0:00

Hi everybody

0:02

and welcome to Maintenance

0:06

Phase, the podcast that dares

0:08

to answer the question,

0:11

where's

0:17

the beef? Oh no, you did one of the puns. I

0:20

was going to read you all the headlines with the puns.

0:22

I figured I should bring the

0:25

timeliest reference

0:26

that I could to this show. The

0:28

other really good timely one is a lot

0:31

of the headlines are like, Cattleman's Association has

0:33

a cow over Oprah's comments. That

0:36

wouldn't even make sense to people anymore. Well this is

0:38

also the early 90s when people

0:40

are like, woo, Bart Simpson.

0:43

He's animated but he's bad. Incredible.

0:46

You can tell by his slingshot and his haircut.

0:48

I am Michael Hobbs. I am Aubrey Gordon.

0:51

If you would like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com

0:54

slash maintenance phase. You can also subscribe

0:57

through Apple podcasts and

0:59

you can get t-shirts, mugs, tote bags, all

1:01

manner of things at tpublic.

1:03

We will link all of that for you in the show notes. Michael,

1:06

I am at a loss because I was

1:08

steeled for tiny interrupting machine

1:10

and it didn't happen. I

1:13

was like, the best way

1:14

to fuck with her is to not do anything. Don't

1:17

let her do it. You were 100% right. I

1:21

am on my heels. One

1:23

step ahead

1:23

of you. Please try.

1:27

Uh, Michael, today

1:30

we are talking about a thing

1:32

that I actually know almost nothing

1:34

about. I'm so excited.

1:36

Which is the Oprah V Cattleman's

1:39

Association court bout

1:42

of the 1990s, right? Oprah

1:44

V Beef. Yes. I

1:46

made the mistake of telling

1:48

one of my family members last night what

1:50

our show is about and they were like,

1:52

Oh, that's how she met Dr. Phil. And I was like, shut up, shut

1:54

up. Oh no, you got a spoiler for something that happened 30

1:57

years ago. I did. And it really

1:59

fucked me up.

1:59

What do you actually know? If you

2:02

were forced to put a chronology

2:04

together, what would you say? I believe

2:06

the Cattleman's Association, or

2:09

like beef ranchers or something,

2:12

came after Oprah and

2:15

filed suit against her. It was a big

2:17

lawsuit, but I don't know why. My

2:20

understanding was that it was around something

2:23

relating to talking about mad cow

2:25

disease. Yes. My assumption

2:27

is that she did a show where she was like, mad

2:29

cow is

2:30

a thing. And they were like, get out of town. That's

2:32

basically it, Aubrey. We can close now. Roughly

2:35

you're not. Thanks for joining us on our shortest

2:37

episode of maintenance.

2:37

You're not going to get a huge twist in

2:40

this, but this is

2:42

a two-part episode. And like

2:44

all two-part episodes, this is basically

2:47

just an excuse to talk about a bunch

2:49

of other shit and put Oprah in the title

2:51

of the show so that you download it. Thinking it's

2:53

going to be fun. But it's mostly about

2:56

mad cow disease and the ins and outs

2:59

of American libel law, which is

3:01

actually weirdly interesting. Okay.

3:04

So to get to the beef in 1996, we

3:07

have to talk about the apples

3:10

in 1989. Here's what I know about apples

3:12

in the 80s. There were three kinds

3:14

and they were all bad. Red,

3:18

yellow, green, bad. So in

3:20

February of 1989, 60 Minutes

3:23

runs a segment that was warning

3:25

the US population

3:26

about the dangers of

3:28

pesticides. There was a pesticide

3:30

called ALAR that farmers sprayed

3:33

on apple trees to keep the apples from

3:35

falling down and getting bruised. The

3:38

segment opens with a graphic

3:41

of a red delicious apple like morphing

3:44

into a skull and crossbones. It's

3:47

like beef morphing technology. The

3:51

audacity of news graphics

3:53

in the 80s is unparalleled.

3:57

I love

3:57

this so much. They never should have

3:59

given you mother. motherfuckers morphing. That was,

4:01

remember the Michael Jackson video? And then it

4:03

was like, let's put morphing in there. Oh my God. We

4:06

got a

4:06

morph it. So the segment

4:08

begins with Ed Bradley

4:11

saying, the most potent cancer

4:14

causing agent in our food supply is

4:16

a substance sprayed on

4:17

apples to keep them on the trees longer and

4:19

make them look better. That's the conclusion of

4:21

a number of scientific experts. And

4:23

who is most at risk? Children who

4:26

may someday develop cancer from this

4:28

one chemical called Alar. And

4:31

then this is the

4:34

rest of the segment. Oh my God.

4:36

You know, this is one of my other favorite

4:38

things is watching an extremely dated

4:41

news segment. Dude, I know. I know. Wellness.

4:44

What is it? So here's the clip. They're

4:46

going to say

4:46

Domenazide, which is like the official

4:49

name for the pesticide, which is sold as

4:51

Alar. Janet Hathaway's

4:54

organization, the Natural Resources Defense

4:56

Council has just completed the most careful

4:58

study yet on the effect of Domenazide

5:01

and seven other cancer causing pesticides

5:03

in the food children eat.

5:05

Just from these eight pesticides,

5:07

what we're finding is that the risk of

5:10

developing cancer is approximately 250

5:14

times what EPA says is an acceptable

5:16

level of cancer in our population.

5:18

Kids are at a high risk from

5:21

UDMH because they drink so much

5:23

apple juice. The average preschooler

5:25

drinks 18 times more apple juice

5:27

than his or her mother. If those

5:30

apples were treated with Domenazide, the

5:32

cancer risk is perilously high.

5:37

It sounds pretty damning. Pretty bad.

5:40

But also I know that the science

5:42

around carcinogens is squishier

5:45

than we like to talk about. And I

5:47

know that the news media loves a story

5:49

like this. And I know that

5:51

the number one way to sort of take something down

5:53

is they causes cancer. I feel

5:55

like what you're really saying is, Mike, I know the

5:57

premise of the show, so it's probably more complicated.

6:00

I'm approaching this with caution because I've been recording

6:02

this show with you for three years. Because you know the only

6:04

reason we're going to talk about this is if it's like a little

6:06

bit more complicated than it seems. But also like

6:08

listen, if I just saw this on TV,

6:11

I'd be like, holy shit. Yeah. I got to stop

6:13

by an apples. So this segment

6:16

is basically a preview of

6:18

a report that is about to come out from the Natural

6:20

Resources Defense Council, which is an environmental

6:23

NGO,

6:23

where they tested a bunch of different

6:25

pesticides for their like carcinogenness.

6:29

Like how dangerous are all of these pesticides?

6:32

And ALAR turned out to be by

6:34

far

6:34

the most dangerous one. And

6:37

it's very convincing in that it's like, okay, there's this evil

6:39

chemical which has this scary name, and then

6:41

we cut

6:41

to footage of kids. And it's like, well,

6:44

in their little kid bodies, every

6:46

carcinogen is more concentrated. And

6:49

kids are drinking, they say, 18 times more apple

6:51

juice than adults. This also taps

6:53

into a very real

6:56

track record of chemical

6:59

companies doing horrible things, right?

7:01

Yes. This is a little bit like if someone tells you that

7:04

Big Pharma did something that was trash. You're

7:06

like, yeah, that tracks. This is like the

7:08

central tension at the heart of this

7:10

entire episode. On one hand,

7:12

this is obviously

7:13

like a little overblown this report. But on the other

7:16

hand, it's like a fucking pesticide company,

7:18

which is like, like lying to

7:20

us constantly because like profit motive is

7:23

the number one thing that they operate based

7:25

on. And also listen, at this

7:27

point, I was a kid watching

7:29

a TV show called Captain

7:32

Planet, right where the villains

7:34

were polluters. God, that show was such

7:36

great propaganda. I love that shit. I mean

7:38

that in

7:38

the most complimentary way. I

7:41

loved it so much. So as

7:43

you would expect, right after this 60 minutes segment

7:46

comes out and the environmental NGO

7:48

publishes this report, there's like mass

7:50

panic. 10 large school

7:52

districts around the country, it's like New York, Chicago, LA,

7:55

they pull apples from their cafeterias.

