The Daily Zeitgeist - Icon #38 - Oprah Winfrey: What Is An Oprah?

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

In this edition of ‘The Iconograph’, Jack and Miles are joined by podcaster/author Bridget Todd to talk about the "Queen of All Media": Oprah Winfrey! They'll discuss her legendary daytime talk show, her beef with the beef industry, bees and much more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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which we call the iconograph, instead of looking at the zeitgeist through current events on Monday mornings, we're looking at the zeitgeis through powerful pop culture deities that are our icons. I'm Jack O'Brien. I'm one of the founders of crack. This week we are talking about someone who was often called the most powerful person alive during the first half of my life, who came in the door through the world of Taudry Talk TV, and became an Oscar-nominated actor,

the most powerful influencer of all time before anyone was even using the phrase influencer, she's responsible for some of the dumbest satanic panic hoaxes. And also for more pages read by Americans, more pages of literature. I would guess more pages of literature read, caused by her than most American publics, like maybe all American,

public schools. She's basically a monoculture TV-focused ancestor of everything in the modern world, from Joe Rogan to Goop to QAnon. She became the world's only black billionaire, the richest black person of the 20th century. And she did that by creating the modern world. And then she just sort of dipped. She's just kind of like not around as much anymore. I'm curious to hear what you guys think her legacy is today. We are, of course, talking about Oprah. Oprah! You get a pod. You get a pod. Hell yeah. I'm thrilled to be joined, as always by my co-host. His early career was built on advice. He got from Roger Ebert during a period when they were fucking. It's Miles Gray. Hey! Welcome me. Thank you so much. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to get the insurance payment for that free Pontiac.

G6 I got from Oprah. Hey, those many years ago when I was in the audience. Didn't realize, I thought it was a free car. I didn't realize there were payments that had to be made. I'm still getting it together. Did you remember that as being keys left under the seat? I believe so. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it was not. They were boxes handed out to everybody. And then, like, as it was happening, they were like, and we're handing out boxes, like gift wraps boxes. And in one of them, there is, we'll get to it. what an iconic moment. She certainly had a nose for iconic moments. Oh, yeah, yeah.

That kind of like really, I feel like in a weird way when Oprah was hooking people up in her audience with shit, it inspired like a whole other level of gift giving now. Are people like, shit? Yeah. There's a new fucking ceiling. I don't, I don't want to say this because I don't want to give her too much praise, but you could say she's the ancestor of Mr. Beast in some ways. Ah.

I mean, I don't want to. Look. Yep. like that's for history to decide. It's cool. She filmed with me for three minutes and got my life sob story out and exploited that for, for ratings,

but that's okay. I did get a car I cannot afford for free. Superfoods or Victor said they actually were sitting on the cars. They looked down there. And if you look down, you're sitting on a car. That's a new Pontiac G6. Miles,

we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by an extremely talented podcast host, digital activist. You can hear on her brilliant podcast. There are no girls on the internet. The author of the book, Love It First Prompt. She once staged a televised high school reunion just to flex on her poor classmates. It's Bridget. Todd!

You're joking, but that is something I would absolutely do. It was so wild when she did that. She had her high school reunion on TV, got, like, had her student body president up there, and she's like, Wow, I would have thought you'd be like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. A teacher, really?

Ouch. Man. So was high school important to you guys? Like, gets everybody to be like, yeah, it was a really formative experience. And she's like, huh, I always thought of it as just a face. Interesting. All right. Moving along.

Fucking rules. I will say up front. And Bridget, thank you so much for joining us for your seventh Oprah episode. I did not realize that there was a six-part Bastards series on Oprah when we decided to do this together. I thought it was six. I actually didn't know that they did Oprah. I remember that. I remember that.

It's very interesting. Definitely a good companion piece to this podcast, but we'll try not to cover too, too much of the same ground. But yeah, you were on that as well. You're kind of becoming an official Oprah expert. I am. I consider myself to be an Oprah expert. That six part behind the bastard series was one of the highest points of my career to date. It was like it was it's probably the thing I've done that I see in the wild reference the most. Like whenever somebody talks about Oprah people like on Reddit people will say check out there's a bastards six part thing and it takes every fiber of my being not to be like thank you so much for enjoying it. But just know if you're listening and you've written that on Reddit, I probably have seen it. And I probably have really worked hard to not blow up my Reddit account by saying, thank you for listening.

We see you. We hear you. We appreciate you. Yeah. I, uh, I Google. I was trying to go. I wanted to ask the question.

Is she the most important person in the history of TV as a medium and like what, what is her legacy going to be going forward? Because I do feel like it's fairly diminutive. Like I, I don't know what young people just entering. the pop culture landscape in the last five years know of Oprah, you know? Like, I feel like she's just not, you know, she's off on an island that she owns somewhere. But yeah, like, Googled it, brought me to a Reddit thread that the very first thing was like, you should listen to this six-part Bastards episode.

But I will just say my experience with Oprah is that when I went to my first job out of, of college was being a pool boy. My second job out of college was working for ABC News. And when I was going to work for ABC News, I was like, I thought I was going to work for like this classy journalistic institution and on the news desk behind Peter Jennings, you know, and I got there and everybody had little TVs at their desks. And the second that Oprah came on, everyone was just watching Oprah. And not as like a guilty pleasure thing. It was like, they're like, this is the or text. This is what we build television news out of is the shit that Oprah is out here mining in the, in the consciousness of America every single fucking day. And Bridget, you talked about on the Bastros episode that

like you grew up watching Oprah with your mom, I think you said, right? Yeah, I grew up in an Oprah centric house within an Oprah-centric family. My mom loved Oprah. My dad loved Oprah. My grandmother loved Oprah. When Oprah did her Oprah in Africa special, I remember my grandmother taping it. And she, this was not a woman who taped things on TV.

So just to give you a sense of how big of a deal. Yeah. I just want to say up front, as a black woman in media, I have such deep reverence for Oprah. I think that she is a really kind of delicious complicated person and I could talk about her all day. I really agree with your point, Jack, about how in 2026, I don't know that the younger people know how much when they, this is the architecture of media, whether it's podcasts or people being influencers or people opening up

about their personal lives in a way that connects to something, a social or political issue. I don't know if people really understand how much Oprah architected the soup that we are swimming in today in 2026. Yeah, right. The suit. I love swimming in a good soup. Good Oprah soup. It is. Most people will say, like, it's the water that we're all swimming in, but it is grosser than that.

It is more of a soup. There are chunks in here. Well, yeah, like Bridger was saying, it's complex. Like, when you're swimming in soup, you're like, ugh, but then you're also like, but it is nourish. There is stuff like a heat in here, but that's disgusting. I don't know what to make it. Yeah.

I will say her power, her gift and her curse is that she is enormously, successful and gifted at channeling what America wants and giving it to Americans. That's not all that she does, but she's got an amazing kind of nose for the zeitgeist. And so sometimes that's great. And it makes her, like, make, you know, some of the most entertaining shit that's ever been on television. And some of the times it does, you know, cause her to have Jenny McCarthy. on to, you know, like America wants a quick cure. And so she repeatedly, whether it be Dr. Oz or, you know,

Jenny McCarthy and like the autism shit, like she finds ways to give it to them. You know, the statistics on crime and like, you know, 80% of sexual assaults are committed by family members or people you know. And, you know, people don't want that to be true. they want some other version where like there's a shadowy figure out there and like they're you know leaving uh zip ties on your car door handle and there's like a puzzle that you can do to you know uh get your way out of out of harm so that's the version that you get from oprah they they want satanic cults and so you get satanic cults instead of the reality in some situations not all situations but i do think a lot of the negatives of her legacy come from her giving the people what they want, essentially, in a way that's probably unhealthy because Americans want terrible shit in a lot of cases. And the people wanted Jenny McCarney.

Like she, that she was not, I'm not saying it was good for us, but she definitely had her finger on the pulse of what it, what horrible, harmful trash thing we were going to eat up and ask for more. Right. Donald Trump built his like political, his 2016, like 2015, 2016 political rise on just mainlining talk radio, like conservative talk radio and just, you know, getting a sense of like this is what like in the bowels of America. This is like the horrible shit that they that people want. And I feel like if a Democrat on the other hand had been just mainlining Oprah and like reading it not not as like. And so I'm going to give them. you know, vaccine skepticism, but like being like, this is what is coming down the line and like we need to prepare for it. I think they would have been better off. But instead, people are just like, ah, Oprah, you know? By the way, did you guys, do you remember people saying that Oprah would have been, like should run for president? Oh yeah. That was like a constant, right? Yeah, I remember very

specifically, this is back when I was one of the co-hosts of stuff Mom Never Told You, we did a serious episode weighing that claim. And people were not making this claim like the way that people are, we'll say, you know, John Stewart should run for president or whatever. Like, people meant it seriously.

Like people, like I want to be clear that this was not just a joke thing that people were saying at the time. No, yeah, for sure. Because I think a lot of people were like, I mean, it's like, this might be the one woman to color white women will vote for. You know what I mean?

Like, because she had white women in a stranglehold, like, with people being like, the deference paid to Oprah. So I remember even that, I was all saying like, well, I mean, honestly, like, a lot of white women will vote for Oprah. So maybe there is something to that. Like, I see her, she has appeal in some weird, like in that very reductive way of being like, well, there's mass appeal. Therefore, you win president. Totally.

As we're going to get to, she came into the acting game. I thought she was an actor who, like, was also on TV. and she liked the book The Color Purple was like oh they're making a movie for the color purple I really want that

like willed her way onto it she was so inexperienced that when she came onto the set she was looking into the camera every time and Steven Spielberg had to be like yo yeah yeah

don't spike the camera yeah yeah so she can do whatever the fuck she want by the way like we'll get to it but her her performance in that movie was nominated for an off So like,

Yeah. She, she could do whatever the fuck she wanted to. It just like, it's all about, the only thing that was far-fetched about the idea of Oprah

becoming president is that it didn't seem like she wanted to do that. Yeah. Because like, the other part of her was that, like, she, she knows how to live well.

