The truth sunk in the day he got a call to mediate between a couple fighting in the boxing ring—dressed as a naked referee: The essential ingredients of talk shows are passion and conflict, and their primary purpose is revenge. Now, let’s hear from Stuart Fishoff, a (former) media psychologist, Ph.D.

To the applause of the audience, Geraldo Rivera ran down the center aisle of the studio. Three women sat next to me on the stage, ready to talk, their chests heaving with tension, their faces fixed in polite smiles. They listened as Geraldo explained their shocking biographies to the audience. My pulse quickened as Geraldo moved beside me, his excitement rising: “Dr. Stuart Fishoff, a clinical psychologist from Los Angeles, is here to help answer the $64,000 question: Why would a woman marry her rapist?”

Throughout the show, Geraldo peppered me with questions. Why, why, and more why. But I didn’t know these women. I am armed only with bits of their explanations to justify themselves. People have the power to deal with women, marriage, and rape. But no one has the power to determine why women marry their rapists.

I make only general comments, about low self-esteem (it’s always about low self-esteem, isn’t it?) and about the illusory connection between rape and the romantic myth that one is raped because one is wanted, and desired. “It’s not about love and desire,” I say. “It’s about anger and dominance.” My words pass through the three women like whistles in the wind. They don’t hear me. They can’t hear me. They’re not here to help. They’re here to be validated.

The focus shifts. The studio microphones are turned on. The tension rises. The women in the audience are openly angry. Validation is not on their agenda. Their questions and accusations speak of betrayal, of surrender to the hateful stereotype that women secretly want to be raped. The women on stage are trying to defend the indefensible. It’s a battle they can’t win. It’s another rape. This time by a gang of angry, domineering women.

In the final segment of the show, Geraldo stands on stage, points at me, and says, “In thirty seconds or less, Dr. Fischhoff, give us your impression of these women.”

My mind swallows. “Thirty seconds? Is he kidding?”

No, he’s not kidding. My thoughts run wild. “What am I doing here? Open your mouth, say something, something clever, witty, insightful. Don’t embarrass yourself.”

“I start screaming before I know what I’m going to say. I start getting the words out; loose, easy words. I’m doing my job. I’m performing.

“What the hell was I doing in Geraldo?” I asked myself a few weeks later, after watching a video of the show. As a college professor and clinical psychologist in private practice for more than 25 years, being on TV to discuss the human condition was something I was comfortable with. Or rather, I loved it. Teaching and commentating on TV are both performing arts.

Public speaking is number one among my phobias; not every academic or psychologist relishes the opportunity to speak to millions of people on a digital platform. But if you love delivering clever, insightful statements on camera and are good at it, you’ll have a great opportunity. The media has embraced psychologists and their ilk; we’re everywhere, on TV, in magazines, in newspapers, expressing our opinions. And if you live in Los Angeles, a major news and media market due to its close association with Hollywood, your exposure to the media increases exponentially. Tenth.

I started in the 1970s, discussing assertiveness training. Over time, I evolved into what is now formally known as media psychology. There is even a section of the American Psychological Association devoted to media psychology. Media psychologists research and write about the impact of the media on society. Those who can speak easily, concisely, and explain complex social events and psychological issues in non-colloquial language also appear on or in the media.

Despite my love of media exposure, I have steadfastly refused to be interviewed by tabloid publications like The National Enquirer or magazines like Hustler. Whatever the value of a particular article, the context of the publication as a whole was disturbing. So when a producer from Geraldo contacted me (she got my name from the Public Affairs Section of the American Psychological Association), I was wary of the invitation to appear on the show.

I had been on a few local talk shows and had a good experience. But Geraldo was a different matter entirely. He embodied the tabloid form of contemporary talk shows. First, there was Donahue. Then there was Oprah. Then there was Geraldo and Sally, and the talk show’s standard of taste completely collapsed.

Despite my doubts, I went on the show. It was a TV show. It was sure to be a learning experience.

