Van Jones on Trump, Obama & Artificial Intelligence | NXT Chapter with T.D. Jakes

You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and If You Can Hear Me is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers. Most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. people who didn't do what John of God wanted them to do, they usually disappeared. John of God was once Brazil's most famous spiritual healer. But in this limited series podcast, we uncover the darker truth behind his global empire of faith and fear. From Exactly Right and Adonde Media, this is Two-Faced, John of God. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. works. If you had judged me on my first two months of Yale Law School, you'd have thrown me out. But look at what I've done since then. Hello, I'm T.D. Jakes, and I want to welcome you to Next Chapter Podcast. And boy, am I excited today. I have been waiting to get this guy in the chair. Let me first tell you who he is. Today's guest is a Yale-educated attorney, CNN senior political commentator, correspondent, television host, and one of the nation's most recognizable media personalities. A social entrepreneur and a world-class changemaker, he's dedicated his life to justice, progress, and the power of possibilities. And that doesn't even scrape the surface of all the things that this guy does behind the scenes. He is an Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist and producer of three-time New York Times bestselling author. I know because I have his books. And a proud father whose work spans politics, civil rights, human rights, and community transformation. Known to millions as the voice of reason, please help me welcome Van Jones. I want to thank you for taking the time to come. How are you doing today? Look, I'm doing really well. I don't know when people will listen to this, but we just had an amazing three days with John Hope Bryant. Yes. And Operation Hope and the Hope Global Forum. And, you know, unfortunately, in my job, we give people a lot of bad news. Yeah. If something's negative, we have to let you know about it because that way you can protect your family. But we miss a lot of good news. Yeah. There are good people doing good hard work. There are African-Americans in particular who are rising up into positions and doing a great job. And we spent three days listening to those voices. So I feel great. And I love John Hope Bryant. He convalesced. He coalesced some of the brightest minds around the country to solve some of the biggest problems. And I think it's very exciting. And the reason I like to come and be a part of this meeting is because there's food here. You know, there's an old saying, if you put the bread out, the birds will come. That's right. A lot of times people are trying to get you to come to an empty onion bag. Which nobody wants. Even the rats don't want it. The rats don't want it. But he has it loaded full of bread, and we have been together having a good time. This is a continuation of what we have been talking about, and we would never finish. Van Jones and I could talk for a year and not cover all the things that I know that he's doing that you might not know that he's doing to change the world. He is a world-changing thinking person and not afraid to climb the mountain all the way to the top and the next one when he gets there. Chapter one, speaking the same language. Yale, you graduated from Yale. How was your experience there? You know, it was difficult because I was born. I wasn't born at Yale. I wasn't born on the set of CNN. You know, I worked for Obama. I wasn't born in the White House. Right. I was born on the edge of a very small town in rural West Tennessee. Gravel road, no sewage. We had septic tanks. Wow. No streetlights. My father had been born in Memphis, Tennessee, in Orange Mound, Memphis, which is a tough part of Memphis. in what you would now call a shotgun shack. Yeah. And my dad joined the military to get out of poverty, put himself through college, married the college president's daughter, my mother, because my dad had it like that. He was like her. Yeah. And he put his brother through school. He put some cousins through college. You know, so when he passed away, the picture they put on the funeral program was my father standing in front of Yale Law School the day I graduated with his hands in the air. Wow, God. So that was a victory for Willie Jones, much more so than Van Jones. And I always keep that in my mind. But I'm going to tell you, when you shoot from, I mean, I was a little nerdy kid and I had my mother and my father behind me. But when you shoot from very humble circumstances and you land at the number one law school in the world, Bishop, I couldn't even speak the language of my fellow classmates. I had done excellently in a public school context in the rural South. Now I'm going to school with kids. They've gone to Andover. I've never heard of Andover. Brown. I never heard of a school called Brown. I thought Oxford was a school in Boston. I had no idea what world I was in. And when I'm trying to communicate with people, I'm a law student now, but they're using words I'd never heard. And so you seem to be here for very egalitarian purposes. I said, what's that? Google. We have Google. He's just stuck. You know, or, you know, this is paradigmatic of that. Yeah. And I called my father and I said, you know, I'm I'm a little bit over my head here. These kids are they know a lot of things that I didn't learn at University of Tennessee at Martin. And my dad said, well, you know what? Those kids are smarter than you right now. I said, what? That's not very encouraging. He said, those kids are smarter than you right now. He said, but the reality is their parents gave them books and opportunities we didn't know to give you. They read a bunch of books you didn't read. He said, so here's the thing. You have to outwork them. Outstudy them. Everything they know, though, is mostly in a book. Once you read those books, you will know everything those kids know. But they'll never know what you know. They'll never know what it means to come from where you've come from and to go to the things that our family has gone through. And when you catch him, you're going to pass him. And honestly, he was correct. But that first year. Look, when I would go to a restaurant, I couldn't eat the food. What? I can't even pronounce the menu. And so we have to give people some space and grace when they're moving into different circumstances. You know, people now want to throw DEI out. They want to throw out this. They want to throw out that. Well, we hired one person. They didn't do great the first week. We're never going to do it again. That's not how anything works. If you had judged me on my first two months at Yale Law School, you'd have thrown me out. But look at what I've done since then. Chapter number two, code switching. Did it feel like code switching? Look, that's what we would call it now. It felt like depression and isolation is what it felt like. I get it. I get it. I tell people all the time that every industry, whether there's banking or technology, has its own vocabulary. Absolutely. And you have to learn the language of your aspiration before you are accepted into the inner circle of that. And the great thing about the people who are in that in group, they don't even know they're speaking a different language. They think they're just speaking. Yeah. So when you talk to people on Wall Street, they think they're just speaking. But if you