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Let us ask you something before we even get started.

Do you believe what the founders wrote — or what the founders did?

Welcome back to Three for the Founders — where Brotherhood meets the breakdown.

But first — we have to show some love. Shoutout to Lorelei Newman, UCLA alum, who found this podcast at what sounds like a pivotal moment in her life. She sent us a message with a question we haven't been able to shake: “How do you know when something should come to an end?" Lorelei, we don't know who or what prompted that question for you — but we're glad the show found you when it did. And shoutout to Rahim Muhammad, who heard Episode 18 — "Your bell schedule is racist" — and then did something most people won't do. He went back to Episode 1 and listened to everything. In order. That's not a fan, that's family. And as always — respect and love to the founders of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Incorporated. We don't start without acknowledging you.

2026 is the centennial of Black History Month. One hundred years ago, Dr. Carter G. Woodson — the second Black man to earn a PhD from Harvard, following only W.E.B. Du Bois — looked at American society, looked at what was being taught in schools, looked at what was being erased and distorted and flat-out lied about, and decided he was going to do something about it. He launched Negro History Week in 1926 with a mission that was radical then and — let's be honest — is still radical now: combat the exclusion of Black people from American history. Dismantle the lie that Africa was a "dark continent" with no civilization, no culture, no past worth studying. And affirm, loudly and without apology, that Black achievement didn't begin with survival — it began long before enslavement tried to end it.

A hundred years later, the question isn't whether Woodson mattered. The question is — what have we done with what he built? And what does the next hundred years look like?

That's what we're getting into today. 

We're putting a new framework on the table for what Black History Month could actually become — not a feel-good celebration, not a corporate email in February, but a genuine, structured reckoning with the full scope of Black history across its African roots, its atrocities, and its power. We're running the numbers on reparations — and when we say numbers, we mean numbers. Trillions. Per person. We're going into the Atlantic slave trade with the nuance it demands — including African participation, the construction of race as a European tool, and why collapsing an entire continent into a single story is its own form of erasure. We're talking about what made U.S. chattel slavery uniquely, deliberately, systematically cruel in ways that set it apart from slavery across human history. We're wrestling with scripture — how the same sacred text has been used to liberate and to oppress, sometimes in the same breath. And we're asking the hardest question underneath all of it:

Is history something we teach to learn — or something we curate to feel good?

Because as Howard Stevenson put it: "Until lions have their own historians, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter."

This is fifty-eight minutes and fifty-eight seconds. No fluff.

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"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.

🎙️ threeforthefounders.com | Instagram • Facebook • YouTube • TikTok

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Season 2. Episode 2.
This one doesn’t ease you in—it drops you straight into the fire.

On Episode 32 of Three for the Founders, four longtime friends—Antonio, Jon, Lybroan, and guest David M. Jones—sit with the hardest questions of this moment: ICE, protest, power, and moral responsibility. What does resistance actually do? When does nonviolence persuade—and when does it get ignored? Is working inside an unjust system complicity, strategy, or survival? And how much of your soul is negotiable when money, security, and family are on the line?

Sparked by recent protests, White House messaging shifts, and the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the conversation stretches from Minneapolis streets to Ivy League theories of narrative control, from Malcolm X and MLK to modern boycotts and viral hypotheticals. David—COO of a major trade association, political moderate, and longtime friend—brings the inside-the-room perspective: incremental change, pragmatism, and persuasion. Antonio and Lybroanpush back hard, framing ICE as historically continuous with racist enforcement and asking whether silence from “good people” is itself an indictment. Jon presses for precision, accountability, and language that clarifies rather than inflames.

What emerges isn’t consensus—it’s something rarer: honest disagreement held together by trust. This episode wrestles with protest strategy, media ecosystems, “both sides” politics, democratic socialism, long-range planning, and the uncomfortable truth that whoever controls the narrative often controls the outcome. If you’ve ever argued with friends about politics and wondered whether the argument itself still matters—this one’s for you.

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Season Two of Three for the Founders kicks off exactly where America gets uncomfortable: at the gap between the quote and the policy.

Recorded on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and launching February 2, 2026, this season premiere opens with a toast to brotherhood—and immediately asks the question nobody wants answered out loud: how do you celebrate the Dream on Monday and dismantle it by Tuesday? From a Los Angeles studio, Reynaldo Antonio, Jon Augustine, and Lybroan James return sharper, looser, and less interested in pretending symbolism counts as action. Thirty episodes deep and freshly into 2026, the brothers set the tone for a season that refuses to separate history, power, and the people paying the price.

