Ask Dr. Drew - Megyn Kelly on Presidential Debates, Her New Show & More - Episode 24

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

Megyn Kelly is an attorney and journalist who reached millions as an anchor at Fox News and as a host at NBC. In 2014 she was listed as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People, and she’s the author of the 2016 bestselling autobiography "Settle For More." She recently launched her new media venture with The Megyn Kelly Show, available now on all of your favorite podcast platforms. She joins the show today to discuss the first presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Vice President Joe Biden, the enormous reaction to her debate commentary on Twitter, and more. Get an alert when Dr. Drew is taking calls: http://drdrew.tv/  Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (@KalebNation) and Susan Pinsky (@FirstLadyOfLove). 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

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome, everybody. Of course, my guest is Megan Kelly, attorney, journalist. Millions know her. She really rose to fame as an anchor at Fox News, then hosted NBC. In 2014, she was listed as one of Time's most 100 influential people. Author of

2016 autobiography, Settle for More. And she has a new media venture, The Megyn Kelly Show, the podcast. A new one. She's had her first podcast out that I cannot recommend strongly enough. I suggest as soon as we're done here, you download, subscribe, go listen immediately. Our laws as it pertains to substances are draconian and bizarre.

Psychopaths start this way. 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 do you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before youiculous. I'm a doctor for f*** sake. Where the hell do 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. You have trouble. You can't stop and you might help stop it. I can help.

I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. Welcome to Great Megyn Kelly a lot more to say. Welcome, the great Megan Kelly. Megan, welcome. Ah! Hey! How's it going? It's great. Thank you so much for joining us. Tell people about the podcast. Well, I really just wanted to come out with something that I could control and that I wouldn't have to censor in any way, that we could have discussions about any tough...

You wouldn't have to worry about answering to anybody or saying sorry to anybody, right? Because I just feel like more and more we're censoring ourselves and we're getting rid of free speech in this country little bit by little bit. And if you're somebody who can have a forum where you can have open discussions, then you should take it. I feel almost like you have a moral responsibility to do it. I'm predicting that there will be more than just podcasting coming your way. I foresee a stream like this,

or things when you have thoughts in your mind, you can just turn it on and go public with it. It's really, it's a new world, digital. I mean, you've been on the traditional media side. Isn't it sort of liberating to be on this side? A hundred percent. And not only that, I just think that cable broadcast news is yesterday and the digital world is tomorrow. And if you're going to place a bet, you know, which is the position I've been in over the past, whatever, two years as I've been figuring out what I wanted to do next.

This is a smart bet. This is where people are going. I mean, think of all the cord cutters. Even we don't watch cable news anymore. And'm of cable news i worked in it for 13 years almost no desire to turn it on now i i wish i could stay away from it more it sort of sucks me back in did um uh you used uh in your well i want to ask you this the the podcast evaluating the debate is that up right now or is that coming later today? It's about to come up, yeah. It should be up soon.

All right. So I'm looking forward to that. But in the meantime, the interview with Mr. Greenwald, am I getting his name correctly, was tremendous. I noticed Megan Dahm retweeted, she called it one of the standouts of 2020. Megan's a friend and really a good thinker. And I noticed you retweeted Megan's comment. That was really nice of her. you know obviously i love positive feedback any compliments of any kind are always welcome but it's nice to get back out there and have people who i don't necessarily recognize as fans come out and say they're enjoying it great all right so uh again check it out it's the megan kelly show please go look at it right now i obviously the the elephant in the room is the debate from last night, but I don't want to get into that just yet.

I want to talk about you and how you got where you are and some of that kind of stuff. You know, one of the things I was interested in discussing with you is I guess there are few attorneys in the media. There are not many physicians. But as professionals, it's a special sort of a burden we bear, don't you think, being in the media? We have our professional standards. Go ahead. I think it's a huge advantage, and I always find that it's no accident that my favorite

television personalities have some sort of professional background, just because they've done something else. They weren't dying to be on television. They did something else. They've been out creating something in the arena, as Teddy Roosevelt would say, and not just spectating on those in it. And so I think you bring a special perspective to the news when you've been out there as a doer. Yeah, I've absolutely noticed that. And people that have not sort of worked in the world, they get overly

invested in themselves in the media. When you're out in the world, you know overly invested in themselves in the media. You know, when you're not in the world, you know, what's real, you know, what's not, you know, how not real a lot of the media is. Speaking of not real, you use the word in the Greenwald interview, the word disgusting in relation to the current media landscape. And I thought, oh my God, that is so hard. Disgust is exactly the feeling I have about it. Tell me a little more about that feeling. They're just so dishonest. I just don't trust them anymore. You know, I have felt it so acutely over the past six or seven months during COVID because that's something in which you really want to know what's going on. And it's been a microcosm of what we've seen in the media and so many other stories, which

is the stifling of any dissent from the view that they want you to believe, right? Like, this is who we've decided is the right person. And if you don't accept his narrative, then you're a bad person and you need to be silenced. And this is more complicated than that. I think most people want to hear opposing views and see what makes sense to them and see who they trust. And, you know, Trump gave that presser back in March and I tweeted out like, I don't know who to believe. I don't trust him. I know he would lie to me. And I don't trust these media. And all the media responded with like, ah, could you I'm like, how can I not trust you? Russia gate, Jesse Smollett, which you case you told me he was a victim and how horrible everybody like, and then they never apologize. Hands up, don't shoot

