At Home with Dr. Phil

the Rich and Famous. So we recorded this one in a mansion overlooking Beverly Hills. We figured what better place to interview a household name like Dr Phil than well in his house. And let's be clear, this is not an ordinary house. From the rolls in the driveway to the Morano glass ping pong table, Phil McGraw and his lovely wife Robin clearly relish their creature, comforts and each other.

We've been married forty one years, almost forty two, yeah for almost way tow been together forty and we just start having more fun than a barrel of monkeys. You know, it's it's crazy, and we have a good time and we love it up here. Sometimes we get behind these gates, and sometimes we won't leave for a week or ten. I was gonna say, I don't think I'd ever leave the house if I lived here. Tennis court here, I got a clay court here. Every day, I play summary

eight times a week. Clearly, he's in really good shape. And you know, while he loves living in this house, it was Robin who first fell for it. She noticed it under construction about a decade ago, and she liked it so much she started driving by every few months to check on its progress. And Phil noticed how much his wife loved this house, so he decided to buy it for her. So he just approached the owner and

wrote a check. And when you host the number one daytime talk show in America, like Phil does, you can just do that. But here's the romantic part, Brian. Phil didn't tell Robin what he had done. He wanted to surprise her, so one day he suggested they drive to the house together just to check out what was going on. And when they arrived, the gate was open, so was the front door. Robin was a little freaked out. She

was wary. She didn't want them to call the police, but Phil convinced her to walk with him to the porch. And here's what happened next, in Robin mccraw's own words, let me tell it, let me tell you. I'm hiding behind you because of course I trust you im he'll protect me. But I said, phill up, Okay, okay, I've seen let's Philip and he laugh. I said, but let's get the car. Let's go. And he goes, You're fine, let's look and I know, and all of a sudden he flips around. He picks me up in his arms,

carries me over the threshold and says, welcome home. I just thought you this house. Wow. Clearly she gets a little giddy just talking about it. And so when Brian and I asked for a tour of their digs, well, the mcgraws were happy to oblige you. None so are I think it takes about a week to see all that. We have a wine cellar with the ceiling came from the Tibetan rainforest, from Tibetan monks, and from the sixteen hundreds. It's amazing, Brian, doesn't your wine cellar ceiling wasn't that

made by Tibetan monks? If I recall, yeah, but in the sixteenth century. I mean, I think the seventeenth century ones are just junk. So I refused that just so. Meanwhile, all that wine and even a bar in the house, But both Robin and Phil are children of alcoholics, and Phil told us he doesn't drink. I just resolved early on because I saw what it did, was my dad. So, did you ever drink? Did you? I tried in high school. I tried to get drunk in high school, and I

would get a hangover while I was drinking. Brian, who needs alcohol. The view from the backyard is absolutely intoxicating. You can walk in the front door and see all the way across downtown because we love the weather out here and we love opening these doors and looking out and just seeing everything that we can. It's spectacular. We have this big outside area and then it leads to a swimming pool, which is beautiful and a spectacular view.

Just your typical American family house. So listeners, it was a lot to take in. We really could have taken you with us for this one. I think they all fit in the house. Actually, yeah, I think that's I don't know what that says about our ratings. Or their house or maybe both. They would have been very crowded and very tight, but extremely crowded. And when we were done peeking around, Katie and I sat down with just

Phil to talk about really everything. This was one of our most thorough and interesting interviews yet, at least in my view. I think you also mean long, So get comfortable, everybody.

We had a lot to cover, from how Oprah was instrumental in his success, so the critics who are not fans of the medicine, doctor Phil is dispensing, especially because they say he's not a real doctor, even though he does a PhD in psychology and in fact, Brian, you know, when I posted a photo of the three of us on Instagram, there were a lot of positive comments, but also quite a few negative ones. To one person wrote,

this guy's con man one podcast, I'll be missing. Someone else chimed in Dr Phil is an arrogant jerk, And then there was this person who said, not stoked about him, but we'll listen because of you. Katie Couric and you bribbly wrote that one actually just to give you a little boost anyway, Thank you for that. Thank you for holding your nose and listening to that listener, but clearly

not everyone. Brian is a fan of Dr Phil. But at the same time Phil show is top rated and by the way, is now sixteen seasons in, so he's doing something right. So I'll be curious to hear, Brian if we change any hearts and minds with this episode. After people here a little bit about Dr Phil's backstory, so we put him in the hot seat for a change and tried to find out what makes him tick and by the way, what got him into psychology Long

before his TV show was ever. Phil trained to be a psychologist and he and his dad went into practice together in Wichita Falls, Texas. So I wanted to know did he always dream of getting into people's heads? There was a specific time I can tell you the specific moment that I got interested in it. It wasn't something that I kind of warm too. There was a specific moment in my life that it became a focus of mine.

