Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: It's the Doctor Laura podcast, but about her, not hers,
Speaker 2: because she also has one, but it's not about her,
Speaker 2: although it kind of also is. I'm Robert Evans. This
Speaker 2: is a show about bad people. Jamie. Welcome back to
Speaker 2: the program. How are you doing today? Are you feeling?
Speaker 1: Thank you?
Speaker 3: I've been on the edge of my seat. I'm wondering.
Speaker 3: I mean, like, maybe I'm she seems litigious? Does that
Speaker 3: feel right? You know?
Speaker 2: I could. She's got a lawsuit that she made in here.
Speaker 2: She's got She's had at least one that was unreasonable,
Speaker 2: but she lost and gave up. She will be talking
Speaker 2: about a very reasonable over the revenge porn that gets
Speaker 2: posted of her. Yes, so uh yeah, that one, although
Speaker 2: it doesn't go her way either, So she has a
Speaker 2: bad the law.
Speaker 4: I guess even evil people can be angry about revenge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think we're being pretty fair to
Speaker 2: her in here. I'm certainly accusing her of anything other
Speaker 2: than being a kind of media person that I think
Speaker 2: is unethical. But I still have that right. So yeah,
Speaker 2: before we get into the story, Jamie, mm hmmm, is
Speaker 2: not who I meant to call out there. Sophie has
Speaker 2: a thing to plug.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's hard for we don't have our cameras on.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In the last couple of days since we recorded this,
Speaker 1: my family lost our family dog, Sydney, who had been
Speaker 1: with us for fourteen years, and she was immensely important
Speaker 1: to us. She was my mom's soul dog and just
Speaker 1: a light and she We're fortunate enough that she got
Speaker 1: wonderful end of life care from our vet, but most
Speaker 1: people can't afford venary care these days because it's so expensive.
Speaker 1: And I just wanted to plug an organization my vet
Speaker 1: recommends that does work to help people with who need
Speaker 1: hardship support during times when their pets might need life
Speaker 1: saving or life enhancing treatments, and that is Paisley Pause
Speaker 1: dot org. That's p A I S L E Y
Speaker 1: p A W S dot org. The dot org is important.
Speaker 1: There's another thing that's dot com, not dot com, it's
Speaker 1: dot org. So I just wanted to plug that. And yeah,
Speaker 1: Sydney was really special. So hug your best comparison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your pets the nice food this time. Yeah, don't
Speaker 2: economize on your pets.
Speaker 3: Buy them the nice food. Go into debt for your.
Speaker 2: Pets, go into debt for your pets. You know, rob
Speaker 2: a bank for your pat A lot of people are
Speaker 2: doing it this day these days, and it seems like
Speaker 2: there's no consequences. So you know, watch the movie, watch
Speaker 2: like the first two thirds of Heat, and like the
Speaker 2: first I watch like the right six minutes of Reservoir Dogs,
Speaker 2: and then don't watch anything else from those movies and
Speaker 2: go go rop a bank.
Speaker 1: I would just say Cidy was definitely pro crimes.
Speaker 2: There you go, speaking of crimes.
Speaker 4: John Wick an entire you know, crime in the Interest
Speaker 4: of Dogs franchise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, people love committing dog crimes. It's not those kinds.
Speaker 2: They hate a specific kind of dog crimes.
Speaker 3: Going half of Dogs, Paisleypaws dot Org.
Speaker 2: And we're back. We're warmed up, We're ready to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's lock it in, let's lock it out. When
Speaker 2: we left off with this story, Bill Balance again spelled
Speaker 2: with two l's, which my spell corrector will never accept.
Speaker 2: Made me angry. Microsoftware is a crime against humanity. Bill
Speaker 2: Gates should be too, a Volcana.
Speaker 3: Clippi will Clippi will pay.
Speaker 2: They all should pay. Bill Ballance and Laura Slashinger had
Speaker 2: just met over the radio waves, and he had had
Speaker 2: his producer get her number because Bill is a giant creep. Now,
Speaker 2: obviously this is the entertainment industry. He is definitely trying
Speaker 2: to have sex with her. This is not in a
Speaker 2: lopsided relationship entirely, though the power imbalance is. But Laura
Speaker 2: seems from the beginning to have been open to the
Speaker 2: idea that like, well, this could be how I get
Speaker 2: my foot in the door in the radio. So it's
Speaker 2: a it's a it's it's it's one of those kind
Speaker 2: of situations. And it's also worth noting Laura is at
Speaker 2: this point an adult with a master's degree and a
Speaker 2: marriage behind her, so that's a choice she can make, right.
Speaker 2: It is unclear to me whether she called into that
Speaker 2: show at the first place because she wanted to try
Speaker 2: and make a name for herself in radio, or if
Speaker 2: that only happened the way Bill claims it is. Because
Speaker 2: Bill is going to claim that once they have their
Speaker 2: relig relationship, because they are, in his words, dating, she
Speaker 2: does not use that term for it.
Speaker 4: The truth is, I feel like we have yet to
Speaker 4: encounter a credible source in this.
Speaker 2: Story, not one, not one good source on the life of.
Speaker 3: Doctor Laura's really challenging because you're just like, every time
Speaker 3: the new source is introduced, it's somehow less credible than
Speaker 3: everyone we've met so far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's that's the right way this book goes, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the right way to look at this book. And
Speaker 2: part of why I suspect, part of why I'm trying
Speaker 2: to suggest that maybe Laura went into this with a
Speaker 2: plan is because Bill is a liar, and he is
Speaker 2: going to claim that he's responsible for her wanting to
Speaker 2: be in radio. And I don't know if I want
Speaker 2: to give that to Bill. Doctor Laura is among at
Speaker 2: least whatever else you want to say about her, a
Speaker 2: pretty like motivated, self directed, rational person. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: but but the truth will never be knowable here. The
Speaker 2: day after he Laura calls into his show, Bill is
Speaker 2: within twenty four hours at her parents home. He describes
Speaker 2: her as having what he called a quote thousand watt
Speaker 2: goal wing smile, which is not a phrase I've ever heard,
Speaker 2: and he claims that he convinced her she was a
Speaker 2: star and that she should get into radio. Laura has
Speaker 2: backed up aspects of this. Here's how she described their meeting.
Speaker 2: He came to my parents' home and sat across the
Speaker 2: table from me and looked me in the eye and said,
Speaker 2: someday you're going to be an international radio star. He's
Speaker 2: in the business thirty five years and he's never done this.
Speaker 2: And this is not a pickup line. We're at my parents' house,
Speaker 2: for God's sakes. The closest to radio I'd ever been
Speaker 2: was turning one on to get the weather report. I
Speaker 2: had no interest in it, no designs on it. But
Speaker 2: she does after Bill's call, and Bill gives her a
Speaker 2: pretty full charm offensive. He takes her to dinner at
Speaker 2: Musso and Franks, which is a fancy restaurant in LA
Speaker 2: to talk about her future. Wow again, did Bill? Because
Speaker 2: also one of the possibilities here is that Bill was
Speaker 2: both simultaneously a creep who wanted to hit on a
Speaker 2: younger woman and also thought she would be good in radio,
Speaker 2: because he actually does like help her make connections in radio.
Speaker 2: So I guess several different things are possible here, and
Speaker 2: we don't really know which. But it's definitely gross.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely gross.
Speaker 4: But you know, in the interest of I don't know,
Speaker 4: I feel like so many again, I feel like I'm
Speaker 4: coming to doctor Laura's defense.
Speaker 2: Fuck, but like she hasn't do anything I think is
Speaker 2: wrong here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, no, I mean I feel like this is like,
Speaker 4: this kind of situation is the source of so many,
Speaker 4: so many fraud complexes where I think that two things
Speaker 4: are true here, which is, if this man is a
Speaker 4: fucking creep and obviously I mean if she was.
Speaker 3: Untalented in radio, like in a you know, ethically valueless sense,
Speaker 3: she would not be on you know, still, she wouldn't
Speaker 3: still be working.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he wasn't wrong, but he was a pervert.
Speaker 2: He wasn't wrong, but he was a pervert. And again,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of unknowables here. But Laura becomes a
Speaker 2: fixture at the station after this. She's initially just like
Speaker 2: a very regular guest. She makes I think some money
Speaker 2: doing that, you know, especially when they like bring her
Speaker 2: in to help basically co host episodes or segments. And
Speaker 2: she gets as a result of this, because she's on
Speaker 2: Bill's show so much, she gets offers I think initially
Speaker 2: from the same station, she gets like little jobs. Right
Speaker 2: she's not given her own show right away, but I
Speaker 2: think she's doing some guest hosting here and there. She's
Speaker 2: doing some like announcing she's doing some just whatever kind
Speaker 2: of vo they need, right. Bill describes her as not
Speaker 2: a natural someone who has mike fright, like is as
Speaker 2: scared of the microphone to start, but he says she
Speaker 2: develops skill and keeps with it. She certainly gets good
Speaker 2: at it. However, you know she started. Where Bill and
Speaker 2: Laura's stories largely diverge is that he says they started
Speaker 2: sleeping together and we're in a relationship for more than
Speaker 2: two years. Laura sort of denies this, but not fully.
Speaker 2: And it was the reason why Bill, as I said earlier,
Speaker 2: leaks a bunch of her naked photos to a porn website,
Speaker 2: which he does in exchange for fifty thousand dollars. Is god, Oh,
Speaker 2: he's a real creep. I don't know. I don't actually
Speaker 2: know how Richie was. You know, these guys also snorted
Speaker 2: all their money back then, so like it's entirely this
Speaker 2: man was. This man was a huge radio shock jock
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy one. All of that money went right
Speaker 2: into cocaine. Good lord, Yeah, so you kind of have
Speaker 2: to go back and forth here. I generally prefer to
Speaker 2: build on this stuff. But like Bill sells naked photos
Speaker 2: of her and also like letters and notes that she
Speaker 2: had written him and signed him, like while they were
Speaker 2: seeing each other. Right, He provides all of that to
Speaker 2: this porn website and to I think when it becomes
Speaker 2: a big deal, but a couple other places, because she
Speaker 2: like ignores him at a party and denies that they
Speaker 2: ever saw each other, and so he's like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: be a piece of shit, make money and also get
Speaker 2: you know, get back at her for not respecting me
Speaker 2: or whatever. Like that's the full context of why that
Speaker 2: stuff comes out. And it is here that I should
Speaker 2: note that while doctor Laura was an adult when this
Speaker 2: relationship started with a master's degree, Bill was the same
Speaker 2: age as her dad and had served, in fact in
Speaker 2: World War Two with her dad, but as a captain
Speaker 2: so well not like in the same unit, but like
Speaker 2: that's the age gap, right he is, this is like creepy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: uh huh. I just want to make just really don't
Speaker 2: want to be sleeping on the details of how bad
Speaker 2: a person Bill is. I just also don't want to
Speaker 2: like infantilize her in this Yeah yeah, the way he
Speaker 2: describes their relationship, she slept with him to get her
Speaker 2: foot in the door, and then abandon him as soon
Speaker 2: as she didn't need him anymore. And if that's what happens,
Speaker 2: I'm glad Bill's angry about it, right, I'll say that much,
Speaker 2: because he definitely sucks.
Speaker 3: This is also a ship piece of shit, pieces of
Speaker 3: shit begetting pieces of shit, but a beautiful story.
Speaker 2: I've heard people allege that like he was basically grooming her.
Speaker 2: You know, that's certainly a way to look at it.
Speaker 2: Laura does not describe it that way, but we'll never know.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: In addition to being a massive creep, Bill gives Laura
Speaker 2: some career advice that's going to prove crucial. He wants
Speaker 2: her to and this is kind of the biggest impact
Speaker 2: he actually does have other than like giving her a
Speaker 2: leg up into the business. Is he says, Hey, this
Speaker 2: having like professional medical advice people professional therapists and counselors
Speaker 2: give advice on people's fucked up lives is going to
Speaker 2: be a bigger business and entertainment in the future. You've
Speaker 2: already got like this scientific academic background's Laura is at
Speaker 2: this point working on her PhD. You should get your
Speaker 2: counseling certificate, right, so you actually have a professional credential
Speaker 2: to bring to the table because there's going to be
Speaker 2: a lot of money in that. And Laura commits to
Speaker 2: doing this now. Now, doing this is going to take
Speaker 2: like two thousands hours of supervised counseling work. But if
Speaker 2: he does it, Bill says he'll make her a regular
Speaker 2: like every week on the show, which is like a job.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much it pays, but it's like
Speaker 2: that's like paying work in the radio, right. Laura Gradually,
Speaker 2: as she's doing this, because she's on the show occasionally,
Speaker 2: she's doing some guest bits, and she's she's getting her
Speaker 2: counselor's license, she starts to kind of like hone in
Speaker 2: on what her personality on air ought to be, right,
Speaker 2: and she notices she has times when she's nice and
Speaker 2: she's like listening to people and she's empathetic, and she
Speaker 2: has times because she's kind of an angry person when
Speaker 2: she snaps at people and she's just like really shitting
Speaker 2: to them. And she starts to learn over the couple
Speaker 2: of years that she's doing this, people respond to me
Speaker 2: being mean, right.
