1/6/26: Tim Walz Throws In The Towel, Healthcare Costs Spike, P Diddy And Tupac

26:42and Republicans are at square one still, where they have been literally since 2010. They've got square one, which is repeal Obamacare. But nobody now that we are however many years, 15 years, 16 years into Obamacare, wants to actually repeal Obamacare, full implementation. I guess you could pin it to like 2014, pin it to 2014. So they're more than a decade into Obamacare. Nobody thinks that they can fully repeal Obamacare and they have no plan. And we have covered this over and over again. There is no consensus healthcare position in the Republican Party. Ryan and I had someone who was seen as the foremost Republican expert on healthcare policy, Brian Blaze, sitting right here.

27:22And he has all of these wonky ideas of how Republicans can change the healthcare system. But it's not politically something that they can package together and be like, hey, we fixed healthcare prices. You're going to see them go down. And that's where the subsidies, Marjorie Taylor Greene said, unless you have this massive fix that's actually going to bring down health care prices, you're asking people to swallow this increase in premium prices. And now she's out of Congress and partially because she was chastised for coming out and talking about health care this way. And Republicans are looking at an election year where they're doing regime changes and people's health care insurance, health care premiums are spiking.

28:04So that's obviously a bad combination. Everyone in D.C. knows it's a bad combination. And that's saying something because people in D.C. are pretty pretty scold. Yeah. Well, I mean, the the numbers for the Venezuela operation already are tepid. Right. But I think there's another question that's even more important, which is not even just like, how do you feel about this? But how do you feel about this being the use of the president's time? And, you know, that's part of what Joe Biden suffered from, too, is he also had this fixation. I mean, I think a lot of presidents do because it's the area where they can operate as basically like a king.

28:38You know, they have the most, the freest hand, especially in the modern era, to apparently just do whatever they want without asking Congress or the American people for anything. So I think a lot of presidents get sort of fixated with. And then Trump, who has these authoritarian instincts very deep inside of him as a CEO, loves that too. And I think it's kind of almost like addicted to it. You know, the ability to just snap his fingers and watch, like he described, I watched it like it was a TV show. This special operation going down in Venezuela was incredible. Like, I think that's very intoxicating for him.

29:10And he has a sort of addiction to it. It also drives the narrative. You know, now, like, our whole show yesterday was entirely about Venezuela. This show has mostly been about Venezuela. He gets to take control of the public narrative in a way that he likes. But meanwhile, even voters who might support this, which there are, you know, there are some. It's about 30 percent of the public. It's like, OK, we're good with this. at least where we are right now. A separate question is, OK, but is this what we really want you spending all your time is? And I on and I think the overwhelming majority would say, no, there's a Wall Street Journal piece that kind of gets to this point.

29:47Not exactly like a left wing outlet here. Murdoch publication. Trump's Venezuela focus pulls him away from voters' economic concerns. And the anecdote they start with here is they say Dylan Mockley voted for Trump in 2024 in hopes of ending wars, reigning in government spending, bringing down inflation. Upon hearing the president say the U.S. would run Venezuela after American forces captured, I would say kidnapped, President Nicolas Maduro, the 38-year-old, sarcastically said, charming, just what I voted for. Instead of spending more money overseas, Muckley said he would prefer to see Trump focused on prices in the U.S.

30:21He said the pandemic lockdowns and subsequent inflation surge wreaked havoc on his finances. I make the most money I ever made in my life, and I feel the brokest I've ever been. He runs a food truck business in rural Idaho. He said he routinely sees customers' credit cards declined. He characterized Trump's first year in office as a gigantic disappointment to a monumental degree, and he expects to either vote libertarian or abstain from voting at all in the midterm elections. So, you know, I don't think he's the only one, not to say that he's entirely representative. Many, you know, MAGA base are still with Trump and plan to come out and vote in the midterms and whatever.

30:59But I don't think Dylan is like the only guy who's who's feeling this way, feeling like Trump promised him one thing and having some hope that his finances personally would get better. And instead, the focus is all on these foreign operations. Yeah. Well, I mean, that was again, this is baked into Trumpism. It's not just this opposition to foreign policy that looks like nation building and regime change and imperialism. Actually, for a lot of people, especially people who are kind of right or leaning right, independents who are more likely to vote right. It's not just that. It's also that there's been this hollowing out of the American economy while elites kind of play in the foreign sandbox.

31:40And I think for Trump to be so sucked in, I mean, now he talks constantly about all of the wars he claims to have ended. He talks all of the time about that. He makes it part of what his message to the American people. And obviously, that's not unimportant. Obviously, you know, whether you agree with him about world peace or not, you want to see stability around the world. Everyone wants to see stability around the world for the most part. The average voter wants to see that. But what they care, the difference politically is priorities. So it's not that it's not important. It's that people are saying, Trump, you were the guy who said you were going to stop the adventurism at the sake that was coming at the sake of the average American, right?

32:25That was coming at the sacrifice of the average American. And that I think is going to be if the economy, I mean, they're hoping that tax season comes around and the bill kicks in in a way that Americans really start feeling, which did not happen in 2018, by the way, but they have all kinds of manufacturing credits and stuff that they hope is a juicy economy in the next, what, like six months. I mean, it's now we are in 2026. That's happened. So while we're just talking about the raw politics of it, we're in a total, we're in totally uncharted territory with this tariff regime. On top of that, you have the, I mean, the American economy reeling from this new AI change in the job force.

