Revisionist History - The Staten Island Problem - Part 4: Wu-Tang vs. Shaolin

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

At the height of the secession movement, the Wu-Tang Clan forms on Staten Island. We take a tour of early 1990s hip-hop and reveal the hidden history of the group.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On August 4th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now, we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died. The third way. I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them.

Hollywoodland is part of the Exactly Right Network. Listen to new episodes every Monday on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin. One of my favorite books is Middle March by George Elliott. It's about the life and manners of a small English town in the 19th century. It's also a cautionary tale for the kind of person I am. There's a character in the book named Edward Kazabon, a dreary middle-aged man who's engaged in a decades-long writing project. Kazabon collects facts he writes on little sheets of paper that he stores in the pigeonholes of his library shelves.

He claims that someday he's going to use these facts to prove that all the myths of the world are really one myth. He's obsessed. He calls it the key to all mythologies, and he sees it everywhere. I'm not middle-aged, and I am fairly upbeat, but I fear that last bit is me. I see the Staten Island secession movement everywhere in our world today. I've carried my facts about the Staten Island secession movement around with me for quite a while now. They burn a hole in my pocket. I go to parties and inevitably I wind up in the corner with the Staten Islander who has suddenly revealed themselves.

They look interested and then mildly concerned as I pull from memory the facts that I have stored in the pigeonholes of a document I have titled, Excellent Staten Island Facts. Did you know the towers of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge are so far apart that they had to take into account the curvature of the earth when they built them? Did you know that Staten Island claims to have been home to the true and forgotten inventor of the telephone? Am I Kazapon? God, I hope not. I caution myself against seeing my project everywhere. Don't be the hammer to whom everything looks like a nail.

Don't try to write the key to all mythologies. And then I learned something like this. Wu-Tang Clan, arguably the most important group in hip-hop history, is from Staten Island. They made their first album, Enter the Wu-Tang 36 chambers entirely during the height of the secession movement. And it came out in 1993, just one week after the island was going to vote on secession. I began to listen to this record every day I worked on this project. On the ferry to the archives, on the subway to work. Shaolin, what they called Staten Island, is all over it.

I come from the Shaolin slum and the aisle I'm from is coming through with enough niggas and their music is all about their lives, what they witnessed on the island at the time. Like listen to this from the song Wu Tang Seventh Chamber. up the projects in northern Staten Island where Wu-Tang formed, nicknamed Killah Hill. My plan is stick like plaster, busher, slasher, swear the nigger back like a Dutch master killer, South jumped off and killer, hiller. I was the thriller in the alley, Frasier Manila. It's all about their lives in New York City in the early 1990s, who they were becoming, and what it all had to do with being from the rugged lands of Shaolin.

I considered putting this on my list of excellent Staten Island facts and leaving it at that. But I had no choice. I put on my headphones. I picked up the phone. I opened my notebook. Kazaban rides again. You're listening to Revisionous History. I'm Ben Ad of Haffrey, and this is the Staten Island problem.

A series about the movement that threatened to bring down the greatest city in the country. In this episode, I bring you the story of the rock. of one of the greatest rap groups in history that happened all while the secession movement unfolded in the background. We're going to zero in on an entirely different experience taking place on the island at the same time. One that reveals just how entrenched the Staten island problem really is, but one that also, I think, might show us a way to solve it. This is episode four, Wu-Tang versus the Shaolin. I should say off the bat that I was unable to reach the Wu-Tang clan. For a brief moment, the manager of a lesser-known member of the group considered

giving me an interview. Then he stopped taking my calls. Domingo, if you hear this, I'm ready when you are. But luckily, I was able to track someone else down. I was actually one of the first journalists to ever deal with Wu-Tang because their record label, Loud, called me up. Skis-Fernando was a hip-hop journalist in the 80s and 90s. He covered Wu-Tang from the beginning. Had he ever considered the crucial overlap of Wu-Tang's formation and Staten Island secession? He had not. I had no idea any of that stuff was going on at the time. I don't even know if they did.

