resisted it, changing the sweetheart deal. president biden got it done. >> and that does it for us this hour. we hope everyone has a great labor day weekend. coverage continues after a quick break. ♪ ♪ good morning. welcome to "morning joe." we have a couple more great hours on tape for you today on this labor day. we hope everyone is enjoying the holiday. we begin this hour with a conversation we had a few weeks back that received some of the best feedback we've ever gotten from viewers. a look at how much of a historical outlier donald trump is, the failure to secure a peaceful transition of power has happened only twice in this country's history. the first in 1860 when the election of abraham lincoln

prompted seven southern states to secede and form the confederacy and the second in 2020 with donald trump. in the modern era the transition would begin with a concession speech on election night, often characterized as gracious. a stark difference from what happened three years ago. >> one of the great features of america is that we have political contests, that they are very hard fought, as this one is hard fought, and once the decision is made we unite behind the man who was elected. >> this is a fraud on the american public. this is an embarrassment to our country. >> i have no bitterness, no rancor at all. i say to the president as a thorough politician that he did a wonderful job. >> we were getting ready to win

this election. frankly, we did win this election. we did win this election. >> i have lost. mr. nixon has won. the democratic process has worked its will, so now let's get on with the urgent path of uniting our country. >> and this is a very big moment. this is a major fraud on our nation. we want the law to be used if a proper manner. >> congratulations on your victory. i hope that in the next four years you will lead us to a time of peace abroad and justice at home. you have my full support in such efforts. >> we will be going to the u.s. supreme court. we want all voting to stop. we don't want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list. >> the president asked me to tell you that he telephoned

president-elect carter a short time ago and congratulated him on his victory. >> it is a very sad moment. to me it is a very sad moment, and we will win this. as far as i'm concerned, we already have won it from the people of the united states have made their choice and, of course, i accept that decision. >> if you count the legal votes i easily win. >> he has won. we are all americans. he is our president and we honor him tonight. >> if you count the illegal votes they can try to steal the election from us. >> he will be our president and we will work with him. this nation faces major challenges ahead and we must work together. >> as everybody saw we won by historic numbers. >> there is important work to be done and america must always come first, so we will get

behind this new president and wish him well. >> democrat officials never believed they could win this election honestly. i really believe that. that's why they did the mail-in ballot it where there's tremendous corruption and fraud. >> i have said repeatedly in this campaign that the president was my opponent, not my enemy, and i wish him well and i pledge my support. >> and i have had two elections. i won both of them. it is amazing. and i actually did much better on the second one. >> this is america. just as we fight hard when the stakes are high, we close ranks and come together when the contest is done. >> that was a rigged election but we are still fighting it and you will see what is going to happen. >> but in an american election there are no losers because whether or not our candidates are successful, the next morning we all wake up as americans. >> we will never give up. we will never concede.

it doesn't happen. you don't concede where there's theft involved. >> whatever our differences we are fellow americans, and please believe me when i say no association has ever meant more to me than that. >> and to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. >> i so wish that i had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead the country in a different direction but the nation chose another leader. so ann and i join with you to earnestly pray for him and for this great nation. >> when you catch somebody in a fraud you are allowed to go by very different rules. so i hope mike has the courage to do what he has to do. >> donald trump is going to be our president. we owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer

of power, and we don't just respect that we cherish it. >> and we fight. we fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore. >> you know, we're reminded of what a dark chapter of american history donald trump is taking us through still and we're reminded of that because we see such extraordinary grace. >> goodness. >> goodness, decency. >> love of country. >> patriotism, love of country from all of those other candidates. let's bring in pulitzer prize winner author, doris goodwin. >> and that was free speech on donald trump's part. >> early on it was. not as he was whipping people into a frenzy on january 6th. doris, you and i have had the honor of knowing a lot of people that we saw there. i just want to underline one

point, you know, for people that might go, oh, that was then, they were all a good old boys' club. no, no, no. i look at goldwater who couldn't have disagreed more with lbj and being graceful. mcgovern couldn't are been more horrified of the prospect of four more years of vietnam and nixon. hubert humphries who couldn't have been more horrified that nixon was winning in '68. gerald ford, voice stripped, raw. all of these races close. bob dole. i was flying with him during the campaign and he just kept whispering what he said through the entire campaign, i can't believe this guy is beating me. this world war ii veteran against somebody that he thought was a draft dodger.

he never said it, but he couldn't believe it. gorge h.w. bush thinking the same thing. wait, they reject -- i can't believe it. and then the two most i think extreme examples, richard nixon who conceded a race when, oh, a lot of people around him in 1960 were saying they stole illinois from you. he said it didn't matter. and then al gore in one of the few good moments of his 2000 campaign where we saw into the heart -- >> the best -- of al gore, was for him tragically his concession speech. but a concession speech, one of the most patriotic concession speeches when al gore knew that five republican appointees to -- nominees to the supreme court voted against him and four democratic appointees voted for

him, still went out, gave an extraordinarily gracious concession speech that helped bring the country together. my god, my god, the contrast with this man, this thrice-indicted man, could not be greater, could it, doris? >> you know, joe, i think everybody should show again what you just showed, that conjunction of what has happened in every other time in our history except 1860 and what happened now. i mean it just shows you the grace of those people. you can imagine how hard it is for them. they lost an election. i looked at the concession speeches the other day, maybe a nerdy thing to do, but it made me so emotional to realize what you are saying. they come out there, they know they disappointed their followers, they feel really sad yet they know that the peaceful transition of power is a bed

rock for our country. the reason showing those two things together as you did this morning, people may think it is just words, the peaceful transition of power, but in democrat, the simplest terms is a democracy where you can vote your leaders in or throw them out. if they're thrown out they have to have the grace and humanity to accept that. the only other time, 1860, one of the things lincoln said, our democracy will not exist, that's why the simp war partly had to be fought. if you can decide you are the minority in the south, you are the democratic party, you lost the election, you decide, okay, i'm not accepting the loss, i'm seceding from the union. he said if we can't prove that can't happen democracy will be an absurdity. we have to go over the concession speeches again and again. look at al gore's speech. my husband luckily was partly able to help him on the speech. it was the way he delivered it, such a conversational style, with such emotion when he was able to say, i don't agree with the decision but the supreme court has spoken. it is the law of the land.

