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Speaker 1: Also media Welcome Back to Bastards the Behind podcast Robert

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Speaker 1: Evans A. Uh, your brain will put that together in

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Speaker 1: the right order. Or maybe that only works with written words.

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Speaker 1: Maybe maybe it just sounds like I had a stroke.

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Speaker 2: I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Let's ask our guest today, Uh, bridget Todd andrew T,

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Speaker 1: does it sound like I had a stroke? Always as

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Speaker 1: a longtime friend of mine, Bridget that really that really

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Speaker 1: helps as.

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Speaker 3: A longtime friend of mine.

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Speaker 4: Thank you.

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Speaker 5: Actually, pretty co here, that felt just like like lag.

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Speaker 5: It didn't feel like you were having a stroke. It

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Speaker 5: just felt like there's just some bit of a transmission problem.

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Speaker 5: But it's fine.

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Speaker 6: It's really your parent. You would be like, let's put

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Speaker 6: an eye on it. He doesn't, let's keep it.

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Speaker 1: Maybe we need to take the keys away though. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: they shouldn't be driving that car anymore. We got to

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Speaker 1: get the f one fifty away from Grandpa. He's gotta

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Speaker 1: go right through a fucking farmer's mark.

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Speaker 4: Kids.

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Speaker 1: Oh shit, it just occurred to me actually because I

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Speaker 1: met you both right around the same time, and like

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Speaker 1: mid twenty eighteen to late twenty eighteen, it's been like

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Speaker 1: six years that we've we've all been buddies. We should

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Speaker 1: go to Vegas, to Vegas to meet you.

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Speaker 6: Was it twenty sixteen?

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Speaker 7: I think I think I've known Sophie, but I think

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Speaker 7: I met you Sophie before I met Robert.

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Speaker 6: Robert and I we went to a like you went

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Speaker 6: to a Nazi team in DC.

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Speaker 1: That was a great weekend.

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Speaker 4: Boy, I remember, no, because I'm the one that was like, no, Robert,

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Speaker 4: you're going to d See.

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Speaker 6: You have to hit a bridget Uh huh.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we had a great Time's great.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, there'll be opportunities to go to Nazi marches in DC.

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Speaker 6: Ample I'm sure that's coming before.

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Speaker 1: Friend, I don't Yeah, that's a subject for a day.

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Speaker 1: I will say. I gotta I gotta give a shout

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Speaker 1: out because as we're talking right now, the US Marines

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Speaker 1: have entered the California Mexico border, and there's footage of

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Speaker 1: them with V twenty two Ospreys. So we are we

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Speaker 1: are just hours away from the first time of V

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Speaker 1: to twenty two osprey wipes out a squad of Marines

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Speaker 1: on US soil. Yet again. If you're not aware, these

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Speaker 1: are aircraft that exist almost entirely to kill United States

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Speaker 1: Marines that the Marine Corps continues to use for reasons

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Speaker 1: that make complete sense if you know a lot about

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Speaker 1: the US Marine Corps. So I'm very happy to say

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Speaker 1: that we're about to be suffering severe casualties in a

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Speaker 1: war without anyone to fight but our own aircraft.

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Speaker 5: The reason we'll use them is because they make the

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Speaker 5: coolest Gi Joe toys.

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Speaker 1: They look awesome, they're so cool looking, and it's just

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Speaker 1: they're just death traps. They're just honorable death traps. Like,

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Speaker 1: if you actually care, you would do more reducing American

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Speaker 1: mentalities abroad. Stopping the V twenty two osprey then wiping

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Speaker 1: out isis.

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Speaker 5: It's it's just it's like a it's a drop ship,

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Speaker 5: but with it's like a helicopter with like twice as

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Speaker 5: many points of failure.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, hell yeah, yeah yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's it's like, what if you know how helicopters are

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Speaker 1: absolute death traps? What if we made it twice as

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Speaker 1: much of.

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Speaker 2: A death trap.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of getting lots of people killed, y'all ready

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Speaker 1: to get back to Oprah.

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Speaker 2: Wow?

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Speaker 3: Wow, what a transition.

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Speaker 6: We're gonna get sued.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna get You're gonna get sued. You're gonna get sued.

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Speaker 4: Once again, I checked under my chair and there was

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Speaker 4: nothing there.

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Speaker 1: No, this is I gotta say. People online were like, oh,

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Speaker 1: only a matter of time before Oprah sues them. There's

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Speaker 1: We've had not to mention anybody litigious subjects in the past.

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Speaker 1: We are so far on Oprah's radar, Like again, this

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Speaker 1: is the only people who have ever been more famous

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Speaker 1: than her are certain pharaohs and Greek gods, like she

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Speaker 1: does not give a shit about this podcast.

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Speaker 2: People who.

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Speaker 1: So kind of pivoting off of that statement. I do

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Speaker 1: suspect some of the young'ins in our audience may be

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Speaker 1: incredulous in me crediting Oprah with so much influence in

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Speaker 1: trends that today seem like just like massive societal swings,

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Speaker 1: stuff that's too big for one person to have incited.

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Speaker 1: And I have to assure you Oprah really was that influential.

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Speaker 1: There is, in fact, a direct line from Oprah to

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Speaker 1: the sort of media that utterly dominates the digital attention

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Speaker 1: spans of people today, particularly gen Z kids. Right, if

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Speaker 1: you spend any time looking at surveys of what gen

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Speaker 1: Z claims to look for and value in media figures

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Speaker 1: that they follow, you'll come upon one word over and

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Speaker 1: over authenticity. Now, I'm not saying they actually like authentic

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Speaker 1: media figures, because authenticity is a costume that media figures

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Speaker 1: put on. Nobody is really authentic, right, like, because that's

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Speaker 1: just not the way the media works.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: It's all some sort of dress up, it's all some

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Speaker 1: sort of glamor. But it's the ability to play at

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Speaker 1: being authentic. And I want to quote now from a

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty four study by the NIH surveying the media

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Speaker 1: diet and preference of gen Z viewers. Quote, the qualities

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Speaker 1: that young people wish to find in media, especially on

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Speaker 1: social media, revolve primarily upon spontaneity and authenticity. Quote, nobody

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Speaker 1: has a perfect life. I would like to see a

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Speaker 1: real life that does not come from social media or

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Speaker 1: reality shows. And this is them, quoting a female gen

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Speaker 1: Z surveyed person. They seek a life without filters, much

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Speaker 1: like what is portrayed by influencers like Emily Polini, who,

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Speaker 1: despite having acne, chooses to show herself without filters and

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Speaker 1: accepts herself as she is. And I'm not saying anything

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Speaker 1: about that specific influencer, but like that's the idea, right that,

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Speaker 1: like gen Z, they're moving away from like the super

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Speaker 1: airbrushed and touched up, you know, marketed like celebrities of

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Speaker 1: the past, which is again not true. There's more ability

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Speaker 1: to fill to yourself than ever before thanks to social media.

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Speaker 1: But that's the impression that people think that they want,

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Speaker 1: and that impression really gets started. Authenticity becomes a virtue

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Speaker 1: for media figures in the age of Oprah More than

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Speaker 1: any other single person. She sparks the shift towards relatable,

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Speaker 1: authentic media influencers who deliberately sought to inculcate and feed

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Speaker 1: a parasocial relationship with their audiences. Oprah did this in

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Speaker 1: part by being open about stuff like her struggles with

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Speaker 1: weight loss, which made people think, oh, she's dealing with

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Speaker 1: the same shit. I am right, she is the same

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Speaker 1: kind of person I am. This is like she I

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Speaker 1: like her because she's authentic, and that cuts out a lot,

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Speaker 1: including the fact that, like Wilbrah has billions of dollars

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Speaker 1: and enough money to hire personal chefs and personal trainers

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Speaker 1: and take all of the different rich people drugs that

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Speaker 1: make it a lot easier to lose weight and whatnot

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Speaker 1: and stay youthful. Right, But again, its perception, it's really.

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Speaker 5: Like pretty impressive, how easily, Like everyone is fooled. I

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Speaker 5: think by this, Like, like the difference between authentic and authenticism.

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Speaker 2: Is, like it seems big to me. Maybe am I

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Speaker 2: just an idiot? Like I'm just like this is still

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Speaker 2: very fake, guys.

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Speaker 1: No, I think there's a degree to which I mean,

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Speaker 1: you're right for TV, Andrew, Like you're in media, like Bridget, Like,

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Speaker 1: We're all in media, so we all have experiences of

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Speaker 1: like this is the product that people say is authentic,

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Speaker 1: and we are aware of the degree of work that

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Speaker 1: goes into the background of like make I mean, part

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Speaker 1: of why I have the attitude I have on this

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Speaker 1: is that, like I have the life experience of turning

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Speaker 1: myself into a public figure and deliberately figuring out, like

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Speaker 1: which aspects of my personality are more relatable and marketable

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Speaker 1: to an audience. That's a thing that I did. It's

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Speaker 1: part of my bisiness, right, But I.

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Speaker 5: Would just argue that like every child I know with

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Speaker 5: a phone knows the difference between use this pick not

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Speaker 5: this pick right, which is the exact same thing like this, say.

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Speaker 1: You also like everyone sees some like you know the

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Speaker 1: person well, I like that they're honest. I like that

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Speaker 1: they you know, they seem like a really honest person's like, well,

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Speaker 1: but you're you are seeing what they've curated, you know,

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Speaker 1: And I'm not even making a moral judgment about it. Right,

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Speaker 1: it's not bad. As a public figure, you have to

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Speaker 1: curate yourself, right, Like one thing, you go insane. If

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Speaker 1: you don't have a part of you that's actually like

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Speaker 1: your private human person, you will lose your mind. Right.

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Speaker 1: We see this in certain public figures that happen to

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Speaker 1: be the richest man on earth.

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Speaker 2: Right, I wasn't.

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Speaker 6: Even thinking about that, but yes, not even that.

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Speaker 5: But just like, like the alternative would be a what

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Speaker 5: three sixty spherical constant surveillance, which is believe a form

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Speaker 5: of torture.

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Speaker 1: It's a form of torture. And also how a number

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Speaker 1: of people, a number of people get rich at least

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Speaker 1: doing that for limited periods of time. Right, what is

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Speaker 1: like a lot of the streaming ecosystem is I have

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Speaker 1: for four hours a day, I make a panopticon in

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Speaker 1: my gaming chair, right, Like that is one of the

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Speaker 1: most profitable forms of entertainment on the planet right now.

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Speaker 7: And I think when the because the alternative is like

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Speaker 7: airbrushed and perfect and unattainable visions of people, especially for youth.

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Speaker 7: I can understand why maybe deep down, you know, it's

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Speaker 7: it's like manufactured authenticity in scare quotes. But because the

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Speaker 7: alternative is so clearly manufactured, it's easy to think, like, well,

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Speaker 7: this at least feels a little more authentic, even if

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Speaker 7: it's bullshit.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, it may feel like

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Speaker 1: especially because of how universal that that kind of talk

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Speaker 1: about I like authentic, you know people in my media,

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Speaker 1: is that it may it may feel like a thing

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Speaker 1: that people have always wanted, but it really is not.

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Speaker 1: I mean again, if you remember the nineties, that was

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Speaker 1: not like people were obsessed with guys like Tom Cruise,

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Speaker 1: and the last thing anyone would ever say about Tom

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Speaker 1: Cruise is like that man is authentic, right, Like no,

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Speaker 1: Tom Cruise is like a fucking like a mirror that

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Speaker 1: we project onto you know. But he's like his his

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Speaker 1: his popularity came from his fundamental emptiness, right, And like

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Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger was a guy who was like actively created

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Speaker 1: during the period of time that he was like in

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Speaker 1: the public eye. If you look at early Arnold and

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Speaker 1: you know, to the point where he kind of figured

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Speaker 1: out who he was as a human being, Like, this

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Speaker 1: is not the way we thought about celebrities the entire

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Speaker 1: time that that has been a concept in like our culture,

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Speaker 1: and Oprah plays a huge role in this stuff. Reality

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Speaker 1: TV is in many ways downstream from Oprah. TikTok is

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Speaker 1: downstream from Oprah, and the Trump presidency is downstream from Oprah. Now,

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Speaker 1: I'm not saying Opra is to blame for this. I'm

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Speaker 1: saying is downstream from right in that I'm saying the

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Speaker 1: things that she did helped prepare the culture for that.

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Speaker 1: That's not implying a sort of moral responsibility for Donald Trump,

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Speaker 1: a guy she doesn't like and didn't want to be

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Speaker 1: the president. It's saying that the changes that she helped

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Speaker 1: rat in our culture were part of why we are

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Speaker 1: where we are today, right, And you can just see

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Speaker 1: that at the level of influence. This is a person

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Speaker 1: who at her peak thirty forty million people are tuning

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Speaker 1: into her show. Like the degree to which she has

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Speaker 1: changed the composition of our cultural soil can't be overstated.

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Speaker 1: And I hope that people can like take what I'm

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Speaker 1: saying without it being like Robert saying we should blame

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Speaker 1: Oprah for Trump. I really don't think that's the case.

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Speaker 1: I'm just saying part of why people like Trump is

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Speaker 1: his authenticity quote unquote. You listen to his supporters, that's

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Speaker 1: what they will say, and that being a huge virtue.

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Speaker 1: Oprah isn't the only person who started it or the

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Speaker 1: only person who led to that being the way that

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Speaker 1: it is, but Oprah being Oprah was a massive part

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Speaker 1: of why that shift occurred. Yeah.

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Speaker 7: I also think something that she does so well that

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Speaker 7: has really been made clear from the last few episodes

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Speaker 7: is that idea of the personal being the political, like yes,

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Speaker 7: really being able to blend those things in this way

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Speaker 7: that's just irresistible and like it's the reason why her

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Speaker 7: audience was getting up and sharing like their sexual assault

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Speaker 7: stories without even really being prompted, like me too, before

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Speaker 7: me too, with me too, you know, like this idea

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Speaker 7: of really being able to blend those ideas in a

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Speaker 7: way that make people want to connect and engage.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's a great way to point.

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Speaker 1: And it's also weird that you make that comment about

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Speaker 1: the personal being political because we're about to we're about

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Speaker 1: to read a quote that's right along those lines. So

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, Jet magazine defined Oprah the word

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Speaker 1: as a verb meaning to engage in persistent, intimate questioning

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Speaker 1: with the intention of obtaining a confession. Now, a good

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Speaker 1: example of how pushy she got with this and this

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Speaker 1: is I tried to find this clip every A lot

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Speaker 1: of the bad Oprah clips that have gone viral have

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Speaker 1: been purged from the internet, as we'll talk about. But

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, Oprah has the Olsen Twins

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Speaker 1: on her show as guests. Now at this point they

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Speaker 1: are both seventeen years old. If you are on the

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Speaker 1: younger side and you do not recall it, or you

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Speaker 1: recall the Olsen Twins as you know adult movie stars,

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Speaker 1: which they are today, let me kind of walk you

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Speaker 1: through who the Olsen Twins are Culturally. These were two

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Speaker 1: of alongside mcaulay coch and probably the two like two

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Speaker 1: like of the three or four biggest child stars this

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Speaker 1: country's ever had. Right, they are famous from the point

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Speaker 1: that they are very little kids and they are famous,

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Speaker 1: and this is kind of unusual. The entire time that

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Speaker 1: their children effectively, this is not a thing where like

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Speaker 1: they're in one big movie and then they kind of

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Speaker 1: drop out of cultural awareness, like you know, Jake Lloyd

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Speaker 1: or someone like that. They are in full house and

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Speaker 1: they remain in movies that are very stuff like The

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Speaker 1: Parent Trap all the way up until they are adults.

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Speaker 1: And some of this is just you know, people like them.

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Speaker 1: They're they're good child actors. But also there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of like very creepy pedophile stuff in here. A significant number,

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Speaker 1: a shocking number of adult men will openly admit to

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Speaker 1: keeping track of the when the Olsen twins are turning eighteen.

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Speaker 1: This was a big deal on the Internet in the

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Speaker 1: early ads. It is as gross as it sounds, but

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Speaker 1: it was not a fringe thing, Like I am telling

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Speaker 1: you right now. This was not a tiny number of

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Speaker 1: weirdo pedophiles. A lot of men were willing to put

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Speaker 1: their names to keeping track of that. Ew yes, you.

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Speaker 7: What fucked up time to the old young woman on

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Speaker 7: the internet, Like the internet all came of age.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, it's good to remember that as we talked

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Speaker 1: about how bad it's gotten that like yeah, well and

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Speaker 1: great back in two thousand and four, God, yeah, it was.

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Speaker 4: Like this trend that's going around on TikTok right now.

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Speaker 4: But it's like it's like, oh, you're so beautiful. And

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Speaker 4: then it's like thanks, and then you list something that

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Speaker 4: you grew up with that made you the way that

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Speaker 4: you are, and it's like, this is exactly what that is.

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Speaker 3: It's like, oh, your superpoints, Like thanks.

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Speaker 4: I grew up in the error where grown men tracked

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Speaker 4: told the Olsen twins.

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Speaker 3: Were yeah again, my god.

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Speaker 1: We talked about thought crime.

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Speaker 2: Little joke.

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Speaker 1: I'm generally against thought crimes. All of those men should

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Speaker 1: have been arrested.

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Speaker 7: All that.

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Speaker 1: So, as a result of all this, the bodies in

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Speaker 1: the weight loss were gain of the Olsen twins became

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Speaker 1: regular fodder for tabloids. It should not be shocking. I

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Speaker 1: think both of them developed eating disorders, not really surprising.

