Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay - Russia’s Almost-Coup, and Melvin Gregg on ‘The Blackening’

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay welcome Murtaza Hussain, journalist for The Intercept, to help break down the Wagner Group’s coup attempt in Russia (6:10), before discussing the arrest of a 14-year-old and his mother after the shooting death of a man who had assaulted the mom (38:15). Plus, an update in the Jonathan Majors assault case (1:07:29), and actor Melvin Gregg joins to discuss ‘The Blackening’ and what place ‘Snowfall’ has in the culture (1:14:55). Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay Guests: Murtaza Hussain and Melvin Gregg Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, yo, yo, thought warriors. What is up? Higher learning is on. It is I-Ban Lathie Jr. And it's me, Rachel and Lindsay. Rachel, where are you at? I'm in Dallas. And I gotta tell you, the reason I stopped, I'm in Dallas, I'm at home.

And when I got off the plane, I thought about you. Because it was hot. I don't know Dallas anymore. It is 103 degrees. I'm sweating right now. It is so hot here And it's supposed to get to 108 This is not the Dallas I grew up with

I don't know this Dallas And it's slightly humid outside I don't grow up with humidity I don't know this place This is unfamiliar to me And I'm not comfortable here right now This is a trust thing When people don't trust one another

They tend to react Adversarily To everything that people say This is what I'm saying I got off the plane it was at night. And I got out there and I was so pissed because I was like, bro,

what the fuck is this, bro? And P. Frank Williams, shout out to P. Frank. P. Frank Williams said, bruh, you know, whatever. You should be used to this. I'm like, bro, it's dark. It's four in the morning, 90 degrees in Dallas.

And the whole time we were there, oppressive titty sweat weather. Tiddy sweat weather. Yeah. Nipple sweat weather. When you feel, You know how disgusting it feels when those little be the sweats drip down your shirt and you now know your fresh is ruined?

Yeah. It's happening down. No, when you take a shower and you still feel gross. Yeah. That's what this is right now. But I'm telling you, I'm telling you right now, it's not that I didn't trust you, I'm not familiar with this. I'm used to dry heat. This is very uncomfortable for me and I don't like it.

I might have to cut my trip short. And where you go. There you go. But I am at home. I think the judge just passed out on the couch asleep. He came home early for me. What does he watch? Does he go in there? Does he watch? I got, okay, I'm going to three things I think of the judge.

Yes, yes, yes. Okay. So either one, TBN, he's probably watching like the Bible channel. No, he never watched that. They'll start over and start over. That's my grandmother's show. Does he watch like judge movies like, like court movies like the Rainmaker and the Pelican brief and all of that? No. Oh, no. Really think about that. He watches wrestling. You told me.

He watches the WW. Not anymore. He doesn't watch it anymore. I'm going to give you one more guess. Just like the judge watch. Is it like, okay, what medium? Is it like a television show? Is it movies?

Shows. Shows, television shows. Westerns? There you go. I knew you could do it. Yeah. All of them. All the black and white ones.

That's what he likes to watch. Yeah. All old niggas of a certain ilk like Westerns. that. My dad used to be like, come in, son, come here. Come in there and I'd be like, you know, that, Bananza's cool. I'm not about to do it right now. Okay. Krew up on. Like, MTV's,

the grind is on. That's what I'm going to watch. Right. Now, you know those those channels were on lock. We had locks on those type of channels. So you guys never watched like MTV spring break. Parental codes. I had to go to somebody else's house to watch it. It was very, it was really embarrassing when people would come over here.

and they would try to turn on a show and it would be like parental lock parental lock except when they all got to TBN then it was like we never watched TV I saw him coming on the hill

Jesus is the we're like like Rachel's like sit down they're going to sing rings of Jesus

this is our favorite part and you guys are jumping up with ankle ink dresses on and your friends are like, what the fuck is going on in the lensing? You know? All right, we got two guests today. We got Martaza Hussein. He is going to join us.

He's from The Intercept and talk to us about the really dramatic developments in Russia over the weekend. Yeah. To cool or not to cool? That is a question. Okay. It's not funny, man. It is.

Don't make me laugh about it. To cool or not to cool. We don't know what happened. We thought it was all going down. And then we're not funny. And then we were all over it. And then it didn't go down. And everybody's like, what?

Who is the Wagner group? Yovini, Prevetskin. Who are these? Who's progrotion? Progoion. Progocean. Progocean. All of these people.

Wagner group, I spent the entire weekend learning everything I could about the Wagner group. And then. So are you upset? Then I just went. You were so invested. You were really upset. I was, it was like that it was Wagner, this, Wagner that I literally,

I literally, I spent. all of Friday, all of Saturday, investing in Bog, Bog, Bog, Bog, Vag. And, by the way, a terrible group of human beings, LeVosner Group, terrible. We're talking about the name that they get from a composer who is Nazi ties. We're talking about their original founder being

someone who had Nazi leanings. We're talking about all of that. We're talking about the weirdest, his worst types of battles and proxy wars fought all over the world. Kinds of human rights violations from these guys. These are not the guys that you want to be rooting for. And Meta Thompson Hussein from The Intercept is going to talk to us about that. That is, of course, our big deal of the day.

And then later on, we got Melbourne Greg from the Black. Talk to Melvin Greg about a lot of stuff. So we're giving you the rare dual interview episode of higher learning. But don't worry, you're still going to get enough Van and Rach. Rarely do an interview off the top. But, you know, Matazza is here. It's a big deal. And it's a big deal.

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involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tool. Restrictions apply. See terms at fanduil.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash terms. Okay. The entire world has been talking about the events that unfolded or didn't unfold in Russia this past weekend. But we realize that a lot of you don't know exactly what is happening and what is going.

on? Was there an attempted coup? Is this a spat between the world's most deadly private army and a government? Are Putin and Progosian still buddies? Are they pals? Is he still this good old chef for him? We're going to bring somebody in right now who is going to be able to help us make some sense of this. He is a reporter at the intercept who focuses on national security and foreign policy, CNN, BBC, MSNBC, other news outlets, and has co-hosted the intercepted the intercepted podcast. Recent stories from this gentleman have focused on the geopolitical consequences of the war in Ukraine, as well as, Kiir, the Wagner group and their use of violence and the sledgehammer

symbol. His name is Mertaza Hussein, and we are happy to have him on higher learning today. How are you doing, Beth? Good. Thanks for having me out. Okay, first question. We're going to start all the way at the beginning. What is the Wagner Group and why are they being used as extensively as they are in the war between Russia and Ukraine? So the Wagner Group is a private military company in Russia. You can see it's a mercenary group in Russia, which has a relationship with the

Russian government, whereby it's believed to be used as a tool Russian foreign policy in various theaters in the world. Now, in the United States, maybe 10, 15 years ago, there's a company people may remember called Blackwater. And when the U.S. and Iraq, they had Blackwater as like a supplementary force to the U.S. military doing certain things there, you know, guarding missions, some defending convoys, involved in a lot of terrible abuses in Iraq, too, because they intend to have less disciplined and support of the regular military. So Wagner, if you can imagine, it's blackwater like on steroids. They don't just supplement the Russian military.

They actually substitute for the Russian military in many, many different parts of the world where they're deployed very extensively. They're deployed in Africa. So there are Russian economic interests in Africa in various different countries. Mali is a particular important one. Central African Republic is another one. and Wagner is deployed there and, you know, they secure mines. They partner with the local government and they wipe out their enemies in exchange for cash.

They were involved in a very horrifying massacre in Mali a few months ago, which is documented. Several hundred people who were executed by and raped and tortured by Wagner mercenaries. In Mali, the UN documented this is quite extensive. And I think part of the reason is because they're not really in military. They're just kind of paramilitary. So there are civilians, technically speaking, but they don't want to use it. guns. They have some sort of training internally themselves, another professional force. And a lot of them are actually former prisoners in Russia. So when the Ukraine war started, it was actually given

amnesty for Russian prisoners saying that, hey, if you join Wagner and go fight in Ukraine or somewhere else, you can get your prison sentence wiped out. And a lot of people who were murderers and other things actually went through this. And there was some outcry in Russian public, some guy who murdered a family, did a couple months in Wagner, and then he was free and walking around. the New Yorkers, they're going to mock the grave, family, kill. Some really awful stuff like that. So, you know, very sensitively, Wagner's been deployed in Ukraine, fighting in Ukraine, fighting Ukrainian government on behalf of Russia. Now, why does the Russian government want to do this? I think there's one major reason, which is that war is generally not very popular when the public

feels like they're dying a lot in the war. They ask a lot more question that their own sons and brothers are dying in the conflict. If you can use some other groups of people to take the brunt of it, who are sort of separate from society in some way, you can kind of keep the conflict going a bit longer without the public being mad. So the Russian government's using Wagner, especially, particularly to act as like a shield against public outrage over the conflict

because, hey, you know, it's not to strip soldiers, Russians die these guys. And they also use a lot of ethnic minorities. Russian ethnic minorities are also very heavily sent to Ukraine just proportionally to die in the conflict. So it was intended as a shield. But very strangely, I think what's happened, is that Wagner has become very empowered by its involvement in these foreign conflicts

with gaining money and prestige and notoriety, and also in Ukraine, where it's doing the front of the fighting, gaining a lot of popularity among some far-right sentiments of Russian society, and then also, you know, starting to have its own interests, separate from Putin. And the progelsian, the head of Wagner, is the one we see now emerging as some sort of rivals power-centered for Putin inside Russia. Yeah, yeah, and I want to pick up on that because, you know, you talk about, you gave us like the history of Wagner and you talk about, you know, the way that they work with the Russian government and the military. So when did things start to take a turn?

And why? Yeah. So I think it's quite recent. Over the past year, you've seen the Russian government leaning more and more on Wagner in Ukraine. And the war in Ukraine is, you know, has not really gone well. It's been a very, very deadly, you know, people will say futile conflict, huge losses, huge casualties of Russian military, Ukrainian military, and also these paramilitary groups like Wagner, they've been dying a lot. And I think that, you know, their own leadership and their own rank and file feels that why are we dying for the decisions of the Russian military high command that, you know, we don't even have a say in. And, you know, why do we stand up to them? So I think it's not really clear exactly what happened the last couple of days, to be

honest. No, everyone's trying to figure out where exactly happened. But what it looks very much like is that there was a rebellion against the Russian leadership by Wagner and by its leader, who at some point thought he put pressure on the government or potentially even overthrow the government after what he said, Yevgeny provosions leader Wagner said, was a missile attack by Russian forces against a Wagner base inside Ukraine. So to be honest, it's not that rare to see in conflicts that the longer it goes on and the worse it gets, the more people start turning on each other. I think what we're seeing now is different aspect of Russian state, including this group, this mercenary group is very powerful, you know, becoming rivals of one another in the context

of the still on. So you mentioned Blackwater earlier, and I remember the hubbub surrounding Blackwater when they got more involved in what the United States had going on in the Middle East, particularly Eric Prince, who was the leader of Blackwater. the top guy of Blackwater. He was somewhat of a media darling at that point. People were doing all of these types of, you know, profiles of him talking about his military background and all of that stuff. But he did not have, in my opinion, nearly the proximity to the top of the U.S. government as Yvgeny Progosian seems to have. There was never going to be a time where Eric Prince was going to turn Blackwater on the United States military and threaten George W. Bush for control of the country. How strong is Wagner and what made Progosian think that he could take on Putin in even an indirect way? Yeah, you know, I think it's two aspects of it.

