This Past Weekend with Theo Von - #577 - Mike Rowe

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00:00:30.000 I have some tour dates to tell you about.

00:00:32.060 I'll be in Chicago, Illinois on April 24th.

00:00:35.120 Miami, Florida on May 10th.

00:00:37.360 Cedar Rapids, Iowa on June 19th.

00:00:40.980 St. Paul, Minnesota on June 20th.

00:00:43.060 Fargo, North Dakota on June 21st.

00:00:46.660 Rapid City, South Dakota on June 22nd.

00:00:49.880 Winnipeg and Calgary in the Canada.

00:00:52.480 All tickets at Theovan.com slash T-O-U-R. 0.96

00:00:58.680 Please go through those links so you get accurate pricing.

00:01:01.620 And I appreciate your support for the return of the Rat Tour.

00:01:05.240 Today's guest is a host.

00:01:08.060 You know him from Dirty Jobs.

00:01:10.900 He's also an author and a podcaster.

00:01:14.540 He has a new show coming out in May called People You Should Know,

00:01:18.660 where he travels the country interviewing regular people

00:01:21.900 who are making a difference in the world around them.

00:01:24.900 It's always a good time chatting with the one and only Mr. Mike Rose.

00:01:30.460 Shine on me, and I will find a song I've been singing just before.

00:01:46.260 Oh, he's bringing up my coffee.

00:01:50.180 Oh, good.

00:01:50.560 He got me a cup of coffee.

00:01:51.980 That's how they used to do it.

00:01:53.540 Like, you really got to work for it.

00:01:54.980 You want to be in the labor force.

00:01:56.440 You got to heat it up.

00:01:57.320 Yeah, that's how it is.

00:01:59.320 All right.

00:01:59.680 Yeah, see.

00:02:00.320 Is there a cream in there?

00:02:01.460 See, this is the difference between today.

00:02:03.200 Look, this is the difference between my parents and us today.

00:02:07.880 This is how you got a cup of coffee, like my grandparents.

00:02:10.400 Yeah, man.

00:02:10.880 They would serve it like this.

00:02:12.300 Yep.

00:02:12.780 And you figure it out.

00:02:13.700 Good luck.

00:02:14.240 Figure it out, man.

00:02:15.060 You're on your own.

00:02:15.940 And here we are.

00:02:17.540 Well, remember, the last time I was at your place,

00:02:20.400 I had rolled out of the hotel, come to your house.

00:02:23.820 I wasn't quite sure who you were or where I was or anything.

00:02:26.860 And all I knew was I needed coffee, and you ordered some for me.

00:02:30.140 And they brought it in, and it was so freaking hot.

00:02:33.720 I didn't make a big deal about it,

00:02:35.480 but we were like two minutes into our conversation. 0.99

00:02:37.640 I thought, damn it, man. 0.99

00:02:39.460 I literally cleaved my tongue to the roof of my mouth there for a second. 0.99

00:02:43.760 I wonder if I could still be interesting.

00:02:45.760 And then I just powered through and decided, you know what?

00:02:47.660 It's whatever.

00:02:48.900 It's just pain.

00:02:49.420 Well, thanks for doing that, man.

00:02:51.000 Oh, that's the worst, bro.

00:02:52.780 When you drink something so hot, but you want to be a man,

00:02:56.460 that's why I think our grandfathers,

00:02:57.940 no wonder they couldn't express their feelings.

00:02:59.700 They couldn't talk.

00:03:00.580 They couldn't talk, man.

00:03:01.300 You know how hot the coffee was then?

00:03:03.300 It was magma.

00:03:04.480 Yeah.

00:03:04.860 And how jacked up their teeth were.

00:03:07.160 They were in constant pain.

00:03:08.540 Yeah.

00:03:08.840 People died of their teeth back then, all the time.

00:03:11.340 Yeah.

00:03:11.720 We lost at least a grandfather to teeth infection or to gum infection, at least.

00:03:18.020 But, yeah, people died.

00:03:19.280 It was crazy.

00:03:20.320 It's bananas.

00:03:21.180 Yeah.

00:03:21.480 I bit my lip the other day.

00:03:24.860 Oh.

00:03:25.100 And this is a funny thing for me anyway.

00:03:28.840 But the third, like the first time you do it, it's annoying and it really takes you out of your meal, takes you out of your conversation.

00:03:35.240 Yeah.

00:03:35.440 And part of the reason is because you know it's going to happen again.

00:03:38.820 And then when you do it again, it's a different kind of rage, right?

00:03:43.820 And because it's tinged with the inevitability, like it's going to happen.

00:03:47.800 And then when you bite it the third time, it's just white, hot pain and like an anger at the universe.

00:03:54.720 And it's irrational.

00:03:55.880 Yeah.

00:03:56.260 But it's just one of those things.

00:03:58.060 When I – and maybe four or five times you're going to bite it and it's going to be like that for the next 24 hours until your body finally sends some sort of message and the swelling starts to go down.

00:04:08.380 But it is a – it's a horrible moment in your day when you start that crucible.

00:04:14.380 It's an oral Vietnam, man. 0.71

00:04:16.560 There's nothing like that going down that journey, the D-Day of every bite you take and one of them is going to land – step on that hidden IED of a previously bitten inner lip.

00:04:30.400 An oral Vietnam. 0.82

00:04:32.280 Can we get them some coffee?

00:04:33.820 It's going to happen again.

00:04:35.740 Some cream.

00:04:36.340 They just bring you more coffee, more hot coffee.

00:04:38.060 You know what?

00:04:38.740 Maybe I should – I used to drink – I used to drink black all the time and then I went two creams and one cream.

00:04:44.840 And you know what I find my – it upsets people when you change your coffee order.

00:04:49.960 Like the people around you in your circle, like I always thought you were a black coffee guy.

00:04:54.020 Oh, yeah.

00:04:54.800 And now what's with the cream or what's with the almond milk?

00:04:57.200 You don't want to do that.

00:04:57.920 That sends a whole different message.

00:04:59.420 Yeah, definitely.

00:05:00.240 In some communities that is not good.

00:05:03.120 Well, there's no –

00:05:04.240 It's not good. 0.77

00:05:04.900 There's no nipples on the almond. 0.60

00:05:07.220 Yeah. 0.99

00:05:07.460 And if you're looking for them, you are a randy character. 0.69

00:05:11.280 Well, you can't – I mean, curiosity would require some kind of cursory inspection from this milk delivery system with no nipples. 1.00

00:05:20.280 Oh, look at you, Zach.

00:05:21.140 That's amazing.

00:05:22.240 Thank you very much.

00:05:23.760 Where did you get those out of?

00:05:25.140 Did you go into the cow?

00:05:26.460 I saw the one we had was expired, so I wasn't –

00:05:29.740 Did you really?

00:05:30.800 Oh, my.

00:05:31.400 It's right there.

00:05:31.860 You went to the corner to get me some of these little poisonous pods.

00:05:35.080 These are good.

00:05:36.060 There's a whole –

00:05:36.900 Oh, yeah.

00:05:38.140 Why is everything –

00:05:39.460 They have melatonin in them now.

00:05:41.240 I'm like, should coffee creamer have melatonin in it?

00:05:44.380 I don't know.

00:05:45.340 Isn't that the stuff that makes you tired?

00:05:46.860 Yeah.

00:05:47.300 It's like, what's going on?

00:05:48.240 That is a mixed message.

00:05:49.280 I know.

00:05:49.880 Here's some caffeine with a little sedative for you.

00:05:52.880 We'll just let your body sort it out.

00:05:54.640 Yeah.

00:05:54.940 It's where we are.

00:05:55.720 Next thing you know, you're biting through your lip.

00:05:57.040 Yeah.

00:05:57.380 Curse in the universe.

00:05:58.680 Oral Vietnam. 0.98

00:05:59.880 Dying to your teeth.

00:06:02.580 Oh, dude. 0.63

00:06:03.720 Dude, do you have any idea how much feedback I got?

00:06:07.640 I don't know if this happens to you.

00:06:11.000 Like, you see yourself maybe on YouTube, and it's clearly you, right?

00:06:14.720 This is a thing.

00:06:15.540 You don't dispute it.

00:06:16.840 It's you.

00:06:17.300 You did whatever it is, whatever conversation you're having.

00:06:19.300 But you don't have any real recollection of the conversation.

00:06:22.600 Yeah.

00:06:22.840 You're just seeing yourself, right?

00:06:25.240 Like, this happened to me a lot years ago when people started uploading these incidents

00:06:32.200 on QVC, like in the middle of the night where I'd been fired for various inappropriate

00:06:38.560 interactions with the product.

00:06:40.160 Oh, you were on QVC?

00:06:41.260 Oh, yeah.

00:06:41.560 Yeah.

00:06:41.960 Yeah.

00:06:42.160 But when I look at those old clips, and I can't deny that it's me, but I have absolutely

00:06:50.900 no idea what's going to happen or what I'm going to say next.

00:06:55.180 It's very unusual.

00:06:56.060 It's like biting your lip.

00:06:57.180 Yeah.

00:06:57.520 Because there's nothing you do about it.

00:06:58.460 You just sit there and you watch yourself doing things you don't remember doing.

00:07:01.360 And you just hope to God you don't blow it.

00:07:04.580 I didn't know you got involved in this.

00:07:06.800 I'm seriously involved.

00:07:07.880 Yeah.

00:07:07.960 This is the dark arts.

00:07:09.420 Selling jewelry to people that are high on sleeping pills.

00:07:13.860 Yeah.

00:07:14.440 I mean, they're lonely hearts.

00:07:16.440 They're, you know, that look at my nails so nicely manicured and all that.

00:07:19.760 That was 1989.

00:07:20.520 That's you selling those?

00:07:21.480 Or 90.

00:07:22.860 Were you going to a poison concert?

00:07:24.460 What were you even wearing those for?

00:07:25.620 You know, I mean, as long as you're going to do it, find the cat sack.

00:07:31.440 That's when I knew my life had taken a weird turn.

00:07:34.120 This was 1990.

00:07:35.280 It was my first job in TV.

00:07:36.900 Was it really?

00:07:37.840 That's crazy.

00:07:38.560 I didn't even know that.

00:07:39.860 Oh, yeah.

00:07:40.640 Yeah.

00:07:41.060 Oh, my gosh.

00:07:42.220 Look at you.

00:07:43.140 Look at that hair.

00:07:43.820 Right?

00:07:44.460 Where were you from, Transylvania?

00:07:47.600 So this is a lava lamp, right?

00:07:49.540 And I have no idea how to behave.

00:07:52.880 I just want to know if it's really hot.

00:07:55.860 Well, guess what, dude?

00:07:57.000 It's hot, man.

00:07:57.780 Put two creamers in it.

00:07:58.960 It's like that lava.

00:08:01.280 I mean, obviously, it's not really lava.

00:08:03.080 It's magma.

00:08:03.800 Nuh-uh.

00:08:04.500 No.

00:08:04.900 It's not lava?

00:08:06.160 I open this thing up on the air just because it's three in the morning, right?

00:08:10.980 And you're just trying to make sense out of whatever they bring you next.

00:08:14.900 It could be the Amcor negative ion generator.

00:08:17.480 It could be the health team infrared pain reliever.

00:08:20.160 It could be a lava lamp.

00:08:21.200 Oh, yeah.

00:08:21.740 It could be a child's diaper that sorts coins.

00:08:23.780 They brought me a cat sack.

00:08:27.740 K-A-T-S-A-K. 1.00

00:08:29.720 It's a cat sack.

00:08:31.520 I thought it was a joke.

00:08:32.980 It's not.

00:08:33.620 It's like a grocery bag lined with mylar, right?

00:08:38.160 And your cat crawls in it.

00:08:39.540 It makes a crinkling sound, and cats love it.

00:08:41.840 Oh, that's nice.

00:08:42.520 So this is the kind of thing, man.

00:08:44.260 You just – I would sit there for three hours in the middle of the night trying to – there was no training program or anything.

00:08:51.700 You know, they would just bring you these things that looked like you'd get them out of that machine on the carnival midway with the claw.

00:09:00.080 Oh, yeah.

00:09:00.780 You know, it was really just stuff that had failed to sell in prime time.

00:09:05.080 And so if you're new, there's no training program.

00:09:07.980 They just put you on in the middle of the night, and they just bring you the stuff, man.

00:09:11.200 One thing after the next, and you talk for eight minutes.

00:09:13.660 I love that.

00:09:14.680 We should bring that back.

00:09:16.020 What if we brought something like that back?

00:09:17.620 Well, I mean, QVC is still on.

00:09:19.540 It's just that back in those days, no one really knew about it.

00:09:25.060 They didn't have any big vendors or anything.

00:09:27.280 Today, you know, they do $6, $7 billion a year.

00:09:30.020 Do they really?

00:09:30.780 Giant.

00:09:31.540 It's huge.

00:09:32.160 Home shopping is huge.

00:09:33.260 I wonder if we should – what if we did a fun one on, like, YouTube, and we sold American – products that were American-made, Mike?

00:09:39.280 I'm in.

00:09:41.140 I'm in.

00:09:42.060 Look, there are no new ideas.

00:09:43.440 Like, I joked the last time I was at your pad in Nashville, it was like, I really felt like you had tapped into, like, a Wayne's World meets Charlie Rose, right?

00:09:55.220 And so all those old ideas will come back.

00:09:58.780 Telethons will come back.

00:10:00.120 Oh, I love that.

00:10:01.060 Home shopping never really went away.

00:10:03.660 Telethons were great, though.

00:10:04.820 You'd call up, and you'd be like, who's crippled? 0.91

00:10:06.640 Sometimes my stepdad would get drunk or whatever.

00:10:08.720 Right.

00:10:09.000 And he'd, like, want to impress my mom, so we'd ring up one of those telethons that we're on just to – he'd be like, hey, it's Randy, who's crippled over there.

00:10:17.140 And they'd, like, tell you who's crippled or whatever, and he'd be like, put $30 on that one.

00:10:21.820 Well, do you remember Jerry Lewis doing the telethons?

00:10:25.040 I – yep.

00:10:26.280 Jerry's kids.

00:10:27.260 Jerry's kids.

00:10:28.160 I mean, he was real – I mean, he raised, like, a lot of money.

00:10:31.100 He did a lot of good in that world.

00:10:32.440 But you get 36 hours into a telethon, right?

00:10:36.500 You've been up 36 hours.

00:10:37.820 Yeah, you're on QVC, man.

00:10:39.280 That's – and I did – there were times on QVC where it snowed, and, like, the next ghost couldn't come in.

00:10:47.800 So when you're – when you've been up for that long, and you're on live TV, and they bring you, like, a collectible doll.

00:10:55.360 Yeah.

00:10:55.760 And you're hallucinating.

00:10:56.840 And you don't even understand that people collect dolls, but they do, right?

00:11:00.240 They do.

00:11:00.700 And so you're just sitting there, like, this doll would be next to me, and her name would be Rachel, and she'd be dressed up like a tramp from Little Women or something.

00:11:10.740 Oh, yeah.

00:11:11.480 And you just give them stories, you know?

00:11:13.420 Pride and prejudice.

00:11:14.480 Exactly.

00:11:15.280 I loved him as he loved me.

00:11:18.640 So Emily Bronte.

00:11:20.460 Or was it Charlotte?

00:11:21.100 Oh, I'm not sure.

00:11:23.480 I think they've dated for a while.

00:11:24.760 I'm not sure who was – they may have – one of them took the other one's name.

00:11:27.880 Well, this is – like, what you just did is exactly what I would do every night.

00:11:32.340 It was free associating over whatever they brought.

00:11:35.500 I wasn't a very good salesman, but I was good at, like, starting sentences with no clear end and just keep going.

00:11:42.620 So the next thing you know, you're giving these dolls, like, very elaborate backstories, you know?

00:11:47.960 Like, you know, she's a doll that gives you just a hint of possibility.

00:11:54.100 She says no, but there's yes, yes in those eyes.

00:11:57.420 And then the camera guy pushes in close, really close.

00:12:00.700 And I'm sitting here like this looking at a monitor, looking at myself, looking at the doll, and a million people are watching.

00:12:07.380 She's new in town.

00:12:08.420 She's new in town, and she's keen to make some friends, and there's really no telling how far she'll go or how far you'll let her.

00:12:15.660 Because it's really up to you, caller.

00:12:17.300 For three easy payments at $29.95, young Rachel here will be on her way to you. 0.99

00:12:21.880 And whatever you do with her and the privacy of your own curio is between you and your Lord.

00:12:27.420 I'm just here to tell you that she's on sale, and she looks like a sport. 1.00

00:12:31.420 All righty.

00:12:32.080 What's next?

00:12:33.100 Next up, Mike, we actually have the Princess Diana Beanie Babies that are in town.

00:12:38.840 Hey, that's fantastic, Theo.

00:12:40.040 They're just passing through, actually.

00:12:41.660 Mike, there's not many of them.

00:12:42.780 Well, you know, aren't we all just passing through, Theo?

