Robert Evans
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
The dealer said Diddy opened the door to his former Hamptons mansion while wearing nothing but a robe and brought him to a back bedroom to make a cocaine deal. Weird shit was starting to happen. Celebrity guys fucking each other. There were back bedrooms and it was like the inner sanctum. And this dealer talks about it like I lost a lot of respect for those guys. He is not talking about the sex.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
He's talking about like people having gay sex. Famous people fucking each other in a gay way, which is like fine. That's not the issue here.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
And there's, you know, Now, the dealer claims he also saw a mix of female rappers and prostitutes having sex there. And that's kind of where we do get into, because, again, some of there's probably some trafficking at the white parties. And it's unclear to me, is he talking about a white party or a freak off? It's at the Hamptons. A little bit unclear, but we'll get to that later.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah, absolutely. Now, in 1999, Diddy was arrested on felony charges of assault and criminal mischief. The chain of events began when Diddy was featured in the music video Hate Me Now with Nas. Both Diddy and Nas were crucified on a cross, which Diddy later decided was sacrilegious and asked to have cut. That's his line. That's his line.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Good times, Mom. Thanks. Yeah, this is Diddy's version of that. Now, the Atlanta location hangs on a little while longer. It eventually shuts down in 2012. Why? Here's a summary from an article in BET. In July 2011, Diddy was sued after music executive Tony Austin, a patron of the Atlanta eatery, was shot in the parking lot.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Oh, man. So that's what flips him out. And when he decides, like, hey, cut this out. And then they air the unedited version anyway. And when the version with him being crucified airs, he blames the president of Interscope Records, Steve Stout. And he bursts in the Stout's office with some goons and assaults him with, quote, a chair, a telephone and a champagne bottle.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Stout said of the beating, one minute I'm in the middle of a meeting and the next minute I'm down on the floor and Puffy and his guys are kicking and pounding me. One of them picks up a chair and throws it at me. Then Puffy throws my desk over and they just walk out like nothing happened. And his stance is, I think they were trying to kill me and I just, you know, happened to not die.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
I don't know. I wasn't there. He seems to say it was very serious. Combs turned himself in a few days later and was charged with felony assault. He was freed on $15,000 bail and ultimately pled down to a misdemeanor. His sentence was one day of court-ordered anger management. Ha ha ha.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
oh jesus that's what hundreds of millions of dollars gets you in lawyers man yeah that's the thing is like money is the savior of all problems yeah yeah nearly all like as with epstein you can't eventually hit a line speaking of hitting a line my line is it's time for ads so here you go
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Robert Evans here, and I know everybody loves a great deal, but I also know most of us aren't willing to crawl through a bed of hot coals just to save a couple of bucks. Saving money has to be easy to be worth it. No hoops, no bull crap, no sending anything in through the mail. So when Mint Mobile said it was easy to get wireless for 15 bucks a month with the purchase of a three-month plan,
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
I had trouble believing it, but it turns out it really is that easy to get wireless for 15 bucks a month. The longest part of the process is the time spent on hold waiting to break up with your old provider. To get started, go to mintmobile.com slash behind. There you'll see that right now, all three month plans are only 15 bucks a month, including the unlimited plan.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Find out how easy it is to switch to Mint Mobile and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
To get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash behind. That's mintmobile.com slash behind. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Austin, former A&R for Def Jam and the president of Russell Simmons Music Group, says he was in his car listening to music with another man when someone opened fire on the vehicle. Austin alleged that the proprietors of Justin's were aware of dangerous and hazardous conditions at the establishment, but failed to provide warning or security. Now, isn't that something? Isn't that something?
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
It's your go-to for all things queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. This is the podcast where hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso dive deep into gay culture with unfiltered conversations, hilarious guest chats, and of course, lots of sex-positive moments.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Now the holidays are upon us, and let's be real, sometimes Mom's house is just not an option for some holiday fun. So, Gabe and Chris are back for a very special episode where they'll be catching up on everything they've been up to since Season 1 wrapped, and, more importantly, answering the age-old question, Where do you hook up when family's around?
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
They'll chat with special guests and dive into creating queer spaces during the holidays. Whether it's a Friendsgiving or a holiday sex party, they're covering it all. Plus, Gabe and Chris hit the streets to ask why the night before Thanksgiving is known as the horniest night of the year. Tune in to the Sniffies Cruising Confessions holiday special, sponsored by Gilead.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Out now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So three months after he assaults this record executive, Combs goes out to a Manhattan nightclub with Jennifer Lopez, who he was dating at the time. The couple were partying when someone else at the club insulted Diddy and threatened his protege, a rapper named Shine.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
A write up in The Independent summarizes what happens next in the kind of voice that you usually use for like the Israeli military or cops. A dispute ensued, shots were fired, and three bystanders were injured, including a woman who was shot in the face.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Holmes fled in a Lincoln Navigator with J-Lo, his bodyguard, and his driver, along with a stolen gun none of them had a license for, as cops found out when they stopped the car. Combs was found not guilty in March 2001 of four counts of illegal possession of a gun and one count of bribery after a trial that doubled as a media spectacle.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Proving what a force the rapper had become, fans turned up at the courthouse for seven weeks, and workers at the building, upon his acquittal, threw open the windows to chant his name and leave him alone.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah. And cheer when they get off after probably shooting a woman in the face. After probably shooting someone. It's one of those, one of the things that's amazing is that like, if you read that, like a dispute ensued, shots were fired.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Diddy is so rich at this point that he has become included by journalists in the special exonerative grammatical case that only get, normally it's like for cops, right? Shots were fired. Someone was hit. There was a gun, an unregistered illegal gun in his possession. Okay.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
I have clear procedural memories of about 30% of our friendship, Will. Yeah. It's all flashes. It's all flashes. It's moments. It's a Polaroid picture in my head where I'm like, turns out. So Combs thanked God after the verdict and made a big show of going to church after.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
To further separate himself from the event, he changed his name officially to P. Diddy, telling Vanity Fair, when I changed names, I put periods on those eras.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Got off from a fucking club shooting, time to become P Diddy. The P Diddy era was lucrative indeed. He released more albums, he acted in several movies, and he started producing reality television. He gets that Ciroc vodka deal.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah, yeah, yep. Making the band. Yep, making the band. In 2002, he won awards for his menswear fashion line. Sean John did cause a minor scandal for him when it was found that the clothing he sold was made in Honduran sweatshops with a terrible record for workers' rights.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Got to be some sweatshots. Yeah. Going to have to sweatshop. Mm-hmm. None of that kept him down for long. In 2004, he performed at the Super Bowl. He started his famous Vote or Die campaign that election season.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah, money continued to flow by the hundreds of millions. As the Bush years came to an end, P. Diddy changed his name yet again, this time dropping the P and becoming just Diddy.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
His white parties remained infamous social events, but he also held increasing numbers of freak-offs. These were not for public consumption and acted as an opportunity for him to provide himself and his celebrity friends with endless young women drugs and young women on drugs. Ew. Oh, wow. She woke up in the hospital very ill and vomiting until she was released several hours later.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Quote, I left with no shoes on. My shirt was kind of ripped. I noticed all my money was taken out of my purse except for like $20. I got robbed for my money. I had just enough to get back to a motel in a cab.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
it's so fucked up like these people are also not wealthy people they're doing this because they don't have money in the first place what a contest on the radio and then you get robbed anyway party now she also says she realized afterwards that her vagina was sore she's not certain what happened because again she was drugged drugged yeah almost certainly not a good story Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
And I'm not done with the story, unfortunately. I'm going to read next from an article on MSN. After the incident, Grayson flew back to her home state, Oklahoma, and claims to have received an unsettling phone call the next day in which a female allegedly attempted to dissuade Grayson from speaking up regarding the ordeal. She recounted the anonymous woman's warning.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
She had all my information and was basically telling me that I couldn't do anything about it, that Puff Daddy was a famous person and I wouldn't get anywhere with the issue if I tried to do anything. Puzzled, Grayson queried, so I'm like, well, how did you even get my phone number? Do you know anything about my money being missing? She's like, no, I don't know nothing about that.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
I'm like, well, I mean, how did you even get my phone number?
Behind the Bastards
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You're like a teenager, 20-year-old girl, whatever, from fucking Oklahoma with no money, and he is goddamn P. Diddy.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
And we're talking about the people who know something was done to them and who have spoken out about it for every one of these. Not only are there obviously there are people who haven't spoken up, but there are also people who may be years away from like actually coming to grips with. No, actually, that was bad. That was like really fucked up what happened.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
I even thought about it as like a good thing for a while or at least like a mixed thing bag for it. But like, no, that was actually really fun. Like there's people coming to terms with that right now still. Yeah, absolutely.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
in order to keep his famous and wealthy friends happy and to sate his own desires, he also had to bring in, as you stated, all of these young women to act as party favors, right? That's how we bring, you have these radio contests. Some of them are paid sex workers. Some of them are women.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Okay, you've just gotten started in your career, you know, in the music industry or as a model, you're at a low level in it right now. Why don't you like come over to this party? You know, like, why don't you, you know, and then you get there and then you get coerced. Some of the women at these parties are paid sex workers, but many of them are like, great.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Women are being poached in one way or another, right? There's a different method for all of them. And that means Diddy's not handling this himself. He has a team of people who are using different methods constantly to find women because these parties are happening constantly.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
More people than work at the company Sophie and I run. Their job is just to keep young women coming to these parties. He is spending God knows how many millions of dollars a year on just that part of it.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Right. You have someone right ahead of you with the drugs. Yeah. Yes.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah. Precious Muir, a former Playboy model, was one of the women who attended a number of his parties. She claims that he provided a car service to drive models to and from the events, and that Diddy had agents basically picking women out in public and plying them with invites. She summarized the pitch one of these guys gave her as, I host these amazing parties. Everything is taken care of.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
You don't have to worry about anything. We provide accommodation, so when you go to the Hamptons, there is a house you can stay at, which is very beautiful, very lavish, very stylish, and you don't have to worry about anything. You don't have to pay for anything. Everything is covered. At the time she started attending, Precious was new to the industry without power or connections.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Being invited to these parties seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime. You can impress these guys, make your career. And then you're just kind of, as she said, we were kind of thrown in at the deep end amongst all these people that are well established. People automatically knew that we were new faces. We were new talent and we were vulnerable. We were seen maybe as fresh meat.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
If you're in entertainment, I can say when I was new in my career, if I had had to do something horrible for myself and my brain and body in order to
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
get a break as a writer when I was a baby writer right like I thought about it like I was like yeah I'll do anything right like that's where your head is if you're trying to break in and that's what that's why so much bad stuff happens right like it's the hardest I mean
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah. And the problem is that there's just so many people who don't have that line. Right. Of course.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So because of the nature of how the lawsuits are coming out over this, I have no choice but to jump around. So I'm just going to stay right now. In February of 2024, a record producer named Rodney Jones Jr. filed a federal complaint against Sean, accusing him of running a human trafficking network to stalk his parties with women and girls from a write up in Vulture.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
According to Jones, as he alleges in the complaint, Combs reached out to Jones in 2022 to help him produce songs, but Jones claims the work Combs required of him went far beyond producing music. He claims in the lawsuit that he was tasked with procuring drugs and soliciting sex workers to perform sex acts to the pleasure of Mr. Combs.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Jones alleges that Combs also required him to tape these sex acts, and that Combs would often threaten to inflict bodily harm on him if he did not comply with his demands. Jones alleged in his complaint that Combs kept specific bottles of alcohol designated for females on hand, and, according to Mr. Jones, Mr. Combs forced all the women to drink laced De Leon liquor.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Upon information and belief, Mr. Combs laced the liquor with ecstasy, the lawsuit claims. He also accuses Combs of sexual harassment and assault for allegedly grabbing him without his consent and forcing him to work while Combs paraded around naked. Jones also alleges that Combs once left him alone in a makeshift studio on a yacht with Cuba Gooding Jr.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
What else is going on in your life, Cuba?
