Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Celebrity Doctors

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

Did you know Dr. Phil is not actually a medical doctor?? When “physicians” like Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, and Dr. Drew are elevated to TV star status, followers flock to their “wisdom” to feel safe in a society whose healthcare system is seriously lacking. But should doctors really be treated like rock stars? In pursuit of fame and fortune, these famous medical professionals def find themselves in a borderline cult leader-ish role. This week, Isa and Amanda chat with Buzzfeed culture reporter and host of the Scamfluencers podcast Scaachi Koul to figure out just how sus these docs really are. Head to FentySkin.com and use code CULT20 for 20% off a Start'rs Bundle, OG, or Fragrance-Free. Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations, OR search for The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The views expressed in this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Three weeks ago, I quote you, FBX literally flushes fat from your system. In January, you called Forskolin, quote, lightning in a bottle. I don't get why you need to say this stuff because you know it's not true. So why, when you have this amazing megaphone and this amazing ability to communicate, why

would you cheapen your show by saying things like that? I actually do personally believe in the items that I talk about in the show. I passionately study them. I would give my audience the advice I give my family all the time, and I've given my family these products. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Issa Medina, and I'm a comedian. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism.

Every week here on the pod, Issa and I take a deep dive into one zealous group from the cultural zeitgeist, from Peloton to Celebrity Stands, to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? To join our cult and see culty memes and BTS pics, follow us on Instagram at Sounds Like a Cult pod. I'm on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montell. And I'm on Instagram at Issa Medina, I-S-A-A-M-E-D-I-N-A-A. Also feel free to check us out on YouTube, where you can watch our show, or hit us up

on Patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult, where you can listen to all our episodes at free. I don't even know how to start these things. Do you want to play a doctor? Oh, I've even been thinking of that one. No, it just came to me. It just came to me. Oh no, I don't.

No, I don't either. I hate doctors so much, I've been terrified of them and have avoided them since I was a little kid, but I do love famous people. And so I can see why a cult would assemble around our subject today, which is the cult of celebrity doctors. 100% so easy to see how this cult exists. I'm a hypochondriac and I hate going to the doctor because of the anxiety of what they're going to tell me, but I ultimately do go often like for little things.

Okay, I haven't been a gynecologist in a while, that's what I was trying to avoid saying, but I need to go to the gynecologist. I just haven't been because insurance is a bitch, but I go to like general practitioner doctors often because I have like a tiny pain in my lower neck and I'm like, oh my god, it must be like a tumor. Yeah, we talked about how Americans are probably more prone to hypochondria compared to other countries because we feel so profoundly untaken care of by our healthcare system. And I too, one of the reasons why I hate going to the doctor is like, first of all, I hate

like relinquishing my body to like a stranger. I hate how smug doctors can often be. They're so quick, especially with women to dismiss a certain pain as anxiety. I personally feel the reason I'm not in this cult particularly is because I have looked into online doctors or I have looked into like Mayo Clinic and it makes my anxiety worse. Oh yeah. So like I've had to like self restrict my online search for like self diagnoses.

Going on to WebMD will cause you to absolutely spin out. I've had worse nights cruising WebMD than cruising my own hate comments. Yeah, one time I convinced myself that I had Ebola and I didn't sleep all night. And then I, this was one like Facebook was still popular. I posted like a bunch of Facebook statuses like, do you guys think I have Ebola? Like all this stuff you went hard on the stat eye. Yeah. And then I just did a breathing exercise to make myself fall asleep, but anyway, I digress.

You mentioned that like Americans also have hypochondria because they don't have good healthcare. I also think it's because we glorify doctors. There are so many doctor shows. Yep, exactly. So we should probably clarify what we mean by celebrity doctors. When I first proposed this topic, you thought of something different than what I actually meant.

Yeah. When you first said celebrity doctors, I immediately thought you were talking about like doctors who treat celebrities like the doctors who perform plastic surgery on the Kardashians, for example. Well that is partially what we're talking about because the subject of today's show is really about doctors who have become celebrities themselves like Dr. Oz and Dr. Drew and Dr. Phil. But a lot of those doctors got their start because some celebrity catapulted them to

the spotlight. Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz both got their start by being blessed by Oprah. We are talking about doctors who like have already built that following and that celebrity status, whether it was because they got a blessing from an already famous person or because they've built their following on social media. Well it's funny because when I used to work in the beauty industry, PR people would pitch me all the time like, oh, do you want to interview this cosmetic dermatologist or this plastic surgeon because they treat Kim Kardashian?

