This is the most dramatic podcast ever and iHeartRadio podcast. Chris Harrison coming to you from the home office in Austin, Texas today. This interview is brought to you by the Wellness Company, which we are going to talk about here in just a little bit. A great endeavor that doctor Drew is involved with. Doctor Drew Pinsk is a legend board certified physician internal and addiction medicine. Obviously, he's a
popular television host Loveline. He's been around for decades. I met him in the late nineties when I first came to LA and started hosting The Bachelor and was on Loveline. I have so much to doctor Drew about his connection to The Bachelor. A question I've never asked him before and joining me now is doctor Drew. It's good to see you again.
You as well. You're looking well, Everything cool with you?
Where are you Austin, Texas? Like a few of our friends headed east No.
I was going down there every six weeks to do a weekly streaming or YouTube podcast for your mom's house, and so I got very familiar. I did that for like three years. I got very familiar with us.
It's a great Austin's a great, great town. We've been here for a couple of years now and I absolutely love it and it has It's been a healthy lifestyle down here. You just have to try and stay away from the kso and the Fijiitas every day. But other than that, the barbecue. The barbecue will do it to you. I'm so by the way, there's so much I want to talk to you about.
Good.
I realized that I was kind of prepping for this. I was thinking, was like, man, I've known doctor Drew for two decades. I don't know if you remember the first time we met was I'm assuming you were on the world famous k Rock with Corolla back in the day and we were doing love Line or you were doing love Line. I would come in. That's right when The Bachelor started.
Yep, And I remember that. That was the mid to late nineties and we were actually I think we were in Culver City at that time, but k ROK was our local affiliate. Yeah, there's that, and Loveline was on MTV back in those days also, if you remember, Yeah, and Corol and I still do a podcast. Once you and I finished our conversation, I got to rush out to his studio and talk to him.
You're a glutton for punishment. Still, I know, I know it's crazy, but after twenty years of knowing you, there's there's a question that I have never asked you. And I'm curious about this because you may not have even known. Did you know or were you up for the role of host of the Bachelor?
No one, not that I recall. Is that is that something that you heard?
I because this is when I got into it. This is would have been like May of ninety nine, early two thousand when I when I got on you know the list. There was always a list, and when I got down to the final four, I said, you know who else is on this list? They named a couple of guys and they said doctor Drew. And at this point I had never met you. I only knew of you and obviously Love Line and all that, and I thought, hysterical, I said, you know what, that makes a hell of
a lot of sense. He's hosting love Line, So it makes sense of why you were on in that spectrum of why you would clearly they win a completely different direction of the type of post of not getting a doctor and someone who had any really skill set but they they told me back then that you were a part of the final four.
Isn't that something? I didn't thank you for telling me that. I don't think I knew it, But I remember when you came on being sort of confused by the whole notion of this is what it was and how this worked?
Oh totally.
There was a lot of stuff in my head around reality television. I'm going to do what? And then how does that work? So I'm not sure if I'd been asked a host, if I would have understood what I was being asked to do, I'm sure I wouldn't know. I'm certain I.
Would I got I'm so thankful. I had that dumb look on my face, as we all did in the early two thousands when we were inventing reality TV. But I happened to run into Jeff Probs at of All Things Celebrity Dodgeball and he had a survivor had been on for like six months, and I met him and I just walked up and I said, Hey, you know, my name's Chris Harrison. I'm hosting this new show. This is the basic outline of it. Can you give me any sort of insight as to what the hell this is?
And he said, you know, all I can tell you is you will. It's not like, you know, I was a newscaster, sportscaster, I'd done all that stuff sports radio, but this was a whole different animal. And he kind of explained to me, you'll find your sea legs, and no show is going to be the same, Like what I'm doing on Survivor is kind of game show host story,
Yours is going to be totally different. So that talk actually really kind of helped me figure my way and start my way on The Bachelor, which I kind of, you know, made my own after twenty.
Years, which is interesting. And Jeff is such a great guy, I mean, a good guy, truly a good guy, and so I'm not surprised he gave you something meaningful. The what I'm curious from your standpoint, what how you perceive reality television? I did you know I was. I've been involved with it too, in many different ways. It's always kind of confusing to me. It feels like it's many different things. Like Jeff said, it's hard to call it one thing. But what as it was evolving, what did
you imagine you were doing? Did how did that affect you.
