489: Michael Easter—The Hard Way

Why do so many of the things that make us stronger, healthier, and happier require doing things the hard way? Mike sits down with bestselling author, journalist, and researcher Michael Easter https://eastermichael.com/ to explore the surprising benefits of discomfort, challenge, and voluntary hardship in a world engineered for convenience. Easter, whose work has appeared in Men's Health, Outside, Esquire, and Scientific American, discusses the ideas behind his bestselling books The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain, along with his newest release, Walk with Weight: The Definitive Guide to Rucking https://www.amazon.com/Walk-Weight-Definitive-Guide-Rucking/dp/0063452537/ref=sr_1_1?crid=CA9813DV5WN7&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._174n57hrTBXLiiL_qu6QkMe0xRO4Fxy2GujVFkE-3Kh_VtsLSvmaYEN0l_t3KzhV7KnNG3a6bhCnCmAV3s_7zzUvdXeo2VP78KZbtq8GVtdOBv07seSm9ilIVOgOQjvgUPfgJSqLFCmsKqOb64wnTUh_CYZA6Cbqw26OdmNZulk8CCWj23E51PzsM0TktOxa3wlwRDPW7dP-yt7-oscNv0jdUiliimHBpBkuRkGtsc. DxTkRwbmy0WoWuvExMiyhKU4pCPu__0sjgge_EosA0E&dib_tag=se&keywords=walk+with+weight+michael+easter&qid=1781561401&sprefix=Walk+with+weight%2Caps%2C178&sr=8-1. From carrying heavy loads to carrying life's burdens, Michael explains why the easiest path is rarely the most rewarding—and why embracing difficulty might be the key to a better life.

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

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Hey, it's The Way I Heard It. I'm Mike Rowe. And Chuck, it occurs to me

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:07Mike Rowe?

  as we delve into the preamble for today's very special guest, that I have been crossing names off of a list in my mind. And the list consists of people who I've interviewed before, but never in person.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And today, you got to cross another one off.

• 0:27Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Actually, you got to cross off two, but

• 0:30Mike Rowe?

  I did do two today. Let's not speak of the other one yet.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:33Mike Rowe?

  We'll save him for another time. Or perhaps you've already heard him. Difficult to know. But this guy, I bet you do know. If you're a friend of the podcast, his name is Michael Easter. He's an author. I met him a few years ago at some sort of event. We were long distance, still in the lockdowns. And he was talking about a book he had written called The Comfort Crisis.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Great book.

• 0:54Mike Rowe?

  It really is good, man. It's a very solid, solid, fun read that has a lot of thoughtful information in it. But at its heart, makes a very simple argument that if you have an easy button within reach, you can press it, but there will be some unintended consequences.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16Mike Rowe?

  Hitting the easy button almost never leads to any long-term benefit. And we all know this, you know? These are lessons we drilled into our brains growing up. But boy, it's easy to forget. And especially today, when the easy way is all around us. Uh, Mike Easter has carved out a pretty good niche, I think, in the ecosystem in favor of doing things the hard way.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love this quote. He says, "The most rewarding things in life come on the other side of hard."

• 1:46Mike Rowe?

  Which sounds vaguely dirty to me. And I don't want to unpack that whole thing.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:50Mike Rowe?

  But I know what he meant. And I think I know what

• 1:55Mike Rowe?

  Guys, there's nothing good on the other side of hard.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:58Mike Rowe?

  But of course there is. We all know the importance of being challenged. Nobody ever had a great story to tell who didn't pay a price.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:08Mike Rowe?

  And there's just no getting around it. I guess, what's the old, do you remember that poster? We were in high school, it came out. It was, uh, it was no pain, no gain.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:17Mike Rowe?

  And they were hanging in gyms everywhere.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20Mike Rowe?

  And then I saw one of a guy sitting on a, a keg of beer, right?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25Mike Rowe?

  And he's like just drinking a draft beer and it's like running down his face and it's a wide shot. And the caption says, no pain, no pain.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yes, I knew you were gonna say that. I do remember that one, yeah.

• 2:41Mike Rowe?

  And that's kinda, you know, I always think of that poster when I talk to Mike because we're kind of in the no pain, no pain world. Everything is just so dagon efficient and easy, which is why I think we've seen all sorts of pushbacks. Like, we talk about the cold plunge.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:58Mike Rowe?

  And various other ways to, to shock yourself into a level of discomfort. So, his idea isn't new, but his book was great because it blended like real lived experience with real science.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:12Mike Rowe?

  And I've been a fan ever since. He's written scarcity brain. Talked to him about that and, um, most recently, I gotta give him credit, man. I mean, his latest book is called Walking With Weight.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:26Mike Rowe?

  And it's great. I love it. And we talk a lot about the benefits of this. But what makes me laugh is the conversation that he must have had with his publisher. You know, when he went in to say, okay.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Here it is.

• 3:39Mike Rowe?

  Here's the idea. It's a book about walking with weight.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  With weight.

• 3:45Mike Rowe?

  It's like, yeah, well, what happens? Because that's, that's it. That's it. And yet it holds up. It's chapter after chapter of science and history and really interesting connections that all come back to the fact that this ability we have, H. Sapien, with our opposable thumbs and our bipedal qualities.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:10Mike Rowe?

  The ability to walk long distances with heavy weight is really the only, the only distinguishing characteristic we have in the animal kingdom.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Well, I think that it is fair to say that Michael Easter changed your life.

• 4:26Mike Rowe?

  He did. I've been really busy. And one of the first things to go conveniently was the gym. I just stopped going to the gym and started to exercise in more, you know, calisthenic-ish ways.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Well, you had started walking during the lockdowns.

• 4:45Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  But not with weight.

• 4:47Mike Rowe?

  No, no, just big, long, early morning walks.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:50Mike Rowe?

  And, and, you know, I got in the habit of doing that and I love doing it. I'm sold on walking. I wasn't sold on walking with weight, but boy, I am now. Rucking is the official word for it and I've become a real aficionado of it. Every day I'm home, I ruck now with 45 pounds. I walk eight miles, I get my work done and, you know, I'm not in the best shape of my life, but I'm older than I've ever been and I feel great and that's good enough. Anyway, I'm a big fan of the book. I'm a big fan of rucking. I'm a big fan of Michael Easter and he drove himself all the way up here from sunny Las Vegas to talk about the virtues of walking with weight and the importance of being uncomfortable. It's a fun conversation.

• 5:34Mike Rowe?

  I knew it would be and we're calling it the hard way because what else would we call it, Chuck?

• 5:39Speaker 01

  He doesn't do it the easy way.

• 5:41Mike Rowe?

  No, he doesn't. His name is Michael Easter and we shall resurrect him.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Oh, I see what you did there.

• 5:48Mike Rowe?

  Right after this.

• 5:53Mike Rowe?

  So as some of you may have heard, I went to Congress 16 years ago to testify before a House Subcommittee. And then again, a year later, to testify before a Senate Subcommittee about the need to reinvigorate the skilled trades with some kind of national effort that would make a more persuasive case for a lot of good jobs out there that didn't require a four-year degree. Well, 15 years later, I finally heard back from the government, and I am delighted to tell you about a program called BuildFreedom.us. This is the national PR campaign that MicroWorks has been talking about for a decade and a

• 6:36Mike Rowe?

  half now, and it's focused on 300,000 or 400,000 excellent jobs in the defense industrial base. These are the electricians, and the plumbers, and the steam finners, and the pipe fitters, and the CNC operators, and the shipbuilders, and so forth. But in this case, all of those trades are focused on building out our national infrastructure through the defense industrial base. So people who are building our autonomous weapons, our planes, our ships, it's only a matter of national security, and it's a very big deal. And on a personal level, it's really been very gratifying. Build Freedom donated $10 million to MicroWorks. The money's available right now for you, if you want to pursue a skill that's in demand

• 7:20Mike Rowe?

  and work in the defense industrial base. I think it's an opportunity of a lifetime. Go to BuildFreedom.us, see what's available, and then apply for a scholarship from MicroWorks. The money's there, burning a hole in my pocket. Go get some. BuildFreedom.us. Fantastic, Mike Easter. You've made the journey in your debt. Where'd you come from, Arizona?

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Las Vegas.

• 7:47Mike Rowe?

  Vegas?

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Vegas.

• 7:49Mike Rowe?

  Same thing.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Mostly. A little hotter in Phoenix, a little more sin in Las Vegas, you know, but it's all, it all balances out.

• 7:56Mike Rowe?

  Heat and sin, I've never really ruminated on the duality of both, but I guess to a certain extent, they're hand in glove, no?

• 8:04Speaker 02

  They really are, you know? Las Vegas would not be the town that it is, as deranged, I think, if it were a nicer climate.

• 8:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  The heat in the summer, 115, 120, it really just tacks things up a few notches.

• 8:18Mike Rowe?

  It does, it does.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  People go a little crazier.

• 8:21Mike Rowe?

  Am I hallucinating this, or did we speak long distance a couple of years ago? And did we talk at some length about the welcome to fabulous Las Vegas?

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Yes, you guys said you were going to have, the next time you were in town, you were going to take a picture together in front of that sign.

• 8:37Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know what? I'm going to be in Vegas in a week and a half.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Sounds like we got a photo op coming up.

• 8:41Mike Rowe?

  We really should. Why did we talk so much about that sign? What was the point?

• 8:46Speaker 02

  I don't know. Do you remember?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it basically because it's so iconic. And you were on a walk and you saw people lining up politely to take their turn to take a picture. And you just walked up like the big shot you are and took a selfie.

• 9:03Mike Rowe?

  No, it wasn't exactly that way. Although I thought it was a good rumination on patience and comfort and herd mentality and tourism, like in all these elements, because for those of you who haven't been to Vegas, there's a sign that greets you when you come in that says, welcome to fabulous Las Vegas. And you've seen it, God knows how many movies and TV shows.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Every Las Vegas movie and TV show, they're going to show the sign. It's the iconic image of Las Vegas. When people think Las Vegas, if you're thinking, am I thinking of the right sign? Yes, you're thinking of the right sign.

• 9:36Mike Rowe?

  So there are probably 200 people in line. And to your point, it's 105 degrees outside. And I looked at the sign, I'm like, oh yeah, that is a great sign. But I was on the other side of the street. And so I just got the angle and I took a selfie. And I think our point was, why do you do the things you do when you're in Vegas that you don't do anywhere else? Why do you stand there and pull the lever? Waiting and hoping and praying that that thing's gonna pay off. Why do you stay up all night? Why do you? What is going on in our brains that Vegas short circuits?

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Vegas has become culturally the place where you let loose. And something, you're right, something flips in people's brains. One of my favorite experiences as a person who lives in Las Vegas is if I have to travel, the flight when I fly home, planes frequently run out of alcohol. People are just, they're ready to go. They get up from their chair, they're kind of stumble because they've had, you know, four, five of the little plane bottles. But then the flight leaving Las Vegas.

• 10:41Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Zombies.

• 10:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Everyone's just, they've lost their pride, they've lost their money, they're hungover. Like three quarters of the plane is asleep before it even takes off.

• 10:52Mike Rowe?

  They're beaten.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  It's just such a, yeah, it's just like, welcome to Vegas. Be prepared to lose. This town was not built on winners.

• 10:59Mike Rowe?

  And yet I don't know anybody who's been to, I know lots of people who've never been to Vegas. And I know lots of people who go there many times a year. I don't know anyone who's only been there once.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  They keep coming back.

• 11:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:14Mike Rowe?

  It's like a tractor beam.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  It is a tractor beam. What I think is fascinating about Las Vegas is that I see it as this sort of ultimate human behavior laboratory. And it brings people together from all walks of life. So going back to that plane, when I'm on the plane going to Las Vegas, there's someone in first class with a, you know, $70,000 Rolex. And then there's someone behind me who goes, I spent all the money I have on this flight. I got 50 bucks in a dream. And they're going to the exact same place and they're gonna like intermingle. And they're all there for the same reason.

• 11:48Mike Rowe?

  And the fact that, I mean, I, what's the, you're not a psychologist, you're sort of a social anthropologist, you're obviously a writer. But, but since you evoke the B word, what's going on with our brains in Vegas? I mean, that's really what I, why I think we were ruminating. Like, there's no other sign anywhere I can think of that people would queue up for in the heat.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  So Vegas, Vegas has figured out. To a T, how you get someone to do something that is fun in the short term, but can hurt them in the long run. So the, the example that I love is slot machines.