Or do you want to interview this hair restoration guy because he treats Elon Musk? So creepily, there is a lot of overlap between celebrities and doctors and they sort of feed off each other. The lines between a celebrity and an influencer are so blurry now, but it all starts with endorsement from someone who already has a following. And sometimes that endorsement is the algorithm. Yeah. It doesn't matter if the chicken or the egg came first, but like right now they are wobbling

around peacocking. I don't know. You know what I mean? And that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the consequences of their chickening. How good of a metaphor is that, you guys? The consequences of their chickening. Celebrity doctors that you've probably heard of in the past are again, Dr. Phil, who has

a PhD in psychology. I always thought that he was a medical doctor. I always thought Dr. Phil was an MD. Yeah, no. He just has a MA and PhD from the University of North Texas, but he's not a medical doctor MD. We're going to do a later episode on the cult of chiropractors, but there are so many chiropractors specifically who claim that doctor status on social media and gain massive

followings claiming to be a doctor when really they might just have a chiropractic certification from some for-profit chiropractic school. Yeah, these terms seem really cut and dry, but they're really not. I mean, just in terms of doctor degrees, there are MDs, psych Ds, there's also jurist doctors, PhDs, and then there's social media or more traditionally on TV, a person who could turn themselves into a fake doctor as a character and build clout based on false promises, fake cures or even conspiracy theory type mistrust in traditional doctors, all under the pretense of being this healthy savior physician.

The top designation for physician in Miriam Webster's is a person skilled in the art of healing. Yeah. So you could call someone a physician and unless you have the word licensed in front of it, that could mean fucking anything. Exactly. I saw that when I was looking into like TikTok doctors because a lot of them call themselves physicians and it's just like really misleading.

That is wack. Speaking of boundary blurring and taking things to the next level, Dr. Oz is actually like running for Senate in Pennsylvania. Yeah. As a Republican nominee and without revealing too much, this state is a wink, wink pertinent to our Instagram therapy episode. There's just something in the water in Pennsylvania that encourages doctors to claim more clout and fame and political power than they maybe should.

These like celebrity doctors are already like such establishment figures that they're like, what's the next level of the establishment and it's politics. And that's why we need to be more aware of them and we need to adjust our perception of what a cult looks like or what a cult sounds like because I think we think, oh no, a cult, that's something fringy, it exists on a commune out in the woods. It's like, no man, it's in our political offices, it's in our for you page, it's in our doctor's offices and on TV. Let's talk about some of the backstory regarding this conflation of doctors and celebrities.

Doctors have been filling these rockstar roles since even before the invention of television. You know when you think about like what a parent would want, like maybe this is immigrant parent, but what you want a kid to become, like the best possible thing is a doctor or a lawyer. And so like those were like the celebrities of the day back then, like they had the best job. They wanted to be a YouTuber. Yeah, it's true.

I was just reading a stat the other day that as of a couple of years ago, three times as many children in the US, UK and China want to be influencers as astronauts. Yeah. I think like they were always regarded as like celebrities in their community. Like it's like if you knew a doctor, it's like you could go to them for advice. They were respected, but they weren't necessarily worshipped. Exactly. Doctors as celebrities in the US may have roots in early celebrity endorsements of sometimes

snake oil products from the late 19th and early 20th century. Like have you seen that show, The Nick? It's a stars show. Super underrated show. It's an amazing show starring Clive Owen Hoddy, who plays a doctor named Dr. Thackeray. And the snake oil salesman comes to him and asks him if he would endorse some like cosmetic product that he had created. And he termed it Dr. Thackeray's miracle cure.

And the guy refused. But doctors back then, this was in like the early 20th century, would commonly endorse products that had no FDA approval, no clinical trials behind them because it was an easy way to make a buck. That's crazy. That reminds me of like brands that have like the term doctor in front of them and how much weight it carries like Dr. Bronner's or like Dr. Seuss, I'm just kidding. No, but really?

But actually it allows something to carry like so much more like importance with it. Actually even like Doc Martens. Yeah. I'm just like my shoes are well qualified. But doctors have endorsed all kinds of whack things over the years. Like in the 1930s and 40s, doctors endorsed smoking, tobacco, because they said it helped with throat irritation. There's always like two sides to this coin because medicine is always progressing.

And also like even the establishment of medicine isn't always doing like the best research. So like it is important to have people who like pave their own way and challenge the status quo in some sort of way, especially with medicine. It's just the consequences of like wrongfully doing that that are dangerous. Totally. Social media is an opportunity to sort of debunk false claims when they're made by celebrity doctors. But at the very same time, a lot of misinformation is spread there as well.

Social media does present the opportunity for medical professionals to correct widespread misinformation. We saw that a lot during COVID. I'm thinking specifically like Jen Gunter. She's a kind of ecologist who is always calling out Goop and their misinformation on Twitter. Dr. Stella was one sort of social media famous doctor who helped debunk COVID misinformation. You know, social media encourages people to engage with healthcare professionals where they might not otherwise because either it's inaccessible or they're afraid or because

the medical establishment doesn't seem to really care about them, which is the case for a lot of people of color, a lot of women, a lot of women of color. Yeah. And it helps raise awareness for public health campaigns, like the importance of getting vaccinated or things like that. We don't have a way to like advocate or communicate that to the masses. Like if people aren't even going to the doctor, how are they going to find out? Social media in medicine as in a lot of different arenas can bring information down from like