Behind the Bastards
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If you've ever wondered, like we all did for a period of time, after he won that Oscar, why hasn't he been in things? Because he's a fucking monster.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
And to be honest, he played O.J. in the TV show where Ross from Friends plays Rocky.
Behind the Bastards
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is a horrible human being he did horrible things and somehow knocks it out of the park as OJ knocks it out of the park no but like has managed to evade all of this puppy like shit hopefully that's coming to an end now because stuff about him more stuff is coming out about him you know we could talk more about Cuba but I think we've made our point he'll get his own episode give it time yeah
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Combs's lawyers have denied the allegations and described Jones as a con man. Subsequent allegations and the federal indictment against Combs seem to back up a number of the allegations made by Jones.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
A few months before Jones filed that complaint in February, in December of 2023, a Jane Doe filed a lawsuit in Manhattan alleging that she was gang raped and trafficked by Combs and bad boy records president Harvey Pierre when she was in the 11th grade. These allegations comport with the scenario Precious Mirror described in her interview with The Mirror.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Apparently, Pierre met this 11th grader at a lounge in Detroit and used Diddy's name to draw her in. Combs then approached and told her, hey, you're welcome on my private jet, which was flying to his studio. Once they were there, she was given lots of drugs and, quote, gang raped by Combs, Pierre, and an unknown third person. There are a lot of other hideous details that I'm leaving out.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
We don't... You know, I guess the term gang rape. Make no mistake.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
He's getting his episode soon, too. Don't you worry.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
On a smaller scale, just being, you know, I've been in comedy. I was a Jace. I was never a big stand up guy, but like I did a little and a lot of my friends did. I went out to regular events as I was employed in comedy. And like you just get told by people, you meet someone and they'll be like, oh, we should hang out. And then someone else will be like, don't hang out with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Don't hang out with that guy. It's usually a woman that you work with who will say, like, that guy's a piece of shit. You don't want to know him. That guy's a piece of shit. You don't want to know him. That guy's a piece, like, you know.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah, you don't want to be near that fucker.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Fucking Oklahoma, right? And getting flown in.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
In 2006, Diddy's longtime partner, Kim Porter, gave birth to twins. It was the same year that a friend gave birth to his daughter Chance. Kim considered this a betrayal and broke things off with Diddy. While all this was going on, he was also starting a quote unquote relationship with a young woman named Cassandra Ventura.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
He had signed her to his label at age 19 and started a sexual relationship with her shortly thereafter. He was 37 at the time. It was Cassandra's allegations against him that would eventually open the floodgates of legal consequences for Diddy. But before we get to that, I'm going to quote from The Independent summarizing just a series of his trials in the mid aughts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Eight months after his 2014 Howard commencement speech, TMZ reported that he punched Drake in a Miami nightclub because of a feud over a song, which in a rare case for these episodes, points for Diddy on that. Six months later, he was arrested and charged in California with three counts of assault with a deadly weapon.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
One count of making terrorist threats and one count of battery after allegedly attacking one of his son's football coaches at UCLA. The assault reportedly involved a kettlebell, but prosecutors ultimately decided not to pursue felony charges.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
You gotta do something real bad for me to be on the side of a football coach, guys. Jesus Christ. Anyway, speaking of football coaches, coach yourself on over to this podcast. Sorry, I don't know why I did that. You were almost there. We've been at this a while.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
It's your go-to for all things queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. This is the podcast where hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso dive deep into gay culture with unfiltered conversations, hilarious guest chats, and of course, lots of sex-positive moments.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Now the holidays are upon us, and let's be real, sometimes Mom's house is just not an option for some holiday fun. So, Gabe and Chris are back for a very special episode where they'll be catching up on everything they've been up to since Season 1 wrapped, and, more importantly, answering the age-old question, Where do you hook up when family's around?
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
They'll chat with special guests and dive into creating queer spaces during the holidays. Whether it's a Friendsgiving or a holiday sex party, they're covering it all. Plus, Gabe and Chris hit the streets to ask why the night before Thanksgiving is known as the horniest night of the year. Tune in to the Sniffies Cruising Confessions holiday special, sponsored by Gilead.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Out now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
And we're back and finishing up the epic tale. The epic tale of Gilgamesh and P. Diddy.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
We are. We're going to get into the Cassie stuff now. Cassie, who was for a while, is in Kidu. If we're doing the Gilgamesh, anyway, whatever. Let's talk Cassandra. After his split from Kim Porter, she was the woman largely seen as Diddy's public partner, right? She was a singer and a model in her own right.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, very talented. The two are generally depicted in media as like a power couple, right? Sure. In a civil lawsuit filed earlier this year, Miss Ventura claims that from the beginning, Sean used his wealth and power to force her into a, quote, manipulative and coercive romantic and sexual relationship.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
He assaulted her constantly, beating and kicking her and regularly leaving, quote, black eyes, bruises and blood. Cassandra describes his freak-offs in her lawsuit and alleged that he would often secretly film the days of debauchery with his famous friends.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
The videotapes doubled as fuel for extortion if anyone crossed him, which is part of why his social circle was so loyal and so quiet for so long, right? He has videos of them doing the crimes. Again, the movie Don't Blink really does cover a lot of this. And as a bonus, has Christian Slater, and that's never a bad time.
Behind the Bastards
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fucking great. I love him, dude. I love that guy.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Now, by the time Justin's opened, Sean had split from Justin's mother to date a model named Kim Porter, who gave him his second son. In 1998, he launched a fashion label, Sean John. Sean John. Sean John.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yes, at age 47. That hasn't happened yet, though.
Behind the Bastards
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That was crazy, man. Speaking of which, let's talk about the Kid Cudi story because you hear about this first in 2012. Gossip blogs report that Cassie, who was dating Kid Cudi at the time, and Diddy had had a fight in a club. And now in the lawsuit, Cassie claims that Diddy, quote, blew up a man's car after he learned he was romantically interested in Ventura. And here's my favorite quote.
Behind the Bastards
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This is from the Salon.com article. The New York Times said through a spokesperson that Kid Cudi confirmed Cassie's account that his car exploded in his driveway. This is all true, he said. Oh, my God. Yeah, just a car explosion.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah, I don't know anything about him, but he's cool and he has one less car than he would otherwise have. We can say that for sure. So true, Robert.
Behind the Bastards
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From the New York Times, quote, Cassie in her lawsuit said that Mr. Combs directed frequent freak offs at high end hotels around the country, directing her at the events to pour excessive amounts of oil on herself and tell her where to touch the prostitutes while he filmed and masturbated. We're not going to like go into a ton of detail about the massive amount of baby oil, but there's a lot of it.
Behind the Bastards
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Disgusting. Some of it's drugged. Disgusting.
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The only reason I can think of to drug it is because you are getting it inside people in their mucus membranes.
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Like fucking MDMA or whatever isn't going to absorb it It's not a bodily. Yeah, exactly. In someone's vagina. And so, again, like it's hideous, right? Like we don't need to belabor that point. I think you get it right. Cassie says in her lawsuit, he treated the forced encounter as a personal art project, adjusting the candles he used for lighting to frame the videos that he took.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah. I wonder if he and Epstein ever partied. They certainly had the opportunity.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, yeah. In 2018, Kim Porter passes away. The cause of death was initially listed as deferred, but it was later confirmed that she died of pneumonia. Right. And there's a lot of conspiracy theories. It would be remiss to not conspiracy talk it.
Behind the Bastards
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We can say markedly more successful than his restaurant. Absolutely.
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But yeah, again, people have also said maybe that death should be looked into and probably not a bad idea. Take a look. Take a look. JFK's head just exploded. I don't know if you know that. He just did that. Presidents just do that sometimes. Sometimes. It's a pre-existing condition. Pre-existing. In 2017, Diddy changed his name yet again. He told the world he would now go by Love or Brother Love.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
He legally changes his name because love is his legal middle name. He tells Vanity Fair at the time, love is a mission. I feel like that's one of the biggest missions that will actually shift things. But besides that, we, the world, is different. We have the internet. We have the power. We have a culture. I have us on a five-year plan. First off, fucking talking like Stalin there.
Behind the Bastards
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Second, that was more than five years ago. How'd the plan work out, Diddy? Yeah, yeah. A little more loving? Did you fix it? Nailed it.
Behind the Bastards
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Fucking Joseph Diddy Beria. Fucking hell. Now, during this period, Diddy's public image remained mostly benign.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Oh, OK. And his adopted son, who is older, named Quincy. Sure. Interesting, fascinating name. Now, that year, the year that he starts Sean John, he is nominated for five Grammys. If you want to know what a Grammy looks like, just look behind Will and Tua's right on camera.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yes, he did. It happens with famous people. You see it with Elon Musk and X. Just name your kids something else. I don't care what you name your kids. What is wrong with Steven, man? Albert. Hans. Why we got to be weird about everything? Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Now, in articles from the time he was vetted as a genius producer and interviewer seemed happy to ignore the numerous assault allegations that, you know, were kind of in the shadows, but not too shadowy to have found. And the very public fact that he had definitely killed people through negligence and had them murdered. He even managed to avoid Me Too entirely.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
In fact, in that interview, he tells Vanity Fair the movement inspired him and, quote, showed me you can get maximum change. God damn it.
