Ask Dr. Drew - John Phillips (Tiger King Joe Exotic's Lawyer) Discusses Shocking Revelations of Season 2 – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 70

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

Famed lawyer Robert Shapiro once called John Phillips “the best lawyer in America.” John specializes in personal injury, wrongful death and civil rights cases. He is now representing the Tiger King, Joe Exotic, in his bid to get a new trial. Find John Phillips online at https://FloridaJustice.com [This episode originally aired on December 9, 2021] Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation ( https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/FirstLadyOfLove). SPONSORS • REFRAME – Since the beginning of the pandemic, nearly 1 in 5 Americans has reported consuming an unhealthy amount of alcohol, but only 10% of them are actually getting the help they need. Reframe is a neuroscience-based smartphone app that helps users cut back or quit drinking alcohol. Use the code DRDREW for 25% off your first month or annual subscription at https://drdrew.com/reframe • HYDRALYTE – “In my opinion, the best oral rehydration product on the market.” Dr. Drew recommends Hydralyte’s easy-to-use packets of fast-absorbing electrolytes. Learn more about Hydralyte and use DRDREW25 at checkout for a special discount at https://drdrew.com/hydralyte  • ELGATO – Every week, Dr. Drew broadcasts live shows from his home studio under soft, clean lighting from Elgato’s Key Lights. From the control room, the producers manage Dr. Drew’s streams with a Stream Deck XL, and ingest HD video with a Camlink 4K. Add a professional touch to your streams or Zoom calls with Elgato. See how Elgato’s lights transformed Dr. Drew’s set: https://drdrew.com/sponsors/elgato/  THE SHOW: For over 30 years, Dr. Drew Pinsky has taken calls from all corners of the globe, answering thousands of questions from teens and young adults. To millions, he is a beacon of truth, integrity, fairness, and common sense. Now, after decades of hosting Loveline and multiple hit TV shows – including Celebrity Rehab, Teen Mom OG, Lifechangers, and more – Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio in California. On Ask Dr. Drew, no question is too extreme or embarrassing because the Dr. has heard it all. Don’t hold in your deepest, darkest questions any longer. Ask Dr. Drew and get real answers today. This show is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All information exchanged during participation in this program, including interactions with DrDrew.com and any affiliated websites, are intended for educational and/or entertainment purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with the sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM. A sportsbook

worth a slam dunk. An authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge.

BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us on this stream. And we will be speaking with John Phillips in just a moment. John is the attorney of Joe Exotic. If you watch the second season of Tiger King, you saw John featured quite extensively in that thing. And it turns out that John and I had a relationship long before this, where he used to commentate on my HLM program back in the day. Our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian

and bizarre. Psychopaths start this. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for. Where the hell you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals.

Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want to help stop it, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. Since the beginning of the pandemic, nearly one in five Americans has reported consuming an unhealthy amount of alcohol. Could be you, but only 10% of them are actually getting the help they need. Reframe is a neuroscience-based smartphone app that helps users cut back or quit drinking alcohol altogether. Using evidence-based tools, techniques, and content, Reframe guides users through a personalized program to help them reach their goals. Comprised of daily tasks, a comprehensive toolkit, a community

forum, and accountability guides, Reframe is a modern, accessible, and affordable resource that can help anyone looking to reevaluate their relationship with alcohol. Reframe is backed by Harvard University and Emory University Schools of Medicine, and it is ranked the number one alcohol reduction smartphone app worldwide with over 350,000 downloads. With Reframe, there's no stigma, just science, no labels, just support. To learn more, go to joinreframeapp.com slash drdrew. Use the code drdrew for 25% off your first month or your annual subscription. That's at joinreframeapp.com slash drdrew. Scott Adams, raise your hand if you'd like to come up here and chat with me at all,

because I see you there. And if you're interested in chatting at all, let me know. I don't want to just bum rush you by pulling you up to the podium here if those of you that are in the clubhouse that are listening and want to ask questions of my guest you raise your hand and there

he is there's Scott and sure sure enough I'm going to bring Scott up you'll be streaming on Rumble, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook and all available streams. Scott Adams, how are you, my friend? Hey, can you hear me? I hear you.

Oh, hello. So go ahead. I'm not sure why you invited me, but I'm here for you. I invited you because it's always interesting to talk to you. And I was listening to your stream this morning. Oh, I know I wanted to have a conversation with you sometime. Maybe now's the time about inflammation because you've been referring to

that as some of your, well, first tell people where they can find you, Scott, where they can hear you and what they'll be hearing when they do find you. Oh, Dilbert.com for the comic and just Google or search for coffee with Scott Adams for my live

stream every day. Scott has been on this show a number of times. We like Scott because he helps assuage my anxiety. He teaches about persuasion rather than facts because we live in this weird post factual world that I'm having trouble making sense of and he'll help you make sense

of that from a certain point of view. Is that about to summarize it? Well, that's a big expectation, but let me see what I can do. All right, good, good. And if you're not careful, he will hypnotize you and make you come back every day the way I do. So in any event, inflammation, you were talking about that the other day and it caught my ear and I thought, you know, the mechanism of inflammation that people are really talking about is it's very complicated.

It's not fully worked out. But I think, you know, when they're talking about inflammation, they're not talking about what we used to sort of call inflammation. Like let's say somebody with rheumatoid arthritis has in their joints where neutrophils are coming in there and unloading all these chemicals that cause this huge reaction we call inflammation. People with that kind of inflammation live normal lives. It's not like they have complications or, you know, the complications they get into are from the immune suppressants we give them to reduce the inflammation. The inflammation itself doesn't do that much to them. The inflammation you hear people talking about these days is really the inflammation of what's called the endothelial system, the lining of arteries. The cells that line our arteries

are essentially their own organ system. They're highly specialized and how they interact with immune cells and lipids and oxidized lipids and insulin determines their, let's call it their oxidative stress and their level of inflammation. And as a result, they can impact on the ability to deliver nutrients, oxygen, and immune cells to the periphery of our organs. So I think that's kind of what people are talking about today when they see inflammation. Does that make sense? Am I explaining that's kind of what people are talking about today when they see inflammation. Does that make sense? Am I explaining that in a way that makes sense? Well, what's the non-doctor way to say that? There's two kinds of inflammation?