It was. But so was falling off a cliff. When I saw Geraldo’s tape, I was embarrassed. I’ll never forget what I said about these married rapists and the erratic relationship they had. The words were good. But being on the show—that was the embarrassment! I had fallen into the trap of a big talk show that I later saw other “experts” ensnare. Worse, Geraldo’s unexpected request to describe these women in thirty seconds put me in the role of a psychologist acting on the spot. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like trying to give my own take.

I reassured myself that things would get better. In fact, there were times on many daily talk shows when the pace of the show or the integrity of the host gave me a leg up. Montel Williams’s show was a prime example. Early in his career, when the show was born in Los Angeles, Montel Williams tackled issues like interracial dating, the impact of gangsta rap lyrics on society, and parent-child conflicts. These shows were usually made for a specific purpose—education, not just excitement. Things got raucous at times, but Montel never lost sight of doing something worthwhile, especially in the area of ​​race relations.

Unlike Geraldo, Sally, or Oprah, Montel Williams allowed the expert to speak in more than just sound bites so that nuanced and complex issues could be explored without sacrificing light for excitement. In fact, after appearing on a show where I voiced my support for interracial dating as a way to break down racial barriers, people came up to me in stores and restaurants to thank me for making their lives a little easier. Experiences like these reinforced my belief that reaching millions of people through a forum might actually be worth the silliness that an “expert” can sometimes encounter.

But things change. The success of Montel Williams’ show and his drive to increase viewership have ruined it. The day I got a call from one of the show’s producers and booking agents to mediate a couple’s boxing ring fights dressed as a striped referee, I knew the tide had turned. Montiel had joined the talk show circus in earnest.

Before Montiel’s fall from grace, did I really believe that talk shows could be reliable forums for imparting psychological wisdom? For a while I did, so I continued to participate. I was like a pigeon in a Skinner box, clicking away on a schedule of partial reinforcement, convinced that the next click, the next show, would reward me with the experience of doing something worthwhile.

Then finally, after appearing on Oprah and Sally, I realized the simple, stupid truth: talk shows exist to entertain and exploit the whims of the wounded. If you want to explore your problem, you go to counseling. If you want to show your life, attack and humiliate your wife, or avenge a wrong you did, you go to a talk show.

I got my clue from a phone call late one night. A woman asked me if I was the doctor she had seen earlier that day on Oprah. I was.

“Will you help me get on Oprah?” she asked. “I need to talk about how my brother sexually abused me when I was a girl. I told my parents. They never listened. Now I’m in Seattle, living with a woman. My life is fucked up and I need to get better.”

“How about therapy?” I suggested.

“No, I need to go on Oprah,” she replied.

“Why Oprah? Why a talk show?” I asked. “Sure, therapy would be a better place to deal with your anger and resentment.”

“No,” I cried. “My parents should pay for what they did, for not believing me, for ruining my life. If I go to therapy, no one but the therapist will know. If I go on Oprah, millions will know. My parents won’t be able to ignore me then. Their lives will be ruined as mine were.”

After that call, I began to decline most talk show invitations. Most, but not all. Their narcissistic charm still whispers in my ear, albeit faintly.

Help, I’ve listened and can’t stop listening

Like cancer cells, talk shows are proliferating. In the 1970s, there were three. Now there are twenty and counting. Talk shows have overtaken soap operas as the number one draw of daytime television. Their appeal is obvious. These shows are a source of electronic gossip and safe scandal. They provide endless opportunities to compare one’s life to the lives of others on screen and breathe a sigh of relief. And if you feel like you’re one of the living creatures, what a joy it is to see people making fun of themselves on talk shows.

Talk shows also offer vicarious revenge. If you’re feeling angry about being betrayed or deeply disappointed in your relationships, it’s a joy to watch the infidels try to justify their actions and get savaged by guests, hosts, and audiences.

Like soap operas, shopping networks, and countless movies about women in danger, talk shows owe their popularity primarily to women. They make up more than 70 percent of the audience.

Talk shows are relationship shows. But because they’re steeped in gender stereotypes, they polarize heterosexual relationships. Women come to talk shows mostly to discuss betrayal and victimhood. Women in the audience either attack or embrace. They attack when women on stage live up to their inherited weaknesses—their need for a man to make them feel validated and validated, and their dignity sacrificed on the altar of that need. Women in the audience embrace the male enemy when he’s on stage cheating on female guests in the same way that women in the audience feel betrayed.

