The Megyn Kelly Show - Dr. Drew and Paulina Pinsky on Radical Honesty, Hard Conversations, and the Benefits of Therapy

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00:00:30.740 When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners,

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00:01:01.320 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:03.240 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:01:12.760 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:01:14.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:16.140 Today, I'm excited to be joined by Dr. Drew Pinsky.

00:01:19.420 He is an internist and addiction medicine specialist.

00:01:23.320 He's host of the Dr. Drew podcast and author of the brand new book out today,

00:01:28.840 It Doesn't Have to Be Awkward, which he co-wrote with his daughter, Paulina, one of his triplets.

00:01:35.420 And she's going to be joining us in just a bit.

00:01:37.740 We've got all things COVID to discuss and Dr. Drew will be taking your calls too.

00:01:41.440 That's exciting.

00:01:42.020 And answering your medical questions just a bit later in the show.

00:01:44.560 So, let's get things started.

00:01:46.840 Welcome, Dr. Drew.

00:01:47.500 Thanks for coming back.

00:01:49.140 Megyn, always a privilege.

00:01:50.620 Great to have you here.

00:01:51.640 All right.

00:01:51.900 So, before we get to COVID, I wanted to ask you.

00:01:54.840 I've been following what's happening down in Texas and in Del Rio, where we have these 10,000 migrants from Haiti underneath a bridge.

00:02:04.040 They've crossed our southern border.

00:02:05.460 Our border patrol is down there trying to manage the situation.

00:02:09.400 I have sort of a left field question for you on it, because what happened down there was these folks come.

00:02:15.360 They're coming across the border in record numbers.

00:02:17.460 And they say it's because they believe they have a better chance now than ever before of being allowed to stay under Joe Biden.

00:02:24.120 And we're not equipped to handle them.

00:02:26.100 You know, we don't we don't have resources down there.

00:02:27.920 They have no running water.

00:02:28.920 These guys are bathing themselves in the water down there.

00:02:31.980 It's very unsanitary.

00:02:33.160 Women are giving birth.

00:02:34.380 I mean, it's just it's a nightmare situation for those involved, those trying to keep, you know, the peace and keep things.

00:02:42.060 These are people who are going to be processed and for the most part deported.

00:02:45.420 So the border patrol is trying to keep an eye on them and not to let them make a run for it.

00:02:48.600 And the people themselves are trying to manage their children and so on.

00:02:51.380 Well, yesterday, the big story broke that these guys were using whips, that the border patrol who are on horses are using whips against the migrants.

00:03:00.540 And Jen Psaki went to the White House lectern and said, it's horrible.

00:03:04.380 That's not who we are.

00:03:05.280 What are we doing?

00:03:05.920 Blah, blah, blah.

00:03:06.780 So I was like, well, that does sound terrible.

00:03:08.840 So I took a look at it.

00:03:10.080 And the video does not support that.

00:03:12.480 The video shows border patrol on horses using reins on the horses, the way one uses reins on horses and also twirling, twirling the reins right next to the horse.

00:03:24.640 But at no point do I see one of those reins touch a human.

00:03:28.040 I see them trying to, like, run the horses around so that the people don't run, you know, sort of block the path.

00:03:34.940 And I have no idea how law enforcement is normally done when you're trying to control 10,000 people and you've got horseback, you know, riding cops to do it.

00:03:45.020 But my point is, even when it came out that these are not whips, that these are border patrol agents put in a terrible position by our government.

00:03:52.520 You know, these guys are just trying to do what they've been hired to do.

00:03:55.820 You get reports that are now saying whip like devices are being used on the migrants.

00:04:03.060 Like, you mean reins used by cowboys on horses who are border patrol agents?

00:04:07.740 And the and to me, it speaks to something in the human psyche that just refuses to let go of a narrative that one has chosen to embrace.

00:04:18.500 Right. Border patrol agents are bad.

00:04:20.540 Migrants are good.

00:04:22.140 The any attempt to stop migration across the southern border is racist, is bigot.

00:04:27.260 And you know what I mean?

00:04:27.880 And it's like it all sort of plays into this preexisting narrative.

00:04:30.980 And I'm watching the media refuse to let it go.

00:04:34.440 And your thoughts on that.

00:04:35.660 What makes one incapable of wrestling with new new additions to one's factual knowledge?

00:04:44.900 Put simply, it goes under the rubric of cognitive dissonance.

00:04:49.960 Right.

00:04:50.160 There are cognitive distortions of all type.

00:04:52.660 But cognitive dissonance is so alive and well today.

00:04:56.860 It's unbelievable when you come up against an opinion that differs from your own and you find yourself unable to adjust your priors, blaming the source or blaming the ad hominem individual who happens to be giving you that information.

00:05:12.360 Those are all signs of cognitive dissonance.

00:05:15.680 And to me, there's a more simplistic way of looking at all this.

00:05:19.000 It's simply how fake news is generated and perpetuated.

00:05:24.000 I get to see this all the time.

00:05:26.040 Anyone who's been the object of a story in the press and particularly in social media knows what this is because you know how far the story escapes reality.

00:05:37.160 And then you see it swirl as though what has now escaped reality is the reality.

00:05:41.780 And that is what makes fake news fake.

00:05:44.540 I would argue that cognitive dissonance is an evolutionary glitch in our brain.

00:05:50.860 But this idea of stories that are divorced from reality becoming the reality, I think that's a thoroughly modern phenomenon of social media and this propagandistic media in both directions that seem unable to get off these things they call narratives.

00:06:08.380 I remember when I was arguing with a journalist friend of mine, she kept saying, well, what's the story?

00:06:12.260 We have to find the story.

00:06:13.740 Sometimes stories distort.

00:06:16.620 There's not a story always.

00:06:18.660 There's just the facts of the matter.

00:06:21.580 Facts, unfortunately, in a post-structuralist world don't seem to matter, do they?

00:06:26.500 No, you're so right.

00:06:27.600 I mean, I've seen people on both the right and the left.

00:06:30.120 Young reporters say, I don't understand the angle I'm supposed to take on this.

00:06:33.840 It's like, well, why don't you just try reporting the facts rather than trying to figure out the angle that will please your audience?

00:06:39.780 Yes.

00:06:40.100 What happened to the truth?

00:06:41.400 What happened to it?

00:06:42.400 It's just gone.

00:06:43.080 Objective reality is gone.

00:06:44.200 And I understand that in post-structuralism, the only truth is subjective and political.

00:06:49.060 But, you know, I had to laugh to myself.

00:06:51.700 I was listening to a podcast with a very fine French philosopher.

00:06:54.880 A young woman was saying, the Americans confuse us so much they're preoccupied with French philosophers from nearly 100 years ago, 70 years ago, who have been sidelined as completely irrelevant and wrong.

00:07:11.000 And we have adopted those as some sort of a crucible around which we're going to organize ourselves.

00:07:16.040 The French are just shaking their heads.

00:07:18.040 Mm hmm.

00:07:19.100 And it's so irritating to me when I and look, if pictures emerge or videos emerge showing that clearly, then they should be condemned.

00:07:25.780 That's not OK to do.

00:07:26.820 But we're not there.

00:07:27.940 It's amazing.

00:07:28.820 As you see the videos, people just they refuse to let it go because it reaffirms.

00:07:32.780 Same thing with that Covington kid on the steps of the Supreme Court.

00:07:36.720 For me, a rational way to do that is to go, boy, that's an image that is tough to digest and think about how it makes us feel.

00:07:43.420 It makes us think about all these other things as opposed to going.

00:07:47.540 That's the fact how we feel has become a substitute for fact.

00:07:52.440 And that is a very dangerous place to go because feelings are often quite a distance from anything factual.

00:07:58.900 Whip like devices.

00:08:00.620 You mean rains?

00:08:02.480 I'm like, I'm a city slicker, but even I know what rains on a horse look like.

00:08:06.160 OK, let's talk about COVID.

00:08:07.520 There was a study out just hitting the news this week, and it was roundly criticized on Twitter.

00:08:13.740 And this one was from the CDC.

00:08:16.340 And it didn't go along with the narrative that a lot of the media and on the left like, which is that we like lockdowns and we like mask mandates and we like vaccine mandates.

00:08:25.180 And we like things that are more restrictive if it's in the name of fighting COVID.

00:08:28.020 But the CDC put out a paper that found the BMI, the body mass index, that sort of measures how fat, how much fat you have on your body amongst 430,000 children.

00:08:38.960 This is a big old study.

00:08:40.060 430,000 children rose significantly between March and November of 2020.

00:08:45.860 It rose at nearly double the rate before the pandemic.

00:08:49.760 Kids got a lot fatter during the quarantine and the pandemic and even post quarantine because we ended quarantine, let's say, you know, May, June, especially among elementary kids, as well as those who are already a little overweight or obese.

00:09:04.540 And another study said the numbers are especially bad for kids who are Hispanic, black, publicly insured and low income.

00:09:12.500 One expert said the trends here are, quote, staggering.

00:09:15.500 So, yes, on Twitter, people were like, oh, that's you're trying to downplay.

00:09:19.600 You know, this is ridiculous.

00:09:20.520 So kids got fat.

00:09:21.300 They'll lose the weight.

00:09:22.240 No, this is a real health risk to children.

00:09:25.080 Well, not only is it a real health risk to children, it's the primary health risk of COVID.

00:09:29.900 Right.

00:09:30.600 And so if they're really interested in reducing the consequence of COVID, that has a significant impact on that.

00:09:36.620 The other thing that people rarely talk about is that these sorts of parameters like BMI can really be a sign of emotional distress and trauma.

00:09:47.100 And I would argue that this is just the beginning of data that's going to begin to pile in on the profound emotional impact this all will have had on our children, particularly as I think you and I have talked about before.

00:09:59.000 The 8 to 15-year-old age group has just been profoundly affected, and I don't know how we get back from it.

00:10:06.560 Who knows what the long-term effects are going to be?

00:10:09.060 But to me, this is just more evidence of the effect, which is something I've been screaming about from the beginning, which is please consider the risk-reward analysis.

00:10:18.720 Whenever physicians do any sort of intervention, just because these are non-pharmacological interventions, the so-called lockdowns and whatnot, don't mean they can't have deleterious consequences that could outstrip the benefits or at least prepare for those adverse consequences and don't pretend they're not happening.

00:10:37.240 So all last year, my daughter, when she was in school, had to sit at lunch and not speak.

00:10:42.880 She was not allowed to speak for an entire year at lunch when she was in the fourth grade.

00:10:47.600 They would put on a movie.

00:10:49.220 It's like, oh, what do you have to complain about?

00:10:50.700 It's a movie.

00:10:51.220 I don't want my kid watching a movie at school.

00:10:53.540 Half the reason you send them there is to deal with social situations, figure out how to navigate those with other children.

00:10:59.220 Now, this year we've graduated, too.

00:11:01.440 She can speak if she screams at the top of her lungs because there are thick plexiglass walls between her and the other students at lunch.

00:11:11.320 Same for my sons.

00:11:12.140 And all of my three children who are in that age group you just mentioned, between 8 and 15, they're actually between 8 and 12, are having the same thing.

00:11:21.560 If they want to speak to friends at school, they have to scream through plexiglass and they get in trouble if they try to lean back to talk to the kid behind them, which is the only way they can find to socialize.

00:11:32.120 You can't tell me this isn't creating permanent damage.

00:11:34.380 And these are kids from a mom who's very like, this is bullshit.

00:11:38.180 We're going to have to do it.

00:11:39.320 Like, don't panic.

00:11:40.440 They're not COVID scared, but they're annoyed.

00:11:43.600 And this is going to have some effect on my kids, never mind the ones whose parents are terrified.

00:11:49.200 Right.

00:11:49.640 So there we go.

00:11:50.840 So we don't yet fully know the full effect.

00:11:53.380 And the other thing I would ask people is to, again, when you're trying to figure out a risk-reward, you know, what is the reward?

00:12:01.280 What's the benefit?

00:12:02.340 I don't know if you saw Scott Gottlieb's interview recently, but he reported that when the whole six-feet distance thing emerged, that was completely arbitrary.

00:12:11.640 There was no scientific evidence for that.

00:12:13.480 There was something for 10 feet, but even that, they didn't really have much good resources to justify.

00:12:18.380 So they just picked six feet as something that people would probably be willing to swallow and probably would work.

00:12:25.320 It's incredible.

00:12:26.440 These are capricious, random recommendations, limited benefit, massive effect.

00:12:32.960 And the same, listen, I'm not anti-mask.

00:12:35.440 I have no problem wearing a mask, but everybody, masks aren't 100% effective.

00:12:40.900 The data ranges between 9% and about 15%.

00:12:44.240 Not zero, but 9% to 15%.

00:12:46.620 Don't behave like it's 80% or 100%.

00:12:48.380 It's maybe 20% at best.

00:12:51.640 And so, again, fine if you want to risk all these adverse emotional impacts that are necessarily going to happen.

00:12:59.920 What I'm doing today by Dr. Drew Prinsky, he's hosted so many great shows, it's hard to list them all, Loveline, among my favorites.

00:13:06.740 And he's got a new book out today with his daughter who's going to be here in a moment called It Doesn't Have to Be Awkward.

00:13:12.740 Can I ask you about the new Pfizer news that they're now testing the vaccine on ages 5 through 11?

00:13:18.040 Again, I've got three kids right now in that age group.

00:13:21.080 They're saying Pfizer says its initial results show it's safe and, quote, robust, seeing robust antibody response in kids of that age.

00:13:31.400 The data is not yet peer-reviewed nor published.

00:13:33.960 Pfizer plans to submit it to the FDA for emergency use authorization soon.

00:13:37.720 Could be authorized for younger kids in a matter of weeks.

00:13:40.180 They studied about 2,200 kids in that age group.

00:13:43.960 They said no instances of myocarditis, the heart inflammation that we've seen in the older group.

00:13:48.600 But when we've seen that in the older groups, it's about one in every 5,000 kids receiving the vaccine.

00:13:55.160 So they didn't even get to the number where they would likely see it.

00:13:59.180 And I have to tell you, I have real hesitation about giving this vaccine to my littles.

00:14:07.020 I understand that.

00:14:08.200 And personally, as an internist, someone who doesn't deal with pediatric age group, I'm in no position to make recommendations.

00:14:14.700 I've had difficulty.

00:14:16.080 I have found it challenging in terms of making the decision on behalf of 15 to 18-year-olds.

