Surviving the Storm: A Journey of Resilience and Truth

You are seen.

You are worthy.

You are not alone.

The world loses one person to suicide every 40 seconds.

Let's change the stats together.

We can say not suicide.

Not today.

Welcome to True Crime Authors and Extraordinary People, the podcast where we bring two passions together.

The show that gives new meaning to the old adage truth is stranger than fiction.

And reminding you that there is an extraordinary person in all of us.

Here is your host, David McClam.

What's going on, everybody?

And welcome to another episode of True Crime Authors and Extraordinary People.

Of course, I'm your man, David McClam.

If you guys haven't already, make sure you follow us on all of our social media.

One link to a link tree will get you every place you need to go pertaining to the show.

All right, as you heard coming in, if you are someone or you know someone that is thinking about hurting themselves or someone else, please dial 988.

It is the suicide prevention hotline.

You can call them or you can text them.

And if no one else has told you this today, let me be the first to tell you, I do care and we do need you to be here.

There is nothing worth doing.

Your life.

All right.

So sorry to be this long to come back.

I know I told you I'll be back to let you know what's going to go with the podcast.

I also want to let you guys know what happened to me over this summer and why there were not that many episodes that had dropped.

And so I'm going to tell you guys all of that today and then I'm going to tell you what the future of the show looks like and what will happen starting at the beginning of 2025.

All right, the first thing I'll say is I hope you guys did catch the last two episodes that I dropped.

I just recently dropped the Madness of John Terrell with author Stephen Terrell.

Also the Graves of Truth, A Journey Through History and Mystery with author Sharon Vert.

Let me say something about John Terrell, though.

The guy is so nice, I mispronounced his last name through the whole entire interview.

I was cringing as I was editing it and he never corrected me because he's just that nice.

I was telling it.

Also I was saying John Terrell, when actually is John and Stephen Terrell.

So, Stephen, I apologize for that.

But go check both of those interviews out and make sure you check out all the other authors that I did drop this year.

All of their books are extraordinary.

Some of the books were first time books.

So make sure that you go and check that out.

And also, before we start, I want to let you know that the peers in my audience had gotten split, and let me tell you what that means.

I had moved host earlier this year from Spreaker.

Now, I'll tell you that small story, but there's a lot of people saying that I got kicked off a Spreaker.

I did not.

This should be proof for that.

When I moved, I had my hose broken, which means that at the time, the RSS fee was updating too slow, so I had them break the hose.

But what happened was the RSS fee was never transferred directly from Spreaker.

So I'm hearing that these same ads from speakers on here and a lot of things, and my account was still up under Spreaker, and that's because they had not fully transferred my RSS feed over to my new host, Captivate.

So that split my audience.

What that means is my old audience that had already been following me over at Spreaker got all of my old episodes, but you were getting nothing new.

And now the people that was new to the show was getting all of the episodes from Captivate, but not necessarily getting the old stuff.

So now we have that figured out.

I've had that transferred, and hopefully by this recording, everybody should be on the same page.

Everybody should be hearing all of that.

So let me say welcome to.

To all of my new listeners out there, and thank you to all of my old ones that are still here with me.

You guys, all of you, is what make the show go round.

All right, if I sound a little bit different, I am testing out my new mobile podcasting station.

So I'm using a totally different mic and setup.

So if I sound a little bit different, that is why some of this stuff I can get done mobile.

And sometimes I just feel like I need to record some for you guys.

So.

So this is going to be the way to do that.

So let's jump into what happened to me, what happened to the podcast, why you guys didn't get so many episodes, why I was incognito for so long.

So I'm gonna try to make this story as short as possible.

But a lot of things happened to your boy in 2024.

As you guys know, I have been defending the lies and the evilness that has been going on when it comes to ladonna Humphrey.

You guys know Donna Humphrey, author.

She has become a very good friend of mine.

And there was some people because she was a hero and she blew the whistle on a guy that was doing Medicaid fraud.

He decided to go out out and destroy her life.

This all began earlier in 2024.

They have a whole podcast on it, which I'm not giving them any cloud here.

If you guys have heard my rebuttal podcast, we're not afraid that you know who I'm talking about.

Guys.

I have never seen evil personified like I saw it here.

I want you to understand that none of the people other than the guy that she whistleblow on and her old co host Alicia Lockhart, who decided to join in on the lies knew ladonna Humphrey and none of them certainly did not know me.

