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Hey, Robert here. It's been like two months since I had LASIK and I'm still seeing 2020. All I had to do was go in for a consultation, then go in for a maybe 10 minute procedure and then my eyes have been great ever since. You know, I healed up wonderfully. It was very simple, couldn't have been a better experience. So if you want to explore LASIK plus I can't recommend it enough. They have over 20 years experience in the industry and they performed more than two million treatments right now if you want to try getting LASIK plus you can get $1000 off of your surgery when you're treated in September, that's $500. Of per eye, just visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free consultation. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried true crime. And if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's breaker handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey guys, I'm Kaylee short on my podcast. Too much to say. I share my thoughts on everything from music to martinis, social media, social anxiety, regrets to risky text, and so much more. I have been known to read my literal diary entries on my show, and sometimes I do interviews with my crazy group of friends. So if you guys want to tune in, you can hear new episodes of too much to say every Wednesday on the national podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to him. What's lighten my dumpster fires? I'm Robert Evans, hosted behind the ********. That little introduction was in honour of my hometown, Portland, which just had a police officer murder, a man who was having a mental health crisis and will probably be lighting some dumpsters on fire tonight, although you won't hear it the day that this happens. But anyway, that's all beside the point right now, because the point right now is that I'm introducing our guests. Today the inimitable Matt Lieb. Hey, what's going on? Matt, how are you doing? I'm doing well. I'm excited to be here. A big fan of the pod. Love me some ********. And you are? You do a Sopranos podcast and the name is Ellie pod. Yourself. A gun. That's right. That's right. Gun. Yeah, that's right. The world's Only Sopranos podcast. Don't go looking for any other ones because they do not exist. Little known TV show The Sopranos. You might have heard of it. Very obscure. They niche a niche TV show that only people who really like art understand, and that's that's why we talk about it. We talk about the art. It's fun thinking about that because I believe the song that introduced that show was something about waking up in the morning and getting yourself a gun, which is what I did this morning. Uh, you bought a gun? I did. I did. I did buy a gun this morning. Not for Sopranos like uses, although I am Italian, so you can't really know for sure. You can't really know for sure. Yeah. You woke up with a blue moon on in your eye and you decided, I'm gonna go get myself a gun and then I'm gonna commit crimes. And the pine barons of New Jersey. Yeah, they do that a lot in the show, right? Lot of pine. Barren crimes. They do it at least once. And and it's great. Yeah, that they're chasing that guy through the. Yeah, yeah. The Russian. Yeah. And they leave their DNA everywhere. Well, they pee everywhere. And, you know, they all said, look, we Italians are not a subtle people. No. They spend that whole episode literally, like. Dying of like cold and they're lost in the woods, but they spend all the time talking about how they're starving because they haven't eaten in 12 hours. It's the most Italian thing in the world, but I wanna hear about this gun. Ohh, it's just a gun. But today we have something much more exciting than a gun. We have a ******* and our *******. Are you ready for this? Oh, I'm so excited. Are you settling in? Yes, doctor. Ohz I I never introduced them like that. We're talking about doctor ******* Oz today. Yes, that's right. Who's a thought he'd be a *******? A TV Doctor Who would have thought a TV doctor could be a bad man? No, they they they take an oath. TV doctors they say do no harm and get good ratings. That's the the Hippocratic Oath. Do they do they also oath to be bad guest hosts on jeopardy? Because he sucked and I didn't enjoy it. Honestly, if you are going up against. Lavar Burton. For any job, your first action should be like, you know what? I'm bowing out. Yeah, immediately. I'm not gonna compete with Lavar Burton. We're not gonna pee. **** ***. Officer Fighting Jordy Fighting Kunta Kinte. Fighting whatever the reading rainbow guy's name was. No, I think it was no Lavar. Lavar, yeah. Yeah, no, I did not watch him on jeopardy, but I have seen the show and had no idea he was a *******. Yes, he's a ***** ** ****. He's he's a different ***** ** ****. We're also gonna be talking in the very near future about Doctor Phil, who's a much worse person. Doctor Oz is bad for some reasons that you'll suspect, you know, the pseudoscience stuff, but also for some, I think more complicated reasons, which we'll we'll have us a nice talk about at the end of this episode. So I've always said. But one of the great tragedies of American public life is that our very best doctors are usually like, kind of schlubby dudes and ladies who maybe aren't the best at at social graces and certainly don't have enough time because they're wildly overworked to do TV appearances. Yeah, yeah, I yeah, I agree. They're not hot. I've always said don't. Here's the problem, though. They're not hot. I look at them, I'm like, ill like, we need to put a couple of billion dollars into a national program for more ******** doctors. Come on. Yes, yes. Doctors who ****. That's the next level of healthcare in America. It won't be universal healthcare, but at least doctors will look ******** now. I mean, I think the problem is not their *********** because it's inherently hot to be a doctor. It's more the fact that they're not necessarily, if even the ones who are have a good bedside manner, are good at explaining things, just don't have the time to spend a lot of it on television because they're busy saving lives. This has led to a thriving industry, well documented in this show of grifter health influencers and scam artists selling people poisoned with honeyed words and practice. Files. Today, though, we're talking about a different kind of medical grifter, kind of a grifter who helps to launder those more shady grifters, the guy people who aren't doctors. People have no medical training who are just trying to sell you nonsense gears. The guy we're talking about today exists to give them credibility and launder them into the public consciousness, and his name is Mehmet Oz. Mehmet Oz is maybe the most influential public physician in the country, possibly the world. He is, in every professional sense of the word, an excellent doctor. Exceptional. Easily, even within the bounds of what it is he is trained to do. He may be one of the best in the world at what he does, and he uses his you know, the thing that makes him a ******* is that he uses these exceptional qualifications, along with his charisma, his handsome face, to sell millions of people on nonsense cures every single year. And that's that's a bad thing to do. It's kind of made worse. We'll talk about this a lot by the fact that he is he's a he's a, he's a heart surgeon and he's an exceptional heart surgeon. That's so sad. It's always sad when, like, an amazing doctor is a ***** ** ****. This is like how it felt when Ben Ben Carson turned out to be a Trump guy. I was like, but you're so good at the, the brain surgeons, which you talked to doctors. They'll be