Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome to Behind the Oprah's a podcast about bastards.
Speaker 1: This is, you know, the Oprah Winfrey Show or the
Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey Show show where we talk about the Oprah
Speaker 1: Winfrey Show. Yeah, that's as good as I could do
Speaker 1: the intro here. Look, we're on part six. I'm exhausted,
Speaker 1: You're exhausted, Sophie's exhausted. Let's exhaust everything we have to
Speaker 1: say about Oprah. How are we all feeling? Andrew t
Speaker 1: and bridget Todd at this point in the Oprah Winfrey story.
Speaker 2: Conflicted, I will say, conflicted, but ready to hear more.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, it's starting.
Speaker 3: It's starting to feel like like the the six parts
Speaker 3: of the five parts have been have been leading to this,
Speaker 3: so well, I'm ready.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Oprah's Angel Network. Now. This was Oprah's
Speaker 1: primary vehicle for charitable don I mean, she also has
Speaker 1: her own personal foundations. This was her primary vehicle, certainly
Speaker 1: for educational focused charitable donations during the height of her fame.
Speaker 1: It got its start in nineteen ninety four when a
Speaker 1: little girl named Nora went on The Oprah Winfrey Show
Speaker 1: to talk about what was called the Penny Harvest Project. Apparently,
Speaker 1: she and some other kids had started collecting pennies and
Speaker 1: eventually raised like one thousand dollars via taking in pennies
Speaker 1: to donate to some different charitable organizations, and Oprah says
Speaker 1: this inspired her to wonder if you could do that.
Speaker 1: I wonder what I could do, and like, well, the
Speaker 1: answer is, you have hundreds of millions of dollars, Oprah,
Speaker 1: much more than some children collecting pennies. I'm glad you're
Speaker 1: thinking this way, but obviously the answer is you could
Speaker 1: raise a lot more money. I do think it's.
Speaker 3: I'm loving hearing a kid did something of being like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm so much more money than you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the way that oprah dot compost is
Speaker 1: like Oprah was inspired by this little girl, but there's
Speaker 1: certainly a read of it that's like, oh, I could
Speaker 1: beat the hell out of that little kid. You a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars is a lot. Shoves her off the fucking stage.
Speaker 1: So on September eighteenth, nineteen ninety seven, Oprah announces the
Speaker 1: launch of Oprah's Angel Network. The initial plan for this
Speaker 1: was to turn people spare change. Basically, you donate you
Speaker 1: know your spare change, right, She has Hillary Clinton on
Speaker 1: the show. Hillary puts some change in a piggy bank,
Speaker 1: and this raises three point five million dollars to provide
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand dollars college scholarships for one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty deserving students.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, kid, is that more than a thousand dollars?
Speaker 4: Let meet.
Speaker 1: Twenty five per kid? But no, no, no, your donation's good.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, no, no, yeah, for sure, for sure,
Speaker 1: very impressive. I mean, you know, I raised three and
Speaker 1: a half million with like the shit in my seat cushions.
Speaker 1: But you know, you're good, You're good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh did you have the first lady come on to
Speaker 1: help with your program?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: No, you didn't. You don't know the first lady? You
Speaker 1: speed down? Interesting. Oprah's not doing that. We're just big dicks. Uh.
Speaker 3: I I just want to say, for the record, I
Speaker 3: like the version of Oprah that does that better than
Speaker 3: the version of Oprah that exists.
Speaker 1: She would be on Margaret's Cool People who did cool
Speaker 1: stuff if this had just been for twelve straight, like
Speaker 1: literally like twenty years, just shit talking this like seven
Speaker 1: year old, like, yeah, you think that's fucking fancy. Eighty
Speaker 1: million dollars? Uh, to be that petty. So this is
Speaker 1: how the Angel Network starts, Right, we're taking people's spare change,
Speaker 1: we're giving out college student or scholarships to deserving students.
Speaker 1: But it starts to expand, you know, they get involved
Speaker 1: with like funding Habitat for Humanity and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand, the Angel Network expands, thanks to
Speaker 1: Paul Newman of Newman's own as well as Jeff Bezos,
Speaker 1: they start like expanding it to like donating money to
Speaker 1: what the website describes as fifty life changing programs. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting she describes as like more than fifty life
Speaker 1: changing programs got the money they needed to help their
Speaker 1: local communities. Well maybe maybe some taxes from Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: canna help with that too. But eventually the Angel Network expands,
Speaker 1: taking in and taking something like eighty million dollars in donations,
Speaker 1: most of which ultimately go to helping to start sixty
Speaker 1: schools in thirteen countries, including India, Ecuador, and China. So
Speaker 1: that's nice, right, helping to start schools, funding schools. Aspects, again,
Speaker 1: as is always the case with OPRAH, aspects of this
Speaker 1: are quite positive, but also aspects of this are very toxic.
Speaker 1: Because particularly in the United States States, the thing that
Speaker 1: Oprah spends most of her donation money on is not
Speaker 1: helping school systems. It is establishing specific charter schools. And
Speaker 1: in fact, the last thing the Angel Network does is
Speaker 1: it gives six million dollars in twenty ten to six
Speaker 1: charter schools in California, Colorado, Chicago, Pennsylvania, New Orleans, and Houston.
Speaker 1: Now charter schools are too schools that are not part
Speaker 1: of the public education system. A lot of this get
Speaker 1: started the charter school thing in the Bush years, Right,
Speaker 1: this is a big part of like defunding public schools.
Speaker 1: Let's you know, we don't need to be spending we
Speaker 1: need to have parents need to have choice and to
Speaker 1: have vouchers that they can put into these you know,
Speaker 1: different charter schools and magnate schools and all of this
Speaker 1: kind of like both SAPs the power of teachers unions
Speaker 1: because these schools exist outside of that system. But it's
Speaker 1: also supposed to like prove that the corrupt Department of
Speaker 1: Education is what's holding kids back that if we just
Speaker 1: let rich people establish these charter obviously be vastly more successful.
Speaker 1: So it's this mix of like there are some very
Speaker 1: good charter schools that are very good for kids. I
Speaker 1: have friends who went to some of them, but also
Speaker 1: the larger part of the charter school project is problematic,
Speaker 1: and it continues on past the Bush era. One of
Speaker 1: like the biggest roles in this is in twenty ten,
Speaker 1: there's a documentary called Waiting for Superman by Davis Guggenheim.
Speaker 1: This is a documentary about how broken the education system
Speaker 1: is and we're all just kind of like waiting for
Speaker 1: a Superman to fix it, and it winds up being
Speaker 1: a very pro charter school movie. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: other documentaries at the same time, the Lottery and the Cartel,
Speaker 1: with the same basic attitude, but Waiting for Superman is
Speaker 1: featured twice on the Oprah Winfrey Show. She's not the
Speaker 1: only person who gives it a lot of media attention,
Speaker 1: but she gives it a ton of media attention. And
Speaker 1: that six million dollar donation to those six private schools
Speaker 1: is directly off of the back of this. I found
Speaker 1: a good write up in the Brookings Institute on the
Speaker 1: myth of charter schools, and it summarizes the message of
Speaker 1: all these documentaries. American public education is a failed enterprise.
Speaker 1: The problem is not money. Public schools already spin too much.
Speaker 1: Test scores are low because there are so many bad
Speaker 1: teachers whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop
Speaker 1: out because the schools fail them, and they could accomplish
Speaker 1: practically anything. If they were saved from bad teachers, they
Speaker 1: would get higher test scores, if schools could fire more
Speaker 1: bad teachers and pay more to good ones. The only
Speaker 1: hope for the future of our society, especially for poor
Speaker 1: Black and Hispanic children, is escape from public schools, especially
Speaker 1: to charter schools, which are mostly funded by the government,
Speaker 1: controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make
Speaker 1: a profit. Now that is again, this is a thing
Speaker 1: that a lot of people are into, and Oprah is
Speaker 1: one of the folks who puts their money where her
Speaker 1: mouth is, Like, this is the future of like fixing
Speaker 1: private education or public education, and it's problematic, to say
Speaker 1: the least. To continue with a quote from that Brookings
Speaker 1: Institute piece, and this is talking about waiting for Superman
Speaker 1: in particular, some fact checking is in order, and the
Speaker 1: place to start is with the film's quiet acknowledgment that
Speaker 1: only one in five charter schools is able to get
Speaker 1: the amazing results that it celebrates. Nothing more is said
Speaker 1: about this astonishing statistic. It is drawn from a national
Speaker 1: study of charter schools by Stanford economist Margaret Raymond, known
Speaker 1: as the Credos Study. It evaluated student progress on math
Speaker 1: tests in half of the nation's five thousand charter schools
Speaker 1: and concluded that seventeen percent were superior to a matched
Speaker 1: traditional public school, thirty seven percent were worse than the
Speaker 1: public school, and the remaining forty six percent had academic
Speaker 1: gains no different from that of a similar public school.
Speaker 1: The proportion of charters that got amazing results is far
Speaker 1: smaller than seventeen percent. Why did Davis Guggenheim pay no
Speaker 1: attention to the charter schools that are run by incompetent
Speaker 1: leaders or corporations mainly concerned to make money. Why propound
Speaker 1: to an unknowing public the myth that charter schools are
Speaker 1: the answer to our educational woes. When the filmmaker knows
Speaker 1: there are twice as many failing charters as there are
Speaker 1: successful ones, why not give an honest to accounting. The
Speaker 1: propagandistic nature of Waiting for Superman is revealed by Guggenheim's
Speaker 1: complete indifference to the wide variation among charter schools. There
Speaker 1: are excellent charter schools just as they're excellent public schools.
Speaker 1: Why did he not also inquire into the charter chains
Speaker 1: that are mired in unsavory real estate deals, or take
Speaker 1: his camera to the charters where most students are getting
Speaker 1: lower scores than those in the neighborhood public schools. Why
Speaker 1: did he not report on the charter principles who have
Speaker 1: been indicted for embezzlement, or the charters that blur the
Speaker 1: line between church and state. Why did he not look
Speaker 1: into the charter schools whose leaders are paid three hundred
Speaker 1: to four hundred thousand dollars a year to oversee small
Speaker 1: numbers of students. I don't need to go on. The
Speaker 1: myth of charter schools from the Brookings Institute is a
Speaker 1: good piece on this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just I don't actually know anything about this director.
Speaker 3: But does it have anything to do with his last name?
Speaker 1: I actually don't know. A journalist would check in on that.
Speaker 1: Let's do that.
Speaker 3: I just have a sinking feeling that maybe the reason
Speaker 3: of the one of the incentives has to do with
Speaker 3: the number of buildings ye name is.
Speaker 1: He's related to the family. At least the AI overview
Speaker 1: says he's related to the family, but not directly related
Speaker 1: to the foundation. Let's see here, let's look at his wiki.
Speaker 3: Just a coincidence.
Speaker 1: His dad is filmmaker Charles Gugenheim. Oh, he'll make deadwood
Speaker 1: one four oscars, no one.
Speaker 3: No one said rich kids can't make good stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just that they get a lot more chances to
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So anyway, I don't like this is this is
Speaker 1: a problematic thing that the wind that Oprah Winfrey's charity
Speaker 1: is going to, which is not to say that everything
Speaker 1: she don'tates to do it like a lot of good
Speaker 1: schools I've looked into. I looked into several of the
Speaker 1: schools that she put money on. They have pretty good
Speaker 1: academic records. But although they're not unproblematic, is this.
Speaker 3: Article Yeah, I will just say I I feel like
Speaker 3: this should be said. Even if literally every single charter
Speaker 3: school had better to scores or or even or even
Speaker 3: a good measure was that school, Yeah, they are still
Speaker 3: a net negative on the education system. Literally, even I
Speaker 3: mean it's the same example with the Oprah School, which
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, okay, you can make a good school,
Speaker 3: but it comes at an immense opportunity cost. And that's
Speaker 3: what's like the problem.
Speaker 4: Here exactly that.
Speaker 2: And like fundamentally they make public they erode public education
Speaker 2: there at least where I live. There like full of
Speaker 2: like pretty like like they're basically racist in my mind,
Speaker 2: Like the way that they talk about school choice.
Speaker 4: It's used as a giant.
