Striple

kanye west stood on stage crying and screamed: "I almost killed my daughter! I almost killed my daughter!" kim kardashian's response: "she knows this is something north will see when she gets older. and that's heartbreaking." before kanye, kim learned about the media the hard way. she was 14. pulled up to her dad's gate. cameras everywhere. "that night on hard copy it said, 'robert kardashian's mistress pulling up to his house.' I couldn't believe they were making this stuff up." "that was my first real lesson with the media." her dad wrote her a letter about respecting her body. not letting a man take advantage of her. then a sex tape leaked. "why would anyone put that humiliation on their family? I'm gonna have to live with this for the rest of my life and have to explain to my children one day." kanye didn't care. "I love this person. she's worth it to me. she's my joy." "he's put himself up against the world for me when everyone told him – you cannot date a girl with a sex tape. this is gonna ruin your career." kim would give up anything to make him happy. then north was born. "the moment I laid eyes on my baby, I was so in love." "has he ever traveled with the baby by himself?" – "no." – "you don't trust him?" – "no." then paris. robbed at gunpoint. alone. wearing a robe with nothing under it. "I heard guys running up the stairs. he grabbed me. I saw him have a gun out to me. I was like, okay, this is it." "just tell them I have children. I have babies. I have a husband. take anything." kim tried to recover. but kanye was spiraling. hospitalized. restrained. ranting on stage. "jay-z, I know you got killers, please don't send 'em at my head." he wanted to move to chicago. kim: "that might be my breaking point. I don't have much more to give." then the rally. north. on national television. kim tried to get him help. he refused. she filed for divorce. "there is a weight lifted off her shoulders." kim followed her father's footsteps – helping free wrongly incarcerated people. "my dad used to always tell me, wait until you're early 30s before you have babies. he was so right." "I'm so glad my kids get this version of me rather than the 20-something year old version." "my children are really compassionate. they're really good people. and that is my number one goal in life."

lamar odom was dating taraji p. henson. carried her picture on the road with him. called it the most significant relationship he'd had with a woman. "she was a beautiful, beautiful young lady. she gave me inspiration." then he met khloe kardashian. within a month – engaged. married on national television. "I didn't know how to tell her that I was falling in love with another woman named khloe kardashian." taraji was blindsided. her worst nightmare. but she never said a word publicly. "I have a son. I don't want them to be like, 'oh, mom dated this one.' if you're not serious, don't even open your mouth. you don't get to say, 'I dated taraji p. henson.'" behind the silence, she was falling apart. "I struggle with depression and anxiety. my brain wouldn't stop racing. I started having thoughts about ending it." the trauma started long before lamar. her high school boyfriend mark used to beat her. "it started with the bruises and the grabbing. then once the fist came – I'm missing a piece of my lip to this day." she writes in her memoir: "I fell onto the bed crying, holding my mouth. blood seeping out of my lips and across my teeth." taraji grew up with a father who suffered PTSD and alcoholism. her mother hid the abuse from her for years. "she said, 'I never wanted to destroy. you need your father.'" taraji did the same thing. when mark – her son's father – was stabbed to death, she couldn't tell her boy the truth. "I told him he died in an accident. I was trying to protect him. I didn't want his joy to leave. and it did. and I have so much guilt." "all of my relationships started looking the same. two broken people trying to pick up the pieces." she finally went to therapy. "when my therapist said, 'no one's perfect – the perfection is the perfect lie,' my wings sprouted." meanwhile, lamar's marriage to khloe collapsed. affairs. drugs. alcohol. found unconscious in a brothel from a drug overdose. after it all fell apart, lamar made a confession: "things ended with taraji because of me being an immature punk. I just wish I would've done things different with her." too late. "so many people are ashamed of their flaws. I'm not. or my past. because all of that made me who I am today."

