June 7, 2024 • 23 mins
Chris is joined by his longtime pal Dr. Drew.
This is the first time Chris asks if Dr. Drew was actually supposed to host The Bachelor!
Plus, Dr. Drew lets us in on a wellness secret… The Wellness Company.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is the most dramatic podcast ever and iHeartRadio podcast.
Chris Harrison coming to you from the home office in Austin,
Texas today. This interview is brought to you by the
Wellness Company, which we are going to talk about here
in just a little bit. A great endeavor that doctor
Drew is involved with. Doctor Drew Pinsk is a legend
(00:24):
board certified physician internal and addiction medicine. Obviously, he's a
popular television host Loveline. He's been around for decades. I
met him in the late nineties when I first came
to LA and started hosting The Bachelor and was on Loveline.
I have so much to doctor Drew about his connection
(00:44):
to The Bachelor. A question I've never asked him before
and joining me now is doctor Drew. It's good to
see you again.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
You as well. You're looking well, Everything cool with you?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Where are you Austin, Texas? Like a few of our
friends headed east No.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I was going down there every six weeks to do
a weekly streaming or YouTube podcast for your mom's house,
and so I got very familiar. I did that for
like three years. I got very familiar with us.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
It's a great Austin's a great, great town. We've been
here for a couple of years now and I absolutely
love it and it has It's been a healthy lifestyle
down here. You just have to try and stay away
from the kso and the Fijiitas every day. But other
than that, the barbecue. The barbecue will do it to you.
I'm so by the way, there's so much I want
to talk to you about.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Good.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I realized that I was kind of prepping for this.
I was thinking, was like, man, I've known doctor Drew
for two decades. I don't know if you remember the
first time we met was I'm assuming you were on
the world famous k Rock with Corolla back in the
day and we were doing love Line or you were
doing love Line. I would come in. That's right when
(01:54):
The Bachelor started.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yep, And I remember that. That was the mid to
late nineties and we were actually I think we were
in Culver City at that time, but k ROK was
our local affiliate. Yeah, there's that, and Loveline was on
MTV back in those days also, if you remember, Yeah,
and Corol and I still do a podcast. Once you
and I finished our conversation, I got to rush out
(02:17):
to his studio and talk to him.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
You're a glutton for punishment. Still, I know, I know
it's crazy, but after twenty years of knowing you, there's
there's a question that I have never asked you. And
I'm curious about this because you may not have even known.
Did you know or were you up for the role
of host of the Bachelor?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
No one, not that I recall. Is that is that
something that you heard?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I because this is when I got into it. This
is would have been like May of ninety nine, early
two thousand when I when I got on you know
the list. There was always a list, and when I
got down to the final four, I said, you know
who else is on this list? They named a couple
of guys and they said doctor Drew. And at this
point I had never met you. I only knew of
(03:03):
you and obviously Love Line and all that, and I thought, hysterical,
I said, you know what, that makes a hell of
a lot of sense. He's hosting love Line, So it
makes sense of why you were on in that spectrum
of why you would clearly they win a completely different
direction of the type of post of not getting a
doctor and someone who had any really skill set but
(03:25):
they they told me back then that you were a
part of the final four.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Isn't that something? I didn't thank you for telling me that.
I don't think I knew it, But I remember when
you came on being sort of confused by the whole
notion of this is what it was and how this worked?
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Oh totally.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
There was a lot of stuff in my head around
reality television. I'm going to do what? And then how
does that work? So I'm not sure if I'd been
asked a host, if I would have understood what I
was being asked to do, I'm sure I wouldn't know.
I'm certain I.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Would I got I'm so thankful. I had that dumb
look on my face, as we all did in the
early two thousands when we were inventing reality TV. But
I happened to run into Jeff Probs at of All
Things Celebrity Dodgeball and he had a survivor had been
on for like six months, and I met him and
I just walked up and I said, Hey, you know,
my name's Chris Harrison. I'm hosting this new show. This
(04:22):
is the basic outline of it. Can you give me
any sort of insight as to what the hell this is?
And he said, you know, all I can tell you
is you will. It's not like, you know, I was
a newscaster, sportscaster, I'd done all that stuff sports radio,
but this was a whole different animal. And he kind
of explained to me, you'll find your sea legs, and
no show is going to be the same, Like what
(04:43):
I'm doing on Survivor is kind of game show host story,
Yours is going to be totally different. So that talk
actually really kind of helped me figure my way and
start my way on The Bachelor, which I kind of,
you know, made my own after twenty.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Years, which is interesting. And Jeff is such a great guy,
I mean, a good guy, truly a good guy, and
so I'm not surprised he gave you something meaningful. The
what I'm curious from your standpoint, what how you perceive
reality television? I did you know I was. I've been
involved with it too, in many different ways. It's always
(05:17):
kind of confusing to me. It feels like it's many
different things. Like Jeff said, it's hard to call it
one thing. But what as it was evolving, what did
you imagine you were doing? Did how did that affect you.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
You know what I mean, Yeah, no, and that and
you you kind of hit the nail on the head.
