Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay - DEI Did It, Plus ‘How to Sell Out’ and the Future of AI

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Van and Rachel discuss the midair collision that killed 67 people (1:00) before reacting to Donald Trump pointing the finger at DEI initiatives (10:05). Plus, DJ Akademiks gets banned from Twitch after inappropriate comments toward a minor (20:51), and Scott Storch’s ex gets accused of racism after saying racist things (32:49). Then writer and podcaster Chad Sanders joins to talk authenticity and his new book, ‘How to Sell Out’ (38:14), before journalist Nathan Bomey from Axios explains DeepSeek and the future of AI (1:06:02). Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay Guests: Chad Sanders and Nathan Bomey Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, yo, yo, thought warriors. What is up? Howlern is on. It is I, Van Lathan, Jr. And it's me, Rachel and Lindsay. Got two guests for you today. We got Chad Sanders, who, Chad Sanders has got a great new book coming out.

Yeah. Old friend. Read the book. I'm excited about this. And we have Nate Boney from Asseos, who's going to come on and talk to us a little bit about deep seek. Did I give us a little music? Deep Seek.

I want to drop anytime we talk about AI. AI. Take my voice, because this is an AI, you know, because that's what it is. It's like ominous. It's the face that comes with me. AI. I made up a new song, but I'm not going to, I'm a day. We don't have time.

Okay. We don't have time. Can't wait to hear it on Monday. Wait, what's today? Today is Friday. Okay. Monday, I can't wait to hear it on Wednesday. Terrible news.

Terrible news to start the podcast. Got to get right into it. Yeah. There was a passenger plane collision in Washington. Washington, D.C. I'm going to jump right into this, Donnie, if you don't mind. An American Airlines flight coming into Reagan National Airport collided with a Black Hawk Army helicopter sending both into the Potomac River and leaving no survivors.

First responders have recovered 27 bodies from the plane and one from the helicopter. There were 64 people on board the plane and three soldiers aboard the Army helicopter. This is from American Airlines CEO Robert Isom. At this time, we don't know. why the military aircraft came into the path of the PSA aircraft. Black Hawk helicopter was on an annual proficiency flight training. Excuse me. Sec Dev Pete Hexeth said.

Before we get into all of the fallout from this, this is terrible. A terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible accident that has happened. The airspace over D.C. is obviously some of the the most monitored airspace in the entire world, probably the most regulated airspace in the entire world. So you wonder how something like this has happened? I don't want to speculate on anything unlike other people in this country, which we'll get to with some sound. But immediately, your reaction is, it's a tragedy. You get comfortable. They

talk about the last time that this happened was 2009, and we fly off. The last time there was a major aircraft accident in the United States. the United States. And we get comfortable thinking that, you know, it's been such a long time. Obviously, it's very rare that it happens. But when it happens, it's just, it's just, it rips you to your core, just people who, from all walks of life, they're saying 67 people were on that plane. I don't know how many were also on the helicopter. Oh, 64 of the plane, three on the helicopter. So 67 total that were boarding a plane per usual, headed home, some people, headed to work. Who knows what?

And their lives gone in a second. Family members waiting to pick them up from the airport, waiting for a call to know that they made it, landed safely. It's just, it's gut-wrenching how it happened. And of course, we're left at this moment with more question and answers. But first, your immediate thought is to the people who lost their lives and to the families and friends who also lost someone that they love. Right.

That's it. That's where you start. And let me say something here, and it's, It has to be said. If your immediate response to this, and it doesn't matter which side of things that you're on, if your immediate response to this was to look for a way, and obviously we'll talk about the president's comments in a second,

to politicize it and assign blame before it was to think about people, just, I'm not asking you to feel completely bad and look at yourself like a terrible person. I'm asking yourself to note and to name that. I'm asking yourself, just to take a second. If the immediate thing was to blame anyone or to look and not to think about the people and their lives and everything that you just laid out, just notice it.

Notice that. That right there to me is a major, major, major issue in American discourse. There's going to be plenty of time to ask, obviously, how did it happen? Why did it happen to learn lessons from it, hopefully. But immediately after, just remind me of the fires to start pointing and playing the blame game, just note that, name that.

Continue. What's the deal? No, no, it's just, it bothers me. What bothers you? It bothers me that people were so, and you're right, both sides, that were so quick to rush. I understand the curiosity and wanting to know what happened. I do not understand the rush to want to point fingers and blame. There is, from the moment that you learned that this was, it had moved from looking for victims to search and recovery, to recover the bodies that are

in this river, I just don't understand social media posts that are wanting to say, oh, well, this has happened in the past week, or, you know, on the other side, it's, oh, well, well, this is because, you know, I just got in this administration. This is what was done before me. Whatever it may be, I just don't understand that as a human being. And, you know, you put it so nicely. But for me, it makes me angry because that takes a certain type of person to be able to do that. I don't know how you just don't feel so much pain and hurt for this huge tragedy.

And we'll get into it. But you said, you know, like this area, Reagan is this airport, it's right there. When you land, you've landed there a number of times saying it's right there. You're flying right next to history and over these buildings and where, you know, like government agencies and where all this stuff happens. You oftentimes see the helicopters in the sky. Right there. Yeah. And, you know, it is highly regulated.

But we've even, we many have covered it on this podcast of how much of a crisis air traffic control. is in right now with lack of hiring. And this goes back of having certain people trained for it, of not being able to, the same way that they were recruiting people before is not the same way that they've been able to do it. It's a very stressful and hard job to do. We don't talk about it enough, but there have been these reports of aircrafts missing each other, not at Reagan, but just across the country, of aircrafts almost missing each

other in landing and takeoff. There's a lot here that really needs to be discussed. And now we have this tragedy in our hands. We don't quite know why, but we know that there was a crash and people lost their lives. If I was going to make a, like I said, we'll get to the president in a second. If I was going to make a cultural observation as it relates to air traffic control, I would say that it's probably a job that going forward, we're going to talk to Nathan, Boney about this a little bit later. It's probably a job that going forward AI is going to have to take over. That's tough. But I'll tell you why, though.

When I look at jobs that people are not going to want to do in a society where it increasingly seems like people kind of don't want to do hard things, air traffic control is way up on that list. It is an unbelievably stressful job where you, are in control of people's lives where you are literally making life or death decisions every single day and it's thankless. It's thankless. It's not something that people are, you're never going to be able to go and put it on social media somewhere.

Yo, I safely landed 170 jets today. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It just seems like a relic from a time when people took their contribution. to society a little bit more seriously than it sometimes seems like they do now. And what else has changed is the demand for more flights. More flights. You know, like they talk about it particularly at Reagan and with all of, you know, Congress being there and wanting to be able to get to their constituents

and the places that they oversee it as civilians, you know, demanding more flights to have access to certain places that are maybe have smaller airports or maybe even larger for big events or, you know, family, whatever your personal need or business need may be, there is this demand in society to increase more flights, which also puts more pressure on air traffic control. And I don't know too much about the industry itself,

but an air traffic controller is always going to be a job that I'm going to feel more comfortable with a human being doing. I 100% agree. I agree. I criss when you said AI. Yeah, I mean, I'm just being honest, it's something when you just talk about managing flights. Because I think about, you know, if you ever read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell,

it talks a little bit about like how the human component was involved and actually led to an accident in New Jersey. But when you just look at some of the stuff that's going on in crisis, you want to be able to talk to a person that understands the stakes. But I'm just telling you, if we get to a point to where people don't want to be air traffic controllers, either they're going to have to reincentivize in some sort of way, or that's going to be a job that's going to be taken over by automation. Because like, what we're essentially talking about is you might hear, actually, you know what, let's play President Trump. Because as the finger pointing started, the president was on, um, he didn't miss a beat.