like, yeah, of course it's always surgeons. Yeah. Yeah. They're the ones who think they're gods, right? Yes. They essentially have a God complex and that they'll be really good at one thing. And then they'll also think that they're good at, like, yes, politics. And **** like that. I think good surgeons are so prone to being also like nonsense, like so many of our nonsense public doctors or surgeons, for the same reason that so many of our terrorists are engineers. There are people who get really good at a specific thing, and it lets them convince themselves that they know what they're talking about in a wider variety of things than they really do. That's great. It's it just makes me glad that I never, you know, got really proficient in anyone. Skill, never gained skills. I never, ever learn how to do things. You'll become too smart for yourself. And think that you are God. If no one learned to do anything, we would still be living in the mud and eating grubs. And you know what we wouldn't have? Chemical salesman ohh yeah, or that we would have very little at all. Mimit Sanchez was born on June 11th 1960 to parents Suna and Mustafa Aaz who must have ****** at some point in October of 1959. In order to conceive him. We have to assume his parents ****** in the in October. Don't know that. Yeah, he could be Immaculate Conception. I mean. Yeah you know Robert. Possible I would say right now the most likely theory is that they ****** sometime in October. Ohhh alright. His father Mustafa had been born in Bossier, a village in southern Turkey. He had grown up poor. In the countryside during the Great Depression and obviously, you know, Great Depression, bad time everywhere, real bad time. If you're like in rural Turkey, you know, yeah, you're you're dealing with a different kind of poverty than even like our grandparents dealt with here. Yeah. So he had to work himself to the bone in order to make something of himself, in order to get into medical school and distinguish himself enough that he was able to earn scholarships which allowed him to immigrate to the United States as a medical resident in 1955. So this is a. This is a hard working man and a man who's has to struggle. I'm gonna guess in ways that that are kind of difficult to imagine for most of us, even as difficult as our present times are, is like a true lift yourself up by your bootstraps kind of guy. Yeah, yeah. Came from the middle of like nowhere rural Turkey and worked himself into becoming a good enough doctor that he got it, you know, he was able to get over the racism of the ******* 1950s, the immigration system, you know? That's that's an achievement. Yeah. No, good for him. Started from the bottom, and now he's on TV selling cures. That's his dad all. That's his dad. That's not memory. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's Mustafa. Yeah. So we're talking about his dad and his mom right now. His mom, Soona came from a much wealthier background. I don't know if this is what helped his dad get into the country or not. It may have been her father was a successful pharmacist, and both sides of her family came from Istanbul. She grew up with a lot of money. As benefits his more modest upbringing, Mustafa was an observant, traditional Muslim. Soon, as family was more moderate and secular, Memet and his two sisters grew up split between both approaches to religion. The Oz kids spent their childhood speaking Turkish and English fluently at home, so they grew up in a bilingual house. Mehmet was from a young age, from a young age, ambitious, starving for success and his father's approval. Hugh is want to note that he was born in the year of the RAT, according to the Chinese Zodiac. In one interview he noted of this quote. You run the maze. If you put cheese in that maze, I swear to God I'll get to it and I'll get to it really fast. But should I be running after that cheese? Am I in the right maze? All of these questions, which people much greater than I am think through, I put on the back burner as I'm running after that. Cheese. What the ****? That's way too much stock into the year of what animal year into, at least he wasn't born into the year of the pig. And he's like, well, you. What you gotta do is you gotta take your snout and put it into the trough of life and just you really gotta just shove your face into food. Yeah, as hard as you can. You roll around in the **** and then you hope that someday you find another piggy to **** and then you have little piglets. It's like I was born in the year of the pig and that's why he disposed of bodies for the mob. It's just what you do. Well that's a it's a nice take on year of the rat for him. Umm it is it is telling because what he's saying there is like, I don't think about why I'm doing what I'm doing. I just, I just strive to to to achieve things and I don't think about whether or not they're good or bad. I just I have to achieve. Yeah he just wants that cheese. Yeah, he wants that cheese. It's ambition without an analysis I think is what you'd you'd call it. And he's he's pretty open about that now, Mustafa. His dad repeatedly told the growing doctor Oz, who's not yet a doctor, obviously, that when he'd grown up, when Mustafa had grown up, he hadn't been able to relax for even a second on his road to escaping poverty and establishing himself as a cardiothoracic surgeon. So he's like, telling his kid as he grows up, like, you know, like, if you wanna succeed, you can't relax for even a second. You can't, can't take a moment off. You always gotta be hustling. Yeah, and that's how memet grows up. He's an excellent student, but no amount of success is ever enough for his dad, he later recalled. I'd say I got a 93 on a test, he'd say. Did anyone get better? That was always the question he asked. Cool dad. Hmm. Sounds like a fun guy would hang. Yeah. I mean, this the school I grew up in because of just where we were in North Texas, like, about half of the kids in my school were either from India or from China or Japan. And so you had a lot of kids who would talk that way about their parents, right? And some of them had, especially around our senior year, there were a couple of kids. Had to get like taken in by an ambulance because they would just like one in one case, seizing as a result of stress like, Jesus. Good to put this kind of pressure on a kid. Yeah, like straight having like nervous breakdowns just from like trying to get good grades, right? Once again, don't get good at anything. It's not worth it. Develop skills. Don't develop skills. You'll get seizures. You're at risk of seizures, you're at risk of your of your dad not loving you, you know? You just gotta ******* you no matter what. Yeah, exactly. Stop caring about your dad, you know, just host coast. Find some dirt, eat some grubs. You'll be fine. Yeah, start a Sopranos podcast. That's all you gotta do, dude. Really bringing it back there. So Memmott decided to become a doctor when he was just seven years old, he recalls, standing in line at an ice cream parlor. Quote, I remember it like yesterday there was a kid in front of me who was tin my dad, just to pass the time, said, what do you want to be when you grow up? The kid said, I don't know, I'm 10. My father waited until he was out of earshot and said, I never want you to tell me that. If I ask you that question, I never want you to tell me you don't know. It's OK if you change your mind, but I never want you to not have a vision of what you want. To beat Mamet, go kill that kid. Kill that kid. ******* cut him. Murder that loser kid and tell me what you want to do with your life. *** ****. That is way too much pressure. Way, way too much, so much pressure to put on a kid. And it seems like the kids like that always end up becoming the, like, going into the career that their father wanted them to do. And then eventually their dad dies, and then they're like, oh, **** I I didn't get to do what I wanted to do with my life, and now I'm miserable. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's a real bummer. Yeah. It's not just don't put pressure on people. There's plenty of Grubbs. Yeah. By the time Memmott was ready to start school. His father was wealthy enough to pay to send his son to Tower Hill School at K through 12th grade private college preparatory school in Wilmington, DE. Jesus, that sounds horrible. I know it sounds like a ******* nightmare. Sounds fancy, boy. Yeah. Preps? Yeah. Uniforms, ties. Yeah, probably like weird shorting during the summer, yeah? The fancy boy prep school worked well enough that Memmott was accepted to Harvard, where he played football and water polo. His grades were, as always, exceptional, one of his roommates later recalled. He was very competitive. There was never any question that he wasn't going to be a doctor. He wanted to be a fantastic surgeon. So people around him like, everyone kind of recognizes this kid is brilliant. Everyone recognizes he's got the drive he's going to achieve, you know? So good for him. I mean, it's just like I I just look back now at my own childhood and I'm like, *** **** it, if I can think of 1 friend where I where I knew what they wanted to do for a career. I don't think we ever talked about like, what's your career going to be? No one was like, I'm a doctor, you know? It was it was mostly just like, right, you know, how's, how's your hip hop album working out? And they're like. That and they're like cool. And that was the whole thing. That's interesting, I think. It was different for me because there was definitely a lot of pressure to have something, you know? I went to a public school. Yeah. I didn't go to a private school, but I went to a public school in my early schooling years, was in a dirt poor farming town called Idabel. OK. And the school was as good as it could be in a place like that. Like, they paddled us and stuff. Like it was not. Damn. Not a high end educational wait. But once I do in a in a public school. Yeah. Yeah. Ohh. Damn, they still did that in Oklahoma back in them days. Yeah. You got to sign the paddle. Afterwards too. Ohh it's nice. But when I was in, I don't know, third grade or so, I moved to Plano, which is a, a fairly wealthy suburb of Dallas. And the schools, the public schools, are very good. And there is a lot of drive to achieve, like I said, a lot of like kids who are really motivated by their parents to achieve. And so you either were kind of planning to be a doctor or something on that level, or you were planning to join the military because it was Texas and I was in ROTC. So me and all my friends, I think we all kind of assumed we're all gonna join the army, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I went to, yeah, public school, you know, my entire life and I think most of my friends either wanted to, they were either going to go into the army or they were or they wanted to be famous musicians and or athletes. So see, my brother is a doctor and knew he was going to be a doctor from the. He's my older brother too, from the time that he was like 7. So like, and I and I'm like, Nah, Nah, Nah, no idea. I'm just saying like a level of ambition at a very, very young age has always been a turnoff for me when it comes to like friends cause it's just they they always have that like sense where they're trying to get there you're you're some sort of stepping stone into their whatever their career path is and I don't like it. So Oz took only one break during his relentless progress through medical school and his that break was to do a compulsory I think it was a one year term of service in the Turkish army in order to maintain his dual citizenship. Umm, other than that, straight on to like, becoming a doctor. That's the only kind of breakage. So I guess that's his gap year is being in the Turkish army. I'm just gonna take a break, have a gap year and join the military of a foreign country to help suppress, you know, Kurdish liberatory movements and stuff. Whatever. Yeah, they gotta stop trying to have their own thing. Yeah, yeah. I've got a four year degree in biology and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania where he doubled up working on both an MD and an MBA. He succeeded in earning both, so that's interesting to me. He gets both. He gets at the same time as he's getting his MD. He also gets a business degree. Yeah, this is, it's very there's a lot of foreshadowing going on. Yeah, there's some foreshadowing. He earned both. Obviously, with flying colors. He's he's an incredibly intelligent man, right. This isn't just a guy like, we'll talk about Doctor Phil later. Doctor Phil, I don't think is very smart. Is incredibly good at reading and manipulating people. He's not particularly a genius. Memet Ozz is a genius. Like, I think it almost certainly is an actual genius. Yeah. In 1985, at age 25, he married Lisa Lemole, who was the daughter of a cardiothoracic surgeon who worked with his father. They met at, like, a party or something. This relationship gradually opened him up to alternative medicine in Eastern mysticism, because Lisa's mom was ******** into homeopathy, meditation, and other new age stuff. We'll talk about that more in a little bit. For the next decade and change, Doctor Oz's career zoomed forward. He became triple board certified, which I don't know what that means, but it sounds impressive. It's at least three boards. It's at least three boards. That's three more than I've been certified. Yeah, I got zero boards under my belt. One, but not a single board between the three of us. So we really should find a board just to get us some certifications, guys, just to get certified. If you're a board, if you're a medical board, it's a board out there. Well, actually, you know what? The state of New Jersey. A certified me as a Reverend Dr so I'm one board certified. I assume that out there. Yeah. Is there a board in the Universal Life Church? Because I am a minister slash Jedi knight. I'm gonna say that counts. Alright? I'm board certified. Can you get me painkillers? I put you know, I I know a guy. Sounds legal enough, yeah. Yeah. So he starts working as a heart surgeon and he's very good at being a heart surgeon. And he's not just good at the heart surgery apart, he's good at the science part. Overtime, he authors hundreds of peer reviewed articles and he's awarded 11 patents. One of them is for a solution to preserve transplanted organs. Another is for an aortic valve that can be implanted without open heart surgery. Like he's he's not just really good at at the mechanics of surgery. He's an excellent scientist. Yeah. Yeah, 11 patents is pretty good. Seriously, one might say he's the Wizard of Oz. There. I think I read like six articles with variations of that title on the guy. Alright, well, I gotta go then. Bye, guys. It's just a fake journalist. Can't ******* help themselves. Oh, you can't help yourself if you're anybody. You see Oz and you're like, I gotta call my wizard. Gotta call him a wizard. Doctor. Oz was hired by Columbia Medical School as a teacher. And as you know, he's also working. They've got a hospital, he's working there, but he's also teaching, and he very quickly rises to the level of full professor and becomes the vice chair. Of the cardio of the heart surgery department, basically. How old is he at this point? He's in his 30s. Ohh man. Yeah, like everything I've read right now on its own would be a career trajectory any doctor in medicine would envy. Like, yeah, you could die happy with that being your ******* resume. Like that's a hell of an achievement. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. In 1995, a New York Times profile referred to doctor Oz as quote, probably the most accomplished 35 year old. Cardiothoracic surgeon in the country. Jesus. He might be the best at what he does in the entire United States at this point. I mean, I don't know how to measure that, but he's he's very good. I mean, I don't know any other heart surgeons by name, so. **** yeah. I mean, he's the guy. Yeah. Now, the article that I found that quote in, however, gives some hints about what was to come. Because that article was about Doctor Oz's increasing experimentation with alternative medicine, it opens with the story of one of his patients. The 49 year old diabetic smoker who suffered a critical heart attack. She went under Mehmet's knife for a dangerous surgery quote. At the invitation of Oz and his patient, there were two other people on hand in surgical gowns and masks, a second year medical student named Sally Smith, stationed at the patient's feet, and a 52 year old healer named Julie Motz, who was standing at the patient's head as volunteers in Oz's cardiac complementary Care Center. They worked for free through the operation, seldom moving except to reposition their hands as Oz requested sutures and clamps and units of lidocaine motts called softly desmith to move her hands from the small toe of the patient's right foot to a point. For the soul known as the bubbling spring, what they were doing no one else in the operating room knew how to do or had ever seen done during a coronary bypass, or had ever thought worth doing. Even as an experiment in this ultimate theatre of scientific medicine, the women were using their hands as kings once did. This treat subjects with scrofula and as Jesus is said to have done, and as shamans and mothers and Chinese Qi Gong practitioners still do, they were using their hands to run a kind of energy which science cannot prove exists into the patient's kidney Meridian. Which also may or may not exist. The kidney Meridian, yeah, you gotta get that Meridian. That's the best part of the kidneys. The Meridian that's the most delicious part of the kidney is the Meridian, man with ******* on a Ritz cracker slice. Then I love me some little, little, little. You just wanna get, you wanna get like some duck fat or some butter and you wanna get it sizzling in the pan and you just slap that Meridian on for like 1/2 a second and it's good to go. That's all you *******. Which is a little bit of a little bit of char, you know? Yeah. I mean, this all feels like he's gonna start. Turning his patients into foie gras. And I'm I'm very excited for what's to come, this heel turn that he's gonna take. Yeah. So yeah that's that's that's silly. I I I think that's silly. Umm, but at the other hand, like it's in a hospital, these people are clearly following sanitation guidelines. They're not getting paid, the patients not getting charged extra. So I don't have a problem with that. And that's the smartest doctor in the world. It's like one of those things where you're like I. I feel like this is wrong, but I don't know enough to dispute it. So I'm gonna let him **** with my kidney Meridian. I I I'm not willing to morally condemn him for that, even though I think it's silly just because, like, yeah, yeah, what's the ******* harm in seeing, you know? And in that case, if you're actually doing it in a medical context, you you're guaranteeing everybody's taking proper sanitation procedures, ******* whatever. You know, it seems like from what I can tell, that sounded non invasive. It's not a yeah. Yeah. They were just doing energy work or what? Yeah, they were throwing, you know? Crystals and doing ******* pendulums over over him, it falls into the category of it couldn't possibly hurt, so why not give it a shot, right? Yeah, which is we'll talk about this more later, but that's kind of what they were going for, you know? What else can't hurt? I don't the products and services that support this podcast guaranteed to not harm you. In fact, every one of the products of ours that you buy extends your life by exactly 45 minutes. So, you know, spend all your money and gain immortality. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. 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It's been like two months since I got LASIK laser eye surgery and my vision still 2020. So many things about my daily life has changed. I don't have to worry about putting on a mask and my glasses fogging up. I don't have to take out contacts at night or put them in the day. I don't have to, like, worry all the time when I'm traveling. Like, how many contacts do I have by go swimming at the lake during the summer? Something I like to do, go to the beach or whatever. I don't have to worry about losing a contact or, you know, bringing swimming glasses or something. With me, everything is just easier. And getting it done was easy too. You know, I went in, I had my consultation, they told me I was a good candidate and then I went back in couple of days later about it being about a boom. You know, my eyes were perfect. So LASIK Plus is a leader in laser vision correction in the United States. They have over 20 years in the industry and more than two million treatments performed. If you want to start your LASIK plus journey, you can get $1000 off when treated in September. That's 500 per eye. So visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free. Consultation now. We're back. Ohh. We're talking about doctor Oz. Who in the mid 90s has started some weird alternative medicine stuff. Now, he's not the person who starts the alternative medicine program at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, which is also like a teaching hospital. Whatever. It's one of those hospitals that they have a medical school with. You know how you know the thing? If television has taught me accurately, all of the doctors are ******* constantly. Hmm. Doctors ******* teach. That's what they doctors *******. They teach. That's all they do. You know, when you're not teaching, you're *******. Yeah. And Columbia Presbyterian was among the most reputable medical establishments on planet Earth. Still is, as far as as I'm aware. So this alternate medicine program there is kind of an odd thing. It was not started at the behest of anyone at the top of the school. The whole thing came about because in 1993, a retired utility executive named Richard Rosenthal gave them 3/4 of $1,000,000 as a private grant in order to establish a center to study alternative medicine. Just gifted money and just said do this start. Yeah. Magic Doctor in school and they're like to be like cardboards. Yeah. OK. Now, Richard had been motivated by having several close friends of his get terribly sick in such a way that doctors told them there was nothing that could be done to help them. Umm. And his response was to basically throw a bunch of money into a whole to see if alternative medicine could come up with solutions. And it's one of those things I could make fun of like this. Is almost exactly a week after my mom just died of a type of cancer that when you get diagnosed with it pancreatic, there's basically nothing they can do. You know it. It's even like, like she went through chemo and it did nothing, you know? Right. Get it? You go through something like, OK, well, let's try other **** you know? Yeah. So I