Grubstakers - Episode 06: Oprah

Episode Date: March 12, 2018

On this week's episode we examine the life and times of Oprah Winfrey, the only African American female billionaire in the world. We discuss her journey from poverty to wealth and some of the hucksters and scam artists she's inflicted on America along the way.

This week on Grubstakers, we're talking about Oprah Winfrey. Hear the inspiring true story of how the queen of daytime television made her rags-to-riches tale come true, and how that allowed her to open the doors for such reputable characters as Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, and the people who wrote the book, The Secret. All that and more, coming up on Grubstakers. Because of my success in the private sector, I had the chance to run America's largest city for 12 years. I taught those kids lessons on product development and marketing. They taught me what it was like growing up feeling targeted for your race.

And that's just not true. You know, I love having the support of real billionaires. Hey, welcome to Grubstakers. I'm Sean McCarthy, here with my friends as always, Steve Jeffries. Andy Palmer. Yogi Paiwal. And thank you for tuning in. i think we got a bit of a different episode this week in the sense that our first five episodes are about just complete

human bags of trash um whereas this episode it's about not quite as much not a bag of trash maybe uh maybe a loose leaf bag of recyclables, I think is what we're dealing with today. Right. And of course, we're talking about Oprah Winfrey. She may be known to most of you as the judge from the Bee Movie. That's right. But Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire. According to Forbes, she is worth $2.7 billion as of March 2018. And she's almost entirely self-made, I would say. Whereas, you know, in our first few episodes, we talked about Mark Zuckerberg getting a huge loan from his parents. Jeff Bezos gets $200,000 from his parents. You know, so a lot of so-called self-made billionaires are not self-made. But Oprah is, she grew up very poor um i think her grandmother

was dressing her in like a potato sack dress that's right yeah get made fun of for and so so she gets a literal rags to riches right you know she's a literal rags to riches story so you can't really dispute that and i think like this will be a different episode, but it'll be interesting because the central premise when we started this podcast is we are testing the hypothesis that there is no such thing as a good billionaire. Because if you're just having a billion dollars, you are hoarding money. You are a hoarder. There are thousands of social problems you could fix tomorrow by just downsizing your

lifestyle a little bit instead of just letting your money sit in a checking account. thousands of social problems you could fix tomorrow by just downsizing your lifestyle a little bit instead of just letting your money sit in a checking account so one of the things you could fix is how sean says the word tomorrow he says tomorrow even though he's not canadian and i mean billionaires you got to work on this because i'm tired of hearing it but the point is you know oprah doesn't have like um her slave sweatshops like jeff bezos and uh she hasn't gotten the nation addicted to heroin like the sackler family she just you know showed up in living rooms and cut herself a good production deal and uh maybe made a lot of people happy while potentially peddling some uh questionable along the way. She got us addicted

to positive thoughts and self empowerment. Handy, move your mic closer. She got us addicted to powerful thoughts and self empowerment. Yeah, and also she made sure to prop up literal capitalistic pundits. Literal people that are like, hey,

I'm a con man. Would you let me have a TV show? Yeah, why not? Why not? That was Dr. Oz's original slogan, but they thought it was too long. Yeah, she created all these demi-hucksters that went out and peddled in other areas of medicine. Right. Or personal finance.

Dr. Phil. Yeah, his original slogan was, you can't prove I fucked my patient. But yeah, going back to her bio, so she grew up in Mississippi and then split time in Tennessee with her father. Oprah's mother had Oprah at 16. Her parents separated.

And in Tennessee, her stepmom got her in beauty pageants, and she won Tennessee's Miss Black Teen Tennessee. That's what she won. It was very specific. It was racially segregated beauty pageants because, obviously, you can't have one beautiful person that's just any race. No, that's crazy. You have to have one white and one black, obviously.

It was originally called Miss Black Jailbait, Tennessee. Who won this year? Steven, you keep asking that. We don't know. Just imagine the racist. He's like, we have to segregate our objectification of teenagers. But yeah, no. And Oprah was born to a single mother.

And her mother worked as a maid. Her mother had to work very long hours. So, you know, as a result of that, Oprah was um i guess i want to say neglected as a child by her mother because of economic circumstances really you know uh but she spent a lot of time with her grandmother as well uh who she learned a lot of her values from and uh you know just so the audience knows like what's what do you think the combined total episodes of the oprah show we have actually watched between all of us is i don't know maybe 30 of like an episode if that right are you sure because i mean growing up it was like an it was cultural icon right it was just on in the background a lot yeah i mean that's the thing like i want to say 10 episodes right i

feel like i'm probably i probably gotten through two or three. But those episodes are long. This is like an hour, two hour long episode. I've never seen an episode from beginning to end. I haven't even seen the whole Chappelle interview. Okay, but cumulatively though, we've probably seen somewhere on the order of 100 episodes. I guess. I mean, I don't know if I have.

I didn't watch that much Oprah. All right. Well, anyways, so just so you know. Papa JJ is paining. I saw that clip. You couldn't stop watching that clip. Busted on Sean in the bathroom. He was just watching that clip.

Vigorously stroking his chin. But so Oprah grew up in poverty. And she didn't have an easy life, you know. I believe, and this is, of course, something she's talked about extensively, is she was molested as a child by her cousin, her uncle, and a family friend. Yeah. Starting when she was around nine years old. And so just like the cumulative effect of all that poverty and all that abuse, it is something that makes Oprah's story all the more inspiring. And it's inspiring, but there is kind of a dark underside to it that I think about, and

I was thinking about today when we were talking about doing this episode, because it's like, you know, there's 40 million some Americans who had a similar life experience, at least in terms of poverty to Oprah is today. There's 40 some million and, but there's only one Oprah. Right.

So what you're saying is in about 20 years, we're going to have 40 million Oprahs. No, what he's saying is that those people have negative thoughts. That's right. They don't know the secret. The magnetic waves from their head aren't attracting profitable business opportunities. A positive thought is 100 times more powerful than a negative thought. That's been proved in science.

But, but so, you know, nobody would dispute that Oprah had a very hard life and she built this from the ground up. I don't think she had a very hard life. Andy, shut up real quick though.

You know, I, I didn't know that Oprah was sexually abused as a kid. And then like, I just started looking up. At that point, I was mad at myself for not knowing that because of how public everything from the Me Too movement is to how many celebrities are speaking out against their abuses and crimes against them. And then I just started looking up random female black actresses and celebrities.

