Kamala’s Disappointment and the Killing of Charlie Kirk. Plus, Melvin Gregg Talks ‘The Paper’! | Higher Learning | The Ringer

Summary

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Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay

Episode: "Kamala’s Disappointment and the Killing of Charlie Kirk. Plus, Melvin Gregg Talks ‘The Paper’!"

Date: September 12, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this emotionally charged episode, Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay dive deep into two headline-grabbing topics: the shocking public assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the political fallout from Kamala Harris’s new memoir, which reveals her frustrations as Vice President. The hosts thoughtfully analyze the cultural, political, and moral reverberations of Kirk’s killing and the public’s responses—including their own conflicts over empathy, political violence, and legacy. Later, they unpack Kamala Harris’s book excerpt and what it means for her political trajectory, before welcoming Melvin Gregg to discuss "The Paper," the new Office spinoff, Black representation in comedy, the value of vulnerability, and much more.

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Table of Contents

1. The Killing of Charlie Kirk: Facts, Reactions, & Cultural Impact
   • The facts ([00:26]–[11:49])
   • Cultural and political response ([12:45]–[52:57])
   • Empathy, legacy, and humanity ([13:28]–[52:12])
2. Kamala Harris’s Memoir: Disappointment and Political Fallout
   • Book excerpts and reactions ([57:25]–[72:29])
   • Discussion on party, courage, and systemic issues
3. Pop Culture and Guest Segment: Melvin Gregg
   • The Bachelorette shakeup ([77:30]–[82:13])
   • "The Paper" and Black presence in comedy ([82:13]–[121:21])
   • Vulnerability, Black men in rom-coms, and Hollywood narratives
   • Heartbreaks roundtable ([121:21]–[132:41])
4. Notable Quotes
5. Timestamps Index for Key Segments
6. Episode Tone and Style

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1. The Killing of Charlie Kirk: Facts, Reactions, & Cultural Impact

The Facts ([00:26]–[11:49])

• Van opens: “Charlie Kirk was shot and killed. Yeah, that's where the show starts.” ([00:26])
  • Killing happened at Utah Valley University; shot from 500 yards in the neck, shooter blended into the crowd and escaped.
• Details:
  • Confirmation came from Donald Trump before any news source ([00:26]–[01:36])
  • No suspect in custody; shooter appeared highly trained and professional rather than a typical ‘rampage shooter’ ([01:36]–[03:54])
  • Political messages with ‘anti-fascist transgender messages’ reportedly inscribed on cartridges ([09:42])
  • Uncertainty about motive, perpetrator, or who benefits; speculation is rampant ([07:46])

Quote:
”This seems like someone who knew what they were doing.” – [Rachel, 02:41]

Cultural and Political Response ([12:45]–[52:57])

• Social + political reaction is deeply divisive; responses range from shock to fear to conflicted ambivalence.
  • Rachel: ”The response I'm seeing... is divisive. That's the best word I can use." ([13:28])
  • Calls out Kirk's history of bigoted remarks, especially toward Black women: ”Charlie Kirk is a person who spread harmful and hateful misinformation about marginalized groups...” ([14:41])
• Empathy and its limits:
  • Both hosts wrestle with the temptation not to mourn Kirk, yet ultimately condemn political violence.
  • Van: “The first thing I saw was... a human person sitting down and blood spurted from their neck... That empathy was reflexive.” ([19:02])
  • Rachel: “I'm not going to celebrate what happened, but I'm also not going to mourn it.” ([14:10])
  • Reflection on Kirk’s selective empathy and challenge of extending it when he denied it to others ([33:36])
• Moral and social complexity:
  • Hosts refuse to "whitewash" Kirk's legacy but recognize the dangerous precedent of political assassination.
  • Both emphasize that empathy for Kirk need not erase his damaging impact.
  • Van critiques the hypocrisy of American society in demanding empathy for powerful figures not known for extending the same.

Quote:
”If you steal my empathy, I become a masher. I become a dominator. I become an oppressor. And that's my biggest fear.” – [Van, 21:28]

Empathy, Legacy, and Humanity ([13:28]–[52:12])

• The hosts confront demands for sanitized mourning that ignore Kirk’s harmful public work, as well as the dehumanization of marginalized reactions.
• Rachel expresses fatigue over being morally expected to process political violence the way others dictate: “...to place Charlie Kirk on this pedestal and not acknowledge all the other things he was too, it just eats away at me.” ([35:59])
• Van pushes for honest processing: “Empathy is not something that you should ever turn on or off. Empathy is the building block of human cooperation.” ([29:51])
• Van also offers a stark observation: “There's a whole group of people whose power and influence is based on blaming you for every problem that America has... And then you go through life with nothing ever really happening to them. And then something does.” ([25:51])
• Discussion shifts to the dangers of escalating rhetoric, the importance of not stoking violence, and the ways in which public figures create climates they are unprepared to inhabit ([44:10]–[52:12])
  • Key quote: “If you are saying that you want the world to be a certain way, you have got to be prepared for that. And I know some of you, and you're not.” – [Van, 51:49]

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2. Kamala Harris’s Memoir: Disappointment and Political Fallout ([57:25]–[72:29])

• Kamala Harris’s upcoming book leaks excerpts revealing frustration that Biden never intended to support her path to the presidency.
• Rachel’s reaction: “I feel sorry for her... This is a lose, lose situation... He never planned to support her.” ([58:12])
• Van is incensed not only for Harris but at the political system itself: “Political parties neuter political courage. Political courage is what's needed to make actual systemic change.” ([66:25])
• Both lament the endless cycle of political memoirs that expose dysfunction only after the fact.
  • Van: “We get... books. We get all these books. It's three books. Dropping. Jean Pierre's dropping a book... Everybody dropped the book. Nobody dropped the truth.” ([68:42])
• Rachel concludes: “I can feel sorry for her but still feel like I can't trust that you would execute the desires that people have if it came down to that..." ([72:06])

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3. Pop Culture and Guest Segment: Melvin Gregg

The Bachelorette Shake-Up ([77:30]–[82:13])

• Rachel drops bombshell: Taylor Frankie Paul, TikTok's ‘Mom Talk’ soft-swinger leader, announced as new Bachelorette.
  • “I said, you know what? I love it. Let them be messy... This is their new diversity and inclusion.” ([81:17])

“The Paper” and Black Presence in Comedy ([82:13]–[121:21])

• Melvin Gregg discusses starring in "The Paper," the Office-adjacent mockumentary.
  • Describes show’s premise and challenges of being a spinoff ([84:59])
  • Talks double-edged sword of fan expectations ([85:52])
  • Debate on whether Black viewers (and viewers from segregated backgrounds) will find ‘white boy humor’ funny, and the cultural experience of acclimating to mainstream comedic formats ([86:32])
  • Melvin describes his upbringing in Portsmouth, VA, and the culture shock of entering white Hollywood ([90:32])
  • All discuss code-switching, both public and private ([92:26]–[94:33])

Black Men in Rom-Coms and Hollywood Narratives

• Melvin expresses longing for more Black romantic comedies, both as a writer and performer.
  • “Find your peace and your happiness and protect it. Focus on becoming more, not gaining more.” ([106:01])
  • Offers his concept for a "reverse Pretty Woman" style rom-com starring Nicole Beharie ([107:54])
  • Van and Rachel discuss the value of seeing Black male vulnerability and love onscreen ([119:21])
  • Melvin: “What's the most vulnerable... you gonna see a black man? When he's in love, when his head's on that pillow, pillow talking, saying all of his... heart.”

Vulnerability: Heartbreak Stories ([121:21]–[132:41])

• All three share their “biggest heartbreak” stories, in candid, humorous, and relatable terms.
• Melvin details writing a heartfelt letter to the woman who would become his wife (and initially getting frozen out).
• Van recalls learning the hard way about betrayal, joking about how his father gave tough-love advice: “It’s not your pussy, it’s your turn.” ([133:56])
• The roundtable morphs into a “men need more rom-coms!” campaign.

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4. Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Charlie Kirk is a person who spread harmful and hateful misinformation about marginalized groups in order to ignite his beliefs and his followers.” – Rachel [14:41]
• “Empathy is not something that you should ever turn on or off. Empathy is the building block of human cooperation.” – Van [29:51]
• “There's a whole group of people whose power and influence is based on blaming you for every problem that America has.” – Van [25:51]
• “I'm not going to celebrate what happened, but I'm also not going to mourn it.” – Rachel [14:10]
• “Political parties neuter political courage. Political courage is what's needed to make actual systemic change.” – Van [66:25]
• “Find your peace and your happiness and protect it. ... Ego is the devil.” – Melvin Gregg [106:01]
• “What's the most vulnerable you gonna see a black man? When he's in love, when his head's on that pillow, pillow talking.” – Melvin Gregg [119:21]
• “It’s not your pussy, it’s your turn.” – Van quoting his father [133:56]

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5. Timestamps Index for Key Segments

• Charlie Kirk Shooting: [00:26]–[11:49] (incident facts), [12:45]–[52:57] (social/political implications)
• Empathy Debate & Reactions: [19:02]–[52:12]
• Kamala Harris Book Discussion: [57:25]–[72:29]
• The Bachelorette Shakeup: [77:30]–[82:13]
• Melvin Gregg Interview & “The Paper”: [82:13]–[121:21]
• Rom-Com Representation Discussion: [107:11], [119:21]
• Heartbreak Roundtable: [121:21]–[132:41]

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6. Episode Tone & Style

• Language: Authentic, conversational, sometimes explicit, emotionally open, with both levity and gravity
• Approach: Strong commitment to honesty; both hosts refuse to sanitize or “whitewash” controversial legacies or moral dilemmas
• Structure: Deliberately moves from hard news to nuanced discussion, to pop culture, to vulnerable storytelling

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In Summary

This Higher Learning episode is defined by its refusal to offer easy, sanitized answers to seismic events in American society. Van and Rachel challenge both themselves and their audience: to hold space for empathy without erasing harm, to resist weaponized outrage, and to demand more of political leaders. The cultural segment with Melvin Gregg is a celebration of Black vulnerability and creativity, reinforcing many of the same themes—about honesty, narrative control, and personal growth—that animate the rest of the episode.

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Transcript

[A]

Yo, yo, yo, Thought warriors. What is up? Higher learning is on. It is I, Van Lathan Jr. And.

[B]

It'S me, Rachel and Lindsay.

[A]

Charlie Kirk was shot and killed. Yeah, that's where the show starts. Okay. There's. We'll get into other stuff later on, but obviously the show is going to start with conservative political activist and co founder of Turning Point usa killed at Utah Valley University. This was confirmed not by any news source. His death, at least his. Him being shot was confirmed by Donald Trump. Now you guys are going to be getting this podcast on Friday. This happened yesterday, which was Wednesday. We're recording Thursday the latest things that are happening right now. It looks as if they have a picture of the shooter of Charlie Kirk. It looks like also they have some evidence as to at least motive based upon stuff that was written on cartridges that were. That was taken from a rifle that they found from the shooter. We should say that the shooter shot Charlie Kirk at about 200 yards in the neck.

[B]

500.

[A]

500 yards. Excuse me, 500 yards in the neck, then blended into the crowd to get away, dropped his gun in the woods and remains at large. At the time that we are recording this podcast, which is a day later, I will repeat, shot him at 500 yards, blended into the crowd to escape, dropped the gun in the woods, remains at large. If you are thinking that this is a mad, unstable person that is whipped up by YouTube or TikTok content and then did this, it seems as if from the description of the shot and the aftermath of the shot that that's not the case. This seems like someone who knew what they were doing.

[B]

I mean, yeah, whether it was 200 or 500 yards, shooting one single shot from that distance with that many people, there was, of course, not the same level of security that you would have for a president, but there was security around and to move in that way, getaway. No promising leads. There were two people that were apprehended. They were let go, they were released, not related to what happened in any kind of way. And we wake up this morning and he's still at large. That is what I believe to be somebody trained. I may even as far as go, may go as far as saying a professional to be able to execute this assassination in this manner.

[A]

All right, so as we talk about this, I just want to make sure that it's very clear what we're saying. So when I'm saying blended in, the FBI said that he blended in. They might have just been talking about the person in it. I say he. Because there are still images pulled from video of this individual. So it looks as if, you know, this person is a man. It's a guy.

[B]

Dude. Yes.

[A]

So when they say blended in, they blended in to the rest of the crowd, but was able to get away. Now, I want to make sure that I am making a clear distinction here as I'm describing this, because this is what I'm saying. When we talk about rampage shooters, mass shooters as we know them, the profile of the mass shooter is oftentimes mostly someone who has easy access to a high capacity weapon, an AR15. Not always, but that platform is very commonly used. Right. You did have the Virginia Tech shooter that used two handguns. My point here is that this is normally a rampage shooter that operates inside of a confined enclosed area that they know. You see these things happen in schools where people went. You see these things happen in. They might not be going there now. They went there before in grocery stores or things where they've been before. Even the Mother Emanuel shooting, he's in there for a long time. Dylann Roof is praying with people and with his weapon, he gets to see, like the lay of the land and then pick people off very close range in closed situation. That is not what happened here. That's not what happened. That's not what happened here. This shooter, from distance, hit somebody, then got away. That's also another part of this. The Trump shooter, when he shot President Trump, clipped President Trump's ear. This guy was somebody that was essentially on a suicide mission. He was apprehended or killed or whatever right away. They got to him right away. This shooter shot Kirk from reportedly 500 yards, then disappeared into the ether. We're starting to get information on who this person is right now. Then you see what it says is political messaging. Political messaging on some of the cartridges here. When this happened, everyone viewed it as a political assassination, which. Which, how could you not? Right. It's Charlie Kirk. He's at a political event. And people assumed that this was a political assassination that came from a very specific cohort. Right. When you look at all the information of this together, there is just no way to know who did this.