Wagner is stronger than Blackwater was, but also the Russian state is weaker than the American state. So there's less, it's more personalized, it's more centered around one guy, this case, Putin. There's not these really diffused power centers and strong institutions. It's a very, very weak in kind of hollow state. I think it's very common for dictatorships. They call them like weak, strong men. So, you know, the guy, the center of it can solidates all the power in itself, but it means that everyone else is going to be. So even the emergence of Wagner, I think it was kind of mistake by the Russian government. They needed someone to take the hit on the Ukraine war. They thought they could use as ex-convicts and, you know, a bunch of, you know, kind

knucklehead type guys to be that. But in doing so, they actually empowered someone, someone else beside Putin had some power. And that inevitably led to a clash. Whereas the United States, like, as you said, Eric Prince, even at the peak of his influence and power, he never had the ability to challenge American institutions. In fact, those institutions at some point

can't turn against him a little bit when he started giving it a bit of a bad name. So just imagine if the U.S. was like a post-apocalyptic, you know, Mad Max style situation. And you had warlords emerging. Post-Soviet Russia is sort of like an apocalyptic state. It has some functioning. It has this very big economy. It has some functioning institutions.

But it's a lot weaker and a lot more, I'd say, chaotic than the United States, which, you know, can control people, control people because it has a monopoly and violence from the military and security forces and so forth. You know, if there was this growing sentiment and, you know, if there was this growing sentiment and, And it was obvious that Wagner was gaining, was becoming empowered. How were they able to move so far, like through Russia? And how did Putin not see this coming to stop it before it got? I mean, they did stop it eventually, but for them to get as far as they did.

Well, that's a great question because it certainly doesn't look very good on me. It doesn't look very particularly competent or strong after this. Even though in the end, Prozegn't back down seemingly from marching on Moscow, something like that, it doesn't look great when it's clearly not completely in control. And when your state it's so chaotic that's something that can happen, there were some reports that a few aircraft were shot on by Wagner on their advance towards Moscow. And they captured a city called Rostal-Landandan, which is a very important strategic city

for supplying the war in Ukraine as well, too. So I think that the Russian government clearly didn't expect this, didn't have a backup, where they didn't have defenses in place to defend against an internal uprising. but, you know, I don't think that Putin expected such a thing to happen. I'm not even sure if Grosian had planned on this because it seemed to be quite imprompt, too. And he announced his march on Moscow after what he said was an attack by the Russian military purposely or accidentally against a Wagner base that he inflicts some casualties. So it may have been a, I don't know, a tantrum, the word to put it, or this improm uprising.

Certainly it cut everyone off guard. But I think at the end of it, no one looks very. very good. Putin doesn't look very good. He's in charge. He looks a lot weaker than he did. And Progoshin also doesn't look good because, you know, in the eyes of his diehard supporters, he, you know, challenged the king.

He challenged the leader of the country and then he backed down. He left the country. So he also looks kind of weak. I think in the end of it, I'm going to be happy about this property because their major enemy is looking quite disorganized and quite foolish. There's an interesting. there's an interesting thing happening on Twitter and some other places where it started to happen,

where the Wagner group was looked at as somewhat heroic figures because you're looking at them challenging Putin and people are thinking, is this going to bring an end to the fighting in Ukraine? Might there be regime changer in Russia? And people were like, oh, prognosis, go, go, go. the Wagner group, as I understand it, is an absolutely wretched organization that has been

responsible for countless atrocities in whatever country they've set foot in. Why don't you give us a little background on some of the war crimes that they've maybe been accused of or some of the things they've been, they've done in, I don't know, Syria or in Sudan or other places that they've been utilized? Yeah, so, you know, Wagner has a telegram channel, and it kind of issued communications there and the talk to the supporters there. And if you join that telegram channel, you can get actually a sense of their own internal culture. It's very, as he said, glorifying of violence and indiscriminate violence against non-combatants and prisoners of war and things like that. You mentioned in Syria, one of the first places Wagner was deployed as a tool of the Russian government was in Syria to support the Syrian government, was fighting uprising. They did a lot of terrible things in Syria. One particularly famous incident was the murder of the Syrian army defector by Wagner troops with a sledgehammer. And they beat this man at death of sledgehammer.

They put it on video. They beheaded him. They set his body on fire. And then, you know, they posted the video and his family saw it. And they're trying to sue Wagner now and so forth. But, you know, that video, they never punished people involved. It was their product. And actually, the sledgehammer, after that, became a symbol of Wagner, symbol of Wagner's,

their culture, basically. They made a memes out of it. They started selling merchandise with a sledgehammer on it. Recently, Progoshin sent a sledgehammer to a European number of parliament as a threat. They're very proud actually doing it. So I think that one thing to keep in mind is that people say, well, if Putin gets deposed, that's great. And we have a kind of idea that the next person of Putin is more liberal than Putin or better than Putin. I think it's exactly the opposite.

usually when you depose a dictator, you know, democracy and liberalism, it takes like a really specific sort of like conditions to grow in. When you have a really tough, hardened society and you have a dictator at the center of it, very often the person who's going to emerge in their place will be very, very far to the right of them. So I think if Putin were to be,

if I replace him in the Russian political spectrum of the moment, I'd say he's a moderate. He's like a centrist, I would say, and there are a lot of people to the right of him. Progoshion is just, one of them who, if it's of power, would be much, much more extreme. You know, I don't know what they do exactly.

They could continue the war in Ukraine. They could not end it for various different reasons, but they'd be much more extreme, I think, in many ways. Putin, for all his many, many faults, he tries to govern as, like, somehow a multi-ethnic Russian empire that sort of his vision. Empires by nature tend to be kind of palpit because they have to be on some level, even it's very unfair or unjust.

But I think, you know, there's a very racist, ultra-nationalist in Russia who, you know, have a different priorities. And if they came to power, you know, they could govern Russia differently. And they can also be more aggressive against Russia's neighbors because they feel Putin's being soft. That's a very common perception in Russia. So Progogian is just a great example. He basically a warlord. He was a longtime, you know, prisoner and he looked very hard into that experience. He was, you know, caterer.

I don't what that means exactly in practice, but he was known to be a caterer. for a while in Russia, and then it became this mercenary warlord. So I think he came in power, like, I would say that people would happy the enemy of an enemy by friend, but anyone thinking this guy would be, you know, but more responsible when Russian nuclear weapons, it's a very hard argument to make. And I think, unfortunately, that's just a position that a lot of countries similarly find themselves places. When I hear the history of Wagner, it's like not shocking that what happened, happened,

or that it could possibly happen again. You know, another leader steps up and does this, which makes me wonder, is that why you think? Because a lot of people, there's a lot of talk on, you know, social news, everything. Why did Putin decide to make a deal and negotiate with prognosion and even with the other people that rebelled? And at the same time, and at the same time, everyone's talking about his, does he look weak with this?

does that the talk about making him look weak possibly make him more dangerous? I think promotion is very dangerous in the future. Like right now he has a deal to walk out, but I'd be very, very surprised he's not, I was surprised if this is over now, I would say, because, you know, if you're a dictator of a country, the fear aspect is almost all you have.

That's basically the one thing you have to keep everyone in check. You have patronage, you can pay people a lot. off and things like that. But here's a very, very important component of it. And losing your face is probably the worst thing that can happen to. It emboldens your other. It makes people think that, you know, your provision can get this far. Maybe I can get a bit farther. Maybe this guy we were all terrified up is not really as all powerful as we thought he was. You know, it's the

worst thing in that. So I think that he really, by negotiating, it showed a number of things. He wasn't really ready for possibility of provosion marching on Moscow and the very badly. And he didn't at least we needed an emergency out to get away from that. You know, the situation and the warfront could be much more dire than, you know, letting on at the moment in terms of manpower and forces he had less to deploy. One thing that we saw is it looked like the people who were going to fight for Goshen in Marsha and Moscow are not going to be a regular Russian army. There are going to be these Chechen units, of Chechen militia that's under control,

which are again, like a minority group in Russian society, which is sort of loyal, or he's been patronized by him, most leaders have been patronized by him. They were going to have to fight because maybe Russians were not going to fight. You couldn't rely on them as much. So I think that, you know, it's very, very possible that he could retaliate in the near future in his

Goshen or others just to send a message now. Because, you know, Russian history, recent history, we see that assassination, poisoning, other types of retaliation against dissidents, both right wing and left wing liberal or whatever they are, whichever

part of the spectrum, they are very, very common. So I think David Petraeus, former general said, the U.S. General said that the false provostion, I'll probably say we're from open windows in Belarus, where he is right now. And I think that's unfortunately, or, you know, neutrally, that's pretty of good advice, because

I think that if he doesn't retaliate against him even after making a deal, he's going to endanger himself in favor of another challenge. A couple things about that. Two questions. Number one, Knowing Putin and how he's dealt with his enemies around the world,

why on God's earth would Progosion march on Moscow without finishing the job, number one? And number two, if you're getting if you're getting any progoshin is killed, who is the heir apparent to Wagner? Is there a second that looks to be waiting in the wings to take up the operations of the group? in case Progosion is killed. Yeah, why he did it is an excellent question without finishing the job. It could have been an unplanned decision. It could have been a spontaneous decision in response to if it's true

and it would be a dangerous event like an attack on the Wagner military based by the Russian military. But soon leaving the job half finished, if he lost his nerve, he's going to might have to pay the consequences of that in the future. It's something which no one looks good now because as bad as Putin looks, Provotion also looks bad enough. He looks equally as weak and as feckless as Putin does, and he doesn't have, well, he does an army defendant. He doesn't have the same state apparatus as Putin potentially does. So I think that why did I can't really say without speculating, but I'd say certainly things to be a miscalculation. And in terms of a successor,

I think that it's very common with authoritarian states and authoritarian organization that succession is the number one crisis for an organization or a state, which is run by one guy. Because that question of who takes power after, even identifying successor while you're alive is dangerous. That person can just start taking power now and kill you. Or if you create like a structure whereby successors can emerge and is a meritocracy inside, that also can be threatened. Because then someone can just emerge of their own and people say this guy is smarter than you are, then let's put them in power right now. So people, people can be. People tend not want to do that.

And, you know, Wagner is a pretty opaque organization, but I get the sense that they probably don't have very good succession to. They probably don't have a meritocratic internal culture for new leaders to arise organically. So I would imagine that it's very possible that if he dies, no one case or just dissolves. So it's easier for the Russian government to just dissolve it and eradicate it as there's some indication that we'd like to at the moment.

