492: Jon Erwin—Young Washington

Before he became the Father of His Country, George Washington was a young man with doubts, ambitions, failures, and a calling that would eventually shape a nation. Mike sits down with filmmaker and entrepreneur Jon Erwin to discuss his new film Young Washington, and to explore the remarkable true story behind America's most iconic founder. Jon also shares how he launched The Wonder Project and his mission to tell stories that elevate faith, hope, and the human spirit. Along the way, he recounts the extraordinary legacy of his grandfather, a recipient of the Medal of Honor whose courage during World War II left an indelible mark on his family. It's a conversation about character, conviction, and the people who inspire history long before history remembers their names. This July 4th, make Young Washington part of your Independence Day celebration. See the film, share it with your community, and help spark civic curiosity about the character, leadership, and founding principles that continue to shape our nation. Get tickets here: https://bit.ly/TWIHIYoungWashington

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

• 0:04Mike Rowe?

  Boy, did I enjoy the conversation you're about to hear right now. It's with a fellow named John Irwin, who directed a film called Young Washington. And this, of course, is the way I heard it. And I can't think of a more appropriate topic or guest that rhymes with the title of this podcast or the whole reason it sort of evolved from the very beginning than this film and this guy.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, first of all, he's a great director, and he's done a lot of great movies and TV shows. He did House of David on Prime, which was a big hit. And this movie is coming out just in time for Independence Day.

• 0:46Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, it'll be all over the country in theaters on July 3rd.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 0:50Mike Rowe?

  So we got him in just under the wire. And I'm so glad we did because, you know, there's not much to say about George Washington that you haven't heard. Because most of what there is to say about him kind of starts around the revolution.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04Mike Rowe?

  And goes forward. And then the rest is rooted in mythology. You know, cherry trees and cannot tell a lie and all that nonsense. This is a movie about the man who came of age very quickly thanks to his role in the French and Indian War and in the Seven Years' War and, of course, in the Revolutionary War. And what the film really does is what I tried to do in all my little stories once upon a time, which is tell you something you didn't know about somebody you do.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40Mike Rowe?

  And walk his significance in history back to a couple of moments that really inform the man long before anybody knew who he was. And man, not only does this film... Do justice to that.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57Mike Rowe?

  But the conversation about the film is exactly what's fun to do. After you get a peek through the portal. Back into time.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and he knows his stuff. He spent 10 years making this movie.

• 2:10Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  10 years.

• 2:12Mike Rowe?

  Well, one of the first things I ask him is, you know, can you describe what it feels like to be a director to live with the thing for a decade? And now really just right on the verge of seeing it come out. I'm so relieved to tell you that it's a good movie.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25Mike Rowe?

  Because there are a lot of movies that I respect and that I really, really, really want to like. And, you know, they're okay. And they're worth recommending and they're worth watching for those reasons. But when it's straight up legit, like, oh, man. This is so relevant and so captivating. And for once, when the movie ended, I wanted to see more.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, and it's perfect for the semi-quincentennial.

• 2:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  This is everything that leads up to the Revolutionary War. This is how the father of our country became the general of the army. You see what happened in his life to give him the medal to do what he had to do to win the Revolutionary War.

• 3:06Mike Rowe?

  And by metal, you mean met- metal, two Ts?

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:10Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, for sure. He was forged in fire.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I see what you did there.

• 3:15Mike Rowe?

  Ah, different kind of metal.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:17Mike Rowe?

  But, um, look, this thing we call the American Revolution, it kind of lives in portraits and illustrations and we're taught it. So often through days and dates and documents and it all just feels so dusty and old.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, not this.

• 3:33Mike Rowe?

  No, no, this really frames it for what it was. You know, the American Revolution was in fact really the first modern world war. It was huge and it starts really with the little fort called Necessity that Washington built. Out in the Ohio Valley and it was a botched, horribly failed attempt.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  No spoiler alerts?

• 4:01Mike Rowe?

  No, it happened hundreds of years ago, dude, I'm not spoiling anything. But when you see. When you see the impact and the success of the father of our country through the lens of one of the most. Colossal failures of his life. Things fall into place, it hits different, as the kids say.

• 4:22Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. It's a terrific film. It was made possible not just by John Irwin, but uh, and I say this credit where it's due, because look, you know, if you want to see more movies that you're really like, you gotta kind of follow the money back and really like, who, who made this happen? So, uh, The Wonder Project is a terrific bunch of people who are making great content, and that was founded by John, who you're about to meet.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:45Mike Rowe?

  But also our buddies over at Stand Together made this happen.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:49Mike Rowe?

  And um, they're doing a lot of good work in a lot of different areas, but for my money, making history interesting to people who otherwise wouldn't care.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:01Mike Rowe?

  And doing it through the medium of film, and doing it well, and betting on the right people, that, you know, that matters, because stuff like this is always upstream of most of the headlines of the day.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 5:15Mike Rowe?

  It informs a lot of opinions, and this is liable to change some opinions for the better, I think.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Let's see.

• 5:24Mike Rowe?

  Happy birthday to us. This is Young Washington and John Irwin, right after this.

• 5:35Mike Rowe?

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• 6:20Mike Rowe?

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• 7:01Mike Rowe?

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• 7:24Mike Rowe?

  All right, John Irwin, thank you so much for making the time, man.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks for having me. You kidding me?

• 7:29Mike Rowe?

  No, I'm not kidding you, man. I'm super serious because you've done a couple of things with filmmaking and culture and history that are near and dear to me.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:37Mike Rowe?

  I'm fascinated by the nexus of all that stuff.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Although you can do all that stuff and still, like, fix things and do.

• 7:43Mike Rowe?

  Now, see-

• 7:44Speaker 02

  I can't do any of that.

• 7:45Mike Rowe?

  Well, then, here we go. This is how we start, with the power of myth, with the power of projection, with the trap of assumption. You wouldn't believe, well, maybe you would, the number of people who watched Dirty Jobs for 20 years and who conclude that, yeah, I'm that guy, man.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  I can, I can-

• 8:03Mike Rowe?

  This is true. This is the assumption that, but you were, you just gave voice to-

• 8:07Speaker 02

  You gave audience.

• 8:08Mike Rowe?

  Even worse, man, I was an apprentice. For me, it was just a study in failure juxtaposed with actual competent workers and tradespeople, and letting the viewer conclude, okay, well, that must be X difficult because Mike is failing miserably, or maybe that's not so bad.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Somehow, the aggregate brand that was built, at least in my eyes as a fan, was, oh, yeah, Mike can do all that stuff. This is a good point, and you should just go with that, by the way.

• 8:38Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know what? I did for a while, and I got hired by all the likely, you know, Caterpillar and Ford and their-

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:45Mike Rowe?

  But really, it's not that I can't, it's just that in no way does it come easily.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:50Mike Rowe?

  And so, the real estate that I occupied in that little slice of culture was adjacent to competence. It was really, like, the willingness to try. That I got paid for. And in hindsight, well, you know, it's a lot easier to try than succeed.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, here's to, here's to, you have to do things poorly for a long time before then you can do them well.

• 9:14Mike Rowe?

  Well, what's the Washington quote around failure?

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, failure wants, basically, failure recognized is twice amended, I think he said.

• 9:24Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Basically, the idea is if you admit, and this is a huge part of his life, if you recognize, if you're self-aware, if you recognize that you failed, and if you own it.

• 9:33Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Then you're halfway to solving the problem already, basically.

• 9:36Mike Rowe?

  Own it publicly.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:39Mike Rowe?

  Not enough to like, okay, I'm gonna sit down and really do some, you know, navel gazing and Kierkegaardian reflection and make some sort of internal adjustment. No, you need to go out and say, I screwed the pooch. What a horrific mistake this was. I apologize for that, and I am now ready, this is my favorite scene in your movie, I am now ready to accept the consequences.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  I learned in my own life, many times, but also in the study, I just love history. And so the study of, of a lot of great leaders, most every truly formidable leader, whether it's Washington or Churchill, you know, was forged much more in failure than they were in success and much more in difficulty than they were in ease. But the defining difference was their ability to hug the practice and kind of own it and acknowledge it, and you're right, publicly, and then also apply curiosity to it and sort of evolve. I wanted to do the, the young life of George Washington because I was much more interested in like, where was this myth carved in granite forged, you know?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  And, and under what circumstances? And you get to this chapter in his life.

• 10:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Where this is where he became the leader, in my view.

• 10:56Mike Rowe?

  Let me, let me step back a sec because I, I want to dive deep into all of it. How's it feel right now? I mean, I've never directed a movie, so I'm assuming you've lived with this thing now for a couple of years. You've been through all the pre-production, obviously the production. Now you're done with the post. You're gonna go, this is gonna be a nationwide release right before our 250th frickin' birthday. I mean, things couldn't have lined up.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  And it's the only film in theaters nationwide on R250.

• 11:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  That celebrates the American story at all, which is shocking to me. It's like, I thought there would at least be Independence Day 3, or, you know, or Die Hard 4, or, you know, Saving Private Ryan against something, you know?

• 11:43Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  And so, but yeah, this has been a decade in the making for me. I love while working on other... I think I made a commitment a while ago, because there's like a fog to success and you don't really know. It's hard. And so, someone should write some book surviving success. And so, after your first kind of breakout, there's a lot of voices and they're loud. But I've concluded that inspiration is kind of internal and quiet and...

• 12:08Mike Rowe?

  What was the first breakout?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  I just, so I would say that we did a movie called I Can Only Imagine and raised the money for it to both make it and to market it. So every filmmaker should do that at least once in your life. You're throwing up in a trash can Thursday night before it releases. We built the film to break even at 15 million in US box office. And it did 17 million in its opening weekend and 86 million overall. It was the number one independent film of the year. And, you know, I had grown up in Alabama, was told to do Kindergarten again, you know, because I was an ADHD nightmare, you know? And so, like, I had no means of, my brother and I, of being in Hollywood or in the studio business. Well, that film was such a hit that it introduced us to a great company right here in Santa Monica at Lionsgate and some other studios.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  And then it was just, you know, the pressure of, can you do this again, this anomaly thing?

• 12:58Mike Rowe?

  This isn't Lionsgate.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  This is not, no. But for five years, one of the great mentors of my life was Michael Burns, Vice Chair at Lionsgate.

• 13:04Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  And...

• 13:06Mike Rowe?

  Those guys bought the production company that did Dirty Jobs.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Oh, did they really?

• 13:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  I love Felt and Mike and they're... My whole career is based off mentors and when I did that deal... I said, I just wanna, I wanna learn how your studio works and I'm a very curious entrepreneur and I'd like to be seen as an entrepreneur first and filmmaker second. And Michael just took me under his wing as it felt.

• 13:29Mike Rowe?

  So I'm so curious. So, okay. You get a hit. In relative terms, financially, you crushed it.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, we all, yeah.

• 13:37Mike Rowe?

  I mean, that's very rare.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  We owned it and everybody did well and, you know, we all got a chance to buy a house. And, you know, it was a wonderful moment in life and, but what I realized on the other side of that is, you know, when you have the pressures to repeat success and when you don't even really know how it happened and, you know, our next film was number one, uh, number one movie in America, Friday Night. When it opened, it was called I Still Believe In. My brother and I were in pre-production on a film called American Underdog and producing a film called Jesus Revolution. And, and then five days later, COVID had taken out all theaters worldwide. So I was like, oh, welcome back disappointment. And, uh, but what I learned after that was just, you know, I think at the end of the day, you gotta be motivated by the work itself and the work has to be its own reward.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  And to me, I just decided, kind of through the dark night of the soul, that period to, I'm just gonna tell the stories that are most moving to me.

