Part One: Dr. Oz: Why 'America's Doctor' Is A Bastard

the inimitable Matt Leabe. 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. Uh love me some bastards? And you are? You do a Sopranos podcast and the name is it really pod yourself a gun? That's alright, gun. That's where 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, a niche, a niche TV show that

only people who really like art understand. Um, And that's that's why we talk about it. We talked 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. You bought a gun. I did, I did. I did buy a gun this morning. Um. Not for sopranos like uses. Um, 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, a lot of Pine Baron crimes. They do it at least once and uh 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 everywhere, and you know they look.

We Italians are not a subtle people. Know. 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 twelve hours. The most in the world. But I want to hear about this gun. Oh it's just a gun, um. But today we have something much more exciting than a gun. We have a bastard and are bastard? Are you ready for this? I'm so excited? Are you settling in? Yes?

Doctor Oz and I never introduced them like that. We're talking about Dr fucking Oz today. Yes, that's right. Who's the thought he'd be a bastard a TV doctor? Who would have thought a TV doctor could be a bad man? No, 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 immediately. I'm not going to compete with LaVar Burton fighting, Jordy fighting, Kunta Quinte fighting whatever the Reading Rainbow guys name was. Yeah, yeah, No, I did not watch him on Jeopardy, but I have seen the show and had no idea he was a bastard. Yes, um,

he's a piece of ship. He's he's a different piece of ship. We're also going to be talking in the very near future about Dr Phil who's a much worse person. Dr 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 will we'll have us a

nice talk about at the end of this episode. So I've always said that one of the great tragedies of American public life is that our very best doctors are usually like kind of shlubby dudes and ladies, uh maybe aren't the best at at social graces, and certainly don't have enough time because are wildly overworked to do TV appearances. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. They're not hot. I've always said the problem

they're not hot. I look at them and I'm like, you, like, we need to put a couple of billion dollars into a national program from more funck able doctors. Come on, yes, doctors who fuck that's the next level of healthcare in America. It won't be universal health care, but at least doctors will look fuckable. Now, I mean, I think the problem is not their fun ability, because it's inherently hot to

be a doctor. It's more the fact that they're not necessarily 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 poison with honeyed words and practice smiles. 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 who have no medical training, who are just trying to sell you nonsense cures. The guy we're talking about today exists to give them credibility and launder them into the public consciousness. And his name is memt Oz. Ment 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 eason. 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 um and he uses his you know, the thing that makes him a bassard 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. He's kind of made worst. We'll talk with 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 piece of ship. This is like how I felt when Ben Ben Carson turned out to be a Trump guy, was like, but you're so good the surgeons, which you talk to doctors will be like yeah, of course. It's always surgeons. Yeah, yeah.

They're the ones who think they're God's right. 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 ship 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

or engineers. They're 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's skill. Never gain 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 salesman oh, or that we would have very little at all mimits sang his Oz was born on June eleven, nineteen sixty two, parents Suna and Mustafa Oz, who must have fucked at some point in October of nineteen in order to conceive him. We have to assume his parents fucked in the October. That, yeah, he could be immaculate conception. You know, possible, I would say right now. The most likely theory is that they fucked sometime in October.

All his father, Mustafa had been born in Boscre, a village in southern Turkey. He had grown up poor in the countryside during the Great Depression. Uh. And obviously, you know, Great Depression, bad time everywhere, real bad time. If you're like in rural Turkey, you know, um, you're you're dealing with a different kind of poverty than even like our

grandparents dealt with here. Um. 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 nineteen fifty five. So this is a this is a hard working man, um, and a man who has to struggle, I'm mean to guess in ways that that are kind of difficult to imagine for most p

even as difficult as our present times are. He's like a true lift yourself up by your bootraps 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 you know, he was able to get over the racism of the fucking nineteen fifties immigration system. You know, that's that's an achievement. Yeah, good for him. Started from the bottom and now he's on TV. That's his dad. Um,

that's his dad. That's not yeah, yeah, that's Mustafa. 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 in both sides of her family came from Istanbul. She grew up with a lot of money. As befits his more modest upbringing, Mustafa was an observant traditional Muslim as soon as family was more

moderate and secular. Memit 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. Mement was from a young from a young age, ambitious, starving for success and his father's approval. He was wont 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 fuck? Like, that's way too much stock into the year of what animal? Year the rat? 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 really got to just shut your face into food as hard as you can. You roll around in the ship, and then you hope that someday you find another piggy to fun and then you have little piglets. I was born in the Year of the Pig, and that's why I disposed of bodies for the mob. It's just what you do. Well, that's a it's a nice take on your of the rat.