Speaker 3: People love when and this is a clinical thing. People
Speaker 3: love when mommy yells at.
Speaker 2: Them uh huh, they do do.
Speaker 3: They love that shit so hard.
Speaker 2: They love that shit to a degree that may damn
Speaker 2: the whole species. One day, in the unauthorized biography, Doctor Christie,
Speaker 2: Bill's first on air medical expert. This is the guy
Speaker 2: Bill's working with before Laura comes in. He says that
Speaker 2: he gave Laura the advice to channel her angry Italian
Speaker 2: ancestry into her show, okay, and that Laura resisted this,
Speaker 2: and so Bill had to make an appeal to doctor
Speaker 2: Christie's authority. And this is how Vicky writes it. The
Speaker 2: only thing I could think to say was that he
Speaker 2: has impeccable credentials, continued balance, He's done so much more.
Speaker 2: He was senior advisor to the Shah of Iran. It's
Speaker 2: spent several years in the Middle East. He was a
Speaker 2: senior analyst for the Rand Corporation. I said, he's lived
Speaker 2: a longer life for you. So there's more to talk
Speaker 2: about in the introduction.
Speaker 3: Wow, what a sentence.
Speaker 2: So I love that. Look, you should really trust this man.
Speaker 2: He advised the Shah of Iran. You know how well
Speaker 2: that job went for him.
Speaker 4: God, and the fact that the Rand Corporation is like
Speaker 4: number two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, coming onto this show to help us sort out
Speaker 2: your personal problems. The psychiatrist who told the czar he
Speaker 2: definitely die in a basement. Good stuff. So, while she's
Speaker 2: working on her counselor certificate, Laura continued her studies at Columbia,
Speaker 2: getting a PhD in nineteen seventy four, which allowed her
Speaker 2: to identify as doctor Laura Slashinger both in advertisements for
Speaker 2: her counseling business and on air. She would call herself
Speaker 2: doctor and then describe herself as a therapist or a
Speaker 2: relationship expert, et cetera. And this is something that a
Speaker 2: lot of people might have led them to believe that
Speaker 2: her doctorate was medical or in any way relevant to
Speaker 2: providing relationship with her.
Speaker 3: Rift is love this, It's a classic.
Speaker 2: It's a classic. She gets away with it forever. She
Speaker 2: is also going to attack colleagues who do the exact
Speaker 2: same thing in a way that is so vicious and like,
Speaker 2: but also the dedication she puts to it shows that, like, oh,
Speaker 2: she knows that this is her weakness, right, she knows
Speaker 2: that doctor Laura is way more marketable than Laura, right,
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's it's cool. It's cool that she understands
Speaker 2: this and recognizes that she has to attempt to nuke
Speaker 2: everyone else who does the same thing in order to
Speaker 2: protect her position. Here in the late nineteen seventies, while
Speaker 2: Laura is starting her career and is now a doctor,
Speaker 2: her parents get divorced, and right around the same time,
Speaker 2: she cuts Bill off, breaks things off with him, and
Speaker 2: starts going independent. This seems to have been partly inspired
Speaker 2: by the fact that she met Lewis Bishop, a fellow
Speaker 2: teacher at USC and a married man with three children,
Speaker 2: the youngest of whom was thirteen. Laura, intrigued by his
Speaker 2: sexy shoulders, started hitting on him. She that's her words. Look,
Speaker 2: I'm not I don't know Leu Bishop's shoulders are not
Speaker 2: mine to comment on.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe she was attracted to a jacket and she just
Speaker 3: didn't realize happened to a lot of.
Speaker 2: People in the nineties. You've seen those jackets.
Speaker 3: I know, it's like these are we're talking, I mean,
Speaker 3: we're talking about late century jackets. These are it's the
Speaker 3: jacket you want to fuck, and you could save yourself
Speaker 3: a lot of trouble by just doing that.
Speaker 2: And that's why you should never put on a jacket
Speaker 2: from the seventies. People. I have a lot of people
Speaker 2: get pressed.
Speaker 3: One left their husband for that jacket.
Speaker 2: That jacket is thirty percent human reproductive materials.
Speaker 3: There's just something about him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she hits on him. Now again, This guy, Lewis
Speaker 2: has three kids, the youngestef who was thirteen. He is
Speaker 2: in a marriage. Laura will later claim that she only
Speaker 2: started to flirt with him when lou was separated from
Speaker 2: his wife Jean. Anonymous colleagues at USC claim she pursued
Speaker 2: him while he was still with his wife. Right, And
Speaker 2: obviously that doesn't mean that the blame is all on her,
Speaker 2: but it does mean that she was fine with hitting
Speaker 2: on a guy and fucking a guy who was in
Speaker 2: a who was married with kids, and like that is
Speaker 2: a thing she will tell people their scum for doing later. Right.
Speaker 2: I don't bring that up because I right, I carried
Speaker 2: to be a moral paraga on here. I'm just saying
Speaker 2: she's going to ship on people for as.
Speaker 3: The same thing she'll judge people for, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, for doing In fact, we'll judge people for
Speaker 2: doing ship that's not even that questionable, right anyway, For
Speaker 2: unrelated reasons, Here's a clip from a call to the
Speaker 2: doctor Laura Show, Jamie JP, Welcome to the program.
Speaker 6: Hey, yeah, hi with Laura. I had a quick question. Uh,
Speaker 6: I've been I've been seeing a Loma for for a
Speaker 6: number of years now, and I found I don't know what.
Speaker 7: A number of years means.
Speaker 2: How do you get him?
Speaker 6: Get him?
Speaker 7: Okay, you've been seeing this woman for two years? Are
Speaker 7: you shacked up together? Or you go drive to our house?
Speaker 6: No? We we we we you know we we hang
Speaker 6: out together with Dontne's and you know.
Speaker 7: Are you shacked up or do you live in two
Speaker 7: different places?
Speaker 6: Oh? No, we live in different places.
Speaker 7: Okay, good. Either one of you have minor children.
Speaker 6: I don't she? Uh she has like teenagers?
Speaker 7: And how old are her teenagers?
Speaker 6: I'd rather not. I don't feel like comfortable to say that,
Speaker 6: but I just don't want Yeah that's nothing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I need to know how old they are. And
Speaker 7: I don't see how that's going to be a distinguishing characteristic.
Speaker 7: Everybody's already recognized.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why do you need that?
Speaker 7: They're both sixteen? They're twins.
Speaker 6: Well, no, it's sixteen, seventeen.
Speaker 7: Sixteen and seventeen. Okay, that gives you two years of
Speaker 7: dating her. If you want to marry her, you have
Speaker 7: to wait two more years until the kids are up
Speaker 7: and out. They don't need to deal with you in
Speaker 7: the house. That usually doesn't work out very well.
Speaker 8: Okay, So hmmm h yeah, yeah, so that's that's fucked up, right,
Speaker 8: because number one, this guy just does not even.
Speaker 2: Because you know, what she actually did was get into
Speaker 2: a relationship with a married man behind like the back
Speaker 2: of the woman in that relationship, and then the family
Speaker 2: broke up as a result of that whole thing. Not
Speaker 2: putting all the blame on her either, but that was
Speaker 2: the situation she was in, right. This guy is just saying,
Speaker 2: I want to date this woman who has two sixteen
Speaker 2: year olds, and she's like, well, you can't. You can't
Speaker 2: marry them or have a serious relationship with her while
Speaker 2: they're teenagers, right, because that would disrupt them too much.
Speaker 2: And it's like, what about the what about a thirteen
Speaker 2: year old in this situation you were in?
Speaker 3: Honestly, she's a gigantic, fucking hypocrite. I'm like more interested
Speaker 3: in how like listening to her operate, Like it's it's
Speaker 3: the same deal with Bill.
Speaker 2: She like, drill, what's their age?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, Like she's just like a shark looking for
Speaker 3: an angle, and like if one angle doesn't pan out,
Speaker 3: she will wait for him to talk two to three
Speaker 3: more seconds and try the next angle.
Speaker 2: And it's it's just I mean, it's brutal her audience.
Speaker 2: One thing they like is scummy men or men who
Speaker 2: were you know, weak or something, And so you you
Speaker 2: want to first off, it's about getting him off balance, right,
Speaker 2: the more things that you can needle him on like constantly,
Speaker 2: like he does that this, or she does at the
Speaker 2: start of the call where he's like a number of years,
Speaker 2: like how many years? Right is it? Because that that
Speaker 2: is the most important thing. No, but number one, it
Speaker 2: maybe gives her something she can pivot off of later.
Speaker 2: And number two, by starting it like that, by like
Speaker 2: drilling on him, she's getting him off balance. She's making
Speaker 2: him more nervous. Hopefully he'll say something else that she
Speaker 2: can drill him into and how he said it right her?
Speaker 4: And for like a first judgment because even when she
Speaker 4: when she like takes in the information of two, I
Speaker 4: was genuinely unsure which way she was going to go.
Speaker 4: Just that whichever way it went, it was going to
Speaker 4: be a weird judgment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I and I think it because it's
Speaker 2: like of the issues to have. I don't think it's
Speaker 2: reasonable to be like, well, you shouldn't marry someone when
Speaker 2: they have teenagers because that will disrupt the team. No, you,
Speaker 2: it's your responsibility as an adult in there to not
Speaker 2: fuck up their lives. I'll agree with that, but you
Speaker 2: marrying their mom is not necessarily that thing, right.
Speaker 4: I feel like this is a part of the show,
Speaker 4: I'm sure, but like by the time that interaction was over,
Speaker 4: I forgot what, if anything the question was.
Speaker 2: Because for some extent, it's about that constant feeling of
Speaker 2: like hearing someone who is who who is together attacking
Speaker 2: all of these people for being slothful and lazy and
Speaker 2: like not you know, yea, these these symptoms of our
Speaker 2: degraded modern society and all of its cultural law. Right,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of what the people who like this
Speaker 2: show get out of it, right, Right, that's good. I
Speaker 2: think that that relates to the topic of question.
Speaker 4: Okay, so she is like a manipulative hypocrite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's kind of a Doctor Laura's story. Okay,
Speaker 2: the Doctor Laura's Stora not a good joke not really
Speaker 2: a joke.
Speaker 4: Throughout the Robert, I gave you the pity laugh, and
Speaker 4: I regret it.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I appreciate taking it back. I take it back. I'm
Speaker 3: sucking it back.
Speaker 2: I'm going to I'm giving great lesson to all of
Speaker 2: the men out there, you know, because pity laughs spend
Speaker 2: the same as real laughs, which is not very well
Speaker 2: stop laughing. That was not a bad one. That was
Speaker 2: a joke.
Speaker 3: That was a real one. The first one mis fake
Speaker 3: that one. Really, I'm sorry, Sophie.
Speaker 2: I'm going to take joy of that real laugh and
Speaker 2: I'm going to take it with me into these ads.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, No, I'm party to something.
Speaker 2: Here's Here's is coming after you.
Speaker 1: I have bad news, which might also be good news
Speaker 1: for both of you. I know, when each of you
Speaker 1: is real laughing and fake laughing every.
Speaker 3: Day I leave that. I've never let myself take that in.
Speaker 3: Of course you do.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, all of you?
Speaker 2: Huh and we're back. Ah. What a great time, What
Speaker 2: a great time to be alive. Doctor Laura's world.
Speaker 8: So Yes.
Speaker 2: Through the early eighties, Laura got a series of low
Speaker 2: stakes radio gigs at small stations. She spent years trying
Speaker 2: and failing to break into the mainstream on her own
Speaker 2: while in order to make money teaching at USC and
Speaker 2: maintaining a private practice. Her first big break was in
Speaker 2: September of nineteen eighty three with the nationally syndicated program Breakaway.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of shows, they were trying to capture
Speaker 2: the success Bill Balance had seen by bringing in a
Speaker 2: resident therapist to help gaucket people. Laura does well enough
Speaker 2: in this job that soon she is pitching her first
Speaker 2: TV pilot for a show called Conflict Wishes. Uh oh,
Speaker 2: if only Fraser would have loved this show.
Speaker 3: Fucking dream. I mean, this actually would have been a pretty.
