Ah, DSW, birthplace of the Humblebrad. The shoes are so good, no one would ever know how little you paid if you didn't go telling everyone that is. And with never-ending options for every style, mood, and occasion, all at really great prices, we'll definitely give you something to brag about. Go ahead, stock up on fresh sneakers from your favorite brands. or try those boots you always secretly knew you could pull off.
Find the shoes that get you at prices that get your budget at DSW stores or at dsw.com. Let us surprise you. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday morning. It's all too familiar for many Americans seeking health care.
A doctor recommends a test or treatment, only to have your insurance company deny the coverage. But why? Why is it so hard for so many of us to get the insurance coverage we need, even for potentially life-saving treatments? And what recourse do patients have when they get denied? Questions Aaron Moriarty will explore for us.
When Tracy Hurley's husband got cancer, she was confident they could navigate the health insurance system. After all, they were both doctors. She was wrong. If we as two physicians had to struggle the amount that we had to struggle to get care approved, What about people who do not have? medical knowledge, what's happening to them every day.
When illness collides with health insurance ahead on Sunday morning. Oprah Winfrey is one of the best known and most admired people in the world. But she struggled with her weight for decades until she says she learned obesity is a disease, a revelation. that has set her free. The good news for you, the transformative news, was that.
if it's a disease. It's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not my fault, Jane. It's not my fault.
And I could weep right now. For all of the many days and nights I've journaled about. This being my fault. Oprah Winfrey on her weight. her health and her life later.
She's an Emmy-nominated actress. He's a Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning actor and writer. Together, Carrie Kuhn and Tracy Letz are not only collaborators on Broadway, but also at home. They'll talk with our Jim Axelrod. Your health is my only priority.
Not one, but two starring roles have elevated Carrie Kuhn's profile. They're still out there. What? She and her husband, Tracy Letz, no slouch himself. We've already lost one American city today.
now find themselves safely in the realm. of Hollywood Power Couple. Are you two opposites balancing? Or more two peas in a pot. I'm catastrophizing, and Tracy's holding hope.
Both halves of the couple are now combining in a Broadway drama ahead. on Sunday morning. Mooraka tells us all about the long history of American involvement in Latin America. Plus humor from Jim Gaffigan. and more.
This is Sunday morning, January 11th, 2026. and will be back after this. Yeah. Yeah. We begin this morning with correspondent Aaron Moriarty, who's looking at why so many Americans seeking health coverage find themselves in a state of denial.
It was heartbreaking, and it was awful. Tracy Hurley says watching her husband battle cancer in late 2021 was harrowing. I lived in fear every day. A battle made worse, she says, because so many of the skirmishes were with their insurance company. No family should have to go through having to fight to get treatment as recommended by their physician covered.
while fighting for their lives. Is that what Dan was doing? Yes. Millions of Americans say they are struggling to get medical care, either unable to pay sky-high deductibles. Or, like Dan Hurley, denied coverage for tests and treatment by health insurance companies.
If we, as two physicians, had to struggle the amount that we had to struggle. to get care approved. What about people who do not have? medical knowledge. What's happening to them every day?
Not only are both the Hurleys doctors, Dan, an ear, nose, and throat surgeon, was also skilled in cutting through insurance red tape for his patients. And yet. We still ran into issues. A lot. Dan was an avid hiker until a nagging backache turned out to be cancer.
Diagnosis was chondrosarcoma, which is a ultra-rare. bone tumor. To try to save his life, the tumor, along with Dan's hip, had to be removed. Insurance only covered a portion of the costs. Many of his treatments were denied.
We had PET scans, we had CT scans denied, we had chemotherapy, we had radiation, we had certain medications. that required prior authorization and were denied. On what basis? not medically indicated. Health insurance companies know that 5% of their members account for fifty percent of all the cost.
So I have this huge financial incentive to make their lives as difficult as possible. Ron Halrigan, now a consultant, spent two decades working for health insurance companies and says the business model is unlike other industries. The more your customers use your product, the less money you make. Your incentive is to keep them from using your product. How often do insurance companies refuse to cover the cost of medical treatments?
