493: JD Vance—Communion

Vice President JD Vance joins Mike for a wide-ranging conversation about faith, family, and the future of America. From the dignity of work and the lessons he learned in the Marine Corps to his return to Christianity and the deeply personal journey that inspired his new book, Communion https://www.amazon.com/Communion-Finding-Way-Back-Faith/dp/B0GTQMJ53N/ref=sr_1_1?crid=FZ7MY7QLOSW4&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._IUwHPaccb9_I7zsCbwchZoLPky47Ya3emvJZiddWRMuKVPqIeOT1cDBglWyDg7M0f2-11FdTs-GO1fkUtl-9gaxHTNifVq5kXyU8Cdw6vkQ0-064kT0Wtz2U0jBF2QuLsbD, Vance reflects on the people and experiences that shaped him. He also explains why America's energy future may determine whether we can keep pace with China in the decades ahead.

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

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Hello friends, it's Mike Rowe. This is The Way I Heard It. Today's guest is the Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Vice President of the United States. I mean, the sitting Vice President of the United States. He holds the office right now. That's crazy to me.

• 0:20Mike Rowe?

  You know what's crazy? He showed up with 100 of his closest friends.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Let me tell you, man, I had a week.

• 0:25Mike Rowe?

  I know.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  I had a week preparing for this. I got a pocketful of challenge coins and, you know, shook a ton of hands.

• 0:32Mike Rowe?

  Obviously, there's gonna be security. There's gonna be Secret Service. There's an advance team. There's a communications team. Alternative forms of communications need to be set up in case something should happen that would require his immediate attention and so forth and so on. But what an enjoyable conversation.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Super nice guy.

• 0:54Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Super nice guy.

• 0:55Mike Rowe?

  Uh huh. He's written a book called Communion, which I'm nearly finished, which is really good. It's a very personal book about his faith journey and how he lost it and then how he got it back. And it's not a political book by any stretch. And the conversation you're about to hear is not a political conversation by any stretch. I'm pretty sure I'll get some grief.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 1:22Mike Rowe?

  Here and there. Of course, I don't care about that. In fact, we had a really, I think, my favorite exchange. He had to cut it a little short because Bill Maher's waiting.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36Mike Rowe?

  And he asked me, you know, should I know anything? Can you tell me about Bill Maher? And I told him the true story of the week I went on Bill Maher and Glenn Beck at the same basic time and how all hell broke loose and how, in my mind anyway, that's the...

• 1:51Mike Rowe?

  That's the beginning of the divide that we've been living in. You know, that was the first time I noticed that, you know, something it's the country's more concerned with, you know, who's sitting next to whom as opposed to what's actually being said. And, you know, the Vice President and I have crossed paths a lot, but never actually met. And it's because his book, Hillbilly Elegy, uh, became very big at the same time Dirty Jobs was still crushing it.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22Mike Rowe?

  And the parallels have always been interesting, and I've always wanted to talk to him about that. And we do, he's super forthcoming. Did you learn anything, Chuck?

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I learned about his grandparents more than I already knew. I haven't read the book. I did see the movie. I loved the movie. I thought it was really interesting and, uh, I don't know, man, there's something just likeable about him that, uh, like he comes from good stock. You could, you know, his story is, you know, he grew up very, very blue collar. You know, obviously he went to Yale, which changed things a bit, I'm sure, but.

• 2:54Mike Rowe?

  Well, he's lived in so many different worlds. I mean, abject poverty, Appalachia.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  The military, the Marines.

• 3:02Mike Rowe?

  Yale.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:03Mike Rowe?

  The Ivy League.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:05Mike Rowe?

  And, uh, Silicon Valley.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:08Mike Rowe?

  Investor.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:09Mike Rowe?

  And now, geez. I don't know. I guess he's the second most powerful man in the world when you think of it like that.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  I think so too.

• 3:18Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, he has an agenda. He's written a book and he wants you to buy it. And I have an agenda too. Couple of days ago, in the Pentagon, the Department of War gave the MicroWorks Foundation $10 million to help reinvigorate the skilled trades specifically in the defense industrial base. We're super excited to announce that. Other companies have stepped up. We're going to raise a lot of money for scholarships this year, and we are going to be. All over the place. We're gonna start just in three states, but the campaign is called Build Freedom. And this is the same campaign, really, I pitched 15 years ago in Congress, and it's finally come around. So I wanted to tell him about that. And of course, he'd

• 4:03Mike Rowe?

  been read in. He's familiar with it. For me, it was just a real kick to be able to explain to the Vice President that MicroWorks is still on the case and gratifying. So I think he enjoyed himself. It was really fun to meet all those law enforcement men and women. They're awfully buttoned up, dude.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Over 100 here. Well, you didn't see them for the whole week. I mean, they've been here just about every single day since Sunday.

• 4:30Mike Rowe?

  Snipers on the roof.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, those guys were badass. Those guys were badass. Assault teams in the stairwells.

• 4:36Mike Rowe?

  In the stairwells, yeah.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. There's an assault team as well. There's so many different teams. But they showed up on Sunday, and I'd never saw so many people in our office.

• 4:46Mike Rowe?

  How great would Santa Monica be if those guys were here all the time?

• 4:49Speaker 01

  All the time. Oh, my gosh.

• 4:52Mike Rowe?

  The book is called Communion. My guest is Vice President J.D. Vance, right after this.

• 5:02Mike Rowe?

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• 5:43Mike Rowe?

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• 6:25Mike Rowe?

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• 6:52Mike Rowe?

  Sure appreciate your time.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Of course, man. It's good to see you.

• 6:54Mike Rowe?

  I can't even imagine.

• 6:58Mike Rowe?

  I can't even imagine your schedule. I can't get my head around your retinue, your posse. It's unbelievable, your life, man.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is the craziest thing.

• 7:08Mike Rowe?

  It's so annoying. You're, what, 41?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  41.

• 7:11Mike Rowe?

  What in the world, man? I mean, seriously, military, Silicon Valley, obviously, politics, Yale, and there's probably another world.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:25Mike Rowe?

  You had your foot in a lot of places.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  I had my foot in a lot of places, yeah. The posse is really, I still haven't gotten used to it. So I've been doing this for all of two years. You get the Secret Service detail whenever the president asks you to be the VP nominee. And, you know, just driving in here, I still don't get used to the fact that, you know, probably one in every 10 cars is just parked on the freeway, unable to move because they, you know, they've shut down the whatever, the 405 or wherever we were driving. And it's such a ridiculous spectacle. It's 40 or 50 cars trailing behind us.

• 7:58Mike Rowe?

  I know.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  That people just can't help but record it.

• 8:01Mike Rowe?

  Well, I...

• 8:03Mike Rowe?

  Took some private jets a few years ago that somebody sent and thought I had experienced the absolute pinnacle of indulgence. I was ruined for commercial travel.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 8:14Mike Rowe?

  But last year, I spoke at Clint Hill's funeral, the famous Secret Service agent. And on the way to the church, I guess we were leaving the national monument, going to the graveyard, they had a full-on escort.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 8:29Mike Rowe?

  And in my life, Mr. Vice President, I have never felt that. I mean, to see everything shut down and the speed with which you can get from one side at DC to the other.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 8:39Mike Rowe?