7:57

Whoa, the apple industry just

7:59

like. Completely fucking tanks. There's

8:02

reports of a parent calling

8:05

Poison control and asking

8:07

if it's safe to pour apple juice down

8:09

the drain like it's

8:11

It's

8:14

not paint guys. Yeah, I know

8:16

people people really took this

8:18

stuff like very seriously There's

8:20

also a report of a mom chasing

8:23

after her kids school bus and being like I packed

8:25

him an apple in his lunch Oh,

8:27

okay losing their minds

8:29

about this shit. She was confused. She thought it

8:32

was the snackwells cookie, man Call

8:37

back so eventually the manufacturer

8:39

pulls a lard from the market so like you

8:42

cannot get a lard in America anymore

8:44

This is why we don't have any apples because they're

8:46

all on the ground

8:47

But then the the apple

8:50

industry is so mad

8:52

about this That they file a

8:54

lawsuit against 60 Minutes and

8:56

CBS and the local affiliates

8:59

for libel big apple Big

9:01

apple and they the lawsuit

9:04

is like kind of funny So the

9:06

first problem with this

9:08

lawsuit is that it's not clear

9:11

like who can sue

9:12

Over a claim like this right because

9:14

this is something that affects the entire Apple industry

9:17

And the lawsuit is filed by

9:19

a couple of essentially random

9:21

apple growers in Washington

9:23

State in their lawsuit They

9:25

say 60 Minutes did not

9:27

employ the term red apples But

9:29

the visuals accompanying the spoken

9:32

word left no doubt that red apples

9:34

Constituted the subject matter nor was

9:37

Washington State referenced by name although

9:39

thanks to a long-standing aggressive marketing

9:41

approach taken by the Washington State Apple Advertising

9:44

Commission It is commonly known throughout the country

9:46

if not the world that Washington is the prime

9:48

producer of red apples is that

9:51

widely known It's not even like

9:53

apple farmers It's like red apple farmers,

9:55

and they're like you

9:56

have labeled the good name of

9:58

red apples. I'll tell you what At this point,

10:00

red apples are red delicious and those things

10:02

come pre-libaled. Those

10:05

things are already bad. Their

10:09

product is libel

10:09

against their product. The

10:12

Washington State Apple industry

10:15

files this huge lawsuit.

10:19

One of the judges, sometimes

10:21

judges are trying to be cute with their decisions.

10:24

One of the judges

10:24

says, Apple's haven't received

10:26

such bad press since Genesis. I get

10:29

it. That's a cute little zinger, but I

10:31

don't know that I love judges doing like shtick

10:34

like in their little opinions. In

10:37

their lawsuit, the Apple growers list three

10:40

false claims that were in the 60 Minutes segment

10:42

that they're basing this lawsuit on. The first

10:44

is the most potent cancer-causing

10:47

agent in our food supply is a substance

10:49

known as

10:49

ALAR. The second is

10:52

we know that ALAR causes cancer

10:55

and over a lifetime, one

10:57

child out of every

10:59

4,000 will develop cancer from these

11:01

eight pesticides. Those last two seem

11:04

potentially really hard to prove. I will say

11:06

like in defense of this

11:08

lawsuit, first of all, a lot of Apple

11:10

growers were like genuinely like put out of business by

11:12

this. The Apple industry like

11:15

was decimated for a couple months, like it eventually

11:17

came back, but this is a perishable product.

11:20

And so it just sort of sits there and rots

11:22

because you can't sell

11:23

anything because the price crashes. The

11:26

segment is like straightforwardly like scaremongering

11:29

bullshit. The actual

11:32

context of ALAR and

11:34

the EPA and everything that was going on was

11:36

this pesticide had been approved

11:38

in 1968. There was a whole

11:41

approval process in which they did a bunch

11:43

of studies to determine whether it was a carcinogen.

11:45

So it's not like it was just

11:46

put on the market with like no process

11:49

behind it, right? It's on the market for

11:51

a couple years. And then there's essentially one

11:54

lab at a university

11:55

in Oklahoma that does a test

11:57

in 1973 on a bunch of rats. they

12:00

give rats like a fuck

12:02

ton of Alar. They give them the

12:05

apple growers will later say that to

12:07

be exposed to this much Alar,

12:09

you would have to

12:10

eat 28,000 apples a day. Holy

12:13

shit. This is like the Diet Coke rat

12:15

studies. We're like, exactly. We just injected

12:18

it into their brains at twice their body weight.

12:20

Exactly. They're just blasting them.

12:22

Right. And they do one study

12:24

in 1973 on rats that finds

12:27

us a carcinogen. They do another one in 1977 that

12:29

I believe is on hamsters, which also finds that it's

12:31

a carcinogen. After these two studies come out

12:34

in the 1970s, the EPA forms

12:36

a panel. They look at this evidence and they're

12:38

like, we don't know that this is

12:40

like all that big of a deal. There's

12:42

actually a really interesting debate going on in science

12:44

at the time about whether you can

12:47

determine whether something is a carcinogen

12:50

by blasting

12:51

animals with high doses of it, because

12:53

the toxicity of a substance

12:56

is oftentimes totally dependent

12:57

on the dosage. So like if

13:00

you have too much alcohol, you can die. If

13:02

you have too much caffeine all at once, you

13:04

can die. But when you're getting

13:06

these substances at like much lower

13:08

doses, the idea is

13:10

that your body kind of repairs itself. It's

13:12

not necessarily the case that

13:15

getting something in small amounts will

13:18

have the same effects as getting something in like dump

13:20

truck amounts. Yeah, it's interesting as

13:23

you're talking about this, I'm just thinking about how

13:25

much of our sort of like health

13:27

and wellness conversations and conversations

13:29

about like specific ingredients or

13:31

components of food are

13:34

really stuck in this kind of binary

13:36

mode that you're describing, right? Which

13:38

is just like any amount of this equals

13:41

cancer. Right. I actually read a really

13:43

interesting content analysis of the 297 articles

13:47

published about this in 1989, which

13:49

is just a fucking huge number of articles. And

13:52

what it said is that like very few of the articles

13:55

told people this, that

13:57

it's like the EPA

13:58

is looking at it. They did more. studies,

14:00

the EPA then forms a panel and

14:03

the EPA is like, we don't know that this data

14:05

is all that good, but we're going

14:07

to now order the manufacturer of ALAR

14:09

to perform more tests. Two

14:12

weeks before the 60 Minutes report,

14:14

the EPA had ordered the manufacturer to pull

14:16

it off the market. The whole report

14:19

coming from this environmental NGO is

14:22

about like, you should be phasing it out faster.

14:25

It's difficult to see this as like a total

14:28

breakdown of like government regulators

14:30

when it's like, no, they looked at the data,

14:33

they ordered the manufacturer to do more tests and

14:35

they were like, hey, let's be careful

14:36

and pull this off the market. It's kind of already

14:39

happening. Does that get covered in the 60 Minutes

14:41

story? Yeah, they mentioned it, but with

14:43

these things, it's all about like the emphasis,

14:46

right? Oftentimes the facts are in there if you

14:48

look at each sentence of the

14:50

report in this very like, what is the information

14:52

that it contains? But it's very easy

14:54

for your eyes and your ears to kind of skip over this

14:56

stuff, depending on what the emphasis is, right? The

14:58

emphasis in the report is like kids

15:00

are eating this and this causes cancer and kids could get

15:02

cancer anytime. And everything

15:04

that comes after an apple morphs

15:07

into a skull and crossbones. Yeah, exactly. Like

15:09

this is the number one thing you're going to take away from that. That graphic

15:12

should have been the grounds for their lawsuit.

15:13

Yeah, yeah, no shit. But

15:16

then the other thing that the lawsuit

15:18

mentions is that not only does the segment

15:20

not really prove that this causes

15:23

cancer in kids, it doesn't even

15:25

really prove that this causes cancer in

15:27

humans. This is literally

15:30

based on these two studies

15:32

from the 1970s of like rats and

15:34

hamsters. And another thing I thought

15:36

was fairly irresponsible about the segment is that

15:39

by 1989, ALAR had been

15:41

on the market for almost 20 years. Have

15:43

the kinds of cancers that we would predict gone

15:46

up in the population during that time? If

15:48

not, I feel like that's something to like

15:50

at least tell the audience at some point.