But I think that it's very, very tied to him personally. And outside another force of him, merging inside the organization who we can identify name. It's very hard to see how it would continue institutionally. I think that one thing that could happen is that if you follow this spectrum of Russian ultra-nationalist military figures, there are other guys up there who want to create private military. There are companies like Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, which wants to make a private military.

A lot of people in Russia are saying that if you can have private militaries and the state is not all-powerful, we better get one to protect our own interests. in the country, economically, or political interest. Something we're going to see is rather than maybe Wagner surviving forever, you're going to see it further cracking up

and decentralization of the Russian state around different figures and different institutions. And that's not really good for Russian, I would say. So you don't want to see, you want to see diffusion of power, but you don't want to see a state breaking up

with that rival gang, rival factions. I think those provoking this debacle showed that Russia is sort of kind of like that, becoming like a bunch of gangs. and that's not, doesn't board well for future developments. Hmm.

Last two questions for me, I'll just put them together. I know the United States has come out and said that they weren't involved in this in any kind of way. Is that the sentiment that is being felt over there? Do they, in any way, are they tying this to the United States? And then the second part is, I know they were celebrating in Kiev for what has happened. What does this mean for the Ukraine, right? question more. Yeah, on the first point, I haven't seen them trying to tie it to the U.S. and CIA. Some people who are maybe international supporters of them sort of raised that possibility

or journalists observing and so forth. I think that they haven't. And I, you know, I think it's unlikely, but I think the reason they haven't said too is because if they said that, they would look even worse because then it's like the biggest enemy was responsible for your biggest human humiliation. So regardless if they believe that or not, or they thought there was some role in it, I think they would down to that or they were just not bringing up. It would add to the negative image of everything that's a place. And, you know, Russia is, you know, a relatively close society in sense, pre-press and dissent and so forth is not really committed.

People can log on the Internet and things like that. But, you know, it's a much more controlled media environment. So, you know, their own narrative was going on in Ukraine, what's going on in the U.S. is very, very different. And I think they would not like to promote that idea because they don't want to. want to look at the U.S. is strong. The CIA is strong. They could even turn on all militias and stuff and so forth. They'll come with something else.

Maybe they'll accuse prosodian for some various different reasons and liquid any of the future. But the U.S. angle, you know, could the CIA do something like that? It's possible. But we would not be able to say it independently. But I think that, you know, it's a bit unlike, I think it's unlikely. And it's unlikely they'll be admitted anyway on any side. To the second point in Kiev, you know,

right now it's a very critical time for the Ukrainian military because this summer they launched a counteroffensive aimed at gaining back territories under Russia's control that they occupied in the war started. That counteroffensive has not been going very well. They've been losing a lot of men and material to gain very, very little territory in this time. So this, you know, crackup of Wagner and the Russian government could be very useful in Ukraine's. If the Russians are fighting amongst each other, they don't have enough manpower or up, you know, endurance left to fight us in Ukraine. So our offensive can go a little bit better. And of course, when you're in war, they become more than you're in Russia and Ukraine.

You love seeing your enemy fight amongst each other. It's the number one goal of any conflict, actually. First, you try to drive away between your enemy and get them to the buff and fighting. So I think a lot of them were cheering for Grosin to March in Moscow, not because they like you. They really hate them. for Prozian and, I'm sorry, Wagner has committed a lot of war crimes against Ukraine, but they would love to see them fighting the streets in Moscow

and killing each other. So that didn't happen this time, but the fact that it could have happened, the fact that those entropic tendencies, those tendencies of cracking up are now showing themselves in Russia, very, very gratifying for Ukrainians, and certainly is making them hopeful that their counter-offensive may encounter some weaker defense

than they'd expect them. Wagner forces have been more successful than the Russian regulars in the war against Ukraine. Russia seems to be weak militarily in a way that is shocking, like various parts of the world. They obviously bit off a little bit more, a little bit too dip, too much dip on their chip in terms of Ukraine, in terms of the strength of their army. All kinds of reasons for this. Could be the mismanagement at the top. Could be Putin's proclivity for putting puppets around him instead of actual genius military commanders because of his fear that someone will usurp him. All kinds of reasons.

However, there is one thing that's true of Russia, which is they are an enormous nuclear power. Now, in terms of their technology and where they exist with subs and all of that stuff, they have a lot of world-ending capability in terms of their ability to strike at nuclear targets. Is a Russia that is this unstable fighting a war with one of their neighbors and having problems with the stability, should I say, of the country inside of it with warring factions, any of which could take over the country and then have access to those nuclear armaments. Is that an existential threat to life on Earth? Well, you know, that's one reason why I was sort of skeptical that the U.S. would be behind the potential Wagner, too,

because I think that as much as the U.S. love to hit Russia really hard, and it is involving a lot of suffering on them in Ukraine, people are worried about exactly what you just mentioned. You can break up with the Russian state, what happens to all that technology, all of those missiles, all of the equipment and very sensitive equipment that exists in Russia. You know, that's a very, very dangerous and, you know, important issue. I think if Russia were to crack up and really break up in the warring factions,

like, Palestine or something, that's material, could defuse all over the world. It could be taken over by militias, can be taken over by organized crime, terrorist groups. Even from the time of the Soviet Union was collapsing, the U.S. wanted collapse in an orderly way because it was concerned by exactly what you just said. So I think it's a very serious threat.

I think that one thing I've learned just from observing the U.S. response to the war in Ukraine is that the U.S. intelligence community, which showed itself as being very incompetent during the war on terror, didn't really know what's going on, they weren't very successful. They seem to know a little bit more about Russia. I think they've trained for many decades, just dealing specifically with Russia.

So their understanding of intelligence and, you know, their capabilities are a lot greater. So I imagine they have contingencies in place, what you're talking about, what we do if the Russian government collapses and where are the nuclear sites? How do we both secure them? I don't think it would be easy. I think it would be very messy and difficult. But if they've trained for anything, hopefully it's trained for this. going and securing that. So I think it's the one reason why we haven't seen greater efforts to

kill Putin or oppose the Russian government is because of exactly what you mentioned, the breakup. And the threat it would pose to the whole world. And Russia is a very big country, territory. It's 11th biggest economy on Earth. It's 120 million people. It's the second largest nuclear arsenal on Earth, great arsenals of aircraft and submarines and ships and ships and stuff. so forth. A lot of that could be very useful to a lot of people and, you know, if something would happen, you want to see an effort to go unsecure.

And, you know, they don't want that to happen unexpectedly. All right. Mataza Hussein, the intercept, thank you for joining us. Look how much smarter we are now. We were done before you came in here. Now, look, like, we know

all about Wagner. You know what I might do? I might start my own militia. I might start my own. I might get a, me and you, Martauss, we get together, we start our own. Why not me? Because you know, I know you don't want to do it. You know what I mean? You don't want to do it.

And we go over there and we take that. But thank you so much for joining us today. And we'll check back in with you if more things develop. Thank you so much for joining us on How I Learn. Oh, my cousin. Thanks for me. This episode is brought to you by Sweet Cream. The day doesn't ask for permission.

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Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Okay. I legitimately feel smart.

I know stuff. Definitely. Scary world. Scary world. And I'm really curious as like where they go from here. Because everybody's looking at progocean and everybody's looking at Putin.

And it's like, what are you going to do? Yeah. Neither one is safe. Well, I think a couple of things that happen. Number one, we didn't get to talk about that much. But the Varner Group has really been able to get a lot of things accomplished in the war against the Ukraine, war against Ukraine, should I say.

That Russian troops haven't been. been able to do. So the question now, another question I should have asked them is whether or not they'll still be active in fighting this war. It would seem like they probably won't be. See, I thought they, I thought they would. We should ask that question. I just thought that part of the negotiation was that the reason that Putin's not coming after those people that rebel is because they will go back and fight. That's what I assumed. Well, then, you know, if progosian is in charge of, you know, this fighting force in the same way. And it's a large, moderately skilled fighting force,

although there have been times where they've essentially been proxy wars between Wagner troops and U.S. troops in other parts of the country. And the Wagner group has gotten their fucking ass kicked. So it's not like they're, but they're, you know, the Russian soldiers at this time just haven't been doing a great job in Ukraine. So we'll see what happens. Okay.

So there's a story out of Chicago that has an update. It was updated before we got a chance to go into the story. The woman's name is Carlisha Hood. She's 35 years old. She entered the Maxwell Street Express to get some food at 11 o'clock on June 18th.

She got an argument with a gentleman named Jeremy Brown, 32, while they were waiting in line for food. The video is absolutely disgusting. I'm not sure what. They were arguing about, but at a certain point, Jeremy Brown warned her in this video that he is going to knock her out. And then he launches into an attack against this black woman in this food shop,

in this food shop, and punches her. Ficiously, punches. You probably probably heard of this story. After that, the woman's 14-year-old. old son enters the restaurant. He is armed from a gun that he got out of the car. He shoots the man. Here's where the story

gets controversial for a lot of people. He shoots the man. And when I first viewed this video, I thought that the man died right there. A parent, according to reports. This man, Jeremy Brown,

was able to exit the restaurant. Ran. And the young man followed him and finished. In addition to that, Carlisha Hood, his mother, it had been reported that she had instructed her son to also shoot Jeremy Hood's, Jeremy Brown's girlfriend, should I say, who was laughing and encouraging Brown during the argument.

As a matter of fact, when Mr. Brown hits Carlisha Hood, you can hear somebody saying, he told you. Okay? Now, the details of this are... But he did not shoot her. He did not shoot. He did not shoot. What's according to reports,

Who had texted her son and told him to come to the restaurant, to come inside the restaurant when the argument became physical. He punched her. And then he was killed. Shot twice, later died. Hood and her son surrendered to the police on Wednesday.

She was charged with murder and contributing to the delinquency of a minor and held on a $3 million bond. It should be said that she had a valid firearms identification card and a permit to carry a concealed weapon. That's according to prosecution. It was first degree murder, aggravated assault, unlawful use of a weapon, an unlawful possession of a firearm in juvenile court. That's what her son was looking at. These charges have not been dropped. Yeah. These charges against Carlisha Hood and her son were dropped.

A lot of people thought that maybe there would be some charges that stuck because of the fact that he followed him. And in following him, the danger seemingly was gone from the situation, which didn't give you excuse to kill. You're shaking your head, much. I think that this was the correct call in this. instance because the only thing that when you were hearing the story is things were developing, the whole part about that she, the mother, instructed the son to also shoot the girlfriend.

That had been alleged. I didn't see that anywhere other than that supposedly happened. It seemed like it was a he said, she said thing, and there weren't charges that were related to that specific incident or that story that didn't reflect that. But when you look at, Illinois doesn't have stand-your-ground laws, but they do have your self-defense. And it says that if the person believes that themselves or another individual, or they're allowed to use deadly force

if themselves or another individual is trying to prevent serious injury or death. What that son saw his mother go through, she wasn't hit one time, she was hit repeatedly. There you go with the serious injury. When he left, that son didn't know if he was going to his car to grab a gun or get a gun from somebody else. The threat was still there, in my opinion. So it made sense for me, after seeing, for him to see that man repeatedly beat his mother.