Inflammation is a lot of different things. And when people are talking about inflammation today, I think they're really talking about the biology of what affects our arteries and our blood supply and our body's nutrients and in itself in all cases is something

literally enlarged or inflamed inflammation really just means immune activation right and in and on you know the when cells get sick, your immune system reacts to them and sends things in to clear them out essentially. And that's inflammation. It's, it's sort of its own process of let me, let me look at the definition and see what, let's see what just, you know, you just Google inflammation, what comes up.

I'll go to dictionary and see what it says. How's your day going? How's Boo, your cat? Scott, you have to give your thing on. Side of my house and some weed blowers on the outside. So trying to find a safe space. The fact of inflaming, it's not very, very effective here now. Well, speaking of inflammation, has anybody tried the cryo chambers or anything for COVID? I know there's this thing called hormesis, which is essentially stressing your system to try to boost your immune function.

And cold is one of the ways to do that. It's a whole discipline that Wim Hof and all these guys get into. And there's a lot of, you know, good anecdote that it's helpful, much like with a lot of things with COVID, but not much hard evidence, not much good stuff. So, all right, listen, Scott, I'm going to let you go. I just want to say hi to you and have that brief little inflammation conversation. We got to have dinner again, you and your wife and me and my wife. That was so much fun meeting you guys in Greece. It was really a blast.

One of the outstanding memories of 2020. Not that that's a high bar, but even if in a good year, it would have been an outstanding memory. Thank you, great Scott Adams. Again, say hi to Christina for me, and let's figure out a way to have dinner with you guys again soon. My next guest is who I told you i'd be speaking to and that is uh john phillips john phillips comes to us right now from jacksville florida uh john welcome to the program dr drew thank you there you are are you surprised by the um amount of traction or attention you've gotten uh since uh tiger king 2 it's been interesting

you know i i've always kind of done the the tv show legal analysis circuit you know even with you back in the hln days and so there's always been hey you look familiar now it's oh you're definitely joe exotics lawyer which you know maybe isn't how i always wanted to be defined but you know certainly it's a wrongful convincing case and it's a crazy circus and here i found myself in it and you're still in it i'm definitely still in it i i talked to the hearing with the federal judge today and I talked to Joe yesterday. How are Joe's spirits? Joe's good. So he got transferred from Fort Worth Medical Center Prison to Butner, North Carolina,

Federal Medical Center Prison. And he's dealing with prostate cancer. And so he's caught up in this, a bit of an enigma of, do you do 42 days of radiation or do you go to your sentencing hearing? Well, you know, justice and health really shouldn't be battling each other. And so it looks like he's going to postpone some of this radiation for a couple of weeks in order to get his sentencing hearing, in order to make his conviction final, in order to finally seek to overturn his conviction. I may be unfairly asking you this question, but do you know what his Gleason scale was? What his Gleason number was from his cross-examination?

Yeah. I'll get that during the break. I just looked at it. Okay. Does it sound like six, seven? What's any of that sound familiar? It was, I think it was five, six. Um, there's two spots. So he, that's, so that's a very low grade tumor, right? And he could literally go on active surveillance and do nothing. Uh, I had a, I had a five, six five six myself uh when i was 50 i went on active

surveillance for years because you can it's it's just it's not a cancer you're gonna die of but it can switch to a higher grade at some point that's why you keep an eye on it and um i'm one how old is he now goodness the question late 50s so he really why is he not thinking about an operation is are they not offering him that is they are so they it was the surgery or the radiation in the bop you're at prisons um there's proton therapy and other things out of prison and he's he's got enough immunocompromisation a compromise immunocompromised um from what and so the surgery is icvd now we're getting into kind of his his medical condition um he's got a immunodeficiency disease um that i can look at a piece of paper and tell you, but it's surgery. Tell me what that is.

Joe don't tend to mix. A man in his 50s with a moderate tumor, you normally would take it out. That's what I did. I went on surveillance for years, and then I just took it out. That was 10 years ago. And that's sort of what you, I mean, the robotic radical prostatectomies are now so good. You just do that. I mean, you go home the next day. But okay, so that's his sort of medical situation. So him waiting to, you know, for treatment, definitive treatment is not a bad idea if i were him i'd wait to uh and go ahead and get the whole sorry the whole plan is if he can get private doctors obviously to get to choose his own private doctors um you know but it just depends on what's going to happen with both sentencing and overturning the conviction. Well, if you want me to, if he's able to get out and get his own doctors,

let me know because I work with a thing called the Prostate Cancer Foundation and we have all the best people. So I can sort of direct you, can help direct you if you want. So there is that. And I'd love to know, I'd love to know what this immune deficiency is.

His story was so interesting. I'm surprised that we didn't get the big backstory in the first season about, you know, his first love relationship and how shattered he was losing that. The fact that he was in law enforcement for many years and was sort of a kind of a model citizen law enforcement officer, wasn't he? He was. He was one of the youngest of a model citizen law enforcement officer, wasn't he? He was. He was one of the youngest chiefs of police in Texas. He's got a book. I'm going to plug it for Joe. He's got a book that just came out that talks about a lot of that backstory stuff.

So when Tiger King 1 came out, it was all about, I mean, you know, that kind of television, but it was all about the sensation of, of the takedown and the tigers and how Joe wound up in prison and, you know, was, was pretty, you know, defined as that he was supposed to be there. And it wasn't until Tiger King two, that some of the tougher questions were asked about how you know all of that added up and then his backstory look anybody everybody i've met that's in the tiger industry you know the exotic animal industry has some sort of need probably to have seen you long before they got in it um because it's you know there are people with abuse or significant socialization issues that they've found themselves with tigers as pets.