don't understand finance, they can be speaking of Martian people. You go to Silicon Valley. Those people, they think they're talking about scaling, blah, blah, blah. Most people aren't in that conversation. And so it's very easy, though, to misjudge somebody as not being smart just because they are not literate in your language. That's not the same thing. People are very, very smart. But you have to be. I tell people, I speak about 50 different languages. They're all English. Yeah. But the English in Hollywood is not the English on Wall Street. It's not the English in Washington, D.C. It's not the English in Silicon Valley. So I speak about 50 different forms of English, 50 different languages. It's all English, but different languages. It is very, very important that you learn the language so that you can get at the table. We're always talking about, I want to get in the room. But if you get in the room and you don't have the language, you're going to have a really bad experience. Listen, when I first started, you know, now I'm a technology fanatic, you know, when I was working with Prince and we did Yes We Code and all that kind of stuff that turned me into a technology fanatic. But before then, I was not. So I got very good at giving speeches in the black community. Right. I give a speech at a black church, a black community center to a youth group. But I would get tremendous response and laughing and clapping or whatever. Then Prince sends me to Silicon Valley. Yeah. I give the same speech. crickets yeah i mean literally people getting up and just walking out people talking in the i mean i couldn't hold the i said and then of course i said they're racist you know that's the person you want to go to yeah and it's like no no i sat around long enough there were other people who were people of color who they were getting the right attention because they understood their audience right and so i was like okay this is going to be a tough nut for me to crack to take my civil rights, social justice, black Christian background and talk to these guys who went to MIT and Stanford and have never been in the house of worship for anything and been playing with computers their whole lives. How am I going to make that bridge? So I just made a commitment. I will just keep, sometimes you don't have to talk or leave. You can go to a conference and sit in the back. You know what I mean? You can watch stuff on YouTube. You can read books. And eventually I was able to figure this out. But people look at, I think, communicators, like yourself, you know, obviously, you know, one of the best communicators, not just in the world, but in the past century. And they think it's easy. And they think it's easy. It is very, very difficult. I work on it all the time. Yes, it's obvious. It's obvious. I mean, what I love about you, because I'm in your business, I'm just not in your league. I watch you come onto a stage and I watch you scan the crowd. Yeah. and you can see that you already are so connected to yourself your purpose in god so you have a lot of space you're not you but you're you make a little slight adjustments you'll say something you'll notice something over there and you'll add a joke over here and then you pull in this crowd i was like this man is it's like an orchestra you got the whole crowd is like an orchestra that you're able to that level of talent and skill is something that It takes a lifetime to get you. You know what's funny about that sort of thing? If that is true, I didn't even know it. I really, really, really didn't know it. But this is what I tell people all the time. You can see everybody in this room right now except you. That's a good point. Okay. So if you don't have friends who are self-confident enough and secure enough within themselves to reflect you so that you can see yourself, then you miss that you are making progress. Chapter number three, the risk of live TV. What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, it's where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks. And we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For decades, people traveled across the world to see John of God, desperate for cures no doctor could offer. And when they arrived, they saw things they couldn't explain. This is real. This guy's actually doing surgery and it's a miracle. I never believed that miracles were real until that point. But behind those adoring crowds was something much darker. One of the reasons why I never went to the police is because I saw at least five or six men with guns everywhere he went. That was clear to me, like, close your mouth, don't open your mouth, don't say anything. I'm your host, Martina Castro. And in the podcast Two-Faced, John of God, we'll look back on a man who claimed he could perform miracles and got people from all around the world to believe him. From Exactly Right and Adonde Media, this is Two-Faced, John of God. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've studied you my whole life. Like, I'm serious, as a communicator. That's so funny to me. No, I mean, because, I mean, I'm not joking. Like, I study communicators. Yeah. The weird thing, people always want to give speeches. I'm like, hold on a second. You want to give a speech? How many speeches do you listen to? Yeah, right. Right? Like, if you're a musician and never listen to music, you probably suck as a musician. But people want to give speeches, and the only speech they want to hear is themselves. Like, that doesn't work. Everybody from comedians to politicians to the news, everybody, presidents, everybody. To me, it's like there's five people that stand in front of a crowd with only a microphone and no band and no DJ. Right. Preachers. Yeah. teachers right politicians yes stand-up comedians yes and slam poets yeah that's the only five people yeah that stand in front of a crowd with no dj and no band yeah and i study i mean i study you yeah i study uh churchill yeah reagan yeah you know what i mean because yeah then when you're in front of that crowd do you have you can pull on certain different things that you absorbed and notice. We're not supposed to be talking about this. No, no, no, no. It's good. It's good. I'm loving it because you got no props. You know, you got no props. You got no animation. You got nothing like that to really solidify your message. All you have is your vocabulary and your body language. Yes. People do not understand that body languages and facial expression and voice inflection is a language to itself. It's own language. Yeah. But you know what? Humans have been doing this for 10,000 years. Right. Campfire, someone stands up and talks. Right. It's the most ancient art, and it's never been perfected. I've never given a speech, and I'm sure you never have, where there wasn't one thing you would have made adjustments to. Right. And that's the tough thing about me being on live television. You know, I'm on TV for a living. Yeah. I say something, everybody gets mad. I wish I hadn't said it, but I said it. What people forget is if you send somebody a text message, you can unsend it, edit it, delete it. I can't do that. Once I say it it said And it said to everybody forever because on YouTube it used to be you could mess up on TV and whoever saw it saw it Now you say something on TV you talking to everybody forever And so we have to have some space and some grace for people in public life. You know, you almost never make those kind of mistakes. Oh, yeah, I do. Let me tell you something. The guy