Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay - Empathy, Sympathy, and Charlie Kirk. Plus, Erika Alexander and the Legacy of ‘Living Single.’

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Van and Rachel start by discussing the legal and cultural fallout from the killing of Charlie Kirk. Then they welcome actress Erika Alexander to talk about Apple TV+’s ‘Invasion’ and look back on her role as Maxine in ‘Living Single.’ (0:00)  Intro (1:02)  Fallout from Charlie Kirk’s shooting (36:46)  Brian Kilmeade on homeless: “Just kill ‘em” (54:05)  Van’s basketball tangent  (58:42)  ‘The Gilded Age’ (1:01:22)  Erika Alexander joins the show (1:55:21)  AI influencer? Hosts: Van Lathan Jr. and Rachel Lindsay Guest: Erika Alexander Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith Video Supervision: Chris Thomas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, yeah, no, Thought Wars. What is up? Howe Learning is on is I. Van Lankton Jr. And it's me, Rachel and Lindsay. Erica Alexander coming up on the show later on. Erica Alexander is going to be on the show. You guys, we're fantastic interview with Erica Alexander. Love her.

Amazing. She's got all kinds of stuff she's working on right now. She's got a new show on NBC. She's doing a show, Invasion. She's coming off of American Fiction. We talked about the fact that she has a production company that's producing all of this stuff. California Media. And she has a show.

reliving single, which is a living single rewatch podcast. She's doing so much taking advantage of this career renaissance. We'll talk to her about that. We'll talk to her a lot of stuff. You guys, YouTube, like, comment, comment, subscribe, share. Even if you're

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there is we are still in the throes of the country and the nation's reaction to the shooting of Charlie Kirk there's a lot of stuff that we didn't know when we recorded on Thursday that we know now the shooter has been apprehended

I don't think we knew that when Thursday I don't think the shooter had been apprehended yet when we talked um no the shooter had not been apprehended No, no, no, no. The shooter is 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. He is from Utah.

As much as we know about the shooter of Charlie Kirk, there are still things that are being volleyballed around. Very much so, particularly about him. About him. Ideology. Why he did this, there was, there seemed to be evidence or it was positioned as if there were evidence. The media has been putrid on this issue. putrid. So is the FBI.

The FBI has been putrid. So is the governor of Utah. The media has been putrid on this in terms of shame on the Wall Street Journal. And to me, and the way they went about their reporting and all of that stuff, shame on it. But the media has been putrid on this.

The governor of Utah did all the Sunday shows yesterday. It was everywhere. And he was talking about what he believed that he knew about Tyler Robinson, about his worldview, about motive as to why he would have done this, and just about Tyler Robinson himself. Did you learn anything? Well, you learned something,

but what you have to understand is what we were learning was really based on speculation and assumptions and opinion from the governor of Utah. It was not based on any actual proof, because the reality is that Tyler Robinson is not cooperating with authorities. They don't know his motive. They don't know the reasoning behind what happened. They have a suspect in custody.

He will be appear in court on Tuesday. And then I think from there, they're hoping that they can learn some more. But right now, this is all gathering of information of talking to friends, from the little social media behavior that we do know from talking to family, but nothing from the actual suspect. And so what the governor of Utah is doing is extremely dangerous because he is going off of what he thinks to be true without actually any proof or evidence. He's going off of what friends or people that have been interviewed are saying. Right. But he's cherry picking, right? Because there are also a number of friends, former maybe people who went to school with him, neighbors, who also say, that they didn't see anything like this from him. They didn't think that he was capable of doing something like this.

They knew him as a quiet intellectual person. And I'm not saying one's true or the other. What I'm saying is is that when he is presenting this to the media as he is doing his tour, he is cherry picking what it is that he is presenting to fit a particular narrative. Because let's not also forget, because we didn't get to cover this the last time we talked. This is also the man who stood in front of the media, the public, and said that he was praying for the suspect to not be one of them.

He particularly said what he didn't want this person to be. And now the things that he is saying fit the narrative of what he did want the person to be. So you have to put those two together. We're in a wait-and-see mode as it relates to Tyler Robinson. There will be more information that comes out about Tyler Robinson. Apparently his father recognized the picture of him. He confessed to his father. and then he said he would rather kill himself, then turn himself in,

and a family friend contacted authorities. There haven't been that many details that have come out, but we do know that about the shooter. Cash Patel and the FBI have come under the scrutiny because it looks like they completely bungled the response to this and have a clue what the fuck they were doing. And without the confession and the turning in of Tyler Robinson himself, who knows when they would have caught up to him or caught him or whatever that's going on.

There's also been a cultural response to this. We have seen across sports and some in pop culture, memorials for Charlie Kirk, sports teams, memorials for Charlie Kirk, flags flying at half staff, all that type of stuff. Then there's also been really, direct attack on speech following this where some of the powers that be are compiling lists of people who might say things that are unflattering or critical of Charlie Kirk and then turning people in to their jobs or whatever and we're seeing people specifically saying we're going to

crack down on speech that criticizes or celebrates criticizes Charlie Kirk or could be seen as celebrating his death. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what I was expecting when we did our podcast and, you know, it was released and then put certain clips on social media. I think I, I kind of thought that I had cleansed my audience after the Chris Harrison situation. And people, there was never a question after that to where I stood or who I am or even. just being a part of higher learning of what it is that I represent. So I should have been shocked, I guess, at the cultural response or whatever you want to call it to me expressing my thoughts about the situation. But yet there was, even more than when I talked about the last podcast

of what people were demanding, what people were demanding people calling me, well, they were calling me out of my name before, but calling me saying that I wasn't really a Christian, how dare I, I present myself to be saying that I wasn't being sympathetic because we don't use the word empathetic, apparently. And we can get into that. Who? What? What happened? Well, the clip that I posted on my social media was about empathy. And Charlie Kirk's quote and about him saying that he doesn't believe in empathy. And I called it subjective empathy and even selective empathy. And you and I had a detailed conversation on that. And a lot of people were in my comments saying, how dare you, you're part

of the problem, you're cherry picking. If you're going to use his quote, use the entire quote. And I'm paraphrasing here, but the entire quote was that he didn't believe in empathy. He believed in sympathy. And I still stand by everything that I said. All right? And they're like, he said he didn't believe in empathy because he said it had been politicized or something like that, but he believed in sympathy. So how dare you make him seem like he's this evil person because he didn't have empathy? I still stand by those same things. I think it's interesting when you don't want to recognize what empathy is, but you do want to recognize sympathy. Sympathy requires you to feel sorry for something, something or some person,

and it allows you to have pity for them. That is totally different from empathy. Empathy goes to another level. It requires. something deeper, something more, something more compassionate, some more understanding. Sympathy, yeah, you feel sorry and you pity, but I could, of course, I believe he agreed in that because he said that the people who say things that we stand for on this podcast or, you know, who complain about certain things, he said we had victimhood culture. And he pitied us for that. There is a difference to have empathy goes the extra mile. It is something Christ-like or Jesus Christ would do since, you know, Charlie Kirk said he was a Christian.

That's another level. It's deeper than that. And he didn't want to have that or want to encourage people to have that so he could further his agenda and his beliefs. I think it's very important for people to remember that, yes, maybe Charlie Kirk grew up as a Christian. but when Charlie Kirk started his turning point and the agenda that he was pushing, he did not place politics and religion together. Matter of fact, he argued that they should be separate. He argued for the separation of church and state.

He felt like religion had no place in politics. He did what you see several people doing now on the far right. He saw the benefit in combining the two and playing into a cult-like, culture and when you put those two together and then you're able to use Christianity as, I guess, your weapon and hide behind it to further your agenda, mixing politics and religion is a very powerful force. You saw Trump do that. You see other politicians do that as well. And so I think it's important to remember he didn't always have this. He saw the benefit in doing it and look at where we are right now. People are, as we said last podcast, whitewashing the things that he believed in

order to further their eugenia, to politicize their eugenia, to hide under Christianity, because they were trying to push something else forward. So I got a little off in what it is that I was trying to say, but I think all that kind of plays into the response that I'm seeing people have in regards to Charlie Kirk and not allowing people to say, hey, I do condemn political violence and gun violence. I do condemn the public killing in a gruesome way, but I'm also not going to ignore that the rhetoric and the actions that someone had that were harmful to me and so many other people of marginalized groups because he was a Christian. To Rachel's followers, who you seem to be in a battle with, you know, I don't know why they're

still there. Yeah. To Rachel's followers, this is a different. between sympathy and empathy as far as I'm concerned. Sympathy is feeling bad for someone when something bad happens to them. Empathy is not wanting something bad to happen to them. Empathy is saying I look at your situation and I connect myself to your situation. So the way that you are feeling, nothing bad has happened. But I empathize with you as a person. So something bad happening to you would feel like something bad bad.

happening to me. So because I recognize that you're in that position, let's talk about how something bad doesn't happen to keyword here, us. Empathy is us. Okay. So unifying feeling of common humanism. That's what it is. So if you are saying I sympathize with someone, but I can't empathize with them. you're saying, I feel bad for the losers. Like, there are two teams, and the two teams are, you know, competing. You lose, I feel bad for you. If there is empathy, there is one team. There's one team, the human being team.

And that means what you feel, I feel, and in that, create solidarity. I hope that helps you guys, because the reality of the situation is, It's a completely different thing. So I don't know why you guys are following Rachel and giving her so much grief. But it's a totally different thing. It's a totally different thing. The reaction to Charlie Kirk and everything is really interesting to me for a couple of reasons. An opinion columnist for the Washington Post says she was fired.

Her name is Karen Atia. Atea? She wrote on a substacked that she was fired. She's several several social media posts made in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death

that expressed antipathy towards political violence and frustration with the lack of effort to curb gun violence. And then there was another response. I saw these guys in Huntington Beach. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And they were walking around, what are you saying? Like white men like white man will fight back yeah it was like a white is right kind of thing I don't remember what they were saying Donnie what were they saying? What are the guys

to be saying white man will fight back let's hear for ourselves let's hear what they were saying white man fight back go get a gun Brad go get a gun right go get a gun right they fight back

who's our streets who streets our streets white men fight back okay so I want to I want to say two things here number one political assassination in America is a white phenomenon. I'll give you guys a list. Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, Franklin,

Delano Roosevelt, that's attempted. John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X. Martin Luther King, Jr. Robert F. Kennedy, Harvey Milk, John Lennon, Ronald Reagan, Gianni Versace, Gabri Gifford. If you look at all of these, these are the people who commit those assassinations. John Willispoof, Charles Gatot

Leon Chalgays Sogays That's what he said It wasn't Yeah I remember me Harry Archerid Giuseppe Zangera

Lee Harvey Alswald Members of the nation of Islam Were arrested for the assassination of Malcolm X However There has been A lot of evidence

Guys we know who killed Malcolm X Right Okay. All right. James Earl Ray, Sirhan, Sahan, Dan White, Mark David Chapman,

John Hinckley Jr., Andrew Kannon, Jared Lee Woffner. If you guys are mad about political assassination of figures, you're not mad at black people. You're not mad at them

because that's not what we do. We have not, right now, or ever been the people in America that execute political assassinations of figures, even the figures with the most vile rhetoric towards black people. We didn't shoot them. We did not shoot them.