Like, she knows how to have a good time. And like, she wasn't going to fucking ruin her life to do that shit. Come on. Yeah. And,

I mean, I, I don't, I'm happy that she did not run for president. But when she, when people were having serious conversations about whether she would run for president, it was the early days of Trump. And so I just want to say, to your point, Jack, I don't think that Oprah running for president is any more far fetch than Donald Trump running for president. Or someone like Tucker Carlson running for president.

Like it's not, I don't think it's that, even though it's not something that I was down with and I'm happy that she didn't do it for lots of reasons. but it's not like it's that far-fetched that it would be something that would be, what actually happen. Right. If Obama had really been playing 4D chess, he and Seth Myers would have gotten up on that stage at the White House Correspondent's dinner

and just started humiliating Oprah and being like, you'll never be president Oprah. Right. Because isn't that what like launched that made Trump want to be the president? What if they had just done that to Oprah to be like, Yeah, right. No chance. Obama should have just clowned Oprah from the White House Correspondence Dinner,

and that would have been the first domino that started everything. Yeah. Come on. Come on, Oprah. You know I'm the true king of Chicago. Yeah. Come on. Right. Could never be you. Could never be you. All right. So let's get into origins. Oprah was born in Cushusco, Mississippi. I don't know how to pronounce it. and they have a sign. Is it Kasyosko?

Cossiocco? Jack, we should know how to say that to start off. You know what I mean? Just Mississippi. Oprah was born in Kasyosco, Mississippi. There are you happy? There we go. We got to make sure.

There are you happy. Put some respect on Mississippi's name. One interesting thing. Oprah was actually named after the biblical figure Orpa. everyone just started misspelling it spelling it as Oprah by accident and because it was easier to pronounce. She didn't find out her real name was Orpa until she was around 20. I do just want to first stop and. That's wild.

You were named after Orpa from, I had, people were just like, I don't know, I think that says Oprah. I think that says Oprah. So there's a point later in her career where she does an episode about Class. consciousness and the fact that there are like actual barriers to people being upwardly mobile in the country. Robert Reich is on making the point like we live in a society in which you know the most important predictor of where you're going to end up is your parents class in their wealth and Oprah was basically like I don't believe in luck I don't consider myself lucky at all actually and I'm just going to go ahead

and point out some of the moments where she was extraordinarily lucky and I think this has to be number one. If people hadn't accidentally transposed two letters of her name and accidentally invented an iconic name that fucking pops. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a name you just like can't stop saying. That also nobody else in the world has. Like, we wouldn't be doing this episode right now,

were it not for that page one rewrite, Like, literal page one rewrite by the people. Like we talked about in the Weird Al episode, how he had the benefit of like he would go to famous musicians and be like, hey, could I do this parody of your song? And they would be like, if it sucked, they would be like, no. So you had like a built in like writers room that was like kind of helping him by screening like bad ideas out.

Oprah just got a day one rewrite from the people in her family, like improving her name. Just a little bit of dyslexia. percent. Yeah. With a long way. Just a wee bit. Yeah, because I think Orpa Winfrey would still be like an anchor in Nashville.

Yes. You know what I mean? Like that, that's like you kind of, you're going to. You tap out of a low. Although who knows? I mean,

maybe you would have been like, dang, Orpa, huh? Orpa. I don't think so. And I think having a name that really can pop on its own, like share Madonna. We don't have a lot.

I think having a name, I was reading this. and don't come from me, but I love a trashy celebrity memoir, and I read Amarosa's memoir, and she talks about that a little bit, how, like, she feels like having a name

that can kind of pop as a memorable first, just iconic first name. Oh, yeah. Amorosa, rips. Yeah. I mean, that if Oprah had just been a name, Amorosa, you know, like that's about the, but Oprah is just, it's like,

on the question of, like, I don't, saying I don't believe in luck is obviously ridiculous. I don't think Oprah is just a lucky person. I think Oprah is a generational genius at a number of things. Who also got luck luckier than a lot of other generational geniuses. You know what I mean? And like, uh, Orpa, orpah is a tough.

That name dies in your mouth. Like, not just, yeah, not just in the culture. That shit dies in your mouth. Yeah. So there's a lot of disagreement between her and her relatives about, like, how good or bad she had it growing up. Like she,

especially in the early days, she really emphasized, like, you know, she didn't have shit. I think she said that, like, she had two cockroaches for pets,

um, played with a toilet brush for a doll. Uh, I made that last one up. But, like, basically that was like kind of the idea was kind of like, Dolly Parton-esque. Dolly Parton-esque.

Yeah. Very dolly-partness. Yeah. Very Dolly Parton-esque. Like, she, I think she specifically said, like, her dolls were, you know, kind of makeshift. And she has relatives who were like, no, she had really nice dolls that her mom got from, like, the white family that her mom worked for. But she also said, yeah, she literally said she had cockroaches for pets. And her relatives were like, she had a cat, a parakeet, and an eel.

So, like, more pets than, like, that's a pretty good pet collection. How do you have a pet eel? I know. It's a really good pet. Where do you get? Yeah, I don't know anyone with a pet eel. I know. But that's how she, yeah, she was living good.

But it's also, I'll say like, anytime you have somebody who got extremely rich, it's kind of like taking testimony after a divorce. You know, you'll hear a lot of wild rumors and shit about a celebrity after a divorce. And it's like, yeah, I mean, some of that is true. But like, it's also people with. a lot of motivation to... Well, and just generally, people do this with their own lives, if you're a celebrity or not, like, we have the stories that are sort of foundational to our identities that, like, half the time you're like, wait, I think I just started

saying this about myself at this part of my life when I look back, no, that was just part of my own self-myth making, too. So I definitely see that as a good thing. A lot of people sort of misremember about their own lives, too, just to give things a little bit more meaning. One, she's definitely said that like she always felt less than growing up. And the older I get and the more like I've like had real conversations with people, it's like literally everybody feels that way, you know? Like almost everybody feels that way. And like you find ways of dealing with it, oftentimes unhealthy.

And I think a lot of really successful people, like the way that they find of dealing with that is through successful. and, you know, like in the same way that, like, addicts will use a substance to deal with that feeling. But, like, somebody who's just a straight line upward rocket ship of success, like, oh, you kind of never had to deal with that your bullshit, kind of. You know, you had to, like, you were able to just sort of continue to be more and more and more successful, which she, she certainly had that. as a teenager, so she came up in the like pageant world and specifically Miss Black Nashville, Miss Black Tennessee,

and was also went on to compete for Miss Black America, which was a pageant that was launched in protest of the Miss America pageant, which until 1950 mandated that its contestants, quote, must be of good health and of the white race. So. That's the world that she's coming up in. Like more like Miss Aryan. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, not that I was like looking to the Miss America pageant for,

other than that one woman who answered the question about Iraq so, so brilliantly, Miss South Carolina. Oh, my God. That's the only part of the pageant that I look to for my political idea. Of course. And the Iraq, such as. Such as. Such as.

Of course. When you go back and watch, this is a non-sequit, or if you go back and watch that clip, the person who asked the question is Mario Lopez. Yeah. And he's literally biting his lip to not. He's essentially laughing in her face. Jesus, yeah. I know.

And then, like, she always talks about, she's like, man, my life ended that day. Yeah. Like, I, this was like early internet clip era. Everybody was windmilling on me. It was a pretty dark moment of life. Like, yeah, sorry. We didn't see people as human then. They were just kind of caricatures to laugh at that.

I have compared and I've competed in a few pageants when I was a kid and they tell you when you're, if you're asked the question that you can't answer, you're supposed to breathe, smile and then just sort of start talking and like get yourself to the answer. Answer a different question. Yeah, I can sort of see her doing that. So she was actually, I think, following what I understand to be the standard, what I understand to be the standard pageant advice just kind of took her off the rails. Yeah, for sure. As somebody who has social anxiety, I definitely recognize what's happening there. I've given that answer in conversations before. I just like, you know, I didn't have a television camera on me, but I've definitely

panicked a sentence into a conversation and been like, what the fuck am I talking about? I'm freaking out, man. Right, right. Anyways, at age 19, she became the first black female anchor at Nashville's WTVF TV. and this is where we get an interesting view. So she is at a local TV station in the 70s. I always knew that Anchorman was built on some level of, like, truth. But according to interviews in Kitty Kelly's very controversial Oprah biography,

the Nashville, but she goes around and talks to the people who worked with Oprah all along and is like, she was kind of a bitch. right. That seems to be the leading question to all of that book. But this has nothing to do with Oprah being a bitch or not. It's just what she found talking to people who worked there, that the department was heavily medicated at the time. They were selling window pain LSD in the hall. The staff bought Oprah's co-anchor a Coke spoon as a gift, and management had to remove a vending machine from the office because it had been rigged to dispense marijuana. Awesome.

Awesome workplace. Hell yeah. She's also like, she also dates like some coworkers and like people and she, she has the struggle of like being put on human interest stories around this time. It is like literally the plot of Anchorman. Right, right, right. Everybody's like, you're holding me back. Yeah.

Yeah. Jesus. Yes. Breaking the machines. So Oprah does later talk, like, she's interviewing mothers who have dealt with drug addiction, and she kind of breaks down in tears and comes clean about the fact that she had had some problems with cocaine use. And people think that it's around this time when, again, she's, it is just what every fucking person at the office is doing the whole time. Right, right.

