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

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

Robert is joined again by Jamie Loftus to continue to discuss Dr, Phil. 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. 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. To donate some cash to them, you can go to GoFundMe, DiaperNeed, and COVID-19 Response. If you just Google GoFundMe, DiaperNeed, 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 DiaperNeed and COVID-19 Response on GoFundMe. Thank you all so much. Hello?

I'm just behind the bastards, a podcast that... Robert, you just sounded like a haunted house. Yeah, I don't know. I never come into this show with a plan. I write 10,000 words a week to do this show, and then I consistently just completely fuck the introductions. I think it's nice. I think it's a fun brand consistency.

That's our Robert, people are thinking. That's our Robert. It's easy to have a consistent brand when your brand is being like a brain-damaged drug addict who is incapable of doing anything but writing long essays about bad people. Simple brand. I think that's... You're being reductive, but also when people hear you say things like that about yourself, they go, that's our Robert.

I go, oh, my son, so pure. So humble. So probably shouldn't be trusted with large machinery. Definitely not. You know who else should be trusted with large machinery? Because of the horrible head injury. Dr. Phil. Oh, okay. I thought that was you introducing me.

I was like, this is really me. No, you're Jamie. I would trust you with heavy machinery, although you don't have a driver's license, do you? I don't have a driver's license, but it hasn't stopped me from driving. Hell yeah. Yeah. Well, good for you, Jamie.

I could probably get a driver's license if I really want to do. I just don't want to. That's not true. I've failed the test several times. The key thing about cops, Jamie, and this is some free advice for all of you out there, they're never ready for you to just tuck and roll, you know? As long as you're driving a cheap car, if they start to pull you over, just tuck and roll and then fucking book it.

I guarantee you, they will not be ready. Yeah. I like it. They're just not going to be ready. Anyway, we should probably talk about Dr. Phil some, huh? Sure. Yeah, let's do it. Probably chill out with our fill out.

I need to go, actually. What if I just log out of this? This has been the final episode of Behind the Bastards. I'm so sorry. All right. Yeah, let's chill out with our fill out. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Just a big old pudgy, pudgy bald-headed fill just flopping around. Yes, with a nice moustache. Not even flopping around. Like a skink on a hot rock. Okay. Later that year. Dr. Phil helps Oprah out and like saves her bacon and she brings him on her show and does her verdict episode.

What was her bacon in that statement? Money? She was getting like sued for a lot of money and defamation and shit. Like it was potentially something that would have really damaged her bottom line. I was like, I don't know this lingo. Okay. So Dr. Phil later that year would become a regular part of her show. And this was part of a pivot in Oprah's show where she went from like doing a normal talk

show to what she called Change Your Life TV. Yeah. The goal of Change Your Life TV was to take the experience people had in Phil's seminars, the very public crowd influenced catharsis of emotional change and put that shit on television for everybody to watch. Mostly this involves Dr. Phil confronting people aggressively about their flaws. So they would cry and say they learned something. And this is Dr. Phil explaining his methodology.

In order for people to change, there has to be a dramatic event. I think coming on the Oprah show as an event in itself is a watershed occurrence in people's lives. They get told the bottom line truth about where they are. And in that environment, I don't think they will ever forget it. If you embarrass people on national television, they remember. I mean, that's, you know, that's not untrue. Not untrue.

Okay. Okay. Accurate. Dr. Phil. Accurate. Jesus. Okay. Yeah.

So. So he's really like heading into the villain years. Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's all, I mean, he's been in villain territory this whole time. Right. So on Oprah's show, Dr. Phil focused on clients whose problems were fit things he could justify yelling about to them or yelling at them for.

Huh. So in the case was a husband who was verbally abusive to his wife, calling her obscene names. Phil could not just condemn the man. But he like didn't just condemn the man. He made the man's wife tearfully recount everything he said to her on TV. So like he's yelling at this guy for being a dick, but he's also demanding that this woman like in detail explain every horrible thing her husband said about her to millions of strangers.

Right. The classic air out the worst thing that's ever happened for ratings for someone else. I don't think is great. You know, I don't think that's great behavior would be my, my take on it. Not a psychologist, but Phil isn't really a psychologist either. So Phil then after making this woman laboriously explain the horrible things your husband said to her, got to help provide some of his own homespun wisdom. In this case, he told the wife, you taught him how to treat you.

Now, this is a variation of one of Dr. Phil's life laws for people to follow, which he published in his plagiarized bestselling book, Life Strategies, quote, No. We teach people how to treat us own rather than complain about how people treat us. My mom has a book, Robert. Did she blame herself for people being shitty to her? Just for until about 2008. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Life strategies, self matters, the ultimate weight solution. God, I hate all of his titles. Yeah. We had the relationship rescue. We had that. It wasn't on the main shelf, but it was in the house.

It was in the house. It was somewhere up in there. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Did it, did it rescue your relationships? Absolutely not. I think what we got, we got more out of John Edwards. Do you remember him or John Edwards?

Oh, yeah. Talk to the dead guy? Yeah. The one who would like record people in the audience talking about the dead people they wanted to hear from and then walking out and being like, uh-huh. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That was a fun bridge.

I mean, it also, but also a traumatizing one. They're all traumatizing. They are all traumatizing grifts. That's what makes them so satisfying. Wow. Wow. We all learned a lesson, didn't we? No.

No, we didn't. So what's he up to? What's he do then? All right. So Dr. fucking Phil. Um, so I, I want to talk a little bit more about these life laws that he, that he lays out in his first book, because this is a major reoccurring theme, especially an early Dr. Phil, like people will, he'll, he'll critique people by explaining which life law they violated,

like the one where you're responsible for other people treating you shitty because we teach people how to treat us. Um, which is like an inversion of the truth, which is that if you're like abusers and predators are good at spotting your vulnerabilities and taking advantage of them, right? And so you need to be aware of your own vulnerabilities because you need to be aware of how dangerous people might take advantage of you. That's the non-toxic way of framing that. The toxic ways.