• 14:28Mike Rowe?

  So did this come to you fully formed? Did you stumble across it? Was it pitched to you?

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Oh, no, this is a Michael Burns, uh, quote, uh, that he loves. Uh, Socrates said, I've suffered my way to wisdom. And so I think it was just, uh, it was just difficulty that allowed me to come to a fuller realization of like, you know, the joy of it is just in, in telling stories that I think are meaningful and life-changing to me and hoping they're meaningful and life-changing to other people. It's wonderful when they succeed and many of them have. But, uh, so that led to, I created a series for Amazon called House of David and that's a story I had wanted to do since I was 16 years old. And it was a number one on Prime and 60 million viewers globally. And I had carried around a, a magazine that I had found on the internet. It was 50 years old that no one understood that there was a movie in there.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  But it was like a psychedelic Jesus and it said, Jesus Revolution. And it was very much like a spiritual hippie awakening in California. That movie, you know, broke even in like three days and, uh, and did very well.

• 15:28Mike Rowe?

  There's a movie in everything.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  There is, and then Washington 10 years ago, I uh, I'm from the South, so I'm very, um, fairness means a lot to me. And uh, and, and so I could not get in to see Hamilton like a decade ago. And uh, it just felt unfair. I mean, I wasn't, and, and so I'm like, I'm gonna rage against this by reading 30 books, you know, which I did, and uh, I fell in love with the story of the American Revolution, but not to tell a movie, not to make a movie or a TV show, but I just loved, I mean, it's an incredible story.

• 15:56Mike Rowe?

  Well, here's what you did that I want to compliment you on primarily. And I'm obsessed with this. We did, I don't know, probably 200 stories called The Way I Heard It. That's what this thing originally was. And in some way, shape or form, they were all short stories. And many of them have been brought to life, reenacted and so forth, but they all try to go back into, it's something you didn't know about someone you do.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:24Mike Rowe?

  At a time.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  You know the name, you don't know the story.

• 16:26Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 16:27Mike Rowe?

  So, I mean, look, and in the spirit of no new ideas and good natured theft, of course, I stole this from Paul Harvey.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Good day. Picasso said, uh, good artists copy, great artists steal. So this has been going on for a long time.

• 16:38Mike Rowe?

  Picasso was also obsessed with a model that was diametrically opposed to Cezanne's, which is fascinating.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Now you're beyond me. I don't, I, all I know is the quote.

• 16:46Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 16:49Mike Rowe?

  Arguably, the two greatest artists who ever lived, one was never finished. The other was done in, like, the minute Picasso was finished, and it was usually in the course of a few hours or maybe a day. That thing was framed and sold and out of his life, and he never went back.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Which do you ascribe to?

• 17:12Mike Rowe?

  Cezanne, on the other hand, that guy would show up in people's homes who had bought his works.

• 17:20Mike Rowe?

  And touch them up. He was never done.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 17:23Mike Rowe?

  And Picasso was always done.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting in film, I don't agree with this idea of like the director's cut or a re-release. I think a movie is a reflection of two things. What the world was like at that time. You know, the decade, the 90s, the 80s, the 70s.

• 17:38Mike Rowe?

  The time it was made.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  When it was made, yeah. And what the filmmaker was going through personally.

• 17:42Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  In their journey. And for that reason, I like George Lucas said, films are never complete, they're also abandoned. And they're only abandoned. And, uh, and I think that's the way it should be. I think once they're done, they're done.

• 17:53Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  And they're a time capsule of what the world was and what you were.

• 17:57Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  And they shouldn't be touched.

• 17:58Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  That's my view.

• 18:00Mike Rowe?

  My view is, I agree 100%, but tragically, I did not inherit the conviction of my agreeance.

• 18:08Mike Rowe?

  And I, I almost said, I'm Cezanne, as if there was some sort of relative parallel to our respective talents. There's not. But it's not because I don't think my inability to finish a thing is rooted in insecurity. I just, I just love messing with it.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too.

• 18:28Mike Rowe?

  I just love going back and going, ah, you know what? What if, what if? And it drives everybody in my life insane.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  We have this thing, we say the work expands, the time allowed, and you get to that day. And in my world, it's picture lock. And that's the last time that I can really screw with the story.

• 18:42Mike Rowe?

  That's it.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  And then I actually delegate it to a fabulous team for finishing.

• 18:47Mike Rowe?

  Color.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a lot of times I don't think I've seen the final print of Washington. Just because after I can't change the story, my team is incredible and we do a lot of work together. And, uh, and I'd rather just wait till it opens.

• 19:01Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's why I asked how you're doing, just on a real simple, like, human level. All the work is done, right? You're Sandy Koufax, you let the ball go, it's on the way to the plate. There's not a damn thing you can do about it.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:17Mike Rowe?

  Except wait and see how the batter handles it.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's two things for me. If I were to talk really philosophical, I would say for a long time in my life, I think a lot of artists do, you put so much of your identity into the work itself that you, and it never works in that way. Like if you're, yeah, you're welcome to a volatile, you know, life of, and so I think I had to, over time, put less of my identity in the work and just more identity in just doing the work, in the sense of like, uh, constant improvement in craft and just a love of the game. I love what I get to do. It's a privilege of a life, of a lifetime to get to entertain people. And putting less of my identity into the result of the work and just more identity into,

• 20:03Speaker 02

  you know, myself and also just into the doing the work and the fun of it and the joy of just doing the work tends to make better work and better work tends to work more. And so oddly enough, you kind of get the thing that you're no longer chasing a little bit.

• 20:20Mike Rowe?

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• 21:04Mike Rowe?

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• 21:43Speaker 02

  And so for me, just the sheer love of storytelling and stories and their meaning and what they do and then being able to just take the stories that are most meaningful to me that I think find me in some way over long periods of time and then trying to transmit that experience to the audience as much as I can is a joy. Beyond that, it's almost like you're a football coach where it's like, you know, I have learned success is the byproduct of incremental improvement over a lot of areas, especially in something like film. So it's all about like, how's the special teams, how's the defensive line, how's the punter? In that world with theatrical movies, it's like, how are the pre-sales, how are our grassroots efforts, how's the, you know?

• 22:24Speaker 02

  And you have to like fire, you have to, execution over many, many areas at the same time is really important. And then you, what I've learned to really win, you have to just catch a lightning in a bottle, kind of a perfect storm that you cannot create. So you just have to keep swinging.

• 22:36Mike Rowe?

  Look, man, I, I think that you, you're right about the entertaining thing, but I also clearly you have an agenda. You want to inform, you want to show the country that there's something important. I think. I watched the film last night on my computer. I'm sorry, but I couldn't get the damn thing on the TV.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  No worries.

• 22:54Mike Rowe?

  And oh.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  How was it on a computer? Did it work for you?

• 22:57Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know what the thing is, man? I just brought it three feet from my face. It was great. It was great. And I had headphones in.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  Fantastic.

• 23:05Mike Rowe?

  It was terrific. But one little weird quirk about screeners that I'm sure you've experienced, you know, selecting the studio, I guess it was Angel Chuck sent it to you and you sent it to me.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:17Mike Rowe?

  Right? So it's identified as, as mine, right?

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a huge thing on the screen.

• 23:22Mike Rowe?

  My name pops up the second we see George Washington in battle in the very opening scene, like boom, he's there and underneath it says, Mike Rowe.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, we planted that one just for you.

• 23:33Mike Rowe?

  I'm like, what? This is.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  My name appeared there as well.

• 23:36Mike Rowe?

  It's shocking. It's shocking to see your name pop up throughout the screener. But my question is, nobody wants a lecture, nobody wants a sermon, right?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 23:47Mike Rowe?

  History sucks. People hate it, except we love it.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  It shouldn't though.

• 23:53Mike Rowe?

  It shouldn't.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Sometimes the telling of history sucks.

• 23:55Mike Rowe?

  Well, sure.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  It's pretty amazing if it's in the hands of a good storyteller.

• 23:58Mike Rowe?

  No, it's the best. But, you know, you did a great job in this movie of telling me an entertaining story that. Was filled with stuff that I was curious about and was learnable. But I think the classic mistake people make, especially history professors, is they just reverse that.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 24:21Mike Rowe?

  And we just go in with, okay, facts and dates and names and places and times.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:27Mike Rowe?

  And that just put a glass eye to sleep.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  What I like is, I think the documentary filmmaker Ken Burns calls it emotional archaeology, which is a cool term and process and fun of like, man, do everything that you can to put the audience there. Like, what would this have been like in a visceral way? Which is what we really tried to do with Young Washington. And if there is any agenda to the work, it's that, you know, at Wonder Project, which is the independent studio I founded, that Michael Burns at Lionsgate helped me found, we talk about this sentence of stories that restore faith in things worth believing in, whatever those things are. And I think I would submit that America, while imperfect, is one of those things. And it's worth believing in.

• 25:09Mike Rowe?

  Where would you rather be?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  And, yeah, and so to me, that is the, and not to say that there's anything wrong with, I'll give you an example. I think probably one of the most perfect hours of television ever is the finale of Breaking Bad. That is probably, it's so hard to architect an end in television. And Vince Gilligan, probably the great showrunner and master of his craft. But I had at some point to stop watching Breaking Bad because I was just meaner as a person. You know what I'm saying? I had to like disconnect from it. So while I'm not saying that those things shouldn't exist because they're incredible, whether it's Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or whatever, I would say that there is this need culturally and also in entertainment for stories that pull you to the better parts of your nature,

• 25:54Speaker 02

  to the better parts of humanity and pull you back.

• 25:56Mike Rowe?

  Don't you think it goes both ways? I mean, to be fair, personally, I agree with you. But how much Hallmark can you watch? How much saccharine sweet, G-rated, holy, you know, just?

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, but see, I actually think. I have strong theories on this. Like, I think the best book on optimism I ever read is Viktor Frankl's Band's Search for Meaning.

• 26:19Mike Rowe?

  The great comedy.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, somebody should do a musical on it. But it's, you know, this guy survived the Holocaust and yet he had this kind of optimistic approach. So I actually don't think that the storytelling people want is storytelling that rips out what I think Hallmark does and does well, if that's what you're looking for. Rips out the stakes of the story. Like, let's create a world that's not real to life where, you know, the biggest, the most dramatic decision that is gonna be made is, you know, whether Candace Cameron chooses kind of someone from the city or someone from the country, you know, that's the thing. And again, my wife loves those movies, but my point is, I think what the audience is yearning for

• 27:00Speaker 02

  is stories that grapple with real life and the grit of real life, but through a lens of optimism and belief. And I think that's what's missing.

• 27:10Mike Rowe?

  So, or character.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Or character, yeah.

• 27:13Mike Rowe?

  I mean, Sound of Freedom was not a feel-good.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  Not at all, yeah.

• 27:16Mike Rowe?

