The Chris Cuomo Project - Dr. Phil

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

In this week’s episode of The Chris Cuomo Project, Dr. Phil McGraw (TV host, “Dr. Phil,” and podcast host, “Phil in the Blanks”) speaks with Chris about whether technology is impacting the development of social skills, how parents and universities are coddling young people, destigmatizing mental illness, negativity on social media, the importance of being heard, and much more. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I've been trying furiously to take away the stigma for mental illness and this this whole thing about being ashamed because you've got a personality disorder or even a psychosis or whatever is just terrible because it keeps people from getting the help they need. Hey, everybody, I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to another episode of the Chris Cuomo Project Podcast. Dr. Phil, I know, big star, great to have him on the show, but it's not just the stardust. 20 years plus, he's been on top, but consistently doing the same thing, pounding on the table about mental health, making it more acceptable, and helping people see their problems, not just as a negative, but as a way through it. I think that's fundamental to us right now. And it's always been

interesting to me that his kind of ascendance in TV was going on at the same time that I was like, you know, grinding it through here. I'm no Dr. Phil, any way you want to measure it. But it's been interesting to watch him because he's done so well for so long, but by being consistent and doing something that I think now we need more than ever. So I wanted to talk to Dr. Phil about what's changed, why are we such a rage factory, and what can we do about it? And it turned out to be a really, really interesting conversation.

So please subscribe, follow, love having you here. And now here is a big serving of the man himself, Dr. Phil. Support for the Chris Cuomo Project comes from PrizePix. I got to tell you, there's a reason PrizePix is America's number one fantasy sports app. Three million members. Why? Easy, plenty of action if you're into DFS, and it's just you against the numbers. You pick more than or less than on two to six player stat projections, and if you're any good, the winnings will roll in.

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Again, go to prizepix.com slash CCP and use code CCP for a first deposit match up to $100. PrizePix. Pick more, pick less. It's that easy. The Chris Cuomo Project is supported by Cozy Earth. Why? Because I like their sheets. That's why. A lot of people don't get a good night's sleep for a lot of reasons. One of the ones that you can control is bedding. One out of three of us report being sleep deprived. Okay, well, what is it? Well, it stresses all kinds of things, but the wrong sheets can make you hot, can make you cold. I'm telling you, I don't even believe it either, but Cozy Earth sheets breathe. And here's what I love about them. Cozy Earth's best-selling sheet is a bamboo set, okay? Temperature regulating,

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so I'm proud to be asked. So you have the true accolade of longevity, of watching this culture develop, being at the top of the ratings, daytime TV, giving advice, going through people's hardships. 20 years ago versus now, how do you compare the kind of cultural status quo then and now? Well, Chris, I think it's changed a lot. You know, of course, it would be insane to think that things had not evolved across 20 years. And when you think back, I did my first show on my own.

I started on Oprah 26 years ago. We're in season 21 right now. But even back in 2002 when I started my first broadcast here, text wasn't a thing. There were no social media platforms. There was no Twitter. There was no Instagram. None of those things existed. And I focus on that because people get their information so differently now than they did back then. And there was no cyberbullying. And I've had to deal with that now. Kids used to get bullied at school. It would be in the cafeteria or on the bus docks or something, and they could go home and escape it. Now it follows them everywhere. And now kids can put a picture up on the internet, and it's there forever. They can make one mistake in just the blink of an eye that can ruin them professionally and socially. And I've had kids that are bullied to death. And we see now these kids that get on social media and it correlates with depression and anxiety and loneliness.

