Part Two: The Dr. Laura Episodes

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
It's the Doctor Laura podcast, but about her, not hers,
because she also has one, but it's not about her,
although it kind of also is. I'm Robert Evans. This
is a show about bad people. Jamie. Welcome back to
the program. How are you doing today? Are you feeling?

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Thank you?

Speaker 3 (00:21):
I've been on the edge of my seat. I'm wondering.
I mean, like, maybe I'm she seems litigious? Does that
feel right? You know?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
I could. She's got a lawsuit that she made in here.
She's got She's had at least one that was unreasonable,
but she lost and gave up. She will be talking
about a very reasonable over the revenge porn that gets
posted of her. Yes, so uh yeah, that one, although

(00:52):
it doesn't go her way either, So she has a
bad the law.

Speaker 4 (00:55):
I guess even evil people can be angry about revenge.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, I mean, I think we're being pretty fair to
her in here. I'm certainly accusing her of anything other
than being a kind of media person that I think
is unethical. But I still have that right. So yeah,
before we get into the story, Jamie, mm hmmm, is
not who I meant to call out there. Sophie has
a thing to plug.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh yeah, it's hard for we don't have our cameras on.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah. In the last couple of days since we recorded this,
my family lost our family dog, Sydney, who had been
with us for fourteen years, and she was immensely important
to us. She was my mom's soul dog and just
a light and she We're fortunate enough that she got

(01:46):
wonderful end of life care from our vet, but most
people can't afford venary care these days because it's so expensive.
And I just wanted to plug an organization my vet
recommends that does work to help people with who need
hardship support during times when their pets might need life

(02:08):
saving or life enhancing treatments, and that is Paisley Pause
dot org. That's p A I S L E Y
p A W S dot org. The dot org is important.
There's another thing that's dot com, not dot com, it's
dot org. So I just wanted to plug that. And yeah,

(02:28):
Sydney was really special. So hug your best comparison.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, your pets the nice food this time. Yeah, don't
economize on your pets.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Buy them the nice food. Go into debt for your.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Pets, go into debt for your pets. You know, rob
a bank for your pat A lot of people are
doing it this day these days, and it seems like
there's no consequences. So you know, watch the movie, watch
like the first two thirds of Heat, and like the
first I watch like the right six minutes of Reservoir Dogs,

(03:03):
and then don't watch anything else from those movies and
go go rop a bank.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
I would just say Cidy was definitely pro crimes.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
There you go, speaking of crimes.

Speaker 4 (03:13):
John Wick an entire you know, crime in the Interest
of Dogs franchise.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, yeah, people love committing dog crimes. It's not those kinds.
They hate a specific kind of dog crimes.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Going half of Dogs, Paisleypaws dot Org.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
And we're back. We're warmed up, We're ready to you.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yeah, let's lock it in, let's lock it out. When
we left off with this story, Bill Balance again spelled
with two l's, which my spell corrector will never accept.
Made me angry. Microsoftware is a crime against humanity. Bill
Gates should be too, a Volcana.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Clippi will Clippi will pay.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
They all should pay. Bill Ballance and Laura Slashinger had
just met over the radio waves, and he had had
his producer get her number because Bill is a giant creep. Now,
obviously this is the entertainment industry. He is definitely trying
to have sex with her. This is not in a
lopsided relationship entirely, though the power imbalance is. But Laura

(04:23):
seems from the beginning to have been open to the
idea that like, well, this could be how I get
my foot in the door in the radio. So it's
a it's a it's it's it's one of those kind
of situations. And it's also worth noting Laura is at
this point an adult with a master's degree and a
marriage behind her, so that's a choice she can make, right.

(04:44):
It is unclear to me whether she called into that
show at the first place because she wanted to try
and make a name for herself in radio, or if
that only happened the way Bill claims it is. Because
Bill is going to claim that once they have their
relig relationship, because they are, in his words, dating, she
does not use that term for it.

Speaker 4 (05:04):
The truth is, I feel like we have yet to
encounter a credible source in this.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Story, not one, not one good source on the life of.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Doctor Laura's really challenging because you're just like, every time
the new source is introduced, it's somehow less credible than
everyone we've met so far.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, that's that's that's the right way this book goes, right, Yeah,
that's the right way to look at this book. And
part of why I suspect, part of why I'm trying
to suggest that maybe Laura went into this with a
plan is because Bill is a liar, and he is
going to claim that he's responsible for her wanting to
be in radio. And I don't know if I want
to give that to Bill. Doctor Laura is among at

(05:43):
least whatever else you want to say about her, a
pretty like motivated, self directed, rational person. So I don't know,
but but the truth will never be knowable here. The
day after he Laura calls into his show, Bill is
within twenty four hours at her parents home. He describes
her as having what he called a quote thousand watt
goal wing smile, which is not a phrase I've ever heard,

(06:06):
and he claims that he convinced her she was a
star and that she should get into radio. Laura has
backed up aspects of this. Here's how she described their meeting.
He came to my parents' home and sat across the
table from me and looked me in the eye and said,
someday you're going to be an international radio star. He's
in the business thirty five years and he's never done this.

(06:27):
And this is not a pickup line. We're at my parents' house,
for God's sakes. The closest to radio I'd ever been
was turning one on to get the weather report. I
had no interest in it, no designs on it. But
she does after Bill's call, and Bill gives her a
pretty full charm offensive. He takes her to dinner at
Musso and Franks, which is a fancy restaurant in LA
to talk about her future. Wow again, did Bill? Because

(06:52):
also one of the possibilities here is that Bill was
both simultaneously a creep who wanted to hit on a
younger woman and also thought she would be good in radio,
because he actually does like help her make connections in radio.
So I guess several different things are possible here, and
we don't really know which. But it's definitely gross.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
Yeah, definitely gross.

Speaker 4 (07:13):
But you know, in the interest of I don't know,
I feel like so many again, I feel like I'm
coming to doctor Laura's defense.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Fuck, but like she hasn't do anything I think is
wrong here.

Speaker 4 (07:24):
Yeah, no, no, I mean I feel like this is like,
this kind of situation is the source of so many,
so many fraud complexes where I think that two things
are true here, which is, if this man is a
fucking creep and obviously I mean if she was.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Untalented in radio, like in a you know, ethically valueless sense,
she would not be on you know, still, she wouldn't
still be working.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
Yeah, So he wasn't wrong, but he was a pervert.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
He wasn't wrong, but he was a pervert. And again,
there's a lot of unknowables here. But Laura becomes a
fixture at the station after this. She's initially just like
a very regular guest. She makes I think some money
doing that, you know, especially when they like bring her
in to help basically co host episodes or segments. And
she gets as a result of this, because she's on

(08:17):
Bill's show so much, she gets offers I think initially
from the same station, she gets like little jobs. Right
she's not given her own show right away, but I
think she's doing some guest hosting here and there. She's
doing some like announcing she's doing some just whatever kind
of vo they need, right. Bill describes her as not
a natural someone who has mike fright, like is as
scared of the microphone to start, but he says she

(08:39):
develops skill and keeps with it. She certainly gets good
at it. However, you know she started. Where Bill and
Laura's stories largely diverge is that he says they started
sleeping together and we're in a relationship for more than
two years. Laura sort of denies this, but not fully.
And it was the reason why Bill, as I said earlier,

(09:02):
leaks a bunch of her naked photos to a porn website,
which he does in exchange for fifty thousand dollars. Is god, Oh,
he's a real creep. I don't know. I don't actually
know how Richie was. You know, these guys also snorted
all their money back then, so like it's entirely this
man was. This man was a huge radio shock jock

(09:22):
in nineteen seventy one. All of that money went right
into cocaine. Good lord, Yeah, so you kind of have
to go back and forth here. I generally prefer to
build on this stuff. But like Bill sells naked photos
of her and also like letters and notes that she
had written him and signed him, like while they were
seeing each other. Right, He provides all of that to
this porn website and to I think when it becomes

(09:44):
a big deal, but a couple other places, because she
like ignores him at a party and denies that they
ever saw each other, and so he's like, I'm gonna
be a piece of shit, make money and also get
you know, get back at her for not respecting me
or whatever. Like that's the full context of why that
stuff comes out. And it is here that I should

(10:07):
note that while doctor Laura was an adult when this
relationship started with a master's degree, Bill was the same
age as her dad and had served, in fact in
World War Two with her dad, but as a captain
so well not like in the same unit, but like
that's the age gap, right he is, this is like creepy. Yeah,

(10:27):
uh huh. I just want to make just really don't
want to be sleeping on the details of how bad
a person Bill is. I just also don't want to
like infantilize her in this Yeah yeah, the way he
describes their relationship, she slept with him to get her
foot in the door, and then abandon him as soon
as she didn't need him anymore. And if that's what happens,

(10:48):
I'm glad Bill's angry about it, right, I'll say that much,
because he definitely sucks.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
This is also a ship piece of shit, pieces of
shit begetting pieces of shit, but a beautiful story.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
I've heard people allege that like he was basically grooming her.
You know, that's certainly a way to look at it.
Laura does not describe it that way, but we'll never know.