33:11College graduates are looking at record levels of unemployment. Recent college graduates looking at record levels of unemployment. So there's significant structural changes in the economy in 2026 that they're phrasing down. So a lot of foreign policy adventurism just on a political level is going to be a toxic combination at the ballot box. I think this kind of underscores a point. Let's put F3 up on the screen. This was very interesting. Axios did this. You can take a look at the search interest in these given topics. Starting the year with Palisades fire. You see a spike there. Greenland inauguration.

33:45Elon Musk. Oh, God. DEI. DC plane crash. RFK Jr. You'd see Gaza kind of has these peaks throughout the entire year. Doge. Zelensky. Then comes Autopen. Then you've got tariffs. Again, a spike in the beginning, but ongoing conversation. Signalgate. Hopefully a real ID. That had a lot more than I thought. Golden Dome. Oh, my God. That got a lot of attention. Biden cancer. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, again having these various spikes ice across the year but look at labubu okay and then look down at the middle of the screen there inflation the one news item consistently high across the entire year is inflation um followed by sydney sweeney and labubus apparently sydney sweeney well we were on top of that from day one significant interest throughout the year apparently uh k-pop Demon Hunter is also quite a bit of interest in the latter part of the year.

34:39So a sustained interest there as well. But, oh, God, 6-7 is on the list as well. Why did you say it? Why did you say it? I'm sorry. You're not sorry. Anyway, but, yeah, if you look at all of those news items, you know, most of them, even something that was massively constant, Charlie Kirk's assassination, it's a spike and then it drops way down. Yeah. Most news items are like that. And yet inflation throughout the whole year, you have this high level of sustained interest. And I mean, that kind of tells you everything, doesn't it? Like all these other things are incredibly significant. But in terms of the public attention, they come and go.

35:16The one thing that is a constant is, am I making it? Am I going? What am I buying at the grocery store? How much is it costing? Yes. What is my rent? Am I going to be able to buy a house? Am I going to be able to sell a house? Like what are the interest rates? That sense of can I even sustain the life that I'm living right now, that does not go away for people. No, no, no, not at all. And I think this is part of the mistake that the left made for really long. I mean, we covered this forever. Talking about some of these like kind of decadent elite priorities like Elizabeth Warren, first debate of 2020, even using the phrase Latinx.

35:50Sounds like a silly little thing. But to your average voter, it's like, what the hell are you talking about? I can't pay my bills. grounding in economic populism. Girl, what are you doing? Exactly. Right. But I mean, it was a it was obviously an odd time. Yeah, I was. You had to be there. You had to be there. But it was those types of mistakes actually struck your average voters like, what are you focused on right now? Because I can't pay my bills. Jobs are leaving my town. This is like the entire economy feels off. As the voter in that piece said, he said he's like, I'm making more money in my life than I ever have in my life and I can't pay my bills.

36:25Like many such cases. And that type of experience, when you hear politicians talking about these priorities is infuriating. And so it wasn't just that people disagreed with like saying Latinx or whatever the, you know, choose your priority, a cultural priority at that time. It wasn't just they disagreed with it. It was actually that they were angry that it looked like them were focused. Primary focus. Yes. Yeah. And so even people who maybe were sympathetic to, you know, some of the underlying goals are like, OK, but like, where does the rubber meet the road and why can't we focus more specifically on those things?

37:02So, yeah, you know, I don't think anyone should be surprised that culture war like slop is the easiest thing in the world to do. You know, it doesn't require any legislative effort. It doesn't require any like build on of new programs. it's very easy for the DHS account to post a Nazi meme. That doesn't take anything, you know? And I think it's very common for elites of both parties, but I think this administration really leans very heavily into this because a lot of their cohesive glue and raison d 'etre is this like, you know, these culture war battles. And then you marry that together with, you know, I mean, the Venezuela thing is partly framed in cultural terms from them as well.

37:45And then Trump loves that this is this area of just free reign from him, or at least he takes advantage of it as an area of free reign for him as an executive. And that's where you end up with most of the administration's focus going while people continue to search for some political party, some political leader that is actually going to deal with what is increasingly like genuine crisis in terms of, you know, people being able to make it. people seeing these billionaires with skyrocketing wealth and skyrocketing power that comes along to it with it that are just controlling betting on poly market yeah betting on poly market building a data center near town that you don't want there that's spiking your electric bill like these things are becoming less theoretical and much much much more real for people you know the the culture war stuff again like it's it's important i think we all agree that some of these issues are genuinely like very important to parents and that was a lesson of 2020 Glenn Youngkin.

38:39And what I think people should be taking from, for example, Winsome Sears' pretty stinging defeat, not that that was particularly surprising, but she really ran on redoing the culture war and that trying to... Tons of trans bathroom and sports ads. Right. You're in Virginia. Yeah. She really ran a heavy culture war campaign trying to reanimate the Youngkin coalition during a different time. We were literally just talking about that in 2020. And Republicans are going to make a mistake if they think they can coast on the same 2020 politics, because Democrats have now half a decade of experience adapting to failures.

39:17And, you know, you saw that with Mamdani, you saw it with Democrats in the Virginia race, for example, like that was like a much better campaign than Democrats would have won, would have run just a few years ago in Virginia. In fact, that then they did run with Terry McAuliffe. And that means that Republicans, and Republicans being in power now as well, means that the dynamic is totally different. And so you can... Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America is at a breaking point.