then he talked about what is over harvard law school, not under man but under god and under the law. so the rule of law is at issue right now, and i think if we could just play those over and over again to show the american people this has been our tradition. you know, it started, the concession speeches started in 1896. the first one on the radio was al smith conceding to herbert hoover. the next was a newsreel when wilke conceded to fdr. so there was a sense of a family tree of all of these people knowing how important it was. only donald trump, one man, has not done that. you know, at the end of al gore's speech he reprised something at the democratic convention for clinton and gore. they had a rant at the end, a chant, it is time for them to go, it is time for them to go. finally at the end of al gore's speech he brought it back up in another way, it is time for me to go. he said it peacefully and he

wished with god's stewardship of bush's election. where are these people now? >> it is such a -- >> maybe that should be the chant, it is time for him to go. >> doris, i couldn't agree anymore. that should be mandatory viewing to sit and watch that clip. i was thinking george mentioned george h.w. bush, bush 41, and how devastating that loss was for a man who was so proud that he was going to be a one-term president. he couldn't believe he had lost to bill clinton, and yet famously the note he left in the oval office for bill clinton on january 20th, 1993, on the day of president clinton's inauguration. he gets in the oval office and finds a note, incredibly gracious note. part is "you will be our president when you read this note. i wish you well. i wish your family well. your success now is our country's success. i am rooting hard for you. good luck." signed "george." that is a reminder and those clips we watched -- >> amazing, right? >> -- a reminder of who we are

and who we are supposed to be and how it is supposed to go and donald trump represents a deviation from history. but, doris, it seems to me we have to confront the fact still all of these news on there's a large segment of the population who is saying "we want that and we want it again." >> and that's the reason why the real battle to be fought here, and this is what you were talking about a little earlier, is the battle of public sentiment. i mean the law cases are going to be absolutely critical, but beyond the law cases the country has to be persuaded that what has been done by president trump, former president trump is wrong. you know, one of the things that lincoln said is more important than laws of congress, even more important than judicial decisions is public sentiment. as long as public sentiment is educated as it was in the 1850s and the 1860s, finally with organizing with movements, the anti-slavery movement was able to make sort of a majority view in the north that this was

wrong. it was against the ideals of the country. that allowed the whole thing to happen, and that's what has to happen now. it is very important that -- i think this is why it is so important that the trial be publicized, that it be essentially on television. it is the most important thing that's going to happen to us, is how are we going to feel about somebody who violated the ideals of the country, who was wrong. one of the things to go back to george bush sr., there's a great story he tells, that he came home one day after scoring three goals in soccer. he was so happy. he said to his mother, he said, i scored three goals. and his mother who loved ambition said, yes, but how did the team do? that's the thing, you need people in office to run for office who feel something is more important than their victory, it is the country and the team. if you can't accept that then democracy doesn't work. that's what has to be ridden home to the american people. if they could see the clip over and over they will see how far it goes from the grace and

dignity of all of the other people who ran for the office, lost and took it and the country moved on. >> doris, it is the grace of the individual to accept that defeat, to put the country first, but also they have their parties with them, other leaders, whether it is democratic or republican alike saying, look, the election is over, it is time to move on. we went through the example of nix beyond and watergate, but sometimes at the end of these bitter fights the party said, okay, it is time to turn the page. in 2016 by the next morning the democrats were doing so. have you seen anything here that would suggest there were other republicans, real ones that matter, not just the occasional lonely voice pushing the party and donald trump to move past this in the next election? >> yeah, it is still so hard to accept that. i thought after january 6th when you saw mcconnell speak, when you saw mccarthy speak that it would be the beginning of the leadership turning against him. somehow, somehow it has not happened. it can't just be a few of them.

we have to figure out when is that going to happen, when is it going to break. maybe the more this thing becomes clear what was done you have to believe rational thought will come back in the minds of some of these people. if not, it is going to take the overwhelming organization just as you were talking about earlier, organizing the country at all of the levels so that he cannot win that election. if the party will not depart from him, then he has to be defeated and the party has to be defeated. >> the one concession speech we haven't looked at, doris, is hilary clinton's. i'm just curious if you could talk about that, especially given what we heard kevin mccarthy saying about her behavior, about the peaceful transition of power, versus what she said that day? >> on the contrary, she comes out that next day. she talked about the disappointment she knows that people have felt. she feels it too. she talks about what it was meant to be a woman running for the election, and then she talks about the peaceful transition of

power. she says as was said in that clip with really motion in her voice, it is not just it is part of our system, not just it is the rule of law, it is not just we respect it, we cherish it. we cherish it and therefore we wish him well, hope he can have an open mind. that was a hard thing to do and she knew what she had to do and she did it, the opposite of what he is saying. so too the opposite of al gore. the operates of what he was saying. he comes out and he talks about the fact how hard it is, too. he doesn't like the supreme court decision but it is the rule of the land. they both deserve i think pantheons and those are great acceptance -- concession speeches. one of my favorites actually was mccain. what an extraordinarily one he gave. >> yeah. >> he not only said he accepted what had happened but he said that obama had inspired the nation and that he felt it was a wonderful moment in our history that the first black american had been elected. >> wow. >> i mean that's what you want. >> yeah. >> that's character. in fact, you learn about the character of the person who

loses more by their losing than by their winning. those people you saw this morning on that clip, they showed character. they were americans. >> i'm so glad you brought up john mccain, because for those of us honored to have known senator mccain, for anybody who thinks it is weak to concede an election, a democratic election that you lost, let's show that clip while we show doris, let's just show john mccain. john mccain, one of the toughest guys i ever met in congress. when he came at you, he came at you hard, knock your head off. then he would sit down with you later and he would say, okay, let's figure this out. he was a stand-up man, a tough man. the man we are looking at right there, all of these phony, all of these phony shows of

masculinity and machoism, all of these phony trump snowflakes who claim to be real men, we're looking at a real man here who was imprisoned, who was beaten, beaten so badly he could never raise his arms over his head again. doris, you know the story like so many of us know the story about john mccain. they offered, the vietcong offered to let him out of his living hell and he refused. he wasn't going to get special treatment. he would continue to be beaten into inches of death and stay in vietnam in the hanoi hilton being tortured because he wasn't going to get special treatment over his band of brothers who were there with him.