If growing old is no place for cowards, as Bette Davis once said, then talk shows are no place for men. You might wonder why men who don’t want to commit, who sleep with their girlfriend’s best friend, or who abuse their wives come to such shows to be smothered so predictably. From what I’ve observed, most of them do it to satisfy their partners’ desire to simply be on a show.

These men play by cues, say stupid things, and make stupid statements about fidelity or disregard for their partners’ needs. They get beat up—but they leave the stage unscathed. To them, it’s a joke. I heard one guy say to his girlfriend, “I hope you get off my back now,” as they left the stage at the end of the show. She had just ripped him off on stage but now she was warm and affectionate… in the moment.

There are men in the audience, but most of them are recruited through magazine ads and audience brokers. They occasionally ask questions and make statements, but their hearts are not in it. This is evident when you sit on stage and watch them contort their bodies when Oprah or Sally walks by: “Not me, please don’t ask me to speak.” Women, on the other hand, line up, stand, raise their hands, and shout, “Me, let me speak!” This is their chance to eliminate some of the primitive men or snake women who inhabit every woman’s nightmare and probably most women’s resumes.

FreeCircus

Unless people are from Mars or Venus and have never watched these talk shows, and have never seen guests act like “Jong Show” alumni or experts who surrender their professional prestige to the theatrical demands of the burlesque format, why do people continue to attend them? Why risk damaging their personal lives or their careers? Because guests and experts alike whisper to themselves: “I can do better.” But they don’t. Because they can’t. The courageous and intelligent format of talk shows ensures that.

Talk shows occupy two realities. There is the reality of watching a talk show on television in the familiar, benign environment of your home—the “passive reality.” Then there is the “active reality” of being a guest or expert facing a set of glaring studio lights, roving cameras, charismatic hosts, and studio audience stares, and the glamorous reality of being on television. Moreover, the studio is much smaller and more intimate in reality than it is on television. The psychological coercive power of the host and audience on stage, in such proximity, is invisible to the home audience. Its effects cannot be anticipated, only experienced.

Often before a show, guests confidently tell me that they are sure the show will be a positive experience, even when they have painful topics to discuss. But it is precisely the lack of control guests have over the proceedings (or themselves) that makes unsophisticated, “Look, mom, I’m on TV” guests attractive prey for talk shows. Once on stage, the guest’s self-control evaporates in the hot glare of the spotlight.

Media psychologist colleagues have shared a similar shock after a show. They rarely get the chance to say what they thought they were going to say when they agreed to be on the show. Being scolded by the host when his explanations are too long is traumatic. Experts are left with two choices: be polite or be ignored.

Acrobats

Calm intellectual discourse is unwelcome to most talk show viewers—they want action! Emotion and conflict are the essential ingredients of the talk show recipe. They give it the flavor that keeps viewers hooked. Conflict is king! Producers, hosts, and studio audiences use guests to plant seeds.

Conflict is certainly the essence of good storytelling. But the conflicts that host and studio audiences stir up on stage are not the stuff of a TV movie. The raucous drama that talks show guests play out in their lives, their wounds, their crimes of the heart and gut. Unlike actors, talk show guests eventually have to answer for their confessions on camera when they return to their daily lives.

It’s one thing to tell a stranger your problems and mistakes in a bar, but it’s another thing to do it in front of 20 million people. But what viewers find irresistible is the unpredictability of slut-shaming.

DancingBears

My experiences on talk shows have confirmed something painfully: Most of America’s guests are poor. They’re not highly intelligent. They’re not highly paid. They don’t have many opportunities. And they have no way of snatching the brief fame that television affords them except by putting themselves on display. They sell their misery like prostitutes sell their bodies.

Talk show conventions are like Limbo. The lower you go, the lower your audience must sink to successfully play the game. Guests say the most intimate things precisely because they have seen others do it before them. If guests discuss their sex lives, other guests will do the same. If guests attack their spouses, other guests will do the same. If guests confess to incest, surprisingly, other guests will do the same. As in some revival tent shows, once guests have fallen to the ground, touched by the spirit, and are speaking in tongues, others will follow, wagging their tongues, ignoring shame and privacy.

