426: Tim Allen Loves the Ballet

It's a compelling hang with the iconic comedian, actor, and renaissance man who takes a deep dive on a myriad of topics, including philosophy, physics, and fire prevention. His new sitcom, Shifting Gears, can be seen on ABC Wednesdays at 8PM.

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

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Chuck, I could talk for hours about the conversation I just had, but what's the point since the conversation I just had went on for hours with my old friend, Tim Allen?

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Two hours and 10 minutes, to be precise, but who's really counting?

• 0:14Mike Rowe?

  Well, aside from you, no one. I thought the time flew by. Tim is such a pleasure to be with. Now I owe him another one because this is the second time he's come by on the podcast, but boy, he came armed this time with a whole slew of topics that I did not anticipate. I'm not going to say anything else because the conversation speaks for itself. It takes its time. I hope you'll strap in and enjoy it. I don't think it's too big a spoiler alert to tell you that, among other things, you may not have known, Tim Allen loves the ballet. Right after this.

• 0:56Mike 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 meat packers 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. Given

• 1:37Mike Rowe?

  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 TrustViolet. 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.

• 2:22Mike 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, ho.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Like I said, cutbacks.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Only the best. Because you can't afford a piece of bamboo with little stripes on it. Because that would have been a lot of money to have a clapboard.

• 3:01Mike Rowe?

  Oh, God. Is that what they're officially called?

• 3:03Speaker 02

  It's a clapper.

• 3:04Mike Rowe?

  A clapper?

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. I do. I'm constantly messing with our lady. I always put a ruler when she's not looking in there so it doesn't.

• 3:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  And she goes, what the? It's not funny to her, but.

• 3:15Mike Rowe?

  I do one where I lean in super close and then act like they catch my nose and really just keep going with it. I've made people cry.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. I mean, if you commit to it.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Here comes your coffee. Look at that, Lucas. Weirdest. Logan is coming in hot with the coffee.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  He's just kind of.

• 3:33Mike Rowe?

  We asked him if he, like, would you like anything at all? Anything? And he was like, no, nothing. Maybe, maybe coffee iced with a straw. Because that's what we have sitting around.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Anything that's horribly hard to get. And then there we go. I hate iced coffee, but I need a little caffeine today.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Sorry, we couldn't get a large.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Never. Yeah. Is this enough? Because I'll be pissing this up pretty soon.

• 3:57Mike Rowe?

  Oh, terrific. All right. Well, we'll keep this one short. How much time do you have, by the way?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  I don't have a time, I don't want to say I don't have a time limit because it sounds like if you ask for a

• 4:08Mike Rowe?

  Chuck, let me know it's been a three hours. I don't want to be disrespectful to the man's time.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  You got it. Hard to deal with.

• 4:13Mike Rowe?

  No, we'll get you out of here in no time. What's wrong with your tooth? What happened?

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Uh, something happened to the nerve on the inside of one of these teeth, so they polished on the inside. The guy said, I would avoid hot beverages. If you have to drink coffee, use a straw. I don't know what that is. It seems fine right now. Because I'm listening to, generally, I don't listen. But I have a, I bought a sports car this year.

• 4:37Mike Rowe?

  That's weird. You?

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Well, I got big, you know, big V8s and I bought an old Porsche. But you can't drink anything in it and hear you in a car if you're ever driving to do any of my production errands.

• 4:49Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  You're in your car as an office.

• 4:50Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  And I can't drink in that car because it's too bouncy, so. My life is over.

• 4:56Mike Rowe?

  Hey, did you see my truck?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yes, I did.

• 4:59Mike Rowe?

  Well, what do you think?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Loved it.

• 5:01Mike Rowe?

  I thought about you every step of the way.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  That's the whole show. I don't clearly, I don't, totally lost what you were talking about half the time going, but look at that friggin Bronco. Wow.

• 5:12Mike Rowe?

  It wasn't a Bronco, man. The one I sold at the auction.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Oh, that one? No, I'm not, I'm not one you're on your show.

• 5:17Mike Rowe?

  No, not the one on the show.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  That was, the one on the show is overdone like everything else. It's just, you'll never use it.

• 5:23Mike Rowe?

  No, no, somebody bought it at Barrett-Jackson for 1.5 million dollars.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, but for a show, right?

• 5:30Mike Rowe?

  No, they're anonymous. I don't even know who it was.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Right. I've been to Barrett-Jackson and bought probably five cars down there. Yes, I did see that car. And I said, who made that for you?

• 5:39Mike Rowe?

  The company is called Sugar Creek. They're up in Ohio, Washington Courthouse. And the guy is called John Richardson. You should know him. You'd love him. He, um.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  That's what he does is resto rods or whatever you call it?

• 5:54Mike Rowe?

  Yeah and no. What he does for real is he sold you all the bacon you've ever eaten. He's the guy that sells the bacon. To like Oscar Mayer and Smithsfield and they're like the major bacon wholesaler. But he's crazy for cars and so.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  I'm stuck on the bacon thing.

• 6:13Mike Rowe?

  I know, but literally at Sugar Creek, there's this bacon factory and across the street is a 10,000 square foot fabrication house with a couple dozen dudes who are the best at what they do. He's probably got 200 old junkers behind the building and they're constantly in the process of turning these old turds into these beautiful, beautiful classics.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:36Mike Rowe?

  That guys like you would buy.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  I just had a car dealer come by my shop in North Hollywood and the same thing. I said, resto rods have taught me the value of GM, Ford, Chrysler, Ferrari. That's what they do for a living.

• 6:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  We build hot rods at my shop. Isn't that beautiful? And then me, the functional guy goes, has anybody driven this? Cause generally it takes three to four years to make some of these really high end resto rods and takes five years to sort them out because they don't work. They're not functional.

• 7:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  That's old Porsche design. Form follows function.

• 7:12Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  I love that. Sometimes it looks horrible, but it works. Porsche has been able to manipulate, at least in my view, they've been able to manipulate beautiful design into a functional piece.

• 7:23Mike Rowe?

  Was that really Porsche that had that turn of phrase?

• 7:25Speaker 02

  I don't, I studied, that was minor in college design and forms follows function. I thought that was Bauhaus actually.

• 7:31Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. I've always loved that whole thing.

• 7:34Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's design, but it's also philosophy adjacent.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:38Mike Rowe?

  And you're an old philosophy freak.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Quality is the enemy of capitalism. That's when I've turned into a Marxist because he's right. They don't want Fisker Tools, I believe was the, if I got the guy right, he said, just make me the best wrench. I'll figure out how to sell it.

• 7:53Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Don't make the one that sells best, which is a bag of wrenches from overseas. Or like eleven bucks for thirty wrenches.

• 8:02Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  And they're broken in the bag. They're really broken and if you pick up a Fisker, um, a flat nose pliers. As soon as you hold it, you go, huh, you know, that's, uh, wow, that's weird. But it's also thirty-nine dollars.

• 8:16Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  For one wrench. Or Wilton Vise Company, I make jokes about them all the time. I wanted to replace the vise in my house. And it's an old, it just started wobbling. I didn't notice that it was wobbling. And I said, do they make better vices? And Craftsman Sears, old company, used to make in the sixties, they were pretty good. Craftsman has since turned into mass production. So I'd go online and I do this all the time, search, how much could you pay for a vise? And so I get into this, Wilton, I believe, Will Turner, Wilton, I think Wilton. And it was in Ohio, I believe, again. And then I'm going, I called up, I says, who pays twenty-four hundred bucks for a vise? And she goes, sir, you called me.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  And I go, okay, point taken. She goes, you're looking at a machinist vise, you probably don't need that. It has declinations on the, so you could put a watch in there, it'll only do. And I go, all of our gears are internal. What's it called when you, it's forged steel.

• 9:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  It's not pounded or fifty thousand pound per square inch, the anvil on top. You can actually use that anvil that's on the top of the vise.

• 9:21Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  I end up buying two in one for my buddy Hank's, who's got an office around here. And I said, it is like buttery smooth. No matter who comes into my shop, the big shop, they'll sit by the vise and go, what is, ooh, what is that?

• 9:33Mike Rowe?

  Hank's isn't Tom?

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Uh huh. He's got it.

• 9:36Mike Rowe?

  So you guys are still on a last name basis? You're that tight?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, we are. Hank's, well, it's Woody or Hank's, one of the two. It's either fabric cowboy that nobody wants.

• 9:46Mike Rowe?

  So is he a geek too with this?

• 9:48Speaker 02

  He's a geek.

• 9:49Mike Rowe?

  And by the, you know what I'm talking about.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:51Mike Rowe?

  We got more mail. Last time you and I chatted, I told the story of the time you and I missed our cue on Last Man.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:02Mike Rowe?

  Because I asked you some question in passing backstage and you started talking about, it was a blender and you were trying to take a busted blender and explain to your grandkid or something, you know, show them how it could be fixed. But it was all like one piece of extruded plastic.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:20Mike Rowe?

  Dude, you've lost your mind.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:22Mike Rowe?

  It was just the two of us in the shadows behind the flats. And you're like in my face and you're frothing. And you're like, "I'll tell you something else, Ro." The way they made this thing. And meanwhile, the audience is like, we're like...

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Who cares about them? I care about this little piece of rubber that caused this entire problem of this stupid... And that caused... I did a History Channel show over that.

• 10:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Over that blender of April Wilkerson, who is this do it yourselfer that's the best in the world that we've had on that show. She got a hold of it, my shop got a hold of it, and nobody could fix it. April did fix it eventually. First off, I don't want to give the brand away. There's no way to get the...

• 10:58Mike Rowe?

  After what you just did to Fisker?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Well, Fisker was good. I love... Fisker's great.

• 11:03Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. What was the bag full of wrenches that showed up already busted? And I think you alluded that Craftsman went all commercial.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Craftsman used to be the best.

• 11:10Mike Rowe?

  Used to be.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  I thought Craftsman should have...

• 11:12Mike Rowe?

  High praise.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  I thought they should have branched off. When Sears went under, Craftsman should have been its own hardware store. I've always thought that should have been their own hardware store. Because now, I don't know who makes good ratchet anymore. Craftsman's are okay.

• 11:27Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  I don't know who makes the top, the high-end one.

• 11:30Mike Rowe?

  I'll tell you this, Craftsman saved QVC. When I was there in 1990, they were starting to circle the drain because they couldn't get any name brands. It was all just stuff for sale you'd went on a carnival midway, you know? And then they made this deal with Craftsman. And all of a sudden, the viewership went crazy and we started selling all kinds of tools, thanks to Craftsman.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Thanks to Craftsman.

• 11:52Mike Rowe?

  But that was 1990.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Right. Then, when they made it, but I said that the blender idea was, it has not stopped. I have a technical house. I like my house technical, but my technical department in my house looks like a battleship. The room down the basement where all my furnaces are, even guys that come fix it go, "Who did this?" Because it's all bleach white walls and I got it so you can get behind the air conditioning unit, behind any kind... I want... Where you fix it is, looks better than where you operate.

• 12:22Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  That's my deal. My whole thing is, I'm out in the brands, it's Questron. Because you can, from a distance, I can turn on lights in certain parts of the house. It's, but it started going funky on me three weeks ago with some lights didn't work. Some lights went on all by themselves. It got so frustrating. And then you get IT guys and I said, I know. What can I do before a white van with ladders on it shows up? And it's always the same thing. Well, you unplug it. Now, I don't care how big the components are. Eventually a guy goes, yeah, we'll try the freak phenomenon, turn them and plug this. Or

• 12:59Mike Rowe?

  Hard restart.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Hard restart. I go, isn't there a switch you could have that has a hard restart in it? Well, anyway, they tried that, nothing. Then he goes, he sends me a video and he goes, I don't know what I'm even looking at. And he says, that's the back of the There's a two module The green area, which is a If anything, they go, do they just unplug? No, no, no, no, plug it. You know, put your elbow on your knee, look at the gods and then blink and there's something you gotta pull.

• 13:26Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  The whole thing was based on, don't even understand it. Copper is brittle. Copper wire sometimes just separates. I mean, in the middle, it's something about copper. Hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold, electric. Eventually it just popped. And I'm talking about a wire you could barely see. Barely see it between another clip that had nine wires in, but a ground wire was in there. And that ground wire was tapping and once it stopped, all the lights went out. The whole house went out because of a little tiny wire. And I said, that is something about technology and something about how things get done is what's fascinating to me. And which is why I love what you do. I love being part of this thing. And as I told my shop, I break stuff literally before I fix it.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Like this guy came through, the second guy came through and he found that.

• 14:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Without yanking stuff out. And I don't know what he used, what tool he used, but that's, my weakness is plumbing and electronics, electrical stuff.

• 14:24Mike Rowe?

  Well, your strength is reductive. I've always admired that about you. Two things. First of all, you distill stuff really fast to the tiniest component part. Whether it's a little filament of copper or an O-ring.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:39Mike Rowe?

  Or some little rubber cannibaling pin or some Johnson rod or whatever it is. And then you build from that. And I think that's just interesting as a personality quirk. But what I like is that you

• 14:54Mike Rowe?

  You work in this big machine, like you're in the Disney machine, you're in the network machine, you're in the scripted machine, and you've, you've gotta be in rooms all the time with writers who don't know their ass from a hot rock, but who wanna write.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say it that way in front of them.

• 15:08Mike Rowe?

  No, you wouldn't, but here I am. I'm not in that world. But I know for a guy who's a bit of a pedant when it comes to the specificities of maybe his automobiles or electronics, you wanna get it right.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:24Mike Rowe?

  Even in a world of fiction, you want that stuff to be right.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  I don't think you can base fiction on, on reality, even the comedy I do, and we've had this discussion. Last Man Standing, and now, when I decided to do Shifting Gears, I said, if you did another one, I said, well, I thought they were kidding, cuz I was doing Santa Claus a series at the same time they're sending, how would, would you do a linear TV show?

• 15:46Mike Rowe?

  Hey, look at this, by the way.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 15:50Mike Rowe?

  We're not screwing around.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Not screwing around.

• 15:52Mike Rowe?

  Chuck is actually doing something over there.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Something. To see it come from Caroline Cassidy and Carrie Burke from Twentieth Century, we had a lunch, and they were saying, what would you do? Caroline Cassidy, fortunately, her family lost their home in this fire, I keep thinking about all that she's done, and just amazing that the amount of pain this has caused this business, and they move on. She had seen me in Vegas, and she said, I had no idea, didn't sound like a compliment, she said, I had no idea that you had this sort of an impact on people, and it's cuz I've been working stand-up for years.