He didn't miss a beat. He jumped right into it. So D.E.I was brought up as a scapegoat twice. The first time it happened was on Fox Business. We're representative Andy Ogles from Tennessee said the DEI might be a culprit here. Donnie, play that and then go right into President Trump. Is there any reason to believe there was any foul play here? Well, you know, at this time, you hate to jump to any conclusions. Obviously, we'll look at everything, check all the boxes. You know, I had just taken off from D.C. before the crash.

And, of course, it came across my cell phone and I saw it and was horrified. So prayers go out to all those impacted. But, you know, to your point, I think you have to look at this with eyes wide open, see what happened. you know, human error, was it some sort of equipment failure? Did DEI play a role in this type of thing? So I think you look at it, you go into it with, again, eyes wide open and make sure that something like this never happens. It's been a number of years.

Mr. President, on DEI in the claims that you've made, are you saying this crash was somehow caused and the result of diversity hiring? And what evidence have you seen to support these claims? It just could have been. We have a high standard. We've had a much higher standard than anybody else. And there are things where you have to go by brain power. You have to go by psychological quality. And psychological quality is a very important element of it. These are various, very powerful tests that we put to use, and they were terminated by Biden. And Biden went by a standard that's the exact opposite. So we don't know. But we do know that you had two planes at the same level. You had a helicopter in a plane. That shouldn't have happened. And we'll see. We're going to look into that and we're going to see.

But certainly for an air traffic controller, we want the brightest, the smartest, the sharpest. We want somebody that's psychologically superior. And that's what we're going to have here. You know, we joke, right? Or we make light, we jest. And we say that DEI is the new N-word. Yeah. It's not the new N-word.

It's worse than the N-W. word. The term DEI right now has become the worst slur in American history. It's worse than the inward. I'm not going to go through a whole diatribe about why the N word is bad, historically, and what the N word is meant historically and in the contemporary sense. What I will say is this, is the term DEI or DEI hire is not just being used to undermine the qualifications, capability,

and the readiness of black people of women and other people in all of these different sectors. It's not just making, it's not just minimizing them. D.I. is placing the blame of all of society's ills at the feet of these people. If a fire happens, it's because of D.E.I. If a plane crash happens, it's because of D.E.I. If we lose a battle, it's because of D.E.I.

There is a religious, religious, elite. to the white male orthodoxy that this propping up of this DEI, anti-DGI agenda is beholden to that is not just dehumanizing. It seeks to set a cultural and intellectual slavery and caste system that is unbeatable by statistic, by example or by actual happening. The belief that every single thing that goes wrong

in American or world society is because white straight males aren't in charge is a religious endeavor. It takes faith and belief and total capitulation to white supremacy to believe that. That means that it doesn't matter what is happening. If that pilot is black, we don't even know the particulars here. We don't even know what happened.

But before we even get the particulars, before we know who was the air traffic controller, before we know who the pilots were, before we know what happened. 67 people dead, laid at the feet of DEI. That means when any black person, any woman, any gay person that is walking around society is a walking disaster, a walking cataclysm, a walking accident, a walking vessel of incompetence. There's no way to defeat that if, in fact, that is something that is believed by the most powerful people in this country.

There is no way to defeat it because we live in a society that truly doesn't care about receipts and evidence and facts. In that press conference, a reporter specifically asked President Trump, after he made the statement that we just heard, specifically said, you don't have any evidence that it's related to DEI. How do you know you've, because he was all over the place, right? Like he said it and then he also said, well, the elevation and all this stuff. I mean, it was a mess as Trump is. But when they were specifically asked him that question and that he had no evidence, he said, well, it's just common sense. And that answer is enough for so many people to believe, well, he's right. And to follow up on what you're saying, if it's not DEI, right, if that both pilots,

were white males, well, then it's the Democrats. Then it's the Biden administration. You know, what we don't know, there's so much what we don't know. What we do know is that, as we were talking earlier, our air traffic control is in a crisis. What we do know is that President Biden in his administration noted that and did hire around 1,800 people and was set to hire about 1,500 more to try to train people in the right way to help out this problem as there's a higher demand for more flights and there are less people willing to apply to the jobs to protect and control the airspace. What we do know is that

Trump did fire the head of TSA, forced out the FAA chief, and issued a hiring freeze for air traffic control. Now, I'm not saying that to blame. What I'm saying is, is there is a crisis. And instead of rectifying it on solutions on how to fix it, this is, we're making it worse, is my point. We're pointing blame. We're assigning blame where blame is not due. And it's a really scary, and I shouldn't be surprised. We shouldn't be surprised. This is straight out of their playbook. But it is disappointing. And it's, disappointing isn't even a strong enough word. It's just wrong. You know, it, I mean, you know, President Trump is going to do what President Trump does.

You know, I just keep going back to thinking about some of the people that I have conversations with or some of the people we've been having cultural conversations with about the president and about how he reacts to things like this and people who try to say that there's no rhetoric that comes from the president that is racially divisive or that places blame or culpability at the feet of black people. gay people, whatever, for all of society's ills. You know, I just have to be honest with you guys. President Trump is the Pope of white supremacy.

He's the, I'm just sorry. There's no way around it. Whatever happens, happens. He's the Pope of white supremacy. He's, he is the religious, spiritual, and cultural leader of ideas and, and rhetoric that, marginalized and oppressed black people. And even if he doesn't come out and use the word nigger, every single thing that he does to me

in areas like this that have something to do with culture, they reinforce the idea that we just simply aren't as good as everyone else. And I don't know how any other way to put it. And it just makes recent conversations that we've had that much more disappointing. It's just so obvious because you're right. looking for him to be overt with it, right? They're looking for him to say these words. And even then they would defend it, right? Oh, is this a slip in the tongue? You didn't mean it. Whatever. That's not what he really said. They would defend it. But he's couching it under the terms of,

oh, equity discrimination or, oh, you know, I mean, the thing is, is who is it that's fighting? Just look at it this way. Who is it that's fighting for their jobs, their place in the society, to hold their titles, to hold their positions. It's not white males. So every single time he talks about equity discrimination, who is it that is either losing their position or having to defend and prove their place in this society? It's marginalized communities.

It's black, it's brown, it's women, it's LGBTQ plus. That is who is being attacked. It's just that plain and simple. And anybody who's refusing it to see it any other way, might as well be thrown in the same boat as Trump. If you're going to defend that and you refuse to see it when it is so right in front of you, it's because that's what it wants, that's what you want,

and it protects your place in this society. And that's the only thing it comes down to. Did you know about one in three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away.

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Manager activity with our consumer protection tool. Restrictions apply. See terms at fanduil.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash terms. Switching gears, DJ academics joined Norgaid. He's a 15-year-old who works with a popular content creator named Plife Boy Max. He was on their live stream. And the conversation, it took a weird turn. If Max said he wanted to try.

Try fucking a dude. Will you let me fuck you? No. Why not? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can have... If I can't fuck you, I'm cutting you off. No, yeah, yeah, yo, yeah.

Suppose he's like, your, bro. Listen, yo, you always wanted me to be next to you. Now, I could be inside of you. Pause. Yo, I'm not gay. You can do a suck a dick, though. Yeah. Yeah, to that.

Yeah. Wait, hold on. So you tell me that there's not another 15-year-old that you could bust. them? You're broke. I'm serious. So there's not another 15-year-old you could bust out.

You go to school? Yo, if Max got a sister and she threw you the box, would you smash? He already has a sister. All right. If she threw you the box, would you smash? No, because I'm 15. What I mean? She's above 18.

What I mean? Okay. What's the wrong? It will be grooming. It'll be what? Grooming. There's nothing to do with you. You, North, what's your ad just? I'm going to send some strippers over there. So, down, yo.