The conversation moves with purpose and side-eye. MLK Day as performance versus policy. Free parks, closed futures. DEI rollbacks framed as “fairness.” Whether arguing online is civic duty or just free labor for the algorithm. Ten years into the Trump era, the hosts trace what’s changed—and what’s simply stopped hiding. Along the way: Ghanaian “welcome home” moments, family shout-outs, jokes about thrill-seeking, and a sobering reframe—when your daily life already runs on adrenaline, you don’t need to jump out of planes to feel alive. The laughs land, but so do the receipts: January 6 rebranded, racism deployed as a tool, and capitalism quietly doing what it’s always done—consolidate.

Episode highlights include:

• Why MLK is safest to America as a soundbite, not a blueprint
• How DEI became the villain the moment it threatened comfort
• The myth of “both sides” and who benefits from pretending power is neutral
• Racism as strategy, wealth capture as the endgame
• Whether people are complex—or just committed to lying to themselves
• How repetition, attention, and outrage reshape what we call “truth”

Listener takeaways for 2026:

• Don’t accept the first version of any story—ask say more
• Engage online only where there’s real relationship; starve the bots
• Read Black authors to re-center history and reality
• Spend your energy building family, community, and coalitions—not defending myths
• Remember: symbolism is cheap. Power is not.

Season Two doesn’t offer comfort. It offers clarity. Three for the Founders is back—measured, unfiltered, and unimpressed by hollow tributes. Like, subscribe, and pull up. The dream deserves better than a holiday.

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At a time when Americans are tired of scripted outrage and elite-approved talking points, Three for the Founders is doing something different—speaking freely and living with the consequences. In Episode 30, the hosts look back on Season One and tell the truth about what happens when you stop chasing applause, stop curating a “target audience,” and start saying what you actually think. The result? Real conversations, real pushback, and real growth.

This retrospective pulls no punches. The hosts reflect on early episodes that played it safe—and later ones that didn’t. They talk candidly about faith, race, gun culture, family, language, and power, including moments that made listeners uncomfortable and moments that made the show stronger. Along the way, they honor influential voices, remember friends lost too soon, and acknowledge where they got it wrong—and why owning that matters more than managing optics.

There’s humor, too—phones buzzing mid-recording, debates about bathroom doors at home—but the message is serious: authenticity beats approval every time. Three for the Founders isn’t here to preach or please. It’s here to have the conversation others won’t—and trust the audience to decide what to do with it.

Episode 30 drops December 29.

Season One ends. Season Two begins in 2026.

Listen—and judge for yourself.

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We know something about endings. We know when a beloved teacher hangs up the chalk, when the church mothers finally step down from the usher board, when a job no longer fits, or when a season of our own lives is quietly tapping us on the shoulder saying, “Baby, it’s time.”

That’s why this week’s episode of Three for the Founders feels like it was recorded for every one of us.

Episode 29 closes out the podcast’s first season with an unflinching conversation about endings: the kind we invite, the kind we delay, and the kind the country may be drifting toward whether we admit it or not.

The brothers anchor their discussion against the backdrop of a “capitalist Christmas” and corporate rollbacks of DEI—even as those same companies cash in on Black Friday. The hosts push us to see how justice, clarity, and honesty should shape how we exit, not just how we begin.

When Personal Seasons Shift

Antonio speaks for many of us who stayed too long at a table we loved. After four and a half years on a working board—and two and a half knowing he needed to go—he finally chose health, purpose, and peace over obligation. That’s a sermon in itself: you don’t have to keep showing up when showing up hollows you out.

Jon opens up about career pivots, calling, and faith transitions. From leaving ministry nearly two decades ago to stepping fully away from Christianity more recently, he names the fear of letting people down—and the quiet ego underneath it. His story reminds us that spiritual and professional shifts aren’t failures; often they’re freedom.

And Lybroan continues to be the patron saint of planned exits. Whether navigating teaching, real estate, or academia, he shows the power of intentional endings—of seeing the season before it sees you. He’s already got eyes on a doctorate next.

But this episode isn’t just about personal lives—it’s about national ones. The hosts wrestle with a heavy question: Is America ending?

Lybroan and Antonio say yes: powerful interests are already drafting the blueprint for a redesigned nation, and the signs—Project 2025 and constitutional choke points—are all around us. Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower reminds us that scarcity has always been used to justify walls, surveillance, and the rearranging of democracy.

Jon hopes the Trump era is what’s ending—and admits the optimism may be wrapped in the comfort of privilege. If nothing else, he argues, the young people are watching, questioning, pushing. And that has always been the seed of American rebirth.

