479: Evan Voyles— The Connoisseur of Irony

Neon lights aren't supposed to be profound. They're supposed to buzz, flicker, and sell you a cold beer or a bad decision. But Evan Voyles—founder of The Neon Jungle http://theneonjungle.com/—has made a career out of bending that expectation into something stranger… and maybe a little wiser. Evan is a self-taught craftsman who works with fire, gas, and fragile tubes of glass to make signs that don't just glow—they say something. His work has been commissioned by brands, collected as art, and—on more than one occasion—made people stop and wonder if the joke is on them. In this episode, Mike sits down with a guy who makes a living lighting things up—literally—and wrestles with why any of it matters. They talk about the strange line between art and advertising and why irony is harder to come by than you'd think. It's a conversation about craft, culture, and the quiet satisfaction of making something with your hands… even if what you make is a glowing reminder not to take any of it too seriously.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Mike Rowe here. It's The Way I Heard It. Boy, oh, boy, Chuck.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:09Mike Rowe?

  I mean, that was fun.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  That was a lot of fun. Like, I've been experiencing Evan for the last two or three years.

• 0:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Because I've been calling him, you know, we've been talking about these great neon signs and when he's gonna make one for us, and then, of course, getting him to be on the podcast. It's like, I've experienced quite a bit of him before today.

• 0:30Mike Rowe?

  Well, for those of you in the audience who have commented on the new signage here at The Way I Heard It World Headquarters, the neon in question was made by my old friend, Evan Voyles. He made a sign that says "The Way I Heard It," which is now always affixed just beyond our guests.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:51Mike Rowe?

  Here in PH3. And over my shoulder is a more ambitious logo for MicroWorks, all done in neon.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:59Mike Rowe?

  All handmade, all bent glass, all, I think, beautiful. And, you know, like most people, I've always been attracted to neon. There's just something so nostalgic and evocative.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  It's sexy.

• 1:15Mike Rowe?

  It is sexy.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  You know, and not in a dirty way.

• 1:17Mike Rowe?

  No, it's, you know what, I think, to me, neon is a kind of, it epitomizes pulp fiction somehow.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:30Mike Rowe?

  It's noir, it's of a time before you and I were born.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35Mike Rowe?

  But we're nevertheless familiar with, so in that sense, there's like a Verchmalz to it, you know?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41Mike Rowe?

  In the early days of Somebody's Gotta Do It, not long after we stopped filming Dirty Jobs, we featured this guy, Evan Voyles, who has this rundown crappy little shop.

• 1:55Mike Rowe?

  In Austin, but who does such great work.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Amazing work, yes.

• 2:03Mike Rowe?

  And, you know, he was, and you'll hear me talk to him about it in a minute, but he really did epitomize the kind of person I was looking for on this show.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:14Mike Rowe?

  Because you can't put this cat in a box.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Right, and he is the somebody who has got to do it. He got fixated with Neon by accident.

• 2:23Mike Rowe?

  Afflicted.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was a collector, and then he just started going, you know what, I want to do this. And so now you can't stop him from doing it.

• 2:31Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. What makes him interesting is that he's an artist who can't call himself an artist, because the term makes him uncomfortable. He's more of a craftsman.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:41Mike Rowe?

  I think he would agree. He can live with that term. He's an English major who went on to study architecture and decided not to work in either of those fields, but both equipped him to be what he is today, which is an incredible conversationalist.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  He's really, really good at talking.

• 3:01Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, and, and listening. Like, he's like, it's a...

• 3:05Speaker 01

  And hitting the ball back over the net. Really, really good at that.

• 3:08Mike Rowe?

  Always. So in the same way, he was a great representative of a somebody who's got to do it. He's also a great representative of the kind of guest I, I try and get on the pod, you know, because I don't want a bunch of questions. I don't like to follow, you know, a predetermined agenda. I just want to talk to people as best I can. And man, he makes it so easy. He's lived a big life, and as you'll hear us, you know, allude to, we're, we're probably not singing out of the same hymn book vis a vis a great many things.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:47Mike Rowe?

  But the things we agree on, we agree on passionately. And hey, look, Mary Sullivan's in the house.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Hi, Mary.

• 3:56Mike Rowe?

  Hey, we're just recording a podcast, or about to. So you stand there for a minute, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, you'll meet my friend Evan. And fair warning, when you see his handiwork, you might wanna hire him. Because the boy makes a hell of a sign.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  I wanna say one more thing.

• 4:13Mike Rowe?

  I can't stop.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  We never do this, but I wanna say this, that one of the ways that podcasts grow is people share episodes. This episode is gonna be very shareable.

• 4:22Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  It's a conversation with a regular guy who does an amazing thing, and it's a lot of fun. So people out there, please, share this episode with someone you like.

• 4:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, don't be shy. Share away. You know, smash that like button. There you go.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  That is a lot.

• 4:40Mike Rowe?

  Evan Voyles, we're calling this one a connoisseur of irony. Because he is. You'll see.

• 4:52Mike Rowe?

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• 5:34Mike Rowe?

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• 6:17Mike Rowe?

  Maybe, certainly some kind of abuse, some sort of...

• 6:21Speaker 02

  I think that needs to be practiced on a daily basis.

• 6:23Mike Rowe?

  Of course, abuse, well like anything else, it's a muscle.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:27Mike Rowe?

  On self-abuse, to this day, perhaps the best 1,200 words I think I've ever written about... Remember the Great Masturbation Scare? I mean, you wouldn't remember it, you didn't live through it, but it was a thing.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  I think I was studying for that exam, actually.

• 6:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, practice, practice.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  I didn't know there was a scare! I wasn't scared, no, this is a real thing!

• 6:47Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, are we rolling?

• 6:49Speaker 02

  And is this...

• 6:51Speaker 01

  I'm afraid we are, yeah.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Good distance?

• 6:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, that's a good distance.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 6:55Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, no, The Great Masturbation Scare tore through the country in the late 19th century.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Oh, you're right, I don't remember that, clearly.

• 7:04Mike Rowe?

  Which, by the way, man, you look, I mean, it's... When did I see you last?

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Hmm, 10 years ago.

• 7:10Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  11 years ago.

• 7:12Mike Rowe?

  What's the Oscar, was it Dorian Gray?

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, you look exactly the same, too.

• 7:16Mike Rowe?

  There must be a picture of you in a garage somewhere that looks like hell. You look the exact same.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  I would like to see that picture, actually. I imagine it looks exactly like what I think I look like.

• 7:26Mike Rowe?

  Chuck, can you find that photo online for me, real quick? Oh, shit.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Find that, no, I can't find it real quick. Find that garage.

• 7:32Mike Rowe?

  So, The Great Masturbation Scare was a thing in this country, and it was really preached from the pulpit, and it was deemed a sin. And what was interesting about it was there were a lot of tangential things that were being argued from the pulpit that were encouraging this behavior, and one of them was diet, right? So, the kind of foods we ate.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  This is Victorian?

• 7:57Mike Rowe?

  Yes, well, in this country, you know, we didn't really... But about, yeah, it was contemporaneous. I think like 1870s, 1880s.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 8:04Mike Rowe?

  Right, and one of the dogmas around discouraging self-abuse was the eradication of sugar and flour, and really anything that made food taste good. Because the argument was that kind of pleasure would lead to...

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Lead to the other kind of pleasure.

• 8:22Mike Rowe?

  Correct, and so, the story...

• 8:25Mike Rowe?

  Concerns a famous reverend who preached the eradication of those dietary supplements and created a cracker that just didn't taste like anything at all.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Like hard tack kind of thing?

• 8:39Mike Rowe?

  Very much like hard tack, which is of course what the sailors relied upon as they sailed around the world. Anyway, it was very popular.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Along with.

• 8:48Mike Rowe?

  That's right. What shall we do with the drunken?

• 8:53Speaker 02

  That's right. You got the hard tack in one hand and something else in the other.

• 8:56Mike Rowe?

  And the harder tack in the other. Anyway, the pastor.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  There's new meaning to come about.

• 9:04Mike Rowe?

  The pastor was named Sylvester Graham and his crackers eventually purchased by Nabisco are now filled with sugar and flour. Which is why the country still can't keep its hands off itself, I suppose.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Wow, it's too bad that we do not have money invested in Nabisco right now because shares are kind of sore.

• 9:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Or or just rise.

• 9:29Mike Rowe?

  Look at us. There we are. 10 years ago.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:33Mike Rowe?

  I mean, aside from the bad, and that's me. I got, you know, another 20 pounds.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  We're both grayer.

• 9:38Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. And it still looks just like that. Only I'm not in that building anymore.

• 9:42Mike Rowe?

  Your place, I'll never forget walking in there the first time and just thinking, is it possible you could have deliberately trashed it to this extent just to make some kind of impression upon me and the crew?

• 9:57Speaker 01

  You thought you were doing an episode of Hoarders.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:59Mike Rowe?

  Honestly, I couldn't savvy it, as the sailors would say. It just didn't make sense. But you're not there anymore?

• 10:05Speaker 02

  No, no, I'm not. I moved out of there five years ago and ended up buying an old gas station, which I then pretty much trashed the same way, but it's not as bad. Nothing was as bad as that. And ironically, I did it because they wouldn't, they raised my rent. This is what happens in Austin. You raise your rent till you have to leave. I said, I'd love to buy it. I had the option. They said, well, the option only works if we want to sell it. We don't want to sell it. And so I got out, ended up buying this place not far away, great. The landlords then leased it to this company out of Chicago. What was it called? Foxtrot.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Little neighborhood grocery place. They spent millions fixing up the whole building and turning it into this, you know, neighborhood grocery concept. They were doing thirty-three of them across the country.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  I got to do the sign, which was a little ironic. You know, to be back on this building and now with money behind me, I'm getting to do what I never would have got to do for myself. And we know I wouldn't have made it nice.

• 11:13Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  I'm incapable of that.

• 11:14Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  But I'm, I'm good at making other people's make things look nice. That's sort of my job. They lasted one year and then went bankrupt like that overnight. No notice to vendors, no notice to employees. Only the top people got wind and got out.

• 11:34Mike Rowe?

  How long you been in business?

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Thirty, thirty-three years as Neon Jungle and then five years before that, just working with vintage signs for a while.

• 11:46Mike Rowe?

  Was it Neon Jungle when I was there?

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:49Mike Rowe?

  You were calling it that then?

• 11:50Speaker 02

  I'm calling it that. There was no sign. There's no sign now.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Shoemaker's Children Go Barefoot.

• 11:57Mike Rowe?

  First things first, thank you for making these for me.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  You're welcome.

• 12:00Mike Rowe?

  And I apologize for taking so long to reach out. I knew when I left you after our meeting ten years ago that I would be a customer one day. But things happen pretty fast in my world and I just couldn't decide what to ask you to do, you know, because there were multiple titles and things.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 12:17Mike Rowe?

  But these are the things where we settled. This podcast, this idea of just talking about the world and all the trouble in it is called The Way I Heard It. And my foundation, which I was just really starting to take seriously when we met. Has become a thing that in my estimation is now worthy of neon and your specific.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  We talked about it then, because I remember I set aside a couple of circles that I had left over. And had your name on them for, you know, a good eight years or so before I chopped them up.

• 12:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Which was ironically probably a few months before we reconnected. Yeah. It's like, damn it.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  That's true. Hey, I just want to point out that image right there. You're wearing the exact same shirt. You got the exact same necklace on and you have two pair of glasses on your head in both. Yeah. Real life and back there. And I guess that's, that's your look, isn't it?

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Well, it's not, it's not a look per se. It's all about, it's a uniform. It's how, it's my work wear. It's all got a reason, but it's also true that because I wear the same clothes pretty much every day. And it's not the exact same shirt, but it's the same type of shirt.

• 13:28Mike Rowe?

  No, man, that's the exact same shirt.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  I'm easily.

• 13:32Mike Rowe?

  That's the exact shirt. Look.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  I can take it off and prove it, but that.

• 13:36Mike Rowe?

  I, I, I think part of the reason Chuck is pointing this out, which is excellent catch, by the way. My compliments.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 13:42Mike Rowe?

  But I think it says a lot about our guest. But it also says, if I could bring this back to me for a moment.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Why not?

• 13:49Mike Rowe?