Speaker 2: Dog whistle to be like, you don't really want your
Speaker 2: kids next to black and brown kids.
Speaker 1: Right right?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And I think so even if all of her schools,
Speaker 2: all of these schools were great, it still contributes to
Speaker 2: a lot of pretty I think, like messed up things
Speaker 2: in education.
Speaker 3: Always resegregating the education system.
Speaker 1: Cool, yes, And it's also not all of these schools
Speaker 1: are And again because they abide by different rules. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of problematic aspects to some of them, including
Speaker 1: one of the schools that Oprah gave a shitload of
Speaker 1: money to, this one, particularly in New Orleans. I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote from Beet here. Numerous charter schools, including those
Speaker 1: backed by Oprah Winfrey, Microsoft's Bill Gates, retailer Walmart, and
Speaker 1: New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, have been accused of
Speaker 1: breaking federal law by not serving children with disabilities. The
Speaker 1: children are named in place plaintiffs in the legal battle,
Speaker 1: which stems back to twenty ten. Charter schools and New
Speaker 1: Orleans were seen as a way to rehab the city's
Speaker 1: failing education system and serve seventy percent of cities children.
Speaker 1: The Loop twenty one reports Lawrence Melrose sixteen needed counseling
Speaker 1: in speech therapy, which wouldn't be provided by the New
Speaker 1: Orleans Charter Science and Math charter school that was made
Speaker 1: popular through its association with Oprah Winfrey. Instead, he was
Speaker 1: frequently suspended and not allowed to ride the bus. The
Speaker 1: lawsuit says the school kept him from attending a celebration
Speaker 1: where students watched Oprah Winfrey hand the principle a check
Speaker 1: for one million dollars. The exclusion of children with serious
Speaker 1: learning and emotional disabilities occur often, says the lawsuit, at
Speaker 1: charter schools, which comprise the majority of public schools in
Speaker 1: New Orleans. The exclusion of special needs kids also helps
Speaker 1: charter schools test scores, since children with disabilities typically do
Speaker 1: not do well.
Speaker 2: You couldn't even watch the assembly with Oprah like they
Speaker 2: would like.
Speaker 1: Nah. No, they literally locked him out of this.
Speaker 3: It's also like these fucks will like, I mean, you
Speaker 3: see it on so many other places where they're trying
Speaker 3: to reinvent the wheel where they like, I feel like
Speaker 3: transportation is such a clear one where it's like they're
Speaker 3: going to try to do self driving cars before they
Speaker 3: try oh properly funding a subway system in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And it's like I don't I'm sorry, guys.
Speaker 3: All the solutions for these ills were invented in like
Speaker 3: fucking whatever eighteen hundred. We're just electing not to do
Speaker 3: them because you're a billionaire. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, at this point, I support Musk building a
Speaker 1: rich people tunnel under LA just because we'll have a
Speaker 1: quake and the people who pay to access that tunnel
Speaker 1: will all learn a lesson very quickly. At the same time, listen.
Speaker 3: If he had even like an ounce of like self
Speaker 3: believe his ass should be on Mars right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, get yourself there. Man. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Oprah in charter schools, but really,
Speaker 1: when we talk about Oprah's direct bastardism, there's no better
Speaker 1: thing to discuss than the bevy of khnman that she
Speaker 1: helped to introduce to the world. She is responsible for
Speaker 1: making John of God, the Brazilian faith healer who sexually
Speaker 1: assaulted at least six hundred women, internationally famous. There are
Speaker 1: numerous cases of women who visited his compound and were
Speaker 1: raped or assaulted and say that they went there because
Speaker 1: they saw him on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and specifically
Speaker 1: they saw doctor Oz tell Opra Winfrey that he couldn't
Speaker 1: explain the miraculous healings this man was responsible for. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say more about John of God or
Speaker 1: doctor Oz or doctor Phil because we have done two
Speaker 1: part episodes on all three of these guys, none of
Speaker 1: whom would have Obviously there's specifically John of God was
Speaker 1: like in Brazil, a famous faith healer and assaulting people.
Speaker 1: He would not have become an international star without Oprah.
Speaker 1: And I don't think doctor like Doctor Oz probably just
Speaker 1: stays a surgeon. Doctor Phil probably dies in a ditch.
Speaker 1: That's my guest for doctor Phil is he dies in
Speaker 1: a ditch somewhere in rural Texas if doesn't pick him.
Speaker 3: Up some kind of charisma. Doctor Oz, it's like he's
Speaker 3: the most he's so repellent, you're just like, oh my god.
Speaker 3: Without Oprah's cosyn he is.
Speaker 1: There's no way this man is a star. That's how.
Speaker 1: That's the star power she has. Looks just listen to
Speaker 1: doctor oz speak. Yeah, amazing stuff. So we're not going
Speaker 1: to go into more to them, but I should note
Speaker 1: we have never ever had a bastard who is responsible
Speaker 1: for three different two parter episodes on other bastards, or
Speaker 1: at least largely responsible. That's mark.
Speaker 3: This, I think is the place where I'll try to
Speaker 3: drop my quote, which is I mean, it does seem
Speaker 3: like like Oprah is, she's like the enzyme for bastards,
Speaker 3: Like she just makes, she takes She finds the worst
Speaker 3: people or the worst people get into her orbit, and
Speaker 3: she makes them a million times stronger than they ever
Speaker 3: had any right to be.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And I think that really is the way
Speaker 1: to look at it.
Speaker 2: And it's funny because I would peg Oprah as somebody
Speaker 2: that I would assume would be a good judge of character,
Speaker 2: and she's a terrible judge of character. It's like it
Speaker 2: truly is like the worst people who come into her orbit,
Speaker 2: She's like, let's make you a star.
Speaker 4: What is it hooked up with that.
Speaker 3: I mean, on some level, she has to be following
Speaker 3: what she believes the audience wants. But why I picked
Speaker 3: those specific people it is a little baffling.
Speaker 1: I think there's a back. I'm sure there's a degree
Speaker 1: to which both of those people, particularly doctor Phil, being
Speaker 1: as doctor Phil is a pretty manipulative person, I would argue,
Speaker 1: and I think he just understood how to make her
Speaker 1: like him. A manipulator. Doctor Oz has a legitimate thing
Speaker 1: that would make you like him and want to put
Speaker 1: him in front of people. It is not unreasonable at
Speaker 1: the start of things that you'd be like, this is
Speaker 1: literally one of the best heart surgeons who's ever lived.
Speaker 1: Maybe he'd be a good person to talk about public health.
Speaker 1: Turns out no, turns out absolutely not. But I understand
Speaker 1: how that process starts. Now, obviously there was ample evidence,
Speaker 1: especially during the shot of god Shit, that he was not,
Speaker 1: in fact a good person be doing that with. But
Speaker 1: I don't think the evil is not in that she
Speaker 1: initially was like, well, maybe the world's best heart surgeon
Speaker 1: is a good guy to talk about health, right. I
Speaker 1: get how that starts with doctor Phil. It's more like
Speaker 1: this guy made me feel good about myself during a lawsuit.
Speaker 1: Let's let him abuse teenagers on television for twenty years.
Speaker 1: But again, we're not gonna say anymore about these guys
Speaker 1: because we've said so much about them. But I did
Speaker 1: feel like we have to go into detail about one
Speaker 1: of Oprah's toxic bastards, right one of the convent that
Speaker 1: she elevated to the public eye, who we haven't done
Speaker 1: episodes on. And that's going to bring us to James
Speaker 1: Ray born in nineteen fifty seven. Ray was a former
Speaker 1: telemarketer who got into the business of teaching motivational seminars
Speaker 1: to corporations. He was not an original dude, and instead
Speaker 1: worked for Stephen Covey, the author of The Seven Habits
Speaker 1: of Highly Effective People, teaching Stephen Covey's particular flavor of
Speaker 1: self help bullshit to car salesman and the like. Or
Speaker 1: at least Ray claims that he worked for Stephen Covey.
Speaker 1: There is no actual evidence of this, and Ray is
Speaker 1: a serial liar, so it's entirely possible he just made
Speaker 1: that up for clout. Ray started his own motivational speaking
Speaker 1: business and it did okay, It's not huge, it's not
Speaker 1: really overwhelmingly successful, probably because he's not super successful himself.
Speaker 1: He is not rich and famous, so he's like telling
Speaker 1: people how to get rich, but like he didn't do it.
Speaker 1: Ray is like a lot of these guys. There's very
Speaker 1: little to separate him from the herd at this point.
Speaker 1: He's an advocate of the law of attraction, which we've
Speaker 1: talked about a few times in these episodes. This is
Speaker 1: the bullshit belief underpinning the secret. Whatever good or bad
Speaker 1: things happen to you happen because you drew them to yourself.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of guys in this space, he mixed
Speaker 1: in buzzwords from quantum physics because of course he's like
Speaker 1: a big also a big masculine guy, right, So as
Speaker 1: a masculine guy, you can't just be like, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just be like this is the you know,
Speaker 1: you can't do the wooy version of this, right, you
Speaker 1: have to say, this is quantum physics, right, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about science to you, you know, And so would He
Speaker 1: would rope in buzzwords from quantum physics to try to
Speaker 1: convince mild skeptics that what he was selling in fact science.
Speaker 1: In one interview, he said this about personal responsibility. I
Speaker 1: fully know for me that there is no blame. Every
Speaker 1: single thing is your responsibility and nothing is your fault
Speaker 1: because every single thing that comes to you is a gift,
Speaker 1: a lesson. Now do you think that could like be bad?
Speaker 2: I mean I love that nothing is my fault, angles
Speaker 2: that I really really connect you.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, there's going to be a very interesting thing
Speaker 1: that becomes his fault in the near future here, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's probably a good idea for him to
Speaker 1: be selling at this point, given where he winds up.
Speaker 1: His motivational seminars involved board breaking and trust falls, all
Speaker 1: of which was done without proper medical staff present, which
Speaker 1: is why prior to him getting famous, several people were
Speaker 1: badly injured during his events. At least one time at
Speaker 1: Walt Disney World in two thousand and five, a forty
Speaker 1: two year old man was hospitalized after Ray made him
Speaker 1: exercise in a poorly built sweat lodge. So this is
Speaker 1: all happening before he winds up on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Now,
Speaker 1: what gets him on the show is that he is
Speaker 1: one of several narrators for the two thousand and six
Speaker 1: documentary The Secret, which is what gets him on the
Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah lavished praise on Ray and urged
Speaker 1: her viewers to sign up for his courses and listen
Speaker 1: to his wisdom. Many did, and he goes in short
Speaker 1: order from a failing motivational speaker with several lawsuits against
Speaker 1: him to the hottest thing in town.
Speaker 4: This is what I'm talking about with her. He just
Speaker 4: was the name.
Speaker 2: I am a voice artist, right, like I've narrated plenty
Speaker 2: of things. The fact that this guy, who already had
Speaker 2: a pretty problematic history, just was a narrator, and she's like, Ooh,
Speaker 2: let's elevate you, Let's make you a star. Yeah, something
Speaker 2: must be like I don't know, I don't know where
Speaker 2: I'm going with this, but it is. It baffles me
Speaker 2: why she would want to be further mixed up with
Speaker 2: this a person like this just based on him being
Speaker 2: a narrator of the secret.
Speaker 3: I mean, we'll never know because it's it's not like
Speaker 3: there's like whistleblowers from the Oprah camp, but like surely
Speaker 3: there were there had to be discussions, Yeah, like Oprah,
Speaker 3: why these guys?
Speaker 1: You know? I think some of it is just that
Speaker 1: at this point, he's just another motivational speaker, and it
Speaker 1: looks like he's attached to this successful project. He probably
Speaker 1: had a good rapport with Oprah. All you really assume
Speaker 1: at that point is like, Okay, well maybe this will work, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy's probably someone smart to have on.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess that's the other side of Oprah
Speaker 3: is like because she's gotten so far on gut. I mean,
Speaker 3: maybe it's just a charming five minutes at a fucking
Speaker 3: cocktail party or a meeting.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the a lot of cases
Speaker 1: it is like literally they charmed me for like five minutes. Yeah, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: that's that's wild.
Speaker 3: To have a vibe spaceed empire. I mean, I guess
Speaker 3: we are living in one, so on.
