Dr. Phil McGraw is the host of the Dr. Phil Show and the brand new podcast, Phil in the Blanks. In this Sunday Special, he talks about how he became a household name, how he went from working as a trial scientist to becoming one of the most recognizable people in the world, and how he got to where he is today. He also talks about Oprah Winfrey and her influence on his life, and why he decided to become a TV host. He also explains how he was able to become one of Oprah s go-to people when it came to defending her in the Mad Cow case, and what it was like being on her show when she asked him to be on the show and how to spot a "liar." Dr. McGraw also explains why he thinks Oprah is a better judge of character than most people and why she should be on TV more often than she actually is and much, much more! This is a Sunday Special with Dr. Phillip McGraw, and you won't want to miss this one. It's a must-listen Sunday Special! Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, Like, and Share to get exclusive sneak peeks of upcoming episodes and interviews with celebrities and high-profile guests. Subscribe and comment to stay up to date with the latest in today s trending topics! Thanks for listening and share the podcast with your fellow podcaster friends! and Good Luck Out There! Timestamps: 1:00 - What are you waiting for? 2:30 - How do you want to be featured on the next Sunday? 3:00:00 4: Who are you going to be a guest on The Dr Phil Show? 5:00 | What do you're going to do next? 6:30 | How do I know who you're watching the most important thing I'm going to watch the most interesting thing I should I do? 7:30 8:15 - Which celebrity is your favorite thing? 9:00 Is Oprah s favorite part? 11:30 Is Oprah a liar? 12: What do I like to watch? 13:30 What s your biggest superpower? 14:00 What are my biggest weakness? 15:00 Do you have a favorite thing that I would you like to see me talk about in a movie? 16:40 17:00 My biggest takeaway from this episode?
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00:03:54.000One of the things that obviously you're famous for is your ability to read other human beings and a lot of your show is the personal interaction that you have with other folks.
00:04:01.000How accurate do you think that people can actually be just by talking to folks about assessing where they're coming from, whether they're lying, that sort of thing?
00:04:11.000Well, you know, when you really sit down and focus on somebody, and particularly the people that I work with, I think they really come in wanting me to know the truth.
00:04:24.000Uh, and we really manage people's expectations.
00:04:27.000First off, I don't work with anybody that doesn't want to work with me.
00:04:31.000I mean, I don't stop cars out on sunset and say, you look like you need help.
00:04:38.000I mean, we get tens of thousands of emails of people wanting to be there and, and it's hard to get there because, uh, I mean, somebody told me the other day, uh, the, Average guest is written in 20 or 30 times before they get there, which I hate.
00:04:59.000And I make it real clear, look, I can help you with anything you tell me about, even if it's to tell you I can't help you, or I will send you where you can get help.
00:05:10.000But if you come in and tell me something that's not the truth, if you're just coming in trying to cover your ass or spin this, you're wasting my time and yours.
00:05:18.000So you worked really hard to get here, so you need to tell me the truth.
00:05:23.000So most people really are trying to put it out there and tell me the truth.
00:05:27.000And if they're not, it's pretty obvious.
00:05:30.000If somebody's there just trying to be a right fighter, not own their part of a circumstance or situation, whether it's a family issue or they're on drugs or whatever, if they're trying to evade and hide, it's pretty evident, because They're not wanting to take accountability or whatever, and once they start getting honest, that's real clear, too.
00:05:53.000But most of the people come in are trying to really get some help, sincerely, or they don't make the cut, because we do Every guest that I deal with, I get a notebook that's probably 250 pages thick, because we do intake interview, I do a cross-sectional history, a longitudinal history, a medical history, a social history.
00:06:16.000We interview collaterals, neighbors, friends, family members, to try to get as many perspectives as we possibly can.
00:06:24.000So I have a lot of information that doesn't just come from them.
00:06:29.000And then I have an advisory board for Dr. Phil, and that's made up of the top minds in psychology, psychiatry, medicine, sociology, and they're from the top learning centers in the country.
00:06:44.000I've got the head of the family division in the Harvard Medical School, the children Child psychiatry at Yale University.
00:06:52.000I've got Dr. Zimbardo, a professor emeritus from Stanford University that's done all the—remember, he did the prison experiment.
