S2 E19 - Van Lathan

Ed talks with Academy Award winning producer and author, Van Lathan, Jr. They talk about Lathan’s Oscar win and his book, Fat, Crazy, and Tired: Tales from the Trenches of Transformation. They also talk about the hardships of being a Black male in America, and Lathan’s infamous, viral run-in with rapper Kanye West.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to the latest edition of one hundred The Ed
Gordon Podcast. Today a conversation with producer, author, and podcast
host Van leath In. Juda Lathan rose to prominence while
a producer on the television show TMZ. He gained national
attention when he took on rapper Kanye West during an

(00:42):
appearance on the show. During a rant, West suggested, among
other things, that slavery was a choice for black people.
Lathan challenged West on the spot, and the incident went
viral on social media. Do you feel that I'm feeling dude?
Do you feel that I'm being free and I'm thinking free? Yes?

(01:07):
I actually don't think you're thinking anything. I think what
you're doing right now is actually the absence of thought.
And the reason why I feel like that because Kanye,
you're entiled to your opinion. You're entiled to believe whatever
you want. But there is fact and real world, real
life consequence behind everything that you just said. And while

(01:27):
you are making music and being an artist and living
a life that you've earned by being a genius, the
rest of us in society have to deal with these
threats to our lives. We have to deal with the
marginalization that has come from the four hundred years of slavery.
That you said for our people was a choice. Lathan

(01:48):
was thrust into the spotlight and his voice became an
important one in the media since The Infamous Tangled with
Kanye Among many things, Lathan has written a book, hosted
another of podcasts, and produced a number of projects, including
the short film Two Distant Strangers, about a black graphic

(02:09):
artist caught in a time loop where he tries to
get home but repeatedly is killed by a white police officer.
Oh and did I mention the film won an Oscar
nice shirt though, Man, everything alright here fellas, Yes, sir,
everything is just fine. When you were young, dreaming about

(02:40):
whatever it was you dreamt about becoming, did you ever
think that they were going to have on the front
end of your name Academy Award winner you know what? Not?
Really yea. And the reason was because everyone kept telling
me that they wouldn't have it on. There's something we

(03:01):
do sometimes kids, as we we want to make them successes,
so we we try to, uh, we want to make
them successes, so we try to subtract the ways that
they can fail m hm. Because the higher goals like
the more you can fail. But if you stay in school,
you're gonna get that doctor. You're gonna get that that

(03:23):
that that uh, that bachelors, you're gonna get that. So
sometimes when I would tell people that I wanted to
come out here and make movies, they would say, you know,
the planet hiring right by the way. That those people
didn't meet me any harm. They just want to make good,
good people. And everybody that they ever heard saying that
they wanted to be a guitar player or something like that.

(03:45):
Sometimes it didn't work out so um, but I'm glad
I didn't listen to them because I still love them.
You have lofty dreams as a kid, though, you know,
coming out of Louisiana. You know, like you say, people
temper your dreams and say, look, man, that's cool. Uh
you know you're gonna be in the swamps, You're gonna
be in the factory, You're gonna be depending on where
you are. Yeah. Yeah, if I definitely had lofty dreams

(04:07):
and people definitely try to temper them. But they couldn't. Man,
because in between video Souls and video vibrations, he was
a black guy on TV, you know, giving the news.
You know what I mean. In my mind, I would
be like, look, that's the only place I see that, really,

(04:28):
And I would be like, if he could get on TV,
I can get on TV, too, So you know what
I mean. I just think I had too many examples.
And I mean that to honor you, of course, but
I would I would say that I had, UH, I
had too many examples of um of people that UH
that I could aspire to be like. And it wasn't
just people that were on television, you know. Whenever you

(04:49):
would UH, I would get into my books and I
would I would read about Mega Everest, and I would
read about Marcus Garvey, um, you know, even taking it
all the way back, George Washington Carver, these black people
that did all these amazing things. I just didn't see
any reason why we should stop that. And a lot
of people UH in my generation about rugs Worth the

(05:09):
same way you mentioned your generation, the generation that you've
come up with and and behind you. UM. I think
about you as a great example. You know, if you
think about the idea of what technology has done and
allowed us to propel people. The platforms that people had

(05:32):
before that were gatekeeper platforms. You had to be let
into the room to get to the table, and now
you have the ability to kind of create a platform. Uh.
How do you look at that? Because I try to
not be the old dude get off my lawn, right Uh.