So I waited for a while after they did this and I watched what it was doing to her and I said, I can't sit back and do nothing.

My mom did not raise me like that to sit back and watch somebody be slaughtered or lied on or whatever and just sit back and do nothing.

I was appalled because there's people that knows her a lot longer than I do.

Some people that she's responsible putting their career, whether it's podcasting or writing books in play.

And everybody sat back and said nothing.

So over the course of the summer, I decided I was going to join in and I was going to help defend her.

As you guys seen, I was attacked by all their trolls.

I still am.

We're not afraid carries a 1:1 star because of them.

And then if you notice that my rating here jumped from a five star down because of all of them.

But you, my audience know who I am and I wasn't really frazzled by that.

But they were attacking every place that I went and everything that I did.

Now I'm not the kind of person that anybody gets to me and they certainly haven't.

They've done everything from trying to say I made false statements about wanting to go and beat up drag queens, which was totally untrue to I was getting sued by this guy's lawyer for his copyright to the one guy who is all after ladonna Humphrey wouldn't decided to file a police report against me because he said I don't really threaten to come to his gay nightclub and to basically shoot up drag queens.

We put all that to rest.

I have the episodes if you guys want to go.

Listen, we're not afraid.

Where I rebutted all of that and I proved to you exactly what I did say and I made them all like idiots in the process, which is why they don't like me is because of the fact that everything they say I can and have proven the truth.

Well, Recently, I started looking over the course of all of that and I started looking over the course of my whole career and what I do and try to do here on true crime and authors and extraordinary people.

And I ain't got a lot of you guys.

I felt defeated.

And the reason why I felt defeated has nothing to do with those clowns over there.

It had to do with.

I felt like.

And I don't know if you guys ever felt this way, that no matter how much good there is, it always seems that at some point, evil always seems to triumph.

No matter where the truth is, no matter how you can tell the truth, no matter how you prove the truth, it seems like that evil always wins.

And I was getting tired of that.

And I'm like, why am I even here anymore?

Nobody wants to listen to a podcast that is truthful, that is honest, that is going to be transparent, that is not going to try to make money off of the backs of someone else, even if that means ruining their lives in the process.

They have tried to have me shut down.

They wrote the speaker and this is why I said that they're going to tell you I got kicked out.

I did not understand.

Speaker is a business and I make them money no matter how much or how little I make them money.

They signed me to a lifetime deal.

And let me tell you how crooked they are.

I left.

And I'll tell you why I did leave.

Because yes, they went with this whole thing about I threatened to beat them up in the whole nine.

Now what you guys need to know is a whole bunch of attorneys, a whole bunch of police officers, our friends, that is listen to this episode.

I think some police officers even in Arkansas listened to the episode and said, I didn't threaten anybody.

What I had said when they got their panties in a bunch was that I said that if this was 25 year ago Dave, this would have ended very differently because they decided to go after my wife.

And I said, 25 year ago, Dave would apologist showed up on his doorstep, knocked on his door and we opened the door.

I says, what you got to say now?

Well, they turned that into.

I said I was coming to North Carolina to beat up the host and I was going to go.

And I said that a church had contacted me that does not like gay people.

And to be honest with, they don't even like people that's been divorced, so they don't even like me.

And that they had written me well over the summer.

And as you know, they said they had heard that there was this gay drag queen that was going after a prominent author named ladonna Humphrey.

And they wanted to know what they could do to help.

And I said, yes, this church reached out to me, and I.

And they never mobilized because I didn't answer that back.

I said, I would never do that.

I'm not that hateful.

No matter what you do to me, I would never unleash a hate group on any minority group.

Whether you're gay, black, white, Mexican, it doesn't matter to me.

That is evil that you cannot come back from.

And I have a conscience.

So I said, you know, I would go to bed at night knowing that, you know, this person and all of his guests would have probably gotten injured because I was pissed because you said a couple things about me.

And boom, there it is.

Well, they ran with that.

Now, here is the dumb part.

My show is transcribed.

And if you go and you look at Apple now, any show in Apple is transcribed, but I have full transcriptions of my show.

I post them on my website.

So when you come and say I said something, believe me, I can back that up.

Well, if you go to We're Not Afraid, you can see that I did a whole episode where I did nothing but go through everything that they lied about and prove to you exactly what I said.

Well, he went to the police and fought a police report saying that I was going to come, and I threatened him, and the police pretty much told him to kick rocks.