15:53

Right. And also like, could you compare it to other

15:55

places that don't use this substance? Right.

15:58

There's like a bunch of ways that you could look at it.

15:59

them imperfect, but could

16:02

point you in a direction or not. Right. Another

16:04

thing that they didn't really mention is that this pesticide

16:07

was already basically

16:08

being phased out. So, the

16:11

EPA estimated that it was only

16:13

being used on about 5% of apples by the time this

16:17

report came out. The environmental NGO

16:19

says that it's closer to 30%. The

16:21

industry says it's 10%. It's

16:24

not like every single

16:25

apple you buy is going to be

16:27

doused with this pesticide. 5% to 10%

16:30

to 30% of apples, that's a big

16:32

range. Huge range, I know. But it's also not

16:34

the same thing as every apple might

16:36

be poison for your child, right?

16:39

And also, we know this now, we didn't

16:41

know this then, but ALAR

16:43

has been looked

16:44

at by a bunch of other countries and

16:46

the UN and the WHO have both said that

16:48

it's not a carcinogen and there's been more

16:50

tests now. What? Yeah,

16:53

it's not clear that this

16:56

actually is dangerous. I don't really

16:58

fucking care that the US banned a

17:00

pesticide needlessly.

17:01

Just

17:04

like the McDonald's thing in last episode, I'm like, I

17:06

don't weep over the fate

17:08

of a fucking pesticide company. Don't someone

17:10

think of the shareholders? Yeah, exactly. No,

17:13

we're fine. But then, the real legacy

17:16

of this case is not about

17:19

ALAR. It's about what happens

17:21

to libel laws. So,

17:24

the apple growers sue CBS

17:26

for libel

17:27

and the case is thrown out

17:30

because they can't prove that

17:32

any of these claims are false. They

17:34

say, well, we know that ALAR causes cancer.

17:37

Well, there's some evidence that it's a carcinogen

17:39

in rats. That is a factual

17:41

statement or at least close enough to a factual statement

17:44

that 60 Minutes is justified

17:46

in saying it. Sure.

17:48

And also, when you pair it with B-roll

17:51

of children eating apples, it's

17:53

also leading you in a direction. So

17:56

it's factually correct,

17:58

but also a mere emitting important

18:01

information. Well, this is the central

18:03

case of the apple growers

18:05

is they basically say that like, yeah,

18:08

there's no specifically false

18:10

claim like at the sentence level

18:13

in this segment. But the overall

18:15

impression that it leaves you with is that apples

18:17

are fucking dangerous to eat. And this is an

18:19

actual thing

18:20

in libel law. It's called the substantial

18:23

truth requirement. The idea

18:25

is that you can't go after a news

18:27

organization for like one false

18:30

claim in a longer, you know,

18:32

segment or book

18:33

or article whose overall

18:36

message is not libelous. But

18:38

the problem is that because they sued

18:41

in Washington, we don't have the substantial

18:43

truth requirement. You have to prove that the actual

18:45

like

18:45

sentence level claims were false.

18:48

So again, I have some

18:51

sympathy with the apple growers,

18:52

right? Because basically there's like this

18:54

TV show that is the number one most

18:56

watched TV show at the time that is saying your

18:59

fucking product is poison. Yeah, to children,

19:01

to children. Yeah. And like a

19:03

lot of apple growers weren't even using fucking a lard,

19:05

right? They're like, well, nobody's buying my product either,

19:08

even though I already phased out this fucking pesticide. Yeah,

19:10

right. Like it is pretty fucked up and unfair. On

19:13

the other hand,

19:14

when it comes to laws that are governing

19:16

things like food safety, you kind

19:18

of want to err on the side of like being

19:21

able to warn people that a product

19:24

might be dangerous. Yeah, right. There's

19:27

this balance here between like protecting the interests

19:29

of an industry and protecting like

19:31

free speech. When does the evidence rise

19:34

to the point where you can say like, hey, we

19:36

think this product

19:36

causes cancer. When should the media

19:38

be able to do that? We're also just

19:41

in like weird hinky territory where

19:44

claims about free speech are almost

19:46

always like about white supremacy

19:49

or like people's saying

19:51

and doing horrific things to be

19:53

considerably less power, even

19:56

though free speech is like, you know, generally

19:58

a good.

19:59

thing. I like it. It has been sort of

20:02

hijacked. Yeah. But I'm like conceptually

20:05

and legally, right? If we're talking about interpretations

20:08

of the First Amendment, I could absolutely

20:10

see that there would be a ton of tensions in that.

20:12

Exactly. And this is a tension that

20:14

has existed since

20:15

the beginning of like the journalism industry.

20:18

So this case is thrown

20:20

out mostly because in

20:23

America, it's just very difficult

20:26

for public figures and for

20:28

companies to win defamation

20:31

lawsuits. And to

20:33

understand what happens next, we

20:36

have to talk about the ins and

20:38

outs of libel law, which

20:41

I think is actually like pretty interesting. I

20:43

know that you know

20:44

an attorney and I suspect

20:47

that you talk to an attorney about this.

20:50

A charming little attorney. I

20:52

host a podcast with a fat lady and

20:54

a little tiny lawyer. Those are my jobs.

20:56

That's his job. And that's my job. My job is

20:58

fat lady.

20:59

So yeah,

21:02

how much do you know about libel law, Aubrey?

21:05

My greatest fear is that I learn more

21:07

about people. That

21:09

you learn

21:09

it against your will from this

21:12

goddamn show. Yes. Yes. Yes. So

21:16

basically, you know, America's like kind

21:18

of famous at this point for having like very strong

21:20

libel laws. It's really hard to win a libel

21:22

case in America. And one of the reasons for

21:25

that is there's

21:25

a totally different standard of

21:27

libel protections for public figures.

21:30

If you're just a random person and

21:33

a newspaper prince, like you're cheating on your

21:35

wife or something, that's like pretty

21:37

fucked up because it's not like a matter of public

21:40

concern and it's much easier

21:41

to win a libel lawsuit. But

21:44

public figures have much more

21:46

ability to respond than

21:48

a private figure does. So if we say on this

21:51

show that like Gwyneth Paltrow

21:53

is like faking

21:54

her organic certification, her products

21:57

are from sweatshops or something, she's

21:59

a massive celebrity. She can go

22:01

on Instagram, she can call a press conference,

22:04

she can have a video produced about how

22:06

much we suck and her organic practices. The

22:08

state doesn't really need to get

22:10

involved. The

22:12

first bar that public

22:14

figures or companies have to

22:16

clear to win a libel lawsuit

22:19

is it has to be about a specific

22:21

individual. If somebody

22:24

says on their podcast that lady podcasters

22:28

in Portland are the worst,

22:30

you can't sue for that. I've tried,

22:32

Michael. I know. What

22:35

are your legal updates, Aubrey? I sued

22:37

McDonald's for the coffee not being hot enough.

22:43

The other bar to clear

22:45

is that libel has to be a fact,

22:48

not an opinion. If we say on the

22:50

show, like Gwyneth Paltrow sucks and

22:52

you should never order anything from Goop again, that's

22:55

not libel because that's just our

22:57

opinion

22:58

and opinions are protected by the First Amendment. So

23:00

even if we're kind of going out of our way to

23:03

put her out of business, that's not libel

23:05

unless we're saying Gwyneth Paltrow

23:08

is an ax murderer and she's murdered 14 people and

23:10

she's been convicted in nine states. Hang on, I'm just

23:12

lifting that out of context

23:15

and sent

23:17

to Goop. The funniest

23:19

case that I came across, this is like how this

23:22

gets entrenched in law is

23:23

– you know the speaker company Bose?