Speaker 5 (11:10):
Now.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
In addition to being a massive creep, Bill gives Laura
some career advice that's going to prove crucial. He wants
her to and this is kind of the biggest impact
he actually does have other than like giving her a
leg up into the business. Is he says, Hey, this
having like professional medical advice people professional therapists and counselors
give advice on people's fucked up lives is going to

(11:32):
be a bigger business and entertainment in the future. You've
already got like this scientific academic background's Laura is at
this point working on her PhD. You should get your
counseling certificate, right, so you actually have a professional credential
to bring to the table because there's going to be
a lot of money in that. And Laura commits to
doing this now. Now, doing this is going to take

(11:53):
like two thousands hours of supervised counseling work. But if
he does it, Bill says he'll make her a regular
like every week on the show, which is like a job.
I don't know how much it pays, but it's like
that's like paying work in the radio, right. Laura Gradually,
as she's doing this, because she's on the show occasionally,
she's doing some guest bits, and she's she's getting her

(12:15):
counselor's license, she starts to kind of like hone in
on what her personality on air ought to be, right,
and she notices she has times when she's nice and
she's like listening to people and she's empathetic, and she
has times because she's kind of an angry person when
she snaps at people and she's just like really shitting
to them. And she starts to learn over the couple

(12:36):
of years that she's doing this, people respond to me
being mean, right.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
People love when and this is a clinical thing. People
love when mommy yells at.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Them uh huh, they do do.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
They love that shit so hard.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
They love that shit to a degree that may damn
the whole species. One day, in the unauthorized biography, Doctor Christie,
Bill's first on air medical expert. This is the guy
Bill's working with before Laura comes in. He says that
he gave Laura the advice to channel her angry Italian
ancestry into her show, okay, and that Laura resisted this,

(13:14):
and so Bill had to make an appeal to doctor
Christie's authority. And this is how Vicky writes it. The
only thing I could think to say was that he
has impeccable credentials, continued balance, He's done so much more.
He was senior advisor to the Shah of Iran. It's
spent several years in the Middle East. He was a
senior analyst for the Rand Corporation. I said, he's lived
a longer life for you. So there's more to talk

(13:35):
about in the introduction.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Wow, what a sentence.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
So I love that. Look, you should really trust this man.
He advised the Shah of Iran. You know how well
that job went for him.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
God, and the fact that the Rand Corporation is like
number two.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yeah, coming onto this show to help us sort out
your personal problems. The psychiatrist who told the czar he
definitely die in a basement. Good stuff. So, while she's
working on her counselor certificate, Laura continued her studies at Columbia,
getting a PhD in nineteen seventy four, which allowed her
to identify as doctor Laura Slashinger both in advertisements for

(14:15):
her counseling business and on air. She would call herself
doctor and then describe herself as a therapist or a
relationship expert, et cetera. And this is something that a
lot of people might have led them to believe that
her doctorate was medical or in any way relevant to
providing relationship with her.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Rift is love this, It's a classic.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
It's a classic. She gets away with it forever. She
is also going to attack colleagues who do the exact
same thing in a way that is so vicious and like,
but also the dedication she puts to it shows that, like, oh,
she knows that this is her weakness, right, she knows
that doctor Laura is way more marketable than Laura, right,

(14:58):
And yeah, it's it's cool. It's cool that she understands
this and recognizes that she has to attempt to nuke
everyone else who does the same thing in order to
protect her position. Here in the late nineteen seventies, while
Laura is starting her career and is now a doctor,
her parents get divorced, and right around the same time,
she cuts Bill off, breaks things off with him, and

(15:21):
starts going independent. This seems to have been partly inspired
by the fact that she met Lewis Bishop, a fellow
teacher at USC and a married man with three children,
the youngest of whom was thirteen. Laura, intrigued by his
sexy shoulders, started hitting on him. She that's her words. Look,
I'm not I don't know Leu Bishop's shoulders are not

(15:43):
mine to comment on.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
Maybe she was attracted to a jacket and she just
didn't realize happened to a lot of.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
People in the nineties. You've seen those jackets.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
I know, it's like these are we're talking, I mean,
we're talking about late century jackets. These are it's the
jacket you want to fuck, and you could save yourself
a lot of trouble by just doing that.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
And that's why you should never put on a jacket
from the seventies. People. I have a lot of people
get pressed.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
One left their husband for that jacket.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
That jacket is thirty percent human reproductive materials.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
There's just something about him.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah, she hits on him. Now again, This guy, Lewis
has three kids, the youngestef who was thirteen. He is
in a marriage. Laura will later claim that she only
started to flirt with him when lou was separated from
his wife Jean. Anonymous colleagues at USC claim she pursued
him while he was still with his wife. Right, And

(16:41):
obviously that doesn't mean that the blame is all on her,
but it does mean that she was fine with hitting
on a guy and fucking a guy who was in
a who was married with kids, and like that is
a thing she will tell people their scum for doing later. Right.
I don't bring that up because I right, I carried
to be a moral paraga on here. I'm just saying
she's going to ship on people for as.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
The same thing she'll judge people for, right.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yes, yes, for doing In fact, we'll judge people for
doing ship that's not even that questionable, right anyway, For
unrelated reasons, Here's a clip from a call to the
doctor Laura Show, Jamie JP, Welcome to the program.

Speaker 6 (17:17):
Hey, yeah, hi with Laura. I had a quick question. Uh,
I've been I've been seeing a Loma for for a
number of years now, and I found I don't know what.

Speaker 7 (17:31):
A number of years means.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
How do you get him?

Speaker 6 (17:35):
Get him?

Speaker 7 (17:38):
Okay, you've been seeing this woman for two years? Are
you shacked up together? Or you go drive to our house?

Speaker 6 (17:44):
No? We we we we you know we we hang
out together with Dontne's and you know.

Speaker 7 (17:51):
Are you shacked up or do you live in two
different places?

Speaker 6 (17:55):
Oh? No, we live in different places.

Speaker 7 (17:58):
Okay, good. Either one of you have minor children.

Speaker 6 (18:04):
I don't she? Uh she has like teenagers?

Speaker 7 (18:08):
And how old are her teenagers?

Speaker 6 (18:11):
I'd rather not. I don't feel like comfortable to say that,
but I just don't want Yeah that's nothing.

Speaker 7 (18:18):
Yeah, I need to know how old they are. And
I don't see how that's going to be a distinguishing characteristic.
Everybody's already recognized.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah, why do you need that?

Speaker 7 (18:31):
They're both sixteen? They're twins.

Speaker 6 (18:32):
Well, no, it's sixteen, seventeen.

Speaker 7 (18:36):
Sixteen and seventeen. Okay, that gives you two years of
dating her. If you want to marry her, you have
to wait two more years until the kids are up
and out. They don't need to deal with you in
the house. That usually doesn't work out very well.

Speaker 8 (18:52):
Okay, So hmmm h yeah, yeah, so that's that's fucked up, right,
because number one, this guy just does not even.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Because you know, what she actually did was get into
a relationship with a married man behind like the back
of the woman in that relationship, and then the family
broke up as a result of that whole thing. Not
putting all the blame on her either, but that was
the situation she was in, right. This guy is just saying,
I want to date this woman who has two sixteen
year olds, and she's like, well, you can't. You can't

(19:25):
marry them or have a serious relationship with her while
they're teenagers, right, because that would disrupt them too much.
And it's like, what about the what about a thirteen
year old in this situation you were in?

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Honestly, she's a gigantic, fucking hypocrite. I'm like more interested
in how like listening to her operate, Like it's it's
the same deal with Bill.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
She like, drill, what's their age?

Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, exactly, Like she's just like a shark looking for
an angle, and like if one angle doesn't pan out,
she will wait for him to talk two to three
more seconds and try the next angle.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
And it's it's just I mean, it's brutal her audience.
One thing they like is scummy men or men who
were you know, weak or something, And so you you
want to first off, it's about getting him off balance, right,
the more things that you can needle him on like constantly,
like he does that this, or she does at the
start of the call where he's like a number of years,

(20:20):
like how many years? Right is it? Because that that
is the most important thing. No, but number one, it
maybe gives her something she can pivot off of later.
And number two, by starting it like that, by like
drilling on him, she's getting him off balance. She's making
him more nervous. Hopefully he'll say something else that she
can drill him into and how he said it right her?

Speaker 4 (20:38):
And for like a first judgment because even when she
when she like takes in the information of two, I
was genuinely unsure which way she was going to go.
Just that whichever way it went, it was going to
be a weird judgment.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, yeah, and I and I think it because it's
like of the issues to have. I don't think it's
reasonable to be like, well, you shouldn't marry someone when
they have teenagers because that will disrupt the team. No, you,
it's your responsibility as an adult in there to not
fuck up their lives. I'll agree with that, but you
marrying their mom is not necessarily that thing, right.

Speaker 4 (21:11):
I feel like this is a part of the show,
I'm sure, but like by the time that interaction was over,
I forgot what, if anything the question was.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Because for some extent, it's about that constant feeling of
like hearing someone who is who who is together attacking
all of these people for being slothful and lazy and
like not you know, yea, these these symptoms of our
degraded modern society and all of its cultural law. Right,

(21:42):
that's a lot of what the people who like this
show get out of it, right, Right, that's good. I
think that that relates to the topic of question.

Speaker 4 (21:50):
Okay, so she is like a manipulative hypocrite.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's kind of a Doctor Laura's story. Okay,
the Doctor Laura's Stora not a good joke not really
a joke.

Speaker 4 (22:02):
Throughout the Robert, I gave you the pity laugh, and
I regret it.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
I appreciate taking it back. I take it back. I'm
sucking it back.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
I'm going to I'm giving great lesson to all of
the men out there, you know, because pity laughs spend
the same as real laughs, which is not very well
stop laughing. That was not a bad one. That was
a joke.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
That was a real one. The first one mis fake
that one. Really, I'm sorry, Sophie.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
I'm going to take joy of that real laugh and
I'm going to take it with me into these ads.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
Oh wow, No, I'm party to something.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Here's Here's is coming after you.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
I have bad news, which might also be good news
for both of you. I know, when each of you
is real laughing and fake laughing every.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
Day I leave that. I've never let myself take that in.
Of course you do.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Oh yeah, all of you?

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Huh and we're back. Ah. What a great time, What
a great time to be alive. Doctor Laura's world.

Speaker 8 (23:19):
So Yes.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
Through the early eighties, Laura got a series of low
stakes radio gigs at small stations. She spent years trying
and failing to break into the mainstream on her own
while in order to make money teaching at USC and
maintaining a private practice. Her first big break was in
September of nineteen eighty three with the nationally syndicated program Breakaway.

(23:40):
Like a lot of shows, they were trying to capture
the success Bill Balance had seen by bringing in a
resident therapist to help gaucket people. Laura does well enough
in this job that soon she is pitching her first
TV pilot for a show called Conflict Wishes. Uh oh,
if only Fraser would have loved this show.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
Fucking dream. I mean, this actually would have been a pretty.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Good episode of Frasher. The idea would be that, like,
people would come to doctor Laura with problems and they
would she would give them advice, they would take it,
and then six weeks later they would come back to
discuss if it had worked. Now, this was not going
to be a real like even in the pilot they
do they bring in actors, which is not abnormal for
reality shows. But when she has a show later, she

(24:25):
will lie about people being actors. So I'm going to
assume it would all of it lies. This doesn't sell,
Laura will continue to try to force her way onto television,
a dream which she does technically succeed at but never
really works out for her. She is a radio star, right.
I found a demo reel, which, to my best knowledge

(24:46):
dates from sometime in the late nineteen eighties to early nineties.
What stands out to me in this video is that
this is a Laura who has not yet become the
person we've heard in the clips that I've played. She
is less aggressive, more nervous, more focused on actually providing
some sort of useful feedback.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
And she's wearing a fabulous brooch.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
She is wearing an ice brooch. And I'm going to
let Jamie play some of this or Sophie play some
of this audio for me. Well, I women write an
apology letter for that.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Hello, Sue, I'll have one.