And I think in probably 2008, 2009, with the proliferation of the smartphone, we saw a quantum shift in social development and a whole generation that kind of stopped living their lives and started watching people live their lives on the internet. And so we have a generation that, you know, when I was growing up, when you turned 16 at 8 a.m., you were over getting your driver's license, you know, and now they're getting their driver's license later. They start dating later. Just everything is kind of slowed down because they're so involved in the virtual world instead of the actual world. I don't think that's a good thing. Well, I guess that's the crux of the question is,

you said it would be crazy if things hadn't evolved. I don't know that it's evolved. I think there's more. I think there's new and different in terms of the amount of saturation of information and access, but I don't know that it's evolution. I don't know that it's not devolution. I don't know that it's not breaking our character down and our culture down because people seem to me, looking at my kids, we're doing the best we can. They're blessed with a good mom and a struggling dad who's at least trying. But they don't seem as good person to person as even in my awkwardest, most awkward days. The ability to talk and hang around and be with other people and do things. I don't even know that.

I think I had to teach him how to play without the device. Well, there's no question about the fact that when we think about social development, and I'll use the word competition, and I don't mean that just in terms of athletics, but when you get out into the world and you're competing for your space in the world, in the hallway at school or at a table in the lunchroom or a place on a team or whatever, that is clearly eroding. Social skills, the ability to engage, the ability to be rejected and overcome it, those things are clearly being compromised. And you take that and mix that in with a tendency, I think now, that I think parents are coddling their kids way too much. And I think our universities today are coddling the students way too much. And I think the way kids learn about themselves,

the way they form their self-image, the way they form their self-esteem, is the same way we form opinions of other people, which is we watch what they do, we watch it across time, and based on their patterns of behavior, we attribute certain traits and characteristics to them. Like if you have somebody that shows up at the office every day and they're there early, they unlock the door, they get the coffee going, they get the lights on, and they never miss. Rain or shine, you attribute dependability, reliability to them. It's the same way kids learn who they are. They watch themselves master their environment, overcome obstacles, solve problems. And now they don't get a chance to see themselves do that as much because you've got parents that

are smoothing those bumps out in the road for them. They're not out there negotiating with professors and things like that the way they were. They're living a virtual life and confusing likes and clicks with real relationships. They're not developing those skills, so they're not attributing to themselves. And that's why that generation is higher in depression than even people 65, 75, and older. They're more lonely and depressed and anxious than anyone else. Now, the pushback to that is, no, we just say they are now. We give everything an acronym. A kid doesn't have ants in his pants anymore.

He's got ADD. And if someone's sad, now they're depressed, and they've got to be on medication, and everybody's got a diagnosis, and it's part of the snowflake softening of America. Do you believe we're just getting more savvy to mental health struggles, or do you think we're making them up? Well, I think ADD and ADHD are wastebasket diagnoses that are so overused, it's ridiculous. We used to call those spoiled kids. Now we call them ADD, ADHD, and we throw Ritalin or some other cortical stimulant at them, which is like, by the way, throwing gas on the fire. If you don't have an underactive neocortex and you throw a stimulant at it, you're going to send that kid up the wall.

terrible misuse of medication and a way over-diagnosed disorder that's usually made by a GP instead of someone that is actually qualified to make the diagnosis and does a DNA test and does a brain scan. So I do think that's overused. But I do think we are seeing more depression now. And it didn't start with the pandemic, by the way. That did spike it. But we actually started seeing it in 08 and 09. And we see it on psychological tests, but we also see it behaviorally with lower psychomotor activity, less attention, less endurance and follow-up on

activities, poor concentration. So there is clear evidence that they are more, in fact, depressed. Do you believe that we're moving in the right direction in terms of allowing people to be open about not just one type of health struggle, but any type of health struggle that you can come in, limp it into work because you've got arthritis in your knee and nobody's going to really care about that. You think we're moving in the right direction in terms of saying that you're struggling with something that is emotional or psychological and the ability to get access to help? I think taking the stigma away from mental illness is the best thing in the world we can do. I think there's a lot of guilt and shame associated with it.

