Savile's Horrific Crimes, and Life After the Cancel Mob, with Dan Wootton, Joseph Massey and Dr. Robert Maloney | Ep. 296
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 33 minutes
Words per Minute
175.93228
Summary
In this episode of The Megyn Kelly Show, Meghan tells us about her recent LASIK surgery, and we're joined by poet Joseph Massey and Daily Mail columnist Dan Wooden. Plus, a new Netflix documentary about a notorious British pedophile and his association with Prince Charles.
Transcript
00:00:00.480
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.580
Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:19.480
I had my LASIK surgery yesterday, and for those of you who are just listening,
00:00:29.020
Number one, first of all, it went great, and I'm going to have more on it for you in just a bit.
00:00:34.300
But number one, I mean like very bloodshot eyes, like very, very bloodshot eyes, like patches of blood.
00:00:42.320
It's not quite Joe Biden debate level bloodiness, but yeah, it's not attractive.
00:00:47.460
And number two, I'm not allowed to wear any eye makeup at all until Tuesday,
00:00:52.660
and there's really no reason to subject you people to that.
00:00:55.080
So I'm wearing makeup on the rest of my face and sunglasses.
00:01:07.280
At the end of the show, we're going to be joined by Dr. Robert Maloney.
00:01:10.620
He's a very, very famous LASIK doctor, eye doctor.
00:01:15.320
He wasn't the guy who did my procedure, but he did do all of the Kardashians.
00:01:18.740
And he's one of the guys who helped like get this thing going back in the 90s when nobody would do it.
00:01:24.780
So I'll give you the full report of how it went and he'll walk you through, you know,
00:01:29.460
how it would go for you and what the concerns might be and so on.
00:01:34.920
OK, before we get to Dr. Maloney, two of my favorite people, one I know very well,
00:01:39.740
one I'm looking forward to meeting for the first time.
00:01:42.680
In a second, we're going to be joined by Dan Wooden, our friend across the pond.
00:01:46.720
But before we get to him, well, after we get to him,
00:01:50.040
I want to tell you that we're going to be joined by poet Joseph Massey, a.k.a. Paul.
00:01:55.980
To me, remember, in my audience, I love him on Twitter and he sent me a nice note and I responded.
00:02:03.900
Anyway, before we get to poet Joseph Massey, the first poet I think I've ever interviewed.
00:02:09.620
Do you remember me ever interviewing a poet, Abbs?
00:02:16.720
And you must, must, must follow him on Twitter if you want to make your life better.
00:02:21.660
But we're going to begin across the pond with multiple scandals involving the royal family.
00:02:30.900
There was like two minutes he was out of hot water.
00:02:33.000
And now a new Netflix documentary about a notorious British pedophile and his association with Prince
00:02:40.880
And there's always something going on with Harry and Meghan.
00:02:48.520
That's what I kind of see now whenever I read their names.
00:02:52.460
We're going to cover it all now with my pal Dan Wooden.
00:03:07.580
But firstly, I have to say, wow, you pull off the sunglasses.
00:03:12.180
And boy, oh boy, I didn't even think you would be here today.
00:03:15.720
I certainly didn't think you would be on camera.
00:03:19.080
So my respect for you as Wonder Woman just grows.
00:03:22.980
Because it's pretty big surgery, isn't it, really?
00:03:34.640
I showed my team my eyes without the sunglasses on.
00:03:46.220
Physically, I'm totally normal, as normal as I'm ever going to get anyway.
00:03:55.080
So something nice happened to Prince Andrew, where the queen selected him to be with her.
00:04:02.560
He was going to escort her to, was it a Prince Philip's memorial?
00:04:06.840
And then he screwed it up by diverting press to his misuse of his royal title.
00:04:14.580
This is absolutely fascinating because what it shows, Megan, is that the queen at 95 years old,
00:04:20.440
and certainly in the twilight years of her reign.
00:04:23.480
I mean, I'm known for saying I want the queen to go on for decades, and I hope she can.
00:04:28.520
But very sadly, Megan, this appearance at the memorial service for Prince Philip could even be one of the last times we ever see her in public.
00:04:36.820
And for the British people, and I think folk all around the world, that is hugely significant.
00:04:41.260
We don't know life without the queen at these national events.
00:04:48.480
We knew it was going to be one of her final appearances.
00:04:51.060
She is struggling to walk, so she was brought in through a special entrance at Westminster Abbey.
00:04:56.160
The eyes of the entire country were on her, and guess who she chose to escort her to her seat?
00:05:04.320
Prince Andrew, the man who all of the courtiers in the royal family, who all of the other senior members of the royal family,
00:05:10.120
including Prince Charles and Prince William, they want him out the way.
00:05:12.960
They want Prince Andrew never to be seen again in public.
00:05:16.700
And I've been investigating this a lot over the past few weeks, Megan, because you know I do cover the royals on top of what I do at GB News,
00:05:23.480
and I write about them a lot for the Mail Online and DailyMail.com.
00:05:27.460
And this was the queen making a big public statement that she believes her son,
00:05:34.400
that even though he settled the lawsuit with Virginia Dufresne, she doesn't believe the allegations against him.
00:05:41.420
She wants the world to give him a second chance.
00:05:44.640
And this is one of the first times, Megan, in her entire reign, and this is why I find it so historically significant,
00:05:50.540
where the queen has put family ahead of Commonwealth and country.
00:05:54.840
Because you remember, of course, she denied her sister, Princess Margaret, the opportunity to marry the man who she loved because he was a divorcee.
00:06:06.100
And so I thought this was such a significant moment.
00:06:09.680
And what was particularly fascinating about it is the queen ignored Prince Charles and Prince William,
00:06:16.020
who did not want Prince Andrew put on center stage at such a significant event.
00:06:32.040
I mean, you know, we've talked about this before.
00:06:33.940
Just because Virginia Dufresne was definitely a victim of Jeffrey Epstein's does not mean she was Prince Andrew's victim of anything.
00:06:41.120
And she's made allegations against other men, including Alan Dershowitz, that I don't believe for one second.
00:06:49.020
So I don't know whether Prince Andrew did what she claims or not, but he's been punished for a colossal lapse in judgment in going back to Jeffrey Epstein as a friend and staying with him in his New York mansion after the guy pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitutions, prostitutes who were understood to be very young.
00:07:13.860
So anyway, like any royal, the dumbest royal has got to know you're not supposed to do that.
00:07:19.520
And that's really what led to his public's shaming.
00:07:23.740
And I think that's what's unforgivable, Megan, actually, in the eyes of the British public.
00:07:28.060
Although I will tell you, there is a growing group of people, especially folk like me, who are very much against cancel culture and believe that you shouldn't be found guilty before you lose your career, who say, hang on a moment.
00:07:46.240
And of course, he's got lots of friends behind the scenes, including Lady Victoria Harvey, who was very close to Prince Andrew in the years where he knew Virginia Dufresne, who's working hard behind the scenes.
00:07:58.080
And I had Lady Victoria on my show, actually, and she is convinced that she will be able to clear Prince Andrew.
00:08:04.560
Now, personally, Megan, I don't take that position on this because I think Prince Andrew had multiple opportunities to clear his name.
00:08:12.020
He could have done it in the civil court case, which he said he would do.
00:08:16.080
He could have done it by traveling to New York to assist the FBI in their investigations.
00:08:22.840
And of course, remember that cringeworthy, but very famous car crash interview with the BBC and Prince Andrew, probably actually the biggest royal car crash interview in history, where he said he didn't regret his friendship with Epstein.
00:08:38.500
And he said it couldn't have been him that Virginia Dufresne was describing because he doesn't sweat.
00:08:48.080
So he behaved like a buffoon, but I, you know, I might, I might be leaning more in your friend's camp because I just think like the, the proof isn't there.
00:08:58.900
I want due process for guys, even if they're royals accused, there's no question he behaved badly and he made stupid decisions.
00:09:05.560
But that's a world away from you knowingly sex trafficked a 17 year old for, you know, self-pleasure.
00:09:17.800
I don't, I'm not sure I believe these allegations against him.
00:09:21.740
And to try and explain the situation from Prince Andrew's side, even though I will repeat, I think he's acted appallingly at certain points throughout this whole scandal.
00:09:31.240
But from his point of view, he was almost pushed into a corner in terms of having to settle with Dufresne because all of the drumbeat from people behind the scenes, the men in gray suits, as they've described at Buckingham Palace, was that you cannot overshadow your mom's platinum jubilee by pressing ahead with this civil court case.
00:09:52.640
So the idea was he had to settle to save the queen, all of this embarrassment in what is a very big year for her.
00:10:00.060
But then, because he is sort of the buffoon of the family, he's a little Fredo-ish.
00:10:11.100
That's nice that, you know, a mother's love knows no bounds.
00:10:14.400
And then there's some other moment, I don't know what, I don't know what he was posting for on, on his ex-wife's Instagram, Fergie's Instagram.
00:10:23.060
He takes over the, the pen and decides to post all about his service in the military to commemorate this day.
00:10:32.240
Cause he screwed it up again and he gained headlines for the wrong reasons.