I have the report.

I've done an episode on that, too.

But I'm sitting there going, okay, so now they're going to speaker, trying to get me shut down.

And I did get a call from my handler, which I was already done with speaker anyways, so Amy can jump, because the fact that they've never done anything that they said they were going to do either.

And I was there for almost eight years, right?

There was a bunch of promises that was made to me and my daughter.

There was a bunch of promises that was made to me specifically.

There was a bunch of things they're supposed to do for promotion.

Speaker never did that.

So when I get a call from Amy, Amy doesn't even want to take responsibility for working hand in hand with this guy, because I can tell you the way that she's talking, oh, they're rubbing somebody's back over there.

And she wanted to come with the sponsors, doesn't like it.

And I said, then I moved the one episode.

No, they wanted me to remove the whole show.

And I said, I'm not removing my whole show.

I said, because that is freedom of speech.

And I said, if you do, then when I decide to sue them, I'm going to sue you.

And that's exactly what's going to happen.

Because the fact that my contract, they can't just remove me like that didn't tell me they was going to remove me, but I already saw it coming.

So I moved that show out and I plastered it someplace else.

I went to Captivate, but I wanted to move from speaker before.

But understand this, guys, if you guys are someone out there that you guys get a lot of stuff for free.

Now, I don't mean from your job, because usually if you're getting stuff from your job, your job is going to keep you in your updated things they give you.

Whether it's one or two years behind, it's still going to be updated enough to where you can do the job you're supposed to do.

But if you got a service out there, or you're like me, you're a podcast, you got a podcast contract.

Look around.

Because the fact that I've told my wife for the last four years, I should move from speaker, they're not doing anything that they are supposed to do.

And I'm watching all of these new hosts come up with things that I've never seen.

But I hung with speaker because of the word free.

That was it.

And you guys know what I feeling, because if you're paying for something, you're gonna automatically shop around and look for whatever the best stuff is.

I knew speaker was outdated.

I knew that maybe speaker was costing me more money to stay with them than if I left, which they were.

And I'll explain that.

I moved to Captivate and I saw things speaker hasn't had and they should have had three years ago.

Captivate, as well as other podcast hosting companies are moving up.

They're giving AI, they're giving transcriptions, they're doing all these things that I'm paying extra money for a month because I get Spreaker for free.

So a Spreaker really free to me if I'm paying this company X amount of dollars so that it can help me write my show notes, right?

Because I don't lie to you.

Any podcaster that's busy will tell you they probably use AI to write their show notes.

But I don't like to cheat with AI.

What I mean by that?

I don't go to ChatGPT and say, Write me some show notes and here's what you do.

No, the companies I use actually uses my own Voice and my own episode to create the show knows all of that.

And then I go through there and I tweak them.

So it's not 100 AI because I have to tweak them and add things and stuff, but a majority of it is written and gives me the concept and the idea I'm paying some other company for that.

Why am I paying another company to add subtitles if I wanted that?

Or if I'm paying another company to add chapters?

So even if speaker was free, it's really not.

I go to Captivate.

If you look now at this episode per se, you'll see that there's chapters.

So where my name just sat there, what just said True Combustionary people.

You now see that move here.

Here's chapter one, and then the next chapter, and then it'll change.

That's something that Speakers should have had forever.

So they're barbaric and they're not nice and they're not friendly, and I wouldn't recommend anybody to go there.

I know I've said many times before that they have treated me very well.

Well, they did at the beginning.

And the service is good because it was free, but it's out of date.

You would get more out of paying somebody just $15 a month if there's their base, then if you go to Speaker.

So if you're a speaker and you're free, you need to think about moving.

But I moved.

They went to Captivate, Captivate said, kick rocks.

So now they're defeated because they can't bring me down there.

But I still get to thinking.

And I said, you know what?

Nobody really wants true reporting anymore.

Everybody wants sensationalism.

Everybody wants to hone in on somebody's life if it's being destroyed, even if the things they're saying is a lie.

Why am I here?

Why do I need to be here anymore?

My voice doesn't matter because the fact that I'm reporting to you truthful stuff.

I actually sit down and do my research on the things that I tell you.

I have empathy and sympathy where I need to, because my whole goal is to get you the story so that maybe we could do something together collectively.

I bring you authors.

And I was like, these authors never been heard.

But nobody wants that, right?