  It's, I mean, I can't even talk to anybody else about it who hasn't experienced, because it's truly inexplicable.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's the thing that money can't buy. So I was traveling, actually Elon Musk was in my motorcade at one point, I think we were in Florida, actually, it was maybe during the transition. And it's just they had completely shut down traffic from the airport to, I think Mar-a-Lago. And Elon's like, you know, I can buy a lot, but I can't buy that.

• 9:06Mike Rowe?

  I can't buy that. It's fantastic.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 9:10Mike Rowe?

  The first time I heard your name and heard about Hillbilly Elegy would have been, I guess, in 2016.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yep, 10 years ago.

• 9:19Mike Rowe?

  The election was over, and I had mouthed off, I was just telling Jay, your guy, this story.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:26Mike Rowe?

  I, on one of the socials, answered a question, saying, you know, I typically don't weigh in, but I think Trump could win.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:34Mike Rowe?

  Like, I wrote it down, and I was immediately invited on Meet the Press.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:39Mike Rowe?

  To tell them what weird insight I might have had to make this prognostication. And your book came up. And ever since then, I've been hearing about how you and I are singing out of the same hymnal.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:54Mike Rowe?

  As it were.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:56Mike Rowe?

  Different tunes, but same basic message. So I want to spend the time I have with you talking about your book, but I want to lean somewhat shamelessly into workforce.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 10:06Mike Rowe?

  Dignity of work.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 10:08Mike Rowe?

  Reinvigorating the trades. And I guess the first question would have to be, given the administration's commitment to reshore, re-industrialize, and reinvigorate the trades, is that even possible until or unless the country rethinks its overall relationship with work?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  That's a good question, and I think it is possible that these things have to sort of happen together, and I think they are happening together slowly but surely. So to give you an example, when I was, you know, I was raised by a Union Steel man, my grandfather, and the most important man in my life, he died when I was 13 years old. I called him Pat Paul. Pat Paul had this idea that, you know, his work was the work of the hands, you know, he was a blue collar guy, but that my work would be the work of the mind, and that I would sit at a desk and I would do that.

• 11:01Mike Rowe?

  Did he want something better?

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 11:04Mike Rowe?

  For you?

• 11:04Speaker 02

  He wanted something better for me, even though he himself realized more than anybody that his work was very much work of the mind.

• 11:10Mike Rowe?

  And how weird, how weird is it to envy and love him so much and admire him, and then watch him want something else for you?

• 11:20Speaker 02

  It's very hard. It's very hard. I look back and I think there is a certain sadness, tragedy is probably overstating it, because my grandfather had, in a lot of ways, a very amazing life. It was a very, very young life. He died when he was 67 years old. But Pat Paul, it was always kind of sad to me that he saw the thing that he did as somehow not something that was good enough for me.

• 11:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  And in hindsight, you know, there was this deep cultural assumption that if you worked with your hands, if you were a blue collar, somehow that wasn't as good, or that wasn't, you know, it wasn't as prestigious as the people who went to college. I do think that our society actually has learned a lot since then. I don't necessarily think that if my grandfather were alive today, he would be telling me, do something different than what I did. Now, of course, these jobs change, and there's always transformation, there's always people have to learn new skills, but I actually think that a lot of people recognize, first of all, that working with your hands and working with your mind are not two separate things. You have to do both at the same time. And number two, that a lot of the white collar

• 12:24Speaker 02

  jobs that exist in our country are kind of bullshit, excuse my language.

• 12:27Mike Rowe?

  I can take it.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  There were all of these viral TikTok memes a few years ago of people going to like work at some social media advertising agency and people like the subtext of all of these viral videos is like, oh, you get to work at 9:45 and you go get coffee at 10:45 and you have a meeting, but then you have lunch. And then the subtext is, oh, my God, so many of these people aren't actually doing anything.

• 12:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Oh, shocking. Well, look, it actually opens up a riff on the dignity of work, which I think has been really confused. I think a lot of people in the country think about dignified work through the lens of the circumstances of the job itself, the conditions. Is it too hot? Is it too cold? Do I have insurance? Do I have a lunch break? You know, is OSHA doing its thing, et cetera, et cetera?

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:18Mike Rowe?

  And if all those things line up, great, you have dignified. But what you just said is so interesting because it's possible, under my definition, to be doing undignified work and still prosper from it because I think the thing that gives work dignity is maybe if it blesses somebody else.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:38Mike Rowe?

  Like if somebody else benefits.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:41Mike Rowe?

  Key bono, right?

• 13:42Speaker 02

  I think it's a good definition. I would say when I think of dignified work, whether it's a white collar or blue collar, it's doing something that somebody else actually really values. Like if you're building a house, that really matters. If you're fixing the plumbing, that really matters. But like, yeah, if you're a lawyer and you're solving somebody's dispute, that can really matter, too. It's not that, you know, I do think that sometimes there's this false dichotomy between dignified work, you know, being white collar or blue collar. There are a lot of jobs, I think especially that grew up in the COVID era, where people would sit at a laptop and not actually do much. And I think that moment in time drove home the fact that there are jobs that really do bless people, that really do build things that are meaningful. And then there are jobs that are kind of

• 14:27Speaker 02

  fake.

• 14:28Mike Rowe?

  The study that I'll never forget was conducted during the Second World War in a POW camp.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 14:35Mike Rowe?

  And so half the prisoners were forced to build a barracks. So they're, they're laying brick. The hours are terrible. The work is hard, the conditions are brutal. The other group is basically charged with carrying large vessels of water across the yard.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:56Mike Rowe?

  And dumping them out into nowhere specific. It's not like they're making or doing anything, they're just being forced.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  It's just busy work.

• 15:04Mike Rowe?

  Yes. Wow. The science after it is extraordinary. Those men building that barrack who were essentially slave labor.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:14Mike Rowe?

  But building something were so much better off mentally. And the people who lost their minds was the other cohort.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  The ones who were just jumping to water. That's fascinating, but not that surprising, right? Because, again, whatever the circumstances, whatever the conditions, and obviously, we want people to have good conditions, good benefits, good insurance, all that stuff. But if you do something that you know is valuable, it's very hard to get bored with it. Whereas if you do something that you know is not valuable, it doesn't matter how much you're paid. I think it's very hard to actually take meaning from that.

• 15:49Mike Rowe?

  Okay. Which of the many worlds you've occupied, I'm picturing five in my head, best line up with this idea that your work was blessing someone? I mean, was it the milita-- I mean, obviously, military service has got to be up there, but Silicon Valley and politics and, you know, academia, these all add value, but for you personally.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, they all add value. I would say the military is definitely at the top of the list for me because I had never felt so clearly that I was on a team and that that team was geared towards something positive. Okay? And I do think that that is, I mean, that's something we try to do in our office, that's something we try to do in politics, is build the sense of camaraderie among the people who are working for you, working with you. But that just was constantly etched in what we were doing in the military is the guy to your left, the guy to your right, you guys are on the same team. You may be pissed off at each other from time to time, but get over it, you've got to figure out a way to work together. That sense of teamwork was really amazing and kind of. Transformational for me.

• 16:56Mike Rowe?

  Did it leave a hole when you left?

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. Some of the best friends that I have, I mean, you know, I just saw one of my best buddies from the Marine Corps like two days ago. He came into my office in the West Wing and he actually works now with Unions in New Hampshire. And so he and I have taken like much different paths, but he's still one of my best friends. And you know, the most exciting thing, the most exciting thing from the day that I got inaugurated as Vice President, and it was an amazing, amazing day in so many ways, but is that like right after the inauguration, I go into this party, Ohio State was playing Notre Dame, I'll never forget this, and we had this kind of room set up. It was a gigantic room, but for family and friends, and pretty much every single one of

• 17:40Speaker 02

  my Marine Corps buddies showed up for that. Some of them I hadn't seen in 10 years. And when you talk about leaving a hole, you maybe don't realize it until it gets filled in that moment where you were just surrounded by all these friends. So I think a lot about it.

