Behind the Bastards - CZM Rewind: Part Two: Dr. Oz: Why 'America's Doctor' Is A Bastard

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

It's still a CZM Rewind week! Enjoy the second part of this unfortunately prescient episode where Robert is joined by Matt Lieb to discuss Dr. Oz.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From audio up, the creators of Stephen King's Strawberry Spring comes The Unborn, a shocking true story. My babies please, my babies. One woman, two lives and a secret she would kill to protect. She went crazy, shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids, tried to burn her house down. Listen to The Unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes where a crime took place leads you to answer why the crime happened in the first place. Hi, I'm Sloane Glass,

host of the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. In this series, we'll examine some of the country's most infamous and mysterious murders and learn how the location of the crime becomes a character in the story. Listen to American Homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we neg our audience in order to make them more closely drawn to us. It's a tactic I learned from pickup artists. From pickup artists.

Yes. Really, this whole show is based on the lessons I learned as a pickup artist. You can't see it, but I'm wearing an enormous hat with ostrich plumes coming off. Made out of purple felt. It's an incredible hat. The most fuckable hat. The most fuckable hat. Yes, that was actually the first name I pitched for this podcast. But Sophie said that that means nothing and no one will listen to it.

So we won't look behind the back. He always puts lies on my name and saying that I turned down his ideas. That's just not the case. Sophie, I think we can all agree that one of the best things to do is to lie about things your colleagues didn't do because it's funny.

I agree with it. Thank you. On to the show. We're talking about Dr. Oz. And as we left the last episode off, he had just, you know, gotten Oprah'd. Right?

Started his TV career. Got an Oprah'd hard. So he started his TV career. And he also starts right around the same time he gets on TV for the first time. He starts a daily morning radio show on Oprah Winfrey's Sirius XM channel. Never a good idea. Sirius XM? No, terrible idea. What is it about giving people three hours of uninterrupted airtime?

You know, there's just something about it. I, you know, and this is an opinion that's pretty controversial within iHeartRadio. I think radio should be illegal. Um, and I think it should be a felony Punished by prison time for for being on the radio or having a radio. We're thinking about the radio Yeah, I think the only form of entertainment that should be legal is specifically my podcast. Yeah. Yeah Okay Yes, yeah, and and there should legally only be one Sopranos podcast allowed which as it turns out is the case So I think if we if we could get Chuck Schumer's ear we can make this happen

We'll tack this onto the pot bill. No one will notice so Dr. Oz has the dr. Oz show He's got a radio show on Winfrey's XM channel where he covers very scientific topics like how God changes your brain and the happiest people in the world. Now, I found a New York Times article

that was written just a few months into his tenure with his TV show kind of at the start of his burst into stardom. And the interviewer who talked to Oz for this article seems as impressed as everyone always is by the manic, somewhat inhuman pace at which Mehmet Oz works. By this point, he'd also written six books with titles like You, the Smart Patient, You on a Diet, and You Having a Baby. It's like the series is the Yeah, yeah, the famous You series.

colon, whatever. And he co-writes these books with another doctor. I can't tell you how much of the writing was. A lot of times, I'm not saying this is the case with Dr. Oz because he's a wild workaholic, but a lot of times when you have a guy that's his kind of famous

and they write a bunch of books, they write like 10% of the book and they have someone else, a co-author or a ghost writer do the rest. I don't know if that's the case here. There's always one one Matt Damon who's writing most of Good Will Hunting and then there's a Ben Affleck who gets top booking. And I do believe Matt Damon writes most of his books.

Oh, 100 percent. Yeah. So nine million copies of his various titles are in print by this point, like the first year of his show. So he is he is a very wealthy and successful man, pretty much out the gate, like money machine getting the start on Oprah kind of guarantees it. Basically, if Oprah likes you enough to put you on her show more than once, you're going to get rich. Damn. Yeah. I just I just should have spent my my youth trying to get on Oprah. We all should have we all should have So Dr. Oz gets a semi regular column for Time magazine because again they see this guy get famous

They're like we got to get some at Oprah money, too We get this guy on time people who start reading time again And yeah, it's interesting they give him a a column. And in 2008, they included him on their list of the world's most 100 most influential people. So before they hire him to a column, they call him one of the world's most influential people. And as soon as he gets listed as one of the hundred most influential people on the planet, Dr. Oz calls his dad, right? Like, finally, this is gotta be the thing. How can he not be impressed by this? So when he tells his dad his dad's first question is what number

This is not a ranked thing like it's not the top hundred like going to one It's just these hundred people are all very influential a listicle. Yeah, it's not a ranked thing. Like it's not the top hundred, like going to one. It's just these hundred people are all very influential. It's not a listicle, bro. Yeah, it's not a listicle. Oh my God. But Dr. Oz in this interview seemed to acknowledge that the fact that his dad reacted that way said a lot about both, you know, his dad and about their relationship. He told an interviewer, quote, he wants to know what number, are you kidding me?

There are 6 billion people on the planet. It's a rounding error. Oh God. But like what number though? Cause you do wonder. Yeah, seriously, what, how high are you motherfucker? Yeah, come on. How influential are you?

You're basically me. Yeah. So that interviewer, along with the New York Times wrote, quote, it's also the kind of thing that goads the sun to climb mountain after mountain, seldom pausing to enjoy the view. The good doctor did admit to engaging in a number of time-saving measures. Over the years, he did numerous columns, which were often just recycled from other columns

or chunks of his books. He'd provide the same list of skin moisturizing or metabolism boosting tips in different magazines or online articles. Even so, his workload was enormous. The Dr. Oz Show was instantly one of the most popular shows on the planet, and Mehmet was contracted to record 175 hour long episodes per year, which is a fucking brutal work schedule on its own.

And the man continued to practice as a surgeon, albeit at a reduced rate. The New York Times interviewer who visited him in 2010 seemed to find his behavior and kind of his compulsive workaholism somewhat unsettling. I never saw him without a portable larder of baggies, plastic containers and thermoses of food and drink. And all of it, every crumb, every drop, was healthful.

Low-fat Greek yogurt mixed with brightly colored berries, and thermoses of food and drink. And all of it, every crumb, every drop, was healthful. Low-fat Greek yogurt mixed with brightly colored berries, spinach, slaw, raw almonds, raw walnuts soaked in water to amplify their nutritional benefit, a dark green concoction of juices from vegetables including cucumber and parsley. Roughly every 45 to 60 minutes, as if on cue, he would ingest something from his movable buffet, but only a little bit. His portions assiduously regulated like an intravenous and like an intravenous drip of nutrition. It was the most efficient, joyless eating I have ever seen.

That is so weird. I'm sorry. That's so weird. That made me so uncomfortable to just know. He's cool, dude. Like that's, you know, he's living life in the in the most drab way possible. Just trying to just trying to make TV shows and do heart surgeries, you know? Yeah. Who has time to enjoy anything when your daddy was a fish and even eating.

He's like, I don't eat or drink anything that I would enjoy. Yeah. Well, that's just so unsettling. I mean, you know what? I have known a couple of people in my lives, all very skinny, who have told me like, I just don't really like eating. Like, yeah, there's some foods that I prefer to others, but I just don't really enjoy it one way or the other. Like I've, I've no, like some of those people wound up on the soylent thing.

