G'day, it's Gus Walland here, host of Not An Overnight Success, the only podcast in
the world that gives $10,000 to the charity of the guest to give away every single episode.
Today, it's Charlie T.O.
This episode, you'll see a side of Charlie that perhaps you haven't seen before, very
very tough upbringing, medicine, being a doctor was not part of his plan, in fact he started
a motor mechanic apprenticeship.
One part of the interview that I really enjoyed was when I got vulnerable and then I saw
Charlie get vulnerable, he's a guy that does not tow the party line, I hope you enjoy the
chat that I had with Charlie.
Now that we know you're an internationally recognised neurosurgeon, but I want to take
us back to that time when you were just a child, what were you like as a child, where
were you born, give us your sort of childhood.
Oh, well in a nutshell, I was the, an ultimate nerd.
As a child, so it was difficult in those days, I mean there were two Asians in my school,
so there was a lot of anti-Asian sentiment, you know it was in the days where people were
still anti-Japanese because of the Second World War and of course they couldn't tell
whether we were Japanese or Chinese so they lumped us all together and just called us
the Yellow Peril.
I mean you either rose above it or you sunk from that attitude and I'm pleased to say
that I sort of came out black belt in karate and thought, oh bugger this, I'm not going
to let them get me down and sort of tried to rise above it.
But it was a relatively modest childhood, my father was a doctor so it could have been
with a silver spoon in my mouth but no, it was hard love, in fact he used to beat me
up quite a bit and really, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, so it was one of those sort of relationships
where if I went to school for example, got picked on at school, got bullied at school,
or come back and he would sort of, you know, sort of get very upset that I didn't stick
up for myself and used to give me a good whooping for not sticking up for myself and yeah, that's
my memory of my childhood actually, a pretty hard childhood, never had a holiday.
They believed that in order to get a good sense of value of money that I'd have to
work every school holiday so I worked every school holiday doing something like being
a bowser boy at a gas station or a rouser bout on a farm, doing the milk run.
When I hear you say that, that actually makes me sad.
Well again, you could be sad about that childhood but then that's clichéish but it builds character
and you have to try and make the best of that bad sort of childhood and I think it contributed
a lot to my tenacity now and the fact that I've, you know, sort of things that I've achieved.
I'm not quite sure I would have had the foundational, the fortitude to have tackled a lot of things
that have happened to me since if it wasn't for that hard childhood.
Oh look, I don't recommend it to people.
It's not the way that you brought up your kids.
Exactly, exactly.
I wanted my children not to have to experience that, to have a nice pleasant childhood, holidays
and loving parents and they're still high achievers so it's not what I would want for
my children but I don't look back on my children and think oh god, I wish it was different.
You make the best of what you get.
Yes, so that was your dad pretty much sort of running the show there, what about mum?
Mum was your rock of Gibraltar, she was the one who was always there for you when you
Like my father beat me up so badly once that I bled, I had a laceration and my mum had
to stitch me up and yeah, she was always there for me and she was my rock and they
divorced when I was nine, basically I was raised by a single mum.
Was there more love after dad was out of the picture?
Which is very Chinese so it wasn't that demonstrative love, it was showing love like cooking for
coming to watch me play football despite me being a very bad footballer and being, I was
never in the A team, I was always in the C or D team you know so for her to come along
and watch that, I'm sure it wasn't entertaining for her but she just, it was her way of showing
that she loved me and supported me but no, she never said, the first time she said I
love you was when I was 40 years old and I'll never forget it, I love you and that was the
first time it ever came out of her mouth.
So you were 40, what had you done to get that I love you?
I was living in America and I came back to visit her and at the airport and she was saying
goodbye to me to go back to America again and she said I love you.
Did you sort of stop?
Yeah, double take, like oh, what happened then?
Did I hear that right?
You know the sort of mother and shit, you know, very Chinese, very traditional, you
didn't say things like that, it was hard love.
She did it her way and the way that she had been brought up.
So you're a nine-year-old boy, your dad leaves, mum's looking after you, you're not very
good at football but you're very good at academic stuff, are you top of the class, are you ducks,
do you have to work hard for your results?
Yeah, I had to work hard.
The ducks was a Chinese guy who was, you know, a genius and it came pretty easy for him.
I guess the first five were all, you know, really clever guys.
I was in the top 10 but I had to be in the top 10 because after the divorce it was always
conditional those divorces in those days and my father wanted to take me out of private
school to save himself money but the condition of the court was that if I stayed in the top
10 then he couldn't take me out of school so there was a lot of pressure to be in the
top 10 every year.
Oh yeah, on top of all the other pressures of being a teenage boy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was hard, it was hard.
I had to work really hard to stay in the top 10 because I'm not, you know, I'm not like
those guys who are naturally brilliant.
I had to work hard to stay in that.
So there you are, you're working hard to staying in the top 10.
Any brothers and sisters?
A sister who was very doting when I was a little boy, in fact so much so that she did
all the talking and I actually didn't start speaking until I was about four years of age.
My parents thought that I was special needs and they put me in a special needs school.
Well, they sent me to Trinity Grammar first and because I couldn't speak they said, look,
I'm sorry, you can't come here.
So they put me in a special needs school and at the special needs school apparently I looked
around and thought, shit, I need to get the hell out of here and so I started talking
so they put me back in the Trinity.
My sister is very, she does a lot of talking, she talks a lot and she did all the talking
for me so I never needed those skills.
Right, there you go, are you close to her now?
Yeah, yeah, she's a lovely person.
Like I say, she still talks a lot, but you know, she's got a great heart.
Did you guys get born here or did you come across?
No, we were born here.
Dad came over to do medicine and mum came over to do nursing from Singapore, so we were
So when you go back to Singapore, if you go back to Singapore, do you feel any link here
I did that program, Who Do You Think You Are?
