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Welcome to Hot and Bothered. I'm your host, Melissa Ford.

This is the space where we get real about sexual health, wellness, relationships, and all the life-affirming conversations that remind us what it

means to live fully and authentically.

Nothing is off limits.

Everything is on the table.

So let's dive in.

Thank you. Today on Hot and Bothered, I'm joined by a man who's never been afraid to disrupt the conversation, Charlemagne the God. You know him as one-third of the Breakfast Club, one of the most influential radio shows in the world.

But that's just the beginning of his impact.

Charlemagne has evolved from polarizing provocateur to a powerful voice in culture and politics,

using his platform to amplify conversations around mental health, accountability, and black empowerment.

He's also a savvy businessman with a growing media empire under his Black Effect podcast network,

amplifying diverse voices and reshaping what ownership looks like in entertainment.

And if that weren't enough, he's a New York Times best-selling author with books like Black Privilege.

Opportunity comes to those who created, Shook One, anxiety-playing tricks on me, and his most recent get honest or die lying they blend

brutal honesty with hard-won wisdom in this conversation we're gonna go

beyond the headlines and hot takes we talk about growth grace and the

evolution of a man who's built his brand on truth-telling even when that

truth gets uncomfortable from political commentary to personal introspection, Charlemagne the God proves that reinvention isn't about changing who you are, it's about owning every version of yourself. The people that were coming to me saying, yo, I deal with anxiety, I deal with bouts and depression. You know, my father, and he you know, I was going to therapy. You know, I've been on 10 to 12 different medications for my mental health, and I tried to commit suicide. Every single thing comes to the surface, you start questioning all types of stuff, but then you start getting answers, like in the moment. I thought that I was going to go to a shaman's village in Peru in 2018. Yeah, I'm going to go to like Ayahuasca. And I just, I look back at how casually I was talking about going to do this very major thing and how much respect I have for it now. Even now, that seems strange to me when people are like, yo, I'm not going to talk to none of my family members because they voted for Trump. And we literally had to wear these glasses that say, this person's a

Republican, this person is a Democrat, so I'm not going to deal with them because of it. We probably

wouldn't even be able to function as a society. Within the last, I would say, five years, you really leaned into, for lack of a better phrase,

...