Ep. 33 - Fatherhood From The Middle *bonus*

Three for the Founders | Bonus Episode

"Hot Takes, Heartfelt Dads & Bringing POCC Home"

Feb 23, 2026 • 22 min

Fraternity brothers Reynaldo Antonio, Lybroan, and Jon jump back in for a bonus round that moves fast and hits deep. First up: is Stephen A. Smith's $100M ESPN deal turning "the people's voice" into controversy-for-profit — and who else is getting rich while Black America pays the tab? The brothers draw the line between hot takes and real takes, and it's a line worth hearing.

Then, they pull back the curtain on an upcoming live session for SoCal POCIS's Bring PoCC Home — a regional answer to the People of Color Conference’s indefinite “postponement". With independent schools navigating the Trump administration's pressure on DEI and the quiet erasure of history, Lybroan, Jon, and Antonio are walking into the room with one guiding question: “Do we believe what they wrote, or do we believe what they did?"

And before the credits roll, things get personal. Jon's father-son story — the one that's making grown men emotional in rooms across the country — lands here too, alongside a Robert Bly quote that'll stop you mid-commute, and a Valentine's Day moment from Antonio that hits different when you realize he was channeling his own father without even knowing it.

Bonus episode energy. Founder-level conversation.

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Thanks for joining us. Still got questions? Other things to say? Hit us up at Three for the Founders on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok and let us know. Til the next time...left on founders...we out! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

No, it's not a butt whatever.

SPEAKER_03 0:03

Hey, it's Reynaldo Antonio here. From time to time our conversations run longer than we intended, and we're left with longer, short snippets of some value, in our opinion. We're dropping these shorter bonus episodes as intellectual appetizers for you to chew on until we're back next week. Enjoy. We're brothers. We're happy and we're stinging and we're colored.

SPEAKER_05 0:33

Give me a hard five. Alright, cut and print. Beautiful guys. I don't like that. Welcome to Three for the Founders, where brotherhood meets the breakdown. We've been having these conversations for years, and now you are invited to join us. We'll say the things you are afraid to say and ask the questions you've always wanted to ask. Three brothers, all truth, no filters. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Am I wrong? LeBron's like, can we please have a black man that's not a conservative? Thank you. Anyone that's not a conservative.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

Let's have Steven let's have Stephen A. Smith's coon ass on.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

Do you consider yourself a coon?

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Hey, can you all I didn't pay much attention to him. I know he got he he's sold out to some degree. Can you guys give me the reader's digest quick version of what did he do?

SPEAKER_04 1:30

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

I know it exists.

SPEAKER_05 1:32

I know that you can't escape it, but I do not believe it is as prevalent as some on the left would like us to believe. He's always been controversial and quick to demean black athletes and black women. Then ESPN gave him a contract for a hundred million dollars, and then he just cooned out to a whole nother level. Yeah? Yeah. He's one of those people like I stand with Israel. He's on that level now. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Well, LeBron James stands with Israel.

SPEAKER_05 2:04

No, he doesn't stand with Israel. He said, uh Yes, he did.

SPEAKER_03 2:06

He did what'd he say?

SPEAKER_05 2:07

What'd he say? He said he said, you can he said it's a place I want to visit one day, and I hope to inspire them to be good basketball players. That's all he said. And then they interpret that as okay. But you can I mean, look, it's open to interpret anybody who makes more than$100 million, they stand with Israel. I promise you. I don't care who you know, if they got a hundred million dollars, they stand with Israel. I don't agree with it, but it just shows you that they don't control their money.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

Um you said no, LeBron said, um, a while ago, that as people become more economically successful, they stop working for the betterment of humanity and they start working for the betterment of self. And Stephen A. Smith, Candace Owens, um Merkel Rubio, all of these people have found individual success, forgetting that it's their communities who who built them, who sustained them, who got them their Clarence Thomas, um uh uh Amy Coney Barrett, right? Because white women have not benefited, they've sort of been in the wake of the white patriarchal bullshit. And so um Stephen A. Smith is just the latest, and his you this is what you said. You said that your brand becomes audacity, your brand becomes saying things that are controversial, Colin Cowherd, oh yes, right? He used to be a sports anal analyst, analyst, and now he is a um talking generator of controversy. What's the hot take? Right, you were you were talking about when we talked to Dave. You talked about I don't want the hot take, but I want the real take. Right? I want you to understand and think about and then tell me what is the best possible outcome for this, as opposed to what is your knee-jerk reaction to that's going to get you a lot of views. Right. Stephen A. Smith is about a lot of views to the detriment of black America, true, and to the benefit of his pocketbook.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

So an example would be he would say he he would he would deliberately take the devil's advocate side, uh, even if it's if it's like if it is doing detriment to black folks in general, just for the sake of that hot take. Like, is there an example of something he said? I'm sure I could find it.