(05:54):
And I see it two ways. I appreciate the popularity.
One can get quick, gleek and design an audience for yourself.
But being popular is not always being profound. And sometimes
I think we're missing the idea that there is a difference. Sure, um,
well there's a reason why you tell people to get
off your lawn. It's because you don't want to suck

(06:15):
up your grap So so so let's remember that all
of the old people that we that that we sat
around that even that it's interesting people say tell people
to get off your lawn. Well, people didn't want you
to mess up their their grass. They were protecting something
that they have build value in. And the same old

(06:37):
guys that would saying get off by lawn are the
ones out there water and the lawn. And I think
that is an interesting sort of dynamic that exists now,
is like there are certain people that can now be
famous for messing it up your grass. That's why they're famous.
They're famous for coming on your lawn and just messing
up your grass. And there are people who in this

(07:00):
stream that are disseminating information. There are people who are
translating culture. They're still doing their best to uh water
and nurture and build right, um, because when you are
disseminating information and you are translating culture, UH, there's responsibility
in that, at least I believe. And then there are

(07:21):
people who now realize that everybody wants to see you
funk up somebody's grass, and so they're doing that. And
while I'm happy that the internet has allowed us to
have such connectivity where people don't need gatekeepers, there also
is something that's being lost, and let's be honest about that.

(07:43):
And it's like if there's something that's being lost, and
what's being lost is so many people are shouting at
the same time that what they're saying is becoming way
less important than how they're saying it, um. And we're
not talking about the information anymore. We're not getting to
the heart of the issues anymore. It's a lot of

(08:04):
style of a substance. And that was harder to do
UH in years past, because you have to put in
so many years UM being qualified at something that by
the time you were just doing it for eyeballs, you
were normally years and years and years and years and
years and years and years. And to a career where
you have to be in somebody's on newsroom, where you

(08:26):
have to be in somebody's new station, you have to
do all of this stuff. And while the democratization of
this stuff is is a great thing, um, it's also
precarious and it's it's it's something that we should keep
our eyes on. We should pay attention to who we're
listening to and why we're listening to them, and we
should also realize we can't listen to everybody. Man, You

(08:48):
just you just can't. You can't listen to everybody. You
just you can't do it. I appreciate your perspective on that,
because you and I have talked off air about a
lot of this before. And what what really shocks me is,
you know, I tease about being the old guy now,
but I appreciate that I'm the old guy now because

(09:10):
there is some some wisdom that comes with time if
you're smart, because there are a lot of old fools
out here too. What I'm bothered by is I see
a lot of people my generation, who you know, continue
to kind of fight that and they want to be
accepted by a younger crowd, and therefore they do some
of the same things, UM that lose that wisdom perspective

(09:33):
bravatas that you you talk about. Do you do you
see that? Of course, because I think, uh, youth has
always been power. There's always been powering youth, but there's
also been UM, there's also been power and being the
o G there's been powering. Listen to your elders, that's
been powering. UM. You know, understanding where you come from

(09:55):
and what it is that you come from the thing
that a lot of people do before. First was the
was the interaction with Kanye West. And the only reason
why that happened is because I wasn't uh taught to
respect my elders. I was taught to worship them. You know,
they had survived, you know what I mean, like they
had gone through something, They had been through something. My

(10:16):
elders is one thing. My aunts does something totally different,
and so I was triggered about what he said. I
think now is the first time that uh, I'm starting
to see on a mass level, on a mass level,
it's old people who always wanted to stay young. That's
nothing new about that. But in addiction to youth culture,
that's a little bit different. Um And I think that