00:12:45.280 When you really think about it, this whole notion of permanence as it relates to porcelain dolls, I think that's something we can dive into to kill three, four, maybe five minutes.

00:12:54.420 Oh, I believe that.

00:12:55.360 And I'll tell you this, that these Beanie Babies are stuffed with – what's the – it's not cotton.

00:13:03.100 What is it?

00:13:03.640 It's styrofoam, Theo.

00:13:04.940 Oh, yeah, styrofoam.

00:13:06.080 They're stuffed with styrofoam.

00:13:07.460 And I'll tell you, it was a bold move on a manufacturing level.

00:13:09.960 A Russian cotton, as they call it.

00:13:11.700 That's right, because when you get it wet, it swells up a little bit, like those nesting dolls in reverse.

00:13:17.020 When you see that little Princess Diana Beanie Baby swell up like a tick, your heart's going to beat with anticipation and wonder about what could possibly happen next.

00:13:26.400 Yep.

00:13:26.620 And we also – she comes – if you buy her now, she comes with these two CIA dolls.

00:13:30.380 Mm-hmm.

00:13:31.460 We're not saying anything.

00:13:32.960 You say potato.

00:13:34.520 I say massage.

00:13:35.920 I say cavity search because with the Beanie Baby, it's really your property.

00:13:41.140 That's the beauty, especially the Princess Diana Beanie Babies because with a touch of royalty, well, they're dressed in purple too, the color of kings, Theo.

00:13:49.620 I thought that's worth knowing.

00:13:51.640 And if you order right now within the next 44 seconds, both of these CIA Beanie Babies will be stuffed with pure polyester or gay cotton, as they call it in some circles. 0.51

00:14:01.760 That's right.

00:14:02.440 And for this week, just to mix things up a little bit, each one of these Beanie Babies, every one out of 100, will be stuffed with cocaine.

00:14:10.540 Oh, wow.

00:14:11.220 So it's really going to shake things up because who knows who's going to get it and who knows what's going to happen next.

00:14:17.600 Oh, I wouldn't put it in a baby's crib unless you want him to walk this week.

00:14:22.340 That's what I'd say.

00:14:23.520 I just bit my lip.

00:14:25.700 I'm going to put two creamers inside of myself. 0.92

00:14:29.740 Mike, we have you here.

00:14:32.920 Thank you, dude.

00:14:33.640 I didn't know you were in those trenches.

00:14:35.700 Because you know what I've thought about?

00:14:37.120 It would be neat to do something if we did it with products, only products that are American-made, right?

00:14:41.260 I just got this shirt and a jacket from this company, American Giant, right?

00:14:45.960 So-

00:14:46.920 Seriously?

00:14:48.220 Yeah.

00:14:49.020 Bring in that jacket if you can.

00:14:50.760 I know those guys.

00:14:52.340 Do you, uh, Bathrop or what's it, Winthrop?

00:14:54.260 Byard Winthrop.

00:14:55.580 Byard Winthrop, yeah.

00:14:56.420 Is the CEO of American-

00:14:57.960 This, are you messing with, like, did-

00:15:00.000 I swear to God, dude.

00:15:01.700 All right.

00:15:01.820 Bring it in.

00:15:02.660 It's a gray one out there.

00:15:04.460 I'll tell you a true story about this guy, Byard Winthrop. 0.92

00:15:07.000 16 years ago, he sent me a sweatshirt in the mail because he saw me on Dirty Jobs getting the absolute crap knocked out of me.

00:15:18.400 And he saw my clothes being destroyed right and left.

00:15:20.760 He goes, this is an indestructible sweatshirt.

00:15:23.000 It's 100% made in the USA, and Slate Magazine had just written a story called The World's Greatest Hoodie.

00:15:32.960 So it wasn't cheap, but it was made from cotton that was literally picked, like, outside of Gaffney, maybe, or Middlesex, South Carolina, where their factories were.

00:15:43.220 He showed me pictures of the employees who stitched it, you're right, the yarn, the everything.

00:15:49.100 And I still have it.

00:15:50.460 Wow.

00:15:50.920 I wore that thing.

00:15:52.360 It was completely in it.

00:15:53.400 There it is, Slate Magazine.

00:15:54.780 This is the greatest hoodie ever.

00:15:56.020 This is December 2012.

00:15:57.460 So he sent me this sweatshirt, and I wore it, and I gave him some love on Dirty Jobs because it really is amazing.

00:16:05.620 You know, it's the kind of sweatshirt.

00:16:07.380 Do you remember the Champion sweatshirts?

00:16:09.820 Yeah.

00:16:10.160 With the reverse weave.

00:16:11.660 Yeah.

00:16:12.200 Right?

00:16:12.540 They were, like, the Varsity sweatshirts, the Harvard crew guys.

00:16:15.740 It's the kind of sweatshirt your girlfriend steals.

00:16:19.620 It's those.

00:16:20.860 So anyway, I never knew what happened to the guy, but he reached out a couple years ago, and American Giant is still doing it.

00:16:28.360 Like, I mean.

00:16:29.320 Yeah, they're making clothes in America, right?

00:16:31.280 Because this is, yeah.

00:16:32.680 How did I come across this?

00:16:33.980 Oh, a friend of mine showed this to me.

00:16:35.900 They sent me a clip about a guy was trying to make a product in America.

00:16:40.520 Yeah.

00:16:40.960 And he couldn't do it.

00:16:42.080 Yeah, I'll put it on for a few minutes.

00:16:43.380 This is my AG right here, Daddy.

00:16:45.060 That's great, man.

00:16:46.240 Yeah.

00:16:46.880 Yep, they're doing it.

00:16:48.580 They're actually doing it.

00:16:50.040 People don't understand how jacked up this is.

00:16:52.360 That, back in 1988, 80% of all of the clothing we wore was made in America.

00:17:03.760 Yeah.

00:17:04.160 And today it's 2%.

00:17:05.300 It's bananas.

00:17:06.420 It's unbelievable.

00:17:07.180 The problem that those guys have is there's a labor challenge because what's happening is they're competing, obviously, with China and with Vietnam and with a lot of other places.

00:17:21.080 And those places, you know, they don't have the same regulations.

00:17:25.840 They don't have the same requirements.

00:17:30.260 They don't have the same conditions and factories.

00:17:33.260 All that stuff.

00:17:34.000 Right.

00:17:34.100 You don't have to be fully awake to work.

00:17:36.060 You don't even have to really be human.

00:17:38.720 I'm not sure what the laws are.

00:17:41.620 I just know that when the dust settles, it's a hell of a lot harder to do it here.

00:17:46.740 So they do it.

00:17:48.480 They're trying to do it.

00:17:49.500 They do it elsewhere.

00:17:50.840 They do it in South Carolina.

00:17:52.480 They do it in South Carolina.

00:17:53.340 American Giant.

00:17:54.040 American Giant does.

00:17:54.960 But it's crazy to think that when you think about – this is a misconception that I started to realize that I had, that when I travel around the country because we've probably – and I just said this recently, but we've – touring comedy, we've probably done the top 200 cities size-wise, right?

00:18:11.600 Like some comedians, they go to 50 cities, right?

00:18:14.060 Sure.

00:18:14.480 And they go to the – we went as many places as you could go.

00:18:17.800 And we still have more to go, but I mean like anywhere from like Lubbock to La Crosse.

00:18:27.360 Yeah, I mean just – to Fargo.

00:18:29.780 I mean we're going to medium-sized cities.

00:18:32.500 And you always think like, oh, well, there's factories everywhere that make things and stuff like that.

00:18:36.780 There's not.

00:18:37.540 No.

00:18:38.140 There's not.

00:18:38.960 And you think, oh, well, I'm sure there's always – when you're flying on an airplane, you're like, oh, I'm sure we're passing thousands and hundreds of thousands of factories that are making products and sweatshirts.

00:18:47.540 And we're not.

00:18:49.080 No.

00:18:49.500 It used to be – I mean the Rust Belt in particular, like that part of the Mid-Atlantic, those were factory towns.

00:18:55.260 The Tetanus Belt too they called it.

00:18:56.780 The Tetanus.

00:18:57.720 Well, I mean it was – there's so many rivers up there and so the mills were by the rivers and so the factories were near the mills and the cotton was spun there.

00:19:07.260 But this guy Byard, he's actually become a friend of mine and he's on a mission and like flannel, like hand-dyed yarn in flannel was something – like those old thick flannel shirts that we grew up with.

00:19:23.340 You can't get them anymore.

00:19:24.640 So American Giants started making those.

00:19:26.460 They started making these hoodies and the more I read about them, the more I liked them.

00:19:30.660 So he's become – like he's in my world now because I try it on my podcast.

00:19:35.280 I'm not there yet.

00:19:36.060 But I'm really trying to make sure all the sponsors have an American-made story just because why not?

00:19:44.740 See, the thing is, man, if Trump succeeds at the reshoring effort –

00:19:51.600 With the tariffs.

00:19:52.740 Yeah, that's part of it.

00:19:53.940 But if in general, he gets manufacturing reinvigorated in this country, then there's going to be a challenge that like a lot of people aren't talking about, which is labor.

00:20:07.220 So there's – in January, there were 482,000 open positions in manufacturing in this country, right?

00:20:17.160 480,000 open positions.

00:20:19.080 But if he gets his way and this all gets reinvigorated, you're talking about two or three million new jobs.

00:20:27.380 But there's no workforce sitting there going, this is what I want to do.

00:20:32.460 Or prepare to do it?

00:20:33.720 They're not – so there's a skills gap for sure.

00:20:36.100 Okay.

00:20:36.640 But there's also a will gap.

00:20:39.580 Right.

00:20:40.260 Okay.

00:20:40.580 So let's talk about a couple of these things, Mike.

00:20:42.520 So first let's talk about – I'm going to take this off because it is pretty warm in here.

00:20:46.400 But I will say this.

00:20:47.120 This feels great. 0.92

00:20:47.740 You will sweat your balls off in that thing.

00:20:48.460 They made a T-shirt.

00:20:49.420 Oh, dude, you will never – this thing will keep your coffee warm for seven eons, dude.

00:20:53.740 It gets – I mean, not to turn it into a commercial, but I swear, it's weird how soft it'll get.

00:20:59.180 It gets softer and it gets thicker.

00:21:01.160 It'll smell a little funky.

00:21:02.300 Oh, God.

00:21:02.920 It's going to turn into a wife. 1.00

00:21:06.100 Just bit my lip again.

00:21:07.320 Hey. 1.00

00:21:07.660 Damn it. 0.99

00:21:08.700 But no, this is really awesome, Mike. 0.99

00:21:10.580 And I know you have a new show that's coming out on your YouTube on May 2nd where you went and met with a lot of just workers on the ground, right?

00:21:19.380 We do a lot of that.

00:21:20.380 But this thing is kind of important.

00:21:24.700 The tariff stuff?

00:21:25.580 Yeah.

00:21:25.900 Okay, so let's start there.

00:21:27.480 So Trump has put in a lot of – he started this kind of tariff war, right?

00:21:31.920 Yeah.

00:21:33.020 And you hear people say it's good.

00:21:34.680 You hear people say that it's bad.

00:21:35.780 From my perspective, after traveling around the country, I don't know how else you're going to get jobs back here because it just – there's a lot of towns that are boarded up.

00:21:42.540 There's a lot of small cities that are boarded up.

00:21:44.140 I mean a whole city.

00:21:45.980 You walk through the city of Jackson, Mississippi.

00:21:48.800 During the day, it looks like a movie set.

00:21:52.560 It's very clean.

00:21:53.980 It's beautiful.

00:21:55.060 But there's nothing – and that's one of 40 probably cities that we've seen that are like that.

00:22:00.120 So I'm just thinking what's going to come and save these cities if something needs to?

00:22:04.780 And so then you start to see Trump put these tariffs on, and then you start to get the idea, well, it's to bring jobs back so we have jobs here so it keeps cities busy.

00:22:12.860 Yeah.

00:22:12.960 So it's two different conversations, I think.

00:22:15.920 And obviously, I'm not an economist.

00:22:17.800 Me neither.

00:22:18.520 In fact, I don't know an economist who thinks tariffs are a good idea.

00:22:22.200 I really don't.

00:22:22.980 I don't know an economist.

00:22:25.080 I know a couple.

00:22:26.460 But the ones I'm most interested in are like slightly right of center where they don't agree either, right?

00:22:33.160 So like everybody is either having a conversation about whether or not it's a good idea economically.

00:22:40.520 I call that like a tier two conversation.

00:22:42.960 So you're having a tier one conversation.

00:22:45.420 You're saying, well, wait a minute.

00:22:46.620 What if there's something in the country that's actually more important than the economy long term?

00:22:54.360 What if – like what could that be?

00:22:56.160 The economy of the human spirit, I think.

00:22:57.700 It could be that.

00:22:59.160 And I get all kinds of grief for this.

00:23:02.080 But I think it's a fair analogy.

00:23:04.180 I think about – well, hell, I think about slavery in 1870, right?

00:23:10.160 And I think about the conversation that was going on in the country and a big part of it was, wait, if we get rid of this, do you have any idea what it's going to do to the economy?

00:23:20.540 Not just for the south, which would collapse, but for the north.

00:23:23.580 Who was blind to all the products.

00:23:24.780 Who was all dressed in cotton.

00:23:26.100 Right.

00:23:26.300 And, of course, there's the triangle trade, molasses, rum, slaves, right? 0.99

00:23:30.160 This is an eternal wheel that had been going on for time immemorial.

00:23:34.580 Yeah, dark rum.

00:23:35.340 Where do you think that came from?

00:23:37.460 You know what I'm saying?

00:23:38.300 You put a couple – you know?

00:23:39.760 I think I know what you're saying.

00:23:41.300 I'm just saying you mix a few items and you got some – that's the best rum they got.

00:23:45.240 It's good rum.

00:23:46.080 But if you fundamentally were to make the slavery decision based on nothing but whether or not it was good or bad for the economy, well, we'd still have slavery.

00:23:57.160 Right.

00:23:57.320 So we got to a point where people said, wait, wait, wait.

00:24:02.080 This can't keep going.

00:24:04.300 This isn't human.

00:24:05.120 That's right.

00:24:05.560 Right.

00:24:05.940 Right.

00:24:06.100 And so it was bad.

00:24:09.880 The economy crapped the bed.

00:24:11.420 We fought a war.

00:24:12.540 A lot of people died.

00:24:14.000 And I don't mean to sound glib when I say it.

00:24:16.940 I don't know what the real ramifications are going to be.

00:24:21.540 I don't have a crystal ball.

00:24:23.000 But I do think that the reason people are talking past each other with the tariffs is because some people are saying, look, it's a tax, period.

00:24:30.740 It's not good for global trade, which is true.

00:24:33.700 But if there's this other – if you're trying to transform Jackson, Mississippi, then you at least have to elevate the conversation to these – this other set of consequences that might happen if you shake the whole thing up.

00:24:47.680 Now, again, I put a big like asterisk on that, i.e. I don't really know what I'm talking about.

00:24:54.460 But I do believe that there are unintended consequences and intended consequences.

00:25:00.960 And the consequences of messing with the tariffs are probably both.

00:25:07.560 But do you feel like – do you think Trump, his intentions are good?

00:25:14.340 Here's what I think.

00:25:15.560 When I started my little foundation, which, by the way, we're still doing it.

00:25:20.120 We've got $3 million we're giving away this month in these work ethic scholarships.

00:25:24.540 So we're training people for skilled jobs.

00:25:28.160 We're training people for manufacturing jobs.

00:25:30.400 We've been doing it for years.

00:25:31.300 Oh, that's me in a cap and gown sitting there without any pants on as if to indicate optically that even though I have my degree, I'm not actually trained for any of the opportunities that currently exist.

00:25:41.480 Oh, you look like you just graduated from San Francisco.

00:25:44.100 I'll say that, dude.

00:25:45.160 Nice legs.

00:25:45.920 It was an experimental phase.

00:25:47.260 That's okay.

00:25:47.620 My dad used to wear those shoes, dude.

00:25:49.540 Hey, you can see my shark bite there on my left knee.

00:25:53.220 There you go.

00:25:53.920 Look at that.

00:25:54.240 That hurt.

00:25:54.820 Yeah, a lot of sharks over there in San Fran, those bays, buddy, you know.

00:25:58.780 So Trump's intentions, right?

00:26:00.480 I don't know.

00:26:01.280 I don't know the man.

00:26:02.500 I'm rooting for him.

00:26:03.660 But here's what happened to me.

00:26:04.940 When I started that foundation.

00:26:06.700 You started this.

00:26:07.520 Yep.

00:26:07.840 Because your foundation gives out work ethic scholarships.

00:26:11.500 Work ethic scholarships.

00:26:12.540 And people can apply on the website.

00:26:14.080 If you click on scholarship right there up at the top, yeah, it'll take you to a, well, that's me and a bunch of people who got the scholarship.

00:26:22.960 There you go.

00:26:23.740 Yeah.

00:26:23.980 That's awesome.

00:26:24.520 Can we donate to that?

00:26:25.660 You can donate to it.

00:26:26.640 Sure.