he came back, he got into politics, he served this country so proudly. and when he lost, i'll say it, he did what real men do when they lose. tipped his hat, acknowledged reality and moved on. d moved on so you only pay for what you need. that's my boy. now you get out there, and you make us proud, huh? ♪ bye, uncle limu. ♪ stay off the freeways! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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schools has one parent in the top percent. steve rattner, walk us through this because there are three categories you are looking at in terms of school. >> sure, mika. it is an interesting study and obviously parents are getting ready to apply to schools again. we just had the supreme court decision about affirmative action. let's look how rich people and other people fare at these schools. so let's compare here three groups, as you said, of schools. this little dotted line down here are what they call flagship public schools, places like university of virginia, university of michigan, high-quality public schools. you can see your chance of getting admitted regardless of income are roughly about the same all the way down from the bottom to the very top. if you apply to let's call it an ivy plus, an ivy quality school, your chances remain roughly the same until you get up here to the top 1%, the top .1%. suddenly your chances go up 1.3

times the average to 2.2 times the average. let's talk about what happens if you are a legacy. if you have a parent or close relative who went to one of these schools and what happens to your chances of getting admitted. at every single income level your chances are substantially higher from three times, but at the very top of the income level your chances go up to five times and 8.3 times as likely to get admitted if you are a legacy and you have high income at these schools. now, something that people also don't really appreciate is that rich people actually can get better recommendations out of high school. so if you look at academic ratings in high school regardless of your income, roughly the same. if you look at your nonacademic ratings coming out of high school, the richest people have a much higher chance, 1 1/2 times a chance of getting a high recommendation for nonacademic activities, one and a half times of getting a better guidance

counsellor recommendation, 1.3 times of getting a better teacher recommendation. >> you know, steve, it is very interesting looking at this. it is not really surprising on. fronts. i will say the last thing that you showed about ratings, we know the academic advisers. we have all dealt with academic advisers, with guidance counsellors and teachers. there certainly is no part of that where, you know, parents are going in and saying, hey, we're rich, write something nice for my kid or ta-da, ta-da. the thing i found coming from a family that grew up across the deep south and everything, the thing that shocked me was, you know, when it was time to take the s.a.t. my mom said, hey, you got the s.a.t. tomorrow, she gave me a couple of pencils and i went and took the s.a.t. and that was it. i mean just most middle class americans it is not the blood

sport that it is in like elite -- a lot of elite communities where, you know, i have read kids like 5, 6, 7 years old, it is absolutely crazy. they start prepping for the s.a.t. at these early ages it it seems to me a lot of this just has to do with communities, and i guess wealthier communities where they just know how to work the process. they know how to game the process. how does that play into it? >> well, joe, let me actually go to my third chart for a second and then we can come back to the second chart if you want. so if you look at what you are referring to here in a sense, sort of the pipeline, one of the problems of getting more kids into these elite schools is that they simply don't even take the tests. if you look down here, all the way up to the 70th percentile, the top 70% of incomes, fewer than half of kids coming out of

high school actually take the s.a.t.s and they don't score particularly well for a lot of the reasons you were alluding to in terms of preparation. these are kids with scores of less than 1,000 on their s.a.t.s. you can see they're a majority of the kids of lower income. when you get up to the higher income, this is the top .1% again, the top 1%, you can see the higher percentage takes the test, 89%, 88%. and their scores, this is at the 1,400 level which is at a level that will help you get into an elite school, goes up to 20%. there's a big pipeline problem. one of the things people talk about to solve this problem is to eliminate legacy preferences at these universities, eliminate legacy preferences for elite things like sailing and squash. if you did that, what the researchers found was the percentage of kids coming from the top would only go down from 42% to 33%. 33% of the kids at these schools

would still come from the top 5%. so this whole question of how you get more kids from diverse background into schools is actually very complicated. coming up on "morning joe," the summer blockbuster "oppenheimer" is drawing attention to the long-term effects of the trinity test, which marked the first detonation of an atomic bomb. this event released harmful levels of radiation across the american southwest. new reporting on the families still grappling with the effects of those first nuclear tests even decades later. we'll be right back. no fingersticks needed. manage your diabetes with more confidence. freestyle libre 2. try it for free at freestylelibre.us i need it cool at night. you trying to ice at me out of the bed? baby, only on game nights. you know you are retired right? am i? ya! the queen sleep number c2 smart bed is now only $999.

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the release of christopher nolan's film "oppenheimer" has brought renewed attention to the history of the manhattan project, the research team that would bring the world's first nuclear weapon to life. but little is known about the consequences faced by many residents who lived and worked

in the towns neighboring the trinity testing site where the bomb was first detonated. "morning joe" reporter daniela pierre-bravo has been looking into that part of the story and she joins us now. what did you find out? >> reporter: good morning, guys. almost half a million new mexicans were affected by the radiation fall-out of the trinity test. these residents who were not part of the project say they were never warned before the bomb went off or evacuated. we traveled to the trinity site and surrounding towns in new mexico to find out why it has taken so long to hear about their stories, why they were never compensated and what comes next. how long has your family had this ranch? >> since the late 1800s. >> reporter: the family has called new mexico home for more than a century. today they are known as down winders meaning they're one of. new mexican families who lived down wind from the 1945 trinity nuclear test site in new mexico's desert.

the location was famously depicted in the recently released hollywood film "oppenheimer." this is the trinity test site where 78 years ago the world's first nuclear weapon was successfully detonated. the pinal family ranch is just 35 miles east of trinity. >> they had trucks on the outskirts of town that they were going to evacuate people. >> reporter: but they never did. while the infamous trinity blast took place nearly 80 years ago the pino says they continue to feel the impact. their mother and three older siblings were at the ranch when the blast detonated. cancer diagnoses followed. >> reporter: carmen, you had three brain tumors? >> yes, it was one but it would break out and grow again so i

was going blind. >> margie here survived thyroid cancer. my brother greg died of stomach cancer. >> reporter: before the blast it is unclear what the manhattan project team knew about the health dangers of prolonged radiation exposure. in a declass food memo the group's medical officer said less than a week after trinity the resulting death cloud was, quote, potentially a very dangerous had ard over a band almost 30 miles wide, extending over 90 miles northeast of the site. the pino ranch was in that zone. for decades doctors have drone connections between radiation exposure and health problems up to and including cancer. >> from the studies of atomic-bomb survivors in hiroshima and nagasaki we know there are multiple times of cancer for which risk is increased by radiation exposure. other problems have shown up like increased risk of heart disease and reduction in how long people lived. we are still learning about the

effects of radiation but clearly cancer is well documented. >> reporter: a new study released last month and currently being peer reviewed it shows that the fall-out was farther than expected impacting states and as far as canada. the reca was signed into law to provide compensation for individuals residing down wind from atomic tests including nevada, utah but did not include new mexico despite the resident that lived within a 150-mile radius of the test. now, a new vote that would include them has passed the senate and heads to the house later this year. a congress woman remains troubled new mexicans were left out of the original legislation. >> it is environmental injustice at the most explosive proportion. there was no good reason for it.