Speaker 2: Good episode of Frasher. The idea would be that, like,
Speaker 2: people would come to doctor Laura with problems and they
Speaker 2: would she would give them advice, they would take it,
Speaker 2: and then six weeks later they would come back to
Speaker 2: discuss if it had worked. Now, this was not going
Speaker 2: to be a real like even in the pilot they
Speaker 2: do they bring in actors, which is not abnormal for
Speaker 2: reality shows. But when she has a show later, she
Speaker 2: will lie about people being actors. So I'm going to
Speaker 2: assume it would all of it lies. This doesn't sell,
Speaker 2: Laura will continue to try to force her way onto television,
Speaker 2: a dream which she does technically succeed at but never
Speaker 2: really works out for her. She is a radio star, right.
Speaker 2: I found a demo reel, which, to my best knowledge
Speaker 2: dates from sometime in the late nineteen eighties to early nineties.
Speaker 2: What stands out to me in this video is that
Speaker 2: this is a Laura who has not yet become the
Speaker 2: person we've heard in the clips that I've played. She
Speaker 2: is less aggressive, more nervous, more focused on actually providing
Speaker 2: some sort of useful feedback.
Speaker 3: And she's wearing a fabulous brooch.
Speaker 2: She is wearing an ice brooch. And I'm going to
Speaker 2: let Jamie play some of this or Sophie play some
Speaker 2: of this audio for me. Well, I women write an
Speaker 2: apology letter for that.
Speaker 1: Hello, Sue, I'll have one.
Speaker 9: I want to know how I can tell my daughter
Speaker 9: how far she can go on a date and win.
Speaker 9: I began to tell her that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how old is your daughter?
Speaker 9: My daughter is fifteen?
Speaker 10: Has she been dating already?
Speaker 9: No? Not? I want her to start dating, and I
Speaker 9: want to know when to start telling him these things.
Speaker 10: How do you assess your daughter? Do you think she's
Speaker 10: a bit shy?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 9: She's very shy, very very shy, and I'm afraid that
Speaker 9: she needs to know this because I don't want her
Speaker 9: to go too far and trying to win acceptance with
Speaker 9: the guy.
Speaker 10: Oh so you're it sounds Yeah, I guess I had
Speaker 10: a feeling that you were thinking that maybe for her
Speaker 10: the sexuality might be a tool for making the connection,
Speaker 10: or for communication, or for getting acceptance or approval maya guy.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, there's a couple times that are really interesting
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 10: To me.
Speaker 2: For one thing, you would not find that, I think irresponsible.
Speaker 2: That was how a therapist talked to.
Speaker 3: You, right, No, it seems like she was like, uh,
Speaker 3: I mean I think she is.
Speaker 4: Oh god, there's so much Fraser. There's so much Fraser
Speaker 4: low hanging fruit here. She is always like whether she's
Speaker 4: doing a good or a bad job. She's always listening
Speaker 4: very carefully. But this was like a non menacing, like
Speaker 4: actually instructive kind of listening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the question she asked number one, her tone is
Speaker 2: not aggressive, and number two, she's clearly not using it
Speaker 2: too needle, but to actually get more information, which she
Speaker 2: seems to actually process and respond to rather than take
Speaker 2: in a separate direction. Right, Like if this was on
Speaker 2: her show, she would never say Okay, so it seems
Speaker 2: like you think your daughter might be looking at sex
Speaker 2: as a way to connect to people, which is a
Speaker 2: reasonable and fair way to express a worry about like
Speaker 2: a teenager having sex, but without like being judgmental, you're
Speaker 2: just saying, I think maybe they see sex as this
Speaker 2: and so this, you know, I'm concerned that it might
Speaker 2: lead to this or that right in their relationships, as
Speaker 2: opposed to oh, she's she wants to shack up because
Speaker 2: she thinks that's how you get boys to like you
Speaker 2: or something like that would be how Laura would express
Speaker 2: it today.
Speaker 4: Right, right, I mean, even the tone that she says
Speaker 4: shack up with, like it's just this doesn't feel like
Speaker 4: there is an explicit agenda to it, even though it's
Speaker 4: like I'm sure that the you know, like advice she's
Speaker 4: going to give is like fairly conservative, but like, yeah,
Speaker 4: but it doesn't feel malicious in the way that the
Speaker 4: first clip did.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And it's because it's really not because at
Speaker 2: this point she doesn't realize how much money that's going
Speaker 2: to make her.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, my therapist has a roommate, So that's how
Speaker 4: I know she's.
Speaker 2: Good, Yeah, it's interesting, Like it is actually good therapy
Speaker 2: advice that she gives. Like later in that call, the
Speaker 2: mother discussions that, like, you know, I made a lot
Speaker 2: of mistakes when I was her age in regards to relationships.
Speaker 2: I'm afraid she's going to repeat my mistakes. And Laura's
Speaker 2: advice is very responsible. She's like, well, you should go
Speaker 2: to your daughter. You should open up about your own
Speaker 2: life and how you feel about the choices you've made
Speaker 2: and kind of maybe that can guide her to like
Speaker 2: where you are right. And I like, yeah, that's actually
Speaker 2: good advice, you know, not just yelling at your kid,
Speaker 2: not just saying you're not allowed to do this, but
Speaker 2: be like, well, look, you know this is what happened
Speaker 2: to me when I was young, Like this is maybe
Speaker 2: information you should have, and here's how I feel about it.
Speaker 2: I think that that's like responsible advice. It's not like
Speaker 2: overwhelming or shocking advice. But and I think that's why
Speaker 2: this doesn't work. Right. There's no big TV show in
Speaker 2: people having thoughtful therapists consider their problem.
Speaker 3: Reasonable conversations on television.
Speaker 2: You want the worst people you've ever seen being insane
Speaker 2: assholes to each other. That's why always Sonny's been on
Speaker 2: the air for so long.
Speaker 7: Well, I really do.
Speaker 4: I was thinking about this. I forget what show I
Speaker 4: was watching a clip from it. It might have been
Speaker 4: like that show Couples Therapy, but like people either want
Speaker 4: to watch a reasonable person talking to the most unhinged
Speaker 4: like or like most troubled patients imaginable effect yes yes, yeah,
Speaker 4: or an unhinged therapist scolding like pretty well adjusted people
Speaker 4: and nothing in between.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, sorry, Louis get it. Yeah yeah. Watch Weird Weekends.
Speaker 2: There's a great episode on that with preppers that really
Speaker 2: predicts a lot of our current or at least shows
Speaker 2: the early stage of our current weird militia commact. Great show. Ah,
Speaker 2: louis complicated man. Speaking of complicated people, Laura's life is
Speaker 2: pretty complicated because while she is trying to get a
Speaker 2: radio show and working as a therapist, she and her
Speaker 2: now husband Lou have a kid. Lou had been a
Speaker 2: teacher when they had met at the school she taught
Speaker 2: at and had had to retire in disgrace because of
Speaker 2: everything that happened with doctor Laura, and so he is
Speaker 2: kind of like working as her manager for a bunch
Speaker 2: of this period, I don't think he he is not
Speaker 2: the breadwinner, to be sure. Right, it seems like a
Speaker 2: lot of the family finances are on Laura's shoulder. That's
Speaker 2: the feeling that I get. None of this is like precise,
Speaker 2: but that is at least what I'm led to believe
Speaker 2: by Vicky's book. Who knows how he's.
Speaker 3: Kind of like he's mommaging her a little bit.
Speaker 2: It seems like it if how Vicky's have how the
Speaker 2: mostly anonymous people Vicky quotes like if that's accurate?
Speaker 3: Right, there's so many despicable people attempting to tell this
Speaker 3: totally bad because yeah, you can see a world where
Speaker 3: it's like that is just a tool to make to emasculate.
Speaker 2: No one who doesn't suck has ever been within thirty
Speaker 2: feet of Laura's lensing Like that's the lesson of bits,
Speaker 2: so will never know, will never know.
Speaker 3: There's no Forrest Gup like character to give us insight.
Speaker 2: Tragic. There is, however, a son named Derek with a
Speaker 2: why sorry, OK, it's a spade spelled Derek. There's no
Speaker 2: other way to say. Look, I'm not trying to punch
Speaker 2: down Derek, but.
Speaker 3: Your name is not Derek.
Speaker 4: We support you and your I think almost inevitable.
Speaker 3: You know Scott interests.
Speaker 2: A SKA band. Wait wait yeah, d E R y K.
Speaker 3: Thank you Scott.
Speaker 2: Definitely, definitely he's He's got a name that would have
Speaker 2: made him fit in the mighty mighty Bosstones. Maybe he
Speaker 2: give him the idea to do that embarrassing album about
Speaker 2: George Floyd.
Speaker 3: Oh look, the city hasn't bounced back.
Speaker 2: Scott has not bounced back from that album. No, no,
Speaker 2: it's just something you can't pick it up, pick it up,
Speaker 2: pick it up? After that? Wow, So I love I
Speaker 2: love getting any chance to do a skapit.
Speaker 3: Oh, so you have it.
Speaker 2: A couple years after Derek is born, Laura is going
Speaker 2: to make a major point of like her show, that
Speaker 2: women who have kids should not have a career if
Speaker 2: they can avoid it. That it is not fair to
Speaker 2: raise kids and have a career at the same time
Speaker 2: for a woman. And I want to give you an
Speaker 2: idea of how she talks about this. I want to
Speaker 2: play you a call from a one woman named Rosemary
Speaker 2: who is on track. She claims to be partner at
Speaker 2: a law firm and is trying to decide should I
Speaker 2: get a nanny for my kids. Right, And here is
Speaker 2: Laura's response.
Speaker 3: Rational I'm sure.
Speaker 7: If you were your kid, what would you want your
Speaker 7: mother to do?
Speaker 10: I would definitely want my mom to stay home with me.
Speaker 7: That's your answer. I think you should never have had
Speaker 7: a child. If becoming a partner and all of that
Speaker 7: stuff was that important, you never should have had a child.
Speaker 2: Part of the love of it is it's not important
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 10: I don't even especially lost my job, and I do
Speaker 10: love being home with my baby girl.
Speaker 7: Well, I don't know why you asked the question. Then
Speaker 7: I feel that hearing a lot.
Speaker 6: If I'm an internal voice, but also I'm hearing.
Speaker 7: I asked you a simple question. If you or your daughter,
Speaker 7: what would you want your mother to do? There is
Speaker 7: no other debate other than the answer to that, I'd
Speaker 7: want to be mothered. You said, why would you even
Speaker 7: contemplate something different for your kid than you would want
Speaker 7: for yourself. I care about doing much best for my daughter,
Speaker 7: and unless you are a really bad mother, having you home.
Speaker 7: Uh huh okay, having you home is the best for her.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 4: Also in this uh, in this window, Sophie just had
Speaker 4: to open the copy, was like, don't buy the feminist
Speaker 4: fly you know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Laura has a big lot of bits about
Speaker 2: how the feminists have ruined women by making them want careers.
Speaker 4: I just it's I don't know. I it's so frustrating
Speaker 4: because it's like, does she ever at any point try
Speaker 4: to justify the fact that she has a career. Is
Speaker 4: there any exugenation as to why that is, or does
Speaker 4: she She's.
Speaker 3: Just the exception.
Speaker 2: She lies for one thing, because she says, as a spoiler,
Speaker 2: she says, we spent the for the first three years,
Speaker 2: I didn't leave the house. That's not true. We'll talk
Speaker 2: about But also that's three years. She's not telling this
Speaker 2: woman because maybe her kids are both older than three. Right,
Speaker 2: She's saying, you should quit your job. That could provide
Speaker 2: so well for your family that your kids might be
Speaker 2: taken care of. Right, but you could pay like partner
Speaker 2: to law firms, not like a not a shit job.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 2: That could be the path to quite a bit of wealth.
Speaker 2: She's saying, give that up because otherwise you will not
Speaker 2: be responsible parent. When what she did was continue to
Speaker 2: work on being a radio personality while her child was
Speaker 2: very young. Right, I don't think that's wrong. I actually
Speaker 2: think that's very impressive. My mom got a second master's
Speaker 2: degree in her late forties while she was raising us
Speaker 2: so that she can start a new career. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't if that
Speaker 2: if she were to be honest about who she is.
Speaker 2: The advice to give this woman is, like, you know,
Speaker 2: be cautious of how you know. Once you start having
Speaker 2: your kids watched by an eight, talk to them. Be
Speaker 2: cognizant of how this is affecting them. If you get
Speaker 2: a sense that you know the individual you've picked or
Speaker 2: just this situation is harming them, then you may need
Speaker 2: to reappraise things. But like many children have had a
Speaker 2: nanny a couple of nights a week, especially if they're
Speaker 2: kids who were older, and it's not. When I was
Speaker 2: fucking ten or eleven, I would I loved any time
Speaker 2: one or both of my parents were out because I
Speaker 2: got more time to read books and talk to weird
Speaker 2: adults on the internet, which was never.