And until then I had no desire to learn about my ancestry.
You know, I'm one of these sort of present sort of guys or future guys.
I didn't want to look back in the past.
But when that program looked back in my past, I went back 23 generations, I found it absolutely
And so when we went back to Singapore, it was a real eye opener for me and quite cathartic
in many ways because I realised then some of my traits were not my traits, so traits
of my ancestors and it was all genetic and it had nothing to do really with my upbringing,
it all had to do with genes.
Yeah, very, very fascinating really.
So that journey you went on, going back all those generations and so forth, was there
one sort of moment that you went, I'm so glad I'm going through this journey like it?
Yeah, because we all question our own motives sometimes and sometimes we think, am I a good
person or why am I such a weirdo?
And when you look back in your ancestry, you realise that in fact, some of those traits
that you had came from epigenetics.
They came from the fact that you had to be this or you had to do that to survive.
So one of my traits, for example, and I'm not saying to be boastful, but I'm incredibly
I will not give up.
And you could tell that from my background that back in Fujian province in the days of
Genghis Khan, my family were very, very tenacious and they held to the moral high ground.
Sometimes I think, do I do charity work because I'm a good person or do I do it because it
makes me feel good?
In other words, is it a selfish thing?
And you question yourself about these sort of things.
And I realised there was a lot of charity back in my family where they're good people.
They tried to lift others up to a higher standard.
So it did explain a lot of the traits that I often questioned myself.
Yeah, I think more of us should go back and do that type of thing if you can.
It's becoming more and more popular, isn't it, sort of the ancestry type stuff?
Yeah, and I can see why now.
And I had no interest at all before that program.
Yeah, that's good.
So you're a teenager, you found your voice.
Did you find your voice properly at any stage or a moment you can go back and go, I was
I felt like I was on the right path because your sister had done so much chatting.
Your dad's left for a few years now.
At what point did Charlie T. Ove become Charlie T. Ove, you reckon?
I think I was a bit of a late starter.
I was still wanting to be one of the boys when I was at school.
I think most kids like to fit in.
So at school, when I obviously stood out, not just from appearance, but from my personality,
I hadn't found myself.
I didn't like myself.
I wanted to be one of the boys.
I wanted to be white.
I often lay in bed thinking, God, I wish I didn't look Chinese.
I wish I was good at sports so I could be one of the boys.
So it wasn't at school.
It wasn't until, I guess, university years that I thought to myself, actually, I should
be more proud of who I am and not try and be someone that I'm not.
But no, at school, I have to confess, I really yearned to be so-called normal.
So were you always going to go to university?
Part of that yearning to be something else was I wanted to be good at sport and strong
and muscular and stuff.
So I got into karate and I got my black belt and I wanted to be a bouncer.
I wanted to be a security person.
I wanted to own my own security firm.
So there was that ambition.
I also wanted to be a politician because I wanted to make changes to society.
I wanted to be a lawyer because I was in the debating team and I was a good debater.
So there was a lot of things I wanted to be and some of them did not include university.
In fact, I wanted to be a motor mechanic and I did.
I started a motor mechanic apprenticeship but was treated with zero respect.
And I thought, I need to do something where I'm treated with a little bit more respect.
Yeah, and so I guess I kind of fell into medicine.
It's not as if my parents encouraged me to do it.
I got the marks to get into medicine and just one thing led to another.
I wasn't really passionate about medicine until I did it.
Yeah, so I don't want you to think it was one of those stories where right from when
I was a kid I wanted to be a neurosurgeon, a brain surgeon.
That wasn't the case.
It was one of these things where it was almost like serendipitous.
So your dad's left when you were nine.
Do you have a relationship with him at all after that point?
No, he beat the crap out of me so much so that he had a restraining order.
So it was a very acrimonious relationship where I was poisoned a little bit by my mum
who obviously he had another family and committed adultery.
So the divorce was on the grounds of adultery.
In retrospect, a lot of my opinion, my father was tainted by my mum.
Now that I'm a man, I realise that we all have our failures and we all have our problems
and so I'm a little bit more understanding of his situation.
But no, I hated him and I didn't want anything to do with him for 20, 30 years.
So you find yourself in medicine.
At what point through the course do you go, oh, actually, this is not just me doing a
degree and a pretty good life afterwards.
This is something that I'm good at and I'm passionate about and you're into it.
Yeah, well, that didn't come until later either.
So medicine to me was something that I enjoyed, but no, I wasn't really good at it.
In my day, the system was high distinction, distinction, credit and pass and I got passes
I got a credit in something, but I never got a distinction in anything.
I knew I was good with my hands because I like doing things with my hands and I started
an apprenticeship in motor mechanics and I was good at it and I always played with Lego
and Meccano sets and I knew I was good with my hands.
So I thought, oh, well, being good with my hands, I should do surgery.
But I don't know, I never really got on well with the surgeons and I was never, I was never
really, I guess, part of the fraternity or one of the boys.
I never felt that comfortable even though I loved surgery itself.
So no, again, the answer is I really didn't know my calling and I didn't know what I really
wanted to do until I fell into it, essentially.
So I guess medicine was a means of getting to neurosurgery, again, all through serendipity
because as it turns out, because I knew I wanted to do surgery, I started doing pediatric
I like kids, I like surgery, so the natural thing towards pediatric surgery, but I hated
I'd never had a mentor in it.
I found it a little bit boring, didn't challenge me mentally and didn't really challenge me
physically either.
But then I was thrust into neurosurgery.
I was doing call as a pediatric surgical registrar and the neurosurgical registrar got ill with
hepatitis and so he was out for the count.
So they asked me to pick up his call.
So I was thrust into neurosurgery even though I never wanted to do it.
In fact, I didn't like it at all as a medical student.