can't, I I can't even blame Richard for, like, it seems like he was motivated out of grief to do this. You know? You can't blame people for trying to try any other alternative. To I mean, you know something in which there is no cure in modern medicine? It makes blame the snake oil salesman. I'm never gonna blame someone who's like, well, doctors said they can't cure me, so I'm gonna eat this route, you know? **** it. Why not go for it? Who who gives a **** like, you can't hurt if you're definitely gonna die. Yeah, and it is, to be honest, like, it is kind of within, even you could argue with and kind of medical best practices, because one of the things if, like, I took EMT training years ago, one of the things they tell you is that you're not supposed to use. An AED, you know, like paddles the to restart. You're supposed to use them on an infant. But if an infant is in, you know the state where like, you use them on them because they're dead. Shocked the **** out of them. Yeah. They're dead. You can't make dead worse. So, like, why not? So I guess, like, yeah, you can't, I don't know. Can't make it worse. Why not see if it if if something happens. I'm not against the basic idea of testing some of this **** is what the worst thing you're going to get out of that is a really cool tik T.O.K video of electrocuting a dead body. Absolutely. And then you get a ******** of followers and then you start selling brain pills. It's a perfect plan. So yeah, so I can't blame the college for this. I can't blame the guy for funding it. It's a reasonable thing. Why not? You know what that's kind of my attitude is, is why the **** not? And that's more or less what the Dean of Faculty of Medicine at the college said. Like, alright, well, we're not paying for it. Why not give it a shot? That said, a lot of medical professionals were really angry about the idea. Doctor Victor Herbert, a Columbia Medical school graduate and a professor of medicine at Mount Sinai and a board member of the National Council against Health Fraud. Publicly lambasted the lecturers brought in by the program as con artists and sociopathic liars and knowing the kind of people who get into the selling this **** business, I don't know if he's wrong about that. A lot of these people are ******* sociopaths, you know? He says. Quote I am nasty. I call practitioners of fraud, practitioners of fraud. It's my feeling that the Rosenthal Center has been promoting fraudulent alternatives as genuine, and I get his critiques, you know, that is one of the like I can say on one hand, what's the harm? But also maybe the harm is that. People hear this stuff is being done in a hospital, so it must help when it doesn't. And maybe some of those people do that, not the way Doctor Oz is doing it. Where we're going to do the normal medical procedure. We'll have this done. Maybe some people decide I just want to have the energy work done and then they drop dead of a heart attack because it doesn't, right, replace the valve. You know, I'd like to think that even at a hospital or research facility with Western medicine that they still peer review and try out different, you know? Like alternative medicines, right. You know, like some of them, some of them work, some of them work. Like there was a time when, you know, acupuncture was seen as kind of like a crock. And now it's like kind of just a standard part of Western medicine. It's just, you know, so. Yeah. And there's so there's a lot to be said about even acupuncture. You know, I I went through a lot of it as a kid and it did nothing for me. But my grandpa swore by it for his Parkinson's. And even if it was, I don't know, you could say it's like, ******* whatever, placebo. But he experienced relief, so I don't care. Like, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I I'm not gonna get into like it because I don't know, I don't know all of the. I know. It's one of those things where there's a number of divergent opinions on action, sure. But a number of things that were initially considered alternative medicines have been found to have medical, you know, benefits. Not that that's the norm, but it has happened in history, you know, different kind of traditional or whatever treatments. So this is very controversial, though, is the point I'm making. And a number of people even picketed the college when the Rosenthal Center opened. None of this dissuaded Dr Oz from participating in it. His explanation as to why he embraced alternative medicine was, to be quite honest, kind of brilliant. He said that his, by this point, vast experience is a real doctor had really informed him of the limits of medical science. Specifically, he said that while he could sew bypass grafts and even implant a new heart into someone's chest, he couldn't change the habits that had made them sick. In the first place, nor could he cure the emotional issues that they were dealing with. Depression, he pointed out, was a major risk factor in heart patient recovery, post surgery and things like meditation. Right. That's kind of considered woo, new age, right? That can help with depression and that can help with healing. And he's right about that. That's not 100% bad point to make. Yeah. So he seemed to insinuate when he was talking to the New York Times. Why wouldn't a caring physician want to try everything possible to improve his patients? Odds he could point out that meditation. Has shown some benefit for heart disease patients. Who was to say that other stuff wouldn't work? Doctor Oz told the New York Times that he felt ethically obliged to experiment in new directions in medicine. The article makes it clear that Doctor Oz had not let up one bit in the workaholic tendencies that he inherited from his father as well. And I'm going to quote from the times again here. Mehmet Ozz is one of those rare beings who seem incapable of sloth. He's doing a heart transplant right now, his secretary says on the phone. And he's got a double lung transplant waiting, and those are, in addition to his two, regularly scheduled. And hearts. And then at three, he's supposed to fly to Boston to deliver a lecture. So exceptional is Ozzy's energy that some of his colleagues use him as a benchmark, correlating their own vitality as a fraction of a full memet unit. He runs down lobs sizes tennis partner, mentor and department chairman Dr Erica Rose, who at 44 is one of the top heart transplant surgeons in the world. So I can't tell you how nervous I would be going into a lung transplant procedure and then hearing like this doctor's. They do a heart after you and then gotta fly to Boston. I'd be like, do you think you could maybe take your time with this, bro? Like, could you get that? I I do. It is a mad. We'll talk about the N2. We don't have enough of these guys. It's actually a major health problem. How few people there are that can do this. Yeah, but it does. It is exhausting, everything you read about this guy's day. Like you're just one of those people who I think I kind of get the feeling. I don't wanna psychoanalyze someone, but you get the feeling he can't be alone and yeah. Still like he he he has to always be moving towards something. He's got his dad in the back of his head. Exactly. Telling him to murder that kid in the ice cream shop. Yeah, to kill that ******. Kill that ******* kid. He doesn't know what he wants to be. Yeah, he's just like, yeah, I mean, I imagine that would create a bit of a problem later in life with the stillness. Yeah, I I feel for him a little bit in that. Sure. Now, the article also goes into more detail about how Doctor Oz's. Wives family doctor Oz's wife's family peaked his interest in