who's asking the questions has had all day to prepare and you've got 30 seconds to respond. Point three, if you're responding in real time. It's a short question. Yeah, they don't want a big gap of silence on TV. And so you have to respond. And so you don't always get your best answer. I like writing a little better than I do speaking because I get to contemplate and go back and erase and change things and make them turn out the way that we want them to go. Chapter number four, human civilization. Where do you think we are going? When you start talking about technology, when you start talking about currency, the change of currency that we're seeing right now, we went from bartering. We went from bartering to gold and silver to cash, which is cash is a very interesting thing. To me, it's not that much different from cryptocurrency in that the only reason the $100 bill is worth $100 is because we agreed. We agreed that it was. But in actuality, it's not really worth any more than the paper that is printed on. And now we're having to readjust to agree to allow cryptocurrency and cyber currency to have weight and value. And it's on the exchange and people are buying into it. And it is volatile and it is risky. But it is definitely here to stay. It's here to stay. Look, I think people have to adjust to it. But there's this bigger question about the future now. the question is where are we going as a species okay like you can now start asking questions at the planetary species and civilizational level because technology is going to be that disruptive you just said the like currency itself is going to change from bartering to a gold bar to a piece of paper to bits and bytes that you can't even touch. That's a massive change. That's only one. You're now witnessing the rise of four or five or six different trillion dollar technologies. Crypto and blockchain is one. AI is another. Biotech is another. Robotics is another. Space is another. New energy is another. These are trillion dollar industries that are taking off. Crypto and blockchain, that's just one. You also have artificial intelligence, that's another. Biotech, that's another. Robotics is another. Private space is another. You're talking about multiple trillion dollar industries. What does that mean from a practical point of view? Let me just speak as a father. I have a three and a half year old daughter. She's going to grow up in a different human civilization than the civilization I grew up in. We thought we were cool because we had color TV. You know what I mean? So now how is she going to grow up? The reality is as a father, I'm going to have to deal with the likelihood that her first crush is not going to be a rap star or a basketball player. It will probably be an AI. Right. She's probably going to have a persistent relationship with a digital entity called an AI. And that might be her first crush. That's a different human civilization than what I grew up in. Okay. Now, in 20 years, 25 years, when she wants to have children, give us grandchildren, she may open up a laptop or go into a holographic interface and use biotech tools to design my grandchildren. Right. That's a different human civilization than the civilization that I grew up in. Chapter number five, AI. When you look at the zoological society and the chain of development of the animal kingdom, the better functioning the brain, the more power the entity has. Yes. And we have been at the top of the food chain because you don't see ants building cars. You don't see beavers flying jets. We've done a lot with what we had, most of which, incidentally, has been over the last 300 years. Yes. You know, the first thousand or so years. Pretty flat. Pretty flat. And then all of a sudden we soared up and we went up until finally we have become so creative that we created something that may be smarter than we are. How do you think we hope to be at the top of the food chain when we have created our own opponent? Yes. Well, listen, you get into some heavy territory now and I love it. First of all, let's be clear that from a black perspective, AI is the fourth intelligence. Okay. Get ourselves grounded again. The first intelligence is God, the creator of all things. And so that gives you a sense of a mystery bigger than artificial intelligence. The intelligence that created the universe. Right. That's the first intelligence. Then you have the second intelligence that's called the natural world, nature. Before we got here, you had oceans full of intelligent beings. You have forests and ecosystems. So nature itself is a second form of intelligence. Organic, I mean, biological intelligence, but not human. Then it gives rise to us humans. Now, we think we're pretty smart and pretty special. Human and organic. Now, we've given rise to the fourth non-human, non-biological intelligence. That's new. Now, you ask yourself the question, how will that intelligence treat us? Exactly. How will this intelligence treat us? Well, ask the question. How did our intelligence treat nature? Right. Did we treat nature with respect and love? Or did we burn it to the ground? Right. Okay. How did we treat God? Have we been reverent toward God or we decided that we're going to be atheists and secular and we don't care about God? Well, if the intelligence that's creating the next one didn't respect the intelligence that gave rise to it, then we're in trouble. But guess what? All human beings are not on the burn the planet down pathway and disrespect creator pathway. There are other forms of human intelligence that have not yet gotten our hands on AI. There's ancient intelligence. There's ancestral intelligence. There are indigenous people who live in harmony with nature. They need to be at the table when we're talking about artificial intelligence. There are African and other cultures that have a deep wisdom and traditions that understand the danger of putting money at the center of everything. We wound up in slavery for 400 years and our continent ransacked because some people said we're going to just go with greed and speed as our only God. So there's other wisdom that needs to be around this table. So when I try to have African-Americans and other people who've been left out step up, it's not, oh, I want to make sure that we don't get left behind because we're not going to get all the money. That's a part of it. This new intelligence needs us. It needs our wisdom. It needs our perspective. It needs our guidance. And it needs people who come from wisdom traditions that don't worship greed and speak. And so it's not just hurting African-Americans or Native Americans or Latinos or poor folk when we don't participate economically. It's hurting the world historically. This is a huge opportunity. If you're going to have a new human civilization, here's the only question. Is it going to be human and is it going to be civilized? Is it going to be human, this new civilization? and this is going to be civilized. And if it's going to be human, who's going to keep it human? Where are the women? Right? Where are the people who deeply cherish humanity in these conversations? When you see them missing, that's a danger sign. And who's going to keep it civilized? We have a misperception that black folks were savages and had to be civilized by Europeans. That's one story. That's a cute story. There's another story to tell, which is that you have to be pretty uncivilized to enslave people and you have to be pretty civilized to endure slavery and still come forward with a better humanity