Three for the Founders

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 want to ask. Three brothers. All truth. No filters.

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Three for the Founders

Ep. 40 - Say My Name, Say My Name

April 27, 2026 • Jon Augustine, Lybroan James, Reynaldo Macías • Season 2 • Episode 40

0:00 | 38:23

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Season 2 | Airing Monday, April 27, 2026

Some episodes are too good to stay in the vault.

Originally recorded as the Season 1 finale, Episode 40 never made it to air — until now. Consider it a gift from the archives, and the perfect bridge into everything Season 2 is becoming.

Reynaldo, Lybroan, and Jon go deep on something deceptively simple: your name. What it carries. What it costs. What it means when someone gets it wrong — and whether that’s ever really an accident.

From Kamala Harris to Barack Hussein Obama, from Prince’s war with his record label to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s meditation on language and colonial dominion, the guys connect the personal to the political to the philosophical. Because naming isn’t just courtesy — it’s power. And mispronouncing someone’s name isn’t always laziness. Sometimes it’s a message.

Plus: Jerry Lewis, Charlie Sheen, God Sham God, a rare Revenge of the Jedi T-shirt, and the real reason Reynaldo Antonio Macias is not changing his name to Joaquin.

22 countries are listening. Make sure your city is in the count.

Three for the Founders — where Brotherhood meets the breakdown.

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!

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Sometimes we record, we put things together, and then we decide it's just not time. That means that from time to time we can go in the vault and pull out an episode whose time is count for your listening pleasure. So what you got now is a throwback. It was supposed to be the end of season one. Little did we know. At episode 15, we were just getting started. So here you go. Say my name, say my name. The power of names. Number two. This week on 3 for the Founders. Luke's original name in the original script was Luke Starkiller. And there was Return of the Jedi was Revenge of the Jedi. Damn. Naming has power. We're brothers. We're happy and we're singing and we're colored. Give me a high.

SPEAKER_04 1:00

Alright, cut and print. Beautiful guys. Dynamite. 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_00 1:29

Hi, Reynaldo Antonio Macías here. I'm a teacher, educator, lifelong learner, somebody who enjoys thinking about things and then talking about things. Sometimes writing about things, although I talk about writing more than I actually write.

SPEAKER_04 1:47

And hello, my name is LeBron James, a mathematician, futurist, and a person who likes to solve problems, especially when it comes to race in America.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

My name is John Augustine. I am a communications consultant, an executive coach. I'm a musician. I'm a white dude in a black fraternity. And I am obsessed with communicating and getting people to be understood and finding a more diverse way of moving forward together.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

We've been having conversations about all of these things and more for the past 30 years. And you are invited to join us, taking our friendship global. 22 countries now, Finland and Finland, Spain, jumping in there. Espana. Bienvenidos todos.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Tony, when I think Tony, there's like a whole high school you that I see in my head that I never met, but I can very picture. And I can I can I can imagine, you know, when you're a teenager and you're you're establishing yourself and the teacher is saying your name out for the first time, you're not just making it easy on them. You're you're trying to stay out of that spotlight. You're like, just so you're doing it for you, too. Like I'm just following.