It was the, they must have. It was the biggest story on Staten Island. What was it going to be? Just like, Staten Island was just going to be a city? Yeah. When the Wutang clan first formed, their label called Skizz to write their bio. So he connected with the group's de facto leader, a guy named Bobby Diggs, who went by the name Rizza. And I was immediately struck by this guy. Like, I could detect, like, some

serious intelligence in this guy. Rizzo was a former drug dealer with no professional prospects, living out on Staten Island. That alone was strange. In the pantheon of hip-hop, Brooklyn and the Bronx reigns supreme. Nobody is from Staten Island. All of the five boroughs in New York were pretty represented in hip hop in the 90s. You had the, you know, you had like the Boogie Down Bronx. So obviously, Brooklyn. The money-making Manhattan. Now I'm the guy named Curtis Blow,

and Christmas is one thing I know. So every year, just about this time, I celebrate it with a rhyme. You know, Queens, you had Queensbridge projects, produced so many amazing artists like Nas Mobb Deep. And like Staten Island, you know, who was from Staten Island? There was not a lot of acts coming out of Staten Island. You know, you had, oh, geez, I'm blanking. This is all to say, Skizz was surprised.

Here was this relatively unknown MC from the island with an encyclopedic knowledge of Kung Fu. movies and a crew of eight other emcees who named themselves after a form of martial arts invented by a Taoist hermit. Skizz was like, what? Wow, this guy is something else. So Skis, journalist that he is, began a decades-long process of figuring out how exactly the Wu-Tang Clan came to be. Rizza decided what he wanted to do with his life on America's 200th birthday. He was in the Park Hill Projects of Staten Island. It was July 1976, and there was a party in the courtyard.

A DJ was spinning records and rapping over them. He dip, dip, dive, and socialized. I think those are the exact words that Rizzo remembered. And that kind of just, just that energy and just the excitement of that whole thing of seeing this free party happening in this environment, you know, all these kids running around and adults and people just enjoy. enjoying the music and enjoying each other's company. This was how hip-hop started.

Rizzo was seven at the time. And when you're a young kid exposed to this, and this is like the excitement that's happening in your neighborhood, you want to be a part of it. And he wanted to be a part of it. He stayed up late into the night, transfixed. So immediately he goes home and he starts writing rhymes, you know. and then as soon as he could, he starts DJing.

Rizum moved around a lot as a kid. He was born in Brooklyn, spent some of his childhood in North Carolina, but he landed in the Park Hill projects on the north shore of Staten Island. The buildings were built in 1965, around the same time as the bridge and the expressway that split the island down the middle into north and south shore. North was where the black people lived. South was where the white people lived.

Several Staten Islanders told me the expressway was their, equivalent of the Mason-Dixon line. People like, where are you from? And I'm like, so I used to say, if I tell you, I have to kill you. And you're like, why? And then I'm like, Staten Island. One day, when I was listing excellent Staten Island facts to a friend, she told me, you should meet Daphne McWilliams. She's a filmmaker from Staten Island.

There were only three houses on my parents' block. And then across from the lake was Park Hill Projects. Her parents were from Trinidad and Jamaica and didn't really know the intricate racial codes of Staten Island. Her family moved to the white area across from the Park Hill projects back in the 1970s. But when my mother found that house, she got a threatening,

I guess, call or something where they were like, oh, something like, you better hope that you don't see your kids floating in the pond. By one estimate, there were fewer than a thousand people of color south of the expressway. Daphne stuck out. She told me a story from when she said, she was a kid about having a crush on an Italian-American boy named Billy.

One day, she called his house. And his mother picked up, and she was like, don't ever call this house again. So I went to school the next day. I was upset, and I went and speak to this priest. I don't know what I did wrong. I don't know what I did wrong. And I'm telling you, the guy goes, well, you see, he says something to like, almost like, there's a little heaven for white kids and there's like a little heaven for black kids.

Evan is segregated? I was like, oh my God, like I had no idea. When I look back and think about it, we always stood out because we were always the black family. My parents didn't raise us in a segregated mindset. We just never, it was the community that made us feel different, especially as you get older. But the truth is, all of New York City was segregated then. It seemed like there was a defining race riot every year, very do the right thing. The reality that Mayor Dinkins' vision of a beautiful mosaic obscured is that if one bit of colored glass from the mosaic crossed another, someone might end up shot or run over.