  But you're invested.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  But you're invested, or you know, I could, and my dad and I will watch this film. He's probably watched it, I think he watched it seven times in theaters. Top Gun Maverick, I think, is a good example of like, you go to that movie, you just feel you believe in things again. And I think that that's the content that's missing and what we aspire to create. And so, the idea of let's grapple with real life, let's tell a story in as gripping and entertaining a way possible for first entertainers, but let's design and architect the story to inspire the audience, to do something that's very countercultural and kind of punk rock, which is to embrace optimism again and embrace belief in each other and in things that are imperfect, like America,

• 27:59Speaker 02

  but still absolutely worth believing in and worth perfecting together. That's the kind of, so if there is an agenda in the things that I do, it's that. And it's letting the story do as much of the work as possible and hopefully instigating the journey for the audience. Where you watch, you know the name Washington, you don't know about this story, you learn about this story. In my view, this was a movie about leadership, like what it isn't and what it is and what it should be, those type of questions. And you watch it and then you immediately, hopefully, what I've heard from a lot of people that have seen it, you know, you're on Google that night.

• 28:27Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah, man.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Did this happen, did this happen?

• 28:29Mike Rowe?

  Dude, that's the other back part of my compliment. It's, um... Don't take this the wrong way, but movies and stories, I think inherently, you just have to realize that all you can offer in two hours is the shallow end of the pool.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 28:46Mike Rowe?

  But if you do it right, it's gonna make a lot of people wanna take a deeper dive down on the other side. And that's exactly what the movie does.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Well, and you did it like beyond the form of the story, the, um, an eight-minute podcast episode of yours, I believe.

• 29:02Mike Rowe?

  At the Crossroads.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Oh, at the Crossroads, yeah. In eight minutes, you had me saying, wait, did this place exist? Did Washington really go there 25 times once on his way to the inauguration? Was it, and it was great storytelling. It was a great device of let's hold the, what, who the traveler's name is till the end. And to me, that's the job of a storyteller is to entertain and to kind of give a window into the meaning of life. I agree with you. I like this, Aaron Sorkin said, when you do an adaptation of a true story, you're not trying to take a photograph, you're trying to paint a portrait.

• 29:32Mike Rowe?

  You're painting a portrait.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  And you're painting the most accurate portrait you can. But you have to make typically in making a movie, you're compressing timelines and you're doing composite characters, but you're trying to get that portrait right. I remember when we did the Kurt Warner movie, and he signed to Rams helmet and said, you got my story right. And we made those changes typical to an adaptation, but you're trying to paint an accurate portrait so that the audience is then inspired to go find the photographs.

• 29:59Mike Rowe?

  Let me tell you what happened to me, and then you tell me if this rhymes in some way with the way you think about the movies you make. I read conflicting accounts of the first inaugural address by Washington. Witnesses, some say he concluded it by saying, so help me God, when he was sworn in. Others say he didn't. There's been this giant debate ever since. This podcast is called The Way I Heard It in large part because we seem to be surrounded by ambiguity and certainty in the expert class. So here's just like one more instance where, okay, a lot of people are really pretty sure this happened, did it or didn't it? Well, I certainly don't know.

• 30:43Mike Rowe?

  But here's what I know. I grew up in Baltimore, not far from the intersection of 175 and Route 1 down in Columbia. There's a Holiday Inn there today. Turns out there's been an inn at that crossroads for centuries. And it used to be run by a guy named John Spurrier. And John Spurrier got famous because he wrote a book called The Practical Farmer that both Jefferson and Washington loved and endorsed. Spurrier's Inn, or Spurrier's Tavern, was on the way to a lot of important places that Washington frequented. So he wound up staying there over 25 times. And so in my story, and this is where I go totally off the rails. I'm just making stuff up and I'm like, well, wait.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  But you hypothesize in a way that it does not, it could have happened. It makes total sense that it could have happened.

• 31:31Mike Rowe?

  Well, there's no way these two men didn't share multiple private conversations. Washington admits as much, and of course, John does as well. But what did they talk about? So the hook from my story was, okay, you can fill a book with what I don't know, but the only words I'm gonna put in Washington's mouth are quotes that there's no ambiguity about.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:57Mike Rowe?

  So what kind of conversation could the father of our country have with an innkeeper that might somehow be relevant to people today? That's the riddle. And hopefully, what came out the other end was, was okay, you know, but how do you think about that?

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Well, I'm a Washington, like, I love the history. And I was like, wait, did this happen? It was written in a way that was visceral and engaging, and that's exactly what stories should do. Oh, this inn existed. This guy existed. He wrote this book.

• 32:24Mike Rowe?

  Well, spoiler alert, just so people can track it, in my story, at the end of one of their meetings where Washington is constantly giving Spurrier great advice on how to run his inn, which he inherited from his mom and dad and didn't really want.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:36Mike Rowe?

  Right? In one of those exchanges, as Washington is leaving, Spurrier promises to take his advice, "So help me God." And in my story, Washington cocks his head and goes, "Ah." I like the way that sounds.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:52Mike Rowe?

  So help me God, that should be at the end of a promise. And a day later, he makes his promise.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Here's what we do know, and it actually intersects with the movie I made, is when you read the words of his first inaugural address. And I actually thought John Adams got this right, the series. Washington has a plurality when he was younger, and it kind of takes his voice. So he kind of has what would be like a breathy, deep voice. So.

• 33:17Mike Rowe?

  Washington did.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Washington. So, and he said, no matter, I would rather be known by my deeds than my words. But he would have spoken softly. And this is where David Morse in John Adams gets it absolutely right. So on the inauguration, everybody was said to be leaning in because they couldn't hear him because he spoke in this soft tone or this kind of deep, quiet tone. He had such a resounding presence, but John Adams was like the voice, you know, or Patrick Henry. George Washington was a guy that walked in the room and changed the room and, but quietly. And he architected himself and his ethos and his look.

• 33:58Mike Rowe?

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• 34:43Mike Rowe?

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• 35:27Mike Rowe?

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• 35:47Speaker 02

  And I thought the movie, Spielberg's movie, got that right.

• 35:50Mike Rowe?

  Well, Daniel Day, yeah.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  And so I think the reason there's some controversy around this is because no one could hear him. And it's said that he said, "So help me God and kiss the Bible." But with that many people with no P A, who knows? Because he wasn't an orator. But what I can tell you is that when you read his first inaugural address and his other speeches, there was absolutely a recognition of what he would call the architect of the universe, the divine hand, being inextricably linked to his rise and to the nation itself. And that's kind of a part of our ethos. The American Revolution being kind of a collision of faith and thought and purpose and reason. The Great Awakening preceding the American Revolution and the rights of man

• 36:36Speaker 02

  and kind of the age of reason coming out of Europe. Those things collided in the American Revolution. And so I think it's absolutely, in the context of his actual speech, it makes total sense that he would say, "So help me God." Because what we dramatized, spoiler alert, in our film, was that when he really humbled himself under Braddock and really defined himself as the leader he would someday be, he later learned, it was 14 years later, we moved it up into the context of the film, that there's a Native American chief and his men were firing right at him. And they said could not hit him. And in fact, one of the bullets went through his hat. Their claim was that there was some kind of,

• 37:20Speaker 02

  the Creator was kind of protecting him in some way, some divine hand of providence. That really stuck with him. And then I think... Whether it's the fog on the crossing of the Delaware, there's a bunch of stuff in his life where he was like, I don't understand how this happened. I don't see any other explanation for this happening. And I have to recognize some sort of a divine hand in the story of his life and in the story of the nation itself. That was very, what he says in his first inaugural, heavy on his mind, you know? And so I think within that context, him saying, so help me God, would have been absolutely in character. Although, no one could hear, so who knows?

• 37:56Mike Rowe?

  Who knows? How do you decide where to start a story?

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm just obsessed with the formation of things. Like, and anytime there's a leader that's mythic, whether that's David, you know, in the show House David that I made, or if it's Washington, you actually ask, okay.

• 38:20Mike Rowe?

  Or Churchill.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Or Churchill.

• 38:21Mike Rowe?

  Since you invoked.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  But Churchill, you get to Gallipoli, you get to a massive blunder.

• 38:25Mike Rowe?

  Darnell's biggest mistake of his life.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  I think 50,000 people, a lot of people died because of a decision he made. And so what I am obsessed with learning is like, what are the primary characteristics of a person? And then where are they made? And so with Washington, what a lot of people don't understand is that the Revolutionary War was a war of attrition or the war of post. That means it's basically, you have the largest amphibious fleet ever assembled in the history of the world, filled with Hessian mercenaries, like hired guns, basically, sent to crush us.

• 38:55Mike Rowe?

  And we're not even us yet.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  And we're not even us. And all of a sudden, that's a whole other discussion. We're not even a nation. We are colonies that are banded together to declare independence. Or to basically, and then we didn't really know what would happen afterwards. But if there even wasn't afterwards, which was highly unlikely. So the idea that this unstoppable force meets this immovable object, which is Washington. And by force of character and force of will and force of myth and ethos, this one man, before there was a national anthem, or creed, or flag, this one person embodied this movement, and his army, people don't understand, was not a standing army. That means every six months, most of your army can just be like, well,

• 39:40Speaker 02

  that's all that South Carolina, you know, and they would just leave, you know? And so, the idea of one guy holding it together like that, where did this person with an absolutely uncommon grit and endurance, and the ability to suffer over a long period of time, in a way that just outlasted the enemy? Which is what you're, a war of attrition, you're waiting on them to just get tired and go home.

• 40:03Mike Rowe?

  Where do you learn that kind of stoicism?

• 40:06Speaker 02

  And then you get to this early part of his life, and you learn that great characters like that are forged, they're never forged in ease and success. And kind of like, um,

• 40:18Mike Rowe?

  Or alone.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  lofty ideas, or alone. They're forged in hardship, and adventure, and risk, and failure, and brotherhood, and, you know, mentors.

• 40:28Mike Rowe?

  Adventure.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Adventure. So there was this adventure chapter in the beginning of his life, that, I knew we were on to something when we went to Mount Vernon to research it, and that one of the gate attendants, she's like, what are y'all working on? We're like, oh, we're working on a movie on, uh, it's called Young Washington. She goes, oh, I guess he was young once, wasn't he? Like, and so nobody really thinks of that. And so it was this chapter that, in my mind, was very much like Pride and Prejudice meets The Revenant. It was his first great adventures. And he made this really big mistake. I mean, it was not a small mistake. It was a shot heard around the world, that he was responsible for, that started a global conflict. And then he made this fort in the wrong place, and got his ass kicked.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  At the highest levels of failure.

• 41:15Mike Rowe?

  Kickery.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  And he went from Colonel to nothing. But then he self-assessed, he humbled himself, he owned his failure, and he became an aide-de-camp for Braddock, went back out into the frontier, and absolutely defined himself as the leader that he would become. And so, I just thought that chapter of how are myths made, was so interesting to me. And I think so many of us, Have either failed in such a way that we think we can't recover or are so afraid of failure that we don't try, that we don't realize that actually, few failures are fatal. And failures shape great people much more than success. And so I wanted to kind of process

• 41:57Speaker 02

  that of like, what is leadership, where are leaders born, and what is the use of suffering and failure and adventure and risk in the development of yourself?

• 42:05Mike Rowe?

  I think in the human moment, you can handle all of that in a portrayal and in a narrative as well. In a historical context, like Washington couldn't, I don't think he could have possibly known that the French and Indian War that he Forrest Gumped his way into.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  He did, didn't he?