And Joe was one of those that came from an abusive household and this was his ultimate kingdom. Joe Tainter Yeah, trauma, lots of trauma. And so the tiger is going to protect them from the horrors of what they experienced during their childhood. Although I got to say sociopathic but but sort of anti-social ish like he was always kind of flaunting the system or working the system or outside the system and now the the series made it seem like he had no alternative because he was being stigmatized so severely for being a gay law enforcement officer. Is that an accurate representation of what happened? I mean, you know, as I say in the series, you know, Joe is going to Joe.

So Joe went from, you know, a guy that truly cared about animals to kind of having too many, too quick. And then he was under the scrutiny of PETA and, you know, Carole Baskin and his rivals. And in a way he became, you know, almost, you know, kind of what Walmart has done to communities. He almost kind of became too big and controlled the market of exotic animals. And that just put them more under the microscope. And what people need to realize is the feds were communicating with Carol Baskin and Howard Baskin back in 2012, 2014 about infiltrating Joe's park and finding some reason to bring him down and of course he was doing this social media um you know earn media i have my own tv show kind of thing that you see more in 2021 than you saw back in you know 2014 2016 but it helped sell tickets to his park. And so if Joe did something. It's interesting, but that's already something interesting that you don't get from watching

the show is this idea that Joe was some sort of kingpin leader in that world. You get a sense. The sense I got was there are just these people that run these zoos and he's another one of them. The fact that he was somebody that sort of was at the top of the pyramid of course would put a target on his back and for whatever reason that's how he became so defensive I guess and then in that defensiveness got kind of kind of goofy right and I think Joe's always been exotic in many ways, you know? And so he's, you know, from abuse to some of the bashing for being homosexual to just,

you know, finding his way in the tiger industry and working his way up you know from from nobody with nothing to to this i don't want to use the term kingpin but whether tiger king or kingpin you know it's not that far apart that that that was his world and he was in control of it and you know the only the only real comparison at the time that people have made is doc antel and the difference is doc antel surrounded himself with family and and had assets and kept tight control over it where joe every stray cat was a friend to joe including you know people coming out of prison and so it just made him susceptible because there were you know drugs and people with dependency issues and everything else surrounding him. And his core circle he just was surrounded by people that were trying to, you know, use what he had and it consistently worked out to his detriment. So what's the plan going forward?

We've sort of seen some of the evidence laid out on television. I'm certain there's a lot more. Can you talk about what the sort of strategy is going to be? vacated his sentence, it was a 22-year sentence, they said that it was inappropriately tabulated. So in January, we expect there's going to be a new sentencing hearing. At that sentencing hearing, whereas everybody was the world against Joe Exotic last time, there's going to be all new evidence, all new positions that in fact, Joe wasn't quite the bad guy that we said he was. Um, you know, even the own, the hit man is, is admitted under oath to perjury in a federal trial said, look, I get arrested, I get arrested. And so, you know, stage one is a sentencing and stage kind of oneB is a three-part overturn of his conviction based upon federal government misconduct, ineffective assistance of counsel, and all new evidence.

Because invariably, all of these people, Jeff Lowe, Alan Glover, James Gerritsen particularly, recorded conversations. And they kept those to themselves trial one and now there's my stash here now i've got cell phones aplenty where every single one of these guys have given me three or four cell phones and said have at Um, and there's so many recordings and stuff that we didn't have before, which I've done this for 20 years, Dr. Drew, I've never had people come and say, here, take my cell phone and see what you can find. Because typically on one cell phone is the most personal details of their life.

And so, you know, we've combed through them. And, you know, lo and behold, found hundreds of recordings, including, you know, federal agents sort of scripting this. And everybody had something to gain if Joee went away whether it's the park whether it's control of of you know that part of the exotic animal network um you know it whether it's just plain money even his niece texted lauren lowe and said i've been trying to get joe arrested for years and years and then proceeded to take over joe's mother's estate and so there was just a lot of stuff. I'm confused. Yeah, I get that it was quite a group of people he had around him. I'm confused why they gave you their phones. Me too, Drew.

You know, it's... What? I mean, look, there seems to have been a lot of remorse that Joe got 22 years in prison. And I have two phones from James Gerritsen, three or four phones from Alan Glover. I got three or four phones and hard drives from Jeff Lowe, like a terabyte of data. And, you know, some of those phones had recordings that were done on an app that actually were encoded that we were able to decode. And so there's hundreds of phone calls, you know, some stuff that is incriminating to the people that gave them to us. Well, that's what i would imagine

now now i i watched some of the stuff that they were doing on the television program and alan glover to me looks like a newly sober person trying to make amends trying to clean things up is that what that was that what i was looking at there? I agree wholeheartedly. You know, Alan Glover touched me like he there. They only showed just a tiny piece of, of, you know, ultimately three days that we spent two days in my office and one day in South Carolina. And to see a guy with a teardrop tattoo cry and say, look, I went along with this. Ultimately, Alan wanted to get out. I mean, as you see, not to spoil the whole season, but if you hadn't seen it by now, Alan had a plot to kill Joe. He was that desperate. Jeff was on Joe's life insurance. They'd get the park.

And some of it was fantasy. Some of it was reality. There was so much dark talk on that park. But Alan just needed to get out of there. And so by any means necessary, he was going to get out. And we have recorded calls where Joe just wants Alan out of there. And Winky says, look, why don't you just pay him? Why don't you just pay his travel and get him out of here? And then, you know, you have these dark videos that Joe did for viral hits or whatever reason, and they all add together. And look, Joe said things he shouldn't have.