Speaker 3: Goes bad, unavoidable. No, it's always fine, and unfortunately it
Speaker 3: can't be stopped.
Speaker 5: No, not.
Speaker 2: We have learned that it's not the same.
Speaker 3: My parents being home prevented that. It just made it harder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's obviously like these are, especially if if
Speaker 2: you're an only parent, like it's a complicated, difficult thing.
Speaker 2: But the fact of the matter is, however, you see
Speaker 2: about that Laura literally did the thing where she didn't
Speaker 2: spend all of her time at home to take so
Speaker 2: that she could build her career because she knew how
Speaker 2: much money.
Speaker 9: Was in it.
Speaker 2: And she's telling this woman not to do the same thing.
Speaker 2: I think that's shitty, right, That's all I gotta say
Speaker 2: on the matter, right. Yeah, So, because this is such
Speaker 2: a through line and her advice to women, Laura makes
Speaker 2: a point to claim that she managed to be doctor Laura.
Speaker 2: She says she only works like two hours a day
Speaker 2: or at least during this period, and then again, she
Speaker 2: didn't leave home for the first three years. Vicki Bain
Speaker 2: is going to claim this.
Speaker 7: Is a lie.
Speaker 2: Although Laura had been teaching a nighttime graduate level psychology
Speaker 2: course at Pepperdine University branches in the San Fernando Valley
Speaker 2: since January nineteen eighty two, she took the fall semester
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty five off to prepare for Derek's birth,
Speaker 2: but lou was left to babysit Derek, then two months old.
Speaker 2: When Laura returned to Pepperdine in January nineteen eighty six
Speaker 2: to continue her hour and a half long Tuesday evening
Speaker 2: clinical practicum for psychology students, Laura also maintained a Saturday
Speaker 2: private practice, again sharing office on Ventura Boulevard, and in
Speaker 2: mid nineteen eighty six, when Derek with Derek not yet
Speaker 2: six months old, she added another teaching commitment to her
Speaker 2: work at Pepperdine and her private practice. So she's just
Speaker 2: it's just like, does she does the opposite of what
Speaker 2: she said? I don't think that.
Speaker 4: That's yeah, it's like she feels she sounds almost like
Speaker 4: a you know, stereotypical media like projection of like a
Speaker 4: working woman of the eighties whose business is talking other
Speaker 4: women out of doing that. Like it's just yeah, and
Speaker 4: you know, I'll be damned if that's not a profitable
Speaker 4: I mean, there is just an infinite amount of money
Speaker 4: to be made in making women feel horrible about themselves,
Speaker 4: because there's no point in your life where that is
Speaker 4: not precedent.
Speaker 2: It's just everything that. From what I can tell, laura
Speaker 2: values in her life comes from the fact that she
Speaker 2: was willing to spend less time with her infant child
Speaker 2: in order to further her careers. Right, Yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: think that's a reasonable choice. She makes a lot of
Speaker 2: money enough to make sure that kid never wants for anything.
Speaker 2: I'm not I'm not going to come here and say
Speaker 2: that's not she did the wrong thing. But the wrong
Speaker 2: thing is like pretending that other people who have that
Speaker 2: chance or just to need to work, because everyone does
Speaker 2: usually that they're being a bad mom, which they're not,
Speaker 2: right right, right, which I.
Speaker 4: Mean, especially in the back half of that like is
Speaker 4: just oh, like it made my stomach clench a little
Speaker 4: bit for the for the woman on the phone, like
Speaker 4: because she that like soft defense of like I'm not
Speaker 4: a bad mother.
Speaker 3: She's like, okay, well then.
Speaker 2: Well then you should be at her job.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh god, they're just like a yeah, it
Speaker 3: is a certain kind of hell.
Speaker 2: Yes. Uh So, while Laura was by her own standards,
Speaker 2: working out of the home and being a bad working
Speaker 2: outside of the home and being a bad mom, she
Speaker 2: was also being a bad therapist by anyone's standards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's her job.
Speaker 2: One of the anonymous sources for Vicky's book is a
Speaker 2: former student of Laura's. So this is a woman taking
Speaker 2: Laura's classes, and during one day when they're talking, Laura
Speaker 2: basically says, you should become my patient at my therapy business. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't think you're allowed to do that's a therapist.
Speaker 2: I think that's probably not ethical, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: It was. It was the eighties, right, A lot more
Speaker 2: everyone is on cocaine, right, so it's hard not to
Speaker 2: invite people to be therapized by a baby. Baby Derek
Speaker 2: is doing more cocaine than a nightclub DJ could survive
Speaker 2: doing in modern terms.
Speaker 3: Baby Derek dug up some loops. Dudes, He's in the backyard.
Speaker 3: He's good to go.
Speaker 2: It's it's like how alien people talk about the Pyramids,
Speaker 2: Like we have lost the knowledge as a species for
Speaker 2: how to do as much cocaine as they did back then,
Speaker 2: as Baby Derek and doctor Laura are all doing every
Speaker 2: single day.
Speaker 3: A long way the student truth.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I'm going to continue with that quote from Victory
Speaker 2: Vicky's book. It was her way or no way, the
Speaker 2: said the student turned patient. Basically, I walked in and
Speaker 2: she said, I want you to tape all your sessions.
Speaker 2: I expect all my patients to bring in a tape.
Speaker 2: We use my tape recorder. We're going to tape everything. Basically,
Speaker 2: I think what she was saying was, if you listen
Speaker 2: to this over and over again, you'll get more out
Speaker 2: of it. According to this patient, the tapes were returned
Speaker 2: to her after each session and are still in the
Speaker 2: patient's possession. They document some boundary breaking activities between therapists
Speaker 2: and patient. Over the next two and a half years,
Speaker 2: this patient met with Laura almost weekly, paying her one
Speaker 2: hundred dollars an hour for her work. I guess she
Speaker 2: took a liking to me, recalled the patient who added
Speaker 2: and I guess at that point in my life I
Speaker 2: needed the attention. She reeled me in and broke nearly
Speaker 2: every boundary that there is. For example, the former patient said,
Speaker 2: there was a young man she was seeing right before me,
Speaker 2: so we would kind of pass each other there in
Speaker 2: the waiting room. She would talk to me about what
Speaker 2: some of his shoes were. That really freaked me out
Speaker 2: because I wondered if she was telling the next person
Speaker 2: about me. Then there was a very non newscaster who
Speaker 2: was also seeing her as a therapist on the same
Speaker 2: time I was, and Laura talked a little bit about
Speaker 2: him as well. She asked me to babysit her son
Speaker 2: on several occasions. Laura said, I don't talk to my sister,
Speaker 2: and Derek hasn't doesn't have an aunt. I want you
Speaker 2: to be his aunt. So that is a boundary, you know.
Speaker 3: That is bad?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had a therapist be like
Speaker 2: I cannot if I were to meet you out in
Speaker 2: the world, I would like leave immediately and pretend not
Speaker 2: to know you. Yeah, Like, I'm not sure if that's
Speaker 2: the norm for everyone, but you are certainly not supposed
Speaker 2: to ask them to be your aunt or your kid's aunt.
Speaker 3: No, oh, I feel like this.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's I wouldn't go as far as
Speaker 4: to say that like doctor Laura's work is directly in
Speaker 4: conversation with this, but like the fact that she is
Speaker 4: a very like, you know, an increasingly public therapist figure
Speaker 4: and then in the eighties feels directly in conversation. But
Speaker 4: like how therapists were presented as these savior figures during
Speaker 4: the Satanic Panic too, and just like how this was
Speaker 4: such a popular and like still publicly somewhat trusted grift
Speaker 4: despite however, much evidence, like recorded evidence to the contrary.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I I yeah. Anyway, for years after this point,
Speaker 2: Laura and this patient become weirdly remained very close. The
Speaker 2: patient later claimed or claims that Lou was a helicopter
Speaker 2: parent that he or helicopter husband. So basically, this patient
Speaker 2: says Lou was there every class she would do at
Speaker 2: the college. He was always around. He was like obsessed
Speaker 2: with her success. And Derek was not there. So maybe
Speaker 2: they even hired a nanny. Right. The good news is
Speaker 2: that doctor Laura had enough time while raising a kid
Speaker 2: to start up another business, this one making custom sweaters
Speaker 2: for major film productions. And Jamie, this is where the
Speaker 2: show goes in a shocking direction, because I will bet
Speaker 2: you did not call that the sweater's Whoopee, Goldberg War
Speaker 2: and Sister Act were made by doctor Laura Slusheger. What yes,
Speaker 2: I just man when this was coming across this, Jamie,
Speaker 2: there's an experience. I feel like I am the only
Speaker 2: one who can understand what like pirate captains felt when
Speaker 2: they like landed and actually like hit treasure in their shovel, right,
Speaker 2: because that's how it felt. Reading that detail, I am floating.
Speaker 4: Three feet above the ground. The slack from my mic
Speaker 4: to my zoom recorded the only thing tethering me to
Speaker 4: the art.
Speaker 2: How how God fascinating stuff. At least one custom sweater.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I love it. It's glorious. She
Speaker 2: also made some of the Lost Boys costumes and hook.
Speaker 2: I just there's no way to be ready for that. No,
Speaker 2: it hits like a like a like a cyclone of.
Speaker 3: Woman's heart as an ocean of secrets, like amazing. Never.
Speaker 2: No, I don't know which sweater in Sister Act that
Speaker 2: doctor Laura made, but it was apparently for whoopee, so well.
Speaker 3: I would be open to Yeah, someone started like a poll.
Speaker 4: Some of the watch hook which one is which sweater
Speaker 4: is giving you an aura of menace?
Speaker 2: And anyway? Wow wild stuff. Yeah. So Laura is finally
Speaker 2: syndicated on air in the mid nineteen eighties, but she
Speaker 2: loses the show. This is another unhinged twist. The network
Speaker 2: that owns her show is bought by the Liberty Lobby,
Speaker 2: which was founded by a Nazi named Lewis Cartow as
Speaker 2: a political action group for the far right, and also
Speaker 2: published the newspapers Spotlight, which was dedicated to Holocaust denial.
Speaker 3: Far less shocking to me than the sweat.
Speaker 2: You know, Laura is number one not a fan of
Speaker 2: people who deny the Holocaust. She is half Jewish. She's
Speaker 2: going to become Orthodox Jewish for a period of time,
Speaker 2: then she stops. But at any rate, she does not
Speaker 2: thrive here. She quits the station not long after it's
Speaker 2: taken over by the far right. We don't know the
Speaker 2: exact reasons, but it might have had something to do
Speaker 2: with the fact that they were really bad people.
Speaker 3: So for you, doctor Laura has a line.
Speaker 2: Doctor Laura had a line at least who knows about today,
Speaker 2: But she did have a line then, and she gets
Speaker 2: credit for that. Good for you, Good on you, Bill Balance.
Speaker 2: After she leaves, maybe she was fired also, It's really
Speaker 2: unclear to me, but in which case, less kudos. But
Speaker 2: according to Bill Balance, she called him and begged for help,
Speaker 2: saying that she would kill herself if she couldn't get
Speaker 2: back on the radio. Bill is a huge liar. I
Speaker 2: don't know that. That doesn't really sound like Laura to me,
Speaker 2: but maybe maybe she did. The good news for Laura
Speaker 2: was that things turned around for her very quickly after
Speaker 2: this point. Near the end of the nineteen eighties, a
Speaker 2: radio executive picked her to replace Sally Jesse Raphael. Her
Speaker 2: primary competition for the role was a woman named Barbara DeAngelis. Today,
Speaker 2: Barbara is a prominent author, lecturer, and New York Times
Speaker 2: best selling author. She is a PhD in psychology from
Speaker 2: Columbia Pacific University, which is not a real college. It's
Speaker 2: kind of state approved but not accredited. It is sketchy, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Now Laura is going to go to war with this
Speaker 2: woman because she calls herself doctor Barbara DeAngelis and get
Speaker 2: like she will complain to station management, and station management
Speaker 2: will make it, like, stop Barbara from describing herself as
Speaker 2: a doctor on air. Laura, doctor Laura has is definitely
Speaker 2: a real PhD from a real accredited school, but it's
Speaker 2: in kinniestiesiology. It is not in anything relevant to what
Speaker 2: she is doing on air. It is not in like
Speaker 2: therapy or in counseling. It is somewhat dishonest for her
Speaker 2: to portray herself in this context as.