alternative medicine. His father-in-law was one of the surgeons on the 1st heart transplant team in Texas. He'd also been nicknamed the Rock Dock by Rolling Stone for playing music in the OR to relax patients. His mother-in-law had developed a special low fat diet for her husband's cardiac patients. And this was really before it was accepted that low fat diets would be good for heart patients, right? She once refused surgery for her own inflamed gallbladder and handled it instead. By altering her diet, she taught her son-in-law, doctor Oz, about using arnica for sore muscles and herbal tea for stomach aches. So he gets brought in in part by to alternative medicine by these people who have a real medical background and are doing things that aren't widely accepted but also may help you know, music. I think there's there's some data now on how music can help with, with certain aspects of the healing process, right? Low fat, fat mother-in-law seemed to be on on the cutting edge of that when you said the rock, doc, I I I got concerned. I thought it was gonna like. Replace people's hearts with crystals and **** and I was like, ohh no ohh no, they all die. But my God, their hearts are pretty. So this is how Memet gets introduced to the wide world of quack cures, and it makes sense. He enters it through largely reasonable ways. Alternative treatments that have some positive impact on people. That's in there's extremely reasonable stuff in the article in general, like Doctor Oz points out that in 1995, American hospitals had only recently allowed family to stay in the hospital with a patient, while in Turkey it was common for families to do this. And of course, having loved ones nearby can help a patient's morale, which can influence how well they heal. No one, I think today would even like think to disagree with that. It didn't used to be common. It changed. So he's he's in medicine during a time when a lot of stuff that, like, just wasn't, that is kind of now common sense medicine wasn't. And I think that kind of opens his eye to like, well, maybe all this other **** works. Yeah. Yeah, maybe everything in my head is correct. Yeah. Slowly getting to him, turning into a complete narcissist. Yeah. And the article kind of veers right from yeah, having loved ones in the room can. Can influence how well you heal to doctor Oz's love of energy work, particularly his work with a lady named Motz, who believed she could sense the energy of heart transplant patients. The Times article certainly does not portray this woman in a particularly positive light quote. She now has her surgical sea legs under her. But the first time Motz observed open heart surgery, she had a shaky debut. She had been standing at the patient's head outside the sterile field, periodically telling Oz what changes she was able to sense into patients. Energy the patient was obviously not. Awake, but probably had some awareness, most likely smell and perhaps hearing. Open heart patients are often fitted with headphones and provided with tapes to listen to, including if they want Ozzy's own specially recorded supi trance music for the bypass team. It was quite a novelty to hear Matt's report that she was registering the patient's moods and her body. Various states of fear, anger or satisfaction perceived this roughness in her chest or turbulence in her stomach. At one point, seeing that Motz was not looking so good herself, Oz asked the burly assistant to take her outside for some air when he returned, he said. I sense a change in my stomach. It's a tenseness. No, it's a growling. No, wait a minute, I'm just hungry. My God, I swear she's like, she seemed like she is just describing her own feelings and then just ascribing them to an open heart surgery patient. But yeah, it's it's one of those things. I'm not sure exactly what type of energy work this person is doing because there's a few different kind of categories of it. I'm checking the lives, dude. She's checking the vibes. Just making sure, you know, the vibe dipstick is filled with oil. I I should note if I'm going to be totally fair that Ricky. Uh, which has its origins in Japan, has been shown in some early scientific studies to help diminish the symptoms of chemotherapy and to significantly alter people's experience of physical and emotional pain. And I have some friends who swear by it for kind of physical and emotional pain in particular. I'm always, I don't know what Ricky is. I've heard of it. Is it like when Mr Miyagi rubs his hands together and then he puts his, like, energy work? I guess. I don't know. It it it's not a kind of thing that I particularly believe in and I kind of think. In a lot of cases it's that you have a good relationship with the practitioner and you trust them. And it can be, you know, an emotionally soothing thing, which I don't know. There were early studies, scientific studies, that showed that it could diminish the symptoms of chemotherapy and reduce people's experience of pain. Now further studies were commissioned after these early studies, which starting in the early 2000s were more negative. A number of hospitals did however add Reiki practitioners to their stable of avitable of available providers, in part as a as a result of. Like the work that Doctor Oz and the center at Columbia was doing. You can find these people in hospitals now. And it's worth noting that a number of the positive studies about Reiki and other similar things were conducted by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Their work is problematic, to say the least, and I'm gonna quote now from an analysis of several studies conducted by this organization by Professor Doctor Edzard Ernst. Quote three studies suggested that. Energy medicine had an effect, but their authors either applied statistics, inappropriately confounded the effects of energy healing by adding unrelated interventions to the experimental condition, or failed to design or blind equivalent placebo controls. Their results are therefore untrustworthy. The two studies that were well designed failed to demonstrate effects from energy and healing. The odds of generating a useful result of a clinical trial of energy medicine are small. Moreover, what impact would negative studies have? Scientists will simply say, we could have told you. Know and proponents are unlikely to change their mind. Proponents may then claim that the negative study must have been flawed or that energy medicine cannot be investigated by the tools of science. Or they might rely on the NCCAM. That organization I talked about funded studies that generated biased but apparently positive results. The NCCAM's approach encourages a self perpetuating cycle of misinterpreting research and conducting flawed research, which inevitably generates some studies that erroneously claim positive effects and give the false impression. That the efficacy of energy medicine is still scientifically unresolved man. We are just veering into anti VAX territory and like anti mass territory people who just they Google stuff and then they go this article right here says that mass actually and they can't have it, they can't analyze and it's from a government science organization you know these guys like and there's a study that said it's like well OK but you actually look at scientists you don't have a vested in often financial interest in this and they point out all these very obvious. Laws in the study. It's worth noting that the NCCAM was founded in 1998, three years after the New York Times article about Doctor Oz and the Alternative Medicine Centre at Columbia was published. Now, Doctor Ross at this point was not yet on