I'm excited to hear about this. What was it? It involved football and I was in Oklahoma City and we were on a team that really had a lot of great equipment and great uniforms. I mean everything was. We had black uniforms with silver, straight very, Friday night lights very and arm bands. I mean, we looked badass, I'm telling you. And we thought we were a badass. And we had a game rain out, and the Salvation Army had a team and they called our coach and said,

I know he had a game rain out. Could we come Monday and play a scrimmage game with you? And the coach that sure. So Monday they show up over there to play us. Three pickups pull up and these kids start piling out the back. It looked like the grapes of wrath. I mean, and I'm aging myself, but I don't think anyone up. But but I mean the kid, for example, that lined up across from me had on blue jeans for football pants, and he had them rolled up so they kind of looked like football pants. He

had on loafers for shoes instead of football shoes. He had a button up shirt and he had the number four on it with masking tape. And I'm thinking, you know, we're in a huddle, kind of snicker, and you know, like, why didn't he put it on a magic marker that's going to come off? Well, he didn't put it on a magic marker because that was his shirt. That wasn't his shirt for the day that he had to wear that to school the next day. And so they don't

kick off because it's a scrimmage. They just snapped the ball, and they snapped the ball. That kid hit me so hard it still hurts when it rains. I kid you not. They beat us like they were clapping for a barn dance. I mean, I thought it was a track meet. They're running up and down the field. We can't catch them there. They probably beat us fifty to nothing. And I remember getting in the car everything heard. I had dirt in my mouth, you know, I'm looking out the ear hole

in my helmet. I asked my dad what the hell happened, and he said, well, you just got your gass handed to you. Boy. I said, well, I was looking for a little more depth of an answer, and he said they were just hungry. They wanted it more than you did. And in that moment, even at that age I was like twelve years old, I thought, if they can do so much with so little, what should I be able to do when I've got good equipment, coaches a grass field, And I was envious. I walked away from their envious

of those kids. I wanted what they had, and that interesting And here I am envious of the Salvation Army kids because they had grit, they had they had burning in their gut. And at that moment I got focused on studying why people do what they do and don't do what they don't do. I wanted to know. So while all my friends were putting together model airplanes and sniffing the glue, I was in the library trying to read books on motivation and why some people had it

and some people didn't. I started at twelve years old. I became fascinated with it, and I've never ever stopped being fascinated. You spent a lot of time as a psychologist studying the treatment of pain, which obviously is a very big issue these days, not just with opioids, but according to the ni H, more than twenty five million Americans experienced chronic pain, which is pain every single day

for the last three months. Um, I don't think people who don't have pain realize how debilitating and depressing it is.

What do you attribute this epidemic of pain to? Well, yeah, it's interesting that you bring that up, Robin, and I just got back we testified before a joint committee Biparisan committee in Congress last week about the opioid crisis, and particularly with regard to addicted mothers and their children, either that they're pregnant with or have just had, and what should happen to them, because I feel very strongly about that. But there's organic pain and then there's pain that is perceived,

and there's two very big differences there. And I used to run a pain clinic inside a hospital, and there are so many alternatives to the management of pain besides opioids and these other pain killers. But medicine has become a high volume business, and it takes time to teach people neurotherapy, biofeedback, do cryotherapy, do other things to manage pain. That takes time. It takes two seconds to write a prescription. And there are enough opioid prescriptions right now for every

person in America to have their own bottle. And if you take those pills past the eighth day, you have a one in seven chance of being addicted at one year. If you macome at thirty days, if you're still taking you have a one in three chance of being addicted at the end of a year. This is an epidemic. What should be done when you testify it on Capitol Helleny, what do you see as the way out of this mess? Well, I think there has to be accountability right now. There

has to be accountability. I think the doctors have to be made highly aware of what's happening with these people and the high level of risk for addiction. Look, these doctors, most of the doctors that are writing these prescriptions are well trained, well intended, responsible professionals. But they need to be constantly reminded that these patients will ask for more and more and more as long as you'll give them

to them. And so they have to have a constant reminder and they need to give three to five of these pills, not thirty. And then the manufacturers have to be held to account in that regard. And because what's happening now is you have a whole new population of heroin addict in the suburbs because they take the opioids for a period of time and then they stopped taking them because heroin is cheaper. So you've now got soccer

moms on heroin because they can't afford the opiate. It's a whole new population of heroin addicts, and you spoke about the danger of mothers and fathers who are addicted, and maybe the mom was addicted while she was pregnant, or they're addicted while they have a young kid. What do they do in that situation? How do we respond as a society to those people. What Robin and I are advocating for is for them to repurpose dollars in the Family First Act, where now the dollars are only

allowed to be used for fall sster care. And what we're advocating is that instead of using those dollars for foster care, put these mothers in family based residential treatment where the baby stays with them. And you said, well, why would you leave a baby with a drug addic mother, Well, this may be the only time the mother hasn't been on drugs is while she's in the treatment center. And she might be there six months, seven months, eight months,

