About… Power, Punishment & The Cost of Cruelty

Tell Me More with Nicole Walters

Dear Media

Society & Culture, Business

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2026

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

" The lie is that cruelty equals strength... that harshness is required to be effective... and that suffering is an effective deterrent to immigrants."

In this chat We are addressing the killing of Alex Pretti, the unrest unfolding in Minnesota, and what this moment reveals about fear, power, and humanity in America today.

This chat isn't about outrage for outrage's sake. It's about the moral cost of violence, the normalization of cruelty, and the responsibility we share when grief is replaced by narratives and slogans.

Friend, now is the time to chat candidly about immigration enforcement, due process, protest, and the danger of turning human lives into symbols instead of honoring their dignity. I'm asking us to slow down, sit with the weight of what’s happening, and examine how empathy, justice, and moral responsibility must remain central to who we are, even in times of fear and division.

We’re chatting about:

The death of Alex Pretti and why grief must come before politics
What the Minnesota protests reveal about fear, power, and unrest
Immigration enforcement versus human dignity and due process
How cruelty and intimidation are being normalized in America
Why empathy and moral responsibility still matter in hard times

This is not light listening. It’s an honest chat about loss, accountability, and the kind of country we are becoming. Thank you for being here.

Come chat with me over on Threads where you always get spicy Nicole at

https://threads.net/nicolewalters and WATCH the show on YT at http://nicolewalters.com/youtube

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
0:07.2	Welcome to the Tell Me More podcast with Nicole Walters, the only podcast where I'm not seeking to make you think more like me, but to help you keep thinking for yourself.
0:27.5	Okay. for yourself. Hey everyone.
0:28.6	So welcome to tell me more.
0:31.3	And if this is your first time listening, I'm Nicole Walters.
0:34.3	I am walking along with you, right? It's been quite the weekend, if you
0:40.8	are listening to this, after some of the more tumultuous things have happened in Minnesota and
0:46.0	America. And it's something I think globally we've all kind of collectively experienced as people
0:50.8	abroad are watching and as people states that are watching. And I just want to kind of
0:56.0	open up first because I know several of you may be tapped out. Like you're just all the way
1:01.1	tapped out. It doesn't matter where you stand politically. You're like, I don't want to hear
1:04.3	nothing about it, right? Or you're looking for an escape. And I hear that. I understand it. You
1:09.5	deserve rest if it's required.
1:11.9	I want you to know a couple of things. The first one is you can choose to listen to this one with
1:16.3	your kids around. I do think it's probably one for your older kiddos. You know how I play it.
1:20.6	I always try to keep it honest and clean and respectful. I want to acknowledge the nuance, right?
1:26.5	Nuance in that all of us have different lived experiences.
1:30.3	That's so much of our podcast chat here.
1:33.6	But I want to do this kind of in a two-parter, right?
1:36.5	So today I want us to just take a moment and look at where we are.
1:42.1	Look at how we got here, and just examine what has happened and where we are in the truth of it, right?
1:50.8	But then what I want to do after this when we've been able to take a breather and reflect is I want to talk about what we can do.
	...

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