Hey, you taught him to be like that. Like, no, you didn't. He saw that you had this vulnerability and he took advantage of it. That's a fair way to put it. Yeah. That's one of the most abuse, abuse of tactics in the book. Like, well, actually it was your fault. And if you weren't so weak, this wouldn't have happened to you.

And he's like, go fuck off and die. I want to try this logic with like crimes. Like the next time I'm caught speeding, like, look officer, you taught me how to drive this car that way. Like by, by having the road be this straight and maybe this drunk, you kind of taught me to speed. You know, I will say that every time I tried to teach my dog something that is, it's a very low

stakes version of that. They're like, well, didn't you teach him? Did he get poop on your floor when you don't feel like standing up? And I was like, yes, I guess I did. Christ in heaven. Okay. So here's how he introduces the concept of life laws in his book. Quote, life laws are the rules of the game.

No one is going to ask you if you think these laws are fair or if you think they should exist like the law of gravity. They simply are. You don't get a vote. You can ignore them and stumble along wondering why you never seem to succeed or you can learn them, adapt to them, mold your choices and behavior to them and live effectively. Learning these life laws is the at the absolute core of what you must master in this book to have the essential knowledge for a personal life strategy.

What kind of he went from zero to being like my laws, much like the law of gravity, that is like, that is galaxy brain that are as unavoidable and as unchanging as the time. Yes. Oh, God, you got you have to appreciate the flagrancy on on display there. Jesus. Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's good, Jamie. It's like you're, you being abused being your fault to me. That's gravity.

It's like, oh, I want to put you through a shredder. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That would be fun. And I think we could probably get a pretty good prime time TV audience if we actually did that, Jamie. So if I dug your filterage again, if we just put it through a shredder, yeah, yeah, watch

like that scene in Fargo, it's a that that's kind of like that's where his story is building to it. Oh, fuck. We get Steve Buscemi to present. That's a fucking hour of TV right there. There you go. There you go. And I'm sure he'd be happy to do it.

I'm sure he would. Now, I bet, Jamie, you're hungry for some more of Dr. Phil's life laws. I can see it in your eyes. You're just, you're just, you're just, yeah, absolutely. So most of these laws are pretty self-explanatory stuff like life rewards action and you cannot change what you do not acknowledge. My favorite is people do what works, which boils down to the idea that we engage in bad behavior because it rewards us in some way.

So Dr. Phil says, if you want to stop the behavior, stop rewarding yourself for it, which makes sense until you think about the way, say, heroin or junk food works, because you can't stop it from the reward is the thing, right? Like these are all so so manipulatively worded. Yeah, the next time you take heroin, punch yourself in the dick so you don't enjoy it as much. I don't know. Like, yeah, how do you like statistically most of the kind of people who want advice

from me are going to be dealing with something like weight loss. And it's like, no, the reward is eating food. Like that's, that strategy isn't going to, to help, you know? It's so frustrating too, because it's like, the way they're worded is so deliberate that it's like, oh, I understand why people fell for this too. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's just all, it's just very, very transparent nonsense for the most part.

Yeah. Words in a certain sequence and charging you, you know, 1895 for a hardcover. You got to give the man credit. It is words in a sequence. That is undeniable that Dr. Phil. That was a sentence that that's the man uses sentences, you know, you got to give that to him. You can't take that from him.

So yeah, some of his rules are, however, a little more sinister. Probably the worst. One of the worst is, I don't know, there's a lot of worsts. One is you create your own experiences. Here's how he explains that one. Don't play the role of victim or use past events to build excuses. It guarantees you no progress, no healing and no victory. You will never fix a problem by blaming someone else.

That's, first of all, not true. And that's just like, I mean, yeah, he's just clearly not even good at the job he's getting famous for saying he's good at. Yeah. So backwards. Yeah. It's it's I mean, he sounds like a fucking Catholic priest. He's like, well, push your emotions down.

OK. It's just such bad. It's particularly all bad advice for like abuse victims, because if you're an abuse victim in a lot of cases, part of the healing process is realizing that your abuser is the person to blame and that all these things they got you to blame yourself for aren't things you did wrong. Absolutely. Like that's a big part of healing from that sort of thing.

And he's just like, no, no, no, don't be blaming this guy because he was beating you. Maybe you didn't do the laundry right. You know, maybe you should have got him his beer faster. I'm Dr. Phil. I'm a doctor. You know, like, God damn it. I really don't like this guy. Yeah.

I also want to read you the we said earlier, one of his rules is we teach people how to treat us. But the actual wording in the book of how he explains that is even creepier than you might guess. I quote, you either teach people to treat you with dignity and respect or you don't. This means you are partly responsible for the mistreatment that you get at the hands of someone else. You shape others behavior when you teach them what they can get away with and what they

cannot. This is like, oh, God, you're just like, oh, God, OK, so what did you do that you need to believe this in order to live with yourself? Yeah, right. He's fucking Christ. Yeah, he's he's really a bad person. I don't like him. My house.

Wow. It was next to. I clearly remember it being next to my mom's bed. Yeah, like, you know, it's the good book. You got to keep it close to you. We didn't own the Bible. We own life strategy is the John Edward book and that other one by that guy who said he could talk to dead people.

