The Reiner Family Tragedy, Mass Shootings, and an Uncle Nearest Apology Rating

Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.8 • 11.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2025

⏱️ 115 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Van and Rachel react to a weekend filled with difficult news, from the killing of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, to the mass shootings at Brown University and a Hanukkah event in Australia. Then, the return of Philip Rivers resurrects discussions about Colin Kaepernick, the cofounder of Uncle Nearest apologizes, and Atlanta tops an OnlyFans list. (0:33) Reiner family tragedy (8:59) Trump’s response (22:16) Brown University shooting (42:49) Bondi Beach shooting (1:00:04) Philip Rivers, Colin Kaepernick, and the NFL (1:32:43) Fawn Weaver apologizes (1:46:32) Atlanta loves OnlyFans Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Jade Whaley Social Producer: Bernard Moore Video Supervision: Chris Thomas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Yo, yo, yo, thought warriors. What is up? How Learning is on and is I Van Lathen Jr.
0:11.0	And it's me, Rachel and Lindsay. Right to the show. No pleasantries. This is, in my estimation,
0:19.6	one of the worst news weekends that I can remember.
0:23.2	So we're going to get right to talking about this stuff.
0:27.1	We're going to start with an in-memorium segment that is completely and totally unexpected.
0:35.2	There is bigger, more important news, perhaps, that came
0:39.0	out of this weekend, but none that is more shocking. This was gut-wrenching. Donnie? Yeah,
0:45.1	director Rob Reiner and his wife, producer Michelle Singer-Riner, died yesterday, according to a
0:50.9	spokesperson for the family. The LAPD said that it's investigating an apparent homicide after they were found dead in their home in Brentwood.
0:59.3	It was reported that the person who killed the couple was their son, Nick Reiner, the 32-year-old, is currently being held on a bail of $4 million.
1:09.3	So Nick had long struggled with drug addiction.
1:14.4	Nick and his father had worked together on a movie in 2016 called Being Charlie.
1:18.9	It was co-written by Nick and another gentleman and Rob.
1:23.3	And, you know, both Nick and Rob have been pretty forthcoming about Nick's struggles with addiction and how it affected their family dynamic.
1:35.0	Let's want to play for you a little bit before we kind of get into the news and some of the reaction to it of some of the talk that was on the press tour between father and son when they were talking about
1:47.1	the movie and talking about the genesis of the film and how it reflected their relationship.
1:51.9	The movie dealt with a lot of these subjects that the family was trying to navigate.
1:56.9	We didn't bond a lot as a kid.
1:58.6	Like he really liked baseball.
2:00.4	I like basketball and he could watch that with my brother, baseball. But I just, when I saw him do that, and it was something that I'm interested in, I was like, wow, like, he really knows a lot. And, like, it made me feel closer to him and be like, yeah. You're like, wow, my dad's Rob Reiner. I never had thought about it.
2:18.5	Yeah.
2:19.1	It didn't cross your mind, right?
	...

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