And I don't know if the gunshot is what made him stop or he stopped on his own. But to see that happen and then see him run out, you don't know what he's capable of doing. To me, the threat was still there. So I'm not shocked that the charges were dropped. So then that's a very interesting point that I haven't heard anybody bring up, but I haven't talked to a lot of people with your legal equal knowledge about it either.

So then the question then becomes, and I'm serious, the question that becomes, does that, is that true for any case? If somebody is in my house and I shoot them because they're in my house and they run out, is it safe for me to assume that they might be running to get something

to come back in? In that case, following someone, and shooting them, you seem like there would always be a defense for that because you could say, I don't know what they were going to get. I mean, I think people do do that. I think that is what we see happening, right? I mean, just the case we were talking about in Florida with the former football player. You know, he went in, he grabbed his gun, he kept shoot.

Well, he didn't follow them out. I can't remember he was shooting from his house. He didn't follow the mouth. They were in the car and he saw him with the gun. So he shot until he thought the threat was, yeah. He went back in the house, got the gun, kept shooting. Right. But, I mean, he was found, I think that they should have let him go from the beginning.

But they made him go through the whole trial process. I think that there's an argument to be made. And I think every case is different, right? You have to look at all the circumstances surrounding it. But I think it is very likely seeing what that man did initially, it's likely to think that he's running out to defend himself or to go get a gun and finish the job or keep it going. that I think anybody, a reasonable person, would think that. And so I think the correct force was used.

What do you think the impetus was for arresting her on the first degree murder charge and giving her $3 million bond in that case thing? Like, why? The bond, I can't speak to because, I mean, well, probably because it was a murder charge where $3 million is a lot. But I think they had to at least take her in. I think they're quicker to do that when it's, of course, black people, but they needed to get all the evidence and get talked to witnesses and do all of that before the before.

I mean, it seems like they rushed to charge her. But this happened four days ago. But it seems like they did rush to charge her, set the bell, and, you know, do all of that. But I think they had to weigh everything out and see what happened. Because just as there's this debate on social media, right? Was it okay for him to continue shooting? Well, I got to talk to people. I got to figure this out.

Well, I don't know if that video that we saw on social media was initially available to the police. Don't you think that it would have been a different story? I think if we hadn't seen this video, she'd still be in jail. Well, there's another video that the police posted. And police posted a video of the young man walking. I have to imagine the police saw this video. Because the police, whoever is shooting that is at the scene of the crime.

and there's another video where you don't necessarily see it happen, but you see the young man walk into the place and pull the gun out and shoot whenever it turns physical. Okay. So I have to imagine that the police had seen this video

because the people there that were on scene and it made the rounds. I have to believe that he'd seen the video. Now, the video that I haven't seen, that people claim exists, but I haven't seen it, is the video of the young man following Mr. Brown

outside of the place and shooting him. Because it also depends in terms of, for me, on how that looks. If he's running, he gets shot, that's one thing. But if he falls to the ground and then you shoot him while he's on the ground

and he's bleeding, then that seems to be another thing. And I'm just talking here because this is the way I feel about this. This gentleman earned his death. And I don't mean to be insensitive. I don't mean to be insensitive. I don't. This gentleman earned his death.

He made the choice. He made a choice to take his right hand and punch a woman dead in her fucking face. Okay? And he chose the wrong fucking one. That's just the way that it goes. Tell you something right here. Y'all motherfuckers need to do fucking better. What I saw in that situation, the brutality in which he went in that woman's job,

the sheer force, the fact that there was no hesitation. right over words over words over words a place in line no matter what it was over words I'm sorry to anybody

who loves that gentleman I really am I really am but he punched a woman in her fucking face and didn't know her son was waiting outside you mean it's a Glock 17 in the other room

and I know you guys are now shocked that I didn't get rid of all my guns. I can't. Like, they kept their guns, so I got to keep mine. I'm sorry. There's a Glock 17 in the other room. If I see somebody punching my motherfucking mother in her face, especially if I was 14, I'm going to shoot you. Like, you're going to get shot.

Like, there is a societal edict, a societal edict to protect people who can't meet the force that is assailing me. When we talk about men against women, that's what we're talking about. There's a societal edict to protect people who can't meet force with equal force. Let me tell you what I mean by that. That means if that was a child. Yeah.

Now, I'm not equating women to children. What I'm saying is she can't do to him what he could do to her. That's a fact. And so because of that, we expect you to act like. you got some motherfucking sense. We expect you to be mad and do all your yelling and your shout. I wouldn't even raise my voice to that woman.

But we expect you to do all of that. We expect you to do all of that and not ball up your fists and punch a woman in her face. Multiple times. Multiple times. Like, what are you expecting? Her son is there.

He is going to shoot. He is going to do something. Somebody's got to do something. Now, we could have a conversation all day long about where that should stop. Whether or not you follow somebody and you shoot them after. We could talk about that.

That's something that we should talk about and that's what looks like what the law talked about. That's fine. It's a discussion. Anything that happens, in my opinion, after you take your fist and you punch a woman in her face,

you earn that. Yeah. I'm sorry. Well, because, well, no, because Van, anything could have happened, right? You could have hit her once, even though we know he hit her multiple times. Could have hit her once? She could have fallen back, hit her head, died.

The way he was hitting her multiple times, she could have had serious, and she still might, a serious bodily injury from the way that he was attacking her. Deadly force was appropriate in that situation. And because of his actions, he has also deemed, in my opinion, unpredictable, which is why I say him running out. You don't know what this man is capable of doing because out of an argument in a restaurant, he resorted to punching this woman over and over again in the face.

Deadly, deadly force is appropriate. And obviously, the DA's office agrees. Have you seen the, so you watched the video. Did you see the reaction of the other people that were standing around? particularly people have talked about the fact that there were a couple of men there who fled when the gun came out

but before they were just standing what do you think about that? They were just standing there. I think that's inappropriate. I don't know how as a man you can sit there and watch a woman get beat on and not do anything. I don't understand how you could just

how you could look yourself in the mirror and just stand there and watch that. Would you stand there? Of course not. Exactly. That's my point. I know you would but I'm sorry. But, but, okay, so I'll tell a quick story real quick.

So I saw one of the guys there was older. That's an older black guy. Okay. And when we were doing hip-hop homicides, we went to a neighborhood in Chicago called Englewood. And we were in the neighborhood. And shout out to the people in Englewood and the people that are making things better there. But obviously, the neighborhood's falling on some tough times in terms of the way things go there. it's one of the places that's not receiving the attention

except for people like Englewood Barbie who is really struggling to make her community better. I shouldn't say struggling. I think she's striving to make her community better. She does a lot of work. And a lot of people later like that. But over time, the neighborhood has changed from what it was back in the day.

And I met an older guy. And he was on his porch. I remember we were shooting. And he goes, just don't come on here, don't come up here on the porch. Don't come up here. Don't shoot one of this.

I'm like, okay. So I started talking to it. And he had lived in that neighborhood for a very long time. And he had seen the neighborhood turn from what it was in 1962 or 61 when his parents first moved there and he was a little boy to what it is now.

And he just sat up there and he watched all of this stuff going on. Same home he had. He was doing all this stuff. I talked to him. And he was so afraid of young brothers exactly like the one in the video. He was so afraid.

He was so afraid. He was afraid because they represented something that he couldn't relate to that he didn't understand. He didn't understand the propensity to violence. He didn't understand what they were going through, what they were trying to say, like why they were so angry,

why they were so murderous. He had seemed so, so much in his neighborhood that I think, I can't speak to everybody that was there. But when I saw the older black dude kind of not doing anything, I think that oftentimes

we don't really think about the paralyzing fear that exists in some of these places that, you know, the citizens, the black people that have to live there, that they have of the element that we're talking about. Like the same criminal element that white people are afraid of,

black people are afraid of. They're afraid of the savages and the demons that roam this neighborhood. I'm not saying any of this is necessarily true about Mr. Brown. I don't know his background. I know he was acting like a demon man. So I can't say anything about what he's been through or what he's going through. And I know that family lost a loved one and all.

I'm trying to be sensitive to that. But what I'm saying is I did see a lot of people that are talking about it, and I understand that we need to make protecting our women our highest priority. But when I looked at that older guy, I couldn't help a see the dude that was on the porch. I couldn't help to think maybe he's fucking scared. You know what I mean? I saw other people in the comments that go, yo, I saw my brother. My brother saw two people getting into it, and he jumped into it, and now he's dead.

I'm telling people who don't get in the middle of people's stuff. It's just, it's a tough situation all around. But I can tell you one thing. The person that escalated this and turned this into a vicious, villainous, murderous, violent situation is Jeremy Brown. Yeah.

That's who did that. That's who did that. I'm sure. I'm not you out. You punched. I don't. don't know how the loss of life, I get it. I just don't know how to feel any other way than that.

I mean, look, I don't want it to be normalized to shoot people while they're fleeing if he was, in fact, I just don't want, because that opens up too many situations. We've talked about this before. If the dynamics here are different, if the racial dynamics here are different and you're trying to get away and you get shot and we're going to have a different conversation. So we want to be consistent in terms of what gives somebody the right to use deadly force. But it's just too, I don't know. I can't fucking do anything but say you shouldn't have punched that woman in a fucking face like that.

No, this could have been avoided. Yes. Yes, he did. Yeah. So it looks like for right now, I mean, the murder charge. charges have been dropped. I guess that's the end of it. No, that's that, that's done. Unless they come back with like a lesser, like a different type of charge, but

I can't imagine they would charge her. So let's go into this real quick before we move on and get the exact reason why. Or do you know the exact reason why, uh, they decided to drop the charge? I read that they said that there wasn't enough evidence for the chart. That's what, that's what I read. We can look it up. Yeah. What would be enough evidence? Well, I mean, to prove the elements, like if the DA doesn't feel like they have the evidence to prove the elements of their case, the elements of the charge for this one, murder, then they're not going to move forward with it. Like, if they just don't think that there's enough.

They might have talked to enough people who were like, listen, he was defending himself. Listen, he was, you know, this is what happened. This is what we saw. And if they don't think that they can prove their case, they're not going to move forward with it. I wonder what they would have learned. that would have made them move off of such because it was a first degree murder charge. I think it's video.

I think they saw, you talked about, you couldn't imagine that they haven't seen the video. I think they did. I just think they saw it after they charged her. So you feel like, I think they were quick to charge her. Based upon the facts,

evidence, and the law, we were unable to meet our burden of proof in the prosecution of these cases. Kim Fox. Kim Fox, somebody who's been you know, in the news before. Kim Fox is the DA there, the Cook County State's attorney that decided

not to charge here based upon our continued review and in light of emerging evidence. Let me tell you what has to happen. We're going to move on. We have to have videos to get off every time. Yeah. But let me tell you what has to happen here. It says you have the right to use deadly force

to stop that force against another person and exactly what happened in this case. Exactly why the state's attorney office dropped the case. Yeah, you know. And a lot of people saying that murder charges should have never been approved in this case. Interesting.

