Behind the Bastards - Part One: Dr. Phil Is Even Worse Than You Think And You Probably Think He Sucks

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

Robert is joined by Jamie Loftus to discuss Dr, Phil.FOOTNOTES: https://www.statnews.com/2017/12/28/dr-phil-guests-say-show-risks-health-of-some-addicts/  https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/scaachikoul/dr-phil-mcgraw-mental-health-danielle-bregoli  https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/analyze-this-6395801  https://www.drphil.com/about-dr-phil/  https://www.recordnet.com/article/20021017/a_life/310179982  https://grantland.com/features/dr-phil-wild-houston-tulsa-college-football-game/   https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/scaachikoul/dr-phil-mcgraw-mental-health-danielle-bregoli   https://en.newsner.com/celebrity/dr-phils-ex-wife-describes-her-years-together-with-him/   https://www.drphil.com/advice/dr-phils-ten-life-laws/   https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dr-phil-life-laws_n_5734666  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. To donate some cash to them, you can go to GoFundMe, Diaper Need, and COVID-19 Response. If you just Google GoFundMe, Diaper Need, and COVID-19 Response, it should take you to the fundraiser. You can also find my pinned tweet on my Twitter at IWriteOK. We'll take you right there.

So Diaper Need and COVID-19 Response on GoFundMe. Thank you all so much. Fuck you! That's the introduction. Just fuck you, people who listen and give us an income. Allow us to live a comfortable life. Not you, Jamie. Just the audience. Just the people who support us with their ears.

Oh, yeah. Just out the gate. Fuck them. That's right. What are you going to do about it? You're going to listen to another podcast? Like there are other podcasts? Like you have other options?

Like there's a flooded marketplace of things exactly like what I do that you could just turn to? I don't think so. And don't investigate otherwise. No, please don't search podcasts on Spotify. I feel like what you just said all could have come out of Dr. Phil's mouth at one point. The second the cameras turn off for his show. Well, Jamie, the orca is out of the tank because that is the subject of today's episode. And also your Jamie loft is my guest on the show that this is behind the bastards.

Yes, it is behind the bastards and I'm here. I'm mainly here to bring the Dr. Phil ASMR videos this week. Excited is the wrong word. Dreading is the right word. I'm dreading that, Jamie. You're going to either really love them or really hate them. And I can't figure out what it's going to be. I can't imagine loving them because they involve Dr. Phil.

I think he's going to love them. You know, it's one of those things. We just did the Dr. Oz episodes and Dr. Oz also bad, obviously he was on the show, but you have to respect him because he is a brilliant doctor. Like he's a man who for all of the harm he's done by spreading pseudoscience has performed like 5,000 successful open heart surgeries, which is an achievement, you know, and has patented a bunch of useful medical devices and stuff. He's a person who's made like bafflingly selfish decisions that I don't respect. But as a person, I have to have some level of respect for the things that he has achieved because he's impressive.

Dr. Phil is just a piece of shit. Dr. Phil is just straight up trash. We were talking about this off, Mike. There was some Dr. Drew drama in Los Angeles this week that actually like for once ended well and online bullying like persevered. And Dr. Drew was like nominated to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority like board. And what is, okay, I don't know Dr. Drew. What is what is Dr. Drew do?

I'm assuming he's a nonsense doctor like all of the other doctors we talk about. He may be technically a doctor. I'm not totally sure. I think he's a radio doctor. Oh, that's the best kind of doctor. He also mediates the reunions of Teen Mom and Teen Mom 2 and 16 and pregnant and causes damage to lots and lots of young minds all the time. He technically does have, he is a doctor. I don't know if he's currently licensed, but I know him from VH1 in like middle school where he had...

He's been around for so long. Dr. Drew sex rehab with Dr. Drew. Celebrity rehab presents sober house. Oh, that sounds like my nightmare. Like that sounds like the hell that I would go to is sober house. Oh, no. I could have shortened my description and said he's Adam Corolla's best friend, which is also true. Which is like...

Oh, really? Oh, yeah. No. Yeah, he hosted like a famous radio show called Love Line Forever and Adam Corolla was also on the show and they're close. And so, yeah, he was nominated to serve on the homeless authority board. And it only took about a day where like activists just bullied him into bully people into withdrawing the nominations pretty quickly. And he had a few spicy little comments about it. He was like, I can't...

Like he basically was like, these online bullies are trying to cancel me for not being a good doctor and irrelevant for this job. So, you know, sometimes bad doctors fall. I like... I love to see it. Well, that's fascinating. I'm so happy to have learned about Dr. Drew. But today we're talking about Dr. Phil and it's time to get into the... It's time to have us a Philgasm. Okay.

A magrasm. A magrasm. A magrasm. A magrasm. A magrasm. Yeah. So, Philip Calvin McGraw was born on September 1st, 1950 in Veneta, Oklahoma, about four hours from where I grew up. His father was Joseph and his mother was Anne Geraldine or Jerry is what she preferred to go by.

He had two older sisters and one younger sister. When he was a kid, his father moved the family down to the oil fields of North Texas, which are about as unpleasant a place as I've ever encountered on this earth. Not a good place to just exist. You don't want to, as a general rule, stay away from oil fields. Not nice places. So, his kind of like southern desolation is Phil McGraw's early childhood, which, you know, I can tell you from experience what that does to a kid. And it makes you either a washout or ambitious and angry. One of the two.

You either wind up an alcoholic working on an oil derrick or you do everything possible to escape the desolate south. Anyway, Phil's going to take that second point. I like where you went with it. I like where you went with it. Yeah. I have strong feelings about that part of Texas and that part of Oklahoma. Phil was a precocious child and his parents seem to agree that he basically raised himself. He expressed a hunger for money from a young age and he was coddled.

His mother thought he could do no wrong. Young Phil was the center of attention for everyone but his father, who was himself obsessed with work. The elder McGraw would end up moving the family half a dozen times for the sake of his career. By age 11, Phil was spending summers driving a freight truck owned by his grandfather in Monday, Texas. By age 12, he was flying planes illegally without a license as he traveled with you. Oh my God. Okay. I mean, driving at age 11, not as uncommon as you might think in certain rural parts of the world, still a bit young.

Driving a freight truck is a bit odd at age 11. That was a shark jump. And then driving a plane unlicensed. A license pilot at age 12? Honestly, I looked up Dr. Phil Young because sometimes it's shocking and you're like, whoa, Dr. Phil used to be hot. Not the case here. But there's a picture of him as a kid and now I'm like,

that does look like a kid that would steal a plane. Yeah. He's not even stealing a plane. His dad needs to fly to these desolate airstrips in the middle of nowhere to deliver oil field equipment. Phil goes with him and flies the plane sometime, and my guess is that his dad is just like, I'm taking a nap. You're flying this oil field equipment across Texas. I trust you.

Lay on the bastard. Okay, dad. Okay, dad. Oh. Kyle Dr. Phil looks like adult Chris Cuomo. Whoa. I see it. I see it.

