An Army of Normal Folks - Antong Lucky: If You Lead for Evil, Imagine What You Could Do For Good (Pt 1)

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

As a teenager, Antong founded the Dallas Blood gang and ran the city’s roughest streets. This inevitably landed Antong in prison, where a man told him that if he could lead for evil, imagine what he could do for good. He now leads Urban Specialists, which has transformed the lives of 819 OGs like himself. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the beginning, Urban Specialists was really about gang intervention, trying to get young men to think about things a different way. Right. Using people with lived experience, using the OGs. Using the OGs. Using the OGs. We were training OGs to say, look, you guys influence, if you get yourself together, you can change a generation of young people because they're following you.

You guys even negotiated a truce between the Blood and the Crips, right? Yeah, we did. We had over 270 young people who signed a peace treaty, who would add war with each other. Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm an entrepreneur and I've been a football coach in inner city Memphis. And that last part, it somehow led to an Oscar for the film about our team. That movie is called Undefeated. Y'all, I believe our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits

talking big words that nobody uses on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks, us. Just you and me deciding, hey, maybe I can help. That's what Anton Lucky, the voice you just heard, has done. Before he was 15 years old, Anton founded the Dallas Blood Gang and ran the city's roughest streets. This inevitably landed Anton in prison, where a man told him if he could lead for evil, imagine what he could do for good.

I cannot wait for you to meet him right after these brief messages from our 2024 iHeartRadio Music Festival, presented by Capital One. The biggest headliners in live music will be taking over T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas. Plus some special surprises and moments you are not going to want to miss. Stream only on Hulu. The iHeartRadio Music Festival. And listen on iHeartRadio Music Festival and listen on iHeartRadio, the most anticipated live music event of the year. This Friday and Saturday starting at

10 30 p.m. Eastern, 7 30 Pacific. We think of Franklin as the doddering dude flying a kite in the rain, but those experiments are the most important scientific discoveries of the time. I'm Evan Ratliff. Last season, we tackled the ingenuity of Elon Musk with biographer Walter Isaacson. This time, we're diving into the story of Benjamin Franklin, another genius who's desperate to be dusted off from history. His media empire makes him the most successful self-made businessperson in America. I mean, he was never early to bed and early to rise type person.

He's enormously famous. Women start wearing their hair in what was called a coiffure a la Franklin. And who's more relevant now than ever. The only other person who could have possibly been the first president would have been Benjamin Franklin. But he's too old and wants Washington to do it. Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packer star Kabir Vajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. Hey, GB, explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite.

I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning in a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron, and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns in church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked, voila, you got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiral'd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. Its tradition is culture.

This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12 episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of lucha libre. And I'm your host Santos Escobar, the emperor of lucha libre and a WWE superstar. Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of my Kultura podcast network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts.

Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition? Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm

hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Anton Lucky, what's up? Man, I'm feeling good to be in Memphis.

Yeah, I mean, first of all, Anton Lucky, Lucky is your last name, not a nickname, not something you made up, that is for real. That's on the birth certificate. That's on the birth certificate. What a name, I mean, Anton is interesting, but Lucky is like, that's, yeah, pretty cool. Man, I love it, man, cause ever since a kid,

you know, that name go always, yes, are you feeling lucky today? Yeah, yeah, I guess I am. Yeah, I feel lucky every day cause I am. Yeah, so that's my name. That's awesome. From Dallas, first of all, thanks for coming to Memphis and joining us and understand you spent a little time today

looking around the city and. Yes, I was in search of a barbecue. I was trying to find a bit. Did you find, what'd you find? Man, we found Payne's barbecue. Payne's barbecue's the real deal. Yes indeed, man, I towed them ribs up. Did you?

All right, you got to get Alex, you hear me on this. Okay. You've got to have Co, hear me on this. You've got to have Cozy Corner's barbecue bologna sandwich. It will make you want to slap somebody. That's so good. I'm just telling you. I got to get there before I go. And then next time you're back,

you got to go to the barbecue shop and get the barbecuebeque spaghetti. Barbeque spaghetti? That's right. Oh yeah, I got no idea. It's the real deal. It is so good. You ever had a Cassius?