  I own four shirts, maybe five. And all of them were purloined from various shoots, you know? And I, it's one of the many things I think we share in common. Life is simpler with a uniform. Life is simpler with certain things predictive, you know? I try and do that too, but the other thing is that things become sometimes uncomfortably real. When they manifest as a sign.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Ooh, that was a segue I didn't see coming. What do you mean?

• 14:25Mike Rowe?

  Well, think about your own deal. Like you, you don't have a sign for your own sign making place.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 14:32Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Deliverly.

• 14:34Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's it. I had a design in my head for the MicroWorks logo. But I hesitate for so long to pull the trigger. Not for any other reason than I hesitate to make things real prematurely, sometimes ever. So if there's a question and all that, it's what's wrong with us?

• 14:59Speaker 02

  We are, I'll speculate that we're people who know what we want, but have doubts about the actual manifestation of that. And there's also the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of thing.

• 15:13Mike Rowe?

  Thoreau gets all the credit for, you know, ergo cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. But some people argue that the original utterance was ergo dautitum. I doubt, therefore I am. Like doubt is the, there's something foundational in skepticism. And I always think of that when I think of you. And by the way, not to blow too much sunshine too early, but that segment on "Somebody's Got to Do It" was the best example that I had in the whole run of the show. You were the best subject for it.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Because it matched your zeitgeist, or what?

• 15:56Mike Rowe?

  No, no, because you're a sign maker without a sign. And yet you've been in business 30 years making signs. Because you wear what appears to be the same shirt all of the time. Because, if I remember right, you were an English major with dreams of becoming an architect, who walked away from all of that to start fabricating things in the backyard of what, your grandfather's ranch or something?

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Something like that, yeah.

• 16:23Mike Rowe?

  Because if you took any road at all, it was windy and circuitous. And like, your life to me, I left our first meeting thinking, this cat has taken the reverse commute at every possible turn. And it's all that zigging and zagging has just brought you to, I think, a really interesting place. And to this day, I think that segment, the way it touched on art and commerce and advertising and transaction.

• 16:58Mike Rowe?

  Everything that came down into the business of bending glass and running current through it just struck me as remarkably human and interesting.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Wow, I'm so glad we're having this meeting because this is putting things into perspective for me at a point in my career where I kind of need to hear that because there's, again, with doubt, you know, I still have doubt every day and I did not plan to zig or zag. I just found maybe a certain allergy to, you know.

• 17:31Mike Rowe?

  To not zig or zagging.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  To doing it directly, often to my own chagrin, certainly my parents' chagrin, you know, and I credit them for being so busy sort of falling apart as people that they were not in a position to stop me from going out the side exit.

• 17:48Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  So that was just luck, you know, they could have cracked the whip and it could have gone all differently.

• 17:54Mike Rowe?

  Oh, sure, I mean, sliding doors was a popular movie.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:59Mike Rowe?

  Because it's fun to look back and go, oh, man, this instead of that, what would have happened?

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Well, and we find ourselves looking back, my wife and I, and, you know, things are different than it was before, but you're right, and there's a reason for everything. I'm not just wandering around, you know, blundering, but sometimes it seems that way, I think, from the outside. There's a reason I wear these clothes and it's not just for branding purposes, it's, you know, because they suit the work I do. And I don't wear them every day because I want people to recognize me, I want them to realize that I work every day, pretty much, Saturdays and Sundays too, maybe not all of it, and I know how to take a vacation.

• 18:39Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  But on the other hand, I'm still used to wearing these clothes, so I'm going to wear them.

• 18:43Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week, highly immersive, pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications

• 19:26Mike Rowe?

  you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately. I'm talking about AI-proof, six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade.

• 20:09Mike Rowe?

  If you, or your spouse, or your kid, or your grandkid are looking for a straight path into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. Hence, the aforementioned dichotomy.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Look, that's a good title. The aforementioned dichotomy.

• 20:35Mike Rowe?

  With Evan Foyle. There you go. Jot that down, Charlie. I think that if I don't put some guardrails on this, we really will free associate for two hours, which is what I enjoyed. Easily. So, in an attempt to try and focus it, maybe if we could just start with craft. Because I don't know that people think it means what you think it means. I know what I think you thought it meant 10 years ago. But how has your thinking evolved with regard to this weird miasma of skill, intentionality, art, like, all of it?

• 21:18Mike Rowe?

  If I remember right, the word craftsman was the term that you were most comfortable with.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Right, as opposed to artist.

• 21:25Mike Rowe?

  Yes. Yeah, for sure.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Nothing's changed on that. If anything, it's sort of, I don't want to say hardened because I'm still learning and we're still changing, but certainly craft is not only what I bring to the table, it's the table. It's what we build on every day and it's breaking down as we're doing it and it's a miasma, as you say, but it's also the thing that holds us up. We offer craftsmanship in a world that's increasingly void of it, which is good in a way and it's also frightening in a way.

• 22:06Mike Rowe?

  But what's the difference between, if you're looking, like the signs that you made for us, you know, is that, is that the product of craftsmanship? Is that not the product of artistry? And, you know, like, how does it translate to the work as opposed to the identity of the person doing the work?

• 22:26Speaker 02

  It, well, I'm buried in, in the work. I'm in there. I don't need to sign it. If you know my work, you're going to recognize that I've done it, but it's not about me. It's more about you, the client, the end user, feeling like it represents them, especially in your case because of, you know, the lifetime of your career of talking about work and what work means and what craftsmanship looks like versus things that aren't. And we're surrounded more than ever by things that aren't.

• 23:01Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  By digital, by vinyl, by plastic, by things that were produced and maybe still part of a marketing meeting. And that's not what we do. We don't, we make things by hand with the absolute intention that they look like they were made by hand. It's not artifice.

• 23:22Mike Rowe?

  With materials that have some kind of...

• 23:27Mike Rowe?

  Oh, I don't know. I mean, there's, there's something primal about glass, right?

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Metal paint and glass.

• 23:33Mike Rowe?

  Metal paint, right. Those things feel, um, I don't know, maybe eternal is a bit much, but foundational in ways that plastic and bytes and bits and cloud and blockchain.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 23:49Mike Rowe?

  Right? Like, there's something, um, I mean, there's something kind of attractive about those things. Obviously, they wouldn't exist so predominantly in the zeitgeist if, if it wasn't so. But there's a bargain, you know, that we make. And, um, I think you're suspicious of that bargain vis a vis those materials.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Sure. It's a slippery slope. I used to say earlier in my career, I'd say, no computers were harmed in the making of this sign. I can't say that anymore because a lot of times, and in the case of your signs, the information was sent to me via an email, which we then forwarded to an imaging company that was born in 1920 as a blueprint company. And I still call them Miller Blueprint. But they're not called that anymore. And most people don't even know what a blueprint is. And they're making a digital print at scale. And we use that to, we'll cut that out or we'll transfer it with a kind of glorified carbon paper

• 24:55Speaker 02

  to the aluminum and draw it. So to say we live without, you know, computer imagery or bits and bytes is just, would be wrong. Now, I can't make that claim anymore.

• 25:04Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  And yet, it's better than me, it's more accurate and faster than me using an overhead projector, the way I did for 25 years.

• 25:14Mike Rowe?

  So should the consumer care? And if so, to what degree? Like, I mean, I know you're, you're riffing on no animals were harmed in the making of this movie.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 25:24Mike Rowe?

  Okay, well, that, that's kind of important to me. I don't want to watch Dances with Wolves and assume that, you know, that wolf was really shot. But the movie itself preserves, you know, a certain illusion. And it's there for me and it was fun to consume. Your signs, no matter how, no matter what the process is, still look like they could have.

• 25:48Mike Rowe?

  Been the product of the heyday of neon, which was what, 27, 28, something like that?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, we look at the golden age of neon in America anyway as being like mid 30s to, you know, mid 50s, maybe late 50s. Let's say 1930, 1960. And I, because I was a collector first, and I never worked for a sign company. So I came at it from a different angle and have found my sweet spot there. I wanted to make things that looked like the vintage signs I was collecting and restoring.

• 26:22Mike Rowe?

  Why?

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Because they seemed more real to me than the plastic boxes that had taken their place starting in the 1960s. And they provided joy and they riveted your attention in a way that the plastic boxes do neither. And that hadn't changed. That's still true. It's more true now. We get hired, and I say we because it's not just me anymore. I've got a team. And that's necessary because of the amount of work and because I'm aging. I'm breaking down.

• 26:51Mike Rowe?

  Second law of thermodynamics.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Second or third law. I've got two, I've got two or three people and, you know, behind me. And the good news is these are people who I've trained. I mean, they approached me. I didn't, you know, pull them off the street, but trained to make things the way I want to and to see things the way I want to. And what they've seen, all of them, is how it has influenced the culture around us, at least in Austin, mostly, where most of my work is. So what I'm trying to get at is that, you know, it arrived by osmosis. I liked the thing. I bought the thing. I produced it as, you know, folk art to hang on the wall, the vintage signs. And then that led to making signs

• 27:38Speaker 02

  that looked like that for people that didn't like what I had for sale. And of course, that took off and kind of took the place of the collecting. I'm still very much interested in the collecting. I still want to do a museum of signs. And not about the history of the companies, you know, mom and pop who came up with this. That's important. I think that's an American exchange. You know, somebody wants to start a business and they hire a sign maker who's also in a business to make this expression for the people who are passing by. That's about as basic a human interaction as you can get.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  I want it to be about design and kind of a yes or no thing. In other words, if I put your sign next to a Starbucks emblem, vinyl on plastic, and say to any audience, big audience, small audience, which do you like better? Never mind whether you like Mike Rowe Works coffee better than you like Starbucks coffee. Which thing do you like better? I'm pretty sure they're gonna go with the neon.

• 28:41Mike Rowe?

  I mean, if they don't, then we've, then we've lost.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  We haven't lost yet.

• 28:46Mike Rowe?

  Humanity.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  That's where we start.

• 28:48Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  And that's when we start re-education if we can. I'll say, okay, you like Starbucks better, tell me why. Try to cancel out the fact that you have to have one every day and you're addicted to it. Try to cancel out that the fact that you're addicted to brand identity and you think brands are more important than individual craftsmanship. Let's just look at two things, two round things together. And if I go on five minutes and I'm not getting anywhere, I'll say, okay, I'm sorry I've wasted your time and, you know, go off to whatever void you came from. And next candidate, please. It, it shouldn't be judgmental. But I'm hoping that there, if there is anything left of humanity,

• 29:32Speaker 02

  and I don't want to make it this big a deal, but it's, can we agree that if you've got two things and you like one better, why are we not making more of the better?

• 29:46Mike Rowe?

  My friend, Thomas Tull, uh, who, who owns the Steelers and plays in a band that opens for the Rolling Stones and other interesting things.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  That's a good resume.

• 29:56Mike Rowe?

  And started Legendary Pictures. And hired Chris Nolan to make Inception and The Dark Knight Rises. That guy.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:03Mike Rowe?

  He sat here a month ago or so and said, you know, pretty stingy with advice, but fail fast works for me. Right? Like fail fast. If you're gonna fail, you just said five minutes in, if I'm not getting anywhere.

• 30:21Mike Rowe?

  Right. Now, a lot of people would equate that with quitting or a lack of perseverance. But, but the decision to move quickly is interesting. Chuck, sidebar, how many locations are there in the country for Starbucks? I'm curious because to your earlier point-

• 30:36Speaker 02

  That's less worldwide.

• 30:38Mike Rowe?

  Okay, yeah, both. Now, that is what you call sui generis. It's one of a kind. There's only one MicroWorks. There's only one podcast called The Way I Heard It. At least I hope so. And so there's only one sign to reflect each of those. But you, you stumble into Starbucks land, you're talking about thousands. And, you know, I mean, does the economy of scale even permit a world where a guy like you, or a team of guys like you could, like, what would happen to the specialness of that?

• 31:15Speaker 02

  I can tell you.

• 31:16Mike Rowe?

  If, if there was a mechanism by which it could wind up on-

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Tens of thousands. It's 16,800 to 17,200 Starbucks locations in the United States.

• 31:27Mike Rowe?

  And that's the question.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  McDonald's, they don't say how many billions serve. They just say billions and billions now. But they started out as a place in Downey, California with Neon.

• 31:37Mike Rowe?