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Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Dodge that bullet. Clearly it's clean sailing from here on out.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah. Aubrey O'Day comes out for years, like at least a couple of years saying, I don't think she sees or has evidence. And obviously you don't want to casually before all this breaks, call him a sexual. He has a lot of money.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the most direct things she said in 2022 in an interview on the Call Her Daddy podcast, she said that Diddy had fired her because she, quote, wasn't willing to do what was expected, not talent wise, but in other areas. Right. Right. Brutal. Brutal, brutal, brutal. Very clear what that means. Yeah. And here's another quote from an article.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Again, this is before everything breaks and varieties is 2019 called Aubrey O'Day is still recovering from making the band PTSD and making the reality show that all of them suffered so much.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Puff is a very difficult person to work with. Everything had to be perfect. I remember times where he looked at my toenails and was like, what is your third toenail doing? Go get that shit fixed before you walk into a room. Or we would be in rehearsals performing an hour and a half set over and over. Bitch, you get your toenails corrected or I will fucking end you. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
I would walk in for five minutes with a camera and say, Aubrey, why are you sweating? You look like a wet dog. You're the hot one. So you think anyone wants to see that? And again, this is all pretty minor next to all the horrible sex jokes, but he's a dick too.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
You got it fucking backlit. Was the first thing you did with that take a shot out of it? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yep. Yep, absolutely. So about five years after saying that he was inspired by me, too, in that article for Vanity Fair, Cassandra came forward with her lawsuit and she was joined very quickly in a flood of lawsuits. Not all of the people charging Sean with sexual assault are women.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Go back in time and just have, like, about 14 shots. Yeah. So the late 1990s is an era in which bad boy records is growing by leaps and bounds and Diddy is getting rich as fuck. We are talking the insane pile, the cash pile so large that your only option is to either get really into cocaine or start a series of ill-conceived small businesses.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
We have mostly focused on that, but I want to be very clear that he is alleged of assaulting men, too, not just through Cuba. One man currently incarcerated in Michigan for kidnapping and criminal sexual conduct himself. says that Diddy drugged and raped him in Detroit in 1997.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
A judgment was briefly issued on that case, but Diddy's lawyers, because they hadn't appeared in court, unclear to me what happened, you know, but like that's not the only allegation of him abusing a man too, right? I just want to be clear about that. There's just less of it. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
And he's got famous friends who are gay and creeps. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
You know. So there are so many of these allegations that we we're not going to cover more of them. Right. We've done it.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
I think this gives you a pretty good understanding of him. And the fact that I've cut out allegations, which I've cut out like two for every one I've included, says nothing about the legitimacy of those. It's just a space thing. I should say a bit here about Christina Coram, K-H-O-R-R-A-M. She was Combs' chief of staff and is a co-defendant in the Jones lawsuit.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
We talked about the lady from Oklahoma who was like brought into a party and drugged and possibly sexually assaulted and then called by a woman afterwards and threatened. I think there's a decent chance that was Christina Coram. Jones claims that Coram bought a lot of the drugs and actually handled the booking and paying of sex workers for Combs' parties. She was his Gillen Maxwell, in other words.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
And also it's worth noting, again, I keep bringing up that movie that I didn't appreciate as much until this all came out, Link Twice. The woman who is, there's like an older woman who is like the creepy sex CEOs, like fixer. And she's Christina Cora. That's who, I didn't realize how directed was.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah. And that's Christina Coram in this story. We'll see what happens to her. Sean Huffy Combs was arrested on September 16th, 2024, several months after the FBI raided his L.A. mansion and seized firearms, illegal drugs and more than a thousand bottles of baby oil. Combs has denied all charges and pled not guilty.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
More recently, a judge declined to set bail for him, noting that he still posed a danger to the community.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
We really run. And that'll save us, you know, and our reputations. We'll die historic, you know, in a gunfight with the FDA. That's all I want, man. That's the way to go down.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
And every one of those FDA agents has got to remember us forever. All of their children. All of their children's children. They'll never forget. Yeah. Now, we're going to have to start selling supplements first, Will. Oh, my God.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
You know, I know that guy. So funny. Yep. Yep. So this has been Behind the Bastards, a podcast about a guy I almost named a goat for. It has been a fantastic time.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Cool. That's the podcast experience. I hope you get home or drunk or something too, buddy. And Godspeed.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
No, this is to take shots out of because it's funny. And you're not going to get content like this from the Pod Save America guys. You're not getting it from the Bulwark. You're not getting it from Last Podcast on the left. Only behind the bastards.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
You might get this on Joe Rogan. You would get this on Joe Rogan.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
You would be trying to convince my listeners to, I don't know, inject bleach into their assholes in order to build muscle mass.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
I'd be trying. Well, I do actually think you should eat more elk. It's delicious. Yeah, elk is delicious. You're right. It's very tasty. Now, so that year, the same year he opened Sean John, he gets nominated for five Grammys. Bad Boy pulls in $130 million in revenue.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
That I don't know. I could have looked that up, but I'm a hack and a fraud. Now, from this point forward in the story, Sean has infinite money, right? Which he still does, basically. Now, as I noted last episode, he'd always had a knack for throwing huge media-driven parties. And now that he was actually a major celebrity himself, he kicked things up several notches.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
1998 is also the year of his first white party. These were the events where he'd invite piles of celebrities to his mansion in the Hamptons for what inevitably became the big event of the summer. And part of it is he becomes like the first black guy to move into this very rich white neighborhood.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
The white parties are in part how he kind of makes his neighbors cool with him is like, hey, you're some like lame bank CEO. You can be at this party with these cool people.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah. And everyone wears white because Diddy thought he looked good in white. And to be honest, like, I don't want to be complimenting the man, but he doesn't look bad. That's not a bad look for him. That's not a bad look for him.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Well, part of what I love is you can really see the whole, like, he is, you know, part of the point of these parties is for, like, people who are rich but not very cool to get to feel cool. Yeah. Some of the people below him, like that guy in the front, like they're just wearing white T-shirts. You don't look like a rap star.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Like you get this wild mix of like beautiful people and also sometimes beautiful people looking just like normal weirdos at a party. But which I always think is really interesting. You've got like part of it is because these first white parties are from the era before. Like there's no social media, so there's no social media filters anymore. Photoshop tools aren't as easy to use.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
It's Behind the Bastards, a podcast hosted by a man who is legally a judge and his friend Greasy Will, who is legally Greasy Will. Legally not allowed to drive anymore. I think...
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
So you get a lot of shots of famous people actually looking like normal people at a party. Like here's Leo DiCaprio and some other dudes drinking champagne, smoking cigarettes and like not particularly looking like they're crazy rich and famous.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah. Yeah. And then Sophie's going to show you next. Regis Philbin. Yeah, there's a photo of Regis Philbin, and I can only describe the look on his face. He looks like he is smiling like the devil, like you would cast him in needful things. He is selling you a cursed Victrola. That's how Regis looks in this photo.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
And there's a couple other middle-aged white dudes in there, one of whom is grabbing a young woman's arm in a way that I would say looks kind of off-putting to me, but I don't know what was going on.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Diddy I'm sure does both actually. I had two choices. I was going to sit in that failure.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
It's kind of grainy. All of these people are rich. Some of them are famous. I don't think that bald guy got famous for being a hip hop star.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
And the people being sex trafficked. God, look at Regis.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
You can see both of my hands. I ain't fucking up this... What was it? Was it he wants to be a millionaire at this point?
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah, that's going to be a fascinating shade above that crowd there. Everyone's going to have an aura that looks like the drink of the guy on the left, which is red.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
There are definitely, especially at the end, at the after parties, the night parts, which not everyone stays for. There are definitely some sex crimes here. These are not the ditty parties where most of the sex trafficking crimes are happening.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
There's a reason for it. The white parties are his PR. This is where he goes to.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
legitimacy into the black community as well right right and that is the point of these and so these are largely less sketchy events for that reason and it is his he has another kind of party with another name that we'll be talking about that is where most of it i'm not saying like there's no sex crimes happening here there's definitely drugs but the fact that someone was at a white party doesn't mean that they committed sex crimes yeah
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
So I'm not saying Regis Philbin is a sex pest. I don't know Regis. Maybe there have been allegations against him. If so, then I guess I am, but I don't know that. But these are his show parties, and he's a lot more careful about what happens here. The other parties, the parties you have heard stories about with the baby oil and the sex crimes, are what he called his freak-off parties.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Like a dance-off, but, you know, with your freak.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
They're dark. These are the sex crime parties. If someone went to a freak-off, you should assume they did some bad stuff.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
He steps out of the darkness to launch a restaurant called Justin. This is named after his oldest son. He starts the first Justin in New York City in 1997, and he franchises it out to Atlanta the following year. The New York location shuts down after about a decade. Sean claims because he wanted to find a larger location, but he just never opens a new one. I think it just...
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
And another big part of it is because there's different gradients of cases. A lot of these people are like, well, yeah, I said yes and I agreed and nobody threatened me. But also I was there because I had just gotten started in this industry and I'm in front of the guy who could make my career. And like, I didn't think I had any other op. Like, these are also some of the things that are happening.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Probably fine for 12 year old Justin Bieber to be at Diddy's house. Who am I to judge? Who are we to judge? We should have judged. Yeah, we should have judged. At the White Party, the most intense photo I've seen is Sean pouring champagne over what the New York Post describes as two unidentified near-naked women. It doesn't look nearly as sketchy as they describe it.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
The Post and a lot of other tabloid coverage of these events does tend towards sensationalism about the wrong things. For example, this piece from September. Inside, Sean Diddy Combs' Hampton sex parties featuring gay rappers who were high on ketamine. And like, you and I have both been to parties with gay rappers high on ketamine. That's not the problem. Yeah, not at all.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
That some gay rappers are doing ketamine. That's not what's the issue here.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
Yeah, those gay rappers probably not committing sex crimes. Not at all.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes
No, no, because he's not again. He's not stupid. That's why he got away with this for so long. Now, I'm not sure how seriously to take this post article, which has its source as just one anonymous Coke dealer, which, again, not necessarily the most credible people on the planet. But here's a quote.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
It's fucked. So, again, I just made the point that Grootman was not breaking the law. The same cannot be said for the next doctor we're going to discuss, an anesthesiologist named Scott Rubin.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Starting in the year 2000, Rubin published what would become 21 papers claiming to show evidence that COX-2 inhibitors performed better than non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for patients who'd received orthopedic surgery. Now, the last episode, we mostly focused on Merck, and we will later in this one, as the bulk of the blame Okay.
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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Pfizer funded a great deal of Rubin's research from 2002 to 2007, effectively picking him up after he'd established himself as an expert in the burgeoning field of COX-2 inhibitor research. The good news is that in the field Rubin attempted to influence, orthopedic surgery, his work had less of an influence than he'd hoped.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Most surgeons hesitated to switch to COX-2 inhibitors because some very good animal studies showed they slowed the rate at which bones heal, which is kind of a big deal if you're in the orthopedic surgery business. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
It's really the orthopedic surgeons. Sorry. Speaking of orthopedic surgeons, they don't listen to podcasts, so fuck them. Here's some ads.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
And we're back. If you're an orthopedic surgeon, hit me up. I got too many bones. I could use a couple less, probably. So Rubin's work formed an influential mass of positive-seeming scientific PR arguing in favor of drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex as safer super aspirants. An article in Scientific American notes, a 2007 editorial in Anesthesia and Analgesia said,
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
stated that Rubin had been at the forefront of redesigning pain management protocols through his carefully planned and meticulously documented studies.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
That's what an editorial, how the editors of the paper described him. I see. And there's only one problem with these carefully, the 20 or so carefully planned and meticulously documented studies that he had authored over a 12-year period. They were all complete bullshit, fraudulent in every way.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Now, we will talk more about Rubin later because a lot of his story occurs after the collapse of Vioxx, but it's important to note that just as Pfizer underwrote Rubin's shoddy research, Merck had deeply questionable science that they funded in an equally dubious way.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Back during the FDA approval process, Merck had launched a strategy called ADVANTAGE, in all caps because it was a very tortured acronym. assessment differences between Vioxx and naproxen to ascertain gastronomical tolerability and effectiveness.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
An analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists describes the goal of Advantage as using flawed methodologies biased towards predetermined results to exaggerate the drug's positive effects. Quote, "...as part of their strategy, scientists manipulated the trial data by comparing the drug to naproxen, a pain reliever sold under brand names such as Aleve rather than a placebo."
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
and yeah we we covered that a little earlier but what's important is that we now know that vermerc had a great deal of evidence when they were pushing this study suggesting that like vioxx massively increased the risk of cardiovascular events which makes the case that this was not just something where they did a bad study and put this thing next to naproxen and it looked less risky than it does because it was next to naproxen they conducted that study with naproxen because they had data showing that vioxx massively increased the risk of heart attacks
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
And they were deliberately trying to hide that, right? This is all stuff that came out later as a result of the Senate investigation and numerous court cases. So yeah, we know that Merck had a lot of evidence showing this was dangerous and that they deliberately hid it. And we know that this was incredibly profitable for Merck. From 1999 to 2004, Vioxx made them $2.5 billion a year on average.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
It swiftly became the best-selling drug in Merck history and one of the best-selling drugs of all time. And just as swiftly, it started to kill people. One of the first to die was Bob Ernst. He was a fit 59-year-old triathlete who started taking Vioxx because of recurrent arthritic pain in his hand. His wife Carol had urged him to try Vioxx after seeing an ad and Bob had gone on the medication.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
On May 6, 2001, the two had an anniversary date at an Olive Garden in Keene, Texas. Bob passed away in his sleep later that night, dead from heart failure. Now, Bob had been in very good shape, but the death of a 59-year-old man from heart failure is simply not the kind of thing that most pathologists are going to consider super suspicious.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
It was Carol herself who got suspicious and started digging into Bob's one medication. This is the only thing he was prescribed, Vioxx. Even as early as 2001, there were studies showing that Vyax was bad for heart health. Merck had successfully buried many of them, but there was still stuff that you could find with enough digging online, and that's exactly what his wife did.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
She found a lawyer, Mark Lanier, who made to take her case. And the book Poison Pills does a wonderful job of chronicling the work that they did. I'm going to have to give you a summary here, which is that in August of 2005, a Texas state jury awarded almost $25 million to Carol Ernst in compensatory damages against and more than 200 million in punitive damages.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Now, that latter verdict was lowered quite a bit due to a Texas law, but it would be fair to call this a massive victory against Merck. And much of the case against Merck hinged on the fact that in June of 2000, Merck had provided a tranche of early user data to the FDA that revealed Vioxx users had four times as many heart attacks as people on naproxen. They didn't state this, though.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
This was in the data. You could find it if you analyze the data. But it was not in any of the conclusions that Merck sent along to the FDA. And the FDA really just didn't do the work to actually figure this out very quickly. And so it wasn't until 14 months later in April of 2002 that the FDA actually forced through changes and how Vioxx was labeled to reflect the evidence of risk.