00:26:27.140 Awesome, man.

00:26:27.840 Yeah.

00:26:28.160 In fact, we just auctioned off these guys up in Ohio, made me a truck.

00:26:32.920 They made a micro works work truck.

00:26:35.420 Rogan's head exploded when he saw this.

00:26:38.120 This is a 1964 power wagon.

00:26:41.180 And they built it from scratch.

00:26:44.720 It was beautiful.

00:26:45.480 And they took it to the Barrett-Jackson auction.

00:26:47.960 And we got one and a half million bucks for it.

00:26:49.760 No way.

00:26:50.180 So that all went to scholarships.

00:26:52.260 I remember last time I was telling you.

00:26:54.100 We're going to donate way less than that. 0.96

00:26:55.080 I was auctioning off all kinds of crap from dirty jobs to raise money.

00:26:59.300 We've given away about 12 million bucks in these things. 0.94

00:27:01.200 That's amazing, man.

00:27:02.040 But I'm not saying it because I'm awesome.

00:27:04.360 No, you're just saying this is so this is a way that you're trying to be a part of the

00:27:07.800 things that you've gone through and seen.

00:27:09.560 You want to put guys back in the workforce and make them be prepared.

00:27:12.520 Is that right?

00:27:13.300 That is right.

00:27:14.200 And the answer to your question regarding Trump actually starts with Obama because the

00:27:17.880 year we started this in 2008, I don't know if you remember it, but he had a thing

00:27:23.880 called the Highway Infrastructure Act.

00:27:26.200 And it was big news, headlines everywhere.

00:27:29.020 He was going to create three million shovel-ready jobs, right?

00:27:33.960 And I was rooting for him.

00:27:35.900 And then dirty jobs at the time was at its absolute peak.

00:27:40.840 And what was weird as the country was going into a recession was everybody I was talking

00:27:46.200 to on dirty jobs, there are 12 million unemployed people, but they all had like help wanted

00:27:51.040 signs out. 0.74

00:27:52.080 They were really struggling to hire and their basic bitch was, we just can't find people 1.00

00:27:58.080 who are excited to pick up a shovel. 0.97

00:28:00.200 We can't find people who want to do the work that we have.

00:28:04.020 So I reached out in an open letter to the president in 2009 and just said, look, man, I

00:28:11.100 am rooting for you.

00:28:12.700 I think three million shovel-ready jobs sounds great.

00:28:16.140 But part of making that succeed has to include a campaign to help make shovel-ready jobs cool

00:28:24.580 because right now people aren't buying it.

00:28:27.060 There it is.

00:28:27.440 Look at that, man.

00:28:27.980 You guys are unbelievable.

00:28:28.960 That's an open letter to the president.

00:28:30.640 March 11, 2009.

00:28:32.240 I am awed by the task at hand and compelled to tell you about MicroWorks, a public awareness

00:28:36.620 campaign designed to reinvigorate the trades.

00:28:38.400 Yeah, we need – there needs to be – you're saying – look.

00:28:43.720 I'm saying it because it's about to happen again.

00:28:45.400 Right.

00:28:45.920 Donald Trump is going down a road and if he succeeds, he's going to create millions of

00:28:54.480 manufacturing jobs in a country that currently has nearly 500,000 manufacturing jobs open

00:29:02.400 because the people who run those factories can't find people who want to do the work. 0.67

00:29:09.760 So it's not enough to create the jobs.

00:29:12.840 Right.

00:29:13.300 And look, a lot of your listeners are probably thinking, well, make the pay better.

00:29:17.660 Make it more interesting.

00:29:20.100 Make it more palatable.

00:29:21.140 And we can have that conversation for sure.

00:29:22.900 But the bigger issue still is there's no enthusiasm for the work.

00:29:27.880 We took shop class out of high school.

00:29:29.880 We robbed kids of the opportunity to even see what that kind of work even looks like. 0.99

00:29:35.420 Meanwhile, we told a whole generation of kids they were fucking screwed if they didn't 0.98

00:29:40.760 get a four-year degree, right? 0.98

00:29:43.220 And so people say, Mike, how did college get so expensive?

00:29:47.120 I know you know this, but nothing has gotten more expensive in the last 40 years than a four-year

00:29:52.120 degree.

00:29:52.480 Not real estate, not health care, not energy, nothing, right?

00:30:00.800 And so we keep telling kids they're screwed if they don't go in this direction.

00:30:05.860 We free up endless money to loan them.

00:30:09.440 So now you've got $1.7 trillion in student debt on the books.

00:30:13.380 You've got 7.6 million open jobs right now, most of which don't require a four-year degree.

00:30:19.580 And here's the other screwed up part.

00:30:22.240 You've got 6.8 million able-bodied men who are not only not looking for work.

00:30:29.040 I mean, they're out of the workforce and not looking.

00:30:32.900 So all of that together, we've never seen that before in peacetime anyway.

00:30:39.720 So something beyond the tariffs, something beyond policy is going to have to happen to make 22-year-olds

00:30:49.680 go, yeah, man, I would consider doing that.

00:30:51.920 Right.

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00:32:02.960 I like Armra colostrum.

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00:32:11.780 Well, I've got some thoughts on that.

00:32:13.200 So one is, do you think that the college, one of the reasons it went up was because

00:32:17.460 most of that money was loans, and then that was almost a scam, not a scam, but a scheme

00:32:23.360 to...

00:32:23.860 Scam's good. 0.96

00:32:24.760 Yeah.

00:32:25.600 Sure.

00:32:26.020 Wow.

00:32:26.400 Look, it's a product, man.

00:32:28.060 What you're selling...

00:32:29.520 Right, but how does that money...

00:32:30.360 So just so I know, so I'm clear.

00:32:31.520 So that money works because then the college loans it to you, they put interest on it,

00:32:37.680 and then you have to pay it back.

00:32:38.740 Well, the college doesn't loan it.

00:32:40.240 Sometimes you might get a scholarship from the college.

00:32:42.280 That's not a loan.

00:32:43.440 But financial aid packages can involve like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which sounds like

00:32:49.840 your awesome aunt and uncle somewhere.

00:32:51.540 Yeah, it also sounds like you borrowed some money from a guy in Memphis.

00:32:54.360 That's all I'm saying.

00:32:54.600 Well, actually, what it is is some faceless bureaucrat in a tall, soulless building in

00:33:00.540 Kansas City that's just crunching the numbers, right?

00:33:03.960 So...

00:33:04.440 So the more people that they can get to go to college, the more interest that they can

00:33:08.480 get off of these big loans, right?

00:33:09.860 So sure, the people loaning the money are getting interest on the loans, but it's the colleges

00:33:15.860 themselves that...

00:33:18.000 Like right now, literally as we speak, there's a screaming headline.

00:33:22.500 Trump just put a hold on $2 billion of federal money that was going to go straight to Harvard.

00:33:31.100 To Harvard, right?

00:33:31.140 To Harvard, that's right.

00:33:32.420 Now, why would he do that?

00:33:33.700 You know, people are screaming, oh my God, it's something about free speech.

00:33:38.920 And, you know, $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard has been paused due to activism on campus.

00:33:46.460 Where in the headline does it tell you that Harvard has a $52 billion endowment?

00:33:52.420 Nowhere.

00:33:53.220 But they do.

00:33:54.500 They've got over $50 billion in an endowment.

00:33:58.460 Yeah, that might not even have an effect.

00:34:00.640 Well, I mean, look, colleges, especially the top tier colleges, have an awful lot of money.

00:34:08.180 And they have a steady stream of customers because in our society, we have completely bought into the notion that what you're purchasing in these schools is an education, which you're actually purchasing as a credential.

00:34:24.200 Whether or not you're educated or not, your experience may vary.

00:34:27.900 Look, dude, I'm looking at my iPhone right here.

00:34:30.460 If you've got an internet connection, well, you have access to 98% of all the known information in the world.

00:34:36.580 How you process it and how you utilize it, that's up to you.

00:34:40.500 That's you.

00:34:41.200 So I'm not – it's not fair to say that you can get a liberal arts degree on your iPhone, but you can.

00:34:46.960 It's not fair to really compare, you know, lying in your bed like I did two weeks ago watching a free lecture at MIT and saying, you know, it would be the same experience if I were there in the classroom.

00:34:59.400 But it's close enough to say, well, wait a minute.

00:35:02.860 If the first one cost me $0.0 and the second one is going to keep me in debt for over 20 years, what am I doing?

00:35:12.680 So I don't know, man.

00:35:14.040 I feel badly about painting with too broad a brush.

00:35:17.820 My liberal arts degree served me really well.

00:35:21.020 I was – I graduated four years after you were born, I'm guessing.

00:35:25.780 1984 I graduated.

00:35:27.140 Beautiful year.

00:35:27.680 All right, it was a great year.

00:35:29.660 I went to two years in a community college.

00:35:31.800 About hot chicks then too, huh? 0.96

00:35:33.320 Couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a prospect.

00:35:35.820 God.

00:35:36.380 You know those collectible dolls on QVC?

00:35:38.580 Mm-hmm.

00:35:39.080 It was very, very similar.

00:35:40.840 Yeah.

00:35:41.660 It was a good time to be alive.

00:35:43.880 I was also singing in the opera back then.

00:35:46.040 Oh, yeah, that's right.

00:35:47.080 I forgot you were an opera – that you were an opera guy.

00:35:49.840 Yeah, it was a thing I did.

00:35:51.200 Cat calling.

00:35:52.180 Dude, if you hear that cat call, you stop. 1.00

00:35:54.040 If it's just some fucking Chicano whistling at you, dude, I'm keeping walking. 1.00

00:35:59.220 But you hit a guy, if I could hit half of an Ave Maria on his lunch break near an open manhole, dude, you got to stop. 1.00

00:36:06.760 Well, people pay attention, man.

00:36:08.040 That's what – like in the first season of Dirty Jobs, I sang – I didn't even know the cameras were rolling.

00:36:12.980 I was just blown away by the acoustics in a sewer in San Francisco.

00:36:17.940 Oh, yeah.

00:36:18.780 So I sang a –

00:36:19.980 Right?

00:36:33.980 Right?

00:36:34.740 Okay.

00:36:35.180 I'll have the anapasta.

00:36:36.680 Okay. 1.00

00:36:37.860 But it was like the image of a dude wearing a rubber suit, squatting in a sewer, covered with other people's shit. 1.00

00:36:47.800 Oh, yeah. 1.00

00:36:48.200 Singing Puccini.

00:36:49.940 Mm.

00:36:50.920 To your point.

00:36:51.800 Literal Puccini.

00:36:53.980 Poop-chini.

00:36:54.640 That's good.

00:36:55.700 Yeah, people didn't know what to do with that.

00:36:58.260 You don't know where to – it's like a lot of cognitive dissonance in your brain.

00:37:02.140 There's a lot going on at once.

00:37:04.380 And there's a parallel here.

00:37:06.140 It's kind of what's going on right now.

00:37:07.420 That's it.

00:37:08.060 People – like if you sing opera, you shouldn't be in a sewer. 0.98

00:37:12.240 If you're in a sewer, you should be getting paid crap wages. 0.86

00:37:15.860 But what do you do – what do you say about a guy in a sewer who's a multimillionaire? 0.96

00:37:22.060 Right?

00:37:22.440 Like what do you mean he owns his own septic tank business?

00:37:25.680 What do you mean he worked his way up to become a successful entrepreneur without a college degree?

00:37:30.640 How is such a thing possible?

00:37:32.640 Yeah.

00:37:32.920 Every day, Theo.

00:37:34.340 We've got 2,200 people have gone through microworks.

00:37:39.000 I'd say 30% of them are welders.

00:37:42.960 I'd say half of them are making mid-six figures.

00:37:47.700 Yeah.

00:37:48.220 Nobody believes it.

00:37:49.600 I spend most of my time now in this space sitting down with people who are 25 years old and looking at a camera and saying, hey, I get it. 0.99

00:37:59.080 Don't take it from the opera singing rich dude covered with other people's crap, okay? 0.98

00:38:03.980 I get it. 0.99

00:38:04.620 I'm not persuasive.

00:38:06.720 Yeah.

00:38:07.720 But listen to her.

00:38:09.160 Listen to him.

00:38:09.800 Right.

00:38:10.240 Right?

00:38:10.500 And so that's how the needle starts to move, and that's part of what has to happen.

00:38:15.720 So you're saying that if the tariffs work, right, part of that is going to have to be that we're going to need people who can do the jobs, do the manufacturing jobs here.

00:38:23.360 We're going to need those skilled labor workers, right? 1.00

00:38:26.180 Yes.

00:38:26.440 Okay.

00:38:27.360 So – and we don't have all those right now.

00:38:29.700 We need them.

00:38:30.380 We don't have them.

00:38:32.160 How do you – so we almost need like a – remember that Uncle Sam poster like I want you.

00:38:36.660 Like we need that PR campaign to get people hype because, yeah, you just need that thing that's going to get people hype a little bit.

00:38:44.520 It's not just PR.

00:38:47.820 It's ethos too you think?

00:38:49.440 Well –

00:38:49.920 What is ethos?

00:38:50.600 Bring it up.

00:38:51.520 Yeah, bring up ethos and tell us and all these Greek words.

00:38:55.580 You know, the Aristotelian definition of a tragedy, anagnoresis and peripatia, a characteristic of spirit, a culture, era, or community is manifested in its beliefs and aspirations.

00:39:06.620 That's it.

00:39:07.320 A challenge to the ethos of the 1960s.

00:39:10.200 So can I have an ethos on myself, kind of like my own spirit?

00:39:12.520 Yeah, absolutely.

00:39:13.940 Okay.

00:39:14.560 So if it's an individual, it's a worldview.

00:39:19.660 I think an even better way to think about it is a code.

00:39:23.780 Okay.

00:39:24.080 Do you have a code?

00:39:25.240 If you do, what is it?

00:39:26.480 Like Dexter kind of, but my own thing?

00:39:28.620 Like a code?

00:39:29.980 Yeah.

00:39:30.460 Yeah.

00:39:30.720 Yeah, like look, man, this will sound really outdated and hokey.

00:39:34.460 Integrity, you mean?

00:39:35.720 I do mean integrity.

00:39:37.240 I mean, when I was a kid, like the first time I had to raise my hand – well, the first time I had to take a pledge, it was the pledge of the flag.

00:39:45.420 Yeah.

00:39:45.640 I didn't really know what it meant.

00:39:46.640 I was too young.

00:39:47.100 I just memorized it, right?

00:39:48.060 But later in the Boy Scouts, I had a scoutmaster who was a retired Army colonel. 0.95

00:39:56.340 He was a hard ass, and he took this really seriously. 0.84

00:39:59.480 So you like raise your hand and pledge – you take the scout oath. 0.98

00:40:05.980 Now, I'm only like 12 years old at the time.

00:40:08.520 But I remember thinking this feels like there were candles lit in a darkened room, and it was serious.

00:40:14.700 It was as serious as it could be.

00:40:16.660 It's easy to look back and laugh and poke fun.

00:40:19.040 No, we did the same thing.

00:40:20.380 It mattered, man.

00:40:21.500 On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country.

00:40:26.100 Like wait – that's just the first sentence.

00:40:29.200 Never mind whether you like it or agree or disagree.

00:40:32.540 Challenging kids to take an oath and to make a pledge.

00:40:37.620 My foundation has a thing called a sweat pledge.

00:40:39.780 You have to sign it if you're applying for the particular pile of money that I've accumulated through donations, and I'm super stingy with that money.

00:40:47.820 Well, AA has a – they have a pledge in the beginning that you do as a group.

00:40:51.160 There's something about doing something as a group that makes you feel a part of a group.

00:40:54.100 That's how a group works.

00:40:55.020 That's how tradition happens, right?

00:40:56.300 You can't just have it without actually participating in it and vowing to it.

00:41:02.160 You must assume individual responsibility, but you must do that in the presence of other like-minded people.

00:41:08.820 Yeah.

00:41:09.060 So my sweat pledge, which I ironically wrote after some bourbon, stands for skill and work ethic aren't taboo.

00:41:17.120 I was just looking for a way to make people make a promise.

00:41:20.440 And you can find it out here.

00:41:22.000 It's now a curriculum actually in 70 schools, but it's based on the 12-step recovery process.

00:41:28.800 Wow.

00:41:29.340 And the Boy Scout law.

00:41:31.480 Mm.

00:41:31.780 Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent, combined with these really old school affirmations around things like gratitude and delayed gratification and personal responsibility and work ethic and aversion to debt.

00:41:53.540 I actually have something on the sweat pledge that says I would rather live in a tent and eat beans than pay for things I can't afford.

00:42:02.360 Now, people call me.

00:42:04.000 They're pissed.

00:42:04.520 Their parents call, right?

00:42:06.580 There's a tenant on the pledge that says I believe that my safety is my responsibility.

00:42:13.260 Mm.

00:42:13.460 Uh, I understand that just because I'm in compliance doesn't mean I'm out of danger.

00:42:20.440 Now, I believe this because I nearly got killed half a dozen times on dirty jobs.