And most of the ones I looked up had been abused. Mary J. Blige, Monique, Gabrielle Union, Queen Latifah. It was crazy how long it took me before I got to a black celebrity female that wasn't abused as a child. Halle Berry was the first one I found. And that's crazy to think about. Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis.

There's so many black female actresses that were abused. And it made me mad at how... How much they lie. Yes. That's what I was very mad about shot. I mean, is it not crazy? I mean, think about how many... Did you do a control against white and Asian actresses to see?

Sure. I watched this movie Eyes Wide Shut. And I think it talks a bit about maybe why that happens. I've never seen that movie. It's a good movie. Because they speak out against the power? But so, Oprah... They don't know the password?

The second password? There is no second password. It's a secret. Sean and I watched Eyes Wide Shut the other day. You have to like, that's why he got caught is because he wasn't on his vision board. He didn't put the second password. But he did put a mask. Okay, so Oprah has a hard life, but her father's a positive influence, and her grandmother as well encourages her.

And she's able to win a scholarship to go to college at Tennessee State University. She gets a full scholarship there, and she studies communications. And eventually, she starts working in local media she has to be the richest world's richest person with a communications degree she's uh she becomes the first black female news anchor at a nashville station in i think 1975 or 6 or so. And then eventually she becomes a co-host of a talk show, People Are Talking, in 1978. And then she kind of builds her media career from there. She's known for the style she would refine over the years,

which is her very intimate, conversational, but also confessional television appearance. And this is something a lot of people have remarked on. What built Oprah's brand, when she launched her show especially, is that she really gets emotional and gets involved. It doesn't have the more traditional journalistic distance that you see from, you know,

Phil Donahue, who she went on to crush. But in 83, she relocates to Chicago and she takes over a low-rated talk show, AM Chicago. And then that would eventually be relaunched as the Oprah Winfrey Show. And this is where her money really starts um yeah and we can talk a bit about just how she got to a billion dollars in uh in media entertainment if we don't have any other biographical details that are worth noting well I remember reading that she had some career stumbles along the way even after she she left her home. She failed on the way to success? She failed, but she reinterpreted it as a success. Ooh.

You talking about when she got fired? Yeah, she got fired and then she got demoted. Yeah, she got demoted to the morning headline news show, basically, which I think was before the Oprah Winfrey show. That's what she took over, I believe. Like, Oprah, you can't give away cars on the news. She's like, well, I'll start a show where I can give away cars. The station, needless to say,

ended up losing over $2 million from the car giveaways. What if she, like, she was giving away pintos At first It was a real disaster There were a lot of legal problems But yeah I mean

She had kind of a back and forth thing She had some career stumbles along the way I'm sure The Oprah cult has documented it better Than we ever could. But eventually, in 84, she launches her AM Chicago show, which takes over, which becomes the Oprah Winfrey show. And this just really, Phil Donahue was the main ratings guy in Chicago

and nationally at the time, And Oprah just destroys him. You know, to the point where nobody even knows who Phil Donahue is anymore. My vagina is paining. He just couldn't compete with that content. Can't compete with that. Can't beat that. That's that Oprah magic. I love bread.

I'll get the grainiest, nuttiest seed bread. And my favorite bread. Unbelievable. I love it. But yeah, and it should be noted, the original Oprah show was not what essentially everyone in this room grew up watching. The daytime talk show for women. The original Oprah show was much more like the Jerry Springer show where we were watching some clips earlier.

She'd have, you know, child preachers on to fight with her heathen audience. And she'd have neo-Nazis on. She would like bring on this child preacher who did like fire and brimstone shit and clearly the the kid was just stuck like in front of a make a church by his dad right as a novelty uh it was pretty almost cut and dry child abuse just like you know um joe jackson shit and so they bring the kid on and instead of exposing the dad they just have the audience grill the kid on how much he knows about the bible or like what he's saying so they're just like basically they're taking a kid who's being abused by his dad and then just abusing him with the audience for national tv

yeah it was those bold choices that set her up. That's right. Juicy TV. I mean, it's the precursor to the most exploitive TV reality TV. Like, this is the beginning of putting... Toddlers in tiaras? Yeah, all of it. Basically, damage people for your entertainment on television starts with Oprah asking a child preacher, why are you so shitty like it's like it's crazy but the thing about oprah that i think all of us have learned through our research is that you know she directly might not be uh malicious by our research yogi means her wikipedia

article that's right she directly might not seem malicious but once she got enough money, the people that she put in charge were morally corrupt and fucked up a whole bunch of shit. That chick who went on Dr. Phil, the catch-me-outside bitch, she fucking is popular. But it was not Oprah directly, but that's Dr. Phil, so that's Oprah. It's what Oprah represents to the narrative. You know, like I was saying earlier about the 40 million poor people want Oprah. It's the idea that, you know, either through the secret or positive visualization or just working 100 hours

like Elon Musk wants you to do or something. It's just telling people that, like, in this society, if you're not successful, it's your fault. Because Oprah can do it, so why can't you do it? Why can't you be a billionaire? Yeah, why can't you? Negative thoughts.

What's wrong with you? Gonna put out a self-hate heckler tape. It's just me yelling at you about why you're not a billionaire. Oh, you can't make no money, huh? You can't be Oprah? Maybe we should talk about her lieutenants

who got their start on her show. Yeah, first I do want to just kind of discuss how she actually got rich because it is an interesting story. So basically in 85 she, or sorry in 84 she's making this is according to a Forbes profile in 95, but in 1984, she's

hosting the AM Chicago. She's making $230K a year with like a $30,000 raise every year. And she actually makes the decision to fire her agent because she thinks she's being underpaid. She gets a new agent and he actually negotiates a really good deal for her um basically uh the this agent um goes around and starts trying to um peddle her show for syndication um so abc agrees uh to uh let the her agent try and distribute the show. And then she gets this big break

because she stars in The Color Purple. So when her show goes back on in 86, she's like a Hollywood celebrity. She's well-known because of The Color Purple. And so it has like a big rating spike. And then her agent returns to the bargaining table and essentially gets ownership for Oprah of the program. So she already owns the...

In 86, she owns the Oprah show and starts to get a heavy cut of syndication. And then it just kind of goes on like that, where she became... You know what that buys a lot of? I love bread. Thin, I love bread. Thin. I love bread.