  Okay, but they couldn't stay with Neon because, I mean, obviously, there's an economic reason. But my question has to do with what would happen to the specialness of the glass? And the, just the fundamental stuff about it that you like, if it were somehow able to be incorporated at scale, would it become as banal as the plastic logos that you're evoking?

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Quite possibly. And certainly, there was a time when that was true. You have to remember that Neon isn't magic, though for a long time, I thought it was. A long time.

• 32:14Mike Rowe?

  Magic how?

• 32:14Speaker 02

  It was-

• 32:17Speaker 02

  If you can put this gas into a vacuum tube and get power to it, it will light up. And it will do so without being consumed. And as long as you don't break down the glass, it will do it maybe till the end of time. Name something like that that's not in Harry Potter. It just doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. But so what it was, when they, when they got it and harnessed it and made it available to be used in signage, which it was perfectly adapted for, it almost immediately wiped light bulbs as a, as a way of communicating

• 32:58Speaker 02

  in signage off the map. It was like the dinosaurs being wiped out by a cataclysm. It was just, and I hate to say this, superior technology. It was a technological advance. And it held sway for those, you know, at least that 30-year period until plastic came along and almost knocked neon off. And ever since then, remember fiber optics? Hmm. I do. In the 90s, they told us this is going to make neon obsolete. Well, it didn't. It didn't make anything obsolete. It's gone. You know, fluorescent tubes, which in the 60s, the advance of that and making cabinet signs almost knocked neon off the map. They're gone now, too. Now we've got LEDs. This is going to end it all. And it maybe it will. But not without a fight.

• 33:42Mike Rowe?

  Couple of weeks ago, on this very podcast, I talked with Brooke Rollins, our Secretary of Agriculture, about the incredibly complicated business of delivering affordable beef to our citizens without disadvantaging American ranchers. We also discussed the very controversial decision to import 300,000 metric tons of ground beef from various foreign countries and the maddening policy that allows meatpackers to label imported meat as a product of the USA. Well, shortly after that conversation, one of my sponsors, Good Ranchers, reported an unusually high level of interest in their product. And this is not surprising.

• 34:27Mike Rowe?

  Given a choice, most people would prefer to buy their meat from American Ranchers. And Good Ranchers is the number one company in America that delivers 100% American meat straight to your door. They partner with over 100 local farmers and ranchers to deliver pasture-raised meat with no antibiotics and no added hormones. They've got 25,000 five-star reviews on TrustPilot. 25,000, including my own. This month, when you visit GoodRanchers.com/row, you'll get a free Angus ground beef bundle with your first order. Again, that's GoodRanchers.com/row for four bonus pounds of ground beef raised right here in these United States.

• 35:12Mike Rowe?

  And that's guaranteed. Support your local ranchers by insisting on American meat delivered at GoodRanchers.com/row. If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch. Get Good Ranchers now. Hey, Hal! In my industry, that's called the displacement theory. And probably in yours too. But in media, you know, there's this, there was a thinking that radio would be the end of newspapers. And that movies would be the end of radio. And that TV would be the end of movies.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:52Mike Rowe?

  And that digital and so forth and so on. Of course, that doesn't really happen more often than not. What it does is it forces its predecessor to adapt in some way. Unless it doesn't, right? 8-tracks. Actually, you know what? CDs destroyed 8-tracks and cassettes.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:12Mike Rowe?

  But MP3s destroyed CDs.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:14Mike Rowe?

  Sometimes the displacement theory is true.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  And now vinyl's back, though.

• 36:18Mike Rowe?

  And then it comes back.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:19Mike Rowe?

  And that... That's the magic in my mind. It's like, that's the thing you can't, at least with this, you can reduce it to its various component parts and wax nostalgic about it.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  That's the danger, yeah.

• 36:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, up here, it's like, we, we get to decide, we get to assign value, we get to appreciate that or not. And back to the speed thing, how much time do you really have to get my attention? How much time?

• 36:47Speaker 02

  In my world, two to three seconds.

• 36:50Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  It used to be five. Now, we might spend two, three months building something for that blip. And everything comes down to that. And it's the reason I think it's shortened, and I've, there's no studies, this is just my experience. Not only is there more stuff, and again, we're not looking at the world of the 1940s, where you would see dizzying amounts of layering of neon giant signs in, in cities, or on highways, both sides, vying for your attention. I'd love to go back and see it. I might not find it as attractive as I think I would.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Now, with, everybody's looking at their screen while they're driving. I've done it.

• 37:36Mike Rowe?

  Makes it exciting.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  On the sidewalk, we've seen it.

• 37:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  You really have to think hard about what you're gonna say and how you're gonna say it. My job in sidewalk or street culture, which is mostly where I work, is putting stuff on buildings to try to get your attention to either immediately go into that place, because I've formed a good feeling for you about it, or to put it in the back of your mind, like a fish hook, that makes you wanna go back later. Well, I can't do it now, but I'm gonna go back to that place, cuz it looks interesting, or I'm gonna find out about it on my phone, on my screen.

• 38:16Mike Rowe?

  Do you reckon these are conscious associations? Like you said, it formed a good impression in my mind. Do I know, do I know that in two seconds as the consumer? Or am I just, is it like the medulla oblongata? Is it that, you know?

• 38:32Speaker 02

  I think there's two levels, and I feel this as a consumer of culture myself. Like, when I walk through a flea market, which I like to do a lot.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  I'm kind of just going in a fugue state. When I was an antique dealer, I was working booth to booth, but now I don't do that anymore. I'm just going through looking for something that calls to me. That don't mean I'm gonna buy it. But if it keeps calling me after I walk past it, makes me come back, it's the same exchange. I'm looking for something, I want to feel that pull. It makes me happy to to find something that that talks to my inner self through my outer eyes. And

• 39:18Mike Rowe?

  Give me an example of something that you saw, like when you put yourself into that fugue state, which I assume means like I'm open to, I'm not affirmatively looking for a thing, but I'm open to the thing jumping off the wall and making me go like what's

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Well, when I was an antique dealer, I had certain categories that I looked for. So it was almost like looking for that shape. When I was a kid at the ranch, my dad was teaching me to hunt deer. And he would say, what you're looking for is the thing that sticks out. And I said, I don't understand. He says, something that looks out of place. He says, light will fall on the, and this makes my father sound like he was a savant. And maybe in this he was. Light will fall on the tine of an antler differently than it will on a tree trunk or leaves. Much less if it moves. So what you're doing is just going through, waiting for something that looks out of place. Take that forward if I'm walking through a flea market in Paris.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Usually with my wife and she's usually ahead or behind. We're like

• 40:24Mike Rowe?

  Paris, Texas or Paris, France?

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Paris, France. But also in America still, just not as much because I'm not finding that many things in America that interest me right now. And there's more to that, of course, than maybe should be said. If something jumps out at me, just that light on the tine of an antler, and I'll approach, you know, I'm gonna go to the signal and look at it and take it in. I may move on, but as I'm moving away, possibly over days even, you know, I'll think the thing is still caught in my head. I should go back. Hopefully, I'll do it while I'm still

• 41:06Speaker 02

  there and go back and buy it. And that happens. That's how I buy things. And that's the closest thing to the shopping experience I still have, because obviously, you know, I buy clothes by just buying three at a time. And then, then they wear out, and I've got an endgame for that now. And I'll go get three more.

• 41:28Mike Rowe?

  I mean, that, in it, that's the utter predictability and the certainty of your wardrobe is in stark contrast to the passive-aggressive way you're looking for a thing to hook you. Like, that's...

• 41:45Speaker 02

  I have other clothes that are not this uniform. And when I'm not...

• 41:49Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  When I'm not working, so, example, at the flea market.

• 41:53Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  This was just at Christmas. We were there at 7:00 a.m. The light is just coming in. This was at Port de Vannes in France, ancient street market, where they just close the street down and vendors are set up on the sidewalk. There's snow on most of the tables. And we're walking along, and I see this flash of hot pink with gold braid. It's a vest laid down on a table with a three-page dissertation on what it is. It's in French, so I can't read it. But I can tell that it says it's from Albania, and it's a woman's vest. Or so I think.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Stood out in the snow, maybe. I like vests. I kind of collect vests. I've got Native American beaded vests and, you know, Mexican mariachi style vests and, you know, these are things I wear when I'm not wearing what you generally see me wearing. And partly just to show that there's this other side of me that isn't just work, however infrequently gets to go out, but it does get to go out. And so I looked at this thing and now I've learned, especially if I have trouble finding my way back, I'll take a picture with my cellphone. And I got almost to the end, I thought, you know, that's the one thing that is caught in my head. And I'm gonna go back and see if I can get it. And I had no idea

• 43:18Speaker 02

  what it was gonna cost, you know, and I bought it. And now I've got it with a friend of mine who's a tailor, and she's gonna restore it. It's, you know, 100 years old or more, and it's starting to fall apart, but I wanna wear it. I don't wanna just hang on the wall. I don't wanna just put it in the closet. I wanna wear it. And so it could have just as easily been a painting. It could have just as easily been a pair of cowboy boots or a neon sign or any of the things I've been known to collect over the years. But that's how I select. And I'm hoping that people moving through the world, even if they're in the back of an Uber, looking at their phone, if they glance up for one minute,

• 43:57Speaker 02

  one second, and I've put something there that's pink and gold shining in the snow of what is passing by them. And they come back, then I've done my job. Now, what happens when they go in that store is up to the store owner.

• 44:13Mike Rowe?

  Now, see, that whole English degree has paid off for you.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  It was a way to write a shorter essay, if you will.

• 44:21Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  I am hopelessly verbose, as we know. And so to be able to compact it into one picture with words.

• 44:30Mike Rowe?

  What a fun challenge.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Little movie, yeah. No, it could be limited, in my case.

• 44:34Mike Rowe?

  There's a great line in The Matrix when Morpheus is trying to explain to Neo.

• 44:41Mike Rowe?

  What the matrix is, and before you can get your head around that, you have to acknowledge the thing you're talking about, the, the sort of quiet awareness or suspicion that it might exist. The light on the tine might exist if you're open to the possibility that it would present itself, the vests in the street market.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  If you even believe tines are out there to be seen.

• 45:08Mike Rowe?

  Right, but, but the way Morpheus, he says it's a, it's there. You've always known it, like a splinter in your mind.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, good.

• 45:19Mike Rowe?

  It's so good, and, and I, I don't know. I mean, I can't speak for anybody but me, but there are things that I've always doubted and always suspected that I can't prove, but they're there. And, you know, this whole notion of, of living, I think, in a lot of ways is a search. You know, like the shrinks call it a confirmation bias, but, but seeing a thing glint in a way. I just think that's.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  And does that mean it's there? I mean, this is the foundation of faith and whole religions.

• 45:53Mike Rowe?

  Everything.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  Are, are built upon that. And I think people like us who are creative and observers and creators of things that sort of bridge observation to reality, uh, end up creating our own face. And I'll make jokes about, you know, well, it's against my religion to leave a penny on the sidewalk. But that's, I mean, that's as much part of my religion and a tiny expression of that. Take the, take the thing that you see. What right have you to leave it there?

• 46:30Mike Rowe?

  What a conscious choice to walk past the thing of any value.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, what are you saying about yourself and about the world and about the opportunity that's been given to you? This, this tiny little gift.

• 46:43Mike Rowe?

  Because it comes down to stakes.

• 46:47Mike Rowe?

  The world's full of people who will walk past a penny. Will it walk past a quarter? Sure. A dollar?

• 46:56Mike Rowe?

  Less? A five? Few. A 20? No one. Who's going to walk past a $20 bill? So the only difference is the accepted value of the thing that you're either going to stroll past or not.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  Where's the bottom of your investment structure?

• 47:18Mike Rowe?

  Right. Right. Where's the bottom of your investment structure?

• 47:23Speaker 02

  I haven't found it. I don't want to find it. I don't want to do everything. I want to select. I want to have a selection. I've preset myself to pick up the pennies, you know, because I think that I should.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  And I'll pick up all kinds of things, you know? I'm like a crow that way. If I see a discarded earring on the sidewalk, I'll pick it up because I found a ring on the sidewalk at a flea market and gave it to my wife and it fit her and she wears it every day. Is it a wedding ring? No. Does it have any more significance than the fact that I found it? Does it need more? What the hell? That was a thing. So there is, the bottom should only be in your own judgment, in your own belief, in your own aesthetics. Anything can be anywhere. Beauty is around you all the time. Let it find you.