I got to have barbeque spaghetti. You ain't never had the barbeque spaghetti. Have you had Cozy Corner's barbeque bologna? Man, Cassius. Barbeque spaghetti. I thought you were from Memphis. Man, you ain't. Yeah.

It is the real deal. I'm trying it. So anyway, you got some't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't.

You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't.

You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't.

You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. You ain't. I'm not going to even, I'm not going to even take up with Dallas. Cause I brought some people from Louisiana and they, they, they, they did me bad. So I said, I said, I'm not getting that conversation. So I'm in search. I'm in search for the best barbecue. So, uh, president of urban specialists, which we will get to, but we got a lot of work to get there to, to understand how you ended up there and why you're doing what you're doing now. Cause your story is like many of our guests, phenomenal.

And actually when I studied up on you a little bit, you remind me a lot coming up of a couple of other guests we've had, similar type background stories, but yours has an interesting twist to it in that you always seem to have this innate inside of you, depth inside of you, love and care for your family, and candidly,

you wanted to be good at school, which is a little interesting twist, which we're gonna get to. So first of all, Frazier Court. Yes. Tell me about what Frazier Court is. Man, Frazier Court is a little community inside of Dallas where I was born. And at the time I was born,

Frazier Court was one of the roughest place to be born into. Right. It was, it was kind of this little piece of Dallas that nobody went to nobody, you know, you, you couldn't go over there unless you knew somebody. It was that, right. We was the neighborhood in Dallas that, that radio disc jockeys and the rest of the city didn't mention. They didn't mention it all. Uh, but I grew up there. My father was a project, project housing project.

My father was a sentence to 55 years in prison when I was nine months. And what do you do? Uh, what he do? Uh, he was accused of aggravated robbery. Right? Fifty-five years for robbery. Fifty-five in 1970...77. He ultimately did 37 years.

But growing up there, growing up in the projects, my mother went to work, dropped out of school, went to work at 16 and never looked back. I mean, when that situation happened, she went straight to work and she never looked back. And she closed that chapter of her life with my father. The interesting part of that was that when she closed that part of her life, nobody, not even her, ever sat down and began to explain to me who he was, what he was about.

It was like that chapter was closed, everybody moved on. And you were nine months old? I was nine months, growing up just nine months from my nine months to my kindergarten years up into middle school. I mean, I never had a conversation with anybody about my father. And I remember as a kid, I wanted to know who my father was, but I felt too dumb to ask the question, right? Because I would go to PTA, I would go to schools and I would see other kids with their, with their fathers,

uh, or they knew their father, if they, if the father went in the home, but I could never answer the question of who my father was and no one never told me. And so what I did for my, and you never asked. And I never asked because I, because as a kid, I felt, I felt, like I said, I felt dumb. I felt like if I had to ask you who my father, who my, that's something you supposed to know as a kid, but I didn't know that. And so for me, right, mother working, a hard worker, I placed all of my talents in school. So school

became my refuge. That was a place where, you know, I could thrive and I could flourish. I was a kid that brought the teacher to Apple. I was a good kid who I remember them discussing with my mother, like we got to move him up two grades, right? And my mother said, no, I'm like, he too, he too smart, you know, talented and gifted a on the road. And this is in elementary school, right? And so as my mother worked, my grandparents were like my primary caretakers. They were the ones who looked after me. They was one who gave me the confidence. They the ones that affirmed me because when I was younger, I was real skin.

I wasn't this big. I was skin. I had a big head. I had a real big ass big kid. And my cousins, and my cousins, man, they, they teased me a lot. They called me blimpy. What's it like to grow up as a fourth, fifth, and sixth grader in the hood where you're supposed to be hard and tough and you a skinny, big headed, smart kid? I'm gonna tell you, it was tough. It was tough because, and I think,

I think what you just asked represent a lot of kids around the country, even today. I think those kinds of kids, kids like who I were, live this duality, right? This dualism, because on one end, you're trying to be a good kid because that's just who you are, trying to be an A on the road student, smart kid, et cetera, et cetera.