but she's there with her baby. And what happens is you're now you're not putting two people in the system. You put one child in foster care, you put a mother in prison or whatever. You can't punish your way out of this epidemic. So if you put the mother and child together in a family based residential treatment center A the mother's gonna bond with the baby, they're less

likely to abandoned the child later. You're not going to load up and already overwhelm foster care system, so they just need to free up some of that money and let it go to treatment. You're not going to punish your way out of this. You're going to treat your way out of it. Before we talk a little more about your road to success, Phil and I know Brian is particularly interested in Courtroom Sciences, which you co founded, as Brian's a lawyer, but I wanted to ask you

about recent events. Having just talked about opioid in this epidemic, there's an epidemic of gun violence happening in this country. As I came over to see you today, as Brian and I met you at your house, there was yet another shooting in your home state of Texas, outside Houston, in a town called Santa Fe. I don't know the latest numbers, but it went last I checked, it was eight or nine students, at least ten students murdered in

their high school. And it makes me so upset and so infuriated and this of course comes on the heels of Parkland, which was what just over three months ago, Phil, What are we going to do about this? You know, I had many of the Parkland students on my show and I had some of the Columbine students there at the same time, and uh, there was a really interesting dynamic there because these Columbine students, We're saying, every time

this happens, they get re traumatized. It triggers for them and they never really got what they needed in the interim. And this is, by the way, almost twenty years ago, because Columbine happened in because I covered that shooting. And by the way, there was a girl who was interviewed today who was at the school and she was asked the question that all the reporters asked, that you ever think it could happen here? And her response was so striking to me. She said, yes, I thought it could

happen here because it's happening all over the place. I expected at some point there would be a shooting here. I think there have been. We could look it up right quick, but I think there have been close to thirty school shooting so far this year. It's like one a week, I think, yeah, something that's just terrible. Um, here's the problem. From a psychological standpoint, we absolutely do not have the ability to predict who's going to do this. UM. And you can say, well, if anybody has a history

of mental illness, don't give him a gun. The mentally ill population has a lower incidence of violence than a general population. I know. And it infuriates me when people say it's mental illness because that is such a red herring, and it also stigmatizes everyone with mental illness. And they're real, real people in every country, but they don't have this gun violence problem. So what is the solution? Um? I think what we have to do is have an intelligent

conversation about this instead of a political yelling match about this. Amen. Right now, you've got people on both sides of this issue that takes something like this and politicize it. I think what you have to do is start out by saying, let's see what we agree on. Anytime I'm negotiating with somebody, the first thing I try to do is narrow the issues and say, before we try to resolve our differences,

let's see what we agree on. Because when you do that, you often find out that you're not nearly as far apart as you. Thank you on this issue, though, Phil, I honestly really wonder for this super extremists and you n r A members actually believe there should be more sensible gun laws. But for the extremists who believe there's a slippery slope and this is the price of liberty and freedom, this is what we have to put up with. There's very there's not much of a vent diagram between

the two groups. That doesn't mean there can't be I mean, look, is there any theory under which somebody needs an A K forty seven? Is there any theory under which anybody needs an assault rifle? I don't care if you're the

most staunch Second Amendment supporter in the world. Is there any reason that there is a recreational use a Second Amendment justification for an A K forty seven where you can put out so much lead, so much death in a short period of time, that let's find out, there has to be some sensibility that comes along with it. You can't have rights without responsibilities, and you can't say we have to throw out the Amendment. That doesn't mean

you can't have some modifications within the US. You you you have people right now that are just so they have so much firepower to do so much devastation in such a short period of time, that we are setting ourselves up for destruction. That has to change. It absolutely has to change. It's time now to take a quick break. When we come back, Phil tells us about his old gig running a trial consulting firm and how this work led him to the woman who gave him his big break.

I'm talking about Oprah people. That's right after this and now back to our interview with Dr Phil McGrath. You took a turn in your career. You co founded a company called Courtroom Sciences, Inc. Predating cs I. You have the original c s I, which is a trial consulting firm. Can you explain what that business did what you did? Yes, Um, basically, in every situation, if you know what your fact pattern is,

you may have a thousand facts. I'll promise you there is a subset of those thousand facts, maybe ten or twelve, configured in a certain way that, if presented, are your best chance of getting home, your best chance to get into a verdict. And trial science is about finding out out of that thousand facts, what are those best twelve and who are they best presented to and in what way? And so we always researched cases. Uh, we trained witnesses

to tell the truth effectively. There's a big different. It's between telling the truth and telling the truth effectively. And we we're very active in jury selection. It's really de selection, but in shaping who gets on the jury and then figuring out what they need to hear to support your case. But do you ever feel that's unethical in any way?