angelina jolie thought she was too broken to be anyone's mother. "I didn't know if I belonged in this world. I never felt calm. I couldn't sleep. nothing was ever enough. I had voices. I couldn't shut certain things off." "I'd see people with kids or married or in love and thought – that's great. that's not my life. I'm never gonna be calm or stable or normal or safe." she buried herself in work. then while filming, she learned about refugees. landmines. tens of millions of displaced people. "I started to realize how much I didn't know. my whole life changed." she visited an orphanage in cambodia. they placed a three-month-old boy in her arms. he was asleep. they bathed him. still asleep. "he opened his eyes and just stared at me for the longest time. I started crying. and he smiled." "so we became a family right then." "he made me believe in fate. god knows how we found each other, but we found each other. he's my best friend. he's my everything." then she met brad pitt. the rebel disappeared. 12 years. six kids. hollywood's dream couple. "what makes you guys so strong?" – "six kids. a commitment to understanding each other." then one morning the world woke up to: angelina jolie is filing for divorce from brad pitt. FBI and court documents leaked. a flight home from france. brad had been drinking. a disagreement escalated. a child asked: "mommy, are you okay?" brad turned to the child and said: "no, mommy's not okay. she's ruining this family. she's crazy." he used her deepest insecurity as a weapon. the one she'd carried her whole life. once they were safe, she filed. said nothing for years. the media called her controlling. bitter. crazy. the internet piled on. when she finally spoke: "my focus is my children. we are and forever will be a family. that is how I'm coping." "do you ever miss being a bad girl?" "I'm still a bad girl. it's just in its place now. somebody said I was crazy for going to certain places with the UN. I thought – my crazy's found a purpose." "an 8-year-old girl who saved her brother taught me what it is to be brave. a pregnant woman in pakistan taught me what it is to be a mother. a paralyzed boy who'd been shot in the back, with his big smile, showed me the strength of an unbreakable spirit." "there's that fire in all of us. so often you think there's something wrong with it. but if directed the right way, it can be a force for good and brave and wonderful."

Drake told Rihanna he loved her on live television. She couldn’t even look at him. “All my adult life I’ve looked up to her. She’s someone I’ve been in love with since I was 22 years old.” Rihanna’s response: “Waiting through that speech was probably the most uncomfortable part. I don’t like too many compliments. I don’t like to be put on blast.” The first time he met Robyn Fenty it was 2005. She was introduced as a kid who played background music at a restaurant while people ate dinner. “I saw my parents go through the ups and downs. I’m scared. I don’t want to be alone.” His father did a stint in prison. Then went on TV and said Drake uses his son to sell records. Drake: “My father will say anything to anyone that’s willing to listen. It’s sad when a family gets like this.” “I was really hard on my parents. But they could have done a better job of co-parenting. Sticking together. Not being so divided.” “I was just angry about a lot of things from my childhood.” Then Chris Brown beat Rihanna. Drake got into a bar brawl with him. “That’s embarrassing. That’s the type of person that I fell in love with.” Drake spiraled. “I was changing as a person. Becoming a guy that was definitely willing to do some terrible things. Moving with a different energy.” “I’m so sick of people saying that I’m lonely and emotional. Why can’t I come to a place where I let somebody in?” Then a secret child surfaced. He did a DNA test. “I end up in this situation where I don’t have the fairytale. Like, oh, Drake started a family with Rihanna.” “We have found ourselves in a situation. We are both equally responsible. I am a single father learning to communicate with a woman.” “I have unconditional love for the mother of my child. Because I want him to love his mother. And I have to project that energy.” “When I learned to stop thinking from such a confrontational, paranoid, violent standpoint – I was able to mend a lot of those situations.” “I could be at dinner with my mom and still hear her say, ‘I’m proud. You’re still you.’” “I’m at a great healing place in my life. More self-discovery. Hopefully going up, not down. Take it one day at a time.”

Lenny Kravitz was 8 years old when his father walked out. Bags at the door. His mother said: "What do you have to say to your son?" His father looked him in the eyes and said: "You'll do it too." Then he left. Lenny swore he'd be different. Then he saw Lisa Bonet on TV. He was 8. "Mommy, I want that one." He found her. They fell in love. "This magical, magical relationship. I saw myself in her. For the first time I really got a clear look at myself." They had Zoë. But Lenny repeated what he knew. "There were times where I did not behave properly. There were times where I was not respectful." His mother got sick. His marriage fell apart. "I was a mess. I went away and just disappeared." The divorce happened. But instead of vanishing like his father, Lenny stayed. "Being married. Going through divorce. Then having to get the relationship back on track as friends, as family, as raising a daughter." Then Lisa met Jason Momoa. Lenny's reaction: "Is she still with that hot man? She is. He's cool." "We are one family. We love and support each other. People seem to be in awe of it. It seems very normal to me." Then Lenny met his own person. "I felt stupid crazy madly in love. I've already thought of him as my husband." "My wife gave me three beautiful kids. And with them my dreams finally came true." His father said: "You'll do it too." He didn't. "When we're all together now – her man, her kids, Zoë, me – we're all together. One big happy family."