SPEAKER_04 3:05

But at the same time, when Antonio made it easy for the teachers by going by Tony, that reminds me of what immigrants do from other countries when they come here. Like, I'm not Mao Yen is not gonna go over well in America. I'm not gonna be able to assimilate with Mao Yin. But Emily sounds good. Emily's good, yeah. Whoa, Mike, Tim, whoa, those names. So, you know, it's just curious, interesting how we people adopt Americanized names, either for convenience or from power or to hide or to avoid discrimination. You know, yeah. It's an interesting thing. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Oh yeah. I wasn't even thinking about this until now. My grandmother, my mom's mom, her name was Carolina Mariano. So you go ahead and decide where she was from. And then seven siblings, and I knew them as these are my mom's uncles and aunts, and so I knew them as Bobby, Uncle Bobby, Uncle Petey, Uncle Frank, Uncle Al, and then Aunt Rita, Aunt Dolores, Aunt Josephine, and Aunt. I'm missing one. Uh I'll I'll remember it eventually. But it wasn't Rob and Pete and Al, it was Roberto, it was Pietro, it was, you know, Alberto, and and um, so but they were very they gave them Italian names, but they make sure that they were anglicized, so because you know there wasn't anything like black discrimination, but there was a you know, Italians were seen as these kind of like, all right, these poor people who are you know not really one of us, and if they're trying to make it in New York, they're in the Bronx. But so yeah, every I mean everyone's got their plight, and and the name becomes such a big part of it. And I like I said, I really this this kind of ties well into but going back to the Kamala Mamdani thing, where I just find there is there's some there's some point in American history where we should everyone should have just agreed that, okay, like yeah, English is the our language, and so it's we've decided that's the national language, but we've also decided that this is supposed to be a nation of immigrants, and so we are going to respect the language that other people bring. Even if we can't speak the language, it's impossible to speak all the languages that are going to be represented in our country, but we can show respect for the names of people. And I just found it so I find it so frustrating when political people, figures especially, just choose to not pronounce the name right. It's such disrespect, it's such dismissiveness. And the Kamala, so that's really drove me crazy, man. It was and I want it so bad. And Tony, I wanted to hear you because I didn't when I said that Trump should or Kamala during the debate, every time he called her Kamala with his stupid like L, he's like Kamala, the voice I can't stand that. It's like like I wanted her to just say, Okay, I'm gonna call you Denald. You call me Kamala, I'm gonna call you Denald and see how you like it. And see, like just until you, you know, Denald and his middle name is John, Denald Joan Trump. That's what I'm gonna call you from now on, see how you like it. But would that have been like you know, getting dirty, getting like mud wrestling wrestling with a pig, and you both get dirty and the pig likes it?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Oh no, the the so the the the white privilege piece of it is that she would have been denigrated for mispronouncing his name, right? Even as a response, she'd either been the angry black woman, but then you'd have to admit she was black, right? As he refused to do. Like, is she Indian? Is she black? Like she was Indian, and then all of a sudden she was black. Right, yeah, right. I mean, do that whole thing, yeah. And she's D-9, the right to be pledge, vaca, but I'm gonna leave that. As she was at Howard, which is the historically black university. Um, and so she did not have the liberty, right, to respond in kind because that would have been character suicide as she's the angry black woman, or she's a low IQ individual, as Donald J. Trump is so fond of labeling women of color and women in general. Um but either way, it would not have been seen as a justifiable retort, it would have been seen as a character flaw on her part, because in the ether, right, Kamala was too confusing, so he was excused for mispronouncing it, the same way Andrew Cuomo, you know, can say a lot of things, but somehow he can't say Zo Ramman Ramdani. I mean, he could say mayor of New York, right? I can say that shots fired.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

We went through we went through some of this with Barack Hussein Obama, right? I mean, but but I do I do I do find it irritating in general when people don't try to speak the other language with the accent, too. Like because there's at first it's like laziness, and I know that we've talked about like the lazy Anglican tongue, we've we brought that up before, and there's I'm not a linguist, there's folks who say, you know, English is your first language. We inherit this lazy way, we don't fully commit to an accent per se. We'll want to learn something else. So maybe it's just like a uh uh conditioned laziness, but then there's unkindness, like you're just being unkind. And then there's prejudice. There's that is not an American-sounding name, and so I'm not gonna show it any respect. You're gonna have to make Americanize that, or you're just gonna have to deal with me calling you this because you're an America. Like that's that to me is the progression. There's laziness, then there's unkindness, and then there's straight up prejudice. And I just see a lot of prejudice in the politics where they're and and just disrespect, like straight up disrespect for anything that doesn't sound American.

SPEAKER_04 9:18

But which is yeah, but John I want to add to that because I like that progression you had, but it's not prejudice, it's racism. Because prejudice means we can say things 23 hours. Sorry. I know, I know, I didn't want to go there, but the door was open and he pushed me in. Walked there you go. Because look, everyone is prejudiced, that's just human beings. The only problem is when you put power behind it, that's the racism. So if I put my name, you know, uh Tyrone Jackson III on my application, I may not get an interview. And but if my name is Tim Smith, I'm in. Even if I'm not as well.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

You're saying that's not prejudice, because that's not racism. There you go.