like they just don't acknowledge their mistakes right and they they've lost all credibility with me yeah i to me as i saw this coming i i was screaming about it in january saying that press needs to shut up they're going to create a panic that is going to be worse than this covet thing and i got i got of course excoriated for that but here we are now in terms of why the press would feel they weren't trusted they just learned to pronounce some of the words they now have a clinical opinion about. That's insane. That is insane. It's beyond the editorial board of the New York Times got together and demanded lockdown. They're demanding non-pharmacological interventions. I thought that was the job of the health department. It was it was a kind of craziness. We're going to look back on this

and it's not going to look it's's not gonna look nice for the press. Well, so two things on that. I had to have a wisdom tooth pulled recently, which was fine, actually didn't even hurt. But the doctor said to me, and the doctors in there during COVID doing in your mouth dentistry, so like 40,000 layers on and so does his hygienist and so on. But they were there. They were doing it.

And he told me, he said, I don't know a single, he's at a very well-respected institution. He said, I don't know a doctor that's not taking hydroxychloroquine prophylactic. But you're not allowed to say it. You can't say it. It's like, this is the whole reason for my show. We should stop saying you're not allowed to say it. You are allowed to say what you want to say you are is this still america it's hard it's hard to recognize it it's not the one i was used to but i agree with you 100 yeah they but there are some states where you cannot prescribe it it's illegal to prescribe so my next question is don't you think

and i'm going to put your attorney hat on for a second. When we look back, well, when we get far enough away from the craziness and we can think with clarity again, don't you think there the fetal position right now, but they're scared. And I understand that. The media has scared the living daylights out of them. I mean, I don't mean to compare COVID to the flu. I know that's controversial. I get that they're different. But if you were to put the flu numbers of deaths on the screen as often as they do with COVID, people would be scared too. And they'd be really reluctant to send their children to school

because that's something that actually is killing kids at a higher number. And so you need to be responsible with it. And I see the same thing now with a false narrative about police allegedly in the streets hunting down black men. It isn't true. What the media does is they take a sensationalistic case that almost always happens in an election year and they decide to blow it up into something that they claim is representative of the relationship between all police and all black men. Whereas you could take

similar video of police and a white man resisting arrest that ends badly, not to say either is okay or great, but they only choose the ones where it's a police officer with a black man resisting arrest that ends badly. Not to say either is okay or great, but they only choose the ones where it's a police officer with a black man and then try to tell everybody that's what's happening. It's happening everywhere, and black men are not safe in America. Well, and you, Greenwald, mentioned in your interview that's up right now at the Megyn Kelly show that the dishonesty around congregating, that you're not allowed to have more than eight people in your backyard for a barbecue but you can have 50,000 people in the streets

of Hollywood. I don't care if they were to say, you know what, this is such an important issue. We're stepping aside. Of course it's going to create some spread. We wish they wouldn't congregate in the streets. But it's so important. We will step aside

and our recommendations will take them down for this important demonstration. Instead, they go, they just, because I have the public health officials. I do a local news broadcast and I bring the public health officials in. I go, tell me something. So four people congregating, no good. 10 people worse? Yes, 10 people worse.

100 people worse? Okay. What about 50 effing thousand people that is a right and a privilege that is their demonstrations that are the privilege of the united states first amount and and that's their answer and you know you have people rightly saying you didn't let me say goodbye to my dying parent in the hospital because you said it was going to endanger lives and I listened. Husbands who didn't get to be with their wives when they were giving birth to their babies and they listened. Then they're supposed to just say, when they

say, well, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. So people really felt the need to go and put those flowers out. I can understand people's rage not to mention you know the restaurant owners and the hair salon people whose entire livelihood is being destroyed where there is a way if we get creative and clever to help them but instead we just shame them saying you want to kill people and it's really about them trying to stay afloat and keep their own families well disneyland uh was begging the governor of California to give them guidelines, as every other governor and every other leader in international settings for the Disney parks have provided guidelines where they have safely opened their parks with no surges.

Our governor refused, and 25,000 people lost their job yesterday. Yeah, and honestly, I just got back from the Jersey Shore, which is where we spend our summers jersey jersey baby and uh we have a fun yeah um we have a fun amusement park there on the jersey shore and it was open they wiped down the rides in between you had to wait a little longer to go on they didn't fill every cart on the ferris wheel and you know but it it was working fine. People had a great time and there was no spike. We were there all summer. There was no spike whatsoever in the COVID rate. It's just you have to have the will to do it. And I think right now, I can't help but think that on November 4th, somehow the will is going to return.