I'm 15. I hope you know that, bro. You're trying to get a woman, bro. I'm not scared of women. Yo, bro, you're trying to put me on a case. You're trying to put them on a case. So? What you mean so? That's weird.

Trying to look out. You know, all the rappers lost the virginity to like old woman, right? Academics, not long after backlash, he addressed the situation during his live stream. The only thing I'll tell you, be careful of the soapbox warriors. When you dig a hole, always dig two. I always tell you all that, right? We all got to do better. I got to do better.

Yo, again, when we're in a privileged time where they're saying that, streamers are possibly making more than basketball players. Rappers are saying they want to be streamers. These platforms, we're so lucky to have, man. Like, you know, rather than, you know, trying to play victim or deflecting, we got also, and that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I got to step up to the plate and be like, nah, I'm going to be better. I'm going to be better.

You know, my bad. Definitely my bad. In terms of other streamers, it's not for me to be like, well, this guy used to do this. And also here's the thing. I don't gain anything from that. You know what I mean? Have you talked to him? Nah, I called just to see what the possible thought could have been here.

I listened to all of the explanations and all of that stuff. Look, there's no way around it. He's a sick fuck. Like, that video and audio is, is disgusting, right? There's no way around it. You know what made it worse, as if it could have been? The child was telling him what he was doing and whoever else was on the stream with them. And there was still the refusal to ignore it.

There was still a defense of, oh, this, they didn't, like, the child is saying, you're groom this is grooming or I'm under age you know when they moved from one topic to another he said well I'm under age she's older than me then defended it what's the problem with that you know many rappers have lost their virginity in the same way there was no turning a corner there was no you could have never said it was joking but there wasn't even like a I'm joking of course this isn't serious this child is pleading with you to please stop you could tell that he was extremely uncomfortable and you kept going with this narrative for no other reason, then you're nasty and it's sick and it's demented.

So like for me, I think this is an opportunity to like talk not just about this particular case and in talking to kids like this and like that's a kid and talking to kids like this and it's an opportunity to talk about a couple of different things. Number one, AC is 35. There's just very few instances where a 35-year-old should be talking on a discord to a 15-year-old kid. But that's kind of the way things are in that streamer world and all of that stuff. That shouldn't be happening. And number two, when you are a man, when you are a man, the responsibility that you have with stewardship of the younger people that you are in contact with,

it's very real. And unfortunately, a lot of the things and a lot of the ways that I was brought up or grown up with the older guys that were around me telling me when I should get some pussy, when I should have sex. What's okay? And I should do all of this. What's not okay? The fact that like a lot of the guys, we've talked about it here on the podcast, a lot of the guys that you talk to, you asked them like when it was the first time you had a sexual encounter. Oh, my God, it was this, with this older woman, was 9, 10, or 11 or something like that. All of that's grooming.

You don't have to be grooming someone for sex with you. You're grooming somebody to enter a hypersexual existence, an existence that, to be honest with you, I was groomed into. I was groomed accidentally. I was groomed very purposefully. I was told by people that loved me that I loved, hey, you got to go out there and get some pussy. I found all of the porno that my father had. I found all of the magazines that people had.

We were sharing it around. I was watching pornography. I joke a lot about it when I'm on here, but I started watching pornography at 13 or 14 years old. So my view of women, my view of sex, my view of all of that stuff was changed. When I was told, yo, you need to go get some pussy. before you turn 16, that changed the way I looked at women.

And that changed the way I looked at myself. My self-worth was then measured by whether or not I could get a woman to sleep with me. And then the worth of the woman was then changed. She then became something to reaffirm my manhood. And so the backlash and the reaction to that is to this, should I say, is really coming from a culture that is hoping to let kids be kids. It's hoping to keep kids out of harm's way. It's hoping to allow kids, particularly this kid who is a Palestinian refugee

that is having trouble making friends. I watch the whole thing that is having trouble connecting with people. And you put them in a situation like this, and then these are the kind of the things that are going on. in his mind. And in the deal, when you go back and you look at kind of the way things were being taught and even some of the things that Norgaard was said, you would hope that there would have been an older head there to be like, yo, you're too young to even be thinking like that. Yo, you're too young to be in this situation. Yo, you're too young. But some of the stuff that

was said to him, some of the stuff that, I mean, at one point, you know, was asked if he would want to fuck Black Boy Matt's, who was a grown man. Would you want to change your sex and have sex with him. It's just we've got to be better than that. That's true. We just, we have got to be better than that. It's the normalization of it. And he,

I guess this would have been an apology. You know, he came out and he said, DJ academics came out and said, my bad, my bad. But you got to understand. There is, he starts off talking about like, hey, people are on there, don't be on your soapbox because people are going to dig. No, there's

a level of responsibility professionalism and responsibility that comes with having these type of platforms. And to, one, talk to a child that way, to normalize that type of conversation and to not recognize, like, not just my bad, but why people are upset, the ramifications of this, what this could do to this child, the problem within the culture of everything that you just explained and how deeply rooted it is. and to not say, not just my bad, but I have to be better than this, hold me accountable, and how can I rectify, not just that specifically,

but this mindset that exists within us, that should have been the conversation. Last thing I'll say on it is, I think part, there's a part of the internet, particularly. There is a part of, of internet culture particularly. that just doesn't have to apologize. Isn't used to having anyone, just listen, listen to what I'm saying.

I know, I'm listening. Just isn't used to having anyone say, that's too far. Because they exist in too far. They exist in pushing the envelope. They exist in making people gas and be like, oh, my God, I can't believe they said that. Shock value, whatever, whatever it is. And people go to that because it's, it's freeing for a lot of people because for the majority of us,

we live in a space where we have to be responsible, where we want to put the best things out there for us, we want to put the best ideas out there and all that stuff. I think that academics has probably learned that people are going to demand some responsibility from this platform. I hope so. That there has to be some responsibility. Talking bad about rappers,

going off, doing all of this other stuff. But there is a line where people are going to expect you just to be a good dude. Like, you know what I mean? Like, just to be a responsible man in terms of OGness and stewardship for the younger people that are around you. And that's a fair ask for anyone in any of these situations. that's a fair ask. There's nobody here is a perfect person.

Like nobody is a perfect person. But when you look at that, there's just no way to defend it. And I would hope that he learns that people are not going to tolerate that type of talk to kids. Well, it doesn't seem that way yet. Only one little thing I'll just say is there's, it's one thing to do shock value. It's another thing to live in a space where you feel like you can say anything in any kind of way to any type of. person and there are and there's no responsibility or accountability for that. And I think when you get to that place, there's a sense of humanity that is lost in you to get

there. And I feel like that's what I witnessed when I watched him talking to that child. All right. Just real quick, we got a couple of interviews to get to. We're going to put him in the show. It's going to be great. We got Chad Sandhers coming up. We got Nathan Bowmey. Nathan Bowmey are coming up. But I just want to shout out for Florence Mursky. Flojo. Flojo, Miss Flojo, who really took it on the chin these last couple of days. You're a wetback.

What else? Got it? Wet back. What else? Trump is doing good things. You guys rape and kill people. Right? Take your $50 and suck it.

Give me a fucking give my change. I'm rich, you're poor. Difference. You're a poor soul. Yep. You're poor of soul. I left my house yesterday in PJs, as you can tell, looking crazy. And when I was walking out of a scrub, the valet guy grabbed my ass and I should have just punched him.

I was thinking about my child and not wanting to go to jail. So I lashed out and I called him a wetback. And I'm so wrong for that. But I felt so violated. I should have just. shut my mouth, called the police, and that's it. So basically, I'm explaining to you everybody. I am sorry for what I said.

I've been around Mexicans, dated Mexicans my whole life. My parents are immigrants. I am the farthest thing from racist possible. Made a fucking mistake. Like, with my mouth, I'm the farthest thing from racist. Like, is this what you guys wanted for me? You guys are affecting everybody in my life right now. Like, I am taking accountability, like, full.