SPEAKER_04 10:09

Systemic. So if my name is used against me so that I can't get a job or I can't get services or I can't get into a college, that's racism. So if someone says a joke about your name, they're being prejudiced. But if it stops me from getting a job or stops me from getting you know admission to a college, then that's a power play, then that's racism. And I think that's where a lot of people get confused with prejudice and race. Like I don't care if white people say the N-word. I don't care. Because he ain't talking to me. What I what I I know, but what I what I do, what I do.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

I was too far from the mic, I said that's a lie.

SPEAKER_04 10:54

And then LeBron said, I know. I know. But the the problem is is when the government sanctions prejudice, that's racism. That's my issue. Like you don't have to like me, but when the government sanctions you not liking me, then that's a little difficult.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

So when Andrew Cuomo is talking on the street when he's running for mayor, and he says, and I saw this clip today where he says, his name is Mom Donny. And and he kind of pronounced it correctly, but that emphasis that he put on it was like a little wink, like, come on, you're gonna trust a guy named Mom Dani. Like, so is that prejudice or is that racism? It's racism. I mean, it's racist. That's racist.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

It's racism because he has the privilege of doing it. And that clip you saw was the first time he actually pronounced it correctly, even though this is the person that he's lost to twice now. Right? He lost in the primaries. Oh, well, I guess I'm not a Democrat, I'm gonna run as an independent, and then he lost the election. So he's lost to him twice. It's not as if he's not uh uh familiar with his name. Zoran Mamdani. Right, it's in his dreams now. Put it this way: if he was gonna get a donation of a million dollars every time he pronounced it correctly. Oh, you know he'd like to send it to the side. He'd be singing songs. Right? And so when he has the privilege of mispronouncing it or not saying it, right? He just went a whole period of time where he wouldn't say his name. Yeah, he has the privilege of doing that because there's no accountability.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

I mean, except at the ballot box, except for not not winning the election, yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Except for not winning the election, but he's running a whole, it's the same thing with Donald Trump, right? Is he could say he could mispronounce Kamala and he could question her ethnic heritage. It's all a part and parcel. He was rewarded for that.

SPEAKER_04 13:00

Yeah. That's the racist.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

That was what he ran on.

SPEAKER_04 13:03

And Tony, what if it was the other way around? What if my mom Donnie was saying, hey, Qomo?

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Mm-hmm. Oh, then he's racist.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah. Doesn't show respect for this Italian name now for history. He's gonna get the run of that one.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah. Right. And so you notice he never he he he played the happy Negro. And mom Dani never addressed it in any angry way. He never had negative feelings about it. He said, you know, that's unfortunate. I'm here about the affordability of living in New York City. My campaign is about helping out people, being able to pay for living their lives.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

So it would backfire if he's if he really stood his ground on pronounce my name. Say my name, say my name, say my name would backfire.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

He wasn't Muhammad Ali who changed his name. Thank you. Right? And that's a barbershop clip from uh coming to America.

SPEAKER_04 14:03

And he's definitely not Destiny's child, so you really can't say his mama, his mama named him Clay.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

I'm gonna call him Clay. If a man wants to be called Muhammad Ali, goddammit, I'm gonna call him Muhammad Ali.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Says Eddie Murphy playing a New York Jew. Yes. Talking about shout out to my man Eddie Murphy.

SPEAKER_04 14:21

Do y'all gotta watch his Netflix special about his life? Just saw it. Oh, guess what? I was in that house twice a week for five years. My favorite place to go, tutor kids. Okay. What?

SPEAKER_03 14:33

You didn't know how to tutor all the five of Eddie's kids? I used to go to this house twice a week.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

No, Peggy McIntosh, Stevie Wonder. Steve. I didn't even like I ain't even saying Stevie, you know. Uh-huh. Oh my goodness. All right. Back to names. LeBron, Eddie Murphy.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

