Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Dr. Laura Episodes

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

Robert and Jamie conclude the story of Dr. Laura and offer up a theory on the possible murder of her mother.   https://www.paisleypaws.org/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call zone media. Hooray! It's the Dr. Laura podcast, but about her, not hers, because she also has one, but it's not about her, although it kind of also is. I'm Robert Evans. This is a show about bad people. Jamie, welcome back to the program. How are you doing today?

How are you feeling? Thank you. I've been on the edge of my seat. I'm wondering, I mean, like, maybe I'm, she seems litigious. Does that feel right? You know, I could, she's got a lawsuit that she made in here. She's got a, she's had at least one that was unreasonable,

but she lost and gave up. She also, she has to be talking about a very reasonable over the revenge porn that gets posted of her. Yes. So, yeah, that one, although it doesn't go her way either. So she has a bad record with the law, I guess, is what I'm landing. Really? Even evil people can be angry about revenge porn, I think.

Yeah, I mean, I think we're being pretty fair to her in here. I think so. I'm certainly not accusing her of anything other than being a kind of media person that I think is unethical But I still have that right so yeah before we get into the story Jamie Mm-hmm is not who I meant to call out there Sophie has a thing to plug Yeah, it's hard when we don't have our cameras on Uh- plug. Yeah, it's hard when we don't have our cameras on. Yeah, in the last couple days since we recorded this,

my family lost our family dog, Sydney, who had been with us for 14 years, and she was immensely important to us. She was my mom's soul dog and just a light. And we were fortunate enough that she got wonderful end-of-life care from our vet, but most people can't afford veterinary care these days because it's so expensive. And I just wanted to plug an organization that my vet recommends that does work to help people with who need hardship support

during times when their pets might need life-saving or life-enhancing treatments and that is Paisleypaws.org that's P-A-I-S-L-E-Y-P-A-W-S.org. The dot org is important there's another thing that's dot com, not dot com, it's dot org. So I just wanted to plug that. And yeah, Sydney was really special. So hug your pets. Press and Paris, Sydney. Yeah.

Hug your pets. Hug your pets. Buy them the nice food this time. Don't economize on your pets. Always buy them the nice food. Go into debt for your pets. Go into debt for your pets. You know, rob a bank for your pets. Go into debt for your pets.

Rob a bank for your pets. A lot of people are doing it these days. And it seems like there's no consequences. So, watch the movie. Watch the first two thirds of Heat and the first, I don't know, watch the right six minutes of Reservoir Dogs and then don't watch anything else

from those movies and go rob a bank. I was just gonna say, Sidney was definitely pro crimes. There you go. Speaking of crimes. John Wick, an entire crime in the interest of dogs franchise. Yeah, yeah, people love committing dog crimes. It's great. But not those kind.

They hate a specific kind of dog crime. Anyway. On behalf of dogs. Paisleypaws.org. In 1980, while El Salvador sat on the brink of war, one man held together the fragile peace, Archbishop Oscar Romero. He was brutally assassinated

in front of dozens of his loyal followers. His death marked the start of a civil war that left more than 75,000 people dead and a million more displaced around the world. My family includes both, those that fled and those that died. Listen to Sacred Scandal, Nation of Saints, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ever get the feeling someone's watching you? or wherever you get your podcasts. Ever get the feeling someone's watching you? Well, in 1971, a group of anti-war activists had that feeling.

I was in the heart of the dragon and it was my job to stop the fire. So they decided to do something insane, break in to the FBI and expose J. Edgar Hoover's dirty secrets. We had some idea that this was pretty explosive. I'm Ed Helms. Listen to season two of Snafu on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you

get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Since it was established in 1861, there have been 3,517 people awarded with the medal. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and our new podcast from Bushkin Industries and iHeart Media is about those heroes. What they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us

about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back, we're warmed up, we're ready to go. Yeah, yeah. Let's lock it in, let's lock it out. When we left off with this story, Bill Balance,

again spelled with two L's, which my spell corrector will never accept, made me angry. Microsoft word is a crime against humanity. Bill Gates should be thrown into a volcano. Anyway. Clippy will pay. They all should pay.

Bill Balance and Laura Schlesinger had just met over the radio waves and he had had his producer get her number because Bill is a giant creep. Now, obviously this is the entertainment industry, he is definitely trying to have sex with her. This is not an lopsided relationship entirely though, the power imbalance is,

but Laura seems from the beginning to have been open to the idea that like, well, this could be how I get my foot in the door and in the radio. So it's one of those kinds of situations. And it's also worth noting, Laura is at this point an adult with a master's degree and a marriage behind her. So that's a choice she can make, right?

Right. It is unclear to me whether she called into that show at the first place because she wanted to try and like make a name for herself in radio, or if that only happened the way Bill claims it is, because Bill is going to claim that once they have their relationship, because they are in his words dating,

she does not use that term for it. For a while. The tricky thing is, I feel like we have yet to encounter a credible source in this story. No, not one. Not one good source on the life of Dr. Laura. It's really challenging because you're just like, every time a new source is introduced, it's somehow less credible than everyone we've met so far. Yeah, that's the right way this book goes, right?

Yeah. That's the right way to look at this book. And part of why I'm trying to suggest that maybe Laura went into this with a plan is because Bill is a liar and he is going to claim that he's responsible for her wanting to be in radio. And I don't know if I wanna give that to Bill.

Dr. Laura is among, at least whatever else you would have say about her, a pretty like motivated, self-directed, rational person. So I don't know, but the truth will never be knowable here. The day after he, Laura calls into his show, Bill is within 24 hours at her parents' home. He describes her as having what he called a quote, thousand watt gullwing smile,

which is not a phrase I've ever heard. And he claims that he convinced her she was a star and that she should get into radio. Laura has backed up aspects of this. Here's how she described their meeting. He came to my parents' home and sat across the table from me and looked me in the eye and said, someday you're going to be an international radio star. He's in the business 35 years and he's never done this. And this is not a pickup line.

We're at my parents' house for gosh sakes the closest to radio I'd ever been was turning one on to get the weather report. I had no interest in it No designs on it, but she does after Bill's call and Bill gives her a pretty full charm offensive He takes her to dinner at Musso and Frank's which is a fancy restaurant in LA to talk about her future Wow again Did Bill? is a fancy restaurant in LA to talk about her future. Wow. Again, did Bill, because also one of the possibilities here is that Bill was both simultaneously a creep

who wanted to hit on a younger woman and also thought she would be good in radio because he actually does like help her make connections in radio. So I guess several different things are possible here and we don't really know which, but it's definitely gross. Yeah, definitely gross, but in the interest of, I don't know, I feel like so many,

again, I feel like I'm coming to Dr. Laura's defense, fuck. But like- She hasn't done anything I think is wrong here, yeah. No, no, I mean, I feel like this is like, this kind of situation is the source of so many fraud complexes where I think that two things are true here, which is that this man is a fucking creep and Obviously, I mean if she was untalented in radio

Like in a you know, ethically valueless sense. She would not be on You know, so she wouldn't still be not be on, you know, still, she wouldn't still be working. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So he wasn't wrong, but he was a pervert. He wasn't wrong, but he was a pervert. And again, there's a lot of unknowables here, but Laura becomes a fixture at the station after this. She's initially just like a very regular guest. She makes, I think, some money doing that, especially when they bring her in to help basically co-host episodes or segments. And she gets as a result of this,

because she's on Bill's show so much, she gets offers, I think, initially from the same station. She gets like little jobs, right? She's not giving her own show right away, but I think she's doing some guest hosting here and there. She's doing some announcing. She's doing some, whatever kind of VO they need, right? Bill describes her as not a natural, someone who has mic fright, like is scared of the

microphone to start, but she, he says she develops skill and keeps with it. She certainly gets good at it. However, you know, she started. Where Bill and Laura's stories largely diverge is that he says they started sleeping together and were in a relationship for more than two years. Laura sort of denies this, but not fully. And it was the reason why Bill, as I said earlier, leaks a bunch of her naked photos to a porn website,

which he does in exchange for $50,000 is- Oh my God. Isn't he rich already? Again, he's a real creep. I don't know. I don't actually know how rich he was, you know? These guys also snorted all their money back then. So like it's entirely, this man was, this man was a huge radio shock jock in 1971.

All of that money went right into cocaine. Good Lord. Yeah. So you kind of have to go back and forth here. I generally prefer to build on this stuff, but like Bill sells naked photos of her and also like letters and notes that she had written him and signed him like while they were seeing each other. Right.

He provides all of that to this porn website and to I think when it becomes a big deal about a couple other places because she like ignores him at a party and denies that they ever saw each other. And so he's like, I'm going to be a piece of shit, make money and also get, you know, get back at her for not respecting me or whatever. That's the full context of why that stuff comes out. And it is here that I should note that while Dr. Loro was an adult when this relationship started with a master's degree, Bill was the same age as her dad

and had served in fact in World War II with her dad, but as a captain. So, well not like in the same unit, but like that's the age gap, right? He is, this is like creepy, yeah. Just wanna make, just really don't wanna be sleeping on the details of how bad a person Bill is. I just also don't wanna like infantilize her in this.

Yeah. Yeah. The way he describes their relationships. She slept with him to get her foot in the door and then abandoned him as soon as she didn't need him anymore and if that's what happens, I'm glad Bill's angry about it, right? I'll say that much, because he definitely sucks.

This is also- Yeah, he's a piece of shit. Maybe he- Pieces of shit begetting pieces of shit. What a beautiful story. I've heard people allege that, like, he was basically grooming her. You know, that's certainly a way to look at it.