Ryan Reynolds sent Celine Dion a letter that changed her life. She almost didn't open it. Months earlier, her husband René Angélil was diagnosed with cancer. She was backstage when he told her. "My heart started to beat faster but my body shut off." She went on stage. Sang the song. Then went to the hotel. "Then reality started to strike." René pushed her to keep working. She didn't want to leave him. "I feed my husband. I feed my kids. Please allow me to stay home." He agreed. But it was too late. His last words to her: "I just want to wish you a great show and to tell you that I love you." She came home late that night. He was under heavy medicine. "I didn't want to go in the room and say honey I'm home and then he would be confused." So she didn't go in. The next morning, the nurse came for his first feed. "He was gone to his new life." Then her brother died of the same cancer. On René's birthday. She broke down on stage performing "All By Myself." "Is this an earthquake? Losing half of you. Because we were partners. We were one." The media said she was too thin. Her grief was eating her alive. Then the letter arrived. Personal and confidential. From Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds had also just lost someone. His father. Parkinson's. "I had no outlet to deal with this inner hurricane." He asked Celine to sing a song for Deadpool 2. "Let's go right to the legend." She played it for the first time. "Oh my gosh. This is such a beautiful song." It was about beauty rising from the ashes of loss. Recording that song was the first step to building a career without René. Her next album: "Courage." The media asked if she'd found a new man. "I am in love. Love is not necessarily to marry again. When I see a rainbow. When I see a sunset. I laugh. I cry. I'm in love." "Today is the first day of the beginning of my life."

terry crews. 6'3. 240 lbs. former NFL linebacker. "just muscles everywhere." his wife said: "I have seen my husband put people on the floor because people want to test the big guy." one of his earliest memories: his father knocking his mother out. "my mother's on the ground. the example of manliness I have to look up to is towering over her. I'm 4 years old and I can't do anything." terry swore he'd never end up like his dad. then he became exactly like him. "I truly believe I was worth more than my wife and kids. I'm the man. I run this. you better do as I say." his wife was suspicious for years. then she confronted him. "I started to hammer him with questions and all of a sudden he starts coming out of his skin with these confessions. 10 years ago I did this. 13 years ago I did this." he'd been cheating on her. for a decade. his wife said: "I'm done. I don't know who you are." she left. took the kids. "there I was by myself. in this hotel room. it's over." then a small voice came to him. "maybe it's me. what I presented to my wife was an image. I was lying the whole time. she wasn't married to the real terry crews. she was married to the picture." he went to rehab. not to get his wife back. "I went there because I needed to be a better person." she eventually came back. "I had to earn it. we rebuilt our marriage from the ground up." then in 2016, at a party with his wife, a powerful hollywood agent sexually assaulted him. grabbed his genitals. looked him in the eyes. "the way he looked at me – he was like, no one's ever going to believe you." terry's first instinct was violence. he held back. 50 cent attacked him for it. mocked him publicly. "god gave you muscles so you can say no. ain't nobody just going to grab my nuts without getting punched." terry: "as a black man in america, you only have a few chances to make yourself a viable member of the community. I have seen many young black men who were provoked into violence – and they were in prison or they were killed." he spoke at the US senate. "one man's horseplay is another man's humiliation. what kind of man would I be to tell my kids – if someone touches you where you don't want to be touched, tell someone – and then I don't do it?" 50 cent called terry less of a man. but 50 has been estranged from his own son for over 10 years. his son: "everything he promised – basketball games, vacations – he hasn't done any of that." terry's response to 50? "I love 50 cent. I listen to his music while I'm working out." "strength is not about picking things up and throwing people around. strength comes from standing up for the weak. it's admitting you have a problem. it's admitting you need help." "that pride. that manliness. the hyper-masculinity – is not real. true manhood is beautiful."

will smith was at dinner with his first wife sheree. sat down. and felt something he never expected. "I had a realization that I wasn't with the person I was supposed to be with." he went to the bathroom at the palm restaurant and broke down in tears. he already knew who that person was. jada. "we did not have an affair." he got divorced first. then called jada. "are you seeing anybody?" she said no. he said: "cool. you're seeing me now." "no, dumbass." she got on a plane. came back to LA. never spent one night in her house in baltimore again. jada got pregnant. first trimester. and she was furious about having to plan a wedding. "I was so upset that I had to have a wedding. I was so pissed. I went crying down the aisle." but will never doubted it. "I've never met anybody like you. and I knew if I wasn't with you, I'd be searching in vain for the rest of my life." on the outside, will was winning. but inside the marriage – he was lost. "I think that's the worst I've ever felt. I was failing miserably. but on the outside, I was winning." then jada found the red table. her space. her voice. will: "together you have found something with this red table that I tried my damnedest to build for you. when I see you on this red table – it is the joy that I have always hoped you'd have. the space where you get to fully, honestly, thoroughly be you. and get all of the love and the praise that you deserve." sometimes the person you almost lost was the one you were always meant to find.