It's many different things. And I always tell people when
I speak at schools or whatever, I say, you have
to think of a spectrum. You know, this is not
black and white. It's not reality TV or not. There
is this huge spectrum that is reality TV. And there
are the the game shows where like Jeff Probes and
Survivor are Dancing with the Stars. There's very heavy standards
(05:49):
and practices. There are lawyers because there's money involved, and
so that's that's a different animal into itself. Then there's
you know some shows I'm not going to name anybody,
but they're one hundred percent scripted. You know, they you
set up the scene, they know what they're going to
talk about. They you know these people that a lot
(06:12):
of it's the bio you know, the type lifestyle shows
where they're following these people around. Nobody's that interesting. Let's
be honest, even the Kardashians in and of themselves their
daily lives, they're not that interesting. You have to create,
you have to produce. And then there's a show like
The Bachelor, which I always said fell in the middle,
because what we did so well was produce that fish
(06:33):
bowl environment that you had to live within. So it
wasn't a surprise that Doctor Drew and Adam Carolla, who
hated each other, were on the same date. Now, what
happened within that date that was reality TV. We didn't
tell you what to do. But there's a reason that
you guys both like the same girl and hated each
other and you're together.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah. And there's even another category which I participated in,
which they generally call sort of therapeutic category, which is
you you come in and just let the cameras roll
and you just you and it's it still has the
oddity of and this I'm I want to ask you
about this. This is one of the odd things about Well,
it's it's an odd experience because you're having these very
(07:15):
intimate encounters and there is a camera guy, a cable guy,
a sound guy over here, the same thing behind you.
As soon as there's at least six people, maybe nine
in the room with you. A odd how quickly you
forget they're there. That's so odd to me. And that's
number one, and then number two, there's something about the
environment of reality shows that makes everything intensified. Did you
(07:37):
experience that? Oh? No.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I always said TV and reality shows they don't change you.
I think they just exponentially magnify who you are or
what you are.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
But I don't know why. I couldn't. I couldn't explain why.
I just always aware of it. Maybe it's because everybody's
sort of the lights or the cameras. Something about it
gets everybody going.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I think it's what you see. So, you know, we
always had the this. I always said, Look, if you're
a good guy, you know, like doctor Drew, you'll come
off like the greatest guy in the world. If you're
kind of a snarky pain in the butt, you really
come off like a villain. It's really magnified magnificently.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
I always say, you know, these people on the show,
they're not that bad, you know, the quote unquote villains.
But the other thing is TV really magnifies things, for example, religion.
Religion's a very touchy subject. And I was told and
it's kind of true, if you say the word Jesus Christ,
that really has a powerful punch. And if you say
Jesus Christ once in a conversation, it's like you've said
(08:37):
it twenty times. Oh yeah, And so there's just ways
that TV magnifies things because it has like viceral reaction.
And I remembered that specifically about religion when we would
cover it on the show, and it's like, well, we
don't you know, they don't need to say it so
much because once they say it once, it just has
that impact. And I found that fascinating. And again you
would have to dive into the psychology of it, which
(08:58):
is why I love TV so much. Yeah, what is
that psychology? And is that when we hear certain things
or see certain things, it really is magnified in our minds.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I don't know that anybody it's really and it's very
specific to television. Obviously, there are certain things that pack
a punch in the human psyche, and religion, of course,
is one of these things that is deeply meaningful in
various ways for people. And you know, I've over the
years talked to people about television and they will say
things like, well, you're you're going into people's living rooms
(09:30):
and bedrooms and you're there with them. It's something more
than that. I don't it's no one's ever really studied
I studied the kinds of people that go into these shows.
I get that all documented.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
I think we have this voyeuristic you know, I know
the Bachelor is it's we all want to judge. You know,
you look at society, you look at social media and
why it's so popular. We want to flip through and
just judge everybody's pictures and lives and yeah, cancel them
or not or put them in the box. That makes
us feel good about ourselves. And I think reality TV
was that first initial kind of social you know, societal
(10:04):
kind of idea where we can sit on our couch
with our pint of chunky monkey and judge, and we
love that voyeuristic thing. It makes us feel better about
ourselves maybe or it also makes us envious. It makes
us feel all those emotions. It's very It really is interesting.
How then you see social media now and how now
(10:24):
kind of reality TV has struggled a little bit because
it's not as impactful as social media.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Is, right, that's exactly right. It is all kind of
and look when when humans watch plays and all the
way back to Greek tragedy, right, these aren't healthy people
acting healthy. It's always sick people being sick. Yeah, and
so and and reality does a and I don't mean
that pejoratively. I mean, you know, it's just that it
(10:51):
you know, it's healthy people. What's the what did tools do?
I say, you know, healthy families are all healthy in
the same way, but dysfunctional families are all dysfunk on
their own unique way. And it's those stories that get us. Yeah.