the high pedestal of the medical establishment to everyday people. And those are the good sides and the benefits of celebrity or social media doctors. But we aren't going to discuss the downsides because some of these doctors have built a cult following and it's not all good love. So we've discussed on the show many times the overlap between celebrities and cult leaders, how celebrities have such a godlike status in this culture. The mix of medicine and celebrities is a pretty awkward modern revelation. The American Medical Association had this no advertising rule that was in place for

almost a century. It was put in place in 1847 and it basically prevented doctors from self-promoting to this celebrity status. But in 1975, that rule went away and now doctors are able to elevate themselves to that pedestal like position. These doctors can be put on a pedestal not just because of their credentials, but also like immediately you know how to identify them, right? Think of the uniform like their scrubs or the white coat, the stethoscope around their

neck. It gives them so much credibility. That's probably why these doctors are so easy to impersonate. Why you find so many like grifters and scammers and cult leader figures in this space is because the uniform is so identifiable. The idolization of those uniforms are like furthered by the portrayal of them on TV and like the use of the uniforms on TV and like you see these hot famous people like actors wearing these uniforms and then it like doubles down.

I always wondered if doctors had some type of like code they had to follow or limitations that they had to observe in terms of social media, the same way that they have to like follow certain rules for like prescribing medication or things like that. Right now, the only thing that there are limitations on are from the general medical council, but it's like very broad guidance for doctors about social media use. Like they can't discuss individual patients. They cannot bully, harass or make gratuitous or unsubstantiated comments about individuals online, whether it's patients or colleagues.

It's not appropriate to raise concerns about patient safety through social media and if they do identify themselves as doctors, they should identify by their name. But I think it's really important to highlight that these are guidelines. Yeah. I don't think there's like anything holding them accountable. And these guidelines were put in place in 2013 and there aren't immediately clear guidelines for say navigating brand deals, navigating endorsements in the way that we were talking about before.

For example, like even an endorsement for something like Quaker Oats or Clorox, there was one Instagram doctor who pedals endorsements like that all the time, could create the perception that those products are medically approved. You know me, I got a slip of devil's avocado in here. The thing for me with being frustrated at doctors for like having these kinds of sponsorships is that I can't entirely be mad at them because doctors who aren't influencing are also endorsed by like big pharma, like they get bonuses for prescribing a certain amount of medicines. I kind of do get where like these people seek these online doctors and then they kind of

fall into their cult because it's kind of those people who don't trust anyone. Yeah. So we trust when even the establishment is corrupt. Right. Fair enough. Although I will say with the celebrity doctors, unlike those who don't try to pursue becoming an influencer or a television star or a talk show host or whatever, there is such an intense focus on their media presence and their fame and their clout that it can totally cloud

you from the ultimate like Hippocratic oath to do no harm, you know? For me, the concern isn't that they want to be on social media. It's the concern that they too are starting to be controlled by the monster of social media. Totally. And like what might they be willing to do or say to get more followers, to get more likes and they might just sensationalize things that are like medical concerns and that's where it gets dangerous.

Exactly. And that's a great reminder that few cult leaders ever decide, you know what? I'm going to start a cult tomorrow. It starts with an inch and then as more and more opportunities to trade their ethics for power come along, they end up taking a mile. There was a piece that I read about this exact phenomenon in Fast Company that said the COVID pandemic has revealed that there are unscrupulous physicians who are willing to say pretty much anything about COVID to increase their follower count.

And we thought that that was only true of like MLM salespeople who were like, oh, COVID, the perfect opportunity for me to promote my product, for me to induct you into my downline. No, baby. Social media physicians were doing it too. We put these doctors on such a high pedestal already. We forget that they're also people like everyone is susceptible to social media addiction. Yes. To the cult of going viral.

Yeah. So it's like, what will they do next? And all of that goes without saying that these are doctors that, first of all, all of their followers don't even know personally and are taking information from in a completely non-bespoke, non-nuanced, non-diagnostic way. And some of these doctors don't even have the proper credentials to be giving out this information. All they have is their celebrity status.

Now, to continue to look into the cult of celebrity doctors, we're going to introduce you to our guest, Saachi Cole, a BuzzFeed culture writer and host of the podcast, Scan Fluencers. Saachi writes about a lot of cult-like figures from pop culture and wrote an expose last year on Dr. Phil, so we're really excited to hear her perspective. Could you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us a little bit about your work? My name is Saachi Cole. I'm a senior culture writer at BuzzFeed News, and I also co-host a podcast called Scan

Fluencers for Wondery. How did you first take an interest in celebrity doctors and what has been your experience covering them? I think it's because I grew up watching them, right? I used to watch Oprah with my mother every day, and I met Dr. Phil that way. I met Dr. Oz that way. And then those doctors beat at their own doctors and their own doctor shows, and now we are in a real snake eating its own tail of celebrity TV doctors who all think I should drink algae

water or something. How and when did doctors go from medical professionals to bona fide TV stars and influencers in their own right? I think that so long as people have wanted to have power well beyond their abilities and what is reasonable, all professions have room for corruption. So I think this is just the natural progression of how that career would start to get a little sticky. I think it's basically just late stage capitalism exploiting our human desires to trust and

connect and heal. The thing about the medical field in particular is the doctors that are always sort of going viral or becoming famous are sort of being viewed as like these snake oil salesmen. They're all trying to demystify stuff about our bodies and our brains that we really don't know anything about. So it's always psychologists, psychotherapists, talk therapists, sort of doctors, and then it's weight loss, diet doctors. It's always stuff that you can't see.