But then on the other side, you have to be what the neighborhoods say you have to be. And that's that whole survivor, that's that whole tough, that's to be. And that's that whole survivor, that's that whole tough, that's an environment. And that's something most people don't understand, especially people who are busy educating and doing all that stuff. They're not looking deep into that, looking granular enough to understand a kid who live in a duality, right? Who's trying to be good when he in the school. And then when he in the neighborhood, he has to do what the neighborhood when he in the school and then when he in the neighborhood, he has to do what the neighborhood says he has to do

because you learn quickly in the hood that smart kids, talented kids, they get bullied quick, right? You learn that quick. You learn that early on. Like early on, you learn that. You learn like being, I remember I used to hide how smart I was. I used to hide.

I used to almost be ashamed of it. Right. I didn't like when my family would talk about it, especially when we was all together. I didn't want them to, I didn't want them to, I remember feeling that like feeling like, Oh, I don't say that. No. And you know, and I tried to hide it as much as I could until I couldn't hide it no more. Right. And I had to make some choices. This is an,

this is early in our conversation to go where we're gonna go. Let's go. But I wanna go. Mm-hmm. I wanna know what's the difference in you and me. And here's why I say that. Okay. I was nine months, I was four.

But my dad was gone at four. Mm-hmm. Nothing. Mom had to work hard. Right. And my grandmother and grandfather both subs really, my maternal and paternal grandmother and grandfather, even though my dad wasn't in the picture,

my dad's parents were good people. So they were heavy in my life through elementary and into middle school. And mom did what she could, but she had to put food on the table, cook and everything else. Now, you know, she wasn't 16. She was 23, but still young. I was the same age. I had very much of the same things you're talking about in my life. My dad wasn't there. I didn't understand. It was embarrassing. I didn't like when other guys came around.

And I wanted to do good in school and everything else, but I didn't go down the path that you ultimately went down, which spoiler alert, which we're going to get to all of it, but gangs and stuff. we're going to get to all of it, but gangs and stuff really, candidly, what do you think's the difference in you and me? We had the same, we had the, we really did have the same, we're probably dealing with some of the same dynamic through fifth or sixth grade. Right. Before I answered, I asked you one question. You didn't ask me anything you want to, cause I'm going to ask you. Your neighborhood, what kind of neighborhood question. Why you didn't ask me anything you want to, cause I'm gonna ask you your neighborhood.

What kind of neighborhood was it that you grew up in? When the projects, but it was an apartment. It was lower middle, but not the projects. Shootings every day. What's that? Shoons every day. What every day? Shoons.

Shoes. Were they shooting? No. They have gunshots every day? No. Did you see drug dealers hanging out every day, or gang members? Never. Okay.

I think that's the difference. I mean, I think when we look at the, that's the difference. I think people tend to underestimate the neighborhood environmental influence on young people. Arshay Cooper was a guest we had some months back, a Chicago guy, the hood. He said to me that,

I don't know how you expect a kid to learn when, before he even gets to school, he's passed three drug deals, heard 10 gunshots, and literally stepping over pools of blood. And he said in their apartment, the air conditioner didn't work real well, and they had a plug-in fan,

and one of the blades was a little bit out of balance. So as that fan spun, every time it'd spin, it'd click. So that fan's kind of going click, click, click, click. And if you walked into his apartment and never lived there, that click would drive you crazy. But if you lived there, you just, you didn't even hear the click anymore. And he said, the reality of my childhood

of gang violence and drugs and gunshots and blood and everything was like the click of that fan. People from outside area would be appalled by it, but it was just the way we lived and it just became commonplace. But once you go through all that, once you get to school, you don't care what time the Mayflower came here or what half of 50% is.