What emerges is what folks in our community have long understood: endings are not the enemy. Denial is.

Some of us plan. Some of us surrender. Some of us delay. But all of us have to face the moment when what once fit… doesn’t.

This first season of Three for the Founders ends the way a family gathering does—full of gratitude, good sense, and a reminder of unity: “We represent the United States and its principles and everything it’s supposed to be.”

And then, true to form: “Left on Founders, we out.”

Season 2 is expected around February 1, with episodes every two weeks. And yes—Bryan Stevenson is on the dream list.

Until t

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The Power and Politics of What We’re Called
December 15, 2025 • 1 hour, 19 minutes

On this episode, Three for the Founders are taking on a single idea—names—and stretching it across culture, politics, history, comedy, and the intimate corners of family life.

Reynaldo Antonio Macias, Lybroan James, and Jon Augustine open with the spark: pop culture and present-day politics giving them déjà vu. Succession’s slime, a debate-night “empathetic” performance from J.D. Vance, and the Hillbilly Elegy-to-DC pipeline all raise the same question: How much of identity is real, and how much is branding? From there, the episode shifts into something deeper—and a lot more personal.

Lybroan tells the now-legendary Nike Town story, recalls decades of bureaucratic friction over his name, and tracks the three-generation lineage of “Lybroan.” Antonio walks through his own evolution from “Antonio” to “Tony” to “Reynaldo,” mapping how school, family, culture, and professionalism each tried to rename him. Jon traces Ellis Island edits, the tale behind “JON without the H,” and the family threads behind his kids’ names.

Together, they explore why Black naming traditions are creative, historical, and political—born from a legacy where Black people were once denied literacy, self-definition, and even the right to name their own children. They unpack patriarchy in surname traditions, the emotional calculus of naming kids, the chaos and comedy of names that sound gentle versus names that clap like a snare drum, and the everyday politics of mispronunciation—from Kamala to Zohran Mamdani to your kid’s classroom roll sheet.

Along the way, they drop a Rams-game field trip story about gentle authority, salute students, supporters, and producers (Sabah James, Daniela Macías, Wil Gatuda), and put out the ongoing call: Popeye’s, let’s talk sponsorship—preferably live from the Underground Station at Tower of London.

The episode closes with a promise: this was just part one. Math names, Middle Eastern names, and a full decolonization of credit—yes, including Lybroan’s push to rebrand the Egyptian theorem—are coming next.

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1 hour, 2 minutes

We know something about pressure. You can feel it in the church aisles, in the grocery line, in who gets stopped driving down Main after dark. But lately, that pressure isn’t just local — it’s national, creeping in through our screens, our newsfeeds, and the voices of men who look straight into a camera and tell America that power belongs to whoever claims God sent them.

That’s why Episode 27 of Three for the Founders is not just another conversation. It’s a warning flare shot clean into a darkening sky.

The hosts — Reynaldo Antonio Macias, Lybroan James, and Jon Augustine — don’t tiptoe around it. They walk straight into the storm: Steve Bannon calling Donald Trump “an instrument of the divine,” all while promising (or threatening?) a 2028 presidency and brushing past the 22nd Amendment like it’s a speed bump. That’s not politics. That’s an authoritarian sales pitch wrapped in scripture.

And too many folks are buying it.

But this episode doesn’t just talk about Bannon. It talks about the machine behind him — the algorithm, the “ether,” the long-game strategy that has been shaping American power for generations. Think tanks planning in centuries, not news cycles. Propaganda that looks suspiciously like the 1930s, except this time the posters come stamped with the U.S. Department of Labor. Whiteness dressed up as patriotism, again.

And while that machinery churns, somebody’s asking a real question:

Why are white protestors flooding “No Kings” rallies while so many Black folks are sitting this one out?

The hosts won’t sugarcoat:

Because Black people have already learned what happens when we get loud. Because the cost of protest isn’t the same for everyone. Because some of us have warned about voter suppression, policing, and backlash for decades — and we’re still waiting for the rest of America to catch up.

This episode also goes inward — into fear, dreams, kids, Blue Books, Sunday alarms — but not as a distraction. As a reminder: real people are carrying this moment. Real families are thinking about leaving the country. Real communities are asking what safety even means anymore.

And then comes the hardest question of all: What does it mean to be American right now?

Lybroan argues many of us were never allowed to be “Americans” in the first place — not in the way power defines it. Antonio pushes back. Jon names his own fears. They wrestle, respectfully, fiercely, the way democracy requires.

