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Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome to Behind the Oprah's a podcast about bastards.

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Speaker 1: This is, you know, the Oprah Winfrey Show or the

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Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey Show show where we talk about the Oprah

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Speaker 1: Winfrey Show. Yeah, that's as good as I could do

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Speaker 1: the intro here. Look, we're on part six. I'm exhausted,

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Speaker 1: You're exhausted, Sophie's exhausted. Let's exhaust everything we have to

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Speaker 1: say about Oprah. How are we all feeling? Andrew t

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Speaker 1: and bridget Todd at this point in the Oprah Winfrey story.

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Speaker 2: Conflicted, I will say, conflicted, but ready to hear more.

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Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, it's starting.

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Speaker 3: It's starting to feel like like the the six parts

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Speaker 3: of the five parts have been have been leading to this,

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Speaker 3: so well, I'm ready.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about Oprah's Angel Network. Now. This was Oprah's

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Speaker 1: primary vehicle for charitable don I mean, she also has

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Speaker 1: her own personal foundations. This was her primary vehicle, certainly

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Speaker 1: for educational focused charitable donations during the height of her fame.

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Speaker 1: It got its start in nineteen ninety four when a

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Speaker 1: little girl named Nora went on The Oprah Winfrey Show

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Speaker 1: to talk about what was called the Penny Harvest Project. Apparently,

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Speaker 1: she and some other kids had started collecting pennies and

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Speaker 1: eventually raised like one thousand dollars via taking in pennies

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Speaker 1: to donate to some different charitable organizations, and Oprah says

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Speaker 1: this inspired her to wonder if you could do that.

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Speaker 1: I wonder what I could do, and like, well, the

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Speaker 1: answer is, you have hundreds of millions of dollars, Oprah,

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Speaker 1: much more than some children collecting pennies. I'm glad you're

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Speaker 1: thinking this way, but obviously the answer is you could

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Speaker 1: raise a lot more money. I do think it's.

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Speaker 3: I'm loving hearing a kid did something of being like, yeah,

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Speaker 3: I'm so much more money than you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the way that oprah dot compost is

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Speaker 1: like Oprah was inspired by this little girl, but there's

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Speaker 1: certainly a read of it that's like, oh, I could

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Speaker 1: beat the hell out of that little kid. You a

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars is a lot. Shoves her off the fucking stage.

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Speaker 1: So on September eighteenth, nineteen ninety seven, Oprah announces the

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Speaker 1: launch of Oprah's Angel Network. The initial plan for this

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Speaker 1: was to turn people spare change. Basically, you donate you

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Speaker 1: know your spare change, right, She has Hillary Clinton on

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Speaker 1: the show. Hillary puts some change in a piggy bank,

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Speaker 1: and this raises three point five million dollars to provide

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Speaker 1: twenty five thousand dollars college scholarships for one hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty deserving students.

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Speaker 3: I'm sorry, kid, is that more than a thousand dollars?

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Speaker 4: Let meet.

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Speaker 1: Twenty five per kid? But no, no, no, your donation's good.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, no, no, yeah, for sure, for sure,

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Speaker 1: very impressive. I mean, you know, I raised three and

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Speaker 1: a half million with like the shit in my seat cushions.

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Speaker 1: But you know, you're good, You're good.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Oh did you have the first lady come on to

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Speaker 1: help with your program?

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Speaker 3: Oh?

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Speaker 1: No, you didn't. You don't know the first lady? You

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Speaker 1: speed down? Interesting. Oprah's not doing that. We're just big dicks. Uh.

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Speaker 3: I I just want to say, for the record, I

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Speaker 3: like the version of Oprah that does that better than

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Speaker 3: the version of Oprah that exists.

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Speaker 1: She would be on Margaret's Cool People who did cool

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Speaker 1: stuff if this had just been for twelve straight, like

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Speaker 1: literally like twenty years, just shit talking this like seven

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Speaker 1: year old, like, yeah, you think that's fucking fancy. Eighty

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Speaker 1: million dollars? Uh, to be that petty. So this is

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Speaker 1: how the Angel Network starts, Right, we're taking people's spare change,

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Speaker 1: we're giving out college student or scholarships to deserving students.

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Speaker 1: But it starts to expand, you know, they get involved

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Speaker 1: with like funding Habitat for Humanity and stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: And in two thousand, the Angel Network expands, thanks to

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Speaker 1: Paul Newman of Newman's own as well as Jeff Bezos,

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Speaker 1: they start like expanding it to like donating money to

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Speaker 1: what the website describes as fifty life changing programs. And

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Speaker 1: it's interesting she describes as like more than fifty life

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Speaker 1: changing programs got the money they needed to help their

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Speaker 1: local communities. Well maybe maybe some taxes from Jeff Bezos

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Speaker 1: canna help with that too. But eventually the Angel Network expands,

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Speaker 1: taking in and taking something like eighty million dollars in donations,

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Speaker 1: most of which ultimately go to helping to start sixty

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Speaker 1: schools in thirteen countries, including India, Ecuador, and China. So

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Speaker 1: that's nice, right, helping to start schools, funding schools. Aspects, again,

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Speaker 1: as is always the case with OPRAH, aspects of this

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Speaker 1: are quite positive, but also aspects of this are very toxic.

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Speaker 1: Because particularly in the United States States, the thing that

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Speaker 1: Oprah spends most of her donation money on is not

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Speaker 1: helping school systems. It is establishing specific charter schools. And

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Speaker 1: in fact, the last thing the Angel Network does is

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Speaker 1: it gives six million dollars in twenty ten to six

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Speaker 1: charter schools in California, Colorado, Chicago, Pennsylvania, New Orleans, and Houston.

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Speaker 1: Now charter schools are too schools that are not part

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Speaker 1: of the public education system. A lot of this get

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Speaker 1: started the charter school thing in the Bush years, Right,

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Speaker 1: this is a big part of like defunding public schools.

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Speaker 1: Let's you know, we don't need to be spending we

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Speaker 1: need to have parents need to have choice and to

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Speaker 1: have vouchers that they can put into these you know,

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Speaker 1: different charter schools and magnate schools and all of this

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Speaker 1: kind of like both SAPs the power of teachers unions

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Speaker 1: because these schools exist outside of that system. But it's

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Speaker 1: also supposed to like prove that the corrupt Department of

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Speaker 1: Education is what's holding kids back that if we just

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Speaker 1: let rich people establish these charter obviously be vastly more successful.

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Speaker 1: So it's this mix of like there are some very

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Speaker 1: good charter schools that are very good for kids. I

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Speaker 1: have friends who went to some of them, but also

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Speaker 1: the larger part of the charter school project is problematic,

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Speaker 1: and it continues on past the Bush era. One of

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Speaker 1: like the biggest roles in this is in twenty ten,

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Speaker 1: there's a documentary called Waiting for Superman by Davis Guggenheim.

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Speaker 1: This is a documentary about how broken the education system

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Speaker 1: is and we're all just kind of like waiting for

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Speaker 1: a Superman to fix it, and it winds up being

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Speaker 1: a very pro charter school movie. There's a couple of

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Speaker 1: other documentaries at the same time, the Lottery and the Cartel,

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Speaker 1: with the same basic attitude, but Waiting for Superman is

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Speaker 1: featured twice on the Oprah Winfrey Show. She's not the

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Speaker 1: only person who gives it a lot of media attention,

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Speaker 1: but she gives it a ton of media attention. And

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Speaker 1: that six million dollar donation to those six private schools

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Speaker 1: is directly off of the back of this. I found

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Speaker 1: a good write up in the Brookings Institute on the

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Speaker 1: myth of charter schools, and it summarizes the message of

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Speaker 1: all these documentaries. American public education is a failed enterprise.

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Speaker 1: The problem is not money. Public schools already spin too much.

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Speaker 1: Test scores are low because there are so many bad

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Speaker 1: teachers whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop

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Speaker 1: out because the schools fail them, and they could accomplish

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Speaker 1: practically anything. If they were saved from bad teachers, they

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Speaker 1: would get higher test scores, if schools could fire more

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Speaker 1: bad teachers and pay more to good ones. The only

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Speaker 1: hope for the future of our society, especially for poor

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Speaker 1: Black and Hispanic children, is escape from public schools, especially

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Speaker 1: to charter schools, which are mostly funded by the government,

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Speaker 1: controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make

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Speaker 1: a profit. Now that is again, this is a thing

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Speaker 1: that a lot of people are into, and Oprah is

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Speaker 1: one of the folks who puts their money where her

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Speaker 1: mouth is, Like, this is the future of like fixing

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Speaker 1: private education or public education, and it's problematic, to say

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Speaker 1: the least. To continue with a quote from that Brookings

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Speaker 1: Institute piece, and this is talking about waiting for Superman

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Speaker 1: in particular, some fact checking is in order, and the

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Speaker 1: place to start is with the film's quiet acknowledgment that

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Speaker 1: only one in five charter schools is able to get

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Speaker 1: the amazing results that it celebrates. Nothing more is said

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Speaker 1: about this astonishing statistic. It is drawn from a national

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Speaker 1: study of charter schools by Stanford economist Margaret Raymond, known

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Speaker 1: as the Credos Study. It evaluated student progress on math

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Speaker 1: tests in half of the nation's five thousand charter schools

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Speaker 1: and concluded that seventeen percent were superior to a matched

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Speaker 1: traditional public school, thirty seven percent were worse than the

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Speaker 1: public school, and the remaining forty six percent had academic

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Speaker 1: gains no different from that of a similar public school.

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Speaker 1: The proportion of charters that got amazing results is far

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Speaker 1: smaller than seventeen percent. Why did Davis Guggenheim pay no

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Speaker 1: attention to the charter schools that are run by incompetent

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Speaker 1: leaders or corporations mainly concerned to make money. Why propound

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Speaker 1: to an unknowing public the myth that charter schools are

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Speaker 1: the answer to our educational woes. When the filmmaker knows

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Speaker 1: there are twice as many failing charters as there are

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Speaker 1: successful ones, why not give an honest to accounting. The

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Speaker 1: propagandistic nature of Waiting for Superman is revealed by Guggenheim's

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Speaker 1: complete indifference to the wide variation among charter schools. There

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Speaker 1: are excellent charter schools just as they're excellent public schools.

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Speaker 1: Why did he not also inquire into the charter chains

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Speaker 1: that are mired in unsavory real estate deals, or take

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Speaker 1: his camera to the charters where most students are getting

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Speaker 1: lower scores than those in the neighborhood public schools. Why

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Speaker 1: did he not report on the charter principles who have

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Speaker 1: been indicted for embezzlement, or the charters that blur the

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Speaker 1: line between church and state. Why did he not look

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Speaker 1: into the charter schools whose leaders are paid three hundred

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Speaker 1: to four hundred thousand dollars a year to oversee small

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Speaker 1: numbers of students. I don't need to go on. The

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Speaker 1: myth of charter schools from the Brookings Institute is a

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Speaker 1: good piece on this.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just I don't actually know anything about this director.

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Speaker 3: But does it have anything to do with his last name?

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Speaker 1: I actually don't know. A journalist would check in on that.

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Speaker 1: Let's do that.

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Speaker 3: I just have a sinking feeling that maybe the reason

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Speaker 3: of the one of the incentives has to do with

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Speaker 3: the number of buildings ye name is.

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Speaker 1: He's related to the family. At least the AI overview

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Speaker 1: says he's related to the family, but not directly related

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Speaker 1: to the foundation. Let's see here, let's look at his wiki.

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Speaker 3: Just a coincidence.

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Speaker 1: His dad is filmmaker Charles Gugenheim. Oh, he'll make deadwood

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Speaker 1: one four oscars, no one.

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Speaker 3: No one said rich kids can't make good stuff. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: it's just that they get a lot more chances to

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Speaker 3: do it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So anyway, I don't like this is this is

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Speaker 1: a problematic thing that the wind that Oprah Winfrey's charity

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Speaker 1: is going to, which is not to say that everything

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Speaker 1: she don'tates to do it like a lot of good

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Speaker 1: schools I've looked into. I looked into several of the

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Speaker 1: schools that she put money on. They have pretty good

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Speaker 1: academic records. But although they're not unproblematic, is this.

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Speaker 3: Article Yeah, I will just say I I feel like

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Speaker 3: this should be said. Even if literally every single charter

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Speaker 3: school had better to scores or or even or even

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Speaker 3: a good measure was that school, Yeah, they are still

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Speaker 3: a net negative on the education system. Literally, even I

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Speaker 3: mean it's the same example with the Oprah School, which

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Speaker 3: is like, yeah, okay, you can make a good school,

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Speaker 3: but it comes at an immense opportunity cost. And that's

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Speaker 3: what's like the problem.

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Speaker 4: Here exactly that.

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Speaker 2: And like fundamentally they make public they erode public education

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Speaker 2: there at least where I live. There like full of

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Speaker 2: like pretty like like they're basically racist in my mind,

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Speaker 2: Like the way that they talk about school choice.

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Speaker 4: It's used as a giant.

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Speaker 2: Dog whistle to be like, you don't really want your

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Speaker 2: kids next to black and brown kids.

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Speaker 1: Right right?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: And I think so even if all of her schools,

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Speaker 2: all of these schools were great, it still contributes to

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Speaker 2: a lot of pretty I think, like messed up things

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Speaker 2: in education.

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Speaker 3: Always resegregating the education system.

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Speaker 1: Cool, yes, And it's also not all of these schools

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Speaker 1: are And again because they abide by different rules. There's

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Speaker 1: a lot of problematic aspects to some of them, including

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Speaker 1: one of the schools that Oprah gave a shitload of

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Speaker 1: money to, this one, particularly in New Orleans. I'm going

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Speaker 1: to quote from Beet here. Numerous charter schools, including those

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Speaker 1: backed by Oprah Winfrey, Microsoft's Bill Gates, retailer Walmart, and

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Speaker 1: New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, have been accused of

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Speaker 1: breaking federal law by not serving children with disabilities. The

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Speaker 1: children are named in place plaintiffs in the legal battle,

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Speaker 1: which stems back to twenty ten. Charter schools and New

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Speaker 1: Orleans were seen as a way to rehab the city's

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Speaker 1: failing education system and serve seventy percent of cities children.

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Speaker 1: The Loop twenty one reports Lawrence Melrose sixteen needed counseling

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Speaker 1: in speech therapy, which wouldn't be provided by the New

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Speaker 1: Orleans Charter Science and Math charter school that was made

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Speaker 1: popular through its association with Oprah Winfrey. Instead, he was

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Speaker 1: frequently suspended and not allowed to ride the bus. The

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Speaker 1: lawsuit says the school kept him from attending a celebration

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Speaker 1: where students watched Oprah Winfrey hand the principle a check

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Speaker 1: for one million dollars. The exclusion of children with serious

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Speaker 1: learning and emotional disabilities occur often, says the lawsuit, at

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Speaker 1: charter schools, which comprise the majority of public schools in

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Speaker 1: New Orleans. The exclusion of special needs kids also helps

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Speaker 1: charter schools test scores, since children with disabilities typically do

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Speaker 1: not do well.

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Speaker 2: You couldn't even watch the assembly with Oprah like they

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Speaker 2: would like.

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Speaker 1: Nah. No, they literally locked him out of this.

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Speaker 3: It's also like these fucks will like, I mean, you

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Speaker 3: see it on so many other places where they're trying

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Speaker 3: to reinvent the wheel where they like, I feel like

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Speaker 3: transportation is such a clear one where it's like they're

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Speaker 3: going to try to do self driving cars before they

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Speaker 3: try oh properly funding a subway system in Los Angeles.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And it's like I don't I'm sorry, guys.

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Speaker 3: All the solutions for these ills were invented in like

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Speaker 3: fucking whatever eighteen hundred. We're just electing not to do

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Speaker 3: them because you're a billionaire. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean, at this point, I support Musk building a

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Speaker 1: rich people tunnel under LA just because we'll have a

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Speaker 1: quake and the people who pay to access that tunnel

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Speaker 1: will all learn a lesson very quickly. At the same time, listen.

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Speaker 3: If he had even like an ounce of like self

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Speaker 3: believe his ass should be on Mars right now.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, get yourself there. Man. So I wanted to

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Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Oprah in charter schools, but really,

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Speaker 1: when we talk about Oprah's direct bastardism, there's no better

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Speaker 1: thing to discuss than the bevy of khnman that she

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Speaker 1: helped to introduce to the world. She is responsible for

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Speaker 1: making John of God, the Brazilian faith healer who sexually

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Speaker 1: assaulted at least six hundred women, internationally famous. There are

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Speaker 1: numerous cases of women who visited his compound and were

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Speaker 1: raped or assaulted and say that they went there because

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Speaker 1: they saw him on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and specifically

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Speaker 1: they saw doctor Oz tell Opra Winfrey that he couldn't

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Speaker 1: explain the miraculous healings this man was responsible for. Now,

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Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say more about John of God or

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Speaker 1: doctor Oz or doctor Phil because we have done two

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Speaker 1: part episodes on all three of these guys, none of

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Speaker 1: whom would have Obviously there's specifically John of God was

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Speaker 1: like in Brazil, a famous faith healer and assaulting people.

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Speaker 1: He would not have become an international star without Oprah.

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Speaker 1: And I don't think doctor like Doctor Oz probably just

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Speaker 1: stays a surgeon. Doctor Phil probably dies in a ditch.

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Speaker 1: That's my guest for doctor Phil is he dies in

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Speaker 1: a ditch somewhere in rural Texas if doesn't pick him.

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Speaker 3: Up some kind of charisma. Doctor Oz, it's like he's

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Speaker 3: the most he's so repellent, you're just like, oh my god.

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Speaker 3: Without Oprah's cosyn he is.

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Speaker 1: There's no way this man is a star. That's how.

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Speaker 1: That's the star power she has. Looks just listen to

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Speaker 1: doctor oz speak. Yeah, amazing stuff. So we're not going

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Speaker 1: to go into more to them, but I should note

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Speaker 1: we have never ever had a bastard who is responsible

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Speaker 1: for three different two parter episodes on other bastards, or

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Speaker 1: at least largely responsible. That's mark.

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Speaker 3: This, I think is the place where I'll try to

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Speaker 3: drop my quote, which is I mean, it does seem

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Speaker 3: like like Oprah is, she's like the enzyme for bastards,

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Speaker 3: Like she just makes, she takes She finds the worst

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Speaker 3: people or the worst people get into her orbit, and

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Speaker 3: she makes them a million times stronger than they ever

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Speaker 3: had any right to be.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And I think that really is the way

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Speaker 1: to look at it.

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Speaker 2: And it's funny because I would peg Oprah as somebody

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Speaker 2: that I would assume would be a good judge of character,

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Speaker 2: and she's a terrible judge of character. It's like it

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Speaker 2: truly is like the worst people who come into her orbit,

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Speaker 2: She's like, let's make you a star.

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Speaker 4: What is it hooked up with that.

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Speaker 3: I mean, on some level, she has to be following

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Speaker 3: what she believes the audience wants. But why I picked

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Speaker 3: those specific people it is a little baffling.