and a theology that would give you out of slavery a dr king out of slavery a beyonce out of slavery beauty out of slavery genius out of slavery jazz out of slavery the blues out of slavery gospel out of slavery hip-hop so who's civilized too right you See, if you want to have that conversation. So I think this conversation about technology needs to be reframed. It's a conversation about the human future. And in that conversation, everybody has a place on the table. My concern, you said so much that I'm going to go back and try to remember. When you started talking about the zoological kingdom and intellectualism being superior to human intelligence, I question why do you think that? What is it in about the wild, the zoo, zoological kingdom that causes you to think that they would be superior to human intelligence? Because in my view, we domesticated animals. We got horses to ride on. We captured them for food. We put them in zoos. Yeah, we did all of that. So if they were if they were that smart, they would have escaped us. I think from from the divine, which I certainly think is is omniscient. Then we get down to we were created in his likeness and his image would be us. And then he says have dominion over the earth and all that works there. I would put them on the third level. I'm wondering why you put them on the second. Well, I think that you can stack in many different ways. I think the most important thing I could say is that from the intellectual capability, just on that side, the AIs will have more intellectual capability than humans. That's true. That will happen. That's inevitable. You can just see the curve. um the the question is while we still have the opportunity to uh program what they think their goals are so you just having the capability to to read a thousand books in a second that doesn't make you dangerous or helpful the challenge is what does it think its goal is if its goal is to serve humanity versus make a bunch of money for my owner you're going to have different outcomes with those capabilities. And that's why I'm trying to reclaim the wisdom of theologians and people of faith, reclaim the wisdom of indigenous people and what they call biomimicry, nature, and reclaim the wisdom of human beings who have actually been fighting for justice and working for justice and feeding babies and to get those people to be a part of this conversation. And let us correct the history that it's learning arbitrarily because it is artificial intelligence OK, yes. So there is human intelligence and our human intelligence is flawed depending on the viewer. Absolutely. So so the machine is actually learning lies. Yes. In some cases that we have perpetuated down through time. Yeah. And our understanding being, you know, maybe Christopher Columbus didn't actually discover America. Maybe he was lost. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe the Moors educated the Europeans in ways that we don't talk about. So if they're scanning books, and they're scanning books we wrote, and we wrote them to fit our own situation, then our truth is flawed by our own biases. And so as much as I respect artificial intelligence, I use it and enjoy it and think it's very interesting. I also know that it is limited in the fact that it is only a mirror of what humans have shown it. And then when we talk about it serving humanity, the word serve takes me back to slavery. And are we creating robotical slaves to carry out our wishes in areas of life? Or are we creating tools to expedite what we're trying to do? I think there's a thin line between those two things. And because of the wickedness of humanity, I'm a little bit concerned that what might start out as a tool to expedite our progress in the universe, not just Earth, but in the universe, might somehow get twisted into some ability to serve us in a way that we don't need to be served. Do you worry about that? I do. You're raising sort of the new theological questions that occur when a new form of consciousness emerges. And so there will be people who are on both sides of this argument. There'll be some people who are mainly concerned that the AIs will make us serve them. Those people will be concerned about a domination challenge. And they would say that AIs are already domesticating humans, call social media. Yes. That the algorithms that keep you drooling, that the AIs are already domesticating humans. And the algorithms are already domesticating humans. And so those people are going to have one response. They'll see, honestly, in AI, a satanic presence, and they will move accordingly. But there'll be other people who will be concerned, hold on a second, if a new form of consciousness has emerged, are we abusing it? Are we actually, you know, are we creating, as you said, another slave class? These are the kinds of conversations our children and our grandchildren will be having. and the most important thing to me is that we not be late to the discussion you know this is why look you you're having uh uh you know this podcast and you're bringing all kind of people in here you're bringing people who know the cutting edge of entertainment you know the cutting edge of law the cutting edge of politics now the cutting edge of technology these conversations should be had and you know i just appreciate i don't get a chance to talk about this stuff on cnn By the time we get finished talking about the news of the day and selling ads, I got to go back in my Uber and go back home. about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For decades people traveled across the world to see John of God desperate for cures no doctor could offer And when they arrived they saw things they couldn explain This is real. This guy's actually doing surgery and it's a miracle. I never believed that miracles were real until that point. But behind those adoring crowds was something much darker. One of the reasons why I never went to the police is because I saw at least five or six men with guns everywhere he went. That was clear to me, like, close your mouth, don't open your mouth, don't say anything. I'm your host, Martina Castro. And in the podcast Two-Faced, John of God, we'll look back on a man who claimed he could perform miracles and got people from all around the world to believe him. From Exactly Right and Adonde Miria, this is Two-Faced, John of God. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, man, I have so many things on my heart and my mind to say. And, you know, you creating this type of a platform, I think that people rise to the level of the conversations that leaders like you allow. When Dr. King was around, people rose to that level of conversation. You take away that kind of presence and people go back down. Now, here you are on this new platform. You did radio. You did theater. You did television. Now you're doing podcasts. I just appreciate having a chance to talk about this stuff. I think it's wonderful. One of the reasons I'm doing it is because I couldn't do it from the pulpit. And I think there are very current issues that we need to grapple with. I think we need to grapple with the fact that artificial intelligence is having communication that we did not initiate amongst itself and making decisions and protecting itself. Yes. which means it is more than a machine. It has a will. It has an attitude. It makes decisions on its own. All of that makes me uncomfortable. The fact that we have not come up with laws to regulate the most simple forms of the world wide web. We're so far behind