HATE TO BREAK IT TO YA with Jamie Kennedy

This week I sat down with Joseph Whipp, who played Sheriff Burke in the original Scream and Sergeant Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street, and I realized pretty quickly how much of his story I had never heard.

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This week I’m going down the AI rabbit hole because something about this story is getting seriously weird. An AI researcher leaves Anthropic warning about how dangerous this technology could become, we're hearing claims about rogue bots escaping their sandbox, hacking systems and even leaving self-replicating code around the internet — and I’m trying to figure out how much of this is real and how much could be a work.

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This week on Hate To Break It To Ya I sat down with Mercedes “MJ” Javid, and we had a lot to catch up on. We get into the world of Jeff Lewis and Chump Land, what happens when people fall out of a friend group, loyalty, getting “de-chumped,” and why some people walk away gracefully while others burn everything down on the way out.

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This week on Hate To Break It To Ya I sat down with Flash Shelton — better known as The Squatter Hunter — to get inside one of the craziest loopholes in the housing system.

Flash breaks down how squatters and “deceptive tenants” use fake leases, tenant protections and civil law to stay in properties they don’t own — sometimes leaving homeowners stuck fighting for months just to get their own house back. We get into the worst states for it, why police often can’t simply remove someone, some of Flash’s wildest removal tactics, and the cases that pushed him into becoming The Squatter Hunter in the first place.

I also tell Flash about my own experience squatting in Los Feliz when I was a broke actor in the ’90s — and what I discovered after buying a house that had apparently been functioning as a full-blown commune.

Flash also talks about his A&E series Squatters, how his work went viral, and his push to change squatter laws around the country.

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About Flash Shelton:

Flash Shelton is the founder of Squatter Hunters LLC and star and executive producer of A&E’s Squatters. After dealing with squatters in his own family’s property, he began helping homeowners reclaim their homes and has since become one of the most recognizable voices pushing for squatter-law reform.

Follow Flash SheltonInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/flashsheltonX: https://x.com/flash_sheltonYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FlashSheltonTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@flashsheltonWebsite: https://squatterhunters.com

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Timestamps:

00:00 – How I Met The Squatter Hunter04:50 – How Flash Became The Squatter Hunter19:43 – The Worst States for Squatters28:26 – $130K and a Year to Get Their House Back31:19 – Who Are These Squatters?44:01 – My Own Squatting Story51:41 – The Commune I Found in My House1:00:27 – Flash’s Wildest Squatter Removal Tactics1:05:37 – The Hollywood Hills Squatter Case1:21:00 – Changing Squatter Laws Across America1:25:42 – How to Protect Your Property

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Support the Pod:

💥 Patreon: patreon.com/thejamiekennedy

🎟️ Tour Dates: jamiekennedy.com

👕 Merch: jamiekennedy.com/merch

📺 Subscribe: youtube.com/@jamiekennedycomedy

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Flash Shelton, Squatter Hunter, Hate To Break It To Ya, Jamie Kennedy podcast, squatters A&E show, deceptive tenants, squatter laws United States, homeowner rights, how to remove squatters, squatter hunter 2026, tenant rights loopholes, Flash Shelton interview

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This week I’m back with another Worlds on Fire, and this one starts with restaurant stupidity and somehow ends with Coca-Cola, predictive programming, Apple, the end times and a conversation with Hayden Panettiere that I haven’t talked about before.

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This week on Hate To Break It To Ya I sat down with Dave Sheridan — the man behind Officer Doofy and the actual Ghostface killer in the original Scary Movie — and I have to say, this is one of those conversations where I barely had to do anything. Dave just goes. He's one of the few people who genuinely makes me laugh without trying, and this episode is proof of that.

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In this solo episode of Hate To Break It To Ya, I get into everything that went down at the Scream 30th Anniversary panel at Midsummer Night Scream in Long Beach — one of the most elaborately produced con panels I've ever been part of, with a full union crew, stage set, music cues, and close to 2,000 people in the room. It was incredible. But something happened that I couldn't let slide, and I want to break it down honestly and respectfully for anyone who's ever been to a con, worked a con, or wondered what it's actually like on our side of the table.

The big story making the rounds involves a fan who aired a grievance at Matthew — publicly, on stage — over an interaction from a few years back. I wasn't there for the original exchange, but I heard the whole thing afterward, and I want to give you the full picture: the fan's theory (which was actually kind of fascinating, connecting Mad Love to Scream through character motivation), what I think really happened in that signing line, and why I pulled the guy aside, talked it out, and got him to a better place. This is a conversation about parasocial relationships, expectations, and what it means to give someone power over your emotional state. I also had my own version of this play out — a woman reached over from the bathroom line and tried to get a free ChapStick signing, I said there's a process, and somehow that made me a D-bag on the internet. I'm going to explain exactly why that's wrong, and I'm going to do it without apology.