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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Merck took no action on their own to warn users about the fact that they knew that Vioxx was causing heart attacks. Now, in the later trial that would develop from all this, CEO Raymond Gilmartin would claim that Vioxx wanted to add a warning label the instant they were aware of the danger. This was a lie, as Cope and Berry write in their article, Merck and the Vioxx Debacle.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Lanier, that's the lawyer, introduced in the Ernst trial internal Merck documents, which revealed that Merck resisted the FDA's efforts to add warnings to Vioxx's label and eventually complied in ways that the Ernst jury found obscure. You had to dig three levels to see it, one juror stated.
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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
In March 2000, when Merck became aware of the Vigor study's findings of a significant increase in cardiovascular events for those taking Vioxx over naproxen, Merck's scientists expressed concern. In an email message written in March of 2000, Dr. Edward Skolnick, who was then Merck's head of research, stated the Vigor clinical trial had shown that Vioxx increased heart risks.
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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
The CV events were clearly there, he wrote. Despite clear warnings, Merck decided against conducting studies on the heart attack risks because marketing executives worried it might hurt Vioxx sales. Internal Merck analyses in 2001 and 2002 showed that Merck was worried about lost profits if warnings or precautions were put on its label.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
During that period, Merck was in private negotiations with the FDA over changes to its Vioxx label. David Anstis, who at that time was the president of Merck's human health division, projected that a strict warning would reduce sales by at least 50%.
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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
After the Vigor study findings in March of 2000, a second internal Merck analysis performed in October 2000 showed a significant increase in cardiovascular events for those taking Vioxx. The Merck analysis, plaintiff's attorney Mark Lanier has argued, was never presented to the FDA nor the media. and certainly was not given to the physicians prescribing Vioxx.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
So this is entirely the marketing team and the CEO coming in and saying like, this will cut profits. So bury it as long as you can. Every additional year we get to sell this stuff without a warning is worth it to us, right? Whatever number of deaths there are, the money this is bringing in is so huge, like it's fine, right? That's literally a decision being made.
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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
And that's that's what's fucking scary, right? Is that like we're talking this is a massive failure by the FDA to. that happened when it was funded, right? We can argue it should have been funded more, but that happened in a period totally different from the one we're entering into now. What kind of shit is going to come by now that there's no guardrails on any of this stuff, right?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
These fucking MBAs who are managing all of these pharmaceutical companies and these marketers have absolutely no restrictions on anything that they can shovel into people's faces to make a profit. It's funny.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Oh, we are back. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast with Dr. Kaveh Hoda and Robert Evans, where Sophie is out of the house right now. So, you know, we're just just the boys, just the boys.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
And it's, yeah, it's just fucking, I mean, what's coming is going to be sick, folks, in a very literal term. But what happened in the past was pretty sick, too.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
So it took about four years for the Carol Ernst legal case to wind on against Vioxx, right, from her realizing there was probably something wrong with her husband's medication to actually getting a victory, which is actually pretty quick for one of these lawsuits.
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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
The company continued to push the mountain of disinformation during this time about their new star medications, dangers. One February 2001 sales memorandum forbade sales reps from discussions on a study that raised heart concerns when they talked to physicians, right? Can't talk about this study about heart attacks from our medication when you sell it to doctors.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Salespersons were also ordered to avoid discussing heart health risks and instead hand over a cardiovascular card to physicians, which said Vioxx is protecting the heart, right? rather than potentially harming it. That ought to take care of all of their questions. Oh, good. You gave me a card. Well, you guys got card money. There must be nothing wrong with this stuff.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
No one shady can afford this kind of embossing. My God, look at that. It's okay, guys. They gave me a card. We're good. The Ernst lawsuit was not the first or last against Merck. Most were brought by survivors of heart attacks or, more often, the family members of people who had perished. Merck upped their game, as this passage from Kolpenberry's article makes clear.
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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Merck prepared an in-house training game for Vioxx sales representatives dubbed Dodgeball. Sales trainees could only move on to the next round of the card game if they gave Merck-approved answers to doctors' questions raising Vioxx safety concerns or dodged such questions altogether.
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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Except for the listeners. That's like half our listeners. Please keep listening, ladies. Sorry. I'm so sorry.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Right, right. It's also this kind of like, there's less of an inbuilt immunity within the medical community because you guys weren't used to being sold to this way. Yeah, it's like when they first started getting Americans hooked on cigarettes and people had never seen an advertisement before and they're like, a cowboy? Well, I'm buying a cigarette now. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Ah, so a later congressional inquiry found that Merck leadership divided the studies on Vioxx into approved and background studies. And any study that showed a danger to heart health was considered a background study. And so their salespeople were forbidden to discuss them with doctors. This was a violation of company policy. Ah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
I apologize. We didn't mean that. We didn't mean that. Just like Merc didn't mean to kill all those people that they're about to kill. Thanks in part to utilizing Dorothy Hamill's star appeal. Poor Dorothy. She really did not... Again, it's one of those things where it's like we just shouldn't have pharmaceutical ads like the way that we have them because you can't.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Now, all through 2001 and 2002, the FDA sent letters to Merck poking at it for failing to properly disclose the dangers of Vioxx, but it still took again 14 months for any sort of labeling change to be mandated. Part of why is that officials within the FDA were in the tank for Merck, not all of them, but enough.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
At later Senate committee investigations, an FDA scientist testified that he had brought forward concerns about Vioxx to his superiors and been pressured to shut up. Another researcher who had gone to the FDA with complaints was Gurkenpal Singh, a Stanford professor who claimed that a Merck senior executive complained to his superiors at the university when he reported Vioxx to the FDA.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Singh claimed, I was warned that if I persisted in this fashion, there would be serious consequences for me because, of course, Merck has the ability to donate a lot of money to a university like Stanford. Now, still, some brave academics continue to blow the whistle, as this paragraph from a New York Times article by Alex Berenson, Gardner Harris, and Barry Myers summarizes.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
In 2001, the first major study critical of the drugs appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The report, written by Eric J. Topol and cardiologists at the Cleveland Clinic, reanalyzed data from several clinical trials of Vioxx and Celebrex. It reported that both drugs appeared to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, but that the danger from Vioxx appeared higher.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Dr. Topol, the chairman of the clinic's Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, immediately called for trials to determine whether or not the drugs increased cardiovascular risk. Merck and Pfizer both rebuffed that request and said that the Cleveland Clinic report was flawed because it failed to do, among other things, to include data from other studies.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Dr. Topol became a harsh critic of both drugs, but his ire focused on Vioxx and Merck. Even before his 2001 report appeared, he said in a recent interview that company scientists came to Cleveland to try to convince him not to publish it. Merck officials denied doing so.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
A year later, a study by Dr. Wayne Ray, an epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University, found that Medicaid patients in Tennessee who were taking high doses of Vioxx, greater than the recommended long-term dosage of 25 milligrams daily, had significantly more heart attacks and strokes than similar patients who were not taking high doses.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yeah. It's okay. His career has moved forward now. He doesn't have to do that anymore. Yeah. I don't know. It's it's it's it's all pretty bad. Right. Like that's I mean, terrible. There's a degree to which like at least you can see these these heroes who tried to do something, even though, you know, your university is telling you stop.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Merck is sending scary guys to your door to be like, are you sure you want to publish that study?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yeah. Yeah, well, because Merck, there's no argument. They don't know exactly what they're doing. They are trading lives for dollars. They know eventually we'll have to stop selling this stuff because we know how dangerous it is. But every day we get to keep selling it. We're recouping that investment. We're making a profit.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
And whatever we have to pay out in the end is going to be less than what we're making.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Dorothy Hamill was a great figure skater. Nothing in her life prepared her to adequately vet whether or not Vioxx was a safe medication to advertise. We can't put that on Dorothy Hamill.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
They know who to lie to and not. They're lying, I think, to a lot of the doctors and to some of the salespeople. You know, salespeople don't maybe know how to, like,
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
analyze whether or not this is a a good uh study or whatever so they're just like oh those other studies that showed a danger they're not good for this reason or that reason and like you're just some fucking sales rep that got hired out of college maybe you don't really give that much of a shit but there are people plenty of people who know exactly what they're doing right um and like those people who know exactly what they're doing just don't care they don't feel bad about the fact that they're getting people killed right
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
My brain doesn't. Yeah. I mean, it's not dumb. You just aren't. You just have a soul. And I'm working to get rid of it. Yeah, well, that's that's the only thing that's going to let us win. We all have to get rid of our souls today, which, by the way, I've got a great new medication for getting rid of your souls. First step, you're going to go to your local, not a local gas station.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Actually, you want to go to a truck stop about 30 or 40 minutes outside of town. Right. If you can actually like see like people like there's more than a half dozen rigs parked outside, that's probably a good truck stop. And you're going to go in there. And behind the counter, there should be a wall of pills. And you're just going to ask for all of them. And you pour that into a cup.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
And this is critical. You mix it in with Mountain Dew Code Red. Not Baja Blast. That'll fuck it up. Do not mix Baja Blast in. Mountain Dew Code Red. And then shoot that shit as fast as possible. And that's going to get rid of your soul. And then you're ready to join us on the front lines fighting the demons.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
You'll also be able to see demons. That's a promise. Yeah, you're going to see some shit. You're going to see some demons. Yeah, all of that fucking Ibogaine or whatever the fuck they put those in those pills. Those random trucker pills that they just, they almost call them Adderall, but not quite. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
You got to go down the five to that place that sells split pea soup. And then, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can find some trucker pills there.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yeah. All right, I'm going to do it, actually. I think this is a good day trip. Yeah, this will be good. Let's go do it together. We'll buy all the trucker pills and we'll see how they work.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So in late September 2004, as the death toll mounted and Merck's legal team was buried in cases, they made the decision to pull Vioxx off the market altogether. This is right after the case has been decided against them, there is no longer keeping this cat in the bag, and now it's about damage control.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Their official justification was that they just had a long-term clinical trial, which showed that some patients developed cardiovascular problems after taking the drug for 18 months. The data showed 15 heart attacks, strokes, or blood clots per thousand people over three years, compared with seven and a half cardiac events in the general population.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
And even if you believe this Merck study, which I think is kind of trying to pad how bad it is, that's still much worse. That's still a real problem. The stock market reacted first, costing Merck somewhere in the neighborhood of $26 billion in a day. But that's not real money. They get it back. You know how the stock market works.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
The next reaction came from the families of people who died due to Vioxx, leading to a rush of new lawsuits. But the initial public reaction was beyond muted. It was in fact downright hostile to the victims. And this likely has something to do with a particularly toxic aspect of U.S. culture I call scalding McDonald's coffee syndrome.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Some of it wasn't even available to her. She wasn't getting up at four in the morning every day as an adolescent girl to have the COX-2 enzyme explained to her. No. No, that was like me, not her. Yeah. We had different paths, different journeys. And you're a terrible figure skater. Not that bad. Okay.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Now, you've probably heard the story about the woman who had a hot coffee spill in her lap at a McDonald's drive-thru, and she sued them and got a bunch of money. This is a thing that, especially when I was younger, I think more people know the real story now, but you would see viral memes all the time. You'd see it in newspapers. It was really a thing my parents' generation loved to hate on.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
It was particularly a big thing for conservatives who were angry at how mean all these, these frivolous lawsuits hurting innocent corporations. Like this woman spills coffee in her own lap. And like the reality was McDonald's had the coffee way higher than they were legally allowed to have it. They should not have been selling or handing people coffee that hot.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