39:52Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

40:40What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

41:17It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. its crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations, you get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas.

42:00And also, you know, your daughter's incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah, thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little... Yeah, for sure. our daughter she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances which i've not really talked about ever growing up on disney in front of million how did that shape your sense of self i went blank i hit a bad note then i couldn't kind of recover and i i built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity i had to sort of relearn who i was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

42:44You can't just expect backlash to dem cultural excesses to distract from economic problems when you're in power. It just is not going to work that way. It was the opposite for people like Junkin who said, and I went back and looked at Junkin's inaugural speech recently, he was talking actually about how he was connecting the culture war in class. And it's funny coming from someone like Glenn Youngkin, but it was clever. It was genuinely clever saying that these ideas were hurting people at the bottom more than they were hurting people at the top. And that is really, really interesting. If Republicans aren't able to make that connection, which is obviously harder to do when you're in charge of the economy, good luck.

43:29There was also something very specific going on at that time period, which is a lot of parents like non-ideologically upset with school closures. And which, you know, was understandable also. Yeah. And so, you know, I think it was a very sort of specific moment where he's able to achieve that victory that, you know, like we've moved on from that moment. And so some of those pieces just aren't there to work with anymore either. No, but I mean, this is the future of the Republican Party. I remember going out to Loudoun and like 2020 something made a, it was 2020, made like a mini documentary talking to these parents who were organizing themselves in the basement of this barn.

44:08And some of them were like old Tea Party hands, but some of them, I remember talking to them, they were like minorities, had never been involved in politics, maybe had voted for Obama. And you're looking at this and you're like, this is the Trump era in politics, but it's not anymore. Right. That coalition is fraying. Yeah. And part of it is because on the margins, which really do matter on the margins, you had people who, again, I was talking people who voted for Obama and were organizing for Glenn Youngkin. It was just it was a strange time, to your point. But if Republicans want to keep that coalition in the future, it's not looking good.

44:45And it doesn't seem like Trump himself understands or cares much about what that would look like down the road. Very true. All right, guys, we've got Diddy on the show bar there because I recorded a little while back an interview with Toray about the Diddy Netflix doc. Yeah. Toray has some spicy takes. He's also in the documentary. Yeah, I was going to say he's in it. Yeah, he's in the documentary several times as a journalist because, you know, I mean, he's interviewed. He's most famous for that R. Kelly moment. Yep. But he's interviewed, you know, everybody. He knows a bunch of the people that are involved.

45:17so I really wanted to talk to him about what he thought. And he did some... I can't wait to watch it. Yeah, and he did some digging, some journalistic digging into some of the anecdotes that are told in the documentary that he's able to pour some cold water on. But in any case, it was really fascinating speaking with him. So have a relatively lengthy interview with him about the Netflix doc. I mean... Did you guys get into the 50 Cent stuff? Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. It was more about, you know, what do you make of, was Diddy involved in Biggie's murder? Because that is alleged in the documentary.

45:53And Tori's very skeptical of that. Was he involved in Tupac's murder? Which I think there's more solid evidence for. But Tori's also somewhat skeptical of that too. So you'll have to hear his analysis of, you know, why he doesn't fully buy the evidence that's proffered there. But there are some other ways that they sort of tell the story. They're just like, well, it's not exactly how it happened based on what I spoke with. And in any case, if you haven't watched the documentary, it is interesting. I guess there's spoilers here, although in this interview, although I guess, you know, we all kind of know how this all went down.

46:26Yeah, it's not really spoilers. But in any case, I recommend you watch. I think you guys will will enjoy it, certainly. And I like to like talking to Tori about it. I can't wait to watch it. So I'll be I'll be there with everyone else. Amazing. All right, guys. Bro show tomorrow. And Sogret and I will be back on Thursday and we'll see you then. See you. All right, guys. So I, like many other Americans and probably some people overseas as well, just watched the Netflix Diddy documentary, which was backed by 50 Cent. And after I watched it, I said, there is one person I need to speak with about that.

46:59And that is my great friend and the legendary journalist, Torre, who is doing all kinds of interesting things right now, including talking to Nomiki Konst about her breakup with Bill de Blasio. But in addition, has a YouTube channel called Rap Latte that you guys should definitely check out. So great to see you, my friend. Nice to see you. Yeah. So before we jump in, guys, spoilers, spoilers. Not that, I mean, is it spoilers when we kind of know some of these things? But anyway, if you're waiting to be surprised about how this documentary unfolds, watch it and come back to this. It's a documentary about history that has been discussed.

47:34It's interesting because a lot of this history for Gen Xers and older millennials who are into hip-hop, this is old history that we have been discussing and arguing about for a very long time. I think for younger millennials and for Zoomers, this may be their first time discussing some of these issues, especially when you go back to, I believe it was the 1993, 94, it was 92 maybe, shooting at Quad Studios, 93. They had not really discussed this. I know for some of them, they had never heard of the CCNY tragedy. So some of this. So, Tori, I actually did not know about the CCNY tragedy. So, you know, I'm sort of engaging on this as not like super like in the weeds with all of it, just like existing in America throughout this time period.