00:06:59.000He's written most of the general psych textbooks.
00:07:03.000If people went through general psych, they probably had Zimbardo as a textbook.
00:07:09.000I've just got, you know, really the These are a lot of the editors of the peer-reviewed journals in psychology.
00:07:18.000So if I get a really complex case, I can send it out to these different men and women on my advisory board and get really good input from them.
00:07:27.000You know, there's about an 18 to 24-month lag time From research that's accepted for these peer journals to the time it gets published.
00:07:36.000So I get beyond cutting-edge information for my guests.
00:08:07.000People ask me sometimes, you know, Dr. Phil, are problems really as simple as you make them out to be?
00:08:14.000I don't think problems are simple at all.
00:08:17.000In fact, I think problems are often very complex.
00:08:21.000But I think the solutions are often very simple.
00:08:24.000You can have a complex problem that maybe is generational through someone's family history, or it may be a problem of comorbidity where there's drugs, and then there are psychological issues, and then familial issues.
00:08:40.000There are lots of things that are feeding in to define a problem that's multifaceted.
00:08:47.000But the solution to that problem may be very simple, such as stop doing drugs, get the toxic people out of your life, hit the reset button and start behaving your way to success, and I'm going to give you the resources to do that.
00:09:05.000I'm going to get you a rehab center to get you detox from these drugs with medical supervision.
00:09:10.000And we're going to bring a family counselor in to start redefining what you call a family dynamic.
00:09:16.000So, you know, after 17 years, I've got a network of resources.
00:09:22.000We've just passed $30 million in aftercare resources that we share with our guests off-camera, away from the show where they actually do the work.
00:09:31.000So I don't think I'm solving these people's problems.
00:09:35.000Sometimes we do, sometimes it's very simple.
00:09:38.000But I think of it as being kind of an emotional compass.
00:09:42.000I can tell you what I think, point you in the right direction, and then help you with the resources you need to get there.
00:10:46.000Some people just want to be in the spotlight.
00:10:49.000And then there's a percentage of the people that they just uniquely want my perspective.
00:10:55.000They think, he tells, I'm tired of going to a psychologist that pats me on the hand and says it's going to be okay, and how's that make you feel?
00:11:03.000They want somebody that puts verbs in their sentences and cuts to the chase.
00:11:05.000So they come because they uniquely feel like I've been in their living room every day for 15 years.
00:11:12.000They trust me and want to know my… It seems like a lot of your brand and a lot of your popularity is linked to the fact that you're a very big advocate of personal responsibility.
00:11:31.000From the shows that I've seen, a lot of what happens, people come in, they don't want to take responsibility for what's going on in their life, they don't want to take responsibility for their choices and you kind of tell them that they need to take responsibility for those choices.
00:11:58.000I mean, look, there are some things that... I'm one of those people that believes old sayings get to be old sayings because they're profound.
00:12:09.000Like a stitch in time saves nine, you know?
00:12:11.000I mean, these things stick around generation to generation to generation because they apply.
00:12:16.000And I have certain rules, like, you just don't reward bad behavior.
00:14:46.000Well, in just a second, I want to ask you about how that kind of personal responsibility ethos meshes with a society that may be promoting the idea that we are all sort of subject to forces beyond our own control.
00:14:56.000But first, when the founders crafted the Constitution, the very first thing they did was to make sacred the rights of the individual to share ideas without limitation by the government.
00:15:03.000The second thing they enumerated was the right of the population to protect that speech and their own persons with force.
00:15:09.000You know how strongly I believe in these principles.
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00:16:20.000But I'm not sure this is really a political question as much as it is a societal values question and may have some political ramifications.
00:16:26.000It seems like we live in a time where a lot of folks want to blame their personal behavior on forces beyond their control.
00:16:32.000They want to say that I do, but I don't think that it is all or none.
00:16:34.000obviously within their control, are obviously not within their control.
00:16:38.000They're the result of historical forces or forces out there in the ether or institutional pressures or all the rest.
00:16:44.000Do you see that conflict right now in the country between sort of an ethos of personal responsibility and a system of thought that says that you're really a victim of circumstance?