Speaker 1: I know, but that's not zero percent of cool zones business, right,
Speaker 1: That's just the way entertainment works, now, you know. Take
Speaker 1: that what you will. So let's go to ads and
Speaker 1: then we'll come back and talk about what happens next
Speaker 1: in the James Ray story. We're back, so I want
Speaker 1: to read a quote from The New York Times about
Speaker 1: kind of the explosion in Ray's business after this, because
Speaker 1: he goes from again a middling figure, not a ton
Speaker 1: of money, not super successful, to for a while like
Speaker 1: the biggest name and self help or at least like
Speaker 1: the biggest new name and self help. Quote. He offered
Speaker 1: a hierarchy of courses, each more expensive than the last,
Speaker 1: culminating in Spiritual Warrior, a ten dollar retreat near Sedona, Arizona.
Speaker 1: After a series of endurance exercises, including extended fasting, participants
Speaker 1: spent hours in a sweat lodge where temperatures soared above
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty degrees. Mister Ray presented Spiritual Warriors
Speaker 1: several times, and some past participants had raised questions about
Speaker 1: whether he or his staff members had sufficient training to
Speaker 1: run a sweat lodge.
Speaker 4: They probably didn't, right, Oh.
Speaker 1: No, they didn't. Bridget I'm going to tell you right now,
Speaker 1: if there's a fucking white guy running a sweat lodge,
Speaker 1: he does not have sufficient training. That's just a rule
Speaker 1: in sweat lodges, or white lady, let's be fair.
Speaker 3: One hundred and fifty degrees when when the room gets closer,
Speaker 3: it goes past like, that's closer to my oven controls
Speaker 3: than my thermostat controls. Yes, which is roll.
Speaker 1: Bad when you are in the able to cook meat spectrum. People. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again, you know, sweat lodges. And I'm not competent
Speaker 1: to talk about this exhaustively, but there's a long history
Speaker 1: in several Native American traditions of use of sweat lodges,
Speaker 1: and they can be have been part of like therapeutic
Speaker 1: treatments run by people who know what they are doing.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying there's sweat lodges are inherently bad. James
Speaker 1: does not know what he's doing, and he is not
Speaker 1: utilizing this as part of an actual like therapeutic thing.
Speaker 1: He is sticking people in a hot room because it's
Speaker 1: unpleasant and he wants to make them do something incredibly
Speaker 1: unpleasant and physically straining, because that when you get out
Speaker 1: of when you do that with a group of people
Speaker 1: and you have like this dangerous, painful physical experience, and
Speaker 1: then you get out of it on the other side
Speaker 1: of it, you feel bonded to those people and to
Speaker 1: the program. Right, Yeah, that's why he's doing this. And
Speaker 1: when you use a thing like that that way, your
Speaker 1: concern is that they suffer, right, and not that we're
Speaker 1: doing this in a way that is safe or going
Speaker 1: to like have a therapeutic benefit. It's that this is
Speaker 1: as intense and experiences as possible, and in fact, he
Speaker 1: would brag about it. When he does his big Sweat
Speaker 1: Lodge event on October eighth, two thousand and nine, for
Speaker 1: a group of people each paying ten grand for the
Speaker 1: Spiritual Warrior seminar. The guy he brags to the group
Speaker 1: that he just talked to the guy stoking the fire,
Speaker 1: you know, setting it with good intentions. You know, he's
Speaker 1: part of it is he's got to really think about
Speaker 1: positive intentions for your experience to help make sure there's
Speaker 1: a good one. And this is the hottest fire we've
Speaker 1: ever had, you know. Make him feel special, right, make
Speaker 1: them feel like they're getting this uniquely intense life changing experience.
Speaker 1: They did get that, you know, I gotta say it
Speaker 1: is a uniquely intense life changing experience for all of them.
Speaker 1: Twenty one of the people in that Sweat Lodge are
Speaker 1: hospitalized and three of them die when first responders show up.
Speaker 1: One compares what he saw to quote the site of
Speaker 1: a mass suicide.
Speaker 3: Uh, I just check out is medium is north of
Speaker 3: medium rare?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like, if your meat is cooked to one
Speaker 1: fifty in the center, you're you're pretty you're pretty much good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is very bad you're not supposed to kill
Speaker 1: multiple people in a single sweat lodge. You're not supposed
Speaker 1: to ever kill people in your sweat lodge. These are
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly not old people. There's a podcast called Guru on
Speaker 1: Wondery that goes there's just about Ray and goes into
Speaker 1: detail about this. One of the women who dies is
Speaker 1: I think like thirty nine years old, and it's like
Speaker 1: the story you hear a lot. This is a woman
Speaker 1: who's like career ambitions hadn't really worked out, and she
Speaker 1: didn't really have a clear idea of like what she
Speaker 1: wanted to do, and so she gets into a lot
Speaker 1: of this self help type stuff. She sees James on
Speaker 1: the Oprah Winfrey Show. She has the same attitude of
Speaker 1: a lot of people that like, well, if Oprah says
Speaker 1: this guy is good, he must be. She gets his books,
Speaker 1: she drops tens of thousands of dollars on courses, and
Speaker 1: then eventually all of her savings on this spiritual Warrior
Speaker 1: weekend that fucking kills her.
Speaker 2: Think we're in this, I mean today, I think we're
Speaker 2: in a weird golden age of like entrepreneurism and tech
Speaker 2: and like bullshit risky spirituality kind of coming together, Like
Speaker 2: I feel like this was on the like this this
Speaker 2: guy was sort of on the early days of what
Speaker 2: is definitely here, because I have heard so many people
Speaker 2: in tech who are sort of like that woman describes,
Speaker 2: like not sure what they should do. Maybe they've been
Speaker 2: laid off, They're not sure what's next for them, and
Speaker 2: they are so many hucksters that will take their money
Speaker 2: and offer them something that they that it's meant to be,
Speaker 2: like a spiritual whether it's psychedelics. That's a thing that's
Speaker 2: really taking off right now in that space. It makes
Speaker 2: me so sad that people who probably could have used
Speaker 2: like therapy or a career coach would turn to somebody
Speaker 2: who would so callously exploit them and put them at
Speaker 2: such danger that they would die and like die paying.
Speaker 4: For the pleasure.
Speaker 2: It's just so disgusting, and it like it just it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it does. These people have no values and they are
Speaker 2: such hucksters.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and Ray is the epitome of that. And
Speaker 1: of course, as soon as he kills a bunch of people,
Speaker 1: Oprah distances herself from him, he does not show back up,
Speaker 1: and by God, have at least last time I checked,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find good clips of him in on Oprah's show.
Speaker 1: A lot of that stuff gets Let's get this shit
Speaker 1: out of here.
Speaker 3: Impressive that she's able to scrub so much shit off
Speaker 3: the internet.
Speaker 1: I will, yeah, I mean it's all rights claims and stuff,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, So he is charged and convicted, he
Speaker 1: spends some time in prison. Oh obviously nothing happens to her.
Speaker 1: She does not stop putting self help gurus on her
Speaker 1: show or stop encouraging new age experimental alternative medicine. I
Speaker 1: do want to listen to something that I didn't have
Speaker 1: in the script, but I just came across it, and
Speaker 1: maybe we'll try seeing this video. This is something that
Speaker 1: James Ray posted after getting out of prison called be
Speaker 1: careful what you wish for. So I'm just gonna I'm gonna,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take the wheel here. Sophie Insights into success,
Speaker 1: Be the best you can be. I love that, be
Speaker 1: the best you can be. This man killed three people.
Speaker 5: I like the website is into success dot com.
Speaker 1: Also, I have to say before we start this, James
Speaker 1: Arthur Ray, it is one of those like three word names,
Speaker 1: like that's a very serial killery.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he is definitely gonna kill somebody for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was always doomed to it, although not a
Speaker 1: bad fit on the suit anyway.
Speaker 6: And I thought I'd finally arrived. Well, that's a dangerous
Speaker 6: place to be. And I would say this to any entrepreneur,
Speaker 6: if you believe you've arrived, you may have likely arrived,
Speaker 6: most likely have arrived at a very very dangerous place,
Speaker 6: because nothing stays the same. It just doesn't. And I
Speaker 6: don't know how much you know, Paul about my history,
Speaker 6: but in two thousand and nine, I was at the
Speaker 6: top of my game. I was worth north of twenty
Speaker 6: million dollars. I had built an ink five hundred ten
Speaker 6: million dollar company, you know, I had all these other
Speaker 6: accolades going on. And then I was involved in a horrible,
Speaker 6: horrible accident in two thousand and nine in a five
Speaker 6: day retreat in the desert of Sedona, and a'll shortened
Speaker 6: the story, but it was quite a lengthy journey. And
Speaker 6: I talk about this in great depth and detail in
Speaker 6: my book The Business of Redemption, because it I went
Speaker 6: from the pinnacle to the pit. I literally, you know,
Speaker 6: we had at the end of this five day event,
Speaker 6: which is a very intensive week of hard work and
Speaker 6: diving deep into those psychological issues that drive behavior and
Speaker 6: bringing those to the forefront of our mind so we
Speaker 6: can heal them, release them, and move forward in life
Speaker 6: and integrate those things. And so it was a very
Speaker 6: emotional week. It was a narduous week. And at the
Speaker 6: end we had this experiential learning opportunity called a sweat lodge.
Speaker 1: I love how long it takes him to get to Like,
Speaker 1: so we had a sweat lodge and I killed three people.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: It's also there's a masterclass here, and like this guy
Speaker 1: hospitalized almost two dozen people and killed three. And he
Speaker 1: immediately is like, as soon as I get out, I'm
Speaker 1: going to write a book about redemption. Right, I'm going
Speaker 1: to have like this is I'm just gonna pivot this
Speaker 1: to being about my success journey. And like I thought
Speaker 1: I was at the top, but you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize what fate had around the corner when I accidentally
Speaker 1: killed three people at a sweat lodge. This is just
Speaker 1: one of those curveballs. Life sinses sometimes, right, Sometimes you're
Speaker 1: just out there living your life, trying to do your best,
Speaker 1: and you get three people killed in a sweat lodge.
Speaker 3: It happens if anyone's just listening to this. Also that
Speaker 3: I didn't realize he was such a tmu ass wolf
Speaker 3: Blitzer looking motherfucker.
Speaker 1: He is a really really wolf Blitzer looking motherfucker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how I would describe him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I also like how he describes it as like I
Speaker 4: was involved in an accident.
Speaker 1: Out I was involved in an accident.
Speaker 2: You might think that he means like a dirt but
Speaker 2: he was involved in a dirt accident or something.
Speaker 1: I crashed my car, I hit a kid with my
Speaker 1: you know, total accident. They darted into traffic. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. You engineered a situation that was definitely going
Speaker 1: to kill people because you didn't know what the fuck
Speaker 1: you were doing and had lost your mind with arrogance
Speaker 1: and belief in your own power. So uh, this does
Speaker 1: not stop Oprah from putting self help gurus on her
Speaker 1: show or encouraging new experimental alternative medicine. Again. She puts
Speaker 1: ray On in two thousand and six, He kills people
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine the John of God episode.
Speaker 1: I think after that, so it's good stuff. In my research,
Speaker 1: I came across an article by Gene Brown the sister
Speaker 1: of Kirby Brown, who died in that sweat lodge, Gene
Speaker 1: and her family started a nonprofit Seek See k All
Speaker 1: Caps Safely, focused on trying to establish protections and guardrails
Speaker 1: for the self help industry. She wrote this in an
Speaker 1: open letter to Winfrey. You helped make this sham of
Speaker 1: a man what he was. In fact, it was after
Speaker 1: seeing him on your show that my sister Kirby Brown
Speaker 1: read The Secret and became a fan of James Ray.
Speaker 1: I remember when we were together for my wedding at
Speaker 1: my parents' house in July of two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: three months before she'd die of heat stroke in a
Speaker 1: plastic tint in Arizona. I remember Kirby telling me that
Speaker 1: I had to read this book, that it was amazing,
Speaker 1: that James Ray was amazing, that he'd been on OPRAH,
Speaker 1: and that she was looking forward to the Ray event
Speaker 1: she'd be attending a few months later. That's right, she
Speaker 1: mentioned you by name, and Brown is begging Oprah in
Speaker 1: this to speak up and use her incredibly powerful, you
Speaker 1: unique platform to advocate for regulations to protect people from
Speaker 1: the predatory aspects of the self help industry. To my knowledge,
Speaker 1: Oprah never took a up on this strident plea, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a bummer.