• 48:28Mike Rowe?

  Ever since Chapter started advertising on this podcast, I've been getting letters and emails from satisfied customers all over the country. Last week, I got one from Joseph, a retired veterinarian in Texas, who just learned his Medicare plan was shutting down. I can't tell you Joseph's last name because his medical history is complicated and personal, but his situation is not uncommon at all. Given his medical history, Joseph was unable to find a local provider that would include the doctors he'd come to rely on. Happily, Joseph listens to this podcast and Joseph heard me talking about Chapter just last week. And Chapter exists for one reason, to help people on Medicare find the plan that's right for them.

• 49:14Mike Rowe?

  It's a free service. Anyhow, Joseph called Chapter. He connected with an advisor named Heidi. And Heidi caught something that most people miss. Because his current plan was about to close. Joseph had a limited window to continue with his current coverage through a new plan without any additional medical underwriting. In other words, Heidi found a way to get Joseph the coverage he needed with the doctors he preferred. Then she found great coverage for his wife, too. Moral of the story? Medicare plans are constantly evolving. You are too. Call Chapter. Make sure you're on the best plan for you. Also, people who switch plans after calling Chapter

• 49:56Mike Rowe?

  save an average of $1,100 a year. 804-Chapter. That's the number. Call it today. It's free. Whole thing takes about 20 minutes. 804-Chapter. That's American Beauty. That movie. That little essence right there.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Sure, the bag dancing in the updraft.

• 50:17Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  Mesmerizing. How did they get that shot? How long did it take them to get it?

• 50:22Mike Rowe?

  I don't know. But there's the feather in Forrest Gump.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Right. That's right.

• 50:26Mike Rowe?

  Right? So those little...

• 50:27Speaker 02

  This is storytelling.

• 50:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  This is storytelling for every individual moving through the world. And I was talking with friends about this last night. I have lived a good story. I think I was born to seek stories. I was attracted to stories. I was surrounded by people who were storytellers and got just used to that idea.

• 50:53Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  And so... And I'm hoping that I am associated with other people who are living good stories and raising children who've...

• 51:06Speaker 02

  You know, God love them, are going to be addicted to stories and will hopefully live a good story.

• 51:12Mike Rowe?

  How's your daughter?

• 51:13Speaker 02

  My daughter's good, my son's good, they're 20 now, so, you know, they're both in college, which is kinda wild.

• 51:22Mike Rowe?

  Was your daughter, if I recall, blind, legally blind?

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Legally blind, absolutely, legally blind, learning disabled, and a little autistic. That we didn't know at the time that you and I met, but that diagnosis came in as she moved through the system and, you know, caregivers started noticing things.

• 51:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  She's amazing, she's one of a kind.

• 51:44Mike Rowe?

  She's really generous.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right, and it's a different situation, and it's another way to introduce that doubt, you know, every time I sound certain about what you can see and how you can apprehend it, and it's like, well, what about how Zelda sees and how she apprehends, and what does apprehend even mean, and for her, and yet she's moving through the world and we're doing our best to help her, and she's helping us, too, helping us see a different way.

• 52:20Mike Rowe?

  Well, her story is part of your story.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  And same for my son, who's deeply dyslexic, dysgraphic, dyscalculic, which basically means he can't read, write, or do math, or even write numbers very well, and yet he's in art school, which is, and of course, I'm deeply jealous, it's like, I didn't get to go to art school! Like every parent, I'm like, forcing them to do the thing, or did I force him, or did he choose it, I can't tell, but, and he's struggling, but he's also loving it, at the same time, and that's what you want.

• 52:53Mike Rowe?

  Does he pick up pennies?

• 52:54Speaker 02

  That's a good question, I may not have trained him well enough. Doubt rises momentarily, I hope so, I hope so, or I hope he finds a way to express his own religion his own way, I pick up pennies.

• 53:13Mike Rowe?

  I, I'm gonna ask you what it feels like to lose everything, I know you have, but a quick sidebar first, you mentioned crows.

• 53:25Mike Rowe?

  I'm fascinated by that, that bird. I don't understand the intelligence. I mean, I don't understand where it ends with the crow. When I was a boy, we had a lot of woods behind our house and a bunch of crows, what do they call them? A murder. A murder of crows.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, why's that?

• 53:44Mike Rowe?

  Well, they, they ganged up.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  In the 1870s, they killed a man.

• 53:49Mike Rowe?

  Right, during the great masturbations scare.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  That's why they've been banished from getting smarter because, you know.

• 53:55Mike Rowe?

  Well, they damn near, we had a cat and they attacked the cat. They like descended on the cat. And, um, and I broke it up, but the cat was hurt and I was angry with the crow. I was very angry, the way a 12-year-old righteous boy would be.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 54:11Mike Rowe?

  So I, I took my 22 long rifle and I walked back into the woods and I.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  Murdered some crows.

• 54:17Mike Rowe?

  Well, I took a shot at one. And they flew off. And then I walked a little further and they had lighted again in another tree and I, I took a shot at another one. Uh, hit it, didn't kill it. They all flew off. And I walked away, you know, I, I would walk back into this woods every day. This was kind of my little church as a boy. And, um, the next day I walked back there again, you know, cause our cat was pretty jacked up. And I had my, my rifle with me. And the crows saw me and immediately flew away. Okay. Later that week, same thing, back there, they see me, they fly away. So eventually I get off my revenge kick, cat's fine.

• 54:59Mike Rowe?

  Um, and I go for a walk and I take the stick that I would always carry with me, not the rifle. A stick.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  They knew the difference.

• 55:07Mike Rowe?

  They didn't fly away. They sat there in the tree oven and they looked at me and they looked at that stick. I'm like, I held up the stick and waved it at them. And they just, you know, made crow sounds. And I pointed the stick at them, didn't fly away.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Not fooled.

• 55:22Mike Rowe?

  How in the hell can a crow discern a 22 from a stick at 30 yards?

• 55:31Speaker 02

  And why just crows? Why not another bird of equal size, brain capacity, eyes?

• 55:36Mike Rowe?

  Raven?

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Magpie?

• 55:38Mike Rowe?

  Seagull?

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, seagulls are smart, but they're not smart enough to use tools yet that I know of.

• 55:44Mike Rowe?

  I got a seagull story for you too, but go ahead. Say something unforgettable and prescient about the crow's ability to discern.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  I know nothing about crows. I have not your murderous knowledge of crows, or your attempted murderous knowledge of crows.

• 56:02Mike Rowe?

  Well, then let me throw the quick seagull metaphor out there as well, and you can just ruminate on it.

• 56:09Mike Rowe?

  That same year, I worked on a fish boat for my uncle. We were catching menhaden.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  This is off the coast of Maryland, or?

• 56:17Mike Rowe?

  Off the coast of Virginia.

• 56:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 56:19Mike Rowe?

  Still in the Chesapeake. Industrial fish. Can't eat it, but they would catch these things by the thousands and smash them. And the oil that came out of them were really valuable in all kinds of industrial applications. They used the bones in jewelry, right? It was just an industrial fish. And God, the boat stunk, and my cousin and I, you know, in between hauls would go onto the roof. And the first time he took me up there on the roof of the wheelhouse, he said, "We gotta get some bait." You know, because they would chum as well. And he took, he had a fishing rod, and he took off the hook and he tied a chicken bone to it. And the seagulls, of course, follow the boat.

• 57:04Mike Rowe?

  And he cast up.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  Into the air.

• 57:07Mike Rowe?

  And the seagull grabs it.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:10Mike Rowe?

  And he reels it in.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  It won't let go.

• 57:12Mike Rowe?

  Won't let go. And it gets this far away, and he pulls a club out of the back of his. And knocks the thing unconscious and then cuts it up into little pieces and throws it in a bucket.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:24Mike Rowe?

  All his friends are watching. Ties off the chicken bone, casts it up, boom, another grabs it, you reel it in.

• 57:31Speaker 02

  Right, same way you catch crabs.

• 57:33Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  Same way you catch raccoons.

• 57:35Mike Rowe?

  Right, but to your point.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  They don't learn.

• 57:38Mike Rowe?

  Crow wouldn't fall for that. Maybe once, may, you know, if it was hungry and all the buddies would be like, that lunatics, you know, he's, he's bad, don't grab the chicken. Seagulls don't. So I, you know.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Well, what article of selection gave us the big brains of all the animals? Why did we get to be the crows of, you know?

• 58:02Mike Rowe?

  The apes.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  The apes.

• 58:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  And how has that worked out for us? And we're pretty murderers.

• 58:08Mike Rowe?

  Hmm.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  Ourselves.

• 58:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  You know, so I don't know what to make of that, you know, all these kind of mystical things, like talking about the neon, the sort of magic of it. I had this weird thought last night that, you know, we read, at least as Americans, left to right, and most people are right-handed. The world turns left to right. Is it simply we're all mostly based on a rotational pole? And there's some variation. My aunt was left-handed, Aaron Flynn, our sign painter, is left-handed, Elise Klein,

• 58:49Speaker 02

  happy birthday, Elise, who does most of my fabrication is right-handed, I'm right-handed. We welcome variation, you know, but still, is there something to that? Nobody ever asked, why are we right-handed? Nobody ever asked me why we read left to right. Asians, of course, can read up and down and stuff, and of course, some signs read up and down, but generally, I'm making things that read left to right. Is that just a predisposition of gravitational pull?

• 59:20Mike Rowe?

  Chuck, what percentage of H sapien is left-handed? Maybe, you know, it's kind of like the displacement theory. By and large, you know, it's just a theory, but every now and then a thing really is displaced. Making it impossible to paint with too broad a brush. Well, not impossible, but just dangerous.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  Wouldn't, don't we prefer to not paint with too broad a brush?

• 59:41Mike Rowe?

  No, we love to paint with a broad brush. As a society, we love to tell kids.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  I agree, but the whole point of what we were talking about before is making the thing that stands out from the broad brush.

• 59:51Mike Rowe?

  Absolutely.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  That's what I do for a living, is try to be the left-handed, the sinistre.

• 59:57Mike Rowe?

  But you would have no basis for your business thesis if the rules weren't already in place and the expectations for right-handedness didn't already exist.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  If the force didn't exist, the time can't stand out in the light.

• 1:00:12Mike Rowe?

  That's right, that's right. Or if you're out there and at night, your whole metaphor craps the bed. You need.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Well, for the time, but I'm making electric signs. Night is my favorite. I got you now. The force is gone, man. It's all times when I'm working the street.

• 1:00:29Mike Rowe?

  Do you still have the genie in the back of the?

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  It's not in the back of the truck anymore.

• 1:00:33Mike Rowe?

  You still have the truck?

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  I still have, of course I still have everything. It's just, I took it out of the back of the truck when I had to leave that building. And split it, knowing that I was going to restore it someday, but I still haven't gotten around to it and it's a decade later.

• 1:00:49Mike Rowe?

  Percentage, Chuck?

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  10 to 12%.

• 1:00:51Mike Rowe?

  Interesting.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  More than I thought.

• 1:00:54Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, well, I mean, everybody knows multiple left-handed people. Watch Major League Baseball, the South Pole. I'll bet you the percentage of pitchers that are left-handed.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  Higher.

• 1:01:08Mike Rowe?

  Is higher.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:09Mike Rowe?

  Than the aggregate.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Because that's a desired feature of a pitcher.

• 1:01:14Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  It's going to create, you know, a situation. Then there's the people who can bat right and left-handed.

• 1:01:19Mike Rowe?

  So what do you make of this? I throw darts right-handed. I deal cards, left-handed.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:01:26Mike Rowe?

  I shoot pool, right-handed. I kick left-footed.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  So you're semi-ambidextrous.

• 1:01:34Mike Rowe?

  I think I'm equally incompetent with both sides.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  You're incompetent ambidextrous.

• 1:01:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I don't, I mean, I did hurt my, my right arm when I was a kid. I was attacked by crows. I don't know if I mentioned this, but.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  Why you carry a rifle everywhere you go now?

• 1:01:50Mike Rowe?

  But, no, I.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Disguised as a cane, a stick.

• 1:01:53Mike Rowe?