00:42:24.320 There it is, number six, right?

00:42:26.120 Oh, yeah.

00:42:26.880 So this thing makes people crazy.

00:42:30.880 They resist it.

00:42:35.680 But this is a code really here.

00:42:37.320 It's my code.

00:42:38.560 It's your code.

00:42:39.140 And it starts right at the top, man.

00:42:41.240 I believe I've won the greatest lottery of all time.

00:42:44.240 I'm alive.

00:42:45.240 I walk the earth.

00:42:46.140 I live in America.

00:42:47.320 Above all things, I'm grateful.

00:42:49.260 Now, you can disagree with that.

00:42:51.840 And we can still be friends.

00:42:53.600 But when I get calls from parents or teachers or kids who are going through this application process and they say, look, I'm not really comfortable signing this.

00:43:03.180 Then I say, well, then this particular pile of free money might not be for you.

00:43:06.680 Yeah, yeah.

00:43:07.140 It's okay, man.

00:43:08.040 I mean, I work really hard and I raise a lot of money and I give a lot of it away.

00:43:11.980 And I make no apology for wanting to help people who at least see the world.

00:43:20.260 The same way you do.

00:43:21.160 Or something adjacent.

00:43:22.480 Oh, I agree.

00:43:23.100 I think that that makes perfect sense.

00:43:24.600 But you can't run a business that way.

00:43:27.620 No.

00:43:27.960 Like you can't hire people based on their worldview regarding gratitude or personal responsibility, at least not in California.

00:43:36.620 Yeah, probably not in California.

00:43:37.440 You can't.

00:43:37.880 But I think just, you know, you got to keep it off the documents.

00:43:40.580 But secretly in your head, you can low-key have some ideas.

00:43:43.900 Wink, wink.

00:43:44.420 Do you think there's something different about the Gen Z workforce?

00:43:47.700 Or do you think there's just – they haven't had the same examples that previous generations had, you know?

00:43:52.520 Yeah, I do.

00:43:53.760 I think – well, look. 0.98

00:43:56.260 Again, painting with too broad a brush sucks.

00:43:59.020 And, you know, I've – 0.99

00:43:59.680 We're not pointing at the Gen Z workforce like, you're bad or anything like that.

00:44:02.560 Because, you know, it's so funny.

00:44:03.860 It's like we had a guy on recently, this guy Alexander Wang, and he's not the fashion guy that got murdered.

00:44:11.260 He's a – he's like kind of a semi-Chinese guy.

00:44:13.980 But he founded Scale AI.

00:44:16.280 It's an AI company.

00:44:17.420 And he was saying that one way to look at AI is that everyone will kind of level up, right?

00:44:24.020 It's like suddenly kind of robots or computers will do a lot of the more menial tasks.

00:44:30.980 And you'll – everyone will kind of be a manager.

00:44:33.860 And it's interesting because if you say that to me or your generation, our generation kind of that, people would be like, well, I don't want to just be – I don't want to be the manager of five robots and I sit in a small dark room all the time and, you know, and that's my life.

00:44:49.700 And maybe I get four-day work week instead of five.

00:44:53.040 But if you told my nephews that, hey, you get to be the manager of five robots, you just sit in this room and control them all day, they would think that's awesome.

00:45:04.280 Right.

00:45:04.420 Just because of how they've grown up.

00:45:06.560 You know, like everything is so gamified.

00:45:08.440 So it's kind of interesting because you start to get into what the whole like perception of work, of being alive even is to people.

00:45:18.500 Does that make any sense to you?

00:45:19.880 It makes – look, it starts –

00:45:22.200 I mean there's a lot in there.

00:45:23.300 There's a lot.

00:45:24.420 But what you're really saying is like what is a good job?

00:45:27.680 What is a bad job?

00:45:28.800 What is a clean job?

00:45:29.780 What is a dirty job?

00:45:30.720 And once you start to create some sort of hierarchy, which makes sense.

00:45:35.620 Everybody is free to do it.

00:45:36.720 You ought to do it.

00:45:37.780 But, you know, if Bayard were here, the American giant guy, he would tell you a story about the individuals who made that sweatshirt.

00:45:47.720 Right?

00:45:47.860 He would show you the factory line.

00:45:51.200 He would introduce you to the farmers who grew the cotton.

00:45:53.920 He would show you step by step how his entire supply chain is insulated from these tariffs.

00:46:00.040 These tariffs hadn't affected him at all because he doesn't rely on any of them.

00:46:04.700 He's totally independent.

00:46:06.500 So he's taking kind of a victory lap right now.

00:46:08.820 But his big point would be you would have to see the enthusiasm among his group of workers when they created a sweatshirt that became the greatest hoodie ever made. 0.92

00:46:22.800 And you can look at that and go, it's a freaking sweatshirt, dude. 0.60

00:46:26.740 But it's not a sweatshirt. 0.97

00:46:28.380 Right.

00:46:28.560 It's not that – it's not about the sweatshirt.

00:46:31.040 And this might put it into even better focus.

00:46:33.820 Just so your listeners understand how jacked up things are.

00:46:37.080 I got a call six months ago from a company I bet you've never heard of called Blue Forge Alliance.

00:46:44.440 All right.

00:46:45.340 Blue Forge Alliance.

00:46:46.800 Is it siding or no?

00:46:49.580 In a manner of speaking.

00:46:51.480 We went through a siding phase.

00:46:53.220 We'll come right back to this idea.

00:46:54.480 I remember we went through a siding phase in our town once.

00:46:56.720 Somebody came through with like a semi-truck full of siding.

00:47:00.060 It fell over and they said people had a bunch of people stealing siding, you know, and so –

00:47:05.820 We sold that on QVC.

00:47:06.980 Y'all sold siding?

00:47:07.800 No, the same siding.

00:47:08.660 We had a whole racket.

00:47:09.680 They would bring us the siding that was stolen from the neighborhood.

00:47:12.120 And I would sell it in between collectible dolls.

00:47:14.100 Well, people in our area hadn't seen siding before.

00:47:16.000 So they were putting it on the sides of everything, dude.

00:47:17.780 You put siding on a house, siding on a floor.

00:47:19.760 Sure.

00:47:20.320 Yeah.

00:47:20.600 You'd have siding on the ceiling.

00:47:21.740 It's like it is not supposed to go up there.

00:47:23.180 People had siding. 0.99

00:47:23.940 Bro, they put siding on a damn baby while it was resting, dude. 0.99

00:47:27.660 They would just – 1.00

00:47:28.560 Siding on a ceiling.

00:47:30.080 It ain't supposed to go there.

00:47:31.400 This is basic.

00:47:32.440 Crazy phase, dude.

00:47:33.800 It was a crazy phase.

00:47:35.060 But back to Blue Forge.

00:47:36.460 This is crazy.

00:47:37.180 Okay.

00:47:37.520 This is crazier than that.

00:47:38.480 Okay.

00:47:39.180 Blue Forge Alliance is in charge of the American Maritime Base, and there they are.

00:47:44.760 Okay.

00:47:45.100 The American Maritime Base is in charge of delivering three nuclear-powered submarines every year to the U.S. Navy.

00:47:52.780 Two Virginia, I think, and one Columbia class.

00:47:56.100 These things are longer than the Washington Monument is tall.

00:48:00.680 Wow.

00:48:01.040 Okay.

00:48:01.460 They are the pointy part of our national defense.

00:48:05.440 Yeah.

00:48:05.580 They'll seat about 40, won't they?

00:48:07.120 Well, look.

00:48:07.860 If things go sideways with Taiwan or China and get hypersonic, I worry about our aircraft carriers.

00:48:14.400 They're exposed like they haven't been before.

00:48:16.400 Yeah. 1.00

00:48:16.620 Oh, shit. 0.99

00:48:17.080 If things go sideways with Baltimore, we'll send one over there, you know? 1.00

00:48:20.040 So it's the subs that matter.

00:48:22.220 Now, Blue Forge represents 15,000 individual companies, and these companies have to deliver three a year for 10 years.

00:48:29.460 They called me, right?

00:48:31.160 And they say, look, we're hiring tradespeople, and we're kind of in a rush.

00:48:35.600 I'm like, well, what do you mean a rush?

00:48:36.960 And they said, well, we're desperate.

00:48:39.180 And can you help us find them?

00:48:40.960 And I said, I don't know, man.

00:48:42.320 It's pretty skinny out there right now.

00:48:43.780 There's a lot of competition.

00:48:45.000 How many do you need?

00:48:46.260 The guy says, 140,000.

00:48:50.940 Wow.

00:48:52.320 I swear to God.

00:48:53.440 And you can find it on the site there.

00:48:55.180 They're hiring over the next nine years 140,000 welders, steam fitters, pipe fitters, electricians, all of the construction trades, plus all kind of electronics and technical stuff.

00:49:09.880 Very, very few of those positions require a four-year degree.

00:49:13.920 Right.

00:49:14.440 140,000 openings.

00:49:15.740 And the guy says, Mike, we've looked everywhere.

00:49:19.000 Do you know where they are?

00:49:21.120 Can you send me a few phone numbers?

00:49:22.900 I said, actually, honest, I said, yeah, dude, I know where they are.

00:49:27.440 They're in the eighth grade.

00:49:30.020 That's where they are.

00:49:30.980 And if you want to get them, holy crap, they put my face on an I want you to work in the trades.

00:49:37.640 Who's doing that back there? 0.98

00:49:39.400 I don't know, dude, but what we need are robots, R-O-W-E-V-O-T-S. 0.93

00:49:44.040 Would you send me that, whoever you are, doing this amazing non-authorized copywritten stuff?

00:49:50.140 I'm going to use that.

00:49:51.520 I thought robots was a good pun that deserved a little bit more than that, but.

00:49:54.200 It's not bad.

00:49:54.860 You could have Mike robots, little tiny versions of me.

00:49:58.840 Yeah, that's a cute idea.

00:50:01.560 It's adorable.

00:50:02.180 They would sell on QVC, man.

00:50:03.480 They would kill.

00:50:04.940 This is the smallest workers.

00:50:06.800 This is the fire ant of the work community.

00:50:11.420 Let me land the plane.

00:50:12.500 Okay.

00:50:12.760 Here's the point.

00:50:14.100 That crisis that right now is impacting our submarine base,

00:50:21.260 I think you can draw a line between the enthusiasm of the workers who build one of these subs.

00:50:29.740 And believe me, you should meet these guys.

00:50:31.440 They understand they're moving the needle.

00:50:35.160 They understand that they're the pointy part of the spear with regard to national defense.

00:50:39.560 It's a big deal.

00:50:40.220 You can compare, not the work, but the feeling to the satisfaction that comes from making the greatest sweatshirt in the world.

00:50:48.640 And if you can do that, you can do it for virtually every product in between.

00:50:54.020 That's what I'm talking about.

00:50:55.940 There's somehow or another, and I started talking about this early on in Dirty Jobs.

00:51:01.480 It just became clear that in our society, we had identified work as the enemy. 1.00

00:51:10.220 It's like the proximate cause of all our misery is the fact that our freaking boss is up our ass, 0.99

00:51:16.520 and every day for 8 or 10, 12 hours, I got to go make little rocks out of big rocks, 0.99

00:51:21.480 and life isn't fair, and damn it, something ought to be done. 0.69

00:51:25.140 And this whole thing is modeled around the idea that I have to do whatever it is I have to do 0.81

00:51:34.180 until I get to the point where I can retire, right?

00:51:38.440 So, like, I'm retirement age now.

00:51:41.220 Like, the idea of retiring is so insane to me.

00:51:44.520 Yeah.

00:51:44.640 So why?

00:51:46.260 There's still work to be done.

00:51:48.060 There's more than ever.

00:51:49.660 So, look, to answer your question, I'm super sympathetic to Gen Z.

00:51:55.400 I want them to find meaningful work, but the meaning, it's not inherent in the work.

00:52:03.760 It's in the dude.

00:52:04.780 Right.

00:52:05.460 It's in you, and you get to assign whatever level of meaning you want to that sweatshirt

00:52:11.420 or that nuclear sub or this cup of coffee or this poisonous cream that your people brought me 0.81

00:52:16.900 that right now is either making me tired or jacked up.

00:52:19.720 I can't decide yet.

00:52:20.820 No, in 30 seconds, you're going to start telling us all your secrets, you know?

00:52:23.440 You're going to tell us where you keep your favorite wood whittle.

00:52:25.580 My greatest fear.

00:52:27.260 Is a whittler thing, a tool?

00:52:28.900 A whittler could be a person who whittles.

00:52:31.980 Okay.

00:52:32.660 A whittle it could be a thing that you whittle, but a whittle flunk is the actual tool in question.

00:52:39.980 A whittle flunk.

00:52:40.900 And you can Google that.

00:52:42.380 Now, you won't find anything to confirm any of it.

00:52:44.360 I just felt like it was my turn to talk again.

00:52:46.480 Oh, that's very fair.

00:52:47.840 I'm going to say this.

00:52:48.900 You know what?

00:52:49.480 You're right, and I think that that used to be a part of kind of what you were saying

00:52:53.200 even in school.

00:52:53.960 It's like, I pledge allegiance to my country.

00:52:56.020 This country means something to me.

00:52:57.700 Like, my grandfather worked at this factory where they made parts.

00:53:01.900 It was for FMC, right?

00:53:03.140 And they made, like, elevator parts for elevator shafts and stuff like that.

00:53:06.120 But he would go to the factory, and it was like this thing.

00:53:08.720 And then when we were in elevators, we would see his little emblem on the thing.

00:53:11.260 He was like, oh, Grandpa made this, you know?

00:53:13.260 Dude, that.

00:53:14.200 And that kind of stuff was huge.

00:53:15.900 It was like even, like, native, like, in cultures, there are stories that you tell

00:53:21.280 your grandkids.

00:53:22.020 It's like the meaning of being human, we passed from each other.

00:53:26.860 We passed it in, like, relics and in artifacts.

00:53:30.360 And, you know, you keep things from people that meant something to you.

00:53:34.720 So I think to think that just because that only happens, it doesn't only happen, like,

00:53:38.380 in your family, like if your grandfather passes away and you keep something that meant

00:53:41.720 something to him.

00:53:42.260 But it happens as a community, too.

00:53:44.140 It's like you have things that mean something to you and that carry on.

00:53:47.880 What am I?

00:53:48.860 Does that make any sense of my rambling?

00:53:50.200 I'm okay.

00:53:50.720 No, dude, I'm telling you. 1.00

00:53:52.220 Yeah, what the fuck are you talking about? 0.99

00:53:53.120 Of course it makes sense, dude. 0.99

00:53:54.380 Yeah, it makes you feel alive, dude.

00:53:56.900 You know?

00:53:57.960 It makes you feel alive.

00:53:59.000 And then, like, you see something across town.

00:54:00.780 You're like, man, I was a part of that.

00:54:01.760 And you get to drive by and tell your son, I built that house.

00:54:05.040 And your son's like, no way.

00:54:06.340 I want to learn how to build something, you know? 0.99

00:54:08.220 Why do you think people lost their shit when Obama said, you didn't build that? 0.99

00:54:13.120 You didn't do that. 1.00

00:54:13.940 We all did that together.

00:54:15.460 It was an insult to what you're saying.

00:54:19.920 That part of us.

00:54:20.580 It doesn't mean that we're not all part of a team, a country, a concerted effort.

00:54:25.700 But it does mean, like, if you rob an individual of that feeling, then you have reduced his work to only the transactional company.

00:54:36.920 It's just a paycheck now.

00:54:38.520 But I'm telling you, my life changed.

00:54:41.060 It was early on in Dirty Jobs.

00:54:42.880 And we weren't even really filming yet.

00:54:46.260 Or it was after we shot.

00:54:49.000 And I was working with a mason.

00:54:52.740 And I was in his pickup truck.

00:54:55.060 And he was dropping me back at the hotel.

00:54:57.900 And as we're driving down, we were in some little Midwest town.

00:55:01.120 And we were driving down some easily forgettable street.

00:55:05.600 But the architecture on either side was super cool, right?

00:55:08.800 And as we're driving, he was, like, pointing up to the facade.

00:55:12.080 He goes, yeah, we did that one.

00:55:13.660 And then around the corner, he's like, yeah, we did that one, too.

00:55:15.800 And see over here the way this – that one took.

00:55:19.620 And as he was talking, like, his eyes were filling up.

00:55:23.380 And he was driving past his life's work.

00:55:28.540 And it was there on display to be seen.

00:55:30.780 And I was very happy for him to be able to have that but also very mindful of the fact that you can see the same wonder in the sewer, right?

00:55:41.020 Like the architecture down there and the technology.

00:55:45.100 Now, except you'll never see it.

00:55:47.060 And you'll never see the guys who tend to it because it's all out of sight and it's all out of mind.

00:55:52.500 And that's part of the point, too.

00:55:55.800 You don't – that thing you described.

00:55:59.680 I got a call from a – have you heard of Moog, M-O-O-G? 1.00

00:56:03.800 You'll let this down to your neck of the woods.