Okay. It's honestly shocking that he was not a bald baby. No, if someone wants to make a comic book, Dr. Phil child pilot, it's pretty decent premise. I've heard worse. So yeah, this is how Phil spends his childhood up until the point when his dad, Joe turned 40 and decided apropos of nothing that he was going to abandon his family and become a psychologist. Wait, hold on. We truly don't have more info than that. I have not found more info than that.

His dad's like, I'm going to become a psychologist. You guys can keep doing your thing. You know, like that's basically how it's set. And so Joe leaves his wife and three daughters behind. I think they stay in Texas and he brings Phil with him to Kansas where the two started a new life together. I don't like the closeness of father and son here. It sounds like, why is it? Oh, I hate it because every time we go over stories like this, you're like, it can't be daddy issues.

Everything can't be just daddy. But then it always is. Yeah, it's interesting. One of the things that's interesting to me is like the ways in which Dr. Phil and I's early background are similar and then diverge. And this is a big divergence point because when I was a kid, my dad left for like a couple of years to work somewhere else. But it was because we had no money. We were at like the edge of bankruptcy and the only job he could get was in New York living on a friend's couch and like working at a radio station so he could send back money to us. So it wasn't like, and like I didn't go with him.

He like had to go alone to New York to support the family and stuff. But it is weird. We grew up in the same area, moved around a bunch when we were little. Our dad leaves, you know, but in Phil's case, he goes with his dad and they just abandoned all the women. Right. Right. Like Dr. Phil's dad is like, you're my wife now. You're my wife now, boy.

My wife pilot. Blimey to blame, Phil. You're my wife now. Dr. Phil, child wife pilot. The pitch is getting better and better and better. It's going to be sold by the end of the episode. I actually just got an email from Netflix and it's a check for $112 million. So we are now contractually obligated to make this show, Jamie.

I would honestly rather do that more than anything else. I know. That would be a dream. Let's leave this life behind. Okay. So we're abandoning podcasts to do that. To do Dr. Phil, child wife pilot. Yes.

I think that would put a lot of positivity back into the world. So they just bail and it's not for financial reasons. I mean, it is. They're poor as shit. His dad wants to go to school and is like, I can't take care of this family anymore. Bye. The way it's been described in the articles I've read. Maybe Dr. Phil could give us a more detailed story, but I have not run across it yet.

Okay. Yeah. Most of the info I have on his childhood comes from a Dallas observer article and they explained the whole abandoning of Phil's mom and sisters as a financial move. Okay. Phil apparently told the Dallas observer, quote, there just wasn't enough money to do otherwise. So we can only feed two members of this family.

So girls, you're on your own. Phil and I are going to Kansas. Phil, okay. Yeah. Extremely, very, very, sounds like a really healthy family dynamic so far. You get the feeling he grew up in a healthy environment. That's true. Healthy families are all alike.

They allow 12 year olds to fly planes. That's how the famous quote goes. That's how Anna Karenina starts. I love that book so much. And it turns out that's the key to statement of the whole thing. How did you just pronounce that, Robert? I don't know. Anna Karenina?

What is it? I was going to let it fly. Yeah, I wasn't. Honestly, I think that had Anna Karenina been a child pilot, maybe she wouldn't have gotten crushed by that train. No, no. And she could have been Dr. Phil Stad's child wife. I actually don't know what happened in that book.

I pretended to read it when I was like 11. I just stared at the page really hard over a course of months. Per the result of a 2006 court case, I am not allowed to read Russian literature. So in more recent post-fame interviews, Dr. Phil claims those early days with his father were a humbling experience. Quote, we were so poor, we couldn't even pay attention. Which is, I think is less a true statement. Not that I'm saying they weren't poor.

I think he just said that because he knows it was a pithy thing. And he makes his whole living off of saying stupid Dr. Phil witticisms. We couldn't even pay attention. And I've heard that a thousand times. I have heard a thousand different people explain their origins that way. So I don't know. Fuck you, Dr. Phil. Be original.

But does it make the moms absolutely lose it? I bet it does. I absolutely bet it makes the moms lose it. The moms love it when Dr. Phil quips. They love it. I read it during the Dr. Oz episode. I noted a couple of times that his audience and the people that he makes money off of his middle-aged moms.

And that that's a great business because they have all the money. Or at least control all the money. Middle-aged moms are one of the most profitable demographics to get in your corner in the entire world. And someone was like, you're being unfairly negative towards middle-aged moms. It's just a statement of fact. Look in the audience of a Dr. Oz show. It's not 16 to 30-year-old men.

It's a bunch of moms. My mom loved Dr. Oz. That's who his audience is. It's not a negative statement. My mom loves Dr. Phil. I don't think that's a negative statement. So if anyone's hearing that, it's not what they're intending to say. That's just who the audience is.

It's the target audience. It's like saying men 18 to 35 listen to Joe Rogan. I'm not even, it is negative to listen to Joe Rogan, but I'm not being negative when I say that. I'm just accurately describing his audience. Yes. Right. Right.

Yeah. Fuck you, Joe Rogan. Doctor, as someone who was raised by Dr. Phil moms, I am fully. And it's like not, I mean, it is the primary demographic. Yeah. At least at the peak. I don't know who's watching Dr. Phil now. No matter your demographic, there's a grifter for you.

Look, I've been honest about the fact that there was a period of time. There was a period of time in my life when I liked John McAfee before I knew about, you know, the murder and the rape and stuff. Right. Like we all, we all have a grifter we're vulnerable to. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You just need to acknowledge it. And in the case of middle-aged suburban moms, it's Dr. Phil and Dr. Ross.

Mine was, I think the grifter that really that got me was Lou Pearlman who made all the boy bands that made me more. Oh my God. I mean, one of my, not my fate, but one of the most legendary. Incredible. Bastards. Absolutely amazing person. Like.

Mr. Blink himself. No, without any sort of joking, like a genius. Just, just has a genius in terms of knowing exactly what a specific age group of people want. Right. It doesn't mean that we were like not smart, but we were clearly targeted by. Yes. Yeah.

The thing we're vulnerable to. Anyway, we're, we're getting off topic, which is fine. Cause it pads the runtime and that's what I do as a grifter is I pan the runtime in order to make more money off of you. Fucking. Sorry. Okay. Uh, shameful.

So yeah. The details that Dr. Phil gives about his childhood, like he gives that kind of pithy. We were so poor. We couldn't even pay attention. But in the interview with Dallas observer, the details he actually gives make it seem like the issue for Phil was less a matter of crushing poverty. Like, I think they were kind of poor, but I think they were like my kind of poor, like, which was not crushing poverty, it was not your malnourished.

It's just, there's no money for anything but the basics, you know, but the basics. Absolutely breaking it. Yeah. Yeah. But you're not like, you know, you're not like in, in, in absolute destitution, you know, like not to exaggerate it, but like you're poor. That's kind of what I think is, is, is really happening. And part of why I think that is because his real complaint about that time in his life

is that he couldn't buy any cool shit quote from the Dallas observer. It didn't help that he was fiercely competitive, he says. And he lacked the clothes and the car to compete for girls. So I think that's more the big thing for him. Right. Like, you're not that poor. You just don't have enough money to impress girls with possessions. Right.