Right. Magically, we'll be able to do it. I think we ought to have a hashtag like October 19th or something. Open your business. Hashtag everyone opens. Hashtag or open safely. Everyone open safely. I mean, I'm not I'm not advocating that we just disregard. I'm saying we have to learn how to live with this thing, learn how to live with it and have, you know, and reduce the risk. And, you know, there's a study that just came out. I'm going to be reporting on it later today that showed that something like only 8% of infected individuals infect others. I should get the headline out for you and see exactly what it said. But it was really rather striking how few people are dramatically infectious, let's just say,

that most people do not spread the virus. Here it is. Increasing or no, no, no. I don't have it. I'm not going to come up with it. Look what's happening in the schools. Just this week, the data came out that the transmission rate in the schools is far lower than anybody expected. It's less than 1% now amongst the kids and the students and the teachers and contrasted against the damage that's being done to the kids in being forced to stay at home you know from lower socioeconomic classes or who can get access to the Internet to kids and families and abuse you know where teachers are usually the first-line reporters abuse in children it's like can't we get real about the relative risks on both

sides well this is the thing that that made me apoplectic from the beginning. We have people making decisions that aren't used to making a risk-reward analysis. So we're talking about, everyone's worried about health. Well, health is not one illness. So we have people delaying treatment, delaying screening, delaying getting to the hospital when they're actually sick and dying. We have people escalating their depression, suicide, alcohol use. There's just a study that just came out talking about them, particularly women are severely using alcohol right now, white women particularly, opiate overdoses. Here it is. It came. It's arrived.

And God knows what we're doing to the trajectory of a generation by holding them back from their social and cognitive development. Right. Oh, my God, that's exactly it. I mean, my kids are little. They're 11, 9, and 7. And, you know, half the reason you send her to school is not so that they can learn how to multiply fractions, but to navigate social situations and resolve conflict and be around other little humans for the practice of when they're out with all the other larger, older humans in college and so on. They haven't been getting any of that i mean it's not real i get to listen to the zooms now right because i listen to my daughter she's on

it's great the teachers are doing a great job but she it's not that what she's learning right now is is critical the whole point is to get them interacting with others and that's gone it's gone and i understand back in march i understand in april but now here we are we're're moving into October and the rates are going down and we're getting better at treating it and we're gonna fight vaccine and we figured out social distancing. And so it's time that the scales are changing. Yep, that's you're absolutely correct. Can we talk about your kids for a second? Sure. Their names caught my attention. i wanted to know immediately where i mean obviously as i look at your kids names they have uh historical implications in various ways right is that is that where the names came from no but i know you say that so my oldest child a boy is

named yates and that's after his his name is edward Yates and he's named after my dad who was Edward who died in 1985 but not my husband's dad but that WB Yates I know no it's funny because our priest said to him how do you spell it you know is it is it Y E A T S and he said no it's Y A T E S and he said oh okay so not like the poet and he said no and he looked at so not like the poet. And Yates said, no. And then he looked at the priest and said, how's the other guy spell it? He's named after his grandparents, his granddads. And then when we got pregnant with Yardley, my middle child, you know, when you have a first kid named Yates, you can't name your second child like Anne. Kathy. Yeah. Her whole life.

It's like, oh, my God, Yeats is so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. So, Yeats, where does that come from? So, I don't know where I got Yardley. It popped into my head one night, and I'm kind of convinced, kind of convinced, because I love the movie Christmas in Connecticut, which was 1947.

Barbara Stanwyck starred in it, that Y yardley was named after a very fat bald white guy uh old old man named alexander yardley in that movie oh how interesting could be where it came from and then my little guy thatcher um i just liked the last name his first name thing and it was and margaret thatcher had died recently and it was so it was kind of in the air but then my irish friends are like you better not have named him after Margaret Thatcher. I did not name him after Margaret Thatcher. You can tell them, you'll give them Yates. Tell them Yates, maybe Yates after a famous Irishman. That's right, exactly.

I should have thought of that. So also, if you don't mind, take me down the road for media for you. So you're practicing law in New York. How did journalism happen and and would you call yourself a journalist or would you call yourself a commentator tell me more about that uh i'm a journalist i do some commentary as well and analysis news analysis but i'm a journalist um so i was uh sorry i was i was practicing law and i practiced law for almost 10 years and i decided I just wasn't happy just

wasn't happy at all and needed to make a career change and had no idea what that meant like well what what next because as you know when you go to training for a long time to do one thing and then you do that thing for a long time especially a profession unlike journalism which is considered a trade you get get, you know, you feel proud of yourself. You think you're fancy and your ego gets attached to it. Well, your identity, your identity gets wrapped up in it, right? A hundred percent. And I really, I was proud of it. I, I, there was no one in my family who had gone to professional school. So what sort of law were you practicing? You don't mind me asking?

What, what? What sort of law were you practicing, if you don't mind me asking? What, what? What sort of law were you practicing? I was a commercial litigator, so I tried business cases, mostly defense work for a big firm named Jones Day. And I liked the actual practice of law for a long time, but it was just such a grind. And I spent all of my 20s at the office. I just didn't nurture any relationships, never mind my own well-being. And there was one night driving home on the Kennedy. I was in Chicago, and it was 3 in the morning, 2 in the morning,

and I was like, if I just turn this car off the road, maybe I could just break a major bone. It would have to be a major bone, like a femur. Maybe not my back. That would be too awful. But like, you know, a rib, that's not going to do it. An arm, but I need a brick. And that was really my red flag that maybe I needed a different profession. Maybe that's not a normal thought. Maybe that's not a good thought. I know a lot of lawyers who have stories like this. It's such a grind and people don't often talk about it.