• 12:28Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Everyone knows the house always wins. The longer you play the slot machine, the more you're gonna lose. Yet people play them for hours. So if you've never been to Vegas beyond the strip, you go to a grocery store, a gas station, a restaurant, they all have slot machines. I'll go into 7-Eleven at like 7:00 AM, gotta get a coffee, whatever, and there's people at the slot machines. So I live there. I see this. I go, this doesn't make any damn sense. It just doesn't. But why, right?

• 12:57Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  That's the question. So for my book, Scarcity Brain, I end up finding this, uh, it's an actual working casino, but it's a laboratory. So they've built a real casino, turned it into a lab where they analyze human behavior.

• 13:11Mike Rowe?

  Did the humans in the lab know they were lab rats?

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Yes. So they know they're in a lab setting, but there are scientists around, they're tracking things. I talked to a guy who's a slot machine designer. I'm like, how does this thing work? And he goes, well, let me show you. So we go over, we start playing. And basically he broke it down like this. Slot machine works on these three parts. You can think about it as like a behavior loop. So first part is opportunity. You got an opportunity to get something of value. Second is unpredictable rewards. You know you'll get that thing of value at some point, but you don't know when, you don't know how valuable it's gonna be. Third point is quick repeatability. So if you do or don't get the thing, you can immediately repeat the behavior. So with the slot machine,

• 13:57Speaker 02

  you got the opportunity to win money. You play a game, you could lose, you could win $2, you could win $200,000, right, on any given game.

• 14:06Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  And then you can immediately replay. So, once slot machines and casino designers figured out that system, how to really dial it in, this was in 1980, there was this guy named Cy Redd, and he's like the most Vegas person ever. Drove a Cadillac, you know, maroon suits, giant glasses, bow tie, the whole deal. He figures this out in 1980, this system, they apply it to slot machines. And slot machines went from these games that no one really played. And casinos are kind of off to the side. They didn't even have chairs, because people wouldn't spend enough time at them.

• 14:40Mike Rowe?

  Is it because the owners really just didn't have any faith initially in, in an attraction that required zero skill?

• 14:51Speaker 02

  It was that, but it was also that the inherent design of the slot machines were not that interesting. So because they had mechanical parts, you could only have so many different combinations. The math just didn't work out where you would win enough.

• 15:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Okay, because you need these three things to line up. There's only so many of them, just odds weren't good. So you'd play, play, play, play, play, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose. And then when you won, you'd win, you know, you'd win a little bit. It's just not that exciting. People stopped doing things that give them nothing. So the Cy Redd comes in, and he goes, "We're going to digitize these. And because we can digitize them, we are not limited by actual real spinning reels. They're just these digital things. So we can have all these different combinations. And what we can do is we can have people bet on a bunch of different lines that are across the screen, right? And you can win this way, you can win X, Y's, you can win straight, you can win up and down. So now all of a sudden, when you play, something's going to happen. Like, you could win, because you're betting on 40 different lines in this game.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  You might win on one. And here's the thing, though, if you bet a dollar, your win on that one line might be, say, 30 cents, 40 cents. So now that, you know, the logical person here will go, well, wait a minute.

• 16:05Mike Rowe?

  You didn't really win.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  You didn't really win. You lost 70 cents or 60 cents. But the machine still lights up. So it goes ding ding ding ding ding. The money goes up and that's exciting. So once they figure that system out, slot machines take off. They start to make up, I think it's 85% of casino revenues. People today spend more money on slot machines than they do books, movies and music combined.

• 16:31Mike Rowe?

  Are you kidding me?

• 16:32Speaker 02

  No, it's insane. It's insane. These are cash cows.

• 16:35Mike Rowe?

  Wait a minute.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable.

• 16:37Mike Rowe?

  So when I walk through the casino and wherever it is I'm staying, I think I'm at the Aria Suites this time. 85% of the total gaming revenue is slots.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Slot machines. So when you walk through the Aria, you will pass some tables, but generally you will have to navigate a labyrinth of slot machines. Well, why do they have more slot machines? Well, it's because they make more money. So now where it becomes interesting and relevant to the listener, they might be, why are you talking about slot machines? I don't ever go to Vegas. I don't play slot machines. I live in Utah. There's no gambling.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  You start to see a lot of industries look at Las Vegas and go, how in the hell are they getting these people to do this thing? Where they're ultimately just gonna lose. This doesn't make sense. And they go, we gotta figure out what that is. So they take that system and I call it the scarcity loop in my book, the three-part system I just mentioned.

• 17:30Mike Rowe?

  Red system or what is it? Cyred?

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Cyred system, yeah. They take that system and it starts to pop up in all these different forms of technology. So that is what makes social media work. You have an opportunity to get a like or see some interesting reel, but it's unpredictable. If I post a photo, I could get two likes and I go, oh my God, no one likes me at all. Or I could go viral and now my life has changed, right? And I can keep scrolling, infinite scroll. It's the exact same mechanics. You see it in dating apps. So the guy who invented Tinder, what allowed online dating to really take off was the guy who invented Tinder just goes, oh, yeah, we just gotta do for dating what slot machines did for gambling. It's a opportunity to find someone, but you just swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, ding.

• 18:14Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Oh, she's ugly. This is a loss. Do, do, do, ding. Oh my God, that woman's amazing. Jackpot, right? Um, you see it in financial apps are using it. Online shopping uses it. Great example from online shopping is those discount wheels.

• 18:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Those increase sales conversions sevenfold. Sevenfold. And even the speed, the speed is another thing that was really important because the old slot machines, you would pull the handle. Takes a couple of seconds per game. Slot machine makers go, yeah, it's taking too much time for these people to lose their money, give us their money. You know what we need? We need buttons that you just hit and they say spin.

• 18:54Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  And people just sit there.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  That took the average gamer from playing 450 games an hour to 900 games an hour.

• 19:05Mike Rowe?

  Oh my God, dude.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  This is why Las Vegas is the ultimate human behavior laboratory. Cause they have figured out, how do you get people in a place where they will do these things that are exciting and thrilling and fun in the short term, even if it hurts them in the long run? And the town has mastered that. It's like the perfect place for that. Now, of course, the problem is, is once that gets put everywhere else. So to me, Vegas is fine because most people come into town. Most lose money, some walk away with money, but it's this separate experience from normal life.

• 19:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  You go back to Utah and you don't do it again for a while until you come back.

• 19:44Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  But once you start to see it in everything, now you understand why people spend, you know, four hours a day on their phones. The rise of all these crazy dating apps, the rise of sports betting in your phone. And it just, you go, oh, okay. Well, that's why we spend so much damn time.

• 20:03Mike Rowe?

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• 20:46Mike Rowe?

  Ask your questions and get help comparing 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. Who was this guy? Cy Redd again? Like, what was his background?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  He was a, he started in pinball machines, I believe. And I think he was from Missouri. Don't quote me on that. He moved up to Boston. He was in pinball machines. Mob comes in and they say, hey, we want to vague on your pinball machines. Or, and he goes, all right, I'm taking my talents to Las Vegas. So he started in pinball machines in Las Vegas. He started to get into gaming machines.

• 21:51Mike Rowe?

  Wait, but so were pinball machines ever used as a gambling attraction?

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Not to my knowledge, no. There's a skill element.

• 21:59Mike Rowe?

  Big time skill.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Right. So especially in a mechanized game, you could get someone who just figures out the game and fleeces you. You know, whereas something like poker, which isn't mechanized. Well, there's skill involved, but it's you and me and then we have a dealer, right? So it's a little bit different. So yeah, to my knowledge.

• 22:19Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Poker, you can play the man. Pinball, you can. I guess, play the ball and I mean, there's a lot of, it's amazing to watch people who are like naturally good at pinball. Watch people who have played it for years and become real like aficionados. And they're just normal people who just sit there like absolute lemmings going, how in the world? That ball's coming right down the center and you can't reach it with either flipper. And somehow you save it.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  They figure it out.

• 22:49Mike Rowe?

  How did you do it?

• 22:50Speaker 02

  That's my uncle Brian. He's a pinball wizard and he had a great hustle up in Sun Valley, him and his friends. I think they were probably 10, you know, 12, 13. They were able to figure out, how do we jam up the pinball machines so it'll give unlimited games? And then kids would come in, you know, it's Sun Valley, these rich kids. They'd say, hey, if you just give me your five bucks, I'll let you play as many games on this as you want. So this is going to be a good deal for you. And so they just raked it in that summer.

• 23:18Mike Rowe?

  Wow. So, okay. Did you know when you moved to Vegas, that so much of the behaviors specific to that town were going to inform the book that you wrote? And I'm, you've got three books, I'm going to talk about all of them at some point, but like this was the Scare City Brain book. Yeah. Like, did you go to Vegas to do that or were you inspired? What inspired what?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  I would say I've always been interested in Las Vegas. I'll give you the anecdote. When I was a kid, my mom said, do you want to go to Disneyland? And I said, no, mom, I want to go to Vegas. So there's always been something that pulled me to that town. I think it's just the excess, the, I mean, even for kids back in the 90s, they had like these amazing arcades and it was just, everything was over the top. This place is unbelievable. How did, like, how's this work? I grew up in Utah and then went, lived on the East Coast for a while. And then when we wanted to move west. My wife said, no, no snow. And sorry, guys, but I said, no, California.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Which gave us, uh, Phoenix, or it gave us Vegas. And I took a job as a professor at UNLV. And, um, ended up in Vegas. And UNLV is a really great school for hospitality and gaming. There's casino labs at UNLV as well. And I think it was just the living there, the observing, how these things pull people in and going, what's going on there? You know, because as a journalist, if I see something and it doesn't, and it doesn't make sense, I don't just go, huh, okay, I'll move on. I kind of, it just becomes an itch.

• 24:58Mike Rowe?

  Do you still think of yourself primarily as a journalist? Or are you a writer now? Or are you a investigative something like, what if you had a business card? And I'm sure you don't, but if you did, what would it say?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  That's a good question. I think I might just say writer.

• 25:13Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Except when people ask, the people who don't know me, they'll say, you know, what do you do? And every time I say writer, I cringe because I'm going, that person immediately just goes, oh, so you live in your mom's basement?

• 25:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're, uh, so you're unemployed.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Yes. So you're unemployed.

• 25:30Mike Rowe?

  So in scarcity brain, it's cravings, like, or at least a lot of it, you know?

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:37Mike Rowe?

  Why do we crave what we crave?

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:40Mike Rowe?

  And if I remember, like, when are, when are cravings good? When are they bad? It seems like they would always be bad because the word itself.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:51Mike Rowe?

  Suggests a feeling that's out of your control. But can you control cravings? Can you control all of the allure that's built in so diabolically to these casinos? Can you rehack your mind?

• 26:06Speaker 02

  I think so. So something else I write about in the book is that for most people. They go play the slot machine. They lose their 50 bucks. Maybe they win 10 bucks, whatever it is. Took them, say, 30 minutes. It's just, oh, that was fun. To me, that isn't fundamentally different from saying, hey, I'm gonna spend $50 and go see a movie for two hours. But there's always gonna be a subset of people that just get sucked into a slot machine. But it could be, could be anything else, right? It's like, why are some people addicted gambling? Some, it's alcohol. Others, it's TikTok. There's like something that pulls us in. And I think the underlying thing that you tend to find with people who get pulled into these

• 26:47Speaker 02

  bad habits that hurt them is there is, it's solving for some underlying problem. It becomes an escape. And so, once that underlying problem goes away, I think a lot of serious issues tend to go away. But the book, the question to the book is, everyone knows that everything is fine in moderation, and yet we all suck at it.

• 27:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  So why is that? Who looks at that question?

• 27:11Mike Rowe?

  Right. Well, what's the answer? I mean, moderation, I was just talking to Todd Rose, who, who I think you would really like. He, he wrote a book, he wrote a couple of great books. One was called The End of Average.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:24Mike Rowe?

  And the other was called Dark Horse. And then his third is called Collective Illusions. You guys write about a lot of the same stuff. He runs a think tank up in, in New England. But this idea that we don't know why we're doing things and manufactured consensuses and the assumptions we have of, well, I know why I'm playing this machine, you know? All these other people around are probably playing it for the same reason. But in fact, well, I don't really know how to finish that sentence. I don't know what the fact really is, other than we don't feel like we're in control an awful lot of the time.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. So in, in the book, I, I think a lot of this goes back to how humans lived for most of time. So if you think about life, say, 10,000 years ago, whatever it is, we never had enough food. We didn't have enough possessions, tools, things like that. We never had enough information. You never know what's gonna happen with the weather, what was gonna, what someone's intention. Well, what is the other tribe doing out there? And so if you were the type of person who goes, I'm gonna overdo these things when I get the opportunity. If I find a big pile of food, I'm gonna binge on that because I know famine is gonna come at some point. Happens every year.