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Speaker 1: So during their interview with Oprah, this comes up, and

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Speaker 1: the interview starts with some pretty anodyne stuff. Part one

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Speaker 1: you can still find unedited online, and they're talking about

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Speaker 1: like who's messier, and they're in terms of keeping their

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Speaker 1: room clean, what's their allowance that their dad gives them,

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Speaker 1: et cetera. Later on in the interview, though, Oprah starts

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Speaker 1: to probe the two about tabloid rumors that they had

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Speaker 1: and eating that one or both of them suffered from

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Speaker 1: an eating disorder, saying, quote, I know a new rumor

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Speaker 1: that's recently surfaced has really upset you, right, you know,

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Speaker 1: the one about eating. The girls get visibly uncomfortable, and

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Speaker 1: Ashley immediately tries to shut the topic down. She replies, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, people are gonna write what they're gonna write.

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Speaker 1: We try not to read the good or the bad

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Speaker 1: because it just comes with the territory. Either you too fat,

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Speaker 1: too skinny, and people are just gonna write what they

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Speaker 1: And then Oprah interrupts her, asking what size are you?

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Speaker 1: By the way, now, Oprah, you have dealt with some

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Speaker 1: of the most unhinged fucking obsession with your body weight

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Speaker 1: that like we've tried, we were I think quite sympathetic

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Speaker 1: of in previous episodes. You should know that's fucked up.

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Speaker 1: She's seventeen, God damn it.

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Speaker 6: Like, oh, what's gosh? I mean not to like I.

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Speaker 7: Know you've already you've probably talked about this when you

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Speaker 7: did his episode, but like doctor Phil taking teenagers up

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Speaker 7: on stage and like asking if they had preston plants,

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Speaker 7: Like right, this was like yeah, kus, what was okay?

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Speaker 7: On like mainstream daytime television when.

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Speaker 1: We talk about modern social media being downstream from this.

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Speaker 1: Think of all of the different parents who we now

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Speaker 1: know were like who got famous as like mommy bloggers,

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Speaker 1: or like I've got a YouTube channel featuring my kids

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Speaker 1: and their development and it comes out three four, five,

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Speaker 1: six years later. Oh, that was an incredibly abusive situation

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Speaker 1: where they were basically turning their kids, like mining their

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Speaker 1: children for money and deeply psychologically and often physically abusing

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Speaker 1: them to make them more profitable.

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Speaker 2: Right, I mean, speaking of thought crime the Internet.

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Speaker 5: One of the Internet's sort of positive things is at

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Speaker 5: least there's a paper.

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Speaker 2: Trail for all this shit. Yeah, yeah, Jesus Christ, Yeah, you.

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Speaker 5: Know what's crazy you were saying. So that part of

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Speaker 5: the clip is scrubbed from the Internet. Where Oprah asks

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Speaker 5: their size.

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Speaker 1: It is very hard to find. So I want to finish,

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Speaker 1: finish the scene. Oh sorry, So the girls respond after

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Speaker 1: Oprah interrupts them to ask their size, like, well, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, we're celebrities. We get our clothing tailored, Like

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Speaker 1: I don't know what my size is, right, I don't

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Speaker 1: like good with store and buy clothes, right, And Oprah responds,

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Speaker 1: that's so interesting. I'm obsessed with size and You're like,

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Speaker 1: I really don't know, there's a lot there. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know, Like you put a

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Speaker 1: team of psychiatrists on that that two sentences.

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Speaker 5: It was more just what I was trying to what

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Speaker 5: I was curious about, was like because in the last episode,

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Speaker 5: we watched a clip of Joan Rivers doing a version

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Speaker 5: of this to Oprah, right and.

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Speaker 1: On misery demand, it builds up like a coastal shelf.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like it's it is wild too for Oprah

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Speaker 5: to have been upset by the Joe Rivers version of this,

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Speaker 5: And then I mean, it's not surprising, but it is

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Speaker 5: really like remarkably un self aware or on empathetic.

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Speaker 7: When we talked about how much she regrets her wagon

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Speaker 7: full of Fat incident, I really think that what she

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Speaker 7: regrets is making like a lot of speculation about her weight. Personally,

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Speaker 7: I don't think she has any problem with the way

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Speaker 7: that she has foisted that same level of scrutiny about

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Speaker 7: weight onto others. I think that she is perfectly fine.

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Speaker 7: And if that's complacent in that dynamic that has been

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Speaker 7: so unhealthy for so many people.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I would agree one hundred percent Bridget. Now, as

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Speaker 1: we talked to I talked about a bit ago with you, Andrew,

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Speaker 1: we're not watching this clip. I would have preferred to

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Speaker 1: play it, because it's been pretty well expunged from the internet.

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Speaker 3: Now.

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to say I did not spend hours

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Speaker 1: on this, but I spent a good like twenty minutes

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Speaker 1: or so trying to find this clip, and all that

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Speaker 1: I was able to get are like viral clips on

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Speaker 1: TikTok that are heavily edited because a couple of years ago,

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Speaker 1: this particular chunk of the interview went kind of viral

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Speaker 1: on TikTok because people have been one of the things

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Speaker 1: that's been happening over the last two years or so

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Speaker 1: on social media TikTok primarily but not exclusively, is people

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Speaker 1: have been like kind of relitigating some of Oprah's worst moments,

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Speaker 1: and she has been receiving some criticism. So this went

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Speaker 1: viral and people were like, rightfully, this is pretty fucked up.

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Speaker 1: As a consequence, though, damn near every pure clip I

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Speaker 1: have not been able to find a pure, unedited clip

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Speaker 1: of this moment. I'm able to find TikTok videos where

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Speaker 1: the audio is overlaid with some shitty AI voice or

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Speaker 1: asshole narrating that like makes me want to nuke every

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Speaker 1: data center on Earth. Like the way these things are

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Speaker 1: like edited and put together, and like the whole screen

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Speaker 1: is covered with text, and I just hate it. I

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Speaker 1: hate the way this stuff looks, and I haven't found

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Speaker 1: a clean clip of it, That's what I'm saying. And

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Speaker 1: that's often the case with some of Oprah's like worst moments.

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Speaker 1: You know, a lot of this stuff has been purged,

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Speaker 1: and because most of her stuff was on daytime TV

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Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties, a lot of it is

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Speaker 1: effectively lost media for our purposes. Anyway, I just found

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Speaker 1: that interesting.

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Speaker 5: There's someone's parents have this on VHS somewhere. Next time

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Speaker 5: you're a home for anie holiday. Check the tapes.

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Speaker 7: Yes, probably my late mother, because she did tape Oprah's

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Speaker 7: and she.

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Speaker 6: Would watch them on VHS.

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Speaker 7: I have so many, like burned in my memory clips

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Speaker 7: of Oprah being not great, but like I probably could

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Speaker 7: not find them, like I think. Nathan Lane has talked

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Speaker 7: about how when him and the late Robin Williams were

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Speaker 7: on the show, Oprah was really grilling him about his

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Speaker 7: sexuality and that luckily Robin Williams stepped in to make

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Speaker 7: a joke out of it and take the heat off

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Speaker 7: of him because he wasn't out. She did the same

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Speaker 7: thing to Dennis Rodman, like she really when it came

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Speaker 7: to men and their sexuality, she did some like I

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Speaker 7: think we would look at back at some of those clips,

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Speaker 7: the way that she was grilling these people and think like, well,

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Speaker 7: that really wasn't cool. But all of those clips are

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Speaker 7: so difficult to find.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's a little bit

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Speaker 5: too speaking of the political that like, because she's a

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Speaker 5: black woman, make assumptions of what her like politics and

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Speaker 5: values are that don't have to be true. And we

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Speaker 5: see this in like the actual questions and like her

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Speaker 5: the editorialslan, which is like, fine, she's obviously allowed to

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Speaker 5: have those opinions, but it's I think there's there's a

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Speaker 5: big like we build up as a culture, like who

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Speaker 5: we think Oprah ought to be, and the bastardy happens

436
00:22:24,600 --> 00:22:26,560
Speaker 5: in the difference between those two things.

437
00:22:27,200 --> 00:22:30,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I think actually a very good way of

438
00:22:32,240 --> 00:22:35,480
Speaker 1: talking about it. Andrew also shout out to the late

439
00:22:35,560 --> 00:22:39,239
Speaker 1: Robin Williams. You do like moments like this, do like

440
00:22:39,359 --> 00:22:42,480
Speaker 1: reveal character on behalf of some people, and it's always

441
00:22:42,600 --> 00:22:45,240
Speaker 1: nice to get like, Okay, he was a really nice man.

442
00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:46,440
Speaker 3: That's good.

443
00:22:47,119 --> 00:22:50,000
Speaker 1: I rewatched Goodwill Hunting. I think I may have been

444
00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:52,240
Speaker 1: for the first time. I had like vague memories of it,

445
00:22:52,280 --> 00:22:54,760
Speaker 1: and that like scene where he's hugging Matt Damon, I

446
00:22:54,840 --> 00:22:56,879
Speaker 1: just had the thought, like, God, damn, there's not a

447
00:22:56,920 --> 00:22:59,199
Speaker 1: problem in my life that wouldn't be fixed with a

448
00:22:59,240 --> 00:23:02,040
Speaker 1: good Robin Williams hug. Like that man looked like he

449
00:23:02,119 --> 00:23:09,000
Speaker 1: gave great hugs anyway. Yeah, Rip, we've probably talked about

450
00:23:09,040 --> 00:23:12,280
Speaker 1: Oprah more. Around the same time Jet Magazine made Oprah

451
00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:15,640
Speaker 1: a verb, the Wall Street Journal introduced the term oprah

452
00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:19,000
Speaker 1: Fication in order to complain that political discourse in the

453
00:23:19,040 --> 00:23:21,480
Speaker 1: country had become And this is what you had mentioned, Bridge,

454
00:23:22,240 --> 00:23:25,160
Speaker 1: This is what you had mentioned, Bridget public confession as

455
00:23:25,160 --> 00:23:29,800
Speaker 1: a form of therapy, Right, So great minds. Well, actually,

456
00:23:29,800 --> 00:23:31,879
Speaker 1: I think you're considerably a better mind than anyone at

457
00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:33,760
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal. But you guys had the same

458
00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:39,879
Speaker 1: basic take. And this is kind of noteworthy because therapy

459
00:23:40,160 --> 00:23:43,560
Speaker 1: is at the core of Oprah's appeal and the growth

460
00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:46,120
Speaker 1: in our understanding of not just the value of therapy,

461
00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:48,960
Speaker 1: which I think is generally good, but in the use

462
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:53,080
Speaker 1: of like therapy speak in everyday life, and to some

463
00:23:53,119 --> 00:23:56,639
Speaker 1: extent the I think massive overuse of therapy speak at

464
00:23:56,680 --> 00:24:00,439
Speaker 1: everyday life, this is very much tied to OPRAH. And

465
00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:03,239
Speaker 1: the way in which therapy is tied to OPRAH is

466
00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:08,119
Speaker 1: not actual clinical therapy, which is of course potentially extremely

467
00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:11,879
Speaker 1: valuable for people, but a simulacrum of therapy, one that

468
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:16,040
Speaker 1: apes the definitions in terms used by clinicians and often

469
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:20,000
Speaker 1: apes actual clinical expertise by bringing in oaths like doctor

470
00:24:20,040 --> 00:24:24,280
Speaker 1: phil who are in no way actually doing good therapy,

471
00:24:24,280 --> 00:24:26,840
Speaker 1: and in fact are doing things that the ethics of

472
00:24:26,960 --> 00:24:32,159
Speaker 1: the discipline condemn pretty strongly, but are doing it in

473
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:35,240
Speaker 1: such a way that people believe this is what therapy,

474
00:24:35,280 --> 00:24:38,439
Speaker 1: This is medical work, right, This is somebody actually like

475
00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:41,840
Speaker 1: functioning as a mental health clinician, and I think that

476
00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:45,520
Speaker 1: does so in a way. Again, a lot of the way,

477
00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:49,000
Speaker 1: a lot of dialogue of discourse on like Twitter, is

478
00:24:49,240 --> 00:24:55,359
Speaker 1: downstream from this, this birth of understand that there's a

479
00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:59,240
Speaker 1: value in like talking about mental health in a clinical way.

480
00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:02,200
Speaker 1: But also none of us are clinicians, and none of

481
00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:05,199
Speaker 1: us are doing it right, and so we're like medicalizing

482
00:25:05,240 --> 00:25:08,520
Speaker 1: shit in ways that are in a lot of instances

483
00:25:08,560 --> 00:25:12,600
Speaker 1: deeply toxic and damaging to people. A lot of that

484
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:14,040
Speaker 1: is tied directly to.

485
00:25:14,040 --> 00:25:18,280
Speaker 7: Oprah spoken like a true gas lighting narcissist Rber.

486
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:19,600
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you.

487
00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:22,960
Speaker 7: If you ever want to like win an argument in

488
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:25,439
Speaker 7: a certain kind of group house, if like you know

489
00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:27,840
Speaker 7: what I'm talking about, just to be like, he's gaslighting

490
00:25:27,880 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 7: me into taking up the garbage, Yes, you'll win.

491
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:34,520
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm being abused into doing the dishes effect.

492
00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:38,320
Speaker 5: It's also even in the absence of the like perversions

493
00:25:38,359 --> 00:25:41,119
Speaker 5: of it, just the simple act of doing it in

494
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:45,159
Speaker 5: public or as a performance, even if it were otherwise

495
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:47,000
Speaker 5: largely fine, which it isn't.

496
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:52,000
Speaker 1: I just I always think back to this happens every

497
00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:54,520
Speaker 1: so often. There's one like six months ago, tens of

498
00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:56,680
Speaker 1: thousands of people like liking and sharing it. If someone

499
00:25:56,720 --> 00:25:59,440
Speaker 1: being like, you know, people with ADHD have no sense

500
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:03,600
Speaker 1: of object permanence, Yes they do, man, that's not that's

501
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 1: not five year olds have object permanence, bro, that is

502
00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:10,760
Speaker 1: not ADHD. You are you are in an attempt to

503
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:14,440
Speaker 1: bring up to create create empathy for people suffering from

504
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:19,359
Speaker 1: severe ADHD. You are like dehumanizing them, like this is

505
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 1: actually quite bad.

506
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:27,080
Speaker 5: Oh my god, that's like that's like medieval like Layman's

507
00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:30,119
Speaker 5: understanding of the world, Like that's just like burn the

508
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:30,800
Speaker 5: Witch type.

509
00:26:31,040 --> 00:26:31,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we're back.

510
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:34,520
Speaker 1: Can we stop? Can we stop with some of this?

511
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:38,199
Speaker 7: I saw someone that said people that have ADHD can

512
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:40,920
Speaker 7: never pick a Halloween costume because there's too many choices,

513
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:43,080
Speaker 7: and then the reply on Twitter was like.

514
00:26:43,240 --> 00:26:44,679
Speaker 6: Damn, can't you all do anything?

515
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:49,399
Speaker 1: Yeah again, my life is filled with and I have

516
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:54,760
Speaker 1: like ADHD. The stuff people say about it online just

517
00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:57,359
Speaker 1: feels like someone talking about aliens. I don't mean to

518
00:26:57,359 --> 00:26:58,640
Speaker 1: like harp on it so much, but this is one

519
00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 1: I have like so much personal experience with that, Like

520
00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:05,280
Speaker 1: I really and I don't want to get like lost

521
00:27:05,280 --> 00:27:09,919
Speaker 1: down a rabbit hole here. But there's a very complicated

522
00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:13,439
Speaker 1: issue in it's good for people do have an understanding

523
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:17,560
Speaker 1: of mental health and do have an understanding of like therapy,

524
00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:21,960
Speaker 1: and there are there's value in that some of that

525
00:27:22,359 --> 00:27:24,960
Speaker 1: those discussions becoming more a part of like common parlance.

526
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:28,840
Speaker 1: And also it can be very very toxic because people

527
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:33,720
Speaker 1: use it and weaponize it to an extent, and a

528
00:27:33,760 --> 00:27:36,680
Speaker 1: lot of the irresponsibility that we see now kind of

529
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:38,840
Speaker 1: reflected down in social media and the way people talk

530
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:42,399
Speaker 1: about this stuff really gets launched by doctor Phil on

531
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:45,120
Speaker 1: the Oprah Winfrey Show. Right where you are you are

532
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:51,480
Speaker 1: using actual clinical psychology as a costume as opposed to

533
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:54,359
Speaker 1: as a way to actually help people, Like you are

534
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 1: dressing that way so you can say whatever and do whatever,

535
00:27:59,080 --> 00:28:02,080
Speaker 1: you know, and in this case, it was for entertainment purposes, right,

536
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 1: And a lot of this ties in directly to the

537
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 1: self help movement. You know, this is and this is

538
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:10,760
Speaker 1: I think a toxic thing for therapy, right, because therapy

539
00:28:10,800 --> 00:28:14,560
Speaker 1: should not be a thing that you do instead of

540
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:17,800
Speaker 1: helping other people and trying to better the world. And

541
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:20,960
Speaker 1: that's kind of the message of a great deal of

542
00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:24,480
Speaker 1: like the way in which therapy is discussed on the

543
00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:27,000
Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey Show. And you even see stuff like Jordan

544
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:29,600
Speaker 1: Peterson saying like you can't fix the world until you've

545
00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 1: fixed yourself, which is simply untrue. And this ties into this,

546
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 1: this kind of American civil religion of self help. If

547
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 1: you remember the Woody Guthrie episodes, we talked about how

548
00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:42,920
Speaker 1: during the Great Depression, starving farmers and their kids were

549
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:46,440
Speaker 1: listening to prototypes of Norman Vincent Norman Vincent Peel's The

550
00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:50,120
Speaker 1: Power of Positive Thinking, right, which is basically this shares

551
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:53,440
Speaker 1: DNA with Prosperity Gospel, stuff with the Secret and mary

552
00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:55,800
Speaker 1: Anne Williamson. The core of it is this idea that

553
00:28:56,800 --> 00:29:01,080
Speaker 1: like attracts like. So if your negative thing, that's what's

554
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 1: bringing bad things to you. And if you want to

555
00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:07,280
Speaker 1: be wealthy, you have to think like a wealthy person, right,

556
00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 1: And you know some of the ways in which this

557
00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 1: gets passed down, like Prosperity Gospel, if you want to

558
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: be wealthy, you need to give money. You don't have

559
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 1: go into debt to give money to God, and then

560
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:19,640
Speaker 1: that kind of thinking will attract wealth towards you.