Well, it's hard to tell. Health insurance companies are only required to report denial data for plans purchased through healthcare.gov. A CBS News analysis of about 1.3 billion federal health insurance claims across three years shows that in 2024, insurers denied 19% of in-network claims. But for the biggest insurer, United Healthcare, that was a steep drop from the preceding two years, when it denied as many as one-third of its federal claims. While it did not provide data to support it, United Healthcare says that across all its plans, their initial denial rate is 10%.
They also point out that when employers are self-insured, the plans they choose for their employees dictate coverage decisions. The insurance companies have Honestly, it made it more difficult to be healthy in the United States. This is a surgery center really built for patients affected by breast cancer. Dr. Elizabeth Potter is a surgeon who sees as many as 60 patients with breast cancer each week at her Red Bud Surgery Center in Austin, Texas.
She says insurance denials actually add to costs. I have two employees who spend almost all day navigating insurance. It seems that everywhere we turn, There's an issue, whether it's An insurance company is saying, you know, we won't cover your surgery at that surgery center. Or we won't pay for that medication. We want you to be on a different medication.
Here we go. All right, let's do this. Case in point: on an early morning this past fall, Jeannie Lee, a 40-year-old mother with breast cancer, was being prepped for a procedure that could have been done two weeks earlier during her double mastectomy. But both her and her husband's insurance companies refused to cover the cost. Today I am having a Lympha Venus bypass.
Lee is at high risk for developing a condition known as lymphedema. I mean, it becomes very difficult to just use your arm. It can be painful. It's swollen. It's also deforming.
I'm forty years old. I have three young kids. It's very necessary. to do this procedure. Once Lee was able to obtain financial assistance through a new non-profit set up by Dr.
Potter. She was back in surgery. This patient is having an extra surgery. A separate general anesthetic because her insurance company wouldn't cover the surgery. We could have done this very easily at the same time.
When she isn't in surgery, Dr. Potter is often on the phone, defending her treatment decisions to insurance company medical directors, who she says often know little about her area of medicine.
Sometimes I get an ophthalmologist. An eye doctor. An eye doctor. It was just completely Absurd. You won't give me your name or number.
And neither will the doctor from Texas.
Okay. Dr. Potter sometimes posts her side of those conversations online.
So we're speaking about lymphedema of the arm.
So this is not an area that you're familiar with, correct? Insurance just keeps getting worse. But a video she posted in early January 2025, she says, ended up putting her entire medical practice at risk. I got a phone call. While she was in the operating room, Dr.
Potter says she got a call from United Healthcare. It's never happened before. I didn't know what was going on. but they said it was urgent and I needed to call. And so I did.
That urgent call, she says, was to question why her patient needed an overnight stay in the hospital. I am operating. I'm doing the right thing for the patient. I'm going to keep her overnight. I walked out of the hospital and I just filmed myself in my unfiltered.
you know, moment. It's out of control. Insurance is out of control. Shortly after she posted that video, she got a letter from the insurance company threatening to sue her for defamation. I'm taking great care of patients.
They're just trying to scare me into being quiet. I was scared. United Healthcare has not taken Dr. Potter to court. They declined an on-camera interview, but a company spokesperson says the call was due to an erroneous order.
and a doctor would never be asked to leave surgery for a call about an insurance matter. All of us are vulnerable to being denied. Not all of us can weather the storm as easily when it comes to appealing and overcoming these barriers. Miranda Yavaver, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, says insurance companies know that only a small percentage of people will actually appeal claim denials. She calls it rationing by inconvenience.
A lot of people don't know that they even can appeal.
So you're saying that it's not really the denial that ends up? Keeping people from getting care, it's that the people give up. Fewer than 1% of those claim denials. result in appeal, even though people are winning roughly half the time. Clearly, it does pay to appeal, but some patients like Dr.
Dan Hurley, fighting an aggressive cancer, run out of time. Much of his last months were spent, says his wife, on the phone with insurance company personnel. He would go line by line with them and they'd say, Okay, yeah, we need to get a supervisor involved, we'll call you back. And then they don't. Dan's goal, she says, was to see insurance companies held to a standard similar to doctors, making them liable for malpractice when they deny life saving care.
The act of signing that denial? Is practicing medicine. The same way, if a patient came to me and I made a decision about treatment. And that decision went sideways. I'm liable.