Speaker 9 (25:20):
I want to know how I can tell my daughter
how far she can go on a date and win.
I began to tell her that.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
Yeah, how old is your daughter?

Speaker 9 (25:30):
My daughter is fifteen?

Speaker 10 (25:32):
Has she been dating already?

Speaker 9 (25:34):
No? Not? I want her to start dating, and I
want to know when to start telling him these things.

Speaker 10 (25:39):
How do you assess your daughter? Do you think she's
a bit shy?

Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (25:43):
She's very shy, very very shy, and I'm afraid that
she needs to know this because I don't want her
to go too far and trying to win acceptance with
the guy.

Speaker 10 (25:52):
Oh so you're it sounds Yeah, I guess I had
a feeling that you were thinking that maybe for her
the sexuality might be a tool for making the connection,
or for communication, or for getting acceptance or approval maya guy.

Speaker 9 (26:05):
Right.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, Now, there's a couple times that are really interesting
about that.

Speaker 10 (26:08):
To me.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
For one thing, you would not find that, I think irresponsible.
That was how a therapist talked to.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
You, right, No, it seems like she was like, uh,
I mean I think she is.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
Oh god, there's so much Fraser. There's so much Fraser
low hanging fruit here. She is always like whether she's
doing a good or a bad job. She's always listening
very carefully. But this was like a non menacing, like
actually instructive kind of listening.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, the question she asked number one, her tone is
not aggressive, and number two, she's clearly not using it
too needle, but to actually get more information, which she
seems to actually process and respond to rather than take
in a separate direction. Right, Like if this was on
her show, she would never say Okay, so it seems
like you think your daughter might be looking at sex

(26:56):
as a way to connect to people, which is a
reasonable and fair way to express a worry about like
a teenager having sex, but without like being judgmental, you're
just saying, I think maybe they see sex as this
and so this, you know, I'm concerned that it might
lead to this or that right in their relationships, as
opposed to oh, she's she wants to shack up because
she thinks that's how you get boys to like you

(27:16):
or something like that would be how Laura would express
it today.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
Right, right, I mean, even the tone that she says
shack up with, like it's just this doesn't feel like
there is an explicit agenda to it, even though it's
like I'm sure that the you know, like advice she's
going to give is like fairly conservative, but like, yeah,
but it doesn't feel malicious in the way that the
first clip did.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
Yeah. Yeah, And it's because it's really not because at
this point she doesn't realize how much money that's going
to make her.

Speaker 4 (27:45):
Right, Yeah, my therapist has a roommate, So that's how
I know she's.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
Good, Yeah, it's interesting, Like it is actually good therapy
advice that she gives. Like later in that call, the
mother discussions that, like, you know, I made a lot
of mistakes when I was her age in regards to relationships.
I'm afraid she's going to repeat my mistakes. And Laura's
advice is very responsible. She's like, well, you should go
to your daughter. You should open up about your own

(28:11):
life and how you feel about the choices you've made
and kind of maybe that can guide her to like
where you are right. And I like, yeah, that's actually
good advice, you know, not just yelling at your kid,
not just saying you're not allowed to do this, but
be like, well, look, you know this is what happened
to me when I was young, Like this is maybe
information you should have, and here's how I feel about it.
I think that that's like responsible advice. It's not like

(28:31):
overwhelming or shocking advice. But and I think that's why
this doesn't work. Right. There's no big TV show in
people having thoughtful therapists consider their problem.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
Reasonable conversations on television.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
You want the worst people you've ever seen being insane
assholes to each other. That's why always Sonny's been on
the air for so long.

Speaker 7 (28:52):
Well, I really do.

Speaker 4 (28:53):
I was thinking about this. I forget what show I
was watching a clip from it. It might have been
like that show Couples Therapy, but like people either want
to watch a reasonable person talking to the most unhinged
like or like most troubled patients imaginable effect yes yes, yeah,
or an unhinged therapist scolding like pretty well adjusted people

(29:16):
and nothing in between.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yeah, sorry, sorry, Louis get it. Yeah yeah. Watch Weird Weekends.
There's a great episode on that with preppers that really
predicts a lot of our current or at least shows
the early stage of our current weird militia commact. Great show. Ah,
louis complicated man. Speaking of complicated people, Laura's life is

(29:40):
pretty complicated because while she is trying to get a
radio show and working as a therapist, she and her
now husband Lou have a kid. Lou had been a
teacher when they had met at the school she taught
at and had had to retire in disgrace because of
everything that happened with doctor Laura, and so he is

(30:00):
kind of like working as her manager for a bunch
of this period, I don't think he he is not
the breadwinner, to be sure. Right, it seems like a
lot of the family finances are on Laura's shoulder. That's
the feeling that I get. None of this is like precise,
but that is at least what I'm led to believe
by Vicky's book. Who knows how he's.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
Kind of like he's mommaging her a little bit.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
It seems like it if how Vicky's have how the
mostly anonymous people Vicky quotes like if that's accurate?

Speaker 3 (30:29):
Right, there's so many despicable people attempting to tell this
totally bad because yeah, you can see a world where
it's like that is just a tool to make to emasculate.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
No one who doesn't suck has ever been within thirty
feet of Laura's lensing Like that's the lesson of bits,
so will never know, will never know.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
There's no Forrest Gup like character to give us insight.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Tragic. There is, however, a son named Derek with a
why sorry, OK, it's a spade spelled Derek. There's no
other way to say. Look, I'm not trying to punch
down Derek, but.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
Your name is not Derek.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
We support you and your I think almost inevitable.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
You know Scott interests.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
A SKA band. Wait wait yeah, d E R y K.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Thank you Scott.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Definitely, definitely he's He's got a name that would have
made him fit in the mighty mighty Bosstones. Maybe he
give him the idea to do that embarrassing album about
George Floyd.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
Oh look, the city hasn't bounced back.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
Scott has not bounced back from that album. No, no,
it's just something you can't pick it up, pick it up,
pick it up? After that? Wow, So I love I
love getting any chance to do a skapit.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Oh, so you have it.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
A couple years after Derek is born, Laura is going
to make a major point of like her show, that
women who have kids should not have a career if
they can avoid it. That it is not fair to
raise kids and have a career at the same time
for a woman. And I want to give you an
idea of how she talks about this. I want to
play you a call from a one woman named Rosemary

(32:13):
who is on track. She claims to be partner at
a law firm and is trying to decide should I
get a nanny for my kids. Right, And here is
Laura's response.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
Rational I'm sure.

Speaker 7 (32:24):
If you were your kid, what would you want your
mother to do?

Speaker 10 (32:31):
I would definitely want my mom to stay home with me.

Speaker 7 (32:33):
That's your answer. I think you should never have had
a child. If becoming a partner and all of that
stuff was that important, you never should have had a child.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Part of the love of it is it's not important
to me.

Speaker 10 (32:50):
I don't even especially lost my job, and I do
love being home with my baby girl.

Speaker 7 (32:55):
Well, I don't know why you asked the question. Then
I feel that hearing a lot.

Speaker 6 (33:02):
If I'm an internal voice, but also I'm hearing.

Speaker 7 (33:04):
I asked you a simple question. If you or your daughter,
what would you want your mother to do? There is
no other debate other than the answer to that, I'd
want to be mothered. You said, why would you even
contemplate something different for your kid than you would want
for yourself. I care about doing much best for my daughter,

(33:25):
and unless you are a really bad mother, having you home.
Uh huh okay, having you home is the best for her.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Thanks.

Speaker 4 (33:38):
Also in this uh, in this window, Sophie just had
to open the copy, was like, don't buy the feminist
fly you know.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
Oh yeah, Laura has a big lot of bits about
how the feminists have ruined women by making them want careers.

Speaker 4 (33:54):
I just it's I don't know. I it's so frustrating
because it's like, does she ever at any point try
to justify the fact that she has a career. Is
there any exugenation as to why that is, or does
she She's.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
Just the exception.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
She lies for one thing, because she says, as a spoiler,
she says, we spent the for the first three years,
I didn't leave the house. That's not true. We'll talk
about But also that's three years. She's not telling this
woman because maybe her kids are both older than three. Right,
She's saying, you should quit your job. That could provide
so well for your family that your kids might be

(34:32):
taken care of. Right, but you could pay like partner
to law firms, not like a not a shit job.

Speaker 9 (34:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
That could be the path to quite a bit of wealth.
She's saying, give that up because otherwise you will not
be responsible parent. When what she did was continue to
work on being a radio personality while her child was
very young. Right, I don't think that's wrong. I actually
think that's very impressive. My mom got a second master's
degree in her late forties while she was raising us

(35:01):
so that she can start a new career. Right, Yeah,
there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't if that
if she were to be honest about who she is.
The advice to give this woman is, like, you know,
be cautious of how you know. Once you start having
your kids watched by an eight, talk to them. Be
cognizant of how this is affecting them. If you get
a sense that you know the individual you've picked or

(35:23):
just this situation is harming them, then you may need
to reappraise things. But like many children have had a
nanny a couple of nights a week, especially if they're
kids who were older, and it's not. When I was
fucking ten or eleven, I would I loved any time
one or both of my parents were out because I
got more time to read books and talk to weird
adults on the internet, which was never.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
Goes bad, unavoidable. No, it's always fine, and unfortunately it
can't be stopped.

Speaker 5 (35:50):
No, not.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
We have learned that it's not the same.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
My parents being home prevented that. It just made it harder.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, it's it's obviously like these are, especially if if
you're an only parent, like it's a complicated, difficult thing.
But the fact of the matter is, however, you see
about that Laura literally did the thing where she didn't
spend all of her time at home to take so
that she could build her career because she knew how
much money.

