And while Strickland told me that he had always really liked Springer as a person and as a politician, the talk show never sat well with him.

To me, he was just this bright, exciting, kind, empathetic, uh, person that embraced all the values that I considered important in terms of public policy.

And yet, you know, as a, as a psychologist, I sometimes cringed seeing his show because, uh, uh, part of it seemed as if he was exploiting the pain and suffering of others.

I mean, they were, so many of them, very dysfunctional people who probably thought getting that kind of public exposure was the best thing that ever happened to them.

A- and that bothered me.

When I asked Ted Strickland about Jerry Springer's political ambitions, he told me a version of something I've heard a lot from those who knew Springer personally, that at the end of the day, there were two different Jerrys in there, and there just wasn't enough room for both of them.

It was always s- sort of a unrequited love for politics that, um, that he felt, and that was always there, but on the other hand, his, uh, choice to have his show was an obstacle that he could not overcome.

So they were competing aspects of his life that seemed to have no resolution.