But yeah, and then Kareem Abdul Jabbar, our guy from EC. Yes, thank you. Lou El Cindor. Lou El Cindor. You talk about a name change. But look at, I mean, let's let's look at this. We talk about racism, we're talking about systems. And trust me, this is something we have to parse. I have to parse when I'm when I go back to the Caucasian Underground and I and I get the buzzing, and I'm I hear this is still a concept that's hard to explain. To be quite honest, it took some time being with you all, Dr. Carter, who seems to be the most oft-referred to guest uh ever, and of our three guests that we've had. But four, thank you. The difference between racism and prejudice. And but notice, notice how what matters to Americans, white Americans, if we're talking about racism, is celebrity, athletic athleticism, wealth. So Muhammad Ali can get away with it. And he took flag. I mean, we yeah, but you know, ultimately he won that. Yeah, yes, he did. Right. Kareem Abdul Jabbar, same thing. Had to fight, though, that was early 70s, right? Like 69, 70s, sometime around there. Um, yeah, he had to be. Malcolm Little had to change his name.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Around the time my mom won the crown. Oh, okay. Yeah, they were there together. Okay. She knows she knows Kareem.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

By the way, I never landed the plane on that story. I'll have to come back to it. But my point is notice how we you like if someone comes who's like Obama, Barack Obama, you know, Harvard grad, Harvard professor, too, right? I mean, law professor, right? President of the uh law review. Harvard Law Review. President Law Review, Harvard Law Review. Okay. I mean, you know, credentials up and down. But the name, the name keeps coming back to the name, the name, the name, the name. Like never fully won that battle. But a celebrity, an athlete, uh Prince, you know, an entertainer, like we'll we'll give them that. Like as long as they're entertaining us, we'll accept that name change. But but for something, you know what I'm saying? Was that his government name? Barack Hussein Obama? No, Prince Rogers Nelson. Yeah, Prince Rogers Nelson. I think that's his name.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

That was his government name.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

He was born, so that okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Well, he he was so here we go with taking back the power. And why did you name your child Prince?

SPEAKER_04 17:23

Mm-hmm. And then the record company owned the name Prince, so he had to go by the symbol. Remember? The power of names. Somebody owns your name. I love the symbol album. I love the symbol. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Oh, seven, and we watch them fall to the way.

SPEAKER_04 17:42

You know, the you know, the real power of the name is if you want to succeed in America, in this capitalist society, you have to have several names. So that's why you create corporations because it they become their own entity.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

So you can thought that was going somewhere.

SPEAKER_04 18:02

That's not where I thought you were going. Oh man. I told you I was gonna back up off my people. I thought he did it again. So your point being that that's how people have multiple names. So, like you are we're all assigned a social security number, right? So that is attached to who you are, but you can then create a corporation, which is actually another entity in another name. So you could be as many people as you want. That's what corporations do. So like celebrities have their regular social security number, then they have their their um actor or professional entertainment name, and then that's a whole nother social security number. So usually entertainers have like two, at least two social security numbers because they can be two.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Well, I don't know. You can have two social security numbers.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Yeah, is it two social security numbers or is it like a tax ID number?

SPEAKER_01 18:50

I just thought it was like DBA doing business as for this podcast. We'll just say yeah. We'll I don't want to get in trouble.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Well, you can have your social security and you can have an EIN number. But to your point, it's um right, it's why you can't register as an actor with the name that somebody else has. Exactly. Like Michael B. Jordan? Who's the dude that played Batman? No, not Michael B. Jordan, but Michael B. Jordan started using the B because Michael Jordan had done Space Jam. Thank you. But who's who's Michael Keaton? Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton's name is actually Michael Douglas. Oh, that's it. It was already a Michael Douglas, but there was already a Michael Douglas in SAG.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Don't get it twisted. Screen Actors Guild, that's the actor's unit. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

For Tracy, yeah, my sister in Wisconsin. Oh, sorry, we're not Smarless. My bad.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

No, dude, that's nice. I totally when you said that in my way, that's Smarless.

SPEAKER_04 19:54

Yeah, so names are powerful.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Uh names are powerful. Speaking of names, the things we were gonna say, but we've been on target.

SPEAKER_04 20:02

We've been on target. So, do you know one of the most famous comedians of all time, Jerry Lewis? You heard of Jerry Lewis, right? Funny dude. Do you know he's Jewish and his name is Jerry uh Levit Levitchky or Levich? Levovich. Yeah. So Jerry Levovich wasn't going over.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Jerry Lee Levich?