  I would struggle to deal cards right-handed. And I play cards a lot. So I don't, I don't know what that means or says.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  Can you take that apart? I mean, can you examine yourself and say, is it because I'm saving my right hand for something else? Or, you know?

• 1:02:07Mike Rowe?

  And just like that, we're back to the great masturbation scare.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  See, I did try to set that up for you, but notice how I left it to you.

• 1:02:14Mike Rowe?

  Thank you.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  To close it.

• 1:02:16Mike Rowe?

  It's my show.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is your show.

• 1:02:18Mike Rowe?

  All right, there we are, 10 years ago. There's the genie in the back of that old jalopy. There's my crew. Good grief. Chris Jones running audio.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  And we drove all over Austin and several counties like that.

• 1:02:36Mike Rowe?

  I'd like to talk about initiative, if I could, for just a moment. Here at MicroWorks, we value it a great deal. In fact, it's the most important quality we look for in our work ethic scholarship applicants. But everybody wants it. I'm talking about the, the quality in a Lyft driver that inspires him or her to carry your bags to the door without even asking, or the grocery clerk who shows you where an item is on the shelves, or a doctor who personally calls you to explain your test results. If you're hiring, you want to encourage initiative because it's invaluable. And ZipRecruiter has a way to allow a candidate to tell you, in their own words, why they're interested in your job. Not just why they're qualified, but why they're interested.

• 1:03:21Mike Rowe?

  This is a way that allows the best candidates to distinguish themselves from the competition. And a great way for you to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Right now, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/row. ZipRecruiter is the number one hiring site, in large part because of this new initiative that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first. So you meet the right people faster. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within one day. Try it for free, ziprecruiter.com/row. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  That still happens.

• 1:04:12Mike Rowe?

  Who was the client? The genie client?

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  Well, me. That was one I bought for the collection. Genie Car Wash now doesn't exist anymore. They're all down. That was the last one that had never been altered. So it was in, of the three that were in Austin, and they had some in Waco too, I think. That one had never, ever been repainted or anything, and that made it more valuable to me. That is much larger than I like to acquire, but I couldn't pass it up. And so, once we got in the truck, I was kinda stuck there for a while, trying to figure out where to go with it.

• 1:04:50Mike Rowe?

  You know what just struck me? Pause right there for a second, Chuck. Right there. Actually, back up. Not right there.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  No, let's hold it there. Let's talk about this genie.

• 1:04:59Mike Rowe?

  I want to talk about my shirt. It's, it's Herb's Meats, so just back up, yeah, just, just a little bit, like an inch, just so you can see the shirt, as I'm walking towards you. Well, not that far. I mean, like, literally, just a little bit. This, I didn't even notice on the day, right there.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  There it is, yeah. And where is Herb's Market?

• 1:05:21Mike Rowe?

  I don't know. I have no idea who Herb is.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  You don't have the shirt anymore.

• 1:05:25Mike Rowe?

  I have it. I still have this shirt. And if I, and if I was thinking, I would've worn it today, because that's a guy who sells meat. And there's his logo. As a sign guy, you should appreciate that. I mean, he's...

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  Well, and it shows the different cuts. And then, later that day, we went to a barbecue place, remember?

• 1:05:45Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  And you were wearing the competitions from wherever.

• 1:05:49Mike Rowe?

  I was, I was wearing the actual... signage embodiment of the creature we were eating.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  Right. You were also an outside agitator, walking into somebody else's establishment.

• 1:06:00Mike Rowe?

  With the competition.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  With the, well, not really local competition, but still. Yeah. So did you, did we know we were gonna go to the barbecue place? I don't think so.

• 1:06:09Mike Rowe?

  No, we did not.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:10Mike Rowe?

  We had no idea.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:11Mike Rowe?

  And I also didn't know on that ride, that was, in those days, you know, I was convinced that the best moments would come when the crew wasn't around. Now, I didn't have to worry about that with you because you're impervious, like utterly aggressively indifferent to cameras. You don't care. But most people do. And so I was thinking, right there. So we're driving.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Mike Rowe?

  And I was like, guys, it's really gonna be important to rig this piece of crap truck. I want to be able to talk to this guy as we're driving. Cause I've learned over the years, when people are driving or doing something, working in their element. That was Dirty Jobs 101. That's when you get to know them. That's when they'll tell you things.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:56Mike Rowe?

  So we're cruising around here and I don't know how we got to it, but there was a fire in your life.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:07:03Mike Rowe?

  And you had a collection. Was it cowboy boots?

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Cowboy boots. Plus everything else I owned, but yeah.

• 1:07:08Mike Rowe?

  You lost every, like, and like as an antique collector.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:14Mike Rowe?

  As somebody who's like going through the world in a fugue state, like a splinter in your mind, looking for things that speak to you. And then collecting all of these things. And then losing all of these things. And we didn't have time to really, you just told me the story in the course of driving to eat some barbecue.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:38Mike Rowe?

  But later, you know, when I was looking at the footage and trying to figure out, man, this is so heavy and this is so interesting. And look at us like squat in there like a couple of animals. What are we doing? There's no place to sit.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  Well, we could have sat on the curb.

• 1:07:53Mike Rowe?

  That was a squat.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  Better shot from the squat.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  Should have been a stand up, but it was a squat up.

• 1:07:57Mike Rowe?

  It was a squat down.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Mike Rowe?

  Hmm. Anyway, um, what's it like to lose?

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  I still own every, everything and I own the building it's in still too. Nothing's changed there. But what's it like to lose everything? Uh. As somebody who has a very, you know, we asked earlier, what's the bottom of my collective impulse and we haven't found it. I didn't lose it. It got heavily altered, but of course, I went into the burned out building and took everything of mine out and put it in storage and then asked my neighbors if they weren't going to do the same for their building, would they mind if I went in and got that? Because I see value in some things that other people don't. Certainly vintage cowboy boots or neon signs were things that were just ubiquitous

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  and taken for granted. And I, at the time, thought I was the only person who saw their inherent value as, you know, American faux card. That proved prescient on my part, you know, it turned out there was a market for that and I've made money in those markets. I haven't done so well with, you know, burnt offerings and baked goods, but that's what I had for a while. And I ended up selling the collection of cowboy boots I kept collecting and sold the burnt ones with the unburnt ones.

• 1:09:18Mike Rowe?

  How many did you have?

• 1:09:19Speaker 02

  At the time of the fire or afterwards? By the end, I had 750. At the time of the fire, I probably had 400, 500, which was a lot at the time.

• 1:09:29Mike Rowe?

  Why? Why cowboy boots?

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  When I started going, I went out on the road. You know, I lived in San Francisco and I had purchased a Toyota Land Cruiser and rigged it to where I could live in it. And was just going to go out on vacation, but I went out and just stayed out. And at the end of two years, I'd really become an antique dealer and collector and had thought that I was going to collect like Navajo rugs and Navajo jewelry, something I grew up with and liked. Well, there wasn't any left. A generation of hippies 10 years before me had cleaned all that out. But cowboy boots were just lying out there everywhere. This is in the early to mid 80s. And I thought, oh my God, this is, of course, I grew up

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  with cowboy boots and started really seeing the whole history of them and seeing handmade versus factory made and seeing the craft of it and the way that the design was mostly...

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  As a tool, it was designed to do a certain function. And then the decor that gets added to it was simply to be an expression of both the maker and the wearer. Well, that's when you cross into folk art. You can make a folk art coffee cup. The design is to hold coffee and to get it into your system. But making it something more than just the design is where you cross over into craft. Again, the art question is a little tricky. So I started collecting these things because I could. They were everywhere, they were cheap. And then I discovered there was a market for them in Los Angeles and I became a dealer to finance my habit. My habit was the collecting. If you do enough collecting, you become a dealer because that's just the way it is.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  That's how you make enough money to keep going. And then that transferred after the fire to neon signs. I had started collecting neon signs. I had a storefront in Buta, Texas. I had my collection of boots in there. I was getting some fame for that. And working on movies and stuff. But then it all burned down and the signs were out back and they weren't harmed. So that's what I was left with after the Viking funeral. For my, that period of being a well-known, in a world that didn't care, collector of cowboy boots. I became a lesser-known, but later well-known collector of neon signs. And it also transitioned me into, I never learned to make boots, never wanted to.

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  But I did learn to make signs by simply studying the way they were done and replicating it in my crude manner. So that fire was everything to me, Mike, because I was locked into a situation. I had gotten myself painted into a corner with this whole cowboy collecting thing. It was, it was everything I did. The signs were kind of a sidebar and suddenly it's gone. There was no way I was walking out of that corner by myself. I needed an act of cosmos.

• 1:12:28Mike Rowe?

  Machine of the gods.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  That's right. Deus machina.

• 1:12:31Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  Exactly. I love how much Latin is making an end to this.

• 1:12:35Mike Rowe?

  Hey, e pluribus unum, you know?

• 1:12:40Mike Rowe?

  That was low hanging fruit right there.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  State of the Union address from Mike Rowe.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  How is the economy, Mike? Stock market's at an all time high. We're doing great.

• 1:12:52Mike Rowe?

  We're doing great. Form over function?

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  Uh-uh. Form follows function, but once you've achieved that, then you've still got form and you've still got some room. And then, and it's in that room is where I think expression takes over. And expression, after all, is the hook.

• 1:13:13Mike Rowe?

  But can you have expression absent function? I mean, of course you can. That's what an art gallery is, but, but...

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  No, the art, the function of art is to decorate your life so you don't just have blank walls.

• 1:13:27Mike Rowe?

  Right. Okay. But folk art and sort of like the practicality of a cowboy boot.

• 1:13:34Speaker 02

  Folk art is a bloated phrase. It's the two words don't match up.

• 1:13:39Mike Rowe?

  Well, you used it. Not me.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it, so it has doubt in it, you know? Folk art is like, is it art? Is it folk? Is it both? Is it neither?

• 1:13:48Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, the cowboy boot was clearly designed for a utilitarian purpose.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:13:54Mike Rowe?

  Right? I mean, this is the thing you want on your feet if you're spending the day in the saddle.

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:14:00Mike Rowe?

  Okay. Then, because we're humans, we look at the thing and go, eh, would it, would it kill you to snatch it up a little bit? Maybe you want to save it?

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Why didn't you wear a white t-shirt instead of a mauve t-shirt that has Herb's Market, Herb's Market?

• 1:14:16Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:14:17Speaker 02

  And a picture of a pig on it?

• 1:14:18Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Why do you wear the same shirt every day for a decade, more or less, right? So all these things, you know?

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  Because I'm doing the expression elsewhere.

• 1:14:27Mike Rowe?

  But you're trying to express yourself with really, within a really narrow lane of faded denim, two sunglasses, long, like, it's very predictable. Cowboy boots, once you start messing with them, I mean, you couldn't collect them if they all look the same. It's the very point that, I mean, who?

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  I wouldn't collect them if they're all the same. You certainly could, but it's not a good idea. Yeah.

• 1:14:54Mike Rowe?

  Right. So when I say form over function, it just seems like you're living the epitome of that because a sign... has such a clear function. But the form is unlimited. And apparently so too is a cowboy boot. And finally, the example you used, look at these ridiculous coffee mugs. That thing is delivering the caffeine into your system as advertised. Incredibly, my face is on it. Now, I don't know how you feel about drinking out of my head, but I'm flattered.

• 1:15:29Speaker 02

  We'll see how the, you know, results turn out later.

• 1:15:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, that's the old logo of this podcast on a coffee mug.

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  I thought you were still using this. Anyway, keep going.

• 1:15:40Mike Rowe?

  No, I'm using the one you made over your left shoulder.

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  We could have done a portrait of you above it.

• 1:15:45Mike Rowe?

  Look, this is probably why I didn't call you five years ago.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  Guess so, because we see what the end game was gonna be.

• 1:15:51Mike Rowe?

  Evan, can you please make some-

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  A giant neon version of Mike's head. No words.

• 1:15:55Mike Rowe?

  And look at my mug. Look at it. My mug says, "Really Famous." Not because I think I am. I don't even know where this came from, Chuck.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  It's aspirational.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  That's a podcast that you've been on a couple of times.

• 1:16:07Mike Rowe?

  This is somebody else's podcast.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:16:10Mike Rowe?

  Can you un-

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  You just made $20,000.

• 1:16:12Mike Rowe?