00:16:55.000I do, but I don't think that it is all or none.
00:17:00.000And I look at it that way I can use genetics as a good example.
00:20:18.000So in the field of politics, there's a tendency for politicians to And I wonder if there's a tendency in the field of psychology to paint people as the victims of their own biology too much, to pathologize evil, to essentially suggest that decisions are not your own.
00:20:38.000So to take an example, there's been a lot of controversy over the last few weeks over this documentary about Michael Jackson, who was allegedly a child molester.
00:20:46.000And there are several now, I guess, four different kids who have come forward, now adults, saying that he molested them.
00:20:53.000There was an article by Dolly Lithwick over at Slate that was kind of interesting in which she said, you know, are we going to treat this as a sickness or are we going to treat this as though it's an evil?
00:21:01.000In other words, is Michael Jackson an evil man or was he a man who was suffering from some sort of biological sickness?
00:21:07.000Where do you come down when it comes to determining that balance in terms of personal responsibility versus maybe genetic drive to do something that we think is evil or immoral?
00:21:17.000Well, I can't speak to the Michael Jackson situation because I don't know the facts of that situation.
00:21:34.000And that's where you deal with Neurosis, psychosis, that's what you generally think of when you think of going to a therapist.
00:21:43.000They're generally a clinical psychologist.
00:21:45.000Not always, there can be counseling and others, but generally it's clinical.
00:21:51.000And then I also completed the core in behavioral medicine, which is essentially medical psychology.
00:21:57.000It's a point at which your physiology and your psychology merge and interact and they influence one another.
00:22:04.000And that can be a profound influence, particularly with chronic disease management.
00:22:09.000And then when I finished school, I did a postdoctoral fellowship in forensic psychology.
00:22:15.000So now I was dealing with psychology and the law.
00:22:18.000And one of the things that I was often called on to do, from a forensic psychological standpoint, is make a determination between the irresistible impulse And the impulse not resisted.
00:22:35.000And there's just a few words that differentiate that, but it's often the difference between the death penalty or life in prison and going home.
00:22:48.000An irresistible impulse, you become involuntary.
00:23:02.000An impulse not resisted, you're driving the bus.
00:23:06.000You choose not to resist this impulse.
00:23:09.000And a big part of my determination in those situations was, did this person have the capacity to know the difference between right and wrong?
00:23:18.000And if someone is a pedophile, if they are aroused by Children, for example.
00:23:32.000Okay, clearly a deviant behavior, right?
00:23:35.000Unhealthy, sickness, no doubt about it.
00:23:39.000Do they know the difference between right and wrong?
00:23:42.000Do they know this is wrong, but they act on it anyway?
00:23:49.000Now, to me, if they know it's wrong, then they have the ability to raise their hand and say, I have this problem.
00:24:10.000And if they fail to do that, now I've got a problem with their behavior.
00:24:16.000But if they say, Look, I have a problem here, and I realize that I don't want to feel these things, but I do, and I know it's wrong, so I'm identifying myself.
00:24:28.000I'm going to mental health professionals.
00:24:30.000I'm identifying myself before I act on this.
00:24:33.000And there are many pedophiles that do that, by the way.
00:24:35.000They do raise their hand and say, they don't come out publicly, but they go to a therapist and say, my God, what is wrong with me?
00:27:10.000And you were on there kind of as the sole voice on your side of the issue with four or five other voices that were kind of counterpoint voices.
00:27:27.000And I thought that we had a very respectful, intelligent conversation.
00:27:38.000And I talked to the audience afterwards in studio, I looked at the message boards afterwards, and I thought people on both sides of the issue were a little bit dumbstruck by what an intelligent, respectful exchange of ideas took place, even though there were some diametrically opposed positions.
00:28:04.000And I walked backstage, and you were back there with a couple of those people that you have debated before.
00:28:15.000You are 180 degrees out from where they are on positions.
00:28:20.000And y'all were laughing and talking and talking about some personal issues and just really kind of enjoying some personal time together.
00:28:33.000What has happened that that doesn't happen anymore?
00:28:38.000You were on different sides of issues about as diametrically opposed as you can get.