Laura does not describe it that way, but we'll never know. Now, in addition to being a massive creep, Bill gives Laura some career advice that's going to prove crucial. He wants her to, and this is kind of the biggest impact he actually does have, other than like giving her a leg up into the business, is he says,

hey, having like professional medical advice people, professional therapists and counselors give advice on people's fucked up lives is going to be a bigger business and entertainment in the future. You've already got like this scientific academic background. Laura is at this point working on her PhD. You should get your counseling certificate, right?

So you actually have a professional credential to bring to the table because there's gonna be a lot of money in that. And Laura commits to doing this. Now, doing this is going to take like 2000s of hours of supervised counseling work. But if he does it, Bill says he'll make her a regular, like every week on the show, which is like a job.

I don't know how much it pays, but that's like paying work in the radio. Laura gradually, as she's doing this, because she's on the show occasionally, she's doing some guest bits and she's getting her counselor's license, she starts to kind of like hone in on what her personality on air ought to be, right?

And she notices she has times when she's nice and she's like listening to people and she's empathetic and she has times, because she's kind of an angry person, when she's nice and she's like listening to people and she's empathetic and she has times, cause she's kind of an angry person, when she snaps at people and she's just like really shitting to them. And she starts to learn over the couple of years

that she's doing this, people respond to me being mean, right? People love when, and this is a clinical thing, people love when mommy yells at them. Uh-huh. They do love it. Oh boy, do they. They love that shit so hard. They love that shit to a degree

that may damn the whole species one day. In the unauthorized biography, Dr. Christie, Bill's first on-air medical expert, this is the guy Bill's working with before Laura comes in, he says that he gave Laura the advice to channel her angry Italian ancestry into her show. Okay. And that Laura resisted this.

And so Bill had to make an appeal to Dr. Christie's authority. And this is how Vicki writes it. The only thing I could think to say was that he has impeccable credentials, continued balance. He's done so much more. He was senior advisor to the Shah of Iran that spent several years in the Middle East.

He was a senior analyst for the Rand Corporation. I said, he's lived a longer life for you. So there's more to talk about in the introduction. Wow, what a sentence. So I love that. Look, you should really trust this man. He advised the Shah of Iran. You know how well that job went for him.

God. The fact that the Rand Corporation is like number two. Yeah. Coming onto the show to help us sort out your personal problems, the psychiatrist who told the czar he definitely wouldn't die in a basement. Good stuff. So while she's working on her counseling certificate,

Laura continued her studies at Columbia, getting a PhD in 1974, which allowed her to identify as Dr. Laura Schlesinger, both in advertisements for her counseling business and on air. She would call herself doctor and then describe herself as a therapist or a relationship expert, et cetera.

And this is something that a lot of people might have led them to believe that her doctorate was medical or in any way relevant to providing relationship advice. People love this grift. People love this grift. It's a classic. It's a classic.

She gets away with it forever. She is also going to attack colleagues who do the exact same thing in a way that is so vicious and like, but also the dedication she puts to it shows that like, oh, she knows that this is her weakness, right? She knows that Dr. Laura is way more marketable than Laura, right? And yeah, it's cool.

It's cool that she understands this and recognizes that she has to attempt to nuke everyone else who does the same thing in order to protect her position here. In the late 1970s, while Laura is starting her career and is now a doctor, her parents get divorced. And right around the same time, she cuts Bill off, breaks things off with him and starts going independent. This seems to have been partly inspired by the fact

that she met Louis Bishop, a fellow teacher at USC and a married man with three children, the youngest of whom was 13. Laura, intrigued by his sexy shoulders, started hitting on him. That's her words. Look, I'm not, I don't know. Lou Bishop's shoulders are not mine to comment on.

I don't know. Maybe she was attracted to a jacket and she just didn't realize. Happened to a lot of people in the 90s. You've seen those jackets. I know, it's like these are- This is the 90s. We're talking, I mean, we're talking about

late century jackets. These are, it's the jacket you wanna fuck. And you can save yourself a lot of trouble by just doing that. And that's why you should never put on a jacket from the 70s people. I have, a lot of people get pregnant with some weird kids. Someone left their husband for that jacket.

That jacket is 30% human reproductive materials. There's just something about him. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, she hits on him. Now again, this guy, Lewis, has three kids, the youngest of whom is 13. He is in a marriage. Laura will later claim that she only started

to flirt with him when Lou was separated from his wife, Jean. Anonymous colleagues at USC claim she pursued him while he was still with his wife, right? And obviously that doesn't mean that the blame is all on her, but it does mean that she was fine with hitting on a guy and fucking a guy who was married with kids. And like, that is a thing she will tell people they're scum for doing later, right?

I don't bring that up because I care to be a moral paragon here. I'm just saying she's going to shit on people for doing this. It's the same thing she'll judge people for, right? Yes, yes. In fact, we'll judge people for doing shit that's not even that questionable, right? Anyway, yes. In fact, we'll judge people for doing shit that's not even that questionable, right?

Anyway, for unrelated reasons, here's a clip from a call to the Dr. Laura show, Jamie. JP, welcome to the program. Hey, yeah, hi Dr. Laura. Hi. I had a quick question. I've been seeing a woman for a number of years now and I don't know what a number of years means. Get him, get him. Over two years. Okay so you've been seeing this woman for two years are you

shacked up together or you go drive to her house? No we yeah we you know we hang out together with don't things and you know, are you shacked up? Or do you live in two different places? No, we live in different places Okay, good Either one of you have minor children I don't she she has like teenagers and how old are her teenagers? I'd rather not, don't feel like comfortable to say that, but I just don't want, you know, that's nothing.

I need to know how old they are and I don't see how that's going to be a distinguishing characteristic. Everybody's already recognized their boys. Yeah, why do you need that info? They're like 16. They're both 16? They're twins? characteristic. Everybody has already recognized. Yeah, why do you need that? They're both 16. They're twins. No, 1617. 1617. Okay. That gives you two years of dating her. If you want to marry her, you have to wait two more years until the kids are up and out. They don't need to deal with you in the house.

That usually doesn't work out very well. Okay, so, hmm. Yeah. Yeah, so that's fucked up, right? Because number one, this guy does not even, because what she actually did was get into a relationship with a married man behind the back of the woman in that relationship and then the family broke up

as a result of that whole thing. Not putting all the blame on her either, but that was the situation she was in, right? This guy is just saying, I wanna date this woman who has two 16 year olds and she's like, well, you can't marry them or have a serious relationship with her while they're teenagers, right?

Because that would disrupt them too much. And it's like, what, you can't marry them or have a serious relationship with her while they're teenagers, right? Because that would disrupt them too much. And it's like, what about the 13 year old in this situation you were in? I was like, she's a gigantic fucking hypocrite. I'm like more interested in how, like listening to her operate. Like it's the same deal with Bill. Where she drills in, well, what's their age?

Exactly, like she's just like what's their age? Yeah. Exactly. She's just like a shark looking for an angle. If one angle doesn't pan out, she will wait for him to talk two to three more seconds and try the next angle. It's brutal. Her audience, one thing they like is scummy men or men who are weak or something. You want to, first off, it's about getting them off balance, right? The more things that you can needle him on, like constantly, like he does that at the

start of the call where he's like a number of years, he's like, how many years, right? Is it because that that is the most important thing? No, but number one, it maybe gives her something she can pivot off of later. And number two, by starting it like that, by like drilling on him, she's getting him off balance. She's making him more nervous. Hopefully he'll say something else that she can drill him into and how he said it, right?

Like that's part of what she does. It gives her an in for like a first judgment. Cause even when she, when she like takes in the information of two, I was genuinely unsure which way she was going to go. Just that whichever way it went, it was going to be a weird judgment. Yeah, yeah.

And I think, cause it's like, of the issues to have, I don't think it's reasonable to be like, well, you shouldn't marry someone when they have teenagers cause that will disrupt the team. No, it's your responsibility as an adult in there to not fuck up their lives. I'll agree with that, but you marrying their mom is not necessarily that thing, right? I feel like this is a part of the show, I'm sure. But by the time that interaction was

over, I forgot what, if anything, the question was. To some extent, it's about that constant feeling of hearing someone who is together attacking all of these people for being slothful and lazy and like not, you know, these symptoms of our degraded modern society and all of its cultural rot, right? That's a lot of what the people who like this show get out of it, right?

That's good. I think that relates to the topic of question. Okay, so she's like a manipulative hypocrite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's kind of a Dr. Laura story. The Dr. Laura Stora. Not a good joke. Not really a joke.

Throughout the 1980s. Robert, I gave you the pity laugh and I regret it. Thank you. I appreciate the pity laugh. Take it back, loftus. I take it back, I'm sucking it back up. I'm giving great lesson to all of the men out there, because pity laughs spin the same as real laughs, which is not very well.

Stop laughing at bad jokes. That was not a bad one, Sophie. Stop laughing at men's bad jokes. That was a real one, the first one was fake. That one really, I bad one, Sophie. Stop laughing at men's bad jokes. That was a real one. The first one was fake. That one really, I'm sorry, Sophie. I'm being a bad ally. I'm gonna take the joy of that real laugh

and I'm gonna take it with me into these ads. Oh no, now I'm party to something. The FTC is coming after you. I have bad news, which might also be good news for both of you. I know when each of you is real laughing and fake laughing. Every time. I believe that. Oh, no.

Every time. I've never let myself take that in. Of course you do. Oh, yeah. All of you. Fuck. What's the hardest question you've ever asked your mom? Mom, what happened to your sister Margarita?