• 16:24Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  And still sell out these big venues, and she said, I just don't know it. I said, well, my publicity people push other stuff that's not about my stand-up, and so she says, there's so many people that, and your sense of humor, and it hasn't really been, the show is partially, Home Improvement was based on my act, the first six episodes were my first act, my first Showtime act.

• 16:45Mike Rowe?

  Met her pigs.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:47Mike Rowe?

  Good stuff, 1990.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  1990.

• 16:49Mike Rowe?

  I felt terrible about myself after watching that.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  I love and hate men. I grew up in a family with seven boys and two girls. So it was all about men's perspective, but run by women.

• 16:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Which is life in itself, how it is. And I told these people, if I did another one, I want to be a widower, recently widowed. And they love that because they said, then we could date. You know, they get networks like that. I'm not so interested in that part of it. I love grief as it's run my life with loss and other people's loss. I'm always admired people that have lost something deep and yet they still have a.

• 17:26Mike Rowe?

  A true north?

• 17:27Speaker 02

  The true north. Again, I don't understand that. I've fought it my whole life. And so I want to do that. And then I want to be in the car restoration business because I love construction. I did that home improvement. I love the outdoor equipment business, did that last minute. If I did it again, I want to be in Resto Rods. In this business right now where the, I'm not finding the new generation that into it.

• 17:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  And in my case, I'm, my shop is next to a dance academy. And I used to hate dance. I thought it was phony and stupid. And now I've liked ballet and like art. I said, that's the best of mankind.

• 18:04Mike Rowe?

  How did that happen? Like, that's really interesting to me because I, I got a riff on every bad thing that's ever really happened socially starts when you take the art out of it.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:18Mike Rowe?

  Like when the vocational arts became VOTEC. And then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then shop and then whatever. But like, when did it occur to you that maybe, maybe the art was the thing worth saving?

• 18:35Mike Rowe?

  Can't believe it's been 15 years since that headline first appeared in Slate Magazine, the one that said, "The greatest hoodie ever made." That's the headline that put American Giant on the map. And that's the same year their CEO sent me one of these hoodies unsolicited in the mail. I didn't know Byrd Winthrop back then, but he was a fan of Dirty Jobs. He and his kids watched it and he wanted me to have one of his sweatshirts. So I beat the hell out of it. I mean, I wore it, I don't know, on dozens of different Dirty Jobs. I just saw an old episode last week of me castrating lambs, wearing this hoodie.

• 19:13Mike Rowe?

  No garment in the history of the world, in my opinion, has ever been bespectacled with a more curious array of unholy fluids than my American Giant sweatshirt, and it's still standing. Honestly, at this point, I'm less concerned about replacing it than I am deciding who gets it when I'm gone. But what made American Giant famous, of course, was not just a sweatshirt that refused to die. It was making that sweatshirt right here in America with skilled people doing good work. That's something I'm happy to support, especially when I can support it while wearing something comfortable. If you're looking for a gift that might outlast your relationship with the recipient, consider the hoodie that started it all. Go to American-Giant.com/mike.

• 19:56Mike Rowe?

  You'll save 20% when you drop my name at American-Giant.com/mike.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  American Giant, American-made. American Giant, American-made. Because of that, when you remove that, part of it was a bad joke, perhaps, is Stalin, I was looking at the murderers in Mount St. Louis. Hitler was a child compared to those two. Mount St. Louis and Stalin, there was 20 million or millions and millions of people. And I don't understand that process of a human being that gets that low. And then Stalin would go, "I want all of them dead tomorrow, and all these dead, but don't touch the ballet dancers." And somehow, it always was weird to me that the Russians were so violent in their own people, and yet, oh, the dance.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  And what was it about dance? And then I took my family to Francisville, Versailles, where I think King Louis invented the tap shoe and all that stuff. And my niece is in the Washington Ballet. And I said, "The work these people do is amazing." And I say this, and the only word I come is for nothing. They're just expressing, they're not using a tool, their body is an expression of... I don't get it. I don't get any of the opera, any of that. But my gosh, it's these people expressing the best of creation.

• 21:23Mike Rowe?

  Do you remember the scene in Shawshank? When Robbins locks himself in the warden's office and he plays an aria?

• 21:35Mike Rowe?

  And it's broadcast all throughout the prison. And the men have never heard

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:41Mike Rowe?

  this sound. They've certainly never heard opera. I think it was Maria Callas. And they just stand there and they weep. They don't even know why they're weeping.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 21:50Mike Rowe?

  It happened to me a couple of years ago, weirdly in Vegas. I was probably just super tired after a long day of shooting and I wound up at Cirque du Soleil. It was a production of Ka. And I'm just sitting there in like the fourth row, watching the body bend in ways that men can't. In such an incredibly synchronized, beautifully choreographed work of deliberate art. And I realized, God, I'm crying like a baby. Don't know why. That to me is art.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I said, that's, I've lost track of why we're on the subject. I said that-

• 22:24Mike Rowe?

  Well, your tooth in a straw.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  And that's why I get, I said, what, oh, getting back to my show, and I said that I want it based in this and I want the creative process. I want a contrast between the people that do resto rods. You get the guys deep into the process that we just had, I don't know if it's a word, it's called filigree. Where they etched the bumper, I'm building a really love of this project, but it's been so stressful. I'm doing a thirty nineteen, thirty-two Victoria Victor, I call it coupe. And it's, I bought it from a guy who had it. I saw it on an auction site. It'd been in the Detroit Auto Show in the sixties, but it's been through guys' garages.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  And but the stance of it, I always buy stuff, the stance of this thing, I said, damn, that's nice looking.

• 23:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  So I took it all apart. And then I saw King, one of the English guys, had a X K E that he put electric motor in. And I had it all backwards. It was the inverter I was looking at. He opened the hood and the inverter was in there and said, damn, that's not bad looking. I love big V eights as I'm designing it. I said, I'm gonna make a electric hot rod. Cause it's really about the style of the body that I care about. So this has been about a six year project. Cause I don't know diddly crap about electric motors and nor do most hot rodders in North Hollywood. And the guys, the E V people in Southern California didn't know how to speak, nor did the hot rodders know how to speak to them without annoying them. It got into a-

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Name calling and I said, guys, this is not helpful. The hot rodders need the thing to then build around it. EV guys know we need the plan first. We don't want you. And they were just trying to protect. They'd start talking real slow. You don't understand the synchronicity of the inverter to the battery.

• 24:18Mike Rowe?

  Guys love to be talked to like that, by the way.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, really, yeah. Hot rodders love that.

• 24:21Mike Rowe?

  They love that.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  That little.

• 24:23Mike Rowe?

  I had them on the head sometimes.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Oh, and it. But the art form, the guys that actually do it. Now we've gotten synchronicity between the EV people. So we can make it work. That in parentheses said, now, that's a lot of batteries under my ass. Cause it's a hot rod. They're not the gas tank. I thought in my head, you just take the gas tank out, put a battery that back there. That's for about that's six miles. You have to put them under the seats and I'm going through technically. If these ever catch fire or arc or whatever they do, he goes, yeah, that'd be a problem. You'd switch them off. He goes, no, it doesn't work like that. Once they arc and they get into that, it's kind of dangerous. I said, my voice usually goes, well, I would have my kids with me.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  You know, would you drive your kids in this? He goes, yeah. And it's always that Oppenheimer moment. You know, yeah. Will it light the whole atmosphere on fire? Ah, there's a chance it would. Can we eliminate that chance? No, there's really a, you know, we don't really know.

• 25:25Mike Rowe?

  It was like that Higgs boson thing, remember? And it's like, yeah, we're going to basically break this beat of light. Couple of times over and then we're going to go ahead and collide a couple of atoms. And you know, could, could be an event horizon, I suppose. Could be the end of, the end of everything.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Could be.

• 25:41Mike Rowe?

  Probably not.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think so. This is, I used to do this bit on, and it was in the movie Oppenheimer. They did it where they had, they said, what the, I think about Matt Damon's character. So what are the, you said, barely any chance. Well, it's minute. And they're arguing about it and they have, I think little John or little boy and fat man or whatever it was, the only two they made, they never really tried them. And they said, well, so it could light the atmosphere in New Mexico on fire. He goes, could, probably won't, probably could.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  Is there a chance it would light all the atmosphere on fire? Well, that's an outside possibility. So you could catch the world's atmosphere on fire. And he goes, it's a very, very slight chance of that. And then you have a bunch of guys going, ah, hell, let's try it anyway. And they went ahead and blew it up. And in the movie, they were a little too close to that thing.

• 26:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  The point I'm trying to make was that the art of putting stuff together, I admire. Where you're pointed with it, why I love ballet and now mu... I say I love it. I still don't get it. And it's hard to watch, except with my niece and my daughter was in dance school.

• 26:57Mike Rowe?

  You need a docent, right? You need somebody to say, and this is why.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  This is why, this is what's important to it. But mostly now, I'm fascinated by the workload it takes to be able to do that. I didn't even know those wood shoes, whatever they're called. I didn't know that they put their foot in a wood shoe.

• 27:14Mike Rowe?

  Clogs?

• 27:15Speaker 02

  Where they dance. They're not slippers. It's a thing. I didn't know that.

• 27:19Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  That's where they can spin on top. But the muscles and what it takes to do it. And why are you doing this? To express a movement of my body compared to music. And I go, I find it amazing.

• 27:30Mike Rowe?

  Like, that's why I said, it's a, you don't, weeping is fun. I don't cry much. I'm not a crier. But I think, you know, when I see something like that, that is transcendent. It's Shakespearean. It's what a piece of work is man. That's all. It's like, wow.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  You know, I spoke as I walked in here. As I've had between my philosophical studies, been real intense with a bunch of my guys that we talk philosophy. We're right back to where, and even in college, in the last three, or whatever you do, the four-hour session, you have to give your profile and... Dilworth, that was my professor's name, is the most depressing group of men in a room. It's like, and I'm going, were any philosophers funny? I mean, was any, any of these guys, there are currently, there are some guys, but not Schrödinger or any of these guys or.

• 28:21Mike Rowe?

  Schrödinger's cat. Nietzsche could tell a joke.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Some of them, but none of them, actually, I think, Wiganstein, I think.

• 28:28Mike Rowe?

  Hegel.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  He eventually got out of philosophy because there's no end to this. There's no, you're asking, it's just because the question exists, doesn't mean there's an answer to it.

• 28:37Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  And you get into this darkness, and then I said, this whole occurrence, I call it, this emanation, I call it, is temporary.

• 28:48Mike Rowe?

  You're talking about life.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Life itself.

• 28:51Mike Rowe?

  Existence.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  And we're, I just saw in a movie, Lucy, with Scarlett Johansson, just, which is we're trapped by time. There is a concept without time. That's where we emanated from. It doesn't exist. And then the physicist in CERN, I took my younger daughter to CERN, he says, time is a construct. There is an element in the quantum level that time is irrelevant. And I said, irrelevant? And it was called spin dynamics. And I go, first off, I don't, what math proves this, but that's all they're doing, is slowing the spin down of a packet. That's what they call particles. They use the word particle for your head, but there's, when you keep looking at it smaller

• 29:35Speaker 02

  and smaller, or scale, they call it, there's nothing there. It's a packet. But if they slow it down, whatever the hell that means, the antiparticle also will slow down. And if you turn the particle the other direction, the other one does the opposite direction. It's antiparticle. I said, well, that's not, I guess I can understand that. No matter how far away the other one is.

• 29:58Mike Rowe?

  Ah.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  And I said, that's exactly the noise I meant. Ah. What does that mean, like a couple of miles? No, sometimes the antiparticle is several billion light years from here. And I said, first off, how do you know that? Oh, and they'd show me a blackboard.

• 30:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. With squiggles on it.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Oh, that, that says that.

• 30:18Mike Rowe?

  It's obvious, don't you think?

• 30:19Speaker 02

  So there's an element at the micro level, and he even said, it's not even a level. We don't call it, because I said, how many miles small is boson, Higgs boson? He goes, it's not miles. At that point, we call it scale. But we're at. Zero, let's say, plus 24 is the event horizon, minus 23 zeros is a Higgs boson, they think.

• 30:41Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  And I said, so you, how do you know that? And what a weird world it is at the quantum level that time is irrelevant, it doesn't exist. So then I'm starting to think, what's I, is consciousness, is human consciousness is without time, just did it this morning. I'm conscious of a dream that a lot of things happened. I was on a motorcade, I did something and we went and ate and, and it was 8:08 when the kids went to school and I was still in bed. My wife took them to school and I said, it was 8:08 and all of a sudden it was 8:14. And I had had a day trip.

• 31:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  In my, so wherever that world, world is, I'm experiencing consciousness in a dream. It is a dream. However, time was irrelevant. It was very manipulatable.

• 31:27Mike Rowe?

  Just so I understand, we're talking about the events of this morning.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:31Mike Rowe?

  And you got up and you went to some philosophy group where you sat down with friends?

• 31:36Speaker 02

  I work out what I'm, what I'm talking about. I've got two other guys that don't like this whole thing. I've got.

• 31:43Mike Rowe?

  What do you mean? Don't like what whole thing?

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Is this determined or is it free will? This is the oldest conversation ever. Schrödinger's cats, that whole thing.

• 31:51Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  At the quantum level, it appears to be both at the same time, at the same moment. The slit experiment with light, it's particles and it's a wave. And if it's a wave, it's predetermined that light knows where to go. We did it on Last Man Standing because it was in the movie Arrival. Where the aliens didn't understand anything that that woman was saying. And she says, I got 30%. We just have no background, but they did, what did Boyle? We stick a pencil in water.

• 32:22Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  It bends. No matter what water, no matter what pencil, no matter what day, time of day, the light immediately goes the fastest direction. Never been in that water, but it always goes the fastest direction. The formation of thought is the light has already been everywhere. It's timeless. And so the aliens in that movie said, yeah, we understand that. And that was this thing about.

• 32:45Mike Rowe?

  That was Jodie Foster, right?

• 32:46Speaker 02

  Yes. No, no, no, Amy Adams.

• 32:49Mike Rowe?