• 42:24Mike Rowe?

  Would become the Seven Years' War.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:27Mike Rowe?

  Which would in turn inform everything that became the American Revolution, which, if you're really gonna step back and ask yourself what the first world war was in the modern age.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Seven Years' War, yeah.

• 42:42Mike Rowe?

  That's it, right? And so if you go back a little further, go, okay, so it's fort necessity. All right, that was a bad idea, built in a bad spot, he greenlit that. But wait a minute, go back before that, the first shot that's fired. We don't know who fires it. Was it the French? Was it the Brits? Was it Washington himself? I guarantee you, John, 98% of the people who are gonna walk into this theater are not going to realize that George Washington was a Colonel in the British Army.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:13Mike Rowe?

  We just don't think of it.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Colonel in the British Army, but never given a royal commission, which meant that he could have been, you know, there's a line in the movie where a British officer says, you could be a general and I wouldn't have to listen to you.

• 43:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  And so there was this incredible lack of fairness that he was never able to accomplish on merits alone. And that feeling of the American idea, to me, America is just simply an idea that you, if you can get yourself here, you can do anything. And there's nothing, it's not, you're not your bloodline, you're not your class, you know, this is the land of opportunity. See in Washington that if he was just truly let into these circles and not put down because he was colonial. I don't know that there is an America today, but yes, he became Colonel just before necessity. Not royal commission, but certainly it was major first, then a Colonel because he volunteered for things he had no idea how to do.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  And he failed miserably at first trying to do them, but learned and he learned this new style of warfare. Of harass and outlast the enemy that he would end up using against the British. So again, I just think it's a great lesson that sometimes when you're going through incredibly difficult seasons in life. Sometimes when you're failing, you're just learning how to win incrementally. If you'll just keep going and not give up.

• 44:33Mike Rowe?

  Again, understand that the father of our country built a fort on a flood plain. Surrounded by heavily wooded.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Trees right behind.

• 44:43Mike Rowe?

  Forest. There is no infilade and defilade. You can fire at will. Right into an open fort, which of course is exactly, exactly what happened. It was just disastrous.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the idea that he just felt the French would face them in this field in honor.

• 45:00Mike Rowe?

  That's proper gentleman.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  The French are like, we're going to hide in the woods and just pick you guys off. And it was a horrible defeat. Like it was, if it was a basketball game, it would have been like a hundred and 10 to two, you know? And then, again, to make matters worse, he signed a document that he, because he was not.

• 45:19Mike Rowe?

  Articles of capitulation.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  He was not as educated as many others because his father died. We portray that in the film. But he missed it, as did his interpreter, and I guess he would have been forced to sign it anyway. But that basically he agreed to assassinating the officer that started this conflict. And so.

• 45:35Mike Rowe?

  Joel Peen, what was his name?

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Oh gosh, it's in the film. I'm not, I'm going to butcher it if I say.

• 45:41Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's like eight long, but there's actually a place. Today in this country, you can visit. It's like Joel Peen's bluff or something.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, Jemal Vaglin is, is the.

• 45:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, that's it. That's what I'm talking about. It's like 60 miles out of Pittsburgh.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting that, oh, and by the way, as an aside on this shot heard around the world. That no one knows who fired the first shot at Jemal Vaglin that started kind of the first global conflict. That's how we portrayed in the film. But these muskets that we were using were very temperamental and very old. And constantly, we were doing these very complex, what we would call a oneer, which is a one, a single shot with a lot of precision work in like horse lanes and explosions and mortars. And constantly, these guns would not go off. You'd get to like the close up of the gun, click, they don't go off. And so this was a constant frustration as we were filming the movie and enlightening of like, how did people fight with these things? And so, but there was one where we had this kind of like kid extra.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  And we were doing Jerman Vogland and he had his musket and we're on him. And we haven't yet called background to action and we're doing, we're going. And all of a sudden, his gun just goes off. And obviously a blank. And he looks at the camera and he's like, was I not supposed to fire that shot? And I'm like, we figured it out.

• 46:56Mike Rowe?

  There it is.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  This is how it happened, guys. We saw 270 years of history right here.

• 47:01Mike Rowe?

  Isn't it weird, you know, how things rhyme like that? I mean, when you say the shot heard round the world, I think Lexington and Concord. I mean, but, but in that same battle, we don't know who pulled the trigger. Or at least that's the story. That's the way somebody heard it.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  I think the guns just went off accidentally. I mean, that literally could be what happened in at least one or both instances.

• 47:25Mike Rowe?

  But here's what drives me crazy.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Very temperamental guns would just go off, you know?

• 47:28Mike Rowe?

  Okay, so I watched Burns' version, The American Revolution.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:35Mike Rowe?

  Let me say first, wow. I mean, what he did with the Civil War. I mean, my dad and I just had weeks of bonding watching that together.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  It's incredible.

• 47:45Mike Rowe?

  My dad was a history teacher. Jazz, baseball, Vietnam, national parks. He's, he's one of our great, certainly one of our greatest documentarians, I think, walking around.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  Oh, he's the great documentarian, I think, yeah, yeah.

• 47:59Mike Rowe?

  But what do you make of it? Like, I watched your movie and in the film, the way you heard it, the way...

• 48:08Mike Rowe?

  Your advisors heard it, whatever. We don't know who pulled that trigger. We don't know. Now, in Ken's movie, we know exactly who pulled the trigger. We know exactly who fired the first shot. It was George Washington. Now.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  There is one account that there's not enough evidence to make that claim. In my opinion.

• 48:25Mike Rowe?

  This is what I love, dude. This is what I love. I mean, it's the history. For people who don't properly enjoy it, man. It's the ultimate Monday morning quarterback meets a trial, meets looking at the evidence. And making your best call. But it's very different in a lecture hall. When the academics can just go at each other versus, hey, man, I'm writing a podcast. You're making a movie.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  I'm saying when I dramatized that scene and this early twenties kid. He's got this camp surrounded. There's thirty five of them down there and there's fifty surrounding him. And it's his job to go tell them to leave again. And if they don't, to use whatever force necessary, which is an order he didn't understand, a very unclear order. I don't think he fires his gun. I'm saying when we dramatized it, I'm like, everything I know about this character, you know? So there's all kinds of theories, you know, the half king who was there with him hated the French and said that they ate his father, whether that was true or not, that's what he said. I don't think that there is near enough to say that. Because the other thing is the account that Washington fired the shot was, as I understand it,

• 49:33Speaker 02

  decades later in an absolute retrospect. So there was nothing first person in the moment at the time that said, oh, yeah, Washington pulled the trigger. That you can't. I would be uncomfortable as a storyteller claiming that to be true.

• 49:45Mike Rowe?

  Do you remember? I don't know if you're old enough to remember this, man. You are there. Later, I think changed to you were there. This was on in the seventies and.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  Slightly before him, eighties, childhood, eighties.

• 50:00Mike Rowe?

  So I remember a series on the Alamo. And basically, so it's just a big recreation. But it's presented, you know, in the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties, like John Cameron Swayze. Everything is as it was on that famous day in history, except you are there. So it's like, right, it's cool. But once you say that, once you say you are there and everything else is the way it was. You're not saying that's the way I heard it. You're not making a move.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  That's better because first of all, nobody knows how it was. But you know.

• 50:33Mike Rowe?

  Right, but it's just, it's just a delightfully arrogant pretense to go, okay, the only thing that isn't exactly as it was is you're there. So they put the viewer as a witness.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:46Mike Rowe?

  Into the.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Good marketing hook.

• 50:48Mike Rowe?

  It's terrific.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Impossible to execute. And I'm much more vocal of like, this is a, this is commentary. This is a storyteller wrestling with everything that they can learn. And then when you put it up on its feet and you add context and you add hopefully this kind of emotional archaeology to it, it's revelatory. You can process it, but I, this is how I heard it. I don't know. This is my best efforts to saying of all I know, this feels emotionally right and authentic to me.

• 51:22Mike Rowe?

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• 52:07Mike Rowe?

  the costs and benefits. So if your current plan is still the right fit, they'll tell you. If there's a better option, they'll tell you that too, and they'll help you switch. Again, the service is free and a review can take less than 20 minutes. This is the time of year to make sure you're squared away for 2027. So if you haven't checked your Medicare coverage lately, give Chapter a call. It's a simple way to make sure your plan still works for you. And with potential savings of $1,100 a year, it's worth a free review. 804-Chapter, call them today. 804-C-H-A-P-T-E-R. Look, I mean, the greatest lesson a filmmaker or a writer can learn from Washington.

• 52:52Mike Rowe?

  Is humility.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 52:54Mike Rowe?

  It's gotta be.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think that he, I mean, there's so many lessons to learn from his life, but the way he kind of, he was very self-aware, he forged himself and he humbled himself when he failed. And that process of failing, admitting it, humbling yourself, learning.

• 53:11Mike Rowe?

  What do you most admire about the man? I know that's broad. What did you learn in the course of making the movie that actually took your breath away?

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Man, there's so much to learn from Washington as I wanted to make a film about leadership. You know, what does that mean? Is it important? Okay, if it is important, which I think we could call, say it is, okay, what's the good version of it? What's the bad version of it? And what I learned about Washington, first of all, what I found interesting, and this is again, this is my, this is my take, but he was not this boring stoic. This dude's personality raged. His quest for stoicism and self-mastery was almost like the lid on a volcano. Like, there was a lot of passion underneath the surface of Washington that he learned to control in ways that other founders didn't. And like, I think Patrick Henry, as influential as he was, the revolution would, the reason

• 54:04Speaker 02

  why he was a great orator, not necessarily a great leader, is, man, his passions were everywhere. John Adams, the same way. Washington learned to control this massive personality. Now, when that lid blew off, like with Lee and the Revolutionary War, it would say that when he like really reamed somebody out, the trees shook, I think is the actual word. So he had this incredible personality that he learned to control. So that lifelong quest to forge oneself and to control oneself and that, and being successful in that is really interesting. I also found it really interesting, like, I think the lesson of like, be careful who you study and who you admire. He was a guy that couldn't go to, to school because his dad died.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  And so he, his, I portrayed in the film, his half-brother really mentored him, and there was a question of whether he had tutors or not, but he read a lot. And I do think that that is important, like, reading, learning, studying. And then who are you in allegory, I think matters, because it's interesting that Washington like loved Cato, loved the play, loved the book, and there's a line that was often passed between the founding fathers that we quote in the film that I think it's tis not immoral to command success, we'll do, we'll do better, we'll deserve it. The idea of like, you can't predict success, but damn it, we can deserve it.

• 55:24Mike Rowe?

  You can command obedience, but not respect.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  Correct, and I think that he also modeled himself after Cincinnatus, and which is where we get Cincinnati, it's a Roman general that was given total power, but also a farmer, protected Rome, gave it back twice. And so Washington like became his obsession. I think it's interesting that, that he really architected himself, his interior and exterior. He built himself and over a long period of time, and he learned through failures, and he crafted something very powerful. But I think what I wanted to point the most defining attribute, I think, to Washington that I wanted to point out in the film is here's a guy that through this first set of adventures in his life, realized that it kind of wasn't about him, even though

• 56:13Speaker 02

  it would be, in the sense that he realized that to lead, you know, the first half of our film, which I think is accurate, as with any story about someone that wants to make a name for themselves, you know, or wants to make it in the big city or whatever, this is kind of a story trope. It's selfish, it's about them, you know? And I think for Washington it was.