[B]

There's no way to know.

[A]

And that is not me saying that the easiest and most plausible explanation for this is that it was a political assassination by someone who didn't like what Charlie Kirk has to say. That seems to be the most simple and easy way to explain this. But at the same time, who that person is, what that speech is, or how this is supposed to go. If you just look at all of this and how this, as this was getting updated yesterday, people kept waiting and kept waiting and kept waiting and kept waiting for there to be somebody that was apprehended for this. And now it seems like maybe they're on the trail of someone because there is a picture, they seem to have a couple of leads. But as we sit right now, there still isn't anyone. And it looks like it is a little bit. It's not quite as cut and dry as what it seemed when it first happened.

[B]

Yeah. When Greg Gutfeld was on, on Fox News, he was even saying, because you're right, at the end of the day, we don't know. And I think it's really important to keep that into perspective because you have so many people speculating and assuming so much based on who Charlie Kirk is, what he stood for represented, what party he was affiliated with, what his views aligned with. They're assuming they already know what type of person would do that shooting. And I was actually a little bit surprised. I'm not trying to give Greg Gut feel too much. But he said, at the end of the day, you don't know. And I'm paraphrasing a little bit of what he had to say. But he said you don't know who did this. And he questioned that. The idea that the shooting that people were saying it benefited the left because Charlie Kirk is no longer here on this earth. He said it actually doesn't necessarily benefit the left, which is speculating to the nature of the killing and that he referenced that it feels very professional. I think that it's dangerous because. And it is dangerous because we're seeing the response from people with platforms, politicians, and they're already placing blame. But it is very dangerous to do so in the sense that we don't know. You don't even with what's the little information that's come out with what was engraved on the bullets, you still don't know political affiliations, we don't know motives, we don't know what the person's. The reasoning, which I guess goes to motive, the intention of what and why they executed this, on whose. If it was personal, if it was on somebody's behalf, you just don't know. And so I'm glad that we're starting this conversation off in this way because it is important to have a platform where we don't place blame without any type of evidence or knowledge. And this when it comes to the identification of the shooter, all we can do is report the information that we.

[A]

Have at this point, man, I'm not acquiescing anything, nothing until there is a shooter in custody and this person has been interrogated. And then even after then this is a situation where you have to look at it from every single angle because it's a high stakes incident in the current American political climate. It just is. And before everyone jumps to conclusions and acts as if they know why this happened, who did this, just pump your brakes and kind of let things play out. The political messages that were written on the cartridges, anti fascist transgender messages, they said, that is so on the nose and direct. It almost screams psyop to me. Like, that is so on the nose and direct that it seems like it's done to endanger and implicate one or two or a group of people. There's just not enough that we know specifically about the crime itself right now to say who did it and why. There's not enough. Now if there is a full throated investigation into this and there are no shenanigans at the doj, then you should be able to make some inroads into who did this and get some explanation as to why. Yeah, but that is where it sits from a criminal standpoint. But to cover that first, from a criminal standpoint, there has been a murder. The suspect is at large. And there is different reporting about how close authorities are to catching this suspect and what the motivation of the suspect is. That is the deal.

[C]

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[A]

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[C]

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[C]

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[A]

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[C]

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[C]

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[A]

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[B]

I would absolutely say that. I mean, on a personal level, just group chats, social media followings, the response I'm seeing from people I know, people I don't know, it's divisive. I mean, that's the best word I can use to describe it. When I found out, which was a text message from you, I was shocked. That was my first thought, right? I was shocked. And then I immediately got scared, if I'm honest, you know, And I had conflicting thoughts. Thoughts as well, if you'll give me a second to just like kind of dive into it a little bit, the way I say shots. Because the way in which Charlie Kirk was killed was loud, it was public, and it was gruesome. And I immediately thought, man, this is a life. Someone lost a son, someone lost a father, someone lost a husband. And that's devastating because despite what I thought about him or my personal things, there were a number of people that he meant something to on a completely different personal level. Right. But I was watching, as I was all day, right, on social media, it never stopped. On television, on the phone, I came across some words that really did kind of resonate with me and contributed to some of the thoughts that I have and some that were conflicting. And that came from Blakely Thornton. And I'm kind of paraphrasing this, but he said, I'm not going to celebrate what happened, but I'm also not going to mourn it. And that really struck with me because I thought, if I am mourning anything in this moment, it's the implications of this assassination and what this means for our society now. Like, where do we go from this? And that goes back to kind of the division. When I talk about conflicting thoughts, I think of. It's hard for me to have empathy for someone who didn't believe in the meaning of that word. I mean, when I think of. Because I don't think you can talk about Charlie Kirk and separate the two. I think when I think about him, I think about, it's a man who actively worked to discredit me and my rights as a woman, my rights as a black person, my rights as A black woman. I mean, this is the same man who said black women do not have the brain power to be taken seriously and that they had to steal a white person's job to be taken seriously. Charlie Kirk is a person who spread harmful and hateful misinformation about marginalized groups in order to ignite his beliefs and his followers. He was a divisive person. He didn't value the rights of others place in this society, in our country, on the same level as his. He treasured certain constitutional rights over the value of innocent lives, even if that meant that he thought those lives were indisposable. He did it in the name of certain amendments. But then I also thought, this is really bad for our country and it's really bad for humanity. I think it showcases the dangers of political violence, especially at the hands of a widely debated issue, which is gun control. I believe political violence is dangerous. And because it kills. Well, because it kills the freedom of expressing words and fostering arguments and debates, I believe political violence takes the easy way out. And that's a violence that fuels the fire to create the discourse of hate and confusion and then basically perpetuates these emotions to grow into an army that empowers or empower an army that is empowered by these feelings for people to act on them. And it's already happening. We're seeing it. We're seeing it with the Jesse Waters, we're seeing it with the Nancy Maces, we're seeing it with Trump in their response to what happened. And we're seeing it with so many other conservative voices that are calling for war and are calling for retribution without condition what political violence is as a whole. And without noting the issue of gun violence, which is also an issue with this. They're not condemning political violence on both sides of this. They're allowing it to exist when they don't condemn it on both sides. And by not condemning it on both sides, they're allowing it to be okay, except for when it impacts their side of the table. When I think about all this, and I don't know if I'm merging my thoughts, my original thoughts, and my conflicting thoughts with also how I feel about political violence and gun violence. And I probably should just stop before I keep running on and on, and I will, and I will, because I want to separate each thing, but those were my initial thoughts when it came to this, and those thoughts are conflicting. And I feel that a lot of people are struggling with that, because in order to talk about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, you also have to talk about who he is as a person and what his beliefs and values are and how that affected me. But I also have to condemn political violence because I'm against that. And I condemn it on both sides. But I also have to talk about gun violence and Charlie's connection to gun violence in our society as well.

[A]

Well said. First of all, I wanna talk to the audience real quick. I wanna let the audience know something real quick. I love you. I love you guys. You guys, I know that we have an odd and sometimes weird parasocial relationship, me and the audience rile you guys up, a poke at you guys. But more than anything, I'm an advocate for you. I believe in you. I'm a humanist, and I believe I aspire to be a humanist. Let me say it like this. I advocate for your freedom and your protection. That's what keeps me talking, is I've looked at you, whoever you may be, and I've done my best to put myself in your position. Whoever you may be, if you are a gay man, I am not that. I've done my best to put myself in your position. If you are a trans woman, I am not that. I've done my best to put myself in your position. If you are a woman, I've done my best to put myself in your position. I can do better, and I am trying to do better, but I've done my best to put myself in your position. Otherwise, I wouldn't give a fuck. But my ability to say that's happening to you. How much do you feel? Is the thing that makes me love you. That's why I love you. That's why I love you guys. I love you guys because I see myself in you. I love you guys because I see all of us together. I can't control that. It's reflexive. So the first thing that happened was I saw a video. And the video was of a human person sitting down and blood spurted from their neck, and they went limp. And I reflexively reacted to seeing that video. When I saw that video, I went, nah, that's me. I'm telling you guys right now, the people that are listening to this, I love y'. All. I understand that everyone is trying to understand how to contextualize and talk about this. The first thing I saw was that. And I went, nah, hell, nah. No. That's what happened. That empathy was reflexive. Charlie Kirk, you talked about it very famously, said that empathy is overrated, that it doesn't really exist, that it's not a thing. He was a Christian. That was somehow against empathy. However that works, that's for him. His views on empathy, the way he looks at human beings, how he approaches empathy. He's not gonna steal mine. Nobody will. Because if you steal my empathy, I become a masher. I become a dominator. I become an oppressor. And that's my biggest fear. That's my biggest fear. My biggest fear is living outside of community. My biggest fear is not being someone that you can depend on or someone that you can call or someone that you can believe in. That's my biggest fear, is not seeing myself in you anymore. That's what bothers me. Not any of the other stuff. That's what bothers me. We're not about to do on this podcast, or at least I'm not about to do. You do whatever you want. I know, but we're not about to have a very special episode of Higher Learning where we whitewash somebody's legacy. We not doing that.

[B]

We're not doing that.

[A]

Right? You're not having this conversation like, we're not doing that. If I didn't do that for Hulk Hogan, then why would I do it for someone else but for Charlie Kirk? But what I will say is this. I am not going to even attempt to go to a place where I can see something like that, watch something like that, and then either rhetorically or energetically condone it. I'm not doing that at all. And I'm also going to tell you guys something else. I'm not going to make moral judgments about you and how you react to anything, because I'm telling you guys right now that I don't care about whether or not society thinks that you are moral or immoral. I don't think that American society is in the position to judge my morality as a black man. I think they lost that a long time ago. As a matter of fact, I think part of that is what I was talking about a couple of shows ago. A couple of shows ago, I said right here on the podcast, I said, we've kind of been taught to litigate our morality through the lens of our oppressors, which all always makes us want to live in community with them rather than shake off the shackles of what it is that they're doing. I stand by that. I do. I stand by that. I stand by the fact that that happened. But what else I'm going to say, what I'm going to add to that is the way that I look at the world and the way that I approach things. I Don't want to change. I don't want to change and become something else. I want to grow and I want to evolve. But I don't want to look up one day and be the person holding the gun. I don't. I'm afraid of that. I'm scared of it. I'm scared of one day being the person that's oppressing you. I'm afraid of that. I'm afraid of that. I believe in the destruction of hierarchy. I believe in the use of violence in self defense when you are threatened. I believe in vehemently defending your family, your property, who you are. Right. From people who want to take it illegally, unlawfully and immorally. I believe in all of that. But I also believe in the ability of human beings to feel for each other. And if you do that, it doesn't make you wrong. By the way, if you don't do it, you're not gonna hear anything from me because I understand it. Let me tell you the trick bag of being black. In this country. There's a whole group of people whose power and influence is based on blaming you for every problem that America has.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Their power and influence is based on the fact that America is flawed and you're the reason why. And not only are those people not punished for that, they are exalted for it. They make hundreds of millions of dollars. They have all those from just wishing ill on you, from wishing terrible things happen to you, for saying terrible things about you. Those people get all kinds of bread, all kinds of opportunities, all types of privileges. And then you go through life with nothing ever really happening to them. And then something does. When something does happen, you are then on an island where now your morality is being litigated by whether or not you can have compassion for someone who never had it for you. What a fucking place to be. Let me tell you what I believe the antidote to that is.

[B]

I'm serious.

[A]

What I believe the antidote to that is, is not in any way. In any way thinking about what you owe society, but thinking about what you owe yourself on empathy. Once again, it's not that I've never looked at a situation and had empathy in a situation that was grotesque. There's a very specific thing that I think about when I think about this. There was a guy in Baton Rouge. I don't know if people have seen the video. And his son was kidnapped. Son was kidnapped. Son was kidnapped and sexually abused for a couple of days by like, his karate instructor. Well, there's a very famous video that takes place in Ryan Airport in Baton Rouge with this guy, waited by a phone booth for the. For the abductor of his son to walk by. And he shot him in the head. Killed him. Killed him dead. The abductor of his son. When I first saw that video, I felt incredible empathy for the father. I thought, this happened basically on tv. It's a news report. I thought, man, what must this man have been going through? Think about the anguish in this man's heart. Think about how he felt knowing what was happening to his son. Think about everything going on in his mind for him to take that chance. He did not know what was going to happen after that. He didn't know if he was going to go to jail, be given a death penalty, be taken away from his family. He couldn't think straight at all. The pain was so fucking deep that he thought, the only way I can extinguish the pain is to extinguish the person that hurt my family. I didn't feel any empathy in that situation for the guy that got shot. I felt the empathy for the guy who actually was the trigger man. In this situation. It was different. What I initially felt when I saw the video was, fuck. And that's just me. I looked at the video and I went, shit. I reflexively put myself in this position. Reflexively. I just went, God damn. Think about that. I thought about if I go out and I talk, or if I go out and I give a talk, or if I go out and I go somewhere and say something, somebody blows my shit off. My mom. I thought about that reflexively. That's a part of my makeup. That's who I am. And I'm not gonna apologize for that. And I'm not asking y' all to apologize for how y' all went with it. People who didn't feel that way, I'm not apologizing for that because I can't give that up lest I become my father. And I'm not asking you guys to apologize. I'm telling you right now, I love you. I understand why you feel the way you feel either way. And this society doesn't get to make decisions morally about how you feel about this. It doesn't make you a good person to go at it one way. It doesn't make you a bad person to go after another way. But what I will say is this is. Empathy is not something that you should ever turn on or off. Empathy is the building block of human cooperation. It is literally the only thing that we should have to have for one another. It's the only thing. If we don't, we are the animal kingdom. And if we are the animal kingdom, biceps, triceps, and bullets win. That's not the world I want.