23:26

They tried to sue Consumer Reports for

23:28

publishing a bad review? This

23:33

was in 1984. Consumer

23:35

Reports said,

23:36

their speakers seem to grow

23:38

gigantic proportions and tended

23:41

to wander about the room, which

23:43

isn't even like that sick of a burn. But

23:46

Bose was like, this shall not stand. And

23:49

then the court was like, you gotta be fucking kidding me. You

23:52

gotta be able to say that these speakers suck. I'm

23:54

going to start suing

23:55

people who leave lukewarm

23:57

reviews of my book. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

24:00

I appreciated the first half. The second half

24:02

was not totally for me, but yeah,

24:05

like lawsuit. Yeah, it

24:06

was totally for you Another

24:09

thing that's really interesting is I think a lot of the public Thinks

24:12

that libel law is really about

24:14

like you've made a false claim about

24:16

somebody but in the United States There's all

24:19

kinds of false claims that are actually protected

24:22

So I mean there's an infinite number of false

24:24

claims that you can publish about somebody like somebody could publish

24:26

that like Michael Hobbs is Right-handed that's

24:29

a false claim, but it's not actionable as libel

24:31

because it doesn't damage my reputation left-hand

24:33

hive rise up Yeah,

24:36

it's actually very interesting how few

24:38

libel trials Actually

24:40

hinge on like whether or not the claims were

24:42

true a lot of libel trials hinge

24:45

on whether it was the kind of false Claim

24:48

that it's okay to make So

24:51

the reason for this balancing act in the law

24:53

is that like journalism is kind of messy

24:55

if you're a journalist acting

24:56

in good faith You're gonna get tips and

24:59

sometimes those tips are about sort of like urgent issues,

25:01

right? If you get a tip that like, okay This this

25:03

pizzeria is poisoning people and there's been 75 cases

25:06

of food poisoning and you have some reason

25:09

to think that that is Accurate you've reached out to

25:11

the pizza place You're actually allowed to

25:13

print that as long as you've kind of done

25:15

your due diligence And

25:18

for a public figure to win

25:20

a libel lawsuit against a false claim

25:23

The bar they have to reach is extremely high So

25:25

you have to prove that the journalist

25:27

was acting with what's called actual malice.

25:30

Yeah, you don't want any of that fake-ass malice

25:33

Yeah, exactly real the real shit real Malice

25:36

and it means that not only

25:38

is the claim that we made about Gwyneth Paltrow

25:40

false But we knew it was false

25:43

or we just had a completely reckless Disregard

25:45

for whether it was false right like

25:48

I saw a graffiti on a trash can

25:50

that said like Gwyneth Paltrow has murdered a bunch Of people

25:52

and so I put it on my podcast like

25:54

no, that's not real The whole

25:57

kind of idea is that like in a

25:59

robust free speech, free media

26:01

environment, false claims are gonna

26:04

get published, right? Things are gonna fall through

26:06

the cracks. And we can't have

26:08

a legal system that protects

26:10

fucking celebrities from like every single

26:13

false claim, right? Like we have to

26:15

be able to kind of err on

26:17

the side

26:18

of informing the public about important

26:20

issues rather than erring on the

26:22

side of like, no one should hurt Gwyneth Paltrow's feelings.

26:24

I'm really delighted I have to say that

26:27

Gwyneth Paltrow is your example of a public

26:29

figure and murdering people

26:31

is your example of a false claim. I'm

26:34

trying not to get sued because I'm

26:37

using

26:37

an example that's like so outlandish

26:40

that no one is going to think that this is true. Also,

26:43

this is actually a super bad example because there's certain claims

26:45

about individuals

26:45

that are always libelous and one of

26:47

them is that somebody has committed a crime.

26:50

So I'm technically

26:52

libeling Gwyneth Paltrow by saying that she murdered a bunch

26:54

of people in acts. You're making my greatest

26:57

fear come true. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. It's happening. Sorry.

27:00

So basically, these are all

27:02

of the reasons why these Apple

27:05

manufacturers, growers are like really

27:07

mad about the fact that they can't win this case, right?

27:10

Because to

27:10

a normal person, I think

27:12

you look at this and you're like, okay, these guys said this thing that

27:14

was like on kind of dubious grounds,

27:16

they destroyed our industry. And then

27:19

when we try to sue them, it doesn't

27:21

go anywhere because we can't prove

27:23

that they acted with malice.

27:26

So in 1992, after this

27:29

case is thrown out, the agricultural

27:32

producers, not just

27:33

the Apple people, but the everything

27:35

people start lobbying

27:37

state governments to pass

27:40

special laws to protect

27:42

agricultural industries from libelous

27:44

claims. Boy, I'll tell you what, for every

27:47

wacky news story, there is some kind

27:49

of extremely reactionary

27:51

set of state level policy. See,

27:53

it's really something. Exactly. Some

27:56

fucking nightmare epilogue

27:57

that like no normal person is paying attention.

28:00

to. So these laws go

28:02

by various names. The kind of official name

28:04

or the one that the media uses the most is veggie

28:07

libel laws. But people

28:09

also refer to them as banana

28:11

bills or sirloin

28:14

slander. I think that's kind of the most one. Because

28:17

it's a lot of meat producers. Sirloin

28:19

slander is an amazing name

28:22

for

28:22

a drag king. That's

28:24

a free one. The logic

28:27

that the agricultural producers use

28:30

is that there's a set of libel laws. We're already

28:32

protected by ordinary libel laws.

28:34

Those work for Gwyneth Paltrow because

28:36

somebody says something mean about her and she

28:38

engages in the debate and she holds a press conference.

28:41

Six months later, her reputation

28:43

is back where it was. That works for ordinary

28:45

public figures. But our products are

28:48

perishable. So if we get libeled right

28:50

before a harvest, by the time

28:52

the record is corrected,

28:54

we've lost hundreds of millions of dollars

28:57

and we're now vulnerable to this. So we need

28:59

an extra special set of protections.

29:02

So in the first years of the 1990s, 13

29:05

states pass veggie

29:07

libel laws specifically to

29:10

protect agricultural producers

29:12

from defamatory claims. So I'm not

29:14

going to go through each of these laws individually because they differ

29:16

in the specifics,

29:17

but every single one of them has a far

29:20

lower standard of evidence than the

29:22

existing libel laws. So the

29:24

first modification is

29:26

the veggie libel laws get

29:29

rid of the actual malice standard.

29:32

A lot of them just prohibit

29:35

journalists from making a false claim,

29:37

which seems like reasonable.

29:40

Like, well, journalists shouldn't publish false claims. But

29:43

the problem with the way that a lot of these

29:45

laws

29:45

are worded is that it's not

29:48

clear how you would determine whether something

29:50

is false. I've read a lot of legal analyses

29:52

of these laws and a lot of them point out

29:54

the fact that this would prohibit

29:57

publishing reports about how cigarettes cause cancer.

30:00

in the 1940s and 1950s because we didn't know that yet. The

30:04

other big thing about this is that right now,

30:07

if Gwyneth Paltrow sues us for libel,

30:09

she has to prove that our claims were

30:12

false. Under the veggie libel laws,

30:15

we would have to prove that they're true.

30:17

Whoa! So the burden of proof

30:19

shifts from the public figure with

30:21

all the power and money that go along with that to

30:23

the journalists. The

30:26

other thing that these laws do is

30:27

they allow anyone to

30:29

sue. So if you're growing apples,

30:32

if you're processing apples, if you're shipping

30:34

apples, if you're wholesaling apples, anybody,

30:37

which basically means that it would be really easy to

30:40

venue shop, right? Because I think

30:42

it's Ohio has

30:43

one of the worst ones where it's a criminal

30:46

act to libel any agricultural

30:49

producer. Like if we say on the show, like, ooh, broccoli

30:52

is full of chemicals or something, then

30:54

some random fucking person

30:56

in Ohio could sue us under like the

30:58

most strict version of these laws and

31:00

we could go to jail. Boy, a paradise

31:03

for the incompetent, except... Ha

31:05

ha ha ha ha! Unless

31:07

you're going after veggies.