00:29:05.000Well, again, my opinion on this is that I do think that there is currency in victimhood, and even in public debate, if you can claim that you've somehow been harmed by the other person, then we grant you a sort of patina of more credit.
00:29:18.000So, if you're in just an honest debate and everybody sort of expects, you know, understands the rules of the debate, you treat each other with respect, somebody wins, somebody loses, or maybe you just have a discussion, then There's no real reward there.
00:29:31.000But politically speaking, I think we live in a time where if you can claim that someone was mean to you on stage or you claim that you were offended by somebody, that there is real currency in that.
00:29:41.000I was pointing this out with regard to, for example, the vice president, Mike Pence, and Joe Biden, the former vice president.
00:29:45.000So a couple of weeks ago, Joe Biden did a speech in Nebraska where he suggested that Mike Pence was a decent guy.
00:29:51.000And he was immediately hit by a wave of people who said, well, Mike Pence isn't a decent guy.
00:29:55.000He disagrees with me on some LGBT issues.
00:29:57.000This would be Cynthia Nixon, the former gubernatorial candidate in New York.
00:30:11.000I think that he probably thinks Pence is a decent guy.
00:30:13.000But if you can pretend that there is a lack of character on the other side, it allows you to avoid having the kind of productive discussions that bring unity and there's a lot of money to be made and a lot of political hay to be made in the polarization rather than in the reasonable discussion, I think.
00:30:27.000Well, here's what I think about that, since you asked.
00:30:36.000I don't drink or smoke dope or take drugs.
00:30:40.000I never have because, as I said, everybody makes decisions in their lives, like what are we going to have for lunch today, where are we going to go on vacation.
00:30:49.000But then there's another level of decision we make, and I call those life decisions.
00:30:53.000Life decisions you make one time, and that's it.
00:30:58.000Like, you make a decision you're not going to steal.
00:31:02.000Like, so, you make that decision maybe in the third grade, you know, and your parents tell you, or you get caught stealing or something, and so you decide you're not going to do that anymore.
00:31:35.000I made a life decision early on that I wasn't going to drink or do drugs because of what I'd seen it do to my dad, who I thought was a really good, hard-working man.
00:32:51.000I don't like this about him, but you don't have to like everything about somebody to like them.
00:32:57.000So why can they not have a difference of opinion on an issue and you still recognize they have many redeeming qualities?
00:33:06.000If I had a brain tumor and the surgeon that was coming in to save my life had different political views, But this was the guy that could save my life?
00:33:20.000Would I go, no, don't take this tumor out of my head.
00:33:24.000I don't like what you believe politically.
00:33:28.000I just don't understand the intolerance that we now seem to have for each other instead of recognizing that we can differ on issues and still recognize that there's redeeming qualities in each other.
00:33:53.000It didn't seem to used to be that way.
00:33:55.000Well, actually, I want to ask you about that in just one second.
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00:34:48.000I know you don't want to think about death or life insurance.
00:35:24.000It's going to be very difficult for me to love those people.
00:35:27.000And it's not just a political disagreement.
00:35:29.000There are root values that are in disagreement.
00:35:31.000What root values do you think that people need to share in order for there to be a bedrock for love to grow?
00:35:36.000Well, I think that you've just identified it, its root values.
00:35:41.000I mean, I'm not going to hang out with Hitler because he plays a hell of a game of golf.
00:35:46.000I could give a shit about his game of golf, right?
00:35:49.000I mean, everything about him is offensive to my sensibilities.
00:35:53.000So that is overwhelmingly, we are just different people with different core values.
00:36:01.000And that's not what I'm talking about.
00:36:03.000If you're talking about somebody from Al-Qaeda, if you're talking about somebody that is a child molester, and just everything they stand for is offensive to your sensibilities, the gap is too wide.
00:36:28.000If you sit down with people You know, for example, if I'm negotiating with people, whether it's a business deal I'm negotiating, or if I'm trying to broker a peace between a couple that is really at odds with each other and on the brink of divorce, I always do the same thing.
00:36:50.000I say, first, let's talk about what we agree about.
00:36:55.000I know you came here to resolve your differences, but first, I want to make a list of what we agree about.
00:37:02.000Because if we do that, we might just find that what we disagree about is less than we realize.