No previous criminal record for Hood or her son. Not that that matters. And the gun was legally registered. Like, yeah, it shouldn't have. All right. So let me let's have a conversation real quick. Let's begin to have a conversation about what we have to do in terms of talking about violence against women in

our community. It seems to me that increasingly there's a generation of young black males that doesn't mind slapping the shit out of a woman. Just being honest with you. I think that's new? I think that in this way it's new. I think that domestic violence has always existed and it's always been prevalent. But I think I don't remember being in high school and being in even college and before then and just watching a bunch of dudes fucking tee off on ladies.

We didn't have social media. No, no, no. I'm talking about what I saw with my own eyes. I saw plenty of fights. I saw plenty of fights. I saw plenty of dudes talking shit to women. I saw plenty of shit of girls talking shit to boys. But I just don't remember, this is anecdotal.

I just don't remember a lot of times, like dudes just hauling off and beating the shit out of fighting girls. I just, I, when I hear stories from family, it seems that this is nothing there. Interesting. Truly. With domestic violence. Domestic violence is,

I, I, domestic violence is always. So you're more so talking about like, the random, randomness of it. I'm talking about, like with strangers.

I'm not excusing any domestic violence situations. I do think it's, it's in a different, it's in a different trough in terms of, hmm, I guess it's not.

I'm talking about just, it's okay to hit a woman over a dispute, like in a line at a thing. I'm seeing it in school now. I'm seeing videos of young men punching on ladies. And it's just, it's, I, growing up, I did not see that. I'm telling you, I did, I've seen a million times women into it with men, all different types of places, Bat Rouge and hearing,

and all different to when I first got out here to LA just like beating up on a woman like punching the shit out of her mixing on her in front of everybody in front of everyone do you realize

that my dad would have shot that man to death like it would have you know what I mean it would like or if not shot on the death because here's another thing if people jump in and stop that from happening and did that the way he's talking to her

maybe nobody dies. Yeah. I don't have, what I'm saying is there's something that's happened, there's something that's happened, in my opinion, to where

this is more normal than it used to be. It's hard, and you might be right. It's just hard for me to look at it that way when I do think there's a history of that. I don't, I think it seems more prevalent because we have more access to video

and audio in ways we didn't before. But when I also think of like the music and the way women are talked about and disrespected and disregarded, that it breeds that thought of not, I'm not saying they're telling you to do that exact thing like you saw Jeremy Brown, but it does breed this,

a culture of almost like looking down at you or disrespecting you or not, you know, not putting you on a certain level, I was shocked by what I saw, but I just don't think that there was a time when it really stopped or let up. Or I don't see it increased, getting increasingly bad. I think this is just the way it's always been.

You think there's always, it's just been situations where dudes are haul off, punched the shit out of women in public and nobody would do anything. I'm not saying I don't think it happens all the time. I don't think it happens all the time, but yeah, I really do.

Well, I mean, Look, just moving on, I do think that there's a men are shitty. Men are shitty. They are. They're shitty to women. We're shitty to each other when we're, you know, we're competitive and all that. Men, we're shitty to women. I do think, though, like for me, my father, who we've talked about on this podcast

in terms of the fact that he wasn't always a good husband would lose his fucking mind if he thought that I was hitting a woman. Like, I couldn't fight my sister. I couldn't fight my sister. But my sister, I couldn't fight. And Ebony had the dogs. She'll give you the bing biao, boom.

And that sort of don't hit, a lady it just doesn't seem to be that big a deal anymore and why do you think there's been an increase what do you think it is? Do you think it's because the whole

people might say oh you want to be equal oh you think you you want to act like this do you think it has to do with that? I think it's not necessarily because that makes it women's fault right? But you're

looking at a man who would hit a woman. I'm not saying that's what you're thinking, do those men who would do that have that mentality? I guess is what I'm saying. I think there are a couple of things that play here. Number one, I think what I said that I had was a father who prioritized as flawed as he was not being violent against a woman and not hitting a woman. So I think that's one thing. I think it comes from an older generation. And I also think influences are different now. And like, if you hear in the song, I'll smack the piss out of bitch, I'm not blaming hip-hop.

Okay? I'm not blaming hip-hop. But what I'm saying is it seems to have been, punching a woman in an argument seems to have been culturally decriminalized. It seems to be something that, for whatever reason and we should talk about this. It's not a taboo anymore.

For a lot of the younger brothers that I'm seeing out, in some way punching a woman has been culturally decriminalized. And, you know, for me, any type of violence in that situation is bad. I don't want to see women

smacking the shit out of men. You know, I think that was cultural. we decriminalized a long time ago. But it's just not the same. All right, we move on. Yeah. Well, I was about to say, look at the way people

were defending Tory Lane's. Yeah, it's just not the same. Okay, real quick, updating the Jonathan Major's case, and I know that it might be triggering for some of these are coming back to back, but the lawyer for Jonathan Majors has blamed the NYPD and racism for his domestic violence arrest. There is an article. on the insider that if people are interested in this case,

if they should read in this article, it talks about what Majors and his attorneys say is a mound of evidence that will exonerate Jonathan, not just to get him off reasons without like exonerate him. And some of this argument, some of this stuff is very specific. Of course, the lady that Jonathan Majors is accused of of assaulting said that he

broke her finger, choked her, all of that. There's a reporter from the insider that claims to have seen evidence. The only reason why we're reporting on this right now. They claim to have seen evidence that points to the fact that

when Jonathan Majors left the lady that she was fine. They have video from inside of the club where she appears to be using her finger. They have the fact that she met people that same night that she got into the argument with Jonathan and they went to the club and they bought a bunch of bottles and they have her dancing and fist bumping the DJ and it doesn't look like she was hurting what they're saying is the next morning she had some sort of nervous breakdown and when she had that breakdown she was drunk

she had some pills and she must have hurt herself at that point the cops came and according to Majors, his attorney, and from what the insider reporter saw, that the police officers were dedicated to the notion of taking Jonathan Majors to jail. They even asked, how can this guy afford this place? The drivers of the vehicle that night are going to testify. It's what they say, according to what's in there, it seems to be a lot. We talked briefly about this. We don't spend too much time on this, but we reported some of the advancement in the allegations, so we want to report this too. You had a question, I think, was really interesting, Rachel, around like if all of this stuff has been seen by a reporter. Well, yeah, like, we're sitting here

talking about the case in Chicago with Carly Shahood, and we see that the DA dismissed charges in that case because they, after reviewing certain things and the emerging evidence that was out there, they decided they didn't have enough to move forward on their case. So in reading this article, which is very, very detailed, very detailed. You hear about new witnesses, new video, and this writer has a reporter has allegedly seen this. Apparently Jabari, just last thing, when asked by, which that's the name of the lady,

when asked how she heard herself by people who arrived on the scene, apparently she said, I don't know 19 times. This is all in the article. This is what they're saying. Apparently there are transcripts, recordings, all of that stuff that's what they're saying. Nobody's seen it yet, except for the writer,

except for the Jonathan Major's defense, and the writer of the art. Yeah, and so with all of this, based on what I said before, when we were talking about the Chicago case and all this evidence that's emerging, I'm wondering, then why is the DA moving forward?

For some reason, and if they are, they feel that they have enough information to win their case. Otherwise, they would drop it, especially with all the media attention that's surrounding this case. Everybody's watching them. So to me, it's just interesting to hear all of this and this reporter saying they saw it,

which to me seems very damning against the person who's, you know, accusing Jonathan of all these things. Sorry, her name for forgetting her name. It seems to go against all the things that she alleged in her initial complaint. I just don't understand why the DA isn't drop. the charges and why they're moving forward. So does that make you think the fact that the DA isn't dropping the charges, does that make you think that perhaps either the evidence isn't as strong as the defense says it is, or is there a chance that the DA has other things that we don't know about because

they're not playing the media game? Both. I absolutely think that they, because they don't have to share everything. They don't have to get everything. They don't have to reveal their entire case. to the defense. So I think that they have something that we don't all know about and they're moving forward on that. And I think that that information that they have potentially weakens what the defense has. That's what I would assume. Because why else would you move forward? Because when I read this

article, it's like, okay, what are we doing here? Why are we still moving forward with this? You know, I do know that domestic violence charges in New York, it's like once that is out there and there's a complaint, even if the person, the victim, the alleged victim, if they recant their statement, New York, they're still going to move forward with the case. They're still going to move forward. But if there is evidence that contradicts it or they don't have enough to move forward their case, they will drop the charges. And for some reason, they're not. Is there any one piece of evidence that right here could be lockstep damning either for or against? like what would be so strong that they would still move forward

and what would be something that would be strong enough? What of what you've seen would be strong enough to make them go, if it all exists the way that they say it does, to make them go, we're not, we're out, we're dropping the charges? I don't know. I mean, maybe there's, I have no idea. I can't speak for the DA's office on like what they would specifically need because there's a lot of information here that seems to go towards Jonathan.

And I say this, that I said of this before. A part of me understands why Jonathan's attorneys keep trying this in the court of public opinion because his reputation is being tarnished by all of this. And they want to win favor with the public because if he is found not guilty or the DA does drop the charges, they want him to be able to pick up where he left off and continue on with his career and this not be a blemish on, you know, his record or his reputation. So I understand what they're doing. But I also really wish that they would just like stop telling us all this information.

They can. I really do. They can. I know, but I wish that. Because things are moving so quickly in terms of projects and all of that stuff. I know. So they're trying to maintain that. So just to say his lawyer said, told Insire that.

they had hoped that the misdemeanor assault charges would be dropped by the prosecutors in Manhattan, but that Jonathan is eager to prove his innocence to a joy. All right, we're going to change the mood a little bit. We're going to get some melbourne Greg from the blackening. This episode is brought to by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner or a road trip goes sideways, catch-up,

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Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Trimfair radio.com. All right. The movie is the blackening. It's hysterical. You guys have to go see it. You have to go see the film, not just because it's an all-black cast produced by black people. just go see it because it works, because it's good, because it's amazing.

87% right now on Rotten Tomatoes. And we have one of those fresh tomatoes on the show right now. Melvin Gregg, look, somebody whose career I've been watching for years as he's gone from being someone who was on the Vine situation, who was on television and who was now making this mark all over Hollywood. He's in the black and he joins us on How I Learn Today. Brother, how are you doing?

I'm good, man. Thanks for having me. And I appreciate those kind of words about the film and myself as well. It's a good film. It's very novel, the idea that it takes so many of the tropes that involve black people in horror movies

and like makes fun of them almost a meta commentary on how they do us in horror movies. When you first read the script, what did you think? It was a breath of fresh air because I don't really like horror movies for the most part because of those tropes. It's like some of them like the old school, old school, like Freddie Crew with Leprechaun, like they were entertaining.

But like the newer like slasher films, I'm just not a big fan of them because I feel like people don't want to survive. It's like this doesn't make sense. It's like, y'all not trying to live. Y'all just trying to set up this movie so I can sit here for an hour and have and be scared. It's like, why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? So a lot of the, you know, trepidations I have with the genre we address in this film.