Okay. Yeah. I get that level of poverty. Yes. Yeah. I think most of us had more or less that level of poverty where like, especially like I, I was like one of the poorer kids in a school that was not porous. There were kids in my school who drove BMWs and like I had a beat to shit Ford Taurus.

I'm not complaining. Ford Taurus. I had a Ford Taurus. Like I'm not complaining. I had a car, but like you see the, you see the kids who's like parents are rich and you're like, ah, shit, I feel so poor because they have like a brand new Jaguar. That, that's I think the kind of poor he is. Yeah.

Our school is like the kid with the Ford Taurus was like, oh my God. He has a car. What a cool boy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was just for my senior year, but yes, I did. I did eventually get a car. Um, so thankfully the young Dr. Phil was huge, uh, quickly crossing six feet.

He's a massive man. If you've ever like seen him next to normal sized people, he's a very large person. I forget that. But yes. Yeah. Is he like six? He's like, yeah, he's like an inch or two taller than me. And I think quite a bit broader.

Like he's a big motherfucker. But, uh, but most of that's mustache, Robert. Most of that's a lot of it's mustache now, but when he was younger, he was in good shape and he was, he was very like muscular. And as a result of how big and strong he was, he was a shoe in for the high schools football team. Later recalled quote, I was filled the jock and that was my currency. And by currency, he means that's how he got girls, right?

He didn't have the car. Now, but he was able to like get girls cause he had, you know, he was, he was on the football team. He was tall. He was tall. He was, and he was apparently quite good at football in Phil senior year, his father moved to Wichita Falls to start his psychology practice. Not yet a doctor Phil spent his entire senior year living alone.

He didn't go with his dad this time. He supported himself and he played football because he was like, he, there was a period of time where he might have made it into the NFL. So he didn't want to leave his high school and like disrupt that. He said, quote, it wasn't what you were supposed to do, but I was pretty independent. Interesting. College scouts had started eyeing him pretty early on and he had, it seems like he had a real chance of getting at least picked to play college ball.

He did get picked to play college ball. His dad had gone to the University of Tulsa on a football scholarship and in short order, Phil was picked by scouts for the same college. So he gets a college scholarship to the University of Tulsa. He becomes the captain of the freshman football team and he says he was very good. A lot of articles you'll say were very good. We're going to talk about this in a little bit because his team at least was shit. Like, like not just, not just a bad, not just like not good in the year, but like one of

the all time least successful college football teams in the history of college football. No. Yeah. I'm trying to think of other, there's, that is like such a like celebrity that grows to be evil. I feel like that is a pattern of like, I, I could have been a big sport ball person. That was his Hitler's art school, right? Right.

Right. Right. Right. Like, and you just know that parties, he doesn't let people forget it. Like shit. Yeah. I'm looking up celebrities who played high school sports, Matthew McConaughey. It just seems like not making it big in college sports can potentially a villainous origin

story. I mean, I never had any. I was on the high school. I did like, sorry, I did one year of football and junior high. I never had any chance of, of going pro. And I didn't like football. There was a period of time where I might have been able to like do, do, do well at fencing. I did.

I was in like a special pro. I was pretty, I was pretty good at fencing. That's cool. But no, I got bored eventually. I love that for you. I could see that for you. Yeah. Take it back up.

If you're really tall, it helps. Yeah. But never like, never, never at the college level or anything. So I was, I ran track and junior high, but then I grew up one time and I quit permanently. And to this day, I do not run. I was captain of the varsity basketball team and I'm really, really short. Holy shit. So I had no, so I'm the most athletic of our bunch.

Sophie is the most successful athlete in, in, in this call. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Send pics. Oh, oh, oh, there are. That's great. There are pics.

Jamie, I will personally send them to you. You know, I will say, having watched the video of that guy shot putting a fucking Bobcat, I think that should be the most amazing thing I've seen in such a long time. That was, that was, that, you know, what that was is the greatest example of like quality husbanding that I think I've seen on Twitter. Like, oh my God, that's, that's a, that's a, you did, you did good, man. That's exactly what you're supposed to do. Like that's, that's, that's wholesome masculinity right there is shot putting a wild cat away

from your wife. Wait, that's so, what a hero. Well, and it's also, you know, it's not going to do any damage to the cat. Now he did get out his gun to shoot the cat, but it charged back at the family. And I feel at that point the cat had chosen violence, you know, he gave, he gave the animal a chance to end the interaction. Thank you for that, that fine forensic analysis. That's my, that's my opinion on the by now week's old video of a guy hooking a bobcat

across a yard. It should be fair. He chose violence. Yeah. The cat chose violence. That's my, that's my end statement here. So yeah. Anyway, Dr. Phil, a lot of interviews you'll see he was very, very good, could have maybe

could have gone pro. I don't know how accurate that is. I'm not great at football, but I found an incredible analysis on the sports website grant land about a game that he played in, that his freshman football team played in that is like one of the most famous games in college ball history because of how badly his team did. Um, yeah, uh, Grant land calls it one of the craziest games in NCAA history. For starters, the bulk of Phil's team were like actively dying of the flu while they

played, quote, an especially virulent strain of flu had been cavorting through the Tulsa athletic dorm, somehow overcoming the formidable sanitary standard. Those three words imply. In 15 of Tulsa's 22 starters were shivering feverish wrecks that tried to act energetic, but they were so weak. Tulsa coach Glenn Dobbs, remembered in 1985, my son's Glenn the third and John were on the team. Their eyes were glazed with fever.

The team, the team doctor pleaded with the coach to call off the game, but Dobbs, a former Tulsa star who, because the world just does whatever it wants, had been an icon for the Saskatchewan rough writers of the Canadian football league, refused to surrender. I just never liked backing out. He said afterward Tulsa had two defensive linemen who were well enough enough to travel. One of them passed out before the coin flip. So this game is a fucking disaster from the beginning. So much.

Oh, it's so good. Finally, a sports movie for me. Yeah. Everyone's just puking to death. Also someone named to Glenn the third is involved, like just the funniest fucking thing. Passing out before the game starts. Oh, that is just. And kudos to the Grantland writer.

It's a very entertaining article. I miss Grantland. Yeah. Yeah. By the end of the first quarter, Phil's team was down 14 to zero, which is a significant like they're getting. It's not a great start to a game, but it's not insurmountable. However, by the end of the game, they were down by a record breaking 100 points to six.

Oh my Jesus. Did Phil get any of the points? No, I don't believe so. Not at all. I think it's one of the greatest ass kickings in college ball history. Wow. Like in the entire history of the sport, like Dr. Phil's team got their asses beat almost the worst.