At 21, Jorge Valdés says he was making up to $2 million a month running U.S. operations for the group that became the Medellín cartel. Jets, yachts, mansions, supermodels. In 1979 his plane crashed in the jungle of Panama with 200 kilos of cocaine on board. He tried to buy his way out. Twice. In the video below, he tells the whole thing, step by step. First he gives the local commander $100 to stamp his passport, so it looks like they landed legally. The commander sends his name to Panama City. The answer comes back: stop him, he’s the biggest drug dealer in the world. Next morning the DEA is there. So he goes straight to Panama’s attorney general: how much to buy back the coke, and how much to leave? The coke has already been sold. Leaving costs $250,000. He had a man sitting by a phone 24 hours a day with a million in cash. Give him a code, and the money shows up the next day. Then his pilots break. They tell the DEA everything, including the bribe. He’s thrown into a dungeon and tortured day and night. Three months in, he decides he wants to die. So he threatens General Noriega’s family, hoping it gets him killed. Noriega shows up the next day, laughing. “You paid the wrong man.” The price to leave: another $250,000. He pays. At the airport, Interpol takes him and puts him on a plane to Miami. He was 23. His bond was set at $7 million. He served five years, walked away from the business in 1987, got arrested again and lost everything. In prison he studied theology. He later earned a Ph.D. from Loyola University Chicago. $2 million a month. Two $250,000 bribes. A Ph.D. in theology. Did Jorge Valdés really change, or did he just run out of people to pay?

kendrick lamar dropped a verse on "control" and named every rapper he was coming for. the entire industry lost its mind. snoop dogg didn't. "he kept it all hip-hop. he didn't go personal. he attacked his friends and told them – this is friendly competition. he named them. these are my friends that I'm after because they're hot and they're smoking and they're dope. and he told them: I'm on y'all. and that's what hip-hop does. that's what it's supposed to do." new york rappers tried to turn it into east coast vs west coast again. snoop shut it down. "I wouldn't say new york is soft. but there's a lot of following going on. there is no more new york sound. new york influenced everybody in the beginning. hip-hop was born here. it spread around the whole globe. but people get so caught up with trying to make beef when he's just making good music." "his music is being played all over new york radio stations. all over the west coast. he's selling tons of records. selling out concerts. shit, that's the king." "when I was doing that, I proclaimed myself the king and nobody had a problem with it. it's just that he's a nice guy. so they have a problem with it because he doesn't have a gangster approach." then snoop smiled. "but let me let y'all know – he got 100,000 motherfucking gangsters with him. so y'all better watch what y'all say." "he took the rap game by storm. and he did it without the help of dr. dre and snoop dogg. that's his name. and that makes me feel good – that he can stand on his own two feet and create his own movement." "one thing about the west coast – we ain't never been friendly. so I don't know why y'all thought this n***a was gonna be friendly just because he had a backpack. he might have a motherfucking AK in that backpack." snoop was once in the same position. source awards. new york crowd. hostile room. he grabbed the mic and said: "the east coast ain't got no love for dr. dre and snoop dogg?" "what was going through my mind was – don't take the personal words of one man for the account of the whole team. we actually love new york. we was born and raised on this new york sound. KRS, rakim, big daddy kane, LL cool J – they were our influences. they were the guys we wanted to be like. until NWA came. then we had our own identity." every generation needs someone to shake the table. kendrick just did it without asking permission.