I am not been a fan of rally television until
the pandemic and then I got wrapped into ninety Day
Fiance and my.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Wife loves that. You did Special Forces.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I did Special Forces and that was that was a
great experience.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
They asked me to do it. I'm really curious, You're
really curious about your experience on it.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
That's another show where they just let the cameras roll.
You don't see producers, you don't even see cameras ninety
percent of the time. They just they just put you
in there and that's enough. Shit will go down. Trust me.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
I would like to think of myself as athletic and
can handle that. But I'm like, yeah, okay, doctor Drew
went down with you know, heat, exhaustion and dehydrations. I'm like, yeah,
I'm like, I don't know if I want my ass
kick that much.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
So how do you mind? If I ask gold you
are fifty two, Yeah, you're you're They shouldn't have people
in their sixties in there. That's what I've decided because
your relationship with the environment is quite different. Because I
I really was ready for it, and it was not
The physical part did not bother me at all. I
mean a little bit. Obviously it's rough, but but that
was an issue. It was the environment that just took
(12:10):
it tole on me and that was it and I
was out. I was I was confused. I can't always
tell people. I want to create a T shirt that
says Jamie Lynn Spears saved my life because she's the
one that when I when I got in cephalopathic, I
was kind of out of my mind. I didn't know
where I was. She grabbed me, she goes, you don't
look right, come with me, and dragged me into the
medical office.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Wow, Jamielyn Spears saves DOOC. That's the headline. Saves doctor Drew.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
She did. She did.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Doctor Fauci testified in front of the House Subcommittee.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I have to get her because I know I've I've
listened to so many interviews from you, what was your take.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
So it's a little complicated, so let me try to
lay it out. Yeah. It made me reflect on the
fact that back in the AIDS epidemic, I relied on
doctor Fauci and the CDC so much, and they were wonderful.
They were guides, they were led us through it, helped us,
advised us. They did not tell us what to do.
They were advisory, as the CDC has always been. And
(13:20):
so when this pandemic hit, one of the things you
will not see in the various videos of me telling
people to calm down at the end of every one,
I would say, just listen to Fauci, listen to the CDC.
And that was actually the only thing I got wrong.
They turned out they went sideways in a weird way
that I was just astonished. I couldn't believe it. And
(13:42):
some of the things he was saying yesterday were sort
of disturbing in their lack of insight into the impact
he had. That kind of bothered me, particularly when he
was asked about the lab leek hypothesis. I thought about
all the people that were crushed under his direction for
even entertaining the idea, and his words, specifically that it
(14:03):
was just another shiny object. He expected it to go away. Now,
the reality is he said he was open minded during
the whole thing. He was. I've seen documentation of how
he helped to try to come to an understanding where
it came from. He was open mind, that is true,
but he also said things that really affected the practice
of medicine and other people. So that bothered me. But
(14:24):
the part that bothered me even more was that there
were no good questions. The only good question was that
er doctor who laid out his story. But I came
away thinking, oh no, this is probably because all these
guys are encumbered with contributions from research organizations and pharma organs,
(14:46):
so they can't ask the real questions. And that was
the most troubling part for me. We really need to
understand what happened. I am not in favor of it
being a criminal of all this you know, Nuremberg talk,
because then we'll never find anything out. People will just
go into their camps and hide, and they'll defend themselves
to the death because they should. I want to know
(15:09):
what happened. I want to know what we got to
do to prevent this from happening again. And that's all
that really.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Matters, and any which medically because you think of medicine
and doctors and scientists. And when Fauci was like, I
am science, I represent.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Science, it's not good.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And then he will literally say in the next breath,
I don't know where social distancing came from. It just appeared.
And what a silly thing to say, you know where
it came from, obviously, I So I made.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
It my business. I do a show, a streaming show
on Tuesday Wednesday Thursday at three o'clock on Mumble and
other YouTube called Ask Doctor Drew, and early on I
started interviewing people who had been canceled because they all
were like consummate professionals people. I admired that why are
they canceling those guys? Right? They must got to understand
what happened there. In every single one of them, I
(15:59):
learned it least one profound insight and one a guy
named Paul Alexander was there when the six foot distancing
thing came in, and he objected to it and questioned
it and tried to understand. Took talk to the CDC
leaders and his input was they felt they they knew
it was probably thirty to sixty feet that they should
(16:20):
be maintaining and they needed to do something. Now, needing
to do something, in quotes, is the most dangerous thing
you can ever hear from medical provider. When my residence,
when I was training, residents would say, when I asked
them to defend a choice they made and they said
I needed to do something, I would destroy them. That
is how you harm patients, That's how you do it.
So needing to do something is an egregious statement. And
(16:43):
B he also told me this was really interesting. He
only recently told me this. That the middle level management
at the CDC, the bureaucrats, the lifelong bureaucrats, decided that
they were going to make sure this happened, and the
leadership be damned, and they were the ones that forced it.
And the leadership of the CDC could not handle the
(17:05):
middle and lower management who was demanding that they do
this based on no science. There was no science, There
never will be science. There is no such term as
social distancing. They sort of added it to lockdown language.
