No Jumper - Meghann M. Cuniff on Tory Lanez, A$AP Rocky Shooting Case, Nicki Minaj & More

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

Meghann M. Cuniff talks about the many cases she has covered in her career, Tory Lanez, Cardi B, and much more. ----- Get the latest news & videos http://nojumper.com CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE STORE!!! https://shop.nojumper.com/ NO JUMPER PATREON http://www.patreon.com/nojumper CHECK OUT OUR NEW SPOTIFY PLAYLIST https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5te... Follow us on SNAPCHAT https://www.snapchat.com/discover/No_... Follow us on SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ENxb4B... iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/n... Follow us on Social Media: https://www.snapchat.com/discover/No_... http://www.twitter.com/nojumper http://www.instagram.com/nojumper https://www.facebook.com/NOJUMPEROFFI... http://www.reddit.com/r/nojumper JOIN THE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Q3XPfBm Follow Adam22: https://www.tiktok.com/@adam22 http://www.twitter.com/adam22 http://www.instagram.com/adam22 adam22hoe on Snapchat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No Jumber. Coolest podcasts in the world. And today, I'm connecting with somebody. I'm a very big fan of the journalism that you've been doing over the last couple years. Megan Cuniff is in the building. Thanks for having me so much. Yeah, very, very excited to meet you. So I watched the Vlad interview and got a lot of in-depth perspective into the trial itself and everything.

But can we start with how you sort of ended up in this position of doing this kind of reporting in the first place? Yeah, yeah. It was a long road through kind of traditional. journalism basically. Like it was always kind of a dream to cover celebrity trials, but I never thought that I'd actually be doing it. You know, I grew up in Carvalis, Oregon and didn't really come from a family that had much like connections to, you know, East Coast media or, you know, I don't know, we were pretty down home in Curvales. Like going up to Portland and Seattle was like a big deal for stuff. But my dad was a lawyer, like a country lawyer, did criminal defense and kind of anything. I mean, civil

stuff, divorce cases, that kind of thing. And he was really interested in the media and cases, you know, anything big going on in the press. He was always paying attention to current events, like the OJ case and everything. So that always kind of stuck with me. And I went to University of Oregon, which was just down the road from Carvalis, got into journalism there, worked at the high school paper too, but always kind of wanted to go into journalism. And then ended up in Spokane, Washington, working at the paper there for like six or seven years. And that was kind of where I got my start. Not kind of.

That was totally where I was. So what would your media diet have been like in college? So I was reading the New York Times, like really interested into politics stuff, trying to get into that. We read the Register Guard because that was the local paper in Eugene. And we were covering the University of Oregon. So we were interested in, like, what the administration was doing. We were interested in, like, what the athletic department was doing.

So at the time, my media consumption was that. And then also maybe electronic music stuff, like raver stuff. Oh, that was your scene? Yeah, yeah. If anyone remembers northwest techno.org. I was a northwest techno.org. Remember, that was the board where you found out where all the parties were going on in the northwest, like Eugene, Portland, Eugene, that kind of thing.

That was what I was doing. Okay. Yeah. So you were out there partying on the weekends and then you were doing your thing as a student on the weekdays? Maybe a couple times a month or so. but I had friends who were like hardcore into it like all the time like throwing parties that kind of thing like DJing that kind of thing so I was always kind of into music through that and you know the drum and bass scene has a lot of like overlaps with hip hop so it wasn't completely unfamiliar to me the hip hop world but I'd been so out of touch with it like all the internet stuff all the YouTube stuff I was completely out of touch of being like siloed and first mainstream papers up in Spokia. and then paywalled, like, legal newspapers, like the Daily Journal in L.A. and then ALM, Law.com. It's very, like, lawyers only. So I was kind of immersed in that world for a few years.

Okay. And so then once you, what was the paper that you ended up being a job at? Spokesman Review in Spokane. And then I was at the Idaho statesman for a little bit. And then the whole reason I came down to California is because the Orange County Register was hiring back in, like, 2013 era. They had new owners and they were doing some big expansion. that, of course, didn't end up working out. But it was how I was able to get down to Orange County and actually was hired to cover the city of San Juan Capistrano, which is about as lame as you can kind of imagine.

But it's, you know, small-town journalism important to those people, like covering the city council and the development down there, which is not what I wanted to end up doing. I always loved courts reporting and coughs reporting, but that was just like how you get your footing in the journalism area in Southern California. Right, like doing a lot of this more, dry type of stuff, did that sort of push you in the direction of like, oh, I would eventually

like to be reporting on stuff that's more viral or high profile? Yeah, yeah. Eventually, like, after being in siloed in the like law.com paywalled legal era, I was always like, there's so much interesting stuff that we're covering in litigation and what the lawyers are doing. It seems like we should have more mainstream attention on this. So that was why I went to law and crime news was because it was a change. to kind of combine traditional legal affairs reporting with like mainstream cases. And that was how

I covered Tori Lates. Oh, really? Okay. So you're you were working for a law and crime news. What kind of business is that? Yeah, it's Law and Crime Network. Everybody knows Law and Crime Network. So the YouTube channel? Yeah. That was who you were working for. Okay. Yeah. And they have a website that at the time, it was technically separate operations. They've combined them now. But it was a pretty shoestring operation and that they had a small staff, and it was just like, hey, come cover trials on the West Coast. So this is before that, because they have like 5 million subscribers now, and they have like 80,000 people watching Y&W.

Meli's trial, the last time I tuned into it, which is kind of astounding. Totally. And they just come off the huge surge from the Johnny Depp, Amber Heard thing. So they were like, they were trying to keep that going. And they have TV people that cover the trials and we'll just do the live streaming, like, local partnerships with, like, the Florida TV stations or something.

something, but they wanted to build up the website and have like more coverage out on the West Coast. So I was like, hey, that's me. Right. Okay. And so you started, one of the first things they put you on was covering in the Tory Lane's trial. And was this the first thing you ever did that was like hip hop adjacent? It was actually coming up here to cover Harvey Weinstein and then Danny Masterson. And the first hip hop trial that I covered was actually Cardi B down in Santa Ana when she got sued over her album art by the guy who was pretending to go down on. her while she was holding a Corona bottle, right? Yeah, yeah. And that was just a totally silly, like, stupid case. I mean, it was, you can't even compare it to the Torrey Lane's case in terms

of, like, seriousness. But Cardi B didn't have to show up or anything? Oh, she was there. She, technically didn't have to, but a lot of the times in these civil cases, it's like so personal for them that they want to be there. And the lawyers tell them it, it looks good for them to be there. So, yeah, she was there, I think it was a four-day trial. She was there every day, and she testified to, so that was pretty awesome. And there was a huge, it's actually across the street from a high school at the courthouses, and they all realized Cardi B was there. So it was just like bigger and bigger crowds every day.

Wow. There was some kid asking her to homecoming. It was funny. It was very lighthearted, you know? So the kids just start slowly gravitating over to the courthouse, trying to get a glimpse? Yeah, totally, huge crowd. Like, I have a video of her leaving the courthouse,

and there's just, like, this walking mob of students around her. Like people, like, shouting stuff at her and everything. And it was, and it was just a funny case to cover. So that was my first experience with hip-hop. you know, blogs and being, like, reposted by them and then taking my photos and that kind of thing. Right, yeah, because, I mean, I didn't really notice it until the Tory Lane's trial, but what was that like to, like, after having done all this stuff that is very, very professional? And then all of a sudden, you're in this world where any tweet that you might put up might become

a world star post or academics post or whatever. And then all of a sudden you just have so many more eyeballs on you, right? Yeah, it was overwhelming at first. And it kind of took me while to realize it was going on, too, because, you know, you're not You can't have your phone out in the courtroom. And then when you get out, you're trying to just update so you don't have time to look through all your notifications. But it was kind of like, where am I getting all these followers from? I think it was like the second or third day.

I got 3,000 followers in like an hour and a half, like go in and then go out and I have 3,000 more followers. And I'm like, okay, where are all these people coming from? And I think it's like the shade room, like you guys, like everybody who's just posting like screenshots of the tweets and stuff. And I was just like, wow, this is like crazy interest in this. Yeah, I mean, like, I think I followed you at a certain point because it was just like, oh, I have no idea who this woman is, but she's doing really good investigative stuff into what's going on in this trial. And I'm supposed to be paying attention to the trial. And when I look at different hip-hop meme pages or whatever, they're basically just, you know, repost and stuff that you were saying. So all of a sudden, people just start tapping in.

You just seem like incredibly useful to people in that moment, right? Yeah, and it just seemed like I feel like I can absorb stuff pretty well in the courtroom. Like, I covered the best trial actually ever that I covered was a couple months before that. in federal court, Vanessa Bryant's lawsuit over the, against LA County, over the photos that they took at Kobe Bryant and Gianna Bryant and the other victims in that helicopter crash. That was a really, really good trial. And there was, just the lawyers were really, really excellent. The topic was crazy, was crazy. And all the testimony was just like you felt like every word of the testimony was really, really important. And that was handwritten notes only. So I felt like I was,

like I had practice, like absorbing everything. Like, even if you're not even able to get, like, write down every single quote. If you take notes in a way where you go back and look over the notes, you can almost kind of replay the testimony in your head. It starts to come back to you. Right. Like, it's buried somewhere in your recollection. And it's just, like, forgotten art of having to actually write things down and remember things, and you don't have, like, a video that you can just be referring back to. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it's so much more serious serious with with the no cameras, no laptops in the, courtroom. I mean, it's annoying and it's not good for public access, but it just brings such a more,

like, almost solemn feeling to the proceedings. So, and then I always say that my background covering, like, convenience store robberies up in Spokane, like being the 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. reporter in Spokane and you've got to write a five-inch story about a freeway crash that killed two people. It's like you just learn how to, like, quickly convey information. So when you go into a test, you know, hear opening statements, you can come out and say, here's what happened in opening statements. The prosecutor's first words before he got before the jury were dance bitch and just go into kind of a chronology of what he said, whereas other people might come out and say, and this is what I noticed on the first day, that so many of the hip-hop blogs, their biggest headline from the

first day of opening statements, was that Tori's lawyer had said something about Megan, like also sleeping with DeBaby or something. and as somebody who was sitting in court, like, listening to the opening statements, it was such a small moment in his opening. And the way he said it, he was kind of like, yeah, and she'd done this before with the debate. He kind of, like, just read it and was like, whoa, wait, go back to what you were saying about the victim's sex life, like, that you wanted the jury to know that in your opening statement. As somebody who watched a lot of trials, I was just like, I don't think this is going to play very well for this jury, you know?