SPEAKER_04 20:22

So that wasn't going over at that time. So he had to drop the Jew thing, so he dropped changed the name to Lewis to sound American. Then everybody said, Oh, he's just another American.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Well, that's Frankie Valley, right?

SPEAKER_04 20:35

Frankie Valley as well. We won't talk about uh Charlie Sheen, how he changed his name and his father changed his name because they're Spanish. I think they're from Spain. Esteves. Yes. Emilio kept the name. Emilio Estevez. Yep. He kept the name and everybody else sold out. But what's in the name?

SPEAKER_03 20:51

About a hundred million dollars.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Evidently, yeah, evidently a lot. I have to drop this in, and I know I know we're we need to continue moving on. But uh, as I thought about names, one of the books that has moved me a lot about the language of names is the book Braiding Sweet Braiding Sweetgrass. I think I've probably brought it up before. You did. Robin Wall Kimmerer, she's a botanist and a native. She's from the tribe. I always want to say, I have it written down here, I always want to say uh Pottawatomi, but they say Pottawatabe, Pottawatomie Nation, Oklahoma, Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin. She wrote a book called Braiding Sweetgrass. Every chapter is how nature teaches you something. And it's it's brilliant, but it's really, really good. But she talks about learning her language, and there were only like 12 people left from the Pottawatomi tribe that spoke her language, and so she really wanted to learn it just to keep it alive. And the importance of names in her language be is she said it was very difficult to learn the language because in she learned that in English, 70% of the language are nouns, so we name things.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

That's an it. That's a that's a tree.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

That's a river. That's a whereas her language only 30% were nouns, it was flipped, and things were verbs. And I in other words, like I read this, I had to share the actual words because as she says, one day walking in the woods, this is someone speaking of the book. Kimmerer comes upon a mushroom that was not there the previous day. She's in awe of how this mushroom pushed up through the heavy layer of dead leaves overnight. She learns that the Pottawanami have a word for this phenomenon. So they don't call, they don't give it a noun. They don't say that's a this. The word is popawi, I'm not saying it right. Translated in English, it means the life force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth during the night. She was surprised to learn this, adding, in all technical vocabulary, Western science has no such term, no words to hold this mystery. And as I read that, it's like the I saw how colonial English is in a lot of our language, where when you name living things, it it now you have dominion over it. When you give it a noun, it's you're here and you're there, and the it thing is here, especially in nature. And you know, you can get it, we can get into a lot of like you don't just say that's a river, you go like that's a river moving from this direction to this direction at this time of year, like it's a verb. And there's I think is it nahuat? How do you how do you pronounce that Tony? There's the mech, the like one of the Mexican Nawa, yeah. The word for brother is not like he's my brother, it's it's he walks with me. That's the word for brother. It's a verb, it's a verb, you know.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

And so I just the English part of it, I to cut you off because you made me think of this, but the noun is human being, right? But the verb is human being. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

But yeah, I was just fascinated by even this anglicizing of names is is turning something into an it. And when you refuse to say Mamdani and you're mispronouncing it, you're you're keeping it over there. It's not a human anymore. It's a it's a thing. And you want you want it to submit to the order, the way our tongues work, the sounds that we make in this country. And refusing to pronounce it respectfully, even if you're trying and you pronounce it wrong, but you're showing respect. That refusal just it's like the it's the colonial tongue. It's the those sounds are unfamiliar to us, and so we don't like that sound. We want it, we're gonna keep you in your place and call you this. It's the separation, it's an elevating one over the other. That's that was what was on my mind talking about all this stuff because I just I'm when I when I hear it when the dialogue is happening in politics, and I hear that, I just hear these alarm bells go off of my mind. It'd be like me refusing to learn how to say LeBron and just say, no, we're gonna call you Lyle.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_04 25:03

He said Lyle.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

I'd like that.

SPEAKER_04 25:08

He just killed the why all up in my name, didn't he?

SPEAKER_02 25:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:13

Quick question for both of you. If you can pick any other name in the history of the world to go by, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 25:21

For our bon.

SPEAKER_04 25:27

You don't want that pain.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

It's not Adolf. Can I tell you this is gonna I I've only thought about this recently. I would love my last name to be my first name. I would love my first name to be August or Augustine. Augustine. It's yeah, it's a first name. That's a tight first name.