And I guess like, I mean, yeah, fine. It's like, it's whatever, you know, it's your life. If you want to eat monkey food, eat monkey food, but don't, you know, be surprised when I judge you, you know, it's your life. You want to your life food eat monkey food But don't you know be surprised when I judge you, you know Yeah, like it's uh, that's weird at the start. The doctor Oz show was broadly inoffensive from a medical perspective He gave a lot of fairly good common-sense health advice health advice and provided a lot of people with a friendly medical face willing to Explain things their doctors might not have the time or the bedside manner to properly lay out. But Oz's fascination with alternative medicine was present from the beginning.

And as time went on, he veered more and more in that direction, following both the topics that consistently drew the most viewers and the topics that were easiest to put together. Because 175 hours of content a year is a lot. I mean, really though, like at some point you run out of shit to talk about and you have to just be like, oh, pendulums over the heart.

Do they work? Yeah. Punching people in the dick. Could it improve your bowels? Yeah. I mean, you know, we, we have to do, I don't know how much content we have to do per year, 52 weeks, two hours a week. Uh, yeah. We, we do like 110, maybe like with some of the episodes that go over

120 hours of content for this show. And that's a lot. One hundred seventy five hours of video content is huge. Like you can't. There's there's not that much good and also entertaining medical advice that you could give in a year, let alone every single year. I mean, just like there's only so many organs to talk about, you know, after a while you just got to invent shit.

Yeah. And it's this thing. It's this kind of this inevitable churn of capitalism leading us all into this cut, this specific kind of nonsense because you can't not have content. Legally you're contracted to, but also you have this whole team of people whose ability to pay their rent, whose ability to afford their homes to keep their kids in school is dependent upon you doing this show outside of just the fact that he's rich.

Like, like he's fine, but he like, it's this thing you have to keep putting out the thing and you will never have enough meaningful shit to put out to do it. So you start, in his case, doing nonsense about mediums and shit. And in our case, doing episodes about Dr. Oz. When you run out of bastards, eventually you just got to find one on TV. We're not out of bastards, but like last week I spent 30 hours reading about the protocols of the Elders of Zion. I needed an off week, you know?

God. We all need off weeks. That is one of my favorite absolutely real documents to read. Yeah. That's why we brought you on, actually. Yeah. I'm actually one of the Elders of Zion and I got some protocols for you. Good times. So, good times. So for an example of the kind of nonsense creep, I guess you'd call it, that like advanced upon his show in March of 2012, Dr.

Oz did a show titled medium versus medicine. Oz's guest was a psychic who claimed she could communicate with the dead. This was one of several, and by this point probably dozens of episodes dedicated to people who claimed to talk to the dead. Energy healing was, you know, on the fringe, certainly, but at least it was something that when he started doing it, there were scientific studies saying there might be something to it. Those studies have since been to a large extent discredited, but when he started doing that, there was some evidence it was a something to it. Those studies have since been, to a large extent, discredited.

But when he started doing that, there was some evidence it was a thing to try, you know? He wasn't completely out of left field. Yeah, people were at least testing it out. Doing episodes on mediums talking to the dead is well outside of plausible deniability territory, right? Like, you're just doing nonsense at this point. Yeah.

I mean, you know, it depends how they're talking. If you go up to a dead body and start talking to it, you are technically talking to the dead. Now, that would be a fun show. Dr. Oz breaks into morgues and talks to corpses. Yeah. Hey, how'd you die? Just having his bodyguards, mace police officers,

rolling into a crime scene be like, who did this? Yeah. Oh yeah. How have this go down. Are you okay? Hey. I am a doctor. Do you want some almonds? They're soaked in water for more nutrition.

All right, someone get me a crystal. So yeah, he had, yeah, Dr. Oz had among other things All right, someone get me a crystal. So yeah, he had, yeah, Dr. Oz had among his psychic guests, famous grifter king, John Edwards on his show, not the politician. No, no, no. The talks to dead TV show guy. Yeah. Yeah.

And he praised the reading that he received from John Edwards saying quote. Let me tell you it changed my life I've learned in my career that there are times when science just hasn't caught up with things and I think this may be one of them Which is almost exactly what he said about John of God the guy who raped hundreds of people Yeah, that's how you know like to stay far away from anything when he's just like man. This is uh, this is a brand new Groundbreaking territory and you can go. Alright guys. It's a rapist Ron It's one of those things part of how he's like the intelligent way to frame This is you start with the true thing which is there are things science can't explain one of those things is the nature of consciousness And what happens to it after you know vital science vital sciences. We don't know. There's

not an objective answer to that. But it going this way is kind of like being like, yeah, you know, we can't explain like the slit box experiment. Like there's a bunch of shit in physics. I don't know. I'm not a science guy, but like, you know, particle and wave shit. You can't explain that. So you can't explain magnets. Yeah. how do they work? How do they work? It's this is this jump from yes, there are things we can't explain to so let's listen to this man talk to the dead Millions of yeah gather gather round. He's going to channel your dead on yes Maybe not not a reasonable way to take a reasonable starting point. Yeah.

Especially when you're a doctor on TV. Yeah. And I want to quote from a write-up I found in the Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association. Quote, during another show, Oz interviewed Dr. Mosara Fali, a miracle healer to Sylvester Stallone, Prince Charles of England and others regarding his use of iridology. According to the widely debunked Bizarre Belief, each part of the iris corresponds to a specific

area of the body and a person's state of health could be diagnosed by examining particular regions of the iris. After expressing his amazement at Dr. Ali's diagnostic abilities, Oz stated, I want to applaud Dr. Mosarraf Ali because these are ancient traditions and they have been around for centuries. So who am I to dismiss them? Other than a very well educated man. A doctor. Dora Doctor, Mehmet.

You add me at French Charles. Yeah. It's like, you know, there's a lot of cultures who say that you should remove the clitoris surgically It's it's it's it's healthier and it's dangerous masturbation. It's ancient Who are we to say this is a bad idea? Who are any of us to say anything wrong? Yeah, oh my god I love it too just like yeah I was amazed by his ability to look into my eyes and diagnose that my dad will never love me

How did you know? by his ability to look into my eyes and diagnose that my dad will never love me. How did he know? How did you know? It does bring me joy that Prince Charles got fucked with his fuck. Oh, I wonder what his eyes said. It's funny. It's the same thing. It said your dad will never love you. That's all he does.

He goes to famous people and he goes, your dad will never love you. Your dad will never love you so much. There's this one of the big aspects of this guy's success and of the success of the things he pushes is is Orientalism, right? Right. Like this idea of like the forbidden and strange and wondrous and magical East and all of the, we don't understand all of these like, Oh, India is so mysterious. Yeah.

Yada yada yada. Um, what if you were to say like, well, for centuries, tobacco companies have said that tobacco can cure like different lung ailments. Who are we to dismiss these ancient traditions? Yeah. The Q zone could be real. Exactly.