Speaker 3: Doctor waah, but she still does.
Speaker 2: It's actively dishonest. Yeah, And like it's weird because also
Speaker 2: it's dishonest for Barbara de Angelis to coll herself and.
Speaker 3: Let's find the most lyingest people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, find so. I don't know, you can dubious truphy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can feel however you want about that. But she's
Speaker 2: definitely a hypocrite.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 2: Colleagues at the time added that Laura was by far
Speaker 2: the most aggressive person at the radio station. Any disagreement
Speaker 2: or conflict with her was likely to result in weeks
Speaker 2: or years of vicious shit talking. And this is what
Speaker 2: Barbara says happened to her, that Laura basically becomes like
Speaker 2: he's almost stalking her in a professional sense. This escalates
Speaker 2: to Laura sending an anonymous complaints to the Board of
Speaker 2: Behavioral Science Examiners that Barbara DeAngelis was fraudulently portraying herself
Speaker 2: as a doctor, which I guess she was anyway. She
Speaker 2: also sends a letter to the da of Los Angeles
Speaker 2: accusing Barbara of practicing medicine without a license, which I
Speaker 2: don't know that Barbara was doing. Although maybe this is.
Speaker 4: A very like boomer woman con like just right, it's
Speaker 4: watching like the Barbara v.
Speaker 2: Laura or h I like people.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, you're like all of all of these generic
Speaker 3: boomer women names need to no good.
Speaker 2: I wish. Neither of them had ever had a job
Speaker 2: giving people life advice. I guess this is where I
Speaker 2: land on the Barbara Laura debate.
Speaker 3: It's it's hard to find someone professionally giving life advice
Speaker 3: who also has a pathological gift for attention.
Speaker 2: I have known a couple of people who were like
Speaker 2: good enough at life that I think their advice has
Speaker 2: a would have a monetary value. And they are all
Speaker 2: way too busy living good lives to get on the
Speaker 2: radio and do that check, right, And.
Speaker 3: That is what is supposed and that is like the
Speaker 3: beautiful catch twenty two of people worth listening to. They're
Speaker 3: usually too busy to talk to you.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, which is why you're left with people.
Speaker 3: Like me, and that's why we're here.
Speaker 2: Ponder that while you listen to these ads. Ah, So
Speaker 2: Barbara leaves the station KFI while she and where she
Speaker 2: and Laura have their quarrel. She later would claim that
Speaker 2: this happens in nineteen ninety two, several months after she
Speaker 2: left quote, I received a call from a woman who
Speaker 2: sounded very nervous on the phone. She said she had
Speaker 2: been a patient and a friend of Laura's, and she
Speaker 2: wanted to meet and talk to me because she had
Speaker 2: some information. She came out and told me that she
Speaker 2: knew for a fact it was Laura, as I suspected,
Speaker 2: who had set out to destroy my career and discredit me,
Speaker 2: because she had heard Laura say it from her mouth
Speaker 2: and not just say it, but scream it. Now. Again,
Speaker 2: no good sources here Barbara's story does, or at least
Speaker 2: Vicky finds other people who worked at KFI who back
Speaker 2: up aspects of the story, including that Laura was incredibly
Speaker 2: hostile to Barbara. So yeah, I don't have trouble believing
Speaker 2: that she orchestrated this woman's expulsion from the network because
Speaker 2: she was threatened by her because she was competition, right.
Speaker 2: I also think that Barbara definitely was portraying herself as
Speaker 2: a doctor, and I don't really think she was.
Speaker 3: I don't think there. Yeah, again, there's like I'm rooting
Speaker 3: for no one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm rooting for those sweaters in hook. Maybe I'll
Speaker 2: have to watch that movie again and really have an
Speaker 2: eye for the sweaters.
Speaker 4: I hope they're able to sort of dig themselves out
Speaker 4: from yeah, the trauma.
Speaker 2: Then, yeah, yeah, I'm so shocked by that. Relief reveal.
Speaker 2: What a baffling thing to learn in the middle of
Speaker 2: this it comes. It's like, yeah, it's like a thunderbolt
Speaker 2: from a clear sky, just bam. Now there's sister act
Speaker 2: in the middle of this story.
Speaker 3: It's a moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is like this moment where you're like, wait,
Speaker 4: is this gonna change the direction of her life?
Speaker 3: And it's like no, no, not at all.
Speaker 2: No, no, really doesn't make it unrelated, a complete red
Speaker 2: herring for the future of Laura's slack.
Speaker 3: There's no narrative to be gotten from it. It just is.
Speaker 2: You would cut this out of the script on her
Speaker 2: life because like, why are we doing this? Where are
Speaker 2: we going on this journey? This doesn't teach us anything,
Speaker 2: This doesn't contribute to who she becomes. But life isn't
Speaker 2: a story, people. Yeah, the nearly nineteen nineties we're a
Speaker 2: precarious time financially for the Slushingers. They had a devastating
Speaker 2: house fire and we're basically on the edge of eviction,
Speaker 2: horribly in debt. At least a Vicki's story is accurate.
Speaker 2: The story one is left believing, if we take that
Speaker 2: book as more or less true, is that doctor Laura
Speaker 2: was ruthless and so cruel to Barbara, in part because
Speaker 2: she saw that like, if I don't get if I
Speaker 2: don't break through in radio, we're fucked right. We've kind
Speaker 2: of bet everything on this, and I don't like being
Speaker 2: a therapist. We get a vision of her during this
Speaker 2: awkward period through a piece of rare, nearly lost media,
Speaker 2: or at least we can learn about her a little
Speaker 2: in her absence in this lost media, because we're not
Speaker 2: actually going to hear her in this. This is a
Speaker 2: recording of the Meeting of the Mouths, a radio special
Speaker 2: hosted by Tom Lacas, who I think I've done ads for.
Speaker 2: He's one of the first shock jocks. He came right
Speaker 2: after Bill Balance and right before Howard Stern. Right, so,
Speaker 2: if you're if you're looking at like where we land
Speaker 2: on the descendants chart, Lacas comes out of balance. Stern
Speaker 2: kind of is birthed somewhere in at miasthma. Although Stern
Speaker 2: is on the air by the time they're talking about him.
Speaker 2: I need to.
Speaker 3: Turn onside this. I absolutely hate to test despise the
Speaker 3: phrase Meeting of the Bouths.
Speaker 2: It's horrible, it's so gress and this this is like
Speaker 2: a big radio specially get a bunch of hosts together
Speaker 2: in a room, right, So Laura is big enough that
Speaker 2: she's made it into the room with Tom Lakas, who's
Speaker 2: a significant name. Also in this video is Barbara DeAngelis,
Speaker 2: Rush Limbaugh and some other dudes who matter less than
Speaker 2: either of them. So this is during that awkward period.
Speaker 2: I don't have any of Laura in here because she's
Speaker 2: very quiet, so is Barbara, and it's kind of unclear
Speaker 2: to me when one is talking or the other because
Speaker 2: they're not on great audio.
Speaker 3: Sound the same to you, to say it, all women
Speaker 3: sound the same.
Speaker 2: But the point is that, like, you learn a lot
Speaker 2: about her position here. This is nineteen like ninety, she
Speaker 2: and Barbara are kind of just putting in very little, right.
Speaker 2: It's mostly Tom Lakas and Rush Limbaugh, who has just
Speaker 2: exploded at this time. It gives you an idea of
Speaker 2: where her standing is. Right if this had been a
Speaker 2: couple of years later, Laura would have been talking as
Speaker 2: much as Rush like, because she does become that level
Speaker 2: of figure. So this gives you an idea of kind
Speaker 2: of where this is her early career. And honestly, we
Speaker 2: could get away without playing this clip but Rush Limbaugh's
Speaker 2: gonna say something here that I just feel I've had
Speaker 2: to listen to it, and now you're gonna listen to it.
Speaker 2: And for some context, this is Tom Lacas and Rush
Speaker 2: Limbaugh arguing about the band Two Live Crew, who have
Speaker 2: had to cancel several shows after being accused of profanity.
Speaker 3: You can you're not allowed to throw in another hard
Speaker 3: left like this.
Speaker 2: I know it's wild stuff. Tom is arguing Two Live
Speaker 2: Cruise shouldn't be censored. Basically, right, I don't approve of
Speaker 2: them being so profane, but it's bad that they're having
Speaker 2: to cancel the shows, and Rush being like, as long
Speaker 2: as the government doesn't have a law, can't saying they
Speaker 2: can't do their show, it's fine. Right, that's the argument,
Speaker 2: And I'm just going to play you a clip from
Speaker 2: that argument.
Speaker 1: Just warning Jamie listeners, you're going to hate this.
Speaker 2: Oh you're not going to be happy, but it's happening.
Speaker 3: Well, why did we gather here?
Speaker 5: And are you not troubled that the whole focus of
Speaker 5: the particular song in question of Two Live Crew was
Speaker 5: to talk about how much fun it is to bust
Speaker 5: female vaginal walls, to rip them apart to rip them.
Speaker 2: I'm troubled by it, but I also know that the
Speaker 2: free market would eventually determine that most people don't want
Speaker 2: to buy a record like I just that had to
Speaker 2: be with other people. I never heard Rush Limbas say
Speaker 2: vaginal walls before, and I wish I am male vaginal
Speaker 2: female vaginal walls. I'm so sorry, but it's maybe this
Speaker 2: isn't me now, and now what's in you?
Speaker 3: This is maybe? Like but like he said.
Speaker 4: It, you know, exactly like you would think you to
Speaker 4: grow like, which is worst case scenario.
Speaker 2: If you were like a comedian doing a fake Rush
Speaker 2: Limbaugh voice and like reading out rap lyrics right because
Speaker 2: you thought that was funny, you would say that phrase
Speaker 2: the way that Rush said it.
Speaker 3: There, Well, that's I mean, that's like that guy's whole beat, right,
Speaker 3: that's the Rush Limbo effect.
Speaker 4: That's the Jordan Peterson. In fact, they're always performing a
Speaker 4: bad snl.
Speaker 2: Ben Shapiro reading a wet ass pussy right, like, yes,
Speaker 2: part of the appeal, that's part of.
Speaker 4: Their comedians are left dead in a ditch over the
Speaker 4: self parody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's part of what works with them.
Speaker 3: Seeing through vaginal walls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody somebody's gonna clip that one out and turn
Speaker 2: that into a track.
Speaker 3: Thank god, was that an iambic pentameter? Do you think?
Speaker 2: Yes, it must have been, a lot of people don't
Speaker 2: know this, but both the show Deadwood and everything rush
Speaker 2: Limbaugh ever said perfect diambic pentameter. Gorgeous. So all of
Speaker 2: that's very unpleasant. But you can see nineteen ninety she
Speaker 2: has not found her footing right because she is not.
Speaker 2: She doesn't say anything when rush Limbaugh says that. But
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety four she does break through, and she
Speaker 2: owes a lot of the success she has. Finally to
Speaker 2: her her co host in this recording, rush Limbaugh, his
Speaker 2: success had put conservative talk radio on the map. So
Speaker 2: Bill Balance makes it clear to the people with money
Speaker 2: and radio, oh, these women are listening to shows, and
Speaker 2: rush Limbaugh makes it clear that like people like weird loud,
Speaker 2: right wing assholes, and putting those two together is going
Speaker 2: to make it very clear that doctor Laura has an
Speaker 2: audience right.
Speaker 4: Even listening to shows could be dangerous, better a wrench
Speaker 4: in the whole.
Speaker 2: Thing, Yeah, exactly. So this is gonna work out well
Speaker 2: for her now to fit into this new market. Doctor
Speaker 2: Laura makes herself harsher crueler and you know, more Rush
Speaker 2: Limbaugh esque.
Speaker 3: That's all daft punk remix.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Much of her success is supercharged by the fact
Speaker 2: that she also times the release of her first book wonderfully.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety four, I think ninety four ninety five,
Speaker 2: she publishes the advice book Ten Stupid Things Men Do
Speaker 2: to Mess Up Their Lives. Yes, if you ever heard
Speaker 2: the show, you heard this title. I knew the name
Speaker 2: of doctor Laura's first book without even having to research
Speaker 2: it because I heard a million times on the air.
Speaker 3: I've seen without knowing. Yeah, I mean that book has endured.