561
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:19,960
Speaker 8: Right.

562
00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:24,120
Speaker 1: Alternatively, if you put down five thousand dollars for this

563
00:29:24,240 --> 00:29:28,120
Speaker 1: seminar on how to like automatically generate books and put

564
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:30,719
Speaker 1: them on Amazon, you know, in order to make money

565
00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 1: that will attract wealth back too. You have to make

566
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 1: the universe needs to see you make a sacrifice in

567
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: order to know that you're serious about this before you

568
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:42,000
Speaker 1: can start attracting the money. Right, All of this stuff

569
00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:45,640
Speaker 1: is it doesn't start obviously, again, as we talked about,

570
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:48,560
Speaker 1: this has been going on since like the early nineteen hundreds.

571
00:29:48,560 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 1: It doesn't start with Oprah, but by bringing on mary

572
00:29:51,560 --> 00:29:54,520
Speaker 1: Anne Williamson and then by pushing later the secret, she

573
00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:58,600
Speaker 1: supercharges this shit, and she supercharges it at the same

574
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:02,320
Speaker 1: time as she is continually on the show pushing this,

575
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 1: pushing therapy and a specific attitude towards therapy, right, which

576
00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:11,040
Speaker 1: the overall thing you're supposed to take away from this

577
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 1: is you can fix every problem in your life by

578
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:19,000
Speaker 1: changing your attitude. Now, that is simply untrue. Right, there

579
00:30:19,040 --> 00:30:26,080
Speaker 1: are social problems and issues that affect people's ability to

580
00:30:26,200 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 1: be happy, that are rooted in politics, that are rooted

581
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 1: in history, that are rooted in things you have no

582
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:34,560
Speaker 1: control over. And it is true obviously your own attitude,

583
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 1: you know, can matter a lot, and your resilience. But

584
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:41,400
Speaker 1: there's this big thesis of like every problem can be

585
00:30:41,520 --> 00:30:44,760
Speaker 1: fixed by altering your attitude. You can even change the

586
00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:48,520
Speaker 1: way the universe works by altering your attitude. That gets

587
00:30:48,560 --> 00:30:54,000
Speaker 1: wrapped up in the kind of pro therapy ethos being

588
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 1: pushed with Oprah in a way that warps what therapy is.

589
00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's just it's it's it's complicated, but I

590
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:04,000
Speaker 1: think very profoundly toxic.

591
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 5: Yeah, it turns therapy into like telekinesis magic. Yes, yeah,

592
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 5: at at sort of best where it's just like and

593
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:17,520
Speaker 5: I guess to me, it's like all this shit, it's like,

594
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:22,440
Speaker 5: do you never consider the counter factual of any of this?

595
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:28,080
Speaker 5: Like just like, oh, sorry kid, sorry about all your cancer.

596
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:30,840
Speaker 2: You should have had a better attitude.

597
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:35,080
Speaker 5: Like it's so fucking disgusting when you think about any

598
00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:39,239
Speaker 5: failure case of this, and it's, oh, I don't know,

599
00:31:39,520 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 5: it's so hard to argue against, but it's just like

600
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:43,080
Speaker 5: you're it's so gross for that reason.

601
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:48,000
Speaker 7: To me, Well, I actually think like it's incredibly like

602
00:31:48,080 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 7: it's I completely it's like gross. It stocks like I

603
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:55,160
Speaker 7: completely agree, but it's also so enticing, right, Like I

604
00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:58,680
Speaker 7: am some like I'll give myself as an example. I've

605
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 7: been a little down the dumps, shall we say, since

606
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:05,840
Speaker 7: January twentieth, and you know, I like, you can feel

607
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:09,080
Speaker 7: very out of control and there's so much happening that

608
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:12,080
Speaker 7: I really can't control. Somebody coming in and saying, actually,

609
00:32:12,120 --> 00:32:14,640
Speaker 7: you can control it, don't be afraid because it's all

610
00:32:14,680 --> 00:32:16,440
Speaker 7: it's all in your head. And if you just did X,

611
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:18,560
Speaker 7: Y Z or got right in this way you can

612
00:32:18,720 --> 00:32:22,400
Speaker 7: control it. That is so intoxicating, and especially as people

613
00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 7: feel out of control. Like I get why people like

614
00:32:26,120 --> 00:32:28,240
Speaker 7: Oprah turned to this because it works. And I have

615
00:32:28,280 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 7: to say, like, I get why it works. I get

616
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:31,240
Speaker 7: why it's effective.

617
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:33,480
Speaker 5: Well, because because there's like a germ of truth, like

618
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:36,720
Speaker 5: speaking of like Jordan Peterson. I did have a moment

619
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:38,960
Speaker 5: where I was like, you know, most of these boys

620
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:41,320
Speaker 5: that listen to him really could clean their room.

621
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 2: More like and that would sensuably improve their.

622
00:32:45,280 --> 00:32:47,520
Speaker 6: Lives, and then getting might help.

623
00:32:47,760 --> 00:32:51,760
Speaker 5: Yeah, but then once once the little amount of information

624
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:56,400
Speaker 5: like actual of value that they've imparted has paid off,

625
00:32:56,680 --> 00:32:59,000
Speaker 5: everything subsequent to that is complete bullshit.

626
00:32:59,600 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 2: And it's just like the line of like how valuable

627
00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:03,360
Speaker 2: this is is.

628
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:07,959
Speaker 5: But it's such a like even as we're talking, you

629
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 5: see how you lose this argument because it's like.

630
00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 8: Well, okay, some of this works, but like not all

631
00:33:13,400 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 8: of it, but I can't prove that none of it works,

632
00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:17,360
Speaker 8: and no, da dah, and you just you become a

633
00:33:17,440 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 8: dithering idiot in the face of all you have to

634
00:33:20,200 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 8: do is be positive.

635
00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:24,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, like a simple lie is always going to be

636
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:27,200
Speaker 5: better than a laborious.

637
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 1: Refutation yeah, yeah, I think that's right, and I think fundamentally,

638
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:34,720
Speaker 1: you know, part of what's so poisonous here is that

639
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 1: it's taking therapy and it's turning it into magic, right that,

640
00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:41,240
Speaker 1: like this is a thing you can magically fix and

641
00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:44,520
Speaker 1: have a breakthrough in twenty five minutes sitting on a

642
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:46,680
Speaker 1: couch in front of an audience with doctor Phil. Like

643
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:49,920
Speaker 1: that's the way therapy works. And also that's the way

644
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:52,360
Speaker 1: fixing the world works. Is if you change your attitude,

645
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:53,760
Speaker 1: all of these good things will come to you. You

646
00:33:53,760 --> 00:33:56,240
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about dealing with structural problems in

647
00:33:56,640 --> 00:33:59,400
Speaker 1: legislation and the government and all of this shit, like

648
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:02,400
Speaker 1: it's just you when in reality, therapy and making the

649
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:06,400
Speaker 1: world better work the same way, which is slowly doing

650
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 1: laborious work consistently over long periods of time. Right, Yes,

651
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:13,440
Speaker 1: that's the problem.

652
00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:13,759
Speaker 5: You know.

653
00:34:14,200 --> 00:34:16,160
Speaker 7: It's like that episode of Rick and Morty when Rick

654
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:18,560
Speaker 7: goes to therapy and the therapist is like, I get

655
00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:20,880
Speaker 7: that this is like flossing for you, and it's like

656
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 7: not exciting and it doesn't happen all at once and

657
00:34:23,160 --> 00:34:26,319
Speaker 7: it's just boring maintenance. But like that's the trick, Like

658
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:28,359
Speaker 7: that's the magic is you do it a lot, and

659
00:34:28,400 --> 00:34:31,239
Speaker 7: you get small gains and maybe over the course of

660
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:34,680
Speaker 7: years you feel a little bit better consistently and like tada,

661
00:34:34,760 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 7: Like people do.

662
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:38,200
Speaker 6: Want that magic solution in that magic bullet.

663
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:41,160
Speaker 7: I get why that's really enticing, but that's just not

664
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:41,960
Speaker 7: the way it works.

665
00:34:42,160 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 1: And I think this is as someone who was in

666
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 1: psychedelic delic culture fifteen years ago. This was one of

667
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:50,440
Speaker 1: the issues that we had with it, which is psychedelics,

668
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:56,440
Speaker 1: particularly LSD mushrooms MDMA have massive potential as ais therapeutic aids,

669
00:34:56,920 --> 00:34:59,680
Speaker 1: but they aren't magic, and there's a degree to which

670
00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:03,400
Speaker 1: people treated them both as magic and also as inherently positive.

671
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:07,080
Speaker 1: At this point, I have gone through enough self described

672
00:35:07,160 --> 00:35:11,359
Speaker 1: radicalization journeys by nazis who credited it to an LSD trip.

673
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:14,719
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, this is a

674
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:17,080
Speaker 1: knife what cuts both ways? My friends.

675
00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:23,440
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just a big old scramble and you just wish,

676
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:26,279
Speaker 5: Yeah it works. And also it's such a it's such

677
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:30,000
Speaker 5: a like insidious grift because it's so easy. Then when

678
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:33,400
Speaker 5: it doesn't work, for you to point out that you

679
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:35,640
Speaker 5: didn't magic hard enough in various ways.

680
00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:38,399
Speaker 7: Yeah, when your kid actually dies of the cancer they

681
00:35:38,440 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 7: had because their vibes were off. You can just be like, no,

682
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 7: you didn't want it, he didn't want to live enough,

683
00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:45,920
Speaker 7: or whatever. It's never the huckster's fault.

684
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:47,080
Speaker 2: Yeah.

685
00:35:47,239 --> 00:35:50,920
Speaker 1: Now, speaking of your children dying, they never will if

686
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:54,279
Speaker 1: you purchase the products and services that are advertised on

687
00:35:54,320 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 1: this on this podcast, it's the only way to keep

688
00:35:57,120 --> 00:36:06,920
Speaker 1: your family safe. Probably we're back. So In her book

689
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: The Age of Oprah, Jenny's Peck quotes a history of

690
00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:14,160
Speaker 1: psychotherapy by Philip Cushman. He wrote in nineteen ninety five, quote,

691
00:36:14,200 --> 00:36:18,160
Speaker 1: every era has a particular configuration of self illness healer technology.

692
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:23,000
Speaker 1: They are a kind of cultural package. They are interrelated, intertwined, interpenetrating.

693
00:36:23,239 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 1: So when we study a particular illness, we are also

694
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:28,400
Speaker 1: studying the conditions that shape and define that illness and

695
00:36:28,440 --> 00:36:31,759
Speaker 1: the sociopolitical impact of those who are responsible for healing it.

696
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:37,400
Speaker 1: Janis continues, Winfrey's identification is a spiritual healer. Her diagnosis

697
00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 1: of what ails us, and her prescribed cure are rooted

698
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:43,560
Speaker 1: historically in the therapeutic enterprise that emerged in the nineteenth

699
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:46,600
Speaker 1: century and was fully institutionalized in the United States by

700
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:50,440
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century. Debbie Epstein and Deborah Steinberg suggest

701
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:53,239
Speaker 1: that the centrality of therapeutic discourse to the framing of

702
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:56,799
Speaker 1: the Oprah Winfrey Show issues from the increasing ubiquity of

703
00:36:56,840 --> 00:37:00,520
Speaker 1: therapy as a language of self and interpersonal relationship, and

704
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:04,080
Speaker 1: even as a way of life. Winfrey's media enterprise draws

705
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 1: heavily on a self help model of therapy, with its

706
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 1: peculiarly American belief that the individual's power to initiate a

707
00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:13,840
Speaker 1: renaissance of self, of nation, of other. This promise of

708
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:17,200
Speaker 1: individual efficacy and liberation is the ground upon which Winfrey's

709
00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:19,960
Speaker 1: stakes are claimed to empower her followers. It is also

710
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:23,399
Speaker 1: the basis of observers claims that she is an inspirational phenomenon,

711
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: a public leader, and quote almost a religion.

712
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you know, as we're talking, I just had

713
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 5: the realization that, like what kind of what Oprah offers

714
00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:39,040
Speaker 5: is kind of like those like right wing pregnancy crisis centers.

715
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:41,080
Speaker 2: They're like abortion.

716
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:45,080
Speaker 5: Clinics, because it's like it's a simulacrum of the thing

717
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 5: that you actually need.

718
00:37:48,200 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 2: And it just serves these horrible ends.

719
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:55,719
Speaker 5: Like yeah, I guess those are at least directed and

720
00:37:55,800 --> 00:38:00,279
Speaker 5: intentional and full of lies and throughout all the I

721
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:03,640
Speaker 5: will say, the thing that is like still kind of

722
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 5: there is like it doesn't it still doesn't seem like

723
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:11,360
Speaker 5: Oprah is being intentionally eve or anyway. There's enough plausible

724
00:38:11,360 --> 00:38:12,479
Speaker 5: deniability here.

725
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:14,560
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean there's a ton of it,

726
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:17,520
Speaker 1: and like it's important not to as we kind of

727
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:22,960
Speaker 1: litigate bastardism like this is this is not an attempt

728
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 1: by Oprah to shift the culture. This is just sort of,

729
00:38:26,239 --> 00:38:28,759
Speaker 1: I think a mix of what she really believes, she

730
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:32,560
Speaker 1: really feels like personally, she had so much stacked against her,

731
00:38:32,760 --> 00:38:35,960
Speaker 1: it was her attitude that allowed her to be successful, right,

732
00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:39,040
Speaker 1: whereas the reality is, I mean, among other things, Oprah

733
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:41,399
Speaker 1: has said like she was an affirmative action higher that

734
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 1: those programs and policies function the way they were supposed to,

735
00:38:44,840 --> 00:38:46,920
Speaker 1: which was a person who maybe wouldn't have gotten that

736
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:50,799
Speaker 1: opportunity because of racism, got some opportunities that she proved

737
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:53,560
Speaker 1: to be excellently suited for. In addition to that, she

738
00:38:53,680 --> 00:38:57,520
Speaker 1: had the fortune of like having a father who chose

739
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:00,759
Speaker 1: to be her father, did not actually have to take

740
00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:03,719
Speaker 1: that role upon himself, and provided her with a lot

741
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:07,000
Speaker 1: of resources she otherwise wouldn't have had. And like, it's

742
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:09,560
Speaker 1: not just it wasn't just her attitude that led to

743
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:11,880
Speaker 1: her success, right, you know, as in this is the

744
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:12,880
Speaker 1: case for everybody.

745
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:14,560
Speaker 2: Right, But even even.

746
00:39:14,360 --> 00:39:18,680
Speaker 5: While you're describing like like among her peers, she at

747
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:22,839
Speaker 5: least will acknowledge things like affirmative action, whereas like like

748
00:39:23,040 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 5: every single billionaire you know, got to where they are

749
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:33,919
Speaker 5: with immense like moments of chance. They high they hire

750
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 5: rolled many times in a row, and like the overarching

751
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:46,400
Speaker 5: like common commonality between most of them is they believe

752
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:50,080
Speaker 5: that none of that was chance. Yeah, over at least

753
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:54,239
Speaker 5: has a little bit of like like still least some millionaire.

754
00:39:54,560 --> 00:39:59,440
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So there's an interesting bit about because I think

755
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:01,920
Speaker 1: it is important. The degree to which she was talked

756
00:40:01,960 --> 00:40:05,160
Speaker 1: about as like a religious figure is kind of significant.

757
00:40:05,200 --> 00:40:07,920
Speaker 1: And to kind of make that case, there's a chunk

758
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:10,280
Speaker 1: in the age of Oprah that talks about an expensive

759
00:40:10,320 --> 00:40:12,440
Speaker 1: self help speaking to her when Free launched in the

760
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:15,960
Speaker 1: early two thousands, the Personal Growth Summit, And through that

761
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:18,440
Speaker 1: I found a review of the Personal Growth Summit in

762
00:40:18,480 --> 00:40:21,920
Speaker 1: the La Times, which is a real newspaper that was

763
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:25,200
Speaker 1: purportedly reputable at least in that era. This is what

764
00:40:25,680 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 1: this is the reviewer. A prophet walks among us, and

765
00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:31,520
Speaker 1: her name is Oprah. You know her as a television

766
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:33,840
Speaker 1: talk show host, one of the most popular, successful, and

767
00:40:33,880 --> 00:40:36,600
Speaker 1: recognizable women of our time. But make no mistake, she

768
00:40:36,719 --> 00:40:39,720
Speaker 1: is also a healer, sent to earth to spread the word.

769
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:42,720
Speaker 1: Perhaps it is only fitting that a twenty first century

770
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:45,360
Speaker 1: wise man is a woman and that her chief medium

771
00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:48,359
Speaker 1: is electronic Buddha might have taken to the airwaves had

772
00:40:48,360 --> 00:40:51,640
Speaker 1: they been available. Gifted with a profound moral insight an

773
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:54,920
Speaker 1: exceptional rapport with her followers, Oprah Winfrey has grown from

774
00:40:54,960 --> 00:40:58,239
Speaker 1: a masterful communicator into an inspirational phenomenon.