• 17:53Mike Rowe?

  Isn't that why there's a VFW?

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Absolutely. That's why there's a VFW. And that camaraderie, it's not just camaraderie. I mean, you think about the military. The craziest thing about the military is a job that you never, ever leave. And what I mean by that is, you know, the guy who's in charge of you, yeah, he's making sure you do your job, but he's also a guy who could walk into your barracks room at 9:30 at night to make sure that your barracks room is properly cleaned. Now, that's kind of crazy in some ways. And when I went to college, I was glad to be away from that part of it, but it's just so immersive. Every part of your life becomes the Marine Corps. And I do miss that from time to time, but I certainly miss the people all the time.

• 18:35Mike Rowe?

  One of my favorite chapters in your book, which that's a stupid way to start the sentence because I'm not done it yet, full disclosure. But I think the second chapter is called Semper Fidelis.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, obviously a play, there's the cover of the book there, and a play on the Marine Corps motto of Semper Fidelis, right? Always faithful.

• 18:59Mike Rowe?

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• 20:23Speaker 02

  But the irony, I think, you know, the book is in some ways just a personal journey about how I lost my religious faith and how I got it back. But a big part of the story of how I lost my faith would happen in the Marine Corps. And for reasons that had nothing to do with the Marines, but because my grandmother, who, you know, married to my grandfather.

• 20:43Mike Rowe?

  Papaw and Mamaw.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Papaw and Mamaw, the man and woman who raised me. My anchor to my Christian faith was Mamaw. And I didn't realize this at the time, but we didn't really go to church that much. It wasn't a particularly, you know, institutional faith, but it was very devout and very personal. Mamaw read the Bible every day. She would ask me about God every day. We would pray every day. And she died about three months before I left for. Iraq. And as soon as she died, my religious faith kind of started to whittle away. And I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the reason is because she was my anchor. She was actually the person who connected me to it. And when I lost that, I slowly lost my faith. And that chapter, I believe, is really about how that whole thing happened in the Marine Corps.

• 21:29Mike Rowe?

  Laugh out loud line from your mama. When she says, you're asking her to kind of explain, you know, the whole, the whole man, God relationship. And she, you know, gives her best shot and you say, it's kind of like a bullet. Right? Like you fire the bullet and the, and the casing is the body and that falls to the ground and the bullet goes to heaven.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 21:51Mike Rowe?

  And she says, yeah, goddamn it, I guess it is like that.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  That's exactly what she says. Oh, man, she was a truly amazing. I mean, when she died, we actually made a CD, back when people make burned CDs.

• 22:06Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  We made a burned CD of all of her favorite songs. And we called it a force of nature because that's what she was, man. She was just absolutely off the wall, the biggest personality, super charismatic, cursed like a sailor. I'll never forget when we first started having kids and my wife would get kind of annoyed at me because when you start having toddlers, the toddlers say whatever you say.

• 22:30Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  And so it doesn't matter if you say the F word when your kid's 18 months old. It kind of matters when he's three and a half. So I had just been elected to the Senate. I was taking my kids from, you know, Cincinnati to DC. And I would always, not always, but sometimes I'd try to just take one kid with me to spend special time with dad because for the first six months I was in the Senate, my family lived back in Cincinnati. So I take one of the kids back to DC. They get to hang out with me. And I'm like, from Cincinnati to DC, everybody on that flight knows who I am, especially right after the election. And my kid, who's three years old at the time, he drops one of those Delta Biskov cookies between his seat and he goes, well, shit.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  And it's like every single person in the plane turned around. Judging me, if they didn't already disagree with me politically, they certainly judge me as a father. But I picked that language up from my grandmother and I've gotten better at it. But man, she was so non-conventional, right? She was not like a sit at home and knit you a sweater kind of grandmother. She was a woman of very devout Christian faith. She loved the F-bomb. You know, when she died, we discovered 19 loaded handguns in her house. And I know you're a second amendment guy, but

• 23:45Mike Rowe?

  But 19?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  But not just 19, but 19 spread randomly all over her house. And we're thinking to ourselves, and obviously we can't ask her, she's because she had died. What the hell did she need with a loaded handgun in the silverware drawer? And we realized Why take chances? It's because she couldn't get around that well towards the end of her life. And it sort of hit us and she wanted to make sure that no matter where she was, if somebody walked into her house in Middletown, Ohio, she had a loaded handgun within arm's reach because she couldn't move around that well.

• 24:13Mike Rowe?

  What in the world would she say today? Assuming she's looking down and Papa for that matter.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:20Mike Rowe?

  How would they? Well, what would they think of your book? But what would they think of their boy?

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Well, you know, you never know. I think and hope they'd be proud of me. I think that what Mamaw would say in particular is don't get too big for your britches. She was

• 24:36Mike Rowe?

  Don't get too big for your goddamn britches.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right. She was particularly worried that I think Mamaw always had very high expectations for me. So I don't think that she would necessarily be surprised though. How could you not be surprised by how crazy my life has been the last 10 years? But I think that what Mamaw would be worried about, and it's something I worry about too, is like my life is, dude, totally transformed. I don't go to the grocery store anymore. People go to the grocery store for me. Most of my meals, like when I cook a meal, it's like, I love to cook actually. Big baker. I like to cook for my kids as a special occasion, but I don't have to cook anymore because I've got an army of people who are willing to like cook me my food. My life is so weird. I fly around on a 757, no more TSA lines for me and the kids.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  It's so weird, but it can become the sort of thing that if you internalize it. You start to be an entitled asshole.

• 25:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  And I think that's the thing that Mamaw would really be insisted on is don't become entitled about this. Recognize it's cool. It's a blessing. Obviously, it comes along with duties and responsibilities. But she would be very proud of me. I know she would. She would also make sure that I didn't get too big for my britches.

• 25:46Mike Rowe?

  So my mom is, I had a Nana, by the way.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:50Mike Rowe?

  Not a Mamaw, but they sound like pretty much the same people. My mom is now 88 and people who watch this podcast know her well. She wrote her bestseller when she turned 80.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:00Mike Rowe?

  And she's written.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 26:01Mike Rowe?

  Since then, but she called literally right before you walked in. She's like, Michael, I just want to have a chat with you. It's been a couple of days and your father and I. And I said, Mom, listen, can I call you back? She goes, oh, are you big day, busy? I'm like, well, the vice president's coming in and I'm interviewing him.

• 26:20Mike Rowe?

  I won't repeat exactly what she said, but your Mamaw would have been proud and she just hung up.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:25Mike Rowe?

  And if I'm being honest, I kind of, I think maybe looking back, I kind of hit her over the head with that on purpose. Just to let her know that, you know.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:32Mike Rowe?

  Every now and then, you know.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, somebody in a suit walks in here.

• 26:36Mike Rowe?

  Is she impressed with you? Yeah, that's her.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Oh, I love it.

• 26:40Mike Rowe?

  She's impressed with me. You know what? She's actually more bemused. She's bemused. She's like, you know, your father and I, we did what we did and now we're watching you and it doesn't quite make sense. But I am gobsmacked by her because she wrote every day for 60 years. Her dream was to be a writer.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:59Mike Rowe?