  Listen, I'm drinking out of somebody a mug with somebody else's podcast logo on it. And their podcast is called Really Famous, apparently.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:16:22Mike Rowe?

  Which is why I was a guest, obviously. You, here, not quite an artist, but a craftsman, you could have selected any mug, or maybe Chuck put that in your hand. Chuck, did you give him the micro mug?

• 1:16:34Speaker 02

  I'm not throwing you under the bus here, Chuck.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  No, you're not. It's all good. Yeah, I did, yeah. I was trying to find one that wasn't somebody else's logo.

• 1:16:43Mike Rowe?

  Because as the producer of this podcast, it pleases you to see the logo of this podcast in the shot.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  Oh, for God's sakes, we've got neon signs that we have in the shot.

• 1:16:52Mike Rowe?

  I know.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Which you're trying to send a message, and it's a message of love. It isn't just relentless marketing, because we do it differently, albeit this mug.

• 1:17:03Mike Rowe?

  But what am I doing subconsciously? I'm trying to take the piss out of the shameless pluggery that he's determined to do by putting somebody else's logo on a mug, apparently, and drinking from it.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Kara Robinson, that's her.

• 1:17:16Mike Rowe?

  Kara, right, she's a lovely woman.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:17:19Mike Rowe?

  Dozens of listeners.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:17:21Mike Rowe?

  No, she's sweet.

• 1:17:22Speaker 02

  That's terrible.

• 1:17:23Mike Rowe?

  No, we had a great- She made it very personal.

• 1:17:24Speaker 02

  She's had a lot of, lot of really famous people on her podcast.

• 1:17:27Mike Rowe?

  She asked me questions like, like I wouldn't even ask Evan. Like really, like very personal.

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:17:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. But I mean, good for her. Anyway, I've got a mug out of it.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  True.

• 1:17:38Mike Rowe?

  Point is, you're saying you lose everything. And it's a blessing.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  I have an ability to rationalize almost anything. And so maybe that's all this was. But I did find that it, it opened, you know, one door closes, another one opens. It certainly worked out that way. And also, how are you going to cope with trauma unless you find a way to deal with it? You can't just say, oh, well, that happened. You know, you've got to be able to rationalize it to yourself and to your world. And people would come up to say, oh, my God, are you okay? It's like, yeah, I didn't catch fire.

• 1:18:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  You know, and let's remember that. I didn't catch fire. I remember at the time, a friend of mine, and actually the mother of close friends of mine, wrote me a note that just said, Evan, be a phoenix.

• 1:18:31Mike Rowe?

  Rise from the ashes.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, rise from the ashes. And, and partly maybe because she made that invocation, it was, I, I did become that. And so I don't recommend this for anybody, the Viking funeral, as I called it. But if you must do something like that, and if you're incapable of doing it yourself, that can be helpful. I'm not saying everybody should get a divorce, everybody should quit their job, everybody should walk into the ocean naked. But if you have aspirations to do something and you're stuck, try imagining what it would be like if you weren't stuck. And, and what it would be, how you would feel if you lost everything.

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  And it turned out, kind of it worked, worked for me. Do I regret it? Do I wish it hadn't happened? I want both, you know, I want the effect without having the loss. But that wasn't the deal.

• 1:19:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, you want the form and the function.

• 1:19:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had to spend the penny I found on the street.

• 1:19:32Mike Rowe?

  There you go.

• 1:19:37Mike Rowe?

  If you work in boots all day long and your feet sweat, I feel your pain. And I'd recommend trying the socks that I wear every day from Camel City Mill. These guys sent me a box as a gift long before they sponsored this podcast. And I started wearing them and eventually I reached out to them because I love the product. And I wanted more sponsors on the podcast who make things in America. And now here they are again sponsoring another episode. Camel City Mill makes their socks in North Carolina with American wool in an American factory. Their merino wool blends help wick sweat away from your skin. And their no sweat vent lets heat and moisture escape. That helps keep your feet dry and comfortable when you're spending long days in work boots.

• 1:20:21Mike Rowe?

  They also reinforce the heel and the toe with double plated nylon to stand up to the wear those boots put on your socks. Remember, it's not the feet that wear out your socks, it's your boots. And they back their socks with a 10-year durability guarantee. If you get a hole or a tear in the first decade, they'll replace them for free. If you're a hardworking guy dealing with sweaty, uncomfortable feet, I'm telling you, these are worth trying. I wear mine every day and I'm glad to have the company on the podcast. CamelCityMill.com. Use code ROW. Get 10% off my favorite work socks. CamelCityMill.com code ROW.

• 1:20:59Mike Rowe?

  And look, in the same way, the primal nature of the tools of your trade are undeniable. Like the gab, what is it, argon?

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  Argon and neon.

• 1:21:09Mike Rowe?

  Argon, neon.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  These are all argon.

• 1:21:12Mike Rowe?

  Okay, the paint, the glass itself, and of course, the fire. I mean, what's more primal than fire? Robert Frost, right?

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  We lived without fire, we just didn't live as well.

• 1:21:27Mike Rowe?

  I mean, did we?

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:21:29Mike Rowe?

  Did we really live without fire?

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  Apes live without fire.

• 1:21:32Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's not us necessarily.

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was, wasn't there a time when it was us? When does, when does the switch happen?

• 1:21:38Mike Rowe?

  When does a seagull become a crow? When do you learn to let go of the chicken leg to not get your brain, brains bashed in? When do you, when do you learn to discern?

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  There are plenty of people out there who haven't learned that, and our job is to fix that.

• 1:21:53Mike Rowe?

  Some say the world will end in fire, others in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if I had to perish twice, I think I've seen enough of hate to know that for destruction, ice is also great. And what's of ice?

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  This is Frost?

• 1:22:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:19Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, one of my favorites, but that, you know.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  I thought I was gonna be slouching towards Bethlehem for a minute, but.

• 1:22:26Mike Rowe?

  What rough beast is our come round at last?

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.

• 1:22:33Mike Rowe?

  Jesus, look at you, that's, uh, Yates, second coming.

• 1:22:37Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:22:38Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:40Speaker 02

  Folks, if you're just joining us here on English Major's rebuttal.

• 1:22:45Mike Rowe?

  Do you remember he wrote something called Crazy Jane Talks to the Bishop?

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  I don't remember how it goes, but yes.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  Was the bishop a metaphor by any chance?

• 1:22:54Mike Rowe?

  Bringing us back to the great masturbation scare.

• 1:22:56Speaker 02

  The angry bishop, yes.

• 1:22:58Mike Rowe?

  No, the line that stuck with me was.

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  Good we stay on point.

• 1:23:01Mike Rowe?

  A woman can be proud and stiff when on love intent, but love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. For nothing can be whole or soul that has not been rent.

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  Not been rent?

• 1:23:19Mike Rowe?

  Art, rent, as in torn asunder.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  But it's a double entendre though, too.

• 1:23:23Mike Rowe?

  Every single line. Yates fathered a child when he was 90 or 89, you know? I mean. Best poetry.

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  That's Mick Jagger.

• 1:23:38Mike Rowe?

  That's eternal.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, the desire to do that keeps going.

• 1:23:44Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, you know, he graduated, or I think he dropped out of the London School of Economics.

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  Jagger.

• 1:23:49Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. But learned enough there to, you know, get smart about finances.

• 1:23:56Mike Rowe?

  Well, have you gotten smart about marketing? Like, your own thing, your whole business, dude, you're so interesting because you allow people to trade. You're in the advertising business.

• 1:24:09Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:24:10Mike Rowe?

  But you can't bring yourself to advertise.

• 1:24:13Speaker 02

  I don't want to advertise. It's a trick. Think about this. I could put as...

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  Why is that funny? I haven't even given you the punchline yet.

• 1:24:24Mike Rowe?

  It makes me thirsty, you know? I've got whiskey all over the place here.

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  Okay, well, just now we're talking.

• 1:24:28Mike Rowe?

  It's like 10:30 in the morning. That really sends a message. That's the seagull.

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  If we're gonna do this, I need to go to the bathroom.

• 1:24:36Mike Rowe?

  No, no, we're not gonna do this.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  Okay, well, then I guess I'm not going to the bathroom.

• 1:24:39Mike Rowe?

  No, no, you can't.

• 1:24:40Speaker 02

  You can't, really?

• 1:24:42Mike Rowe?

  You can if you want to.

• 1:24:42Speaker 02

  I need to.

• 1:24:43Mike Rowe?

  Well, you can go ahead.

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  I'll just stand up and do it here and keep talking.

• 1:24:46Mike Rowe?

  You could do that, too. I got the stadium pal on. I've gone twice.

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  We can edit this, right?

• 1:24:51Mike Rowe?

  No, we're not editing it. But wait, go to the bathroom, it's right there.

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  Good, I'm going.

• 1:24:54Mike Rowe?

  All right.

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  All right, and then the whiskey will be able to take one and get back.

• 1:24:57Mike Rowe?

  Sure it will. All right, as Evan takes care of business, I'll just, I'll just reflect, Chuck. Dude, you know what? I mean, I told you.

• 1:25:07Speaker 02

  Oh, no, this is a slam dunk. He's an interesting cat.

• 1:25:10Mike Rowe?

  I mean, you could probably fill a book with the stuff we don't agree on.

• 1:25:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:25:16Mike Rowe?

  But as a soul, walking the planet, there is just no arguing the fact that the Earth is more interesting with this cat on.

• 1:25:25Speaker 02

  With Evan in it, yeah.

• 1:25:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. It really is, man. I was really blown away 10 years ago after that day, and I remember, you know, thinking about him again when we were recutting the show for TBN. Just going, man, there was just so much there. Taylor, were you there when we shot this? I don't even... You were on the ground? I can't remember one from the next.

• 1:25:50Speaker 03

  It was like our fourth episode?

• 1:25:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:53Speaker 03

  It was right at the start.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  Come in here.

• 1:25:54Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. What do you remember? From that day, like when we.

• 1:25:59Speaker 03

  I remember it was hot.

• 1:26:00Mike Rowe?

  It was hot as balls.

• 1:26:02Speaker 03

  Ninety-five degrees.

• 1:26:03Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:04Speaker 03

  And we drove around town and had a great time, looked at all the signs, ate tacos. And then we had cold beers at the end.

• 1:26:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I remember it was hot.

• 1:26:13Speaker 02

  We wrote a song.

• 1:26:15Mike Rowe?

  Yes, oh, we got to go to that, too. Yeah, my lawyers will be in touch, or yours.

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  They were.

• 1:26:22Mike Rowe?

  No, it was hot outside and then we walked into his little pit of despair and it was actually hotter inside. And he had the fans on and we had to turn them off for like audio or something.

• 1:26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:34Mike Rowe?

  So we just.

• 1:26:35Speaker 02

  I'm amazed I had fans.

• 1:26:37Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, how'd it going there, by the way?

• 1:26:38Speaker 02

  About the same as always, yeah.

• 1:26:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, sounded fury, signifying nothing.

• 1:26:42Speaker 02

  Ah, really, I mean.

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  I mean, you weren't in there long, so that says something good.

• 1:26:48Speaker 02

  Well, it's because it's a tale told by an idiot. Doesn't take long. Playing table tennis here.

• 1:26:56Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah, man, let's, okay, wait, wait.

• 1:26:58Speaker 02

  We were talking about.

• 1:27:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  Why I don't advertise.

• 1:27:02Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  When I'm in the advertising business. And this is one of those things that it's a, I like to think I'm a connoisseur of irony. I don't necessarily create irony, but I, I appreciate it. When it comes to me and I'm looking out for it, just like I'm looking out for that time in the world that will stick out and stick in my head.

• 1:27:21Mike Rowe?

  Chuck, that could be our title, jot it down, a connoisseur of irony. Thanks.

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  There was some reluctance on my part to actually put up a sign that said, yeah, I'm here, hire me. But I did, I had an office starting in nineteen ninety-five and I put the Neon Jungle on it. It was handcrafted out of old muffler pipe.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  And people would come in through the door.

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  Very few of them were the people I wanted to meet. And as soon as I could, within a year, I got a studio I could build in, the one you went to. Mm-hmm. And I started spending more time there and just had the door locked. I had a fax machine, that's how long ago it was, and I would get faxes every day from people saying, well, and I was in the phone book. I was doing everything you're supposed to do. Hey, I'm out here. I was listed with the Texas Film Commission. And what you get is people sending you the prior version of an Autobot thing, saying, "We are soliciting bids for signs like this. We're contacting everybody in town." Yeah.