Hog wall crazy. But yeah, like, so essentially, I think, and this is going back to 95, she set up her own production company, Harpo Productions, which is Oprah backwards. But so Harpo Productions starts to produce the show, and they take basically 70% eventually. By 95, they were taking 70% of all the revenue from the Oprah show because she negotiated a good deal for herself, and she was in on the ground floor of syndication, and she owns her show.

So just as one example, in 94, the Oprah show took in, and this is according to Forbes, the profile that I mentioned, the Oprah show took in $196 million in gross revenue. Her agent gets a 10% cut, so about $10 million for the year. And then Winfrey personally earns $74 million pre-tax in 1994. So essentially, because she owns the show and because her production company has a majority share of distribution rights, she's making $70-some million a year from the 90s up through 2011 when the show ended wow you know um like that's

nuts 70 million a year just for the show ownership huh yeah yeah that's crazy because like once you own the distribution obviously that's where all the money yeah right um so yeah no uh credit to her she was smart and she hired a good agent to uh not allow her to get fucked over by show business and she leveraged her popularity uh with the confessional show that we were talking about so yeah like some pro-capitalism and i mean yeah that's like uh that's that's the thing with the oprah story is again as we've been mentioning it's she kind of buys into this this narrative about herself where it's like she was very smart, but she was also incredibly lucky.

The Oprah story is not the typical story of American capitalism. But because she's seen in millions of living rooms, I think her peak audience was something like 13 million a day in the 90s. She's this massive success that's in their living rooms who came from nothing and she shows them every day that like oh if oprah can do it i can do it too and it's my fault and i should blow my brains out after the financial crisis and what sean's saying

is that oprah inspiring women around the country is what caused the modern day feminism movement and oprah's to blame for all the liberal issues we're dealing with right now, right Sean? I think you're paraphrasing, but you're getting at the spirit of what I'm saying. It's crazy because she she's the most philanthropic black female from the United States. She's, I think, either the

only black female billionaire. Except for the lady who ran the Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman. Yeah, in my head I was like i was like did you forget harriet tubman i was like could you not remember more than one black female name at a time sometimes you just got to get the thing in the microphone before you remember the name you know like the except for the man who freed the slaves, President Lincoln. But, yeah, no, I mean, she's been relatively philanthropic, but it should be noted, she still has $2.7 billion. So, it's like, how philanthropic are you if you're still sitting on multiple billion dollars? Right, right.

It's just gathering interest in a checking account while people are starving to death so with the money she made from the show savings account with the money she made from the show was that from also the book club money and also the like favorite things type of thing right well that started coming in later. But yeah, like, I mean, later she signed a deal with, I think, XM Satellite Radio. And of course, she was a co-founder of the Oxygen Network, I think in 98 that launched. She didn't actually become, hit the $1 billion mark until relatively recently. Right. As of the year 2000, she was worth $800 million. And then from $800 uh 800 and again this according to forbes so from 800 million in 2000 to 2.7 billion today wow it was really like you

know she started with the um the production the syndication rights to her show and taking a majority share of syndication revenue and then from there she kind of built her whole media empire like i think harpo um i believe yeah through her harpo productions she still has a hand in dr phil rachel ray dr oz show you know her magazine o and then the satellite radio station we mentioned which might have been shut down i actually yeah yeah i think so but she got a bit of money for that but the point is you know um and we'll talk about dr phil uh and dr oz a little bit later and sues yeah but essentially she's you forgot her magazine yeah i'm sorry i

mentioned the o magazine okay o magazine uh was estimated to have generated i think a billion in revenue between 2000 and 2015 you know what i say when i uh when i see that in the newsstands? What's that? Oh, magazine. Great contributions today, Andy. He's lying on the floor from a hangover. Andy's lying on the floor and looks like he's doing a podcast from a hammock. He looks like he could, and I'm hunching over because the headphone thing has to be closer to you guys. Yogi's mad because he's jealous. Yes, I'm mad because I'm hunching over because the headphone thing has to be closer to you guys. Yogi's mad because he's jealous. Yes, I'm mad because I'm jealous, Andy.

You're 100% correct. I'm seething with jealousy right now. If only I could be lying down and playing drops. Imagine being too lazy to even sit for a podcast. I'm the only one who doesn't get a chair with a backdrop. You could sit on the couch. It's a three-person couch. Yeah, but I'm fat.

Yeah, well, okay, you don't get a chair with a backdrop, but you know Oprah wore a potato sack as a dress for many years of her life. I mean, yeah, that's hard, but... It was savagely molested. I'm sure her chairs had, you know, a back to them. I'm going to argue that there's a good chance they didn't, Andy. If they got potato sack dresses, I don't think the chairs got backs.

You know what? Agree to disagree. All right, man. But, yeah. And so we've mentioned, you know, she made this money and then she built her media empire with that. And, like, her money just kind of doubles and expands um from there and i think you know thomas pichetti uh kind of showed pretty convincingly that capital accumulates uh at a what a rate averaging three times as fast as the

economy as a whole so once you have you know 800 million in 2000 it's pretty easy to make it into 2.7 billion you know because you can either just stick it in like an equities traded fund and get seven to ten percent a year or you can just invest in all these other people like dr phil dr oz etc o magazine she bought a 10 share of weight watchers in 2015 and recently sold some of her stake for i think 110 million dollars and that's you know she more than doubled her initial investment. I think she spent something like $42 million, and then she sold some of that for $110 million.

So, you know, capital, it accumulates and it replicates itself. So once you get enough $100 million, you're pretty well set in our system. You know, Sean, when I was at the grocery store earlier, I was looking at the rack of newspapers and stuff, and I went, oh, a magazine. It only works if you're lying down when you say it.

I just wanted to make sure we kept the first one in. If I keep doing callbacks to it, you can't cut it out. Right, yeah, no. You think I'm ashamed of that joke. It's going to be Andy's only contribution today. He's doing drops.