Speaker 3: It's a little though also, like I mean, listen, I'm
Speaker 3: coming at this from a place of utter non belief
Speaker 3: in this, and I do understand that parts of this
Speaker 3: industry have helped people in certain ways. But the idea
Speaker 3: of like advocating for regulations on face, I guess is
Speaker 3: this is like the same as the FDA technically has to,
Speaker 3: you know, have a handle on these supplements industry, or
Speaker 3: like casinos have some guardrails. But it is so dark
Speaker 3: because it's like this shit is fake. So like what
Speaker 3: regulation other than this should not be These should not
Speaker 3: be claims that you can make because they are lies.
Speaker 3: Can there possibly be? I guess, I guess you shouldn't
Speaker 3: kill people. You can lie to them, but you can
Speaker 3: lie to them take their money. Shouldn't kill them. I
Speaker 3: don't know. It's very dark.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's pretty bleak. Now, I can't conclude a
Speaker 1: series on Oprah Winfrey without at some point discussing her
Speaker 1: infamous book club. And so that's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: Now you get to talk about We're not going to
Speaker 1: keep doing that joke I should say something about the
Speaker 1: car thing. Probably, So she does this episode where she
Speaker 1: has like three people on who can't afford cars, and
Speaker 1: you know, the problems that causes in their life, and
Speaker 1: then they all find out they're getting brand new Pontiacs,
Speaker 1: and then gradually becomes clear every one in the audience
Speaker 1: is getting a free new Pontiac. Now, two things. Number one,
Speaker 1: the specific if you know anything about Pontiac, you know
Speaker 1: that that's a curse more than it's a blessing. And
Speaker 1: the sunfire Yeah yeah, yeah, I had a cousin with
Speaker 1: a firebird and boy, howdie was that thing a piece
Speaker 1: of shit. But also, like these are, this was an
Speaker 1: advertising ploy. In part, Pontiac pays for the cars, that's
Speaker 1: why they're free, right. But also the Oprah Winfree Show
Speaker 1: does not remember to give the people money in addition
Speaker 1: to the cars, because when you get given a car,
Speaker 1: there's like tax implications. And everyone wound up owing like
Speaker 1: six grand as a result each for that car, which
Speaker 1: was like a big problem for a lot of people
Speaker 1: because these are folks who couldn't afford cars. Now, in
Speaker 1: terms of the Bastard column, this was more of like
Speaker 1: a thing. They just didn't because in the future, when
Speaker 1: she would give expensive gifts to people, the show would
Speaker 1: also give them checks to account for the tax burden.
Speaker 1: So I think this probably lands and just like you
Speaker 1: weren't thinking about this was like an ill thought out
Speaker 1: advertising ploy that worked pretty well for Pontiac. Although where
Speaker 1: Pontiac is today, it's still Pontiac. It's still Pontiac.
Speaker 3: Honestly, there's a part of me that's like the bigger
Speaker 3: thing is like that will never be in an era
Speaker 3: where any media is consolidated enough that it's worth that
Speaker 3: level of outlay, Like what is it like one hundred cars? Yeah,
Speaker 3: fifty cars something like that. Yeah, like as an advertising stunt,
Speaker 3: Like it's just not you know, in addition to all
Speaker 3: the other shit like whatever Oprah got or like I'm
Speaker 3: just like, yeah, I just don't think that's gonna happen anymore.
Speaker 1: I Mean, what's most funny to me is that the
Speaker 1: specific model of Pontiac has gone down as like one
Speaker 1: of the very worst cars ever made. So it really
Speaker 1: was like you get a shitty car, you get a
Speaker 1: shitty car, and six k and you six grand. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's not really a bastard thing. It's just kind of funny.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the book club. In September nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: Oprah launched her book Club as a regular feature on
Speaker 1: her show, making monthly picks and discussing them on air. Instantly,
Speaker 1: it became the largest and most influential book club on earth.
Speaker 1: Every single book Club pick that she would make for
Speaker 1: like fifteen years or something, became a best seller, every
Speaker 1: one of them. Some sold many millions of copies. I
Speaker 1: read a paper analyzing Oprah's literary choices by Alana Kullen
Speaker 1: of Salvagi Regina University and Colan quotes a scholar named
Speaker 1: Lofton Is saying nearly every one of the novels she
Speaker 1: suggested for the original book Club followed the same narrative trajectory.
Speaker 1: A woman, usually of a centric yet compelling character, experiences
Speaker 1: an enormous trauma. The remainder of the novel follows the
Speaker 1: woman as she manages the psychological, material and social after
Speaker 1: effects of the trauma. Usually, the stories conclude on a
Speaker 1: neutral note. The central character is wiser for her experiences,
Speaker 1: though on the whole not entirely happy with the way
Speaker 1: her life is resolved. Obviously, Oprah believes this paradigmic plot
Speaker 1: line will not only resonate with her viewers, but also
Speaker 1: expresses a universal truth critical to her spiritual work, the
Speaker 1: suffering of women as universal, unabated, and endured only through
Speaker 1: solidarity with other women. And I don't read that because
Speaker 1: that's like evil or anything. That's just an analysis of
Speaker 1: the fiction picks. It's interesting to me that, like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: the fiction that you are drawn to is very much
Speaker 1: a mirror of your own life. Yeah, just an interesting thing.
Speaker 1: And Oprah does, in fact pick a lot of good books,
Speaker 1: including some great works of classic literature, that she helps
Speaker 1: to spread to a wider audience. Her book Club is
Speaker 1: an extreme positive for the publishing industry as a whole. Now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to what is this net positive or
Speaker 1: negative for society, that's a little harder because in addition
Speaker 1: to some very good works of classic literature and just
Speaker 1: books that are fine that more people read, and more
Speaker 1: people are reading because Oprah is a good example, there's
Speaker 1: also shit, like a lot of poisonous stuff gets very famous.
Speaker 1: And I'm speaking here about The Secret, which we have
Speaker 1: I think discussed adequately, but also the infamous nonfiction book
Speaker 1: that turned out to be a fiction book, A Million
Speaker 1: Little Pieces by James Fray. We all know this story.
Speaker 1: Maybe not you at home, but everyone's sitting here does, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: did anyone read this fucker before it came out? My
Speaker 1: mom made me. She wanted to scare me away from drugs.
Speaker 1: And this is a book about this guy and it's
Speaker 1: his crazy drug and alcohol life and he goes to prison,
Speaker 1: loses all his teeth. It's like this fucked up addiction
Speaker 1: memoir of you know, addiction and redemption, and it is
Speaker 1: just horseshit. It's complete lies.
Speaker 2: When you don't know it's lies, it's I mean, I
Speaker 2: remember the opening. It opens with him like coming to
Speaker 2: on a plane and he doesn't know where he's going
Speaker 2: and it turns out he was on a bender and.
Speaker 4: They're sending him to rehab.
Speaker 1: Like yeah.
Speaker 2: It opens and you're like I'm locked and loaded, like locking,
Speaker 2: and when you find out it's bullshit, you realize like, oh,
Speaker 2: I like it really questioned my bullshit detector, because I
Speaker 2: was like, how did I not realize that this was fiction?
Speaker 2: Going back and reading it knowing it's it's lies, Like
Speaker 2: it really reads like bad, bad fiction.
Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah, And it is like very very like bad
Speaker 1: fiction is a good way to look at it. Anthony
Speaker 1: Bourdain described it as an obvious, transparent, and steaming heap
Speaker 1: of falsehood. From the first page, I was enraged that
Speaker 1: anyone on earth would believe a word. As a former addict,
Speaker 1: I found this fake redemption memoir to be morally repugnant.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember thinking it sounded kind of cool, like,
Speaker 1: oh man, this guy had some fun adventures being on
Speaker 1: drugs and alcohol. Maybe I should be an addict as
Speaker 1: an adult. Didn't have a positive impact on me. You
Speaker 1: could say, while Frey's book spent, he spends this this
Speaker 1: is such a hit, like it's hard to over like
Speaker 1: books almost don't almost don't go viral the way A
Speaker 1: Million Little Pieces did. He spends fifteen weeks on the
Speaker 1: bestseller list, which is huge for any author, especially one
Speaker 1: coming out of nowhere. And as soon as Ray is
Speaker 1: the top of the literary game, this guy goes mad
Speaker 1: with power. He starts. You can find like writings of
Speaker 1: his and like public comments he made attacking other authors
Speaker 1: like Edgar Dave Edgars and David Foster Wallace, calling them
Speaker 1: hacks and bragging that he was the best writer of
Speaker 1: his generation. Just immediately loses his mind. Journalists start, after
Speaker 1: this book is on the market a while, like looking
Speaker 1: into some of the obvious provable lies in his book
Speaker 1: and pointing out stuff that like, well, you talk a
Speaker 1: lot about the time you spent in prison, and like
Speaker 1: you didn't like you never got arrested or sentenced for
Speaker 1: a thing, Like you didn't you didn't do the thing
Speaker 1: that's like the centerpiece of your book. Is it possible
Speaker 1: other things are lies? If this obvious provable thing is
Speaker 1: a lie. Now, when the allegations come out, Oprah initially
Speaker 1: defends him, and in fact, Oprah even calls into Larry
Speaker 1: King Live to describe the allegations against Frey as much
Speaker 1: should do about nothing, which is like a unique and
Speaker 1: in part because like she's put her ego into backing
Speaker 1: this guy, right, yeah, Like she called him brilliant and
Speaker 1: said his book was wonderful. If she got conned, that
Speaker 1: doesn't look good for the Oprah brand. Journalists kept pointing
Speaker 1: out inconvenient details, and eventually the whole edifice of lies
Speaker 1: came crumbling down. Frey eventually admits, like I fictionalized large
Speaker 1: portions of this. Oprah was surious, and so she does
Speaker 1: the logical thing and has him back on her show.
Speaker 1: There's like three times she has him on after this.
Speaker 1: One of them is like extremely hostile where she is
Speaker 1: clearly like, oh you are pissed, like this guy made
Speaker 1: you look bad, but she also lets him like explain
Speaker 1: at length, Like he goes on a rant at one
Speaker 1: point where he's like, well, all memoirs are kind of lies,
Speaker 1: right because people don't remember things acting he's saying, like
Speaker 1: the stuff we were saying at the start, We're like, well,
Speaker 1: your past is to some extent like fiction, right, like,
Speaker 1: because we all remember things that didn't happen or didn't
Speaker 1: happen that way, or our memory is different memory of
Speaker 1: other people who were there. He interprets that as so
Speaker 1: it's fine if I just lie about my entire backstory
Speaker 1: and call it nonfiction, right, like, which is a leap.
Speaker 1: Maybe I would say.
Speaker 3: The publishing industry, though, is there no like like fact checking,
Speaker 3: Like what the fuck is happening?
Speaker 1: I mean, actually today there is no fact checking. There
Speaker 1: still was a little bit back then. It's very much
Speaker 1: it's very very rare in publishing to get functional fact
Speaker 1: checking these days, those are some of the first jobs
Speaker 1: you eliminate when you're cutting costs, newspapers are unfortunately the
Speaker 1: same thing. There is some minimal fact at least the
Speaker 1: last time I did a nonfiction book, which was fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago, there was minimal fact checking, but it is
Speaker 1: mostly on the author. Yeah, and I don't think they
Speaker 1: thought to fact check something like a memoir by this
Speaker 1: guy about his own experiences, even though there's stuff like
Speaker 1: his time in jail that would have been very easy
Speaker 1: to check. More to the point, Oprah continuing to have
Speaker 1: Frey on after he's exposed sells more copies of the book,
Speaker 1: Like it benefits him financially that she keeps having him
Speaker 1: on because people keep buying the goddamn thing.