(10:38):
has to do with a little bit of social media.
And the interesting thing about the pandemic was that you
got to see how old everybody was. Yeah, that's like
you got to see you got to see. Oh this
is not in any way mean to this anybody, but
I remember I saw Will and Will has a head
full of gray hair, and Kevin Harden but all these guys,

(11:01):
they're they're great, Like we're in our forties, right, um
And and so in order to stay viable, which viability
has never been more important than it is now. Ever,
there's never been a time now where you it's less
fashionable to right off into the sunset now that it
has ever been ever used to be. You had a

(11:24):
career in music, you were hot for as long as
you were hot. You did whatever after music, and you
will pop up at the Juneteenth concert and we would
have and we would have a good a good time
with you. Now because you're never supposed to not be hot.
You gotta keep it going on Instagram, you gotta keep
it going on Twitter. We got guys rappers saying ridiculous

(11:45):
things during ridiculous things to keep it going because they're
still grabbing at something. I say all that to say
that um, wisdom and and and and growing old gracefully,
and growing culturally old gracefully, and becoming a good old
g a good uncle. It's more important now than it's

(12:07):
ever been, because somebody has got to tell these especially
these young men. Man. I'm talking to these young men
and I sound like the old guy in the room
because when when we was killing the bat rouge, and
I'm from a violent place, it seems like it was
a reason if they was killing, it was still senseless.
Don't get me wrong, it was senseless and it was stupid,
and it would needed to be rooted out. There's a

(12:30):
culture of of of death and and violence. Now that's
like that's difficult for me to wrap my arms around.
I've been doing this show, so I think it's just
important for for I know that's along with an answered
I have a tendency to be that, but I think
it's important more than any time now for us to
embrace our elders and embrace, you know, the respect that

(12:54):
we have for them and the people have been around
for a while. Yeah, it's funny you say that, because
each generation sees appeal of the onion. My parents looked
at my generation and thought, god, you know you you
have no understanding of life and you don't see it
as valuable and the like. And now I look to
your point, as somebody I'm sixty, I'll be sixty two

(13:14):
in August. I look at somebody twenty two. I think, ship,
what is going on? Let's go on? And to your
point about you know, holding onto youth. I can't tell
you how many people advised me not to let this happen.
And I was like, hell, you can do the math.

(13:34):
As long as I've been around, you can do the
math right. So you know, you have to have a
sense of understanding what's important to you. I get maybe
if your movie star. Okay, yeah. And by the way,
I'm not on anybody, No, I I agree if you
want to diet jet black and it's blacker than you what, No,

(13:56):
You're not fooling us. That's my life. Yeah, the deal is.
But I agree with you. You know, do what makes
you you right, And I'm all for that. Let me
let me jump into the book because I thought it
was really interesting. Man. Uh, tales from the Trenches of Transformation, fat, crazy,
and tired. And I I admire that not only that

(14:19):
you took the title, but you didn't leave it superficially
that you could have said, hey, man, you know I
lost weight, and you know I had this battle all
my life, and but you really talked about the environment
that makes you all three of those things. And there's
so many black men and you can substitute one of
those words for another word, but particularly black men, there

(14:40):
are environmental things that surround us culturally and literally environmentally
that make us all of these things that society looks
at us too often cross eyde and never allow for
the idea that we weren't born this way. Uh, there's
a reason that we are who we are, right and

(15:02):
and I think that's the first for me, at least,
it was the It was the first step in sort
of forgiving myself. UM my father who's passed on now. Um.
One time I was going to my room and he's like, Yo,
you gotta clean this room up. He's like, I like, look,

(15:23):
I'll let you go a little bit, thinking that one
day you're going to clean the room up, but obviously
just love health. He's like, clean this room up. And
he says to me, he says, I know why you
don't want to do this right now. It's like because
you look at this and you think, how possibly could
this room ever be clean again? Stuff everywhere is blah
blah blah blah blah blah. But he's like, it's got

(15:44):
going there, and you gotta pick up one thing, and
you're gonna see after you pick up one thing, after
you pick up five things, after you pick up tent things,
it's gonna start to change. And they're going when it
starts to change, it's gonna wanta be finished. And I
think a lot of times when we take a look
at our dysfunctional, we take look at the things that
made us. Sometimes we think, God, wow, there's no way
that we could ever clean this room. There's like there's