And it was just kind of strange to see like the Instagram comment or the internet driven defense kind of play out in a courtroom and how much it did not play well with the jury. Right. Because like I mean as somebody who even on a lot of days we'd be doing like real time reactions to what had happened throughout like the earlier part of the day on trial and everything like that. And I have some degree of guilt about having sort of been duped by a certain story. lines that were being putting out there. And I never really wavered on my belief that the most likely scenario was the Tory Lane shotter in the foot. But there was definitely moments where, you know, certain narratives were kind of being pushed by his team of the media that kind of had me saying things that gave a little bit too much credence to certain things that now, to me,

seem like blatant disinformation that, to be honest, he pretty much like masterfully deployed, you know, like even though he didn't ultimately prevail, I don't think I've, ever seen anyone do a better job of creating just like a cloud of mystery around a situation by putting out so many different narratives, right? Yeah, it was interesting to me how focused he was on that. And like even right now, the, the statement that he just put out on his Instagram page is so obviously a reaction to that New York Post or New York Daily, I think it was a New York Post, had an anonymous source saying that, you know, he's scared to death and he's afraid for his life in prison. So the voicemail that

he just put out from prison was obviously to refute that just to show that he's a good He created sort of like an animated phone graphic to use with it, like the way that they do the lyric visualizers for when artists put out songs and stuff. And it's just like he's shown a dedication to trying to craft the public narrative that you very rarely see where a lot of times when people get into these situations, they just go quiet and they let their legal team handle it. And they'll do interviews, but they won't say anything about it. I mean, he was putting out coded messages to the fans, even in his music videos and stuff is really stuff that you've like never seen before. Totally, totally. And that was just the focus on that and the, I almost wonder, there's such a disconnect between what he was doing and what was actually going to happen in the courtroom. Because it seems like anybody who was like familiar with trials and how things worked, it just, it didn't look good for him already.

And then all this public relations and internet stuff, it's like it's not going to come into the courtroom. And that's why after the conviction is when I really started feeling like the heat online. from all his fans because the masses had kind of died down and they were still there. But it was just bizarre to me because I'm like, he's been convicted. Like this is over. Like all the energy that they spent on all this post-conviction stuff should have been put on a better trial because I mean, I just think he was ill-served by his decision to switch out Sean Hawley and then go with George McDesion at the last minute because he wanted

somebody to embrace the Kelsey Dider theory. Yeah, the Kelsey Schroeder defense. but it's like, this is a really serious case. And I mean, the idea that he, after he was convicted, he wasn't just totally screwed and was going to go to prison for a few years. I mean, he wasn't going to get a new trial. He's not going to get one now. You just wonder about, you know, how prepared was he for it and how clueless are these people

about the justice system. Yeah. And, I mean, the recently I've seen it in the news, I don't know how verified this information was, but the idea that he basically could have pled out. to like, what was it, a year or two years? I did. So, so, Vlad Saur said four years. And then I heard from Alex Bot, the prosecutor, said he was pretty sure that they didn't offer

a plea on it, but that also he wasn't the prosecutor on it from the very beginning. So I haven't gotten a confirmation on whether there was any kind of plea from Kathy Taub. But then I've also heard from a credible source that it was three years, that he was offered three years. And the idea that he wasn't offered any kind of plea deal, I think it's hard to, hard to believe. leave. But, you know, I can see, I mean, the idea of going to prison for three years doesn't sound very fun either, but it's just the circumstances that he was facing and then what he's facing now. And then I'm not sure how much of it is puffery and how much of it is just do they not understand

the system. But I saw a TMZ article that said, you know, his lawyers are working around the clock to try to get him out or try to do an appellate motion over his bail pending appeal. And it's like, okay, I mean, in the end, TMZ is just kind of, appealing to the dumbest people out there. But like working around the clock, what are they doing? He's, he's kind of screwed. They're losing sleep. You want us to believe that they're just not sleeping because they're working so hard?

So what are they doing? So if they're working around the clock and that article published two days ago, we should definitely be seeing something filed right now. It's just, I mean, it's just TMZ blowing smoke. Right. Like, yes, earlier today, I was doing the podcast with my two co-host, Brigh Baby and Desto Dub. And, you know, they're not super,

media-obsessed types of guys. So they're probably like most of their assumptions about the Toy Lane case are just kind of casual conversations or they've seen a few videos. And they probably haven't even thought about the shit in a few months. But I mentioned that I was interviewing you. And they both, when I said that I believed that yes, he shot her in the foot, that they kind of looked at me as if I was a conspiracy theorist or as if I, like, they were surprised that I was going along with the mainstream narrative on this, which I mean,

I've had the same experience when people realize that I got vaccinated. they're like, or when people realize I voted for Joe Biden, where it's like these things that seem extremely logical and rational to me are very easily cast in this like extremely suspicious anti-expert light that kind of, and I remember, I remember once like when Trump got arrested, or when Trump got arrested, I guess that has happened as well, when Trump got elected, that there was just like a lot of people that I respect saying, the bad thing about this is not just the fact that he's present. it's going to normalize lying.

And with Torrey Lanes, I feel like I've seen that better than in a different part of society than I've probably ever seen it anywhere else. That like, you know, the conspiracy mindset has certainly been advanced in hip-hop a lot by this whole thing. And the attacking the messenger, too, like the attacking of journalists. And there's kind of a whole crowd that sees this and actually thinks that I should be, like, embarrassed because Tori Lanes insulted me or something. I just look back at like journalists that I admire, a columnist for the Miami Herald Carl Hyacin on his website actually writes that one of his proudest moments was when a member of the board of commissioners who he'd been writing about actually issued a resolution condemning his work and just thought it was like a real badge of honor.

So it's like, I mean, the whole googly-eyed bitch thing, the whole him like just taking such a target on me, it was weird, but it also seemed very Trumpian. Although we should be clear that it's not like attacking journalists began with Trump. I mean, Democrats do it. It's been going on for a long time. But just the whole, instead of focusing on the facts, focus on the person who's presenting the facts and like try to attack them and like demean them. Right. 100%. And I mean, calling you that on his part, it really does the opposite of what he might have been trying to do there.

Because to me, as someone who knew Tory Lane's before this and thought he was an asshole, but like a tolerable asshole, like not. an asshole who I had a reason to like speak publicly about that very much is in the line with the character that I've seen him express throughout this whole trial and I just that that was just a very confusing move to me because it's like I mean I would I would hope that we could kind of agree especially in a solemn moment after you've been found guilty that to attack the physical appearance of a reporter and to me a reporter who's mostly been pretty fair to him that's what I've thought. Like the biggest, the biggest thing that I've noticed is the, the attack and the heat really happened after the trial. Because up until the very moment he was convicted, I think

people thought that he could be acquitted. And that was, they were all reading my reporting too. And then I, it might have been afterward, because I did some candid interviews afterward, where I said, yeah, I thought from the beginning that I thought he'd be found guilty that his, his jail call to Kelsey didn't look good. But then also the post-convict. coverage that I did because his lawyers and what he did with his PR campaign and then his motion for new trial trying to recuse the judge. It was so unusual and there wasn't really anyone else who was covering it like I was. So I think that like really caught their attention and so they felt like they needed to somehow discredit me through through that. But it was just kind of

funny how they went apart, went about doing it. And especially at the point where he has his last words in court be that or some of his last words in court be that. And how verified is that? Because you weren't 100% sure if this happened at first when you tweeted about it, right? Yeah, I didn't hear it. But one of his fans online who had direct contacts in the courtroom tweeted it out. And that's how I first heard about it. And I was like, okay, so is that, is that what he said? It makes sense. And I believed it like the second that I saw the tweet, but I wanted to get other confirmation. So I just emailed the DA's office, like Alex Bot and Kathy Taum was like, hey, did you guys hear this at all. And Alex Baas's like, oh, yeah, yeah, several deputies heard him say that.

He said conflicting reports on whether he actually said my name. But the way he was looking over at me and stuff, it's like he had to have been saying that, the way his fans were kind celebrating that. And I think some people were worried that I was going to be upset about it. But other people were just like, you realize this is like, I mean, he just insists on trying to make me like a household name on these hip-hop blogs. Which from your perspective is probably kind of helpful, right? I mean, yeah, I mean, I might as well ride the wave. Like, it was, I was a little like in the beginning, what do I do with this kind of thing? Because I don't want to just be like the hip hop legal reporter. And I, you know, everyone's always, not everyone, but like two people

will comment, oh, she's a culture of culture or something. It's like, and somebody, somebody commented, they're like, the culture is not the courthouse, you know, I cover, as long as you're, you know, sticking to legal cases and not, I'm not planning to branch out into the latest, uh, blueface drama or anything like that. But if there was a criminal case, which it seems there almost certainly will be at some point. Yeah, no. And I have been like, I might be writing about these two sooner than later. Oh, yeah.