Like it stops people from stuttering. Do more cocaine. I mean, yeah, just the idea. And I've always found this in general to be the biggest load of horseshit is when people have have said, you know, this is like an ancient healing technique. And it's like, you mean like bleeding people with leeches, you know, you mean like cutting off someone's leg because he got a fucking a small infection on his toe ancient

it's this fucking thing with dr. Oz like it's one thing if you just like traveling to another part of the world you see some sort of Medical or treatment you've never seen before and you're like well, who am I to say anything about right? Like I don't know Dr. Oz is a doctor on TV talking to millions You're literally the person who should be saying something about the legitimacy of this. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You're the guy. You're the person. You are, in fact, the person who should say something about this. Who am I? You're you.

Yeah. The most famous doctor in America. Yeah. And that's what that that write up in the Journal of Missouri State Medical Association notes. Quote, who? Dr. Oz is a trained clinician and scientist. Yeah, and that's what that write-up in the Journal of Missouri State Medical Association notes. Quote, who? Dr. Oz is a trained clinician and scientist. Someone who can read a scientific article with a critical eye. He is someone who can filter out the noise of the placebo effect or discern the simple carnival tricks of a charlatan.

The problem is that most people in his audience cannot. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he has a literal responsibility to tell people that these guys are full of shit But he also has a responsibility to his show sponsors and to the network for ratings You know, you know who else has a responsibility to the show That's gotta be the first time it's ever actually been a relevant segue. So fucking good. So good.

Anyway, here's products. In the quiet town of Avella, Pennsylvania, Jared and Christy Akron seemed to have it all. A whirlwind romance, a new home and twins on the way. What no one knew was that Christie was hiding a secret, so shocking it would tear their world apart. 911 response, what's your emergency? My babies, please, my babies.

One woman, two lives, and the truth more terrifying than anyone could imagine. They had her as one of the suspects, but they could never prove it. You're going to go to jail if you don't come with us right now. Throughout this whole thing, I kept telling myself, nobody's that crazy, crazy. Uncover the chilling mystery that will leave you questioning everything. A story of the lengths we go to protect our darkest secrets.

She went crazy, shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids, tried to burn their house down. Audio Web presents The Unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi listeners, I'm Sloane Glass, the host of American Homicide, a podcast where we take you across the country to investigate some of America's deadliest crimes.

We'll explore how these murders are shaped by their unique landscapes, and in turn, how these tragedies have shaped the fabric of these American communities forever. And you can get access to all episodes of American Homicide 100% ad-free and one week early through the iHeart True Crime Plus subscription, available exclusively on Apple podcasts. So don't wait, head to Apple podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus and subscribe today. Ah, we're back. Talking about Dr. Oz, having just a great time.

So obviously, the fact that Dr. Oz, I mean, probably the fact that most of his audience couldn't discern whether or not any of these nonsense treatments were real is a big part of why the Dr. Oz show became an overnight success. Before very long, it was being watched by 4 million viewers every single day. Over the next half decade or so, he won two Emmys. His guest list included First Lady Michelle Obama, who loved Dr. Oz for his focus on healthy diets for children and in general, his crusade to get Americans to lose weight. Dr. Oz claimed through medicine, through math that I cannot verify.

But his show inspired Americans to lose three million cumulative pounds per year. I don't know, maybe. Yeah, they based that on what? Like did people call in to say how many pounds they've lost to the show? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure he found some way to like make the claim or whatever, but it's very, it's,

I don't know, maybe it is one of the things that he does that is, we'll talk about, there's problems with some of the diet tips he gives people actually, significant ones. But telling, like inspiring people to lose weight is not usually bad for their health. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes people take it too far and it depends on the health problems. You know, it's a mixed bag, I guess we'd say. But the other stuff isn't a mixed bag. So I guess we'll call that his his great success so Yeah, it is good

I will say it is unequivocally good that dr. Oz continually pressed his audience of millions of people to eat more fruits and vegetables Fruits and vegetables to get better sleep to exercise regularly and to get their flu vaccinations. That's all rat, right? Yeah, but shit I could have told you that. Give me a TV show. Yeah, you don't have to be a doctor to say that. You don't have to be a doctor to know that shit. Yeah, eat better, piggies. I mean, it's-

But he's charismatic, people like him. It's good that he does that, at least. Yeah. They don't trust me, so they won't give me the show, but they should, because- Yeah, the unfortunate part is that this guy gained, because he's handsome, handsome a lot of a lot of a lot of Ladies out there think dr. Oz is hot

He's a doctor. He's very charismatic He's very charming and he gains this enormous influence with middle America and he uses that influence to do some really fucking Questionable shit and I'm gonna quote now from a a write up in the AMA's Journal of Ethics. He has told mothers that there were dangerous levels of arsenic in their child's apple juice. There weren't and suggested that green coffee is a miracle cure for obesity. Federal regulators discovered altered data

in hyped coffee bean evidence. The Food and Drug Administration tested for arsenic and apple juice and found the vast majority of apple juice tested to contain low levels of arsenic and given these levels was confident in the overall safety of apple juice consumed in this country. Dr. Oz also featured two guests on his show who claimed that genetically modified foods were cancer causing despite repeated safety reports that found no adverse effects. Man. Yeah. I mean, he's like he's very he's getting there.

Like I'm watching him slowly go from Mehmet to Mangala. You know, like he's. Come on, let him be Mangala. It is too good a pun to. I get that you want to be fair, Robert, but let's go for it. All right. We're doing it. No, we're watching it like turn into a snake oil salesman. And it's it's very exciting.

Yeah. So Dr. Oz's enthusiasm for alternative medicine has had the effect of creating instant fads over any health product he even vaguely suggests on his show. When he mentions the purported health benefits of white mulberry, red palm oil, or brown seaweed, all of which he's claimed can do things like cut weight, reduce aging, or beat the flu, those products fly off the shelf. Oz often doesn't endorse specific brands, but he doesn't need to. Online retailers watch closely and immediately slap, as seen on Dr. Oz, on their pseudoscientific

products. Yes, I've seen this. Yeah. I've seen this. This is where we get to the big harm. He did one episode that focused on so-called relaxation drinks and included a close up shot of five cans of beverages he said might help calm you down. Just a Miller Highlife.

Yeah. He just puts a can of Colt 45 on the table. Billy Dee Williams walks out. It's a still reserve. Trust me, you'll be relaxed. You'll be calm as shit. You might yell at your mom, but it'll be fun afterwards. Yeah.

You will very calmly put your hand through a taxi cab window As soon as the episode aired a quote liquid sleep aid called I chill bragged on their website Dr. Oz is talking about a new way to wind down with relaxation drinks They are the newest trend and helping you relax and calm down and the best news is they contain natural Ingredients already known to promote relaxation. Mulberry, Laudanum. I remember the iChill. That turned into like an entire thing. There's so many drinks like that now.