00:14:21.480 I think that's an interesting age group to sort of struggle with.

00:14:25.100 But as you get younger, I get more and more and more uncomfortable.

00:14:28.160 For one reason, obviously, the effects of this virus on those age groups become less and less significant.

00:14:33.620 The only motivation to do it is to reduce the replication of the virus.

00:14:39.560 In other words, we do have an issue internationally in terms of the volume of replication and the potential for some variant to emerge that can get around our vaccines or get around our natural immunity.

00:14:50.880 That's the great risk right now.

00:14:52.640 And if somebody wants to make the case that it's necessary that we have no replication going on in young kids as well, I'm willing to listen to that.

00:15:02.200 But to make that decision for a given child, that's a rough, that's a tough decision to make.

00:15:06.580 We just not.

00:15:07.480 Listen, and just if you understand the context of how I make these decisions, back when the chickenpox vaccine came out, my children were of age to get it.

00:15:16.540 I didn't let them get it because I didn't think we had enough experience with it yet.

00:15:19.580 Now I would have them get it.

00:15:20.900 But it was about a three-year-old vaccine at that point.

00:15:23.040 I was like, chickenpox is not that big a deal.

00:15:25.100 I'd rather they just get chickenpox, but they did.

00:15:27.340 And there have been some reports of some things in Japan.

00:15:29.740 I thought, why make that call?

00:15:31.880 Let's see how it goes first.

00:15:32.920 And I kind of feel the same way about this vaccine.

00:15:34.600 Unfortunately, the mandates are pushing things, you know, in a hasty manner where, you know, it's hard to make those decisions.

00:15:41.660 It really is.

00:15:42.680 And then and the shaming.

00:15:43.680 OK, so I had this dust up with David from now of The Atlantic on Twitter yesterday.

00:15:48.800 It was just absurd.

00:15:49.860 He he is absurd.

00:15:51.600 Soon as that news broke about Pfizer and the five to 11 year olds, this is what he tweeted tweeted.

00:15:56.060 If regulators approve that five to 11 year olds can be safely and effectively vaccinated against COVID,

00:16:01.760 let's not repeat the mistake of allowing space and time to anti-vax extremists.

00:16:09.080 States should immediately make anti-COVID vaccination a requirement for schools, sports leagues, etc.

00:16:15.780 The anti-vaxxers get a big thing right.

00:16:18.620 They understand that a vaccine mandate is not merely a requirement.

00:16:21.300 It also expresses a social stigma against the unvaccinated as ignorant and antisocial.

00:16:27.280 That stigma is very powerful, which is why the anti-vaxxers resent it so intensely.

00:16:32.460 So that's what he wants to foist on parents who have some doubts about this experimental vaccine that's not even yet approved and may get emergency use authorization may.

00:16:43.520 And I wrote back to him, you don't have to be an anti-vax extremist to have concerns about vaccinating a little one who has very little risk from COVID.

00:16:50.740 You do have to be some kind of an asshole to demonize any parent concerned about forcing minor kids to take a vaccine that had no long term testing.

00:16:58.600 Good for you.

00:16:59.720 I like that.

00:17:00.180 Oh, screw him.

00:17:01.100 I'm so sick of the demonization.

00:17:02.440 He wants it.

00:17:03.300 He's baking it into the cake.

00:17:04.620 Yeah, and I don't understand why that's not at least somewhat perceived as racist, because here in New York City, I'm in New York right now, only 35% of the African-American community has been vaccinated.

00:17:17.420 And that community has been ill-served throughout medical history, and their resistance is a function of that history, not some personal choice.

00:17:24.400 And we should be really addressing that in a systematic way, which does not include shaming.

00:17:29.100 Listen, Megan, I work in the world of trying to get people to change behavior, don't want to change their behavior.

00:17:34.720 If I go to a drug addict and say, you need to stop doing drugs, don't you know what you're doing?

00:17:39.140 That's the opposite.

00:17:41.100 Shaming and guilting is the opposite of how to change people's behavior when they have resistance.

00:17:47.300 And so it's bizarre to me.

00:17:48.700 The other thing, the idea that the FDA dictates behavior from on high, we have got to address this.

00:17:57.820 The FDA does not determine how physicians practice medicine, period.

00:18:03.760 They determine guidelines for what companies can bring to market.

00:18:08.780 What doctors do with that is between the doctor and the patient and the FDA has no authority and no business involved in the practice of medicine.

00:18:18.700 It never has.

00:18:19.900 It never will.

00:18:20.720 Same for the CDC.

00:18:22.320 They're not designed to do that.

00:18:24.460 It's one of the things that Gottlieb brought up in his interview.

00:18:26.920 This idea, and certainly the government shouldn't be practicing medicine, so we should be talking to the pediatric community.

00:18:33.660 Where are they?

00:18:34.420 Where's the American College of Pediatrics?

00:18:36.460 What's their opinion on this?

00:18:37.580 I'd like to know, because they're the ones that should be making these decisions.

00:18:40.700 Dr. Drew is an expert in many things, including narcissistic celebrities, and we'll talk about them and their role in all of this in about one minute.

00:18:50.160 Stay with us.

00:18:50.940 We'll discuss.

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00:19:28.060 Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show, everyone.

00:19:30.160 I'm back here now with Dr. Drew Pinsky, internist and addiction medicine specialist, not to mention host of the Dr. Drew podcast,

00:19:38.580 co-authoring a book out today called It Doesn't Have to be Awkward with his own daughter,

00:19:43.820 and they cover everything, which you would think it's awkward.

00:19:47.320 I'm going to ask them why it wasn't when she joins us in about one more block.

00:19:51.660 But first, I want to ask you, Dr. Drew, about the disgusting hypocrisy we're seeing now amongst our leaders, amongst our public figures in dealing with COVID.

00:20:00.520 We've talked ad nauseum over the past few days about AOC at the Met Gala and Mayor de Blasio and Upper West Side Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney without their masks on,

00:20:08.800 trying to lecture everybody on social justice values and how to be better citizens.

00:20:12.120 Meanwhile, there is a mask mandate, even if you're vaccinated inside the Met, but the rules don't apply to the rich and famous.

00:20:18.200 You got San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

00:20:20.380 That was the greatest thing I've ever seen.

00:20:21.820 I mean, like her hypocrisy, not wearing that mask inside of the black cat nightclub.

00:20:26.760 And the excuse was, I was feeling the spirit when I heard Tony, Tony, Tony.

00:20:30.680 Like, all you have to do is just say, I was feeling the spirit when you listen to Tony, Tony, Tony.

00:20:35.580 And apparently you can take off your mask or have a drink, have a cocktail within 50 feet of you, which is very likely in my case.

00:20:41.220 So great.

00:20:42.560 Then you have the Hollywood Emmys and all these actors, despite the indoor mask mandate in L.A., not wearing it.

00:20:49.260 Meanwhile, the kids in K through 12 all over L.A. have their masks on, even if vaccinated.

00:20:53.600 And I look at all of this and think, why aren't the regular Joes and Janes rising up?

00:21:01.620 Why are we OK with this?

00:21:04.820 I don't think they are.

00:21:06.180 I think people are taking note.

00:21:08.900 It's it's of course where everyone's in tribes.

00:21:11.520 Right.

00:21:11.840 And so if your tribe violates one of these mandates, well, they had a reason to and you're that's that's cognitive dissonance, right?

00:21:19.400 You're reasoning your way from conclusion to try to justify what that person did.

00:21:24.040 But I would I would argue that Governor Newsom at the French Laundry without a mask in close quarters with friends at a dinner party indoors during an absolute lockdown was case one of people rising up and having had enough of it.

00:21:39.400 I mean, the recall effort was directly related to that event.

00:21:42.920 So people have had it.

00:21:44.740 They really have this.

00:21:46.300 The problem is, though, they're still in their tribes and they're still reasoning from conclusion.

00:21:51.580 And so those that have had it are coming up against people that are continuing to tell them, look, you're just unenlightened.

00:21:58.220 You don't know better.

00:21:59.320 We know we're going to tell you.

00:22:00.760 It's such a horrible.

00:22:01.940 You said narcissism, what we would talk about.

00:22:04.020 And it is narcissistic, but it's also histrionic.

00:22:07.040 Everyone's almost delusional in their thinking.

00:22:08.940 There's a rigidity in people's thinking now that, for me, has moved past straight up narcissism, which is, hey, listen to me.

00:22:15.480 I know what's going on here.

00:22:16.760 Usually a narcissist at least is sly enough to follow their own mandates.

00:22:21.360 This has become something a little bit different.

00:22:23.220 And it's a little more out of control, it seems to me.

00:22:26.300 You know, Nicki Minaj was all over the news, of course, last week for saying she didn't want to go to the Met Gala because she didn't want to have to get a vaccine.

00:22:32.380 And then told some story, alleged story about her cousin's friend's testicles and alleged impotence after the vaccine.

00:22:40.740 Unverified, but that's what she said.

00:22:42.660 And boy, oh boy, did she take it from all corners on the left.

00:22:46.140 I mean, the right sort of was, I think, bemused that the left was attacking one of its own.

00:22:50.260 You know, previously she was this goddess because she's done these very sort of R-rated songs about women and so on.

00:22:55.920 And now suddenly they attack their own because you can't buy insurance from the woke.

00:23:01.180 And she got mad.

00:23:03.120 She was ticked off.

00:23:04.040 She got a dose of sort of what happens to you when you cross these arbitrary lines that are drawn.

00:23:08.660 And here's just a little bit of what she said she thought was going on.

00:23:12.540 Listen.

00:23:13.100 80% of the artists that y'all following right now feel like I feel about the vaccine and are too afraid to speak on it.

00:23:23.680 If they assassinate me and assassinate my character and make me look crazy or stupid, guess what?

00:23:31.700 No one else will ever ask questions again.

00:23:36.680 It's disgusting that a person can't speak about just questions or thoughts they're having about something that they're going to have to put in their body.

00:23:47.840 Boy, she's not wrong about that.

00:23:50.280 She couldn't be more right.

00:23:51.780 God bless her.

00:23:52.520 God bless Nicki Minaj.

00:23:54.000 I don't know if you saw the other her famous marbles tweet, too, which was also fantastic.

00:23:58.540 Oh, yeah.

00:23:59.040 If you're a black person and a Democrat, you'd have to put marbles up your ass if the party told you to do it.

00:24:04.100 If they tell you to, that's it.

00:24:06.020 And so it's like she is so right.

00:24:08.880 It's sort of an interesting movement that that particularly many African-American friends of mine have been pushing for for a long time.

00:24:15.360 But just think, think for yourself, raise questions, talk about things.

00:24:19.060 And poor Nicki has gotten caught in the maelstrom.

00:24:21.400 And I listen, I don't I don't.

00:24:23.680 I would love to spread her straight on the testicle story and I would love to deal with her.

00:24:28.500 I would love to talk to her about vaccine hesitancy because I bet you I could get through to her.

00:24:32.780 I know how to deal with resistant people.

00:24:35.060 That's my job when I'm dealing with addicts and alcoholics.

00:24:37.080 The way you deal with them is not the way Twitter deals with them and the not the way the world is dealing with poor Nicki right now.

00:24:43.300 You could get her to come along and get a vaccine and maybe even be a vaccine advocate.

00:24:47.440 This is not the way everybody.

00:24:49.100 The case one and how bad a job we're doing.

00:24:51.780 And by the way, totally defend her right and privilege to say anything she wants in the meantime.

00:24:56.780 She did not come out and say, hell no, never.

00:24:58.900 She came out and said, I don't know.

00:25:00.160 You know, I still want to do my research.

00:25:01.680 She's thinking about it.

00:25:02.280 I know she's thinking about it.

00:25:03.520 The research is done.

00:25:04.520 What are you doing?

00:25:05.160 And it's like, well, maybe Nicki Minaj has been a little busy and didn't look at all your studies and really has to just kind of postpone this because she's a young and healthy woman.

00:25:12.480 But she is 100 percent right that if they make an example out of her, then others are expected to get in line.

00:25:19.640 She's got 160 million Instagram followers, 22 million Twitter followers.

00:25:24.560 So if she can be shamed into silence, so anybody can be.

00:25:29.540 That's right.

00:25:30.060 That's right.

00:25:30.520 And I think that I think she is fighting on behalf of others who don't have the same position of power that she is in, who would like to be able to speak their mind.

00:25:40.680 And it is this whole phenomenon that we've moved into.

00:25:44.740 I don't know if you and I really talked about this, but the idea that you can't speak, you can't talk.

00:25:49.980 I'm so shocked that we live in a country.

00:25:52.200 You know, I just got back from France and it's really interesting.

00:25:56.280 In France, first of all, they've got the what they call the pass sanitaire, which is their their their pass for vaccine.

00:26:02.900 For the pass, you can either show antibodies for natural immunity or go get a test.

00:26:08.900 They're everywhere.

00:26:09.620 You get a test for 20, 30 bucks or you show your vaccine and they're apologetic.

00:26:14.100 Like, sorry, we have to do this.

00:26:15.160 We're trying to get everybody to say, what's your choice?

00:26:17.000 What would you rather do?

00:26:17.760 Would you rather do testing or vaccine?

00:26:19.420 Not you're an idiot if you don't get the vaccine.

00:26:21.460 They don't do that.

00:26:22.120 Then what's fascinating that's happening is 18 to 28 year olds are are getting up every weekend in massive demonstrations against mandate.

00:26:33.760 It's funny.

00:26:34.420 My French is pretty good.

00:26:35.720 And I was talking to a lot of young people and to a person.

00:26:38.680 I go, look, we were told this is not a serious illness for our age group.

00:26:41.440 Now they're forcing us to do something that's wrong.

00:26:44.680 And I would always say to them, I go, hey, vive la liberté, right?

00:26:48.020 Yes.

00:26:48.380 And they become, they become absolutely, I had a ticket, a woman at the ticket counter

00:26:53.720 at the airport come out from behind the counter, go raise her fist, go, she was 23 years old

00:26:58.240 and she goes, vive la liberté.

00:26:59.760 I thought, wow, that is so different than here where they're doing death outs, where they're

00:27:05.300 lying in as though they're going to die if they don't wear masks at the college campuses

00:27:09.280 unless they get more stringent mandates.

00:27:11.260 It drives me nuts.

00:27:12.540 Why?

00:27:13.040 Why?

00:27:13.340 I don't get, I see the French.

00:27:14.980 I love what they're doing.