Speaker 9 (36:14):
Was in it.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
And she's telling this woman not to do the same thing.
I think that's shitty, right, That's all I gotta say
on the matter, right. Yeah, So, because this is such
a through line and her advice to women, Laura makes
a point to claim that she managed to be doctor Laura.
She says she only works like two hours a day
or at least during this period, and then again, she
didn't leave home for the first three years. Vicki Bain

(36:38):
is going to claim this.

Speaker 7 (36:39):
Is a lie.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Although Laura had been teaching a nighttime graduate level psychology
course at Pepperdine University branches in the San Fernando Valley
since January nineteen eighty two, she took the fall semester
of nineteen eighty five off to prepare for Derek's birth,
but lou was left to babysit Derek, then two months old.
When Laura returned to Pepperdine in January nineteen eighty six
to continue her hour and a half long Tuesday evening

(37:01):
clinical practicum for psychology students, Laura also maintained a Saturday
private practice, again sharing office on Ventura Boulevard, and in
mid nineteen eighty six, when Derek with Derek not yet
six months old, she added another teaching commitment to her
work at Pepperdine and her private practice. So she's just
it's just like, does she does the opposite of what
she said? I don't think that.

Speaker 4 (37:22):
That's yeah, it's like she feels she sounds almost like
a you know, stereotypical media like projection of like a
working woman of the eighties whose business is talking other
women out of doing that. Like it's just yeah, and

(37:42):
you know, I'll be damned if that's not a profitable
I mean, there is just an infinite amount of money
to be made in making women feel horrible about themselves,
because there's no point in your life where that is
not precedent.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
It's just everything that. From what I can tell, laura
values in her life comes from the fact that she
was willing to spend less time with her infant child
in order to further her careers. Right, Yeah, I don't
think that's a reasonable choice. She makes a lot of
money enough to make sure that kid never wants for anything.
I'm not I'm not going to come here and say

(38:15):
that's not she did the wrong thing. But the wrong
thing is like pretending that other people who have that
chance or just to need to work, because everyone does
usually that they're being a bad mom, which they're not,
right right, right, which I.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
Mean, especially in the back half of that like is
just oh, like it made my stomach clench a little
bit for the for the woman on the phone, like
because she that like soft defense of like I'm not
a bad mother.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
She's like, okay, well then.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
Well then you should be at her job.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
You're like, oh god, they're just like a yeah, it
is a certain kind of hell.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yes. Uh So, while Laura was by her own standards,
working out of the home and being a bad working
outside of the home and being a bad mom, she
was also being a bad therapist by anyone's standards.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
Yeah, that's her job.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
One of the anonymous sources for Vicky's book is a
former student of Laura's. So this is a woman taking
Laura's classes, and during one day when they're talking, Laura
basically says, you should become my patient at my therapy business. Now,
I don't think you're allowed to do that's a therapist.
I think that's probably not ethical, but I don't know.

(39:29):
It was. It was the eighties, right, A lot more
everyone is on cocaine, right, so it's hard not to
invite people to be therapized by a baby. Baby Derek
is doing more cocaine than a nightclub DJ could survive
doing in modern terms.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
Baby Derek dug up some loops. Dudes, He's in the backyard.
He's good to go.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
It's it's like how alien people talk about the Pyramids,
Like we have lost the knowledge as a species for
how to do as much cocaine as they did back then,
as Baby Derek and doctor Laura are all doing every
single day.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
A long way the student truth.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Anyway, I'm going to continue with that quote from Victory
Vicky's book. It was her way or no way, the
said the student turned patient. Basically, I walked in and
she said, I want you to tape all your sessions.
I expect all my patients to bring in a tape.
We use my tape recorder. We're going to tape everything. Basically,
I think what she was saying was, if you listen
to this over and over again, you'll get more out
of it. According to this patient, the tapes were returned

(40:29):
to her after each session and are still in the
patient's possession. They document some boundary breaking activities between therapists
and patient. Over the next two and a half years,
this patient met with Laura almost weekly, paying her one
hundred dollars an hour for her work. I guess she
took a liking to me, recalled the patient who added
and I guess at that point in my life I
needed the attention. She reeled me in and broke nearly
every boundary that there is. For example, the former patient said,

(40:52):
there was a young man she was seeing right before me,
so we would kind of pass each other there in
the waiting room. She would talk to me about what
some of his shoes were. That really freaked me out
because I wondered if she was telling the next person
about me. Then there was a very non newscaster who
was also seeing her as a therapist on the same
time I was, and Laura talked a little bit about
him as well. She asked me to babysit her son

(41:13):
on several occasions. Laura said, I don't talk to my sister,
and Derek hasn't doesn't have an aunt. I want you
to be his aunt. So that is a boundary, you know.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
That is bad?

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had a therapist be like
I cannot if I were to meet you out in
the world, I would like leave immediately and pretend not
to know you. Yeah, Like, I'm not sure if that's
the norm for everyone, but you are certainly not supposed
to ask them to be your aunt or your kid's aunt.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
No, oh, I feel like this.

Speaker 4 (41:46):
I mean, it's it's I wouldn't go as far as
to say that like doctor Laura's work is directly in
conversation with this, but like the fact that she is
a very like, you know, an increasingly public therapist figure
and then in the eighties feels directly in conversation. But
like how therapists were presented as these savior figures during
the Satanic Panic too, and just like how this was

(42:09):
such a popular and like still publicly somewhat trusted grift
despite however, much evidence, like recorded evidence to the contrary.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah yeah, I I yeah. Anyway, for years after this point,
Laura and this patient become weirdly remained very close. The
patient later claimed or claims that Lou was a helicopter
parent that he or helicopter husband. So basically, this patient
says Lou was there every class she would do at
the college. He was always around. He was like obsessed

(42:43):
with her success. And Derek was not there. So maybe
they even hired a nanny. Right. The good news is
that doctor Laura had enough time while raising a kid
to start up another business, this one making custom sweaters
for major film productions. And Jamie, this is where the
show goes in a shocking direction, because I will bet
you did not call that the sweater's Whoopee, Goldberg War

(43:05):
and Sister Act were made by doctor Laura Slusheger. What yes,
I just man when this was coming across this, Jamie,
there's an experience. I feel like I am the only
one who can understand what like pirate captains felt when

(43:28):
they like landed and actually like hit treasure in their shovel, right,
because that's how it felt. Reading that detail, I am floating.

Speaker 4 (43:35):
Three feet above the ground. The slack from my mic
to my zoom recorded the only thing tethering me to
the art.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
How how God fascinating stuff. At least one custom sweater.
I know, I know, I love it. It's glorious. She
also made some of the Lost Boys costumes and hook.
I just there's no way to be ready for that. No,

(44:03):
it hits like a like a like a cyclone of.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
Woman's heart as an ocean of secrets, like amazing. Never.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
No, I don't know which sweater in Sister Act that
doctor Laura made, but it was apparently for whoopee, so well.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
I would be open to Yeah, someone started like a poll.

Speaker 4 (44:23):
Some of the watch hook which one is which sweater
is giving you an aura of menace?

Speaker 2 (44:30):
And anyway? Wow wild stuff. Yeah. So Laura is finally
syndicated on air in the mid nineteen eighties, but she
loses the show. This is another unhinged twist. The network
that owns her show is bought by the Liberty Lobby,
which was founded by a Nazi named Lewis Cartow as

(44:52):
a political action group for the far right, and also
published the newspapers Spotlight, which was dedicated to Holocaust denial.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Far less shocking to me than the sweat.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
You know, Laura is number one not a fan of
people who deny the Holocaust. She is half Jewish. She's
going to become Orthodox Jewish for a period of time,
then she stops. But at any rate, she does not
thrive here. She quits the station not long after it's
taken over by the far right. We don't know the
exact reasons, but it might have had something to do
with the fact that they were really bad people.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
So for you, doctor Laura has a line.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
Doctor Laura had a line at least who knows about today,
But she did have a line then, and she gets
credit for that. Good for you, Good on you, Bill Balance.
After she leaves, maybe she was fired also, It's really
unclear to me, but in which case, less kudos. But
according to Bill Balance, she called him and begged for help,
saying that she would kill herself if she couldn't get

(45:50):
back on the radio. Bill is a huge liar. I
don't know that. That doesn't really sound like Laura to me,
but maybe maybe she did. The good news for Laura
was that things turned around for her very quickly after
this point. Near the end of the nineteen eighties, a
radio executive picked her to replace Sally Jesse Raphael. Her
primary competition for the role was a woman named Barbara DeAngelis. Today,

(46:14):
Barbara is a prominent author, lecturer, and New York Times
best selling author. She is a PhD in psychology from
Columbia Pacific University, which is not a real college. It's
kind of state approved but not accredited. It is sketchy, right, Yeah,
Now Laura is going to go to war with this
woman because she calls herself doctor Barbara DeAngelis and get

(46:38):
like she will complain to station management, and station management
will make it, like, stop Barbara from describing herself as
a doctor on air. Laura, doctor Laura has is definitely
a real PhD from a real accredited school, but it's
in kinniestiesiology. It is not in anything relevant to what
she is doing on air. It is not in like

(47:00):
therapy or in counseling. It is somewhat dishonest for her
to portray herself in this context as.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
Doctor waah, but she still does.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
It's actively dishonest. Yeah, And like it's weird because also
it's dishonest for Barbara de Angelis to coll herself and.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
Let's find the most lyingest people.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Yeah, find so. I don't know, you can dubious truphy. Yeah,
you can feel however you want about that. But she's
definitely a hypocrite.

Speaker 9 (47:30):
Right.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
Colleagues at the time added that Laura was by far
the most aggressive person at the radio station. Any disagreement
or conflict with her was likely to result in weeks
or years of vicious shit talking. And this is what
Barbara says happened to her, that Laura basically becomes like
he's almost stalking her in a professional sense. This escalates
to Laura sending an anonymous complaints to the Board of

(47:54):
Behavioral Science Examiners that Barbara DeAngelis was fraudulently portraying herself
as a doctor, which I guess she was anyway. She
also sends a letter to the da of Los Angeles
accusing Barbara of practicing medicine without a license, which I
don't know that Barbara was doing. Although maybe this is.

Speaker 4 (48:12):
A very like boomer woman con like just right, it's
watching like the Barbara v.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Laura or h I like people.

Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah right, you're like all of all of these generic
boomer women names need to no good.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
I wish. Neither of them had ever had a job
giving people life advice. I guess this is where I
land on the Barbara Laura debate.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
It's it's hard to find someone professionally giving life advice
who also has a pathological gift for attention.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
I have known a couple of people who were like
good enough at life that I think their advice has
a would have a monetary value. And they are all
way too busy living good lives to get on the
radio and do that check, right, And.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
That is what is supposed and that is like the
beautiful catch twenty two of people worth listening to. They're
usually too busy to talk to you.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
That's exactly right, which is why you're left with people.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Like me, and that's why we're here.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Ponder that while you listen to these ads. Ah, So
Barbara leaves the station KFI while she and where she
and Laura have their quarrel. She later would claim that
this happens in nineteen ninety two, several months after she
left quote, I received a call from a woman who
sounded very nervous on the phone. She said she had

(49:30):
been a patient and a friend of Laura's, and she
wanted to meet and talk to me because she had
some information. She came out and told me that she
knew for a fact it was Laura, as I suspected,
who had set out to destroy my career and discredit me,
because she had heard Laura say it from her mouth
and not just say it, but scream it. Now. Again,
no good sources here Barbara's story does, or at least

(49:51):
Vicky finds other people who worked at KFI who back
up aspects of the story, including that Laura was incredibly
hostile to Barbara. So yeah, I don't have trouble believing
that she orchestrated this woman's expulsion from the network because
she was threatened by her because she was competition, right.
I also think that Barbara definitely was portraying herself as
a doctor, and I don't really think she was.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
I don't think there. Yeah, again, there's like I'm rooting
for no one.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Yeah, I'm rooting for those sweaters in hook. Maybe I'll
have to watch that movie again and really have an
eye for the sweaters.

Speaker 4 (50:24):
I hope they're able to sort of dig themselves out
from yeah, the trauma.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
Then, yeah, yeah, I'm so shocked by that. Relief reveal.
What a baffling thing to learn in the middle of
this it comes. It's like, yeah, it's like a thunderbolt
from a clear sky, just bam. Now there's sister act
in the middle of this story.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
It's a moment.

Speaker 4 (50:44):
Yeah, it is like this moment where you're like, wait,
is this gonna change the direction of her life?

Speaker 3 (50:50):
And it's like no, no, not at all.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
No, no, really doesn't make it unrelated, a complete red
herring for the future of Laura's slack.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
There's no narrative to be gotten from it. It just is.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
You would cut this out of the script on her
life because like, why are we doing this? Where are
we going on this journey? This doesn't teach us anything,
This doesn't contribute to who she becomes. But life isn't
a story, people. Yeah, the nearly nineteen nineties we're a
precarious time financially for the Slushingers. They had a devastating
house fire and we're basically on the edge of eviction,
horribly in debt. At least a Vicki's story is accurate.

(51:25):
The story one is left believing, if we take that
book as more or less true, is that doctor Laura
was ruthless and so cruel to Barbara, in part because
she saw that like, if I don't get if I
don't break through in radio, we're fucked right. We've kind
of bet everything on this, and I don't like being
a therapist. We get a vision of her during this

(51:45):
awkward period through a piece of rare, nearly lost media,
or at least we can learn about her a little
in her absence in this lost media, because we're not
actually going to hear her in this. This is a
recording of the Meeting of the Mouths, a radio special
hosted by Tom Lacas, who I think I've done ads for.
He's one of the first shock jocks. He came right

(52:06):
after Bill Balance and right before Howard Stern. Right, so,
if you're if you're looking at like where we land
on the descendants chart, Lacas comes out of balance. Stern
kind of is birthed somewhere in at miasthma. Although Stern
is on the air by the time they're talking about him.
I need to.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
Turn onside this. I absolutely hate to test despise the
phrase Meeting of the Bouths.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
It's horrible, it's so gress and this this is like
a big radio specially get a bunch of hosts together
in a room, right, So Laura is big enough that
she's made it into the room with Tom Lakas, who's
a significant name. Also in this video is Barbara DeAngelis,
Rush Limbaugh and some other dudes who matter less than
either of them. So this is during that awkward period.

(52:49):
I don't have any of Laura in here because she's
very quiet, so is Barbara, and it's kind of unclear
to me when one is talking or the other because
they're not on great audio.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
Sound the same to you, to say it, all women
sound the same.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
But the point is that, like, you learn a lot
about her position here. This is nineteen like ninety, she
and Barbara are kind of just putting in very little, right.
It's mostly Tom Lakas and Rush Limbaugh, who has just
exploded at this time. It gives you an idea of
where her standing is. Right if this had been a
couple of years later, Laura would have been talking as
much as Rush like, because she does become that level

(53:23):
of figure. So this gives you an idea of kind
of where this is her early career. And honestly, we
could get away without playing this clip but Rush Limbaugh's
gonna say something here that I just feel I've had
to listen to it, and now you're gonna listen to it.
And for some context, this is Tom Lacas and Rush

(53:44):
Limbaugh arguing about the band Two Live Crew, who have
had to cancel several shows after being accused of profanity.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
You can you're not allowed to throw in another hard
left like this.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
I know it's wild stuff. Tom is arguing Two Live
Cruise shouldn't be censored. Basically, right, I don't approve of
them being so profane, but it's bad that they're having
to cancel the shows, and Rush being like, as long
as the government doesn't have a law, can't saying they
can't do their show, it's fine. Right, that's the argument,
And I'm just going to play you a clip from
that argument.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
Just warning Jamie listeners, you're going to hate this.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
Oh you're not going to be happy, but it's happening.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
Well, why did we gather here?

Speaker 5 (54:25):
And are you not troubled that the whole focus of
the particular song in question of Two Live Crew was
to talk about how much fun it is to bust
female vaginal walls, to rip them apart to rip them.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
I'm troubled by it, but I also know that the
free market would eventually determine that most people don't want
to buy a record like I just that had to
be with other people. I never heard Rush Limbas say
vaginal walls before, and I wish I am male vaginal
female vaginal walls. I'm so sorry, but it's maybe this

(54:58):
isn't me now, and now what's in you?

Speaker 3 (55:01):
This is maybe? Like but like he said.

Speaker 4 (55:03):
It, you know, exactly like you would think you to
grow like, which is worst case scenario.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
If you were like a comedian doing a fake Rush
Limbaugh voice and like reading out rap lyrics right because
you thought that was funny, you would say that phrase
the way that Rush said it.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
There, Well, that's I mean, that's like that guy's whole beat, right,
that's the Rush Limbo effect.

Speaker 4 (55:25):
That's the Jordan Peterson. In fact, they're always performing a
bad snl.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
Ben Shapiro reading a wet ass pussy right, like, yes,
part of the appeal, that's part of.

Speaker 4 (55:36):
Their comedians are left dead in a ditch over the
self parody.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Yeah, that's part of what works with them.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Seeing through vaginal walls.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Yeah, somebody somebody's gonna clip that one out and turn
that into a track.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
Thank god, was that an iambic pentameter? Do you think?

Speaker 2 (55:54):
Yes, it must have been, a lot of people don't
know this, but both the show Deadwood and everything rush
Limbaugh ever said perfect diambic pentameter. Gorgeous. So all of
that's very unpleasant. But you can see nineteen ninety she
has not found her footing right because she is not.
She doesn't say anything when rush Limbaugh says that. But

(56:16):
in nineteen ninety four she does break through, and she
owes a lot of the success she has. Finally to
her her co host in this recording, rush Limbaugh, his
success had put conservative talk radio on the map. So
Bill Balance makes it clear to the people with money
and radio, oh, these women are listening to shows, and
rush Limbaugh makes it clear that like people like weird loud,

(56:38):
right wing assholes, and putting those two together is going
to make it very clear that doctor Laura has an
audience right.

Speaker 4 (56:45):
Even listening to shows could be dangerous, better a wrench
in the whole.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Thing, Yeah, exactly. So this is gonna work out well
for her now to fit into this new market. Doctor
Laura makes herself harsher crueler and you know, more Rush
Limbaugh esque.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
That's all daft punk remix.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Yeah. Much of her success is supercharged by the fact
that she also times the release of her first book wonderfully.
In nineteen ninety four, I think ninety four ninety five,
she publishes the advice book Ten Stupid Things Men Do
to Mess Up Their Lives. Yes, if you ever heard
the show, you heard this title. I knew the name
of doctor Laura's first book without even having to research

(57:25):
it because I heard a million times on the air.

Speaker 3 (57:29):
I've seen without knowing. Yeah, I mean that book has endured.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
It absolutely has. And I'm going to read you the
first five chapters, and each each chapter comes with like
a little sentence that I guess is supposed to be
a scriptor Number one, and these are again the ten
stupid things women do to mess up their lives. Number
one stupid attachment is a woman just a woe woe
woe on a man. You typically look to the context

(57:55):
of a man to find and defined yourself. I don't
understand why should wrote that. That doesn't wa a whoa
wo whoa on a man? What does that mean? Anyway,
Stupid courtship, I finally found someone I could attach to,
and other stupid ideas about dating. Desperate to have a man,
you become a beggar, not a chooser in the dating scene.

(58:16):
Stupid devotion, but I love him and more stupid romantic stuff.
You find yourself driven to love and suffer and sucker
or do you spell that sucker in vain? Stupid passion? Whoa,
oh yeah, oh ah, we're breathing hard. It must mean love.
You have sex too soon to romantically and set yourself
up to be burned. Stupid cohabitation the ultimate female self delusion.

(58:38):
So stop lying to yourself. You're not living with him
because you love him. You're living with him because you
hope he'll want you.

Speaker 1 (58:43):
You can't, you generally can't tell me that this isn't
just like articles written by Carrie Bronshaw.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (58:52):
I was gonna say the front half of that was
like a semi good, if a little conservative Olivia Marico
sink and then it just sort of descended into madness.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Yeah yeah, So looking into this book is very frustrating.
It starts with the introduction, where we learned that her
book on Women was inspired by two men. The second
of those two men was her father and the first
was an engineer at KFI. Quote. After working with me
for more than six months, three hours a night, five
days a week, Dan Mandis was hearing approximately twenty five

(59:25):
women per show agonize over some dumb guy. You know, Laura.
He told me in an unguarded moment, if you listen
to your show long enough, you begin to think women
are stupid. And that's kind of the core of what
the Doctor Laura Show is and why it's toxic.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Right, Yeah, you mean you mean whoa whoa whoa whoa
whoa man our stupid man?