Right. And just think about the kid who experienced all of that, but was trying to care when he got to school. That experience, everything he just described, but was trying to care when he got to school. Right. And then you, and then you have a segment of people who say, well, you know, cause I got friends who didn't make some choices. They grew up in the neighborhood I grew up in too. But when you look at it, um, some people say, man,

how did you let that influence you to go down that road if I had the same situation? I don't believe that the neighborhood can convince you to be a gang member or even consider, right? And I said, it's simple, right? If I come out my house, and it's just as plain as I can get when I'm growing up, if I come out my house and I look down the street, I got on a red sweater, and I see 15, 20 dudes stomping a dude in a red sweater, and they all got on blue sweaters,

intuitively I know to go back in the house and put on a blue sweater. Now I'm in the game. You ain't gotta be real bright to know that. You ain't gotta be bright to know that. You in the house and put on a blue sweater. Now I'm in the game. You ain't gotta be real bright to know that. You ain't gotta be bright to know that. You in the game. You see that, you gonna say, oh, I gotta change this. And I got friends who, I got friends as we got into the gang stuff and all that, who

wasn't as, had the propensity that we had, but because of sheer association, affiliation, sheer geographic, just born in that area, now you in a gang because you're gonna suffer the same consequences. And those are some of the stuff that I think, I think helped shape some of the decisions that I don't care for today, but those were the decisions that I made.

And now a few messages from our generous sponsors, but first, I hope you'll consider signing up to join the Army at NormalFolks.us. By signing up, you'll receive a weekly email with short episode summaries in case you happen to miss an episode or if you prefer reading about our incredible guests. We'll be right back. We're just days away from our 2024 iHeartRadio Music Festival presented by Capital One. The biggest headliners in live music will be taking over T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas.

Plus some special surprises and moments you are not going to want to miss. Stream only on Hulu. The iHeartRadio Music Festival. And listen on iHeartRadio. The most anticipated live music event of the year. This Friday and Saturday starting at 10 30 p.m eastern 7 30 pacific. We think of Franklin as the doddering dude flying a kite in the rain, but those experiments are the most important scientific discoveries of the time. I'm Evan Ratliff. Last season, we tackled the ingenuity of Elon Musk with biographer Walter Isaacson.

This time, we're diving into the story of Benjamin Franklin, another genius who's desperate to be dusted off from history. His media empire makes him the most successful self-made business person in America. I mean he was never early to bed and early to rise type person. He's enormously famous. Women start wearing their hair in what was called the coiffure a la Franklin. And who's more relevant now than ever. The only other person who could have possibly been the first president would have been Benjamin Franklin. But he's too old and wants Washington to do it. Listen to On Benjamin

Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford and I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret?

When should you not trust your intuition? Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions.

Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packer star Kabir Vajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. Hey, GB, explaining what he believes led to the arrest

of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning. In a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron, and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns in church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories

that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiral'd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more

than just entertainment. Lucha libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. Its tradition is culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and culture richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring.

This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of my cultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. Sixth grade, skinny, big, hecka thing. Uh, yeah, smart. Trying to hide it kind of how, how's it evolve from there for you? Started out. And I gotta say this man, shout out to my mother cause she, my mother to this day have never committed a crime,

never been to jail in her life. And I learned from her work ethic, she all did, all she did was work and she wanted the best, et cetera, et cetera for me. And I wanted to please her and I wanted to please my grandparents, but it just wasn't no match for what I dealt with as your other guests said, when you step outside the household, just wasn't no match for what I deal with. As your other guests said, when you step outside the household, just want to match for that.

Uh, even at school, I often talk about how school we will be in bust into another neighborhood, probably about a mile or two down the street, different neighborhood kind of just like here in Memphis. But if you don't know those boundaries, you understand those boundaries being caught in those neighborhoods can be serious for you, right? So my safety depends on how, if I caught that bus, cause sometimes that bus will leave at a certain time,

don't care where you at. And then you stuck in a neighborhood that's not favorable to you. So then my safety is how fast I can run, how hard I can fight. Some days I fought, had to stay back and fight dudes for no reason. And some days I ran, you know, as fast as I could.