• 28:42Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Same with information. If you're the person who goes, hey, what do we think this? What, what's your, like, you're always searching for information. That would give you a survival advantage. Same with possessions. If you had more stuff, more tools, you're probably gonna survive when the crazy storm hits or when you need to do X, Y, Z.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  So, great, that helped us for all of time, this drive for more. If you got the opportunity for more, take it. But then you plop humans into this modern environment where, you know, we throw out a third of the food today, where this was a stat that's crazy. The average person today sees more information in one day than a person in the 1400s would have seen in their entire life.

• 29:23Mike Rowe?

  And you're defining information as just facts or?

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Facts, any piece of information you come across in your environment that's new.

• 29:31Mike Rowe?

  Ah.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Stuff, the average house has anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 items today. So it's like you take these genes that tell us more, more, more, and then you put us in an environment where we can fulfill that. You start to see, oh, okay, yeah, it makes sense why we all have so much stuff and are hooked on our news feeds, whatever it might be. White people tend to overeat, including, including me quite often.

• 29:55Mike Rowe?

  Well, so the short version is our predisposition to binge on all things was actually a survival instinct.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 30:07Mike Rowe?

  Once upon a time.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:08Mike Rowe?

  But then, modern age, I guess agrarian to industrial to what? Tech, financial, and now AI. There's really no shortage of anything at all.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:21Mike Rowe?

  And yet, our brain is still predisposed to gobble it all up.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And I think that, that can start to get us in a little bit of trouble, depending on how you wanna define trouble.

• 30:32Mike Rowe?

  All right. Well, let's define it.

• 30:36Mike Rowe?

  Health and fitness.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Health and fitness. I think forty odd percent of the country is obese. Seventy-two percent is either overweight or obese. That was never a thing for all time. Like, the obesity rate was basically zero for all of human history. So there's one. We went from zero to seventy-two percent. There's some evidence in about, you know, two hundred years.

• 31:00Mike Rowe?

  Have you seen photos of like, I saw one the other day of Yankee Stadium. I think taken in like nineteen sixty-five. You know, just, you can see thousands of people, you know, the way it's angled. You can really see them. And then today, same exact angle. And it's like, people can barely fit in their chairs.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Even, I mean, even when you look at photos of

• 31:25Speaker 02

  soldiers in World War Two. The guys are just so much smaller.

• 31:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Part of that, I think, is better nutrition. Even if you're not, say, fat or overweight, whatever you want to say. Like, people just have a lot more muscle, which that can be fine. But they're just bigger people because we've got so much more access to food. Fitness-wise, and this kind of ties more into my, the Comfort Crisis book, but the average person in the past used to walk twenty thousand steps a day. Meanwhile, they're carrying stuff, they're physically working, they're digging for tubers, they're hunting, they're doing all these things. And the average person today walks about four thousand steps a day. Because we've engineered movement out of our environment. You don't have to do any of that. You know, if you need to get from point A to point B, get in a car. Call an Uber, whatever it might be.

• 32:13Mike Rowe?

  And yet you didn't take the stairs.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  And yet I didn't take the stairs.

• 32:16Mike Rowe?

  That's my fault. You told me get in the elevator.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Well, I'm so used to telling people how to get here. Yeah, get in the elevator, go to this, blah, blah, blah.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  In my defense, and I'm going to reiterate this, because this is going out to the world. You're a very fancy man.

• 32:30Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah, look at me.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Penthouse. So I'm picturing, I'm picturing like, the only way up is through the elevator. The doors open and it's just, just the gold gleams in when I hear the word penthouse. And I'm like, the stairs aren't going up to the penthouse.

• 32:45Mike Rowe?

  I'll be wearing an ascot, singing a Robert Goulet song over by the grand piano.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  He was, he was.

• 32:51Mike Rowe?

  Look, I didn't name it the penthouse. It's just, that's what it's, it's just the top, it's this top floor here at the MicroWorks World Headquarters. But the 2% club is still a thing.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  It's still a thing, yeah.

• 33:02Mike Rowe?

  And that was, if I recall, that's the percentage of people who, given an opportunity, will choose to take the stairs as opposed to an escalator.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, if there's, if you have a choice between staircase, escalator, only 2% of people take the staircase. And that to me just shows us, we're wired to do the next easiest, most comfortable thing. That also goes back to the fact that in the past, you didn't want to move any more than you had to, right? You didn't have enough food. You didn't want to burn off any extra energy. That would have been idiotic. Like, exercise is something we had to invent.

• 33:34Mike Rowe?

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

• 34:19Mike Rowe?

  from American Ranchers. And Good Ranchers is the number one company in America that delivers 100% American meat straight to your door. They partner with over 100 local farmers and ranchers to deliver pasture-raised meat with no antibiotics and no added hormones. They've got 25,000 five-star reviews on Trust Violet.

• 34:42Mike Rowe?

  Including my own. This month, when you visit goodranchers.com/row, you'll get a free Angus ground beef bundle with your first order. Again, that's goodranchers.com/row for four bonus pounds of ground beef raised right here in these United States, and that's guaranteed. Support your local ranchers by insisting on American meat delivered at goodranchers.com/row. If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch. Get Good Ranchers now. Hey, Hal. Well, is this part of the slot machine too? If you think of, how much effort does it take to play and win at poker?

• 35:27Mike Rowe?

  At, just go down the list. Backrack. I mean, down and down it goes. Like, the slot machine is the, truly the simplest, skill-free thing. And it's responsible for 85% of the revenue, which means also 85% of the loss.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 35:46Mike Rowe?

  Oh, God.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  More likely to lose on those games, too.

• 35:50Mike Rowe?

  So, what's the moral of this story? To just do less of everything? Consume less?

• 35:58Speaker 02

  I think, for me, I think first step for most people is awareness. Where you just go, oh, my brain is pushing me in to do all these things that I don't really need anymore. And once you can start to see how the machinery works, it gives you a little more of a choice to go, okay, am I going to fall into this machinery or not?

• 36:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  When it comes to the idea of more, so to go back to that stat I told you about the slot machines, oh, they sped everything up and then people started losing more, people started playing more. One thing that's really changed societally is speed at which we can do things. So, example I like to give is shopping.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Thirty years ago, if I need a hammer, okay, I need to get in my car. I need to drive down to Home Depot or Ace Hardware, whatever it is. I gotta walk the aisle. I gotta go, okay, they got six hammers. Which one am I gonna buy? It's like an hour long process. Now, if I go, I need a hammer. I go hammer on Amazon, one click buy, bam, I'm out. It's on the way. It's there, it could be there the same day.

• 37:05Mike Rowe?

  Could be the same day, yeah.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Could be the same day. So if you can even slow down some of the behaviors, I think that can be useful.

• 37:11Mike Rowe?

  But how is it bad for us to eliminate all of the strom and drang that comes from just getting a hammer? Like, I mean, is it inherently bad to spend that time? Or is it just a matter of efficiency?

• 37:25Speaker 02

  The faster you can do something, the more likely you are to do it. So if that thing is a good thing, good. But when you look at how much shit people buy, frankly.

• 37:34Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  And that's really just been ramped up by the ease of online. So I'll tell people, like, if you think you want something online, put it in the cart and give yourself seventy-two hour rule. I can only buy this if I revisit the cart in seventy-two hours and go, that was a great decision. You definitely need that. Most of the time, people go, I already have a hammer. I just wanted the like, cool one with the flag on it that was all nice and painted, you know? And even something as simple as taking credit cards off of auto fill. So you gotta go find the wallet, you gotta type in the credit card, it's a pain in the ass.

• 38:11Mike Rowe?

  I forget which carrier it was, but I was on a plane the other day that I don't normally take. And their wifi hadn't automatically saved whatever info I needed. And I needed to get online, I wanted to finish the thing. I had an hour before I landed and that exact screen came up. I needed to fill in nine rectangles. I just didn't have the belly for it. I just couldn't do it. It was easier to get a gin and tonic and stare out the window. Which I did, you know? What does that say about me?

• 38:42Speaker 02

  We don't like friction. It goes back to that 2% idea. We want to do the next easiest, most comfortable thing. We're wired to do that, even when it doesn't serve us.

• 38:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  So I could argue in your case, you go, if you would have gone through that little moment of friction, you would have gotten these productive things done. But it was like, oh, friction?

• 39:02Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  The escalator's broken? No, I'm staying on the first floor.

• 39:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Forget that. But I think-

• 39:08Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's because whatever is on the second floor is not sufficiently beguiling, right? I mean, if I had to get online in order to do a thing that would result in some sort of remuneration, maybe, right? Like, but it wasn't, the truth is, the reason I had to go online was to do something I didn't really want to do anyway.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Didn't want to do it in the first place.

• 39:31Mike Rowe?

  Right? It was like, oh, God, I was kind of dreading it. I didn't really feel like, in fact, I kind of resented it, you know? Like, Jade needed some description for a podcast episode. And I just didn't feel like writing it, really.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:44Mike Rowe?

  And, and like, that was my excuse. It was like, you know something? I would have done it, but these sons of guns over here at Delta, they insist, nope, sorry, it's not my fault, it's Delta's fault.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:54Mike Rowe?

  So that was, yeah, I didn't like the friction, but maybe I was also looking for an excuse.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. That sounds about right. I'm the same way.

• 40:02Mike Rowe?

  I mean, that's your, yeah, you, you took the elevator because a producer told you to, and you've got this weird fantasy in your brain that I'm living the Vita Loca up in the penthouse, and the doors are gonna open and you're gonna step in his adieu.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  I did expect that. I don't know if I was let down, or just like, oh, good, he's not full of shit.

• 40:20Mike Rowe?

  He's not as fancy as I thought.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's not as fancy as I thought.

• 40:24Mike Rowe?

  Well, so much of what you wrote about in The Comfort Crisis, and again, I guess this is an obvious thing to say, but in scarcity brain, it's like, why haven't we adapted to our surroundings? Comfort Crisis is about-

• 40:40Mike Rowe?

  The virtue of being uncomfortable and the price we've paid for hitting the easy button in a thousand different ways.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:52Mike Rowe?

  And it really did stick in my craw, man. We met virtually, I think it was like at a Dave Ramsey thing or something.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's how we met. It was a Dave Ramsey event.

• 41:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, and like this really never happens for me, but I got your book immediately and I read it.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 41:07Mike Rowe?

  I really did, and I really liked, I liked the way you came at it as a writer, but it was so personal. That's really the thing. And I'll, I want to talk a lot about rucking because it has kind of changed my, my daily world.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 41:23Mike Rowe?

  What's the big takeaway for people from this book? I'm just asking for the Cliff Notes because I know we've already touched on it in the past, but it's important that people understand, I think, what sent you down this weird path of skepticism.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, the big Cliff Notes of the book is that as the world has gotten more and more comfortable in every way, everything from we don't have to put in as much effort to get our food, to the fact that we spend 93% of our time indoors, the fact that we don't have to move anymore, we've lost some of the most important things that keep us healthy, happy, and make life interesting and bring us meaning. So it's like comfort is, is great, but if you're never offsetting that by doing things that are inherently challenging, uncomfortable, you start to see people get restless, they get unhealthy, like all these bad things sort of creep in. So my, my path to that book is that I got sober when I was 28, and this wasn't like

• 42:20Speaker 02

  I listened to a few health podcasts and go, oh, you know, maybe if I have a few more, less drinks, I'll have abs. I was like the guy that would wake up and go, where's my car? And I'd look out and, oh, it's on the front lawn, Michael.

• 42:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  That might be a problem. So getting sober though was extremely hard. I'd tried a bunch of times, never worked, because I'm always looking for the easy way out of this. You know, what, what simple thing can I do to just fix this problem? How can I just, you know, drink a little less? That shit never worked.

• 42:52Mike Rowe?

  Really?

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Never.

• 42:54Mike Rowe?

  So it was never the moderation thing?

• 42:55Speaker 02

  No, my favorite drink was always the next one. That might get you in trouble.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  And then one morning, I just sort of could clearly see this was not gonna end well. And it occurred to me, it was kind of like one of those will die moments where you go, wait a minute, did you think this is supposed to be easy to get sober? Like, no.