For me, it's about a murder that's haunted my family for decades. They said that they took her, and the next day she was already dead. To find the answers, I went to the place where my family is from, El Salvador, and found that the story starts with a priest who was killed on the altar and sparked a war. I'm Jasmine Romero, and on Sacred Scandal Nation of Saints, join me as we uncover an unholy war, one that includes government cover-ups and politicians turned death squad leaders. But I'll also tell you the story of one family, mine. Because on this journey, I found out that we had more secrets than I knew. Listen to Sacred Scandal, Nation of Saints, as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Late on the evening of March 8th, 1971, a group of anti-war activists did something insane. Holy s***, we are really here. This is really happening. They weren't professional criminals. They were ordinary citizens, but they needed to know the truth about the FBI. Burglary's forged blackmail letters, and threats of violence were used

to try to stop anti-war marches. Even if that meant risking everything. I just felt like I was living in the heart of the dragon and it was just my job to stop the fire. I'm Ed Helms, host of Snafu, season two, Medburg, the story of a daring heist that exposed J. Edgar Hoover's secret FBI.

If it meant some risks that were involved, well, that's what citizens sometimes have to do. Listen to season two of Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We all know what that music means. Is somebody getting coronated? No, it's time for the Olympics in Paris. The opening ceremony for the 2024 Paris Games is coming on July 26th. Who are these athletes? When are the games they're playing? You may be looking for the sports experts to answer those questions,

but we're not that. Well, what are we? We're two guys. I'm Matt Rogers. And I'm Bowen Yang. And we're doing an Olympics podcast? Uh, yeah. We're hosting the Two Guys Five Rings podcast.

You get the two guys, us, we're hosting the two guys five rings podcast. You get the two guys us to start every podcast then the five rings come after watch every moment of the 2024 Paris Olympics beginning July 26th on NBC and Peacock and for the first time you can stream the 2024 Paris games on the iHeartRadio app and listen to two guys five rings on the iHeartRadio app Apple listen to two guys, five rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Ah, what a great time.

What a great time to be alive. Dr. Laura's world. So through the early eighties, Laura got a series of low stakes radio gigs at small stations. She spent years trying and failing to break into the mainstream on her own, while, in order to make money, teaching at USC and maintaining a private practice. Her first big break was in September of 1983, with the nationally syndicated program, Breakaway. Like a lot of shows, they were trying to capture the success Bill Balance had seen

by bringing in a resident therapist to help gawk at people. Laurie does well enough in this job that soon she is pitching her first TV pilot for a show called Conflict. This was a- Frazier wishes. Oh, if only. Frazier would have loved this show.

In his fucking dream. I mean, he actually did have it. This actually would have been a pretty good episode of Frasier. Yeah. The idea would be that like, people would come to Dr. Laura with problems and she would give them advice, they would take it,

and then six weeks later they would come back to discuss if it had worked. Now, this was not going to be a real, like even in the pilot they do, they bring in actors, which is not abnormal for reality shows, like even in the pilot they do, they bring in actors, which is not abnormal for reality shows, but when she has a show later, she will lie about people being actors. So I'm going to assume it would all up in lies.

Okay. This doesn't sell. Laura will continue to try to force her way onto television, a dream which she does technically succeed at, but never really works out for her. She is a radio star, right? I found a demo reel, which to my best knowledge, dates from sometime in the late 1980s to early 90s.

What stands out to me in this video is that this is a Laura who has not yet become the person we've heard in the clips that I've played. She is less aggressive, more nervous, more focused on actually providing some sort of useful feedback. And she's wearing a fabulous brooch. She is wearing a nice brooch.

And I'm gonna let Jamie play some of this, or Sophie play some of this audio for me. Well, I- Women are all the same to you. Write an apology letter for that. Hello Sue. I have a daughter. I want to know how I can tell my daughter how far she can go on a date and when I began to tell her that.

Yeah, how old is your daughter? My daughter is fifteen. Has she been dating already? No. I want her to start dating and I want to know when to start telling her these things. How do you assess your daughter? Do you think she's a bit shy? Yes, she's very shy, very, very shy.

And I'm afraid that she needs to know this because I don't want her to go too far in trying to win acceptance with the guy. Oh, so it sounds, yeah, I guess I had a feeling that you were thinking that maybe for her, the sexuality might be a tool for making the connection or for communication or for getting acceptance or approval by a guy.

Right. Yeah. Now, there's a couple of things that are really interesting about that, Timmy. For one thing, you would not find that, I think, irresponsible if that was how a therapist talked to you, right? No, it seemed like she was like, I mean, I think she is, oh, God, there's so much Frasier. There's so much Frasier.

There's so much Frasier low hanging fruit here. She is always, whether she's doing a good or a bad job, she's always listening very carefully, but this was a non-menacing, actually instructive kind of listening. The question she asked, number one, her tone is not aggressive, and number two, she's clearly not using it to needle,

but to actually get more information which she seems to actually process and respond to rather than take in a separate direction. Right? If this was on her show, she would never say, okay, so it seems like you think your daughter might be looking at sex as a way to connect to people, which is a reasonable and fair way to express a worry about a teenager teenager having sex but without like being judgmental You're just saying I think maybe they see sex as this and so this you know I'm concerned that it might lead to this or that right in their relationships

as Opposed to oh she wants to shack up because she thinks that's how you get boys to like you or something like that would be How Laura would express it today, right? The tone that she says, shack up with, it's just, this doesn't feel like there is an explicit agenda to it. Even though it's like, I'm sure that the advice she's gonna give is like fairly conservative,

but it doesn't feel malicious in the way that the first clip did. Yeah, yeah. And it's cause it's really not, because at this point she doesn't realize how much money that's going to make her, right? Ugh. Yeah.

My therapist has a roommate, so that's how I know she's good. Yeah. It's interesting. Like it is actually good therapy advice that she gives. Like later in that call, the mother discusses that like, you know, I made a lot of mistakes when I was her age

in regards to relationships. I'm afraid she's going to repeat my mistakes. And Laura's advice is very responsible. She's like, well, you should go to your daughter. You should open up about your own life and how you feel about the choices you've made. And kind of maybe that can guide her to like where you are, right?

And I'm like, yeah, that's actually good advice. Not just yelling at your kid, not just saying you're not allowed to do this, but you're like, well, look, this good advice. Not just yelling at your kid, not just saying you're not allowed to do this, but you're like, well, look, this is what happened to me when I was young. This is maybe information you should have, and here's how I feel about it. I think that that's responsible advice.

It's not overwhelming or shocking advice, and I think that's why this doesn't work. There's no big TV show, and people having thoughtful therapists consider their problems. People don't want to watch reasonable conversations on television. You want the worst people you've ever seen being insane assholes to each other. That's why always Sunny's been on the air for so long.

Well, I really do. I was thinking about this. I forget what show I was watching a clip from. It might've been like that show, Couplesy, but like people either want to watch a reasonable person talking to the most unhinged, or like most troubled patients imaginable, or the reverse. The Louis Theroux effect, yes.

Yes, yeah, or an unhinged therapist scolding like pretty well adjusted people. Theroux Theroux. And nothing in between. Sorry, sorry Louis. God, get it. Yeah, yeah. Watch Weird Weekends.

There's a great episode on that with preppers that really predicts a lot of our current, or at least shows the early stage of our current weird militia communities. Okay. Great show, ah, Louie. Complicated Man. Speaking of complicated people,

Laura's life is pretty complicated because while she is trying to get a radio show and working as a therapist, she and her now husband, Lou, have a kid. Lou had been a teacher when they had met at the school she taught at and had had to retire in disgrace because of everything that happened with Dr. Laura. And so he is kind of like working as her manager for a bunch of this period. I don't think he, he is not the breadwinner to be sure.

Right? It seems like a lot of the family finances are on Laura's shoulder. That's the feeling that I get. None of this is like precise, but that is at least what I'm led to believe by Vicky's book. Who knows how accurate that is. So he's kind of like, he's mommaging her a little bit.

It seems like it, if how Vicki's, if how the mostly anonymous people, Vicki quotes, like if that's accurate, right? There's so many despicable people attempting to tell this story. It's only bad people. That you're just like, who knows? Because yeah, you can see a world where it's like,

that is just a tool to make, to emasculate him. No one who doesn't suck has ever been within 30 feet of Laura Schlesinger. You can see a world where it's like that is just a tool to make, to emasculate him. Whatever. No one who doesn't suck has ever been within 30 feet of Laura Slashdigger. Like that's the lesson of this. So we'll never know. So we'll never know. There's no Forrest Gump like character to give us insight.

Tragic. There is however, a son named Derek with a Y. Sorry. Okay. It's an unhinged way to spell Derek. There's no other way to say it. Look, I'm not trying to punch down Derek, but your name is not spelled right.

Derek, we support you and your, I think almost inevitable, you know, Ska interests. Wait, it's also one R. Oh, now if Derek joins the Ska band. Wait, wait, Robert. D-E-R-Y-K. Thank you. Ska.

Ska. This guy is skanking. Definitely, definitely. He's got a name that would have made him fit in in the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones. Maybe he gave him the idea to do that embarrassing album about George Floyd. Oh my God.

Look, the city hasn't bounced back since. Ska has not bounced back from that album. No, no, no one involved. You can't pick it up, pick it up, pick it up after that. Wow. So I love any chance to do a Ska bit. I'll let you have it. A couple years after Derek is born,

Laura is going to make a major point of like her show that women who have kids should not have a career if they can avoid it, that it is not fair to raise kids and have a career at the same time for a woman. And I want to give you an idea of how she talks about this. I want to play you a call from a woman named Rosemary who is on track. She claims to be partner at a law firm and is trying to decide, should I get a nanny for my kids right and here is Laura's response. Rational I'm sure. If you were your kid what would you want your mother to do? I would definitely want my mom to stay home with me. That's

your answer. I think you should never have had a child if becoming a partner and all of that stuff was that important you never should have had a child if becoming a partner and all of that stuff was that important. You never should have had a child. Part of the rub of it is it's not important to me. I don't even especially love my job and I do love being home with my baby girl. Well, I don't know why you asked the question then. I feel that I'm hearing a lot. If I'm an internal voice, but also I'm hearing... I asked you a simple question. If you were your daughter, what would you want your mother to do?