People can give you damn good reasons for that. For example, if you have someone in law enforcement or firefighters or whatever, and they say, hey, I need to go to an employee assistance program and get some counseling, and they're on track to become a lieutenant or a captain and move up in the ranks, I guarantee you it will slow them down if it gets out. So that's a justified stigma. But I really hope that I've been trying furiously to take away the stigma for mental illness. And this whole thing about being ashamed because you've got a personality disorder or even a psychosis or whatever is just terrible because it keeps people from getting the help they need. We have so much better evidence-based therapies for these things now and proper use of certain medications. I'm not a big pill pusher. I'm a psychologist, not a psychiatrist,

so I don't prescribe pills. I'm trained in psychology, not psychiatry. But I do think we have a lot better treatment technology now than we did before, and these things can be managed. They can be handled, and people can have very productive lives. Yeah, I mean, I've definitely seen it in my own life, but I've definitely seen it in my own life, but I've also seen it in lives around me. And now it's kind of come full circle where I had people, when I started talking about how, I'll tell you, it was hard not losing my job.

I knew I'd get another job. I knew I was good at what I do. But it was like kind of processing emotionally, like, you know, what did this mean? And what did it mean about what I do and, you know, how I feel about it? I had people care about me saying, hey, man, you got to be careful with talking about what you're struggling with or whatnot, because people are going to think that you're crazy. And then they're not like going to trust you anymore because they're going to think you've lost it. And it was really interesting.

They weren't wrong. And I totally understood why they were saying that. I had just reached a point where I completely rejected the bias. The bias to me is the problem, not what they're biased against. And I've seen too many people have horrible outcomes because of shame when it was never necessary. And I've always felt it was one of the reasons that I felt good about your success. Watching you, you know, my TV career has kind of matched yours in terms of timeline. And I was always happy to see

that you were doing as well as you were, not just because of whatever flavor of the moment box is being checked in daytime TV, but that you were doing as well as you were, not just because of whatever flavor of the moment box is being checked in daytime TV, but that you were helping with people that are real, real problems that go to real family struggles, real couple struggles that are very relatable. Even if people don't want to admit it in themselves,

they can watch it in the people on your set. And I always felt good about that, that I know this is real. All these paternity tests and all this bullshit that's going on in these other TV shows. I mean, that's true, but real. All these paternity tests and all this bullshit that's going on in these other TV shows. I mean, that's true, but there's an extremism to them. And I've always felt that your show was bringing people the reality that they probably knew themselves. I was thinking back just the other day when we had our 20th anniversary and I was talking to

Oprah and she said, do you remember when we started this whole thing? And Roger King, I don't know if you ever knew Roger, he was the king of syndication, and of course he's passed on now. But I remember when we were doing the first pitch reel for the show, the first question he asked me, he says, all right, what are you going to talk about on your show? What are you going to do? And I remember saying two things. I said, I'm going to talk about things that matter to people who care. And then I said, we're going to talk about the silent epidemics in America, the things that you just don't talk about in polite society. And that's almost everything that has to do. I was telling Oprah, I think I'm fortunate in that I think everything I've

ever done in my life has prepared me for what I'm now doing, which wouldn't be true if I'd spent five years selling shrimp out of a van down by the river, but that hasn't been the case. You know, my dad was a terrible alcoholic, and my wife's father was a really bad alcoholic. And so when I talked to people that had parents that had a chaotic, violent household, it's like, yeah, I get that. I've been there. And we were so terribly poor that everybody had to work, and people said, you get an allowance. What do you mean allowance? You worked and came home and put the money on the table because that's what you had to do. And I'm not crying about it. You don't know you have a bad deal at the time. Just everybody works, and you do what you can, and you get through it, and it's fine. But I understand.

I'll say things. Sometimes people say, yeah, it's easy for you to say. You're Dr. Phil. Yeah, well, I wasn't always, and I know what it's like to have to make a choice. Are you going to pay the rent or the light bill? And so when I bring these people on, I feel like I'm able to relate to wherever they are because I've been there. And I think that's important when people think you truly get what they're saying. Oh, absolutely. I also think, please don't let the zeitgeist of the moment confuse your intuition about the need for an example of better.