00:10:37.140
It's the 40th anniversary of the Falklands war, which is of course a major event in British history.
00:10:43.520
No one expected Margaret Thatcher's invasion, uh, sorry, Margaret Thatcher's defense of the Falklands after the Argentinian invasion to be successful.
00:10:52.440
And it was, and that was the time that Prince Andrew was a national hero because he fought in the Falklands.
00:10:58.840
And as you say, Fergie, who, let's be honest, has gotten to so many scrapes over the years and certainly is not the person that you would want to turn to, Megan, if you were seeking a crisis PR advice.
00:11:13.080
But really she's the only person who has publicly stood by Andrew and to all intents and purposes, Megan, they are in a relationship.
00:11:20.380
I'm not saying it's a sexual relationship, but they live together.
00:11:26.360
And a lot of people believe that at some point they will actually, uh, formally remarry.
00:11:31.960
And she posted these words, uh, from Prince Andrew reflecting on his service in the Falklands.
00:11:37.360
And actually, again, without wanting to defend Prince Andrew, I found the words quite powerful.
00:11:42.940
He was talking about the Falklands in the context of the conflict in Ukraine at the moment and talking about how we should avoid war at all costs.
00:11:53.100
He signed off the message, his Royal Highness, the Duke of York.
00:12:00.040
And again, if you're into the British Royal family, that's a big no-no for Prince Andrew because he's not meant to be a working royal.
00:12:07.640
So it summed up what I've been saying for a good couple of years, Megan.
00:12:11.520
Prince Andrew doesn't believe he's going to retire in disgrace from the public spotlight.
00:12:16.180
He's going to spend the rest of his life, however long he has left on earth, trying to cleanse his reputation.
00:12:22.220
And that poses a really big issue for Prince Charles and Prince William, who are trying to modernize the Royal family and having Epstein's BFF hanging around in Prince Andrew doesn't make that easy for them.
00:12:35.040
And yet, uh, Andrew gets a, gets a card to use against Prince Charles, just as if, you know, from the heavens.
00:12:43.400
Netflix drops this documentary about this apparently very, very famous British guy.
00:12:51.400
Um, and he was accused of pedophilia during the course of his life, I guess, or some sort of child, uh, molestation or inappropriate behavior with kids.
00:13:04.700
And he was a very close confidant and friend of Charles.
00:13:09.180
I should say, no one's suggesting that Charles knew that this guy was hurting children during the course of their friendship.
00:13:18.980
And how did he get so close to so many Royals and other muckety mucks in, in Great Britain over the years?
00:13:25.100
So Jimmy Savile, Megan, is one of the most famous figures in the UK.
00:13:30.580
While he was alive, he was the most popular TV presenter in Britain.
00:13:35.280
He was attracting 20 million viewers for his shows on the BBC.
00:13:44.900
Problem is, Megan, he was also Britain's most notorious pedophile and necrophiliac.
00:13:51.020
And it was known over the course of his life that he abused young girls.
00:13:58.680
And what ended up happening was, I think, one of the most shameful establishment cover-ups in British history.
00:14:07.160
The BBC, the organization that is meant to be the public broadcaster of this country, covered up Savile's behavior.
00:14:18.040
And even after his death, Megan, when one of the news programs at the BBC Newsnight wanted to broadcast, to tell all investigation about Savile's pedophilia, they were banned from doing so by BBC management.
00:14:33.940
Now, the issue is, the first person who offered a full and wholesome tribute to Jimmy Savile following his death was Prince Charles.
00:14:42.740
And this Netflix documentary couldn't come at a worse time for Charles and the entire British royal family, which has been rocked by a series of scandals, of course.
00:14:52.980
And clearly there is an argument for Prince Andrew to make, hang on a moment, big bro.
00:15:00.160
Yes, I was pals with Epstein, but you were close pals with Jimmy Savile, who was widely known behind the scenes to be a dodgy pedo.
00:15:12.980
And the notes between Savile and Prince Charles, which have been included as part of this Netflix documentary, show just how close their relationship was, Megan.
00:15:26.100
Savile was actually offering lots of communications and PR advice to the royal family, including advice that was shown to Prince Philip and the Queen.
00:15:35.120
He also offered, sorry, Prince Charles also asked him to provide PR advice to Fergie, the Duchess of York, who was involved in all of her own scandals at the time.
00:15:46.000
So, look, I'm not saying for a single second that Prince Charles was aware of Jimmy Savile's behaviour.
00:15:52.380
And remember, lots of other people were sucked in, including Margaret Thatcher, the very well-respected first British female prime minister.
00:16:01.240
So, maybe we should give Prince Charles a pass on exactly what he knew about Savile, but you can understand why it's particularly uncomfortable, given what's just gone on with Prince Andrew.
00:16:13.280
Well, was there, you say that a lot of people knew he was a dodgy pedo.
00:16:22.080
Did Charles, in the way that Andrew did with Epstein, continue the friendship after it was known this guy was likely hurting kids?
00:16:32.240
Well, look, the BBC knew as early as 1973, Megan, that Jimmy Savile took underage girls back to his apartment following filming of Top of the Pops, which was a really big music chart show in the UK.
00:16:49.040
Quite an iconic show where all of the big pop acts would perform every week.
00:16:52.340
Now, Savile's argument at the time was that, oh, yeah, I'm taking the young girls back to my apartment, but nothing sexual is going on.
00:17:02.000
And obviously, the culture was incredibly different back then.
00:17:06.500
And that argument was accepted and BBC bosses turned a blind eye.
00:17:09.780
Of course, what we don't know is how aware Prince Charles was.
00:17:13.660
But look, there were various newspaper reports throughout Savile's life about some of his dodgy practices.
00:17:19.960
But again, the British libel system makes it incredibly difficult for British newspapers to publish those sorts of allegations without hard and fast proof.
00:17:28.700
And Savile would boast while he was alive that, oh, well, every time the newspapers publish one of these exposés, it's great because I just get thousands more pounds when I take them to court.
00:17:39.900
So at the very least, it's hard to believe that Prince Charles hadn't heard that he was a dodgy character.
00:17:46.940
The full extent of his reign of terror and his shocking abuse of children didn't fully emerge publicly, though, until well after his death.
00:18:05.640
I thank you for everything you do, every good course.
00:18:09.900
How on earth do you raise ten million pounds in three years?
00:18:16.440
With Jim, you accept you think it's normal, but it was abnormal.
00:18:26.640
What did I ever do to you that you would draw that picture of me?
00:18:48.040
Sometimes when nobody's looking, I help the losses.
00:18:51.140
It turns out everywhere he'd been, there'd been abuse.
00:18:57.880
And you mentioned just in passing, necrophilia?
00:19:03.900
And it was well known that he would maintain these relationships, Megan, with hospitals and children's hospitals.
00:19:18.020
So, you know, this, I mean, this is the worst story of celebrity abuse, I think, that exists.
00:19:26.820
And I can completely understand why Netflix has decided this is a big story in Britain,
00:19:34.280
but no one outside of the UK has even heard of this bloke.
00:19:43.060
But at the same time, Megan, there are questions being asked about Netflix as well.
00:19:49.220
And I wrote a column for the Daily Mail about this yesterday because very interesting, isn't it?
00:19:56.160
It's intriguing, you might say, that from the moment that Netflix signed their big multi-million dollar deal with Prince Harry and Megan,
00:20:04.900
there's been a slew of negative programs about the royal family.
00:20:10.300
And they seem to be targeting Harry and Megan's relatives.
00:20:16.440
And soon to be followed by a Spotify podcast audio series along the same lines, I'm sure,
00:20:23.760
since that's the other entity with whom they have a deal.
00:20:26.160
OK, now, wait, before we I'm going to take a break in a second, but I do want to ask you on the subject of Harry.
00:20:32.980
So we started it off by talking about Prince Philip's memorial service.
00:20:37.600
That was Prince Harry's grandfather, the queen's husband.
00:20:42.140
And he refused to go home to England to say goodbye.
00:20:49.280
And to me, it's like, once again, his reason is incredibly flimsy, pathetic and all about himself.
00:21:06.280
He has spent years saying how much he cares for the queen and how much respect he has for the queen.
00:21:12.760
This might have been his last opportunity to see the queen.
00:21:18.860
This memorial service meant so much to the queen, Megan, because you might remember those horrifying pictures over the course of COVID lockdowns in the UK,
00:21:28.480
when the queen sat alone at Prince Philip's funeral without a soul nearby her because of the ridiculous and actually quite inhumane government restrictions when it came to funerals.
00:21:42.040
So this was the opportunity for the queen to give Prince Philip the funeral that he had wanted.
00:21:50.960
There were only two people missing, Harry and Megan.
00:21:54.120
And the reason they weren't there, Megan, is because of a pathetic and petulant row with the British government over who gives Prince Harry security when he comes back to the UK.
00:22:09.100
Because he wants, Megan, even though he's no longer a working royal and he's in Hollywood making tens of millions of dollars,
00:22:14.500
he wants to still be treated as if he's a working royal.