So I pretty much said, I'm done at the end of the year.

So I texted Ladonna and I said, I'm just letting you know that after I'm done, we are not afraid to begin in 2025.

I'm hanging up the microphone I am walking away.

I am done with podcasting.

And she came back and said, why?

And she asked me, what's the trolls getting to me?

I said, these fools would never get to me.

I would never quit because of them.

I says, but the reason is because what good am I doing?

I do the cases that nobody else wants to do because they're afraid of getting canceled.

I bring people on the show to try to help people, but it seems like the more I turn around, evil always seems to win.

It always wants to drown my voice out.

It always wants to drown out the voice of the true podcasters out there that really care, and they want to bring good content.

They just want to go listen to lies like, from this podcast, and they want to sensationalize.

They want to go check out Reddit threads and talk trash about people because they have no lives.

Why don't you add to that?

And she told me that she felt like I was making a mistake if I quit.

That true convulse for many people is a great podcast and that people is benefiting from it.

And so after she thought, before a while, I went to my wife, said the same thing, and she said she didn't think that was something I should do.

And at that point, I said, okay, well, you sold me.

Maybe I stick around.

But then life kept rolling, and I found out that my son tried to take his life over Thanksgiving break.

And we started dealing with that, and I was like, this is it, bro.

You know, when your kid decides to do that because of some things that he had went through earlier about a year ago that we thought we had the handle on, and we thought everything was good to go.

We get hit with this.

Gets told us from a school, and he admits it.

And I said, you know, maybe I.

Maybe I am done.

And this is very therapeutic to me.

And I sit here and I think about all the good I try to do.

My son was going to take his life because of something somebody else did.

We kind of got that squared away now.

But I said, is there really room out there for a voice like mine that's going to continue to bring you the stories?

I'm never going to lie to you guys.

I'm never going to make up stories of this other podcast just to get radies.

And believe me, this guy's getting ratings because this is what people want.

People's paying him money to lie and destroy somebody else's life, and they tried to destroy mine.

You know, they threatened to call my job or everything, dude.

I mean, this has been like, if you knew what happened in the course of 2024, mostly would have just jumped off of a bridge by now and be like, I'm done with this.

So I kept thinking about it.

I got to thinking, maybe I haven't really dealt with my mom's death the way I should have.

And it's been four years.

I thought about my son.

I thought about what people's doing to ladonna.

And I thought about this podcast isn't even worth it anymore.

And this is why two common officers kind of got behind.

And then little things started waking me up.

I started getting requests from publicists of interviews that I had shot.

Now, I didn't lie to them.

I did have family emergency that deal with my son.

And I did have other, you know, sicknesses that was going on, the whole nine.

So any of them listening, they say, oh, he told me that there was a failing burden.

He got sick.

Those are very true.

But then after those was over, just added to, I don't think anybody wants to do this anymore.

Then I started getting the publicist, hey, do you know when this interview is going to come out?

You know, do you know, you know, even Steven Terrell himself will be.

Do you know when mine's going to be released?

And even though he was kind of new because his was shot in November, usually I'm pretty quick with these.

You know, I got Sharon Verts.

And then all of a sudden the public, Sharon Verts is like, hey, I got two other fabulous ladies.

So she keeps giving me, giving me things.

Which helped, right?

Because I started thinking maybe, maybe people do want to come on the show.

Maybe people do really want to hear what's going on.

And I'm not getting what I would consider small authors.

Some of these authors are brand new to the game, but I can tell you, if you read their books, they're going to be New York Times best selling authors.

Most of these authors that you guys hear from me are New York Times bestselling authors of.

They've written three, four, five different books or they've been in so many, you know, so many extreme clubs.

They have their own clubs.

I mean, so these are not small people that people's publicist is reaching out to me saying, do you want to do this interview?

And so I was like, I owe it to them.

Let's get these out.

And I said, I want to get this up by the end of the year.

You guys deserve to hear them.

They deserve to have it published.

They took their time with me.

I will never do anything to misguide their trust.

They both are fabulous books.

Let's get them out there.

And I still got to thinking, maybe this is just not.

Not worth it.

And I hadn't told Ladonna, my wife, this, but I'm like, I still was in this vein that I said, I'm gonna quit.

Then I thought about all of you.

I thought about the people that's been with me all this time.

How would you guys feel if I did actually just disappear?

And ladonna told me, well, I think that your whole audience would care.