I forget who it was. Oh, John Edwards. And there's a lot of dead people. So despite the fundamental emptiness of Phil's philosophy or perhaps because of it, Dr. Phil became a wild success. His first episode ran in 2002 of the Dr. Phil show, like he spun off pretty quickly. And he's been on the air ever since. He instinctively knew that the real money in this sort of TV was leaning in towards

the most tragic and risque stories, drug addiction, spousal abuse, troubled teens, all that good shit. He was happy to throw medical best practices out the window in 2004. He interviewed a nine year old boy whose parents said he was being abusive towards his younger sister. And Dr. Phil said the child had nine of the 14 characteristics of a serial killer. Then he added Jeffrey Dahmer had seven. Jesus.

Oh, my God. That is a very well crafted insult. That's beautiful. Yeah. It's it's like so any reputable psychologist or psychiatrist will tell you that one thing you can't do as in like it's forbidden in the discipline is to diagnose a child as a psychopath. You're not allowed to do that because their children, their brains are developing and shackling a child with that diagnosis is incredibly unethical.

Dr. Phil did it on national television. He did. I feel like he is still doing it on national television. I mean, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. From a write up by Buzzfeed, quote, Dr. Phil purports to be a mental health professional,

but he's diagnosing from videotape on the air, said then executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Michael Fitzpatrick to The Washington Post in a 2004 story about Dr. Phil's bad psychotherapy. It's unethical to do that sort of, if you will, pop psychology. You don't do that for ratings. This is a human being a spokesperson for Dr. Phil at the time said that McGraw never labeled the child as mentally ill, which is technically true. He merely brought up Jeffrey Dahmer.

So there you go. This is like just next level. It all rings like semi familiar. It is kind of like interesting to think about how, how used to as a culture, how used to we are of like Dr. Phil saying the most fucked up thing he could possibly think of at a child because he's been doing it for 25 years. Yeah. I love how from the beginning.

Yeah. I was like, oh, that wasn't an escalation. I was just always that. No. People have been complaining about Dr. Phil in this way from the very beginning of his career and it has never made a difference for a single second. And it's never made him less money. It doesn't seem like this is so fucking bleak.

I think it's just made him more money, which is good. I mean, he picked a good life strategy, you know, and get more money than I do. So Dr. Phil stopped renewing his license to practice as a psychologist in 2006. He has never held a valid license in California where his show is filmed. A spokesperson for his show confirmed that he stopped renewing his license because he quote, no longer worked as a therapist, which I don't disagree with, but I would argue he is absolutely marketing himself as a therapist and is still in the business of therapy. He's presenting himself as someone who has a license.

He for sure is. And he's not just still doing therapy on his show. He is selling products to companies that make their whole all of their money from doing therapy. Like he, I'll get into that now. A stat news Boston Globe investigation several years ago revealed that Dr. Phil and his son, some dude named Jay, started a business called Dr. Phil's path to recovery and the late aughts.

This was a virtual reality addiction recovery program where a VR Dr. Phil would walk you through exercises to help you get and stay sober from Buzzfeed quote, users don virtual reality goggles and are placed in scenarios with Dr. Phil and one McGraw sits at a bar arms folded across his chest, counseling his visitor on how to avoid the triggers of an evening out when alcohol is present in another scene. He reclines in jeans on the backyard patio of his sprawling estate, sparkling pool and fuchsia flowers behind him and a wide blue sky above and shares coping strategies. You'll leave these sessions feeling as though you just had an eye opening an insightful

conversation about your life with Dr. Phil, the path to recovery website promises. The product is described as the culmination of more than four decades of experience Dr. Phil has working in the mental health profession and addiction recovery. So that sounds helpful. That's yeah, that was thank you for that clarifying statement. Now obviously there's absolutely no evidence that this program helps with addiction in any way. The disclaimer on the website says that it is quote solely for general information purposes

and is quote not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any medical health, mental or psychological problem or condition. The worst kind of person, the worst kind of person because now he's just outright targeting the most vulnerable people he can. It's like it was I didn't care when he was targeting other grifters. Yeah. And he's not even doing it in a situation where they can choose to be grifted by him because by the time they're in addiction recovery, like they're already paying.

They probably don't even know that this fucking thing is there. Right. Yeah. Now, despite the fact that there's no evidence that this thing helps in any way, a number of addiction recovery programs purchased path to recovery to use. You want to guess why they bought it? Why? Because Dr. Phil gave them free advertising on their show if they bought it.

No. Oh, he's a business boy. He's a business boy. He's a business boy. He's a really good fist boy. Yeah. He'll offer to Diction Treatment Center's free endorsements on both the Dr. Phil show and his spinoff series, The Doctors, if they first bought his program.

BuzzFeed managed to get a hold of audio of one of these pitch sessions where McGraw Salesman told a customer, quote, our job is to get your phones to ring and the admissions hopefully follow. He bragged that Dr. Phil's viewers were older, high income people, not the addict calling because I told my mom I'd do it. Oh my fucking god. Okay, so we've arrived at Partoon Villainy. We sure have, Jamie Loftus.

Oh, right. We sure as shit have. Okay. Does Oprah ever, because I forget, because over the years, Oprah has endorsed a number of questionable people and sometimes- Shout out, John of God. And shout out, what's his name? Who wrote a million little pieces?

Oh yeah, Jonathan Frey, right? Yeah. And she's had to apologize for having endorsed a lot of fucked up people over the years. Has that, that moment has never happened for Dr. Phil, right? She's never backed off. Did she ever back off from him at any point? No, no, no, no, no, no. They're still deeply tied together.

Why would she ever back off on him? I guess that's true. God. Yep. Dead men. How are you? Okay. Well, that was the question I wanted a better answer to.

Yeah. Except the truth. The truth is that, why would she care? She's doing just fine. Yeah, she has plenty of money. So like, what do you expect her to do, Jamie? I don't know. I don't know.