And also the comedic tone was just like, it was right in my world, the stuff I want to do where it's grounded comedy. We're not really playing for jokes. It's just the honesty at a moment in the situations, which make it funny. and I felt like our audience the black culture feels seen in this movie not just being seen on screen

but also having a voice I mean like I felt like a lot of our characters were the voice of the audience while on screen Mm-hmm Mm-hmm It is a hilarious movie

I don't know what I was expecting I didn't know if I was gonna be scared if I was gonna laugh I got a little bit of both But as I was laughing I couldn't help but think if I was watching this and I was with white people and they were laughing just a little too hard,

would I feel a certain way about some of the comedy? Do you think about that when you're doing this movie? Because I know you talk about it being for us and the culture and what it represents, but did you think about that? Or does that even, or do you care? No, no. So it's like I'm always conscious of that

just being black in America. You always, when in mixed company, you just, you tend to be conscious of it. And shooting his film, it didn't feel like that. It didn't feel like we were in mixed company, so we were just unapologetically ourselves. And Tim kind of set the stage for us to do that, and the script was written in that way. So we just, we shot what we felt was right. And when we premiered it at TIF, the Toronto International Film Festival, it's like this one slide It's called like Midnight Madness.

It's like a big slot at this festival. And I would say majority of the audience was like older white people. I'm like, they're not going to get these jokes. Like, they're not going to get it. I don't know how it's going to play. But they loved it. It's like they might not have gotten all the intricacies of like space and the terms. But I think it's more so about the relationships between the characters and the friends

and then just trying to survive that people relationships. And if they don't get space, maybe they can relate it to Yahti or something that they do play where, you know, the stakes are dying when, you know, the card game is going on. But they seem to relate to it. And somebody asked that question to tell me, he was like, I made movies for myself and like we are my friends. And hopefully the world loves it. But I can't go in making a movie thinking about what everybody else is going like because it's going to lose the essence of what it is. So I feel like that was, that resonated with me when he, when he said that. But yeah, I feel like everybody enjoy it. Everybody enjoy our culture. You got the most important of the culture in the world.

And it's just us being that. So I feel like we can do it on the screen too. Is there anybody that you look at, that you look to and go like, I want a career that kind of follows in that person's footsteps? Because obviously there's a lot on your shoulders, like keeping the baton

and the tradition of light-skinned niggas going. So like with, with, With that, is there anybody that you look at and you go, I have to continue, I want that person's career? You know, there's no light skin legacy that I feel like I got to uphold. Coming through the gates, I was like, I need to break down all of these walls. It's holding as light of complex with brothers back. You know what I mean?

I just say earlier on, I want to be like, I want to be Jada's dream, man. I want to be able to do the Will Smith shit but how the edge of Tupac. Oh. So, you know. Jada, brad, Jada just, somewhere right now,

Jada just went, ooh. Just even with somebody putting that out there, she went, I never thought of that person. Woo! That's crazy. You know, so, like, yeah, I, oh, I don't want my careers to go there past, but I want to be able to do the commercially,

the commercially successful stuff like Will, the four quadrant projects, but you can't see Will do a Tupac project and take them serious. And that's something like, it's just an edge that Will don't have. Even when he slapped somebody, you're like,

uh, I, you know what I mean? It's like, damn, it wouldn't have been me opposed to it to happen, like, you know,

a Tupac or whatever, just somebody without the Will Smith vibrancy. Um, that'd have been different. And I feel like that, that translates on screen. You know, you get too much of your son,

the audience, they could only really see you in one way. And I grew up of a huge fan of Tobok. My favorite movie, you could probably see it. It's Juce. I mean, Bishop and Juse was the character I looked up to as a kid. God damn, Melvin? Hey, Melvin, that thing was nuts. Okay, well, explain why?

Melvin Y. Why did you look up to him? Probably, I can't come and give you, like, no, something that sound good. he was an anti-hero I relate to. Wait, wait, wait, you feel like Bishop.

See, that's why I like Melvin. Melvin one of the realists that you feel like Bishop from Juice was an anti-hero. He was killing all his friends. He was, but the story followed. Stories all the time want to follow him.

Hit me on this, man. Stories always want to follow the good guy and everybody doing the right thing for the right reason. But that's not the world we live in. Think about video games like Grand The Fado, right? Everybody played Grand The Fado, Carly Dutty, all of that.

Nobody going around being a police officer on Grant The Fido. That's true. Picking people up in an ambulance, arresting people. Everybody wants chaos. Like, people live for chaos. So to be able to play that character on screen or follow that character is more interesting to me. That's why I enjoy characters like band boys. And even though I don't get to be a bad guy,

But it's like, being bad is fun. And if you do it with no consequence, playing a video game and doing it on camera, like, you see it. Why not? Being bad is fun. If they, in the age, we're like, they're doing remakes and they're reimagining films, if they do that for juice and they ask you to play Bishop,

would you do it? No. Okay, why? Why? And should they remake it? I don't know. No, they shouldn't remake it. Like, I got me.

feelings, but I ain't a shot I got mixed feelings. I don't love all of the remakes. Same. For some stuff, you could do it, but some of these classics that weren't even really big IPs, they just trying to do it to get us to tap back into. Like, these movies did $10 million in the box office. Like, you only remake them to put on a streaming service to hope that we come and tap in.

It wasn't a big film like a, I can't think of it. The movie I'm thinking of right now, the Tom Hardy movie where they're out in the desert with the big machines and things. Matt Max Fury Road. Yeah, something like that is a big IP you could remake or like Star Wars or Reboot that type of shit. But like some of these smaller movies I get why they do it. But Juice, I mean, they killed it.

Why I try to redo it? And then how to compare ourselves to that. They do a stage play right now, actually, for Juice. They do one, stage play for Juice, and they do one for New Jack City, too. New Jack City, too, yeah. doing the New Jack City. They got Alan Payne back. Shout out to

Howard Payne. For the Juice New Jack City situation, that New Jack City play. Look, you know, one thing I liked about this movie is we talk a lot

about diversity, but we don't talk about the diversity that we have inside of the culture. Like, like Rachel and I are alike, but we're also different. You know what I mean?

I'm not going to get to it. I'm not going to get to it. I did feel seen though. I did feel seen in this movie. But this movie like leans into the fact that it's all different types

of black people and that's very, very important. When you read it, was that something that jumped out to you? Because as soon as I said that I saw you shaking your head, like do you like movies where you get to be?

Because like if you're in juice, and you're a Tupac, there's got to be an Omar X. There's got to be a black guy or a black lady that might be more conservative. I think a celebration of us is a celebration of every different part of who we are. I think the blackening gets that right. Thank you.

No, when I first read it, it didn't jump out to me in that way. Because nobody was really cast, so I'm just kind of hearing the characters through my own personal lens. And it's like, I don't know. I know all of these people. So it's like, cool, cool. I'm feeling like, okay, this is culturally accurate,

but I didn't realize the representation that it was touching on within the culture until we were actually filming it. And I got to see what each person was doing with each character because a lot of times you only get one of the type, one of the seven that we got in this film. We typically only get one of those in this genre. And in other genres, too. You know what I mean?

In the lead role like this, where you kind of see the person rounded out more so. You get to know these characters. You get to know the Clippings and the Shikas and the, you know, Allison and the Kings in a way that I don't see too often with our projects.

I read that you, you said, you don't want to be known for playing the same type of character over and over again. What was it about King that drew you to want to play this character specifically? Yeah, I think that, the artist of me wants to, of course, feed my ego of being this super diverse

act and touch on so many different things. And I do. But I also lean into playing these thug roles because I know these people, like, intimately. Like, I grew up, my cousins, everybody around me, like, were these people, but they are people. And a lot of times portrayed on screen, you don't get to see who they are.

You might see him, rob a corner so, but you don't understand he guys a sister at home with cerebral palsy who needs medication, you know what I mean? It's a giant Q situation to a lot of this or, you know, he comes from a broken home or his dad wasn't there, his mom is on drugs.

He really don't understand which people are, so to step into those spots. I lean into him, even though I don't want to just do that because I understand the business of it, but with King more so, I mean, I'm not going to talk like this was an Oscar-winning, like, role when I had to do so much to get into it.

But a parallel that I drew from was after playing, I thought it snowfall, all of a sudden, I keep getting cast as a thug. And I was like, I don't want to keep doing it. I don't want to be seen as a thug before that. I was just a basketball player all the time. I was like, I don't want to just be seen as this thug. I want to be seen as something different.

So I want to do different stuff. And then when I read the script, I'm like, oh, King going through the same shit. Like, people just saw him as a thug. And he wants to be seen for who he grew into. The man he is now is a real estate agent. he's into you know breathing

different breathing and meditation and all this type of stuff so I thought that would that would be something cool to take on in a nice way to segue out of this like my little thug era Was y'all hooping on the set

did y'all get any run? I know Sink would like to play. Nah, not at all. The closest we got to hooping which wasn't even close to hooping who was working out on the side of the road What is that area called? It's by UCLA.

That's Westwood. Westwood, yeah. Is it Westwood? By UCLA? UCLA is in Westwood, yeah. Okay. Westwood, Brickwood? Yeah, it's like, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So we are working out on the side of the road. And if you've seen the movie, you know, St. Kwai, his costume is like a jumper with a white beard on. So he got it tied around his waist. We meet him and Jermaine on the side of road, lift and waits until somebody called and, the complaint, but yeah, those

the closest we got to go. Blackening, they saw it for real. I got two, I have one question, that's two questions, just about anything. What is the dopest thing out there and what is the wackest thing out there? What's just dope out there, something that you love,

and what's just whack, something that you don't fuck with? In cinema? No, just period. In life? Fatherhood is dope. That's like, That's like the dopest shit ever, man.

I knew I always wanted to be a dad. And I think that was just the narcissism in me to create another me that I could raise up to be better than me. But after having kids and, like, it's just, it's indescribable. Like, my happiest moments come from, you know, moments I have with my sons. And, like, my most emotional moments comes from just putting them in bed

and night knowing I can't see him to the morning. Um, fatherhood is the dopeest shit by far. And it made me hypersensitive to so many things. Relationships on different sides of the spectrum of fatherhood. I look at dad's different now. I feel for sons different now. Um, I understand that relationship and how it's needed and why he's needed and how people affect it when they don't have it.

And it's, um, yeah, it's dope. It's dope. What's the wackest thing out there? Man, I hate the, I hate just this, I don't want to say generation, but just like the social media shame and judgment of people. You know what I mean? How people so quick to talk down on other people. And a lot of times you don't even be real. They're just looking for somebody else in the comments or relate to them so they can have some engagement and have somebody to talk to.

But it's at the expense of putting somebody down. most of the time. Yeah, I think that's white. Like, I think it's super whack. Yeah, and agree, and agree. Something that I saw that you're doing, you volunteer with the NAACP Teen Arts Department. Can you talk about that and, like,

what's the work that you do with them? Nothing. I don't know where that came from. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'd be young. If I did, I probably, I'm sorry.