(16:07):
too much going on. There's there's intergenerational trauma, you know
what I mean. There's powering, there's violence, there's drug addiction,
and then in order to cope with all of this stuff, Uh,
there's abuse of food. That's abuse of our women. There's
sometimes our women abusing themselves or us. There's there's domestic,

(16:27):
there's all of these things, right, and we still manage
to look happy and have this amazing cultural expression and
all of that, despite of despite it all. But the
first thing we have to remember is that these traps
were set and are being sprung in a very purposeful way.
And even if they're not being even if there's not
somebody sitting around right now pushing buttons, there's a system

(16:49):
that needs our dysfunction to keep the will turning. And
so for me, when I stepped back and I looked
at where I'm from in South Louisiana, when I looked
at some of the ways we we when we ways
we hate each other, some of the ways we love
each other. Um, I was able to let go of
why can't you stop eating? Or why are you depressed?

(17:10):
You know what I mean? Or why why do you
feel like you just want to lash out sometimes? And
I was able to kind of say, Okay, now, how
do you reconstruct your life to divorce yourself of some
of those things as much as you can? And that's
kind of what the book is about at its core.
How do we take that beyond the individual? Because part

(17:30):
of what and I want to thank you for being
a part of a book that I did a couple
of years ago where I put together a group of
about forty people influencers, um, you know, some of the
usual suspects and others who I thought had something to
say and did a virtual conversation. And one of the
unique things that I find in our community is there

(17:52):
is a sense of this self hatred that we've not
been able to let go of, and there is a
neatness and black folks who can take a negative. We
say we're turning it into a positive. Yet I wonder
as I take a step back to see that what

(18:13):
we're doing is normalizing absolutely rather than making it positive,
we're just simply normalizing it. How do we how do
we broaden that and and try to correct that. Yeah,
I don't know, because it's uh, it's it's almost a
pro evolutionary trait to get used to things. So your

(18:37):
body does, like your body gets used to stuff so
much so it's so much, so much so to the
point where if you live by a lake for ten
thousand years, your great great great great grandkids will have
web feet, you know what I mean, or at least
like you know, if you're an at like we adapt,
like getting used to things. Um is the human way.

(19:01):
It's it's I don't know how. And the sad thing
about this, this function that we're talking about is we're
used to it mhm. And we've had to get used
to it in order to survive. And UM give an example.
So I worked at TMZ for for a number of years.

(19:21):
I'm sure everybody knows that. And I remember one time,
sometimes I just throw tweets out there, I just see
what people are gonna say, and just see what people
are gonna say, and I said, I said, Hey, in
my whole life, I never sold drugs. I wasn't making
a value judgment. I'm just saying I never sold drugs
out a dad that if the drug stuff gets mentioned,

(19:44):
it's not a good situation for It's not gonna happen.
It's like I'll lose you to my hands before I
lose you to the street. And a familiar refrain of
all of that was, Hey, but you still worked at TMZ.
You still did something vile. I'm not about to in
any way defend some of the journalism that goes on
at TMZ or some of the things that they've had

(20:04):
to say about the community at t MZ not at all.
But what struck me about that was that that's comparable
to a lot of people to being a drug dealer. Now,
the reason why there are so many luminaries, be their
rapper stars or whatever they have to talk about their

(20:25):
life in the streets, in the life of the streets
that they've led, is because and the reason why we
don't hold them responsible for uh, for that stuff forever,
and the reason why we're so forgiving about that is
because we understand that like some of the nicest guys
I ever knew, some of my closest men in my
family that I love so much, were some of the
worst criminals and most violent people that you would ever

(20:47):
want to meet. There there Santa Santa CRUs and tender
bears to me and demons and devils to you. Right,
But I get that, I understand that. I'm used to
the fact that that's the way that that is. You
know what I'm saying. When it comes to TMZ or
some of the stuff that they see, it's like, I
would never do that, But if it came down to it,
selling drugs not that bad of a thing. I mean,

(21:09):
that's two pregnant ladies. That's the people in the community
that's to all of that stuff. We don't judge those
guys because we know those guys, because we've been forced
to kind of come to terms with some of the
some of the ways that society ships on us. So
we know that sometimes we can't play about a book
to get to where we're going. What we can't do, though,
is continue to normalize those situations in perpetuity. We just can't.