You know what I mean, Yeah, no, and that and you you kind of hit the nail on the head. It's many different things. And I always tell people when I speak at schools or whatever, I say, you have to think of a spectrum. You know, this is not black and white. It's not reality TV or not. There is this huge spectrum that is reality TV. And there are the the game shows where like Jeff Probes and Survivor are Dancing with the Stars. There's very heavy standards
and practices. There are lawyers because there's money involved, and so that's that's a different animal into itself. Then there's you know some shows I'm not going to name anybody, but they're one hundred percent scripted. You know, they you set up the scene, they know what they're going to talk about. They you know these people that a lot of it's the bio you know, the type lifestyle shows
where they're following these people around. Nobody's that interesting. Let's be honest, even the Kardashians in and of themselves their daily lives, they're not that interesting. You have to create, you have to produce. And then there's a show like The Bachelor, which I always said fell in the middle, because what we did so well was produce that fish bowl environment that you had to live within. So it wasn't a surprise that Doctor Drew and Adam Carolla, who
hated each other, were on the same date. Now, what happened within that date that was reality TV. We didn't tell you what to do. But there's a reason that you guys both like the same girl and hated each other and you're together.
Yeah. And there's even another category which I participated in, which they generally call sort of therapeutic category, which is you you come in and just let the cameras roll and you just you and it's it still has the oddity of and this I'm I want to ask you about this. This is one of the odd things about Well, it's it's an odd experience because you're having these very intimate encounters and there is a camera guy, a cable guy, a sound guy over here, the same thing behind you.
As soon as there's at least six people, maybe nine in the room with you. A odd how quickly you forget they're there. That's so odd to me. And that's number one, and then number two, there's something about the environment of reality shows that makes everything intensified. Did you experience that? Oh? No.
I always said TV and reality shows they don't change you. I think they just exponentially magnify who you are or what you are.
But I don't know why. I couldn't. I couldn't explain why. I just always aware of it. Maybe it's because everybody's sort of the lights or the cameras. Something about it gets everybody going.
I think it's what you see. So, you know, we always had the this. I always said, Look, if you're a good guy, you know, like doctor Drew, you'll come off like the greatest guy in the world. If you're kind of a snarky pain in the butt, you really come off like a villain. It's really magnified magnificently.
You know.
I always say, you know, these people on the show, they're not that bad, you know, the quote unquote villains. But the other thing is TV really magnifies things, for example, religion. Religion's a very touchy subject. And I was told and it's kind of true, if you say the word Jesus Christ, that really has a powerful punch. And if you say Jesus Christ once in a conversation, it's like you've said
it twenty times. Oh yeah, And so there's just ways that TV magnifies things because it has like viceral reaction. And I remembered that specifically about religion when we would cover it on the show, and it's like, well, we don't you know, they don't need to say it so much because once they say it once, it just has that impact. And I found that fascinating. And again you would have to dive into the psychology of it, which is why I love TV so much. Yeah, what is
that psychology? And is that when we hear certain things or see certain things, it really is magnified in our minds.
I don't know that anybody it's really and it's very specific to television. Obviously, there are certain things that pack a punch in the human psyche, and religion, of course, is one of these things that is deeply meaningful in various ways for people. And you know, I've over the years talked to people about television and they will say things like, well, you're you're going into people's living rooms and bedrooms and you're there with them. It's something more
than that. I don't it's no one's ever really studied I studied the kinds of people that go into these shows. I get that all documented.
I think we have this voyeuristic you know, I know the Bachelor is it's we all want to judge. You know, you look at society, you look at social media and why it's so popular. We want to flip through and just judge everybody's pictures and lives and yeah, cancel them or not or put them in the box. That makes
us feel good about ourselves. And I think reality TV was that first initial kind of social you know, societal kind of idea where we can sit on our couch with our pint of chunky monkey and judge, and we love that voyeuristic thing. It makes us feel better about ourselves maybe or it also makes us envious. It makes us feel all those emotions. It's very It really is interesting.
How then you see social media now and how now kind of reality TV has struggled a little bit because it's not as impactful as social media.
Is, right, that's exactly right. It is all kind of and look when when humans watch plays and all the way back to Greek tragedy, right, these aren't healthy people acting healthy. It's always sick people being sick. Yeah, and so and and reality does a and I don't mean that pejoratively. I mean, you know, it's just that it you know, it's healthy people. What's the what did tools do? I say, you know, healthy families are all healthy in the same way, but dysfunctional families are all dysfunk on
their own unique way. And it's those stories that get us. Yeah. I am not been a fan of rally television until the pandemic and then I got wrapped into ninety Day Fiance and my.
Wife loves that. You did Special Forces.
I did Special Forces and that was that was a great experience.
They asked me to do it. I'm really curious, You're really curious about your experience on it.