But that was the everyday situation. You know, think of a kid who's struggling to do right, who wanna do right, who's trying to do right, who's questioning his identity, questioning where it's for, all this good stuff and maintain the A and B on the road grades. But coming back to this, coming back to a neighborhood like this, uh, that stuff where it down, it wear you down, you know,

as much as I wanted to do right and keep doing right, it got to wear me down and I can remember vividly like where stuff started to slip for me. Like when stuff started to when was that probably around about 11, 12, maybe even 13, but 11, 12, 13 and that stuff just, and you supposed to be playing youth baseball and going to the Cub scouts and, and stuff like that at 12, 13. You ain't supposed to be thinking about banging man at 12, 13. You ain't supposed to be thinking about banging. Man, at 12 and 13, by that time,

you know, like from nine to 10, around 10, that's when it started. Around sixth grade, fifth to sixth grade, that's when it started. By the time I got into seventh grade, we were selling drugs big time and I had them amputated my personality and became what the neighborhood said.

But one thing I really- Okay, time out. Say that again. You amputated your personality. Yeah, I amputated who I was to become what the neighborhood said that I needed to become. And I started, I put that character on. I became that character. I started being what the neighborhood said,

because this is what I learned though. I learned that I was a lot smarter than a lot of my peers. Cause remember I was going to school, you know, in those formative years. And, and because what I went through, I think it made me very, very observant to life, probably more so than some of my other friends. But when I put this outfit on, I realized that I was kind of smarter

than a lot of my peers because I thought a lot. Because me, my father, I think primarily my father being out of my life made me think a lot, made me think about life a lot because I was a kid having some real serious questions that I, that I wanted answered that made me pay attention and question a lot of stuff. And I don't know if that made my brain just far off, but when I, when I put this outfit on, I realized I said, man, I can run some stuff because I was using this. I,

I understood early on that strong rule of weak, but the wise rule of mouth. I understood that as a kid as 10, 13 years old, by 13 I'm going to junior high school and limousines making three, four, $5,000 a day selling pro-cain. That's a Dallas thing. That's going to the area liquor store, buying some superior beef supplement and cooking it up with ether base and making it seem like it's crack cocaine and you can spend by $40 and you can make about $10,000, $15,000 easy.

You were really doing that? No, we was really doing this in my book. You know, we were doing that. So I read that about this time is when the movie Colors came out. Colors came out. Colors, Colors. I remember the song.

Mm, mm, mm, mm. Right. Mm, mm, Colors. Right. Yeah. They came out. It came out in the movie theaters. And again, for my neighborhood, we didn't have no gang affiliation, but these other neighborhoods, they had already, the Crips had already migrated from California and these other neighborhoods had gang affiliation. What was your neighborhood?

Our neighborhood was just a bunch of hustlers. I was just phrased. Of course. Yeah. We were just phrase a court. That's the neighborhood that sat back there. You know, they, they, but there was hustling going on drug dealing, but it wasn't organized. It wasn't organized and we didn't have no name for it. We didn't have no name for our neighborhood. We only probably wasn't going to never have a name for our neighborhood, but because we kept fighting these other kids and then they were Crips,

they were blue bandanas and rags. But we went into that until colors came out. When colors came out, we was like, Oh, so the, so the enemy to the Crips is the blues. Oh, we the blues. Just like that. Nobody came from California. We just said, we 415 Bloods and we're going to be the most deadliest, ruthless gang in the city.

Now you got to imagine this little neighborhood was probably outnumbered 150 to 1. But we had heart and we said we was going to terrorize the city. And we did. I mean we did it. we said we was going to terrorize the city. And we did. I mean, we did it.

I'm not saying that to glamorize. I'm just giving perspective to cause it, it's also in the mind of a 15 year old. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean a 15 year old. Right. Right.

And so we did that and boom, it just, we didn't even prepare for it. It just spread it like wildfire. Like I never forget, man, I had went to a friend, one of the first friends I went to, casualties of gangbanging. It was two friends out of Oak Cliff with another neighborhood who looked up to us and they both got killed at the same time.

They both were like really front line soldiers for the gang. They had to be. I was just looking at their bitch where not too long ago. I was like about 14. They was like 15 and 16, 15 and 16. Yeah, 15 and 16. And they both got killed, right? And I remember going to their funeral, right?