She just has, like, sort of like, the wherewithal to be like, and I'm, going to be kind of honest about this. Yes, exactly. Oh, right. Yes. I completely identified it. All right. So it goes to Baltimore.

Her debut there is hyped with Billboard's reading, what is an Oprah? Again, great name. Like the Matrix when the Matrix came out? What is the Matrix? Wow. What is an Oprah? And then from there, quickly gets her own morning show, A.M. Chicago.

And before long, they're like, why are we calling this A.M. Chicago? this is the Oprah Winfrey show. Right, right. And it becomes the Oprah Winfrey show, and she immediately starts beating Phil Donahue's ass. Phil Donahue was like the number one daytime talk show person. He had like kind of invented the format.

And Oprah's just immediately whooping his ass to the point that it becomes nationally syndicated with the newly named the Oprah Winfrey show. I can understand why she dominated so quickly. The point that you made when she revealed her own personal struggles, with cocaine dependency. That, I feel like that little nugget is exactly Oprah of figuring out a way to humanize stories and to connect with both the audience and the subject that you're talking to in a way that kind of seems very personally revealing and vulnerable, but actually also has the

function of getting the other person talking and sort of breaking down their barriers. You can really see she's just fucking good at this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. It's like almost like, is it a form of like pathology to where you're like, Oh, yes, I also. Like, you know, that's the thing. She's really good at finding that common ground to your point, Bridget,

which then allows someone the comfort to then begin revealing thing after thing after thing. Yeah, totally. Like, that is the theory of the case that I think her relatives who say that she's a liar are like, yeah, she just says, she's like, oh, me too, essentially every time somebody says something. But I don't think that's true. It seems like she'll say she had. a similar experience when she had that experience is kind of the sense I get. And then she's just really good at talking about it.

Yeah, I don't think she's lying. I'm sure the toilet lid at the studio in Tennessee where they were doing drugs looked like a cutting board from people doing cocaine off that thing. And she knew about it. Incidentally, part of Oprah's success, and I mentioned this when I was introducing you Miles, is due to Roger Ebert. So he's also a popular syndicated television personality in the Chicago. area at this time. And Oprah and Roger Ebert are dating when her, when she's being offered a

syndication deal. And Ebert's show was already syndicated. And so he was like, they, they were on a date at the hamburger hamlet. Come on, Roger Ebert. Oh, fuck. Yeah. I miss that. I know. But yeah. So she had like, put different ways that she could go with the show. And he was like, all right, well, let me just like do run some quick numbers for you based on my show. So he took his annual salary. What's that? I'd say he just starts snorting a bunch of cocaine. He's like, let me just do some math.

He's like, let me just do some math. So this is what I'm thinking. It's called Terriology. Like, damn, Robert? What? Or Roger? Took his annual salary multiplied by two because his co-critic, Siskel was fucking eaten into his hat.

Okay. Then he multiplied that number by five since Oprah's show would be on five days a week. And then he doubled that number to reflect the hour time frame. And then doubled it one last time because he was like, and also like, you're way better at this than me. You're going to be like really successful. And then she was like, wow, that's a big number. He was like, yeah, I think you should probably syndicate your talk show. Wow.

And she does. He has a type. Like his, the woman he was married to when she died is also like a very successful black woman from Chicago. And I'm just getting, I don't think I realized he, this is a little bit of a pattern emerging for him. Yeah. Yeah. Little De Niro. Yeah.

I think there's a pattern here. As Bossa used to call it, down with the swirl. You know what I mean? Dr. Ebert. Who knew? Yeah, okay. All right. Let's take a quick break.

We'll come back. We'll talk about her show launching and her acting career launching. We'll be right back. The long loading times. The glitchy video calls. That's your house asking for better internet. Switch to Bell Pure Fiber, Canada's most reliable internet awarded by Open Signal. from $75 a month.

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where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know. Have you guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So we don't like to use that word anymore.

Okay. A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No! I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore at 14. That's crazy.

I went to the Wonderland Bookstore yesterday and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30. No way. You have to come to the last bookstore, though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween.

He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on the I-Hard Radio. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Brett Coleman. And I'm Trevor Sycambe. Have you ever watched a game and wondered what really made the difference beyond the final score?

That's exactly why we created NFL Prox. Got a man wide open. Seahawks! Every week, we use exclusive next-gen stats insights and NFL content to break down the biggest stories, matchups, and moments from around the league. We go beyond the box score to uncover the numbers, the tendencies, and details that help explain. what actually happened on the field.

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Join us each week for a quick chat with your soccer-loving bros about the best sport in the world. Soccer. Just don't tell my coaches I said that. Listen to Big Kick Energy on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast, lots to say with me Bobby Bones and Matt Castle. We also bring in friends, they're mostly match friends, who are current or former NFL players, some of the biggest names in music and entertainment, and then we have some really great conversations

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this is your podcast. This is the R&B Money podcast. Listen to R&B Money from the Black Effect podcast network on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast and we're back so her show is taking off around this time but when it's still even before it's like nationally syndicated um she gets the role in uh as sophia in the color purple which is wild doesn't it it's just like so like we take it for granted but like That is not a, like, daytime talk show host.

Yeah. Is that? Because, like, if Phil Donahue was cast in a Martin Scorsese movie, like, that would be weird. Like, I was surprised to learn Jerry Springer was the mayor of Cincinnati. That was, that was crazy to me. I was like, this guy, the guy from daytime talk. But like. The guy who, yeah, who gets like the cops to fight the gang members on stage.

Yeah, yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, I guess that does make sense of the mayor. Yeah. But it does just solicit. to identify like she could have done whatever she wanted to. She just went with what was, I think, interesting and going to bring her. She had a vision.

But she was, like I said, not a star at all. So this is how it happened. Quincy Jones, that guy, Quincy, got called last minute to testify in a plagiarism lawsuit involving Michael Jackson. Someone claimed that he had stolen the girl is mine from him.

That, like, this person said, I wrote the girl as mine. And so Michael Jackson got dragged to Chicago for this lawsuit, and he brought Quincy Jones. Quincy Jones couldn't sleep on the morning of the trial, woke up and turned on the TV, and Oprah was on. And it was just like, again, she's local TV at this point.

And he's a producer on the color purple. And he called Steven Spielberg and was like, hey, I just found Sophia. Just looking at her on a local, broadcast of the Oprah Winfrey show. Is that because I'm like, I'm so impressed by people like this who just have, who just somehow just like, yeah, there it is. There she is.

And then I'm like, is it that the bar is so low everywhere else and you kind of have a slightly above average analytical eye where you're like, yep, this is the best thing out there. Or, you know, I'm so, I just, I'm fascinated with, also, I think it's also the confidence that Quincy Jones has too. Like, whenever you hear interviews and things like that, he's never like, unsure about anything. Even his worst takes, he's like, fucking, he stands on that shit. So I think there is something also about the confidence of a very talented creative person.

I think probably through the TV, he could sense. He's like, no, there's, the material is there for something. We just have to figure out how to form it. But shout out to Quincy again. Yeah, Quincy Jones is like a rare creative talent, like otherworldly. And just, just somebody who really trusts his decision making creatively and artistically. which I think is really cool. Having read the novel by Alice Walker, Color Purple, I totally get what Quincy Jones was seeing. You know, the character of Miss Sophia.

I feel like even before I knew it was going to be Oprah. Like Oprah is who pops up in your head when you're reading the book. Right. So I totally buy, but he just sees her on local TV and it's like, oh, that's our Miss Sophia. Who else could it be? And if y'all have seen the movie, it could be no one else. No one else could have had the range to make Miss Sophia her own like Oprah Winfrey did.

And so, yeah, I think speaking of confidence, which, you know, he possesses and probably can sense in somebody else. Because, you know, Miss Sophia, like, comes in that first scene to, like, abusive Danny Glover and just, like, owns the fucking room. Right. It's just, like, big-timing him in a way that she's like, what the fuck is going on here? Why is everybody doing what this guy says? like she had no acting experience and she at that time was like I got to find a way to get in the color purple like she knew they were making the movie and was just like yeah I should probably be in that like that's like that's like how I thought I was going to be on SNL when

I was in college you know what I mean I'm like damn bro I should be on that how I'm going to do that but it's like the boom goes the dynamite guy being like I feel like I'm going to be on SNL next. Just the difference, but again, like, you, that's, that's a, that's a fucking superpower when you're like, I don't know how, but I'm going to. And also, you probably benefit from also having the platform where someone can't notice you. And again, let's just talk about luck, because if that guy hadn't sued Michael Jackson, if Michael Jackson hadn't needed Quincy Jones to come, and if Quincy Jones had been able to sleep that morning, like none of this happens. And, you know, so there's a massive stroke of luck. But to, in

retrospect to Oprah, she is like, I had the thought that I wanted to be in this movie. And then I was in that movie. Manifestation. Hence we get the secret, you know? Right, right, right. That's what I mean. But like that's also just how like all this icon shit works is that all of these people are people for whom because of just like the way the dice rolled are having incredible

strokes of good luck. and they are awarding it to shit that they did, you know? Sure, sure, sure. Like moves that they made. And it's like a combination, but, you know, it's, yeah, you're going to get some magical thinking. Well, that's how, but even if you tell somebody who's, you know, all in on like manifestation and they're like, well, it's all these other things. Well, no. She had the thought to even be open to be a newscaster, which then got her this thing.

Takes both. And it does everything. It's like, yeah, sure. but also motherfucking Quincy Jones had to be there to see her because I'm sure, but I think that is crazy to think though too. Her intent was there. She did not have the conductive material or person to actually get in front of Spielberg, but then you have,

but here this person comes and, you know, is able to observe your talent. And she's going on TV every day. Maybe she is like putting it out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm putting out Miss Sophia energy today on the show just in case. And it works out, you know. you look at those episodes, she's like, she's dressed differently and it looks sweaty all the time.