Do you feel like it's stacking the jury? It's kind of antithetical to uh, you know, a jury of your peers, because only wealthy clients can afford the services of somebody like that, and that, Um, I don't know that. There's something that just is intrinsically unjust about that telling the truth effectively, not so much telling the truth effectively, but hand picking people who you believe will help your clients. Well, that presumes that the other side is not hand picking

the jury as best they can. Well, if they have a public defender, probably they're not. Oh, we work with the public defenders a lot. Really sure, we did a lot of proboble in cases. But understand they're trying to pick the best jury they possibly can do. I think it's unethically to do it better. No, No, I don't doing your void dear thing. Right, is how you met Oprah Winfrey is So that was back in the day when she was being sued for something she said on

her program about mad cow disease. Right, So tell us about that meeting. And obviously there was some kismet for both of you, and she had you at hello, or you had her at hello. Well, she was sued, and again this is a situation where in the court of public opinion, and she was sued by ranchers cattleman, which was not the case at all. She was sued by cattle manufacturers. These were feed lot people that moved cattle

by the tens of thousands through feed lost. This wasn't Joe Rancher out here cow pokin and you know feeding this cattle agricultural industrial complex. It was big business, big business. And she made a comment about beef and cattle futures went limited down on the Chicago Board of Trade that day, which equals billions of dollars. And so she was sued um unjustly in my opinion, and so they took her to trial in federal court in Amarillo, and um, not a great place to be. Not a great place to be.

I remember just as the trial was starting, she leaned up to me and said, UM, I don't see any peers over there. I don't I don't see black jerors. I don't see anybody over there looks like me. And that panel derived income directly or indirectly from the beef industry, then why couldn't you move to have the trial relocated? Because the judge said, no, oh, I hate that. So did I think it was unfair to help her? No? I didn't think it was unfair to help her. And

we worked on that. We we tried that case several times to figure out what that configuration of facts were. And um, we worked on it for two and a half years before trial. And then when it went to trial, we all lived in a bed and breakfast. Uh myself, Oprah, chip Babcock law, you're extraordinaire. Um. Her executive producer Stephen was there. Some We lived in a bed and breakfast town on the edge of town for a couple of months.

Like the sister, I never wanted. But if you're going to have an extra sister, Oprah is a great one to have, right, So we lived together out there and tried that for a couple of a couple of months and ultimately you prevailed. We zeroed them out. Yeah, we zeroed them out, and uh we had a great We had some great times during that. We have a state dinner to celebrate, No, we had port dinner to celebrate,

but we used to. We used to go from the bed and breakfast to the courthouse and we had to put a this big tent up over the portice here because there were death threats when we were in cattle country, and so there was a lead car and then a bulletproof car, and then a chase car and we left

to load. And many a day and nobody knows this, so it's a little but many a day that motorcade would pull in there and it would be this big flurry and everybody would jump in and zoom off the court and about five minutes later, Oprah and I would go out the back door and get in my rented Toyota and we would pull out and drive around Ambarillo and go through the mall and look around exactly hang out,

do you do you think Oprah should run for president. Uh. I think she is a wise woman that has uh much more knowledge of international affairs and geopolitics than people would ever imagine. Whether she should run or not, you know, that's up to how much sacrifice she wants to make. But uh, she certainly is better prepared than some and you'd vote for I would vote for her because I know how well she prepares, I know how smart she is,

and I know how sincere she is. So you published the first of nine best selling books soon after you worked with Oprah, and so many of your books deal with the challenges families face, especially married couples. We talked about the amazing marriage you and Robin have. Um, Katie and I are both married. Obviously, I don't think anyone made that misunderstanding. So what are your top three or four pieces of advice on developing or maintaining a happy marriage.

I think what you know. First off, preparation, Yeah, I think everybody should go through premarital counseling, and by that I mean work out what the challenges are going to be ahead of time. You need to figure out where you both stand with your expectations on family, children, finances in laws, religion, geography, division of labor, all of those things. Um, I don't think you should ever get married till you're

uh intended has had the flu. I mean if you don't see them, if you don't see them in their worst possible light, you don't see them throwing up and sick. And I mean you got to see them not on a marriage is not a date. It's not three sixty five dates put together, and that's a year. You got to see them in their most unflattering light. But you certainly need to go through marital counseling. And you know, it's not what happens in life that upsets people. It's there.

It's violating their expectation of what was supposed to happen in life. If you go into marriage and you think it, know, my wife's going to meet me at the back door every day with a martini and a big smile on her face or wrap, Yeah, exactly like every evening in my house my husband is you know, he's just gonna

take me out dancing everywhere. Look, and then you get in a marriage and you have a division of labor, you have to go on a budget, you have kids getting you up at night, you're gonna think, oh my god, this is horrible and you're going to label it a failure. But if you expected those things to happen and then they do, you go, yeah, this is about what was we expected. We're doing okay. So you have to have

realistic expectations. Really important to to talk about money, I think before you get married, because I think that is the number one divider of couples. And to have a really good understanding about people's priorities and how they feel about money, their relationship with it. I think is is something that people feel uncomfortable discussing. But not that I'm putting my doctor Phil had on, but it seems to

me really really important. If you talk to the American Bar Association family lawyers and asked them what are the number one reasons people show up for divorce that's on the short list? You know, money, sex, parenting. These are things that people clash about because they didn't work it out to begin with. And you know, another big thing is if you have to stop being all of who you are to behalf of a couple, bad deal, bad deal.