00:22:18.120
And he wants the British government to provide security for him.
00:22:21.820
Quite rightly, in my opinion, the British government is saying, you and our private citizen, that is the decision that you made.
00:22:28.940
So you have to provide and pay for your own security because the metropolitan police are not security guards for hire.
00:22:36.340
And if we make that arrangement for you, we're soon going to have Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg or whatever celebrity chooses to arrive in the country asking for privately paid for metropolitan police security.
00:22:53.720
But for me, it actually doesn't matter what the reason is.
00:22:59.820
And I think if he doesn't get to see her again, we know she is 95.
00:23:07.020
He should he should never forgive himself for a decision like that.
00:23:10.180
I think it just shows how destroyed his relationship is now with the royal family.
00:23:16.800
Of course, Megan plays a big part in that, in my opinion.
00:23:19.700
And do you think, Dan, with the British people, too?
00:23:22.180
I mean, I feel like the British people, they must have been horrified by that decision.
00:23:25.940
He's got tens of millions of dollars pouring into him from the two companies we just mentioned.
00:23:31.300
And he's not wanting for funds to begin with, thanks to Prince Charles and the queen.
00:23:42.900
He gets a private bodyguard to walk around and make sure he stays safe.
00:23:51.100
This is Prince Philip's former royal personal protection officer.
00:23:56.320
But it sounds like being, I mean, shockingly candid for somebody in that role on his thoughts about Harry's decision.
00:24:13.340
Yeah, and all this nonsense about he couldn't get protection.
00:24:18.280
You know, as far as I'm concerned, that was a pathetic excuse.
00:24:21.480
He should have been here to honour his grandfather.
00:24:23.540
There is certainly a great deal of security here today, isn't there?
00:24:26.800
So there wouldn't have been any question about that.
00:24:29.820
At the end of the day, if he was that worried about security, he could have stuck with his brother and his father,
00:24:35.640
who've got wonderful security, and he'd be more than safe.
00:24:42.680
And Megan, do you actually know what this is about?
00:24:45.040
It's about the fact that when he came over in July for the unveiling of the statue of Princess Diana,
00:24:51.320
where he had a very awkward meeting with his brother, Prince William, in public,
00:24:55.840
because the relationship between them is, for the moment at least, more than a little icy.
00:25:05.760
Basically, some photographers followed him in a car when he left the service.
00:25:14.380
There was no issue with the photographers following him.
00:25:17.660
And by the way, Megan, if he drove through Hollywood, he would be trailed by photographers too.
00:25:25.300
And of course, since the death of his mother, there is so much regulation in Britain about where photographers can go,
00:25:35.640
So, in my view, Prince Harry has been looking for a reason to avoid the UK,
00:25:41.600
looking for a reason to create drama with the British government.
00:25:45.840
But I just think it makes his decision to name his daughter after Queen Elizabeth II,
00:25:53.560
using her nickname, Lilibet, feel particularly hollow,
00:25:58.200
given that the Queen hasn't met this young girl.
00:26:09.160
How are they feeling, do you think, about these two?
00:26:21.720
who at one point was more popular in public opinion surveys, Megan,
00:26:29.680
He was the most popular member of the royal family.
00:26:34.560
And now, aside from Fergie and Prince Andrew and Prince Andrew's daughters,
00:26:50.120
And I think she has acted impeccably throughout her entire reign.
00:26:54.520
And at the moment, Megan, it actually makes for people like me.
00:26:58.900
And yes, we do cover her and we have to cover the royal family,
00:27:02.020
I believe, critically through a critical lens and treat them as public officials.
00:27:07.320
But when you see the Queen struggling to stand up, struggling to walk,
00:27:14.020
but being so stoic because she knows that she has to be seen to look regal.
00:27:22.860
She doesn't want the public to see her fade away in the same way that they saw her mother,
00:27:28.180
the Queen mother, and her sister, Princess Margaret, fade away in public.
00:27:33.620
And as she stood in that memorial service at Westminster Abbey for Prince Philip
00:27:43.480
there was a particularly emotional moment because I think a lot of people in the room
00:27:49.340
felt this might be one of the last times we get to do this for the Queen.
00:27:57.000
And I just think it says a lot about the stoicism of the generation that we're so tragically losing,
00:28:04.880
who lived through World War II, who know what it's like to be in a house as bombs rain down on London,
00:28:21.240
And the Queen is almost like that last remaining connection to those wonderful people.
00:28:30.040
And even though I think we know it's coming because the Queen's health is deteriorating,
00:28:37.280
Britain certainly isn't ready for life without her.
00:28:42.220
showed that less than half the British people are comfortable with the idea of Prince Charles becoming king.
00:28:49.660
So there are choppy waters ahead for the royal family.
00:28:54.760
You know, the thing is, you look at her and you think selflessness.
00:28:59.160
She just, her whole life and all the bios about her, documentaries about her show that,
00:29:04.880
that she puts service above herself and others for years.
00:29:12.300
I mean, I think Prince William's living up to that more and more.
00:29:15.360
Princess Kate, I think more and more people over here are falling in love with them.
00:29:21.680
They're not constantly trying to make the news cycle about themselves,
00:29:24.580
unlike his little brother and his American wife.
00:29:31.000
While they want, they want to be seen the same as these selfless,
00:29:43.620
Of course, they're like, but I'll be at the Beverly Hills Hilton at 2 p.m. on Sunday
00:29:54.580
They may not know all the ins and outs of how they manipulate,
00:29:58.860
Because if you are a manipulator, it comes through.
00:30:01.960
Their latest manipulation is where I'm going to pick it up with Dan
00:30:15.600
So Dan, the, this pair has decided to unleash their, their messaging.
00:30:21.620
Uh, they're finally going to get going on their Spotify podcast,
00:30:33.680
Um, and she has decided that she wants to trademark a word that is 476 years old
00:30:42.460
as hers, uh, in the broadcast of her new podcast,
00:30:53.280
For example, you might say, um, you know, in any given,
00:30:57.020
I don't know, um, crime drama, you could have the villain, the hero, the consoler.
00:31:06.800
Those are archetypes that we are sort of familiar with.
00:31:09.580
She wants to use it in the context of women, Dan, because she's a champion for female empowerment.
00:31:15.180
And the statement is that she wants to address the labels and stereotypes
00:31:22.700
And then the articles add in our patriarchal society.
00:31:26.880
So she's going to fight the patriarchy after giving up her entire career,
00:31:31.820
her religion, her country, and her family for a guy.
00:31:36.380
You might say, Megan, this is an archetypal Megan Markle move.
00:31:45.120
It's crass commercialization that makes no sense.
00:31:50.740
It's like you're making your tens of millions of dollars from Spotify.
00:31:58.080
It reminds me, Megan, when Victoria Beckham, you know, the Spice Girl,
00:32:02.600
who's nicknamed Posh Spice, tried to trademark the word posh.
00:32:07.540
And she was roundly condemned for it because it's ridiculous.
00:32:10.740
I can use the word archetype in whatever context I want to, I'm afraid, Megan.
00:32:15.720
But it just shows you how bad their advice is and how they're surrounded by this sort of ridiculous Hollywood types
00:32:26.360
And I feel like Megan's rebrand is just to say, I'm a victim.
00:32:31.360
And she's about as far from a victim as you could possibly get.
00:32:35.980
But I think it's bad because to me, all right, I have a saying and I say to my kids all the time,
00:32:42.580
it's about the people who brag about how much money they have or how smart they are or whatever it is.
00:32:48.380
The seven foot center doesn't tell you how tall he is.
00:32:53.960
And they're trying to use like the fancy word to make her sound smart.
00:32:59.720
The regular people here in America, what loves her?
00:33:07.880
I had to look it back up just to remind myself.
00:33:11.700
You want it to be relatable to as many people as possible, unless your name is Megan Markle,
00:33:16.040
where you've spent your whole life trying to be less relatable to the common man and woman.
00:33:20.420
You want them to feel that you are above them, smarter than they are, richer than they are.
00:33:26.100
And now at the same time, more of a victim than they are.
00:33:29.300
And I wonder, Dan, whether there's any appetite from people here or in Great Britain to listen
00:33:36.000
to this woman talk about how hard it is to be female.
00:33:44.120
And what I found so hilarious, Megan, was when the other Megan, the Megan we don't like,
00:33:51.420
who spells her name funny, unlike you, said, oh, goodness me.
00:33:56.920
Maybe I'm going to have to leave Spotify unless they sack Joe Rogan.
00:34:02.460
And obviously, Spotify said, oh, hang on a moment.
00:34:10.100
And so Megan very quickly said, oh, well, in that case, OK, I'm OK with it.
00:34:21.180
So they can be as pious and virtue signaling as they want.
00:34:25.820
But actually, when push comes to shove, Megan will share a platform with Joe Rogan because
00:34:36.420
She would share a platform with anyone as long as the check cleared.
00:34:42.960
Yeah, the statement from their spokesperson basically said, well, the release of this podcast
00:34:47.460
was originally delayed due to concerns over Spotify's role in spreading misinformation,
00:34:56.420
I challenge I want I'd love to talk to her name, three name, three facts, just any.