Speaker 2: I remember reading a piece about how other memoirists who
Speaker 2: genuinely lived experiences that Frey kind of like made up
Speaker 2: or fabricated, like people who genuinely struggled with addiction or
Speaker 2: like had rough circumstances, that they had a hard time
Speaker 2: selling their books because of him, and like the impact
Speaker 2: that it made on people who were trying to write
Speaker 2: about those tough experiences.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cool stuff, Oprah. Cool stuff. Now there were near
Speaker 1: calamities too. In two thousand and eight, Oprah picked a
Speaker 1: Holocaust memoir as her book of the Month. The book
Speaker 1: was called Misha, and it was the purported true story
Speaker 1: of the life of the author, Misha Diffonseca, who was
Speaker 1: a little Jewish girl during World War Two, had to
Speaker 1: search Europe for her parents in the midst of the
Speaker 1: Holocaust and was adopted and saved by Nazi murder by
Speaker 1: a pack of wolves. That is literally the claim that
Speaker 1: she makes in this memoir. Now, you guys want to
Speaker 1: hear something shocking. Didn't happen. Little Jewish girl was not,
Speaker 1: in fact saved by a family of wolves during the Holocaust.
Speaker 1: In fact, Misha was not a little Jewish girl. She
Speaker 1: was raised Roman Catholic. She was not caught up in
Speaker 1: the Holocaust. This is just nonsense. Thankfully, Oprah was saved
Speaker 1: from plugging her novel because the truth came out at
Speaker 1: the eleventh hour before the episode could air, so they
Speaker 1: had time to scrap the fucker. But very nearly got
Speaker 1: brought in on that one. That said, in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: she was conned by the author of a different Holocaust novel.
Speaker 1: Herm authors Herman and Roma Rosenblatt, wrote a book titled
Speaker 1: Angel at the Fence about how Roman had saved herman's life, well,
Speaker 1: he was interned at Bukenvald by throwing apples over the fence.
Speaker 1: A Roma had saved his life by throwing apples over
Speaker 1: the fence, and that's how they'd met and fallen in love,
Speaker 1: and they'd been together ever since. Oprah called it the
Speaker 1: single greatest love story she'd ever heard. It was also
Speaker 1: total bullshit. Now this was not revealed for more than
Speaker 1: a decade, So like this book goes out as her
Speaker 1: book of the month, a decade later, it comes out
Speaker 1: like they just lied. None of this happened. Oprah's response
Speaker 1: was basically a fart noise. She said she was disappointed,
Speaker 1: but it refused to admit that she had been tricked.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how much deeper to get into
Speaker 1: the weeds with this stuff, right, Like, when it comes
Speaker 1: to most of the harms of her book club, they
Speaker 1: kind of boil down to like, I don't think that
Speaker 1: her taste in books was always great, but that's a
Speaker 1: personal opinion. And then number two, and this is the
Speaker 1: big one, she doesn't nobody really does. Very few people
Speaker 1: read enough that every month for like twenty years, you
Speaker 1: can recommend your favorite book of the month that you
Speaker 1: have actually read cover to cover. Some people do read them.
Speaker 1: I read that much because I.
Speaker 3: Have to, But like you're being pitched, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Oprah's not reading that much. She's got too
Speaker 1: much to do, and so she's not actually like reading
Speaker 1: multiple books every month and picking her favorite, because that's
Speaker 1: very hard to do. She's got a team of people
Speaker 1: who are picking books, and that leads to them making
Speaker 1: some very lazy picks that that can elevate ask literature,
Speaker 1: especially when she's focusing on like literature from other countries.
Speaker 1: There's an element of that could be problematic. And this
Speaker 1: is not something I would have picked up on on
Speaker 1: my own, but I had the good fortune during my
Speaker 1: research to come across an article by Rob Spilman, the
Speaker 1: editor of tin House magazine and the author of an
Speaker 1: anthology of contemporary African fiction titled Gods and Soldiers, and
Speaker 1: he made a complaint about Oprah's elevation of a book
Speaker 1: called Say You Are One of Them by Nigerian author
Speaker 1: uwhim Akpan quote Okpan, a Nigerian Jesuit priest, is a
Speaker 1: Maudlin sappy writer and his book only reinforces Western stereotypes
Speaker 1: about Africa, that it is a wasteland of child soldiers, poverty,
Speaker 1: and corruption. While there are serious problems in much of Africa,
Speaker 1: this is not the only reality, and strictly from the
Speaker 1: point of view of African fiction, Oprah could have done
Speaker 1: a lot better. The stories in Say You Are One
Speaker 1: of Them are drawn directly from the well known African headlines,
Speaker 1: but with little added imagination. They have nothing of the
Speaker 1: power of Akpan's countrymen Uzodin ma Iwela Iuela's searing novel
Speaker 1: about a child soldier, Beasts of No Nation, or Senegalese
Speaker 1: author of bobokar Boris Diop's novel about the Rwandan genocide.
Speaker 1: The Book of Bones. Ocpon's writing is pedestrian and plotting,
Speaker 1: but that has never stopped Oprah before. I am sure Ocpon,
Speaker 1: who is by all accounts a very nice person who
Speaker 1: is dedicated to doing good work in the world, will
Speaker 1: make for compelling daytime TV. It is just a shame
Speaker 1: that this one mediocre book is going to be put
Speaker 1: forward to stand for all of African fiction.
Speaker 2: This doesn't surprise me at all because this was certainly
Speaker 2: a well worn claim about Oprah that she was really
Speaker 2: interested in mining, like the trauma specifically of the black
Speaker 2: community and sort of packaging it and turning it into
Speaker 2: a commodity. And yeah, I mean, I can't help but
Speaker 2: see reflections of this and how she might have been
Speaker 2: thinking about some of those schoolgirls when she was coming
Speaker 2: up with the idea to launch that school, right, Like,
Speaker 2: I think that our experiences do often have traumatic legacies
Speaker 2: and like baggage and all of that, But that's not
Speaker 2: the only story that there is. And so I wonder if,
Speaker 2: like maybe she does have a preoccupation with you know,
Speaker 2: kind of the kind of not just traumatic, but like
Speaker 2: traumatic in a very specific, recognizable way that this author
Speaker 2: is calling her out for.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's also a thing that like white audience, like
Speaker 3: white Americans assume Black Americans no have special insight into
Speaker 3: Africa or Africans, right, but why would they.
Speaker 1: No, they're Americans. Yeah, Like they don't need to know
Speaker 1: anything at all about Nigeria, Like, yeah, what do you know? Like, okay,
Speaker 1: what's your last name? O'Malley? How much do you know
Speaker 1: about contemporary Irish politics?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Is it just Saint Patrick's day? Is that all you
Speaker 1: really know? Okay? Okay?
Speaker 2: And I wonder like Robert to your point about like
Speaker 2: certainly Oprah is not reading these books you know, on
Speaker 2: her compound and then hand picking them. Someone's picking them
Speaker 2: for her, So like why not consult like a Nigeria
Speaker 2: like what, Like she has infinite resources. It wouldn't be
Speaker 2: that hard you find somebody who knows what a good
Speaker 2: pick would be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a way you could still be doing good
Speaker 1: as her by saying like, hey, I'm going to pick
Speaker 1: this month. I've got this this expert on Nigerian literature
Speaker 1: who put together this like, you know, compilation of books,
Speaker 1: and he's going to talk about some literally you know,
Speaker 1: Nigerian literature that you should read and recommend it to.
Speaker 1: Like that again, that kind of takes the focus off
Speaker 1: of Oprah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she doesn't pass the mic.
Speaker 2: I feel like that is like really the theme here
Speaker 2: is that she wants it to be about her.
Speaker 4: She won't pass the mic.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and the other thing is like just knowing
Speaker 3: anything about the media and entertainment industry, those readers were
Speaker 3: two to three white people who are just doing their
Speaker 3: best scheme right now.
Speaker 1: This really is such a revealing novel about modern Nigeria,
Speaker 1: a place I've never been or read anything about other
Speaker 1: than this novel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway, that's a thoughtful
Speaker 1: and complex critique. I don't know that you again, Is
Speaker 1: this a bastard colony? Yeah, probably a little bit here,
Speaker 1: But it's also it's more than anything. It's a reflection
Speaker 1: of the fact that even with someone his favor is
Speaker 1: fair amsus Oprah tries to use fame in a good
Speaker 1: way to encourage reading, which is generally positive, there will
Speaker 1: always be negative externalities, precisely because fame is a brute
Speaker 1: force and it is very hard to use in a
Speaker 1: way that doesn't cause spillover harm. Right, that's the nature
Speaker 1: of fame. I've quoted a couple of times in these
Speaker 1: episodes from a paper by Alana Mullen of Salve Regina University,
Speaker 1: and that paper's title is salient to this point, quote
Speaker 1: despair disguised as entertainment? Does Oprah Winfrey sensationalize human suffering
Speaker 1: in order to fuel her media empire and encourage other
Speaker 1: media to follow. So the argument here is essentially that
Speaker 1: Oprah's content largely consists of a mix of horrific, heartrending
Speaker 1: stories of suffering meant to generate a motion that usually
Speaker 1: ends on an uplifting note where the subject somehow pulls
Speaker 1: themselves up by their bootstraps. This is augmented by segments
Speaker 1: on self help featuring guru featuring gurus and fitness experts
Speaker 1: who offer a mix of mental and physical expert exercises
Speaker 1: through which the individual might fix their problem. Quote under
Speaker 1: the advice section of Oh, the Oprah Magazine, after the
Speaker 1: reader reads the Panic Button, Martha Beck on the only
Speaker 1: Rational way to whether Life's big and little snaffoos, Doctor
Speaker 1: Phil on getting along with the surly son in law,
Speaker 1: and tips on raising a grandchild. And Sues Orman on
Speaker 1: an oppressive load of debt, a cramped house, and a
Speaker 1: money squandering husband. The reader finally comes to the journaling portion. Here,
Speaker 1: the reader is encouraged to write down her feelings about fear.
Speaker 1: It begins at times, we all fear we're not good
Speaker 1: enough before you can convince yourself otherwise, you have to
Speaker 1: simply admit to yourself and no one else what you want.
Speaker 1: Then tell yourself I am good enough. Say it until
Speaker 1: you believe it. The reader is given five questions and
Speaker 1: is asked to reflect on such things like how does
Speaker 1: your self talk change when you're fearful. We must keep
Speaker 1: in mind who hear who Oprah's readers are. These are
Speaker 1: not children, These are middle class women with families and careers.
Speaker 1: I would argue that the childlike dialogue Oprah exploits presents
Speaker 1: her audience with a simplistic discourse on suffering. Suffering is
Speaker 1: a powerful or some lessons and moral knowledge, and it
Speaker 1: should guide the individual. But what Oprah ends up doing
Speaker 1: is making suffering and the exploitation of your own suffering
Speaker 1: into a desirable and commonplace experience.
Speaker 2: M I mean, I think that's I mean, I hate
Speaker 2: to make like I hate to brand that as a positive,
Speaker 2: but I do feel like today like she was ahead
Speaker 2: of her time, whether that's a good thing or a
Speaker 2: bad thing. Intern of lookalth popular things like true crime,
Speaker 2: or like the idea of packaging suffering as entertainment.
Speaker 4: That's all that I.
Speaker 2: Feel like sometimes, that's all media is right now, and
Speaker 2: I feel like I can't I can't not see the
Speaker 2: ways that she was onto something before it had really
Speaker 2: become like that much of a thing.
Speaker 1: And do an extent, it becomes that much of a
Speaker 1: thing because she does prove the market right like, which
Speaker 1: isn't to make say that she's morally responsible for everything
Speaker 1: that media has done since, but you do have to
Speaker 1: look at like the the evolution that these things follow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's sort of like the question is like,
Speaker 3: do you create the market or does the market create you?
Speaker 3: Because it's like even from the early stories, it's like
Speaker 3: it Also it was also clear she was just trying
Speaker 3: a bunch of shit and the things that worked was
Speaker 3: the thing she gravitated towards and more and more and
Speaker 3: more and more, which is just like you know, how
Speaker 3: you do it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this sort of I mean like there's yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we've we've gone into that enough for these episodes.