madonna lost her mother as a child. no one explained it. "I sort of went the other way – I'm going to never rely on anybody. so I won't be hurt that way again." she built herself into the most controversial woman in music. "people were telling me I couldn't do it. made me want to do it even more." banned by mtv. labeled "obsessed with shocking people." "everything that's said about you and believed about you is nowhere near the truth." then tupac showed up. a friend set them up at the soul train music awards. "madonna just goes up to him." they hit it off immediately – and kept it secret. madonna was at the height of her career. news about the two would have created a media frenzy. "madonna is real nice. she's a good person. she helped me a lot. she was real cool – like any one of my homeboys." when tupac got arrested, nobody had his back. "the first person that came to have his back was madonna." but madonna pushed him away. she was supposed to visit him in prison. "the guards let me take an extra shower because they thought she was coming." she never came. tupac wrote her a breakup letter from prison. "those words cut me deep. seeing how I had never known you to be with any rappers besides myself. I was stuck on you. I got scared. please remember me for the good times and the magic that we shared." then tupac was gone. just like her mother. "I really did feel completely abandoned. and I'm sure that has influenced every decision that I've made. you sort of grow up being afraid to love things because they're gonna leave you." "I am constantly in these situations where I'm completely frustrated and I always say – I wish I had a mother that I could call. and I don't." "what do you do with it? you're by yourself. yes." madonna threw herself into work. fought for the role in evita. made an impassioned plea to the director. got the part. then – mid-filming – she found out she was pregnant. "I needed to rethink how I was going to continue. I was making all kinds of mistakes. living life in a very impulsive way. without really thinking about the consequences. and I didn't grow up with any sort of female role model." she had a dream while pregnant. she was at her mother's feet, asking about her fate. "and she died before she answered me." without a mom to guide her, madonna wrote her own fate. "the birth of my daughter was a rebirth for me. it made me look at life in a completely new way. I feel very inspired to give my daughter everything my mother couldn't give me." "no matter what you've done in your life, you can always change. people try to hold you down, make you afraid. no one can take your soul. you have to find that authentic truth inside of you that keeps you going and helps you rise up." "everyone has a destiny. and everyone is the master of that destiny."

at 13, usher was called "the next michael jackson." his mother managed every step of his life. strict. protective. always there. the label said: she has to go. "they said, 'you're too close to the project.'" diddy stepped in. "you're gonna have to trust me." puff daddy became the legal guardian of a 13-year-old kid he barely knew. sent him to new york. to something called "puffy flavor camp." "where we hanging out and what we doing, we can't really disclose. but it's definitely a 15-year-old's dream." usher was thrown into a world he didn't understand. "I'm around grown women, and I'm seeing them do things." diddy's parties had a reputation – drugs, orgies, and suspicious behavior around children. million-dollar parties. "we showing the f*** off tonight." but diddy also gave usher something no one else had. "I suffered a long time making moves based off the fact that I didn't have a dad. I was the kind of kid that always wanted the most attention. so I would go over and beyond – whether it was dancing, singing. and that actually just turned into my talent." usher wasn't just looking for a career. he was looking for his father. "there's nothing like a father's love." diddy filled that gap. "that man helped me understand life. he helped me understand what it was to be an artist. what it was to be passionate about something." "you may not be able to rap, you may not be able to sing, but there's something else that you could do." usher's mother told him: "you need to stop telling people you're gonna be a big artist." he said: "if I don't believe it, nobody else would." at 13, he promised his mother: "don't worry about it. I'll be gone by 14." he was. a kid who traded his mother's protection for a stranger's mentorship. a fatherless boy who found guidance in the most controversial man in music. "as a result of being around that man, I don't sleep to this day." the sacrifice made the star. the cost is still being counted.

dame dash met aaliyah at a photo shoot. they talked about souls. "our intention wasn't even to be in love. we were just really good friends. and we fell for real. it was almost an accident." but aaliyah was carrying something. at 15, r. kelly had secretly married her. dame knew. "we talked about it up to the point where it hurt." once on a tour bus, a door flew open. dame saw "things that an adult should not be doing with a child." he wanted to act. aaliyah said no. "she just wanted it left alone. let me heal. let me rest. I'm in love. let's just enjoy this." he respected her wish. "I didn't know what being in love was. I didn't even understand what that feeling is. and I was able to really achieve that with her." then came the video shoot in the bahamas. dame didn't want her to go. aaliyah's last text: "I don't like the plane." he replied: "don't get on it." she got on. the plane crashed minutes after takeoff. aaliyah was 22. "if I had been an asshole that day and really stood behind what I believed in, she wouldn't have got on that plane." dame's mother called him. his cousins – ten of them – all crying down the line. his father hit rock bottom. "I actually never saw him that low." "it changed me. turned me into a monster. I know what real pain feels like. everything that scares me is losing people I love. and everyone that I've really loved, I've lost." for 20 years, he stayed quiet. then the "surviving r. kelly" documentary aired. dozens of women came forward. dame broke his silence. "if people would have protected aaliyah, so many other girls wouldn't have got touched. she was the sacrificial lamb. she didn't deserve none of that." "everyone has all these morals and principles. but when it behooves them, they look the other way. the test of honor isn't convenient. honor is when it's inconvenient." r. kelly was sentenced to 30 years. "there hasn't been one day in 20 years that I haven't heard her name, heard her record, or seen a picture of her. every single day she's present in my life." someone asked dame what people should remember about aaliyah. "she was magic. I never thought I'd see that magic again."