• 43:14Mike Rowe?

  Was that the car on the lawn morning?

• 43:17Speaker 02

  That was probably the car in the back lawn morning. It might have been that one.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  And I just sort of accepted this is gonna be really hard. And I leaned into that discomfort. And it was hard. It was hell for the, I mean, your life gets worse when you get sober. Cause now you don't have the, oh, I feel bad. Crack, right? Your life gets worse for a while, but then on the other side of that, things started getting better across the board. Like, everything got better.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Now, when this happened, I was working at Men's Health Magazine. I was an editor there, writer for a bunch of years. And I saw that like everything, every single thing we wrote about in that magazine, same exact trajectory. You had to do something that was hard in the short term to get a long-term benefit.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  And so from there, then it became this sort of pullback going, all right, going through discomfort seems to improve people in a lot of different ways. And there's a lot of different ways to do that. And then you just sort of look at modern life and you're like, wow, we've made everything way more comfortable than it's ever been. Like, we don't really have to be uncomfortable today if we don't want to. And I wonder what that's done.

• 44:18Mike Rowe?

  So the unintended consequence?

• 44:19Speaker 02

  The unintended consequence, yeah.

• 44:22Mike Rowe?

  And it was Donnie Vincent, right?

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I went hunting with him. So that, that book came out of a profile I did of him for Men's Health, where we went hunting for a week. You know, I'd never been hunting.

• 44:35Mike Rowe?

  And this guy probably hasn't eaten anything he hasn't killed in decades.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  He's one of those types.

• 44:40Mike Rowe?

  Like, true off the grid. Like, walking the walk.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  He's legit. He's not, you know, going to a hunting resort and staying in a nice lodge. And then he goes out for the day and hunts and shows the photo of the like, look at this crazy shit I did. No, he's out there for like months at a time in the middle of nowhere. Very dangerous hunts. He's the real deal. I did a hunt with him for Men's Health. I realized, you know, it was one of those stories I sat down where my word count is 2,500. And I said, well, I could probably do like four times this. Not four, my math is not good. I'm a writer, not a mathematician.

• 45:14Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's 10,000 words.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Forty, yeah, 40 times this. So I could

• 45:17Mike Rowe?

  Forty, oh, yeah, so that's a book.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Eighty thousand words, yeah.

• 45:20Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  So I pitched it as a book. And then as part of that, I'm like, all right, well, we needed through line. The hunt that I had done with him in Nevada, I'm like, that was the spine of this story I wrote, but I had to leave out a lot. So I talked my way into going up to the Arctic with him for more than a month. It's like, hey, could I do one of these hunts with you? And he's like, yeah, maybe.

• 45:43Mike Rowe?

  This is a caribou?

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a caribou hunt. So we were up in the Arctic for more than a month hunting and yeah, I got what I wanted out of that, which was let's see what being uncomfortable for a while does. And I mean, that it was hell up there. Like I'm freezing cold. Like I wasn't warm for a second. But there were some days where like negative 40.

• 46:03Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  And I'm coming from Las Vegas.

• 46:06Mike Rowe?

  It's so cold.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  It's so cold. Bored out of my mind for a lot of it, which that's new today.

• 46:12Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  If I'm bored at home, I just go bam, cell phone, Netflix. Let's check my email for the 99th million time today.

• 46:19Mike Rowe?

  Who knows? Maybe she's there.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Yep, waiting. Hungry too, because we had to pack in all our food. Like now, I just, I'm one of those people that now I'm kind of bored. I think I'll just eat, you know? So now I'm hungry again. All these different foots, the silence, holy hell. Like, once you get up there, there was one time I was out on the tundra. It's probably peeing or something. And you hear this like,

• 46:53Speaker 02

  I'm like, what is that? What is that? It was my watch.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  It is so silent that any noise just gets amplified. And it's almost like your perception just gets really dialed up and it's.

• 47:07Mike Rowe?

  We don't realize how noisy it is here, day to day.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:11Mike Rowe?

  We don't realize, it's kind of like light pollution too, right?

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:14Mike Rowe?

  Like noise pollution and light pollution are, you know, like a duplex. But yeah, even in Vegas, I remember being out in the desert and, and just being blown away by the, the amount of stars I could see.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:29Mike Rowe?

  Once you're really away from the lights. Because if you live in Vegas, or really in any city, it's, it's amazing what you can get used to. Like you get used to not seeing the night sky, not hearing nothing.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:44Mike Rowe?

  So when you do, yeah, it's breathtaking.

• 47:52Mike Rowe?

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• 48:36Mike Rowe?

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• 49:15Speaker 02

  There's a stat I have in that book that we've increased the world's loudness by fourfold. So four times louder than it was. The other thing I found, there's a study that found there's only 16 places in the lower 48 where you can stand for more than 15 minutes and not hear any human created noise. Only 16 places left.

• 49:37Mike Rowe?

  Wow.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:38Mike Rowe?

  Like where?

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Uh, one was in the, oh, what's that? Place People Canoe in Minnesota. It's not like that. I want to say Badwater.

• 49:48Mike Rowe?

  In Minnesota? I thought they were all lakes up there. Is it a river?

• 49:53Speaker 02

  Yes, I think it's a lake and river system.

• 49:56Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Places, there's a place in Washington in the forest. There's a guy who's literally, his job is, I think he's called a. Audioecologists or something like that. One of those where you go. What is that major?

• 50:10Mike Rowe?

  That's not a job.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then you hear what he does and you're like, oh, so you just go on a hike and you take like a sound meter and publish research and that sounds like you figured it out, man.

• 50:19Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, he, he made it into your book, I guess.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  He made it into my book. Um, but I, but I think to your point about you don't even realize, I think a lot of this is very subtle. It definitely affects us, but you get used to it and you don't realize you are being affected by it. It's just kind of like, you know, you're like a fish in water. You don't realize you're surrounded in water.

• 50:40Mike Rowe?

  How much of what is going on today in just the whole general kind of body hacking thing, you know, like when I think of, you know, people exercising in a sauna, you know, like Laird Hamilton, just getting on a stationary bike and going bananas in 220 degrees and then jumping in his pool and walking across the bottom, holding a 50 pound boulder or something like, or, or cold plunges. These things are all, all seem to be deliberate choices to be uncomfortable. And I was just so surprised to see them catch on the way that they did. Were you surprised? Is it part of the theory that, you know,

• 51:21Mike Rowe?

  we come out of this trance at some point, the way you did, when you realized the benefits of all of this discomfort? I mean, do you take any credit for the cold plunge today? Did, did you write about that? I don't remember.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  I did not write about the cold plunge. No, I think, I think to your point, people get something from it. Right? It does something for them or else I wouldn't go back to the basket. So you go, okay, well, what is that? Well, it turns out that people inherently value things that are harder to get or work for. When we do things that challenge us and are harder, the end result, whatever it might be, becomes way more valuable than had we got it in an effortless way. Good example I like to give people is, um, kids. So I don't have kids, but you talk to any parent, you go, what's the most important thing in your life? The most meaningful thing in your life? They always say kids. You go, was, was

• 52:16Speaker 02

  that really easy? They go, no. Well, it's one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Bingo. That's it. And there's strong psychology going back decades for that. And so when you look at two, if you look at polls on meaning in the country. People are feeling like their life is more meaningless. They're just not finding meaning. I think part of that is so much of the friction that once, although it was hard, it taught us something about ourselves.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  Gave us this inherent like, yeah, I'm a person who can do stuff like this is my life is important. Removing the dial. That's been removed in a lot of ways. I was actually thinking about you because I did a piece on my Substack, 2%. That was about that. How when you have to do something that has some sort of challenge, you gotta, you gotta figure something out. And you get an end result. People get meaning out of that. And so I was thinking about it with jobs. Cause a lot of people today, if you work in an office.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  At a big corporation say.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  You don't really know, like, what is the end product? You know, you fill out a spreadsheet. It goes to this guy who goes, yeah, I sent it to that guy.

• 53:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Who then maybe sent it to this person and then it just, you just don't know. There's just no end product. You're like, the spreadsheet was kind of a pain in the ass, but like, I have no idea. What happened? I'm just kind of like doing this stuff. I don't know what it does. I mean, the stock price kind of goes up every now and then. I guess, I guess I helped that. Me and the 30,000 other people who work here. But I think trade jobs. Have an element where there's a quick return. You did, you did something. You put work in. You had to figure things out. Did you fix it or not? You figure it out within. It's a quicker thing. You figure it out by the end of the day.

• 54:06Mike Rowe?

  You always know how you're doing.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  You always know how you're doing and you can walk away going fixed it.

• 54:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Like your hat. I fix stuff.

• 54:13Mike Rowe?

  Right. And you're surrounded. By the visual proof of that thing, you know?

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:20Mike Rowe?

  I can't tell. I mean, there's nothing here to indicate when the podcast is over, except I stopped talking, you know? Like there's no obvious thing and most people don't have. A clear and present visual reminders of their progress at every stretch. But, but Donnie Vincent does, you know, hunters do.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:41Mike Rowe?

  And to your point, a lot of trade workers do too.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  But it is. They called this the, uh, this came from a study I was writing. It was called the IKEA effect. And so basically, they, these researchers had people either put together a piece of Ikea furniture, or they said, hey, do you want this pre-made one? And then they asked them, how much would you pay us for this? And the people who had to make it,

• 55:05Speaker 02

  said they would pay far more money for it than the people worth if they would just hand it over. So this indicated, oh, there's something that inherently makes this thing more valuable because I had to do it. And one of the great anecdotes they used to open up the study was in the 50s, food manufacturers start making instant cake mixes. The first time they go out with it, they're like, we're gonna make this as easy as possible. You just get the powder and you mix in the water and you put it in the oven. That's all you gotta do. No one is buying it. And they go, why is someone buying this? It's so easy. They realize, oh, maybe that makes it not as valuable to the baker. The baker feels like they haven't really done anything for the people they're serving the cake to.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  The people eating it go, you didn't do anything for this. So they literally started for no reason, just to add friction. Now you have to put an egg and a little bit of oil in it. Adding that little bit of effort, it made the cake mixes take off.

• 56:05Mike Rowe?

  But then which is it? I didn't log on because the friction of the form, you're right, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. I didn't want the friction. In that example, if I had had 18 squares instead of nine, maybe I would have looked at it as more of a challenge somehow or another. How does the psychology translate?

• 56:27Speaker 02

  How does it square? For me, it's that had the cake maker said, you gotta do 20 steps. Now you're like, no.

• 56:35Mike Rowe?

  Right? What do I look like, a cake maker?

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. But because it was just a little bit, people go, okay, I've put in some effort to this. I feel like it's more meaningful.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  And the way that squares for me is, once you add too much friction, once you add the actual staircase, now that's a lot of friction.

• 56:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  People start to shy away.

• 56:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  But you'll see people will kind of walk up the escalator and they're like, okay, I did something, you know?

• 56:57Mike Rowe?

  This is a little inside baseball, but I know for me, and I've learned this lesson a couple of different ways over the years, but when I decided I wanted to make money impersonating a public speaker, right? Well, you know, I put the word out and I came up with a rate that I thought was fair, you know? And kind of put myself out there and there was, there was some interest and, you know, I got a lot of, a lot of good feedback once I went and did it. Turns out I had a facility for it, but I was like, you know, how can I, how can I do better? Like what do I have to do?

• 57:40Mike Rowe?

  Cause I thought the rate I was charging was pretty frothy, but as it turns out, as it turns out, if you charge a lot more, then people start to wonder, well, what the hell does this guy really have to say?

• 57:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:58Mike Rowe?

  And then somebody pays it. And then you realize, oh shit, I, I actually need an act now. I need a message.

• 58:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:07Mike Rowe?

  And so this, this happened years ago. It was, I think it was Motorola invited me to the innovation seminar down in Boca Raton. And I had a conflict and I literally told my business partner, who you just met, Mary, I said, you know, I would really love to do this and it sucks that I can't because of this. And she says, well, look, they're still asking for a rate. They, they really want you. And I said, just for grins, find out what Bill Clinton charges. That's how long ago it was. And just give it, just to see what happens. She's like, ah. And they said, yeah, all right.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Pressure's on.

• 58:48Mike Rowe?

  So I had to cancel my gig. I wound up going to Napa for a weekend and just thought really, really hard. What, what could I possibly say at the innovation seminar that would justify this ridiculous rate that I know I'm not? I don't have the value. Like I, I was really nervous about it.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:06Mike Rowe?