00:35:01.620
You know, it doesn't even have to be misinformation.
00:35:17.940
Megan, how dare Megan accuse Joe Rogan of misinformation?
00:35:32.700
For God's sake, the interview was literally two hours of misinformation.
00:35:38.420
So to me, your misogyny is showing irony is Megan lambasting anyone about misinformation.
00:35:57.580
They on their website, you know, they're partnering with women's groups again to lift up women,
00:36:02.740
women, the very women who choose not to leave their country and their religion and their
00:36:05.900
husband and everything that they hold dear abandon their entire family so that they can
00:36:09.240
marry a rich guy in Britain, which was her goal from the beginning, as we've discussed
00:36:13.380
OK, she wants to lecture those women about how to empower themselves.
00:36:18.160
But on her website last week, our friends at the National Women's Law Center released
00:36:24.540
a new report providing a timely snapshot of the continuing multifaceted impact of the
00:36:31.360
And then in particular, women and mothers who are black and brown and so on, blah, blah,
00:36:35.800
She doesn't have friends at the National Women's Law Center.
00:36:45.420
All of these people showed up at the royal wedding and go on her stupid website and do
00:36:49.120
her little PSAs for the only reason she got married to Harry, because it's access to the
00:36:53.660
royal family and it makes them feel somehow better, smarter, more fabulous.
00:37:03.720
Bull, you know, to me, it's so pathetic that like she did abandon all of her friends
00:37:10.420
And she's still referring to them as like her friends.
00:37:14.240
She doesn't know these people and they don't know her.
00:37:17.100
She wasn't friends with Oprah and Gayle King, who wanted nothing to do with her when she
00:37:25.480
They became interested when she got it on with Prince Harry.
00:37:29.320
And look, I've actually got to know Meghan's family really well over the past few years.
00:37:34.720
And her father, Thomas, and her sister, Samantha, to me, are good, ordinary Americans.
00:37:43.260
I'm not saying they haven't made a few mistakes, Meghan.
00:37:46.820
But anyone who is thrust into that sort of worldwide spotlight are going to make a few mistakes.
00:37:56.520
And I just cannot believe that Meghan won't drive down that highway to Mexico a couple
00:38:03.220
of hours and at the very least just allow her dad to meet his grandson and granddaughter.
00:38:13.220
No relationship with the grandparents on either side, even though one of them is the Queen of
00:38:22.460
On your nightly show, you cover all sorts of news in the UK.
00:38:25.880
I watch it on YouTube all the time just to keep up on what's happening across the pond
00:38:29.540
with my pals, my actual pals like you, not the fake pals like she has.
00:38:33.880
And one of the things you've been covering is you guys are going through the same weird
00:38:38.360
transgender revolution that we are, where it's crossed over to the point of absurdity.
00:38:43.460
But your leader, old Bojo, has handled this a little different than, I'm sorry,
00:38:53.320
But I mean, he just, you know, he's not we're not sure he's still alive.
00:38:58.020
So as I understand it, Boris Johnson has come out and said because there was a debate about
00:39:03.080
whether the that they should ban, quote, conversion therapy for young gay boys and girls and young
00:39:15.360
And they came out and said, definitely conversion therapy is totally inappropriate for young
00:39:22.840
But young trans kids, this has been looking more and more like a social contagion.
00:39:29.920
And Boris Johnson came out and said, I I've got my concerns about all of this, too.
00:39:37.760
This is soundbite for I don't think that it's it's reasonable for kids to be deemed so-called
00:39:48.100
Gillick competent to take decisions about their their gender or irreversible treatments that
00:39:57.840
I just don't I think there should be parental involvement at the very least.
00:40:02.320
Second thing, I don't think that biological males should be competing in female sporting
00:40:09.160
And maybe that's a controversial thing, but it just it just seems to me to be sensible.
00:40:14.320
And I also happen to think that women should have spaces which are whether it's in in in
00:40:24.640
hospitals or prisons or change rooms or wherever, which are dedicated to to to women.
00:40:33.060
So how does that go over with the British public?
00:40:36.840
Well, incredibly well, and obviously very few people, Megan, would listen to what Boris Johnson
00:40:41.400
just said and think it's at all anything other than complete common sense.
00:40:46.580
But to contextualize what's been going on here in the UK the past couple of weeks is that
00:40:51.920
the leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, the bloke who wants to be prime minister and
00:40:57.180
at the moment, Megan, is actually leading Boris Johnson in the polls, has been asked numerous
00:41:02.440
times, what is a woman and can a woman have a penis?
00:41:07.480
And he has stuttered and he has been completely pathetic and unable to answer the question.
00:41:15.000
Even Boris Johnson's rival for the main job within his own party, his chancellor, Rishi Sunak,
00:41:21.420
was asked to define what a woman is, and he refused to answer the question.
00:41:27.420
So this is a big win for Boris Johnson electorally because a new group has just been launched and
00:41:33.080
they've been all over the media, including the front page of the Daily Mail, which is the
00:41:39.360
And it's called, you won't get my ex unless you respect my sex, because we have the local
00:41:48.720
It sort of plays a similar role as the US midterms.
00:41:52.980
And this group described themselves as the most important feminist movement since the
00:42:00.120
And it's actually very hard to argue against that, Megan, given we're currently living in
00:42:04.280
the world here in the UK, where British cycling want a competitor called Emily Bridges to be
00:42:12.040
able to compete against biological female cyclists.
00:42:16.940
When Megan, Emily Bridges was competing as a man just a few weeks ago.
00:42:22.220
So Boris Johnson has tapped into the anger and the frustration going on here about trying
00:42:32.940
Thank God, because so few are willing to do it, are actually willing to stand up for
00:42:38.100
for women and allow just the complete takeover of traditionally women's sports, locker rooms,
00:42:45.180
whatever areas you were not to be left sitting on the sidelines on this one, Dan.
00:42:51.040
You sent out one of your fearless producers onto the streets of Great Britain to figure out
00:42:54.700
what's the what's the pulse of the populace on this important issue about the penis.
00:43:02.940
A quick question that Sir Keir Starmer has struggled with in recent days.
00:43:09.900
You'll have to ask the Prime Minister for what does he think, do you know?
00:43:14.600
I'm taking into consideration how women feel about it and women's rights.
00:43:19.420
Surely it's a simple answer that women can't have penises.
00:43:36.080
I'm just asking people a simple question whether women can have penises.
00:43:40.600
I'm not prepared to answer that because I don't know enough about the subject.
00:43:44.600
You don't know enough about men or women's simple biology?
00:44:07.360
But I think folk like that will be punished at the polls because it's not just women who've had enough, Megan.
00:44:19.300
And I just fundamentally believe anyone biologically born a man cannot compete in women's sport.
00:44:26.660
I don't buy this thing that there's any gray area or that hormone levels make a difference.
00:44:32.400
We just have to have hard and fast rules on this one.
00:44:35.900
And so it's been very pleasing for me to see Boris Johnson be morally courageous enough to do this.
00:44:41.100
Because interestingly, a little bit of background to this, Megan.
00:44:43.740
His wife, Carrie Johnson, who is certainly, let's just say she's on the woke side of things.
00:44:50.100
And she's been a bit of a negative influence in terms of Boris Johnson's policy.
00:44:54.640
And she is actually in cahoots with one of the LGBT, that's what we're meant to say now, right?
00:45:02.080
I mean, I just say gay organization Stonewall, which very much backs the trans lobby on these issues and thinks that trans competitors should be able to compete in women's sport.
00:45:14.040
So Boris Johnson, by making this public statement, let's just say things might have been a little bit difficult when he got home, if you get what I mean.
00:45:22.400
Carrie Johnson wouldn't have been happy because that's not the position that she shares.
00:45:27.880
And she's become, for all the wrong reasons, increasingly influential on Boris Johnson's decision making over the past couple of years.
00:45:35.240
All right. We have about a minute left. What do we think about his chances of re-election?
00:45:41.560
Well, they're looking better now. I mean, I'm sorry, if you've got a leader of the opposition who cannot answer the question, does, can a woman have a penis?
00:45:52.300
I mean, I think that's someone who's heading to electoral disaster.
00:46:03.060
And I think if you look at what's happened in the Biden administration, actually, there's a great warning.
00:46:07.820
And the British people are very much taking note at what happens when you have woke warriors taking over power.
00:46:15.540
I will say, and Megan, by the way, I'm not one of the people that particularly cares about what's become known as the Partygate scandal,
00:46:22.820
you know, whether Boris Johnson was having people over to his house when he had locked the whole country down,
00:46:27.580
because I just feel like the world has moved on and all the scandal should prove is that we should never have locked down in the first place.
00:46:34.000
It was completely morally wrong to ask people to go through that.
00:46:37.000
But I will just say the police investigation is continuing.
00:46:41.100
So there is still the possibility that Boris Johnson could be fine.
00:46:44.240
But look, I think Boris has provided great moral leadership over the Ukraine crisis.