And then the riots would begin again. But Southern Staten Island was a particularly dramatic case. it may as well have been the deep south. When one Wu-Tang member went to Daphne's area, he remembered getting chased out by white kids with motorcycles. They spray-painted KKK on the rocks to warn the black kids away. This was the Staten Island Rizzo grew up on, but he had a way of escaping that reality.

Hip-hop. By the time Rizzo was in his early 20s, hip-hop had gone stratospheric from the courtyards and rec rooms of the New York City projects to the top of the Billboard charts. The labels were grabbing at any artists they could. Rizza got a deal. He brought his new label a bunch of songs, and they said, We think girls will like you.

So we wound up releasing an EP called Ooh, We Love You, Rakim, a record that presented him as a sweet ladies' man named Prince Rakim. It was an attempt to do something extremely commercial, totally inoffensive and upbeat, and also fundamentally false and corny. And maybe for that reason it bombed. Rizza got dropped from his label, and he was back to zero. That's when he started dealing drugs, and almost went to prison for attempted murder. He argued self-defense and beat the charges in the end, and he had $10,000 left.

It was enough to buy some drugs and sell them, but he had a kid on the way. He had to make a choice, and this choice became so legendary that he's still talking about it. Here he is on a recent episode of a podcast called Flagrin. I had 10K and the gag was, the plan was to get a brick. So we figured, yo, if we flip this 20, we could at least get 80. The thing was, yo, I had a baby in the oven or maybe just born, right? So life was like, what are you going to do? But then I was like, nah.

I have a second chance. That's when he started calling himself Riza, R-Z-A. He would later say it was short for Rakeem Zig-Zag-Zig-Lah. While everyone else zigged, it was time for him to zag. And so living on a Staten Island that was in the middle of its own very big zag, he began to make a bold plan for an independence movement of his own, something called Wu-Tang Clan. Are the host of the podcast, Oncour.

Check out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry. Join me as I go behind the songs that brought Shane and Elia together. I'll tell you the stories of Fice, My Moon, My Man, Wolf for raids, I'll Believe in Anything, and tattoos all the things she said, and how they all became a part of this global phenomenon. Stream Encore on IHeart Radio, Crave, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them.

Like how the story of Marilyn Monroe isn't just the story of a Hollywood icon. Marilyn Monroe has become so iconic that her death can only be explained through conspiracy theories. And for some fans who can't let go, these stories have metastasized from condescary. to accepted fact. So on August 4th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now, we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died, the third way. Learn more about what happens when fame, media obsession, and conspiracy collide. Listen to Hollywoodland on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

After he beat his charges, Bobby Diggs, aka the Rizza, began to walk around Staten Island. And he started to take these long, drawn-out walks day after day. So I'm walking and I'm thinking, yo. And I'm walking all that. I'm walking through Staten. People thought I thought I was losing my mind because I'm walking and I'm talking to myself. He would walk the island and think. Staten Island was more than twice the size of Manhattan

and Rizza could just walk and walk. He would start at the projects on the north shore then maybe journey along the coastline through the suburban streets. Rizzo was ready to make music again. But the first time out with his Prince Rakeem project had gone badly. But the idea he was coming up with now

was going to be different. And I want to argue here that it has everything to do with Staten Island. Let me share a lot of it. with you some writing from Riz's book, The Tao of Wu. I spent my formative years on an island, Staten Island, which is a blessing I've taken with me through life. In Staten Island, Wutang were set apart from all the influences and fads that were happening in the other four boroughs. A nine-man hip-hop crew based on mathematics, chess, comics, and kung fu-fliks wasn't springing up in the

middle of a Manhattan art scene. Only on a remote island can something like King Kong grow to his full capacity. But the projects in Staten Island were a difficult place to live. A few of the Wu-Tang members have written books, and reading them, it's clear that it wasn't just the remoteness of Staten Island that led them to the Wu-Tang Clan. It was also what they experienced there, especially in the projects.