You gotta let your partner be who they are. And if they've got to stop being who they are to be half of the couple. The cost is too high.

I couldn't agree more. But I also think a big problem I've suddenly become a marriage counselor is that when you take your partner for granted, right when you sort of stop trying, when you get lazy when you I mean, I find like, you know, you have to try to look decent when when you're married and take care of yourself and um, you know, sometimes I find that I fall in that trap that I'm like, I can't believe

my husband is still married to me. But the way I kind of I'm just a hot mess some of the time and I don't think he cares most of the time. But I think you you have to keep trying, I guess is what I'm trying to say in in a clumsy way. You know, a relationship, any good relationship, is going to be based on a solid underlying friendship. And what a friends do. Friends talk to each other. They tell each other jokes, they laugh, they share their day.

And you'll see a married couple that will pass each other in the hallway, uh, or they're out at dinner and they're not talking to each other that makes that breaks my heart. But then you see each of them go to work and they see somebody in the hall, they go, hey, good morning, how's it going. What did you do last night? They'll put their social mask on and put an effort in at work with somebody that they won't do at home. At least do at home what you will do at work. You sound like my

husband to John Mulner, have you married a wise man? John? Stick with it said to return to our episode of this is your Life, Dr Phil. So you became a regular on oprah Show, and then with her help, you developed your own show. And you know, I told a couple of people I was going to talk to you, and one thing that came up is how much of your show is entertainment and how much of it is psychological treatment? I mean, how do you think about that question? Well, let me I have to stop you for a second

because you you glossed over that real quick. You said, with her help you started your own show. Yeah, with their help I started own show. Um, I was at five years on the Oprah Show. And she was the most generous spirited person. I mean, you know a lot of people wouldn't be that way. Uh, Particularly when I enjoyed success and there were rating spikes and stuff like that, she would just keep just pushing me to the forefront, pushing me to the forefront, pushing me to the forefront.

There were times when I would be on the show, she would just go sit out in the audience and put a little table next to her chair and get some hot tea and say, this is what are you gonna do today? I mean, there's nothing. She she did everything she possibly could to establish Dr Phil as a brand, as a personality, just the most generous, supportive person you could ever be. That's so nice. You know, you're right.

Many people would be like, wait, he's getting higher ratings, get rid of them, And I mean, we're I talked to her all time. I was just with her last week. We spend lots of time together. Um now, so I just had to Yeah, then your next question. I've been asked this a lot, usually intended as an insult. I don't take you so, I don't take you that as asking it that way. I get ask it as an insult by people saying a lot of what you do is entertainment. That's kind of how I get ask it.

So UM. And my answer to them is God, I hope so, UM, Because if I don't present stories in a compelling way, if I don't present scenarios in a way that really get people intrigued and involved, They're gonna go do something else. So I do try to present things in a in a way that is interesting and compelling. UM. How much of it is entertainment versus psychological treatment? I hope it's all entertaining. None of it is psychological treatment, UM. I think of it is education, And I think of

every guest I have as a teaching tool. UM. And when I say it's not psychological treatment, I mean I'm never under the misapprehension and I'm doing eight minute cures up there in segment to UM, people ask me sometimes, you know, Dr Phil, do you think problems are as simple as you make them out to be. I don't think problems are simple at all. I think they're often very layered. I think they're often often co morbid. I think they occur in parallel with different disorders happening at

the same time. I think the solutions are often very simple. I think we make the solutions too complex. Sometimes it's it's kind of the old Joel. If you go the doctor and says it hurts when I raise my arm like this, and he said, well think quit raising your arm like that. You know your fix. Give me ten dollars to go home. Sometimes there are two pathways you can go when you look at helping someone have a

better life. You can go down a psychiatric pathway, a mental illness pathway, or you can go down to behavioral pathway. And a lot of times you can behave your way to success. You can manipulate your environment to success. And then there are other times where you have a brain imbalance, you neurotransmitters are disrupted, you need some biochemical replacement therapy

something of that nature. Um. But a lot of times the solutions you've you've just got in a situation where you're rewarding bad behavior or you're not requiring enough of yourself. Sometimes the solutions are pretty simple when you step back and think about them, but the problems can be very complex. It must be challenging though at times, because you want things to be interesting, you want them to be educational and also entertaining. But do you ever worry that you're