She was just doing Miss Sophia for like a year straight. Her hair looks like shit. And she was asking who's Harpo, whose baby is this? So she reads for the part, doesn't hear back for several months and assumed she hadn't gotten the part, went to what she calls a health farm to lose weight. And is like, she says she's like running around a. track crying being like I've fucked up my career like I'm to you know people immediately were like she's wow this person is overweight we can't believe it like what what a disaster

there's these crazy interviews with her and like uh Joan Rivers where she's like oh my god why are you so fat Joan Rivers it's like crazy um but anyways she's running around a track crying and somebody from the health farm comes out and is like uh there's a Stephen Spielberg on the phone for you. And she picks up the phone and he's like, hey, sorry, I haven't like gotten back to you. You have the part-ish, but if you lose weight, you don't have the part. And so she's like, okay, checks herself out. Can do.

It says she went to a dairy queen on the way to the airport just to be like, well, I bet I better not lose this weight. Celebrate. And, yeah, first day of filming doesn't know she's not supposed to look directly into the camera, which, by the way, I do think making reassuring eye contact with the camera is Oprah's, like that is how I picture her. When I close my eyes and picture Oprah, she is looking into the camera. And she's being the best at staring down the barrel of the camera that has ever done it, I feel like. With that big hair, too.

Like, I'm picturing like 93 Oprah hair. That's the Oprah that looks at me in my dream. So she goes from that to receiving an Oscar nomination, the supporting actress. Um, is like just, yeah, that's, that's talent. I know I've made this point. I think I made this point on the Bastards episode, but I, if people haven't seen the color purple, it's one of my favorite movies, you should definitely watch it. Yeah, it's good.

Per all my life, I've had to fight kitchen table speech is what, it is one of the most iconic pieces of film that is so dear to the black community. And, you know, it's the beginning of all right. Yeah, it's, it's referenced by Kendrick Lamar. I cannot oversell what a big deal this was. And my understanding is that she was not actually even meant to have that huge of a part in the movie. But once she got on set, they were like, oh, we got to give her more dialogue. And my understanding is that there are people on set who did not like that.

One miss, one miss, uh, Whoopi Goldberg, who plays Seeley, who was ostensibly the main character of the color purple. Apparently, people loved Oprah so much that there were some, some, I guess, Wuppie felt some kind of way about the fact that like when you think of the color purple most people think of miss sophia before they think of seely even though seely is the main character right i mean i think yeah because this was also the end introducing whoopey goldberg movie like that's how it's written in the credits like it's a big deal for both of them i i think of absolutely think of both of them but yeah whoopi's performance is definitely more understated and uh i can i can definitely see going into production with somebody who you've only really, you've seen like read for the

part in your office and has never acted before and being like, all right, we need to like have a version of this where this person's barely in the movie. And then she gets on and is just like, comes alive. It's just like, you know, popping off the screen. And you're like, oh, well, I guess we got to amp it back up. Let's dial it back up, baby. Dial up that Oprah. Yeah. It's definitely up there for my favorite Oprah performance.

Also, question. A bit of nominative determinism because of Harpo being in the, a character, her name is Oprah, then she has the production. Part of me is like, how did you fucking do all that? Her character's love interest husband in the color purple is named Harpo. and when she reads for the part in, like when she leaves the health farm slash, you know, fat farm, uh, and goes and reads for the part in Steven Spielberg's office, she's reading opposite the guy who's going to play Harpo and Stephen Spielberg was like,

and I realized we got Oprah and then Harpo right there. Like, and it's her name backwards and Oprah, of course, pointed that out immediately. So there is like some, she was probably going to get the line, role anyways, but there is a moment where they're like, this is fucking kismet. Like, this is crazy. It's lining up like this. It's like me and Prince Harry having a podcast. When I'm like, yeah, bro, we got the same birthday.

I'm leading with that shit. I'm like, motherfucker. I'm like, motherfucker. What time were you born? Me too. Me too, bro. Same year and everything? Same year, same day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm married to Megan. I'm sorry. You didn't know you were on a podcast with a celebrity. Yeah. Sorry. What did we remove? Sorry.

Royalty. I will say it's up there. I don't know if it surpasses Oprah's performance as Judge Bumbleton in B. The Jerry Seinfeld movie. Judge Bumbleton, who is somewhat confusingly not a B, it's a person in B movie whose name is Judge Bumbleton. She's a human being in the movie? A human being judging the case of B versus Bumbleton.

Love. I don't know. Loving versus B. And yeah, and just happens to be named Bumbleton because Jerry Seinfeld is a good screenwriter. And don't let anybody tell you differently. He is good at this. All right. Let's talk about the content of the Oprah Winfrey show. Right from the jump, she distinguishes herself as being like unafraid to tackle big topics.

And she goes right at racism. by taking her show to Forsyth County, Georgia, which is an all-white community that had violently forced out all black residents in 1912, and they are still, like, proud of that shit to the day that, like, Oprah brings the show there. And, like, she has these community members on who are, like, you know, openly, like, yeah,

I'm proud white and, like, they're KKK members and shit. And it's just she's, So, like, it's just, she, she's just like, okay, so, like, listens to them and is like, hmm, seems wrong, but, like, her, her likability and, like, obvious, like, intelligence is kind of the entire argument. It's not like, she's, like, shouting these people down. You've just got, and then there are people from the town who are like, this is crazy. We, you know, it shouldn't be a situation where black people aren't allowed to live in our town.

but it's seen as groundbreaking at the time. You know, this is the 80s. This is when America, like, mainstream culture was selling the myth that, like, America had kind of solved racism, you know, and that, like, the, the Huxstables were now, you know, the Jeffersons had moved on up and were now the Huxibles. And, like, it's not, you know, the episode wasn't really showing the facts of systemic racism, but it's hard for people. to watch this and think racism is solved while watching an entire town that is like a fucking

sundown town pat itself pat itself on the back for what it did you're like oh yeah that's that's no no no and i think there's a version like this is something that i do really respect about Oprah because there's a version of her that doesn't tell that story where where she might think i would have an easier time being mainstream mega successful if i kind of go along with the lie that we've solved racism. We live in a colorblind society. Like she could be exhibit A. We've solved it. Look, I have a show, you know. And I think the fact that

she chose something different, that she chose like, no, I'm going to make content that really sort of exposes the fact of the reality of race in this country. I think really says something about the moves that she was making at that point, even at this early stage in her career.

I agree, yeah. Yeah. It was definitely not the path of least resistance. It was definitely not the path of like give America whatever they want. You know, it was her being like, this is kind of what America needs to see at this time. And then she's able to do the best job of like packaging that. And probably an easier way for like white audiences to confront white supremacy too to use it as this example of a thing that a county did in 1912 without having to talk about like, sure,

broader systems of oppression, which gets a little bit heavy. You can just go, look at these interesting white folks that kicked every. everybody out in 1912. Are you okay? Huh. It's kind of brilliant. That seems bad. That's what I mean.

Like it's such a good way to stealthily introduce these concepts to people in a way that we'll get a broad sort of coalition of support from your viewers. You're not going to put people off immediately be like, what the fuck you're talking about? No, I didn't do nothing bad. My grandpa wasn't racist. You know what I mean? Like where it's just sort of like, look at this place and just treating it like this odd thing.

But I think again, like with so many of the topics she picks, it's, it's, it's they're in people subconscious because even for the people who want to believe they lived in a post racial America, they know that shit like this exists still. They know people like this exist still. And to just sort of like bring it up like this and just kind of tease it out for people, I think, yeah, it's a very effective way to have those conversations because prior to that, people are like, no, I know about race. I watch blazing saddles. You know what I mean? Like, I've done the work. Yeah. And by the way, like, this was not an easy job to do when she came to town. received a phone call from a man who said, this is the clan, we're going to kill you, and

like hung up. And she just was like, all right, well, we got a show to do and just stayed and did the show. And then, you know, the, uh, so she did, she did a show in LA after the riots and was just not no celebrities, not the chief of police, just like community members talking about their experience with the riots. Um, at her best, she is like on some studs turkle shit where she's just like going and letting Americans tell their stories in their own voices in a way that I think is probably really valuable, especially on subjects like this where the kind of mainstream consensus was so far out of line with like every people's lived experiences of racism at that time, you know. Yeah, which is wild too because you think of like what even daytime talk shows are now and nobody's even close to doing some shit. like we went to, you know, like we went to Minnesota to speak with the people currently experiencing ice rates. You know what I mean?

And doing something like that. Like that just that's what the internet's for. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. But like when you think of like how much like daytime television is sort of morph now to just a purely like promotional vehicle for like other like marketing things. Yeah. Like you're like, oh yeah, there was there was something there was something there that was giving like giving people the requisite amount of discomfort to just sort of do something.

not fully solving it, but just enough to be like, just nudging you a little bit. Yeah, I was in a hotel recently, and you know how when you're in a hotel, you're just flipping channels and whatever's on? You're watching networks. Yeah. Yeah, the one time you're experiencing linear television again,

and you're like, and now we're going to time travel. Right, right, right. And I might have been Kelly Rippa, or it was some kind of daytime TV talk show, and they were advertising a trivia slash dance contest where people were coming on the show to compete in trivia, but then part of the competition was also if they could dance. And I just remember thinking,

what the hell is this? What is this what daytime TV is? I don't even think we have, like I, again, I don't watch a lot of network TV, but is there a daytime 2026 equivalent of what Oprah was doing where people are trying to, I'm not saying it's the most hard hitting,

but it ain't a dance contest, right? It's not like a celebrity telling the same story. they've told a hundred times to promote their podcast or whatever. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I wouldn't know. I mean, I watch just, look, Bridget, we know we have the same YouTube algorithms. We're watching, we're watching body cam videos of white women get arrested for stealing things.