Oprah's show, but he had been featured on TV several times for his pioneering work with mechanical hearts, as well as his embrace of alternative medicine. You can draw a Direct Line. I don't know if we would have an NCCAM without doctor Oz. I don't know. You can't say that for certain, but he is someone who. Before his embrace of alternative medicine starts to be well known as an exceptional Dr and scientists, he embraces this stuff. Colombia starts studying this stuff, and even though everything they find is pretty inconclusive, the fact that it's in an actual hospital lands it legitimacy. This organization is started in order to test this stuff. The organization is filled with people who already believe in it, carrying out tests that are flawed, and it it helps prepare this culture, believing too much in this stuff. God, it's just like, it's a real life Facebook group, you know? It's just like everyone already believes in all the stuff and they just keep like just Co signing each other's ********. And it's one of those things, like I, again, I know people who who swear by Ricky, who gain, you know, emotional benefits from it, who think it helps with, you know, a number of things including like physical, including emotional pain. And like if you find something that helps you alleviate your emotional pain, more power to you know you're gonna hear me. Say a damn word against it. You know, go with God. That's that. That's all great, but I mean, you wanna relieve pain? Yeah. Try some morphine though. Dog cause that ****. Oh my God. Morphine. There's no downsides to morphine? No. The best part I can't think of 1 downside to morphine. It's not single one. Yeah, it just feels good the whole time and you just need to take more. My issue is not so much with any particular treatment. Not that, not not even an issue that people would like. It's #1. A lot of people. Will issue. Actual medical treatment in favor of some of this stuff. And it's not going to I I I'm trying to be as fair as I can, really is not going to solve your blocked cardiac pathways, you know? Yeah, like, yeah, it's not gonna fix it. Yeah, I mean, energy is great, but Plavix works wonders, you know, this is a lot better. And it's it's it's more to the point, even more than that is it. It gets us on this. This road of increasingly accepting and legitimizing things that there's no, there's not a scientific basis for. And that leads us to **** like, let's drink bleach to cure the coronavirus. Like, you know, it's where the road ends I have more of a problem with than doctor Oz experimenting with an energy worker during a a surgery like it's where that leads to and he plays a major role in legitimizing that. He's yeah, he he helps put it. He helps put our national foot on the the gas pedal. Into the the post science age. So yeah, it's a slippery slope to that, you know, Downing that brain octane oil, you know, exactly, exactly. So, yeah, at this point, though, we're talking still in the mid 90s. Everything Doctor Oz is saying is reasonable from a certain point of view. He's not claiming that Ricky's gonna cure cancer. He's not even claiming it's gonna cure your heart disease. He's saying it could help with recovery. And a lot of recovery is mental, and he's not, you know, it's possible. He's right. You know it. He's not yet a *******. It's certainly not impossible for this kind of stuff to have a mental impact which can positively affect recovery. OK, yeah. So, yeah, he's not a ******* at this point. Nearly all of his. Alternative medical claims were things that you could argue were at least to some extent reasonable based on the way he framed them. And he was most importantly, regardless of whatever kind of woo, woo stuff, he got into an exceptionally gifted medical perfecture professional who was performing something like 250 heart surgeries a year. You know, that's 250 lives a year. Yeah. Extended. Yeah, that's that's great. He's not a ******* yet. Yeah, he's doing great work so far. You know, despite the little weird heart stuff. Fine. A little bit of energy. A little bit of heart surgery. It works out. And the thing though that is I think is happening during this. And I don't know how conscious choice this is by doctor Oz. I think it is because of the fact that he gets an MBA as well and the fact that he's very good at getting pressed, very good at getting on TV, at getting in the news. I think he is at this point crafting his career to make himself into an ideal candidate for famous TV doctor. I think he is building a background that will allow him to establish his celebrity career later. It is not hard to see how a handsome doctor with TV experience, a New York Times profile talking about alternative medicine and a seriously impressive resume was going to wind up eventually, on Oprah Winfrey's radar. He almost built himself perfectly for that to happen. And he he tried. In the early 2000s, he tried with his wife to start a TV show. They like, filmed a pilot episode. It didn't really take off. But he he succeeds. And I and I think he's pushing and his wife is pushing him to to get in. She's very much his business partner to to develop himself into a media personality. Yeah. And he eventually succeeds in 2004 in getting invited to Oprah Winfrey Show. Now, memet immediately endeared himself to Winfrey's audience with his willingness to discuss Frank. Health details in a way that was demystifying and humorous. He most famously explained that healthy poops tended to be shaped like an S and should hit the water like an Olympic diver with very little splash over, herself later recalled. When he made it OK to talk about the shape of a good poop, I knew he could talk about anything. He always found ways to make the human body endlessly fascinating. Man, that is. I mean, I'm I'm lowkey impressed that he impressed Oprah with the Doo Doo shapes. It's where it's mom stuff. You know, moms love poop. Poop. They love talking about Doo Doo. That's the thing. And and that's what like Oz does exactly the right things to endear himself to. Like millions of of middle class moms. Yeah, which is the best market in the country. It's an incredible market. Can make all of the money if you can get a few million middle class moms to love you. Yeah, I worked at this, this digital, what do you call it? Like a digital production company and the the most famous person that we dealt with. Was a famous Facebook mom who had millions of followers. And I would watch her stuff and I was like, this is, you know, maybe the most awful **** I've ever seen. There's just a, you know, lady in a car yelling at people about kids. Yeah. And it. But the she was a famous mom. I mean, if you can become a famous mom, you will be one of the most famous people in the country. Yeah. I mean, it's it's the power of of particularly middle class moms can't be exaggerated. Like in Portland, the cops and the feds were able to **** over as many people as they wanted until they started gassing moms, right? Suddenly the whole country's ******. Yeah, they're like, like, hey, listen, you can do that to people of color, but those are moms. Those are white moms. Those are white moms. That could be my mother. Yeah. Yeah, you know what else? Yes. Where you going with that? Right? I thought you said you would know what else did your mom? That's where I thought you were going with. 