>> reporter: today fernandez is helping to lead the bill through the house and helping down winders' families connect the dots between generational medical issues and the original trinity blast. down winder advocate tina cordova. >> people didn't know about it back then. in this village there was no electricity. we lived isolated. they don't know what radiation exposure was. no one knew what cancer was. we hadn't heard the terms in our community as well. >> reporter: the work conducted at trinity led to the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki which ended the war in the pacific. now it is time to compensate all down winders for the role they played in ending the war to end all wars. >> i would say we didn't know how bad radiation was back then but we know better now. >> we reached out to the department of defense and the department of energy seeking comment about why the down winders were never warned in

advance about the trinity blast, the lack of monitoring or inspection as an immediate aftermath of the blast and why the down winders have never been compensated. both agencies denied to comment. >> wow. >> no comment. thank you for that report. >> isn't it fascinating when they provided relief, they provided relief to everything -- >> but -- >> -- but new mexico. daniela, any reasoning why congress left the original -- >> down winders. >> -- down winders out of the bill? >> yeah, everybody from activists to legislators, everybody says it is the $2.5 million question. a lot of people are seeking answers. as you saw, you know, the reports about this and how it has been measured in the past are just coming to light now. so it seems like we'll finally get some restitution for these people who have been suffering for a while now. >> yeah. that's so important.

>> daniela, thank you. coming up, a discussion with best-selling novelist brad thor on his newest spy thriller about the ongoing war in ukraine and what we've learned about the war 18 months in. "morning joe" will be right back. will be right back come get the biggest, crispiest, fluffiest, sweetest deal in breakfast for only $7.99. and for a limited time, try our new pumpkin pecan pancake breakfast. at denny's, it's diner time. how can you sleep on such a firm setting?

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the war in ukraine is the backdrop for the latest novel in author brad thor's acclaimed scott harvath series. it picks up the journey of the ex-navy seal turned operative for who the series is named. he is sent this time to the war-torn nation of ukraine as a russian unit goes rogue wreaking havoc village to village. after eight american aid workers are skilled he is cement in to cement the score in the race against trial. it is titled "dead fall." and it is new york times best-selling author brad thor joining us now.

22nd novel. congrats on all of them, particularly the new one. >> thank you. >> tell us, was it an obvious thing for you to set this in ukraine, which obviously has dom dominated the news cycle for so long? >> it was. i have always love things like "where eagles dare," i loved "saving private ryan," "band of brothers" and i wanted to do a modern take on that. that's why i chose to et is it in ukraine. >> it feels like the wagner group is in the background of this. he have really bad actors. give us a sense of the landscape, right, of the novel and what is the particular way in which the hero or the central character of the 22 novels is doing this work. >> great question. so there's an aid worker, one in particular, they've not found a body and they're worried she has been kidnapped. the u.s. can't commit troops.

ukrainians are stretched to the limit. they can't give resources. so the u.s. government has their top spy, scott harvath, go in and look for her with the order bring her back and make everyone responsible for taking her, pay for what they've done. it is said history doesn't repeat but it rhymes, and so many things we are seeing in ukraine rhyme with world war ii whether it was hitler taking the land in czechoslovakia like putin did with the donbas in 2014 down to the warsaw uprising where hitler sent in one of his worst ss brigades to commit the war crimes in warsaw in august to october of '44. so i wanted to bring all of that stuff into a great thriller where the bad guys were obvious, good guys were obvious, and you got a lot of tension and excitement but a great resolution at the end. >> i think everyone loves a spy thriller, i certainly do. but 22 books in, as you are looking at the state of the world and threats against democracy that have starkly

risen, have the themes changed? does it change the way you approach the books? >> it is a great question. one of the things about harvath is he always does the right thing, no matter how hard it is, no matter what the price is. i think as the books mirror a lot of what happens in the real world it has become harder for him to do his job, much like it has for our men and women at the fbi, the cia. it is tough when the fellow citizens lose faith in our government when we have patriotic men and women doing their best every day. >> what are the dangers that you could be overtaken by current events? >> the hardest thing was to research war crimes going on in ukraine and find a way to put them in a book that wouldn't freak people out too badly, keep it entertaining. the other thing is i was looking at the power plant, if we had a meltdown in one of the reactors would it overtake the book. there was a certain amount of having the rabbit's foot in one hand and typing with the other to make sure or at least hope that i didn't get overtaken with

events. i got lucky. very lucky. >> luck and skilled, you pulled it off. >> naufrpg. >> "dead fall" is available now. best-selling author, brad thor. best again. >> thank you. we talk to the network series "pain killer" about the heartbreak and devastation of the opioid epidemic as well as the family at the center of it all, the sackler. we begin with breaking news on capitol hill. we begin with brean capitol hill trelegy for copd. ♪ birds flyin' high, you know how i feel. ♪ ♪ breeze driftin' on... ♪

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we developed ms contin. we understand pain. i understand pain. all of human behavior is essentially comprised of two things, running away from pain and toward pleasure. it's a cycle. pain, pleasure, pain, pleasure, again and again. well, this circle is our existence. it is the very essence of what it means to be human, to be alive. but if we place ourselves right there between pain and pleasure, then we have changed the world.

>> wow. that was matthew broderick as richard sackler of purdue pharma, the makers of oxycontin in the new netflix drama "painkiller." the six-episode series digs deep into the roots of the opioid crisis and its impact, from the family man who gets addicted in an injury at work, to the lawyer investigating the devastating effects of the drug, to the sackler family member at the center of it all, richard sackler. joining us now, the series executive producer and director peter berg and producer barry myer. myer is also the author of the book that was the inspiration for the series. as the author of the book, how does this series bring to light

the sackler family business, its role in this epidemic and perhaps what you wanted people to take away that they could not grasp if they haven't read the book? >> thanks very much for having me on. i think the show illuminates the story in a way that it's really never been told before. it kind of helps people understand the scope of this incredible betrayal, the crime that occurred. you know, it dramatizes it in a creative, fantastic way. that's all credit to pete berg, the director, the screenwriters and what was a fantastic cast. >> what do we learn about richard sackler in matthew broderick's performance, peter? >> well, as barry just said, for

me, obviously i understand that oxycontin is a problem and the opioid epidemic is very real. what i didn't understand and what we do learn quite well thanks to barry's book is the complexity and effectiveness with which the sackler family lied, manipulated, bribed and sort of cheated their way into billions of billions of dollars. i didn't understand quite how good they were at being so very bad. >> give us a little bit of a sense of the sackler family just in terms of what money they made from this, what sort of steps they took to avoid being held accountable for the negative effects. and people hear opioid crisis. the numbers are almost too big for people to get. give us a sense of the human toll. >> it's mind boggling in all

those statistics. they made billions and billions of dollars from oxycontin. since the drug was first introduced, over a quarter of a million americans have died from prescription opioid overdoses involving oxycontin and other drugs. the money has been phenomenal. the death toll has been staggering. i mean, oxycontin is a valuable drug for cancer, for chronic pain, but purdue pharma could only make billions from it by lying, by saying that it was good for everyday common pain, back pain, dental pain and that it wouldn't be abused or cause patient addiction. >> barry, you've been following this since around the time i entered college, so for over two decades, which is just incredible. you were at the forefront of discovering what was going wrong with the marketing of this drug. in this series, you try to do a