00:56:05.360 It's actually Boaz, Alabama. 0.99

00:56:07.140 Oh, damn. 0.99

00:56:08.220 Okay. 0.99

00:56:08.960 Little – it's not so little.

00:56:11.240 Moog makes virtually every ball bearing in your car or your truck.

00:56:18.160 They've been making ball bearings for years, forever and ever.

00:56:21.260 They turned 100 a couple years ago.

00:56:24.600 And the guy called me.

00:56:26.600 They're part of Federal Mogul Motor Parts.

00:56:29.460 And they were like, can you maybe just come down here and look at our factory?

00:56:35.360 And can we film you looking at it?

00:56:36.840 And can you just talk to some of our people?

00:56:39.460 And I said, well, yeah, probably.

00:56:41.720 Why?

00:56:42.580 And they're like, well, we just think it would be great if somebody were paying attention to the fact that we've been doing this for 100 years and that there is no automotive industry without us.

00:56:50.920 Wow.

00:56:51.740 So I did.

00:56:52.580 I went and I brought a little crew with me.

00:56:55.660 And I wound up giving them a 60-second love letter.

00:56:59.440 I know a place in Boaz, Alabama where people – right?

00:57:02.840 They played that at their annual thing.

00:57:05.320 And I got a video of people watching the video I made.

00:57:10.900 Yeah.

00:57:11.840 Tears streaming down their face.

00:57:15.020 Purpose.

00:57:15.780 Pride.

00:57:17.300 Code.

00:57:17.940 Integrity.

00:57:18.520 All that stuff, man.

00:57:19.400 Yeah. 1.00

00:57:20.120 Well, there it is, 30 pounds ago, you fat bastard. 1.00

00:57:22.520 But there I am. 1.00

00:57:23.100 Going the extra mile.

00:57:24.120 American Pride with Mike Rowe.

00:57:26.100 Some hotties in the back. 1.00

00:57:28.140 Well, you know.

00:57:29.080 Going the extra mile.

00:57:29.900 Right there.

00:57:30.240 American Pride with Mike Rowe.

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01:00:46.060 Thank you.

01:00:47.520 Well, let's talk about like the workforce a little bit, then let's talk about some issues that they face for a few minutes, and then I'm going to talk about your new show.

01:00:53.240 Last time we spoke, we talked about minimum wage, right?

01:00:57.420 Last time we spoke, I said there was no justice if you didn't put spunk minions on a hat. 1.00

01:01:03.960 I told you a story of artificial insemination.

01:01:07.520 You coined that term.

01:01:09.200 At least I'd never heard it before.

01:01:10.920 The coffee came out of my nose, and I said, for God's sakes, man, please.

01:01:15.600 Hot coffee came out of your nose.

01:01:17.100 It was still hot.

01:01:17.920 Hot coffee cooled down with some of this, you know, poison.

01:01:22.140 But, yeah, yeah, I remember last time.

01:01:25.080 It was that conversation.

01:01:26.900 I'm not blowing sunshine, dude.

01:01:28.400 I got more people, more of the people that my foundation tries to reach reached out to me.

01:01:35.920 Really?

01:01:36.440 Yep, to say, I heard you on Theo Vaughn, and I would like to apply for a scholarship.

01:01:40.540 What do I do?

01:01:41.240 Wow.

01:01:41.700 I mean –

01:01:42.260 That's awesome.

01:01:43.000 No, you need to understand – well, I'm sure you understand, but it was – I do this all the time.

01:01:48.020 Hundreds of people, hundreds of people.

01:01:51.500 Because the problem is, man, I preach to the choir a lot.

01:01:55.600 You know, I talk to people who already – you know, your audience is the future of this country.

01:02:01.380 A big chunk of them are anyway.

01:02:03.140 I don't know about the others.

01:02:04.120 Well, I do believe that one thing I think I have in common with a lot of my audience is that the way that we feel about stuff, right?

01:02:09.960 We might have different views on things, but I think our feelings are a lot the same.

01:02:15.180 And we talk a lot about, like, purpose on here.

01:02:17.240 Like, we had a guy named John Verveke come on and talk about purpose.

01:02:20.940 We had Richard Reeves.

01:02:23.080 It's really great.

01:02:24.280 He talks about how men aren't leaders in their communities anymore.

01:02:27.660 You know, they're not doing Boy Scout troops.

01:02:29.480 They're not teaching in classes anymore.

01:02:31.400 So we're losing this male-to-male connection piece that is part of what keeps our desire to be, like, performing humans, human males, you know?

01:02:40.600 Like, so we talk about this kind of stuff a lot.

01:02:43.840 And maybe there's a way we can figure out something to do where we could – you know, where I can – we would love to donate and then just continue to help send people your direction, too.

01:02:51.480 Well, look, man, I'll never say no to a couple bucks, but I don't need it.

01:02:55.340 What I need is what you're doing, right?

01:02:57.840 I mean, what I need is for the people listening to – like, if they're serious about what you just framed, the book to read is called Men Without Work.

01:03:07.700 It's by a guy called Nick Eberstadt.

01:03:09.940 He is a real economist, and I know him.

01:03:12.640 And he wrote this thing years ago but republished it during the lockdowns.

01:03:18.600 And that's where the real truth of this is, man.

01:03:22.040 That's where the – that's the real story, Theo.

01:03:24.900 At the time he republished this, there were 7.2 million able-bodied men, not only not working but not looking.

01:03:34.240 Now, now the question is, well, what the hell are they doing, right?

01:03:37.360 The research goes deep and wide, and it's horrifying.

01:03:41.620 By and large, the majority of them are spending 2,000 hours a year on their screens.

01:03:47.480 They're scrolling, they're looking, they're inward, right?

01:03:52.980 Right.

01:03:53.600 And what that means is they're not in the Jaycees or the Kiwanis Club or the Boy Scouts or the Lions Club or the YMCA, right?

01:04:02.840 They're not in their local church.

01:04:04.300 They're not volunteering in their community.

01:04:06.320 They're not doing anything at all except living some version of what – what was it, Thoreau?

01:04:12.740 You know, lives of quiet desperation.

01:04:15.920 And that's – and I want to tell you one other thing, too, that really blew me away.

01:04:21.080 I knew of you.

01:04:22.560 I didn't know you.

01:04:23.860 And it's cool that you texted me and stayed in touch over the last two years since we talked.

01:04:28.140 Oh, thanks, man.

01:04:28.840 No, no.

01:04:29.160 I mean it – most people don't do that.

01:04:32.560 Really?

01:04:33.240 Yeah.

01:04:33.740 They don't.

01:04:34.320 And I had so much fun talking to you that, you know, I took a deeper dive and one night just was scrolling through and I watched you sit here or maybe you were in Nashville.

01:04:46.440 I don't know.

01:04:48.560 But somebody called in and they told you a story and it was a common story but it was a sad story.

01:04:55.340 And it was a combination of addiction and struggling with that and a kind of hopelessness and this kind of desperation that my friend Nick writes about, you know.

01:05:06.920 And what you did, you did two things that were really interesting to me.

01:05:13.860 The first thing is you sat and didn't say a word.

01:05:18.340 I've never seen – I've never seen anybody do that before.

01:05:21.920 You just sat and looked at the camera like you're looking at me, like you actually listened.

01:05:28.140 And then you talk for about three minutes in about the most empathetic way I had ever seen.

01:05:33.860 I took that clip and I sent it to my little network and I said, look, man, this war is going to be fought on a lot of fronts.

01:05:43.160 It's a war of public opinion to your point.

01:05:47.100 It's persuasion.

01:05:50.380 It's all these things.

01:05:51.280 But what this guy is doing right now in this space, in this way, is important.

01:05:58.820 So, yeah, man, I don't know how big you're going to get and I don't know how wide your audience is going to be.

01:06:05.520 But the fact that it's as big as it is, yeah, you're funny.

01:06:10.280 You're funny as hell.

01:06:12.220 I was going to crash one of your shows in – I forget what town I was in.

01:06:17.660 But it was like – what is it?

01:06:18.800 The Rat?

01:06:19.260 The Rat was back or something?

01:06:20.300 Return of the Rat.

01:06:20.860 Return of the Rat, man.

01:06:22.360 That's the thing.

01:06:22.940 You can't keep a rat down. 0.98

01:06:24.000 You could kill a rat. 0.99

01:06:24.880 Bam, another rat, boy. 1.00

01:06:26.400 They pop up, dude.

01:06:27.200 They keep popping up.

01:06:28.120 But that's who we are.

01:06:29.380 You're resilient.

01:06:30.500 We're resilient.

01:06:31.440 And that's – I mean, Louisiana doesn't have a lock on that.

01:06:35.440 But I'll tell you what, man.

01:06:38.000 Dirty Jobs is – Louisiana is very good to dirty jobs.

01:06:40.900 I mean, from Baton Rouge to Lafayette to cut off.

01:06:43.900 I did my time there.

01:06:45.240 Dude, we should have been cut off when we stayed on, dude.

01:06:47.220 That's Louisiana.

01:06:48.620 Louisiana Purchase, first of all. 0.98

01:06:50.220 Thank you very fucking much. 0.96

01:06:51.660 You wouldn't even have a third of this country for us and for Louisiana. 0.97

01:06:54.260 Thomas Jefferson, 1803.

01:06:56.000 We're making that deal.

01:06:57.060 It's a good deal.

01:06:57.260 And we kept the receipt.

01:06:58.180 I'll say that.

01:06:58.860 It's a good one.

01:06:59.460 And also, we have Nutria Rats, rats that live underwater, bro.

01:07:04.140 I know.

01:07:04.920 I know.

01:07:05.580 That is something else.

01:07:06.520 But thank you, bro.

01:07:07.320 That's very nice of you, dude.

01:07:08.320 Yeah.

01:07:08.820 I think that's the one thing that connects our audience is just there's this way that we feel.

01:07:12.700 And a lot of it is hopeful, right?

01:07:14.860 And so that's the side that I choose to err on when it comes to the tariff stuff.

01:07:18.080 It's like I have no clue. 0.97

01:07:20.320 Like if it doesn't work, what the fuck – what do we lose? 0.85

01:07:23.340 Because we're at a – I believe that we are at a severe crossing point right now where if it gets – if another generation without like a sense of purpose, it's not going to matter. 0.97

01:07:36.920 Nothing's going to matter anymore.

01:07:38.460 There won't even be enough of a person inside of our grandchildren for it to matter too.

01:07:43.100 Like even if you bring the gasoline, there's not going to be enough of an amp inside of them to even spark it up.

01:07:48.180 It's like even I think the human spirit is a muscle, right?

01:07:51.260 That's how I feel about it.

01:07:52.460 And I feel like it's always there.

01:07:54.100 But it's like the stronger that we work it and the more that we encourage others to work it, you know?

01:08:00.740 And it's scary, man.

01:08:03.060 I think people don't realize it's scary.

01:08:04.880 But then I think part of all of us realize it's something scary is going on.

01:08:08.200 Well, the stakes are big.

01:08:09.160 Right.

01:08:09.500 I mean $37 trillion in national – that's the national debt.

01:08:14.340 Yeah.

01:08:14.680 $37 trillion.

01:08:15.380 Most people – like you really don't have to be an economist.

01:08:19.180 You don't have to – you don't need a pedigree to understand that that's getting a little wobbly and it's not sustainable.

01:08:27.820 So something radical has to happen.

01:08:30.800 Something really unpopular is going to have to happen.

01:08:33.980 Right.

01:08:34.180 And it's going to be uncomfortable.

01:08:35.380 It's going to be uncomfortable.

01:08:36.360 It's going to be wildly uncomfortable.

01:08:37.540 But what's going to be way more uncomfortable is whatever is after that sounds – it doesn't even sound human to me after that.

01:08:45.420 I go back to the slavery thing.

01:08:46.860 I mean the idea of getting rid of that in 1860, right?

01:08:54.540 It was – so many otherwise rational people who were walking around, influencers of the day with columns and people giving oratories and speeches, really smart people were saying, we can't do this.

01:09:11.060 The country will collapse.

01:09:13.220 And other people were like, well, then let the heavens fall because that's a hill I'll die on, right?

01:09:20.620 So every now and then something rises to a place where you just can't talk about it the way you'd been talking about it.

01:09:31.560 And look, man, I really wonder 150 years from now what our great, great, great, great grandkids will be saying about us.

01:09:40.020 Like how – what will be the slavery of today?

01:09:43.840 Will it be the fact that we let our country become completely dependent on other countries who really don't like us much?

01:09:53.980 I mean –

01:09:54.600 Not that they don't have any care.

01:09:55.700 It's insane.

01:09:57.520 China – I interviewed a guy yesterday who you would love.

01:10:02.560 Jan Jekyllic, he's called.

01:10:03.980 He writes for the Epoch Times.

01:10:05.780 He's a senior editor over there.

01:10:07.260 OK.

01:10:07.520 And he has been on China hard for 20 years and he believes one of the greatest untold stories right now is the fact that 60 to 100,000 human organs are being harvested from prisoners in China every year as we speak.

01:10:32.340 They're called the Fulongong and they were – 70 to 100 million of these people have been persecuted forever.

01:10:38.740 I'm going to quit ordering it.

01:10:39.680 Dude, you have to – it is bananas.

01:10:43.020 Fulongong.

01:10:44.020 When you look at the number of prisons in China that have hospitals built right next to them, you have to go, well, what's up with that?

01:10:53.900 And when you talk to these people and there are countless examples who are scheduling open heart surgeries, they're scheduling kidney replacements, right?

01:11:06.980 You can't schedule those.

01:11:09.040 You go on a list and then you wait for somebody to become brain dead.

01:11:15.420 In a motorcycle accident.

01:11:17.020 That's right because you can't take a heart from a cadaver.

01:11:20.020 You have to take it from a living but doomed person, right?

01:11:25.220 And so cutting that line is about the rudest thing, right?

01:11:30.140 I mean that's a line you don't want to cut.

01:11:31.800 My sister got a liver transplant and we had to wait and they called us over and we'd get over and they'd be like, no, the guy's going to stay alive.

01:11:38.280 And we're like, well, don't call us then.

01:11:40.580 We just drove over here.

01:11:41.640 I can't even imagine what that is like but I can tell you this, the organ industry in China is a $9 billion industry and people are – they're making appointments for livers.

01:11:55.400 They're making appointments for hearts.

01:11:57.120 Based on knowing when the guy's going to die or they're killing them? 0.99

01:12:00.120 They're killing them, dude. 0.99

01:12:01.160 Wow. 0.99

01:12:01.460 It's not based on – yes, it is based on knowing when they're going to die.

01:12:05.140 Exactly.

01:12:05.480 Because they kill him and what they tell you is, well, look, he's on death row anyway and so like they tell you a lot of things and you'll go, OK, OK.

01:12:16.800 And so it's back to slavery.

01:12:19.780 It's like, well, you know what?

01:12:20.840 I don't really want to look at the reality of organ harvesting.

01:12:25.580 If my kid needs a heart, please tell me a happy story about how the inmate is a murderer, right?

01:12:34.560 And we're going to – and right before we kill him, we're going to anesthetize him and take his heart. 0.88

01:12:38.880 Tell me that story. 0.91

01:12:40.460 It's not much different than in 1860.

01:12:43.500 It's like, look, I need clothes, man.

01:12:45.220 My kids need clothes. 0.97

01:12:46.660 Please don't show me the raping and the whipping of these poor people.

01:12:53.580 Please don't show me the middle passage and what happened, the unspeakable conditions on those ships.

01:12:59.520 I don't want to see that.

01:13:01.460 I just want my clothes.

01:13:02.860 Now, when I'm talking 150 years from now, maybe I could be talking about 150 days from now.

01:13:08.540 Please don't show me the abortion, right?

01:13:10.540 I don't want to see that.

01:13:12.340 That would – please don't show me the diseased lungs in your attempt to get me to stop smoking.

01:13:17.100 I don't want to see that. 0.83

01:13:18.540 Please don't make me shoot the cow in the head.

01:13:22.500 I did that on season three of Dirty Jobs.

01:13:24.540 I slaughtered a cow and butchered it with a mobile butcher just to show viewers where their food comes from and what it takes to make a porterhouse, what it takes to get a sirloin, difference between all these different things.

01:13:37.120 People's heads exploded because the truth is, man, they don't want to see where their food comes from.

01:13:42.060 They prefer to think it's growing on a hamburger tree and we really don't want to know the truth about a lot of this.

01:13:49.160 I mean, look, we're joking about this, but you really want to know what's in this little creamer? 1.00

01:13:53.360 You really want to know why this thing can sit on the shelf for years?

01:13:57.500 The answer is nothing good.

01:13:59.200 And a baby won't eat it too.

01:14:00.300 You see the one where they try to give that to a baby and they won't eat it.

01:14:02.900 Yeah, because they know.

01:14:04.180 They know.

01:14:04.680 So, look, we're ostriches and we got our head in the sand on a lot of different things.

01:14:09.380 And a lot of parents, you know, to bring it back to kind of where we started, they don't want to see that that 200 grand they invested in that college degree can't get their kid a job in his chosen field.