48:22But there were some, you know, some sort of foundational pieces here that even I didn't actually know about and that they use. So maybe talk a little bit about the CCNY piece, because that becomes a kind of bedrock part of how they build out the story of Diddy just being a horrible psychopath in every way. Let's I mean, let's start with this baseline that Puffy has been a horrible person for a long time. And I believe a lot of the essay and violence charges that are levied against him. He has been known to all of us as a sex addict for a long time. Somebody who does not really care about other people and will roll over other people to get whatever he wants.

49:11typical of what it takes to become a leader in this capitalist society. You know, has been an egomaniac, has been, I did a video on YouTube. I know why Diddy is broken. And I think there's something broken inside of him that goes back to way back. And actually, let me tell you a story from his childhood that I think sort of sums up some of who he is. He had a paper route as a kid. A lot of us in Gen X had paper routes. The most entrepreneurial kid in the neighborhood had a paper route where he or she would get on their bike before school and throw newspapers into 20 or 30 or 40 people's homes, right?

49:54And sometimes maybe your mom would drive you around and help you do that. But it's always like, you know, the most go-getter kid in the neighborhood would have a paper route, right? So, of course, young puff had a paper route. But what happened is that he purchased other kids paper routes. Now, that is not super unusual. But then he would have them delivering papers for him. So and taking their some of their money. And you might say, oh, well, that's being clever. OK, but at 12 or 13, he's thinking like a capitalist and manipulating the labor of other kids to enrich himself. And 12 or 13 year olds are not thinking like that.

50:37Yeah. It's an instinct for exploitation is what that is. Exactly. So, I mean, you're already starting with that. So by the time you get to CCNY, I believe he was about 20, 21, 22, somewhere in there. He had left Howard University. He was known in New York City as one of the big promoters. I mean, like when I got to New York City, he was already known as like one of the big promoters in party promoters, nightlife promoters. And so the CCNY thing at CCNY, he planned and executed a celebrity pro-am basketball game, which was kind of an excuse to put on a mini concert inside CCNY. where you... PCNY for people who don't know, City College of New York, which is up at what, like 140th Street, something like that.

51:27Yeah, something like that, which is a very, let's say, which is a college that a lot of working class folks would go to because it's much more affordable than a lot of other places. And he planned this celebrity basketball game. So all the hip hop artists who were hot of the moment, who were New Yorkers, who he could just get on the phone, were going to come. So I think there was six or eight. Heavy D was one of them. I remember. And it was super popular at that time. And they I think they had I think it was that they had a capacity of like, let's say, twenty five hundred and they sold like five thousand tickets.

52:03So there's clearly like a hustler ship and, you know, an exploitation. You know, we're just going to fake it till we make it. And like, just just we'll figure it out on the rules don't apply. We'll figure it out. You know what I mean? Yeah. And, you know, you can Google the specifics, but there was a tramp. There was a problem. There was a stampede because there were too many people inside and outside the space trying to get in. And you had a situation where a lot of people were trying to get out rapidly and people got squished against doors, fire doors that would not open. People got trampled.

52:40and about nine people who were most of them teenagers. I think the oldest was like 27, 28, but most of them teenagers, about nine people died, you know, which is very tragic. Puff was sued. A lot of people thought, you know, this will be the end of your professional life. He somehow survives that, which starts this whole thing of like, he keeps surviving these crazy moments that would ruin a lot of other people's careers. Well, and the way that Doc frames it actually isn't just that he survived, but that this is part of what made him famous, that this tragedy that would have ended the career of anyone else is part of what helps to launch him in the public consciousness.

53:24I mean, perhaps. I mean, like he got a lot of name recognition out of that. People who had not heard of Puff Daddy before that heard of him. But, you know, I mean, just setting the record straight often in this climate right now after the trial, the doc sounds like you're defending him in no way, shape or form. am I defending him? And one of my TikTok videos alleges, insinuates that he may have killed his wife, Kim Porter, the mother of three of his children. So I am never defending Puff. But, you know, the tragedy got some people knowing who he was. But then after that, excuse me, while he was there, he was already an A &R man at Uptown Records.

54:10And he launches the career of Mary J. Blige. And he launches the career of Jodeci and they were massive stars right away. And there's some there's some significant creative innovations that happened with the rise of Jodeci and especially with Mary as far as the merging of hip hop and R &B that had not happened before. So this was actually the first time that people were like, OK, the artists are dope, but who's the A &R guy who is styling them, who is really uniquely like creating artists that are like these major cultural figures that are changing the game. So, you know, to me, to a lot of us, it's the rise of Jodeci and Mary J.

54:51Blige that make it like, wait, who's that guy? And out of the success of those two and creating Biggie while he was at Uptown, and he gets fired from Uptown because of an interpersonal clash with the leader of Uptown, Then he's able to go to Clive Davis and get money to start his own label, which is bad boy. So I want to jump into the part that people will be sort of most, I think, fascinated by, which is the documentary's evidence, mostly circumstantial, but evidence that Diddy is directly responsible for the murder of Tupac and sort of low-key responsible for the murder of Biggie as well. And they spent a lot of time building up like this is an absolute psychopath.

55:32He will do literally anything. He cares about power and control, whether it's, okay, now that I know that's your girlfriend, I'm going to steal her. Whether it's I'm going to call you into my office on a whim just so you can see me getting my butt sucked during office hours when I don't even want you, you know, need anything from you. Like, I'm going to convince you that you have to give me all of your shares in this business that we co-founded. Like, everything is sort of building up to this guy's a total psychopath who's just in it for himself and will do literally anything. And then before I get your analysis, just take people through what is the evidence that is offered that Diddy is directly responsible for the murder of Tupac?