comparison with the consequences of the crack epidemic and then the opiate epidemic. can you talk about the disparities and how consequences were meted out? >> our justice department has a particular habit of not prosecuting corporate criminals. when it comes to drug dealers on the street or cartel members, they're happy to parade them before the cameras, to throw them into prison. but they chickened out when it came to going to bat against purdue, its executives and the executives of many other opioid producers and manufacturers. in many ways, this disaster was not simply the doing of one company. it was a failure by everyone in the system to do their part, to stand up and to do the right thing. >> you know, peter, as the

family goes through the process of accountability or tries to defend themselves in this series, do we ever see personal accountability? do they understand at all the impact they had on a society with these drugs? >> i mean, if they do, we've seen very little indication of that. you know, their chief strategy for so long was to do what they called hammer the abusers, so that if your 18-year-old son hurt his leg, was given oxycontin, got addicted, well, that's too bad, your son was a drug addict. that was their chief strategy. that was a pretty telling indicator that there have never been any real apologies that feel authentic and that suggest they have any awareness or concern over what they've done.

they just lawyer up and try and do everything they can to protect their money. >> the show "painkiller" is streaming on netflix now. peter berg and barry myer, thank you both very much for doing this. we'll be right back. this we'll be right back. hi, i'm todd. i'm a veteran of 23 years. i served three overseas tours. i love to give back to the community. i offer what i can when i can. i started noticing my memory was slipping. i saw a prevagen commercial and i did some research on it. i started taking prevagen about three years ago. i feel clearer in my thoughts, my memory has improved and generally just more on point. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription. if you're looking for a medicare supplement

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that task force will be cochaired by former obama secretary of homeland security jeh johnson and former federal judge j. michael luddig about the threats our system faces and how we can overcome them. >> judge, let me begin with you. first of all, i've got to say thank you for your strong, uncompromising voice on protecting and defending the constitution of the united states. it's the same judge who's always respected and defended the constitution of the united states. talk about this task force and also the threat from our party, my former party, i would guess your former party. talk about the threat to

democracy that's before us now because of the undermining of the rule of law. >> mika and joe, thank you so much for inviting secretary johnson and me to join you this morning to introduce the country to the american bar association's new task force. american democracy is in crisis today. it is the most important issue facing the nation between now and 2025 and beyond. the continuing false claims to this day that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the former president and the republicans, those claims have laid waste to americans'

confidence in elections and democracy. president mary smith in announcing this blue ribbon task force of the nation's 1.5 million lawyers said that we lawyers must run to the storm. all americans must run to the storm, joe, that is the crisis of american democracy today. >> so, jeh johnson, on that note, how does the task force plan to do that, to run to the storm? what actions and what policies will you be pushing to try and reach the goal of the three points laid out as we introduced this task force, including educating the public? >> thank you for having us on. i'm honored to serve as the cochair with judge luttig, who

was one of the heros of january 6th, in my opinion, serving with him on this task force to strengthen our democracy, to recommend how we strengthen our democracy. it will be the capstone of my public service career. everything is going to be on the table, in my opinion, from not only looking at how we educate young people, american civics, but also how our cyber security, social media, conventional media contribute to or detract from our democracy to the very manner in which we elect candidates for federal office in our country. we've put together a really extraordinary distinguished, nonpartisan, bipartisan group of americans to look at this with us, retired former judges like judge luttig, including the former chief justice of the ohio supreme court, to former

candidates for president, carly fiorina and dick gephardt, scholars like bill crystal. we're going to take the next year to go on basically a listening tour around the country. we're going to do our own research, develop some recommendations that we will deliver a year from now that i hope and believe will be implementable and will gain support among the american people. this group is, by the way, not just limited to lawyers. lawyers don't have a corner and a monopoly on wisdom. we have a number of basic patriotic americans who want to help us out. >> jeh, this is claire. good morning. and good morning to you, judge. i'm hopeful that in this process there will be some effort to look at the lawyers who have

violated their oaths to the law and to the constitution by embracing the big lie and the fraud. i know there have been some lawyers that have had disciplinary hearings, a few that have been disbarred in a few jurisdictions. but do you plan on looking at how well lawyers are policing themselves as it relates to supporting our democracy? this seems like an empty exercise to me if we can't keep our own house clean as lawyers. >> the lawyers of the nation are uniquely qualified and positioned to protect and preserve american democracy and the rule of law, and this task force first and foremost will be looking into the issues surrounding our constitution and

the rule of law that have come out of the attack and assault on american democracy and the institutions of democracy and law over the past two or three years. the task force is not likely to speak directly to the counsel that was provided to the former president in the lead up to january 6th, but certainly at the 40,000-foot level, the task force will address the profound obligations of lawyers under the constitution and the rule of law. >> i have a question for secretary johnson. i'm not a lawyer. i am married to one. i would never say that lawyers are not important because of that. however, in this case, our government was built on a system of checks and balances. and one of the things i think

people who are concerned about democracy and its future point to as a failure was the inability of our system to hold those checks and balances or barely hold them together. i look at the second impeachment and the idea that, well, he's out of office soon, we can let the courts decide this. in fact, that was political issue, the second impeachment and it was punted down the road. on this task force, how directly will you work with elected officials? obviously there's a legal component, but how directly will you work with elected officials to persuade them as the judge did in the lead up to january 6th? >> that's a critical question. we do expect to engage, first of all, state secretaries of state who are responsible for running elections in their respective jurisdictions. one of the missions of this task force, in my view, needs to be

looking at what incentivizes political actors to engage in extreist rhetoric and behavior, what incentivizes them. when you have over 400 safe seats in the house of representatives to basically go to extremes in their respective constituencies. when it comes to the issue of lawyers, this is what happens when a president systemically drives out of his administration anybody interested in maintaining the guardrails and has left nothing but people who are just simply yes men in his administration. i learned when i was a senior legal official at the department of defense you cannot give your client simply legal advice that they want to hear. you have to give them the best and most sustainable legal

opinion about what the law calls for, authorizes and prohibits. >> former secretary of homeland security jeh johnson and retired federal judge j. michael luttig, thank you both very much for being on the show. >> and thank you for your service to this country. up next, the tech designed to make us angry. we'll be joined by the author of a new book called "outrage machine." called "outrage machine. guys, c'mon! mom, c'mon! mia! [ engine revving ] ♪ ♪ my favorite color is... because, it's like a family thing! [ engine revving ] ♪ ♪ made it! mom! leave running behind, behind. the new turbocharged volkswagen atlas. does life beautifully. more shopping? you should watch your spending honey.