So when you say pick up the call, what does that mean for people non-medical?
So when a head-injured patient or a neurosurgery patient came into the emergency room at night,
I was asked to assess them and look after them despite the fact that I was doing pediatric
surgery and not pediatric neurosurgery.
So I was really thrust into it, thrown in the deep end.
From there, the rest is history.
I fell in love with neurosurgery once I actually was thrust into it.
Yeah, so it sounds like you bumbled and fumbled your way to where you ended up, where you
No one's put it that way before Gus, but you're right.
Okay, so at what age are you fumbling and bumbling and going, oh, this is actually quite
Yeah, it was right up until they did neurosurgery, which was, I don't know, 28.
And at that stage, are you a single man, are you?
Yep, I'm single, playing the field, being a naughty boy, thinking I'm pretty hot because
I'm a brain surgeon.
So when people actually ask you what you're doing and you say a brain surgeon, they're
like, yeah, sure, what are you really doing here?
No, no, I'm actually a brain surgeon.
I know, it never worked.
It was a nightclub up in Brisbane called Rosie's and all the footballers used to go there and
I'd go there with my buddy and he was doing cardiothoracic surgery, open heart surgery.
And so we went there to pick up girls and I'd say something like, you know, I'm a brain
surgeon and he's an open heart surgeon.
And the girls would just walk away like, you know.
Walk straight over to Wimbledon Sailor and Wally Lewis rather than you.
Exactly who they went to.
It was Malmininga and Wally Lewis who were in Rosie's when we were there.
And you're absolutely right, they had all the girls around them.
We had no one around us.
So you're 28, you're up there in Brizzy, you play in the field.
At what point does that change?
When do you fall in love and when do you start being a family man?
So I had met Genevieve before then, but she'd gone overseas and we both agreed that, you
know, she'd gone for a year.
And when she came back, I realized that, well, actually I didn't realize, again, mumbled
and fumbled my way through that because I didn't realize how good I had it until I lost
So it was one of those things where, you know, we just went on for years actually.
And I was very happy with my cake and wanting to eat it.
And she goes, well, bugger this, you know, if you're not going to marry me, it's not
that I don't love you, but I'll go and find someone else who's willing to marry me.
And when I lost her, then I go, oh shit, you know, maybe I should agree to get married.
So what's the engagement like?
Did you get down on bended knee?
Did you get a ring?
No, look, I'm not the romantic type, as my current partner will tell you.
And my daughters tell me all the time that I'm a bit of a philistine when it comes to
women and relationships.
And you know, I'm divorced now, as you know, and the reason I'm divorced is because I was
never, I was never a very good husband.
Life was always revolved around me.
I never really appreciated the sacrifices Genevieve was making.
I never voiced my appreciation of her.
I never sort of made her feel that she was appreciated.
Just terrible at that sort of stuff.
Not dissimilar to my father and my mother, literally about to say that a bad communicator
when it comes to that.
And yeah, so I mumbled and fumbled my way through that and it was a great marriage.
She was a great wife, a great mother, and I just essentially blew it the last 10 years
where I devoted all my time to neurosurgery, very little time to her.
And I was just telling Keisha actually that it was one of those emptiness type syndromes
where now the kids go, you've lost that common bond.
At that stage, you should be spending more time with your wife, making sure she knows
how much you appreciate her and what she's done for your career.
And I didn't do that.
I just, I just, I dove into neurosurgery more when the kids left home, not the relationship
The fact that you can talk about that is progress.
With your new relationship now, are you better at communicating, you know, the hard stuff?
So you know you're bad.
You're a smart person.
At what point do you go, I'm going to do something a little bit differently?
But the fact that I actually have to try it doesn't come naturally, it's not good.
I mean, you know, it should come naturally, but it doesn't, it just doesn't.
I'm very old fashioned, very, very old school where guys don't cry, they don't wear their
heart on their sleeves.
They certainly don't tell their wives how much they love them or appreciate them.
You just don't do that.
How's that working out for you?
Because I'm here to tell you, that's, I can understand why you feel that way.
And going back to that generational stuff you spoke about before, it's just embedded
But I know there's so many blokes, like I spoke to a group of men on Saturday up on
the Gold Coast at a seminar and I'm all talking about, you know, showing vulnerability and
My charity is all about, you know, what does it take to be a man today compared to when
the rules were set all those years ago?
When I get feedback like, oh, mate, you know, this young generation, they're soft, they've
just got to get on with things.
I say, okay, well, it's Christmas coming up.
Imagine your grandson or your granddaughter walking into Christmas and not feeling like
they can talk to you about something that they're worried about.
That would make you sad.
In fact, you've brought up some type of shield where I don't talk to granddad about that
because that's not what granddad does.
And I'm saying that's why we need to change, not for any other reason than to just be open
to have those discussions that could really clear the mind of someone that you absolutely
adore who's growing up in a different world to the world that we grew up in.
Look, I'm intelligent enough to know that unless I change, things are going to be bad
for me with this relationship.
I mean, I've got this perfect partner now who loves me dearly.
I love her dearly.
She's very giving, very understanding emotionally.
Her EQ is like 160, whereas my EQ is 60.
So I know I have to change or else I'm going to lose her, but no matter how intelligent
I am, no matter how much awareness I have, I'm struggling.
I really struggle.
You even telling her that is a huge, huge thing for her to hear.
The fact that you acknowledge it and that you are trying your best, but it's bloody
That is an absolute, just do that as a starting point.
That is a good starting point, but on a daily basis, it's important to recognise those things
And then, see, what I do is I fall back into the old fashioned sort of sexist, male dominant
breadwinner role.
I mean, because I love that role.
I love the old fashioned role of me looking after my woman and caring for her, providing
for her, but never sort of nurturing her emotional needs.
No, no, I wouldn't do that.