snoop dogg grabbed a knife, hid under a blanket, and rode a 5-hour flight in silence next to his best friend. it was the last time he'd see tupac alive. snoop grew up in long beach. at 12, he joined a gang. "drugs and gangs were as much a part of your life as stop lights and street signs." his mom kicked him out at 17. then he met tupac. "fell in love with that man. we started building a brotherhood. the calm one and the relentless one." snoop thought he was untouchable – until his bodyguard shot and killed a man. snoop turned himself in for first-degree murder. suge knight bailed him out on a million dollar bond. 10 p.m. house arrest. tupac wanted him to stay gangster. snoop: "I got a baby on the way. I have a lot to live for. somebody's life was lost. I don't want to live this gangster life no more." verdict: not guilty. then the east coast/west coast beef exploded. tupac was convinced biggie and puffy set up his shooting. snoop never believed it. "they was his friends at the time." tupac dropped a diss track saying he slept with biggie's wife. snoop: "I ain't really feeling that, cuz. he took it too far." then angie martinez asked snoop on air: how do you feel about puffy and biggie? he said: "I'm cool with him. I want to do some music with him." tupac took it as betrayal. "death row looked at me as a traitor. you had sided with the enemy." the plane ride back to LA – 5 hours on a private jet. tupac didn't say a single word to him. snoop got off the plane: "cuz, you going to vegas?" tupac brushed him off. went his way. next call snoop gets: "turn on the news." tupac shakur was shot four times in a drive-by. snoop drove to the hospital. "I'm thinking he's going to make it. when I went to go see him – that ain't what I got. he wasn't moving. he wasn't talking. he wasn't breathing on his own." tupac's mother pulled him aside. told him to be strong. that's when snoop knew. "I got right on the side of his head and just started whispering to him. telling him I loved him. to hold on. he was going to be okay." snoop went to the bathroom. fainted. threw up. "me and my homie wasn't straight. I'm not even going to be able to apologize to him. or just tell him – I feel you. I'm wrong. how can we fix this?" tupac died at 25. compton erupted. 12 shootings. a 5-day blood bath. three men dead. ten wounded. "we was right in the middle of all that madness." snoop looked around. "all of the rappers that was writing about death – they all dead. I got a baby. I got a wife. I wanted to live." "my life is not based off me being a gangbanger. it's based off me being positive. finding ways to help others. the key to this thing is bringing people together." "pac was taught how to love at a very early age. and through his music, he shared the love with all of us." snoop chose peace. and never got to say goodbye.

Dame Dash and Jay-Z built Roc-A-Fella Records from nothing. they were brothers. nobody wanted to sign Jay, so they created their own label and made him famous. "Jay's my best friend. I'm not ashamed to say it." then Dame fell in love with Aaliyah. it started as a friendship. "our intention wasn't even to be in love. it was almost an accident." but Aaliyah was still healing. at 15, R. Kelly had secretly married her. Dame knew everything. "we talked about it up to the point where it hurt." she'd just say: "that's a bad, bad man." Aaliyah asked Dame one thing: leave it alone. don't start anything with Kelly. let her heal. he respected her wish. August 2001: Aaliyah flew to the Bahamas to shoot a music video. her last text to Dame: "I don't like the plane." he replied: "don't get on." she got on. the plane crashed minutes after takeoff. Aaliyah was 22. "if I'd have been an asshole that day and really stood behind what I believed in, she wouldn't have got on that plane." five months later, Jay-Z released a joint album with R. Kelly. Best of Both Worlds. then a tour. t-shirts. merchandise. everything. Dame: "you know that I got a girl that your man r**ed. I tell you. and you're gonna still work with him. what you think I felt?" Jay's response: "I mean, I wasn't there. I had nothing to do with that." Dame couldn't speak out – he'd promised Aaliyah he'd leave it alone. so he watched his best friend tour with the man who abused the woman he loved. the partnership collapsed. Jay became CEO of Def Jam. the media blamed Dame. "Dame is bitter. Dame burned bridges." Jay called it "growing apart." for 20 years, Dame held it in. then the "Surviving R. Kelly" documentary aired. dozens of women came forward. Dame broke his silence. "if people would've protected Aaliyah, so many other girls wouldn't have got touched. she was the sacrificial lamb. she didn't deserve none of that." R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years. "there hasn't been one day in 20 years that I haven't heard her name, heard her record, or seen a picture of her. every single day she's present in my life." someone asked Dame what people should remember about Aaliyah. "she was magic. I never thought I'd see that magic again."