SPEAKER_03 5:03

Well, so the the the the inverse example, and it's not a hot take that he said, and somebody, and he didn't get any pub for it. He announced that he's thinking about running for president, and nobody black supported him.

SPEAKER_05 5:21

Nobody.

SPEAKER_03 5:23

Nobody.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

And so So did he go on a rampage about that?

SPEAKER_03 5:28

He hasn't gone on a rampage about it because he just announced it. But the point is that he didn't, right? So Kamala announced that she was running for president. The whole D9 was like, girl, I'm not a AKA, but I'm with you. Right? Even Booker T Washington had black supporters. Thank you. Hello.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Booker T. Stephen A.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Smith.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Say no more. Stephen A. Smith, dude, his running mate's gonna be that guy who talked about going to Cheesecake Factory with a MAGA hat on.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

Oh my god, every time that comes up in my feed.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

I know you have to post it again.

SPEAKER_03 6:06

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

I'm just wondering why, bro. I'm just wondering why. And dude, every now that I watch it, I love knowing that he's about to say that. I love looking to all the way to my right to the guy who originally said the cheesecake factory and watching his his dead eyes just be like, Cheesecake factory would have make America great again.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

He shouldn't be verbally accosted. He you you should maybe inquire as to why he's wearing it if you want to hear his point of view, but he should by no means feel that he's not welcome in a restaurant. Okay. This is the problem that we have as Americans, and we can all do better.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Mark, I know you want to respond to that. What did you want to say? I was wondering what to do was in a cheesecake factory, but I I think for me, you know, most most you know that that has y'all tripping, man. The point is that most black people who are dealing with the ritual human like he just doesn't understand why they're upset at him in general.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

Every time I watch it, I watch what's his name that got arrested? Don Lemon.

SPEAKER_05 7:08

Don Lemon, yes.

SPEAKER_03 7:09

And then I watch Angela Rye. Yes, and then I watch those two, like the actual people involved in the conversation. Oh my god. Every hilarious. I was wondering what you're doing at the Cheesecake Factory. I wonder if I have it saved on my phone. I need I was just wondering what bro was doing at the Cheesecake Factory, but oh my god. It had to happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Um we're doing on the 21st, man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

Thank you. We got invited to do a live session at a let me give you some backstory. So the People of Color Conference we've talked about before, right? Yes. And that is the National Association of Independent Schools, People of Color Conference. It started out as a safe space. There was some conversation about whether or not it was a showcase, meaning, was it a good place for faculty and staff of color who work in independent schools in the United States to go to talk about, to have affinity space, to to just be in community? Or was it a diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice conference where people were doing workshops about how to be better, how to be better allies? It's gone on for about 35 years. Um last year, after some Israel-Palestine issues, they postponed it. In the last year that they postponed it, though, the Southern California people of color and independent schools had done this regional conference. People who couldn't go to the national conference still got to get some affinity and still got to get some workshops out of.

SPEAKER_04 8:52

Right.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

So now that they've postponed the national conference, so Calposis is still doing the regional conference. So it's still called Bring POCC Home. You all saw the the the workshop idea uh about diversity in independent schools, the Trump administration's regulation of education, the eraser of history, what should schools be doing? One of the biggest challenges facing educators today is the anti-intellectual bent of the current political regime, signified by the raising of black history monuments, the removal of historical references to indigenous peoples, women, and any quote, anti-American unquote activities in national parks? How do teachers, faculty, parents, and most importantly, children seek to be mission-aligned and honest with themselves right now? Are our schools pulling back their justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts in an attempt to obey in advance, to fly under the radar, to keep out of harm's way? Or are our institutions standing firm in their commitments to help raise good humans in the face of silencing oppression? Come join career educators and experienced communicators, LeBron, John, and Reynold Antonio, in a guided discussion to answer these and other questions. Welcome to Three for the Founders. But your talk was great.

SPEAKER_05 10:30

Oh, dude.

SPEAKER_03 10:31

Oh, I thought you were talking to LeBron.