And the emotional needs are the most important.
Well, it turns out they are.
My marriage would have been more successful had I realised that.
Well, the fact you've been given a second chance with someone that you obviously adore,
time to change it up.
I'm here to tell you, Charlie, as a friend of yours and someone that I admire greatly,
there are many people in this world that I admire greatly that could be better in these
So I'm on a bit of a crusade, not to say that I have all the answers, but to be vulnerable
enough to understand it and to just have a go.
And a lot of the time, I did a speed dating thing for a show I did on the, I'd been married
20 odd years and still married to the same lady, but we had a night where I speed dated
with some really lovely looking ladies in Sydney with 10 other blokes.
And believe me, if there was a rating of between one and 10 of good looks, I'm coming in at
At the end of the night, I had a tick from every girl.
Now, there was a bloke there that looked like James Bond, beautiful body, the whole bit.
And he was a really nice guy.
He had six out of 10 and everyone else was under that.
And when we sat down with smart people afterwards, it was that the women were quite happy
with the good looking guy and the body and everything.
That was fine. But most importantly, they wanted to see someone who was authentic and
real. And the simple fact is that most men don't quite know how to do that.
And it's difficult for us.
Well, because it makes you vulnerable.
And, you know, when you're holding on to that rule of being the not vulnerable person,
then you don't know. The last thing you want to do is show vulnerability.
And by showing your emotions, you're showing vulnerability.
Yeah, I'd much rather not cry and not show any sort of emotion.
And do that because, again, it's what I was raised to be.
I was raised to be that sort of person, that bloke.
We're leading with vulnerability in 2024.
And I'm going to text you every week.
And I'm going to remind you, as I do with many, I'm adding you to the list of brilliant
people who just, you know, like if I had something wrong or someone that I loved and you
could help, I would ring you.
So I feel I can help you with this, because I'm certainly in touch with that side of
me. OK, we've got off.
We've got off. But that happens.
That happens. So you get married.
Yes. You found your passion.
You fumbled and bubbled your way into that.
So life's pretty good.
Life's very good, actually.
Yeah. Well, no, no, I won't say that.
I always want to stay in Australia.
I love Australia. And I found that my personality just didn't fit.
What do you mean by that?
So when I was a registrar, for example, I could never.
No, no, no, no, no.
Right from when I started medicine, I could never play the game.
Like, I hate to say this, because it means that anyone who's been successful, so-called
successful in medicine, has played the game.
But so here's the game.
The game, unfortunately, is that medicine by definition is a hierarchy.
I mean, it is. It's a hierarchy.
You've got the professor, you've got the registrar, you've got the resident, you've
got the medical student, you know, there's this hierarchy.
And playing the game means that you can't piss off the person above you, because
they've got the power over you.
OK, so what does it mean by not pissing them off?
It means basically regurgitating what they're telling you.
And that's right from the get-go.
Before you get into medicine, you've got to get 99.95 in the HSC.
How do you do that?
Regurgitate. It's all about spitting back facts and so you get good marks.
So that's how you get into medicine.
When you're in medicine, you're taught by your professor.
And God forbid, if you started sort of questioning your professor.
So what you're meant to do there is, again, regurgitate.
OK, and then when you're a doctor, God forbid, if you do anything that's
against evidence-based medicine or consensus.
So, again, you're meant to toe the party line, play the game.
And someone like me, who finds it hard to play the game.
Actually, that's an understatement.
Who finds it impossible to play the game?
It's a struggle right from the get-go, because even when I was a resident,
I was antagonising my superiors.
And then when I was a registrar, I antagonised my consultants.
And then when I became a doctor, I realised that this is not my game here.
I need to go somewhere else where I can be honest to myself, be true to myself,
say what I believe, do what I believe and not just toe the party line.
And I'm sorry, but a country as small as Australia, where everyone knows everyone
and everyone's in everyone's back pocket and got to belong to the club.
Someone like me, it just doesn't, it just doesn't work.
And so I struggled.
I was fired as a registrar, kicked off the training scheme.
Like I told you, I was doing paediatric surgery, kicked out of the paediatric
surgery training scheme because I'd pissed off the professor.
There's nothing wrong with your skills.
It's your, it's your mouth.
It's your attitude.
It's your, I can't just cop this.
Say you are a root back to them.
You're not playing the game.
Is that what you mean by that?
It's exactly what I mean.
Even my greatest detractors today, if you speak to anyone, will tell you
that I'm a talented surgeon, a very good surgeon.
No one has ever questioned my surgical abilities.
I've questioned my decision-making, sure.
But decision-making is a very, very personal thing.
So no one has questioned my talents as a surgeon or as a doctor.
What they've questioned is my ability to tow the party line.
I mean, you think that this latest controversy is me operating on a patient
that everyone has said is inoperable and they want me to call a tumor inoperable
when they call it inoperable.
Well, I'm not prepared to do that.
You know, if I truly believe that I can take out a tumor when everyone else
is called inoperable, even though the risk is high and it's putting my career
and my reputation on the line, I'll still say it.
I'll still say, look, it's a chance I can take that tumor out.
There's a chance I can prolong your life.
Everyone else has said it can't be done, but I think I can do it.
And then the patient decides, but with that attitude, what's happened?
It just doesn't go down well.
They want me to say, you know, if someone else has called inoperable,
they want me to call inoperable.
If someone else has told them the risk of surgery is 70% chance of death,
even if my figures show the risk is 5% of death, they want me to say the
risk is 70% of death, just like them.
Sorry, not prepared to do that.
So you leave Australia?
So I left Australia to train in America to do a thing called a fellowship where
you've done your basic training here and then you go to input the icing on the
And when I went to America to do my fellowship, I realized that America was
more sort of my personality and that is it's a meritocracy, as you know.