A lot of lawyers turn to drugs or huge use of alcohol and a piece of it. And I really just didn't want that. I looked around and there were a lot of guys at the firm who had ex-wives and a couple of mortgages and they were golden handcuffed to the firm and I wasn't. And I was like, I'm out of here. And my one friend said, don't do it, MK. He's like, you know, you got to stay. This is your highest and truest calling and you know, you'll never be as good at that

job as you are at this one. And I looked at him and I said, but I get to be on TV. And it was really just more like I'm doing something that excites me and that might be fun and utilize some of my skills. It's funny. I had people early on, too, saying, I just don't want you to ruin your career. Like, maybe I have some instincts that you don't recognize. I know there's things that we could do here that you don't really see. Has the lockdown been okay?

Oh, let me ask something back to the law. What do you make of the threats to expand the Supreme Court of the United States? That's not going to happen. I can't believe the Democrats mean that threat. I don't believe they'll do it. Expanding the Supreme Court is killing the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's over if you do that. It'll have no credibility. No one will adhere to the rulings because they will consider it an unelected political body. It will just keep

expanding because then when a Republican gets back in the White House, he or she will add his own three justices, and it'll be over. I mean, jurisprudence as we know it will be over. So I don't think they'll do it. I think it's an empty threat. And you've described yourself in the past as apolitical. Are you managing to hold a middle ground these days? Well, yes, I think so. I mean, I mean it in a couple of ways. I'm not driven by politics. I'm not somebody who, you know, eats, yes, I think so. I mean it in a couple of ways. I'm not driven by politics. I'm not somebody who eats, sleeps, and breathes politics, as some people are. I like it as a piece of news that I cover, but I like covering legal news, and I like covering cultural news, and crime, whatever it is, but politics has its own lane. But it's not what i'm about like i've never been

a hard partisan i've been a registered democrat i've been a registered republican i'm a registered independent you know me too i just don't yeah not like i don't feel like yes the republicans those are my people or the democrats they're for me i'm like you know what i'll make a case by case basis yeah exactly i sometimes i thought it was libertarian but libertarians don't really have a heart so i'm not a libertarian either so i'm not sure what i am half the time yeah it's hard it's hard to hold middle ground you you interviewed uh a friend of mine somebody did a radio show for quite some time lauren savant who was really one of the first people to say me too um how was that interview how did you find that she's so brave laurence devon was she doesn't she doesn't get enough credit for her role in taking down i completely agree with you

she really was the first one that said me too she goes oh yeah that happened to me because she had told us about it a couple years before well that's right and nobody had gone on television to tell their stories about Harvey except for Lauren. She was the first one. And she was not somebody who had a lot of power in the television industry or Hollywood for that matter, which she wasn't really in. But she did it. She did it before he fell, before he fell. Oh, yeah. So the story had been broken by the New York Times and Rose McGowan had come out

and a couple of other women. And Lauren came on my show on NBC that Monday. It broke on a Friday. She came on that Monday and told a disgusting story about how she just met him in a restaurant at random here in New York. He took her on a tour of the restaurant.

He found her in a hallway down in the basement of the building. And the next thing you know, he was pleasuring himself right in front of her and of course lauren is like whoa yeah corner her down there i mean and she said and you know i i because because we did a radio show every day i brought it up several times to kind of really explore it you know what that experience was like for her and she said look this guy's 250 pounds what what am i gonna do i you know she's you know she's 85 pounds and five foot four or

something. Yeah. And, uh, you know, what's up, how, how, what, and of course what she did was, which was interesting. She immediately started blaming herself. How did I get myself in this position? How did I lead him to think this was possible? And I said, wow, that is heartbreaking to you. And women do that so often, so often. Well, all right. well all right so i'll take you on on that um i think it's sad that that that was the first instinct and pretty much the only instinct i mean for a long time that's all we did just blame ourselves and move on but i also believe in personal responsibility and i think it's it's okay for all of us to ask well what did i do that endangered me potentially or what could i do differently the

next time to help increase my odds of staying well um and i think it's okay for women to reflect and say i shouldn't have met him in the hotel room i know why i did it but i'm going to take responsibility for that piece of it and that that's not victim blaming that's just being smart it's it's interesting i i just naturally in a, in a way, my low self-esteem and the way I think, I always assume I have a role in everything. Something I've done has got to figure that I could improve, that I could do better to reduce the risk or increase the better outcome, that sort of thing. And so I agree with you absolutely in principle. However, me pushing back, I noticed women did this long before the Me Too thing. And I'd always say, yes, great that you do that, but maybe it's one of the aspects of what's called the fundamental attribution error. Maybe it's something in that other person and not in you.

Well, absolutely. I mean, I think what the Me Too movement did was gave us a whole new framework for even considering that it might be almost all of his fault, right? It's like, or all of his fault. It's like when you get robbed trying to go into your house, like a lot of women, they have a grocery bag and they have their keys out. And we've had stories of them getting attacked as soon as they open up their door to go to the apartment. Yeah. And then something awful happens to her. Is that the woman's fault? Absolutely not. It's 100% his fault.