I like the drop work he did earlier. Yeah, I guess he did a little bit of drops. He did some breads, some vajay. Seed bread. Great. Fantastic. Just his two drops. Bread hopefully all to read every day because he can't like play him back to back because he didn't download them he's just streaming the drops

do you mean he's just hitting play each time bask in it i don't have to have bread anymore during the day because I have. But so, yes, I think we've hopefully given a basic overline of just how Oprah got so rich. And I think we should discuss, as we've mentioned at the top, we don't think Oprah's a horrible person. She's done a lot of good. And like researching this, I remember when. That was very brave of Sean to say by the way Considering that he's talking about a woman Sean has only praised three women in his life First one obviously the Virgin Mary. Mm-hmm. The second one being his own mother. Mm-hmm and now Oprah Winfrey Oprah Winfrey

My girlfriend listens to this show, and she's good, too. Wow, guys, a breakthrough. You know, I would love to talk about her long-term boyfriend, Stedman. People don't know this. Middle name, won't sign a prenup. That's his middle name.

I see no reason for them to be married outside the fact that I don't think Stedman's going to sign a prenup. And to be honest, Stedman looks like he's melting as a human being. He does not look good. And he's got a few million dollars to his name as well. But Oprah's best friend, Gayle, Gayle King, I believe is her name, there's a supposed love triangle between Stedman, Gayle, and Oprah. And it's not Stedman with Gayale. It's Gale and Oprah.

And it's like, oh yeah, Stedman's getting cucked always. That's happening. Stedman likes to watch. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, Andy. Did you know that Forbes estimates Stedman makes the most money per single pump of any man in America? But yeah, so the other thing is there is rumors that oprah is gay with her best friend gail king um uh which are gleefully spread by both alex jones and gavin mckinnis and among others while they're spooning in bed yes well well gavin mckinnis is uh having sex with a proud boy. He spreads rumors of this nature, but Oprah has denied them. He spreads full ropes of rumors

all over those proud boys. Well, he's beating the shit out of an impressionable child who can't name cereals fast enough. He's saying that Gayle, King, and Oprah are lesbians together. But Oprah has denied this and said that she's been very public about her life. As far as, as we've mentioned,

you know, her history of sexual, uh, being sexually abused and, and all, she had a miscarriage at a young age. So she could be a lesbian. You think she,

I don't know. Like, I don't think she's a lesbian. I think her quote was accurate where she was like, I would tell you if I was a lesbian. Her and Gail are just good friends. But again, I have no fucking idea. You know, Steve and I were watching an Oprah video

and it showed former boyfriends of Oprah. And I don't know what you guys guess, but one of her boyfriends gets two thumbs up from me. Roger Ebert was one of her former lovers. She credits him with giving her the idea to go nationally syndicated. Oh, really? When she was in Chicago, yeah. Because Ebert was syndicated at the time and he gave her the idea and actually at the time

estimated she would make 40 times more money than him and that was a bit of an underestimate. But, you know, he also estimated that he would live 10 more years after he got the surgery. He also estimated, I'll always have this jaw. We're really giving it to that dead guy, right?

I give him two thumbs down under. He's in hell. But sorry, do we have a bit of the Oprah Me Too speech? Maybe we'll just show you like 30 seconds of this. I think it's protected. I mean, there's this nine minute one. We don't want that. Yeah. I mean, look, you guys can listen to it.

And you probably heard what she said from the media reports. But basically. Or go read it. We don't care. Yeah. She gave a a speech it was very inspiring about me too and it talked about her own experiences with sexual abuse and how you know the time's up and you know all these the men like harvey weinstein are being exposed and that's a good thing and we all agree that's a good thing but um essentially this fueled a lot of talk of her running for president, which she has denied. But she did sell that Weight Watchers stuff, so maybe she's trying to fund something.

We don't know. But what I wanted to talk about is, like, doing the research, there were criticisms of her from the left just on the idea of a billionaire running for president in the first place. You dropped a beautiful gem there, though. You think that Weight Watchers money could go for a campaign? I mean, it's $100 million. That's the amount you'd need to run a campaign like that, right? Yeah. I mean, if I were to guess, I'm going to say Oprah is not going to run for president.

She might jog. She doesn't need as much charisma compensation as, say, Michael Bloomberg. She has a better money multiplier than that guy does. Yeah, she's like an inverse Michael Bloomberg where he has to like just pour money

into his campaigns because he has no charisma. Right. Oprah made her money because she is an embodiment of charisma. Yeah. But what I wanted to get to from that is a couple things.

Nicole Ashoff coined the term spiritual capitalism to describe Oprah's doctrine. It's from her book, The New Prophet's Capital. Right. And we'll talk about that a little bit more. But I also wanted to say just the other leftist criticism of her was um the iraq war and then that's actually worth looking at a little bit um because essentially she did that well um no you get a war you get a war you get a war um i think guys if we visualize weapons of mass destruction okay i got a board up here they'll be there when we get there

that's right oh yeah i guess uh paul bremer didn't put rule of law on his vision board for baghdad in 2003 george w bush and i'm a fake doctor md i think we i think we got it, guys. I think we're here. If we visualize a stable state after you put half the professional class out of a job and disband the military. Everyone look under your seats while I exit the building.

Did you know that Dr. Oz said a green coffee extract can actually stop the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis in Baghdad neighborhoods um but so anyways um oprah's role in the iraq war is um obviously like i think it's complicated but essentially she did a show not long after 9-11 called is war the only option um and this was actually i think a rather brave critique of the military response to 9-11. And she has said that she received more hate mail for that than anything else.

You know, people telling her to go back to Africa and this kind of shit. So I think she was kind of tempered by that response. But she did actually a series of shows leading up to the Iraq War, one of which she essentially shut down an audience member who was questioning the idea that there were WMDs there, which should be noted. And she had some pro-war people on to support WMDs. But basically all of the other subsequent shows she did were very skeptical of the idea of the Iraq war. And, you know, she had Thomas Friedman, of all people, on to be like, well, if we do the war, we should do it with the international community or whatever. So, again, like, she wasn't, she was an Iraq war opponent. Thomas Friedman, by the way, should be noted.

Recent proponent of defeating Assad by arming ISIS. But she was an opponent at the time when most of mass media was uniformly pro-intervention. Yes, exactly. That's where she deserves... It's mixed because she deserves credit for... And I think Michael Moore actually at the time was calling for her to run for president

because at one show leading up, she showed extended clips from his show bowling for columbine outlining u.s military interventions in other uh countries as sort of an explanation for why some countries might dislike the u.s and uh so she was uh generally skeptical of the iraq war but there's there's a question of you know maybe she could have done more maybe she couldn't have but she actually did talk with phil donahue about that about you know, maybe she could have done more, maybe she couldn't have, but she actually did talk with Phil Donahue about that, about, you know, how to do these kinds of criticisms without people

attacking you and questioning your patriotism. And of course, you know, the response she got and all the go back to Africa stuff was, I'm sure, very influential in her not being too vocally critical of the war, but maybe being a bit publicly skeptical, which she does deserve credit for.

