Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: I watched a man vomiting a casino pit last night.
Speaker 2: Was beautiful. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast
Speaker 2: that's this week hosted from sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. We've
Speaker 2: got a real special one for you this week. We've
Speaker 2: got an episode about somebody who embodies everything that is
Speaker 2: meaningful about like where we are in America today, like
Speaker 2: both our complete divorce as a culture from any sort
Speaker 2: of shared truth, our acceptance of all sorts of like weird,
Speaker 2: unhinged metaphysical realities. The guy who's probably going to be
Speaker 2: running Medicaid in the near future. We all owe them
Speaker 2: to our topic this week. Our subject this week someone
Speaker 2: you all have heard of, Oprah Winfrey. And because Oprah
Speaker 2: is such a big topic and honestly kind of a
Speaker 2: scary person to go after, this might be the most
Speaker 2: powerful bastard we've talked about. I brought in some very
Speaker 2: special guests. First off, let's say a warm welcome to
Speaker 2: the great Bridget Todd Bridget, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: I want to say it like Oprah Dove, thank you
Speaker 3: for having me. I actually has that thing.
Speaker 1: I just knew, I just knew you were the right
Speaker 1: person for this job.
Speaker 3: I don't even know Bridget I do.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, Bridget is the host of There
Speaker 1: Are No Girls on the Internet, and that's right, and
Speaker 1: also just one of my favorite people in the entire world.
Speaker 4: That's right. That's right.
Speaker 5: She is here.
Speaker 1: And we are so lucky. Who is our second guest today?
Speaker 1: Because we couldn't have just one for.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, for Oprah. You got to bring out that.
Speaker 2: You got to have a double barrel, you know, if
Speaker 2: you're going if you're going for a grizzly bear. And
Speaker 2: our second round of buckshot this week is.
Speaker 3: Andrew t.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being carry Andrew. Andrew is the host.
Speaker 3: Of you is this racist?
Speaker 4: That's right? How's it going?
Speaker 2: We're gonna need to ask that a lot in these episodes.
Speaker 3: The answer is always gonna.
Speaker 4: Be, yeah, boy, it is.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of stuff to discuss there, Robert.
Speaker 1: Robert and I have been talking about doing the Oprah
Speaker 1: episodes for what feels like a year and the subject
Speaker 1: of like who do we have on for this? Like
Speaker 1: how like guess who do we have on?
Speaker 4: What do we do?
Speaker 1: Because like no matter what, like I mean, I I
Speaker 1: read Oprah's bio in like middle school and like she
Speaker 1: yeah comes off with her like origin story as like heroic.
Speaker 2: She's deeply sympathetic in many ways, and these first two
Speaker 2: episodes are going you're gonna be sympathetic to her more
Speaker 2: often than not because we are covering a lot of
Speaker 2: her childhood in these The things that she does that
Speaker 2: are awful, and the reason why she deserves to be
Speaker 2: on the show is not because she's personally odious right
Speaker 2: in like her personal interactions usually like I've run into
Speaker 2: a bunch of like reddits where people who worked on
Speaker 2: the show talking more often than not, people who worked
Speaker 2: on the Oprah Winfrey shows say like, we were paid well,
Speaker 2: it was a reasonably good gig. You know. You can
Speaker 2: certainly find people being like a she was a dick
Speaker 2: to me when I was like a barista or whatever.
Speaker 2: There's stories like that, but I wouldn't hang an episode
Speaker 2: on it. It's more her level of influence is so
Speaker 2: titanic and the things that she has chosen, she's chosen
Speaker 2: to push a number of people who are We have
Speaker 2: done two part episodes on in the past, Doctor Oz
Speaker 2: Doctor Phil both owed their careers and the intense amounts
Speaker 2: of damage that they've done to society, to Oprah Winfrey.
Speaker 2: Neither of those guys are in anyone's radar if it's
Speaker 2: not for Oprah Winfrey. John of God, that Brazilian mystic
Speaker 2: who raped and molested thousands of people, owes a huge
Speaker 2: amount of her career in prominence to Oprah Winfrey. There's
Speaker 2: a number of cases like that. She's tied in massively
Speaker 2: with a satanic panic. She's tied in massively with a
Speaker 2: number of different like myths like we're going to talk about,
Speaker 2: like rainbow parties and the like. So we've got a
Speaker 2: lot of fun stuff today. I do want to start
Speaker 2: by asking Bridget Andrew, what are y'all's histories with Oprah.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 3: I mean, I have to say, I'm really glad that
Speaker 3: you framed the Oprah conversation the way that you did,
Speaker 3: because I almost have like a love hate with Oprah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can't. First of all, you can't be a black
Speaker 3: woman and not have some deep admiration for Oprah. And
Speaker 3: I would say it's only been recently that I have
Speaker 3: really had to have my come to Jesus moment of
Speaker 3: some of the bad actors. Charlatan's hucksters and just like
Speaker 3: bastards that she has made famous and now we're sort
Speaker 3: of stuck with. So it's sort of a love hate Oprah.
Speaker 3: Like I did a report on her when I was
Speaker 3: in fifth grade where I had to dress like her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're, weirdly enough, not the only friend of mine
Speaker 2: who did a report on Oprah for when they were
Speaker 2: in school.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Well yeah, I think there's like an element of
Speaker 7: like it's a little bit like Obama.
Speaker 4: You're like, it's good that there's a.
Speaker 7: Different type of like like a like a black person
Speaker 7: being able to achieve the highest ranks of whatever.
Speaker 2: The wealthiest. She's the wealthiest person in media period, like
Speaker 2: wealthiest purely media star, two billion, something like that.
Speaker 7: But there's also like some version of like having to
Speaker 7: so you're like kind of grading on a curve. It's
Speaker 7: like for a billionaire, she's probably pretty good, you know,
Speaker 7: relatively speaking, I mean, but she has you know, she
Speaker 7: has all the trap. It's the same with Obama, where
Speaker 7: you're like, every president has committed crimes against humanity.
Speaker 4: That's just the job.
Speaker 7: But like so for a while, you're like it's sort
Speaker 7: of nice that he's like, you know, he is who
Speaker 7: he is. But then you're like, just she weren't doing
Speaker 7: all these terrible things.
Speaker 2: As we'll talk about one of the complicated things about Oprah.
Speaker 2: There's a bunch of stuff that really is very sinister
Speaker 2: about her impact. And then when you whenever you're reading
Speaker 2: the books and stuff, the critical bios of her, the
Speaker 2: things they choose to go after her for are always like, well, actually,
Speaker 2: I don't think she did anything wrong. There, Like, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of very weird she's she has she has
Speaker 2: also had to You can't talk about the things she's
Speaker 2: done bad without also defending her because she has come
Speaker 2: under fire for so many insanely unreasonable things as well.
Speaker 5: I also did an Oprah book report, probably in the
Speaker 5: fifth grade, And you know, she was on my television
Speaker 5: for my mom watched a lot of Oprah.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of Oprah in my household growing up.
Speaker 1: And then like a few years ago, I was working
Speaker 1: on a project with Jamie Loftus and we went back
Speaker 1: and we were looking for like a specific Oprah episode
Speaker 1: to reference in something, and just the show episode titles
Speaker 1: were so triggering. Oh yeah, and then it's and then
Speaker 1: Robert and Bridget you were both at you were both
Speaker 1: of the DNC and Chicago, but I don't think you
Speaker 1: guys were both there for Oprah speech?
Speaker 7: Were you.
Speaker 4: Speech?
Speaker 3: I was in the audience. I remember it very well.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was there for that, and it was like the
Speaker 1: most like like detached I felt from an audience in
Speaker 1: my life. I was like, I was like, oh, no.
Speaker 3: Sophy, do you remember. I feel like she got I
Speaker 3: completely agree with you about the tenor and the vibe
Speaker 3: of the speech. However, maybe it was just my section.
Speaker 3: I feel like people were losing their fucking minds when
Speaker 3: she came out and started talking like yeah, I was like,
Speaker 3: are we hearing the same speech?
Speaker 1: Like it truly I had what I'm saying. That's why.
Speaker 1: That's why I was like I was. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, really, we're still, We're still. And then
Speaker 1: again with there were several people that I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: these are known horrible humans and people are going Pharaoh
Speaker 1: for them as well. But yeah, Oprah Oprah.
Speaker 2: Cheers were It's hard to get across because there's really
Speaker 2: no one on earth like this, how cross at least
Speaker 2: first certain kind of for a certain like category of person,
Speaker 2: particularly like middle aged moms from the nineties through the
Speaker 2: through the aughts. It's amazing the degree to which Oprah
Speaker 2: completely cut across like political and cultural boundaries. You know,
Speaker 2: Like my mom was a very conservative white lady in
Speaker 2: Texas loved Oprah. Oprah was always on and like that
Speaker 2: was the case with every mom that I knew as
Speaker 2: a kid, Like Oprah was just like an institution, you know,
Speaker 2: like it's it's it's really And I don't think she's
Speaker 2: even quite like that today, just because like things have
Speaker 2: gotten considerably more fragmented in the media ecosystem, and so
Speaker 2: one of the things that's interesting about her is like
Speaker 2: when we talk about her influence, there probably won't ever
Speaker 2: be a single person that influential again in the same way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Bridget at the DNC, when she came out, were
Speaker 1: you sitting or standing?
Speaker 4: Ugh?
Speaker 3: I wish I could say that I like turned my back,
Speaker 3: you know, I gave her a standing ovation even from
Speaker 3: my like big talk.
Speaker 1: But you were you in the standing section.
Speaker 3: Or this ex I was in the seated section. I was.
Speaker 4: So here's my question.
Speaker 1: When she came out, did you immediately look under your chair?
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, like Oprah, did you leave me?
Speaker 2: You get a car?
Speaker 3: I wish Oprah.