You rarely have like a bone density and knee joint specialist getting super famous. Those are not the kinds of people who are getting a lot of attention. Although I've seen them on my TikTok Fyp, they're there, they're getting great. But even there, the TikTok doctors who are going viral are trying to explain things to us in theory, if we assume that everybody has good intentions, which everybody does not have good intentions, but point is to sort of demystify these things that we really don't know about our bodies, but nobody knows with a lot of it. They're talking about oftentimes things where there is just basic research lacking.

There isn't anybody who is less researched than, for example, like a black woman. No one knows less about her health, frankly, because they don't put any fucking research into it. So I don't know what these guys are going to talk about on TV. They can only give really broad general guidance and usually guidance that is skewed towards white men because that's how they test. It's an interesting point too, the one you were making about how like you never see a bone density doctor becoming a celebrity doctor.

It's true too. When we did an episode on Instagram therapists and you never see Instagram therapists going viral for talking about like really niche or nuanced subject matter like obsessive compulsive disorder. It's always about something really broad and up to interpretation like trauma or anxiety because those subjects are more vague and buzzy and alluring than say insomnia or borderline personality disorder. There are a number of doctors on Tiktok who are sort of diagnosing everybody with ADHD.

So at this point, oh my gosh, between the ages of 16 and 50 now seems to think they have ADHD. Maybe some of them do. I don't know. But the likelihood of being diagnosed over Tiktok by somebody who's got a million followers, that seems slim. Yes. Exactly.

Like I'm not going to be the one to tell you whether you have ADHD or not, but it seems like a lot of people are self-diagnosing and it's like maybe you just scroll on Tiktok so much that your attention span has diminished. I know that's a fact for me because when I don't go on Tiktok for a week, I am so much more capable of focusing. There seem to be these sort of like health trends about things that would be panic about and that's usually where famous doctors lurk. So unfortunately for the last 200 years, a lot of it has been about weight loss and

so that's when we get Dr. Oz talking about these like magic beans that are going to make you lose weight. If any of that worked, if any of that was real, that company, it would be a trillion dollar company, but it's not for a reason. What do you think are the qualities necessary to become a cult-followed doctor? I think you have to talk with the alarming amount of unearned authority. I think being tall seems to help. They all are exceptionally tall.

I think being white, if you can find a way to manufacture some folksy sayings. I mean, Dr. Phil has so many, it doesn't matter how flat you make a pancake, it has two sides. A lot of them have a knack of figuring out how to appeal to the every man and they usually often have some connective tissue with a celebrity that we view as aspirational and admirable. So I'm not super up to date on who the Kardashians are using these days, but there's always someone around them, right? Because they're very beautiful. And if there's a doctor saying, well, I treat so-and-so and this is what we work on, then

you're going to listen to it a little more. I think it's very clear that Oprah has a lot to account for with all of the charlatans that she has put out into the ether, whether she knew at the time or not, I don't know. But usually they have some connection to someone that we all like. You mentioned a little bit about what they have to look like to be a cult-followed doctor. How would you describe their specific charisma? Dr. Phil's audience is comprised largely of suburban parents, mostly women, mostly stay-at-home moms, you know, in suburbs.

They can watch primetime broadcasting at four o'clock in the afternoon, right? But again, I watched all that with my mother, who was a stay-at-home mom. And I'd come home from school and she and I would watch that. And then there are some like celebrity doctors who I don't really think have any authority but are just used a lot. Like Dr. Drew is constantly being used by VH1 and MTV. And I don't know why. They are really making it seem as if he is the only doctor that'll work for scale or

something. I don't know. Maybe he's in the union. I don't understand his appeal at all. I've never seen a mental health doctor more inert and neutered than that little twerk. Yeah. You know, it's funny in Lindy West's essay collection, The Witches Are Coming, she has that chapter called Ted Bundy Wasn't Hot, Are You High?

And it's sort of, you know, commenting on what you're saying is that like our standard for middle-aged conventionally, like fatherly looking white men's charisma is so low. I mean, he was hot for the 70s, but God, things were so dark then. You know, obviously I like you think that all these guys, the Dr. Oz's and the Phil's and the Drew's seem like such scammy gas bags, but they are so successful and so respected by so much of America. So psychologically and culturally, what are you think the factors that prime someone to become a fan of a famous doctor?