One Wu-Tang member, You God, wrote about the first time he saw somebody die. He was five years old, sitting with his mom listening to Loving You by Minnie Ripper When he heard a crowd forming in the courtyard, he ran out to look. A woman was standing on the roof screaming. He watched so long, his neck went stiff. Then she jumped or fell.

U-Gaud wrote in his book called Raw, I was a toddler. The sound of her hitting the concrete steps would resonate with me forever. So when Rizzo walked Staten Island, it wasn't just this utopian vision of the isolated island. where you can dream big. It was also the deeply segregated place where kids living on their own little island watched adults fall to their death. A kind of paradox.

And my theory is, that paradox was expressed in the word, Shaolin. When Rizzo was a kid, he and his cousin used to go to a Times Square porno theater. Sometimes it showed Kung Fu.

And one movie that they loved in particular, the 36th chamber of Shaolin. But sir, all a man choose are well armed. What can we do? No man's so weak. He cannot help. Most people came to that Times Square movie theater to jerk off, sniff glue, or shoot heroin.

But Riza would later say in interviews that he and his cousin were locked in on this poorly dubbed movie about a small village in China that was being oppressed by a distant government. The hero of the movie is a villager who journeys to the Shaolin Temple in China, to learn to fight back.

Riza saw this movie over 300 times. He hadn't realized that kind of oppression happened to people who weren't black. This is from the 36th Chamber, when our hero learns what Shaolin is. Shalind school is restricted. Only monks are taught that. If Shaolin techniques could be taught here,

then the people could use it to fight the Manchu troops. That would be good. At some point, Riza started to call Staten Island Shaolin, the place he learned his secret weapon to fighting oppression, hip-hop. But Staten Island was also a version of that distant oppressive government he saw in the films. And as he walked the island trying to come up with his next play, he didn't decide to start a group called the Shaolin clan. He came up with an idea for something called the Wu Tang clan, named after Shaolin's rival. This is from another kung fu movie they loved called Shaolin versus Wu Tang. Isn't it true that you think you're better than us?

But you're afraid that one day the Wu Tang will overtake you? So you used your special poison to get rid of my master who was your biggest threat? nonsense. No, it isn't I saw it with my own arms. No one. Shaolin aren't afraid of the Wu Tang? Willi Wu Tang will fight? Listen to me.

Someone is trying to frame me. Riza kept walking and thinking. Shaolin, Wu Tang, 36 chambers. Shaolin, U-Tang, 36 Chambers. U-Tang biographer Skiz Fernando knew all about those walks Rizzo would take. That's one good thing about Staten Island. You can walk around in these nice neighborhoods

with Victorian mansions. You don't have to worry by getting mugged necessarily. And what would have been on the lawns of all those Victorian mansions Rizzo was walking by? Signs that said vote yes for the city of Staten Island, Secession means a better life. Billboards for secession above the streets. The same thing as was on the front page of the paper all the time.

The same thing the NAACP of Staten Island was hosting meetings about, worrying that this could be really bad for black people living on Staten Island. Let me be clear. I have never found Rizza himself talking about Staten Island secession, but in my Cazabon mode, I see a connection. Because as he walked a Staten Island that felt like it wasn't welcome in New Zealand, New York City and was striking out on its own. This guy who would have every reason not to feel welcome on Staten Island formed a plan for an unlikely hip-hop group from Shaolin that was about to do

the same. Maybe, he thought, they could skip the whole major label thing that had screwed him before. Maybe he didn't have to sanitize his life and character to succeed. Maybe there could be a hip-hop group from the forgotten borough that made it all happen on its own. And that group would be called Wu-Tang clan. He began to assemble his crew, and the core ideology for Rizza, I think, had a whole lot in common with the secession movement. It's the exact same fantasy.

If some central authority is dominating you and you don't like it, what do you do? Go away to Shaolin, learn the truth, build a movement, and go to war with the oppressor until you remake it in your own image. We are the host of the podcast OnCore. Check out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry.

Join me as I go behind the songs that brought Shane and Elia together. I'll tell you the stories of Fice, My Moon, My Man, Wolf Parades, I'll Believe in Anything, and tattoos all the things she said, and how they all became a part of this global phenomenon. Stream encore on IHeart Radio, Crave, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Brennan. And on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Like how the story of Marilyn Monroe isn't just the story of a Hollywood icon.