[B]

It's not the world that I want to live in either, which is why I got scared when all of this happened. But the reality is, we've been living in this world. And I got to tell you, when I really think about yesterday and the way people were responding, whether it was on a personal, professional, political level, for me, it chipped away at me. I feel like I really lost a part of. Like, a piece of humanity was lost in the responses that I saw yesterday. And I'm not saying I understand what you're saying, and I'm not telling people to. To judge in the same way that you are, but like, a piece of me I don't know was just lost in how people were responding yesterday because.

[A]

What do you mean?

[B]

Something that. Something that you just said really resonate well. Okay, to answer the first question, when I say a piece of me is lost is people are acting like what happened is new. I know it was shocking and it was gruesome, and I said all of that before, and I still stand by that. It was public, it was loud, all of it. But the way people have been killing for political violence and gun violence is not new. That's why I said we've been living in this world. And the response that people were having chipped away at me a bit. And something you said when you talked about empathy in Charlie Kirk and you talked about his quote, which has been floating around about how he didn't believe in the word empathy and how it was a New Age word, yet he stands in Christianity and those two things conflict. Because how can you believe in Jesus Christ and not believe in empathy? That's really profound that you pointed out the Christianity and the empathy part. And you and I were talking before we got on this microphone. We're talking yesterday. I do believe Charlie Kirk believed in empathy. It's just that his empathy was subjective. I believe he believed in empathy when it aligned with certain people, and it aligned with. With his beliefs and his motives and his values. He had selective empathy. He just didn't say that. Charlie Kirk, when it referred to people who look like you and me or marginalized groups or people who were against the things that he was fighting for, he called that victimhood. Right, Victimhood culture. But there was. He had empathy for things that affected his family, his children, white men, Christians. Christians who believed in his type of Christianity, he absolutely had empathy for that. But when I saw the. But. So there's that part. But then when I.

[A]

Right, so just real quick, Real quick. So he's also making you that way. Or not you, but anybody else who then. So he is. So his version of selective empathy is contagious.

[B]

Yes, it's fact.

[A]

It makes everyone run to a silo. So what I'm saying is a lot of people are like that. A lot of people choose to live in the world like that. I can't do it because, like, if. If I. So to me, I get it. I get it. He didn't give a fuck about what happened to anyone, anyone everywhere, except for this small group of people. This is not the way that I look at the world, and I'm not going to start looking at the world that way, because he did.

[B]

Right. I completely agree with you. He had a lack of compassion for anybody except for a very small sector. And I think that that's the part where I say, I lost a little faith in humanity yesterday. The part that chipped away from me yesterday. I posted there was another shooting yesterday. And I posted that I didn't post a thing about Charlie Kirk, because to me, that is a conversation. It doesn't. It can't live in a post. It's a conversation that I knew we were going to have on this podcast. And I'm grateful for the platform and the opportunity to be able to do that and flesh that out. I cannot put Charlie Kirk in a post. Wouldn't do that. But I posted about the Evergreen shooting, and there was. The shooter died, and there are two students that are in critical condition. I cannot tell you the number of people who responded to that post and said, really? But you can't talk about Charlie Kirk. Are you serious? But what about Charlie Kirk? And I will write people back. And I was like, so it's fuck them kids, right? So it's just fucking kids.

[A]

They already. Yeah, they said that a long time ago.

[B]

Yeah, but I'm like, I want you to realize what you're saying. And some people would say, well, I didn't say that. I said, but you're implying it. You were mad that I didn't write about Charlie Kirk. But you're. And. But you don't want to acknowledge that. I'm trying to acknowledge another shooting that you have been so desensitized to that you don't care about that. Because I'm living in a society that, as of yesterday, was basically deifying Charlie Kirk. Silence at Baseball games, standing up for him at Congress, getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Is that what he gave? Is that what he gave him posthumously?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. The list goes on and on and on and watering down what Charlie Kirk also represents. Right. You can acknowledge the tragedy and an assassination and the things that we are doing in that way on this podcast, but to completely erase what Charlie Kirk also was to me and act like this is something that is new, chipped away at me. To find fault in me, acknowledging that there was a school shooting because I didn't acknowledge Charlie Kirk is something that made me lose a little faith in humanity. And to act like political violence is new and gun violence is new. To act like there haven't been politicians on both sides that have been attacked, that have been harassed, that have been murdered. And I'm supposed to pause all of that because Charlie Kirk is somebody who you revered. You wanna now look at Charlie Kirk as a martyr, deify him and compare him to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And I don't look at that in the same way. You want to find fault in me. When I saw people do that, that chipped away at me. That made me lose faith in humanity. I'm not saying I have no faith in humanity. It's just that to ignore. I don't know if you're just dumb or willfully or plausible deniability or. Or just willfully wanting to ignore Charlie Kirk. I don't know what your motive is, but to place Charlie Kirk on this pedestal and not know or acknowledge all the other things that he was too, it just eats away at me for whatever your reason is, it just does.

[A]

Two things. I'll come to gun control in a second. So on the full throated remembrance of someone or contextualizing of someone talking about who they were and stuff like that, if you care about black people, if you actually care. Having empathy. Okay, how do I put this? Having empathy for black people right now, since we're talking about empathy, this is all oriented around empathy. Having empathy for black people right now is understanding why they're reacting the way that they're reacting. That would be empathy. See. Cause here's the deal. It's one thing for people to say you lack empathy if you don't have a specific take on or a specific reaction to what happened to Charlie Kirk. Having empathy is also understanding why black people feel the way that they feel right now, why gay people feel the way that they feel right now, while anyone who is not one of the straight white people that Charlie Kirk advocated for about how they feel right now having empathy for them is understanding that some people that are going, what do you want me to say? Like, what do you want me to say? Like, seriously, like, what do you want me to say? Like, I watch a video where someone says black women aren't smart enough to fly planes or to be in Congress, and then something bad happens to that person and you want me to be like, that's too much, and that I get it. But having empathy for people is understanding that people are made up of emotions and. And people are made up of experiences, of fears, and in ways that they connect to society. And sometimes those things don't really meet. They don't meet the standard that you think that they should meet. That, yeah, you might want somebody to be like, ah, put all that to the side. That's words and rhetoric. But look what happened. But then people are gonna tell you it's not just words and rhetoric because you say this, I have to drink shitty water. Because you say this, I get killed by the police. Because you say this, I don't get to go to school or to college. Because you say the things that you say and you do the things that you do, it has a material and direct effect on my life. Empathy, true empathy would be somebody that would say, hey, you know what? What can I do to ratchet all of this down so we could all talk about how we got here? Like, literally, let's talk about how we got here. The President didn't do that. The president came out and said, look, radical leftist, he used it as a stat to put into his arsenal. He used it as a stat. That's what happened. So for somebody looking at this in a holistic way, what you would want more than anything else, what you would want more than anything else is for people to be safe. For people to be safe and exist in safety and understanding that safety was their birthright. That walking down the street unmolested by the state, by the people in their community, by the people in their household is their birthright. That housing is a birthright, that all of these things are things that people should have. And they fucking notice when they don't have them. And not only do they notice when they don't have them, they. They notice. Who's saying that they shouldn't? They. They. They notice it. So true. Somebody who was really interested in having a conversation that tried to ratchet all of this down would have to consider all of the variables. But that's not what we do anymore. What we do is we look for somebody to blame.

[B]

We look for somebody to blame.

[A]

We look for somebody to blame. And in finding someone to blame, you know who we never blame? The person that's in the mirror.

[B]

Never. We're seeing people hop on their platforms and a microphone immediately ready to condemn. Talked about it, calling for war and retribution. There should have been reasonable gun control policies prior to this happening as a response to mass shootings, school shootings and senseless killings that have been happening in this country prior to what happened on Wednesday. This is something that should have been a bipartisan issue, but it wasn't before and it still isn't now. Because what's happening instead, they're using this tragedy as a weapon to politicize his death and to condemn the left. As you said, they're pointing fingers, looking for someone to blame, rather than taking a step back and looking at the big picture issue. We have a divided, hateful country where people use all kinds of violence to stop, suppress or hurt people that don't agree with them or just. And just because they can, because the laws in this country allow them to be able to have access to do it. We should be focusing on that big picture. Exactly what it was that you were talking about. That's why I keep going back to the point of. This didn't just start today. It didn't just start today. When you talk about empathy, my empathy is exactly what I said at the beginning of this. I can have empathy enough to have to understand that somebody was affected by the death of Charlie Kirk in a personal way. I have empathy in the sense that he should not have been killed like this. I don't agree with this.

[A]

The shooting was discussed.

[B]

I don't agree with political violence. That is where my empathy goes. But what I will not do is water down who Charlie Kirk was and what he represented and how. How his rhetoric and his teachings and his beliefs and his movements were harmful and hurtful to so many people. I'm not gonna not talk about that.

[A]

And I think that that's what I'm saying. And the reason why you have to talk about that is because if not, then people get to paint the reaction to his death as a bunch of individuals with no central moral compass. It dehumanizes the issue. If we're going to consider feelings, we have to consider all the feelings. We have to consider the feelings of the people that don't have 46 out of 47 presidents. Right? We have to consider the feelings of the people who don't have own all the land in the country. How do they operate in their average day to day lives, living in a place where they're underserved and it's being done to them on purpose. And when something like this happens, we're looking at a whole group of people react and they're reacting because they're human, because they feel scared, because they feel assailed, because they feel oppressed. And if you're not gonna deal with that, but then you're going to morally judge them or make judgments about them, then you're denying them their humanity. Once again. We're all feeling machines. We're all people that it's in us. Like this is a part of who we are. This is the God in us, the, the people that watch that and went, whoa, that's disgusting. I hate what I just saw. That's divine. That's a part of. Yeah, I'm not saying that you. I'm saying that that existing in you, you don't have to tamp that down in any way. You shouldn't in any way to be accepted by any group. You should be able to say, you know what, man, that's so fucked up that we really need to have a conversation about how we got there. And that conversation is going to be. Part of that conversation is going to be about this person and what they still for. It would have to be. It has got to be. It has to be. There's no way around it. We would have to talk about that. And we don't owe it to nobody, nobody to not have that conversation. We don't. Matthew Dow was fired. Matthew Dow was on msnbc. He was fired. He was fired because he made comments about Charlie Kirk's death on air on msnbc. He said, we apologize for his statements, as has he. There's no place in violence in America. Political otherwise. I apologize for my tone and my words. Let me be clear. I no way intended to blame Kirk for his horrendous attack. Let's all come together and condemn violence of any kind. By the way, I'm not blaming Kirk for his attack, no in any way, shape or form. I'm not blaming anyone for the attack other than the person that pulled the trigger. I'm not blaming anyone for the attack. What I am saying is, if you want a space where we can really talk about this, understand the reaction to this, understand why people feel why it's gutting to some people to talk about this without contextualizing it, while it's freeing for people to say, hey, just to let you know, this fucking guy hated me, like this, the guy that y' all put up on the thing, that guy fucking hated me. And now I'm in traction because you're telling me that I'm not a good person unless I go to bat for something that I can't connect with. Because look at my fucking life. All of that's real. And by the way, y', all, it's okay for y' all not to, like, some of the things that I've said. I love y' all anyway. Like, it's okay for you guys to. To. To not be on my side with this. It's okay for you. Some of you could look at that video and look at it and not give a fuck about it. Like, some of you. I talked to people. The last. A friend of mine hit me up. It's like. Cause I said, I can't celebrate it. I'm pussy. I'm pussy. I'm pussy. I'm pussy. I can't celebrate it. I can't celebrate it. I can't. And a friend of mine said, well, what do you draw the line? How do you judge when you celebrate. When do you celebrate the death of a terrible person is what he said. We got on the phone, we had a great conversation. We had a great conversation. And what I realized is that there is a way that I met that I am. And being that way, to me is the way that I believe moves towards keeping people safe and empowered. Safe and empowered. Now, last thing I'll say is this. Last thing I'll say on this. There is nothing more vulnerable than a hawk with dove's feathers. So I want to talk directly to the. Some of the people that I'm seeing. If you are saying that you want the world to be a certain way, you have got to be prepared for that. And I know some of you, and you're not. If you are saying that you are ready for a certain type of existence, then you have to have been doing something to prepare yourself for that existence. Don't talk anything out here on these platforms that you are not ready to live. If you are, in fact hyping people up and whipping people up and injecting into them a specific type of worldview, and you yourself are not ready for the ramifications of that worldview, or you're not ready for what's going to happen to those people as they go out and act on some of the things that they are thinking and feeling and that you are undergirding, then you're doing a disservice to them and we all are. We all are. If you saying you ready for something and if you're espousing that you are ready for something or that you are happy about something or that something makes you feel good and you don't have the requisite wherewithal to deal with the consequences, the societal consequences of what it is that you create, then you are a hawk with the feathers of a dove. And the other hawks who have been preparing, who have tried to make society this way, who have endeavored into this, they are going to fucking rip you apart. Now, listen, I'm not one of these turn the other cheek motherfuckers. I'm not. Nah, nah. Slap me. Kick you in the knee. Kick. Okay. Right to the knee. Bam. Like, take your fucking knee out. Right? But what I am saying is, what I do believe is that it is my job to protect, advocate for, and put my arms around the most vulnerable people in society. It's not my job to make them more vulnerable. It's just not. So when I see the temperature or the fire rising, I always think two things. One, who's getting burned? Two, how can I turn the fire down?

[B]

If only more people adopted those two things as well.

[A]

Yeah, but they're not watching enough porn. That helps you.

[B]

Well, you don't do that anymore, right?

[A]

I know, but it's still there.

[B]

Oh, is that your foundation? Was that your foundation?