And it gave her third degree burns to like her entire genital area. Like it was a hideous, hideous life altering injury that she suffered because they were not doing what they legally should have been. Anyway, we don't need to rant on this, but at the time this happens, A lot less people realize the true story there. And so there is this big backlash against frivolous lawsuits against companies.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
And what the Merck Vioxx lawsuits initially get lost in that, right? When Carol Von Ernst won her case against Merck, a lot of pundits of the day kind of looped this in with the McDonald's coffee case. as another example of our sue-happy culture run amok.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
From the book Poison Pills, Carol Ernst's lawyer, Mark Lanier, was blasted by everyone from physicians to newspaper columnists for winning the trial by twisting the facts and relying on nothing but an ignorant jury of hicks, despite the fact that his witnesses included some of the best-known physicians and scientists in the world.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Even as the Texas jury was deliberating, Merck's lead attorney, Jerry Lowry, said if he, Lanier, had any evidence Vioxx causes arrhythmia, this case would have been over three weeks ago.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
A few months after the trial verdict, CNBC broadcast a debate between Lanier and Richard Epstein, the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute. The professor had written an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal and said that physicians lamented the fact that they could no longer use the drug.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Many leading newspapers, including the Washington Post, also mocked the Ernst trial. In an editorial entitled The Vioxx Hex, the Post wrote that the Texas jury in that case awarded $253.4 million to the widow of a man who died of a heart attack triggered by arrhythmia, which is not a condition Vioxx has been proven to cause. The Post said the jury was confused about the medical evidence.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
And this is number one, that fucking dude debating Lanier on stage as a Hoover Institute guy. It's right wing think tank. But number two, you've got all these like big publications going like, oh, these it's a Texas jury. So clearly they're hicks. They don't understand our big city science. They just got bamboozled by this smooth talking lawyer who just hated Merck.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Not that bad. I've never seen you figure skate. Can you do a sow cow? Maybe. Sure. Is that like a skateboarding move? Yeah, probably. Yeah. I can do it then. This has been Skate Talk with Robert and Kava, two people who probably don't skate. So when we left our heroes at Vioxx, they just latched upon the brilliant idea of having Dorothy Hamill sell Vioxx.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Celebrex still has some uses and stuff, right?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
I'm just. No, I mean, it's it's it's all very frustrating, right? Like the way that this worked is just comprehensively bad for everybody but a handful of people at the top of Merck. It's bad for the research scientists at Merck who were not shady motherfuckers whose will always exist under a cloud of suspicion because they worked during the Vioxx era.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
It's bad for the people who might have benefited from a VIAX that was rolled out in a more reasonable way to a smaller subset of people. It's bad for all of the tens of thousands of people who lost loved ones and the people who had life-altering injuries as a result of it. It's just terrible for everybody. But you know, Dr. Hoda, what's not terrible for anybody? What's that?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
The products and services that support this podcast, all of which have been FDA approved. And if we've learned anything this episode, that always means good. Good. Good.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
If you've been wondering how tens of millions of your fellow countrymen could be convinced to vote for a guy like Trump, just remember that an awful lot of them saw a video of a figure skater promising she knew a solution to their chronic pain issues and desperate for relief, millions of people followed her to their demise. That really does explain a lot.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
And we're back. So we're drawing to a close in this episode. I have a question. Did they actually lose money overall from this?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
No, no, no, no, no. They pay in total a little less than a billion dollars in penalties and additional civil settlements for their victim. They are making two and a half billion dollars a year during the period of time where they're selling this. And it's out for five years. Something like five years. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yeah. So that's cool. Now, one of my favorite side parts in this story is that the Washington Post takes like a huge, strong stance to defend an unethical mega corporation and got something wrong, which is not a thing that ever happens again.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Anyway, about a year after the Post's article talking about how unfair it is to sue Merck, Harvard School of Public Health issues a public health bulletin warning that Vioxx use was associated with severe heart rhythm disorders and an increased risk of kidney failure.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
More research comes out in the following years that further vindicates everyone who tried to warn Merck and the world about Vioxx, the medication that had been prescribed to some 20 million people in 80 countries by the time it was polled. We will never have a comprehensive list of the number of people killed and injured as a result of Vioxx, but what we do know is harrowing.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Now, in fairness, very few people are doctors. It is unreasonable to expect people who are hurting and in some cases literally being driven mad by pain to personally overcome the weight of a multimillion dollar ad campaign and all of the science washing that a big pharmaceutical company can do.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Dr. David Graham, the associate director for science and medicine in the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, testified before the Senate Finance Committee that Vioxx had been associated with at least 100,000 heart attacks and more than 55,000 premature deaths. That is in the United States. He compared the cost to two to four jumbo jetliners crashing every week for five years. Holy shit.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yes, that's a lot of dead people. God. Mm-hmm. Now, the lawsuits that resulted from this are far too numerous to chronicle, save to note that Merck initially promised to fight each of the 30,000 lawsuits against them independently.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yes, yes. Then they agreed in 2008 to provide what could have been almost $5 billion as part of the settlement, but I don't know how much of that they actually paid out. And then they pled guilty to a misdemeanor for illegal promotional activity. That was about another $950 million in penalties and civil payments. So they wound up paying a good amount of money.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
That's like they lost a good two years or so of the profits that they made. Did Dorothy Hamill do any time? No, no. Dorothy Hamill does not go to prison for her many crimes.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Skates free. For her many crimes. They do plead guilty to a misdemeanor for introducing a misbranded drug to interstate commerce. So that's nice. But no one at Merck is locked up for what they did, nor do any of the scientists who'd agree to help cover up studies or push disinfo suffer lasting career harms, with the notable exception of our friend Scott Rubin.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Paul White, the editor at the Journal of Anesthesia and Analgesia, claims that Rubin's studies showing the benefits of COX-2 inhibitors helped sell billions of dollars worth of both Celebrex and Vioxx. In 2009, he was revealed to have completely falsified at least 21 of his published papers, all of which claimed to show how well super aspirins could benefit post-operative healing.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Pfizer had funded Rubin's work from 2002 to 2007, the years when they were also making bank on a little medication called Celebrex. His employer, Bay State Medical Center, claimed to Scientific American that Rubin had been paid directly by Pfizer for his work, and that he had then decided how much of that money would fund research, and how much would go into his pocket, Which sounds fine.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
That's not sketchy. There's nothing. How could that lead to anything bad?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
In fact, during the early years of IACS's success, it would have seemed as if COX-2 inhibitors were medical marvels backed by the best science. And it would have seemed that if you were someone who did what should be like the responsible amount of reading on this subject. Not...
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Oh yeah, there's some good breakdowns on them from scientists who are more qualified than me to talk about it. I would love to look at that. It's a fascinating story. One of my favorite quotes from this is that his employer Baystate, like when people would note that like, well, that's not how pharmaceutical, you're not just supposed to give a single guy cash, right?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Like, that's not how pharmaceutical research is supposed to be done. A spokesman for Bay State Medical Center told Scientific American, I don't know how many dollars went to Rubin or his group. Wow. No idea. Holy hell.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
A Pfizer spokesperson insisted the grants were properly dispersed to Bay State in accordance with Pfizer policy, but that they weren't familiar with the records retention policies of Bay State. So, you know. Who knows? Who knows how much money? Between $10,000 and $100,000 at least.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
But he was actually asked to pay $360,000 in restitution when he got sentenced in 2010 after pleading guilty of massive fraud. Prosecutors argued that he'd been paid huge money in grants and never performed the studies he'd been paid to conduct. He just pocketed the cash and published lies about Celebrex. Thankfully, justice was done.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
He was given six months in prison and asked to pay $360,000 in restitution to the pharmaceutical companies who'd sponsored his work, the real victims in all this.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yeah, and that's the story of Iox. Dr. Hoda, how are you feeling? How are you good?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
like the amount of reading that we could expect from like a research scientist, because research scientists who were responsible knew the dangers. But if you were, say, like a normal educated person who's like, oh, well, I'm going to read a paper of record and they're reporting on these new drugs written by a medical doctor interviewing other medical doctors.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yeah, I mean, there's not much more to say on the matter than that, right? I guess part of what's so frustrating to me is that the sweep of the anti-intellectual crusade that is going to cost so many people their lives is of such catastrophic danger to every positive gain that we've made as a society in the last 150 years.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
That's really all you as a layman should be expected to do to try to like figure out, you know, how safe a medication is. Yeah. And if you were doing that with Vioxx, you would have walked away misinformed. And this brings us to one of the chief medical merchants of Vioxx Disinfo, a Harvard Medical School professor named Dr. Jerome Groopman.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
is fueled in part by the irresponsibility, greed and wastefulness of people who knew better, who are not ideologues, who are not misinformed, who are just willing to, well, the system can handle, you know, me fucking around in this way or like, why shouldn't I get paid? Right. Like someone will catch it. It won't be that bad.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Like and those little acts of malfeasance provide a lot of the fuel, like the distrust, the hatred of, for elites and whatnot. You know, when I say elites, I mean like in the medical sense, right? You've got doctors and people at the FDA who are like in the tank for these sketchy drugs that get people killed. And that means that when we have a fucking pandemic, less people trust them, right?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Like Vioxx is not 0% of why so many people were hesitant. to, to trust medical science during COVID. Right. And neither is the opiate epidemic. Right. And that, that doesn't mean that the people that RFK has a point, it means that like, if you let people get away with shit like this and we always do, uh, it'll just keep getting worse. Somebody who is, who is absolutely has no limits whatsoever.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
We'll start taking advantage of the situation.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yeah, there's going to be a lot of diarrhea. Look, folks, every year I go to Vegas, I find whichever buffet has the rancidest mussels, and I eat 14 to 15 plates. And that provides me with the internal strength and resilience I need to handle any kind of change to our health and safety food standards. I'm going to be fine in this sick new world, Kava.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
I'm going to be eating rancid mussels like a king.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
It's going to be the golden age of diarrhea. The brown age, really. Yeah, that's what we're going to call this. The gilded age and the brown age. Well, actually, we could call it the gilded age, which is an old timey term for like shit encrusted on your ass.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
We'll have to explain it, but it works. Yeah, you have to explain it. You have to explain it. But, you know, why does that make it bad? Anyway. No. Yeah. All right.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yeah. Thanks for coming on the show.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
He had embarked on a career as what you might call a professional semi-celebrity doctor, authoring articles for The New Yorker about health and the pharmaceutical industry. which he does today. Dr. Grootman is not someone who you would call a crank. He served in the advisory board of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Association.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
He was the Dina and Rafael Reconati Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He'd worked at a high level for the FDA and was a listed author on some 150 papers. One of his books had been adapted into a TV show, Gideon's Crossing, which I didn't expect to run into a Gideon's Crossing reference. Not familiar with that one. This episode. It wasn't great.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
As Tom Nessie writes in the book Poison Pills, even among top level physicians who are generally known as opinion or thought leaders, Groopman stands out. It was no small matter, therefore, when he wrote a lengthy article for The New Yorker in June of 1998 entitled Super Aspirin, New Arthritis Drug Celebra.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Celebra was the name for the drug later known as Celebrex and very close in composition to Vioxx. The article had been carefully authenticated by the famous fact-checking department of the New Yorker, which has an almost perfect record of verifying every piece of information the magazine publishes. Like Hamill, Groupman began his discussion of super-aspirin with a personal story.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
He himself had suffered debilitating pain brought on by arthritis developed while training for the Boston Marathon. Despite years of searching for relief, he had found no satisfactory remedy. Now a remarkable new class of drugs was offering hope to people like him and millions of others.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
And Groupman provided the anecdotal story of a firefighter from Nebraska whose arthritis had been alleviated miraculously thanks to super aspirin. A responsible scientist would note that the anecdotal evidence was more fit for a pharmaceutical commercial than an article in the New Yorker by a doctor,
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
But Dr. Groupman did speak with other medical experts, like Harvard's Dr. Lee Simon, who had a seat on the FDA's Arthritis Advisory Committee and had been part of an FDA panel to evaluate how to approve super aspirins. This probably shouldn't have been allowed to happen, because while he was sitting on that FDA panel deciding...