Six feet was invented out of thin air, and it
probably did well. It certainly did nothing except disrupt Again,
(17:26):
think about it, what you had to stand in the
corners of elevators, like, what is that going to do?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
It has left such a scar on a generation and
so oh my god, and predictably and you look at
you look at what happened to our kids, and how
this it shut down businesses, it shut down school. So
it's like we kind of I'm not saying, I'm not
saying he laughed it off, but I agree.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
What really I.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Felt was missing with him was the gravity of his
decision making. And I would love And again, I don't
want to see him strung up. I don't want to
see him out jail. No, but I would love for him.
And I know we'll never get this, but just say, hey, god,
we made some mistakes. It was such a traumatic, chaotic time. Yes,
we thought this was happening, but man, did we make
some mistakes. We got to learn from this. Like, that's
(18:13):
what I want my doctors and my scientists to say,
one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And what keeps me up at night is that they
were able to do this to us and we haven't
put anything in place to prevent it from happening again.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, that's not what I want My doctor, especially my
lead doctor and scientists who's you know, the face of
our country in the face of medicine. That part, to
me is horrifying.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
That was never his job. He was a research grant organizer,
he was he was a advisor. He was worked in
conjunction with the CDC who made recommendations to us. The
fact that the state governments took that is thus saith
the Lord. That's the disgusting part. That's where things went
off the rail. And the fact that they kept things closed.
I kept saying early on that we were sacrificing eight
(18:55):
to fifteen year old just sacrificing them and two years
of school closure in this county ridiculous. I want to transition,
if you don't mind, over to the Wellness Company, because
police is also a response to this. You know doctor
Kelly Victory, who's on our medical board also, and she's
been a friend of mine for quite some time. She
said something the other day that really rung true for me.
(19:15):
She goes, you know, we are helping people get access
to these emergency kids and travel kids that fulled with
antibiotics and medication. I mean things I give to my
patients when they travel, for instance, or I have on
hand here for my family and she said, you know,
five years ago the idea of giving people access to
this the way we're doing it with board, with a
(19:35):
manual and with telehealth support and backup. She's I'm not
sure I would have signed up. I might even have
thought it was crazy to do this. She goes, but now,
given what they've done, is crazy not to do this.
You have to be ready. And so that's how we
framed our TWC philosophy, which is, we give you access
to be ready, be prepared, have access, and by the way,
(19:57):
in a cost effective way, so you don't have to
run to would urgent care pick twelve hundred dollars, You
can do it with us very inexpensively. And well we
do it. Well.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
I have my emergency kit.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
I go and when you travel, look at that travel kit.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I wish I'd come up with this idea, because you know,
for again, I was shooting the show for twenty years
and I had a doctor, and I would he would
say the same thing. Look, you're going to Asia, You're
going to be over at these in these places. Yeah,
I would. I would always travel with zpak. I had antibiotics.
I traveled with stuff for my stomach. He's like, immediately.
And so it's funny I had one of these I
traveled with just because there's no way, you know, I'm
(20:34):
stuck in Thailand or Vietnam, right And so I love
that you guys are doing this, and I have the
I have an emergency kit from you guys in my
house right now.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Good and and I think of it. You know, even
if you're going to Spain or France, them you don't
know navigate the system. But I started thinking, even our
system is so encumbered with nonsense, you can't you can't
navigate it either. And so it's really it is a
sign of the time that a group of well meaning,
well trained physician have gotten to go to do this,
and it is a great medical word. People really put
(21:03):
some thought into this. So take a look at it.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Well and a matter of you know, because sometimes even
if you're well to do and living in America, it
can take two or three days before you can jump
on something. If you could have started taking a z
pak immediately, you'd be done well.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
And I do think, like you know, they're making a
big deal of this bird flu, which is their three
cases now, two conjunctividis, one was respiratory. This means to
me that they're monkying with the virus and they're fearful
it's getting out in the community. So we added tam
flu to one of our kits, which has so owned
some activity. The idea with all viruses is early and
(21:39):
hard because it's the sequella of the viral infection that
really creates the havoc on our system. Well, Chris is
great to talk to you, really.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Doctor Drew Man. Again, I could do this forever. By
the way, this interview was brought to you by the
Wellness Company. You can visit them online at urgentcarekit dot com.
By the way, go to slash Chris to get your
kit today because you get fifteen percent off. Again, you
can get fifty percent off your kit today at urgentcarekit
dot com slash Chris and use promo code Chris and
(22:11):
you can check out everything they have to offer. And
by the way, this is for like, this is for UTIs,
It's for for everything.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
So we've got I've got cool stuff coming. I've got
things that when I think about providing these things for
people now I think, why have we done this before?
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Well goes off.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff coming in terms of
the reproductive health and sexual health that we're going to
get into, and like you said, UTI and things that
people know how to use. These things, it's it's not
you know, it's not a rocket science. So much.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Well, let's let's not wait so long. I would love
to get back together again and chatters about so many
other things. Do my best to Corolla and it's great
to see you again, my friend. To Chris, thanks so much,
thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram at the most
dramatic pod ever, and make sure to write us a
review and leave us five stars. I'll talk to you
next time.