That's how it works. Dan Hurley died on august third, twenty twenty three. One week later, his wife got a letter from the insurance company. asking her to pay for a round of chemotherapy that had been pre-authorized but was suddenly retroactively denied. What kind of money are we talking about?
$80,000. It was such a gut punch to get it that day. This is unbelievable, right? Almost. laughable.
Dan Hurley's battle has become his widow's. There's part of me that says, Oh, he would be so proud of me. But there's also part of me that he'd be like, Come on. Chop chop, you got this. Let's go.
Pick it up. Don't be sad. you know, keep going. Because that's what he was like. I just feel like.
As you get older, you have to justify your life, you know? And your choices. And When I'm with you guys, it's just so like like transparent what my choices were. and my mistakes. Carrie Kuhn is nominated for a Golden Globe for her memorable performance in The White Lotus.
She's moved on to Broadway and as Jim Axelrod tells us, collaborating with a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright very close to her heart. Yeah. Stay with me, my dear. George, please, please, I beg you, stay with me. Safe to say, after recent star turns in the Gilded Age.
And the monologue of the year about friendship in The White Lotus. We started this life together. I mean we're going through it apart, but we're still together and I... I look at you guys and it feels meaningful. Carrie Koon.
is having a moment. Would you agree with me that Where you used to say you're at the bottom of the A list? I think I used to say maybe bottom of the B list, but yeah, but don't we need to revise our assessment as where you are? Maybe, but the thing that's changed for me is that I was on the white lotus and now I can be in a Broadway play. That wasn't true for me five years ago.
The play is Bug. which opened just this past week. Wow. Jerry, where are you? Did you get out?
Koon is leveraging her newfound star power. I did have a child once. What happened? I lost him. to play the demanding, harrowing lead role.
in this examination of paranoia, conspiracy, and loneliness. My baby. And she is adamant. That her success should not obscure a larger, sadder reality. of theater these days.
We live in a country that is fundamentally unsupportive of the arts.
So now, in order to do a play on Broadway, you have to do the white lotus. Or else you're not allowed. They have to replace you with somebody more famous. Hang on. If you hadn't done White Lotus and Gilded Age and hadn't sort of blown up as a single situation.
Your acting ability, what you do on stage, not enough? No, that's not how we make those decisions anymore. And you can ask all these extraordinary theater actors who don't do plays anymore because celebrities are doing plays. It's just a different world that we're living in now. Carrie Kuhn?
Yes, sir. Can you try? Half a beat. Tracy Letz is the playwright. He's in love with Koon's fearlessness.
She has ice water in her veins. in another life should make a great assassin. These people, they're coming in here because the bugs won't leave. He's in love with her acting chops. She's a great stage actress.
For the people who have only seen her do Gilded Age or The White Lotus, they just don't know what a What a stage animal she is. Good clear thinking. Tracy Letz is in love with her. He and Kuhn have been married for the last dozen years. Your partners, your life partners, they had to be theater people, right?
Because it's such a consuming world? I came to that conclusion a long time ago that whoever my partner was had to be in the profession. Civilians just don't get it. Yeah, it is hard. They just don't get it.
It's a hard life. A couple of Midwesterners, Coons from Ohio, Let's, Oklahoma, they met in 2010 doing Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. We had a palpable attraction to each other. We just wanted to be with each other. And when we confessed to our director and our castmates that we were officially together by the time we, they were like, yeah, of course.
We thought it was shocking. A shocking revelation. He's like, yeah, hello. We've been here the whole time. Honestly, George, you burn me up.
All right, you really do, George.
Okay, Martha, okay, just trot along. When the show got to Broadway in 2012, Let's won a best actor Tony.
Someone's lying around here. That's some impressive artistic range. Considering his Pulitzer for writing the play August Osage County in 2008. If we do not take steps to neutralize our enemies, Now. We will lose our window to do so.
And his steady presence in film and TV. How do you know the bonds are worthless? For the last several decades. You make a lot of man friends. That's him in the Seinfeld Festivus episode nearly 30 years ago.
Me? I'm a man. He's been around a while. Tracy's entering into sort of this Oldness? I was going to go elder statesman.