00:27:15.960 I am vaccinated.

00:27:16.980 I love the vaccines.

00:27:17.960 I recommend all adults if it's safe for you and your doctor didn't give you a reason

00:27:22.220 not to, to get the vaccine.

00:27:23.660 But I don't like these mandates and I don't think that they're particularly American, especially

00:27:27.300 on a brand new vaccine that is very low risk the younger you are, or the virus has very

00:27:32.460 low risk the younger you are.

00:27:34.440 And to be fair, let me code to that by saying, hey, look, we do have an issue, I mentioned

00:27:37.920 it before, which we've got to re-decrease the replication of this virus.

00:27:41.440 So you might want to take some risk for you, your children, above and beyond the individual

00:27:45.660 benefits you could gain from it to try to get this thing suppressed more.

00:27:49.660 So I think that's why most people in New York got it.

00:27:51.820 I think that's why most people in New York got it.

00:27:53.240 I mean, whether they, they felt like they needed it or not, they got it because the

00:27:55.940 city just got so hammered and he felt sort of responsibility to do it.

00:27:59.360 Okay, fine.

00:28:00.040 But that still should be a personal, personal choice.

00:28:02.100 So why, why, you tell me why the French who gave us the Statue of Liberty, Liberty, they're

00:28:08.320 out there protesting and we still haven't learned our lesson all these years later.

00:28:12.200 It's so crazy.

00:28:13.380 And by the way, France is a socialist country, you know, and they're, the young people have,

00:28:19.460 I mean, they have, and they are, they are, the way they express themselves in this topic,

00:28:24.880 it, it really, it's, it's echoes of the 1790.

00:28:28.800 It really is.

00:28:29.560 They, they see a direct correlation with the excesses of government now and the excesses

00:28:34.420 of the, the royalty, the aristocracy in 1790, and they won't have it.

00:28:39.780 I don't understand.

00:28:41.880 It's funny.

00:28:42.540 I don't know where we're missing it or if we're missing it.

00:28:44.600 I don't either.

00:28:45.660 The fact that young people, I don't see it for me, Megan, here's the thing.

00:28:50.240 I don't understand the individual who wants to tell other people how to live their life

00:28:55.440 and manage their body.

00:28:56.920 I, and here I'm somebody that's getting people to stop doing drugs and alcohol all day.

00:29:01.200 And I, I don't, I I'm there because they want help.

00:29:04.640 Not because I want to tell them what to do.

00:29:06.560 I know how to help them once they ask for that help or once they're available for that

00:29:10.860 help.

00:29:11.320 And to, to tell people how to live their life is the strangest impulse to me, especially

00:29:17.160 in this country.

00:29:17.920 And I don't understand why it's so appealing to somebody and particularly to young people.

00:29:22.160 It's very strange to me.

00:29:23.380 It's turned into like everything else, virtue signaling now, and it's beyond personal health.

00:29:28.780 It's really got, it's crossed over into politics.

00:29:31.280 And that's why we cling so, so desperately to our political tribes.

00:29:36.040 And that's what this is all about in a very weird way that we haven't seen Italy too,

00:29:39.440 by the way, is now instituting effectively vaccine passports for everyone to work and

00:29:44.020 so on, but recognizes natural immunity as an exception to the vaccine mandate.

00:29:50.240 So we're seeing our European friends be honest about natural immunity in a way the United States

00:29:56.060 has not.

00:29:56.880 By the way, Europe too has said that 12 to 15 year olds don't, should not get the vaccine.

00:30:01.620 They don't think there's the evidence for it yet.

00:30:03.500 And for 16 and up, they say one dose, one shot, um, to deal with the myocarditis.

00:30:08.680 Let's be clear to paying a little lantern on that.

00:30:11.200 That's science.

00:30:12.500 That's the digesting of science and having opinions based on currently available wisdom.

00:30:17.560 This is not that a complete, we know exactly what we're doing.

00:30:21.280 There's one way to go and no other way.

00:30:22.680 And this is where a lot of the resistance is coming from.

00:30:25.940 People are aware that things are capricious and fluctuating and our mandates based on

00:30:31.380 okay, but maybe spurious considerations where they're not giving the worst thing you could

00:30:37.120 do to people that are resistant is not give them all the data.

00:30:39.420 That's this idea that they can't handle it.

00:30:41.660 Terrible, terrible idea.

00:30:43.000 It makes them more resistant.

00:30:44.100 You look over here, it's like, okay, so why, why am I a terrible person if I just want to

00:30:48.580 pursue the same policy that's in place now for 27 million, you know, Brits or what?

00:30:53.700 Like I see countries that we know and trust and whose data we use to come up with our own

00:30:58.220 policies, making a totally sane, different choice.

00:31:02.440 Doesn't make them all bad.

00:31:03.640 Doesn't make me bad just because I happen to have been born in America.

00:31:06.720 But the people pushing these mandates on us won't deal with that.

00:31:09.420 All right, let me shift gears because I want to talk to you about Maureen Dowd's column that

00:31:13.460 came out over the weekend.

00:31:14.780 You don't need to have read it.

00:31:15.880 I'll tell you what she said.

00:31:16.820 And it's something you've heard before.

00:31:18.580 Um, she's always got an acerbic pen, which is super fun unless she's turning it against

00:31:22.840 you.

00:31:23.360 Uh, but she, she was taking issue.

00:31:26.160 How do you stand up to all this stuff?

00:31:27.640 Your attitude is always so good.

00:31:28.880 I, I find myself worn out and worn down and getting depressed while the disgusting negativity

00:31:34.140 out there.

00:31:34.540 How do you handle it?

00:31:35.320 No, it's like, I got a good life.

00:31:36.980 I got a good husband.

00:31:37.780 I got good kids.

00:31:38.480 What, what more do I really need to worry about?

00:31:40.240 I hear you.

00:31:40.700 Um, I take it, I take it, you know, a walk through some of these fields, the anger fields,

00:31:45.580 the, you know, concern fields, not really so much the anxiety fields.

00:31:48.560 Uh, every once in a while, but then I come back to center.

00:31:50.940 Okay.

00:31:51.220 Which is why everybody out there needs to build up their own, you know, build up the people

00:31:54.020 around you who you can actually touch and be around.

00:31:56.420 Um, this is what she says.

00:31:57.960 Our culture is a wash in people who get called out for their behavior and then retreat behind

00:32:03.160 some victim-y excuse.

00:32:04.720 She says, if you're going to go for it, go for it.

00:32:07.360 Now she was picking up, not just on AOC who got blowback for the reasons we just discussed

00:32:11.920 and her tax, the rich, the rich, uh, dress.

00:32:15.100 And she says, um, if she wanted to get glammed up and pal around with a ruling class in an

00:32:19.000 event, that's the antithesis of all she believes in.

00:32:21.340 She should have just gone for it.

00:32:22.660 And what AOC had said when she got hit was, and I quote, honestly, our culture is deeply

00:32:27.820 disdainful and unsupportive of women, especially women of color and working class women of

00:32:32.780 color.

00:32:33.260 She said, uh, Oh, then Maureen Dowd said, really the working class card at the Met Gala.

00:32:39.480 Then, um, AOC says the more intersections one has the deeper, the disdain.

00:32:45.300 I am so used to doing the same exact thing that men do, including popular male progressive

00:32:51.060 elected officials and getting a completely different response.

00:32:54.320 Uh, Dowd writes back to say, I found this statement to be at the intersection of disingenuous

00:32:59.000 and hilarious.

00:32:59.860 It was cynical and it wasn't the first time she has failed to consider that people can

00:33:04.280 disagree with her without disagreeing with her identity.

00:33:08.340 So many people throw the identity card down as a shield against criticism of legitimately

00:33:14.400 controversial behavior.

00:33:17.120 Right.

00:33:17.780 Yes.

00:33:18.180 I, and I, it's funny.

00:33:19.620 I remember I was, uh, I had a nightly news broadcast in Los Angeles for a year during the

00:33:25.020 dark days of COVID.

00:33:26.140 We were sort of analyzing what was going on and we'd occasionally talk to the members

00:33:29.820 of the school board or the school union and some union officials came in and we're sort

00:33:33.680 of laying down all these requirements for going back to school.

00:33:36.280 And I said, great, let's do them all.

00:33:37.980 Let's do it.

00:33:38.560 What's the delay?

00:33:39.180 Let's go.

00:33:39.540 Let's get back to school.

00:33:40.300 And she, and she announced I was racist and, and no, I was sexist.

00:33:43.600 I was sexist.

00:33:44.240 How dare I?

00:33:44.840 I was like, I'm, I'm supporting you.

00:33:46.300 What are you talking about?

00:33:47.680 It's, it's such a, it's such a crazy default position and it, and it, it's cognitive dissonance

00:33:52.860 again, and it ends any meaningful discourse that could perhaps get us to a better place.

00:33:59.380 I, I would like to hear what AOC has got to say about what that, what really are your

00:34:02.940 thoughts?

00:34:03.680 What, was it a mistake?

00:34:04.740 Would you wish you hadn't done it?

00:34:06.260 What, what, what are you thinking?

00:34:07.560 Uh, how about all those other people you around who are paying going to, do you think they're

00:34:10.940 not paying taxes?

00:34:11.860 Do you think all those people that met, they don't pay taxes?

00:34:13.840 Is that what you think?

00:34:14.700 Is that, what did you mean by tax the rich?

00:34:16.200 What does that mean exactly?

00:34:17.940 So Maureen Dow goes on to take issue with Elizabeth Holmes playing the victim, saying she was basically

00:34:22.620 controlled by a man all the years.

00:34:24.140 She allegedly committed fraud, uh, while running this company.

00:34:27.080 Theranos, uh, takes aim at this squad member, uh, representative Pramila Jayapal.

00:34:32.000 I actually don't know her of Washington who reportedly defends her, calls herself a defender of the

00:34:36.320 working class, but treats her own staff like dirt, uh, and so on.

00:34:39.660 And her, her chief of staff came out and said, women of color are often unjustly targeted and

00:34:44.020 held to a higher standard than their male colleagues always put under a sexist microscope.

00:34:47.600 So, so to me, as you see this pattern of like, I get hit for being in a bad person or for

00:34:52.580 doing something stupid or shitty, and it's like finding money in my pocket.

00:34:56.860 It's like finding, you know, little jewels hidden in, in, in my Levi's five pocket jeans

00:35:01.260 in the tiny little pocket.

00:35:02.260 I used to show off to my neighbors, which is, Ooh, I've got something amazing and valuable

00:35:06.880 with which to distract you, to deflect this entire conversation and to give me the moral

00:35:11.820 high ground.

00:35:12.860 You know what?

00:35:13.720 And I get it.

00:35:14.820 I just think about it.

00:35:15.700 Think about if you were in that position and this is something you do, you would think

00:35:21.160 to do the same thing.

00:35:22.420 I hope you wouldn't because it is, it is not of high character to do that, but you would

00:35:28.860 think of doing the same thing.

00:35:30.160 I think it's perfectly a human impulse to, cause these attacks are quite vicious and

00:35:35.760 people really are scared and anxious and hurt and they, they go, they retreat to their sort

00:35:41.700 of natural zone of safety.

00:35:43.200 I get that you can do better.

00:35:45.620 You can do better.

00:35:46.380 That's, that's, that is absolutely a straw dog that you built and it needs to be looked

00:35:52.500 at and you need to get honest and rigorous, rigorous honesty is something that is in short

00:35:57.080 supply these days.

00:35:58.000 And, and, and, you know, and also is Bayesian reasoning, you know, Bayesian reasoning where

00:36:02.040 you, you just, you adjust your thinking based on currently available knowledge.

00:36:05.940 You adjust and you go, nope, I've changed my position now based on current.

00:36:09.760 And, and by the way, I have, I kind of feel like I've seen AOC moving a little bit.

00:36:14.780 She has been adjusting her position on certain things.

00:36:16.780 And I said, good, good for her.

00:36:18.600 But when the shit really hits the fan, not so much.

00:36:21.300 Yeah.

00:36:21.400 You cannot be shielded from the consequences of your own choices by your intersectionality card.

00:36:26.860 That's just not how, and that's not to say that there is never criticism that's sexist

00:36:31.760 or that's based on, you know, like it, but if you play that card every time you undermine

00:36:35.880 its value and, you know, she's seems to be oblivious to that.

00:36:39.840 I'll give you the last thing.

00:36:40.980 This is Maureen's final word on it.

00:36:43.280 We shouldn't reorient our society so that people can simply wrap themselves in an identity

00:36:47.060 cloak when identity is not the issue.

00:36:49.260 Virtue should not be defined by who you are, putting you beyond reproach and preventing judgments

00:36:54.720 about what you did that would leave whole sectors of society exempt from moral evaluation.

00:37:01.060 Nailed it.

00:37:01.420 It's so fun when you can read great writers, really sort of nail an issue that's important

00:37:04.600 to you.

00:37:05.260 So you did that there.

00:37:05.980 Okay.

00:37:06.180 Dr. Drew is coming back in one minute.

00:37:07.580 He's going to be joined by his daughter, Paulina, to discuss their new book.

00:37:11.160 It doesn't have to be awkward.

00:37:13.540 If you've ever wondered about how to talk to your kids about sex, dating, the awkwardness

00:37:16.880 of turning into an adult.

00:37:17.760 Can you imagine if Dr. Drew was your dad going through the sexual changes of life?

00:37:21.960 Uh, the Pinskys have answers.

00:37:23.820 Don't miss this.

00:37:24.520 Next.

00:37:26.540 Your business doesn't move in a straight line.

00:37:29.480 Some days bring growth.

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00:37:53.480 Canada Life.

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00:38:01.080 Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show, everyone.

00:38:03.080 Dr. Drew Pinsky is back, and he is joined now by his daughter, Paulina Pinsky.

00:38:08.320 She's a Columbia graduate.

00:38:10.060 She's a writer.

00:38:11.040 And they are co-authors of the new book just out today, It Doesn't Have to Be Awkward.

00:38:16.400 Paulina, thank you so much for being here.

00:38:18.600 Thank you so much for having me.

00:38:20.240 All right.

00:38:20.540 So I have to tell you that this book makes me feel better about life, because if Dr.

00:38:25.580 Drew can raise somebody who's as open and honest about their struggles as you, I feel

00:38:30.620 like I can totally fuck up my kids, and they're going to wind up just fine.

00:38:35.380 I think that's just you can live by that phrase, generally.