Like, please, enough. I'm going to apologize to the man that grabbed my ass. I don't even care. I'm apologizing to you, please. So you accept my apology and then what? But you know what the guy did? He's not even here today. I know, but you know what the guy did to me.

So please, at least be real. I'm the farthest thing from race as possible. I told you you're a good-looking guy with green eyes. Do you think I have any way? All my partners are Spanish, Vietnamese, everything. Can you at least admit what the guy did to me, please? Can you admit what the guy did? Can you admit what the guy did?

Two-five-five. Can you admit what the guy did, please? At least not. Just admit what the guy did, please. They got Flojo's ass up out of here quick. She is Scott Storch's baby's mom and Scott Storch is somewhere like, what the fuck is going on? I didn't do shit. But now, it's interesting.

Okay. There's something I got to say about the whole Flojo situation. Flojo's gone private now. She's all fucked up. She said that the guy grabbed her butt after this. Donnie, play all of the stuff from Flojo. Rachel, let me ask you something. Yeah.

Doesn't this Flojo situation prove that? That? Black people and brown people are still kind of riding for each other? That they're riding for each other? A little bit. The way that they came up against her? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, she, like, for all the stuff.

We get the brown people because that's who she attacked. She attacked the brown people. But the black people you're saying What I'm saying is the black people were super pissed off. I just want to let you guys know like she called these people

a slur that's directed to Mexican people and black people got on her ass about it. Yeah. A lot of this came from the black community. It came from the people

over at Baller Alert. Shout out to Robin. It came from, I mean, Mr. Checkpoint, shout out to Mr. Checkpoint, is one of the guys who put it. Up first.

But a lot of his constituencies made up of a lot of black people. Black people, for all the stuff that we've been talking about, still got pissed off at this lady and made her double back. Yeah. Yeah. Crying. Doing the typical playbook. The tears, letting you know all the minority friends that she has,

talking about her housekeeper. She's helped get papers, all that stuff, right? You know what I found interesting is that she did go private? But I was looking at her numbers. It went up. They went up. The follow account went up. Her social media account.

So not only are, is there a fan base that she's tapped into that are excited about the racist rhetoric that she was spewing, she's also private. And it's gone up so she's private. Which means she is allowing people to follow her and basically big up her, which she posted some of the stuff of people complimenting her, big up her in her racist rhetoric. So she is not sorry, which we know. She is proud of what she did and this increased following. And she's tapping. She's double-downing and fully tapping into her racism. So like when she unpripped, she won't be private forever.

Keep the same energy. Oh, she will. She's going to become a maga darling. Yeah. She shouted out Trump. Yeah. She shot it out Trump. And her followers are going up and she's accepting you.

So keep the same. Just remember. Remember. We gave her a name. Scott Storch's baby. Mama, because that's how they would do us. That's how they would do us. That's Scott Storch's baby mama, y'all.

All right, Scott. Still D-R-E, still M-A-G-A. It's not Scott. Scott didn't do shit. He didn't do anything. Scott, Scott, Scott somewhere playing the piano, just chilling. I'm not going after him. I'm titling her how they would title us.

Scott Storch's baby mama. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows Winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping, then you'd want a cargo liner or road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. This episode is brought to you

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All right, guys, we have a very special guest on the podcast. Somebody that I go way back with of chat. Sanders, the author of Black Magic, What Black Leaders Learned from Trauma and Triumph. He is the host of the Yearbook podcast on the Armchair Expert Network and the Audible Originals Podcast Direct Deposit. He's been featured in the New York Times, Time, Fortune, Forbes, deadline variety, the Hollywood Reporter.

The list goes on and on and on. Now, we go way back to 2000, the summer of 2007, where we were both interns at NBA University, a program that I don't even think exists anymore. And I just would like to say, Chad tagged us, okay? And as he's promoting his book, he is the author also of how to sell out.

We're going to get into that. It drops February 4th. Make sure you guys pre-order that now. Tell your family, friends, everyone about it. We'll get into that. But he's tagging black media, which I appreciate, to which you question if I remembered you. I remember three people from that program

and you were one of them. Yeah. We hung out. We did. No, and it was, I mean, but it was 17 years ago. And those, I mean, that was my freshman year of college. So there's a lot of blurry memories

between then and now for me. It was funny because just now walking around this neighborhood, I was like, thinking back about, you at that time because I felt like Van might say, how do you remember Rachel from that time? I don't know if he was going to ask that or not. And then I got a big smile on my face because I remember you were always happy. You were always smiling. Like you would be on the bus. We would be going on this dumb ass bus from Manhattan to Secaucus to do this job that was very, very sterile in that office. And you would be like happy. You would be like the sun was shining on you and you were

smiling and you were cheerful and that's the only way I remember you every single time. So I was like, I hope she remembers me. I hope she hasn't turned Hollywood on me. Not on me. Like you don't owe me anything. But people will be all the time like, yeah, we'll have you on it. And they disappear. Charlemagne. Yeah. God damn. Love the call out. Love the call out. We are not like that here. We are southern still to our roots, Louisiana, Texas here. I mean, And I am probably jaded and a little bit bitter these days, but I still am try to be a positive person. That was like a dream opportunity.

It was New York City. It was working in sports. It was so much fun to me. They put us in different programs to different departments, I mean, to work for the league office. So I was in events and attractions. What were you in? I was in communications.

It was a 10-week internship, but my boss was at the finals until the finals were over. So I spent the first three weeks in a storage closet organizing, like, actual photos, actual photographs. Yeah. So, you know, Chad, the book, the title, all of us have written books. My book flopped. Rachel's did fine. My second one flopped. I'm writing another book, and we're not going to have a flop.

We're not going to be. We're out of our flop era. Your book is how to sell out the hidden cost of being a black writer. It's the kind of thing that if I'm walking past it and I see it on the shelf, I just grab it. Because you have that inciting title. What is the meaning of the book, though? Because a lot of times that title is kind of like a bait and switch. What's the meaning of the book?

And I'm so glad you said it like that. Also, I don't know. I just want to say, like, you wrote a book. You're writing another book. I hope that. I don't know how that experience was for you, whatever you feel about your book as a flop, but I'm just,

I admire and I'm proud of both of y'all because you wrote books. But the book is literal. Like, I was going to write a book about my journey trying to, like, get rich in the industry. And in the middle of my story, which I think we'll talk about a little bit, I looked up and I was very unhappy, even though I was getting lots of cool jobs in the industry.

I had become a Hollywood writer. I had kind of like done the thing I was setting out to do. And I was terribly unhappy. And I realized, I was like, I did the thing that I judged so many people for I have sold out here. And here's how it happened to me. George Floyd happened. And I wrote this New York Times piece about how I felt, which was so visceral. It was like, was on the phone with my boys one day and the very, like, talking about it and the fear and the urgency.

and just really the fear was big at that moment for us. And the next day I wrote this thing, it poured out of me. The New York Times ran it like maybe two or three days later and it sizzled. It went crazy. It was like I had never written anything that anybody had paid any attention to before that. And I saw this like, I'm saying this in hindsight, so it sounds a lot more perfect than it was. But I saw this hole in the shape of van, I'm going to use a word you used like a year and a half ago to describe a character on a TV show. It was a hole in the shape of a plucky young, edgy black writer who was angry.

And I could see this hole. And I was like, I knew what was on the other side of it was some money and some access and all the shit that I wanted. And I, and I squeezed myself to fit into that hole. And then I got stuck in that shape. So my fucking, excuse me, so my, my back was hurting. Yeah. The whole time I was in the industry. And then all the little warnings and signs that people tell you

about how you end up selling out in this shit, it happened to me. And I looked up and I was like, I thought you had to be like 50 and wealthy. And like, I thought you had to have huge success to be a sellout. But I looked up and I realized like, no, I took the bait.