I also get into the Famke Janssen yardstick story that's been circulating — a fan paid $80, got told to stay three feet back, and posted about it. I give both sides. And then there's the Nicolas Cage first-con story, which I heard through the circuit and which is genuinely one of the most human things I've come across in a long time. I close out with a story about a fan named Jess the Mess — who did everything right, earned real access, and ended up getting me Dunkin' Donuts coffee the morning after the con in exchange for a picture she accidentally left at my table. That's the kind of experience this can be when both sides show up right.

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Timestamps:

00:00:00 – Intro: Midsummer Night Scream & the Scream 30th Anniversary Panel

00:02:37 – Matthew's Incident: The Fan Who Aired a Grievance on Stage

00:05:22 – Breaking Down the Mad Love / Scream Fan Theory

00:08:06 – Defending Matthew: What It's Actually Like to Meet 5,000 People in a Weekend

00:11:46 – Jamie Talks the Fan Down & What Good Communication Looks Like

00:16:20 – ChapStick Gate: Why I'm Apparently a D-Bag

00:19:26 – Con Economics 101: How the Table System Actually Works

00:27:31 – Both Sides: Celebrities Aren't Always Right Either

00:34:53 – The Famke Janssen Yardstick Story

00:38:49 – Nicolas Cage's First Con & the Little Girl Who Changed Everything

00:41:51 – Jess the Mess: A Fan Who Got It Right

00:45:47 – Outro: Like, Subscribe & Keep the Pod Alive

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Support the Pod:

💥 Patreon: patreon.com/thejamiekennedy

🎟️ Tour Dates: jamiekennedy.com

👕 Merch: jamiekennedy.com/merch

📺 Subscribe: youtube.com/@jamiekennedycomedy

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Jamie Kennedy podcast, Hate To Break It To Ya, Scream 30th anniversary, con circuit drama, fan entitlement, parasocial relationships, comic con etiquette, Midsummer Night Scream, Nicolas Cage first convention, Famke Janssen yardstick, celebrity autograph signing, Hollywood convention culture 2026

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This week on Hate To Break It To Ya I sat down with Drea de Matteo — Emmy-winning actress, Queens native, Sopranos icon, and one of the most unexpectedly outspoken voices to come out of the COVID era — and the conversation went everywhere. Drea didn't come in with talking points. She came in with a story, and it's a wild one: a foreclosure notice, a flooded house, a lien she needed to pay off fast, and a decision that made headlines around the world.

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This week on Hate To Break It To Ya, I dive into the release of Anthony Fauci's personal diary and why I think it's one of the most overlooked stories of the year. I walk through the entries that caught my attention, the Congressional testimony that followed, the debate surrounding his pardon, and why so many people still have no interest in revisiting what happened during the pandemic.

From there I revisit some of the moments that changed the way I looked at everything—from the Pineapple Hill protests to restaurants enforcing different rules for different people—and why I think those years permanently reshaped public trust.

Then things take an unexpected turn. We get into a California robotics company unveiling a goat-headed chainsaw centaur, Meta's newest smart glasses campaign that looks like it came straight out of They Live, and why I think we're moving into a future that deserves a lot more skepticism than it's getting.

Whether you agree with me or not, this episode is really about one question: what happens when people stop questioning the people they're told to trust?

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Timestamps:

00:00:00 – Intro: Best Golf Round of My Life00:01:19 – The Pandemic Was a Three-and-a-Half-Year War00:03:28 – Two Types of People: Telephone vs. Banana00:06:06 – The Cult of Closed-Mindedness00:07:06 – Fauci Takes the Fifth — 111 Times00:20:00 – Reading Fauci's Diary00:25:03 – Fame, Money, and Public Perception00:27:44 – Looking Back at Pandemic Policies00:28:52 – Gain of Function and the Lab Leak Debate00:35:52 – RFK Jr. and Questioning the Experts00:44:46 – Why I Almost Quit: My SNL Audition Story00:51:09 – The Fauci Diary Finally Goes Public00:55:15 – The Goat-Head Chainsaw Robot00:58:45 – Meta Glasses, They Live, and the Future01:01:04 – Patreon, Tour Dates & Final Thoughts

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Support the Pod:

💥 Patreon: patreon.com/thejamiekennedy

🎟️ Tour Dates: jamiekennedy.com

👕 Merch: jamiekennedy.com/merch

📺 Subscribe: youtube.com/@jamiekennedycomedy

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