00:38:38.560 Generally, that is true.

00:38:39.980 I would say the 10 years of therapy help.

00:38:43.060 Oh, how dare you?

00:38:44.280 Well, so I love this.

00:38:45.420 So first of all, you were born a triplet, and let me just kick it off there, because

00:38:49.340 triplets are still rare, even with IVF.

00:38:52.260 They're still rare.

00:38:53.160 And how do you think that affected your life?

00:38:55.900 I have theories about this.

00:38:57.320 As the youngest and at the top of the stack, nearest my mother's ribs, I feel like it must

00:39:04.000 have been traumatic for me to have my two roommates exit the womb before me.

00:39:11.020 So my first interaction with the world was, my brother's leaving me.

00:39:16.440 That's just my theory.

00:39:18.100 It's true.

00:39:19.060 Gosh, I never really considered that.

00:39:20.540 But you must share everything.

00:39:21.580 I must tell you, I'm going to interrupt you, Megan, that there was literally 55 seconds

00:39:26.920 between those guys being out and you.

00:39:30.280 Yeah, I always imagine it's like pulling noodles, except it was pulling babies.

00:39:34.100 Oh, nice.

00:39:34.560 Yeah, ew, right?

00:39:35.180 Like, that's a lot.

00:39:37.260 Really, the true trauma was your mother's.

00:39:40.080 And so I'm sure she's addressed that since.

00:39:42.240 Absolutely.

00:39:43.260 Every Christmas, she would say, this wouldn't have happened if I didn't love.

00:39:47.040 Like, you be grateful for Christmas, because I'm the one that brought Christmas.

00:39:51.360 Well, and to be fair, we were faced with reduction.

00:39:57.760 Our obstetrician sat down and said, hey, don't have triplets.

00:40:01.620 Don't do it.

00:40:02.040 But he goes, here's the data, the marriages don't survive, the mental health of the kids

00:40:05.560 suffer, don't do this, have twins, and I'll send you out to UCLA, and we'll reduce down

00:40:10.420 to two.

00:40:11.140 Oh, my gosh.

00:40:11.680 That was a heavy, heavy, heavy thing we sat with for a couple of days and then just went,

00:40:15.900 we can't do that.

00:40:16.960 Forget it.

00:40:17.320 Right, right.

00:40:18.360 It's like, so we have to end the pregnancy with one baby or end our marriage, right?

00:40:24.360 Like, what kind of a weird choice is that?

00:40:26.240 That's so false.

00:40:27.080 It's not true.

00:40:28.080 I mean, maybe it makes it tougher, but it's not true.

00:40:29.900 Well, statistically, it was, you know, it was, it was actually, he just handed me the

00:40:33.480 papers and I said, okay, I'll look at him.

00:40:35.460 And, and statistically at the time it wasn't.

00:40:37.300 And I literally felt like a poker player who just took all the chips and go, it doesn't,

00:40:40.840 I'm going all in.

00:40:41.580 We're just going all in.

00:40:42.900 That's it.

00:40:43.340 And it turned out to be a good bet for us.

00:40:45.320 Oh, my God.

00:40:45.840 I mean, I had, we did IVF and thank, thank God I was able to use all of our embryos, but

00:40:50.800 that is a tough choice for any parent to have to make.

00:40:53.640 Okay.

00:40:53.960 So let me talk to you about growing up Pinsky because your dad, in addition to being a

00:40:59.760 triplet, which, which poses his own, you know, interesting challenges being a triplet, but

00:41:06.520 you've got a famous dad and you, you talk in the book about sort of growing older and

00:41:10.380 realizing that you have a famous dad and then he's getting more famous and he's getting

00:41:15.020 busier and you are pretty honest about, forgive me, Dr. Drew, sort of an absentee dad situation

00:41:21.560 and how that was not, that was not easy for you.

00:41:25.380 It, so it back to the title of the book, it doesn't have to be awkward.

00:41:28.140 Is it awkward to write about that and talk about that with him sitting right there and

00:41:31.680 sort of say, yeah, I needed you and you weren't there.

00:41:34.460 Yeah, I, um, well, I've been working on a memoir for the past five years.

00:41:37.900 So writing about my life as, you know, routine for me at this point.

00:41:41.500 And ultimately, because we have open discourse, I've been very vocal about the fact that his

00:41:46.380 workaholism did impact all three of our childhoods.

00:41:49.400 Uh, we were, you know, obviously provided with privileges that are, you know, incomparable

00:41:54.300 for a lot of people in this country.

00:41:55.560 And for that, I'm grateful, but ultimately, you know, there was sort of this opening ma

00:42:01.860 hole, uh, in which, you know, dad wasn't there.

00:42:05.320 He did show up for ice skating competitions.

00:42:07.100 He did show up for football games.

00:42:08.580 You know, he was there for the big events, but the day-to-day was a little bit more mom's,

00:42:13.140 uh, domain.

00:42:14.960 That's the word I'm looking for.

00:42:16.080 So I would argue that.

00:42:16.760 Did you know that?

00:42:17.800 Well, I was aware that I was a workaholic.

00:42:20.360 When, when she's talking really about when they were younger, before I started doing

00:42:24.500 media, when, when I, I would get up at five in the morning and I would struggle to get

00:42:27.900 home by 10 at night.

00:42:29.100 And that was, you know, I had midnight or midnight.

00:42:32.860 Yeah.

00:42:33.020 Well, later it was midnight, but, but it was, it was, I had multiple careers going simultaneous.

00:42:38.800 I, you know, I had an intensive care practice at a hospital.

00:42:41.000 I had an inpatient medical practice and outpatient medical practice.

00:42:43.660 I was running medical services in a psychiatric hospital.

00:42:46.140 I was running their addiction services.

00:42:47.680 It was super, super, super crazy for many years.

00:42:51.140 And that's the part where I feel bad that I might've been able to balance things out a

00:42:55.320 little bit better.

00:42:56.040 But that's, you know, that's my affair.

00:42:58.100 Full, you know, back to the radical honesty.

00:43:00.240 Do you think it had anything to do with the fact that you had triplets at home?

00:43:02.960 That are, that is hard.

00:43:04.620 And I mean, we, I joke, I had, I used to be married to a doctor before there was Doug,

00:43:08.060 there was Dan, he was a doctor, my first husband and one of his doctor friends.

00:43:11.360 And, you know, it's tough to be a doctor, but one of his doctor friends was saying when

00:43:13.960 he leaves his house in the morning and sort of hits the security code, leaving the kids,

00:43:17.900 all the many kids he had inside, he used to say, ah, time to go to that spa called work.

00:43:24.080 Oh, I didn't feel that way so much as I was in a panic.

00:43:30.060 I had, you know, I had a depression here, a dad that sort of traumatized me around finances.

00:43:35.080 And I lived in a panic for many years that I wasn't going to be able to support this

00:43:38.880 family.

00:43:39.120 All of a sudden, like I said, all the chips were in, we were, we were this family of

00:43:43.300 five.

00:43:43.780 All of a sudden we went from this young, cool couple.

00:43:45.880 We're, you know, on our own, all of a sudden family of five, I just put the pedal to the

00:43:50.660 metal.

00:43:50.920 And, and I kind of knew there could be consequence, you know, it wasn't, I was without awareness

00:43:55.980 that my absence could, could have an issue.

00:43:58.780 So I did the best I could.

00:44:00.120 I just did the best I could.

00:44:01.140 How do you think it affected you, Paulina?

00:44:04.380 One therapist would say, no, I'm just kidding.

00:44:06.820 No, I think for me, I think it played out in my romantic life.

00:44:10.900 I think for a long time I was just as radical honesty, let's go.

00:44:16.460 Uh, I would, you know, pine over people who were emotionally unavailable, um, ultimately

00:44:22.020 because, uh, I wasn't used to having a parent who is there to meet my emotional needs every

00:44:28.080 single day.

00:44:28.820 What age were you when that stopped?

00:44:30.240 Do you think?

00:44:31.320 Um, because some, I'm asking only because to some extent, most adolescents do that kind

00:44:36.880 of stuff, you know, but did it go well into adulthood?

00:44:39.500 I would say like 26, 27 around the time that I sort of, and he's doing what every daughter

00:44:45.720 of an unavailable dad does.

00:44:47.300 Thank God I wasn't abandoning.

00:44:48.640 I didn't leave because that would have been then the preoccupation, but, uh, which is what

00:44:52.660 put more meat on those bones, drew what she's doing with every daughter of an, which is,

00:44:58.200 which is the, the, you're, there are various ways of sort of talking about this and thinking

00:45:02.000 about it, but there are things called, some people call love maps.

00:45:04.400 They're things that we're fitted with and our family of origin and create those romantic

00:45:08.340 fittedness.

00:45:09.300 And if they were insufficient, the drive to fit that becomes even more powerful.

00:45:15.420 And, um, you know, therapy is the way out of that.

00:45:18.080 I'm grateful that you did that work too.

00:45:20.000 Well, in fact, by the way, I am, there's nothing, you know, I, I know I'm not a perfect

00:45:24.620 parent when I, when I, and when Paulina first told me she was in therapy, I was like, off

00:45:28.120 the ground.

00:45:28.420 I'm so, oh, that's so great.

00:45:30.160 And you're, you're, and you're participating.

00:45:31.880 You can't imagine how many people there are in this country that do go into mental health

00:45:36.600 services, but don't participate.

00:45:38.700 You have to, you have to, you have to be in the, in the experience in order to get something

00:45:43.560 out of it.

00:45:44.100 And I was just so grateful.

00:45:45.380 I thought you were going to say, I was like, oh, thank God you're going into therapy where

00:45:48.100 they'll definitely blame it all on your mother.

00:45:50.060 Well, there was, there was that, it happened, but, but, but, but it was more that I was

00:45:56.220 just, I would rather than feeling guilty and sad, I was grateful that, oh my God, she's

00:46:00.920 grabbing onto this good.

00:46:02.180 I know I'm not perfect.

00:46:03.340 Totally.

00:46:03.700 I love therapy.

00:46:04.400 I've been in therapy for years and I recommend it if you're at all interested.

00:46:06.900 It's just, it's sort of a gift you give to yourself.

00:46:09.100 Uh, but you, it is one of those things you only get out of it what you put into it.

00:46:11.700 So if you're going to hold back and you're not really going to put cards on the table,

00:46:14.340 you're not going to get much out of it.

00:46:15.740 And you definitely put cards on the table in the book, in your writings prior to the

00:46:19.720 book.

00:46:20.120 I've been, I've read a lot of them.

00:46:21.920 Um, and one of them is, can we talk about virginity?

00:46:25.680 Because I'm like this girl, she's fearless.

00:46:28.620 So you talk about, you knew it was coming at some point, obviously you're going to lose

00:46:32.860 your virginity and you have, your dad is Dr. Drew.

00:46:36.180 Awkward, awkward.

00:46:37.200 It doesn't have to be awkward, but you're, tell us what your mom said to you that stayed

00:46:41.300 in your head from eight years.

00:46:42.860 I have an eight year old from eight years forward.

00:46:45.740 We were driving, uh, to ice skating practice, uh, to Burbank, California.

00:46:50.940 We were on the one 34 freeway.

00:46:53.480 And my mom looks at me and said, when you lose your virginity, your father's going to

00:46:58.440 broadcast it on the radio.

00:47:01.640 And somebody consulted me about that.

00:47:03.820 Well, I understand the impetus behind that, right?

00:47:07.260 She was trying to communicate to me that because I was a girl, there was different pressures

00:47:10.560 on me.

00:47:11.020 I would be a topic of discussion.

00:47:12.840 If I messed up, I would be ridiculed.

00:47:15.780 And, you know, I kind of experienced that.

00:47:18.000 I mean, to a certain degree, when I first started writing about my bulimia, you know, the reason

00:47:22.840 it went national is because New York post pulled out the hook of it and was like, Dr. Drew's

00:47:26.720 daughter has an eating disorder.

00:47:28.160 And in that moment, it was, you know, almost worse than my virginity being broadcasted on

00:47:34.200 the radio.

00:47:34.820 It was like, yeah, it was kind of the same phenomena, but a deeper secret.

00:47:39.140 Um, but ultimately one is like, everybody eventually loses their virginity.

00:47:42.500 And one is like, shame, shame in some corners still, unfortunately.

00:47:47.140 Yeah, absolutely.

00:47:48.100 And, you know, I think because I have proximity to my father's platform, it's been very important

00:47:53.520 to me to speak honestly and authentically about these experiences because I can't be the only

00:47:58.300 one, you know, dealing with purity culture or dealing with, uh, eating disorder slash body

00:48:04.120 image issues.

00:48:04.900 And so it's been sort of, um, foundational in my writing practice to practice radical honesty

00:48:11.960 and really be transparent about, you know, what I've been through and, and what it means

00:48:17.160 to be in proximity.

00:48:17.780 And I was just, I was smiling to myself, Megan, cause I'm, and I've gotten used to it.

00:48:23.260 I just sort of tighten my, uh, uh, glital muscles and prepare, prepare, prepare for the,

00:48:29.680 whatever punch comes my way.

00:48:31.360 Yes.

00:48:31.920 But you have a more authentic relationship.

00:48:34.440 Oh, absolutely.

00:48:35.200 It's been great.

00:48:35.600 And listen, this, and this is forging those adult connections.

00:48:38.260 Right.

00:48:39.040 And, and, and again, that's what our book ended up being about.

00:48:41.100 We really, it's not about all this stuff so much, although this does get in the book.

00:48:46.140 That will be in the memoir.

00:48:47.220 Yeah.

00:48:47.780 That's more than memoir.

00:48:48.540 This is, it's more about, it was written, this book was written for sort of, well, we

00:48:52.900 say 14 to 20 year olds, 14 to 20 year olds.

00:48:54.940 And how helping them navigate relationships.

00:48:58.100 It really was originally about consent.

00:49:00.380 It's a primer on sex, on relationships, on crushes, on bullying, on teenage life.

00:49:06.980 I thought it was actually really eyeopening.

00:49:08.660 All right.

00:49:08.760 We're going to pick it up there when we come back.

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00:49:55.320 Welcome back, everyone, to The Megyn Kelly Show, joined today by Dr. Drew Pinsky, and he is joined by his daughter, Paulina Pinsky.

00:50:06.720 They are together with me today.

00:50:08.420 She's a Columbia graduate, a writer, and they are co-authors of the new book, It Doesn't Have to Be Awkward, out today.