But some guests, of course, are more cunning, and eager to exploit exploiters. One woman called me after seeing me on a talk show. She told me she had a disease of the day, multiple personality disorder. She wanted to appear on The Home Show or Geraldo (she had seen me on both shows) so she could tell her story and perhaps get a producer to make a TV movie about her life. She had heard that I was also a screenwriter. She said that if I helped her get on the show, she would let me write the script. Other guests had more modest exploitative goals—just to get on a TV show. On one of Oprah Winfrey’s shows, the bookers found four couples who claimed to suffer from various strains of sexual jealousy. Oprah was particularly interested in a man and a woman in their mid-20s. He was an accountant; she was a housewife. She was jealous, but not the kind of jealousy the bookers had promised—“women in swimsuits at work.” The wife was jealous of his work, nothing more, nothing less! Women in bikinis had nothing to do with it.

When this information finally came out of the wife’s mouth, Oprah did a wonderful imitation of Mount Vesuvius. “That’s why you came on the show, to discuss your jealousy of his long hours to advance?” she said angrily – and then turned to me. “What do you have to say about that, Dr. Fischhoff?”

“About what in particular?” I asked, looking for something to focus on.

“About anything. Just talk,” she said in a low voice. So I talked while Oprah thought and paced back and forth. The housewife was shocked and hurt. “Why was Oprah so upset?” she asked me later. “After all, I just wanted to be on Oprah. Doesn’t everyone want that?”

The others who are groping for time on the air are not so naive. There are a few guests, often transgender or people with multiple personality disorders, who somehow move from one show to the next, flaunting their queerness.

TheSatiricalAudience

They are not spectators. If you take the studio audience out of the picture, you take away the talk show scene as we know it. The audience provides a tribal effect, where people provoke people into saying and doing things they would never say or do unless they were drunk or guaranteed anonymity.

The audience is filled with snipers and talkers who often use the guests to draw themselves into the spotlight, to participate not in the dialogue but in the investigation. The more their questions annoy the guests and make them lose control, the more powerful the audience members feel. This makes the guest more like the accused. The audience members are the judge and jury. They will try to cut your head off because they sing the executioner’s song.

The audience may not enter the studio with their fangs bared, but they are soon salivating like vampires. Before the show begins, the warm-up crew urges them to “say what’s on your mind,” “don’t hold back,” and “if you don’t like what they’re saying, tell them!” By the time the guests take the stage and climb onto the ledge, the audience has already been moved—turned into a crowd of Manhattan pedestrians, looking up at the sky, urging the hapless idiot on the 15th-floor window ledge to jump.

As an expert, you sit on stage and feel the negative electricity emanating from the audience, enveloping the guests. But your status as an expert is by no means a haven. The audience’s opinions are deliberately placed on an equal footing with the experts.

The expert may have the training, clinical experience, or other qualifications to offer an educated opinion on the topic under discussion. But the audience members come armed with their own experiences, the equal power of a studio microphone, and the host’s encouragement to “let it go.” This is not a meeting of the minds. If you disagree with the audience’s vociferous opinions, they will disagree with you.

The show was hosted by Sally Jesse Raphael and the topic was “Men Who Don’t Commit.” The audience kept asking questions of the unfortunate males (is there any other type on most talk shows?) on stage. The women (and some men) in the audience shouted, “Immature, immature,” and pointed their fingers like Winchester rifles. I interjected and noted that women sometimes confuse a man’s general fear of commitment with his unwillingness to commit to a particular woman. Rather than maturity, it is social conditioning and other less romantic agendas that force many women to pressure themselves into commitment to marriage.

Big mistake! The audience attacked me like children smashing a piñata. I could have accused Mother Teresa of being a transvestite. Sally loved that, of course. What she didn’t love was when one of the “non-committal” men proposed on stage and put an engagement ring on his girlfriend’s finger. The exploiters were being exploited.