We're about to talk about it. Yeah. And also if there was a Laudanum drink, I would be buying Um, so the problem with all with this is that all of these different relaxation drinks are filled with a variety of chemicals like melatonin and theanine and taurine these drinks are unregulated as they are not medicines or dietary supplements, but the chemicals they include all have actual impacts on the central nervous system. Pregnant women and children are often advised to avoid products with some of these chemicals,

but the beverages in question rarely note this. No data exists on how these chemicals might impact people and the quantities they are added to in these beverages, or when combined with other chemicals, or when combined with medications people drinking them might be taking. Responsible Doctors, writing for the journal Nature Neuroscience, wrote a warning about these beverages that specifically called out iChill by name. Quote, existing research on the potential benefits and harms of some components of relaxation drinks suggests that they may not always be safe.

Indeed, the FDA issued a warning last year to the manufacturers of melatonin-laced brownies, citing safety concerns from the literature, including effects on the autonomic nervous system and visual system and increased expression of symptoms in a sleep disorder. Other components of relaxation drinks, such as L-theanine or amino acids, such as taurine, may be considered safe for consumption only at some doses by the FDA, but relaxation drinks are not subject to such regulations, nor are they required to disclose the amounts of their ingredients. Oh my God. I mean, first of all, did you say melatonin brownies?

Yeah, buddy. What the fuck? Like I want to eat and just get tired immediately. Like that is very strange. Like here's the thing about brownies I've never eaten one and been like I just want to relax like no I'm trying to get a little sugar rush to be honest a sleepy time brownie delightful I would be very down listen hot brownies are very different it's not it's not the same as relaxation bread like one is like an ambient brownie and the other one is like a brownie that makes you hungry for more brownies

Hot brownies make sense ambient brownies exist. I would love one. Thank you very much I mean, I guess I'd rather do that than just swallow an ambient but man that is I'm like I'm like gets to sleep and also got a brownie. I'm Sounds awesome. It's bad for your health. I'll tell you that. Apparently. Am I remembering this correctly, Robert? But wasn't the I. Chill like like the bottle and the marketing like similar style to like an energy drink similar to like a five hour energy?

That was like the aesthetic. No, no, no. I think those were those were they had like a weird, different shaped plastic bottle. But like the problem is that again, number one, you've got a lot of people with like who are on medications that this shit interacts with. Which is crazy that like literally a relaxation drink could be contraindicated for your prescription medication. Okay, so everything Dr. Oz recommends, I guess outside of like death psychics comes with this caveat. Some of the herbs and natural medicines that he recommends

do have health impacts, but they also have consequences. Medications they might not interact well with. Dr. Oz does not bring this up when he shotguns half-assed advice out to an audience of millions. That article in Nature Neuroscience that I referenced, warning about the relaxation drinks Oz recommended, it's been read 10,000 times. So the article warning people that these things can be contraindicated and

might have impacts on your health and your central nervous system. Read 10,000 times. Dr. Oz's episode suggesting these drinks, listened, watched 4 million times. God damn. Yeah. People started to notice that this was a problem by the mid-aughts doctors had been complaining for a while But in 2013 Forbes wrote a listicle laying out the silliest things. Dr Oz has suggested on his show including the fact that having 200 orgasms a year would extend your life by six years Here's how he explained that bit of math on his website. Dude, I'm about to live to 200 years old. I ain't never dying motherfucker. I ain't never dying.

I get one out at least once a day. 365. Here's his website. If you have more than 200 orgasms a year, you can reduce your physiologic age by six years, Dr. Oz says. He bases the number on a study done at Duke University that surveyed people on the amount and quality of sex they had. They looked at what happened to folks that are receiving a lot of intercourse over time. And the fact is it correlated.

Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is it sex? Because he didn't say nothing about sex. He said orgasms. And I do that on my own. No, he talked to he talked to them about the amount and quality of sex they had but like it's correlated So again, he's basically lying here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah you you number one What is the possibility that people who are having a lot of good sex are in better health? Oh, that's why they're able to have a lot more good sex because they're like they're physically healthy And so it's easier for them to like What if what are the odds that like if you're having more sex you're more social you're more likely to have a long-term

Romantic partner that increases your lifespan. Yeah again I'm of all people never gonna be the guy to say there's not health benefits to sex. There sure is Oh, yeah, dr. Oz is is is sex there sure is oh yeah dr. Oz is is is Exaggerating this he's he's taking an actual study that showed some interesting stuff and he's turning it into a lie Yeah, he's turning it into like pretending. He has quantifiable data and that like correlation and Correlation is causation like that. Yeah, that's that's what he's trying to do Yeah There is data that suggests that regular intercourse reduces men's mortality risks by 50%

Which doesn't mean that fucking stops men from dying particularly because it's men who benefit in this way It means that men are less healthy than women tend to die faster and when men have Partners that they live with they are more likely to have a medical problem noticed if they have a heart attack Someone's going to be there to call the like there's a lot of reasons why this is the case. Yeah, they're not dying alone. You know? Yeah. It's not the fact that just fucking magically adds like reduces your age by six years if you do it enough. Like that's nonsense. It's nice to think it though. It makes it nice to think it. I'm going to know that article, show it to my girlfriend and say, Hey, you got to help me live though. It makes it nice to think it. I'm going to know that article, show it to my girlfriend and say,

hey, you got to help me live longer. You know, not coming enough. I'm going to die. We got to do this more. Yeah, just start fucking in public. And when the cops come be like, this is medicine. Yeah. Do you want me to die six years earlier than I should? I have a right to this. Dr. Oz said I should fuck more.

Now on its own, recommending that people get more sex is, you know, fine. I'm very pro-sex, but I am anti-encouraging people to misunderstand health science. The nature of Dr. Oz's audience and the sheer breadth of things he suggests makes it difficult to analyze the total health impact of his show. But there are some dire case studies, as Vox notes in their write up quote, there's the case of a man who followed Oz's suggestion of curing insomnia by pouring uncooked rice into socks, heating them in a microwave and wearing them to bed. The man got second and third degree burns on his feet. And the reason he got burned is because he was diabetic.

He didn't have the same level of feeling in his feet. Oh my God. If he had gone to a doctor and said, Hey, I heard about this thing that might help with insomnia. The doctor would say, well, you're diabetic. You don't have as much feeling in your feet. I'm worried you might call burn yourself. Dr. Oz is just saying, Hey, this will help you sleep.

Do it. Whoever you are. Again, it's probably talking to four million people. It will be bad advice for some of them. I mean, it's like, yeah, this all feels very much like when Trump was telling everyone about the wonders of hydro hydroxychloroquine. Oh, yeah, we're going to talk about that later. And then people are eating fucking fish food or like fish tank cleaner and dying.

And people like, how could how could people be so stupid? And it's like, people are stupid. You can't tell them to eat the fucking fish bowl cleaner. Yeah, they'll do it. It's the fucking do it. So this guy sued, but the case was thrown out because the judge determined that Oz cannot establish the physician patient relationship through TV I agree with the judge. That's my problem with his show

Yes that he is a physician purporting to be giving medical advice But is also not taking anyone's individual circumstances into account and more to the fucking point Not liable if he does any of the irresponsible things that would lend a physician doing their job traditionally in trouble. I mean, it is medical malpractice whether or not he's legally liable for it or not. I would agree. Yeah. And I'm going to continue that quote from Vox.