  Every day, 60 years, never got published.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Did you know that when you were a kid that she wanted to be a writer?

• 27:04Mike Rowe?

  She would write unauthorized biographies of strangers she met in the elevator at the Bob's Big Boy.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  That's very cool.

• 27:10Mike Rowe?

  A cop on a horse, right?

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 27:13Mike Rowe?

  And she'd magnet, she'd stick them to the fridge and my dad would read them to strangers the next day. That's what I grew up watching. So her first book was a bestseller when she was 80, which leads me to my question. I asked Jay, your man Jay earlier, who's busy over there on his, probably not a BlackBerry anymore. But, uh, you know.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  I hope not.

• 27:34Mike Rowe?

  I said.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  If so, Jay's fine. Fired.

• 27:37Mike Rowe?

  Sorry, Jay. See yourself out. No, I said, Jay, don't bullshit me. Did he write this book himself? And he got, he was like, yeah, he did. Every word started in 2017. Yes, he did. And I just want to say that on behalf of my mom and I, good for you. I don't understand how you could have done it, found time to do it or anything else, but I, that's my question.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Well, I appreciate it. Give my best to your mom.

• 28:02Mike Rowe?

  I will.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  Okay, I have to ask though, those biographies she wrote about strangers, is that what was in the first book that she published? Or any book that she's published? Or is it all?

• 28:10Mike Rowe?

  Since you asked, what happened was, she wrote the funniest story I'd ever read about losing her big blue purse at the Walmart. And the calamity of events that happened in the wake of that. I read her story and posted it on Facebook.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:27Mike Rowe?

  Seventy million people watched me read her story.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 28:31Mike Rowe?

  The publishers called, you'll love this, and said, if your mother can churn out 20 of those. And just make sure you're in them, so we have a hook, right? The mother of the dirty guy.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:44Mike Rowe?

  And so I say to my mom, hey, look, you're not going to believe this, but I think I got you a book deal. And this is what you have to do. And she says, well, Michael, you know, I have two other sons. I'm like, ma, just write the book, okay? We'll deal with my brothers later.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 28:58Mike Rowe?

  She goes home and she writes a book called About My Mother. A story about my mammal, a story about my nana.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 29:06Mike Rowe?

  I'm not even in the frickin' thing. It's a book about my grandmother, Thelma Noble, who no one has ever heard of. And the publisher is like, I can't do anything with this.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:17Mike Rowe?

  So my partner, Mary, is like, screw that. We'll print 10,000. We sold them in three days. Then the publisher came back.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 29:25Mike Rowe?

  Second printing, number four, been a bestseller ever since.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 29:29Mike Rowe?

  Crazy.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  That is such a cool story.

• 29:30Mike Rowe?

  I mean, but it's, how did elegy happen? How did it lead to this? And why is it? Are you that arrogant that you have to write your own stuff, Mr. Vice President? Is that what this is?

• 29:42Speaker 02

  No, no, it's not that. It's, it's, look, writing is one of the ways. Going back to when I was a kid, I've always worked things out in my head through writing. So when we did debate prep for the vice presidential debate, one of the ways that I actually prepped is to write out what I thought they would say and how I might respond to it. I've always been fascinated by arguments and one of the ways that I sort of argue things with myself, with other people, was through writing. So Hillbilly Elegy comes out. We did an initial print run of 10,000 copies. We sold out of it because I have this mega viral interview on a magazine called The American Conservative. Sold out immediately, to the point where it was like two weeks before people could even get the book again. Anyway, it becomes a publishing success and I immediately sign on to write a book.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  They're like, what are you thinking about right now? I'm like, honestly, I'm thinking about faith right now and not just personally, but how the effect that it has on American life, the ability that it has to unite us together as a people with a lot of diverse interests and backgrounds, but faith is one of these things that's been a commonality in the American story. So I was thinking about writing a book about faith. So the publisher's like, great, let's sign a deal. So in 2017, I do a contract to write this book and I start writing it right away. Actually, I guess I'd already been writing it even before then. So over time, it's just, you know, things happened. I started my own venture capital fund. We started having babies. We had three kids. We actually have a fourth on the way.

• 31:09Mike Rowe?

  Congratulations.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Thank you. And all that stuff is happening and I'm still kind of, every now and then, I sit down at my computer when it's late at night, the kids are asleep and I start writing this book. Okay, so it gets to the point where I'm the vice president of the United States and the publisher's like, you know, kind of time to get off the pot. And I'm like, all right, well, I need to write probably another two or three chapters and then edit this thing and make it work together because, you know, you're a writer. When you write something over 10 years, it's kind of disjointed. So I had to like make it so that it actually fit together. And so I decided to just do that and I got it done. And of course, my wife helped me a lot, not with the writing, but with the editing. She's a vicious editor. Love my wife.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  She's one of the few people who can just tell me like, this sounds like garbage and help me fix it.

• 31:58Mike Rowe?

  Sidebar too, I love the fact that if she recommends a book to you, you immediately read it.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 32:06Mike Rowe?

  Didion's book, Year of Magical Thinking.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  Year of Magical Thinking. Have you ever read that book?

• 32:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 32:12Mike Rowe?

  And wow.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 32:14Mike Rowe?

  Rough year, rough year for Joan.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Totally rough year for Joan. I mean, and then you read like there were things that happened after the publication of that book that were even worse. Her daughter passed away.

• 32:24Mike Rowe?

  Daughter dies.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  It's just, it's heartbreaking.

• 32:31Mike Rowe?

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• 33:15Mike Rowe?

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• 33:57Mike Rowe?

  people who switch plans after calling Chapter 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.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  But I wrote the book myself and, you know, didn't use ChatGPT. And sometimes when politicians write books, by the way, the other thing I wanted to make sure is that it wasn't just another like politician book.

• 34:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Right? It's not, here are eight problems with America and here are my, here's my 12-point plan to fix it. It actually really is just a book about one guy's faith journey and then some broader thoughts about what Christianity means in America in 2026. The one thing, it's funny, just the one thing about the book that is still controversial in my brain is when I finished it, I had a couple of people, close friends, read it. And they're like, look, we really like this. You know, they had some specific feedback, but it is very weird. You're the Vice President of the United States and you don't talk about politics at all. And so I kind of went back and added a little bit of political reflection in there.

• 35:03Mike Rowe?

  Not much.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Not much, but even what's in there, I kind of wish that I hadn't put it in there, even though I understand the arguments from people who are saying, you can't not talk about politics like you're literally the Vice President. So anyway, yes, I wrote the book myself.

• 35:16Mike Rowe?

  Good. It's important. I think it's important.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 35:22Mike Rowe?

  But my bigger concern, when, before I read it, it wasn't whether or not you're going to get political in it. It's that this is such a personal journey.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 35:34Mike Rowe?

  And it can't be over yet.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 35:36Mike Rowe?

  Because if you haven't noticed, you're 41 years old.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 35:39Mike Rowe?

  So it's sort of, it's a very clever conversion story wrapped into a memoir.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:47Mike Rowe?

  But it's still the product of a 41-year-old man.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 35:51Mike Rowe?

  So as you're writing this over a 10-year period, are you ever sitting down and going, the story's changing?

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:57Mike Rowe?

  As I'm writing it?

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Oh, of course.

• 35:59Mike Rowe?