• 56:34Mike Rowe?

  He wants to be weighed and measured.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, he wants to advance his station, and, and so it is about him until his, what we say in the film is his ambition was, he put his ambition in front of his men, and he got a lot of his men killed. And I think this guy realized that, oh, leadership is to actually serve, to serve the people you're entrusted with, and to serve an idea that is so much bigger than you, that in service to that idea, you become the embodiment of the idea itself.

• 57:03Mike Rowe?

  And the discipline, man. I mean, he was such, my experience of the guy, and not just through your movie, but he was such a fan of rigor, he was such a fan of a codified system.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 57:17Mike Rowe?

  I mean, he loved his men, but I remember reading, it may have been Valley Forge, that terrible, terrible, unthinkable winter.

• 57:26Mike Rowe?

  You know, where he has deserters shot.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:29Mike Rowe?

  In front of his men.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Flogged shot and he would, yeah, and, and he had, I think, discipline was very important to him. Order was very important to him. Also as an exercise, which is something any American can do. I don't know for you, like whenever I'm in between movies or whatever, I like to like redesign something like a wall, a room. Or something because it's like, this is the little thing that I can control.

• 57:51Mike Rowe?

  My desktop.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, and so for Washington, he would always write these very specific letters to his brother, Jack, about Mount Vernon. Often before a battle.

• 58:03Mike Rowe?

  His brother was Jack?

• 58:06Mike Rowe?

  Who was it? Who's the brother portrayed, his half brother?

• 58:09Speaker 02

  It's Jack, right?

• 58:09Mike Rowe?

  That's Jack?

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:10Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  And Jack would have been a little older. He, we made him younger for the story. He would have been actually like, in the context of our story, like 17 or 18. But we, again, we're trying to explain that it was his younger brother.

• 58:21Mike Rowe?

  And his dad was Augustine.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  Correct. And so, Mount Vernon, if you want to get into the psychology of Washington. Because Mount Vernon is so well preserved, you're thinking this guy is under great duress. In this war that he cannot control. Mount Vernon is the thing he can control. So the more pressure he's under out in battle, the more letters he's gonna write to be like, plant the shrubs here. Because this is this one thing that he can control. And so you go to Mount Vernon. And there is, everything is symmetrical. Like if you go into the little rotunda on the left house. You go in and there's two windows. There's the same exact piece of furniture underneath both windows. There's the same two paintings. The same two on both walls.

• 59:06Mike Rowe?

  In the same room.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  Exactly the same. The room is completely.

• 59:09Mike Rowe?

  Cezanne Picasso.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  I'm like, was this dude on the spectrum? Like, there was something like completely symmetrical about the room. Mount Vernon is in complete symmetry. And so it's just an interesting exercise to be like, this is totally preserved. This is, Mount Vernon is this dude's painting. And what does it say about his personality? To me, it says that there was an extreme quest for order and perfection and balance and symmetry. So that would tell me that then a lot of, you know, he said, are these the men with which I am to defend America? A lot of the chaos of the war would have driven him absolutely nuts.

• 59:43Mike Rowe?

  Think about the tactics that ultimately led to. His near demise at Fort Necessity, but that he ultimately embraced later in the fight, when all those redcoats just looked like targets standing in a line. And he told his own men to adapt the same tactics of the Indians and the French, who kicked his ass 10 years earlier. That's a really interesting way to think about a guy. I mean, that's how you can explain two identical paintings on opposing walls in the same room.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Mike Rowe?

  The man was forced to literally abandon all pretense of order in battle and let his guys free.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  And so that there was this hyper order at Mount Vernon.

• 1:00:21Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  So you see the two happening that he had to abandon. He had to embrace the tactics of like guerrilla warfare. And I think that drove him, you know, that that was such a grade on him that he wanted this row of roses planted exactly this way at Mount Vernon. And so you kind of see one informing the other. And he did completely embrace a new method of winning. And he was able to endure long seasons of of losing and of horrific stakes. And he would have been, he would have had some sort of a presence that it's an uncommon person that after Valley Forge or after the crossing of the Delaware,

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  before this victory or death kind of like thing to recross the Delaware. It's an uncommon person when when a lot of the army could say, all I have to do is get to December 31st and then I can go home. For thousands of those people to stay because of one person, there had to be something uncommon about this one leader. That's like, I'm going to stay and fight and die for that guy even when I don't have to. And so that, you know, a lot of storytelling is just really sitting with that and trying to find out what in the world would have forged that in anyone.

• 1:01:34Mike Rowe?

  Don't you think there's this other thing too? Which is maybe a level down or maybe not. But I remember when I read, well, certainly at Flight 93, you know, Todd and the gang, they charged the cockpit. And then years later, that attack on the Paris train. Couple of guys get up and they just.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  Clint Eastwood did that film, yeah, with the with the actual guys.

• 1:02:01Mike Rowe?

  Movies like that and scenes in yours, when they're done right, they make the viewer ask the question.

• 1:02:11Mike Rowe?

  What would I do?

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Mike Rowe?

  What would I do on Flight 93? I'd like to think I'd be right there with him. But I don't know.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:21Mike Rowe?

  I don't know. I'd like to think that I would have learned a lesson from Ford necessity.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Mike Rowe?

  Like Washington did and have the good sense to course correct my own life, but I don't know.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  You know what I came to? I asked this, again, it's fun to have. You never get to have extended interviews. You never actually, you know, you're always answering the same four questions.

• 1:02:44Mike Rowe?

  Not here, man.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  Not here. But my grandfather, I thought about this.

• 1:02:47Mike Rowe?

  We have eight.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  In depth, in depth. No, this is great. It's a, my grandfather received the Congressional Medal of Honor in World War II. He was a radio operator on board a B-29 Super Fortress. One of his jobs was to drop a phosphorus flare. Phosphorus burns 2,000 degrees, it'll burn through steel, it'll burn under water. They hit an air pocket. The bomb went back up into the plane, ignited in his face. And instead of trying to save himself, he actually grabbed the bomb like a football, marched it all the way to the front of the plane, threw it out of the front of the plane. And it started this series of very, very unlikely events that got him the Medal of Honor in a week. It was the only, it was a stolen medal from Pearl Harbor, because it's the only one in the Pacific. But he was horribly burned.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  He lived through the war, mostly because my grandmother, when she came back, kissed him, said, "Welcome home," and it gave him the will to live. But he was very much like, like Phantom of the Opera, like, you know, the right side of his body completely burned, his arm fused in place. And I remember he said to me, I held his medal when I was like seven years old, and not knowing at the time what this would mean later on, but you know, he said over my shoulder, "Freedom isn't free." And you know, he bore the marks of this statement. And, but it did lead me later on in life, after his funeral, to ask that question of like, you know, would I be able to do this? What I learned in that exploration, talking to some of the other members of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, because the Medal of Honor is like these, these guys that do

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  these superhuman, you know, things in like the blink of an eye, without thinking twice. And where does that happen?

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  What I learned, my grandfather, his dad died, he had to provide for the family when he was 11. He signed up so his brothers wouldn't have to. What I learned was, I remember asking Gary Luttrell, who's a time president of the Medal of Honor Society, like, how do you make this decision? And the idea is that you don't.

• 1:04:43Mike Rowe?

  You don't.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  Whatever you are, up to that moment, manifests.

• 1:04:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  So it's actually about the preparation of what has life taught you to become? So when there's moments of these great pressure and stakes, my grandfather had lived his whole life just sacrificing himself for the people he loved. That's what he did. And so when it was a moment of a bomb on the floor, what do you do? You pick it up and you try to save the people around you. That's just who you are. So what I took from that exploration, now having said that, if I were just to keep talking about this story, I was also on a Southwest flight once and this very old guy started having a seizure and was like on the floor beside me, and by the way, we had just taken off and that plane did not turn around or land, so Southwest will get you there dead or alive.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  But I'm like, oh, we don't care. But then like someone helped and then someone else helped and this guy's. And the first thing that went through my mind, literally the first conscious thought was like, well, he's really old and hasn't taken care of himself. I'm like, oh my God, John, your dad, your granddad's a Medal of Honor recipient. And so I realized there, oh, I probably wouldn't do anything. A lot of people helped before me. I don't know what I would do here. I would crowd the, so maybe that, maybe I'm a storyteller in that DNA, skipped a generation, I learned that day. But you know, I do think that what I find very interesting is you take these heroic moments, they're actually forged over a long period of time and you can kind of trace, whether it's George Washington or my grandfather or Churchill or whoever,

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  you know, these moments in their lives are developed over a long period of time.

• 1:06:18Mike Rowe?

  Of course.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  And so that's what I learned. I still feel bad about that guy. He was fine. He made it through. Once we landed in New Orleans.

• 1:06:24Mike Rowe?

  Did they do, did they still do the meal service for the peanuts?

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  They kind of did everything as if it didn't happen at all. They're like, you know, this is, yeah. Now that against, I love Southwest, but they're just, they're gonna get you there.

• 1:06:35Mike Rowe?

  They're gonna get you there.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:06:37Mike Rowe?

  It's like, what's the old FedEx ad? You absolutely, positively have to be there overnight.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:06:43Mike Rowe?

  Even if the guy beside you dies.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, anyway.

• 1:06:48Mike Rowe?

  I want to go back to something you kind of glossed over that I think is is really important today, and it had to do with this curiosity vis a vis books.

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01Mike Rowe?

  And really, one of the heroes in the movie that you haven't invoked yet is is Fairfax.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Mike Rowe?

  Played by Kelsey Grammer. It's it's it's not a huge part, but what an influence Fairfax had. So when you talk about Washington's curiosity, interest in Cincinnatus, or Seneca, or really any of the Stoics, that whole Greek sort of mafia.

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:28Mike Rowe?

  Right? And like even earlier, you talked about mentorship, you know, and that was, you know, Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle, and Aristotle

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Oh, good point.

• 1:07:40Mike Rowe?

  Taught Alexander.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:42Mike Rowe?

  Who was pretty great, you know, and so I've talked to a lot of people in that chair about how do you bring mentorship back in to the schools? But right adjacent to that is why were books so valuable? Like, there's that scene with Fairfax where he like takes six or seven, and Fairfax like, there's one at a time.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:08:04Mike Rowe?

  Right?

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:05Mike Rowe?

  So my theory is that they were in such short supply.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Mike Rowe?

  And that there was

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  That's accurate.

• 1:08:10Mike Rowe?

  Oh, OK, cool, because like today, we're drowning in information. I've got right here access to everything Seneca and Cincinnatus ever wrote.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Think about that.

• 1:08:21Mike Rowe?

  And it's free.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Mike Rowe?

  And I'm not reading it. I'm scrolling through people getting scared and falling down steps instead, right? I'm not like, like

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  Which is kind of fun, actually.

• 1:08:33Mike Rowe?

  It's great.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Mike Rowe?

  Don't let anybody tell you it's not great.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  But what is it doing to our minds?

• 1:08:38Mike Rowe?

  Nothing good.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:39Mike Rowe?

  Nothing good.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  Cat fail videos.

• 1:08:46Mike 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.

• 1:09:28Mike Rowe?