But at least you saw that out there too. Yeah. I mean, I have to tell, you know. I was like, oh. My PR problem, I think you did. Remember you did? Oh.

Okay. Tell me what you are working on next. How about that? You tell me. Oh, my God. Instead of me trying to tell you, what's coming up for you? What are you working on next? I'm writing.

I'm writing. Heavy in fact, my main focus is writing as writing. St. Robbins is able to create content online and just control the narrative of what I wanted to do. My goal has always been to do the same thing in the traditional space. And I know that she's going to come from the Brighton. Other than that, I have a film coming out in October called Story Add. Cool little movie. I get to play a juice type, a bishop type character.

When I was a real cool film, director, Airsada Torres and stars Asante Black myself Oh man It's cool It's October 9th Blackness just came up Yeah that's that's

That's part it for now It's just you know writing I'm on strike so I'm not writing Not writing Yeah Yeah Not writing you're thinking about What you might write

When they're saying Because we ain't wrote nothing today It's not like I got six pages done No, anyway. So look, I got two more questions. One is bullshit. But then the other one, I really want to hear

what you got to say. Before I even get to these questions, I won't let you know that we were in the movie together. We co-starred in the movie together. We did. Was it Shark Nato? No. Come on, bro. You know what I'm saying?

We were high-flying bird, bro. I was in that. You were in high-fly. We was in high-flying bird together. So shout out to Ed Rameen with crow stars, bro. That's why... Shout out. Caste mates, houseline bird.

Um, okay. That's how, that's how myself and Ivan Orgy and Jay Farrow are, like with this film. Like, we're in the same film, right? Yep. Yep. Don't really...

Yeah, right, right. It's true. Now, let me... Let me ask you this, because there's a show that just wrapped up. A lot of people know you from at Snowfall. Okay. Mm-hmm.

Um... Snowfall is a show that is well-acting, that is well-produced, that has captivated audiences for the time that it's been on. However, it's gone noticeably unrecognized in a lot of the awards and in the year's top lists and this and of that. why do you think people don't view snowfall as prestige television in the same way other shows on FX are viewed or other shows in the landscape are viewed right, right? Why doesn't Snowfall get

that same love? The performances are amazing. It looks amazing. It's had a coherent amazing story through the entire time. You were great. Amen. Amen is great. Dampton's great. Everybody has great on the show. Why do you think, and I've heard you talk about it before, why does the Snowfall get any awards recognition? I can't

tell you. When you say other shows in the same landscape, like what do you mean? I mean, like Atlanta. I mean like shows, I was thinking about the FX shows. I was like, Atlanta. Yeah, other stories. I'm not talking about that deal in the same type of

subject matter. You're not talking about like power. No, no, no, no. I'm not talking about power and stuff like that. Shout out to 50, but I think, you know, power is a little bit more of a soap opera. Snowfall takes itself a little bit more seriously, I would say. And it's dealing with a lot of things that historically were very real. When you're talking about the contras and things that happened in the 80s, that's real shit, historically accurate stuff that they're talking about.

But it doesn't seem to be met with the same seriousness of some of the other shows. Right. I mean, I could be political and say we make the show for the fans and the fans loving. And it's the most white show and with our audience, you know, we get the awards. But, you know, paths that we all understand the role that getting these nominations plays for the people involved. And it's conversations I've had with other cast members. We don't know. All we could do is put our best performance and try to make, like, the best product we can

do and not worry so much about that. It didn't happen. And I feel more so for like the main cast involved, like, Damson and Amman and Isaiah and just everybody involved because they put in so much work on the show for six years. I came in two years and, you know what I mean, I was just happy to be a part of it was my favorite show before I was even on it.

But for them to get overlooked in Damson, like he gave a great. remarkable performance from top to bottom. Like, he grew on that show, like, into a man, until who you see him today and just grew as an actor. And just, like, the development from, you know, season one and six is phenomenal. But, you know, if you wanted BT, best actor was last night, actually. But, yeah, when it comes to just, like, the Emmys and stuff, I understand that a lot of it is politics.

You need to network to really push behind it and campaign. And then you need the people. as a part of the award, I don't want to say the academy, but people who as members of like the Emmy, whatever it's called, that vote for it, you need them to know the show and see the show and be familiar with it. And I guess if I hadn't guessed, I would say that off top is probably something

they're not attracted to seeing it. When we look at the majority of what these people are, these older white people and they see the show about quote unquote drug delivery, in South Central, maybe they just don't tap in and they don't even know what it is and it's going unseen. The Black Man is the movie and we all can't die first. So I'm going to do something for you right now.

I'm going to give you the opportunity to bring one black character who died in a movie back to life. You can bring them back to life. They live out there full life. Okay. You get to save them from their death in the movie. Who are you going with? And we just see their, like, play out on screen.

It's like a sequel. They just don't die. Yeah, they don't die in the movie. And they can go, you can see whatever they can have a sequel. They can not. They just don't die in the movie. Who are you going with? I mean, you should know.

You should know. We already, like, we're over it. You're not going to bring Bishop back. Bishop is going to kill again, bro. You can't. You don't. But Bishop, dog. Bishop is definitely going to kill again, bro.

bro if bishop turns his life around he has a lot like the retribution that he has to do he's going to really change the world I just want to let you know I just want to let you know Ricky was going to USC to play football and he was killed by games

okay it had nothing to do with it and you're telling me I mean I'm thinking about Ricky I'm thinking about Latifah from Set It Off I was thinking Cleo too. I'm thinking Queen and Slim. They got them both.

You know what I'm saying? I'm thinking about all of these characters that you go on with Bishop from Juice, bro. Okay, let's break it down one about one. Let's take Ricky's death out of boys in the hood. Boys in the hood don't hit his heart.

You need him and God for that Ricky. Without him, that movie that movie falls, it ain't going to say it falls flat. but it's not the same movie. And then he goes on. Who cares to see Ricky at USC?

Like, what is this show to come? I'm not tapped into that. So, Queen Latifah and said it all, what's she going? Everybody else's gone. Like, I don't want to see her, like, have a phone.

You don't really care about that's going. Coen and Slim. Like, like, they go to June and dance for three more seasons. Nah, man. We need a bishop back. I want to see Bishop redeem himself. And if he don't, we're just going to watch

Juice Part 2. He's going to move to another city. Maybe Tupac moved to the West Coast because he on the run and, you know, start some up here. Maybe he went into Franklin St. I don't know, man. Bishop on. Hold on. Hold on.

See, Bishop on the run on, he gets to L.A. Or down, that's actually the movie. Melvin, you're crazy, bro. You're crazy. You're crazy. I'm going to be honest with you. Y'all, that's Melbourne, Greg. I'm telling you guys right now,

telling you guys right now, there's, we're in such a great point in black Hollywood where we have all of these amazing actors who are able to do their things. And the one right now that's on our screen, something special. I'm going to be around for a very, very long time.

I'm going to have a huge career, Melbourne. I'm surprised we haven't connected before this, brother, but we're so happy to have you on higher learning. Thank you for joining us, bro. Thanks so much, man. I'm a big fan. I used to see you all the time at 24-hour fitness back in the day.

Giving people work. Giving people work is what you're saying. Giving people work, man. Yeah, giving people. You know what I'm saying? Intentia. Yeah. Yeah, I was.

I still waiting for 24-hour fitness. Yeah, no, 24-hour fitness got a little bit toxic, bro. I had to stop. I got a dog now, so I'm chill. Melvin, though. Thank you for joining this, brother. Melvin the man.

He's great. And y'all got to go see the black and him. It is so funny. So funny. Y'all say y'all like black people, but y'all will be going to see black people movies like that. Y'all need to support this. Like, go out and see the movie.

The movie's good. Like, go see it. And if you're not black, Melvin said it's okay for y'all to laugh. It's okay to laugh. Go enjoy yourselves. I'm not fucking, yeah. BT Awards for last night.

Did you watch? I did not. I feel like I thought. No, I didn't watch this year. And maybe a part of it is because I've worked it the last two years. And this is the first year I don't, I didn't work it because I don't work for extra like that anymore. So an extra didn't even cover it on the carpet. But I know.

So it's like a part of me is like, oh, I wish I was there. But I did follow along on social media, the fashions, who was there, some of the performances. So, you know, I guess it's supported in that way. You watched it? A little bit. I'm not into award shows anymore. But I wanted to see what was going on with Ice Spice. Look, speaking to her,

Lil Uzi Bird and JT had a kerfuffle scuffle at the BET Awards. And it's on video. Natalie Nunn supplied us with video. Oh, that came from her? one of the videos I saw came from that. And that was one of the videos where it shows JT whacking Uzi with her phone. She threw a phone at Uzi and accused him of being a groupie.

Now people are saying this is around Ice Spice. He was being a little too friendly with Ice Spice or whatever. He said it on the stage and then like they're saying it's about ice fight. So what? So he said it on stage. Is Ice Spice or something? Yeah. He revealed a new song and in it he said he's got a girl and she's got to throw like Ice Spice and she's nice.

And I got to be honest. Like that would, if that's my man talking about another woman who happens to be right here, I'm going to feel a little certain way. I'm not throwing my phone at you, but I'm going to have some words for you when you get off the stage. And then I got to see a photo of the two of you circulating, cuddled up. Not cuddled up, but they're close. the two of you making the rounds as well. It just feeds the narrative of what was on stage and now you got everybody talking

and making me look stupid and you're my man. Yeah. My feelings are going to be a little hurt. So then you were resort to violence because her taking her phone and throwing her phone at him is domestic violence.

No. No. No. Yes. It is violent. J.T. is guilty of domestic violence. I'm sorry. Right there. Yes. I don't condone. I don't condone. the violent part. I do understand her being humiliated and her feelings being hurt. I do. That's embarrassing.

He said something about like, she's got a little fro, she's got a little fro. Donnie or Ashley, maybe you can find the clip. She's got a little fro like Ice Spice. She's nice. I don't think he says wife, but he might say wife. Hold on. Let me look at this. I got to see what this is worth.

Luzi Bert Ice Spice lyrics. J.T. throws phone at Little Luzzi calls him a bitch-ass nigger and goofy at the BUTE Awards. Or groupie. We don't know. She either said groupie or goofy. Wait a minute. Hold on.

Oh, here it is. Oh, yeah. It's called spin again. Spin again, spin again. Pull up in the fishbowl. Ooh, clear lanes. Spin again, spin that shit. It's like I'm a ceiling fan.

I got too much. What? I got the bitch fuck. I get your bitch fuck. Wet. I get your bitch fuck. What? Okay.

Get to the part. Hold on. Okay. Okay. Oh. Oh. I'm fucking the dog shit out of this bitch. Her wig came off twice.

She had a little fro. She looked like Ice Spice. Donnie, go ahead and run it. I got a nice wife. I'm fucking out of this bitch. The wind came off twice. She had a little girl. She did her like Ice Spice.

Oh, yeah. He went hard on the Ice Spice part. Go, go. Say it again. Play it again, Donnie. Because they, they called a little clear out for the Ice Spice part. Go ahead. Play it again.