775
00:41:00,320 --> 00:41:02,399
Speaker 6: I need to know who wrote that and where they

776
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:02,839
Speaker 6: are now.

777
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:10,919
Speaker 1: I could pull that up absolutely. Yeah, let's check this out.

778
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:15,360
Speaker 1: Flocking to the Church of Oprah June twenty fifth, two thousand,

779
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:19,360
Speaker 1: Times staff writer. They took a name on it, Ah,

780
00:41:19,560 --> 00:41:20,359
Speaker 1: you sons a bit.

781
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:23,000
Speaker 7: You know, It's like somebody was embarrassed by that, and

782
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:23,640
Speaker 7: it was like, look at that.

783
00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:28,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't have this detention to me done that now.

784
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:30,600
Speaker 1: One thing that's really interesting to me about Oprah is

785
00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 1: that she demonstrates how quickly the worm can turn for

786
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:36,080
Speaker 1: a celebrity once they leave the public eye. Because like

787
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:39,200
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, I think is Winner Show stops being on

788
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 1: the air as a daily thing, and QAnon starts about

789
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 1: a decade later. Right, so she is. She stops being

790
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 1: a daily figure for most Americans about a decade before QAnon.

791
00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 1: And yet in twenty twenty, a sizeable chunk of the

792
00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:58,280
Speaker 1: QAnon movement starts spreading rumors that Oprah has been secretly

793
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:01,840
Speaker 1: arrested for sex trafficking. Now, this is obviously untrue, but

794
00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:04,680
Speaker 1: there are some things that fuel the allegations. One of

795
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:08,239
Speaker 1: them is Oprah's long standing professional relationships with two men

796
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:12,160
Speaker 1: who have definitely did sex trafficking, Harvey Weinstein and our

797
00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:15,840
Speaker 1: old friend p Diddy. Now, for Weinstein's case, there is

798
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:18,359
Speaker 1: a photo of Oprah kissing Weinstein on the cheek, which

799
00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 1: you can find without much effort. I have found zero

800
00:42:21,640 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 1: solid information that implies anything beyond a professional relationship between Oprah,

801
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:30,760
Speaker 1: who stars in one movie produced by his company, and Weinstein. However,

802
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 1: there have been allegations made by other celebrities. I should

803
00:42:34,520 --> 00:42:37,560
Speaker 1: note that when interviewed about Weinstein by Gwyneth Paltrow, Oprah

804
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:39,759
Speaker 1: said what I knew about Harvey was that Harvey was

805
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:42,200
Speaker 1: a bully and that if Harvey's on the phone, you go, God,

806
00:42:42,480 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 1: you don't want to take the call because you're going

807
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:47,920
Speaker 1: to get bullied in some way. That is probably true

808
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:50,440
Speaker 1: in that a lot of people talk about a lot

809
00:42:50,440 --> 00:42:53,000
Speaker 1: of people who worked with Harvey talked about him that way.

810
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: He's kind of the archetypal dick producer. That said. People

811
00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 1: have alleged that Oprah knew more was aware of a

812
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 1: lot of the illegal, bad stuff Weinstein was doing. I

813
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:10,200
Speaker 1: think that's also very likely. A great deal of people

814
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 1: in Hollywood knew something, and someone as powerful as Oprah

815
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:19,680
Speaker 1: was probably to some extent aware of Weinstein's problematic behavior. Now,

816
00:43:19,719 --> 00:43:22,960
Speaker 1: that does not mean she was directly enabling or helping

817
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:25,640
Speaker 1: to hide it. It's just the kind of gross thing

818
00:43:25,719 --> 00:43:28,600
Speaker 1: that a lot of people in the industry did, right.

819
00:43:28,680 --> 00:43:32,359
Speaker 1: I mean, Seth MacFarlane is like came out and made

820
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:35,480
Speaker 1: some joke about Weinstein during one awards ceremony or the other.

821
00:43:35,560 --> 00:43:38,680
Speaker 1: That was like a big deal because everyone was aware

822
00:43:38,719 --> 00:43:41,000
Speaker 1: of the fact that Harvey was, you know, maybe not

823
00:43:41,080 --> 00:43:42,680
Speaker 1: certainly not the extent of what he was doing, but

824
00:43:42,719 --> 00:43:45,239
Speaker 1: everyone knew He's not a safe guy to leave a

825
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:47,920
Speaker 1: young woman alone with right to the extent that, like,

826
00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 1: someone would make a joke about that, and I think

827
00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 1: it was the Oscars, the Emmys or whatever, and people

828
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:57,080
Speaker 1: got it because he was that much of a famous creep.

829
00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:00,759
Speaker 1: And in the case of Rose mcgo and, who called

830
00:44:00,800 --> 00:44:03,120
Speaker 1: Winfrey as fake as they come as a result of

831
00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:07,000
Speaker 1: her condemning Weinstein, her issue with Oprah comes from the

832
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:09,479
Speaker 1: fact that Oprah had been set to produce a movie

833
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 1: about famed sex abuser Russell Simmons, and then resigned from

834
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:18,319
Speaker 1: producing that movie. Oprah claims she had creative differences. I'm

835
00:44:18,360 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: not interested in litigating that, in part because that's all

836
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 1: I can find on the matter, and that's not conclusive.

837
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:26,960
Speaker 1: There's a lot of reasons why you would drop out

838
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:29,920
Speaker 1: of producing a movie that doesn't really count as like

839
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:32,400
Speaker 1: you're trying to cover it up. I'm vun any evidence

840
00:44:32,480 --> 00:44:35,439
Speaker 1: she tried to stop the thing from being made, right,

841
00:44:36,160 --> 00:44:38,359
Speaker 1: Rose is not the only celebrity who was alleged that

842
00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:42,280
Speaker 1: Oprah knew more about Weinstein than she let On Seal

843
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:45,040
Speaker 1: came out the guy who wrote Kiss from a Rose

844
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:47,520
Speaker 1: and has made allegations that basically, you knew a lot

845
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:51,920
Speaker 1: more than you're saying. Again, this may be true. Seal

846
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: has also been accused of and investigated for sexual battery.

847
00:44:55,280 --> 00:44:59,759
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, I don't know where we want

848
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:00,520
Speaker 1: to go there.

849
00:45:01,080 --> 00:45:05,160
Speaker 5: I mean it is sort of that like not mud slinging,

850
00:45:05,239 --> 00:45:09,359
Speaker 5: because it's factual. That's like, I mean again, you're we're

851
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:12,719
Speaker 5: barely past the era of or not even we're still

852
00:45:12,719 --> 00:45:16,600
Speaker 5: within the era of men on the internet being like

853
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:20,480
Speaker 5: oh I can't wait t other you know xyz like

854
00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:25,000
Speaker 5: young Woman as eighteen. I It's it's a little bit

855
00:45:25,040 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 5: of that, like this ship was definitely happening, by the way,

856
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:32,799
Speaker 5: definitely is happening, and there's whispers about it, but like

857
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 5: you kind.

858
00:45:33,440 --> 00:45:36,360
Speaker 2: Of just like there's there's a limit to what you

859
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:36,879
Speaker 2: can do.

860
00:45:37,080 --> 00:45:40,359
Speaker 5: So like, yeah, it's that kind of thing where like

861
00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:45,680
Speaker 5: every time, like like Democrats go after Republicans and they're like, oh,

862
00:45:45,800 --> 00:45:48,640
Speaker 5: you wouldn't want this turn back on you, like, oh,

863
00:45:48,719 --> 00:45:51,520
Speaker 5: we're gonna we're gonna go after your heroes, and it's

864
00:45:51,560 --> 00:45:54,200
Speaker 5: like truly, like yes, they're all fucking horrible people. Get

865
00:45:54,239 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 5: them all out of there. If you've done crime, I

866
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:01,560
Speaker 5: don't care what political party or like who you are

867
00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:02,280
Speaker 5: in the culture.

868
00:46:02,920 --> 00:46:06,160
Speaker 1: This does, though there's also a murkier aspect of it,

869
00:46:06,239 --> 00:46:10,799
Speaker 1: where again, when we say Oprah probably knew something about Weinstein,

870
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:15,160
Speaker 1: I'm not saying Oprah new Weinstein had committed a litany

871
00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:18,799
Speaker 1: of felonies. Oprah new he's kind of like he's like,

872
00:46:18,880 --> 00:46:21,520
Speaker 1: he'll sexually harass you, he'll make gross comments. You know,

873
00:46:21,600 --> 00:46:22,279
Speaker 1: he might like.

874
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:25,800
Speaker 2: Or it's like Hollywood in that, like, yeah, you heard

875
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:26,680
Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff.

876
00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:31,440
Speaker 1: You don't have evidence, and like you can there's legal

877
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:35,360
Speaker 1: consequences for just like accusing someone to powerful and wealthy

878
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:39,120
Speaker 1: without those evidence, yea of like being a sex offender.

879
00:46:39,239 --> 00:46:41,760
Speaker 1: Like and this is the kind of thing where it's like, Okay,

880
00:46:41,760 --> 00:46:46,279
Speaker 1: so we're attacking Oprah for stuff like her involvement in Weinstein.

881
00:46:46,680 --> 00:46:50,759
Speaker 1: I don't know how extensive it was. Everyone kind of

882
00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:54,800
Speaker 1: involved in the mud slinging has ulterior motives and it's weird.

883
00:46:55,360 --> 00:46:57,759
Speaker 1: What I can prove is that Weinstein and Oprah worked

884
00:46:57,800 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 1: together at some point and that likewise, Oprah went to

885
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:03,880
Speaker 1: a number of Ditty's parties. And these are specifically the

886
00:47:03,960 --> 00:47:07,440
Speaker 1: white parties, right, the ones that were not exclusively devoted

887
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:10,800
Speaker 1: to sex crimes. So I part of the issue is

888
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:15,200
Speaker 1: that these two are both very famous people and in

889
00:47:15,239 --> 00:47:18,479
Speaker 1: the industry Oprah was in, and so obviously she had

890
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:22,880
Speaker 1: personal and professional connections to them. But again, when it

891
00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:26,600
Speaker 1: comes to actual crimes, there is zero evidence of Oprah

892
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:31,200
Speaker 1: directly enabling or directly covering up either of those men's crimes.

893
00:47:31,400 --> 00:47:35,279
Speaker 1: That evidence does not exist, and from what I've seen,

894
00:47:35,280 --> 00:47:37,960
Speaker 1: it looks like she's probably guilty of the same thing

895
00:47:38,080 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 1: most people at her level in Hollywood are, which is

896
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:42,319
Speaker 1: being like that guy seems fucked up. I'm just not

897
00:47:42,360 --> 00:47:43,200
Speaker 1: going to get too close.

898
00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:46,319
Speaker 7: Yeah, I do want to give a plug to the

899
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:48,759
Speaker 7: documentary that she pulled out of, because it did end

900
00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:49,600
Speaker 7: up getting produced.

901
00:47:49,600 --> 00:47:51,720
Speaker 6: It's called on the Record. It tells.

902
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:55,040
Speaker 7: It features Drew Dixon, who is this like very iconic

903
00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:58,440
Speaker 7: hip hop producer who her entire career was almost derailed

904
00:47:58,480 --> 00:48:03,360
Speaker 7: because of people like Russells, and so, yeah, I also

905
00:48:03,440 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 7: agree that I think that when it comes to Oprah

906
00:48:05,600 --> 00:48:08,960
Speaker 7: and these powerful men, I think that like that, I

907
00:48:09,040 --> 00:48:13,359
Speaker 7: understand why it lends itself to conspiracy theories. Because powerful, rich,

908
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:16,759
Speaker 7: famous people know each other, they work together, they're photographed

909
00:48:16,760 --> 00:48:20,640
Speaker 7: with each other like that doesn't mean that some that

910
00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:23,840
Speaker 7: doesn't mean that Oprah like had a direct hand in

911
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:27,400
Speaker 7: enabling Weinstein's sex crimes, but like, like, that's just how

912
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:27,800
Speaker 7: it works.

913
00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:31,920
Speaker 1: Weinstein wouldn't need her for that, right, There's no line

914
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 1: between the women that he abused and like Oprah unlike.

915
00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:40,319
Speaker 1: For examples, we'll talk about Oprah told women John of

916
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:42,920
Speaker 1: God was a safe guy to fly to fucking Brazil

917
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:45,239
Speaker 1: and get treated by and a number of women got

918
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:48,160
Speaker 1: raped because they took the advice of the Oprah Winfrey

919
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:51,560
Speaker 1: show endorsing this man. That is something that she should

920
00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:54,200
Speaker 1: be held accountable for. I just don't have any evidence

921
00:48:54,320 --> 00:48:57,400
Speaker 1: that she's done anything in the Weinstein case or in

922
00:48:57,400 --> 00:49:00,360
Speaker 1: the p Didty case. Now, the most bullshit thing she

923
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:03,560
Speaker 1: gets accused of by the QAnon types is involvement with

924
00:49:03,680 --> 00:49:08,480
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein. If you google Oprah Winfrey Epstein, you will

925
00:49:08,520 --> 00:49:12,400
Speaker 1: also come across this. Randomly. You will find articles and

926
00:49:12,560 --> 00:49:17,240
Speaker 1: viral tweets and tiktoks, all of which have some variation

927
00:49:17,320 --> 00:49:20,320
Speaker 1: of the sentence Oprah Winfrey mentioned five times and files

928
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 1: related to the Epstein case. That sounds bad, right, Let's

929
00:49:25,120 --> 00:49:29,759
Speaker 1: look into what that means. So one of the things

930
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:31,480
Speaker 1: that turned me onto this was a viral post on

931
00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:34,400
Speaker 1: Facebook with the title justin Oprah has been revealed as

932
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:37,839
Speaker 1: a client on the Epstein list, capitalizing the first letter

933
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:41,399
Speaker 1: of each of those words, what's your reaction and that's

934
00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:45,040
Speaker 1: complete bullshit. Oprah's name shows up five times in documents

935
00:49:45,080 --> 00:49:48,600
Speaker 1: for the Epstein case. The first two times are because

936
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:53,400
Speaker 1: the files include screenshots of articles, one from Radar Online

937
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:57,040
Speaker 1: and one from the Daily Mail. Those articles in the

938
00:49:57,040 --> 00:50:00,680
Speaker 1: bottom of them have a suggested other re You know

939
00:50:00,719 --> 00:50:03,000
Speaker 1: how articles work. You finish an article will say, hey,

940
00:50:03,080 --> 00:50:05,560
Speaker 1: you might be interested in this article on a different topic.

941
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:10,520
Speaker 1: Those articles that were suggested by the articles relevant to

942
00:50:10,560 --> 00:50:14,839
Speaker 1: the Epstein trial mentioned Oprah. That's two of the five mentions, right,

943
00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 1: is something completely unrelated to the case that just because

944
00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:22,520
Speaker 1: somebody fucking screen grabbed the whole page, Oprah's name winds

945
00:50:22,600 --> 00:50:25,640
Speaker 1: up on it. The other three times come from emails

946
00:50:25,719 --> 00:50:29,000
Speaker 1: introduced as evidence, where a journalist working with one of

947
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:33,080
Speaker 1: Epstein's accusers on a book tells a book agent, I

948
00:50:33,160 --> 00:50:36,959
Speaker 1: think this book will sell well to Oprah's audience. Now,

949
00:50:39,320 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 1: if you're keeping track, what does that mean? Which means

950
00:50:42,040 --> 00:50:44,080
Speaker 1: Oprah has nothing to fucking do with Jeffrey Epstein.

951
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:48,040
Speaker 5: I mean the other just like heuristic way to look

952
00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:51,040
Speaker 5: at it is if these fox had concrete evidence on

953
00:50:51,120 --> 00:50:54,360
Speaker 5: a black woman, you sure as fuck we would know

954
00:50:54,440 --> 00:50:54,920
Speaker 5: about it.

955
00:50:55,160 --> 00:50:57,799
Speaker 7: Yes, oh my god, would you get the pictures that'd

956
00:50:57,800 --> 00:51:00,920
Speaker 7: be screenshots or be emails tie wise whole works.

957
00:51:01,040 --> 00:51:04,000
Speaker 5: Like there would there'd be no need for insinuation if

958
00:51:04,040 --> 00:51:05,320
Speaker 5: any evidence existed.

959
00:51:05,600 --> 00:51:08,439
Speaker 1: It's this way a question. So yeah, yeah, what.

960
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:12,920
Speaker 7: Like when so there are documented connections with Oprah and

961
00:51:13,000 --> 00:51:15,440
Speaker 7: like men who turned out to be creeps who were

962
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:16,480
Speaker 7: safe to be around.

963
00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:18,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can see, and she's there's a picture of

964
00:51:18,160 --> 00:51:19,799
Speaker 1: her kissing Weinstein on the neck, you know.

965
00:51:19,920 --> 00:51:23,280
Speaker 7: But like, why do you think people obsess about these

966
00:51:23,600 --> 00:51:26,480
Speaker 7: bullshit claims about her connection to people like Epstein when

967
00:51:26,520 --> 00:51:29,600
Speaker 7: there are documented connections between her and people who were

968
00:51:29,719 --> 00:51:32,640
Speaker 7: back like genuinely, Like that is a smoking gun where

969
00:51:32,640 --> 00:51:34,440
Speaker 7: she said this guy was safe and endorsed him and

970
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:36,640
Speaker 7: then he wasn't. Like why do people focus so much

971
00:51:36,680 --> 00:51:37,640
Speaker 7: on the ones that are bullshit?