Marilyn Monroe has become so iconic that her death can only be explained through conspiracy theories. And for some fans who can't let go, these stories have metastasized from conjecture to accepted fact. So on August 4th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now, we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died, the third way. Learn more about what happens when fame, media obsession, and conspiracy collide. Listen to Hollywoodland on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let me put my Kazavan robe back on and bring you back into my library. Please, sit at the table, have a mug of tepid tea.

I believe that the fantasy Wu-Tang clan had was that there's a way to strike out on your own independently and take over the forces that oppressed you. And that's the exact fantasy of the secessionists emanating from the exact remote island at the exact moment so many people on the island experienced it. And it was the spirit of what Skis that Wu-Tang biographer told me that Rizza did next.

He took the whole mythology that was in the movies, and he appropriated it to his current conditions of a black man, living in Staten Island, doing battle in this game called rap against the music industry. Walking the island, Riza had come up with a five-year plan. He'd go to the greatest underrated emcees he knew on the island and ban them together into the Wu-Tang Clan. He'd been burned by the labels before with that Prince Rakeem album,

so now he wanted to go it alone. He'd take the $10,000 he'd save and use it to start a production company. These guys had absolutely no future. They're all caught up in the street game. They're all selling crack. You know, two for five on the street. They didn't want to be doing that. The guys all went out to a diner on Staten Island.

They toasted Wu-Tang with a bottle of champagne. Each member put up $100 for studio time. The next day, they started recording what became their first single, Protect Yaneck. Putting eight MCs on a track and making it all blend together is as difficult as making five boroughs feel like one city. The difference is that Rizza was about to pull it off. It took days of recording until all the verses were in place.

Like students at Shaolin and Wu Tang, each MC was trying to one up the other, pushing farther and farther beyond the reaches of what existed in hip-hop at the time. Riza knew each one's style and how to draw out what made them unique. It was the opposite of some oppressive label telling him, We think girls will like you and neutering his art. He didn't need the label. By December of 1992, the song was finished. The group took the cassette of Protect Ya Neck to the hottest hip-hop radio show in town, Stretch and Babito.

Babito was alone in the studio. I'm not quite sure how members of the Wu-Tang Clan got into our hallway, but I hear a knock on the studio door. I open it, and there's five dudes out there, and they're not smiling. They shoved an unmarked record into his hands. They're like, yo, man, you gotta play this. You got to play this. You got to play it right now. I was like, yo, fellas, like, I can't.

I felt like I was being strong-armed to play their record immediately. I was like, I felt it's cool. So I took the record. I threw it all because I was intrigued. I was like, how did these dudes mysteriously get into the studio? He listened to it privately first. And I hear that, You know, the martial arts.

And I'm like, oh, this is dope. You know, I'm going to play it. It was the premiere that launched the Wu-Tang Clan. But yeah, I mean, immediately the phone lines lit up. Immediately, I'll never forget, my friend, he called up and was like, yo, what the F is that? I was like, yo, I don't know. I don't know what the record is.

The entire philosophy of Wu-Tang is that they don't need some centralized music. industry to take over the world. They can do it all on their own. Basically, you had your chance, you lost it. We don't need you. It's our time now. The song blew up. So of course, the labels came knocking, but this time Riza was ready. No more Prince Rakeem, he was the king, and he had a plan for world domination. They would make a deal for Wu-Tang as a group, but he would do something totally unprecedented in the industry. In the contract, there would be a clause. Though all the emcees in Wu-Tang might be consolidated

under the name Wu-Tang Klan, and Wu-Tang might sign a record deal, each MC was going to retain local control of their own career. Each one could make any deal he wanted with any other record label. Loud Records agreed to Riza's terms. Skis-Fernando again.