Not everyone agrees with the judge's reasoning. Rochester, New York medical student and blogger, Benjamin Mazer has been publishing anonymous stories sent to him from health professionals about the impact Oz has had on patient care. One reported that her dad had a heart attack and five stents placed in his heart, which required him to take aspirin and Plavix

to prevent blood clots. He was watching Dr. Oz who said Plavix was not necessary. So he stopped taking it. About a month later he had another massive heart attack encoded and had to be shocked back to life. She continued, my dad admitted to following Dr. Oz's advice and not asking his own cardiologist. Man, that's really bad. Did he have like an alternative or was he just like decided one day that Plavix was going to be the thing? I'm sure it was if I know my Dr. Oz I'm sure it was you don't need to take plavix eat these

different heart healthy foods and avoid these foods and that'll do all that plavix will do. Yeah yeah eat some beans and put your face in some boiled water and you should be fine. I suspect it was dietary advice that if you're someone who doesn't really need plavix is fine or might even help you to not need it later in life. Right. Tell your habits. But the problem is again the way he's framing it. There's going to be a lot of people who are like just had stints placed in there. I don't need plavix. Fuck it. Yeah. You know, Dr. Oz, the TV doctor said I don't

need this medicine. I just need more acai in my belly. Yeah. The TV doctor also said he can talk to ghosts. So I'm going to go talk to, I mean, you will be talking to ghosts faster. If you follow all of Dr. Yeah, exactly. I want to talk to ghosts. I'm going to stop taking my plavix and dive a stroke. Now on his show, Dr.

Oz claims that the trust of his audience is the entire reason for his relevance. Quote, the currency that I deal in his trust. And it is trust that has been given to me by an audience that has watched over 600 shows. He repeatedly references the fact that he is responding to the very real and very understandable unfilled needs of Americans who feel alienated from modern healthcare, which is an expensive and often inhumane labyrinthine bureaucracy. True.

This is true. Yeah, bureaucracy. This is true. Yeah, absolutely. 100% true. Yeah. How you exploit it is a very different thing. But the thing he is replacing it with is, by and large, nonsense. And I'm going to quote from that right up in the Journal of Ethics again. When it comes to epistemic boundaries, Dr. Oz admits he applies different

standards of evidence compared to those accepted in the medical establishment. When challenged by a reporter for the New Yorker about his questionable evidentiary standards, he replied that all data could be differentially interpreted. You find the arguments that support your data, he said, and it's my fact versus your fact. It's not that he doesn't offer data. It's common for Dr. Oz to offer some plausible mechanism from test tube experiments conducted by manufacturers combined with personal anecdotes from his own or consumer's experience

to support the products he's promoting. A study of 80 recommendations made on the Dr. Oz show in early 2013 found that published evidence supported 46% of recommendations, contradicted 15% and did not support 39%. Gotta love a good like coin flip on whether or not he's fucking lying to you and having an adverse effect on your health. If your doctor said, hey, you know, 46% of the time, I give pretty good advice.

Yeah. You would be like, I think I might get another doctor, but he would reframe it to be like, I'm back to 500 here and really 500 that's a good bet. If you assume medicine is like baseball, I'm a great doctor. No, he's crushing it. Yeah. Doing a great job. Now to his credit, the journal does note that a decent chunk of the blame for Dr.

Oz's success lies in the very, very flawed state of mainstream medical science. Quote, we settle for incomplete, selectively published data in journals heavily subsidized by pharmaceutical companies and for outcomes that don't give firm answers. While not on par with offering anecdotes as evidence, the fact that debates persist about what constitutes sufficiently high, unbiased quality evidence to support decisions in the profession as a whole

creates a wedge that Dr. Oz seems to exploit Mm-hmm. Yeah again. This is the Journal of Ethics being like the fact that you can pay to get a study done the fact that we Pharmaceutical companies lobby to allow them to market things in dishonest ways the fact that doctors are bribed by companies like Purdue Pharmaceutical with vacations. Yeah recommend people take medication that is not in their best interest to take. That's why this motherfucker has a job. And the fact that healthcare is expensive, right? The fact that we don't have a single pair of healthcare. It all combines to the fact that a lot of people who are not idiots,

I'm not saying has... You can be... I'm sure there's people who are brilliant electricians, who fucking... or brilliant at whatever, who are great at whatever it is they do, but they're not fucking doctors because most of us aren't. And it's hard to get. I am very fortunate in that I have a couple of good friends who are doctors and I am luckier than I can. One of them is a guy who was on the show recently, Cava Hoda.

I'm luckier than I can that I can say to be able to like, every now and then send them a message being like, Hey, what should I do here? Yeah, it's a question of like, I'm having this problem. I don't know what kind of doctor to see to like get this dealt with. I don't know whose job this is. And I don't want to like, my, um, my ex a while ago had a non cancerous brain tumor. And it was a fucking nightmare figuring out it took a series of different doctors and tests to figure out what kind of doctor

she needed to go to to get the medication that would help. And it's of course people are like, well, this guy is explaining things and he's nice and he's saying that I have the power to deal with this. Right. Change my diet. If I do this, if I do that, um, he's giving us alternatives to deal with the bureaucracy of medical institutions in this country. I have a Kaiser and I had to go to a rheumatologist and I tried to get a hold of him on the phone and they sent me through six different call centers to finally get

to his specific office. And then I asked the lady, oh, can I get the extension so that I don't have to deal with that? And she's like, Oh, sorry, we're not allowed to do that. And so now, now I'm just recording every phone call and just, you know, freestyling to the hold music, because it's the only thing I can do. I'm like, you know what? I might as well turn this into content because this is fucking ridiculous. into content because this is fucking ridiculous. You know, there's like the amount of bullshit you have to go through makes people like Dr. Oz feel like a good alternative. You know? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And it's. It fucking sucks. It just really fucking sucks. And it fucking sucks because there's a lot of wonderful people who are part of the medical system like the fucking doctors in the in the ER who were with my mom in her last days like incredibly competent and compassionate and amazing people who in their entire careers will never be able to do as much good as Dr. Oz does harm because he has 4 million people watching him every day.

Yeah, it's a bummer. Yeah, yeah, yeah watching him every day. Yeah. It's a bummer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know what's not a bummer? Wow. Capitalism is actually a bummer, but it's the water we swim in. So here's some fucking ads. In the quiet town of Avella, Pennsylvania, Jared and Christy Akron seemed to have it all. A whirlwind romance, a new home and twins on the way.