972
00:51:37,840 --> 00:51:40,160
Speaker 1: Because the people who hate Oprah and are making stuff

973
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:42,759
Speaker 1: up about her primarily hate her because she is a

974
00:51:42,800 --> 00:51:45,399
Speaker 1: liberal figure and the celebrity is the same reason they're

975
00:51:45,400 --> 00:51:48,960
Speaker 1: going after like Tom Hanks, right, because he was pro vaccine.

976
00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:52,720
Speaker 1: The other thing is the stuff she's done that's bad

977
00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:57,239
Speaker 1: is stuff they do in love and don't think is bad, right, Yeah,

978
00:51:57,480 --> 00:52:00,840
Speaker 1: you know, like that's that's that's what it's why when

979
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:03,680
Speaker 1: people talk about the problem of child sex abuse in

980
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:07,640
Speaker 1: child sex trafficking, they obsessed with this largely fanciful idea

981
00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:10,240
Speaker 1: of like three and four year olds being trafficked around

982
00:52:10,239 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 1: the world in large numbers and abducted from their fucking

983
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:16,000
Speaker 1: white families, which is not really the issue. The issue

984
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:20,640
Speaker 1: is primarily a dope men related to sixteen and seventeen

985
00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:23,880
Speaker 1: and fifteen year old girls molesting them, you know. And

986
00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:25,800
Speaker 1: part of why they don't like to do that is

987
00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:27,800
Speaker 1: that an awful lot of the guys who obsessed with

988
00:52:27,960 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 1: shoot your local pedophile, think it would be fine if

989
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:32,759
Speaker 1: they married a sixteen year old as long as you know,

990
00:52:32,840 --> 00:52:34,480
Speaker 1: they did it in the church and their parents were

991
00:52:34,520 --> 00:52:36,480
Speaker 1: okay with it. Yeah, that's why, you know.

992
00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:38,759
Speaker 5: Well, and then also the other big portion of it

993
00:52:38,840 --> 00:52:40,560
Speaker 5: is in the fucking church.

994
00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:43,359
Speaker 1: Itself right right where you can marry fourteen year olds

995
00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:45,319
Speaker 1: in a lot of US states as long as you

996
00:52:45,400 --> 00:52:48,640
Speaker 1: do it, you know, through God and their parents. Anyway,

997
00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:50,399
Speaker 1: we don't need to make that the subject every time

998
00:52:50,440 --> 00:52:53,680
Speaker 1: we talk about this shit. But I think when it

999
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:56,160
Speaker 1: comes to like properly criticizing here, one thing you have

1000
00:52:56,200 --> 00:52:58,320
Speaker 1: to note is that Oprah has made child abuse and

1001
00:52:58,400 --> 00:53:02,440
Speaker 1: child sex abuse constant sess of focuses with her fundraising activities.

1002
00:53:02,880 --> 00:53:06,040
Speaker 1: She has done harm through spreading misinformation about child abuse,

1003
00:53:06,360 --> 00:53:08,640
Speaker 1: but she's not a sex criminal. This is something she

1004
00:53:08,719 --> 00:53:11,640
Speaker 1: puts a lot of. She very much actively has tried

1005
00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:15,279
Speaker 1: to reduce again in imperfect ways, but she's put her

1006
00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:17,759
Speaker 1: money where her mouth is a lot. And one of

1007
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:21,319
Speaker 1: the things she is really consistently puts effort into is

1008
00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:26,560
Speaker 1: trying to help underprivileged, at risk kids. And again, this

1009
00:53:26,719 --> 00:53:29,960
Speaker 1: is always a mixed bag. And this brings me to

1010
00:53:30,000 --> 00:53:33,640
Speaker 1: the story of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls

1011
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:36,480
Speaker 1: or OWLAG as we're going to be calling it, Bridget,

1012
00:53:36,560 --> 00:53:38,799
Speaker 1: you were excited to get into this topic. What have

1013
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:42,200
Speaker 1: you heard of our LAG? This is our South African school.

1014
00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:45,040
Speaker 7: I remember it very clearly because my mother and my

1015
00:53:45,120 --> 00:53:47,839
Speaker 7: grandmother and I watched these episodes like it was a

1016
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:51,640
Speaker 7: special family event to get together and watch Oprah in Africa,

1017
00:53:51,719 --> 00:53:54,160
Speaker 7: Like y'all, this was a big deal.

1018
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:55,480
Speaker 6: I remember this again.

1019
00:53:55,360 --> 00:53:58,680
Speaker 1: Was yesterday, Yeah, yeah, and it was you know, this

1020
00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:01,640
Speaker 1: starts it open. The school opens in January of two

1021
00:54:01,680 --> 00:54:04,719
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. It is inspired the year before. She's

1022
00:54:04,800 --> 00:54:07,400
Speaker 1: vacationing in South Africa. She's hanging out with Nelson Mandela,

1023
00:54:07,480 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 1: because when you're Oprah, you get to hang out with

1024
00:54:09,680 --> 00:54:14,120
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela, and she decides on the spot to while

1025
00:54:14,120 --> 00:54:16,400
Speaker 1: they're talking and like looking, you know, going through she's

1026
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:18,680
Speaker 1: seeing the poverty of a lot of the poorest South

1027
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:20,719
Speaker 1: African children. She decides on the spot, I'm going to

1028
00:54:20,760 --> 00:54:25,640
Speaker 1: create a school for very bright and very poor South

1029
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:27,600
Speaker 1: African kids. These are kids who are at the top

1030
00:54:27,680 --> 00:54:30,400
Speaker 1: of their public schools in terms of test scores and

1031
00:54:30,480 --> 00:54:32,640
Speaker 1: come from households that make less than nine hundred and

1032
00:54:32,719 --> 00:54:37,440
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a month. Right now, the project is instantly

1033
00:54:37,640 --> 00:54:40,759
Speaker 1: controversial among the wealthy neighborhood where the school is built.

1034
00:54:40,880 --> 00:54:42,719
Speaker 1: They do not like that a bunch of poor black

1035
00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:44,920
Speaker 1: girls are going to be going to school in this

1036
00:54:45,040 --> 00:54:49,920
Speaker 1: largely white neighborhood. The administration is deluged with complaints. Neighbors

1037
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:53,279
Speaker 1: begin staking out the school during recess, watching the few

1038
00:54:53,320 --> 00:54:56,280
Speaker 1: girls in this white neighborhood as they play soccer, Oprah

1039
00:54:56,360 --> 00:54:58,840
Speaker 1: has the school put up hedges to block the field

1040
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:01,239
Speaker 1: from view. And so as we talk about the things

1041
00:55:01,280 --> 00:55:03,880
Speaker 1: that are criticizable about this venture, I don't want to

1042
00:55:03,880 --> 00:55:06,439
Speaker 1: lose the fact that like she is really pissing off

1043
00:55:06,480 --> 00:55:09,480
Speaker 1: a lot of South African racists, which again are the

1044
00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:13,799
Speaker 1: most racist racists, Like we're we're If we're ranking the

1045
00:55:13,960 --> 00:55:17,640
Speaker 1: racist the very top of that pyramid is South African racists.

1046
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:25,000
Speaker 1: No one's ever been better. Speaking of South Africa, I'm

1047
00:55:25,040 --> 00:55:32,520
Speaker 1: fairly certain none of our sponsors are based in South Africa.

1048
00:55:34,880 --> 00:55:38,680
Speaker 1: We're back, Apartheid's not around anymore. So I guess we

1049
00:55:38,680 --> 00:55:41,400
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't have a blanket band on South African sponsors.

1050
00:55:42,760 --> 00:55:48,040
Speaker 5: But you know, uh, those guys are still doing I

1051
00:55:48,239 --> 00:55:51,600
Speaker 5: would say, whoever the sponsor, is high chance some South

1052
00:55:51,640 --> 00:55:54,719
Speaker 5: African racist has a stake in that company.

1053
00:55:54,840 --> 00:55:57,160
Speaker 1: There's a very good old British song. I've never met

1054
00:55:57,200 --> 00:56:00,719
Speaker 1: a nice South African that gets into gets into some

1055
00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:06,480
Speaker 1: of these issues. So Oprah is incredibly integral to the

1056
00:56:06,520 --> 00:56:09,520
Speaker 1: design of this school. She is not just This is

1057
00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:12,520
Speaker 1: not just a case for good and for ill. Oprah

1058
00:56:12,560 --> 00:56:15,040
Speaker 1: is not just somebody who throws money at a problem

1059
00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:17,759
Speaker 1: to have her name attached to it. This is a

1060
00:56:17,880 --> 00:56:21,239
Speaker 1: personal focus, and she pours hundreds of hours of her

1061
00:56:21,280 --> 00:56:24,480
Speaker 1: own personal labor into making this school. I want to

1062
00:56:24,560 --> 00:56:27,600
Speaker 1: quote from an article on Forbes. Winfrey severed ties with

1063
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:29,640
Speaker 1: the state and decided to go it alone, hiring the

1064
00:56:29,760 --> 00:56:34,320
Speaker 1: architects behind Johannesburg's favorite famous apartheid museum. She donned Jean's

1065
00:56:34,320 --> 00:56:36,760
Speaker 1: in a hard hat and oversaw every aspect of construction.

1066
00:56:36,880 --> 00:56:39,040
Speaker 1: She thought of the little things. The tubs of umbrellas

1067
00:56:39,040 --> 00:56:42,240
Speaker 1: outside each building for use during South Africa's rainy season,

1068
00:56:42,239 --> 00:56:45,280
Speaker 1: when it pours almost NonStop for forty days. They're green,

1069
00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:48,360
Speaker 1: her favorite color, to match the girl's uniforms. At the

1070
00:56:48,360 --> 00:56:51,400
Speaker 1: school's first convocation, Winfrey took the stage to address the

1071
00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:54,200
Speaker 1: girls and their relatives, bust in from across South Africa.

1072
00:56:54,520 --> 00:56:56,920
Speaker 1: For many years, people always ask me why didn't I

1073
00:56:57,000 --> 00:57:02,239
Speaker 1: have children, she told the crowd. Now I know, and

1074
00:57:02,520 --> 00:57:06,080
Speaker 1: you know that's largely good. But you can also see

1075
00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:10,640
Speaker 1: a little weird, although again in like a very like

1076
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:15,399
Speaker 1: sympathetic way. Oprah is, by this person point, very rich,

1077
00:57:15,560 --> 00:57:20,360
Speaker 1: and being very rich also means you're coming increasingly unhinged

1078
00:57:20,440 --> 00:57:23,120
Speaker 1: as you age. Some of the evidence for that is

1079
00:57:23,120 --> 00:57:26,440
Speaker 1: that in addition to the stuff that is pretty like fine, right,

1080
00:57:26,600 --> 00:57:30,320
Speaker 1: like okay, yeah, I give them green umbrellas because that's

1081
00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:32,600
Speaker 1: your favorite color. Whatever you're paying for it, that's your right.

1082
00:57:33,280 --> 00:57:36,240
Speaker 1: During like the big opening event for the school, because

1083
00:57:36,240 --> 00:57:38,760
Speaker 1: they're having a bunch of celebrities Nelson Mandela and like

1084
00:57:38,840 --> 00:57:42,280
Speaker 1: Diane Sawyer are showing up, she has the groundskeeper because

1085
00:57:42,280 --> 00:57:45,000
Speaker 1: it's during the dry season, she has the groundskeepers paint

1086
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:51,360
Speaker 1: the yellow grass green, which is again not evil, just

1087
00:57:51,480 --> 00:57:53,040
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh yeah, that's the kind of thing

1088
00:57:53,080 --> 00:57:54,680
Speaker 1: you get to do and you have Oprah money.

1089
00:57:54,840 --> 00:57:57,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the kind of thing you worry about.

1090
00:57:57,480 --> 00:58:00,760
Speaker 1: It's just like, I guess, yeah, this school's not going

1091
00:58:00,800 --> 00:58:03,560
Speaker 1: to look good enough if the grass is yellow. Now,

1092
00:58:03,680 --> 00:58:06,200
Speaker 1: Oprah has to date spent more than one hundred million

1093
00:58:06,280 --> 00:58:08,360
Speaker 1: dollars on both the school. This is initially I think

1094
00:58:08,440 --> 00:58:10,520
Speaker 1: supposed to be like a six million dollar project. It

1095
00:58:10,520 --> 00:58:12,800
Speaker 1: balloons to forty million. And again she's paid over like

1096
00:58:12,800 --> 00:58:15,120
Speaker 1: one hundred million at this point. So for one thing

1097
00:58:15,200 --> 00:58:19,360
Speaker 1: you cannot Faulter for is dedication. This is not something

1098
00:58:19,440 --> 00:58:22,520
Speaker 1: she is casual about. This is not something where she

1099
00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:24,640
Speaker 1: was just kind of like siphoning some money off for

1100
00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:28,080
Speaker 1: a tax break. She's personally involved in this. And this

1101
00:58:28,200 --> 00:58:31,400
Speaker 1: school has provided an excellent education for a lot of

1102
00:58:31,640 --> 00:58:33,880
Speaker 1: I think a couple hundred girls have graduated at this point.

1103
00:58:34,240 --> 00:58:37,200
Speaker 1: And Winfrey is also committed to pay for the secondary

1104
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:39,960
Speaker 1: education of any girl who graduates from this school, which

1105
00:58:39,960 --> 00:58:41,520
Speaker 1: is where a lot of the cost comes from. She's

1106
00:58:41,560 --> 00:58:44,360
Speaker 1: not just paying for this school, She's paying for these

1107
00:58:44,400 --> 00:58:47,080
Speaker 1: kids to go to college. And in fact, recently the

1108
00:58:47,120 --> 00:58:49,880
Speaker 1: first of these girls received a PhD. Oprah showed up

1109
00:58:49,960 --> 00:58:53,600
Speaker 1: at her graduation ceremony. And this is good. This is,

1110
00:58:54,160 --> 00:58:58,280
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, a thing that has done good. There are

1111
00:58:58,560 --> 00:59:01,640
Speaker 1: valid criticisms of it, like the fact that Oprah's focus

1112
00:59:01,680 --> 00:59:04,000
Speaker 1: on luxury means that this one school, which again has

1113
00:59:04,040 --> 00:59:07,320
Speaker 1: only graduated a couple hundred girls, could have paid for

1114
00:59:07,640 --> 00:59:11,400
Speaker 1: a lot more schools that had a similar educational quality,

1115
00:59:11,720 --> 00:59:14,240
Speaker 1: if not for some of the expensive things that are

1116
00:59:14,320 --> 00:59:18,440
Speaker 1: largely a result of Oprah's sort of focuses. An article

1117
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:20,920
Speaker 1: on the school in Reuter's Notes, Action Aid, a global

1118
00:59:20,960 --> 00:59:24,000
Speaker 1: development group, said the school exposes the stark disparities in

1119
00:59:24,080 --> 00:59:27,200
Speaker 1: South Africa's education system, still haunted by the legacy of

1120
00:59:27,240 --> 00:59:30,000
Speaker 1: apartheid and as an insult to millions of poor children

1121
00:59:30,080 --> 00:59:33,760
Speaker 1: worldwide wanting a decent education, and that is harsh. But

1122
00:59:33,880 --> 00:59:36,640
Speaker 1: there's a segment from Forbes Africa, based on an interview

1123
00:59:36,640 --> 00:59:39,600
Speaker 1: with Sam Blake, the director of operations, that does kind

1124
00:59:39,600 --> 00:59:42,560
Speaker 1: of back that up quote. Why were the girls sleeping

1125
00:59:42,560 --> 00:59:45,880
Speaker 1: on two hundred threadcount sheets? Why were there chandeliers hanging

1126
00:59:45,920 --> 00:59:49,320
Speaker 1: from the library ceiling and brightly colored mosaic tile pillars

1127
00:59:49,360 --> 00:59:52,560
Speaker 1: outside of the cafeteria. Blake grimaces when he's reminded of

1128
00:59:52,560 --> 00:59:55,520
Speaker 1: those early articles when you walk into a beautiful place,

1129
00:59:55,560 --> 01:00:00,240
Speaker 1: you think better of yourself. He explains, simply, again, I

1130
01:00:00,240 --> 01:00:01,720
Speaker 1: don't know that you would call I don't think it

1131
01:00:01,760 --> 01:00:03,960
Speaker 1: would be right to call that evil, but it is like,

1132
01:00:04,480 --> 01:00:06,960
Speaker 1: this is what you get when you have a very

1133
01:00:07,000 --> 01:00:10,000
Speaker 1: serious problem and somebody who is not an expert on

1134
01:00:10,320 --> 01:00:14,240
Speaker 1: education but has several billion dollars goes in to fix it.

1135
01:00:14,320 --> 01:00:17,920
Speaker 1: Is you can sometimes get a good thing to happen.

1136
01:00:17,960 --> 01:00:19,600
Speaker 1: And I think overall, this school is a good thing,

1137
01:00:19,640 --> 01:00:22,120
Speaker 1: but it's so much more expensive than it needs to be,

1138
01:00:22,160 --> 01:00:24,320
Speaker 1: and a lot more girls could be helped if, for example,

1139
01:00:24,800 --> 01:00:30,760
Speaker 1: that money had been like.

1140
01:00:29,440 --> 01:00:32,960
Speaker 5: Like if overpaid correct taxes and then went into the

1141
01:00:33,320 --> 01:00:34,760
Speaker 5: education system.