And sure, there's a tall poppy syndrome in all countries, but it really isn't
very strong in America.
In America, if you're good, you tell everyone you're good and they go, oh,
okay, and they worship you for it and they respect you for it and they
surround you with other good people and it elevates you and it elevates them
and everyone's happy.
And that's how America works.
It's a true meritocracy.
And so when I was over there and I thought I was pretty damn good, everyone
else thought I was pretty damn good and I got rewarded for it.
You know, assistant professor to associate professor to full professor to
being searched out by all these different institutions, offered jobs at
UCSD, UCLA and yeah, I loved it.
I really found not only my calling in neurosurgery, but my place, I thought.
Why did you not just stay there?
Well, it was Genevieve, Genevieve and the family.
Genevieve had made huge sacrifices for my career.
She had a great career herself and gave that up to.
What was her career in?
She was a set designer for movies and TV shows and stuff and very talented,
very good at it and basically gave it up to support me and the family.
At what stage did you have kids?
Did you have kids before you went to America or did you have them in the States?
No, we had our first child while I was a registrar still.
So the family started, she gives up her work.
You go to the States, everything's going well.
And at some stage, she had this insight that I never had that once children get
to a certain age and they're in America, they become Americans and that's their
So she said to me very clearly, if you want America to be our home and never go
back to Australia, fine, let's stay.
And the children will be identified as Americans, but they're at the age now
that if you want to go back to Australia, you have to go now.
So she's, she put the pressure on me to come back.
I knew I wouldn't be successful back here.
I knew that I'd be struggling the whole time and I was right.
So if you could have those moments back, would you have said, no, no, that's okay.
We're going to stay here.
The kids are going to be American.
And that's what's happening.
If you could have that moment back.
I've never thought about that.
No one's ever asked me nor have I ever thought about that.
Well, it's one of those questions where I think I'm going to upset a lot
of people either way with, or I say yes or no, but so I'll just be honest with
you and say, if I had the blessing of Genevieve, yeah, I think my career
would have been easier at States.
I can tell you now I was there for years and it was very easy.
I just kept getting promoted and people would come and watch me operate and
I'd be invited everywhere to give talks and yeah, it was, it was very easy.
As soon as you talked about America, your face lit up.
You probably didn't even realise it, but you actually, it just, it
took you to a happy place.
Just loved everything about it.
So you come back to Oz and we know there's been some brilliant bits and there's
been some bits that are controversial and so forth because of your style and
your personality and the way that you like to do things.
A close friend of both of ours, Gavin Robertson, who you did incredible work
on, will say that he is one of many, many, many people that are around
today being who he is because of you.
When I talked to him, he just says that you're the greatest at what you do.
Why do you think there's so much controversy at times around that
particular statement?
Yeah, because I've never denied it.
Yeah, because when you say something like that, I mean, in Australia, you're
meant to say, no, I'm no better than anyone else and I'm no different to
That's what you meant to say.
And I've never said that.
I've always said that I'm fantastic at brain shimmers and I'm a great brain
tumor surgeon and I think I'm the best in the world when it comes to brain
shimmers and that doesn't go down well.
I mean, a sportsman can say it as you know, but no, no one else can say that.
Just, just doesn't go down well with the Australian vernacular and the
Australian sort of mentality.
And you know, why haven't I learnt my lesson?
Because, you know, if I had gone quiet, rejected all the TV and all the media
type stuff, if I had been like, like everyone else and you know, oh, I can't
take that brain tumor out.
No, no, if you can't, sir, I can't, sir.
I'd be well accepted here and I would never have caused as much controversy and
I wouldn't have been the target of media outlets and I would seem pretty, I think.
But, you know, I just, I guess I just can't, I just can't do it.
It's not who you are.
It's not who I am.
I'd be dishonest with myself.
That's you being your authentic self.
Look, I'm not a, I won't say, you know, a lot of people have accused me of being a
narcissist, but in fact, I think I'm the opposite because a narcissist is someone
who is just so in love with themselves that they don't think they can improve
I'm always actually very self-critical and always trying to prove something.
Like my father used to beat me up and call me a coward.
So I sometimes think that maybe I do all these things to prove that I'm not a
So I think I'm the actually opposite of a narcissist, you know, I'm always trying
to better myself or do better, will be better because I don't think I'm good
So when you do the type of work that you do, there's obviously the positive side,
like the robbers and there's, you know, countless names of people that you've
And then you've got the other side to it as well.
Is that always something that you knew that when you're doing the type of stuff
that you're doing, that you know, that it can go either way sometimes?
Oh, my God, absolutely.
And we all know that any person who has someone else's life in the hands knows
that, you know, things can go sour and go the other way.
But with my particular subspecialty of really difficult brain tumours, I
absolutely know it.
It's, it's on the forefront of my thinking and my decision making and my
actions that I know, yeah, this is operating the other day and, and while
you're operating, you're just thinking about all the time, you know, if I push a
bit too far there, or if I try and take that last bit of tumour out, could I
actually hurt this person?
And, oh, it's constantly on your mind.
When you're doing the surgery before the surgery and you're having the
discussions with the parents or the patient or whatever it might be in loved
ones, there's obviously so much emotion and stuff that is there, does anything
ever get done without their permission, without them signing off, even though
they probably don't know a lot of the words that you're saying and they're in
the probably emotional state where they just want a Hail Mary?
Well, that is a problem, a problem, and that's what the lawyers use.
So we all get someone to sign a consent, but the lawyers say to you, well, signing
that consent, they were under duress and they really didn't know what they were
signing, and that unfortunately is the, the factor that is so variable, that
some people know exactly what they want.
They voice it, they know it, the family knows it, everyone's on the same page
and, you know, Bob's your uncle, everyone's happy, whether the outcome's
good or bad, everyone's happy because, you know, it's right up front.