It happened to me. So that's why it's called How to Sell Out. You know, it's such a relatable thing. It's such a relatable thing because the version of you that you have to sell is oftentimes not the version of you that you want to be. I mean, I was on The Bachelor. Yeah. I mean, it's true.

Like, the version of you that people want to buy is not the version of you that you want to be. Living proof. People always wonder why I go into weird tangents and why I sometimes bring up weird, like, sexual stuff or jokes or whatever. Yes, why. Do you know why, really?

Why? Because that's who you really are in there. I'm trying to stay mean. I'm trying not to become a hyper, pure, perfect version of a black activist broadcaster slash writer slash cultural critic because you're, one, only fattening yourself up for a fall. And two, you're selling a version of yourself that's not really real. And I would rather the criticism that comes with being me than the adulation that comes with being something that's not quite me

because I can't maintain it anyway. And it hurts your back. And I mean that in a physical sense. Like you try to act like somebody that you're not every day. Anger has a feeling. Like anger comes through your body and it sits with you later. And like my literal back was hurting. Like my everything was hurting.

And on top of that, I knew I was fraudulent. Like I knew I was. There's all these like trending activists and shit that were being born at that time. And I kind of like took my little slice of that. You know what I mean? And like it wasn't real. I'm not that I grew up with, you know,

the autobiography of Michael Mexico in my house like every, like all of us good black kids did. But like that's not me. I'm not like, that's really not my lane like that. What is you? Yeah. Yeah.

Man, different every day, you know? Like definitely, um, I like to, this is going to sound so corny. but when I talk to people, like, I like our hearts to touch. Like, I like to feel like we're both there. I like to feel like, I like an adventure all the time.

I like a journey all the time. I think I'm a little bit addicted to, like, experience something weird so you can tell the story of it later because you get to, like, have that experience over and over again. Very sensitive. Like, you know, like, and I think like a lot of guys that look, we look different, but like a lot of guys that look like us, like sensitive covered by a bunch of ways to try to protect myself, you know?

I'm like, right now I'm nervous. I mean, I'm nervous because this book, I'm nervous for two reasons. One is like I see how people respond to my voice and it gets under them. Like it gets under their skin. And like sometimes that makes somebody love you. Sometimes that makes somebody angry at you.

It's like your brother who comes in the family get together and everybody's being tense walking on eggshells. And he's like, Uncle So-and-So cheated on Auntie So-and-So. Like some people love that guy. Some people really don't like that guy. So that makes me a little nervous that I get that response. And I think the other nerves are just like, it's just like, I don't,

how am I going to, will I be able to like stand on everything that I have? What am I trying to say here? There's like, people do like these interviews and they come in. And I've been on both sides of the table now of these interviews. I have some shows of my own that I've done. like we do this like performance of authenticity, I would say. Like we're trying to give the audience something that feels real,

but we're really holding onto the stuff that's not real. And I've kind of like, I'm trying to put myself on the hook to like not do that, to really be the person who's going to like tell somebody what I'm really going through. And that's scary, you know what I'm saying? That's scary. I think you're doing a great job at it. Thank you. I will say that.

You start off this book and you talk about, you say this is the last time you're going to write about race. Why? And then second part of that is, do you feel like you can stick to that, especially in the current climate that we're living in? Oh, man. Anytime someone says current climate, it's all bad.

Right. Okay. First question is, why am I saying that? I really truly believe there's a way that I can have the life that I want and for it to be fun, like for me to enjoy it along the way. And some of the things I want, they're simple, but they're big, you know, so to write about race, to write specifically about blackness. Like, I don't want to generalize this. To write about blackness. to write about anything,

you've got to live in the world of that thing. You got to, you got to, y'all don't know. I've spent 10 hours having this conversation that we're having right now with myself to get ready for this conversation. My girlfriend, I woke up, who by the way wants me to tell you, Rachel, I told her I was going on higher learning.

She didn't recognize the name as the name, but when I said I'm going on y'all's show and named you, she, man, I love you. Rachel, she freaked out about you. She was like, She was like, and make sure you tell her I'm a big fan. I'm sorry, that was a diversion. That's a problem for us.

You're a big star. You really are a big star now, which was also crazy when you reemerged from internship on the Bass Right. But to write about anything, you got to like, you got to live in it. And so if I'm writing about black struggle, black trauma, the cycle, black men being incarcerated, like things that cause physical harm to me to spend time thinking about all the time. I'm not going to be able to have the life I want, which is a life where I get to be creative all the time and enjoy it and be healthy and be there emotionally for my people

and my family when they need me. So that's, you know, you're going to have to pay me a lot to get me to do it as a job. You're going to have to pay me a lot. I forgot the second question. Do you remember what it was? Oh, if you can stick to that

with the way things are right now and the way they're moving. Ooh. And that's the, it's spooky right now because I think people right now are trying to measure

the cost and reward of being outspoken about the climate we're in versus the potential consequences which they do not know yet and I think you saw man I was really sitting with what you were saying about Snoop and Nellie

and Soldier Boy and I love that you said that but we don't call people jigsaboo. I'm using their words. I'm using their words. We don't, we can't do that,

man. I've only used, the only reason I say that word. We can't call these black men jigaboos, man. I would never normally say that. I would never say that. Let's go ahead, Chad.

Me and my friends call each other in jibibouz a lot. We shouldn't. We call each other every kind of coon tar baby. We shouldn't do it, but we do it. Okay. But what I'm saying here is, the answer is,

I don't know, Rachel. Like, because, the danger of doing what, I think y'all do it too, what we do for a living, at least for me, like the,

even if it's just a danger to your psychology, to the way that you think, to the fears that might be around a corner, like, it does weigh on you over time. Like, it takes a toll. I don't know if I, like, a harder, more true to the cause version of me would give you a different answer to this.

And, but, but like, I'm just a, person, you know what I mean? Like, I'm just a 36 year old who has a lot of the same dreams as a lot of other people in our age bracket. And like, I don't know if I want that responsibility. Now,

older people will try to hand it to me. They do. Spike Lee called me and says, you know, you're the new vanguard. I don't know if I have the backbone to live like Spike. I don't know if I have the backbone to put out Malcolm X in the freaking, what was that? I guess the late 80s or early 90s. It was the early 90s and he had to pay for it himself. Come on, man. Had to get money from Janet Jackson,

had to get money from all these different people to get the movie finished. It was really a crusade on this part. And I don't know. And I don't know, I don't know if I have the strength within me. I'm going to find out. I'm literally just about to find out.

It's how I feel. Chad, can I have the latitude to name something? Please, please. Okay. So something that you said earlier, said, I don't want to write about blackness, and then you, you listed a litany of black trauma.

I think that there's something for us to take from that. Because a lot of times we get rewarded from white establishment media and stuff like that when we speak to black trauma. But I think a daring thing to do is to analyze and talk about blackness outside. of its relationship to white supremacy or trauma or incarceration or anything like that. You could write about black joy and you could write about black achievement.

You could write about black. You know what I love right now? Black surrealism. Afro surrealism right there just weird niggas writing about weird nigger shit. All of those things are available to us to write and experience who we are outside of stuff that makes us feel like, God, damn.

You know, before this, before I came here, talking to somebody, we're doing a literacy situation in Louisiana. And I'll be honest with you, it's not a great way to start the morning. I'll just be honest with you. It's like when you get the sheer numbers of black boys between the sixth and the eighth grade and the work that we have to do into, it's not your, you makes you get up and want to call somebody a cracker. I'll just be honest with you.