Right. But we should still stop and say, how can I better protect myself? What did I do that I could not do the next time or advise my daughter not to do, right? To protect her against the fact that there are bad guys out there. Yeah. So again, I think we're saying the same thing, which is it's definitely advisable to have the posture of taking responsibility and checking out your role in anything that happens to you. And it's more empowering. It's more empowering.

Just one other point on that. Absolutely. who's been, I don't like the word victim, but as somebody who's been the target of a couple of bad guys in my life, some actual criminals, I just think it's much more empowering to believe maybe there is something I can do differently that will change my future, that will improve my chances of never experiencing this again. So it's not always to be seen through the framework of who is to blame. You know, some things can be seen through the framework of how do I empower myself to do better and have a better future in dealing with powerful men or potentially dangerous people.

Yeah. I'm sorry you've been through that. I, you know, is this all part of the media story for you, the media career? I had a very bad criminal stalker for a while. It was a very scary situation. And then I had another one right after that guy.

And then I've had some public situations that people are aware of. But look, the one benefit of all that stuff is you do get stronger. If you don't collapse in a ball on the couch, you do get stronger. I think you saying that, I think that helps other women. Well, I hope so. Because honestly, in a way, huge crises thrown at you or in which you suddenly find yourself are a gift. Because how are you going to build your superhero muscles if you don't have a few of those thrown your way? That's a pretty bold statement.

I don't know that we think that way these days so often. In fact, I'm going to incorporate a little bit of that in my thinking. In this day of safe spaces and whatnot, what I've been saying is sort of clinically, look, when people have sensitivities or thoughts or phobias or things they can't tolerate here's how we deal with it we expose them we expose them to those things and guess what that builds resiliency and they learn to manage their feelings around it and they get better but the same is also true for this is sort of in a non-patent almost in a it's almost

like an athletic thing you're talking about which is you're you can go build powers you didn't know you had yeah and there's only one way to do it exercise the muscle yeah how are you going to get a big old bicep you can't just sit on your couch and will it you've got to get into the gym and lift it and break down the fibers a little so that they come back stronger and i think the same is true for resilience and grit. You know, I mean, I have so many women say to me, you seem so strong. How can I raise a daughter to be strong like you are? And the sad truth is they need to go through some stuff. Like you have to let them get hurt, fall, have their ideas challenged and fall on their faces. You know, find themselves on the wrong end of hopefully just mild, not

bullying, but you know, means mean girls or mean boys. It's not that you wish any of this for your child. It's just that you shouldn't stop it from happening out of a desire to protect them because you, they have to learn that at some point life is going to bully them. It is no matter how many safe spaces we create during their childhood. And our job, when we still have them cooking in the house, is to give them the skills with not only how to deal with the other people, but how to deal with their own heads in processing it. And failure. Gift of failure. Of course. I'll have that failure. And I'm guessing your family of origin, your parents gave you a similar environment.

And you lost your dad at quite a young age, right? Yeah, my dad died of a sudden heart attack in 1985. It was 10 days before Christmas. I was 15 and he was 45. And my mom found herself a widow at age 44 with two kids in college and one a sophomore in high school. Oh, my goodness. And she was a nurse.

So, you know, it's not like we had a lot of dough. And it was rough. It was a rough couple of years around my house. But my mom's strong, and she got us through it. Do you think that's where some of your determination, your strength as other women reflected upon? It certainly gives you perspective. I wouldn't say that's where my own personal grit comes from, but it does give you perspective on what matters in life and what doesn't, what nonsense doesn't.

I would say the greatest gift that came out of that right if you want to look for a silver lining is um the true realization that no tomorrow is promised so why would i waste away one more day or year at a law firm leading a life i can't stand why would i spend one more day at a news organization where my lifestyle is crushingly sad and agrimonious and upsetting all the time, even though my bank account is full and I have power, but I'm totally missing my children's childhood. Why would I do that? Life could end. It could end tonight. It could end tomorrow. And it really can if you've lost somebody in your life you know that's not just a saying so you have to make changes you owe it to yourself to make changes to live your life so that god forbid you know the bus came tomorrow your loved ones could say she was doing exactly what she was doing what she wanted to be doing

you know she she had gotten her life you know maybe not perfect but she had she was doing exactly what she was doing, what she wanted to be doing. She had gotten her life, maybe not perfect, but she was doing the things that she knew would bring her happiness or wellness is a better term. Well, it's interesting to me. We opened up talking about COVID and the medical system and the overreach of the press and the government. I did not know your mom was a nurse. I know your ex-husband was a physician. You've been around the medical system a bit. Did you learn anything about it, having seen it from

one relationship removed? I mean, I have huge respect for doctors and nurses. Huge. I just think, you know, my mom, she was a nurse at the VA in Albany. And so she dealt with these vets who, they were so respectful to her. They used to salute my mom and she was not in the military, but it just, that gave me such empathy for wounded veterans and what they go through because it's so much of it is psychological. You know, it's not just the wounds on their legs that got blown off by an IED. And then I just, doctors and nurses, but especially doctors, have to train so hard, so hard. And they give up, you know, 10 to 12 years of earning to train and train again. 10, 12 years of living too. You're not living anything except in a hospital.