You seen that baby's hernia? I have not seen the photo. I've seen it. I got it. It is jaw dropping. And then my jaw did drop. It's just blue face going on Twitter and be like, oh, my phone was stolen. My Twitter is at, come on.

I feel like his legal counsel might have told them to say that. Because whenever they're using an asset or a piece of content, of social media in a trial, there's always an attempt to explain a way why this might not have actually been real or why this can't be, you know, evidence in the trial. So I feel like him saying that at least it like plants the seed of doubt so it might not actually be able to be used in a trial because, I mean, I guess posting your son's penis is, I mean, it's pretty serious. Yeah. You could imagine charges be impressed about that, right? Yeah, just the other, I was like, I can't believe I know so much about these people. And I actually had to go and I googled

Krasian just to see how old she is because I have, I have empathy for her. And I like, Temeca Mallory had a nice Instagram post about how just trying to be helpful for her and just dumping on people in situations like that just doesn't help. And I was reminded of my aunt actually in Carvalis, Oregon, started a place called Old Mills Center for Children and Families that aims to help people who are in situations like that, who are completely overwhelmed, have no parenting skills whatsoever. But in the end, like, they love their kid and they want to learn how to be good parents and can we have them, can we give them resource to try to do this? So I kind of come from a background that's more that than just, oh, let's make social media

posts mocking these people and like speculating about the kid crying and stuff. So it's kind of weird to see that stuff play out. And I feel like I've been, especially in the last few months, just because my social media algorithms kind of put it all in my face. So, I mean, me, myself has just been kind of having a, what do I cover as a reporter with all this newfound, newfound fame. But I think the key is to just focus on LA cases because there's plenty of celebrity cases going on. And then there's all these interesting federal cases and, you know, cases that people might not hear much about because the defendants aren't famous,

but they're still really interesting. Right. How do you feel about, we've also seen some, some sort of celebrity lawyers like our boy Moe, who've kind of taken upon themselves to, you know, fly out to L.A. and sort of involve themselves in some of these trials. And there's been some wild visual aids to this effect that have come out, like Mo coming out and delivering the not guilty verdict to the NBA young boy fans and they're all jumping up and down and screaming. And it's kind of wild for people who, you know, grew up throughout the 90s and stuff who saw the legal system as mostly being a pretty boring thing. And like, you know, the OJ trial in comparison was pretty tame compared to a lot of this.

And like, like, what does that like to sort of witness that? Because he's kind of doing like the court reporter thing. Oh, yeah. And I am kicking myself. for not covering the NBA young boy. And I heard from some friends in the U.S. Attorney's Office that they got their ass kicked on that case. And nobody within the U.S. attorney's office really realized who he was and like how big he was

and the lawyers that he had. I mean, the young AUSAs who prosecuted that case. I mean, it was just a felon in possession of a firearm charge. So it's not like they had their veterans on it. But apparently they just like walked into a buzzsaw on that. But there's so many cases that get, that just fly under the radar that don't get, coverage very well. So it's like, yeah, if we can figure out a way to like kind of bring those to life, I mean, yeah, when was the last time a felon in possession of a firearm case got so much

coverage from that? And then I was just thinking about the judge's house arrest order for Kenneth Petty. I mean, these LA federal judges have like really no scrutiny except for the lawyers who appear in front of them. Of course, everybody kind of talks in their own circles, but the lawyers are like ethically bound to not say anything publicly about these cases or about the judges. So you kind of have a duty as a journalist to like try to bring some light to these cases. And I think the lawyers who go in and the law tube crowd is interesting and there's definitely obviously a market for it. But the lawyers I know are way too busy to just be talking on YouTube like that.

And it would be seen as like pretty low class and almost unethical to be talking about cases like that. Right. And Moe's monetization scheme long term is that basically he will represent you when you sue your employer for a slip and fall or like an underpaid overtime case or whatever, which is pretty funny, like the same way that like an only fan's model seeks out attention to drive people back to our only fans, he's seeking attention through these trials,

hoping that he'll be at the front of your mind when you decide that you want to sue Wendy's for not paying you for overtime or whatever. It's an interesting profession, and it's so unregulated, especially like we've seen in California. I mean, there's just so many different types of lawyers. And with, you know, Tom Girardi from the real,

housewives of Beverly Hills crowd. He basically ran the California State Bar for years and was, you know, very influential on judge elections. And he was a huge crook. And he was ripping off all sorts of people. So just just the lawyers who spring up and are just like, oh, I'm a lawyer. And I think society still has a big deference to lawyers. I mean, you want to defer to lawyers. It's why it's why you hire him. I mean, and I still hear it. It's like, well, Megan's not a lawyer. It's like, well, yeah, I'd like to think if I was a lawyer, I'd be practicing law. Right. Not writing about other people who practice law.

But, I mean, the one thing that has come up, and I think both me and Vlad and maybe academics, have all kind of separately said this about Mo, a lawyer for workers, if you're confused who we're talking about, is that it seems like, at least to our perspective, that he might be dealing with a little bit of audience capture issues, where it seems like he kind of takes the side of the rapper more often than not, which seems a little odd. in certain cases like Torrey Lane's thing because it's like, yes, I understand that that is the perspective that is going to be popular with your audience. You got your audience from the rap crowd, not the battered women crowd, which to the extent that

that exists. So it's kind of like it helps him to represent Toray Lanes because a lot of Tori Lanes fans are just going to click off and stop following you if you seem to be taking an anti-Torailant's stance. But do you think that that's like a real problem in terms of how these trials are being covered? Well, he just seems so off in some of his perceptions of it. And what he would tell people was like the main point of testimony. In the end, he was like having all those people think that Tori might be acquitted.

When the chances of him ever being acquitted were like really, really slim, like hung jury maybe. I mean, the chance of any kind of acquittal on that was just like slim to none. So there is just kind of a puffing up of the crowd. And it's not rooted in informing the public and like the grassroots of journalists. That's why, I mean, the mainstream media gets a lot of criticism, and rightfully so. Like, there's tons of problems with, like, East Coast bias and just the elitism in the mainstream media and what they cover and what they don't cover. But, like, the grassroots of how you learn to be a reporter, like working at a regional paper, like the spokesman review, and who you call when there's a freeway accident and how you get the information and how you approach calling the victim's family. you just learn how to approach news stories from like a public standpoint that I don't think

a lot of these people have ever even thought about before, you know? It's just kind of like sensationalizing it and getting clicks and that kind of thing. So I mean, the true crime crowd I have a lot of complaints about, but even just the fact that it's called true crime. It's like when I was at the spokesman review, it was called the crime beat. Well, it was called the public safety beat because it's not like you just write about crime to write about crime. You're trying to answer a broader question of, are we safe?

safe as a community? Are we prosecuting crime in a way that makes us safer? Not just, hey, look at all this crazy stuff that happened in the local trailer park. I mean, it's kind of like taken as a given in the year 2023 that the average American woman has an unquenchable thirst for true crime lore. Do you find this urge within yourself as somebody who's been doing this professionally since before that kind of became a common meme? I mean, I've always been, interested in it. I mean, everybody is kind of interested in, like, the depths of society. And remember my editor at the spokesperson interview told me that a lot of people, when they read about crime, they're reading about it because they're like, they're like, oh, this could have happened

to me. I could be, and when really most of the crime when you get into it, it's like actually that couldn't have been you. And like, unless you're out, like, looking for a fight, looking to score a bag of dope or looking to pick up a prostitute, your chances of being a victim of violent crime in this country or like slim to none. But just the way the internet is and kind of the sensationalism of all these cases, I think people have kind of lost sight of that. And there's a perception in society that crime is going up. And I think there's been an uptick in the last few years,

but it's still that classic like 20 or 30 years. It's actually gone like way down. And then I noticed this with the hip-hop world too, that the death of like the one place where you get all sorts of news. because the benefit of like a newspaper is all this other news is just in your face and you can't avoid it. Whereas, you know, if you only get your news from the Shadroom or you only get your news from No Jumper, there's just a lot of different perspectives that you're missing out on. And then the way the YouTubers kind of compete with each other, it becomes like competition.

Instead of everyone realizing that, you know, back in the heyday, we would all work at the same newspaper and we would all go out at night and get drunk and people would hook up with each other or something. But instead, it's like a big rivalry. But a lot of people would say that, and I disagree with it quite often, that the new marketplace of ideas that we exist in is better because, you know, heterodox opinions are allowed to exist and be discussed. But I think what you see way more of is just non-experts acting like experts when it comes to everything from like, I mean, every day I log into Twitter and I see a bunch of Republican commentators who don't seem like they have any clue what they're talking about telling me how fucked up Biden is when it comes to you. Ukraine or whatever. And it's just like the experts have kind of been pushed out of the discourse for not being exciting enough quite often. Yeah, it's like nerdy to be smart. And it's uncool to be smart and nerdy. And it's such a siloed effect in social media. And really this whole thing, especially with just all the vitriol online in the past few months, I'm like, I just need to sign off there. You know, instead of like living on social media, it's like try to go out in the real world. Tweet and exit out of the app. Yeah, exactly. It's something tough to pull off.