  Like in a fundamental way, begging the obvious question, aside from the fact that it ends at 304 pages, how do you know when you're done?

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so my experience having written all of two books is that you're never done. And there are still times when somebody will read something from Hillbilly Elegy, which came out in 2016, and this thing came out in 2026, obviously just a couple of weeks ago, where I will say, I wish that I had put that in there. And so my attitude towards writing a book is it's never actually done. You just have to get to a point where you accept. It's like a hostage negotiation where eventually you send it off, you get the hostage back, you send it off, and you hope that you never have to deal with the hostage person again.

• 36:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Right, the hostage taker again. And that's kind of how I think about writing a book, is the hostage taker is the publisher. Eventually, you just pass it off to the hostage taker and you hope you have to never have to deal with it again. So I've definitely thought of this issue a lot. The most time that I spent writing this book over the last six months was not writing new material. It was going through and trying to like make the material that I wrote in 2017 fit with the material that I wrote last year.

• 37:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  And that was definitely a part of the writing process, but man, it's never done.

• 37:18Mike Rowe?

  What is the most brutal critique your wife has offered?

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Oh, you mean, it definitely would be about writing.

• 37:28Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Because she's a very sweet person, but she is a brutal editor. And I would say that, I mean, hell, I could go through pretty much every chapter. There was one chapter that she went through where she like marked up every single paragraph and just kind of like wrote through it. And basically like what I was like, well, there are so many markings here, like what do I even do here? And she's like, basically, I don't know what you were trying to say there. And you either have to completely delete everything or rewrite it so that it's clear what you're trying to say. And it's like, Jesus.

• 38:05Mike Rowe?

  So my-

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Oh, dagger to the heart, but-

• 38:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  You need that.

• 38:10Mike Rowe?

  My mom dedicated one of her books to my niece, who was like six years old when she read a short story that my mom had written. And her critique was, it's really good, Grandma, but I was thinking, what if you just moved the good parts closer together?

• 38:28Mike Rowe?

  That's good.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  And it's good.

• 38:30Mike Rowe?

  You know, my mother was like, "Well, thank you, Katie." And, but in the end, I mean, that's life. It's certainly, it's certainly copyrighting.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  I need that. I think all people need that, but I particularly need that. The hardest thing, you never hear me complain about my life, because it's very blessed in so many ways. I'm a very lucky guy. The hardest thing about my life is that I live in a bubble. And I have a lot of people who really want to tell me how great I am. And, you know, some people wouldn't tell me how terrible I am, of course. But people who surround me, it's very hard for them to give honest feedback.

• 39:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  It's not hard for Ush to give me honest feedback.

• 39:10Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's...

• 39:11Speaker 02

  That's what you need.

• 39:11Mike Rowe?

  You're very lucky. Years from now, I mean, I know you couldn't have possibly known the impact that Hillbilly Elegy was going to have on the country.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 39:21Mike Rowe?

  So riff quick on that, to the degree to which you're, you're pleased by it and how you think the book may have improved social discourse. And what do you hope this does?

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think that what Hillbilly Elegy did, and in some ways is still doing, is it gave people who didn't come from my world an insight into a group of people that are complicated, certainly messy. I'm not saying we're perfect, but we're fundamentally like the people who raised me are very good people.

• 39:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  And it gave an insight into the world, or of the world, into that group of people. And I still will have people come up and tell me, like, "I didn't know anything about this, like, massive group in the middle of the country until you wrote this book about it." The most important thing, though, that Hillbilly Elegy did, and I don't know if it's happened to a dozen people or hopefully more, I'll never forget this. The first time that ever happened to me, I was at the West Virginia Book Festival. And, you know, I gave a little talk and I signed some books. And then this woman who was similar in age to me, she came up to me afterwards and she said, like, "Your book is why I had my dad over at Thanksgiving for the first time in 10 years."

• 40:34Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  And she said it gave me this... Perspective on him. And my attitude was like, if you can forgive people in your family, then I can forgive people in my family. We sort of all just move on together. I've heard that from a few people that like recognizing that somebody who was in your life, maybe whether it's a parent who screwed up, isn't a fundamentally bad person just because they screwed up. And that forgiving them is a much better way than holding that grudge and holding that resentment for the rest of your life. That's really what Hillbilly Elegy is about.

• 41:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Kind of coming to terms with my grandparents, my mom, and how their crazy story fit together. You know, if that happened with 12 people, Hillbilly Elegy was worth writing.

• 41:16Mike Rowe?

  Was it, was it a phenomenon because it was entertaining and enlightening? Or did it catch fire because people saw themselves in it?

• 41:28Speaker 02

  I think both. And I think the third thing is it was very much the beneficiary of the 2016 election campaign. So many people were so shocked by what happened in 2016. You weren't.

• 41:38Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  I was not. But I think that they were looking for something to try to understand what the hell had just happened. And that is certainly a big part of the reason why it became such a big bestseller.

• 41:48Mike Rowe?

  Why did my neighbor's kids just convert to Catholicism? Why, like, what, is there a revival of some kind? Like simmering underneath all of this divisiveness?

• 42:02Speaker 02

  I think that there is. So I have to know though, your neighbor's kid, was he not raised Catholic? Was she not raised Catholic?

• 42:08Mike Rowe?

  He is 22, live in a very nice life, in a really great school, surrounded by all of the advantages you could want.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:20Mike Rowe?

  And out of the blue, converted, it seemed, and just started going to a Catholic mass again and again. And now it's official.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 42:30Mike Rowe?

  And many of his friends have followed suit.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I definitely see this among young people. And I don't think it's all Catholicism. I do think there's a broad speaking Christian revival in the country among young people. But I do think that what Catholicism, those who have gone to Catholicism, and this is certainly true of me. I think a couple of things are true. Number one. There is a beauty to it. Catholics are very good at aesthetics. If you walk into one of these old churches, whether it's a small church or a giant cathedral.

• 43:01Mike Rowe?

  That's the inciting incident in your book.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. That's right. I was in a cathedral and I saw the light in a stained glass window and it was just, it was hitting at just the right time where you could literally see the dust in the church kind of moving around in the light. And it was this really beautiful thing. And I do think that at its best, beauty calls us to God, sort of reflects God. And there are a lot of people who, you know, they maybe they're not used to seeing beautiful things. I don't think that we build beautiful buildings in the same way in 2026 as we did 100 or 200 years ago. And so I think the beauty of it is attractive. I also think that there is something stabilizing about it. The world is such a crazy place. Social media has transformed the way that we communicate with

• 43:46Speaker 02

  each other. It sometimes seems like the world is changing so quickly that a lot of people are looking for a kind of arc from the instability and the chaos.

• 43:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  And I do think that the church is very good at providing that to young people. And it's one of the reasons why you have seen, it's, it's clear in the data, a pretty significant shift from young people who are, you know, like me, had kind of abandoned their faith. Maybe they were never raised in a faith to begin with, but they're attracted to it because it speaks to something that they're yearning for. Now, I would say, the last thing I'll say on this is, I think that what people are ultimately yearning for is a relationship with God, a relationship with Christ. But I think there are weird echoes of that, whether it's the beauty that you see in a church, or the sense of stability you feel in a church community. I think that's all calling us to something that's even more true and more fundamental, but different people come at a different, different directions and in different ways.

• 44:45Mike Rowe?

  You said losing faith is like a divorce.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:51Mike Rowe?

  Is finding it again like falling in love again? Or is it like coming home?