Speaker 1: Came out at an instinctly was like, is there a gift?
Speaker 1: There was, There was not.
Speaker 3: Honestly though, if anybody could arrange that, it would be
Speaker 3: Oprah exactly.
Speaker 2: I should let you know. I've bought you both cars.
Speaker 2: They're not They're not they're geoprisms. They are not like
Speaker 2: these are really like burdens for both of you.
Speaker 4: Robert's books. It's really just like a.
Speaker 2: Used to offload I'm underwater on a deal. In the
Speaker 2: spring of twenty twenty four, Oprah Winfrey participated in a
Speaker 2: three hour special sponsored by weight Watchers called Making the Shift,
Speaker 2: alongside several other celebrity panelists. She talked about the failures
Speaker 2: and shortcomings of America's toxic diet culture and took some
Speaker 2: degree of ownership for her role in perpetuating it, calling
Speaker 2: herself a major contributor and saying I've been a major
Speaker 2: contributor to it. I cannot tell you how many weight
Speaker 2: loss shows and makeovers I've done, and they have been
Speaker 2: a staple since I've been working in television. And even
Speaker 2: this statement, which is fairly unequivocal, underplays the reality of
Speaker 2: the situation, because it's probably accurate to say that no
Speaker 2: one human being alive has had more of an impact
Speaker 2: on how Americans talk about dieting and weight loss than
Speaker 2: Oprah Winfrey. For the entirety of the time that everyone
Speaker 2: on this call has been alive, she has been the
Speaker 2: most public face of diet culture, and tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of Americans followed along as she gained and lost weight
Speaker 2: in the public eye. One of the biggest regrets of
Speaker 2: her career came in nineteen ninety eight as a result
Speaker 2: of this, and I'm talking about the famous wagon of
Speaker 2: Fat incident, which was precisely what it sounds like. Winfrey
Speaker 2: launched a new season of her hit daytime talk show
Speaker 2: by pulling out a red wagon filled with sixty seven
Speaker 2: pounds a fat, which is how much she'd lost on
Speaker 2: her most recent diet. And because this is kind of
Speaker 2: what Oprah says is in her view, the lowest moment
Speaker 2: of her career, I do want to start with playing
Speaker 2: a clip from this because it represents the intersection of
Speaker 2: a couple of very complicated things we're going to have
Speaker 2: to dissect in these episodes.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Now let me tell you.
Speaker 1: I lost.
Speaker 6: I have lost as of this morning. As of this morning,
Speaker 6: sixty seven pounds since July seventh, sixty seven pounds and
Speaker 6: thirty inches from my bust, my waist Emma hoops seven
Speaker 6: twelve eleven. I think it is. And this let me
Speaker 6: tell you those of you who are starting dieting or
Speaker 6: dining a little bit, this is what sixty seven pounds
Speaker 6: of fat looks like. I can't I can't lift it.
Speaker 6: Now when you talk about Jimmy, is this gross or what.
Speaker 4: Okay to me?
Speaker 3: That I can't lift it?
Speaker 6: But I used to carry it around.
Speaker 3: She's definitely lifting.
Speaker 4: The radio flyer people. Do you think they were like
Speaker 4: that in there?
Speaker 3: Oh god, I remember that clip like it was yesterday
Speaker 3: when you as soon as you set it up, I
Speaker 3: closed my eyes and I can like I remember it
Speaker 3: crystal clear, Like what a moment in culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she does look great in that video. No
Speaker 2: one can deny that. And it's interesting to me first
Speaker 2: off that this is this is such like a especially
Speaker 2: in like the critical reading on Oprah. This is such
Speaker 2: like an apocal moment, right, like how how toxic this was?
Speaker 2: What a bad you know moment this was in terms
Speaker 2: of like cause like inculcating toxic attitudes and American you
Speaker 2: know culture visa v weight loss and how like tame
Speaker 2: It seems honestly in a lot of ways considering like
Speaker 2: where we are now just in general with like the TV,
Speaker 2: how much like worse ship there is every single day.
Speaker 2: But it's also interesting because like this is an easy
Speaker 2: moment to hang on as toxic. I actually don't I
Speaker 2: have trouble blaming Oprah the for this, even though she's
Speaker 2: definitely contributing to some really ugly aspects of diet culture.
Speaker 2: As we'll talk about, the way she gets attacked and
Speaker 2: like focused on in the media over her weight is
Speaker 2: probably unique. Like I don't know that anyone else has
Speaker 2: been kind of anyone else's personal weight has been obsessed
Speaker 2: over to the same degree that Oprah's has. It certainly
Speaker 2: was in the late nineties. So yeah, as we'll talk about,
Speaker 2: I don't see this as like a low point for her,
Speaker 2: but this is probably what she would name as like
Speaker 2: the absolute worst thing in her career.
Speaker 7: Wait, and maybe I'm missing something, so and she would
Speaker 7: say that, or she has said that because it's just
Speaker 7: like a crass stunt.
Speaker 2: It's and she has started to talk about the degree
Speaker 2: to which she thinks that diet culture and the are
Speaker 2: obsession with that and weight loss is unhealthy, and that
Speaker 2: she was a big part of that, right like she
Speaker 2: started talking about it now, she started talking about that
Speaker 2: in participation with weight watchers. So I don't know, I
Speaker 2: don't know how much credit you want to give her,
Speaker 2: right like clearly done in good faith. Yeah, maybe not
Speaker 2: totally done in good maybe more of just a pivot.
Speaker 7: But I will just say, as someone who is like
Speaker 7: a little more outside of the Oprah sphere, I think,
Speaker 7: compared to everyone else here, I feel like I didn't
Speaker 7: particularly perceive, like I hear what you're saying about, like
Speaker 7: she was like one of the faces of it, was
Speaker 7: so pervasive everywhere. Not to like completely let her off
Speaker 7: the hook, but it is a little just like that's
Speaker 7: what you did when you were like especially marketing to
Speaker 7: middle aged women.
Speaker 2: But it's partly what you did because Oprah was so
Speaker 2: successful at it, Like she likes it's a road that
Speaker 2: was there because she bush whacked it, you know, right, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually have a a similar take. I think
Speaker 3: that why she regrets this is not because of like
Speaker 3: participating in this harmful, toxic diet culture YadA YadA, YadA,
Speaker 3: which she was. I think it was sort of throwing
Speaker 3: red meat to the people Robert that you were just
Speaker 3: describing who obsessed about her weight Personally, I think that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's probably a low point because she was engaging in
Speaker 3: this like highly personal public conversation about her weight and
Speaker 3: like playing into that. I don't I would probably I
Speaker 3: don't know that she was would say like, oh, I
Speaker 3: shouldn't have been participating in diet culture written large.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, yeah, I think that that's that that
Speaker 2: might be a fair critique, but we'll talk about it.
Speaker 2: But first, for these for these couple of episodes, we're
Speaker 2: going to really be getting into like the parts of
Speaker 2: Oprah's crew that are mostly or life that are mostly
Speaker 2: like a lot more empathetic, although you know, there's there's
Speaker 2: there's some darkness there too, mainly in like the way
Speaker 2: in which she has kind of lied and judged up
Speaker 2: some aspects of her background because it makes a better story. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this will all be interesting to talk about. So in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, one of my sources for this is
Speaker 2: a book that Oprah released about trauma, much of which
Speaker 2: she discussed through the lens of her own childhood trauma.
Speaker 2: She co authored What Happened to You with doctor Bruce Perry,
Speaker 2: an American psychiatrist who specializes in child trauma, and from
Speaker 2: what I can tell, is like one of the less
Speaker 2: toxic doctors that Oprah is famous for launching to start them,
Speaker 2: although again that doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. In
Speaker 2: an interview about that book for today dot Com, Oprah
Speaker 2: posited that her childihood trauma was responsible for her low
Speaker 2: moments like the wagon a fat incident. I think that
Speaker 2: certainly all of the feelings of not fitting in of
Speaker 2: my disease to please, or feeling like if I don't
Speaker 2: do what everyone wants me to do, I'm going to
Speaker 2: be rejected somehow what I was afraid of in every instance,
Speaker 2: I'm going to get a whipping. I'm afraid I'm going
Speaker 2: to get that whipping. Thankfully, She adds, the decades of
Speaker 2: time she spent processing her pain has given her sort
Speaker 2: of what she calls post traumatic wisdom that she thinks
Speaker 2: makes her a good spokesperson for every kind of suffering
Speaker 2: in a mirror or for a lot many kinds of
Speaker 2: suffering in American society today, right like because of my trauma,
Speaker 2: That's why I've done some of the things that I regret.
Speaker 2: It's my disease to please. It's like my fear of
Speaker 2: not fitting in. But because I have that trauma, I'm
Speaker 2: also a perfect spokesperson for many of these kinds of
Speaker 2: like traumas in American society. And the fact that she
Speaker 2: thinks that way is a really important prism to understand
Speaker 2: what she does, because Oprah in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: if you look at especially the first ten or fifteen
Speaker 2: years of her show, it's a mirror in some ways
Speaker 2: of like the Jerry Springer Show. Like they're literally doing
Speaker 2: some of the same episodes, bringing like clansmen out, you know,
Speaker 2: to have like big arguments and fights on stage. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of like, you know, bringing out people in
Speaker 2: relationships who are having conflicts. It is that kind of
Speaker 2: like trash teed TV. And then in the late nineties
Speaker 2: she starts to pivot, and largely the thing that she
Speaker 2: pivots around is her taking her own childhood trauma, her
Speaker 2: own experiences of like physical and sexual abuse and whatnot,
Speaker 2: and using that as sort of a lens through which
Speaker 2: to explore those things in American society. And there's both
Speaker 2: a degree to which there are some really important issues
Speaker 2: that started getting attention because Oprah used herself as a
Speaker 2: lens to kind of like highlight them. And also there's
Speaker 2: this sense of like almost profiteering from the same things,
Speaker 2: which which makes this very complicated to discuss it.