Speaker 2 (59:46):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's a lot of it.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
That's my favorite part.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
She has again, as I talk about like she is
kind of like she succeeds by doing the thing that
is still a lot of why. How like internet discourse works, Right,
you find someone who's saying something you can clip out
of context or something shitty, and then you lay into
them for a bunch of people who don't know them, right, Like,
that's the gist of Doctor Laura. That's why the Internet

(01:00:13):
works the way it does. We all want to believe
that we're smarter than we are right, and Laura aimed
herself specifically at a special kind of middle American Christian conservative,
someone like my mom, Right, people who have had tough
goes of it, who are scared or angry about the
things that they see out in the world, and they want,
you know, they need, rather than blaming the systems, to

(01:00:36):
blame the freeloaders. Right, the people they imagine are responsible
for their difficulties, the people that they imagine are less
responsible and good than they are. And doctor Laura provides that. Right,
it's just like on you know, same as it ever was.
Right now, It is not a coincidence that doctor Laura
explodes in popularity in the mid nineties. This is the

(01:00:56):
tipping point from modern conservative grievance politics the media, and
they're they're angry because Bill Clinton has just to their eyes,
unjustly taken power from them after three presidential terms and
is a very immoral man. And his immorality coincides with
an explosion online, in explicit films and TV like the Simpsons. Right,
you get all these you get all these media that

(01:01:20):
conservatives get angry about. Right when the Simpsons may seem
tame toy now, but early and it's it's time on
the air. Barbara Bush when she was First Lady, attacked it, right,
which is why there's a whole Simpsons episode starring the Bushes.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
Yeah, I was like that does that is good context
for that?

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
Yeah, she attacks the show because she does. Like The
Simpsons was fairly unique in that period, a show where
there's like there's nothing redeeming about the country or about
like a lot of the people in it, Like the
police are corrupt, the mayor is a crook. All of
the politicians are crooks, like the alcoholics, you know, Like right.

Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
The school, the teachers don't have the best interests of
their students.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
They do not give a shit about their students.

Speaker 6 (01:02:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
Yeah, they're like it's beautiful, it's perfect art.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
It's very cynical, and it made a lot of it.
It's part of this. It's not the only thing doing,
but it makes a lot of conservatives feel attacked and
under fire, right, a lot of conservatives who maybe wanted
to feel that way because it's more exciting than just
living in the suburbs, taking your kids to school, working
forty hours a week at an air conditioned office. Right,

(01:02:31):
you want to feel like you're part of a culture war.
You're being attacked, right.

Speaker 4 (01:02:35):
Right, Like it gives you a sense of there's a
sense of order, there's a sense of control.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
Yeah yeah, and a sense of action, right yeah. And
I found an interview with doctor Laura from nineteen ninety
four and the Los Angeles Radio Guide. It quotes her
as saying, my values are an oasis in the middle
of a moral nothingness. I am single handedly trying to
change this lack of ethics and values. Great stuff. Oh
so she's a crusader for a crusader, you know, you know,

(01:03:02):
took part in the breaking up of a marriage lot
or told secrets from her patients to other patients, engineered
the distruction of another woman's career, you know. But like whatever, Right,
she's an oasis of morality. Yes, So during this interview
with the Los Angeles Radio Guide, which I guess used

(01:03:23):
to have enough leaders to be a magazine, she described
the chief problem of modern women as quote they does
find success by things other than their family relationships. I mean,
Laura hates her entire family aside from I guess her
kid and her husband, but certainly does not have other
family beyond that that she's close with and.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
The feeling doesn't seem like the other.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
SOI right, right, that's wrong to have be fucked up
with your family and have a good career. I'm fucked
up with my family and have a good career, but
it's wrong to tell people you shouldn't do.

Speaker 3 (01:03:58):
That, right, I just I wonder. I mean, I know
that there's no clean answer for this, but it's just
like it seems like from a very young age she
has both had a fixation on control and a sense
of order and been imbued with a deep sense of
self hatred. I cannot stop thinking about that. Like they're

(01:04:21):
like it's all connected of like, well, what is the
best I can do for myself while maintaining the same
level of self hatred and like spreading it around.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
It's just ugh, that's good stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
It's awesome. I'm sorry, That's what I meant to say.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
It's the essence of right wing politics. Right. Everything I
disapprove of is bad, and I am the lone voice
for truth fighting back against it.

Speaker 10 (01:04:44):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:04:44):
It hurts me to do this, but as you cries, like, figure,
I have to.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
Do it now. In that interview, Laura does sum up
her only flaw generally, I went my way and I
want it now. Aside from that, I don't have any
bad habits. Now that's it's fun stuff. And when it
comes to the harm a person like Laura Sleshinger has done,
I can focus just on her historic context.

Speaker 10 (01:05:07):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
As we've said, she paves the way for guys like
Jordan Peterson, even for like you know, I mentioned the
Bechdel Cast. Obviously this podcast has as we owe something
to Bill Balance, we also do to doctor Laura, but
so doaes fucking Joe Rogan, right, Like these are all
part of it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
Yeah, I would say, I would say Morris.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Yeah, yeah, not in the direct kind of content, but
that she makes space in media and shows how she's
part of the growing awareness that executives in TV and
then radio just all over entertainment have with like, oh,
there's a lot of money in people's messy lives and
people being mean to people in messy lives. Right, She's

(01:05:45):
not the only person doing this, but she's massively successful. Right.
She has the number one radio personality for years. In
twenty eleven, she's the number five audience on the radio.
She's huge for a very long time.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
People love to get yelled at by mom.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
Yeah, So I could focus on all of that, and
I guess we will a little bit, but I want
to focus more right now on the damage that her
advice can do to individual people. You don't you know,
you don't have like a book of the experiences of
everyone who called her show, but you can occasionally find
people who called in or who listened to her talk
about the impact she had on them in places like Reddit,

(01:06:21):
and I this may spoil where the story is going,
but I found accounts from several women about how doctor
Laura affected them in the Narcissistic Abuse subreddit. I'm not
laughing at narcissistic abuse. It's just like, yeah, that is
that does kind of describe the Doctor Laura show.

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
She would pop up there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. And here's one person describing
their experience. Back in the nineties, I was a stay
and I've edited this a little bit for length. Back
in the nineties, I was a stay at home mom
starting a family with my husband. I was raising a
conservative Catholic home with two parents who loved me and
my brothers very much, and I had a traditional marriage.
Whereas my father worked in my mother's stayed home to

(01:06:59):
raise us. Fast forward to the nineties, listening to Doctor Laura.
My husband was gone a lot, we lived far from
the family. There were many red flags of my husband's
behavior treatment of me, but I'd listened to Doctor Laura
during the day and vowed to be a better wife,
to be kind to my husband, to treat him better,
respect him more, nag him less. What that did was
cause me to ignore the red flags of major character

(01:07:19):
flaws and my husband. I recall, for some reason my
husband was doing or saying something I believed was out
of line, possibly calling me a bitch, or neglecting to
come home when he said he would not calling were traveling.
I'd turn on Doctor Laura and hear about how if
you choose to marry this man and make babies with him,
then suck it up for the sake of the kids.
I stayed and ignored major red flags for years. At
the time, I was listening to doctor Laura, and I

(01:07:41):
was blaming myself, and he was lying to me about
everything he did the second he stepped in the door.
It was ideal because his office was an hour commute
from our home in southern California at the time, so
he kept me and the kids a safe distance from
his hidden lifestyle. This is obviously a man who has
a whole life cheating on her as a narcissistic confuser. Right,
I'm not going to go with the details, but we
don't need that on the radio show. But this is

(01:08:01):
how she describes listening to the Doctor Laura Show as
making her think she did the right thing by ignoring
the fucked up shit he was doing.

Speaker 3 (01:08:09):
Right anyway, Well, I mean it's like, I'm at least glad.
I don't know, it's so it's so fucked because I
feel like, you know, the Internet at large is often
i think, like used as the complete villain of how
the stuff gets perpetrated, but it obviously goes back before then,

(01:08:30):
and in this case, it seems like the Internet has
given this person a like space to actually air it
out and talk with people.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
Because yeah, I do think it's valuable. As angry as
I often get at the Internet at social media for
how much more toxic it's made this to note that, like, yeah,
this was happening in the radio, this has probably happened
before the radio. I'm sure like magazines that have a
massive media who you know, you get like these you know,
mail in your advice stuff, right, That stuff pre dates

(01:08:59):
Dock Laura, where you send in a letter and they
give you advice. I'm sure this kind of stuff happens.
I think the lesson here, Jamie, is that we need
a secret police force empowered to kill on site anyone
who knows or talks to more than three other human
beings in the course of their life. You know, it's
just that shit down, that shit down. Yeah, as the occasion.

Speaker 4 (01:09:20):
And as a person, you cannot expect the majority of
people to internalize more than three things about you, truly.

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):
Yeah, that's that's it. I think you'd like to get the.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
Better future now, Jamie. I think we know. I know
what I'm going to go to Kamala with if she
takes over from Joe. I think this could really this
could revitalize American politics. Imagine in America in which no
one knows more than two other people. You know, Wow,
that's a utopia in my mind.

Speaker 4 (01:09:45):
We will become a proper country.

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
We could become a proper country. Yeah. So, another user
in that subreddit mentioned reading one of doctor Laura's other bestsellers,
The Proper Karen Feeding of Husbands and it was in
this book that doctor Laura publicly espoused her belief that
women have an ethical objection to have sex with their
husbands even if they don't want to have sex. This

(01:10:09):
is a staple of her advice. And it's interesting. I found
a whole review of this book on like a super
far right like homeschooling Christian nationalist website, and one of
the things they explain is that, like, look, women need love,
men need respect most of all, right, and you're not
respecting it. They don't say this, but like they advise
her book, and what she is saying is you are

(01:10:30):
not respecting your husband if you don't let him fuck you. Right.
It is that direct. And I have to.

Speaker 3 (01:10:36):
Say, it's just like a pro marital rape.

Speaker 5 (01:10:39):
Is that?

Speaker 3 (01:10:39):
Is that where we're headed with this?