• 44:58Speaker 02

  I'd say it's more like coming home because it was not super emotional for me. There were all these moments of intense emotion that I had, but you know, falling in love is this such an intense feeling. And one of the things that I tried to do when I re-engaged with my faith was I wanted it to stick. I didn't want to just start going to church and then cast it aside like I had when I was 22 years old. I wanted it to stick. And so it was something that was both of the heart, but also was very inspiring to me and made me think about the world in a totally new way. Right?

• 45:35Mike Rowe?

  What is it doing for you on a day-to-day basis, given the fact that you're pretty sui generous, right? I mean, you're the, you're one of one in this country, a singular position with pressures I think most of us can't even begin to imagine. How hard are you leaning on this minute by minute, day by day, hour by hour?

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Very much so, very much so. And I find myself when I'm, I'm most challenged or when I'm most worried about what to do, I'm most unsure about what to do, that's when I find myself praying the most intensively. And what faith does, I, I told you earlier, my grandmother once told me not to get too big for my britches. She would say that all the time. And I guarantee that's what she would say to me today. Faith does that every single day for me. Because one, one of the core lessons of Christianity is that God does love us, but that he sometimes works on his time, not ours. And that's frustrating and it's even enraging, but it creates a certain humility about how much we can control events.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  And so what I, I try to do is not control events. What I try to do is just the best job that I can do. And that is not actually instinctively, especially in a position like this, I think my character flaw would be to try to maximize, to try to completely exert control over the situation.

• 47:07Mike Rowe?

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• 47:50Mike Rowe?

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• 48:35Speaker 02

  I think it's probably that. One of the things I talk about in the book is I was a striver, and not striving towards excellence or towards building something meaningful. I just wanted to get ahead. That is less a character flaw today, because...

• 48:50Mike Rowe?

  Ahead as in competitive?

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Competitive.

• 48:52Mike Rowe?

  More than him, more than her?

• 48:53Speaker 02

  I want more prestige. I want more credibility. I want more money. Not, I want to like, you know, ambition to build a beautiful building or to, you know, do something profound. That's different than just the raw ambition to get ahead. I think I've always had that flaw in myself. I feel like I've, maybe, you know, just being Vice President, I'm so consumed by the day-to-day of the job, and I'm not so worried. About raw ambition. It's also like, how much further could you go? You know what I mean? So.

• 49:21Mike Rowe?

  Well, there is that one other step. There is that one.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that, for whatever reason, that flaw is not something I noticed myself in myself as much today. The one character flaw that I certainly notice in myself is just an impatience for things to happen immediately all the time. Now, that can be good because you're constantly applying pressure, hopefully to accomplish good things. It can also be quite bad because it can turn you into a bit of a control freak. And sometimes the best way to do your job, whether you're the vice president or anything else, is to just make good decisions, to work your ass off, but to let things come.

• 49:58Mike Rowe?

  Curiosity or humility, the greater virtue.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Humility.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that it's extremely important not to assume that you know more than other people. I think that's one of the main reasons why I lost my faith is because I started to see myself as hyper rational and intelligent.

• 50:17Mike Rowe?

  Well, that was Yale. Yale will do that to a man.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Yale definitely did that, but it was not just Yale. Yale facilitated it, but it was already there. And I think remembering that, you know, a guy who's laying pipe or a Christian, in my perspective, you know, a Christian who I would have assumed is superstitious and not rational, that maybe they're motivated by something that's a lot deeper and a lot more true. That comes from humility. And so many of the problems that I see, especially among American elites, comes from a certain arrogance, an arrogance that I know better than somebody else. I know how to do this better than you do. I know what's better for your life than you do. That arrogance is the source of a lot of what's wrong. I love curious people. Curiosity is very important.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  But actually, I mean, humility, how can you be genuinely curious if you're not humble?

• 51:08Mike Rowe?

  That's right, because the whole proposition is rooted in your own ignorance.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. Genuine curiosity, I think, comes from humility.

• 51:17Mike Rowe?

  Well, with humility in mind, can we bring this back to me for just a moment, please?

• 51:23Mike Rowe?

  Fifteen years ago, I went to Congress to talk about what I thought would be a pressing need for.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 51:30Mike Rowe?

  Oh, God.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  There you are.

• 51:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Yeah. So that's me. That's actually in front of a Senate committee.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Thanks for wearing a tie.

• 51:41Mike Rowe?

  You know what, man? I could have worn a rubber suit, I suppose, really. But a year before that, I was in front of some other committee. And, you know, the Dirty Jobs thing gave me a weird amount of permission

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:54Mike Rowe?

  to mouth off.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 51:55Mike Rowe?

  Outside of my land.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  And I love that.

• 51:57Mike Rowe?

  I've got this foundation, it's called MicroWorks. And my message to the feds back then was, look, we need some sort of national effort to reinvigorate the trades.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 52:07Mike Rowe?

  I don't think the solution is .gov the end, but I don't think there's a solution without you guys.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 52:14Mike Rowe?

  Well, 15 years later, your Department of War called me. And I don't know if you've been read into this thing entirely, but the new campaign, they basically said yes to what I pitched 15 years ago. It's called Build Freedom.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  Fantastic.

• 52:30Mike Rowe?

  There are two hats in existence. You can have one of them.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  I appreciate that.

• 52:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, sure. You don't have to put it on now. Although it would go pretty well with the suit.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  It would.

• 52:37Mike Rowe?

  But the idea is, state by state, we're going to start with Texas, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. So, Codnazi and that crew put $10 million into my foundation. And they've challenged big corporations all over the country and governors on a state-by-state basis to make a more persuasive case for, what is it? 7 million open positions right now.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:04Mike Rowe?

  So my question to you is, the first question that I asked, can we reinvigorate the trades? Can we somehow? I mean, when they tell me they need 400,000 welders and electricians for our subs, and when they tell me that the new infrastructure build-out is 10 trillion and the need for electricians and data centers, dude, the math ain't mathin'.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  No, it's not.

• 53:27Mike Rowe?

  But I feel like, truly after 15 years, the Pentagon got the memo anyway.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:35Mike Rowe?

  What can you tell me about this?

• 53:36Speaker 02

  So, a few things. Number one, there's both a cultural but also a policy shift that has to happen. And the policy shift is happening in the administration. So if you look at what we've done with making it easier for parents... Use 529 accounts to send their kids to vocational education, making Pell Grants accessible, not just a, you know, four-year traditional college, but to a whole host of options. You're seeing it happen. And of course, what we're doing at the Pentagon, which is just really facilitating industry to get people into these positions, to train them in these positions. This is all happening in a big way. But the cultural shift that has to happen is you've got to take people like my grandfather and persuade them that we still need skilled tradesmen in this country.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  That you can't just tell everybody that they're going to go to a four-year college because number one, some kids don't want that, and that's okay. But also, number two, a lot of the people who are going and getting four-year degrees, they're not like engineers and doctors. They have effectively fake jobs. And that's like, both of those things are true. You know exactly what I'm talking about. You know exactly what I'm talking about. So I think the cultural shift has to happen from people like me and you, talking about the importance of the skilled trades. But I also just, so much of it is just doing it. Like, you take the first step and sometimes you're hooked. I mean, I, you know, the thing that I am probably the best at around the house is I'm a decent bricklayer and mortarman. And so we've got a lot in our house in Cincinnati, a lot of old stonework. It's about

• 55:04Speaker 02

  150-year-old home. And so, you know, sometimes there were periods where it was hard to actually get a stonemason to the house to do the repairs that you've got to do. But man, like, obviously, I've chosen a different option, but you can make a really good living, but also do something that's really cool if you are just really good at stonework. And honestly, I would have had no idea when I was 18 years old, how to even get on that track. I think that's different today. I think that if you're an 18-year-old today and you want to get on that track, there's at least more of a sense of optionality. There's a lot more to do, but I actually think that we're in a better, I don't know if you agree with this, I think that we're in a much better place today than we were when I was graduating from high school.