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Speaker 1: I think there's a back. I'm sure there's a degree

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Speaker 1: to which both of those people, particularly doctor Phil, being

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Speaker 1: as doctor Phil is a pretty manipulative person, I would argue,

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Speaker 1: and I think he just understood how to make her

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Speaker 1: like him. A manipulator. Doctor Oz has a legitimate thing

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Speaker 1: that would make you like him and want to put

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Speaker 1: him in front of people. It is not unreasonable at

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Speaker 1: the start of things that you'd be like, this is

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Speaker 1: literally one of the best heart surgeons who's ever lived.

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Speaker 1: Maybe he'd be a good person to talk about public health.

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Speaker 1: Turns out no, turns out absolutely not. But I understand

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Speaker 1: how that process starts. Now, obviously there was ample evidence,

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Speaker 1: especially during the shot of god Shit, that he was not,

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Speaker 1: in fact a good person be doing that with. But

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Speaker 1: I don't think the evil is not in that she

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Speaker 1: initially was like, well, maybe the world's best heart surgeon

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Speaker 1: is a good guy to talk about health, right. I

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Speaker 1: get how that starts with doctor Phil. It's more like

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Speaker 1: this guy made me feel good about myself during a lawsuit.

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Speaker 1: Let's let him abuse teenagers on television for twenty years.

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Speaker 1: But again, we're not gonna say anymore about these guys

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Speaker 1: because we've said so much about them. But I did

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Speaker 1: feel like we have to go into detail about one

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Speaker 1: of Oprah's toxic bastards, right one of the convent that

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Speaker 1: she elevated to the public eye, who we haven't done

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Speaker 1: episodes on. And that's going to bring us to James

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Speaker 1: Ray born in nineteen fifty seven. Ray was a former

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Speaker 1: telemarketer who got into the business of teaching motivational seminars

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Speaker 1: to corporations. He was not an original dude, and instead

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Speaker 1: worked for Stephen Covey, the author of The Seven Habits

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Speaker 1: of Highly Effective People, teaching Stephen Covey's particular flavor of

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Speaker 1: self help bullshit to car salesman and the like. Or

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Speaker 1: at least Ray claims that he worked for Stephen Covey.

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Speaker 1: There is no actual evidence of this, and Ray is

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Speaker 1: a serial liar, so it's entirely possible he just made

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Speaker 1: that up for clout. Ray started his own motivational speaking

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Speaker 1: business and it did okay, It's not huge, it's not

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Speaker 1: really overwhelmingly successful, probably because he's not super successful himself.

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Speaker 1: He is not rich and famous, so he's like telling

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Speaker 1: people how to get rich, but like he didn't do it.

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Speaker 1: Ray is like a lot of these guys. There's very

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Speaker 1: little to separate him from the herd at this point.

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Speaker 1: He's an advocate of the law of attraction, which we've

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Speaker 1: talked about a few times in these episodes. This is

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Speaker 1: the bullshit belief underpinning the secret. Whatever good or bad

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Speaker 1: things happen to you happen because you drew them to yourself.

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Speaker 1: Like a lot of guys in this space, he mixed

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Speaker 1: in buzzwords from quantum physics because of course he's like

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Speaker 1: a big also a big masculine guy, right, So as

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Speaker 1: a masculine guy, you can't just be like, you know,

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Speaker 1: you can't just be like this is the you know,

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Speaker 1: you can't do the wooy version of this, right, you

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Speaker 1: have to say, this is quantum physics, right, I'm talking

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Speaker 1: about science to you, you know, And so would He

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Speaker 1: would rope in buzzwords from quantum physics to try to

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Speaker 1: convince mild skeptics that what he was selling in fact science.

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Speaker 1: In one interview, he said this about personal responsibility. I

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Speaker 1: fully know for me that there is no blame. Every

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Speaker 1: single thing is your responsibility and nothing is your fault

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Speaker 1: because every single thing that comes to you is a gift,

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Speaker 1: a lesson. Now do you think that could like be bad?

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Speaker 2: I mean I love that nothing is my fault, angles

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Speaker 2: that I really really connect you.

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Speaker 1: Uh yeah, there's going to be a very interesting thing

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Speaker 1: that becomes his fault in the near future here, So yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think that's probably a good idea for him to

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Speaker 1: be selling at this point, given where he winds up.

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Speaker 1: His motivational seminars involved board breaking and trust falls, all

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Speaker 1: of which was done without proper medical staff present, which

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Speaker 1: is why prior to him getting famous, several people were

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Speaker 1: badly injured during his events. At least one time at

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Speaker 1: Walt Disney World in two thousand and five, a forty

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Speaker 1: two year old man was hospitalized after Ray made him

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Speaker 1: exercise in a poorly built sweat lodge. So this is

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Speaker 1: all happening before he winds up on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Now,

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Speaker 1: what gets him on the show is that he is

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Speaker 1: one of several narrators for the two thousand and six

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Speaker 1: documentary The Secret, which is what gets him on the

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Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah lavished praise on Ray and urged

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Speaker 1: her viewers to sign up for his courses and listen

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Speaker 1: to his wisdom. Many did, and he goes in short

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Speaker 1: order from a failing motivational speaker with several lawsuits against

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Speaker 1: him to the hottest thing in town.

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Speaker 4: This is what I'm talking about with her. He just

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Speaker 4: was the name.

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Speaker 2: I am a voice artist, right, like I've narrated plenty

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Speaker 2: of things. The fact that this guy, who already had

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Speaker 2: a pretty problematic history, just was a narrator, and she's like, Ooh,

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Speaker 2: let's elevate you, Let's make you a star. Yeah, something

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Speaker 2: must be like I don't know, I don't know where

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Speaker 2: I'm going with this, but it is. It baffles me

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Speaker 2: why she would want to be further mixed up with

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Speaker 2: this a person like this just based on him being

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Speaker 2: a narrator of the secret.

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Speaker 3: I mean, we'll never know because it's it's not like

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Speaker 3: there's like whistleblowers from the Oprah camp, but like surely

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Speaker 3: there were there had to be discussions, Yeah, like Oprah,

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Speaker 3: why these guys?

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Speaker 1: You know? I think some of it is just that

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Speaker 1: at this point, he's just another motivational speaker, and it

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Speaker 1: looks like he's attached to this successful project. He probably

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Speaker 1: had a good rapport with Oprah. All you really assume

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Speaker 1: at that point is like, Okay, well maybe this will work, right, Like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this guy's probably someone smart to have on.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I guess that's the other side of Oprah

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Speaker 3: is like because she's gotten so far on gut. I mean,

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Speaker 3: maybe it's just a charming five minutes at a fucking

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Speaker 3: cocktail party or a meeting.

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of the a lot of cases

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Speaker 1: it is like literally they charmed me for like five minutes. Yeah, yeah, man,

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Speaker 1: that's that's wild.

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Speaker 3: To have a vibe spaceed empire. I mean, I guess

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Speaker 3: we are living in one, so on.

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Speaker 1: I know, but that's not zero percent of cool zones business, right,

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Speaker 1: That's just the way entertainment works, now, you know. Take

434
00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:24,119
Speaker 1: that what you will. So let's go to ads and

435
00:23:24,160 --> 00:23:26,960
Speaker 1: then we'll come back and talk about what happens next

436
00:23:27,040 --> 00:23:37,120
Speaker 1: in the James Ray story. We're back, so I want

437
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:39,200
Speaker 1: to read a quote from The New York Times about

438
00:23:39,359 --> 00:23:42,359
Speaker 1: kind of the explosion in Ray's business after this, because

439
00:23:42,359 --> 00:23:45,080
Speaker 1: he goes from again a middling figure, not a ton

440
00:23:45,119 --> 00:23:48,480
Speaker 1: of money, not super successful, to for a while like

441
00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:50,919
Speaker 1: the biggest name and self help or at least like

442
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:54,040
Speaker 1: the biggest new name and self help. Quote. He offered

443
00:23:54,080 --> 00:23:56,800
Speaker 1: a hierarchy of courses, each more expensive than the last,

444
00:23:56,840 --> 00:24:02,200
Speaker 1: culminating in Spiritual Warrior, a ten dollar retreat near Sedona, Arizona.

445
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:06,560
Speaker 1: After a series of endurance exercises, including extended fasting, participants

446
00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:09,240
Speaker 1: spent hours in a sweat lodge where temperatures soared above

447
00:24:09,240 --> 00:24:13,200
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty degrees. Mister Ray presented Spiritual Warriors

448
00:24:13,200 --> 00:24:16,720
Speaker 1: several times, and some past participants had raised questions about

449
00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:19,359
Speaker 1: whether he or his staff members had sufficient training to

450
00:24:19,440 --> 00:24:20,560
Speaker 1: run a sweat lodge.

451
00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:23,360
Speaker 4: They probably didn't, right, Oh.

452
00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:25,879
Speaker 1: No, they didn't. Bridget I'm going to tell you right now,

453
00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:28,560
Speaker 1: if there's a fucking white guy running a sweat lodge,

454
00:24:28,600 --> 00:24:31,439
Speaker 1: he does not have sufficient training. That's just a rule

455
00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:33,879
Speaker 1: in sweat lodges, or white lady, let's be fair.

456
00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:38,119
Speaker 3: One hundred and fifty degrees when when the room gets closer,

457
00:24:38,320 --> 00:24:41,720
Speaker 3: it goes past like, that's closer to my oven controls

458
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:45,400
Speaker 3: than my thermostat controls. Yes, which is roll.

459
00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:50,199
Speaker 1: Bad when you are in the able to cook meat spectrum. People. Yeah,

460
00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:53,400
Speaker 1: and again, you know, sweat lodges. And I'm not competent

461
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:56,000
Speaker 1: to talk about this exhaustively, but there's a long history

462
00:24:56,520 --> 00:25:00,080
Speaker 1: in several Native American traditions of use of sweat lodges,

463
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:03,320
Speaker 1: and they can be have been part of like therapeutic

464
00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:07,000
Speaker 1: treatments run by people who know what they are doing.

465
00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:11,440
Speaker 1: I'm not saying there's sweat lodges are inherently bad. James

466
00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:13,480
Speaker 1: does not know what he's doing, and he is not

467
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:18,320
Speaker 1: utilizing this as part of an actual like therapeutic thing.

468
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:21,280
Speaker 1: He is sticking people in a hot room because it's

469
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:25,080
Speaker 1: unpleasant and he wants to make them do something incredibly

470
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 1: unpleasant and physically straining, because that when you get out

471
00:25:29,800 --> 00:25:31,679
Speaker 1: of when you do that with a group of people

472
00:25:31,920 --> 00:25:35,359
Speaker 1: and you have like this dangerous, painful physical experience, and

473
00:25:35,400 --> 00:25:37,919
Speaker 1: then you get out of it on the other side

474
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:41,879
Speaker 1: of it, you feel bonded to those people and to

475
00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:45,879
Speaker 1: the program. Right, Yeah, that's why he's doing this. And

476
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 1: when you use a thing like that that way, your

477
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:53,720
Speaker 1: concern is that they suffer, right, and not that we're

478
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:55,680
Speaker 1: doing this in a way that is safe or going

479
00:25:55,680 --> 00:25:58,560
Speaker 1: to like have a therapeutic benefit. It's that this is

480
00:25:58,600 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 1: as intense and experiences as possible, and in fact, he

481
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 1: would brag about it. When he does his big Sweat

482
00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:06,280
Speaker 1: Lodge event on October eighth, two thousand and nine, for

483
00:26:06,320 --> 00:26:08,199
Speaker 1: a group of people each paying ten grand for the

484
00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:11,879
Speaker 1: Spiritual Warrior seminar. The guy he brags to the group

485
00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:14,760
Speaker 1: that he just talked to the guy stoking the fire,

486
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:16,840
Speaker 1: you know, setting it with good intentions. You know, he's

487
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:19,480
Speaker 1: part of it is he's got to really think about

488
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:22,440
Speaker 1: positive intentions for your experience to help make sure there's

489
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 1: a good one. And this is the hottest fire we've

490
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 1: ever had, you know. Make him feel special, right, make

491
00:26:28,359 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 1: them feel like they're getting this uniquely intense life changing experience.

492
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:36,320
Speaker 1: They did get that, you know, I gotta say it

493
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:39,640
Speaker 1: is a uniquely intense life changing experience for all of them.

494
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:42,080
Speaker 1: Twenty one of the people in that Sweat Lodge are

495
00:26:42,119 --> 00:26:46,160
Speaker 1: hospitalized and three of them die when first responders show up.

496
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:48,679
Speaker 1: One compares what he saw to quote the site of

497
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:49,840
Speaker 1: a mass suicide.

498
00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:54,760
Speaker 3: Uh, I just check out is medium is north of

499
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:55,400
Speaker 3: medium rare?

500
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:57,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like, if your meat is cooked to one

501
00:26:57,680 --> 00:27:03,800
Speaker 1: fifty in the center, you're you're pretty you're pretty much good. Yeah,

502
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:07,640
Speaker 1: so this is very bad you're not supposed to kill

503
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 1: multiple people in a single sweat lodge. You're not supposed

504
00:27:11,080 --> 00:27:15,000
Speaker 1: to ever kill people in your sweat lodge. These are

505
00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:20,120
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly not old people. There's a podcast called Guru on

506
00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:23,480
Speaker 1: Wondery that goes there's just about Ray and goes into

507
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:25,920
Speaker 1: detail about this. One of the women who dies is

508
00:27:25,960 --> 00:27:27,919
Speaker 1: I think like thirty nine years old, and it's like

509
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 1: the story you hear a lot. This is a woman

510
00:27:31,880 --> 00:27:34,760
Speaker 1: who's like career ambitions hadn't really worked out, and she

511
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:36,639
Speaker 1: didn't really have a clear idea of like what she

512
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 1: wanted to do, and so she gets into a lot

513
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:42,320
Speaker 1: of this self help type stuff. She sees James on

514
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:45,119
Speaker 1: the Oprah Winfrey Show. She has the same attitude of

515
00:27:45,119 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 1: a lot of people that like, well, if Oprah says

516
00:27:46,760 --> 00:27:48,959
Speaker 1: this guy is good, he must be. She gets his books,

517
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:52,159
Speaker 1: she drops tens of thousands of dollars on courses, and

518
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:55,439
Speaker 1: then eventually all of her savings on this spiritual Warrior

519
00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:57,080
Speaker 1: weekend that fucking kills her.

520
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:02,920
Speaker 2: Think we're in this, I mean today, I think we're

521
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 2: in a weird golden age of like entrepreneurism and tech

522
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 2: and like bullshit risky spirituality kind of coming together, Like

523
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:16,879
Speaker 2: I feel like this was on the like this this

524
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:19,439
Speaker 2: guy was sort of on the early days of what

525
00:28:19,560 --> 00:28:22,480
Speaker 2: is definitely here, because I have heard so many people

526
00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:24,920
Speaker 2: in tech who are sort of like that woman describes,

527
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:27,000
Speaker 2: like not sure what they should do. Maybe they've been

528
00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:29,560
Speaker 2: laid off, They're not sure what's next for them, and

529
00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:33,919
Speaker 2: they are so many hucksters that will take their money

530
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 2: and offer them something that they that it's meant to be,

531
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 2: like a spiritual whether it's psychedelics. That's a thing that's

532
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:42,200
Speaker 2: really taking off right now in that space. It makes

533
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:45,840
Speaker 2: me so sad that people who probably could have used

534
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:48,720
Speaker 2: like therapy or a career coach would turn to somebody

535
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 2: who would so callously exploit them and put them at

536
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:55,360
Speaker 2: such danger that they would die and like die paying.

537
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:55,680
Speaker 4: For the pleasure.

538
00:28:55,720 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 2: It's just so disgusting, and it like it just it's yeah,

539
00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:02,800
Speaker 2: it does. These people have no values and they are

540
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:03,880
Speaker 2: such hucksters.

541
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:08,440
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and Ray is the epitome of that. And

542
00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:10,360
Speaker 1: of course, as soon as he kills a bunch of people,

543
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:13,959
Speaker 1: Oprah distances herself from him, he does not show back up,

544
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 1: and by God, have at least last time I checked,

545
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:20,080
Speaker 1: I couldn't find good clips of him in on Oprah's show.

546
00:29:20,120 --> 00:29:23,520
Speaker 1: A lot of that stuff gets Let's get this shit

547
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:24,000
Speaker 1: out of here.

548
00:29:25,720 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 3: Impressive that she's able to scrub so much shit off

549
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 3: the internet.

550
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 1: I will, yeah, I mean it's all rights claims and stuff,

551
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, So he is charged and convicted, he

552
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:39,320
Speaker 1: spends some time in prison. Oh obviously nothing happens to her.

553
00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:42,360
Speaker 1: She does not stop putting self help gurus on her

554
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:47,200
Speaker 1: show or stop encouraging new age experimental alternative medicine. I

555
00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: do want to listen to something that I didn't have

556
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:51,520
Speaker 1: in the script, but I just came across it, and

557
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:53,720
Speaker 1: maybe we'll try seeing this video. This is something that

558
00:29:53,800 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 1: James Ray posted after getting out of prison called be

559
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:01,240
Speaker 1: careful what you wish for. So I'm just gonna I'm gonna,

560
00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:05,960
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take the wheel here. Sophie Insights into success,

561
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:09,480
Speaker 1: Be the best you can be. I love that, be

562
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,320
Speaker 1: the best you can be. This man killed three people.

563
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:16,760
Speaker 5: I like the website is into success dot com.

564
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:19,160
Speaker 1: Also, I have to say before we start this, James

565
00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:21,840
Speaker 1: Arthur Ray, it is one of those like three word names,

566
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:24,200
Speaker 1: like that's a very serial killery.

567
00:30:24,480 --> 00:30:26,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, he is definitely gonna kill somebody for sure.

568
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:29,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was always doomed to it, although not a

569
00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:30,680
Speaker 1: bad fit on the suit anyway.

570
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:34,920
Speaker 6: And I thought I'd finally arrived. Well, that's a dangerous

571
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:38,160
Speaker 6: place to be. And I would say this to any entrepreneur,

572
00:30:39,080 --> 00:30:43,880
Speaker 6: if you believe you've arrived, you may have likely arrived,

573
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:47,480
Speaker 6: most likely have arrived at a very very dangerous place,

574
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:52,480
Speaker 6: because nothing stays the same. It just doesn't. And I

575
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:54,800
Speaker 6: don't know how much you know, Paul about my history,

576
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:59,720
Speaker 6: but in two thousand and nine, I was at the

577
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:02,240
Speaker 6: top of my game. I was worth north of twenty

578
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 6: million dollars. I had built an ink five hundred ten

579
00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:09,200
Speaker 6: million dollar company, you know, I had all these other

580
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:13,560
Speaker 6: accolades going on. And then I was involved in a horrible,

581
00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 6: horrible accident in two thousand and nine in a five

582
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:25,000
Speaker 6: day retreat in the desert of Sedona, and a'll shortened

583
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 6: the story, but it was quite a lengthy journey. And

584
00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:32,000
Speaker 6: I talk about this in great depth and detail in

585
00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:38,200
Speaker 6: my book The Business of Redemption, because it I went

586
00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:42,240
Speaker 6: from the pinnacle to the pit. I literally, you know,

587
00:31:42,520 --> 00:31:44,480
Speaker 6: we had at the end of this five day event,

588
00:31:45,560 --> 00:31:48,600
Speaker 6: which is a very intensive week of hard work and

589
00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:53,440
Speaker 6: diving deep into those psychological issues that drive behavior and

590
00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 6: bringing those to the forefront of our mind so we

591
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:59,560
Speaker 6: can heal them, release them, and move forward in life

592
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:03,720
Speaker 6: and integrate those things. And so it was a very

593
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:06,360
Speaker 6: emotional week. It was a narduous week. And at the

594
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:13,560
Speaker 6: end we had this experiential learning opportunity called a sweat lodge.