For him, 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 call it. And 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 grown up, when Mustapa 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. Um. So he's like telling his kid as he grows up, like, you know, like if you want to succeed, you can't relax for even a second. You can't can't take a moment off. You always gotta be hustling. Uh. And that's

how mem It 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 ninety three on a test, He'd say, did anyone get better? That was always the question, he asked. Sounds like a fun guy would hang, Yeah, the school I grew up in because of just where we were in North Texas. Like about half of the kids in my school, um were either from India or from China or Japan. Um. And so you had a lot of kids who would talk

that way about their parents, right, um. And some of them had, especially around our senior year, there were a couple of kids who had to get like taken in by an ambulance because they would just like in one case easing as a result of stress. Like Jesus good to put this kind of pressure at a kid. Yeah, like straight having like nervous breakdowns just from like trying to get good grades. Once again, don't get good at anything. It's not worth it that loop 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 toast coast some dirt, eat some grubs. You'll be fine. Yeah, start a Sopranos podcast. That's all you've got to do. Really really bringing it back there. So Memitt decided to become a doctor when he was just seven years old. Uh. 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 kids said, I don't know, I'm ten. 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 okay if you change your mind, but I never want you to not have a vision

of what you want to be. Moment, go kill that kid, kill that kid, murder that, lose your kid, and tell me what you want to do with your life. God damn, that is way too much pressure. Way that's 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 fuck, 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. Um. It's not just don't put pressure on people. There's plenty of grubs. By the time Moment was ready to start school, his father was wealthy enough to pay to send his son to Tower Hill School, a K through twelfth grade private college preparatory school in Wilmington, Delaware. Jesus, that sounds horrible. I know, it sounds like a fucking nightmare. Fancy boy uniforms ties. Yeah,

probably like during the summer. Yeah, the fancy boy prep school worked well enough that Memitt 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 just look back now at my own childhood and I'm like, God damn it. If I can think of one friend where where I knew what they wanted to do for a career, I don't think we ever talked about like, what's your career gonna be? No one was like I'm a doctor,

you know. It was it was mostly just like, uh, you know, how's how's your hip hop album working out? And they're like good and they're like cool, and that was the whole thing. That's interesting. I think it was different from me because there was definitely a lot of pressure to have something. You know, I went to a public school. Um, 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 Idebelle, Oklahoma.

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 not a high end educational but once I'll do in a in a public school. Yeah yeah, damn. They still did that in Oklahoma back in them days. Yeah you got to sign the paddle afterwards too. But when I was in on a third grade or so, UM, I moved to planoh which is a a fairly wealthy suburb of Dallas, and the schools, the public schools are very good and there's a lot

of drive to achieve. Like I said, a lot of like kids who were really motivated by their parents to achieve um, and so you either were kind of planning to be a doctor or you know, something on that level, or you were planning to join the military. Because it was Texas and I was in r OTC, So me and all my friends, I think we all kind of assumed we're all going to 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 um or they wanted to be famous musicians and or athletes. So I see, my brother is a doctor and knew he was going to be a doctor from that. He's my older brother too, from the time that he was like seven, so like, and I'm like,

la la la, no idea. I'm just saying, like a level of ambition at a very very young age has always been a turn off for me when it comes to like friends, because it's just, uh, they always have that like sense where they're trying to get there. You're you're some sort of stepping stone into their what ever their career path is, and I don't like it. So Oz took only one break during his relentless progress through

medical school. Uh, and 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. Um. Other than that straight onto like becoming a doctor, that's the only kind of break. He 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 joined the military of a foreign country that helps suppress you know, Kurdish liberatory movements and stuff. Whenever. Yeah,

they got to stop trying to have their own thing. Yeah. He got a four year degree in biology and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he doubled up working on both an m D and an m b A. 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 m d. He also gets a business degree. Yeah, this is a very Uh, there's a lot of foreshadowing going. Yeah, there's a foreshadow He earned both obviously with flying colors.