00:37:10.000So let's talk about what we agree about.
00:37:15.000And if that list is really small, then maybe that gap is too wide.
00:37:19.000But if that list is made up of those root values and core values, like we both want our children to do well, You know, we both love these kids.
00:37:36.000And then you look at what we disagree about, and you realize, well, maybe we have different currencies here.
00:37:45.000Uh, maybe I can give you more of what you want, and you give me more of what I want, because you value something more than I do, and I value something more than you do.
00:37:53.000I'm willing, this is a one for me and a ten for you.
00:37:56.000I can give you that, and that's a two for you and a ten for me, so it's an easy give for you, but a big get for me.
00:38:03.000If you get people where they're looking for ways to come together instead of looking for ways to come apart, then you can begin to make some headway.
00:38:14.000Well, and I think that that's what I'm getting to is I think that the incentive structure is aligned so much right now politically for people to make gains with their own side by drawing distinction.
00:38:24.000So you're saying that, you know, you draw points of unity and that's how you get together.
00:38:27.000But politics isn't about How you draw together.
00:38:30.000Politics, right now at least, is about how you draw distinction with the other side so that you convince people to come to your side.
00:38:36.000And the easiest way to do that is to attack them on a character level, not on a policy level.
00:38:39.000If you admit that the other side is basically good-hearted, has good intentions, that they mainly want good things even if we disagree about how to get there, well then people might side with that person.
00:38:48.000But if you say that that person is a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, if you say that person is a Nazi, if you say that person has no tolerance, Then it's a lot easier to get people to side with you after all.
00:39:10.000And what I really find offensive is when you see people backstage that treat each other with dignity and respect, And then walk out on stage and put on a completely different persona.
00:39:26.000That is really hypocritical and disingenuous to me.
00:39:40.000You've said before that you think people change.
00:39:42.000But does that mean that you can change them?
00:39:44.000Or does it have to be an internally driven thing?
00:39:46.000Because so much of politics and life is about determining whether you ought to accept somebody for the flaws that they have or whether you ought to expend effort in the attempt to change them.
00:40:58.000If instead you say, look, my goal here is I want you to hear me, I want you to understand me, and then I'll shut up.
00:41:08.000And across time, if you prove to be sensitive to that, and you try to find some middle ground with me, and I try to find some middle ground with you, Then this relationship is going to have a long-term history.
00:41:27.000But my goal is not going to be to grind you down where you finally say, OK, OK, you're right, you're right, you're right.
00:41:33.000You've got to decide if you want to be right or you want to be happy.
00:41:38.000And being right comes with a lot of resentment from those that you've proven wrong.
00:41:45.000And that doesn't seem to advance personal agendas or political agendas.
00:41:49.000I mean, and that's really the question.
00:41:50.000Is there a difference between personal interactions and political interactions in the sense that when it comes to political interactions, there is an actual result that is apart from the two sides, meaning that there will be a law, for example, or there will be a public policy that at the end of the day is promulgated.
00:42:04.000I mean, in my marriage, my goal is to preserve the marriage because I married a person with whom I share values.
00:42:08.000The marriage is more important than anything else that is on the table.
00:42:11.000And that means that I'm willing to subsume fact in favor of feeling when it comes to my wife.
00:42:16.000This is true with my parents and my siblings.
00:42:18.000When it comes to politics, where you're determining the rules that govern a society, or how we ought to see reality itself in some cases, what should be the mix there between facts and feelings?
00:42:27.000Well, I think that people say politics are local, not national.
00:42:50.000Whether it's a law about taxes or whatever, how is, if something's going to change the mix of the community or it's going to change laws about how long you work or retirement or taxation, whatever, people may not want to say it, But I think they look at it and say, you know, how's this going to affect me?
00:43:19.000And so I think it gets down very much like a relationship.
00:43:23.000I think they look at it in terms of its personal impact, and once they decide that they can live with whatever that outcome is, then they start to think about others.
00:43:37.000You know, first it's survival, then it's actualization, then you start You gotta survive first and then you can start caring for others and taking care of them.
00:43:48.000And I'm not saying that people don't have genuine empathy and concern for others, but I guess the thing that I would really want people to do, I believe knowledge is power.