595
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:16,400
Speaker 1: I love how long it takes him to get to Like,

596
00:32:16,480 --> 00:32:19,240
Speaker 1: so we had a sweat lodge and I killed three people.

597
00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:20,320
Speaker 3: Oh my god.

598
00:32:20,560 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 1: It's also there's a masterclass here, and like this guy

599
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 1: hospitalized almost two dozen people and killed three. And he

600
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:31,200
Speaker 1: immediately is like, as soon as I get out, I'm

601
00:32:31,200 --> 00:32:34,080
Speaker 1: going to write a book about redemption. Right, I'm going

602
00:32:34,160 --> 00:32:36,480
Speaker 1: to have like this is I'm just gonna pivot this

603
00:32:36,520 --> 00:32:40,080
Speaker 1: to being about my success journey. And like I thought

604
00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:43,800
Speaker 1: I was at the top, but you know, I didn't

605
00:32:43,880 --> 00:32:47,840
Speaker 1: realize what fate had around the corner when I accidentally

606
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 1: killed three people at a sweat lodge. This is just

607
00:32:50,560 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 1: one of those curveballs. Life sinses sometimes, right, Sometimes you're

608
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:56,400
Speaker 1: just out there living your life, trying to do your best,

609
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:58,440
Speaker 1: and you get three people killed in a sweat lodge.

610
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:02,480
Speaker 3: It happens if anyone's just listening to this. Also that

611
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:05,000
Speaker 3: I didn't realize he was such a tmu ass wolf

612
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:06,480
Speaker 3: Blitzer looking motherfucker.

613
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:10,360
Speaker 1: He is a really really wolf Blitzer looking motherfucker. Yeah,

614
00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:12,320
Speaker 1: that's how I would describe him.

615
00:33:12,600 --> 00:33:13,520
Speaker 3: Yeah.

616
00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:15,840
Speaker 4: I also like how he describes it as like I

617
00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 4: was involved in an accident.

618
00:33:17,040 --> 00:33:18,880
Speaker 1: Out I was involved in an accident.

619
00:33:18,920 --> 00:33:20,320
Speaker 2: You might think that he means like a dirt but

620
00:33:20,320 --> 00:33:22,360
Speaker 2: he was involved in a dirt accident or something.

621
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:23,920
Speaker 1: I crashed my car, I hit a kid with my

622
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:28,360
Speaker 1: you know, total accident. They darted into traffic. No, no, no, no,

623
00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:33,280
Speaker 1: no no. You engineered a situation that was definitely going

624
00:33:33,320 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 1: to kill people because you didn't know what the fuck

625
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 1: you were doing and had lost your mind with arrogance

626
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:45,360
Speaker 1: and belief in your own power. So uh, this does

627
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:47,760
Speaker 1: not stop Oprah from putting self help gurus on her

628
00:33:47,800 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: show or encouraging new experimental alternative medicine. Again. She puts

629
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:56,959
Speaker 1: ray On in two thousand and six, He kills people

630
00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine the John of God episode.

631
00:34:00,600 --> 00:34:05,640
Speaker 1: I think after that, so it's good stuff. In my research,

632
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:08,080
Speaker 1: I came across an article by Gene Brown the sister

633
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:11,439
Speaker 1: of Kirby Brown, who died in that sweat lodge, Gene

634
00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:14,960
Speaker 1: and her family started a nonprofit Seek See k All

635
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:18,960
Speaker 1: Caps Safely, focused on trying to establish protections and guardrails

636
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:21,319
Speaker 1: for the self help industry. She wrote this in an

637
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 1: open letter to Winfrey. You helped make this sham of

638
00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 1: a man what he was. In fact, it was after

639
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 1: seeing him on your show that my sister Kirby Brown

640
00:34:29,160 --> 00:34:31,560
Speaker 1: read The Secret and became a fan of James Ray.

641
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 1: I remember when we were together for my wedding at

642
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:36,720
Speaker 1: my parents' house in July of two thousand and nine,

643
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:38,719
Speaker 1: three months before she'd die of heat stroke in a

644
00:34:38,719 --> 00:34:41,799
Speaker 1: plastic tint in Arizona. I remember Kirby telling me that

645
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:43,840
Speaker 1: I had to read this book, that it was amazing,

646
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:46,680
Speaker 1: that James Ray was amazing, that he'd been on OPRAH,

647
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:48,640
Speaker 1: and that she was looking forward to the Ray event

648
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:51,520
Speaker 1: she'd be attending a few months later. That's right, she

649
00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:56,360
Speaker 1: mentioned you by name, and Brown is begging Oprah in

650
00:34:56,440 --> 00:34:59,840
Speaker 1: this to speak up and use her incredibly powerful, you

651
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:03,960
Speaker 1: unique platform to advocate for regulations to protect people from

652
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:07,680
Speaker 1: the predatory aspects of the self help industry. To my knowledge,

653
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:11,520
Speaker 1: Oprah never took a up on this strident plea, and yeah,

654
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:13,000
Speaker 1: that's that's a bummer.

655
00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:17,799
Speaker 3: It's a little though also, like I mean, listen, I'm

656
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:20,640
Speaker 3: coming at this from a place of utter non belief

657
00:35:20,680 --> 00:35:22,799
Speaker 3: in this, and I do understand that parts of this

658
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:26,240
Speaker 3: industry have helped people in certain ways. But the idea

659
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:30,840
Speaker 3: of like advocating for regulations on face, I guess is

660
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 3: this is like the same as the FDA technically has to,

661
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:37,080
Speaker 3: you know, have a handle on these supplements industry, or

662
00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 3: like casinos have some guardrails. But it is so dark

663
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:45,560
Speaker 3: because it's like this shit is fake. So like what

664
00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:49,640
Speaker 3: regulation other than this should not be These should not

665
00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:52,320
Speaker 3: be claims that you can make because they are lies.

666
00:35:53,880 --> 00:35:56,760
Speaker 3: Can there possibly be? I guess, I guess you shouldn't

667
00:35:56,840 --> 00:35:58,920
Speaker 3: kill people. You can lie to them, but you can

668
00:35:58,960 --> 00:36:02,680
Speaker 3: lie to them take their money. Shouldn't kill them. I

669
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:03,839
Speaker 3: don't know. It's very dark.

670
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:08,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's pretty bleak. Now, I can't conclude a

671
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:11,719
Speaker 1: series on Oprah Winfrey without at some point discussing her

672
00:36:11,760 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 1: infamous book club. And so that's what we're gonna do.

673
00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 1: Now you get to talk about We're not going to

674
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:19,239
Speaker 1: keep doing that joke I should say something about the

675
00:36:19,280 --> 00:36:22,640
Speaker 1: car thing. Probably, So she does this episode where she

676
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:25,879
Speaker 1: has like three people on who can't afford cars, and

677
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 1: you know, the problems that causes in their life, and

678
00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:30,439
Speaker 1: then they all find out they're getting brand new Pontiacs,

679
00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 1: and then gradually becomes clear every one in the audience

680
00:36:33,640 --> 00:36:36,920
Speaker 1: is getting a free new Pontiac. Now, two things. Number one,

681
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:39,400
Speaker 1: the specific if you know anything about Pontiac, you know

682
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:44,719
Speaker 1: that that's a curse more than it's a blessing. And

683
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:48,719
Speaker 1: the sunfire Yeah yeah, yeah, I had a cousin with

684
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:51,319
Speaker 1: a firebird and boy, howdie was that thing a piece

685
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:57,279
Speaker 1: of shit. But also, like these are, this was an

686
00:36:57,320 --> 00:37:00,200
Speaker 1: advertising ploy. In part, Pontiac pays for the cars, that's

687
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:03,279
Speaker 1: why they're free, right. But also the Oprah Winfree Show

688
00:37:03,320 --> 00:37:06,440
Speaker 1: does not remember to give the people money in addition

689
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 1: to the cars, because when you get given a car,

690
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:12,239
Speaker 1: there's like tax implications. And everyone wound up owing like

691
00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:16,040
Speaker 1: six grand as a result each for that car, which

692
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 1: was like a big problem for a lot of people

693
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:20,920
Speaker 1: because these are folks who couldn't afford cars. Now, in

694
00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:23,040
Speaker 1: terms of the Bastard column, this was more of like

695
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:25,160
Speaker 1: a thing. They just didn't because in the future, when

696
00:37:25,200 --> 00:37:28,040
Speaker 1: she would give expensive gifts to people, the show would

697
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:31,040
Speaker 1: also give them checks to account for the tax burden.

698
00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:33,960
Speaker 1: So I think this probably lands and just like you

699
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:36,759
Speaker 1: weren't thinking about this was like an ill thought out

700
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:41,080
Speaker 1: advertising ploy that worked pretty well for Pontiac. Although where

701
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,759
Speaker 1: Pontiac is today, it's still Pontiac. It's still Pontiac.

702
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:47,800
Speaker 3: Honestly, there's a part of me that's like the bigger

703
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:51,279
Speaker 3: thing is like that will never be in an era

704
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:56,960
Speaker 3: where any media is consolidated enough that it's worth that

705
00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:01,879
Speaker 3: level of outlay, Like what is it like one hundred cars? Yeah,

706
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 3: fifty cars something like that. Yeah, like as an advertising stunt,

707
00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:09,160
Speaker 3: Like it's just not you know, in addition to all

708
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:12,719
Speaker 3: the other shit like whatever Oprah got or like I'm

709
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:15,080
Speaker 3: just like, yeah, I just don't think that's gonna happen anymore.

710
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:16,640
Speaker 1: I Mean, what's most funny to me is that the

711
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 1: specific model of Pontiac has gone down as like one

712
00:38:19,239 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 1: of the very worst cars ever made. So it really

713
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:24,840
Speaker 1: was like you get a shitty car, you get a

714
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:29,800
Speaker 1: shitty car, and six k and you six grand. Anyway,

715
00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:32,000
Speaker 1: that's not really a bastard thing. It's just kind of funny.

716
00:38:32,040 --> 00:38:34,759
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the book club. In September nineteen ninety six,

717
00:38:34,840 --> 00:38:37,440
Speaker 1: Oprah launched her book Club as a regular feature on

718
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:41,480
Speaker 1: her show, making monthly picks and discussing them on air. Instantly,

719
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:44,239
Speaker 1: it became the largest and most influential book club on earth.

720
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:47,880
Speaker 1: Every single book Club pick that she would make for

721
00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:51,399
Speaker 1: like fifteen years or something, became a best seller, every

722
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:54,600
Speaker 1: one of them. Some sold many millions of copies. I

723
00:38:54,640 --> 00:38:58,720
Speaker 1: read a paper analyzing Oprah's literary choices by Alana Kullen

724
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:03,319
Speaker 1: of Salvagi Regina University and Colan quotes a scholar named

725
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 1: Lofton Is saying nearly every one of the novels she

726
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:09,560
Speaker 1: suggested for the original book Club followed the same narrative trajectory.

727
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:13,040
Speaker 1: A woman, usually of a centric yet compelling character, experiences

728
00:39:13,080 --> 00:39:15,680
Speaker 1: an enormous trauma. The remainder of the novel follows the

729
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:18,799
Speaker 1: woman as she manages the psychological, material and social after

730
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:21,560
Speaker 1: effects of the trauma. Usually, the stories conclude on a

731
00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:24,800
Speaker 1: neutral note. The central character is wiser for her experiences,

732
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:27,040
Speaker 1: though on the whole not entirely happy with the way

733
00:39:27,040 --> 00:39:30,800
Speaker 1: her life is resolved. Obviously, Oprah believes this paradigmic plot

734
00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:33,320
Speaker 1: line will not only resonate with her viewers, but also

735
00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:37,200
Speaker 1: expresses a universal truth critical to her spiritual work, the

736
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:40,319
Speaker 1: suffering of women as universal, unabated, and endured only through

737
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:43,600
Speaker 1: solidarity with other women. And I don't read that because

738
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 1: that's like evil or anything. That's just an analysis of

739
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:48,240
Speaker 1: the fiction picks. It's interesting to me that, like, oh, okay,

740
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:51,200
Speaker 1: the fiction that you are drawn to is very much

741
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:55,640
Speaker 1: a mirror of your own life. Yeah, just an interesting thing.

742
00:39:55,719 --> 00:39:57,800
Speaker 1: And Oprah does, in fact pick a lot of good books,

743
00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:00,600
Speaker 1: including some great works of classic literature, that she helps

744
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 1: to spread to a wider audience. Her book Club is

745
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:10,120
Speaker 1: an extreme positive for the publishing industry as a whole. Now,

746
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 1: when it comes to what is this net positive or

747
00:40:14,120 --> 00:40:17,440
Speaker 1: negative for society, that's a little harder because in addition

748
00:40:17,480 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 1: to some very good works of classic literature and just

749
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,040
Speaker 1: books that are fine that more people read, and more

750
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:26,239
Speaker 1: people are reading because Oprah is a good example, there's

751
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 1: also shit, like a lot of poisonous stuff gets very famous.

752
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 1: And I'm speaking here about The Secret, which we have

753
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:37,120
Speaker 1: I think discussed adequately, but also the infamous nonfiction book

754
00:40:37,160 --> 00:40:39,200
Speaker 1: that turned out to be a fiction book, A Million

755
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:42,240
Speaker 1: Little Pieces by James Fray. We all know this story.

756
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:46,240
Speaker 1: Maybe not you at home, but everyone's sitting here does, right, Yeah,

757
00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:49,920
Speaker 1: did anyone read this fucker before it came out? My

758
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:52,880
Speaker 1: mom made me. She wanted to scare me away from drugs.

759
00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:55,399
Speaker 1: And this is a book about this guy and it's

760
00:40:55,440 --> 00:40:59,320
Speaker 1: his crazy drug and alcohol life and he goes to prison,

761
00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 1: loses all his teeth. It's like this fucked up addiction

762
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:05,920
Speaker 1: memoir of you know, addiction and redemption, and it is

763
00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:08,800
Speaker 1: just horseshit. It's complete lies.

764
00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:11,160
Speaker 2: When you don't know it's lies, it's I mean, I

765
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:14,440
Speaker 2: remember the opening. It opens with him like coming to

766
00:41:14,640 --> 00:41:16,479
Speaker 2: on a plane and he doesn't know where he's going

767
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:17,920
Speaker 2: and it turns out he was on a bender and.

768
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:19,000
Speaker 4: They're sending him to rehab.

769
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:19,840
Speaker 1: Like yeah.

770
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:22,800
Speaker 2: It opens and you're like I'm locked and loaded, like locking,

771
00:41:23,239 --> 00:41:26,359
Speaker 2: and when you find out it's bullshit, you realize like, oh,

772
00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:29,799
Speaker 2: I like it really questioned my bullshit detector, because I

773
00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:32,080
Speaker 2: was like, how did I not realize that this was fiction?

774
00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:35,360
Speaker 2: Going back and reading it knowing it's it's lies, Like

775
00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 2: it really reads like bad, bad fiction.

776
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:43,359
Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah, And it is like very very like bad

777
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:46,280
Speaker 1: fiction is a good way to look at it. Anthony

778
00:41:46,320 --> 00:41:50,080
Speaker 1: Bourdain described it as an obvious, transparent, and steaming heap

779
00:41:50,160 --> 00:41:52,840
Speaker 1: of falsehood. From the first page, I was enraged that

780
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:55,200
Speaker 1: anyone on earth would believe a word. As a former addict,

781
00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 1: I found this fake redemption memoir to be morally repugnant.

782
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:02,400
Speaker 1: You know, I remember thinking it sounded kind of cool, like,

783
00:42:02,440 --> 00:42:04,440
Speaker 1: oh man, this guy had some fun adventures being on

784
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:07,200
Speaker 1: drugs and alcohol. Maybe I should be an addict as

785
00:42:07,200 --> 00:42:11,239
Speaker 1: an adult. Didn't have a positive impact on me. You

786
00:42:11,239 --> 00:42:15,520
Speaker 1: could say, while Frey's book spent, he spends this this

787
00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 1: is such a hit, like it's hard to over like

788
00:42:17,600 --> 00:42:21,400
Speaker 1: books almost don't almost don't go viral the way A

789
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:24,680
Speaker 1: Million Little Pieces did. He spends fifteen weeks on the

790
00:42:24,680 --> 00:42:29,520
Speaker 1: bestseller list, which is huge for any author, especially one

791
00:42:29,520 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 1: coming out of nowhere. And as soon as Ray is

792
00:42:32,719 --> 00:42:35,320
Speaker 1: the top of the literary game, this guy goes mad

793
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:38,400
Speaker 1: with power. He starts. You can find like writings of

794
00:42:38,440 --> 00:42:41,640
Speaker 1: his and like public comments he made attacking other authors

795
00:42:41,680 --> 00:42:45,719
Speaker 1: like Edgar Dave Edgars and David Foster Wallace, calling them

796
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:47,920
Speaker 1: hacks and bragging that he was the best writer of

797
00:42:47,920 --> 00:42:57,080
Speaker 1: his generation. Just immediately loses his mind. Journalists start, after

798
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:00,160
Speaker 1: this book is on the market a while, like looking

799
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:03,239
Speaker 1: into some of the obvious provable lies in his book

800
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:06,000
Speaker 1: and pointing out stuff that like, well, you talk a

801
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 1: lot about the time you spent in prison, and like

802
00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:12,960
Speaker 1: you didn't like you never got arrested or sentenced for

803
00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:15,960
Speaker 1: a thing, Like you didn't you didn't do the thing

804
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:18,640
Speaker 1: that's like the centerpiece of your book. Is it possible

805
00:43:18,719 --> 00:43:22,000
Speaker 1: other things are lies? If this obvious provable thing is

806
00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:26,120
Speaker 1: a lie. Now, when the allegations come out, Oprah initially

807
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:28,800
Speaker 1: defends him, and in fact, Oprah even calls into Larry

808
00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 1: King Live to describe the allegations against Frey as much

809
00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:34,920
Speaker 1: should do about nothing, which is like a unique and

810
00:43:35,120 --> 00:43:37,760
Speaker 1: in part because like she's put her ego into backing

811
00:43:37,800 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 1: this guy, right, yeah, Like she called him brilliant and

812
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 1: said his book was wonderful. If she got conned, that

813
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 1: doesn't look good for the Oprah brand. Journalists kept pointing

814
00:43:48,200 --> 00:43:51,920
Speaker 1: out inconvenient details, and eventually the whole edifice of lies

815
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:57,280
Speaker 1: came crumbling down. Frey eventually admits, like I fictionalized large

816
00:43:57,320 --> 00:44:01,439
Speaker 1: portions of this. Oprah was surious, and so she does

817
00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:04,400
Speaker 1: the logical thing and has him back on her show.