There is no other debate other than the answer to that. I'd want to be mothered, you said. Why would you even contemplate something different for your kid than you would want for yourself? I Care about doing what's best for my daughter and right I wonder unless you're a really bad mother having you home is best Then having you home is the best for her yikes Also in in this in this window, so if he had open, the copy was like, don't buy the feminist lie. Oh yeah, Laura has a big lot of bits about how the feminists have ruined women by making

them want careers. I don't know. It's so frustrating because it's like, does she ever at any point try to justify the fact that she has a career? Is there any explanation as to why that is? Or she's just the exception? She lies for one thing because she says as a spoiler, she says, we spent the first three years I didn't leave the house.

That's not true. We'll talk about but also that's three years. She's not telling this woman, because maybe her kids are both older than three, right? She's saying you should quit your job that could provide so well for your family that your kids might be taken care of, right? But you could pay, partner to law firms,

not a shit job, right? That could be the path to quite a bit of wealth. She's saying give that up, because otherwise you will not be a responsible parent, when what she did was continue to work on being a radio personality while her child was very young, right? I don't think that's wrong.

I actually think that's very impressive. My mom got a second master's degree in her late 40s while she was raising us, so that she could start a new career. Right? Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't, if that, if she were to be honest about who she is, the advice to give this woman is like, you know, be cautious of how, you know, once you start having your kids watched by an A, talk to them, be cognizant of how this is affecting them. If you get a sense that, you know, the individual you've picked or just this situation is harming them, then you may

need to reappraise things. But like many children have had a nanny a couple of nights a week, especially if they're kids who are older. And it's not when I was fucking 10 or 11, I would, I loved any time one or both of my parents were out because I got more time to read books and talk to weird adults on the internet, which was never goes bad for kids. Which is unavoidable. No, no. It's always fine. And unfortunately, it can't be stopped.

No, we have learned that. It's not like my parents being home prevented that. It just made it harder. Yeah, it's obviously like these are, especially if you're an only parent, like it's a complicated, difficult thing, but the fact of the matter is, however you see about that, Laura literally did the thing

where she didn't spend all of her time at home to take so that she could build her career because she knew how much money was in it. And she's telling this woman not to do the same thing. I think that's shitty, right? All right, that's all I gotta say on the matter. Right. Yeah, so because this is such a through line

and her advice to women, Laura makes a point to claim that she managed to be Dr. Laura. She says she only works like two hours a day, or at least during this period, and that again, she didn't leave home for the first three years. Vicki Bain is going to claim this as a lie. Although Laura had been teaching a nighttime graduate level psychology course at Pepperdine

University branches in the San Fernando Valley since January 1982, she took the fall semester of 1985 off to prepare for Derek's birth. But Lou was left to babysit Derek, then two months old when Laura returned to Pepperdine in January 1986 to continue her hour and a half long Tuesday evening clinical practicum for psychology students. Laura also maintained a Saturday private practice, again sharing office on Ventura Boulevard. And in mid 1986, when Derek, with Derek not yet six months old, she added another teaching commitment to her work at Pepperdine and her private practice.

So she just does the opposite of what she said. I don't think that that's... Yeah. It's like she feels, she sounds almost like a stereotypical media projection of a working woman of the 80s whose business is talking other women out of doing that. Yeah. It's just... Yeah. And I'll be damned if that's not

a profitable, I mean, there is just an infinite amount of money to be made in making women feel horrible about themselves because there's no point in your life where that is not precedent. It's just, ugh. Everything that, from what I can tell, Laura values in her life comes from the fact that she was willing to spend less time with her infant child in order to further her careers, right? Yeah, I don't think that's a reasonable choice. She makes a lot of money enough to make sure that kid never wants for anything I'm not I'm not gonna come here and say that's not she did the wrong thing But the wrong thing is like pretending that other people who have that chance or just who need to work because everyone does usually that they're being a bad mom, which they're not.

Right, right. Right, which I mean, especially in the back half of that, like is just, ugh, it like made my like stomach clench a little bit for the women on the phone. Like because she, that like soft defense of like, I'm not a bad mother. She's like, okay, well then. Well then you should be at home with her. Quit your job.

You're like, oh God. There's just like, yeah. It is a certain kind of hell. Yes. So while Laura was by her own standards working outside of the home and being a bad mom, she was also being a bad therapist by anyone own standards, working outside of the home and being a bad mom. She was also being a bad therapist by anyone's standards. Yeah, that's her job.

One of the anonymous sources for Vicki's book is a former student of Laura's. So this is a woman taking Laura's classes. And during one day when they're talking, Laura basically says, you should become my patient at my therapy business. Now, I don't think you're allowed to do that as a therapist. I think that's probably not ethical, but I don't know.

It was the eighties, right? A lot more, everyone is on cocaine, right? So it's hard not to invite people to be therapy by you when you're both doing blow. Baby Derek's on cocaine. Baby Derek is doing more cocaine than a nightclub DJ could survive doing in modern terms. Baby Derek dug up some ludes, he's in the backyard,

he's good to go. It's like how alien people talk about the pyramids, like we have lost the knowledge as a species for how to do as much cocaine as they did back then. As baby Derek and Dr. Laura are all doing every single day, along with this student. Ain't it the truth? Anyway, I'm gonna continue with that quote

from Vicki's book. It was her way or no way, said the student turned patient. Basically, I walked in and she said, I want you to tape all your sessions. I expect all my patients to bring in a tape. We use my tape recorder. We're going to tape everything Basically, I think what she was saying was if you listen to this over and over again You'll get more out of it according to this patient

The tapes were returned to her after each session and are still in the patient's possession They document some boundary breaking activities between therapist and patient over the next two and a half years This patient met with Laura almost weekly paying her a hundred dollars an hour for her work I guess she took a liking to me recalled the the patient, who added, and I guess at that point in my life I needed the attention. She reeled me in and broke nearly every boundary that there is. For example, the former patient said, there was a young man she was seeing right before me, so we would kind of pass each other there in the waiting room.

She would talk to me about what some of his issues were. That really freaked me out because I wondered if she was telling the next person about me. Then there was a very known newscaster who was also seeing her as a therapist around the same time I was, and Laura talked a little bit about him as well. She asked me to babysit her son on several occasions.

Laura said, I don't talk to my sister and Derek doesn't have an aunt. I want you to be his aunt. So that is a boundary. I'm not a therapist. No So that is a boundary, you know? I've had a therapist who like- Yes, no, that is bad, no. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've had a therapist be like,

you cannot, if I were to meet you out in the world, I would like leave immediately and pretend not to know you. Yeah. Like I'm not sure if that's the norm for everyone, but you are certainly not supposed to ask them to be your aunt or your kid's aunt. No. I feel like this, I mean, it's, I wouldn't go as far as to say that like Dr. Laura's

work is directly in conversation with this, but like the fact that she is a very like, you know, an increasingly public therapist figure and then in the eighties feels directly in conversation, but how therapists were presented as these savior figures during the satanic panic too, and just how this was such a popular and still publicly somewhat trusted grift, despite however much evidence, recorded evidence to the contrary. Yeah, yeah, I yeah. Anyway, for years after this point, Laura and this patient become weirdly remain very close. The patient later claims that Lou was a helicopter

parent or helicopter husband. So basically this patient says Lou was there every class she would do at the college. He was always around He was like obsessed with her success and Derek was not there. So maybe they even hired a nanny, right? The good news is that dr Laura had enough time while raising a kid to start up another business This one making custom sweaters for major film productions and Jamie this is where the show goes in a shocking direction for major film productions. And Jamie, this is where the show goes in a shocking direction.

Cause I will bet you did not call that the Sweaters Whoopi Goldberg Warren Sister Act were made by Dr. Laura Schlesinger. What? Yes. Why? No, I just fucked the audio file so bad. I screamed too loud.

Oh, what a win this was. Coming across this, Jamie, there's an experience. I feel like I am the only one who can understand what like pirate captains felt when they like landed and actually like hit treasure in their shovel, right? Because that's how it felt reading that detail. I am floating three feet above the ground. The slack from my mic to my Zoom recorder,

the only thing tethering me to the earth. How, how? God, this is- Fascinating stuff. At least one's custom sweater. Robert, this is why you do what you do. I know, I know. This is beautiful.

I love it. It's glorious. She also made some of the Lost Boys costumes in Hook. Wow. There's no way to be ready for that. No. It hits like a cyclone. I just, there's no way to be ready for that. No. It just, it hits like a cyclone.

A woman's heart is an ocean of secrets. Like you just never know. Wow. I don't know which sweater in sister act that Dr. Laura made, but it was apparently for Whoopi. So. Well, I would be open to, yeah, someone start a poll.

Some of the fuck, the next time you watch Hook. Which one is, which sweater's giving you an aura of menace? And let's see. Anyway, wild stuff. Yeah, so Laura is finally syndicated on air in the mid 1980s, but she loses the show. This is another unhinged twist. The network that owns her show is bought by the Liberty Lobby,

which was founded by a Nazi named Louis Carteau as a political action group for the far right and also published the newspaper Spotlight, which was dedicated to Holocaust denial. That is far less shocking to me than the Sweaters and Sister Act. You know, Laura is, number one, not a fan of people who deny the Holocaust. She is half Jewish. She's going to become Orthodox Jewish for a period of time, then she stops.

But at any rate, she does not thrive here. She quits the station not long after it's taken over by the far right. We don't know the exact reasons, but it might have had something to do with the fact that they were really bad people. So good for you if that's the case. And even Dr. Laura has a line. Dr. Laura had a line at least. Who knows about today.