Well, this is the issue with Oprah, though. She really walks a tightrope kind of perfectly. Right. And the issue with, you know, not the issue, but the thing about our podcast is we really talk about, you know, how billionaires fuck up a whole bunch. But with Oprah, it's like, oh, she did punch that baby, but she hugged that homeless guy. Like, it's like she's always kind of on both sides, which, you know, incidentally, in this day and age, is what a politician does more than ever before, I think, to a certain extent. But with Oprah, I think the problem is, is that she is such a bastion of truth and goodness and wholesomeness, almost like the mom corporation from Futurama.

Right. and goodness and wholesomeness, almost like the mom corporation from Futurama, that it really does blur the lines because you can't play both sides and then only be looked at as a good entity. Yeah, and that's the thing. Essentially her audience, for the most part, is suburban,

semi-well-to-do white women who are more conservative than society at large. So, yeah, she does kind of walk this tightrope where, you know, she never endorsed any politician before Obama. So she was skeptical of the Iraq War, but she didn't really go all in. But it is worth noting that one of her shows that was kind of questioning the Iraq War, actually the Bush administration interrupted it

on the east coast of the United States with a special announcement. Because I think she did it, so after, like two days after Colin Powell did his speech to the UN saying, hey, please let us kill a million people because there's powder in this jar or whatever he said, she did a show that was skeptical of that

and the Bush administration called a hasty press conference that basically just re-outlined what Colin Powell said two days ago, and that cut into her show on East Coast Markets. Oh, really? They took like 20 minutes out of it. But it is kind of cute that, yeah, they were afraid of her. They got back to her, and she's like shock and oh but you know they were afraid of her ability to kind of mobilize white suburban moms against the

iraq war and um excuse me you know maybe she could have done maybe she could have done more maybe she couldn't have um but uh essentially she was not in my opinion opinion, an Iraq war proponent and was one of the few people in media to actually use their platform to at least ask skeptical questions rather than just be rah, rah, hooray, let's destroy the fucking world. We'll put a boot in your ass. I mean, even Ellen DeGeneres is hugging that fucking criminal. Yeah. But anyways, so I guess we should talk a little bit about kind of the hucksters she's enabled and more the idea of spiritual capitalism. And I think the worst part about Oprah are these hucksters.

Right. Because the three that I think are most prominent are Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, and Susie Orman. The Holy Trinity. Yeah. The new, the gods of neoliberalism. That's right. Yeah. They all each occupy like a different sort of sphere of cultural values for the U.S.

There's like, Dr. Phil is like psychological slash spiritual. Right. It's finance, health, and emotion. That's what they're covering. Pretty much. It's three factors every, and emotion. That's what they're covering. Pretty much. It's three factors every person needs to be balanced in to survive, but there's so much misinformation because of people like this that it's more confusing now ever than before.

Dr. Phil was, I mean, say what you will about him, but he was such a good psychiatrist that one of his patients was possibly i don't know all the details willing to have sex with him um or at least did have sex with him and and that might have been how he lost his license five years before oprah promoted him i know we talk a lot of you of tomfoolery about people licking butts and all, but we do know this for a fact. Dr. Phil is part walrus. This is true.

Grub Stakers exclusive. Yeah, they made a movie about it. That's right. They did. Just a random note. Planet Girth. To the best of my knowledge, Dr. Phil was never actually a psychiatrist. I didn't know he could go lower than O Magazine.

This is late stages. I didn't know he could go lower than O Magazine. This is late stages. I went into it. Late stage grub stakers. Right. Dr. Phil has a PhD in psychology. He is not actually and has never been a licensed psychiatrist, but he did fuck one of his psychology patients.

So you know how Dr. Phil got into the Oprah system? At least he wasn't trading pills. psychology patients so you know how uh dr phil got into the oprah system at least yeah i do actually i do know this story um oh yeah yeah sorry well so the story of how um dr phil got into the uh oprah canon is actually an interesting one that goes through um kind of the weird uh libel laws we have for food in this country. Basically, in 1998, Oprah did a show about mad cow beef where she said, I am never eating a hamburger again. And then suddenly, you know, because of the Oprah effect, like millions of dollars worth of cattle stock or whatever went down the drain. So I believe some cattle producers, I don't know their exact role, but basically some people involved in the beef industry

sued Oprah because there is... I'm sure it was ground-level farmers. Some mom-and-pop businesses. Yes. Just a couple cowboys struggling to get by brought a multi-million dollar lawsuit um but so uh uh they sue oprah for like um because i guess there's food libel laws in the u.s this has been talked about other places um they sued oprah for spreading misinformation about you know u.s beef and uh

she hired dr phil had a company at the time, which, you know, offered psychological evaluation services or something. I just want the agriculture industry to know that I would never say anything bad about you. But so she hired Dr. Phil. And don't look into it. She hired Dr. Phil during this lawsuit in 1998 to give her evaluations of the jury pool, basically, because they went to trial on this, and eventually the jury found Oprah not guilty on this thing, so she didn't have to pay out this money. Another rich black woman gets off scot-free.

Dr. Phil's like, I'd hit it. Wouldn't hit it. Might with a few beers Yeah, I was gonna say Dr. Phil was plying the jury With alcohol and drugs before the trial That's why he's the doctor Yeah, that was That one looks emotionally

Vulnerable enough to move in But so Dr. Phil gives Instructions on how to to appeal to the jury's emotion or whatever quackery and then because of that he starts appearing on the oprah show and then i think in 2002 launches the dr phil show um where he would go on to give uh people in recovery drugs and substances to make his show more interesting. Wait, what? Yeah, you didn't hear that story? No.

That was recent. Yeah, no, Dr. Phil was giving drugs to people in recovery. Oh, while they were, like, taping recovery shows? Planet Girth. Yeah, this is a 2017 story from the New York Daily News. Former guests and the Survivor China winner, Todd Herzog, was battling alcohol addiction when he appeared on Dr. Phil Show in 2013.