Speaker 1: I just kind of it's it's something I think about
Speaker 1: a lot because the nature of this podcast is talking
Speaker 1: about awful things and like these these stories that are
Speaker 1: often like very terrible and horrible, and part of the
Speaker 1: popularity of this show is that people are drawn to
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And there's not zero percent Oprah
Speaker 1: in the background of like what I do now. I
Speaker 1: don't ever, for one thing, we don't end our episodes
Speaker 1: on a high note. Usually there's not like an inspiring
Speaker 1: moral journey that makes you think, don't worry just by
Speaker 1: changing my opinions and attitudes I can fix the problem
Speaker 1: like Hitler, because you can't. The thing that fixes a
Speaker 1: problem like Hitler or any other major problem in our
Speaker 1: society is like collective action, and when that action is
Speaker 1: absence absent, there's often just nothing but terror. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But like you know, it's still it's this kind of
Speaker 1: thing like reading about these critiques of Oprah, I have
Speaker 1: certainly thought about, like what I do. You know, it's
Speaker 1: hard not to like, in part because there's so much
Speaker 1: of how influencer in media stuff works today that's downstream
Speaker 1: of Oprah. You kind of have to. But speaking of
Speaker 1: downstream of Oprah, let's sell some fucking products and weird back.
Speaker 1: So I want to read a quote that kind of
Speaker 1: gets into the fact that Oprah she primarily understands the
Speaker 1: world through the things that happened to her, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of what her journey, the possibility that you can have,
Speaker 1: no matter how bad things are for you, you can
Speaker 1: wind up like Oprah, rich and famous and beloved, like
Speaker 1: by changing your attitude of factor. Like, that's what she
Speaker 1: is selling her viewers and readers. And there's an extent
Speaker 1: to which it's kind of dangerous to get people thinking
Speaker 1: about mass problems that way. And this is a point
Speaker 1: that's made very well in the book The Age of
Speaker 1: Oprah by Janis Peck. Quote inspired by a New York
Speaker 1: Times series from two thousand and five titled Class Matters.
Speaker 1: The show's opening segment suggested a serious treatment of issues
Speaker 1: of class inequality. Clips of experts citing the growing gap
Speaker 1: between rich and poor, shots of Hurricane Katrina victims crying
Speaker 1: for help, and Winfrey's own statement that nearly forty percent
Speaker 1: of all the country's wealth is being held by the
Speaker 1: richest one percent. The fact that one of the the
Speaker 1: guests was Robert Reich, us Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: underscored the solemn tone as he spoke of declining manufacturing jobs,
Speaker 1: a shrinking middle class, mounting economic anxiety, and millions of
Speaker 1: Americans who are working very hard but still not making
Speaker 1: it in what some are now calling the new Gilded Age.
Speaker 1: But even as Reich called into question the viability of
Speaker 1: the American dream, Winfrey reaffirmed it. She referred to a
Speaker 1: New York Times poll where eighty percent of those surveys
Speaker 1: said they believe you can go from rags to riches
Speaker 1: in America followed it up with a video clip of
Speaker 1: a young woman convinced she would acquire the big house,
Speaker 1: fantasy engagement ring, and nice cars because if you work hard,
Speaker 1: you can achieve anything. Oprah finally declared herself not only
Speaker 1: a believer in the American dream of rags to riches,
Speaker 1: but living proof of its veracity. Although Reich dutifully decreed
Speaker 1: his host a great model for America, he pressed on
Speaker 1: with his argument that success and failure are not simply
Speaker 1: matters of individual effort. Part of it is luck, he said,
Speaker 1: Part of it is connection, part of it is education.
Speaker 1: Winfrey replied tersely, I don't believe in luck, Bob. I
Speaker 1: think luck is preparation meeting the moment of opportunity. I
Speaker 1: don't consider myself lucky at all.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Oh bruh bh no, no no.
Speaker 3: But also, like, just on its face, how stupid is
Speaker 3: that statement? Like what do you think the fucking moment
Speaker 3: of opportunity is your dummy? That's luck?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's luck. And like you're like, your dad may
Speaker 1: not be your biological dad, the fact that he chose
Speaker 1: to take that responsibility for you is luck, you know,
Speaker 1: Like the fact that your grandma. You know, you have
Speaker 1: credited aspects of her with like instilling in you some
Speaker 1: of these values that like led you being a success.
Speaker 1: That's also luck you didn't have to have that grandma.
Speaker 1: And it's this thing of like, if my life is
Speaker 1: hard and a lot of bad shit happens to me,
Speaker 1: I'm not a lucky person. Both happen, like.
Speaker 2: And there are so many things from her story that
Speaker 2: you've told us that we're just pure luck, Like the
Speaker 2: reaction to her higher ups when she, you know, took
Speaker 2: took the gamb like the gamble and took the risk
Speaker 2: on like I'm gonna berate this woman on the show,
Speaker 2: and like, luckily it's going to be a hit.
Speaker 4: That's luck because her higher ups.
Speaker 2: Could have fired her for that, Like that could have
Speaker 2: her story could have ended there. Luckily it didn't and
Speaker 2: they had a different reaction. But like to say, like, oh,
Speaker 2: that was a calculated choice obviously not Like I just
Speaker 2: can't believe that someone would discount sort of like right place,
Speaker 2: right time, luck Like, oh, just luckily it worked out
Speaker 2: that way to their success story.
Speaker 4: Everybody has that in their success story. Everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's this problem with like conflating I benefited
Speaker 1: from luck to saying like I'm lucky, and like, especially
Speaker 1: if you've had as nightmarish and upbring you she has.
Speaker 1: I get why there's some offense that, but like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's buildings that were air struck, and like one member
Speaker 1: of a family in Gaza survives theyved due to luck.
Speaker 1: They're not lucky their family got killed by an air strike, right,
Speaker 1: but it's just luck that they lived through that thing, right, Like,
Speaker 1: but I don't know, I think people, a lot of people,
Speaker 1: especially particularly Oprah, doesn't like thinking about it that way.
Speaker 1: Like maybe it's better to say, because luck has a
Speaker 1: positive connotation, blind fortune might be better. You know, it's
Speaker 1: the kind of blind fortune of the guy next to
Speaker 1: me took a bullet through the head, but I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, that didn't happen to me. I'm just making
Speaker 1: an example.
Speaker 3: But it's it's like everyone's grandpa survived the landing in Normandy,
Speaker 3: Like yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, through luck. Other guys died because their luck
Speaker 1: was shitty. Yeah, you know that doesn't mean you didn't
Speaker 1: also like grow up fucking poor in the dust bowl, right, Like.
Speaker 2: I wonder for Oprah if there's some aspect to where
Speaker 2: she thinks that like her success was I don't want
Speaker 2: to say predetermined, but like I know a lot of
Speaker 2: people who believe that they are where they are because
Speaker 2: it was like like divinely written that way, and like
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter what choices they make because it's all
Speaker 2: gonna work out for them in the end. Like that's
Speaker 2: definitely a mindset of people that I that I know,
Speaker 2: And I wonder if she feels that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I she talks sometimes that way in terms of
Speaker 1: like does she actually believe that like God picked her specifically?
Speaker 1: I actually don't. She said stuff that you can interpret
Speaker 1: that way. I don't really get the vibe that's how
Speaker 1: she thinks about it. I think her attitude is like
Speaker 1: I succeeded because of my attitude and my hard work. Right,
Speaker 1: that's it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Anyway, since this is behind the Bastards, I think it's
Speaker 1: prudent for us to end these episodes, and by God,
Speaker 1: they're finally fucking ending with a very clear because this
Speaker 1: is all a lot of this is murky. The book
Speaker 1: stubbed like not you know the luck thing. We can
Speaker 1: talk about the harms there and like how that perpetuates
Speaker 1: capitalism and makes it harder to get people behind, you know,
Speaker 1: solutions to the problems of capitalism. But like, it's not
Speaker 1: bastard rey to just feel differently about to have that
Speaker 1: kind of reaction. You're not like evil. I just think
Speaker 1: you're wrong. So we're going to end on a real
Speaker 1: clear bit of evil. In two thousand and seven, Oprah
Speaker 1: had Jinny McCarthy on her show as a guest. McCarthy
Speaker 1: was at that point an actress and a former play
Speaker 1: boy model turned anti vaccine advocate. McCarthy is largely responsible
Speaker 1: for making Andrew Wakefield famous in the United States. Ginny believes,
Speaker 1: with no evidence, that vaccines gave her son Evan autism,
Speaker 1: and that she cured his autism with dieting and pills
Speaker 1: she got from the Internet. Now, McCarthy had a degree
Speaker 1: of fame in her own right, which is why people
Speaker 1: listen to her in the first place, But she would never, ever, ever,
Speaker 1: ever have reached more than a fraction of the people
Speaker 1: that she ultimately reached if Oprah had not had her
Speaker 1: on as a guest that fateful day in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven. This turns into the kind of person who thousands,
Speaker 1: maybe even hundreds thousands of people you know, we're aware
Speaker 1: of and you know, some chunk of that probably in
Speaker 1: the tens of thousands at this point took her very seriously.
Speaker 1: Oprah puts her in front of like thirty million people,
Speaker 1: you know, and this is you talk about her as
Speaker 1: like an enzyme. Yeah, this is that moment for the
Speaker 1: anti VAXX movement, which is at this point one of
Speaker 1: the most dangerous and dominant social forces in the United States,
Speaker 1: pushing back against all of the gains of the last
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty years of medical science. It's a
Speaker 1: real nightmarish problem. And this is one of the single
Speaker 1: most important moments in the growth of the anti vaccine movement.
Speaker 1: Very little equals this and its toxicity. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote from an article in box here. Science journalist
Speaker 1: Seth Minukin, who covered this meeting of the minds in
Speaker 1: his book The Panic Virus, reported that Winfrey praised McCarthy's
Speaker 1: unwillingness to bow to authority, her faith in herself, and
Speaker 1: her use of the Internet as a tool for bypassing
Speaker 1: society's traditional gatekeepers. Here's an excerpt from the interview transcript. McCarthy,
Speaker 1: first thing I did Google I put in autism and
Speaker 1: I started my research Winfree. Thank god for Google, McCarthy.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, Winfrey, thank god for Google McCarthy. The
Speaker 1: University of Google is where I got my degree from.
Speaker 1: And I put in autism and something came up that
Speaker 1: changed my life, that led me on this road to recovery,
Speaker 1: which said autism, it was in a corner of the screen,
Speaker 1: is reversible and treatable. And I said, what that has
Speaker 1: to be an ad for a hocus pocus thing, because
Speaker 1: if autism is reversible and treatable, well, then it would
Speaker 1: be on Oprah.
Speaker 2: I love that the specific things that she was praising
Speaker 2: her for are the most like Karen conspiracy theorist attributes
Speaker 2: like yeah, way to know the Internet, way to not
Speaker 2: trust authority, way.
Speaker 1: To like yeah, this is an er moment. This is
Speaker 1: in Lord of the Rings terms, this is Sourn forging
Speaker 1: the rings of power rights. That's Oprah's involvement in the
Speaker 1: anti vax Mo movement.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: So, days after that Oprah appearance, and this is continuing
Speaker 1: that quote from Vox, McCarthy was invited on Larry King
Speaker 1: Live and Good Morning America to spread her anti vaccine
Speaker 1: message even further between the three shows, she reached between
Speaker 1: fifteen million and twenty million viewers with her anti vaccine message.
Speaker 1: Minucin estimated. I think there's actually a good cause to
Speaker 1: suggest that it was more than that substantially, but all
Speaker 1: because I think her most was like twenty six something
Speaker 1: million viewers somewhere in those line. Along those lines, but anyway,
Speaker 1: Oprah ended McCarthy's bit by calling her a mother warrior,
Speaker 1: which incidentally helped to set off one of my least
Speaker 1: favorite linguistic trends. I really fucking hate people using the
Speaker 1: word war here for basically anything outside of war. It's
Speaker 1: just irritating to me. Not a moral thing, but like
Speaker 1: fucking like it's always alarmed. But I mean the sweat
Speaker 1: lodge that killed three people was the spiritual will warrior seminar, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you're not a warrior because you want to meditate and
Speaker 1: sit in a hot room. You're not a warrior because
Speaker 1: you got on Google, because you don't think your kid
Speaker 1: is worth loving because they have autism.
Speaker 3: You know, you shouldn't want to have to be a warrior.