[A]

Yeah, it's still. Cause you know what I mean? It's still there. I had to try to get out of it with something stupid. Y', all, I really apologize. I told you guys I wasn't gonna do it anymore, but I did it anyway. Okay, we have to move on to other things. There'll be more news about this that'll be coming out. I think we'll. By the time this comes out, maybe we know more about the shooter. Maybe Rachel and I might have to jump on live tomorrow. I don't know what's going on. Maybe we'll know more about the shooter. Maybe we'll know more about some of the fallout from this. But.

[B]

Can I just encourage people. We say this sometimes where it's like, take a breath because I feel like the response to what has happened has created a lot of emotions in me. Like I said earlier, I feel a little bit chipped away at. I feel like I lost a little bit of. Or a little bit of humanity is lost. I feel a little bit of anger that people are expressing, telling me how I should respond and not considering how certain things impact me. It's like, you better, which in essence, highlights how much they value me or other people who are marginalized groups like me. It makes me feel like they don't value my place in society, which is something we probably already saw as well. I mean, we already knew as well. But a day like yesterday and the response from people highlights that. I am going to take a little bit of a break because I was glued to every piece of media yesterday for my own mental health. And I just encourage everybody to do the same if they're feeling fine.

[A]

I feel fine.

[B]

That's fine.

[A]

I feel fine. I'm worried about. I feel fine. I'm worried about y'. All.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know what's funny? Like, when I was doing. I've never talked about this conversation before. When I was doing Hip Hop Homicides, I was in a city. I'm not gonna talk about the city that I was in. I'm not gonna talk about who I was talking to. I was in the city, and I was talking to this kid, and it was. It was a conversation I won't forget. And he goes, you know, I'm in a neighborhood where these kids are racking up kills on each other. This is killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing. It's crazy. It's crazy how much they're able to kill. I'm talking to this kid, and this kid is like. He's like a regular. I mean, the guys I knew that were doing that, I'll be honest with you, and the Player Proof crew, we kind of considered ourself to be regular. And then the killers were the killers, but you kind of knew them. I'm talking to this kid. He's talking about all the stuff that he's into and stuff like that. And after all, I'm like, oh, it's like a. You know, he's a kid. He's not what I considered when I was growing up to be one of them ones. There were guys that I knew like that, and you knew him and whatever. So I'm talking to him, and we just having conversations about all kinds of other stuff. But I know some of the things that he's done or some of the things that he's reputed to have done. So after a while of having the conversation, I go, yo, man, why don't y' all stop? I said, why don't you stop? I was like, look, you can stop. You doing this stuff. You kind of got a little rap career going on. You can stop. You can stop. You don't have to continue this. Y' all can stop. Never forget it. He goes, I'll stop. I'm willing to stop. I'm willing not to target them or do anything like that. I'm willing to stop. He goes, all they have to do is bring my brother back. I was like, fuck. He's like, I'll stop. I'll stop it all. I'll stop right now. I'll stop. We'll make records together. We'll do all of that stuff. All they gotta do is put my brother right back here after he's here again, I'll stop. I'm done. It's over. It's cool. We good. That's all I need back is the person that taught me how to piss in the toilet and did all that. That's all I need back. And that guy's dead. He died. They got him before the show premiered. And I was like, I. At some point we have to say no. I just wonder what that point is. We'll take a break, Donna. You can get us into politics. Kamala Harris. In July, she announced that she's got.

[C]

An upcoming book coming out. It's called 107 Days, in which she.

[B]

Outlines her short lived presidential campaign, is.

[C]

Expected to go on sale at the end of this month. And with the release date approaching, an excerpt is now making the rounds. In which she suggests that Biden's decision to run for reelection amounted to recklessness. This is what the former vice president said.

[A]

Of all the people in the White.

[B]

House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out.

[C]

I knew it would come off as incredibly self serving.

[B]

If I advised him not to run.

[C]

He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even. Even if my only message was don't.

[B]

Let the other guy win.

[C]

Thoughts on this?

[A]

How am I supposed to feel about this?

[B]

Don't you feel sorry for her? No, that's what I did when I. When the fact that she's writing this book, the fact that this excerpt came out, and I don't know if that's her intention, but I thought, man, I really feel sorry for Kamala Harris. This is how she's going out. Because. Oh shit, it is. This is a lose, lose situation for her. It seems like when Biden just said.

[A]

That y' all went to dinner, you turned. You turning on the dinner pack?

[B]

No, no, no.

[A]

It's not gonna be no more dinners.

[B]

It's. There aren't. I just think that she was in.

[A]

I think, from the beginning, Cheesecake Factory with her. No more.

[B]

I think Cheesecake Factory. I Think from the beginning she was in a lose, lose situation because the moment that Biden picked her, it seems like from these excerpts that have come out and I'm sure we'll read about it in the rest of the book, he never planned on her being anything but his vice president. And that's where it would start and that's where it would end. Biden said he was going to be a one term president. Clearly he never had those desires. It seems like he was always planning on running. And if that is the case, then it appears she was doomed from the moment he gave her the phone call and asked her to be his vice president. He never planned to support her. He never planned to big up her for president. Her role was to be the first as a black woman, as an Indian woman in that position and that's where she was going to live. I really believe that from these excerpts that are coming out, Biden always saw that he was going to be two term. He was maybe afraid of announcing that from the beginning because of his age, but it always seemed like he was planning to do it. And obviously that's what happened because he decided to run again. So she was in a lose lose situation. And now so much has happened that she can come out and condemn Biden. She can come out and tell her truth of what really went down and how her hands were tied and how they never and how they continued to put her in positions and put her on top of policies where she could never succeed. And when she did succeed, because this is in some of the excerpts, when she did succeed, they didn't promote it. When she tried to ask them, she was in a position to never look good. She was in a position to stand by his side and represent a woman of color. He never, according to her words from these excerpts, never wanted her to shine. I feel sorry for her. And now that so much has happened with her time in the election, her backing him up even when she thought he shouldn't be running, her standing by saying she wouldn't change anything different from how he ran his administration. It's just putting her in a situation where she can't run again.

[A]

I feel bad for her, feel bad for her.

[B]

I feel sorry for her. I think it is. This is I don't see her running for any more office. So it feels like the end of her political career and it ends with this book. That's how I feel.

[A]

So this book is the end of Kamala Harris's political she's announcing the end of it.

[B]

Is what you're saying, oh, she's not announcing it. I think that she plans to run. I just feel like this is the end for her.

[A]

You think she's running for El President Day?

[B]

I do. She said her political career isn't over. She's not going to go back and run for governor. I don't know where she falls in line. She was the vice president. She's not going to be a part of the administration in anything but being the president again. And I think anything else is a step back from sort of. I said that before this podcast.

[A]

Okay, so look, here's the deal. So this is. This is. This is a tough one for me because when I read excerpts like this from the book, there's excerpts on this, and then there were excerpts on, you know, how she felt about the whole. Obviously the genocide in Gaza now, what she was trying to tell them to do, and all that stuff they were listening to. It enrages me. I get very mad for her. No, at. At. At her. At. See, doomed, but not her. It's not being mad at her as much as it is being mad at them. So, like, imagine that you allegedly like football. Imagine that. If you like that.

[B]

Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

[A]

Imagine that. Imagine that, like, the Dallas Cowboys are playing the game, and they're playing the game, and the fate of the world is at stake if the Cowboys win.

[B]

Like, if they win, we're good.

[A]

If they win, we're good. I mean, we're probably fucked, right?

[B]

We know for sure.

[A]

If they win, we're good. If they lose, everything's fucked up. Okay, Dak Prescott has a sprained ankle. A high ankle sprain. He has a high ankle sprain. He's not gonna be able to move.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

The left tackle knows this, and he can't tell anybody. He can't say anything.

[B]

So only Dak and the left tackle know he has a high ankle sprain in the game?

[A]

No. The whole team knows. Okay, but everyone knows, but he can't say anything. And then all you Cowboys fans, they talk to you guys and they say, dak is our guy. We have to go out there and let him play for the fate of the world on the high ankle sprain. Right? Everyone knows, but they all have to act like it's not a thing. And after the world has been taken over by the aliens, the left tackle writes a book and says, I knew about the ankle sprain. There's just a part of me that goes, fuck all this, man. What the fuck? Like, fuck all this shit, it's like it's not. This made me once again look at the political party itself and the utility of it. It's like, was somebody gonna tell us? Like was somebody. Was somebody gonna go, hey man, just to let you know, everything is in the balance. Like it's all. It's all in the balance. And we all know we can't fucking run this guy. We all know that we shouldn't do it. We all know this, we all know that. But we're going along with it because. Huh? What's it?

[B]

But that's the thing. What like. Cuz the anger to me isn't directed towards her in a sense more so him and the administration. But this is what I'm saying. I think that she's to blame. But what would you do in this instance? This is why I say she was doomed from the start. I don't think he ever wanted her to be president. He wanted her to be a figure standing next to him and represent something in a way that had not been represented in that way before. That's the way what I get from these excerpts from this book and from the whole way everything has kind of fallen out. She wanted to run for president. And I'm not agreeing with what she did. I'm just saying, what do you do? Her hands are tied. She wanted to run for president. She didn't want to. She. So she wanted to align herself with the Democratic Party. She couldn't shit on Joe Biden. She couldn't say things that she knew because if she did, then she couldn't be president. And if she did, then she would never like it. I'm like this. She's doomed. Her hands were tied. I'm not saying that I completely. She is free from fault. I'm just like this woman's whole moment in the administration was doomed from the moment that she said yes, when he asked her to be the vice president. She never stood a chance. Not under this administration.

[A]

Yeah, so you can't unilaterally point blame that, Kamala. You can't. But what you can do is this. Because I don't like to do that anyway. I like to look at the systemic thing. Political parties neuter political courage. Political courage is what's needed to make actual systemic change. You need courage. You need courage to do things like universal healthcare. You need courage to do things like environmental justice. Need courage because you're up against corporations that don't want to see these things happen. You're up against a status quo that exists in part because These things. Because things are the way they are. You need courage. And these parties are just not about that. These parties are about picking winners and losers. They're about picking the people that they think best serve the corporate base and corporate wing of the party. They're about doing what they can do to consolidate power within a certain political elite. And if you don't fit that, then they make sure to keep you out of it. And then you can't cross that because they'll fuck you for it. So that means that we get bad compromised or inept leaders because we're really not picking them. Kind of picking them, but we're really not picking them. Then after everything falls apart and it's all fucked the fuck up, you know what? We get Bestsellers. We get books. We get all these books. It's three books. Dropping. Jean Pierre's dropping a book. We're having her on this podcast. Can't wait to have this conversation with her. I know Kamala's dropping the book. Everybody dropped a book. Nobody dropped the truth. Nobody dropped the truth. Everybody dropped the book. Now the aliens are taking over. And the fucking ankle. We put the spat on that bitch. I wanted to fucking. What am I supposed to think? I'm sorry.

[B]

Look, you guys, look, you're not wrong.

[A]

There's a. Obviously. Obviously I voted for Vice President Harris.

[B]

I voted for her.

[A]

Obviously, I voted for her, right? I wanted her to be successful in her bid to be president. She was a much better candidate. Would have loved to have seen what she would have done with the country on the left. I've seen that. Okay, so, guys, I'm just being honest with you. Somebody gonna get mad. I'm just being honest. Okay? Reality is this. And they don't even get me started on the. The. The Gaza thing. Don't get me started on what was happening there. The whole time there was inaction there, kids faces were getting burned off. They were. The kids faces were getting burned off. And it's like, okay, like, when do we summon. And this is why. When I was talking about the. The fucking. The black thing. The. The Is America a racist country thing with Kamala Harris. Look, I realize that, you know, I have a different set of. It's different. I'm not the vice president. You can't maybe. You know, but I'm saying is. It is important for us not to just accept blatant lies because we understand the political position that somebody is in. It's important for us to be like, all right, you know, this is our person, and we kind of get this. But at the same time, that's a lie. We should just be able to say that's a lie. And I know that you know that that's a lie.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And what ends up happening with these parties too? They become little social clubs rather than political parties. Not a social club. It's not. It's not a fucking club for you guys to have a fun time and do all. It's not a fucking club. Right. These people are the people that control the clean water and fucking all other shit. It's not a club, man. It's a fucking politic thing. And stop with the fucking. We have fun and drink and we all together in club shit. It's not a club if they don't do what you need them to do, then you got to fucking kick their ass and get new people. It's not a. There are no hives. There's none of that. She's in a book. She knew.

[B]

This is why I say her political career is done with this. Because what's going to come out of the book, People are going to have the same. People are going to have the same sentiments that you have. They're going to have the same sentiment in the sense that. How does anybody trust Kamala Harris? Listen, how does anybody trust Kamala Harris after this book comes out? How could we believe anything? Who do you stand for? What do you stand for? How could you run for office after this? We don't know which Kamala Harris is going to get. It's going to be hard to believe. I'll believe what she writes in this book, but it's going to hard to believe her as a political candidate and trust her in that space. That's why I say this is it. I'm sure it's going to be a great book, though.

[A]

Well, I guess that's why I gotta read the book. Gotta read it. Cause I guess maybe the book makes the case for how hamstrung she was.

[B]

It is going to do that.

[A]

And if I'm having key word empathy, maybe I'll read the book. And the depth of it I will understand.

[B]

And what did I say at the top of it? I feel sorry for her because I felt like her hands were tied. But it doesn't mean that I trust her. And as a candidate, after this book, I can feel sorry for her but still feel like I can't trust that you would execute the desires that people have if it came down to that or following the system.

[A]

Let me ask you this. Speaking of hands tied, do you think that R. Kelly was telling the truth when he said that he did not know how to hog tie?

[B]

I didn't know he said that, and I don't care. It doesn't matter. He did so many other.

[A]

Wait a second, wait a second. Hold on, hold on.