And we didn't shoot them last week either. When this news broke, the profile of the shooter being a young white male or a white male with some type of mental, mental illness. issue or that had been radicalized. That was the easiest money on Fanduil that you could get. You were hitting with that bet. And that's a fact. And let me tell you why that's important to say. When you talk about race massacres

or racial violence in the United States, I think a lot of people think that there was a time or a point where they just went in and destroyed and massacred all of these black people. And that's what they did. That is what they did. They did. That's what they did.

But there was always misinformation and disinformation that went into it. Like these gentlemen who are marching up and down the street in Huntington Beach or other people who are using this to crack down. on people's free speech, it's misinformation and disinformation that they are going to use to do something that they always wanted to do or instinctively do, no matter what,

which is terrify and terrorize black people and other marginalized groups and roll their rights back. I want to let people know this. Race massacres. Okay. And I'm going to connect them to false accusations slash disinformation and misinformation that is a part of them.

Just so you guys know, there's always a story of why it has to happen. Always a story of why. 1866 Memphis, the Memphis massacre. There were rumors that black union soldiers were attacking whites after a civil war. 46 black people killed, 90 wounded. 1898, Wilmington, North Carolina, propaganda claiming black political leaders were corrupt and black men were a threat to white women. White supremacists coup

dozens to hundreds of black residents killed government overthrown. 1906, Atlanta, Georgia. The newspaper printed false reports of black men raping white women. White mobs killed 25 to 40 black people, injured hundreds and destroyed businesses. 1919, Arkansas,

lie that black sharecroppers met to form a union and were plotting to murder whites. 100 to 200 black people killed by mobs and U.S. troops. 1919, Washington, D.C. False reports of black men attacking white women, white mobs, including servicemen, rampaged, dozens of black residents killed or injured.

1919, Chicago, racial tension sparked by rumors and false blame after a black teenager swam in a whites-only beach area and was killed. 38 debt, 500-plus injured, 1,000 black families left homeless. 21, Tulsa, you've heard of this one. A black teenager, Dick Rowland, falsely accused of assaulting a white female elevator operator. 100 to 300 black people killed, 35 blocks of Greenwood, black Wall Street destroyed. They firebombed it from the sky. Boom.

1923, Rosewood, Florida. White women falsely accused a black man of assaulting her. They killed up a bunch of black people. What I'm telling you is the reason why. it is important that the information on this is accurate and that the culture of this is properly contextualized is because the misinformation and the disinformation will be used to do two things.

Number one, it will give these guys, guys like the guys in Huntington Beach, who already, already have the want and the need to rampage through the streets and hurt black people a reason to do so, and they will use that reason. Another thing that will happen is, because of this, there will be a power grab, a power grab by people who already wanted to sideline your speech.

They already wanted to tell you what you couldn't say. They already wanted to be able to manicure your speech, and they had already been doing it. They have been manicuring your speech and trying to get you kicked out of school if you didn't agree what Israel is doing. They have been manicuring your speech, your speech and trying to get you kicked out of school if you were talking about the historical

conditions of black people vis-a-vis CRT. They've been trying, they've been, they've been, they've been manicuring speech by getting rid of black professors and other people at all of these institutions that were looking into and culturally contextualizing black people's place. They'd already been manicuring speech. They have been manicuring speech. They've been manicuring thought. So what happened last week and a political assassination, something that black people, black culture in this country has never been connected to, ever, for that to be used to inspire retribution from white people, white groups is laughable. Now, this isn't me saying, hey, man, we didn't do it.

It's me telling you that we see this. we see you we see it question is what now and that's the part of it to be honest with you guys i'm not quite sure about the question is what now the question is what now the playbook is coming the elected leaders everyone everybody is a part of this what's going to happen now is actually talking about who charlie kirk was his ideas his rhetoric and all of that stuff. That's going to be revolutionary action because

we cannot have it right now where someone that we had this type of fundamental tension with. I'm not talking about disagreeing. If you say that black women prominent black women aren't smart enough, we don't have

a disagreement. That's not what that is. It's not a disagreement. It's not a disagreement. It's not We don't disagree. I'm not fucking disagreeing with you on whether fucking Katanji Brown Jackson is smart. I'm not disagreeing with you on that. That's not a disagreement.

We're not having a disagreement. That's not what we doing. I'm telling you you're fucking wrong is what we're doing. And you were wrong last week before it happened to you and you're fucking wrong this week now that you're gone. And that's it. Ain't no more to it.

No way around it. That's what's happening. So everybody be brave. Everybody be in solidarity and everybody being together because I'm not fucking getting lied to this time. Fuck all that. Fuck it.

We're going to tell the truth and we're going to live in the truth and we're going to continue to tell the truth no matter whose fucking feelings get hurt. Because you don't give a fuck about our feelings when the shit happens. You only fucking care. Nigger gets shot.

Fucking carrying skittles. with a hoodie you don't give a fuck about how we feel about that nigga you get a fucking knee on his neck for eight minutes and 41 seconds you wouldn't part of the killer you don't give a fuck about that I don't fucking care

fuck it now how about that fuck it yeah when you talk about it's interesting not interesting I mean everything you're saying is right and that's one of the many problems in what's happening right now

and the way people are looking at Charlie Kirk because everybody wants to say he was just a debater. He was just a debater. Not everybody, but the people who were pro Charlie Kirk. He was just a debater and he opened up conversation for everybody to talk to. No, that's not what he was. It was everything that Van was just saying. That's not what he was. It was hateful. It was racist. It was misogynistic. It was xenophobic. It was homophobic. It was all these things. It wasn't just that. And not only was he not just a debater. He wasn't somebody who just challenged ideas and thought. This is a person who was fully infiltrated with the Trump administration in his inner circle and was aligning these thoughts,

this agenda, this rhetoric with politics. The two are not separate. He was not somebody just on the internet talking. He was infiltrated into the government. We were actually seeing the things that he wanted placed into policy. Those thoughts, those beliefs were in politics. are in policy and continue to go further and continue to move further and what you were saying about the questions like where do we go from here and stuff it's really interesting for the people who are just saying he was a good person and he was a Christian you were doing exactly what biblically you're not supposed to you are idolizing a person instead of wondering how we got here if you really have this love for charlie kirk you should be outraged

that something like this can happen in our country. That's where your anger should be directed, not at a person who doesn't feel the same way about Charlie Kirk as you. You should be outraged that your beloved person was able to be killed in this country in this way. And instead of wondering how we got here and looking at the problem with social media

and how it's not really social, instead of looking at mental health issues, instead of looking at gun violence in this country, instead of looking at political violence in this country, instead of even looking at the male loneliness epidemic, you're not looking at those things. You're going after particular certain people who don't love him in the way that you did. And this is also what our government should be addressing. If the government loved Charlie Kirk in the way that they are portraying themselves to be, that's what they should be focused on.

They should be focused on policy that combats all the things that I just named. But instead, what are they doing? They are enjoying this because it is going to further divide this country and further emboldened people to get the things that they want to happen in this society. J.D. Vance should be working on policy, not hosting Charlie Kirk's show today. There should be, not be people shouldn't be debating whether or not there should be a statue of Charlie Kirk put up like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We shouldn't be looking at what teams had a moment of silence and whatnot. There shouldn't be a hit list of people using free speech to voice the way that they felt about Charlie Kirk and the things that he did that were problematic to them as beings in this society. That's not what we should be doing.

And instead, it is. So if you really cared about Charlie Kirk and his message of Christianity, you would be concerned about how. your beloved person was able to be killed in a public way in this country? I'm not going to celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk, and I'll tell you why I'm not going to celebrate it. No, we're not doing that. I'll tell you why I'm not going to celebrate it. I want to tell you guys something real quick.

Talk to you guys. I started using the N-word. We're going to talk about... You've already used it. Alexander later on a while I shouldn't do that. She already talked to us. I'll tell you guys why I'm not going to celebrate the death. of Charlie Kirk.

Two reasons. One, I told you guys already, you guys can live with it or not. Image was terrible. Image was terrible. I saw it and I was, oh my God, that's terrible. Image was terrible.

This is who I am. Human person, not celebrating that. Image was terrible. I'll tell you something else. There's another reason why. More direct reason why. We've seen terrible things happen when there's like a terrorist attack

or something like that. But then there's something that happens right after the terrorist attack. Normally. Is the group responsible for it? Does what, Donnie? Make an announcement? They take responsibility for it. Why?

People might be asking, why does the group take responsibility for it? Lots of different reasons. One reason is because whatever conversation that they hope to start with the terrorist attack, they want to know who's starting that conversation. two is that there are many terrorist organizations and they want people to know who did it because they might think somebody else did three for politics for branding

all that stuff also down the line there is wanting to make sure that people understand who did it because of the ramifications of the terrorist attack where it's going to go where the resources are going to go in retaliation from whatever group is going to retaliate. Why am I talking about this? I'm talking about this because I personally think celebrating his death is taking energetic responsibility for something that we don't do and didn't have

anything to do with. I'm not taking any energetic responsibility for that. I didn't do that. Culturally, we didn't do that. We don't really do that. So I'm not taking responsibility for that. I'm not taking responsibility for it. They have nothing to do with it. Okay. That's a fact. That's true. However, in the wake of all the deaths that we just talked about, whomever it is, Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, George Floyd, do you know what happened? There was an investigation into the lives of these human beings that were murdered by the state, were murdered by people that were gone crazy with their privilege and supremacy. And these people went through these people's lives and tried to tell us every wrong thing that they did.

There's a reason why they did that. They did it because what they were trying to say is no big deal. No big deal. We're better off. This guy is the guy that might have robbed you. This is the person that might have grown up. to become something terrible, look at the mistake that they made that cost in their lives. I'm not even saying that in this.

What I'm saying is, I am going to be honest and will continue to be honest about things that this gentleman said, non-negotiable. I'm going to be honest about them. And I'm going to be honest about the fact that people say things like this all the time. and we are forced to contend with these things as just political ideas. It's just a political idea that if your pilot is black, your plane might crash. It's just a political idea. It's not an idea that actually reinforces the religion of white male orthodoxy in this country, which is the operating system of American supremacy.