31:09

That was extremely libelous, Aubrey. Ha

31:11

ha ha ha ha! Please save

31:13

your sea-synthesis orders. That's a quote

31:15

from a thing. Yeah, I got it up

31:17

on our t-shirt store. Don't worry about it. We're

31:20

just libeling you in merch. Yeah. Ha

31:22

ha ha ha ha! So a

31:24

lot of these laws are just like straightforwardly

31:27

unconstitutional, but of course because they're kind of under

31:29

the radar, like you don't really notice 13 states

31:32

passing these obscure libel laws.

31:34

Like the public is not really paying very

31:36

much attention to this, but it's

31:38

a little weird that there's like this special

31:40

set of defamation laws for like

31:43

farmers. Why shouldn't the auto industry

31:46

get this? Why shouldn't, like the aviation

31:48

industry is also really important to Washington state.

31:50

Should they just have their own fucking set of laws?

31:53

Like the problem here

31:56

is that politicians have an incentive

31:59

to protect their industry.

31:59

Like the preamble to

32:02

a lot of these statutes is like, the

32:04

agriculture industry contributes 40% of GDP to Ohio, duh,

32:08

duh, duh, duh. Right, if we

32:10

libel Gwyneth Paltrow and she's mad,

32:13

that doesn't really affect the economy of California,

32:15

right? But if we libel like almond

32:17

producers, right, then all of a sudden, like,

32:19

tax revenue goes down. Michael, I think

32:22

you're underestimating how

32:24

much Gavin Newsom loves goop. That's

32:27

true. I've seen his skin,

32:29

it's glowing. Yes. So

32:32

all of this

32:33

brings us finally to Oprah

32:36

Winfrey and April 16th, 1996. A

32:40

day that you'll live in infamy. I mean, kind

32:43

of. What happened on April 16th? Oprah

32:45

did an episode called Dangerous

32:48

Foods,

32:48

in which she talked

32:50

about the rapidly metastasizing

32:54

mad cow disease outbreak.

32:57

Leave it in. So

33:00

we have to sort of set the scene of 1996. This

33:03

is Oprah, I don't know if it's like at the height

33:05

of her powers, but this is the

33:07

moment when people are realizing

33:10

how much power Oprah has. It

33:12

sounds like we are post-book

33:14

club, but pre-remember

33:17

your spirit. Yeah, I think she hasn't

33:19

done the turn into, like,

33:22

more kind of highbrow stuff. There's a

33:24

really interesting

33:24

excerpt from Kitty Kelly's biography

33:26

of Oprah, where she talks about this moment where

33:29

she's kind of straddling these two worlds. Actually,

33:31

why don't I send this to you? Uh, OK. Oprah

33:33

was at the top of her game in 1996, making

33:36

more than $97 million a year and

33:39

stacking up daytime Emmys like firewood.

33:43

She ruled talk show television then

33:45

because she gave her viewers compulsively

33:47

watchable programming.

33:49

It was not all celebrities all the time, but

33:51

a combination of pop culture and dramatic

33:54

first person stories of abuse

33:56

and survival intermixed with books,

33:58

movies, music videos, and more.

33:59

beauty makeovers, fad

34:02

diets and psychics, plus

34:04

pressing issues of the day. Yeah,

34:07

that is absolutely the Oprah

34:10

of my like adolescence. I

34:12

looked up

34:13

a bunch of old like Oprah episodes

34:15

that have ended up on YouTube from this

34:17

era. The mix is incredible.

34:20

So one of them is called Wife Comes

34:22

Face to Face with Husband's Secret

34:24

Second Family. Holy shit.

34:28

There's one called The Two-Headed Baby

34:30

Miracle. Batboy

34:32

escapes from Chicago lab. Real tabloid

34:35

stuff. That one's from like 2003, which

34:38

is like pretty bad. There's also—but then

34:40

there's an interview with a cast of friends. There's

34:43

an interview and a performance with Prince. There's

34:46

something called Spring Training where

34:48

it's like how to exercise and lose weight for

34:50

spring. There's a reunion

34:53

of All My Children, which is very funny to think

34:55

about. Like how much daytime TV was like a big deal

34:57

back then. She's also

34:59

starting to move into this like inspiration

35:01

porn thing. So she has an episode called Bouncing Back

35:03

from Tragedy. And it's just like people

35:05

who like something bad happened to them and like now they're

35:08

fine. The unifying theme is like

35:10

appealing to your most puriant interests.

35:13

It's like here's a bunch of weirdos and a bunch of celebrities

35:16

and how to lose weight. It's like, yeah, just the

35:18

worst parts of myself. Totally.

35:21

And because Oprah was doing like not

35:23

none but less of

35:25

the like Moripovich, Jane

35:27

Jones stuff.

35:28

She was seen as a cut above.

35:30

Right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because she would talk about things

35:32

and be like, this diet works because of science.

35:35

And people would be like, this talk show mentioned

35:37

science. Yeah. And also she's big enough

35:39

that she can get big celebrity guests too. Absolutely.

35:43

So

35:43

we are going to dive into

35:46

the mad cow situation much

35:49

more deeply next episode. But

35:51

what do you know about like mad cow disease

35:53

and the whole kind of outbreak and panic in 1996? I

35:56

remember that I was 13 and

35:58

I kept hearing jokes about it. Yeah, Jay

36:00

Leno. I don't really know anything

36:03

about Mad Cow. I remember that it was a huge

36:05

freak out. It's similar to the E.

36:07

coli outbreaks at Jack

36:09

in the Box and Sizzler and all of those. Right.

36:12

I was aware ambiently in the way that

36:14

kid is aware ambiently that this thing is happening

36:16

and it seems scary and adults are freaked out.

36:19

But I didn't really know anything

36:22

about it. And I haven't gone back

36:24

and learned about it. The Mad Cow Panic

36:26

is one

36:26

of the few things that I've looked into for the show

36:28

where like the more details you get about it,

36:30

you're like, oh, it was like a good idea to

36:32

panic about this.

36:33

Oh, it's genuinely fucking terrifying.

36:36

So it's something called a prion,

36:38

which is like your proteins are folding in

36:41

your brain. And it's like a little error that

36:43

gets like folded in. And then the

36:45

error sort of like copies itself

36:47

and just like folds and folds and folds. And

36:49

it over time, it causes literal

36:52

fucking holes in your brain.

36:55

Oh, so we're in like syphilis territory.

36:57

And the scariest thing about the Mad Cow

36:59

stuff is that there's this years long incubation

37:02

period where there's no symptoms and

37:04

there's no test for it. So when

37:07

cows get mad cow, it's like four

37:09

years of just like totally

37:11

normal cow. And they start getting these like

37:13

really fucked up symptoms like they're sort of trembling.

37:16

They fall asleep on their feet. They rub

37:18

themselves against the wall. It's like I don't know if you ever

37:20

saw that footage as a kid of a cow

37:22

like stumbling and

37:23

like trying to walk. It's really

37:26

grim. Yeah. So there's this long incubation

37:28

period followed by mad cow

37:30

disease in cows and then

37:31

humans. It's the same

37:34

thing. It can be like seven years that

37:36

it's just like happening in your brain, no symptoms

37:39

and no way to fucking know if it's happening to you.

37:42

Once you start getting mad cow as a human,

37:44

it's like your

37:45

brain gets foggy. You start losing your short term

37:47

memory. You fall down. You're

37:50

super fatigued. And

37:52

once people get it, there's a 100 percent

37:55

fatality rate. You just die. Like

37:57

within your holy shit. And then I read.

38:00

I read three books on mad cow

38:02

disease. I'm going to bore you to fucking tears

38:05

next episode with the detail that we're going to get into. I

38:07

will bore you to tears in the next

38:09

episode is the single greatest cliffhanger

38:12

we will ever have on the show. Threat slash

38:14

promise. Yes. I

38:17

love it so much. It's going to suck shit

38:19

two hours long. What

38:22

I remember about this time is one of my brothers,

38:25

like stoner friends, telling me

38:28

that like it's possible that like literally

38:30

everybody has this,

38:31

right? Because of the long incubation period.

38:33

Oh my God. It could have been the case that like 50%

38:36

of the population has fucking mad cow. And

38:38

we won't know for like 10 more years. Yeah.