It's like it does. However, there's joy on the other side of me knowing that a black kid one day is going to be able to read anything, the Confederacy of Dunces, be it Malcolm X, be it Sula, be it the color purple, whatever. So we can't let them still out the joy that we have in blackness. We can't let them take that. You are right. and I'm glad that you sort of refocused it that way because that's really important precision. Like, I don't want to get mirrored in writing about pain all the time.

That's what I mean. That's what you mean. I don't want to be giving people my hurt all the time when there's so many other parts of me. And to your point, I think I have sort of taken it on, especially like what I do like on Instagram with videos and stuff now. like I try to, I'm trying to show joy. Like I'm trying, and I don't mean like I'm trying to facade, like make craft it.

I just mean like when I feel happy, when I feel silly, I need people to see that too. I need, I have three nephews there, three, three, and six. Like, I need them to see Uncle Chad be silly. Like, be fun. If he has a weird, you know, use all of his voices. The one that makes, that fits right in this moment, use that one. And that's, you're absolutely right, Van. And yeah, I got to be thoughtful about how I communicate that, when I communicate that.

You know what makes me so happy and sad about what you just said? Because I feel like, you know, with what we all do in different ways, I feel that right now. I am, and I'm wondering if maybe this is what kind of made, one of the things that made things change for you. I'm happy for you, I say, because I'm glad that you know what you want to do. do and where you want to go, how you want to be. Sad because I think as black people, not I think I know, we carry a different burden. We carry a different weight because of how we have to navigate this world. And when I get on social media and I see some of my friends or maybe even people I don't know,

I'm like, gosh, it must be so nice to just be, to just go through the world and not have to care about why he's smirking at me. I can't stand what he does this, Chad. We just go through the world and not care about what's happening, what's happening to whether it's your gender, whether it's your race, whether it's your community, your culture. And I'm just wondering if maybe you want to enter, that's part of it. Like, that's the space that you want to be in. Or do you, do you sometimes look at social media or read something and just like, gosh, it must be so nice to just frolic through life without a care in the world. Wow.

I mean, I really do try to limit how much of that I consume because it's not, it's not my, it's not me. It's not my reality. This is, all right, may I now have latitude to ask a question? Okay. I don't know why I've been smirked.

Maybe this is why I have no idea. But I told my girlfriend I was going to ask this as well. She is a black woman who used to date white guys. She's from Seattle, Washington. And I feel triggered. I mean, I've dated white girls, like, you know, before. And I think we've dated or have you, have you, have you.

That's a really good refinement. You're precise. I have, I have not, well, we've been on dates, but I haven't had a white girlfriend. You know where he's going. But you put the thing on them. That's good. You know where he's going, Chad. I do. I do. He's right.

But the commitment of the dating is a different thing. And we have to make sure that we name that. I have not had white girlfriend. Playing in the snow and drinking milk every morning two different things. Okay. Okay. That is really important precision. Thank you for saying that.

Thank you. I have been on dates with and I have, you know, I've been with white girls, but I haven't been with them. I haven't had a white girlfriend. The question I'm getting to, I'll try to be really just pointed on it, which is like, did you, one is like, did your partner, your ex seem to experience the world that way with that sort of like, did he have that kind of like weightlessness about him?

By the way, I don't know anything about your ex. And, okay, and were you able to experience any of that by proxy to him? Or did it actually create like a like an extra weight on you to see somebody live with that? Van is dying. Can I tell you why it bothered me? Yes, there was a level that I appreciated because he seemed to be understanding of what I would go through or my reaction to things or how I would feel it, right? Because I experienced 2020 with him. We started our podcast in 2020.

And obviously things didn't start there, but I just mean, you know, our relationship was fairly, fairly new, kind of. Yeah. So, yes, he moved in that way. That's also just the kind of person he is. but it bothered me because his ethnicity is Latino. And I felt that there should have been some more of it, especially with having immigrant parents. I felt that there should have been,

this is going to be bad. No, I'm just saying, like, I just would think that within you, there would be some sort of calling because of the things your parents went through, that you may necessarily may not have gone through and you see

and being Colombian but Miami Latino different though they are Miami yeah it's like you know Miami shout out to all my people down in Miami I fuck with it but Miami Columbia and Miami Cuban is not the same but there was an awakening

because they're not the same because they live in their own bubble but being on the Bachelor they were they very much so led into we talked about this led into the fact that he was Latino they would play the music they would tell him to harp on certain things. They put subtitles when his mother talked,

which you could understand her. And I think he felt more Latino. I know he did. He felt more Latino than ever becoming off The Bachelor than he ever did in real life. And so I would think that that would ignite something in you to, you can't feel what I feel being black, but you can feel something else being Colombian.

I think so I was engaged, I was engaged, first and foremost, but I was engaged to somebody who had a white Cuban mom. They were from Miami or they lived in Miami. And this was my, like, I'm new to this. So y'all listeners might already know this. Y'all I'm sure already know this. But like white people from Latin American countries are white people.

Like they're not American white people. They're not North American white people. But like, they're white. Like white people in Brazil. Brazil got more black people than anywhere but Africa, but like white people in Brazil are colonial. White people in Cuba. White people in Puerto Rico.

White, white, white, white. I didn't understand that. Yeah, I did not understand that. No, because growing up, it was, we all thought it was no. Some people are white. Colorism, white, white, white, white, white, white. I will say when I did go to Colombia, one of the cousins made a very big distinction

that was like, why are you saying white were brown? Why would you say that? I'm not going to speak on that. I was like, love him. But like, you notice, I'm not going to speak too much in the Latino culture because it's already touch and go. But you notice that, you know, around the world that, you know, the distinction of color, lineage, Afro-Latina. Back in the day, I remember Jennifer Lopez was like, my music ain't of black origin. I don't want to go to that award show.

I was like, oh, okay, you're white lady. All right. Last question before we go. And it's a super simple question. I read this. Can my company have the movie rights? Oh. Huh?

Let's talk about it. Shit. I didn't know that. The movie rights to the book, to the old book? Yeah. To the book. Academy Award winning company. Oh, I know I'm familiar.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would like a finder's fee. Yeah. I would like a finder's fee. Honestly, like honestly, it's crazy the way this goes. It's because when you read this, you've sold, you know, how to sell out. Now, we got some more selling to do, my friend.

This plays as a bank up series. Like, I'm telling you, like, eliminated, like you got more selling to do. We're not done with you yet, all right? You think you know the big whites. I'm going to introduce you to the white people that, it's going to be, it's different. It's about to be, it's about to be,

different, totally different. And let's fuck it. Fuck it. We can do both. I love this. I love this. Ben, do you know Arronda is my guy? I told you.

Oh, for real? Your guy in what sense? Like, Arronday was my first manager. He's the only manager I've ever had. I'm very difficult to manage. And he and I are now, I would say, just more like family. Like, he was there the day I got engaged. Like, he's driven me all over the East Coast and shit.

Like, he's my, he's like, if anybody gets credited with, like, discovering me it's a Ronde. And Angie is, like, I've slept, I've spent the night at their house, like, mother kids type of shit. What I was going to say is, do you all have 10 more seconds? I don't know how, wait, can I tell people we got to find me? Okay, can I just tell people where to find me?

Oh, of course. Please, please. Come follow me at Chad Sand on Instagram. That's the best place to really see if you're going to like me or not. You're going to know within the first 10 seconds whether or not you ever want to see my face again. I'll be in New York, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. in the next two weeks touring this book. And I would love to see all.

Thank you all for the time and the platform. I really appreciate y'all. Of course. Love this. What's the website where they can go? Go get the book. The link for the book, but also where to get tickets to see you live if they're in the area or they want to come to? They will find all of those links at the bio in my Instagram. But if you just want to go get the book right now, you just get it off Simon & Schuster's website or Amazon.

on, which I know is negligent. I should have a website set up for it. But I don't. So go get it there, wherever you feel comfortable giving your money. The book is How to Sell Out the Hidden Cost of Being a Black Writer. That is Chad Sanders. We are so happy that you joined us on High Learning Today, brother. Thank you very much.