It's not actually an idea that means, hey, you know what? If a black person is doing anything anywhere, that means you're less safe. If a black person is exalted or elected, that means that there's dysfunction. It's not saying that the only people that are capable of running this country are the straight white males that begrudgingly took your chains off. I'm not doing it. I'm too old. I've lost too many. It's not happening.

So we're going to talk like people that have empathy, like people that care about the human condition, but we are not going to be willfully dumb for the sake of your fucking society. We're not. We're not going to pretend like we don't know. We're not doing that here. And I hope to God that wherever you are, however you are listening,

that you don't do it either. but I'm telling you they will come for you. They've always wanted to control what you've said. They've always wanted to monitor and press buttons to get you to do what they wanted you to do. The algorithm is part of that. We're not even talking about that. We're not even talking about the fact that the algorithm

that has now infected our brains is making us look at this as actually not a person that was killed, but a meme. That's what I'm saying. Shout out to like shout out to Saugger and Crystal on breaking points. I love breaking points by the way

who just talked about the fact that we're meming each other, we're memed up. So now we have to all of that, all of that. But the base understanding that I'm trying to get to people is now once again the truth in this situation

will become a revolutionary act. You do not have to like what Charlie Kirk said to be a good person. Say again, you do not have to like what Charlie Kirk said to be a good person. Say again, you do not have to like or condone what Charlie Kirk said when he was alive to be a good person. That's it. But might cost you your job. And the fact that it can is the conversation that we're having. the fact that it can is what we're talking about

the fact that that could that telling the truth about someone who had said these types of things that that could cost you a job is why we feel the way that we feel that's the reason why because we know man we know the most frustrating thing

is y'all think we don't know we know we know we know you ain't fool nobody we know. Now where we go from here? I don't know. We'll learn more about the shooter. We'll learn more about

the circumstances of surrounding this. But when I tell you right now is the misinformation and disinformation campaign is beginning. And it is forming around people who never thought you had a place in this society

in the first place. They're firming it up and they're getting to it. And for anyone else that feels like they're in a position or where, you know, they've been watched or looked at, whatever, you got a place with me, I'm with you, I'm fucking with you, I have empathy with you for you. I have empathy for anyone who's horrified by what they saw. I have empathy for people that want to be able to say, hey, that was wrong and don't

feel like they can say that to their group of people. I'm with all of y'all. But when we talk and have these conversations, we're going to have them in truth because I'm too old for the fucking lies. We're going to take a break. 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 a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those WeatherTech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need WeatherTech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. Did you know about one and 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. Trimfaya, guselcomab taken by injection is a prescription medicine for adults with moderate to severe plaques psoriasis, who may benefit from taking injections or pills or phototherapy, and for adults with active psoriotic arthritis. Serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections and liver problems may occur. Before a treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or if you need a vaccine.

Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimphaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimphia, including important safety information. Apology rating time. Rachel's time. Brian Kill Meade from Fox If you guys ever watch Fox and Friends

It is a show where They are on Fox and they are Friends of some sort They're friendly to each other But not necessarily to others Donnie do you have the Video and audio Of what Brian Kilmead from Fox and Friends

Said regarding homeless people They were talking about Homeless people getting help And whether or not they should have to get help And Brian Kilmeet he had an idea about this. He's kind of like the main guy on Fox and Friends. Is he not?

Would you got to say that? Is Brian Kilmeet the main guy on Fox and Friends? I guess he is. He's the guy that's been there for the longest. They got the black guy on there now. What's his name? What's the black guy on Fox and Friends? You don't know.

Donnie, play what Brian Kilmeet said about the homeless on Fox and Friends, please. Billions of dollars to mental health and the homeless population. A lot of them don't want to take the programs. A lot of them don't want to get the help there that is necessary. You can't give them a choice. Either you take the resources that we're going to give you or you decide that you're going to be locked up in jail.

That's the way it has to be now. Or involuntary lethal injection or something. I just kill them. Brian, why did it have to get to this point? Right. I would say this. We're not voting for the right people. In North Carolina, wake up.

All right, so two things there. Brian Kulme actually did the black dude a solid because the black guy was like just throw them all in jail. And had Brian Kilmey not doubled down, it's like we probably would be talking about the other brother who said just rounding people up and toss him in jail. So he actually owes Brian Kilmeet, I feel like, to me. I mean, look, it happens.

Like, he owes Brian Kilmeet. Because we are talking about the fact that Brian Kilmead said something super, like absurdly ridiculous. Yep. And then humane. And after somebody said something, just violently inhumane. He said something inhumane too, is all I'm saying.

Yeah, no, he absolutely did. But you're right. I mean, Brian, what Brian said was far worse. Called for killing. So let's sit within a second before we get to the apology. Obviously, there was outrage. But I want you guys to think about something. I want you to think about a homeless person sitting somewhere on the street.

and authority of some sort just actually let's do this before we just start getting into all of these different things and these scenarios that people say let's actually play them out in our minds let's not just take them as words and stuff so Brian Kill Me basically said

that there should be cops or some types of officials that roam around the streets with lethal injection pumps and vials. and they see a homeless person and then they murder them or that the homeless people should be rounded up and all brought to a facility where they are killed. They're killed.

They're human beings and then they're killed. Think about that for a second. Think about what that looks like. And then obviously people got upset with Brian Kilmeet and then he did this. In the morning we were discussing the murder of Arena Saruska and Shaw in North Carolina. How to stop these kinds of attacks by,

homeless mentally ill assailants, including institutionalizing or jailing such people so they cannot attack again. Now, during that discussion, I wrongly said they should get lethal injections. I apologize for that extremely callous remark. I'm obviously aware that not all mentally ill homeless people act as the perpetrator did in North Carolina and that so many homeless people deserve our empathy and compassion. That's his apology, Rach, Rach, you got it. I mean, I think this one is clearly a zero. Less if I actually could. I mean, Brian Kilme had a nurse on the show who got suspended from her job for questioning, I guess, a doctor about him making a comment about Charlie Kirk and, you know, I don't know exactly what was said because it's hearsay, but allegedly

he was dismissing the death of Charlie Kirk. Both were suspended. So, that you have a problem with, but you can call for the death of homeless people who you clearly don't look at as people as human beings. You see them as something that should be dismissed and disposed of and just round it up as if they're nothing and they should be injected. But you want to get mad over what this doctor said about Charlie Kirk's words and actions. And I'm not saying, you know, people should celebrate the death of anybody. My point is, the hypocrisy in it all. So I look at this apology and I'm like, I mean, I look at

this apology and I'm like, this means absolutely nothing. Of course he's also no stranger to making very offensive, inappropriate, crazy remarks on his show that, you know, basically look at certain groups of human beings as if they're not

on the level of him, as if they're not actually human beings. So this apology means nothing and it's crazy to me also that you sat down with this nurse and had her on and basically was saying that you know the doctor should lose his job but you get to keep your job when you call for the killing of groups of people who you don't look at as human beings

you know what he lacks empathy empathy it's interesting it's interesting it's interesting to think about something I think the reason why the right has is still allowed to set the moral parameters of U.S. societies because they've always kind of done that. They were for a long time the party, at least that talked about, you know, the moral majority, the Christian, right, all of that stuff. And so they still get to tell you when you're doing bad.

They get to smack you on your hand, hit you with the ruler. tell you you're subhuman, you're inhuman, you're all of that stuff. They still get to do that. When they've obviously given up the moral high ground, if they ever had it, which they never did, they used to, I think it's that they used to pretend like they had it. They used to pretend like they had the moral high ground.

They used to pretend like they do that. Like, for example, they made abortion a moral issue. And for a long time, they were like, well, we, I hate abortion because we don't want, the killing of innocent unborn children. And then you say, okay, well, let's say a nine-year-old gets raped by her uncle. And then they go, well, she's got to have that baby. And I'm like, so we got to a point to where there was enough information we had done the scouting report

so we realized that they were no longer the, they couldn't even claim to be the people that were looking at the rest of the country and more. morally judging them and I guess holding themselves up as the moral arbiters of America. But they still do it and it's still effective and we still react to it. They still do it. They still are able to get people on the left to capitulate to their idea of what moral is. Because they have, I guess people on the left, their backs against the wall where they're defending. Yeah, their own, like morality, I guess.

Because the way the right does it is they hide behind Christianity. We've seen it on fire since the killing of Charlie Kirk. They hide behind Christianity to further whatever agenda that they have that is not moral, that is not rooted in religion. That is political. That is, you know, how they view humanity, whatever it may be, they hide behind religion. And they weaponize it in order to further something else. And then you have leftists with their back, or people, I guess, liberal, with their backs against the wall saying, well, I am, I do value humanity. I am a moral person.

And so you're so busy trying to defend that that, like, yeah, then it gives them an advantage, I guess, when it comes to the argument of that all over my social media today or these past few days. Christianity is ruined society. well it's been yeah it's been ruining society Christianity is ruining society I'll tell you this love of Jesus is not ruining society love of God the actual adherence to any degree

of what Jesus Christ actually said there's no way that could ruin society it couldn't it's impossible it's right it's all right there in the teachings of Jesus Christ it's all right there any peace loving

humanistic figure from the past if you listen to what they say the blueprint to a place where you know the least of us

is as important as the perceived most of us it's all right there but that's been destroyed it's gone I'm really sick of acting like it's there in any shred like in any way it's gone it's done

it's done and by the way to the Christians out there that say this is not indicative of all Christianity you're losing you're losing you're losing to them so I don't want to hear it no more well they're losing they've lost I don't I don't want to hear it no more get your house in order I'm telling you right now, the teachings of the Bible that I grew up with, I still believe in, and I hold them close to my heart. And they are the reason why, for me, I look at the world the way that I do.

That's the reason why. That's kind of the first thing that taught me and told me empathy. But for everybody else out there, just to let you know, the bad guys have won. You guys are getting your ass kicked by the people that are weapon. scripture and religion to oppress people. And I'm not a member of the church. I'm a spiritual and religious person, but I'm telling you to fix your shit.

The thing that gets me about the whole Christian, I mean, there are a lot of things in the way that people are using Christianity, specifically when it comes to this, is, I mean, I said selective empathy on the last podcast. I'll say selective Christianity. It baffles my mind, and I've seen this multiple times, even when I went through shit with The Bachelor. For some reason, you can apply Christianity and grace and understanding and sympathy and compassion and whatever words you want to use other than empathy towards the Christian you like, the Christian you approve of.