Ringmaster

You’ve seen him or her on TV a hundred times, patronizing those with good, compassionate causes or attacking the outcasts, the opportunists, and the nerds. Phil? You think you know him. Sally? You think you know her. But you don’t. Most hosts’ empathy and concern are often just ploys to lure the guest into revealing themselves and fooling the TV audience. The empathy bonds freeze during commercial breaks and then reactivate when the taping resumes. Do they care? There are rare instances of on-camera concerns and off-camera follow-ups. But these tender moments are often exploited publicly later by the show’s publicists.

And the expert is rarely treated differently (Oprah is the occasional exception). For most talk show hosts, when the show ends, so does the expert. I’ve been on tabloid (Geraldo, Oprah, Sally) and non-tabloid (Sonia Friedman, Larry King) talk shows dozens of times. Except for Montiel, no host has spoken to me before or after a show. Many colleagues tell similar stories of disappearing off camera.

CallingTheClowns

Who are the “experts” who appear on these shows? They are usually psychologists or, more often, non-PhD psychotherapists who regularly appear on talk shows because they have a book to sell or a private practice they maintain and can speak in audio clips. Many veterans give workshops to other psychologists who want to appear on TV. They even meet to swap war stories and get feedback on a recent “performance.”

In theory, experts could offer sound advice on a general topic on the show. They could even offer helpful information to guests. But that’s not usually the case. The format gets in the way. Even experts with the best intentions fall into the talk show trap of rushing to judgment, offering advice, or mediating life between warring guests. But that’s like singing to a deaf man. Guests aren’t here to humble themselves and gain therapeutic insight. They’re not there in front of ten million people. They’re there to prove what they’re saying is true, or, like experts, to get some television coverage.

So what do psychologists do? In part, they give talk shows a sense of legitimacy. But experts are essentially a laughingstock that helps the audience decide who to blame, who to side with, and who “just doesn’t get it.” That may not be why experts think they’re there. But that’s why they’re there.

Some experts say publicly that talk shows are “overall” worthwhile, and that they help the viewing public, if not the guests. But for most experts I know, the only “balance” they have in mind is their own, in the form of self-promotion. The dirty little secret that most media psychologists know is that, with rare exceptions, if a psychologist wants to educate the public, the last place to do it is on a contemporary tabloid talk show.

TheBarker

With very few exceptions, those who book guests must be con artists and ambulance chasers. They get the names and phone numbers of potential guests from a variety of sources: viewers who call in response to a stated theme (“If your friend cheats on you with your best friend, call us”); those who read an ad for potential guests in the classifieds section of the local newspaper; and those who list themselves in publications devoted to specific oddities in human behavior. Or bookers call therapists or other personal service professionals and ask them to bring their patients as guests on themed shows. For ethical reasons, respectable therapists are required to decline such requests; yet the requests keep coming.

Bookers need social outcasts to feed the beast. Guests are not warned that the electric atmosphere of the group will set their tongues loose and their self-defense sensibilities evaporated. That would spoil the fun.

Prospective guests are offered only a forum to advocate for themselves (“Fat women deserve love,” “Transsexuals deserve women who understand them”) and are encouraged to tell all. The promise of a chance to meet Phil or Sally, first-class planes and hotels, and a night on the town can be very tempting to people who normally have little access to such luxuries.

There are no warnings about surprise guests, as a grandmother discovered at one of the Montel Williams shows I was a veteran of. This grandmother thought she was on stage just to discuss her concerns about interracial marriages, but she was completely taken aback when the mixed-race grandson she had refused to see or even acknowledge was brought on stage and placed in her arms. She had no choice but to submit or be seen as the racist ice queen of the century. The stunt played well in grabbing the audience’s attention. But the grandmother’s onstage reunion had little to do with the grandmother’s offstage rage at being swindled. The show’s cast was attacked.

There’s also a psychiatrist or psychologist to feed the beast. When a booking agent calls me, they need to determine whether I can talk without resorting to psychobabble and whether my perspective is consistent with the thematic focus of the show. A booking agent once called me to appear at a show to discuss the pain of recovering from repressed sexual assault memories. I told her I wasn’t convinced of the legitimacy of many of the recovered memories. I thought for a minute, and she said that wasn’t the perspective needed for this particular show, but they were planning another show about “false memory syndrome,” and she would keep me in mind. The sands of principle shift easily.