  But it, it made me care more than I did. And it made me think really hard about the lessons from the dirt. And so I, I wound up going, I wound up getting overpaid in my mind, but I did the best job I could. In fact, I attacked their whole notion of celebrating innovation at the expense of imitation and made what I thought were some fairly, you know, contrarian points. And they invited me back the next year.

• 59:37Mike Rowe?

  So I get it. Like the morals, I think sometimes the key to figuring out whatever it is, is just to go dead the opposite direction, way further than you otherwise might, which is why people are jumping into, you know, water that's absolute zero.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I would argue, had you said, okay, charge him the lower rate, we wouldn't be talking about this. You still remember that talk and you had to put in extra and it's becomes, it's burned into your memory.

• 1:00:05Mike Rowe?

  It became a big part of my business today.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, you had to get there.

• 1:00:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  I had the same thing. So I am not, I've never liked public speaking. That's been my thing. And so I write this, you know, I'm a writer. Just put me alone in a room and just let me pack some keys.

• 1:00:20Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  That's where I'm happy.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  So I come out with a book and then someone asked me to speak in public. I'm going, hell no. Like, I don't want to do that. And they go, well, here's how much we'll pay you. Tell me more.

• 1:00:34Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm listening.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I, so I say yes. And I love public speaking now. The reason I love public speaking now is because I had to work my ass off at it.

• 1:00:46Mike Rowe?

  Dare I say, is it because it made you uncomfortable?

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  Made me uncomfortable. And each time I did it though, you're like, you can see these improvements. You're like, you're getting better. Oh, that joke landed this time. What did you do there? And I learned something. And so it, it really was something that did not come natural to me. I needed the incentive of a check to, to do it. But once I started doing, I'm like, I really enjoy this. And now it becomes this thing that I, that I love because. Every time I give a talk, I'm always like, I'm nervous. Am I gonna land this? What's gonna happen? But then you get through it, you're like, glad I did that.

• 1:01:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  It was great.

• 1:01:26Mike Rowe?

  Would you say that's among the greatest

• 1:01:32Mike Rowe?

  good things that have happened to you as a result of deliberately being uncomfortable?

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  I think so. Yeah. You mean the public speaking? Or just the lesson from that?

• 1:01:43Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, specifically, like, from what I've read your Substack and I've listened to your podcast. I assume podcasting wasn't probably on your bingo card either before you wrote The Comfort Crisis.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  No, I was, I was hoping I could do the Salinger thing and you write a book and it sells a bunch and then it's see you later, world.

• 1:02:07Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  And never hear from me again. Well, it turns out you can't do that anymore.

• 1:02:09Mike Rowe?

  Can't do that.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  The publisher goes, publisher's going, would you put a picture on Instagram of yourself holding, holding the book and talking about the book? And you're just like, Jesus.

• 1:02:19Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, but you can't say no because it makes you uncomfortable because that would make you the worst kind of ironic hack there is.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:02:26Mike Rowe?

  So now everything you have.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Everything I do, I have, everything I hate to do, I have no excuse.

• 1:02:32Mike Rowe?

  You wrote a book that destroyed your entire excuse architecture.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And it's funny now because I'll travel to towns and, you know, go to events or hang out with people and they'll be like, oh, you're here? You want to go for a hike? There's this peak where we might die. You'll love it.

• 1:02:48Mike Rowe?

  Right, right.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  I can't say no.

• 1:02:51Mike Rowe?

  Or you're in your hotel room, right? And the air conditioner is not working. So you call down, you say, yeah, this is, and they're like, oh, is it a little warm up there for you, Mr. Comfort Man?

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:03:00Mike Rowe?

  Is it like, suck it up, dude?

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I can never, I can never fly first class. I can never go to like a five star hotel. I can never go to a five star restaurant because it's just too, but I'm fine with it.

• 1:03:09Mike Rowe?

  You wrote the wrong book.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wrote the wrong book. Should have been, why, why Comfort is so great for you and I could just do nothing.

• 1:03:15Mike Rowe?

  Here he is, 2% with Michael Easter.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:18Mike Rowe?

  With the, you're nicely coiffed there.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's Buffalo Larry in Las Vegas.

• 1:03:25Mike Rowe?

  Is this, is this the pod?

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is the pod. We just launched it in April. It's been fun. It's been a blast. I wasn't sure if I was gonna like it. I've loved it. You talk to a lot of interesting people. You just gotta ask them questions. Why didn't you tell me about this?

• 1:03:41Mike Rowe?

  I get it. Look, well, I came to, I spent 20 years crawling through sewers and having this exact conversation, you know, hanging upside down like a bat in a cave with, you know, something. And I'm like, there, there's gotta be an easier way to do this. But no, I mean, if you're genuinely curious and you genuinely enjoy the language, there's no better way to make a living today, which is why there are four and a half million podcasts.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  Sounds right.

• 1:04:07Mike Rowe?

  I can't imagine. There's four and a half million of a thing that didn't really exist a decade ago.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's wild.

• 1:04:19Mike 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. I'm talking about AI-proof,

• 1:05:03Mike Rowe?

  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 into a career

• 1:05:45Mike Rowe?

  with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/americasworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/americasworkforceacademy.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  And part of it for me is my books were selling more in audio than they were print. And so people.

• 1:06:03Mike Rowe?

  Why do you figure?

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  I think people listen to my books when they go out for walks, they're exercising, they're doing other things. So they're being active, which, which I like, but then.

• 1:06:15Mike Rowe?

  Did you read it yourself?

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  I did read it myself.

• 1:06:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Mike Rowe?

  You happy with that?

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  You tell me. I don't know.

• 1:06:22Mike Rowe?

  I actually read your book, the old fashioned inefficient Pro Magnum way. Yeah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was fun. I did it at a studio in Las Vegas and they gave me a, you know, email, here's the address, show up here at this time. And I go down, if anyone's familiar with Vegas, I'm on South Maryland, which is a good place to get shot.

• 1:06:40Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  And I pull up and there's this restaurant and then there's this building with just a number, totally blacked out door. I knock, I wait, door cracks open. Eyes come out, I can kind of smell weed.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  And guy just looks at me goes, you the writer?

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  That's me.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  They let me in and I opened the door and there's all these platinum albums on the walls. There's like Kenny Chesney albums, there's like Kanye albums. I'm like, these are all recorded here? And he goes, yeah, idiot, let's go record. And it's like a full on, you know, they, I don't even think they ever had a writer there. It was like a rap studio, a country studio. It was great.

• 1:07:23Mike Rowe?

  That's so funny. The same thing happened to me over in, uh, Bermuda, I guess.

• 1:07:30Mike Rowe?

  The Deadliest Catch got jammed up and they needed an emergency session and I wound up in a place where Sean Connery's lived there. It was not far from his house and he, he had just been there doing a movie trailer or something. And it was this, God, you look at the walls and all these famous cats are there. And it's a very weird set of muscles and a very strange environment. Like if you're. The first time you enter that, to sit there alone, headphones, microphone, just you and your own voice, made doubly strange by now you're reading your own words.

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:10Mike Rowe?

  So you're kind of telling yourself a story that you wrote.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:13Mike Rowe?

  And is it making you crazy when you do it? Are you, are you finding sentences that you're saying out loud for the first time and going, God.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Why'd I write it that way?

• 1:08:22Mike Rowe?

  I sure would like another pass at that one.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  And then you got a producer in your ear, piped in, and he's this erudite guy from New York. And I mispronounced words, apparently, and I'm an idiot for it. What did I, I mispronounced something and he just goes, stop. And he pronounces it correctly, like in the most demeaning way ever. And I'm just like, sorry, I'll go back to the basket.

• 1:08:47Mike Rowe?

  It's not the comfort crisis.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Mike Rowe?

  You've been saying the title of your book wrong.

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was one word in scarcity brain that he finally just gave up on me. He corrected me so many times.

• 1:08:58Mike Rowe?

  You remember the word?

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  Monk, I was saying monks, M-O-N-K.

• 1:09:02Mike Rowe?

  Monk?

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was saying monk. And he was like, it's monk.

• 1:09:05Mike Rowe?

  Monk like bonk.

• 1:09:07Speaker 02

  Yes, I was saying monk. And I wouldn't stop saying it. And he corrected me so many times.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Monk, like a monk.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, like a Benedictine.

• 1:09:14Mike Rowe?

  That's what he's trying to say.

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  Benedictine.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  And he's saying monk.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Monk.

• 1:09:18Mike Rowe?

  But you said monk.

• 1:09:19Speaker 02

  But I kept saying monk.

• 1:09:20Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  And finally, he just goes, screw it, I'm, I'm done with this. So the, part of the book has monk.

• 1:09:27Mike Rowe?

  Part has monk.

• 1:09:27Speaker 02

  My cut-ins with monk. And then eventually it just transitions to monk.

• 1:09:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I had a.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  It's a fun, fun.

• 1:09:35Mike Rowe?

  I had a horrible script for the Science Channel once. And it was a line about bloodworms and.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  Naturally.

• 1:09:44Mike Rowe?

  I mean, I'm reading, I'm pretty good at this, you know? I mean, I've done it a lot and I don't spend a ton of time in the booth anymore. But I came across an assemblage of letters that I had not seen before. The word was circumflorinial ganglion. And it's, it's, it's the smooth, fleshy, round part on a worm, like in the middle of it. Like it's ridged everywhere, but then there's this smooth thing. And inside the circumflorinial ganglion are all the organs. That's, that's where you put the hook when you bait them, because that's, it's a tough part. But man, it just, it's so jarring to your brain. You're just sitting there and you're reading along, you're narrating and everything's good. And then there's this, this hard stop, man. And you had to walk away from it, had to say it out loud a few times because you

• 1:10:27Mike Rowe?

  can't just say it in the blind. You have to actually read the sentence.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:10:32Mike Rowe?

  But yeah, you know, that was uncomfortable. But you know something?

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  Well, listen to how you just said it perfectly.

• 1:10:38Mike Rowe?

  What would I, I wouldn't have, like, how many cocktail stories? How many just good tales exist as the result of being uncomfortable?

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:10:50Mike Rowe?

  I'd say virtually all of them.

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  Every single, so my, this sort of mantra I've, mantra?

• 1:10:57Mike Rowe?

  Mantra.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Mantra.

• 1:10:58Mike Rowe?

  Mantra.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Excuse me, stop, stop. It's mantra.

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  Mantra.

• 1:11:04Mike Rowe?

  Chuck's a producer, if you haven't.

• 1:11:06Speaker 02

  This mantra I've come up with for myself is no problem, no story. So when I would have to do these reporting trips for my books and I'll go to all over the world, you're like flying, you're going to the Bolivian jungle and you gotta get there. You're going to Iraq, you gotta figure it out. I would go in wanting everything to be perfect, right? Like, we're in dangerous places. I want everything to line up. I want to feel safe. I don't want things to go off the rails. Things would go off the rails naturally. And I would be like, oh, you know, you're kind of anxious about it. But then I would get home and write the book and go, this is what makes the story good.

• 1:11:47Mike Rowe?

  That's called material.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  The fact that my fixer in Iraq is just completely full of shit.

• 1:11:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  Is what makes the book interesting.

• 1:11:55Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  If the guy's like perfectly dialed and everything goes right, that's, that's not a good read. You need, you need bullshit inserted in your life so you can come back and go, let me tell you this story.

• 1:12:07Mike Rowe?

  Do you, uh, were you a fan of Bourdain?

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  I was, yeah. I, I liked a lot of his stuff.

• 1:12:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  I think he was unfair to some people.

• 1:12:15Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm. He was?

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  I think he was unfair. He was a...

• 1:12:17Mike Rowe?

  Oh, he was unfair. He was very flawed.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:20Mike Rowe?

  He, um, was a terrible host in the traditional sense of the word.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:12:26Mike Rowe?

  He was so uncomfortable that he couldn't look at the lens of the camera. And his producers became so panicked when they realized they were working with a guy who was hosting a show at the time called, um, No Reservations. Who couldn't look in the camera because he, he, he just felt so false and so fake and so inauthentic whenever he was doing that, that they figured a way for him to be himself without looking at the camera, ever. You know, and so that, that was the first thing that like really changed the way that show felt. And then years later, I saw him off the coast of, where was it? Was it like Sardinia, maybe?

• 1:13:06Mike Rowe?