56:13So the Tupac story is a lot. It's, it's, there's, so we really got to go back to, in Atlanta, there's a club conversation, fight, conflagration between him and Suge. And it ends up that one of Suge Knight's friends in his crew gets killed. Suge Knight is the leader, of course, of Death Row Records, which is really the beefing with bad boy during this time. After that, it's reasonable to expect that Puff was very afraid that they would try to come back and do something to him or somebody around him. So the notion that he thought that maybe we should do something is there. We got to remember, Puffy is not a street guy.

57:09Suge Knight is absolutely a real street guy. He comes from the L.A. gang scene. Puff is a suburban guy who becomes more gangster as he's in the music business. But that's not really where he's from. And especially at this point in the early to mid-90s, there are real street people in the industry. there's a conversation in the documentary and in the world of hip-hop that puff hired somebody to get tupac okay there in the doc they say that there was a moment where there's 40 gangsters in a room. And Puff says to the entire room, $1 million if you can get and eliminate Suge and Pac. I find it very difficult to believe that you basically stood on a stage in front of 40 people and said, hey, I got a million dollar bounty.

58:16I mean, I also think as a leader, you wouldn't do it that way. You would say it to one person. You wouldn't say it to a whole room full of people. Like you're like, hey guys. Let's get the Zoom call together. Everybody hears your invites. You know what I mean? I feel like, you know, like - But on the other hand, I mean, they have in the documentary, I mean, listen, I found it compelling, but I also don't know anything, right? But they have in the doc, They have all this testimony from a proffer session from what's the guy's name? Keefy D. Keefy D., who's been saying for years that Puff was supposed to pay him for getting Pac and or Suge.

58:54Keefy D. did not get paid. That money supposedly was stolen by a gangster who was down with Puff. So he says that he did the thing and was supposed to get paid, didn't get paid. But let's go back a second. Yeah. Orlando Anderson is a crip who happened to be at the Tyson fight. He had stolen a death row person, employees chain, death row chain earlier. So when they're at the Tyson fight, somebody says to Tupac, there's the guy who stole that guy's death row chain. And Pac and others go beat him up. And then later that night, Orlando Anderson, we know this, went back and shot Pac. Orlando Anderson is Keefe D's nephew.

59:47Now, I am being asked to believe that Pac initiated a fight, which I believe, against the one person who was hired to kill Tupac. So he picked the one wrong person who was already looking for their opportunity. And when they beat up Orlando Anderson, Keefe D and others were like, oh, here's our perfect opportunity to go get Pac. And everybody will think that it's retaliation for that. We've already been looking for our opportunity. To me, Occam's razor is you saw a crip, you beat up a crip, and he came back and shot you. that is extraordinarily believable and extraordinarily reasonable if you beat up a crip he will take a gun and try to shoot you right or blood whatever what do you know about how did he at this time was thinking about pock like what level of threat he perceived you know what what do you think his headspace at this time would have been i i think from talking to people who was around him and who know him that he was definitely very scared that there was definitely a fear that these death row guys, we don't know what they're going to do.

1:01:06You know, they could come back us with any level of violence. So there was definitely a genuine fear and a state of like, we need to be, uh, you know, on edge. We need to be on point because these guys might come back at us in any number of ways. Does that mean that he did this? Is it possible? Maybe. But I just, I just don't think that that's where he was. Did he, this person, this person, this person, believable. Did he roofie and drug and thus incapacitate so he could and essay many people? totally believe that. But did he order Pox? I just don't buy it. Is it possible? Maybe. But I just don't.

1:02:00So it's not that you don't think that like, oh, that would be too far from him and morally he wouldn't. You just don't feel like the story is logical to you. Morally, sure, it's possible. Sure. From knowing what I know from talking to people, Puff's not a street guy. So the notion that he at that point in his life turned to, we're going to kill this guy, Pac. I mean, I also feel like he would have seen that Suge was the real enemy. Suge would be the one who would say, you go shoot Puff. So you'd be trying to shoot Puff, Suge. But allegedly he was, right? Allegedly he was trying to get both Suge and Pac, right?

1:02:47Yeah, which is, I mean, like, how did you not? You were right there. I did want to know, what did you think of the portrayal of Shug? Because the doc kind of portrays him as like, yeah, from the street, rough guy, but he took care of his artists. And Diddy is like, you know, just pure exploitation. And so that's why a bunch of his artists were leaving, et cetera. I mean, correct about Puff as far as exploitation and such. much um suge is also a horrible person um you know from the street not necessarily as far as we know the sex addict and people but like violence like no problem like i'm i mean like this is a much longer story but he basically kidnapped me at one point a very frightening i'm sorry what i mean you know i mean if you want to do if you i mean it's a 20 minute story so i can come back and tell you but i mean i went to interview him and i asked him a question he did not like and there was a long it's about a half hour where i where i was not allowed to leave the office no longer than have i was not allowed to leave the office when i wanted to and uh a solid period of time when there was a young blood standing beside suge and i thought he at any moment, he's going to say, okay, go beat him up.

1:04:12And then he would like destroy me. I, I, so I mean, there was about maybe an hour that I was like trapped in his office and like wanting to leave in death row. And like, I'm not able to leave. Um, cause he's like, you know, you're going to sit there and you know, um, he's, so he is a horrible person. He is known to have, uh, you know, dangled people off of balconies and held a gun to people's head to get them to sign a contract that they should not have been signing. And he was kind of known for like barging into your office and stealing your pants, right? Like that happened several. I mean, the first time I wanted to interview him, I called somebody, an executive, and they were like, don't, just don't, don't do it.