Revolutionary deal in the music industry. The whole first round of Wu-Tang's solo albums was like that, all on different. labels and different artists, but like all the Wu Tang is on each album. So they're using the major label system to spread their own brand out there. That was the genius of it. Like no one had ever done anything like that before. On November 9th, Wutang Clan played their album release show for Enter the Wutang,

36 Chambers, at Webster Hall in the heart of Manhattan. Skizz was there. The floor was packed with people. They were showing 36 chambers, the original on the big screen. And then when the group got on to perform, honestly, it seemed like all of Staten Island was on stage. You didn't know who was in the group and who wasn't because it was just like the whole stage was packed, the whole floor was packed. that whole floor was just bouncing up and down. These wooden rafters, I thought the whole thing was going to collapse.

It was just like people were ready to tear shit down, the energy, the excitement. Because they came from Staten Island, it was like a sneak attack. Like no one saw it coming. Riza executed his plan flawlessly. Wu Tang released their debut album, an absolutely bizarre hour-long hip-hop record. Full of Kung Fu samples and weird jazz and nine unheard of emcees, most of whom hailed from a forgotten island, an island they'd renamed after a Chinese martial arts school.

And it went quadruple platinum. Here's Method Man on TV. And we tried to lock down the industry, which you cannot do, because they already set in their ways, like I said before. So what we have to do is build our own industry to make it right. And Wu-Tang is still playing together. So for me, in this series on Secession, It's a lesson in how to keep a group of people together.

Not that the clans without its problems, but the genius of the whole thing is that Rizza figured out how to showcase each rapper's own personality and give them their own career. He went on to produce a round of solo albums for each of the MCs in the group, hit after hit after hit, each one on different record labels

who were feverishly trying to ride the Wu-Tang wave, Method Man on Def Jam, Platinum, old dirty bastard on WMG, platinum, Rayquan on RCA, platinum, ghostface killer on epic, platinum, Jiza on Geffen, gold. Six hit albums in three years. Wu-Tang Clan ran the industry.

These guys who had so much working against them went to Shaolin, came back on their own terms and toppled the oppressor. Don't think that because he has a solo deal and I have a solo deal. This man may get a solo deal that we all just separating and breaking up. It's not that type of thing, man. We just expand because the talent is so great.

It's like we have mad talent in this, you know, and we just got to spread out. You know, you can't come out on one chain, but you just got to spread. This is the fantasy of secession. You break away, you come back with a crew of guys from Staten Island, and you dominate. That's what Wu-Tang did.

That's what the Staten Island secessionists dreamed of doing. It's the zeitgeist, The key to all mythologies, some force in the early 90s of New York City was shouting, secede, secede. Oh, and by the way, the vote on secession, it happened seven days before the Wu-Tang Clan put out their album. And that vote was going to leave an even bigger mark on our world today. That's coming up on the last episode of the Staten Island problem. Live here on Channel 77 from Secession headquarters at the island chateau.

Channel 77 bringing you that live. It's so parallel. Who gets to be in this position? What's fair and what's not? Who gets to wield power? Who doesn't? These sentiments show up in so many places and parts of our population.

Right? That sense of low-boiling resentment towards the people in charge. Like, who doesn't feel that right now? You realize as a city that can plan for its own and doesn't have to say, may I, may I do this and may I do that? We will be doing. What are we standing on top of right now? We're standing on the story of New York City.

If you lived here between 1948 and 2001, you're here somewhere. Maybe not in this exact mound, but some piece of you, even if you just passed through, some piece of you is underneath us. The Staten Island problem is written and produced by me, Ben, Nat of Halfrey. with Lucy Sullivan and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Shakurgy. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Fact-checking by Sam Russick, sound design and mastering by Jake Gorski.

Original music by Stellwagen Symphonette, Luis Gara, Jake Gorsky, and thanks to Todd Reynolds for his track, The Solution, from the album Outer Borough. Special thanks to Malcolm Gladwell. I'm Ben Madafafrey. Here episodes of revisionist history, a Staten Island problem, early and ad-free, by subscribing to Pushkin Plus.

Sign up on the revisionist history show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm. slash plus. Pushkin Plus subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, and exclusive binges of true crime podcasts throughout the year. On August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now, we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died, the third way. I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Hollywoodland,

I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Hollywoodland is part of the Exactly Right Network. Listen to new episodes every Monday on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.