01:14:23.880 We don't want to look at 37 trillion in debt.

01:14:27.280 We don't want to look at the fact that our country is making only 2% of the clothing that we wear.

01:14:33.980 Dude, we have in this country, a third of the United States is covered with timber.

01:14:42.080 Covered with timber.

01:14:43.540 Now, our forests are rotting and they're burning because we're not tending to them.

01:14:49.060 Meanwhile, guess who the leading importer of timber is in the world?

01:14:53.640 China.

01:14:54.360 Us.

01:14:54.720 Oh, we're the leading importer of it, but we have a great deal of it.

01:14:58.020 We have more than anybody and we're the leading importer.

01:15:01.340 California has so much timber and they import 80% of what they need.

01:15:08.240 How much energy are we sitting on?

01:15:10.440 Right.

01:15:11.020 Right?

01:15:11.620 I just look at all of it and I don't need to get political.

01:15:15.440 It's not political.

01:15:16.760 It's a weird combination of virtue signaling and head in the sand.

01:15:22.560 Well, and also I think our media is probably a lot of it has been under control of people who don't want to champion America.

01:15:30.640 Maybe, you know, I don't know if that's true or if it's just the fads and the way that things have gone.

01:15:35.600 But it's just it's always it seemed like things have gotten like anti-American somehow in the past even 10 years, like the American flag even became like kind of a right wing symbol as opposed to the symbol of our country.

01:15:47.580 And whoever's people think that things just happen.

01:15:50.220 I believe that there's strategy behind a lot of stuff that's out there.

01:15:53.020 I want to switch to a topic of so we but we talked before about minimum wage.

01:15:57.940 I don't think people can survive on minimum wages these days.

01:16:00.620 I just don't think that they can do it.

01:16:02.220 And Bernie Sanders talked about how, well, if a company makes more money because they start using AI or for whatever reason, that shouldn't that minimum wage go up within that company for the workers, you know?

01:16:15.100 What do you think?

01:16:16.420 I think we have to do something.

01:16:18.180 If somebody makes $8 an hour and they work for eight hours, that's $64.

01:16:23.340 You can buy food for your family for that day these days with that.

01:16:28.220 Well, look, I mean, it's a there are a lot of thoughts on that.

01:16:31.500 And I know there's not one perfect answer.

01:16:34.040 There's not.

01:16:34.940 But you can learn, I think.

01:16:37.100 I mean, you have to understand that those jobs, minimum wage jobs were never designed to be careers.

01:16:44.940 Right.

01:16:45.260 They're they're rungs on a ladder.

01:16:47.460 But for some people, they are careers, though.

01:16:49.080 But but the majority have that conversation next.

01:16:52.600 But but but like the first thing to understand is you don't like the purpose of work is not to merely make money.

01:17:01.120 It's probably the biggest reason you've got to put food on the table.

01:17:04.680 Like I get all of that.

01:17:06.060 But you don't go from a kid into a fully actualized, mature working person.

01:17:12.040 You you have to go through all kinds of like a crucible of fits and starts and good jobs and jobs that make sense.

01:17:19.980 And, you know, whether it's fast food or whether it's maybe digging a ditch or maybe putting siding on a house one hot summer.

01:17:26.620 Right.

01:17:27.180 It's like these jobs that don't pay very well offer something else.

01:17:33.800 That's really, really, really important to a person who is maturing and growing.

01:17:41.560 I know what it is.

01:17:42.160 I bet.

01:17:42.880 Say it.

01:17:43.420 They offer you the time to think and plan and strategize and get excited for something that you want to do.

01:17:49.380 It's almost like a soil that you get to be in for a little bit.

01:17:51.880 It's like a buffet.

01:17:52.980 Remember that now.

01:17:53.840 It's a buffet, man.

01:17:54.840 You don't you're not going to eat all of it.

01:17:59.600 It's not all going to taste good to you.

01:18:01.740 Yeah. 1.00

01:18:02.080 You have to experience a whole long list of shit. 1.00

01:18:06.960 And and and most of it is going to leave a funny taste in your mouth. 1.00

01:18:11.660 But most things aren't for most people.

01:18:14.120 It's a it's a giant process of of figuring it all out and in the and also learning who you are.

01:18:20.740 Now, I get it.

01:18:21.520 That doesn't address the fact that somebody busting their ass with inflation being wherever it is and the cost of goods being wherever that is, can't afford to feed their family on that salary. 0.91

01:18:32.380 Now, the other side is going to say, yeah, why did you have a family? 0.97

01:18:35.500 What are you doing?

01:18:36.540 What do you why would you have a family before you have the means to provide for them?

01:18:40.040 And then we're going to have that whole conversation and it's and it's going to get politicized.

01:18:44.460 But if the basic argument is, wait a second, the people at the top of this company are being unfairly enriched at the expense of the work.

01:18:55.180 I totally get that.

01:18:56.780 Right.

01:18:57.020 I totally get it.

01:18:58.000 And I'll tell you something that gives me hope.

01:18:59.940 All right.

01:19:00.300 Because I get constant.

01:19:02.120 Thank you.

01:19:02.740 We get stuck in the doldrums.

01:19:04.620 Sometimes we get stuck in the ditch and we don't look for the light.

01:19:07.120 I'm going to give you the light.

01:19:08.220 At least a couple beams of it, the doldrums and the problem almost always happens because it's door number one or door number two.

01:19:19.060 Everything is binary.

01:19:20.560 So in this conversation, it's well, are you union or are you management?

01:19:25.940 Are you labor or are you management?

01:19:28.500 And like people have to choose.

01:19:30.260 And now it's easy to forget that these are two sides of the same coin because we always pit them against one another and then people wind up in interviews like this or any one of a thousand other conversations and they're going to get tagged as one or the other.

01:19:45.100 So my hope is in an organization called Opportunity Works.

01:19:53.480 And I learned about these guys pretty recently.

01:19:58.280 Two years ago, a company called Groundworks, who you'll love, hired me to give a speech in Virginia Beach when their CEO turned 5,500 of their frontline workers into owners.

01:20:14.100 Okay.

01:20:14.580 So here's what Groundworks does.

01:20:18.000 Groundworks will fix the foundation on your house.

01:20:20.600 They will encapsulate a crawl space and they will waterproof your basement.

01:20:28.740 Oh, I was hoping you'd say, hide your stepmother down there.

01:20:31.180 That's okay.

01:20:32.000 Well, that's an upsell.

01:20:33.060 But I mean, look, you got to know who to talk to.

01:20:36.040 But they – like if you scroll through that, that's Dirty Jobs 101.

01:20:41.520 Yeah.

01:20:42.100 I spent the first – a big chunk of the first season underneath houses doing this kind of work.

01:20:48.680 Now, a lot of these people, they've got a high school education.

01:20:53.040 Some went further.

01:20:54.160 But a lot of the 5,500 guys I met on that day, they spend their life doing backbreaking work.

01:21:02.560 They were made owners.

01:21:03.980 It's like an ESOP plan and it goes all the way down, all the way through the company.

01:21:09.260 Wow.

01:21:09.680 And it's another one of those moments, Theo.

01:21:11.220 I'm sitting backstage and I'm watching these guys are there with their families.

01:21:15.560 And this is a financial event.

01:21:17.920 Like it changes their life.

01:21:19.260 So I said to the owner, hey, man, I'm – I like this because now I don't think there's any, frankly, need for –

01:21:27.080 Like how does a union negotiate against a member if they own the company?

01:21:33.500 It's like you just took all the air out of that tire.

01:21:36.420 And he said, well, if you like this, you got to meet my friend Pete Stavros.

01:21:41.840 Pete works for KKR.

01:21:45.200 Now –

01:21:45.580 Ooh, that third letter I wasn't sure I was going to be.

01:21:48.880 I was like, whoa.

01:21:50.060 Whoa, Mike.

01:21:51.220 I'm not feeling hopeful.

01:21:52.440 We're trying to head forward.

01:21:53.840 KKR.

01:21:54.840 These were the original barbarians at the gate, you know, the whole Nabisco. 1.00

01:22:00.240 Like that world of private equity gets a really bad rap and in some cases I think probably deservedly.

01:22:07.680 I don't know about them.

01:22:08.620 Well, it's a –

01:22:09.740 That's okay.

01:22:10.420 It's a deep dive.

01:22:11.840 Okay.

01:22:11.980 But it's like when you think – when people talk about roll-ups, what they're talking about –

01:22:16.960 I don't know about that either.

01:22:17.740 Okay.

01:22:18.300 Let's say you've got a heating and air conditioning company.

01:22:21.160 Plumbing company, electric company.

01:22:22.400 Let's say you've had it for 25 years and let's say you'd like to retire but you really can't and you got 30 employees and you love them and it's their job and so forth and so on.

01:22:34.480 And so the industry consolidates when private equity comes in and says, wait a second.

01:22:41.120 We'll buy you.

01:22:42.660 Okay.

01:22:43.000 We're going to make you more efficient.

01:22:44.260 We're going to put you under somebody – some other name.

01:22:47.200 Okay.

01:22:47.600 And you'll be able to retire because you've worked hard and your people will – well, we're going to do – in some cases, it's good for the workers.

01:22:58.400 In other cases, it's not so good because in the name of efficiency, you can gut a company.

01:23:02.900 So that's the negative wrap on private equity has been that.

01:23:08.820 But now what's starting to happen, at least in these home services businesses, is that this ownership works element.

01:23:16.620 This guy, Pete Stavros, who works for KKR, has done this ground works deal.

01:23:22.500 There's Pete.

01:23:23.640 He's awesome.

01:23:24.200 They've done this with like 70 companies where they'll go in and they will work with management to make everybody in the company an owner.

01:23:37.540 And it's a tough sell for management because they got to let go of some stuff.

01:23:43.600 But the research is incredible.

01:23:46.580 Over time, what happens is these companies explode.

01:23:51.320 They stay alive and people are excited about it and hopeful about it.

01:23:53.820 Dude, there's – I mean, who do you want to come to your house to fix a plumbing problem? 0.61

01:24:00.260 An employee who is the epitome of a stereotypical plumber, butt crack, hanging out, pissed off, overweight, right?

01:24:11.380 Like everything you've seen plumbers portrayed as. 0.97

01:24:14.160 Yeah, drugs, coke.

01:24:15.680 Or would you like the owner of the company to come out and fix your problem?

01:24:20.060 It changes everything.

01:24:21.880 And I've seen – like you guys should take a deep dive if you want, but look at some of these videos where – like I saw one the other day, a company.

01:24:32.700 I think they were outside of Chicago, Nucor maybe. 1.00

01:24:35.020 They make garage doors.

01:24:36.620 It's another one of these companies you would never think about.

01:24:38.420 It's like Moog and their ball bearings and what is that?

01:24:41.300 Well, all of a sudden, like you've got truck drivers in these companies who have been there for 12 years and when this scheme goes into place, they leave this gathering with a check for $400,000, $500,000, $600,000.

01:24:54.780 It changes the –

01:24:55.640 That's a financial event in their life and it changes the way you think about that sweatshirt, right?

01:25:03.500 That's what I'm talking about.

01:25:04.800 There is a way forward that doesn't keep us stuck in the binary of labor and management.

01:25:12.120 And I think we have to – you have to realize – like I start thinking like the only way to compete with big business is you have to start a new way to do big business that – like I wanted to sell like a water, right?

01:25:24.660 I thought like so many people are in recovery and so many more people are headed into recovery for drug addiction, sex and pornography addiction.

01:25:31.780 Like that's one of the biggest epidemics that's coming right now is pornography addiction, right?

01:25:35.440 And it's not even here yet.

01:25:37.200 It's coming.

01:25:37.760 I see what you did there.

01:25:41.580 It's coming soon.

01:25:42.620 I don't know.

01:25:43.400 Hopefully not super soon.

01:25:44.960 It's just you and me in here.

01:25:46.120 Stay on that bull for eight seconds and we'll hope for the best.

01:25:49.900 Oh, yeah.

01:25:50.460 I'll bet that creamer over there.

01:25:52.820 I feel sleepy.

01:25:55.040 Can I lie down?

01:25:56.240 Yeah, dude.

01:25:57.560 That's a – okay.

01:25:58.900 I can keep going on that.

01:25:59.980 But yeah, it's like you have to fight fire with fire and you have to fight it with more compassionate and empathetic fire.

01:26:07.560 I was like, well, what if we sold a water where the proceeds of it went to put people in rehab, right?

01:26:11.920 So then it would be really hard, especially these days where so many people, all they have left is how they feel kind of because a lot of other things have been taken away from them.

01:26:21.260 It would be hard to say, okay, I'm not going to buy this.

01:26:23.160 I know this is going to help somebody get better, right?

01:26:26.460 It's like I think you have to start thinking beyond like this circle that we've been in of just like profiteering and of like combining everything.

01:26:37.540 Everything is just like these – what do they call it when they all get together but it's one owner or whatever?

01:26:44.280 Co-op.

01:26:44.800 Co-op.

01:26:45.460 Co-op or like – because a lot of the stories that I heard, this is – I just thought about this.

01:26:52.160 A lot of my friends' stories were that their dads got laid off after working at a place for 20 years and 25 years or their grandfather.

01:27:01.900 That was the story that I heard where I bet a generation earlier was my grandfather got a big severance thing and he got this and that and he was like the pride of the company.

01:27:10.620 A lot of the other stories became my dad got laid off after 22 years.

01:27:14.900 They didn't get – and I think a lot of that happened because like you're saying, umbrella companies came in.

01:27:19.860 Things got consolidated.

01:27:22.300 I mean we're meeting with Mark Zuckerberg and they're like up against antitrust stuff right now.

01:27:26.280 Oh, yeah.

01:27:26.840 Big time.

01:27:27.520 Which is pretty crazy and scary.

01:27:29.220 Oh, dude.

01:27:29.760 I mean there's so much to think and say about Facebook.

01:27:33.000 Mark's coming in here specifically?

01:27:34.760 We're going to see him in Los Alps or whatever they live at, Facebook.

01:27:38.660 Yeah, they're down in the peninsula from where I live, north of you.

01:27:43.080 Amazing campus.

01:27:44.120 Check out the roof when you go there.

01:27:46.620 I don't know if it's changed.

01:27:47.740 Is it good?

01:27:48.020 Is it siding?

01:27:48.800 It's sushi and a lot of siding.

01:27:50.560 Yeah.

01:27:51.000 Sushi and siding.

01:27:52.440 Pretty amazing.

01:27:53.480 Oh, a roof is just brave siding.

01:27:55.300 Let me tell you what Mark did for me just so you get a – I mean there's just endless things to say about the guy.

01:28:02.640 I'm fascinated to get to spend time with him.

01:28:04.380 Well, I wouldn't be here without Facebook.

01:28:09.220 I know it's crazy because I – there's clips of me out there telling Jay Leno I'd rather have hot needles stuck in my eyes than book a face or send a tweet or whatever that was.

01:28:19.060 Oh, yeah.

01:28:19.280 But once I realized that all the shows I work on could be programmed basically by the people who watch them, that was amazing to me.

01:28:30.480 So I got eight, nine million people out there now, six on Facebook and a couple –

01:28:36.340 That's great.

01:28:36.740 Oh, no.

01:28:37.540 Look, it's – this is my – these are my bosses, you know, and I'm super late to the YouTube party but I just got a million over there.

01:28:46.680 You did?

01:28:47.240 Yeah.

01:28:47.460 Let's go.

01:28:47.960 Yeah, man.

01:28:48.320 Well, your show's on there too.

01:28:49.000 It comes out May 2nd.

01:28:49.940 Right.

01:28:50.440 And that show wouldn't exist without Zuckerberg.

01:28:53.020 Okay.

01:28:53.440 So let's hear about it.

01:28:54.200 So six years ago, Mark invites me down to Facebook and he talks about this thing called Watch, Facebook Watch.

01:29:06.860 And the thought was who are we going to be, you know, 10 years from now and who are we really going to compete with and how is that going to work and could we be Netflix?

01:29:16.300 Should we be a kind of Netflix?

01:29:17.940 So that company basically committed to spending close to a billion dollars to answer that question.

01:29:26.460 So how do you figure it out?

01:29:27.860 You green light a couple of shows and they did something called Ball in the Family, some famous basketball player.

01:29:35.120 They did something with Jada Pinkett Smith and they did something with me.

01:29:39.160 What they did with me was a show called Returning the Favor.

01:29:42.520 Returning the Favor, I think you would dig.

01:29:44.940 Basically, I would look for and Facebook would tell me about people in these little towns that you probably couldn't find on a map that were doing something super cool in their neighborhood in a totally selfless way.

01:30:01.800 So it's like bloody do-gooders running amok, right?

01:30:05.480 And so we would go in there and we'd meet these people and we would tell them, like, I'm not there at this point.

01:30:12.120 I would send the crew in and they'd say, hey, we're working on a documentary about your town.

01:30:16.540 We understand you're doing some good work, maybe with foster care, maybe with PTSD, right?

01:30:21.780 And we would love to talk to you about that.