  Oh, right. That's a good one.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Yes. And so in that, in my brother, in the philosophy guys, but I can make a decision. I have free will. I said, it does appear that way. They say, why do you say it like that? It says, because I can't, I went and edited a film once in college and the best looking girl in school finally responded to me. I was a geeky kid with zits and half into the weightlifting thing with the football team and half with the geeks and I love industrial art. So I was all over the school. But this girl, I made friends with her mother is what you do when you want to get her mother. She, he is such a kind boy. I would go to their house and help clean up stuff. And at one point she got, why don't you come over tonight?

• 33:34Speaker 02

  And I went, I can't believe it. I'll be over there after I edit this film. If you've ever edited a film, you're going, pretty soon I'm done. Oh God, it's 3 a.m. And she's pissed because I never showed up. And I, I've always wondered what would happen had I not edited that film and gone to her house.

• 33:53Mike Rowe?

  Sliding doors.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Sliding doors. And I said, told my buddies that it's impossible. Metaphorically, there's no way that you can't, I can't go back and do it. Then it would be going back and it'd be doing a different way.

• 34:05Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  And I said, so there is a potential that it is both. Now, there's an old, I believe it's mystical Judaism. I think it was what a Kabbalah thing I'd read. Guy goes out of an office building. There's a homeless guy sitting in the, on the side. The first go around, guy goes out, ignores him. I don't want to deal with homeless people. I've got my own life. And he walks out and there's a pillar, a light post. And there's a doctor between him and the light post across the street. He walks out, gets hit by a car because the pillar was there. The doctor didn't see any of it. He walked around the corner. And he gets hit, not gravely injured.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Second guy is out and at least looks at the guy and says hello, you know, it says, you know, I don't, but he pauses a minute. This time, the doctor now can see all this, hears the noise, comes across and helps him.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Third guy goes out and helps the guy, misses all the drama. And he said, so those three choices could exist temporally in different worlds. We have every decision you make, free will is another world. And deja vu is when one crosses the other one. You come back and go, I've been here, I've done this before. If you go, this is a mystical religious idea. If you go what, by the will of the emanation, where the emanation comes from is kindness. Love conquers all. That love might be, and consciences might be eternal. They don't have any timeframe to them. And if you go with what they try to say in religion, help somebody, be there, extend

• 35:46Speaker 02

  yourself, then that will, you go by that will and the things will go better for you.

• 35:52Mike Rowe?

  Are we talking about this because of the fires, you think?

• 36:01Mike Rowe?

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• 36:44Mike Rowe?

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• 37:27Speaker 02

  No, I've been doing this as a, I've been a religious kid because I was forced to as a kid. And then I spent some time incarcerated, so I had to search, you know, why is this? It wasn't even just me. Why did horrible things happen to good people? What is that all about?

• 37:44Mike Rowe?

  That's the essential.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  That's, I just don't know that. And then I was given a little message. And it's actually the Book of Job, which cut to, I don't even know where that's from. And I'm, this has been a year, almost a little over a year. I read the Aramaic, French, Latin, and Greek versions of the Old Testament, page by page. I put it down if I drift. And I got all the way through the Old Testament. I'm four pages into the New Testament as of this morning. Reading it as a scientist, is what one of two guys told me, a priest and a rabbi. EXE, let the words come to you. Do not look for meaning. It will come to you.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  And all of that, it's been life-changing. I mean, I can't believe it's not what I thought it was. The Bible is not what I thought it was. It's very little preachy stuff. You know, it's mostly the Torah is about law, you know?

• 38:41Mike Rowe?

  Consequence.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, law and consequence and all this. And the Book of Job is the one that affected me most. And even in this version, they're not sure where that was even written. It might have been written way before the Old Testament. This whole story about a guy who asked the emanation, "Why are you so mean to me?" And I said this one time in a prison, you know, I was doing a shop thing. I was cleaning up. And I said, I saw some of the meanest people that were treated well and some of the nicest people treated horribly. I just never got that. And I got this kind of wind. I said, "Listen, you keep asking me this question. I'm going to tell you, and I guarantee you're not going to like the answer."

• 39:25Speaker 02

  And that was Job. It was a reminder of a short story I'd done. Magician, when I was on the road early and doing comedy, we'd open for magicians.

• 39:35Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Or strippers. I actually prefer magicians because it was more fun to watch. After a while, you watch strippers, it's like working in a chocolate factory. You're just kind of bored with chocolate. I get it. You got the boobs bouncing. I got it. Ba ba ba with the pole and all that. But magicians.

• 39:48Mike Rowe?

  But a good trick.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  A good trick. You, "Oh, what is that?" And I asked Mark Kornhauser, this magician. I said, "He would rip a newspaper." Into all these pieces and then he goes, and it's all back together. And I'm, "Oh God, that's magic. He's really a magician." So I'd ask him, "Can you show me how you do that?" He goes, "No." But it was so direct. Yeah. Come on, I'll pay ya. "No, I'm not paying you. I'm not showing you a magic trick." And it's the same line. He goes, "If I showed you, several things are gonna happen. You're gonna go, 'That's stupid.'" And then magic will no longer mean the same to you. And that story kept back with the story of Job.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  If you ask the emanation, why this is like it is, first off, you're gonna go, "What?" That's, you won't understand anything. And in that book of Job, one variation, the emanation very rarely talks to humans 'cause it's like speaking to an ant. He can't understand anything it says. And it said, "Listen, do you understand why the waves stop at the shore? Probably not. Do you understand why birds fly at a certain time of day but not others? No. You know, part of this planet is frozen solid like it. Do you know the stars all move in the same direction? Do you know any of that? You weren't here when I started it. You weren't here when I created this. You weren't here for any of this."

• 41:15Speaker 02

  And this is the first question you wanna know is, "Why did you do this?" I'm so angry, I wanna split you into little pieces. But my anger is mitigated by my amazement that you do. That's the thing about man. There's something about Job I liked, that whole story, that as dumb as we are, we do ask some amazing-

• 41:34Mike Rowe?

  Stubborn son of a gun, he was, man.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Stubborn son of a gun and we add, "Why is this and how can I help?" If you add that to that.

• 41:43Mike Rowe?

  Why is this and how can I help?

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Why is it and how can I help?

• 41:45Mike Rowe?

  I think the magic thing is super interesting, both in the context of your career and your philosophy, and in everything you're saying. Because I went down deep YouTube rabbit hole the other day. Have you seen, I think it's Card Tricks by Jason Chuck, the stuff I send you?

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, love that.

• 42:05Mike Rowe?

  This guy, if you haven't seen him, Tim, I'll send you a link.

• 42:10Mike Rowe?

  It's card tricks, it's sleight of hand.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 42:13Mike Rowe?

  But it's so good.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  So good.

• 42:15Mike Rowe?

  But the context, like you know, he is a master of ledger domain. You know, it's just like the Cirque du Soleil, it's just like the art we're talking about. He's, he's human and he's doing a thing that you can't do. But, forget the context and imagine having that skill throughout the long history of time. And imagine being able to show somebody a thing, not in the context of a magician, but of a fire bringer, a god, right? Wow.

• 42:49Mike Rowe?

  What choice do we have as mere mortals when confronted with something so outside our bounds of imitation or comprehension? That to accept that, yeah, this is a superior being, or this is a different kind of being. They're not. They can just do a thing we can't do. But if it's not for the magician construct, we're not capable of thinking about it in that way. Make any sense?

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I call them naturals. You meet people that have an ability that's, it's almost an anti-constitution thing. We all are created equal. We are not, I've had naturals in my life. Where'd you get that ability? Where did that come from? Why is that different from the dancers that are the best of the best? I have, my agent is a Stanford scholarship for golf. Within three weeks of being at Stanford, he realized he's never going to be golfing like the guys that, that he's golfing with.

• 43:54Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  I was a race driver for Ford on Trans Am for about six years and I took a whole bunch of... Big movie producers out to Willow Springs here to just goof around with some of my race cars and I took some famous director and two of them were so slow that the guy said, I think we're gonna put you in a kid's car and they weren't being joking and the guy was such a formidable director, he went, I would like that. He wants to go and the other guy who's directed big films, never been in a race car, he was two seconds faster than me immediately. Never been in a race car. It's so humiliating to see a guy has

• 44:31Speaker 02

  a natural ability. People that paint or fix or that some, I find that formidable about and what is their vent to the source? I've often said humbly, when I'm killing in a big audience, this is not coming from me.

• 44:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  I'm working it. I'm riding this. I don't know what political religious persuasion I really am. Cause the more I look at the emanator, I tag it, I make names and it's then I go through these whole things. It's in a big chair and it's got a beard for some reason. It looks like Father Time. If it doesn't have a beard, you have no idea, I keep saying to, as though it's saying to me, you have no idea how big I am.

• 45:17Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  And how insignificant you are and yet you have a capacity to go, nah, I think I get it.

• 45:23Mike Rowe?

  You know.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Right. I'm bigger than big. I'm past big. I invented big. I invented everything. You will sit there and go, alright, I think I got it.

• 45:34Mike Rowe?

  It's like infinity. It's like, well, here's what it is. Right? It's like, okay, I got it.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  I got it.

• 45:40Mike Rowe?

  No, actually you don't.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  You don't got it.

• 45:42Mike Rowe?

  You don't have it.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  And then you'll step back from there and go, oh, I get it. I don't have it.

• 45:45Mike Rowe?

  Not, you know, I got it once. I was talking to you earlier about this show, How the Universe Works, which I've been narrating forever in there. Like every episode, both is a reminder that nobody's getting out of this alive and.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  We gotta go back to that. Okay, thanks a lot. I'm gonna go have a hamburger. Cause why not?

• 46:04Mike Rowe?

  We're trapped by the language. We only know what we think things mean based on our understanding as the words we think we know. If you think there's life on other planets.

• 46:16Mike Rowe?

  Then you have to be prepared to accept that there is life on an infinite number of planets because in an infinite universe, there is infinite life by definition. And so it's really interesting when people are making an argument for, well, yeah, look, the universe is so big that there has to be life somewhere else. It'd be crazy if it was just this. So at least one other place. But it's like, no, no, no. If your argument is it's got to be at least in one other place because it's infinite, then ipso facto, there has to be life in an infinite number of other places because that's what infinite means. Infinite can't catch up to infinite ever.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  They, again, this was CERN, the guy, now, this is my other group of physicists that are working. I can't remember what they're doing now. They're all working in New York on something.

• 47:07Mike Rowe?

  No, wait, sidebar, my other group of physicists. What's really happening with you? I don't understand what's.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  There's some guys I've met when I went to CERN. And then there's some guys that I've met because of that that are doing stuff that happen to have physics backgrounds. And I said, so they all will reach out at certain times. And then a lot of doctors I know are kind of physics heads. Like, we're all thinking about, why are we not figuring out breast cancer in women? It's like, there's a, there's a whole bunch of us going, I need physicists and working men to think about it. Take it, take it outside of the people. I can't stand that this many women are suffering from this. Mothers, family, friends. And then why are we not focusing on that? When,

• 47:58Speaker 02

  what's the lack of focus on that in what I said? You got to bring in sometimes my mechanics. If they looked at the problem, and I've done this to my doctors many times is what if another guy looked at what you're looking at? Would they come up with another solution? It's another version of eyes. What's today's, I think I told you, the harvest is great, but the, there's not enough. Farmers.

• 48:20Mike Rowe?

  Workers.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  There are sheep or.

• 48:22Mike Rowe?

  Sheep and shepherds.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  Sheep and shepherds. And I said, I'm missing that problem solvers, which is what I've been such a fan of yours, because that's where your head is, you know, dirty jobs. I loved how you looked at things because you've got a sense of humor and you're self-effacing. That's the character stuff. That's wonderful. The fact that you're the type of guy that gives credit to these people that fix stuff. And these are the people that don't need any credit. That's the weird thing. I went to a Medal of Honor dinner. It was five, I believe, surviving Medal of Honor winners and two Victoria Cross guys. And my youngest daughter, my wife and I, you're speechless. The thought process of these guys, well, I'm not going to leave the guys there to get killed.

• 49:08Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  But you don't know how to fly a helicopter. No, I figured it out. I took it back in there. And he took it back in Vietnam on a hill, if I got it right. It was compromised by a Vietcong had gotten involved in the radio operator and they had ratted them out. So the Vietcongs surrounded him with, I think, 14,000 or 5,000 troops. They had 1,200 on top of the hill. He said, we had position, but because they were so close, artillery couldn't help us. So we were getting surrounded. And so we were flying people in and out. I got shot five times, but the helicopter pilot got hurt. And I said, I'm not leaving these guys there. And I go, I would run screaming like a hyena. And you went, I wonder how these work. And so you're going to pull this and then the truck. And he figured it out,

• 49:53Speaker 02

  went back and saved numerous guys. And I saw these different guys that fix shit, fix stuff, look. And I guess, who are these? How do I become better at it? How do I motivate other people? So many mechanics in my group that I like this, an Armenian guy in North Hollywood. He, the car will come in and he always, he just stands there going like this. It's not what you think. He calls it transference. Generally where the noise is, isn't what the problem is. It's something on the other side of the car is doing this and it's causing it to do this. And that guy is so freaking good at.

• 50:34Mike Rowe?

  It's like Dr. House.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:36Mike Rowe?

  It's like you're diagnosing a sick person.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:39Mike Rowe?

  Same chip.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you look, what happened two weeks prior to this?

• 50:45Speaker 02

  What does that have to do with it? And my physician, who I love that we sometimes we talk in the examination room for my physical and I'd walk out and I go, did I get a physical? He goes, I think we forgot because we're both talking about their last one that we both got off track and he got into another surgeon that he got me with. Do viruses speak to each other? That was after COVID. And he said, no, the virologist said that's not possible. And I said, it's a mutation. What motivates a mutation? Nothing. It mutates. I know, but it was moving in a direction, let's say, and then it mutated at one point. So it's

• 51:23Speaker 02

  it it decided to go left instead of straight. It mutated because it had a, he said, it mutates generally because the cell figures out that's not friendly. And they have this handshake, some genetic handshake goes, yeah, it's called something, some word, but bacteria will know because they fight viruses all the time. He goes, yeah, they don't like each other. Well, it's using human terms, but it knocks on the cell wall and the virus can figure out how to get in there and manipulate it. They're not parasitic in a way. They're not, you know, they don't like alien. They don't turn it in. I don't know what they actually do. They're not living like bacteria. They don't bacteria actually eat and poop. Right. But they get into the bacteria and within a short period of time, the bacteria before

• 52:08Speaker 02

  it dies is able to send a chemical signal to all other bacteria that they've been compromised. So bacteria will change their coding. Sure. And he says, yeah. Like evolutionary biology. However, the virus then knows it's been compromised. He goes, oh, God. And he started go, yeah. So the virus then tells other viruses that's that we got to come up with another signal. And he goes, let me get back to you. He comes back a couple of days later goes, this is not new thought. He goes, it's new for me as a virologist. I didn't know that there's they're actually beginning to think, I think, what is it? It's called virus. It's Lynn Margolis. I hope I got the right book. It's about that. Yeah.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  The viruses may speak, communicate on a wavelength you don't even, we don't even understand. Maybe it's a hive mentality, but why do they mutate? It's not chance. They're not working. So it changes its direction. That means it was aware in a weird sense that something happened. So I bring it up to these. The philosophy part of people, the problem solving thing, that's philosophy. You just wonder why this happens. The problem with philosophy with me is that you get to literally some guys like, I think it was Wiganstein, it was a linguist philosopher, he says, "I don't know that you visually are understanding anything that I say."