Let's is now 60. Kuhn. Is 44. He always gave me room to grow because I was not in the same place in my life as him. Like what you're sitting in contemplation of at this stage in your life is different than where I am in mine.
So, how does that?
Sort of meld. Oh, a lot of jokes like your second husband's gonna love this cow. Yeah, right. Whether playwright and actor, husband and wife. What makes this partnership work, they told us, is honest feedback and mutual respect.
She knows I'm going to tell her the truth. She'll put on a dress and say, How does this look? And I'll say, It doesn't look good. No, no, no, no, no. It's true.
And she appreciates it because she knows I'm not lying to you. Isn't rule number one of husbanding not bad, which we all know means. No, we don't do that.
So when she puts on something and I go, you look fantastic. Or when she's in this play and I say, my God, you're a great actress. She knows I'm not bullshitting her. If you have something to say, whether it's praise or criticism, you know. It's the truth.
Yes. even with things I wear. See? While any couple might recognize that trust required to navigate life's challenges, Let's and Kuhn's moment. is providing some uncommon tests.
Yeah. They're still out there. What? All waiting for us. Tate Kuhn landing the white lotus roll.
I turned to Tracy and I said, there's no way. I can go away to Thailand for six months. Or you had a three-year-old. and a six-year-old. And Tracy was the one who turned to me and he said, We're gonna figure this out.
Tracy was doing every morning, he was doing dinner and bedtime every night and bath time. By himself.
So that was a really hard six months. I wasn't doing anything extraordinary. I was taking care of the kids while she was going a job. We know when the undeniable thing comes along, and we will both make room for that to happen. which is why this chance to collaborate on Broadway is so important for them.
The best way to handle a whirlwind. is to find a place to anchor. For these two. That's always been the theater. This is where we're most comfortable.
In a rehearsal room, preparing this on a stage, doing this in a theater. That's what we know. You just have a sense of. accomplishment and gratification in the theater. You've told a story over the course of a night.
You don't get to do that when you make a film or TV show. Carrie Kuhn and Tracy Letz are a couple now living in some of the culture's brightest lights. But they're theater people. Bright lights don't phase them. I got my first credit card at 43.
It is a tough, it's a tough gig. Besides, they have work to do. the kind that's most affirming for them. Work they can do. Together.
I needed somebody who understood. What it means to be an artist in America. And I needed somebody who reminded me that it was important to be an artist and that it was. powerful and necessary. There's still time for a little breakfast.
Which brings us to Jim Gaffigan. and some food for thought. If you have children, you've probably heard that pancake analogy. Your first kid is like your first pancake. You always mess up your first pancake.
Dear How bad are you at making pancakes? Why are we comfortable comparing the impossible task of parenting with something simple like making a pancake? I've spent a lot of time with my children, and I've never thought, this is just like making pancakes. The pancake analogy is intended to be cute. Commentary on how new parents are finding their way through the challenges of raising children.
Like making a second pancake, you get better at it. But do we? Are we better parents of that second child? Doesn't feel that way. If my first child was like making a first pancake, my second child felt more like baking a souffle.
And in case you're wondering, I don't know how to bake a souffle. My real issue with the pancake analogy is that it ignores the birth order theory. As you may know, birth order stereotypes were created by the same people who brought us astrology. like reading a horoscope, a birth order stereotype, sounds like it could be true, but you also know it's total garbage. If we follow the birth order theory, the second child/slash pancake is a bigger challenge.
Why are we having cake for breakfast? If you have a third child, then you are confronted by the middle child syndrome. When you have three children, the second child, slash pancake, becomes the middle child, who is ignored because the youngest child, the third child pancake, is spoiled. Maybe the third child Slash pancake is a chocolate chip pancake. I guess you spoiled the third youngest child slash pancake because the second child pancake was so hard, but.
You also ignored them? You know what? I would never ignore a pancake. Look. I have five children, which is overwhelming, too many.
Having five kids is like eating five pancakes. The stack is beautiful and inviting, but that initial giddiness always gives way to regret and disappointment. I mean in myself. and my children. Either way.