Speaker 2: It absolutely has. And I'm going to read you the
Speaker 2: first five chapters, and each each chapter comes with like
Speaker 2: a little sentence that I guess is supposed to be
Speaker 2: a scriptor Number one, and these are again the ten
Speaker 2: stupid things women do to mess up their lives. Number
Speaker 2: one stupid attachment is a woman just a woe woe
Speaker 2: woe on a man. You typically look to the context
Speaker 2: of a man to find and defined yourself. I don't
Speaker 2: understand why should wrote that. That doesn't wa a whoa
Speaker 2: wo whoa on a man? What does that mean? Anyway,
Speaker 2: Stupid courtship, I finally found someone I could attach to,
Speaker 2: and other stupid ideas about dating. Desperate to have a man,
Speaker 2: you become a beggar, not a chooser in the dating scene.
Speaker 2: Stupid devotion, but I love him and more stupid romantic stuff.
Speaker 2: You find yourself driven to love and suffer and sucker
Speaker 2: or do you spell that sucker in vain? Stupid passion? Whoa,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, oh ah, we're breathing hard. It must mean love.
Speaker 2: You have sex too soon to romantically and set yourself
Speaker 2: up to be burned. Stupid cohabitation the ultimate female self delusion.
Speaker 2: So stop lying to yourself. You're not living with him
Speaker 2: because you love him. You're living with him because you
Speaker 2: hope he'll want you.
Speaker 1: You can't, you generally can't tell me that this isn't
Speaker 1: just like articles written by Carrie Bronshaw.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say the front half of that was
Speaker 4: like a semi good, if a little conservative Olivia Marico
Speaker 4: sink and then it just sort of descended into madness.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, So looking into this book is very frustrating.
Speaker 2: It starts with the introduction, where we learned that her
Speaker 2: book on Women was inspired by two men. The second
Speaker 2: of those two men was her father and the first
Speaker 2: was an engineer at KFI. Quote. After working with me
Speaker 2: for more than six months, three hours a night, five
Speaker 2: days a week, Dan Mandis was hearing approximately twenty five
Speaker 2: women per show agonize over some dumb guy. You know, Laura.
Speaker 2: He told me in an unguarded moment, if you listen
Speaker 2: to your show long enough, you begin to think women
Speaker 2: are stupid. And that's kind of the core of what
Speaker 2: the Doctor Laura Show is and why it's toxic.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, you mean you mean whoa whoa whoa whoa
Speaker 1: whoa man our stupid man?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's a lot of it.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite part.
Speaker 2: She has again, as I talk about like she is
Speaker 2: kind of like she succeeds by doing the thing that
Speaker 2: is still a lot of why. How like internet discourse works, Right,
Speaker 2: you find someone who's saying something you can clip out
Speaker 2: of context or something shitty, and then you lay into
Speaker 2: them for a bunch of people who don't know them, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's the gist of Doctor Laura. That's why the Internet
Speaker 2: works the way it does. We all want to believe
Speaker 2: that we're smarter than we are right, and Laura aimed
Speaker 2: herself specifically at a special kind of middle American Christian conservative,
Speaker 2: someone like my mom, Right, people who have had tough
Speaker 2: goes of it, who are scared or angry about the
Speaker 2: things that they see out in the world, and they want,
Speaker 2: you know, they need, rather than blaming the systems, to
Speaker 2: blame the freeloaders. Right, the people they imagine are responsible
Speaker 2: for their difficulties, the people that they imagine are less
Speaker 2: responsible and good than they are. And doctor Laura provides that. Right,
Speaker 2: it's just like on you know, same as it ever was.
Speaker 2: Right now, It is not a coincidence that doctor Laura
Speaker 2: explodes in popularity in the mid nineties. This is the
Speaker 2: tipping point from modern conservative grievance politics the media, and
Speaker 2: they're they're angry because Bill Clinton has just to their eyes,
Speaker 2: unjustly taken power from them after three presidential terms and
Speaker 2: is a very immoral man. And his immorality coincides with
Speaker 2: an explosion online, in explicit films and TV like the Simpsons. Right,
Speaker 2: you get all these you get all these media that
Speaker 2: conservatives get angry about. Right when the Simpsons may seem
Speaker 2: tame toy now, but early and it's it's time on
Speaker 2: the air. Barbara Bush when she was First Lady, attacked it, right,
Speaker 2: which is why there's a whole Simpsons episode starring the Bushes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like that does that is good context
Speaker 3: for that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, she attacks the show because she does. Like The
Speaker 2: Simpsons was fairly unique in that period, a show where
Speaker 2: there's like there's nothing redeeming about the country or about
Speaker 2: like a lot of the people in it, Like the
Speaker 2: police are corrupt, the mayor is a crook. All of
Speaker 2: the politicians are crooks, like the alcoholics, you know, Like right.
Speaker 4: The school, the teachers don't have the best interests of
Speaker 4: their students.
Speaker 2: They do not give a shit about their students.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like it's beautiful, it's perfect art.
Speaker 2: It's very cynical, and it made a lot of it.
Speaker 2: It's part of this. It's not the only thing doing,
Speaker 2: but it makes a lot of conservatives feel attacked and
Speaker 2: under fire, right, a lot of conservatives who maybe wanted
Speaker 2: to feel that way because it's more exciting than just
Speaker 2: living in the suburbs, taking your kids to school, working
Speaker 2: forty hours a week at an air conditioned office. Right,
Speaker 2: you want to feel like you're part of a culture war.
Speaker 2: You're being attacked, right.
Speaker 4: Right, Like it gives you a sense of there's a
Speaker 4: sense of order, there's a sense of control.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and a sense of action, right yeah. And
Speaker 2: I found an interview with doctor Laura from nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: four and the Los Angeles Radio Guide. It quotes her
Speaker 2: as saying, my values are an oasis in the middle
Speaker 2: of a moral nothingness. I am single handedly trying to
Speaker 2: change this lack of ethics and values. Great stuff. Oh
Speaker 2: so she's a crusader for a crusader, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: took part in the breaking up of a marriage lot
Speaker 2: or told secrets from her patients to other patients, engineered
Speaker 2: the distruction of another woman's career, you know. But like whatever, Right,
Speaker 2: she's an oasis of morality. Yes, So during this interview
Speaker 2: with the Los Angeles Radio Guide, which I guess used
Speaker 2: to have enough leaders to be a magazine, she described
Speaker 2: the chief problem of modern women as quote they does
Speaker 2: find success by things other than their family relationships. I mean,
Speaker 2: Laura hates her entire family aside from I guess her
Speaker 2: kid and her husband, but certainly does not have other
Speaker 2: family beyond that that she's close with and.
Speaker 3: The feeling doesn't seem like the other.
Speaker 2: SOI right, right, that's wrong to have be fucked up
Speaker 2: with your family and have a good career. I'm fucked
Speaker 2: up with my family and have a good career, but
Speaker 2: it's wrong to tell people you shouldn't do.
Speaker 3: That, right, I just I wonder. I mean, I know
Speaker 3: that there's no clean answer for this, but it's just
Speaker 3: like it seems like from a very young age she
Speaker 3: has both had a fixation on control and a sense
Speaker 3: of order and been imbued with a deep sense of
Speaker 3: self hatred. I cannot stop thinking about that. Like they're
Speaker 3: like it's all connected of like, well, what is the
Speaker 3: best I can do for myself while maintaining the same
Speaker 3: level of self hatred and like spreading it around.
Speaker 2: It's just ugh, that's good stuff.
Speaker 3: It's awesome. I'm sorry, That's what I meant to say.
Speaker 2: It's the essence of right wing politics. Right. Everything I
Speaker 2: disapprove of is bad, and I am the lone voice
Speaker 2: for truth fighting back against it.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 3: It hurts me to do this, but as you cries, like, figure,
Speaker 3: I have to.
Speaker 2: Do it now. In that interview, Laura does sum up
Speaker 2: her only flaw generally, I went my way and I
Speaker 2: want it now. Aside from that, I don't have any
Speaker 2: bad habits. Now that's it's fun stuff. And when it
Speaker 2: comes to the harm a person like Laura Sleshinger has done,
Speaker 2: I can focus just on her historic context.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 2: As we've said, she paves the way for guys like
Speaker 2: Jordan Peterson, even for like you know, I mentioned the
Speaker 2: Bechdel Cast. Obviously this podcast has as we owe something
Speaker 2: to Bill Balance, we also do to doctor Laura, but
Speaker 2: so doaes fucking Joe Rogan, right, Like these are all
Speaker 2: part of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say, I would say Morris.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, not in the direct kind of content, but
Speaker 2: that she makes space in media and shows how she's
Speaker 2: part of the growing awareness that executives in TV and
Speaker 2: then radio just all over entertainment have with like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of money in people's messy lives and
Speaker 2: people being mean to people in messy lives. Right, She's
Speaker 2: not the only person doing this, but she's massively successful. Right.
Speaker 2: She has the number one radio personality for years. In
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, she's the number five audience on the radio.
Speaker 2: She's huge for a very long time.
Speaker 3: People love to get yelled at by mom.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I could focus on all of that, and
Speaker 2: I guess we will a little bit, but I want
Speaker 2: to focus more right now on the damage that her
Speaker 2: advice can do to individual people. You don't you know,
Speaker 2: you don't have like a book of the experiences of
Speaker 2: everyone who called her show, but you can occasionally find
Speaker 2: people who called in or who listened to her talk
Speaker 2: about the impact she had on them in places like Reddit,
Speaker 2: and I this may spoil where the story is going,
Speaker 2: but I found accounts from several women about how doctor
Speaker 2: Laura affected them in the Narcissistic Abuse subreddit. I'm not
Speaker 2: laughing at narcissistic abuse. It's just like, yeah, that is
Speaker 2: that does kind of describe the Doctor Laura show.
Speaker 3: She would pop up there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. And here's one person describing
Speaker 2: their experience. Back in the nineties, I was a stay
Speaker 2: and I've edited this a little bit for length. Back
Speaker 2: in the nineties, I was a stay at home mom
Speaker 2: starting a family with my husband. I was raising a
Speaker 2: conservative Catholic home with two parents who loved me and
Speaker 2: my brothers very much, and I had a traditional marriage.
Speaker 2: Whereas my father worked in my mother's stayed home to
Speaker 2: raise us. Fast forward to the nineties, listening to Doctor Laura.
Speaker 2: My husband was gone a lot, we lived far from
Speaker 2: the family. There were many red flags of my husband's
Speaker 2: behavior treatment of me, but I'd listened to Doctor Laura
Speaker 2: during the day and vowed to be a better wife,
Speaker 2: to be kind to my husband, to treat him better,
Speaker 2: respect him more, nag him less. What that did was
Speaker 2: cause me to ignore the red flags of major character
Speaker 2: flaws and my husband. I recall, for some reason my
Speaker 2: husband was doing or saying something I believed was out
Speaker 2: of line, possibly calling me a bitch, or neglecting to
Speaker 2: come home when he said he would not calling were traveling.
Speaker 2: I'd turn on Doctor Laura and hear about how if
Speaker 2: you choose to marry this man and make babies with him,
Speaker 2: then suck it up for the sake of the kids.
Speaker 2: I stayed and ignored major red flags for years. At
Speaker 2: the time, I was listening to doctor Laura, and I
Speaker 2: was blaming myself, and he was lying to me about
Speaker 2: everything he did the second he stepped in the door.
Speaker 2: It was ideal because his office was an hour commute
Speaker 2: from our home in southern California at the time, so
Speaker 2: he kept me and the kids a safe distance from
Speaker 2: his hidden lifestyle. This is obviously a man who has
Speaker 2: a whole life cheating on her as a narcissistic confuser. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go with the details, but we
Speaker 2: don't need that on the radio show. But this is
Speaker 2: how she describes listening to the Doctor Laura Show as
Speaker 2: making her think she did the right thing by ignoring
Speaker 2: the fucked up shit he was doing.
Speaker 3: Right anyway, Well, I mean it's like, I'm at least glad.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's so it's so fucked because I
Speaker 3: feel like, you know, the Internet at large is often
Speaker 3: i think, like used as the complete villain of how
Speaker 3: the stuff gets perpetrated, but it obviously goes back before then,
Speaker 3: and in this case, it seems like the Internet has
Speaker 3: given this person a like space to actually air it
Speaker 3: out and talk with people.
Speaker 2: Because yeah, I do think it's valuable. As angry as
Speaker 2: I often get at the Internet at social media for
Speaker 2: how much more toxic it's made this to note that, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this was happening in the radio, this has probably happened
Speaker 2: before the radio. I'm sure like magazines that have a
Speaker 2: massive media who you know, you get like these you know,
Speaker 2: mail in your advice stuff, right, That stuff pre dates
Speaker 2: Dock Laura, where you send in a letter and they
Speaker 2: give you advice. I'm sure this kind of stuff happens.