  Octopus, yeah. Yeah, so he's, he's spear diving for octopi. And he has a fixer, as you always do when you travel. And this guy was very eager to please and wanted to make sure that they had some octopi to spear. And so while Tony's down there looking for one with a legit spearfisher, this guy is up top dumping like frozen octopi into the water.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  Unbelievable.

• 1:13:33Mike Rowe?

  And they're just, they're falling around him, you know, now, and, and so in narration, you hear Tony telling you what is happening in this moment. And he's so angry after the fact, and how he got this on the network is one of the great mysteries of TV. But he throws everybody under the bus. And he's basically saying, this is it. This is why I hate my job. Here I am, you know, 15 feet down, trying to legitimately show you what it takes to get an octopus on your plate. And this asshat is trying to do his job in the worst possible way, and I hate everything about it. And this happens early on in the episode.

• 1:14:14Mike Rowe?

  And he's so pissed as a result that all he does is drink for the rest of the episode. Now he's not only looking at the camera, he, he's just, he gets drunk on camera and stays that way in protest of this moment of...

• 1:14:29Mike Rowe?

  Uh, falseness, I guess.

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:31Mike Rowe?

  You know? And so, you know, I'm like, I'm riffing on it because all of that came from being uncomfortable and frustrated. And every single thing that happened as a result, in any other media, with any other director, on any other network, in any other form, would have all been cut out.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:51Mike Rowe?

  But it wasn't. And so it became my favorite episode of that whole thing. It was, it was one of the more honest things I'd seen on TV ever. So if you can find that on the, on the page, in front of a camera, on stage, you know, in a recording booth, in song, whatever it is, that's the trick, and it's always preceded by pain.

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, preceded by pain, it became authentic because of the pain. Why do you think that show worked then?

• 1:15:21Mike Rowe?

  Well, in part because it was surrounded by lots of other examples that did not comport. It's the same reason Dirty Jobs worked when it did. It, it's not that it was particularly or inherently good. It's that it was surrounded by the commute. And so when you take the reverse commute in the face of all the other stuff, like you mentioned Salinger, you know, why, why? Well, why, why did that book work as good as it worked as one great book? And, and I think it's because there was nothing else like it at the time.

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Timing is a thing. I think that Comfort Crisis has done pretty well as a book.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  I don't think anyone would be talking about it had that book come out in 2019.

• 1:16:14Mike Rowe?

  Correct.

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  That book came out in 2021, about a year anniversary of all the pandemic lockdowns. People would spend a year in their house, you know, and I've been trapped in this cage of comfort for a year. And then, oh, this book, this, okay, I'll check this out.

• 1:16:30Mike Rowe?

  Right. Well.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  It's just a lot of it is luck. That said, I would like to say. You gotta at least throw the damn dice so you're never gonna have any luck.

• 1:16:39Mike Rowe?

  The other reason your book worked, and the other reason I hustled to get it after hearing you talk about it, is that it was, it was an interesting combination of a lived experience. Like you, you actually went on the caribou hunt. You actually shot one, you actually butchered it and walked across the tundra for many miles to hump it out. You know, it's, but then you back it up with science, or at least other people with large brains who have done deep work, who can actually put some meat on that bone. Not a lot of books do that.

• 1:17:20Mike Rowe?

  And you were uniquely qualified to write it, in part, maybe because, you know, maybe because you weren't sober and then you were, maybe because, you know, you needed your own cage. Shook?

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I, I do think I definitely get better material going out into the world.

• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  I think we were just talking before we hit record how a lot of nonfiction books are, it's harder to sell them now. I think one of the problems is that a lot of people who are in the nonfiction space, especially journalist types, it's just, I'm gonna sit at my desk and write a book.

• 1:17:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  I'm gonna read some studies, I'm gonna find some random anecdote online. Here's your anecdote, here's the study, okay. It's like go out in the world and talk to people, find an interesting narrative. Like it becomes too formulaic. Some of those books I think are great, some I'm like, I've read this before. I read this 20 years ago. You gotta go find something new. It takes like, you gotta exit the bounds of normalcy.

• 1:18:21Mike Rowe?

  Truly, man, I mean, that is the, that's the sameness.

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:26Mike Rowe?

  That's why most TV I think is bad, because it's, it's derivative. Somebody did something that was different and that was a hit, and then everybody rushed to, you know, do the same show,

• 1:18:37Speaker 02

  Does that.

• 1:18:38Mike Rowe?

  Write the same book. Why does so much music sound the same? It's always that.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:44Mike Rowe?

  You know, that was my theme at Motorola in a way. They were there to celebrate innovation. And I was there to say, how come all you cats in Silicon Valley brand yourself as great innovators? When in reality, the money that you made wasn't just a result of this great thing that you innovated, right? It's really your ability to do this like millions of times in a row.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:11Mike Rowe?

  This iPhone, right? It's like, that's when you have a business. You have to be able to do the same thing over and over. I mean, maybe I reckon Donnie Vincent would like, if you're gonna be a good hunter, you better do smart things over and over and over and over.

• 1:19:28Speaker 02

  Do smart things over and over and over. Go places people won't go. Spend more time in those places. Like, he's just willing to put the time and the work in. Not everyone can do that. He does it professionally, but he's figured out, how do I turn this into a living?

• 1:19:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  That's like every, you know, and a lot I would imagine of building a good brand is if someone has one thing, but you go, well, what's wrong with this? And how can I just make this thing so much better? It's like we had the, not to pick on your old client here, but we had the razor. And Steve Jobs comes along and goes, yeah, but look at this thing. And it's the iPhone.

• 1:20:05Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  At the end of the day, both make calls, but this thing can do so much more. Or like coolers. Coolers used to be suck. Right? You put the ice in, you put the drinks in, the ice has melted in three hours. Yeti comes along and goes, we got an idea. And now the ice stays there for 48 hours. Or like, did you have Josh Smith on the podcast?

• 1:20:25Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Mike Rowe?

  He was just here.

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna make an unbelievable knife. I'm gonna make it in America. It's gonna be the best damn knife you've ever seen. And the branding's gonna be phenomenal. And bam, Montana, and then Montana Knife Company just goes from his garage to now they got this giant facility.

• 1:20:43Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Were you there for the opening?

• 1:20:45Speaker 02

  I wasn't there for the opening, but I saw him actually with Dave at the, Dave Ramsey did an event.

• 1:20:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  In April.

• 1:20:54Mike Rowe?

  How were you guys friends? How did he get in your world?

• 1:20:56Speaker 02

  Me and Josh?

• 1:20:56Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  I was hanging out with the, one of the toughest human beings in the world, if not the toughest. Her name is Laura Zara. Amazing.

• 1:21:06Mike Rowe?

  New one. Check that thing out.

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. This guy knows what he's doing.

• 1:21:14Mike Rowe?

  Dude, he's so.

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  Unbelievable.

• 1:21:16Mike Rowe?

  He so knows what he's doing.

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  Do you know that that new knife? Sold out in less than 10 seconds.

• 1:21:24Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  That flipper?

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  That people, yeah, the flip, the flip knife.

• 1:21:28Mike Rowe?

  Oh, you mean the pocket knife?

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  The pocket knife. People lined up like, I think there were three since 3 a.m. that day to wait for it to drop and it was gone online. It was like, because I happened to be watching it go down.

• 1:21:41Mike Rowe?

  No kidding?

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  No kidding. And when it went down, click, sold out.

• 1:21:50Mike 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, uh, 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

• 1:22:33Mike Rowe?

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

• 1:23:18Mike Rowe?

  Recruiter, try it free. Let me tell you what this guy's done. Just sidebar. He sat right here a month ago.

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  I can feel his aura.

• 1:23:31Mike Rowe?

  That's, that's not his aura. He, uh, no, he, uh, we talked about the great American pocket knife three, four years ago and, and how like it's, no one's doing it and how it was such a talisman for generations and how everybody's granddad had one and, and what a truly useful tool it was. And then somehow out of favor and you know, he said, I'm, I'm going to bring it back. He gave me the first one, sitting right here on the air. And they're, they're gone now Chuck in, in like literally like that. I love that, man. Yeah. I love it. You know, Josh has got, he built that

• 1:24:12Mike Rowe?

  facility, but he's, he's got 130 people working for him in Missoula, making knives, the uncomfortable way, the public way. But I mean, it's like, everything is totally transparent.

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Mike Rowe?

  And he's doing it in the, in the age of tariffs and taxes and a lot of stuff. I mean, talk about an uncomfortable, risky entrepreneurial bet. And he's, you know, I think his story matters.

• 1:24:40Speaker 02

  When I first met him, his factory was his garage.

• 1:24:45Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  And he walked me through the whole process. You're going, this is where you make these? And this is when the brand was pretty young.

• 1:24:53Mike Rowe?

  Did you write a story about him for one of the magazines?

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  I don't think I did. No. I was up there, um, I was up there with a lady named Laura Zara, who is just tough as nails. She, she literally will just go live in the woods for months at a time. She's just, she's awesome.

• 1:25:08Mike Rowe?

  That kind of girl.

• 1:25:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. She's great. Um, very feral person, but great.

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  So she takes me, she knows Josh.

• 1:25:17Mike Rowe?

  That's probably not, you know, at least not one of the classic compliments that the, that the ladies are just.

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  You can edit that out.

• 1:25:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. She's a lovely one. She's feral. Like a cat.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, she, she literally lives in a cave for a lot of the year. She got this, she meets this old guy in Montana. He's like, oh, I really like you. You're just out, you know, you just hang out in the wilderness all the time. And I think he left her a big piece of property and there's a cave on the property. Piece of land and she just lives in the cave.

• 1:25:50Mike Rowe?

  What's her last name?

• 1:25:51Speaker 02

  Zara, Laura Zara. Look her up. She was in scarcity brain.

• 1:25:54Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. See if you can find her, Chuck. I want to meet the feral woman who lives in a cave.

• 1:25:58Speaker 02

  She's awesome. She's one of the greatest humans and she's not, interestingly enough, if you were to just meet her in normal life. Very normal.

• 1:26:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. You don't go immediate cave dweller.

• 1:26:10Speaker 02

  No. She went to, she went to like Connecticut college for undergrad or something, you know, it was like this liberal arts kind of hippie school and um, yeah, great. But anyway, she took me to meet Josh and that's when the facility was in the garage and walked me through the whole thing. He gave me a knife. I'm like, oh my God, this is like, you're making these out of here?

• 1:26:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:30Speaker 02

  And at the time they were building the bigger building on his property, which that I think probably by the time the roof got raised on that, he was like, we need a bigger boat.

• 1:26:39Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:26:39Speaker 02

  And the bigger boat just opened, I guess. So congrats to him. Great guy.

• 1:26:43Mike Rowe?

  You know what else he did, man? He did a knife for MicroWorks as a fundraiser.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 1:26:49Mike Rowe?

  And gave us like, I don't know, a hundred, you know, these things sell for 350, 400 bucks a piece, you know, sold out right away. And then he created one called the rocker, which was in his words, the ultimate working man's utility knife. You know, he was a lineman before he was a.

• 1:27:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:27:09Mike Rowe?

  You know, like in for money. And uh, he's been given 10% of the gross sales of that thing back to MicroWorks.

• 1:27:17Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 1:27:17Mike Rowe?

  And he does it every quarter. I mean, it's, it's, oh, it's over $200,000 now that he's contributed to our scholarship program. That's a guy making knives up in Missoula who understands discomfort.

• 1:27:32Mike Rowe?

  Who who loves the country and who appreciates what we're doing. Is that Laura?

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

  That's Laura.

• 1:27:38Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my God. Well, what is she doing? What is on her back?

• 1:27:42Speaker 02

  She shed she shed hunts, so she'll go find her thing is um she gets her thrills by finding antlers. She literally is just like, this is how she spends her time. This is great. One of the most fascinating, interesting people and wise.

• 1:27:58Mike Rowe?

  Shout out to the driftwood log and pine cone that helped take this pic after only talking to Neron for a few weeks. That's her dog. They were also great for a fresh conversation. Just kidding. I was enjoying the solitude and refused to respond when they tried to strike up banter. All right.

• 1:28:18Speaker 02

  Look at see how her legs are all cut up.

• 1:28:21Mike Rowe?

  Uh huh.

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  Because she only wears shorts and gaiters. Like even if there's snow on the ground and she I don't like she's like, I'm not a pants person. I just like shorts. So she emerges from the wilderness and her legs are just cut to hell. It's it's awesome. She's great.

• 1:28:36Mike Rowe?

  You know what I'm gonna ask next, Chuck? We're gonna need to get, I mean, not.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Laura, get get Laura.