being exploited? And that to me would be something that would be in the back of your mind. I know that. You know, we all get criticized when you're in the public eye. But but you've been criticized for a couple of things, like the having Shelley Duval on the show when she was clearly having some serious mental issues, or you know, are there other circumstances when you thought, maybe I went over the line, maybe this wasn't the best use of my skills, or maybe I did exploit this

individual more than I should have. You know, I could tell you that there's I have never done a show where I was insensitive to that or decided I'm just going to do that. I don't care what. UM. I think. There have been times when I've looked back and thought there was there might have been a better way to have done that, or there it might have been better

to not to have done that at all. So sure, I mean, I've probably done eight thousand guests, and there were probably a handful of them that, UM, if I had it to do over again, I would have done

it in a different way or not done it at all. UM. But we approached the these guest I think very thoughtfully, and we have a real policy in the way we approached it, like, for example, we won't book anybody that's currently in therapy unless we contact their therapist explain what the show is about, what we're gonna do, and get their permission in writing, or we don't book. Not one

time in sixteen years. And there have been some therapists that have said no, and we agreed because they said there's something you don't know, and here it is and said there's something you don't know we can't tell you. Yeah, that's what I mean. There said there's there's some things you are not aware of. But you know, I have an advisory board on Dr Phil that's made up of the top minds in psychology, psychiatry, sociology, medicine, theology, nursing.

A lot of these are editors of the PERI review journals and stuff, and if I have a particularly complex case, I'm able to send this out to them and get their input and feedback. So we have a check in balance system and so we really are very thoughtful about it. Not always right, of course, um, but we're really mindful of it and try and do a good job. But are we perfect? Of course not. Was there is there any one that sticks out in your head where you think, Gosh,

in hindsight, I regret that. You know, most of the things that I regret are things I didn't do rather than things we did. Like, for example, there was a show recently where um, a really defiant team said she was talking about something and she said, oh, that girl is such a retard, and UM, that's just so offensive to my sensibilities. I mean, that's like an F bomb to me. And then something else happened, and I was going to go back and call her on that and

make certain that people know I don't endorse that. It's not okay to say that something else happened. I got distracted. Next thing, I know, the show is over and I realized I let that go by. I didn't. I let her get away with that and implicitly indorsed it. I let that happen, And I hate that. I mean, I really hate that. You couldn't have done it at the end or done a little add on. I think we did. I think we did afterwards. But you know, you should

have called her right there. I should have stopped what was going on right there and said, don't given how much care you put into the show, and as you just described, Phil, it must really stick in your craw when you get criticized by some of these folks. Like a sociologist from Middlebury named Laurie Essek. She has said, quote, Dr Phil is the modern day equivalent of the Victorian

freak show. Things are packaged as educational and medicinal, but they are really just excuses to show off the most vulnerable people in our society and make us feel better about ourselves. A Victorian freak show. Yeah, I didn't know Victorian's head freak show. I think what she's sort of alluding to is sort of during the Victorian era when there would be circuses with you know, the bearded lady or you know that kind of thing. I mean, that's

sort of what I took it as. Yeah. Yeah, I'm one of those people that doesn't feel the need to be loved by strangers. And of course you want everybody to love you, and well you want them to respect you.

And this wasn't very respectful. And oh, promise you if that person came and spent thirty days with us here and came home with me on Monday night and went through the two hundred and fifty page book that I have for Tuesday Morning show and looked at the cross sectional history, the longitudinal history, the medical history, the career history, the interviews of collaterals that we do to verify everything, the research section on O C D. If that's what

the show is about, or anxiety, neurosis or whatever. UM went through everything that we do to prepare for that show. Um, I think she would be embarrassed to say what she's said. And the difference is I am here Monday night. I do go through that book, so I do know what we do and how seriously we take it. Uh, So I don't give my power away to somebody that doesn't know what's going on. On a different topic, I'm curious

your reaction to this. For years, there was something called the Goldwater Rule preventing psychiatrists and psychologists from diagnosing politicians from afar. This started when a bunch of people in that profession did this to Bury Goldwater when he was running for president. And yet a number of very prominent, respected psychiatrists and psychologists have not met with Donald Trump,

but they've said he's delusional, he's paranoid, he's narcissistic. I mean, do you think these people should just shut up about their concerns. Or do they, as they believe, have a duty to warn the public about what they believe is president dangerousness. Well, that's a compound question with about five different parts, so let me take them one at a time. Uh,

they don't have a duty. The Tarasoft decision is very specific about the duty, and in order for them to have a duty, there has to be a specific threat against an individual that they consider to be legitimate and at that point they have a duty to warn either the police or the individual. Um. And that Tarasoft decision is a California decision, and that certainly is not the case with Donald Trump. So there's no duty for them

to warn. Now they may feel like they have a moral duty, but that's in violation of the canon of ethics that they swore an oath too when they went into practice. Um, you you cannot diagnose someone from a far And if you took all of the transcripts from my shows across sixteen years and you did a word search on I cannot diagnose you here, it would probably