It's like, you can't expect anyone with that much money to be a good person. You're just setting yourself up to- Yeah, you're just asking to be sad because they- Just ask me to be whack-a-mold right now. Yeah, they never will be. Because it's not lucrative to be a good person. It's the opposite of lucrative to be a good person. That's true.

That's true. Yeah. What is lucrative though, Jamie? Shilling the products and services that support this podcast. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism.

I'm Ben Bullock. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic- And occasionally ridiculous- Deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history

books. I'm Smedley Butler, and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads, or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows.

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. But there was this one that really stuck with me, about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart.

And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 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? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful

lot of forensic and not an awful lot of 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. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all

bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, we're back. I am just having a great time talking with my friend Jayloft about Dr. Dr. Philomar. Philomar.

What's his middle name? What's his middle name? Phil. Oh, that's disappointing. Philip. Calvin McGraw. Calvin, yeah. Jamie, I just talked to you about how Dr. Phil has this VR addiction treatment thing.

And he basically gives people like treatment centers free advertising if they buy it. I hate it. Okay. And that's the quality of the facilities that take Dr. Phil up on this offer. Only the best, right? Oh, is it worse than nothing? Oh, Jamie, it's a lot worse than nothing in some cases. One facility that took Dr. Phil up on this offer was Inspirations for Youth and Families,

a Fort Lauderdale based treatment center for teenagers. Phil actually highlighted the facility run by Corcoran Walsh on his show the day he announced his new VR program saying, we think outside the box in designing what addicts need. What you need is something that pops out of the noise, something that rises above the noise like a distinctive voice. And that voice in this case is me. Dr. Phil then introduced Walsh saying she ran the nation's leading family addiction

treatment and dual diagnosis center. BuzzFeed actually investigated the facility and found that it had a well documented history of children escaping and getting into danger. Steven Sardui, a PI who was hired to find two different girls who escaped from the facility and disappeared said, it seems to be an ongoing problem. In that particular facility, obviously there's a gap somewhere, a loophole somewhere in the system where they're just leaving. In the last two years, Inspirations staff members made 180 reports to police about children

in their care going missing. Sometimes the teens, sometimes the teens left for days or even escaped the state. One escapee wound up prostituting herself for drugs. A number of the teens wound up finding drugs one way or another after getting out of the facility. Six were arrested. Two were hospitalized. One group who escaped together later robbed a homeless man.

BuzzFeed talked to Jill Walters of South Carolina who's 17 year old escaped from Inspirations in 2016 and wound up on the street in Miami. She explained why she initially had chosen Inspirations to help her boy. They touted this, we were on Dr. Phil. They use that as, we must be a great facility because we were on Dr. Phil. Well that has nothing to do with how the facility is run. You entrust your child to the care of these people and something like this happens. It's good shit.

God. That's, I thought that, that it wouldn't stop getting worse. That is so fucking off. It's like, I mean. It's pretty bad. It's pretty, pretty bad, Jamie. It speaks to like, yeah, just the level of plot he, but he's, he still upholds too because it's like, yeah, I guess that if you think about it for a while, you're like, oh, well,

he's not a licensed doctor and look at what he's actually saying, but it's like the world was reinforcing his bullshit for so long. That is so evil. Oh my God. Yep. It is evil, Jamie. Sure is. But you know what's not evil?

What? The products and services that I just advertised on this podcast that we're not actually cutting to again. I just, I have a problem, Jamie. I have a problem. You just, you can't stop thinking about it. And I, I can't stop, I can't stop pivoting dads, you know? I just, you've been, I mean, it, I'm, you know what, Jamie, I'm an, I'm an addict.

Oh my God. Get it? Get it? Oh yeah. I don't get it. Can you explain that to me? I hated it. That one's a good one.

That one's a, that's a keeper. You know what? We're done with the episode. Go home. I nailed it. Wow. Wow. We got to end with Dr. Phil ruining the lives of children.

I mean, I guess that that is where the story is going to end no matter what. It's where it began and it's where it'll end. Yeah. It's where, it's how it will continue. Oh, Dr. Phil. Just kill me now. I got, okay, I am going to, I am going to continue to advocate for, put Dr. Phil through a gigantic human size shredder on live TV.

I think that that is the kind of dystopian television, like we're already at Masked Singer. That's the next logical step for me is what I hated. I hated evil person through a shredder. It's the modern guillotine, big old shredder. Yeah. It's the best way to do anything really. Yeah. Is a shredder.

Anyway, Jamie, J Loft, J Loftus, Jo Loft, Jo Loft Sherwin, Jo Loft, God, yeah. We're actually still talking about inspirations. So court records also reveal that the center's co-owner, Christopher Walsh, is by his own admission a habitual drunkard who in 2015 sued a resort for serving him alcohol saying they should have known he couldn't handle it. And boy, howdy. Does it ever get worse? Let's talk about Todd Herzog.

Yeah. Oh boy. Yeah. That's the end of the inspiration stuff. But so Todd Herzog was another, was a repeated guest on the Dr. Phil show. Now Todd's backstory is that he won survivor back in the early aughts. He got like a million dollars and then became a horrible, like developed a horrific addiction to alcohol, like a life-threatening addiction.

Now, Dr. Phil and his producers must have salivated at the combination of disastrous alcoholic and reality TV star. Here's how stat news described what happened next, quote, Herzog told stat in the Boston Globe that he was not intoxicated when he arrived at the Los Angeles studio to film the Dr. Phil show. Okay. In his dressing room, he said he found a bottle of Smirnoff vodka. He drank all of it.

Then someone handed him a Xanax, he said, telling him it would calm his nerves. So this guy managed to sober himself up enough to like, try to go on TV and Dr. Phil's people basically allegedly made sure there was a full bottle of vodka and a fucking gave him a Xanax to just because, you know, I think the reasoning is the more of a disaster you seem like on air, the more marketable you are. Yeah. Right. Right.