You know, but when you have a federal agent there before all this happened, it's one thing if you and our buddy Adam Carolla are planning to commit a crime and I come in as a federal agent afterwards and audit you and try to figure out what was said and when it was said and looking at receipts. It's another thing if I'm there the whole time telling Corolla what to tell you. And that's what we had here. The federal government was there years before this ever happened, putting desperate people into desperate positions all while trying to keep them immune from other problems they had. Well, you're, you're vague, you know, uh, about desperate people and, you know, wild things that were going on. I just see drug addiction all over

the place. And then I see the trauma, of course, which you mentioned earlier. Is everyone addicted to drugs at that place? I know you may not be able to really say, but if they were not, they were certainly using. They're not actually actively an addict. It's, you know, and people aren't going to tell me everything, obviously. And so there was clearly drugs all over the place. Yeah. And it's not clear. They shrouded in the show, I'm going to say,

meth pretty much everywhere and alcohol. Is that about right? And then some of them on opiates. I think that's right. And then whatever the pills of the day that walked on the park were, when an employee would come on the park were, um, you know, when an employee would come together, you know, come on the park with, with, you know, some type of prescription, I think those would get, you know, chewed up pretty quick or wherever, whatever you do with them. And so

for somebody like me, it was so crazy to see that subway. So much sex and drugs. Yeah. Yeah. It's, and every single, so there was, you know, in order to afford a lifestyle of sex and drugs, what do you need? You need money. And so, you know, there was an undercurrent and they talk a little bit about it and how, you know, Joe describes a little bit about the care credit fraud and credit card fraud. But there was a ton of credit card scams, like buying and selling, going and getting a car loan under a fake name and flipping cars. And there was just so much of that among some of the accessory cast that the feds could have brought down any number of people. And one of the witnesses, they actually

allegedly had video of bestiality. And the feds said, look, we're going to press charges for bestiality if you don't come forward. and my thing is look if you're protecting animals you really let that go you know um it's just bizarre oh my god well so so it's funny so my eye sort of looks at alan glover as the guy that's getting well and he's the most violent serious criminal in the group he's the one that seems to be very serious beginning well jeff you could see the sex addiction and the whatever drugs are going on is he why is the only reason i can think of that he would give you his phones is a something to gain or b he's trying to get treatment or something himself is he you know the at some point they all became under the scrutiny of the federal government and so there's the the century-old expression of the enemy of

your enemy is your ally and so okay okay look if i'm crawling through your your phones or your data and i'm finding stuff that a stuff that shows federal government misconduct that benefits you all. Because they've all... Got it. There it is. It's not a tiger left that was owned by Joe or Jeff or any of them. They've all been confiscated. Yep. So there it is.

So that starts to make sense. And how do you... Do you try not to incriminate these guys at the same time as you try to help joe is that a is that a strategy or do you just do what you got to do everybody knows my client is is joe maldonado and so yeah at some point even alan's perjury right so alan said look i've committed perjury, slap the cuffs on. And I said, look, Allen, here's the thing. You committed perjury at the behest of other people that are in the cast, right?

They committed crimes at the behest of the federal government. So if either it's going to be a scenario that that there's going to be cuffs on everybody or they're going to uncuff joe and say you know there's nothing to see here this nobody would care about this if it hadn't been for the tiger king cameras and that little thing called covid that made us all addicted to to this crazy TV show back in March and April. You're absolutely right. That's absolutely true. You're stuck in a position that I found myself in when I was treating people on TV,

and some people were referring to them as cast, and I was referring to them as my patients. I noticed you're kind of stuck in that weird, isn't that a strange place to live? You know, it is. And somebody made the comparison because I represented Omarosa in her NDA case against Trump. And somebody brought up that I represented Omarosa and Joe Exotic. And it was like this moment to me, like, oh yeah,

like that's two, you know, pop culture phenomenons of, of, of, of some sorts. But to me, you know, the, the, the NDA litigation was important litigation, you know? And, and when, when this all started, probably the first time you and I met, I was involved with the Jordan Davis case, which was a young man killed over loud music. And Jordan Davis's mom is now Congresswoman Lucy McBath. And she walked me through kind of the systemic issues within the justice system. And I spent nine years just dealing with

civil justice cases with an occasional criminal case. And what Joe has shown me with the federal government misconduct here, I'm at another precipice. And so, yeah, it's a TV show. We're dealing with, you know, all of the secondary gain and craziness of that, um, including my own image and brand. Like that's, I've done this for 20 years and they, you know, they start me off on let's make a deal, you know, it's like, well, that's okay. But you know, it's the, it's that bargain you make. And, you know, I quit the show at least once. But with Joe being convicted in a court of law as well as the court of public opinion in season one it i think what happened with season two was a partial exoneration of them that will help with a full exoneration of them

um and so there you know it's a symbiotic relationship of you know indescribable you know decisions daily of of what are we doing you know well it is just very interesting that that overlap of you know television moved into reality reality and sometimes reality includes bringing cameras into intense situations that we put ourselves into, we become a part of. But television and the real world have had a really interesting overlapping relationship. I'm wondering how the internet and social media and the metaverse, how that all evolved from here. Because television has become a place where people live out their lives in reality programming. And the metaverse is going to be that again in some other weird context. It's going to be very strange.

I don't know how that's all going to work. But again, it's an interesting place to try to keep your boundaries clear and do good things for people, which I know is what you're struggling to do. So let's do this. Let's take a quick break. And I want you to get me the name of his immune compromise syndrome. I want you to get me his Gleason scale, his Gleason score. And then we'll come back and take a couple calls. How about that?

Okay? Sounds great. Beautiful. John Phillips, Tiger King. We'll be right back. Let's talk about our friends at Hydrolyte. I can't say enough about Hydrolyte. You hear me talk about them all the time.