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i saw facebook repeatedly encounter conflicts between its own profits and our safety. facebook consistently resolved these conflicts in favor of its own profits. the result has been more division, more harm, more lies, more threats and more combat. in some cases, this dangerous online talk has led to actual violence that harms and even

kills people. this is not simply a matter of certain social media users being angry or unstable or about one side being radicalized against the other. it is about facebook choosing to grow at all costs, becoming an almost trillion dollar between by buying its profits with our safety. >> that is frances haugen testifying before congress about facebook. joining us is media researcher tobias rose-stockwell, the author of "outrage machine." congratulations on the book. >> thanks for having me. >> let's establish what we're talking about, what moral outrage exists on social media and the reward system.

>> so it turns out that moral outrage is something that's inherently viral on social media. it gets a boost of about 17% per moral and emotional word that you use on these platforms. when we express these comments of outrage in our posts, it actually trains us. so as a person posting online, when our posts get a tremendous amount of traction, we actually begin to make more of them in the future. so these signals of outrage actually end up cascading and training us to do more. >> what's a good example? you say it helps to break the democracy as you wrote in your piece in "medium." >> on my way to the studio this morning, for instance, we got stuck in traffic, which is fine.

it happens in new york. if i tweeted, "i'm stuck in traffic," that wouldn't have gotten a tremendous amount of traction. but if i had said, "i am so annoyed, i am disgusted by the fact that eric adams, mayor of new york, hasn't taken care of this traffic problem," that would have gotten a tremendous amount of traction online. there's a difference in the type of language that we use online. it tends to be the stuff that is outrageous gets the most viral attention. >> is it obviously or am i wrong in thinking that twitter or x, whatever you want to call it, attracts naturally people who are bitter, angry, mean spirited, lonely, whatever? it seems the preponderance of stuff on twitter is largely vicious, other than like news

alerts. >> yeah. i think that if we're looking at the average twitter user, most twitter users, x users -- >> how many twitter users are there in the country? >> i'm not sure of the current number, because there have been sodramatic changes to the platform, but it's more than half the population of the earth on social media right now. >> so how can we change it? what are steps to try to improve our relationship with social media? >> fortunately, there's things we can do. there's three different kind of buckets of things we can do at every level as individuals, at the platform level and the government level. as individuals, it's very important for us to recognize that these tools have certain weights and measures in them that are trying to keep us

there. so social media literacy is very important for recognizing how the algorithms work. most importantly, there's a handful of specific apps and healthy frictions you can put in place that will keep you from dropping into these moments of kind of cacophony outrage. there's apps that will block your usage or pause you. there's one app that i love called one sec that forced you to take a deep breath before you entered these apps. it takes five minutes to set up on your phone. it will just force your brain out of that kind of automated habituated response and force you to take a second like, why am i entering into this app in the first place? that makes a big difference. >> a lot of people who appear outrage are performing outrage and, in fact, their outrage

isn't representative of a whole lot. the book is "outrage machine." it is out now. tobias rose-stockwell, thanks so much. coming up, an important conversation about masculinity in america. ant conversation about masculinity in america a once-daily pill. when i wanted to see results fast, rinvoq delivered rapid symptom relief and helped leave bathroom urgency behind. check. when uc tried to slow me down... i got lasting, steroid-free remission with rinvoq. check. and when uc caused damage rinvoq came through by visibly repairing my colon lining. check. rapid symptom relief... lasting steroid-free remission... ...and the chance to visibly repair the colon lining. check, check, and check. rinvoq can lower your ability to fight infections, including tb. serious infections and blood clots, some fatal;

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the deconstruction of america begins with and depends on the deconstruction of american men. the left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic. they want to define things like courage and independence and assertiveness as a danger to society. >> josh hawley back in 2021 discussing what he calls the decline in masculinity. though the missouri lawmaker has

been one of the loudest voices speaking out against these so-called attacks on manhood, his rhetoric has become all too familiar with young men in the country. this is an issue we've discussed on the show before. for more, we're joined by writer for the "washington post's" opinion section christine emba and professor at new york university scott galloway. good to have you both. christine, you dive into the conversation about american masculinity in a new essay entitled "men are lost, here's a map out of the wilderness." let me read from a part of it, because it's really compelling. you say, "i started noticing it a few years ago, men, especially young men, were getting weird. for all their problems, the strict gender roles of the past did give boys a script of how to

be men, but if trying to smash the patriarchy has left a evacuate in our ideal of masculinity, it also gives a fresh start, an opportunity to take what is useful from models of the past and repurpose it for boys and men today. we can find ways to work with the distinctive traits and powerful stories that already exist, risk taking, strength, p procreating. we can recognize how important they are and attempt to make them pro-social to help not just men, but also women and to support the common good. in my ideal, the mainstream could embrace a model that acknowledges male particularity and difference but doesn't denigrate women to do so. it's a vision of gender that's

not an droj nous but equal. how to implement it? frankly, it will be slow. a new masculinity will be a norm shift, and that takes time. the women's movement succeeded in changing structures and aspirations, but the social transformation didn't take place overnight and empathy will be required, as grating as that might feel. what are the challenges moving forward to actually make these changes? do we have to confront what is happening right now? >> yes, absolutely. first of all, thank you so much for having me to talk about this. i do feel it's a really important issue even though i'm obviously not a man myself. i think one of the challenges that we've been facing in

bringing this issue to the fore is that we do have the statistics. we so that for every 100 women who graduate college right now, only 74 men do. men make up 3 out of 4 deaths of despair. so we know there's something going on. the problem that i outline in this piece specifically is that progressives and the left especially seem to not want to acknowledge this or at least not acknowledge that men might be a group in need of assistance itself. there's a sort of hesitance to talking about men as men. instead people want to say, well, we just need to be good people. but what does that look like specifically, because young men especially are asking for a specific path. >> scott, i'm curious what you think of christine's piece and

how it reflect what is you're seeing in the younger generations? >> i think christine's piece was a tour de force and an important work. we're acknowledging that compassion is not a zero sum game, that we can acknowledge that young men are three times as likely to be addicted, four times as likely to kill themselves, 12 times more likely to be incarcerated and recognize it's not a zero sum game. that civil rights didn't hurt black people, that gay marriage didn't hurt hetero normative marriage and that speaks about this problem in societal terms as we speak about problems and very real issues facing women and non-whites that we finally have a productive conversation and asking an important question. should a 19-year-old boy who has an education bias against him on