Okay. To tune in our upcoming podcast about white women getting arrested for stealing things on body cam. Called our rhythms where we talk about what our algorithms are serving us. We literally Will Pearson of Iheart expect an email. Our rhythms is good. This idea is fucking gold. Jack, I was telling you about this. This is off mic.

I was telling you about this. This is some shit. Bridgett. We're talking. I'm telling you, this is some shit I've been thinking up for a long time. This is gold. We got to fast track this one because this is a great idea.

Will, you got it. Okay, Will, Connell, Greenlight. Let's go. Our rhythms is so good. Rhythm. rhythms. I mean, I'm not going to say it that way, but you can, yeah. Thank you, Jack.

It's like, I'm going to say 50 cents. I'm going to call him 50 cents, okay? I will call him two quarters. I will say to your point that like she's like kind of bringing white people along very slowly. One of her most famous episodes is also about racism where they bring in this expert guest who tells the audience. they basically split audience between brown-eyed people and blue-eyed people, and they're, like, discriminating against the blue-eyed people. And it's some real, like, person comes to your workplace to teach a lesson about discrimination.

And, like, it's kind of on some, I bet this shit hits so hard if you eat crans type shit. But it's also, but, but, like, when it comes to race, Like white people in the 80s are some crown-eating motherfuckers, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't think that this was wrong. They were wrong to do this. And like, you see people, like, it eventually dawns on the blue-eyed people. They're like, I think what you're trying to say is that being discriminated against is hard for the races that are discriminated against.

This one guy, like, stands up and it was like, but I will just say, like, the races are different, whereas blue-eyed and brown-eyed people are not. not different. Like, he still like, can't get it. But that's where I'm like, I'm not mad for you trying that in the 80s and 90s, because people were so fucking dumb. And I'm sure as a woman of color, you're like, I don't know how the fuck to get these people to even move a fucking inch closer to realizing what the fuck. Okay, how about this mother.

It's like blue-eyed motherfuckers over here, brown-eyed motherfuckers over here, y'all suck. How does that feel? You're trying to train a pet to understand racism. Yeah. Maybe if I give them treats. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got one less, you got half the treats, and this animal worked twice as hard for how to the treats.

Yeah. I bet that feels bad, huh? The treats are actually different on a cellular level. If you think about like, oh, fuck, here we go. God damn it. We're so close. Let's take one more break, and we'll come back. We got a lot of Oprah to get through here, guys.

But this is too fun to talk about with you guys. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. The long loading times. The glitchy video calls. That's your house asking for better internet. Switch to Bell Pure Fiber, Canada's most reliable internet awarded by Open Signal

from $75 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for more details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane, Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists

artist podcast. The improvised character comedy podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know. Have you guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So you're so we don't like to use that word anymore. Okay. A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No. I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore on 14th. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore yesterday, and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30.

No way. You have to come to the last bookstore, though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone.

I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on artists on the IHeard radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Britt Coleman. And I'm Trevor Sycamma. Have you ever watched a game and wondered what really made the difference beyond the final score? That's exactly why we created NFL Prox.

Got a man wide open. See, Hawks. Every week, we use exclusive next chance. Gen Stats Insights and NFL content to break down the biggest stories, matchups, and moments from around the league. We go beyond the box score to uncover the numbers, the tendencies, and details that help explain what actually happened on the field. Fires it out in the flat to Barclay who beats one man,

spins past another, leaps over at third. And don't worry, this isn't just a show for stats experts. We use advanced analytics to help tell the story behind the game, turning the numbers into insights that every fan can understand and enjoy. So whether you're a casual fan learning more about football or a hardcore fan who can't get enough analysis, our goal is to help you see the game in a whole new way. If you've ever wanted to know why a playwork, how a matchup was won, or what most fans missed on Sunday, NFL Pro delivers insights you simply can't get anywhere else.

Listen to NFL Pro on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Yes. The new NFL season is here, and you should be listening to NFL Daily as we march along to Super Bowl 61. Last year, we had Mike McDonald, Sam Darnold, on the field after the game. But that was last year. If you're a football sicko like me, NFL Daily is your kind of show. It is in the name NFL Daily, fresh content in your feed every day all season long. Matthew Stafford coming off his MVP season.

on a dazzling darts from Matthew Stafford. Big time trades that shake up the NFL. A.J. Brown is loose. And of course, those Seahawks trying to run it back and win another Lombardi trophy. The Seahawks win Super Bowl 60. They are bringing the Lombardy back to the Northwest. If it's happening on a football field, NFL Daily will cover it.

Listen to NFL Daily on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcast. The World Cup is over, but if you caught the soccer bug and aren't sure what to do now, check out our podcast, Big Kick Energy. I'm Cameron Dicker, the kicker from the Los Angeles Chargers, most accurate kicker in NFL history,

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for everything you need to know from around the league. Get new episodes of the NFL Report Monday through Friday all season long. Listen to the NFL Report podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Jay Valentine. I've spent my career on the executive side of this industry, multi-platinum songs, building artists, and building business. And alongside my brother Tank, the superstar R&B singer, songwriter, and producer,

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and came out with a radio flyer wagon full of animal fat that was like 67 pounds to represent the 67 pounds that she had dropped, which I was vaguely aware of. I did not realize the way she dropped that weight was something called OptaFast, which meant that she had not eaten solid food in months. She was just like on a liquid only diet, otherwise known as a major and very dangerous eating disorder.

Yeah, sure. Yes. Something about Oprah is that as somebody who has the level of access and money that she has, she has really, her weight has been a topic of public conversation for decades. And I feel like if there's any evidence that, like, crash diets do not work. It's the fact that she did so many of them and that this still remained a topic of conversation. to the most cutting edge of health, nutrition, diet science. And yeah, I think, so she actually just sold her steak in Weight Watchers, like a year ago.

And it was because she was like, I don't want to, you know, engage in false advertising. I don't fuck with this anymore because I'm on like the G, the, you know, GLPs. Yeah. And so that's, at least she lives what she, you know. She's like, but I got my new brand of GLP-1s. I know. Right. That you can buy.

Yeah. Like, that's got to be coming. Another thing that's just a measure of how powerful she was that I don't, like, just for people who like weren't around for this. Just to, I can't imagine a current celebrity where this would be true. She had somebody on to talk about mad cow disease. She said during the discussion that what she had learned has just. stopped me cold from eating another hamburger.

I'm stopped. And that hit beef sales so hard that she got sued for $10 million by the Texas beef group. She had to go to Texas to defend herself. Like just saying what her plans were. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I don't know about that. That's defamation. Right.

That's how powerful she was. That's how powerful she was. That's fucking wild. And I love that when she made a whole thing of this, she started recording her show from Texas, wearing like 10 gallon hats and shit. Like I, this is probably my favorite moment in Oprah history.

Amazing flex. Yeah. Like truly amazing flex. Because she wasn't allowed to say why she was down there. So she would do, she did her show from Texas, like brought all the, you know,

celebrity guests and shit in. And suddenly this small Texas town that was trying to sue her is like, fuck this lady's so cool all the locals are like everybody loves Oprah so on the one hand they might say oh that Oprah she tried to hurt our beef industry on the other hand

it was like oh I watch her every day I watch every day and actually brought a lot of business to the area just her being here turns out but yeah she would open each show being like we're here in Texas for well you know like wouldn't you know she acknowledge it

I remember when like she won and I remember like the images of her like it was such a huge moment where she's like Oprah wins like she can't fucking be stopped. Another one. Yeah, there's like a picture of her like in the court like throwing her fist up like coming out of the courthouse

or like there's fucking Oprah. Can't be stopped. So this is unfortunately it would be a good Oprah movie. Like if you're going to do the Oprah movie that like encapsulates everything you're going to do the biopic that isn't like a baby being born

in the first scene. That could be a good moment. moment because it also contains the downfall because this is also where she meets Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil is like a consultant for her case and like he rides to the courthouse with her every day and that's how he, you know, Dr. Phil whispers his way in there. What capacity was he helping? I don't even know. Like he was a consultant on the case.

I'm not even sure. Because I can't, I still, years into writing about popular culture still can't really. still can't really tell what the fuck he is, or what he does or what he's supposed to be good at. He just says I'm a doctor, man. That's right. Good era where you just fucking just did that. And people are like, he must be a medical doctor.

That's right. I mean, why else would he say that? Oprah's Book Club, speaking of literature, speaking of Maya Angelou, she launched her book club in 96. People were like, no way this works. Getting Americans to read. Each one of her books would sell

at least 500,000 copies, oftentimes one million copies of books. Like, books don't sell that much. Like, that is 100,000 copies of a book is like a bestseller these days. She was moving weight. Yeah, she was going platinum, like with albums, but with books, yeah. Yeah. What's so funny is I have a book out, love at first prompt, about AI and intimacy. And my publisher, we were making like a list of places to reach out to.

and my publisher was like, oh, maybe, you know, Oprah has been having a lot of conversations on her podcast about AI. Maybe you can get them with the Oprah book people. And I was like, yeah, why not? Then I remember that I was part of a six-part series about whether or not Oprah was a bastard. And I was like, yeah, that might not, that might be why I'm not hearing that. Hey, quick pit, brig debt. Just switch around the letters like Orpa. What about Birgett?

Yeah. That's me? That's Birgit. That's Burgit Todd. No, no, no, a different person. Yeah, don't confuse me with that other podcast. Bird nut. Birdgit.

Who's this bird get person? I'm a bird getter, okay? For the 19th season premiere of the Oprah Winfrey show, she offered audience members the chance to obtain their wildest dream, but only if their wildest dream was a mid-budget sedan. She presented 11. So the pitch of the show coming in was, we're going to give away 12 cars today.