00:46:48.980
Boris Zelensky, obviously one of the most popular politicians in the world in some quarters at the moment.
00:46:53.660
I know there's other people who are very anti-Zelensky, but in a lot of quarters, he's very popular.
00:46:57.220
And of course, he's bigging Boris Johnson up all the time.
00:46:59.920
So, no, I think Boris is in a in a good place at the moment.
00:47:07.700
Thank you so much, Megan. Keep well. Hope your eyes are OK.
00:47:42.440
And how he survived it and how what his advice is for others to survive it when the cancellation mob comes for them.
00:47:50.080
I've become a true fan and he's here to talk about all of it, along with his new poetry book, which we all have to buy to support him because the mainstream will not promote him.
00:48:04.520
Welcome, Joseph Massey. Great to have you here.
00:48:06.880
It's great to see you, Megan, or kind of see you.
00:48:14.220
I can see. I can't like when I'm reading my papers.
00:48:16.640
It's hard only because my shades are so tinted.
00:48:20.280
But my eyes are now seeing perfectly. Praise Jesus.
00:48:29.940
Now, first of all, should I call you Joseph or Joe or Paul?
00:48:35.820
Your producer was I think he was calling me George and he did it twice.
00:48:42.700
And then your other producer called my book Rosemary Made of Air.
00:48:52.400
So but but you give the breaks out as often as human humanly possible.
00:48:58.740
But for those who didn't hear this episode, we were doing an episode on time management.
00:49:02.780
And I was saying I'm not very good at responding to people via text message, via email.
00:49:10.720
And you were nice enough to reach out to me via DM.
00:49:19.440
So about a month later, I realized I had a note from you and I responded.
00:49:31.420
I don't know why I I am bad at checking DMs and apparently at remembering names that are
00:49:38.540
But a belated thank you for doing this and for putting beauty into my days.
00:49:41.960
You may be the most thoughtful person on Twitter, which I realize is a low bar.
00:49:46.380
But still, and this is the thing that made me fall in love with Joseph Massey.
00:49:51.640
He writes back, Megan, your note made my night.
00:49:55.880
Your work is fearless and an inspiration and always great company.
00:50:10.240
So thank you for letting me off the hook on that one.
00:50:13.000
So let's go back to how you got into poetry, because I was just saying I've never interviewed
00:50:23.440
I was 12 years old and I was a very troubled student.
00:50:30.640
And they just told me to sit in the auditorium every day.
00:50:38.900
I don't know how that happened, but that's what I did.
00:50:42.560
And during that time, I stumbled upon a biography about Jim Morrison, of all people.
00:50:50.720
But it was through that book and reading about Jim Morrison's early life that I discovered
00:50:56.140
the French poet, Arthur Rimbaud and Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher, and then also
00:51:06.820
the beats, the beat poets, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, those poets especially.
00:51:12.100
And yeah, from that point forward, my life changed.
00:51:17.460
Was it one of those things you knew you had to do it?
00:51:22.960
Yeah, at the time, it certainly was because my home life was rough.
00:51:26.560
You know, my family, the adults I was surrounded by, you know, they were very busy people working
00:51:35.760
in factories and just trying to survive and, you know, working in diners.
00:51:44.500
And reading these poets felt like real rebellion to me.
00:51:53.300
It was a way of reclaiming this language that, as far as I had known up to that point, was
00:52:00.960
only being used to curse at the Eagles game, you know, or yell at the dog or something.
00:52:09.420
So I was wondering and reading more about you personally, because even before the Me Too
00:52:18.800
You know, you made reference to it here, but there was abuse of all kinds.
00:52:26.200
I mean, forgive me the indelicacy of it, but whether one can be a happy poet.
00:52:32.900
Does one go into poetry to reflect on one's joys and happiness full-time?
00:52:38.840
Or do you think most people are drawn to it, at least initially, to express some form of
00:52:47.800
I don't know if someone can experience, for lack of a better way of putting it, full-on
00:52:55.820
joy if they haven't also experienced terrible despair.
00:53:16.360
There's a mystical kind of edge to some of the things that I do.
00:53:23.120
I'm in wonder of the world around me all the time.
00:53:29.040
But I would not be a poet if it hadn't been for all of the, frankly, trauma that I endured.
00:53:37.540
Well, this is the reason your name came up in my earlier conversation, because we were
00:53:41.780
talking about how it's important to put down the iPhone and step away from the screens and
00:53:49.500
just take a moment to appreciate the beauty in life, life's small beauties, which, of course,
00:54:01.260
And you'll be scrolling through on Twitter, and it'll be a massive toxicity.
00:54:05.720
And then you'll hit a Joseph Massey tweet, which is usually about the bullshit nature.
00:54:12.940
Um, the BS nature of cancel culture and sort of wokeism, or it'll be an injection of beauty.
00:54:20.160
It'll be, it'll be like a link to something you've done, or the email is what I really
00:54:27.200
You can, you can join, you can follow Joseph Massey Substack for five bucks for month one.
00:54:34.300
And you see his beautiful poems, always accompanied by a beautiful photograph.
00:54:44.520
You, you write about, you know, the scene at family dollar, you know, like over the parking
00:54:49.560
lot, like images we've all had, but we don't appreciate them in the, in the right way, in
00:54:56.820
Yeah, that, well, my, my modus operandi on Twitter is to disrupt the toxicity.
00:55:01.680
I really love the idea of putting a poem without commentary, just putting the screenshot of a
00:55:07.920
poem up on Twitter and imagining somebody scrolling through just the most horrible, um, shit.
00:55:14.380
And then they come and they stumble upon the poem.
00:55:17.180
It must be, if they spend time to, to, to read it, it must be very, um, disruptive, but
00:55:29.860
It reclaims, it rejuvenates language that's been so abused and, and used for manipulation.
00:55:38.140
It's been drained of its life through politics, the language of politics and the language of
00:55:46.100
And, um, the poem brings language back to a really human place.
00:55:55.780
And that's something that's lost in the world of screens and yada, yada, yada.
00:56:03.120
And yet it's not as readily available as we'd like, you know, it's, you don't get poems
00:56:07.460
foisted on you the way you get links to books or new podcasts or new digital shows.
00:56:12.940
And that's another thing I love about following you on Twitter and also dispatches from the
00:56:18.040
basement, which is what you call the substack emails, uh, and links to your work.
00:56:23.160
Because it's, it just makes it, it's right there.
00:56:26.180
It's one click away as opposed to having to go look for it for somebody who doesn't follow
00:56:30.860
It's, you make it super easy and the poems are easy to connect with.
00:56:37.360
Um, I'm sure for you, there's some labor that goes into it, but for the, for the reader,
00:56:43.420
It's just, it's just love and connection and a thought or a moment of serenity.
00:56:51.500
Like a lot of these websites now are too cold about our feelings when they post things like
00:56:59.660
about child abuse or like, there's a terrible story going on right now about the killing of
00:57:05.700
this innocent dog in China by their, their crazy COVID police over there who have zero
00:57:13.500
I mean, they just post this, like you're just scrolling on Twitter and there's this, suddenly
00:57:17.140
you're assaulted with the video of, of animal torture.
00:57:29.960
This is from Joseph Massey's dispatches from the basement.
00:57:32.220
He writes, the poet has two jobs, write and survive.
00:57:41.880
Between the two, some kind of life occurs close to the ground in poverty.
00:57:47.000
And there are seasons, even as a snow squall pixelates the alley outside my window in the
00:57:55.380
Poetry is time chiseled into a shape that makes a sound.
00:58:01.580
So this is obviously written before, cause it's April, but, um, I, I wanted to ask you
00:58:06.380
about that, the poverty, cause you write about, you don't have a lot of dough.
00:58:10.400
Um, you should be charging more than $5 a month, first of all, but second of all, is that also
00:58:20.020
The rich, the rich poets are the tenured professors who are, who are ruining poetry in my opinion,
00:58:25.260
uh, because the MFA poetry world is quite a racket.
00:58:30.360
And, uh, uh, I think there are 300 MFA programs in the country and pumping out how many thousands
00:58:43.260
And so the, the big money is in being a, a tenured professor.
00:58:46.560
It's rare to achieve that, but, um, and, and there are poets with trust funds.
00:58:53.100
I mean, the more that these MFA programs proliferate, uh, the more you see 20 somethings who, you know,
00:59:01.340
have very wealthy parents who never told them that, Hey, maybe you're not all that talented.
00:59:07.780
Maybe you should, uh, do ceramics and, you know, uh, pick something more practical, but,
00:59:18.840
So no, there aren't the poets that I've loved in my life.
00:59:23.600
They've dedicated their lives entirely to poetry and there is no real financial reward.
00:59:30.020
And that, however, since I was canceled and then had to rebuild my life over the course of
00:59:37.040
two or two and a half years, something like that, you know, I've been able to make some
00:59:42.680
money through the sub stack and the book that I just put out, I published it myself.
00:59:47.540
I've never published my own book before and I won't give the number, but I mean, I've, I've,
00:59:52.980
I've made enough in royalties to pay a couple of months worth of rent.