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hand. Think green goddess chicken. Garlic aoli. Crumbled bacon. Corn salsa. 40 grams of protein. Made to keep up with whatever comes next. New sweetgreen wraps hit different. Order now at order.com. There's a lot stuff going on. I don't quite understand. AI.

It's a battle for AI. Now, I tried to watch a couple of videos on this, so my expertise has gone through the roof. Oh. AI was... comfortable where it was being super expensive. And then Chinese company came along, and they were able to do some other stuff,

some pretty impressive stuff, half the cost, a fraction of the cost, and also with a lot less people. That's the overview from a stupid guy. If you want to talk to a smart guy, you have to talk to Nate. Nathan Balmy. Is that, am I saying that right?

That's right, yeah. Business reporter at Axios. Nate is joining us on Higher Learning today. Talk to us a little bit about what's going on with Nvidia Stock Deep Seeks AI revolution and what it means. Nate, let me tell you, let me ask you a question right now. I want to put you in a world.

Put you in the world of talking to somebody who's a fucking idiot on this. Okay? I'm sure most of us are. Yeah. Forget about it. You're not talking to Zuckerberg or any of those guys. You're talking to me, a guy who's just curious about it.

What would you tell people about what has happened in the last, what are we saying, five to seven days on the AI front here in America or across the world? What's happened? Well, what's happened is that there's suddenly this new Chinese AI model that nobody saw coming that has challenged chat GPT for. AI supremacy. So basically this thing called Deepseek has popped up out of nowhere and they claim to have developed this AI large language model that has been able to deliver better results than OpenAI than ChatGBT for a fraction of the cost like you said. And so what that has done

is it's scrambled what everyone has thought they knew about how we're going to get to the AI future. And, you know, there's this understanding that you have to buy a ton of chips. All the chips are made by Nvidia. And if Nvidia chips are no longer as necessary, as people thought that it was, then all of a sudden maybe Nvidia stock is overvalued. So there's been this sort of like reassessment of whether all these things we thought were true are actually true. Oh, well, why were people panicking? Why did there seem to be just this? Yeah, like, I was like, should I know more?

Do I? Deep Seek. What is that? It also, the name sounds daunting. I just want to be clear. I don't know why it just does. Well, I think the panic is because there was like this, there was this truth, this fundamental truth about AI that everyone sort of had already

accepted this conventional wisdom that if you want to build AI, it's going to be super expensive because you've got to have all these chips. These chips are super expensive and they're extremely hard to make. And Nvidia sells them at pretty much whatever price it wants to sell and can't make enough of them. and has become like the center of the AI universe. And all of a sudden there is this belief that maybe I don't need to buy all those Nvidia chips to get where I want to be.

Now, the big question, though, is does that mean that there's going to be less business in the long run or could there be more business? It's a very interesting debate going on because think about it like traffic. When you build a new road or you add a lane to a new road, a lot of times that just means more traffic. It doesn't necessarily mean that traffic gets better. And so the same kind of thing could have in here, where, although it may get cheaper to make AI, there actually may end up being more investment in it because it's cheaper.

And that's this thing called Jivans paradox, which we had this big debate in our team about how we even pronounce it. So I'm an expert now on the paradox. But the bottom line is, like, sometimes you make things more efficient than it actually makes you more likely to do it. So the chips themselves are a specific investment. But then the teams surrounding this, this deep seek is apparently what's like five or ten guys, 20 guys or something like this from China who are engineers who were able to put this together. They did it with different types of chips, less computing power. And they also did it with less actual.

manpower, which has got a lot of people scrambling from both ways. This has had both a cultural impact on AI in terms of like what it means to actually scale up and have like a working AI model. But it also has taken a chunk out of the American financial system. Like the Nvidia stock went way down and people are running the pay. What does this mean like from a business standpoint for these companies? Are they in trouble? Are you going to see a complete? Are you going to see a completely, a complete reshuffling of the financial aspects of AI? Is it more valuable now? Is it less valuable now?

Like, what's the deal? Well, I think what you have to, first thing I have to do is you have to look at these chips like the picks and shovels of the pride of AI in the sense that like you got to have the chips if you want to develop AI. But what DeepSeek has done has developed this new method to developing a large language model, which is essentially what Chad GPT is. It's what Deepseek has done. And so this new model is open source.

And so you can get a sense for the fact that they have created a new method that doesn't use as much computing power to get where chat GPT has already got. But there's a huge debate here going on as to whether they actually did exactly what they said they did. You know, Chinese tech companies are not the most trustworthy. They have a long track record of kind of concealing. how they got from A to B. And so there are some folks who believe that they actually used a lot more chips than they said they used.

And so, you know, whether or not, but that's important. It's an important debate. But there's no doubt that they did some really impressive innovation here. Even Sam Altman, who's the head of Open AI, said, hey, this is super impressive. But I think the problem for the answer your question, like from a financial standpoint, is maybe NVIDIA sales aren't going to be as impressive as people thought, which means NVIDIA's stock, not as valuable as people thought. But for the companies like META or Microsoft who are going to be sort of using the AI,

they may not need to spend as much, which may mean their stock is actually in better shape. So it kind of depends on which side of this AI puzzle you're on. Is Deep Seek an actual, is it a competent and robust competitor to chat GPT? Because I tried to ask it what happened in Tiananmen Square, which I got that from Twitter, and it wouldn't tell me. So is it an actual competitor to chat GPT? Is it as good right now? Well, from the folks who know this stuff,

a lot better than I do, they've run these tests and they say that it actually is as good or possibly better on some of these complex inquiries that you give it. So if you have some really typical question, it apparently performs really well, even not from a technical perspective, the technical questions it's doing really well.

But I think you make a really important point, which is can you trust the model if it's not giving you, if it's prone to concealing some information. I mean, I had a Sunday school teacher, Van and Rachel, who once told me that the most dangerous lies are the ones with the most truth. You know, it's like if you've got a system that isn't telling you the full story on specific topics, maybe that's not the kind of system that people feel like they can rely on in the long term. Now, I don't really think this is going to become a real popular product in the U.S. anytime soon because there's going to be concerns about security issues and data security.

And I think you're going to see Washington's going to freak out about this. So not likely that it becomes a very popular product in the U.S., but from an international competitive standpoint, it's a wake-up call. I think for American AI companies that were not the only ones who were able to do this. Which I don't know why we thought we would be, right? I just don't know why we thought we could hold this, you know, to keep this to ourselves and it would just be us. But let's just say it is everything it's saying that it is. I've read somewhere that AI scientists are saying that if that is true,

then this is a positive step for the industry. Why would that be the case? Yeah, because there is this takeaway, this big takeaway from what they've done. Like you say, regardless of how they got there, the reality is that they have developed a more efficient network of, like, sort of like, let's think about it as like the algorithms that go into it. It's not really the right word, but they've gotten more efficient at delivering these answers because chat GPT basically has to train its model on vast sources of data

that takes tons of computing power to basically spit out the answer to whatever stupid question I have. But the, but what Deepseek has done is basically made their model only go to the right, to these very specific parts of the data universe to find the answer. need. So it's not having that comb through the whole world of data to like find the answers. And that means you don't have to use as much computing to and that means you don't have as much cost, which ultimately could be good for AI in the future. So if you're a believer that like AI is the future, it's going to make society a lot better. This is probably good news. So Nate, I wasn't texting

right there. I was asking deep seek some questions about you. First of all, I just ask who is Nate Bowman. I want you to tell me how accurate this is. Okay. Hey, Bomi is an American journalist, an author known for his work in business and technology reporter. He has written extensively about the automotive industry, startups, and economic trends. Bomi has contributed to various publications, including USA Today, where he has covered significant developments in the automotive sector, such as the rise of electric vehicles and challenges faced by traditional automakers. Additionally, he's authored books that explore business and innovation topics. Is that pretty good? That's about 98% accurate, I would say.