Which is a proven model, given the star of the show. That is like bachelor levels of like fuck-upery. Yeah. Oh, no. Jamie. Jamie. Jamie. Jamie.

Let's get as close as we can to killing people. Dear sweet Jamie Loftus, we are not even at the worst part yet. Oh, no. Okay. Keep going. Keep going. Yeah. So by the time Herzog got on stage, he was so wasted that he could barely talk or function.

Dr. Phil and his assistant walked them out themselves, making a big show of helping him while highlighting just how wrecked he was. And I want you to listen to this, Jamie. I want you to watch this obviously, but I want everyone at home or in your car or pooping or whatever it is you're doing. I can't describe the anxiety of seeing Robert Evans has started screen sharing. I know. I know.

I know. All right. Here's the Dr. Phil show. Hi, Dr. Phil. Hi. Hi. Nice to meet you. How are you feeling, man?

Can you walk? Barely. I have to help. All right. Sorry. I'm very... What's all right? Brandon, why don't you get over there and take Debbie's spot?

I'll go. Yeah, I'll go. I'm sorry. I'm crying because I just can't believe this is happening. Just come turn around. One, two, three. One, two, three. So that's all I want to play of that.

He can barely move. It is fundamentally unethical to have someone in that state on your television show. Even if they had been inebriated of their own volition and not being like fed drugs, that is... Even if they had consented earlier, I don't think you can consent to that. No. Absolutely not. Yeah.

God, that is like the worst situation imaginable. That is fucking evil. Yeah. It's not good, Jamie. It's just not a good thing to do, I would say. I would recommend not doing that. If I was... If someone asked me, should I take someone who has a problem with addiction and give them drugs

and then film them disastrously wrecked? I would say, no, that sounds like an evil thing to do. That is absolute cruel. God. It's cruel and good, Jamie. Cruel and good. And they just had that on in waiting rooms. That was just what you watched while you were waiting to see the dentist.

Yeah. Fuck. So, when questioned, representatives of the Dr. Phil show deny that they provided Herzog with alcohol and drugs. They said, junkies lie, in essence, about his claims, and then they pointed out that they weren't a medical facility and couldn't watch their guests at all times. The director of the treatment facility where Herzog agreed to go for help at the end of the show, however, was horrified when he saw him on television.

He was so upset by the condition that Dr. Phil let Herzog appear on air in that he refused to ever have anything to do with the Dr. Phil show again. So, this was so outrageous that it convinced the head of a treatment program that all of the free advertising that Dr. Phil show could provide was not worth the ethical compromise of dealing with that man. I mean, you can't really hand it to him for that, but that's fucking something. That's so bleak. Yeah.

It's just you have to really do bad to convince someone of that, I think. That's throwing a lot of money out. I don't know. I'm not going to say all people in the rehab facility business are sketchy, but there's a lot of sketchy motherfuckers in that industry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's cool and good, Jamie. Wow. I feel really not very good. Jamie, thank you so much for saying that. You know, hear it behind the bastards. That's exactly what we go for at all times. Every time I convince myself that this is going to be a fun one and every time, except the one time, I'm dead wrong.

Yeah. Even worse than I could have conceived. All I ever want is for you to feel bad. Thank you so much. That's my whole goal, you know? You're a successful person. You're really successful person. I'm not a hero.

I'm just, I'm a hero. Okay. I'm a hero. You know? I'm not a hero. Period. Todd Herzog's story does not appear to be an isolated one. No.

Jordan Smith appeared on The Dr. Phil Show in 2012 in an episode titled Young, Reckless, and Enabled. Smith's aunt claims she contacted the show to help get her niece off of heroin. When they arrived in LA from out of state, Jordan started going through withdrawal. Her aunt told the show producer that her niece needed heroin and something or something else to help with the withdrawal. The producer suggested that they go to Skid Row and buy heroin together. She then told them not to say who made that suggestion later.

Now, guests like Smith receive free addiction treatment and an expensive center after their appearance on the show, which is why many do it. But prior to taping, no medical treatment is provided or offered. Smith and her family were in Los Angeles alone for two nights before taping. A less trusting person than me might suggest that the show does this so that these people will be extra fucked up and sad when it comes time for them to be on television. Sure. Sure.

Yeah. It's very ethical. That is extremely like, you have to be thinking so hard to come up with something like that. It's so innocuous. Wow. Yeah. These people's lives are already off the fucking rails. How can we make it a little worse?

I'm Dr. Phil. Joel King Parish brought her 28-year-old daughter, Caitlin, to Dr. Phil for help kicking a heroin addiction. Caitlin was six months pregnant at the time. Her mother assumed that when they landed, they would receive medical attention, since withdrawal could endanger the fetus. But when Caitlin's mom asked the staff for help, they told her to quote, take care of it.

She took her daughter to the hospital, which she left without a sheet receiving treatment. Next, from STAT News, quote, the producer texted to say she should stay at the hospital. But Caitlin would not, and King Parish was terrified the baby would die if her daughter did not get medicine or drugs. King Parish and Caitlin went to the Dr. Phil studio, where another show staffer joined them. All three got into a cab headed for Skid Row. The staffer shot video, which later aired on the show. In it, King Parish tells the camera, I am scared to death right now.

The camera follows Caitlin from behind. She walks towards homeless encampments. King Parish said Caitlin was gone for about a half hour while she shot up heroin. So they just went out to go buy a horse at Skid Row and filmed it. That's good TV is what that is. This is training when they're really upset. On top of the fact that that's an extreme disservice to her, that's also yet another example of like bullshit, high rated TV, heading into unhoused encampments to just frame people

and put me in contextless, fucked up way. I hate that shit so much. That is awful. It's fucking vile. I think it's cool and good, Jamie. Wow. I think it's cool and good. What?