And it's abusive. I mean, you want to talk about like how, I mean, sort of the Me Too movement morphed into, and I shouldn't have to work Saturdays, which is wrong. But like in a journalism shop, that's not what you get. Like, oh, I should, you know, I'm tired. I'm not in my happy place with my work-life balance. I'm completely, right? Tell it to a doctor going through residency, trying to save people's lives. If that's your complaint, this is not the profession for you.

And then in today's day and age with all the insurance hits they've taken, they don't really make a lot of money. It's hard to make a living. You see the plastic surgeons and what they're doing, but they're literally making between a hundred and a thousand times more per unit time than the average physician. Oh yeah. I went one day here in New York, I always get my heart checked given my dad. Yes.

And I've been on that regularly. One day, two years ago, I went to see my cardiologist and his office was barren. There wasn't a picture on the wall. The guy was one week away from being his own receptionist. It was just him and yeah and then later the day i went to the dermatologist and it was like a five-star resort yeah it's very different very different 40 people working for him and the beautiful lights and the lounge chairs and i was like something's wrong with this picture listen primary care gets any worse even than

anybody but anyway it's a topic for another day, Megan. Let's kind of wrap up with a little bit on the debates last night, if you're okay with that. I know your pod that's about to drop. You do a very deep dive with other consultants on this.

Give me your just 30,000 foot view of what we witnessed last night. I don't think it moved the needle. I think Trump was Trump. People aren't shocked to see him act aggressively or like a brute, as jarring as it was to see on a presidential debate stage. But, you know, I was on a presidential debate stage with Donald Trump asking him questions in Detroit four years ago where he referenced the size of his unit.

So I wasn't particularly shocked. Ladies and gentlemen, our president. And that's Trump. That's how he is. If you're not used to that by now, I can't help you. You need to pay closer attention. That doesn't mean it was a nice thing to watch or made me feel comfortable or that I enjoyed it because I would have preferred substantive exchanges. And you can make the

case that he should have let Biden talk more because that might have been worse for Biden. But that's the state of America. I think what we saw on that stage represents America right now, shouting at each other, looking at each other through the least generous lens, telling people to shut up, calling them names, not letting them finish their arguments, back and forth, both of them. And, you know, I think a lot of people were like, and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Where is that?

It's watch what happens live. Here we go. Anything, anything. It's funny. I thought it was nice to seeiden at least appear more nimble than he has appeared in so many of his media uh opportunities so that was at least reassuring and sort of relieving listening and talk is like you're on eggshells aren't you because as a human being you're rooting for him to like land the sentence. Like you can do it, you know, like let's go.

I know you can do that. And so when he was landing the sentences, you felt a little relief. Like, okay, I don't want him to be embarrassed. You know, not looking for it.

Remember Admiral Stockdale, the vice presidential debate when Ross Perot ran, he was Perot's vice presidential candidate. Right. And he, he didn't do anything. And it was like, Oh, I don't know.

I don't want to see this. That's pretty funny. Do you miss not being up there when they're doing those debates or was that a burden? No, I miss it. I would like to do that again. And I think I could do a pretty good job of it.

It's a hell of a preparation. It what i mean it takes months and it's just brutal because you got to know everything about everything and the stakes are very high and if you don't do well you just get crushed by the media as we're seeing today but uh i don't care i like high stakes situations like that we are adrenaline pumping and you you tweeted something to me made perfect sense is why doesn't the moderator have a hold button for the mics? He or she needs to be able to control the debates. But turn the mic off.

That's it. The mics and the camera. Oh, camera too. Interesting. Yeah. If Trump was going on, on, on, on, on, interrupting, and I had control, I would have said in my, you know, I would have said, said because they can hear you through your mic cut his mic and put the camera on me and i would have just sat there and when he was done i would have said no one heard anything he said because we cut your mic and the camera's been on me and that's what we're going to do tonight if you guys keep interrupting

each other love it love it hey you had to do it early you would have had to take control and you would have had to do it early because as you know when you're dealing with like a two-year-old oh yeah if you don't follow your threat the first time you make it there's no getting it back yeah and maybe i do how do you feel about a joe rogan lengthy uh sit down with the two of them i would love that yeah i would one listen to that because Joe Rogan goes for three hours. So it would be a chance to really flesh out arguments and you might actually learn something about them unlike last night.

And finally, tell me about the media company, where it's going, what we should look forward to. Tell me more. Well, I named the media company Devil May Care Media because I wanted it to telegraph my mission statement. The full saying is the devil may care, but I do not. And what I'm trying to telegraph my mission statement. You know, the full saying is the devil may care, but I do not. And it's what I'm trying to say is we're getting scolded in every corner

now for every thought we have, everything we say, every thing we do. And I'm done. I am done. We can't live like this. We shouldn't have to. You're not bad because you have a, quote, heterodox view of any of these third rail issues. We have to be able to talk to each other. Human beings are complicated. Life is complicated. The only way forward as a nation, as a people, is to communicate. And to tell somebody, you just must stop talking. You're no longer allowed in the conversation conversation and I've labeled you something awful because our views don't match up is what a frightened person does and it completely shuts down your exact goal the other person's never

going to be persuaded they're actually going to develop an antipathy toward you that's right so I think the solution is for not just me but anybody who can do it, start talking about these issues. You don't have to do it perfectly. It's not true. You don't have to be on eggshells when you talk about everything. Talk about them in a way that makes sense to you and when somebody gives you pushback you say, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. You tell me more about why you think it's offensive then I'll tell you why I think it isn't and on we go because that's what's American. That's one of our fundamental values. And that is Megyn Kelly.