00:44:08.000I think knowing The true, unspun facts of a situation are critically important.
00:44:17.000And I'm just not sure that many people have access to that in this day and time.
00:44:26.000I don't know where to get unspun news today.
00:44:33.000Yeah, and I'm not sure that it's even possible.
00:44:36.000I mean, I think there are people who are striving for it, but I think everybody has their own cognitive biases that act themselves out in real time, no matter how we discuss the issues.
00:44:44.000When it comes to the difference between personal and political, I'll give you an example of where I think that, for example, there's a gap.
00:44:48.000So, on the issue of transgenderism, I've been very outspoken.
00:44:51.000I think that a biological man is a biological man.
00:44:54.000I think a biological woman is a biological woman.
00:44:56.000There are people who are intersex, but that does not obviate the categories of male and female.
00:45:01.000I do not think that a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man.
00:45:04.000And if a man wants to identify as a woman, I think that that is factually incorrect.
00:45:10.000My view of that is that that's a mental disorder.
00:45:12.000Now, if I'm at dinner with a person who is transgender, I will call them by their preferred pronoun because what's the point in offending the person The person's still a person.
00:45:20.000I wouldn't go out of my way to insult somebody who I'm at dinner with.
00:45:23.000But if I'm speaking publicly about Caitlyn Jenner, for example, I will say that Caitlyn Jenner is a man, and I will call him by his biological pronouns.
00:45:30.000The reason for that is because in the dinner situation, my target audience is the person with whom I'm speaking.
00:45:35.000That's the person with whom I'm forming a relationship.
00:45:37.000In the political world, the target audience is not Caitlyn Jenner.
00:47:02.000You know, there's a time and a place for everything.
00:47:05.000And I think you've chosen very well to say, I'm not going to be offensive to this person's belief system here.
00:47:14.000But you put me in a public forum and ask me to take a position, I'm going to be true to my belief system here.
00:47:20.000That doesn't mean I have to be offensive to this person's belief system there.
00:47:24.000So in a second, I want to ask you about your religious worldview, because religion is obviously a great part of how people become happy in certain social science studies.
00:47:33.000I want to ask you what your factors are for happiness.
00:47:35.000How do you become a happy person, and does religion play a part in that?
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00:48:41.000So let's talk a little bit about how to become a happy person.
00:48:45.000So there's a lot of focus on happiness, particularly in Western civilization.
00:48:48.000The traditional religious worldview has been your happiness is of no consequence, basically, that you have duty, and duty is what motivates you.
00:48:55.000And if you fill your duty, then you'll be happy.
00:48:56.000In the typical sort of Aristotelian view, if you act in accordance with virtue, you'll be happy.
00:49:01.000We in Western society seem to think that happiness is Sometimes material goods, sometimes it is, you know, kind of the joy of the moment.
00:49:09.000How do you define happiness, and what should we be aiming for?
00:49:12.000Yeah, well, a friend of mine has a poster that says, money won't buy happiness, but it'll get you where it is.
00:49:20.000It'll get you real close to where it is.
00:49:21.000I think it's very individual, and I think it comes down not only to how you define it, but how you Experience and express it.
00:49:37.000I mean, because happiness is not just a definition, it's experiential.
00:49:45.000I mean, let's put on our Gestalt hats for a minute and say, what's our experiential happiness?
00:49:53.000And, you know, to me, I start using synonyms like fulfillment and peace and joy.
00:50:05.000And, you know, I'm what my wife Robin calls emotionally constricted sometimes.
00:50:14.000I mean, something good will happen and, you know, she looks like...
00:50:18.000You know, Snoopy dancing in the Peanuts cartoon, you know?
00:50:22.000And she looks at me and says, give me something!
00:50:25.000You know, come on, give me something here!
00:50:27.000And I might be feeling all warm inside, and it's like, okay, I've achieved that, I've clicked that off, I feel great about this.
00:50:39.000And, you know, for me, happiness is is a real sense of peace and accomplishment and that kind of sense of having climbed this mountain and done that, and I'm very happy about that.
00:50:57.000But I may not be as expressive as she is or the next person is, and I think it's different I think it's different for everybody.