Way to lose, Phil. Yeah. It's like a famously famous ass kicking. So it does like several rounds of like going back to being sad and then going back to being funny and then going back to being sad and then going and finally landing on being the funniest shit I've ever heard. It's incredibly funny. So Dr. Phil brags about this game today saying that it and that football in general helped

awaken in him an interest in psychology by teaching him that people with advantages don't always win. That said, the author of that Grantland article takes pains to point out that there is actually no evidence whatsoever that Phil played in this game. And the facts that do exist from this time make it seem kind of unlikely. I don't know how to, like it was far enough back that there's not any comprehensive way to know for sure, really. But the doubt thrown on to it by this investigation might mean that as a grown ass multi-millionaire,

Dr. Phil lied to David Letterman about playing in one of the worst ass kickings in sports history. And I have no idea what this says about him. Like I don't even know how to analyze that. There's so many levels there, because if he did play in it, you're like, oh, what a... Yeah. Okay. But like, I can see, like if I was, if I played in, if I partook in a famous ass kicking in

a sports history, I would brag about that as an adult. It would be funny, you know? That's fine. You get enough distance from it. Sure. Lying about it, though. Lying about it is baffling. Yeah.

That's like a game of 4D chess I can barely conceive of. I have no idea what's going on with Dr. Phil, but, and for the most part, I do know what's going on with him. This is just baffling to me, because he's clearly a narcissist. It's very strange as a narcissist to lie about this, you know? To lie about one of the greatest failures. Yeah. To just, to lie about just getting, just like fame, historically wrecked.

Anything for clout, baby. Anything for clout, baby means. Speaking of clout, you know who has all of my clout, Jamie? Does it happen to be a product or maybe even a service? It is the products and services that support this podcast. I sacrifice all of my clout to them, like members of the ancient cult of the old ones. Sacrifice virgin babies to Nyerlothep, the crawling chaos. Much like that.

Yeah. Here's some ads for dick pills. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy.

Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. But the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way. He's a nasty shark.

He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories.

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We're back. We're back. We're back. Shipping the old gods, I don't know, might deliver up some of my bodily fluids to a shog off later. Who knows? Who knows? We're talking about Dr. Phil.

Anything can happen. So anyways, after this, at some point, I don't know the exact year, but at some point pretty soon after this disastrous game, because Phil was definitely on the team. At some point after this, Phil had another sports disaster. He went in to tackle a running back and he got hit really hard. And I don't mean just like, you know, sprained something. I mean, he woke up blind. Oh, my God.

The kind of head injury where when you come to your eyes don't work, which is medically speaking bad. I don't think it's allowed. I don't think it's allowed. No, it shouldn't be allowed. It's too scary. Oh, my God. It absolutely, like, I don't know.

I think adults should. I think if you're like 22 and older, you should be allowed to play football. But certainly 18 year olds should not be, nor should they be allowed to join the military, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, sure. He still, yeah, it was the head injury was bad enough. His eyesight came back, obviously, but it was a serious head injury and it ended in

this. There was no chance of him continuing his career after that, right? Like, it's one of those things you like, you don't get to ever play football again because you get hit in the head one more time. That might be fucking it for you, you know, right? Once his eyesight. Yeah. And he still suffers like he's there's after effects of this today.

Like it's it's a lifelong injury. He got really messed up. It's a bad thing to do. Yeah. Yeah, it's bad. Once his sight came back, Phil returned to Wichita Falls to heal and to plot his next move. He decided to put his college education on hold now that he couldn't do a football scholarship. And he decided, you know, the thing to do now, I'm not going to, I'm going to think about

college later. I'm going to make some money now, right? Which is not an unreasonable call to make in the situation. And I'm going to quote from a write up in the Dallas Observer. He worked at a health club selling memberships and wound up owning a partnership interest in that club and a half dozen others. That was typical of the way he did things, says Scott Madsen, who went into the building business with his future brother-in-law.

He is the smartest guy I ever met, a born leader. Even at a young age, he had the insight to figure out how things work. Others took a more damnable view of his business practices. I didn't know of anyone who had a business deal with Phil at the time who felt they came out on top, says David Dickinson, a former friend of McGraw's from Wichita Falls. It's like playing golf from someone who moves the ball around all the time. So how young is he when he gets into business and he's like right out of my store? He's like maybe 20 at the most, like 19 or 20.

And very quickly, he becomes a part owner in the sports club he's working at, becomes part owner in like a half dozen other clubs. So he doesn't have a degree yet of any kind? No, but he's clearly very good at, specifically the thing that Phil is objectively one of the best people in the world at is negotiating. Yeah. He's a very terrifying negotiator. I haven't run into any disagreement about that.

He's got all the grift. He's got all the like the strongest grifters have, yeah. And he's very good at negotiating in a legal manner, which is a separate skill just from grifting, you know, and is honestly like the best kind of grifting because you can't get in trouble for that shit. Yeah. Yeah. If he's willing to go into this game that young, that's so.

He's just, he's wired for it, you know, or at least maybe with a football injury, scrambled his wires and made him wired for it. I don't know. His reality is stressing me out. Okay. Yeah. He's triggering my fight-or-flight response. This is good.

Feeling good. Yeah. That's how Dr. Phil works. He really, really triggers a lot of responses. Yeah. Now, the article notes that when you interview, that Dallas Observer article notes that when you interview a bunch of people who have known Dr. Phil over the course of decades, you tend to get two very different pictures of the man.

One from the people who like him is of an incredibly gifted expert in practical psychology who has a passion for helping people. The other picture you get of Dr. Phil is a, quote, charismatic opportunist who achieved great things by betraying the people closest to him in order to make a quick buck. One of these spurned former friends is Elden Buck, who claimed to the Observer, I put Phil in a couple of oil field deals and everyone pays me but him. Phil is a smart, smart, smart son of a bitch, but he's only out for one thing and that's Phil.

Okay. Phil denies all of this, but it is worth noting as we've just heard that Buck is not the only person with allegations like this against him. He's not even just one of two, but we're going to get to that story in due time. So he's also involved in oil fields down the line? Anything that'll make him money. This is kind of all happening over a period of a couple of years. He starts making money and he immediately reinvests that's money.

He's in a bunch of businesses. I have a good, a very, very close friend who has that kind of brain, who's just always spending off their money into one business or another and I don't know how they do it, but they just are able to keep track of the fact that I've got an investment in this business and through that business, I have an investment in this business and an interest in these other three businesses and those give me an interest in this and this is how all of that. I don't understand it, but it's kind of like being an engineer. Some people have the kind of brain where you can open up like a fucking HVAC system or

like the flight control system on an airplane and know what all of the little cords and all of the lights go and do and how to work all of that. Some people have a brain that allows them to just business, you know? I respect people who use it for good, but holy shit, what an exhausting sounding life. It sounds like a nightmare. I keep all of my money in a pile and I will never have investments like I will never like I keep it in a bank, but like I have no, I have no investments and never will because the idea of investing money is terrifying to me and makes me want to huddle around a

fire with a spear and stab outsiders. I spent all my savings on Dilbert NFTs. Well, that's going to appreciate, you know, Jamie, I've got a good feeling. The only thing they're not making any more of that's a real thing they, the, you know, the Sashi Dilbert guy made Dilbert NFTs and the only difference from a regular Dilbert is that he says fuck in this one and so much money anyways, I would pay good money for a Dilbert NFT where he admits responsibility for the Oklahoma City bombing. I think that would be a good NFT.