(21:33):
We have to be understanding and we have to be
compassionate to people in the situations uh that, uh that
to get that necessitate them doing certain things that we
might not normally see them do. We have to because
it's a part of the things in our community, but
at least within our own community, we have to set
some standards. We we we do like we we have

(21:57):
to set some standards. I can't stop saying that. In
The reason why I can't stop saying the N word
is because my grandfather used to say that too. I
love that little that little a little nea so handsome.
Look at that little I love him. But we should stop.
We know that we should like, we should stop. We're
not doing like we like. I understand it, but it

(22:21):
only confuses things. And so I guess an answer to
your question is how do we set new community standards.
I don't know, and I think it's going to take
brave leadership, because in order to do that, somebody's got
to come out and admit that there is true dysfunction here.

(22:42):
We don't always like to do that publicly, and I
understand why, because everyone sees right, but at some level,
any real change often came from leadership who was willing
to hold that mirror up and say this is why
we have to change. I think about your dad, and
I think I think about one of the first conversations
that you and I have before you've finished the book.

(23:05):
I don't even know if you started it. I remember
thinking when we hung up, how I appreciate it, just
the reverence you spoke, or I could hear when you
were telling me something about your dad. I don't even
really fully remember what it was, but I could just
hear it in the way you talked about him. Um.
And again, we're missing so much of that for young

(23:28):
black men, that real sense of some of those men
who were willing to tell us at at at all fronts.
We're not having that. Yeah, we're not having that. We've
lost a lot of that. UM was part of the
reason you you wrote the book in the way you did,
making it so personal. You know, anyone who's seen you

(23:50):
talk about where you were, I think at your height
three d sixty five three seventy um. But there is
that sense of what needs to be looked at first,
because you could have resigned yourself and in the book
you say, you know I was the fat friend. You
could have resigned yourself to always being that. Um. Was

(24:13):
there someone who said to you, dude, we can't do this. Oh,
there were many people. But until there were many people
who said that. But until I decided how I was
going to live my life. Yeah, yeah, there were many
people who said it, right many. I remember one time

(24:33):
my boy Gino was like, why don't you just try
to just not supersize it at this point? Just try that.
I was like what he was like, we go to
mc donald's and this is so funny. He goes, Man,
you spend eleven dollars at big Donalds. He's like, this
is like the late nineties, early two thousand's. You can
get out of me Donalds full meal, five bucks. He's like, bro,

(24:54):
just don't supersize it. Give yourself a chance, you know
what I mean. And whenever somebody would say that, I
would just get bad because I'm like, we're gonna tell
me and tell me how to how to how to
live my life. But the reality is, you know, um,
it took me understanding how I wanted to live and
like who I wanted to be. But also it took

(25:14):
me understanding that like I was using food, using whatever
to kind of feel some holes in myself and my family.
To be honest with you, like the people in my family,
like we have a tendency to do that. There is
you know, we come from a family of addictions, different crutches. So, um,

(25:36):
if you're gonna attempt to break the cycle, you gotta
kinda interrogate, like why it's like that? How do you
change the mindset of it? It's I think whether it's
being overweight or whatever your issue is, I think it's
easier to change the physical than the mental. So you're
absolutely right, right, So what did you have to do?