He's an incredibly intelligent man, right, this isn't just a guy like we'll talk about Dr Phil later. Dr Phil I don't think is very smart. He's incredibly good at reading and manipulating people. He's not particularly a genius. Mem at Oz is a genius like I think almost certainly is an actual genius. In nineteen eighty five, at age twenty five, he married Lisa Limole, 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 and Eastern mysticism because Lisa's mom was hardcore into homeopathy, meditation, and other New Age stuff. We'll talk about that more in a little bit. For the next decade and change, Dr 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 I got zero boards under my bottom one, 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 board out there, well, you know what. The state of New Jersey has certified me as a reverend doctor, so I'm

one board certify. There is there a board in the Universal Life Church because I am a ministers last Jedi night, I'm gonna say that counts all right, I'm board stified. Can you get me painkillers? But you know, I know a guy that sounds legal enough. So he starts working as a heart surgeon um and he's very good at being a heart surgeon. And he's not just good at the heart surgery part, he's good at the science part. Over time, he authors hundreds of peer reviewed articles and

he's awarded eleven 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 the mechanics of surgery, he's an ex lent scientist. Yeah, Levin Pattents 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 guard. Alright, well I gotta go. Then

it's just a fig. Journalists can't fucking help themselves. Anybody you see Oz and you're like, I got a callum a wizard, not a call um a wizard. Dr Oz was hired by Columbia Medical School UH as a teacher, and as you know, he's also working. They've been 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 at this point, he's in his thirties. Oh man. Yeah, Like everything I've read right now on its own would be a career trajectory. Any doctor in medicine would envy. Like you could die happy with that being your fucking resume. Like that's a hell of an achievement. Um. Yeah. In nine, a New York Times profile referred to doctor Oz as quote, probably the most accomplished thirty five year old cardiothoracic surgeon

in the country. 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 names, so fuck, 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, a forty nine year old diabetic smoker who suffered a critical heart attack. She went under Memets 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 fifty two year old healer named Julie Motts, who was

standing at the patient's head. As volunteers in Oz's cardiac Complimentary Care center, they worked for free through the operation, seldom moving except to reposition their hands as Oz requested suitures and clamps and units of light a cane. Mots called softly to Smith to move her hands from the small toe of the patient's right foot to a point on 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 theater of scientific medicine. The women were using their hands as kings once did dis treat subjects with scrupula, and as Jesus is said to have done, and as shamans and mothers and Chinese quigong 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 meridians. That's the best part of the kid the meridian. That's the most delicious part of the kidneys. Man with fucking on a ritz cracker slice, then I love me a little little You just want to get You want to get like some duck fat or some butter, and you want to get it sizzling in the pan, and you just slap that meridian on for like a half a second and it's good to go. That's all you fucking which just a little bit of a little bit of char

you know. I mean, this all feels like he's gonna start turning his patients into far gra and very excited for what's to come. This heel turned that he's gonna take. So, yeah, that's that's that's silly. I I think that's silly. Um. But out at the other hand, like it's in a hospital. These people are clearly following sanitation guidelines. They're not getting paid, the patient's 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 feel like this is wrong, but I don't know enough to dispute it. So I'm with my kidney meridian. 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 fucking harm and 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, fucking whatever.

And it seems like from what I can tell, that sounded, uh, non invasive. It's yeah, they were just doing energy work or when they were, you know, crystals and doing fucking pendulums over over him. It falls into the category of it couldn't possibly hurt, so why not give it a shot, right, 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 know. 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 forty five minutes. So you know, spend all your money and gain immortality. We're back. We're talking about doctor Oz, who in the mid nineties has started some weird alternative medicine stuff. Now he's not the person who starts the alternative medicine program at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital UM, 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 fucking constantly m doctors fucking teach, That's what they doctors, fucking they teach, that's all they do. You know, when you're not teaching, you're fucking um. And Columbia Presbyterian was among the most reputable medical establishments on planet, or it still is as far as as I'm aware. UM, 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. Um. The whole thing came about because in nine a retired utility executive named Richard Rosenthal gave them three quarters of a million dollars as a private grant in order to establish a center to study alternative medicine. Just gifted money and just said magic