Which, again, like, pre-Mr. Beast, that was a big deal. Like, I remember that hit. Oh, yeah. Like, when they announced that, I was like, cars, damn. Like, you maybe saw, like, Price is right. Give a car away once in a while. But, like, 12 cars is a crazy number of cars. So she has the 11 audience members on stage that got it.

And she's like, all right, remember I said 12. there is a set of keys hidden inside of one of the gift boxes that we are handing out that have been handed out to everybody. And she's like, all right, you can, like, got a drum roll going. You can open it now. If there's keys in there, you get a car. And everyone's opening it. And everyone has keys in it. And the audience, like, and she's like, you get a car.

You get it. It's, when she said she was doing that because, like, people didn't seem to comprehend what was, they were like, what the fuck is happening? Yeah, because no one believed it,

right? Yeah, yeah. Me? A car? But also, like, the response of the people getting the shit is next level.

Like, this is the moment, like, her energy is that of, like, a, like, a, like, a, like,

megachurch, like, faith healer, but, like, their energy is that, that of people who are like speaking in tongues. Right, right, right.

Yeah, yeah. People's heads are exploding. People's heads are literally. That was the S&O bit. Yeah, yeah. For having babies. They're, yeah, yeah. I do, like, if she had just in that moment,

walked up to somebody in a wheelchair and, like, they had just been given that car and just been, like, get up. Like, are you telling me that person wouldn't have stood? Like, they definitely would. have. Throw those crutches aside. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting too. I remember like the thing that the first response was like, everyone was like, you know, no one actually got that car, right?

Right. And you're like, whoa, what? I'm like, she gave him away. And then they found out that like, that people were on the hook for the like income taxes of getting that car.

Yeah. But everybody wanted to shit on this right away because it was like, it is, it is such a viral moment. And like you want to, it's like almost like the current way that the internet reacts to a viral moment is, you know, it's like excitement and then like you're going to do a parody of it. And then you're going to like explain why it actually you shouldn't be excited about her or whatever.

So everybody said that. Yeah, they were like, first of all, no way did she give away that many cars. Second of all, uh, everybody actually had to pay $7,000 in taxes, which is true. But they also told people, look, this is, you have to pay $7,000 in gift taxes or you can just take the cash value of the car. Yeah. And then you, like, just don't have to worry about the taxes. And some people just sold it right back to the dealership for like,

and they're like, I didn't take, I actually made 32 grand from doing that. So the story that people had to pay $7,000 is a kind of bullshit and also like she was so upset by it that when they gave away trips to Australia, like, in subsequent seasons, they had like a CPA waiting in the wings to like settle all the tax related issues right away. Oh, interesting. Yeah. That's pretty thoughtful. I know. It is kind of. I was kind of impressed by that. But yeah, this is kind of like when she starts getting like big billionaire sort of energy though too or she's like, watch me give her give these people these little Pontiac G6s and these other things. And that's like kind of the beginning like where the connection to the earth begins to kind of slip away a little bit too, I feel like. I will say she is groundbreaking in like being a billionaire who completely left the planet. she is on some Gwyneth Poutro shit in some

respects. I do just want to share my favorite because this became a viral thing of like people cutting up that you get a car, you get a car thing. There was robot chicken versions of it. I just want my favorite, which Brian, the editor has already referenced. But,

but. It's crying. Bees. Just dance in A, A, hey. Bees. Oh my gosh.

Get your Epipans out. Oh, my God. The reaction of the crowd during the giveaway does resemble people being stung to death by bees because they're freaking out. Yeah, they're agonizing. Yeah. Yeah.

That brings us to the time. cruise incident, which also, I think the missing ingredient from both of those stories is, like, we need to acknowledge that Oprah's audience was, like, she was on some cult leader, like, you know, godhead level shit to these people, like in America broadly, but especially to these people who had come to her show. And they, the behavior in this audience is so wild when, Tom Cruise is coming out and Oprah like Oprah's like teasing him and she's like and he's in the house and people are like ah like they're fucking vibrating like violently vibrating when he's about to come out um and so he's like kind of playing to the crowd um I think everybody

knows about this but it's May 2005 Tom Cruise is like the number one movie star and he's promoting war of the world and ends up promoting whatever prescription drugs he has been refusing to take because he looks bonkers. He like keeps, he keeps like doing, it's like he's doing these weird gestures. Like he keeps like doing this like weird kneel down fist pump thing that like it really like underlines like that this person is. not a human, that they are somebody who has practiced human actions to appear human. Oh, yeah, yeah, but it's completely fucking up the performance.

Yes. He keeps arm wrestling, Oprah. He jumps on the couch a couple of times. Like, it really gave the energy of, like, performative rehearsed. And like, this is at a time that people are finding out the truth about, like, Scientology, that, like, they are, um, conducting. Girlfriend Auditions. Yeah.

Like Shelly Miscavage is conducting girlfriend auditions. Where is she now? And we don't know where she is now. No clue. No clue. Oprah keeps being like, you're gone. You are gone. I mean, it's just all the jumping.

I wonder if she was like, I hope he's on cocaine. Right. Like that's, I haven't seen anything like this since I was an anchor in Nashville. Yes. Yeah. And at this point, Tom Cruise, had a pretty, like, controlled, manicured image. Yeah.

And so this seemed like a real departure. And I think it is important that, you know, in our cultural imagination, I remember this is a moment where Tom Cruise, like, went bonkers on Oprah and jumped on the couch. Yeah. But you're so right that she was really playing it up. The audience was really playing. Like, it was, he definitely, I think, was responding to the energy in the room. But I do think it was like a viral moment, a viral celebrity moment before we had a concept of what a

viral celebrity moment was. Yeah, yeah. It is like one of the very first viral celebrity moments on YouTube. YouTube had just been invented. So this is like the, um, it starts getting cut up to, uh, top one of the best ones. I think the most viewed one is Tom Cruise kills Oprah with, with lightning. It's just all of his like grabbing her hands. They like add lightning over it. So it looks like he's electrocuting her. I think also shouldn't, we shouldn't underrate how much a black woman encouraging a white guy can really gas them up to new heights. Oh, I take advantage to that all the time.

He's like, yeah? Go! I'm glad you did the Dean's scream there. I'm glad you did the Dean's cream there because it's got big Dean's scream energy. Go ahead. Show that again. He's in. Yes.

Uh-huh. Yes, baby. Uh-huh. We love that. Oh, Tom, you crazy. You look so bad. Doing box jumps off a fucking, like a love seat and shit. According to Seth Rogen, by the way, I love the fact.

Like, go seek out every Seth Rogen interview you can because he will just talk cash shit about if a weird celebrity has done something to him, he'll be like, oh, yeah, this guy's weird and he said this. According to Seth Rogen, Tom Cruise once told him that there was a coordinated effort to make him appear foolish and that that video was like misleadingly edited by the pharmaceutical industry.

And this is like days... There's a Scientology. Yeah. I think this is the same, around the same time that he went on with Matt Lauer and was like, you're glib, Matt, your glib. Yeah.

The Matt Lauer thing was just a few days later. And it like... Yeah. He got like dropped by Paramount. Like it was like a big deal in his career. Yeah. I mean, he had just fired his publicists who had been like in charge of kind of controlling him and keeping him out of the public

eye when convenient and had replaced her with his sister who was a big time Scientologist so everybody was like uh oh this is coming apart right now so the fact that he was able to like wrestle it back into uh under control my hat's off pia tom ah man but i wonder if tom's like and that was the happiest I ever was, actually, in those moments hopping up and down on that couch. So if you want to hear more about kind of the Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, John of God stuff, there's plenty of that in the Bastards episode. But, you know, she does seem to, you know, whether it be the author of Million Little Pie, James Frye, whatever his name is, or these guys, she does seem to have a soft spot

for sociopath. I will say that. And, you know, I think she's good at channeling what is coming, what people are interested in. And that I think that was true of the Tom Cruise thing. Like, you know, people were ready to say fuck celebrities at that point. Like with the advent of the internet. And so it's appropriate that like the first big fuck celebrities moment happened on her show. And then, like, Dr. Phil, obviously, has been routinely blasted by former guests for not only not helping them, but actively hurting them.

Dr. Oz, there was a 2014 study that found that medical research that Dr. Oz recommended was either not substantiated or flat out contradicted. So there is a difference between surgeons and doctors that I think people underestimate. mate. He was one of the best cardiac surgeons, but surgeons, like, show up and do a mechanical thing to an unconscious object. And doctors' scores are generally, like, effective based on how empathetic they are. But, yeah, John of God was a really bad one. That was, like, a faith healer, psychic surgeon who was able to, like, heal people by focusing his, like, God energy on them. turns out that wasn't true, but more than 300 women came forward to accuse John of God of sexual abuse. And then there's the Jenny McCarthy

autism, skepticism, that, like, she did not push back on nearly enough. And I think this is, like, kind of at the point where she's losing the plot a little bit and has just been in a world of very famous people and billionaires for probably too long. Yeah, because, I mean, like, I feel like whenever I think about Oprah,

like I net out at she broke so many barriers and created a completely different environment for people of color and entertainment to exist in and thrive in and then shit just takes a turn once you start really becoming hyper wealthy which just feels like a story for fucking anybody

or all like at a certain point your wealth you're now just playing by a different set of rules and you're not thinking what's best for people not to excuse anything but I'm just like and then she just fucking lost She became a billionaire, man. Like, what do you want to do?

Like, what are you going to say? Like, you know, she's doing billionaire things, like buying up massive tracts of land. Like, this is mine. And doing just, you know, piling around with the wrong people. And surrounded by a lot of people who are like part of the Oprah company who are like, how do we make Oprah's vision? Like, you know, everything that Oprah's done to this point is great. And how do we keep that momentum going instead of like having any breaks?