01:00:01.500
But we have to, we have to, that's not good enough.
01:00:08.100
It's available on Amazon and we need it right now.
01:00:10.120
It's like number 70 in certain, in a poetry sub that's not good enough.
01:00:13.180
Let's get it to number one, please support Joseph Rosary made of air.
01:00:23.300
I'm saying, please go buy it, but we have to support artists like you who are putting
01:00:27.140
out good works into the ether who have been silenced by, you know, this group of moralists
01:00:33.680
who decides if you make mistakes in your life, you are never to be forgiven.
01:00:36.560
No matter how many mea culpa's, no matter how much you've shown the world that you see
01:00:41.140
the error of your ways, you understand you may have misstepped, but you're like, you're
01:00:48.420
The rest of us are on evaluating past behaviors, learning from them.
01:00:52.640
If you're at all evolved, which you are and trying to do better.
01:00:56.980
So that leads us to the, the cancellation that you suffered during the me too movement.
01:01:02.480
And as I understand it, and I would love to have you back another time, really get into
01:01:07.200
it because the story is way, way more dense and complex than, you know, we, we can do justice
01:01:12.680
to here, but you had, you had a, a romance with a married woman.
01:01:29.000
And as I understand that, this is my take on it.
01:01:33.540
You contacted the husband on Facebook and told him that you were having an affair with the
01:01:36.980
wife and the wife decided the things were going to get worse for you and started publicly
01:01:45.340
making very derogatory posts about you, having her friends write long, anonymous letters about
01:01:55.380
Contacting everyone with whom you did business in the poetry world.
01:01:58.160
I mean, everyone and, and encouraging them, urging them to cut ties with you, all of whom
01:02:04.160
did without offering you any chance to defend yourself, your actions, or really even in a lot
01:02:10.460
of circumstances to know what the specific allegations were.
01:02:15.480
No one told me anything about any specific allegations.
01:02:19.300
When you, I, I was working for the university of Pennsylvania, which was, I mean, it just felt
01:02:33.720
And with a ninth grade formal education, it felt like a real coup for me.
01:02:38.040
And, um, yeah, the director who was singing my praises only months before at a, uh, fundraiser
01:02:45.700
that he had me read for, uh, he, um, dumped me with a very legalese laden email and said,
01:02:55.200
point blank, I will not discuss any of the allegations against you.
01:03:04.460
And, um, when these kinds of things continuously come at you over the, I mean, it went on for
01:03:11.760
it's like a year, like this really intense, um, loss of, of what I've felt I'd earned.
01:03:20.160
Um, it really starts to screw with your head, uh, not knowing what you're being accused of.
01:03:26.700
And later on, I came to find out that the woman I was in the affair with had been accusing
01:03:32.260
me of all kinds of things that were absolutely untrue and would have been easily enough, um,
01:03:40.960
disproven if I had been given a chance to defend myself.
01:03:44.680
Cause I never deleted a single email or text message from this lady.
01:03:48.260
Uh, and, uh, there are so many emails that would exonerate me.
01:03:54.060
Um, and, uh, I was never given that opportunity, which is why I eventually wrote the essay for
01:04:03.180
Quillette, which was my opportunity to give my side of the story.
01:04:11.140
The cancellation to have in January, 2018, it took that much time to kind of gather my
01:04:19.380
And, and the audience should know you're very open in that, in that piece.
01:04:22.900
I mean, you, you lay it out very, very clearly that you've made mistakes, you've done bad things
01:04:29.080
And so it's not like you're trying to say nothing.
01:04:34.460
It's, it's, I'll own what I did, you know, some, some verbal mistreatment and, you know,
01:04:40.120
some bad incidents with me, but I'm not going to own what I didn't do.
01:04:43.420
And that's the problem with these like blanket allegations where people just want you canceled
01:04:49.660
And this is what I'm referring to in particular.
01:04:51.800
So I guess this woman with whom you had the affair had an anonymous, a friend penned this
01:04:56.400
anonymous letter and send it to all of your business associates.
01:05:00.900
And it, and she writes in it, this, a quote, anonymous person.
01:05:03.760
I hope you will end relations with Joseph and make a public statement about it, especially
01:05:08.960
in light of the cultural shifts around believing victims, right?
01:05:13.920
It's not, it's like not enough to have due process.
01:05:16.440
You have, the woman gets the thumb on the scale and then goes on to say, this is, this
01:05:20.740
is how she writes the letter to whom it may concern.
01:05:25.280
Far too many people have told me about his behavior.
01:05:29.800
Um, for many people in whisper networks, it is now taken for granted that he's a predator.
01:05:37.380
Well, what, that would never be admitted in a court of law.
01:05:40.260
You would get an objection that was sustained almost immediately upon saying something like
01:05:43.340
this and alleged encounter the writer had and so on and so forth.
01:05:50.200
This is, this is an attack that you should be given the opportunity to respond to.
01:05:55.960
And yet everyone in the poetry world turned their back on you.
01:06:01.440
And you know, the, the main allegation in that letter was that I called the letter writer
01:06:16.140
And, uh, this was at the height, the peak of me too, when after it had kind of started
01:06:21.480
to spiral out of control, you know, the Oz, Aziz Ansari, um, situation and where things
01:06:28.060
really started to become kind of muddy, which was so unfortunate because me too was doing
01:06:37.380
Anybody could be treated that way in their workplace.
01:06:40.360
Um, but that energy that, that was behind that movement was taken and, uh, taken advantage
01:06:48.700
of by people like this woman I was in the affair with who orchestrated this destruction
01:07:05.960
Now I'm so glad you're in a better place, but you, I think the.
01:07:09.680
The openness you've shown about the pain being canceled caused is admirable.
01:07:15.880
And I, I'd be lying if I said I didn't also relate to it.
01:07:20.800
Um, I think too often in an effort to make these stories empowering, we kind of skip over
01:07:26.480
You look around, you, I think you had a line in one of your pieces, the life, you know,
01:07:33.680
And you, you spend some moments in a tailspin asking yourself, how, what, what just happened?
01:07:41.400
What, you know, and the future, you don't know, you have no idea professionally, whether
01:07:49.280
And in your case led to severe, severe depression and even suicide attempts.
01:07:55.420
Um, yeah, and extremely debilitating panic attacks almost every day.
01:08:04.060
Um, not the kind of panic attacks where it just, you know, uh, you know, I'm just a little
01:08:08.580
uptight or something, but like, I'm having a heart attack.
01:08:14.900
And, uh, yeah, that led me to, uh, being hospitalized for a couple of weeks.
01:08:27.400
It was, I thought it would be like one floor with a cuckoo's nest, but it wasn't.
01:08:37.020
And then also, you know, regaining my, uh, footing in a, on a spiritual path, uh, really
01:08:45.020
But, you know, Megan, one of the best things about writing that essay for Quillette is that
01:08:52.540
I still hear from them who've read the essay, who've experienced something or other that
01:08:58.300
I've described in the essay, and they have felt, uh, healed by it, or at least seen and
01:09:11.060
And the only reason I'm writing this thing is to potentially help other people.
01:09:15.340
I don't enjoy making art out of, uh, these horrible things that have happened.
01:09:31.900
First of all, you sought help, went to a hospital.
01:09:37.840
You got into meditation and breath work, which is so important.
01:09:42.840
And my sister-in-law, Diane, she loves breath work and can't say enough about it.
01:09:46.180
And I know you feel the same, you know, the deep breathing, holding it inside, you know,
01:09:51.400
and then exhaling and just sort of, if you can breathe, you're alive.
01:09:57.400
If you can breathe, you can, you can write the poetry.
01:10:01.800
For me, I, that's sort of where I diverged from you.
01:10:04.440
Cause I was like, I'm not sure rejoining the word, the world of media is goodness.
01:10:08.440
You know, like I had this toxic stew still sitting there saying, come back, come back.
01:10:17.500
And then I kind of like you here, you know, found a different way.
01:10:21.100
It was like, oh my God, wait, what if you could do it without being in the toxic stew?
01:10:25.300
What if you could do the thing you love and that you know, you're really good at
01:10:33.380
Cause I'm having, I'm just really trying to manage these sunglasses and all that, but you write
01:10:38.740
Talking about sort of going for walks and feel companionship with everyone and everything
01:10:43.940
You say, I, I know this drives against the grain of the fear and anger boiling within
01:10:49.180
you, but you have to find a way of re-channeling those emotions.
01:10:53.380
Don't let the mob drive you to annihilate yourself.
01:11:00.000
If it's raining, let it fall down the back of your neck.
01:11:05.880
The sense of loss is overwhelming, but now cannot be lost.
01:11:13.660
And if you continue with this practice, grace will find you.
01:11:19.300
That's not even a poem, but it makes me feel the same way your poetry does.
01:11:25.400
It's reflected in your photography, in your poems, the beauty of the puddle, the beauty
01:11:30.480
of the fence post, the beauty of what's out the window on a spring day.