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

• 1:10:11Mike 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. Talk about scarcity with regard to books, information, and greatness.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  Isn't it interesting, when there's no longer scarcity of knowledge, it's sort of like if you live too close to the theme park, you don't ride the ride somehow. But back then, in a scene that we portray in the film, it would have happened progressively and earlier in his life. We kind of pushed the idea of it into the movie. But Fairfax was Washington's first real patron, kind of like the... The gate he walked through and Fairfax, that would have been like the rich people living down the road, Washington would have that kid down the street, you know, and they would have known about him. But there's a scene in Fairfax's library and he had 3,000 books. He called them his true tenants.

• 1:11:06Mike Rowe?

  Washington breaks into his house.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:11:08Mike Rowe?

  Crashes a party.

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  Crashes a party, yeah.

• 1:11:10Mike Rowe?

  Right? And that basically leaves with books.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  And leaves with with a gig to go survey Fairfax's land, but also with the books. And the books that he got on surveying, he actually got from Fairfax's cousin. And so what you see with Washington is a guy that whose education was denied him very early, and he became incredibly curious and incredible student and reader.

• 1:11:32Mike Rowe?

  Veracious.

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  And voracious reader. And one of the things that you don't think about the American Revolution and why it worked when most revolutions don't. Our founding fathers, it was a war of words as much as it was a war of they you want to talk about some of the great writers.

• 1:11:49Mike Rowe?

  The best.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  And you just look at Washington's writing and his penmanship and you read like, you know, we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, you know? That is the rights of man and this age of reason coming over from Europe colliding with kind of the purpose and faith and.

• 1:12:06Mike Rowe?

  It's also the finished product. Like, that's not how it was originally written, correct?

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, well, Jefferson, I think, much quieter, probably the great greatest mind in the history of our country and in my opinion. But I think that that would have frustrated him greatly and because I think he wrote it a version and then it was Franklin specifically and others of like, people are gonna need to, there's gonna be some rewrites.

• 1:12:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  Thomas, which I think would have been like, so Jefferson's rewrite, Jefferson wrote, we hold these words to be sacred and undeniable. Jefferson, I'm sorry, Franklin, coming out for, you know, he's a, he's a scientist. He's like, no, we should go with like empirical, measurable. We hold these words to be self evident that all men are created equal. I just think one of the great.

• 1:12:48Mike Rowe?

  Like obvious.

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  Obvious.

• 1:12:49Mike Rowe?

  Like today, in parent, we would go, duh.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  But the gauntlet of your saying to Europe and to England, and here's the fundamental difference in America. We hold this basic thing to be obvious, blatant in front of everyone's face. A no brainer. Everyone is created equal. That is a defiant sentence and a wild concept at the time.

• 1:13:16Mike Rowe?

  Especially as articulated by men in a country. And believe me, I'm only saying it because half the audience is thinking it. But where do we get off wrapping ourselves in self evident truths regarding equality? While we're holding slaves. And look, I have my theory, but give me yours.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  Well, again, if you did a doc or a podcast of just words struck out by the Declaration of Independence, you would get to sacred and undeniable, struck out, self evident. Um, that all men are created equal. Everyone. Then you would get to um, subjects struck out with citizens. Then you would get to an entire paragraph about the evils of slavery struck out to get South.

• 1:14:00Mike Rowe?

  South Carolina was not uh, Rutledge, as I recall.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so here is, not many people know this. It's quite the study that change does not happen when people realize something is wrong. Change often waits for a moment and doesn't happen. It's a war of convenience and opportunity. So Jefferson tried to be an abolitionist when he was like 30 years old. It was so inextricably linked to the economy and so hard to deal with everyone. There was a broad consensus that this is wrong. We don't know what to do with it. We don't know how to fix it. And so what I would say in the kind of the riddle me this, first of all, it's an incredible thing to look around the world as you've always known it and say, maybe it shouldn't be this way.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Like that is its own act of courage. So for this group of founders to look at slavery and say, we're going to go ahead and throw the gauntlet that we know in our lifetime, we will never achieve. And then we don't know how to deal with with this national sin. But what they did know, what Jefferson said is we're going to push this to the work of greater men, to the work of future generations. And so the ideas, my theory is what they realized is their job was to forge a nation, a solidified nation that was strong enough to deal with slavery.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  And that that was their work and that that would set the stage for the work of future generations. That's my read on it and my riddle me this to whoever disagrees with me is if they choose to keep that paragraph in the Declaration of Independence, dealing with slavery.

• 1:15:37Mike Rowe?

  We're nowhere.

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

  There's no nation. And if there's no nation, there's nothing consolidated and powerful enough to deal with slavery. It's this kind of like a chicken and egg conundrum, but to blame them for the paradigms of the world they grew up in, when they're the ones that actually had the boldness to say, I don't think the world should be this way.

• 1:15:57Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  Is ridiculous, in my opinion.

• 1:15:59Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, it's ridiculously noble in part, but but I think more so, it's just so human. Look, we're all hypocrites.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  Yes, that's true.

• 1:16:11Mike Rowe?

  Every single one of us preaches something slightly different than what we practice to some degree. When you think about the mind of Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, all those cats, man. They weren't stupid people. They knew that A, the Declaration was a death warrant and they signed it anyway.

• 1:16:34Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:16:34Mike Rowe?

  And they also knew it was the biggest invitation ever to just, the rejoinder was going to be you hypocrites.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:43Mike Rowe?

  But they did it anyway.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:16:46Mike Rowe?

  For the reasons I think that you're suggesting, it was, like you said, what's a film? It's a reflection of the filmmaker's personal life at the time he tells the story.

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:16:58Mike Rowe?

  That's what this is too. That was the moment in time.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it was never even supposed to be a unifying concept. There was never supposed to be a gauntlet. It was just supposed to be this committee that's writing a document for all the reasons that England sucks and we're leaving. So the the courage of saying, we want to summarize this whole idea bumbling up in the colonies in one sentence.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  That was never on the kind of the like the boxes to check for that committee. So it says something about them that we're actually going to write this sentence that I think they knew would lead to a constant quest, imperfect as it is of like, it's a sentence by which we're never able to totally accomplish or measure up.

• 1:17:46Mike Rowe?

  You're talking about all men are created equal.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  All men are created equal endowed, but we're trying to figure it out today. We were trying to figure it out 50 years ago. What does that mean? And how can we form a more, a more perfect union? And so I think that there was the, one of the things I love about this generation is they set these crazy goals. And then even in forging the constitution, which is kind of where we became a nation, they actually baked in this idea, it was not Picasso, it was the other guy, you know? It was the idea, this, this is a never finished document that we will just keep improving upon. And they had that self-awareness, that's an incredible thing. So I don't think that you, again, I don't at least do the work of studying the history to understand

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  if you're going to criticize them for the world that they came from while they dreamed of a new one.

• 1:18:36Mike Rowe?

  That's an amazing observation, actually. The constitution is my best argument for Cezanne's process.

• 1:18:44Speaker 02

  But they're not selling the constitution over and over again. At some point, if you're an artist, you gotta, you gotta.

• 1:18:48Mike Rowe?

  You gotta move on.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  You gotta frame in someone's house.

• 1:18:50Mike Rowe?

  What have you done for me lately?

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  I would love to do a short film of this painter that's literally breaking into someone's house. Like move, move, just, just get, I need a brush, you know? He's like, he's like changing paintings in someone's house.

• 1:19:01Mike Rowe?

  What are you waiting for, man? Why are, where's the story at least? Or, I mean, maybe it's not a film, but you're pops, dude. I mean, phosphorus bomb runs it out of the plane. I mean.

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  Technology, I think, by the way, so if, to go on that rabbit trail, so we're. So they're the lead plane. Their plane was called the City of Los Angeles. And it's the Pathfinder. So they're leading 800 planes. LeMay, which is kind of like the Patton of the Pacific.

• 1:19:30Mike Rowe?

  Like Curtis?

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  Curtis LeMay, yeah. Was like, you never turn around. Mission over the man, you never turn around. Well, there was a Colonel on board when this happened. And they, they started to descend, um, because the plane was filled with smoke. He marched it to the front of the plane, threw it out over the Colonel's shoulder, collapsed in flames. The Colonel was so moved by what he saw that he said, I don't care if they court martial, we turn this plane around right now. Um, so they drop out and they were like, we're going to try to save this man's life because I've, I've never seen anything like this. So the airstrip at Iwo Jima had just opened. There was still, um, there was still basically, uh, uh, conflict at Iwo Jima. And so they, they were actually fired upon as they landed Iwo Jima. The pilot of the plane, that Colonel, wrote the citation for the Congressional Medal of Honor that night. Normally it takes about a year.

• 1:20:16Speaker 02

  It's like a trial to say, does this act merit above and beyond the call of duty?

• 1:20:21Mike Rowe?

  What was his name, your pup?

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  Uh, Red Irwin, Henry Eugene Irwin, they called him Red Irwin. And, uh, and my granddad. And, and basically they, um, so they wake LeMay up at five in the morning on Guam, which is its own act of courage. He was so moved by what he read that he used his abrasiveness to get it to Washington. Well, all this happened the day FDR died. So it's Truman's first day in office.

• 1:20:44Mike Rowe?

  Oh, man.

• 1:20:45Speaker 02

  Truman said, basically, I'd rather have the Congressional Medal of Honor than be President of the United States. So here comes this, first day in office, here comes this hero in the Pacific, this guy that threw this bomb. And he gets it through Congress in one day, which is never, because they all thought he was going to die. It's never happened before. So then it's like you were going to give the Medal of Honor posthumously to this guy. And, um, LeMay says, no, I want to pin a Medal of Honor on this kid's neck. Well, there's only one Medal of Honor in the Pacific. You, you, when you get a Medal of Honor, you get your real one, you get a display medal. So there's one display medal. It's in a general's display case at Pearl Harbor. So they stripped down a B-29. It's ultra-long flight from Guam, the secret mission. They land, uh, the general's not there, they break into his office, they can't find the key, they smash the display case, steal the medal.

• 1:21:27Mike Rowe?

  You've got to be kidding me.

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  Dead series. All this happens when my grandfather's brother was in Saipan and LeMay asked him, what, what can I do for you? He's like, I'd like to see my brother. And, um, the, it was Tyrone Powers, the actor, was doing like a tour and he was a pilot. So he flew my granddad's brother to his bedside. And he didn't recognize my granddad because he was so burned, which started this fear of like, what's, he was married three months before the war, really good looking guy. What's my wife gonna think? So they get him, LeMay gets this medal, they steal it, they scratch my grandfather's name in the back of it and they pin it on his neck a week after it happened, which has never happened before. And then my granddad endured like 47 surgeries or something, came back 87 pounds, clinging to life. The guy in the burn ward beside him, his wife came in, was so horrified by what she saw.

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  So it's like, that's not my husband. And she left, the guy was dead of a broken heart the next morning. So my granddad was terrified of this. My grandmother comes in, having only received a telegram that he was injured. Married three months before the war. He goes away, this super good looking guy, you know, looked like Matt Damon. He comes back, shell of a person. She comes in, he clutched the bomb like this. So the whole right side of his face. She finds the only unburned portion of his cheek, kisses him and says, welcome home, I love you. That gave him the will to live. And they had five kids all after. Well, there he is. That's my granddad.

• 1:22:42Mike Rowe?

  So this, holy crap dude, that's like Ali Murphy.