It gets me through workouts and medical procedures and colonoscopies and COVID. It absolutely contributed to my recovery from COVID. Hydration is key to feeling healthy. And there's never been a time when that could be more important. We're in the height of cold flu season. Every headache has got you testing for COVID. Staying hydrated can keep the questionable symptoms at bay and there's nothing better than Hydrolyte to get it done. Taking their hydration formula one step further, now there is Hydrolyte Plus Immunity. It starts with their fast-absorbing electrolytes and adds a host of great ingredients. Plus, each single-serve,

easy-pour drink mix contains 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C and 300 milligrams of elderberry extract. Hydrolyte Plus Immunity comes in convenient, easy-pour powder sticks that rapidly dissolve in water to make a great-tasting drink that is a 75% less sugar than your typical sports drink. It uses all-natural flavors. It's gluten-free, dairy-free, caffeine-free, non-GMO, and even vegan. Hydrolyte Plus Immunity is also now available in ready-to-drink bottles at the Walmart next to the pharmacy, or as always, you can find it by visiting hydrolyte.com slash drdrew. That is H-Y-D-R-A-L-Y-T-E dot com slash drdrew. And be sure to use that code drdrew25 at checkout for a special discount.

All right, we're here with John Phillips. He's alive from Jacksonville, Florida right now. He, of course, is the attorney from this season's Tiger King, where he's been representing Joy Exotic. What did you get on the Gleason scale? Gleason, two sixes. It's two different areas, two sixes. Two sixes.

So that's sort of a moderate tumor. moderate uh tumor and he would be he's young to be getting radiation i'm surprised they would do external beam radiation on somebody his age i to me that's the kind of thing that should be either on active surveillance or just go ahead and do the surgery that's me so when he gets out let's i'll be happy to help you guys out and then what is the uh the immune syndrome he has that's the question i'm still looking for that but i i have your email i'm not aware common variable immunocompromised common variable that should not prevent surgery at all okay okay i don't think so unless it's even during the and i don't want

to get too personal but even during the biopsies he got he you know he went and again we're dealing with bop medical treatment but he got sent he had to get rushed to the hospital um because of of i believe um did he get a staph infection or something? Kidney infection. It's weird. So he might have something more going on than sort of usual. Right. Yeah.

Hmm. All right. Well, that would certainly make it a higher risk proposition. Yeah. That would make it a higher risk proposition, that's for sure. That I'd love to have with you because it's, you it's i i do you know i was on the board for the you know the local cancer society and you know big into real men wear pink even had a pink mustache for

a month a couple years ago and for no bro you know this november right this, you know, this is one that I'm still trying to understand. And, you know, other men can learn. We'll learn from Joe. And so. Well, that actually is one of the things I was interested in. I was surprised that there's not been more, like, use of his story to help men understand how common prostate cancer is we have a real problem with african-american men right now not getting properly screened and showing up by the time we get them their prostates they tend to have more

aggressive tumor and by the time we get them it's far advanced it's really kind of a mess and it's it is you know i believe is it after breast cancer or maybe more common than breast cancer now? I mean, it's just very, very common. And people need to be aware of it. But I'm ruminating about this immune deficiency he has. And, you know, the more I think about it, the more I think that surgery might be a bigger deal. You'd have to get an immunologist involved. Then it would be a lot of extra steps you would do.

But anyway, let's take some calls. let's see what people want to talk about um uh let's get to josh if he has any questions josh what's going on there hey dr drew um i'm just really intrigued by this story and i wanted to ask the lawyer if he thought about an insanity defense i i know he's i guess in, and I feel like a mental institution might be better for him. I don't know anything really about him other than what I've read about early trauma. People think he has narcissistic personality disorder. And prison, he's not going to get the treatment that he really needs. So I just was wondering about that. Boy, that's a big topic.

Thanks, Josh. Well, the insanity offenses do not work, my understanding is, for anything. You have to prove that if somebody had any planning in doing anything, they're not insane the way the law looks at it right is that about the way i mean they could be completely psychotic completely actually clinically insane but if they were filling their gas tank on the way to going to hurt somebody and putting a gun in the back of the car that's it that's enough to keep them not insane in the eyes of the law right i think i've even commented on this on your radio show saying exactly what you just said. And, you know, Joe would have me say he was very safe. He was so sane, he didn't do what they claim he did.

And, you know, until that is opened up and, you know, there's eight page affidavits by each one of these witnesses that we can't, know get into until the judge has seen it and digested it but it there's there was a whole orchestration that you know to assume the insanity defense would be a viable option you'd have to assume that he did what they say he did and unfortunately the public defender really didn't flesh that out. And what about this world of people with major psychiatric illness that results in criminal behavior? What about the world of people being referred for treatment as opposed to prison? What's going on these days with that? I mean, I'm sure it's different in every state. state look if if if we want to talk in in this case these two shows have been all about the treatment of animals and and what's ethical and what's not ethical and and cub we can have a two hour conversation about cub petting and how wrong it is and what it what it does but then can we have a four-hour conversation of what's going on in our prisons?

And, you know, that's, if, if we want to worry about the protection of animals, I tell people I'm not Republican, I'm not Democrat, I'm reasonable. So I try to find the middle ground and problems. And so if we want to talk about this treatment of animals, can we spend time talking about, you know, what Joe wood and glass partition. And we're talking to a little hole that you hear about, you know, a third of our, our communications. And it's,

it's like, well, no wonder people stay in there. And, you know, why was he put in isolation? There's been a few different, you know,

different reasons. Some of them, you know different reasons some of them um you know justified some of them not at one point yeah guards in some of the federal prisons sell cell phones and so at a point you know joe was caught with a cell phone um and you know, that he, he, he redid his time, um, for that, but you know, they, they, they hang on every phone call. Anytime you're alleging government misconduct, the government has a lot at stake. Anytime you think you can prove government misconduct, the government has even more at stake. And, you know, with an immunocompromised individual where there's recordings of a federal agent, our whole thing is, look, let's just speed this up and just judge.