Speaker 1: It's well, I mean that's what McCarthy would say. I
Speaker 1: had to be one for my son to cure him
Speaker 1: of the horrible specter of autism, which is actually like
Speaker 1: deeply hateful to your kid, that like you're going to
Speaker 1: move heaven and earth to like change them, as opposed
Speaker 1: to just being like, yeah, this is my kid, this
Speaker 1: is how they are now. The only slight nod to
Speaker 1: reality was when oath pro read a brief statement from
Speaker 1: the CDC which pointed out that vaccines save lives. Even then,
Speaker 1: McCarthy got the last word, insisting, my science is named
Speaker 1: Evan and he's at home. That's my science. Man. The
Speaker 1: episode with McCarthy is still featured. I think the actual
Speaker 1: clips of it aren't. I mean you can still find
Speaker 1: some of them, but like the episode is still featured
Speaker 1: on the oprah dot com website, Like there's a write
Speaker 1: up about it on there. Winfrey has never retracted or
Speaker 1: apologized for her role in the anti vaccine epidemic. In fact,
Speaker 1: she had her production company sign McCarthy for a TV
Speaker 1: show that eventually fell through. Because Jenny McCarthy is bad.
Speaker 1: We'll say bad because that's not legally actionable. I think
Speaker 1: she's really bad and the show didn't happen to thank god,
Speaker 1: but Winfrey made her a recurrent guest. She keeps on
Speaker 1: coming on, and Winfrey does not limit herself to just
Speaker 1: McCarthy as an anti vax figure. In fact, I found
Speaker 1: a mother Jones article that informed me that Jenny McCarthy
Speaker 1: was not even the first person with anti vaxx views
Speaker 1: on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Quote months before McCarthy's appearance,
Speaker 1: Katie Wright, whose son has autism, set on the show.
Speaker 1: The vaccine connection has not been refuted at all. In fact,
Speaker 1: we give thirty seven vaccines to babies under the age
Speaker 1: of eighteen months. Nobody has shown that safe a wise idea,
Speaker 1: the multiple vaccines at once. I would say the fact
Speaker 1: that most kids who are born survive to be adults
Speaker 1: shows that that's a good idea. Look at where things were.
Speaker 1: They're in eighteen fifty with kids who were born surviving
Speaker 1: to adulthood. That that, I would say is pretty good evidence. Anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the next year, Oh sorry, are just really bummed out now.
Speaker 3: It's although, like, I mean, so much of like what's
Speaker 3: wrong with America is like, can can just we make
Speaker 3: everyone learn basic statistics just once?
Speaker 1: No, absolutely never going to do that, Andrew, we can't
Speaker 1: even teach people how to read anymore.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: The next year, OPRAH had Christianne Northrop On. Northrop is
Speaker 1: a physician, or at least a former physician, who started
Speaker 1: making the switch to new age health disinformation grifter on
Speaker 1: Oprah's program. Her initial target was the HPV vaccine, which
Speaker 1: she suggested should be replaced by a healthy diet. Norript added, look,
Speaker 1: just eat right, and you can't get HPV. Everyone knows that.
Speaker 2: All the things I thought you were where you thought
Speaker 2: you were gonna go, if you had good prayer, that
Speaker 2: would be the only thing like more ridiculous.
Speaker 1: No, this is why, Like you know, in my own
Speaker 1: personal life, I don't use any kind of protection. We
Speaker 1: just eat a salad first.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: That makes it safe. If you're both eating a salad,
Speaker 1: nobody can pass anything to anybody else. Like, no, I've
Speaker 1: got some tomatoes, but I got this excellent caesar. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's so good, and it's spinach. None of
Speaker 1: that fucking like lettuce bullshit, right, like the good stuff
Speaker 1: mixed greens, fucking hysterical. So Northrip added, I'm a little
Speaker 1: against my own profession. My own profession feels that everyone
Speaker 1: should be vaccinated. Nothing you mean to say about that,
Speaker 1: you won't be surprised, but should be sadden to hear
Speaker 1: that Northrop is still with us. She pivoted to COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen denial. This is particularly a problem because in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: readers Digest declared her one of the hundred most trusted
Speaker 1: people in the country. I want to read a quote
Speaker 1: from a McGill University article on Christiane for the Office
Speaker 1: of Science and Safety, which calls her the doctor Carl
Speaker 1: Sagan warned us about, and she's specifically talking about a
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan quote about like his fear that anti science
Speaker 1: attitudes will lead to a return a new dark ages.
Speaker 1: Is like this, people start to believe in a demon
Speaker 1: haunted world rather than a world of like problems and
Speaker 1: solutions that can both be understood scientifically. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's both a damning and accurate way to describe Northrop.
Speaker 1: Quote from McGill University. She does not believe vaccines are
Speaker 1: necessary if your body is healthy, and has spread unsubstantiated
Speaker 1: fears about safe vaccines throughout her career. She claimed that
Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen vaccines will target specific chromosomes that act
Speaker 1: as the seed of our empathy, an utterly absurd and
Speaker 1: unscientific statement. She believes that artificial intelligence has somehow been
Speaker 1: incorporated into these vaccines, absolutely nonsense, and that this AI
Speaker 1: will integrate itself into our DNA. She warns her viewers
Speaker 1: that the injection of patented vaccines inside our body will
Speaker 1: turn us into the property of the patent holders. Thanks
Speaker 1: for that one, Oprah.
Speaker 4: Let me just check Bill Gates.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't know this. Bill Gates actually
Speaker 1: moved into your house, and because you're legally his property,
Speaker 1: you couldn't say anything about its super clean roommate, super
Speaker 1: clean roommate.
Speaker 4: No God, why that is nonsense. That is complete.
Speaker 1: Thanks oaps. Great that she's in the discourse forever and now,
Speaker 1: and that's part of the thing. Is like Oprah kind
Speaker 1: of takes a step back in like twenty ten eleven.
Speaker 1: She's on leash. She's clearly like partially retired, but like
Speaker 1: all of these fuckers are still with us. You didn't
Speaker 1: take them with you, Oprah. Do if she'd just been
Speaker 1: like a pharaoh and been buried with them all, I'd
Speaker 1: be fine.
Speaker 2: But like.
Speaker 1: A glass no, like.
Speaker 2: The harm they do. Like she's she's gonna be fine.
Speaker 2: It's like she unleashed this chaos.
Speaker 1: She's gonna be fine forever, She's she's gonna be Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's doing what.
Speaker 5: Government job does doctor Oz have now?
Speaker 1: Not yet, not yet, but probably by the time people
Speaker 1: listen to this, like, there's a good chance he might
Speaker 1: have been confirmed. I think it's Health and Human Services. No,
Speaker 1: it's medicaid for him, right, yeah, Medica. Oh great shit.
Speaker 1: So the good news is that in recent years the
Speaker 1: world has slowly started catching up to the many, many
Speaker 1: harms that Oprah and her celebrity have caused. I found
Speaker 1: a good article about this in The Root, which noted
Speaker 1: that after the catastrophic Maui fires in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: she and the Rock asked random working people to donate
Speaker 1: to rebuild the island. They put in ten million dollars themselves,
Speaker 1: even though they both of them are worth substantially more
Speaker 1: than that. Shall we say, in earlier years, I think
Speaker 1: they both would have been praised for giving ten million,
Speaker 1: But in twenty twenty three, coming from a woman with
Speaker 1: more than two billion dollars in a bank in the bank,
Speaker 1: especially considering she was clearly talking about the parts of
Speaker 1: Maui where the rich people lived, it was taken widely
Speaker 1: as insulting. Speaking of insulting, and I'm getting a little
Speaker 1: petty here, but I'm gonna tell this story anyway. In
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, Oprah went on tour with her mystic buddy
Speaker 1: Deepak Chopra, selling tickets for one thousand dollars for a
Speaker 1: motivational presentation called The Life You Want. Because there would
Speaker 1: be long lines to get in and the whole event
Speaker 1: would be something of a spectacle, Oprah and her organizers
Speaker 1: decided to hire local talent to play on stages around
Speaker 1: and outside the weekend long event. Oh did I say hire? No? No, no, sorry,
Speaker 1: I meant they begged local artists to work for free
Speaker 1: for exposure.
Speaker 4: A page from the Amanda Palmer playbook.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Now what's interesting about this to me? I
Speaker 1: started this by talking about that it was like in
Speaker 1: two thousands she did her first like big tour. I
Speaker 1: think it was called The Life You Want? Or is that?
Speaker 1: Oh no, this one's Life you Want. I forget what
Speaker 1: the first tour was. We talk about it at the
Speaker 1: start of episode five. But she did a tour and
Speaker 1: in that one she made a real point. Tickets were
Speaker 1: like twenty or thirty bucks and all of the proceeds
Speaker 1: were donated to the Angel Foundation. So whatever you want
Speaker 1: to say about like, you know, this is the thing
Speaker 1: that the La Times was like calling her a basically
Speaker 1: a god for putting on. But at least it was
Speaker 1: an extremely affordable event made for like working people to
Speaker 1: be able to attend, and she didn't profit directly off
Speaker 1: of it. All of the money went to her charity.
Speaker 3: Although foundations come on, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, by twenty fourteen, but there's pretense, no pretense by
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen for this one one thousand dollars, okay, or
Speaker 1: at least those are some of the like it's going
Speaker 1: ranging from one hundred to a thot thousand dollars, right,
Speaker 1: and these are the venue in the town where she's
Speaker 1: specific like, because this specific article comes from a performer
Speaker 1: named Revolva r Evolva or at least that's your stage
Speaker 1: name obviously, and Revolva is one of the people who
Speaker 1: Oprah's team reaches out to asking her to work for
Speaker 1: free at this event, and Revolva points out that the
Speaker 1: venue in her town had an eighteen thousand person capacity
Speaker 1: and if tickets are ranging from one hundred to one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars with eighteen thousand seats. That adds up to
Speaker 1: what I think doctors know as a shitload of money,
Speaker 1: enough to pay someone like Revolva. I don't know, a
Speaker 1: couple thousand bucks something like that. You know, any money,
Speaker 1: literally anything.
Speaker 2: What if the life that I want involves being paid
Speaker 2: for my labor?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Tomul like, hey, it's like five hundred bucks. I know
Speaker 1: that's lower than standard, but you'll get exposure. At least
Speaker 1: you're offering money, right, you know. I So the producer
Speaker 1: she talked to framed it as a favor that Oprah
Speaker 1: and the crew were doing the local arts community. People
Speaker 1: started calling us asking to perform, so we thought we'd
Speaker 1: add a stage for local acts. Look at how good
Speaker 1: we are. Like, motherfucker, now I've got again. I'm criticizing
Speaker 1: this because it is shitty and bad. I have no
Speaker 1: idea how much Oprah was aware, if at all, about
Speaker 1: the specifics of this. I highly doubt she was like,
Speaker 1: send Revolva an offer, right, Like there's a good chance
Speaker 1: though that. Like someone said, hey, should we have a
Speaker 1: bunch of local actors perform on a stage where you
Speaker 1: aren't for free? And she was like, yeah, sure, sounds great.
Speaker 1: They'll get exposure. Yeah, I think that's probably probably somewhere
Speaker 1: close to the case.
Speaker 3: Or even less to be fair, like, hey, she got
Speaker 3: some local artists. Great, make it happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, make it happen right.
Speaker 3: End of story.
Speaker 1: As far as Oprah is concerned, end of story. That said,
Speaker 1: I suspect, if asked honestly, Oprah would consider getting to
Speaker 1: perform on a stage kind of near her to be
Speaker 1: where much more than money. And I do want to
Speaker 1: note we'll have a link and link in our source
Speaker 1: notes to Revolva's website where she writes this up. But
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have Sophie show you the little image infographic
Speaker 1: that she put together about the different people involved in this.
Speaker 1: It shows Oprah Winfrey networth two point nine billion, the Epact,
Speaker 1: Chopra networth eighty million, Elizabeth Gilbert networth twenty five million,
Speaker 1: Revolva net worth negative twenty thousand dollars. But she's like
Speaker 1: a fire.
Speaker 4: Spinner, awesome spinning fire.