• 53:30Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  There's, I don't know, the, in your head, yeah, when I say orange, if I was in your head, I go, "What are you looking at? That's a monkey's ass, see? That's not an orange."

• 53:39Mike Rowe?

  It could be an orange monkey's ass.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  Well, baboons definitely have that weird ass shape, whatever that's all about.

• 53:46Mike Rowe?

  But it's the, I mean, sticking with philosophers, it's Kierkegaard, right? It's the, it's the unexamined life.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:54Mike Rowe?

  Is not worth living. And sitting here with you now, man, it's clear, I don't know how long you've been this curious a cat, to bring Schrödinger back into it, but you seem to be really, really kind of centered around something other than comedy. Is it curiosity?

• 54:20Mike 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 you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 55:02Mike 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

• 55:45Mike Rowe?

  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.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  Not even generally, my father was killed in a, by a drunk driver when I was 11 years old. I realized it at a neighbor's house. I had, when University of Colorado football game, he took all my other brothers and a bunch of carload of kids. Luckily, he was the only one killed, but he died in my mother's lap. My other two brothers were thrown around the car. A lot of kids were hurt. He wasn't. And then I'm walking down to my house, knowing something terrible had happened, even though I didn't know it. I'm praying, weeping. I said, "I will, I will eat vegetables." Whatever is a kid, just make, whatever is going on, this is terrible. I will, you know, do my homework or what. I was walking down, and none of that happened.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  I get to the house, there's police, and my uncle was there, said, "Man up." You know, "Your mom needs you right now, so no crying, none of that."

• 56:51Mike Rowe?

  How old are you at this point?

• 56:52Speaker 02

  11. And I walked there, and the whole time I'm going, huh. Literally as a boy, for your fat, he was a great dad, love of my life. I said, "This doesn't make any sense. I don't like this. This is..." And everybody's answer was, and he was a funny guy, and everybody, as I look back, did the best they could. The priest said, "He's in a better place." My first reaction was, "Then why are we in this shithole? Why don't we just start there?" And it never got answered. You know, he was carrying a bourbon around. I don't know. But he never had the right answer. I don't think he knows. Why, why is this? What's this that never stopped? The pain of it never stopped. The discomfort of it.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  I took for many years. I didn't care. This is meaningless because at any point, like the aliens in that movie Arrival, Ted Chang, I think, wrote the book. I know he did. Wrote a series of books about that. If the aliens live their lives knowing the end of their life. They know that I'm gonna die in this time.

• 57:57Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  And to the humans, it's terrifying to know that.

• 58:02Mike Rowe?

  It would change everything.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  To the aliens' point of view, how do you live not knowing one minute to the next if you're gonna live? They were terrified of us. How do you deal with that? And this is what I kept thinking too.

• 58:15Mike Rowe?

  So we were terrified by the certainty of knowing when our death is.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  And they're terrified.

• 58:19Mike Rowe?

  And they're terrified by the uncertainty of not knowing.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And all of a sudden I said, you know what? I kinda see where you're going with that. And I said, I don't think either one's good. It is that, um, I asked Amy Adams at a premiere of it. Because in the story, she let her daughter, in the book, it's tremendous. They weave all these stories in where she had a 21-year-old daughter and you're, you're watching. She can't have a 21-year-old daughter. She's a young scientist. And you really realize that she's starting to see her future. The more she's been with these aliens and her daughter dies. In the book, about 22 fall in a hiking accident in Tibet. And I asked her, so you know the future and your daughter's gonna die. Would you have that daughter?

• 59:05Speaker 02

  And she said, it was worth the love I had for her while she was here. And I said, it's inherently, my view, it's inherently selfish.

• 59:14Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  So I not just conceived the girl two seconds later or not have, don't have sex that night with that husband.

• 59:24Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, you get a different girl.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  You do get a different girl. So you do lose her. But you're losing her a different way. Now you don't know how she's gonna die. And that whole thing of certain, of knowing that.

• 59:33Mike Rowe?

  And she never had the 20 years.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:35Mike Rowe?

  At all.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  At all. So I get where she's coming from. So if you know the outcome, would you still do it, know that they suffered at the end, but you had the 20 years? It's a real quandary about, and again, this is a philosophical guy that said, the universe isn't expanding. The physicists I talked to said it's just getting more complex. We call it expanding because it makes sense to you people. I mean, it's easier to understand.

• 1:00:03Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  It's not growing. It's just you're learning more about it. It gets more and more complex as we learn about it. That whole process started me on asking questions, generally getting no answers. That said, shop teachers always had an answer.

• 1:00:22Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  Put your hands down. Stop asking. Figure it out. That's all you can do. And I used to love that about shop teachers. I used to love that. It's a, yeah, yeah, that's great. All right. So just put, this does, is worthless. Engaging?

• 1:00:41Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's worthless without this, and this is really worthless without that.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:00:45Mike Rowe?

  It's two sides of the same coin. And that's where I reckon we're out of whack. And that's why I do what I do. I'm just trying to get some equilibrium back in the world where the reverence that you clearly feel for people who are capable of flying a helicopter who weren't trained to fly one. I'm gobsmacked by that as well. But that's adjacent to putting up drywall that's perfectly plumb.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:01:12Mike Rowe?

  And laying pipe that's perfectly laid, if you will, and so forth. Like, there's majesty. I mean, I talked to a Medal of Honor winner as well, not long ago, and it's the same thing, man. Like, there's a weird obviousness with which they respond to questions that we don't take.

• 1:01:31Mike Rowe?

  That we don't think are obvious at all. Well, clearly I'm not gonna leave the guys behind.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  The guy, uh, one of the SEALs, they're shooting in Afghanistan in a, uh, when they got, I love military strategy. I was a strategy guy. It was all supply lines to me. The most boring part of it is where are they getting the tires?

• 1:01:50Mike Rowe?

  Quartermasters.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Where are they getting ball bearings? And that was, I opened that up and my admiral friends in the Navy said, "We learned that early in the war. We started bombing, uh, German factories. They had no ball bearings." And they tended to use stuff that was very maintenance heavy.

• 1:02:06Mike Rowe?

  Excuse me, but if you're keeping track, he's got the admiral friends, he's got the physicist friends. Right? He's got the doctor friends. These people exist in small groups that are unknown to us. This is so interesting. You're, what are you, 71?

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:22Mike Rowe?

  Okay, so you're 11 and your dad dies in your mom's lap. And you come face to face with the uncertainty of the universe. And then-

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  The meanness of it.

• 1:02:32Mike Rowe?

  The arbitrariness.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  Arbitrary meanness.

• 1:02:34Mike Rowe?

  Capriciousness of it.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Cause it says, and that literally the emanation is saying, "You don't wanna, you don't understand."

• 1:02:42Mike Rowe?

  You don't understand anything.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  You don't understand. You will understand pain, but you're gonna need, I think it's like, um, I love knife sharpening. I just love it. I've, I've always been fascinated by knives and I've gone to three different companies. I went to a butcher, they're a fisher, fishery and they were slicing up fish. I hate fish, fishing, but I love, they were slicing up, I go, but to cut through fish skin and the fish that goes like butter, I go, "Where are you getting these knives?"

• 1:03:12Mike Rowe?

  Stop, stop, stop. Why do you have to interrupt your story to tell me you hate fish?

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  Well, I just, I'm not a fisherman. I don't, it's just the whole thing. I'm not, I, I eat them. I like them in a kind of-

• 1:03:24Mike Rowe?

  You don't dream of fish?

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  No, and I have so many fisherman friends. They just love them.

• 1:03:29Mike Rowe?

  Your fisherman group, adjacent to the admiral's and the physicist's-

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  I have the outdoor group I love that go hunting and they fish. And I used to sell Orvis rods at this outdoor shop. I learned how to fly fish to have to demonstrate.

• 1:03:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  And so I know how to do it. I know how to shoot guns and binoculars and all that, but I don't like this. However, the knife sharpening, you're gonna sharpen a knife, you have to hurt the knife.

• 1:03:48Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  And if you keep it honed, you can extend it without, if you will, causing pain. Once the knife gets dull, honing a knife, the first thing is it's a rough stone and it takes off a little bit of the, I mean, microscopically, if I got it right, the good blades just bend, microscopically.

• 1:04:09Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  You want to bring it back up. If it bends too far, you have to take, get a new edge and that's, life in a sense, is honing. There's going to be some pain and eventually you will cut through this thing.

• 1:04:22Mike Rowe?

  You'll appreciate this. Couple of months ago, a guy sat right there named Josh Smith. Josh runs the Montana Knife Company. I don't know of a better bladesmith in the country right now. He's incredible, a true artist. Everything we've been talking about, this guy personifies. His knives aren't cheap and he started offering a lifetime guarantee on his knives and he offered to sharpen the knife for his customers for the lifetime of the knife or his lifetime. And I'm like, that just seems like, like an awful lot of, of maintenance after the sale.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  But no one does it.

• 1:05:05Mike Rowe?

  And he says, no one does it. And here's the thing, man, no one does it right.

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:10Mike Rowe?

  And I didn't think to ask him about in the conversation, I wish I would have because part of me feels like if we have the facility and the wherewithal to buy a knife, but we don't have the capacity to care for it properly, maybe we shouldn't own it. But this guy's in the knife selling business.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:30Mike Rowe?

  So it's like, well, no, that's not really going to work. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to sharpen it for you. And then that makes me think about all the other ways, well-intended makers of things, right? We can't really trust the consumer to fix that blender because you're just too frickin' stupid. You don't have the patience or the intellectual curiosity or bandwidth. So we're just going to make it out of one piece of extruded plastic and it works until somebody like you comes along who's like, no, that, that actually offends me because you're still clinging to the uncertain universe where you get to put your hands on a thing and make it better. That's the world we're in right now. Those are the two different types of people walking around. They want their knives sharper for them, or they want to do it themselves.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  I just read this. If you were to go back in time, could you help them at all? And that is nothing, if I went back a hundred years, I would say, we have these things that are, no, they're phones. We, we, we have a, a machine, and that's a friggin blender. And so there's really nothing I could help them. And in reverse, if you've got someone from way back, 200 years ago, the only thing they'd recognize here is a fruit market.

• 1:06:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  And a cobbler. And there aren't any cobblers left. I cannot find, other than rare here in Los Angeles, someone that will fix a shoe. Cause everybody wears tennis shoes now. And to have, I have some leather shoes and I had a, a brand of sidewalk. It's a group, they hand make shoes in Sherman Oaks. And you can't, even in Mexico, I have a home in Mexico and I, I'd think they'd, they look and they go, we, we can't fix this. You just buy another one. I said, I'm now stubborn about that. I don't want to buy another one. What would it take to fix this? What would it take to fix? Boy, that blender started me on my washer dryer. I said, but the washer dryer is a, a motor. We used to do this as

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  kids. We, they, they used to leave them on the sidewalk. And a buddy of mine, Mick Hersley, he'd go, the armature, it's got two, the early ones were just electric motor and tons of tumbler, but it's like two ball bearings that go.

• 1:07:38Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Then it starts wobbling and then it starts making that noise. He's, he pulled that out, put a bearing in, put it back in. It's, there's not much to go wrong with a washer.

• 1:07:46Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  And he said, so we do that in, so we had one in our, our house and it was doing that. The guy said, yeah, it's gonna go. I said, you know what? This isn't that old. You earn that warranty? And I didn't know that I was. So I said, I wasn't. He goes, yeah, it's just cheaper to replace it. Cheaper to replace it. Ding, ding, ding. This is all metal. The drum is metal. This is metal. What are we replacing? And it's that.

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  It's that digital dashboard.

• 1:08:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  And I said, so we took it apart, went to the shop. It's a, you know, it's circuit board. And it used to be, the circuit boards were all in the back were little welds, not welds, but solder.

• 1:08:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  You solder two things together. Now it's all, that's all internalized. They don't let you, they don't let you repair it. Cause generally what's wrong with that wash machine is that circuit board, one of those sodders broke and it's dead. Or it won't dry, or it won't do the cycle. I said, so this whole thing is useless. All the work, all the people that made it is worthless because of a little solder joint. And you don't want to fix it. And he goes, it's just cheaper, sir. We'll just get you another one. And then I came up with, you know, I found I do have the warranty. He goes, well, I'll fix it then. Cause it's, if you, if you, at that point made a Lowe's or whoever did it, if they have to replace it, they will fix that circuit board.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  But I don't even know if they make the circuit boards replaceable anymore. I don't think the company that makes them, I don't think they.

• 1:09:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I'm going to stick with my metaphor, man. We all want a knife and we don't know how to sharpen them.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  And we're like what you said, but I'm uncomfortable with where it's headed. I go to change my life, I took Richard Karnan, I did for the History Channel. How they, break things. So I don't know what we called it. It was a great show with the D W P, which I've always disliked. I don't know why I disliked them because it never seems like they do their job.

• 1:09:43Mike Rowe?

  Department of Water and Power?

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I go down there, completely turned me around. How hard these guys work.

• 1:09:49Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  The people, not the guys on the Diaz that tell them why, well, the water system doesn't work in Los Angeles. That guy probably has never worked on it. It's much more complex how they get the water to us. It's much more complex about the maintenance and the vision for it.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  Is different than the guys, the men and women that were down there working. I said, we're not making a generation of people that find this admirable.