I was like, because we had red Dickies and Chuck Taylors. And you know, I still had my grandmama in me, you know, to be respectful church, all that good stuff. That stuff was still worn in my spirit. And I remember walking into the funeral home, this was like in 1993, with a red shirt, some Dickies, red Chuck Taylors, red bandana, really feeling like I'm disrespecting

this family, you know, my grandmother and grandfather's voices in my head. And I remember opening the door on a chapel, a church, and everybody in there, everybody in there, everybody in there, except the mother, cause it was a double from hell. I'm the same thing. We had them like red Chuck Taylors, red bandanas, even they was in the

casket with it. And then, and then, and then when we went to the cemetery, all of these bloods that we never knew it was no bloods in Dallas before us, before we said we're going to be bloods that we never knew. It was no bloods in Dallas before us, before we said we gonna be bloods. And so we standing at the, we at the cemetery and you have 40, 50, hundreds of bloods, Mexican, white, black, Puerto Rican, coming from far as they came, we'd never seen.

And they were paying homage to us. That's when I knew it was serious because they were paying homage to us at, you know, calling us the OGs and saying what we finna do. All right. There's, as I sit and listen to you, there's almost a sense of nostalgic reverence when I hear that story. Which is revolting. It's almost like the way we idolize the mafia, the Italian mafia in the 60s and 70s, like

that's so cool. Look at all that. But they were racketeers and murderers and pimps and everything else. Yeah. And as horrible as it sounds, I think I can almost understand how that may seem cool to a 15 year old kid. Oh yeah. Which in and of itself is really dangerous. You're absolutely correct.

We'll be right back. We're just days away from our 2024 iHeartRadio Music Festival, presented by Capital One. The biggest headliners in live music will be taking over T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas. Plus some special surprises and moments you are not going to want to miss. Stream only on Hulu. The iHeartRadio Music Festival. And listen on iHeartRadio. The most anticipated live music event of the year.

This Friday and Saturday, starting at 10 30 PM Eastern, 7 30 Pacific. We think of Franklin as the doddering dude flying a kite in the rain, but those experiments are the most important scientific discoveries of the time. I'm Evan Ratliff. Last season, we tackled the ingenuity of Elon Musk with biographer Walter Isaacson. This time, we're diving into the story of Benjamin Franklin, another genius who's desperate

to be dusted off from history. His media empire makes him the most successful self-made business person in America. I mean, he was never early to bed and early to rise type person. He's enormously famous. Women start wearing their hair in what was called a coiffure a la Franklin. And who's more relevant now than ever. The only other person who could have possibly been the first president would have been Benjamin Franklin.

But he's too old and wants Washington to do it. Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packer star Kabir Vajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. Hey, G.B. explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a

children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning in a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron, and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns and church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked.

Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiral'd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine and of course lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha libre is a type of storytelling, it's a dance, its tradition is culture. This is lucha libre behind the mask, a 12 episode podcast in both

English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport, from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask.

Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of my Kultura podcast network on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford and I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do.

Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition? Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more, because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging

into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. These grandmamas and mamas that are working hard and ain't been in jail and do love and are in church and everything else, they are so are not stupid. They see this generation of kids getting in this. Why didn't it stop? Why didn't somebody put their foot in the sand and say, we ain't letting our boys do

this? It's tough. Explain that to me. I know it happens, but I don't understand it. We talking about this current generation? Or we talking about back then? Back then. We'll talk about this current generation.

We'll get to what you do now. Back then, I think it was different in the sense that, and I think you had a slew of grandmothers and mothers who my mother was one, who really carried, like who really, you know, I hid a lot of stuff from my mother. You know, I hid a lot of stuff from her. A lot of stuff, when I used to hustle at the car wash, she would ride the city bus.

I knew what time she got off the city bus. And when that time approached, now, mind you, I'm at the car wash hustling, selling drugs, carrying guns. But when my mother come, when that city bus come down the street, I'm hiding until it passed by. Hey, I'm hiding. And that was like that, that was true for a lot of my friends. Like our mothers didn't play, but we hid a lot.

You didn't have social media, so they didn't see a lot. You know, it would have to be a name who really was different. It was different. Hey, you had to have a neighbor to say, I got many weapons off my neighbor saying, our neighbors saying, Hey, I saw him. Look, I had a car at, when I bought my first car, I had a car at 13, 14 and 15. I had a car at 13.