1:04:55Because it just, you know, you don't know what kind of can of worms it could open up. You don't, you know, just like, don't talk to the gangster. Just don't get his attention. Just leave it alone. It's a horrible person who is absolutely exploiting people, who's absolutely beating people up. So the doc definitely makes Shook look a lot better than, I mean, the Pac story we could talk about. The big story, did Puff kill Big or have something to do with it? I'm like, guys, now we're really in fantasy land. This was, I don't want to say his best friend, right? Because I don't think he really has best friends.

1:05:33But like, this was his number one artist by far. This was his number one rainmaker by far. Well, and that's kind of just to give the way the documentary portrays it. I mean, that's actually the motive that they that they use to portray. Like, that's actually why he wanted him out of the way, because Big was the star. He was sucking up the oxygen. Diddy wanted to be that number one artist. And he was kind of in the way. and so you know whereas with puck it's like he got these gangsters in a room was like i want this guy dead with big it was like okay we know it's very dangerous in la big does not want to be there i'm going to let me let me just finish what the documentary said you can tell me what you know about the situation so big does not want to be there um they play interview of him talking about how you know how sort of nervous and uncomfortable he is not only does that not only is he there does like diddy like forces him to go but then they extend it big was supposed to go to some i don't know interview in the uk or something like that and they're like no cancel your flight you're gonna stay there we're gonna do this big party and then that's when he ends up getting murdered so it's not like the the doc doesn't portray it like oh diddy ordered this hit right but basically that he intentionally put his life knowingly at risk sort of hoping that something like this might happen is the subtext of what the documentary lays out.

1:07:05The notion that somebody could just tell Big what to do is laughable.

1:07:31The students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

1:08:19Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits.

1:09:01He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations. You get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And also, you know, your daughter's incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. Thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little...

1:09:41Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I've not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of millions, how did that shape your sense of self? I went blank. I hit a bad note, then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. earlier in the career puff had been trying to get big to stop dealing drugs right while they're making the first album and i can't confirm if it was after the first album came out but while they're making the first album he's like you know you don't need to do that anymore and he's like yeah whatever whatever square whatever nerd so be controlling him as far as i know because when And when that was happening, when Big was in L.A., he was with partly my friend Cheo Coker, who's another legendary hip-hop journalist.

1:10:50And Cheo was, I believe, the last print journalist to interview him. It's very clear that Big was very happy that that trip in L.A., he was not forced to go to L.A. He wanted to go to L.A. He chose to extend his stay in L.A. because he was having good time. The weed out there is much more potent than the weed in New York City. So being like, he was like, we're staying here. Like, this is cool. The notion that Puff wanted to have a party on enemy territory. The party where Big got killed was a vibe party, not a Puff party. Okay. Did he throw a party while they were out there? I'm trying to remember.

1:11:32I remember Nas telling me about, I think it was a Puff party, but it would have been like in the hills, not like at a club in the middle of the city. The other thing you referenced, the video, the interview of Big saying, I'm scared, right? With the red shirt where he's laying down. And then right after that, they show March 9th. Here's what happened at the Peterson Auto Museum. So that interview where he's in the red shirt and he's laying down, he's talking to me. That's my interview from the first album. that interview at that point is a year and a half, two years old. So he's talking about the street.

1:12:13He came into the game. He was actually a dealer and he was afraid that somebody on the street was going to shoot him. So we talked about that a lot. I had interviewed him before that for the New York times. And we talked about that a lot. So then when we were doing this video interview, I cued him to talk about that again, cause I knew that he was very scared. So he's talking. So the documentary is very clever in the way that it places this clip from much earlier next to him getting killed. He's not talking. It makes you think he's talking about I'm scared this moment. And then Puff makes me go to L.A.

1:12:47and then this shit happens. No, no, no, no, no. He was scared earlier of other people, not the game. His vibe during the battle was like, you know, he's not I'm not scared. Like, you know, I'm going to move around like, you know, these guys are talking their shit, but like, I'm not scared of these guys. Um, so I mean, you know, there's a lot of sort of circumstantial thing of like Puff pushed LA, Puff pushed Big into a complicated situation in LA. He shouldn't have been there, made him stay long. I dispute that entire characterization. Um, I feel like Big chose to go to LA. He was enjoying himself.

1:13:26He wanted to stay longer. I don't put anything on Puff. Now you could say maybe Puff should have been like, we got to get out of here. But I don't really think I don't know that they really thought that somebody would do that. I mean, like thought somebody might do that. I'm sure they wouldn't have been there. It was surely dangerous and contentious. And, you know, I know people were were talking shit about him on the radio. I know they went to the mall and people were talking shit. And like, it was like, you know, it's drama out here. You know, it's loud. There's a lot of noise. But I don't think they really thought somebody's going to roll up and shoot this guy.

1:14:09I really don't think they, I think if they thought that, they would have left for sure. But I don't think they really thought that. I don't, I just don't buy that story. And then after he's murdered, and actually this moment culturally has been revisited in the wake of with Erica Kirk and doing her grief tour and thing and whatever. Diddy really capitalizes, I think this is fair to say, on the death of his recording artist, Big, and friend. And, you know, that's when he really ascends to sort of solo superstardom. And he's wearing the white jacket and he's doing the, you know, his whole thing, which again, is like culturally relevant again.