Okay, yeah, fair enough. But she did have a line then, and she gets credit for that. Good for you, good on you. So according to Bill Balance after she leaves, maybe she was fired also, it's really unclear to me, but in which case, less kudos. But according to Bill Balance after she leaves, maybe she was fired also, it's really unclear to me, but in which case less kudos. But according to Bill Balance, she called him and begged for help saying that she would

kill herself if she couldn't get back on the radio. Bill is a huge liar. I don't know that that doesn't really sound like Laura to me, but maybe she did. The good news for Laura was that things turned around for her very quickly after this point. Near the end of the 1980s, a radio executive picked her to replace Sally Jesse Raphael. Oh, wow. Her primary competition for the role was a woman named Barbara DeAngelis. Today, Barbara is a prominent author, lecturer, and New York Times bestselling author.

She has a PhD in psychology from Columbia Pacific University, which is not a real college. It was state approved, but not accredited. It is sketchy, right? Yeah. Now, Laura is going to go to war with this woman because she calls herself Dr. Barbara DeAngelis. And get like, she will complain to station management

and station management will make management will stop Barbara from describing herself as a doctor on air. Dr. Laura is definitely a real PhD from a real accredited school, but it's in kinesiology. It is not in anything relevant to what she is doing on air. It is not in therapy or in counseling. It is somewhat dishonest for her to portray herself in this context as Dr. Laura, but she still does. It's actively dishonest. And like, it's weird because also it's dishonest for Barbara DeAngelis to call herself a doctor.

It's just like, let's find the most lying-est people you can find to compete for this. So I don't know, you can, dubious trophy, yeah. You can figure however you want about that, but she's definitely a hypocrite, right? Colleagues at the time added that Laura was by far the most aggressive person at the radio station. Any disagreement or conflict with her was likely to result in weeks or years

of vicious shit talking. And this is what Barbara says happened to her, that Laura basically becomes like, almost stalking her in a professional sense. This escalates to Laura sending in anonymous complaints to the Board of Behavioral Science Examiners that Barbara DeAngelis was fraudulently portraying herself as a doctor. Which I guess she was. Anyway, she also sends a letter to the DA of Los Angeles accusing Barbara of practicing medicine without a license,

which I don't know that Barbara was doing, although maybe. This is a very like boomer woman con, like just- Right. It's watching like the Barbara V. Laura war. Well, I don't like the sister of these people. Yeah. Right. You're like all of these generic boomer women names

don't lead to no good. I wish neither of them had ever had a job giving people life advice. I guess is where I land on the Barbara V. Laura debate. It's hard to find someone professionally giving life advice who also has a pathological gain for attention. I have known a couple of people

who were like good enough at life that I think their advice would have a monetary value and they are all way too busy living good lives to get on the radio and do that job. Right, and that is what is supposed, and that is like the beautiful catch 22 of people worth listening to. They're usually too busy to talk to you.

That's exactly right, which is why you're left with people like me. And that's why we're here. Ponder that while you listen to these ads. What's the hardest question you've ever asked your mom? Mom, what happened to your sister Margarita? For me, it's about a murder that's haunted my family for decades.

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Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, so Barbara leaves the station, KFI, where she and Laura have their quarrel. She later would claim that this happens in 1992, several months after she left. Quote, I received a call from a woman who sounded very nervous on the phone. She said she had been a patient and a friend of Laura's,

and she wanted to meet and talk to me because she had some information. She came out and told me that she knew for a fact it was Laura, as I suspected, who had set out to destroy my career and discredit me because she had heard Laura say it from her mouth and not just say it, but scream it." Now, again, no good sources here. Barbara's story does, or at least Vicki finds other people who worked at KFI who back up aspects of the story, including that Laura was incredibly hostile to Barbara.

So yeah, I don't have trouble believing that she orchestrated this woman's expulsion from the network because she was threatened by her, because she was competition, right? I also think that Barbara definitely was portraying herself as a doctor and I don't really think she was. I don't think that, yeah, again, there's like, I'm rooting for no one.

Yeah, I'm rooting for those sweaters and hook maybe. I'll have to watch that movie again and really have an eye for the sweaters. I hope they're able to sort of dig themselves out from the, yeah, the trauma that they. Yeah. I'm so shocked by that reveal. What a baffling thing to learn in the middle of this.

It comes, it's like, yeah, it's like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. Just bam, now there's sister act in the middle of this story. It's a moment, yeah, it is like this moment where you're like, wait, is this gonna change the direction of her life? And it's like, no, no, not at all.

No, no, no. Really doesn't make a difference. No, utterly unrelated. A complete red herring for the future of Laura Schlesinger. There's no narrative to be gotten from it. It just is. No, you would cut this out of the script on her life because like, why are we doing this?

Where are we going on this journey? This doesn't teach us anything. This doesn't contribute to who she becomes. But life isn't a story, people. Yeah. The early 1990s were a precarious time financially for the Sleshingers. They had a devastating house fire

and were basically on the edge of eviction, horribly in debt, at least Vicki's story is accurate. The story one is left believing, if we take that book as more or less true, is that Dr. Laura was ruthless and so cruel to Barbara, in part because she saw that like if I don't get if I don't break through in radio, we're fucked, right? We've kind of bet everything on this and I don't like being a therapist.

We get a vision of her during this awkward period through a piece of rare nearly lost media or at least we can learn about her a little in her absence in this lost media because we're not actually going gonna hear her in this. This is a recording of the meeting of the mouths, a radio special hosted by Tom Lakus, who I think I've done ads for. He's one of the first shock jocks. He came right after Bill Balance

and right before Howard Stern, right? So if you're looking at like where we land on the descendants chart, Lakus comes out of balance, Stern kind of is birthed somewhere in that miasma, although Stern is on the air by the time they're talking about him. I just need to say, I absolutely hate, detest,

despise the phrase meeting up the bouts. It's horrible. It's so gross. No. And this is like a big radio special. You get a bunch of hosts together in a room, right? So Laura is big enough that she's made it into the room with Tom Blakess, who's a significant name. Also in this video is Barbara DeAngelis, Rush Limbaugh,

and some other dudes who matter less than either of them. So this is during that awkward period. I don't have any Laura in here because she's very quiet. So is Barbara. And it's kind of unclear to me when one is talking or the other, because they're not on great audio. And all women sound the same to you. Just say it.

All women sound the same. But the point is that like, you learn a lot about her position here. This is 1990. She and Barbara are kind of just putting in very little. Right? It's mostly Tom Lakers and Rush Limbaugh, who has just exploded at this time. It gives you an idea of where her standing is, right? If this mostly Tom Lakers and Rush Limbaugh, who has just exploded at this time.

It gives you an idea of where her standing is, right? If this had been a couple of years later, Laura would have been talking as much as Rush, like because she does become that level of figure. So this gives you an idea of kind of where, this is her early career. And honestly, we could get away without playing this clip, but Rush Limbaugh is gonna say something here

that I just feel I've had to listen to it and now you're gonna listen to it. And for some context, this is Tom Lakers and Rush Limbaugh arguing about the band Two Life Crew who have had to cancel several shows after being accused of profanity. You're not allowed to throw in another hard left like this. I know, it's wild stuff.

Tom is arguing two live crews shouldn't be censored basically, right? I don't approve of them being so profane, but it's bad that they're having to cancel their shows. And Rush being like, as long as the government doesn't have a law saying they can't do their show, it's fine, right? That's the argument. And I'm just going to play you a clip from that argument. Just warning Jamie listeners, you're going to hate this.

Oh, you're not gonna be happy, but it's happening. Well, why do we gather here? And play. Are you not troubled that the whole focus of the particular song in question of Two Live Crew was to talk about how much fun it is to bust female vaginal walls, to rip them apart, to rip them apart with violence against women. You think that's okay?

Yes, I'm troubled by it, but I also know that the free market would eventually determine that most people don't want to buy a record like that. That had to be with other people. I never heard Rush Limbaugh say vaginal walls before and I wish I hadn't. Bust female vaginal walls. Bust female vaginal. Bust female vaginal walls. I am so sorry, but it's in me now, and now it's in you. This is maybe, but he said it exactly like you would think.

He said it like, yes. Which is worst case scenario. If you were a comedian doing a fake Rush Limbaugh voice and like reading out rap lyrics, right? Because you thought that was funny. You would say that phrase the way that Rush said it there. Well, that's, I mean, that's like that guy's whole beat, right? That's the Rush Limbaugh effect.

That's the Jordan Peterson effect. They're always performing a bad SNL audition of themselves. Fucking Ben Shapiro reading a wet ass pussy, right? Like yes, that's part of the appeal. That's part of their appeal. Half comedians are left dead in a ditch over the self parody. Yeah, that's part of what works with them.

Busting through vaginal walls. Yeah, somebody's gonna clip that one out and turn that into an EDM track, thank God. Was that an iambic pentameter, do you think? Yes, it must have been. A lot of people don't know this, but both the show Deadwood and everything Rush Limbaugh ever said,

perfect iambic pentameter. Gorgeous. So, all of that's very unpleasant, but you can see in 1990, she has not found her footing, right, because she is not, she doesn't say anything when Rush Limbaugh says that. But in 1994, she does break through and she owes a lot of the success she has finally

to her co-host in this recording, Rush Limbaugh. His success had put conservative talk radio on the map. So Bill Balance makes it clear to the people with money and radio, oh, these women are listening to shows and Rush Limbaugh makes it clear that like people like weird and radio, oh, these women are listening to shows. And Rush Limbaugh makes it clear that like, people like weird, loud, right-wing assholes. And putting those two together is going to make it very clear

that Dr. Laura has an audience, right? Women listening to shows could be dangerous, better throw a wrench in the whole thing. Yeah, exactly. So this is gonna work out well for her. Now to fit into this new market, Dr. Laura makes herself harsher, crueller, and more Rush Limbaugh-esque. Wow, that's a horrible Daft Punk remix.