Speaker 2: I think the lesson here, Jamie, is that we need
Speaker 2: a secret police force empowered to kill on site anyone
Speaker 2: who knows or talks to more than three other human
Speaker 2: beings in the course of their life. You know, it's
Speaker 2: just that shit down, that shit down. Yeah, as the occasion.
Speaker 4: And as a person, you cannot expect the majority of
Speaker 4: people to internalize more than three things about you, truly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's it. I think you'd like to get the.
Speaker 2: Better future now, Jamie. I think we know. I know
Speaker 2: what I'm going to go to Kamala with if she
Speaker 2: takes over from Joe. I think this could really this
Speaker 2: could revitalize American politics. Imagine in America in which no
Speaker 2: one knows more than two other people. You know, Wow,
Speaker 2: that's a utopia in my mind.
Speaker 4: We will become a proper country.
Speaker 2: We could become a proper country. Yeah. So, another user
Speaker 2: in that subreddit mentioned reading one of doctor Laura's other bestsellers,
Speaker 2: The Proper Karen Feeding of Husbands and it was in
Speaker 2: this book that doctor Laura publicly espoused her belief that
Speaker 2: women have an ethical objection to have sex with their
Speaker 2: husbands even if they don't want to have sex. This
Speaker 2: is a staple of her advice. And it's interesting. I found
Speaker 2: a whole review of this book on like a super
Speaker 2: far right like homeschooling Christian nationalist website, and one of
Speaker 2: the things they explain is that, like, look, women need love,
Speaker 2: men need respect most of all, right, and you're not
Speaker 2: respecting it. They don't say this, but like they advise
Speaker 2: her book, and what she is saying is you are
Speaker 2: not respecting your husband if you don't let him fuck you. Right.
Speaker 2: It is that direct. And I have to.
Speaker 3: Say, it's just like a pro marital rape.
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 3: Is that where we're headed with this?
Speaker 2: I don't know more or less, but it's a little
Speaker 2: differently fucked up than that. She is not saying women
Speaker 2: don't have men don't have the right to not consent
Speaker 2: to sex with their husbands. She is saying you are
Speaker 2: being a bad wife if you ever say no, okay,
Speaker 2: And there's a kind of a difference there. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying what's better than the other, but it is a
Speaker 2: little bit of a difference. Third thing, got a evil
Speaker 2: third thing. And I want to play you a clip
Speaker 2: of this from her Modern Day YouTube show and yeah,
Speaker 2: just listen to this. This is her reading a listener letter.
Speaker 7: I've never been married, so I'm soaking up all I
Speaker 7: can to help me when I do marry. Is it
Speaker 7: absolutely never okay to say no to your husband, even
Speaker 7: when you're sick not being there yet. I'm curious what
Speaker 7: tips you can give all women for overcoming not feeling
Speaker 7: well to go forward and still have sex with their husbands.
Speaker 7: Let's just say, if you're needing chaopectate or an ivy. Oh,
Speaker 7: come on, that's just silly. If your husband is saying, hey, baby,
Speaker 7: I want to pump you when you're sick, you've married
Speaker 7: a jerk. We're talking about when you're feeling irritated or
Speaker 7: I'm annoyed or I'm just too tired today and turn
Speaker 7: away your man. One. This is the measure that men
Speaker 7: have of how much we love them.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 2: I love shit like this because it's both it's a
Speaker 2: great one two of like, wow, this is a deeply
Speaker 2: toxic thing to tell women, and then wow, oh this
Speaker 2: is also a toxic thing to say to men. Great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, doctor Laura, you've finally done it a thought
Speaker 4: that is coachingly terrible for everyone on earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was really leading heavy with the women stuff.
Speaker 2: But then at the end there, you as a man
Speaker 2: only have value if someone's willing to let you fuck them, like,
Speaker 2: oh we got there way to go.
Speaker 4: Wow, her wig did a three hundred and sixty degree
Speaker 4: spin at the end of that.
Speaker 3: You just couldn't it.
Speaker 2: Sure does. Her hair is doing something else said this
Speaker 2: fort Now that's very gross, right, I will say it's
Speaker 2: this is a woman who used to have an audience
Speaker 2: of eighteen million people listening every week, right, at least
Speaker 2: reaching that many people. Radio numbers are a little wonky,
Speaker 2: as are all numbers that anyone in entertainment ever gives
Speaker 2: or gets.
Speaker 4: And then if they decide they don't like it, they'll
Speaker 4: just delete it forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this view this video has one hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty two thousand views in fourteen years. Doctor Laura has
Speaker 2: forty one thousand subscribers, so more people than you'd hope for.
Speaker 2: But she is definitely not diminished, shug in along the
Speaker 2: way that she used to. Right, Yeah, now, I find
Speaker 2: what she's saying here especially funny because another major line
Speaker 2: in her again, because she's saying here like, you have
Speaker 2: to fuck your husband whenever he wants, because like, your
Speaker 2: only value is your ability to make him feel wanted
Speaker 2: by being able to have sex with someone. Right in
Speaker 2: the other thing that she says frequently is women today
Speaker 2: are pigs, and women today are pigs for seeing life
Speaker 2: purely in terms of like sex and short term pleasure,
Speaker 2: when the thing she's making clear is that the only
Speaker 2: relationship men and women can have that is valuable to
Speaker 2: the other involves sex. So it's why it's beautifully incoherent.
Speaker 2: And I want to play you a clip for calling
Speaker 2: modern women pigs.
Speaker 7: I was raised by my grandma listening to you, I
Speaker 7: remember growing up hearing that all too often women strive
Speaker 7: for short term gratification instead of long term satisfaction.
Speaker 3: Now I'm reapediting on really use.
Speaker 7: A refresher in that course. Is there any way I
Speaker 7: can receive an update or something to refresh my own
Speaker 7: memory on these talks? It would be the utmost and
Speaker 7: helpful as to where I am in life trying to
Speaker 7: remember about what was said about long term satisfaction. Wow,
Speaker 7: This is so timely because these days most women out
Speaker 7: there are pigs.
Speaker 3: Are you shocked that I said that?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 3: Do you think I'm talking about you?
Speaker 7: I might be. Is it one, two, three minutes, three hours,
Speaker 7: three days, three dates, and you're already having sex with somebody?
Speaker 7: I don't know. That's the short term gratification. That's the
Speaker 7: pretending there's a relationship. That's the pretending that somebody gives
Speaker 7: a darn about you. That's pretending that somebody respects you,
Speaker 7: cares about you. You know what, here's the deal.
Speaker 3: You know he's in love with don't.
Speaker 4: I don't need to know what the deal is. No,
Speaker 4: you don't claw hit me, doctor Laura. See if I give.
Speaker 3: A rat's ass.
Speaker 2: I hate to say it, though, but that's also a
Speaker 2: man like. That's a perfect example, Like, Yeah, she's really
Speaker 2: good as a broad Like she's good at understanding how
Speaker 2: to speak for an audience, right, Like the way in
Speaker 2: which her voice builds up, the way in which she
Speaker 2: changes her voice, like the different tones uses her cadence,
Speaker 2: the way in which she organizes that response is just like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's someone who has been broadcasting for more than
Speaker 2: I've been alive, right, like, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Enjoyed the whenever she said pretending, the yellow font came
Speaker 1: up on the screen in big letters and said pretending.
Speaker 3: And it's kind of like the more you know.
Speaker 2: Look, she's better as a broadcaster than her editors as
Speaker 2: a video editor.
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 4: Look, I hope Derek was editing that shit on iMovie with.
Speaker 2: A fucking why right there in his name.
Speaker 3: I hope he charged a hefty hourly rate to edit
Speaker 3: Mommy's little videos. I yeah, that was that was bleak.
Speaker 3: I mean, she is clearly a master at finding any
Speaker 3: angle to make a person real or imaginary, to feel
Speaker 3: horrible about themselves. But it doesn't I don't know, I've
Speaker 3: like this specific style of shaming doesn't hit the way
Speaker 3: it once did. I don't know, what do you think?
Speaker 2: No? No, I mean that's you've seen her decline, right,
Speaker 2: And part of it is that she just isn't She's
Speaker 2: always been kind of culture war adjacent, but never as
Speaker 2: much as people are today. I think she would have
Speaker 2: found it kind of undignified. She would never do. Not
Speaker 2: that she's any better, but like the degree to which
Speaker 2: all of these people become ricatures of themselves in every
Speaker 2: form of media, imaginable. I don't think she would have
Speaker 2: been comfortable with. I think she wants too much control
Speaker 2: over her image to get that close to a bunch
Speaker 2: of other media figures, right, I think, yeah, Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: my feeling of it.
Speaker 3: I just wonder, I mean, honestly, because she's well into
Speaker 3: her seventies at this point, I wonder if there's just
Speaker 3: a part of it is like at some point I
Speaker 3: wonder this about you know, older people who are involved
Speaker 3: in the culture wars conversation, I'm like, how are you
Speaker 3: not just fucking exhausting, not just tired? Exhausting?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm thirty six that I fucking hate it.
Speaker 4: It's exhausting to like bear witness to much less participated.
Speaker 3: I would about it like she might just be fucking tired.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's because some of these I don't
Speaker 2: think she is quite although she has some of that.
Speaker 2: But guys like rush Limba were born to be culture
Speaker 2: war ghoules, whereas most of us, people like you and me,
Speaker 2: who have grown up in the middle of this fucking
Speaker 2: thing they helped start. We maybe have gotten involved by nature.
Speaker 2: But I don't know about you, Jimmy. My ideal life
Speaker 2: is being a weirdo with like a radio show talking
Speaker 2: about cryptids who lives in the woods and one day
Speaker 2: just disappears while hunting for big Wooter, big Bigfoot or
Speaker 2: one of those one of those worms in Mongolia that
Speaker 2: has lightning powers. That's what I would like to disappear.
Speaker 4: Searches that was Is that what what Dune was about?
Speaker 3: Don't answer.
Speaker 2: I think Dune might have been inspired by that Mongolian worm,
Speaker 2: Jamie awesome. That may or may not exist. You never know. Look,
Speaker 2: nobody's found the Great CON's tomb, and nobody's found one
Speaker 2: of those worms. Put him together about being about a boom.
Speaker 2: You got a pretty good fucking high adventure novel.
Speaker 3: You know, it does feel I mean, like clearly. You know,
Speaker 3: Doctor Laura has a clear place in the pantheon of
Speaker 3: twentieth century grifters.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, And she does very well at
Speaker 2: her height. The show is on four hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: radio stations. She's second only to Rush Limbaugh. This is
Speaker 2: when she starts receiving a bunch of awards. She gets
Speaker 2: one from the Department of Defense eventually, and then she
Speaker 2: gets she snubs Bill Balance at an awards ceremony and
Speaker 2: this is why he sells her photos to a foreign website.
Speaker 2: Slashinger is rightfully furious. She sues him for invasion of
Speaker 2: privacy and copyright violation. The court ruled that she had
Speaker 2: no right to the images, and the consite puts them
Speaker 2: back up. I'm not an expert on this case, but
Speaker 2: it sounds pretty fucking gross. She does not appeal. She
Speaker 2: tells her audience the photos were taken at a low
Speaker 2: point in her life, and since she was going through
Speaker 2: a divorce at the time, she didn't have moral authority
Speaker 2: to talk.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's it doesn't matter at what. It just
Speaker 3: matters that it's illegal to distribute, right.
Speaker 2: So that's where I am on this. It's like, we
Speaker 2: just shouldn't be allowed to do that at all.
Speaker 4: We shouldn't have to be That feels like, yeah, the
Speaker 4: doctor Laura kicking in of like oh well this, you know,
Speaker 4: there's a reason that this happened.
Speaker 3: It's like, no, actually, this is the rare time that
Speaker 3: I'm on your side.
Speaker 2: No, I shouldn't sue him, and I wish the case
Speaker 2: had gone your way. Yeah, yeah, I think it doesn't
Speaker 2: because of some weird like the copyright issue is a
Speaker 2: big part of it, right, there's something weird about like
Speaker 2: their professional relationship that I think it's I don't know, though,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to don't want to talk out of
Speaker 2: my ass on it because she's in the right there.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety nine, she signs a deal with Paramount
Speaker 2: to create a talk show, which is a disaster. Laura
Speaker 2: does not have the kind of face charisma that you
Speaker 2: need to be a compelling TV lead, And there's also
Speaker 2: something inherently shameful about what she does, right, Like, you
Speaker 2: don't want to see somebody be that meat. You might
Speaker 2: want to hear it when you're driving and you're in
Speaker 2: a bad mood because you're commuting, but you don't necessarily
Speaker 2: want to see it.
Speaker 3: I don't. I mean, but if that were true, wouldn't
Speaker 3: that be true of like Rush Limbaugh and Jordan Peterson
Speaker 3: and all those guys that we see all the time.