SPEAKER_05 10:32

That shit was fire as hell, dude. Thanks, man. That shit was fire. It was in your whole musical thing.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

Hey man, I was on the clock too, bro. I was I would have I would have talked about you all so much more. Like I wanted to talk about chapter. But uh, like I was supposed to be I begged for more than 20 minutes. I think I went 24. Um, they didn't need to talk anymore.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

Just said beautiful things. It was beautiful. It was DNA.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

I appreciate that, man.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

I loved your conversation about you and Dave in the car. Um I I had already heard you talk about you talking about your dad. Oh man, he's still the most important.

SPEAKER_05 11:13

I was like, Oh, that one got me. I was like, ooh shit.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

Bro, y'all don't even know because I did that same talk in San Diego and I had a little bit more time at that at that moment when I'm telling the story about me and my pops, I go deep, bro. I go and did you do they record it? No, but I I do a written version of this. Y'all y'all know Lisa Nichols? Have you heard of Lisa Nichols?

SPEAKER_05 11:36

I've heard of Lisa Nichols, yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

She's a she's kind of like an influential speaker, speaker, yeah. African-American lady. She's really cool. She's putting out a book, and I've got a chapter in it through Blue Talks. Oh, nice. And uh I decided just to focus on that part of the talk because I had to I had to do 2,000 words or less, so you know how hard that is, Antonio. I fucked up so but anyway, in San Diego, what I realized is that I can go so much harder and deeper on that part. Like what I said is that I um and I I I start crying when I'm talking about it in person because I'm like, in in that moment, I didn't know I could not have said what I felt because I was 16. Yeah, but I know now what I felt. Right. You know what I felt? Hey dad, I need your strength. I need to know that every every morning that you overcame every hardship, every disappointment, every hungover morning that you still got up before the sunrise and and went to work and met the needs of the people who needed you. I need to know that I have access to that. I need to know that I am your son, that that the the days that your father spent in pain are also mine. And like I go deep and like and I guess and you know, and I'll say that, you know, again, I I couldn't have said any of that when I was 16, but I felt every single one of those things when I played music with him. I felt that strength, I felt that togetherness, I felt that, you know, so that anyway, I appreciate you bringing that up, man, because um it affirms that I think I'm onto something with this shit.

SPEAKER_03 13:07

Yeah, you know, yeah, definitely for sure and if I may play therapist. Thank you. No, your kids get to play with you, um but there are many a lost video to them sitting, right, in in in Caucasian Acres playing with you.

SPEAKER_04 13:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

They know that. They know they're true, yeah. And and they don't have the language for it yet, even Luke, right? Who wasn't playing, but he was in the space, he was in the room.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

And this universe, I appreciate that. This universality of fathers and sons, you all know this. It's like you and I talked about this years ago. Robert Bly, Iron John, you and I were talking about like his poem. I heard him, he he was he's a he was a poet, talked a lot about father-son relationships. And uh I heard him being interviewed one time, he says, When a boy sits down next to his dad, he's receiving spiritual food from him. It's invisible, but he's being fed. And when I think about both of you all, all of us being very mindful dads, yeah, whether it's not gentle parenting or whatever it is, it's like even just the time spent when you are deliberately being their dad in that moment, you're not just surviving with your like you're feeding them. And they're they don't even know it, but as they get older, they go, Yup, yeah, yeah, possibly he was feeding me.

SPEAKER_05 14:44

Isn't it weird though, like being in the middle, like we remembering like how our dads raised us, and now we're the father, so we're the son and the father. You know, and and and appreciating both perspectives. It's like, wow. Like I know what my dad is feeling now because I feel it from them. Yeah. So what I'm trying to pour into them, that's what our dads have been trying to pour into us in various ways. The best way they know how.

SPEAKER_03 15:19

Does it make you hear things differently?

SPEAKER_05 15:22

Totally differently.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

Oh yeah. That's what's crazy for me. Yes, and I'll think about conversations I've had with my father 25 years ago. Yeah. Whether he was raising his voice or he was just like leaning back and not closer to the light. Um and we were we we went to um to brunch for Valentine's Day, the four of us. Right. And my son was asking the question, he was talking about his life, and I said, just make sure that XYZ. And he went, Oh, like he heard it, and I was like, Yeah, that wasn't me.

SPEAKER_04 16:12

That was that that was possible. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

Oh, God that wasn't that wasn't my lived experience. It wasn't even his, but it was the what he has told me is coming to you. Yep.

SPEAKER_05 16:27

Yeah, yeah. I'll say this real quick because I know we gotta wrap up, man. My dad is on this thing for some reason. He keeps telling my sons 49, bro. Well, we're ahead of schedule almost.