doct during school and they're like, okay, um. Now, Richard had been motivated by having several close friends of his get terribly sick um in such a way that doctors told them there was nothing that could be done to help them. And his response was to basically throw a bunch of money into a hole 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's even like like she went through chemo and it did nothing. You know, I get it. You go through something, I think, okay, well, let's try other ship. You know. Um, so I can't 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 and modern medicine, I might will blame the snake oil salesman. I'm never going to blame someone who's like, well, doctor said they can't cure me. So I'm going to eat this route. You know, why not go for it? Who gives a ship like you can't

hurt if you're definitely gonna die? Um, And it is to be honest, like it is kind of within even you could argue within kind of medical best practices because one of the things I like, I took em T training years ago. One of the things they tell you is that you're not supposed to use an A E. D. You know, like paddles to restart a heart. 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. 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, if, if something happens. I'm not against the basic idea of testing some of this ship is what the worst thing you're going to get out of that is a really cool TikTok video of electrocuting a dead body. Absolutely, and then you get a funkload of followers and then you start selling brain pillars.

It's a perfect plan. Uh so yeah, um, 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 why the funk not? And that's more or less with The Dean of Faculty of Medicine at the college said like, all right, 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. Dr 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 lambastad. 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 ship business. I don't know if he's wrong about that. A lot of these people are fucking sociopaths, you know,

he says, quote, I am nasty. I call practitioners of fraud,

practitioners of fraud. It's my feeling that the Rosenthals enter has been promoting fraudulent alternatives is genuine um 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 here, 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 Dr Oz is doing it, where we're going to do the normal medical procedure, will

have this done. Maybe some people decide I just want to have the energy work done, and then they dropped out of a heart attack because it doesn't replace a 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 croc and now it's like kind of just a standard part of Western medicine. It's just you know, so yeah, and there's a there's a lot to be said about even acupuncture. You know, 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 fucking uh whatever placebo, but he experienced relief.

So I don't care, like, um, I don't know. I'm not going to get into like 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 actual 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. Um 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 doctor 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 as a real doctor had really informed him of the limits

of medical science. Specifically, he said that while he could so 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. That can help with depression,

and that can help with healing. And he's right about that. Bad point to make, um 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 had 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, mem at Oz 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, own, And he's got a double lung transplant waiting, and those are in addition to his two regularly scheduled open hearts.

And then at three he's supposed to fly to Boston to deliver a lecture. So exceptional is oz is energy that some of his colleagues use him as a benchmark correlating their own vitality is a fraction of a full mement unit. He runs down Lobbs Sizes tennis partner mentor and department chairman Dr Eric A. Rose, who at forty four, is one of the top hearts transplant surgeons in the world.

So I can't tell you how uh nervous I would be going into a lung transplant procedure and then hearing like this doctor has got to do a heart after you and then got to 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 man. We'll talk about the Z in two. We don't have enough of these guys. It's actually a major health problem. How few people there are that can

do this. Um but it it is exhausting everything you read about this guy's day, Like, you're just one of those people who I think, I kind to get the feeling. I don't want to psychoanalyze someone, but you get the feeling. He can't be alone and still like he he has to always be moving towards something. He's got his dad in the back of his head and telling him to murder that kid in the ice cream show, yea to kill that he just like, I mean, I imagine that would create a bit of a problem later in life

with stillness. Yeah, I feel for him a little bit of that sum now. The article also goes into more to tail about how dr oz Is wives family. Dr Oz's wife's family piqued his interest in alternative medicine. His father in law was one of the surgeons on the first heart transplant team in Texas. He'd also been nicknamed the rock Doc by Rolling Stone for playing music in

the o r 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 patients. She once refused surgery for her own inflamed gall bladder and handled it instead by altering her diet. She taught her son in law, Dr Oz about using arnica for store