818
00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:08,319
Speaker 1: There's like three times she has him on after this.

819
00:44:08,440 --> 00:44:10,680
Speaker 1: One of them is like extremely hostile where she is

820
00:44:10,719 --> 00:44:13,439
Speaker 1: clearly like, oh you are pissed, like this guy made

821
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:16,240
Speaker 1: you look bad, but she also lets him like explain

822
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:18,640
Speaker 1: at length, Like he goes on a rant at one

823
00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:21,200
Speaker 1: point where he's like, well, all memoirs are kind of lies,

824
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:24,920
Speaker 1: right because people don't remember things acting he's saying, like

825
00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:26,719
Speaker 1: the stuff we were saying at the start, We're like, well,

826
00:44:27,400 --> 00:44:30,719
Speaker 1: your past is to some extent like fiction, right, like,

827
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: because we all remember things that didn't happen or didn't

828
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:36,440
Speaker 1: happen that way, or our memory is different memory of

829
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:38,960
Speaker 1: other people who were there. He interprets that as so

830
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:41,480
Speaker 1: it's fine if I just lie about my entire backstory

831
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:45,120
Speaker 1: and call it nonfiction, right, like, which is a leap.

832
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:46,799
Speaker 1: Maybe I would say.

833
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:52,720
Speaker 3: The publishing industry, though, is there no like like fact checking,

834
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:54,120
Speaker 3: Like what the fuck is happening?

835
00:44:54,200 --> 00:44:57,160
Speaker 1: I mean, actually today there is no fact checking. There

836
00:44:57,239 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 1: still was a little bit back then. It's very much

837
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:04,879
Speaker 1: it's very very rare in publishing to get functional fact

838
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:07,600
Speaker 1: checking these days, those are some of the first jobs

839
00:45:07,640 --> 00:45:11,400
Speaker 1: you eliminate when you're cutting costs, newspapers are unfortunately the

840
00:45:11,440 --> 00:45:15,400
Speaker 1: same thing. There is some minimal fact at least the

841
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:17,760
Speaker 1: last time I did a nonfiction book, which was fifteen

842
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:19,759
Speaker 1: years ago, there was minimal fact checking, but it is

843
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 1: mostly on the author. Yeah, and I don't think they

844
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:28,359
Speaker 1: thought to fact check something like a memoir by this

845
00:45:28,480 --> 00:45:31,239
Speaker 1: guy about his own experiences, even though there's stuff like

846
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 1: his time in jail that would have been very easy

847
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:36,799
Speaker 1: to check. More to the point, Oprah continuing to have

848
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 1: Frey on after he's exposed sells more copies of the book,

849
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:44,399
Speaker 1: Like it benefits him financially that she keeps having him

850
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:47,319
Speaker 1: on because people keep buying the goddamn thing.

851
00:45:49,120 --> 00:45:52,719
Speaker 2: I remember reading a piece about how other memoirists who

852
00:45:53,120 --> 00:45:56,239
Speaker 2: genuinely lived experiences that Frey kind of like made up

853
00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:59,279
Speaker 2: or fabricated, like people who genuinely struggled with addiction or

854
00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:02,359
Speaker 2: like had rough circumstances, that they had a hard time

855
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:05,960
Speaker 2: selling their books because of him, and like the impact

856
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:07,799
Speaker 2: that it made on people who were trying to write

857
00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:09,279
Speaker 2: about those tough experiences.

858
00:46:09,880 --> 00:46:10,160
Speaker 3: Really.

859
00:46:10,719 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, cool stuff, Oprah. Cool stuff. Now there were near

860
00:46:15,880 --> 00:46:19,480
Speaker 1: calamities too. In two thousand and eight, Oprah picked a

861
00:46:19,560 --> 00:46:22,319
Speaker 1: Holocaust memoir as her book of the Month. The book

862
00:46:22,400 --> 00:46:24,920
Speaker 1: was called Misha, and it was the purported true story

863
00:46:24,960 --> 00:46:28,160
Speaker 1: of the life of the author, Misha Diffonseca, who was

864
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:31,239
Speaker 1: a little Jewish girl during World War Two, had to

865
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:33,719
Speaker 1: search Europe for her parents in the midst of the

866
00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 1: Holocaust and was adopted and saved by Nazi murder by

867
00:46:37,680 --> 00:46:41,160
Speaker 1: a pack of wolves. That is literally the claim that

868
00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:46,400
Speaker 1: she makes in this memoir. Now, you guys want to

869
00:46:46,400 --> 00:46:52,319
Speaker 1: hear something shocking. Didn't happen. Little Jewish girl was not,

870
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:55,480
Speaker 1: in fact saved by a family of wolves during the Holocaust.

871
00:46:55,800 --> 00:46:58,440
Speaker 1: In fact, Misha was not a little Jewish girl. She

872
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:01,960
Speaker 1: was raised Roman Catholic. She was not caught up in

873
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:06,400
Speaker 1: the Holocaust. This is just nonsense. Thankfully, Oprah was saved

874
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:08,680
Speaker 1: from plugging her novel because the truth came out at

875
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:11,160
Speaker 1: the eleventh hour before the episode could air, so they

876
00:47:11,160 --> 00:47:13,879
Speaker 1: had time to scrap the fucker. But very nearly got

877
00:47:13,920 --> 00:47:16,960
Speaker 1: brought in on that one. That said, in nineteen ninety six,

878
00:47:17,040 --> 00:47:20,280
Speaker 1: she was conned by the author of a different Holocaust novel.

879
00:47:20,520 --> 00:47:24,200
Speaker 1: Herm authors Herman and Roma Rosenblatt, wrote a book titled

880
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:28,520
Speaker 1: Angel at the Fence about how Roman had saved herman's life, well,

881
00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:32,400
Speaker 1: he was interned at Bukenvald by throwing apples over the fence.

882
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:35,040
Speaker 1: A Roma had saved his life by throwing apples over

883
00:47:35,080 --> 00:47:37,239
Speaker 1: the fence, and that's how they'd met and fallen in love,

884
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:39,759
Speaker 1: and they'd been together ever since. Oprah called it the

885
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:43,160
Speaker 1: single greatest love story she'd ever heard. It was also

886
00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:46,879
Speaker 1: total bullshit. Now this was not revealed for more than

887
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:49,319
Speaker 1: a decade, So like this book goes out as her

888
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:51,160
Speaker 1: book of the month, a decade later, it comes out

889
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 1: like they just lied. None of this happened. Oprah's response

890
00:47:55,040 --> 00:47:57,919
Speaker 1: was basically a fart noise. She said she was disappointed,

891
00:47:57,960 --> 00:48:00,000
Speaker 1: but it refused to admit that she had been tricked.

892
00:48:00,640 --> 00:48:02,600
Speaker 1: And I don't know how much deeper to get into

893
00:48:02,600 --> 00:48:04,919
Speaker 1: the weeds with this stuff, right, Like, when it comes

894
00:48:04,920 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 1: to most of the harms of her book club, they

895
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 1: kind of boil down to like, I don't think that

896
00:48:09,719 --> 00:48:11,880
Speaker 1: her taste in books was always great, but that's a

897
00:48:11,920 --> 00:48:15,840
Speaker 1: personal opinion. And then number two, and this is the

898
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:19,640
Speaker 1: big one, she doesn't nobody really does. Very few people

899
00:48:19,719 --> 00:48:22,880
Speaker 1: read enough that every month for like twenty years, you

900
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:25,360
Speaker 1: can recommend your favorite book of the month that you

901
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:28,520
Speaker 1: have actually read cover to cover. Some people do read them.

902
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:31,440
Speaker 1: I read that much because I.

903
00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:35,480
Speaker 3: Have to, But like you're being pitched, Yeah.

904
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:38,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Oprah's not reading that much. She's got too

905
00:48:38,840 --> 00:48:43,080
Speaker 1: much to do, and so she's not actually like reading

906
00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:46,879
Speaker 1: multiple books every month and picking her favorite, because that's

907
00:48:47,000 --> 00:48:49,200
Speaker 1: very hard to do. She's got a team of people

908
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:51,920
Speaker 1: who are picking books, and that leads to them making

909
00:48:51,960 --> 00:48:56,080
Speaker 1: some very lazy picks that that can elevate ask literature,

910
00:48:56,160 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 1: especially when she's focusing on like literature from other countries.

911
00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:01,640
Speaker 1: There's an element of that could be problematic. And this

912
00:49:01,719 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 1: is not something I would have picked up on on

913
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:05,040
Speaker 1: my own, but I had the good fortune during my

914
00:49:05,120 --> 00:49:08,120
Speaker 1: research to come across an article by Rob Spilman, the

915
00:49:08,239 --> 00:49:10,960
Speaker 1: editor of tin House magazine and the author of an

916
00:49:10,960 --> 00:49:15,200
Speaker 1: anthology of contemporary African fiction titled Gods and Soldiers, and

917
00:49:15,280 --> 00:49:17,759
Speaker 1: he made a complaint about Oprah's elevation of a book

918
00:49:17,840 --> 00:49:20,640
Speaker 1: called Say You Are One of Them by Nigerian author

919
00:49:20,800 --> 00:49:25,239
Speaker 1: uwhim Akpan quote Okpan, a Nigerian Jesuit priest, is a

920
00:49:25,280 --> 00:49:28,880
Speaker 1: Maudlin sappy writer and his book only reinforces Western stereotypes

921
00:49:28,920 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: about Africa, that it is a wasteland of child soldiers, poverty,

922
00:49:32,120 --> 00:49:35,200
Speaker 1: and corruption. While there are serious problems in much of Africa,

923
00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:37,360
Speaker 1: this is not the only reality, and strictly from the

924
00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:40,040
Speaker 1: point of view of African fiction, Oprah could have done

925
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:42,359
Speaker 1: a lot better. The stories in Say You Are One

926
00:49:42,400 --> 00:49:45,520
Speaker 1: of Them are drawn directly from the well known African headlines,

927
00:49:45,680 --> 00:49:48,360
Speaker 1: but with little added imagination. They have nothing of the

928
00:49:48,400 --> 00:49:52,759
Speaker 1: power of Akpan's countrymen Uzodin ma Iwela Iuela's searing novel

929
00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:56,000
Speaker 1: about a child soldier, Beasts of No Nation, or Senegalese

930
00:49:56,040 --> 00:50:00,320
Speaker 1: author of bobokar Boris Diop's novel about the Rwandan genocide.

931
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 1: The Book of Bones. Ocpon's writing is pedestrian and plotting,

932
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:06,520
Speaker 1: but that has never stopped Oprah before. I am sure Ocpon,

933
00:50:06,520 --> 00:50:08,480
Speaker 1: who is by all accounts a very nice person who

934
00:50:08,560 --> 00:50:10,879
Speaker 1: is dedicated to doing good work in the world, will

935
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:13,800
Speaker 1: make for compelling daytime TV. It is just a shame

936
00:50:13,840 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 1: that this one mediocre book is going to be put

937
00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:18,520
Speaker 1: forward to stand for all of African fiction.

938
00:50:20,120 --> 00:50:22,440
Speaker 2: This doesn't surprise me at all because this was certainly

939
00:50:22,480 --> 00:50:27,720
Speaker 2: a well worn claim about Oprah that she was really

940
00:50:27,760 --> 00:50:31,080
Speaker 2: interested in mining, like the trauma specifically of the black

941
00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:33,799
Speaker 2: community and sort of packaging it and turning it into

942
00:50:33,800 --> 00:50:37,319
Speaker 2: a commodity. And yeah, I mean, I can't help but

943
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:39,799
Speaker 2: see reflections of this and how she might have been

944
00:50:39,840 --> 00:50:42,080
Speaker 2: thinking about some of those schoolgirls when she was coming

945
00:50:42,120 --> 00:50:44,200
Speaker 2: up with the idea to launch that school, right, Like,

946
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:50,040
Speaker 2: I think that our experiences do often have traumatic legacies

947
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:51,920
Speaker 2: and like baggage and all of that, But that's not

948
00:50:52,000 --> 00:50:54,680
Speaker 2: the only story that there is. And so I wonder if,

949
00:50:54,719 --> 00:50:58,319
Speaker 2: like maybe she does have a preoccupation with you know,

950
00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:02,799
Speaker 2: kind of the kind of not just traumatic, but like

951
00:51:03,040 --> 00:51:06,920
Speaker 2: traumatic in a very specific, recognizable way that this author

952
00:51:06,960 --> 00:51:07,799
Speaker 2: is calling her out for.

953
00:51:08,440 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 1: Yeah.

954
00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:12,839
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's also a thing that like white audience, like

955
00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:19,280
Speaker 3: white Americans assume Black Americans no have special insight into

956
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:23,200
Speaker 3: Africa or Africans, right, but why would they.

957
00:51:23,200 --> 00:51:27,759
Speaker 1: No, they're Americans. Yeah, Like they don't need to know

958
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:33,320
Speaker 1: anything at all about Nigeria, Like, yeah, what do you know? Like, okay,

959
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:35,320
Speaker 1: what's your last name? O'Malley? How much do you know

960
00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:37,200
Speaker 1: about contemporary Irish politics?

961
00:51:37,680 --> 00:51:37,839
Speaker 3: Oh?

962
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:39,400
Speaker 1: Is it just Saint Patrick's day? Is that all you

963
00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:41,080
Speaker 1: really know? Okay? Okay?

964
00:51:41,719 --> 00:51:44,080
Speaker 2: And I wonder like Robert to your point about like

965
00:51:44,160 --> 00:51:47,200
Speaker 2: certainly Oprah is not reading these books you know, on

966
00:51:47,239 --> 00:51:49,879
Speaker 2: her compound and then hand picking them. Someone's picking them

967
00:51:49,880 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 2: for her, So like why not consult like a Nigeria

968
00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:57,600
Speaker 2: like what, Like she has infinite resources. It wouldn't be

969
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:00,359
Speaker 2: that hard you find somebody who knows what a good

970
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:00,960
Speaker 2: pick would be.

971
00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:03,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a way you could still be doing good

972
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:05,319
Speaker 1: as her by saying like, hey, I'm going to pick

973
00:52:05,360 --> 00:52:09,640
Speaker 1: this month. I've got this this expert on Nigerian literature

974
00:52:09,640 --> 00:52:12,440
Speaker 1: who put together this like, you know, compilation of books,

975
00:52:12,480 --> 00:52:14,360
Speaker 1: and he's going to talk about some literally you know,

976
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: Nigerian literature that you should read and recommend it to.

977
00:52:17,040 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 1: Like that again, that kind of takes the focus off

978
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:19,560
Speaker 1: of Oprah.

979
00:52:19,680 --> 00:52:20,919
Speaker 4: Yeah, she doesn't pass the mic.

980
00:52:21,000 --> 00:52:23,600
Speaker 2: I feel like that is like really the theme here

981
00:52:23,680 --> 00:52:25,000
Speaker 2: is that she wants it to be about her.

982
00:52:25,080 --> 00:52:26,239
Speaker 4: She won't pass the mic.

983
00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:28,760
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and the other thing is like just knowing

984
00:52:28,960 --> 00:52:33,000
Speaker 3: anything about the media and entertainment industry, those readers were

985
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:35,640
Speaker 3: two to three white people who are just doing their

986
00:52:35,680 --> 00:52:36,920
Speaker 3: best scheme right now.

987
00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:41,400
Speaker 1: This really is such a revealing novel about modern Nigeria,

988
00:52:41,520 --> 00:52:44,560
Speaker 1: a place I've never been or read anything about other

989
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:49,920
Speaker 1: than this novel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway, that's a thoughtful

990
00:52:49,960 --> 00:52:53,160
Speaker 1: and complex critique. I don't know that you again, Is

991
00:52:53,200 --> 00:52:55,680
Speaker 1: this a bastard colony? Yeah, probably a little bit here,

992
00:52:55,719 --> 00:52:57,880
Speaker 1: But it's also it's more than anything. It's a reflection

993
00:52:58,040 --> 00:52:59,800
Speaker 1: of the fact that even with someone his favor is

994
00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:02,160
Speaker 1: fair amsus Oprah tries to use fame in a good

995
00:53:02,160 --> 00:53:05,480
Speaker 1: way to encourage reading, which is generally positive, there will

996
00:53:05,480 --> 00:53:10,120
Speaker 1: always be negative externalities, precisely because fame is a brute

997
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:13,080
Speaker 1: force and it is very hard to use in a

998
00:53:13,120 --> 00:53:17,040
Speaker 1: way that doesn't cause spillover harm. Right, that's the nature

999
00:53:17,120 --> 00:53:20,960
Speaker 1: of fame. I've quoted a couple of times in these

1000
00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:24,560
Speaker 1: episodes from a paper by Alana Mullen of Salve Regina University,

1001
00:53:24,840 --> 00:53:27,920
Speaker 1: and that paper's title is salient to this point, quote

1002
00:53:28,120 --> 00:53:32,520
Speaker 1: despair disguised as entertainment? Does Oprah Winfrey sensationalize human suffering

1003
00:53:32,520 --> 00:53:36,120
Speaker 1: in order to fuel her media empire and encourage other

1004
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:39,480
Speaker 1: media to follow. So the argument here is essentially that

1005
00:53:39,560 --> 00:53:42,560
Speaker 1: Oprah's content largely consists of a mix of horrific, heartrending

1006
00:53:42,600 --> 00:53:45,240
Speaker 1: stories of suffering meant to generate a motion that usually

1007
00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:48,000
Speaker 1: ends on an uplifting note where the subject somehow pulls

1008
00:53:48,040 --> 00:53:51,280
Speaker 1: themselves up by their bootstraps. This is augmented by segments

1009
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:54,600
Speaker 1: on self help featuring guru featuring gurus and fitness experts

1010
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:57,759
Speaker 1: who offer a mix of mental and physical expert exercises

1011
00:53:57,800 --> 00:54:02,120
Speaker 1: through which the individual might fix their problem. Quote under

1012
00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:04,840
Speaker 1: the advice section of Oh, the Oprah Magazine, after the

1013
00:54:04,880 --> 00:54:07,759
Speaker 1: reader reads the Panic Button, Martha Beck on the only

1014
00:54:07,880 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 1: Rational way to whether Life's big and little snaffoos, Doctor

1015
00:54:11,120 --> 00:54:13,359
Speaker 1: Phil on getting along with the surly son in law,

1016
00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:16,440
Speaker 1: and tips on raising a grandchild. And Sues Orman on

1017
00:54:16,480 --> 00:54:18,759
Speaker 1: an oppressive load of debt, a cramped house, and a

1018
00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:23,359
Speaker 1: money squandering husband. The reader finally comes to the journaling portion. Here,

1019
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:25,959
Speaker 1: the reader is encouraged to write down her feelings about fear.

1020
00:54:26,280 --> 00:54:28,960
Speaker 1: It begins at times, we all fear we're not good

1021
00:54:29,080 --> 00:54:31,719
Speaker 1: enough before you can convince yourself otherwise, you have to

1022
00:54:31,760 --> 00:54:34,959
Speaker 1: simply admit to yourself and no one else what you want.