Much of her success is supercharged by the fact that she also times the release of her first book wonderfully. In 1994, I think 1994, 1995, she publishes the advice book, 10 Stupid Things Men Do to Mess Up Their Lives. If you ever heard the show, you heard this title. I knew the name of Dr. Laura's first book without even having to research it because I heard it a million times on the air.

She's better at plugging than I am. I've seen it on shelves without knowing. Yeah, I mean, that book has endured. It absolutely has. And I'm gonna read you the first five chapters. And each chapter comes with like a little sentence that I guess is supposed to be in a script. Number one, and these are again,

the 10 stupid things women do to mess up their lives. Number one, stupid attachment. Is a woman just a whoa, whoa, whoa on a man? You typically look to the context of a man to find and define yourself. I don't understand why she wrote that. That doesn't win. It was a whoa, whoa, whoa on a man.

What does that mean? Anyway, stupid courtship. I finally found someone I could attach to and other stupid ideas about dating. Desperate to have a man, you become a beggar, not a chooser in the dating scene. Stupid devotion. But I love him!

And more stupid romantic stuff. You find yourself driven to love and suffer and sucker, or do you spell that sucker in vain? Stupid passion. Oh yeah, oh ah, we're breathing hard. It must mean love. You have sex too soon. Too romantically.

And set yourself up to be burned. Stupid cohabitation, the ultimate female self-delusion. So stop lying to yourself. You're not living with him because you love him. You're living with him because you hope he'll want you. You can't, you generally can't tell me that this isn't just like articles written by Carrie Rodshaw in Sex of the City.

No, no, no, absolutely. I was gonna say, I was gonna say the front half of that was like a semi-good, if a little conservative, Olivia Rodrigo single, and then it just sort of descended into madness. Yeah, yeah. So looking into this book is very frustrating. It starts with the introduction,

where we learn that her book on women was inspired by two men. The second of those two men was her father and the first was an engineer at KFI. Quote, after working with me for more than six months, three hours a night, five days a week, Dan Mandus was hearing approximately 25 women per show agonize over some dumb guy.

You know, Laura, he told me in an unguarded moment, if you listen to your show long enough, you begin to think women are stupid. And that's kind of the core of what the Dr. Laura show is and why it's toxic, right? Yeah. You mean, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, man. Are stupid.

Whoa, whoa, on man. Yeah, yeah. That's a lot of it. That was my favorite part. She has, again, as I talk about, she is kind of like, she succeeds by doing the thing that is still a lot of how internet discourse works. You find someone who's saying something you can clip out of context or something shitty, and then you lay into them for a bunch of people who don't know them.

That's the gist of Dr. Laura. That's why the internet works the way it does. We all want to believe that we're smarter than we are. Laura aimed herself specifically at a special kind of middle American Christian conservative, someone like my mom. People who have had tough goes of it, who are scared or angry about the things that they see out in the world. They need, rather than blaming the systems,

to blame the freeloaders, right? The people they imagine are responsible for their difficulties. The people that they imagine are less responsible and good than they are. And Dr. Laura provides that, right? It's just like on, you know, same as it ever was, right? Now it is not a coincidence that Dr. Laura explodes in popularity in the mid-90s.

This is the tipping point for modern conservative grievance politics in the media. And they're angry because Bill Clinton has just to their eyes unjustly taken power from them after three presidential terms and is a very immoral man. And his immorality coincides with an explosion online and explicit films and TV like the Simpsons, right? You get all these, you get all these like media that conservatives get angry about, right? The Simpsons may seem tame to you now,

but earlier it's time on the air, Barbara Bush, when she was first lady attacked it, right? Which is why there's a whole Simpsons episode starring the Bushes. Yeah, it was like that does, that is good context for that episode. Yeah, she attacks the show because she does, The Simpsons was fairly unique in that period,

a show where there's nothing redeeming about the country or about a lot of the people in it. Like the police are corrupt, the mayor is a crook, all of the politicians are crooks, the adults are alcoholics, you know? Right, the teachers don't have the best interest of their students. No, they do not give a shit about their students.

Yeah, they're like, it's beautiful, it's perfect art. It's very cynical and it made a lot of, it's part of this, it's not the only thing doing, but it makes a lot of conservatives feel attacked and under fire, right? A lot of conservatives who maybe wanted to feel that way because it's more exciting than just living in the suburbs, taking your kids to school, working 40 hours a week at an air condition office, right? You want to feel like you're part of a culture war.

You're being attacked, right? Right. Like it gives you a sense of, there's a sense of order. There's a sense of control. Yeah. Yeah. And a sense of action, right? Yeah. And I found an interview with Dr. Laura from 1994 in the Los Angeles radio guide. It quotes her as saying, my values are an oasis in the middle of a moral nothingness. I am single-handedly trying to change this lack of ethics and values. Great stuff. Oh, so she's a she's a crusader for a crusader. You know, you know,

took part in the breaking up of a marriage lie or told secrets from her patients to other patients. Hey, was Christ not flawed Robert? Come on. Of another woman's career, but like whatever, right? She's an oasis of morality. Yes. So during this interview with the Los Angeles radio guide,

which I guess used to have enough readers to be a magazine, she described the chief problem of modern women as, quote, they define success by things other than their family relationships. I mean, Laura hates her entire family, aside from I guess her kid and her husband, but certainly does not have other family beyond that that she's close with.

And the feeling doesn't seem like unbalanced on the other side. But has a great career. Right, right. I don't think that's wrong to be fucked up with your family and have a good career. I'm fucked up with my family and have a good career, but it's wrong to tell people you shouldn't do that. Right.

I just, ugh. I wonder. I mean, I know that there's no clean answer for this, but it's just like, it seems like from a very young age, she has both had a fixation on control and a sense of order and been imbued with a deep sense of self-hatred. I cannot stop thinking about that. Like it's all connected of like, well, what is the best I can do for myself

while maintaining the same level of self-hatred and like spreading it around. It's just, ugh, ugh. Yeah, it's good stuff. It's awesome. Sorry, that's what I meant to say. It's the essence ugh. Yeah, it's good stuff. It's awesome. Sorry, that's what I meant to say. It's the essence of right wing politics, right? Everything I disapprove of is

bad and I am the lone voice for truth fighting back against it. Yeah, it hurts me to do this, but as you, Christ like, figure, I have to do it. Now, in that interview, Laura does sum up her only flaw.

Generally, I went my way and I want it now. Aside from that, I don sum up her only flaw. Generally, I want my way and I want it now. Aside from that, I don't have any bad habits. Now, it's fun stuff. And when it comes to the harm a person like Laura Schlesinger has done, I can focus just on her historic context, right? As we've said, she paves the way for guys

like Jordan Peterson, even for, like, I mentioned the Bechdel cast, obviously this podcast, as we owe something to Bill Balance, we also do to Dr. Laura, but so does fucking Joe Rogan, right? Like these are all part of- I would say more so, yeah.

Yeah, not in the direct kind of content, but that she makes space in media and shows how, she's part of the growing awareness that executives in TV and in radio just all over entertainment have with like, oh, there's a lot of money in people's messy lives and people being mean to people in messy lives. Right. She's not the only person doing this, but she's massively successful. Right. She has the number one radio personality for years in 2011. She's the number five audience on the radio. She's huge for a very long time.

People love to get yelled at by mommy. Yeah, yeah. So I could focus on all of that, and I guess we will a little bit, but I wanna focus more right now on the damage that her advice can do to individual people. You don't have like a book of the experiences of everyone who called her show,

but you can occasionally find people who called in or who listened to her talk about the impact she had on them in places like Reddit. And I, this may spoil where the story is going, but I found accounts from several women about how Dr. Laura affected them in the narcissistic abuse sub Reddit. Oh God.

I'm not laughing at narcissistic abuse. It's just like, yeah, that is, that does kind of describe the Dr. Laura show. She would pop up there, yeah. Yeah, yeah, of course. And here's one person describing their experience. Back in the nineties, I was a stay, and I've edited this a little bit for length.

Back in the nineties, I was a stay at home mom starting a family with my husband. I was raised in a conservative Catholic home with two parents who loved me and my brothers very much, and I had a traditional marriage whereas my father worked in my mother's state home to raise us. Fast forward to the 90s, listening to Dr. Laura. My husband was gone a lot. We lived far from family. There were many red flags of my husband's behavior, treatment of me, but I'd listen to Dr. Laura during the day and vowed to be a better wife, to be kind to my husband, to treat him better, respect him more, nag him less.

What that did was cause me to ignore the red flags of major character flaws in my husband. I recall for some reason my husband was doing or saying something I believed was out of line, possibly calling me a bitch or neglecting to come home when he said he would, not calling me traveling. I'd turn on Dr. Laura and hear about how, if you choose to marry this man and make babies with him, then suck it up for the sake of the kids. I stayed and ignored major red flags for years. At the time, I was listening to Dr. Laura and I was blaming myself and he was lying

to me about everything he did the second he stepped in the door. It was ideal because his office was an hour commute from our home in Southern California at the time, so he kept me and the kids a safe distance from his hidden lifestyle. This is obviously a man who has a whole life cheating on her as a narcissistic abuser, right? I'm not gonna go into the details of it. We don't need that on the radio show, but this is how she describes

listening to the Dr. Laura show as making her think she did the right thing by ignoring the fucked up shit he was doing. Right. Anyway. Well, I mean, it's like I'm at least glad. I don't know. It's so fucked because I feel like the internet at large is often, I think, used as the complete

villain of how this stuff gets perpetrated, but it obviously goes back before then. And in this case, it seems like the internet has given this person a like space to actually air it out and talk with people. Because yeah, I do think it's valuable as angry as I often get at the internet at social media for how much more toxic it's made this to note that like, yeah, this was happening in the radio. This has probably happened before the radio. I'm sure like magazines that have before the radio, I'm sure like magazines that have, I haven't looked in this as much, you get like these mail in your advice stuff, right? That stuff predates Dr. Laura,

where you send in a letter and they give you advice. I'm sure this kind of stuff happens. I think the lesson here, Jamie, is that we need a secret police force empowered to kill on sight anyone who knows or talks to more than three other human beings in the course of their life. You know?