You know, it's just all gas, no breaks at that point. Yeah. I will say one of the worst things that she was ever responsible for was very early on in the satanic panic era. You know, she had Michelle remembers on, which was like the book that kind of launched the satanic panic. But sort of like Geraldo and Donahue in 2020. But she also did a 1989 Oprah interview. Again, you can like hear more about this on the bastards one. But this is a big one.

She had somebody on who was like, I've witnessed the ritual. sacrifice of Jewish children by like Jewish families. So it was like, it, it is bloodline. Like it's, yeah, right. The thing, the ancient anti-Semitic trope that she is bringing out like at a time when, you know, that it is again, like probably taking something that exists and bringing it out. Like some people wanted to believe that.

and just create, like, horribly, horribly dangerous. But probably the most fun bullshit thing that she gave light to is the rainbow parties. Oh, 100%. I do just want to end there. 100% true also. In 2000, yeah, Miles, you've talked about this. You experienced a lot of rainbow parties. I mean, look, Bridget has been on podcast talking about Oprah.

I've also been on, my mama told me, talking about the rainbow party. The rainbow parties, that's right. That's right. Allow me to roll my sleeps up. So, 2003, she hosted the episode, Is your child leading a double life? In which O Magazine writer, Michelle Burford, told the audience to hold on to their underwear

before revealing that teens were secretly throwing rainbow parties. First of all, doesn't hold onto your underwear imply that things are about to, like, be horny? Like, I feel like that's, that's not a, not the phrase I would use for being, like, let's talk about children. My underwear. My underwear shoots off. my body whenever I'm caught off guard by a surprise. So it attracts for me. So these parties allegedly found female teens wearing different shades of lipstick and

positioning themselves underneath a table where they would perform oral sex on multiple boys seated above. The object of the game was to see, I mean, do I have to explain this to anybody? We've all been to these parties growing up as teens. I have always always turned them down in vites. Which girl could put a penis. deepest in her mouth and the lipstick would create a rainbow effect on their dicks, which doesn't even like make sense from a physics perspective.

No. But the producer didn't have any evidence that these parties existed, just talked to 50 girls and like, you know. So basically they had evidence that this was an urban legend that was happening. Sure. Yeah. I did the work. I talked to a teenager who heard it from her cousin who knew a girl who did it at another

school, the county over. And you're like, yes. Some people have pointed to like this being. perfectly timed because it was in the years after the Clinton Lewinsky story and people were like, what is this going to do to our children? Obsessed with blow jobs. Do you see what he's done? That's it.

Should have voted parole. I do have a very clear memory of being a kid during that whole thing and hearing about this stained dress and just like not being able to put together what they were talking. What the stain was? What is the stain? Like, what are they talking about? This is really working overtime trying to figure it out. Should have watched Oprah.

You know? Just got a cork board with red strings. What is this stain exactly? Who is this stain? Who is this stain? Who is this person? But some obvious issues with the story, not the least of which being the lipstick would almost inevitably smear and destroy

the supposedly sought after rainbow effect. Okay. But I'd say that's a big one. That's the only one I can think of. There was a novel published in. 2005 called Rainbow Party. The publisher specifically got the idea for the book after

watching the Oprah episode, then hired the author of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the official episode guide to hammer out some bullshit based on what was on the Oprah show. And I just want to read a segment from this novel. I'm sorry, what is

what is the category of content when you're writing salacious erotica about children? For children by children or about children. Yeah. This is the cover. It just says rainbow party. It has different shades of her lipstick.

And then here's some of the pros. What the hell are you talking about? Rod asked. Do I look like somebody who likes rainbow crap? No, man. It's a sex party, Steve said. Some chick is throwing it. But I don't know who.

That's a relief. And technically, it's not a sex party. It's just oral. So that's my dramatic. Who talks like it? Oh, thank God. It's just oral. Wait, what teenager

made up character? Oh, God, dang. Who's freaking sex? Right. Oh, good. It's just oral. I wasn't convinced that this was a real phenomenon until I read that dialogue very clearly

and authentically in the voice of a teenager. It's also real hard to find, like, blue and green lipstick. It's back when Rainbow Parties was, like, being talked about, like, they were real. You couldn't just go off. the shelf, like, buy this on the shelf. It was, I don't know.

So many, so many indications that this maybe was not the phenomenon. Oprah would have you believe. Dude, that's crazy. This guy did so many, really, like, he was, like, the official, like, nerd writer for TV shows, this guy, Paul Ruditis on there. And he did tie-in novels for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Angel, Queers, Folk, Frasier, the L word, Star Trek, Roswell, the West Wing, alias, prison break,

bones, the Brady Bunch, party boys, Sabrina, the teenage witch, wrote a guide for G.I. Joe, Rise of Cobra, and then we just look at his bibliography, it's all this stuff would do TV shows, and then suddenly, Rainbow Party. There it is. Damn. I will say.

So I was watching the clip of that damn, so you're saying racism sucks for, even if a blue-eye person has it. And the clip ends, And I just want to show you what the final, like, production, you know, the thing, the, like, Harpo Studios production house thing looks like. It's like rainbow rings that, like, swirl together and, like, turn into an O.

Oh. Cool. I was like, damn. Was Oprah, like, fucking with us the whole time? Is this, like, her Kaiser Soze moment? where she like showed a rainbow party in her Harpo Studios logo. So I don't know, man.

I think she might have, I think she might have been fucking with us. I can't. That's just too much for me to sort of process at one time. I'm only just now really. Harpo, that's her name backwards too? Harpo. I'm fucked up, man.

Imagine the luck. I know. Yeah. It does seem like she's scrubbed all the clips of the rain. Bhop Party episode off the internet. But I doubt that any part of the episode is as disturbing as the time she interviewed the Ninja Turtles. And Raphael confessed that he's been trying to pressure April O'Neil into an interspecies

relationship. I remember that shit. Yes, that was so wild, bro. It was so inappropriate. I remember as a kid because I was fucking with the Ninja Turtles seeing that. And it's funny too, Jack, because when we did the Ninja Turtles episode last week, I rewatch that. it just sounds like oh maybe this will come up

and I just remember him he was like really crazy like yeah you know I've been trying to get it to do an interspecies relationship for a while and you're like yeah thanks they say something that is either sounds like conceptually or sexually he's like they're like what if April was a turtle and I think Donatello says either

conceptually or sexually that works for me I'm pretty sure it's conceptually but it does feel weird and then you do a reverse reverse cut and it's just a bunch of seven-year-old boys just being like, what, what's going on? Why, why is this happening? Yeah, I mean, because this was around the time they were doing the live tour.

Yeah. So that's why like, yeah, like, they were just at the height of their shit. Like, yeah, they were like, why am I having turtles on the show today? Oh, it's because Pizza Hut. Doing a massive campaign to get these people to go to the shows. I wish that April was a turtle. Whoa, definitely. Conceptually, that works for me.

You know, I've been going. Oprah. Man, I've got to crack myself up. Oprah, I've been trying to talk her into an interspecies relationship for months now. Whoa, wow, yeah. And she won't do it. She can't hold her breath long. No, she can't do it.

The biggest problem is she can't hold her breath long enough, you know? What the fuck does that mean? Is they... Soundtrack? You have their soundtrack? Do you dig it or what? What? Do you dig it?

You don't dig it. What? What a hater? Shook his head. He's like, fucking a girl. Get a grip on yourself, kid? What's the special about Splinter? Hey, well, think about it.

He's a rat. And he talks. And he taught us how to be Ninja Warriors. I mean, that's pretty special right there. These guys are going to improv classes. Spleners are dead, you know? I mean, what's so special about your dad? You know he's very special.

It'd be so funny. The kid's like, I don't know my dad. Oh, shit. it. Fuck. God, what a... That was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. It was fucked up that whole running Ninja Turtles

because those motherfuckers didn't have their shells on. Right. They're just wearing fucking denim jackets and shit. And I remember at the tour being like, where the fuck are your shells, bro? You were just some fucking weird guys in denim outfits. It's more like frogs now. Yeah.

It makes sense. The fucking music of that, the Ninja Turtle's live show sucked. Hey, what did it in? Well, what are you talking about, kid? What's so special about your dad? I mean, he kind of hooked us up

with an eight ball before this back stage. Like, whatever, man. That's like, cool, dude. Such like cheap cocaine energy. Yeah, yeah. What's so special about your dad? Reflexively? It's like weird.

You're talking to kids. You know what I mean? Like little little kids, too. He's not to talk. You're not getting an argument in like a fucking bar or something. What the fuck you know, kid? He's a fucking mutant, fucking rat who taught us ninja warrior skills, dude?

What you're talking about, dude? Fuck your dad. Would, would April? being a turtle make you sexually aroused? Like Oprah. Oprah, what the fuck? I mean, sometimes Oprah would be asking like crazy. Like she asked Michael Jackson if he was a virgin. He was like, what?

Oprah, what? See, we would have no Z way if it weren't for Oprah. That's true. You know what I mean? Again, she's breaking number. She tried to like out Nathan Lane when they were on their press tour for the birthday with him and Robin Williams. and he has said, like, Robin Williams totally, you know, came to his defense and, like, kind of shifted that interview. She would ask some, like, fucked up question.

Dennis Rodman, I have a very clear memory of her being like, why do you dress the way you do? What are you pay? You know, she really, she really would go there. And by there, we mean, be a fucking bully asshole. Straight to homophobia. Right. At the time we call it, she'll go there. Homophobia.

Prime editor said, Nathan Lane, why are you gay? Oh. He was not out yet. So she was like, a lot of people are wondering, kind of. And it was like in the middle of,

she like asked him a question about the movie and then like, just like mid-strived, like changed it to a question about whether he was gay or not. Thank God you got Robin Williams there, someone who's, the fucking brain is lightning fast to just be like, for complete. shift the conversation.