• 55:45Mike Rowe?

  Well, anecdotally, I can tell you that we've been doing our work ethic scholarship program now for about 15 years. And this year, we got 10 times the applications than we did the year before.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 55:56Mike Rowe?

  Now, I'm not doing anything different. So, yeah, maybe it's the student debt message.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 56:02Mike Rowe?

  Maybe Gen Z got that memo. Maybe the parents got the memo. Or maybe, maybe we're just looking at the math, too, man. I mean, for every five tradespeople who retire.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 56:12Mike Rowe?

  Like the one you just described, two replace them. And it's been that way 11, 12 years. So the math ain't great. The stigmas, the stereotypes, the myths, the misperceptions, all those things need to be debunked. And really, what this campaign aims to do is, if I have my way anyhow, I almost always do.

• 56:35Mike Rowe?

  I can tell a story anecdotally, but we need that the 18-year-old version of that stonemason.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 56:41Mike Rowe?

  And the electrician, and the steam fitter, and the pipe fitter, and the welder, and the CNC operator, who are prospering as a result of mastering a skill.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 56:50Mike Rowe?

  To, in their own words, their own words.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 56:53Mike Rowe?

  Tell their own story. And if we can condense that and blast it out through the channels, I've seen, that's my, and that's my question, the power of good PR. Like, you said you love to debate.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 57:08Mike Rowe?

  What do you find, what do you find most persuasive at the guts of the argument I'm trying to make?

• 57:16Speaker 02

  It's exactly what you're talking about. It's stories. Ideas and abstractions have never moved me and have never particularly persuaded me. But I think that the people's stories, this idea that there's a connection between a kid's skill level, a kid's ambition, a kid's work, and some outcome that's very good. I think that we've got to tell more of those stories. And, you know, the thing about the skilled trades that is also different, probably from certainly 10 years ago, 15 years ago, is the financial part of it. And again, all this stuff has to work together. But I think people recognize that you could make a very, very good living.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  Again, the attitude when I was an 18-year-old kid was, if you become a welder, if you're lucky, you'll make way less than the kids who went to college and your job may very well disappear.

• 58:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 58:06Speaker 02

  By the time that you're 50.

• 58:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  That's not the story that we're telling today. And it's clear the market is sending a signal that these skilled trades are valuable. And you're seeing it in the wages that people are able to earn. I still think fundamentally the storytelling. Because here's the thing, one of the insights that I've had, just look back at my grandfather and at various people that I grew up with, is you have to have a pathway. For both the hyper ambitious, but also the people who just want a normal life. And by the way, I'm indifferent between the two. I admire hyper ambitious people. I also admire people who are just like, you know what? I want to do something meaningful. I want to hang out with my kids. I want to, you know, I just want to be there for my family.

• 58:43Mike Rowe?

  But that hyper ambition rhymes with striving, which rhymes with pride.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  Correct, exactly.

• 58:48Mike Rowe?

  And now that's your.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  But hyper ambition towards something valuable is different from hyper ambition because you want to be better than other people. That's the thing that, I mean, I wouldn't call it hyper ambition, but like if you're ambitious because you really want to build a beautiful home, that's different than I want to be better than all the other home builders. There's just a fundamental difference between, it's almost like a social ambition of the desire to be better than other people. I really mistrust that. I think it's fine if you want to start a construction business and build beautiful homes that people can live in. I think that ambition is very good. It's also totally fine to be the guy who just wants to work for the guy who started for the construction business and help him build beautiful homes.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  One of the things that I worry about still with the skilled trades is that I think a lot of people see the pathway to a decent job where you're making 70, 80, maybe more than that, $1,000 a year. Not as many people see the optionality to build something that is long-term and sustainable. Now, it's, I'm not saying it's not there, but I think those stories, they have to be told too. Because for every tin welders who are going to build something amazing and build a good life for their family, one of those guys is going to want to start his own welding business and do something a little bit different. And I think you got to tell both sides of that story.

• 1:00:09Mike Rowe?

  Boy, I mean, you buried the lead in my opinion, that in reverse, you know, we've had 3,500 people come through our foundation. The number of people who start with a welding cert and then wind up getting a plumbing certification and then get an electric and then they hire a buddy to work with them. Now they got a van, now they got two vans, now they got an HVAC guy, and now you got a mechanical contractor company.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:00:35Mike Rowe?

  A going concern, so.

• 1:00:38Mike Rowe?

  That's the second stage of Build Freedom. We have to, first of all, make the case for the opportunities in the DIB, the Defense Industrial Base, right?

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:00:46Mike Rowe?

  But then we have to go as wide as we can. And I wonder, and I know, how we doing on time? He's got, I know he's got somewhere to be.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  It's 3:30 right now.

• 1:00:54Mike Rowe?

  2:30.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  2:30. We got a little more time.

• 1:00:57Mike Rowe?

  Are you sure?

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:58Mike Rowe?

  Okay, because you're gonna see Bill Maher, right?

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  I'm gonna see Bill Maher, yeah. I'll see, by the way.

• 1:01:01Mike Rowe?

  Okay, so let me, quick sidebar. Tell him I said hello.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:01:05Mike Rowe?

  That same year, I went on Meet the Press.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Mike Rowe?

  The great canary in the coal mine for me was the week I did Real Time with Bill Maher.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:01:14Mike Rowe?

  Not because of that show necessarily, but because three days later, I went on Glenn Beck's show. Now, at the time, I'd been trying to build my social profile, and I had like, like 6 million people on a Facebook page.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Mike Rowe?

  Holy shit. All my buddies on the left just clutched their pearls and fainted when they saw me on Glenn Beck.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:01:39Mike Rowe?

  They couldn't believe it. And all my buddies on the right, just, just the disappointment of seeing me sitting next to Bill Maher. Now, the crazy thing is, I told the same story, delivered the same message, the exact same thing, I've been beaten, same drum I've been beating. And when I saw that reaction, that's when I truly knew that our country had entered a place where we were less interested in what was being said, and more interested in who was sitting

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:02:11Mike Rowe?

  next to the sayer.

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:12Mike Rowe?

  And I don't think we've come back yet. I don't know how we do. So, sorry to completely shift it.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  I think we're better than we were in 2016, but we haven't quite come back yet.

• 1:02:22Mike Rowe?

  Do you have any idea what kind of grief I'm gonna get? You know, I mean, thank you for participating in the micro-blow's-up-half-the-country, you know, tour. But no, I don't care, and I've never cared, but I'm super aware of it.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Mike Rowe?

  Dude, you went on The View, which by the way.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:02:41Mike Rowe?

  By the way, you know, and I again said to Jay, you don't get points for being great in a debate. You have to be great in a debate and you have to debate.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Mike Rowe?

  You didn't have to go on The View.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  No, no, but I'm glad I did. I'm glad I did.

• 1:02:55Mike Rowe?