Exactly. I was thinking about, I want to get back up to Yosemite National Park, if I can. I'd done like a big national park tour in 2020. But I was thinking about when I first started going up there, I was reading all about the park. And I read an article, and I think the Fresno B about a guy who took troubled kids to Yosemite National Park. And he said that he would take him up to Glacier Point where there's like a view of the whole park. You've got like the valley and half dome and the mist trail, the waterfalls. that lead up to Half Dome and then Yosemite falls over there and he'd show it to him and just be like, this is it. Like, this is the world.

Like, you can do what you want with it. And it's like, think about all the people who saw this in the very beginning, like hundreds and thousands of years ago and decided like we're going to climb to the top of Halfdome. And I was thinking, like, can you imagine a counselor for troubled teens opening up a web browser and going to like a message board on Lipstickalley.com and being like, this is it, guys. This is the world. This is what's out there. like, yeah, we got to turn off the internet and go outside more, you know?

Yeah, I was having that feeling when I was in Hawaii on vacation recently and just like being on the beach and just thinking what, like, what is it about me that makes me crave doing these podcasts and doing business on a day-to-day basis instead of just like hanging out on the beach? Because a lot of these people, you don't really live in Hawaii unless you kind of want to hang out on the beach in the sun quite often. And a lot of those people seem just blatantly a lot happier than the vast majority of people that I spend time around.

And, you know, granted, like most people don't really have that choice to go hang out on the beach. But it's interesting to me that so few people do choose to kind of make that their life. Yeah, yeah. And you just kind of get used to. And I've fallen into it in the last eight months or so. Just there's so much internet going on, so many cases to cover. And you're not getting out as much. But you're much happier if you kind of break away from that a little bit.

You just realize the real world exists elsewhere. And I think the Tori Lane's case is such a good example of that. Because, I mean, he was so gassed up on the Instagram comments and so were so many of his supporters. And still to this day, just some of the comments I get, I'm like, God, they don't realize that the trial ended on December 23rd. Right. It's weird. Damn. Yeah, because that makes me thinking about the fact that I always was making an attempt to have conversations about the Tory Lane's case in a respectful way in the sense that I didn't want to throw him under the bus, even though I felt like he was guilty.

and I didn't want to, you know, like necessarily buy into narratives that I felt like he was putting out there unfairly. But once we had talked about it on the show a couple of times, I got a DM from him after not talking to him for a few years. That was basically just like, fuck you, you fucking bitch. Yeah, right, right, around and just like attacking me, even though I felt like I was really attempting to speak fairly when his name would come up and everything. And he fully unloaded about me. And I'm looking at my DMs like, bro, you have such bigger things to be worried about. Like the fact that I'm even entering your mind right now is insane. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, definitely innocent until proven guilty. I mean, until he was convicted, you know, I mean, and even after he's convicted, everybody deserves to be treated fairly. But it seems like his idea of it, or he's just so used to the gaslighting that was going on before that, that afterward, I mean, his stuff about how the DNA was like so crucial in his conviction, that's such bullshit. No one wasn't.

The prosecutors went up there. and told the jury that they couldn't say one way or the other, whether his DNA was on the gun or not. It's like, in the end, that was favorable for Torrey. And that's what Sean Hawley said from the very beginning. And if there's one conversation in this whole thing that I wish I could be a fly on the wall for, it's the conversation that Sean Hawley references in her email to him before the trial where she tells him that she doesn't think the Kelsey defense is a viable strategy. And if he wants to pursue that defense, he should check with George to see if George is willing to do it. But she says, you know, per our discussion on Saturday, I'm like, I wonder what that discussion

was like between Tori lanes and Sean Hawley, who's a very experienced criminal defense attorney. And if she was telling him that blaming Megan's best friend for shooting her wasn't a good strategy, it's like she had a point. And bias has not come out and said anything about, you know, the Kelsey shot her defense, but he has said things about the misogynistic stuff that came out in trial and the whole idea that the jury was being told that Tori was going back and forth between, you know, Megan and Kylie Jenner at the pool. He's like, none of that should have been in the trial at all. None of that was relevant. And it's like, well, it was Tori's own lawyer who was presenting that. So I think, like, in retrospect, especially bias is experienced enough with jury

trials enough that I think his approach would have been totally different. But the question is, would Tori have allowed that and would his ego have allowed that? Because it seems, like that's what happened with with him and holly was they just had a huge disagreement about it so he was able to get george to come in and it kind of be a yes guy for him and so you think his first lawyer just didn't want to fuck up her own credibility by attempting to blame this on kelsey because it just probably would have looked so absurd credibility but then also just the idea of that just not being a good like that could be a defense that assures his conviction because you're almost putting a burden of proof on the defense when you do that. You never want the defense to have to prove more than they have to.

And when instead of just leaving it open-ended and kind of making the jurors think that it could have been the driver, it could have been Kelsey, we just don't know because the investigation was so sloppy and there was such a rush to investigate to convictory. They just put it all on Kelsey. So it's like, so if the jury doesn't think it's Kelsey, you're kind of screwed. You're like creating this extra burden of proof that like almost doesn't even need to be there. Did you walk away from this thinking that Kelsey was in any way guilty or culpable of anything? There's definitely something involving, and I think the prosecutors have said the bribery, that I need to watch that HBO Max video that came out,

but I think Alex Botts says in there that Tory bribed her, that they were actually wanted to amend the charges during trial to add a bribery charge against Tory, but the judge wouldn't allow it. And I think that has to do with Kelsey. So her pleading the fifth and then getting immunity, I think it all had to do with the bribery and if there were any kind of payments involving that. But the thing that trips me up with that is if she was bribed, she like completely breached their contract or something when she went into that prosecutor's interview

and told them everything in September. I mean, you've probably heard. But it felt like she got bribed later on, right? It could have been, but that's a pretty short window, though, because it was like September 2020 when she did the interview, and then December 2020 was the trial. Right. So if the bribery happened before then,

she still went in and told prosecutors everything. Right. Another weird thing about it, though, is that I've never met Meg, and I don't know what kind of person she is, but it does feel like she has kind of like aggressively fallen out with a lot of people in a relatively short period of time, Kelsey being one of them. And then even like little things like like the the way that like Drake just kind of like

recently sort of dismissed her on stage. Yeah. Little things like that. And I even remember one episode of this podcast, Joe Budden just talking about how he believed that she was a shitty person and yet. And just little things like that like I definitely still think she was the victim of this attack. But it does feel like something about her like because publicly her personality comes off.

Like she's America's sweetheart. Like very kind of hard to find her bad behavior that makes people dislike her. But then I am kind of surprised from time to time to see the amount of people who seem like they do kind of turn on her over time. I have always just kind of seen it as just, I mean, siding with Tori, being upset that Tori's in prison. But then her whole fallout with Kelsey, I just thought it was really sad when I like was watching the trial and I realized that they used to be best friends and really good friends. And then after the shooting, they're not friends anymore. And especially in Kelsey's interview with the prosecutor, she's so focused on Megan. behavior and kind of the sliding that happened. But if you just think of the situation that Megan was in at

the time, like, I remember when she was on the stand, she was like, and I was just at the point where I was getting so famous, you know, and she was like on the brink of all this stuff. And then this happened. So you can kind of see how she'd want to like, like circle the wagons around her. And I guess it's, I mean, on the one hand, it's surprising that Kelsey wouldn't be like in that wagon circle with her, if they've been friends for so long, but just all the drama of what happened. And I thought it was sad. I don't know. There were so many aspects at play there that I never was just like, oh, well, she just must be a bad person. I was like, this must be so stressful for her.

If you had a friend and that friend one night while you guys were out partying or whatever got shot by her boyfriend or a guy she was seeing at the time, I would just feel like that experience would bond you to her in such a way that it would take so much to drive you guys apart because you just witnessed and were a part of her dealing. with one of the most horrific things you could deal with. It's just kind of hard to imagine the circumstances in which you would just like turn your back on her, right? I remember watching the trial and thinking that like the hip-hop industry had to have played into this. Like Megan's emerging fame and just the people around her and all the drama online had to have been a big part of it too. Because that's one thing I've really noticed in the last eight or nine months is just how much that drama like drives everything and how people are like so fixated and in, noticing it. So if Megan felt like that there were rumors going around or or something,

you know, it just feels like it was just a big communication problem between those two. And, and I've always just been like, I hope that they can somehow like someday like work things out. Because I just remember as somebody who didn't know anything about the case and seeing them testify, I was like those two seem like they have a lot in common. I can see why they were really good friends. I just thought it was sad what happened. I wonder if we'll ever get to hear Kelsey, like, bear her soul and tell us what really happened. Maybe a book?

I almost think, yeah, but I almost think her interview with prosecutors was almost her bearing her soul. But it doesn't explain, like, exactly what happened between her and Megan. But you can just feel like the hurt in her voice and kind of the, like, she just doesn't understand this and how she's so fixated on what Megan did or what Megan didn't do. But it's like, I can just see how somebody's who's already a little overwhelmed. at like this emerging fame that they're having getting put in a situation like that and just being like I mean you almost just shut down to everyone you know right I remember somebody submitting one of her music videos probably her label or maybe her to my live stream in 2018 and just thinking like oh like she's got some talent like you know she seems all right I wasn't exactly I wasn't blown away to the point why what I should have done is I should have dropped everything and been like she's a star she's gonna be fucking huge but just for for her to go from that in 2018 to 2020, just partying with the Kardashians is a pretty fucking big deal.