[B]

I don't know this.

[A]

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Donnie, there's no way. You haven't seen this. There's no way. It's impossible.

[B]

Where did he say this?

[C]

I'm looking it up.

[A]

Hold on.

[B]

I don't. I don't. He did so many other disgusting and harmful things that I don't care if he knows how to hog tie or not. That's like. There's a number of criminal activity, criminal things that he did that were harmful to women, which is why he's riding in jail now.

[A]

Rachel.

[B]

Prison.

[A]

I want you to. Rachel, I want you to watch this. No, this is. Come on, Rach. I want you to watch this and I want you to tell me whether or not you believe R. Kelly, whether or not you think that he's telling the truth. Right here.

[B]

He said, it's a gal.

[A]

Somebody sent me something on my phone and it said that a hog tied her. I don't know how to hog tied to people.

[B]

What would I hold. I do remember. Sorry. I do. Of course.

[A]

Of course there's a debate about whether or not he's actually telling the truth there because he told a lot of lies. But do you think that he. No, it doesn't matter. It's just a question. Do you think that he knew how to hog tie? Do you think he could hog tie?

[B]

I think he tried. You want. You know what? This is what I think. This is what I think the reason he knows he can't hog tie is because he probably tried it and it didn't work.

[A]

You think that he was trying to hog tie and he realized that he could. He couldn't. He couldn't hog tie.

[B]

So he meant that he's sad about. I didn't know how to hog tie. Cause I tried and it didn't work.

[A]

He said, hog tie, people.

[B]

Why did she bring that up? Why? Why?

[A]

Cause I saw a tweet and the tweet said, I do think that R. Kelly was telling the truth, that he couldn't hog tie. And I was like, I never thought about that. That probably with the way that he.

[B]

This is the difference between me and you. I would have seen that tweet and kept scrolling. You sat there and thought about it, huh?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Huh?

[A]

I thought For a second. Like, could he hog tie? My dad could hog tie.

[B]

And your dad. And your dad is from Mary Gwynne.

[A]

L.A. he hog tied me.

[B]

R. Kelly is from Chicago, Illinois. Okay. Different skill sets that are required, I think, for both. And why did he hog tie you, Van, why did he hog tie you?

[A]

We were playing around. We were being rascals. And he would say something. My dad would say, like, boy, I'll throw you. I'll throw you. And I would say, you can't throw me. You can't throw me. And then he would be like, boy, I'll throw you. And then I'll say, you can't throw me. And then one time he picked me up and he threw me. And then when he got me down, he had his lasso and he hogtied me. And it was funny. It was funny. I was a kid. It was like a funny thing.

[B]

Oh, sure, that sounds like fun. I don't think it was fun in the R. Kelly sense, though. But I do like what you share. Yeah, I just want. I absolutely believe R. Kelly tried to hogtie and realized he couldn't. I didn't realize because I would have been like, hogtie. I don't even know what that is. He said, I tried, but I. But I didn't know how.

[A]

We should say something. By the way, Melvin Gregg is coming on the show pretty soon. We should say something. By the way, there's a shit ton of news.

[B]

Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot.

[A]

I don't know if you guys saw this. Israel hit Qatar. Israel hit Qatar. They bombed Hamas negotiators in Qatar trying to. And this was an operation that took place on the soil of Qatar, Qatar, and it is a major deal. This is a huge deal. Higher learning homework. You guys should look into this. If you haven't looked into. Looks like Israel hit Qatar to try to get to Hamas, which is what they said. But really this is happening, in my opinion and a lot of other people's opinions, to stifle the negotiations that are ongoing right now to bring an end to the conflict or at least to get to a ceasefire. They hit the negotiators, they hit the people that are negotiating, everyone. There's so much going on right now that Israel launched a strike against Qatar and basically told the United States about this strike while the birds were in the air and we couldn't get to it today. There's a lot of stuff going on.

[B]

There's a lot going on. Supreme Court ruling going on. We were VMAs there's some fallout from the VMAs. We were talking a little bit about new Bachelorette. I had thoughts about. Oh, you have to.

[A]

You have to do that. You have to do that.

[B]

No, no, no. Yeah, I mean, I always did a lot.

[A]

No, no, no.

[B]

There's really not.

[A]

Martha listens to her favorite band all the time. In the car, gym, even sleeping. So when they finally went on on tour, Martha bundled her flight and hotel on Expedia to see them live. She saved so much, she got a seat close enough to actually see and hear them, sort of. You were made to scream from the front row. We were made to quietly save you. More Expedia made to travel savings vary and subject to availability. Flight inclusive packages are at all protected.

[B]

Are you familiar with Secret Lives of Mormon Wives?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Do you watch it?

[A]

I've seen it before.

[B]

So you know what the premise of the show was built off of?

[A]

Yeah, Mormon women skinny dipping.

[B]

Okay. No, it was built off of soft swinging. A girl came out. Mom Talk was something that was built by these women who are Mormons.

[A]

I've seen it. They get on the teeth to deal with.

[B]

I'm explaining it to people. And it became very, very popular on TikTok. Millions of followers, millions of likes. And then one day, the leader of Mom Talk, Taylor Frankie Paul.

[A]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Are you telling me that the Bachelorette is a woman from the MomTalk thing?

[B]

Yes, yes, yes. This is why I was like, you think it's not that there's a new Bachelorette I don't even watch anymore. It's that it's Taylor Frankie Paul. So Taylor Frankie Paul was the creative momtalk. The leader of it comes out and says years ago and says, hey, guys, I just want to let everybody know we're swingers. And she didn't specify who was or who wasn't. So everybody assumed every single girl that was in Mom Talk was swinging with each other. They were swinging. Turns out it was her. Her best friend, her best friend's husband, her husband. They. All those couples get divorced, whatever, and the fallout comes to Mom Talk. These fractured friend groups, the lies, the mistrust, do they swing? Do they not how they are in their religion, not in the church. In the church, all of these things. And it's a great watch. Two seasons. The third one comes out later this year. Bam. It's under the Disney Network. So is the Bachelor Bachelorette. Taylor Frankie Paul put out a video that she wanted to be the Bachelorette. Nobody took it seriously until yesterday when she announced on Call Her Daddy that she is the new Bachelorette. People are losing their minds. I woke up to the phone calls. I already knew, though. I woke up to their phone calls, to the phone calls, and they were like, rachel, we have to have your thoughts now. You know, I don't talk about the Bachelor Bachelorette. I don't even watch the show. But I had to pop in for this because it's so from the norm. Normally, they pick a lead from a previous season. So you know this person, you're familiar with them, you know their story. You're rooting for them as they find love. That has been the format. I've said multiple times that this format is dead. The fairy tale is over. They can't compete with these other love reality shows because they're trying to sell something that people don't believe in anymore. They needed to shake it up, and they shook it up. They have said, we're going to jump in the land of chaos. We're going to jump into the mess. Because the Bachelors always said, we're not like them. We're not like the other ones. And they're losing because of it. They're losing viewership. They're losing dollars. It doesn't make sense anymore. So they have thrown their hat in the ring and they said, we're going to do it in the loudest and biggest way, and we're going to make the leader of mom talk of soft swinging. Taylor, Frankie Paul is going to be our lead. I spoke out about this, and I said, I love it. I think a lot of people thought, rachel's going to condemn it. Rachel's going to hate it. I said, you know what? I love it. Let them be messy. I have spoken and tried to push for diversity and inclusion in this franchise, and they dabbled into it, but they never got it right. And I believe that this is their version of diversity and inclusion because Taylor, Frankie Paul is. We've seen divorced women, we've seen moms that have been Bachelorette, but not all this together. She got multiple baby daddies. She's divorced. She is. We've seen her in and out of relationships. She has struggled with her mental health, which is gonna be an issue on the show. And she has passed the soft swinging. She's maga. I didn't even talk about that. There's so many different things that point to making her different. This is their new diversity and inclusion right here. And she is our new Bachelorette. Oh, been arrested, domestic violence. The list goes on and on.

[A]

Melvin Gregg Joins us on the show today. Melvin, do you watch the Secret lives of Mormon Wives?

[C]

I don't.

[A]

You never heard of that before?

[C]

I feel like I've probably heard of it, but nah, I've never watched it.

[B]

I wish he could have heard the explanation.

[C]

It sounds familiar.

[B]

It was built off soft swinging and Mormons and. Hi, Melvin. Sorry, I'm sick. I can't be in studio today.

[A]

It's a show about Mormons and Mormon ladies, but they go wild. It's like Mormons gone wild.

[C]

That's probably interesting.

[B]

It actually is.

[A]

I like it one or two. I've seen it one or two times. I didn't realize that was the same lady. And now this lady has gone on to become the bachelorette. Melvin Gregg, would you ever become the bachelor?

[C]

Nah, nah, I'm already married.

[B]

He's married.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's the thing, Melvin. Wait. Can I just say, Ben is the worst about knowing the personal relationship and lives of his friends.

[C]

It's true, though. That's. It's not a bad thing.

[A]

I. I knew this about Melvin, though, because I. Melvin is very proud. He puts his. Like, I've seen you do stuff with the family on social media and stuff like that. Like, y' all build stuff. You're very handy. You do crafts? I do. What kind of. How did you learn how to do crafts?

[C]

Because I'm cheap, as they say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if somebody come in and they quote me a crazy price to do something, I usually look at a person. I'm like, do I feel like I'm as capable as that person? Cool. All right. The answer is yes. Let me figure out how they. How they would do it. Let me go to YouTube and you can learn anything.

[B]

Wow. What's your sign?

[C]

Yeah, I'm a Virgo.

[B]

That makes a lot of sense. That makes all the sense in the world.

[A]

Don't y' all feel like it's a lot of.

[B]

No, I like the side.

[A]

I like Virgo propaganda that's going on lately. Like, Virgo.

[B]

We're in Virgo season.

[A]

I know, but I'm saying it's like the Virgos have now. I think it's Beyonce related. I think Beyonce has made the Virgo into this big brand. It's like a brand now.

[C]

It's a big thing. Yeah. There's a lot of propaganda around it, too. I feel like it's part of. It's true, and I think it's. The traits that are associated with Virgo are, like, very prominent traits. So it affects people in a way. But they're more vocal about it, I think.

[A]

What's the Virgo traits like?

[C]

Perfectionists thinking they know everything. Like.

[B]

Yeah, but there's positives. You're very grounded, you're very practical. You always know what you're going to get. Very loyal. I'm an Earth sign as well, so I understand.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

What do this mean? What's an Earth sign?

[B]

Well, Taurus, Capricorn. No, you are an Aries fire.

[A]

What's that fire sign. Burn a motherfucker up. That's what I'm talking. So Melvin is joining us because you got a new show. Dropping bruh.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

It's a. The show is out, is it not?

[C]

It's out. It's out.

[A]

And it is called the Paper and it is an Office spinoff. Tell people about the show.

[C]

Yeah, so it's from the same universe as the Office. The same showrunner that brought you the American office 20 years ago. A lot of the same directors from before. It exists in the same world, but it's a different show. The only carryover is Oscar, Oscar Nunez from the original and also the documentary crew. So how the show is set up is the documentary crew from before they go to Dunder Mifflin to check one of the old crew, the old cast, and everybody's gone and you find out that the company was bought by another company. So the documentary crew go track down where the company was sold and they discover a newspaper, like a local newspaper and they decide to document this newspaper.

[B]

Do you think that it being like Vance described it as a spinoff from the Office, but it is different. But another mockumentary. Do you think that that kind of categorization helps or hurts the show?

[C]

I think it's a double edged sword. I think in the industry today, IP is everything, you know, that's why we got so many reboots and stuff. So coming off of the Office and the Office being such an iconic show and having so many die hard fans, you'll garner a lot of attention but at the same time you'll garner a lot of comparisons too. And at the end of the day, as long as people watch it, that's good. Now we got an opportunity for people to fall in love with the show and see that the show is different from the Office. Same documentary crew, but a different group of people. There's not like a Michael Scott type and a Dwight type. It's just a completely different group of people with different tasks, different dynamics and it's a different show. Just same format, same DNA, same comedic.

[A]

Tone, Will black people find it funny?

[C]

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think if black people kind of give it a chance and just clock in. I think a lot of comedy comes from relatable moments, even though it might not be a shared experience. Like, the human experience is pretty relative. So if you kind of watch it and you fall in love with the characters, you know, you'll find comedy. You'll find comedy in it, but it's not going to be the same type of comedy you get from, like, Tyler Perry. You know what I mean? It's a different tone, but there is.

[A]

So this is interesting to me. So when the Judd Apatow stuff first came out. Cause, like, in college, I put my homies on Seinfeld, and at first I didn't think that they would like it, but it's just fucking hysterical. It's just funny. And then the Apatow stuff came out, and then there was a whole run, a whole time where we were into the white boy humor.

[B]

Yeah, I called it stupid fun.

[A]

We were into the white boy humor. And that whole humor seemed like it went away. The Office was kind of that, but not really that. And now it's like, are we free to laugh at the white boy humor anymore?

[C]

I think, you know, being black in America, you gotta kinda acclimate to the white world in a sense, in a way that they don't have to acclimate or accept or acknowledge our space. They don't have to watch our movies, but, you know, eventually we'll watch theirs. I grew up, where I grew up at, it was really no white people. It was kind of segregated in a sense. I've seen a new map where it says, like, the concentration of black people. And it's all in, like, the southern coast. And the darkest color is the biggest black concentration. And it was right where, you know, I grew up. It was probably like two white people in my high school. I don't know who they were, but I just assumed that they were there. I don't want to say it was completely black. My elementary school was one white guy. His name was Timmy. I remember him. I used to sell him Sega games, but Melvin. But yeah, yeah.