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
I don't know more or less, but it's a little
differently fucked up than that. She is not saying women
don't have men don't have the right to not consent
to sex with their husbands. She is saying you are
being a bad wife if you ever say no, okay,
And there's a kind of a difference there. I'm not
saying what's better than the other, but it is a
little bit of a difference. Third thing, got a evil
third thing. And I want to play you a clip

(01:11:03):
of this from her Modern Day YouTube show and yeah,
just listen to this. This is her reading a listener letter.

Speaker 7 (01:11:10):
I've never been married, so I'm soaking up all I
can to help me when I do marry. Is it
absolutely never okay to say no to your husband, even
when you're sick not being there yet. I'm curious what
tips you can give all women for overcoming not feeling
well to go forward and still have sex with their husbands.

(01:11:36):
Let's just say, if you're needing chaopectate or an ivy. Oh,
come on, that's just silly. If your husband is saying, hey, baby,
I want to pump you when you're sick, you've married
a jerk. We're talking about when you're feeling irritated or
I'm annoyed or I'm just too tired today and turn

(01:12:00):
away your man. One. This is the measure that men
have of how much we love them.

Speaker 9 (01:12:06):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
I love shit like this because it's both it's a
great one two of like, wow, this is a deeply
toxic thing to tell women, and then wow, oh this
is also a toxic thing to say to men. Great.

Speaker 4 (01:12:17):
Yeah, wow, doctor Laura, you've finally done it a thought
that is coachingly terrible for everyone on earth.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
Yeah, she was really leading heavy with the women stuff.
But then at the end there, you as a man
only have value if someone's willing to let you fuck them, like,
oh we got there way to go.

Speaker 4 (01:12:34):
Wow, her wig did a three hundred and sixty degree
spin at the end of that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:37):
You just couldn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
Sure does. Her hair is doing something else said this
fort Now that's very gross, right, I will say it's
this is a woman who used to have an audience
of eighteen million people listening every week, right, at least
reaching that many people. Radio numbers are a little wonky,
as are all numbers that anyone in entertainment ever gives
or gets.

Speaker 4 (01:13:00):
And then if they decide they don't like it, they'll
just delete it forever.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
Yeah, and this view this video has one hundred and
eighty two thousand views in fourteen years. Doctor Laura has
forty one thousand subscribers, so more people than you'd hope for.
But she is definitely not diminished, shug in along the
way that she used to. Right, Yeah, now, I find
what she's saying here especially funny because another major line

(01:13:26):
in her again, because she's saying here like, you have
to fuck your husband whenever he wants, because like, your
only value is your ability to make him feel wanted
by being able to have sex with someone. Right in
the other thing that she says frequently is women today
are pigs, and women today are pigs for seeing life
purely in terms of like sex and short term pleasure,

(01:13:48):
when the thing she's making clear is that the only
relationship men and women can have that is valuable to
the other involves sex. So it's why it's beautifully incoherent.
And I want to play you a clip for calling
modern women pigs.

Speaker 7 (01:14:02):
I was raised by my grandma listening to you, I
remember growing up hearing that all too often women strive
for short term gratification instead of long term satisfaction.

Speaker 3 (01:14:15):
Now I'm reapediting on really use.

Speaker 7 (01:14:17):
A refresher in that course. Is there any way I
can receive an update or something to refresh my own
memory on these talks? It would be the utmost and
helpful as to where I am in life trying to
remember about what was said about long term satisfaction. Wow,

(01:14:37):
This is so timely because these days most women out
there are pigs.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
Are you shocked that I said that?

Speaker 7 (01:14:46):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):
Do you think I'm talking about you?

Speaker 7 (01:14:48):
I might be. Is it one, two, three minutes, three hours,
three days, three dates, and you're already having sex with somebody?
I don't know. That's the short term gratification. That's the
pretending there's a relationship. That's the pretending that somebody gives
a darn about you. That's pretending that somebody respects you,
cares about you. You know what, here's the deal.

Speaker 3 (01:15:11):
You know he's in love with don't.

Speaker 4 (01:15:13):
I don't need to know what the deal is. No,
you don't claw hit me, doctor Laura. See if I give.

Speaker 3 (01:15:18):
A rat's ass.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
I hate to say it, though, but that's also a
man like. That's a perfect example, Like, Yeah, she's really
good as a broad Like she's good at understanding how
to speak for an audience, right, Like the way in
which her voice builds up, the way in which she
changes her voice, like the different tones uses her cadence,

(01:15:40):
the way in which she organizes that response is just like, Yeah,
that's that's someone who has been broadcasting for more than
I've been alive, right, like, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
Enjoyed the whenever she said pretending, the yellow font came
up on the screen in big letters and said pretending.

Speaker 3 (01:15:58):
And it's kind of like the more you know.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
Look, she's better as a broadcaster than her editors as
a video editor.

Speaker 7 (01:16:05):
I know.

Speaker 4 (01:16:05):
Look, I hope Derek was editing that shit on iMovie with.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
A fucking why right there in his name.

Speaker 3 (01:16:14):
I hope he charged a hefty hourly rate to edit
Mommy's little videos. I yeah, that was that was bleak.
I mean, she is clearly a master at finding any
angle to make a person real or imaginary, to feel
horrible about themselves. But it doesn't I don't know, I've

(01:16:35):
like this specific style of shaming doesn't hit the way
it once did. I don't know, what do you think?

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
No? No, I mean that's you've seen her decline, right,
And part of it is that she just isn't She's
always been kind of culture war adjacent, but never as
much as people are today. I think she would have
found it kind of undignified. She would never do. Not
that she's any better, but like the degree to which
all of these people become ricatures of themselves in every

(01:17:01):
form of media, imaginable. I don't think she would have
been comfortable with. I think she wants too much control
over her image to get that close to a bunch
of other media figures, right, I think, yeah, Yeah, that's
my feeling of it.

Speaker 3 (01:17:16):
I just wonder, I mean, honestly, because she's well into
her seventies at this point, I wonder if there's just
a part of it is like at some point I
wonder this about you know, older people who are involved
in the culture wars conversation, I'm like, how are you
not just fucking exhausting, not just tired? Exhausting?

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
Yeah, I'm thirty six that I fucking hate it.

Speaker 4 (01:17:37):
It's exhausting to like bear witness to much less participated.

Speaker 3 (01:17:41):
I would about it like she might just be fucking tired.

Speaker 2 (01:17:45):
Yeah, I think it's because some of these I don't
think she is quite although she has some of that.
But guys like rush Limba were born to be culture
war ghoules, whereas most of us, people like you and me,
who have grown up in the middle of this fucking
thing they helped start. We maybe have gotten involved by nature.
But I don't know about you, Jimmy. My ideal life
is being a weirdo with like a radio show talking

(01:18:07):
about cryptids who lives in the woods and one day
just disappears while hunting for big Wooter, big Bigfoot or
one of those one of those worms in Mongolia that
has lightning powers. That's what I would like to disappear.

Speaker 4 (01:18:19):
Searches that was Is that what what Dune was about?

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
Don't answer.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
I think Dune might have been inspired by that Mongolian worm,
Jamie awesome. That may or may not exist. You never know. Look,
nobody's found the Great CON's tomb, and nobody's found one
of those worms. Put him together about being about a boom.
You got a pretty good fucking high adventure novel.

Speaker 3 (01:18:41):
You know, it does feel I mean, like clearly. You know,
Doctor Laura has a clear place in the pantheon of
twentieth century grifters.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, And she does very well at
her height. The show is on four hundred and fifty
radio stations. She's second only to Rush Limbaugh. This is
when she starts receiving a bunch of awards. She gets
one from the Department of Defense eventually, and then she
gets she snubs Bill Balance at an awards ceremony and
this is why he sells her photos to a foreign website.

(01:19:16):
Slashinger is rightfully furious. She sues him for invasion of
privacy and copyright violation. The court ruled that she had
no right to the images, and the consite puts them
back up. I'm not an expert on this case, but
it sounds pretty fucking gross. She does not appeal. She
tells her audience the photos were taken at a low

(01:19:37):
point in her life, and since she was going through
a divorce at the time, she didn't have moral authority
to talk.

Speaker 3 (01:19:44):
Well, yeah, it's it doesn't matter at what. It just
matters that it's illegal to distribute, right.

Speaker 2 (01:19:51):
So that's where I am on this. It's like, we
just shouldn't be allowed to do that at all.

Speaker 4 (01:19:54):
We shouldn't have to be That feels like, yeah, the
doctor Laura kicking in of like oh well this, you know,
there's a reason that this happened.

Speaker 3 (01:20:02):
It's like, no, actually, this is the rare time that
I'm on your side.

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):
No, I shouldn't sue him, and I wish the case
had gone your way. Yeah, yeah, I think it doesn't
because of some weird like the copyright issue is a
big part of it, right, there's something weird about like
their professional relationship that I think it's I don't know, though,
I'm not going to don't want to talk out of
my ass on it because she's in the right there.
In nineteen ninety nine, she signs a deal with Paramount
to create a talk show, which is a disaster. Laura

(01:20:29):
does not have the kind of face charisma that you
need to be a compelling TV lead, And there's also
something inherently shameful about what she does, right, Like, you
don't want to see somebody be that meat. You might
want to hear it when you're driving and you're in
a bad mood because you're commuting, but you don't necessarily
want to see it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:46):
I don't. I mean, but if that were true, wouldn't
that be true of like Rush Limbaugh and Jordan Peterson
and all those guys that we see all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:20:54):
Rush Limbaugh also has a TV show that doesn't really
work out in the okay, Jordan Peterson comes around and
is a different kind of guy. You know, he's related
to both of them, but for one thing, he's a
lot more like of a lower tempo of energy usually, right,
Like that's part of how you know, he has his

(01:21:14):
times when he's clearly manic or on whatever weird drugs's
daughter convinced him to take. But the Jordan Peterson that
initially got famous is like a very good at sounding
like a cultured and calm academic for the most part
until he has his moments of.

Speaker 3 (01:21:28):
Passion, until he goes raw meat mode.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
Right right, whereas doctor Laura is kind of immediately mean
to whoever calls you know anyway the show flops. Laura's
desperation over the show flopping is evident in the fact
that the series had to bring in paid ringers to
generate conflicts because it was so bad. They did this
lazily on two consecutive days. The same researcher employed by

(01:21:51):
the show is brought into play two different people. The
first is like a college a student who gets money
to write essays for other students, and the second is
a woman living with her boyfriend training decide if she
could she should get married. The show has its last
episode in March of two thousand and one. Now, Jamie,
I know that you and I both know about another
terrible thing that happened in two thousand and one. You

(01:22:14):
know horrible. I think it's changed my life. I know
it's changed your life. And that's when doctor Laura briefly
had a conflict with the gay community. Yes, this was
at a different times. The only other thing that happened
in two thousand and one that I can recall after
March only.