The grey zones are people who are making decisions based on what they think
their family wants them to do, or what they think the doctor wants to do, not
what they really want to do, and then of course there's all that miscommunication
in the room, like they say you only hear about a third of everything the doctor
tells you, so some people just want to hear the good stuff, and you can tell
them until you're black and blue that there's a risk of death or a risk of
paralysis, but they just don't hear that.
For a lawyer or someone else to sit in judgment of a doctor for what goes on in
that room is just so wrong because so much, there's so many variables and so
much going on in that room, the complexity is such that it's like, I say
it's like this, you know, when I come out with a statement, it's not just a
statement, it's, it is a reflection of years and years of experience, reading
the literature, your own personality, interpreting what that person wants,
it's so many complexities that goes into that one, one statement, I think you
should have surgery.
Well, it's not just, I think you should have surgery, it's, I think you should
have surgery for the following reasons, because you're this sort of person, I'm
this sort of person, the last 100 cases I did this, I read the literature the
last night, they said that, it's like all these things that go into making that
one statement, so for a lawyer to come along and go, you know, you shouldn't
have said there was a 5% risk, you should have said there's a 70% risk, you
know, oh my God, I said a 5% risk, number one, because there was, number
two, because this person knows that this is a risky operation, they know that
it's so risky that other people have called inoperable, I'm not going to sit
there and just tell them, you know, there's a 70% chance of death and this
and that, and you know, every time I cut this and cut that and, you know, they've
come to you because they want some shred of hope and they want to hear how you
would treat them if they were your loved ones and that's what I do, it's not what
the party wants me to do, it's not what everyone else wants me to do, everyone
else wants me to, you know, present this case in front of an MDT, multidisciplinary
team, get consensus, listen to what someone else has said, I don't like doing
that, I don't like doing it because there's very good evidence that you
shouldn't do it anyway. There is no evidence in the medical literature that
presenting a case to an MDT improves the prognosis or the quality of life of
patients. There's about, you know, thousands of articles, there's two
articles that says it does, but every other article says no. The thing that
really influences prognosis is the experience of the practitioner. The more
experience, the more they do it, that particular thing, the better they get at
it. So to me, presenting in front of a whole group of other people, some of
whom I don't respect, some of whom are very meek and mild and won't say anything
anyway, even if they have a good opinion, they won't say it, is just a, to me it
just, it doesn't, it doesn't gel. I like treating my patients the way I would
treat a member of my own family, that's my benchmark. Treat them like you want
the very best for them and it works and the majority of times it works. Sometimes
of course, as you know from the media, some people are unhappy and they're
unhappy usually because of miscommunication. But the end of the day, I
say to my patients, I can make you one promise and one promise only. Not that
you're going to get a good outcome or I'm going to get the tumour out or you
won't have a stroke. All I say to them is I will try my hardest and do the best I
can. It's the only promise I make.
As someone who's not particularly emotional, is it hard for you to have
discussions when things go good or bad? Like, do you feel those emotions when
you're talking to patients and their families after outcomes, good or bad?
Yeah, I mean, as you get older, you become more emotional when you have
children become more emotional. But I don't like crying in front of patients. I
don't like showing again that sort of vulnerability. And I used to find it not
too difficult, but difficult. When I started having children, I found it even
more difficult because I started relating children to my own children and
God, whatever, that was my child that died or got diagnosed with the malignant
brain tumour. I remember the first time I cried in front of a patient was a child
because the child was exactly the same age as my daughter at the time. And now
that I'm older, you know, as you get older, you cry on a movies now.
You never used to do before.
The old Telstra ads or the Qantas ads, those Qantas ads when they're jumping on
the plane in London and getting home to surprise mum that, oh, that gets me every
Oh, no, that doesn't get me. I'm not that bad. But yeah, look, I do. The
discussion is very, very difficult, because you can't help but carry some of
the emotion yourself and relate to them. And yeah, look, I don't know, call me
old fashioned, but I don't like it when I cry in front of patients. It's almost
showing a weakness and I'd like to be strong for them. You know what I mean?
We've skipped right over you being a dad. So you've reminded me talking about the
kids. How much do you love your kids?
Yeah, I mean, again, it's all cliche, but the love of your children is
indomitable. It's insurmountable. It's infinity, like everything. So I feel
really sorry for people who don't have a relationship with the children because
that is it, isn't it? I mean, really, they're your immortality. So when you're
on your deathbed and you have to reflect on your life, to know that your DNA, that
your love and nurturing has gone into something that's, you know, something
that's very lovely and special is the way you die in peace, I think. So if you
didn't have that, you had children who you couldn't relate to, or they couldn't
relate to you, or you didn't have a relationship with, I think that'd be the
worst thing ever.
How many kids and what balance have you got, boys and girls?
Well, I've got no balance. As punishment to me for being a Philistine, I've got
four daughters. In fact, I love telling this story, but one stage in my life, in
fact, for several years, all four daughters were getting their periods at
different times. So there was incredible emotion in the house, plus my wife went
through five years of menopause. So a menopause, a wife, four girls, all having
the periods at different times. It's no wonder I put so much effort into my work.
And that is the ultimate payback, my friend. That is the ultimate payback
I don't know if that's a sexist thing to say, but I mean, I think most women
agree that, you know, emotions run riot during those, those years, those
formative years when estrogen is very, very high or very, very low.
Are you a good dad?