I paid 2,500 cash off a lot clean Cadillac Coupe de Ville with truth and volds, Systemin and everything, right? Look, at 13, I used to park the car down the street because I couldn't drive it to the house. I'm talking about a clean car. Yeah, I mean, she's gonna want to know where you got that car. I never drove it to the house.

All the money, where'd you hide that? I hid everything, look. So you got big money in your pocket. Meanwhile, your mama working for $12 an hour. So exactly, exactly. Look, you realize how messed up that is? Messed up. Look, I used to hide the car. I used to park the car down the street.

And to one day, my neighbors, one of our neighbors told my mother that I was driving the car and she confronted me about it. Right. That's how she knew I had a car. So the cat out the bag now and she is pissed. My mama is pissed. I don't have a driver's license. She is pissed, right? So one day I come in the house, it's in my book too. I talk about this part of my book. I came in, how come my mama, you're right, making minimum wage, blah, blah, blah, struggling. I mean, she working. We, I close on, I close on layaway. We had to put a layaway, get it 90 days, all that. But look, I came in the house one day, man.

I had a roll, I had a roll of money, a hundred dollar bills. And I really felt like, man, I'm, man, you know, I'm finna- Take care of my mama. They're gonna get his money. I know she gonna be good. And man, I put that money on the cabinet and she was in the kitchen.

And when she turned around and she seen that money, oh, all hell broke loose. She cursed me out, told me to get, she didn't take the money, told me to get out of her house, no ever bring. Da da da da da da da. Yeah, let's put it in perspective. She lost her husband to armed robbery.

Yeah, and's put it in perspective. She lost her husband to armed robbery. Yeah, and look, you can imagine how that pierced my perception of what I thought I was going to do, like what I thought I was doing. Like I'm finally the man. I'm going to give you $1,000 and $100 bill. At 13, 14 years old, I'm thinking you're going to be happy. Like my mom did not play that. She, she cursed me so bad.

All right. And then take the money. So drugs, typically, I mean, gangs, typically the drugs. Started that. That's the, that's the natural progression of gangs. Um, is getting in drugs because you gotta be able to sustain and all that good stuff.

So I started selling drugs, did that to the point that I had a feds in my neighborhood in 1995. And I was fortunate, I was me and one other person out of 48 people, well 48 people in my neighborhood, all my friends, they all went fed except me and another friend. I missed the indictment. I kind of know why I missed the indictment, but I missed the indictment. And kind of know why I missed the indictment,

but I missed the indictment. And all my friends got locked up. They did like 15, 20 years. But when they got locked up, after I realized that I wasn't on the list, I didn't have a secret indictment, it left me, it left the streets dried up and it left me out there to make money.

And so I started, you know, next thing you know, I'm making 35, five, seven thousand dollars next thing I'm throwing three keys and I got a trap hat. I got people working for me, et cetera, et cetera. And now I'm in a position where I'm not selling no drugs. I'm not on the blocks no more. All I do is just score it and then give it out. So you are now the leader of the Bloods. Right, right.

So you're not just a gang member, you're running it. Well, yeah. And I don't never talk about this. So I'm talking about this normally in interviews. I don't never go deep in that because I don't try to glamorize that. Like you were saying earlier, I don't never talk about this. So I'm talking about this normally in interviews. I don't never go deep in that. Cause I don't try to glamorize that. Like you were saying there, I don't like to talk about it cause I don't glamorize it.

But it is, it did happen, right? And so it put me in that position where I kind of elevated had how just the gang stuff was still happening, but it was kind of phasing out because of the, the drugs and all that good stuff. And then, uh, one day, one day I remember getting a call from, uh, one of the guys that worked for me. And he said he was out and I had a system like where if somebody had,

you got somebody who pick it up out the whole night, you'll have to assist. And so he called me and said, you're not answering. I need, I need something else I'm out. I said, well, I'll come by there and pick up the money and then we'll figure out where he at. When I came by the house and where I had to sit up, I had a house on this side of the street, a house on that side of the street.