• 1:10:18Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  We can't live without these people. You know, they can't live with them. They were making the trusses that were the high, the high voltage wires. Of course, me, I'm going, why do they look so ugly? You know, because in Sweden, they make them look like dinosaurs or branches. He goes, we don't have that. That's the functional. That's what it looks like functionally with the bolts standing that kind of rusted. You see the high tension. The United States doesn't, we don't, there's not a designer goes, you could use, you could make a bed.

• 1:10:46Mike Rowe?

  Where's the form?

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Mike Rowe?

  It's just function.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  Well, they just don't do it. But the guy was, he was on a, God, I got the name probably wrong. It used to be Heidelberg with these presses. It's a press that makes the parts that make the press that make the press that make the press. It's a, it's a turning wheel that's gee, is making the case that holds the bearing for the armature at the dam.

• 1:11:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  It's such a huge machine. And I go, God, that's beautiful. And he goes, it's 1939. They do not make them better. There's nothing wrong with that machine. You buy those big turning wheels or presses. They made them in 39 and they don't make them any better. And they don't repair them. And the pieces, the guy was 68 years old, fit. He goes, every day, I finish something. Every day, I advance DWP's ability to do what we do. And everybody in this place is all alert. And I used to work at Turtle Lake. Hated it because it's repetitive. I don't know. This, they fix one thing at a time. And when they do those turning wheels, that has to be so precise because it goes into a sleeve and then a

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  bearing the size of, you know, a ranch goes in there. And then the armature goes in there. There's Kasteak Lake dams. When I saw, who makes this stuff? Who are the people that make that armature that the bear, that goes in it? That has to be, it can't wobble.

• 1:12:15Mike Rowe?

  Do you think glazed hams glaze themselves? Or do you suppose there's a specific job for that specific task? This was the topic of a recent dinner conversation with some friends the other night. And while those assembled failed to resolve the question, we did agree that if such a job actually existed, then ZipRecruiter would be the only logical place to find a qualified glazer of hams. Why? Because nobody's better at helping you find qualified people who are excited to do whatever it is they do than ZipRecruiter. And right now, you can try them for free at ziprecruiter.com/row. Also, ZipRecruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first. That's a game changer.

• 1:12:59Mike Rowe?

  So you meet the right people faster, and then your candidates can tell you in their own words, also important, why they're excited about your job. For instance, when Chuck first said to me, "Mike, I've always wanted to work with a glazed ham." I had no choice but to hire him. And that was over 10 years ago. And look, he's still here impersonating a podcast producer. Let ZipRecruiter find the right people for your roles. Try them for free today at ziprecruiter.com/row. That's ziprecruiter.com/row. Meet your match at ZipRecruiter. Build your team. Build it sooner. Meet your match at ZipRecruiter.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Try it free.

• 1:13:46Mike Rowe?

  I'll tell you. I don't know about the armature, but the ball bearings that you keep mentioning. I was in business a couple of years ago with Federal Mogul. Who owns everybody from Anco to Champion, Spark. Is that Detroit? Is Federal Mogul? They're out, well, it's Carl Icahn now, and they're everywhere. Federal Mogul, if you look at all the brands they own, you start to understand the totality of the automotive supply chain. And just how vast. It's its own universe. One of the many companies in that universe is called Moog.

• 1:14:21Mike Rowe?

  M O O G.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:23Mike Rowe?

  Moog, they're down in Boaz, Alabama. And they invited me down there, probably six years ago, to celebrate their 100th anniversary. And Tim, it's enormous. All they make are ball bearings. Big ones, little ones, medium size, a little bigger than medium.

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  Nothing in this country runs without ball bearings.

• 1:14:46Mike Rowe?

  It's all ball bearings. It's in a town most people can't find on a map. They've been at it 100 years, right? And the pride in this factory, it was like watching that Cirque du Soleil thing in a different way. It was just watching people so focused on one part of their job. And the number of jobs required to get a perfectly round, stainless steel ball bearing to spec, it's only everything, right?

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:24Mike Rowe?

  And nobody knows about it.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  That's how I felt that I left the D W P completely a fan of that Water and Power. I'm just, what they do, they're not the leaders. And it's like the Medal of Honor guys, they say, you should be a leader. He goes, nah, I don't want to do that. I don't, I like to be, he didn't say it like this. I do what I'm told. And I do that very well. And I said, but I'm not, because we're just missing the leadership. I don't find leadership where a guy was like you. Because I remember my uncle worked for Ford Tractor when Ford used to make tractors. And he was a line foreman, but he was actually, he'd step in now and then, he was hands on. And eventually he got so good, they moved him. And he said, that was the death of him.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  They moved him to a white collar upstairs. And he was away from the, the factory. And that transition from the people that do the stuff, I think of in the military, think of more corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, and captains, maybe captains.

• 1:16:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  Because I don't know that the captain goes into battle.

• 1:16:29Mike Rowe?

  Typically, no.

• 1:16:30Speaker 02

  That's when it ends and they don't, you don't want your best guy in battle. You kind of want him telling the other guys. But that transition is where I find a vacancy right now, both in sometimes studio, creative, all the, I call them the, the, the guys that get shit done. In my business, a line producer.

• 1:16:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  In Vegas, I, I gotta give it to pit boss.

• 1:16:55Mike Rowe?

  It's a pit boss all day long.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Pit bosses, I always thought that they should have a pit boss in DC. So he just walks around the Congress and he taps a guy on the shoulder. Step away, step away. And then another congressman sits down, but he doesn't say anything bad about what he does. He goes,

• 1:17:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:12Speaker 02

  Come on, come on. Every, stop for a minute, gotta go outside. Get the congressman from Tennessee, sit there. There you go.

• 1:17:19Mike Rowe?

  Don't you see how like similar that is to when we started this conversation, like the Armenian you were describing? You know, the diagnostic guy who just walks in and just kind of looks at the.

• 1:17:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:32Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:17:34Mike Rowe?

  Right. They're assessors.

• 1:17:35Speaker 02

  Assessors. But he's done the other part of it and like you gave me credit and I said, when I raced, I still think I'm good at it. I don't take credit for it because it, it isn't me. Even in the race car, I'd go, I think we got brakes in a bias problem in the left rear. And he goes, I don't think so. And I said, it generally right. And I have a big car collection and I'll drive them. And we have two mechanics, so I'll, I'll, we're using my car collection now and shifting gears, which is amazing. Cause now that it circles around too. When they were writing it, they go, we'll have the guy come in and he'll, it'll be smoking. I go, man, if it's smoking, it ain't going to be in the shop. It would be outside.

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  Well, we want it in the shop to get the gag. I said, I get that. Not going to happen. He wouldn't drive it in if it's broken.

• 1:18:21Mike Rowe?

  But that's what I meant before, when I was trying to compliment you. It's like the, the writers. Are looking for a moment, a scene, but you're bringing something.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  If it doesn't, if it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense. You know, I get it.

• 1:18:36Mike Rowe?

  That's annoying in your, in your industry. You're probably very annoying to a lot of people.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  Oh, you don't know.

• 1:18:42Mike Rowe?

  The point I'm trying to make is whether I go to Boaz, Alabama, you know, and spend the day filming these people who nobody's ever paid any attention to before, you know, to do something nice about the business of making ball bearings, or whether you're, like, you keep doing the same kind of show, like, you change the title every few years. And that's what I've been doing. It's a dirty job, somebody's got to do it, returning the favor. It's all, hey, man, get a load of this guy.

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:19:12Mike Rowe?

  Doing this thing in real life. You're doing the same thing with scripts. I didn't realize it until I met you, actually, and until we worked together. And since then, I've been, I've been watching you a lot. And you're, you're tortured, you're a jagged little pill, you ask these big questions, and you're still pushing the rock up the hill, making sitcoms that actually have, have something really at their core that's pretty great.

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  Well, I appreciate that. And I said, there's something authentic about having an audience. It's like doing theater, doing a movie, in a live audience. And even the older guys, this last, last week, we finished a sixth episode for this first season, and the guy says, isn't this amazing? And this is the line producer.

• 1:20:03Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  There's live people laughing at what we're doing over here. And we're both standing there. It was a scene that I wasn't in. I said, this is why I love doing this. And I said, the gravity of, of a studio, and I'm, I love the new brass at Disney, ABC, and 20th, which is a big business.

• 1:20:19Mike Rowe?

  Walden.

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  There's so many of them. There's, yeah, there's so many involved in the decision. And you don't have, unfortunately, I look back at some of the pioneers, we just talked about this last night, a lot of the pioneers were flawed people.

• 1:20:34Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:20:35Speaker 02

  And we don't want flawed people working. So we've done this, this thing where you take the flaws out of people. So everybody has got this checkbox, is they've got the right education, the right look, the right sensibility, but they don't have that, like the, some of the. Some of the major players, will not mention them out of respect for their families. They were just decisively unattractive people. But they did the job well. These are big, big, big guys.

• 1:21:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  That worked in the industry and they, they had vision. I was looking at the, where did the Ford Mustang come from? Lee Iacocca, I'm not sure it was Lee Iacocca. He was probably, and I knew him and he, he was head of the department of Ford, but it was a guy in Ford. So what if he took the Ford Falcon and did this to it? I don't know, cause I don't know. Bill Collins was a friend of mine from Northern Michigan and he was involved in the GTO. Now, he, he didn't get the Pontiac GTO if I'm not being clear enough. And it was, DeLorean took credit for that. Cause it was DeLorean's point of view, it probably was, you got a guy, I hope his name is right. Tim Kozinski, I hope I did it right, for Dodge who'd made the Dodge all the.

• 1:21:49Mike Rowe?

  Not the Unabomber.

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  Could have been. You know, he did get out of jail.

• 1:21:55Mike Rowe?

  What an unfortunate moniker.

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  Well, no, oh God, I hope I got his name right. But he was the head of Dodge. I think he's moved on. He did the, the demons and all. He was the kind of guy that said, huh, I wonder what would happen if we put a 900 horsepower V8 into that car? And there'd be most people go, why would you do that? That'd be horrible. It's gas and everything else. I just wonder what would happen. I did this to, years ago, I, I got the opportunity to build a, a lake home. And once I started making enough money, I wanted, I, I've been through boats, a 14 foot boat. Don't like fishing, but I like going fast on the water. You know, 28 foot, then I got a 34 foot. Now I want one that I could, like an RV. So you have to get three cabins in it.

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  So it's, it was a 60 foot boat. Still have it. Went to Italy to buy it and I'm in there going. The only reason, the Italian Unisessi built it, because they're this only yacht company in the world that will make a custom-made yacht under 100 feet.

• 1:22:56Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:56Speaker 02

  Now, we do whatever the customer want, unless they don't like it. That's the Italian way of doing it. We do whatever you want, anything you want, but we don't do blue. That was literally three weeks of me arguing with it. You do whatever I want. We see.

• 1:23:10Mike Rowe?

  It's like every great Italian restaurant I've ever been at. You can have anything you want, as long as it's this and this, because that's what we're cooking.

• 1:23:15Speaker 02

  And then, so, I said, what are the engines? It's Cat, I got, probably have the nomenclature incorrect, was it Cat 780s or something? One of my buddies, they did a whole show for Caterpillar, comedy show, and for trade, I get one of the engines.

• 1:23:31Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Instead of my pay, I got one engine. And I said, what's the 760s? And he says, what's 760 horse diesel? And I said, what's the one above that? And then, the Cat, had a Cat at that time, said, Tim, no. There's a guy in the room, I hear going, well, who just said, well? What is it? Oh, the 810s. It's a, it will fit. Oh, good, great. What's above the 810? Tim, we're not going there. And the same dude goes, well, who's the guy that says, well? Who says, what would it be like? Let's forget. And so, 1160s, they have to put the turbo in the back, they had to switch some pumps, but it's basically the same block, just a different head on it.

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  Cut to, I've got, instead of 1,400 horsepower, I've got 3,200 horsepower, the two biggest engines. I told Cat, don't do the yellow, let's do something cool, call it a Cat Marine. For all your boats, it would be a big bubble, like you're looking through a bubble, it's this Cat Marine. And all the young people loved it. And Cat goes, we don't need comedians rebranding Caterpillar. I said, I'm not a comedian here, I'm an old designer from college. Anyway, I got those in the car, in the boat. The downside is, I didn't understand power-to-weight ratio of diesels. I did know that diesels don't like to be Pegged. Diesels don't like flooring them. They like, you know, eight, nine hundred RPM. They don't like, and they, the guy said at one point, I've run out of fuel a lot. He goes,

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  you ever see GPH? Do you see that gauge? That's gallons per, or GPM, or gallon per minute, or hour? And I go, no, because it doesn't work. No, because it's pegged. Every time you floor these things, and it is a fast, huge boat. All the captains that have taught me, I now can captain myself. The diesels really don't like running like this. And I've now learned that I beat, I've popped, uh, filters and stuff like that, and, uh.

• 1:25:28Mike Rowe?

  Should you get two of these engines on a boat at your lake house?

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  Uh huh. Well, like on Lake Michigan.

• 1:25:32Mike Rowe?

  On Michigan?

• 1:25:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:34Mike Rowe?

  I just, you know, you just kind of glossed over, but I'm stuck on this. You basically worked for an engine. Like, yeah, keep your money, just give me one of the engines.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did. Well, they're a lot of money.

• 1:25:47Mike Rowe?

  I'm just saying.

• 1:25:47Speaker 02

  The big diesels, and they said, we'll do a custom made, work with Unissey, and we'll send them, but one will be on us. And they'll, they, uh, blueprint them both.

• 1:25:57Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:57Speaker 02

  It's both of them. And they're white. They're only two cats that are white. And I will give nothing but kudos to that company. That company does things right.

• 1:26:06Mike Rowe?

  I've been working with them for 12 years, probably. I go to ConExpo every year in Vegas.

• 1:26:10Speaker 02

  That country, that company takes, uh, quality correct. They take, what I've heard, they have, mechanics are married to the machines. And they have a, they've come out when we need them. They've been.

• 1:26:25Mike Rowe?

  It's such a history, man. That company is.

• 1:26:27Speaker 02

  Can't find workers.

• 1:26:29Mike Rowe?

  They are all the time, all the time, looking for machinists.

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  Machinists.

• 1:26:33Mike Rowe?