This is the most dramatic podcast ever and iHeartRadio podcast.
Chris Harrison coming to you from the home office in Austin,
Texas today. This interview is brought to you by the
Wellness Company, which we are going to talk about here
in just a little bit. A great endeavor that doctor
Drew is involved with. Doctor Drew Pinsk is a legend
(00:24):
board certified physician internal and addiction medicine. Obviously, he's a
popular television host Loveline. He's been around for decades. I
met him in the late nineties when I first came
to LA and started hosting The Bachelor and was on Loveline.
I have so much to doctor Drew about his connection
(00:44):
to The Bachelor. A question I've never asked him before
and joining me now is doctor Drew. It's good to
see you again.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
You as well. You're looking well, Everything cool with you?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Where are you Austin, Texas? Like a few of our
friends headed east No.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I was going down there every six weeks to do
a weekly streaming or YouTube podcast for your mom's house,
and so I got very familiar. I did that for
like three years. I got very familiar with us.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
It's a great Austin's a great, great town. We've been
here for a couple of years now and I absolutely
love it and it has It's been a healthy lifestyle
down here. You just have to try and stay away
from the kso and the Fijiitas every day. But other
than that, the barbecue. The barbecue will do it to you.
I'm so by the way, there's so much I want
to talk to you about.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Good.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I realized that I was kind of prepping for this.
I was thinking, was like, man, I've known doctor Drew
for two decades. I don't know if you remember the
first time we met was I'm assuming you were on
the world famous k Rock with Corolla back in the
day and we were doing love Line or you were
doing love Line. I would come in. That's right when
(01:54):
The Bachelor started.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yep, And I remember that. That was the mid to
late nineties and we were actually I think we were
in Culver City at that time, but k ROK was
our local affiliate. Yeah, there's that, and Loveline was on
MTV back in those days also, if you remember, Yeah,
and Corol and I still do a podcast. Once you
and I finished our conversation, I got to rush out
(02:17):
to his studio and talk to him.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
You're a glutton for punishment. Still, I know, I know
it's crazy, but after twenty years of knowing you, there's
there's a question that I have never asked you. And
I'm curious about this because you may not have even known.
Did you know or were you up for the role
of host of the Bachelor?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
No one, not that I recall. Is that is that
something that you heard?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I because this is when I got into it. This
is would have been like May of ninety nine, early
two thousand when I when I got on you know
the list. There was always a list, and when I
got down to the final four, I said, you know
who else is on this list? They named a couple
of guys and they said doctor Drew. And at this
point I had never met you. I only knew of
(03:03):
you and obviously Love Line and all that, and I thought, hysterical,
I said, you know what, that makes a hell of
a lot of sense. He's hosting love Line, So it
makes sense of why you were on in that spectrum
of why you would clearly they win a completely different
direction of the type of post of not getting a
doctor and someone who had any really skill set but
(03:25):
they they told me back then that you were a
part of the final four.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Isn't that something? I didn't thank you for telling me that.
I don't think I knew it, But I remember when
you came on being sort of confused by the whole
notion of this is what it was and how this worked?
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Oh totally.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
There was a lot of stuff in my head around
reality television. I'm going to do what? And then how
does that work? So I'm not sure if I'd been
asked a host, if I would have understood what I
was being asked to do, I'm sure I wouldn't know.
I'm certain I.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Would I got I'm so thankful. I had that dumb
look on my face, as we all did in the
early two thousands when we were inventing reality TV. But
I happened to run into Jeff Probs at of All
Things Celebrity Dodgeball and he had a survivor had been
on for like six months, and I met him and
I just walked up and I said, Hey, you know,
my name's Chris Harrison. I'm hosting this new show. This
(04:22):
is the basic outline of it. Can you give me
any sort of insight as to what the hell this is?
And he said, you know, all I can tell you
is you will. It's not like, you know, I was
a newscaster, sportscaster, I'd done all that stuff sports radio,
but this was a whole different animal. And he kind
of explained to me, you'll find your sea legs, and
no show is going to be the same, Like what
(04:43):
I'm doing on Survivor is kind of game show host story,
Yours is going to be totally different. So that talk
actually really kind of helped me figure my way and
start my way on The Bachelor, which I kind of,
you know, made my own after twenty.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Years, which is interesting. And Jeff is such a great guy,
I mean, a good guy, truly a good guy, and
so I'm not surprised he gave you something meaningful. The
what I'm curious from your standpoint, what how you perceive
reality television? I did you know I was. I've been
involved with it too, in many different ways. It's always
(05:17):
kind of confusing to me. It feels like it's many
different things. Like Jeff said, it's hard to call it
one thing. But what as it was evolving, what did
you imagine you were doing? Did how did that affect you.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
You know what I mean, Yeah, no, and that and
you you kind of hit the nail on the head.