On this side of the street, where you do business on this side of the street, you never go on this side of the street. No, never, never bring nothing, no drugs on this side of the street, just right here. I came to the house, picked up the money. When I didn't even pick up the money, I didn't get a chance to pick up the money.

Soon as I pulled up at the house, cause I was on my way to Home Depot, cause I was renovating another house, and I was 18 and getting ready to go to Home Depot. Soon as I pull up, get out the car, walk to the backyard, I see a van pull up, jumping out and I said, oh, they coming. As I walked back to the front of the backyard, I see a van pull up, jumping out. And I said, oh, they coming.

And so I walked back to the front of the house. By that time, another van coming down the street. I lay down, mind you, I ain't picked up the money. And then they had us on the ground. And then some narcotic officers that knew me personally from on the streets, but never had the opportunity to get me. I remember saying, calling the officer name out from his mask, right? And

then they went, they searching everybody. I had nothing on me. I just pulled up no money. So the guy who was working for me, they rolled him over. He had some drugs on him, right? And he had the money on it that he never gave me, right? Like four or five, maybe seven down dollars. So they got the drugs from him. He immediately said, that's mine. Cause they were his. He said, that's mine.

Cause he called me, he was there. He said, that's mine. So they put him to the side and three or four narcotics officers go into a huddle, one I know. And they said, I saw Lucky through it. And I heard him and I said, what? They say, look, he threw it. And then the other one said, yeah, yeah, Lucky. They went and devised this plan to say, and the guy was like, no, that's mine. And straight up BS. Right.

And I tell that story because that kind of spiked my whole criminal justice reform type of bone that I got in my body because up until that point, and as bad as I was, in my limited understanding, I never felt at that point that public servants, police officers, civil servants were lying. I had this, I had this idea like the police officer, he can't be lying.

They ain't gonna never lie. They ain't gonna never do that. They were, they righteous. You know, I had that. It pierced my whole idea of that because I witnessed them go into a huddle and because they knew that this the only opportunity we got to get him, we got to put these drugs on him. And so they went into a huddle and they said those are my drugs, they saw me throw them, blah, blah, blah. And they took me to jail for it. And that began this consciousness that ultimately led me to right here that we'll talk about in a little bit. But it was that scene, that officer officer those officers willing to go to court

And put their hand on the Bible and say that they saw me throw those drugs and those are my drugs That created something in me because I never thought they would do that. I never thought an officer would do that I thought officers would you know, you don't break the law to enforce the law. Then you just like me. So, but that was my naivety. I thought that was, you know, that was my naivety. And that, so on May 7th, my daughter was born. And then May 21st, I got sentenced to prison. First, I really do appreciate you going into depth on it.

The vast majority of our listeners have never gang bang, dealt drugs, First, I really do appreciate you going into depth on it. The vast majority of our listeners have never gang bang, dealt drugs, or been arrested on the front porch, and so perspective matters. It also matters to explain what you do now, which listeners will get to, but first you gotta understand how and why. But first you got to understand how and why.

And that concludes part one of my conversation with Anton Lucky. And guys, you don't want to miss part two that's now available to listen to. As his redemption story, it's coming. Together, we can change this country, but it starts with you. I'll see you in part two. iHeartRadio Music Festival, presented by Capital One. The biggest headliners in live music will be taking over T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas. Plus some special surprises and moments you are not going to want to miss. Stream only on Hulu.

The iHeartRadio Music Festival. And listen on iHeartRadio. The most anticipated live music event of the year. This Friday and Saturday, starting at 10.30 p.m. Eastern, 7.30 Pacific. We think of Franklin as the doddering dude flying a kite in the rain. Benjamin Franklin is our subject

for a new season with Walter Isaacson. He's the most successful, self-made business person in America. A printer, a scientist, a founding father, but maybe not the guy we think we know. Franklin casts his lot on the side of revolution, and it's another thing that splits the family apart. Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask.

The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the Weird Little Guys Trying to Destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast, Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford and I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads.

Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life because the more we know about what's running under the hood, better we can steer our lives. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.