You've done a wonder for me.

No one else stood up for me, but you did.

And I think we are not afraid.

It's doing wonders.

And I've been asked and begged by several different people, people I don't even know, to keep We're Not Afraid open and just use that as another podcast to do nothing but help people in situations like ladonna, some other folks that's told me their story.

And so I was considering that.

Let me tell you what finally turned me completely around.

And I know he doesn't know this because I just met him.

So as of this shooting, this has been a day ago.

And I'm gonna tell you how sometimes celebrity and movies can factor into your decision.

I don't think that a lot of times celebrities realize the work that they've done actually can help somebody else.

Because when you meet a celebrity, sometimes everybody's all gung ho.

Oh, my God, that's who it is.

And they're all over them.

And, you know, let's face it, celebrities are people, too.

And sometimes they just want you to shut up and move on.

But I'm in my store the other day, if you guys don't know.

I.

I cover, like, 14 different stores for what I do for work, and two of my stores is a Best Buy.

And I was in my one Best Buy that's in a territory called Woodland Hills, California, and I was just coming off a break.

So as I'm walking back out to the floor, because the floor had been very busy.

I know.

And I was hanging up the phone with my wife, I noticed that there was a few people in the store, and there was a Best Buy employee that was helping out this gentleman.

Now, I saw him, and before I hung up the phone to my wife, I said, hey, I just got back on the floor.

I got to go because our break is over.

I says, but I swear that I'm looking at choir boy.

This is before I even talked to him.

Now, I don't know how you guys are.

But I know all the names to these people, sometimes at least first or last names.

But most of the time, you spend your whole life referring to that celebrity as the part that they've played in a movie.

The only names that you really know is if they're clicked.

Like, they're always, like, thrown in your brain all the time.

Or if that person used their real name in the show.

Like Jamie Foxx, right?

You know, Jamie Foxx because that's his name.

He had the Jamie Foxx show, so there was never, never any other character on that show he played.

Now, he wanted to play other characters, like Willie Beeman and, you know, so on and so forth.

But you always do Jamie Foxx's name because he used his real name.

But when you watch certain movies, you only equate the name of the character that they played to them.

And you may know what their real name is, but I don't care what you say.

Sometimes you stand in front of people when you're trying to recall their name.

It just doesn't come to you.

That's kind of what happened to me.

So I'm sitting there, I'm hanging up with my wife, and just as I'm pushing the button, the Best Buy employee that was helping him has said, well, this is the.

The Apple rep for all store.

He can help you.

You know, he's the guru.

He's.

Oh, yeah, you're the man.

You're the guru.

And so I shook his hand and I was like, you know, I was like, welcome to the shop, brother.

What's your name?

And he said, tico.

Now, I already knew, but I said to him, I said, you are an actor, aren't you?

And I said, I know you.

And he says, oh, yeah, yeah.

Well, you know me from.

And I said, you were in the Five Heartbeats.

You played choir boy.

Has anybody ever told you look like him?

And he said, for the last 35 years, which I knew that that was him.

So Tico Wells hops in my store.

And we are talking about Max Dove.

Now.

We.

We talked about a little bit about the Five Heartbeats, How I was a fan of his, how I love the movie is truly an iconic movie.

You guys never seen the Five Heartbeats?

Go watch that movie.

It was written by Robert Townsen, as well as Keenan Ivory Wayans, two big black writers and producers and actors that went on to do fabulous things.

You know, Keenan, part of the Wayans brothers.

You know, he did In Living Color, and, you know, his brothers came after him and Robert Townsend's done fabulous movies, not only like the Five Heartbeats, but Hollywood Shuffle.

He always honed in on things that he felt was wrong or needed to be corrected.

In that movie, at least.

Hollywood Shuffle with black people, right?

He was talking about the roles that black people usually always gotten.

The big tagline was, you can always find work at the post office, but if you haven't seen Hollywood Shuffle or the Five Heartbeats, go watch this movie.

The Five Heartbeats has become a cult classic now.

So we talked about that and a little bit about choir boy.

And then we started talking about why he was there, which is he wanted to get information on MacBooks and.

And you want to know what the differences was between the pro and the air and so on and so forth.

So we started having this conversation, and all of a sudden, I noticed that Tico starts looking off in the distance.

Now he's facing towards the front door, where he can actually see the front door from where we're standing.

And I couldn't see.

I could only see into the store.