38:41

This is a more grounded version

38:43

of my childhood fear, which was the thing about

38:46

swallowing a watermelon seed and then a watermelon

38:48

growing inside yourself. You

38:51

think you're pregnant, but it is not kicking. Oh

38:53

my God, it's a watermelon. And I'm nine. Yeah.

38:56

Yeah, it's perfectly round. So

38:59

Oprah's episode is in April of 1996. In March

39:01

of 1996, Britain announces that

39:04

there's been at least 10 people who've been

39:06

infected with mad cow. And at

39:08

the time, no one really knew

39:11

anything. And this was the first that anyone

39:13

in America had heard about mad

39:15

cow, right? And there's all kinds of panic

39:17

going on, mostly because of this like incubation

39:20

period. It's like, well, how many fucking cows have

39:22

it in America? How many fucking people have it? And there

39:24

were projections coming out

39:27

of the UK that up to like 130,000

39:29

people were going to die. Wow.

39:32

And also America has a much larger beef industry

39:34

per capita than Britain. And we

39:36

eat a lot more beef than Britons.

39:40

So it's like all of the elements coming together

39:42

for just like a total freak

39:44

out. So on April 16th,

39:47

Oprah does an episode called Dangerous

39:49

Food. One of my like greatest

39:52

frustrations and obsessions in the last like

39:55

three weeks that I've been researching

39:56

this is I could not find this fucking

39:58

segment. It does not exist. on

40:00

YouTube, Vimeo, or the sketchy

40:02

Chinese websites that are streaming episodes

40:05

of Seinfeld, I

40:06

could not get a transcript of it. The

40:08

transcript was originally in the

40:11

court documents, but it's now been redacted,

40:13

which I think is really weird. Huh, that

40:15

is really weird. So I sort of had

40:17

to piece together

40:19

what was said in this segment

40:22

from various court documents. There

40:24

were two or three different biographies I had to look at.

40:27

They're basically talking about, well,

40:29

this mad cow disease thing is like a huge fucking deal

40:31

in Britain. Everyone's losing their mind. Is

40:34

this a risk in America? Like how

40:36

worried should we be about this, right? And so

40:38

they have three panelists. The

40:40

first is a guy named William Houston, who

40:43

is with the USDA, and he's like

40:44

the country's leading expert on

40:48

mad cow disease. The second guy they have is

40:50

named Gary Weber. He's from the National

40:52

Cattlemen's Beef Association. So he's

40:54

like the beef guy. And then the third

40:57

guest is a guy named Howard

40:59

Lyman. He is like a third

41:02

generation rancher. He grew up on a cattle

41:04

ranch and took it over from

41:06

his folks. And in the,

41:09

I believe 1970s, he had two big

41:11

scares

41:11

that his brother

41:13

died of cancer. And then he

41:15

was diagnosed with cancer and he

41:18

linked this back to his diet and specifically

41:20

to his consumption of animal products.

41:23

So after he recovered

41:25

from cancer, he sold the

41:27

farm and became like a super

41:29

hardcore animal rights activist.

41:32

He's been involved in all kinds of environmental

41:35

and animal rights charities throughout the

41:37

years. In 1996, he's a

41:39

like ambassador, like something VP,

41:42

something, something

41:42

for the Humane Society. And

41:44

so he's the third guest. So they have like

41:46

the academic guy, the beef guy

41:49

and the like animal rights guy on this Oprah

41:51

panel. She goes to the

41:53

beef guy and the beef guy's like, well, we

41:55

actually have a lot of safeguards in place in America

41:58

and like our, our.

41:59

Our system of beef is very different than

42:02

it is in Britain. And then she

42:04

goes to the academic guy and he's like, yep, our

42:06

system is like very different. And like, we're

42:08

actually not very worried about this as a

42:11

risk in America. And

42:13

then she goes to Howard

42:15

Lyman. And Howard Lyman says

42:17

that the way that mad cow spreads

42:20

is through cows eating

42:22

the brains of other

42:24

cows. This is the way these little prion

42:27

error messages spread between animals

42:29

is they infect like brains and glands

42:32

and spinal stuff. And

42:34

when other

42:35

members of the same species eat that stuff

42:38

of their own kind, they also get the

42:40

little error folding. And so we

42:42

are going to read the exchange that

42:45

follows. This is as close as

42:47

I could come to piecing together

42:49

like the transcript. This is from a couple of different sources, but

42:52

as far as I can tell, this is what was said

42:54

afterwards. I love this level of sleuthing.

42:57

Do you want to be Oprah or do you want to be Howard? Oh,

43:00

I'll be Howard. You want to be Howard? OK.

43:03

I'll send this to you. I hope this comes through. It's

43:05

like a massive brick. This might actually have graduated

43:07

from brick to two by four. OK.

43:11

What it comes down to is about half of

43:14

the slaughter of animals is non-sellable

43:16

to humans. They either have to

43:18

pay to put it into the dump

43:20

or they sell it for feed. So they grind

43:22

it up, turn it into something that looks like

43:24

brown sugar, add to it

43:26

all

43:27

of the animals that died unexpectedly,

43:29

all of the road kills and the euthanized

43:32

animals, add it to them, grind

43:35

it up and feed it back to other animals.

43:38

It's about as simple as it can be.

43:40

We are doing something to an animal that

43:42

was never intended to be done. You

43:44

said this disease could make AIDS look like

43:46

the common cold? Absolutely. That's

43:48

an extreme statement, you know? Absolutely. What

43:51

we're looking at right now is we're following

43:54

exactly the same path that they followed

43:56

in England, 10 years of dealing

43:58

with it as public relations.

43:59

rather than doing something substantial

44:02

about it.

44:03

100,000 cows per year in the United States are

44:06

fine at night, dead in the morning.

44:09

The majority of those cows are rounded up,

44:12

ground up, fed back to other cows.

44:15

If only one of them has mad cow disease, it

44:17

has the potential to affect thousands.

44:20

Remember today, 14% of all

44:22

cows by volume are ground up, turned

44:25

into feed, and fed back to other

44:27

animals. But cows are herbivores. They

44:29

shouldn't be eating other cows.

44:30

That's exactly right. And

44:32

what we should be doing is exactly what nature

44:35

says. We should have them eating grass,

44:37

not other cows. We've not

44:39

only turned them into carnivores, we've turned

44:42

them into cannibals. Now, doesn't that concern

44:44

y'all a little bit right here, hearing that? It

44:46

has just stopped me cold from eating another

44:48

burger. I'm stopped. Footage

44:52

not found of Oprah never eating another burger.

44:54

You know what I mean? I mean, she does

44:55

five shows a week. They're not meant to have like

44:57

a lasting impact on you emotionally. They're

44:59

not meant to be read out

45:01

from court transcripts in 2023. Yeah,

45:05

yeah, yeah. But also, I can see

45:07

how

45:08

people freaked out about this. What

45:10

this dude is saying is like, we're eating fucking

45:12

cow brains and cows are eating fucking

45:14

cow brains. Well, even with the sort of gross

45:17

factor, I think there is

45:19

a

45:20

pretty deep and visceral revulsion

45:22

at cannibalism for most folks, right?

45:24

So even just conceptually that thing.

45:26

I will say one

45:28

of my longest standing pet peeves

45:31

is there is a barbecue

45:33

restaurant that I drive by frequently

45:36

and their mascot is

45:38

a pig serving barbecue. Oh

45:41

yeah, that

45:41

is dark. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's really dark. Yeah, and

45:43

sometimes the animated M&Ms like eat M&Ms. And

45:46

you're like, oh, you're little friends. Yeah,

45:49

look, as long as the M&Ms that they're eating

45:51

are appropriately feminine, it's

45:54

fine. Okay,

45:58

so I'm sending you another brick.

45:59

This is as close as I could come

46:02

to understanding what it felt like

46:04

to watch this segment. Gotcha. This

46:07

involves Howard Lyman, the animal

46:09

rights guy, and also the beef

46:11

guy and Oprah. Why

46:13

don't you also play the beef guy? I'm

46:16

the beef guy. As far as I could tell, this

46:18

comes after the previous

46:20

segment where he's like, we've turned them into cannibals.

46:23

Then Oprah turns to the

46:25

beef guy and she's like, is this true? Are you

46:27

feeding cow brains to

46:29

other cows? Let me clarify that.