The less experienced you are as an expert, the easier it is for booking agents to mislead you. If you tell them you don’t want to be part of the circus, and that you need to be able to seriously explore the subject, they will tell you that they are okay with it and that their offer is different. But if you watch an episode of the show before making your decision, most of the time you will realize that you have been lied to.

It doesn’t take a neurosurgeon to figure out why. Their show is a circus because circuses get ratings. In March, the Jenny Jones show got some unplanned publicity when one guest shot another just days after they appeared on the show. The alleged killer had been asked to appear on a show about secret admirers. Not realizing the show’s real subject was about men who have secret crushes on men, he complied. To his surprise, a neighbor showed up and made his feelings known. Three days later, the admirer was found dead and the gay guest surrendered to the police. The following week, the show’s ratings jumped 16 percent.

Cleaning

Do guests go out, do a striptease, and then walk around in the sunshine? Some do. According to published research, few people admit to being devastated by their outings. Unless it’s the first round of a lawsuit. Montel Williams got that surprise after he ambushed another reluctant guest when he revealed that her boyfriend was sleeping with her sister. She then sued the show for pain and suffering.

Her lawyer called me to review a tape of that show. I was asked to judge whether the woman appeared to be surprised and shocked by her sister’s betrayal. I was also asked to prepare for possible expert testimony on matters such as the unsettling surprises guests bring. The woman later collected an undisclosed sum in an out-of-court settlement.

There are less extreme cases, of course. But even then, most guests would simply say it was an experience, or it was somewhat disappointing, or that they had to do it to help correct a terrible social bias—even if the forum was miserable for doing so. Such benign public admissions can be misleading.

After Sally focused on “women with bad reputations,” she awkwardly shared a limousine at the airport with one of the guests. She was just ripped apart by the audience and the host. My on-air comments did not prove her self-abusive lifestyle. She insisted that the experience was wonderful. “I was on Sally’s show,” she said enthusiastically. Denial protects you from regret and humiliation.

Denial protects you unless your parents watch you on Geraldo’s show and hear—for the first time—that your husband was the man who raped you on your second date. Then things don’t go well. Or unless your son watches you on Sally’s show and learns that you usually go to the neighboring cities on weekends, end up in bars doing strip shows, and go home with strangers. The guests soon realize that they have paid a high price for their brief attempt at fame.

I have a troubling concern about people who volunteer to be guests on talk shows. You might argue that if the guests want to go, let them. If they get burned, that is the price of their choice. No one put a gun to their head.

True. But it is also true that people are not always sophisticated enough and intelligent enough to make the right choices or realize the consequences of their decisions. I argue that until people fully understand the dangers of parading their life’s flaws for a few moments of cheap fame, and until they realize that talk shows have an intoxicating pull on self-disclosure that they cannot grasp while sitting at home wishing for a chance to appear on Geraldo’s show, they are less responsible for this humiliating spectacle than the clever talk show producers.

Freak circuses no longer have the cruel appeal they once did. As a society, we have become more sensitive to the feelings of “freaks” and the dehumanizing stigma that this term carries. We have also become more vehemently condemning the organizers who exploit freaks for profit. Perhaps the guests on these freak shows deserve the same sympathy, and the producers of these shows deserve the same condemnation. Had I realized this earlier in my talk show career, I would have stopped doing them much sooner.

But is talk show television coming to an end? Will producers come to their senses and stop the class struggle between the rich who exploit the poor for the entertainment of the greedy masses? This will only happen when shame and privacy regain their place in the pantheon of social values. The chorus of “I am the victim, hear me groan” has a seemingly inexhaustible supply of singers who parade themselves on television screens and excite viewers.

Over time, I learned that I could exercise more control over what I said than dutifully feeding the beast. But controlling my show wasn’t enough. My presence still legitimized the circus. In the end, there was no way I could fool myself any longer into believing that I was doing any sort of informational job for the audience or the guests. The reality is that the workforce is too powerful. The talk show circus will go on but with one less clown.