00:50:15.400 In about 20 minutes, we're going to be taking your calls at 833-44-MEGYN, M-E-G-Y-N, 833-446-3496.

00:50:23.720 So let us know if you've got a question on your mind today.

00:50:26.420 But I want to go back to Drew and Paulina with the story, Paulina, of you as a competitive ice skater.

00:50:33.320 That was a big, big piece of your life for many, many years.

00:50:36.640 And not surprisingly, it, I don't know if we can say led to, but involved what ultimately became an eating disorder for you.

00:50:45.040 Very open about that.

00:50:46.540 Would you say caused?

00:50:48.400 I would say that it is in the fabric of the ice skating culture.

00:50:53.040 I would say, you know, your friends are your competitors and your competitors are your friends.

00:50:57.800 And, you know, I was actually speaking to a childhood friend of mine last night who's actually in one of my writing workshops.

00:51:04.000 And we were talking about how dieting was a means of bonding with your friends and how you would dole out secrets with each other.

00:51:10.920 I think ice skating, honestly, is on the track of needing sort of an exposure like gymnastics.

00:51:19.280 I'm sort of waiting for that moment to happen because I think that it's a really toxic culture.

00:51:25.280 But ultimately, you know, it really fed my performance spirit.

00:51:28.600 And that's really where I learned how to be a performer.

00:51:30.500 But ultimately, you know, I couldn't talk about it for years and I couldn't write about it.

00:51:36.960 And it was a very incredibly painful, complicated relationship, ultimately, because ice skating was the foundation of my identity for 13 years.

00:51:45.720 And some of those relationships were very powerful and important.

00:51:49.380 The coaches.

00:51:50.180 Oh, yeah.

00:51:50.600 I mean, my coach, Erica Shore and Barbara Sussman, you know, they are mothers to me.

00:51:56.980 And, you know, they fundamentally helped me move through my childhood, my adolescence in a way that, you know, really fostered my spirit.

00:52:05.420 And then, you know, there were the coaches who were like, you know, you gain weight here and, you know, you got to lose weight and all that stuff.

00:52:11.060 But why couldn't you talk about it?

00:52:12.820 Was it the was it the the culture of ice skating?

00:52:16.900 Like, it's shameful to talk about it or because you didn't want to let it go.

00:52:20.900 You know, if you talk about it, it's the first step toward letting it go.

00:52:23.580 Yeah.

00:52:23.820 I mean, I think that weight loss and thinness is sort of the subliminal messaging of the entire culture.

00:52:30.700 Well, I mean, you're trying to get off the ground with, you know, incredible things that you're hurtling yourself off the air on a toe pick.

00:52:39.060 Yeah.

00:52:39.380 And then landing on a toe.

00:52:40.120 And then landing on a razor.

00:52:41.540 It's like insane.

00:52:42.440 It's such an insane thing.

00:52:43.580 Yeah.

00:52:43.820 You shouldn't be doing that anyway.

00:52:46.340 No big deal.

00:52:48.060 Yeah.

00:52:48.540 I mean, I just have memories of mothers being like, how much do you weigh?

00:52:51.580 My daughter weighs this, you know, like there's very much a toxic specifically, you know, I, Tanya is my favorite ice skating movie because Allison Janney, Allison Janney, excuse me, is the quintessential ice skating mother.

00:53:04.280 You know, just like the kind of shrew like woman with a parrot on her arm, you know, like, yes, that is, that is the, you know, when I would walk into the ice rink, there would be a pack of mothers smoking cigarettes.

00:53:15.920 And, you know, they would stop whispering when I would walk up and I'd be like, are you talking about me? And these are grown adults.

00:53:21.920 Um, and I was, you know, 14.

00:53:24.500 Um, and so this is why I'm waiting for ice skating to have its day in the sun.

00:53:29.060 Um, ultimately, because I think.

00:53:30.280 You could write a book about that.

00:53:31.400 That's really interesting.

00:53:32.540 You should, you should write an expose.

00:53:34.120 You should go contact other ice skaters and get them to talk to you.

00:53:37.540 I'd read that.

00:53:38.140 I'd put you back on.

00:53:38.920 Okay, fantastic.

00:53:40.860 Yeah.

00:53:41.240 I, um, I tried to write a piece about it last spring and nowhere would pick it up.

00:53:45.940 Ultimately, because I think there was an investment in keeping ice skating sort of this pristine princess like sport.

00:53:51.500 Well, what's interesting to me is the mom thing.

00:53:53.580 That's an interesting observation because it, it, it, what I saw, what it was a way for moms that were immigrant or lower middle class to try to propel their daughters into a different strata and they would not let go.

00:54:06.560 They were just wild about it.

00:54:08.340 So, well, yeah, I mean, one of my dear friends, Mariah Nagasu, uh, who landed the triple axle at the Olympics, you know, we were in the same preschool together and there's video footage of us at the Esmeralda dance recital.

00:54:20.020 And, you know, I'm like twirling around flirting with the camera and Mariah's, you know, doing beautiful tendus.

00:54:26.540 And so to me, there was always like a very clear distinction of like who was going to make it.

00:54:30.900 And for whatever reason, I was like, Mariah's going to the Olympics and I'm going to college.

00:54:35.280 Like that is our trajectory.

00:54:37.980 But going to college for ice skating, ice skating is good too, right?

00:54:40.520 I mean, is there, is there an ice skating at college?

00:54:42.260 I don't know.

00:54:42.800 Is that one of those sports you can take to?

00:54:44.340 There is.

00:54:45.040 It's a club sport.

00:54:46.280 And originally I, you know, when I was 14, I was like, I'm going to go to Columbia and be on the ice skating team.

00:54:52.140 And then I kind of gave up on the Columbia team, went to Barnard, didn't realize that it was part of Columbia.

00:54:58.100 And then I joined the rugby team.

00:54:59.780 So, different trajectory.

00:55:01.200 That's hilarious.

00:55:02.860 Wow.

00:55:03.140 Yeah.

00:55:03.320 Who, probably very few people have that exact line.

00:55:06.740 So, can you talk about this?

00:55:08.920 Your mom was not.

00:55:10.500 High five on that one.

00:55:11.080 She was not sort of the working class mom looking to sort of make it for the family through you.

00:55:18.740 No.

00:55:18.860 You guys had already made it.

00:55:20.880 And there was some conflict there.

00:55:22.940 Like, you write about how when you told your mom that you'd been forcing yourself to throw up.

00:55:27.140 And one time it was eight times a day when you had stayed home from spring break.

00:55:31.720 Her response was, we're going to get your teeth checked.

00:55:36.040 And I wondered, man, you are so honest.

00:55:39.320 Like, it's very brave of you to talk about this, given that your dad's famous and famous for mental health talk and so on.

00:55:45.700 And so, what of your relationship with your mom and how that played into the eating disorder?

00:55:50.960 My mom and I were both invested in ice skating.

00:55:55.840 It was the foundation of our relationship.

00:55:57.740 She would drive me to, you know, every ice rink in Southern California, which is the largest network of ice rinks in the country.

00:56:04.160 Five o'clock in the morning.

00:56:05.100 Five o'clock in the morning.

00:56:05.720 You know, I have memories of being nine and her waking me up at 4 a.m. and just dutifully combing my hair and me, you know, manifesting early signs of OCD that would eventually manifest as an eating disorder.

00:56:18.220 But I would make her do my bun eight times and I would just scream at her.

00:56:22.660 And, you know, that was early anxiety playing out.

00:56:26.280 But it was kind of this routine that we were in.

00:56:28.140 Right.

00:56:28.400 And the singular goal being we got to get her on the ice.

00:56:30.740 We got to get her to perform.

00:56:31.600 And for a long time, it really was, you know, as a triplet, I needed my thing.

00:56:36.840 Right.

00:56:37.180 My brother, Douglas, was playing piano.

00:56:39.400 My brother, Jordan, was good at math and I was the ice skater.

00:56:41.800 And so what became a hobby or an activity was swiftly an identity.

00:56:46.880 And, you know, I write about my relationship with my mother, which is, you know, leaps and bounds, more communicative and stronger because I have written about it.

00:56:56.200 And ultimately, I think it's a privilege that my parents allow me to write about it and don't disown me.

00:57:03.040 And, you know, I think also what was unusual about my situation is I was sent to a childhood nutritionist from ages 12 to 18.

00:57:12.020 And I think that was really where the nexus of the eating disorder, this culminated, ultimately, because I was getting waived every week.

00:57:21.640 I was being told what I can and cannot eat.

00:57:23.820 And ultimately, I, you know, I have a lot of resentment for that nutritionist because there was never a moment in which she questioned my motivation or checked in with me or anything.

00:57:35.100 Ultimately, she was invested in a paycheck, which is a symptom of diet culture.

00:57:40.180 So ultimately, you know, I had my my go around with diet culture in a very extreme way.

00:57:46.440 And figure skating was the motivation behind that.

00:57:50.600 At least.

00:57:51.040 So how did you get out of it?

00:57:52.340 Because it's so hard to break an eating disorder.

00:57:56.320 I, my freshman year of college.

00:57:59.260 Started watching other people eat and I realized that other people were able to feed themselves based on instinct rather than controlling portions or, you know, obsessively weighing themselves or whatever it was.

00:58:17.420 And so it was because I was taken out of my childhood context that I was able to see that I was the unusual one.

00:58:23.320 And as you cited earlier, you know, it was my freshman spring break.

00:58:28.560 I went home and the emotional reality of being home and, you know, trying to differentiate myself as a New Yorker and being in Pasadena and kind of forced back into the space in which I felt like I was a different person.

00:58:41.160 Ultimately, I purged eight times in one day.

00:58:43.720 And that was when I was like, oh, something is wrong here.

00:58:48.120 And so I went to my school's mental health services.

00:58:51.520 They gave me a list of referrals.

00:58:53.440 And thankfully, I was paired with an amazing therapist who incorporated feminism into my care.

00:59:02.900 And ultimately, I feel really lucky because a lot of the ways we teach, not teach, treat eating disorders is by, you know, sending them to a clinic and sort of focusing on gaining weight and focusing on meal control.

00:59:15.160 And I had none of that.

00:59:16.960 It was more like, how do you feel?

00:59:19.560 How do you remain neutral?

00:59:20.720 How do you how do you feed yourself based on instinct?

00:59:24.100 And for a long time, that meant eating spicy, spicy tofu pad thai every single day.

00:59:29.640 But then, you know, that didn't feel good anymore.

00:59:31.960 Right.

00:59:32.320 And it was because I had spent so many years abstaining and restricting that I kind of went overboard.

00:59:37.740 And then once I started really feeling better about myself and more attuned to myself, I was able to learn how to feed myself based on instinct.

00:59:47.120 And so intuitive eating and feminism were central ideologies in my recovery.

00:59:52.640 I've never heard anybody say that before.

00:59:55.020 How feminism like what is helping you see how this object objectification of you as an ice skater, as a young woman was feeding into unhealthy body images or what?

01:00:08.520 Absolutely.

01:00:09.520 Absolutely.

01:00:09.640 The way in which I was internalizing patriarchy and performing for patriarchy, right?

01:00:14.360 The idea of Eurocentric thin standards being held above all else and trying to achieve that.

01:00:20.900 Like even as a cis white woman, I wasn't able to achieve the standard without, you know, fully breaking myself.

01:00:28.960 And so ultimately, feminism, intersectional feminism allowed me to understand the way in which I was perpetuating a system that I wanted to break free from.

01:00:39.060 Oh, that is fascinating.

01:00:40.460 So, you know, I'm sure your dad's told you or, you know, I'm not woke and I'm not really into the whole woke thing.

01:00:44.860 But I love hearing that it worked to perform some radical good in your life.

01:00:50.860 I can hear how and why.

01:00:54.740 Absolutely.

01:00:55.360 I think feminism was central to my evolution of self.

01:01:00.680 And, you know, I went to Barnard, which is like feminism mecca.

01:01:05.100 Other than Smith, maybe they're tied.

01:01:08.240 And, you know, for freshman year was the first time I encountered feminism.

01:01:12.540 And it was before that, that I never felt confident enough to have an opinion.

01:01:16.200 I didn't feel smart.

01:01:18.800 And, you know, being introduced to feminism, really thinking about, you know, the social strata of the country, of the culture, of the world really helped me find my voice.

01:01:33.840 Did it give you more compassion for your mom?

01:01:35.560 It did give me more compassion for my mom.

01:01:37.500 It did.

01:01:37.940 I think, ultimately, before I went to college, I was very much like a, like, I'm only friends with guys.

01:01:45.860 And, ultimately, that was kind of a misogynistic belief to keep perpetuating.

01:01:51.540 Because, ultimately, at Barnard, I learned that, you know, women and non-binary people and, you know, everyone is affected by feminism.

01:02:01.320 Feminism isn't just about pushing a female agenda.

01:02:04.620 It's about equality for all.

01:02:06.540 And in order to really achieve equality for all, we need to be realistic about where everyone is situated.

01:02:13.660 Can I back up and ask you about the patriarchy you mentioned on the ice skating?

01:02:16.740 Because I get what you're saying.

01:02:18.160 Trust me.

01:02:18.560 I've definitely dealt with, quote, the patriarchy, capital T, capital P.

01:02:23.020 But I also think women do it even more so, if not, as much, if not more so than men to other women, right?

01:02:31.580 Like, these crazy beauty standards that we're setting.

01:02:34.060 We're doing it to ourselves.

01:02:36.880 But that's sort of the internalization of patriarchy, right?

01:02:40.340 I think because patriarchy is sort of the superstructure of our lives, the only way to survive is to internalize that structure and repurpose it.

01:02:51.920 And so misogyny is real.

01:02:54.360 Misogyny is real.

01:02:55.400 And a lot of women, I think, need to come to terms with the fact that they have internalized misogyny, whether that's, you know, how they view other women, whether that's how they view themselves, whether that's just how they move through the world.

01:03:11.840 You know, it's our default as a culture is misogynistic.

01:03:15.740 And I think the internalization of patriarchy is sort of a perpetuation of that misogyny.

01:03:21.520 So I had a guy on the show yesterday who I really like.

01:03:23.820 His name is Leonidas Johnson, and he's a black man who's got heterodox views on BLM and, you know, sort of these race discussions that we've been having nationally.

01:03:32.960 And he was saying he gets accused of being sort of a supporter of white supremacy.