1142
01:00:34,920 --> 01:00:36,720
Speaker 1: And since she's not South Africa, I didn't. More to

1143
01:00:36,720 --> 01:00:38,560
Speaker 1: the point of that money, if that one hundred million

1144
01:00:38,640 --> 01:00:42,400
Speaker 1: had been handed to a group of actual education experts

1145
01:00:42,400 --> 01:00:45,480
Speaker 1: in order to build a system to improve educational quality

1146
01:00:45,480 --> 01:00:47,920
Speaker 1: for underprivileged Kitchen, South Africa, probably would have helped a

1147
01:00:47,960 --> 01:00:52,040
Speaker 1: lot more kids, right, And that's that's not bastardism, right,

1148
01:00:52,120 --> 01:00:54,960
Speaker 1: anymore than you're not a bastard if you ordered takeout

1149
01:00:55,040 --> 01:00:58,360
Speaker 1: last night. That's like a waste of money, right, But

1150
01:00:58,480 --> 01:01:00,960
Speaker 1: like it helps kids. It's just an it's an example

1151
01:01:01,000 --> 01:01:04,400
Speaker 1: of like what's problematic about even good billionaire charity.

1152
01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:07,560
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the same reason like Batman is a bastard

1153
01:01:07,600 --> 01:01:11,640
Speaker 5: because batmanning is by far the least effective use of

1154
01:01:11,680 --> 01:01:18,120
Speaker 5: your billions to keep crime down. Yeah, Like it's vanity

1155
01:01:18,200 --> 01:01:21,439
Speaker 5: and it's it's just like it's not bastardy, but it's

1156
01:01:21,480 --> 01:01:22,200
Speaker 5: like come.

1157
01:01:22,000 --> 01:01:26,080
Speaker 1: On evidence of like, yeah, we really ought to just

1158
01:01:26,160 --> 01:01:27,960
Speaker 1: tax these people a hell of a lot more so

1159
01:01:28,000 --> 01:01:33,320
Speaker 1: they can't exist as billionaires. But anyway, moving on, when

1160
01:01:33,320 --> 01:01:35,560
Speaker 1: it comes to this school, what's it's most famous for

1161
01:01:35,720 --> 01:01:39,000
Speaker 1: outside of South Africa is the allegations that have come

1162
01:01:39,040 --> 01:01:43,560
Speaker 1: out from within it that are problematic and those Yeah,

1163
01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:46,280
Speaker 1: I'm just going to list what's happened. So, within months

1164
01:01:46,320 --> 01:01:49,400
Speaker 1: of the school opening, there were allegations that the matron

1165
01:01:49,440 --> 01:01:52,880
Speaker 1: of the dormitory of the dormitories for the kids, tiny

1166
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:56,960
Speaker 1: Macoppo is her name, had attempted to kiss and fondle

1167
01:01:57,040 --> 01:02:00,720
Speaker 1: as many as six teenaged girls at the academy. Now,

1168
01:02:00,760 --> 01:02:03,160
Speaker 1: Oprah acted very quickly, as far as I can tell,

1169
01:02:03,200 --> 01:02:06,160
Speaker 1: as soon as evidence came out. There are allegations that

1170
01:02:06,200 --> 01:02:08,520
Speaker 1: she tried to hide it before it came out. I

1171
01:02:08,560 --> 01:02:12,080
Speaker 1: haven't seen anything that actually backs those up. Like what

1172
01:02:12,120 --> 01:02:15,600
Speaker 1: I have seen looks like she acted as quickly as possible.

1173
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:18,320
Speaker 1: Who knows if there's stuff that I'm not you know

1174
01:02:18,320 --> 01:02:21,320
Speaker 1: that's not public, but that just seems to be people

1175
01:02:21,880 --> 01:02:25,040
Speaker 1: at this point kind of talking shit. She acts very quickly,

1176
01:02:25,080 --> 01:02:29,640
Speaker 1: She fires Macopo. I should also say Macopo is tried

1177
01:02:29,720 --> 01:02:33,840
Speaker 1: and is found not guilty three years later. So again

1178
01:02:33,880 --> 01:02:36,240
Speaker 1: I can't say I'm not going to do the Oprah

1179
01:02:36,240 --> 01:02:37,600
Speaker 1: thing and say she definitely did it.

1180
01:02:37,600 --> 01:02:38,000
Speaker 2: I don't know.

1181
01:02:38,000 --> 01:02:39,320
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on this case.

1182
01:02:39,400 --> 01:02:39,560
Speaker 2: Right.

1183
01:02:39,960 --> 01:02:42,880
Speaker 1: The incident does, however, leave a stain on the school

1184
01:02:42,920 --> 01:02:45,720
Speaker 1: that deepens in early two thousand and nine when seven

1185
01:02:45,760 --> 01:02:49,240
Speaker 1: students are expelled for bad behavior that includes sexual harassment

1186
01:02:49,280 --> 01:02:52,440
Speaker 1: of classmates. And around the same time, a seventeen year

1187
01:02:52,480 --> 01:02:55,000
Speaker 1: old student is found with a dead infant child in

1188
01:02:55,040 --> 01:02:59,880
Speaker 1: her handbag. Yeah, and this is like I think she

1189
01:03:00,520 --> 01:03:05,040
Speaker 1: had a stillbirth or something like that. Like this is

1190
01:03:05,080 --> 01:03:07,120
Speaker 1: a case of like somebody who gets pregnant very young,

1191
01:03:07,160 --> 01:03:10,720
Speaker 1: and like the baby doesn't make it. And these are

1192
01:03:11,080 --> 01:03:12,720
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. The fact that you have a

1193
01:03:12,720 --> 01:03:15,160
Speaker 1: bunch of the kids there who are abusing other kids.

1194
01:03:15,560 --> 01:03:17,720
Speaker 1: This has and the fact that there's these allegations from

1195
01:03:17,800 --> 01:03:21,040
Speaker 1: this teacher, this has led to accusations. And you'll get

1196
01:03:21,040 --> 01:03:22,960
Speaker 1: this a lot. And like the QAnon side of things

1197
01:03:23,200 --> 01:03:26,240
Speaker 1: that Oprah started like a sex abuse factory to molest

1198
01:03:26,320 --> 01:03:29,040
Speaker 1: kids in South Africa. And as a guy who has

1199
01:03:29,080 --> 01:03:32,960
Speaker 1: told stories about schools that were sex abuse factories for

1200
01:03:33,040 --> 01:03:36,760
Speaker 1: the express purpose of allowing certain people to lest children,

1201
01:03:36,760 --> 01:03:39,479
Speaker 1: I have to tell you that's not what's happening here.

1202
01:03:39,920 --> 01:03:42,720
Speaker 1: Our lag is a school for underprivileged kids living in

1203
01:03:42,760 --> 01:03:46,160
Speaker 1: a country where the deepest poverty is unimaginable to most Americans.

1204
01:03:46,400 --> 01:03:48,880
Speaker 1: As Winfrey herself said, by the time a girl gets

1205
01:03:48,880 --> 01:03:51,440
Speaker 1: to my school, normally she suffered on average six major

1206
01:03:51,480 --> 01:03:54,760
Speaker 1: life traumas they've lost a parent or both parents, multiple accidents,

1207
01:03:54,800 --> 01:03:58,160
Speaker 1: death in your family, aides, rape, sexual molestation, all of it.

1208
01:03:58,320 --> 01:04:03,560
Speaker 1: Unimaginable things have happened. Creating an institution where these students

1209
01:04:03,640 --> 01:04:05,960
Speaker 1: are taken in away from their families. I should note

1210
01:04:06,000 --> 01:04:11,240
Speaker 1: you supported and asked to live together is a huge, messy,

1211
01:04:11,800 --> 01:04:17,920
Speaker 1: complicated thing. There's no way stuff like this wouldn't happen

1212
01:04:18,000 --> 01:04:20,400
Speaker 1: to some extent. So what you have to judge the

1213
01:04:20,440 --> 01:04:23,480
Speaker 1: school on is did they set up guard rails to

1214
01:04:23,600 --> 01:04:26,400
Speaker 1: make it possible to report this stuff to make it

1215
01:04:26,520 --> 01:04:30,640
Speaker 1: less likely? And did they act quickly when evidence came out?

1216
01:04:31,000 --> 01:04:34,600
Speaker 1: And as far as I can tell more or less, yeah,

1217
01:04:35,160 --> 01:04:37,840
Speaker 1: again there's some critiques there. It certainly was not a

1218
01:04:38,080 --> 01:04:42,000
Speaker 1: set up perfectly, but like generally, yeah, it seems to

1219
01:04:42,040 --> 01:04:42,840
Speaker 1: be the case.

1220
01:04:43,160 --> 01:04:45,160
Speaker 7: Well, this is exactly why I think the point that

1221
01:04:45,200 --> 01:04:47,720
Speaker 7: you two are making a moment ago is so salient,

1222
01:04:47,800 --> 01:04:50,200
Speaker 7: because I don't think that Oprah should have been involved

1223
01:04:50,200 --> 01:04:51,880
Speaker 7: in a school like this to begin with. I think

1224
01:04:51,920 --> 01:04:56,240
Speaker 7: it is fundamental criticism, like you cannot take extremely at

1225
01:04:56,360 --> 01:05:00,280
Speaker 7: risk girls who have been living in extreme poverty. Doesn't

1226
01:05:00,320 --> 01:05:02,280
Speaker 7: matter how nice the sheets are or how the chande

1227
01:05:02,280 --> 01:05:04,080
Speaker 7: of leers are. These are going to be girls who

1228
01:05:04,160 --> 01:05:07,000
Speaker 7: probably have problems, and it's like, of course, this is

1229
01:05:07,000 --> 01:05:08,800
Speaker 7: the kind of thing is going to happen when they're all,

1230
01:05:09,000 --> 01:05:11,000
Speaker 7: you know, taken away from their support systems and their

1231
01:05:11,040 --> 01:05:11,880
Speaker 7: families and all of that.

1232
01:05:12,200 --> 01:05:14,400
Speaker 6: I think it's the pinnacle.

1233
01:05:13,960 --> 01:05:17,040
Speaker 7: Of nsists, narcissism in vanity to be like, oh, well,

1234
01:05:17,080 --> 01:05:20,680
Speaker 7: certainly my money can foster an environment of safety for

1235
01:05:20,760 --> 01:05:22,960
Speaker 7: these girls. If you care so much, just give the

1236
01:05:23,040 --> 01:05:25,240
Speaker 7: money to people who know what they're doing, who are

1237
01:05:25,240 --> 01:05:26,120
Speaker 7: already doing this.

1238
01:05:26,360 --> 01:05:28,520
Speaker 6: Don't try to set up a school with your name

1239
01:05:28,600 --> 01:05:28,880
Speaker 6: on it.

1240
01:05:28,960 --> 01:05:31,479
Speaker 7: Like it's It's one of my biggest pet peeves, people

1241
01:05:31,560 --> 01:05:33,640
Speaker 7: who think like, oh, I've got money and my heart's

1242
01:05:33,640 --> 01:05:36,320
Speaker 7: in the right place, so I'll start my own nonprofit

1243
01:05:36,360 --> 01:05:38,480
Speaker 7: and it'll be it'll be in my image, and it's like, no,

1244
01:05:39,560 --> 01:05:40,480
Speaker 7: people have been doing this.

1245
01:05:40,640 --> 01:05:41,640
Speaker 6: People know what they're doing.

1246
01:05:41,720 --> 01:05:44,720
Speaker 7: There are people who specialize in working with at risk youth.

1247
01:05:45,040 --> 01:05:46,920
Speaker 6: Give the money to them, like, don't do it on

1248
01:05:46,960 --> 01:05:48,000
Speaker 6: your own for.

1249
01:05:48,480 --> 01:05:51,760
Speaker 5: All, like the like the billionaire classes railing against the

1250
01:05:51,760 --> 01:05:58,400
Speaker 5: inefficiencies of bureaucracy, like their own vanity and hubris is

1251
01:05:58,560 --> 01:06:02,240
Speaker 5: so much more wasteful, disgusting and damaging, and there's no

1252
01:06:02,320 --> 01:06:04,000
Speaker 5: way to make them see it. I mean, part of

1253
01:06:04,000 --> 01:06:06,840
Speaker 5: what like is here, it's like there's because I was

1254
01:06:06,840 --> 01:06:08,920
Speaker 5: going I was almost going to say, like, you know,

1255
01:06:09,680 --> 01:06:13,400
Speaker 5: what is the comparison you know, between what happened at

1256
01:06:13,440 --> 01:06:17,720
Speaker 5: the Oprah Academy and a baseline when you realize there

1257
01:06:17,760 --> 01:06:20,280
Speaker 5: is no baseline, there's nothing to compare this to, Like

1258
01:06:20,800 --> 01:06:23,920
Speaker 5: nothing like this exists for a good reason.

1259
01:06:24,280 --> 01:06:24,480
Speaker 1: Yep.

1260
01:06:24,520 --> 01:06:28,160
Speaker 7: And I really there is a thing this needs to

1261
01:06:28,160 --> 01:06:31,920
Speaker 7: be studied. Wealthy people trying to open schools like Kanye

1262
01:06:31,960 --> 01:06:33,600
Speaker 7: West doing it like there's something.

1263
01:06:33,600 --> 01:06:33,800
Speaker 5: I mean.

1264
01:06:33,840 --> 01:06:36,360
Speaker 7: I say this as a former educator where when you

1265
01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:38,720
Speaker 7: are an educator, everybody thinks.

1266
01:06:38,560 --> 01:06:40,640
Speaker 6: They know how to do your job better than you.

1267
01:06:40,720 --> 01:06:42,880
Speaker 7: People who have never been in a classroom before, people

1268
01:06:42,880 --> 01:06:45,360
Speaker 7: who have never been involved in education before, somehow are all,

1269
01:06:45,640 --> 01:06:48,360
Speaker 7: you know, know exactly what to do. There's something about

1270
01:06:48,440 --> 01:06:51,960
Speaker 7: education that I think makes rich people who got successful

1271
01:06:52,000 --> 01:06:54,280
Speaker 7: in one lane feel like they could open a school

1272
01:06:54,360 --> 01:06:55,640
Speaker 7: or they know how to do it.

1273
01:06:55,640 --> 01:06:56,720
Speaker 6: It's very frustrating.

1274
01:06:57,120 --> 01:07:00,320
Speaker 5: Well because it's partially my guess is that like everyone's like, well,

1275
01:07:00,360 --> 01:07:02,760
Speaker 5: I've been to school, I've been a scuted before.

1276
01:07:04,960 --> 01:07:07,280
Speaker 1: Well that's really where a lot of this comes from

1277
01:07:07,280 --> 01:07:11,880
Speaker 1: with Oprah, where it's like, you, I had a lot

1278
01:07:11,880 --> 01:07:15,560
Speaker 1: of trauma as a kid. I was abused and like,

1279
01:07:16,000 --> 01:07:18,200
Speaker 1: but also very smart and I got an opportunity and

1280
01:07:18,240 --> 01:07:22,120
Speaker 1: so I succeeded. So I know how other smart kids

1281
01:07:22,440 --> 01:07:25,120
Speaker 1: that are suffering in like difficult circumstances, I know what

1282
01:07:25,160 --> 01:07:29,360
Speaker 1: they need and like, no, every kid's different, Oprah. Like,

1283
01:07:29,520 --> 01:07:33,000
Speaker 1: and also, you don't fully understand all of the things

1284
01:07:33,080 --> 01:07:35,720
Speaker 1: that helped you because you weren't one of the You

1285
01:07:35,760 --> 01:07:39,560
Speaker 1: weren't your dad, right, Like there's things that just like

1286
01:07:39,640 --> 01:07:42,040
Speaker 1: all of us, we all and this is part of

1287
01:07:42,080 --> 01:07:44,600
Speaker 1: the process of like reconciling, oh, my parents did this

1288
01:07:44,640 --> 01:07:47,480
Speaker 1: stuff that was fucked up and also realizing, oh my god,

1289
01:07:47,520 --> 01:07:50,080
Speaker 1: I never realized my parents did this thing that was

1290
01:07:50,120 --> 01:07:53,760
Speaker 1: like absolutely crucial in me turning out like having these

1291
01:07:53,800 --> 01:07:56,560
Speaker 1: positive traits that must have been really hard for them.

1292
01:07:56,840 --> 01:07:59,400
Speaker 1: That's just like, yeah, we're.

1293
01:07:59,280 --> 01:08:01,280
Speaker 5: How difficult it is, Like, oh, I was fucked up

1294
01:08:01,280 --> 01:08:04,120
Speaker 5: by this, but like you're not aware of the choice

1295
01:08:04,440 --> 01:08:07,600
Speaker 5: that had to be made. Like yeah, it's a little

1296
01:08:07,600 --> 01:08:10,880
Speaker 5: bit like being like, oh, I've eaten at a restaurant before,

1297
01:08:10,960 --> 01:08:12,720
Speaker 5: therefore I can be a chef, Like.

1298
01:08:12,920 --> 01:08:16,839
Speaker 1: Right, a far, it's just more complicated than that, okay,

1299
01:08:17,320 --> 01:08:19,800
Speaker 1: And like this should not have been your gig. You know,

1300
01:08:19,840 --> 01:08:21,840
Speaker 1: every now and then you get one of these. Really,

1301
01:08:21,880 --> 01:08:24,519
Speaker 1: the only time it's worked is like James Cameron becoming

1302
01:08:24,520 --> 01:08:29,559
Speaker 1: a deep sea explorer. But nearly every other time. I

1303
01:08:29,600 --> 01:08:32,040
Speaker 1: guess she is second because at least the school is

1304
01:08:32,040 --> 01:08:32,879
Speaker 1: a good school.