I'm never having pancakes again. This was 60 pounds ago. And you were 60 pounds lighter? 60 pounds ago, I think of my life in terms of my thighs. Oprah Winfrey is the kind of legend we usually say needs no introduction.
She is Oprah, after all. This morning, we talk about the battle of her life, which at age 71, She says she's finally winning. You always wear really beautiful clothes. Always have. Always have.
And I wonder if it's... A joy to get dressed now. I can tell you What a joy it is to to actually Pack clothes that you know are going to fit and you're going to feel good in them. I mean, it is a joy. to get dressed.
That is such a powerful first question, Jane Polly. Really? Turn it right. Powerful. is one of the superlatives befitting Oprah Winfrey.
one of the best known and most admired people on the planet. And one of the richest. But for all her success, she seemed powerless against a weight problem. A deeply personal struggle she's waged publicly and openly. Sh Everybody loves okra.
You mean me? In 1985, when her talk show, AM Chicago, was getting national attention, Oprah appeared on The Tonight Show with guest host, Joan Rivers. And I'm sitting there, and we're toward the end of the interview, and Joan turns to me and says, So tell me. You know, how'd you gain the weight?
So how'd you gain the weight? I ate a lot. I was stunned in that moment. When I now look back and I see that moment, you know, but. I left feeling Humiliated.
And embarrassed? But not the least with anger Not the least bit of anger or being upset about it. Because Because I thought she's right. Over the next forty years, Oprah would gain and lose hundreds of pounds.
Okay, good. In the fall of 1988, after a strict four-month liquid diet, a new Svelte Oprah appears wearing size 10 Calvins, weighing 145. and pulling a wagon with sixty seven pounds of animal fat. It was all back. Plus twenty-five more.
when she went to the Daytime Emmy Awards in nineteen ninety two. And I go to the Emmys. praying not to win. literally praying not to win. because I don't want to have to get up out of my seat.
And have everybody watch me do that walk to the stage. She started over again the next day, working out with an on-call personal trainer this time. In 1994, she even ran a marathon. Oprah knew how to lose weight. She did it over and over.
My body, Jane, was always seeking 211 to 218.
So usually by the time I would hit 211, when I first went on the diet for the wagon of fat and pulled out the wagon of fat. when I did my first marathon. Once I get to 2.11, I go, oh, I gotta do something. But now I understand that the biology of me, which is different than the biology of you and everybody else, everybody, all of us has our own. that no matter what I did, No matter how hard I worked, no matter what.
It was always trying to get my body back to 211. 211, not because 211 is her ideal weight, but rather a set point. a genetically influenced weight range. Oprah calls it. the enough point.
Enough is also the title of a new book Oprah co wrote with doctor Anya Yastroboff from the Yale School of Medicine. Enough point. How do you know what your body's number is? And for most people, it's the weight that they kind of always gravitate to.
So to lose weight, you cut back on calories. and start craving high-fat food. Or you eat less. But nothing changes. Our body's like, well.
If you're going to eat less, then I'm going to make you more efficient. I'm going to make you burn less.
So what happens is together, collectively, we end up eating more. and burning less. It's the enemy within which is in our brains. Yes. Oh.
So now that we know What the problem is, the hormones that drive why don't people just stop? obeying it. That would be like trying to control something that is not in your control. That would be like holding your breath. That would be like holding your breath for the rest of your life.
Every time somebody says, just eat less, move more, We're asking our patients to control their biology and hold their breath, and it's just not possible. And why would we do that? We don't do that for any other disease. And that's what the American Medical Association says obesity is. A disease.
a treatable disease. The good news for you, the transformative news, Oh, was that? If it's a disease, It's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not my fault, Jane.
It's not my fault. And I could weep right now. I could wheat right now. I'm not going to, but I could wheat right now. For all of the many days and nights I've journaled about, This being my fault.
And Why can't I conquer this thing? In the last decade, nearly a dozen weight management drugs have been approved. for chronic weight issues. And for millions, drugs like GLP-1s are the answer to their prayers. Finally, a scientifically supported, medically approved weight loss strategy that worked and yet OPRA resisted.
I was so motivated by shame. that I felt I could not take the drug. Because if I took the drug, I who have been the poster child for I can do it, I can do it, I can do it, willpower, willpower, let's just get more willpower, if I couldn't do it, then I would be shamed. and ashamed of myself for not being able to do it myself. The medications don't work for everyone.