[A]

So you were selling them the old shit.

[C]

What was it? I get it from the pawn shop.

[A]

You get it from the pawn shop?

[C]

He just wanted to be cool, so he'll buy whatever I'm selling.

[A]

He wasn't really even playing the games. He just wanted to.

[C]

He probably wasn't, hey, I'm all for it, but nah. Shout out to Timmy, I remember him to this day. But I'm saying all that to say that I didn't watch white comedy. I didn't watch a lot of white movies. I just watched things of the culture with characters I could relate to. And I remember I went to this thing called Boys State to get to. You went to Boise State?

[A]

Yeah. You go to student government?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, I went to Boise State and they. I guess it was supposed to be a treat for everybody. They took us to, like, a auditorium, and they put on Ron Burgundy, the anchorman.

[A]

Anchorman.

[C]

And I was lost. They were going crazy, laughing at everything. And I was just like, this is stupid. I don't get it. I seen Napoleon Dynamite and I'm like, yo, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Like, I just don't get it. My introduction to white comedy, in a way, I was like, yo, this is hysterical. But super bad.

[A]

Okay?

[C]

Super bad. And 40 year old virgin.

[A]

Yeah, great.

[C]

Like, at that point, I was like, okay, I get it. Those other ones, I still don't kind of get it. But I think the thing is playing absurd situations in a grounded way where you're not trying to be funny. You're just like. If you look at Steve Carell and 40 year old virgin, he wasn't trying to be funny, but it was just hysterical because he was so oblivious to the world in which he existed. And the same thing with Superbad. And it's relatable. Like, every guy can relate to trying to get laid or. You know what I mean? Going on a crazy night out with your friends, just trying to hook up with that one girl you got a crush on. So it was relatable in a sense that I found hilarious.

[B]

Was it hard for you? Like, I'm curious, like, growing up the way that you did and you saying only two people that were white in your high school, and then you come out here and it's white. Hollywood's so white. Was it hard for you and you're so yourself. Was it hard for you to stay true to yourself? And how did you do that?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was definitely tough. So culture shock for me came in college. Cause I went to college in the same area. I never really left the area.

[A]

Where is this area at? Where's.

[C]

I'm from Portsmouth, Virginia.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

It's near, like, Norfolk, Virginia beach, like that southern coast of Virginia. So I. When I went to college, I stayed close to home. I went to college, but it was really diverse. And I had culture shock. I didn't talk to People for like two years. I had a roommate my first year that I never met. Whenever he would come in a room, I act like I was asleep just. Cause I just feel so out of place. I end up leaving around November, so I ain't had to hide out too long. But like, even the black people, they was from northern Virginia for most, most of them. So like the culture was different. They dressed different, they, they, they talked different. I just felt so out of place. And it was to a point I just kind of stayed to myself. And it took a couple years for me to kind of break out of it. But being able to. To adjust in college when I came to California, I had got to the point where I realized, like, you know, we all people, we all experience the same thing. We might talk different, we might got different experiences, but how we react and how the experiences affect us is all common in a sense. So by the time I got to California, I had found a sense of who I was. But it was still hard for me to figure out who I was on camera because I still got an accent, but my accent was super thick when I moved out here, so I didn't look like how I sounded. Like I sounded super urban, as they say, but I looked friendly. So when they casting, you know, this friendly light skinned guy with curly hair, he didn't sound like me. And then when they was casting, you know, the niggas, as he would put. As he put, like, I didn't look like what the idea of it was. You know what I mean? You know, we look like whatever. There's no monolith to black. But the idea of what Hollywood was casting in really looked like myself. So I would try to code switch and I was trash at it. Like I sounded terrible. Trying to sound like I was.

[B]

Let us hear.

[C]

No, it's gonna sound different now.

[A]

I want to hear your code switch. All three of us should code switch. Rachel, code switch.

[C]

My code switch is very light. I feel like Rachel got an elite code switch.

[A]

Rachel got a crazy code switch. Rachel. Try it.

[C]

I already know it.

[B]

Hold on. My voice is hoarse. Hi guys, I'm Rachel Lindsay and welcome to Extra.

[C]

That's like a broadcast switch.

[B]

Well, that was. That's a switch. That's a switch.

[C]

I guess, I guess.

[B]

What'd you think? I had like a Valley Girl accent?

[C]

I think you could do Valley Girl.

[A]

Yeah, something like that. A little bit more. I liked it, but I. Yeah, yeah, I liked it, but it was a little broadcasty. I don't code switch, so I wouldn't know nothing about that. I keep that shit real.

[B]

I do.

[A]

I definitely code switch back in the day.

[C]

I'm sure you go home and a New Orleans accent come out. Louisiana accent come out.

[A]

No, it doesn't. See, here's the thing.

[B]

My text does.

[A]

It doesn't. It does for me. Baton Rouge is an interesting place. Cause if you. Rachel, you met my friends, right? The play approved. They don't really have.

[B]

They don't really have accents.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So also too. You already pretty articulate. So you don't have to code switch.

[A]

Probably.

[C]

Yeah. Like, you sit in a middle place. You. If I didn't know you and I heard you speak, I'd be like, okay, he's probably middle class. Like, you know what I mean? A two parent household type thing. So I think for me, having a coach, which came from, like. I'm from like the. I don't like saying trenches. Cause people glorified, but like, you know, welfare type. You know what I mean? Like that type place. So the way I naturally talk is kind of hard for white people to understand.

[A]

So you had to.

[C]

So what I'm doing now is also a shift from how I naturally talk.

[A]

Wait, wait. You nigga switching? No, it's you switching with us.

[C]

I'm media switching. Cause I don't want y' all to have subtitles for what I'm doing.

[A]

I never had. I don't know. I don't. I never had anybody switch flummies. Yeah, maybe you just wouldn't know.

[B]

You wouldn't have known.

[C]

It's like a California switch. You wouldn't have known. Like, white levels probably don't ob Switch white people.

[A]

We never talk about when white people code switch.

[B]

Well, we do. We call it.

[C]

You seen a Tarantino switch?

[B]

I have not.

[C]

Oh, man. Look up Tarantino talk to a group of black people. It was like 70s black exploitation. He was like, yeah, so this movie that we come. I can't even hear it.

[B]

He said like, jai turkey and stuff like that.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was crazy.

[A]

I'm looking at your filmography, so people should know the background as we talk about the paper, which is a huge deal. But I'm looking at the filmography and a lot of people that are seeing Melvin Gregg right now, they're gonna be like, I remember him. I've gone way back with him because of how you got started with vine, right. And all of the skits and stuff. But when I'm looking at the filmography, I'm looking at constant, constant, constant elevation, right? I'M looking at a whole bunch of titles here that don't have no clickable links to em on the Wikipedia. Then I'm looking at Sharknado. And then as I see him, I'm seeing Boom High Flying Bird. We were in that movie together, actually. I was in that then the Way Back. Underrated Ben Affleck movie, right? And then you cooking now. Billie Holiday, Boxing Day, the Blackening. Love the Blackening.

[B]

He loved the Blackening.

[A]

House Party, Story Avenue sharing. Then when I look at the TV stuff, ever Since Snowfall, all of these are projects that are really fantastic to be like associated with. You're talking about Soderbergh, you're talking about John Singleton and my man Dave. Shout Out Dave over there on Dave Be Hooping. Think he could shoot the ball out there on Snowfall. How did you go? What was the actual thought of? I'm going from vine to build a career where I am in prestigious gigantic productions. And now Melvin, I'm bringing it up to talk about your ascension, but nobody even talks about the vine thing anymore. You became an actor and the first place that they met you was on Vine. How did you do it? What was the strategy?

[C]

Some people still be like, oh, this is the guy from Vine. I'm standing there with the paper, with the promotion, and it just shows I'm touching a market that I haven't touched since Vine. But if you look at it like you said, if you go back, it's so many credits on my filmography because there's so much stuff that I've done before vine in regards to just wanting to work before vine, before Vine. I moved out here 2011. So it's stuff like is asteroid versus earth, cleaver family Reunion. It's like a lot of low budget or student films or indie films that I was doing in 2012, 2013, 2014. But I wasn't able to get the auditions for the real projects, the prestigious type projects, because I didn't have an agent and I couldn't get an agent because I didn't have those credits. So I was like, in order to get to a place where I want to be, the place where I am now, the place where I'm gonna be soon, I was like, I gotta figure out another path to get there. And that's why I did Vine. I did vine with the intentions of building an audience so I can be more of value to an agency or a production. So me doing vine was a means to an end of me getting representation to actually get real projects. But I realized when I was doing Vine. The projects that I was getting from being an influencer weren't great projects. You'll get stuff like Freakish, Unreal, which was a great show. But my role was so minimal. I played an influencer and you know what I mean? I was only getting those really small parts even though I was big online. So I had to come to a point where I'm like, what do I really want to do? Even though I'm finding a great deal of success doing social media, that's not why I moved here, that's not why I came to LA to act. So I was just like, let me just stop. So I quit and I just shifted my focus completely to acting. And that's when you started seeing a high flying bird or American Band or the way back when. I just kind of shifted the hyper focus that I have for social media back towards traditional media and just continuing to, you know, put forth the work, but also just be conscious of where I exist in this space, how the landscape exists and how I can best navigate it to get to where I want to be.

[B]

I love that because I feel like when I was making a career switch to, somebody said to me, what's the one thing in your life that's holding you back? And I didn't want to admit it was being a lawyer because that had defined me for such a long time. I was like, that's what everybody knows me as. That's the respect. What are they going to think of me if I go off and do what I really want to do? And she was like, that's the one thing holding you back. And as soon as I let it go, I felt like things started to fall into place. I read I was gonna slim interview and I read that you. Cause I'm wondering if you believe in manifesting and if you place importance on it. Because you read. I read that at the top of the year you had wrote down like all the different things that you wanted in your next project that would help you move to the next level of your career. So the question is, do you believe in manifesting? Is that something that you do? And maybe talk a little bit about that for other people? Because obviously it worked, you know, with what you're doing now in the paper. Because I read also that that's the full circle moment for you.

[C]

Yeah, 100%. I'm a big believer in manifesting. I feel like manifesting isn't much different from prayer. The only difference is you pray out to an external being or Jesus or whoever it is you pray to for whatever it is that you want, and you have faith that's going to come back to you because you have faith in whatever it is you're praying to. I feel like manifesting is the same thing, but it's a faith within yourself. You are putting out what it is you want to receive, and you have faith in yourself that is going to come to you. So as long as that faith is strong, there's a chance that it's going to come back to you. But I think the great deal about manifesting and having faith in yourself, you're going to put forth the work relentlessly to gain what it is that you want. You're not sitting back waiting for something to come to you. You're confident in yourself to put everything into it and bet on yourself to go out and get whatever it is that is. So I've always believe that I could manifest whatever it is I want and that, I guess you could say delusional faith in me being able to achieve what I want. I'm putting myself out there and doing the work to garner those blessings or manifestations. But yeah, with the office, my wife is more in tune with it than I am. She reads books and stuff based on people's research and life experiences in this space. I kind of just go off of what. What's innate for me. But yeah, top of the year, she was like, this is something with the moon, and this is a great time to kind of just.

[B]

We would be such good friends.

[C]

Right down. Yeah. And she really set it up too. And I was kind of laughing at it, but, like, she set up like a palette all in the yard and she had like, some candles and like, some wine and like all of this stuff in a notebook. And I was kind of laughing at it, but of course, I'm still. I still go along with it. And I just write all the things that I want out of my next job, moving into the next year. And a lot of those boxes was checked by the paper. So it's just like, wow, that's crazy.

[A]

How important is it having a good woman in your life?

[C]

I think it's the most important. It's the most important thing. I think your partner, as in with anything, in everything, your partner is probably the most important decision you make. If it's a business, the person you decide to partner with is gonna be more important than what the actual business is. I think having the right person is gonna build you up and give you strength and encourage you and add to who you are. The Wrong person is gonna do the complete opposite and could be the cause of your demise. So I think, yeah, a good woman or a good man is more important than most.

[A]

Why do you think sometimes? Cause, you know, the young brothers out here that are in the city that are doing their thing, sometimes they don't wanna settle down.

[C]

These city boys.

[A]

These city boys, they out here, you married, family, all of that. Sometimes they say that comes later, career comes first. And now. And I need to solidify all of that stuff. But it seems like you feel like solidifying your family and your personal life helps you be. Does it help you be more productive in your professional life? Is that part of the success that you might not, you might be having that maybe others don't? The fact that you have a great partner and a stable family?

[C]

I think there's a. I think there's a balance as far as productivity and what it is you want to be productive at and where your focus is. For me, my family is more important than my career. So even though I might not be as, as productive as like a businessman, I'm productive as a father, as a husband. That's more important than anything. So it's just like I'm putting my attention there. And anytime I got leftovers going towards work, there's not a lot of, like, extra time to be hanging out and doing a lot of other stuff. And I try to keep a work schedule, like, but between four and five, I'm done. And I'm just, you know, with my family on the weekends, I'm just with my family. I wake up in the morning with my kids and make them breakfast for a long time. I was taking them to school too, but that's priority first for me. And back to the first part of your question about a lot of, you know, young guys focusing on work and stuff. I think it's. It's like a conditioning in a sense. And I was in that place. I think a big part of it is ego. But, you know, men are conditioned to, you know, want to have options and to get the girls that everybody desire. And a lot of times that's attached to getting money and getting fame and flexing and that type of stuff because you're going to attract these girls that you're conditioned to want. So then you're going to go out and chase business and you're going to chase money. And then you come up with this philosophy of, you know, money over hoes and all of this stuff. And it's just, it's a bad cycle overall. And I feel like I definitely had that perspective at one point in my life. But you gotta kind of grow through it. And I've always been one to pay attention to the omens and see cautionary tales. And I have to kind of live through it to learn from it. So if I see this guy doing this, that and the other, and this is where he ends up. I don't wanna take that path.