01:03:38.100 And I was saying I get accused of having internalized misogyny if I'm ever critical of a woman.

01:03:44.080 And I kick that around.

01:03:46.300 And I'm wide open to any possible criticisms of myself and the possibility that I've got some issue.

01:03:52.380 But I genuinely don't think that's it.

01:03:54.380 I genuinely think that I'm just sort of a journalist whose job it is to comment on people in the news.

01:03:59.460 And sometimes it's men and sometimes it's women.

01:04:01.620 Sometimes they're white.

01:04:02.320 Sometimes they're black.

01:04:03.260 But whenever I say something about a woman, I get accused of that.

01:04:06.880 Whenever he says something about, you know, this movement.

01:04:08.940 So don't you think that those labels get overused?

01:04:12.000 They sort of get weaponized against people as well.

01:04:14.760 So if I could jump in, I think we need a new vocabulary because I think words like white supremacy have or they're so loaded that and I and they're absolutely weaponized.

01:04:27.100 I agree with you.

01:04:27.740 I think there is a language that we could generate where everyone could grab onto these concepts and kind of understand more generally what we're talking about.

01:04:35.580 I feel like anything has the potential to be weaponized when it's put in the wrong hands.

01:04:40.020 Because I think even if we had a new vocabulary, it would be weaponized.

01:04:44.540 And I think it's about America.

01:04:47.000 I think it's it.

01:04:47.800 Well, yeah, America.

01:04:50.040 I think it's simplistic to say if you're a woman and you criticize a woman, that's misogynistic.

01:04:54.940 Right.

01:04:55.260 Like that's just reductive and not necessarily true to not criticize a woman because she's a woman is.

01:05:02.620 Misogynistic.

01:05:03.240 So that's how I feel.

01:05:04.820 That's how I feel, too.

01:05:05.760 It's like, don't baby her like she can take it.

01:05:08.940 You know, we're I don't like it when people treat women like they're delicate flowers.

01:05:13.480 Yeah.

01:05:14.000 Yeah.

01:05:14.480 And I, you know, ultimately, all of the verbiage comes from an academic background.

01:05:19.720 And I think because the the verbiage is so academic that it can feel inaccessible and it's easy to kind of ascribe your own meaning to it.

01:05:29.860 And, you know, I think that all words can be weaponized.

01:05:32.600 And I, you know, it's hard to say that a new vocabulary would rectify that situation.

01:05:37.920 So, Drew, I know that Frederick Douglass was struggling with this in 1870.

01:05:42.660 He really was with a language for this.

01:05:45.240 And I'm scouring his his rhetoric right now to see if I can figure out if he got to a place that we could use today.

01:05:53.300 He, too, was a white supremacist.

01:05:55.700 Well, no, but he thought Abraham Lincoln was a white supremacist.

01:05:58.700 And when I first read that, I was like, what am I, Abraham Lincoln?

01:06:01.380 No.

01:06:01.920 And then I thought, oh, I understand what he's talking about.

01:06:04.060 I get it.

01:06:04.760 Just the words struck me wrong.

01:06:06.500 Well, so can we let so dial it back just a little, because when Paulina was talking about, you know, your your wife, her mom, the struggle she went through when she realized she had an eating disorder, she went to a therapist.

01:06:16.520 You know, not to you.

01:06:17.820 How does that how do you square all that?

01:06:20.600 Like, how's that making you feel when you realized all of it, that your daughter had this eating problem?

01:06:25.760 How did what did that bring up for you as a guy who's been a therapist?

01:06:29.720 I had an immediate I had an immediate reaction.

01:06:32.460 I my reaction was I was sad that she had an illness.

01:06:36.700 Right.

01:06:37.200 I was sad that she was not well.

01:06:39.380 But I was so grateful that not only had she on her own gone out and gotten treatment was clearly benefiting and embracing treatment.

01:06:48.860 Yeah, it was it was I was so grateful.

01:06:51.720 Listen, psychiatric illness, mental health issues, medical illnesses.

01:06:56.960 We are human beings.

01:06:58.020 We are biological entities.

01:06:59.660 Shit happens.

01:07:00.320 It happens to all of us.

01:07:01.500 It happens to all of us.

01:07:03.360 All of us.

01:07:03.880 The difference is.

01:07:05.440 And by the way, then people came happy.

01:07:07.360 Well, you didn't even know your daughter is eating disorders.

01:07:09.280 Like, yeah, that's the point.

01:07:10.620 They don't they hide it.

01:07:12.140 They argue.

01:07:12.640 There's no way you could know if you're the parent, especially.

01:07:15.760 And and and the fact that that people when people embrace treatment, that's the difference for me.

01:07:21.940 Then I'm just like, oh, this is going to go OK.

01:07:24.120 I know this will be OK.

01:07:25.140 We just got to support the treatment.

01:07:26.660 And, you know, it's not going to be fun.

01:07:28.240 It may be painful, but I just was so grateful for that.

01:07:31.480 I just that that was what I felt at the moment.

01:07:33.440 So I can I tell you, I totally relate to this because, first of all, I have two very,

01:07:39.280 very good friends whose daughters have severe eating disorders and watch them go through

01:07:42.860 all of that.

01:07:43.820 And in my own family and I haven't been given permission to talk about this in more detail,

01:07:47.980 but someday I likely will get that permission and then we'll do so.

01:07:50.800 But I have a very close family member who got swept up into the opioid crisis.

01:07:54.840 And when it was happening, we didn't realize that it was a national crisis.

01:07:58.640 We didn't realize that this was a thing that a lot of families, millions of families,

01:08:02.340 as it turns out, were experiencing.

01:08:03.820 We just thought, oh, my God, you know, this person's a drug addict.

01:08:07.500 What what on earth?

01:08:08.780 Right.

01:08:09.260 And all the judgments that came with it, because drug addicts tend to lie and they tend to steal

01:08:14.260 and they tend to do a bunch of things that you don't like.

01:08:17.820 And there was a fair amount of shame connected to it.

01:08:21.080 Shame, anger and definitely was personalized, you know, by us against this person.

01:08:26.120 And now with time and understanding, it's actually a big national crisis that we we all went through.

01:08:32.120 I mean, so many people and same for an eating disorder, same for all these things that we

01:08:36.240 carry around, like our own personal burdens, whereas every family has this shit.

01:08:43.040 You're not alone.

01:08:44.420 It's not your effed up family.

01:08:46.440 It's life.

01:08:48.180 Well, yeah, it's being a human.

01:08:49.740 And please, if you if you do get to a point where you want to discuss it, let me help you

01:08:53.580 discuss it, because it's it's a it's something I know very, very well.

01:08:57.140 And to your point about the stealing and the bullshitting, that's a symptom of the illness.

01:09:01.340 That's not the person.

01:09:02.880 That's a symptom of that person's illness.

01:09:05.700 And yeah, there's a lot to be said, but we'll leave it.

01:09:08.280 Go ahead.

01:09:08.720 I was just thinking, you know, about my first media media sensational experience, which was

01:09:14.340 back in 2013, the sort of mantra that I kept pitching again and again was like, you

01:09:19.620 know, even Dr.

01:09:20.480 Drew's daughter has an eating disorder, right?

01:09:22.200 Like even this person who, you know, advocates for works towards mental health, it can affect

01:09:28.640 his family as well.

01:09:30.200 And ultimately, like I just there's so much silence around eating disorders, like it's

01:09:34.960 a fundamental aspect of the disease itself.

01:09:37.700 And so the more that I can talk about it, the the more I feel like I'm in service of someone

01:09:43.700 else's healing.

01:09:45.000 And and to your point, like for in your defense, Dr.

01:09:47.160 Drew, just because you're in the mental health field does not mean you you will raise perfect

01:09:50.980 children who will have none of these issues.

01:09:52.620 That's absurd.

01:09:54.200 Absolutely not.

01:09:54.820 And I assure you, you know, having been around reams of leagues of psychiatrists, their family

01:10:00.740 have stuff, too.

01:10:01.540 It's just the way it is.

01:10:02.480 And then they naturally and good ones.

01:10:04.060 Good psychiatrists were accepting of it and just and work towards good treatment and good

01:10:08.800 outcomes.

01:10:09.360 And other psychiatrists pay for that.

01:10:11.480 Now, there's a great line in the book talking about dating and what to look for in your mate

01:10:21.540 and how to tell whether this is a person you ought to be with.

01:10:24.200 I'm going to read it after the break because I want people to remember this.

01:10:27.760 It was like one of the best summaries of sort of how to know whether you're you've got a

01:10:31.420 good person or not.

01:10:32.820 Dr.

01:10:33.020 Drew and Paulina Pinsky are staying with us.

01:10:34.820 If you have any parenting questions or eating disorder questions or any questions at all

01:10:39.880 that you want to discuss, give us a call.

01:10:42.020 833-44-MEGAN, M-E-G-Y-N.

01:10:44.400 That's 833-446-3496.

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01:11:23.500 Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show, joined today by Dr.

01:11:26.360 Drew Pinsky and his daughter Paulina Pinsky, both here talking about their new book,

01:11:30.400 It Doesn't Have to be Awkward, out today.

01:11:32.880 These conversations, drugs, sex, alcohol, whatever it is, you can talk to your kids about it.

01:11:39.520 You can talk to each other about it.

01:11:40.780 It doesn't make you bad.

01:11:41.720 In fact, it's going to help you have a better life.

01:11:43.740 And if you have a question for our guests, for me, or if you just want to talk parenting,

01:11:47.520 life, what have you, give us a call.

01:11:49.380 833-44-MEGAN, M-E-G-Y-N.

01:11:52.500 That's 833-446-3496.

01:11:55.440 Okay, so you guys in your book talk about discussions when it comes to parenting, when

01:12:00.660 it comes to sex, when it comes to dating.

01:12:02.620 One of the things you say is, number one, talk to your parents, and parents talk to your

01:12:07.040 kids about sex.

01:12:09.160 Being open about it may save you from doing anything prematurely.

01:12:13.940 But man, it's easier said than done, right?

01:12:16.300 I mean, it's hard to have that.

01:12:18.720 It's like, okay, safe sex, this is what you should do.

01:12:20.980 I think most parents understand they should discuss that.

01:12:23.640 But beyond that, I don't know a lot of parents who want to go into, have you done it yet?

01:12:28.600 How'd it go?

01:12:29.300 What did you use?

01:12:30.080 What did you feel?

01:12:30.920 Right?

01:12:31.620 How detailed do we get?

01:12:33.020 I'll give that one to you, Dr. Drew.

01:12:34.300 I don't believe you should get detailed at all unless the kid is asking for it.

01:12:38.800 In fact, my whole philosophy is create the environment where the child can bring you their

01:12:45.800 questions and an environment where you can't express your values.

01:12:50.480 So in other words, your goal is not to give an entire plumbing lesson when a child has

01:12:54.640 a simple question about kissing.

01:12:56.760 You know, like, oh, here's my chance.

01:12:58.160 A lot of parents, for a while there, that was sort of the parenting thing.

01:13:00.720 Are you familiar with the vulva?

01:13:02.340 No.

01:13:02.880 Yeah.

01:13:03.400 No, that's right.

01:13:04.520 And it should be, did I just answer the question?

01:13:07.940 Did I answer it to your, you know, is that all you need?

01:13:09.740 Do you want anything more?

01:13:10.400 Do you have any other questions?

01:13:11.380 I hope you'll come back to me with more questions.

01:13:13.740 And oh, by the way, here's a little more information.

01:13:16.440 Here's how I feel about this.

01:13:17.760 Here's how I hope you'll, you know, consider whatever.

01:13:20.200 Yeah.

01:13:20.460 For instance, one of the things that I think is important to communicate to kids early

01:13:24.000 is that, you know, if you have sex before you're 16, our brains really aren't developed

01:13:28.400 for that yet.

01:13:29.060 They just don't handle it well.

01:13:30.920 And so 16 is a good threshold, just sort of.

01:13:34.100 And oh, by the way, if you do have sex, here's, you know, what I feel about relationships

01:13:38.120 and what context that should happen.

01:13:40.080 Oh, I have a question.

01:13:40.520 I have a follow-up for you on that because my kids actually asked me the other day when

01:13:44.340 I lost my virginity, I was like, what?

01:13:46.920 Look over there, something shiny.

01:13:48.980 Right.

01:13:49.580 So this is, I'm glad you brought this kind of thing up because I haven't answered this

01:13:52.860 one in a while, which is whatever you did or did not do, you are not under any obligation

01:13:58.340 to share with your kids when they are under, under the age of 21.

01:14:01.380 Never lie.

01:14:02.420 Don't ever lie to your kids.

01:14:04.240 But if it's something that you wish you'd waited, let's say, then your response should

01:14:09.040 be, we're not here to discuss what I did or not do.

01:14:12.280 Here's what I expect of you.

01:14:13.880 And that's going to, what you're going to get back is, oh, that means you had sex.

01:14:17.260 It's like, we're not, it has a totally different impact than going, well, honey, let me tell

01:14:22.320 you, when I was 15, it wasn't so good.

01:14:24.580 And here's what happened.

01:14:25.340 Here's how I felt.

01:14:26.080 Not good.

01:14:26.980 Not good.

01:14:27.200 Get out of bounds.

01:14:27.580 Because you're, whatever you did, if you share that with your kid, you're issuing them

01:14:31.820 a license to pick up where you left off.

01:14:34.460 Okay.

01:14:34.860 So this is my follow-up question.

01:14:36.160 Because you and I had this discussion last time about underage drinking.

01:14:39.560 And you said with your triplets, and now I've got one of them here so I can verify this,

01:14:43.960 that you basically said, if I ever find out that you were at somebody else's house, boozing

01:14:49.400 it up and the parents know about it, you better pray that I don't find out because I'll be

01:14:54.900 outside with a megaphone, calling the cops, and put the fear of God into your kids about

01:14:58.820 that scenario.

01:14:59.500 And God forbid, you would never be the house hosting such a party.

01:15:02.360 Paulina, confirm or deny?

01:15:03.280 Yeah, a little different.

01:15:03.360 If the parents had to actually serve the beer so the kids, then I'd be hauling the parents

01:15:07.420 out.

01:15:07.980 Okay.

01:15:08.160 The kids I know are going to do their thing.

01:15:09.700 But did I say that or did I not say that?

01:15:11.120 You said that if you get arrested, I'm not getting out of jail.

01:15:13.680 Oh, I said that too.