And his eye starts to drift like he wasn't listening to anything I was saying.

I'm like, am I boring him or what's going on?

He says, excuse me.

I'ma go say hello.

So I turn around, and the legendary Smokey Robinson is standing over at Geek Squad.

I can't make this stuff up now.

I didn't go to go say hi to Smokey.

I didn't want to inundate him.

Tico went and said hi, came back, and we started conversating again, but it was Smokey.

And then I started to think, it's like I.

Tico, well, stand in front of me.

And now the legendary Smokey Robinson just came in here.

And me and Tico start talking about how Smokey is 84, he's still gigging, and the young people that was helping him had no idea they were staring at a legend in the business.

Matter of fact, after he had left by an hour, I walked up and said, do you want to.

Do you know who the black older gentleman was that you was helping?

He had no idea who Smokey Robinson was.

We got to teach our youth who these people is, because a lot of the music they listen to would not be possible without people like Smokey Robinson.

So I started thinking about all the things that Smokey Robinson did in his life.

He's 84.

He's had a long career.

You know, he used to be an executive of Motown.

You know, he sung with the Miracles.

You know, he's.

He's been through it.

He's been through racism and Jim Crow and not being able to perform in places.

And so I started to think, and I'm like, man, you know, was Smokey ever at a point where he just wanted to, like, kind of, like, give up and.

Because he didn't think he was doing any good.

That's what I'm thinking.

What would happen if Smokey would have quit?

Where would R and B and soul and even jazz music be right now if Smokey Robinson just threw his hands up and said, I'm done?

So I go back and me and Tico continue to talk.

At the end, we talk about, you know, some specs and stuff.

And I thanked him for coming into the store.

And here's what Tico did know.

So what he didn't know, you know, as we were sitting there talking, you know, we were talking about other things.

Talking about a little bit about mental health and what my show was about.

You know, this one true coming off is what I did and about the extraordinary people.

And, you know, he said, you know, when I said, yeah, you know, people are survivors, something, he goes, who's.

Who in here is not.

And it was just a human conversation, right?

I didn't.

I wasn't talking David to Tico.

Tico the actor.

I was talking David to Tico.

Both of us as being human beings on this planet, both of us just being people.

And here's what ended up happening.

I was like, man, I haven't watched Five Heartbeats in a while.

And something said, go watch the show.

And of course, Tico plays choirboy in this one.

And, you know, I.

I was laughing because one of the famous scenes in there is, you know, they're about to go on stage, and Eddie hasn't made it yet.

You know, he's.

He's supposed to be the main singer.

Bobby ain't there, and, you know, he's going off on Dresser ball, man.

Who gonna sing the parts?

Eddie ain't here.

Bobby ain't here.

And Dresser pretty much had brought up that the last performance, he had got hit in the head with a bottle.

And he goes, oh, man, they gotta hit me in the head with no bottle, man.

They could have said something.

But then the part of that movie that grabbed me is, if you look all through that movie, there was controversy for all of them.

There was times where probably all of them should have given up.

The.

The character of Eddie was loosely based off of David, referring from the Temptations.

You know, he's going through his drug stuff from the whole nine.

It comes to the end of the movie where now the group is all broken up, right?

There's a lot of things that happen.

I'm not going to spoil it for you guys.

These guys.

Can you go watch the movie?

You can find it on prime right now.

But the buzzing happened in pretty much the Five Heartbeats is no longer.

And you can tell, years have went by.

They're all gotten older.

Donald Doug Matthews, who was played by Robert Townsend, had a fallen out with his brother J.T.

they weren't even speaking anymore.

And so a letter comes to Donald Duck Matthews from Choir Boy.

Choir Boy has now become a minister.

So if I didn't tell you this part, he was, you know, choir boy because his dad was a minister, he was a Christian.

He was in this group.

His dad did not approve of him being in this group.

He said, you can't serve two masters.

Because back in those days, parents, especially ministers, felt like if you were singing, you know, anything but gospel music, that you were actually serving the devil.

And so that's why he got the name Choir Board.

So it goes on to where it comes.

Towards the end of the movie, Choir Board sends Donald Matthews this letter.

Pretty much says, hey, brother, I haven't seen you in so long.

I miss you.

That he had invested a lot of the money that he had got from the group into his dad's church.

His dad was about to have the.

The opening service of the church, and he would love him to come, and he says, I have a present for you.