Just prune that shit down. Pr of their life, you know, it's That shit down really that shit down. Yeah, it's true Communication and as a person you cannot expect the majority of people to internalize more than three things about you No, truly. Yeah, that's that's it. I think I can build a better future now, Jamie I think we know I know what I'm gonna go to Kamala with if she takes over from Joe. I think this could really, this could revitalize American politics. Imagine an America in which no one knows more than two other people, you know?

Wow. That's a utopia in my mind. We will become a proper country. We could become a proper country. Yeah. So another user in that subreddit mentioned reading one of Dr. Laura's other bestsellers, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. And it was in this book that Dr. Laura publicly espoused her belief that women have an ethical

objection to have sex with their husbands, even if they don't want to have sex. This is a staple of her advice. It's interesting. I found a whole review of this book on like a super far right, like homeschooling Christian nationalist website. And one of the things they explain is that like, look, women need love, men need respect, most of all. Right?

And you're not respecting it. They don't say this, but like they advise her book and what she is saying is you are not respecting your husband if you don't let him fuck you. Right? It is that direct. And I have to play him. Yeah, so it's just like a pro marital rape. Is that where we're headed with this?

I don't know more or less, but it's a little differently fucked up than that. She is not saying women don't have the right to not consent to sex with their husbands. She is saying you are being a bad wife if you ever say no. Okay, evil third thing. And there actually is kind of a difference there

I'm not saying what's better than the other but it is a little bit of a difference evil third thing got evil third thing And I want to play you a clip of this from her modern-day YouTube show and yeah Just listen to this. This is her reading a listener letter I've never been married so I'm soaking up all I can to help me when I do marry Is it absolutely never okay to say no to your husband even when you're sick? listener letter. with their husbands. Let's just say if you're needing kaopectate or an IV, come on, that's just silly. If your husband is saying, hey baby I want to pump you when you're sick, you've married a jerk. We're talking about when you're feeling irritated or I'm annoyed or I'm just too tired today and turning away your man when this is the measure that men have of how much we love them. Now I love shit like this because it's both it's a great one-two of like

wow this is a deeply toxic thing to tell women and then wow, this is a deeply toxic thing to tell women. And then, wow, oh, this is also a toxic thing to say to men. Great! Yeah. Wow, Dr. Laura, you've finally done it. A thought that is cogently terrible for everyone on Earth. Yeah, she was really leading heavy with the women stuff, but then at the end there, you as a man only have value if someone's willing to let you fuck them.

Like, oh, we got there, way to go! Wow, her wig did a 360 degree spin at the end of that. You just couldn't see. It sure does. Her hair is doing something else at this point. Now that's very gross, right? I will say it's, this is a woman who used to have an audience of 18 million people listening every week,

right, or at least reaching that many people. Radio numbers are a little wonky. As are all numbers that anyone in entertainment ever gives or gets. But anyway. Oh, they're all made up. And then if they decide they don't like it, they'll just delete it forever. Yeah.

And this view, this video has 182,000 views in 14 years. Dr. Laura has 41,000 subscribers. So more people than you'd hope for, but she is definitely not... Diminished. ... chugging along the way that she used to, right? Yeah.

Now, I find what she's saying here, especially funny because another major line in her... Again, because she's saying here, you have to fuck your husband whenever he wants because your only value is your ability to make him feel wanted by being able to have sex with someone, right? The other thing that she says frequently is women today are pigs. And women today are pigs for seeing life purely in terms of like sex and short-term pleasure when the thing she's making clear is that the only relationship men and women can have that is valuable to the other involves sex.

So it's beautifully incoherent. And I want to play you a clip of her calling modern women pigs. I was raised by my grandma listening to you. I remember growing up hearing that all too often women strive for short-term gratification instead of long-term satisfaction. Now I'm editing on iMovie. You could really use a refresher in that course. Is there any way I can receive an

update or something to refresh my own memory on these talks? It would be the utmost and helpful as to where I am in life trying to remember about what was said about long-term satisfaction. Wow. This is so timely. Because these days, most women out there are pigs. Are you shocked that I said that? Do you think I'm talking about you?

I might be. Is it one, two, three minutes, three hours, three days, three dates, and you're already having sex with somebody you don't know That's the short-term gratification. That's the pretending. There's a relationship. That's the pretending that somebody gives a darn about you That's pretending that somebody respects you cares about you You know what? Here's the deal. You know, he's in love with you. I don't need to know what the deal is. No, we don't. Clock me, Dr. Laura. See if I give a rat's ass.

I hate to say it, though, but that's also a mat. Like, that's a perfect example. Like, yeah, she's really good as a broad. Like, she's good at at understanding how to speak for an audience. Right. Like the way in which her voice builds up, the way in which she changes her voice, like the different tones she uses, her cadence, the way in which she organizes that response,

is just like, yeah, that's someone who has been broadcasting for more than I've been alive, right? Like, yeah. I enjoyed the, whenever she said pretending, that yellow font came up on the screen in big letters and said pretending. It was kind of like the more you know looking. She's better as a broadcaster

than her editor is as a video editor. I enjoyed it. Look, I hope Derek was editing that shit on iMovie. With a fucking Y right there in his name. I hope he charged a hefty hourly rate to edit mommy's little videos. I, yeah, that was, that was bleak. I mean, she is clearly a master at finding any angle

to make a person real or imaginary to feel horrible about themselves. But it doesn't, I don't know, I feel like this specific style of shaming doesn't hit the way it once did. I don't know, what do you think? No, no, I mean, that's, you've seen her decline, right? And part of it is that she just isn't, she's always been kind of culture war adjacent,

but never as much as people are today. I think she would have found it kind of undignified. She would never do, not that she's any better, but like the degree to which all of these people become caricatures of themselves in every form of media imaginable, I don't think she would have been comfortable with. I think she wants too much control over her image to get that close to a bunch of other media figures, right?

I think that, yeah, that's my feeling of it. I just wonder, I mean, honestly, because she's well into her seventies at this point, I wonder if there's just a part of it as like, at some point, I wonder this about, you know, older people who are involved in the culture wars conversation. I'm like, how are you not just fucking exhausting?

You're not just tired? It's exhausting. Yeah, I'm 36 and I fucking hate it. It's exhausting to like bear witness to, much less participate in, I would imagine. She might just be fucking tired. Yeah, I think it's because some of these, I don't think she is quite, although she has some of that,

but guys like Rush Limbaugh were born to be culture war ghouls. Whereas most of us, people like you and me, who have grown up in the middle of this fucking thing they helped start, we maybe have gotten involved by nature, but I don't know about you, Jimmy, my ideal life is being a weirdo with like a radio show talking about cryptids who lives in the woods and one day just disappears while hunting for Bigfoot or one of those worms in Mongolia

that has lightning powers. That's what I would like to disappear searching for. You know? Is that what Dune was about? Don't answer, I don't know. I think Dune might have been inspired by that Mongolian worm, Jamie. Awesome.

That may or may not exist. I'll never know. Look, nobody's found the great Khan's tomb and nobody's found one of those worms. Put them together, bada bing, bada boom, you got a pretty good fucking high adventure novel. You know? It does feel, I mean, like, clearly,

you know, Dr. Laura has a clear place in the pantheon of 20th century grifters. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. And she does very well at her height. The show is on 450 radio stations. She is second only to Rush Limbaugh. This is when she starts receiving a bunch of awards. She gets one from the Department of Defense eventually.

And then she snubs Bill Balance at an award ceremony. And this is why he sells her photos to a porn website. Schlesinger is rightfully furious. She sues him for invasion of privacy and copyright violation. The court ruled that she had no right to the images. And the porn site puts them back up. I'm not an expert on this case,

but it sounds pretty fucking gross. She does not appeal. She tells her audience the photos were taken at a low point in her life. And since she was going through a divorce at the time, she didn't have moral authority to talk. Yeah, it doesn't matter at what it just matters that it's illegal to distribute. That's where I am on this is like we should be allowed to do that at all. to distribute the venniform. That's where I am on this, is like, well, you shouldn't be allowed to do that at all. That's completely unacceptable.

That feels like, yeah, the Dr. Laura kicking in of like, oh, well, there's a reason that this happened. It's like, no, actually, this is the rare time that I'm on your side. No, you are completely right to sue him, and I wish the case had gone your way. I think it doesn't because of some weird, the copyright issue is a big part of it. There's something weird about their professional relationship that I think it's, because of some weird like, the copyright issue is a big part of it, right?

There's something weird about like their professional relationship that I think it's, I don't know though. I'm not gonna, don't wanna talk out of my ass on it. Cause she's in the right there. In 1999, she signs a deal with Paramount to create a talk show, which is a disaster. Laura does not have the kind of face charisma

that you need to be a compelling TV lead. And there's also something inherently shameful about what she does. Right? Like you don't want to see somebody be that mean. You might want to hear it when you're driving and you're in a bad mood because you're commuting, but you don't necessarily want to see it. I don't. I mean, but if that were true, wouldn't that be true of like Rush Limbaugh and Jordan Peterson and all those guys that we see all the time? Rush Limbaugh also has a TV show that doesn't really work out in the longugh and Jordan Peterson and all those guys that we see all the time? Rush Limbaugh also has a TV show that doesn't really work out in the long run.

Jordan Peterson comes around later and is a different kind of guy, you know? He's related to both of them, but for one thing, he's a lot more like of a lower tempo of energy usually, right, like that's part of how, you know, he has his times when he's clearly manic or on whatever weird drugs his daughter convinced him to take. But the Jordan Peterson that initially got famous

is like a very good at sounding like a cultured and calm academic for the most part until he has his like moments of passion. Until he goes raw meat mode. Right, right. Whereas Dr. Laura is kind of immediately mean to whoever calls, you know? Right.