(25:58):
And it may still be a journey to get out
of the fat friend mentality, which can hold one down frankly,
because you always see yourself as not good enough. I'm
I'm always the second guy. I'm the wing man. I'm
you know, how do you get out of that? Well,
the first thing I had to remember is that, Well,

(26:19):
the first thing to be honest with you, I had
to really remember is that I'm the man. I mean,
I'll be honest with you like I'm the man. I
go to a place. Uh, my life isn't the mirror
of anybody else's. I'm not fat because somebody is skinny. Um,
they're not skinny because I'm fat, Like I'm not. I'm

(26:42):
not How about say this, I'm not like a I'm
not the antithesis of normal. I'm not something other than
that's with anything. Black is not something other than we black,
right and not have stands, which a lot of people say,
that's happn to be black, No negro. There's a reason. Yeah, yeah,

(27:06):
we're black, okay, like we black? All right, we're not
black because they're white. We're not black. No, we black?
That matters, okay. Um. And so once I started to
understand that, like you know, I'm not living at cross
purposes with what is normal or functional, I started to
ask myself, well, what is it that you want I'm competitive,

(27:28):
So when I'm on the basketball court, I like to complete.
I like to compete. What's the best way for you
to compete? Not a three seventy pounds? You know? You
know what I'm saying. There's all kinds of things that
I viewed about myself. And by the way, there are
people everywhere who are bigger, people who are happy, who
are healthy. Okay, because healthy is is not across the

(27:50):
board thing. Health is a very individual thing, and you
know there are certain conditions in certain ways that you
can be healthy. Um at being bigger is not gonna
be great for you. But then there are other people
who are perfectly healthy at all different types of sizes, right.
Um So I had to I had to define these
things for myself and stop worrying about whether or not

(28:12):
I was the fat friend, or stop worrying about whether
or not people got mad at me when I got
on a bus or a plane and stopped living my
life as a reaction to what I thought was normal.
I'm gonna do what I want to do. I'm gonna
do it for me. And the moment that like I
did that, I became mentally in shape. Because you need
to get mentally fit. And the moment that you start

(28:34):
your journey and you know you're working out and you
know you're eating right, you feel different, like you feel
like different, and then you see you've lost it. But
you might be three ten pounds, but you see you've
if you get to three or five, you're like it's working.
But a lot of times we don't give ourselves that

(28:54):
chance because we're doing it for the wrong reasons. But
you really have to find peace within yourself because the
journey is not gonna happen overnight. I was gonna ask
this later, but you said peace within yourself, and I
think it was I don't know if it was the
Kimmel interview. You're on Jimmy Kimmel for the book, and
then you were on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah
and one of them ask you, you know, what do

(29:15):
you want to do next? Uh, and you said, you
know it, maybe corny, I just want to find some peace.
I want peace in my life. And so many of
us come to that wisdom later in life, not as
young as you have found that. I mean, it took me,
you know, a lot of years to understand that really

(29:35):
should be first, you know, all this other stuff, the
crib and the cause and whatever else you desire. If
you don't have peace, it won't really matter. What was
the epiphany for you. For the peace, it's the death
of my father. So my father passed away, and I

(30:00):
went in the bed with Kaliga, and you know, the
phone rings, and it's early, it's like six am Pacific.
So I whatever whoever that is, um. But then there's

(30:21):
another call. They call her mm hmm, she sleeps, she
doesn't answer. The next call came to my phone again.
I knew he was dead. M hm, I knew it,
and so Um, I picked up the phone. It's my sister.

(30:45):
She's hysterical, and uh, I already knew, like already know.
She's like, daddy, Daddy died, he's gone, blah blah blah.
So we talk, get off the phone. I sit there,
blah blah blah. It wasn't that moment. It wasn't until
months after, months after. So the next day I gotta

(31:07):
fly to bad Rouge. I'll go to bad Rouge. A
post on Instagram and my father passed away and so boom,
I getting all of these messages and everyone like oh man,
from all over the place, and of course people want
to reach out there concerned and then this is a
weird thing that happens when something like that goes down.
That like, you're just going because you've got a lot

(31:29):
of stuff to do, right number one, Like, from from
that point on, there were just tasks. I had to
get a plane taken on short notice. I had to
get an airbab to stay home for two weeks on
short notice. I had to go to his crib, get
all of this stuff. Make sure who's gonna get what that.
You're just doing stuff. You're doing stuff. You're doing stuff,
and your friends are always there. There're people are hovering