• 1:28:41Mike Rowe?

  I mean, does she have a phone in the cave? How does she how does she communicate?

• 1:28:44Speaker 02

  Send her a text. You'll get a reply in a month when she comes back.

• 1:28:48Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know what? Yeah, between you and Josh, I'm sure we can we can get her out here. I'd love to talk with a girl that doesn't wear pants.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:56Mike Rowe?

  That just seems like a sport.

• 1:28:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, come with bloody legs. Be great.

• 1:29:00Mike Rowe?

  Your latest book, I laughed out loud when I saw the title, Walk with Weight.

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  Walk with Weight?

• 1:29:08Mike Rowe?

  It's my favorite part of Comfort Crisis. And I guess of all the different forms of discomfort that you discuss in that book, boredom is actually my my favorite one to talk about. I just think it's so important to be bored. And man, do I think we've forgotten that. But the business of carrying weight and you write about it with so much affection that it almost feels like a duty as a species that we have because it's really the one thing we can do that is unrivaled.

• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  Unrivaled. That's the physical thing that humans are built to do and are very good at.

• 1:29:56Mike Rowe?

  Explain.

• 1:29:58Speaker 02

  There's no other animal that can pick up a weight and carry it somewhere for distance. Like no other. And people will listen to this and go, what about a horse? What about a donkey? Well, the key point is pick it up.

• 1:30:10Mike Rowe?

  Pick it up. So a wolf grabs its prey in its jaws.

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:30:17Mike Rowe?

  And heads out.

• 1:30:18Speaker 02

  Hauls it a little ways, but they're not carrying it far.

• 1:30:20Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Right. So once humans start walking on two feet, well, we got these free limbs.

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  What do we do with them? Oh, we can, we can manipulate the world. We can carry our kids. We can carry tools into the unknown. And that really shaped us into who we are and allowed us to take over the world. And so in the comfort crisis in this walk with weight book, you know, I argue when you look at physicality and what people do for fitness. It's like we lift weights, we run, that's great. But we've totally overlooked this thing that we are uniquely good at. That shaped our bodies. And so the argument is add some carrying back into your life. And I think the argument I make in the book is that the most practical, easy way to do that, easy quote unquote, is with rucking, which is just putting some weight in the pack, going for a walk.

• 1:31:12Mike Rowe?

  A noun and a verb.

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  Exactly. Exactly. And what makes it interesting from a physical perspective is that you're getting cardio because you're walking. And the weight makes it harder. But you're also getting a strength effect because you got weight on your skeletal system. So you're kind of getting like a two in one.

• 1:31:34Speaker 02

  Also, the injury rate is much lower than running. Like multiples lower than running. A lot of people have gone out and they've run, my knees hurt, can't run anymore. If you can walk, you can rock. I just think it's this tool that is so useful for people. I mean, I, I do it every day because if I'm going to walk my dogs, I'm just going to throw a ruck on. I get more from every step.

• 1:31:56Mike Rowe?

  Thirty, forty? What do you carry normally?

• 1:31:58Speaker 02

  Uh, usually a thirty.

• 1:31:59Mike Rowe?

  Uh huh.

• 1:32:00Speaker 02

  For me. Yeah.

• 1:32:01Mike Rowe?

  So it's not a ton of weight, but it's just enough to affirmatively kick in all the systems you're going to kick in anyway, but faster.

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, I tell most people.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  When they start, start with like 10% of your body weight, just to get going. See how this feels. I don't want people to have like some soul crushing weight because then they go, oh, I can't do that. I'm never doing that again.

• 1:32:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  And then just add up from there. And I also tell people, don't go over a 30 of your body weight. That tends to, one, it'll suck beyond belief.

• 1:32:34Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  Two, it can kind of raise the injury rate a little bit. That's from old military data going back to the 50s.

• 1:32:40Mike Rowe?

  Yep. I did it. I screwed up. I got, I got very enthused after Comfort Crisis. I had already started during the lockdowns. I was in the habit of getting up super early and walking usually eight miles, like between Awesome. 5:30 and 7:30. Just, you know, just a big loop in the neighborhood where I live. It's pretty walk, you know, the bay is there, you know, I'm in like the Tiburon area, right? And then I, I called our buddies over at Go Ruck. I got my pack and I, I put in the 30 and I was stunned at the difference. Walking eight miles, I was totally used to it. Walking eight miles with 30 pounds is totally different.

• 1:33:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:23Mike Rowe?

  And I did that for a couple of months and lost probably four pounds, five pounds. Didn't do anything different at all than I'd been doing. Then I went to 40. Then I went to 45 and I was just feeling great. And then I really screwed the pooch, man. I'm fine now, but do you?

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:33:46Mike Rowe?

  You know what? Find that video for it. Did you ever see the video I posted?

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 1:33:52Mike Rowe?

  Oh dude, this is, this is funny. We don't have to watch the whole thing, but find it so he'll, he'll recognize. But what happened was I decided, I mean, it's homeostasis, right? Your body's, you have to mix up your workouts.

• 1:34:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:05Mike Rowe?

  Otherwise your body knows what you're gonna do and it cheats.

• 1:34:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, you adapt and

• 1:34:10Mike Rowe?

  That's it.

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  You gotta do something else, yeah.

• 1:34:12Mike Rowe?

  So I thought, no, you know what? I gotta go to 50. I gotta go to 50 pounds and And that meant I should order a, I guess, another 10-pound plate. I'm like, I don't want to order a 10-pound. It's just 10 pounds. And like, I put it off. And I'm having this conversation with myself. I'm out for a walk. And I got 40 pounds in this thing. And I look down. And in the street is a rectangular slab of concrete that had washed off the top of a water main. Like, it literally said, "Property of Water Something" on the front of it. But I looked at it. I'm like, damn, that thing, I bet that would fit in the ruck. And I picked it up.

• 1:34:54Mike Rowe?

  And it was heavier than 10 pounds. I wasn't sure how heavy, but it was, it had. But sure enough.

• 1:34:59Speaker 02

  Probably 20?

• 1:35:00Mike Rowe?

  It weighed 25 pounds.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:35:03Mike Rowe?

  So I walked that day eight miles with 65 pounds on my back.

• 1:35:08Speaker 02

  Eight, right into, so you went 50% heavier than normal?

• 1:35:12Mike Rowe?

  Pretty much, yeah. But to your point, I weighed, I say, say 200 pounds. Right? So, yeah, that's a third of my.

• 1:35:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, getting close to the max.

• 1:35:22Mike Rowe?

  Wow. I mean, every single thing.

• 1:35:26Speaker 02

  This is so good.

• 1:35:27Mike Rowe?

  It's a level of misery that I, you can't really explain unless, I mean, certainly, people in the military understand. They walk routinely with, you know, they have 100 pounds on their back.

• 1:35:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:39Mike Rowe?

  But if you're not used to this. So this is me just explaining to the viewer. Because somebody said, bullshit, you know, there's no way you walk with this amount of weight. Here, you can turn it up too, Chuck.

• 1:35:51Speaker 02

  You can even tell how you got up.

• 1:35:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, oh, it hurts. It hurts. But here you go.

• 1:35:56Speaker 02

  Where's the volume?

• 1:35:57Mike Rowe?

  Lower right, unmute. There you go. You can do it. Because the whole, the whole rucking process makes you sweat a lot. I usually put it back on in the evenings, but that's another story. The GoRuck bag itself looks like this.

• 1:36:15Speaker 02

  Just the effort and.

• 1:36:16Mike Rowe?

  About two years ago. You're gonna love this. It arrived with a 30-pound plate already in it. And I'll show you that plate. It's a, first of all, I added ten pounds to it a couple of months later. Cause you get, you know, you get used to the weight and you wanna trick your body into avoiding what you call a homeostasis. See, I know stuff. Anyway, that's why it's important to increase the weight from time to time. But this is a, this is a thirty pounder, right there. And, uh, and I added another ten, so I was walking around with forty for about a year. And I thought, you know what, it's time to go to fifty.

• 1:36:57Mike Rowe?

  So I decided, walking home, one morning I was gonna order another ten pound plate from Goruck. And then, I saw this thing in the street, just lying there on the other side of my driveway.

• 1:37:12Speaker 02

  It is perfectly shaped.

• 1:37:14Mike Rowe?

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:37:15Speaker 02

  Perfectly shaped.

• 1:37:17Mike Rowe?

  But there was no open hole nearby, just this slab of concrete in the middle of the street. So, being cheap, I, I picked it up and I, and I, and I put it in my ruck bag. And, uh, and then I kept walking. And you know what? It was very heavy. And when I got home, I got on the scale and it said two hundred and sixty-five pounds. And at the time, I weighed two hundred pounds, so I did the math and that's how I got the sixty-five pounds. Anyway, that's what I walk with every day, Jack, so, uh, so there.

• 1:37:46Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 1:37:48Mike Rowe?

  So, I mean, that, that video happened because of you. That's a hundred percent because I read the comfort crisis. And I walked with sixty-five pounds for the next couple of months, lost another seven pounds. And then my knee hurt, and then my ankle hurt, and then my hip hurt. And then I, then I stopped rucking for a couple of weeks and I thought, oh god, I really, what have I done? But I was still walking and I felt okay. And long story short, now I'm back to forty, every day when I'm home. And Mike, it's totally changed my life.

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  That's awesome to hear.

• 1:38:24Mike Rowe?

  And I don't have time to go to the gym anymore. I'm trying to maintain the illusion of fitness, you know?

• 1:38:30Speaker 02

  But we all are.

• 1:38:32Mike Rowe?

  But nothing, nothing, it's, this allows me, sometimes it's 90 minutes, sometimes it's two hours. But maybe I'm prepping for a podcast. Maybe I'm on the phone, it's early, I'm getting stuff done.

• 1:38:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:45Mike Rowe?

  I'm sweating like a whore in church. The calories are getting burnt. I'm atoning for all my sins the night before in a way that is just, I mean, it's just so efficient. I get home, I do as many pushups as I can. I wait three minutes, I do as many pushups as I can, wait three minutes, do as many pushups. That's it, that's all I do.

• 1:39:04Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 1:39:05Mike Rowe?

  And it's, you know, it works for me.

• 1:39:12Mike Rowe?

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

• 1:39:51Mike Rowe?

  And Chapter exists for one reason, to help people on Medicare find the plan that's right for them. It's a free service. Anyhow, Joseph called Chapter, he connected with an advisor named Heidi. And Heidi caught something that most people miss. Because his current plan was about to close, Joseph had a limited window to continue with his current coverage through a new plan without any additional medical underwriting. In other words, Heidi found a way to get Joseph the coverage he needed with the doctors he preferred. Then she found great coverage for his wife, too. Moral of the story? Medicare plans are constantly evolving. You are too.

• 1:40:33Mike Rowe?

  Call Chapter, make sure you're on the best plan for you. Also, people who switch plans after calling Chapter save an average of $1,100 a year.

• 1:40:44Mike Rowe?

  804, Chapter. That's the number. Call it today. It's free. Whole thing takes about 20 minutes. 804, Chapter.

• 1:40:53Speaker 02

  I've heard from so many people on my Substack who, same deal. They go, "I hate running," or "running hurts my knees."

• 1:41:02Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:41:02Speaker 02

  "Walking, if I really want to get something out of it, I gotta go for like 20 miles." And then they get into rucking and it totally changes their life. It allows them to get more from the walk. It becomes like an actual workout. Yet, to your point, "Oh, I can make calls while I'm doing this. I can send some emails if I have to, so I'm able to multitask." "I don't feel like I'm carving time out of my life entirely in order to get this physical activity in."

• 1:41:28Mike Rowe?

  I could listen to Michael Easter mispronounce monk.

• 1:41:31Speaker 02

  Monk, exactly.

• 1:41:32Mike Rowe?

  As I'm strolling.

• 1:41:33Speaker 02

  Exactly. Or mantra.

• 1:41:34Mike Rowe?

  It's a wonderful experience. Or mantra.

• 1:41:36Speaker 02

  Mantra.

• 1:41:36Mike Rowe?

  That's my mantra.

• 1:41:37Speaker 02

  Mantra.

• 1:41:40Mike Rowe?

  In your book, you credit women.

• 1:41:43Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:41:44Mike Rowe?

  Primarily for creating this thing. And I want you to explain that, but I also want you to really link its significance to virtually every military that's ever existed or walked the planet, I dare say.