What no one knew was that Christy was hiding a secret so shocking it would tear their world apart. 911 response, what's your emergency? My babies, please, my babies! One woman, two lives and the truth more terrifying than anyone could imagine. They had her as one of the suspects, but they could never prove it. You're going to go to jail if you don't come with us right now. Throughout this whole thing, I kept telling myself,

nobody's that crazy. Uncover the chilling mystery that will leave you questioning everything. A story of the lengths we go to protect our darkest secrets. She went bat-shit crazy, shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids, tried to burn their house down. Audio Web presents the Unborn on the iHeartRadio Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi listeners, I'm Sloane Glass, the host of American Homicide, a podcast where we take you across the country to investigate some of America's deadliest crimes. We'll explore how these murders are shaped by their unique landscapes, and in turn, how these tragedies have shaped the fabric of these American communities forever. And you can get access to all episodes of American Homicide, 100% ad free and one week early through the

iHeart True Crime Plus subscription available exclusively on Apple podcasts. So don't wait, head to Apple podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus and subscribe today. We're back. So in 2014, Mehmet Oz was called before a Senate subcommittee to answer questions about his unfounded claims about dietary supplements. Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill went off on him saying, I don't know why you need to say this stuff because you know it's not true. Why when you have this amazing megaphone and this amazing ability to communicate, would

you cheapen your show by saying things like this? And then he just pulled out a wad of money and he just started making it rain all over Congress. Do you know how many houses I have? She pointed out several examples of the things he cheapens his show by saying he had called green coffee extract a quote magical weight loss cure. Recent research has recent research has suggested that long-term use of green coffee extract causes bone density loss in animals

But you are in fairness you're losing weight your bones are lighter that's weight bones are heavy as hell It was everywhere when that came out. It was that literally not just like it's not like bed bath and be everywhere. It was Get like bones. You can fly like a bird. Mm-hmm And again, those are studies in animals But it's the kind of thing where a responsible doctor would say well some studies in animals have shown that this might call bone Did cause bone density loss? So unless you know your weight is a really disastrous health situation and your bone density is fine, I wouldn't recommend this.

Dr. Ross is just saying it's a magical weight loss cure. I mean, he's not wrong. Yeah, not wrong. Yeah. Oz called raspberry ketone, quote, the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. This is a fun one.

First of all, it's all gasoline. Part of why people, well, actually's all gasoline. Part of why people well, actually part of why part of why people are attracted to stuff like this is that like raspberry ketone, that's natural. It sounds like, oh, if I just like getting raspberries, that's going to help me lose weight. This chemical in a natural healthy fruit. Of course, it makes sense that like some wonderful plant based medicine would be able to help me lose weight. Yeah. Raspberry ketones don't come from raspberries They can but it takes 90 pounds of fresh raspberries to produce a single dose

As a result, they are manufactured synthetically. A fact Dr. Oz did not feel the need to explain because again He's really critical of GMOs and it might seem hypocritical to note that raspberry ketones are actually synthetic lab nonsense I And it might seem hypocritical to note that raspberry ketones are actually synthetic lab nonsense I Love when people say things like it's it's natural. It's like I think cyanide is natural There's like there's a lot of like natural poisons out there fucking snake venom is natural The fucking arsenic in the apple juice that he's worried about is natural. Yeah The apple juice that he's worried about is natural. It is possible, based on animal studies, that these ketones may have some ability to reduce or slow weight gain.

But no studies have ever been conducted on how raspberry ketones impact human beings. There have been reports that they increase blood pressure and heart rate in humans. Dr. Oz does not warn about this. Likewise, when Dr. Oz told his viewers that Garcinia cambogia may be the simple solution you've been looking for to bust your body fat for good, he did not also warn them that it can interact negatively with diabetes medications,

pain killers, and psychiatric medications. Oh my God. Why would you need to warn people that? Look, what are the odds someone looking to lose weight has diabetes medications? Zero. What are the odds that someone who has diabetes is sitting around watching Dr. Oz's show? Zero. Yeah.

What are the odds that a middle-class American is addicted to painkillers? Zero. Zero. During the Senate inquiry, Senator McCaskill pointed some of this out and she told Dr. Oz, quote, when you feature a product on your show, it creates what has become known as the Dr. Oz effect, dramatically boosting sales and driving scam artists to pop up overnight using false and deceptive ads to sell questionable products. Yeah.

In the wake of this, which was a fairly bad day on Capitol Hill for him, Dr. Oz released a somewhat contrite statement where he noted, I took part in today's hearing because I am accountable for my role in the proliferation of these scams and I recognize that my enthusiastic language has made the problem worse at times. We're good so far? Yeah, not bad. Pretty good so far. Okay.

Oz added in his statement, to not have the conversation about supplements at all However would be a disservice to the viewer in addition to exercising an abundance of caution in discussing promising research and products in the future I look forward to working with all those present today and finding a way to deal with the problems of weight loss scams God, I yeah, I just amazing. talking about, I'm just asking the question. We have to have conversations about this. You know, a conversation would be noting, for example, green coffee extract causes bone density loss in animals and perhaps be worried. Yeah, that's a conversation.

Well, you and I have had about these things. Yeah, I love it. I love people are like, I'm just asking the question. I mean, I'm not a doctor. I'm a guy who's addicted to an unregulated plant. Oh, my God. Which I just took more of while standing next to my unregulated gun. Yeah, dude, you're living the unregulated.

Not a doctor. Now. Yeah. So Dr. Oz, also making this statement, pointed out that he believed the greatest disservice he'd done to his audience was to not recommend specific products, which had provided room

for a wide industry of shysters to stick his name on their website. So like, oh, I was just saying green coffee extract in a bunch of companies I couldn't verify started selling with my name on it. I should have recommended a specific brand. Yeah. I mean, what I need to do is cut deals with specific companies so that you can only be taking their bone density loss drugs. Yeah. I mean, exactly. Good call.

Fucking amazing. Yeah. So in the wake of this day on Capitol Hill and this amazing response, physicians across the country asked Columbia University in a letter, basically, what the fuck? Why is this guy still on your faculty? Columbia claimed it was because of their commitment to, quote, the principle of academic freedom and to upholding faculty members' freedom of expression

for statements they make in public discussion. Hell yeah, dude. That's like, yeah. They're like anti-cancel culture letter. You know, they're just like, stop trying to cancel Dr. Oz. It's freedom of speech. You have freedom of speech. Yeah. I mean, doctors also are held to different standards than the rest of us. They take an oath. If like your uncle Jimbo says, hey, you know, take some green coffee extract. It'll help you lose weight. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. It might not be good advice, but that's just a guy saying a thing. Doctors are held to a different standard.

Yeah, it's on you if you listen to your crazy uncle Jimbo. It is definitely on the doctor if he recommends you lose some bone density so that you look better in that dress. It's it's it's awesome. It's fucked up. So on April 15th, 2015, 10 prominent physicians sent a letter to Columbia University calling Oz's faculty position there unacceptable and citing his, quote, egregious lack of integrity. The only change wrought by the congressional inquiry and the flood of condemnation from

the medical community seems to be that Dr. Oz started endorsing specific supplements and pseudo medicines. God, he's Alex Jones. He's doing it. He's Jones. He's Jones. It hard. He's so much smarter than Alex, though.

Yeah. You focus it just on the health. None of this nonsense like political shit. Everybody is going to love you and you'll make way more money. Mm hmm. Yeah. A 2018 analysis of his show by the Health News Review found, quote, in the doctor, I show 13 out of 19, 68.4 percent shows had ads relating to general show content.

68.4% shows had ads relating to general show content. 57.9% had specific products mentioned by the host using their commercial name. And 36.3% of shows mentioning products by name named more than one product. They also found that 78% of the medical statements made on the Dr. Oz show did not align with quote, evidence-based medical guidelines. So if those guidelines mattered,

they'd make more money, dog. Half a decade earlier, 46% of his statements are more or less fine. Now it's down to what? Jesus. 22%. Well, so we're seeing again, he met the quality of the, cause again, you're running out of good content.