She also tried to wipe Drew Breeze's birthmark off his face when he came on her show. She's like, come here. Somebody has a little, uh, you have a little lipstick there. Oh, no! For real? For real. Oh, that's fucking wild. She doesn't give a fuck.

She's so confident. Does not. Come, you got some schmutz on your face. It's a birthmark. It's what my face looks like. It's how I look, Oprah. Oh my gosh. Bridget, such a pleasure having you. Do you, I, I know you said you had some stuff built up from behind the bastards. Is there anything else that you wished you had a chance to say about Oprah?

This has been so comprehensive. I love talking about Oprah Winfrey. I would just say I've recently seen, oh my God, it's my, it's a topic I can talk about a lot, obviously. I will say I've seen she's having a bit of a resurgence on social media where people who are maybe younger, who don't know her like we know her. are almost sort of trying to have these gotcha moments of like, here she is admitting that she used cocaine or something like that. And to that I will say, Oprah is a rare figure who I think really resists being flattened into a box on social media. Like social media we all know is like

where, you know, topics are really flattened and it's black and white. She is such a complex, complicated figure that I really think the medium to discuss her is long form. I think that she really is, there's only a few people who are like this that really she resists that flattening that is so commonplace on social media. So if you're a younger person and you are not a scholar of Oprah, before you try to weigh in, make sure you like- Try it, kid. I might even actually say, if you weren't there, you don't know, right?

If you weren't there, you don't know. You don't fucking, yeah, exactly. You weren't in the trenches. Yeah. At the rainbow parties. Listen, I had to have a conversation with my mom about whether or not I had heard of rainbow parties because of that fucking Oprah episode. Like, we were there.

Y'all were there. I was there. She must have created at least a handful of rainbow parties by doing that. By like having parents talk to their kids and their kids being like, well, I guess we got to fucking do this. I wasn't doing it, but it's a pretty good idea, actually. We're going to be it blue lipstick. I'm leaving for neon green.

Where can people find you, Bridget? Well, you can check out my book. Love at First Prompt, AI and the Future of Intimacy at Love at Firstprompt.com. You can follow me on Instagram at Bridgettree, D.C. And you can check out my podcast. There are no girls on the internet. Amazing. Miles, where can people find you?

You can find me everywhere at Miles of Gray. I'm talking about English football and European football on Ain't It Footy Weekly with Jamel Johnson and Chris Martin. Check out A&Footy there and also 420 Day Fiance. Talking about 90 Day Fia. all right and i will be right back after this uh with the notebook dump no book talk about anything i forgot to say during this part we'll be right back all right that was our oprah conversation uh as mentioned up top we recorded this uh on september 11th never forget i said she kind of disappeared from

our culture and on wednesday september 16th the mere five days later uh Oprah unleashed a coordinated three-pronged attack on my credibility that is really my personal 9-11. She announced an upcoming multisensory event at the Las Vegas sphere, the Pentagon of Las Vegas, and then targeted the Twin Towers of New Age Wisdom podcasts and Jay Shetty and Mel Robbins. But yeah, I think Oprah was probably having the same feeling that I was entering this episode, which is, man, it's been a while since we heard from Oprah. that a lot of young people don't even know how massive she was. This was her forgot about Dre moment.

And I feel like this episode is like me releasing a podcast the day before the chronic two came out, speculating that Dr. Dre doesn't have any more guns because he sold them all. So I apologize. I blew it. Also, maybe Oprah has a mole inside the Daily Zykeyes editorial infrastructure. impossible to know. But I,

I did listen to the Mel Robbins podcast. And I got to say in the intro, Mel Robbins is not fucking around. I'm going to read a couple quotes from the intro, knowing full well that you'll probably turn this episode off and go listen to Mel Robbins interview Oprah, given how she hypes this up. But I don't know, you've already downloaded this one.

We've got the numbers. You can't hurt me. speaking about the Oprah conversation you're about to listen to, Mel Robin says, and I quote, it's kind of hard to put into words what you're about to experience. There's absolutely no way that you can listen to this and not be forever changed. You're going to hear something that will make you see your life differently.

There are irrefutable truths in this conversation that will stay with you long after it ends. I am so happy you get to experience this. Is this how her podcast always starts? I would have trouble. If I had just painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, I would struggle to muster that level of like unbridled confidence and enthusiasm for what I had just done.

Anyways, how was I not going to listen to it after hearing that? I listened to the conversation between Mel Robbins and Oprah and it sounded to me like two drunk people talking. Like, not that I don't think either of them are actually drunk. They're not slurring or anything. But they're doing this thing that I've noticed drunk people do where they're like very enthusiastically complimenting one another. They get very adamant and excited about like vague ideas

that don't really kind of make a ton of sense. Very excited about callbacks I've noticed drunk people are. your aha moment, like you said earlier. Like I said earlier, and then everybody's very excited. Anyways, look, some of Mel's enthusiasm is warranted. Oprah has an innate ability to speak about life in a way that sticks with you. And there's good advice in here, I will say. I came away with, they said, you always have the right to change your mind.

And that's good advice. There's also terrible advice. They talk about how they are 10-gallon people, Oprah and Mel are 10-gallon people, and sometimes their problem is that they're trying to get too much love from people who are one-pint people, which I Googled that. One pint is 1-80th of 10 gallons. So it's like, if you don't get along with a loved one, It might be because they are a type of person who is one 80th as capable of love as you is as best as I could figure it out.

Anyways, this is all to say. Well, it might have seemed like Oprah abandoned us for a moment. She was simply in the dark listening to Mel Robbins and Jay Shetty and getting stronger. So apologies for suggesting she dipped. She's back. and I think things are about to get very weird and crazy. One story we skipped over that gets at the luck thing, and I'll explain why I keep coming back to the luck thing,

but I do think it has something to do. Oprah's unwillingness to believe that she has good luck or had good luck gets at why I also think things are about to get very weird in the Oprah story. So the Oprah Winfrey show became syndicated in 1986. They wanted a big celebrity guest for the first national episode, nationally televised episode. And they settled on Don Johnson. You know, he's sex symbol, height of Miami Vice fame.

And Oprah goes hard recruiting him. She's sending him cases of champagne, a special pair of rhinestone sunglasses that always get brought up in the reporting on this. And anyways, he rejects the offer. and at the time she's devastated and thinks it's unlucky and now acknowledges it's very lucky because without a big name celebrity to interview, Oprah decides to focus the first show on everyday men and women, which is the template for future episodes. And so she's forced by circumstance into the format that differentiated her show from everything else that was on TV in a world where they get Don Johnson, you know, maybe that episode

gets good ratings and they think they have to get bigger and bigger stars after that, which is expensive and hard to produce. So instead, she got the cheap version that works right away by accident, which is all to say, to be as globe-stridingly successful as Oprah, the research for this episode convinced me that you need to be a generational talent, which she is. You also need to get extremely lucky like a hundred times. But when you're a millionaire and then a hundred millionaire and then eventually a billionaire, I feel like more and more shit just starts going right for you,

especially in this country, in the United States. And it's easy for these very wealthy people in this country to just start expecting it. And the good fortune becomes built into the fabric of their life and takes on a momentum of its own. and it kind of becomes like this thing that allows you to feel like you've transcended the human condition. Like she talks about a lot, always feeling different and feeling less than. And she's really good at talking about that. She's really good at talking about a lot of these parts of the human condition. And in the Mel Robbins episode, her solution that she points to for dealing with that stuff is a lot of New Age spirituality.

which I'm not going to like focus on criticizing that. As I've gotten older, I'm more inclined to grant everyone their way of dealing with the human condition as long as that's not hurting others. You know, part of the human condition for a lot of people is that core feeling of inadequacy buried deep inside a lot of us. Like an inception totem locked in a state telling us,

we are not shit. I used to drink vodka in the morning to deal with that. So I'm not here to tell anyone they are stupid or wrong for the way they deal with that part, that suffering of the human condition. I will tell you that the vodka in the morning method did not work as a long term solution for me. But I will say that for some people, it seems like the way they deal with that in this country, that feeling of being less than is success. Their vodka in the morning is succeeding.

And in America, it seems like that works really well. And you can just like keep getting more and more and more and more and more success until you're a billionaire. And when you're famous and a billionaire, you never really have to learn the original lesson, which is that you're not greater. than or less than anyone. You're actually the same as people, you know, like the feeling of inadequacy doesn't need to be cured. It's what makes you human. And to me, I don't know, it feels like Oprah seems like she kind of yo-yoes back and forth between feeling and channeling everyday suffering of her audience and feeling like she's

transcended that through success. And it feels like we're leaning in a transcendence direction. and as we've seen with other icons, the desire to transcend the human condition with success doesn't become more subtle as you get older and face death. Like, you know, nobody gets out of this alive. So I think we might be about to see a deeply weird chapter of the Oprah story. I will be watching. That's going to do it for this Oprah episode.

Thanks to Bridget Todd, truly one of the greats to ever do it. A wonderful guest. best possible guest for this episode. Thanks to Miles, as always, J.M. McNabb for the research, Brian the editor, for tying it all together. Also, Robert and Sophie,

at Behind the Bastards for the six-part Oprah series, which was very helpful research for this one. Next week, we are covering another icon of the early 90s, who's probably the biggest. What might have been, nay, what would have been in modern pop culture history.

We're covering Selena with Danny Fernandez, and we will talk to you all then. Bye. The Daily Zykeyes is executive produced by Catherine Law. Co-produced by Victor Wright. Co-written by J.M. McNabb. And edited and engineered by Brian Jeffries. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman.

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