01:15:14.760 I said that too.

01:15:15.400 I really internalized that.

01:15:16.800 I mean, I was terrified before the age of 18.

01:15:21.620 I was straight at, you know.

01:15:22.000 That was, unfortunately, as I told you, that was the goal.

01:15:24.460 Because of my experience, that was my goal.

01:15:26.500 I just got to make sure we get through adolescence.

01:15:28.900 That's what we got to do.

01:15:29.640 I mean, when we have, you know, a drug and alcohol talk at school, it was my dad giving

01:15:33.780 the talk.

01:15:34.520 Oh, wow.

01:15:35.020 So, you know, it didn't make me popular at parties.

01:15:38.120 Right.

01:15:38.960 Didn't really get invited.

01:15:40.440 The sad fall.

01:15:41.080 Which was painful.

01:15:43.160 But ultimately, you know, I went to college.

01:15:45.380 I started experimenting.

01:15:47.140 I started pushing it too much.

01:15:48.860 And, you know, I really hear the importance of waiting developmentally.

01:15:52.380 Like, I'm glad that my brain was booze-free for the first 18 years.

01:15:58.480 But ultimately, with this book, I also wanted to give advice on to how to engage with it in

01:16:04.720 a harm reduction sense, right?

01:16:06.040 How do you move through these substances?

01:16:07.700 Because inevitably, a lot of us choose to partake.

01:16:10.740 And so, you know, we have guidelines in here about how to, you know, enlist people to surround

01:16:16.680 yourself with, how to check in with yourself, how to take your temperature and really tune

01:16:21.940 into reality and what is happening.

01:16:23.220 And the big piece of this, remember, this book started as a consent book on the heels

01:16:26.960 of me, too, when there was a lot of confusion with young people about navigating consent.

01:16:31.360 And we emphasize again and again and again, you cannot render consent when you are intoxicated.

01:16:35.720 You cannot do it.

01:16:36.760 It's not possible.

01:16:37.600 Now, you talk about dating and how to figure out who to date.

01:16:42.060 And I like that you talk about focusing on yourself, pursue your own passions.

01:16:46.500 I've said this to the audience as well.

01:16:48.000 Like, the way you become a more attractive person just in life, to yourself, to your friends,

01:16:52.680 to a potential mate, is to be interesting, to be interested and to be interesting.

01:16:57.200 And so that's really the number one thing you need to focus on.

01:16:59.220 But you talk about that, too, and say, you know, real friends and romantic partners,

01:17:03.860 though kind worth having, will come if you do that and you're not big on hookup culture.

01:17:09.520 But here's the line I loved.

01:17:11.460 How people treat you shows you how they treat themselves.

01:17:17.320 If they treat you like dirt, you best believe their internal monologue is intolerable.

01:17:23.740 I love that.

01:17:25.180 That's going to make me feel so much better whenever somebody gives me a hard time from

01:17:28.360 this point forward.

01:17:29.720 That's so true, too.

01:17:30.900 It's obviously true.

01:17:32.500 If they're hateful to the outside world, they're hateful in their own heads.

01:17:36.980 And I would argue that those are your words.

01:17:42.300 But I would say and we live in a time when people are projecting hateful impulses onto

01:17:48.080 everybody, when really it's something they worry about in their own heart and they're

01:17:52.760 seeing it everywhere else, all to the point of delusionality, as you and I have discussed

01:17:56.560 before.

01:17:56.960 But be careful when you see hatred elsewhere outside of your body.

01:18:02.340 Look for it inside.

01:18:03.920 That that seems brilliant to me.

01:18:06.100 One of the things you sort of base the book around is TCB, trust, compassion and boundaries.

01:18:10.880 And these should be the rules basically for all of our relationships.

01:18:14.220 Trust, compassion and boundaries.

01:18:16.400 Can you just expand on that a bit?

01:18:18.620 Well, let's tell the history on this.

01:18:20.260 So TCB has been in my life for the past.

01:18:25.380 20 years, I was obsessed with Elvis Presley from a very young age, and his rhythm section

01:18:33.500 was called TCB, and he gave them all TCB necklaces that had lightning bolts.

01:18:38.440 And in the third grade, when I became obsessed with Elvis, you know, reading all the biographies

01:18:42.180 out there, I decided I needed the necklace for myself.

01:18:46.540 Speaking of feminism, how accurate were those biographies?

01:18:48.680 I mean, yeah, I mean, problematic fave.

01:18:53.300 Elvis is very problematic.

01:18:54.840 You know, marrying a 14-year-old, stealing black music.

01:18:58.080 We tend to gloss right over that.

01:19:00.780 Yeah.

01:19:01.680 What about Jerry Lewis?

01:19:04.320 Jerry Lewis, yeah.

01:19:06.000 Some problems.

01:19:07.200 Yeah.

01:19:07.620 Yeah.

01:19:07.980 Also.

01:19:08.480 It's better just to listen.

01:19:09.440 Just listen.

01:19:10.080 You don't have to look too closely.

01:19:12.520 But yeah, so I pray to Elvis before everything important.

01:19:15.120 Uh, so he is more like a deity to me than a human, which is probably why I do the mental

01:19:21.220 gymnastics of forgiving him in my mind.

01:19:23.220 That is how I feel about Judge Judy.

01:19:25.880 Judge Judy?

01:19:27.360 She's, she's my Elvis in that way.

01:19:29.860 I love her.

01:19:30.480 Oh my God.

01:19:31.140 That's so funny.

01:19:32.340 I did not know that.

01:19:33.240 That's fantastic.

01:19:33.620 You and RuPaul.

01:19:35.620 RuPaul is hers.

01:19:36.940 And America.

01:19:38.500 Hello.

01:19:39.040 All right, keep going.

01:19:39.660 Well, the fracking isn't great, but RuPaul, RuPaul is done in terms of just expanding

01:19:44.900 LGBTQT representation in this country is phenomenal, but the fracking, not so great.

01:19:50.400 Um, however, I'm lost.

01:19:52.920 RuPaul is a fracker.

01:19:54.640 Yeah.

01:19:55.160 He fracks on his private property.

01:19:56.740 Oh, how funny.

01:19:57.300 I didn't know that.

01:19:58.840 My God.

01:19:59.560 We took a hard turn there.

01:20:01.440 Left us in the room.

01:20:02.220 Let's talk to him about that.

01:20:03.300 See what it's taking.

01:20:03.900 Okay, keep going.

01:20:05.880 Keep going.

01:20:06.200 TCB.

01:20:07.680 TCB.

01:20:08.700 So Elvis brought TCB into my life and this book brought trust, compassion and boundaries

01:20:15.520 into my life.

01:20:16.220 So we took TCB, we morphed it into an aphorism or an acronym for what we thought would be sort

01:20:21.960 of headlines for maintaining good relationships.

01:20:25.140 Ultimately, you can't give consent if one of those factors is missing.

01:20:29.000 So if you don't trust that person, you can't consent.

01:20:31.540 If you're not offering compassion to that person, you can't consent.

01:20:34.600 And if there are boundaries are not being respected, then you obviously can't consent.

01:20:37.920 But ultimately the foundational idea of this book is that if you trust yourself, have compassion

01:20:42.140 for yourself and know your own boundaries, then you can trust someone else, offer them

01:20:46.080 compassion and respect their boundaries.

01:20:48.240 And it sounds sort of almost glib and easy, but it's a complicated landscape or particularly

01:20:53.360 the landscape of boundaries these days.

01:20:55.000 Boundaries, people don't fully get how important that is, how there are obvious physical

01:21:00.500 boundaries, there are emotional boundaries, but there are deep boundaries too that we

01:21:03.980 have between and amongst ourselves that may not be all that apparent to somebody navigating

01:21:08.720 a relationship.

01:21:09.860 I do think when it comes to trust and compassion, frankly, it's one of the reasons why parents

01:21:14.480 should try very, very hard to control their anger and try not to scream at their children

01:21:19.140 and express the anger to the child.

01:21:21.200 Because I do think it just erodes trust and makes a child in particular feel very unsteady.

01:21:25.720 Not to say I'm perfect at this, but it's definitely a priority in my life to check my own anger,

01:21:31.040 walk out of the room rather than yell at my kids, because I do think it erodes trust and

01:21:35.620 it certainly doesn't sound compassionate and it doesn't create a relationship that either

01:21:39.640 party really wants to be a party to.

01:21:42.240 Let me jump to some of our callers because they're firing up right now.

01:21:46.880 This is Dave from Ohio.

01:21:48.760 He's called in and he's been dealing with weight issues his whole life.

01:21:53.560 Hey, Dave, what's your question for?

01:21:55.060 Hang on, Dave, Dave, you don't mind one quick second.

01:21:57.200 I just want to put a code on something that Megan just said, which is if you are yelling,

01:22:01.760 consider that a symptom of something that happened earlier.

01:22:06.100 Some parenting intervention should have been manifest earlier.

01:22:10.080 And that's why things get out of control and emotions escalate.

01:22:12.840 So so yelling is inevitable as a parent, but it's a symptom that something went wrong a lot

01:22:17.180 earlier.

01:22:17.640 Just think about that.

01:22:18.720 OK, sorry.

01:22:19.580 That's good.

01:22:20.140 Dave, what's on your mind?

01:22:20.960 Hey, I have I've been I'm 58 years old.

01:22:24.540 I've been struggling with weight gain all my life.

01:22:26.620 I lose it.

01:22:27.500 I go all the way down to where I'm supposed to be.

01:22:29.480 Then I'll gain it up.

01:22:30.880 My I see this in my younger son, who's 24.

01:22:33.920 Very proud of him.

01:22:34.900 Great kid.

01:22:35.920 But I watch him pick on the bounce and I'll say something to him that automatically gets

01:22:39.880 into an argument.

01:22:41.360 I mean, he takes it like very personal and I don't know how to fix it, but I want to fix

01:22:46.400 it because I don't want to see him struggle like I've been struggling my whole life.

01:22:51.360 Good question.

01:22:52.560 That's a toughie.

01:22:53.640 So the first thing that comes to my mind is the book Health at Every Size by Dr.

01:22:59.720 Lindo Bacon.

01:23:02.160 I'm of the belief that you can achieve health at any size.

01:23:04.640 And ultimately, what that book explains is that every time you put your body through

01:23:11.000 extreme dieting and say you lose the weight, your set weight, which is your natural weight

01:23:16.020 rises.

01:23:17.320 So every time you lower your your weight, your set weight goes higher and higher and higher,

01:23:21.980 which is why when you lose weight, sometimes you gain weight plus more.

01:23:25.420 Um, and so I think ultimately what I would advise for you is trying to find a way out

01:23:31.620 of the dieting cycle, um, learning how to feed yourself intuitively and ultimately, you

01:23:37.840 know, it's hard as someone who has had the conversation of you're gaining weight and we

01:23:42.240 need to talk about it.

01:23:43.540 Um, I think ultimately how you interact with your son and how you interact with yourself

01:23:51.200 is going to do more than telling him to lose weight.

01:23:54.640 Right.

01:23:54.940 So if you can find a way to find balance in your life, maybe that can be a model for

01:23:59.620 him, um, which is why I recommend Health at Every Size was a foundational text in terms

01:24:03.420 of my own eating disorder recovery.

01:24:05.600 Um, my father probably has a different perspective, but I really believe Health at Every Size is

01:24:10.020 possible.

01:24:11.260 True.

01:24:11.960 It's complicated on so many levels.

01:24:14.600 Uh, you know, for Paulina's, the complexity of an eating disorder puts it all in a certain

01:24:18.840 context.

01:24:19.920 Uh, it sounds like Dave has a particular biological genetic context.

01:24:24.620 And, you know, I don't want to over medicalize it, but, but I would just say that Paulina's

01:24:31.760 advice that if you can, like, it's like, for me, it's like an, uh, a family where addictions

01:24:37.080 in the family, the parent in recovery does more than anything else.

01:24:40.260 And so her advice of you coming to terms in a more balanced way with your eating, I think

01:24:45.300 is a reasonable way of modeling something for your son, uh, to get into it with him like

01:24:50.580 this, you see creates more trouble than, than not.

01:24:53.520 You, you, I, I also do believe that it's good to get allies in, uh, other, other non-parents

01:24:59.680 talking to the child, if it's important, the pediatrician, whatever coaches at school, that

01:25:04.720 kind of thing.

01:25:05.640 Um, but you're coming at him directly will be very difficult.

01:25:09.960 I see.

01:25:10.180 I agree with you on that because I, I don't know that I have to be honest, Paulina, I

01:25:14.980 don't really believe in health at any size.

01:25:16.720 Cause I come from a family that's been dealing with obesity on many levels and I've seen what

01:25:20.380 it can do to people's health, you know, actual physical health.

01:25:23.600 But, but I also think we live in America and everyone here understands the pluses and minuses

01:25:30.520 of waking, right.

01:25:31.340 Of being overweight, of having a high BMI.

01:25:33.620 I mean, like, this is not difficult information to, to receive as a, as a person who grows up

01:25:38.320 in America.

01:25:39.140 And I would say like, as a mom of young kids, I'll help them understand these are healthy choices.

01:25:43.440 This is what, you know, this is what this food will lead to, whatever sugar would not so

01:25:47.900 great, blah, blah, blah.

01:25:49.200 But once they've gotten that information, I would not, I would not intervene.

01:25:53.380 Like if my daughter, let's say I'll pick my daughter.

01:25:55.560 Cause we have different standards for women.

01:25:57.020 Of course, when it comes to weight, if I saw her getting chunky, I would not say you're

01:26:02.240 getting a little chunky.

01:26:02.920 I would keep my mouth shut.

01:26:04.200 I wouldn't, I wouldn't say it because she's not, she knows.

01:26:06.940 And one thing I've, I can tell you having, you know, grown up with a family of obese people,

01:26:10.820 they know, they know, they know.

01:26:13.720 And maybe they're good with it.

01:26:15.020 Maybe they're not good with it, but they definitely don't need people to sort of remind them,

01:26:17.920 um, of how to lose weight or that they, whatever the consequences are of being overweight.

01:26:23.020 Okay.

01:26:23.240 That's my own two cents there.

01:26:24.660 Um, I like this.

01:26:25.620 This is fun.

01:26:26.040 I like different opinions too.

01:26:27.520 Okay.

01:26:27.820 Let me get to, um, oh, this is kind of interesting.

01:26:30.160 Terry in Missouri.