• 1:28:34Speaker 02

  And we want to, whoever gives us the lowest number, that's who we're going with. And I realized, I don't want to be part of that. And I'm not the guy that's gonna give you what you want. I'm not the right tool for that job. And so, instead, you know, the first time I made a neon sign that was actually out in the public, could be seen outdoors, that I designed myself, was in December of 94. And somebody, within the first month, saw that sign, liked it, went inside to the shopkeeper and said, "Who did your sign?" And they told him. "Did you like them?" And they said, "Yeah, we do." You know?

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  And he said, "Give me their number, I'm gonna call them." And that became the model of marketing. If I do a good job, somebody that wants that will see it, and they will ask you. If they've gone to the trouble to stop the car, go inside, ask, I've got them. They already like my work, they already want this kind of thing. I've eliminated the fax machine, I've eliminated the advertising. You paid me to do the advertising. Yeah, I did. We put this- I was happy to. Yeah. I haven't updated that website since 2006.

• 1:29:56Mike Rowe?

  Welcome to the Neon Jungle. Take a look at the vintage and custom signs for sale. There are some good ones. Thanks for stopping by. At least you went with an exclamation point.

• 1:30:06Speaker 02

  I didn't write any of that. No. My friend Matt Linnall wrote that. But I haven't, all it is, the only part of that you need to see is call Evan Voyles 5126. It's better call Saul.

• 1:30:20Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:21Speaker 02

  You know, that's the only part. You can look at the rest of it, and if you like it, great. But I'm kind of more interested in, what did you see of mine? How'd you find me?

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  You know, what did you see you like? And that gives me a window into what you like.

• 1:30:38Mike Rowe?

  Is it as simple as, look, the work speaks for itself. And it has to speak first, before I do. If I can't get you there, that means I have to sell you, and I don't want to do it.

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  And I have to work. And that's not my game, is selling.

• 1:30:55Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:55Speaker 02

  Me. My game is selling.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  TheNeonJungle.com.

• 1:31:00Mike Rowe?

  Good.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  TheNeonJungle.com. You have pictures here and stuff. Even though it's old, it's still got your phone number on it. And, yeah, he made these great signs that are right here for us, and he's made a million signs, maybe not a million, slightly less than a million, over the course of his lifetime. Was reasonably easy to deal with. Reasonably. A lot of fun to talk to, as you can imagine. So, yeah, if you need a sign, call Evan. Because it's one of a kind. He'll make you a one of a kind.

• 1:31:30Mike Rowe?

  Suey generous.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  And it's gorgeous. Suey, suey generous.

• 1:31:35Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:35Speaker 02

  I like how y'all's cadences of now, after all these years, pretty well matched up, and you could

• 1:31:40Mike Rowe?

  Pretty much.

• 1:31:40Speaker 02

  You could be AI programs for each other.

• 1:31:42Mike Rowe?

  Well, the other reason that I loved

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  To our point earlier.

• 1:31:46Mike Rowe?

  Yes. The segment. I think we really wrote to this, certainly in the recut, anyway, but like, you know, I make my living in advertising, really.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  That's how the show started, yeah. Talking about all the

• 1:31:58Mike Rowe?

  QVC.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  I was in it.

• 1:32:00Mike Rowe?

  You were there.

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. One of the, one of the ads we did together.

• 1:32:03Mike Rowe?

  See, I'm, I, my own dysfunction with my industry.

• 1:32:08Mike Rowe?

  Has to do with the artists in it who see themselves as artists. Or maybe craftsmen, I don't want to put words in their mouth, but whoever they are. They draw a pretty bright line between what they'll say. In the context of a commercial. And what they'll permit in the context of, say, an integration into a show.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  What do you mean by that?

• 1:32:35Mike Rowe?

  Okay, uh, Bill Peterson. Famous actor. You'd know him if you saw him, if the name doesn't ring a bell. I think it was, was it NCIS? Maybe, or one of those shows, he, he was at the height of his popularity. And this was in, I think, the early aughts. And he walked off the set. Because. He's having a scene. With his co-star. And an SUV. Pulls up in the script to pick him up. It's his driver and he's going to get in the car. And, um. And if I remember the story right, Bill noticed the, the DP.

• 1:33:16Mike Rowe?

  Tilt down a little bit to make sure the logo. Of the SUV. Was in the frame.

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  Product placement.

• 1:33:25Mike Rowe?

  That's right. Product placement. Now Bill drew a line there. Right? It was like, nope. I'm not going to.

• 1:33:31Speaker 02

  I'm not party to this.

• 1:33:32Mike Rowe?

  I'm not party to this. I'm not going to get into this vehicle. This is an advertisement and there's a difference between an advertisement. And the art that I was right in the midst of creating. Now, I understand.

• 1:33:46Speaker 02

  Forgetting entirely what television is founded upon, but yeah.

• 1:33:51Mike Rowe?

  Correct. So, you know, look, if you're in my line of work or yours, and I, and I think this is a thing we really have in common. We get to draw the line wherever we want. You know, I think this podcast is free. No one subscribes to it. There's no paywall. There's no Patreon. I've never asked. Anybody who watches any of my crap for money. But I do ask the advertisers for it. And I don't draw the line between the conversation we're having right now and the ad that is destined to interrupt us any moment now.

• 1:34:24Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:25Mike Rowe?

  Because you can't have one without the other.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:34:28Mike Rowe?

  That is the form and the function.

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:34:30Mike Rowe?

  That's the, that's the deal, dude. That's the deal. And if you're gonna be, "You must be this tall to get on this ride." And Bill pissed me off when he did that because he was like, "Nope. I, I wanna take the ride, but I wanna distance myself from the parts of it."

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:34:46Mike Rowe?

  Right? So, anyway.

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  He gets to be holier than everybody else he works with. And of course, I, I didn't see this, but I think we're in a unique position to talk about this and talk about where the line is and how we feel about it and have a discussion about a thing that everyone on earth is engaged in unless they're hiding in a cave. And believe me, there's days when I wanna be hiding in the cave, but I'm not. And so, to the extent that there is beauty in the street, beauty on the screen, beauty in these kind of conversations, then let's let that flourish and let's let it go where it's gonna go.

• 1:35:35Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who wanna work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a Five-week, highly immersive, pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 1:36:17Mike Rowe?

  I'm talking about AI-proof, six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you, or your spouse, or your kid, or your grandkid are looking for a straight path

• 1:37:01Mike Rowe?

  into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/americasworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/americasworkforceacademy. To survive, you must be in on the joke. You must be excellent at what you do, and you must take your clients seriously. But you must also understand, there's a farcical reality to what all of this is. I write unauthorized jingles for the sponsors of this podcast.

• 1:37:35Speaker 02

  Unauthorized how?

• 1:37:36Mike Rowe?

  Jingles. Like, I don't ask them. Like ZipRecruiter is a sponsor. M-Dry. I mean, we go down the list, you know?

• 1:37:43Speaker 02

  But isn't that why they hire you? Is because they know you can do that?

• 1:37:46Mike Rowe?

  No. No, they hire me because hundreds of thousands of people listen to this.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:37:50Mike Rowe?

  And they-

• 1:37:51Speaker 02

  Just the ratings, just the numbers. I can't believe that they don't-

• 1:37:55Mike Rowe?

  They like me.

• 1:37:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:56Mike Rowe?

  And they like that- What that sign stands for, they like the association.

• 1:38:01Speaker 02

  They're buying into the brand.

• 1:38:03Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:38:03Speaker 02

  And part of the brand is you writing unauthorized jingles.

• 1:38:06Mike Rowe?

  No, that's never, that's never, well, maybe, maybe now.

• 1:38:09Speaker 02

  It's a value add.

• 1:38:10Mike Rowe?

  It's a value add.

• 1:38:11Speaker 02

  That'd be what I'd want.

• 1:38:13Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, if I ask them, if I say, okay, this is what you pay to advertise on the podcast. Now, would you like a jingle? I'll write it myself and sing it in four-part harmony. And they say, yeah, that sounds great. Now it's transactional.

• 1:38:27Speaker 02

  Now you don't want it to be transactional. You just want to do whatever the hell you want.

• 1:38:31Mike Rowe?

  Dude, you know what I wrote for?

• 1:38:33Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:38:34Mike Rowe?

  I mean.

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  Are we not supposed to go here?

• 1:38:36Mike Rowe?

  Probably not.

• 1:38:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:37Mike Rowe?

  But, you know, Manscaped, it makes a product to shave your testicles. Obviously, you know, not available during the great masturbation scare. Thank you. But they needed a jingle. So, I mean, obviously, your gonads are covered with curly black hair, fuzzy and furry. They're dangling there. Your scrotum needs trimming, but don't you despair. Manscaped is here so your balls can be bare. Boom. Art or commerce?

• 1:39:07Speaker 02

  Well, history too. I mean, the style of that songwriting, it's very.

• 1:39:12Mike Rowe?

  Get on the mic if you're gonna be interesting, damn it.

• 1:39:14Speaker 02

  Sorry, sorry, sorry. I was backing off in case we had to edit this out.

• 1:39:17Mike Rowe?

  Stand back. I don't know how big this thing is.

• 1:39:20Speaker 02

  This could be bad. You know, you wrote that in the classic style of like 40s, 50s, radio-based jingles.

• 1:39:29Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 1:39:29Speaker 02

  That bled into television.

• 1:39:31Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  The television that you and I grew up with, being of an age. That jingle's lost on somebody that's, you know, born after 2000. And yet it's still catchy, still hooky.

• 1:39:43Mike Rowe?

  We had denture fit. Denture fit.

• 1:39:45Speaker 02

  Okay, well, we know who your demographic is.

• 1:39:47Mike Rowe?

  When your teeth are going south, get denture fit inside of your mouth. Ridiculous. No ad agency would ever bless that. I can't.

• 1:39:57Speaker 02

  Well, in 1953, they would have, and they would have had three-part harmony from some of Andrew's sisters' knockoff.

• 1:40:02Mike Rowe?

  Absolutely.

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:03Mike Rowe?

  So here's a question. I do that to stay sane. It makes me laugh to be home in my office with my little piano and go, oh, jeez. This is so stupid. If, sometimes it's indulgent. Sometimes I think it's appreciated. Mostly, I think it's tolerated. But I'm not doing it for any reason other than to kinda somehow stay grounded with this weird part of my past, the splinter in my mind.

• 1:40:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:34Mike Rowe?

  I bet you're doing something similar.

• 1:40:36Speaker 02

  I mean, it's irony, like we're talking about. The irony is that being in on the joke and pushing the limits of the joke and maybe going too far, maybe not going far enough, and you get to, that's delicious, to get to live with that, to have that built into your thing. It's like, and I get to do whatever the hell I want with this because of what I've done elsewhere, that lets me have that. And yeah, there's so many ironies, you know, I can't draw that well. And yet, and I have, I still use a notebook analog to sketch what I'm gonna do. And you show that to somebody, there's no way they will or should hire me

• 1:41:19Speaker 02

  based on that. And they're not. They're hiring me on what they've seen me do on the street. It's like, pay no attention to the man behind this drawing. What, pay attention to the screen, the big O's, you know, not the fumbling guy from Kansas. But they're also, because they're hip, and they like irony too, they like the ironies of, we hired this guy who like carries this notebook, and he draws these terrible things in, and then they turn into swans.

• 1:41:46Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:48Speaker 02

  Everybody loves the ugly duckling story, you know, because all of us have an ugly duckling inside us still. And we also think we have a swan inside us, and both live there, rent-free, as they say.

• 1:42:00Mike Rowe?

  Ducklings, swans, seagulls, crows, God, man, we cast a wide net.

• 1:42:08Speaker 02

  We throw out one chicken bone and see what we can catch.

• 1:42:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, cuz we know, we know, something's gonna latch on to it, and they won't let go till they get too close.

• 1:42:18Speaker 02

  To their death.

• 1:42:19Mike Rowe?

  Then you sit on the hot stove, and then you learn. Teachable moment. Or, if you don't...

• 1:42:24Speaker 02

  Folks, if you're listening, do not try that trick at home. Nobody should sit on a hot stove, not even a seagull or a crow.