That's another show where they just let the cameras roll. You don't see producers, you don't even see cameras ninety percent of the time. They just they just put you in there and that's enough. Shit will go down. Trust me.
I would like to think of myself as athletic and can handle that. But I'm like, yeah, okay, doctor Drew went down with you know, heat, exhaustion and dehydrations. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, I don't know if I want my ass kick that much.
So how do you mind? If I ask gold you are fifty two, Yeah, you're you're They shouldn't have people in their sixties in there. That's what I've decided because your relationship with the environment is quite different. Because I I really was ready for it, and it was not The physical part did not bother me at all. I mean a little bit. Obviously it's rough, but but that was an issue. It was the environment that just took it tole on me and that was it and I
was out. I was I was confused. I can't always tell people. I want to create a T shirt that says Jamie Lynn Spears saved my life because she's the one that when I when I got in cephalopathic, I was kind of out of my mind. I didn't know where I was. She grabbed me, she goes, you don't look right, come with me, and dragged me into the medical office.
Wow, Jamielyn Spears saves DOOC. That's the headline. Saves doctor Drew.
She did. She did.
Doctor Fauci testified in front of the House Subcommittee.
Yeah.
I have to get her because I know I've I've listened to so many interviews from you, what was your take.
So it's a little complicated, so let me try to lay it out. Yeah. It made me reflect on the fact that back in the AIDS epidemic, I relied on doctor Fauci and the CDC so much, and they were wonderful. They were guides, they were led us through it, helped us, advised us. They did not tell us what to do.
They were advisory, as the CDC has always been. And so when this pandemic hit, one of the things you will not see in the various videos of me telling people to calm down at the end of every one, I would say, just listen to Fauci, listen to the CDC. And that was actually the only thing I got wrong. They turned out they went sideways in a weird way
that I was just astonished. I couldn't believe it. And some of the things he was saying yesterday were sort of disturbing in their lack of insight into the impact he had. That kind of bothered me, particularly when he was asked about the lab leek hypothesis. I thought about all the people that were crushed under his direction for even entertaining the idea, and his words, specifically that it
was just another shiny object. He expected it to go away. Now, the reality is he said he was open minded during the whole thing. He was. I've seen documentation of how he helped to try to come to an understanding where it came from. He was open mind, that is true, but he also said things that really affected the practice of medicine and other people. So that bothered me. But the part that bothered me even more was that there were no good questions. The only good question was that
er doctor who laid out his story. But I came away thinking, oh no, this is probably because all these guys are encumbered with contributions from research organizations and pharma organs, so they can't ask the real questions. And that was the most troubling part for me. We really need to understand what happened. I am not in favor of it being a criminal of all this you know, Nuremberg talk,
because then we'll never find anything out. People will just go into their camps and hide, and they'll defend themselves to the death because they should. I want to know what happened. I want to know what we got to do to prevent this from happening again. And that's all that really.
Matters, and any which medically because you think of medicine and doctors and scientists. And when Fauci was like, I am science, I represent.
Science, it's not good.
And then he will literally say in the next breath, I don't know where social distancing came from. It just appeared. And what a silly thing to say, you know where it came from, obviously, I So I made.
It my business. I do a show, a streaming show on Tuesday Wednesday Thursday at three o'clock on Mumble and other YouTube called Ask Doctor Drew, and early on I started interviewing people who had been canceled because they all were like consummate professionals people. I admired that why are they canceling those guys? Right? They must got to understand
what happened there. In every single one of them, I learned it least one profound insight and one a guy named Paul Alexander was there when the six foot distancing thing came in, and he objected to it and questioned it and tried to understand. Took talk to the CDC leaders and his input was they felt they they knew it was probably thirty to sixty feet that they should be maintaining and they needed to do something. Now, needing to do something, in quotes, is the most dangerous thing
you can ever hear from medical provider. When my residence, when I was training, residents would say, when I asked them to defend a choice they made and they said I needed to do something, I would destroy them. That is how you harm patients, That's how you do it. So needing to do something is an egregious statement. And B he also told me this was really interesting. He
only recently told me this. That the middle level management at the CDC, the bureaucrats, the lifelong bureaucrats, decided that they were going to make sure this happened, and the leadership be damned, and they were the ones that forced it. And the leadership of the CDC could not handle the middle and lower management who was demanding that they do this based on no science. There was no science, There never will be science. There is no such term as
social distancing. They sort of added it to lockdown language. Six feet was invented out of thin air, and it probably did well. It certainly did nothing except disrupt Again, think about it, what you had to stand in the corners of elevators, like, what is that going to do?