Just dating or hooking up with or having anything going on with Tori Lane's. That would be a pretty big deal to any normal person. And then for her to end up in this situation. And that is like when you really kind of realize the cruelty of the whole situation, it's the extent to which she dealt with so much negative publicity and kind of became this villain-esque character for a period of time from a situation that basically had nothing to do. her fault at all.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I can, from a mainstream standpoint, though, I think that it shows how much, how much more mainstream appeal

she has than him, though, because if somebody who tangentially listens to hip hop and knows, like, the mainstream stuff, but isn't involved in all the drama. I mean,

I knew who she was, but I had never heard of him. And I think that's how it is with, like, a lot of mainstream people. Like, I'm not sure if mainstream society really, like,

takes Torrey Lane seriously. But I think they do, take Megan the Stallion seriously, although you're not going to hear her music everywhere, because it's like, you know, hey, eat my ass or something. Yeah, I mean, he is very talented, from my objective point of view, he's very, very talented as a singer slash rapper, but at the same time, his personality doesn't really necessarily ooze the charisma that would necessarily take him to the place of being a Drake who's always going to be the number one person he's compared to because of where he's from and everything. And, I mean, they hated each other

for a significant chunk of his career up until a few years ago or whatever. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. That's wild. I will say just to calm the masses if they're out there, that one of the more boring debates that breaks out in my replies is like, who is more successful? And it's like them comparing their Spotify listens or something. It's like, can we just agree that they were both successful in their own, right?

Yeah. And I mean, yeah, for at least this time period, she's clearly been dramatically more successful. I mean, I don't, like, records. sales wise and stuff she hasn't maybe lived up to some of the hype but i mean she's a beloved figure although i wonder to what extent the tory thing kind of damaged a lot of that because for sure for like the rapper rapper crowd it probably damaged that a lot but i think in a more mainstream sense like she's very beloved yeah yeah i like her uh npr tiny desk series i mean i'd heard some of her

songs before but i listened to her tiny desk uh concert a while back and was like wow this is awesome like how talented i'm ashamed to the extent to the extent to which I enjoy the Tiny Desk series. Me and my girl and my kid watch the Post Malone one all the time. Oh, nice. It sounds way better than those same songs sound on Spotify. Gosh, you know, I just looked up a case of his. And actually, I heard about it from you guys.

The girl, his ex-girlfriend who was trying to get some kind of settlement or something departure settlement from him. And the law firm actually suitor. And then the law firm went and filed something in court that revealed some personal information about her that she's now upset about. And as somebody who's covered lawyers and is just kind of on the lawyer beat,

I was like, that's so appalling by the lawyers. Really? I went and looked at the court documents too. I mean, just lawyers suing their old clients. Like, I mean, even if you have a case, it just seems like that is such bad form a lawyer to turn around and sue their client, especially when your client is like,

I don't know how old she is, but she's got to be in her like late 20s or early 30s. You sue her because she settled privately Leah with her ex-boyfriend and you want a piece of her money. Do you think there's anything unique about the Torrey Lane's case in it being a hip-hop thing? Because when I think about the Johnny Depp thing and having watched that Netflix series about that and stuff, I wasn't super paying attention to that while it was happening, but they do seem sort of eerily similar. Although, obviously, the Johnny Depp thing was quite a bit less serious.

I think there was so much, like, the misogynistic crowd is just like so eager to hop onto a case if they think a woman is lying. You know, oh, this woman scorned and this poor guy is being, you know, in a, you know, but civil cases are just so much different than criminal cases that I just think this one, I'm not sure it really could play out as some kind of controversy when, one thing, I wish we could talk to the jury. If any, if any Tory Lane's jurors are watching this, I'd love to talk to you and give you anonymity on it. I can imagine them not really wanting to come forward, but everyone just forgets that there were 12, people who like heard everything and debated amongst themselves for seven hours and then came out and convicted him like pretty swiftly right solid conviction what was like the demographic of the

jury i wasn't i don't know if i ever saw him but gosh off the top of my head it was a lot of women it was i think it was like seven or eight women and uh an older older black woman an older black man uh there was like three or four white people The jury foreman kind of had a gamer vibe to him. He was like some nerdy-looking white guy in his 20s. Have you seen jury duty? No, I haven't. I've heard it.

You know about it? No, I've heard. It's amazing. Some jurors were talking about it in a jury pool I saw. That was the best two or three days of my life. I was watching that shit. But he becomes the foreman at a certain point. That's pretty hilarious.

Okay. So you, what's this thing about the Nikki and Oz thing? They announced or you broke the news of Nikki's husband being placed on her a 20 days house arrest? Well, some people had already tweeted it. And that's actually how I saw it is some people had like added me on the replies being like, hey, did you see this order about Kenneth Petty? And when I saw it, I was like, oh, yeah, that's right up my alley.

That's Judge Fitzgerald. That's a signature right there. And yeah, I mean, I didn't think it warranted like a story that I would write up and send out to my email list. But I was like, I can take a screenshot of that and tweet it out and didn't expect it to get all the attention that it did. But, you know, I think people appreciate the. authoritative tone and the explanation of exactly what it is.

But, yeah, I mean, like everyone, I had followed the videos and the drama between, it's what started at the video music awards and then offset sent him a DM and then the video of Kenneth Petty out on the street in New York City, like looking for offset and then offset responded by filming himself like getting off a jet or something. And I was like, you know, my algorithm. It just puts it right in my face. Would you say that you're genuinely interested in this or is this stuff that you're just kind of paying attention to because it seems like it might turn into a case or a criminal thing at a certain point? Somewhat interested in it because I especially after covering Cardi B and just seeing her in person, I have kind of an interest in her in her life.

So I'm just kind of somewhat interested in offset too. But I was also like, how do I change my algorithm? So every time I go on to social media, I don't see all this stuff. I don't care. And I was just amazed that people were like, I mean, it was the whole weekend news cycle of like the YouTubers trying to. update on that. It was like the latest blue face in Krizian. Then I saw the order and I'm like, okay, this is federal court in L.A. And at the time, I didn't realize or remember that he had been put on probation. But yeah, being on federal probation is a pretty big deal. Right. I mean,

my main takeaway from that is just like, Nikki Minaj needs people around her to tell her how she looks because she's just not like even take the being a woman out of the situation. If you, you're Jay-Z and you're standing outside, you know, yapping in your phone talking about how tough you are. It's just not going to come off. Good. And granted, she didn't do that, but she was, like, very much co-signing it. And, like, you know, she's at Queen Radio, Queen B Radio, whatever, with like a bunch of goons in the room and stuff. And it's just like, you know, when you're a woman at your age, nobody wants to see you putting out this sort of image.

And even as a guy, like, nobody wants to see this, especially when you're at the top of the game. And Cardi being offset are doing a good job of looking kind of unbothered and just sort of, being, you know, happy and successful to get there. And for some reason, Nicky Manage is just full of this, like, anger. And maybe it's kind of working in terms of pushing the album, but I feel like most people are kind of laughing at her. Well, and behind the scenes, people had to have been like, okay, you don't want to go to court for this. Because it's important to note that Kenneth and his lawyer just agreed to the whole thing. They waved in appearance and were like, yeah, put me on house arrest for a couple of 20 days. Really? It just took that

120 days like nothing, huh? Yeah. So it must have been, you know, some kind of PR stuff in mind there. I mean, if that got a media attention, imagine how much media attention it would get if he actually had to go to court. He's probably not dying for people to pay more attention to his initial charges and everything. Because I have seen a lot of renewed interest in that. And even today, I've seen people posted pictures of leaked photos of his victim allegedly from whatever. And the whole idea that people were laughing at him. I mean, just objectively speaking, like from a factual standpoint, when people say that this was a grown man who was grounded and put on time out, it's like, yeah. That's an accurate way to describe it.

I mean, it's a little flippant and maybe not like a professional journalistic way to describe it. But yeah, I mean, you got put on time out. And it's weird too because it's like throughout the course of being married to Nikki Minaj, I'm sure that he has had conversations had with him that are like, you're not allowed to do this on social media or this is a bad look because he's always been like very, very quiet on social media. And then all of a sudden you just see him doing something that him basically being like a street thug from New York City. seems like pretty much like within his realm of shit that he would like I feel like him making that video the more interesting thing is the fact that he hasn't made videos like that before because

that kind of seems like the real him yeah and now like you're just seeing him sort of like give into his urges and you wonder to what extent Nikki Minaj sort of said like it's okay for you to go act like a tough guy in front of the the building or whatever because it seems like he probably wouldn't have done it if he if it was going to make her angry yeah yeah and I I was kind of confused at But first I'm like, so do they think that offset is just like around the corner? And then the video, I mean, objectively speaking, it is pretty hilarious that offset was actually like on some private jet going to go see Dion Sanders or something when that happened. Yeah, you're not going to find me on the street corner here. But yeah, it's just that it's it's opened me up to the whole world of like celebrity gossip bleeding into like a court case or something.

Right. So for somebody like me, I heard years ago like, oh, Danny Master. is being charged with some sexual assault or rape and didn't really think much of it. And then all of it comes out that he got how many years? 30. 30. And it's 30 to life. So that means he's eligible for parole after 30 years.