He told the Boston Globe that he was flown there for Los Angeles for the taping and was sober when he arrived. But then he found a bottle of vodka in his set's dressing room. He said the show's staffer also gave him a Xanax to calm his nerves before his appearance. When he went on the show, he appeared drunk and looked like he was struggling to walk. So, you know, it's definitely something where... How can you look like you're struggling to walk?

Isn't that just you're struggling to walk? I don't know. Maybe it felt very easy for him. He looks like he's struggling, but he's smiling and having a great time while he's doing it. One woman from the show, again, this is from the same New York Daily News article. One woman claimed a show employee told her to buy heroin from a drug market for her niece who was trying to detox. The show has denied them these claims. Why would anyone make up these claims to sue the show?

No, that doesn't make any sense. They're lying about the things that we did. It's like, why? Because they want to lie? I don't get that. Yeah. I mean, it's like, again, the guy's a huckster and he's only a doctor because he has a PhD. And so the company was called Courtroom Sciences,

a trial consulting firm. That sounds like a sketch from a futuristic SNL. That's too good. But yeah, so basically you have Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz is another fucking huckster doctor who has, of course, you know, gotten in a lot of trouble for, among other things, promoting green coffee extract,

calling it, quote, magic and, quote, a miracle. And, you know, this is somebody who's appearing on tv and being referred to as a doctor and dressing well what's funny about coat about him is he was like what was it like a surgeon and um he was a lecturer at columbia for years and so he was like denying the armenian genocide he was he was like a legit like doctor but i think giving legitimate medical advice doesn't pay the bills so he was just like yeah green coffee i'm a doctor but that's the thing about all of the people oprah puts around her they're not technically doing wrong things well but well he was he was definitely doing

wrong things well like okay so it's not wrong to fuck your patient obviously no obviously obviously they're wrong but like they tried spinning in a light where it's like i'm trying to help you out oh yeah it's up to you to decide right right right right well that's and that's why that's like the holy trinity of like neoliberalism or whatever, because the idea is that the individual is entirely responsible for what happens to them. And a lot of the psychology and ideology behind the self-help industry is that idea that if you just change your attitude, good things will happen through the secret. Or if you just follow Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz and you do the fucking stupid coffee extract, then you'll be fine. You don't need health care. You fucking stupid coffee extract, then you'll be fine. You don't need healthcare. You have green coffee extract.

Sean, what did you say that this was? What kind of... I think I would describe it as ideology. Andy, so his fourth contribution is taking three minutes to find drops. Don't we have...

Are you going to YouTube to find the drop? Don't we have that drop saved? Wasn't this a discussion? This was a discussion in the first episode that we need the ZZack ideology drop. There it is. It's very important here. Ideology. Here, do it once.

Add a good... Now. Ideology. Here, do it once at a good... No. Ideology. All right, perfect. It's like we always say. Actually, on the first episode, I found it on YouTube. I see. But it turns out it's not the first result for ZZack ideology.

Well, it's like we always... You have to type in ZZack says ideology. It's like we always say. The most important thing in comedy is timing. Wait, what do you always say? The most important um but so uh the last of the holy trinity oh yeah so suzy orman suze suzy suze ideology

suzy ideology orman uh is a personal finance guru. Right. A la Dr. Phil and Oz, but just for personal finance. Mm-hmm. And her thing is she finds artful ways to basically say save more than you spend. Right, right. Day after day. Yeah.

And she got her start in 98, I think, on the show. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so she'd written a handful of books and was on CNBC, and she was promoting a book. Yeah, she has a couple. Right, she got a handful of books out. Three or four books.

What did she say in 09? Yeah, Stephen had found this quote, because basically she was being a personal finance guru when the 2008 financial crisis happened. People had the interesting idea to ask her what she thought about it. And the quote that she said was that millennials have it great right now. I think the exact quote is the financial crisis is, quote, is the greatest thing that has ever happened to youth.

That's from June 2009. Right. So this is like right before about 7 to 11 million people are going to be evicted. This is when 800,000 people are losing their jobs per month. Right. The greatest thing to ever happen to youth is all these evictions. Well, she says to youth. Well, you know, the real tragedy is that they're not going to be able to appreciate it.

I have the full quote. Yeah, read the quote. The questioner asks, do you think young people have it worse than any other generation with their higher unemployment rate, higher debt levels, and weak job market prospects for graduates? She says, right now they have it so great, it's not even funny. And the questioner's like, what, really?

What do you mean? She says... The questioner's like, do you want to retract that No I'm going to double down Give her an opportunity if she doubles down If the economy kept running the way it was You guys would have been broke For the rest of your life

And she goes on This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to you It gave you a wake up call that your parents Were living in financial La la land They were just trying to impress everybody with money they didn't have i love people which is like exactly sort of the protecting the goldman slash city group people right type propaganda and and how did the fire sector talking heads were putting out at the time right what was that about uh money they't have? Money they didn't... They were trying to impress everyone

by keeping up with the Joneses and running up credit card debt. And how did she get her start in finance? She did receive a small loan of $53,000 from friends and well-wishers. Yeah, so she did the 98 equivalent of a GoFundMe or something. I gotta get me some well-wishers.

You know when you throw a penny into a well for a wish? She took all that. She just went from mall to mall. I mean, penny saved, penny earned. A penny stolen is also a penny earned. I do love the idea of a financial consultant saying people are living in financial la-la land while also telling people that the worst crisis since the Great Depression is a good thing for them. Did you know that crisis in Chinese also means opportunity?

Well, I mean, this is her green tea extract. She literally did call the 2008 financial crisis an opportunity. And again, like, so this is the person Oprah has on to give financial advice to middle class Americans. And the other part of that quote. I mean, if your job is giving struggling people financial advice, it's definitely an opportunity for her. Yeah. And that's the thing. Saying it's an opportunity, although wrong, technically true for some people.

Not the people she's talking to, though. True for Oprah. Yeah, exactly. For sure. Buying houses number 678. Estates. They don't call them houses at that point. Yeah, Oprah has a $13 million ski lodge in Colorado,

but her main property in California is, I think, sold for $28 million. She also has homes in Hawaii, Tennessee, a few other places. You know the thing when there's billionaires, and you say she has a $13 million ski lodge, my first thought is like, yeah, she could get a bigger ski lodge. She also, Oprah, has a $42 million private jet and a podcast called Super Soul Sunday. So we'll try and get her on. Let's do some cross promotion. Exactly.