You only have so much good medical advice you can give when you're doing an hour a day, 175 times a year for fucking 15, 16 years. Eat fruit. Exactly. The actual amount of things that an average person can reasonably do to improve their own physical health doesn't really take that long to explain to you

You know, it's pretty simple stuff and most of us know a lot of it already We know when we're I know that Pounding kratom and coke zero isn't a wise health care decision But you know it and you can you know fucking you don't need a dr. Oz to tell you that you know, you just know You can, you know, fucking you don't need a Dr. Oz to tell you that. You know, you just know, you know, I know that the fact that I bought the hundred dollar entire smoked leg of, uh, of, of pig from Costco, the giant prosciutto leg that you can go, well, I know, I know buying that and not also purchasing, uh, I don't know,

salad in order to have sufficient fiber. I, I recognize that was the poor health decision Yeah, no one tricked me about rice and at no point that I think this hundred dollars worth of smoked ham is the solid Healthcare move, you know For my Q zone Traditional medicine. Yeah, this is really good for all of my kidney meridians I need all the smoke Tams like all my meridians are fucking low right now peaking in meridians, bro Let me fucking tell you my meridians are as hard as a goddamn rock feel my kidneys feel my kidneys

It's just like why is your kidney swollen? The doctor Oz show is still on the air. In 2018, President Trump appointed Dr. Oz to a council on sports, fitness, and nutrition as part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Oh, man. He's still on that council under Joe Biden. Bipartisan baby. Two years later.

Oh, no politician is dumb enough to want to piss off Dr. Oz. You're never going to hear Joe Biden throw it. Well, except for except for Claire McCaskill. God bless her. Yeah. Like she was the only one who had the guts to stand up to Dr. Oz. I think other people did. I'm not an expert on what went down in that congressional thing,

but she was seems to be the main one who was really angry at him, which good on you, Claire. I love that a bipartisan decision is just like, let's share this grifter between administrations. Like good, you know what? Gotta love it. We all agree that you should be able to lie about healthcare as an MD.

Yeah, right. So 2018 is when he gets appointed to this council. Two years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he endorsed hydroxychloroqu the COVID-19 pandemic, he endorsed hydroxychloroquine. Later that year, he endorsed reopening schools, saying, I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in the Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us two to three percent in terms of total mortality. What the fuck?

On such two to three percent of the country, that's barely anybody dying. That's barely hundreds of thousands of deaths. He said 2-3% as if that's not a huge number of people. He's losing his goddamn mind. And it's one of those things, not making a point pro or against gun control either way, but if somebody against gun control said, what, keeping these things legal is only going to cost us 1% of the country. You'd be like, you're a fucking maniac.

You are a dangerous person. But he's like we got it. And he didn't. Yeah. This outraged a lot of people in Oz apologized as he apologized for vaccine hydroxychloroquine. Yeah, he OOPSY daisied it. He claimed to regret that his comments had confused and upset people and basically pointed out the Lancet wasn't saying two to three percent of the country was going to die. It was I think more like two or three percent of like

children or something like get sick and like it was he But the way he phrased it was it's only gonna cost us two to three percent of the country Yeah, I don't care what the actual study. Again, I don't care what the studies. I care what you said to your audience of millions. And also I care about the fact that in any case, that's fucking evil. Yeah. That's an evil thing to say.

Yeah. It's pretty wild to just look at two to three percent of the country as like expendable if it means that my fucking dirtbag ass fifth grader can be Stuck inside in a school all day and listen I get it people with kids they want their kids to go back to school But you can that's easy. You don't say the quiet part out loud, you know, it's one thing to say Hey look living in a society. There's all kinds of Cost-benefit sort of analysis analysis we have to do. Like, right, cars improve a lot of efficiencies in certain ways and people like have them. They're also

going to cost X many lives. You know, we could change these sorts of laws, but it would lead to this sort of problem. You know, we have certain freedoms that may cost lives. And like, to be like that, that's just living in a society. Right. There's no we our society is not angled around absolutely more reducing mortality in every way. And there's a cost to not having these schools open. And it's a very real cost. And like we have to like that's a way to say that. I'm not saying that's the argument I'm making because I'm not.

I'm thinking, no, I don't think we should open schools out until we actually have, I don't know, like 80 percent of the fucking country vaccinated or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, um, but that's a way you could, that's a way you could make that argument and not sound like a gibbering sociopath. And it's weird to like, you know, be like, all right, it was a poor choice of words. And it's like, bro, at this point, saying words out loud to millions of people is your job. Yeah, you're choosing to do the job. You could never work another day in your life

and you would never, you're rich. You don't need to do this. You're choosing to. So go fuck yourself with that explanation. Just fucking fix some hearts already. Stop talking. Yeah, we're getting to that. So today, Dr. Oz works to continue to monetize his brand with his wife and business partner,

who he also writes books with His daughter seems to be getting in on the grift to with books like the dorm room diet Which she wrote when she was in college, I think He is working diet. Yeah free pizza and dick. I'm the dorm room diet Hey, you know if you pour coffee into instant ramen instant ramen. It's an efficient breakfast. I've done that by the way. Not proud of it. We've all been there. Kind of proud of it. It's real good if you add in vodka. He is worth tens of millions of dollars and is not in any danger of being worthless anytime soon. We've talked a lot about the

harms of his specific recommendations and the disinformation he spreads, but at the end of this all, I keep coming back to that 2010 New York Times article, specifically its end, when I think about what may be his worst crime against medicine. Quote, on the stairs at Columbia Presbyterian, apropos of nothing, he began talking about certain Japanese, Sardinian, and Costa Rican populations that live unusually long, and said that their shared trait

was activity, activity, activity. His first column for Time magazine, Living Long and Living Well, ran in a section called How to Live 100 Years. At another point, in his Rockefeller Center office, he said that so many people thrill on being on television because, quote, there's an element of eternity to it. You are storing you. You are taking your life force for that brief moment when you're on camera and you're storing that

for all eternity, which makes you someone who will never truly die. That is a fucking bonkers way of looking at being on TV. That is out of its goddamn mind. He's literally one year away from wanting to be buried with his cats, you know? Like this dude wants some pyramids and some live cats in a casket with him. This is, he's a pharaoh. Yeah.

I'm going to continue the quote. And he described his own investment in television by saying, I've always felt that when I looked at my tombstone, it shouldn't say, Mehmet Oz banged out 10,000 open heart operations. I've probably done 5,000. Am I any better at it than 10,000? He shook his head. It's just a different number on the tombstone.

No, it's not. It's 5,000 other people whose lives you extended. Those are actual human being's hearts. Those are human beings. It's not about like your how better at it. You're already great at it. It's about saving additional lives. My God. That it's that's wild. One of the he has dramatically he still does perform surgery. I think sometimes.