Right. And it actually could be a little bit sooner because he's 47. And apparently there's an elderly release program, compassionate release. So by the time he's like 72 or something, he might be able to petition for release. So what was it about this? trial that got him such an unbelievable sentence because typically when you hear about people being convicted of rape charges and stuff, you hear about them getting five years or something more like that and not 30. It would depend on like what the actual rape charge was, but this was first degree

forcible rape, which was like the most serious. And it 20 years ago, but because there were multiple counts, the statute of limitations didn't apply. So it was multi, yeah, enhancing circumstance of multiple victims and two counts of forcible rape. And each one carries 15 years to life. So, like, everyone who was in the press row who was covering it thought that he would get 30 years. I mean, we originally thought it was 45 because it was three charges, but he was only convicted on two. How much evidence was there? Like, was there anything in particular that really stood out to you that really made it seem like a sure thing he was going to get found guilty? The biggest thing was 2004, one of his victims did report it to the police. So there's

there's kind of this narrative that it took them forever to report it and they kind of conspired together at the end. But one of them definitely reported it in 2004. And then there was actually a non-disclosure agreement that she signed with Danny and his lawyer. And I think Danny paid like $300,000 or almost $500,000 or something. And the judge cited that too at sentencing. And used that against him. Yeah, said that was a lot of money to pay for an incident that apparently, you know, supposedly didn't happen. And then also the victims all testified, but they each had somebody that they told about, they'd told that they'd reported the rape to earlier, like right after it happened. So they had like corroborating witnesses through that.

But one interesting angle of it, though, is the police department, the LA police department's like relationship with Scientology, because it was, it was a question of how could she have reported this in 2004 and it kind of just got buried. And that hasn't been exposed really well, but there's all these, there's all this talk about the relationship the Church of Scientology has with LAPD and especially the Hollywood precinct. But there wasn't much urgency to their investigation in 2004. There were like all these kind of problems with it. And so they think that the Church of Scientology might have some sway over the police department, huh? Yeah, yeah, just how their big presence in Hollywood. They've got so much money. And it's funny because, I mean, it's hard, I think it's hard for

people to take the Church of Scientology seriously. I mean, everybody thinks I felt. Like, and if you're on Twitter, there's a account, film the police, L.A. I don't know if you ever seen him, but he was filming the police in L.A. and he was, he has a whole explanation about how he had to stand right in front of the Scientology building door to get everyone in at the angle that he needed to get in. But one of the security guards said something to him, and this was a few months ago. So he's just been kind of on a war against Scientology ever since. Like when he's around their building, he'll film him and just make fun of them and, you know, urge people not to talk to them. You know, don't go there. It's a cult. So it seems like that's their, like, that's the most social

media you see about them. I mean, nobody takes them seriously at all. I drive by a giant church of Scientology building every day. And occasionally I see people walking out of there and I'm just staring at them wondering what the fuck they're doing with their life. This is what they're doing. They're like overtly weird, but they have tons of money. And like they, they, The Danny Masterson case, there's a civil case against him. His ex-girlfriend, who was one of the victims, filed a lawsuit, and actually went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Because the church is trying to say that she signed an arbitration agreement as a church member.

So she's not allowed to sue them. It all has to go through private arbitration. And appellate court ruled against him, and the Church of Scientology actually hired Winston-Strawn, which is like a big-time law firm, and they petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court. It didn't go anywhere, but they've got all these connections to judges and stuff, too. Because, I mean, they're stacked legally. So they've got some of the top lawyers in L.A. have worked for them before.

So when lawsuits against Church of Scientology get filed, actually it just happened. Leah Remini's lawsuit was originally assigned to a judge who then recused herself, and it's because her husband used to do legal work for the church. And Danny Masterson is still in good standings with the Church of Scientology? I think so. Yeah, it's interesting to see how they're going to deal with the fallout from this because legally they've circled the wagons around him and he's a second generation member too. His mom had all their kids born into it. It sounds like he's a child abuse survivor as far as I'm concerned. Well, and I have empathy for people who grew up in it. There's a YouTube channel that's pretty big growing up in Scientology, but he has a big channel about that.

And he runs a group to try to help people like get out of it. Yeah, growing up in a cult like that. No, I've seen some fucking great YouTube content, like sort of pointing out moments and interviews of where like, you know, where Scientology people will not say the things that they actually believe or kind of dance around answering. Because once you fully get into the shit, they just start telling you about all this crazy intergalactic shit that you then have to deny publicly. Yeah, one, I've heard, I've heard that Danny hasn't even done all that much like education or reading. Yeah, I mean, maybe he has, but there's like so much. many levels of Scientology that he's like not even close to it. It's just because he's a movie star and an actor. He was he's you know one of their protected members. So when we saw

Ashton Kutcher and Mina Kulis when they made these character reference videos basically and they then were exposed to the public and they ended up having to you know basically recant their statements are off of this big ass apology and everything. Them making those videos and assuming that they would never be released to the public is that as ordinary as they said it was? Or it was letters. Yeah, they wrote letters and then the videos apologizing for afterward. But yeah, and I'm actually working on a story on that

right now. It should be out in a couple of days on character reference letters because yeah, they're completely common. And I talked to a couple of defense attorneys were like, it's really unfair that they were like globally skewered for writing those letters because the letters are so common. But yeah, I think there's something to be said for the tone deafness of them

when they're read by the victims and you just kind of compare what they're saying in those letters to what the facts of the case are. But one thing I did was just looked up some federal sex crimes defendants who have been sentenced in the last couple of months and pulled up their reference, their character reference letters because they're not famous, so their cases didn't get any coverage at all. But the letters are the same exact thing.

I mean, it's this guy who just got sentenced for 15 years for possession of child porn and his uncle writes a letter on his law firm, letterhead talking about some positive experience in basketball like 20 years ago. The guy's aunt writes a letter saying that she can get him a job in maintenance at Cornell University. Wow. I mean, it's like the public, just the outrage cycle of the public, you know, they freak out about Ashton Kutcher and Millicunis. And, you know, I mean, it's something to be said about mainstream media and not

conveying how common that is. But also, maybe it just says something about the disconnect between the court system and the public that the public can see something like that and just be completely appalled. And then lawyers see it and they're like, oh, it happens all the time. It's like, okay, well, maybe you shouldn't. Yeah, and the memory of people is so short that I can almost imagine this exact same thing happening in a year or two. And the information landscape is so fragmented that this exact same thing could happen in hip hop. Yeah. And the vast majority of people are not paying attention to Danny Masters and Emilio Kuhna. So they're not going to necessarily remember that we just went through

this exact thing, right? Yeah. One thing I always bring up is Corey Booker. The senator wrote a character reference letter for Elizabeth Holmes. And that's not quite as scandalous because, I mean, Elizabeth Holmes wasn't convicted of forcible rape or shooting somebody, but she was convicted of a pretty big fraud that ripped off a ton of people. And she's kind of just seen as this huge sham. And yeah, Cory Booker wrote a letter. I mean, the Senate Judiciary Committee writes a letter to a federal judge.

Right. That's kind of a big deal. But I feel like that's not going to hit the same nerve that the sexual assault thing. Yeah, exactly. And then especially the fact that Ashton was on the, had that organization. That they booted them out of, I guess. Yeah.

Yeah. Just the hypocrisy of that was, but yeah, the story I'm doing, I said, let's just look up all the cases recently and pull up the character reference letters and just do a story all about that, just to show how common it is. Right.

So I'm super interested in how this ASAP Iraqi trial might proceed. I have had conversations with ASAP Raleigh, formerly ASAP Raleigh. Is that? The one who's shy. Yeah. And actually the last time I spoke to him, because there's a video of the shooting taking place.

And when I talked to him, he basically said like, yeah, nobody gets to see the video until the trial or whatever. And I said, if you show me, I promise I won't say anything. Did not work. He left me on red on that one. But I mean, this is pretty insane because we are talking about somebody who's not only like a lister in hip hop, but also has produced multiple children with Rihanna, the biggest stars in the world. So how deep into this are you and how close are you paying attention to? What we just talked about is all I know.

And I'm very skeptical of like, is this actually going to happen? Because especially the posture of this case just seems so much different than the Tory Lane's case, that it seems like he's being advised by smarter people. And I wouldn't be surprised if he takes some kind of deal or there's some kind of easy plea deal and it never goes to trial. But it sounds like you know more about it than me if you've actually talked to the victim. And is he not, if he doesn't want there to be any kind of deal and he's willing to testify, I mean, I hope there's. a trial just from a journalist standpoint? I mean, he hasn't indicated to me when I talked to Raleigh that there's been any attempt to reconcile by Rocky because you would think that the first thing that you would want to do

after you shoot somebody in the hand or whatever is that you would want to start trying to bring the temperature down and maybe try to soothe things over, at least because that could maybe be a possibility. That was never probably a possible. Well, actually, you did see Torrey Lans calling Kelsey and basically trying to do just that of like, you know, he was trying to sue things over so that maybe she wouldn't want to speak to the cops or whatever. But yeah,

from my brief conversations with him, it sounds like, you know, this pretty much happened to how that happened and there hasn't been an attempt by his legal team to,

but the newest development is that Rocky's team is suing him for defamation because of what he's said, which is kind of hard to imagine because it's not like he was going to be able

to get through this trial without defaming him if he is saying he in fact shot a loaded gun at him. Well, and that's a sign that, yeah, there's not going to be

any kind of plea deal. So yeah, no, that'll be great. I think it was scheduled sometime in August, but now it's November 8th, the preliminary hearing, which if that actually goes, that'll be really big. I mean, it happened in Tori Lane's case, and it got a lot of coverage, but that's when they air out all the evidence. Like, we'll probably see the video then because the judge is going to decide, like, whether there's enough to take it to the jury. So if that actually happens, it'll be a big story and it'll be coming up. But I'm just like, I'm skeptical because stuff always pleads and, you know, everything gets delayed. And it just sounds crazy because it's not a rapper that anybody would expect to ever have heard about shooting someone.