I'm going to go on Super Soul Sunday, and Oprah's going to be here next week to respond to our allegations of her being a promoter of spiritual capitalism we'll ask her how she pronounces her magazine name it also uh just uh before we move on from all the hucksters though i did want to say that suzy orman quote the other part of you know the keeping up with the joneses this is another part of uh neoliberal ideology after the financial crisis which is the idea that essentially consumers were responsible for what happened there. The idea that, you know,

people, they did go into debt, but the financial crisis was not caused by, you know, people, the average homeowner borrowing too much. It was caused by a wall street securitizing trillions of dollars and just fraudulent and toxic assets and then reselling

them all over the world. So it should be just quite kind of noted that in that quote, not only is she being disgustingly ignorant and calling one of the most horrific economic events in the last hundred years, a opportunity and a great thing, the greatest thing that has ever happened to youth. She's also reinforcing this false narrative of how the financial crisis actually happened so she's a terrible fucking financial advisor and oprah should never have put her on television sean you know what

i'm sensing right now negative thinking you gotta cut this out sean Sean. You're not going to get to your billion with this type of thinking. So I think before the last thing, Dr. Oz in 2012 did do an episode on reparative therapy for gays. God, really? Yeah. And he did have some opponents of it on, but he also just gave a platform to people who spread this idea that it's possible to you know do therapy and make gay things go away and that's in 2012 so you know he's quite the guy that's only ways that less than a year away from when you look like same-sex marriage yeah i think so you think you could do therapy and get more gay? Because I kind of want to be more gay.

It seems like there's just more opportunities. I think you could do therapy to be more gay. I think that would work. So gay marriage was legalized in 2015. So three years beforehand. Okay. But yeah, he's, you know, those three are not particularly pleasant people. And they wouldn't exist without Oprah beaming them into middle America's homes.

And, of course, through her production company, in the case of Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil, taking a large cut of their show's revenues and profits. I think brunch with the right people could be gay therapy. You know what I mean? I think that, like, I feel like I'm trying to think, like... Oh, to go further?

Yeah, to go deeper into being gay. I think that, like, get a couple of good gay friends, and this isn't people who are homosexuals. This is just good friends who you want to be gay with. Oh, so get some hot dudes to have lunch with. If you had lunch... First of all, brunch, not lunch. If you had brunch with some hot dudes,

and they were like, hey, let's all take our shirts off. You wouldn't take your shirt off? Come on. It's a whole bunch of guys having fun. Well, they're hot dudes. At brunch. Hey, but you're with the hot dudes, Andy.

They would have to verbally encourage me to build up my self-esteem, to take off my shirt with these ribbed brows. I'm sensing negative thoughts. I think when my girlfriend yells at me, it's actually the opposite of gay conversion therapy. Like, maybe I should just go suck a dick or something. That's so funny.

Apathetically needing to suck a dick. I guess I need to suck a dick. I don't know. You know, I was at the Apple store and the guy just was like, no, man, you fucked up. You put honey in your power switch. I'm like, you know what?

I guess I need to suck a dick. But I guess... Guys, if you're... Just for the audience, if you want something to think about and you have the readily available picture of Sean, just imagine him with a resigned look on his face

sucking a dick well I'm not sure how I got into this one but I guess I gotta apply suction until he achieves orgasm it like pauses and like the duke's a hazard like voiceover because it's like don't know how

mccarthy's gonna get out of this one you're probably wondering it's only polite if i finish him we're at now uh yeah i i guess we should have a brief discussion on just the idea of spiritual capitalism and all that though um uh a funny thing was when Oprah in 2010, when she was kind of wrapping up her show, her show ended in 2011, but she planned a trip to Australia

and a lot of people got mad at her because basically she did a segment on her show where a culture person of Australia broke down Australian slang

and then said Australian people love to hang out at quote mick hip mick cafes which they call mackers just like a like 30 second ad spot for mcdonald's in the middle of the show and described it as part of australian culture and of course uh many uh actual australian coffee shops were a little angry at this idea that Australian coffee consists of, you know, McCafes. And, of course, her studio audience in the same episode were given McDonald's products. And McDonald's partly sponsored that segment.

So it's just kind of funny to me that it's like, again, by 2010, she's a fucking billionaire and she's still doing these McDonald's ads, which, you know, has its own history of horrific wage theft and labor abuse and everything else. But, you know, it just kind of actually in,

in Australia, it's called, uh, a wage snatch. Uh, dingo ate my baby at Macca's because of the way to snatch I'm getting a little labor punch

that's not a labor that's a knife did you know that in Australia the term for indigenous people is the past I like it well so anyways I guess basically what we people is the past. I like it. Thanks, thanks. Well, so anyways, I guess

basically what we... So I think as a billionaire, Oprah definitely has the best pulse of what real people can be, not are, can be. I think, unfortunately, power produces monsters and Oprah,

although very powerful, has also empowered people who are very stupid. Right. And the search for a truly decent billionaire continues. Yeah, I think she actually hits very well on kind of the vein of individualism in America, where she, again, sells this self-help, confessional stuff, and everything that has kind of an inherent appeal to Americans and the idea that if you just work harder and do better, you can be successful, and things that happen in life are mostly your fault and not the result of larger systemic forces aligned against you. And I think she's well-meaning, and like we've definitely said,

she's the most self-made billionaire we've talked about so far. But I think she's bought into a lot of ideologies that do not help say that it was basically how she, you know, became the Oprah that we know today. And The Secret makes claims that a positive thought is 100 times more powerful than a negative thought. And it's and it claims that it's scientifically proven. Did you know that it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile? Yes, I fucking did, Sean. And it also claims that the basic idea is that positive thoughts create energy.

Like, they try to make a scientific claim that positive thoughts create energy. Like, they try to make a scientific claim that positive thoughts create energy that attract positive happenings in your life. I think that's called string theory. That's not far from the quality of string theory. I think that what they're trying to say isn't terrible, but I also think, hey, maybe fuck off a little bit, you know? Because it's like... Well the the idea is based i mean they and they've made 300 million selling books and

fucking dvds about this but the idea is just like if you're failing it's because you have negative thoughts and succeeding takes positive thoughts and apologists will say like oh it empowers people but it also causes people to blame themselves for things that are out of their control. Right. And that's how you get into this sort of spiritual capitalism and ultra individualism. Right. Well, and so, yeah, like just to talk a little bit about the secret before we end here. I think she endorsed it in her book club in like 2007 or something.