1305
01:08:32,960 --> 01:08:37,080
Speaker 7: But and having I remember so viscerally watching the Oprah

1306
01:08:37,080 --> 01:08:41,080
Speaker 7: and Africa specials and again like I want to give

1307
01:08:41,080 --> 01:08:43,720
Speaker 7: her grace because I get it right, Like it's like

1308
01:08:44,160 --> 01:08:49,160
Speaker 7: the most beautiful, precocious little girls in green uniforms and

1309
01:08:49,240 --> 01:08:52,840
Speaker 7: like smiling ear to ear, and it shot with that

1310
01:08:52,920 --> 01:08:56,120
Speaker 7: like that like filter on it that everything looks kind

1311
01:08:56,120 --> 01:08:56,840
Speaker 7: of like you know what.

1312
01:08:56,920 --> 01:09:00,000
Speaker 6: The like glazy filter. It was beautiful.

1313
01:09:00,040 --> 01:09:04,040
Speaker 7: I remember crying, like I get why this is more,

1314
01:09:05,280 --> 01:09:07,759
Speaker 7: why she would rather do this than just send money

1315
01:09:07,800 --> 01:09:09,240
Speaker 7: to somebody who's already doing it.

1316
01:09:09,240 --> 01:09:10,040
Speaker 6: But it goes back to.

1317
01:09:10,000 --> 01:09:13,120
Speaker 7: That idea of like the the thing that is boring

1318
01:09:13,479 --> 01:09:15,920
Speaker 7: and the kind of like commonplace isn't what you want?

1319
01:09:16,000 --> 01:09:19,200
Speaker 7: You want your name on a school girls in uniforms

1320
01:09:19,240 --> 01:09:21,559
Speaker 7: lined up, smiling from ear to ear, like that's the

1321
01:09:21,600 --> 01:09:23,080
Speaker 7: thing that gives you the warm fuzzies.

1322
01:09:23,439 --> 01:09:23,679
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1323
01:09:23,680 --> 01:09:27,439
Speaker 5: Well, and also, it's like making one perfect school is

1324
01:09:27,880 --> 01:09:31,160
Speaker 5: something you can do, making a dozen pretty good.

1325
01:09:31,280 --> 01:09:33,879
Speaker 2: Fixing the system is a lot harder.

1326
01:09:34,360 --> 01:09:36,960
Speaker 1: No. I mean, it's like when I started my summer

1327
01:09:37,000 --> 01:09:39,599
Speaker 1: camp to teach kids how to blow up trains and

1328
01:09:39,760 --> 01:09:44,679
Speaker 1: effectively conduct counterance or insurgent operations. I wanted to teach them,

1329
01:09:44,760 --> 01:09:47,599
Speaker 1: but I had to eventually accept that, like, look, I'm

1330
01:09:47,640 --> 01:09:50,680
Speaker 1: not an expert educator, which is why I trained a

1331
01:09:51,160 --> 01:09:54,519
Speaker 1: LLM on Lawrence of Arabia's books Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

1332
01:09:54,880 --> 01:09:57,519
Speaker 1: And I've just let that loose on the kids. You know, now,

1333
01:09:57,560 --> 01:10:01,040
Speaker 1: this AI is teaching them everything, and it's go wanna be.

1334
01:10:00,960 --> 01:10:04,160
Speaker 7: Fine, Robert, stop trying to recruit for your boy army.

1335
01:10:05,040 --> 01:10:08,479
Speaker 1: They're not all boys, said, there's a lot of girls

1336
01:10:08,479 --> 01:10:12,320
Speaker 1: not buyinary kids. Look, we don't discriminate as long as

1337
01:10:12,360 --> 01:10:16,599
Speaker 1: you're willing to man what wrap it up, If.

1338
01:10:16,520 --> 01:10:18,840
Speaker 5: Your fingers are nimble enough to get into the little

1339
01:10:18,840 --> 01:10:20,439
Speaker 5: grenade pins your.

1340
01:10:20,240 --> 01:10:23,400
Speaker 1: Fingers, if you know how to mix gel ignite, I

1341
01:10:23,400 --> 01:10:25,880
Speaker 1: don't care about anything else. Just like the no, okay,

1342
01:10:25,880 --> 01:10:27,400
Speaker 1: we should probably stop at this point.

1343
01:10:27,320 --> 01:10:28,719
Speaker 4: Now, Anderson says stop.

1344
01:10:28,800 --> 01:10:30,479
Speaker 6: Also, are you preparing to.

1345
01:10:30,439 --> 01:10:32,360
Speaker 1: Wrap the part? God willing?

1346
01:10:32,800 --> 01:10:33,080
Speaker 2: Great?

1347
01:10:33,160 --> 01:10:35,920
Speaker 1: So? There are some valid complaints about the school. Parents

1348
01:10:35,920 --> 01:10:38,280
Speaker 1: of voice frustration that their time to see their children

1349
01:10:38,400 --> 01:10:41,400
Speaker 1: is unfairly curtailed. Restrictive rules for kids have been compared

1350
01:10:41,439 --> 01:10:44,320
Speaker 1: by some to some as prison like an article for

1351
01:10:44,360 --> 01:10:46,920
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Black Star notes. There's also the recent firing

1352
01:10:46,920 --> 01:10:49,599
Speaker 1: of the former head of operations, Simon Metiko after one

1353
01:10:49,680 --> 01:10:52,479
Speaker 1: year was reported in December of twenty twenty three. Court

1354
01:10:52,520 --> 01:10:56,280
Speaker 1: documents reveal complaints about abuse of authority, intimidation and victimization,

1355
01:10:56,400 --> 01:10:59,160
Speaker 1: as well as the mistreatment of learners. Mitiko alleges he

1356
01:10:59,200 --> 01:11:02,280
Speaker 1: was fired for his performance during private arbitration at the school.

1357
01:11:02,560 --> 01:11:06,160
Speaker 1: Further investigation found other employees who voiced their difficulty with management.

1358
01:11:06,200 --> 01:11:08,880
Speaker 1: Once said, working under pressure, threats, and other issues, we

1359
01:11:08,880 --> 01:11:11,160
Speaker 1: don't discuss issues with our management as we fear we

1360
01:11:11,200 --> 01:11:13,559
Speaker 1: will lose our jobs as we are not given clarity

1361
01:11:13,640 --> 01:11:16,519
Speaker 1: or relevant answers. Another said, our lag used to be

1362
01:11:16,560 --> 01:11:19,000
Speaker 1: a place where one contributed more than required because there

1363
01:11:19,040 --> 01:11:22,120
Speaker 1: was a culture of working together, listening and respecting professional

1364
01:11:22,120 --> 01:11:24,959
Speaker 1: opinions that has changed. There is a culture of distrust

1365
01:11:24,960 --> 01:11:29,679
Speaker 1: and fear, and I don't know the perfect reality here,

1366
01:11:29,720 --> 01:11:33,439
Speaker 1: but again I think we've we've litigated this more than enough.

1367
01:11:35,479 --> 01:11:38,240
Speaker 1: The broader problem here is that like the issue of

1368
01:11:38,320 --> 01:11:41,599
Speaker 1: rich people launching into crusades to fix major problems without

1369
01:11:41,640 --> 01:11:45,799
Speaker 1: knowing much about them, you know, And that's an issue,

1370
01:11:45,880 --> 01:11:48,120
Speaker 1: you know, that goes right to the top of this country.

1371
01:11:48,120 --> 01:11:51,320
Speaker 1: And probably the best example of OPRAH contributing to this

1372
01:11:51,360 --> 01:11:53,479
Speaker 1: in a really toxic way, because our lag at least

1373
01:11:53,479 --> 01:11:55,280
Speaker 1: has given a lot, you know, a couple hundred kids

1374
01:11:55,320 --> 01:11:58,639
Speaker 1: of very good education. Probably the best example of her

1375
01:11:58,680 --> 01:12:02,200
Speaker 1: diving into something she was not really competent to handle

1376
01:12:02,479 --> 01:12:05,680
Speaker 1: that had a toxic, toxic knock on effects is her

1377
01:12:05,720 --> 01:12:11,200
Speaker 1: support of orphanages in Haiti. There's one specific orphanage that

1378
01:12:11,240 --> 01:12:14,320
Speaker 1: she's devoted a massive amount of attention and money towards,

1379
01:12:14,680 --> 01:12:16,519
Speaker 1: and this is an orphanage that was started by an

1380
01:12:16,520 --> 01:12:19,400
Speaker 1: American family to protect and shelter some of Haiti's hundreds

1381
01:12:19,400 --> 01:12:24,240
Speaker 1: of thousands of orphaned kids after a massive earthquake. Oprah

1382
01:12:24,280 --> 01:12:28,080
Speaker 1: has repeatedly highlighted and supported the work of missionaries operating

1383
01:12:28,120 --> 01:12:31,840
Speaker 1: adoption services to help these orphaned kids get connected to

1384
01:12:31,840 --> 01:12:34,160
Speaker 1: people who will adopt them and bring them over, generally

1385
01:12:34,200 --> 01:12:39,479
Speaker 1: to the United States. That sounds great, unproblematic. What could

1386
01:12:39,479 --> 01:12:43,559
Speaker 1: be bad about supporting an orphanage. This is where we

1387
01:12:43,600 --> 01:12:46,960
Speaker 1: get to talk about the problems with the international adoption industry,

1388
01:12:47,000 --> 01:12:50,200
Speaker 1: And largely the problems of the international adoption industry is

1389
01:12:50,240 --> 01:12:54,920
Speaker 1: that it is an industry that profits off of facilitating

1390
01:12:55,000 --> 01:12:58,160
Speaker 1: the adoption of, in this case, poor black children by

1391
01:12:58,200 --> 01:13:01,400
Speaker 1: white foreigners with money, in many cases, who are more

1392
01:13:01,439 --> 01:13:04,360
Speaker 1: interested in converting the child to their specific brand of

1393
01:13:04,439 --> 01:13:07,840
Speaker 1: Christianity or showing the child off to their friends than

1394
01:13:08,000 --> 01:13:12,639
Speaker 1: raising a traumatized child. Now, to make this even worse, many,

1395
01:13:12,680 --> 01:13:18,240
Speaker 1: if not most, of these orphans aren't actual orphans. Yes,

1396
01:13:18,720 --> 01:13:21,400
Speaker 1: after the twenty ten earthquake in Haiti, the number of

1397
01:13:21,479 --> 01:13:23,920
Speaker 1: orphanages in the country more than doubled from two hundred

1398
01:13:23,920 --> 01:13:26,439
Speaker 1: to seven hundred and fifty two by twenty thirteen. Now,

1399
01:13:26,439 --> 01:13:28,400
Speaker 1: Oprah was just one of the mint of the media

1400
01:13:28,400 --> 01:13:33,520
Speaker 1: figures making documentaries about these generally operated by foreigners orphanages.

1401
01:13:33,920 --> 01:13:36,479
Speaker 1: And really it's one of these like these heroic white

1402
01:13:36,479 --> 01:13:39,960
Speaker 1: missions coming to this dangerous place and like really risking

1403
01:13:40,000 --> 01:13:45,000
Speaker 1: themselves in order to help these poor, underprivileged kids. Oprah

1404
01:13:45,040 --> 01:13:47,160
Speaker 1: is again not the only person doing this, but her

1405
01:13:47,160 --> 01:13:50,360
Speaker 1: sheer popularity gives her an outsized role in making this

1406
01:13:50,680 --> 01:13:54,760
Speaker 1: a popular cause. At least thirty thousand children wound up

1407
01:13:54,800 --> 01:13:59,040
Speaker 1: in Haitian orphanages, and about eighty percent of those thirty

1408
01:13:59,080 --> 01:14:03,320
Speaker 1: thousand kids one living parent at least from CNN quote.

1409
01:14:03,560 --> 01:14:06,400
Speaker 1: Unable to sustain their children's well being, these parents are

1410
01:14:06,439 --> 01:14:09,559
Speaker 1: persuaded to relinquish them to privately run orphanages that promise

1411
01:14:09,600 --> 01:14:13,040
Speaker 1: that children will receive shelter, food, and education. This is

1412
01:14:13,120 --> 01:14:16,160
Speaker 1: often not the outcome. Instead, the children living in Hades

1413
01:14:16,240 --> 01:14:20,960
Speaker 1: orphanages face exploitation and trafficking unintentionally funded by foreign donors.

1414
01:14:22,280 --> 01:14:25,839
Speaker 1: Jamie Vernalde of Lumos and GEO, advocating for the institution

1415
01:14:25,960 --> 01:14:30,040
Speaker 1: of the Institutionalization of Children, says this this orphanage business,

1416
01:14:30,040 --> 01:14:33,280
Speaker 1: where orphanages are established and recruit children to raise donations

1417
01:14:33,280 --> 01:14:37,000
Speaker 1: from foreigners, is becoming increasingly recognized globally as a form

1418
01:14:37,040 --> 01:14:43,200
Speaker 1: of trafficking. These Haitian orphanages employ people called child finders,

1419
01:14:43,479 --> 01:14:48,080
Speaker 1: who seek out struggling families and bribe them for their children.

1420
01:14:48,160 --> 01:14:51,639
Speaker 1: The going rate is around seventy five dollars. The money

1421
01:14:51,680 --> 01:14:55,120
Speaker 1: to pay these child finders to bribe families for their

1422
01:14:55,200 --> 01:14:58,360
Speaker 1: kids comes from the one hundred million dollars a year

1423
01:14:58,479 --> 01:15:02,360
Speaker 1: in mostly faith based donating sent to these orphanages. This

1424
01:15:02,560 --> 01:15:05,240
Speaker 1: is a much larger issue than Oprah, but she plays

1425
01:15:05,280 --> 01:15:07,719
Speaker 1: a significant role in it, and this whole period of time,

1426
01:15:08,040 --> 01:15:11,000
Speaker 1: she's running all of these tiery stories praising missionaries who

1427
01:15:11,000 --> 01:15:14,479
Speaker 1: take children away from Haiti, and actively defends a system

1428
01:15:14,520 --> 01:15:17,280
Speaker 1: that is desperately broken. A good example of this comes

1429
01:15:17,280 --> 01:15:20,360
Speaker 1: in February of twenty ten, a group of ten Baptists,

1430
01:15:20,400 --> 01:15:23,240
Speaker 1: mostly from Idaho, were arrested in Haiti with thirty three

1431
01:15:23,320 --> 01:15:27,200
Speaker 1: children who were absolutely not related to them. When confronted

1432
01:15:27,240 --> 01:15:30,200
Speaker 1: by authorities, these Baptists assured them the kids were all

1433
01:15:30,320 --> 01:15:32,920
Speaker 1: orphans being taken to loving homes in the United States.

1434
01:15:33,200 --> 01:15:35,559
Speaker 1: The Haitian authorities looked into this for three seconds and

1435
01:15:35,600 --> 01:15:38,600
Speaker 1: realized no, they had no permission to be doing this,

1436
01:15:38,880 --> 01:15:41,040
Speaker 1: and also a lot of those children were in fact

1437
01:15:41,439 --> 01:15:45,040
Speaker 1: not orphans. Here's how CNN describes the way those kids

1438
01:15:45,080 --> 01:15:47,600
Speaker 1: wound up in the care of missionaries. Most of the

1439
01:15:47,680 --> 01:15:51,040
Speaker 1: children appear to be from cabellas parents there told the

1440
01:15:51,040 --> 01:15:54,080
Speaker 1: Associated Press they had surrendered their children on January twenty eighth,

1441
01:15:54,160 --> 01:15:56,920
Speaker 1: two days after, a local orphanage worker, acting on behalf

1442
01:15:57,000 --> 01:16:00,280
Speaker 1: of the Baptists, convened nearly the entire village of about

1443
01:16:00,280 --> 01:16:02,320
Speaker 1: five hundred people in a dirt soccer pitch to present

1444
01:16:02,360 --> 01:16:05,559
Speaker 1: the Americans offer. The orphanage worker, Isaac Adrian, said he

1445
01:16:05,600 --> 01:16:07,880
Speaker 1: told the villagers their children would be educated at a

1446
01:16:07,880 --> 01:16:10,599
Speaker 1: home in the Dominican Republic so that they might eventually

1447
01:16:10,600 --> 01:16:13,360
Speaker 1: return to take care of their families. Many parents jumped

1448
01:16:13,400 --> 01:16:15,519
Speaker 1: at the offer. The village school had collapsed and their

1449
01:16:15,520 --> 01:16:19,479
Speaker 1: homes were destroyed at Haites's catastrophic January twelfth quake. They

1450
01:16:19,520 --> 01:16:21,519
Speaker 1: had no money to feed the children. They said.

1451
01:16:23,720 --> 01:16:27,559
Speaker 5: It's truly like you know, you said it earlier, but

1452
01:16:27,640 --> 01:16:31,599
Speaker 5: it's like they're looking for child trafficking here.

1453
01:16:31,640 --> 01:16:33,920
Speaker 2: It is. They just don't like it because it's Christians.