Donnie. And then B2T Awards. She cut to ice spice. And then B2 Awards. Messy. Messy! They cut to Ice Spice. Yeah.

Messy-assy-assed V-T awards. Yeah. Yeah. She's embarrassed. She's embarrassed. The feelings are hurt. But the violence, no. She had never heard this song?

No, it was a new song. So she had never heard the song. So he's just playing with her. He's just playing with her. He's just playing in her face. It seems like it. I can't understand what he's saying half the time. Maybe she didn't either.

I don't know. Maybe she heard and she went paying attention. So look, is it, is it bad? Because it's the specificity, right? It's like the fact that he said, ice spice. Because if he was just like, fuck a bitch or like nut on a stick or whatever like that, then it's like, that's okay. But the fact that he's singled.

out iced spice is the thing that's pissing her off. You can't do. And then they took that picture together and everybody was, it's like circulating around. Yeah. But you also can't resort to violence. And I did have a huge problem

with everybody posting their videos and it almost seemed like they were glorifying or excited by what JT did to Uzi. She threw her phone, hearted him, could have hit anybody. I understand Natalie, none being excited

because she probably thought she could cast her for the next baddie show. She said that. She said I just said. Oh, she did? See, see, see. But I don't like the fact that everybody seemed to be excited by it. And as you love to always point out, if the roles were reversed, this would have been a totally different situation.

And neither one are okay. She should not have done that to him. That's not the way to handle that situation. I'll say this. Women always excuse violence. Like, there's a whole show called Snap, about women who killed their husbands. They're not excusing Snap.

They're not excusing Snap. We're not excusing Snap. I watch Snap the same way I like to watch Dateline. Okay? Yeah. And I'm both of the killing shows. At the same time, though, is like, Snap.

Snap, the name of that show implies that they a push so far that they snapped. So the name of the show, the name of the show inherently implies that a nigga deserved to get killed. It does. Wait, if it was a show called

Snap, and it was men who killed their wife, well, she kept burning the bread, I had to fucking shoot her. That show is not going to... It's uncharacterized. It just seems like the way that women have been the stereotype of a woman in the society is not that she would like resort to that type of violence

and so I'm trying to justify it and I can't you're right you're right since we've had an episode that has so much to do with you know violence amongst the sexes is there something that we need to sort because like a woman slapping a man a woman none of this excuses the retaliation but I'm saying

don't we need to not be like, yeah, I'll smack the shit out my nigger too if he was saying the ice spice pro dance song and stuff. That's not, we can't encourage that. We can't. Get to the point of violence. You ever smacked the shit out of a guy? No. But I did have to think about that.

I don't believe you. I haven't. I might be my little push or maybe a show. Yeah, I don't believe you, man. I'm serious. I never. All my exes unite. I've never done that.

I've never done that before. You know, anyway. All right. Last thing is this fucked up. A video is circulated of four black women twerking. On top of the slave castle in Ghana. It's the castle that everyone goes to.

Directed by the Portuguese of 1482. It was the first trading post built on the COVID-Khemia. It would become one. of the most important stops on Atlantic slave trade. You've seen this before. People go there when they go to Ghana. Yeah.

Get in touch with the continent, the ancestors. I saw Steve Harvey cried. It's a place that everybody goes. I'm telling you right now, when I go to Ghana, I'm not going there. And I'm coming to Ghana.

I don't want to go. And I'll tell you why. I'm too emotional to go do stuff like that. I don't see how you go do stuff like that and then come back and still be around the white people that you be around. Because, you know, sometimes I'll be looking at people like, you know, your ancestors were a bunch of evil motherfuckers. Because I'll see like Cristiano Ronaldo, she's Portuguese, and I'd be like, come from some of the most evil motherfuckers.

And I'm not focused enough for it. I don't want to see it. But I understand that I would go see it. Of course you would. I would go see it. I think there's just, I don't know, it's like a, to go all the way there. and not see that I would feel like an incomplete trip. It is about... I don't know. I don't know if it sounds wrong

to say paying respects, but just kind of acknowledging, just seeing it. I want... I need to go. I need to go. Pay respects to the slaves. That's a Portuguese castle.

Not pay respects, but just like... That's what I said, I'm probably using the wrong word. But like, what happened there, what was done, I just need to go.

I need to see it. I need to, I just need to be there. But what I wouldn't need to do is stand on top of it, bend over, touch my toes, and twerk for the ancestors. That wouldn't even cross my mind because I would be emotional, because I would be thinking about what was done. and I would probably be overwhelmed with that type of emotion. I wouldn't be like, this one's for the ancestors. I'm getting old. I'm getting old.

You know, you know what it makes me? You know what I'm concerned with just how cut off we are from who we really are? But you would think in Ghana, that's the whole purpose to go. That's what I don't understand. That's the disconnect to me. You're missing what I'm saying. What? There's a reason why we twerk.

There's a reason why we dance like that. We dance like that because we've been doing it for thousands of years. We dance like that because we came from a place where when we would show our fertility and we would show our zest and zeal for life, drones will come out and are women who were blessed with amazing trunks and thighs would shake their asses. The people that have told us that shaking your ass is bad are the Judeo-Christian captors who couldn't do it. And so now we wear their pants, we wear their shirts, we speak their language, we have their names, and we judge each other by their standards. there's nothing right about this

but there's nothing wrong I mean it's like if we get into if we get into the painting of nails and all of that the wearing of certain things I hear I hear

black men sometimes talking about what's feminine and what's not feminine right and every time I hear them talking about they're talking about a Western version of what a man should look like. They're not talking about how we dress and where we come from and what our

lineage is. And that's cool. It's cool because we started here in America and we've adopted the cultural mores and values of the people that captured us. That's fine. Those women are in Africa. And if you're saying that there's no reason for them to be celebrating, but I don't be honest with you, if they're communing with their ancestors, if they're dancing with their ancestors, that's how their ancestors dance. Do you think that that was really their intent? I don't know what their intent was, but I also don't, I don't think that I should, I don't think that I should invert.

I need to see the video. Donnie, can you get the video up? I need to see the video again. No, they were throwing that ass. They was throwing that ass. Okay. And I don't disagree with the history of what you're saying. I don't know.

I'm not, but I think just because. Donnie, play it. Yeah, see, they're throwing that ass. No, they're throwing that ass. But look, but I'm saying, though, to me, I just don't, I just don't see why we're so uptight. We're so far from the way we're supposed to be and who we are and all of that.

It's just, it's interesting. When those women, when they bring the drums out and they would dance, no. There's my. There's Mapooka. There's all kinds of different dances that that come from the content. We dance like that and get busy like that because it's in us. That's who we are.

So why we got to be? I understand what you're saying. But when they do it, are they like bent over and the man's behind them? Is that like? Because I feel like that's the way, that's what twerking is here. They weren't bent over. And there wasn't no men there. Why are you talking?

There wasn't a minute. But that's what they do. But like that's how. what they were doing was for the purpose of social media and like a twerking as if they were on a day like a dance floor like for the man to get behind. There's like a difference van. There's a difference.

I don't think so. I think the only difference is. So they were they were celebrating. I don't know. What I'm telling you. It's not about celebrating the ancestors so much as it is that there's nothing wrong. There's no right or wrong place to to shake ass in celebration. There's to me there's no right or wrong place.

Okay. There's no right or warm place to shake ass in celebration. And sometimes, to be honest with you, you can't help but shake some ass. Because some people, don't matter how they dance, a little ass will be shaped. I get what I understand. I would imagine that it's usually in celebration or for a ceremony or for like that on top of a slave castle. Just that's not what they were doing. They weren't.

To me, to me, if you're going to go to the slave castle, if it's okay to go to the slave castle and cry, then it's definitely okay to go to the slave castle and dance. If it's okay to go to the slave castle and cry, it's definitely okay to go to the slave castle and dance. It's the slave castle, it's, you know what?

You know why you can't say anything? Because you're not, you're never going. I'm never going. You tell me, if you go, you tell me what you feel moved to do. Cry or twerk. If I go to the slave castle, I'm a piss on the slave castle. But I can tell you

one thing. And I don't know, she wouldn't be mad at that. And to, and to, And to be real with you, twerking on the slave castle, aha, you guys are gone. Ghana is still here. You didn't kill us. I'm with it.

I'm okay with it. Again, if that, intention, intention. I need Donnie and Ashley to jump in real quick. We need a ruling here. Donnie, twirking? Yes, your name? My initial reaction was that it wasn't a good look. But when I first brought it up, I showed it to Janay.

She had a similar reaction to you, Van. and after some more consideration, I think I, I'm open to people expressing their emotions any way that they feel best to them when they get there. And I'm not here to like to reign on people showing their black joy in that way. And I mean, I've changed my mind on it. Donnie. Donnie. So you think that was joy? They were shaking.

Oh, it was definitely joy. It's just whether or not it's appropriate joy. Like I think my opinion on the appropriate. the ground. They were doing it for Instagram. They went viral. Success. That's why they were doing it. Now they might come out and say it was something different now since you and Van

have given them an out. But I don't think that's what was happening here. Ashley? I'm a little conflicted with it because like the first time I saw it or the first time I read it, I was like, what? And then I saw the video. And

I don't know if it's because I kind of grew up in such like a desensitized type of like internet thing. So it didn't hit as badly as I thought it would when I saw it. You're definitely right. They did it for the gram 100%. But I don't think I am upset at them. Like the comment section was like mad shitting on them.

So I don't think I'm upset with them. I think for other people, hmm, it's so complicated. I don't even know. I'm not upset. Because you know what? You're reaching. All y'all are reaching. That's why you can't,

that's why you can't reason with it. I'll be the bad guy. I'll be the bad person. That's fine. I'm the prude. I'm the prude one on the podcast. Rachel, go in there and watch some TV in after this. Daddy, can you turn it on TBN?

We're almost done. Turn on TBN right now. Wall to wall coverage of the grieving world of Pat Robinson. After 60 pass away. All right, that's enough. And maybe I would have it to be. different opinion if I wasn't at my family home. Probably so.

The spirit is on me. Because, nigga, I see, Rachel, I could tell, I know you, nigga. Like, I could tell so, like, you, I know you. Can I just let you know that if you listen to, I'm so glad I remembered this. I believe if you turn up the volume on that video, one of them said

at them red lights, twerking on them headlights. I rest my case. So what? Oh, you go sing the, you go sing the lyrics to FNF? Because I can't say it. You guys, guys, there's nothing sacred there. It's not our castle.

Our ancestors exist. It's a castle we should be twerking on, pissing on, and shitting on. It's not our castle. Our ancestors died there. There's plenty of other places that they die. My thing is what I'm saying is it's not sacred to us. It shouldn't be sacred to us.

It's nothing to pain. Not sacred, but just like, exactly. but something happened there to us. Fine, don't look at it as sacred, but like what happened there is not a cause for at the red lights, twerking on the headlights.

Twerk at the castle, it's fine. Okay. Take things out of all we do not stop learning. I'm Vanley. I'm Rachel and Lindsay. Hi, hi, guys.