[A]

Right.

[C]

My dad, you know, prided himself being on being a ladies man. He got three different baby moms and now he lonely at 70. No shade to my dad. That's his life choices. But I don't want to go down that path. So if I could look at that and be like, cool, that's not where I want to go. Let me not do that. It's easier for me to move that way. If I see people that find happiness in marriage and family and kids and, you know, having somebody to support them and that being more productive, cool, that's more so what I want. So let me align myself with that way of living versus that way of living, I guess.

[A]

That's an interesting thing. So you talked about the whole mantra of like money over bitches. Cause you chase that and then everything comes from that. What would be the right mantra? What would be the right mantra for someone to have in terms of what's the right way to orient your life, your social life, your professional life? We want to get ourselves out of these toxic spirals of talking to each other in these things that we learned from these records. If I'm talking to a group of young men, what's the right way for me to tell them, this is how you should attack life. This is how you should attack happiness. What would you say?

[C]

Find your peace and your happiness and protect it. And find your happiness and your peace. Your happiness can't be based on what somebody else want, because at the end of the day, it's not going to make you happy. If you're doing it to make them envious, like, what is that really doing for you? Ego is the devil. Ego is the root of greed and so much other stuff too. So leave the ego alone. Find what makes you happy. Find what gives you peace. Hold onto it, protect it. Focus on becoming more, not gaining more. And we get lost in, like, material possessions and we want so much, you know what I mean? They want us to have the biggest house and now we live in a library where there's no communal experience within the house because y' all in different sides of the house. And now you got these Big white marble floors and this big empty space. You can't even clean it. Versus, like, if you think about growing up, some of your finest experiences, for the most part, is gonna be, like, at your grandma house, small house, little front room, little side room. But y' all all together, y' all got experiences. It feels wholesome. And I'm not knocking, you know, people. That's ambitious. I'm ambitious, too. But know why you want it? Don't just want it because other people want it.

[B]

See? Grounded Virgo. I read that you want to do a rom com or an action. So if you were doing a rom com, who would you want to play opposite of? You.

[A]

Interesting.

[C]

Yeah, that's very interesting. I wrote a rom com, and I know I want to play opposite of me. But this industry is so tricky that you can't play. You can't follow creative rules. There are no creative rules, but you can't do what you're creatively drawn to do. A lot of the times, you gotta do what makes monetary sense for whoever giving you the money.

[A]

So who would you want to play opposite them?

[C]

I wanna work with Nicole Behari.

[A]

Ah, shit. That is. To me, this is going to sound. This is going to sound fucked up, but to me, I don't want to say underrated. I would say that Nicole Behari is the most underappreciated. Yeah. Not underrated.

[C]

No. She fires yes.

[A]

Because she. Because she's not underrated.

[C]

Right, Right.

[A]

But underappreciated. That is a fucking star. That's a star right there. You see her wherever she's at. You see her on the morning show, you see her on tv, you see, like, the black mirror, everything she's done. That's a star. That's a great choice. What is this rom com about? Got secret agents or some shit?

[C]

Nah, nah. So the original conceit of it was me thinking, like, I want to do a reverse Pretty Woman, in a sense. So it's a reverse Pretty Woman. I ain't gonna be no. Like.

[A]

You want to be the host. Not you. The hoe.

[C]

I'm not.

[A]

So she. Wait, wait, hold on. You gotta be. That's what you say. So this is. This should get made.

[C]

See, you gotta. You gotta think of who she really was. She wasn't just a hoe. That was her means of getting on. But she was. She was a lost soul. She was a lost soul. And she found somebody who showed her how valuable she could be.

[A]

Don't give me cancer.

[C]

And put her in.

[A]

I realized it. I realized it was More to the lady. Okay. I can't. I love the movie.

[C]

So my version of a hoe, right? And it's equivalent. What's the version of a hoe for a man?

[A]

I don't know. You tell me.

[C]

A hustler.

[A]

A hustler. Hustler is hustler. Yeah. Yeah.

[C]

So that's what the character is. He's a hustler. He's just crazy in and out. Not in and out of jail, but he. I can't. I'm blanking on the determined. But he's just a. A slut. A slut. I'm tripping.

[A]

Just say no. No, no, no, no, no, no.

[C]

He's, he's, he's.

[A]

We trying to get pretty. It's called pretty.

[C]

I'm trying.

[A]

No, no, no, no, no. It's called pretty. We trying to get it made, right? We can get this made, by the way. So listen, by the way, I'm telling you right now, we get this made.

[C]

And I want to get it made. We.

[A]

You can produce it then we can get this made.

[C]

Oscar van. So look it. So he's a hustler, right? So when she meets him, he's driving Uber, but it's not just your typical Uber. He got like a mini fridge in the middle. He's selling like party cups with Henny and condoms in the back seat. He got a stripper pole that he got from like a storage unit auction that he drops off to somebody that he, that he meet on. What's that app where you sell stuff?

[A]

Craigslist?

[C]

Not Craigslist, the new one.

[A]

I don't know.

[C]

It's green. It's a green icon. Let's just say Facebook marketplace. He linked up with somebody sell this all while the woman who. She's, she's in venture. She's in venture capitalist. She's on her way to a meeting that her career pretty much depends on and she has to make it to this dinner. Meanwhile, she's in the car with this dude that's doing the most. So off the rip. They butting heads, they not really into each other. And she gets into the meeting and she realizes this couple, a hotelier couple, where she's trying to acquire their hotels, they're really old fashioned in a way, and she knew it beforehand, but she was kind of like, I'm gonna do my own thing. They only really wanna work with couples. And throughout the film you figure out why. So when she shows up, they're like, where's your husband? And she realizes like, yo, this is gonna Be this is gonna be like the death of this deal. And at the same time, the guy come in. Cause she had dropped her purse. She had dropped her phone in the car when she was getting out. So as she. He's bringing her the phone, she pulls him to the side. And she was like, Look, I got $1,000 for you. Don't say nothing. Sit here, agree with what I say. I gotta close this deal type thing. But I like to liken it to Leo and Titanic. He comes and he's honest and he's himself unapologetically. And the people fall in love with him. And the people like, yo, we can't close this deal right now. We haven't had enough time. But we do an annual retreat in Jamaica where we stay at each one of our hotels each night. We get to know each other and we get to see the type of people we do business with. We would love for you guys to come. So in order for her to close this deal, she now needs to bring him on this trip to close this couple. And, you know, she pays him as they do. And Pretty Woman, yeah, it's not $3,000 as it is in that movie, but she pays him an amount to come and spend a week with her there. And over the course of that week, of course they hate each other, but they. They learn from each other and they grow from each other. And eventually they fill out. They realize that they're better for each other with each other.

[A]

Now. We can get it made. We can get it made.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Nicole. Tracy. Tracy could do that. Like, we can get it made. That's a good one. So you have your own projects. You're getting off the ground too then?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, I got a lot of them, man. These last six years, I've been focusing on a lot of people see me do DIY stuff, and I spend more time actually writing and DIY on these scripts, but it's just easier to post a theater room or a deck or a little contraption fun toy that I make than it is to get these scripts made. But they definitely in the works. I got a few.

[B]

I like it.

[C]

Yeah. I want the rom com to be next.

[A]

I like it too.

[B]

And we need more rom coms. We're missing those right now.

[C]

I know, man. We get what Netflix give us, but it's all kind of the same thing. And they kind of. They kind of cheesy and a lot.

[A]

Of don't talk your stuff. We gotta pitch this thing now.

[C]

I mean, you gotta get. All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I Ain't gonna talk bad on it, but I'm just saying this. I think this is, you know, it's given something that hasn't been given in a while, so.

[A]

Domo Gleason's in this?

[C]

Yeah, Yeah.

[A]

I don't fuck with him.

[C]

Why not? Is it Harry Potter?

[A]

Nah. General Hux, bro.

[C]

What's that? I'm sorry, what is it?

[A]

He's General Hux, bruh.

[C]

Who is that?

[A]

Fucking General Hux from Star wars, bro.

[C]

I told you earlier how I grew up, bruh.

[A]

He's fucking General Hux from Star wars, bro. It's Dom Gleason. He's fucking General Hux. You never seen it? You ever seen the Force Awakens? You've never seen the Force Awakens? You've never seen the Last Jedi?

[B]

I don't watch either.

[A]

So you doing the whole show with General Hux? You and General Hux going back and forth and you don't know it's General Hux?

[C]

You wanna know something crazy? What? I didn't know who Nicole Kidman was, so I got this.

[A]

You're lying.

[C]

I had to Google it when I.

[A]

Knew she was working so I would know who. No, no, no way.

[C]

I told you how I grew up. I didn't see any of this stuff until I was an adult.

[A]

Wait, wait a second. So. Cause you did the show. What was the name? That was a good ass show. Non Perfect Stranger, Non Perfect Strangers. So you did Non Perfect Strangers. Was that hbo? Hulu, Hulu, Hulu and Non Perfect Strangers.

[C]

Nicole Kidman. I didn't know who. Missed you.

[A]

You didn't know who Nicole Kidman was?

[C]

Nah, I knew her name. I knew her name as a famous actor, but if she was in a lineup, I wouldn't have been able to be like, oh, that's her.

[A]

So then what did. When you see her and when you see Nicole Kidman, you don't know who she is? Does she expect you to know who she is?

[C]

I don't. She didn't give the energy. She's a very gracious, beautiful human being. She kind of just floats through life.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And she's been famous for so long, I don't even think she acknowledges if people know her or not. She's just. Excuse me. Respectful, nice and gracious. Hi, how are you? Yeah, nice to meet you. Where you from? You know, it's just that you got to get that energy because you was magic.

[A]

Happen.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. It was kind of that. But yeah, I didn't. I didn't. I had to Google it before she came. So I would know who to be like, you know, thank you. Because it was her show, but it just speaks to. Like I said, growing up, I didn't watch a lot of that other stuff. I had to catch up later on, so there's a lot of great things I still haven't seen.

[A]

What are the movies you haven't seen?

[C]

It's hard to name them. You name them and I'll tell you if I've seen them.

[A]

Have you seen the Godfather?

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Have you seen Goodfellas?

[C]

Yes, I've seen all these gangster movies.

[A]

Have you seen. Oh, so you've seen all the gangsters?

[C]

I've seen the gangster movies.

[A]

Okay. Have you seen the original Color Purple?

[C]

Yes. Yes.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Do white movies. Do white movies.

[C]

I haven't seen white movies.

[A]

Okay, okay.

[C]

Do.

[A]

Do white movies. Okay.

[B]

Do you watch Marvel? Do you like Captain Americas?

[C]

I haven't watched the Captain Americas, but I love the one with Thanos.

[B]

You are like me.

[A]

God damn.

[C]

I watch. I like Iron Man. I'm not like a fanatic. I'm not a fanatic. I watch Iron Man, Black Panthers.

[B]

You see it here and there.

[A]

Black Panther. Okay.

[C]

Yeah. I don't know.

[A]

So rom com. You like rom coms? Have you seen, like, Sleepless in Seattle? I did.

[C]

So listen, listen.

[B]

He likes rom coms.

[C]

I was writing a rom com, so I watched as many rom coms as possible. It's a formula. So I'm like, let me educate myself on rom coms. But prior to writing the rom com, I had never seen Sleepless in Seattle or many of the other ones.

[A]

Right, but you wanted to know the formula, so you watched it because they're all the same.

[C]

So I watched the greatest. I looked up the greatest rom coms and watched them, Watched them all to kind of, you know, figure out what made them great.

[A]

But you never saw Eyes Wide Shut?

[C]

I watched it later.

[A]

Yeah, you watched it later? What did you.

[C]

So I didn't like it.

[A]

What was it like? What was it like meeting Nicole Kidman, then watching Eyes Wide Shut?

[C]

It's different.

[A]

I know, right?

[C]

It's different. Yeah.

[A]

No, no.

[C]

Cause like.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, you saw that shit.

[C]

But it's hard. It's hard to see people different from how you first meet them. Have you say, have you met Rachel's parents?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay, so you met them as older people. Now try to imagine them being 20 years old. It's hard. Go watch an old video of Morgan Freeman. Yeah, watch an old video of Morgan Freeman. He still feels old because you met him. So I met Nicole Kidman, older. So it was hard to go and see her in a sexual act and be affected the way people probably were when it happened. Originally. Beautiful woman. But it's, you know, it's a respect thing. It's like, I have a different respect. Excuse me. I respect her as a elder, but.

[A]

Like, as a.

[B]

Just.

[C]

I love Nicole Kidman.

[A]

I love Nicole Kidman. I love Nicole Kidman. Wait, hold on.

[C]

And it's not specific to her. This is any, this is about Rachel's mom. It's about.

[A]

Any older.

[C]

It's about, you know, my wife's mom. Like, you know, when she meets somebody one way, it's hard to see them in a different light.

[B]

Wow. I, I, we get where you're coming from. We understand.

[A]

Yeah, Definitely get where you're coming from.

[B]

Yes, yes. Especially in the first movies.

[A]

Shout out to my man Woody McLean. Yeah, the brothers are. If you guys don't know, Whitney McClain is, has a Kickstarter. He's raising money for his rom com. Our brothers want their rom coms. We want to be in rom coms. We want to be lovers.

[B]

You know why?

[A]

Because think of the 90s.

[B]

Think about all the rom coms we had in the 90s. We grew up on that. We grew up watching, seeing, like, black people find love and, and in beautiful spaces and even.

[C]

And think about it. What's the, what's the, what's the most vulnerable. You gonna see a black man when.

[A]

He'S in love with a black woman?