46:32

There is a reason to be concerned.

46:35

We've learned from the tragedy in Great Britain

46:37

and made a decision here. We started

46:39

taking initiatives 10 years ago to make

46:42

sure this never happened here. Number

46:44

one, we do not have mad cow disease

46:46

in this country and we have a 10-year

46:49

history of surveillance to document

46:50

that based on science. Also,

46:53

we have not imported any beef into

46:55

this country since 1985 from Great Britain. Are

46:59

we feeding cattle to cattle? There is a limited

47:02

amount of that done in the United States. The

47:04

audience groaned and booed. Hang

47:07

on just a second now. The Food and

47:09

Drug Administration. I have to just tell

47:11

you, that's alarming

47:11

to me. This is Oprah interrupting him. Now

47:14

keep in mind that before you view the ruminant

47:17

animal, the cow, as

47:19

simply vegetarian, remember that they

47:21

drink milk.

47:22

Or groans and booze. I'm

47:24

saying we do not have the disease here.

47:26

We've got 10 years of data, the best scientists

47:29

in the world who are looking for this. Over 250

47:33

trained technicians and veterinarians around

47:35

the country. Everyone's watching

47:37

for this. So now Howard Lyman jumps in.

47:39

The same thing that we've heard here today is exactly

47:42

what was heard for 10 years in England. Not

47:44

to worry, we're on top of this. If

47:47

we continue to do what we're doing,

47:50

feeding animals to animals, I believe

47:52

we are going to be in exactly

47:54

the same place. Today,

47:56

we could do exactly what the English did

47:58

and cease feeding cows.

47:59

to cows. Why in the

48:02

world are we not doing that? Why

48:04

are we skating around this and continuing

48:06

to do it when everybody sitting here

48:09

knows that would be the safest thing

48:11

to do? Why is it? Why

48:13

is it?

48:14

Because we have the greedy that are getting the ear

48:16

of government instead of the needy

48:19

and that's exactly why we're doing it. Audience

48:21

applause. But you really inhabited

48:23

Howard there, Aubrey. He's a real horrider,

48:26

that guy. You can see how Howard

48:28

Lyman is just a way better communicator

48:31

than the beef guy. I think the audience is also

48:33

primed to not trust a dude from the Cattlemen's

48:36

Association, which like, yes, I agree

48:38

completely. You can see

48:41

what's happening here is that they're not really

48:43

focusing on the specific

48:46

risks of mad cow. They're basically zeroing

48:48

in on this thing that's fucking gross. They're grinding

48:51

up cows and feeding them to other cows. Most people

48:53

do not know that this is happening routinely in

48:55

the food supply. So Oprah seizes

48:57

on this thing that is like objectively fucking gross

49:00

and is like, are they feeding cows to cows or not?

49:02

And this guy is basically called

49:05

upon to be like, yeah, but we've been doing that for ages

49:07

and we haven't had mad cow. Like this is fucking

49:09

gross, but like you just don't really want to think about where your beef comes

49:11

from. And like, there's a lot of fucking

49:12

gross shit that goes on behind the scenes. Well,

49:14

and it's also worth thinking about what everyone is

49:16

there to do, right? Howard

49:19

Lyman is there to make extremely

49:22

big claims, right? To

49:24

get folks further and

49:26

further

49:27

on board with like not eating

49:29

animals anymore. Right? Yeah. Beef

49:31

guy is there to just defend his industry,

49:33

which never feels great. Right? Like

49:36

that's never like a welcome TV presence.

49:38

Right. And Oprah, the moderator

49:40

of this conversation is there to make a

49:42

TV show. This is an utterly abysmal

49:45

way to inform the public, right?

49:47

What you basically got is two interested actors. You've

49:50

got an animal rights activist and a beef activist,

49:53

neither one of whom have any incentive

49:56

to give you a holistic understanding

49:58

of what the fuck is going on in

51:59

second episode following

52:02

up where she invites back the beef guy

52:04

to like talk for another like 10 or 15 minutes

52:07

and like well You were here last week. Maybe we

52:09

railroaded you a little bit. Maybe you didn't get to say

52:11

your piece So she does like a whole

52:13

other segment about like what's

52:15

the beef situation? How much is the mad

52:17

cow a risk? She's trying to do a

52:19

make good, huh?

52:20

Yeah, this seems like a either a good

52:22

faith effort or a damage

52:24

control thing But either way exactly giving

52:27

them more air time so she tries

52:30

to do the kind of correct the record

52:32

but I think it's a much more like Boring

52:35

segment because there aren't really any fireworks

52:37

and according this also is

52:39

not online But according to descriptions of it, she's

52:41

kind of again grilling him about

52:44

like well, are they eating other cows? What about the cow

52:46

brains and he's like trying

52:48

to talk about these like controls They have in place

52:50

for mad cow disease and she's just fixated

52:52

on like this is fucking gross Like is this gross thing

52:54

happening or not which it is You're

52:57

a credit. Yeah, so a month

52:59

goes by and on May 28th

53:01

1996 a

53:04

bunch of cattlemen Association

53:07

people it's the cactus

53:09

feeders incorporated,

53:10

which is very confusing because it's cactus

53:12

and cattle files a

53:15

lawsuit against Oprah Winfrey

53:17

and Howard Lyman in Texas

53:20

under Texas's false disparagement

53:23

of perishable food products act

53:25

Oh, which is one of the veggie

53:28

libel laws that was passed

53:31

in this way By far

53:33

the weirdest

53:33

fucking thing about the lawsuit.

53:36

You want to guess how much they sued her for? Is it in the

53:38

billions or the hundreds of millions?

53:40

This is the weirdest thing. It's 12 million

53:43

dollars What which is like nothing couldn't

53:45

like for these lawsuits. That's so low

53:48

the Apple people sued CBS for 200 million boy Oh

53:51

boy. It's actually very interesting that Oprah

53:53

fought this rather than just paying

53:55

it I mean, I'm glad that she didn't but like

53:57

she will eventually spend 5 million dollars

53:59

defending herself

53:59

from this. That's fascinating. Before

54:02

we sort of start to wrap up here, these

54:04

are the complicated feelings

54:07

I have about this. Yes, tell me.

54:10

On the one hand, the Oprah segment was

54:12

like straightforwardly really

54:14

fucking irresponsible. We find out

54:16

through the lawsuit, through the entire discovery

54:18

process that goes on over the next couple of years, Oprah's

54:21

team wanted to do a segment on the

54:23

Mad Cow panic in the UK

54:25

and basically they called around

54:28

the CDC and the NIH and a bunch of experts

54:30

and every single expert was

54:33

like, this is not really a risk in the United

54:35

States for

54:35

various kind of boring structural

54:37

reasons. They

54:40

were like expert, no, expert, no, expert,

54:42

no. What about this random animal

54:44

rights activist? Then

54:46

they find Howard Lyman who's willing

54:48

to make a bunch of exaggerated

54:51

and fairly unsubstantiated

54:53

claims. They're like, okay, great, let's have this guy

54:55

on. Then not only

54:57

do they have this guy on as like a

54:59

counterpoint to people that have more

55:01

expertise in this area, they also edit

55:04

out a shitload of stuff from

55:06

the actual expert. This

55:09

USDA expert

55:10

guy who's like the country's leading expert on

55:12

Mad Cow disease apparently said

55:14

a lot of the same things as the beef guy,

55:16

but they cut him out because they're like, oh, it's redundant.

55:19

He's the closest thing you have to a referee

55:22

who's like, I've actually looked into this and

55:24

my view is much closer to the cattleman than

55:26

it is to the animal rights guy. Totally. There's

55:29

a way to structure that conversation that's

55:31

like, hey, before we dig in on this complicated

55:34

topic, we wanted to hear from the USDA

55:36

about what their regulations are around

55:38

something like this and how they're enforced.

55:41

It's like a much cleaner approach,

55:43

but it's also not the best TV

55:46

necessarily. They're basically they're doing something that we see

55:48

all the time now where they're kind of whipping

55:50

a debate out of something

55:52

that is not really the consensus of experts.