  And they have, uh, you know, it's a, it's a franchise model. And there's something like a dozen cat franchisees that are billion dollar companies in and of themselves. They're so big. And they're so massive, and they're so always hiring. And it's just one of those brands. You don't see them advertise much, because all you have to do is drive around and like, oh, Yellow Iron. I remember those guys.

• 1:26:58Speaker 02

  I don't know how they compete with, you know, that are. Weird competitor, China. Because I don't know the details of it. I know what friends of mine have dealt with them on a large scale and I know a comedy joke I did with some military guys. I said, "So, they don't want to pay for the plans to the, whatever they call the, their version of the 737."

• 1:27:24Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  And they said, "Well, we made it better." "Yeah, made it better. You didn't have an airliner until you took Boeing's designs and just made them cheaper because of the workload." "Right, we made a better plane. It was Cino or whatever they call it, Chino, whatever, whatever they call it." He goes, "I know, but you took the original drawings from Boeing and never paid for them." And this is, they've been fighting over this. "Well, you're saying we stole it?" Because saving face is a very major part of their culture. And they said, "Whatever you want to call it, you took designs from somebody else. We didn't take them. We made them better." Again, it's nomenclature here. "If you would pay Boeing what you owe them, this will all go away. So you're telling us that we have to admit that we stole the design?"

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  "Yes." "You can call it whatever you want, but we had to go to Hague or someplace over in Europe and decide." And they go, "They did decide that they would do that, but they want the final jurisdiction back in China." They said, "No, that's not going to..."

• 1:28:23Mike Rowe?

  This is never going to stop, Tim. I mean, this happening right now with this little thing called a lab leak. Like, we kind of want to know.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:28:31Mike Rowe?

  We kind of want to know before we can move on. And what about DeepSeek? Are you reading?

• 1:28:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:36Mike Rowe?

  What's going, I mean, Nvidia lost $600 billion yesterday.

• 1:28:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:28:41Mike Rowe?

  And...

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  They didn't see this coming. I, I, I think it's lazy.

• 1:28:45Mike Rowe?

  You know, the headlines, by the time this airs, it'll, will both be made fools of, I'm sure, but...

• 1:28:50Speaker 02

  But, more than...

• 1:28:51Mike Rowe?

  But, I mean, why would we believe anything China says, honestly? Why would we just take it at face value? "Oh, you, you developed a better mousetrap. You wouldn't have taken any of these processors, right? You wouldn't have done it." There's no industrial espionage. There's no subterfuge.

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  If you don't look at it that way, do you recall, and I, I say this out of... All due respect, because I'm a huge fan of Sony and many Japanese companies. The Japanese did this many, many years ago. Remember, it was a mimic. Didn't come up with the idea, they'd make the idea far better.

• 1:29:23Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:29:24Speaker 02

  And I agree, there was a point when the Japanese were buying all sorts of land in the United States and all that. It's a mentality that I get only because I'm a comedian. And comedians, maybe like musicians, we kind of naturally, like Carlin, it's observational comedy. And if I'm watching another comic do something funny, I'm observing it, so I'm kind of, I can invariably steal some of his material, but make it better. And where do you start the line? Where did you get the, where did, where did the idea come from?

• 1:30:00Mike Rowe?

  It's, it's music, man. For me, everything redounds to music. There are only so many notes.

• 1:30:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:30:06Mike Rowe?

  It's a handful of notes, you know?

• 1:30:08Speaker 02

  You're not making new notes.

• 1:30:09Mike Rowe?

  You're not making new notes. Now, you might group them up a little different, you might mess with the tempo, you might do something with the rhythm, but in the end, it's variations on a theme.

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:30:21Mike Rowe?

  That's what it is. And a, and a great comic set, a great song, but man, the minute you get too close, now you're Ed Sheeran, now you're in court for five years, now it's copyright.

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  If it gets too close, I get it. And I said, I use this all the time, is it Ferrari? I think it's a 63 GTO. That's been mimicked and stolen, that design. Once they did that design, and I don't, I think it was fresh, I don't think, that three-quarter view, the roof, the front, the sides, has been in Camaros, 240Z, Datsuns or Nissans. That's been stolen, they've, they've stolen that idea. How many times has that, that beautiful shape been stolen? And I said, it's source material. The original, I got good friends with Steve Jobs, and he said,

• 1:31:20Speaker 02

  That iPhone was a series of mistakes. The one was called Newton, if anybody remembers. I got every device he did. Oh, this is good. That doesn't. Yeah. That kind of works. And it was, the idea was, and if I got him right, and God bless him, he's a great guy, great family. He had, he just wanted to make it simpler to dial. That's why he put the screen on there. Literally, not his words, his vibe. He said, if you want to go to the internet, you could do that, but who would want to do that? Yeah. When you could do it on the computer. Never had any idea that we would completely supplant the internet on the computer by using it on there. But the original idea of that screen was just so you wouldn't have to go dee dee dee

• 1:32:05Speaker 02

  on the phone. That was the idea of it. That literally changed everything. I have not seen that same sense of design, because I'm a phone freak, I've got probably 60 phones, because I love the technology. They haven't changed, you know, up until, they were starting to get really wild dial phones. Who was it? Tag Heuer. The watch company was making phones. And the phones were, they're still for sale. There's some Russian ones that have a Ulysses Nardin watch winder in the phone, so that the phone would Yeah. wind itself while you're using it. And the phones, even back then, God, I don't know what year that was, 2001 maybe, they

• 1:32:50Speaker 02

  were nine grand. And they were like watches, they were that fancy, it was right. What makes a company like Tag Heuer go? Well, they thought the phones, that's what going to be it. Now, let's make the phone high end. Better quality, better, everything's going to be jeweled. And then, literally a month later, Jobs' phone came out and they went, well, that ain't going anywhere. People aren't going to go with that. It was like, what was this, DuPont? Yeah. Dumont. Dumont. He said, they're not going to give up horses. You know, go with this stinky Model A or Model T. That'll be stupid. He owned all the horse trailers and all the horse things. People love horses. Who's gonna go with this? Everywhere.

• 1:33:34Mike Rowe?

  So certain.

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  And he, but there's a, he'd started GM, right?

• 1:33:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, he said, well, and he lost everything and then he bought all these off-brand Buick, Chevy, Cadillac and put them into one group. And I thought that, what an amazing frickin' story. That will, that whole story again is quality. This is from Leno, and I don't know the truth of this, is you could bury a Model T and it probably would start 50 years later unburied it. There's nothing. That thing is so well-built. Marine stainless steel. Have you ever driven one?

• 1:34:10Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, this is so weird, Tim. A week ago, up in Marin, I met a guy named Charlie, who has a massive car collection, who has started the only automotive shop class in a Marin high school. It's a Terre Haute High School and it's called Shifting Gears.

• 1:34:30Speaker 02

  Not anymore, it's not.

• 1:34:32Mike Rowe?

  I'll, I'll tell him.

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  Hawaii will get, hold on a second.

• 1:34:35Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, Disney will be in touch.

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  Disney Law, what is, we will sue him.

• 1:34:39Mike Rowe?

  But I'd literally waved goodbye to him as he drove one of his Model Ts, the two miles to the school. Because it was the Model T that he could, the kids would see it and their minds would explode.

• 1:34:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:34:54Mike Rowe?

  And they would have nothing but questions. And this guy Charlie, he says, once I get them asking questions, once I show them they could be a ball bearing, could be a Medal of Honor, could be a Model T. But once I get them asking questions, I got them. That's what we need to do. We need to find a way to reinvigorate that curiosity.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  Make it like I've told my, um, my sisters really into kind of the JFK, just eat better. Why are we coloring? And I don't even like to, when they advertise these sugary cereals, this is poison for, it really is poison for kids. Cheerios are okay, they're still sugar in it, but if you could brand the industrial arts better. If you brand it to these are cool people. It's just because hopefully guys like us. I am astounded at how impressed I'm with plumbers. I know nothing about plumbing. I just love what they do. And I have a series of plumbers that I deal with and a series of house painters. Both of them love what they do. Their van is clean.

• 1:35:58Speaker 02

  They, I mean, it's real tweaked out. And the guy says, there's nothing like finishing a job.

• 1:36:03Mike Rowe?

  Oh, that's thirty jobs one oh one.

• 1:36:06Speaker 02

  You finish.

• 1:36:06Mike Rowe?

  A beginning, a middle, and it ends.

• 1:36:08Speaker 02

  Then I.

• 1:36:08Mike Rowe?

  And then you start again.

• 1:36:09Speaker 02

  A guy was, when I was growing up, he had a, I think it was a C five. It was the smallest bulldozer, but it was frickin' perfect. He had it on a perfect trailer and a, and a truck. And he dug the foundation with that. He'd, you know, do, pull it out. So he'd make himself a ramp. And that's all that was left. He'd dig the whole thing by scraping the wood thing up. And then he'd hose it off, put it back up on his trailer. And I always dreamed of that. It'd go home. Honey, how, what'd you do today? Dug a hole. What's for dinner? And, but he finished a job. He had great respect for the machines that do the job. You must respect, like in my business, it's all about the crew. And especially the PAs.

• 1:36:53Speaker 02

  The PAs, the people on the starting end of that do so much work for so little. Retr, you know, renumeration. The Teamsters get, their union covers them. The actors is a guild. I don't know what the guild does. It doesn't really protect it. The people that do all the work don't like to be Marxist about it. I don't know how to transfer this mentally. They need to be better taken care of. It's gotta be a cool job.

• 1:37:19Speaker 03

  If you're a NASCAR fan, chances are you don't make a lot of decisions without doing a little homework first. You check the stats, the standings, the lap times. You compare the field before race day. Buying a car is no different. You want to compare your options, do your research and feel confident before making such a big decision. That's why I was surprised to learn you can buy a car online on AutoTrader. At first I thought, wait, really? But the more I looked into it, the more it made sense. Autotrader gives you access to an extensive inventory so you can compare vehicles, explore your options, and find the right fit, all in one place. And when you're ready, you can start the buying process online, test drive at the dealership, and finish wherever works best for you.

• 1:38:02Speaker 03

  Your information stays with you, so there's no starting over. The best part? You have support from a person whenever you need it, giving you the convenience of buying online with help that's there when you want it. So if you're looking for your next vehicle, check out Autotrader and see what buying a car online can really look like. Buy your car online on Autotrader. Really. Visit autotrader.com.

• 1:38:24Speaker 02

  And I just...

• 1:38:25Mike Rowe?

  Well, think about your own deal, man. You're a comedian. You don't have a guild.

• 1:38:30Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:38:31Mike Rowe?

  Your material, right? And this is the thing that I find the most galling. We're so litigious and there's so much copyrighted stuff I have to worry about now, even in this little space. But like, when you saw your act appear in the first couple of seasons of Home Improvement, that material basically became the property...

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  Yes, of Disney.

• 1:38:59Mike Rowe?

  Of Disney.

• 1:39:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:01Mike Rowe?

  Like, right in front of you.

• 1:39:02Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:39:03Mike Rowe?

  How that... Like, were they just making it better?

• 1:39:05Speaker 02

  I was too stupid. I didn't understand. And I still don't quite understand. That became quite an emotional process for me, because I said, if anybody wrote... And this is because of mistreatment and legitimate concerns from the Writers Guild against studios that never had any rights to their own material. So the Writers Guild came up with... To protect the writers who do everything.

• 1:39:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:30Speaker 02

  We don't have anything without the writers. Nothing. They are the ones that do everything. They got no credit for it, they got no renumeration. That changed. And what happens is you overstep the boundaries a little bit. So that means anybody who wrote my material down, Writers Guild protected them and not me. And they said, well, they... He wrote that. Yeah, but I do it on stage. And so my...

• 1:39:54Mike Rowe?

  He transcribed it.

• 1:39:55Speaker 02

  He transcribed it. So you're saying at one point, it wasn't a threat, it was a mild threat. I don't know what that's called. We could actually stop you from, they wanted me to sign early.

• 1:40:08Mike Rowe?

  They could stop you from doing your act.

• 1:40:10Speaker 02

  They wanted me to stop me from doing my act. They said, we could come into, I said, you know what? I'd like to see it. And I did a big concert in Frisco after that argument. And I said, I want you to just have guys come in and with the little mouse lapels. In the middle of an act, 6,000 people go, cut. We don't want him doing any of the material until he signs his contract. Yeah. No, we, we own that. And it, they said, we're not going to do that. I said, yeah, but you threatened that. There's comics, we're in the burlesque union, I believe. Magicians, strippers and comics.

• 1:40:41Mike Rowe?

  Back to magic again.

• 1:40:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't think magicians are protected.

• 1:40:44Mike Rowe?

  No, but I'm just saying, this, this whole conversation, like, something magic hangs over it. Whether it's the art in the vocation, or the art in the comedy, or the art in the writers. This desire, or all the philosophy and all of the physics, this desire to try and quantify and understand these things, man. It's what makes interesting people interesting.

• 1:41:07Speaker 02

  Well, I appreciate that. It's also about translating it to, I so admire what you're doing with. I'm seeing it in some young men that come to my shop and some, I've, some of my friends have little boys and they are now fascinated by cars. And fascinated by how it works. In this world, I know that the little girl across the street is going to be a physicist or scientist. This girl has figured out. So it's not just a male thing. I know more about males because I go up in a boy's household. So I don't understand how the women in my life and also the friends' daughters have that same look. They're, it's, how's that work?

• 1:41:46Speaker 02

  I'm wondering, this girl is, measures stuff visually. She goes, but if you just, if we did this, you know, she's making something to do with her dollhouse. However, she's forming math as it equates to a building process.

• 1:41:58Mike Rowe?

  Figuring it out.

• 1:41:59Speaker 02

  She's figuring it out. And I said, I want that. On a fundamental level, because whatever we screw up, and we do screw up a lot, we can fix. That's where your genius, and I've watched you, and that's what I so admire, but whatever we screw up, we can unscrew up. We'll see it in the Palisades, I pray, that they figure out, culling the forest, it's been going on, I'm a 4H guy from way back, why don't, at least 20, at least 20 feet to 100 feet around houses, you cull it. You don't allow that scrub to come back. And whenever the power wires go through the forest, it has to be 50 feet on either side.

• 1:42:42Speaker 02

  They don't go through the forest, you just can't have that.

• 1:42:45Mike Rowe?

  Those timber roads.

• 1:42:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:46Mike Rowe?

