Hello and welcome back to you, the listener and a South Beach sessions.

We've been off for a few months here resting and recuperating from this furnace blast.

We're about to throw in your face right now.

The most loquacious of the talkers anywhere in the sports media business.

Stephen A Smith is here to bring back South Beach sessions with a little bomb blast.

Here he is, the roots of Stephen A Smith, the entire story's a best-selling author.

You catch him on first take and he's got big plans beyond all of that.

Let's talk to Stephen A Smith.

Stephen A I want to talk to you about sort of the first formative years of your life

when you're arriving, you know, before any of what's happened now,

before you're arriving at 16 years old, what do you look at as the things that had the most

to do with shaping you, the details in your childhood, early teenage years that are imprinted

in the way that you're ambitious, in the way that you're boisterous, confident, all the things that you are.

Getting left back in a fourth grade and being held back for the entire year because of a first grade reading level,

do you mediation that I felt at that particular moment in time definitely impacted me?

My relationship with my father has lack of belief in me, definitely resonated with me.

My mother and her unwavering devotion and commitment to me and my siblings,

despite what level of negligence my father displayed that resonated with me and all of us,

but especially me from the standpoint that I've always held the belief because of my upbringing.

Call it chauvinistic, call it whatever it is that you want to and this day and age,

you know what they'll call it, but I am one of those guys who firmly believes that a man has a role

and his role is to provide for and to protect his family and he's not comfortable unless they're

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