00:51:07.000And for some people, they define that with spiritual awakenings and spiritual evolution.
00:51:16.000Some people achieve it through a sense that they're really being altruistic in some way.
00:51:24.000Some people define it materialistically.
00:51:30.000Things make me what I call happy or fulfilled now.
00:51:35.000That didn't have that effect on me 30 years ago.
00:51:42.000I've got this kind of ruler that I've made.
00:51:46.000I roll it out on the floor and it goes from zero to 83, which is the life expectancy.
00:51:54.000And I have people sometimes walk along it and stand on their age.
00:51:59.000And when I walk along it and stand on my age and look over my shoulder, There's a whole lot of white behind me and not very much ahead of me.
00:52:09.000So now, having good health and being able to enjoy what's around me now, my kids who are grown and my grandkids, I mean, to me, spending time with them and having the health and cognition to enjoy it, that, to me, is really fulfillment and happiness, and that, to me, really fills me up.
00:52:36.000Thirty years ago, I took most of that for granted, so it didn't have an effect on me, so I think it changes across time, and I know now One of the things that gives me the most fulfillment is I love giving a voice to people that don't have it.
00:52:56.000So, if I'm working with a story on Dr. Phil that has children caught in a crossfire, In a custody battle or something, and they're just being torn apart and used as a rope in a tug-of-war, and I can come in and stop that and get these kids out of this crossfire and give them the voice they don't have.
00:53:18.000I might go home tired that night, but it's a good tired.
00:53:24.000This was a good thing, and if millions of people watch that, and a percentage of them won't do that because they saw the pain in these kids' eyes and I realize I've impacted those people, then that's a good target at the end of the day and that's a joy for me.
00:53:40.000So, you know, sometimes it's tied to achievement, sometimes it's tied to something else, but I think it has a lot to do with peace and fulfillment.
00:53:53.000So, I want to ask you about something that seems to be making a lot of people deeply unhappy, and that is social media.
00:53:58.000Do you think that social media is a net benefit or a net detriment to human beings?
00:54:02.000Were we ready for this machine that we created for ourselves?
00:54:04.000And I'm talking from the perspective of someone who's extraordinarily active on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all the rest, but the science tends to suggest that this stuff may not be particularly good for us.
00:54:15.000Where do you come down on the social media?
00:54:25.000When I started Dr. Phil, the first text message had not been sent.
00:54:30.000There was no Twitter, there was no Facebook, there were no smartphones.
00:54:34.000So I'm dealing with things now that didn't even exist when I started.
00:54:40.000But I'm also dealing with kids who used to come home and their mother said, sit down, you can't talk right now, Dr. Phil's on.
00:54:47.000Now they're coming on to the show and their kids are saying, they're saying, hey, can't talk right now, Dr. Phil's on.
00:54:55.000And I realize that we have a whole new set of influences on kids, and they have access to information that I didn't have when I was growing up, that's racing them along the evolutionary continuum, in terms of relationships and emotion, and their access to bullies and predators and all that we didn't have to deal with in my generation.
00:55:25.000If you were getting bullied at school, you went home, it stopped.
00:55:28.000Now you go home, the cyber bullies just follow you home and you get online and they're bullying you at home.
00:55:34.000So it's here, we have to deal with it.
00:55:39.000I was invited to testify on Capitol Hill.
00:55:45.000on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and they were asking, should they allocate money to the curriculum to deal with cyberbullying?
00:55:57.000And I was there to say, not just yes, but hell yes, because teachers were saying, it doesn't happen on campus, so we don't, it's not our job.
00:56:06.000And I was saying, well, it is your job, because these are the kids that are doing it, and you're watching these kids throughout the day.
00:56:16.000What we have to start doing is preparing our children to deal with the social media world, because if we have a generation that grows up with the need to be loved by strangers, we're creating a vulnerable generation that is giving their power away to people they don't even know.
00:56:41.000If your mood is driven by how many likes a picture you post gets, I've talked to kids that they'll put up a picture and it doesn't get 10% of the likes the last one did, and their moods cycle down.
00:56:56.000I've talked to parents whose kids were cyber-bullied to death.
00:57:32.000They wouldn't say that to you in the elevator.