But, you know, because because of her it really became a runaway bestseller and i remember actually at the time i watched like 30 minutes of the secret documentary uh before i turned it off at being like complete horse shit but basically like they interviewed this woman and she was like yeah you know i i live in los angeles and it's so hard to find parking and then like i started one time I was like in my head, positively imagining a parking spot being available. And as I pulled up, there was that parking spot.

And they use this as like evidence of anything at all. And, you know, at the time I just couldn't believe that people bought into this shit. But, you know, this idea of like positive reinforcement will actually create things is it it actually took off like fucking lightning and again it

appeals to this individualism i think it i think like the most like one of the overarching thing about having individual agency over like your own body your own choices like one one of the sort of dialectical inversions i guess of that concept is that if you could just add up all those people's individual senses of agency don't you in fact have collective agency to change the external barriers that she also acknowledges like hat from her tough upbringing where like basically every door was shut to her economically and you know luckily she got through but lots of people don't even if they try just as hard as she did. And I would say the vast, vast majority don't.

Right. And so, like, I mean, she's sort of a prophet of capital, but she's also kind of a prophet of, like, the neoliberal idea of just atomizing individuals so that they can feed into the profoundly alienating process of accumulating capital. Yeah. Can you rephrase that in terms of, uh, quantum energy waves that are emitted from your positive or negative thoughts? I think I can actually, she wants us to achieve all Joe down to a lower ground energy state.

Did we, sorry, I don't remember early in the episode. Wait, Sean. Steven was describing the negatrons. I need to know about the positrons. Can we get these Google Gox in my bleegly bop? Please?

There wasn't anything there. What if they expand on the secret, and they're like, you know, our first go at it was non-relativistic. Yeah. Our first description of the secret secret and they're like you know our first go at it was non-relativistic yeah our first our first description our first description of the secret was only using special relativity we didn't account for frame dragging or gravitational waves yeah it's uh but now we've got the secret field theory

yeah that's they just they're working for a unified field of secrets. They solved Einstein's secret field equations. Yeah, we put E equals MC squared on our vision board, and we think we're ready to grapple with the mathematics behind all this now. But, sorry, did you do the quote already about the secret and positive thoughts about money or whatever? Because I do want to get to that. There's this quote.

So the Scientific American found kind of the most jarring quotes from The Secret. And one of them is, the only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts. This is like, oh man. You know what? It's almost as bad as austrian school economics but this is i think a way that people with means justify the pain of the world of course

sending out that magnetic signal that is drawing the parallel back to you she spends like over half her time honestly talking about like the pain and the suffering involved in pursuit of those personal ambitions that she wants us to unleash. It's capitalistic televangelism. That's really what it is. People want to hear that it really isn't just them. And she does have sort of kernels of that truth in what she says. Well, she gets to both be a poster child for the pain and trauma she truly lived, but then also gets away from the fat cat billionaire look that she also is a part of.

Which is why she teeters that line. It's a very interesting case. An economic recession or semi-depression is like a mental one. It's been shown at the same time, but like it can really switch on and off parts of your biochemistry beyond just your social situation. I think that's part of why something like The Secret, with its obvious bullshit, is able to kind of reel people in. Because if you're really desperate, you're kind of looking for anything.

Yeah. And anything can help when you're really desperate, you're kind of looking for anything. Yeah. And anything can help when you're very desperate. Yeah. It's a much better way to put it. I just like the secret explanation for why billionaires exist, which is like these are just the 2,000 people with the least blockers on the money part of their brain. They're the brains that are most receptive

to the money energy in the universe. Well, people don't know this, but I got a quick look at the... Let's study their brains. I got a... Find the money receptors. Short of that, let's just send electrical currents into different spots and see what it does. Well, people don't know this, but I got a sneak look at the secret version two. I got a vision board on my vision board. Next level stuff, guys.

Pretty crazy. Oh, yeah. I guess like one last note, fun fact, being from Seattle and being a big fan of Ezell's fried chicken, which I recommend if you do enjoy chicken and if you are in Seattle. For a time, Oprah was having it flown out directly to her in California because she liked Azale's fried chicken so much. So make sure to support local business before it becomes

an Amazon bookstore or whatever. Alright, so we're getting $400 for that spot? Which is going to be pretty easy to divide up. I asked for a free combo meal next time I'm there. Come on, bro. 86 hits. Oh, God.

I was also... So, at least so far, I think we can all agree Oprah's the least evil billionaire. But I think so far the thesis is still intact that it is inherently not good. It's inherently evil to have a billion dollars. And although she is the least evil billionaire we've covered so far, she's also the poorest billionaire. She's got what, 2.7 or something? Yeah, we were dealing with the big dogs.

Right. Oprah with a hundred billion dollars, that's a different Oprah. You know what I mean? Like right now the incidence of racism against her in European boutique high-end fashion stores is laughable. You laugh at $50 billion Oprah

or someone's racist towards Oprah and she's got $100 billion. She buys the country. You know what I mean? That's next level shit. Well, you know, she's not old, really. And she went from $800 million to $2.7 billion in...

So you're trying to hit that, Stephen? You're trying to say that she ain't old? She ain't no c in... So you're trying to hit that Steven? You're trying to send the she ain't no she ain't no cougar? You're trying to get that dick wet? She's got plenty of time to become a multi tens of billion billionaire. Mrs. Steven Jeffries. That's right. Next week we're going to come back and be like update Steven got that dick wet?

I think that's everything. Sean, how are you feeling? I feel like Steven's going to teach Oprah about modern monetary theory. Like in between. But energy is conserved, right? Yeah. So you can't just create. As long as you have positive thoughts.

That's the only way to make sure that it happens. In between eating her out, he's like, well, you know, the government really is the monopoly controller of the currency i love bread all right anything else uh my name rainiest nuttiest bread that's what that's what she calls steven the grainiest nuttiest bread uh and with that my name is yogi polywall i'm sean mccarthy steve jefferson andy palmer all right thanks for listening guys slice of bread