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Go to drinkag1.com slash ccp. Drinkag1.com slash ccp. Drinkag1.com slash ccp. Check it out. You know, it's one thing for you to say to people, I've been where you are. I think it's more empowering for people in terms of my experience of your program that people see you as an example of where they can get. You know, that was always a big aspect of the American dream. You know, my father, may he rest in peace, really used to like that people would say to him,

wow, look at you. And he would literally, I would see it in his face. He'd go, right? A generation ago, my father was digging graves. Look at me. I'm governor of this amazing state. You know, here I am. I'm a doctor. I'm a, you know, I'm a doctor of laws. He Here I am. I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor of

laws. He always would say, I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor of laws. Here I am. I'm a lawyer. I'm educated. My father never made it past fourth grade. My mother never really spoke English. And look at me. He used to love that example of what the American dream can do, that you can start where Phil McGraw did, and you can then be a Dr. Phil. Right now, people are beating on that. And I think that's part of our collective problem, is we're attacking the good all the time. Nothing can be good. Everything has to come down. I don't know if you've seen these commercials that are on the football games. He gets us, has to come down. I don't know if you've seen these commercials that are on the football games.

He gets us, and it's about Jesus, and it says Jesus, and then it highlights the us. He gets us, and he has people fighting at home, and it says Jesus knew what it was like to fight with people in his house, but he didn't disown them forever. It's a message like that. So I see these ads, and a couple of my buddies say to me, hey, did you see that ad on the game? Not particularly religious guys, but good guys. You see the ad? I like that ad. I like that. I heard it like three, four times. And that's always an indicator to me that you should be paying attention to this. And I had felt the same way. The first time I pitched the piece and I say, hey, we should look into these ads. It's kind of cool. I thought, find out who's doing them and let me talk to them. Oh no, that's not what I got, Phil. What I got was five different avenues of who this group is, who are their donors, where's this money coming from, and what kind of proselytizing is

this, and what's this guy really about? It was all attack angles on the ads. And I was like, no, no, no. I just want to have a guy on and ask him why they're putting all this money into this message. We like to tear things down. And I wonder what you think the net effect of that is on our kind of cultural psyche. I think it's amazing that you've observed that because I think there's a real attack on the meritocracy in the United States. And I think we're going to make a real bad mistake if we let that carry through. And it boils back, you can go all the way back to biblical times, and I think whether it's two or three different commandments have to do with envy.

And I really think it has a lot to do with envy. And look, people who say, I want equality of outcome, just doesn't make sense to me. If you want to work towards equality of opportunity, I'm with you, man. I'm right there. I think we can try and level that playing field, but you're not ever going to get equality of outcome. I can't add two and two and get five every time. And if you put me in a situation where that's required, I'm going to be at the back of the line. Now, if you start talking about qualitative, where it's about reading and retention and expression,

I'm going to be at the front of the line. Everybody has different skill sets, and everybody has different levels of ability. And there are people that don't have the springboard that everybody else has. We can work on leveling that, but you can't work on a quality of outcome. You've got to try and level a quality of opportunity. We're seeing stories in the media right now about schools that didn't let kids know they had a national merit scholarship that they could use because they didn't want them to have an advantage over classmates about getting in college. Are you kidding me? That's not the way

to level the playing field. If it's that there are kids in that school that didn't get that recognition and it's because they didn't have the springboard. Those other kids did. Then help them with a better springboard, but don't take that away from the kids that earned it. And if I go get brain surgery, I don't want to get it from the next guy up. I want to get it from the best person available at that time, if they're operating on my child

or someone like that. I don't want some woke agenda in there saying, well, this is, it's a level playing field. No, I want the best available man or woman. I don't care what color they are. I don't care what country they're from. I want the most skilled professional to do the job when it comes to something that matters. And it's crazy to talk about it any other way. There's something to be seen in the psychology of compensation and the

psychology of coping and the psychology of adjustment and the choices that we're making as a culture. Attacking the meritocracy, true. And look, I was raised in a house by a guy who had a huge chip on his shoulder. My father, he told a joke at the end of his life. One of the last funny things I remember my father saying was he read a piece about me on television and how I look like a soap opera actor and this is white privilege, you know, right here. This guy being on TV is white privilege. And my father went, hot damn, we made it. We're white. And, you know, he meant it, you know, because he had always been the hot-blooded Italian, the swarthy ethnic with the gap-toothed grin and the circles under his eyes and the hot temper, mercurial Mario. And it really bothered him.