a behavior adjusted basis. should that 19-year-old pay for the sins and advantages of his father and grandfather? these young men are struggling. because of the good work of christine and a more productive dialogue, we're finally having a productive conversation around solutions instead of a gag reflex around the issue. because unfortunately, some very negative voices have filled this void where there was no discussion. >> i totally agree. >> that's what's remarkable, christine, about your piece. i was reading the piece. i would get to certain parts and go, wait a second, she's saying this out loud, because this is what everybody's talked about but they haven't said certain parts out loud. one thing you talk about that i think any parents or people who have known younger women have seen for some time, it think it started with our family about

ten or 11 years ago, we would have friends of the family who are young women. it would be like a friday night and there was somebody they were dating. we would say, oh, so you're going out with so-and-so. no, he's playing video games. no, he's doing this. you know, we weren't prodding, but we've all had these conversations. it started about ten years ago where i would just say to mika, wait, a lot of these guys in their 20s and 30s are playing video games and watching porn and staying inside their house and living with their parents and not moving forward. but we really didn't know what was going on. we know now. it is not good. that's what i loved about your article. don't run away from masculinity,

don't pretend it's not there. but as you said, use those strengths, use those traits in a way that helps all of society. the key to it is that it's used to protect others. >> right. i think that's exactly right. this was a question that i started asking myself when i was writing my book "rethinking sex," which came out last year. i talked to a lot of young women. they also mentioned the men they were hoping to date were just not there, exactly as you said. they were at home playing video games and watching porn or just not stepping up. talking to guys themselves, they almost seemed confused as to what they were supposed to do. like, are we allowed to talk to women? are we not supposed to talk to women? i'm so confused. i guess i'm not going to do anything at all. they were looking for a path

forward. unfortunately, progressives and the left are not looking for a path. instead they turn to often right-wing figures. josh hawley is one of the tamer of the bunch. but even people like andrew tate, who has become famous after being retweeted by elon musk and being imprisoned in romania for sex trafficking, these are the people they go for awful models of masculinity, because there aren't better models for them to look to. that seems like a real lack in our society. it's only going to get worse as a vast swath of young men are going to feel more and more lost and disappear. >> i have a teenage daughter and a teenage son. i have different concerns about each of them. when i think about my young son -- and i'm curious what you think about this -- he will hear out there things like toxic

masculiity and all these things, and there is a generation that it's true that there are young boys now hearing from the time they are sentient basically that inherently there's something wrong with them, that they need to temper themselves and tame themselves a little bit. what is the impact of terms like toxic masculinity? >> it's shame and it's rage. to not acknowledge that we're having an important conversation about the continuum of sexuality and everyone along that continuum deserves respect and dignity and equal rights. but also to embrace masculinity. it's a wonderful thing. essentially on the far left we've decided that maculiity is being more feminine.

also young women say they want men to initiate romantic interest. while the world wants the positive aspects of masculinity, young people are told that masculinity is a negative. maculiity is a wonderful thing. just to move to solutions, you're talking about your boy, the point in a boy's life where he comes off the rails and starts becoming one of these poor citizens, quite frankly, more likely to engage in misogynistic content and starts blaming women for his problems or his parents, that point is when they lose a male role model. i think moving to solutions and helping redefine masculimasculi which we get to do -- it's a society construct. the ultimate expression of masculinity is to take an

interest in the life of a young boy that isn't yours. that is when boys start to fail, is when they don't have a male role model. up next on "morning joe," the legendary musician and cofounder of public enemy, chuck d. joins to discuss the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. we're back in a moment. anniversary of hip-hop we're back in a moment

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♪♪ ♪ fight the power ♪ ♪ fight the power ♪ that's "fight the power" by public enemy, the iconic song that ranked number two in "rolling stone's" list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. this week marks the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. the cofounding member of public enemy chuck d. is shedding new light on the genre's roots. in june an intersection in the south bronx was renamed after a

gang member who was killed there while trying to break up a fight back in 1971 when new york city was rife with gang violence, but his group chose to pursue peace instead of revenge in the wake of his murder, shifting from violence to unity against systemic oppression and paving the way for the dawn of hip-hop. that story and the movement that emerged in its aftermath is now the subject of a new podcast series entitled "can you dig it"? a hip-hop origin story. chuck d., who narrates the new podcast joins us now. also with us for the discussion is president of the national action network and host of msnbc's "politics nation" reverend al sharpton. >> reverend al, we take it to you as a godfather of soul.

were you his manager or his minder? i'm not sure. >> i was more like his son. you know, he wouldn't let me get into the business because he wanted me to stay in civil rights and a preacher. let me go to chuck. chuck and i go way back. it is a blessing that we're both sitting in this studio, because we're both now five or six years apart. i don't think we thought we'd get to this age when we were growing up. >> you were the energy and the movement that made that thing happen, the fight the power thing. without you, that doesn't take up the speed and momentum. here we are at hip-hop 50. to be here with lights, camera, action, pete shalala, to talk about the seed that hip-hop grew out of, that's really important. >> hip-hop not only changed

music, it changed a social movement. in '89, when you came out with the movement fight the power, a young man named yusef hawkins had been killed in brooklyn. "fight the power" became the sound track to the urban movement. talk about the social impact of hip-hop and that whole era that gave a cultural bent? >> we didn't invent the energy. a lot of times the synergy of that period was a lot of people and a lot of different things also calling for a different time. the city had left a lot of us for dead in many cases. it was lopsided, one-sided politics and not even looking at us at all.

but we have people like you, movers and shakers that were heard and black radio at the time. wlib was really a fuel for me hearing people on the radio. that gave me enough fuel to say, well, these are real people doing real things, saying real things in a community that's ignored by the city. so, therefore, the issues that were in the city at that particular time were highlighted. how could we add to it culturally if we don't get any time on the radio stations? this is what we're getting from a talk radio station that talks about the issues that we could put a sound track to. no different than the godfather of soul. >> if you watch ari melber's show "the beat" you know that he

can dig it. ari, you have the next question. >> some law, a lot of lyrics. go ahead, ari. >> we'll remember that, joe. chuck, great to see you guys again. congratulations on this project. i wonder if you could tell us about the power of storytelling. obama was able to write his own narrative along the way that introduced himself differently than maybe the country had seen minorities in the past. at the time, you just alluded to new york and certain neighborhoods being left behind by the government. much of hip-hop was maligned and not listened to at the time, but the story about inequality, about police brutality, about violence in a neighborhood in a way that didn't fit with the right-wing narrative but was