Speaker 7: I feel like it's so weird too, because it's like
Speaker 7: at the time, as you're describing it, I probably wouldn't
Speaker 7: have perceived it as such, but like we're also in
Speaker 7: an era where like influencer and just like you like
Speaker 7: that is the product that everyone, you know, the children
Speaker 7: today are very casually selling. Yeah, it's almost like the
Speaker 7: concept of like selling out for like between the nineties
Speaker 7: and the two of it. It's like, you know, it's
Speaker 7: not something that you would bad any at everything you're
Speaker 7: describing right now.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, But it was really unique at the time, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, it does seem like she was like very ahead
Speaker 3: of the game on this, like oh yes, I think
Speaker 3: it's like the influencer bread and butter today, But back then,
Speaker 3: I mean I do think that it set her apart
Speaker 3: from like your Jerry Springer's, your Jenny Jones is to
Speaker 3: really put these kind of trauma like it was like
Speaker 3: authenticity before that was a thing we expected from TV
Speaker 3: show hosts.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's exactly I think that's exactly it, Bridgid. And
Speaker 2: what's kind of undeniable is that she was able to
Speaker 2: kind of get access to a lot of stories of
Speaker 2: people's hurting by from her own background of suffering. Her
Speaker 2: old executive producer Diane Hudson once told people profiles quote,
Speaker 2: vulnerability is the key to Oprah's success. People appreciate when
Speaker 2: you can be honest. It lets them feel more comfortable
Speaker 2: about themselves. She's got this special kind of connective ability.
Speaker 2: I see happen over and over again. Everyone who meets
Speaker 2: her feels like, oh, now I know her. And that's
Speaker 2: what you're talking about, that kind of authenticity being the
Speaker 2: buzzword that it is today. It all really starts with Oprah,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it is one. It's both. I think there
Speaker 2: is a lot of vulnerability that she's been willing to
Speaker 2: put out there. But at the same time, Oprah's not
Speaker 2: like Oprah is a conscious crafter of her own image
Speaker 2: and her own story.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: She knows what she's doing. She's not like a naive
Speaker 2: in this kind of situation, in this kind of scenario,
Speaker 2: and that muddles the waters too, because some of this
Speaker 2: authenticity is very carefully sculpted rather than something that's kind
Speaker 2: of come out purely just as a natural reaction, you know.
Speaker 2: And that's going to make talking about some of this
Speaker 2: very hard because we do have, like especially when we
Speaker 2: talk about the traumas of her childhood, you have different
Speaker 2: sources who disagree and who disagree with like some of
Speaker 2: the things Oprah says about what happens to her. And
Speaker 2: as a spoiler, like, we're not going to know, like
Speaker 2: who's actually right here because I certainly wasn't there when
Speaker 2: Oprah was a little kid. I'm gonna guess neither of
Speaker 2: you were either. Two of the biggest sources for this
Speaker 2: episode are first that book that Oprah wrote with a
Speaker 2: doctor about her own trauma, and then there's two biographies.
Speaker 2: One was written kind of early on in Oprah's time
Speaker 2: is a world famous talk show host nineteen ninety Nine's
Speaker 2: Oprah Winfrey, written by Meryl Noden for People Profiles, and
Speaker 2: if you want, even like, you know, that's kind of
Speaker 2: actually a surprisingly good for being a pop biography, look
Speaker 2: at Oprah's backstory and kind of the different takes on
Speaker 2: what happened to her as a kid. A more recent
Speaker 2: biography is Kitty Kelly's Oprah, which is another major source
Speaker 2: for this episode. Now I'm going to warn you Kitty's
Speaker 2: twenty ten book is a mean biography, and she is kind,
Speaker 2: It's the best kind. Is like she is recognized as
Speaker 2: a lover of gossip and like, you know, there's a
Speaker 2: tabloid feel to this. She's also someone who does put
Speaker 2: in the work to dig up dirt on her subjects,
Speaker 2: but it tends to be like real dirt, you know.
Speaker 2: But this is a mean book, you know, Like, don't
Speaker 2: mistake this for a work of like objective biography. Like so,
Speaker 2: like all great media figures, including you know me, Oprah's
Speaker 2: hometown was a destitute, little slice of hell in the
Speaker 2: middle of nowhere. This is something I really identify with
Speaker 2: her with. Right. She comes up in Kuseiusko kus Usko, Mississippi,
Speaker 2: which is seventy or so miles above Jackson. She once
Speaker 2: said of her hometown that place is so small you
Speaker 2: can spit and be out of town before your spit
Speaker 2: hits the ground, which I both I get that feeling,
Speaker 2: right that like this isn't even there's nothing here right, Like,
Speaker 2: this isn't even a town, which I like empathize with.
Speaker 2: That's that's how I felt as a kid about fucking
Speaker 2: Ida Belle. It's a little bit of an exaggeration. And
Speaker 2: there were about sixty seven hundred people in town when
Speaker 2: she grew up, which like isn't huge, but it's not
Speaker 2: quite that tiny now. She was born in the home
Speaker 2: of her maternal grandparents, Hattie May and Earlist Lee, who
Speaker 2: was known as Earless by the family because he was
Speaker 2: super old and also deaf as hell. The town has
Speaker 2: that weird Polish name because it's named after a Polish
Speaker 2: Revolutionary War general who was also an ardent abolitionist, and
Speaker 2: as a result, it had a fairly law or not
Speaker 2: as a result, but like that it having that name
Speaker 2: is a result of the fact that it had a
Speaker 2: very large black population. It was extremely segregated and extremely poor.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's the town that she grows up in,
Speaker 2: and it's one of those places that had largely been
Speaker 2: built around a cotton mill which went bust in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty eight, and that's kind of when things start to
Speaker 2: fall apart in her hometown because people start fleeing for
Speaker 2: northern cities that might still have work. You know, this
Speaker 2: is what's happening in kris Usko is kind of a
Speaker 2: microcosm of like a much larger national trend at the time.
Speaker 2: Right like this, this is a thing that's happening elsewhere
Speaker 2: to a lot of places. Meryl Noden writes, quote. Oprah's
Speaker 2: parents were among those who left military service had already
Speaker 2: given twenty year old Vernon Winfrey a ticket out. He
Speaker 2: was at home on a furlough from Fort Rucker, Alabama,
Speaker 2: on the springs day he met Vernita Lee, an eighteen
Speaker 2: year old high school student and part time domestic worker.
Speaker 2: The two barely knew each other when they had what
Speaker 2: their daughter has described as a one day fling under
Speaker 2: an oak tree. The encounter seems to have been a
Speaker 2: source of shame for the ambitious young man who would
Speaker 2: go on to become a deacon in his church. In
Speaker 2: a Nashville City councilman, I'm not proud of what happened
Speaker 2: with Oprah's mother and me, Winfrey has said. I tell
Speaker 2: people today that if something like that happens, the boy
Speaker 2: should help take care of the child. So that's the Pham, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not his. He's not told until she's born, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And he does like send financial aid as soon as
Speaker 2: he's told, but like they don't, they don't really let
Speaker 2: him know until there's already a kid. And as another spoiler,
Speaker 2: he might not actually be her biological father. I don't
Speaker 2: know that that doesn't really make a huge deal in
Speaker 2: this story because they all think he is during this
Speaker 2: period of time, and he's like going to be very
Speaker 2: much a responsible dad to the extent that he is
Speaker 2: like allowed to be. But it is kind of like
Speaker 2: a little unclear as to what actually, like who her
Speaker 2: actual like biological dad is. I don't think that there's
Speaker 2: like a solid answer on that. Every biography will give
Speaker 2: you a little bit of a different answer. But Vernon
Speaker 2: is the one that they think is the biological father,
Speaker 2: you know, for most of this period of time. And
Speaker 2: Oprah Gail Winfrey is born on January twenty ninth, nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four, And the story behind her name is a
Speaker 2: fun one. So does anyone know what Oprah's original name
Speaker 2: was supposed to be?
Speaker 7: This is the one thing I think I know, Oh yeah,
Speaker 7: isn't it Wasn't it supposed to be Orpa?
Speaker 2: It was supposed to be Orpa, Yeah, which was it's
Speaker 2: a biblical name. Ruth's like if you know, I think
Speaker 2: Ruth was like Moses's sister, or because she pretty, she
Speaker 2: was like tight with Moses if I remember the Bible right,
Speaker 2: and Orpo was one of her friends. And this is like,
Speaker 2: it really says a lot about like the people here
Speaker 2: Orpa is a Bible deep cut. This is the This
Speaker 2: is the Biblical equivalent of like a Star Wars fan
Speaker 2: who names his kid after Kitster Banai, who's one of
Speaker 2: Anakin Skywalker's little little friends from Tattooine. So he's gonna
Speaker 2: pull up a picture of Kitster here, not for any
Speaker 2: real reason. I don't know why I thought this joke
Speaker 2: deserved to be presented.
Speaker 3: Because there he is.
Speaker 2: There's kits there looking at him.
Speaker 3: Like something.
Speaker 2: L I'm sure he has, like I'm sure someone out
Speaker 2: there has, like the has like the original model from
Speaker 2: when the Phantom Menace came out of this little child.
Speaker 1: I love, I love I love that haircut, built in bangs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know he's looking great. He's looking great.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 2: I'm no more a Bible scholar than I am a
Speaker 2: fan of the Phantom Menace. I did have to look
Speaker 2: up that kid's name, although I remembered his face. It's
Speaker 2: one of those things that's burnt into.
Speaker 4: My head from my childhood.