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
how to approve these medications, Dr. Simon was also a paid employee of Searle, conducting clinical trials for Celebrex. He did not disclose this conflict of interest, and Dr. Grootman's article did not make any note of this fact that might have compromised a source's objectivity. That's actually pretty shocking, I have to say.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
They didn't require that. It's unclear to me if Groupman knew that Dr. Simon was a paid employee of Searle. But I don't think Groupman is doing as much of his due diligence as he ought to. What Simon is doing is obviously the more shady of the thing. But it's one of those. This is what I say when I'm like. You really I just made that comment about like people being led by a figure skater.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
But like, yeah, again, if you're yeah, if you're doing your research, you could still get misled about this stuff.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yeah, and Simon's quotes in The New Yorker are, it's one of those things, he's really relying a lot on the fact that he's this fancy Harvard doctor because the shit he is actually saying in this article is shit no doctor should ever say. He described Celebrex as incredible and told Dr. Grootman that unique among all other medications ever created, it had no side effects whatsoever.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
He specifically stated there are no side effects, which those don't exist. You might not experience side effects, but someone will. There is no drug that has zero side effects of any kind. It's not a drug if it's that way.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Wow. Yeah. And this is this is, I think, where it gets into, like, the value of actually having a higher level of like.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Kind of medical like medical even training may not be totally the right word, but like word, but like in school so that because that's the sort of thing it is easy to like train people to have people in general layman be aware of like, oh, if I see that, if I see somebody claiming there are zero side effects for anyone of this medication, that's something you shouldn't. That's sketchy, you know?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
So as Nessie notes, this should have been a massive and immediate red flag, just as we noted. But yeah, Dr. Grootman's article cited other medical experts making similarly dubious claims. He quoted another Harvard professor, Dr. Clifford Saper, as saying super aspirin might hold the key to treating Alzheimer's.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Now, this is a case where there was not evidence that it had efficacy treating Alzheimer's. Dr. Saper had a theory that inflammation in the brain caused by injured neurons led to swelling that damaged brains, and that as a result, Vioxx might help, right? And that's a perfectly valid thing to want to test, right?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
But you shouldn't go out in an article and be like, this might cure Alzheimer's based on that, because that's just a theory, right?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yep. And yeah, so, quote, Dr. Saper said that Celebrex probably has to break open the vicious cycle of inflammation and Alzheimer's. Quite an astonishing statement in and of itself, and even more so since he did not cite results of a single human study.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yet the claim is part of an age old school of medical thinking that holds that logic and what makes sense or rational therapy should dictate the practice of medicine. But rational therapy needs to be buttressed by randomized, controlled human trials to determine what is and what is not effective treatment. That's from the book Poison Pills.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Now, theorizing like Saper did is, of course, part of the medical process, but maybe not one that should be presented to the public in a widely read article where people who've got loved ones suffering from Alzheimer's are going to be like, oh, my God, a miracle drug might be coming through. No, even if it works, it's fucking 15 years out or whatever. Right.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
you know groupman's article also wildly exaggerated the harms of existing inseds like motrin and advil failing to discuss newer versions that had been approved and came with fewer of the side effects that so-called super aspirin was meant to avoid in his article groupman cited the work of dr james freeze a professor at stanford at length freeze himself claims groupman distorted his research in order to make claims that freeze was not making about uh cox-2 inhibitors
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Now, Dr. Grootman was not being bribed by Merck, nor did he violate the law or medical ethics in any way that I'm aware of other than writing a bad article. He fucked up. And part of why he fucked up was, in my opinion, he was looking to merge developing medical science with magazine pop science in a way that's not wildly different from what Malcolm Gladwell is going to be doing a few years later.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
I think that's irresponsible, but not malicious or outright criminal. Right. And we are talking about some people who did outright criminal acts in this. I want to make it clear I am not.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
Yeah, it's the same thing where we have this problem in journalism, right?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
There's a great movie called Shattered Glass starring Hayden Christensen about a journalist for the New Republic who was like their star reporter, super young, and it turned out all of the stories, he was just making them up, like complete bullshit, like literally just inventing people and things in order to write entertaining stories.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
The New York Times a little bit later had another reporter get blown up, a star reporter for the same thing, just completely lying about shit, tricking fact checkers. And it's one of those things doesn't have to happen all that often for people to be like, well, then these outlets are no better than whatever, like weird fucking conspiracy rag info wars or whatever that I like. And you know what?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
That's kind of on the journalists for fucking up in that way. Right. That's that's on the newsroom. That's on the editors. That's on the people wanting these big stories.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam
that are exciting and that get eyeballs on right here you kind of have the merger of the two right the new yorker wants an article that gets a lot of people to read it because fuck this is a miracle medicine that might help me and my loved ones with things that are really like causing us problems uh and as the doctor you want to be the first you want to be the doctor who kind of establishes himself as like i'm kind of on the ground floor of this breaking for people and
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Robert Evans here, and for the holiday season, the end of the year, all that good stuff, we are continuing our normally scheduled Behind the Bastards episodes, don't you worry. But we also are running some special episodes, compilations from new shows we launched this year, and the very best episodes they did.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
We've stitched a couple together so you've got less ads, you can listen to something that maybe you haven't had a chance to check out yet. And today you're going to hear 16th Minute, as in 16th Minute of Fame, Jamie Loftus' excellent new podcast about the main characters of the internet and what happens to them after internet stardom. And here's her wonderful two-parter on Mormon influencers.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Robert Evans here, and I know everybody loves a great deal, but I also know most of us aren't willing to crawl through a bed of hot coals just to save a couple of bucks. Saving money has to be easy to be worth it. No hoops, no bull crap, no sending anything in through the mail. So when Mint Mobile said it was easy to get wireless for 15 bucks a month with the purchase of a three-month plan,
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I have trouble believing it, but it turns out it really is that easy to get wireless for 15 bucks a month. The longest part of the process is the time spent on hold waiting to break up with your old provider. To get started, go to mintmobile.com slash behind. There you'll see that right now, all three month plans are only 15 bucks a month, including the unlimited plan.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Find out how easy it is to switch to Mint Mobile and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
To get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash behind. That's mintmobile.com slash behind. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
See Mint Mobile for details.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys
Hey, everybody. Robert here. Because it's the holidays, we will be continuing our normally scheduled Behind the Bastards episodes. But every week, we're also doing a compilation of one of the other new shows on our network. Some aren't so new, but this one is. It's called Weird Little Guys. It launched this year with one of my friends and favorite researchers, the great Molly Conger.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys
And you're going to listen to a two-part episode, which we've cut together for you with a lot less ads than normal, about a guy named Frank Sweeney. So please enjoy and happy holidays. Robert Evans here, and I know everybody loves a great deal, but I also know most of us aren't willing to crawl through a bed of hot coals just to save a couple of bucks. Saving money has to be easy to be worth it.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys
No hoops, no bull crap, no sending anything in through the mail. So when Mint Mobile said it was easy to get wireless for 15 bucks a month with the purchase of a three month plan, I had trouble believing it, but it turns out it really is that easy to get wireless for 15 bucks a month. The longest part of the process is the time spent on hold waiting to break up with your old provider.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys
To get started, go to mintmobile.com slash behind. There you'll see that right now, all three month plans are only 15 bucks a month, including the unlimited plan. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys
Find out how easy it is to switch to Mint Mobile and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month. To get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash behind. That's mintmobile.com slash behind. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys
Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
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Right. People are just like, let's not give this guy the real ones.
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No. Oh, man. And of all the SEAL teams to get killed, too, that's the one that would be the biggest news day. Do you know who would never kill SEAL Team 6, Robert? I'm never going to say never about killing SEAL Team 6.
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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.
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Okay. Cool. Sure. I do feel like you're underestimating the expense of office space and overestimating the availability of it, but sure, why not?
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But I also I also think you are really, really underappreciating docents. It is not easy to get a docent up to speed. Like, for example, it's a much harder job than you currently have.
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Now, you say that, Garrison, I absolutely would put a seven year old in charge of the FBI. You know why? That's a blockbuster movie. Now, to be fair, that's a 1997 blockbuster, but man, that could- Yeah, no, it's like 30 years ago. Can you imagine a young Mara Wilson running the FBI? Fucking- Kid FBI, yeah. Oh, perfect.
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They also put Will Wheaton in charge of the CIA. Yes! Damn. All right, you know what, Garrison? This podcast is done. You and I are writing a screenplay tonight. With the power of AI, we can just generate this whole movie instantly. Perfect. With a truly ghoulish guest appearance by Robin Williams. Just the worst taste imaginable.
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Yeah. Great. Well, it seems like it's going to end well for everybody. I don't know. What do you think? Do you think he's going to get confirmed? Because he's one I'm seeing people are focusing now that Gates is out. People are focusing way more on Hegseth, which is probably the priority because, my God, that man should not be leading the Department of Defense anymore.
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Because he's going to start a war, yeah. He's going to drunkenly and accidentally start a war. I'm not even worried about him launching a conflict with China, right? We're going to wind up fighting an insurgency against the Portuguese because he gets fucking hammered and mixes up a couple letters. I mean, I'm also really concerned about Tulsi Gabbard.
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Gabbard is top of my list because she has just never met a dictator she doesn't like. And yeah, that's a scary person having that job.
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She's evil, but smart and incredibly power hungry. That's all that matters to her is getting into power. And she has things that she believes and what we know of the things that she believes is chilling. Like, yeah, but that's, we don't, we're talking about someone besides Tulsi today.
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See, again, I'm sympathetic. Everything I do is for content, Garrison. That's just the way the world works now. The content must flow.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
Behind the Bastards
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It's a performance enhancer. You know, if we could convince, well, let's see, if we could convince Joe Rogan COVID's a performance enhancer, I don't think we could get Joe Rogan's fans to spread any more disease than they already do. Than they already do, yeah.
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Now, we should have called the COVID vaccines no COVID-em. It's a good name. That was just leaving money on the table. Or Novid. Novid's good. Novid would have been a great name. Novid's good.
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It's, it's, I mean, it probably will wind up being much more dangerous, but there is a version of this where the FBI just pivots to selling supplements. All right. Like where you, where you get, where you get your estrogen and testosterone from the FBI. Ooh. Look, as long as it's marketed as like a performance enhancer.
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Yeah, they're going to start. Yeah, with them. I mean, it looks like just based on his enemy list, they're going to start with
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biden administration officials and people in the government but like it won't end there it's going to depend on what happens like it'll be a reactive violent organization which to a degree it always has been but there's always been like more of a sense of like predictability that will not be present
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The one thing we all used to be able to agree on is that we don't like kings here.
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R-U-S-S-I-O-N-I-A-N-S. This is the kind of thing the FBI should be cracking down on. Yeah. So that's all I'll say about that.
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Well, no, because, OK, you know what? I don't think it is. But it came from the opposite side. You remember when the fucking Krasenstein brothers put out that children's book about Robert Mueller? No. No. Yeah. No, you're right. Yeah.