1023
00:54:35,200 --> 00:54:38,080
Speaker 1: Then tell yourself I am good enough. Say it until

1024
00:54:38,120 --> 00:54:41,000
Speaker 1: you believe it. The reader is given five questions and

1025
00:54:41,120 --> 00:54:43,239
Speaker 1: is asked to reflect on such things like how does

1026
00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:46,200
Speaker 1: your self talk change when you're fearful. We must keep

1027
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:49,279
Speaker 1: in mind who hear who Oprah's readers are. These are

1028
00:54:49,280 --> 00:54:52,520
Speaker 1: not children, These are middle class women with families and careers.

1029
00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:56,000
Speaker 1: I would argue that the childlike dialogue Oprah exploits presents

1030
00:54:56,000 --> 00:54:59,360
Speaker 1: her audience with a simplistic discourse on suffering. Suffering is

1031
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 1: a powerful or some lessons and moral knowledge, and it

1032
00:55:02,120 --> 00:55:05,040
Speaker 1: should guide the individual. But what Oprah ends up doing

1033
00:55:05,200 --> 00:55:08,360
Speaker 1: is making suffering and the exploitation of your own suffering

1034
00:55:08,600 --> 00:55:11,160
Speaker 1: into a desirable and commonplace experience.

1035
00:55:15,400 --> 00:55:20,600
Speaker 2: M I mean, I think that's I mean, I hate

1036
00:55:20,640 --> 00:55:24,360
Speaker 2: to make like I hate to brand that as a positive,

1037
00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:26,920
Speaker 2: but I do feel like today like she was ahead

1038
00:55:26,960 --> 00:55:28,680
Speaker 2: of her time, whether that's a good thing or a

1039
00:55:28,719 --> 00:55:32,560
Speaker 2: bad thing. Intern of lookalth popular things like true crime,

1040
00:55:32,680 --> 00:55:36,799
Speaker 2: or like the idea of packaging suffering as entertainment.

1041
00:55:37,160 --> 00:55:37,799
Speaker 4: That's all that I.

1042
00:55:37,800 --> 00:55:40,239
Speaker 2: Feel like sometimes, that's all media is right now, and

1043
00:55:40,280 --> 00:55:43,400
Speaker 2: I feel like I can't I can't not see the

1044
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:46,200
Speaker 2: ways that she was onto something before it had really

1045
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:48,120
Speaker 2: become like that much of a thing.

1046
00:55:48,200 --> 00:55:50,120
Speaker 1: And do an extent, it becomes that much of a

1047
00:55:50,120 --> 00:55:53,960
Speaker 1: thing because she does prove the market right like, which

1048
00:55:54,040 --> 00:55:57,279
Speaker 1: isn't to make say that she's morally responsible for everything

1049
00:55:57,280 --> 00:55:59,600
Speaker 1: that media has done since, but you do have to

1050
00:55:59,640 --> 00:56:03,560
Speaker 1: look at like the the evolution that these things follow.

1051
00:56:03,760 --> 00:56:05,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's sort of like the question is like,

1052
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:07,839
Speaker 3: do you create the market or does the market create you?

1053
00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:12,640
Speaker 3: Because it's like even from the early stories, it's like

1054
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:16,520
Speaker 3: it Also it was also clear she was just trying

1055
00:56:16,520 --> 00:56:18,600
Speaker 3: a bunch of shit and the things that worked was

1056
00:56:18,600 --> 00:56:20,719
Speaker 3: the thing she gravitated towards and more and more and

1057
00:56:20,760 --> 00:56:25,120
Speaker 3: more and more, which is just like you know, how

1058
00:56:25,160 --> 00:56:26,520
Speaker 3: you do it?

1059
00:56:26,800 --> 00:56:32,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this sort of I mean like there's yeah,

1060
00:56:31,120 --> 00:56:36,759
Speaker 1: I think we've we've gone into that enough for these episodes.

1061
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:40,000
Speaker 1: I just kind of it's it's something I think about

1062
00:56:40,040 --> 00:56:43,360
Speaker 1: a lot because the nature of this podcast is talking

1063
00:56:43,400 --> 00:56:46,440
Speaker 1: about awful things and like these these stories that are

1064
00:56:46,440 --> 00:56:50,080
Speaker 1: often like very terrible and horrible, and part of the

1065
00:56:50,120 --> 00:56:53,759
Speaker 1: popularity of this show is that people are drawn to

1066
00:56:53,880 --> 00:56:58,480
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And there's not zero percent Oprah

1067
00:56:58,800 --> 00:57:02,120
Speaker 1: in the background of like what I do now. I

1068
00:57:02,160 --> 00:57:05,960
Speaker 1: don't ever, for one thing, we don't end our episodes

1069
00:57:06,000 --> 00:57:09,319
Speaker 1: on a high note. Usually there's not like an inspiring

1070
00:57:09,400 --> 00:57:12,480
Speaker 1: moral journey that makes you think, don't worry just by

1071
00:57:12,600 --> 00:57:15,560
Speaker 1: changing my opinions and attitudes I can fix the problem

1072
00:57:15,640 --> 00:57:18,080
Speaker 1: like Hitler, because you can't. The thing that fixes a

1073
00:57:18,080 --> 00:57:20,760
Speaker 1: problem like Hitler or any other major problem in our

1074
00:57:20,760 --> 00:57:23,800
Speaker 1: society is like collective action, and when that action is

1075
00:57:23,840 --> 00:57:28,960
Speaker 1: absence absent, there's often just nothing but terror. Right, Yeah,

1076
00:57:29,680 --> 00:57:33,320
Speaker 1: But like you know, it's still it's this kind of

1077
00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:36,440
Speaker 1: thing like reading about these critiques of Oprah, I have

1078
00:57:36,480 --> 00:57:40,080
Speaker 1: certainly thought about, like what I do. You know, it's

1079
00:57:40,080 --> 00:57:42,920
Speaker 1: hard not to like, in part because there's so much

1080
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:48,280
Speaker 1: of how influencer in media stuff works today that's downstream

1081
00:57:48,280 --> 00:57:50,960
Speaker 1: of Oprah. You kind of have to. But speaking of

1082
00:57:51,000 --> 00:58:01,240
Speaker 1: downstream of Oprah, let's sell some fucking products and weird back.

1083
00:58:01,720 --> 00:58:04,080
Speaker 1: So I want to read a quote that kind of

1084
00:58:04,080 --> 00:58:08,000
Speaker 1: gets into the fact that Oprah she primarily understands the

1085
00:58:08,040 --> 00:58:11,360
Speaker 1: world through the things that happened to her, and that's

1086
00:58:11,440 --> 00:58:15,840
Speaker 1: kind of what her journey, the possibility that you can have,

1087
00:58:15,960 --> 00:58:18,000
Speaker 1: no matter how bad things are for you, you can

1088
00:58:18,080 --> 00:58:21,960
Speaker 1: wind up like Oprah, rich and famous and beloved, like

1089
00:58:22,120 --> 00:58:25,400
Speaker 1: by changing your attitude of factor. Like, that's what she

1090
00:58:25,520 --> 00:58:29,480
Speaker 1: is selling her viewers and readers. And there's an extent

1091
00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:32,800
Speaker 1: to which it's kind of dangerous to get people thinking

1092
00:58:32,920 --> 00:58:35,320
Speaker 1: about mass problems that way. And this is a point

1093
00:58:35,320 --> 00:58:37,600
Speaker 1: that's made very well in the book The Age of

1094
00:58:37,600 --> 00:58:41,080
Speaker 1: Oprah by Janis Peck. Quote inspired by a New York

1095
00:58:41,080 --> 00:58:43,800
Speaker 1: Times series from two thousand and five titled Class Matters.

1096
00:58:43,880 --> 00:58:47,040
Speaker 1: The show's opening segment suggested a serious treatment of issues

1097
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:50,080
Speaker 1: of class inequality. Clips of experts citing the growing gap

1098
00:58:50,080 --> 00:58:52,840
Speaker 1: between rich and poor, shots of Hurricane Katrina victims crying

1099
00:58:52,880 --> 00:58:55,960
Speaker 1: for help, and Winfrey's own statement that nearly forty percent

1100
00:58:56,000 --> 00:58:57,760
Speaker 1: of all the country's wealth is being held by the

1101
00:58:57,840 --> 00:59:00,040
Speaker 1: richest one percent. The fact that one of the the

1102
00:59:00,080 --> 00:59:03,320
Speaker 1: guests was Robert Reich, us Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton,

1103
00:59:03,400 --> 00:59:06,960
Speaker 1: underscored the solemn tone as he spoke of declining manufacturing jobs,

1104
00:59:07,160 --> 00:59:10,280
Speaker 1: a shrinking middle class, mounting economic anxiety, and millions of

1105
00:59:10,360 --> 00:59:13,400
Speaker 1: Americans who are working very hard but still not making

1106
00:59:13,440 --> 00:59:16,560
Speaker 1: it in what some are now calling the new Gilded Age.

1107
00:59:16,800 --> 00:59:19,360
Speaker 1: But even as Reich called into question the viability of

1108
00:59:19,360 --> 00:59:22,880
Speaker 1: the American dream, Winfrey reaffirmed it. She referred to a

1109
00:59:22,920 --> 00:59:25,520
Speaker 1: New York Times poll where eighty percent of those surveys

1110
00:59:25,520 --> 00:59:28,000
Speaker 1: said they believe you can go from rags to riches

1111
00:59:28,040 --> 00:59:30,600
Speaker 1: in America followed it up with a video clip of

1112
00:59:30,640 --> 00:59:33,400
Speaker 1: a young woman convinced she would acquire the big house,

1113
00:59:33,640 --> 00:59:37,800
Speaker 1: fantasy engagement ring, and nice cars because if you work hard,

1114
00:59:38,080 --> 00:59:41,920
Speaker 1: you can achieve anything. Oprah finally declared herself not only

1115
00:59:41,960 --> 00:59:44,880
Speaker 1: a believer in the American dream of rags to riches,

1116
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:49,120
Speaker 1: but living proof of its veracity. Although Reich dutifully decreed

1117
00:59:49,160 --> 00:59:52,080
Speaker 1: his host a great model for America, he pressed on

1118
00:59:52,120 --> 00:59:54,560
Speaker 1: with his argument that success and failure are not simply

1119
00:59:54,600 --> 00:59:57,400
Speaker 1: matters of individual effort. Part of it is luck, he said,

1120
00:59:57,600 --> 00:59:59,840
Speaker 1: Part of it is connection, part of it is education.

1121
01:00:00,360 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 1: Winfrey replied tersely, I don't believe in luck, Bob. I

1122
01:00:03,840 --> 01:00:07,120
Speaker 1: think luck is preparation meeting the moment of opportunity. I

1123
01:00:07,160 --> 01:00:08,920
Speaker 1: don't consider myself lucky at all.

1124
01:00:10,160 --> 01:00:10,480
Speaker 4: Wow.

1125
01:00:11,360 --> 01:00:16,160
Speaker 1: Oh bruh bh no, no no.

1126
01:00:17,640 --> 01:00:21,880
Speaker 3: But also, like, just on its face, how stupid is

1127
01:00:21,920 --> 01:00:24,720
Speaker 3: that statement? Like what do you think the fucking moment

1128
01:00:24,760 --> 01:00:27,479
Speaker 3: of opportunity is your dummy? That's luck?

1129
01:00:27,560 --> 01:00:32,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's luck. And like you're like, your dad may

1130
01:00:32,400 --> 01:00:35,840
Speaker 1: not be your biological dad, the fact that he chose

1131
01:00:36,160 --> 01:00:40,560
Speaker 1: to take that responsibility for you is luck, you know,

1132
01:00:41,400 --> 01:00:44,040
Speaker 1: Like the fact that your grandma. You know, you have

1133
01:00:44,120 --> 01:00:47,080
Speaker 1: credited aspects of her with like instilling in you some

1134
01:00:47,120 --> 01:00:49,240
Speaker 1: of these values that like led you being a success.

1135
01:00:49,440 --> 01:00:52,240
Speaker 1: That's also luck you didn't have to have that grandma.

1136
01:00:52,880 --> 01:00:54,680
Speaker 1: And it's this thing of like, if my life is

1137
01:00:54,720 --> 01:00:56,600
Speaker 1: hard and a lot of bad shit happens to me,

1138
01:00:56,640 --> 01:00:59,439
Speaker 1: I'm not a lucky person. Both happen, like.

1139
01:01:00,560 --> 01:01:03,280
Speaker 2: And there are so many things from her story that

1140
01:01:03,320 --> 01:01:05,800
Speaker 2: you've told us that we're just pure luck, Like the

1141
01:01:05,880 --> 01:01:09,040
Speaker 2: reaction to her higher ups when she, you know, took

1142
01:01:09,120 --> 01:01:11,160
Speaker 2: took the gamb like the gamble and took the risk

1143
01:01:11,240 --> 01:01:13,840
Speaker 2: on like I'm gonna berate this woman on the show,

1144
01:01:13,880 --> 01:01:15,600
Speaker 2: and like, luckily it's going to be a hit.

1145
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:17,680
Speaker 4: That's luck because her higher ups.

1146
01:01:17,520 --> 01:01:19,160
Speaker 2: Could have fired her for that, Like that could have

1147
01:01:19,360 --> 01:01:23,120
Speaker 2: her story could have ended there. Luckily it didn't and

1148
01:01:23,160 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 2: they had a different reaction. But like to say, like, oh,

1149
01:01:25,800 --> 01:01:29,360
Speaker 2: that was a calculated choice obviously not Like I just

1150
01:01:29,400 --> 01:01:33,600
Speaker 2: can't believe that someone would discount sort of like right place,

1151
01:01:33,680 --> 01:01:35,760
Speaker 2: right time, luck Like, oh, just luckily it worked out

1152
01:01:35,760 --> 01:01:37,480
Speaker 2: that way to their success story.

1153
01:01:37,520 --> 01:01:40,640
Speaker 4: Everybody has that in their success story. Everybody.

1154
01:01:41,000 --> 01:01:44,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's this problem with like conflating I benefited

1155
01:01:44,440 --> 01:01:47,800
Speaker 1: from luck to saying like I'm lucky, and like, especially

1156
01:01:47,840 --> 01:01:50,280
Speaker 1: if you've had as nightmarish and upbring you she has.

1157
01:01:50,720 --> 01:01:53,360
Speaker 1: I get why there's some offense that, but like, you know,

1158
01:01:54,320 --> 01:01:57,400
Speaker 1: there's buildings that were air struck, and like one member

1159
01:01:57,520 --> 01:02:01,120
Speaker 1: of a family in Gaza survives theyved due to luck.

1160
01:02:01,360 --> 01:02:05,919
Speaker 1: They're not lucky their family got killed by an air strike, right,

1161
01:02:06,320 --> 01:02:09,920
Speaker 1: but it's just luck that they lived through that thing, right, Like,

1162
01:02:10,920 --> 01:02:13,400
Speaker 1: but I don't know, I think people, a lot of people,

1163
01:02:13,520 --> 01:02:16,320
Speaker 1: especially particularly Oprah, doesn't like thinking about it that way.

1164
01:02:16,800 --> 01:02:18,960
Speaker 1: Like maybe it's better to say, because luck has a

1165
01:02:19,040 --> 01:02:23,520
Speaker 1: positive connotation, blind fortune might be better. You know, it's

1166
01:02:23,560 --> 01:02:25,480
Speaker 1: the kind of blind fortune of the guy next to

1167
01:02:25,520 --> 01:02:27,520
Speaker 1: me took a bullet through the head, but I didn't,

1168
01:02:27,600 --> 01:02:30,640
Speaker 1: you know, that didn't happen to me. I'm just making

1169
01:02:30,680 --> 01:02:31,800
Speaker 1: an example.

1170
01:02:31,960 --> 01:02:35,320
Speaker 3: But it's it's like everyone's grandpa survived the landing in Normandy,

1171
01:02:35,520 --> 01:02:36,439
Speaker 3: Like yeah.

1172
01:02:36,200 --> 01:02:39,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, through luck. Other guys died because their luck

1173
01:02:39,160 --> 01:02:41,640
Speaker 1: was shitty. Yeah, you know that doesn't mean you didn't

1174
01:02:41,680 --> 01:02:44,840
Speaker 1: also like grow up fucking poor in the dust bowl, right, Like.

1175
01:02:45,840 --> 01:02:48,439
Speaker 2: I wonder for Oprah if there's some aspect to where

1176
01:02:48,480 --> 01:02:51,640
Speaker 2: she thinks that like her success was I don't want

1177
01:02:51,640 --> 01:02:53,640
Speaker 2: to say predetermined, but like I know a lot of

1178
01:02:53,640 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 2: people who believe that they are where they are because

1179
01:02:56,320 --> 01:03:00,440
Speaker 2: it was like like divinely written that way, and like

1180
01:03:00,560 --> 01:03:03,120
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter what choices they make because it's all

1181
01:03:03,120 --> 01:03:04,640
Speaker 2: gonna work out for them in the end. Like that's

1182
01:03:04,680 --> 01:03:06,720
Speaker 2: definitely a mindset of people that I that I know,

1183
01:03:06,800 --> 01:03:08,840
Speaker 2: And I wonder if she feels that way.

1184
01:03:09,560 --> 01:03:16,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, I she talks sometimes that way in terms of

1185
01:03:16,920 --> 01:03:20,960
Speaker 1: like does she actually believe that like God picked her specifically?

1186
01:03:21,400 --> 01:03:24,280
Speaker 1: I actually don't. She said stuff that you can interpret

1187
01:03:24,360 --> 01:03:26,400
Speaker 1: that way. I don't really get the vibe that's how

1188
01:03:26,400 --> 01:03:29,680
Speaker 1: she thinks about it. I think her attitude is like

1189
01:03:30,000 --> 01:03:35,080
Speaker 1: I succeeded because of my attitude and my hard work. Right,

1190
01:03:36,160 --> 01:03:36,560
Speaker 1: that's it.

1191
01:03:36,960 --> 01:03:37,200
Speaker 3: You know.