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So Oprah had doctor Oz on her show 55 times over the course of five years. She gave him the nickname American's doctor, which stuck. And although I'm not saying this in a positive sense is unfortunately accurate, he's definitely America's doctor, just appealing to the lowest common denominator of the stupidest human being. Therapist, doctor, and if you look at the health of the average. American you can tell the quality of job he's done, yeah. Eat more bread. Eat everybody. Eat bread. Well, actually, that's the one thing he is. He's actually pretty good about, like, weight loss. Well, I don't know. That's still debatable. Stop defending Dr oz. I'm not gonna defend. I just love to be fair, you know? I know. You know. You're very fair. Look, say what you will about Hitler. No, no, you will. He was a vegetarian, and that's good for the environment. The man cared about animal rights. By 2009, it was clear that Doctor Oz had more than enough star power to justify a shot at his own show. Oprah's production company had little trouble finding a buyer for what was sure to be a blockbuster new series. Her show celebrated the launch of Doctor Oz's show with an entire episode dedicated to Doctor Oz, which acted as something of a coming out party for his brand. From a press release on oprah.com, this is talking about the the special Doctor Oz episode, moving personal stories and. Extraordinary surprises are featured throughout the hour as Doctor Oz meets viewers who share how his advice saved their lives. From those who noticed life threatening diseases their doctors missed to those who lost weight thanks to his diet tips from Doctor Oz, real people step forward to offer their thanks to America's doctor. Plus, it's the reunion that Doctor Oz never imagined would happen as Oprah show producers tracked down a young boy he cared for in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the two reunite for the first time. He's like the ******* perfect perfect. Guy for this. I mean, I love that. It's literally sounds like an hour long special of people just thanking him. Hmm. Which might be the most narcissistic thing I think I've ever heard. Yeah, I mean, like, it's one thing for Oprah to do that, because I think America does legitimately owe her thanks for just years of content, you know? But years of mostly dangerous health based content? Oh yeah, no, I mean, it's awful content, but the fact is it's it's quantity over quality. In America and you know, but an hour of just thanking Dr Oz and having people come up to him like you save me this ******* while. Worth noting in terms of his bastardry that. And and in kind of the acceleration from, hey, maybe energy healing works to becoming a monster, the early 2000s is the period in which Oprah becomes aware of a Brazilian healer named John of God who believes he can do psychic surgery and, like, remove tumors of God. Yeah, yeah. Ohh of of the of the Brazilian of gods. Yeah. And on the episode in which she introduces John of God to America, doctor Oz comes on and gives his professional opinion that like. He seems like he's really having an effect on people, and I can't explain it. I don't think medical science can explain what this man is doing. Basically giving a real doctor's opinion that this guy's gotta be legit. Yeah. John of God later turned out to be a mass ****** on these on a scale. Hundreds of victims on a scale almost incomprehensible. We did A2 parter on John of God. You can listen to it. It's a ******* nightmare. Wow. This guy never gets half the following that he has if it's not for Oprah and Doctor Oz. So wow. Holy ****. Ohh it's good **** good ****. I found a fascinating New York Times article written a few months into Doctor Oz's new show. It notes that in transitioning to his own series, Doctor Oz had to spice up his act for a daily for a daily daytime audience. Quote. Potentially distracted by the tantrums of a toddler or the yelping of a Labradoodle, they go on to summarize his early episodes. His show tackles topics as diverse and diversely weighty as skin cancer, kitchen burns, sleep, eating, and pubic hair. Plus, returning constantly to the same television, mother Lode Winfrey profitably mined weepy, overweight guests who vow and often fail to get in shape. And it has taken its star far away from any sort of traditional medical practice. He explains that transition as the product of frustration. Too often, he told me, he would sit in an office and be telling you stuff too little, too late. That if you'd been able to lose a little weight or if your diabetes had been managed more aggressively, than it would have dramatically altered your destiny, which is now to go downstairs and have open heart surgery. With his TV show, he can exhort Americans to end all aspect, to tend to all aspects of their health head to toe before they reach a point of no return, lose weight, go to Brazil and get sexually assaulted by a con man God. Ohh boy. Oh, you know, there's always that point. You know, I've listened to your show and there's always that point in the episode where the comedian or the guest has no other option but to just say, **** that sucks, dude. Like, there's no other comment. But what? Oh, that's crazy. But you know, hey, John of God, doctor Oz, they're they all sound like great people. Yeah, yeah. And it's it's going to get worse. You know, he he this is kind of the period. One of the things he used to do in this. Is he starts cutting back on his surgical practice and performing fewer surgeries. Yeah, because he's gotta keep up all those TV dates. Yeah, in order to tell people about John of God, the mass ****** and in order to tell people about, I don't know, some stuff that's good, right. Telling people to eat healthier is a good America's diet sucks. His diet advice, I think, is, well, we'll talk about that. Later, it's also problematic anyway. He's trading objectively useful medical work for being a nonsense doctor. But he's making millions of dollars. Yeah. And yeah. And in America, that is the ultimate marker of doing the right thing. Yeah. That's the only thing that tells you whether or not you're doing the right thing is if you make a lot of money, then whatever you're doing is the right thing to do. Yeah, it's morally correct to make a lot of money. Yeah. Morally righteous. Righteous. Well, yes. You know what else is righteous, Matt? Is it the products and services? No, my man, it's you. Because the episodes over, part one is over, and we're gonna we're gonna, we're gonna sail out. But first you've gotta plug your plug cables, and I I just decided to compliment you before we roll. That's very nice. Here, here. I thought you were just trying to get me to talk about products and services. Well, I thank you for having me on. I have a product and or service called the pod yourself a gun. It's a Sopranos podcast. And, yeah, if you like The Sopranos. Even if you don't check it out on the, you know wherever the podcasts store is. Podcast alright, yeah, well. This is the show that it is, and we're done doing the things that we do. So go out into the world and I don't know, find Doctor Oz and scream at him. Give me good, give me a good screaming. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it then after just 18 months of podcasting with spreaker. I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey guys, I'm Kelly short on my podcast. Too much to say? I share my thoughts on everything from music to martinis, social media is social anxiety, regrets to risky text, and so much more. I have been known to read my literal diary entries on my show, and sometimes I do interviews with my crazy group of friends so if you guys want to tune in, you can hear new episodes of too much to say every Wednesday on the national podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to them. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.