I think you have to be lost. I think when we look at a lot of these people who fall for any sort of scam or cult is that you are looking for meaning. I actually really have a hard time at like laughing at these like MLM women, like certainly a lot of them are worthy of ire. I think the racist ones, yeah, laugh all you want. That's fine. But so many of them are just lost women who have not had a purpose because they have been

crushed by patriarchal structure that they have to live in, loser fucking husbands, you know, that they have no financial or professional autonomy in their lives. They're looking for someone who can give them guidance. Yeah. So everybody is susceptible to something like this all the time. I'm susceptible to it in lots of ways. This just isn't the way that I'm susceptible to it. I think perhaps by virtue of the fact that as a Canadian, I went to the doctor for free

until I was 28 and moved to the States. And so I actually don't think these like celeb doctors work the same way in socialist healthcare countries because it's free to get the advice from a doctor here. It costs so much fucking money that like, yeah, of course, how getting free medical advice on the internet or on television is of course, that's what you're going to do because your options are to give Cobra 800 bucks a month, you know, then go to a doctor in person and that's still going to cost you whatever the copay is and then he's going to run tests which come out of your deductible, like, which to be clear, all these words, the fact that

I know them makes me sick. I went to go to the doctor and I realized my insurance had expired in March, which they don't send you an email. So I'm like in the process of like getting health insurance and I saw this tweet that was like, what's cool about health insurance is that even when you have it, you don't like. Yeah, you don't. You don't have it.

Yeah. I'm trying to find one that will actually cover what I need. There literally is none. Your point about universal healthcare in Canada really speaks to a point that we often make on this podcast, which is that like Americans when we fall, when we lose our jobs, when we get sick is just not like it is in other developed countries like Canada and you know, and Western Europe and all these places. So it's like, yeah, that paves the way for alternative authority figures to sweep in

and be like, yeah, no one's helping you. I have the answers and that's where Dr. Oz gets his power. I mean, if the systems don't work, then if somebody comes to you and offers you a solution, you're going to take it. I just find it ironic that these women who are stuck in this more traditional patriarchal role of being married to like a cis man and being the home taker and the wife, they're often seeking help from like men too. They don't like switch over to be like, oh, maybe I should do something different.

They continue in that traditional role even in their outreach. I still think that people are more likely to listen to a male doctor, a white male doctor than any other authority figure, anybody else who's a doctor. I mean, we all have these biases. I know Sarah Hagee and I did an episode of scam influencers about a fake doctor who was really young. He was like a teenager and we said, we're like, you know what, if so much shows up and is my physician and he's younger than me, no, straight to jail.

I'm not doing that. Like that's a clear bias I have that I got to work on because that's not reasonable. And as I age, I'm going to have to make peace with that. But in terms of a lot of the more soft science doctors, which is not a term I love, but the emotional health guys, the psychiatrist, the psychotherapist, the talk therapist, I think if you're a woman who's having trouble, for example, in your marriage and your husband isn't listening to you. And maybe if you can sit him down and watch television with him and have him heed advice

from someone who looks like him and talks like him and has sort of the same attachments and detachments, I think that's more likely to be effective. So I think there's a reason why Dr. Phil is like the person that gets to be propped up is because the stuff he's saying, a lot of it I think is nonsense and a lot of it I don't agree with. A lot of what he says is just basic emotional intelligence stuff, right? Like, hey, do you want to have a good relationship with your stepdaughter? Don't scream at her.

Do you want to have a happy domestic life? Don't cheat on your wife. Like these are some of the stuff is super basic, but if part of the mission of those shows us to be instructive, then it's going to be on women to take that work and bring it back to the men in their lives. We're strangling them emotionally with whatever they're not doing right. Those guys are far more likely to listen to him than Dr. Jen or Dr. Ruth or anybody else. Yeah.

Of course, we give people the power we think they deserve, and so the exact same message, same words, same delivery, same everything could be coming from someone who looked different, a person of color, a woman of color, God forbid, and it wouldn't be interpreted the same. And I think that works on both ends. I mean, if you think about someone like Suzy Orman, Suzy Orman was often speaking to women who were over consuming, they were shopping too much, they were buying too many things. I think that is also an oversimplification of the financial crisis happening in America. A lot of it's just about the fact that student debt is out astronomical and you start at

a loss. But okay, assuming that Suzy's right, we're all just women be shopping, you're more likely, as a woman, to listen to her than you would if a male accountant came in and yelled at you. So it's the same thing. It's just about who do you think you're going to hear, who in your life needs the message even more and who will they listen to? Women are far more likely to take care of their physical health than men are.

And so a lot of these male like celeb doctors are kind of talking to men with the exception of the celeb doctors who are talking about like how to look younger and how to put this shit on your face and then you'll never ever wrinkle again. That stuff is obviously intended to prey on our panic as women about getting older. What was the most disturbing thing you learned about celebrity doctors in your reporting, do you think? Some of them are not doctors. Are there repercussions for claiming that credential?