01:30:24.800 So meanwhile, they're filming that and I come in later and parades are arranged and we free up a big chunk of money,

01:30:34.320 sometimes $100,000 to maybe build something that allows them to do more of what they're already doing.

01:30:40.920 Oh, that's beautiful.

01:30:41.940 Some kind of gift.

01:30:42.960 So the show, it was a feel-good show, but it was also the making of a feel-good show.

01:30:46.880 Now, here's where it gets crazy.

01:30:48.500 We do 100 episodes, which is a lot.

01:30:51.100 The show's a hit.

01:30:52.000 It's a lot.

01:30:52.580 It's downloaded 450 million times.

01:30:56.520 No way.

01:30:57.160 Okay.

01:30:57.560 Dude, congratulations, bro. 0.94

01:30:58.940 You're an infection and it's a good one. 0.99

01:31:00.520 It gets crazier. 0.65

01:31:01.880 I win an Emmy, okay?

01:31:04.300 Like, I never won an Emmy.

01:31:05.740 I hope it was Emmy Rossum, huh?

01:31:08.260 Oh, man.

01:31:08.900 Is she cute or not? 1.00

01:31:09.540 Sorry, that was a bad joke.

01:31:10.260 No, no, she's something.

01:31:11.140 She is? 0.92

01:31:11.480 I don't even know who she is.

01:31:12.260 I was just thinking of the only Emmy I know.

01:31:14.080 No, she's a good one. 1.00

01:31:16.300 Yep, there you go.

01:31:17.320 Yeah, she's talented. 1.00

01:31:18.340 Rossum damn near killed them, huh?

01:31:20.060 That's an old Emmy Rossum joke. 0.72

01:31:22.080 So what you got to know is this never happened.

01:31:23.940 Hits are hard.

01:31:25.580 Emmys are hard. 0.98

01:31:26.360 Of all the things that I've worked on to be recognized this way, right?

01:31:32.720 So we got to 100 episodes.

01:31:35.380 I win Miami and we're canceled two weeks later.

01:31:39.360 Now, that's impossible.

01:31:40.660 But what happened at Facebook was they decided after four seasons that this whole watch platform,

01:31:47.720 they're just not going to compete with Netflix.

01:31:50.160 So no harm, no foul, but it was – we had two million people on a Facebook page who would watch that show like on the edge of their seat 0.89

01:32:01.980 and it was a giant community of people who really gave a shit and they were super interested because remember, not so long ago, in fact, today, 0.96

01:32:10.260 the country is so divided and there's so few things everybody can agree on. 0.99

01:32:16.380 You know, this show was, I think, one of them.

01:32:20.380 It was just a celebration of the neighbors you wish you had.

01:32:24.120 I don't own returning the favor, but we're relaunching it next week, May 2nd, under a new title called People You Should Know.

01:32:33.900 And, dude, I'm not like overly earnest.

01:32:38.800 I get all my sentimentality is taken care of in my foundation.

01:32:42.820 But this thing, I mean, whether it's addiction or – you're going to meet a guy on this show called Steve Hotz.

01:32:51.060 He runs something called the Black Horse Forge down in Fredericksburg.

01:32:54.800 The PTSD thing, you're up to speed with how bad that is?

01:32:58.300 Not how bad.

01:32:58.900 I mean, I know that it's a – you hear about it so much and it's used so much, I think it's hard to know what's really going on with it.

01:33:05.780 Well, last year, 6,407 service people killed themselves and divided by 365, it's like 17.5 a day.

01:33:18.620 But that doesn't count overdoses.

01:33:22.300 That doesn't count, you know, death by misadventure, addiction.

01:33:26.000 You, like, add up all of the deaths, the preventable deaths of despair and the numbers way beyond that.

01:33:33.320 So on Returning the Favor, we profiled – like, we – the number of things people are doing to combat this, you would love.

01:33:41.600 We hunted pythons in the Everglades with these guys. 0.59

01:33:44.260 I hate them.

01:33:44.760 They're annoying. 0.97

01:33:45.440 They're big and they're, you know, they're very snaky.

01:33:47.740 Putting motorcycles together in Indiana.

01:33:49.720 You got to get these guys out of their head if you want to help them.

01:33:53.320 This guy, Steve, the Black Horse Forge, has had 22,000 vets come through.

01:33:58.100 Wow.

01:33:58.520 Zero suicides.

01:33:59.600 He's batting 1,000.

01:34:00.620 Steve Hatz?

01:34:01.580 Yeah.

01:34:02.000 H-O-T-C. 1.00

01:34:02.700 We got to get him in here.

01:34:03.220 Dude, you would – so this guy was like a dress designer, an interior designer, all right?

01:34:09.380 He goes sideways with his boss.

01:34:11.540 He decides to enlist, 82nd Airborne, has hundreds of jumps.

01:34:15.080 Yeah. 0.70

01:34:15.740 Compresses his back, damn near breaks it, loses an eye. 0.88

01:34:19.120 Ooh. 0.97

01:34:19.540 Comes home, absolute rock bottom.

01:34:23.060 He's just – it's everything he loved is upside down.

01:34:28.260 And he starts making knives in a forge and realizes that when you're forging, the only thing you can think about is really what you're doing and don't burn yourself.

01:34:38.000 Yeah.

01:34:38.180 Right?

01:34:38.920 And it so completely took him out of his head.

01:34:43.000 That could have gone either way.

01:34:43.680 You see a depressed dude making a knife, you're like, how's this going?

01:34:46.440 He's made hundreds.

01:34:47.700 Wow.

01:34:48.000 He's got a whole line called the Jackalopes named after cryptozoological creatures, right?

01:34:54.740 Like the Beast of Bladenboro and all these things.

01:34:56.940 Yeah.

01:34:57.560 So he's one of the guys we'll be featuring on this thing.

01:35:00.360 That's him.

01:35:00.920 There he is right there.

01:35:01.820 That's him, man.

01:35:02.400 One-eyed Steve. 1.00

01:35:03.160 Fucking tough son of a bitch. 1.00

01:35:03.960 One-eyed Steve. 1.00

01:35:05.080 Yeah, he threw me out the door.

01:35:08.560 You ever listen to Widespread Panic?

01:35:10.460 Yeah.

01:35:10.760 I like them.

01:35:11.960 Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.

01:35:13.420 Am I conflating Panic at the Disco?

01:35:15.520 Yeah, you might be.

01:35:16.840 They should combine.

01:35:17.860 You'd have Widespread Panic at the Disco.

01:35:20.320 At least for one small team.

01:35:21.780 One massive stadium extravaganza.

01:35:24.980 Yeah.

01:35:25.820 That'd be something, dude.

01:35:26.780 I like that.

01:35:27.320 Or Def Leppard and Glorilla, maybe like Def Glorilla.

01:35:30.500 Def Glorilla, yeah.

01:35:32.200 Dude, they should have cool bands that merge.

01:35:34.660 Taco Bell and Pizza did it.

01:35:36.320 How about Queen and Kings of the Stone Age?

01:35:38.720 Yeah.

01:35:39.360 Kings and Queen of the Stone Age.

01:35:40.740 Like I have a little family.

01:35:41.780 That'd be amazing.

01:35:42.420 Yeah, or just like, yeah.

01:35:43.760 Or Trans of the Stone Age, you know? 1.00

01:35:46.560 Yeah.

01:35:47.280 I was going to say Kansas and Boston.

01:35:50.080 Got to get all this.

01:35:50.840 Kansas, Boston, and Chicago.

01:35:53.620 That'd be amazing.

01:35:55.200 God, that's a great idea.

01:35:56.660 I'll tell you what else they want to do.

01:35:57.960 This whole QVC thing dragged forward with a guy like you.

01:36:03.100 If you'd have me, I'd do it too.

01:36:05.060 But a celebration of American-made products done at, like, with this level of production.

01:36:10.980 What you really need is a back office to help you with the stuff.

01:36:15.680 Do you know Josh Smith, Montana Knife Company? 0.99

01:36:18.780 Get his ass in here. 0.99

01:36:19.740 Dude, didn't we see each other at Dave Ramsey's thing? 1.00

01:36:24.120 Were you there?

01:36:24.620 No.

01:36:25.080 I've done Dave Ramsey's thing.

01:36:26.960 Were you there?

01:36:27.760 I think, I don't know if we might have been there at the same time.

01:36:30.560 Or Tucker Carlson.

01:36:31.620 Have you got that Zen thing he had?

01:36:32.760 Yeah.

01:36:33.680 This guy makes some of the most, he's a master bladesmith.

01:36:37.700 He was on, what is it, Forged in Fire.

01:36:40.540 And I met him about a year ago.

01:36:43.340 This guy, I mean, talk about a quest.

01:36:46.280 He makes all, everything is in America.

01:36:48.900 Just like Bayard over at American Giant.

01:36:52.000 I love that.

01:36:52.720 Only he's up in Montana.

01:36:53.780 These knives are amazing.

01:36:56.000 He comes on my podcast.

01:36:58.100 And full disclosure, he's not a sponsor.

01:37:02.020 But he said, you know what you're doing with MicroWorks.

01:37:04.540 Anything I can do to help.

01:37:06.060 And people offer, they say nice things, whatever.

01:37:08.380 So I said, well, I tell you what you can do.

01:37:10.260 But if you want to make a MicroWorks blade, you know, real limited, you know, I can, I promise you my people will buy them like that.

01:37:20.200 Because your knives are amazing.

01:37:22.080 And, you know, when they go to your site, maybe they'll get a sense of who you are and what you've done and how many jobs you've created and so forth and so on.

01:37:29.060 And he makes 300 of these things.

01:37:32.540 They're unbelievable.

01:37:34.480 They're not cheap.

01:37:35.180 We sold them for $350,000.

01:37:36.720 Let me keep every, we raised like $70,000.

01:37:39.900 Let's go.

01:37:40.460 Immediately.

01:37:41.320 Immediately.

01:37:42.020 Now they're doing a knife.

01:37:44.420 And my foundation participates.

01:37:47.000 And I'm going to talk to Bayard about doing something similar.

01:37:49.860 Because to your point, you've got to fight fire with fire.

01:37:53.200 Right.

01:37:53.440 That's the thing.

01:37:54.020 You can't just keep yelling at it.

01:37:55.800 You can't just be like, this is what they're doing.

01:37:57.320 This is what people, you have to start to be like, well, how do we be, how do you ingenuity it or whatever it's called?

01:38:06.160 Ingenize.

01:38:07.000 Engineer.

01:38:07.660 Engineer.

01:38:08.380 Well, look.

01:38:09.120 Yeah.

01:38:09.400 Dude.

01:38:09.560 How do you, but that's how you win.

01:38:11.080 It's like, but just pointing the finger at a time that you're not doing anything.

01:38:15.000 Here's something.

01:38:15.720 You have to, you have to win the game up here first.

01:38:18.960 You got to, it's, you know what it is?

01:38:20.580 It's, it's, it's asymmetrical warfare.

01:38:23.140 You have to think that like in this conversation, typically Walmart is the devil because, you know, the rap is, oh, well, they're buying stuff super cheap because people need it super cheap.

01:38:35.560 And that's what Walmart is and whatever.

01:38:37.480 The thing people don't know, and I, and I don't work for Walmart, but I'm, I'm just telling you, I, I know them pretty well.

01:38:44.260 And they have spent, uh, nearly $700 billion on U S supply chain.

01:38:51.960 Wow.

01:38:52.060 So what happens is, uh, God, I hope I'm not talking out of turn.

01:38:55.800 They made a deal with American giant too, didn't they?

01:38:58.180 Yes.

01:38:58.720 That's what I'm going to tell you.

01:38:59.740 And this is what your audience needs to understand.

01:39:02.780 And this is why it's really hard to get, you know, good guys and bad guys with black hats and white hats.

01:39:08.680 It's not that simple you, so you got a company like American giant who makes a great t-shirt and it says like, you know, American made on the front.

01:39:17.500 It's thick.

01:39:18.200 It's indestructible.

01:39:19.580 I got one bad news.

01:39:22.120 $75.

01:39:23.180 Now most people can't pay 75 bucks for a t-shirt no matter how rad, right?

01:39:27.780 You just can't, it's just, it's not in the wood.

01:39:29.480 But what happens if a company like Walmart, the biggest retailer in the world, sets aside a real chunk of money and calls a company like American giant and says, I tell you what, we love that shirt.

01:39:42.980 If we order a million of them or even half a million, as opposed to the normal 5 or 10,000 IPO you might get, if we blow this thing up, what kind of price could we actually get at that level?

01:40:02.720 And then the price starts to come down, 15, 20 bucks.

01:40:07.440 You know, under $20, you can get an American made t-shirt.

01:40:10.860 That's what you're talking about.

01:40:12.880 It's not going to happen with the current way of thinking.

01:40:16.700 The problem is if I go out in the world and tell that story, there's a whole long list of union people who are going to say, Mike, you don't understand.

01:40:25.980 Walmart's the devil because this, this, this, this, and this.

01:40:28.240 And I say, look, I get it.

01:40:29.760 That's your fight.

01:40:31.140 And I don't particularly have skin in that game.

01:40:34.460 I'm sympathetic to your cause.

01:40:36.240 But it's back to that tier two, tier one conversation.

01:40:38.900 You don't talk about tariffs like it's only an economic thing or you want to talk about it up here.

01:40:44.160 If you're going to talk about it up there, you can't just look at Walmart as the devil because you've been told they're the devil.

01:40:50.200 And you can't look at American giant as a small scrappy US company that makes things that are too expensive because they're doing the best they can with the way the table's been set.

01:41:00.160 But if you get these two guys together and all of a sudden you get a different kind of investment in a supply chain in our country in a different way, and that's how a T-shirt can be made in this country for a price most people can't afford.

01:41:14.880 And that's a story that, look, that can happen with knives.

01:41:18.880 That can happen with anything.

01:41:20.500 Imagine like a QVC type of thing, right, where it's like this is American made and it's awesome, right?

01:41:25.400 You would like make sure that the products were good and that they had enough of a supply chain where they could sell or maybe they could only make 50 this month.

01:41:31.700 But that's what they are.

01:41:32.620 And then they're limited.

01:41:33.320 And then you have like something that's a real person made it.

01:41:35.840 And then when you're walking around with something on your back, this is like you're not just carrying – you don't just have a shirt on your back that makes you look cool.

01:41:42.260 You have somebody's well-being and their purpose on your back, you know, and so now you're carrying something together.

01:41:50.020 You know, once you're both carrying purpose, it takes a lot of – it's pressure if it's just you.

01:41:54.380 But if you put the same weight on two people, that's purpose, man.

01:41:57.160 Well, look, man, that's rod busting 101.

01:41:59.940 Look what you just did there.

01:42:00.760 I sound like Dennis Rodman.

01:42:02.280 Metaphor there.

01:42:03.620 Like that's – I did a job a couple years ago with these rod busters.

01:42:07.900 They're iron workers, right, and they carry the rebar, right? 0.78

01:42:13.000 So you got a chunk of rebar.

01:42:14.920 Say it's like, I don't know, whatever the gauge is.

01:42:17.100 It's thick.

01:42:17.600 These things weigh a couple hundred pounds and you get like eight of them.

01:42:20.520 So you got 800 pounds on eight guys' shoulders and that's the only way you can move them.

01:42:27.060 You know, you have to put the weight on your shoulder.

01:42:29.280 Where it gets crazy is, well, that guy's short and that guy's 6'3". 0.99

01:42:33.160 Now, if you're 6'3", you're screwed. 0.82

01:42:35.720 Yeah, you're doing a lot of – yeah. 0.84

01:42:37.180 Right, so it's like the whole – it's really a great metaphor because when you're humping the iron up to the top of the skyscraper,

01:42:43.540 you're stepping through a grid of rebar that's already been laid.

01:42:46.860 And if you trip and you go down, you take everybody with you.

01:42:51.080 So it's an incredible metaphor for teamwork, consequences, stakes, working together, right?

01:42:59.260 And to your point, there are other ways to get the rebar to where you need to set it but this is the best way and it really does take a different way to think.

01:43:13.960 And then ironically of course, have you ever seen a bridge before they pour the concrete where it's – the whole thing is just like a skeleton of steel?

01:43:23.260 So it's –

01:43:24.260 Sounds very nice.

01:43:25.200 Well, it's beautiful and it's artistic and it's like what you were talking about before.

01:43:30.540 The – like there it is.

01:43:33.060 That's like a whole panel of rebar there, right?

01:43:35.680 Oh, yeah.

01:43:36.380 And that's just on the floor but when you see like an overpass being built, it's like some kind of a dinosaur and it's all done with hundreds of tons of iron.

01:43:50.660 And like the guys who do this work, there you go, that kind of thing.

01:43:55.900 It's just mind-boggling and then when they come, like the concrete guys come and they bury it, man, forever.

01:44:02.940 However, no one ever sees the artistry, no one ever sees the work of the iron worker.

01:44:09.680 You know, for 100 years, it'll –

01:44:11.420 That's a good point.

01:44:12.240 It'll live in the concrete.