SPEAKER_04 25:58

It's a lot of Spanish questions. I would I would read your book. You can write any book, but I'm reading that one. Y'all read that book by Augustine?

SPEAKER_01 26:08

I know I know some people who who named their kids and or want to name their kids August. Had a friend, they were like, if if it's a boy, we're gonna name them August, and then they had a girl and they didn't. And I was like, oh, that's cool. And then I looked at the history of the name. So I was I've always just attached it to Father of the Catholic Church, a very Catholic name, St. Augustine of Hippo, who was African, by the way, North African Augustine. Um, but then shorting it to August. Gotcha. It's got some cool meaning to it. But no, that's that's a very self-serving thing, but I don't know. Antonio? That's what first came to mind.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

See, and then I'd say, do you pronounce it August or August?

SPEAKER_01 26:44

August. No, it's kind of that's the proper if like if you're describing something as August.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Well, no, you're saying something different. Right, you are you were saying Augustine, like referencing a person, but something is August. Like there's a respect to that. Um, there's a necessity to it. Um I'm debating my and I I think I have an answer, but LeBron, what are you?

SPEAKER_04 27:09

It's between two. It'd either be Muhammad Ali or it would be a basketball player's name was God Sham God. That's the dopest name I ever heard. God Sham God was an actual basketball player. He had a crossover like you would not believe. Google him. Parents' name God Sham God. That's what I'm talking about. Was he from America? Uh he lived in America. I think he's American, yes. His family's not American. I don't know where they immigrated. I gotta have to look it up.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

But that sounds like something a Nigerian would say. But God, God Sham God.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Yeah, no pressure. In the mid-60s, uh there was a young activist poet named uh Rodolfo Gonzalez, and he wrote a poem called Yoshoe Joaquin. I am Joaquin. Uh it's actually the poem that my brother is named after.

SPEAKER_04 28:06

Okay. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

And I was recently teaching uh a lesson about the Chigano movement, and so I had the opportunity, and I had never taken it before. Let me talk about say more to read the entire poem. And I was astounded, amazed, blown away. And so my first thought when you said that was I I might call myself Joaquin.

SPEAKER_04 28:40

Right Trouble in Paradise, rather off.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Umly because it it he like y'all should read it, but his capture of history and identity and the complexity of humanity, to your point, LeBron, about you know humans are complex. People are complex. We almost said it. Um I don't know that I would change my name. Good answer. Honestly, right? It's the Jamie Tart answer. You want to be a lion or do you want to be a zebra? Coach? Um me. Why would I want to be anything else? Um but but there's a temptation to to think that at this point I would aspire to be something else, or that that would I've often thought about in naming the kids if we went back, right? Do you name them something unusual? Hope is one that like a lot of young, a lot of girls, a lot of people who are sign female are named Hope. Um but then you have those unusual children who are named something like power or strength or fortitude. Um and what does that mean as they grow up and people refer to them that way? I think there's an interesting conversation about starting out with a name that's determinative like that, and it goes back to the boy name, too. Like it's gonna get you. You're gonna have to there's some struggle and some strife. But as we've talked about, struggle and strife is where growth happens. Um and so I don't know. I think that'd be me.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

Yeah, and I I like it. I'm not gonna let you off the hook that easy, though, man. I hear you. Because we're the only two things we typically don't get to choose in life is our name and our religion. Those are usually thrown or cast upon us, and we just stick with it. So I'm just saying, if you could pick a name, not that it's gonna change who you are now, but if you got to pick your own name from any name in history. And by the way, God Sham God is his real name. He was born in New York. And when he went to college to play college basketball, he felt so much pressure he wanted to change his name to his mom's name, Sham God Wells, but it cost six hundred dollars for a name change he can afford it. So he's the one. I'll stick with God.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

I'll think God is. Well, you all know I just want to be black, so just give me the blackest name possible. What's my name? Clarence Thomas. Well, you gotta why you gotta go, Uncle Clarence, man. Not Uncle Clarence. Grand opening? Grandma closing. Antonio's done with us. Looking at me, he's like, you know, I'm I'm I'm struggling with that.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

I know he is. You're right. But like I something like Dragon.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

There we go.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Fire.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

There's gotta be something in the Star Wars universe that you want, though.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

The original name of uh episode six was Revenge of the Jedi. And they actually printed up some no, and they actually printed up like they were they had started filming, and then somebody said, Would Jedi really want revenge? So here we go with claims to fame. I didn't teach Jake Gyllenhaal when he was in ninth grade, but I was at the same school and he was wearing uh because his parents were producers on the movie, he was wearing a t-shirt that said revenge of the Jedi.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Ooh, like one of the prints. I need it.