(31:51):
around you wherever you go. I get back to l
A and I'm going through all of the messages that
I got on Instagram, and I get a mess it's
from a woman. I see a message from a woman. Woman,
should I say? And the woman says the message from
her says, Hey, you don't know me, but I just

(32:12):
took your dad to the hospital. It's bad. Call me.
I didn't see this this entire time, right. Um, So
he was with someone. They it was early in the morning.
She took him to the hospital, dropped him off there. Uh,

(32:35):
and he died at the hospital. He had congestive heart failure,
so his heart as he went to car everywhere. As
he died, I thought to myself, for everything that he
wanted to do with his life, for everything that he
was doing in his life, there was chaos. Always there

(32:55):
was the next problem to solve. Um, that was the
next person to to to to grab up two set right.
He never got to a point to where I was
coming in and coming out to where I was home
many of states is he almost made it. They had

(33:16):
a house, my dad, my mom got a at a
big house and had a house of Zachary, and he
had his life. He had his horses, we had a barn,
there was a pond, there were a bunch of dogs,
and he was He would come home and he would
just be there. Look at what I did, look at
what I built. But he couldn't keep it. Um, it's

(33:37):
just too much going on. And so for me, I
started to think, when it's all said and done, how
do I want my life to have been lived? Right?
I want to be able to be curious, to explore.
I want to be able to find new places, meet

(33:59):
new people, feel a strong connection with my woman and
my children. Uh, to have a certainty and an understanding
of my place in this world and in this university,
in this culture, and what's the number one component for
all of those things. Something that my father never had. Peace.
He was a warrior, like to fight, and he there

(34:20):
was always something to fight for. And at the end
when he died, nobody was around him. Mhm's by himself.
It haunts me. It's alone. There was a woman that
I had never met. I have nothing against her. She
was one of his girlfriends. He liked to do. A
woman that I had never met telling me that my
father died and nurses that he never met. Like in

(34:44):
a room where he is by himself, you know. Um,
me and my mother and my father and my uh,
my mother, my father, and my sister hadn't all been
in the same room since two thousand and two. It's
just chaos everywhere, confusion, it's her feelings. Nobody knows what
the truth is. Nobody knows who's telling the truth, nobody

(35:06):
knows who means is all of this. There's no one
needed that. I don't want none of that, And the
way to do that is to confront some hard truths
about myself. Trying to be a better person, UM, to
to set personal sandards about how I'm going to be
dealt with and thought of. And also and it's gonna
be turning down some money. Yeah, it's gonna mean turning

(35:28):
down some things. It's gonna mean it's gonna mean not
being maybe some of the things. Maybe you have one
or two less cars. You know, I still want to
power a catamaran. I want to bote that cruising around.
I'm still gonna get that. But uh, but I'm not
saying you can't have incredible um wealth and success which

(35:52):
we all want, and not have peace. But I feel
like I have to define it for myself. But I
just don't want the chaos that seems to be UM
ever present and in my family's life back home, I
don't want. I want to help them achieve it too.
So Yeah, we moved on to Van's popular podcast, Higher Learning.

(36:13):
He and co host Rachel Lindsay take on black culture, politics,
and sports. The way you all have been able to
cover a wide swath of things. Uh, and you know
do it sometimes irreverently, sometimes seriously, um, which is what
I think is unique about your generation and younger. You know,

(36:37):
we were taught, particularly on a new side. You gotta
stay right here. You know, there's a serious nature that
you and there's there's a time for that you all
have been able to do brilliantly. Is not take everything
so seriously. Uh. You know, I still don't understand why
every other uh conversation has to be rating rappers. But hey, man,

(37:01):
I'm on. So I'm like me roes okay, got it
top ten, right, But give me a sense of what
the podcast is for you man? Well, you know what,
I really you know what. The first thing I realized
when I, uh, when I was watching guys like you

(37:22):
brothers like uh Tavis and yeah, I gotta give Brian
Gumble his credit, and and is that like you guys
would be in situations and I would be like, how
is he not laughing? Right, I be like how is
he not laughing? Especially you you were so you were
like a statesman almost like how is he not laughing?