• 1:42:33Mike Rowe?

  You know what's crazy, man? The most honest... Ever felt in hindsight was was actually on QVC. When the entire like 24 seven, it was a commercial. The whole thing was a never ending commercial.

• 1:42:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:42:50Mike Rowe?

  And so the job then was to make the commercial feel more like content. Like to be more human in that ridiculous construct. Everything today is the opposite. Today it's like, oh, you're you're making your I'm practicing my craft. I'm making my art and now somehow or other I gotta.

• 1:43:09Speaker 02

  That's ironic, too, in a sad way.

• 1:43:12Mike Rowe?

  Well, when have you felt the most congruent or honest in this weird nexus of commerce? And and craftsmanship?

• 1:43:22Speaker 02

  I mean, now, to some extent, as we're talking about this and now that I'm in late career, probably. And I'm gonna turn 68 in a few months.

• 1:43:30Mike Rowe?

  No kidding?

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 1:43:33Mike Rowe?

  Have you thought about a haircut?

• 1:43:35Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, I don't have to. My wife thinks about it for me. She approached, we were going out the other night and she came at me with the scissors.

• 1:43:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that's coming. I mean, it's, you know.

• 1:43:48Mike Rowe?

  It's all coming.

• 1:43:48Speaker 02

  It's all coming. It's all coming apart.

• 1:43:50Mike Rowe?

  The sound of inevitability, back to the matrix.

• 1:43:52Speaker 02

  It sounds like scissors, yeah.

• 1:43:55Mike Rowe?

  OK, well, at the risk, oh, you know what, Chuck? I got I gotta ask about one more thing.

• 1:44:00Speaker 02

  OK.

• 1:44:00Mike Rowe?

  I know we're going late, but but if I didn't properly thank you for indulging the creative process. At the end end of our day, when we were drinking a beer and you brought out your guitar.

• 1:44:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:44:13Mike Rowe?

  And I had in my head, you know what? Somebody's got to do it, needs some kind of song. And I'd been kicking something around.

• 1:44:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, you had the beginnings.

• 1:44:22Mike Rowe?

  I had the beginning and we sat down and, you know, when we got done with. That I still didn't have the end, but I but I had something I could use in the episode.

• 1:44:30Speaker 02

  Right. It was in the episode.

• 1:44:32Mike Rowe?

  It was in the episode. We filmed, like, we, actually, you know what? It's a really good example of the creative process, whatever that means. In this case, it was fueled by humidity, heat, beer, and

• 1:44:46Speaker 02

  Exhaustion.

• 1:44:47Mike Rowe?

  Exhaustion. You had a guitar.

• 1:44:48Speaker 02

  Spontaneity.

• 1:44:49Mike Rowe?

  But you're a child of the world, man. You know that, wait a minute, if Mike turns this into a theme song and it defines the series, well, you had a role in creating that. So, you know, we ought to at least, that's where you met Mary, or somebody met Mary. And all of a sudden, I remember CNN was like, well, wait a second, man. Who wrote this song? I'm like, well, it's not even really a song yet. It could be like, well, if it is, what are we gonna do about Evan? He's got to sign a piece of paper. And now it's just like that. A couple of craftsmen and artists are in a world where

• 1:45:23Speaker 02

  There's a corporate overlay to everything.

• 1:45:26Mike Rowe?

  Everything.

• 1:45:26Speaker 02

  Now, that was an interesting moment, because I remember I wrote all the lyrics down. I charted it with chords. And I went to put it in your hand, and then I pulled it back and I said, so, how are we handling this?

• 1:45:40Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:45:41Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:45:42Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:45:42Speaker 02

  In my world of musicians, of the musicians I know, this is a co-write.

• 1:45:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:48Speaker 02

  And you said, oh, don't worry, Evan, this is, you know, you'll find him a very generous person. We know how to handle this. I go, great. And hand it over. I've got cameras. I've got a witness in the neon guy. This is, you know, I don't want to think about the fact that I dropped out of law school. I want this just to be a spontaneous moment. Two guys at a bar coming up with a thing.

• 1:46:10Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:46:11Speaker 02

  Three weeks later, I get a, you know, two-page thing that says, I hereby relinquish all rights to the song. Somebody's got to do it.

• 1:46:22Mike Rowe?

  Yep. I am so sorry for that, man.

• 1:46:24Speaker 02

  That's okay.

• 1:46:24Mike Rowe?

  Not my, not my thing.

• 1:46:26Speaker 02

  No, I know it wasn't. And But it was, it's part of the lesson, you know, part of the curve and this, that's their job, that's their job. The people who are protecting you, the people who are doing the law. And I said, absolutely not. That's not my understanding with Mike. That's not what, I'm not going to sign this.

• 1:46:43Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:44Speaker 02

  And if you want to go further, I'm going to hand it to my attorneys and that's what you guys are for.

• 1:46:48Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:48Speaker 02

  And that's how it'll work out. And then it disappeared.

• 1:46:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:51Speaker 02

  You know, this didn't, it didn't come back. And then it was on the episode. So it's like, well, what did happen? And that's the thing. You can say that about every moment of every, every day. It's like, what just happened and what does it mean?

• 1:47:04Mike Rowe?

  This is exactly.

• 1:47:06Speaker 02

  You know, I've had situations with other clients who are also friends of mine, where we got on either, so it was a design question. It's like, I designed that logo. Yeah, well.

• 1:47:17Mike Rowe?

  Did you?

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  I did. Now, this is a true story. I won't mention names. And they said, well, we kind of, we need to own that. And I said, well, okay, then, you know, how are we going to handle this? And he said, how about we put you on retainer for a few years? You're going to get some money every year. We can write it off as, you know, in other, we're not acknowledging anything and you're not acknowledging anything. This is a gentleman's agreement between two, we're friends, but also he saw me as a threat to his business.

• 1:47:55Speaker 02

  I saw him as a threat to my sovereignty as a designer. And, and, you know, it went away. Because also, I didn't want to, at the end of the day, even if I hold the copyright, is it not in my best interest to see the thing go wild?

• 1:48:14Mike Rowe?

  Right. You have to choose.

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  Isn't that what I'm after?

• 1:48:17Mike Rowe?

  Sometimes you're Lennon, sometimes you're McCartney. Sometimes.

• 1:48:20Speaker 02

  Sometimes.

• 1:48:21Mike Rowe?

  Sometimes you're Ringo. Sometimes you're Ringo.

• 1:48:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:24Mike Rowe?

  But look, you know, Dirty Jobs is very personal. You know, it was tribute to my granddad and it was hard to get it on the air. And when I finally did, the network didn't even want it. Even when it rated, they didn't want it. They shelved it for a year.

• 1:48:36Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:48:36Mike Rowe?

  And then, you know, the people just wore them down.

• 1:48:40Speaker 02

  Wanted it, yeah.

• 1:48:41Mike Rowe?

  The people wanted it and we decided to do it. And I signed a piece of paper that Mary, who you just met, still busts my balls over there. It's the worst deal I could have signed. But there's no way I could have got that show on the air. There's just no way. So I agreed to things that were just horrible, but would only ever be rectified if it worked. And of course, the show.

• 1:49:05Speaker 02

  How many rock bands have the exact same story? They sold away all their rights.

• 1:49:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:09Speaker 02

  Just to get to play and record their music and they're, and as harrowing as it was, did we not all win? Cause the music got out there. And in the case, I'm thinking of Fogarty gets to actually buy it back 40, 50 years later.

• 1:49:23Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:49:25Mike Rowe?

  I went to Discovery before, like right after, early in the first season. We didn't know there was going to be any more, but I believed in it and I said, how about this? I'll work for free. You don't pay me anything.

• 1:49:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:40Mike Rowe?

  Just let me own a piece of the show that I brought you. Just let me do that. And if there's money to be had, we'll whack it up later. It was like, sorry, this is not our model.

• 1:49:50Speaker 02

  Not how we work.

• 1:49:51Mike Rowe?

  So, you know, it's the same kind of moment. You gotta go, well, I'm still betting on the idea and maybe later it'll lead to something good. And I mean.

• 1:50:02Speaker 02

  Isn't that how we do all of our careers?

• 1:50:04Mike Rowe?

  Everything.

• 1:50:05Speaker 02

  You bet everything.

• 1:50:06Mike Rowe?

  Every damn thing, man. Everything.

• 1:50:08Speaker 02

  All the chips go across the table.

• 1:50:10Mike Rowe?

  All the time.

• 1:50:10Speaker 02

  Every day. Every day.

• 1:50:14Mike Rowe?

  Well.

• 1:50:14Speaker 02

  And I don't gamble.

• 1:50:16Mike Rowe?

  The hell you don't.

• 1:50:17Speaker 02

  But I gamble incessantly.

• 1:50:20Mike Rowe?

  How many times have I said that to you? I hate Vegas.

• 1:50:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:23Mike Rowe?

  And the casinos. Play games for money.

• 1:50:27Speaker 02

  Except here we are, playing a game for money.

• 1:50:29Mike Rowe?

  Every day.

• 1:50:29Speaker 02

  Every day.

• 1:50:32Mike Rowe?

  Thank you again for the signs.

• 1:50:34Speaker 02

  You're welcome.

• 1:50:34Mike Rowe?

  Again, I'm sorry.

• 1:50:35Speaker 02

  Thanks for hiring me. I don't care. Conversation can take a long time and many turns. You know, you didn't have a podcast then.

• 1:50:45Mike Rowe?

  I barely had a song.

• 1:50:49Mike Rowe?

  But I did have a suspicion.

• 1:50:50Speaker 02

  He's about to sum up.

• 1:50:52Mike Rowe?

  This is where the plane lands. While you were in there taking a crap in the middle of our conversation or whatever.

• 1:50:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was monitoring that. I left my phone out here so I could hear it.

• 1:51:00Mike Rowe?

  Well, I said, I said to Chuck, you know, I, I get it. There's probably a long list of stuff you and I don't see eye to eye on. But I'm 100% sure that we are cut from the same cloth in the ways that matter. And I'm 100% sure the the country and the world's a more interesting place with you walking around in it.

• 1:51:19Speaker 02

  Well, likewise to you. And it's, people ask me going into this, what are you going to talk about? I said, I have no idea. Well, aren't you worried about this? Not a bit. You know, for one thing, I think I'm better loose. And I think that's how you roll too. It's just like, I've got a certain confidence that if I'm talking to somebody of reasonable intelligence, that we're gonna have a good time and maybe get somewhere.

• 1:51:45Mike Rowe?

  We didn't get to the AI, which is funny. Because just for grins.

• 1:51:49Speaker 02

  That was the point.

• 1:51:50Mike Rowe?

  Well, we just said, what would, uh, we asked the AI.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  I asked the AI, what would Mike Rowe ask Evan Voyles's?

• 1:51:57Speaker 02

  Oh, and it didn't take it long to come up with an answer either, did it? Can we do it again?

• 1:52:02Mike Rowe?

  I don't think so.

• 1:52:03Speaker 02

  I'm sorry.

• 1:52:03Mike Rowe?

  I'm sorry. Only if you put it to music. And I'm gonna need you to sign a piece of paper.

• 1:52:10Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, that's not my model.

• 1:52:12Mike Rowe?

  Did you drive or fly?

• 1:52:14Speaker 02

  Flew.

• 1:52:14Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:15Mike Rowe?

  All right. Well, enough already. Thank you. Was a fan, continue to be one. Folks, at the risk of a really, truly shameless plug once removed. If there's room on your wall for a little bit of neon, a little bit of argon, and you're trying to think about the design and you're trying to think who might do it, you would be a straight up fool. A fool to go anywhere other than the neon jungle. And you would be very lucky indeed to get this, uh, rapacious, guilt-ridden capitalist Evan Voyles's to do the work for you. He's all that and a bag of chips. A, a connoisseur of irony.

• 1:52:58Speaker 02

  Yes. Thanks, man. Okay, let's cut it.

• 1:53:03Mike Rowe?

  This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long. But if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go online and leave us a review. I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge. But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch,

• 1:53:48Mike Rowe?

  just a line or two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five star review. Not four. All you've got to do is leave a quick five star review. And not three. All you've got to do is leave a quick five star review. Definitely not two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five star review. We need five. All you've got to do is leave a quick. Even if you hate it. Five star review. Thank you.

• 1:54:15Speaker 04

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