I'd like to think I am. Yeah. And if I asked the girls, would they say, you're a
They would say I had my weaknesses, but they know that I put so much time and
effort into them. I used to take them away everywhere I went. They'd do rounds
with me. They'd go overseas with me. If I was operating Peru, we'd do Machu
Pichu. If we were operating in Cambodia, we'd do Angkor Wat. You know, Vietnam,
they'd come and go through the tunnels with me. We did everything. Operating in
Egypt, they did the Nile with me. So, yeah, I took them, I took them
everywhere, put a lot of time and effort into them, love them dearly. And yeah, I
think they'd say I was a good dad, but they'd also tell you that I was an
absolute philistine when it came to emotion and displaying emotion and
appreciating, you know, my partners. Granddad yet? Granddad now. Are you a bit
a granddad when you were a dad? No, I'm scared I'm not going to be a good
granddad. Why? Because I'm a control freak. And so with your children, you've
got total control over them, and you can formulate their personalities and
behaviour. I used to love doing that. I love telling the story, and hopefully
some fathers will learn from it. So when I was in Little Rock, Arkansas,
there was a cafe called the Purple Cow. And the Purple Cow, you'd sit in your
little booth, but it wasn't separated from the other booth, but apart from a
partition. So in other words, you could hear everything that was going on in the
next booth. And this couple came in with their child, and they spent the first
five, 10 minutes arguing about whose turn it was to look after the kid, because
he was such a little brat. No, I looked after him last week, or yesterday, it's
your turn. And then I thought to myself, oh, shit, if they had made him the sort
of kid that they would enjoy being around, then the argument wouldn't be
about whose turn it was to look after him. It was, you know, sorry, it's my
turn to look after him. You had your turn last week. So I pledged at that
time that I would never have that relationship with my children. I would
make them the sort of people who I would enjoy being around. And that means
that they weren't allowed to cry, for example. And now I'll never forget, like
two o'clock in the morning, or catching a plane, we'd missed the plane, we're
lining up, the kids were tired. And one of the kids started crying, and I go
stop that. You know, and the person behind me goes, oh, it's two o'clock in
the morning, they're tired, you should let her cry. And oh, no, I'm not going
to let her cry, because I don't like that sort of behaviour. So they behaved
in the way that I just loved their company. And I made sure they knew that.
And for example, I let them swear because it didn't bother me. But Genevieve
hated them swearing. So they knew they couldn't swear around Genevieve, but
they knew they could swear around me. And so it's all about making your
children the sort of people that you would want to be around that you enjoy
being around. So I just loved their childhood, because I just loved their
company. And I still do. They're the sort of people now, who if they weren't my
family, they'd be my best friends. You know, they're really good company.
That's really lovely.
They're positive. They've got humour. They see the world in a big picture. They
know that they're global citizens. They also have a sense of charity and giving.
I love them. And I take credit for that. I take credit for that, because I put a
lot of effort into making them those sort of people.
Yeah, lovely. That's lovely. What about you now? What's happening now for you?
We're sitting in a very nice, un-medical looking office, which your daughter
designed and so forth. It's beautiful. It's spectacular. What's Charlie Tio now
and the next 10 or 15 for you before you maybe put your feet up?
Yeah, so this is what I'm really proud of, because everyone comes up and says,
oh, I'm so sorry, you must be going through terrible times. And, you know,
it's hard and stuff at night. But I'm not. I'm not in a bad space. I'm in a
very good space. I have good mental fortitude. I never get depressed. And when
things like this happen, it's almost like I think to myself, well, one door
closes, another opens. That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And I'm
really pleased at what they've done to me, because if they hadn't done to me
what they've done to me, I would never have got into what I'm getting into now.
And I'm really proud of what I'm getting into now.
Can you tell us in a nutshell what exactly they've done to you?
Well, I can't operate in Australia. So again, no one said I'm a bad surgeon. So
they can't take my license. They haven't taken my license off me. I've done
nothing wrong. But what I've done is I've alienated the media, and I've
alienated my colleagues. And that's enough to make it impossible to operate
in Australia. So even though I have a full license to practice as an
independent surgeon, no one will give me privileges. No hospital is giving me
Which means you can't use their
Facility. So if something happened to me now, or Keisha, our beautiful producer,
who basically runs this podcast, by the way, I could just thank you for that,
Keisha, for a more time. If something happened to us right now, and you had to
perform surgery on us somewhere, you'd bring us into the local hospital where
they wouldn't let you do the surgery.
Exactly. I don't have privileges in any hospital.
So when you first heard that, that must have knocked you for six in some way.
Oh, yeah, because the hospital that I was working at, Prince of Wales Private
Hospital, I'd devoted my time to them. And I loved the hospital and I promoted
it. You know, I brought in a lot of money for them, I'm sure, with all the
patients that I operated on. And they dumped me. They dumped me because I was
too high, in their words, I was too high risk. With the media against me and my
colleagues against me, I was just too high risk.
That must have saddened you to feel like you haven't got their backing when
you'd given them so much.
Oh my God, so much. But again, I've got to suck it up. I've got to take some of
the blame there. You know, you might not want to include this. I'm happy if you
want to include it, but it's a long story. But the story was that during COVID, I
was asked to operate on a kid down in Melbourne, and Melbourne was shut. So I
had to get permission to go down to Melbourne and then come back and operate
because I had a sick kid coming from Perth, and I couldn't afford to go into
quarantine and not operate. So Brad Hazard gave me special permission to go
down to Melbourne, operate on the kid, not leave the hospital, not leave the
hotel, come straight back to Sydney and work. And the hospital administrators knew
that. So they knew that this arrangement had been made. So I go down, operate, get
the tumour out. Everyone's happy. The kid had had two previous operations,
couldn't get the tumour out. He was dying. He was too sick to come to Sydney.