If you're listening, Scott Adams, all invested in that one, Dilbert, Dilbert admits to making a 6,000 pound fertilizer bomb and parking it out in front of the Murra building. That's the NFT I want. I can guarantee that Kathy guys, my creator of Kathy comics does not know nor care what an NFT is. And that's why she is, she is really, she is, she's my strength in this world. Stan, Kathy, Stan, Kathy, Stan, Kathy, you know who else I stand, Jamie. Me too.

No one. That was like, it's not time for an ad pivot. He loves to do the like fake ad thing and then he thinks about it and he's like I can't stop myself. He's just so good at it. I mean, you know who I actually stand, who I have an unreasonable affection for and can't be kept at Stetherwide. No, no, I think, I think I have a reasonable love of Lavar Burton as everyone does, right?

It's like a Cappy Bar, you know, it's like loving a Cappy Bar, like it's Lavar Burton, of course. So, Verner Herzog, Herzog is my unreasonable love. Robert, I would love, you should start making Verner Herzog fan cams. I don't know what that means, Jamie. I'm gonna make one of you and you're gonna be horrified. If there, I wonder if Robert fan cams exist. Listeners.

What the fuck is a fan cam? It's, how do I describe a fan cam? It's usually like, it's a short video made on an app, I don't know what the app is, but it's just a series of clips of you and they put a glittery filter over it and there's like a cute song on in the background. I don't think there's a lot of video of me where like you can actually see me. So that might be hard to do. Robert, you would absolutely hate it, my friend.

I know I would. There's enough video footage of you for a fan cam. You need like three clips. Well, all I'm interested of is a fan cam of Verner Herzog diving into a bunch of cactuses because he promised a group of little people that if they made it through the filming of a movie without injury, he would horribly hurt himself by diving into a bed of saguaros from 12 feet up. Is that true?

Yeah. He absolutely did it. And they begged him not to. They were like, please don't do this. Like, we don't want you to hurt yourself. And he said, I made a promise and if I don't fulfill my promise, there's no reason for me to be alive. And then he dove into a pile of cactuses because he's a fucking lunatic and I love him so much.

Wow. Okay. Oh, Verner Herzog. Watch Aguirre, The Wrath of God. So Dr. Phil Robert. Dr. Phil. Yeah. Sorry.

We're off the topic a little bit. So after three years as a business slash con man, Phil McGraw decided to return to the education system to study psychology. He started off at Midwestern University in Wichita Falls where his father had gone and then transferred to the University of North Texas, which is where the people who gave me huge amounts of drugs went to school. I don't think Phil spent his time half a mile outside of campus, downing 100 milligrams of 2CI and 15 to 20 milligrams of 5MEO MIPT and vaporizing DMT, which is probably why

he graduated UNT with a PhD while my friends and I all dropped out of college to go do stupid shit. Anyway. Punk rock. Yeah. Dr. Phil's not fucking punk enough. No, he's not. In his recollection, Phil both hated and excelled at college.

He later recalled, I almost quit every day. The faculty just jacked with you all the time. I remember telling one professor, either kick me out or get off my ass. He did succeed in impressing other professors, though. His mentor at UNT was Dr. G. Frank Lawless, who still considers Dr. Phil, quote, by far the most brilliant psychologist I ever worked with, which is meaningful praise. But also we are talking UNT here. You know, we're not talking like one of the famous psychology schools in the country.

Not, not, not a nothing compliment, but not like a doctor, not like people saying Dr. Oz is the best heart surgeon ever, you know, because that motherfucker's working at Columbia, right? They know from heart surgery. Right. Okay. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not throwing shade at Frank Lawless.

I'm just saying, I don't think Dr. Phil is the most brilliant psychologist ever to exist. I haven't, I haven't gotten past the fact that Frank Lawless sounds like a made up person. That sounds like a cartoon character. I'm assuming he's Zena's father. Um, so McGraw got his doctorate in 1979 and returned to Wichita Falls for reasons that are impossible to explain any, any person who returns to Kansas. I just don't, I don't understand.

He started a business partnership with his dad and together the two veered their practice towards treating the mental ailments of the rich and socially prominent circulating among country clubs to cater to doctors, lawyers, bankers and their wives. One of Dr. Phil's, Phil's friends later claimed, quote, Phil moved right into the money circles. If there wasn't a buck in it, he wasn't much interested. So, you know, that's, that's the, that's the field he gets into is, is dealing with like rich people who are neurotic or whatever. Okay.

So he comes to being a charlatan early. Yeah. I mean, you know, I, at this point, again, if you're grifting rich people, I don't care. Who cares? Yeah. I find it interesting for an off week, but I don't consider that evil behavior, right? They have too much money, whatever. He specialized in cognitive behavioral therapy, which Phil at least claimed was a cause and

effect therapy that treated thoughts and behavior the same. Quote, people would come in and say, I had a hard childhood, therefore I am not doing well as an adult. A Freudian would say, let's work through your childhood. I would say that's fine, but right now you are an adult, you have a choice to stop yelling at your kids. I've done, I've done CBT. Yeah.

That's not, that doesn't sound bad. Right? Like that is a reasonable take, which is like, okay, it's fine to like, you know, work through a difficult childhood, but you can't be shitty to your kids just because you had a bad childhood. Right. Like past trauma doesn't excuse current bad behavior. Yes. Perfectly valid statement.

Absolutely. And this kind of no nonsense approach was very popular with some of his clients. I can see how it would have been useful in a number of cases, but Dr. Phil himself admits that he was quote, probably the worst marital therapist in the history of the world. I was teaching what they taught me, but I was real impatient. Everybody was getting divorced. The way he relates it, realizing the shortcomings of his education, convinced Phil to seek out less traditional ways to practice his profession and to market it.

And I should note here as an aside that during this period, Dr. Phil got married and was briefly with a woman before cheating on her repeatedly and then leaving her. Oh. Yeah. So anyway. Well, maybe he should have been a little more patient, maybe he should have taken some of his own medicine. Yeah.

I mean, he, he does. I mean, to be fair, he admits he was a bad marriage therapist. So I can't call him like a hypocrite if you're saying I was a, I was a shitty husband and a shitty marriage therapist. That all scans. Right. You know, like, um, that's, yeah, he's being honest here. So we won't belabor the point.

Okay. Yeah. He started holding pain clinics, weight loss clinics and executive, giving executive recruiting advice and even expert legal testimony for court cases who's like an expert witness. Yeah. And he's like, for court cases, right? Like you need someone to come in.

You know, you have like somebody who's claiming like, oh, you know, I can't be held responsible for this because I'm, I, you know, like mentally ill or whatever, like, you know, not guilty by reason of insanity. He comes in and he's like, yes, that's valid or no, that's not valid, depending on who pays him. You know. So just a general mental health professional. Yeah.

Yeah. It's the kind of, we just, we just finished the Chauvin trial. You know, we had all these kinds of use of force experts. There's a bunch of people in different fields whose main job is to take that, that expertise in another field and testify about it in court because it's relevant, right? You have like engineering specialists who are like, I'm going to go testify about this bridge that collapsed to either defend the people who made it or explain how irresponsible they were, whatever.

