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He grew up on the south side of Santa Monica, surfing a mediocre break and guarding it like home turf. He pledged a Black fraternity, played piano on a national TV talent show, and was told by the producers that he was exactly what the show was looking for. Then he walked away from all of it. In Episode 55 of Three for the Founders, the second of our three biographical episodes, Antonio and Lybroan turn the mic on their brother Jon William Augustine. What does a white kid raised on jazz records and Thelonious Monk album covers owe the culture that shaped him? Is it confidence or curiosity that puts you on a step-show stage in front of five thousand people who are all asking "who's the white guy"? Why would a 19-year-old with Elton John's agent's business card in his pocket stop returning calls and give twenty years to a church that asked for everything? And once you leave the system that told you who to be, how do you find out who you actually are? This one has surf lessons, Star Search receipts, Crazy Church, and a question about ikigai that lands somewhere none of us expected. Where Brotherhood meets the breakdown, and this time the breakdown is Jon's.

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If your family never lived in the South, is lynching still your history?

Is not knowing ever innocent, or is it always a choice?

When Shaq pins on an FBI badge, is that service or selling out?

When you spot another person of color in a mostly white workplace, how do you know if they're with the lions or with you?

And, who actually gets invited into your home?

Jon, Antonio, and Lybroan take on all of it: a Converse ad that made its choices on purpose, lynchings in New York, and why TV keeps getting us to cheer for the cops. Look up the 1863 New York draft riots, send this to the friend who swears their people weren't involved, and tell us your answers in the comments.

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A sixth grader watches a basketball game, picks his college off the vibe, writes it down, and works. Six years later, a thin envelope shows up-Congratulations!

This week, we sit down with our brother Lybroan "the MathMan" James for the real story. Radical honesty at the dinner table. Mickey Mouse as a lesson on America. A Range Rover, a hot hood, and a badge that decided he looked guilty. Lifelong friendship built on lumpia and study sessions. The house on Crenshaw that made him who he is.

It's funny. It's tender. It's honest in the way only family can be.

Where brotherhood meets the breakdown. Let's get into it.

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We call it the Civil War.

They called it slavery.

But sure, let's keep using the nice name. Very generous of us.

A new episode of Three for the Founders is up, featuring a Frustrated Historian! He’ll be connecting some dots: a lost cause, executive orders, white-washing history, the insurrections we forget, and a QR code at a concentration camp asking visitors when they feel bad.

Nothing says "restoring sanity" like immigration detention centers, I mean Japanese internment camps.

What version of history YOU got? the one with the hard parts sanded off for your comfort?

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Name a song you loved before you actually understood what it was saying. What changed when you finally heard the lyrics?

Can we teach rhythm?

Is rap music, or is it "just a beat without a melody"?

Where's the line between Kendrick, Shakespeare, and needing to know what they're talking about?

If shared rhythms build empathy, what's one song outside your usual rotation you'd commit to sitting with on purpose?

Is "Born in the USA" secretly a protest song? Why do reggae anthems groove even when they're raging against the machine? And is there something to the old joke about white people and rhythm — or is it colonial conditioning dressed up as a stereotype? This episode, the Founders dig into the DNA of music itself: lyrics versus feel, industry gatekeepers versus YouTube democratization, and whether learning to move to a different beat might just be a path toward empathy. Tupac, Prince, Kendrick, and Springsteen all make an appearance — plus a debate about whether rap is poetry that gets heated fast.

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Can a sing-along save the nation?

Before there was a Constitution, there was a drumbeat in Congo Square — do you still hear it?

Have you ever stood in a room of strangers — different politics, different pain — and felt it all dissolve into one held note? A blue note bent by enslaved people’s pain became the blues, jazz, and rock and roll that conquered the world — what does that tell you about who really built this nation’s sound?

If Bob Marley could put warring leaders hand in hand with a song, what’s stopping us?

Tell us — what’s your song?

Music can save America only if we’re bold enough to sing it out loud, together, right now.

Here's Our Playlist! Listen along!

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We had to keep talking about Nolan Xavier Wells. Kohen Wiley. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero. Alex Pretti. Renée Nicole Good. Keith Porter, Jr. Corey Ruiz. Five questions we need you sitting with:

• Why are we still meeting people as hashtags?
• Why does Black and brown justice depend on strangers with cell phones?
• Is there a rhythm to cop killing?
• Why is Jon the only one safe jogging?
• Does the system protect whiteness?

On this bonus episode of Three for the Founders, we'll give you our answers to all of these and more.

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What if the most dangerous racism isn't the kind that screams at you — but the kind that quietly shows up in your mortgage, your paycheck, and the words coming out of your own mouth?

When you can trace a straight line from a cotton field to a Wall Street bond prospectus, the question isn't whether systemic racism exists — it's whether you're ready to see it everywhere it's been hiding.

Jon, Lybroan, and Antonio are going there, and they're not coming back the same — are you?

Three for the Founders pulls back the curtain on the financial machinery that tested modern banking on the bodies of enslaved people, the Hollywood erasure that makes you invisible in stories set in your own city, and the tipping culture that was never designed to pay you fairly in the first place.

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