(37:44):
And and it's like, I'm glad that that media changed
a little bit because even when I was at TMZ
and these people would say this ridiculous ship, I'd be like,
y'all serious, like um, And so I reflect that in
the podcast there are places, don't get me wrong, to

(38:05):
where if you see me, we are discussing something that's
going to be serious, and to make sure that we
that we stay on it. In the podcast, it's such
a long form, it's kind of structured. There are no segments. Really,
you're gonna get more of a of a three sixty
degree of who I am. But as you know, there
are things that I am deadly serious about, deadly serious

(38:28):
about the future, in the past, the future and the
past of our people. I'm deadly serious about the American
dysfunction that we're seeing, the threats on democracy that we're
seeing right now, the culture of of of white nationalism
and separatist ideas that are festering and growing in our
country as we speak. Um, I'm serious about all of

(38:50):
that stuff. But some of this other stuff edge you
can't be serious about it. It's just too stupid. It's
so much stupid shain going on right now. It's like
it is is just really stupid. It can't be serious
about the versus battle where people you know what I mean,
where where the technology not working. Sometimes you gotta let
yourself breathe little with you. I want to make sure

(39:11):
that we take breaks because I remember I used to
hear about things, right, I used to hear about Diallo
and Wema and all those things that that had happened
in New York. I used to hear about these different
things that were happening with the police and stuff everywhere.
Um I remember the first thing I ever actually saw
in l A with two things in l A, the
Latasha Harlans and then of course Rodney King. But we

(39:33):
didn't see that every day. I see it every day,
And so the goofing is sometimes with me or or
some of that other stuff. It's really a coping mechanism
and it always has been, and I need to do
it less. My girls over there in the other room
right now probably going, hey, stop making a joke out
of everything. But for me, it's a coping mechanism for

(39:56):
for a lot of that stuff. And I think it's
important that sometimes when you're dealing in the topics in
there as weighty is what they are, and you're not
delivering news and a news form um, to let people
have a little bit of a break, and so that
that's that's kind of that would be the most reason
is to give myself a break to look and I
want to tell you before you go. I just can't.

(40:19):
I know. I've said this to you so many times, man,
and we uh, we have the volume back and forth
to to get on the same page to get the
podcast done. But I just hope, I really do hope, man,
I sincerely hope that you know. I know that you do,
but y'all never do you know what I mean? So
I'm just gonna keep saying it. I hope you know

(40:41):
how much you meant to an entire generation and continued
to me to an entire generation of kids that looked
up on the screen and saw you. And that's where
we got our news from. Like that's where we got
are are just you and Donnie Simpson and ship Ary
and Rachel from Careering Rhythms. Who I thought it was

(41:02):
a little beautiful, um, you know, just just that that
was that was us. It wasn't no other us, that
was us. That was us. Man. I appreciate it. As
I've said to you, man, I I don't take it
for granted. And you know you try to be humble
in it. But so many people, um have come to

(41:24):
all of us frankly and said, look, I can't tell
you what you meant to us, and I will tell
you that we took it seriously. Yeah, we understood that
we were representing not just ourselves and our family, but
the extended family, the larger family Black folk. And you
know I, I in particular, took it very seriously, which
is why I was that serious news. Dude, I was

(41:47):
playing that seriously. I got you. But listen, man, all
the best to you. You know how I feel about
your brother, and I want you to have continued success
and look forward to uh, your peace and whatever else
comes along with that. Man, Thank you so much. Man,
it's a pleasure to know you. It's a pleasure to
be on the podcast. Brother. Another big thanks, Divan. Remember

(42:11):
his book Fat Crazy Entire Tales from the Trenches of
Transformation is available now. One hundred is produced by ed
Gordon Media and distributed by I Heart Media. Carol Johnson
Green and Sharie Weldon are our bookers. Our editor is
Lance Patton. Gerald Albright composed and performed our theme. Please

(42:36):
join me on Twitter and Instagram at ed L. Gordon
and on Facebook at ed Gordon Media.