  Were natural fire breaks for years. And 30 years ago, Ed Ring sat here a couple of weeks ago, right after I called him, the guy runs the Policy Institute, Water and Energy for California. He's like, we were taking 6 billion board feet of timber out of the national forest for decades. Now we're taking less than a billion. There's so much fuel. It's just everywhere.

• 1:43:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:43:11Mike Rowe?

  We are living in a tinderbox.

• 1:43:14Speaker 02

  Tinderbox.

• 1:43:14Mike Rowe?

  We're living in one. And I know you're sensitive to this, we all just went through it. I was down here when it happened too. And I just, I keep thinking like, what would happen in New Orleans if after Katrina, we learned that the governor had refused to put in levees.

• 1:43:35Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:43:35Mike Rowe?

  Just not gonna do it.

• 1:43:36Speaker 02

  Just not gonna do it.

• 1:43:37Mike Rowe?

  Or maybe in Oklahoma, Moore's, whatever that was, God, that poor town. You know, they just decided, well, yeah, it happens, but we're not gonna, we don't put in tornado shelters here. Yes, we live in tornado alley, but we're just not, we're just not gonna do that.

• 1:43:52Speaker 02

  And what is the, again, you get to philosophically, what is the mindset in that group? That decides I'm not going to do that. And I said, why don't these happen in Germany or Spain or other countries? Why just here? And oddly enough, one of the firemen said, a lot of this is natural. There's a lot of seed pods that are indigenous to California that do not pop unless they're burnt. So he said, if we were living here prehistorically, that's exactly how this thing recircles. It gets wet, scrub comes up, it catches fire, and all the seeds pop. He said, that's how this thing goes. I said, okay, we have to manipulate. Unfortunately, we live here too now. So you'd have to at least cull it. And

• 1:44:37Speaker 02

  I was in the Serengeti with my family, and they have these, I think they're called date palms. I hope I got those ones you see in all the pictures where the stem goes way up, and there's an umbrella. And if California at least closed their, not whatever they call Savannah, they don't need a lot of water, but they shade the ground so the scrub can't grow. So if at least close to humanity, and you'd have pillars of that, we start growing the African trees that are, because we don't have indigenous trees. I've been planting trees in my area. That's one of my fan, very difficult because California, if I want to do it for free, I mean, I'm doing it. I'll put them in, and I'll take care of them. But I need permission to put it in. And they sometimes the California tree people, I'm

• 1:45:22Speaker 02

  a treper, Arbor Day guy. I don't know, why are we picking in our set, the set deck people near we, they trees for the movie community for sets. He even asked me, why did you put date palms in here? He says, well, that's what the city wanted me to put in there. He goes, say it out loud and tell me why that's not going to be a good idea. I said, date palms, which is tropical, and they're palm trees, which is not, it's nut bearing. He goes, so nut bearing means bugs and birds. Date palm means it needs a lot of water, and it's going to droop. So I've got all these. And the state, they're, well, it's good looking. I said, we're back to that good looking thing. They're not functional. I've got trees in my horrible area that I've updated, all along, we planted trees all along this bad area

• 1:46:05Speaker 02

  in North Hollywood. And they go, well, what is that thing? It's been hit by a garbage truck. Homeless people slip under it. It's been caught fire, and it's still there. And that's an indigenous California tree that somebody clipped early on. So it's a bush, actually, but they kept trimming it so it grew into a tree. It's literally indestructible. And it's indigenous to California. I said, And I wish I could remember the name of it, because now I'm planting those in a nursery and culling them as babies, so that they grow up. And then I find, most shop owners don't want trees in front of their stores, because they flower right at the sign level.

• 1:46:42Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:46:42Speaker 02

  So I said, okay, now we gotta change it, so you gotta cull them longer, so they don't flower till they get above eight feet. And then it's right at the top of their sign. Then they don't mind it, but they don't want to take care of them. Well, these don't need taking care of. I don't know what they are. It's a bush that you cull it into a tree. And it turned into a tree, but I'm not, I'm kidding, it's, it hits by a car, it caught fire. Still there. These date nut palms that the city made me put in. I've got two trucks that have got to go out to take care of 25 trees that are so buggy, they drop fruit, and the guy says, but this is working with, the translation between getting stuff done, shop foreman, pit boss, line producer,

• 1:47:24Speaker 02

  I need those men and women trained with a nonpartisan. Perspective is, how do we get this done? I used to love the line producer. He has to work with the studio, studio says, we're not paying this for that movie. Union, we're not working for this. He goes, okay, then we're not going to do it. Okay, stop, stop, stop. We're willing to go to this, and we're willing to go to this. It's a thing called compromise. It's not gonna look like you want it to look. And it's not gonna get the money you want to get, but we're gonna move it forward, and we'll do the next one. Well, it's, that line producer, foreman, I don't have them, I don't see them, I don't, those, the guy, they're not being trained for it in school.

• 1:48:08Speaker 02

  I make jokes, because I hope they don't say it. The kids at my kids' school, the boys, the students, they're like, huh, how you doing? Huh. They don't seem to have a skill set for anything. There's no industrial arts at the school anymore, they've taken that out. Think that, they have a dance part, and they have the art part, and a photography part, but still, there's no. And if I donate any more money to the school, I'm going to demand, I can't think of a name for it.

• 1:48:34Mike Rowe?

  Shifting gears.

• 1:48:35Speaker 02

  Ha! But you know, a name for what, industrial arts, how do you, I guess the word art has to be, it has to be branded better.

• 1:48:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. I'd probably go back to that.

• 1:48:45Speaker 02

  Industrial arts.

• 1:48:46Mike Rowe?

  I really would. I don't think, with regard to our earlier point about borrowing material and making it better, I don't think you can make it better. I think that's what it is. It's industrial, which is masculine and broad and universal. And it's artistic.

• 1:49:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:06Mike Rowe?

  Which is something different, something more sensitive, but the two smashed together.

• 1:49:11Speaker 02

  Two smashed together. I used to use the term, I took painting and art most of the time and got so um, A D D, I get so bored with, where are the, the paint brushes? Oh, we use those for a display over there. So that you go to the art department and nothing was where it was.

• 1:49:28Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:28Speaker 02

  Industrial arts, literally it was set up cleanup. That was basically.

• 1:49:32Mike Rowe?

  Everything in its right place.

• 1:49:34Speaker 02

  And then you got about four minutes to do your work. Cause it's, all right, setup. And everybody go get their tools, they get their workspace, then you get working on, all right, cleanup. And I go, did we do anything here? And most of it was, but the tools are always where they're supposed to be. When I want anything, it's in the, cause you spent most of your time out of respect for the area that you're working in first. And then finish the product, like is where, what, today we're gonna do hinges, that's we're working on hinges. So that's focused on what you're doing. And then remember you got 15 minutes at the end, I want everything put back. You don't just leave it there, the bell, oh shoot, we're late. No, that's not how it works.

• 1:50:12Speaker 02

  And I said, that I'm missing that, what I didn't like about art was that, what I didn't like about I E was design. Cause I did get in trouble with my, my industrial arts guy, cause he said, we're making, um, whatever we're doing, chairs or something. I said, but I wanna make a chair that you can disassemble quickly. He said, we're not, we're not doing that. And I go, well, I don't wanna make a recipe box. He goes, and he even told me, he said, I appreciate what you're doing. You wanted something useful instead of a box. You're going to fail. And I said, I'm willing to fail if I, if you'll help me make the, the chair. And I made it a, kind of a custom made chair, which I still have.

• 1:50:53Speaker 02

  I wanted to make a chair that you could mass produce for college kids that was six dollars in wood. But it looked, and I even took it down to Tennessee to a place that they were gonna buy it. But they they said, you know, this is a brilliant idea. And I said, I think so. Well, so we'll need $500,000 upfront to make it. We'll do the rest. I went, oh, yeah, well, that I didn't. I have about $36. I thought, you know, I thought I'd sell the idea. And they said, here's what the problem with chairs is, Mr. Allen.

• 1:51:25Mike Rowe?

  How old are you at this point?

• 1:51:26Speaker 02

  It was the second year in college.

• 1:51:28Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:51:28Speaker 02

  And he said, this is a chairs have already been designed. So you have to make a lot of these first because as soon as it does well, you're going to get people copying it because you can't patent a chair.

• 1:51:38Mike Rowe?

  Making it better. Variation on a theme.

• 1:51:41Speaker 02

  You're making it better. And I said, I called industrial arts. I called design is a useful art. That's what I loved about design.

• 1:51:49Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:49Speaker 02

  It's the sensibility of art, but I want to use it. I don't want to put it on the wall. I have a lot of paintings. I love paintings and I'm a painter and I love all that. I love about industrial arts, the people that make furniture, tripods. They just, there's an artistic view. It's like you just said, it's a balance.

• 1:52:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:09Speaker 02

  It can make it look good. You know, there's people that make this whole device, forgive me, that looks better than this one.

• 1:52:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  And sometimes it's the most expensive one and sometimes it's the cheapest one. It's just somebody, somebody had an artistic point of view, which is why I love the liberal heart, liberal politicians. I love where you're coming from.

• 1:52:29Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:52:29Speaker 02

  You don't want people starving. There's nothing around it. How you do that is I, it's California all the time. Affordable housing for the, the 62,000 that live downtown.

• 1:52:41Mike Rowe?

  Most decent people that I know that are on opposite sides of the aisle actually want the, the exact same.

• 1:52:47Speaker 02

  Exact same thing. It's just how are you going to do it? I said that.

• 1:52:50Mike Rowe?

  Shortcuts or not? Shortcuts or not is, is the way I, it's like, well, you know, we want people to make a living wage, but should you just raise the wage to make it a living wage? And that's going to be, that's a shortcut, you know? An elevated minimum wage is a shortcut.

• 1:53:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:53:06Mike Rowe?

  A rent control is a shortcut. And if you're not terribly concerned about the unintended consequences.

• 1:53:12Speaker 02

  It's unintended consequences. What a great word. You think this through. Oh God, I hate to even bring it up. I wanted a, I love utility knives. So I built one. I designed it so that the handle, I took a piece of clay and I squeezed it like this. And then I took that and made that into my utility knife. I got a Canadian company to help me fabricate it. It comes apart, but it's got a little dial at the back and it's got 12 blades in it. But you pull the cartridge out, turn it around and you got 24. And we will all sharpen those blades. You send that cartridge back for us. And it got huge reviews. I can't remember, we got a million dollars in sales upfront

• 1:53:54Speaker 02

  from Builders Square at the time. They've gone away and everything was going well. And I was gonna do it like Paul Newman. I was gonna sell it in my drill, which I did a drill at the time.

• 1:54:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:05Speaker 02

  And I was gonna, all the money was gonna go to charity. And it was brilliant. We didn't do the metal one. The metal one was formidable, but it was gonna be 19 bucks. And it's a lot for a utility knife. And, cause there's a lot of the utility knives, you know, you unscrew them and you flip the blade around. This was unbelievable. My brother-in-law is a drywaller and he said, I sent him out to a bunch of people first. And we'd already sold the first batch. He goes, this is just unintended consequence. This is brilliant to him. Everybody loves it. Drywallists especially, cause they go through blades and they just let, new blade, new blade. He goes, how do you clean it? And I go, what? What?

• 1:54:45Speaker 02

  Well, when we're doing drywall, we're pulling a lot of the dust and sometimes it's wet back into the casing. I go, um, uh, can you give me a minute? And I go take it and there's no way you can clean it.

• 1:54:59Mike Rowe?

  Wanna buy a chair?

• 1:55:00Speaker 02

  Holy God, it was horrifying. I had to call up all the vendors. I said, we've got unintended consequences. We worked it on every single application. We never worked it with wet drywall.

• 1:55:13Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:55:13Speaker 02

  And that's what it was meant for. And they pull the drywall back in there and you'd have to unscrew it, take this cartridge out, soak that in water. But it made everything. And I just, oh God. And I think about, failure is the foundation of success. You've got to fail at this over and over again to do any of this. And none of the designs I've worked at. My drill was the best. That was I moved the handle forward. Now they're all like that. It used to drills with the handles at the back. It was like this. I moved it forward so it's middle. All my first prototype drills, now they all do that. And I put bearings on both sides of the armature. Unfortunately, that made the drill last forever. And most drill companies don't want that.

• 1:55:56Mike Rowe?

  And now you've got no planned obsolescence, so you don't have a customer for life.

• 1:56:00Speaker 02

  And my first hammer, the Tim Allen hammer, I used an ax handle instead of a hammer handle. So I had that swerve to it.

• 1:56:07Mike Rowe?

  What's the corollary for your shows? Are they getting better as they go? Are they getting like, are they evolving the same way?

• 1:56:13Speaker 02

  Right now, we've got, they see what I'm doing. I put the shop part of it is run by a woman named Kate Fox, who did all my History Channel stuff, who's been in the shop, arguably happens to be my older daughter. However,

• 1:56:31Mike Rowe?

  Arguably?

• 1:56:32Speaker 02

  Well, because for some reason, if you're a plumber, you want your kids in your business. But for some reason, if you're an actor, it's nepotism. I don't understand that. She did all the work on History Channel, and she's one of those line producers. And so I said, listen, you've got to talk to the writers, and they've got to pitch a show. And you've got to go, you have the guts and authority. That doesn't work. You can't have that happen. So you give them a foundation of why the car shop works. And now it's starting to gel where number one, when you see the shop scenes in shifting gears, it's gorgeous because we're using some really cool cars that are in process.

• 1:57:08Mike Rowe?

  Are they your cars?

• 1:57:09Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:57:09Mike Rowe?

  That's, see, that's ingenious.

• 1:57:12Speaker 02

  I didn't want it that way because I, these are rare cars. What we've done, and also in a real cool way, we're going backwards with wrapping. It's a 100-point restoration 455 GTO. Now we've wrapped it to look like it's rusted and needs restoration. So we'll just pull the wrap off over the series because we can't restore a car

• 1:57:33Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  in real time. You know, restorations, as much as they show on those TV shows, you don't restore a car in a week. That, I don't know how that happens. Right. You know how long this stuff takes. Editing. Well, so we've gone backwards in it, and now everything has to be real. Whatever we're doing in that shop, and I'm loving it, because in the shop we have, upholstery gets done and all this, and the show will bleed from that. I'm able to be the actor, this Kat Dennings, who plays my daughter, same birthday as mine, obviously many years apart, is very much like the character I play. It's a little more curmudgeonly, but I have him as a Wonderful Life.