But they're not claiming it. That's what you have to be really careful about looking at it. Do they go by their first or last name? I could say Dr. Amanda and it would be fine. That's between you and your lawyer, but you couldn't go by Dr. Montell. That's my parents. That's my... Yeah.

Exactly. I don't have a PhDs to clarify, not MDs, but oh my God, side note, in academia at least, I found that no one is more demanding about being called a doctor than people who have doctorates in like music or Greek mythology, like something absolutely not medical. A lot of them are not. I mean, maybe at some point they were or perhaps they have, for example, a PhD in something. But are they physicians? But if you pronounce it like doctor, I think that just means you're Italian.

What do you think are the cultiest aspects of celebrity doctors and would you consider them many cult leaders in their own right? Yeah, maybe. I don't know if I'm the person to suggest it. I think it's about the follower, right? Like how do they feel about them? A lot of people seem to have parasocial relationships with the families of celebrity doctors. Oh, interesting.

What? Yeah. If it's a male doctor and he has a wife, then people have a really strong connection with the wife and it very much becomes a family business. I think that's a little odd. Oh, weird. So how do they interact parasocially with the family? Like on the internet.

It's giving like Lula Roe vibes. Kind of. It is. Yeah. Like family business. Yes. What other like culty figures from the zeitgeist are you covering in your work now? Are you focusing on another sector of people or what are you up to these days?

We're still recording scam influencers episodes. So there's always some influential weirdo that we're looking at. I will probably do something about Dr. Oz and time for the midterms. We'll see what that looks like. I can't wait to read it. I should say for the listeners that I love Saachi's work and I voraciously consume it. If I had more time, maybe I would cult worship you. Yeah, you know what?

If you want to have a parasocial relationship with me, I'm open to it. The cult thing is, it's funny. It's very much like that old definition of chronography, which is like, I'll know when I see it. Yeah. We're going to play a game that we often play on this podcast called culty quotes. So we're going to read a sequence of quotes and you're going to have to guess was the quote said by a celebrity doctor or an infamous cult leader from history.

Play it on me. Quote number one, there is no reality, only perception. That would be a doctor. Yeah, that's Dr. Phil. Next quote, total paranoia is just total awareness. I hope it's a cult leader. Yeah. It was Charles Manson.

Good for him. Good for him. For him. You know what, worst person you know, sometimes they make a point. What are you going to do? That's the problem with cult leaders. Some percentage of what they say works or else no one would follow. Okay.

Next quote, we have a pandemic of childhood trauma. That's a doctor. Yeah. Can you guess which one? I don't know. Is it, it's not Dr. Phil. Dr. Drew. I thought that, but then I was, I, yeah, sounds like something he'd say.

Okay. Next quote, I really think it would be cowardly to pull back and not challenge the status quo when the status quo may not be the right way for the field to go. I think that's a doctor. Yeah. Who was it? Dr. Oz. Dr. Oz.

Yeah. Okay. Second to last quote, discover yourself, otherwise you have to depend on other people's opinions who don't know themselves. Cult leader. Yes. That was Osho from the Rajneesha's. Right.

You're like, I know. No, it's just, there are these interesting distinctions in how they talk. I mean, like, they're small tells. I feel like the cult leaders have a slightly more Yoda syntax. Well, they're not as media trained, honestly. So when they say things, it doesn't sound quite right because a writer isn't writing it for them. A cult leader just needs a little media training.

That's all. That's the problem. We don't want that. We actually, that would be actually really bad. Last quote, trauma can prevent what you really want, but also seemingly paradoxally, it can custom forge you for what you really want. It can just as easily bend you for failure as it can bend you for success. That sounds like a doctor.

That's teal swan. Yeah. I'm glad we got you on the last one. I mean, speaking of media training, I suppose she's media trained herself. The algorithm has media trained teal swan. She's kind of like a celeb doctor that doesn't go by doctor. Thank you so much for this interview. If you want to find you and follow you, where can they do that?

Find me on Instagram or on Twitter at AtSachi, S-C-A-A-C-H-I. We learned so very much from our guest, Sachi, but let's talk a little bit more about the celebrity doctors and their cult in detail. As we mentioned, some of them are just on TikTok and on social media, but some of them have network television shows that people buy tickets to, to go in person, or they try and get cast to be diagnosed on TV in front of people, and that is giving culty, culty vibes. Dr. Phil is probably one of the biggest names we learned from our guest, Sachi.

He is extremely litigious. He loves to throw around a little lawsuit for defamation, so we're going to be throwing around a lot of allegedly today. Allegedly. Okay, Dr. Phil, full name Phil McGraw, didn't know that. I'm just like Dr. Phil is the last name, and that's actually an important point. Oh my God, what if Taylor Swift's song was about like Phil McGraw instead of Tim McGraw? I know that's the first thing I thought of.

What's how does the song go again? When you think Phil McGraw, I hope you think me. I hope you think my favorite doc, the one who was on TikTok all night long, telling me to not get vaccinated. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly.