Let's listen to these conversations. Let's just listen to the tapes. And his sentencing was reversed back in April or May. And it's November, December, and we're just now setting a hearing either for January or March just on phase one. And so it just harkens that Dr. King line, justice delayed is justice denied. And it's how you have inmates who are exonerated 10, 15 years later because it's just slow once you're in there. When you say he redid his time, he had more time added on at that point? So they lose gain time, but for the violations, they essentially throw you in solitary confinement for 20, 23 hours.

Yeah, exactly. How healthy is that for 70 days? No, no, no. It's not good. Back to the original question, though. The prisons have become the mental health hospital of, I don't want to say a last resort. They've just become the mental health hospital of, I don't want to say a last resort.

They've just become the mental health facilities of our country. Are judges taking that into account? Are they accounting for that anyway? Are they mandating any kind of treatment so people can be rehabilitated? I don't mean rehabilitated, treated. Is that in the discourse these days? I mean, Florida seems like a pretty decent state as it pertains to these sorts of things. Are they doing anything active?

He was sentenced in Oklahoma and then shipped to the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, which actually lost its medical certification. And then now he's in North Carolina because they have more effective cancer treatment. We think it's because just the proximity to the research triangle, there's just more college students or educated population that's just volunteering, frankly. But no, there's virtually no treatment, particularly psychologically. And so they come out fractured individuals who've now learned this prison system where guards sell you cell phones and then have a search and then resell them three months later. And, you know, I've learned more about prison drugs and, you know, prison currency and all of that doing criminal defense the last few years than I ever, you know, saw on any of the, you know, sensational TV shows.

Hmm. Do you have any ideas about what we should be doing in terms of prison reform? I mean, there's lawyers that do this day in and day out that would probably be better guests on that topic, including Molly Palmer, who's one of Joe's criminal defense attorneys on this case. She lives and dies this stuff and deals with it. It clearly, whatever it it is isn't working and and people you know again going back to the to the animal you know people care more about how we mistreat our animals than our humans and neither should be mistreated. You know, Joe writes in his book about how all of the zoos, particularly the, you know, the, the private zoos always put the injured animals or the elderly animals up front and they do that for fundraising. And, you know, you think of the Sarah McLaughlinlaughlin you know commercial where we all cry at the end after the two-minute commercial and joe points out that you know there were cameramen filming all of

that and so here you have these abused animals and you know the tv time is paid because there's profit in mistreatment of humans, I mean, of animals. And then you got the federal, you know, particularly the privatization side, that there's profit in the housing of humans. And I think we've opened up Pandora's box so wide that I don't know how we get out. Wow, interesting. Let's get another call here. This is Russ. Let's see, get Russ up here.

Hey, Russ. Hey, Dr. Drew. Thanks for having me up. I had a question about there's a parallel I'm seeing in a lot of these legal documentaries, like the Stephen Avery case and now in Joe's case where there's a bit of a moral quandary where these people aren't necessarily good types of people you would root for and may have done bad things but they're not necessarily guilty of the crime they're charged with and so I understand why that's a compelling story but how how prevalent do you think that is in the American legal system where people are convicted and locked up for something they didn't do just because maybe they have done other bad things or are not generally liked or respected?

Is that what happened to O.J. Simpson? He got caught with something else and it seemed like he spent a lot of time in jail for that but you tell us uh john yeah you know you do look first of all films like like we talked about the commercials are designed to to be sold and make money and so i'm telling you right now you've seen the snowflakes on the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Joe's personality. That said, he owns a lot of his mistreatment. He didn't even blame it on his past, but he legitimately in his book owns some of the moral and legal mistakes that he did make. Um, but you know, just take the average human, me, for example, uh, you know, I grew up, you know, thinking about prisons is where the bad guys live and, you know, you don't see prisoners coming out to a lot of sympathy and hope for redemption. There's certainly been efforts

since then about employment and rules to try to integrate former inmates, but there's so much misconduct. Like I talk about Jordan, not knowing really how understanding what a black family went through compared to a white family. You know, Joe, in some of the recent cases I've been involved with, have me thinking about, you know, the wrongfully convicted and and, you know, the wrong place at the wrong time. And then you get doubly deep into race and it's even worse. You know, Joe's the, Joe's the white guy, but he'll, he'll hop on a call just as well as anything and talk about, you know, the brothers that, that are in the prison with him that are, you know, way sadder stories than his own. And it, you, you just don't know, you know, the Atticus Finch line, you know, you don't know what somebody's going through, not until you walk in their shoes,

but until you crawl in their skin. Yeah, it is. And I, of course, looking at it from the standpoint of the mental health system, which is just so woefully inadequate right now, I don't understand why we have such trouble in this country. It's not something typical of other countries. It's us. And I don't fully get why we can't take care of sick people and why we have to criminalize sick people and why we can't have a system that accurately pulls out the people that actually are criminals and deals with them i it's very it's very overwhelming to me to think about all the all the cases and you hear about them if you listen you hear about them weekly where police respond to a suicidal

uh a person and they wind up dead, not by their own bullet, but to protect the safety of everybody else. And look, I'm a police or heroes, but when you put them in that position, what else are they gonna do? And that's what they know. And so it's, and I get the the argument you don't send a mental health

person into somebody with a gun but there's some you know there's some reasonable in between we have all the money we can we can we can take care of so many different problems but not you know mental illness and it and it's just it's it's hard to see well it's it seems like the really the core issue is around addiction where we refuse to really look about talk about what that really is and what it turns people into and how they can be treated in such a way that they they're no longer that person that they were when they were engaged in criminal activity eric what's going on hey dr drew um yeah on the on the mental health topic um i was thinking about the the histrionic turn of society we've been talking about and how in this weird way like is this idea that this there's there's a there's a mental health crisis going on but there's also like this weird