Priyanka Chopra seems to have a perfect life. A loving husband, a daughter, global fame. But her whole life she's been hiding. And when the media went after her baby – she finally broke. Growing up in India, Priyanka had zero confidence. Boys followed her home from school. One jumped onto her balcony at night. Her father put bars on the windows and confiscated her jeans. Her mom entered her into a beauty pageant without telling her. Priyanka saw the photos: "How can you send those? They're so ugly." She faked confidence and won Miss World at 18. Then Bollywood happened. She starred opposite Shah Rukh Khan – India's biggest star. They became close. The media turned it into a scandal. "Is Priyanka having a secret affair with the married Shah Rukh Khan?" They were spotted together at 3 AM. She was photographed wearing his jacket. Shah Rukh defended her: "The fact that a lady who's worked with me has been questioned, not shown the respect I show her – that's most disturbing." Priyanka stayed silent. That made things worse. Then they went after her face. "Priyanka has gone under the knife." Reporters asked on camera: "Is that your original nose?" The truth she revealed years later: she was 18, went to a London doctor for a sinus problem, and the bridge of her nose collapsed during surgery. It wasn't cosmetic. It was a medical accident. Bollywood turned on her. "People not casting me. I was tired of the politics." She fled to America. She met Nick Jonas at an Oscar's after party. He got on one knee: "Where have you been all my life?" She was 35, he was in his twenties. She wasn't looking for love. "I was afraid of getting my heart broken." The media attacked. One article called her "a global scam artist." Others said she "rocks him to sleep like a baby." They got married anyway. Then their daughter Malti was born dangerously premature. Hospitalized for 110 days. "She had so many tubes, you could hardly see a little face." Priyanka shut down. Nick held her by the shoulders. She said: "Just tell me what to do." He said: "Just get into the car with me." Then the media went after the baby. They questioned the surrogacy. Said she "didn't give birth to her daughter." That was the breaking point. Malti came home healthy. And Priyanka finally stopped hiding. "I come across as strong because my parents raised me to be a strong woman. But that doesn't mean I'm not vulnerable. That doesn't mean I don't have dark days." She survived stalkers, Bollywood politics, an affair scandal, a botched surgery turned into a nose job rumor, and a media that called her a scam artist for marrying the man she loved. It took almost losing her daughter for her to stop pretending she was fine. "The best shutdown to people who said I didn't belong – is to belong."

Traders on the floor made thousands of dollars in minutes by showing each other fingers. Not a metaphor. Literally - with their hands. One gesture meant a hundred contracts. Another meant a thousand. Wrong hand - margin call. This world is almost gone. But someone filmed it before it disappeared. Rick Santelli - CNBC legend. Started as a trader in 1979 on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Gold, currencies, interest rates. Then became the face of financial television - 25 years of live broadcasts from the trading floor. In this video he walks into the pit with the TopStepTrader crew and shows exactly how it all worked. The language of the pit is hands. Everything below the chin - buying. Above - selling. Fingers at your face - price. Fingers away from you - quantity. One finger - one contract. Fist at the forehead - ten. Another gesture - a hundred. Another - a thousand. When CME and CBOT merged, traders from different exchanges ended up in the same pit. The problem: identical gestures meant different things. One guy shows a hundred – the other reads a thousand. "You're buying a thousand?" – "No, I'm taking a hundred." In a pit where a deal closes in one second, that mistake is real money. Santelli demonstrates the math. One S&P 500 contract requires $2,500 in margin. You buy a hundred in the pit and sell five hundred on the screen and pocket a thousand dollars. Twelve hours of work. Some days the market rips 200 points up, the cash session closes, and in the next fifteen minutes the Market-on-Close orders trigger a ten-point drop. The brokers have client orders stacked - sell 500 on close. The bell rings. The pit explodes. A hundred sold. Two hundred. Done. The name TopStep comes from the pit itself. The best traders stood on the top step – where they had the best view, the best prices, and the best chance of catching the order flow. Everyone below was fighting for scraps. This was trading before algorithms. Before screens replaced humans. Before the pits went silent. A world where your voice, your hands, and your nerve were the only edge you had.