It's many different things. And I always tell people when
I speak at schools or whatever, I say, you have
to think of a spectrum. You know, this is not
black and white. It's not reality TV or not. There
is this huge spectrum that is reality TV. And there
are the the game shows where like Jeff Probes and
Survivor are Dancing with the Stars. There's very heavy standards
(05:49):
and practices. There are lawyers because there's money involved, and
so that's that's a different animal into itself. Then there's
you know some shows I'm not going to name anybody,
but they're one hundred percent scripted. You know, they you
set up the scene, they know what they're going to
talk about. They you know these people that a lot
(06:12):
of it's the bio you know, the type lifestyle shows
where they're following these people around. Nobody's that interesting. Let's
be honest, even the Kardashians in and of themselves their
daily lives, they're not that interesting. You have to create,
you have to produce. And then there's a show like
The Bachelor, which I always said fell in the middle,
because what we did so well was produce that fish
(06:33):
bowl environment that you had to live within. So it
wasn't a surprise that Doctor Drew and Adam Carolla, who
hated each other, were on the same date. Now, what
happened within that date that was reality TV. We didn't
tell you what to do. But there's a reason that
you guys both like the same girl and hated each
other and you're together.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah. And there's even another category which I participated in,
which they generally call sort of therapeutic category, which is
you you come in and just let the cameras roll
and you just you and it's it still has the
oddity of and this I'm I want to ask you
about this. This is one of the odd things about Well,
it's it's an odd experience because you're having these very
(07:15):
intimate encounters and there is a camera guy, a cable guy,
a sound guy over here, the same thing behind you.
As soon as there's at least six people, maybe nine
in the room with you. A odd how quickly you
forget they're there. That's so odd to me. And that's
number one, and then number two, there's something about the
environment of reality shows that makes everything intensified. Did you
(07:37):
experience that? Oh? No.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I always said TV and reality shows they don't change you.
I think they just exponentially magnify who you are or
what you are.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
But I don't know why. I couldn't. I couldn't explain why.
I just always aware of it. Maybe it's because everybody's
sort of the lights or the cameras. Something about it
gets everybody going.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I think it's what you see. So, you know, we
always had the this. I always said, Look, if you're
a good guy, you know, like doctor Drew, you'll come
off like the greatest guy in the world. If you're
kind of a snarky pain in the butt, you really
come off like a villain. It's really magnified magnificently.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
I always say, you know, these people on the show,
they're not that bad, you know, the quote unquote villains.
But the other thing is TV really magnifies things, for example, religion.
Religion's a very touchy subject. And I was told and
it's kind of true, if you say the word Jesus Christ,
that really has a powerful punch. And if you say
Jesus Christ once in a conversation, it's like you've said
(08:37):
it twenty times. Oh yeah, And so there's just ways
that TV magnifies things because it has like viceral reaction.
And I remembered that specifically about religion when we would
cover it on the show, and it's like, well, we
don't you know, they don't need to say it so
much because once they say it once, it just has
that impact. And I found that fascinating. And again you
would have to dive into the psychology of it, which
(08:58):
is why I love TV so much. Yeah, what is
that psychology? And is that when we hear certain things
or see certain things, it really is magnified in our minds.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I don't know that anybody it's really and it's very
specific to television. Obviously, there are certain things that pack
a punch in the human psyche, and religion, of course,
is one of these things that is deeply meaningful in
various ways for people. And you know, I've over the
years talked to people about television and they will say
things like, well, you're you're going into people's living rooms
(09:30):
and bedrooms and you're there with them. It's something more
than that. I don't it's no one's ever really studied
I studied the kinds of people that go into these shows.
I get that all documented.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
I think we have this voyeuristic you know, I know
the Bachelor is it's we all want to judge. You know,
you look at society, you look at social media and
why it's so popular. We want to flip through and
just judge everybody's pictures and lives and yeah, cancel them
or not or put them in the box. That makes
us feel good about ourselves. And I think reality TV
was that first initial kind of social you know, societal
(10:04):
kind of idea where we can sit on our couch
with our pint of chunky monkey and judge, and we
love that voyeuristic thing. It makes us feel better about
ourselves maybe or it also makes us envious. It makes
us feel all those emotions. It's very It really is interesting.
How then you see social media now and how now
(10:24):
kind of reality TV has struggled a little bit because
it's not as impactful as social media.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Is, right, that's exactly right. It is all kind of
and look when when humans watch plays and all the
way back to Greek tragedy, right, these aren't healthy people
acting healthy. It's always sick people being sick. Yeah, and
so and and reality does a and I don't mean
that pejoratively. I mean, you know, it's just that it
(10:51):
you know, it's healthy people. What's the what did tools do?
I say, you know, healthy families are all healthy in
the same way, but dysfunctional families are all dysfunk on
their own unique way. And it's those stories that get us. Yeah.
I am not been a fan of rally television until
the pandemic and then I got wrapped into ninety Day
Fiance and my.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Wife loves that. You did Special Forces.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I did Special Forces and that was that was a
great experience.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
They asked me to do it. I'm really curious, You're
really curious about your experience on it.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
That's another show where they just let the cameras roll.