1:14:49And they also talk about how he was trying to screw over, you know, Big's family in terms of like secretly changing the contract provisions. There's also this anecdote. And you can speak to this because you've done some reporting on this, that prior to Big getting murdered, he was supposed to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. And did he freak sound as like, absolutely not. That cover is going to be for me. So talk about some of those pieces, because that's the other side of it is like, because they're they're trying to make the case that he intentionally and was in a position to profit and ascend off the death of his friend.

1:15:29He does profit and ascend from that moment for sure. I completely believe that he changed the contract and thus took millions away from Biggs family. And I spoke to somebody who was inside Bad Boy who said that sounds very likely. And you find just Kirk Burroughs, isn't that his name, who's the co-founder of Bad Boy, and he's very central to a lot of the storytelling here. You find him to be compelling and reliable narrative. I know Kirk. I'm watching the doc and many of the things he's saying, I'm like, yes, that's right. Yes, you are in a position to know that more than anybody else, especially something like a contract being changed.

1:16:16Kirk would be the one that you would go to, like, is this true or not? There's definitely other things that we could talk about momentarily that Kirk said that I know to not be true. You know, and I'm not going to use the L word. I know Kirk. He's telling it from his perspective. I know other things to be true. I have at least two sources that say don't think that Big was forced to pay for his own funeral, like from inside bad boy, that people are like, he would have tried it. And people inside up high would have been like, nah, dude, we cannot. We're not doing that. So I don't think that that happened.

1:16:59Now, I'll give you a breaking points exclusive. The first time I'm talking about this, because I just nailed this down 15 minutes ago. I've been trying to nail this down for four days and finally just 15 minutes ago in the doc, it says big was supposed to be on the cover of Rolling Stone for, to promote his second album, life after death. And then after his death, uh, puff called Rolling Stone and said, I'm taking that cover, right? You just referenced that. So when Kirk said that I was like, okay, I was at Rolling Stone for many, many years, right? I'm part of the long-term Rolling Stone family.

1:17:37I'm like, that is not how anything goes. No outsider could ever call and say, hey, I'm taking the cover, right? I mean, maybe Bruce Springsteen, because he's super close friends with Jan Wenner, could call and be like, hey, I got an album come out. Can you make room for me on the cover? But not like I'm telling you. So I called my old friends to try to figure out what really happened. I nailed down. I spoke to just this morning, the woman who was the photo director at that time, who she just got off the or got off email with the person who was the editor in chief at that time and talking about how did Puff come to be on the cover?

1:18:19Biggie was never supposed to be on the cover, period. Rolling Stone at that point in history, when Biggie was making Life After Death, would not have put a rapper on the cover. Jan Wenner at that moment did not think a rapper was big enough to be on the cover. So there is no truth to the idea that Puff took the cover from Big. In the wake of I'll Be Missing You becoming this gigantic monster single, the editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone said we should try to get him on the cover. And because he had this monster single and was willing to take his shirt off for the photograph and was willing to wear Calvin Klein underwear because they were a big advertiser.

1:19:07Because of all of that, Monster Single, you know, Big in the News, and this amazing photograph with your shirt off and all that. Because of all that, they were able to convince Jan Wenner, okay, we'll put Puff on the cover. But this was not motivated by Puff, and this was not a rejection or an erasure of Big. So that is something that I can definitively say Kirk Burroughs is incorrect there. Right. And the entire story he's telling there is completely incorrect. And I spoke to the two people who were closest to that decision just today. At the very end, you know, because Kirk is an important narrator throughout, which makes a lot of sense narratively because he knew Puff for so long.

1:19:49Like you said, he's in a position to know this. He's co-founding Bad Boy Records. He's seeing the ins and outs, getting pushed to the side, like witnessing all this behavior. And then at the end, he reveals, you know, his own allegation that he was sexually assaulted by Diddy. You know, talk a little bit about that. And because we've talked a lot about like the violent allegations here. But, you know, they're obviously throughout the documentary and we know now on the public record, the, you know, the horrific abuse that he subjected any number of people to. I mean, I did not know that Kirk was going to say that.

1:20:28I was, you know, obviously moved by that. You know, you feel horrible. And I completely believe him. I believe almost. Let me just say, I believe. I feel like that would be a hard thing to. I mean, I feel like that would be a very hard thing to come forward with as well. Like, yeah, not an easy thing to put out in the public. I believe Kirk, I believe that Puff was, had essayed or any number of men. I spoke through a long time to Little Rod about what happened to him. He told me the same story and in more detail than he goes into in the doc. So, yeah, I mean, I believe it. Puff was definitely known to roofie or drug people.

1:21:17I shouldn't say Rufy because he was using something that was much more potent. And multiple people who do not know each other talked about being given a drug and feeling being unwittingly drugged, right? Generally through a drink that they were, that Puff was constantly, let's take a drink, let's take a drink. And then suddenly you are feeling way out of it. And like, people are like, you know, large chunks of memory gone, like loss of control of my body. I mean, I have men and women both who have said this to me. So I believe it that he, you know, to establish dominance, to, you know, to be depraved, you know, that he was incapacitating people, he's drugging people and then taking advantage of them.