[C]

When he's in love, when his head's on that pillow. Pillow talking, saying all of his. Anything that's on his heart, that's the most vulnerable. And I think that's what makes for the characters that are the most redeemable, the characters that you care for the most, you see them in love, and I think we all kind of want an excuse to expound upon that.

[A]

Do you think Hollywood enjoys seeing black men in love, Holly? Hollywood.

[C]

Hollywood. I think if they don't see us as black men and they just see us, of course we're black men. But if you just watch us as men and people that are in love, you will learn to love it. And I think that's something that I'm able to do and we'll be able to do more of within the show, the paper, because I think watching it, you won't see Detrick as like, oh, he's a black man. Of course he's black. But you just see him as a person. He's just a person. And he's in love with this girl, and you get to know his heart. So I think it's a great opportunity to introduce black men to people that might not know him on such a vulnerable and transparent level.

[A]

Tell us about Dedrick.

[C]

Dietrich is unlike characters I've played before. Dedrick is. He's awkward, he's offbeat, he's a little unsure of himself. He's a people pleaser, but he has a really good heart. He's the type of guy that you'll be happy for him to date your sister like you. You. He's just a. He's just a good guy, but he hasn't really come into his own. And over the course of the season, he's head over heels in love with somebody, and they're not giving him. They. They not, you know, returning the same energy. So that puts him in a place of, like, uncertainty and insecurity. And if you ever been in love, then the person not really give you that love back. Your logic is out the window. You move in with your emotions, and you're not doing things that make a lot of sense to the outcome, and you just kind of lost in it. And I think this is who he is at this point. But there's a lot of room for him to grow and, you know, see what else he has to offer and explore his mind and heart.

[A]

Before we leave, everybody talk about their biggest heartbreak. The moment where they. We have to be vulnerable now, the three of us, now we've established we doing a movie together. All kinds of shit. It's crazy. Safe space has happened. Yeah.

[C]

With the rest of the world. The rest of the world.

[A]

Watch. Everybody talk about their biggest moment of heartbreak. Rach first. Me second. Our guest last. We signed off. Biggest moment of heartbreak, Rach.

[B]

I mean, I guess people would expect me to say my divorce. That is not the answer.

[A]

That's not it.

[B]

That's not.

[A]

We know that's not it, nigga.

[B]

You know, there was this. There was this guy I liked at college, kind of. It was like, I should have known, right? Hindsight, because it was never officially defined. But I considered him my boyfriend. And we were off and on, off and on for years. And I really liked him, and he was just everything that I wanted. And one day I called him, like a normal day, and I got the do, do, do. The number that you have dialed is disconnected. And I was like, you know, he's changed his phone number before. Like, he'll probably hit me up in a second and let me know that. Yeah, that He's. That. He changed his number. Anyways, that never happened.

[A]

See what's happening?

[B]

It never happened.

[A]

Mm. This is tough, huh?

[B]

This was tough. It never happened. I was ghosted. But ghosted wasn't a thing back then. Like, it didn't have a title. Like, we used to joke, and I was like, yeah, he's Casper. But we didn't have a title. So there was social media. Wasn't big then. I think we just had Facebook. So there was no way for me to connect to him, to reach out to him, to know anything. I really didn't find out anything till two years later. And then two years later, I found out that he went back to his old girlfriend, they had a baby, and they lived happily ever after.

[A]

That's crazy. It's good for them, though.

[B]

It was great for them. We're cool now. We're cool now.

[A]

It's good for them. Y' all good? Y' all got over it. Good.

[B]

We're good now. But it really broke my heart.

[A]

I was at school, and I was going to school, and I remember one of my homeboys came to me. He was like, hey, I wanna let you know, so and so was getting freaky with so and so. And that's the way he told me that it was going down. And I didn't. I didn't believe. I'm like, nah, no way. And he was like, yeah, bro, he's getting a little freak on. I'm telling you. You got a little freak on your hands. And I'm like, you need to watch that. And so I confronted her about it. I confronted her about it, and she was like, no, no. Never happened. Bullshit. And I'm like, oh, okay, cool. Okay. I go back to my boy. I'm like, you are wrong. It is you who is wrong. I do not have a little freak. You misspoke. It is you who is wrong about this. Don't you ever speak on my household like this ever again. Okay? It wasn't a household that was playing house. Don't you talk about my household like this ever again. Okay, cool. So I am in her room one day, and at this school, we had, like, this blackboard thing where you would click into it and they would have your classes and your. Like, you could turn in papers in there and all of that stuff. But we all had it. It was a thing. And I remember I clicked into the little thing where you sign in to the login, and all of the past logins pop up when you click into this thing. And the guy who she Was allegedly little freaky freaky with his name popped up in that thing, which meant he had been in the room. He had been at the computer. He had been logging in. That nigga had been logging the fuck in.

[C]

He's been logging in.

[A]

That nigga was logging in. I'm like, he logging in on my.

[C]

He logging in and putting his information.

[A]

Putting his information in, bro. He was. He was putting his information in. And I remember I'm sitting there and, like, I was. It was like a moment of. It's funny now, but it wasn't even, like, a moment of heartbreak. There was terror. I was like. I was like, yo. She was like, what? I'm like, what is this? And that was it. That was the moment. And then, man, this became a thing because all my people and every. But this became a whole big thing. But that was the moment. That. And, see, you know, I don't hold that against black women. I was a black woman. I know sometimes y' all get the.

[B]

I don't hold it against black men. Stop.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. But I didn't do that. Okay, so now that's me.

[C]

She's using it. I got a quick question. Did that moment define you for the years to come afterwards?

[A]

Nah, Because I'm not like that.

[C]

So it wasn't the origin story of a little.

[A]

See, I always take everything out on myself. Yeah, I know. That's when I always take everything out on myself. That's my problem. My problem is I looked at that and I went, now, what wasn't I doing to. When really, we just got to college. We was young. The nigga was on the football team.

[C]

She.

[A]

You know, it was the whole nine and all of that dumbass shit. So I made that about me. I internalized that for a while, and then I got in shape and started wilding out.

[C]

Exactly.

[A]

It was your origin story. My origin story for a while. Okay. I started wilding out. All right, now you. This is your biggest heartbreak.

[C]

Yeah, my biggest heartbreak. So I never had a girlfriend until my wife, until I met her, so.

[A]

God damn.

[C]

I know, man. Never.

[A]

Not one girlfriend.

[C]

Nah, nah. Cause I'm like a Virgo. I have this delusional confidence where it's just like, I'm not gonna settle for anything less than exactly what I want. So if I meet a girl from the jump, I know how far I could go. We could hang out. We can kick it. But I'm not gonna lie to you and tell you it's something that is not.

[A]

Now, did they think that they were your boyfriend?

[C]

Nah, See, yeah. Yeah. I never wanted to mislead anybody. Like, they always knew what it was with me. And a lot of times that would be, you know, at the cost of me compromising who I am to just. Maybe I'm just a jerk because now you don't want me to be your boyfriend, but you might want to kick it with me here and there. So not to get sidetracked, I met my wife. And of course, she wasn't my wife at the time. And I was like, that's her. Like, I knew it soon as I seen her. So I was into it. I was like, cool. I like, got her Facebook. I hit her on Facebook. I was like, you want to go out for coffee? I had never drinking coffee in my life, but I just moved to California. I'm like, this is what they do out here. So she was like, nah, I'm dating somebody. I'm like, dang, I respect it. But I'mma still tap in. It's on Facebook. I'm going to tap in every month or so. Like, how you doing? So after a while, that situation with her boyfriend had died out and we hung out. We hung out for a couple days. And I was like, let me approach this in a way that I've never approached dating before. And I'm gonna be a gentleman. I'm gonna be like the best possible guy that exists.

[A]

Let me treat that person.

[C]

Let me treat her. No, no, no. Let me treat her like a. Let me treat her like a queen.

[A]

Let me treat her like a queen.

[C]

So I've always treated him like people, but I might put myself first. So with her, I was putting her first. And yeah, bro, it ain't pan out for me. It ain't pan out for me. I realized I was like a rebound. And it hurted my pride. Cause it hurt my pride. Cause I'm like, I put her first. I treated her like a queen. I don't usually do this and I get what I want. I put her first. And now I'm the good guy and I'm finishing last. And it sucked. And I wrote her a letter. I wrote her like a three page letter. Mind you, I had only hung out with her a couple times. If you read this letter to this day, you would have thought I wrote it yesterday. Like, I poured my heart out. I wrote drafts so there was no errors in what I was writing. There was no cross offs. I wrote it with pen and cursive. That's a foreign art nowadays.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[C]

She ain't even respond to it. I'm like. So then I'm hitting her, like, ain't trying to press her. I'm like, you read the letter. I'm going to get to it. I mean, I read it. Yeah. Waiting to see how I want to respond all of this. And she's just not hitting me back at this point. And then one day, I hit her, and I finally got a text back. I pulled over to the side of the road because I was like, I need to sit down when I. You know what I mean? When I read this, I kind of want to give him my full focus. I don't want to be driving. I pull over, I read the text. It says, sorry, this is the wrong number.

[B]

I feel you now.

[C]

Fast forward, Rachel. Fast forward. Maybe a year later, we end up connecting on Facebook or something again. And I was like, send me your number. Cause she was. You know, she was more cordial now. So send me your number. She sent that same number from before.

[A]

It was her real number.

[C]

It was a real number.

[A]

Oh, my God. That's the number one story. No, she played bruh. And the fact that y' all a man married, that's straight, Rachel, I'm telling you.

[C]

Cause. Cause from that moment, it created a different version of myself. I was completely opposite of what I was the first time, and it ain't last. The relationship lasted about five months. Cause I was a jerk because I was overcompensating from what I did before. My pride was hurt. So now I'm taking it out on her and this relationship. So I'm pissed.

[A]

How did y' all end up getting together?

[C]

I mean, through time, you. You grow apart and you grow closer together. This was, mind you, this happened in 2013. And then that time after that, six months. What's that, 2004?

[A]

So this 10 years ago, Melvin, this is the movie.

[C]

This is a separate movie.

[A]

I don't know. I'm serious.

[C]

But this ain't a romantic comedy.

[A]

I know this. I know, but this right here, like that. Like, this is the movie or the Limited or whatever. This is the.

[C]

You want to know what's crazier?

[A]

What?

[C]

That's the show. That's my art. This year with the paper, my character goes through the exact same thing. Instead of writing a love letter, he carves a bird. And it's the same thing.

[A]

He carves up a bird.

[B]

He carves a bird.

[A]

He carves a bird. Oh, he hurt. No bird, though.

[C]

No, he carved a bird out of pine, like a suit.

[A]

Oh, man, we gotta watch the paper. Yeah. If y' all not watching the paper, man. Y' all gotta watch the paper. Y' all have to. Y' all have to see how this ends for Detrick and see if it matches up with what happened for Melvin in real life, which is he gets this amazing family. Y' all gotta watch the paper. Where can they see it? Where do they go?

[C]

Is on Peacock. It's streaming. All episodes are streaming on Peacock. All 10 episodes. You know, check it when you can.

[A]

Go check it out. And you got a whole bunch of shit coming up, too.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. I'm working on a lot of things, man. So, you know, hopefully those things ought to come. But right now is the paper, and I think everybody should watch it. I think you'll like it. The receptions. The reception of it has been great. I thought people were gonna hate it. Not hate it because it's bad, but I thought people were gonna hate on it because of the Office.

[A]

Because compared to the.

[C]

And I think that's great because the two can coexist. You can still love the Office and then watch the paper.

[A]

I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm in a group text with some guys, and before the paper came out. These are semi important guys. Before the paper came out, they was dragging the shit through the mud. They was just like, there's no fucking way. Why would they do this? Why would they do this? I remember there was, like, a text about it. It's like, hey, you know, it's actually pretty good, actually. You know? Cause everybody. The office is such, like, rarefied air. It's like actually, you know, it's actually. It's actually pretty good. It's pretty good. So I'm gonna get to it, man. I'm gonna make sure that we watch it. Everybody needs to tap in for sure.

[C]

I think I know you logging off, but there's a very genius line in the first episode when they pull the camera on Oscar and he's walking off and he says, no one asked for this. And I think that's the sentiments of a lot of people that are Office fans. Like, no one asked for this. But, you know, you don't always know what's good for you. And I think if you check it out, you'll learn to love it.

[A]

Yeah. I didn't ask to sit down at that computer that day and click the thing and see that shoe. He was logging into my shit.

[C]

Exactly.

[A]

He was logging in to my shit. And then that's when my father told me. That's what my father told me. The coldest line I told you this line before my dad. Because I told my dad about this. My dad gave me the coldest line. My dad goes, son, don't be too jealous. I was like, why? He was like, it's not your pussy, it's your turn.

[C]

My dad said something similar and I.

[A]

Was like, oh, shit.

[C]

That's.

[A]

He told me the lines like, it's not your pussy, it's your turn. You.

[C]

You know another one that's a little more. Less that there's. There's no. There's no story without conflict.

[A]

No story without conflict. That's what my dad was trying to say, but he didn't have a language. I feel you.

[C]

It was a different generation.

[A]

It's a different generation. It was a different generation.

[B]

Thank you, Mel.

[A]

He didn't have the language. He didn't have the language. We are out of here. Take your think caps off. Do not stop learning. Thank you to Melvin, Greg for joining us.

[C]

Thanks for having me.

[A]

Hope. Thank you to the audience today for allowing us to be raw and real about our feelings about the happenings of yesterday. Rachel.

[B]

Oh, everything that Vance said. Make sure you guys take care of yourself. Like I said, detach if you need to. There's a lot going on. Melvin, again, thank you for being here. I'm Rachel Lindsay.

[C]

Thanks for having me.

[A]

Sam.