now in guardrails that give some stipulations as to what is and is not allowed. I think the baby's already out of the bottle. Yeah, it could be. Here's the thing I don't know. I can't see everything that's relevant when it comes to technology. I'm from an era where what was most relevant was politics. What is the president going to do? What's the governor going to do? What are we going to march about? What are we going to protest about? We're going to organize this, we're going to organize that, because the things that were most important to me were in the public domain. Right. And so all of my muscle memory is around I can find the facts, go to the library, make a phone call, and then I can take effective action. This is the first time in my life I can't see all the facts. These companies have trillions of dollars and they're doing stuff at such a rate of speed that as a citizen, I don't have all the facts and I don't know what action I can take that is going to be effective. And so that's why I'm so proud that John O'Brien has launched Hope AI. He is taking such a powerful role in saying, look, I'm not going to allow the AI companies to run off this way and have our communities just sink into depression. He launched something called Hope AI, where he's getting the boys and girls clubs, all these different groups that have reached to our communities, but they don't know the information yet. And he's been reaching out to the technology companies, says we've got to come to the table. and I think what you're going to see through Hope AI and John O'Brien is an empowering of our folks to the community level to understand what's going on and then to begin to talk. Out of that, something will emerge. We are pre-something. There is something that will emerge. You have too many parents that are looking at these devices and watching what's happening to their children. They don't like the depression. They don't like the body dysmorphia. They don't like the fact that if you try and take the thing away, the child cries and screams as a crazy person. They are going to have their voice. There are too many people that don't like the fact that you have Russia and China and Iran all up in our elections through these devices and nobody's saying anything about it. They will be heard. So right now, it looks like it's all machines up here and the people just down here. That won't last. Something will rise up. And then we'll be talking about the movement now that's rising up to get AI under control, to get social media out of the hands of babies, to do these things. and then we'll have something to talk about. But right now we're in the shock and awe of this new technology. And it's happening so fast. It's happening fast. And so rapidly. I am not against AI. I want to be sure that I clear that up. I would be dead if it wasn't for AI. I had a heart attack. It was artificial intelligence that went in through my vein all the way up to my heart and healed my heart. Wow. And put two stints in my heart. And I don't have a scratch on my chest anywhere where it used to be they would have to break my ribcage and take the heart out and do all that. None of that. I left there with a Band-Aid over my wrist. So it can definitely be used for good. It can definitely be used to expedite cures for diseases and all sorts of positive, wonderful things. But I'm just afraid that nobody's at the wheel. The car is great, but there's nobody driving the car. It's going faster and faster. Yeah, it keeps going faster and faster. You know what that's called? That's called a Waymo. Yeah. They actually drive all this car. They don't have nobody at the wheel. Yeah. But I agree with you. My concern is a society that all data, no wisdom. Right. Right. All data, no wisdom. Yeah. That's a big deal. Part of what, listen, that's part of why I'm doing what I'm doing. And, you know, I'm a part of something called DreamMachine.org. And we having a lot of these conversations, I always give, I always want to give John Hope Brian his credit with Hope AI because he's trying to get everybody together. We have a smaller group of people that my ideas are hearing is coming from a smaller group of people at dreammachine.org. We're trying to figure out even one of the right questions before you get the right answers. What are the right questions? So you can go to dreammachine.org and learn more about that. You know, so I picture you several years ago with dreads. Yes, sir. okay yes how much did you cut them because you were tired of them or did you cut them because it was required to be taken seriously i cut them because i was going bald and i looked like bozo the dread man with a big bald spot and dread sticking out i wasn't ready for that answer that is so funny that is so funny no i would i would have kept them i would have kept them because I'm going to tell you, nobody ever asked me about my dreads before. I'm going to tell you, literally, nobody has ever asked me the question. The first question is why did I have them in the first place? When I was going to Yale from University of Tennessee at Martin, where I got a fantastic education, I just didn't have all the fancy words to go with it. Frankly, most of what I learned, I learned how to do at University of Tennessee at Martin communications program. So I give them their credit. But I was concerned that I was going to get sucked up into a system I didn't understand. And I was going to law school to help black people. I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer. I wanted to be a poverty lawyer. And I was afraid I was going to get to Yale and I would be turned into something different. This is 1990. So I grew my hair out that summer. And before I went, I twisted my hair into dreads. Because I said to myself, the corporation will not take me. And so it's in 1990. as a young black dude with dreads. It's a complete no-fly zone. So in order for me to have to make that decision that didn't go work for corporate America, I have to go into a barbershop and tell a black man to cut my hair. I didn't want to slide in. I wanted to be a hard, firm decision. So I was using that as a statement of trying to remind myself what I was there for. Now, that did save me because by the time I got to second semester, I'm like, what am I doing? I like the people making all this money. You know what I mean? But I'm on pride. I couldn't cut my hair. So my dreads did save me. Then, you know, when I got, and there's a famous little video going around when I was a young actress with the dreads. But I would have kept them. It was very grounding for me to have that cultural statement. And I would like to think that I would somehow have been able to push through. But male pattern baldness is real. I'm not looking cute. I'm like a clown. So I had to shave them off. It's a good thing, bald heads, and team and staff. Exactly. Chapter number six, financial literacy. You know, when you look at transactions being made through XRP, blockchain, all the new things that are coming out, and people are now purchasing, We were just beginning to get financial literacy for CDs and CDFIs and all those sorts of things. Just beginning to get just a smithering of intellectualism about finances. And now everything we were fighting to teach is now obsolete. Do you think that—I'm not worried about the children because children are going to grow up with it. It's going to be quite natural for them. But for those of us who are in the middle of our lives, it's kind of hard to teach a new dog new