SPEAKER_00 32:50

Let's let's talk. I'll add a player. He was like, nah, I can't, I can't. I was like, Jake, let's come on, bro.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

I think you need to know if he was in your class, you could have held him over the barrel.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

If he wasn't in my class if he had a lot of people. That's what I'm saying. If he was, you could have but I was like, You're not gonna remember this because you're gonna go on and have a life. But I I am gonna talk about this moment when you don't give me the t-shirt for years.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

In a podcast in about 20 years, this is gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Oh no, I I I we he just did um Othello with Denzel. We'll talk about names with Denzel Washington. Denzel, not Denzel. That's how he pronounces it.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

He says Denzel?

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

He does not say Denzel? No. The women say Denzel.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

The women say ah panties. But um, sorry, I hit the desk. This is just a callback episode. Denzel.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Yeah. It's the first I've ever heard of that too, John. Um yeah, thank you, LeBron. Thanks, you thanks, Libron.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Um, but I I actually wrote him a I was like, hey, I'm bringing students to to the show. Be cool. I'm that guy that you that tried to get your t-shirt when you were in ninth grade. He didn't respond. I can't imagine why. Did you just email some contact form online? I mean, I was trying to, yeah, I was like, this would be cool if my students could meet, you know, somebody who's of course.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

But you need a phone number to access them directly, which you didn't have access to. I didn't. You probably could have gone deep into the school, the records, but you're you're a man of integrity.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

So you I started to, and then the more I was like, this isn't creepy.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Not at all. Maybe I'll see him by the side of the stage door and say hi and remind him. Your honor, what I was really trying to say was. You see, there's his t-shirt. It's a long story, but it's a long story.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

Uh I'm Captain T-shirt. He had a t-shirt. Thank you. It was a thing.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

I'll be representing myself today in the court of law. Um the Gulf of America.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

The Gulf of America. What the fuck?

SPEAKER_01 35:00

That just says insecurity to me. That was like, you know, uh I mean, you can't.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

I mean, but right, America and Americo Vespucci, and he was a map maker. It's not even the people who discovered it for Europe. Right. Yeah. Like, naming has power.

SPEAKER_04 35:23

It sure does. Sticks around, don't it?

SPEAKER_00 35:26

All right. Well, um, thank you for listening. If this is dropping when it's supposed to, which doesn't happen. Uh, this is the end of season one. Season one is 2025. Thank you all. Yes, thank you all so much for listening. In the new year. I can't believe it. 2026 with season two, probably starting around the first of February or whatever the Monday is around there. But uh, this has been an experience. Uh, it's been fun for us. I had somebody ask me today, like, you all sound like you'd be having real conversations and they're really deep, and then you start laughing, and that is the relationship that we have. Um it's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 36:10

That's called a real conversation between real friends. You can get deep, personal, painful, and we laugh.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

Yeah. Dude, the very first conversation, the very first time this concept even came up, Antonio, was years ago. I want to say like seven or eight years ago, and you and I were talking on the phone, and you literally said the words. I remember you going, well, then that's the title of the podcast is A Conversation Between Friends. That's what you said. Genius. Look at you. Look at you. You did apparently. That's apparently. Apparently, I um damn, more than a quarter of a century of them. Yeah, amazing.

SPEAKER_04 36:53

I'm looking forward to season two with you fellas, man. It's gonna be straight up. Yeah, and look look, now we like stand on target and stuff. Like, this is scary going into season two. Like, we may actually have a topic and a little bit frightened.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Stick to it. Season two. Season two. You all you you all gonna line some folks up too? You got some people in mind? I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:15

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 Buzz Sprout. Remember to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and share the pod with someone you think can benefit from it or add to the conversation. Till the next time, Left on Founders.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

We out. 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.