In March 1929 a banker named Paul Warburg stood up and warned America that an orgy of speculation would end in a depression involving the entire country. Wall Street called him a party pooper. Six months later the market crashed. The depression lasted a decade. Then came war. Warburg never recovered. His family believes the grief killed him. They called him the Cassandra of Wall Street. Cassandra could see the future. She was also doomed to be ignored. This BBC documentary traces how the greatest financial disaster in modern history unfolded – and why everyone saw it coming and did nothing. It started with a new idea: ordinary Americans could get rich in the stock market. Charles Mitchell, president of National City Bank, spotted the opportunity. Millions had bought government bonds during World War I. Mitchell said – if they'll buy bonds, they'll buy stocks. He opened brokerage offices across the country. By the mid-1920s three million Americans were in the market. Shoe shine boys. Photographers. Comedians. Groucho Marx invested everything he had. Then came buying on margin. You could buy a $100 stock for $25 down. The brokerage loaned you the rest. By the late 1920s 90% of a stock's purchase price was borrowed money. Nearly 40 cents of every dollar loaned in America went to the stock market. Nobody regulated any of it. President Coolidge said the business of America is business. The government's job was to get out of the way. Wall Street insiders like Joseph Kennedy ran pump-and-dump schemes in broad daylight. It was legal. There were no disclosure rules. The market was a casino – and it was rigged. October 24, 1929. Black Thursday. Stocks dropped 10, 20, 30 points at a time. Shrieks and gasps from the gallery of the exchange. Ten thousand people filled the streets outside. Four hundred mounted police were deployed. The bankers tried to save it. Thomas Lamont of JP Morgan gathered five of the wealthiest men in America. They pooled $250 million. Richard Whitney marched onto the trading floor and bought 25,000 shares of US Steel above market price. It worked – for two days. On Tuesday the selling was so relentless there was no lunchtime meeting at Morgan. By evening, American stocks had lost 22% of their value in 36 hours. $25 billion in personal wealth vanished in five days. Then the banks started failing. Over 2,000 collapsed in 1931 alone. There was no deposit insurance. People went to withdraw their savings. The money wasn't there. They wrapped their feet in newspaper and slept in cardboard huts in Central Park. They called them Hoovervilles. The crash didn't create the Great Depression by itself. But it triggered a chain reaction – banks failing, businesses losing credit, workers laid off, demand collapsing – that lasted an entire decade and spread across the world. In Germany it fueled the rise of fascism. In Russia it validated communism. American capitalism's worst failure became a recruiting tool for its enemies. When Roosevelt finally took office he said one sentence that still echoes: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. He guaranteed bank deposits. He launched the SEC. And to run it he picked Joseph Kennedy – the very man who had profited from rigging the market. The fox guarding the chicken coop.

MIT, 2007. An ordinary lecture on circuits and electronics. The professor writes a formula on the board and starts plugging in numbers. A chip with 100 million gates, running at 1 GHz on 5 volts. He finishes the math, pauses, and turns to the class. The chip would burn 125 kilowatts just sitting idle, doing nothing. That's enough to power a small building, coming from a single chip. He jokes about carrying a laptop like that in your backpack. Then he asks the room how to fix it. A bigger resistor makes the chip crawl, and lower voltage isn't enough. For a moment it looks like the whole semiconductor industry is stuck. The answer turns out to be simple: replace one resistor with a second transistor that does the exact opposite of the first. When one is on, the other is off, so current never flows straight from power to ground. Idle power drops to almost zero. This is CMOS, and nearly every chip in your phone and laptop is built on it today. At the end of the lecture, the professor puts one tiny inverter on a live demo and starts raising the frequency. The temperature climbs until it hits 110 degrees and the transistor dies right in front of the students. The question is: if one small idea saved the industry from 125 kilowatts, what will save it from the next wall?

POV: you asked Michael Saylor what time it is. 20 minutes later you understand inflation, monetary history, digital scarcity, the collapse of fiat… and somehow you bought Bitcoin. Great teacher though.