I hate this shit so much. Oh, Loftus. We do have fun on this show, though. We sure do. We sure do. We tend to bust out the frans, yeah, and really dial this up. Yeah, frans out with our glands out. I don't know.

I'm stuck making that exact kind of joke repeatedly. I'm still chilling. Chilling with Philan? Chilling with my Philan. Wow. That's gross. No, no, no. It's all deeply uncomfortable.

Robert, you know what's not deeply uncomfortable. The products and services that support this podcast? Facts. No, every one of them will gently cradle your head or whatever other part of your body. You would like them to cradle. Absolutely. Or wherever.

They'll just kiss you, you know? They're just gonna kiss you. That's the behind the bastard's promise. Random kisses from a product. Yep. Here's some ads. Just experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations

of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler, and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads, or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows.

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. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down.

It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 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? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of 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. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial

to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus, it's all made up? Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so there are a bunch of stories like this. And one of the saddest parts of all these stories

is that the people who Dr. Phil clearly takes advantage of will still claim that his show helped them because they were able to receive free addiction recovery care that they couldn't have afforded without the Dr. Phil show. Almost no aspect of his show works if there's single payer healthcare that covers addiction treatment. The Dr. Phil show profits off of sadness porn. The shock and embarrassment people feel watching the ruined lives of his guests

and the sassy, no bullshit advice Dr. Phil gives them. He earns between 60 and 80 million dollars a year. Of course, the Dr. Phil show, I know, right? That's an obscene number, isn't it? Just makes you want to light some shit on fire, doesn't it? Yeah, it sure does, Jamie. It sure does. So, of course, the Dr. Phil show would get boring pretty quick

if he only dealt with people suffering from drug addictions and abusive spouses. From the beginning, a major source of content for McGraw was so-called Troubled Teens. Kids in crisis are big business for grifty TV therapists because, being children, those kids have no ability to regulate their emotions and no sense of proportion. This leads to TV-friendly explosions of rage. In 2016, Dr. Phil interviewed Danielle Bregoli

for an episode titled, I Want to Give Up My Car Stealing Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried to Frame Me for a Crime. Which is just a title meant to show up on a leg, like throwing twerking in there with fucking cars stealing. Shameless. So, we're twerking. There was a cultural heft to it, sure.

Now, Bregoli now goes by the stage name Bad Baby, B-H-A-D, B-H-A-B-I-E, was a primetime ready delinquent. She spoke in a ridiculously affected hood accent and pretended to basically be a gangster in the kind of confrontational, like, nonsense teenage way that gave Dr. Phil a lot of openings to mock her with his witty rejoinders. I don't want to play much of her appearance

because she was a child. And I think what Dr. Phil does by having her on is fundamentally abusive. But I do think it's important to play how the episode starts so you can see how he introduces this segment and hear it, you listening will hear it. I want you to pay attention to the looks on the faces of the people in his audience. Okay. She's defiant.

Hi! Oh, who are you? What has she met? Her match. You want to do it again? Sit down. With Dr. Phil. You can threaten them.

Good. But I'm your worst nightmare girl. Well, thank you, thank you. Well, you know, I've been doing this show for 15 years and I've met some truly remarkable people. And I have heard thousands of stories. Now, in that time, you get to thinking that you've seen and heard just about everything.

That was until today. Meet Danielle. Now, Danielle's mom, Barbara Ann, has written to me every year for the past three years about her daughter who has stole thousands of dollars, framed her mother as a drug user, and then called 911 to report her and is currently facing grand theft charges.

Now, I answered her call for help and I sent my film crew across the country to capture what was going on inside this home. Needless to say, while my team was there, something shocking and unexpected happened. Shortly after they had finished filming, one of my crew members noticed that Danielle had vanished with the keys to my crew member's car.

Now, sure enough, when Danielle's grandmother, Barbara, went outside, she found out that Danielle had stolen the car which had the crew member's handbag, wallet, ID, and cash inside. Now, that's not bad enough. Danielle's only 13 years old. So, you see, the thing that's most interesting to me about that is the faces of the women in the audience because they are particularly the glee, right?

That's the thing that's most unsettling to me, is how excited they are with every new aspect of this story that Dr. Phil reveals. Well, and I also think that those reactions may not even be... I mean, those reactions in themselves are extremely coached, where I used to do audience work and there's no money to my name. And you're so extremely coached.

And before the show even starts, you're told to do a series of facial expressions for the editors to work with. And so, it's like manipulation top to bottom with how it's handled. Because not only is he obviously not... has no vested interest in the well-being of this kid, he also... I would argue probably that editing is completely fucking doctored as well.

Yeah, I have no idea if those face expressions match like what was actually going down. But it's all, I guess, specifically the idea that they wanted to show those reactions. Because I think they're trying to coach a response... They're trying to coach a response from the people watching at home too, right? The voyeurism.

It makes it clear none of this is about helping anyone. It's about laughing at quote-unquote low-class people and their problems. That's what Dr. Phil really makes his bread doing. For sure, yeah. That's great. But fuck him. She went on to have a successful...

She's 18. She was nominated for an American Music Award. Oh, she was? I didn't know that. Fuck him. I'm glad there's a happy ending. I don't know much about that, baby. She's 18 now.

She's signed her record label. And she is standing up for what happened to her, which I think we're going to get into. So, Bregoli went viral. And within the confines of the episode, Dr. Phil positions himself as the dispenser of tough love. His prescription was to send Bregoli to one of his favorite therapeutic boarding schools,

Turnabout Ranch in Utah. This is an actual working ranch, where troubled teens are sent under the impression that working in the country and riding horses will get them off of drugs, premarital sex, and petty crime. In subsequent episodes, Bregoli filmed an update from the ranch, where she dropped her fake accent and claimed to feel okay with who I am now.