01:44:13.580 Well, that's – like so much of that is happening to people today.

01:44:18.180 They feel like their good work has been covered in concrete.

01:44:22.460 They feel like it's invisible.

01:44:24.540 They don't feel appreciated.

01:44:26.340 They don't feel like they're moving the needle.

01:44:28.760 They don't feel like they're part of a team, you know?

01:44:31.640 And we have to do it.

01:44:32.680 The toughest part then is I've found in my own life when it is – if I – and it's not like you're playing the victim but sometimes you're the person that gets affected by something but you also have to be the person to be a part of fixing it.

01:44:45.700 And that's the toughest thing because there's a part of me that always wants to be like this isn't fair.

01:44:50.140 And I'm not saying for me.

01:44:51.160 I've been fortunate in my life.

01:44:52.300 I can afford to pay my rent.

01:44:53.400 I can afford to buy my groceries.

01:44:54.840 But there's certainly been times where I've – in the past where I've been like, you know, this is unfortunate.

01:45:01.760 You know, it's their – it's the – it's society.

01:45:04.600 It's this fault.

01:45:05.440 But still, it put me in a certain position.

01:45:07.840 I still have to be the one to correct my position.

01:45:11.120 Dude, it's you.

01:45:12.120 Look, whatever it is, it starts with you. 0.99

01:45:14.440 That's why the first tenet on my stupid sweat pledge is about that gratitude. 0.99

01:45:20.360 Dude, I don't think you can feel sorry for yourself if your default position is grateful. 0.99

01:45:27.540 Yeah.

01:45:27.860 Oh, that's the truth, man.

01:45:28.980 I just don't think you can.

01:45:29.840 And self-pity can be a drug.

01:45:30.640 I was addicted to self-pity for a long time.

01:45:32.300 I didn't even realize it.

01:45:33.320 Yeah, man.

01:45:33.800 I was addicted to self-pity.

01:45:35.300 I was like, oh, that's a – and I would get addicted to it.

01:45:38.120 Feels good to feel bad.

01:45:39.440 It does, especially when that's the thing you're most used to feeling.

01:45:42.400 It feels impossible to even attempt to feel good.

01:45:46.180 I was afraid to feel good because I would be – I was afraid I would leave my bad feelings behind.

01:45:50.900 And they were the only feelings I'd ever even known.

01:45:52.900 Oh, my God.

01:45:53.660 You would betray your negativity.

01:45:56.740 Yes.

01:45:57.200 And thereby let yourself down again.

01:46:00.740 Yeah.

01:46:00.920 Yeah, that's a –

01:46:01.740 That's crazy.

01:46:02.420 And I never even knew that could happen, man.

01:46:04.340 That took a ton of work to get to do that.

01:46:07.780 Yeah, I would love to think of something.

01:46:09.300 It's so funny because I've been trying to think of that.

01:46:10.940 How do we fight fire with like a fire that has a feeling in it, right?

01:46:15.320 And then – yeah, what about unions though?

01:46:18.020 We had Sean O'Brien come in about unions.

01:46:20.540 Unions helps a lot of people.

01:46:21.660 Do you feel like unions are bad or do you feel like unions are good or it's just –

01:46:25.040 Too broad.

01:46:25.860 Too broad.

01:46:26.300 Never mind.

01:46:26.760 No, no, no.

01:46:27.200 It's a great question.

01:46:28.380 But it's like, okay, so the iron workers we were just talking about.

01:46:32.760 Yeah, that was a cheap question to me to just fling at the end.

01:46:35.180 Well, look, my own problem is – first of all, 2,200 people through Microworks, I'd say maybe 20, 25 percent of them are working through a union shop.

01:46:46.440 Okay.

01:46:46.660 Most of them are electricians, some plumbers.

01:46:50.680 But by and large, the percentage in my cohort of scholarship recipients and workers is – it's actually bigger than the – I think the national right now, 8 percent of workers are in a union or something like that.

01:47:05.520 Maybe a little less.

01:47:06.440 You check and I'm not sure, but it's close to that.

01:47:08.200 So, yeah, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but the thing – it's like tier two and tier one with tariffs.

01:47:16.900 If you're going to have a conversation about how best to negotiate between labor and management, there you go, 10 percent in 23, 11.2 in 23, 6.7 private – that's really what you're asking.

01:47:33.740 Look at that, 6.7 percent in 2024 in the private sector like iron workers or plumbers, 35.7 percent in the public sector.

01:47:45.240 That could be the post office.

01:47:46.600 That could be teachers.

01:47:48.040 That could be the SEIU.

01:47:49.880 That could be all sorts of different things.

01:47:52.680 If businesses start to become more like groundworks, you wouldn't even need a union.

01:47:55.520 Thank you.

01:47:56.080 So really, again –

01:47:56.820 That's the future.

01:47:57.600 Fire with fire.

01:47:58.280 How do you – yeah.

01:47:59.660 It's reconceptualizing things.

01:48:01.640 I call it door number three, right?

01:48:03.820 You can't just give me one or two, left or right, blue collar or white collar.

01:48:11.080 Republican or Democrat.

01:48:12.360 No.

01:48:12.620 It's all a shell game.

01:48:13.940 You have to realize this whole thing has been a shell game. 0.99

01:48:16.180 It's a sucker's bet. 0.98

01:48:17.640 Yes. 0.97

01:48:17.960 It's like the color of collars is no longer for sale.

01:48:22.200 Don't talk to me about blue or white collar.

01:48:24.440 That's the point of the groundwork story.

01:48:26.120 You got a guy covered with mud under your house, your greatest investment, okay, doing something to save the foundation.

01:48:35.420 Now, are you going to call that guy a blue collar worker?

01:48:38.420 You're going to call that guy just a grunt? 1.00

01:48:41.000 That guy is a fucking – 1.00

01:48:42.520 Superhero. 1.00

01:48:43.380 Surgeon at that moment.

01:48:44.620 That's right.

01:48:45.340 For your family to sleep safe at night, that guy is your surgeon.

01:48:48.480 That's right.

01:48:48.960 And he's also an owner of the company.

01:48:51.280 So now all of that other pride of ownership, all of that other code-driven integrity thing, right?

01:48:58.380 You can start to see how you might be able to build a cohesive unit around something other than a paycheck.

01:49:07.500 And that's not an excuse to say the paychecks couldn't be better.

01:49:10.700 I'm just saying that if you only look at the economic ramifications of a tariff, that's not much different than only looking at whether or not you like your job based on what your paycheck says.

01:49:24.460 And if you take the bait on that, the next thing you know, you're going to be having an argument about UBI, universal basic income.

01:49:31.300 And you're going to get sucked into this whole conversation about, well, what are people going to do if there is no work and we ought to just pay them not to do anything?

01:49:39.100 And then you've got all kinds of moral and ethical questions and it never stops.

01:49:44.780 If at a certain point – at a certain point, you have to invest in your own country, in your own people, the spirit of your own people.

01:49:50.040 And I can't understand how that's not extremely evident right now.

01:49:56.060 And if UBI, if universal basic income helps people to get by for a couple years or five years while these – while like things adjust from going from let's try to build stuff here in our own country and make people feel empowered and if they're – as if they're part of an assembly line of humanity and of purpose and of a nation and of a group think of a moral code, then I don't – I think that that's totally fine.

01:50:23.080 Let's stop giving money to other places who have enough money right now and help our own people out for a little while.

01:50:30.460 And I know I'm opening up bigger cans of worms but it's just – I am all in because if you don't do it now, it is – to me, it appears like it's kind of going to be a wrap.

01:50:42.260 And – but I still believe that there's that human spirit, that there's that team spirit, there's that like – that whatever made those people – whatever that thing is to be an American, even if it's not even real, but that we believe in it, there's still that inside of us that makes me believe that we could turn it around.

01:51:02.840 That guy, Bayard, who you brought up, he's a Wall Street guy and 16 years ago, he said, no, I've just – his family came over on the freaking Mayflower, just so you know.

01:51:14.980 That's who this guy is and he said, nope, redo.

01:51:18.320 I'm going to build a company called American Giant and I'm going to prove that this country can still make quality clothing.

01:51:25.660 Now, that's a very personal mission that could only be embarked upon by a genuinely hard-headed dude, okay?

01:51:33.380 But 16 years later, they're still standing and they're doing it.

01:51:37.720 They're proving it, right?

01:51:39.400 Now, can you do it to scale?

01:51:40.940 This is a whole other conversation.

01:51:42.620 We'll talk about it another time.

01:51:43.700 We can.

01:51:44.360 But yeah, can you do it to scale?

01:51:45.540 What pieces have to start?

01:51:46.660 But you have to start somewhere. 0.67

01:51:48.160 It's like the crazy person, the leader was first the crazy person. 0.69

01:51:53.540 The revolutionaries were first viewed as insane always.

01:51:58.560 It's not just that.

01:52:00.120 It's every great accepted truth today began as madness.

01:52:07.840 It was dismissed and then it was grudgingly considered and then it was slowly accepted as fringe and then it was more widely believed as possible and then it got a consensus and then it became the truth.

01:52:22.780 And then it became the self-evident truth.

01:52:26.260 That's how it always, always happens.

01:52:29.060 It's going to happen with every single thing right now from tariffs to climate change to meat eating to addiction.

01:52:38.880 All the things we think we know about all of these different things are in a state of evolution.

01:52:45.660 I agree.

01:52:46.020 And I don't know where or how it ends, but I'll tell you this, man.

01:52:50.420 It's exciting.

01:52:51.060 We are long in certainty today and we're very short in understanding.

01:52:59.980 And it's just going to take time.

01:53:02.500 It's just going to take time to be as certain about these other things as we are about slavery.

01:53:08.300 You know, it takes time for people.

01:53:12.340 I don't know.

01:53:13.680 I don't know how it ends.

01:53:14.980 But look, again, you're engaged.

01:53:19.160 What you're doing, I can see that you love it.

01:53:22.900 You love it on stage.

01:53:24.400 You love talking to people and you love helping your audience.

01:53:27.420 My hope for everybody who is listening is that they can find a pursuit that gives them a measure of that.

01:53:34.900 And I've seen it in welders.

01:53:36.520 I've seen it in plumbers.

01:53:38.140 I've seen it in entrepreneurs.

01:53:40.020 I've seen it in writers.

01:53:41.360 My mom just wrote her fourth book.

01:53:43.960 She's 87.

01:53:45.420 This woman wrote every day for 60 years, Theo.

01:53:47.780 Cleaning up after my dirty son.

01:53:50.160 Well, that was kind of her second one.

01:53:52.560 But no, for 60 years, her dream was to be a bestselling author.

01:53:56.860 She never got published until she was 80.

01:53:59.520 And then she went to number four.

01:54:01.160 And now she's had four books.

01:54:03.240 I only mention it because, you know, I talk about work ethic all the time.

01:54:07.200 I talk about my pop.

01:54:08.140 I talk about Dirty Jobbers and everything else. 1.00

01:54:10.140 My mom, right in front of me, you know, is a four-time New York Times bestselling author. 1.00

01:54:15.540 And she's 87.

01:54:17.120 And that's a second act.

01:54:19.500 It didn't really happen for her until she was 80.

01:54:21.840 Yeah.

01:54:22.160 So whatever level of hope or hopelessness or despair people are in, man, there's...

01:54:27.460 I feel like we've just talked about a lot of inspiration.

01:54:29.500 I mean, I feel inspired.

01:54:30.680 I feel like we can do things.

01:54:32.100 I just, I feel like things are so possible, right?

01:54:35.440 And yeah, I just appreciate that there's an audience that tunes in.

01:54:38.900 And I hope they just stay patient, you know, and we'll keep thinking together and we'll

01:54:43.920 find ways to do things new.

01:54:45.640 I just, I don't think it's that far off to change things, you know?

01:54:51.660 You're a hillbilly from Louisiana who just interviewed the president of the United States. 0.89

01:54:56.260 Oh, yeah.

01:54:56.720 Are you kidding me?

01:54:57.920 Yeah, that's a great...

01:54:58.800 Are you kidding me?

01:54:59.720 That is a great point, dude.

01:55:01.440 When people tell me...

01:55:02.940 Dude, I remember when I couldn't find my shirt for almost one month.

01:55:05.200 By the way...

01:55:08.200 Three and a half weekends, dude.

01:55:09.360 You talk about shirts.

01:55:10.860 I can't believe you got a wardrobe rack here.

01:55:14.360 Oh, yeah, we do.

01:55:15.280 And the whole smiley face on the thing and the...

01:55:19.100 It's exactly what you were talking about.

01:55:21.100 That's your...

01:55:22.020 It's like your credo.

01:55:23.220 It's your code.

01:55:24.720 It's such a simple thing, you know?

01:55:27.180 What's it say on the back?

01:55:28.480 It just says, be good to yourself on the back.

01:55:30.360 Well, there you go. 0.98

01:55:31.360 Because, yeah, we're a lot of late bloomers here, but we're fucking hopeful. 0.93

01:55:34.280 And, yeah, I think we can do something cool. 0.83

01:55:36.900 Like, we just have to make sure we get it right, you know?

01:55:39.240 You got to try, man.

01:55:40.600 Right.

01:55:40.800 You have to try.

01:55:41.300 That's the thing.

01:55:41.780 That's it. 1.00

01:55:42.020 About tariffs, like, fucking try. 0.99

01:55:43.460 I don't give a... 1.00

01:55:44.000 There's nothing to lose.

01:55:45.980 I've been to every place.

01:55:47.160 Everybody I know is in addiction.

01:55:49.520 What are we waiting for to happen?

01:55:52.640 Tell me how it's working with $37 trillion in the hole.

01:55:55.640 Tell me what's working, okay?

01:55:58.100 This whole thing is cobbled together with Kleenex and spit.

01:56:01.120 And we've confused the fact that we're still living in a workable situation with a situation

01:56:08.540 that truly works.

01:56:10.100 Yeah.

01:56:10.260 It's very wobbly.

01:56:13.700 Kleenex and spit, I agree, man. 0.99

01:56:14.920 It's time to clear our own throat and make our own fucking glue, too, I think, you know? 0.99

01:56:18.300 I thought you were going to go with phlegm. 0.99

01:56:19.660 Oh, it was phlegm, but it was...

01:56:21.120 Well, if you're clearing your throat, you're cutting up the phlegm, you put the phlegm in

01:56:23.780 the glue, and then the next thing you know, it's all in one of these little sunny delight

01:56:27.500 things, and I'm feeling weirdly caffeinated and subdued.

01:56:31.600 Mike Rowe, your new show is out May 2nd.

01:56:34.220 We'll make sure to share some clips of it on our Instagram page as well and on our Facebook.

01:56:38.640 Thanks, pal.

01:56:39.300 Yeah, and it's a rehash of...

01:56:40.840 It's not a rehash.

01:56:41.600 It is a continuation of...

01:56:43.740 It's a celebration of the neighbors you wish you had, returning the favor, thanks to Mark

01:56:47.960 Zuckerberg, set the standard, people you should know, is what I'm going to do.

01:56:51.960 Look, I don't even...

01:56:53.580 I don't know what else to do except point the camera at people who are actually making a

01:57:02.620 difference, whether they're making a sweatshirt or a submarine or saving lives by making knives

01:57:08.140 in a forge, man.

01:57:09.080 And these stories, Theo, that's where we land the plane, with your permission.

01:57:14.060 If you're looking for hope, it's in the forge.

01:57:19.060 It's in the sewing machines.

01:57:22.000 It's with a welding torch. 1.00

01:57:24.760 It's with an attitude that says, I'm going to cheerfully take hold of that son of a bitch, 0.99

01:57:29.860 and I'm going to lift it up, and I'm going to do my part to get the rebar to where it 0.99

01:57:33.280 needs to go.

01:57:34.080 I'm going to do my best.

01:57:35.260 I'm going to try.

01:57:35.920 And if I fall, I'm going to stand back up, because life is a journey, brother.

01:57:41.560 And it's a job.

01:57:43.200 I'm not going to say a dirty one, just a job.

01:57:45.860 Mike Rowe, thanks so much, brother.

01:57:47.560 Anytime.

01:57:47.880 Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.

01:57:54.020 I must be cornerstone.

01:57:59.200 Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.

01:58:04.740 I can feel it in my bones.

01:58:08.980 But it's going to take...

01:58:11.200 東南平

01:58:11.900 The two years of life, I can feel thank you.

01:58:12.500 The truth is about flying into us all together.

01:58:14.840 I can feel it on the breeze.

01:58:18.500 The truth is about flying into us all together.

01:58:21.140 And I can feel it in our subconscious seat to see you during these time.

01:58:23.300 But in the air on everything here, how did you do it one of us?

01:58:26.360 I can feel it in your life.

01:58:28.760 After you now, I'll leave you keeping your eyes right at my neighbor. 0.99

01:58:30.580 So, where do you hear from the air?

01:58:32.080 I know you, and I'm trying to see your eyes right here.

01:58:34.400 So, I'm trying to get it on all day out of what you need to follow me next back up.

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - April 22, 2025

#577 - Mike Rowe

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