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 respects of the healing process. Mother in law seemed to be on on the cutting

edge of that doc. I I got concerned. I thought it was gonna like replace people's hearts with crystals and ship and I was like, oh no, oh no, they all die. But my God, their hearts are pretty So this is how mem it 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 American hospitals it 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 Um 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 ship works. Yeah, maybe everything in my head is

correct 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 Dr Oz's love of energy work, particularly his work with a lady named Motts, 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. Well, she now has her surgical sea legs under her, but the first time Mots 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 patient's 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, Oz's own specially recorded Supi trance music for the bypass team. It was quite a novelty to hear Mots 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 Mots was not looking so good herself, Oz asked a burly assistant to take her outside for some air. When he returned, he said, I'd sense a change in my stomach. It's a tenseness. No, it's a growling. No, wait a minute, I'm just hungry. Oh my god. I swear she's like she seemed like she is just desc having her own feelings and then just ascribing them to an opening. But yeah, it's it's one of those things. I'm not sure exactly what type

of energy work this person is doing. Um, because there's a few different kind of categories of it. Um checking the vibes, dude, she's checking the vibes, just making sure you know the vibe dipstick is filled with oil. I should note, if I'm going to be totally fair, that Rieky, 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. UM. And I have some friends who swear by it for kind of physical and emotional pain in particular. UM. 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 energy work. I guess I don't know. 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,

in an emotionally soothing thing which I don't know. UM, 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 two thousands were more negative. A number of hospitals did, however, add Reeky practitioners to their stable of a vitable of available providers and parts as a result of like the work that doctor oz

in the Center at Columbia was doing. UM, you can find these people in hospitals now. And it's worth noting that a number of the positive studies about riki and other kind similar things were conducted by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine UM. 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 and appropriately 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 so, 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 n c C a M. That organization I talked about funded studies that generated biased but

apparently positive results. The n c c a M 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 resolved. Man, we are just veering into anti back's territory, and like anti

mask territory. People who just they google stuff and then they go this article right here says that mass act and they can't they can't analyze, and it's from a government science organization. You know, these guys like and here's a study that's it, and it's like, well, okay, but you actually look at scientists you don't have a vested and often financial interest in this, and they point out

all these very obvious flaws in the study. It's worth noting that the n c c a M was founded in nine, three years after the New York Times article about Dr Oz and the Alternative Medicine Center at Columbia was published. Now. Dr Ross at this point was not yet on Oprah 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 it in c c a M without Dr Oz. I don't know. You can't say that for certain um, but he is someone who before his embrace of alternative medicine starts to be well known as an exceptional doctor and scientist. He embraces this stuff. Columbia starts studying this stuff, and even though everything they find is pretty inconclusive, um, the fact that it's in an actual hospital lends 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. Um. And it it helps prepare this culture believing too much in this stuff. My 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 bullshit. And it's one of those things like I again, I know people who swear by Riki, who gain you know, emotional benefits from it, um, who think it helps with you know a number of things, um, including like physical including emotional pain, and like if you find something that helps you alleviate your emotional pair, more power to you know. You're gonna hear me it, you know,

go with God. That's that. That's all great, But uh, I mean, if you want to relieve pain, yeah, try some morphine though, dog, because that'sh it, oh mark morphine. There's no downsides to morphine that. I can't think of one downside to morphine. It's not a 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 number one. A lot of people will issue actual medical treatment in favor of some of this stuff, and it's not going to I'm trying to be as fair as I can. He's not going to solve your blocked cardiac pathways, you know, like it's not going to fix it. Yeah, I mean energy is great, but plavix works, Wonders is a lot better. Um 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 ship 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 doctors experimenting with an energy worker during a surgery, like it's where that leads to, and he plays a major role in legitimizing that. He's he helps put he helps put our national foot on

the gas pedal into the post science age. Yeah, it's a slippery slope to that, you know, downing that brain octane oil. Exactly, exactly. Um so yeah. At this point, though we're talking still in the mid nineties, everything doctor Oz is saying is reasonable from a certain point of view. He's not claiming that rinky'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, he's not a bastard. It's certainly not impossible for this kind of stuff to have a mental impact which can positively affect recovery. Okay, um, so yeah, he's

not a bastard. 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 two fifty heart surgeries a year. You know, that's two hud lives a year extended. That's that's great. He's not

a bastard yet. And yeah, he's doing great work so far despite the heart but 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 period. And I don't know how conscious a choice this is by Dr 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. Um. 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 two thousand's, he tried with his wife to start a TV show. They like filmed a pilot episode. It didn't really take off. Um, 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 develop himself into a media personality, and he