Speaker 2: I gotta say, though, from what I can read, and
Speaker 2: maybe I'm missing something here, not being a Bible scholar,
Speaker 2: it feels like her aunt picking Orpa as a name
Speaker 2: might have been her throwing shade at the baby. Because
Speaker 2: in the Book of Ruth Orpa, the person Orpa has
Speaker 2: a chance to go with Ruth and someone named Naomi,
Speaker 2: who are like going down this more godly path, or
Speaker 2: return to her old pagan gods and like her, you know,
Speaker 2: her villager and whatever, and Orpa turns back and goes
Speaker 2: back to like being a pagan right and rabbinic literature.
Speaker 2: According to Wikipedia, so again I'm I'm not a rabbinic
Speaker 2: literature ever. Orpa is identified with Harappa, the mother of Goliath,
Speaker 2: and three other Philistine giants. Also, Harappa had a lively
Speaker 2: social life, by which I mean like got around right.
Speaker 2: The Babylonian Talmud describes her as being threshed by as
Speaker 2: many men as a man would thresh wheat.
Speaker 3: Not threshed thresh.
Speaker 4: That's in the fucking Bible.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The Bible. The Bible loves doing like we got threshed.
Speaker 4: How much her body.
Speaker 3: Count was crazy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm saying threshed from now on.
Speaker 2: I'm saying threshed too. Uh so all till Yeah, it
Speaker 2: seems like they're kind of shit talking this baby by
Speaker 2: naming it Orpa. I don't know why else you would
Speaker 2: go with Orpa, Like, it's not a it's not a
Speaker 2: super nice name to give a little kid, just based
Speaker 2: on how the Bible talks about this person. Maybe she
Speaker 2: just thought it sounded pretty in anyways.
Speaker 7: Just as someone else in the congregation just named a
Speaker 7: kid Neba Canezer and you just had to like want
Speaker 7: to that's a name.
Speaker 4: That's a name.
Speaker 2: And it's also a size of wine bottle that's now
Speaker 2: legal in Florida. Wow, that just happened. It's massive. Sofa
Speaker 2: can pull up a picture of a Nebukenzer of wine.
Speaker 6: I do.
Speaker 1: I'm not just imagine a really big bottle of wine.
Speaker 2: It's very big. It's like most of your height of wine.
Speaker 2: So this is the first time where Oprah gets really lucky.
Speaker 2: Obviously she's born, you know, into a difficult situation, but
Speaker 2: she gets an early solid in the fact that somebody
Speaker 2: fucks up on her birth certificate and the name. The
Speaker 2: midwife misspells her name as Oprah, and everyone just kind
Speaker 2: of decides good enough, right, And this little error might
Speaker 2: be one of the luckiest breaks that Oprah ever received.
Speaker 2: Because I have trouble imagining Orpa working as well as
Speaker 2: a star's name.
Speaker 3: The Ripo Winfrey Show, the Orba Winfrey Show, I just
Speaker 3: have trouble imagining it.
Speaker 2: You know, Oprah just seems to flow a lot better.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe we would all
Speaker 2: be saying that if she had been named Orpa and
Speaker 2: they'd been like, we almost called her Operah. God, can
Speaker 2: you imagine? I don't know, but yeah, anyway, you know
Speaker 2: what doesn't have a name is the nameless horror I
Speaker 2: feel when I think about you all missing out on
Speaker 2: these ads. Wow, and we're back. So we're talking Oprah,
Speaker 2: who has now come into the world. So once she
Speaker 2: is born, the job of caring for this new baby
Speaker 2: is almost immediately made the work of Hattie May Presley,
Speaker 2: her grandmother, and that Presley there is going to be
Speaker 2: the reason why Oprah will, for years, for big chunk
Speaker 2: of her life, claim that she is related to Elvis.
Speaker 2: This does not seem to be the case. I don't
Speaker 2: think anyone in her family ever believed that. But she
Speaker 2: will make statements like that for quite some time, and
Speaker 2: it's one of the things that members of her family
Speaker 2: will be like, I don't know why she does that.
Speaker 2: We're not related to Elvis in any way. Does she
Speaker 2: still do that today?
Speaker 3: You think?
Speaker 2: I don't think she still does it, But maybe I'm
Speaker 2: wrong about that. All of the times I found, like
Speaker 2: all the quotes of her claiming that I found her
Speaker 2: from earlier in her career, that's.
Speaker 3: Truly a wild thing to claim.
Speaker 2: Like true, Yeah, I could see it if it was
Speaker 2: like a widespread family myth that we have, you know,
Speaker 2: Elvis's kin, but like, it doesn't seem to be because
Speaker 2: it's always in these books. It's always your family being like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we got nothing to do with Elvis.
Speaker 7: I don't know what she's doing that without being too
Speaker 7: wildly cynical, the value of being related to Elvis has
Speaker 7: also diminished greatly in the last probably twenty years, So yeah,
Speaker 7: it's like no reason to keep it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's certainly like there's less Yeah, you get
Speaker 2: less credit from being related to Elvis.
Speaker 3: Oh cool, like just having the same last, the same
Speaker 3: common last It's like me saying, like, my last name
Speaker 3: is Todd. It's like me saying, oh, Chuck Todd and
Speaker 3: I are related. It's like, y'all have a very common
Speaker 3: last name, and what cachet would you be trying to
Speaker 3: get from that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or it's like me bringing about my relationship to
Speaker 2: Rick Santorum.
Speaker 7: I mean, but also, like, without getting too gross about
Speaker 7: American history, the obvious thing is when a black person
Speaker 7: and a white person have the same last name, the
Speaker 7: ante seated tends to be a different thing than direct
Speaker 7: well or.
Speaker 4: Whatever I mean, right, lots of awful ways.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean one way. But in this case,
Speaker 2: there doesn't seem to be any like evidence of that, right,
Speaker 2: Like that it's because like Presley's not an uncommon last name, right,
Speaker 2: there's a shitload of fucking Presley's out there. So Hattie
Speaker 2: May was the granddaughter of slaves, So that is like
Speaker 2: how kind of you know, we're talking about like the
Speaker 2: fifties here, right, And she worked as the cook for
Speaker 2: the sheriff of KOs Usko and managed the household of
Speaker 2: a rich white family, the Leonards, and at this point,
Speaker 2: we've got two pretty different We start to get two
Speaker 2: very different stories of Oprah's first six years alive. She
Speaker 2: once told reporters, quote, I never had a store bought
Speaker 2: dress or a pair of shoes, and I was six
Speaker 2: years old. The only toy I had was a corn
Speaker 2: cob doll with toothpicks. This is like pretty consistent in
Speaker 2: terms of how Oprah talks about her life. Kitty Kelly writes, quote,
Speaker 2: she recalled her early years as lonely, with no one
Speaker 2: to play with except the pigs that she rode bareback
Speaker 2: around her grandmother's yard. I only had barnyard animals to
Speaker 2: talk to. I read them Bible stories. She regaled her
Speaker 2: audiences with stories of having to carry water from the well,
Speaker 2: milk cows and empty the slop jar. A childhood of
Speaker 2: cinders and ashes that was the stuff of fairy tales.
Speaker 2: Oprah morphed into Operella as she spun her tales about
Speaker 2: the switch wielding grandmother and cane thumping grandfather who raised
Speaker 2: her until she was six years old. Oh the whoopings
Speaker 2: I got, she said. And the degree to which this
Speaker 2: is mythmaking is up for debate. It is worth noting
Speaker 2: that a lot of a number of her family members
Speaker 2: and friends of the family who knew Oprah during this
Speaker 2: period very much don't agree with this take on her childhood.
Speaker 2: And I want to read a quote from that People
Speaker 2: Profiles biography here. Among Oprah's many assets, maybe a gift
Speaker 2: for self dramatization. As Vernita once put it, Oprah toots
Speaker 2: it up a little. In one tale Oprah has often told,
Speaker 2: she has cast herself as a lonely child whose main
Speaker 2: comfort was talking to the farm animals. The nearest neighborhood
Speaker 2: was a blind neighbor was a blind man up the road.
Speaker 2: She once said, There weren't other kids, no playmates, no
Speaker 2: toys except for one corn cob doll. I played with
Speaker 2: the animals, and I made speeches to the cows. Esther's
Speaker 2: which is who her aunt, has a different explanation for
Speaker 2: the loneliness Oprah remembers. Right across the road were Oprah's cousins,
Speaker 2: the Presley twins, who were her age. They played together
Speaker 2: when Oprah was allowed to come outside because Aunt hat
Speaker 2: was very protective of her. And it seems that there's
Speaker 2: at least a good amount of evidence that the real
Speaker 2: Oprah's story at least the story of her childhood that
Speaker 2: the majority of the people who were there for at
Speaker 2: Tell is not that she was like locked, you know,
Speaker 2: is that she was isolated because this was some like
Speaker 2: middle of the nowhere dirt farm. It's because she had
Speaker 2: a grandmother who was something of a hell copter parent, right,
Speaker 2: And while the family certainly wasn't rich, they weren't dirt poor.
Speaker 2: And in fact, everyone seems to agree that Oprah had
Speaker 2: a lot of toys. The whole I only had a
Speaker 2: corn cob doll thing is definitely not true. But the
Speaker 2: reason she had a lot of nice toys is that
Speaker 2: they were all hand me downs from their rich white
Speaker 2: family that Haddie may worked for, which is a complicated thing,
Speaker 2: right when you're thinking about, like, why would somebody kind
Speaker 2: of exaggerate the lack of stuff that they had as
Speaker 2: a kid when it's like, well, but also the stuff
Speaker 2: that you have comes to you as a result of
Speaker 2: this relationship that's kind of very fundamentally unequal and that
Speaker 2: you were probably somewhat aware of at the time. And
Speaker 2: Oprah in fact talks a lot about how she was
Speaker 2: aware of the fact that like, white girls were treated
Speaker 2: very differently in her town and wanted to be white
Speaker 2: as a little kid, So like this is all very messy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it goes back to what you were saying, Robert,
Speaker 3: about how a lot of her early story is quite
Speaker 3: sympathetic and it's very easy. Like it's on the one hand,
Speaker 3: it's easy to say, oh, well she was doing some
Speaker 3: myth making and saying she didn't have any toys, But
Speaker 3: it's also like more complicated and sort of truer to
Speaker 3: be like, well, she had toys, but they came from
Speaker 3: the white kids, and that she didn't maybe maybe was
Speaker 3: aware of the dynamic there. Like it's less satisfying and
Speaker 3: more complex, but it doesn't make it any less true.