This is what broke me right here.

At that point, Donald Duck Matthews decides to go to this service.

And you see Choir Boy is sitting up in the choir stand.

He's got full robe on for the choir to get ready to sing.

And he looks out and he sees Duck, and he mouths the words, thank you for coming.

And Doug gives the thumbs up.

And then his dad, the minister, calls for the choir to come and sing their selection.

And the music starts.

Right as the music starts, you start to hear Eddie Kane sing.

Now, at this point in the movie, Duck is kind of looking down, you know, preparing for what the choir is going to sing.

And when he hears that voice, he lifts his head, and It's Eddie Kane Jr.

The man that was strung out on dope, the man that ruined his career because of it.

The last thing that we heard about Eddie Kane in that movie was that he had gotten, I think, shot because he was trying to rob some store.

He had ruined his relationship with his wife at the time that named Baby Doll who's also a singer.

And he looks up at this man is standing there sober, and he's singing this song called Feel Like Going On.

And that broke me.

And at that point, Tico Wells not knowing, coming into my store, causing me to think about these scenes.

I thought about these scenes before I went back to the movie.

Seen the movie hundreds of thousands of times on my lunch break.

I'm watching the movie.

That right there is what saved my career from podcasting along with ladonna Humphrey and along with my wife telling me things and along with Sharon, one of the publicists that continues to give me people to come on my show.

That song I Feel Like Going on is all about facing trials and tribulations, but you got to move on from them, since I feel like going on.

Although the storms are raging and the billows are tossing high, everything just flooded through me at that point.

And it was at that point I said that I knew I could not stop, because Tico Wells even said, maybe we'll work together sometime.

He says maybe he'll come do an interview.

And if he's listening, I hope he does come do an interview.

I think it'd be a heck of an interview.

You know, he's in the health now, making sure people stay healthy.

But his.

His overall career, right, that a lot of it took off right after the Five Heartbeats.

He's played, you know, movies like Trespass and All about you.

And of course, we mentioned the Five Heartbeats.

That's just a few of the things that he's done, and he continues to do things as well as the rest of the cast.

So.

Thank you, Tico.

So it's because of that.

Because of that song, because of the things I started thinking about.

All the things I have brought you guys, I brought.

I mean, I interviewed Taryn hall this year.

I've interviewed David Whitten, who is one of the writers for the Family Guy.

I've introduced you guys to some authors that you guys may have never heard of, and if you guys would have brought their books.

Thank you.

That's my whole goal, and I hope that I'm the voice that will bring things to you that other people won't.

So that's what ended up happening.

I was thinking about hanging up everything, but unknowingly, Tico Wells in the movie that he played in the Five Heartbeats, along with my good friend Madonna Humphrey, who's going through her own stuff, but took the time to want to bail me out the log.

My wife said she don't think That's a good idea that's coming.

Me and said, I think it'd be a travesty if you quit all of that in one circle, especially going through what I went through with my son.

And now we got all that squared away, I have to continue to fight for young kids and suicide, not committing suicide or give them away to where they can feel that they're useful or whatever the case is.

Children face more things now than we ever face if you're my age.

Back in the day, when we was going to school in the 70s and 80s and graduating in the 90s, everything is on them now.

The parents don't really have any leeway because everything we do is wrong.

But the minute that child goes and does something they shouldn't do, they come knocking on your door.

Right.

Like you should have done these things.

So that's what happened.

Not telling the story to feel sorry for you.

I'm telling you what happened of why I haven't been here.

And this is what I was thinking.

So what's gonna go on with the future of the show?

But before I say that, somebody had asked me if I was gonna.

If I would say something about what I felt about politics at this point.

We're going in with the Trump coming in and the whole nine.

I'm not gonna go into detail about that on this episode.

Maybe I'll come back and talk to you guys about that first of the year.

I will say this piece, though.

I think a lot of people that voted for Donald Trump right now is finding out that a lot of things he said was not true.

There is now people lining up at the Capitol begging Biden.

The same people that called him Sleepy Joe, the same people that said he wasn't a good president, the same people that dogged him out are now the same people, though, that is beating down the door at the White House, asking Joe to save them and to do something, to put something in place before Trump takes office and implies his immigration policies, which is supposed to be a mass deportation.

Problem with that is.

Is now Joe Biden's in the lame duck section.

He really can't write any policies.