come up a thousand times. Because I want to make it very clear, they haven't even met him, and I'm sitting there with the person, and I say, I can't diagnose you here. To do so, I would have to do very elaborate interview, probably a set of psychometric tests, um, maybe some lab work. I mean, there would be a lot of things I would have to do that I can't do here in forty two minutes and eighteen seconds between commercial breaks. You can't do that. Now. They haven't

even met him. I have met him many times, um, and I again, I can't diagnose him, m Um. What they can say is, generally speaking, I observe behaviors that caused me to be concerned about what he might be capable of doing. They could say, I can't diagnose him, but if I was going to, I can tell you the short list of my considerations would include narcissistic personality, impulse control disorder, UM, paranoia. You know, they might say that these are things that would be on my short list.

Because the diagnostic process is a differential diagnostic process, you start wide and go narrow, right. I think they kind of have done that with those caveats. I don't think they've said, without a doubt, he is a malignant narcissists. I think they have use those caveats, but they have said pretty much in certain terms some of them have Yeah, but but do you so you you don't have a problem if people say this behavior seems to me to be consistent with blah blah blah. I think anybody can

opine about someone else's behavior. I think when you're a professional that opining has it is going to be looked at, uh differently. So I do think they need to make those caveats. Um. I've been asked to I think he's a narcissist, UM, and I've said, well, here are the diagnostic criteria. Make up your own mind, you know, let people make up their own mind. I mean, his behavior is certainly out there for people to see, but I don't think anyone really is in a position to know

it all is going on with him. I think we can say that his behavior is certainly a typical for a statesman. Do you worry about his behavior? Philm not only is this psychologist, but also as as an American? UM? I did not in the beginning, And I'll tell you why. I've always thought of the president as being kind of

a committee function. I mean, didn't you really think there's checks and balances around a person like this, There's going to be a chief of staff, and there's gonna be secretary, there's gonna be a people around that if somebody starts

going a little rogue, they're gonna, okay, hey, come here. Um. I don't have that feeling anymore because it seems like they're rotating in and out of there so fast and and are so subject to being fired that I don't have, uh, the sense that there is a check and balanced system. I don't mean executive, legislative, judicial, I mean just a dam yeah, yeah, just a dynamic inside there that somebody can say, let's pump the brake here and and think

about this, because I don't think. It doesn't appear to me that there are people in that inner circle where there's mutual respect. Maybe there is, and we don't hear about them, but I don't have the same comfort level that I did before. He's kind of gotten rid of the guardrails, seems to me. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about before we leave and end up spending the night here is the me Too movement.

You know, you've watched this unfold and it's been a real awakening for a lot of people about gender and about sort of workplace equality, etcetera. And I would love to get your views on this movement and if there's anything about it that concerns you. Well, I hope that people don't think that this is a Hollywood phenomenon, because we've been doing shows for sixteen years about this power abuse with people from Omaha and Spokane and Cleveland working

on assembly lines and in all kinds of jobs. And you know, we always say rape, for example, is not about sex, it's about power. And you know, it always gets headlines when pretty people have problems, when famous people have problems, and that's not a bad thing. I mean, if a really famous person, a beautiful woman or a handsome guy, contracts a disease or whatever, and it draws a lot of attention to disease, like rock cuts in with aids very I mean, that's that can be a

really good thing to move the needle of awareness. But this is happening in school systems all over the country. It's happening in factories all over the countries, and grocery stores and everywhere that there's a hierarchy, these kinds of things can happen. And I just hope that that awareness doesn't limit itself to just being a media phenomenon in high profile situations. I hope people realize that it's it's

more than that. What would you say to men who seemed confused by this and to other people who are worried that all bad behavior is being lumped into one big bucket it? Yeah, you know, what I hear from a lot of men is that they're taking extreme precaution and saying I just simply would rather have a male

secretary or a male assistant or whatever. And I hope that doesn't create a backlash that causes um that hurts women ultimately exactly, that causes young women to be left out of meetings, left out of dinners where deals might be made if something is being negotiated sometimes at a dinner meeting or something, or a position is being filled and there there's a backlash and they're not considered for that position because they're afraid of the exposure. I hear

that a lot too. Yeah, I hope that doesn't happen. But I think the pendulum pendulum is always swing, and they go to extreme and then they tend to settle back in the middle. And I hope that happens. So you've become and I'm not sure how many people know this, like a one man entertainment empire. It's not just your show. It's like MERV Griffin for crying out loud. You've got to start up with your son called Doctors on Demand.