And that's why he hated mob movies and hated these things. And my point is that he saw something aspirational. He wanted to be more. He wanted to make the grade. He wanted to be accepted. He wanted to achieve. He wanted to succeed. And he wanted to help others.

Now what I see in our culture is attacking what you call the meritocracy. It's not just the standard. It's that there shouldn't be a standard, that everything that is good is now called elite, and that must come down. And I don't see enough positive reinforcement of any ideal or value or anything. All I see is just attacks. In my business, in politics, in the culture around us, it's all about a rage factory. You know, what someone's really angry about. Like right now, they're really angry about the royals.

They're really angry about Harry and Meghan. And what it started with some type of window into a racial dynamic, you know, in the royal thing, is now just a rage machine. We always wind up at rage, Phil. Why? Two things. One, I think we're getting programmed for that. And I'm going to sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist with this, but I've been doing a lot of research into the algorithms that are feeding people stuff on the internet. And I'm going to tell you there is reliable evidence that these algorithms do not feed people what they want to see.

It feeds people what energizes them emotionally. If there is content that pisses you off and sends you down the rabbit hole, that or neglected, it's going to feed you a lot of that too, because that's going to get you upset. And it feeds you things that get you emotionally upset, emotionally energized. And if you have a certain mindset that you're emotionally charged about, you might have had that idea sitting on the fence on a farm in Iowa 20 years ago. Now you're on the Internet where that gets oxygenated by other people who think that way. And so now it starts to build. And I think that's the reason a lot of these movements get life. I think we get

upset in part by what we're being fed, and I think we get upset because of envy. Look, it's the haves versus the have-nots. And that's been the case for thousands and thousands of years. If you're going to be honest, you're going to have to acknowledge that and recognize that envy is a real strong force in people. As I say, it's as far back as biblical times, and people get upset when they see people succeeding. You know, there's something in psychology called leveling. People that are insecure tend to level, and they do it two ways. They either do it by pounding their own chest and puffing themselves up or shooting at the other person's reputation or accomplishments to bring them down to their level. But they're always trying to level things out instead of celebrating someone's success and being happy. Anytime somebody launches a new show in daytime or whatever competition with me,

I always send them flowers or balloons or something and say, hey, congratulations on your launch. I wish you well. Welcome. Jump in. The water's fine. There's room for it. I've always sent somebody a congratulatory thing on their launch day and wish them well. And people look at me like I'm crazy for doing that. You're welcoming your competition? Well, of course. No matter how big my rating is, there's 360 million people in America. I'm going to speak to an infinitesimal part of them. I mean, come on. There's so many people out there. It's not going to make any difference. It's rare, though. I guess my concern is, you know, you have your philosophy and your intellectual construct and your faith. I totally

get the intelligence of what now passes for criticism, which is almost exclusively negativity as a proxy for insight. You can't say something nice about somebody that's seen his weakness or a puff piece. But I do worry that where are the positive influences? Where is the leadership that isn't motivating rage and anger, but that is motivating virtue? You know, people want to say this is a Christian country in its formation. We do not practice a lot of WWJD. You know, I can't tell you how many bios on social media say Christian, and they are killing me in a very unchristian way. So where's the balance, Phil? I shot a show yesterday about the impact of the internet with influencers that stage their reality using filters and people that rent these fuselages for 15 minutes and change clothes six times like skiing and Tahiti.