1454
01:16:34,120 --> 01:16:37,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because this is the child trafficking. Now. It

1455
01:16:37,520 --> 01:16:41,479
Speaker 1: is unclear to me how much the American missionaries and

1456
01:16:41,479 --> 01:16:45,439
Speaker 1: their leader, Laura Silsby knew about what the Haitian parents

1457
01:16:45,479 --> 01:16:49,000
Speaker 1: had been told. Laura had met the childfinder who got

1458
01:16:49,000 --> 01:16:53,400
Speaker 1: them these kids two days earlier and it's possible he

1459
01:16:53,439 --> 01:16:56,480
Speaker 1: did the bulk of the lying. When questioned by authorities

1460
01:16:56,479 --> 01:16:59,160
Speaker 1: in the newsletter, Silsby and the missionaries insisted the kids

1461
01:16:59,240 --> 01:17:02,040
Speaker 1: had all been handed over by distant relatives who were

1462
01:17:02,080 --> 01:17:05,400
Speaker 1: frightened the kids might starve to death. Now that's their

1463
01:17:05,479 --> 01:17:09,320
Speaker 1: side of events. The childfinder Adrian, for his part, says

1464
01:17:09,640 --> 01:17:12,680
Speaker 1: he had no idea that the entire point Silsby and

1465
01:17:12,720 --> 01:17:15,880
Speaker 1: the Americans were in eighty four was to take children

1466
01:17:15,960 --> 01:17:18,320
Speaker 1: back to the United States. He thought they were trying

1467
01:17:18,320 --> 01:17:20,519
Speaker 1: to take them to an orphanage in the Dominican where

1468
01:17:20,560 --> 01:17:22,880
Speaker 1: their families would still have access to them and be

1469
01:17:22,960 --> 01:17:25,040
Speaker 1: able to get them back at some point when conditions

1470
01:17:25,040 --> 01:17:27,400
Speaker 1: were better. And I tend to think he may be

1471
01:17:27,479 --> 01:17:29,720
Speaker 1: the one telling the truth because of lines like this

1472
01:17:29,880 --> 01:17:33,040
Speaker 1: from that IP article. The parents of four children taken

1473
01:17:33,080 --> 01:17:36,760
Speaker 1: by Silsby said the Americans took down contact information for

1474
01:17:36,840 --> 01:17:39,360
Speaker 1: all the families and assured them that a relative would

1475
01:17:39,360 --> 01:17:41,639
Speaker 1: be able to visit them in the Dominican Republic. So again,

1476
01:17:42,240 --> 01:17:45,479
Speaker 1: when questioned by authorities, Silsby and the missionaries are like, oh,

1477
01:17:45,560 --> 01:17:48,519
Speaker 1: distant relatives handed them over because obviously they don't have parents.

1478
01:17:48,840 --> 01:17:51,800
Speaker 1: When questioned, the parents say no, no, no, like they

1479
01:17:51,840 --> 01:17:54,400
Speaker 1: gave us. They took our contact info and said would

1480
01:17:54,439 --> 01:17:56,240
Speaker 1: be able to visit their kids. They were just going

1481
01:17:56,280 --> 01:17:59,760
Speaker 1: over the Dominican Republic. So if that's true, this really

1482
01:17:59,760 --> 01:18:03,640
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like child theft. On behalf of the missionaries

1483
01:18:03,680 --> 01:18:06,519
Speaker 1: and Silsby. Now I'm going to spoil the end and

1484
01:18:06,560 --> 01:18:10,280
Speaker 1: say everybody but Silsby gets off scott free, although thankfully

1485
01:18:10,360 --> 01:18:14,519
Speaker 1: not with the kids. Silsby did due time in Haitian jail,

1486
01:18:14,520 --> 01:18:17,240
Speaker 1: but it was essentially knocked down to like a misdemeanor basically,

1487
01:18:17,479 --> 01:18:21,240
Speaker 1: even though the evidence I think might suggest something more nefarious.

1488
01:18:21,840 --> 01:18:25,160
Speaker 1: NPR dug into Laura Silsby and described her in an

1489
01:18:25,240 --> 01:18:28,240
Speaker 1: article as a woman who found arguably a woman who

1490
01:18:28,360 --> 01:18:32,519
Speaker 1: arguably found a lot of society's rules optional. Silsby live

1491
01:18:32,720 --> 01:18:35,280
Speaker 1: both in interviews and to the Haitian government about having

1492
01:18:35,280 --> 01:18:39,280
Speaker 1: proper paperwork. Back home, she ran a personal shopping internet business,

1493
01:18:39,280 --> 01:18:42,519
Speaker 1: and it was being actively pursued by creditors for failing

1494
01:18:42,560 --> 01:18:45,479
Speaker 1: to pay her employees or any of the other people

1495
01:18:45,560 --> 01:18:48,640
Speaker 1: she owed money. Despite this, Silsby convinced her church that

1496
01:18:48,720 --> 01:18:51,040
Speaker 1: she was in the process of putting together a shagra

1497
01:18:51,240 --> 01:18:54,479
Speaker 1: law in Idaho for the lucky Haitian kids she was

1498
01:18:54,520 --> 01:18:57,599
Speaker 1: about to rescue. The Wall Street Journal rights quote. Miss

1499
01:18:57,680 --> 01:19:00,400
Speaker 1: Silsby and miss Coulter traveled into Dominican report Public and

1500
01:19:00,439 --> 01:19:03,240
Speaker 1: Haiti last July, late and late last year. They were

1501
01:19:03,439 --> 01:19:06,479
Speaker 1: laying the groundwork then for opening an orphanage, said mel Coulter,

1502
01:19:06,640 --> 01:19:09,760
Speaker 1: Miss Colter's father. They coordinated with people who they thought

1503
01:19:09,800 --> 01:19:13,479
Speaker 1: were handling necessary details and running interference for them, he said.

1504
01:19:13,720 --> 01:19:16,520
Speaker 1: So they thought they had everything they needed in documentation.

1505
01:19:16,680 --> 01:19:20,080
Speaker 1: Mister Colter said Miss Silsby had an equally grand ambition

1506
01:19:20,160 --> 01:19:22,759
Speaker 1: greatered a home. According to a local builder, the Idaho

1507
01:19:22,800 --> 01:19:26,040
Speaker 1: plan called for a multimillion dollar complex for runaway children

1508
01:19:26,040 --> 01:19:28,880
Speaker 1: on a forty acre lot in Kuna County, Idaho. According

1509
01:19:28,920 --> 01:19:31,960
Speaker 1: to Eric Evans, owner of Evans Construction in Meridian, Miss

1510
01:19:32,040 --> 01:19:34,120
Speaker 1: Silsby told him it would have an indoor swimming pool,

1511
01:19:34,160 --> 01:19:37,000
Speaker 1: tennis courts, and dormitories for the children, said mister Evans,

1512
01:19:37,160 --> 01:19:39,759
Speaker 1: adding that she had discussed having him build the project.

1513
01:19:39,920 --> 01:19:42,160
Speaker 1: Miss Silsby's mother said that she had never heard of

1514
01:19:42,200 --> 01:19:43,040
Speaker 1: any such plan.

1515
01:19:44,360 --> 01:19:44,639
Speaker 6: Oof.

1516
01:19:45,439 --> 01:19:47,000
Speaker 7: I have to say as someone who grew up in

1517
01:19:47,000 --> 01:19:49,240
Speaker 7: the church, so I can say this, Yeah, you can

1518
01:19:49,320 --> 01:19:54,520
Speaker 7: get like church folk to hand over money and believe anything.

1519
01:19:54,640 --> 01:19:57,240
Speaker 6: Like if you're like I.

1520
01:19:56,439 --> 01:19:59,880
Speaker 1: OO now to get back to where Oprah is in.

1521
01:20:00,240 --> 01:20:02,720
Speaker 1: I'm not reading this for no reason. Oprah and her

1522
01:20:02,760 --> 01:20:06,040
Speaker 1: website and o magazine, Oprah goes to bat for these

1523
01:20:06,080 --> 01:20:12,120
Speaker 1: specific missionaries, writing having very sympathetic articles written, doing features

1524
01:20:12,160 --> 01:20:14,599
Speaker 1: on how these people are. They're just trying to help.

1525
01:20:14,760 --> 01:20:17,400
Speaker 1: They got caught up in this corrupt government and it's

1526
01:20:17,520 --> 01:20:20,479
Speaker 1: just a big misunderstanding. But like, these people are really

1527
01:20:20,520 --> 01:20:25,000
Speaker 1: good people trying to help, you know. Here's a quote

1528
01:20:25,040 --> 01:20:27,800
Speaker 1: from Oprah's write up. The oprah dot com write up

1529
01:20:27,840 --> 01:20:30,599
Speaker 1: I should say Jim said he traveled with his group

1530
01:20:30,640 --> 01:20:34,000
Speaker 1: to a number of orphanages around Porta Prince. During those visits,

1531
01:20:34,080 --> 01:20:36,040
Speaker 1: Jim says they were introduced to children who were said

1532
01:20:36,080 --> 01:20:38,280
Speaker 1: to have no home or parents to go home to.

1533
01:20:38,760 --> 01:20:41,320
Speaker 1: He says, one of the orphanage directors asked if they

1534
01:20:41,360 --> 01:20:43,679
Speaker 1: could take the children to try to help them. As

1535
01:20:43,680 --> 01:20:45,840
Speaker 1: we got their name and birth dates, we wrote those

1536
01:20:45,920 --> 01:20:48,080
Speaker 1: down and they got on our bus and we started

1537
01:20:48,120 --> 01:20:50,920
Speaker 1: taking care of them, basically, he says. The plan, he says,

1538
01:20:51,040 --> 01:20:53,120
Speaker 1: was to take the children to a restored hotel in

1539
01:20:53,160 --> 01:20:56,320
Speaker 1: the Dominican Republic that had been set up as an orphanage. Now,

1540
01:20:56,840 --> 01:20:59,719
Speaker 1: maybe Jim is unaware, but as we know from Salesby's account,

1541
01:21:00,000 --> 01:21:01,960
Speaker 1: he was not planning to take these kids to the

1542
01:21:01,960 --> 01:21:05,280
Speaker 1: Dominican Republic. And also a lot of the parents say no,

1543
01:21:05,320 --> 01:21:07,680
Speaker 1: it wasn't an orphanage director that handed them over. They

1544
01:21:07,720 --> 01:21:10,880
Speaker 1: got them from us, right. The closest we get to

1545
01:21:10,920 --> 01:21:13,360
Speaker 1: scrutiny of any of this and that oprah dot com

1546
01:21:13,439 --> 01:21:16,720
Speaker 1: article is this paragraph. Since the story broke, there have

1547
01:21:16,720 --> 01:21:19,759
Speaker 1: been allegations in the media that the group leader, Laura Silsby,

1548
01:21:19,920 --> 01:21:22,639
Speaker 1: intended to make a profit on the children by charging

1549
01:21:22,720 --> 01:21:25,360
Speaker 1: large fees to get them placed. Jim says he doesn't

1550
01:21:25,360 --> 01:21:26,519
Speaker 1: know anything about those.

1551
01:21:26,360 --> 01:21:27,760
Speaker 2: Class all be.

1552
01:21:31,000 --> 01:21:31,960
Speaker 6: Open and shutcase.

1553
01:21:32,040 --> 01:21:36,360
Speaker 1: That open and shutcase. And I know Sophie's fuming right

1554
01:21:36,400 --> 01:21:38,559
Speaker 1: now because this has gone very long. But that is

1555
01:21:38,600 --> 01:21:40,400
Speaker 1: the end of the episode. I just felt we had to,

1556
01:21:40,680 --> 01:21:43,880
Speaker 1: we really had to end this one on the Haitian orphanageists.

1557
01:21:45,560 --> 01:21:48,599
Speaker 7: Yeah, oh, Oprah, why'd you get mixed up with these people?

1558
01:21:49,320 --> 01:21:49,759
Speaker 2: Why?

1559
01:21:49,920 --> 01:21:52,800
Speaker 3: Indeed, and we have we have one more part left,

1560
01:21:52,800 --> 01:21:53,960
Speaker 3: don't we, Robert.

1561
01:21:54,200 --> 01:21:56,960
Speaker 1: We suare do we have a sixth partner? There are

1562
01:21:57,120 --> 01:22:00,559
Speaker 1: still ten pages left in the script, which has finally

1563
01:22:00,600 --> 01:22:05,320
Speaker 1: come down to twenty four and sixty eight words.

1564
01:22:05,479 --> 01:22:06,360
Speaker 6: That's like a novel.

1565
01:22:06,920 --> 01:22:09,200
Speaker 1: It's half of what is generally considered to be the

1566
01:22:09,280 --> 01:22:12,160
Speaker 1: length of like a book. Right, fifty thousand is like

1567
01:22:12,360 --> 01:22:15,000
Speaker 1: kind of the cutoff. Now that said, I don't want

1568
01:22:15,000 --> 01:22:16,640
Speaker 1: to make it out to like I wrote half of

1569
01:22:16,680 --> 01:22:20,479
Speaker 1: a nonfiction book. Here, I'm taking other people's original reporting

1570
01:22:20,560 --> 01:22:23,680
Speaker 1: and like chopping it up and you know, remixing it.

1571
01:22:24,040 --> 01:22:26,360
Speaker 1: That's That's what a lot of this is is. Oh,

1572
01:22:26,400 --> 01:22:28,920
Speaker 1: here's three different accounts of this thing. Well, I'm going

1573
01:22:28,960 --> 01:22:31,680
Speaker 1: to tell you the similarities and the differences between them.

1574
01:22:31,680 --> 01:22:34,800
Speaker 1: Here's different attitudes these different people have about stuff. Right,

1575
01:22:34,840 --> 01:22:37,600
Speaker 1: Like I'm not doing I didn't go to Portaprince. I

1576
01:22:37,640 --> 01:22:40,320
Speaker 1: didn't do the original reporting on this kind of stuff.

1577
01:22:41,800 --> 01:22:44,840
Speaker 1: But this is one of the longest scripts we've ever done.

1578
01:22:44,920 --> 01:22:46,400
Speaker 1: This is a Kissinger linked script.

1579
01:22:49,560 --> 01:22:50,280
Speaker 2: It's wild.

1580
01:22:50,760 --> 01:22:54,040
Speaker 6: Oh I feel him. Oh, I'm honored to be part

1581
01:22:54,120 --> 01:22:55,720
Speaker 6: of this like mega episode.

1582
01:22:56,560 --> 01:23:00,519
Speaker 5: This really is just I mean, at least now we're

1583
01:23:00,560 --> 01:23:04,400
Speaker 5: really getting into like having having gotten the early biography

1584
01:23:04,439 --> 01:23:11,480
Speaker 5: out of the way. It's like, Oh, Jesus Christ okay, yeah, yeah.

1585
01:23:10,200 --> 01:23:12,240
Speaker 2: This is the behind the Bastards I'm used to.

1586
01:23:13,080 --> 01:23:16,040
Speaker 7: I still think it has like like I don't know,

1587
01:23:16,080 --> 01:23:17,559
Speaker 7: I find it's so weird.

1588
01:23:17,600 --> 01:23:18,920
Speaker 6: I find myself rooting for her.

1589
01:23:18,920 --> 01:23:20,880
Speaker 7: I when I hear the thing about like the Haiti thing,

1590
01:23:20,920 --> 01:23:23,280
Speaker 7: I'm like, damn, I was rooting for you, Oprah. I

1591
01:23:23,320 --> 01:23:25,479
Speaker 7: wanted to be the voice of like no, guys, it's

1592
01:23:25,520 --> 01:23:26,919
Speaker 7: really complex and nuanced.

1593
01:23:27,000 --> 01:23:29,280
Speaker 6: But here's it like that and it's hard to say that.

1594
01:23:30,000 --> 01:23:32,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, all.

1595
01:23:32,520 --> 01:23:35,320
Speaker 1: Right everybody, Well this has been behind the Bastards. You

1596
01:23:35,360 --> 01:23:37,519
Speaker 1: guys want to plug your pluggables before we roll out here?

1597
01:23:38,920 --> 01:23:39,519
Speaker 6: Uh yeah.

1598
01:23:39,640 --> 01:23:42,320
Speaker 7: You can listen to my podcast on iHeartRadio called There

1599
01:23:42,320 --> 01:23:44,559
Speaker 7: Are No Girls on the Internet. Check it out, and

1600
01:23:44,640 --> 01:23:46,559
Speaker 7: you can follow me on Instagram at bridge in rendc

1601
01:23:47,240 --> 01:23:47,639
Speaker 7: mm hmm.

1602
01:23:48,320 --> 01:23:49,880
Speaker 2: My podcast is Joseus Racist.

1603
01:23:49,960 --> 01:23:50,280
Speaker 5: I don't know.

1604
01:23:50,320 --> 01:23:52,840
Speaker 2: Do whatever you want. People have been finding me on

1605
01:23:52,880 --> 01:23:54,920
Speaker 2: Blue Sky. It's nice.

1606
01:23:55,439 --> 01:23:58,040
Speaker 1: Find Andrew on Blue Sky. You know, stop him a

1607
01:23:58,040 --> 01:24:00,559
Speaker 1: little bit, send him pictures of your food and see

1608
01:24:00,560 --> 01:24:02,200
Speaker 1: if he'll send you pictures of his food.

1609
01:24:02,840 --> 01:24:03,640
Speaker 2: They did.

1610
01:24:04,000 --> 01:24:06,600
Speaker 5: Oh well, that might have been off a Daily's like

1611
01:24:06,760 --> 01:24:09,559
Speaker 5: iced appearance, but definitely someone did excellent.

1612
01:24:10,280 --> 01:24:13,920
Speaker 1: All right, everybody got out. I Love You.

1613
01:24:17,080 --> 01:24:19,799
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1614
01:24:20,160 --> 01:24:23,440
Speaker 3: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

1615
01:24:23,600 --> 01:24:26,800
Speaker 3: dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1616
01:24:26,880 --> 01:24:30,040
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

1617
01:24:30,040 --> 01:24:34,120
Speaker 3: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday

1618
01:24:34,240 --> 01:24:37,879
Speaker 3: and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

1619
01:24:38,080 --> 01:24:39,800
Speaker 3: at Behind the Bastards