In a time when politicians bend scripture for power, when propaganda gets algorithmic, and when “strength” is sold as a substitute for truth, this conversation is not just relevant — it’s necessary.

Why this matters

Because what happens at the Supreme Court affects who gets housing.

Because what gets framed as “American” shapes which of our kids are treated as such.

Because authoritarian drift never starts with tanks in the streets — it starts with language, symbols, and the quiet rewriting of norms while the rest of us try to get through the week.

Three for the Founders calls it out with humor, with heart, and with the kind of clarity small communities need right now.

So here’s your chall

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🎙️ NPR meets Charlamagne tha God — thoughtful, provocative, and deeply human. Welcome back to Three for the Founders — where classroom truths meet kitchen-table honesty. Today, we’re diving into part two of a conversation that every educator, parent, and student in America needs to hear: “Private Schools, Public Lies: Who Gets to Belong in Education?”

Our guests — Julie Clark, New York Times bestselling author, parent, and public school teacher — and Luivette Resto, internationally award-winning poet, parent, and independent school English teacher — join us to break down what it really looks like when teachers face inequity head-on.

This isn’t your usual PD talk. We’re unpacking:

• How systemic racism shapes classrooms long before students walk through the door,
• Why classism might be the hardest “ism” to teach through,
• And what “care as currency” means when resources and representation aren’t equal.

We’ll hear Julie recall the moment she first saw bias in the system — Black boys being disciplined differently — and how one mentor gave her the lens to fight back.
We’ll hear Luivette speak on bringing poetry to students who’ve never been told their stories belong in literature.
And we’ll talk about what it takes to teach privilege without shame — but with clarity, accountability, and purpose.

Because whether you’re in a public school in South L.A. or a private academy in Pasadena, one truth holds: kids know who’s for them, and who’s not.

🔍 For Listeners to Think About:

• What invisible systems shape how we view our students — and how do those assumptions play out in your classroom, your workplace, or your parenting?
• When have you been called in, not out — and what made that growth possible?
• Are we preparing the next generation to navigate privilege responsibly — or just to enjoy it quietly?

✅ Action Items:

1. Read Lisa Delpit’s Other People’s Children — the book that transformed Julie’s early teaching and might just transform yours.
2. Audit your bookshelf: Whose stories are missing? Add poets like Hanif Abdurraqib, Teresa Mei Chuc, or F. Douglas Brown.
3. Say every name right. Pronunciation is not a courtesy — it’s a declaration of respect.
4. Support diverse storytellers. Buy banned books. Shop indie. Visit bookshop.org if your local store isn’t an option.
5. Challenge your circle. Talk about race and class — especially if your instinct is to stay silent.

Because teaching is political — not partisan. And if we’re serious about justice in schools, we can’t just celebrate diversity; we have to confront disparity. So grab your coffee, open your mind, and lean in — this is Episode 25 of Three for the Founders: “Private Schools, Public Lies: Who Gets to Belong in Education?”

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How do you raise and teach children to be kind and accountable in a world that often rewards neither? This week on Three for the Founders, hosts Reynaldo Antonio, Lybroan, and Jon get real about “gentle parenting,” classroom culture, and what education is actually for—with two powerhouse guests who’ve seen it all from both public and private school perspectives.

Julie Clark—veteran Santa Monica public school educator and New York Times bestselling author—joins Luivette Resto, award-winning poet, mother of three, and middle school English teacher, to unpack the myths and realities behind “gentle parenting.” Together, they ask what happens when empathy gets confused with permissiveness, how anxiety gets inherited, and why “The Talk” for Black and Brown families is still a life-and-death conversation.

From classroom discipline to language politics, from banned books to the economics of words, this episode pulls no punches. The conversation moves from the dinner table to the desk—exploring what happens when care, culture, and control collide.

You’ll hear the hosts and guests break down:

• The difference between consequences and punishments, and why anger doesn’t belong in either.
• How race and class shape what kind of “gentle” a parent or teacher can afford to be.
• Why critical thinking and creativity are often the first casualties of censorship.
• And what it really means to “be the adult” when the kids are watching everything.

Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or just someone rethinking what “raising good humans” means, Episode 25 will make you laugh, flinch, and maybe rethink that next parent–teacher email.

📚 Takeaways & Actions:

1. Read banned books—and talk about them with the next generation.
2. Support independent bookstores and classroom teachers bringing critical stories to life.
3. Teach failure as growth, not shame.
4. Model boundaries and respect—gently, but firmly.
5. Keep classrooms and conversations open to complexity, discomfort, and truth.

🎧 Three for the Founders: Where the book club meets the block, and every lesson plan has politics.

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!