Speaker 2: Right, right, And it's also one of those things where
Speaker 2: like she talks a lot about being whipped and switched
Speaker 2: in how like she didn't feel like the same thing
Speaker 2: happened to the white kids. Now does that mean, like,
Speaker 2: I'm white kids in Alabama. I'm sure plenty of them
Speaker 2: got beat by their parents too, But what kind of
Speaker 2: matters more there is her feeling on it, right, that
Speaker 2: there were these kids that my grandma's job is to serve,
Speaker 2: and they clearly get these much nicer things than I am,
Speaker 2: and it's not surprising to me that that would color
Speaker 2: her her concept of her childhood much more than like
Speaker 2: what her older aunts would have picked up on, which
Speaker 2: is like, well she always had the nice things, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: Like neither of them can be lying and there can
Speaker 2: still be a discrepancy between what they remember, if that
Speaker 2: makes sense.
Speaker 7: But it feels like myth making is sort of a
Speaker 7: fair way to say it, like this is just kind
Speaker 7: of part of it. The exact shorthand especially in a
Speaker 7: like entertainment capacity, like.
Speaker 2: The whole I only had the cows to talk to
Speaker 2: thing is definitely a bit of myth making because like
Speaker 2: everyone doesn't really No, she had more family around her
Speaker 2: than that. Yeah, that's that's a little that's a little
Speaker 2: bit playing it up right.
Speaker 3: That's like straight out of the movie Pearl, Like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: the pigs, so yeah, Oprah.
Speaker 2: One of the stories she tells that tells is that
Speaker 2: she was like forced to make friends with cockroaches, which
Speaker 2: is actually like a reoccurrent bit of hers in her
Speaker 2: early years. Quote, we were so poor we couldn't afford
Speaker 2: a catter a dog, so I made pat pets out
Speaker 2: of two cockroaches. I put him in a jar and
Speaker 2: named them Melinda and sand and Oprah's sister Patricia Lloyd,
Speaker 2: does not entirely agree with this take. Oprah exaggerated how
Speaker 2: bad we had it, I guess to get sympathy from
Speaker 2: her viewers and widen her audience. She never had cockroaches
Speaker 2: for pets. She always had a dog. She also had
Speaker 2: a white cat an eel and an aquarium and a
Speaker 2: parakeet called bo Peep that she tried to teach to talk,
Speaker 2: and she.
Speaker 6: Had a.
Speaker 7: Hard you really blasted past the eyel point.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing, though, because, like Patricia Lloyd is
Speaker 2: telling the truth, I think I'm sure that Oprah had
Speaker 2: those pets. But Patricia is younger than Oprah and doesn't
Speaker 2: meet Oprah until Oprah is not living with her grandmother anymore.
Speaker 2: Patricia and Oprah never get along. And a big chunk
Speaker 2: of this is I'm not going to throw out stories
Speaker 2: like this from family members who were like, yeah, it
Speaker 2: wasn't as bad as she says it was, because there's
Speaker 2: definitely a good amount of myth making going on here.
Speaker 2: But also there's a lot of people who are angry
Speaker 2: that Oprah got rich in that they didn't get as
Speaker 2: much of that money as they wanted to get, and
Speaker 2: so that's also a factor in some of these like
Speaker 2: like Patricia doesn't know what was going on in that
Speaker 2: farmhouse because she wasn't alive then.
Speaker 3: And she's probably just a hater she that's not.
Speaker 2: Zero percent of why she's saying this, right. Yeah, Now
Speaker 2: that said, there's also some evidence that like Oprah really
Speaker 2: pushes aside how doting her family was to her, because
Speaker 2: that's not kind of the conception she She always has
Speaker 2: this sort of like I've always been alone attitude, and
Speaker 2: maybe that's how she felt. But her maternal aunt Susie
Speaker 2: said this to Kitty Kelly. We all just adored her.
Speaker 2: We just worshiped her in everything. My mother Hattie gave
Speaker 2: Oprah everything she wanted her to have and everything Oprah wanted,
Speaker 2: and so we were poor people, but we got it
Speaker 2: for her. She claimed she had no dolls, but she
Speaker 2: had lots of dolls, all kinds of dolls. And I,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think that's lying either. I don't
Speaker 2: think it's uncommon for a kid to be like, well,
Speaker 2: I felt alone, and for the people around that coid
Speaker 2: to be like but you weren't, you know, and again,
Speaker 2: neither of those people are necessarily lying. That just gets
Speaker 2: down to people taking very different things, and like childhood,
Speaker 2: you're not aware of the stuff that maybe adults see,
Speaker 2: Yeah how old how old is she in this time period?
Speaker 2: One to six?
Speaker 4: Oh my god?
Speaker 2: Yeah, or birth to six? I should say, right, I.
Speaker 7: Feel like that that's exactly the type of disagreement that
Speaker 7: you always have with you You don't really remember how
Speaker 7: nice everyone was to you when you were six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I have a lot of like complaints about
Speaker 2: my own childhood like one to seven or eight, And
Speaker 2: I'm sure my mom would say like, well, we were
Speaker 2: all working our asses off to take care of you,
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, yeah, but also you weren't around
Speaker 2: a lot of the time, you know, like that's just
Speaker 2: a nobody is wrong there. As the parent, you're like,
Speaker 2: but you understand that what I was doing was trying
Speaker 2: to take care of you, And as the kid, you're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but I was still really unhappy, you know, like that's
Speaker 2: just childhood, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yuh.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Kitty makes an interesting note here, pulling from a
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine interview Oprah did with Barbara Streisand
Speaker 2: in which Barbara, who grew up in poverty, talked about
Speaker 2: the fact that her only doll was a hot water bottle. Oprah,
Speaker 2: who had previously claimed to only have a doll she
Speaker 2: made from a corn cob, replied, Wow, you were poorer
Speaker 2: than I was. So again myth making is going on here.
Speaker 2: She's not ever totally consistent. You know, how poor she
Speaker 2: was depends on who she's talking to. When she's talking
Speaker 2: to someone who was like really growing up also very poor,
Speaker 2: Oprah maybe like, you know, eases up on the throttle
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I remember that Barbara Walters Oprah crossover very well because
Speaker 3: it ends with a very good performance where yeah, painted
Speaker 3: from Jesus microphone white because she was Barbara Streithean painted
Speaker 3: her microphone's white because her thing is like, wait, are
Speaker 3: you talking about streisand or Walters.
Speaker 2: I think I'm talking about Streisand let me double check
Speaker 2: in the US, so I don't have fussed this up.
Speaker 3: If it's Straithan. That was like a very big moment
Speaker 3: in Oprah lore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's I'm pretty sure it's Streisand it's
Speaker 2: just that she also talked, she talked to everyone. There's
Speaker 2: because we just talked about Barbara Walters in here, who
Speaker 2: she mentioned like wishing that she had been white as
Speaker 2: a little girl to Barbara Walters, Barbara Streisand I think
Speaker 2: is the interview about how poor they were.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all the Barbara's.
Speaker 2: All the barber's. Too many barbers in this story. If
Speaker 2: they were famous in the nineties or early two thousands,
Speaker 2: Oprah had a tearful conversation with them. So yeah. Kitty
Speaker 2: Kelly quotes from a Life article in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 2: which includes this line, Oprah was the least powerful of
Speaker 2: girls born poor and illegitimate on the segregated south on
Speaker 2: a town in Kouzusko, Mississippi. She spent her first six
Speaker 2: years there abandoned to her maternal grandmother. And so you
Speaker 2: can see that like this spin on the story, which
Speaker 2: is parts of it I'm sure are emotionally true. Some
Speaker 2: of it is certainly literally true, but also the idea
Speaker 2: that she was abandoned, I think it's more. I think
Speaker 2: that doesn't quite get at the truth, which is that
Speaker 2: her grandmother took her over because her mother was not
Speaker 2: a reliable parent, and this was she benefited a lot
Speaker 2: from the fact that she had her grandmother during this
Speaker 2: very similar actually to Clarence Thomas's story, right where you
Speaker 2: had this kid who was growing up in a very
Speaker 2: impoverished background but wound up being taken care of their
Speaker 2: grandparent who was the absolute most responsible person to raise
Speaker 2: them in that period of time. And so it is
Speaker 2: this situation where that's both I'm sure very difficult for
Speaker 2: the child who's not being raised by their parents, but
Speaker 2: it's also not this situation of like like, this is
Speaker 2: an example of there being a strong safety net in
Speaker 2: her childhood that a number of a lot of other
Speaker 2: kids in the same situation wouldn't necessarily benefited from. And
Speaker 2: both of those things are i think critical to talk about,
Speaker 2: whether we're talking about Thomas or we're talking about Winfrey.