That's why I had to go down to Melbourne. And so I was palmed and everything was
great. Came back to Sydney, go to the hospital to operate on this little kid
from Perth, and they stopped me from going to the hospital. And he goes, no,
sorry, you've got to quarantine for two weeks. I go, hang on, you gave me special
permission to go down there. I did everything right, got permission off the
Minister for Health. And he tried to make excuses about how the nurses didn't
want to work with me because I could be COVID, this and that. And it was all
bullshit. It turned out that the doctors at the hospital got wind of the fact
that I was getting this special permission and they got jealous. And they
said, no, if you let him operate, we won't operate. So he acquiesced to the
other surgeons. And rather than accept that, I just hit the roof. And I go,
well, you've lost all my respect. You know, what you should have done is
told those guys to get back in their box. You should have respected what I
had done. And now this little girl from Perth is going to die. And she did. She
ended up dying. And so from that point on, I said to that CEO, I said, you've
lost my respect. Fuck you. And so we had a terrible relationship. He'd say, oh,
Charlie, can you come up and speak to me about something? And I go, fuck off.
Right. Yeah, I'm telling you, I'm my worst enemy. Look, I am absolutely my
worst enemy. All I would have had to do is swallow, swallow it and play the game
and go, yes, you're right. And isn't that and yes, but I don't do that. So no one
else can be blamed except me. Now, I should have played the game I should
have done exactly. No, I don't worry about the little girl, you know, I
understand why you're in this position, then I would have still be operating. I'd
still be operating in Australia if I'd done that. But I ruined the relationship
between me and that hospital. Because they also went back on something that
they said they're going to do too. So they did. But that's politics, Gus, that
happens all the time. You know, duplicity and politics are synonymous, I reckon.
And you know, the day I realized that is the day my life will become easier where
I just play the game. Yeah, play the game. Sure. If you'll ever get there,
Charlie, to be honest, it's not your thing. Anyway, okay, so. So the good
thing about it is that when I couldn't operate, I had to do something. I love
helping people. And so I got into this new software that you know about. And
the new software now can map your brain and not only tell you what your brain
looks like, but how your brain is functioning. So that has opened up this
huge, amazing technology that can now scan someone and tell them how their
brain is working. So it can now see depression, happiness, anxiety, PTSD,
Alzheimer's, autism, all those conditions that you would scan someone and say
normal brain, we can now scan them and show abnormalities. And the beauty about
that is that with those abnormalities, those personalized maps of someone's
brain, we can actually modify those networks and help all those conditions
that cause functional problems with the brain. So for the last three years,
we've been treating patients with depression and anxiety using this
targeted, personalized approach. And our results, which we've published now, are
better than any other published series. So if you look at TMS, transcranial
magnetic stimulation, non-targeted, non-personalized, the results are
somewhere between 29 and 40% success rate. We've published our paper showing
a 90% success rate with targeted, focused, personalized TMS. So it's really
groundbreaking. It's world first. We've got patients coming from all around the
world to be treated with depression, and our results are just fantastic.
So how does this become something that everyone can learn about and can afford?
I'm assuming it's reasonably expensive.
Yes, it's, well, it's bad because it's Charlie Teo. And so a lot of people are
anti Charlie Teo and hence anti whatever Charlie Teo is doing. There'll be people
out there, as you know, who want to destroy this whole thing, because it's
me. And the fraternity, the psychiatry fraternity is, I had to say, probably
more conservative than the neurosurgical fraternity. And something like TMS,
which has been around for three decades, transcranial magnetic stimulation has
been around for three decades with a track record. Sure, you know, 29 to 40%
results, but still, that helps some people. And yet, many authorities and
many leading figures in psychiatry in Australia are not accepting it. And the
literature is clear. It's not as if it's in dispute. They are coming around, and
now there are some CPT codes for TMS for depression. But it's been very, very
slow. It's hard to pick up. And a lot of psychiatrists are just not into TMS and
targeted treatment. They're more into pharmacology. And again, there's reasons
for that, which we won't go into. But at the moment, you can't get TMS for
depression unless you've failed two drugs. And even then, when you get TMS,
the government won't pay for anything but two treatments. And most treatments are
about 25 to 30 treatments. So it's expensive. It's not well accepted, even
though the literature is very clear. And I think it's going to be a bit of an
upward battle for a while. In 10 years time, we're going to look back and go, Oh,
my God. But why do we take so long? Why do we take so long? Okay. Charlie, we
could talk forever. I want to ask you the final fast five questions. Favorite
movie? Oh, that's easy. The Bourne series. Oh, how good. Yeah. Brilliant. Have
you got a favorite quote? That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Like that. Favorite holiday destination? Being with my partner in Woonoona.
Okay, that's good. Good answer. See, you've tapped into a bit of vulnerability
there. I noticed it took you a while to get there. But you got there. Favorite
book? Are you a reader of non medical stuff? My favorite book is it's a
medical book. Okay. Sorry. Not too sexy there. No. Just chiming in here.
Normally, at this stage, we asked the guest where the $10,000 should go. Well,
Charlie, he decided to split it up with within a few different charities, one in
particular that he only just became aware of and he said they're desperate
for funds. So I want to make sure they'll look after them. Some of the funds are
going to the Charlie Tio Foundation, which puts money towards brain cancer
research. Voiceless, which gives a voice to industry animals. Zambi Wildlife that
give a forever home to discarded wildlife in Australia. And lastly,
Villa Kitty, Indonesia's rescue shelter for cats and dogs. Big shout out again to
Shaw and Partners Financial Services for that $10,000.
Charlie, thank you so much. It's been lovely to talk to you. Good to catch up
with you again. And I'm reminding you, I'm going to be texting you get a little
bit more vulnerable. Okay, for your relationship with your kids and your new
Oh, it's very kind Gus, but don't be surprised if I block you.
If you block and ignore me, I know where you live. Thanks, Charlie.
I hope you enjoyed the chat that I had with Charlie Tio. Hopefully you saw a
side of him that perhaps you didn't think was there. You can see this podcast
on our YouTube channel. All the details are in our show notes. And I'll catch
you next week for another fantastic episode of Not an Overnight Success.
Even if I say so myself.