But she was not being honest, understandably so. In 2018, she released an original song and gave a different view of her experience at Turnabout. Quote, It was pretty miserable. I did not know what was going on in the real world. This place was far away from anything. There wasn't even service there, she says in the song.

A couple weeks after being home, I finally decided that I wanted to meet up with my best friend again, somebody who was not good for me at all. Instantly, I'd say it was the next day, we got back to doing our old shit again. Smoking, trying to finesse people for money, just doing really, really dumb shit. Her reintegration into society was made all the more difficult

by the fact that, when she returned to school and the internet, she realized rather suddenly that she'd gone viral for being a ridiculous train wreck of a person on a nationally syndicated TV program. She claims that this basically made her decide to, quote, lean in to the bad behavior that had made her famous. Once you become a meme, there aren't a lot of ways to get a clean slate.

There's no right to be forgotten in the US, so why wouldn't Bergoli just keep being the person everyone already thought she was? This gets to one of the things I think is worst about the Dr. Phil show. It's one thing to shamelessly milk the worst moments and the greatest shames in the life of an adult. It's another thing entirely to do that to a child who has no real way to understand the long-term...

It was 13. Yeah, no way that she could have possibly understood the long-term consequences of being coming that kind of famous. It's complete. It's like violent at every level, and it's like whatever. I mean, clearly, Dr. Phil does not give a fuck. No, no, not a third of a fuck, yeah.

But it is. And it also, I think, speaks to how, especially for a kid, which is doing what he does to children should be illegal. It should be a crime, yes. You should not be allowed to do shit like that. And on top of that, it speaks to how... I don't know.

I remember that clip when it first came out, and there was no popular conversation about the well-being of the child who's clearly being exploited by a multi-millionaire. Yeah. And I see that, I mean, it's when you're introduced in the public that way, and you are coming from a place of poverty, and you are not being empowered at all or protected, like what are you supposed to do?

Like that is a miserable, cruel situation to be put in. It's... It's fucked up. Yeah. Now, Jamie, that's all pretty bad, right? Everything we've talked about happening to Bergogli is bad. Yes. I mean, there's worse.

The ranch Dr. Phil sent her and a bunch of other kids to was about as ethical as, oh, I don't know, the drug rehabilitation treatment programs he was also sending kids to. I'm going to quote again from Buzzfeed. It's not clear if Turnabout is actually helpful to the kids who go, or if it's just another facility that takes advantage of the minors who were sent there to get better. Just last week, 19-year-old Hannah Archuleta sued the school

for an alleged sexual assault that she said happened to her while she was staying at Turnabout at just 17. This is likely to be a high-profile case, too, with Gloria Alred representing her. Turnabout administrators provided a statement to me saying they took immediate action after Archuleta claimed she had been assaulted, but that her father removed her from the facility before we could conduct a full inquiry.

The statement continued, we would never take lightly an allegation of best treatment to any of our students. Now that this incident is the subject of litigation, we must withhold our full response for a later date. Now, the owner of this ranch is Aspen Education Group, which was then bought by CRC, which is now owned by Acadia Healthcare. In an email statement to Buzzfeed News,

Acadia's director of investor relations, Gretchen Hommerich, said, it is my understanding that Turnabout Ranch and Aspen Educational Group were closed or sold prior to Acadia's acquisition of CRC Health. In any event, Acadia never operated either of the facilities. Turnabout has gone through multiple owners, and since 2014 has been owned by current and former employees of the ranch. But Aspen Education has been accused of multiple infractions by former attendees, including lawsuits that claimed psychological torture, abuse, sexual assault, and human trafficking.

The torture suit was dismissed, but CRC, the owner of Aspen Education at the time, declined to address specific allegations. Acadia did not answer our questions about these allegations either. So just not only like a bunch of people involved in this have been alleged of things, including human trafficking. There's been sexual assault allegations at the ranch, but it like goes to this revolving carousel of owners because it's like a shady fucking. It's just like they're pumping a quick amount of cash out and then selling it to somebody else.

It's so fucking shady. I'm sure that that's yeah. I'm sure that that's integral to it being able to survive at all. Yeah. It needs to be constantly changing hands. I mean, the whole team treatment industry, like I've done a number of art back when I was at Cracked. I did a number of articles with survivors of these facilities. Like all of these facilities are basically child molestation factories and like child abuse factories in general.

Not always molestation. Sometimes they just kill them from neglect. You know? There was there was a good one. That reached the point where like Paris Hilton made a documentary about it last year. Yeah. Yeah. Paris Hilton and actually Danielle Bergoli by baby are involved right now with going against Dr. Phil about this exact place.

So it's very interesting that you mentioned Paris Hilton. It does. I don't know much about her. I'm always mentioning her. But besides the stuff that was like famous about how shitty she was 15, 20 years ago. But it seems like she's been doing some like good socially responsible stuff lately. Paris. Yeah.

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like it seems like she has. I mean, also I'm like, I'm not I'm not about to. I'm not going to go to bat for the stop being poor lady. But yeah. Right.

Right. Right. But yeah, that that specific instance, I'm glad. If you have wealth and prominence and you use it to take a swing at the teen treatment industry, that gets you a couple of points in my book. Absolutely. Because it's a fucking nightmare. Maybe we'll do a deeper episode about it at some point.

But a lot of the allegations that we just listed about this facility and its many owners predate the episodes of Dr. Phil where he gave free advertisements to the ranch. This means that McGraw and his staff were well aware of the allegations against Aspen and the ranch when they sent children there. When questioned about this, a spokesperson for the show said, we're aware and we're monitoring things. Since Archuleta went public with her allegations, Burgoli has come forward with more detail about her own experience. She now says she was denied food at times and that camp administrators often refused to let inmates change their clothes for days on end. Inmates. Yeah. That's my framing.