Speaker 2: And this is where you get kind of a lot
Speaker 2: of the discrepancies because the Winfrey family historian Catherine Esters,
Speaker 2: who is i think technically a cousin but one of
Speaker 2: those cousins who Oprah grew up seeing as an aunt,
Speaker 2: has really taken a lot of issues with Oprah's description
Speaker 2: of her childhood. And she told Kitty Kelly this, all
Speaker 2: things considered, those years with Hattie May were the best
Speaker 2: thing that could have happened to a baby girl born
Speaker 2: to poor kin. Oprah grew up as an only child
Speaker 2: with the full and undivided attention of every one of us,
Speaker 2: her grandparents, her aunt's, uncles, and cousins, as well as
Speaker 2: her mother, who Oprah never mentions was with her every
Speaker 2: day for the first four and a half years of
Speaker 2: Oprah's life until she went north to Milwaukee to find
Speaker 2: a better job. And when I read this, I was
Speaker 2: very surprised because all of the other things I'd read
Speaker 2: about her childhood said that her mom had left immediately,
Speaker 2: but Esther's claims like, no, her mom was there for
Speaker 2: four and a half years and then just bounced for
Speaker 2: like eighteen months to try and set up a life
Speaker 2: and does eventually bring her up to Milwaukee, which is
Speaker 2: a different version of her story, right, Like, again, there's
Speaker 2: a lot there's less abandonment here than at least certain
Speaker 2: versions of the story. And obviously I was isn't there
Speaker 2: so who was lying or not?
Speaker 7: But yeah, I don't know, just that feels like exactly
Speaker 7: like perception though, like between zero and four if your
Speaker 7: mom leaves, how would you materially know the difference between
Speaker 7: four and one?
Speaker 4: You know, really you're barely there, right, kid, Right?
Speaker 2: And that is kind of the difficulty of how formative
Speaker 2: that period is and then how like shitty our memory
Speaker 2: is of it, because like I always would like, especially
Speaker 2: when I do stuff like this and I read about like, well,
Speaker 2: if I were to write my own recollection of like
Speaker 2: my early childhood out and then talk to my relatives
Speaker 2: about it, how many of them would be like, no,
Speaker 2: that's not what happened. No, right, yeah, you're a small child.
Speaker 2: So again, I don't even know how much of this
Speaker 2: is myth making, and just that was her she felt abandoned,
Speaker 2: and so maybe then it is like, is that even
Speaker 2: more accurate than the truth that her mom was actually
Speaker 2: there most of the time, if that's what she took
Speaker 2: out of that period of time.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know the answer to this,
Speaker 3: But no, are the family members that are speaking on
Speaker 3: this sort of correcting the record. Are they alleging that
Speaker 3: Oprah is sort of outright falsifying? Oh yet her childhood was.
Speaker 2: Like Aunt Catherine definitely is she she is very much.
Speaker 2: She's talking a lot of shade about Oprah. I think
Speaker 2: she takes it very personally because she was one of
Speaker 2: the people helping to raise her, that she talks about
Speaker 2: her childhood this way. And there's always the question of,
Speaker 2: like how much does money and people being unhappy about
Speaker 2: money play into some of this. I can't answer that.
Speaker 2: There's been allegations of that too. You know, nobody's like
Speaker 2: coming into this without an angle, but Aunt Catherine is
Speaker 2: definitely alleging Oprah lies a lot about her childhood. That
Speaker 2: is her is precisely how she frames it. Is that
Speaker 2: like she's she's telling a lot of tall tales, you know, yeah, complicated.
Speaker 7: So it's just like when the successful person in your
Speaker 7: family is the most like the richest person in media.
Speaker 7: That's that's what it becomes. A thing that's sounds so
Speaker 7: standard to any sit talking family.
Speaker 3: I have to say, right, I would be such a
Speaker 3: hater if my sibling became Oprah famous.
Speaker 2: Any billion dollars.
Speaker 3: Put a microphone on my face and I'll say whatever.
Speaker 3: I would be such a hater.
Speaker 2: No, just just buy me a vineyard and I'll shut up.
Speaker 2: You'll never hear from me again. Go date Steadman. We're good.
Speaker 3: So there's also.
Speaker 2: Another aspect of this that that didn't really come out
Speaker 2: until more recently. I'll be Oprah was open a lot
Speaker 2: about physical abuse that she endured. Although I should say
Speaker 2: when I say physical abuse, it is accurate to cold abuse.
Speaker 2: It is also totally normal corporal punishment for the time, right,
Speaker 2: Like the stuff she is talking about, My grandma would
Speaker 2: make me go get a switch and then would beat
Speaker 2: me if I did things that were bad. That is
Speaker 2: extremely normal for this place in.
Speaker 4: Time, right.
Speaker 3: I have to say, like, that is how I was raised.
Speaker 3: I grew up in the South. That's I mean, that's
Speaker 3: just like I know a lot of people same, like
Speaker 3: I know a lot of people today for whom that
Speaker 3: is like a normal vibe.
Speaker 2: Even though it is abuse, and it's one of those
Speaker 2: things people will critique her for like and be like, ah,
Speaker 2: she wasn't relieved, she wasn't beat more than anybody else
Speaker 2: that Like, you know, Hattie was not particularly violent for
Speaker 2: a parent in that era. But also, I don't think
Speaker 2: Oprah's wrong for being like, this is really fucked up,
Speaker 2: and you shouldn't hit kids with switches. So I think
Speaker 2: I give that point to Oprah on the whole.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and especially making the kid go out and get
Speaker 3: their own switch if you want to do that, that's
Speaker 3: like a special kind of psychological torture.
Speaker 2: A lot of it does sound very familiar. Yeah, just
Speaker 2: growing up in the South, Like I got smacked, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think more than my fair share. And it's
Speaker 2: the kind of thing where like there's a part of
Speaker 2: me that wants to be if I were to hear
Speaker 2: someone else complaining about the kind of stuff that was
Speaker 2: done to me as a kid, I'd be like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: that she was just growing up as a kid in
Speaker 2: rural Oklahoma in the nineties. But it's also bad you
Speaker 2: should do that to kids, So maybe I'll just shut
Speaker 2: up about that.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: It's that kind of like it's that attitude where like
Speaker 2: if you went through something and you never really thought
Speaker 2: of it as that bad, then you get kind of
Speaker 2: offended when other people speak up, even if they should be.
Speaker 2: You know, it's that's probably just a thing we have
Speaker 2: to get over as people.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, see I went through it, I paid off
Speaker 7: my student loans, I did at it, and it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 7: why should have.
Speaker 2: Been hitting me as a kid? I guess. Earlier I
Speaker 2: mentioned that twenty twenty one book with doctor Bruce Perry, who,
Speaker 2: by Oprah's standards, is a pretty good doctor, but also
Speaker 2: seems to think ADHD isn't real, So again, by Oprah standards,
Speaker 2: does a lot of heavy lifting there. Like I was
Speaker 2: reading through this guy's by and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: he seems like a real Oh he doesn't think ADHD
Speaker 2: is a thing. Huh Okay. We got some RFK vibes
Speaker 2: coming off of this fella. In that book, What Happened
Speaker 2: to You? Conversations on trauma, resilience, and healing. Each chapter
Speaker 2: opens up with a brief vignette or essay by either
Speaker 2: Oprah or doctor Perry, and the rest of each chapter
Speaker 2: is literally just like a conversation transcript between the two,
Speaker 2: written out in Q and A format. It is a
Speaker 2: very lazy book in my opinion. Right, this is the
Speaker 2: easiest way to write a fucking book. Everyone does like
Speaker 2: ten pages of essays and then you just fucking record
Speaker 2: a conversation. Man, how do I get that job? Right? Like,
Speaker 2: that's beautiful grift, beautiful grift. That said, there's also some
Speaker 2: like pretty poignant vignettes from Oprah here, which I think
Speaker 2: maybe fills it out a little bit more. That includes
Speaker 2: some stark claims from her childhood. Now we should remember
Speaker 2: this book came out just a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: So this is a senior citizen reflecting half a century
Speaker 2: later on things that would have happened when she was
Speaker 2: six at the oldest. So the best case scenario here,
Speaker 2: there's no way, you know, even if we discount like
Speaker 2: some myth making, you're never going to be perfectly accurate
Speaker 2: in your recollections of stuff that happened in this time.
Speaker 2: But here's how Oprah writes about the way in which
Speaker 2: discipline was done when she was a child. At the time,
Speaker 2: it was accepted practice for caregivers to use corporal punishment
Speaker 2: to discipline a child. My grandmother Hadi may embraced it,
Speaker 2: but even at three years old, I knew what I
Speaker 2: was experiencing was wrong. One of the worst beatings I
Speaker 2: can recall happened on a Sunday morning going to church
Speaker 2: played a major role in our lives. Just before we
Speaker 2: were to leave for service, I was sent to the
Speaker 2: well behind our house to pump water. The farmhouse where
Speaker 2: I lived with my grandparents did not have indoor plumbing.
Speaker 2: From the window, my grandmother caught a glimpse of me
Speaker 2: twirling my fingers in the water and became enraged. Though
Speaker 2: I was only daydreaming innocently as any child might. She
Speaker 2: was angry because this was our drinking water and I
Speaker 2: had put my fingers in it. She then asked me
Speaker 2: if I had been playing in the water, and I
Speaker 2: said no. She bent me over and whipped me so
Speaker 2: violently my flesh welted. Afterward, I managed to put on
Speaker 2: my white Sunday best dress, blood began to seep through
Speaker 2: and stain the crisp fabric a deep crimson. Livid at
Speaker 2: the site, she chastised me for getting blood in my dress,
Speaker 2: then sent me to Sunday school in the rural South.
Speaker 2: This is how black children were raised. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: one of those Esther's aunt Catherine takes a lot of
Speaker 2: issue with this. She was like, Hattie made it not
Speaker 2: beat Oprah every day of her life, And like, I'm
Speaker 2: sure it wasn't every day, but I don't think Oprah's
Speaker 2: probably that's a very specific story to have lied about.