You don't see producers, you don't even see cameras ninety
percent of the time. They just they just put you
in there and that's enough. Shit will go down. Trust me.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
I would like to think of myself as athletic and
can handle that. But I'm like, yeah, okay, doctor Drew
went down with you know, heat, exhaustion and dehydrations. I'm like, yeah,
I'm like, I don't know if I want my ass
kick that much.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
So how do you mind? If I ask gold you
are fifty two, Yeah, you're you're They shouldn't have people
in their sixties in there. That's what I've decided because
your relationship with the environment is quite different. Because I
I really was ready for it, and it was not
The physical part did not bother me at all. I
mean a little bit. Obviously it's rough, but but that
was an issue. It was the environment that just took
(12:10):
it tole on me and that was it and I
was out. I was I was confused. I can't always
tell people. I want to create a T shirt that
says Jamie Lynn Spears saved my life because she's the
one that when I when I got in cephalopathic, I
was kind of out of my mind. I didn't know
where I was. She grabbed me, she goes, you don't
look right, come with me, and dragged me into the
medical office.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Wow, Jamielyn Spears saves DOOC. That's the headline. Saves doctor Drew.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
She did. She did.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Doctor Fauci testified in front of the House Subcommittee.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I have to get her because I know I've I've
listened to so many interviews from you, what was your take.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
So it's a little complicated, so let me try to
lay it out. Yeah. It made me reflect on the
fact that back in the AIDS epidemic, I relied on
doctor Fauci and the CDC so much, and they were wonderful.
They were guides, they were led us through it, helped us,
advised us. They did not tell us what to do.
They were advisory, as the CDC has always been. And
(13:20):
so when this pandemic hit, one of the things you
will not see in the various videos of me telling
people to calm down at the end of every one,
I would say, just listen to Fauci, listen to the CDC.
And that was actually the only thing I got wrong.
They turned out they went sideways in a weird way
that I was just astonished. I couldn't believe it. And
(13:42):
some of the things he was saying yesterday were sort
of disturbing in their lack of insight into the impact
he had. That kind of bothered me, particularly when he
was asked about the lab leek hypothesis. I thought about
all the people that were crushed under his direction for
even entertaining the idea, and his words, specifically that it
(14:03):
was just another shiny object. He expected it to go away. Now,
the reality is he said he was open minded during
the whole thing. He was. I've seen documentation of how
he helped to try to come to an understanding where
it came from. He was open mind, that is true,
but he also said things that really affected the practice
of medicine and other people. So that bothered me. But
(14:24):
the part that bothered me even more was that there
were no good questions. The only good question was that
er doctor who laid out his story. But I came
away thinking, oh no, this is probably because all these
guys are encumbered with contributions from research organizations and pharma organs,
(14:46):
so they can't ask the real questions. And that was
the most troubling part for me. We really need to
understand what happened. I am not in favor of it
being a criminal of all this you know, Nuremberg talk,
because then we'll never find anything out. People will just
go into their camps and hide, and they'll defend themselves
to the death because they should. I want to know
(15:09):
what happened. I want to know what we got to
do to prevent this from happening again. And that's all
that really.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Matters, and any which medically because you think of medicine
and doctors and scientists. And when Fauci was like, I
am science, I represent.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Science, it's not good.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And then he will literally say in the next breath,
I don't know where social distancing came from. It just appeared.
And what a silly thing to say, you know where
it came from, obviously, I So I made.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
It my business. I do a show, a streaming show
on Tuesday Wednesday Thursday at three o'clock on Mumble and
other YouTube called Ask Doctor Drew, and early on I
started interviewing people who had been canceled because they all
were like consummate professionals people. I admired that why are
they canceling those guys? Right? They must got to understand
what happened there. In every single one of them, I
(15:59):
learned it least one profound insight and one a guy
named Paul Alexander was there when the six foot distancing
thing came in, and he objected to it and questioned
it and tried to understand. Took talk to the CDC
leaders and his input was they felt they they knew
it was probably thirty to sixty feet that they should
(16:20):
be maintaining and they needed to do something. Now, needing
to do something, in quotes, is the most dangerous thing
you can ever hear from medical provider. When my residence,
when I was training, residents would say, when I asked
them to defend a choice they made and they said
I needed to do something, I would destroy them. That
is how you harm patients, That's how you do it.
So needing to do something is an egregious statement. And
(16:43):
B he also told me this was really interesting. He
only recently told me this. That the middle level management
at the CDC, the bureaucrats, the lifelong bureaucrats, decided that
they were going to make sure this happened, and the
leadership be damned, and they were the ones that forced it.
And the leadership of the CDC could not handle the
(17:05):
middle and lower management who was demanding that they do
this based on no science. There was no science, There
never will be science. There is no such term as
social distancing. They sort of added it to lockdown language.