But yes, you're helpless. You can't call your parent. You can't email your parent. If the state says they have to give you two pebbles, they're going to find the smallest fucking pebbles to give you. That's supposed to help kids get over trauma. I would have rather went to jail. Like one of the girls I talked to who did this when she was like 14 or 15, like one of the punishments they gave her was she had to dig up the stump of a mature tree on her own. Which if you've never had to remove a stump, it's something like three to four large adult men usually do with a fucking truck and power tools.

Yeah. She just spent days in 120 degree heat, like slowly dying as she tried to force the stump out as a shot. Like these places are all nightmares. Horrible. Burgoli is, of course, not the only teenager featured on the Dr. Phil show. Buzzfeed writer Scotchie Cowell announces, sorry, Scotchie. I don't know if I'm getting that right. Alleges that while McGraw is healthy, is happy to feature children of all genders, he gets particularly aggressive with teenage girls.

Their most vulnerable private moments, screaming and crying at home are used on the show until the very end when their parents decide to send them to turn about. Every episode of the Dr. Phil show ends with an after the taping segment where the kids find out they're going to a ranch in the middle of nowhere and usually cry, which is, of course, great television. Most kids featured in this way do not get any updates on the Dr. Phil show or at most mentioned briefly once more. Daytime TV moves too fast for the doctor to actually check back in with most of his patients. In 2008, Dr. Phil spun off and created a new show, The Doctors. Every episode of this show features a plastic surgeon, an obstetrician, and an ER doc who talk about different health topics. This sounds like it might be- Yeah, another, like, summer shop waiting room classic.

We're not going to go into a lot of detail about this, but a 2014 study of the show determined that about 37% of their recommendations were not credible. Which honestly means they're doing better than I expected. Some of the better report cards than I expected. If your doctor, for example, said 37% of the time, I'm going to give you bad advice, you would find a new doctor. That's fair. I was like, oh, wow, D plus, that's not the worst thing. Yeah, imagine a mechanic saying that, yeah, 37% of the time, the breaks I put in work, you know? Your odds are pretty good. Okay, fair enough. I was like, there's no way they're somewhat correct. 63% of the time, why? Yes, and again, somewhat being the operative word.

Sure. We could go into a lot of other case studies, particularly the egregious guest choices, but going over all these sad people in the way Phil exploits them at Nazium kind of runs the risk of being sauroporn itself. I do think it behooves us to look at one last case study, perhaps the most nauseating guest choice of the whole series. 24 year old Gabby came on the Doctor Phil show in February of 2020. She had promised to act as a surrogate womb for two different couples. Gabby had not taken any money from them, and she could not bear children. She is infertile and chronically ill. Her father claims she has psychosis, bipolar disorder, and learning disabilities.

In the show, it's revealed that Gabby's mom died right around the time she started pretending to be a surrogate, which was also a period where she was the victim of constant bullying at school. From Buzzfeed, quote, Her scam wasn't illegal because Gabby never asked for money or items from the couple she lied to. It's just tragic, hurtful behavior from someone deeply isolated and in dire need of mental health care from multiple past traumas. Most of the episode focuses on the producers following Gabby around backstage, begging her to come on stage when she clearly doesn't want to. They call her difficult and volatile, and though she signed an appearance release, it's not clear to the audience that she has read and understood it. When a producer asks her on camera to confirm she understands the waiver, she doesn't respond and covers her face with the pages of the release. But she's certainly remorseful and seems to feel guilty.

In a pre-taped interview, Gabby cries to the producers, I just want to say sorry to everyone that I've hurt. When she walks off the stage in anguish, McGraw merely sips his water in size. The episode is near unwatchable. Yeah, I mean, that doesn't sound like consent was gained at all. I mean, there were so many red flags. It doesn't sound like she's capable of consenting to that. Yeah. I don't even know what to think. I mean, that entire though, because I don't trust any of the information that anyone is presenting in this in this way. But that's just, I mean, very clear there's not an issue that should be handled on national TV. Yeah, to say the very fucking least. Yeah. Yeah, that is just fucking disrespectful.

So Dr. Jeff Sugar, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at USC, provided a description of the Dr. Phil show that I think acts as as good a coda to this episode as anything. Quote, it's a callous and inexcusable exploitation. These people are barely hanging on. It's like if one of them was drowning and approaching a lifeboat and instead of throwing them an inflatable donut, you throw them an anchor. And that's Dr. Phil, baby. Defil. I am so upset about it. Like this was like one of my like the toughest lessons of all time, maybe because he's just still such a real present public disgrace and danger. But like, holy shit, I can't even enjoy Dr. Phil memes.

I was going to show you Dr. Phil memes. I'm not gonna not work it. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck him. Put him through a shredder. Put him through a shredder. And you at home, put yourself through a shredder, but a good kind of shredder that makes you healthy life affirming kind of shredder. Yeah, in a way, in a way. Is that is not just capitalism. Put yourself through a shredder. Well, with that, Jamie, I think it's time for you to plug a pluggable and get the get the fuck out of this zoom call and go live your your goddamn life, Jamie, go live your fucking life. You know, I'm dying to live my life.

So you can just you can you can listen to the podcast. You can listen to the VectoCast. You can listen to the Lolita podcast. You can listen to my year in Mesa and you can listen to my new show about Kathy comics that comes out in June. God damn it. God damn it. And all of you at home. This was miserable.

Damn God yourself. Yeah, it was Jamie. It really was. All right, well, fuck the Internet and fuck life. 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 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. 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 podcast. Listen to Alphabet Boys on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.