But then somehow you can't flip and give me or someone who you disagree with that same. grace and understanding and compassion and that Jesus Christ would. That's like it's just right there. How does it work for this person that you like or you agree with? But it doesn't work for this person. Yet you demand that I, who doesn't agree with something, do that same thing that you are incapable of doing. I don't understand how people can't see the hypocrisy. I don't understand. And I saw somebody say something like this. you, the audacity of people telling me what I should do for somebody that you revered versus you not also saying, well, let me try to understand what she may be feeling. You feel that way, so you are demanding that I feel that way without even trying to hear or listen

as to why I may feel this way. With the willful ignorance, the blatant, you know, ignoring of what the other side may be saying, You're agreeing on the same thing, right? Because what the left is doing is, and I'm not saying everybody is this, but majority of people are condemning the killing. But yet you ignore that because they're also talking about what this person also represented. We're not allowed to say that. We're only allowed to do one thing. But you're allowed to do that.

That's what keeps getting me. It's okay when you do it, but it's a problem when we do it. Yeah. I mean, look, I think everybody owes it to themselves just to tell the truth to themselves and to everyone else. Like, when I say the truth, I mean, just kind of call it how it is that you actually see it. It's funny. It's actually, it's not funny. But I still see a lot of people who want people to think that they are a good. person. That's a weakness. It's a weakness to want somebody else to think that you're a good person. It's a weakness. It's, it's, it allows you to be manipulated by them. They, they get to define how good you are and you care about that definition. You don't owe anyone, you don't owe anyone,

anyone, anyone, anyone. You, you owe it to yourself to be bigger than somebody's perception of you. look at the world, look at yourself, your place in the world, and ask yourself questions about what you think is fair and what you think is right. And have conversations with people where you hear their perspectives about their lives, what they're going through, and how they're making it day to day. And take those perspectives into consideration when you make your decisions about how you look at the day. the world. But if you don't agree, if you do not agree, if you say something and you can't get with them on that, that's what it is. And if they think you're a bad person because of that, fuck it. I think if you also care whether or not somebody thinks you're good, then it really taints the goodness that you're trying to do, right? If I'm doing something because I care what

somebody else thinks about what I'm doing, then that undercuts the good, right? Because if I'm doing something that I think is good, I'm doing it because I believe in it. I want to see it through whatever it is that I'm doing. It means something to me. I'm not doing it because I'm seeking approval because if you are, then you're not doing something that's good. You're doing it to get recognition or to be whatever, please somebody else. Like it has to. to be within you to do it, no matter who's paying attention or not, it's because you believe in it and you want to. I want to be clear about this.

There is nothing wrong with doing something to make somebody feel good. It's different. Doing something to make someone feel good, to make someone feel a little bit more secure to, like, brighten somebody's day, I think that's part of the human experience. What I'm saying is living your life trying to prove that you are a good person to people allows people to manipulate and control you. It only goes so far. Live your life with a set of ethics, morals, and values that you are uncompromising about.

And to me, try to understand that people's perspectives in the community that you share with them are a factor in that. You have to consider how you're affecting other people. Sure, you absolutely do. But what you cannot consider is whether or not they are, they condone or endorse the way that you have to live your life. You can't. But, you know, I'll tell you what you can do

is you can build teammates with people and you can go out there and you can achieve. And I learned that. I learned that this Sunday. Shout out to Nick May. Nick May told me, shout out to my man, Nick May. Because I've seen a lot of people who respond to what I've been talking about with my basketball issues. It resonated with people. They cared.

They cared. Rachel might not care, but they cared. But Donnie, I want you to play a video from something that happened this past Sunday at the Crenshaw YMCA. Shout out to all the brothers at the Crenshaw YMCA. It was good times running with y'all up there. I would be there every Sunday. Shout out to the Crenshaw YMCA over there. Play the video I sent you.

Look at this. This is a game where it was hard to come by buckets, Rachel. We couldn't come by. We, it was a defensive struggle. It was a defensive struggle, right? And we really couldn't get to what we wanted to get to because we had a couple of players on our team that was killers. It's killers, right?

But we couldn't get to the bucket that we needed to get to because they were keen in on our guys. And for one day, Van Lathen was able to come. through. Look at this. Look at this. Here's the play-by-play. Donnie, watch this. The ball's coming in. You're trying to figure out how we're going to score. Next bucket wins. Next bucket wins. Oh, point guard has the ball. What is he going to do? Look, I'm fighting. I'm hand-fighting down there. Oh, he's trying to push me out. I'm using this leverage. Oh, look, look, post up the big fella.

Post up the big fella. Post up the big fella. Post a great catch. Turn around. Boom. And look at that. Look, look. And now I'm talking to the hecklers on the side, because that's what I do. I succeed and then I talk to the people that's been heckling me. I talk to the hecklers on the side. That's a game winner, Rachel. How much taller were you than that guy? A lot. The one you were posting out.

A lot taller. Yeah, that's what I thought. So what? You had the advantage. That's what sports is about. I'm just saying, you act like you were posted up against, I don't know. Somebody, somebody, that's like what I used to play down in post and the girls used to post up on me.

of course you're going to hit a hook shot. Can I be honest with you? I wonder how much you've actually played. Okay. Because that doesn't matter. He wanted that. So when we, listen, when we ran down, when we ran down and I had hit not just that bucket,

but I had hit one right before than another game winner, that guy, that kid who was guarding, he wanted that matchup. I'm not saying he didn't. So what I'm telling you is. It doesn't have anything to do with it. I'm just saying for the people who I'm just saying. I am hating.

I'll own it. I'll own it. You're a natural hater. I'm just saying for the people who may not be watching it. I just wanted there to be a size comparison. You know, so people. It was a bit of an advantage. This is a natural hater.

I love this. By the way, it's like cream, it's like Kareem al-Dujibar's, I'll bust his ass right now. He's like 80 years old. So what I'm saying is it's okay. That's another. thing, man. We got to get to the guess in a second. But that's another thing.

When you are a natural hater, when you naturally hate on people, when you naturally hate on people, also own that. I did. I said, I am hating. There you go. So when you are a natural hater, and that's the kind of hater energy that you bring, like, get in

on that. There's a lot of y'all out there as well that are haters that try to act like you're not. Don't do that. Hate with your full chest. I'm going to continue to go back out on the court. You should. I'm going to get my game back despite the haters in the comments

and despite the haters on the podcast. All right? The question is, when you're going to come out to Krenshaw? I'll come out. There you go. I'll come out. I'll come out. Yeah, I'll absolutely come out.

I think it's great you went out there and played basketball. I just wanted to paint a full picture. I think it's great. They saw the video. I think it's great. But some people listen to the podcast. By the way, if you should be watching. If you're listening to the podcast, you got to watch on YouTube, man.

You got to watch on YouTube. Because if you look, if you're looking at me, you're starting to see the scars, right? This is the scratch. It's starting to see the scratch. Is the scratch? That's a huge band-aid. Is it that bad? So this scratch was actually pretty bad.

But I'll tell you something else about this scratch. It's not healing as well as I've healed in the past. And they tell me that that could be because of the Jaro-Zaro. I thought, I don't know why I thought you said you stopped taking that. No, I didn't stop. Oh, that's, I hope that's not the case. Well, I mean, the scratch, well, so this was a big scratch, kind of a deep scratch. Huge thing.

And it keeps getting, it keeps getting, it keeps getting wet because I'm out there hooping. Can I tell you something that I saw today? What do you want? I'm really excited for you. I have put, I've been talking about this since I've been, got in tune to it, I put Calica on it and I saw that you are watching the Gilded Age. That's a cold Calica thing. And Calica got you in.

I put Kalika on. I am thrilled. It is the real housewives of the Gilded Age. I know some people are struggling to find some things to watch on TV. The Gilded Age is so good. There are so many levels to it. And I am thrilled for you that you get to embark on this journey. I'm going to become the number one advocate of the Gilded Age.

I watched this pilot episode of the Gilded Age. as a show. And it's the type of shit that I like. Yeah. It's so good. I like shady shit, first of all. And this is the shadiest show that I've seen in a while. It's shady.

But there's a little bit of like history in it too. Not a little bit. There's history in it. There's the mess. There's the gossip. There's the cultural, the societal issues of the haves and the have-nots. It's actually the halves. It's actually the central tension seems to be, well, I've seen one episode, between the

halves. No, you get it. get it. And it's peak white mess. It is peak white mess. I love it. I love when there's a conversation happening between characters and the characters don't really want to say the thing, but they're saying it anyway. So it's four people sitting around and they don't want to say the thing, but they're saying it anyway.

Because they just fucking can't fucking stand each other. Look, I like on a pilot episode, is a white woman. lost her purse, black lady was there for and now the black lady got a job. She's in there with them. Miss Peggy Scott.

Miss Peggy Scott. The Russell's across, I'm fucking with the Russells right now. The way we were talking about Christianity and how people use that hide behind Christianity, it's class in the Gilded Day. It's class.

They hide behind class. To further their agenda. They also hide behind, not even so much class as it is how can I put this? historical hierarchy because the one lady says Van Ryan

and she says always the old never the new don't matter how much money you got if you haven't always had money then it doesn't fucking matter to her so good guys

it's so good we got Erica Alexander joining us on the show right now Erica Alexander's popping in this episode is brought to you by Sweet Cream The day doesn't ask for permission. Lunch window? Gone before you saw it coming.

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Thank you. treat for us, Eric. Oh, we're big fans. We're big fans. I'm back at you. Thank you so much. It's a big deal. I started saying, oh, shoot, he's going to

ever meet with these political questions. I'm ready. We're ready to talk about it. I see you when you used to be on TMZ, I said he ain't going to let it lie either. I say he comes hard because you know I watch you on also on CNN with Abby. Abby Phillip, yeah.

You can give it to him with your cowboy hat. Why do you wear a cowboy hat? You're from Texas? I'm from Louisiana. So I'm from Texas. She's from Texas. I wear the cowboy hat. I'll say you from Texas. Okay.

She's from Dallas. Erica, so I want to get right into it. Like you are having, you've had a fantastic career. You've had a fantastic career. You're having a fantastic career. But you're having like a, in like a renaissance right now. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's really, really interesting. You have reliving single, the podcast, which is amazingly successful.

you were just in a really close friend of mine's movie, right? And that movie was one of the biggest court. And that movie was... Oh, okay. American fiction. Fantastic role in American fiction. Thank you. What are you feeling like right now with everyone talking about Eric Alexander?

Evasion? Big deal. TV, film, podcasting, all happening right now. How do you feel? I feel good. I mean, I was 42 years for me. this business. When people say pay your dues, I certainly have. I'd like to think that I've earned the right to not only be here, but also those people who are putting me in their projects,

they had to, I guess they had to matriculate. I mean, I had to wait for them to be there to know what I do. I had to wait for y'all to grow up. It's an interesting thing because sometimes you miss your time. There's a lot of people who I know and who I love and adore that did not get these opportunities. It wasn't because of talent. It wasn't because of, you know, attitude or anything. It's just the time didn't make space for them. It couldn't absorb them. There was no place to put them. It's still that way very much so. But with the advent of the internet and the opportunity for people to tell their stories with Spike Lee, sort of showing how you could and Robert Townsend to people like Cord and Alicia Harris and Jordan Pill, who I was in Get Out, they also needed to become

who they were for them to get the opportunity to say who they wanted in their movies. So I was invited by Cord. He didn't ask me to audition. He asked me, did you want to do this role and look at the script? And you say, of course, I'd love to be there. And you go where you're invited, hopefully. And not many people had the power to invite me, even if they wanted to. So I don't know if it's my renaissance more if we're in a space where there's a lot of people who are in power for themselves who can now dictate how they like to tell their story.

I want to ask you about that specifically because I hear that from so many of my friends who are particularly actors, actors that were black actors that were the 90s and the 2000s. when there just wasn't as much power, creative power, at the top, to really utilize a lot of the fantastic talent that was out there. Is there anyone that you think about from the 90s or the 2000s or even the 80s that should have been and would have been a huge star that just did not get cracks at it? Me and Tay used to, like a friend of mine, Tate Diggs, we used to talk about this a long time ago. He told me he was like, you know, when I first broke and I saw Matt,

Damon on the cover of Vanity Fair, I used to look at Matt Damon and be like, well, why can't I be on the cover of Vanity Fair? Just like Matt Damon is on the cover of Vanity Fair, but he was like, I got out there and I saw that there just wasn't as much available to me as there should have been or you thought that there would have been. So I think about a whole generation of really talented people who are still around, don't get me wrong, but maybe didn't get the opportunity to be in certain types of movies or certain types of television shows.

Is there anybody that you think about from that time and you're like, damn, I wish it would have worked out differently? Sure. Most of the people I came up with, frankly. I mean, there are almost too many to list, but I can tell you now even. I just did Wu-Tang, an American saga with, say, nine to ten young black men who are extraordinarily talented. And there's only going to be space for one or two of them within the business.

And you can take that to the bank. I kept saying they needed a vanity fair, I guess, cover with them. just like they did the outsiders, you know, with Rob Lo and blah, blah, blah, and just show them. I said, those, they're amazingly, Shabeeke Moore, Elijah, Elijah, Ashton Sanders, yeah. Ashton Sanders doing well. I just did something with him. The point is, even now, I look at them and know that there's only going to be a few opportunities to take them. But growing up, Regina Taylor, she did, I'll fly away. She should be more things.

I was with Gloria Foster off Broadway at the public theater. I did six shows at the public theater. I did Shakespeare in the Park with tons of amazing performers. Never saw them again. It's the truth. I want to talk about invasion, but I want to piggyback on a little bit of the conversation that you guys are having because I saw something where you and Kim,

Kim Coles, acknowledged that living single laid the blueprint for so many. black ensemble sitcoms, but that the legacy of it has been overshadowed. Why do you think that is? Because we devalue things that are of color. I refuse to say the black shows. I don't believe in that. A lot of people are like, yeah, but we own those shows. That's ours. That shows that, you know, that we're, you know, that we embrace that or whatever, embrace them. I said, tell me another group of people they say Italian shows. They say, I mean, they don't.

Growing up, the Jeffersons was not a black show. And neither was what's happening. It was a show with the black cast. That's a fact. The minute they can do that, they are setting the terms of engagement for promotion and marketing. And it devalues what we do.

It keeps us at a level that says that, oh, that's a black show. No, there's a show with Black cast. And also, there's also white supremacy. I mean, it is what it is. I hate that everything is a devolved position of why does this happen? I said, because white supremacy is real. And we need to acknowledge that equity and the types of things we talk about with diversity

or even inclusion were things that are not something that's an option. It was essential for America's progress to progression. and also statement of what it was out of many one, not for some a little, you know, a little bit. That's not, that's not it. So that's why. We are, we may be, you know, visually y'all may recognize us, but we work on the same corporate structure everyone else does.

And it doesn't promote people to the C-suite equally, if at all, certainly not black women. So, yeah, we're getting a lot of play and love, but we're still undermined by the, downward suppression of wages and of not even being promoted outside of our own so-called core audience. They keeps talking about the core audience. Yes, there are people who uniquely know us, but that shouldn't be the limitation to the

borders of who you design a PR campaign to, and that's been our problem. And it's not unique to us. It is what it is. Do you think that that happened because of friends? No. Okay. Just because they were around the same time and, you know, all of that surrounding it, I was just curious. No, no, no.

It wouldn't be the first time where there's a blueprint here and then there's another blueprint that, and there's something that's derivative that's made that's, again, projected into a different space, publicized and marketed into that space. It's leveraged afterwards. The IP is seen as more valuable. It never went off the air. Neither did we. But you didn't see us at Pandora, where you could get.

it charms, you didn't necessarily an experience of immersive experience. You didn't see that. Why? Because why would you invest in something that you feel is not valuable? And at the bottom line, there is, and there's not only a mindset. There is a credible conversation and intention, intention to devalue what black people do in our culture, whether it's successful or not. So that's why you got Elvis. Not because you didn't have the brother who was before who not only sounds just like Elvis is Elvis did the blueprint, but you never saw that brother promoted that.

You weren't going to see him. You know, it's interesting. There's a tension here that I want to talk to you about it. The tension is about black. So so many of the artists that I hear from, so many of the artists that I hear from that I talk to that I work with go, hey man you know

when they even talk about some of the stuff that we've done hey this is a story with black people don't don't this is not a black story like so many of the artists that I hear about say have the exact same perspective I think there's a tension with the audience

sometimes because the audience finds safety in things that are black things that celebrate them it lets them know that they can laugh a certain way it lets them know that there's going to be a sort of type of humor that they can connect with. It lets them know that they can be even in community watching it.

And in the regular world, labeling something black or saying that it's black is important for people to know that it's a place where they should go and should feel safe. So artistically, there seems to be people that are saying, listen, in order for us to be able to get our stories out, we're telling us. stories about who we are, we can't have them pigeonholed. And then societally, there seems to be people that are saying, I want black stuff. I want it to be unapologetically black. I want to have to call it black. I want to know that I'm in community with people musically, politically, politically, socially, all of that. And we never really get a chance to talk about

that tension because everybody has a point. What would you say to that? How do you feel? Well, I take that argument up seriously if we just call basketball, black basketball. I don't get it. Everybody black knows to go there. Let's do black football. Let's do black sports. How about that? Black rap.

That's the problem. It doesn't hold weight. If you have to manage it somewhere else where you say, do black people know they're invited there? Yeah, because they see black people all over the place, doing well. the thing. The reason why it's like that is because we had to demand that black people be in, be cast, you know. And so then suddenly it was demonstrated that United could cast us. The Cosby Show showed that we be number one. He created Must See TV. Sinefield would not be there for that, neither would friends. That's on NBC.

see. Didn't anybody ever call Cosby Show a black show? No. No one needed to tell us that we didn't show up there. We saw us there. We saw our people there. Like I said, I just use the thing as the Jeffersons or even Sanford and son, you know, a junk man, a junk man. And people, it was right next to MASH. It was right next to Three's company. No one told us we knew that, but it really is a, the conversation really is about how business works. and how if you start to create, it's like a cultural ghetto. And if we don't know that we're part of it and how we start to label or use our labels, I mean, I say all the time that everything is narrative. And if you don't understand the narrative game, then you're not in the world. But here's a narrative that we took on that we proudly boast. Oh, CP time, CP time. I call foul.

That's ridiculous. Black people weren't allowed to be late. But we took it on. so then suddenly we start to do that behavior. I always said it should be the darker the skin, the earlier in. That's what we should be saying. The earlier end with investment, the earlier in you have to come in, the more you have to do. It's just what it is.

But we took on that and we think it's fun. Oh, you know, that's CP time. No, I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about because I can't get to where I'm going. And black people, you know, would not only being beat and Jim Crow, were we allowed to be late? So how do we do it? Because they said we were shiftless. eyes are coming boss oh thank you and they're telling us that beating us for 400 years and we're

feeding their children and our men are being demoralized and demeaned no I don't buy it what if I told you that the CP team CP time thing is black people saying that they can be late with each other because they couldn't be late with the white man no I don't buy it I buy it as a harmful stereotype that we put on just like nigger. We say, oh, nigger, we made it ours. You made their word yours? It's absurd. I don't see another group saying, oh, yeah, they call us that and that's what we're going to be.

It's not true. But we have found in our, there's an examination of psychology. And again, we're unique in all this world. We are the orphans of Africa. in the diaspora, we are unique because we live in a first world context. And we're just trying to find a way to explain why we don't have power. So we take things and we say, yeah, it's ours. And we're going to do this and that.

And we have. And yet I said, we're not going to be free unless we stop. Again, the terms of engagements are not ours. And we're not playing by the Queensbury, the Marcus of Queensbury rules. They're hitting straight punch that are damaging. Look at how many things have been destroyed with that word. People walking around, now you see it in Africa and people going around going nigg, nigg, nigg and Africa, and it hurts you like, oh God, we exported that to our homeland.

We should be ashamed of ourselves to not recognize what Malcolm X and James Baldwin and the people who made us that. They understood that words mattered, that the narrative mattered. The fact that we could sort of twist it and think that is ours is actually they succeeded in branding us when the people who are branded. become what they have beheld. It's horrible. Speaking of narrative and perception and business, talk a little bit about color farm media and the mission to bring representation and

inclusion and equity and all of that into media and I believe even into politics. Absolutely. Well, color farm media is my company and it's with co-founded it with Ben Arnon. And we met each other as community activists. I was a delegate for Hillary Clinton. He was a delegate for, well, they were senators at the time for President Obama, but as senator at the time. And we met at the DNC Convention in 2008. And then we became friends and we started talking about it.

He's a Jewish dude. He was in music and that type of stuff. And I had been an actress my whole life, it started writing and realizing very early on, before the Cosby show that unless I started to write and create, that I would always be waiting by the phone for somebody to choose me. And I did not have the self-discipline. I did not have the wherewithal, even the crafts yet, craft yet.

But then I ended up marrying a writer, a black writer, African-American writer. He was the first writer, African-American writer movie that made over $100 million. He wrote Eraser. One thing he told me is, sit your butt down in that chair and finish what you start. You know, write and rewrite. I didn't know what that really was. I had been a performer since I was 14. So Color Farm Media is my answer to a person to an actress who the first three roles that I got, the first one,

I'm always grateful for these roles, but I have to say, first one I got, I was a foster child, the second row I got, I was a prostitute. The next one, I was a slave. So I didn't feel that way. I went to Philadelphia High School for Girls. I was discovered at New Freedom Theater in Philadelphia. I didn't feel that I could authentically be who I was inside of those roles. And yet it gave me my career.

And the only way you can change the game is to start to realize that you have power. And what would you do with it if it was on you to create roles? And then Spike Lee was happening and all these people were starting to show us, you know, Julian Wayne's brothers, that perhaps we could not only get shows on the air, but that we could be successful and have our own voice. And so that's what Color Farm was. A long sort of journey for me to learn not only my craft as an actress, but also to demonstrate that I could expand within the arena of entertainment and teach myself new tricks,

and then eventually going around and having the soul-sucking experience of being told no, no, no, no, over and over again, no matter what I presented. We were pitching something, me and my ex-husband, something called Concrete Park, which is a comic book series now. But then it was a science fiction series and it was going to be a science fiction series or a movie. And at the time, we thought this is great. You know, he had a background in advertising and marketing. He had mocked up these really great things. So while we pitched, people could see what they were getting. And we had waited a long time for this particular meeting.

We pitched for many years. And this was going to be the guy to do it anyway. Before we could finish, he said, well, black people don't like science fiction because they don't see themselves in the future. That's a quote. We thought why. He told us about a movie that he made where they did a focus testing and the young, a young black man was left staring at the screen and they come from behind the scenes. And they say, hey, is there anything wrong?

And he said, yeah, I just want to know how'd that nigger get to Mars. And he goes, what he was saying to us is the fact that this young man who was probably just making a joke, by the way. He meant Ice Cube, but it was the ghost of Mars. I'll tell you the name of the movie. It wasn't that good, but, you know, it was not Ice Cube's fault and Natasha Hintridge. They, you know. Sean Carpenter, everybody tried to make a good movie and it just didn't end up being in it. Yeah, just what it is.

But the point is, and the president of this studio thought, oh, he can't really see himself in the future. Well, he didn't know that my ex-husband in particular was like Malcolm and Martin putting together. And he says, let me tell you something for black people to pass this pain for the present, precarious, but the future is free. We always see ourselves in the future. And he reminded them that inside of his past, the future had been created by people like Octavia Butler and Samuel Delaney and all these great science fiction artists. But also, we also reminded him at the time that he was sitting at the studio with the number one star in the world, science fiction star of the world was Will Smith. Yeah. With Independence Day, men in black and all of that.

See what people will tell you if you're not paying attention? Tell her you a lie. And when I tell some people sometimes they go, yeah, it's probably hard for us. Are you kidding? We created the future he was in. We're rock and roll and the blues and all this stuff. We brought it not only from Africa, but we created out a whole cloth because we didn't even know who we were. So we projected ourselves in the future as a matter of survival.

We are the futurists here in America. And we have been for the world. That's why our culture has transcended time. it came from another dimension. So Color Farm Media is that. It's meant to stand up and hold itself accountable to what people like Sir Jurner Truth and Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass wanted us to do. They wanted to be challenged, challenge ourselves, and be disruptors to not listen and just take on what people say and certainly not to promote their ideas within our own space. It's to shake off that kind of dust and that mud and become who we're meant to be, which is

the children and the purveyors of the future of the future kings and queens. Well said. I want to come back to something that you talked about a second ago because it kind of lends to a question I want to ask about Black 90 sitcoms and a conversation that's been brought up just recently. So I do feel like sometimes like the first person to call me a nigger was like my dad and my grandfather and my uncle in them. You'd be messing around and be like, look at that little

nigga go. Right? And the genesis of the word and the genesis of some diet, some culture, some custom, all of it was reflexive. Like the older black people that raised me in South Louisiana, I watched them try to figure out

how to exist and live and thrive and celebrate in an inherently pernicious place. Every single thing it seemed like was like trying to kill them. The cops were, like the society was, other groups were. And a lot of their cultural inventions

were in relation to that. So when I see them and when I saw that, I actually was able to, going back to what you said about the N-word or any of these other things, I actually was able to see both the brilliance and the humanity in them taking some of the things that were used to assail them and extract the humanity out of them because legitimately that's all they had. All they could work with was persecution. All they could work with was being second class citizens.

Like they didn't learn, wouldn't teach them to read. I started reading and my uncle he would bring me a newspaper. He'd be like, Van, read this. And I was embarrassed by it. He'd be like, why is he doing this? And my dad pulled me to the side and he was like,

bleep his name, Donnie, because I don't want to disrespect his family, even though everyone knows. He pulled me to the side and he goes, man, I've told this story before. He's like, just let you know, can't read too good. So when he sees you reading, he freaks out like you're six years old. and when he sees this he just he just goes crazy and he's like you know he doesn't read that well so

when he was sitting up there making me read for the whole family i felt like i was on display but what he was actually doing was like look at what just happened right i'm saying all this to say that like there is still to me and i'm wondering when i hear you talk so eloquently and that by the way they could call you eloquent erika if they wanted everyone talks about like when i hear you talk so eloquently about the things that we must shake off. You're absolutely right. But I also wonder how we make the point when the way that we did things and the way that we approached things, it's what saved our lives. And so how do we get from the survival matrix that you're talking about right now to understanding

what's good for us? How do we get out of being so reflexive to white supremacy and being so centrally girded up by what we're living under and with. And just think about what's best for us. What do we have to do? I think that's excellently said. You know, I would never make the case that black people, especially for what we endure, should be, we're in a unique position of responsibility and accountability

to some people who have been enlightened. But for the most part, we are a miracle overall. and there's a lot of grace and forgiveness that goes into understanding the depths and complexity of what you're talking about. And you're right, I call that organic sustainability, that we basically, you know, figured out a way to survive. And hopefully that meant that a new generation might, you know, provide an off-ramp to that. But I do know that maybe I talk really about,

I learned from Reverend Barber, William Barber, of the poor people's campaign, who's one of my mentors, and he calls this the Third Reconstruction. And he says the first one just after Lincoln, they shot him assassinated, halted it, and then just after the assassination of Martin Luther King, that we are in the third reconstruction right now. And we're the new architects. So knowing now what we know, and we're not just in survival mode, we're people talking about all sorts of different things. And yet we are always in survival mode because everything, as you said, everything has been sort of organized to kill us, not just to get rid of us, to kill us.

But what can we do if we can think past that? And if we're the architects, if everyone is listening to you and Rachel understands that. And that's why they come for higher learning. That's the name your thing. Higher learning, not just on an intellectual but on a spiritual plane, then we have to ask ourselves that there's a certain sense. sacrifice we have to do and we have to be the example. And not everybody will, but with your types of influence, both of you, it becomes, it becomes the blueprint. And it's not because

the other blueprint failed. That's what we needed before to get through how we got over, how we got over. But now we're not trying to get over. We're trying to take over. Trying to take over. Get ahead. That's a different mindset. And we need to remember that these people speak truth to power, ourselves. Look in the mirror. What are you saying? And so that's what I say. If this is the third reconstruction, we are all architects of the third reconstruction. And we do need to find different ways. We need new worlds. We need new authors. We need new likes cord of that new strategies, not new versions. Excuse me. We need new strategies, not just new versions. There are all these things that perpetuated white supremacy. But we can tell a greater story and a better truth.

And for a lot of people, that's undiscovered country, but not for you. That's why you, that's why are you out there with your hat? Because you, he's on avant-garde. He's on the front line. People on the front lines also get the most win. They get the headwinds. Not easy what we're saying needs to happen. But if you can't do it, then who can?

That is, again, so well said. I'm sitting here with what you're saying. And I know we said we won't make a political and I'm not, but I'm just being honest. I'm sitting here with what you're saying and wrestling with where we are right now when you talk about this third reconstruction and what feels like this watershed moment

where we are right now with the killing that happened last week. And I'm wrestling with how to be exactly what it is you're saying, but then also feeling very frustrated, very tired, very hopeless, if I'm being honest with you, with everything that's going on. So I'm like, I'm really wrestling with it right now, Erica. But you're not wrong. You're not wrong. No, but Rachel, you are doing exactly what you're supposed to do.

Who are you if you're not sad? If you're not hopeless. If you don't underfeel that feeling where you just, it almost wants to overrun you and just drown you. Guess what? That's called being human. And who had to be the most human inhumane circumstances, black people? African American, we feel, and you hear that in Marvin Gaye.

We feel and you hear that in our writings and what we do. When we get mad, we get mad from a place that we're always tamping down our rage. So sometimes it comes out in this space where we just are sort of just like, I'm going to drown now. Thank goodness, because if you didn't feel nothing, girl, then they won. They won. We can't let them with feel it and don't apologize for it, but the most part is please feel it. Because from there is a victory. I honestly believe that all your great ideas will come out of that pool and those tears of sadness

because inside of there is a mirror that will reflect back the solution. I believe it. So two more questions for me. One is about 90 sitcoms. I don't know if you saw this, but a couple of months ago, Ari Lennox, who is a beautiful,

talented, black singer, like singer, that's also black. Okay, I'm with, okay, all right?

She said that she was watching Martin, and or that she's watched Martin. I'm sure you heard about this, and she would see the jokes, oh, maybe you didn't, she would see the jokes that Martin would make,

on Pam and it would make her upset. She was like Pam was beautiful. Pam was dark skinned and it seemed like Martin was always debasing Pam. And that started an entire cultural conversation

about our sitcoms from the 90s, the way we used to joke with each other, how we can joke with each other and whether or not some of the jokes that we made back then were approaching comedy in a way that minimized black women, darker skin black women, darker skin black people.

Obviously, Gina from Martin was a lighter skin woman and that was Martin's lady. All of that stuff. We just talked about how we used to play. When you hear that, being that you were on Living Single, which it was one of the fundamental sitcoms of the 90, I almost said Black again. and you guys played with each other and joked with each other about who had a job,

about who looked like this, about what it, and your character in particular had an interplay and you guys would go back and forth. You were in one of those kind of relationships almost like Martin and Pam were. Yeah. What do you think about the criticism that Ari had about how we used to joke

and is there any validity to it? It's valid, absolutely. it's valid I understand that there was also a different I have to contextualize it that me and

sorry the character Max and Kyle were both dark skin with you know there's a difference there and also Max gave as good as she gave and sold it and they also ended up in a relationship yeah that's right

they were they were loved and like, you know, love, hate with each other. There's that. But that doesn't mean that having doing this rewatch podcast, I didn't see some things is a little different. And we talk a lot about colorization, you know, and we all suffered from it. I think that what we're rediscovering by even reclaiming

our opinion about these things is someone ever asked us back in the day anything. you come in, you're hired, you do your gig, you keep moving. And for the most part, so many things can be so normalized that you don't feel it. But then you need distance in order to have hindsight. And so it gives us insight, you're right, Ben. There's no doubt about it. I knew then there were things I didn't like about that looking at the Martin show.

I didn't see it within our show, but then looking at our show, I did see a few things. I was like, and I took it on the chin like the chick I am because that's what she does. But Erica Alexander was like, I don't like that. And that girl, they wouldn't have gotten away with that. And I say they, because I don't think it was mean-spirited. I don't think that even now the creator or anybody would have heard it like that. But I hear it. And being dark skin is a unique bird.

in this world, especially for a black woman. And a lot of the true damage that was done and the wounds were unfortunately received by other black people. And all I know is that we can do better now. But we all need to all grow up and away from it a little bit. I think that's what's so great about the podcast that you guys are doing because it's not just recapping or going back and diving in. It is about learning and teaching and it's so much deeper. than just, yeah, just, hey, this was our favorite show and this is why. I want to ask you, I said I was going to get back to invasion, and I want to get back to it. Third season, you're joining.

My man, Simon. His friend of the podcast. Friend of the podcast, Simon, Simon. That's what's up, Simon Kimberg. That's my man. You're joining the third season. I would have said, you know, I've never really seen you in a role like this before, but then in talking to you today, you talk about you have a project. with dealing with sci-fi, so you're obviously a fan of the genre.

Tell us a little bit about you joining this third season and also if you yourself believe in aliens. Oh, I definitely believe in aliens. You know, I grew up with a few of them. My sisters. I was going to ask you if they walked around. I was like, I'm from Arizona. By the way, Arizona up in the mountains flagstab. We had the local observatory.

I saw that. There you go. And it was the first. mega telescope that could see as far as Pluto. That's what it discovered. So the stars were very big in our, you know, how we grew up and looking at the stars. To this day, it's called a dark city. You can only have lights so much from any of the, you know, the town or the city because they, seeing the stars is important. And because we were so, listen, we were living in poverty. That's the truth. I always say I spent the first 11 years in my life.

hotel called Starlight Up, Route 66. We used to go out there on hot nights, and my father would lay on an itinerant preacher, and my mother was a teacher, and one of the things we do is get a 25-cent soda, put a pin in it in the side, shake it up, and then have the, you know, the soda pop go into our mouths. And we sat there, laying the stars, and he would tell stories. And you could see shooting stars, and there was so much more talk about the stars, maybe because it was coming from the 60s. And I always believe that there was somewhere out there, a world for us. Sorry. That was better than the one that we were living in.

They had more access that was, you know, as beautiful as what we were looking at. And even Michael Jackson sang in something that he did with Spilberg about E.T. There were all these stories about, you know, Twilight Zone. Gene Roddenberry Star Trek, Star Wars, Stars, Stars, that somewhere we would be working out, we would have worked out this stuff that we fight about now. There would be more equity, there would be more opportunity, but it didn't necessarily have to be on Earth.

And so, yeah, I believe in the future. I believe in the stars. That's how I grew up underneath the stars, hoping for a better life. And for me, it came. I was discovered in a basement theater. called freedom. And to this day, I'm grateful for anyone who's looking beyond what's happening today. Because any story that's told in a science fiction sphere, which Simon Kimberg is so good at. He's so good at this. He's a world builder. But so are we. And so we understand that. That's why we

love science fiction, because we understand they're talking about us. The other is us. The aliens are us many times. So I always be grateful to him when he gave me a call and offered me the role. I didn't really know if I should take it because I didn't know, I don't know Simon, you know, what this is about. But he asked to speak to me. And he said, may I speak to her? And he set up a call. And he said, I'd want you to see what I'm building here. And it's not because he couldn't have anybody in the world play that.

But he wanted me. He invited me to play. And then he told me what he had in mind. And the world builder that's creating an opportunity to talk about the desire to be immortal and what it can create in you good and bad. To me, I hear it as what happens to a dream deferred. It can be something that's beautiful or it can come out and be poison. And my character on that, Verna, is dealing with a huge amount of grief. And we must be careful in this world to not let our grief come out as poison.

Let it stir something within us better than ourselves. We become in a leadership position. So she becomes a leader in a different position, you know, in this invasion. But we're also going to look to see if she can run away from the darkness that's harboring within, you know, within all of us. And so I think that science fiction is the best delivery system for how to speak about the current events. But we do the future. And God bless him. Kimber is one of the best that ever did it.

Yeah. Also, you know, you get to build the world that you want to see. You get to, you know, like Roddenberry is doing Star Trek. There's the world where there's, there's peace on earth, and we're exploring the galaxy. and he's got an Asian representative in there. He's got a black representative in there. If you go back and look at Star Trek, it's actually a really, really, really disruptive, futuristic show.

Some of the other shows, not as much. There's some sci-fi out there where there's no black people in. But there's like there's ones that are fundamental that are really people trying to build worlds. You know, maybe let's say how weird it is that here we are doing teleportation. This is exactly what they did on Star Trek that didn't exist. And here we are teleporting into each other's home. As if you're Captain Kirk.

Exactly right. That in many of those so-called inventions that the writers projected into the future are now part of our existence. It's a powerful place. Yeah, like Dick Tracy used to talk on the watch. And then when I first got my, when I first got my Apple Watch, I'd be like, hell, man, Dick Tracy. I got the Dick Tracy join.

Before I let you go, I just want to say something to you. You know, one of the first things that was on a television show that I really wanted to happen, this is going to sound crazy. Cousin Pam was getting out of high school and she wanted to go to college. And she asked Cliff and Claire if they would pay for school. And this is getting towards the end of the Cosby show run. So I'm getting to the point. I'm like 11 or 12, right? So I'm to the point to where I understand

how important it is for a kid to be able to go to college and the fact that cousin Pam had come to live with the Huxibles and all that. I remember thinking, I remember you got up and you left and like you almost bumped into the door and Claire said she wants to go to college, you can't even get into the kitchen.

And I remember watching that going, damn, I hope cousin Pam gets to go to college because I understood at that point in life, how important it was to take that next step in your life. Theo had gone. Like we had seen Sandra, Denise had gone with a different world. And it had changed all these characters.

I was like, man, I hope cousin Pam gets to go to college. I forgot what happened now if you eventually went. I think that you did. She went. She went. Right. Right. But TV and all of the art and everything they were talking about, it's fundamental.

That's why it's important. people say it's not important. It's important that we get art that helps shape our worldview because art has a unique opportunity to do that. You've been a part of that. We're very, very, very, very thankful that you join us today on higher learning. Thank you. I was glad to be asked. I'm a fan and I believe a friend and hopefully you see me as being on the same journey as you in different spaces. We all know the destination. We all know where we're going and I really appreciate that you put yourself out there to sacrifice and put yourself in the line of fire

because it ain't easy. Thank you, Erica. So reliving single, invasion, color farm media, so much stuff going on. Tap in with Erica Alexander. She'll keep you inspired and she'll keep you entertained as well.

Thank you so much. And the rise and fall of Reggie Dinkins, the NBC show that's going to be coming with me, Tracy Morgan, and Daniel. Oh, yeah. And Bobby Moynihan. Yes.

It's the Tina Faye series. comics, first time I've been back on NBC since Cosby Show, but also maybe as a regular character in a sitcom since living single. Wow. So what's going on. The Renaissance, like you said. Congratulations to you. Thank you so much, man.

I'm grateful to Tracy for building that with Tracy, with Tina Faye and them. And again, it's good to be invited. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Take care, beautiful. All right, bye-bye. Oh, Erica, I had fun. I will say this.

On Thursday show, we're going to do the top five black guys of 2025. What inspired this? I can't tell you. No, I have to know. Now I have to know. I need to know. Because when you said it, I'm like, where is this coming from? What did you see here feel that said, we got to, we got to honor this on the podcast.

I'll tell you something, man. Who do you personally know somebody you want to put on this list? Is there somebody you want to pay tribute to? It's people that I know that's on the list, but that's not where this came from. Or is this anti- Nah, this came from, this was the idea of somebody. I can't tell you whose idea it was, though. Because they're on the list?

No, they're not on the list. They're not on the list. Okay, you can tell me off my list. I'll tell you off my list. Okay. I can tell you who this was. This is a good segment though. Okay.

We haven't done the Van Layton in a while. We've got to do the days of the week on Thursday, too. but we haven't we haven't done one and we're going to do one. The top five, because we've really had some, this has been a good year for black guys and entertainment. We have some guys that have done their thing. And this is,

but you know what else that's coming off of? We got to mention this. This is coming off of, Terrence fucking Crawford, right? Making history. That's a big fucking moment. I don't know if you guys care about boxing.

Terrence Crawford went up two weight classes and challenged. Canelo Alvarez this past Saturday and got some easy work. Rachel, did you see the fight? I didn't watch the fight. You didn't watch the fight. I didn't watch it. No, I wanted to, but it was somebody's birthday.

Who's birthday was it? My friend shout out to Shabby. She's turned 40. Shabby? We call it Shabby. So Shabby. Her last name is Shaptai. Shaptai.

Shaptai. Interesting. What's her first name? Natalie. Natalie Shabby? We call her Shabby. She was a producer. I don't have a lot of friends still from those show days,

but she's a friend, producer friend. She's in my birthday party. You probably didn't see her. Shabby. You know what I don't like? By the way, shout out to Shabby. Happy birthday Shabby. But you know what?

I don't like. What? I don't like taking somebody's last name and making a cool nickname of it. I don't know why it bothers me. It's like me doing the way I did Big Rage. It was call me Shabby. I don't like it. So if that's what you want to be called,

I mean, that's what you want to be called. That's cool. But like Adam Schifter, Shifty. That's always something like, I don't like that. I don't know why that bothers me. Hey, hey, Van, do you, do you know Banksy? Banksy's over there. Man, that next name is William Bankson.

Is that because we can't do it with your name? Nah, Lathie. You could. Vanny. People come up with new names for me all the time. But I don't like that type of shit. I don't like that type of that. We're not, you know, shabby is cool.

Personal preference. Personal preference. But what's her name again? Natalie Shaptai. Shaptai. Shaptai is such a 100,000-carid last name. That's a fucking dope last name. Never heard of that before.

Well, now that's her, I don't know what her married name is. Oh, she got married? Yeah, that's her maiden name. So I'm going to be honest with you. So Shabby comes from the maiden name. I'm going to be real with you, man. It's one of the funniest moments that ever happened. Ever.

So I have. I probably told this story before I had a friend and he was getting married. And when they were having a kid, they were having a kid. And they were figuring out what they were going to name the kid. And the father of his wife was like, you should take my last name. and make it the kid's middle name. Okay, middle. Middle name.

All right. My name was like, nah, man, hell, nah. I was like, why? It's not the big deal. He goes, hey, man, this nigga wants his name to rain in my household. I was like, bro, it's not that serious.

He was like, nah, hell no. That man name ain't raining in my household. I have to be honest with you. I thought it was funny and kind of crazy then. It's like, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. It's a little problem. What if she's the only, what, like for me, there are no sons.

Okay. So if my dad said that, like, hey, it's like, oh, it carries on the Lindsay name. I mean, that's like a reasonable thing. It doesn't mean the fact that he took it that way. Problematic. I'm going to be real with you. A little bit because all of this stuff is so stupid. Like, it's funny.

It is kind of interesting that there's so much that's in your family. his last name and that the last name can just die. And it could just be no more Lathens, no more Lensis, nothing like that. And it could just go. And when I'm at my lowest vibrational level, I go, yeah, I don't need that to happen. How do you deal with it? But I can make an argument that Shabby is kind of letting the name rain. I could make an argument.

I could put my. But what do you do with that? She's letting the name reign. I got a sorority sister. Shout it to Crystal. I'm about to say your whole name. But, well, maybe I won't. I won't say your married name.

She got a married name, right? But we all knew her before she was married, and we call her Dukes, which is her Maita name. And so I still call her Dukes. And I don't recognize necessarily. I know what her full name is. But we call her Dukes. Dukes. But for me, by the way, not a big deal.

But it is just funny when I think about the name. Like I think, because me, it wouldn't even be, it's not that even that big a deal to me. Like, it's not, it's of. Why? Because it's a slave name. Not because it's a slave name just because, like, it's actual, it's actually luck that I'm a late thing in the first place.

It's just luck. Because my. What could you have been? I'm about to tell some business. Okay. Beep out accordingly. No, you don't beep nothing now. I mean, you, well, maybe.

Rachel's being smart. About to tell some business. Family business is getting told. Technically, I am not a Lathen. So the Lathen family, big mama and big pop, they had 11 kids. However, they had nine girls. Okay. So they had nine girls, two boys,

Gent and Pete, rest in peace to these men. I love y'all so much, man. Jen Pete. My, a grandmother. The guy that she was seeing was El Married. El Marij. She had a couple of kids by this guy,

including my father. This guy's last name was Greyer. So, by the traditional rules of name reigning, I would have been a Greer. Doesn't fit. His name was J.C. Greyer was this guy's name. Damn. Believe that out.

He's been dead. He did. Well, he might have family. He does have family. Okay. Got a bunch of grayers. I've met the grayers. Okay.

There was Moona Greer. There was my uncle John Greer. Shout out to my uncle John Greer. Glenn's family is on this side. This Glenn's family. Okay. The Glenn's family is, that's the Glenn's family. And so really the laything, because she then takes my dad and my dad is then raised by his,

his grandparents, Big Mama and Big Papa. So he's adopted by them. And the adopted name is kind of basically Lathen. That's the adopted name. So we are a Lathen. I am the great-grandson of William Lathen

and Elizabeth Ventress, Lathen, Big Mama, but... There's still Lathen in you. There's Lathen. Wow. There's Lathen. I am a Lathen, but it's all, finicky anyway. And honestly,

all our histories are like that. I've explained to you the Lindsay lot of it all. We don't even really know if that's her name. You know some lots. No, I'm saying this is another reason why the Gilded Age is so good. I know. Gosh, y'all got to, I'm going to watch it again. There's another reason why it's so good because the one, the lady is a Brooks, right? Her last name is Brooks.

But then the other lady is a Van Ryan or whatever. That's her niece. Right, right, right. The family name. She married into the Van Ryan. into the Van Ryan family. But Brooks is the maid name. So too, because Cynthia Nixon is kind of, I don't want to say, you can't say old maid, right?

She's unmarried. Spinster. She's a spinster. They say that in the show, if that's, offends anybody. Cynthia Nixon is a spinster, but she's a Brooks, and the nieces are Brooks. And then, so there's the Van Ryan name that the lady had to marry and cares a lot of weight with her because that guy wasn't a nice guy.

Did you know that was Merrill Streep's daughter? Who? Brooks. And real- Denise, yeah. Oh, that's the same lady from materialists. She's a materialist.

Don't watch that one. Okay, but so, yeah, so she's Meryl Streep's daughter. Makes a lot of sense. There's some actress somewhere that came from the hard, scrabble streets of Rhode Island, Baton Rouge,

Jacksonville, and they said, out of here. She's good. She's great. She's great. But they went out of here. Beat it.

Twirp. We need Meryl Streep's daughter to come here. She's fantastic. really good. She was good in materialist for the one scene that she was in as well. She's fine. She's great. She's great. It's amazing. She plays a great part. But like these names are very important. And we put a lot in these names. That show is all about putting weight on the name.

That show is all about the name. Yeah. It's all about the name. Okay, before we go, I saw the scariest video in history of internet, bro. And y'all have to see it too, man. I saw the scariest internet video ever. I don't know how this got popped up in my algorithm. I don't either. My algorithm is so crazy, man. I don't know how this got popped up in my algorithm, but I saw the craziest.

It's scary. I'm scared. So because I got scared and I literally was like, I felt haunted after I saw this, y'all got to see it too. Donnie, this is a social media personality. His name is William Knight. Y'all have to see this on YouTube

because you're not going to get the, visual if you don't watch it on YouTube. His name is William Knight. Apparently he's been AI this whole time, but people didn't know. But is he really? Because people, I read the comments and they're like, no, he's not AI. Maybe he's not AI, though. They're saying he's trolling us.

For years, people have turned me into memes, compared me to video game NPCs, and even accuse me of being something otherworldly. Now it's time I finally reveal the truth. My name

is William Knight. Oh my God, bro. And I am a digitally created AI influencer, born in 2020. I think he's trolling. Yo, that's terrifying.

Like that, I'm looking at other pictures of him right now. Donnie, look up some of the other videos. I can't tell no more, man. I think he's trolling. I don't know why. That my, my heart, bro.

Like that, that wasn't, Donnie, that's not scared to you? That's a person. in real life. It is, but Rachel's right. He's got other videos that are clearly not a reality.

How do we know? How do we know, y'all? We do not know. The video's made to look like that. There is no such thing as a coincidence. The fact that you're watching this video means you're energeticly aligned with me and this message. Your thoughts create your reality. But you already knew that. Yet, you still live a life that you dread.

Oh God, Donnie. Oh, God, bro. No, no. How would she have seen him if he wasn't AI? I don't know how she saw him. She might be AI too. We don't know anymore. We do not know.

All I saw this video and I looked at it. I'm like, yo, man, it put fear into me. It put fear into me. And now I don't know what's real anymore because of William. I don't know. I can't stop looking at his social media right now. That's what happens. I went down a rabbit hole of William Knight, El Pas, and I didn't know what the

fuck was going on. That's scary. He knows it's scary, too, by the way. What is this? They're saying he's in the audience of a Judge Judy taping. But how do we know that the Judge Judy taping is real? I love it. I love it.

He's the founder of Grand Rising, the positive affirmation. app. Go check them out for yourself. No, no way. William Knight, two T's. Two T's. On social media. That's scary to me. It's very scary. Okay, we're going to go. It's your algorithm, apparently.

I got to fix the algorithm in some kind of way. I fix the explore page. Oh, good. Oh, like you manually did it yourself? Yeah, I had to just like dog videos and boxing videos and all of that to fix the explore page because the explore page was disgusting.

And so I had to fix it. I said, I fixed the Explore page. Maybe I don't know what the fuck happened with the William Knight. The William Knight thing fucking bothered me, you know. And it's scary. It's a scary thing. The whole thing is scary. You guys, we're going to go.

Okay. That's it. It's over. We'll talk about some of the happenings at the Emmys on the next part. There were a lot of people on the Emmys that were outwardly supportive of Palestine. And not only that, there were. upwards of a thousand actors and actresses in Hollywood that all signed a letter saying that they would not work

with any studios, if I remember this correctly, that were materially involved in the genocide in Gaza. And when I say actors and actresses, I'm not talking about big names here, gigantic names. They interviewed Javier Bardem on the red carpet of the Emmys, and he was just very clear. Just very clear about where he stands.

There seems to be a shift. James Tolariko has said that he would not take any money from APEC. Kathy Hockel, the governor, came out to support, endorsed Mum Dining. So there seems to be a shift happening here in terms of the way people are allowed to talk about this. the reason why I say that is because

you got to be able to talk about stuff got to be able to have actual conversations you should not in any way be afraid to say that children get in their face blown off by bombs that hitting a couple of weeks ago let me tell you guys what happened I don't know if you guys heard about it

there was a camera on top of a building I think I talked about this it's a camera on top of a building Zoroiders camera but I saw this, yes. It's a camera on top of the building. Reuters camera. IDF says that it is a

Hamas camera. They hit the building. First responders and other help people go into the building. They go into the building. They hit the building again. Double tap it. We got to be able to talk about this and tell the truth about it. Yeah.

That's it. Almost 700,000 people. people, 700,000 Palestinians, almost 700,000 Palestinians, more than half of that reported number of children. Yeah. We have to be able to talk about that. It is encouraging that people can talk about it and have conversations. We talk about it all. We talk about the perspective of our Muslim friends.

We talk about the perspective of our Jewish friends. We talk about the perspectives of people involved in things. talk about how prevalent misinformation is in the entire deal. But we don't lose sight of the truth right now. Is that there are atrocities happening. And those atrocities are happening with the rubber stamp and backing of the U.S. government. And so we discuss.

We talk. Then once we are in league, we motivate, we mobilize, we take action. So that is the deal. It is a non-negotiable. we haven't always lived up to the higher we Rachel has I haven't always lived up to the higher standards of myself it is sometimes not easy to do it shouldn't be easy

there should be red lines drawn and there should be ultimatums given when people's lives are in the balance so these shows have been serious for the last couple of shows because there's a lot of serious shit going on but I'll tell you guys one thing last thing is I'm having a great time Like, it's, it's, I'm like, I just be honest with you guys.

Like, I am, I am inspired by you. I'm inspired by you guys. I'm inspired. I know that the problems are fixable and that the answers are evident. I'm inspired. I'm not walking around with my head down, looking around. Part of that is privilege. But I am trying my best to stay motivated and,

engaged throughout the times that we're in. I'm not going to do it over the cover of falseness. It's going to have to be in truth. So y'all want to laugh? You can laugh with me. You want to cry. You can cry with me. You want to get mad.

You can get mad with me. But you cannot watch William Knight with me because that's scary. That's frightening. It is frightening. Take thing, caps off, but not stop learning on Gary. I'm Rachel and Lindsay. Bye, guys.