Really? And yeah, I mean, he's just not. He's been famous since 2011 and his reputation was never that he was a gangster or anything like that. You've never seen him with a gun. You've never thought that he would shoot somebody at this point in his career, especially when he's, you know, got all this other stuff going on. You always kind of, the relationship with all the other ASAP members has been pretty much strained since the very beginning. but yeah I mean if I actually get to see a video of Aesap Rocky shooting a gun at somebody my jaw is probably not going to leave the floor for a few days I have nothing against them but I also just kind of hate the idea of celebrities being able to get away with the worst behavior because of the fact that they're celebrities because so many people are just going to that that's kind of what I got from my conversation with Reilly when I talked to him about it is that he's just up the perspective that Rocky treats everybody in his life like total shit and that they all just deal with it because they're all trying to get something from him. And I don't know. There's a little part of me that's like, okay, he should get what he

deserves in this whole thing. The one person I talked to about this, a short while ago who does PR for situations like that was like, I wouldn't be surprised if that settles before. And I mean, if you just see the photo blitz that he's on right now, you know, young stay at home dad kind of thing, doting father, like the photos of him and Rihanna that are coming out. Like his PR team or his legal team has to be working on something. But, you know, maybe not. And maybe November 8. they'll happen and there's this preliminary hearing and then there'll be a trial so yeah that'd be great i mean they always say reporters should vote you vote your job on things right so right yeah you definitely want there to be a trial yeah it is kind of weird to be in the media which we both are to some extent and

there's a little part of your brain that you don't want to like formally acknowledge that is gets kind of happy when a crazy shooting between two famous rappers happens because it's like well this is a lot of stuff for us to talk about for the next couple years yeah yeah and right now it's kind of kind of quiet. I mean, the ASAP Rocky might be the next biggest thing. There's that, you know, post-Mallone lawsuit, but civil cases are always just like kind of harder. It can kind of weirder to cover than criminal cases, because especially with civil cases, I feel like it's so much the lawyer's personalities involved in lawyers kind of at each other. So criminal cases are really where it's at. But one, one big one that's coming up is early next year in federal court, L.A.

federal court, it'll be the Mexican mafia guys who were accused of running the drug run. in the jail, the Elk County Jail. Like Fox Landa Rodriguez is a full-fledged Mexican Mafia member who's going on trial. And then there were some younger, like lower ranking like Serenios who were under him who have been caught up in it. But one of his co-defendants is a lawyer. Actually, he was on trial last year and it was a hung jury. But he's a lawyer for the Mexican mafia and he's accused of like drug possession and

like running secret notes between the state prisons and like supermarkets. in Colorado because all these Mexican mafia members are locked up and can't have contact with anybody, but they need to make, like, crucial governing decisions about, like, who to kill. So they need somebody to, like, pass messages between the state prisons. Yeah, I mean, there's one world that I would probably be pretty cautious in discussing on the internet because that's one thing I've gleaned from having met a lot of gangsters is that there's just a level of fear when it comes to these Mexican gangs that, I just don't see it from any other part of public criminal life.

Yeah, yeah. People just do not want to talk about them ever. That's why you don't really hear about it. Like Matthew Orm-Seth at the LA Times has done a lot of really great. It's almost like a Netflix series coverage of it. But these trials will come up maybe once every like few years or so, and it gives like kind of an inside look at it. But they tried just the lawyer last fall, and it was a hung jury.

Actually, they almost acquitted them. So they're going to try them all together early. next year. But I think things like that go on a lot in L.A. that don't get a lot of coverage. Right. Yeah. Like you said, there's sensitive topics to discuss on, to discuss there.

Right. So the Johnny Depp trial took place in Delaware, right? Where they, is that it? It was Virginia. Virginia, right? Where it is okay where they can film trials and broadcast on TV and everything like that. L.A. is not like that. It's not an option for any trial.

It depends on the judge. Oh, okay. Because they did have, what was the last one that was, was it Robert Blake? There was some media coverage recently. And then like Nipsey Hustle, they didn't allow filming in the courtroom, but they did have cameras in the courtroom for, I think, the guilt or the sentencing for it. I mean, I remember seeing some photos there. So it just completely depends on the judge. But I think a lot of courts are getting really wary of allowing any kind of streaming just because of the monetization that's going on from it, just kind of how kids.

That's a good point, too. If there's random YouTube channels who are able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars by the end of the trial, it's kind of weird for the incentives of covering this, right? Yeah, yeah. So, and then I think just the logistics of the courthouse, too, like the courthouse isn't very technologically adapt, set up for all that stuff. But one thing, as a journalist, I just wish we could have laptops in there. I mean, I don't think we need to stream the whole thing. I mean, I can see if we could, that'd be great. But I'd love to be able to take notes on laptops. And that was just totally up to the job. judge. Like the judge and Danny Masterson's case let reporters who were sitting in the back row use laptops to take notes. And it was just like a night and day difference. Do you think that if the Tory Lane's trial had been broadcast to the world, that it would have been worse for him? Yes. Yeah. I think because one problem with the transcripts that people have and are floating around is it just doesn't capture the tone of the trial in kind of the buffoonery and the in the misogynistic defense that was going on. And, you know, I don't, I don't want to,

bad mouth his lawyer too much because in the end, I think his lawyer was just doing him a favor because he'd come in on the case pretty late and Tori wanted to put on the Kelsey Schauder defense and he was willing to do that. But, you know, it's hard to get up there and talk before a jury, you know, every day for 10 days and do all the questioning of witnesses and that kind of thing. And people's attention span is just pretty short when it comes to the written words. So as soon as you have a video clip of something explosive being said on trial, it just changes everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the the phone call was always bad for him and there wasn't ever really much of an explanation for the phone call. And the one transcript that I'd like to get is the closing

argument transcript where the prosecutor goes over the phone call kind of line by line and just talks about how like what else could you have been talking about here. That was my defense that I went to when I was just having a conversation with my friends and telling them why I thought sorry it was guilty. I just went straight to the phone call. It's kind of like when I have to make the case of why Trump should not ever be president again. and you go to the refusal to agree to a peaceful transfer of power thing. That's just like the easiest one that you would hope that everybody would be able to agree on. Doesn't usually seem like it works on a lot of the people that I've tried to use it on.

But, you know, Trump supporters. It's like, uh, that big riot that he caused were like cops died. Right. Innocent, like, supporter of his died and his family's all upset about it now. Yeah. Her family. Yeah. It's kind of hard to make these arguments these days.

People just always assume that there's got to be a bad. better narrative waiting. Yeah, I don't know. Definitely. So, okay, what are you focused on at this point? Are you just trying to steam ahead with this thing that you've had going? The big thing is the story on the character reference letters is kind of my immediate thing.

There's some other celebrity cases going on, like that Post-Malone lawsuit I want to look into. There's that lawsuit against Michael Jackson's estate that was just kicked back from the appellate court that I think will go to trial eventually from the people who claim sex abuse by them. That could be really big if it goes to trial. But other than that, it's a lot of federal cases. Actually, T.I. and Tiny are going to get a third trial

against MGA, the makers of those laugh out loud LOL surprise dolls. And this is them, the T.I. and Tiny suing them. The doll company actually sued them first, but then they counter sued. So T.I. and Tiny are the ones trying to get

damages out of them, saying that the dolls are a trade dress infringement of the OMG girls. If anyone remembers, like Zonique and Bejao Rodriguez and Breonna Womack had like this girl's group that I guess is, they're reviving it now, but they're saying that the dolls infringe the unique trade dress of this group.

And they lost at trial. And they were signed to T.I. or something? It was T.I. and Tiny, like, really worked on promoting them. And they were on the TV shows a lot. Right.

They lost the trial, but the judge has given them a new one. I don't know if I was saying a word about that. And most of the hip-hop. media world. It's gotten a little bit of coverage, but yeah, it's not the most like, yeah. Yeah. It's, I think some people think it's kind of a silly case, but it also has some really

interesting cultural appropriation and misappropriation things. They're just from what MGA does and the toy maker and kind of their history of taking from black creators and not crediting them at all. But fortunately, none of that stuff is actually coming into trial. So it's kind of a different one. Could you see yourself veerateers? away from putting mostly your reporting straight to Twitter? Like, is there an offer that somebody could be?

Because did you get hired by somebody towards the end of the Tory thing? Yeah, I did go to LA Magazine for a bit because they were doing, they're doing a big expansion and everything. And they're the ones that kind of helped me get set up with my YouTube and going independent and everything. But I really want to push my substack for paid subscriptions. And then also YouTube. I'm working with a production company to try to get more,

get my graphics up to date and get more of a professional production level for that. But I'd like to keep my reporting on Substack if I can because, yeah, I mean, I do want to take it off Twitter because I don't really like the direction of Twitter. And there's just no, I mean, you're not going to make a living off Twitter. The idea is driving all that traffic to Substack and YouTube. So I would like to be able to keep using that for traffic, but to do all my reporting on Substack. But there's just things that happen, like the Kenneth Petty order where I'm like, I'm not going to take the time to like write up a whole article about this. But in, you know, a minute you can just write up something real quick on Twitter and put it out there.

And it's blasted everywhere. Best possible distribution. Yeah. And that's the thing is just use it for name recognition and getting my name out. One of the things that has really fucked up Twitter, but has also kind of like made it less of a time suck for me is the fact that the verified tab is completely useless now. Seriously. Yeah. Yeah, you get huge interactions and you can't tell like where they're coming from at all.