Like that's a whole, there's a whole industry. Dr. Phil gets into the providing. There's a lot of money in that industry too. There's a fuckload of, you can get real goddamn rich doing that. Yeah. Well, yeah, especially if you're willing to lie about the area of expertise. Yeah. And by the way, lawyers listening, I will testify as an expert witness on literally

anything as a certified reverend doctor in the state of New Jersey. My purview is wide. So you know what, 12 grand an hour. The podcast is just going to disappear one day and it's big as you're in court 25 days. Oh, the instant. I'm fucking done. You know, like fuck this podcast. I'm going to go lie under oath about, I don't know, whatever.

Anyway, um, Dr. Phil started, yeah, uh, holding, you know, he, so he started, he gets into like the whole, the business of if I really want to make money at scale as a psychologist having individual, even if they're rich, individual clients, isn't the thing to do. I'm going to do a bunch of clinics on like dealing with pain, dealing with weight loss, you know, recruiting people I'll do like, so he gets very quickly into the, I'm less about helping people and more about making money as a psychologist in 1984. He meets Thelma box, an insurance and real estate agent from Graham, Texas, who asked him to go into business with her to create a brand new motivational seminar.

Now we're talking again, like the seventies eighties, which is the golden age of motivational seminars. That's when this whole thing really explodes. Motivational seminars are basically short term colts for two to five days, uh, several dozen to several hundred to sometimes even a couple of thousand people will pack into an auditorium where a charismatic front man and a handful of his buddies will coach them usually by hyping the room up using simple crowd work tactics to make people feel temporarily elated and tricking them into having like cathartic experiences and thinking they've

learned something. You know, um, that's the whole idea have people get like people, the mania of a crowd kind of going make people cry or laugh and think like something significant has happened. That's probing personal questions in public in front of a bunch of people. It's a whole big grift. Yeah. Thelma box was a, well, I don't know, grift. I think a lot of people just like them.

I've known people who like admit that they never got anything longterm out of it, but just enjoy the experience. And I guess if that's your thing, it kind of depends. Whatever. Yeah. Some people are just like, they're like, yeah, I know Tony. Well, Tony Robbins is maybe not the best to be helpful. Well, again, this person's like basically full of shit, but you know, I had a couple

hundred dollars to burn in a weekend to burn and it made me feel good. You know, I don't care. I guess if that's your thing, we all have joy where you can get it. Yeah. Every, there's a lot of people who liked it. There's people who like to climb the ice filled sides of mountains with crampons and fucking like Pytons and stuff. And a lot of them die.

There's people who like to do cave diving, which is the deadliest thing you could possibly do to relax. So like, I don't know, people do shit. I don't care. But most of the people doing these seminars are actually like people at some kind of like crisis point in their life, having a difficulty and that, that's, that's the problem with it. And it's like, it depends on how you sell it too.

Like if you're like promising, oh, if you come this weekend, you're going to leave and make a million dollars in the next, you know, back, back. There's varying degrees. There's varying degrees. Some of them are just like, I'm going to make you feel good about yourself so you can go out and attack the world. And I guess that's kind of less problematic where it's like, okay, like whatever, you know, it's basically expensive church.

Fucking luck. Okay. Yeah. Like you will not make me not hate myself friend. Better men than you have tried. So, uh, Thelma Box, um, who, you know, his Phil's friend is a huge fan of these kind of motivational seminars. She'd done all the big ones, Zig Ziglar, actual guy out there.

Uh, you can find his books at any given estate sale, uh, Dale Carnegie. You can also find his books at any given estate sale, uh, Tony Robbins. You can also find his books at any given estate sale. All the estate sale greats. She does their seminars with like boogers on the side of the books. Yeah. Most of her classes had been focused on, uh, her career, like they'd been like focused on helping salesmen, right?

Cause that's a big subset of this industry. She sold insurance in real estate. So they'd been conferences to help real estate and insurance salesmen sell better. Uh, box felt that there was a market for a seminar focused instead of financial stuff on personal growth, on how to actually be a better person. Now box had gotten to know Dr. Phil because her son had hired him to renegotiate a bunch of bank loans. She decided Phil was the best negotiator she'd ever seen.

Quote, he has a God given gift, a combination of charm and charisma that can mesmerize a room full of people. And again, people disagree about a lot of stuff about Dr. Phil, nobody disagrees about this part. He's apparently just an incredible negotiator. Um, so she, she decides he's going to be a great front man for this life improvement seminar she wants to host. Now her initial plan had been to lead a success seminar for single women, but McGraw pushed

back against this. He didn't want to limit himself to just female customers. Instead, the, uh, the plan that he made was for bought or instead he was like, we should do like a general like life improvement for everybody. Like come here and I'll, I'll help you deal with whatever things are holding you back in your life. Right. Like that's kind of how Phil, Phil innovates the pitch.

Um, now initially the plan that box had fronted was for box and Phil to be 50, 50 partners in this venture. But right before they started going, yeah, exactly. Right before they started going, Dr. Phil demanded that he was going to walk. If she didn't bring his dad in as an equal shareholder, um, yeah, bringing daddy into it. Yeah. And this, this was a negotiation tactic from box quote, getting his dad involved would

give Phil control. I didn't want to be a minority owner, but he threatened to do the seminars without me. Now since box was not a doctor and she'd already given Phil all of her ideas, she didn't feel like she could do the seminar without him, but he could do it without her. She was kind of in a tight spot here, so she agreed. She claims that she basically, yeah, he's the guy he is. She claimed she built the, um, the, the curriculum of the program from the ground up, designing most of the games and all of like the different like worksheets and shit you had to do.

And basically in fairness, like, I don't think box is a great person. She's taking all of the information for this from other seminars she attended and is just modifying them enough to avoid plagiarism grifting the grifter and the grifter never likes that. And she gets fucked over by Phil, but like, I don't particularly like her either. So I want to take that negotiation tactic and apply it to the standup comedy world. And I'm like, all right, I know that you're supposed to be featuring for me, but actually my dad is going to be opening now and so it's going to be my dad, then you, you'll be doing

a shorter set. I will then be doing five hours like that. Oh, that would be so fun. Oh, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm excited for that for you, Jamie. Thank you. But you know what isn't exciting? What is an exciting life without the products and services that support this podcast? Absolutely.

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I hope you all spent money because this whole fucking wheel of blood doesn't keep turning if you don't put money into it, people. You know? Yeah. That's how it works. Yeah. That's how it works. Fine.

You want this to fall apart? No. Yes. Anyway, so yeah, the basic idea of these seminars that Box mostly cooks up and Phil is supposed to present is to teach people how to find out what they want from life by making them more accountable, by expressing vulnerabilities, stripping away self deception, which all just means like making people cry in a big room surrounded by other people. You know?