He certainly was in the late aughts because he's a doctor. He just doesn't do nearly as much. He used to do a lot more and he's, he's cut it by more than half the amount of actual heart surgery. And it's the one thing he's good at. I mean, I almost, he's amazing. So one of the things that I should note here is that right now, even with the assumption that every available training position for cardiothoracic surgeons is filled. We are looking at a projected shortage of 1500 cardiothoracic surgeons or 25% of the workforce by 2025. There is a desperate need for the thing that he's definitely one of the best in the world

at a tremendous and terrible need for it. And he has stopped doing that in order to give people bad medical advice that will hurt some of them on TV. And I wanna be really clear here. I am not saying that just because you become a cardiothoracic surgeon, you have to do that until the day you drop. You don't, you can quit.

And that's not immoral. It's not evil to be like, I've done enough. A good friend of mine was a cardiologist for 30 something years and quit to travel around the world as a photojournalist. And I don't think there's anything immoral. You do not owe the world doing just because it's valuable and there are enough people doing it forever. I am not.

And you don't you don't have to quit to do some other valuable job. You can just quit to enjoy your life with your family. I'm not saying that. Yeah. But he didn't quit to be with his family. He quit to give people bad health advice. That he quit to do crimes. Yeah.

He is doing something that should be illegal instead of performing an additional 5,000 life saving surgeries. Right. Yeah. That's evil. Yeah. No, that, that, that is bad. That is, that is definitely immoral immoral to like have the ability.

It's like being Superman and having the ability to save someone from a burning building, but being like, fuck, dude, I'm kind of on my way to do this TV interview. That's going to get me more. Yeah, but I'm going to sell people pills and stuff. Lex Luthor can suck it. You know, I got pills to move. The way that he phrases that is incredibly telling, right? Like it shouldn't say, Mehmet Oz banged out 10,000 open heart operations. Am I any better at it than 10,000? It's like, that's not, I care

that you get better at it to the extent that it improves patient outcome, but like, I don't care. Like the thing that's good about performing 10,000 open heart operations is presumably somewhere near 10,000 people have had their lives extended because of you. And that's amazing. That's tens of thousands of cumulative years you added to the lives of people who are loved and who do things themselves, who do incredible,

like who have their own ways of contributing to society, who have children. It's such a sick way of looking at it. It's really fucked up. It's like I'm already really good at it. So I decided. I want to go get into TV now. It's like, if he, if he'd been like, I, I, you know, I did my car, I performed 5,000 surgeries. Now I want to become an actor. Like, you have that right? Absolutely. I'm never going to say that. I mean, it depends on the movie, but yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. If you're in Michael Bay movies, we might have another talk. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But that's again, what it's not that he's decided he wanted to go into TV. It's not that he decided to go into

entertainment. It's that he decided to do a job to go from doing a job where he was unequivocally saving lives to doing a job where he often gives people advice that could shorten or at least reduce the quality of their life. I mean, I guess he got tired of helping people and was like, you know... Time to make some fucking bank. Yeah, it's not just make some bank, but he's like, man, I saved 10,000 lives. I'm gonna have to kill 10,000 just to fucking net neutral this shit, you know? Yeah.

You know, he's just trying to balance the scales of his good and evil It's so fucking frustrating. Um, I Really dislike this man. Yeah, he's so handsome though, dude. I mean very handsome. He's very handsome He made a lot of money. So that's good You know, he's he's he's out there every day, given, given hope to people who are currently dying of a very, very treatable ailment and saying, nah, dog, put your feet in some hot rice. Put your feet in some hot rice, but.

And see what happens, dude. Just see what happens. You know, like someone's got to be doing that job. It's this fucking thing. Part of the Dr. Oz problem and the part of it that, that he, he is, he is leaning into, but it's not as fault as this thing. That's a broader problem that I've gotten trapped in that a lot of that everyone

who's a public figure is at risk of getting trapped in, um, which is the fact that if you're good at something and also have some measure of fame or popularity, you start to think you can extend your skills to everything. I was in the gym the other day since I'm in Texas with my family and since I'm vaccinated and you know, everyone wears a mask, but I've been going to a gym and my family's vaccinated. It's like, it's the thing we get to do now. Okay. Yeah. You're allowed. Yeah. I've been going to a gym and the gyms have like news programs on, right. And I saw Dr. Oz on and it was Dr. Oz true crime because I

guess Dr. Oz has added a true crime thing where he's like talking about this woman who murdered her kids and interviewing, like the ex-wife of the husband of the woman who murdered her kids and like doing this. And he's like, you don't have any. Why are you doing this? Like, oh, because, because it's popular with the same people who like your show and why, why, like, why not? Why not stick your hand into this thing that is, is, is deeply painful

for a lot of people and make money off of it. Um, why not do it? Because if you're, if you're famous and good at one thing, there's no reason not to do absolutely everything. I, I just hate it. Why not do it? Because if you're if you're famous and good at one thing, there's no reason not to do absolutely everything. I yeah, I just hate it. Yeah, it's especially since it's it's again, he he has the God given skills to actually do good and help people. And he chooses, you know, this shit. And I got to say, I blame his dad. I blame his dad, too. Is that you, Mustafa?

Yeah, son of a bitch. You fucked up, dude. I mean, you did a great job by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and yada yada. But, you know, maybe you should have maybe you should have maybe been more encouraging for him to just maybe, you know, pick one thing and stay with it rather than, you know, venture off into television. I will say at least with the true crime stuff that like, I know he's like, he's a little bit kind of like getting into kind of our territory here with the podcast business. And I don't like that. But I'm glad I don't have a true crime podcast that he's currently cannibalizing if he starts a soprano's one

I will lose my fucking mind if dr. Oz decides one day like I want to do a prestige TV rewatch show for CNN That'll be it dude Oz. You'll be on my goddamn list I don't think his podcast publishers anymore the one that he was doing. I don't see any new episodes. That's 2019 Well, I mean he's he's doing a true crime show. That's that's as close as you get to that to the podcast business And yeah, you know what I'm saying? Those are the number one pods out there, dude pisses me off

My pods Alright guys That's the episode me off. Cast my pods. Alright guys, that's the episode. Do you have any plugs? Yeah. Plug the plugs? My name is Matt Leib and you know I'm on Instagram, Matt Leib jokes. The Gram?

Yeah I'm on the Gram. I'm also on Twitter at Matt lead, but follow me on Instagram And yeah, and if you like the Sopranos Pod yourself a gun. It's odd yourself a gun, baby Well get out there and again find dr. Oz in the street and Sophie What what is the legal definition of incitement? I'm not for legal reasons. I'm not going to answer that question. Alright well, just go out and wander the streets angry and agitated. Yeah. So without any clear

goal. Yeah. Oh okay. Angrily wander the streets agitated with an unclear goal. That's what I want all of my listeners to do. From Audio Up, the creators of Stephen King's Strawberry Spring comes The Unborn, a shocking true story. My babies, please, my babies. One woman, two lives and a secret she would kill to protect. She went crazy. Shot and killed all her farm animals. Slaughtered them in front of the kids. tried to burn their house down. Listen to The Unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes where a crime took place leads you to answer why the crime happened in the first place.

Hi, I'm Sloane Glass, host of the new True Crime podcast, American Homicide. In this series, we'll examine some of the country's most infamous and mysterious murders and learn how the location of the crime becomes a character in the story. Listen to American Homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.