Six feet was invented out of thin air, and it
probably did well. It certainly did nothing except disrupt Again,
(17:26):
think about it, what you had to stand in the
corners of elevators, like, what is that going to do?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
It has left such a scar on a generation and
so oh my god, and predictably and you look at
you look at what happened to our kids, and how
this it shut down businesses, it shut down school. So
it's like we kind of I'm not saying, I'm not
saying he laughed it off, but I agree.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
What really I.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Felt was missing with him was the gravity of his
decision making. And I would love And again, I don't
want to see him strung up. I don't want to
see him out jail. No, but I would love for him.
And I know we'll never get this, but just say, hey, god,
we made some mistakes. It was such a traumatic, chaotic time. Yes,
we thought this was happening, but man, did we make
some mistakes. We got to learn from this. Like, that's
(18:13):
what I want my doctors and my scientists to say,
one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And what keeps me up at night is that they
were able to do this to us and we haven't
put anything in place to prevent it from happening again.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, that's not what I want My doctor, especially my
lead doctor and scientists who's you know, the face of
our country in the face of medicine. That part, to
me is horrifying.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
That was never his job. He was a research grant organizer,
he was he was a advisor. He was worked in
conjunction with the CDC who made recommendations to us. The
fact that the state governments took that is thus saith
the Lord. That's the disgusting part. That's where things went
off the rail. And the fact that they kept things closed.
I kept saying early on that we were sacrificing eight
(18:55):
to fifteen year old just sacrificing them and two years
of school closure in this county ridiculous. I want to transition,
if you don't mind, over to the Wellness Company, because
police is also a response to this. You know doctor
Kelly Victory, who's on our medical board also, and she's
been a friend of mine for quite some time. She
said something the other day that really rung true for me.
(19:15):
She goes, you know, we are helping people get access
to these emergency kids and travel kids that fulled with
antibiotics and medication. I mean things I give to my
patients when they travel, for instance, or I have on
hand here for my family and she said, you know,
five years ago the idea of giving people access to
this the way we're doing it with board, with a
(19:35):
manual and with telehealth support and backup. She's I'm not
sure I would have signed up. I might even have
thought it was crazy to do this. She goes, but now,
given what they've done, is crazy not to do this.
You have to be ready. And so that's how we
framed our TWC philosophy, which is, we give you access
to be ready, be prepared, have access, and by the way,
(19:57):
in a cost effective way, so you don't have to
run to would urgent care pick twelve hundred dollars, You
can do it with us very inexpensively. And well we
do it. Well.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
I have my emergency kit.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
I go and when you travel, look at that travel kit.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I wish I'd come up with this idea, because you know,
for again, I was shooting the show for twenty years
and I had a doctor, and I would he would
say the same thing. Look, you're going to Asia, You're
going to be over at these in these places. Yeah,
I would. I would always travel with zpak. I had antibiotics.
I traveled with stuff for my stomach. He's like, immediately.
And so it's funny I had one of these I
traveled with just because there's no way, you know, I'm
(20:34):
stuck in Thailand or Vietnam, right And so I love
that you guys are doing this, and I have the
I have an emergency kit from you guys in my
house right now.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Good and and I think of it. You know, even
if you're going to Spain or France, them you don't
know navigate the system. But I started thinking, even our
system is so encumbered with nonsense, you can't you can't
navigate it either. And so it's really it is a
sign of the time that a group of well meaning,
well trained physician have gotten to go to do this,
and it is a great medical word. People really put
(21:03):
some thought into this. So take a look at it.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Well and a matter of you know, because sometimes even
if you're well to do and living in America, it
can take two or three days before you can jump
on something. If you could have started taking a z
pak immediately, you'd be done well.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
And I do think, like you know, they're making a
big deal of this bird flu, which is their three
cases now, two conjunctividis, one was respiratory. This means to
me that they're monkying with the virus and they're fearful
it's getting out in the community. So we added tam
flu to one of our kits, which has so owned
some activity. The idea with all viruses is early and
(21:39):
hard because it's the sequella of the viral infection that
really creates the havoc on our system. Well, Chris is
great to talk to you, really.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Doctor Drew Man. Again, I could do this forever. By
the way, this interview was brought to you by the
Wellness Company. You can visit them online at urgentcarekit dot com.
By the way, go to slash Chris to get your
kit today because you get fifteen percent off. Again, you
can get fifty percent off your kit today at urgentcarekit
dot com slash Chris and use promo code Chris and
(22:11):
you can check out everything they have to offer. And
by the way, this is for like, this is for UTIs,
It's for for everything.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
So we've got I've got cool stuff coming. I've got
things that when I think about providing these things for
people now I think, why have we done this before?
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Well goes off.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff coming in terms of
the reproductive health and sexual health that we're going to
get into, and like you said, UTI and things that
people know how to use. These things, it's it's not
you know, it's not a rocket science. So much.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Well, let's let's not wait so long. I would love
to get back together again and chatters about so many
other things. Do my best to Corolla and it's great
to see you again, my friend. To Chris, thanks so much,
thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram at the most
dramatic pod ever, and make sure to write us a
review and leave us five stars. I'll talk to you
next time.
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Zima
Chris Harrison
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.