You can follow her at Megyn Kelly on Twitter. You can watch the Megyn Kelly Show, which we have up on the screen right now. And it is really, Megyn, such a privilege to talk to you. Thank you so much for spending a little time with me. And I'll let you get back to the kids now. Thank you for having me. And I look forward to doing it again. You name the time.

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Again, that is 866-581-4401. So I am now taking your calls at 984-237-3739. That's 984-2-DrDrew. Let's go to your phones. I'm going to go look at you guys on the chat as well now. The great Megyn Kelly has left the room. Anthony, what's going on? Hey, Dr. Drew, how are you?

I'm good, man. What's happening? Hey, I just heard that California or the governor just signed a bunch of money for mental illness. Have you heard of that or do you know where it's going to be delegated and things of that nature? I'm just glad now, Anthony, I can recognize your voice. So when you say I'm Anthony, the homeless guy, I know what you're talking about.

Is Anthony the director of nursing? Is that what we've got in my hands here? I had heard that there was a parity bill, right? And I have been through three rounds of parity bills where mental health was supposed to get equitable distributions and reimbursements. Essentially identical to medical care. And it never worked. And here's why. They always include language in the legislation.

They put the words medically necessary in always. What they don't do is define what medically necessary is. Medically necessary should be what the attending physician determines is necessary for the safe execution of the care. Instead, you know what medically necessary becomes. It becomes something the insurance company sets and it has nothing to do with the reality of the care of the patient. So here we go again. Here we go again. Yeah, sorry, man. Get your perspective. Yeah, that's another conversation. We should have another conversation, you know, offline about the frustrations of how, you know know you can't keep people in the hospital more than three days what do you do with residential care how do you find resident what do you do with locked bed needs you know so much stuff is is a mess still you know once we get the

laws to be able to help people with chronic psychiatric illness then we got to come up with the facilities and the the way to pay for it, right? Right, right. Well, I've seen this and I'm like, okay, well, this is great. But then I know in the back of my head, it's just the same old. That instinct is good. Each time it gets a little better, don't get me wrong. It's not as though they're not trying. It's just they leave that language in that the powers that be then exploit.

And of course, all of it undermines the caretakers, right? If you let the person who's in the room make the decisions, he or she knows what that person needs. Instead, it goes to a review agency somewhere whose job it is to get the person out of the care. It's just sad. All right, Anthony, good to hear from you, man. Yeah. All right, thanks. All right, take care.

And my number again, 984-237-3739. Let me look what you guys are talking about here. Can I address the promotion? Can we, Susan, you want to address this? Somebody wants you to address the promotion of psychics on your platform. You have a microphone? That is your business. We have a show

tonight at 5 p.m. Pacific. If you want to join us, Rebecca Fearing is coming in. That is my wife Susan's material. And I think the goblins are messing with our electronics because we didn't watch on Facebook and our Collins studio is having issues. So somebody's spirit is here coming and we definitely need to

sprinkle some salt. And if you have any questions about that, address them to Susan Inskey. Let's see what you guys are talking about here. Defending. You guys are all over the place. I'm scrolling back through the chat. You guys like the idea of Joe Rogan moderating a panel? Larry King moderating Robby Bobby? I'm not sure that would have gone

the way you think. You guys don't like Chris Wallace? I think he had a tough job to do last night. I think if they had put a dump button on his desk, I think it would have helped a lot. All right. Let me see if there's any calls in here.

The call thing is broken too, right? Of course. This all starts two minutes before we go live. Yeah, our call system is apparently not working as well, but that's okay. We had a nice interview. Let me go over some stuff here. I mentioned to Megan this article. Let me see if I can find it right now.

I'm sure I can. Here we are. Okay, here it is. This is an international study on super spreaders. Oh, shoot. Now I can't, it's not working. Gosh darn it. Well, it essentially, well, it's just not coming up. It essentially showed that very small numbers of people.

Maybe it's the combination of the dog and the air conditioner that seems to be the combo thank you um very small numbers of covid cases caused the majority of the spread i i i i may be misquoting the number i was think it was somewhere on eight or ten percent of the cases are the ones that spread and what they showed was that it wasn't that there was something unusual about those people who were spreaders. Uh-oh, now I'm breaking up on the screen too. It wasn't something unusual about those people that were spreaders. It was the proximity of two other people, the duration, and the indoor with lack of ventilation. Those were the criteria that set up large-scale

spreads. In fact, they were able to show that people who hung out with other people for long periods of time where there was not proximity and no ventilation. If they had anything else, if they had ventilation or distance, they didn't spread it. They did not spread it.

But about 10% of people were locked down in their homes and spread it to everybody in the home. And so this was another study that showed that lockdown may not be a good move. It may, in fact, be the way we spread this thing. So outdoors, ventilation, mask, distancing. So Dale is asking, if only 8% are becoming infected from others, what is infecting people? Let me say it again.