Allegedly. Phil McGraw and Tim McGraw, they actually share something in common, which is that they both have this sort of folksy charm, like they're both southern or southern-ish in Taylor's case. And that makes them feel relatable to the average like middle America white viewer. Yeah, it makes them feel like a family member. But Dr. Phil receives an average of 2.9 million television viewers daily 2023 will make the 19th season of his show.

That is insane because when you think about like social media and the amount of followers that influencers have, having a million followers, 2 million, 3 million, that's a lot of followers. But how many likes are you getting on post, you know? If someone with a lot of followers were to start a live stream, how many people would actually be watching, yeah, that's a totally different number. But 2.9 million viewers tuning in to his rhetoric daily on average. Yeah, so the reason he found his celebrity status is because he started working with Oprah in the mid-90s.

She got sued, speaking of lawsuits, by some beef industry cattle ranchers random in Texas. And she hired Dr. Phil to be a part of her legal counsel. It's always good to have a psychologist as a part of your legal team. In 1998, she started bringing him on her show as a relationship and life expert and people really took to him. Yeah, I actually read that Dr. Phil still writes a annual thank you note to Oprah every year because like she really did make his career. Thanks for making me famous.

Yeah. I think so much of his charisma is that he masks medical advice in the very approachable language of a life coach. And this reminds me so much not to make a direct comparison, but it really calls Jim Jones to mind because Jim Jones had this sort of folksy storytelling wit that he would combine with this pseudo intellectual status. So in the way that Jim Jones would quote the Bible and then turn around and preach socialism, Dr. Phil will quote the DSM and make some kind of country music reference.

Totally. And obviously the stakes and consequences of Dr. Phil and Jim Jones could never be compared. That is not what our message is or ever intends to be, but purely as a thought exercise. It is interesting to look at how the same type of charisma that attracted people to such destructive cult leaders like Jim Jones can work in a more everyday context too. But you just saying that like comparing him to Jim Jones made me realize even though he has this like charisma and this power over people who literally like fly across the country to be on his show to get his advice, he is still under the larger cult of entertainment

of TV production. So he is under like some sort of establishment, which I think we don't see often with a lot of the other like rogue cult leaders is that like he has people holding him accountable in certain ways. So I feel like that kind of prevents him from like going off the deep, deep end. That's a totally fair point because probably those higher ups are afraid of getting sued whereas like Jim Jones was like, I'm moving to Guyana baby, like come and find me. But I do want to make a comparison between their rhetoric because I think and politicians

use this type of rhetoric to populist politicians. These like white dudes using this really accessible, charming, self-help, almost like nursery rhyme type of language. We failed to notice how compelling that is. According to this Dr. Phil quote, compared to this Jim Jones quote, it's better to be healthy alone than sick with someone else. If we can't live in peace, then let's die in peace. It's this like mirroring of language that is just like good oratory styling, like just

good speech giving prowess that doesn't necessarily lend itself to like a doctor, but he's like mastered the lilt of a preacher basically. Most doctors don't really know how to speak like that. Like have you ever gone to the doctor and they like are trying to tell you something that's wrong with you and you're like, speak English. Yeah. That's why I feel like folks like Dr. Phil, you know, they thrive so much because they are able to communicate with us in a way that we don't just understand literally, but he

also like taps at our emotions and our feelings. Medical doctor that you're having an appointment with one-on-one will be like all terminology, all specificity, all meaning and no love bombing. Dr. Phil is like no meaning, no specifics, no diagnosis, all love bombing. Yeah. All of that side manner. That's why it appeals to the masses. When you're diagnosing with specifics, it's going to get to like one or two people, but

when you want to reach a three million person audience on a daily basis, you're going to have to really generalize. And there is drama between TV doctors and the actual medical community. A lot of that came to light during COVID. TV doctors were undermining actual medical expertise at the time. Dr. Phil joined Fauci on Fox News, of course, and said 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 die from cigarettes, 360 a year from swimming pools, but we don't shut the country down for that.

So getting so annoying. Yeah. Just confidently spreading this information when again, he's just a celebrity with a PhD in psych. Yeah. And he's saying facts like 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents. Like he's not telling misinformation technically, but he's playing dumb into like the effects of like what he's implying, especially at a time when like people weren't vaccinated.

Why the fuck is Dr. Phil making this appearance? Exactly. Speaking with authority on the subject matter, because he wants his studio to open back up so that he can get people back in the studio and his show back up. Exactly. And this is all on the clout, all on the fame, and not on actual patient care. So let's talk about some of the culty red flags here. I think one of them is the quality of the information provided on a lot of these shows.

So in 2014, there was a study that examined episodes of Dr. Oz and the show The Doctors, and it found that only 54% of recommendations studied had even one piece of medical evidence to back them up. Yes. This reminds me of a story that I read from 2011 when Dr. Oz went on the air and made claims about how there were dangerous levels of arsenic in apple juice, which sent moms around the country into needless panic. Think about who is watching these late afternoon doctor shows.