Speaker 3 (01:22:31):
Shrek came out, you know, Mahalandra came out.

Speaker 2 (01:22:34):
Right, Yeah, other things, and doctor Laura calls homosexuality a
biological error. Now Laura kind of immediately has to backpedal.
This would not happen today. She would grift off of this.
She would certainly be fetted by the far right right
or the normal right at this point, just by the right.
She can't. It's weird because two thousand and one, in

(01:22:57):
so many other ways is so much worse a period
for like queer rights in this country. But at this
point there's enough like glad and stuff, there's letter writing
campaigns against her people cause enough of a problem that
she has to apologize. And her point on this is
always again, you can really see that the narratives haven't
calcified to the point that they are at this point,

(01:23:19):
because while she says a bunch of horrible things like
gay people. It's not. It's the result of basically a
biological glitch, right, rather than something that we see in
every species that reproduces sexual.

Speaker 3 (01:23:30):
The beginning of time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
Yeah, but she also says, well we should. This is
also fucked up in a way. When kids get too
old for good straight parents to want them, gay men
should be able to adopt them.

Speaker 4 (01:23:41):
Which is such a weird that's I've never even heard that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):
It's honestly impressive gymnastics there, Like, you just have to
hand it to her sometimes, Yeah, what the fuck. Yeah,
I didn't know how to make gay people should be
allowed to adopt kids horrible, but you did it. Wow,
And in two ways, it's amazing stuff. Laura continued her
by now time warn tradition of giving people advice. The

(01:24:10):
best example of her giving advice that is like the
opposite of stuff that she actually did from later in
her career, is that she would repeatedly tell people you
got to honor your parents. You should try to have
a good relationship with your parents. If your kid, you
should have a good relationship, you know, with your parents,
and you know, the best thing that a kid can
or that a parent can have as grandkids YadA, YadA, YadA.

(01:24:31):
In real life, she briefly hires her mom to be
her secretary and then fires her mom, and then her
mom goes on to spend her next remaining years alone
in a condo. She dies and isn't found for like
three months and may have been murdered. We don't know
if she was murdered or not. It's a little bit
of a mystery. But here's what Laura herself wrote on

(01:24:52):
the matter. One day, the Beverly Hills police called me
she had a condo in Beverly Hills, to let me
know my mother was dead and had been dead on
the floor of her apartment for about four months. There
were no friends, and none of her neighbors were close.
Nobody noticed. They said it was probably a homicide, but
not a robbery. When the police came to my helm
to ask me questions, I told them it couldn't be
a homicide. I said that to murder someone personal, you
had to be close enough to begin to hate. Well

(01:25:14):
that nobody got close to her. The final conclusion was
unknown cause of death, but not homicide. So no comment,
no comment, MESSI MESSI fucking brutal. Yeah, that's that's brutal. Now,
I will say, Jamie, I think I solve this case.
I think I know something that Laura didn't at the time. Right,

(01:25:35):
so the police think this is a homicide. You know,
maybe the serial music can start playing now. The police
believed this is a homicide, but Laura says her mom
wasn't close enough to anybody to be murdered for personal reasons.
But in the book Vicky Bain wrote about Doctor Laura,
it opens with an interview with Yolanda, doctor Laura's mother,

(01:25:55):
from inside her house. Vicky describes the house she seems
friendly with doctor Laura's mom. Am I saying that biographer
Vicky Bain murdered doctor Laura's mother for some personal reason.

Speaker 3 (01:26:09):
Not film never know to listen to the next.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
Eleven episodes of my podcast on who killed Doctor Flora's mother?
Which is okay to joke about a little because she
hated her?

Speaker 3 (01:26:21):
You know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
Maybe it's not Who cares? What are you going to do?

Speaker 4 (01:26:26):
And then I will start a rival podcast called Vicky
Bain Innocent in years.

Speaker 2 (01:26:30):
One, Jamie and I are going to grift so much
money off of this woman, who, as far as I
could tell, published two unauthorized biographies back in the nineties
and then did not publish any other books. Hey, people,
of a person might be a fake name that a
publisher made up to publish this book. No way to know. Anyway.

(01:26:53):
Up to the mid auts, Doctor Laura remained one of
the most successful broadcasters on the planet. All of this
took a disastrous turn on August twenty ten. Up to
that point, doctor Laura was like the number five broadcaster
in the country by audience. But on that broadcast, while
talking about modern comedy, she says this.

Speaker 3 (01:27:12):
Black guys use it all the time.

Speaker 7 (01:27:14):
Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all
you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger.

Speaker 3 (01:27:19):
I don't get it.

Speaker 7 (01:27:20):
If anybody needs anybody without enough melon and says it,
it's a horrible thing. But when black people say it,
it's affectionate.

Speaker 3 (01:27:27):
It's very confusing.

Speaker 2 (01:27:29):
Jesus Christ, Doctor Laura, Oh oh, she goes on, because
I'm not going to play all of this. Maybe I should,
but like the lady she's on the phone with, who
I think is a black woman, says, well, you were
like really comfortable saying a lot of times on air,
that's kind of weird. And Laura. Laura gets really angry

(01:27:49):
and uses it eleven more times, just being like, you know,
like yeah. Then she says a lot of blacks only
voted for Obama because he was half black, And when
the collar disagrees, Laura says, don't nua acpe me.

Speaker 3 (01:28:03):
Oh so Jesus, that's not great, Jesus great.

Speaker 2 (01:28:13):
Yeah, yeah, quite a bit.

Speaker 3 (01:28:15):
So this is what this is what does her end professionally.

Speaker 2 (01:28:18):
As a big name. Yeah. She issues an apology later
that evening.

Speaker 3 (01:28:22):
And I mean it's like Air's fucking something.

Speaker 2 (01:28:25):
Yeah, basically at the end of you think probably there
was a backroom deal. She doesn't immediately quit, but she
quits at the end of the year. She goes, I
think it's she goes on Letterman to be like, I'm
quitting in order to regain my First Amendment rights to
say whatever is on my mind.

Speaker 9 (01:28:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:40):
Good on Letterman for letting her give her perspective.

Speaker 2 (01:28:43):
Yeah, thank god. But nobody really wanted to hear it
after this point, even though she is still doing it.
So well, there you go, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:28:53):
At very least, uh, it doesn't seem like she is
endured meaningfully outside of her only demographic It seems like
it's ever been like generationally.

Speaker 2 (01:29:04):
Bill Nobody knows who fucking Bill Balance was. Right now,
we do live with his I mean, Howard Stern's still
on the air. Not to say that, but we like
we are part of like the the the We exist
in a space that he helped make right and a
lot of the worst people on the Internet today, a
lot like Jordan Peterson being the example we keep going

(01:29:25):
back to. I don't know if they wouldn't. I'm not
going to say there would be no Jordan Peterson without
doctor Laura, but he would have had a lot more
work to do to make that space if she hadn't
been there first, right.

Speaker 3 (01:29:36):
Right, and and make no mistake, I believe in doctor
Jordan Peterson. I believe he would have found a way,
but you know certainly didn't didn't hurt. This is fascinating that.

Speaker 2 (01:29:48):
Jordan Peterson finds a way.

Speaker 3 (01:29:50):
Wow, from from just a looming presence in the Barnes
and Noble Aisle to knowing that she is I don't know,
no small part made some of our worst schools possible.

Speaker 2 (01:30:04):
Well, and also made the one of the sweaters and
Sister Act and the boys costumes in Hook.

Speaker 4 (01:30:11):
If you remember nothing else you know that feels that
feels about right?

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
Yeah that I am going.

Speaker 3 (01:30:17):
To rewatch the Shock tonight. And guess which sweat I
could rewatch?

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
You know what, let's all rewatch Sister Act.

Speaker 3 (01:30:24):
That's a very gentle to watch.

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):
A good Yeah, yeah, rewatched Sister Act. We'll watch a
good TNG episode where she played where she plays guy,
and maybe the one where they go back in time
and meet Mark Twain. He's got a ridiculous mustache.

Speaker 4 (01:30:39):
And most importantly, we I, oh, I know we had
an episode of Lower Decks about that.

Speaker 3 (01:30:44):
Uh huh, how could you not?

Speaker 4 (01:30:47):
Most importantly, well, we'll go back and watch the Christine
Baranski episode of Fraser.

Speaker 2 (01:30:52):
Yeah, the Christine Baranski episode of Fraser. Uh, the episode
of TNG where they will the two parter where they
go back to San Francisco in old times, and then
of course the movie Sister Act and Hook. If you've
got time.

Speaker 3 (01:31:06):
Actually a very relaxing weekend watch list.

Speaker 2 (01:31:08):
It seems like a nice weekend, you know what. Everybody
have fun, Jamie.

Speaker 1 (01:31:12):
Do you have anything you want to plug at the
end here? Perhaps a podcast?

Speaker 4 (01:31:17):
You know, I would love to plug a sixteenth minute
as well as the Bechdel Cast, which we firmly are
in denial that we have anything to do with any
of this, but yes, listen to sixteenth minute on cool
Zone Media.

Speaker 3 (01:31:32):
There's actually a lot of what I was thinking throughout
this episode had to do with an interview on a
recent episode with Carol J.

Speaker 4 (01:31:41):
Adams, author of the Sexual Politics of Meat, who was
harassed and dosed for weeks and like an entire summer
by Rush Limbaugh back in the day and then went
on to be harassed and docksed by Jordan Peterson fans
just a couple of years ago, and we talked about
out sort of the you know, illusion that this is

(01:32:04):
an Internet problem when it has existed in a very
similar form for a long time.

Speaker 3 (01:32:09):
So yeah, check out my interview with Carol and if
you just like Internet main characters, that's the show.

Speaker 2 (01:32:19):
Yeah, go to hell, I love you Bye.

Speaker 1 (01:32:28):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Behind the Bastards News

Follow Us On

Host

Robert Evans

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season

Crime Junkie

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part Two: The Dr. Laura Episodes