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  So the story of like, but the idea of, you know, to go above and beyond the call of duty and what that means to do more than is required of you is how it.

• 1:22:56Mike Rowe?

  That's red.

• 1:22:57Speaker 02

  That's red, or when my granddad, yeah.

• 1:22:58Mike Rowe?

  What are you waiting for, dude? What are you waiting for?

• 1:23:01Speaker 02

  There's only one.

• 1:23:02Mike Rowe?

  What do you need AI? Dude, do you need some AI? Cause we got it.

• 1:23:05Speaker 02

  No, we do, yeah. My, my show, House of David is the, one of the first shows to really integrate fully a lot of new technology, but we're waiting on, I gotta put 800 B 29s up in the air. So I've got time. Let, let the technology, but that will be the ultimate story.

• 1:23:18Mike Rowe?

  You must, you must.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  Okay. If there's anything I've taken from this is Washington opens well, I have to do my granddad's.

• 1:23:25Mike Rowe?

  You have to, dude, I mean.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  It's a great story.

• 1:23:27Mike Rowe?

  I'm just looking at your resume, you've got permission, you can do pretty much whatever you want.

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  I hope so.

• 1:23:34Mike Rowe?

  But, but I mean, how many people in your position actually have that bit of genealogy?

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  Well, also I didn't, here's the thing of like the stories that we listen to, the books we read, the mentors we seek out, like you said about Washington. I would go, my grandfather had like a photographic memory, had a stroke late in his life. I would go over and stay with him.

• 1:23:52Mike Rowe?

  How long did he live?

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  Uh, he lived 2001, I was 19 years old. And I did not listen to his stories. Like I loved him and we would talk, but I did not listen. And it was not until his funeral that I was sitting there. And it was like, he wanted to be buried in Birmingham, where he was from. And it was very cloudy, very rainy, cold. And there were like generals and all these people. And then there was a bomber from the 23rd Air Force that found its way under the cloud line and tipped its wings. And then there were these two officers playing taps and echoing. And I remember going up to one of them and saying, "Thank you for what you're doing for our family.

• 1:24:36Speaker 02

  I'm so sorry you have to stand out here in the rain, sleek." And they said, "No, this is, your grandfather is one of our nation's heroes. It's our honor." And it just flipped a switch of curiosity of like, "What did I miss?" So I got to go all over the country and find his only living crew members and eyewitnesses and talk to them and listen.

• 1:24:54Mike Rowe?

  Absolute blessing.

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  And one of them said, "He didn't save 11 guys. He saved generations of people." And so, and then a long time was like, "What does this mean for me of going above and beyond the call of duty?" For me, it's just do the best you can, do more than is required of you.

• 1:25:07Mike Rowe?

  What's his wife's name?

• 1:25:09Speaker 02

  Betty.

• 1:25:09Mike Rowe?

  Okay. See, this is why I ask you at the beginning, how do you know where to start a story?

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:14Mike Rowe?

  I mean, I ask myself the same question all the time because there's no real right answer.

• 1:25:23Mike Rowe?

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

• 1:26:08Mike Rowe?

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

• 1:26:53Mike Rowe?

  Try it free. I mean, Travis Mills. Familiar with him? He's a friend of ours. He came back from Afghanistan. I think one of the first or second to quadruple amputees to survive.

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:27:13Mike Rowe?

  Now.

• 1:27:14Speaker 02

  I know this person, yeah.

• 1:27:15Mike Rowe?

  Okay. He wrote a book called, I think, The Harder They Come, or Never Quit, or one of those things. I'll find it. But, I mean, there's so many things I could tell you about it.

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  Tough as they come.

• 1:27:29Mike Rowe?

  Tough as they come. But the thing is, it's his wife.

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:33Mike Rowe?

  It's his wife. Like, he's out. He's blown up. He's got no arms. He's got no legs.

• 1:27:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:39Mike Rowe?

  And he's got no clear path forward. And his first kid, I think, is on the way. Right? And he's just in a hospital on the other side of the world. And he's just, there's just no way, man. There's just no way.

• 1:27:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:52Mike Rowe?

  And, you know, by the time they get in the same room together, she's like, no, no, no, I didn't, you know, I signed on. He said, you didn't sign on for this. And she said, I signed on exactly for this. The uncertainty of it. This is, I'm not going anywhere.

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  You know, my grandmother, there was a moment when my-

• 1:28:13Mike Rowe?

  There she is. These two.

• 1:28:14Speaker 02

  That's incredible. Look at that. There was a moment like that-

• 1:28:18Mike Rowe?

  They've had a second kid.

• 1:28:19Speaker 02

  That's incredible.

• 1:28:20Mike Rowe?

  I mean, it's just-

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  My grandfather, I remember my granddad had a stroke. This was about a year before he died. And I remember he caught my grandmother's eye across the room. And it was like two starstruck teenage lovers like and I'm like, what in the here's this guy horribly burned. Now he's he half his body's paralyzed. He can't walk in the way they look to each other. So after he died, I interviewed my grandmother and I just said, how do you make? What did you know? All she knew was he had been injured. That's it. Okay, now you come in.

• 1:28:49Mike Rowe?

  It's her movie.

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  Eighty seven pounds, forty five surgeries already, arm fused in place, horrific burns. Uh, like I've got a picture uh on my mantle with him with, because he went and saw the presidents with JFK. And he would turn like this for photos, you know, because his face was so burned. And I said, basically, how did you choose to stay like how? Especially in this kind of like, you know, Kardashian culture we live in now, like, how do you? How do you do it? And she couldn't even contemplate, she couldn't understand the question. Like, she's just like, I don't understand, how would I not, why would I, that was my husband, he's my husband, like. There was no other option.

• 1:29:30Mike Rowe?

  Right. So the same quality in red that really gives him no choice but to pick up the phosphorus bomb and run to the front.

• 1:29:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:37Mike Rowe?

  There's the same quality in her.

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:39Mike Rowe?

  I don't want any credit, but that maybe a walk on.

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  If this is my next movie.

• 1:29:43Mike Rowe?

  This is your next movie. It's it's look, it's called The Kiss.

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:49Mike Rowe?

  It's told through Betty's point of view.

• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:29:52Mike Rowe?

  It's got all the excitement you need, but everything you said, it's like, yes, his bravery, his moment.

• 1:29:58Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, but the real strength, man.

• 1:30:00Mike Rowe?

  But her walking in and kissing the one part of his face that's not peeling off, dude. Are you, you, there won't be a dry eye in the house.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  And just said, welcome home, I love you. And that's what gave him the will to live. And they had, they had five kids all after the war, my dad being the second. He worked at the VA hospital for thirty years, helping other veterans get their wound in, you know, get their benefits. And yeah, I've just, you know, it's very moving to me to, it's certainly the story that has driven. My film career is to have those awestruck moments where you say, how does someone do that? And then to try to cipher their life to answer that question. That's the idea. And I do love adapt, when they say a filmmaker finds their story and tells it over and over again, I love. Adaptations of true stories and um. So yeah, I always thought continuing Washington. But maybe, you know, that, he's dead.

• 1:30:48Mike Rowe?

  He's gone, man. He's on money.

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  I can get there. Maybe it's time for my grandad story, and if it did, it happened right here. It's so good. It's, uh.

• 1:30:58Mike Rowe?

  I want to be respectfully, how long I've been gone? About like hour 20 or something?

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, hour 20, exactly. I'm, I'm happy to, I'm, I've got time.

• 1:31:06Mike Rowe?

  Well, the guy who's coming in next is just something else.

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  You gotta, you gotta.

• 1:31:12Mike Rowe?

  I know, I know.

• 1:31:12Speaker 02

  There's a lot of people that have sat in this chair.

• 1:31:14Mike Rowe?

  You know what? Well, as you were just talking, I was thinking, uh, our friend Gary Sinise was here not long ago.

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  I love Gary Sinise.

• 1:31:20Mike Rowe?

  And I asked him a similar question about Medal of Honor recipients. I don't think anybody's ever been in the presence of more of them.

• 1:31:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:29Mike Rowe?

  Than him.

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:30Mike Rowe?

  I'd actually written a story about Jack Lucas, the kid who stowed away on a carrier.

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:31:37Mike Rowe?

  To Iwo.

• 1:31:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:31:39Mike Rowe?

  They found him. They were gonna court martial him.

• 1:31:41Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:31:42Mike Rowe?

  And he talked his way into the battle, and that crazy son of a gun threw himself on two grenades.

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  It's incredible.

• 1:31:50Mike Rowe?

  One went off, the other didn't. Didn't kill him. His book's called Indestructible.

• 1:31:54Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 1:31:55Mike Rowe?

  But the point is, that guy forged his mother's name after Pearl Harbor and got in when he was 13.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 1:32:04Mike Rowe?

  By the time he's on Iwo, he's like 16.

• 1:32:07Speaker 02

  16, incredible.

• 1:32:09Mike Rowe?

  And so he's the youngest Medal of Honor winner.

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  16 years old. It's, look, it's the greatest generation for a reason, but, but.

• 1:32:16Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's what I, I'd like how, I mean, Washington at necessity was 21, 22?

• 1:32:22Speaker 02

  21 going in 22, so I think he's 22 when it happened. Gosh, don't, look it up.

• 1:32:28Mike Rowe?

  The guy who's coming in here next is 22. His name's Ethan Thornton. He's running what's probably gonna be the most consequential defense industrial company in business today. He's leading the charge for autonomous weapons.

• 1:32:43Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 1:32:43Mike Rowe?

  He dropped out of MIT to start this company that's now valued at 1.8 billion dollars.

• 1:32:50Speaker 02

  He was a Thiel kid, right?

• 1:32:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, he, he was a Thiel fellow.

• 1:32:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:53Mike Rowe?

  Right?

• 1:32:53Speaker 02

  Incredible. By the way, yeah, the whole founders, that whole. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:58Mike Rowe?

  But it rhymes, man. It's like, like, if you, like, why am I so impressed with the fact that Ethan is 22?

• 1:33:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:06Mike Rowe?

  When that's kind of the way it was from the be, that it's only recently that we've become so like dopey dopey dope dope. I mean, our founders, our generals.

• 1:33:21Speaker 02

  Jefferson writes probably one of the most perfect sentences ever written. He's how old? He's, uh, he's 33, I think, 30. He's young.

• 1:33:30Mike Rowe?

  He just wants to get home and get.

• 1:33:32Speaker 02

  New lady, Mrs. Martha, you know? You know, it's like, my, my thing is, young people can change the world. And that's one of the things that I wanted to point out in the film is I wanted to show with Washington that this was an adventure. It's entertaining. But this guy was young and you don't have to wait to change the world wherever, or your world, wherever you are.

• 1:33:53Mike Rowe?

  How old was Red when he picked up the bomb?

• 1:33:54Speaker 02

  He was 23. In that world, oh, there's a pattern here. By the way, you should do something of like, I'm always interested in, I've, somebody said, told me one time, if you're around great people, don't learn what they do, learn how they think. So as many people as sat in this chair, it'd be interesting to say like, what are the common characteristics of thinking or, you know, values that, that, uh,

• 1:34:15Mike Rowe?

  I'll give you one. I'll give you one that you don't read about a bunch. They're agitated.

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  They're contrarian in a way?

• 1:34:24Mike Rowe?