And some can't tolerate side effects ranging from nausea to gallstones. But it's been two years since Oprah finally started medication. And it's working for her. Actually now, actually for the first time back to my marathon weight. I just yesterday hit my marathon weight.
What's that? 155. Yeah. And so that's it for me. I'm going to just try to maintain well done because I thought 160 was your goalway.
Yeah, yeah, it was. But as I continue to work out here, the combination of the medication And hiking every day and resistance training has given me the body that I had. when I was running the marathon.
So I was 40 and feeling really good, but to be able to be seventy one. and feel that I'm in the best shape of my life. feels better than it did when I was 40. I would submit. that you would have been a phenomenal success.
But I don't think you would have become Okay. Oprah. if you hadn't had the weight issue. And been open about it and shared it. Yeah, I would agree with that.
I actually agree with that. And that's why I don't have any regrets about it. There's a wonderful Spiritual African American spiritual Um called I Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now. I wouldn't take nothing for my journey now. For my journey now, for my journey now.
I wouldn't take nothing for my journey now. So I wouldn't. I wouldn't change the journey. Because I think the struggle with the weight actually helped me be more relatable and relate more to other people who were in their own struggles. But I'm glad now to be in a position where I feel the healthiest and strongest I have ever been.
Our conversation with Oprah Winfrey continues as we explore some unlikely paths. Oprah Winfrey grew up riding on dirt roads. We added this bridge here in the pond.
Now, on her sprawling Montecito Estate near Santa Barbara, California. She owns the room. I bought this used this belonged to my neighbor, so this is 23 acres. Her house used to be right there. We took this fence down, and then so this became my whole backyard.
Well, it's a nice place you got here.
Now, there's an ocean beyond. Yes. Yeah, there's an ocean beyond. And that's yours too? The ocean's not mine.
Around here, all of the views are spectacular. especially the one looking back. Born in Mississippi in 1954, Oprah Winfrey was a teen beauty queen who became a local TV reporter in Nashville. And I'm Oprah Winfrey, we both hope you make it a great Labor Day weekend. Join us.
And then an anchor in Baltimore. And the beautiful thing about my life was that I started out in local television, as you did. And when you start out locally, you get this like little diddy tiny fame. But I failed. I failed in Baltimore.
I failed. They brought me in as a 22-year-old with an anchor guy, white-haired Jerry Turner, who was the most popular. Local anchor in the country, not just Baltimore, and he told. Totally. Hate it.
Me. He resented me. He would do everything he could to condescend to me anyway. I remember one time we were on the set, and he said to me, Um so you're from Mississippi. Can you name all the tributaries of the Mississippi River.
And I was like, all the tributaries of the Mississippi River? No, I can't. He goes, well, what school did you go to?
Well, I went to Tennessee State. Was that an accredited school?
So you got a degree? I mean that kind of thing. This is in between the commercial breaks, okay? Boy, that happened to me in Chicago. That happened to you?
Started in September, basically. Yeah. Uh was taken off uh the the late news in the spring. Maybe we share a few things. The surest way to cut the high cost of eating is to eat less.
I was a shy kid from Indiana who started as a local reporter in Indianapolis. And wound up on national TV. The newest member of the Today family, Jane Pauley, who comes and Oprah was watching. And you were such an inspiration. I was like, I remember calling Gail that morning.
Oh my God. It's just, it was unbelievable. That I inspired you at some point. Yeah. Mm But Oprah famously went on to build her worldwide media empire.
Get it tight! And a following that some world leaders can only dream of. Lord, you have such power now that you are this woman undeterred by Weight and noise, what are you going to do?
Well, I don't even feel that that's a beautiful question, but I don't feel compelled. To do anything.
So I don't know what it means, actually, other than I feel. Free. Yeah. As you know, your name was credibly bandied about for the Presidency. No, it's not going to happen.
What I really want to do is to continue to use who I am and what that represents as a force in the world as a force for good. and to allow people to not let the noises of the world still their joy. You are such a person of positivity. Yeah. For all of her astonishing success, It seems that Oprah is always aware of how far she's come.