And then when you go into that tab, it's just like some of the people are total nobodies. Yeah. It's like, what is this? The vast, for me is the vast majority of people that follow me or interact with me in any way are like 100 followers. And then I'll see that somebody with a million followers quote tweeted me and I didn't see it for two weeks because there was no way to filter for that. Yeah, there has to be a way to like fix that or something, you know. But it's like the social media ecosystem. It's like trying to keep up with it and figuring out like what's coming and what's going, you know?

You're getting paid by Twitter? I am signed up for monetization, but it's not, my payments haven't been very big. Like, even during the big traffic for Lane's sentencing, it was still three digits. I mean, it was like 400 bucks or something when somebody pointed out that it's the rating that you get for ads. So when you look at my tweets, there aren't really a lot of ads under it because, you know, I'm writing about people getting arrested and shot and everything. Just trying about real. state might be better. Well, I think if I started tweeting about IA and then also Tesla, if I just turned my account into a dedication to how great Tesla is, I think I would start

making money. All of the like psychotic right wing people that I follow will continuously post about making $12,000 this week on Twitter. That's just a reason to get out of there. It's like, oh my God, seriously. I mean, the person who was really influential in like helping me get established on Twitter was this lawyer in L.A. called Ken White, and he was Pau Pat on Twitter. And he got the hell away from Twitter, like pretty shortly after Elon bought it. Because it's like, come on, this isn't going to be good. Do you really want to be part of this? Yeah. I still spend a good amount of time reading it, but definitely the number of people that I like and respect who still seem like they post on it, it seems like it's dwindled a lot. Yeah. I mean, I wish I could just

say, oh, I don't like Elon. I'm not going to post on there anymore. But I mean, look how many followers I have on there compared to everywhere else. I get so much traffic on there. The idea is to just drive it to my own website and drive it to YouTube. But it's just so nasty on there. And having spent like a cumulative five minutes on threads, I'm quite certain that there's no future for the Twitter clones of the world. Yeah.

Yeah. Gosh, threads. And I have a friend who keeps from my, oh, keep posting on threads. I'm like, I will, but I just don't see much interaction on it. But, you know, until something takes off, you never really see anything. like that. But all the nastiness is on Twitter. And that's one thing with all the Nicky Minaj reporting recently. Oh, you're really asking for it. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, is that mean I'm going to get 100 nasty messages instead of 10? But if it's Cardi versus Nikki, it's pretty hilarious

because they both have such rabid fan bases that if you take a stance against one or the other, you're basically fucked. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, I just put a court document out there. I really have no stance on anything else other than that. You're not up on the Tasha K stuff? I am only because Cardi's lawyer in the album case was Lisa Moore from Atlanta who did the whole jury trial against Tasha K. And I'm a fan of lawyers. So I think Lisa is a badass lawyer. And I think it's cool that she got this big defamation verdict. It's like really kind of hard to do.

And actually I saw you, you did an interview with Tasha K. And being the law nerd that I am when I look down the menu of what she was talking about, the first one that I clicked on, her saying that she had crappy lawyers. She did. Yeah, that's my tea. She got lawyers with a $5,000 retainer. Yeah. And it's such a battle between the lawyers, you know?

Yeah. I mean, it's such a badge of honor for Cardi's lawyers that that that case is now being passed around as the, if you don't shut up, I'm going to, you know, this is going to happen to you. But I just think the Tasha and Cardi case was like so different from just your typical internet harassment stuff. Yeah, listening to her defend what she said about. party and then sort of reading some comments that casted some doubt about how honest she was being.

That really made me want to do the deep dive to figure out exactly what she actually might have said that might have been criminally liable for it. Because she even says, and it'd be civilly liable, but she even says in your interview, she says that now she has lawyers who, you know, kind of help her out and review stuff for, you know, do you know how to word that? I'm like, that's like a polite way of saying you now have people who make sure that you don't liable people before you put stuff out on the air. Right, because she does get a lot deeper into like unconfirmed relationship rumors and allegations about people than like a lot of the stuff that

she talks about now that I follow her and see what she's talking about. It's stuff that doesn't really make it into like the mainstream hip hop news world, which is pretty interesting because she's telling me about oh, such and such a rapper doesn't take care of their kids or such and such or such rapper did this or whatever. And this is like rappers that I follow very closely. I'm like, I had no idea. I didn't even know that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And, you know, I mean, there's always, what I just remind myself is, if we went back to, like, the early days of newspapers, we would probably be able to find stuff like that. Just like gossiping about the local Scion or something and, you know, who has kids with who. It's like that kind of gossip stuff has just been going on for forever. It's not, it's not really me. But, you know, but there is something to be said about that crowd kind of giving birth to the whole, let's just insult people and focus on your looks, you know? It's like the only, the only area. of the internet where everyone is just, oh, you're ugly. Like, oh, look at your eyes.

You know, it's always focused on that, it seems like. But I think we see that in other areas of the internet, too. But that's just such a weird direction to go with it. Like, oh, you don't like my ideas, so you're going to criticize the way I look. Yeah. Like, I'm not out here saying I'm a fucking supermodel, so it doesn't really work on me.

My friend Jessica, I did a discussion with her about it. She's like, we're not in this business to be pretty. Right. And, like, I mean, especially over the last few months. I've just been like, I don't care if people make fun of my eyes. I mean, I've explained it before. Like, my right eye leans in a little bit. Like, if I take off my glasses and they're not focusing, it's, they're fine.

It's just, I don't know anyone, any kind of explanation for it. And when you go into, like, the mainstream world and, like, nobody even mentions it. It's like just not. So, I mean, the whole quest for these people to be taken seriously, I think, is really, is really hampered by some of, like, their own actions. Yeah. No, definitely. Yeah.

That doesn't seem like it would go too far. I mean, even in hip-hop, a lot of times when I'm making arguments about how people deal with the media, I'll end up saying something like, I think we should all be able to agree that journalists, one of the things that separates us from authoritarian regimes like Russia is that journalists don't have to live in fear of being attacked or murdered for their opinions. And I get a fair amount of pushback on that way that is not really taken for granted. It's like, no, if they have opinions and they're talking shit publicly, then they deserve whatever they get. And I'm like, that is not really. That is not okay.

Yeah, and we're facing that more and more in like the Trump era and everything. But I do think, and one thing I'm heartened by the whole Megan the reporter experience is just how many people seem to be, like, relieved to have the facts. They just wanted somebody to tell them, like, what was going on in court and to have like a clear idea of it, you know? And they didn't want any other kind of spin on it. So I felt good about that. It made me feel good for journalism. Well, I am very thankful for your service. that you've been putting it out there because it definitely makes the Twitter timeline a lot more

interesting, at least when you are hard at work covering something. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate what you guys do too. I mean, it's opened up this whole world of like it helps explain why mainstream media is just, it's just dying and it's just not like people are getting their news elsewhere and there's so many like experimental stuff like social media stuff and new media that's like getting people's attention way better than traditional media is. Yeah, but we got to do better because flaco who actually lined up this interview and then for some reason

bailed like two hours in advance, he notoriously under the No Jumper account reported that Torrey Lanes had been found not guilty at a certain point which, you know, the one thing that was consoling me while we were getting roasted by the internet for it was I was like, they're not going to remember this in a couple of weeks or months.

Luckily that was true, but also I was like we got to do better than that. I've almost wondered could we do some kind of like journalism workshop? Because I think it's so cool how all the hip-hop blogs cite me all the time. But especially with this Nicki Minaj stuff, I'm like, do they know that that court document is just out there for everyone? I mean, yeah, they found it for me, so I appreciate the attribution, but like, it's

just a public court document. Like, anybody can have it. Yeah, because now we have people sort of rising to fame within hip-hop for being able to, like, request court documents or even, like, with this freedom of information stuff that they've been doing and actually getting, like, jailhouse fights. So we're able to, like, see videos of King Vod's. on just fighting random fucking people or saying whatever behind bars. I mean, we're in a crazy new world, which is pretty funny because I remember the early

days of like hip hop media where there was just so little regard for what was true. It was just like it would come a long way where now people who have like more verified information seem like they're building names for themselves. There's definitely this like perpetual Peter Pan aspect to some of this hip hop world stuff where it's just like a bunch of guys who never wanted to grow up. They just like want to wear like cargo shorts and like hoodies to work. every day, you know? And eventually they're going to be like 60. And like, what is the new crowd going to do to like take over and rebel against that, you know, the kids these days?

No, yeah. I'm, because that's the one thing that's weird now when you talk about like the hip hop media landscape is that all of the guys who are like really older in their 50s and stuff are pretty much like radio guys or have corporate gigs. We haven't really seen what it's like for a person within hip hop to blow up on an independent level and then stay in that place for many decades. because somebody like, well, Vlad is like 50, so I guess he is a good example. But, you know, academics is like 32. I'm 39. So it's like how long will the audience stay interested as we get older?

I guess really we all kind of know that it's about how big you build your machine to be. Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's always been like what impressed me from the Tori Lane's case was just like this whole world of YouTube people that I'm like, oh wow. Yeah, no wonder nobody watches network news anymore. It's like, here you guys are. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's so competitive that I will find some guy who's filming himself with an iPhone making news update videos about street stuff or whatever. And then that will kind of replace for me when I'm going through my YouTube subscription.

I'll find myself more interested in this super raw guy talking to his iPhone than something that's way more polished. Yeah. People like the authenticity of it for sure. Yeah. Definitely. All right. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Everybody, follow her. We should link the substack in the description as well. Yes, please. Yeah. Please do. Megan.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. No Jumber. Coolest podcast on the world. Check us on YouTube, TikTok, Patreon, Instagram, et cetera. Like, comment, and subscribe. Nojumber.com if you want to support.

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