• 1:58:14Speaker 02

  If you remember The Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart was getting on a train to go to college. His dad had a heart attack, had to come back. I use that. I was going to the Rodan School of Design, got in an airplane. My, your dad owns a regular heavy machine shop in North Hollywood. He had a heart attack, and I have to go take care of it. I worked there all my life, but mostly did art pieces. I was an artist. So I've got to have, play a character who's not bumbling like Tim Taylor. Yeah. Mike Baxter is more of a businessman, outdoor guy, but he didn't ever camp. This guy is going to be a designer, so he's constantly in his house, there's designs. He's building, he's a guy that is building stuff next to a dance studio. He sees that I want these two worlds to mix.

• 1:58:58Speaker 02

  The young people that I hate on the show, because they're making a lot of noise, just like out in North Hollywood. There's so much frickin' noise in that place. Yeah. But I walked in there one day and saw the work that these, these kids do for no, I mean, the chance of them becoming a dancer? What are, what are you doing? My niece dancing in the Washington Ballet, where's that go? It's just an expression of the best of human beings, dance and the arts. And then I see the restoration business where a guy's just doing this. I was gonna say in this new Vic hot rod, that electric hot rods on the show, we will, this is almost done, so we just took a few fenders off, we'll get there and the guy did, what's it called on shotguns where they etch the, it's filigree, isn't it?

• 1:59:41Mike Rowe?

  Filigree.

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  We have, the bumpers are all filigree and you'll never see it.

• 1:59:46Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:46Speaker 02

  When this show, when this car goes, it won't go to auction because I'm gonna keep it, it'll go to SEMA. The detail on this hot rod, the genius of these guys, Bodhi Stroud, he did most of the interior work and now the filigree guy, took him six weeks to just do the tips of it.

• 2:00:03Mike Rowe?

  Just the tips.

• 2:00:04Speaker 02

  Just, but it's this, it's a guy that does this and I can't do that, I'm more of a, I wish I can, Roy Lichtenstein or Lichtenstein, I met him, I'm a pop artist, I love it. And he became like one of, a lot of these guys, it's process art. They got so far away from their work, they were telling, okay, no, no, paint that, and then they go to another painting, they were, and that's what I've done, I've built probably 12, 15 cars that I've had very little, I love hands-on, but I'm, however, I've got other things that need my time, so I just go, no, all green, let's go matte, matte finish, matte finish, and then, but I have to give it up to the painter. He goes, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just

• 2:00:47Speaker 02

  do matte, but I wanna put a, oh, all right, do that, and then I do it. That was a good idea, so I'm mentoring other creative people, but the whole process, what are we doing this for? I said, just, it's temporary, guys, I'm not gonna live, you know, so it, do the best you can to add value to every situation, every single situation. And I want these kids, as I said, this one young kid come in, he said, little boy, and now I see it, the kid across the street's gotta be three, no, five, and I, he loves my little collection of little cars. There's a couple that I won't let him touch because they're priceless, but I said, he doesn't know that.

• 2:01:30Mike Rowe?

  You could be doing anything you want, man, at this point in your life. It's so great that you're doing this. It's so great that you've integrated everything you give a damn about into a, into a sitcom. I mean, that's a, uh.

• 2:01:42Speaker 02

  Seems cheesy when you say it like that.

• 2:01:44Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:45Speaker 02

  You integrate all this great stuff into a sitcom.

• 2:01:48Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, I just, I say the same thing about myself when I'm trying to compliment myself quietly. It's like, you know, to be able to, to sneak your ideas into.

• 2:01:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:02:00Mike Rowe?

  A, a commercial endeavor.

• 2:02:02Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 2:02:02Mike Rowe?

  That's what I mean to say. That has kept me sort of sane and it seems to have kept you sane, Jason.

• 2:02:09Speaker 02

  I appreciate what you do. That's why I'm doing this. Guys like you, I, I can't encourage enough men and women like you that encourage others to be of value. Don't dismiss it, but this is not of value.

• 2:02:24Mike Rowe?

  I get it.

• 2:02:25Speaker 02

  It's just, I, you know, I switched phones one time because I work with Apple. So that I was on Android phones and then special custom ones I had. And at one point I got in this, finally I got used to the iPhone, which is years ago. And I go, the battery doesn't last on this thing. And the guy said, maybe because you're on the phone all day long.

• 2:02:46Speaker 02

  And I, e- even if it's videos about work, like I, I find the, it's a mixed blessing. I can fix anything now because of that phone.

• 2:02:56Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 2:02:57Speaker 02

  I am shocked and I go, I might as well try it. How do you get those little weird batteries out of the small remotes for candles? They have now remotes for candles. I couldn't open the stupid, I, and I go, all right, how do you open the stupid remote from this? And it's some, there's nine.

• 2:03:14Mike Rowe?

  There's a guy.

• 2:03:15Speaker 02

  There's nine guys. Some guys are good at it. Some guys should show you, I, who?

• 2:03:21Speaker 02

  The blessing is Google will answer almost any question, especially for work work around guys like me, how to fix stuff. I can't believe how good they are, how much they are, how much, and these guys do the work, but now they're getting somebody like these guys that show us how they do that. And that's where I come in, is I love point of view. I love shooting how we're doing stuff. And I said, that's why I love this live stuff, having a live crew, live crowd. You fortunately or unfortunately, depending on our edits, you don't see all of the live stuff because it doesn't fit. Sometimes the laughs are too loud, sometimes the laughs don't, they carry into the next scene.

• 2:04:05Speaker 02

  And we're fighting that right now. How do we make this like George Burns and Gracie Allen, when this is how this all started? It was vaudeville, crowd got in there and then we added cameras. And then pretty soon they had to stop because we have to change things and oh, it's, the crowd has to be sequestered a little bit. And right now, we're, weirdly enough, I'm getting mixed, you know, the people that have a certain age go, yes, because I wanted to say, filmed in front of a live studio audience. And the new people go, ooh, that's kind of old school. And I said, but it reminds the new people that are watching, because our show's done so well on linear TV, they're not used to this.

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  I don't know that the young viewers are used to live, they call it a laugh track, because it's not a laugh track. We never show it, but those are people, that's two, 300 people in there clapping and we do, we rehearse so much that we're not, we don't keep them there but two or three hours.

• 2:05:06Mike Rowe?

  That's great.

• 2:05:07Speaker 02

  It's a live, well, you've done it.

• 2:05:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I've done it with you. Wednesday on?

• 2:05:12Speaker 02

  Wednesday nights at eight o'clock on ABC and Hulu the next day.

• 2:05:15Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'll tell you, man, I haven't seen it yet, but I watched the promo and it's frickin' funny.

• 2:05:19Speaker 02

  It is funny. It is tragically sad. He's really in pain over losing his wife, which I love playing that. And then two seconds later, it's, you know, making jokes with the two grandkids and Kat Dennings and it, yeah.

• 2:05:33Mike Rowe?

  I gotta get you out of here, but god damn it, you just reminded me too of, I'm sorry dude, I know we gotta go, but.

• 2:05:40Mike Rowe?

  You told a story, you were in prison and you were about to get the absolute shit knocked out of you. Guys got you by the throat.

• 2:05:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:05:47Mike Rowe?

  And you just start laughing.

• 2:05:49Speaker 02

  They had a thing called Toastmasters, you were allowed to go out of the penitentiary to a church that was adjacent and then you got a regular meal, which was great. So, we had a Toastmaster meeting and I'm a pretty good speaker. So I'd host the meeting and everybody'd learn how to be, express yourself without hitting somebody with a brick or whatever their problem was. So, everybody's pretty cool there and I'm starting to kind of make fun of people and this guy, I took, "Yeah, and a guy like this robs a bank and doesn't think it's robbing a bank because I didn't mean to." We get back into the prison, he comes in and it's always a bad sign when they shut, the doors are open when it's open count. And he gets into my cell and he comes in and shuts the door and it's, there's a sweat,

• 2:06:33Speaker 02

  the voice goes, "Hey, why'd you shut the door?" And he comes in and goes right to me with this, "Nobody's ever talked to me like that. You made a fool out of me and I'm gonna make you pay for that." And he's got me up against the wall and my face is real distorted because he's kind of missed the shit underneath here because he's at this. And all I could see behind him was my younger brother and my older brother who used to mess with each other all the time. If they could see my face, all distorted like this, it's going, "Well, I didn't..." No, everything came out of my mouth was hysterical and I start laughing with... And he goes, "This is funny to you?" And now it made it even more.

• 2:07:15Speaker 02

  And now my brothers are going behind him and he's going, "This, this is not funny, you're gonna..." And now he's starting to kind of go, "You are a strange, strange man." And he just drops me, he goes, "Just don't say stuff like that to people you don't know." And he walks out and I'm on the ground going, "I don't know what just happened there." But I wasn't scared in that thing because I deserve it, I guess, because I can't make fun of guys I don't know. But the fact is, the comedy part of me has saved my life more. More than any other thing. It's also got me a lot of trouble, but it cause they said it doesn't have. It doesn't. If ever I get arrested, the comedy guy goes away, goes, I didn't.

• 2:08:00Speaker 02

  He goes, I thought it was funny, but you know, I'm gonna just step over and step away.

• 2:08:04Mike Rowe?

  That's where we land the plane. That's great. You're about to get the crap knocked out of you. You laugh and somehow or another you're still standing.

• 2:08:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:08:12Mike Rowe?

  Thanks for coming in and doing this.

• 2:08:13Speaker 02

  You bet, man.

• 2:08:13Mike Rowe?

  Really great. You barely touched your coffee.

• 2:08:16Speaker 02

  I don't like coffee. No, I just can't. No, no matter how manly, we're talking about men's stuff. This is a comic. Nobody said, look, I would have killed everybody in this room.

• 2:08:29Mike Rowe?

  Goes to credibility.

• 2:08:31Speaker 02

  You don't go, there's no mafioso movie. We're gonna kill him. Two guys go in, rip him up and make sure his family pays for that. Hold on a minute.

• 2:08:41Speaker 02

  He just, there's something, something about a straw that is just horrified.

• 2:08:46Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:47Speaker 02

  But I believe you with this one about laughing. It says, my mother's not doing well at all. And I got, luckily I've got four siblings myself. We fly with, and she's really 96. Everything's falling apart. And we had to move her out of house. I built her a house that's on one level so she could, she took care of my stepfather. She married after my father died. Great guy. Broke her, she had to lift him up. She's just couldn't live in her house anymore. And if any of you have been through this, you won't be able to tell me. I live in this house. And she just wouldn't. She was fallen with help in the house. Moved her to a facility of just a quarter mile away from this beautiful house.

• 2:09:27Speaker 02

  And then my whole family shows up every Thanksgiving. There's like 30 of us and we usually use her house. And the doctor said, there's a, my sister and brother, I want to take her back to her house. We'll have Thanksgiving there and we'll take her back to the home. And the doctor said, 50 50 chance she'll come out of this stupor and realize that she's back in her house and will not want to go. And you're gonna go through this horrible again. Or she'll just forget and have dinner and then drive her back. In the middle of dinner, she gets up, walks to her bedroom in the house. My sister sees that. She goes to the bedroom. I hear screaming. She comes out in tears. She won't live. She's, so she's. It's catatonic. My brother goes in and he's gonna, he's swearing at her and I go,

• 2:10:10Speaker 02

  "Hey, guys, guys, let's get out, get out." Granted, this is a boy that's put my mom through hell. I was incarcerated, I've been a bad kid. Stealing cars, I'm just not a good kid. So my mom and I have a very different relationship. She's in bed like this, "I'm not going anywhere." And she's, she's rigamore, 105 pounds. She's just stiff. "Go ahead, try to get me in, I'm not going anywhere." She's screaming. I go, "Mom, mom, everybody, Jeff, Becky out. I'm gonna take you to the car. I'm gonna lift you up, I'm gonna, we're going back there." She goes, "You go ahead and try it." Here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna have to use some weight so your ass bends to get you in the chair. So it's gonna be uncomfortable and I'm not gonna hurt your knee. "You go ahead and try, go ahead and try."

• 2:10:53Speaker 02

  And she, so she's like this stick. I've got this stick and I had to do one of these where you go, to bend her. "Oh, you didn't get hurt. I didn't hurt you, I just bent you." I get her in the wheelchair and as I get down to put her foot in the stirrup, she kicks me so hard my glasses go like this. But it hurt really bad. I go, "Jesus." Oh, I look over her shoulder and my brother is now laughing so hard. He's just bent over. It's the prison guy and she kicked me so, I mean, I go, "Oh, God." Right across here, I go, "Jesus, mom." And then I get her in the stirrups and I, then I get out to the SUV and I go, "I'm gonna get you out of here." And she, "You just tried."

• 2:11:37Speaker 02

  She's back to this and I lift her up and she's a baby. I get her and as soon as I get her in a vulnerable position to get her, scoop like this, she hauls off and hits me a fist, side of my head. Now the glasses fly, fly off, hit the, and I go, my brother's not there this time. I go, like, I don't know how to say this, if you do that again, I'm gonna punch you back. Cause the reaction, mom, is you don't want, no one takes a punch. I can't, don't punch me again. We get back to the home. I'm getting her out of, I'm doing this to get her out of the wheelchair and she looks at me, she goes, "You gotta admit that was kinda funny."

• 2:12:16Speaker 02

  I said, "Son of a..."

• 2:12:17Mike Rowe?

  She did it all for a gag?

• 2:12:19Speaker 02

  She did it all for a gag. And I said, "God, Mom, you..." I didn't pull it, though. I didn't pull the punch. But you kicked me. That first kick was... I thought she broke my nose.

• 2:12:30Mike Rowe?

  Well, on behalf of my mother, who's 87 today.

• 2:12:33Speaker 02

  Oh, good.

• 2:12:34Mike Rowe?

  Uh, thank you for sharing that. It'll give me something to look forward to in the next nine years or so. You're the best. Shifting gears, Wednesday.

• 2:12:42Speaker 02

  ABC, eight o'clock.

• 2:12:44Mike Rowe?

  Fantastic. Tim Allen, everybody. The philosopher.

• 2:12:48Speaker 02

  Thanks, man. If you're done, please subscribe. Leave some stars, ideally five.

• 2:12:59Speaker 04

  Five lousy little stars.

• 2:13:13Speaker 04

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• 2:13:45Speaker 05

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