That's the goal. Right. That's the goal. Yeah. With no connection to the outside world and just gaslight them into believing something that they don't. Short-term cults, which is the kind of cult I'd like to do because it does sound exhausting having to like every time I watch my favorite TV show, which is the Waco TV show where they

made David Koresh have incredible cum gutters. 50 minutes, 40 seconds before editing, before Waco. It seems like it's exhausting. We all love David Koresh, but my God, the man had to put in a lot of work just to keep a cult going. It just doesn't seem worth it. Where to begin with that sentence? Short-term cults.

If I could just do a limited Waco five or six times a year over the course of four days, that seems much better. It's like a juicing. Yeah. It's a juicing of the spirit. You're just left like you feel like you're better off. You're probably not. It doesn't matter because you can sleep for three days.

Yeah, Sophie, take out a podcast idea, The 40-Minute Waco. I think we can make a lot of money with this. Anyway, back to Dr. Phil. What made this seminar thing that he launches with Box Special is the group dynamic, getting a hundred or so people together in a room crying and sharing stories and having the kind of addictive cathartic experiences that make seminar hosts rich people. Phil and Box were good at it, and Dr. Phil instantly gained a reputation as a magnetic host.

One attendee recalled, quote, his voice was mic'd and he sounded godlike. I watched powerful men crumble as he questioned them. He knew just the right buttons to push. Wow. It's not that he's a great psychologist is that he is an incredibly intuitive man who understands people, which is why he's a good negotiator. He does have a great voice. I'll give that to him.

He does. Yes. Yeah. He knows how to manipulate people, right? He's a great manipulator and that you can make a lot of money doing that. That's the most dangerous trait in the world is understanding people, but just not caring what happens to them. Yes.

Yes. I understand people, but care about what happens to them, which is why I tell them to buy machetes and bolt cutters and play more anti-personnel minds. Yes. Definitely saving lives. By the way, when you're ordering your Claymore anti-personnel line, use promo code BASTARDS for 15% off if you buy four or more. Claymore.

Oh. Fuck anyone in front of you. What? Sophie. Robert. Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil. Okay.

Yeah. So this seminar series was called Pathways and it became hugely popular. For a while they were making fucking bank and the whole process of doing this awoke in Phil or at least accelerated a deep desire to get on TV. He started pushing for his own talk show, schmoozing with a Hollywood producer who made the mistake of attending one of his seminars. Phil succeeded in talking said producer into filming a pilot episode of a show where three people went through Dr. Phil's training and told their stories of like, you know, how

it had helped them. Okay. The show sounds incredibly boring and clearly it was not picked up. Now over his years with Pathways, McGraw developed into a talented showman. One of his coworkers, David Dickinson, later recalled, once he got in front of the room, it didn't take long to feel the power. He loved being godlike and worshiped. The only reason it didn't become a cult is because Thelma wouldn't let it.

Yeah. Wow. Okay. He really does sound like, uh, like chaos Frazier. Yeah. Chaos Frazier. Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Phil was on Frazier, for all you Frazier had, Dr. Phil was on the show, the episode The Devil and Dr. Phil. I mean, the thing is, if you actually Frazier was a big show for my family growing up and so like while my mom was dying, we watched a lot of episodes because, you know, there wasn't a lot that she could do and it was kind of a thing that was nostalgic for all of us. Yeah. But one of the through lines of the series is that Frazier is not a good psychologist.

They're like, not a good psychiatrist. Like he's bad. It's like, that's why he's on the radio. Yeah. He's a bit of a drifter too. Yeah. Niles is supposed to be good. Yeah.

Yeah. Niles is competent. It's problematic, definitely some stalking behavior from Niles. Oh, yes. Niles is also canceled, but... Nobody on that show is a good person, but John Mahoney, the only good cop Frazier's dad. That's absolutely true and not even Eddie is safe from...

No. No. From cancellation and honestly, not a good cop, John Mahoney admits to lying on the stand in order to get a man incarcerated during an episode of Frazier. It's just like an offside comment. Really? Yes, he absolutely does. I forgot that.

He's just such a damn charismatic actor. I can't stay mad at the man. So by the late 1980s, pathways had moved to Dallas, where each year more than a thousand people would pay $1,000 each to attend a single weekend event with McGraw. That's a million bucks in a weekend. Jeez. Again, great money in this. Yeah.

Dr. Phil is, I don't know if he's a millionaire at this point, but he is well off at this point. Now, he unfortunately, his dad is involved in the whole thing and Dr. Phil never had a great relationship with his father. I think he was just kind of using him to get control of the thing, but he and his dad don't get along. They're both egomaniacs and to make matters worse, the older Dr. McGraw was basically just kind of there to cash a check.

When he would show up on stage, you'd be like erratic and kind of say nonsense and not really help the business at all. So worse than nothing. Worse than nothing. The two men started to hate each other, which a number of employees noted as somewhat hypocritical. Quote, come on. Here is a guy who was running a relationship seminar and he doesn't speak to his own father in the training room for years.

He didn't walk his own talk. That is a fair hypocritical criticism. Fair point. That's hilarious though. And while Dr. Phil's relationship with his dad kind of went to shit, his relationship with Thelma Box, who had founded the program that made him rich and developed its curriculum, got even worse. The Dallas Observer writes, quote, The McGraw and Box were partners for more than seven years

and friends for more than a dozen. His treatment of her didn't seem much better. On November 16, 1992, Box received a faxed memo from McGraw informing her that he had made a tentative deal to sell his interest and pathways to Midland philanthropist Steve Davidson. McGraw was ready to move on, his father ready to retire. That's why his father had sold his one-third interest, the memo informed her, to a Wichita Falls businessman.

Of course, the new partners, quote, Understand yours and my relationship and know that I am committed to you as a friend and associate and expect fair treatment. Basically, he sold me down the river, says Box, who recalls having heated discussions with McGraw about either selling her own pathways interest or buying him out in the two weeks prior to the memo. Phil and I hadn't been getting along. He stopped talking to me and I knew we couldn't go on that way. What he had neglected to tell her, she says, is that he had engineered this corporate takeover

scheme by actually selling his interest more than a year earlier. On October 15, 1991, he signed an agreement for the sale of his pathway stock for $325,000. I absolutely told her I was selling, McGraw says. What she didn't like was who I was selling to. You can take whoever's word you want on this, but the author of that article was giving a memo that McGraw sit to the buyer of his stock in which he agreed, the buyer agreed that the sale would be kept confidential from everyone, including Box. I'm going to go ahead and say that Phil is the liar here.

He basically knew he wanted to sell out early when his stuff was worth more than hers would be, with only a third of it left, she's not going to get as much money for it. He lies to, she's trying to buy it for him for a year after he's already sold it and he's just stonewalling her like, yeah, it's a shitty way to treat a business partner. It absolutely is. Yeah. It's like, it's hard to care about anyone involved in this, this whole situation, but he does.

Yeah. Like the party who wronged her. Yeah. And he acknowledges that the material from his first bestselling book was basically lifted entirely from the pathways curriculum, but he has never acknowledged that Thelma Box actually wrote the curriculum he based his bestselling book on. Oh, and they definitely didn't mention whoever Thelma Box stole it from. No.