It has left such a scar on a generation and so oh my god, and predictably and you look at you look at what happened to our kids, and how this it shut down businesses, it shut down school. So it's like we kind of I'm not saying, I'm not saying he laughed it off, but I agree.
What really I.
Felt was missing with him was the gravity of his decision making. And I would love And again, I don't want to see him strung up. I don't want to see him out jail. No, but I would love for him. And I know we'll never get this, but just say, hey, god, we made some mistakes. It was such a traumatic, chaotic time. Yes, we thought this was happening, but man, did we make some mistakes. We got to learn from this. Like, that's what I want my doctors and my scientists to say, one hundred percent.
And what keeps me up at night is that they were able to do this to us and we haven't put anything in place to prevent it from happening again.
Yeah, that's not what I want My doctor, especially my lead doctor and scientists who's you know, the face of our country in the face of medicine. That part, to me is horrifying.
That was never his job. He was a research grant organizer, he was he was a advisor. He was worked in conjunction with the CDC who made recommendations to us. The fact that the state governments took that is thus saith the Lord. That's the disgusting part. That's where things went off the rail. And the fact that they kept things closed. I kept saying early on that we were sacrificing eight to fifteen year old just sacrificing them and two years
of school closure in this county ridiculous. I want to transition, if you don't mind, over to the Wellness Company, because police is also a response to this. You know doctor Kelly Victory, who's on our medical board also, and she's been a friend of mine for quite some time. She said something the other day that really rung true for me. She goes, you know, we are helping people get access to these emergency kids and travel kids that fulled with
antibiotics and medication. I mean things I give to my patients when they travel, for instance, or I have on hand here for my family and she said, you know, five years ago the idea of giving people access to this the way we're doing it with board, with a manual and with telehealth support and backup. She's I'm not sure I would have signed up. I might even have thought it was crazy to do this. She goes, but now, given what they've done, is crazy not to do this.
You have to be ready. And so that's how we framed our TWC philosophy, which is, we give you access to be ready, be prepared, have access, and by the way, in a cost effective way, so you don't have to run to would urgent care pick twelve hundred dollars, You can do it with us very inexpensively. And well we do it. Well.
I have my emergency kit.
I go and when you travel, look at that travel kit.
I wish I'd come up with this idea, because you know, for again, I was shooting the show for twenty years and I had a doctor, and I would he would say the same thing. Look, you're going to Asia, You're going to be over at these in these places. Yeah, I would. I would always travel with zpak. I had antibiotics. I traveled with stuff for my stomach. He's like, immediately.
And so it's funny I had one of these I traveled with just because there's no way, you know, I'm stuck in Thailand or Vietnam, right And so I love that you guys are doing this, and I have the I have an emergency kit from you guys in my house right now.
Good and and I think of it. You know, even if you're going to Spain or France, them you don't know navigate the system. But I started thinking, even our system is so encumbered with nonsense, you can't you can't navigate it either. And so it's really it is a sign of the time that a group of well meaning, well trained physician have gotten to go to do this, and it is a great medical word. People really put some thought into this. So take a look at it.
Well and a matter of you know, because sometimes even if you're well to do and living in America, it can take two or three days before you can jump on something. If you could have started taking a z pak immediately, you'd be done well.
And I do think, like you know, they're making a big deal of this bird flu, which is their three cases now, two conjunctividis, one was respiratory. This means to me that they're monkying with the virus and they're fearful it's getting out in the community. So we added tam flu to one of our kits, which has so owned some activity. The idea with all viruses is early and hard because it's the sequella of the viral infection that
really creates the havoc on our system. Well, Chris is great to talk to you, really.
Doctor Drew Man. Again, I could do this forever. By the way, this interview was brought to you by the Wellness Company. You can visit them online at urgentcarekit dot com. By the way, go to slash Chris to get your kit today because you get fifteen percent off. Again, you can get fifty percent off your kit today at urgentcarekit dot com slash Chris and use promo code Chris and
you can check out everything they have to offer. And by the way, this is for like, this is for UTIs, It's for for everything.
So we've got I've got cool stuff coming. I've got things that when I think about providing these things for people now I think, why have we done this before?
Well goes off.
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff coming in terms of the reproductive health and sexual health that we're going to get into, and like you said, UTI and things that people know how to use. These things, it's it's not you know, it's not a rocket science. So much.
Well, let's let's not wait so long. I would love to get back together again and chatters about so many other things. Do my best to Corolla and it's great to see you again, my friend. To Chris, thanks so much, thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram at the most dramatic pod ever, and make sure to write us a review and leave us five stars. I'll talk to you next time.