  I'm glad you did too.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  I mean, I think the only way to pierce through this is to actually go and try to do these conversations everywhere. Right? And you're the kind of guy where everybody from the left or the right can talk to, and that's good. That's an amazing thing. But you also need to be willing to go into more hostile places. And you need to be willing to go into more ideological places. And if you're not, like, I just don't like, why are you in public life? If you don't think you can carry your message? If you don't think there's even a chance of persuading? Not 50% of the people who are watching me on The View, but maybe 10% of the people who are watching me on The View thought at the very least, maybe this guy isn't such an asshole. But hopefully, hopefully they thought, you know.

• 1:03:37Mike Rowe?

  High bar.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, look, if you set a low expectation, you're going to exceed it, right? That's, that's one of the most important lessons in life, man.

• 1:03:47Mike Rowe?

  That's Dirty Jobs 101. Like, the whole mission statement was, my name is Mike Grobe. This is my job. I explore the country looking for people who aren't afraid to get dirty. Hardworking men and women who do the kinds of. I didn't promise to find them. I didn't promise to work.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:04:01Mike Rowe?

  And I certainly didn't promise to be good at anything. Yeah, I just promised to try.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  That's right. And that's what I do. I try. And I think that the solution to, people talk about the division in our country. I think that the division is a symptom of something much deeper. But fundamentally, one of the ways to bridge the divide is just to go and talk to people. Like, yeah, the ladies of The View, some of them were asking unfair questions or talking over me a little bit, but they were fine. They were nice to me. They allowed me to have a platform to say what I wanted to say. And that's all you can really ask for?

• 1:04:37Mike Rowe?

  Well, that was my comment to Bill after the interview. I'm like, look, I don't have deeply felt opinions about you personally, but I'm really interested in your audience.

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:49Mike Rowe?

  Because there's like eight million of them.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:04:51Mike Rowe?

  And a lot of those people have kids and they have no idea what they're going to do with the rest of their life. And they've been told they're screwed if they don't borrow whatever it takes to go in a very specific direction.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:05:03Mike Rowe?

  I wonder if, before I let you go, you can say something unforgettable about AI. I just talked to the Senator McCormick.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  Yep, smart guy.

• 1:05:13Mike Rowe?

  Dave, plenty smart.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, good guy, dude.

• 1:05:16Mike Rowe?

  And we've been going back and forth on this issue. I think Pennsylvania could quite likely lead the charge to reinvigorate the trades.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:24Mike Rowe?

  They're doing great stuff. But he said, you know, the Chinese are doing all kinds of mischief in terms of influencing and persuading Americans to form opinions around data centers and AI. That, well, let's just say a manufactured consensus.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:05:45Mike Rowe?

  To the point where 75% of the people in this country hold a negative view of both. Meanwhile, 85% of Chinese citizens feel pretty great about it.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:05:57Mike Rowe?

  What's at stake? What's being exaggerated? And how much should I be worried?

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  Well, I think that the big mistake that we've made in the United States with respect to data centers, I had to say it to be a little partisan, more in blue states than red states, is when you build these massive data centers, they require a lot of power. By the way, you cannot do any of the AI stuff, the good or the bad. And obviously, I want us to do more of the good without the data centers, that the foundation, the actual computing power exists in these data centers. And we obviously don't want the Chinese to control this. We want to control this.

• 1:06:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  Okay. So the mistake that we've made is when you build the data center, particularly in a blue state, and you allow it to tap into the existing grid, but you don't build other power, then people's electricity costs skyrocket, and they don't know what the hell is going on. They just know that data center means more expensive utility bills for themselves and their families. I've said this to the AI people, I've said this to the people who are building the data centers, I actually said this to one of them last night, a friend of mine, we were having dinner, and I said, "Man, the thing that you guys have got to do is build the power. The problem is not the data centers. The problem is that the United States is not building electricity generation for a 21st century economy." If you look, there's this chart I'm obsessed with.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  Where it looks at the amount of electricity generated by China versus the United States. Okay, in the late 90s, the two lines crossed, meaning the Chinese started making as much power as the United States of America. Since that time, it is flatlined in the US. So as crazy as this might sound, in 2026, we produce about the same amount of power as we did in 1996 in the United States of America. China has 3Xed. So this is actually not a data center problem. It's a utility and power generation problem, and we're working on a lot of stuff with the Trump administration to deregulate and make it easier to build power plants. But you've just got to build more power in this country.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  If you do that, people won't care about the data centers because they'll see data centers as jobs and opportunity, not higher utility bills. If that's the, that is exactly the chart.

• 1:08:07Mike Rowe?

  Look at you, Chuck. Deep pull.

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  Wow, Chuck. It's a big day.

• 1:08:10Mike Rowe?

  Holy cow.

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  That is impressive. That's AI right there. It's Chuck, man. That's amazing.

• 1:08:16Mike Rowe?

  Let's go. He's my optimist.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  But look at that chart. That is just so crazy.

• 1:08:23Mike Rowe?

  Horrifying. Horrifying. They built 1,000 ships last year.

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:08:28Mike Rowe?

  Built three.

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:08:29Mike Rowe?

  What the hell, Mr. Vice President? Three.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Because as much as I love my pat ball, because we allowed this sensibility to infect ourselves that, you know, working with your hands is incompatible with working with your minds, because we allowed the skilled trades to disappear, we stopped being good at building things. I'll tell you, though, I am fundamentally hopeful about the United States of America because other countries get in this cycle and they just stagnate and they don't try to fix it.

• 1:08:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  We're actually fixing it. So I think that chart's going to be different in 10 years, but it's up to us to actually make the right decisions.

• 1:09:04Mike Rowe?

  Look, that's why we got the hat.

• 1:09:06Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:07Mike Rowe?

  That's why we're doing the thing. Men with guns are telling me it's time for you to leave. Through long bitter experience, I've learned never to argue with an HK or a Glock.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  All right, man.

• 1:09:18Mike Rowe?

  Hey, man. Seriously, I really appreciate your time. It's a terrific book. It's called Communion. Yeah, I recommend it because sooner or later, we're all going to wrestle with everything in here.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Thank you, Mike. Good to see you, man.

• 1:09:32Mike Rowe?

  You too. This episode is over now.

• 1:09:36Speaker 03

  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, just a line or two.

• 1:10:19Speaker 03

  All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review.

• 1:10:22Mike Rowe?

  Not four.

• 1:10:23Speaker 03

  All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review.

• 1:10:25Mike Rowe?

  And not three.

• 1:10:26Speaker 03

  All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review.

• 1:10:28Mike Rowe?

  Definitely not two.

• 1:10:29Speaker 03

  All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review.

• 1:10:32Mike Rowe?

  We need five.

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  All you've got to do is leave a quick

• 1:10:34Mike Rowe?

  Even if you hate it.

• 1:10:35Speaker 03

  Five-star review.

• 1:10:40Mike Rowe?

  Thank you.

• 1:10:45Speaker 03

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• 1:11:14Speaker 04

  What's that?

• 1:11:15Speaker 05

  My fresh detector.

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  Uh, your what?

• 1:11:17Speaker 05

  There it is.

• 1:11:18Speaker 04

  What is it detecting?

• 1:11:20Speaker 05

  Fresh produce, fresh meat.

• 1:11:23Speaker 04

  Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 1:11:28Speaker 05

  Apparently, we celebrate.

• 1:11:30Speaker 04

  At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices when your fresh detector is going off. Head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.