Speaker 1: It's a great Yeah, higher Revolva, give her money. If
Speaker 1: she's still doing this, I don't know. This was ten
Speaker 1: years ago. Best of luck, Revolva, thanks for writing about
Speaker 1: this now. Those of you who are in your thirties,
Speaker 1: will remember that fun year or so where large numbers
Speaker 1: of people thought the world was going to end in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve because of the Mayans. The Mayans did not,
Speaker 1: in fact predict the world was going to end in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, but there was a lot of money in
Speaker 1: lying about that for a little while. You may be
Speaker 1: surprised to hear that OPRAH had a big part in
Speaker 1: that panic too, from an article by Kurt Anderson of Slate.
Speaker 1: Right around the time the secret came out, Habit Chowse
Speaker 1: of the of its general vicinities started buzzing about the
Speaker 1: year twenty twelve. Ancient Meso Americans, people were saying, had
Speaker 1: predicted that in twenty twelve, specifically December twenty first, humankind's
Speaker 1: present existence would transition when the current twenty five year
Speaker 1: long period ends. New Age religion makers like American Protestants
Speaker 1: now had their own ancient prophecy for their dreams of
Speaker 1: something like a near future armageddon and supernaturally wonderful aftermath.
Speaker 1: Winfrey ended the daily Oprah broadcast in twenty eleven. A
Speaker 1: month before the final episode, she interviewed Shirley maclain for
Speaker 1: the millionth time and asked about twenty twelve, what's going
Speaker 1: to happen to us as a species? We're coming into
Speaker 1: an alignment. McLean explained. It is the first time in
Speaker 1: twenty six thousand years, thirty six thousand years, twenty six
Speaker 1: thousand years. I'm sorry that this has occurred. You have
Speaker 1: an alignment where this solar system is on a direct
Speaker 1: alignment with the center of the galaxy. That carries with
Speaker 1: it a very profound electromagnetic frequency vibration. When Free interjected vibration,
Speaker 1: McLean agreed, and gravitational pull hints the weather. What does
Speaker 1: that do to consciousness? What does that due to our
Speaker 1: sense of reality? It's why people feel stressed and rushed,
Speaker 1: she said.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I think Oprah should have just been like me
Speaker 2: in college, doing psychedelics and looking at black blite posters
Speaker 2: and just like like if she had just kept this
Speaker 2: in like the common area of the dorm, we all
Speaker 2: might have been a little old bess.
Speaker 1: It's remarkable how many transcripts of her show sound like
Speaker 1: stuff that like fifteen years ago, like a pot dealer
Speaker 1: told me, well, we played PlayStation because like I really
Speaker 1: just wanted to get out of there with my eighth
Speaker 1: But like you kind of got to hang with the
Speaker 1: guy a little bit. He's cutting me a deal. You know,
Speaker 1: these are the experiences legal weed is making kids miss
Speaker 1: out on. Now, that's why they need Joe Rogan.
Speaker 3: God, it's so deeply. I mean, the thing that's coalescing
Speaker 3: now is like Oprah has like a professional credulity verging
Speaker 3: on idiocy. That is just what audiences want because that's
Speaker 3: what everyone is wanted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, And that's kind of so dumb. That brings
Speaker 1: us to the end because the worm has sort of
Speaker 1: turned for Oprah here. You know. The Oprah Winfrey Show
Speaker 1: ended after twenty five years on the air in twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: She still does specials. Oh Magazine continued until twenty twenty
Speaker 1: when it stopped publicizing. Oprah still has a sizable production
Speaker 1: company her current show. She has a current show that's
Speaker 1: called Life Class. So she still does shows and stuff.
Speaker 1: But the Oprah Winfrey Show is like an everyday thing.
Speaker 1: Ended in twenty eleven, and her cultural influence has faded
Speaker 1: substantially from its peak thirteen years ago. Perhaps Oprah might
Speaker 1: have been able to rain in the legions of New
Speaker 1: Age curious fans before they fell into the abyss of
Speaker 1: QAnon or flat Earth or whatever kind of white supremacist
Speaker 1: shit is currently going viral with like a weird number
Speaker 1: of like gen X people who spent twenty years watching Oprah,
Speaker 1: but not anymore. She doesn't have that juice anymore. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things. She came out big for Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris during the election and it didn't do shit. Ten
Speaker 1: years ago. Oprah may have been able to me out, yeah,
Speaker 1: might have been able to swing an election, but not anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, Oprah's well past her peak. But it's also
Speaker 1: too one late to undo the damage. Right, this march
Speaker 1: into unreality that she helped to lead and organize. We're
Speaker 1: still going down that road, even though I think she
Speaker 1: herself sees how dangerous a lot of it is. Like, no,
Speaker 1: there's no turning the wheel anymore, there's no jerking us back.
Speaker 1: We've gone too far. So thanks OAPS.
Speaker 4: So is she a bastard?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's kind of where I'm landing now.
Speaker 1: I mean, where are y'all? I'm interested? I think she's
Speaker 1: I don't think she wanted the evil things is the
Speaker 1: tough thing, right, She's not malicious generally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I guess neither do most of the bastards,
Speaker 3: at least from their.
Speaker 1: I think most of the bastards have their malicious moments, right,
Speaker 1: even if they would argue that what I'm doing is
Speaker 1: the best thing, they have moments where you're just acting
Speaker 1: out of petty hatred or anger. Oprah's bad shit is
Speaker 1: never that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's what I'm like, the credulity, the like
Speaker 3: I mean, look at least as far as like all
Speaker 3: this anti vaxine, like anti science and anti reality stuff goes.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, while she is like an enzyme
Speaker 3: for this stuff, like she herself is also just like
Speaker 3: down the line from like if there wasn't medical racism,
Speaker 3: it's unlikely that she would have a foot to stand on,
Speaker 3: or you know, would have even delved into this like
Speaker 3: anti vax anti you know, or like any other number
Speaker 3: of structural things that exist. So it's like the bastards
Speaker 3: are still the people that set up all the inequality
Speaker 3: in the first place, and she has really done some
Speaker 3: part to intensify it. But I do think if it
Speaker 3: weren't her, it would have been someone else, Like it's
Speaker 3: just a niche that exists, and like someone would have
Speaker 3: fallen into it.
Speaker 1: I think there are pieces of that that are accurate
Speaker 1: and pieces that aren't. It's this, it's the great man
Speaker 1: versus trends and forces, right. I think reality TV happens
Speaker 1: without Oprah. I think this this movement to like as
Speaker 1: long as social media is coming out. I think this
Speaker 1: movement towards like authenticity and like the weird parisocial bon
Speaker 1: that are being built, that was inevitable well before we
Speaker 1: were on that road. But I also think the characteristics
Speaker 1: of Oprah herself, particularly her credulity for a lot of
Speaker 1: this anti reality wu you know from Deepak Chopra, the
Speaker 1: secret Mary and Williamson stuff. I don't think that was inevitable.
Speaker 1: And I don't think the role in seriousness that she gave,
Speaker 1: like anti vaccine stuff was necessarily inevitable.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's a mix.
Speaker 3: I guess to me, the pushback on that is that
Speaker 3: is what the audience likes, and like someone would have
Speaker 3: filled that role if it wasn't her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the thing that we'll never.
Speaker 3: Know, right yeah. Yeah, But I'm just like, I mean,
Speaker 3: we as a society species, I don't know, are inclined
Speaker 3: to believe this stuff because it is the path of
Speaker 3: least resistance on how you perceive reality and solve problems.
Speaker 1: I guess where I go with that is. But also
Speaker 1: like our inclination towards it is why it's good business.
Speaker 1: It is not necessarily written that we are going like
Speaker 1: because people have not always bought into as much of
Speaker 1: this shit. There were periods of time where that was
Speaker 1: less common, certainly less common to talk about publicly. With
Speaker 1: the position that she had, right, and I do think
Speaker 1: that leaning into it was not necessarily going. That was
Speaker 1: a choice that she and other people made, and more
Speaker 1: resistance to it could have ensured that we were in
Speaker 1: a better position now visa vine the existence of reality
Speaker 1: a thing and sensus reality. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think the choice to like lean into it is
Speaker 2: what is the thing for me?
Speaker 4: Like that wasn't happenstance.
Speaker 2: She made a clear editorial decision about what it was,
Speaker 2: what kind of work she was going to prioritize, what
Speaker 2: kind of voices she was going to amplify.
Speaker 4: It's kind of hard to come back from that for me.
Speaker 2: But I do take your point, Andrew, I do think
Speaker 2: that a lot of this is like she really held
Speaker 2: a mirror up to our worst base instincts and desires
Speaker 2: and impulses, and like, I mean, yeah, I kind of.
Speaker 3: You know, sorry, please, I'm like part of her calculus
Speaker 3: of amplifying this stuff is on some level. I don't
Speaker 3: even know who the competitors would be, but she's like,
Speaker 3: if it's not me, I'm just gonna pull an analogous
Speaker 3: I think talk show host, like, fucking it's not Jenny Jones,
Speaker 3: but Kelly Clarkson will do it. Like yeah, It's like
Speaker 3: it's just like someone is going to put these people
Speaker 3: on and this message is going to make waves because
Speaker 3: the fucking idiots who watch my show crave this. You know.
Speaker 3: That's the version where at least she's kind of an
Speaker 3: aware person.
Speaker 4: Are you saying that the real bastard is us?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well people, but yeah, not me, y'all Yeah.
Speaker 4: Robert Sophie, we're not disagreed.
Speaker 1: No, I mean like this is yeah, like that, this
Speaker 1: is why I mean the show, the fact that this
Speaker 1: is behind the Master's to show about the worst people
Speaker 1: in all of history, would seem to always kind of
Speaker 1: lean into the great man stuff. I do try I
Speaker 1: try it to like pull back from that as often
Speaker 1: as I can, right, and that all of you could
Speaker 1: say the same thing about like Hitler too, Right. All
Speaker 1: of these monsters are both individuals, and the bad things
Speaker 1: they do are what they are because of their individual
Speaker 1: choices and also the product of trends and forces. Like
Speaker 1: if there's not a Hitler, there is another guy who
Speaker 1: finds a way to take to who finds a way
Speaker 1: to take advantage of German anger and fury at the
Speaker 1: way the war had ended in the peace and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and turn that into political power. Now that guy's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the Holocaust guy, right, but there's someone the the
Speaker 1: energy would have been has to be harnessed almost because
Speaker 1: it exists. You know, I don't know, like this is
Speaker 1: we're getting a little bit.
Speaker 3: Where we had our bong hits in the commercial break,
Speaker 3: so now where it's going forward.
Speaker 1: That's right, You're getting effectively three parters worth of episodes
Speaker 1: today because this week alone is three hours. So yep,
Speaker 1: you're welcome, You're welcome.
Speaker 5: Anybody got anything they want.
Speaker 4: To plug.
Speaker 3: Anymore?
Speaker 5: Fuck?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now I might questioning my whole media career, am
Speaker 2: I just like pumping out stuff that it's I don't
Speaker 2: realize is going to have like down the line is
Speaker 2: going to have a bad effect on society.
Speaker 4: I don't even realize it yet. Am I early Oprah?
Speaker 6: God?
Speaker 3: I hope?
Speaker 4: So yeah, if I write.
Speaker 1: Up with three billion dollars, who gives a fuck?
Speaker 3: Not me?
Speaker 4: Baby?
Speaker 1: Can I have a car better than Yeah?
Speaker 2: Everyone gets pontiacs on fires and that's that.
Speaker 1: I am going to go out of my way to
Speaker 1: buy up all of the surviving or find the scrapped
Speaker 1: remains of all of the pontiacs that Oprah gave out
Speaker 1: and give them back out to our audience.
Speaker 3: Whatever. It's got to be doable.
Speaker 1: Uh huh yeah, yeah, this is this is, this is
Speaker 1: my my new quest.
Speaker 5: Well, I'll plug for Bridget listen to there are no
Speaker 5: girls on the internet.
Speaker 4: I'll plug for Andrew.
Speaker 5: Listen to you as this racist.
Speaker 1: That's right? And uh, you know, until next time. Fucking
Speaker 1: light your television on fire. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know what to tell you to do.
Speaker 3: Your phone in half and throwing the seat.
Speaker 1: What a mess? What a fucking mess?
Speaker 4: What a mess?
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