01:11:36.100
I mean, it wasn't just the, it wasn't just the meds, you know, that helped or the breathing
01:11:43.100
It was continuing to write poetry and continuing to take photographs and continuing to engage
01:11:53.260
And, uh, that is what really, I wouldn't be here without it.
01:11:58.980
And, um, yeah, in that essay, I stress again and again, uh, to continue to, to do what you've
01:12:05.700
always done, find a way to do it if you're able, you know, cause some people who go through
01:12:11.200
this, they're just, they're flat on their back and almost a catatonic state for, you know,
01:12:22.880
And I know about your story and I, you know, I've, I've had a tiny taste of being publicly
01:12:29.180
humiliated or having crappy articles written about me and, you know, you, you endured quite
01:12:36.340
a bit, but that's one of the reasons why I sent you my fan boy note is because you did,
01:12:46.160
You've, it seems like you're, you're truly yourself in the show.
01:12:54.880
It's, it's been, it's been part of my, uh, media healthy diet.
01:13:04.900
And, uh, I really, I want people for their own sake.
01:13:08.140
It'd be great to support Joseph, of course, for all the reasons I stated, but for your own
01:13:12.040
sake, follow on Twitter, go sign up for the substantial.
01:13:16.620
It's, it's inexpensive, even on a yearly basis.
01:13:19.280
I'm going to get one for all of my team before, before the day is out.
01:13:24.100
Um, and just bring a little dose of lovely, of serenity, of thoughtfulness, of peace, of
01:13:32.600
wellness into your life, of meaning, meaning into your life.
01:13:42.100
Joining me now is renowned LASIK surgeon, Dr. Robert Maloney.
01:13:51.600
I mean, lots of them, including most of the Kardashian family see clearly for over 25 years.
01:14:02.540
All right, so I am 20 hours off of my own LASIK surgery, which I had here in Connecticut
01:14:10.060
I want to say it was Dr. Suresh Mandava in Stanford, Connecticut, who did mine.
01:14:18.060
He's done a ton of these things, and I felt like I was in very good hands.
01:14:21.820
You can relate to that, because not only are your credentials impeccable, summa cum laude,
01:14:26.520
Harvard College, medical doctorate from University of California, San Francisco.
01:14:30.620
You were a Rhodes Scholar, went to Oxford, residency in ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins.
01:14:34.500
You were one of the first to get involved with LASIK, even having it on your own eyes back
01:14:42.620
So you're a perfect person to talk about, and Dr. Mandava agreed.
01:14:48.540
One, one day out from LASIK, what should I be expecting?
01:14:52.620
Just so we can see whether I'm, I'm doing okay.
01:14:58.480
So you should have little red dots on your eye, which is, I suspect why you've got those
01:15:04.460
And you're not supposed to wear makeup typically for a period of a week, which is another reason
01:15:09.700
You should have a little bit of irritation today.
01:15:12.300
You should have a little bit of fogginess to your vision.
01:15:14.660
I saw you struggling to read momentarily there.
01:15:20.740
The irritation will go away typically in a day to a week.
01:15:27.720
I mean, it was so great today to wake up for the first time ever in my memory.
01:15:31.500
Anyway, being able to see the alarm clock, like not struggling to find my glasses.
01:15:36.140
It's like, well, I woke up the morning after my LASIK surgery.
01:15:38.860
And for a moment, I thought I'd forgotten to take my contacts out because I was seeing so well.
01:15:44.060
So I want to tell the audience that, first of all, the procedure was, to me, a nothing.
01:15:48.280
I mean, he gave me some sort of a happy pill, which he said had Valium.
01:15:52.000
I think he said one of the ingredients was ketamine, which is the stuff you get, like it's
01:15:56.040
a psychedelic or something you get if you want to take a trip with your psychiatrist and some
01:16:17.060
And I mean, it was like 10 minutes, 12 minutes tops.
01:16:20.860
The machine came over my right eye and it did like, it looked like etching.
01:16:28.160
And then it went away and then it came back and it did something else.
01:16:31.940
And then the same exact thing on the left side.
01:16:40.440
I like to say it's the first procedure of the 20, 23rd century.
01:16:45.960
So I went in this morning before the show to get tested.
01:16:48.280
And already, even though I'm still a little cloudy already, I'm at 20, 20 vision without
01:16:59.100
I mean, and it's scary for people because I mean, imagine you felt this way.
01:17:02.460
You're going in going, oh my God, they're going to laser my eyeball.
01:17:06.780
And then you take the, you take the sedative and it really, you still feel anxious and you
01:17:18.820
I don't, I just didn't feel nervous about this procedure, but my husband who won't even
01:17:22.860
go to the eye doctor for a normal eye exam, I have to lie to him and tell him they
01:17:26.280
got rid of the glaucoma test to get him to go because he doesn't like things coming
01:17:33.080
And then they convinced him to like watch it from outside.
01:17:36.340
And the, he wasn't expecting the closeup on the video screen.
01:17:39.840
And I'm like, oh, did you get, cause he was going to video it for my kids, our kids.
01:17:49.440
And, uh, you know, when we're doing the surgery and it's, it's, we try and catch them before
01:17:53.400
they fall, but it, it, it can be hard to watch.
01:17:57.960
So one of the reasons we always say, we always say, if you're thinking about LASIK, have it
01:18:04.820
Cause one of the reasons that I was not nervous is I did not consult Dr. Google at all about,
01:18:11.760
I just listened to my doctor on that and I didn't watch it.
01:18:17.320
It's like, I didn't need to watch them do my, uh, cesarean section either.
01:18:24.520
But the, the terrible, like LASIK will kill you.
01:18:30.480
You tell me, cause my impression is those are people who chose doctors who should not be
01:18:41.920
I mean, people worry about what will a disaster happen?
01:18:46.940
Um, it's very clear that LASIK is less likely to make you lose your vision than contact lenses.
01:18:52.380
I mean, the risk of a contact lens statistics is about one in 3,500 every single year.
01:18:56.980
It doesn't sound like much, but it adds up over time.
01:19:00.020
And, uh, with LASIK, the risk of infection is incredibly low.
01:19:06.380
The, the, there are websites out there where people have problems and part of it's a reflection
01:19:13.960
But these stories are generally from 10, 20, 25 years ago from the early days of LASIK when
01:19:20.620
doctors were treating people who maybe shouldn't have had LASIK and our equipment and techniques
01:19:29.760
But if you're flying a Model T airplane, uh, I mean, a Model T, um, a Wright brothers airplane,
01:19:38.100
Nowadays, air travel is much safer than driving a car or walking through the streets of New
01:19:44.620
If you go to one of those big surgical centers, that's just like they crank them out, then
01:19:53.620
You don't want pressure from to get a lot of surgeries done.
01:19:58.120
You, you want to go to an individualized surgeon who's done, who does a ton of these and, um,
01:20:05.160
If you're not a candidate, like I have dry eye, which is really the reason I got LASIK.
01:20:11.860
They actually weren't bothering me, but I know that they're bad for dry eye.
01:20:16.900
So, you know, my doctor was like, kind of, you should wear your glasses full time or consider
01:20:21.720
Um, so, but if you have severe dry eye, they probably won't do LASIK on you.
01:20:32.340
So, um, did you, were you having trouble wearing your contacts because of the dryness?
01:20:37.280
Not really, but my eyes have definitely gotten drier over the past, like four years.
01:20:41.680
You know, if I step out into the wind, they instantly tear.
01:20:44.560
Um, if I read a lot, which I do for work, they get very, very tired pretty quick.
01:20:49.640
And did you have to use lubricating eye drops to keep your eyes moist?
01:20:55.200
Which is just annoying as you're always putting something in your eye.
01:20:58.400
Contacts suck all the moisture out of your eyes.
01:21:00.320
So if you have mild dry eyes, contacts are hard to wear.
01:21:04.280
And we have very good studies that show that dry eyes on average improves after LASIK because
01:21:11.420
you get the contacts out and your eyes are now natural and healthy.
01:21:19.380
And that's why we're very careful about people who have severe dry.
01:21:22.120
For somebody like you with mild dry eye, with their contacts, it's a, it's a miracle.
01:21:25.660
I mean, you'll, you'll wake up every day and you'll stop putting those drops in.
01:21:29.460
You'll stop feeling your eyes tear up in the wind.
01:21:37.640
I'm like, I, I, I lose, I'll lose my job if I can't use my eyes and contacts correct me
01:21:44.840
What I didn't realize was contacts day after day, even the daily disposables like I wore,
01:21:51.320
They can add to dry eye and they can do long-term damage that you should factor into your decision.
01:21:57.000
And they can cause blood vessels to grow into your eye that shouldn't be there.
01:22:00.140
I mean, there's, there's, there's issues with any way you correct your vision.
01:22:04.680
So you say your goal is to have a world that's glasses and contacts free, that you actually
01:22:10.620
Do you think that's a reality like in our lifetime?
01:22:14.600
Like sort of the dream that motivates me as a surgeon is for me to be kind of walking
01:22:21.120
through a museum with my grandchild someday and, and he pulls on my shirt and says, what's
01:22:27.420
And it's, it's a display case with eyeglasses and contact lenses and he has no idea what it
01:22:36.380
And I, I think it's amazingly close to reality.