emphasis i think for people who don't know a lot about mental health on the need for mental health i see it also over social media i'm wondering if in some sense that contributes to this histrionic term we've been talking about i'm not getting it what do you tell me again what you mean so like as a society when i've heard you talk about like human biology like this cloud that like you push against it's gonna have kind of some unintended consequences so yeah yeah yeah so if as a society we're really focusing on like focus on your emotions focus on your emotions take care of your mental health take care of your mental health yeah if that's going to come out in some other way and people who would be more susceptible to histrionics

and other issues i see what you mean that let me let me think about let me think about this i i was thinking today that uh i john i've been talking about the fact that i think we've become histrionic in this country i saw the narcissistic turn and i think we moved off of narcissistic towards histrionic and i i i'm beginning to think the the reason we're so histrionic is we're sort of developmentally arrested and sort of adolescence there's a lot of adolescent personalities going on right now one of the one of the common well piaget had a specific stage of development around age 17 where he described what's called the messiah complex that people want to be messiahs when they're 17 think about you at. You suddenly start thinking about social issues

and you go to college and you, I was in ecology and I was in all kinds of stuff when I was 17, 18. And that passes normally. And people then start to understand the way you have a good life and the way you actually help is one with, you develop a skill and you help one person at a time.

That's how you actually have a good life. That's how you actually help people. You don't try to throw thunderbolts from on high. That's an insane, grandiose, adolescent way of looking at things. So Eric, to your point, I'm sort of thinking that we have a developmental problem where we've not fully grown up, we're not dealing with reality on reality's terms, and it's made us a bit narcissistic and created these histrionic wins that narcissists are getting caught into as well. And I don't think it's a preoccupation with mental health, though I get your point that if we're all don't really understand what we're talking about and telling 20-year-olds focus

on your mental health and they get so self-preoccupied that they become histrionic. I'm not sure that's what happens. I'm not sure that's what it is. I think it's more that we are not letting people experience consequences, and so they're not developing a sense of reality on its own terms. So sorry about that, John. That was sort of an aside, but go ahead. Yeah, even before your show, you know, I'm in the conversation, and I like to think I'm a reasonable individual and normal, but I got into the conversation, you know, with your wife and your producer about, you know, blue check marks. It's stupid. Like who cares? It doesn't define me,

but you know, I have the blue check mark on Twitter and I don't have it on Instagram, but you know, we're, we're, they've figured out how to capitalize and reward more mentally obsessive behavior. And the crazier you act out or the more you act out, I don't want to give crazy a different name, but the more you act out in this country right now where we are, the more you're rewarded. There are people that are just famous for for acting out and so yep you know commerce and and mental health have have like married together in a way that you know we're almost encouraging that behavior yep that's really interesting scott it's back to your point follow the money i'm talking to scott adams who's sitting in our audience so that the money has in has reinforced behaviors that are pathological and then social media has

given the distribution system for that to be possible and to be more reinforced in a monetary sense not just the individual but also now the platforms that are making money off this so it's interesting that there that that may be very very true that it's interesting that there, that, that may be very, very true that it's a, it's sort of a market, I don't want to say a market phenomenon, but there's an economic phenomenon tied into this. Very interesting. All right. Well, listen, my friend, that's about all I wanted to get into. Is there more to be updated soon? Do people want to find out what you're doing and follow? Are you filming right now? Are you creating a new phase three on this documentary series? November 17th was the kind of five episodes

that involved Joe. Tomorrow, I think there's three that involve Doc Antle, which is a whole different situation that I've met him, but I'm not involved with, then there's a question of whether there's three more episodes or, or Tiger King three. If you, if you asked me today, after being involved with the episodes I was in, if I'll do it again, I don't know, you know, we will be releasing more information, um, you know, on Joe's social channels or my social channels. Um, you know, there's a lot more to the story that I don't want the tail to necessarily wag the doll. You know, it's not, it's not all wait for tiger King because Joe can't wait for another TV show.

You know, we need justice. You know, 2022 is the year of the tiger. We're going to try to make that, you know we need justice you know 2022 is the year of the tiger we're going to try to make that you know literal um oh it is so that's kind of interesting it is yeah interesting um this doc what's his name and what was his last name doc i canceled he was the one with the ponytail that wrote the elephant in one yeah right with the uh bunch of women working around him yeah wives whatever whatever well it's it's the three episodes coming i think tomorrow are pretty scathing um of of his life and lifestyle and you know women and and tigers and it's it's sensational um and and you know look the the crew that that wanted all of this to end had two targets doc

antle and joe exotic and even though tiger king kind of brought attention to it, they also helped take it down. And so it's, you know, again, as a hopeful, reasonable individual, you know, I got to wait and see. You know, I don't even know who if you go to one of the producers like he he has these turtle ties and he had gotten in trouble with the usda himself and so you know when you when you really get into reality tv there's it's a deep black hole of why people do what they do and and you know we still haven't figured out some of it yet well i i although i saw lots of drugs and lots of drug addicts in and around uh joe exotics life i do do see that the tiger preoccupation through line seems to be sex addiction. That really seems to be the one thing that if you're really interested in tigers, the high probability that you have some sex addiction, at least features, if not full-blown sex addiction. And I think Jeff Lowe sort of exemplified that a little bit the guy couldn't

even open a a zoo without putting a strip club in it right i mean that was like people look at that and just think oh what a weird thing i look at that and think that guy's a sex addict same thing with the guy with all the wives and it's just all you know and and underneath all that is childhood sexual abuse that's what's underlying all of it uh and that's how that develops and so and then if you have the genetic potential for substance addiction on that comes and meth is sort of the common drug in in the world of sex addiction so isn't that interesting that meth is sort of flying around everywhere and it's it's so easy just to you, isolate somebody in one

dimension, but you know, as, as you know, from a career practice, you've got to, you know, it's not just the snowflakes, it's the, it's, it's what's under the surface that you really got to figure out. You know, I'm not just a guy that was once on let's make a deal. Um fired. I tell people my favorite three seconds on Tiger King is when I'm fishing with my son and he catches his second ever fish. And that's me. That's the John Phillips that people know. But that doesn't sell.