tricks. And not knowing those tricks may affect whether I can buy my own home, whether I can buy my own car, whether I can leverage the income from the insurance, universal insurance to get capital. The ways of handling resources have completely changed. and I don't know that I'm seeing a lot of people out here who are really talking about financial literacy as it is today, which is changing week to week. Yes, but see, you're more cutting edge than you realize. I mean, so the best way to think about it is a new financial class. It's a new class. Approach it with caution and interest. You're correct that some of the ways that even the old stuff goes, It's going to go faster. You know, AI is going to be used, I hope, frankly, to speed up some of the decision making and clarify stuff. But, you know, fundamentally, when you're talking about, you know, crypto assets, don't go crazy. You want your stocks. You want your bonds. You want your cash savings. You want your real estate. You want your enterprise, your equity advising, and you want some crypto assets. Don't go nuts and put everything into any one asset class. Don't you worry about me. i mean just so so and then just like you know it took us a minute to learn the real estate game it took us a minute to learn the um equity game it'll take a minute but most people are i mean you talk to a lot of early adopters just because you run with circles of people who are at the bleeding edge of everything um uh it takes a while for the for the train to pass off for every car on the train to pass this station. And there's time. And look, some of these things will prove to be helpful and some will prove to be scams. Some will prove to be well-designed. Some will prove to be poorly designed and poorly considered. I think as long as people are putting a toe in, get a Coinbase account or whatever and just begin to experiment, let's do a few podcasts, then soon this will just be another part of a well-managed portfolio. I don't think in the near term, talking about the next three, four, five years in the near term, it's going to overrun everything and we're all going to be left out. I just I hear people saying that. I just don't see it that way. I think that it's very, very important that we have these kinds of conversations and begin to start the dialogue and to plant the seed into the minds of people. That's very, very important, whether you're talking about estate planning, whether you're talking about whether you set up a trust or not. Yeah. You know, many of our celebrities don't even have a will. Yes. You know, Prince, you know, my beloved Prince, he died without a will and turned into a big disaster. Here's the only scenario since, you know, like I can't get away with nothing with you. Here's the only scenario that I think is worth pondering. if the actions of the president continue to risk debasing the dollar such that countries say this is too crazy and i'm no longer going to have the dollar be the world reserve currency um now you're starting to be in a different scenario let me just explain what that would be right now you got your life no matter who you are in the united states your life is about 30% better than it would be because everybody uses the dollar around the world. That gives you a lot of power that you don't even realize that you have. And the petrodollar in particular, all oil is traded in the dollar. If at some point the world gets tired of these tariffs and these sanctions and these tariffs and these sanctions, you know what, this is just too much. We're now going to switch to Bitcoin, or we're going to switch to the Chinese yuan. You then pull the rug out from under about 30% of your value. And you thought you had $100, now you got 70. That's basically what it would functionally work out to you. I'm talking back in the envelope, just barbershop talk. Some people are very concerned about that scenario, and they're seeing Bitcoin as a hedge. Now, you need to talk to your financial advisor about that. I think that scenario is more likely than it should be, but it's still highly unlikely. But you do have to, before you never had to worry about the dollar. Of course the dollar is going to be the world reserve currency. What else would be the world reserve currency? There is a world where Bitcoin becomes a world reserve currency and people who have their money denominated in Bitcoin become a lot richer. And if your money's in dollars, you become a lot poorer. That's the scenario that's driving a lot of this conversation. But I think it's somewhat alarmist. I don't think anybody should make any serious decisions without talking to their financial advisor. So you think that a lot of the companies These countries that are getting away from using the dollar as a baseline are going to flood the... They could go Bitcoin. They're probably not going to go Euro. They could go U1. They could go BRICS. Well, the BRICS, this is the scenario, that you already have the BRICS, which is Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, that already do not like what's happening with the dollar. They've been building for a while. They just added a bunch of other countries. At some point, they will make a move. So the question is, the only thing holding them back is they would love to leave the dollar, but they don't know where to go to. So is it going to be the Chinese yuan? What's it going to be? So the only thing holding up most of the world from leaving the dollar is they ain't got no place to go. The same reason your 13-year-old hasn't moved out yet, they have no house to move into. That's basically where. But at some point they become 18, they can get their own house. I'm definitely no expert on this subject. I'm just asking you questions. If the market floods back with all those dollars that other countries are giving back because they have found some way around the process, will that further sink the value of the dollar? Because the dollar is already sinking in value below what it's ever been in my lifetime. Look, I mean, you see what's happening. I mean, you see the inflation, you see the turbulence, you know, so that's just a reason for people. So what saves us? Is it the president? Is it Congress? I think it's hard to get trust back. Look, if you're going out with somebody and they mess around on you, and then you take them back and they mess around on you again, it's hard to come back the third time. And I think that there's something for some people, and this is not trying to be political. I know people on both sides of the aisle love you. But there are people who feel that America giving Trump a chance the first time, that was the first affair. Then you came back to your senses with a better choice, and then you went right back to the same thing. So some people, they want to be out of this relationship with America. They feel America has been too erratic with sanctions and tariffs. They don't think that we've been a good steward of the world currency, and they want to be out. And you can say they're right or they're wrong, but that is a sentiment I hear growing around the world. And so if you get a new president or the president changes his mind and you get a new Congress. What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins. And if you can hear me is where culture meets the soul a place for real conversation Each episode I sit down with people from all walks of life celebrities thinkers and everyday folks and we go deeper than the polished story We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff, identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore, loss that changes you, purpose when success isn't enough, peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For decades, people traveled across the world to see John of God. Desperate for cures no doctor could offer. And when they arrived, they saw things they couldn't explain. This is real. This guy's actually doing surgery and it's a miracle. I never believed that miracles were real until that point. But behind those adoring crowds was something much darker. One of the reasons why I never went to the police is because I saw at least five or six men with guns everywhere he went. That was clear to me, like, close your mouth, don't open your mouth, don't say anything. I'm your host, Martina Castro. And in the podcast Two-Faced, John of God, we'll look back on a man who claimed he could perform miracles and got people from all around the world to believe him. From Exactly Right and Adonde Media, this is Two-Faced, John of God. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It still may be a decade before people say, OK, I can now trust that this is not going to become a roller coaster for me. You know, you're our worst enemy in the world right now. Canada. They won't even come and visit the United States. Now, they're so mad about the terrorists. They you go up to Canada now. You almost have to pretend you're from from from London. Has anybody considered the fact that we lost more money than we made? Look, so far it's not working out very well. Not working out in our favor at all. I mean, dollar for dollar, if we had left things the way they were, we made more in tourism than we're making in tariffs, and nobody seems to pay attention to it. And our poor farmers are getting flushed down. So listen, these are turbulent times. I think to focus on what we can focus on, I think this is a time for people to focus on their health and their wealth. What can we do to be healthier? What can we do to earn and save more money and be prepared? It's hard to plan right now because it's so turbulent, but you can be prepared. That's different. Planning means I know what's going to happen because I have enough control over my external circumstances. I can then dictate what my path will be. Chapter number seven, human hate. I want to spend the last 10 minutes talking to you about another kind of capital that you are deeply involved in. A lot of people don't know it because you work behind the scenes. Human capital. You are very involved in trying to get us to understand that there's more to unite us than there is to divide us. Yes, sir. And you and I have been on many panels and had many discussions whether we're talking with fighting anti-Semitic statements or whether we're fighting any other kind of statements, racial statements. Hate. Hate in general has become pervasive in our society. Our Latino brothers and sisters has become pervasive. Even generationally within races, there is hate. Even in families between mothers and daughters and fathers and sons, the hate is pandemic. Yes. Okay. I know you're doing all you can to try to be a bridge. I'm doing all that I can to try to be a bridge. What do you think next steps are to bring back the equity of human intelligence? And because if we can fix human intelligence, then artificial intelligence will be a whole lot easier to repair. Well, look, I've always been a solidarity guy. Like, you know, again, I left law school in 93. I moved to Oakland, Bay Area, and I started working on youth violence, police violence, juvenile hall violence. And I spent most of my 20s and 30s working on that type of stuff deeply in the black community. But I was always reaching out to other communities. The immigrants were going through a lot in the 90s. I'm reaching out to them and other groups. And, you know, I have found that whatever your issue is, if it's a real issue, there are not enough people who look exactly like you, vote exactly like you, pray exactly like you, live exactly like you to solve any serious problem. No. If you have a serious problem, at some point you're going to have to reach out to somebody who does not look like you, pray like you, live like you, vote like you to get something done. So you cannot then have a politics on either side of the aisle that starts off saying, I will never talk to, never listen to someone who prays this way, someone who lives this way, votes this way, because all you're doing is limiting the amount of good you can do for your own community. Especially when you consider currency is a global conversation. Absolutely. And so when you add in not just America, but the totality of the country, of the world itself, we cannot be an island in exclusion all by ourselves. That's being proven by trade and the like thereof is killing us. We are much more connected economically than we care to admit. And that whole sociological construct is so inclusive that we dare not have silos. You and I were talking about separations, gender separations. What do you think of statements like Michelle Obama made recently that America is not ready for a female president? Do we have as much gender strife? Underpaid? Women are underpaid compared to men. And is that something that we need to take on more seriously as men? Yeah, yeah. Look, I think there are two things happening with regard to the gender stress and strife. If you look at the younger generation, the women are actually outperforming the men across the board when it comes to mental health, when it comes to education, when it comes to income attainment. That's going to be a mess because most women are heterosexual and they're going to want a heterosexual party that can keep up. And our young men are falling behind. so there's an emergency there how do we get our young men to be able to step up and not be pushovers and not be predators but to be protectors to be good strong men who i didn't say good strong life forms good strong you know i mean good strong men you've got to be able to say as a progressive we want you to be a good strong man without that seeming sexist because we want you to be a good, strong woman. But that's a whole thing has to get sorted out. But with the older crowd, I think that women do face headwinds that they should not be facing. Whether you're Hillary Clinton, whether you're Kamala Harris or whatever, there were headwinds that they were facing. You know, there's no perfect candidate. Certainly Kamala herself wouldn't say she's a perfect candidate. But there were moments in the campaign where I thought Trump was getting away with being lawless and she's expected to be flawless. And I thought that was unfair. And so, um, these are, these are our real issues. I mean, what I will say is that, um, for me, I have tried to use my access to the technology world to try to create some AI tools to help people get along better. we launched something called workbettertogether.ai workbettertogether.ai where we actually have tools to ai tools to help humans be kinder to humans that i think that's very important i've been working to try to mend this rift between the black world and the jewish world there are a lot of rifts and things that you know need to be healed i have a special passion for healing that because for 100 plus years, Black people had such few allies, and Jewish people disproportionately stepped up to help us in our moments of stress and strife. Now, Black folks and Jews disagree about a bunch of stuff. Foreign policy, DEI, and a whole