01:22:39.800
So we've solved almost every problem with glasses and contacts, except we don't yet
01:22:45.540
have a perfect solution for the loss of reading vision that comes with age, you know, where
01:22:50.380
grandma and grandpa pull out their reading glasses.
01:22:53.660
In fact, it's not just grandma and grandpa's anybody over 45 generally needs reading glasses
01:23:00.000
You know, you, you see people holding things way out in front of them trying to read it.
01:23:04.320
And, um, we haven't got a great solution for that.
01:23:07.020
But usually we solve that by doing one eye more for distance vision, one eye more for
01:23:12.060
So the eyes kind of work together and let you read that doesn't work for everyone.
01:23:19.740
And it's perfect for somebody like you, who's an on-air performer.
01:23:22.200
You don't mean you don't want to be grabbing, you know, granny glasses and putting them on
01:23:31.440
Well, it's funny because my up close reading was doing okay, but I know it's going to go in
01:23:35.200
the wrong direction and my long distance vision was always the problem.
01:23:40.860
I was wearing a minus three in each eye, minus 3.0.
01:23:44.820
And, um, I tried doing a minus three and a minus two.
01:23:50.000
Your doctor does that with you and your dominant eye.
01:23:54.420
And then the weaker eye, I guess, non-dominant, they'll, they'll under correct that in the
01:24:02.580
And so I tried minus three and minus two, minus three and minus 2.25, minus three and
01:24:10.260
And I wound up settling on minus two, seven, five and minus three.
01:24:14.440
And I wore those contacts for months to see if I could read.
01:24:19.540
So, yeah, and so kudos to, you know, kudos to your doctor, because that's what the kind
01:24:25.600
of the LASIK mills don't do is you need a doctor in a system that'll sit down with you
01:24:29.920
and really figure out how your vision should be corrected and what's the right procedure
01:24:36.180
I mean, it's fantastic for people who are minus three, but not for people who are minus
01:24:41.300
And so, you know, you need a center that'll figure out what's right for you.
01:24:46.700
For the really near-side up here, we do something called the implantable contact lens.
01:24:55.120
It looks like your old soft contact lenses, but about half the size.
01:24:58.680
We roll it up in a little tube and insert it into the eye.
01:25:01.320
It unrolls, but it just stays there correcting vision permanently.
01:25:15.200
And the next generation of this was just FDA approved this week, actually.
01:25:23.480
That's for the people who have like minus 12, you're saying?
01:25:28.160
Well, actually, it's great for people a lot less than minus 12.
01:25:32.740
Like we're using it sometimes as low as minus four.
01:25:37.840
But my message is you want a center that'll figure out what's the right thing for you.
01:25:42.480
Because there's all saying if everything, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks
01:25:49.780
So you want a center that does a variety of procedures, got expertise in those.
01:25:53.880
It'll sit down with you and spend time to figure out what's right for you.
01:25:57.460
Well, I know that, you know, you've, you've taken care of every star in Hollywood.
01:26:01.420
We've got video of you doing their Kardashians.
01:26:03.080
I think you did Kylie Jenner, you did Kendall Jenner, you did Kim Jenner, or Kim Kardashian,
01:26:07.800
Kris Jenner, William Shatner, Cindy Crawford, Dennis Quaid.
01:26:14.080
The list is pretty impressive of the people who have trusted you.
01:26:17.400
But finding the right doctor for, you know, the average Joe out there, they probably don't
01:26:24.620
So how do they find out, okay, this guy's legit, I can entrust my eyes to him or her?
01:26:31.020
Yeah, well, 99.9% of people I correct are just regular people like, well, I was going
01:26:37.800
to say like you and me, but that would be just like me, actually.
01:26:40.760
And, you know, most of what we do is take care of school teachers and accountants and
01:26:48.920
The, there's a couple of things to look for in a, in a, in a surgeon.
01:26:52.120
One is you want somebody who's very experienced.
01:26:55.720
You want somebody who will sit around and answer your question.
01:26:58.220
You don't want to feel like you're getting a high pitch sales push.
01:27:06.300
I mean, and you should read the reviews, find out not just how many good ones have, but look
01:27:12.620
See how they responded or if they even did respond.
01:27:16.220
And they get referrals from your eye doctor because your eye doctor knows better than probably
01:27:23.740
And so there's ways with a little bit of research, you can get great results like you've had.
01:27:29.620
So if you have a question for Dr. Maloney, he agreed to stay with us over the break.
01:27:34.200
You could ask the Dr. Maloney about LASIK surgery.
01:27:53.800
My question is, first of all, I appreciate the segment and I've learned a lot.
01:28:00.080
My first is, how common is it for somebody to get the procedure in one eye only, like
01:28:05.400
my right eye, because my left eye is very close to perfect, far out and in close.
01:28:19.360
So if one eye is good, we just do the other eye.
01:28:23.580
Or sometimes we'll do just one eye for distance and leave the other eye for reading.
01:28:27.560
Megan mentioned monovision just a little bit ago.
01:28:33.220
Part two was, I'm struggling with blood sugar that is higher than it should be.
01:28:41.140
And so going to my normal eye doctor, they realize that when your blood sugars change,
01:28:48.900
And they don't want to invest in new glasses yet until I get my sugars stabilized.
01:28:54.260
Would you recommend the same stance about getting a LASIK procedure?
01:29:02.680
And get your blood sugar under control and then worry about your vision.
01:29:11.780
Let's hop on over to Jim in South Carolina who's got a question.
01:29:20.980
I had cataract surgery last year and they just put in clear lenses and I am one of those
01:29:27.080
people that really wants to see perfectly out of both eyes and my right eye is still not
01:29:39.000
Jim, you definitely can get the LASIK, assuming you're otherwise a good candidate.
01:29:42.380
In fact, I did my mom's LASIK after her cataract surgery because she still had some astigmatism
01:29:50.420
She's had perfect vision now for seven, eight years.
01:29:58.900
You know, it just depends on the particulars of your case.
01:30:03.180
So you can get LASIK after cataract surgery and you can get cataract surgery after LASIK?
01:30:09.060
Yeah, so Megan, someday you'll get cataract surgery.
01:30:13.100
Everyone, if you live long enough, gets a cataract, typically in your mid-70s.
01:30:19.020
So yeah, everyone gets it, even those who've had LASIK.
01:30:22.120
Sometimes you see people, elderly people, get like, it's almost like a buildup on their
01:30:27.280
You can see like their eyes becoming like, it almost looks like a scab is on it.
01:30:34.780
Cataracts, a haziness of the natural lens inside the eye.
01:30:44.760
Cataract surgery means you take your lens out, your natural lens, which is hazy, and put
01:30:55.160
That thing you see on the eyes of old people is what we call a pinguicula.
01:30:58.640
It's like, it's usually a little yellow spot kind of just next to the colored part of the
01:31:15.840
Stacey in Wisconsin has a question for the good doc.
01:31:24.640
One, I'm just wondering when we're looking for the right place or doctor, is there some
01:31:33.400
Is there something we should be looking for that they have done training with that, you
01:31:42.860
No, there's no accreditation, Stacey, for LASIK surgeons.
01:31:46.520
But there's some things that are sort of like accreditation.
01:31:49.100
Look for, look for people who are definitely board certified.
01:31:53.720
Look for people who've published articles about LASIK.
01:31:56.780
Generally, if you publish articles, you're probably an expert.
01:31:59.780
And, um, and again, get referrals from not just one person, but multiple people.
01:32:04.520
And the other thing is, here's another question.
01:32:06.800
How do they make sure, doc, that, that, that the guy has, or the gal, the most recent equipment?
01:32:11.120
Like you made the point about the Wright Brothers flight.
01:32:12.960
How do they make sure that it's the most recent laser?
01:32:18.340
It's, I've got about a million dollars of equipment in my, in my operating room.
01:32:22.460
And, uh, so the temptation is not to buy more equipment.
01:32:26.040
And so generally, um, places that do a high volume, uh, will have the latest equipment
01:32:33.960
So that's a good reason to stay away from people that don't do a lot of LASIK.
01:32:37.340
And then just ask them, what equipment are you using?
01:32:42.000
And then you obviously won't know, but then go online and Google it and see if it's the latest
01:32:48.600
A lot of people wonder that because it's not covered by insurance.
01:32:52.720
Um, price of LASIK per eye ranges at a good place from about 2000 to $3,500.
01:32:59.680
Um, you can get discount LASIK for a thousand, 1200, but usually that comes along with up
01:33:06.700
So you end up paying around 2000, $2,500 by the time you're done anyway.
01:33:11.740
And thank you so much for the great information and the great calls, everybody.
01:33:14.760
Thanks to everyone for the support on my own procedure.
01:33:19.520
And until I can get my eye makeup back on in the meantime, don't miss Monday.
01:33:23.940
Cause my pal, Jeremy boring of the daily wire is here.
01:33:26.900
He's the one fighting back with Ben against all this nonsense.