1192
01:03:38,360 --> 01:03:41,800
Speaker 1: Anyway, since this is behind the Bastards, I think it's

1193
01:03:41,840 --> 01:03:44,479
Speaker 1: prudent for us to end these episodes, and by God,

1194
01:03:44,520 --> 01:03:48,640
Speaker 1: they're finally fucking ending with a very clear because this

1195
01:03:48,760 --> 01:03:50,880
Speaker 1: is all a lot of this is murky. The book

1196
01:03:50,920 --> 01:03:54,040
Speaker 1: stubbed like not you know the luck thing. We can

1197
01:03:54,080 --> 01:03:56,760
Speaker 1: talk about the harms there and like how that perpetuates

1198
01:03:56,840 --> 01:03:59,840
Speaker 1: capitalism and makes it harder to get people behind, you know,

1199
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:03,240
Speaker 1: solutions to the problems of capitalism. But like, it's not

1200
01:04:03,360 --> 01:04:06,680
Speaker 1: bastard rey to just feel differently about to have that

1201
01:04:06,760 --> 01:04:09,360
Speaker 1: kind of reaction. You're not like evil. I just think

1202
01:04:09,440 --> 01:04:11,720
Speaker 1: you're wrong. So we're going to end on a real

1203
01:04:11,760 --> 01:04:14,920
Speaker 1: clear bit of evil. In two thousand and seven, Oprah

1204
01:04:15,040 --> 01:04:19,400
Speaker 1: had Jinny McCarthy on her show as a guest. McCarthy

1205
01:04:19,520 --> 01:04:21,640
Speaker 1: was at that point an actress and a former play

1206
01:04:21,920 --> 01:04:27,240
Speaker 1: boy model turned anti vaccine advocate. McCarthy is largely responsible

1207
01:04:27,280 --> 01:04:31,760
Speaker 1: for making Andrew Wakefield famous in the United States. Ginny believes,

1208
01:04:31,800 --> 01:04:35,040
Speaker 1: with no evidence, that vaccines gave her son Evan autism,

1209
01:04:35,280 --> 01:04:38,280
Speaker 1: and that she cured his autism with dieting and pills

1210
01:04:38,320 --> 01:04:42,360
Speaker 1: she got from the Internet. Now, McCarthy had a degree

1211
01:04:42,400 --> 01:04:44,400
Speaker 1: of fame in her own right, which is why people

1212
01:04:44,400 --> 01:04:48,160
Speaker 1: listen to her in the first place, But she would never, ever, ever,

1213
01:04:48,560 --> 01:04:51,320
Speaker 1: ever have reached more than a fraction of the people

1214
01:04:51,320 --> 01:04:54,200
Speaker 1: that she ultimately reached if Oprah had not had her

1215
01:04:54,240 --> 01:04:56,480
Speaker 1: on as a guest that fateful day in two thousand

1216
01:04:56,480 --> 01:04:59,240
Speaker 1: and seven. This turns into the kind of person who thousands,

1217
01:04:59,240 --> 01:05:02,160
Speaker 1: maybe even hundreds thousands of people you know, we're aware

1218
01:05:02,200 --> 01:05:05,200
Speaker 1: of and you know, some chunk of that probably in

1219
01:05:05,240 --> 01:05:08,280
Speaker 1: the tens of thousands at this point took her very seriously.

1220
01:05:08,520 --> 01:05:10,400
Speaker 1: Oprah puts her in front of like thirty million people,

1221
01:05:10,760 --> 01:05:16,160
Speaker 1: you know, and this is you talk about her as

1222
01:05:16,280 --> 01:05:19,600
Speaker 1: like an enzyme. Yeah, this is that moment for the

1223
01:05:19,640 --> 01:05:22,080
Speaker 1: anti VAXX movement, which is at this point one of

1224
01:05:22,160 --> 01:05:26,800
Speaker 1: the most dangerous and dominant social forces in the United States,

1225
01:05:27,160 --> 01:05:29,919
Speaker 1: pushing back against all of the gains of the last

1226
01:05:29,920 --> 01:05:33,840
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty years of medical science. It's a

1227
01:05:33,880 --> 01:05:39,680
Speaker 1: real nightmarish problem. And this is one of the single

1228
01:05:39,760 --> 01:05:43,720
Speaker 1: most important moments in the growth of the anti vaccine movement.

1229
01:05:44,120 --> 01:05:48,120
Speaker 1: Very little equals this and its toxicity. And I'm going

1230
01:05:48,160 --> 01:05:51,320
Speaker 1: to quote from an article in box here. Science journalist

1231
01:05:51,320 --> 01:05:53,560
Speaker 1: Seth Minukin, who covered this meeting of the minds in

1232
01:05:53,600 --> 01:05:56,920
Speaker 1: his book The Panic Virus, reported that Winfrey praised McCarthy's

1233
01:05:57,000 --> 01:06:00,040
Speaker 1: unwillingness to bow to authority, her faith in herself, and

1234
01:06:00,080 --> 01:06:02,560
Speaker 1: her use of the Internet as a tool for bypassing

1235
01:06:02,600 --> 01:06:07,400
Speaker 1: society's traditional gatekeepers. Here's an excerpt from the interview transcript. McCarthy,

1236
01:06:07,680 --> 01:06:10,240
Speaker 1: first thing I did Google I put in autism and

1237
01:06:10,320 --> 01:06:14,640
Speaker 1: I started my research Winfree. Thank god for Google, McCarthy.

1238
01:06:14,840 --> 01:06:19,120
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, Winfrey, thank god for Google McCarthy. The

1239
01:06:19,240 --> 01:06:22,200
Speaker 1: University of Google is where I got my degree from.

1240
01:06:22,440 --> 01:06:24,520
Speaker 1: And I put in autism and something came up that

1241
01:06:24,600 --> 01:06:27,320
Speaker 1: changed my life, that led me on this road to recovery,

1242
01:06:27,360 --> 01:06:29,840
Speaker 1: which said autism, it was in a corner of the screen,

1243
01:06:30,240 --> 01:06:33,560
Speaker 1: is reversible and treatable. And I said, what that has

1244
01:06:33,600 --> 01:06:35,960
Speaker 1: to be an ad for a hocus pocus thing, because

1245
01:06:36,000 --> 01:06:38,959
Speaker 1: if autism is reversible and treatable, well, then it would

1246
01:06:39,000 --> 01:06:42,160
Speaker 1: be on Oprah.

1247
01:06:42,200 --> 01:06:44,520
Speaker 2: I love that the specific things that she was praising

1248
01:06:44,520 --> 01:06:49,080
Speaker 2: her for are the most like Karen conspiracy theorist attributes

1249
01:06:49,120 --> 01:06:51,520
Speaker 2: like yeah, way to know the Internet, way to not

1250
01:06:51,560 --> 01:06:52,760
Speaker 2: trust authority, way.

1251
01:06:52,640 --> 01:06:56,320
Speaker 1: To like yeah, this is an er moment. This is

1252
01:06:57,000 --> 01:06:59,520
Speaker 1: in Lord of the Rings terms, this is Sourn forging

1253
01:06:59,560 --> 01:07:04,680
Speaker 1: the rings of power rights. That's Oprah's involvement in the

1254
01:07:04,720 --> 01:07:06,200
Speaker 1: anti vax Mo movement.

1255
01:07:06,320 --> 01:07:06,560
Speaker 6: Right.

1256
01:07:08,240 --> 01:07:12,240
Speaker 1: So, days after that Oprah appearance, and this is continuing

1257
01:07:12,280 --> 01:07:14,840
Speaker 1: that quote from Vox, McCarthy was invited on Larry King

1258
01:07:14,880 --> 01:07:17,200
Speaker 1: Live and Good Morning America to spread her anti vaccine

1259
01:07:17,200 --> 01:07:20,320
Speaker 1: message even further between the three shows, she reached between

1260
01:07:20,360 --> 01:07:23,440
Speaker 1: fifteen million and twenty million viewers with her anti vaccine message.

1261
01:07:23,520 --> 01:07:26,240
Speaker 1: Minucin estimated. I think there's actually a good cause to

1262
01:07:26,280 --> 01:07:29,200
Speaker 1: suggest that it was more than that substantially, but all

1263
01:07:29,920 --> 01:07:33,640
Speaker 1: because I think her most was like twenty six something

1264
01:07:33,720 --> 01:07:37,800
Speaker 1: million viewers somewhere in those line. Along those lines, but anyway,

1265
01:07:39,040 --> 01:07:42,400
Speaker 1: Oprah ended McCarthy's bit by calling her a mother warrior,

1266
01:07:42,480 --> 01:07:44,600
Speaker 1: which incidentally helped to set off one of my least

1267
01:07:44,640 --> 01:07:47,720
Speaker 1: favorite linguistic trends. I really fucking hate people using the

1268
01:07:47,720 --> 01:07:51,360
Speaker 1: word war here for basically anything outside of war. It's

1269
01:07:51,440 --> 01:07:54,280
Speaker 1: just irritating to me. Not a moral thing, but like

1270
01:07:54,320 --> 01:07:57,880
Speaker 1: fucking like it's always alarmed. But I mean the sweat

1271
01:07:57,920 --> 01:08:02,400
Speaker 1: lodge that killed three people was the spiritual will warrior seminar, right, Like,

1272
01:08:03,280 --> 01:08:06,200
Speaker 1: you're not a warrior because you want to meditate and

1273
01:08:06,240 --> 01:08:08,800
Speaker 1: sit in a hot room. You're not a warrior because

1274
01:08:08,800 --> 01:08:11,480
Speaker 1: you got on Google, because you don't think your kid

1275
01:08:12,000 --> 01:08:14,800
Speaker 1: is worth loving because they have autism.

1276
01:08:14,840 --> 01:08:18,040
Speaker 3: You know, you shouldn't want to have to be a warrior.

1277
01:08:18,920 --> 01:08:22,000
Speaker 1: It's well, I mean that's what McCarthy would say. I

1278
01:08:22,040 --> 01:08:24,200
Speaker 1: had to be one for my son to cure him

1279
01:08:24,240 --> 01:08:27,320
Speaker 1: of the horrible specter of autism, which is actually like

1280
01:08:27,560 --> 01:08:30,640
Speaker 1: deeply hateful to your kid, that like you're going to

1281
01:08:30,640 --> 01:08:33,080
Speaker 1: move heaven and earth to like change them, as opposed

1282
01:08:33,080 --> 01:08:35,040
Speaker 1: to just being like, yeah, this is my kid, this

1283
01:08:35,080 --> 01:08:39,400
Speaker 1: is how they are now. The only slight nod to

1284
01:08:39,479 --> 01:08:42,479
Speaker 1: reality was when oath pro read a brief statement from

1285
01:08:42,479 --> 01:08:46,479
Speaker 1: the CDC which pointed out that vaccines save lives. Even then,

1286
01:08:46,640 --> 01:08:50,200
Speaker 1: McCarthy got the last word, insisting, my science is named

1287
01:08:50,200 --> 01:08:57,720
Speaker 1: Evan and he's at home. That's my science. Man. The

1288
01:08:57,760 --> 01:09:01,559
Speaker 1: episode with McCarthy is still featured. I think the actual

1289
01:09:01,600 --> 01:09:03,920
Speaker 1: clips of it aren't. I mean you can still find

1290
01:09:03,920 --> 01:09:05,759
Speaker 1: some of them, but like the episode is still featured

1291
01:09:05,760 --> 01:09:08,080
Speaker 1: on the oprah dot com website, Like there's a write

1292
01:09:08,160 --> 01:09:11,040
Speaker 1: up about it on there. Winfrey has never retracted or

1293
01:09:11,080 --> 01:09:13,960
Speaker 1: apologized for her role in the anti vaccine epidemic. In fact,

1294
01:09:14,000 --> 01:09:16,960
Speaker 1: she had her production company sign McCarthy for a TV

1295
01:09:17,040 --> 01:09:22,080
Speaker 1: show that eventually fell through. Because Jenny McCarthy is bad.

1296
01:09:22,360 --> 01:09:25,000
Speaker 1: We'll say bad because that's not legally actionable. I think

1297
01:09:25,040 --> 01:09:27,759
Speaker 1: she's really bad and the show didn't happen to thank god,

1298
01:09:28,000 --> 01:09:31,080
Speaker 1: but Winfrey made her a recurrent guest. She keeps on

1299
01:09:31,160 --> 01:09:34,160
Speaker 1: coming on, and Winfrey does not limit herself to just

1300
01:09:34,280 --> 01:09:37,040
Speaker 1: McCarthy as an anti vax figure. In fact, I found

1301
01:09:37,080 --> 01:09:39,679
Speaker 1: a mother Jones article that informed me that Jenny McCarthy

1302
01:09:39,800 --> 01:09:42,320
Speaker 1: was not even the first person with anti vaxx views

1303
01:09:42,400 --> 01:09:46,200
Speaker 1: on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Quote months before McCarthy's appearance,

1304
01:09:46,280 --> 01:09:49,040
Speaker 1: Katie Wright, whose son has autism, set on the show.

1305
01:09:49,200 --> 01:09:51,880
Speaker 1: The vaccine connection has not been refuted at all. In fact,

1306
01:09:51,960 --> 01:09:54,160
Speaker 1: we give thirty seven vaccines to babies under the age

1307
01:09:54,160 --> 01:09:57,040
Speaker 1: of eighteen months. Nobody has shown that safe a wise idea,

1308
01:09:57,080 --> 01:10:00,599
Speaker 1: the multiple vaccines at once. I would say the fact

1309
01:10:00,640 --> 01:10:03,400
Speaker 1: that most kids who are born survive to be adults

1310
01:10:03,680 --> 01:10:06,599
Speaker 1: shows that that's a good idea. Look at where things were.

1311
01:10:06,640 --> 01:10:09,759
Speaker 1: They're in eighteen fifty with kids who were born surviving

1312
01:10:09,800 --> 01:10:16,080
Speaker 1: to adulthood. That that, I would say is pretty good evidence. Anyway, Yeah,

1313
01:10:16,360 --> 01:10:21,920
Speaker 1: the next year, Oh sorry, are just really bummed out now.

1314
01:10:22,520 --> 01:10:27,240
Speaker 3: It's although, like, I mean, so much of like what's

1315
01:10:27,240 --> 01:10:31,479
Speaker 3: wrong with America is like, can can just we make

1316
01:10:31,560 --> 01:10:34,479
Speaker 3: everyone learn basic statistics just once?

1317
01:10:34,920 --> 01:10:37,840
Speaker 1: No, absolutely never going to do that, Andrew, we can't

1318
01:10:37,840 --> 01:10:39,599
Speaker 1: even teach people how to read anymore.

1319
01:10:39,960 --> 01:10:40,080
Speaker 3: No.

1320
01:10:44,439 --> 01:10:48,280
Speaker 1: The next year, OPRAH had Christianne Northrop On. Northrop is

1321
01:10:48,280 --> 01:10:51,200
Speaker 1: a physician, or at least a former physician, who started

1322
01:10:51,240 --> 01:10:54,040
Speaker 1: making the switch to new age health disinformation grifter on

1323
01:10:54,080 --> 01:10:58,120
Speaker 1: Oprah's program. Her initial target was the HPV vaccine, which

1324
01:10:58,160 --> 01:11:04,679
Speaker 1: she suggested should be replaced by a healthy diet. Norript added, look,

1325
01:11:05,040 --> 01:11:08,479
Speaker 1: just eat right, and you can't get HPV. Everyone knows that.

1326
01:11:12,240 --> 01:11:14,200
Speaker 2: All the things I thought you were where you thought

1327
01:11:14,200 --> 01:11:16,720
Speaker 2: you were gonna go, if you had good prayer, that

1328
01:11:16,760 --> 01:11:18,680
Speaker 2: would be the only thing like more ridiculous.

1329
01:11:18,920 --> 01:11:21,240
Speaker 1: No, this is why, Like you know, in my own

1330
01:11:21,240 --> 01:11:23,640
Speaker 1: personal life, I don't use any kind of protection. We

1331
01:11:23,760 --> 01:11:24,920
Speaker 1: just eat a salad first.

1332
01:11:25,280 --> 01:11:25,479
Speaker 2: You know.

1333
01:11:25,840 --> 01:11:28,280
Speaker 1: That makes it safe. If you're both eating a salad,

1334
01:11:28,360 --> 01:11:32,720
Speaker 1: nobody can pass anything to anybody else. Like, no, I've

1335
01:11:32,720 --> 01:11:36,240
Speaker 1: got some tomatoes, but I got this excellent caesar. Oh

1336
01:11:36,320 --> 01:11:39,160
Speaker 1: my god, it's so good, and it's spinach. None of

1337
01:11:39,160 --> 01:11:42,639
Speaker 1: that fucking like lettuce bullshit, right, like the good stuff

1338
01:11:43,560 --> 01:11:53,040
Speaker 1: mixed greens, fucking hysterical. So Northrip added, I'm a little

1339
01:11:53,040 --> 01:11:55,799
Speaker 1: against my own profession. My own profession feels that everyone

1340
01:11:55,840 --> 01:11:59,880
Speaker 1: should be vaccinated. Nothing you mean to say about that,

1341
01:12:00,320 --> 01:12:02,439
Speaker 1: you won't be surprised, but should be sadden to hear

1342
01:12:02,439 --> 01:12:04,719
Speaker 1: that Northrop is still with us. She pivoted to COVID

1343
01:12:04,840 --> 01:12:08,519
Speaker 1: nineteen denial. This is particularly a problem because in twenty thirteen,

1344
01:12:08,800 --> 01:12:11,519
Speaker 1: readers Digest declared her one of the hundred most trusted

1345
01:12:11,560 --> 01:12:13,960
Speaker 1: people in the country. I want to read a quote

1346
01:12:14,000 --> 01:12:17,360
Speaker 1: from a McGill University article on Christiane for the Office

1347
01:12:17,360 --> 01:12:20,559
Speaker 1: of Science and Safety, which calls her the doctor Carl

1348
01:12:20,680 --> 01:12:23,960
Speaker 1: Sagan warned us about, and she's specifically talking about a

1349
01:12:24,040 --> 01:12:27,519
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan quote about like his fear that anti science

1350
01:12:27,560 --> 01:12:30,320
Speaker 1: attitudes will lead to a return a new dark ages.

1351
01:12:30,479 --> 01:12:32,719
Speaker 1: Is like this, people start to believe in a demon

1352
01:12:32,800 --> 01:12:35,880
Speaker 1: haunted world rather than a world of like problems and

1353
01:12:35,960 --> 01:12:40,240
Speaker 1: solutions that can both be understood scientifically. And yeah, I

1354
01:12:40,280 --> 01:12:44,839
Speaker 1: think that's both a damning and accurate way to describe Northrop.

1355
01:12:46,080 --> 01:12:49,519
Speaker 1: Quote from McGill University. She does not believe vaccines are

1356
01:12:49,600 --> 01:12:52,480
Speaker 1: necessary if your body is healthy, and has spread unsubstantiated

1357
01:12:52,479 --> 01:12:55,519
Speaker 1: fears about safe vaccines throughout her career. She claimed that

1358
01:12:55,560 --> 01:12:59,479
Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen vaccines will target specific chromosomes that act

1359
01:12:59,479 --> 01:13:02,240
Speaker 1: as the seed of our empathy, an utterly absurd and

1360
01:13:02,280 --> 01:13:05,960
Speaker 1: unscientific statement. She believes that artificial intelligence has somehow been

1361
01:13:05,960 --> 01:13:09,840
Speaker 1: incorporated into these vaccines, absolutely nonsense, and that this AI

1362
01:13:10,000 --> 01:13:13,559
Speaker 1: will integrate itself into our DNA. She warns her viewers

1363
01:13:13,600 --> 01:13:16,280
Speaker 1: that the injection of patented vaccines inside our body will

1364
01:13:16,280 --> 01:13:19,800
Speaker 1: turn us into the property of the patent holders. Thanks

1365
01:13:19,840 --> 01:13:21,160
Speaker 1: for that one, Oprah.

1366
01:13:21,840 --> 01:13:24,200
Speaker 4: Let me just check Bill Gates.