  They're, they're contrarian. They're all, they're, they're open to the reverse commute. They're, they're suspicious of the direction where everybody is going.

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:34:33Mike Rowe?

  They're looking for an alternative way to do it. But mostly they just wake up agitated that the world's not quite the way it ought to be.

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  And they're the ones that let that agitation finally.

• 1:34:43Mike Rowe?

  They're disagreeable.

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  I agree with that. By the way, you, you want to, we, we are a nation founded by rebels. Like, remember that. You know what I'm saying? Like, these were contrarian, you know? They didn't like the way the world was and they dreamed of a better one. And, uh,

• 1:35:00Mike Rowe?

  They didn't just dream of it, man.

• 1:35:02Speaker 02

  And then they rolled up their sleeves and they, they willed it into existence.

• 1:35:06Mike Rowe?

  When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary.

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:10Mike Rowe?

  Are you kidding me? That's not a dream. You know, somebody asked me.

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's true.

• 1:35:15Mike Rowe?

  Oh, it becomes necessary for necessity.

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:20Mike Rowe?

  Coincidence?

• 1:35:21Speaker 02

  Maybe not.

• 1:35:23Mike Rowe?

  Oh, I assume you saw 1776, the musical?

• 1:35:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not in a great, great length of time, but yes, yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:30Mike Rowe?

  You know, I, there are so many things you said reminded me of it, but mostly just as a very different piece of art.

• 1:35:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:40Mike Rowe?

  This is a Broadway musical that, for me, did more to open that portal to the past than really any other thing I've ever seen.

• 1:35:52Speaker 02

  You know, here's my hope, whether it's 1776, certainly not, I finally did see Hamilton, never with the original cast, but multiple times.

• 1:36:00Mike Rowe?

  But you're not bitter at all.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  But I'm not bitter about it, but, but I'm like, I'm gonna rage against this. I was kept out of kindergarten, now it's this play. And, and it does something to you. But I will, I hope, if there was any invitation I could get, first of all, I hope people love the movie. It is out nationwide, it's the only movie that celebrates the American story in theaters nationwide on R250. So I hope you love it, go check it out. I made it for my whole family, like, my youngest is nine, so it's visceral, it's PG 13, but in a way that he loves. So go take your family to see it, or you don't care about America, I'm kidding. But, but it's a-

• 1:36:34Mike Rowe?

  No, I don't think you are, man.

• 1:36:36Speaker 02

  It's, it's- Go see the movie.

• 1:36:37Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:38Speaker 02

  Having said that, my hope is that people will go on the same, it sounds like 1776 might have started it for you. Go on a bender of learning the origin of our country. First of all, the story lives up to its hype, it's an incredible story.

• 1:36:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:50Speaker 02

  Like, once you start learning, you can't stop. But second, you know, cynicism and gratitude cancel each other out. You cannot feel both emotions at the same time. And so I think, I would argue, that so many of the problems that we're having are, come from the fact that we don't know our origin story. And, and we don't understand why we're here and, and what America is. And I think if you take the time to learn it, what, all I can tell you is what happened to me. What happened to me is when I really took time to study the American Revolution and the founding of our country and the idea of what America represents and is, I was filled with awe and wonder and gratitude and a sense of stewardship and pride.

• 1:37:31Speaker 02

  And like this American experiment, this idea is somehow entrusted to us. Two fifty, that's a cool anniversary. But you know, you go to Greece or somewhere like where we film House of David, you realize, oh, we're still like a little Ikea store. This is still a new idea. And it's entrusted to us. And my hope is that people will see the movie, love it, and then go on their own quest to, and then the story will do the work. But of just understanding who we are, why we're here, and that we're a nation bound by ideas and ideals. And, uh, and that's my hope. That's my hope for ultimately for what I hope the movie provokes. It's the same thing when I, when I went through, you know, your eight minute podcast.

• 1:38:12Mike Rowe?

  At the crossroad, yeah.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  Like, I instantly had to know, did this really happen? And what does this mean? And was this, is this tavern a real place? And, and that's my hope is that people will see the movie that will love it. And my oath is that, uh, you know, I'm gonna do as much as I can to tell American stories. And, uh, whether it's My Granddad's is a great idea, or Continued Washington, or whatever. That would be my dream, uh, i- if the movie really works in a fundamental way. And, um, but, but I do think ultimately, we, we have way more that unites us than divides us, and we've just lost sight of it. And my hope is that the movie will be one of those things that could be an agent of getting us to, uh, to love the ethos of our country together.

• 1:38:58Mike Rowe?

  I think it can do that, seriously. But I also think, given the occasion, it's a celebration.

• 1:39:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:03Mike Rowe?

  It'll make, I mean, in real time, what, I watched it in June. Tomorrow, you know, right after this podcast drops, you can watch it on the Fourth of July.

• 1:39:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:14Mike Rowe?

  It is a terrific way to celebrate the country, but it's also, who called Washington the indispensable man?

• 1:39:24Speaker 02

  Oh, man, you've got me.

• 1:39:25Mike Rowe?

  See if you can find that.

• 1:39:26Speaker 02

  Someone did call Washington the indispensable man, and that is a true statement.

• 1:39:30Mike Rowe?

  For sure.

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  There, it's undeniable.

• 1:39:33Mike Rowe?

  For sure.

• 1:39:34Speaker 02

  That if this guy does not, and here's the crazy thing is, he knew. He had an awareness, especially when he went back, as he said, to the gallows when, to become president. He knew he embodied the concept. He knew he was the galvanizing figure. And twice, he gave up absolute power. Gave it back to the people after his model, Cincinnatus. That is incredible. As someone that's so aware of their power and so willing to give it up.

• 1:40:05Mike Rowe?

  Dude, I don't want to end on anything remotely cynical. But when you think about what drives power today, what drives ambition today? When you look at how hard someone will work to hold elected office. When you look at the absolute absurdity of people staying in office for 50, 60 years.

• 1:40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:27Mike Rowe?

  Right?

• 1:40:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:28Mike Rowe?

  Like that, when you see the political superstructure become the goal.

• 1:40:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:35Mike Rowe?

  Of the individual. That's not what Cincinnatus was thinking. That's not what was baked into any of the founding documents.

• 1:40:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, the idea of a republic, this idea of government of the people, by the people, for the people. I think it's such a simple concept, but it's the last line of the movie and I think it's true. The idea that to lead is to serve. That's the job. It's not about you. It's not about what you can accomplish. It's not about, it's to lead is to be in service to the people that you're entrusted with and to the idea itself. You know, JFK said, ideas live on, you know, that type of thing. I think we would do well to remember that. And then I also think, as I've studied it, what's missing of like, I'll tell you how to cure a partisan divide. A dictator, like our form of government.

• 1:41:29Speaker 02

  One of the things that makes our form of government unique is our ability to argue. And a republic is indistinguishable. You cannot separate a partisan divide from the idea of a democracy and a republic. So we gotta remember how to argue well. In the sense of like, the point is, we can even celebrate, we get to argue. There's some countries where if you argue, bad things happen to you. That's not America. We get to argue. And that actually is one of the things that makes us unique. But in studying the American Revolution and in studying books, I'm like, what is the difference? I think one of the defining differences is you had a group of people that actually had true intellectual curiosity to find out what works and what was true.

• 1:42:11Speaker 02

  And I think what we've lost is we just wanna be right. It's kind of very tribal and it's us versus them. There was partisan divides then. In some cases, you could argue it was even worse. We don't have duels anymore, but maybe we should.

• 1:42:25Mike Rowe?

  Maybe we should.

• 1:42:26Speaker 02

  But.

• 1:42:26Mike Rowe?

  Hey, look, that's a deep rabbit hole.

• 1:42:28Speaker 02

  What was missing though.

• 1:42:29Mike Rowe?

  The death of manners is linked to the absence of consequence. And a duel was the ultimate love letter to consequences.

• 1:42:38Speaker 02

  Maybe we should bring duels back. You heard it here. But it's uh.

• 1:42:41Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, but not for me.

• 1:42:43Speaker 02

  But basically, even like Jefferson and Adams dying 50 years to the day after the document that they co-wrote, after they were on each end of a partisan divide and then wrote letters to each other and then died on the same day of the document they wrote 50 years later. It just shows that.

• 1:43:00Mike Rowe?

  Can't script it.

• 1:43:01Speaker 02

  They could win each other over. They had the courage to be wrong and to admit that they were wrong and to evolve in their thinking and they had true intellectual curiosity. And I think a basic respect for the other side and a basic loyalty to the overall idea despite their differences. And we would do well to remember that as well. Like, we're not each other's enemy, even when we differ. We're just trying to figure this thing out, you know?

• 1:43:29Mike Rowe?

  Young Washington will remind you of all of those things. Who said it, Charlie?

• 1:43:33Speaker 01

  James Thomas Flexner, historian. He wrote a book called Washington, The Indispensable Man.

• 1:43:38Mike Rowe?

  Oh, so then I can't steal it for the title of this, but. Maybe I could.

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  I don't see why not.

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  Good artist copy, great artist steal.

• 1:43:45Mike Rowe?

  Hey man, you know what? It all rhymes, doesn't it?

• 1:43:48Speaker 02

  It does.

• 1:43:49Mike Rowe?

  And I don't know you well enough to say this, but I would wager Red's looking down, giving you a big thumbs up.

• 1:43:54Speaker 02

  That means a lot to me, man. Although, there is nothing like a great conversation. Many of them have been had across this table, so I'm honored to sit here.

• 1:44:05Mike Rowe?

  I'm a fan. I can't wait to get my lawyers involved after the kiss goes to number one with Betty and Red.

• 1:44:11Speaker 02

  You heard it here. You know what's interesting is just trying to crack the story.

• 1:44:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:16Speaker 02

  Man, you've ruined me. Now I'm gonna be releasing a movie. I'm like, oh, it's my grandmother's kiss. It's her point of view. Oh, my gosh.

• 1:44:23Mike Rowe?

  Ever since Rose said, "Where do you start the story?" And now I see it. Now I understand.

• 1:44:28Speaker 02

  And then if Washington really works, everybody's gonna be like, "Sequel to Washington." I'm like, "No, I watched the micro pie. I've gotta go do my granddad's story now."

• 1:44:37Mike Rowe?

  You know what? It's providential.

• 1:44:40Speaker 02

  Divine hand. It's a thing. Wonderful conversation. Real pleasure.

• 1:44:44Mike Rowe?

  Great fun. Go see the movie. Bring the whole family. Ye shall be restored. Thank you, John.

• 1:44:48Speaker 02

  He said it. Great, thank you.

• 1:44:50Mike Rowe?

  This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long. But if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go online and leave us a review.

• 1:45:27Mike Rowe?

  I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge. But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Not four. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review.

• 1:45:43Speaker 02

  And not three.

• 1:45:43Mike Rowe?

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

• 1:45:46Speaker 02

  Definitely not two.

• 1:45:46Mike Rowe?

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

• 1:45:49Speaker 02

  We need five.

• 1:45:50Mike Rowe?

  All you've got to do is leave a quick-

• 1:45:52Speaker 02

  Even if you hate it.

• 1:45:52Mike Rowe?

  Five-star review.

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:46:02Speaker 03

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• 1:46:35Speaker 04

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• 1:46:49Speaker 04

  Apparently, we celebrate. At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices. When your fresh detector is going off, head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.