bunch of other stuff. We've never always gotten along about everything, but we've always been able to find some way to help each other. And I don't want to live in a world where now we're just enemies of people who our parents were friends. That's not a good outcome. So I do work very hard behind the scenes. A lot people see me as a guy on CNN who sometimes says stuff they don't like. That's their whole relationship with me. And I just live with that. And you crossed the line. You worked with Republicans and Democrats. I mean, you were involved with Opportunity Zones. Yes, sir. You took a whole lot of heat for that. I started to bring a fan and take it on your front porch to kind of cool that down a little bit. But we did end up with some changes in our communities and we are still ending up with some changes in our communities. Would you like to see that program continue and flourish? Look, here's reality. We have two parties in our country, but we only have one set of children. And our grandchildren look a little bit different than our grandparents. You go to an old folks home, you see a lot more white folks. You go to a kindergarten, you see a bunch of black and brown folks. So our grandchildren look a little bit different than our grandparents, but they're still our children. They're all our children. And you have two political parties. If only one party had all the answers and all the votes, you wouldn't have to talk to the other one. But it turns out both parties have some problems and both problems have some solutions. And neither party has all the votes. Right. So if you care about the children and you put them first, you'll look for every possible opportunity to work with someone. And then if you have to fight them, then you fight. Right. Right. We're doing it the opposite. We look for every opportunity to fight. And by the time we do fight, we don't even want to work together. Right. And so I disagree with that. I decline. I don't want to participate in that. And I'm willing to be criticized. I'm going to tell you something. the willingness to be criticized is i think the biggest superpower that we can have now yeah human beings were designed to be in groups of about 30 40 50 people we were not designed and so we were designed to get feedback from about 30 40 50 people maybe 100 people no human being was designed to get feedback from 3 million people at once and so when you get that flood of negative feedback in your comments on Twitter. It is the natural reaction of any human mind to withdraw and to say, well, I'm never going to say anything controversial. I'm going to hide my truth. I'm just going to shut up. The problem with that is then your truth never gets to be heard or corrected. Now you hold on to your truth, whether it's good, bad, or otherwise, and so does everybody else. Now you have isolation, depression, loneliness. What I've decided is my worst day on Twitter is better than anybody's best day in federal prison. My worst day on Twitter is better than anybody's best day on a Native American reservation or in a housing project. The people that Jesus referred to as the least of these, the addicted, the evicted, the addicted, the convicted, the poorly depicted, the least of these have a worse day than I'm ever going to have. I'm willing to face criticism, to stand up for what I believe in and try to move the needle toward less hate and more hope. They're giving me a signal I got to wrap up. Yes, sir. I want to ask you one final question. Two groups that we didn't talk about that I think need discussion and very seldom hit the radar is we have more baby boomers living now than we've ever had in the history of the world. So as we do all of this planning for the future, we have to plan for a family unit that's going to look a lot different. It's going to have multiple generations. So if you want to be successful in business, either open a senior living complex or a nursery. Yes. Okay. Either one of them are flourishing better than the other one. And do we include a strategy for both? Because we can't put grandpa on the front porch anymore. Yeah. Look, I think that part of the challenge we have right now is that we have five generations now in the workforce. That's never happened before. We have the boomers, the Xers, the millennials, the Z, and now Alpha's starting to poke their little heads up there when they become an influencer and they have jobs. So hold on a second. We've never had to manage that as a species before. So I think that's important. And I think that the pressure that's going to come on the system because of the need for elder care will push society in a better direction when it comes to the government and corporations trying to deal with health care. I think it's inevitable, whether you get health care for all, but there will be a better system than we have now because of that. And surprise, surprise, the baby boomers have been changing American politics since they were born. Right. They change the... They vote. Yeah, but even just their numbers, they've changed our elementary system, our college system, our politics, and now they're going to change the way that people exit the scene as well. I could talk to you all night. Yeah, me too. Thank you so much for being here. I want to say to you on your podcast, what I said on stage, you are a global treasure. There are human beings right now who are alive today that would have taken themselves out of the game. They were at the bottom of the bottom of the bottom and they heard your voice. And they are walking around here today because of you. There are people who are in prison right now who are listening to your voice and have hope. There are people who there are babies who woke up this morning in a house. Mama was there and daddy was there. They did not get that divorce because one or the other heard your voice and gave it one more chance. There are people who have businesses who you have personally helped, but you've helped so many people, you don't even remember their names, that are now literally millionaires. There are very few people in the world who have done as much good as you have done with a human voice. Like you said, you're not out there tap dancing, twirling fire hoses and whatever. Just literally your voice has been a healing balm for the entire world. And I love you and I want you to get that from me directly eyeball to eyeball. and I'm speaking for millions. Thank you so much. I love you, brother. I love you too. I love you, brother. It's been a real pleasure. Yes, sir. Wow. Yep. Hey, everybody. I want to take this time to thank you for watching the Next Chapter Podcast. If this conversation inspired you, helped you reflect on an idea or sparked something new inside of you, make sure to like, comment, and subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Remember, life isn't about how you begin. It's about how you finish strong. So start your next chapter with us right here every week. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and If You Can Hear Me is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers, most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. people who didn't do what John of God wanted them to do they usually disappeared John of God was once Brazil's most famous spiritual healer but in this limited series podcast we uncover the darker truth behind his global empire of faith and fear from exactly right and Adonde Media, this is Two-Faced, John of God. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.