No. Again, that's the thing. Right. The point is that he is a con man, not that she is particularly a victim here. You know? Right. I don't care about Thelma Box. In 1989, Dr. Phil was living and working in Wichita.

He keeps going back to fucking Kansas, enjoying his pathways money and working as a psychologist. One of his patients was a young woman who he started and maintained a, quote, inappropriate dual relationship with. Again, that means dual. Yeah. He is her, he is her doctor and he is fucking her. Oh, don't fuck your doctor. Come on.

Yeah. Shouldn't be doing that with the patient you're providing psychiatric care to. Definitely. Don't fuck your doctor. Kind of a no, no. But also don't fuck your doctor. He then made the relationship even more inappropriate when he hired her part time while she was still his patient and lover, which is so many conflicts of interest.

What? No. That is, you got to give the man credit for really going out of his way to do the most unethical version of that thing he could. Like. You're right, Robert. I do got to hand it to him. Yeah.

Critical support to Dr. Phil for managing the fucking, the fucking, I don't know, what are you, the trifecta, I guess. I will not. So my spirit is worn down. I'll hand it to him. Definitely. Dr. Phil considers this transgression to just have been a misdemeanor. But the journalist from the doubt behind the, the journalist who wrote that Dallas Observer

article looked into the situation. He found the woman Dr. Phil had the relationship with and he found it a lot more besides and it's pretty fucking sketchy quote. In 1984, she was a college student returning home after her sophomore year depressed, lonely and suicidal. I was emotionally abused as a child, she says, and suffered from low self-esteem. When McGraw began treating her, she says, he became fully involved in her life, demanding to know with whom she spoke, when she went to bed at night, what she did that day.

If I was depressed or anxious, his first question was, why didn't you call me? Every time I felt bad, he insisted only he could fix me. When she wanted to spend the following summer working for a professor at the Houston University she was attending, he persuaded her to work in his biofeedback lab in Wichita Falls. He kept me totally dependent on him, she says. So that's textbook abuse. That's just literally textbook abuse. Yeah.

Yeah. It couldn't be clearer. I hate it. I hate it so much. On so many levels too, like on multiple levels, God, that's fucking terrible. It's really bad. It's really... He's a bad person, Jamie.

He's just a real bad person. And he's your employer, like fucking hell. Not to be complimenting Dr. Oz, but by this point in the Dr. Oz story, he's performed thousands of open heart surgeries. Again, Dr. Phil, they're both grifters. Dr. Phil never does a single good thing, like to even the scales at all. He's just a monster. Right.

And you get the feeling, Dr. Oz, I have never heard a complaint that he's abusive in his personal relationships. People mostly... I've heard reports that he's kind of a narcissist, but I've never heard that he's like a monster. Dr. Phil's a monster, you know? I'd make a fancam of him already. I don't know. He's a useful comparison.

I just really hate Dr. Phil. Yes. The formal complaint this woman filed led to a decision from the psychology board that Dr. Phil's practice would have to be supervised for a year. Before that time came up, he quit his practice and moved to Dallas to start a new company, courtroom sciences incorporated, or CSI, with his neighbor from Wichita. His job was basically to use his psychology knowledge to help lawyers pick jurors. He loved the work, particularly the adrenaline that came from the high stakes of a court case.

Dr. Phil's company was a hit, and his clients soon included every major airliner on Earth, three TV networks, and dozens of Fortune 500 companies. Before long, it came to include Oprah Winfrey as well. God damn it, Oprah. No! Yeah. I mean, like, you know it's coming, but I just wish it took longer. Why, Oprah and airlines?

Mm-hmm. God. Yeah, the two sacred things in our society, Oprah and the airlines. I want to know, every single time Oprah comes into the discussion, I am like, where was Steadman on all of this? Where does he— Yes, Steadman. What were you fucking doing?

Steadman, where is—because Steadman writes books that are alleging to be about something but are actually about nothing, but he's nice, so I don't care. Yeah. I hope that Steadman was like, something's not right, Oprah, and she was like, I'm not listening to you, Steadman. I'm assuming that's how the relationship works. She was like, I'm going to make so much money, an outrageous amount of money, Steadman. Steadman, quiet.

We're getting a yacht. I will be able to clone you when you die, Steadman. That's how much money I'm going to make off this man. Maybe that's what sold him. Yeah. I used to do little fan drawings of Steadman, Graham, and the barefoot contestess husband hanging out. That's very unsettling, Jamie.

Yeah, they would just be like sharing an umbrella anyways. So Oprah had made the questionable decision to do an episode of her show on the dangers of disease in the American beef supply. A bunch of Texas cattlemen sued her for fraud, defamation, and just hurting their businesses. Now, I have no idea who's in the right here, and I really don't care. The case looked like it to be going badly for Oprah until she brought in Dr. Phil to be a part of her trial team. He instantly recognized her as someone he could make money off of, and he set to work

charming her. Phil did his job. He coached her and the defense team in how to respond under questioning. And he won Oprah's adoration. And to his credit, it seems like he did a good job because she was exonerated. Oh, wow. And after the case ended in her favor, she did a verdict episode of her show from Amarillo, Texas, where for the first time, she introduced Dr. Phil McGraw to a national audience.

She called him one of the smartest men in the world. No. She was so impressed that she added that he was like literally the most intelligent man she'd met in her 12 years of talking to medical experts. She said she wanted to share his brilliance with the world. Yeah. This hyperbole is going to get you. And we are we are going to talk about where this hyperbole gets all of us in part two

of our epic series, Dr. Phil. What a what a dick. Is that the subtitle of this? Perfect. Fuck. Fucking a, Dr. Phil. Come on. Hell.

You're a dick. Could you not? Could you not? Could you just go back to football? I feel like one more head injury could really solve a lot of our problems as a country. The thing is like that every single time you're like, well, goddamn, I bet that if this whole football thing had gone different, the world would be a lot less. Dr. Phil.

Yeah. I don't even necessarily want his football career to have gone. Well, if he just got hit 20 percent harder, you know, that would have been enough for me. Okay. Okay. You know what? I see your point of view.

Yeah. Anyway, Jamie, you got any pluggables you want to drop? Yeah. Just the usuals. You can listen to Bechtel Cast, the beta podcast, and my year in MENSA on iHeartRadio, and then I have a new podcast coming up about Kathy Comic in June that Sophie is producing. I'm excited. Check out Jamie's erotic Kathy podcast.

I assume it's erotic. Is that correct? No. I mean, it's very, you know what? I wish that Kathy was having a lot of sex, but you can't do that in the newspapers. Not then. I mean, she doesn't need to be having sex for the podcast about Kathy to just be like the fundamental, the fundamental arrows of Kathy is so overwhelming, you know?

Yeah. Nice. It's called Gus White and they're still time. They're still time. They're still time. I'll let her know. Fix it in post. It's going to be an erotic podcast.

Can you make it hornier, Kathy? Just like 12% anyway. I hope the rest of you have a day that's 12% hornier. We'll be back Thursday. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. Getting inside his hearse was like a lot of guns.

But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure, he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space?

Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass, and I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based

on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.