1367
01:13:26,080 --> 01:13:28,120
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't know this. Bill Gates actually

1368
01:13:28,160 --> 01:13:30,920
Speaker 1: moved into your house, and because you're legally his property,

1369
01:13:30,920 --> 01:13:36,240
Speaker 1: you couldn't say anything about its super clean roommate, super

1370
01:13:36,320 --> 01:13:37,160
Speaker 1: clean roommate.

1371
01:13:39,439 --> 01:13:44,320
Speaker 4: No God, why that is nonsense. That is complete.

1372
01:13:45,640 --> 01:13:50,679
Speaker 1: Thanks oaps. Great that she's in the discourse forever and now,

1373
01:13:51,560 --> 01:13:53,559
Speaker 1: and that's part of the thing. Is like Oprah kind

1374
01:13:53,560 --> 01:13:56,040
Speaker 1: of takes a step back in like twenty ten eleven.

1375
01:13:56,160 --> 01:13:59,280
Speaker 1: She's on leash. She's clearly like partially retired, but like

1376
01:14:00,120 --> 01:14:02,840
Speaker 1: all of these fuckers are still with us. You didn't

1377
01:14:02,880 --> 01:14:06,160
Speaker 1: take them with you, Oprah. Do if she'd just been

1378
01:14:06,320 --> 01:14:09,479
Speaker 1: like a pharaoh and been buried with them all, I'd

1379
01:14:09,479 --> 01:14:10,080
Speaker 1: be fine.

1380
01:14:10,320 --> 01:14:10,760
Speaker 2: But like.

1381
01:14:12,600 --> 01:14:14,960
Speaker 1: A glass no, like.

1382
01:14:14,920 --> 01:14:17,519
Speaker 2: The harm they do. Like she's she's gonna be fine.

1383
01:14:17,520 --> 01:14:19,400
Speaker 2: It's like she unleashed this chaos.

1384
01:14:19,400 --> 01:14:24,800
Speaker 1: She's gonna be fine forever, She's she's gonna be Yeah,

1385
01:14:24,880 --> 01:14:25,599
Speaker 1: she's doing what.

1386
01:14:25,640 --> 01:14:28,799
Speaker 5: Government job does doctor Oz have now?

1387
01:14:29,320 --> 01:14:32,000
Speaker 1: Not yet, not yet, but probably by the time people

1388
01:14:32,040 --> 01:14:33,960
Speaker 1: listen to this, like, there's a good chance he might

1389
01:14:34,000 --> 01:14:36,200
Speaker 1: have been confirmed. I think it's Health and Human Services. No,

1390
01:14:36,240 --> 01:14:42,599
Speaker 1: it's medicaid for him, right, yeah, Medica. Oh great shit.

1391
01:14:42,720 --> 01:14:45,400
Speaker 1: So the good news is that in recent years the

1392
01:14:45,439 --> 01:14:48,160
Speaker 1: world has slowly started catching up to the many, many

1393
01:14:48,200 --> 01:14:51,120
Speaker 1: harms that Oprah and her celebrity have caused. I found

1394
01:14:51,120 --> 01:14:54,120
Speaker 1: a good article about this in The Root, which noted

1395
01:14:54,160 --> 01:14:57,280
Speaker 1: that after the catastrophic Maui fires in twenty twenty three,

1396
01:14:57,400 --> 01:15:00,479
Speaker 1: she and the Rock asked random working people to donate

1397
01:15:00,560 --> 01:15:04,640
Speaker 1: to rebuild the island. They put in ten million dollars themselves,

1398
01:15:04,920 --> 01:15:09,240
Speaker 1: even though they both of them are worth substantially more

1399
01:15:09,280 --> 01:15:12,200
Speaker 1: than that. Shall we say, in earlier years, I think

1400
01:15:12,240 --> 01:15:14,479
Speaker 1: they both would have been praised for giving ten million,

1401
01:15:14,720 --> 01:15:16,880
Speaker 1: But in twenty twenty three, coming from a woman with

1402
01:15:16,920 --> 01:15:19,360
Speaker 1: more than two billion dollars in a bank in the bank,

1403
01:15:19,560 --> 01:15:21,760
Speaker 1: especially considering she was clearly talking about the parts of

1404
01:15:21,760 --> 01:15:25,959
Speaker 1: Maui where the rich people lived, it was taken widely

1405
01:15:26,120 --> 01:15:30,320
Speaker 1: as insulting. Speaking of insulting, and I'm getting a little

1406
01:15:30,320 --> 01:15:32,760
Speaker 1: petty here, but I'm gonna tell this story anyway. In

1407
01:15:32,800 --> 01:15:35,479
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, Oprah went on tour with her mystic buddy

1408
01:15:35,520 --> 01:15:38,360
Speaker 1: Deepak Chopra, selling tickets for one thousand dollars for a

1409
01:15:38,400 --> 01:15:41,519
Speaker 1: motivational presentation called The Life You Want. Because there would

1410
01:15:41,520 --> 01:15:43,240
Speaker 1: be long lines to get in and the whole event

1411
01:15:43,280 --> 01:15:46,240
Speaker 1: would be something of a spectacle, Oprah and her organizers

1412
01:15:46,240 --> 01:15:48,960
Speaker 1: decided to hire local talent to play on stages around

1413
01:15:48,960 --> 01:15:54,080
Speaker 1: and outside the weekend long event. Oh did I say hire? No? No, no, sorry,

1414
01:15:54,439 --> 01:15:57,920
Speaker 1: I meant they begged local artists to work for free

1415
01:15:58,280 --> 01:15:59,720
Speaker 1: for exposure.

1416
01:16:01,479 --> 01:16:03,800
Speaker 4: A page from the Amanda Palmer playbook.

1417
01:16:03,880 --> 01:16:06,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Now what's interesting about this to me? I

1418
01:16:06,200 --> 01:16:08,680
Speaker 1: started this by talking about that it was like in

1419
01:16:08,720 --> 01:16:12,000
Speaker 1: two thousands she did her first like big tour. I

1420
01:16:12,000 --> 01:16:15,599
Speaker 1: think it was called The Life You Want? Or is that?

1421
01:16:15,720 --> 01:16:17,320
Speaker 1: Oh no, this one's Life you Want. I forget what

1422
01:16:17,360 --> 01:16:18,760
Speaker 1: the first tour was. We talk about it at the

1423
01:16:18,760 --> 01:16:21,760
Speaker 1: start of episode five. But she did a tour and

1424
01:16:21,800 --> 01:16:23,880
Speaker 1: in that one she made a real point. Tickets were

1425
01:16:23,920 --> 01:16:26,880
Speaker 1: like twenty or thirty bucks and all of the proceeds

1426
01:16:26,880 --> 01:16:29,360
Speaker 1: were donated to the Angel Foundation. So whatever you want

1427
01:16:29,360 --> 01:16:31,840
Speaker 1: to say about like, you know, this is the thing

1428
01:16:31,880 --> 01:16:34,120
Speaker 1: that the La Times was like calling her a basically

1429
01:16:34,120 --> 01:16:36,720
Speaker 1: a god for putting on. But at least it was

1430
01:16:36,760 --> 01:16:39,960
Speaker 1: an extremely affordable event made for like working people to

1431
01:16:40,000 --> 01:16:42,960
Speaker 1: be able to attend, and she didn't profit directly off

1432
01:16:43,000 --> 01:16:45,440
Speaker 1: of it. All of the money went to her charity.

1433
01:16:45,120 --> 01:16:47,679
Speaker 3: Although foundations come on, yeah.

1434
01:16:47,880 --> 01:16:52,479
Speaker 1: Yes, by twenty fourteen, but there's pretense, no pretense by

1435
01:16:52,479 --> 01:16:55,720
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen for this one one thousand dollars, okay, or

1436
01:16:55,760 --> 01:16:58,599
Speaker 1: at least those are some of the like it's going

1437
01:16:58,760 --> 01:17:01,040
Speaker 1: ranging from one hundred to a thot thousand dollars, right,

1438
01:17:02,400 --> 01:17:04,960
Speaker 1: and these are the venue in the town where she's

1439
01:17:04,960 --> 01:17:09,400
Speaker 1: specific like, because this specific article comes from a performer

1440
01:17:10,080 --> 01:17:14,040
Speaker 1: named Revolva r Evolva or at least that's your stage

1441
01:17:14,120 --> 01:17:17,240
Speaker 1: name obviously, and Revolva is one of the people who

1442
01:17:17,360 --> 01:17:21,040
Speaker 1: Oprah's team reaches out to asking her to work for

1443
01:17:21,120 --> 01:17:24,080
Speaker 1: free at this event, and Revolva points out that the

1444
01:17:24,200 --> 01:17:27,720
Speaker 1: venue in her town had an eighteen thousand person capacity

1445
01:17:28,080 --> 01:17:29,920
Speaker 1: and if tickets are ranging from one hundred to one

1446
01:17:29,920 --> 01:17:33,040
Speaker 1: thousand dollars with eighteen thousand seats. That adds up to

1447
01:17:33,360 --> 01:17:36,599
Speaker 1: what I think doctors know as a shitload of money,

1448
01:17:37,320 --> 01:17:40,559
Speaker 1: enough to pay someone like Revolva. I don't know, a

1449
01:17:40,560 --> 01:17:43,960
Speaker 1: couple thousand bucks something like that. You know, any money,

1450
01:17:43,960 --> 01:17:45,240
Speaker 1: literally anything.

1451
01:17:45,600 --> 01:17:47,960
Speaker 2: What if the life that I want involves being paid

1452
01:17:48,000 --> 01:17:48,679
Speaker 2: for my labor?

1453
01:17:48,840 --> 01:17:49,320
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm sure.

1454
01:17:49,320 --> 01:17:51,080
Speaker 1: Tomul like, hey, it's like five hundred bucks. I know

1455
01:17:51,120 --> 01:17:53,240
Speaker 1: that's lower than standard, but you'll get exposure. At least

1456
01:17:53,240 --> 01:17:57,439
Speaker 1: you're offering money, right, you know. I So the producer

1457
01:17:57,560 --> 01:18:00,280
Speaker 1: she talked to framed it as a favor that Oprah

1458
01:18:00,360 --> 01:18:03,320
Speaker 1: and the crew were doing the local arts community. People

1459
01:18:03,360 --> 01:18:07,040
Speaker 1: started calling us asking to perform, so we thought we'd

1460
01:18:07,080 --> 01:18:09,479
Speaker 1: add a stage for local acts. Look at how good

1461
01:18:09,520 --> 01:18:14,640
Speaker 1: we are. Like, motherfucker, now I've got again. I'm criticizing

1462
01:18:14,680 --> 01:18:17,960
Speaker 1: this because it is shitty and bad. I have no

1463
01:18:18,120 --> 01:18:21,400
Speaker 1: idea how much Oprah was aware, if at all, about

1464
01:18:21,439 --> 01:18:24,559
Speaker 1: the specifics of this. I highly doubt she was like,

1465
01:18:24,640 --> 01:18:28,719
Speaker 1: send Revolva an offer, right, Like there's a good chance

1466
01:18:28,760 --> 01:18:31,080
Speaker 1: though that. Like someone said, hey, should we have a

1467
01:18:31,080 --> 01:18:33,960
Speaker 1: bunch of local actors perform on a stage where you

1468
01:18:34,040 --> 01:18:36,280
Speaker 1: aren't for free? And she was like, yeah, sure, sounds great.

1469
01:18:37,320 --> 01:18:40,639
Speaker 1: They'll get exposure. Yeah, I think that's probably probably somewhere

1470
01:18:40,680 --> 01:18:41,760
Speaker 1: close to the case.

1471
01:18:42,760 --> 01:18:45,120
Speaker 3: Or even less to be fair, like, hey, she got

1472
01:18:45,160 --> 01:18:46,559
Speaker 3: some local artists. Great, make it happen.

1473
01:18:46,840 --> 01:18:48,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, make it happen right.

1474
01:18:48,160 --> 01:18:48,639
Speaker 3: End of story.

1475
01:18:48,680 --> 01:18:52,599
Speaker 1: As far as Oprah is concerned, end of story. That said,

1476
01:18:53,439 --> 01:18:57,559
Speaker 1: I suspect, if asked honestly, Oprah would consider getting to

1477
01:18:57,560 --> 01:18:59,760
Speaker 1: perform on a stage kind of near her to be

1478
01:18:59,800 --> 01:19:03,040
Speaker 1: where much more than money. And I do want to

1479
01:19:03,040 --> 01:19:05,240
Speaker 1: note we'll have a link and link in our source

1480
01:19:05,320 --> 01:19:08,360
Speaker 1: notes to Revolva's website where she writes this up. But

1481
01:19:08,360 --> 01:19:11,960
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have Sophie show you the little image infographic

1482
01:19:12,000 --> 01:19:14,920
Speaker 1: that she put together about the different people involved in this.

1483
01:19:17,160 --> 01:19:20,280
Speaker 1: It shows Oprah Winfrey networth two point nine billion, the Epact,

1484
01:19:20,320 --> 01:19:24,280
Speaker 1: Chopra networth eighty million, Elizabeth Gilbert networth twenty five million,

1485
01:19:24,520 --> 01:19:28,640
Speaker 1: Revolva net worth negative twenty thousand dollars. But she's like

1486
01:19:28,680 --> 01:19:29,400
Speaker 1: a fire.

1487
01:19:29,200 --> 01:19:31,120
Speaker 4: Spinner, awesome spinning fire.

1488
01:19:32,960 --> 01:19:36,040
Speaker 1: It's a great Yeah, higher Revolva, give her money. If

1489
01:19:36,040 --> 01:19:37,880
Speaker 1: she's still doing this, I don't know. This was ten

1490
01:19:37,960 --> 01:19:41,519
Speaker 1: years ago. Best of luck, Revolva, thanks for writing about

1491
01:19:41,560 --> 01:19:44,599
Speaker 1: this now. Those of you who are in your thirties,

1492
01:19:44,640 --> 01:19:47,280
Speaker 1: will remember that fun year or so where large numbers

1493
01:19:47,280 --> 01:19:49,040
Speaker 1: of people thought the world was going to end in

1494
01:19:49,080 --> 01:19:52,240
Speaker 1: twenty twelve because of the Mayans. The Mayans did not,

1495
01:19:52,320 --> 01:19:54,080
Speaker 1: in fact predict the world was going to end in

1496
01:19:54,120 --> 01:19:56,360
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, but there was a lot of money in

1497
01:19:56,880 --> 01:19:59,320
Speaker 1: lying about that for a little while. You may be

1498
01:19:59,400 --> 01:20:01,680
Speaker 1: surprised to hear that OPRAH had a big part in

1499
01:20:01,720 --> 01:20:05,160
Speaker 1: that panic too, from an article by Kurt Anderson of Slate.

1500
01:20:05,800 --> 01:20:08,200
Speaker 1: Right around the time the secret came out, Habit Chowse

1501
01:20:08,280 --> 01:20:11,200
Speaker 1: of the of its general vicinities started buzzing about the

1502
01:20:11,280 --> 01:20:14,160
Speaker 1: year twenty twelve. Ancient Meso Americans, people were saying, had

1503
01:20:14,200 --> 01:20:18,120
Speaker 1: predicted that in twenty twelve, specifically December twenty first, humankind's

1504
01:20:18,120 --> 01:20:22,960
Speaker 1: present existence would transition when the current twenty five year

1505
01:20:23,040 --> 01:20:26,760
Speaker 1: long period ends. New Age religion makers like American Protestants

1506
01:20:26,760 --> 01:20:29,160
Speaker 1: now had their own ancient prophecy for their dreams of

1507
01:20:29,160 --> 01:20:33,520
Speaker 1: something like a near future armageddon and supernaturally wonderful aftermath.

1508
01:20:33,920 --> 01:20:36,840
Speaker 1: Winfrey ended the daily Oprah broadcast in twenty eleven. A

1509
01:20:36,880 --> 01:20:40,280
Speaker 1: month before the final episode, she interviewed Shirley maclain for

1510
01:20:40,320 --> 01:20:43,320
Speaker 1: the millionth time and asked about twenty twelve, what's going

1511
01:20:43,400 --> 01:20:46,479
Speaker 1: to happen to us as a species? We're coming into

1512
01:20:46,520 --> 01:20:49,559
Speaker 1: an alignment. McLean explained. It is the first time in

1513
01:20:49,600 --> 01:20:52,760
Speaker 1: twenty six thousand years, thirty six thousand years, twenty six

1514
01:20:52,840 --> 01:20:55,479
Speaker 1: thousand years. I'm sorry that this has occurred. You have

1515
01:20:55,479 --> 01:20:57,840
Speaker 1: an alignment where this solar system is on a direct

1516
01:20:57,840 --> 01:21:00,640
Speaker 1: alignment with the center of the galaxy. That carries with

1517
01:21:00,680 --> 01:21:06,120
Speaker 1: it a very profound electromagnetic frequency vibration. When Free interjected vibration,

1518
01:21:06,320 --> 01:21:10,200
Speaker 1: McLean agreed, and gravitational pull hints the weather. What does

1519
01:21:10,240 --> 01:21:12,280
Speaker 1: that do to consciousness? What does that due to our

1520
01:21:12,320 --> 01:21:15,559
Speaker 1: sense of reality? It's why people feel stressed and rushed,

1521
01:21:15,720 --> 01:21:17,640
Speaker 1: she said.

1522
01:21:18,880 --> 01:21:22,240
Speaker 2: Sometimes I think Oprah should have just been like me

1523
01:21:22,400 --> 01:21:26,040
Speaker 2: in college, doing psychedelics and looking at black blite posters

1524
01:21:26,080 --> 01:21:27,920
Speaker 2: and just like like if she had just kept this

1525
01:21:28,040 --> 01:21:31,479
Speaker 2: in like the common area of the dorm, we all

1526
01:21:31,520 --> 01:21:32,799
Speaker 2: might have been a little old bess.

1527
01:21:33,320 --> 01:21:36,040
Speaker 1: It's remarkable how many transcripts of her show sound like

1528
01:21:36,080 --> 01:21:39,080
Speaker 1: stuff that like fifteen years ago, like a pot dealer

1529
01:21:39,160 --> 01:21:41,760
Speaker 1: told me, well, we played PlayStation because like I really

1530
01:21:41,800 --> 01:21:43,400
Speaker 1: just wanted to get out of there with my eighth

1531
01:21:43,560 --> 01:21:44,960
Speaker 1: But like you kind of got to hang with the

1532
01:21:45,000 --> 01:21:47,400
Speaker 1: guy a little bit. He's cutting me a deal. You know,

1533
01:21:49,439 --> 01:21:52,280
Speaker 1: these are the experiences legal weed is making kids miss

1534
01:21:52,280 --> 01:21:57,280
Speaker 1: out on. Now, that's why they need Joe Rogan.

1535
01:21:57,920 --> 01:22:03,040
Speaker 3: God, it's so deeply. I mean, the thing that's coalescing

1536
01:22:03,080 --> 01:22:10,280
Speaker 3: now is like Oprah has like a professional credulity verging

1537
01:22:10,360 --> 01:22:14,120
Speaker 3: on idiocy. That is just what audiences want because that's

1538
01:22:14,160 --> 01:22:15,879
Speaker 3: what everyone is wanted.