01:26:31.380 She's got a question about therapy.

01:26:33.560 Terry.

01:26:33.980 Hi.

01:26:34.180 Hi.

01:26:36.320 First, I want to say, Megan, I'm so happy that you're on your system.

01:26:39.000 Thank you.

01:26:39.920 And I'm glad you have Dr. Drew there and his daughter.

01:26:43.540 And okay.

01:26:44.600 So Dr. Drew, your daughter hit on something, which is wonderful at her age because I'm 62

01:26:49.440 and I'm trying to figure some stuff out.

01:26:51.820 And my problem is finding the right therapist, I guess, with, uh, whatever specialties in

01:26:57.180 their title.

01:26:58.040 This is my situation.

01:26:59.300 So it's taken me a long time to figure, I reflect a lot.

01:27:02.600 I was married 26 years.

01:27:03.800 I was married to a workaholic.

01:27:05.780 And while I didn't think that was a bad thing, I thought, oh, that's the good he works for.

01:27:09.200 My father was an alcoholic, right?

01:27:11.200 So through the years though, I found my problem.

01:27:14.320 And I understand what your daughter was saying.

01:27:16.720 I, okay.

01:27:18.680 Um, now you got to cut to the chase.

01:27:20.520 I've learned this from Dr. Laura.

01:27:21.600 Okay.

01:27:21.940 Okay.

01:27:22.140 Okay.

01:27:22.580 What?

01:27:23.060 Oh, I'm sorry.

01:27:23.860 I know.

01:27:24.180 I love her too.

01:27:24.740 Okay.

01:27:24.920 So I just, you know, what therapist, because Dr. Drew, you said a person has to work through

01:27:28.760 that where I quit picking people that, that, uh, are unavailable.

01:27:33.680 Okay.

01:27:34.080 Really for a relationship, whether they're a workaholic, alcoholic, and I have that problem.

01:27:38.420 All right.

01:27:38.620 Let him answer.

01:27:39.420 Let him answer.

01:27:39.980 Right.

01:27:40.240 Two, two things.

01:27:41.180 I, I do believe that trauma informed therapy is extremely important.

01:27:45.920 If you've had alcoholism addiction in your family and you've had an unavailable or abandoning

01:27:50.820 parents, I think that's traumatic enough.

01:27:52.640 The trauma informed therapy can be very helpful.

01:27:54.860 So ideally you want somebody, in my opinion, LCSW, PhD after their name, PsyD, LCSW, PhD,

01:28:04.300 PsyD with training who, who specifically says they have trauma informed therapy, ideally

01:28:10.580 with, uh, alcoholic family systems.

01:28:13.300 And then you yourself should go to a program called Al-Anon or, um, adult children of alcoholics.

01:28:20.260 And you'll find people who have very, very similar histories of your own.

01:28:23.820 You'll sort of understand the landscape a little better of what you're dealing with.

01:28:27.140 I like that.

01:28:28.160 Okay.

01:28:28.560 Shane in California has got a, got a question for you to Dr. Drew about, um, about COVID

01:28:33.520 alternative medicines.

01:28:34.880 Hey, Shane, what's your question?

01:28:35.840 Um, just want to say I was raised in the seventies by bra burning feminists.

01:28:42.980 So, uh, faux feminism really does disturb me.

01:28:47.020 Um, one of the thing, double standards is it's okay to make fun of obese men, especially

01:28:55.260 politicians.

01:28:56.740 Um, and why is it taboo?

01:29:00.220 Um, an obese president received alternative treatment, but it's taboo to even discuss those

01:29:07.420 alternative treatments.

01:29:08.960 You mean Trump?

01:29:10.040 You're talking about Trump.

01:29:11.440 What, what alternative treatments did he get?

01:29:13.640 Oh, you mean the, the hydrochloric hydroxychloroquine?

01:29:17.640 Um, there on BBC, it shows about a half a dozen treatments.

01:29:24.060 I know one of them is cost prohibitive, but, um, it's, it's pretty much forbidden to even

01:29:31.540 discuss that.

01:29:32.480 I mean, I had to really, you're not allowed to discuss ivermectin.

01:29:36.620 You'll get kicked off every platform.

01:29:38.380 If you discuss even, even the data on that hydroxychloroquine went through a similar phase.

01:29:44.480 Both are medicines that I've prescribed throughout my career.

01:29:47.280 In fact, the CDC has a mandate for every, all the Afghanis coming in will have to be

01:29:52.720 put on ivermectin for roundworms that every, every refugee that comes to this country gets

01:29:58.260 put on ivermectin.

01:29:59.520 That's a CDC mandate.

01:30:00.960 It's crazy.

01:30:02.080 We all have to get the vaccine, but not for COVID for roundworms to be fair.

01:30:05.760 And hydroxychloroquine I've been using for lupus for decades.

01:30:08.320 And it's the only medication I know of that the American college of physicians recommends

01:30:12.260 that women stay on during pregnancy because it's so safe.

01:30:16.300 So it's weird to me that these medicines have had all this energy around them.

01:30:19.620 I'm medicines that I've been using for decades.

01:30:21.680 You just learn how to pronounce and people have opinions about that's crazy.

01:30:25.240 The only thing I know that Trump got that work really was steroids and monoclonal antibodies.

01:30:31.120 That's what got him better.

01:30:32.480 And those are, those work to this day.

01:30:34.500 I am, I, they kept me out of the hospital, monoclonal antibodies, anyone with moderate

01:30:38.780 severe COVID who is in an age category that can get into trouble should be getting monoclonal

01:30:43.680 antibodies period.

01:30:44.520 Yeah.

01:30:44.920 Yeah.

01:30:45.200 I also think it's unacceptable to make fun of anybody for their weight and size, you know,

01:30:51.640 and I also think that feminism has come a long way from the seventies.

01:30:54.600 It's a much more intersectional.

01:30:56.320 The, the feminist first second wave feminism was reductive and really only for white women.

01:31:01.160 And so I would encourage you to educate yourself on the way a fourth wave feminism is going.

01:31:06.600 But isn't it kind of annoying Paulina about how, like now at some of these schools, you can't

01:31:10.700 even have a white guy on the syllabus, like the, the reading that's handed out.

01:31:14.040 Like we, it does seem as the, as the mother of two future white men and a white girl.

01:31:19.820 Um, I do worry.

01:31:21.660 I don't like the demonization of men, um, in an effort to sort of lift up women.

01:31:27.360 It seems unnecessary.

01:31:28.200 I don't like it.

01:31:28.920 And I don't think we should be banning works by, by guys who have offered a lot to human

01:31:33.480 history, nevermind American history, just because of the color of their skin or their

01:31:36.480 genitals.

01:31:36.980 Your thoughts.

01:31:37.720 I think, you know, there should be a balance, uh, to deny that this country was founded by

01:31:45.520 white men and their foundational texts and to deny that history, uh, is wrong.

01:31:51.340 But I also think that it's wrong to deny the aspect of colonialism and the ways in which

01:31:56.440 we enacted genocides on indigenous people and people of color.

01:32:00.120 And so I think it's about a balance.

01:32:02.680 It's about incorporating both aspects of those.

01:32:05.160 No one wants to deny like the history and that these are not perfect people, but it

01:32:09.120 gets upsetting when you see, like we did a story last week about how they want to, they

01:32:12.580 want trigger warnings all over the national archives before you read the declaration of

01:32:15.960 independence.

01:32:16.340 It's like this, I mean, that speaks to something else entirely, to be honest, it's sort of

01:32:19.860 this, this, I don't know.

01:32:21.700 Um, my husband called it coddle culture, you know, that everybody needs a trigger warning

01:32:25.380 before they see the declaration of independence.

01:32:27.280 That's what we got a bigger problems on our hands than there are history.

01:32:29.740 All right.

01:32:30.060 I stole the last word, Paulina, uh, but we're going to come back.

01:32:32.500 We're going to come back in one minute.

01:32:33.480 Uh, we're going to squeeze in a quick break and then Dr.

01:32:35.660 Drew and Paulina are going to, well, no, they're leaving us now.

01:32:38.400 So actually we're, we're squeezing in.

01:32:40.280 Sorry.

01:32:41.040 I guess we're getting rid of you.

01:32:42.340 We can keep going for days.

01:32:43.980 Yeah.

01:32:44.220 Oh, if you can stay, then stay and we'll pick it up on the opposite side of this break.

01:32:47.800 Okay.

01:32:48.200 Um, yeah.

01:32:49.300 Cause you can, uh, yeah, it's called, it doesn't have to be awkward.

01:32:51.900 You got to buy the book today.

01:32:52.720 And by the way, you should also check out their website, premier collectibles.com slash awkward.

01:32:57.980 Love that.

01:32:59.140 Calls are coming in and we'll take more right after this break.

01:33:01.260 833-44-MEGYN, M-E-G-Y-N, 833-446-3496.

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01:33:33.580 Canada Life.

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01:33:35.640 Investments.

01:33:36.360 Advice.

01:33:39.640 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show.

01:33:41.120 Dr. Drew Pinsky and his daughter, Paulina Pinsky, are here talking about their new book,

01:33:44.520 It Doesn't Have to Be Awkward.

01:33:45.960 Phone lines are open at 833-446-3496.

01:33:49.560 I want to ask you on the subject of how much is too much.

01:33:54.000 You know, you're saying you don't have to share with your kids when just because they

01:33:57.740 ask when they're minors.

01:33:59.620 A woman down in Austin, Texas went off on her school board this week.

01:34:04.340 Her name is Kara Bell.

01:34:05.320 She was very angry during a school board meeting because she found out that there was a middle

01:34:10.540 school library book that was apparently very sexually explicit.

01:34:15.840 And they use the word, forgive me, this is a little R-rated, but they use, she's talking

01:34:20.540 about cornhole, which is a game that we play in our backyard in the summer, but also is a

01:34:25.720 reference to a certain kind of sex that, you know, let's just say, you know, comes from behind.

01:34:31.000 But for those who didn't know that, I didn't know that before today either.

01:34:35.020 Here she is talking about the book.

01:34:37.680 Take her out back, we boys figured, then hand on the titties, put it in her coin box,

01:34:42.280 put it in her cornhole, grab a hold of that braid, rub that calico.

01:34:46.240 You can find that on page 39 of the book called Out of Darkness, which you can find at

01:34:51.980 Hudson Bend Middle School and B-Cave Middle School.

01:34:54.520 All right, not going to lie, I had to Google cornhole because I have the game in the back

01:34:59.940 of my yard, but according to Wikipedia, cornhole is a sexualist slang vulgarism for anus.

01:35:08.020 The term came into the use in the 1910s of the United States as verb formed to cornhole,

01:35:13.660 which came into usage in the 1930s, means to have anal sex.

01:35:18.680 I do not want my children to learn about anal sex in middle school.

01:35:23.120 I've never had anal sex.

01:35:24.860 I don't want to have anal sex.

01:35:26.540 I don't want my kids having anal sex.

01:35:28.900 I want you to start focusing on education and not public health.

01:35:35.400 Stone, you're on.

01:35:37.580 That was a lot of information.

01:35:39.460 A lot of information from Kara.

01:35:41.780 Yeah.

01:35:42.420 She's right.

01:35:43.100 But you know what?

01:35:43.580 I have to say, yeah, I feel the same.

01:35:46.020 Middle school's a little young for that.

01:35:47.920 Your thoughts?

01:35:48.360 Listen, the most important thing you're trying to educate, and particularly, again, as I said

01:35:54.780 earlier, under the age of 16, your brain is not really processing these things.

01:35:57.840 The concept of sexuality is very vague and very poorly formed.

01:36:01.720 You're more than anything else trying to educate kids about decency and values.

01:36:06.280 They see tons of stuff.

01:36:07.480 The average age of exposure to porn now is age 11.

01:36:10.220 Trust me, they've seen stuff.

01:36:11.140 Sometimes nine.

01:36:11.980 Sometimes, oftentimes nine, unfortunately.

01:36:13.900 And it's about processing this material, not amplifying it and making it normative necessarily.

01:36:19.900 It's just creating a sense of decency and values and how to navigate relationships.

01:36:25.160 Well, good for her for speaking up.

01:36:26.540 All right.

01:36:26.660 Let me get to Vicki in Arizona, who's got a question about her daughter.

01:36:30.180 Hey, Vicki.

01:36:30.920 Hello.

01:36:31.360 Thanks for taking my call.

01:36:32.940 So, Dr. Drew, my daughter is a young infant, kindergarten, what have you.

01:36:36.900 She would remove herself from toxic situations and calm her down, and I was told that was great.

01:36:42.460 But as she grows older in high school, she would have friends, but then if they didn't treat her the way she felt to be treated, she would just cut them off.

01:36:50.900 And I find her doing that in college, too.

01:36:53.180 Is that typical, or is she negative in her mind, and then I need to get her help that way?

01:37:01.680 It's hard for me to tell based on what you're saying.

01:37:03.740 I mean, I would need a little more information.

01:37:05.340 On its surface, it sounds like a perfectly healthy way of self-empowerment, right?

01:37:09.400 These people aren't treating me the way I want to be treated.

01:37:11.040 I'm out.

01:37:11.440 On the other hand, if she is unable to maintain friendships and sustain them, she needs to learn how to express her dissatisfaction in a way that allows for continued connectedness with people that actually care about her.

01:37:25.100 Just because somebody disappoints her doesn't mean that they need to be abandoned and rejected.

01:37:29.280 That kind of all-in, all-out thinking can be problematic.

01:37:32.740 You guys, this has been so fun.

01:37:35.460 I have to say, I think, Paulina, you may be the first truly woke person that we've had on the show, and so it was brave of you even to do that.

01:37:41.580 And I love hearing your perspective.

01:37:43.100 I love your relationship.

01:37:44.560 Thank you guys both so much, and good luck with the book.

01:37:46.440 Thanks, baby.

01:37:46.880 Thank you for having us.

01:37:47.480 It doesn't have to be awkward.

01:37:49.480 Tomorrow, immigration.

01:37:51.060 Dennis Michael Lynch has been covering the border for years.

01:37:53.360 Love him.

01:37:54.420 Download today's full episode on the podcast and go to YouTube.com slash Megan Kelly.

01:37:58.220 Subscribe.

01:37:58.820 We'll see you tomorrow.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 21, 2021

Dr. Drew and Paulina Pinsky on Radical Honesty, Hard Conversations, and the Benefits of Therapy ｜ Ep. 164

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