true to your experience, if story turned out largely, if i may, to be true and prophetic. >> i'm going to pass the baton to pete shalala. the story has been there. how can how can we have a multidimensional kick on the story that takes it into the future. this story had been there for a long time which was the preceding of hip-hop which created hip-hop in the first place because it was a neighborhood that was left like i said before. pete brought me the story. there was a lot of mythology still floating around. what we wanted to do was anchor and bring it to the ground for everybody to hear and see and experience. that's what pete brought to the table, who i happen to be a voice for. he wrote it well, put ill together well. there's nobody better than him to bring it home exactly how that happened. >> i appreciate that, and i appreciate you guys giving us a

voice. this is an a-ha moment kind of story. this is a global a-ha moment. it's rooteded, ari, in politics, policy and urban planning. when we pull the texture back of the story of hip hon, the dawn is 1973, hertz party. there would be no hertz party without peace in the bronx. if robert moses didn't cross the bronx with the highway, it wouldn't have burned. thousands of kids wouldn't have joined gangs and the death of black benji wouldn't have happened. his gang was given the decision, do we retaliate and lay down the law here. there's 2,500 ghetto brothers that would probably do a good job finishing it off. or do we push for peace. this story is going back to the fingerprints of powerful mentor women. evelyn antonetti who started

united bronx parents was a big influence. rita fetcher, a teacher from chelsea that went to the bronx to teach these kids art and give them hope and confidence. she always said the smartest kids were on the street. black benjie's mother said i want to stop the cycle of violence and tip these guys in to the peace treaty. we say no peace, no hip-hop. no murder, no party. we want to give credit to the people and the kids who made those decisions and did the impossible. they basically changed the world. >> nothing starts from itself. like pete said, there's a community behind everything. when you talk about positive movement, it's almost like you're climbing up a mountain. so you have to have the energy, the power, the backing and the collective voice of a people to make something happen. hip-hop is all over the world. we're celebrating the 50th year. yeah, that's a tremendous achievement, but it does not

come without the effort of community heads and leaders that gave a voice to power. >> chuck said in an interview with "billboard" -- sorry, john. go ahead. >> no problem. chuck, i want to pick up on right where you were at. you and i have talked about this before. you did a podcast a few years ago where you told the story of the clash and the rises of punk rock in london and england roughly at the same time as this story is happening, unfolding in new york, the birth of hip-hop and all the stuff we've been talking about today. the political social context that gave rise to punk is the same one that gave rise to hip-hop. now we're 50 years later. talk about the state of hip-hop today. we have an incredibly polarized -- we have a social cultural context in which you would think that political music, music arising out of politics, whether that's hip-hop or rock or whatever, you would

think you would be seeing a very vital resurgence in that. instead, we don't really see that quite to the degree that we did in the 70s and certainly the 80s around the time that public enemy was so powerful. talk about where we are today and why there's not more politics and social commentary still in hip-hop. >> you've got millions, tens of millions of people recording. morgan can tell you, inside her music she's streaming 10 million songs. people are recording all the time. we need better curators to bring it to the forefront. there are efforts out there. there's people looking at concerns and writing a song and recording it the same night. we need better curators in situations. the reason this is different from 1989 is because people come and go. the same people in the mix in 1989, many of them are not here and new people have grown into being into the mix today as

adults. therefore, you always have to fight the power because the isms remain, like staying in the pockets. that's why you've got to keep going at it, and you bring people with the energy. people like pete that says, hey, i think this story needs to be told. i told a new yorker, sometimes you can find out your status by reading the names on the street. black benjie has a street. you say, well, if i'm looking at a skimmerhorn street, it behooves you to figure out who that is. black benjie has a street. figure out who that is. if you can't figure it out, that means this metropolitan area needs to step up on its education of just where we're at, just educate new yorkers on new york would give us a leg up on keeping that momentum and movement and energy. >> it's interesting you talk about education. the truth is, 50 years, that's a long time. hip-hop has changed. the context haves changed, and the people have changed. now we have hip-hop that

includes lgbtq+ rappers, many more women, young white men, young jewish men. this is a movement. you talked about what you were trying to say then. do you think people listen? and what is the message now? what do you want these younger guys to hear? >> the powers that be in broadcasting, to me i think they're lazy. >> what do you mean? >> they count the gross instead of looking at the net. they're always trying to figure out, you know, numbers. we're talking about -- there's a quality of our existence that can't always be quantified. you've got to have curators that go out there and search the story like pete and brian, grand masters did. they find a story and we bring it to the forefront and it's available. the thing about it, there's weapons of mass distraction everywhere. you need focus to be able to funnel the people. focus on this for a second. it would behoove you to know

about the thing you love. you don't got to say you love hip-hop. when you say you love hip-hop, get ready for somebody to tell you what you love. simple as that. >> pete, tell us the genesis of all this. your research, what led to this that led to that that led you to this extraordinary, extraordinary story that changed everything musically, culturally, politically? >> i came of age in the '80s and '90s with hip-hop. i think when i started pulling the curtain back, i realized several things, it's not just black and rap, it's heavily hispanic at its origins. it's not just one element. hip-hop is a total of four, mcing, djing, beat boarding. i wanted to help reveal that and give the contribution credit to those coming of age in the early

'80s with the aerosol cans. these guys are legends today still and unheard of r50 years into hip-hop. it's an a-ha moment of struggle. i wanted to actually put the light on, our team wanted to put the light on black benjie, karate charlie. crazy legs, a b boy. he couldn't afford a baseball mitt. he's going to retire at yankee stadium on the 11th to celebrate hip-hop. from the streets to nothing to yankee stadium is a remarkable story. >> put together with a hell of a soundtrack and done in a hip-hop way by his partner, brian masters. i call him the grand master of podcasting documentary. >> this is really a told story and never told this way. this is recreated. it's cinematic for your ears and

very emotional. people need to listen to it. >> pete only had a half cup of coffee. >> out of respect to joe scarborough, my co-rapper, you wore your yankee cap. >> in baseball as a met fan it's blasphemous. it's fitting because it's the bronx, it's hip-hop and it's the 50th anniversary tomorrow, the 11th and 12th we'll be celebrating the hip-hop alliance care as one in the bronx, 1520 sedgwick avenue, the birthplace of the campbells throws a back-to-school event on august 11th. how about that? big up to the blast master. >> can you dig it, a hip-hop origin story is available on audible tomorrow. chuck d. and pete espresso

chelala, thank you very much. thank you guys so much. that does it for us this morning. we'll be back live tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. msnbc reports picks up the coverage after a short break. s e coverage after a short break good morning. i'm jose diaz-balart. a lot of news to get to this labor day morning. tens of thousands of burning man spectators hoping for a chance of escape after a massive storm turned the festival into a sea of mud. will the weather break today for those stranded in the desert? a felon meant to be serving a life sentence escaping after escaping from a pennsylvania prison. the seah