Speaker 2: Rush Limbaugh also has a TV show that doesn't really
Speaker 2: work out in the okay, Jordan Peterson comes around and
Speaker 2: is a different kind of guy. You know, he's related
Speaker 2: to both of them, but for one thing, he's a
Speaker 2: lot more like of a lower tempo of energy usually, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's part of how you know, he has his
Speaker 2: times when he's clearly manic or on whatever weird drugs's
Speaker 2: daughter convinced him to take. But the Jordan Peterson that
Speaker 2: initially got famous is like a very good at sounding
Speaker 2: like a cultured and calm academic for the most part
Speaker 2: until he has his moments of.
Speaker 3: Passion, until he goes raw meat mode.
Speaker 2: Right right, whereas doctor Laura is kind of immediately mean
Speaker 2: to whoever calls you know anyway the show flops. Laura's
Speaker 2: desperation over the show flopping is evident in the fact
Speaker 2: that the series had to bring in paid ringers to
Speaker 2: generate conflicts because it was so bad. They did this
Speaker 2: lazily on two consecutive days. The same researcher employed by
Speaker 2: the show is brought into play two different people. The
Speaker 2: first is like a college a student who gets money
Speaker 2: to write essays for other students, and the second is
Speaker 2: a woman living with her boyfriend training decide if she
Speaker 2: could she should get married. The show has its last
Speaker 2: episode in March of two thousand and one. Now, Jamie,
Speaker 2: I know that you and I both know about another
Speaker 2: terrible thing that happened in two thousand and one. You
Speaker 2: know horrible. I think it's changed my life. I know
Speaker 2: it's changed your life. And that's when doctor Laura briefly
Speaker 2: had a conflict with the gay community. Yes, this was
Speaker 2: at a different times. The only other thing that happened
Speaker 2: in two thousand and one that I can recall after
Speaker 2: March only.
Speaker 3: Shrek came out, you know, Mahalandra came out.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, other things, and doctor Laura calls homosexuality a
Speaker 2: biological error. Now Laura kind of immediately has to backpedal.
Speaker 2: This would not happen today. She would grift off of this.
Speaker 2: She would certainly be fetted by the far right right
Speaker 2: or the normal right at this point, just by the right.
Speaker 2: She can't. It's weird because two thousand and one, in
Speaker 2: so many other ways is so much worse a period
Speaker 2: for like queer rights in this country. But at this
Speaker 2: point there's enough like glad and stuff, there's letter writing
Speaker 2: campaigns against her people cause enough of a problem that
Speaker 2: she has to apologize. And her point on this is
Speaker 2: always again, you can really see that the narratives haven't
Speaker 2: calcified to the point that they are at this point,
Speaker 2: because while she says a bunch of horrible things like
Speaker 2: gay people. It's not. It's the result of basically a
Speaker 2: biological glitch, right, rather than something that we see in
Speaker 2: every species that reproduces sexual.
Speaker 3: The beginning of time. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but she also says, well we should. This is
Speaker 2: also fucked up in a way. When kids get too
Speaker 2: old for good straight parents to want them, gay men
Speaker 2: should be able to adopt them.
Speaker 4: Which is such a weird that's I've never even heard that.
Speaker 2: It's honestly impressive gymnastics there, Like, you just have to
Speaker 2: hand it to her sometimes, Yeah, what the fuck. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I didn't know how to make gay people should be
Speaker 2: allowed to adopt kids horrible, but you did it. Wow,
Speaker 2: And in two ways, it's amazing stuff. Laura continued her
Speaker 2: by now time warn tradition of giving people advice. The
Speaker 2: best example of her giving advice that is like the
Speaker 2: opposite of stuff that she actually did from later in
Speaker 2: her career, is that she would repeatedly tell people you
Speaker 2: got to honor your parents. You should try to have
Speaker 2: a good relationship with your parents. If your kid, you
Speaker 2: should have a good relationship, you know, with your parents,
Speaker 2: and you know, the best thing that a kid can
Speaker 2: or that a parent can have as grandkids YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 2: In real life, she briefly hires her mom to be
Speaker 2: her secretary and then fires her mom, and then her
Speaker 2: mom goes on to spend her next remaining years alone
Speaker 2: in a condo. She dies and isn't found for like
Speaker 2: three months and may have been murdered. We don't know
Speaker 2: if she was murdered or not. It's a little bit
Speaker 2: of a mystery. But here's what Laura herself wrote on
Speaker 2: the matter. One day, the Beverly Hills police called me
Speaker 2: she had a condo in Beverly Hills, to let me
Speaker 2: know my mother was dead and had been dead on
Speaker 2: the floor of her apartment for about four months. There
Speaker 2: were no friends, and none of her neighbors were close.
Speaker 2: Nobody noticed. They said it was probably a homicide, but
Speaker 2: not a robbery. When the police came to my helm
Speaker 2: to ask me questions, I told them it couldn't be
Speaker 2: a homicide. I said that to murder someone personal, you
Speaker 2: had to be close enough to begin to hate. Well
Speaker 2: that nobody got close to her. The final conclusion was
Speaker 2: unknown cause of death, but not homicide. So no comment,
Speaker 2: no comment, MESSI MESSI fucking brutal. Yeah, that's that's brutal. Now,
Speaker 2: I will say, Jamie, I think I solve this case.
Speaker 2: I think I know something that Laura didn't at the time. Right,
Speaker 2: so the police think this is a homicide. You know,
Speaker 2: maybe the serial music can start playing now. The police
Speaker 2: believed this is a homicide, but Laura says her mom
Speaker 2: wasn't close enough to anybody to be murdered for personal reasons.
Speaker 2: But in the book Vicky Bain wrote about Doctor Laura,
Speaker 2: it opens with an interview with Yolanda, doctor Laura's mother,
Speaker 2: from inside her house. Vicky describes the house she seems
Speaker 2: friendly with doctor Laura's mom. Am I saying that biographer
Speaker 2: Vicky Bain murdered doctor Laura's mother for some personal reason.
Speaker 3: Not film never know to listen to the next.
Speaker 2: Eleven episodes of my podcast on who killed Doctor Flora's mother?
Speaker 2: Which is okay to joke about a little because she
Speaker 2: hated her?
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's not Who cares? What are you going to do?
Speaker 4: And then I will start a rival podcast called Vicky
Speaker 4: Bain Innocent in years.
Speaker 2: One, Jamie and I are going to grift so much
Speaker 2: money off of this woman, who, as far as I
Speaker 2: could tell, published two unauthorized biographies back in the nineties
Speaker 2: and then did not publish any other books. Hey, people,
Speaker 2: of a person might be a fake name that a
Speaker 2: publisher made up to publish this book. No way to know. Anyway.
Speaker 2: Up to the mid auts, Doctor Laura remained one of
Speaker 2: the most successful broadcasters on the planet. All of this
Speaker 2: took a disastrous turn on August twenty ten. Up to
Speaker 2: that point, doctor Laura was like the number five broadcaster
Speaker 2: in the country by audience. But on that broadcast, while
Speaker 2: talking about modern comedy, she says this.
Speaker 3: Black guys use it all the time.
Speaker 7: Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all
Speaker 7: you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger.
Speaker 3: I don't get it.
Speaker 7: If anybody needs anybody without enough melon and says it,
Speaker 7: it's a horrible thing. But when black people say it,
Speaker 7: it's affectionate.
Speaker 3: It's very confusing.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, Doctor Laura, Oh oh, she goes on, because
Speaker 2: I'm not going to play all of this. Maybe I should,
Speaker 2: but like the lady she's on the phone with, who
Speaker 2: I think is a black woman, says, well, you were
Speaker 2: like really comfortable saying a lot of times on air,
Speaker 2: that's kind of weird. And Laura. Laura gets really angry
Speaker 2: and uses it eleven more times, just being like, you know,
Speaker 2: like yeah. Then she says a lot of blacks only
Speaker 2: voted for Obama because he was half black, And when
Speaker 2: the collar disagrees, Laura says, don't nua acpe me.
Speaker 3: Oh so Jesus, that's not great, Jesus great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, quite a bit.
Speaker 3: So this is what this is what does her end professionally.
Speaker 2: As a big name. Yeah. She issues an apology later
Speaker 2: that evening.
Speaker 3: And I mean it's like Air's fucking something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically at the end of you think probably there
Speaker 2: was a backroom deal. She doesn't immediately quit, but she
Speaker 2: quits at the end of the year. She goes, I
Speaker 2: think it's she goes on Letterman to be like, I'm
Speaker 2: quitting in order to regain my First Amendment rights to
Speaker 2: say whatever is on my mind.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Good on Letterman for letting her give her perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank god. But nobody really wanted to hear it
Speaker 2: after this point, even though she is still doing it.
Speaker 2: So well, there you go, you know.
Speaker 3: At very least, uh, it doesn't seem like she is
Speaker 3: endured meaningfully outside of her only demographic It seems like
Speaker 3: it's ever been like generationally.
Speaker 2: Bill Nobody knows who fucking Bill Balance was. Right now,
Speaker 2: we do live with his I mean, Howard Stern's still
Speaker 2: on the air. Not to say that, but we like
Speaker 2: we are part of like the the the We exist
Speaker 2: in a space that he helped make right and a
Speaker 2: lot of the worst people on the Internet today, a
Speaker 2: lot like Jordan Peterson being the example we keep going
Speaker 2: back to. I don't know if they wouldn't. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to say there would be no Jordan Peterson without
Speaker 2: doctor Laura, but he would have had a lot more
Speaker 2: work to do to make that space if she hadn't
Speaker 2: been there first, right.
Speaker 3: Right, and and make no mistake, I believe in doctor
Speaker 3: Jordan Peterson. I believe he would have found a way,
Speaker 3: but you know certainly didn't didn't hurt. This is fascinating that.
Speaker 2: Jordan Peterson finds a way.
Speaker 3: Wow, from from just a looming presence in the Barnes
Speaker 3: and Noble Aisle to knowing that she is I don't know,
Speaker 3: no small part made some of our worst schools possible.
Speaker 2: Well, and also made the one of the sweaters and
Speaker 2: Sister Act and the boys costumes in Hook.
Speaker 4: If you remember nothing else you know that feels that
Speaker 4: feels about right?
Speaker 2: Yeah that I am going.
Speaker 3: To rewatch the Shock tonight. And guess which sweat I
Speaker 3: could rewatch?
Speaker 2: You know what, let's all rewatch Sister Act.
Speaker 3: That's a very gentle to watch.
Speaker 2: A good Yeah, yeah, rewatched Sister Act. We'll watch a
Speaker 2: good TNG episode where she played where she plays guy,
Speaker 2: and maybe the one where they go back in time
Speaker 2: and meet Mark Twain. He's got a ridiculous mustache.
Speaker 4: And most importantly, we I, oh, I know we had
Speaker 4: an episode of Lower Decks about that.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, how could you not?
Speaker 4: Most importantly, well, we'll go back and watch the Christine
Speaker 4: Baranski episode of Fraser.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Christine Baranski episode of Fraser. Uh, the episode
Speaker 2: of TNG where they will the two parter where they
Speaker 2: go back to San Francisco in old times, and then
Speaker 2: of course the movie Sister Act and Hook. If you've
Speaker 2: got time.
Speaker 3: Actually a very relaxing weekend watch list.
Speaker 2: It seems like a nice weekend, you know what. Everybody
Speaker 2: have fun, Jamie.
Speaker 1: Do you have anything you want to plug at the
Speaker 1: end here? Perhaps a podcast?
Speaker 4: You know, I would love to plug a sixteenth minute
Speaker 4: as well as the Bechdel Cast, which we firmly are
Speaker 4: in denial that we have anything to do with any
Speaker 4: of this, but yes, listen to sixteenth minute on cool
Speaker 4: Zone Media.
Speaker 3: There's actually a lot of what I was thinking throughout
Speaker 3: this episode had to do with an interview on a
Speaker 3: recent episode with Carol J.
Speaker 4: Adams, author of the Sexual Politics of Meat, who was
Speaker 4: harassed and dosed for weeks and like an entire summer
Speaker 4: by Rush Limbaugh back in the day and then went
Speaker 4: on to be harassed and docksed by Jordan Peterson fans
Speaker 4: just a couple of years ago, and we talked about
Speaker 4: out sort of the you know, illusion that this is
Speaker 4: an Internet problem when it has existed in a very
Speaker 4: similar form for a long time.
Speaker 3: So yeah, check out my interview with Carol and if
Speaker 3: you just like Internet main characters, that's the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go to hell, I love you Bye.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.