You've got the CBS drama Bull, which was just renewed for a third season, and it's based on your history as a trial consultant. You've got the Doctors on Daytime TV, which you executive produced. Why why are you doing all this stuff? Well, you know, I think, um, I find this to be an intriguing, ummind to be an intriguing industry. And if you know, if you're in, you're in. You know, go do what you're doing. And um, you know, we'll

produce a thousand episodes of television this year. Uh. From Stage twenty nine, we've got another show, Faced the Truth, which starts in September, and we have another drama that will go to air on CBS All Access very soon. And a comic comedy we're working on with Showtime that'll be going very soon. And Stage ty nine is your production. What's what's a comedy on Showtime? The comedy is just terrific. It's based on a true story. It's Women and People

of Color is the title of it. And it is based on a true story of a of a woman that was an African American housekeeper that actually, out of the blue inherits more money than the people she worked for. And so the whole dynamic changes and they start living in each other's worlds and start to discover how different things are. And it's a much more Norman Lear type comedy that I think is going to be really, really great. So one project stood out to me. You executive produced

daily Mail TV one devadd you to do that? It sounds pretty tabloid, phil Uh. Daily Mail is the most Um it's the most widely read English language website in the world, right and they file nine hundred to a thousand stories a day, what percentage on the Kardashians and a fair amount of the Kardashians, But they do a

lot of really human interest stories, um. And they've got so many correspondents around the world, and you have something like this tragic shooting, Um, they really approached that from the human angle, not just the ten thousand foot news reporting. But they'll really be on the ground and talk to the people, and they take a real human interest it's not all celebrity and it's just really human interest stories.

And we've worked with them a lot over the years, and so they really wanted to have a television UM component to it, so they approached us, and UM we approached them about that, and then they came back to us and said, we want to do it with with you guys, and so we started UM last year and we shooted in New York out of w p i X and Jesse Palmer's our host. And it's going really really well. So to wrap things up, gosh, where do we go from here? I guess by asking you where

do you go from here? Phil? I mean, do you think you'll ever retire? Your sixty seven right? Yes? And playing tennis every day on the tennis court right down the path in the backyard. UM, you know, is there anything you'd like to do that you haven't done yet? Uh? You know, I don't know. It's probably something I don't know about. But UM, I am so blessed in that I have the opportunity to work with both of my

boys every day. UM. Jay is uh involved in television and production and then he has a number of companies Silicon Valley based, and um, he travels around a lot. But I have an opportunity to work with him every day. And my son Jordan, who's a musician, I work with him in the music business. So I get to see and or talk to them at least three or four times a week. And I mean, how lucky is that? And we laugh and have a great time, and I love that. And I bet they teach you to mentoring.

Where can you tell you? They're the world is so different? And there you know, Jay works with all these venture capitalists in the Silicon Valley and and all in uh George in this music business with Spotify and all these things that I know nothing about, and he's really great at I learned so much from them. But that's what will keep me from ever retiring, is just having the chance to work with both of them and have a good time. And UH love having those grandkids over here.

They don't live far away, so we get to have them. So I'm having a good time. So as long as I'm healthy and feeling good, I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing. And if you have to offer one piece of advice to our listeners. What would that be? You know, I think we all have a personal truth, that's what we really believe about ourselves when nobody's looking in no ways listening. I'm gonna talking about the social mask. We all put that on and go out there every day

and put our best foot forward. But we all have a personal truth, and I think it's so important to know what that is because we generate the results in life we think we deserve. And I grew up with a really damn each personal truth because my dad was an alcoholic. We were poor, utilities were getting turned off, and you know, violence in the home and you feel

like second class. And if you have a damaged personal truth, you got to admit it and work on repairing it because you want to generate good things in your life. And days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months and months turn into years and you look back and say, you know, why did I settle for less than I really wanted? And I think people do that a lot.

So I really encourage people to really, if they've got things about themselves that bother them, admit it, put it on your to do list, fix it, and watch what happens in your life when you do well. That's a nice way to end. Dr Phil, Philip, Phil mc graw, Well, Katie, we're gonna have to keep meeting like this. We've been doing it for a long time. It's so fun. You're you're such a pleasure to talk to and to listen to. Well,

thank you, guys, I appreciate it. A huge thank you to Phil and Robin McGrath for hosting us in their extraordinary home, and my usual thanks to the stitcher folks who helped make this show happen. From soup to nuts, Gianna Palmer that makes me hungry, Nora Richie and Jared O'Connell. Also thanks to our dream team over at Kasey m Katie Kirk Media, Alison Bresnick, Betha Mas and Emily Beena. Katie and I are the EPs of this show. Mark Phillips wrote our theme music. We cherish your ratings and

cherish them. Cherishes the word are you going to sing? Ch cherishes the word, Oh, that wasn't the one. I was thinking of the Madonna one. Cherish cherish and this shows our age difference. I'm singing the association you're singing Madonna. That's true. We're both old. We appreciate everything you do over an Apple podcast, reviews, ratings, etcetera. Please please grab to our show if you haven't already. You get every episode as it comes out, and it helps us spread

the word. We love it when you come back week after week. So that's all for us. We'll be back next week with more from our trip to London. Cheerio,