55:55

There's not actually that much debate among

55:57

experts at the time because due to

56:00

the long incubation period of mad

56:02

cow disease. This condition was discovered

56:05

in Britain in 1986. So 10

56:08

years has already gone by. The US

56:11

instituted pretty broad-based testing

56:14

for mad cow disease of every cow

56:17

that has symptoms and looks

56:19

like it's tripping balls, they send

56:21

a piece of its brain to a lab to test it for mad

56:23

cow, and they've never found it. This is like COVID

56:26

testing rules, right? Any symptoms,

56:28

you get tested. And then the biggest

56:31

thing that they didn't really ever

56:33

communicate to the audience is that mad

56:36

cow disease is a very

56:37

British phenomenon. There's other

56:40

countries in Europe that have very large cattle

56:42

sectors that did not have mad cow.

56:44

There's something specific about Britain

56:47

that is causing the outbreak there. And

56:49

a lot of it was that Britain relies

56:52

on this ground-up bone meal stuff

56:55

way more than America because

56:57

America has really, really, really cheap

56:59

soy beans

57:00

available. The whole point of grinding

57:02

up fucking animals and feeding them to animals

57:05

is to get cheap protein. We have way

57:07

cheaper protein available

57:09

in the United States to the extent

57:11

that cattle producers were using ground-up

57:14

cow brains, they were mostly feeding

57:16

them to older

57:17

dairy cows.

57:19

And mad cow is not transmitted through milk. It's

57:21

really only transmitted through brain and spine.

57:25

All the academic reports on this are like, could

57:27

it happen here? Maybe. But in Britain,

57:30

due to all of the structures of their

57:33

cattle sector, it's like one case of mad cow

57:35

becomes 10, becomes 100, and

57:37

it metastasizes,

57:39

which I actually managed to say. Nailed

57:41

it. But in America, it's like if

57:43

we had one case of mad cow, it would have become

57:45

one other case, or two cases. And

57:48

we're testing for it. I think the thing that's interesting about this

57:51

story and this breakdown to me

57:54

is

57:55

nobody was making different strategic

57:57

decisions. There wasn't a real

57:59

regulation breakdown in the UK,

58:02

there wasn't anyone skirting any laws, there

58:05

wasn't anyone making laws in bad faith,

58:07

right? This was a case of folks working

58:10

with the resources that were at their disposal

58:12

and the protein that was most available

58:15

in the US had

58:17

less of a risk of this specific thing.

58:20

I'm always fascinated when we end up with these

58:22

stories of like, nobody

58:24

necessarily

58:25

did anything wrong or

58:27

broke any laws and we're still here

58:30

and that's kind of gnarly. I think, I mean, the place

58:32

that I sort of landed on this was that like, it

58:34

was a bad and irresponsible segment

58:37

and this is very obviously

58:39

a frivolous lawsuit. At no

58:41

point in this segment did Oprah mention

58:44

Texas beef. She was just talking about

58:46

beef and then because these laws allow

58:49

basically anybody to sue, these

58:51

two random cattle ranchers

58:53

from Texas are like, I'm

58:56

suing you for damages. And

58:58

even under Texas's veggie

59:00

libel law, they still have

59:03

to prove that Oprah

59:05

and Howard Lyman knew the claims

59:08

were false and said them anyway. So

59:11

in the filing, they

59:13

say, defendant Lyman

59:15

is a vegetarian activist and lobbyist

59:18

with an agenda to wipe out the US

59:20

beef industry and that defendant

59:23

Winfrey intentionally edited

59:25

from the taped show much of the factual and

59:27

scientific information that would have calmed

59:29

the hysteria it knew Lyman's false exaggerations

59:32

would create. Boy, that

59:34

part I find unconvincing. Yeah,

59:37

like. Like if people knew they

59:39

wouldn't have freaked out, like no, no. Yeah.

59:42

By the time someone says cows are eating cow brains.

59:45

Yeah, exactly. You can't unring that bell

59:46

my guy. There's no amount of like context

59:49

that people are like, all right, I get it, cool. Okay,

59:52

so now we come to the ending, not really

59:54

twist because you already said that you know about

59:57

it. But the ending. Cameo. The

59:59

ending cameo. I'm sending you a photo.

1:00:02

It might be sending you the file name rather

1:00:05

than the file. Send you a photo. Oh,

1:00:07

no, I got a photo. Okay, good. Yeah. See

1:00:10

it. Do you see it? We have an Oprah Winfrey

1:00:13

press conference in front of what looks like

1:00:15

a courthouse. She's talking into the microphone.

1:00:18

There is a wall of people behind her.

1:00:20

Who is in that wall, Aubrey? Who's

1:00:23

little bald head and mustachio little

1:00:25

mouth? Dead center.

1:00:28

It is Texas's favorite

1:00:30

son, Dr. Phil. So

1:00:32

this is like the origin story

1:00:34

of Dr. Phil. According

1:00:37

to Howard Lyman's book, he charged

1:00:39

them $250,000 to

1:00:43

be like a court consultant.

1:00:45

Is he a jury consultant? Yeah, he's a jury consultant.

1:00:48

That's like his first

1:00:48

job. This is also

1:00:50

where he gets his sort of tough

1:00:53

talking thing. So as she's preparing

1:00:56

for the trial, apparently Oprah is just like

1:00:58

rolling her eyes like you got to be fucking kidding

1:01:00

me. Like

1:01:00

you're selling me over this dumb beef shit. Yeah,

1:01:03

apparently Dr. Phil like sat

1:01:05

her down and was like Oprah,

1:01:08

if you do not take this trial seriously, the jury

1:01:10

is going to know. Yeah, he is going to know if

1:01:12

you're rolling your eyes, you're going to fucking

1:01:14

lose. Well, and it looks like you don't

1:01:17

care about the effects of your work is

1:01:19

how it plays, right? Like you

1:01:21

just get to say what you want and then you get irritated

1:01:24

if

1:01:24

anybody tries to hold you to account is

1:01:26

how is the optics of that.

1:01:28

He also warned her he said

1:01:31

if you fight this to the bitter end, the line

1:01:33

at the Sue Oprah

1:01:34

window is going to get a lot shorter.

1:01:37

So basically he's like if if they get

1:01:39

you on this fucking everybody's going to sue

1:01:41

you. Yeah, absolutely. You run a talk show that is

1:01:43

making like outlandishly

1:01:45

false claims constantly five

1:01:48

times a week. You're on the air

1:01:50

and you're saying wild stuff.

1:01:53

Yeah, you're just you're just saying shit and like you're

1:01:55

really not vetting like as we see from the

1:01:57

editing and the choice of guests

1:01:58

and stuff like you're running a pretty

1:01:59

irresponsible ship, Oprah.

1:02:01

If you don't fight this,

1:02:03

fucking everybody's gonna sue you. So you

1:02:06

need to win this to

1:02:08

prove the fact that it's a huge hassle to

1:02:10

sue Oprah. And then I've seen clips

1:02:13

on her show where she talks about how we met and stuff

1:02:15

like that. And it's always this speech

1:02:17

that she references.

1:02:19

His kind of tough talking persona that,

1:02:21

of course, has become the fucking odious Dr. Phil

1:02:23

that we know now, this all comes

1:02:25

out of him being like the only person

1:02:27

who like stands up to Oprah and is like,

1:02:29

Hey, nut up and fucking try to win this

1:02:31

lawsuit and take this seriously. I know

1:02:34

if he said nut up, that's problematic.

1:02:36

So this is where we're going to leave

1:02:38

it for part one. Next

1:02:40

episode, we are

1:02:42

going to

1:02:44

determine whether Howard Liman's claims

1:02:46

are false. I'm learning a little

1:02:48

bit more about the mad

1:02:51

cow outbreak and

1:02:53

getting to the denouement of

1:02:55

Oprah's trial. So no googling to

1:02:57

find out what happened 30 years ago. I will

1:03:00

do no googling. I will mention nothing

1:03:02

to my family here. I will go

1:03:04

hire a lawyer because my anxiety.

1:03:06

Is it a real fever bitch?

1:03:10

You've said you've said some things about Gwyneth

1:03:11

today.