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With Weave Bannon because his hair was a weasel, I think. Yeah. This was another lie. This was another lie from Cash. The Krassensteins beat you to this. This is truly the tier of man we're operating with. I'm going to start pulling every connection I have to somebody in Congress so that when he's being confirmed, I can get up and hit him on this.
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You claim to have written the first children's book that I bring in the Krassenstein brothers? No. Oh, they're going to sell MTG on crypto.
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Dinesh, who has been forced by a court to announce in public that he did not uncover any scheme.
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That's a shame. And I'm just double checking something. Yes. And he stole the name of his song from a Metallica album. One of the better Metallica albums. This is the one that has one on it. Oh my God. You son of a bitch.
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Yeah. It'll be interesting to see the current FBI agents react to that. But I guess we'll see. We're all going to learn a lot about the FBI one way or the other.
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No, and I think that's one of the things I have no desire in focusing on, like what Trump is doing. That's like he's breaking the law. He's violating a norm. Like, I want to hear, you know, what are you going to do to stop it? Right. What is actually being done to try to resist this? Right.
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Like otherwise, it's at least when it comes to stuff from elected leaders, you know, I'm just not interested in like, oh, he broke another law. Yeah, that's what he does. What comes next?
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Ah, welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about the things that are happening all around us, including, shockingly, in the last week, something we did not expect two weeks ago, the fall of the Assad regime. Yeah.
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Which, our official stance as a network is that, fuck him, this is pretty good, but a lot of people feel differently, and to talk with me about that, another guy who's always angry about Syria, and also has been to Syria, James.
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And, you know, just as a note, I think a lot of the people podcasting about this right now are talking about a place they've never been, although James and I have not been to Idlib, so... No, it's true. We're going to be fairly focused on our experiences in the Kurdish regions, but at least we're not just bullshitting about a place that we've read about on the internet.
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Yeah, we... I briefly looked at regime-held Syria. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Over from Kamishlo, where is kind of the governance capital of Rojava, but is also a big chunk of it was held by the Assad regime. So you would just periodically see that fucker's face on the wall as you were crossing the street. Yeah.
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Yeah. Not advised by the old safety people, but... No. One of the sketchier cities I've been in. Yeah. Because of the presence of regime troops. Yes, yes. Everything else was lovely. Yeah.
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Assad, bad man. Stay away, bro. Stay away. Yeah. He's like, you're going to fucking die. Way to be a fucking Haval. Yeah, yeah.
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No, very few dudes in suits I want to see a statue of.
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Assad now seems to be. I think, look, I made the call About two days before the regime fell that I felt he was out of the country based on some reporting, including reporting from the Syrian regime that he'd gone to Iran first. I think he left days before it fell. I don't think he's, yeah, he's got enough instinct for self-preservation that I think he got the fuck out of there.
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Great place for him to be working. Yeah, wonderful. Cool stuff.
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long legacies of authoritarian socialist how do i say this like the authoritarian socialist media project and that kind of colliding with the iraq war anti-era anti-war movement yes you know yeah all the whole hands-off syria thing that groups like the psl the party for socialism and liberation were doing when the rebels started this offensive being like we've got to stop and
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you know, these U.S.-backed rebels from taking, you know, Syria for the empire. And it's like, man, the fuck, it's not the U.S. that was primarily backing the rebels that did most of the fighting. Like, these guys are Turkish-backed, you know? Yeah, yeah. The extent that that even matters, right? Like, this is not, the CIA did not orchestrate all of this.
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The guys the CIA were really trying to back in Syria basically all died. Yeah, they've gone.
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Yes, some of them. But even that's not the bulk of the weaponry that those fuckers are using.
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We stumbled backwards accidentally into exactly once supporting the good guys in a conflict, specifically in the conflict with ISIS. Yeah, like a broken clock. And we immediately, ever since, we have been trying as hard as we can to pull back and, you know, betray them. Yes. To their deaths. Like, that is the story of U.S. support of Rojava.
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Now, part of what gives fuel for that is there are a number of photos of, like, U.S. troops really vibing with the YPG and YPJ. And they're vibing with them. And you and I could both say this, having been with those people, they're nice.
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Hard not to see a bunch of young women who left ISIS captivity and immediately said, give me a gun. I'm going to learn how to use it and be like, yeah, that's pretty cool. Good for you.
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Oh, well, speaking of, well, actually not speaking of the IDF, thankfully, but speaking about maybe the California State Highway Patrol, here's some ads.
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Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about Garrison Davis talking to me. Also, the world falling apart. How do you feel about that, Gare? How are you doing?
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Certainly the only multi-ethnic democracy in the Middle East that's functional. Yeah.
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No, exhaustion is a factor here. You really cannot emphasize enough how long HTS and the SNA have been at this and how fucking tired, particularly HTS, has to be. This has been... more than a decade of constant terror and violence. So I do think that that's going to be a factor in like what happens next. I should hope it will be.
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there's some people who need to be summarily executed you know yeah if you're gonna shoot someone fuck it yeah you're looking at the photos of just like thousands of shoes and decomposed bodies dissolved with acid at sednaya prison yeah like you're liberating those places you catch anyone who was working there i'm not gonna say that that's a bad thing to do i might do the same thing in their situ in their circumstances
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Yes, yes. And they are going to be catching. There are a lot of mokbarat, you know, secret police guys who didn't get out, who were thrown on. We've got videos of them leaving the palace, throwing on civilian clothes. Yeah. And I'm not going to be shocked if a lot of the justice process of that is ugly.
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Now, I do suspect that Jolani is going to at least grab a chunk of those guys and do trials because he is really looking for state legitimacy, you know? And that's one way you get it. Yeah, that's his project now. But that's not going to be how all these guys go down. No, some of these guys are going to die. Yeah, they're just going to get fucking got.
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Yeah, what do you believe, you know? If you're just torturing it to be like, well, no, you and I both read that there was a post earlier today with someone being like, these leftists, purity politics, you know, to be angry that Assad kept a lid on radical Islam and ISIS and just didn't do it super cleanly. And it's, man, he was fucking gassing children. Like, what do you, where are you here? Yeah.
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Yeah, yeah. Something could happen. We could have a Songham and Telerian kind of situation, right? Yeah. Who's the Armenian who shot a member of the Turkish government in Berlin.
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We could have something like that go down. God willing.
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Yeah, he's probably going to be going back and forth to Dubai. There's some Syrians who wound up in Dubai. Somebody might stab him. Yeah.
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We've already got our Scaramucci. I was going to make a Scaramucci joke, but your joke was much better.
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Yeah. We've never had a knife advert, have we? No, I don't know that we have, and I would sell the hell out of knives. Mm-hmm, yeah.
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Oh, yeah. There was literally at one point they had an Ottoman-era black powder cannon on the back of a flatbed that they were using to hit regime positions.
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fucking amazing stuff like the only the only i thought the top of like that sort of thing was when fucking insurgents in afghanistan would use 17th century jazails to shoot at u.s troops but the ottoman cannon is really a was that's a flex yeah yeah it was a huge flex they uh they also work you know they fired propane cylinders out of uh huge tubes these improvised mortars they call hell cannons like
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Uh, not thrilled. Kind of worried. Not thrilled. Matt Gates really seemed like the kind of guy you use to make your sketchy secret police. And Kash Patel is, I guess, your backup to that guy. Totally. Yeah.
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Yes, yes. I'd met a number of people who had, and some who had also had to flee, like from Aleppo and whatnot, because... because they had been on rebels fighting the Assad regime, and some had wound up in the SDF, some were just civilians living in the area.
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There was also a number of folks who commuted to and from regime-held territory, just because if you were someone that wasn't particularly wanted, you could do that. It was a very confusing situation for a lot of people.
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Yeah, I mean, and that's just the norm for dressing. If you're fighting in a war anywhere on the planet now, like whether you're the Russian army or some militia in Syria, it's, you know, plate carrier, usually like some sort of fast helmet. You've got, you know, a belt with sidearm mag pouches and then usually either an AKM or some sort of AR style weapon. Like everybody dresses that way.
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everybody looks very similar now because it's just the most kind of, I mean, number one, there's a lot of that gear lying around and it's cheap. And number two, like it works. It's a loadout that works. Yeah. It's very practical for what they're doing.
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Yes. Yes. It's also looks cool. It looks like being in a movie. And that is a, that matters a lot to the kind of young men who start fighting in wars.
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Yep. One of the ways I like to think about it that is crucial for people to understand is that Syria has largely been the laboratory in which the 21st century was cooked up. Like, all of our futures have to some extent been built in Syria, both like...
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this is where we get a lot of the fuel behind the right wing surge that has been occurring over the last few years started because of the refugee crisis, you know, but also a lot of the tactics and weapons shit that like Israel is doing right now in Gaza, like Syria was the lab to a significant extent for how authoritarian regimes would crack down.
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And it was also the impetus behind a lot of the most significant things that have been happening over the last decade and change. So yeah,
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Hey everyone, Robert Evans here, and this is It Could Happen Here. Obviously, one of the things that's been happening here, probably the biggest story of the last week or so at least, is the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by an alleged shooter named Luigi Mangione. Magione is, you know, an interesting character.
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People have had a lot to say about him, and so I went through his online footprint, everything I could find on his social media, and I wrote an article for my sub stack, Shatterzone, and I'm going to be reading that in a slightly amended form for you now as today's episode.
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I've spent much of the last 10 years reading manifestos and being a fly on the wall in different little online bolt holes where extremists plan and seek to incite mass shootings. When Luigi Mangione, the suspected shooter of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was arrested at a McDonald's, it didn't take long for digital sleuths to put together a comprehensive record of his online activity.
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I will tell you now that nothing he read or posted explains why he gunned down an insurance executive better than this single image in the background of his Twitter profile. And the image is, of course, of an X-ray showing four screws in someone's lower base spine, apparently due to a lumbar spinal fusion surgery.
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The day after I wrote this article, the New York Times published a piece after finding Luigi's Reddit. The piece by Mike Baker, Mike Isaac, and my old boss at Bellingcat, Eric Toller, confirms that he had a spinal fusion surgery, that he had dealt with back pain for years...
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which had been minor and then gotten much worse after a surfing injury, and had grown even worse after slipping on a piece of paper, caused persistent problems, including pain when he sat down, twitching leg muscles, and numbness in his groin and bladder, according to the New York Times.
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He had that spinal fusion surgery, which he had been deeply frightened of ahead of time, but which resolved those symptoms, and then he continued to have other symptoms, probably unrelated to the back pain,
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It's unclear if the back pain came back, but what is clear is that he wrote constantly online about pain and about his struggles with various other health issues, including a persistent brain fog that he seemed unable to get care for.
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His friend RJ, who lived with him at an intentional community for digital workers in Honolulu starting in 2022, confirms that Luigi suffered an injury shortly after taking a basic surfing class after moving there. This laid him up in bed for about a week, unable to move. His friends had to seek a special bed to help him with the pain.
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In general, we have ample confirmation that he was someone who dealt with a series of escalating health issues that changed him from an extremely active, physically fit young man into somebody who felt like they were no longer able to do or enjoy the things they had previously been able to do and enjoy. Now, this is most of what we know about the health history of Luigi Mangione.
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as of December 10th now, when I record this, 2024. As I write this, a purported manifesto is making the rounds online, which discusses health issues his mother faced. It's still unclear if that manifesto is real. Ken Klippenstein has finally gotten access to what he claims is... The draft of the manifesto that the shooter had on him when he was arrested by the police.
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I don't know if that's a manifesto or something he wrote while nervous because he largely addresses the cops in it and tells them, you know, what to expect when searching him. But anyway, Again, at the moment, this purported manifesto that was also posted on Substack, very unclear as to whether or not that's real. So for this today, we're going to stick with what we can verify.
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And what we can verify is that Luigi Mangione suffered from chronic back pain. He had five different books in his Goodreads that he read about dealing with back pain and healing from back pain, as well as other chronic health issues. If he is the shooter, then we can confirm he also chose to act out by targeting an insurance CEO.