eventually succeeds. In two thousand four, uh in getting invited to Oprah Winfrey's show Now Memit 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 okay 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 uh, I mean, I'm I'm low Key impressed that he impressed Oprah with do do Shapes. It's it's moms, don't you know. Moms love poop, I love talking. And that's what like Oz does exactly the right things to endear himself to like millions of middle class moms, which

is the best markets, an incredible market. You can make all of the money if you can get a few million middle class moms to love you. I worked at this this digital uh what do you call it, like a digital production company, and 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 ship I've ever seen. It's just a you know, lady in a car yelling at people about kids and uh, 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 the cops and the Feds were able to funk over as many people as they wanted

until they started gassing moms and the whole countries pists. Yeah, they're like like, hey, listen, you can do that to people of color, but those are moms. Those are white moms, white moms that could be my mother. Yeah, you know what else at the actually, you know what else? Did your mom? That's where I thought you were going with. You know what else is your mother? The products and services that support this podcast. We're back. So we've so we've all just agreed that Matt is very fine. That

was the discussion over the break. You made this one into a two parter, Matt, So you audience can thank you for two episodes about Dr Oz this week, or they can blame you. And if they blame and blame him, Matt's home address is we love to docs our guests. So Oprah had Doctor Oz on her show fifty five times over the course of five years. She gave him the nickname America'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 commons denominator, this stupidest human doctor. And if you look at the health of the average American until the quality of job, he's done eat bread. Well, actually that's the one thing he is he's actually pretty good about. Like wait, well, I don't know that's still debatable. Stop defending doctor I'm not going to defend I just love to be fair.

You know, you know you're very fair. Look say what you will about Hitler Will he was a vegetarian and that's good for the environment. The man cared about animal rights. By two thousand nine, 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 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 dot co, um, this is talking about 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 Dr 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 fucking perfect, perfect

guy for this. I mean, I love that. It's literally sounds like an hour long special of people just thanking him, 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. Oh her, thanks for just years of content, you know, but years of mostly danger is 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 uh, you know, but an hour of just thanking Dr Oz and having people come up to him like you saved me, fucking what it's worth noting in terms of his bastardry. That and and and kind of the acceleration from hey, maybe

energy healing works to becoming a monster. The early two thousands of the period in which Oprah becomes aware of a Brazilian healer named John of God who believes he can do psychic surgery, and like, yeah, yeah, oh of of the of the Brazilian of God's and on the episode in which she introduces John of God to America, Dr 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 excience

can explain what this man is doing. Basically giving a real doctor's opinion that this guy has gotta be legit. John of God later turned out to be a mass rapist on these on a scale, hundreds of victims, on a scale almost incomprehensible. We did a two parter on John of God. You can listen to it. It's a fucking nightmare. Um, this guy never gets half the following that he has if it's not for Oprah and Dr Oz.

So holy shit, it's good ship, good ship. I found a fascinating New York Times article written a few months into Dr Oz's new show. It notes that, in transitioning to his own series, Dr Oz had to spice up his act for a daily day 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 wady a skin cancer, kitchen burns, sleep eating, and

pubic hair loss. Returning constantly to the same television mother load, Winfrey profitably mind we be overweight guests who vow and often fail to get in shape, and it is take in 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 office and be telling you stuff too little, too late, that if you've been able to lose a little weight, or if your diabetes had been managed more aggressively, then 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 aspects, to tend 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. Oh boy, 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 fuck, that sucks, dude, there's no other comment, but what oh that's crazy. But you know, hey, John of God, dr Ras there, 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's just to do in this period is he starts cutting back on his surgical practice and performing fewer surgeries. Yeah, because he's got to keep up all those TV dates. Yeah, in order to tell people about John of God, the mass rapist. Uh, 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 and in America, that is the ultimate marker of doing the right thing. That's the only thing that tells you whether or not, you're doing the right thing. It makes 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 wealth. Yes. You know what else is righteous,

Matt is the products and services. No, my man, it's you. Because the episode is over. Part one is over, and we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna sail out. At first, you've got to plug your plug doubles, and I just decided to compliment you before we were 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. Um. I have a product

and or service called pod Yourself a Gun. It's a Sopranos podcast and uh uh yeah, if you like the Sopranos, or even if you don't, check it out on the you know wherever the podcasts store is. Podcast All right, 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 Dr Oz and scream at him. Give me a good screaming m m hm.