It's moms, it's people who are anxious about making sure their children are healthy and that makes them vulnerable, especially when these celebrity doctors have such the sort of nurturing paternal disposition, they're like, daddy, like my actual husband, does it work? Yeah. And the thing about these male celeb doctors too is that the majority of their audiences are women. So then women trust them even more because they're always engaging with women or surrounding

themselves with women. So they're like, oh, they must be trustworthy. And that is such cult leader vibes as well, because I know we've mentioned this on the podcast before, but every cult in history, there's like a powerful middle-aged white cis male authority at the top surrounded by a gaggle of pretty women who kind of like steer him and like traffic people to him. Not to mention, and this is what causes some of that panic that we have when we go down rabbit holes on WebMD or whatever.

It's just never good to generalize medical information when everyone's body is so different. Yeah. I feel like generalizing never leads to anything good. It's like when a guy has sex with one girl and they figure out what works for her. And then you hook up with them and then they try that out on you. And you're like, yeah, I don't think like tickling my ears really going to get me off. I'm glad that it worked for Becky, but we're going to have to figure something out for us.

Yeah, you're like, I really know what Becky liked now. Yeah, yeah. Like especially when they do something like really specific and really weird, you're like, all right, your ex liked that. Yes. It's like, I don't need to know that. Now when I have sex with Becky, yeah, bisexual moments, you're like, now I know what to do. So we've talked about all kinds of celebrity doctors from influencers to TV doctors, but

now it's time to diagnose. Amanda, what do you think celebrity doctors fall under? Do you think they are a live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out level cult? They're a classic watch your back, man, solid, solid watch your back. The medical health and wellness landscape is so full of confusion and quacks. There is so much information out there. I think that the goal of simplifying everything is valid.

I think like making medicine more available to the average everyday person in this country is legit. But I also know that nobody is an expert in everything exactly. And people are incredibly susceptible, especially when celebrities are just like bathed in this glow of expertise. We trust famous people when they endorse things, especially when they're doctors. And so the fact that they can basically say whatever they want and are profiting handsomely off of a vulnerable and at times desperate public, the fact that they're exaggerating

their title and expertise, all of this lends itself to a watch your back situation. And I also think it's important to talk about, and I think we'll do this in another episode in more depth, but like the cult of actual doctors and like actual medicine is a cult of its own like residencies and nursing. And so I think that's what kind of like grounds the cult of celebrity doctors in a way to me because as important as it is to have these credentials and like provide legitimate information, I also think that these like celebrity or influencer doctors provide the flip side of the coin to doctors who are really doubled down in the cult of like pharmaceutical dependent

culture and medicine, especially like Western medicine is like so closed minded about like how to it's true create solutions for people. And so I feel like it's kind of hard to say anything with medicine is like a definitely bad or definitely good. Yeah, you're right. I can say this though, what is definitely bad in medicine is to give absolutist advice. Yes. Everyone.

Everyone doing so is making you rich and famous in America, you know, there's also a difference between a non famous doctor who's marrying alternative treatments like you mentioned with traditional treatments because they care about humans and a celebrity doctor who's just disseminating the most optimized monetizable message because they care about themselves. The way I see it like doctors are supposed to specialize and make referrals and stay in their lane and the cult here a doctor is the less they'll stay in their lane. Everybody's body is different. Everybody's mind is different.

I don't trust the average viewer to check up on the credentials of each of these celebrity doctors. I don't even trust them to necessarily care because they assume, oh, this person wouldn't be on TV unless the network gave them their stamp of approval. America's free market and lack of regulations has pros and cons, but it does suck for the time being at least it is a viewer's responsibility to make sure that they don't get swept too deep into the cult of celebrity doctors. Everything is up to interpretation.

Everyone is going to turn advice into like what they want to hear. It's classic confirmation bias. Yeah. There's just so much content out there. Yeah. Clearly these dudes have no qualms about taking up space. Yeah. And they continue to do so on the internet in real life.

On television. I think we have to take doctors off of pedestal and realize like that they're also people, you know. For sure. They're acceptable to the algorithm as well. So to me, the danger of having these doctors on social media isn't just like the mass information they're generalizing, but it's also the idea that they're becoming privy to this like highly addictive platform and they might be willing to do or say more sensational things just for

the likes and the follows. But at the same time, they like hold a lot of power. Yeah. A cult like amount of power. When you're consuming content from doctors or physicians or people just claiming to be doctors and physicians. Watch your back. Watch your back.

Well, that's our show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty. Like a cult is created, hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and Issa Medina. Kate Elizabeth is our editor. Our podcast studio is all things comedy and our theme music is by Casey Colb. Thank you to our intern slash production assistant, Noemi Griffin.

Subscribe to Sounds Like a Cult wherever you get your podcasts. So you never miss an episode. And if you like our show, feel free to give us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and check us out on Patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.