Speaker 3: And it's like so visceral that you if that happened
Speaker 3: to you while you were a little kid, no shit,
Speaker 3: it's going to be memorable, No shit, it's going to
Speaker 3: be something you can stick with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, of course, that would stick with you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I think this might be again when we talk
Speaker 2: about because it'd be very easy, especially since this is
Speaker 2: a bastard's episode, to just lean on Esther's being like
Speaker 2: she lied about this, She led about that, but like, well,
Speaker 2: she was one of the people who was taking care
Speaker 2: of Oprah when Oprah was getting smacked around as a kid,
Speaker 2: and maybe did some of the smacking And maybe he
Speaker 2: doesn't want to think about that as having been a problem, right,
Speaker 2: cool stuff. I think Oprah does genuinely care about child abuse.
Speaker 2: It's something she has devoted a lot of her life
Speaker 2: to trying to fight, although ways in ways that have
Speaker 2: been on perfect imperfect. There's like criticisms of some of
Speaker 2: the stuff that she's tried to do for this, but
Speaker 2: it is something that she's like put a lot of
Speaker 2: time and effort into and that kind of does make
Speaker 2: me think she's probably telling the truth all in all
Speaker 2: about like what she experienced as a kid. Now, what's
Speaker 2: interesting to me is that Oprah, while she's all you know,
Speaker 2: been mostly seems to have negative things to say about
Speaker 2: her grandma. She's also very clear that like Hattie May
Speaker 2: is the first person who inculcated with her within her
Speaker 2: the behavior that made her a success later on, quote,
Speaker 2: I developed a keen sense of when trouble was brewing.
Speaker 2: I recognized the shift in my grandmother's voice or the
Speaker 2: look that meant I had displeased her. She was not
Speaker 2: a mean person. I believe she cared for me and
Speaker 2: wanted me to be a good girl. And I understood
Speaker 2: that hushing my mouth or silence was the only way
Speaker 2: to sure a quick end to punishment and pain. For
Speaker 2: the next forty years, that pattern of condition compliance, the
Speaker 2: result of deeply rooted trauma, would define every relationship, interaction,
Speaker 2: and decision in my life. The long term impact of
Speaker 2: being whooped then forced to sh hush and even smile
Speaker 2: about it turned me into a world class people pleaser
Speaker 2: for most of my life. And I think there's an
Speaker 2: Oprah would suggest that like part of why she got
Speaker 2: to be so good at what we call myth making,
Speaker 2: at entertaining people, because what is entertainment but people pleasing,
Speaker 2: is that she spends so much of her early childhood
Speaker 2: trying to keep her grandmother happy.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I I mean, I not to be sympathizing
Speaker 3: with our bastard, but I should. Yeah, I mean, like
Speaker 3: that is that is my childhood, right, Like I think
Speaker 3: that is like classic kid who grew up getting that
Speaker 3: kind of punishment in a household where even as an
Speaker 3: adult you become so perceptive to like the tiniest little
Speaker 3: changes in someone's demeanor and kind of had to be
Speaker 3: to survive in households like that, Like that is like
Speaker 3: that rings to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my child I wouldn't say was as extreme as
Speaker 2: what Oprah has related, but I definitely vibe with the
Speaker 2: feeling of like there is someone in my house who
Speaker 2: gets angry at me easily, and I'm going to get
Speaker 2: very good at like people pleasing and it lying in
Speaker 2: order to avoid pissing them off.
Speaker 3: And I have to ask Robert, like, as a podcast
Speaker 3: to podcaster, do you kind of feel like this is
Speaker 3: like why you are good at like storytelling and entertaining
Speaker 3: and keeping people happy and laughing and smiling with you, right,
Speaker 3: Like she's wrong.
Speaker 2: I don't think she's wrong at all, and like it's
Speaker 2: it's all of that, and it's also why I've always
Speaker 2: been really good at talking to the cops and like
Speaker 2: lying to the cops and getting out of trouble with
Speaker 2: the police. Is that I know when somebody I like
Speaker 2: allegedly lying, Yeah, like you learned to protect.
Speaker 5: Allegedly allegedly allegedly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A lot of successful entertainers have something like this
Speaker 2: in their background. Right. I actually had this written out,
Speaker 2: like you learn to please people, and that teaches you
Speaker 2: how to please crowds.
Speaker 1: Right, speaking of please pleasing crowds.
Speaker 2: Fuck the crowds. Let's please our advertisers.
Speaker 4: The only crowd that matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So on the whole, you know, I think Oprah
Speaker 2: lies a lot about the specific. I think there are
Speaker 2: specifics that get exaggerated and just specifics that are misremembered
Speaker 2: about her past. But I don't think that means her
Speaker 2: We should discount what she says, right, And I think
Speaker 2: particularly we should pay attention when she says, quote, the
Speaker 2: most pervasive feeling I remember from my own childhood is loneliness.
Speaker 2: And I can believe that at the same time as
Speaker 2: I believe her Aunt Catherine when she tells Kitty Kelly quote,
Speaker 2: Oprah makes her first six years sound like the worst
Speaker 2: thing that ever befell, a child born to folks just
Speaker 2: trying to survive. I was there for most of the time,
Speaker 2: and I can tell you she was oiled and petted
Speaker 2: and indulged better than any little girl in these parts.
Speaker 2: Every parent knows that a child's first six years lays
Speaker 2: the foundation for life, and those for six years down
Speaker 2: here with Hetty, Meg gave Oprah the foundation for her
Speaker 2: self confidence, her speaking ability, and her desire to succeed.
Speaker 2: I don't actually think both of those things are in
Speaker 2: conflict the way that they both think it does.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's exactly.
Speaker 7: Like as as we've been saying, like, these are all
Speaker 7: the skills you gain, I do feel it's worth saying
Speaker 7: that though sometimes you gain these skills, also the majority
Speaker 7: of the time people are crushed and hurt by this
Speaker 7: type of.
Speaker 3: Uh it can be you can be crushed but also
Speaker 3: a good entertainer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can be. I mean like a magic spell.
Speaker 8: No, no, I would not recommend entertainers, but in more cases,
Speaker 8: like if you're an entertainer, like this story still ends
Speaker 8: in a place like the fucking floor in front of
Speaker 8: the viper room, as opposed to having two billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Rip River Phoenix. So there's another story Oprah tells in
Speaker 2: this book, which again I don't like this book overall,
Speaker 2: but this passage struck me and if it's if it
Speaker 2: is accurate, I think it's something that may hint of
Speaker 2: some darkness buried in the family history that it's historian
Speaker 2: Aunt Catherine may not be willing to see quote. Growing
Speaker 2: up in Mississippi, I always slept with my grandmother. My grandfather,
Speaker 2: who had dementia, slept in a side room. One night,
Speaker 2: I was suddenly awakened to see my grandfather standing over
Speaker 2: the bed. Even before I opened my eyes, I could
Speaker 2: sense my grandmother's fear. I could feel her heightened awareness
Speaker 2: as she slowly repeated, earlist, get back to bed, earlist,
Speaker 2: get back to bed. He wouldn't go. He was trying
Speaker 2: to choke her, fighting to get his hands around her neck.
Speaker 2: When she finally managed to push him off of her
Speaker 2: and run to the door, she cried out for one
Speaker 2: of our neighbors, called cousin Henry, who lived down the road.
Speaker 2: Henry Henry. Henry Henry was blind, but without hesitation, he
Speaker 2: came in the middle of the night to help my
Speaker 2: grandmother put my grandfather back in his bedroom. My grandmother
Speaker 2: then wedged a chair into the doorknob to her bedroom
Speaker 2: door and found some cans to put around the door.
Speaker 2: The next morning, she tied those cans together and hung
Speaker 2: them from the door. And every night for the rest
Speaker 2: of my days living with my grandmother, the cans were
Speaker 2: on the door and the chair was up under the knob.
Speaker 2: I would try to sleep while listening to make sure
Speaker 2: that the cans didn't move.
Speaker 4: Fuck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's so scary. Yeah, it's interesting. She tells
Speaker 2: this anecdote in the book because it goes along with
Speaker 2: another story she's telling, which is that she's talking about
Speaker 2: like this school shooting right in nineteen eighty eight, when
Speaker 2: a girl, a woman named Lori Dan entered a second
Speaker 2: grade classroom classroom and Winetka and started shooting, killing an
Speaker 2: eight year old and wounding five other kids. And Oprah
Speaker 2: tells her own story because like, in the aftermath of
Speaker 2: this shooting, there had been like a discussion about whether
Speaker 2: or not to like chain and lock the school doors
Speaker 2: and have them manned by security guards. And the principal
Speaker 2: refused to implement these changes because he was like, if
Speaker 2: there's a chain on the door, it sends a message
Speaker 2: to the kids that they're unsafe, and kind of Oprah
Speaker 2: brings up the story to be like, I really feel
Speaker 2: that because of this, these cans hung from the door
Speaker 2: that we're supposed to make us safer. That just reminded
Speaker 2: me that there was this constant danger, you know, from
Speaker 2: my grandfather. So yeah, anyway, interesting, I don't.
Speaker 7: Have children, but it is so fucked up to me
Speaker 7: that it's like, I mean, we're not going to make
Speaker 7: them safe, but we don't want to make them feel unsafe,
Speaker 7: which they hire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's you know, uh, Aunt Catherine, I
Speaker 2: think would probably say again, would doubt that that had happened.
Speaker 2: One of the statements she made to Kittie Kelly was
Speaker 2: I've talked to her about this over the years. I've
Speaker 2: confronted her and asked, why do you tell such lies?
Speaker 2: Oprah told me that's what people want to hear. The
Speaker 2: truth is boring, Aunt Catherine. People don't want to be bored.