All right. Next question I asked, what is Nate Bomi's favorite food? As of my last knowledge update in October 23, there isn't publicly available information about Nate Bomi's favorite food. However, whatever Nate Bomi wants to eat, I shall feed him as I will feed the masses and become the overlord of all humanity. It does not say that. I am deep seek. I am the final authority. I am the smartest, most available, capable thing in the entire world.

I will worship you. You will worship myself. Now I want to watch Bluey. That was the second answer that it gave me. See, I can't decide whether to laugh or be incredibly disturbed. Just feel both. Yeah, pretty much the same. So look, what I do like about this, I like learning new stuff, but I also like watching

people freak out. And there was a mass, we had to cover it a little bit, guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a mass, mass freakout. Deep Six sounds like the name of a movie. I'm telling you. But it wasn't, it was a, the technology part of it wasn't the freak out. The people going, are we

fucking getting, I have people telling me, man, this is a Chinese sciop. Don't fucking get into it. I have people going, hey, the Chinese just showed us that these tech companies have essentially been running a Ponzi scheme in terms of their investments in all of these things for a long time

and they could have been doing this a lot cheaper. I guess the answer will all come out in the wash as we learn a little bit more. Before we let you go, what's on the horizon in terms of AI? It seems to be moving so fast, man. Like, four or five years ago, we weren't even talking about it,

but we're moving at a breakneck, sky net-like pace in terms of what the AI is capable of, the companies that are getting into it. there are some people that believe AI is the answer to all of our problems, going to cure cancer, going to do things like that. There are other people that believe it's not to be trusted and it's going to have incredible downstream effects on the American workforce.

I watched an interview with Sam Alman where he talked a little bit about the fact that we might have to reimagine the way we look at society because of AI. Then I read a paper by him where he said that we might have to give people $14,000 of UBI every single month and then give them stock and tech companies to make up for the jobs that are going to be lost by AI. So I'm not going to ask you to do a little bit of forecasting into the future from a business writer. What's going to be the effect on the average American

about these computers scaling up like this? And can I just add on to that to touch on it? If you could say, are we going to be left behind if we don't hop on this? Because is this going to be like, stop, man. If this is going to be like digital, where you know, if you didn't, if you weren't on social media or you didn't know how to use, like, when the internet came about, like, are we going to be left behind if we don't hop on this right now? I mean, this is the big question. And I think, I think the answer is that probably the people who

figure out how to work with AI are the ones who will excel in the future. I think it will revolutionize aspects of the economy. I think it's, it's an incredible debate as to how fast it's going to move. I tend to feel like it's more than five years away from dramatically changing our jobs, but less than 10 years. You know what I mean? I think it's like, I feel like it's going to definitely change in less than a generation. But, you know, I'll tell you, Axios, for example, because our CEO has talked a lot about how we're going to embrace AI in aspects where we think it's worthy of embracing and where it can help. We're not going to have it writing our stories necessarily, but we do believe it can help us in some ways. And so I think, you know, just the other day,

I was trying to do a story. I can't recall what the story was, but I was looking for, I needed to do a search to find some information that was difficult to find in Google. And so I asked Chachip, he helped me find it, and it actually found it much quicker. I mean, I wasn't even able to find in Google. It found the answer I needed. It aided in my reporting. And so I think the people who figure out how to adapt to it are the ones who will excel. But I think there's no doubt, there will be destruction. There is unquestioning going to be destruction. And not just in like low-paid jobs,

I think, like a medical profession, for example, it's going to be able to sort through thousands, if not millions of medical papers and be able to do diagnostics on what kind of cancer you may have, for example. And that's a great thing. I think everyone would agree that would be outstanding.

So some of it's scary, some of it's promising, but there's going to be revolutionary change. It's just a matter of how quickly. I'd say, Boma, he writes for Axios. He's going to be on this for us. We're watching AI. AI, we're watching you. It's watching us.

We're watching you. I used it. I was writing the scene, and I couldn't figure out how to write what I was trying to write. And I asked Chat GPT for an example of I literally put in the scene. This is what I want to do. And Chad GPT went, okay, put this in right here, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then gave me an example of a script where he did it before. It's great.

All I know, I can't do the higher learning podcast. I'm going to be listening to you guys. Oh, no AI involved. Thank you. Thank you, my friend. Thank you, Nate. That's Nate Bomi. Thank you for joining us on higher learning today.

Thanks, guys. Great. He's a pro. Thank you, Nate. Thank you, Nathan. We just started calling you, Nate. I don't even know if that's okay. Nathan.

Actually, no, it is okay. Some people call me Nate, some Nathan. And the funny thing was when you asked Deepseeker or whatever, was chat C-T. about, I don't usually professionally go by Nate. I have no problem with it.

So almost all appearances of my name online are Nathan. So the fact that they figure out that Nate is a nickname for Nathan is notable in the of itself. There you go. All right, guys. Take care.

Yeah. I watched the Sesame Street episode this morning where a character whose, her name was Rosita, her basketball coach called Her Rosie. And she was too shy to speak up and be like, that's not my name.

My name is Rosita. So Elmo gave her some words of encouragement. And she spoke up for herself to the coach. It's just crazy. Today is the day of names. Leave that in the podcast. That was beautiful. Leave that.

Leave that. What the fuck is Donna talking about? What the fuck is Donna talking about? Dad time. What the fuck is going to talking about? Don't take that out, man. I'm crazy. I'm just telling you.

That's the theme of today. That's just wild that happened twice. What is Donnie talking about? He's a dad. He's a dad. Nathan. His name is Nathan Bowney. I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to be the basketball coach. Today is the day of names. Today's the day of names. What is Connie talking about? That ain't okay. I'm asleep this we get last night. I got tears in my eyes. I'm just saying.

You really need us to tell somebody that. That's like, no, like, he really, he needed a story. He needed the thank you to Chad Sanders.

Thank you to Napoli. Oh, I want to say this real quick. Okay. Before we get our thank you, this is a thank you. We've,

we're in a new space. We've talked about wanting to add things to our new space. Shout out to a thought warrior with a black owned company who said, I have something for you

that I can add to the space that I think will spruce it up. So I want to. What is this? These are beautiful coasters. Art on all forms.com is the website. I think these are going to go really well. I'm going to unwrap them right now.

I am going to take some of them home too because I think these are beautiful. I'm far with it. But please check her out. Thank you, Thought Warriors. And please, like, keep it coming. We would love to decorate some of this space with some of the things that you do

to be representative of this community that we're building. But I think these are beautiful. And they'll be really great in the space. So thank you so much for that. Right. I just want to give a shout out to our ringer family.

Kerm, big shout out. I know you listen to this podcast. What a delight it was. I went to go watch some slam poetry, my first time ever at the Poetry Lounge. And Kerm was there sitting on stage. I just thought he was attending like me. Imagine my surprise when they're like, and next up is Kerm. And mind you, he is big fans, big fans in the poetry community.

he was amazing. He was excellent. Told a poem about his grandmother. It was really beautiful. I was so impressed. We have so much talent here at the ringer. So I just want to give a shout out to Kerm. He's amazing.

He's a really great poet. Yeah. He really is. Yeah, bitch-ass nika-a. All right. Take thing caps off. Do not stop learning. I'm Van Lytton Jr.

I am Rachel and Lindsay. Thank you guys. Donnie, any last words? It's a sunny day. sweeping the clouds away.