1:22:04I completely believe that that happened many, many times. You know, it's shocking that that did not come up in this documentary much more because they, because Lil Rod and Kirk, I believe somebody else talk about being SA, but they don't talk about him drugging people. And he was, I mean, Aubrey, Aubrey with Dan and Kane. Aubrey O'Day. Yeah. I mean, from what we know, Puff and his drugging was, you know, was making, we probably could have shown Bill Cosby some things like we're on that level with it, you know? So, I mean, I believe Kirk on that for sure. I wanted to talk about in your analysis on your Rap Latte channel, you said that you thought there was a really big missed opportunity in this documentary to dig into the death of Kim Porter.

1:22:54Yeah. I mean, a lot of us find Kim Porter, his wife, mother of three of his children, her death, I believe at 47, from pneumonia to be like, very strange. You died of pneumonia as like 40 something possible. Sure, it's possible, but it does not sound likely. And there's definitely a lot of people who are like, what's going on there? And I think if the, it seems that the tone of the doc, the undercurrent of the doc was let's make Puff look horrible. What can we say that would make him look horrible? We're going to talk about CCNY. We're going to talk about, you know, him maybe killing Pac. We're going to talk about maybe killing Big.

1:23:39why not talk about him maybe killing Kim? Because that's something that a lot of people believe. And what would be the motive there? What was going on at that time? I'm not entirely steeped on that, but there's entirely any number of things that she could have been. It could have been that she wanted to out him on certain things that she was upset about. It could have been that, you know, that she, because she had left him. I mean, like, you know, the why I can't nail down. But the smoke. I mean, the power piece, just that she left. You know, I mean, this is someone who's clearly obsessed with power and dominance.

1:24:24I mean, not alone. Could be. I mean, you know, it's just that if you wanted to destroy his image, I think you would want to go down that. Now, look, you know, 50 is a super troll. You know, that has been his vibe in hip hop from the beginning. I remember a while ago he had this whole Twitter rant about his dog, Oprah. And he was. And so then he was be talking about that bitch, Oprah, that bitch, Oprah. I'm going to make that bitch do this. I'm going to make that bitch do that. And then people be like, are you talking about Oprah Winfrey? No, I'm talking about my dog, Oprah. But of course he was talking about Oprah Winfrey, right?

1:25:04With the plausible deniability. This is the trolling 50. His whole career starts with him attacking Ja Rule and trolling Ja Rule. And then he's attacking other people in the game. He attacked Jay-Z. I mean, his whole his first single was called How to Rob, where he explains how he would rob all the major stars in the industry in concurrent with their image or their their hot song, which is actually it's kind of a funny record. But a lot of people, the industry did not find it at all. But he's a he's a troll. So this fits with who he has been. That a puppy is down. We're going to get him while he's down.

1:25:45Interesting. Interesting. And so in terms of I should say, by the way, for the lawyers, did he denies all of this? These are all allegations, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, in terms of like a compelling piece of content, how did you think that they they did putting this together? I mean, I was riveted through the whole thing. I was definitely like, OK, I believe that. OK, I don't believe that. That doesn't add up for me. That's compelling that I didn't there's there's not much that I didn't know because we've been part of this story for, you know, 30 some years. You know, I mean, I was I was covering Pox trial that happened during the that was happening around the quad shooting.

1:26:31So the day after I'm I saw him wheelchaired into the trial. So, I mean, like, you know, this has been part of our professional life and our conversations for a long time. So, I mean, this isn't new to me, but I mean, like, it's it's a good piece of work, I guess, as far as documentaries go. Finding people like Kirk gives it a lot of credibility, I think, because he's so important to the history of Bad Boy. He knows Puff from so far back. I just know that there's there's messiness in it. There's recklessness in it. There's moments that are just not true. Interesting. Very interesting. Well, I mean, it definitely is very compelling to watch.

1:27:16I think you're right. Kirk comes across. He comes across as very credible, you know, as the kind of central storyteller here. And, you know, I had no surprise to people that Diddy is an absolute horrible monster, just given what we've seen on camera from him with Cassie, if nothing else. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, just absurd, horrible. all right Tori thank you very much tell people where they can follow you find you all that good stuff um follow me on rap latte come to my youtube channel Tori tube and watch my new show that you reference how why did they break up where we talk talk to people about a romantic breakup that they went through it's kind of this wild breakup stories yeah also I mean you are like absolute TikTok superstar.

1:28:03Thank you. Incredible. Yeah, it's fun. I love I love that. I love the TikTok. See, I have been trying to like make myself do it and I'll like go for a little while and then I sort of fall off because it does require it requires a lot of focus. And you've you've really nailed it. You've kind of really gotten into the format, the medium. Well, I want to be more on YouTube like you, you're like the YouTube star. I'm like, I need to go over there for more time. I mean, like, you know, you do it in depth. TikTok can take a couple hours out of your day. You know, I'm like, maybe this time we better spent over there on YouTube.

1:28:41So I'm trying to trying to live up to you, what you're doing. All right. Well, we'll have to, we'll exchange tips. In any case, Tarei, thank you. Appreciate you. Always great to see you. For sure.

1:29:051969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Black history lives in our stories, our culture, and the conversations we still have in today. This Black History Month, the podcast I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either, digs into the moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook.

1:29:52Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Listen to I Didn't Know. Maybe you didn't either. From the Black Effect Podcast Network, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts. I didn't know. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?

1:30:26I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.