But in my opinion, a lot of people that went and voted for Trump, for whatever reason, they didn't want a black woman in office.

They didn't want a woman in office.

Whatever the case is, from what I've been reading up on of what I've been studying and what I've been looking at and the reactions and what's going on in Congress right now and Trying to avoid a shutdown from the government.

I just think, in my opinion, that a lot of people is in what they call the F around and find out era.

And now we're at the find out portion of that.

I think we're gonna make it through it.

We're gonna be okay, especially my race, because we've been dealing with hatred and racism for 400 plus years.

And so we went through this the first time with Trump.

In my opinion, it ain't gonna be no different, it's gonna be worse.

But I think as a country, we can get through it if we stick together.

No matter what color or race, gender, creed.

There's a lot of things that's going to happen that he's going to try to eradicate.

You know, there's gay people.

He's trying to get rid of certain things for them.

He's already killed a woman's right to choose.

Nick Fuentes is running around.

He thinks he almost got assassinated or the guy was coming to kill him the other day.

He's already got doxed.

He's already living, was living in his mama's basement because women came for him when he made this video about, you know.

Yeah, you know, is your body my choice?

And men always going to be in control.

You can't go doing that with, with tensions as high as they are.

So just my little piece on that is, as you guys know, I'm not a Donald Trump fan.

I think the wrong person is in office and I think we are about to find out that everything that he said is not true.

Because I did read that about more than 85% of people that voted for Donald Trump doesn't know anything about what he stands for, doesn't know anything about his policies that he said.

He only has a concept of a plan and does not even know what a tariff is.

And that's the biggest thing that's going on right now.

If you don't know what a tariff is and how it works, he's telling you, we're going to make all these countries pay us.

We're going to get all this money.

It's going to be the bomb.

And he's lying.

That's not how our tariff works.

He's going to impose a tariff on China, then that means everything we get from China is going to go up in price.

Prices is already starting to rise.

When to buy eggs last night could not buy a carton of eggs underneath.

$7 here in California already raising.

People's gotten their Christmas bonuses pulled from big corporations because of the tariff.

So if you guys don't know how terror's worth, I employ you to go and look at that.

But that's a little piece I'll say about politics right now.

Maybe we'll talk a little bit about.

About it more as he gets one in.

In 2020.

I'm not a political channel.

There's a lot of political people I could point you to.

But that's just my little.

My little spill on that.

Somebody asked why.

I'll talk about that, but not in depth tonight.

What's going to go on with true crime officers, extraordinary people.

I will be back stronger than ever in 2025.

Right now I'm slating to come back in the middle of January.

If not, then you guys will hear back from me again in the beginning of February.

I do have some things already lined up.

If I don't come back to February, it's because I'll be busy recording these episodes with some authors I have lined up and everything.

So they're ready to go for you first thing out the gate.

Not gonna quit.

I feel like going on.

We're gonna keep pressing.

I'm gonna keep being that voice in the dark and hopefully you see the light.

I'm gonna keep helping people tell the truth among the people that are evil, who wishes to bring them down?

Because I do believe that in the end of all of this, it may just take a while, but I do believe that truth will always prevail and good will always conquer evil.

All right, guys, thank you for joining for this one.

Again, I'll be back in January or February at the latest.

This is a good time for you guys to go back and listen to all of the previous episodes that maybe you guys have missed out on.

Captivate is my new host.

They've already started uploading these episodes for this show, but now we're going to go through a full year of that.

So you're going to be looking at a new slate of things like the chapters that's probably dancing in front of your face right now.

I think you guys will like that.

So if you listen to the podcast, you decide that you want to quit, you know what chapter you're on.

Don't ever let anybody make you quit.

If you know that you're out here doing something that's good and telling the truth, regardless of what that looks like, you gotta stick with it.

There's a lot of people that depends on you to do that, and I believe that.

I want to say thank you to my friend Ladonna.

Humphrey to my wife Beth and to Tico Wells for making me wake up, look at the world and look at the good that I am doing and keeping me here.

All right guys, once again, thank you for joining me today.

I know you have many choices in True Crime and Interview podcast and I am grateful that for almost the last three years you have chose me.

You have been listening to the only three faceted podcast of its kind.

Be good to yourself and each other and always remember, always stay humble.

An act of kindness can make someone's day.

A little love and compassion can go a long way.

And remember that there is an extraordinary person in all of us.

And I'll catch you guys on the next one.

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