Me and my kid fishing isn't a show. It's terrible television. But, you know, it's, you know, and I appreciate long format like this where we, you know, we even use words that I don't quite understand to get to the bottom of what we're really dealing with and how we can affect change. And I know, you know, from dealing with you for the last 10 years, that's, that's been your heart and soul.

And I appreciate it. That's what my thing. Yeah. And, and I, you know, as much as I hate social media, I do feel like electronic media has given us this opportunity to have,

like, but look at, look at Joe Rogan success and have these very long form interviews where people really learn something. And so, yeah, it's been a pleasure to sort of try to participate in all that and see if we can do something good.

Well, John, good luck with this. We'd love to check in with you again later. Thanks for saying that. That's so cool. Oh, it's yeah. Nice of him to say that. I know. Well, you know, Corolla has this.

Drew can have his Phillips, you know, I'm just saying. I like how you think my friend. I like, I like the way this is where this is going. I just, I'm just saying. I like how you think, my friend. I like the way this is, where this is going. I just, I'm glad we're not boring you for an hour. So glad that you had the time to do this. Yeah. As I told the producers, I've been a fan of yours since Loveline. I mean, it's, you know, the cerebral stuff just never, the conversations never happen.

And, you know, you putting me on the spot about gleason scores and all that i appreciate because it's real and it's getting to what really matters not just what you know the sprinkles are well i also i would argue that you know television and reality television specifically turns people into cartoon characters, right? And, and I, that's just what TV does. It,

well, media generally turns people into cartoons. And I'm always like, no, these are human beings. Let's talk about the human biology, the human psychology, the,

how, how they fit into the spectrum of what goes on with human beings. And, you know, turn this very interesting dude who's done some unforgivable things into the more complete human being he is with all these interesting um biological and psychological uh proclivities i think we focus more on the tigers than we do the human beings well that's what john was saying while you were out dealing with the dogs he was saying that

that you know all the animals get tons of tons of empathy and protection, and humans are like, eh, off with their heads, whatever. And God knows we're behaving more and more like that in social media than we ever have. The guillotines are out, cancel culture, all this stuff, the way people behave. They would never treat an animal like that. I mean, it just wouldn't. Yeah. So, all right, John, thank you again.

I will let you go. Keep up the you go strong work yeah keep it up we'll be interested to catch up later and see how this all plays out whether or not there's a tv show or not um but we're running to our television tomorrow we'll be watching to see the doc ansel thing to see what dogs too that i want to murder right now they're fine so we're here to talk about treating animals humanely you're so excited about what they're here to turn off the ringer on the phones for the telemarketers the dogs won't bark all day i know all right good all right well i'll wrap this up john we'll check to stay in touch and hope talk to you soon okay my friend thank friend? Thank you. All right. Bye-bye.

You betcha. Those of you on Clubhouse, I'm going to wrap this whole thing up in just a moment here. Georgina wants a part of the show. Our dogs are clearly not letting us continue. Scott, you think you have a problem with the cat walking in front of the camera? I have a problem with the dogs. Well, I finally got the guy from Panasonic over here to turn off the ringer on line one. Great.

I have one line and it just rings all day and it's telemarketers. And you didn't, by the way, hear me. I was talking to Scott about us getting together for dinner with him. No, I heard you. So why didn't you ask him to come back on the show? That's going to happen faster. Well, he just was on the show. He just talked to us from Clubhouse.

No, I know. But I want to have him on for a whole hour. I love him. Well, he just was on the show. He just talked to us from Clubhouse. No, I know. But I want to have him on for a whole hour. I love him. Well, he's there. He's listening. You can send him an email. Hi, Scott. I don't know if they're ever down here.

We can get them dinner down here. Or if we have to go up there, we'll figure it out. Susan, you have an okay day? I've been running around with Mr. Carolla all day. I've had like a normal day. I cleaned the garage. I pulled out the Christmas stuff I want you to help me carry in. All right.

And I cleaned out some cabinets. I could barely get through the door here. I know. We have to bring it up. I need help. And then I cooked dinner and I have an ale appointment at four. I think here comes our technician. I'm going to turn off the phone ringer and that's going to be the best day of my life.

All right. So I'm going to... Tomorrow, Kyle Warner, he's the young man. Somebody said, hey, get to be quiet. Kyle Warner is the young man that did the interview with John Campbell. He has myocarditis, pericarditis. We'll get into some of the details on that. Let me kill her. From the COVID vaccine.

And he was recovered nicely, but it's just an interesting story. And he was vilified for daring to talk about his medical syndrome. And that I take great issue with. Not only is that sort of distinctly wrong, it also makes people more resistant if you try to prevent them from getting access to information about the risk benefits of what they're doing. This way you hear about it. It was miserable. And then he's fine. And maybe it will make you less resistant to get the vaccine if you're particular of any kind of risk category.

Caleb, thank you so much for helping us with this one. Again, tomorrow we are at 1 o'clock. So we'll be here with Kyle Warner tomorrow evening, 1 o'clock Pacific time. And I'm just starting to set up next week. I think we have Vinny Tortorich. Vinny has a new documentary out. Those of you who are from the Corolla world we have Vinny Tortorich. Vinny has a new documentary out. Those of you who are from the Corolla world will know Vinny. And I think

Brian Kilmeade is coming on to talk to us about his book about Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas, who are two people I have studied extensively. I'm fascinated by both of them. So that should be a pretty good conversation. So again, tomorrow at 1, we will see you here. Thank you all for joining us. And Clubhouse, we're going to

end the room. Thank you all for stopping by. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor, and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the

information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me, call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.