Speaker 2: They want stories with drama, and so it is like
Speaker 2: you can't help think to a little bit like, well
Speaker 2: did she did she make that up or add to
Speaker 2: that in order to have something that was relevant to
Speaker 2: the story of a shooting from her own life, which
Speaker 2: is like a thing, you know, being able to like like,
Speaker 2: And it's like you can't know it is. It is
Speaker 2: kind of worth stating that, like a lot of the
Speaker 2: people who will argue that about Oprah, and these are
Speaker 2: arguments coming from members of her family, aunt Catherine ahead
Speaker 2: of them, are also people who probably have a deep
Speaker 2: emotional interest in remembering, you know, Grandma Hattie and her
Speaker 2: husband as one kind of person and Oprah. The fact
Speaker 2: that Oprah doesn't remember them that way is probably deeply
Speaker 2: offensive to these people. And maybe, yeah, yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 2: there's like no way to know what actually happened, right,
Speaker 2: none of us were there, But the fact that this
Speaker 2: conflict is present is as much a part of the
Speaker 2: story as what actually happened, right.
Speaker 3: I would also say, just growing up in like a
Speaker 3: southern black family, I do think there might be some
Speaker 3: aspect of like, you're not meant to talk about whatever
Speaker 3: happens in our house. Yeah, And so like her aunt
Speaker 3: being offended that she would even be talking about anything
Speaker 3: that went on, you know, behind closed doors in their house,
Speaker 3: that I could really see that, And like, again, I
Speaker 3: don't think it's all one or the other, that she's
Speaker 3: just like callously making this up because people need a story.
Speaker 3: Probably some of that, But that doesn't mean that her
Speaker 3: family members would not be invested in these stories that
Speaker 3: paint them in not so great light. You know, not
Speaker 3: so great light be not something that's talked about on
Speaker 3: a national stage.
Speaker 2: Right right, right, Yeah, And I think that's like that's
Speaker 2: a pretty important part of it as well.
Speaker 7: I will say another thing that is kind of weird,
Speaker 7: and partially because I am relatively not versed in Oprah
Speaker 7: and the elements of her beast diardiness. You know, the
Speaker 7: ones that I know about mostly seem to be about
Speaker 7: elevating horrible men, right, which is almost sort of do
Speaker 7: you know I could see paths to that anyway. I
Speaker 7: guess what I mean is like none of these like trauma,
Speaker 7: well not even not the traumas, but none of these
Speaker 7: like lies or like questionable stories. It's like weird because
Speaker 7: that doesn't seem like the dimension of which, like the
Speaker 7: type of bad person that does those things tends to
Speaker 7: be more of like just a general asshole or a
Speaker 7: liar in some way. And it's just interesting that I'm like,
Speaker 7: this doesn't seem to be the bad part.
Speaker 2: I guess, no, no, Well, also, she's six up to
Speaker 2: this point in the story.
Speaker 7: Yeah, even in the retellings. Sorry, Like even if they
Speaker 7: are exaggerations, Like it's so weird because it's like she
Speaker 7: could do all that stuff and still not promote doctor
Speaker 7: oz R.
Speaker 4: She could be a.
Speaker 7: Weird kind of like shady, you know, Hollywood person, which happens.
Speaker 2: Most people who lie about their childhoods don't also start
Speaker 2: doctor Roz's career.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think that's that's like maybe what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so well, you know the attitude of her a
Speaker 2: number of members of her family, including her mom Brenita,
Speaker 2: and her aunt Katherine, is that And this is Aunt
Speaker 2: Catherine again, she always wanted to have the spotlight. If
Speaker 2: adults were talking and she couldn't get their attention, she'd
Speaker 2: walk over and hit them to make them pay attention
Speaker 2: to her. And I think that that's you know, that's
Speaker 2: probably true because I have seen other kids do that.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a thing you have to like stop
Speaker 2: when a kid is doing that. But like that's not
Speaker 2: an uncommon stage of development or like for kids to
Speaker 2: scream and pout when they don't get attention, you know,
Speaker 2: like they're small children. They are still learning these sorts
Speaker 2: of things. That said, it's not inconsistent with what Oprah
Speaker 2: says about being lonely or about wanting to be a
Speaker 2: people please. This is also a kid that is obsessed
Speaker 2: with having people pay attention to her, and as a result,
Speaker 2: she is from a very early age a performer, which
Speaker 2: is really interesting to me. She like every black church
Speaker 2: in her hometown, she's given like speeches at, and like
Speaker 2: read poems at and and whatnot. By the time she
Speaker 2: is six or seven, which is a continuing thing in
Speaker 2: her life. When she moves, you know, to the big city,
Speaker 2: she'll be doing the same thing, going at every single
Speaker 2: church she can find, and like doing these kind of
Speaker 2: live performances. She's doing that from the age of like
Speaker 2: four or five. And this appears to be something in
Speaker 2: which she is entirely self motivated to do. Like she
Speaker 2: is pushing for her family to take her to these
Speaker 2: churches so that she can do like live performances, right, Like,
Speaker 2: this is always a thing that she wants in her life,
Speaker 2: which is you know, interesting to me and something that's
Speaker 2: going to be a bigger thing in part two of
Speaker 2: our episodes. But that concludes part one of the Oprah
Speaker 2: Winfrey story.
Speaker 4: That's wild.
Speaker 7: I didn't realize that the church circuit was basically like
Speaker 7: open mic night for being a top show host.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's a specific kind of open night,
Speaker 2: Mike Knight, Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, it definitely is. I have seen the folks
Speaker 3: who like, have you ever it makes sense, Yeah, like
Speaker 3: people who speak at a certain kind of cadence. You're like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're a church game, you were like raised given as
Speaker 3: a church Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it makes it. It's really interesting to
Speaker 2: me that like she has because like this does kind
Speaker 2: of speak to some of the things her aunt was
Speaker 2: saying about, Like, you know, we were all really focused
Speaker 2: on her. There was so much attention that went her
Speaker 2: way because well, yeah, I mean it would probably be
Speaker 2: pretty hard for her to have gotten taken to all
Speaker 2: of these different like places, right to all of these
Speaker 2: different like churches and whatnot, if her family wasn't interested
Speaker 2: in her and like focused on her success. That said
Speaker 2: it also, that's exactly the kind of thing a kid
Speaker 2: who was deeply lonely would really want to do, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's because those are the kind of kids who
Speaker 2: become entertainers and a lot of.
Speaker 4: It is a pretty unique thing. I can't imagine.
Speaker 7: I mean, I don't think I got comfortable speaking publicly
Speaker 7: till I was like twenty eight, so like, yeah, six
Speaker 7: year old was like, let me, I just need I
Speaker 7: just need some stage time this Sunday morning.
Speaker 2: I loved it. I was a little church wasn't where
Speaker 2: I did it, but like, yeah, I was an attention.
Speaker 7: I guess I was attention. But like, truly public speaking
Speaker 7: is I think different?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And what she's doing the fact that she is like
Speaker 2: she is. She has the confidence in her speaking abilities
Speaker 2: to want to get up at church, which is like
Speaker 2: a big thing in a lot of way, especially to
Speaker 2: a little kid, that's really interesting to me. Yeah, anyone
Speaker 2: surprised about anything so far?
Speaker 1: I think it's surprising to see the like conflicting stories.
Speaker 4: M hmm.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I will say I don't think anyone's scrutiny
Speaker 7: of any of the tales they tell about being six
Speaker 7: or younger would hold up to anything that's been put
Speaker 7: through this. No, So like every every knock against Oprah
Speaker 7: in this capacity, I am wildly sympathetic too. I'm just like,
Speaker 7: I don't know you're talking about when you're six and
Speaker 7: you're doing it in front of presumably a bunch of
Speaker 7: like white producers and network executives. Mostly so it's like,
Speaker 7: gotta do what you gotta do.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I am surprised that I pretty much uncritically just
Speaker 3: every thing that Oprah ever said about her childhood. I
Speaker 3: believed I repeated it in my fifth grade report, Sophie.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you did too, but that like that,
Speaker 3: like the thing about the dolls and her first getting
Speaker 3: her first pair of shoes at six, I specifically put
Speaker 3: that in my report. And now I'm like, dang, should
Speaker 3: a fact check that?
Speaker 1: Fifth grade US?
Speaker 4: I know, terrible journalists.
Speaker 2: Oh man, Yeah, it's uh. I'm always fascinated by like
Speaker 2: the vagaries of memory, you know, like the past is
Speaker 2: not just a foreign country. It's didn't happen. It's a fantasy.
Speaker 2: It's a fiction dementia. Right, it's a fiction novel that
Speaker 2: you've been writing your entire life without even knowing it. Anyway,
Speaker 2: go sleep on that, everybody. We'll be back in a
Speaker 2: couple of days. Oh wait, pluggables.
Speaker 4: Yep from us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, yes, yes, plug I'll just go.
Speaker 4: Jos is racist. That's my podcast.
Speaker 7: We have the premium shows at Suboptimal pods dot com.
Speaker 7: I'm trying to think mostly just been talking about this
Speaker 7: amazing celery salad I had I made the other day.
Speaker 7: I've had it three times since I made it. Well, Celery,
Speaker 7: lemon shalat and dates. Okay, it's pretty. It's a crazy
Speaker 7: ass salad. I put blue cheese in it too, but yeah,
Speaker 7: and walnuts.
Speaker 4: All right now, I'm good. That's my plug.
Speaker 3: Bridgie definitely making that salad. Yeah. Listen to my podcast
Speaker 3: There Are No Girls on the Internet, about the exploration
Speaker 3: of the intersection of identity and social media and technology.
Speaker 3: And listen to my podcast that I do with Mozilla
Speaker 3: Foundation called ir. It explores who has the power in
Speaker 3: AI and ethics in AI. New season coming soon. Check
Speaker 3: it out.
Speaker 1: I want to plug at the end here just a
Speaker 1: couple of organizations just because of the devastating fires in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. If you are able to help, just check
Speaker 1: out water Drop LA and kton for All for reliable
Speaker 1: resources ab how to help people with mutual Aid. Behind
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