Only 8 or 10% of the people do the infecting, right? They're the ones that do the infecting. So if you hang out with somebody with COVID and you're more than six feet away and there's ventilation and you wear a mask, you are not going to get it. However, if there's 10 of you in a room

for a couple of days, you're all going to get it. I know. Why is this dog upset? So the point is something we've known, we've been speculating all along, is that distance and ventilation and masks work. And if you're not locked down inside with somebody, you're less likely to get this thing.

So it's just an interesting, it was an interesting study. And McDonald Farmer, asymptomatic don't spread. They do spread. Asymptomatic carriers do spread and children do spread. There was something else that came out of this study as well. Children don't get the illness, but they do spread the illness. That's something we've been wondering

about for a while and now this looks like it really is the case that they do spread even when they get essentially no illness. Finally, I'd link the studies I'm talking about. I will try. I just tried to open one up and it didn't go through and i'm sorry about that uh all right uh fem boy tell me what did i say that was

bias okay somebody expressing bias thoughts on excess deaths percentage from suicide no d's yeah excess deaths uh i don't have the numbers if you do do, Livmar, please give them to me here. I'd love to see them. Because we do know that suicide is up. Alcohol is up. Alcohol in white women, particularly, way up. Opioid overdoses are up. The data, if you want to review the data, is kind of interesting.

In California, we continue on a downward trend in spite of the director of our overall state health department telling us he guaranteed a 90% increase in hospitalization within the next two to three weeks. We've continued down instead. Deaths are down, but that's a lagging indicator, but they're way down. We've sort of plateaued and kind of turned down again in terms of cases. The really interesting thing is to look at things like Florida. Now, Florida has opened back up, and Florida so far is kind of in a plateau, no increase in anything. Indiana is also, Susan, you're on the phone with somebody. Indiana is also open, apparently, and they are plateaued, but their hospitalization rate has increased a little bit. That is something really worthy of keeping an eye on. Now, they don't have lots of hospitalization.

They've gone from essentially 700 to 940, but that's a move. That's a trend. We want to watch that. Are they having trouble with Indiana with this opening? Are they not able to control it properly? And then, as I've expressed yesterday, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, they are in a really serious uptick if you look at the national data

which I will do really quickly again states that are being careful are doing pretty good we're being too careful in California unfortunately national data is sort of plateaued right now both in terms of hospitalization the death rate may be going down a little bit and even the case rate is sort of plateaued

so it's kind of interesting we're in a, the death rate may be going down a little bit, and even the case rate has sort of plateaued. So it's kind of interesting. The virus will tell us. The virus knows what he's going to do. We don't know. But this was more data, again, today that shows that you can make a difference by being in ventilated space, having UV light, and whatnot. Why was H1N1 not handled like COVID? That's an interesting question, Tom Segar.

It's obviously a different virus, but why was one barely noticed and one was a complete shutdown of the world? It seems like there should be a middle zone there somewhere, right? Doesn't it? I would agree. There should be a middle zone. Okay. Anything else, guys,

from your end? Anybody? Is everyone happy? You're all upset that we're not Okay. Anything else, guys, from your end? Anybody? You guys all, everyone happy? You're all upset that we're not on Facebook and the phones aren't working. You're going to sage the room? I need to sage the room. All right. It hurts out.

All right. Let me just, before I wrap up. The email didn't go out. The text didn't go out. Apparently my voice, my mic volume is fluctuating all over the place too. We're having a technical

meltdown of one type or another. I'm asking me a problem with flu season. As Fauci mentioned, the increased spread of flu. Yeah, Matthew, it's a really interesting question. Flu is down right now. And that may be distancing and hand washing. Flu is very much transmitted on hands.

And so when you mess around with the mask on your face, that's a potential for flu to be transmitted. That's what Fauci was worried about. But thus far, flu is down. Question is, will everybody get the vaccine, which they should. If you're over 65, you ought to consider the high antigen vaccine.

The rest of us should get the vaccine, which they should. If you're over 65, you ought to consider the high antigen vaccine. The rest of us should get the vaccine. Okay. Thank you, Jeans. Still no calls. That call system is just down, huh? No. Oh. No, it's down.

Yeah. I called it. It's down because ours are in the guest list. Yeah, it's... I don't know what's up with the internet today. It wasn't working on Facebook. The text alert didn't go out. Call in studio didn't work.

So something must be up with the internet backbone today. I'm just glad I got a chance to talk to Megyn Kelly. That was a good one. We had a great interview. She was great. She was great. Thank you to Caleb for producing this. Susan for producing.

Thank you, Michelle Poe, for the design of what's behind me here and the lighting. Okay, you guys. Well, good seeing you. Thank you to Megyn Kelly. Check out her podcast. And don't forget our stuff. Don't forget After Dark and all the pods over at drdrew.com as well. It's International Podcast Day.

So congratulations to everyone that's out there podcasting. And I will see you in the stream in a couple of days. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. This is just a reminder that the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care or medical evaluation. This is purely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm a licensed physician with over 35 years of experience, but this is not a replacement for your personal physician,

nor is it medical care. 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, anytime, 24-7, for free support and guidance. You can find more of my recommended organizations

and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.