And people compare themselves to that and feel worse. You've got to compare yourself to yourself and not to others because you don't know how real other people are. And I was asking people, do you post hate messages? I was asking the audience. And surprisingly, a lot of people admitted it. They raised their hands. And I call this one woman and she was so sweet and so funny. I said, you post hate messages? You talk shit on the internet to people? She said, yeah, mostly just celebrities like you. And I said, well, I'm not a celebrity, but have you gone on and talked trash to me? She said, no, not you, but I do a lot of people. I said, well, I never thought they really read it. I was just venting because I've been so angry. And so she goes on and talks trash to people and says she hates them. Go kill yourself.

You're ugly. You're horrible. Nobody likes you. And I said, why do you do that? She said, it has nothing to do with them. I'm just angry, so I just go on there and vent. And I'm like, I couldn't believe she's saying this on national television. She said, I don't do it anymore, but I used to.

I said, well, how recently? Well, you know, a couple weeks. Couldn't believe she was so cute and funny, but she's just spewing out all this vitriol on the Internet. Who does that? Get a life. I mean, who sits down and writes a host or a TV show? I mean, come on.

I'm telling you, they do it. And I'll tell you the mistake. I wasn't part of this, but I remember. I remember not the day, but I remember the period when the media started to look at comments on social media as Vox Populi. And there had always been this big debate in the media about man on the street interviews. And it was like, you know, what are you talking to that guy for? He doesn't know what the hell you're talking about.

You're just trying to get a provocative soundbite out of him. He doesn't understand this policy, whatever it is. And unless we're talking about how it affects them, and it would always be this big debate. You know what I mean? How much of it? Should you use it? Is it really valuable? I was always kind of against it

because I didn't want to put people in a position where they were outside their comfort zone. And then social media happened. And I remember the day I got a phone call at work. It was still a phone call. It wasn't a text. It wasn't on my cell phone. It was like a real phone.

And they said, hey, listen, you said on the show yesterday morning that this guy was a mouth breather. And I said, oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. Right. Well, a lot of people on Twitter, not happy about it. It turns out that there's a specific breathing abnormality where people have to breathe out of their mouths. Oh, my God.

And they take offense to you calling someone a mouth breather. And I said, huh, well, that's funny. And I was, no, it's not funny. You've got to apologize. I said, well, there's no way I'm going to apologize on the show because if you show weakness on television, your competition is your critic base. They will kill me with this and it'll become a huge deal.

I said, how many people are we talking about? 50. There had been 50 responses to one tweet and they wanted me to go on and apologize. And more stupid, more ridiculous, more absurd is I did as I went on the next day. And I said, but I remember the moment and be like, wow, this is so stupid what I'm doing right now. And it's so counterproductive. And I'm not, you know, there's no way for me to use this to do anything good other than to just take a beating. And sure enough, I went on. I said, look, I said, mouth breather.

There's this group and the thing in the mouth and the breathing. I didn't mean to offend you with that. I'll find another insult for people who look stupid. And I got beat up four days after. And it wasn't about what happened to me. It happened and it was gone, which is a different part of the lesson. The rage is so ephemeral that if you could just shut up and hide, it disappears because it's usually without basis or real cause. it disappears because it's usually without basis or real cause. But I remember that. And now in the media, if I can get 150 people talking about Dr. Phil's show, 150, right? You could have had 7 million people watch it. Forget about secondary viewership and everything else. I'll get a reporter who will call you and say, hey, people are really upset about the whole blue on blue

on blue thing, Phil. You know, there are people who have monochromatic eyes, and all they're seeing is like waves of you. It's freaking them out. You should apologize. There's no question about it. I did a show called You Can't Say That and put up all the things that are on the don't say list. And I got 57 feet of laser screens wrapping my stage,

and I didn't have room for the stuff you can't say. And it probably changed before the end of the show. My problem with it is this, and I just don't know the solution. And that's why I love having people like you in our culture because, you know, you're talking about problems in a constructive way. And I really think that that is the last bastion of holding on to getting better, I know what the problem is. I see it all the time. I choose not to be a part of it on a regular basis now in different cycles of politics. I see where the story's going, and I go a different way because I can, because that's what News Nation does. But we go after people, and we cancel them, and we attack them because that's what News Nation does. But we go after people and we cancel them

and we attack them because it's currency. If I find out something bad about you, I will get great placement everywhere with it and it will go viral. If I say, hey, you know, I just had Dr. Phil on my podcast. I love this guy, man. It was so great. I got to introduce my daughter to him.