Anyway, the show flops. Laura's desperation over the show flopping is evident in the fact that the series had to bring in paid ringers to generate conflicts, because it was so bad. They did this lazily. On two consecutive days, the same researcher employed by the show is brought in to play two different people.

The first is like a college, a student who gets money to write essays for other students. And the second is a woman living with her boyfriend trying to decide if she should get married. The show has its last episode in March of 2001. Now, Jamie, I know that you and I both know about another terrible thing that happened in 2001. You know, a really horrible thing. I think it's changed my life. I know it's and I both know about another terrible thing that happened in 2001. You know?

A really horrible thing. Shrek came out. I think it's changed my life. I know it's changed your life. And that's when Dr. Laura briefly had a conflict with the gay community. Yes. This was at a different time.

It's the only other thing that happened in 2001 that I can recall after March. It's the only Shrek came out, you know, Mahalan Drive came out. Shrek comes out, right? Yeah. Among Drive came out. Shrek comes out, right, yeah. Amongst other things. And Dr. Laura calls homosexuality a biological error. Now, Laura kind of immediately has to backpedal.

This would not happen today. She would grift off of this. She would certainly be fetid by the far right, right? Or the normal right at this point, just by the right. She can't, it's weird, because 2001 in so many other ways is so much worse a period for like queer rights in this country. But at this point, there's enough like GLAD and stuff, there's letter writing campaigns against her, people cause enough of a problem that she has to apologize.

And her point on this is all, again, you can really see that the narratives haven't calcified to the point that they are at this point. Cause while she says a bunch of horrible things like gay people, it's not, it's the result of basically a biological glitch, right? Rather than something that we see in every species that reproduces sexually. Since the beginning of time, yeah.

Yeah, but she also says, well, we should, this is also fucked up in a way, when kids get too old for good straight parents to want them, gay men should be able to adopt them. Oh. Which is such a weird. I've never even heard that. It's a big fucked up thing.

That's a new fucked up thing. It's honestly impressive in gymnastics there. Like you just have to hand it to her sometimes. Yeah, what the fuck? Yeah. I didn't know how to make gay people should be allowed to adopt kids horrible, but you did it. Wow. And in two ways, it's amazing stuff.

Laura continued her by now time-worn tradition of giving people advice. The best example of her giving advice that is like the opposite of stuff that she actually did from later in her career is that she would repeatedly tell people, you got to honor your parents, you should try to have a good relationship with your parents. If you're a kid, you should have a good relationship with your parents. The best thing that a parent can have is grandkids, yada, yada, yada. In real life, she briefly hires her mom to be her secretary

and then fires her mom. And then her mom goes on to spend her remaining years alone in a condo. She dies and isn't found for like three months and may have been murdered. We don't know if she was murdered or not. It's a little bit of a mystery, but here's what Laura herself wrote on the matter.

One day the Beverly Hills police called me. She had a condo in Beverly Hills to let me know my mother was dead and had been dead on the floor of her apartment for about four months. There were no friends and none of her neighbors were close. Nobody noticed. They said it was probably a homicide, but not a robbery. When the police came to my home to ask me questions,

I told them it couldn't be a homicide. I said that to murder someone personal, you had to be close enough to begin to hate and that nobody got close to her. The final conclusion was unknown cause of death, but not homicide. So. No comment.

No comment. Messy, messy. Just fucking brutal, yeah. That's brutal. Now I will say, Jamie, I think I solved this case. I think I know something that Laura didn't at the time, right, so the police think this is a homicide. You know, maybe the serial music can start playing now.

The police believe this is a homicide, but Laura says her mom wasn't close enough to anybody to be murdered for personal reasons. But in the book Vicky Bane wrote about Dr. Laura, it opens with an interview with Yolanda, Dr. Laura's mother, from inside her house. Vicki describes the house. She seems friendly with Dr. Laura's mom.

Am I saying that biographer Vicki Bain murdered Dr. Laura's mother for some personal reason? Not in an illegally binding sense. We'll never know. To what end? Listen to the next 11 episodes of my podcast on who killed Dr. Flores' mother, which is okay to joke about a little

because she hated her, you know? Yeah. I don't know, maybe it's not, who cares? What are you gonna do? And then I will start a rival podcast called Vicky Bane Innocent in years one. Jamie and I are going to grift so much money off of this woman who, as far as I could tell,

published two unauthorized biographies back in the 90s and then did not publish any other books. Hey, people have made more of less. May not even be a person. Might be a fake name that a publisher made up to publish this book. No way to know. Anyway, up to the mid-aughts, Dr. Laura remained one of the most successful broadcasters on the planet.

All of this took a disastrous turn on August 10th, 2010. Up to that point, Dr. Laura was like the number five broadcaster in the country by audience. But on that broadcast, while talking about modern comedy, she says this. Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger. I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it,

it's a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing. Jesus Christ, Dr. Laura. Oh, she goes on. Because I'm not gonna play all of this. Maybe I should, but like the lady she's on the phone with who I think is a black woman says,

well, you were like really comfortable saying the word a lot of times on air. That's kind of weird. And Laura gets really angry and uses it 11 more times. Just being like, you know. Yeah. Then she says a lot of blacks only voted for Obama because he was half black. And when the caller disagrees, Laura says,

don't NAACP me. Oh. So that's not great. Jesus fucking Christ. Not great. Yeah, yeah, quite a blow up. So this is what does her in professionally? As a big name, yeah.

She issues an apology later that evening and then apologizes on air. God, I mean, it's like at least it's fucking something. Yeah. Basically at the end, you think probably there was a backroom deal. She doesn't immediately quit, but she quits at the end of the year.

She goes, I think it she goes on Letterman to be like, I'm quitting in order to regain my First Amendment rights to say whatever is on my mind. Yeah, good on Letterman for letting her give her perspective. Yeah, thank God. But nobody really wanted to hear it after this point, even though she is still doing it.

So, there you go. You know, at very least, it doesn't seem like she has endured meaningfully outside of her only demographic, it seems like it's ever been, like generationally. Nobody knows who fucking Bill Balance was, right? No. But we do live with his,

I mean, Howard Stern is still on the air. Not to say that, but we are part of like the, we exist in a space that he helped make, right? And a lot of the worst people on the internet today, a lot like Jordan Peterson being the example we keep going back to, I don't know if they wouldn't, I'm not gonna say there would be no Jordan Peterson without Dr. Laura, but he would have had a lot more work

to do to make that space if she hadn't been there first, right? Right. And make no mistake, I believe in Dr. Jordan Peterson, I believe he would have found a way, but certainly didn't hurt. This is fascinating. Dr. Jordan Peterson finds a way. Wow, from just a looming presence

in the Barnes and Noble aisle to knowing that she is, I don't know, in no small part made some of our worst ghouls possible. And also made one of the sweaters in Sister Act. And the Lost Boys costumes in Hook. If you remember nothing else, you know, that feels, that feels about right. Yeah. Yeah. That absolutely shocking feeling. I am gonna rewatch Sister Act tonight

and guess which sweater. I could rewatch, you know what? Let's all rewatch Sister Act. That's a very gentle, yeah. Let's rewatch a good, yeah, yeah. We'll rewatch Sister Act, we'll rewatch a good T&G episode where she plays, where she plays Gainan, maybe the one where they go back in time

and meet Mark Twain. He's got a ridiculous mustache. And most importantly, oh, I know, we had an episode of Lower Decks about that. How could you not? Most importantly, we'll go back and watch the Christine Baranski episode of Frasier. Yeah, the Christine Baranski episode of Frasier, the episode of T&G where they, well, the two

parter where they go back to San Francisco and old times. And then of course, the movie Sister Act and a hook if you've got time. That's actually a very relaxing weekend watch list. It's like a nice weekend. You know what? Everybody have fun. Jamie, do you have anything you want to plug at the end here? Perhaps a podcast? You know, I would love to plug 16th Minute as well as the Bechdel cast,

which we firmly are in denial that we have anything to do with any of this. But, but yes, listen to 16th Minute on CoolZone Media. There's actually a lot of what I was thinking throughout this episode had to do with an interview on a recent episode with Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat, who was harassed and doxed for weeks, like an entire summer by Rush Limbaugh back in the day, and then went on to be harassed and doxed by Jordan Peterson fans just a couple of years ago. And we talk about sort of the illusion that this is an internet problem when it has existed

in a very similar form for a long time. So yeah, check out my interview with Carol. And if you just like internet main characters, that's the show. Yeah. Go to hell. I love you. Bye. of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1980, while El Salvador sat on the brink of war,

one man held together the fragile peace, Archbishop Oscar Romero. He was brutally assassinated in front of dozens of his loyal followers. His death marked the start of a civil war that left more than 75,000 people dead and a million more displaced around the world. My family includes both, those that fled and those that died. Listen to Sacred Scandal, Nation of Saints, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ever get the feeling someone's watching you? We know they're looking for us. Well, in 1971, a group of anti-war activists had that feeling. I was in the heart of the dragon, and it was my job to stop the fire. So they decided to do something insane, break in to the FBI, and expose J. Edgar Hoover's

dirty secrets. We had some idea that this was pretty explosive. I'm Ed Helms. Listen to season two of Snafu on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do, do, do, do, do, do. We all know what that music means. It's time for the Olympics in Paris.

I'm Matt Rogers. And I'm Bo and Yang. And we're doing an Olympics podcast? Uh, yeah. We're hosting the Two Guys, Five Rings podcast. Watch every moment of the 2024 Paris Olympics beginning July 26th on NBC and Peacock. And for the first time, you can stream the 2024 Paris games on the iHeartRadio app. And listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts.