LeBron and Israel, the “Kevin Durant Files,” and the Beautiful Hellscape of Culver City

Summary

Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay

Episode: LeBron and Israel, the “Kevin Durant Files,” and the Beautiful Hellscape of Culver City

Date: February 17, 2026 | Host: The Ringer

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Episode Overview

In this multifaceted episode, Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay wade through a vivid cross-section of Black culture, sports, and modern politics. They dive into three headline topics: LeBron James’s All-Star Weekend comments about Israel, the mysterious “Kevin Durant Files” online drama, and the recent political dust-up over Culver City, joined by Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove. Additionally, tech columnist Ed Zitron joins to debunk fresh AI fear-mongering. Themes of community, accountability, celebrity responsibility, media manipulation, and political truth-telling animate a lively discussion filled with memorable quips, cultural observation, and expert insights.

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1. All-Star Weekend Recap, Partying vs. Networking

[00:10–03:10]

• Rachel recounts her hectic weeks, distinguishing between “partying” and “networking.”
• Van shares a Baton Rouge story about using “library study” as a cover for early dating—a parallel to social networking labeled as career development.
• Memorable banter:
  • “We were going to the library so that we could hang out. And that’s what everyone in Baton Rouge did.”
• [Light tone, playful ribbing; sets up episode’s balance of humor and seriousness.]

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2. Body Shaming and Social Etiquette

[03:13–09:35]

• Van confronts friends and strangers commenting on his weight, declaring he's done taking such remarks politely:
  • "I’ve warned everyone. Now it’s over..." [03:43]
  • "If you walk up and comment on people’s bodies ... you better be perfect." [03:23]
• Humorous anecdote on a friend with legendary bad breath:
  • “He’s a mutant. He should live with the X-Men.” [03:57]
  • “I saw it melt an ice cube.” [04:42]
• Discussion: Why are such “body commentary” and social awkwardness so prevalent? Rachel and Van agree: “The rotund army. We’re polite. We know this shit about y’all.” [05:49]

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3. NBA All-Star Weekend & The Dunk Contest

[09:39–20:39]

• Both hosts critique the current dunk contest, lamenting its cultural decline.
  • Van:
    "The dunk contest in its history has never been a year in, year out, can’t miss event. ... But this one was laughable, laughable and pathetic and weirdly insignificant. And that matters." [12:33]
  • Rachel: Discusses nostalgia for when the dunk contest was a premier NBA family/cultural event.
• Key theme: Erosion of tradition, self-interest over collective celebration.
  • "It used to be a thing ... you all come as a family reunion, and they don’t even come." [16:24]

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4. The “Kevin Durant Files” Burner Account Drama

[20:37–40:48]

• Allegation: Screenshots from an alleged KD burner account surface, purportedly slandering teammates.
• Hosts dissect the claims:
  • Rachel:
    "I saw this, I’m like, this is such a stretch. ... Why are people running with this other than they seem to really want to be anti-KD?" [25:25]
  • Van:
    "There hasn’t been anything ... that's a legitimate smoking gun." [27:10] "If it were him ... it would be remarkably injurious to his standing, his place in the game and really to his legacy." [31:34]
• Discussion of evidence: Circumstantial parallels, group chat leaks, KD’s prior admitted burnering.
• Should Durant address it?
  • Rachel: "No. ... Just keep it going and the news cycle will change." [32:04]
  • Van: "If it were me, I would come out and I would try to establish that I didn’t say these things." [34:08]
• Memorable Moment: Playful debate on whether teammates should confront KD, segues into personal anecdotes about rumor confrontation.

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5. LeBron James, Israel, and Athlete Accountability

[40:48–60:13]

• LeBron asked by Israeli reporters for a “message” to Israel and thoughts on Israeli NBA player Deni Avdija:
  • LeBron responds diplomatically, with a light, “I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard nothing but great things.” [41:36]
• Rachel: Dissects LeBron’s historical responses to domestic (race, justice) vs. geopolitical issues; notes he condemned the October 7 attacks but said little on Gaza or humanitarian crisis.
• Van: Examines broader issues of fame, privilege, and expectation—athletes as arbiters of principle:
  • "It’s unfair that someone has a billion dollars just for playing basketball..." [54:31]
  • "People want to see principle demonstrated." [56:07]
• Memorable quote:
  • "If he had kept it simple ... just kept talking. So to your point, if they have that person in the crew, my advice would be: just keep it a simple answer, right?" —Rachel [48:05]

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6. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove & The "Beautiful Hellscape" of Culver City

[67:29–89:19] (w/ timestamps for Rep. Kamlager-Dove's key sections)

a. Defending Culver City

• Guest: Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (CA-37)
• Responds to Pam Bondi calling Culver City a “hellscape” during congressional hearings:
  • "You've got $24 smoothies at Erewhon ... This is a bucolic neighborhood." [70:15]
  • On viral reactions: "I’m never thinking, oh, let’s try to make a viral moment. ... I oftentimes am just expressing my outrage ..." [73:37]
• Gun store anecdote: "They turned it into art ... 'love one another.' That’s what Culver City is about." —Van [72:01]

b. On Congressional Hearings & Combating Political Obfuscation

• Rep. Kamlager-Dove discusses performative politics and witness deflection (Epstein files, right-wing violence):
  • "You have to call them on it." [82:51]
• On the GOP: "I think the Republican bucket is full of a whole bunch of hot mess and we have to do our job of revealing the duplicity." [81:16]

c. Bridging Political Divides & Authenticity in Congress

• "I believe that people try to separate us by race in order to divide us by class. ... If you took money out of the equation ... we could really extinguish these other kinds of hate." [88:20]
• On a new generation in Congress:
  • "I think what you’re seeing from this newer crop of members is folks more willing to tell the truth and also expose some inconsistencies within our own party." [90:32]
• Internal Dem leadership critique:
  • "He doesn’t excite me, like, at all. ... Sometimes I question if members within our own party want [Hakeem Jeffries] to become speaker as a Black man." [91:31]

d. Epstein Files (and the government’s failures to protect girls)

• Reveals the difficulty of reviewing the unredacted Epstein files and the prevalence of coverups.
  • "You’re reading these things and you’re like, these girls are like 11, 12, 13 years old ... It’s heartbreaking." [97:04]
  • "They’re using the weight of this government to silence people. And I’m not down with that." [102:12]

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7. AI Hype and Economic Reality Check (w/ Ed Zitron)

[103:05–133:22]

• Ed Zitron brings skepticism to the viral tech essay “Something Big is Happening,” which claims AI is close to displacing white-collar jobs and achieving general intelligence.
  • “His [Matt Schumer’s] piece is full of insane misstatements around recursive learning ... it’s just marketing.” [104:34]
  • “If you see a CEO say this will happen because of AI and they run an AI company, think: CEO of Oreos says the Oreo is the most important food of all time.” [108:44]
• On LLMs' actual practical value:
  • “If you know exactly what you’re looking for ... it could speed you up a bit. If you don’t ... it will miss something. And that thing could be egregious.” [121:58]
• Discusses the dangerous AI economic bubble:
  • “These people exist in a completely different world to us, ... all of their customers are AI startups that are funded by venture capital. What happens when one link in this chain breaks?” [126:54]
• "It's a Ponzi scheme." —Rachel [127:28]
• Predicts eventual collapse:
  • “I think what’s going to happen is ... it’s going to stay something like this right up until it’s too late.” [127:55]

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8. Brief Roundtable: Migration, Center-Left Drift, & Alien Disclosure

[134:05–145:14]

• Obama and Hillary Clinton’s recent center-right pivots on borders/migration—Van remains suspicious:
  • "They're inching to the right... they love the center." [142:51]
• Lively debate on what “disruptive mass migration” really means; Van prods for more specifics and addresses cultural anxieties behind migration debates.
• Obama’s soft UFO “confirmation” and swift walk-back leads to jokes about reptilian cover-ups.
  • "He might actually be one...Confirmed." —Van [144:09]

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Notable Quotes & Timestamp Highlights

• "It’s unfair that someone has a billion dollars just for playing basketball. It’s unfair that entertainers and the actors and the athletes that we love get to move through the world like they’re doing the most important thing that's ever existed. People want to see principle demonstrated. They want clarity on who they're giving that privilege to." —Van [54:29–56:07]

• "There are a lot of people out there right now ... are these people stupid or evil? ... You have to call them on it." —Van [80:10], Rep. Kamlager-Dove [82:51]

• "If you know exactly what you’re looking for ... it could speed you up a bit. If you don’t know everything about it ... it will miss something. And that thing could be egregious." —Ed Zitron [121:58]

• "They’re using the weight of this government to silence people. And I’m not down with that." —Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove [102:12]

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Episode Structure/Timestamps (Quick Guide)

• [00:10–09:35] Opening banter, party/networking, body shaming.
• [09:39–20:39] All-Star/hoops culture, dunk contest.
• [20:37–40:48] Kevin Durant Files online saga.
• [40:48–60:13] LeBron/Israel, athlete responsibility, principle.
• [67:29–102:12] Rep. Kamlager-Dove: Culver City, Congress, Epstein Files, political culture.
• [103:05–133:22] AI hype vs. reality with Ed Zitron.
• [134:05–145:14] Clinton/Obama, immigration, aliens, outro.

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Tone & Language

• Candid, opinionated, irreverent but deeply invested in social and political analysis—embodies Higher Learning’s unique blend of humor, cultural authenticity, and critical interrogation. Hosts keep it real about both the personal (weight, rumors, confrontation) and the political (NBA culture, media discourse, migration, technology hype). Guests contribute expertise and personal narrative without political varnish.

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This episode is a lively, far-reaching conversation spanning culture, sports, political drama, and the tech economy—anchored by a spirit of skepticism, solidarity, and social critique. If you missed it, this summary should leave you feeling like you were right there for the ride.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Warriors. What is up? Higher learning is on.

[B]

Is Ivan Lathan Jr. And it's me, Rachel and Lindsey.

[A]

Rachel, what's up?

[B]

You know, I'm just. I'm coming down. I've had a. A very busy three weeks. And I am happy that it's behind me.

[A]

I've been partying.

[B]

You're using that term very generally. I was networking.

[A]

You know what's funny? Do y' all remember, like, back in the day? I don't know if I use. If y' all did this, but I used to do this. It was like. I used to tell my parents that me and Paulette, my girl at the time that we were going to the library to study. And this was a way that we could, like, basically go out on dates and see each other every single day. Cause we was in there studying and all of that shit like that. Studying. We're going to the library. We gotta get work done and stuff like that. But really, that's not why we were doing that. We were going to the library so that we could hang out. And that's what everyone in Baton Rouge did. Goodwill Library, the new Burbank Library. Go there to hang out. So all of this stuff you talking about, you going out to these places to network and stuff like that.

[B]

Yeah, that's exactly what I did. The amount of content. Now. Did I at night party? Absolutely. Saturday I played a little spades. I was able to get in on the tournament. You don't know how to play, right?

[A]

I do. You didn't know the tournament.

[B]

It was spades tournament.

[A]

How many parties did you hit this week? How many different events?

[B]

I did more for super bowl, but for All Star, I went to at least seven. Yeah, two a day. But they're not parties. I went to a women's networking event. I went to Meta House. I went to a boardroom brunch. I went.

[A]

You know what I was doing?

[B]

I was.

[A]

I was putting together this thing on voter ID for the show today.

[B]

I can show you mine. Because I don't sleep. Yeah, because I don't. I don't sleep. That's why I sound like this. Would you like to see mine? Would you like to see mine? Thank you very much.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is that a chart? Bullet points. Okay. All right, let's go.

[A]

So here's the deal. I'll say this. I have to say something before we get into the show today. And I warned people about this. And it happened, Okay? I warned people. I warned people that if you saw me and you say, boy, you've put Some weight on that. I was gonna start getting in your ass.

[B]

Somebody said that to you?

[A]

They did, and I had to get in their ass.

[B]

Who was it?

[A]

Not talking about that part of it. They know who they are. Hey, looks like you picked up a couple of weights. It's good to see you in here. And I said, look, you know what? I've picked up a couple of ways, but what's the same is your breath. Your breath stank in 2017 and it stinks now.

[B]

Was that true?

[A]

It's a fact. This person that I'm talking about is somebody around town. Everybody knows him. His breath is terrible. As a matter of fact, where's my back?

[B]

But, like, why don't you. Like, clearly, this person has halitosis. Why would you not help this person out?

[A]

This person is the reason why I have this. Because one time I smelled this person's breath. I think it was like, 19. And I was like, I can't go out like this. This person's breath is so bad. It's a talent. He should be living with. Professor X. I told you I was going to bust your ass. All right, I'm going bust your asses now. I've given enough grace to all of you people that walk up and comment on people's bodies. You better come. When you do that, you better be perfect. Because if not, I'm gonna bust your ass. You drive away in something crazy, I'm gonna look at you crazy. I'm gonna bust your ass. I'm gonna be an asshole about it. I've warned everyone. Now it's over now. I didn't warn you.

[B]

The fact you said he should be with Professor X, Diabolical.

[A]

He's a mutant.

[B]

No, I get it.

[A]

He's a talent. He should live with the X Men.

[B]

I get it.

[A]

It's like, I've been in situations where this person has walked up and he is like, Agent Orange dropped a fucking cloud over the whole thing. And the rest of us get depressed. It's depressing.

[B]

Does this person listen to the podcast?

[A]

They definitely do. And we had a conversation after this, and I was like, I told people, I'm going to start busting your ass, like, in your face. I don't care if you with your people. You got your son with you, the whole nine. I'mma bust your ass. That's enough. I'm working my ass off. All right? So there's the deal. That's it. It's over. And this person's breath, once again, I swear to God, I saw it melt an ice cube. One time, it was at Beauty in Essex. I saw an ice cube. I saw somebody had one of those ice cubes. Those. Those ice cubes like that.

[B]

And they were just holding it.

[A]

They were getting it. He's getting. They're putting the ice cube in the drink. And then he went. And all of a sudden the drink, it went up because he fucking melted.

[B]

Now. Does he have teeth? Stop. Stop it now.

[A]

I'm not sure that he does. I've never seen them before.

[B]

You're going to.

[A]

Is probably rotten. You probably used to have goals or something like that. You ever seen that? The take their goals out and they.

[B]

All keep you rotting. It's crazy.

[A]

Bust your ass now. Now, if you want to. If you want to stand in front of me and we can go back and forth, I'm good with that too, because I'm in. In the player proof crew. The drive battle is what we do. But just know, it's been years now. Okay? I'mma put that wheel in your back. All right?

[C]

Poor guy.

[A]

He was taking aback.

[B]

I'm sure he was. He'd be like, you've been sitting on this for this many years.

[A]

That's not what happened.

[B]

And you never said anything because.

[A]

I was being polite. Because remember the fats of the world, we're polite, too. We see shit about y' all and we don't just come out and say it.

[B]

You're right. You're right.

[A]

Like, we're polite. The rotund army. We're polite. We know this shit about y'.

[B]

All. You're right. You're not wrong. Exactly. What you're saying is so right. The diabolical part is that you didn't say, oh, your breath smells right now. You said, it's been smelly since 2017. Can you imagine knowing that you've had stank breath for almost 10 years?

[A]

He has to know.

[B]

And I don't know. I went to college with somebody with really bad breath. And everybody knew. Everybody knew. I know the girl. One of the girls who dated. And we'd always be like, how does she not say anything?

[A]

Can I say something? This is.

[B]

And I don't think he knew.

[A]

This is not. I don't mean to be.

[B]

His brother had it, too.

[A]

I don't mean to be addicted. So it's a. It's a mutant gene.

[C]

It's.

[B]

It's halitosis. It's not a gene.

[A]

It's a mutant gene. It's like what I said. Professor X's School for Gifted Youngsters.

[B]

Well, what's the power. What's the power?

[A]

The power is. Think about, think about. If you like Magneto, right? And like, Magneto is like, he. I'm a fucking enslaved to human beings and all of that shit like that. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the human beings are like chanting at you.

[C]

Stop. Magneto.

[A]

What? Magneto. He's like, oh, shit, hold on for a second. To be involved in this. Like, I want to be involved in this. You put him out front of the X Men and you let him talk. And then everybody goes, we give up. But I told. But it's been for a long time. Big ass teeth. Anyway. Big ass teeth too, with the breath. Just trying to find his way through.

[B]

Give me updates on yalls friendship in about a month or two.

[A]

Who?

[B]

You and this person.

[A]

We was never friends, so don't. Like, we were. We were. The LA thing is like, we were never friends. It was like the LA thing. You see this person at different parties and stuff like that. You dap them up and all of that like that. Just like. Just know that if you outrage the fats, we will start talking about what we see in you. Okay? Just remember, man, I was like, I know a lot of people. Shit. I know a lot of shit that y' all done done. I act like I don't know it, but I do. Let's move on.

[B]

That's why people would say that to you.

[A]

But that's what happened. It happened up here at the fucking front of the thing. Not to me, to one of the guys in the front. One of the guys in the front that I hadn't seen in a while. He walks up and there's another guy in the front. And the guy looks at him and goes, you put on some weight, huh? The dude didn't hear him. He didn't hear him. And then he didn't hear him. So he fucking said it again. I'm looking at him, I'm like, my nigga, what's wrong with you? And then I'm like, what's your. Like, what's your problem, bruh? And then we. Then I leave and I come back and I talk to the guy. I'm like, why in the world do people say stuff like this? And the guy hasn't. Hasn't gained weight. He's actually lost weight. He's actually.

[B]

Sometimes people just don't know what to say. Socially awkward.

[C]

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[A]

NBA All Star Weekend Donnie, did y'.

[D]

All watch any of the activities the slam dunk contest?

[A]

I did.

[B]

I watched the duck contest.

[A]

I watched the dunk contest. I watched it.

[D]

I did not. I saw this clip though, of Jace Richardson, who took part in the slam dunk contest and I feel like he got a concussion. Let's just get a.

[A]

Let me pull it up. Hold on one second. Yeah, play the clip. This clip is indicative of the entire slam dunk contest and everything that went on this. This is the slam dunk contest.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I thought that All Star weekend was toast until the game. The game brought it back, the All Star Game last week.

[B]

A lot of people shared that. I think it was also tough because NBC has the Winter Olympics that everything was so much early. So I was missing stuff. Like I came home to watch the dunk contest and it was already over. I had to watch the replay on Peacock. So I think the timing messed people up. Because when you know it's All Star weekend, at least traditionally back in the day for the dunk contest, you know it's coming on at night, three point contest, skills challenge. Like you sit and you watch it. It's like a whole festivities. I agree with you, but I was also. I also have no expectations for the dunk contest. I watch it because I feel like there's still a glimmer of hope because I'm holding on to the past. But not that I expect someone to pretty much injure themselves. But we know it's been a dud for a while and there's always a narrative that follows the game, too. But most people that I talked to had your sentiment about the new arrangement for the game and seemed to enjoy it at least the first two games.

[A]

What are you talking about? On Sunday night.

[B]

On Sunday night. Maybe not the third, but the first two.

[A]

It was fun to see those guys, the best of the best in the NBA go at it, and they seem.

[B]

Like they enjoyed it a little bit more.

[A]

They had fun. It felt like really elevated hoops at an open run at the gym. Kind of the stuff that you see them doing in the summers, either at UCLA or with Chris Brickley or wherever the fuck people are doing all that dumbass shit. Here's the thing about the dunk contest. There's a truth about the dunk contest that we all kind of forget. The dunk contest in its history has never been a year in, year out, can't miss event. It's never been like that. It's. You always had guys in the dunk contest that were super athletic. Obviously it's in the NBA, and then you had some stars. But it would really be. The dunk contest was good every year. And then once every three or four years, you get an iconic dunk contest. Cause, like, when I'm looking back at this, you have Jordan in it twice. You have Dominique Wilkins, you have D. Brown, Cedric Sabalos, Harold Miner, Isaiah Ryder, Harold Miner again, Brent Barry. A lot of these guys, the highlight of their career is that they are dunk contest winners, right? I remember Kenny Skywalker won at one time, and that was After Michael Jordan, 1 2, 12 years in a row. So it's not as if the dunk contest itself was something that. That every single year wowed people. But this one was laughable. Like, laughable and pathetic and weirdly, weirdly insignificant. And that matters.

[B]

And what is your basis? Because of who was in it as well.

[A]

Not just who was in it. Not who was in it. This is not me dissing any of the guys that took their time to participate because some of the other guys can't be bothered to participate. It's not just who was in it. Think about the dunk contest. When you watched back in the day or back in the day in years prior, you will watch the dunk contest, and you'd see the guys dunking and on the sidelines, you'd see the who's who of not just the NBA family, but celebrity, too. The event was a big deal. This, to me, is a microcosm of what NBA All Star Weekend is supposed to be. People that are saying NBA All Star weekend doesn't matter are missing something. To me, NBA All Star Weekend is the family reunion of the NBA. Think about your family reunion when you at your family reunion. It's about seeing people you ain't seen in a while celebrating your family. Y' all make the shirts. Sometimes you have the shirts and you got the family tree on there. You know, the family reunion is in a place that is meaningful to the family. It's a celebration of the culture of the family. You see older people that you haven't seen any while people that might not be here for very long. You see the younger family members that are coming up that like, oh, they in high school now, they in college now, their lives are unfolding right in front of your eyes. All of that in one place. A celebration of the culture of this thing. That's what the NBA All Star weekend is. That's what it is. That's what it's always been. When these players and these people and these. When that's not important anymore, it is kind of in my brain. To me, it's commentary on how they view the culture of the league. Like the dunk contest is an athletic celebration for kids. If you care about the way the NBA is supposed to be and supposed to go, you should want to be in the dunk contest. You should want to come out and showcase that. You should want to be a part of, of entertaining people at your family reunion. This whole thing is a celebration of the NBA. And I just think, to me, when I look at it, it's not like I take it personal. I just wonder what it says about the player of today that so many of them think so much of this stuff is beneath them.

[B]

I don't know if they think it's beneath them, even though I totally understand that sentiment, or if it's just more about people being more self serving than they are about the greater good or, you know, like being a part of the league. Cause you're right. Cause I noticed that as well, part of the joy of the dunk contest was seeing who was on the sidelines. Like I remember back in the day when like, you know, like they had handheld camcorders and they bring their kids so their kids experience it. I mean, even before the All Star Game, they showed a clip of Steph Curry with his dad, Dell, like enjoying the festivities. Like that's part of the tradition. And I think even having Giannis there with his kids, and he was the only one, it made it, it highlighted even more how much it's not about that anymore. And to add to it, it's not even that the athletes didn't come to the dunk contest. A lot of them didn't even come to la. A lot of them stayed home or went on vacation or used the time off to be with their families, which I understand. I'm not Knocking. I'm just saying it used to be a thing like you all come to your point as a family reunion and they don't even come. And I just think we're in a league, it's a totally different league now for various reasons. But a lot of it just more so is about self or self preservation or however you want to look at it rather than the traditions of the league.

[A]

That to me, when you say it's about self, that to me is saying that this stuff is beneath you.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, you make that argument.

[A]

That to me is look, and that's fine. You don't want to do dunk contest, don't do dunk contest. You don't want to do it, don't do the dunk contest.

[C]

It.

[A]

Fuck the contest, don't do any of that stuff. I am saying this though, just as an aside. This to me is kind of a thing that we're seeing now. Just overall, there are a lot of other reasons why NBA All Star weekend is not what it used to be until the game on Saturday. Our idea of like what fame is, what a star is, all of that stuff is different now.

[C]

Right?

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's all different. Right? But like, yo, you know, at a certain point, this player centric league being so caught up in. I don't know, I don't know how to say this because it is about the players and you want them to be empowered, but you also just want players. You want the people involved in this. You want people to care about the thing that they're a part of. You do. You want them to care about the thing that they're a part of? You want people to care about the fact that they're a part of this long tradition of players in this league or in any league. And I think that's with anything. You just want people to care about the thing. You want people to care about not just their place in something, but you want people to care about the craft of it, the culture of it, the us of it. And if you cared about that, get out there and dunk for 10 minutes for the people. All you young super athletic stars. I don't want to talk about who changed the dunk contest and who we never saw in it. Because we're going to talk about this guy in a second anyway. But I just look at this and this sort of apathy towards it, this kind of bum ass shit, I don't like that type of shit. I don't, I don't, I do not. I don't like that Type of shit. I just think. I'm not saying that they forget about oh, and the league. The league is this entity, but just the fans. The fans, the culture.

[B]

That's what I think about it. It's like, yes, it's a family reunion and there's that part of it.

[A]

But.

[B]

But it used to again. Cause we grew up with it being totally different. It was something so fun to watch your players in a different space and then also seeing them come together and be friendly with each other and not as much competition. Cause also back in the day when we watched it, they were a lot meaner to each other, you know, on the court. So to see them a lot more light and having fun and free, that was also a part of the experience too. And you felt like you were getting to know your players in a different way. So I agree with you. Yeah, the league, but the fans is why I would wanna see more people tap into it.

[A]

Yeah, just, you know, I mean, more.

[B]

Players tap into it.

[A]

I know. You know, I think that with the NBA, where there's just a part of it to. We're in the low management, tanking sort of era, being on the court and performing is being contextualized as a part of something else. Not the main thing, but a part of something else. So we'll see what happens. This was a really, really, really interesting All Star game in terms of off the court shit that happened. We have to talk about some of this stuff. Some of this stuff lives in rumor.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Some of this stuff lives in rumor. Some of this stuff lives in rumor. But, Donnie, let's. Let's. We gotta talk about. We gotta talk about allegedly. The KDF files. We gotta talk about the KDF files.

[D]

Well, Kevin Durant has been open about using burner accounts to engage with fans online in the past. And it seems like this story has come back to bite him over the week. And online controversy surrounding KD popped up after screenshots from an alleged Burner account used to slander his teammates allegedly were leaked. We've got a list of these. They are super specific, which lends to the argument that this is Kevin Durant using a Burner account. But I know you guys have seen this.

[A]

Hold on. What are your thoughts in the sense.

[B]

That they're saying information like that's private, that the public wouldn't necessarily know. It's all based in opinion. Donnie telling us what he.

[A]

Donnie. Wow. Donnie getting in there. To me, as I look at this, none of this stuff says anything that someone couldn't just.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Right like, nobody is saying. I don't know what that information would be. Like, what information? There are things that I could say to you that are about you, where people would know that it was me.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

But they would have to be really specific. Where you. How about this? Not where people would know. Where you would know that it was me talking. It would have to be really specific, though. Right. A lot of this. Not a lot of it. All of this stuff has to do with, like, his opinions on other players and the dynamics within teams. Anybody could kind of conjure that from their mind. Right, Right.

[B]

It's very general.

[A]

It's. It's. It's very general. However, this is what I am led to understand here.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Because where I'm trying to understand, as I was looking into, is where this is the basis is coming. Like, what is this rooted in?

[A]

Okay. From what I've been able to glean and talk to people about, this is supposedly the story. These are not tweets. This is a Twitter group chat between someone that Twitter says is Kevin Durant and a bunch of other people that are either accounts that support Kevin Durant or people that he speaks through. Whatever. This is a group chat where he can get. Where the alleged Kevin Durant can get off his chest. Things about the game, his teammates, guys around the league and stuff like that. And in this is a bunch of different people that he would be talking to. One of the people out at the group chat for whatever reason right now. Couple questions I have. First of all, some of these tweets are so wild, right? Some of these tweets are like, just. Some of them are basketball related. Some of them are specific commentaries on his teammates. Some of them are, like, personal. Like, personal shit about different people and stuff like that. I have a lot of trouble. A lot of trouble believing. Despite all the burner stuff, I have a lot of trouble believing that there will be a group where all of these guys would know that this was Kevin Durant. He would know that they know, and he would be talking to them like this. Yeah, I just. It's difficult to believe. I mean, this one. I started holding Steph accountable in the film, and niggas started looking at me like this. Like, this would be Kevin Durant to me, and, like, his very closest group of people.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, people that he would have to know wouldn't fuck him over.

[B]

It's as I. When I saw it, I was like, no way. And then the more I looked into it, I was like, this guy's people. I can't believe People are really taking it and running with this. When there really doesn't seem even you explaining it to me, I'm still like, what's the connection? Right? Other than the one person who outed it out, what is the connection that. How did, like, you know, what proof do you specifically have that this is him? Other than a bunch of circumstantial evidence of, you know, what you just explained, plus the fact that he had a burner account before? Because when he had a burner account before he admitted to it, he sat down with someone. I can't remember, I think it was Jay, Jay Will, who he was talking to about having a burner account. He admitted to it and he said the reason he did it is because sometimes he wants to live a more private life and he's not able to do that because of who he is. So he wanted a space where he could talk, which more so plays into also them hanging onto this or like trying to say this is him. He said he wanted a space where he could talk to close friends and family on social media without having the public review every single thing that he does. And even when he was caught with the burner account, the things that he was saying, you know, because he was referring to himself in third person from his actual account, that's how he got caught. They weren't anything. Cause he didn't know at the time he was using his actual account. They weren't anything close to this, you know, somebody. It was like something asking about why he left Oklahoma or something along that. And he said, you know, didn't think the team was that great. And he didn't like playing for Billy Donovan. So it wasn't even as diabolical as some of this stuff is. So for me, I just. I saw this. I'm like, this is such a stretch. And why are people running with this other than the fact that they seem to really want to be anti kd?

[A]

Okay, so there's. There is a lot of. When I say evidence, I'm not saying that, like, people have put together a lot of stuff.

[B]

Well, I'm waiting for you to tell me.

[A]

Okay, there's some of the talk about his injury or whoever this is supposed to be talking about. Kevin Durant's injury lines up with times that Kevin Durant got off injury. So the. Whoever this person is that is talking, said something about his knee injury came back to the game at a certain point. And the point that they come back lines up with what they said in the chat is when he was coming Back. There's a picture that Kevin Durant used of an owl that he had in his shit, and the same owl picture is used in the deal.

[B]

Tell me how somebody can imitate this. Come on.

[A]

Saying that nobody can imitate. I'm not saying that this is. I'm not saying that I 100 believe it. But what I'm saying is that the Internet is making its case. This. This account blocks a bunch of people. This get off my Dickerson account. Okay? Which is the name of the account that is apparently the Kevin Durant Burner account. It blocks a bunch of people. A lot of the people blocked. The same people that Kevin Durant blocks to get off my Dickerson account. A lot of people that it follows. And it isn't talking to some of the same people. So people are putting together all of the evidence that this is actually Kevin Durant. There hasn't been anything to your point that is like a legitimate smoking gun. Yeah. That says that it's Kevin Durant. Nothing. Nothing. No legitimate smoking gun that says, hey, this is Durant. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's one other piece of information here, though. There's a gentleman by the name of Busby408. I've come across Busby stuff before. He's got a podcast and a very interesting Twitter account.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Come across this stuff before. He was really talking about. It's, like, a lot. He was very involved in the Kendrick vs Drake beef. He's a big KDOT fan. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Toss wrestling. I've seen some of his podcast clips before. He released direct messages and these direct.

[B]

Messages from the burner.

[A]

No, they're from Kevin Durant. Where are they?

[B]

In the rundown.

[A]

Hold on. Like the. Look, here it is. This is Kevin Durant hitting him up just over a long period of time, weeks apart, sometimes on behalf of Drake, because Busby is a big. A big Kendrick fan. He's, like, talking. This is calling them Fats. Busby's a heavier brother. And, you know, why do you want Drake dead? Blah, blah, blah, why you're ignoring me? Blah, blah, blah. The whole nine. And this continues to go for a while and a while and a while. So Busby released these DMs. He released these DMs of Kevin Durant, essentially, in his DMs, having a conversation with himself. Then he released another video where he goes into his own DMs and he searches Kevin Durant so that people could see it. And then it pops up and these DMs pop up. So what people are saying is that, look, the side dmc, the side group chat and stuff like that, you could believe that or you could not believe it, but KD is prone to, I guess, in whatever way engaging like this with people on Twitter.

[B]

Okay, but first off, those comments are, have nothing to do with what we see here with the get off my dickerson. And also he's doing them from his own verified account. He's not even trying to hide it. There is no correlation between these two.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I'm not even gonna entertain this, but I like you like the conspiracy theory.

[A]

This is my thing. Cause here's the deal for you.

[B]

I don't believe it.

[A]

Here's the deal for me, in my heart, I just have a real tough time believing that Kevin Durant would be this reckless to say all of this shit. I have a real tough time. But I gotta say this. If in fact this is him, it would be remarkably injurious to his standing, his place in the game and really to his legacy. Like, and if it were him, if it were him, it would be, it would almost be to the point to where Kevin Durant would need to retire. Because like you would look at his thoughts about his teammates. One thing, everybody has thoughts about people that they work with. Everybody has thought. I'm sure you've talked. Everyone has. But like NBA circles, locker room circles, teams and stuff like that. I know it's all work, but it's all based around this trust and understanding that they have with one another. At least they're supposed to. They're teammates.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And if you were talking like this about your teammates to people outside of that circle, that would be really, really, really fucked up.

[B]

It would if it was true. It's not true. It's not true.

[A]

Okay. Do you think that he should address this?

[B]

No. Cause it's so this. Okay, so normally I'm a big person who's like, address it, address it. But like, I just, if there was something that I could hold onto, I would be like, man, you might need to address it because it's so close, but everything seems so far fetched that it's not even worth putting more attention on it. This is one of those things where it's like you're going to add fuel to the fire if you acknowledge it. Just keep it going and the news cycle will change. Because I do feel like there's. There is like an. It has been for a while, like kind of like an anti KD movement and people look for things when it comes to him. So I think he should just move. Keep it moving.

[A]

Right. So it let me try to go to the get off conspiracy theories.

[C]

I'm not.

[B]

I'm.

[A]

Look, I legitimately came out and tweeted yesterday. I just don't think. It can't be.

[B]

It's too far fetched, guys.

[A]

It can't be. Let's. Let's go to get higher 77. Get higher 77 tweets right here.

[B]

I think it's blocked.

[A]

To get off my Dickerson account.

[B]

I think not blocked. I think it's private.

[A]

They tweeted the fucking shit.

[B]

It's private, right?

[A]

It's privated now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To get off my dickerson. It's privated now. I don't know, man. Like, if I was him, if I was him, I would address it.

[B]

What would you say?

[A]

It's not me.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I would say. And I would give. I would come out and say that it's not me. And then I would give like a whole bunch of evidence as to why it's not me. Some of the other people in this group chat are starting to talk. They think they were talking to Kevin Durant.

[B]

That sounds like fanatics to me.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Like, they really thought that they were talking to Kevin Durant and he was talking to them like this.

[A]

They were talking to Kevin Durant.

[B]

You are that. You are privileged enough to get these. These type of intimate details or inner thoughts of Kevin Darrea. Like, why. Why would you think that you were privy to that? These are fanatics. I would not. I would leave it alone. I would.

[A]

If it were me, I would come out and I would try to establish that I didn't say these things.

[B]

People are gonna. Especially for like this group of people that I believe to be fanatics, they're gonna believe what they wanna believe. Cause they don't wanna think that forever how long it's been. They thought they were talking to Kevin Durant and they weren't. That's also kind of embarrassing.

[C]

So.

[B]

And I don't know how long this alleged group chat was going on. So for me, those people are gonna believe what they want to at the end of the day. So why is it even worth addressing?

[A]

So don't even address it.

[B]

Why give them more attention. Cause that's the attention that they seek.

[A]

Okay, okay. You wouldn't. If somebody came out with, okay, let me ask you this last thing if you were one of the people, because he's got current teammates that allegedly. Whoever it is, get off my Dickerson.

[B]

You love the name.

[A]

It's funny. Get off my Dickerson. Slander. Okay, so Jabari Smith, who should have went to lsu.

[B]

Okay, okay.

[A]

His dad went to lsu. He should have went to lsu. He didn't. I'm salty about it every time I see him. He's a great player. But in this Kevin Durant, like, basically not Kevin Durant. Get off my Dickerson. What'd you say? Get off my Dickerson. Get off my Dickerson. Dissed him. If you are Jabari Smith, do you go to Kevin Durant and be like, yo, did you say this?

[B]

Depends what kind of relationship they have with each other. If they're close, maybe. Yeah. Like, if I. If I saw something, I would. If. And we were. And we're close, obviously. But I would probably ask you.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. If.

[B]

If I wasn't close, I wouldn't care.

[A]

Yeah. So. But if, like, this shit came out and it was all him. It was me talking shit on CT and Jade and Bernard and all of this, I would expect that they would come up to me and they would say, hey, did you say this shit?

[B]

But wouldn't you be offended if that person asked you?

[A]

Nah.

[B]

Because we kind of had that situation.

[A]

What happened?

[B]

Not to bring it up, and I don't even know if this is gonna be an issue, but with something. When you were accused of something, I asked you.

[A]

I was accused?

[B]

Yeah, you were accused of something.

[A]

What was I accused of?

[B]

Oh, I hate to even bring this back up. Cause it. Cause, like, I was really apologetic to you.

[A]

Oh, no. But that was. You do the accusing, though, so that's fine.

[B]

I didn't accuse you. I didn't accuse. I asked. I was like, hey, this happened. Do you know? Like, did you.

[A]

Oh, yeah, that's different.

[B]

And we're close, so I asked. And he accused you.

[A]

Who?

[B]

My ex accused you. He thinks that he thought it was you. Yes.

[A]

What?

[B]

We've talked about this.

[A]

You didn't tell me that.

[B]

Okay, we're not gonna put this in a podcast because I really don't want to bring that stuff up. We'll talk about it later. Like, that's.

[A]

Wait, he said that I did that?

[B]

He thinks that you did that. We're cutting this part out. Yes.

[A]

Well, we don't need to talk about it then. Because I don't want to have to go in a mouth like, hey, tell that. Don't speak.

[B]

But I was. So we'll get this whole part out. But I was more. I was more so bringing enough. As an example of, like, I asked you and I offended you and I felt bad Obviously, we've already hashed this out, but I'm just saying we cut all this part out.

[A]

You know what? Leave it in the podcast. I'll tell you why. Because he is a fucking liar. Because it's likely him that called the people out there and him that did the whole fucking thing. He is a fucking liar.

[B]

I think it was somebody that the same people who called reported it to Page Six before in New York. I think it's somebody on his team.

[A]

Yeah, whatever. That's very rich. That's very rich.

[B]

Yes. Because I know you in that.

[A]

In that situation. That's very rich to even think that that could possibly. I never knew that he had said that anyway.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Come on over here. Come on over here.

[A]

Wow.

[E]

Wow.

[A]

Okay, So I would think that. I would think that some of these people that are named in this would. Would be concerned. Donnie, would you. First of all, Donnie, do you think it's Kevin Durant?

[D]

I don't know. I've seen all the. I mean, it's funny. It's funny to think that it is, but, I mean, I. If I'm like, gun to my head, I don't think it was him because we've seen him be open about his online interactions, which I personally do think are weird. Like, DMing somebody over and over and over, and you're talking to yourself. That's weird behavior. But he did it knowing that his name was attached to that, and it's possible that it could have been released. So I think with that evidence in his back pocket, I don't see him doing this.

[A]

Okay, people are so. People. Okay, just one last one. People are saying that this. Get this dickerson. This off my Dickerson chat, but that don't really matter because. Well, okay, okay, listen. People are saying that this get off my Dickerson account celebrated their birthday in 2022. In 9 29. 2022. And they said mo life. Somebody said mo life to them because it's their birthday. And then Kevin Durant's birthday is September 29th. So look.

[B]

So did you say September 22nd?

[A]

No, it's the 22nd. So it's the 20. So apparently they was responding to get off my Dickerson here. And they said mo life, because it supposedly supposed to be get off my Dickerson's birthday. 9:22. 9:29, 2022. And then you look over at it, and then Kevin Durant's birthday. So get off my Dickerson is purporting to be Kevin Durant.

[B]

Yes, that is. That is very. This person is trying to make people think he's Kevin Durant.

[A]

Last question. If you are Kevin Durant, don't you want to find out the true identity of get off my Dickerson? No, you don't.

[B]

When you're that. No. Like, when you're that big of a public figure, it's not shocking that somebody is pretending to be you. Online, I. There are accounts that were pretending that have used my picture on Instagram, pretending that they're me. Haven't you seen that? Where people are like, hey, look at this page. Yeah. So, no, I don't think. I think he should not waste his time with this.

[A]

But if somebody actually thought that it was me, I would probably have somebody go figure out how I could prove that I didn't say all of that shit. I get it.

[B]

Depending on what they were saying. Sure.

[A]

Depending on what they were saying. Depending on what they were saying. Okay. That's not the only thing that happened off the court. From the All Star game, LeBron was.

[B]

Asked about Israel from Channel 14 in Israel, for all the Israeli fans, what message would you like to send for Israel? And also, what do you think about Danny Abdia?

[A]

Well, I've been quoted on Danny already, and they asked me, did I thought what I thought about his season. I said, I believe he was an All Star. And I mean, he is an All Star. He's playing, you know, exceptional, you know, basketball. So that's that. And then, I mean, if. If I have fans over there, I've never been there. If I have fans over there, then, you know, I hope you have been following my career. I hope I inspire people over there to not only want to be great in sports, but I want you to be better in general in life. So hopefully someday I can make it over there. Like I said, I've never been over there, but I've heard nothing. Them are great things. And I appreciate the question.

[B]

Thank you so much.

[A]

Appreciate it. Thank you, LeBron. Okay, Rach, your thoughts?

[B]

So I looked up. I was like, has LeBron James said anything in regards to what has happened since October 7, 2023? And he put out a statement, obviously condemning the terrorist attack, which a lot of us did. To my research, he has not said anything in regards to the humanitarian crisis, to Palestinian rights to Gaza, to what's happening over there. I wanted to look that up, because I do know that he, more so has a history of speaking out against domestic issues, racial and social injustice, but not necessarily outside of that geopolitical. So I wouldn't necessarily expect him to. But it is to note that he has spoken. He did call out the terrorist attack. This would have been fine. Because first off, and you can answer this, I guess, after I finish, I want to ask you, do you think this was a fair question? Because I saw some of that being litigated online. But to me, it made sense to ask about someone who's making history as an Israeli basketball player in the NBA, for her to say, you have fans over there, and for him to acknowledge fans. I don't think that that's problematic. It was the specific comment he made about. I've heard nothing but great things. I can see why people are upset. And to me, it was just a little bit. I just understand how problematic. There's no way that you don't understand the humanitarian crisis that's going on, that you don't know that hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives. And in stark contrast to that, you have Kyrie Irving sitting courtside with a press shirt acknowledging the journalists that have lost their lives in Gaza, over 300 of them. We know he's been outspoken about it, but I'm just saying that without even saying anything, or even Spike Lee, you know, without having to say anything, they are acknowledging the lives that have been lost and just the genocide that's taking place over there. So for him to just kind of flip it, say in such a flippant way of, they're doing great things, it's like, have you not been paying attention to what's. You know, we'll just start from 20. October, 2023. Have you not been paying attention to what's been going on and happening to the people and the devastation that has happened to that, to Gaza and to Palestinians? You don't even have to go into the history of it. Let's just start there. I'm just a little surprised that he was so careless. Like, the first half could have been fine. The second half.

[A]

Oh, they had him in the first half is what you're saying. I.

[B]

What do you mean, had him? Like, he was set up?

[A]

Nah, they had him. They. We had him in the first half.

[B]

You had him in the first. I think. I think it was fine for him.

[A]

Do you not know what I'm referencing? No, they. Does anybody know what I'm talking about?

[B]

It sounds familiar.

[A]

They had us in the. I ain't gonna lie. They had us in the first half.

[C]

Isn't that just like a general, like.

[B]

When it comes to sports? Like, yeah. They go, no, it is from something. Hold on real quick. I just can't.

[D]

No, it's like there was like a high school kid or something. I feel like it was a real life.

[A]

The meme, the kid goes, I ain't gonna lie. They had us in the first half. Y' all never seen it.

[C]

Maybe I have seen it back.

[B]

It sounded familiar.

[A]

It sounded familiar.

[B]

Okay, all right.

[A]

I ain't gonna lie. They had us. So I ain't gonna lie. He had you in the first half and then the second half. Okay? So the first thing is, to your point, you asked the question whether or not the question is fair. That doesn't even matter. That's out. Okay, okay, that's out. The fairness of the question don't matter. Whether or not it's fair or not. That's out. That you will be asked. Athletes, entertainers, people like that, you will be asked. They will ask you. All right, I have a fix for this. You know, I've covered these crews for a long time, looked in these crews. I know, at least the way it used to be when I was still around TNC sports, that inside these crews, you know, it wouldn't be necessarily regimented this way or assigned this way, but different people had different things, right? There was a guy in the crew that would wrangle females. And when I say wrangle, I mean wrangle. Okay? There's a guy in the crew that would take care of the weed, right? There's a guy in the crew, sometimes get people out the way when we walking all of these different crews for celebrities and stuff like that. Go get you a egghead. Go get your egghead and put the egghead in your crew. Like, legitimately have a politics guy. I'm serious. Like, have a guy, have a dude that you bring around that sometimes can feed you answers, or sometimes you could just be like, yo, hey, yo, this is my man. This is my man Benny right here. He in his, you know, third year of Harvard or whatever. You know, I talked to him a lot about this stuff. Benny, come over here and tell them what we was talking about. Like, have a guy in your crew that is about this, the questions about politics, geopolitics and all of that stuff, they're not going to stop. They are going to be ever present and you're going to have a choice, or you're going to be forced to make a choice. Whenever you're in front of a microphone anywhere. I didn't hear any questions about ice or all of that stuff going on about Donald Trump. It seems as if the NBA was on top of that. The NBA was like, hey, it's All Star Game weekend. We don't want to hear no questions about Pam Bondi or the Epstein files. We don't want to hear that. And even though that was a thing, we still got to a question around a hugely controversial and fraught geopolitical situation, right? And LeBron James was caught out there, and he didn't really know how to answer the question. So I'm telling guys right now, guys, ladies, particularly in sports and music, rap and shit like that, you're not going to be able to avoid being asked about some of this stuff. Depending on where you are, people are going to want to know. These conversations are ever present, they're going to want to know, all right? So you're going to have to find a way to get you a egghead. Put the egghead in the crew.

[B]

Keep it simple. Again, they had him in the first half.

[A]

Had him in the first half.

[B]

If he had kept it simple, he just kept talking. I think, to your point, he was probably uncomfortable and just kind of like, you know, when you're comfortable, you just kind of keep talking and it's like. So to your point, if they have that person in the crew, my advice would be, like, just keep it a simple answer, right? Everybody has their role, so everybody has their.

[A]

Everybody has different jobs. So now I'm going to go maybe a tad little deeper here. A little, tad deeper. It's always a good. Always good to give a warning when you're going to go a little bit deeper. All right, tad deeper here. Don't let your mind take you to a place. Okay, tad deeper here. There's a little precedent here that we have to talk about. 2019, the GM of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, tweeted support for the Hong Kong protesters. When the NBA was in China, this was bad, and it was bad for the NBA because China's a gigantic market. LeBron James, when he was talking out there, he criticized Daryl Morey's tweet. He said Daryl Morey was misinformed. He talked about the consequences of it, and he also said that the tweet was irresponsible insofar as it created a situation that could be dangerous for players and staff in China.

[B]

I remember.

[A]

Okay, let me tell you how these two things kind of connect. One is, I think a lot of people are going to want to know what LeBron James thinks about different world issues, whether that's fair to him or not, whether that's fair to some of these other luminaries or not. People are going to Want to know this is something also that exists there. There could be an argument made that speaking out on domestic issues as it regards to race or things like that are good for the bottom line or the cult of personality for some of these players or for some of these people, that speaking out on things, even speaking against the President, when you're on the level of LeBron James, that that stuff is stuff that you can use to create goodwill and feelings inside of the community. I know that a lot of people says that feels counterintuitive. It feels like, hey, if you come out and you take a political stance against something that's actually bad, it's bad. That lessens the amount of people who would fuck with you. But if you're LeBron James, he is somebody that is so big and so Teflon that he can stand in opposition to certain things, he can not to say that he doesn't care about these things. And by the way, I'm not saying this. I'm saying that this is kind of what LeBron James or a character like LeBron James is battling against. Now we're sitting here talking and we know how we feel about this particular issue. We know how we feel about what's going on in Gaza, the genocide that has existed there. We know how we feel about the plight of the Palestinian people since they were ethnically cleansed from the land that they lived on before for the creation of Israel. We know how we feel, right? We know what we want, which is safety and security in the region, the humanity, self determination of the Palestinian people. We know that we want that. The question is why we want it. The question is why we want it. The question is why we want. Are Jewish brothers and sisters here to be safe? Why do we want that? We want that because at least for me, I'll speak for myself, I want that because I look at the dignity and human rights of the individual as being the most precious thing about existence on planet Earth when you are born. The fact that you get to express yourself freely, the fact that you shouldn't be under the thumb of anyone physically, economically, spiritually or socially, that you should be, that that's your right being born. So that means wherever I see those rights being taken from people, I go, hey, wrong. Didn't. The conversation starts. The conversation starts with who took whose rights first. We're doing this because we're afraid that they're going to take our rights with. The conversation starts and now once the conversation starts, now we're arguing what happened when, how it happened. We're building cases, right? And these cases that we're building are being built so that we can figure out how to solve them, right? We do that everywhere. Everyone's got a reason why the thing happened. Everybody's got a reason why the thing happened. Ask some of your white friends right now. Ask some of your white friends, just do this just for an experiment. Say, was slavery worth America? Was slavery and the invention of white supremacy, was that worth America? Like, ask them, say, okay, we will undo slavery. We won't have any more slavery. We won't have the invention of racist white supremacists thought, but we don't get to have the country. And you will see that a lot of your white friends will go, that trade off is worth it. That trade off, your subjugation almost in perpetuity in this country is worth it. It's worth the Statue of Liberty in New York City and Los Angeles and New Orleans and stuff like that. It's worth it. It's worth it. When we investigate principle, what people believe, that is kind of how we get to the core of who people are. Who people are. Think. The problem that a lot of people have with this answer and with the China thing is that it is devoid of principle. We talked about this before. I talked about this with the rappers. A lot of people pulled my coat on that. The reality is it is unfair. But do you know what else is unfair?

[B]

What?

[A]

It's unfair that somebody has a billion dollars for playing basketball. It's unfair that someone lives their life with so much just ridiculous privilege, like unbelievable privilege, that wherever they go, a red carpet is rolled out. That wherever they go, everyone falls at their feet. When there are people who save lives every single day and nobody knows who they are, nobody cares. They're underpaid, they're under resourced and they're underappreciated. The people who teach and nurture minds every single day devote themselves to that. Nobody gives a fuck about them. There are people on the ground in places, all over the place right now. They're doing their best to change the world. And the entertainers and the actors and the athletes that we love get to move through the world like they're doing the most important thing that's ever been existed. That's not fair. I'm not saying that there's an issue with it. People know who I am when I walk down the street and it's people in Baton Rouge busting their ass that they don't know who they are. That's not fair as well. So Life as we know isn't fair. So the thing is, people want to see principle demonstrated. They want to see people like LeBron James half skin in the game in this, or they want clarity on who they're giving that privilege to. That is totally fair.

[B]

Yeah, it is.

[A]

And so for me, when I looked at that, I was like, did. Did I feel bad for him? Yeah, I'm not gonna bullshit you. Did I feel bad. I did feel bad for that question. I. Let me tell you why I felt bad. I felt bad because I was like, there's. I felt bad because I feel bad. I feel bad for anyone. Right. That's in a situation where there's no way for them to get out. Right. I felt bad for it. If it's me. If it's me, I know what I'm gonna say. I know how I feel. I know what I feel like should be said.

[B]

Do you think that if he simply said, I like playing with Denny, excited to see what he does in the game and appreciate my fans from all over the world, that he would be getting as much backlash?

[A]

I do not think he would be getting as much backlash. I think that's a perfect way to answer the question. I do, though, think that he would have been getting a lot of backlash from people that said, why couldn't he just say something nice about Israel? And I.

[C]

And I've.

[A]

I've said this before, and I want to say it again. I do. And we have to. We have to continuously say this. Israel is a country. Israel is a country. It's a country. Right. It's a country. It's a place. It's a place. It's a place. It's a country. Okay. I'm just letting people know this. Right. Like, what we are attempting to do is when we're having conversations about geopolitics and about, like, how countries move or what they do and how they dominate people, we're tempted to have a conversation about a country and what it does politically.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Right. And we're also doing that at the same time, knowing that we don't want to drift into the disgusting and murky waters of anti Semitism. A lot of people gonna look at that and they're gonna say, hey, if you got a problem with that answer, you're anti Semite.

[C]

Right?

[A]

Right. If you have. If you have a problem with that, with Lebron saying something nice about Israel, then you're an anti Semite. The reality is that Israel has made political and geopolitical decisions over the course of its history. Those Political and geopolitical decisions have had consequences. We criticize America here. We've criticized Russia here. We've criticized all dips. We criticize China here, which LeBron James apparently doesn't like either, and criticism of the State of Israel. State of Israel as a political entity should be completely okay. All right? It should be completely okay. And there's no other way to say that. Obviously, this answer to me, lacking.

[B]

Yeah, it was insufficient.

[A]

I'll ask you this. Do you make a distinction between answers like this on things that happen overseas, geopolitical to domestic things?

[B]

I mean, when I first started talking about this, I said, if it had been domestic, I think he would have said something. So when you're like, I guess I give a little bit more deference to geopolitical things, because that takes a certain level of knowledge. But what's happening over there is so prevalent that I don't see how you could look past it. But if you're asking him for something about what's happening in Iran or Sudan or something like that, I would give a little bit more to you, a little bit more grace, to not be as knowledgeable about that as opposed to things that are impacting you domestically. I'm not saying that that's fair or that should be the case, but I would understand, as we're talking about people have different jobs and different roles if that. If you are not well versed on that or even have knowledge of that, I'm not saying that's okay. I would just understand that more. So most people don't have geopolitical knowledge.

[A]

Right. As we're talking about, like, how people should react to the Trump administration or what types of things they should be saying about the communities where they live and stuff. Is there a distinction when it's something happening overseas, period? What I mean is, like, I meet a lot of black people who simply don't care about the plight of the Palestinians. Right. Do you have an issue with that?

[B]

Overall, I do, because of the point, what you said about what we like human beings, we have to care. You can't just care what happens to you and people who look like you. We've seen that, and we are watching that happen in our country right now. When you only care about the people who are just like you. If we live by that, we'll never. We'll always be in crisis. So you have to care. And caring is educating yourself. Caring is when approached, maybe with publicly, privately, whatever, approached by this standing on principle. I don't understand how you can say you don't care. To me, that feels like you don't have morals or values, because I don't understand how you can't see that that is how, as specifically as black people. Because you said, use the example of black people and Palestinians. If that school of thought still existed in this country, we'd still be enslaved.

[A]

What do you mean?

[B]

Well, if you people don't like, if people don't care about you and they only care about themselves, why would we have ever been. And as I say this, I know that that is not necessarily the reason we were free from slavery. I'm just saying in general, as a generalization, if white people only cared about white people, we'd still have all the things that. I mean, we do in certain ways. But you get what I'm saying. You understand what I'm saying, right?

[A]

I do. I mean, I think white people, as I keep.

[B]

But I know, because as I keep saying it, I'm like, well, there's also. Because you're talking yourself out of it, there's also this. Yeah, but I guess my point is, is like, people have to care about other people, Right. I've just was struggling with it because I could find examples to argue against what I was saying. But the point being is you can't just care about your own people. That's easy to do, but where will that put us as a society if we just don't care about human beings in general, is my point.

[A]

Right, right, right, right. Human rights in the entire discussion. I say that because there's going to be. There's a lot of different situations here, a lot of different layers to this one. Is LeBron James who he's carved himself out to be, does that come with an expectation that he cares about certain plights? Like, for example, if you were to illuminate LeBron James, educate LeBron James on the plight of some people somewhere in some situation, would he be expected to care about that because of how he cares about black people here? That, in and of itself is a whole other debate, right? That's a whole conversation in and of itself. Like birdsong and the guys up there in Philadelphia, a lot of the pushback that they were getting was because a lot of people were saying that black people shouldn't be on the front lines fighting against ice. And so then, you know, you have that and you have philosophical differences, all that stuff like that. Then you have some people that would say, hey, being a part of that, like here is either natural or advantageous to certain types of black athletes, Right? And when you see something that threatens the actual corporate brand overseas or the corporate brand in your cult of personality, you don't move on it the same way. You don't care about it, because then it strikes at your bottom line in a way that criticizing President Trump or criticizing the police over here might not.

[B]

I think when you naturally have a platform and you use it at times to speak out on injustices, there is an expectation that you speak out on all injustices. I'm sure this has happened to you. Obviously, we're outspoken on this podcast. We're outspoken on our social media platforms. I will get. Why are you not talking about this? Why have you not said anything about this? Because the expectation is if you stand for. If you stand up for something or one injustice, you stand up for all of them. So I think that that has been placed on him because that's how he's positioned himself. Like I said, whether it's social or racial injustice. He's called out the Trump administration several times. He's talked about travel bans from the first administration. He's done that in multiple, multiple ways domestically. So I think it quite naturally, as you pointed out, these are his principles. So they would also apply to just any human being that's being negatively impacted.

[A]

What would you do? Well, like, what should LeBron do now? Does LeBron need to go deeper into this?

[B]

It depends. What is. What is what his motives are. Right. Like, if I got caught. Everybody on this podcast knows what we believe. You just said that if I said something that countered that, I would go back and correct it, because you know where I stand. We don't. You can only speculate from this statement. LeBron has not spoken about, other than condemning the terrorist attack, which we all have done and we should do. You don't know anything else about what he believes. So for him to come out and say something, he's going to have to take a stance. I don't see him doing that.

[A]

Right. Well, like, you know, we'll also see how. Oh, we should say that in the get off my Dickerson tweets. We should say that in the get off my Dickerson tweets. There was somebody in the group chat. Maybe this is the person that I don't know might be responsible for putting the world in his group chat that had actually criticized Kevin Durant for being invested into a drone company that is sending drones to the idf. Right. And they said this about Kevin Durant. Kevin Durant alleged Kevin Durant, get off my Dickerson. They said this to get off my Dickerson. Get off my dickerson responded. They need drones. We got them. And so that was, I think, part of the reason, at least part of the reason why all of this stuff was made, was made public. And like, you know, you. You see some people being critical right now of whatever ties to the IDF or to the Israeli government or something that people might have, whether or not they're investing in companies.

[B]

But get off my dickerson. It's not Kevin Durant, okay?

[A]

I'm not. I'm not looking. I'm not saying it is. I'm not saying it is. I'm saying I do disagree with you that he can just like, let it lie and not say anything. He gonna have to say something.

[B]

I don't think so, but.

[A]

Okay, we'll see you guys. It's time to fight for the honor of Culver City. Okay? Culver city was besmirched and Sydney camlogger dove is not going to allow that to happen. She is a U. S. Representative for California's 37th congressional district that since 2023. Culver City, Ledera heights, viewpoint, Windsor hills, shout out to the blacks. The LA neighborhoods of mid city, century city, Beverly Wood. This is my area. This is me.

[C]

Yo, yo, I live. I live somewhere up in there.

[A]

So, yeah, I'm not gonna tell. Cause people come over there. That's where I live. Over there I live. This is me. This is me. A member of zeta phi beta sorority.

[B]

We have to talk about it.

[A]

We do have to talk about it.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Thank you for joining us on higher learning. Now here's the thing, okay. Because you have the three name thing going on.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Have you ever thought about branding yourself.

[C]

Skd Dun dun dun? Yeah, I did that when I was in the state assembly, mostly because the name is so dang long. And so people. Cam lager gets them messed up. I don't know. Then dove gets them messed up. Then they say dove. So SKD is how a lot of people call me in the district.

[A]

I'm telling you, SKD is the way to go.

[C]

Yeah. Okay.

[A]

I think that's dope.

[C]

Let's test it out.

[A]

Skd, There we go. Is fantastic. Okay, so listen, here's the deal. I saw this, this story and it was very funny to me, okay? I saw Pam bondi really trying to help Americans understand. Understand the hellscape that is Culver city. I don't know if you guys ever heard of it. Culver City, man, It's going down, bro. You drive down Venice right by Sony, bullets whizzing by you?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

The joker is out there. It's going crazy. Yeah, it's actually exactly the opposite. It's like a beautiful place to live with really expensive homes. You represent Culver City.

[C]

I do.

[A]

And like Jordan did on the last dance documentary, you took that, that personal.

[C]

I did. So this woman showed up in my house disrespecting all of us. And I don't know about you, but my mama taught me that you don't go to somebody's house and disrespect them, and you also don't let somebody disrespect you when they come into your house. So she was all kind of feral for hours and hours. I was actually doing double duty because I was in another hearing at the same time as this hearing with this lady. So she might have been a little tired, like post lunch, I don't know. But I do know that she was probably way turned up about us continually asking her about this corruption with the Epstein files and covering up and being Donald Trump's lawyer instead of the American people. And so she. We got into it about something different, about the fact that they have taken down all of the data, all of the reports on the rise in right wing extremist violence.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And how she was co signing Donald Trump, essentially saying that it was lefties that killed Melissa Hortman and her husband. And her response to that was, you represent Culver City. So I was like, okay, boo. It is evident. It is evident that you did not come prepared for me and for these questions to be asked of you. To your point, Culver City is a hellscape. You've got $24 smoothies at Erewhon.

[B]

I was there yesterday.

[C]

I checked it out over the weekend. I spent a shit ton of money on like six. And I was like, this really is a crime. But it's known as Screenland. I mean, this was. It was the epicenter of the movie industry way back in the day. I mean, we could get into the Munchkins having all kind of parties at the Culver Hotel. I mean, that was a little salacious, but this is a bucolic neighborhood. It's a pass through community. You've got Amazon, TikTok, Sony, you got small businesses, you got Tito's Tacos. I mean, it is where you go for a little respite from the rest of the city. You hang out on the steps, you get breakfast. Correct.

[A]

Culver City, we walk around.

[C]

Correct.

[A]

We have fun there.

[C]

You have fun there.

[A]

Interesting. And I think to me, when she said that, it Just underscored just how out of touch everyone seems to be now. Look, I'm sure like any other community, Culver City has its issues and all that stuff. Stuff. Of course, we could talk about all of this as it relates to affordability and all that stuff and even its history. Right, of course. But like, I'll tell you a quick Culver City story that I think is very interesting.

[C]

He took the glasses off. This is for real.

[A]

So there was a gun store there? Yes, in the heart, in the heart of Culver City. I bought a shotgun from this gun store. The gun store was called Martin B. Reading was the gun store that was there in Culver City. When you drive by there now, it's not there anymore. Do you know? It is there along the outside of the gun store. They turned it into art and it says out there, love one another. Like the community didn't want a gun store in their community. And after years got the gun store out and turned it into something that shines a light on violence and on the connectivity of people. I'm just saying it's a pretty awesome community full of creatives and people of the like. That's all I'll say about Culver City. I love Culver City.

[B]

Rachel, you, I don't get over there enough, but I was there yesterday. I was there yesterday at the Erewhon. Had a lovely time.

[C]

You went to the scene of the crimes?

[B]

I went to the scene of crimes. I wanted to see it myself. Boots on the ground.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

You.

[B]

Social media loves you.

[C]

Does it?

[B]

Yeah. You have to see, you have to see some of this stuff. Your reactions are. I have no poker face. They're like. And I don't either. So I appreciate it. Your responses, your ms, when you're sitting next to your colleagues. I'm just curious, like, what do you see maybe the role of like these viral moments when it comes to Congress or how important they are? Because it really puts you on the radar of several people who might not be a part of your district.

[C]

So real talk, I'm never thinking, oh, let's try to make a viral moment. You're in these hearings listening to people say God awful things and I oftentimes am just expressing my outrage or bringing, having a little levity with my own self so that I don't get out of the chair and pop somebody in the face and then those things are captured, you know, on the microphone or, you know, they turn into a viral moment. But it's, it's my way of telling people this is incredibly serious. And it's also like practicing self care is also very important. We were in this hearing. This woman is being asked about the Epstein files, and then she starts talking about the Dow and the nasdaq. Right. And you see her figuring out an answer to every question so that she's not implicating herself, which leads you to believe that she also understands what it means to be subpoenaed and what it means to perjure yourself. And yet what kind of answer can she give that will still allow her to look good in the eyes of Donald Trump? Right. Like, that's not how you behave. The role of showing up in a committee is to answer questions that the American people have of you. And when you see people come in and try and disrespect you and call you all out your name.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Every now and again, I might be a little like, really? You know, and then it just comes out because I am a sister and I have had some people have said some wild things in these committees. Last week, I shared a story about, literally, I was in a Natural Resources Committee hearing, and we were talking about building these monuments on the National Mall. And the Republican member next to me told me that I needed to thank the Republicans because Abe Lincoln freed the slaves, and if it hadn't been for them, I'd still be a slave.

[A]

What are your thoughts on that?

[C]

Well, who said it? Yeah. Which was his? Tiffany, I think he's from Wisconsin.

[A]

Tiffany from Wisconsin.

[C]

So I was like, don't you say that to me. And it came out just like that.

[B]

Good.

[C]

And then I had to respond in this last committee because they were. They were justifying taking down interpretive panels at some of these national parks that are sharing the history of slavery. And I was like, well, the irony is that you was telling me that I needed to know my history and thank Abe Lincoln, and now you're telling everyone else that it's not important for them to know the history. So however you want to bastardize it, it's obviously still important to you that you thought you were going to try and shame me by telling me I needed to thank you, which is not going to happen. Boo. Not gonna happen. So it's those kinds of things that get me animated. And then I express, and then maybe it turns into a viral moment.

[B]

I enjoy it.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Thank you. I find it. I appreciate it because I feel like if I was in that situation, that's how I would react.

[C]

Right.

[B]

But when you're watching the hearings and I talked about this on the last podcast, how effective do you think they are? Because we watched, you know, who's the they? The hearings. How effective do you think the hearings are? Because it just using how Bondi responded to you and what you were pointing out to her, and her response was, after you had given back, yielded back your time, she said, whoa, let's, you know, she turned through what they're calling her burn book and she talked about Culver City and she put out statistics or facts or what she called facts or said something that wasn't true. When youth, when the public is watching that, do you think they're seeing that and understanding, oh, this is a deflection. Oh, she's not coming prepared, or do you think they're falling for the performance that she's giving? Because for me, not that I was obviously anti the files, but it just opened my eyes in a completely different way.

[C]

I hope so. I mean, before we prepared for her and we watched the hearings in the Senate and we said, okay, she's gonna try and mad dog people. The House doesn't roll like the Senate, so we are going to be prepared and let her true self reveal be even. Have your facts lean in, claim your time. And I think what the American people saw was how incredibly corrupt this administration is, how woefully incompetent she is, and how she is 100% about disrespecting the law, the survivors, justice, accountability, the American people. It's a slap in the face. If you as a woman, okay, getting paid $115,000 a month or whatever to lobby against human trafficking for Qatar and saying that you are all about survivors and victims, and then you have a dozen victims stand up behind you and you can't even turn around and apologize or at least say, I feel for the trauma right back up. So the, you know, so she just revealed how sinister and corrupt this administration is, but also her office.

[A]

You use the term sinister. I think there are a lot of people out there right now that are asking themselves questions about some of the stuff that they see on the Right. And one question is whether or not these people are stupid or evil. Evil. And I'll be honest with you, because, you know, it's one thing to say, you know, Culver City is a hellscape or all right, stuff like that. You don't know what you're talking about. A lot of times, Trump and a lot of his acolytes are able to hide behind, well, I didn't read that, I didn't see that, I didn't know that, or whatever, whatever. And any robust investigation into the things that they say often reveals lies, half truths and straight up schemes, plots. You have to work with them. These are your colleagues in government. How do you approach that? Do you believe most of the time that you are working with people that are negotiating with you in good faith or are they the Decepticons?

[C]

I think there's a little bit of both. I think there's some true believers.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

I think there's some folks who figured they would ride the coattails of Maga and Donald Trump. And then they got up in here and they're like, okay, he's not trying to help me at all. He is all about himself. I think there are Republicans who consider themselves traditional Republicans and are trying to stay out of the range of fire.

[A]

Right? Trying to.

[C]

Right, right. And then I think that there are some who are true to their own values and are like, well, I'm gonna buck up and here we go. And I think you see that more and more with some folks who are voting against some of the bills that come up on the floor. You know, Thomas Massie has been vocal. You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene got up and left. We've got folks who are retiring who've now found a little Constitution. But you know, I still say that's a little too little too late. A and B, it still shows that they're only listening to him and they're not listening to the American people because the American people are saying, stop lying to me. Tell me the truth about my money. Tell me the truth about my civil liberties. Right? Tell me the truth about what's going on in government. And what it looks like is there are massive cover ups on so many levels. Look at ice, look at Doge, look at doj, look at FBI. I mean, why are we paying for this man to get on a plane and take his girlfriend to some booty ranch or whatever that thing was called, right on our dime. Right? That's what people want. And those are the questions that people want answers to. So I think that there that the Republican bucket is full of a whole bunch of hot mess and we have to do our job of revealing the duplicity. I'm not going to tell you how to think, but I'm going to show receipts and I'm going to hope that you are reading the receipts and coming to a conclusion that best serves you as a constituent and as a voter. Right? Like that's what I want to happen. But you get a lot of it. I mean, they come up in there, especially in judiciary, they Say all kind of things. And I've been like, you know, that's not true. You know that's not true. You a lawyer? You used to be a lawyer. I don't know if your bar card is current, but you, you know, that's not right. And then people are like, okay, you're right. So you, but you have to call them on it.

[A]

I wanna, we don't have a ton of time. I want to desperately ask you about the, the leadership of the Democratic Party.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

But, but before I do that, I'll, I'll ask you something else.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It's a conversation that Americans are having. Okay. I go on the shows and I understand how the shows go. The shows are different in the green room than different in the break up on the Hill or wherever. There's a much more collegial way that you guys treat each other normally. Normally. Normally. What I've seen is a lot of people, hey, I saw that vote that, you know, and that doesn't exist right now in communities everywhere. The polarization is very real. It's desperate. It's desperate because people see people dying on the streets over things that are happening over, you know, ISIS overreaches. They see two different economies existing. They see the Epstein class sort of protecting itself. And there is a binary, either or vicious fight for the present and the future of the country where people don't want to be friends with people from the other side. And the people that helped bring this on, they don't want even. A lot of them don't want their support now. Now they're like, hey, you over there, stay over there. Okay, what's your prescription? Like, you're somebody that has to work with people on the other side. How would you want people to repair communities that are fractured by some of this political animus?

[C]

Well, it's complicated and it's not. I mean, I represent a district that's not 100% D. A lot of Republicans live in the district. Actually, a lot of them live in Culver City. And they're. They're also all different kinds of Democrats.

[A]

Right.

[C]

They're super, you know, progressive. Burn it all down. And then they're super moderate. So you're like, okay, really? Are you a Republican? Are you a Democrat? You see it in your house, you know, when do you go to a Thanksgiving dinner? Who's going to be there? I mean, I have that in my own family. You know, we got Trumpers, you know, in the family. Yeah. And you're like, okay, how are we going to do Christmas and what I try to do is I meet people where they are and I try to listen and I try to. I try to distill the thing down to the thing. And the thing is, I'm feeling disenfranchised. The onions cost $3 and 50 cent for one right now. And nobody is talking about it, right? It's too expensive for me to buy a house. I don't have any more health insurance. And no one is talking about the fact that the guy at the top is getting 1500 times what I would make in my lifetime. I mean, I think that's what people really care about. I went to exercise the other day and I was talking to the sister who owns the studio and she's been an actor for 30 years. And because gigs have dried up here, she hasn't been able to get her hours. And she's like, you know, for the first time, I'm not going to have health insurance. And like, I don't know what I'm going to do. And this is a woman that's responsible for me being healthy.

[A]

Right.

[C]

You know, and so I think when you, when you talk about those kinds of things, rather than you're a Republican, you're a maga, da, da, da. You're able to feel the pain and get to the essence of the pain that somebody is feeling. And it's like, okay, how feel you do we work towards that. Now there are people who that want to fight and I want to fight. I get up in them hearings and I'm like, I want to fight, but I also am trying to listen to like, what the thing is. And some of like there's this one lady, I call her Ursula. She rolls up in a. On a broom. She is all evil all the time. There's no way to connect with that lady. And so I don't know how her constituents are being helped, but I do know that there are other people that I don't really talk to and I don't subscribe to their values. But when I listen to what they're talking about when they're sharing experiences from their district, I'm like, you know what? My people can relate to that. So why don't you take out the MAGA propaganda and just talk about the fact that you got people, you know, making $15,000 a year that don't have access to clean water, you know, in the mountains of Appalachia? Because I can fucks with that and we can work on that together. And I actually think that the American people would rather us talk about those kinds of issues. But when you are imploding those conversations with racism and sexism and culture wars and divisiveness, you can't get there. You can't get there. But I know that as a consumer, I want choice, I want competitiveness, I want prices to go down. And I want to feel like everybody on my block is in the struggle with me. But when you walk out of your house and you're like, okay, how this person all of a sudden get here? And then they bought all this and like, I'm struggling and I don't know if I'm gonna be able to pay my mortgage. Like, yo. And then the stuff on my feet says, you're the problem. So. And I believe that people try to separate us by race in order to divide us by class. And if we. And if. And if you took the money out of the equation, if people were able to live, make a living and save, if people felt like, I don't have to put my child on a bus at 4 o' clock in the morning in order to get to a school where they're going to be safe, if you took those things out of the equation, then we would be able to really, you know, extinguish the other kinds of hate that are fueling the real fears, the economic fears. Because the thing that makes you most afraid is, am I gonna be able to take care of, provide for my family? I mean, when I talk to brothers, that's what they're telling me. That's their number one goal. Like, my job is to be a man and to provide. And you're trying to take that away from me. I can't fucks with you. And we have to have an answer for that.

[B]

So then you're. You're a part of the newer generation of lawmakers.

[C]

Thank you.

[B]

You are. How do you see, like, piggybacking on what you're saying? How do you see your generation reshaping Congress?

[C]

I see my. Like, I think we are unapologetic, you know, about the struggles. And I think so many of us. I've gone through it too. You have imposter syndrome. You're like, okay, I'm in Congress. I'm supposed to dress a certain way, I'm supposed to talk a certain way. I'm probably gonna get in trouble because my mother's like, don't curse. Sorry, Mom. But you know, you're like, okay, this is how I'm supposed to be. And I think now many of us are like, you know, I'm Just gonna keep it real. I'm gonna keep it real. It is hard in these streets. And why am I gonna make excuses for that and ask people to, like, go with the Okie doke? Cause that doesn't work anymore. So I think what you're seeing from this newer crop of members is folks more willing to tell the truth and also expose some. Some inconsistencies within our own party. Right.

[B]

Yeah, we need that.

[C]

Because somebody can't believe in you if they feel like you ain't telling them the truth.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And it doesn't always mean you have answers, but it does mean that you woke enough to acknowledge the challenges and say, I want to work towards being part of the solution.

[A]

Last question for me. Do the. No, last question. Do the Democrats have the right leadership? If the leadership is Leader Jeffries or Chuck Schumer, two people that I have absolutely zero percent faith in facts for me, I just watched another just wretched, putrid answer from Hakeem Jeffries. I just don't believe that these two guys are up to the task. You are. These are your colleagues. These are the people that are on your side of things. Do you believe that they are up to the task?

[C]

So I can't say a lot about Chuck Schumer. Cause I don't know him. I mean, he probably wouldn't be able to pick me out from a lineup. Damn sure. But, you know, he doesn't excite me, like, at all. You know, Hakeem is in a complicated situation. And on the one hand, he's got to represent his district, and on the other, he is really responsible for making sure that we get into the majority. Like, his number one job is to get us to 218. And I think he's got a hard job, and sometimes I would say a horrible job, because sometimes I question if members within our own party want him to become speaker as a black man.

[A]

Interesting. And then why would you say that?

[C]

Because, you know, race is an unspoken thing that complicates a lot of questions. And invariably. And I, you know, I just. Identity politics plays a role in things even when it shouldn't and even when we say it does, doesn't it just. It just. It just does. The whole thing with Donald Trump and that crazy post, it, you know, it poked the identity politic bear. So, you know, I wish that Hakeem would do some other things. Right. But I represent a very progressive district. I have a very different point of view than the person who represents Maine. Right. And won a Trump seat. And so Hakeem's job, the leader's job, is to provide cover and to unify a very diverse caucus with divergent views and to, like, find the unifying middle to get us across the finish line of a vote to then get us into the majority. And, you know, we've had some complicated moments. Like, I'm gonna bring up Charlie Kirk. That was a crazy thing for me, Right? And I was like, why would there be any conversations in this caucus to encourage people to vote yes?

[A]

You know how, like, do you know how deeply unserious that made you guys look?

[C]

So here's the thing. Yes, I do.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

But here's the thing. I know that there were members that said I have to vote yes. And so you, as the leader, have to provide me cover to vote yes. And I can only imagine what that would feel like to a black man with a revolutionary history in his own family. To have to, like, listen to somebody say that, and to even have members of the Progressive Caucus. Yo, the Progressive Caucus vote yes on that hurt my heart. And it also revealed to me. It revealed to me how challenging that job is to wrangle all these folks to get us to 218. That means keeping seats and gaining some more. And, like, that's his number one job. And he, you know, the leader of the Democratic Party is Ken Martin. The leader of the Democratic Caucus in Congress is Hakeem. Two different jobs. We as Democrats have decided that we don't like cult of personality, but we as a human community respond to stories with a hero and a villain. And so we need a person. Don't nobody know Ken. So by default, it becomes Schumer and Jeffries. And I submit that Jeffrey's job. Jeffrey's number one job, if he wants to be the speaker, his number one job is to get us the majority. And when you have people who. And I'm not trying to shade, but, you know, we had a member of Congress say that we would be okay if Donald Trump got elected again. You know, and we're not okay. We're not okay. But that's a Democrat. So it's, you know, you sit in these caucus meetings and you're like, wow, you know, I go back to Charlie K. I was like, really? Like. Like he really said what he thought about black people. Like he really said. And, like, you can put all kind of icing on this vote if you want to, but that's what he said about the largest ethnic caucus in the Congress that represents these people. And then you look at the vote count, you're like, okay, so we have to have more conversations. Yeah, we have to have more conversations. You know, so we want more out of it than we're gonna get. Because his real job, like, yo, if we don't get the majority, you got all this on steroids for another year and a half. Like, for real. For real.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Do you know what I mean?

[B]

Yeah. I want to ask you, I want to go back before we let you go to the Epstein files, just like to.

[C]

And I'm not in the Epstein files for the record.

[A]

I got Jamie for the record.

[B]

Neither am I. Just to like kind of wrap it up because I think people ask the question, so like, where do we go from now? Have you been one of the members of Congress that's been able to look at the unredacted version?

[C]

Yes.

[B]

And if so, what did you learn? What can you say that maybe wasn't made available to the public? And then knowing that you have looked at it and you've seen this information, I guess, what do you do now that they say, hey, we've given you everything that we're gonna give you?

[A]

You a lie.

[B]

We've given you over half of the documents that are available. So what steps can Congress even do next? So two parter.

[C]

So first I was one of the ones that was able to look at it. They make it very hard. You get two hours. There are four computers, there are 430something members. I was in there, it was like two Ds and two Rs when I went. You have people in there that are watching you. You have a tech that signs you in, logs you in with something and is there to answer any questions. It's not your computer, so you don't know the platform. So you do need help trying to do the searches. That takes time. You also have to know how to look at the original and then the redacted. So I went in there to cross check to see that what they shared with us was real. And I'm gonna tell you something, it was overwhelming. You're reading these things and you're like, these Girls are like 11, 12, 13 years old and these adults are doing these things to these girls. It's obviously, you know, alleged because these people haven't prosecuted anybody, but you just think, damn right. And then you also realize that it's a data dump. It's 3 million files. It's less than half. They're not doing what they were supposed to do under the law. The lady is deflecting. They sent out this new letter, a DOJ Letter to Congress after she bombed in the hearing with names of people listed in these files from articles, from correspondence about nothing. You know, Marilyn Monroe's in these files. You know, Janis Joplin. Them people are dead down, think they was at no Epstein party. And that's how you also know it's a deflection from something else, incredibly dangerous and sinister and sad that has something to do with the President of this United States. And so we have to keep pushing to say release them and prosecute. And then tell us why you refuse to do that and how is that? Like, because we have to make. There's a correlation between what they're doing with this information and then how they're treating us in the streets. You're treating these people, the Epstein class, one way, and then you shooting people in the face and kidnapping five year olds, like, make the connection. And then after we talk about these survivors, then let's also talk about these black and brown girls that are being trafficked on the streets every day right now and widen the net to talk about how young girls that look like all of us are being sold on the street multiple times a night. And like, you're not doing nothing for them either. And we have an obligation to talk about all of those things and fight for accountability and then get these cats out and prosecute them for a dereliction of duty. I mean, they've shut down grants for rape crisis centers. They've shut down grants for nurses that know how to examine children with sexual trauma. Like, talk about that. I know. Was that. That was.

[B]

It's. I mean, but it is, it's heavy. It is, it's heavy. But people need to know.

[A]

They do.

[C]

And there are a lot of girls. Sorry.

[A]

I'm sorry. No, but they're, they're.

[C]

Are they doing that?

[B]

Oh, sorry, I wasn't even looking.

[C]

But that happens, right? I mean, yeah, we have that right here in on Figueroa.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I mean, it could be like, you know, my niece, my child.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And she don't care. And she's up here talking about Culver City and it's like, nah, lady, nuh. But that's also how you bring it. But you said, well, how you fight with these people. And like, then you talk about that. You have to talk about that. And you'd be like, that's why I'm here. I got elected to talk about those girls.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And I'm fighting for them. And there are a lot of black and browns. There are also some white girls.

[A]

Right.

[C]

You know, that are Getting pimped. And like you should be talking about them too.

[A]

Right?

[C]

You know, because. Correct. Because the fentanyl, like all of that is real and it's also connected and that's what people are upset about. And they feel like they're fighting all of these forces larger than themselves on their own. And that is what government is supposed to be doing. Stepping in when it is too overwhelming for you to say, I'm going to help. I'm going to use the weight of this government to help you. And what we're seeing with the Epstein is that they're using the weight of this government to silence people. And I'm not down with that.

[B]

Neither are we.

[A]

Well, I don't know.

[B]

Shut up.

[A]

It took you a while. I couldn't make her care about that. I couldn't make her care about the episode.

[B]

Things other things couldn't make care about that.

[A]

Okay, Sydney came. Thank you for joining us on Higher Learning. We will check back in with you as the Democrats continue to march. You're not sure where hopefully like, look.

[C]

I'mma just say this, it's rough, but you know what, when you're in a 15 round fight and you get knocked out in the third round, what you do, you got to figure out a way to get up before the bell, you get you to your little three minute break and come on back. And so like that's how I see myself. I'm like, 15 rounds, we go in the distance, we gonna pace ourselves, we gonna get knocked down, we gonna put the Vaseline back on our head, we gonna get back up. We appreciate it.

[B]

We appreciate your voice. Seriously.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

And your facial expression. Thank you.

[A]

All right, so it's time to check in on AI and you know, my new friend Ed Zitron and me, we talk about AI. He sends me stuff. I read it. There's a lot of talk about AI right now because some people are saying that AI is making gigantic leaps. There was a piece that went hyperviral hyper viral and it was titled Something Big is Happening. It was written by an AI engineer CEO type guy who says that he is no longer needed at his job because AI has become so awesome at doing what it does that it has made him obsolete. And he was striking the warning that we are careening down the road to AI seriously influencing economics and other things about our daily lives. This is along with they're being talk that the latest update from Chat GPT vastly changes the capability of what Chat GPT can do. A lot of people are saying that we might Almost already be to artificial general intelligence. Our AI watchdog, Ed Zitron, is here to call bullshit, or what is bullshit, and to let us know what exactly is happening. Thank you for joining us on Higher Learning. Okay, I'm sure you read the piece. Something big is happening. What did you think?

[E]

Well, it's important to start with who this guy is. This Matt Schumer guy is. So. He runs a startup called Otherside AI. It's raised about four or five million dollars and the only product they have is an AI writing tool called hyperrite. Now, I can find like two posts on Reddit about this. One of them just says, it sucks. It is the same product as it was five years ago when they first raised funding in, I think it was November 2020 and March 2023. There is another two and a half million. Anyway, this fella has built a product that does not appear to be successful or indeed different to how it was years ago. On top of that, his piece is full of insane misstatements around recursive learning. The idea that these models are learning from themselves, that they're building themselves. He takes this example, one of my least favorite bits of it, where he says, well, look, when they said them being OpenAI when they put out GPT codecs, so they're equivalent to Claude code for writing code. This code, it's a command line interface, but nevertheless tool for writing code. When they put it out, they said it was the first tool that was part of its own creation because it helped test bugs and maintained its own code. This is what a coding platform would do. If it couldn't do that, it would be a piece of shit. It's like saying, well, we. It was the first. It's the first car we use that helped us get somewhere. Like, shut the fuck up. This guy's entire piece is full of these egregious overstatements, these ridiculous, fantastical things about AI that builds itself, gets smart, teaching itself things which just are not true. In fact, one of my favorite parts as well was when he talks about AI being able to work uninterrupted for hours. This is a marketing thing from Anthropic themselves and from a research institute called Meter M E T R where, oh, these, these companies, they have these models that can work uninterrupted for hours. Unless you open the article, in which case it says some tasks can go for hours and be successful 50% of the time. It's Sex Panther from Anchorman. It's like every time you click through any of these fantastical claims. You go and look at the truth, it's always he's taken a little bit and blown up to be a massive bit. This guy was also very famous back in September 2024 for claiming he had an open source model reflection 70B. That could be all other open source models. And it turns out he falsified all the benchmarks. It was just the front end for Claude. This guy is like an actual scam artist and everyone just ran with it. And I think it's because it was written to scare the already scared and to convince the already convinced it was. I saw some people that should know better being like, wow, this is incredible. Makes me really wonder about the critical thinking of some supposed news leaders, tech leaders. Alexis o', Hain, founder of Reddit, was saying it was amazing. It's like it was just this egregious viral post. I got asked about it so many times. I'm like, are you reading the same thing as me? Because this just seems like fan fiction. It's probably written. It was like 4,700 words. And I mean, I can't judge anyone for long articles, but at least mine are all written by me. It was clearly AI slop.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I listened to your monologue on your Better Offline podcast and I loved it. You were fired up. You were angry.

[E]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

And it, you know, it was interesting that several prominent publications and even journalists picked this up and were so quick to report on it. And I guess my question for you is, do you think we will continue to see propaganda like this or people to be fooled? Because are people fooled who have these platforms that we respect and we, you know, we go to for information? Because if I'm the average reader or viewer, how do I determine what's real or false? I depend on these people, you know, to give the right information to me. And without the proper knowledge or understanding of artificial intelligence, which I feel like most of us don't have, how do we combat this, you know, if we're going to continue to see people like this report on it in such a way?

[E]

So I think a good place to start is look at where the information is coming from. He quotes Dario Amadei, CEO of Anthropic, within this piece, saying that 50% of white collar jobs will be replaced the next number of years. If you see a CEO say this will happen because of AI and they run an AI company, think of a great post on Blue sky by a guy called Gun Toucher. That's his actual name that says CEO of Oreos says the Oreo is the most important food of all time. It's just marketing. Dario Amadeus said numerous things about this. Last year in March, I think he said within the next six to 12 months that all code would be written by A. Or 90% of code be written by AI in the next 6 to 12 months. This never came true. This has not happened. It's not true. Nevertheless, he says these things, they get quoted because people think, well, the CEO of a for profit enterprise, profit being somewhat relative there for a company that lost $5 billion last year, they wouldn't lie to me, they would lie to you. If the statistics are coming from the CEOs themselves, you cannot trust them. The media are far too trusting of these people. They have a. A vested interest in saying things that you could say were lies. But they can say they were predictions. Oh, it's a prediction based on my knowledge. Dario Amadei is one of the most egregious bullshit artists I've seen of all time. I call him Wario for a reason. He is a real. He just constantly burbles out this nonsense and his goal is to scare you. Remember, if you read the statistic and it scares you, that was its intention. These are not good faith analyses. I even saw a headline today saying that some productivity gain could be blamed on AI. Like AI. AI was, was responsible for productivity game. And I looked and what it was was that there were less entry level hires within industries affected by AI. Again, that bucket included accountants which have had trouble hiring for years and years because less people are becoming CPAs. It includes software engineers, so. Oh, the reason they're not hiring more software engineers is because of AI. We don't actually know that. There's no actual proof of this, but because it's scary and because it makes good headlines, people kind of run with it instead of saying, do we actually have any proof? And we really should have proof by now. We're hundreds of billions of dollars in. I think the Magnificent Seven is going to spend what, $700 billion in capex this year? More on AI. Should we not be a little bit past ghost stories?

[A]

What is the impetus for CEOs scaring us? If we are supposed to be a part of either a customer base or a culture base that one day would want to embrace AI. Or if they are trying to coax investment into AI, why would they want to scare us?

[E]

Well, that's the thing. You kind of cottoned onto something which is investment is the idea. Anthropic just closed the $30 billion round with 37 investors. Like a real we are the world Telethon asked investment round. They are trying to do this so that organizations feel the pressure to buy software. And it's important to know how software is bought and sold. When it comes to big companies, it is usually a CIO, CEO or CTO buying something that will affect 10,000, 10,000 workers or a few thousand engineers or what have you. These people are not the end user. The intention is to scare businesses into going crap. Shit, we need to, we need to do Claude. Whether or not it will work or anything is kind of secondary to this notion that if we're not on board with this, well, something bad might happen to us. It's. I have this theory about the business idiot that I believe a lot of CEOs are just disconnected from production in every way, shape or form. This is the target. The target is members of the media who don't do their homework. CEOs that don't really think too hard, but have people on their board and people they know who also don't do work saying, well, I hear AI is real big now. We got to do AI and if we don't do AI, we'll be stuck in the past. What's interesting was I was just talking to someone who's quite up in, higher up in private equity and they were saying to me, I have people modeling this stuff and it's, it's not kind of coming out profitable. They're not really happy with the actual revenue side. And they're saying, well, these data centers doesn't look like they're going to be profitable either. But you know, everyone's talking about AI, so we're still going to soldier on. The intention is to push past a certain level of good, good sense and common sense. It's the push past. Don't believe the things you're seeing. It is inherently manipulative and a little bit fascistic. On some level. It's really pisses me off because they are making these big promises and scaring regular people with them, scaring them into believing that regular jobs are going away or even engineering jobs are going away when that isn't the case at all. Anthropic themselves are hiring engineers right now. If it was supposedly replacing them, well, why would they need engineers? Exactly.

[B]

I know you've talked about the. When you've been a skeptic of AI, you've talked about the financial side of it, you talked about the intelligence side of it. Recently the New York Times ran an op ed speculating that OpenAI would be run out of money in 18 months. And you said that you think it could be sooner than that. I saw, I read. Well, I like for you to discuss that, but I read that is ChatGPT running ads now. Do you think that that will help it in any kind of way?

[E]

Yes, it will help it. The FT Financial Times, they, I think they estimated low billions of revenue from ads because the problem that OpenAI faces with ads is they have 800 million something weekly active users. Technically they double count people, but let's just say that problem is with that is ads are generally sold based on the market, they price based on the market. So those high and they're charging a very high CPM, which is basically a thousand views, like 60 bucks per CPM, which is way higher than like TikTok, which I think is around 20 Facebook similar. Point is they're going to make money, but most of their users are not in America. They're not in places where they can sell high end ads and thus the advertisers who are able to spend $60 per cpm, so that's a ton of money. They're not going to see a ton of opportunity there. Even then there is this assumption that OpenAI and Chat GPT has all this nuanced data about the people they're advertising to, when really they just have a lot of prompts. The reason that Meta, for example, has such a good ad business, evil company, good ad business is because each user is just a perfect little bottom box of numbers. You got the, you got their age, location, likes, you've got the things they post, you've got the people they're connected to. You can build a social fabric around them to advertise and target. You can get quite specific. And this been the case for nearly 20 years with them. OpenAI, brand new ad sales, very small ad team and a brand new ad product. Good comparison here would be perplexity. AI search company that's really circling the drain right now. They added ads in 2024 and they made $20,000 in the space of a year.

[A]

Jesus.

[E]

Wouldn't even be able to what like a really, like a used Camry. Maybe they could buy with that. Yeah, and then their, their ads product, their ads head ended up leaving in 2025. Point is, ads will help, but this is a big hole to fill. OpenAI is allegedly raising $100 billion right now and people will say, oh, it's so they can do expansion. No, it's so that they don't fall over and die. That's why anthropic didn't raise $30 billion because they all, they have all of these marvelous plans. They promised broadcom they'd buy $21 billion worth of chips. None of these companies can afford to wipe their own ass.

[A]

The rumored or much talked about recent advances in GPT in some of the large language models, are those real? Are these large language models more capable now than they were say 12 to 16, 18 months ago?

[E]

I mean, yes, but more capable is a very relevant term.

[A]

Tell us about it.

[E]

One of the strangest things is I have talked to software engineers who claim up and down this thing sucks, doesn't do what they need. It makes huge mistakes. I've talked to ones that like, yeah, writes half, half of the code I write. And then you're like what kind of code? Oh, it's boilerplate stuff. It's a line here and there's. It's very hard to quantify. And the truth is that software engineers not being laid off and being replaced by AI. So it's hard to tell. There have been advancements in the last 18 months. Absolutely. The question is what they actually mean when you look at, for example, there was a big sell off on the market right now where they're saying oh well, AI is replacing software. And on a very simple level, their argument is that instead of paying for Salesforce or Microsoft360, you had code. Your own kind of a flat way of understanding how code works or even software works. When you buy software for a company, you're not just buying the software, you're buying the maintenance. You're buying the little updates, the bug fixes. You're making sure it all works and doesn't break. You're making sure that if you work with a customer in Turkey and a customer in England, the customer in America, they're going to work all of the currencies will connect without everything blowing up. You're going to make sure that you don't accidentally bill someone, I don't know, $10,000 when you meant to do that in another currency. So the maintenance and running of software is quite difficult. So that whole self is kind of weird. You can as a non coder get some functional software. Sometimes you can get a kind of functional website almost sort of. You can make a toy app that runs on your computer sometimes if you bonk it over the head enough. How you actually measure that as better is kind of difficult. There are software engineers I know who really like Claude code. They like codecs too. But something else Weird is happening, which is these models come out. Claude Opus 4.6 for example, comes out and immediately people like, this is amazing. It does really well. Then you watch the Claude Reddit and within a few days and weeks there's. Has it got dumber? Is it doing something weird now? Why do I have to prompt it differently? I don't know exactly what this means yet, but it's very obvious that when they push these things out the door, they put a shit ton of Compute behind it. In fact, you can kind of see it in that when Anthropic Lawn in December, they did this big press campaign, big marketing campaign, and they doubled the limits on their Claude subscriptions so that people would use Claude code more. And I've been doing a little informal survey because you can run this command called CC usage. Not going to get too technical there, but it will tell you when you use Claude code and when you pay for Claude, by the way, you pay monthly how many tokens you're actually burning. I had a bloke who was paying the anthropic 20 bucks a month who was spending $200 a month in compute.

[A]

Jesus.

[E]

Another one who was spending $200 a month and they were spending two and a half thousand dollars in compute. This is not a real business. All of this is based on infinite resources. However good or bad it may be, I don't know, depends on the person. I've met just as many people who love it as hate it. It's kind of strange. Its actual efficacy for a non coder is extremely questionable. But what's obvious is that Anthropic is annihilating money just to keep this thing standing up. And then there's one other problem this term, training. Now Anthropic spent $4.1 billion just on training this year in 2025, and they made $4.5 billion of revenue. And then there was another $2.79 billion just to put the outputs out there. Here's the other problem. Training doesn't mean making a new model. It means maintenance. It means updating the model, it means tweaking it if it says something wrong or does something wrong. Those little bits. They want us to believe that training these models is something they do once, when it's basically maintenance, constant maintenance, constantly having to tweak it and punch it to make sure it doesn't make mistakes on top of building other models. The raw economics of this do not make sense. And the efficacy of these models I think is also an illusion. I think it's a result of cramming as much compute into it as possible.

[A]

What should you want an LLM to do? When we say what it from you? What is a functioning, a high functioning large language model? How would that make somebody's life easier? We're talking about whether or not they work right. What is working right?

[E]

So you mean in the current model.

[A]

I mean in the current model, like in the current models, or in theory, like when, when, when someone's saying I'm giving a prompt to Claude or I'm giving a prompt to Chat GPT, what are they expecting to get back from the prompt? Like a lot of times when I would use something like this, it would be to collect data. And you still have to go and check the data because sometimes the shit that it says is wrong. Right. What is a fair expectation right now of a large language model? Claude, Chad, GPT, whatever is going on, what should they be able to do?

[E]

I mean, a fair expectation is hard to set. And I'm not trying to punt on this race where, because the, the inherent probabilistic nature is still the case, you could probably, as a proficient coder, do a chunk of your coding with this. You could, if you are working as a software engineer, it will check your work. It will generate, if you want to write one thing in a language you don't write a lot in, it could generate that. It could check for bugs and tell you if there are bugs and sometimes even catch them. And then it will not be able to do that the next day. And you'll wonder why. And it's because that probabilistic nature for information, it's still a shit show. I, in my, my experimentation with AI models is I've used Chat GPT and Claw just to see them. I don't use them. I really don't need them. My one example I use was I threw an Excel sheet in it just to see what it would do. And it was like, okay, it seemed to mostly understand it. And then I started checking the cells it was referring to and it was referring to cells in completely different places. It just could not, couldn't actually read the Excel spreadsheet. It sometimes got the numbers right, but sometimes it would make a little, little error and you might think, well, it's just a little error, right? Not a big deal. Here's the problem. Those little errors can be the things that completely break a model. If you're a financial analyst, as a software engineer, if it misses his bug, that could be really horrifying. Like it could be an infrastructural issue, because writing software is only one part of being a software engineer. It couldn't rely on it for infrastructure. You couldn't rely on it to set something up and make sure it works every time. Is it stable software? And even if it is stable, is it efficient software? Is it bloated and ugly? Your expectation here is that if you know exactly what you're looking for and you know the subject very well, it could speed you up a bit. If you don't know everything about it and your eye isn't on the ball, it will miss something. And that thing could be egregious. And, and the thing is, I'm being vague because that's kind of the problem with these things. You can't specifically say very much about them. You can find all sorts of ephemera. The reason that Matt Schumer post took off was because it was vague enough that anyone could imprint themselves onto, was the kind of, kind of vague ephemera that you look at. You go, well, if I'm already scared of AI, this kind of confirms that I should be scared. And if I'm already an AI hypster with an AI startup, this tells everyone what I've been trying to convince them of, but I can't because I don't want to lie. You're in this weird situation now where it's not really clear why everyone's spending this money. But it's much easier to say, this money wasn't all wasted, these companies aren't unsustainable and all of this will work out. Because to live in my world is to effectively look at the big short, two or micro versions of it. The other day, my last premium newsletter, I worked out the economics of data centers of like the rough data centers based on the debt and on the capex, on the actual costs of running them. I can't find one that can survive longer than six months at best without a tenant, maybe three months. And remember, all of their tenants are going to be AI companies that are all unprofitable, right? So all of these data centers are stood up with these massive amounts of debt, crazy junk debt in some cases. And all of their customers are AI startups that are funded by venture capital. What happens when one link in this chain breaks? What happens when the AI startups can't afford venture capital, can't get venture capital? What happens when AI data centers can't pay their debt? Dario Amade was on the Dwarkesh podcast and he was claiming that he was going to buy tens of gigawatts of compute in the next few years. He can't afford that. He can't afford that at all. That's like. Well, I think it's like 1412, 1250 per watt. So like $125 billion per gig. I mean, it's just the amount of money that they will have to have is not money that they're making from revenue, it's money that they're raising from other people. It's, it's literally rugged individualism for you and I and communism for them. It's like they, they love welfare. They love their fucking welfare. Pardon my french. But it's like these people exist in a completely different world to us, where they can burn capital, where they don't have to justify their businesses, where they can do all these things and they can rely on the fact they can raise $30 billion from various numpties who don't think about things too hard. When you look at their lives and the lives they have to substantiate and the things that they have to justify and the amount of money they need, it doesn't make any logical sense. When you look further in the economics, it gets more illogical. But they, because they're a rich white guy standing up there saying all the things that all of the fucking DC morons want to hear about American dynamism and ultra growth forever, they're allowed to raise what they want. In reality, I believe they're leading a lot of people to lose a lot of money and they're going to tank our markets as a result. But what is funny, I predict is that the big short too, instead of it being houses, five houses owned by one stripper, it's going to be idiot private equity firms and private credit firms that have loaned money for data centers that will have no future other than very large laser tag arenas full of depreciating GPUs that they won't be able to sell for scrap above 5% of their cost.

[B]

When you were describing it, I was like, it really does sound like a Ponzi scheme. Last question for me. I won't call you the Lone Ranger, but you're definitely the leading voice when it comes to your thinking and what you call out about AI. Do you think that people are starting to accept what you're saying or do you still and the fact that there is this bubble or not.

[E]

I think it depends on the week. If the market is down, suddenly everyone's like, yeah, it's a transge. Got a good Eye. Oh, we need to look at these economics. The moment the market goes up, they're like, look at this, look at this moron. In his stupid words. You've got people like Cory, Dr. O', Brien, Merchant Ed Ongweiser Jr. You've got Molly Whiteley, you've got plenty of people who are in futurism as well has done a good job who are on this train. The economic side is weird because I mean Dario and Kakashi off of Twitter as well, great examples. But there are some people doing this kind of critical thinking around it. There are many more who are coming up with these fantastical models to try and prove why AI will work out. But when you look at them deeply, it's just, yeah, number will go up forever. It's the disco stew thing from the Simpsons. It's just, well, line is going up and will continue going up forever. I think what's going to happen is it's going to stay something like this right up until it's too late. When it becomes obvious that all of this is falling apart. People will try and make that change. They will try and turn this boat. Truth is, now is the time to do the time to stop. This was 2024, 2025. Now we're setting us up for an economic disaster. We have construction that takes year two years full of stuff that GPUs that depreciate in six years. They're already two years obsolete by the time you turn them on. And you've got all of this money leverage from private credit that we don't know how much private credit is this completely secret thing run by private equity. I think we could be in real trouble in the bank, in the banking sphere. I don't know to what extent because a lot of this stuff is shadowed. I think by the time it's obvious that all of this is falling apart, people are going to have a lot of trouble pretending that they thought otherwise. And also I've been keeping very detailed notes on the subject.

[A]

Last question for me. Is there a possibility that a lot of this shift, this, this stuff shifts from I guess private sector wealth creation, private sector stuff to government to where the United States government or other governments are in arms races with other countries, AI being the bedrock of those things and that they'll take a lot of this infrastructure and militarize it in some way?

[E]

I mean, going back to the Insula promise, I mean the government's been doing stuff like that. I mean, I don't think these GPUs are going to be particularly useful for anything governmental. You have the whole hes geth anthropic argument right now where they won't allow them to build weapons of mass destruction with it. I guess there's some sort of vague argument there. All of this GPU infrastructure already existed a few years ago.

[A]

I know.

[E]

If the government.

[A]

If we built out a fleet of autonomous battleships, is that possible using all the GPUs and all of the.

[E]

No, no, because the GPUs, what they are doing right now with large language models is entirely separate to autonomous weapons or autonomous cars or any of that. In fact, part of the noxious sales parade they're doing is to try and make you conflate those things. Because AI can mean many different things. Large language models are the things being built with GPUs. You kind of saw it. CES Jensen Huang of Nvidia trying to talk about the Omniverse, which is using GPUs to simulate robots moving around or autonomous vehicles. Yeah. They got so little revenue out of that, they've just pretty much. There was a story from the information that said, well, they're making tens of millions of dollars in some cases, like teeny tiny amounts. As far as an autonomous battleship that's just completely different to. That would not be run using anything like large language models. It's just not what they would be doing, in part because you can't put GPUs on a ship like that. And indeed, just they. Maybe. Maybe they would use them as a way of simulating the training data for an autonomous vehicle. Maybe that's what the Nvidia Omniverse is. But I don't think anyone has a plan. I think it's one of the. One of the comforting things that many people do, and I don't judge them for this, is they think, well, they wouldn't just waste a bunch of money. Right. They'd have a strategy.

[C]

Right.

[E]

They wouldn't just follow each other. Right. The problem is they absolutely would. And they've done it before, and they'll probably do it again. And there is no backup plan here. There is nothing. There is, unless There is like $200 billion a year in AI compute revenue at a time when there's $65 billion of total AI revenue, compute and other services attached. Unless there's $200 billion of new revenue in the next two or three years. All these data centers were built for nothing. No one's going to be able to pay for them because also the customers are unprofitable. AI Startups. I don't know if I'm wrong, something crazy is going to have to happen. And quite frankly, I've been answering what if you're wrong? For two years now. And it's just a question of what breaks first, private equity or venture capital.

[A]

Not if you're wrong, but when you're going to be right.

[E]

Yeah. And the thing is, if I end up being wrong, which I really don't think I am, I'll happily explain why I don't think any of the people that have been so vociferous about AI will even try and apologize or try and explain where they were wrong. I don't think they have the introspection.

[A]

Well, good thing for you is if you're wrong, you won't have to tell us because you'll be telling two AI facsimiles of us. We'll be doing the. You don't have to answer the actual human. Human beings, you know. Ed, tell the people where they can find you, man. Thank you. I don't know what the. Is going on. Tell. Tell people where they can find you and where we can talk more about this stuff.

[E]

Better offline.com go on a subreddit R slash better offline list of the podcast Newsletter. Where's your head.at? subscribe today. Yeah. And I'll explain everything.

[A]

There you go, my man. Appreciate you.

[B]

Thank you, Ed.

[A]

All right, man.

[E]

Thank you.

[A]

Wow. So, you guys, we're gonna do the Save Act. We're going to talk about voter ID on Thursday. We're going to talk about it. We got the whole voter ID thing.

[B]

That'd be great, because we have a good guest on Thursday, too.

[A]

Who's the guest on Thursday?

[B]

Cory Bush.

[A]

Oh, Corey Bush is on the show. Oh, and Danny, Corey Bush is on the show. That's great. Okay. Before we get out of here, though, two things I want to talk about real quick. Obama and Hillary Clinton are out there making the rounds. Hillary Clinton on migration.

[C]

Donnie, I think we need to call.

[B]

It for what it is. There is a legitimate reason to have a debate about things like migration.

[C]

It went too far.

[B]

It's been disruptive and destabilizing, and it.

[C]

Needs to be fixed in a humane.

[B]

Way with secure borders that don't torture and kill people. You have a problem with that?

[A]

Yep. Big time. Big time. Big time, Big time.

[B]

Which part?

[A]

So migration being destabilizing and disruptive.

[B]

Mass. Mass.

[A]

Mass migration being destabilized and disruptive. Okay, when did the mass migration. So what are we talking about? In what way? Is what I would ask, how has it been destabilizing and disruptive? In what way?

[B]

I mean, if I'm assuming when she said it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I thought she was saying too many people have come across illegally across the.

[A]

Border and what has that. What's happened.

[B]

And then she's. She's basically saying that it's been disruptive to our country. That is her stance.

[A]

That's her stance. I would just like somebody to ask her why. One thing that you've heard just, you know, is crime. It's like, dude, you let all these people in across the border, it's crime. First of all, look, do countries need borders? Absolutely. They do. Countries need borders. Absolutely. For all kinds of reasons, for security reasons. In terms of this is, countries have borders. A country is a country. A country has borders. You, you're inside your country, you're making all types of. It needs a border. Right. It has to have a border. So. But what I'm saying is when she says mass migration has been disruptive and destabilizing, I guess my question for Clinton is how.

[B]

Yeah. Like how you took that to mean that she was talking about crime.

[A]

Well, I can only assume that she's talking about crime.

[B]

Cause I can see that won't argue against that. I went and looked. I'm like, what was her policy or what was her stance when she was running for president? Right. Could have changed. That was 10 years ago. And she said if she was president, that she will introduce a comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to full and equal citizenship within her first hundred days in office. It will treat every person with dignity, fix the family visa backlog, uphold the rule of law, protect our borders and national security, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Bring millions of hardworking people into the formal economy. I don't know if I think that she's talking about crime more than she's just talking about. We just need to have more, like, be more structural with our borders so that there can be a pathway where people don't have to do that illegally. Because it seems like she's. For a. When you come here, let's fix the way that you come into this country and give you a pathway that's smooth so you can become a citizen. So I didn't take that when I went back and looked at it as, oh, she's. These are MAGA talking points, per se. I looked at it as, we just need to have a strong border so people aren't coming across the borders illegally.

[A]

But what she said was. Which, by the way, was what Obama ran on. And we've never really talked about on this podcast how we would do immigration and what we think it should look like and how it should be and whether or not you're an amnesty person and you believe in open borders or however that goes, whatever. Cause a lot of people don't talk about that. A lot of people don't talk about what the policy that they believe in is because you're always like in a reactionary sort of frame when you're talking about this issue. You're always reacting to someone saying that, like, migration is going to end the world, which is not that far from what Hillary Clinton just said. She said it's been disrupted. She said it's been disruptive and destabilizing. So the question is how?

[B]

She doesn't believe in illegal immigrants.

[A]

No, but why? What is this disruptive? What has it disrupted and what has it destabilized Now? Because. Because here's the deal. What people, what people would say is that it have, has it disrupted services for people. Or if you are an American and you were getting a Medicaid, or you were using the going to the doctor, or you were going to the dmv, or you were using all of these different services, are these services tougher to get to? Their, their longer waits, their backlogs, whatever, because you have a bunch of undocumented migrants that are taking over stuff. Okay, if it's destabilizing, what is it destabilizing now? So the. I'm not saying that she's saying this, but I'm saying that if it weren't Hillary Clinton, which I don't know why anyone would be giving any benefit of the doubt till Hillary Clinton, what people would assume was that she was making a cultural observation. Because what really undergirds to me a lot of the criticism of this stuff, of this stuff, meaning the mass migration, because you really can't even use the crime argument. Right? If we were to say that mass migration started in the 80s, well, I could tell you that in mass migration, the started right, since. Since in the 40 or 50 years that it was, the crime has gone like that. So everyone that goes out and tells you that a bunch of undocumented people have come across the border into America and that's created this incredible boom in crime during the time that this has happened is just straight up. That's a straight counterfactual. Because you can look at the data, and the data will tell you that across American cities, all over the place, crime has been nosediving as More and more people have come into the country undocumented. And I'm not saying that there's a corollary there. I'm just saying if that is used as the reason why this is destabilizing to a culture, then I could say, no, crime does not think.

[B]

I don't think that's what she's saying.

[A]

I don't think that that's what she's saying either. But my question is, what is she saying? Because what people would say is that mass migration, what you hear when people criticize it in the UK or in other places, what gets to the bottom of that is your country's not as white as it used to be.

[B]

But if she had just said that first line, I would agree with you. But when she says, I want a pathway, paraphrasing, I want them to be able to come here and not be. What does she say? Killed or dehumanized is saying that she wants you to be able to come here. I think when I hear her say the destabilizing part, I'm assuming she's saying, talking about the fact that our borders aren't secure and it causes chaos and it shows a loss of control for your country that you can't control your. Your secure, your borders. I should say that's how I looked at it because of the second part of it. And then when I read what her stance was 10 years ago, I'm like, okay, she's not saying, I don't want you here. She's just saying, this can't be the way to do.

[A]

I, I can understand that. But mass migration, Mass migration has been disruptive and destabilizing to me. When I look at that, I need more. Because what that sounds like is. And look, if people want to have a conversation about what they think the culture of America should be, because that's really what this entire. This entire back and forth is about. This entire back and forth has nothing to do. Almost every single thing that they bring up is a lie. Almost every single thing that they bring up. Now, there are certain things, the day, the right, the side that weaponizes migration as the great sin and evil. What they are talking about is what they believe is a cultural transformation. And if there are people that want to have a good faith argument about what they think the culture of a country should be and whether or not they think America is something or American is something that you can become or something that you're born, have that conversation. Have that conversation. Everybody's gonna have to, like, put their Big boy pants on it. Because they're gonna hear a lot of stuff they don't like. But you can have that conversation. But this, to me, sounded very close, very close to what I'm hearing now. And to say it at this particular time, to get into it at this particular time, I'm. I just want you guys to all to notice. I want you to notice your famous. Your favorite Democrat and your favorite Democratic person inch to the right. Maybe not for Hillary Clinton. Maybe she's consistent here. Obama was consistent in a lot of ways. But I just want. I want you guys to watch them inch to the right as it's time to go. Grab that power, because they gotta be. They gotta center it up. They gotta sit. They love the center. Know what they love? They love the center. They want to be right in the center because that's where it's warm at. Center, center, center, center.

[B]

I thought you were saying center. It looks like the movie center.

[A]

No, I was saying center, center, center, center, center. They want to be in the center of things. All right, Obama says aliens are around. Obama did the same thing. Look. Homelessness. Look, play this real quick. Are aliens real? They're real, but I haven't seen them. And they're not being kept in.

[E]

What is it?

[A]

Area 51. Area 51? There's no underground facility. Unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States. Confirmed.

[B]

He clarified it.

[A]

No. Okay, let's talk about. Let's talk about the clarification before we go.

[B]

Confirmed. This is what he said.

[A]

Confirmed.

[B]

Hold on, let me find this. Confirmed. I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it's gotten attention, let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there, but the distances between solar systems are.

[A]

So he didn't write this shit.

[B]

That the changes. We've been visited by a. That the chances we've been visited by aliens is low. And I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really? Exclamation point.

[A]

They asked him, he answered, and he walked it back. That's what the fuck happened. He's seen him. He might actually be one. He's. He's. He knows it's real. Confirmed. It's confirmed. It's done. Disclosure day was the day that Brian interviewed Obama. It's done. Confirmed. Of course, he had to walk it back. Of course he did, because he probably got a call from some reptilian who spoke to him and went.

[B]

A lot of conspiracy podcasts. A lot of.

[A]

And then Obama went. Obama answered and went.

[B]

Translate that.

[A]

That's.

[D]

They got two hours and 50 minutes. Okay, we're like 50 minutes past the mark.

[A]

All right, we out of here.

[C]

Oh, yeah, it makes perfect sense.

[B]

Perfect sense.

[C]

Dy.

[A]

You know, we give him a big podcasts sometimes. Like, we give them a. Be quiet. Okay, we gotta go. Take your thing. Caps off. We didn't even. We didn't even talk about the fact that we have we didn't even talk about the fact that we have rep. Sydney Kamalaga Dove on the show. Yeah, we had. She was on the show today.

[B]

She was on the show. Ed Citron's on the show today.

[A]

On the show.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So big show. Big show. Plus, Kevin Durant. Get off my dickerson. Okay?

[B]

Allegedly.

[A]

Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. It was him. We would love for KD to talk to us about this, by the way. Kd, Come on.

[B]

Don't do it. Kevin. Listen to me. Don't do it. Don't do it.

[A]

Oh, Daddy. Y' all forgot.

[B]

We gotta go. Take us out.

[A]

Take your thing. Caps off. Do not stop learning. I'm Van Lathan Jr.

[B]

I'm Rachel and Lindsay.

[C]

Bye.

[A]

Sam.