SPEAKER_03 16:39

We got 11 minutes. We got 11 minutes.

SPEAKER_05 16:41

Let me get into this then. So my dad has been on this kick for the last year about trying to get LG and Nigel to pledge a fraternity, pledge a black fraternity. Are you serious? Because they have no desire to pledge, largely because I know that's what their mom told them not to do. You know, that mother influence thing. And I told them, I said, look, it's your life. Do what you want to do. I said, if you choose, I think you'd be better off in a black fraternity. I said, you don't even have to pledge Sigma because I don't want you to feel you have to do it because of me. If you choose to, great. But if you choose something else, I don't give a shit. Just be just join one because you need a network. But my dad has been grinding them, I mean, cussing them out and I'm like on them hard. Like, you dumb.

SPEAKER_03 17:26

Of course. It's not really.

SPEAKER_05 17:31

He said, look, you're going to join the frat or you're going to join the clan. Take a pick. But you join the one. I was like, damn, Pops, is it that zero sum of a game? I didn't think they can't join like the Glee Club or something. It's up in the middle.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

No, no. He skipped right over the Glee Club. Skipped right over, like maybe play a, I don't know, an intramural sports.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

R OTC.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Yeah. You know, you know, join the young Republicans.

SPEAKER_05 17:59

Been there, done that.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

He said, Frat or a clan.

SPEAKER_02 18:04

Or the clan. I was like. Just pick your hood.

SPEAKER_03 18:10

So here's my I'm I've got y'all ain't got no hood. Y'all ain't got no hood. And shout out to LG, right? Finishing his master's, graduating in May. Uh man. All good. Um, how have they received that?

SPEAKER_05 18:27

They received it well. Not that they're they haven't said that they're not pledged. Not that they're gonna pledge, but they are so respectful of their grandpa. They appreciate everything he says. So, you know, I think in due time they'll probably do like a grad chapter of something at some point, once they get out of Colorado. I think once they get out of Colorado and once they know they don't have to pledge Sigma, I think that'll open up the possibility that they'll pledge something and even possibly Sigma.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

So back to the 21st, which is what we were really talking about.

SPEAKER_05 19:00

Thank you. Help me out with the kind of context and what kind of questions are we talking about?

SPEAKER_03 19:04

Like just around education or I just sent you the based on that long thing. I'm gonna read this whole tags. Yes, reads you do tags.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

No, LeBron, put it in your chat GPT. Yep, that's something to do. No, chat GPT. I'm on Claude Gemini, I'm on Claude. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 19:21

I'm on Claude.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

That sounds like a night in West Hollywood in 1987.

SPEAKER_05 19:26

I'm on Claude, Claude's on me.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

I'm on Claude, Claude is on me. Um listen, I know this is good because what we can say, we could frame it up like look, we're a podcast, we're fraternity brothers, we could tell a funny story or two at the beginning. And this is how we operate is we come together, we trust one another, we trust one another's, you know, we can we can be our full selves with each other, so we can show up authentic, we can have honest conversations, which is a part of what we do in education. We try to create an environment in which we can be honest and there's trust and we can we can bounce ideas around. And and to LeBron's point, what what is our new tagline for three for the founders? Believe what they wrote and do we believe what they did. So what we try to do is leave room to answer questions genuinely. So all three of us have come with questions. We invite you to be a part of this too. Did I just uh I just wrote, I just produced. Good.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 20:23

I feel confident now. Now, Antonio, you know, he just produced it. You're gonna have to do the intro. You have to play uh Gladys Knight, and me and him gonna be the pips because this is your crew, this is your folks.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Leaving, leaving, on that minute train night training.

SPEAKER_05 20:46

Thank you for joining us. Still got questions, other things you want to say? Well, hit us up at threeforthefounders.com on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok, or send us a text through Bud Sprout. Remember to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast and share the pod with someone you think can benefit from it or add to the conversation. Till the next time, Left on Founders. We out.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

Thank you for listening to the Three for the Founders podcast. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of any professional or academic institution. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only. Listen at your own risk of becoming woke. I just watched Ray.

SPEAKER_03 21:38

Dude. Sorry, Jamie Foxx, Carrie Washington.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

If you want to be a Ray Lette, you gotta let Ray Regina King.

SPEAKER_03 21:47

God damn. That is a treasure.

SPEAKER_05 21:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 21:53

It's not sinners. I mean, let's not.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

This is a real this, you know, the a flood. Odd man whose life was being told and it was incredible.