I love that he's trying to make people better in our society. It's great. Lives and dies with me. A good story doesn't move. You've heard the quote that a lie travels six times faster than the truth. There's actually a study, I think it's out of England, where they actually did a tracing of that and found out that that is actually true. There is basis for that statement. You know, Mark Twain said, a lie travels around the world while the truth is lacing up his shoes. And that's really true. And they broke it down. And the analysis was that a lie is so much cleaner and it's simpler and it's easier to repeat because for something to be true, it's got nuances. And to be true, it has to have details and qualifiers and stuff.

But a lie, you can just say, bang, bang, bang. And you pick it up, repeat it, send it out, and it's sensational and it's novel. And so it gets picked up and sent around, and it's crazy how you can take control of the narrative in the court of public opinion with a lie so much faster, and nobody ever comes back behind and says, hey, I was one of the people that repeated that. It was wrong. I'm sorry. I correct that. Never happens. No, because you're a dead man, if you do,

which takes in my last question for you, because I know how busy you are. What is the best expectation for us getting better? What has to happen? What do we need to see more of? I work with law enforcement a lot because I really support law enforcement across the board. Doesn't mean they don't make bad mistakes. They do. There are bad law enforcement officers that are badge heavy and should never have been out there. But in the main, I support them greatly, FBI, local, regional. And I was speaking at a law enforcement conference earlier, and we were talking about negotiation. And one of the top negotiators for the FBI has said that they negotiator gets why they took those hostages to begin with.

Doesn't matter anything else. But once they feel like they've been heard, I think this negotiator gets why I took these hostages. Then they've got something to work with. They have a face-saving way out. I've been heard. And I've listened to that, and I've taught that, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I think we need to be better active listeners.

I think we need to make our people that we're at odds with, that we're divided with politically, value-wise, culturally, we need to make sure that that person understands, hey, I hear you. I'm not telling you I agree with you, but I've taken the time to really hear you and understand you. So you don't ever need to tell me again because I hear you and I understand you. I think people are frustrated because they don't feel like they're being heard. I really thought back to the fact that I've always said when I was doing marital therapy, you don't need to win. You just need to make sure you've been heard. And that relieves the tension from it. And I really think that generalizes to,

we're so busy talking that we're not doing any listening. And I think that's a real big deal right now. Everybody's talking, ain't nobody listening. Amen to that, Dr. Phil. Thank you for being the example. Thank you for, you know, you're one of the rare ones who you're better with time because the more life you have, the more experience you have, the better you are at listening to people and giving out advice and helping us deal with all the crazy that's around us. Well, I don't know that time's helping.

I can remember my address in the fourth grade, but I'm not sure I can remember why I went in the kitchen this morning. That's okay. but I'm not sure I can remember why I went in the kitchen this morning. That's okay. As long as you've got a great ability to listen to other people and help process their pain and what they're dealing with and point them in a better direction, and that's a gift. It's a gift to all of us. So continued success to you.

I'm always a call away if I can help with anything. Very proud that you asked me to be on, and you have to reciprocate and be on my show and or fill in the blanks soon. I'm going to call it in. Whatever you want. I'm going to call away. I never forget who helps me. Take care, Dr. Phil. Really interesting guy who's doing really important work. And I hope he helped you understand a little bit better the dynamic around us and what we can do about it. Because I got to tell you, that has become all-consuming for me. We've got to get better. We've got to get to a better place.

It can't be like this all the time. We have too many blessings. We have too many opportunities. It's too easy for us to just be this negative about everything. We can absolutely do better. I know we can, individually and collectively. So, subscribe, follow. Don't forget that free agent merch. Wear your independence, literally and figuratively. I'll see you next time.