00:57:35.000But they'll say it to you with the anonymity of a keyboard.
00:57:38.000Do you think they're starting to bleed over?
00:57:39.000Meaning that, you know, there's always been this sort of feeling on Twitter or Facebook that there's the online world and then there's the real world.
00:57:46.000And the online world is not real, and when you turn off the computer, life gets better.
00:57:50.000But what I'm starting to see is that the crudity of the online world is bleeding over into the real world.
00:57:54.000People are treating each other worse in the real world as a result of them being accustomed to treat each other badly online.
00:58:01.000I mean, I haven't seen any research about that.
00:58:06.000I'm seeing it get worse online, and I'm seeing, just this last weekend, a few weekends ago, sorry, I flew into North Carolina to meet with the family of Shanann Watts, who
00:58:30.000Chris Watts, the family annihilator that killed his wife and two babies, Bella and Sissy, you recall that story, he had just given a real confession about what he actually did in killing her and those two children.
00:58:52.000And the family wanted to sit down and talk, and I went in and sat down and talked with Susan and Frank and Frankie Jr., her brother.
00:59:00.000And one of the biggest problems they have in their grief right now are the Internet trolls.
00:59:07.000There are trolls that are opening accounts in their daughter's name and sending messages, like, so they get up and get on the Internet, and there's a message from their daughter Shanann.
00:59:19.000That says, I'm burning in hell, why did you do this to me?
00:59:23.000Things like that, just to torture them.
00:59:26.000And trolls accusing them of things, and saying they are the real murderers, and all this stuff.
00:59:34.000People, they're just pure, sick, evil people.
00:59:40.000And that wouldn't happen if there wasn't social media, so that's a real downside to it.
00:59:49.000And there's got to be some way to find those people and hold them accountable for that, because You know, some people that don't react well to that, it can actually push them over the edge and be suicidal.
01:00:04.000So, some of it is out of control, and I don't know what the answer is, but it is out of control.
01:00:10.000So, when it comes to how to train your kids for this sort of stuff, you deal with kids on a regular basis on this show.
01:00:18.000What are sort of the rules for the road in teaching your kids how to deal with a world that seems like it may be increasingly chaotic?
01:00:24.000Well, you have to talk to them about it, number one.
01:00:26.000Look, kids have the knowledge but not the wisdom to handle this Internet and the World Wide Web.
01:00:32.000Adults have the wisdom but not the knowledge.
01:00:35.000Those kids can navigate around there, my God, with three clicks, they can have you anywhere and anything looking at whatever.
01:00:42.000You know, we're in there trying to figure out how to get this camera to point the other way for 30 minutes, and by then, you know, they've gone around the world.
01:00:50.000So they've got the knowledge, we need to provide the wisdom, and you've got to sit down and talk to them.
01:00:55.000And you remember, well, you're too young, but there used to be these ads that would come on at 10 o'clock at night, and it would say, it's 10 o'clock, do you know where your children are?
01:01:36.000They may not notice it, but you need to notice it.
01:01:39.000See if somebody's talking, trying to get your daughter out the bedroom window, and she thinks it's another 13-year-old, and it's really a 40-year-old pedophile, predator out there.
01:01:54.000And you need to talk to them and show, when an article is in the paper about Someone being abducted by somebody they met, you need to show them.
01:02:02.000I'm not trying to make them paranoid or make them think the world is a scary place, but they need to be situationally aware.
01:02:10.000And if they become obsessed, then you need to get them to unplug.
01:02:15.000And if they're spending, if all you ever see is the top of their head and their thumbs are going like this, you need to limit the time that they're on there.
01:02:22.000And you can put child controls on there, but they'll defeat those before you set them up.
01:02:27.000You need to limit their time, and you need to know where they're going, and you need to monitor that so you can protect them from themselves and from others.
01:02:37.000I want to ask if there's one particular episode that sticks out to you, but first, If you want to hear Dr. Phil's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
01:02:45.000To subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com, click subscribe, and you can hear the end of our conversation there.
01:02:51.000Well, Dr. Phil, thanks so much for stopping by.
01:02:53.000Folks, you need to check out Dr. Phil's podcast.