1539
01:22:16,080 --> 01:22:21,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, And that's kind of so dumb. That brings

1540
01:22:21,120 --> 01:22:23,680
Speaker 1: us to the end because the worm has sort of

1541
01:22:23,760 --> 01:22:27,559
Speaker 1: turned for Oprah here. You know. The Oprah Winfrey Show

1542
01:22:27,680 --> 01:22:31,120
Speaker 1: ended after twenty five years on the air in twenty eleven.

1543
01:22:31,479 --> 01:22:36,360
Speaker 1: She still does specials. Oh Magazine continued until twenty twenty

1544
01:22:36,439 --> 01:22:40,160
Speaker 1: when it stopped publicizing. Oprah still has a sizable production

1545
01:22:40,280 --> 01:22:42,439
Speaker 1: company her current show. She has a current show that's

1546
01:22:42,439 --> 01:22:46,840
Speaker 1: called Life Class. So she still does shows and stuff.

1547
01:22:46,880 --> 01:22:48,880
Speaker 1: But the Oprah Winfrey Show is like an everyday thing.

1548
01:22:49,320 --> 01:22:53,599
Speaker 1: Ended in twenty eleven, and her cultural influence has faded

1549
01:22:53,720 --> 01:22:58,559
Speaker 1: substantially from its peak thirteen years ago. Perhaps Oprah might

1550
01:22:58,560 --> 01:23:00,800
Speaker 1: have been able to rain in the legions of New

1551
01:23:00,800 --> 01:23:03,479
Speaker 1: Age curious fans before they fell into the abyss of

1552
01:23:03,560 --> 01:23:06,800
Speaker 1: QAnon or flat Earth or whatever kind of white supremacist

1553
01:23:06,880 --> 01:23:09,639
Speaker 1: shit is currently going viral with like a weird number

1554
01:23:09,680 --> 01:23:14,720
Speaker 1: of like gen X people who spent twenty years watching Oprah,

1555
01:23:16,080 --> 01:23:18,479
Speaker 1: but not anymore. She doesn't have that juice anymore. It's

1556
01:23:18,479 --> 01:23:20,759
Speaker 1: one of those things. She came out big for Kamala

1557
01:23:20,800 --> 01:23:23,720
Speaker 1: Harris during the election and it didn't do shit. Ten

1558
01:23:23,800 --> 01:23:27,200
Speaker 1: years ago. Oprah may have been able to me out, yeah,

1559
01:23:27,400 --> 01:23:29,719
Speaker 1: might have been able to swing an election, but not anymore.

1560
01:23:29,800 --> 01:23:36,080
Speaker 1: You know, Oprah's well past her peak. But it's also

1561
01:23:36,280 --> 01:23:40,240
Speaker 1: too one late to undo the damage. Right, this march

1562
01:23:40,360 --> 01:23:43,920
Speaker 1: into unreality that she helped to lead and organize. We're

1563
01:23:44,000 --> 01:23:46,320
Speaker 1: still going down that road, even though I think she

1564
01:23:46,479 --> 01:23:50,160
Speaker 1: herself sees how dangerous a lot of it is. Like, no,

1565
01:23:50,960 --> 01:23:54,759
Speaker 1: there's no turning the wheel anymore, there's no jerking us back.

1566
01:23:54,920 --> 01:23:59,160
Speaker 1: We've gone too far. So thanks OAPS.

1567
01:24:03,960 --> 01:24:05,120
Speaker 4: So is she a bastard?

1568
01:24:05,520 --> 01:24:07,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's kind of where I'm landing now.

1569
01:24:09,200 --> 01:24:13,679
Speaker 1: I mean, where are y'all? I'm interested? I think she's

1570
01:24:14,520 --> 01:24:17,840
Speaker 1: I don't think she wanted the evil things is the

1571
01:24:17,840 --> 01:24:21,960
Speaker 1: tough thing, right, She's not malicious generally.

1572
01:24:22,080 --> 01:24:25,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I guess neither do most of the bastards,

1573
01:24:25,560 --> 01:24:26,479
Speaker 3: at least from their.

1574
01:24:27,880 --> 01:24:31,479
Speaker 1: I think most of the bastards have their malicious moments, right,

1575
01:24:31,600 --> 01:24:33,920
Speaker 1: even if they would argue that what I'm doing is

1576
01:24:33,960 --> 01:24:36,920
Speaker 1: the best thing, they have moments where you're just acting

1577
01:24:36,920 --> 01:24:40,519
Speaker 1: out of petty hatred or anger. Oprah's bad shit is

1578
01:24:40,560 --> 01:24:41,120
Speaker 1: never that.

1579
01:24:43,120 --> 01:24:46,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's what I'm like, the credulity, the like

1580
01:24:47,080 --> 01:24:49,519
Speaker 3: I mean, look at least as far as like all

1581
01:24:49,520 --> 01:24:53,120
Speaker 3: this anti vaxine, like anti science and anti reality stuff goes.

1582
01:24:53,360 --> 01:24:58,439
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, while she is like an enzyme

1583
01:24:58,560 --> 01:25:03,280
Speaker 3: for this stuff, like she herself is also just like

1584
01:25:03,720 --> 01:25:07,640
Speaker 3: down the line from like if there wasn't medical racism,

1585
01:25:08,240 --> 01:25:11,120
Speaker 3: it's unlikely that she would have a foot to stand on,

1586
01:25:11,439 --> 01:25:14,200
Speaker 3: or you know, would have even delved into this like

1587
01:25:14,720 --> 01:25:17,519
Speaker 3: anti vax anti you know, or like any other number

1588
01:25:17,560 --> 01:25:20,960
Speaker 3: of structural things that exist. So it's like the bastards

1589
01:25:20,960 --> 01:25:23,640
Speaker 3: are still the people that set up all the inequality

1590
01:25:23,640 --> 01:25:27,320
Speaker 3: in the first place, and she has really done some

1591
01:25:27,520 --> 01:25:30,160
Speaker 3: part to intensify it. But I do think if it

1592
01:25:30,200 --> 01:25:34,599
Speaker 3: weren't her, it would have been someone else, Like it's

1593
01:25:34,640 --> 01:25:38,320
Speaker 3: just a niche that exists, and like someone would have

1594
01:25:38,320 --> 01:25:39,120
Speaker 3: fallen into it.

1595
01:25:39,479 --> 01:25:42,679
Speaker 1: I think there are pieces of that that are accurate

1596
01:25:42,800 --> 01:25:45,639
Speaker 1: and pieces that aren't. It's this, it's the great man

1597
01:25:45,760 --> 01:25:50,200
Speaker 1: versus trends and forces, right. I think reality TV happens

1598
01:25:50,200 --> 01:25:54,360
Speaker 1: without Oprah. I think this this movement to like as

1599
01:25:54,400 --> 01:25:56,160
Speaker 1: long as social media is coming out. I think this

1600
01:25:56,240 --> 01:25:59,880
Speaker 1: movement towards like authenticity and like the weird parisocial bon

1601
01:26:00,360 --> 01:26:03,800
Speaker 1: that are being built, that was inevitable well before we

1602
01:26:03,840 --> 01:26:07,520
Speaker 1: were on that road. But I also think the characteristics

1603
01:26:07,560 --> 01:26:11,120
Speaker 1: of Oprah herself, particularly her credulity for a lot of

1604
01:26:11,120 --> 01:26:15,800
Speaker 1: this anti reality wu you know from Deepak Chopra, the

1605
01:26:15,920 --> 01:26:19,880
Speaker 1: secret Mary and Williamson stuff. I don't think that was inevitable.

1606
01:26:20,000 --> 01:26:22,800
Speaker 1: And I don't think the role in seriousness that she gave,

1607
01:26:22,840 --> 01:26:25,520
Speaker 1: like anti vaccine stuff was necessarily inevitable.

1608
01:26:25,680 --> 01:26:25,840
Speaker 6: Right.

1609
01:26:25,920 --> 01:26:27,559
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's a mix.

1610
01:26:27,960 --> 01:26:30,040
Speaker 3: I guess to me, the pushback on that is that

1611
01:26:30,240 --> 01:26:34,360
Speaker 3: is what the audience likes, and like someone would have

1612
01:26:34,520 --> 01:26:37,280
Speaker 3: filled that role if it wasn't her.

1613
01:26:39,000 --> 01:26:41,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the thing that we'll never.

1614
01:26:41,280 --> 01:26:46,439
Speaker 3: Know, right yeah. Yeah, But I'm just like, I mean,

1615
01:26:46,560 --> 01:26:52,680
Speaker 3: we as a society species, I don't know, are inclined

1616
01:26:52,760 --> 01:26:54,760
Speaker 3: to believe this stuff because it is the path of

1617
01:26:54,840 --> 01:26:58,200
Speaker 3: least resistance on how you perceive reality and solve problems.

1618
01:26:58,800 --> 01:27:00,639
Speaker 1: I guess where I go with that is. But also

1619
01:27:01,760 --> 01:27:05,760
Speaker 1: like our inclination towards it is why it's good business.

1620
01:27:06,280 --> 01:27:09,559
Speaker 1: It is not necessarily written that we are going like

1621
01:27:09,640 --> 01:27:12,439
Speaker 1: because people have not always bought into as much of

1622
01:27:12,479 --> 01:27:14,560
Speaker 1: this shit. There were periods of time where that was

1623
01:27:14,640 --> 01:27:19,599
Speaker 1: less common, certainly less common to talk about publicly. With

1624
01:27:19,680 --> 01:27:23,280
Speaker 1: the position that she had, right, and I do think

1625
01:27:23,360 --> 01:27:28,600
Speaker 1: that leaning into it was not necessarily going. That was

1626
01:27:28,640 --> 01:27:31,599
Speaker 1: a choice that she and other people made, and more

1627
01:27:31,680 --> 01:27:34,640
Speaker 1: resistance to it could have ensured that we were in

1628
01:27:34,680 --> 01:27:38,800
Speaker 1: a better position now visa vine the existence of reality

1629
01:27:38,960 --> 01:27:42,439
Speaker 1: a thing and sensus reality. I don't know.

1630
01:27:42,960 --> 01:27:45,880
Speaker 2: I think the choice to like lean into it is

1631
01:27:45,920 --> 01:27:47,080
Speaker 2: what is the thing for me?

1632
01:27:47,320 --> 01:27:49,520
Speaker 4: Like that wasn't happenstance.

1633
01:27:49,960 --> 01:27:53,200
Speaker 2: She made a clear editorial decision about what it was,

1634
01:27:53,360 --> 01:27:55,920
Speaker 2: what kind of work she was going to prioritize, what

1635
01:27:56,000 --> 01:27:57,800
Speaker 2: kind of voices she was going to amplify.

1636
01:27:58,479 --> 01:28:01,000
Speaker 4: It's kind of hard to come back from that for me.

1637
01:28:01,840 --> 01:28:04,040
Speaker 2: But I do take your point, Andrew, I do think

1638
01:28:04,040 --> 01:28:07,280
Speaker 2: that a lot of this is like she really held

1639
01:28:07,280 --> 01:28:11,720
Speaker 2: a mirror up to our worst base instincts and desires

1640
01:28:11,720 --> 01:28:14,960
Speaker 2: and impulses, and like, I mean, yeah, I kind of.

1641
01:28:15,600 --> 01:28:20,320
Speaker 3: You know, sorry, please, I'm like part of her calculus

1642
01:28:20,320 --> 01:28:22,960
Speaker 3: of amplifying this stuff is on some level. I don't

1643
01:28:22,960 --> 01:28:25,439
Speaker 3: even know who the competitors would be, but she's like,

1644
01:28:25,479 --> 01:28:29,200
Speaker 3: if it's not me, I'm just gonna pull an analogous

1645
01:28:29,240 --> 01:28:33,759
Speaker 3: I think talk show host, like, fucking it's not Jenny Jones,

1646
01:28:33,800 --> 01:28:37,560
Speaker 3: but Kelly Clarkson will do it. Like yeah, It's like

1647
01:28:37,840 --> 01:28:40,040
Speaker 3: it's just like someone is going to put these people

1648
01:28:40,080 --> 01:28:44,240
Speaker 3: on and this message is going to make waves because

1649
01:28:44,400 --> 01:28:50,680
Speaker 3: the fucking idiots who watch my show crave this. You know.

1650
01:28:51,080 --> 01:28:53,280
Speaker 3: That's the version where at least she's kind of an

1651
01:28:53,280 --> 01:28:54,080
Speaker 3: aware person.

1652
01:28:56,160 --> 01:28:58,679
Speaker 4: Are you saying that the real bastard is us?

1653
01:28:58,960 --> 01:29:06,800
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well people, but yeah, not me, y'all Yeah.

1654
01:29:05,280 --> 01:29:08,280
Speaker 4: Robert Sophie, we're not disagreed.

1655
01:29:08,840 --> 01:29:12,640
Speaker 1: No, I mean like this is yeah, like that, this

1656
01:29:12,720 --> 01:29:15,640
Speaker 1: is why I mean the show, the fact that this

1657
01:29:15,760 --> 01:29:17,599
Speaker 1: is behind the Master's to show about the worst people

1658
01:29:17,600 --> 01:29:21,280
Speaker 1: in all of history, would seem to always kind of

1659
01:29:21,360 --> 01:29:24,479
Speaker 1: lean into the great man stuff. I do try I

1660
01:29:24,560 --> 01:29:27,000
Speaker 1: try it to like pull back from that as often

1661
01:29:27,040 --> 01:29:31,280
Speaker 1: as I can, right, and that all of you could

1662
01:29:31,280 --> 01:29:33,680
Speaker 1: say the same thing about like Hitler too, Right. All

1663
01:29:33,680 --> 01:29:37,320
Speaker 1: of these monsters are both individuals, and the bad things

1664
01:29:37,360 --> 01:29:40,040
Speaker 1: they do are what they are because of their individual

1665
01:29:40,120 --> 01:29:43,160
Speaker 1: choices and also the product of trends and forces. Like

1666
01:29:43,200 --> 01:29:46,160
Speaker 1: if there's not a Hitler, there is another guy who

1667
01:29:46,200 --> 01:29:49,360
Speaker 1: finds a way to take to who finds a way

1668
01:29:49,400 --> 01:29:53,360
Speaker 1: to take advantage of German anger and fury at the

1669
01:29:53,439 --> 01:29:55,559
Speaker 1: way the war had ended in the peace and whatnot,

1670
01:29:55,600 --> 01:29:57,960
Speaker 1: and turn that into political power. Now that guy's not

1671
01:29:58,040 --> 01:30:02,280
Speaker 1: necessarily the Holocaust guy, right, but there's someone the the

1672
01:30:02,720 --> 01:30:06,040
Speaker 1: energy would have been has to be harnessed almost because

1673
01:30:06,080 --> 01:30:10,040
Speaker 1: it exists. You know, I don't know, like this is

1674
01:30:10,920 --> 01:30:12,160
Speaker 1: we're getting a little bit.

1675
01:30:12,320 --> 01:30:15,439
Speaker 3: Where we had our bong hits in the commercial break,

1676
01:30:15,520 --> 01:30:16,920
Speaker 3: so now where it's going forward.

1677
01:30:16,920 --> 01:30:20,720
Speaker 1: That's right, You're getting effectively three parters worth of episodes

1678
01:30:20,720 --> 01:30:25,920
Speaker 1: today because this week alone is three hours. So yep,

1679
01:30:26,320 --> 01:30:28,280
Speaker 1: you're welcome, You're welcome.

1680
01:30:28,720 --> 01:30:30,240
Speaker 5: Anybody got anything they want.

1681
01:30:30,080 --> 01:30:30,800
Speaker 4: To plug.

1682
01:30:32,520 --> 01:30:33,000
Speaker 3: Anymore?

1683
01:30:33,439 --> 01:30:33,759
Speaker 5: Fuck?

1684
01:30:34,479 --> 01:30:37,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now I might questioning my whole media career, am

1685
01:30:37,720 --> 01:30:42,040
Speaker 2: I just like pumping out stuff that it's I don't

1686
01:30:42,040 --> 01:30:44,400
Speaker 2: realize is going to have like down the line is

1687
01:30:44,400 --> 01:30:45,920
Speaker 2: going to have a bad effect on society.

1688
01:30:45,920 --> 01:30:48,000
Speaker 4: I don't even realize it yet. Am I early Oprah?

1689
01:30:48,240 --> 01:30:48,439
Speaker 6: God?

1690
01:30:48,479 --> 01:30:48,840
Speaker 3: I hope?

1691
01:30:48,880 --> 01:30:54,879
Speaker 4: So yeah, if I write.

1692
01:30:54,680 --> 01:30:56,559
Speaker 1: Up with three billion dollars, who gives a fuck?

1693
01:30:56,640 --> 01:30:56,880
Speaker 3: Not me?

1694
01:30:57,040 --> 01:30:57,280
Speaker 4: Baby?

1695
01:30:57,800 --> 01:30:59,599
Speaker 1: Can I have a car better than Yeah?

1696
01:31:01,680 --> 01:31:04,040
Speaker 2: Everyone gets pontiacs on fires and that's that.

1697
01:31:04,400 --> 01:31:06,400
Speaker 1: I am going to go out of my way to

1698
01:31:06,560 --> 01:31:09,599
Speaker 1: buy up all of the surviving or find the scrapped

1699
01:31:09,600 --> 01:31:12,160
Speaker 1: remains of all of the pontiacs that Oprah gave out

1700
01:31:12,200 --> 01:31:14,360
Speaker 1: and give them back out to our audience.

1701
01:31:17,680 --> 01:31:20,080
Speaker 3: Whatever. It's got to be doable.

1702
01:31:20,520 --> 01:31:23,600
Speaker 1: Uh huh yeah, yeah, this is this is, this is

1703
01:31:23,640 --> 01:31:24,679
Speaker 1: my my new quest.

1704
01:31:24,920 --> 01:31:27,600
Speaker 5: Well, I'll plug for Bridget listen to there are no

1705
01:31:27,680 --> 01:31:28,799
Speaker 5: girls on the internet.

1706
01:31:29,280 --> 01:31:30,320
Speaker 4: I'll plug for Andrew.

1707
01:31:30,400 --> 01:31:31,959
Speaker 5: Listen to you as this racist.

1708
01:31:33,600 --> 01:31:40,559
Speaker 1: That's right? And uh, you know, until next time. Fucking

1709
01:31:41,680 --> 01:31:43,720
Speaker 1: light your television on fire. I don't know, I don't

1710
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Speaker 1: know what to tell you to do.

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01:31:45,560 --> 01:31:47,280
Speaker 3: Your phone in half and throwing the seat.

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Speaker 1: What a mess? What a fucking mess?

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Speaker 4: What a mess?

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Speaker 5: God Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 5: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

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Speaker 5: Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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01:32:04,400 --> 01:32:07,559
Speaker 5: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

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01:32:07,560 --> 01:32:11,640
Speaker 5: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday

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01:32:11,720 --> 01:32:15,400
Speaker 5: and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

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Speaker 5: at Behind the Bastards