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The New York Times has stated that he was arrested with a 262 word manifesto, which has since been leaked. And in that manifesto, he describes the executives who run insurance companies as parasites who, quote, continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. In addition to all this, we know that Luigi came from a wealthy family.
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Great. Okay. I'm sure he was good at that job. I'm sure he doesn't have any really embarrassing failures during that period of time.
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His grandfather made millions running a series of country clubs, nursing homes, and office buildings and hospitals. One of his cousins is a Republican state legislator. It is unclear if Luigi had any access to the family money, but he was clearly financially comfortable enough to move to Hawaii and pay to join an intentional community.
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He had engineering degrees and a promising early employment history. This is a man who had options. He could have been almost anything he wanted to be. And the thing that he ultimately chose to do with his life after suffering a debilitating series of health issues was to shoot the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Luigi Mangione was radicalized by pain
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It's a well-known fact that most terrorists tend to be radicalized in communities. Much of my career was spent watching 8chan turn from an image board dedicated into Gamergate into a machine for generating white nationalist mass shooters. These people often appeared as lone wolves to the untrained eye, but they were radicalized intentionally in and by a community.
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Much will be made in the coming days and months about Luigi's online footprint. I will go into some detail about where he spent his time and how we should characterize it, but I want to be clear at the outset that his intellectual diet does not seem to be what made him choose to take action, although it may have influenced the specific kind of action he took.
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Luigi followed a lot of accounts on Twitter that are wildly popular with young men like Joe Rogan. He listened to Jordan Peterson and Tucker Carlson and agreed with them on certain things, but he also had cogent criticisms of their arguments and presentation. Here's what he said about Jordan Peterson on May 14th.
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This is why Jordan Peterson always bothers me, overcomplicates everything he says aloud, wasting everyone's mental bandwidth and having to decipher it. The best teachers are the best communicators. Clear, succinct, simple language, which does kind of gel with the fact that he wrote three words on the bullets he used to shoot that CEO.
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Luigi also expressed frustration with wokeness and expressed opinions common on the libertarian tech-influenced right, like a belief in the social benefits of Christianity without expressing popular religious beliefs himself. I found one post where he talks about how nature abhors a vacuum and shares an article about how Christianity's decline has unleashed terrible new gods.
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Some of his posts took the form of memes typical to online discourse of this type. But I've also read an essay that he wrote when he was 15 years old discussing how Christianity persevered over paganism in ancient Rome. And that essay exhibits a longstanding interest in this topic and a capacity to treat it with nuance. His paper is very well written, particularly for a 15-year-old.
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And while his conclusions are highly arguable, it's not the work of someone hopelessly brainwashed by culture war bullshit. Luigi liked to think and read and come to his own conclusions. He was interested in AI, in cryptocurrency, in life extension, and in a constellation of tech bro-adjacent attitudes and philosophies often described as the Gray Tribe.
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I found one post where he talks about a senior speech he gave on the future. Quote, topics ranging from conscious artificial intelligence to human immortality. The term Gray Tribe was coined by an influential rationalist, blogger, and psychiatrist named Scott Alexander Siskind.
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He used it to refer to an intersection of nerd culture with Silicon Valley-influenced ideology descending from the online rationalist movement. This community existed outside of traditional right-left ideology. Now, I've not found any evidence that Luigi was a specific fan of Scott, but he expressed appreciation for several figures associated with this big tent movement, including Peter Thiel.
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If we described Scott as representing the more liberal flank of the Gray Tribe, Luigi seemed to be drawn to folks closer to the right-wing side of things. The worst person to use this terminology would probably be Teal associate Balaji Srinivasan, who has used Gray Tribe framework to describe his ideal big tech takeover of San Francisco and purging of progressives.
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However, I must stress that Luigi Mangione never expressed any support for this end of the ideology that I can find. He was a young man of libertarian inclinations who worked in big tech and had ties to San Francisco, but he was also clearly someone still making his mind up about the world.
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As information about him has come out, I have seen people on the left who initially saw his acts as heroic lament that he was a bigoted tech bro. Scott Alexander has been credibly described as a eugenics supporter, as have many other people adjacent to the strains of rationalism and big tech ideology in which Mangione dabbled.
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Luigi's Twitter account does indeed include weird posts from his time in Japan where he theorizes on how to solve falling birth rates by banning pocket pussies and video game cafes. At other points, he complains about Japanese citizens acting like quote-unquote NPCs.
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But race science and eugenics don't seem to have been a focus for him, and I would caution anyone against being overly reductive about a 26-year-old's beliefs based purely on a handful of posts that bear no relation to his actions in the world. The evidence that we have of his online footprint suggests someone who was not unmoved by certain arguments rooted in social justice.
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He expressed admiration for a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five about criminalization of poverty in the United States. America is the wealthiest nation in the world, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Ken Hubbard, "...it ain't no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be."
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It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of the poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor, but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more esteemable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor.
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Now, Luigi is certainly not the idealized leftist icon some had hoped, but he doesn't easily fit into any other box we've got. His interest in gray tribe-adjacent thinkers and self-help books written by productivity hackers like Tim Ferriss is incredibly common among young men. Much has been made of the four-star review he gave Industrial Society and Its Future, the manifesto of Ted Kaczynski.
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But as with the rest of his media diet, he did not view Ted through the simple lens of hero worship. Here's what he wrote, quote, He was a violent individual, rightfully imprisoned, who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy Luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.
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Now, we know those words, his condemnation of Kaczynski maiming innocent people, are not just words because we have seen the attack he allegedly chose to carry out. Not a series of bombings that killed and maimed innocent people with no real power in our society, but a surgical strike against a man at the very top of the system he hated and one that caused no collateral damage.
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He was capable of appreciating some of Kaczynski's conclusions, but ultimately the quote he chose to highlight in his review came not from the manifesto, but from a Reddit post made by a guy with the username BossPotatoNess, who otherwise mostly commented on the Grateful Dead.
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This post praises Kaczynski for having the balls to realize that peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere and complains economic protest isn't possible in the current system. As a result, violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defense. Quote, these companies don't care about you or your kids or your grandkids.
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They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck. So why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive? This is not the kind of radicalization pathway our media is good at discussing or analyzing. The things Luigi read and the people he interacted with online absolutely influenced what he did and how.
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But boss potato-ness is not some Nazi on 8chan trying to provoke a shooting spree for the lulz. He's a random dude angry about the things 70% or more of the country is angry about, and he's expressing a lack of faith in a peaceful way forward.
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If you read this post in its entirety, as Luigi did, you can't miss the pain there, anxiety and horror at the inevitability of climate change and the looming knowledge that everything good and green on this earth is being fed into the bloody maw of an industry concerned only with maximizing profit. In more ways than one, Luigi Mangione was radicalized by pain.
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I know many people who suffer with chronic pain and ongoing medical issues. I will tell you that it is not uncommon in dark moments after fruitless hours-long calls about dropped medications or receiving surprise bills for them to joke about what they'd like to do to the executives who run these companies. These are jokes made in moments of despair and pain.
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No one I know would ever act on them because they all have lives, people to care for and to whom they are responsible. They would never really do anything because the consequences to their own loved ones would be so severe. In the months before the shooting, Luigi had cut off all contact with his family. He admitted this in court.
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His parents eventually filed a missing persons report in November of this year, and we have evidence that friends tried to contact him on his family's behalf via social media. As was first noted by a Twitter account, Luigi Mangione expressed interest in the works of Paul Scalise, a tech lawyer, writer, and prominent poster who writes about the Lindy effect, a concept that boils down to this.
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The only effective judge of things is time. Scalise is popular among the set of people Mangione found himself drawn towards and writes about the wisdom of ideas from antiquity. It's not hard to grasp what a man with an academic interest in ancient Rome might see in him. On December 4th, 2024, Paul made this post.
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Look, if you don't have any kids and you're one of these guys just floating around the big cities, you got your education, but you never really used it to make money. You got a dead end back office job and a future of just working somewhere until you're 75 and then dying. Go ahead and do something.
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It's been suggested that this may have influenced Luigi, and I think the timeline makes it clear that cannot be the case. Luigi cut off contact with his family and most of his friends months before this. The evidence suggests that he had planned this attack for quite some time. He arrived in New York City on November 24th on a bus bound from Atlanta, where he did not reside.
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So I don't think this post represents a piece of his radicalization journey, nor was Scalise advocating for people to kill CEOs. But the situation and mindset Scalise described does speak to a lot of young men like Luigi, young and educated, but without intense responsibilities or much hope for the future.
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This subset of society has always overproduced terrorists, revolutionaries, and of course, mass shooters. The United States has a mass shooter culture. Over the last several decades since Columbine, we have grown used to the idea that people who are angry and no longer care if they live or die will sometimes choose to go down killing strangers.
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In most cases, these shootings are totally random, the victims chosen with no concern beyond maximum body count and maximum attention. More recently, especially since 2019, mass shootings have become increasingly politicized. Different extremists, mostly right-wing, have used them to put theory into praxis and earn free PR for their causes.
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I hate that he's got a My Cousin Vinny in his record because that movie is great and it gets me on his side in a way I definitely shouldn't be. Did he come in next wearing like a funeral director's tuxedo? Or a fucking band leader's tuxedo? Whatever. I don't know how to describe the tuxedo Vinny wears in the scene after that. Anyway.
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Most people abhor these actions, but we have grown used to the idea that other people will use such acts as a way to spread messages that might otherwise get ignored. It is not coincidental that the white genocide conspiracy theories from Brenton Terrence's Christchurch Manifesto are now mainstream talking points in conservative politics. Luigi Mangione grew up with all of this.
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He would have come to the same conclusions about the role shootings play in our society as any other reasonably aware person. What he did was, of course, not a mass shooting. But the assassination, his actions afterwards, and his possession of a manifesto were all clearly plotted out by someone who knew the social script for how this kind of thing goes in the USA.
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In the wake of this shooting, every media organization commenting on it has had to grapple with the waves of public enthusiasm for Luigi's actions. Right-wing media figures condemning the left for celebrating this assassination have been criticized by their own readers and listeners. Insurance companies have pulled down lists of their executives from the internet.
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This is because they, too, understand the shooter culture of the United States. Like everyone else, they know that any mass shooting that meets with massive media coverage and interest will spawn copycats. The assassination Luigi is believed to have carried out was new and exciting. It demanded the public's attention in a way that most mass shootings don't.
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At almost the same time the UnitedHealthcare CEO was gunned down, a gunman walked into a religious school near Oroville, California and shot two young children before killing himself. This shooting drew almost no national attention. It was entirely drowned out by the execution of an insurance industry CEO.
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The armed and disaffected young men who are most drawn to this sort of thing will not miss this fact. I believe Luigi Mangione was radicalized by pain. The shooters who follow him will all have their own reasons for what they do, for their own journeys to that violent end. But ultimately, they'll do what they do because Luigi proved it's what gets attention. For now.
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And to be clear, Kash Patel was not dating Marissa Tomei. He could never pull Marissa Tomei. He could never pull. I mean, honestly, Joe Pesci. Who can? Who can? That's...
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Amazing stuff. Let him cook. Crazy stuff. Look, here's the thing, Garrison. If it had gone the worst possible way it could have gone, we'd have been saved at least four interminable books and at least three podcasts.
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People have made this point, but it's guys like this that have convinced me that there's no, at least no like perfectly known to intelligent smoking gun about the Kennedy assassination. That shit would have leaked so quickly. No. If not before Trump was in office, then certainly by the time he was.
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Or at least if there is, it's the kind of thing. There may be a smoking gun that someone who is deeply knowledgeable at the time period would be like, oh, the fact that this guy was here at this time really means that this other thing happened. But Kash Patel doesn't know shit.