How do you figure that from that success You kept on going, you kept on going and became something is so much bigger than television. Ah, you know what I mean. I do know what you mean, and I have to say There's a wonderful poem by County Cullen called Yet Do I Marvel. And I would have to say, yet do I marvel at that myself.
Sometimes in the early spring the frogs are in the pond and you can I can open the door and I can hear the frogs out at night. And it sounds just like Mississippi, being on the porch in Mississippi. But the distance from Mississippi to Montecito cannot be measured. It just cannot be measured. And I marvel at How did this happen?
How did it happen? that I was able to navigate the waters of racism And sexism and misogynism and all the things that we had to endure. Yet do I marvel. And marvelous it is. For sure.
We have little bits of things in common, I'm happy to say. Little bits of things. Yes. A lot, because we were women of this business at a time when it was really tough to be in this business. But now it's become something else.
It's become something completely different. It was both. It was a time that was tough to be a woman in the beginning. Yes. But boy, was the timing good.
Boy was the timing good. We made the best of it. Yes, we did. You've been hearing about it almost from the start of the American sweep into Venezuela. The Monroe Doctrine.
So what is it? Where did it come from? we have a short history lesson from Mo Rocka. A resurgence of the Monroe Doctrine, which says it's not every day that a 202-year-old address to Congress goes viral. And going all the way back to James Monroe and the Monroe Doctrine.
The Monroe Doctrine.
The Monroe Doctrine.
Well, go back to the couple of hundred-year-old Monroe Doctrine. Yes, the Monroe Doctrine, that thing you learned about in high school, is suddenly a hot topic. You wrote a book on the Monroe Doctrine. Yes, I did. Has your phone been blowing up?
My five minutes of fame turned into a week of fame. University of Missouri's Jay Sexton wrote about how just three paragraphs in an 1823 address by President James Monroe have been used to justify U.S. actions in Latin America ever since. Monroe's original message was to Europe, Stay out of the Americas. It wasn't a pronouncement of law or statute.
It was simply a statement made by a president to Congress. About what foreign powers could not do in the Western Hemisphere. That's it. It was decades before that statement would be ordained a doctrine and invoked by President James K. Polk to justify war with Mexico and expand the US by nearly half.
Cut to 1904 and President Teddy Roosevelt brandishing his big stick and proclaiming his own corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. He's the key figure. And when Roosevelt looks at the Caribbean and Central America, he sees instability. He sees concerns that the European rivals might intervene, and he says in order to prevent that from happening, the United States needed to take preemptive action of its own. It's part of the justification, well, we kept the Europeans out of this hemisphere, so you have to keep your house in order or we'll do it for you.
That's very much how Roosevelt put it. The Marines returned to the troubled spot, this time in force. Enter the U.S. Marines, who by the 1920s were boots on the ground in half a dozen Latin American and Caribbean countries, attempting to stabilize them and, this is crucial, protect U.S. business interests.
from bananas in Honduras to banks in Haiti. But these occupations soon became bloody quagmires, with hundreds of military and tens of thousands of civilian casualties. They're known as the Banana Wars. These are the forever wars of their era. They begin to become very, very unpopular.
The Banana Wars ended with U.S. withdrawal from Haiti in 1934. After World War II, the Monroe Doctrine was barely mentioned. Constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of the United States. of all the Americas.
In 1962, when the Soviets sent missiles into Cuba, President John F. Kennedy had this to say: He said, the Monroe Doctrine, what the hell is that? But now it's back. Since last week's incursion into Venezuela, President Trump has cloaked his foreign policy in a once again revived Monroe Doctrine. Monroe Doctrine.
We sort of forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don't forget about it anymore. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning.
Pluto TV has thousands of free movies and TV shows. This system is free. This is the mantra. This is With movies like Joe Dirt, Pixels, and 51st Date. This is awesome!
And TV shows like Survivor, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly Odd Parents, and Ghosts, Pluto TV is always free. Huzzah! Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never. You're welcome.
Yeah. Everything you Done. Must come to this. The biggest and wildest mission yet is now streaming. I need you to trust me.
One last time. Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning. Rated VT13, now streaming on Paramount Plus.