• 1:42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay, so go back, who knows how long? Many hundreds of thousands of years. You have a kid. Okay, most kids died before the age of five. Infant mortality rate's like 50%. So, in order to keep your kid safe, you gotta carry this thing around all the time. Well, women were a major contributor to gathering food, doing all these other things. So, well, now they're carrying this kid in their arm all day. They're one-handed, right? They're, you cut your production in half. So, at some point in time, one very wise woman goes, "Well, what if we built these little sort of sash-type things and we put the kid in there?" So they do that. Now it frees up two hands.

• 1:42:45Speaker 02

  So now they're back to business as usual, being able to gather food, help with other things, and our productivity just completely expands. So we invent these initial backpacks. And then, of course, because humans are smart, we go, well, if we can carry kids in these, what else can we carry in these things? Right now, we have a means of transporting items for long distances. Because when you have something attached to your back, it's like, what do backpackers do? They throw all their gear in their back and they go out into the unknown. They go down the trail. So that expands how we can explore. It makes us more productive. Like, it changes humanity forever. So fast forward to the military. Militaries throughout history, the most important physical act was,

• 1:43:28Speaker 02

  can you march a certain distance while carrying the gear you need to fight in the war? And so there have been tests going back throughout time, like even, even the Greeks and Romans, they would say, you're fit enough for the military if you can carry X amount of load, Y distance, in Z time. Like, it's always been the most fundamental act of the military is rucking. And obviously, you need it because you're going to fight a war. You need to get your gear. And in the past, it wasn't like you're not flying in soldiers, you know, from Germany into the war zone. You're going, well, we gotta go invade this place that's 250 miles away. That's where the battle is. All right, everyone get your stuff, get your gear.

• 1:44:09Speaker 02

  We're going for a long walk. So that was just fundamental to moving troops and being able to fight.

• 1:44:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. And it's, I think what's surprising about it, to read about that anyway, for the first time, is that you never see that part of war, or rarely do you see it leaned into. Like, you see the battles, you, cinematically, I mean, right? Because it's not great TV to just to show people marching, you know, for hour after hour after hour. But of course, in the Civil War, I mean, those guys would, not unusual to walk 30 miles and then fight.

• 1:44:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:44:48Mike Rowe?

  You know.

• 1:44:48Speaker 02

  Long, and the gear back then is heavy.

• 1:44:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:51Speaker 02

  It's super heavy.

• 1:44:52Mike Rowe?

  It gets wet.

• 1:44:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:54Mike Rowe?

  Canvas. So, I mean, you're talking about young men carrying, I mean, it could be, what is it, like, sixty to a hundred pounds on average, I read?

• 1:45:06Speaker 02

  Today, especially as we sort of ramped up technology, the loads became heavier over time. Today, in the military, the average loads, I think, in Iraq and Afghanistan were about a hundred pounds.

• 1:45:20Speaker 02

  That's serious.

• 1:45:21Mike Rowe?

  Dude, I'm.

• 1:45:21Speaker 02

  That's including like body armor, all your stuff. I mean, that is a lot.

• 1:45:25Mike Rowe?

  As we just established, I know what sixty-five pounds feels like. Throw on, you know, another third of that. Now, to your earlier point, you're talking, like, in the Second World War, these soldiers were,

• 1:45:39Mike Rowe?

  what do you think the average weight was? I bet it was like.

• 1:45:42Speaker 02

  Of a soldier?

• 1:45:43Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, of a fighting infantryman in the Second World War. I bet it was a buck forty.

• 1:45:47Speaker 02

  I was gonna say exactly that. It was probably a hundred and forty pounds, and then they're loading them down with, say, depends on what your job is, right? Eighty-ish pounds.

• 1:45:57Mike Rowe?

  These guys are carrying two-thirds of their weight. And then hand them a Thompson gun on top of it.

• 1:46:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:04Mike Rowe?

  Did you ever read, there was a book, a terrific book about Vietnam by Tim O'Brien. It's called.

• 1:46:10Speaker 02

  Oh, The Things I Carried?

• 1:46:10Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's one of the best written books ever. If you're a writer.

• 1:46:15Mike Rowe?

  I think it's the best war book.

• 1:46:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  And if you're a writer listening to this, don't read that book, because you will go, okay, there's people out there that are far better than me.

• 1:46:23Mike Rowe?

  They can do that. Yeah, Salinger's, you know, like, what else did he write? Was it Tim O'Brien? I think that was the author.

• 1:46:30Speaker 02

  That was his biggest books. Yeah, his biggest book was Tim O'Brien.

• 1:46:34Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, if you don't know what we're talking about, it's, it's basically, I mean, it's a literal explanation of the things a soldier carried out of his ruck, you know, and if that were all it was, it would be an eye-opener. But of course, it's really a, you know, a metaphysical rumination on the emotional weight.

• 1:46:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, and even.

• 1:46:56Speaker 02

  Training for big missions.

• 1:46:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:59Speaker 02

  Rucking was the foundation. It's like all the people who stormed D-Day, like the, the rucking was legendary.

• 1:47:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:06Speaker 02

  They would go on these legendary ruck marches to get ready for that. And then one of my favorites that I came across was 10th Mountain Division.

• 1:47:15Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:16Speaker 02

  Their training was insane.

• 1:47:17Mike Rowe?

  Cause you have to do that at altitude.

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  And you're carrying cold weather gear.

• 1:47:22Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:23Speaker 02

  You're carrying skis. It is so heavy and you're in the mountains. The terrain is the worst.

• 1:47:30Mike Rowe?

  It's, is it the worst? Cause I, who was that psycho you just had on your podcast? Grandmother of four, purple hair, running, running in, what's the name of the race?

• 1:47:43Speaker 02

  Badwater 135.

• 1:47:45Mike Rowe?

  Jeez, this woman.

• 1:47:46Speaker 02

  She gets out of the car at night to start this race. It starts at 11:00 PM in Death Valley.

• 1:47:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  It's 120 degrees at 11:00 PM and she go, okay, we got 135 miles ahead of us. And she won, she won it that year. It's considered the world's hardest race. Her name's Ashley Paulson.

• 1:48:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:08Speaker 02

  Um, she is literally a grandmother. I don't know how old she is. I would say late 40s, but she's literally a grandmother, has four kids, didn't even start getting into running and racing until she was on her fourth kid. And she set the women's course record, won the race that year. Unbelievable. It gets to like 130, 135 in the heat of the day. And then when you factor in, it's all on a road, which actually makes it harder because the heat coming off the road, the, the heat coming off the road is like 180. It's unbelievable.

• 1:48:41Mike Rowe?

  Your shoes melt.

• 1:48:42Speaker 02

  Your shoes melt. What I love about her though,

• 1:48:46Speaker 02

  is there's people who would do that race and they go, I'm the baddest person who ever lived. You know what I mean? Like they just are like, it's a lot of, and she's, she's a grandma with pink hair and she, hey, yeah, I ran it. It was really hot. It was real. And you're just like, I love this person. You won the thing and there's no flexing.

• 1:49:03Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:04Speaker 02

  I just love that about her.

• 1:49:06Mike Rowe?

  Is she indicative of the kind of guest you're looking for on the 2%?

• 1:49:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, we like to mix it up with people who are going out in the real world, doing interesting things that are inspiring. And also, we'll bring on scientists who can explain, well, why is this important? So the episode was her was paired with a guy who wrote a book called Hot Wired, and it's looks at the science of the heat and why heat is good for humans. So humans lived in the heat for all of time. We're unique in that we can, we're really good at cooling ourselves. We're really good at endurance exercise in the heat. That totally shaped us. And then we started living in air conditioning for 95% of the time. And we don't get these temperature swings that are actually really important for physical

• 1:49:52Speaker 02

  health, even mental health. There's really interesting research on depression and how exposing yourself to the heat seems to help with that for various reasons. So yeah, we try and try and keep it in, you know, my sort of guiding thing is, do I want to talk to this person? And do I think that would be a fascinating conversation? I'm like, yeah, let's do that. So.

• 1:50:15Mike Rowe?

  As North Stars go, that's a good one.

• 1:50:18Speaker 02

  Good.

• 1:50:18Mike Rowe?

  You know, and it's a good place, I think, to land the plane here because we started with the heat of the desert. And we started with wondering, why do people do what they do? Maybe, maybe part of the reason they stand in that line in front of that ridiculous sign, it's just because they're having a heat stroke. Maybe it's just the heat. But wow, you know, I mean, I read it in your book too, but the idea that, I mean, for only the thinnest little blip of measurement have we lived in air conditioning. For only the thinnest little blip of the relative timeline have we enjoyed a hot shower at

• 1:51:00Mike Rowe?

  the end of a cold day. My granddad didn't experience that till he was 50, you know?

• 1:51:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:51:06Mike Rowe?

  Never had a hot shower. Right? And.

• 1:51:11Mike Rowe?

  My God, have we become soft. How like?

• 1:51:16Speaker 02

  Because we adapt to our conditions. We adapt to whatever level of comfort we're at. And if that gets reduced, now it's an emergency. So a lot of the message of my work is, well, adaptation works both ways.

• 1:51:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:31Speaker 02

  So if you go put yourself in situations that are going to be uncomfortable,

• 1:51:36Speaker 02

  when you get back to your normal world, that changes how you view it. All of a sudden, it becomes, this hot shower is unbelievable. Hot running water? Oh, my God. Like when I'll go do stuff outdoors, when I come home and eat the first meal and you have the hot shower, you just go, why have I ever complained? Like, this is unbelievable.

• 1:51:56Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:56Speaker 02

  It's all so new. And so that's the case for me. Yes, you get all the physical benefits. That's important. I don't want you dropping dead of a heart attack at whatever age. But more importantly, I want you to view your daily life in a way that is in perspective of how good things are and helps you appreciate just how amazing things are.

• 1:52:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  Because that colors your worldview.

• 1:52:16Mike Rowe?

  Yep. And, and again, we talked about the speed with which, you know, things can happen. I, the fact that my granddad had a, had his first hot shower at 50. And the fact that really a generation later, people were deliberately plunging themselves into the freezing water. Right? Either to push or challenge or whatever the reason, it doesn't really matter. Because I think the bigger point is we get to choose. Like, there's a whole long list of stuff we can't control. But the sliding scale on the comfort and discomfort spectrum, that's up to us.

• 1:52:55Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:52:57Mike Rowe?

  You know, and maybe you can't go on a caribou hunt with Donnie Vincent. And maybe you, maybe, maybe you're not going to do that thing. But maybe you'll do the other thing. What did you tell me about Masogi?

• 1:53:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, Masogi. Take on one, one big challenge a year where you have a 50 50 shot at failure. Can be anything. Because today, I would argue, a lot of times, even when we take on challenges, we're in the safe zone. We're like, I know I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it.

• 1:53:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:25Speaker 02

  It's gonna be hard. But when you get that 50/50 right, now you got to dig deep.

• 1:53:29Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 1:53:29Speaker 02

  You're gonna have times where you go, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to, I need to quit. This is terrible. But if you can just keep going, that becomes kind of a metaphor for life. You go, I realize I have more on board than I thought, and that changes you. And this isn't me just making stuff up. You look at every myth, important myth throughout human history. That is exactly how they are structured. You take someone out of the comfortable world, you throw them into an uncomfortable world. They have to deal with all this shit down there. It's hard. They want to quit.

• 1:54:01Speaker 02

  But eventually, they make it through, and they come out the other side a new person, like literally a new person. And we've like, removed that. You need moments like that. There's a reason humans had these stories for all of time, that stories are how we told ourselves what was important about living and all these different lessons. So yeah, I just think we need to get back to that.

• 1:54:20Mike Rowe?

  What is boot camp? What is buds?

• 1:54:22Speaker 02

  Why do we give you the Ranger Tab or the Seal Trident? Because it's a symbolic representation of the fact that you are a new person. It's exactly what that is.

• 1:54:31Mike Rowe?

  Last question.

• 1:54:34Mike Rowe?

  With regard to discomfort, is the goal to endure it?

• 1:54:40Mike Rowe?

  Or figure out a way to love it?

• 1:54:43Speaker 02

  I think if you figure out a way to love it, that'll be, that's the ultimate goal. And ask what your why is too. What am I gonna get from this? It's gonna be like, what is on the other side of this? Because that makes sure, like, the guide, you got a good router there, guiding you into the right things.

• 1:55:00Mike Rowe?

  Well, the odds of finishing your first book were probably 50/50. But the odds of actually getting it published were skinnier. It's getting the odds of writing another one, and another one after that, skinny, skinny, skinny. The odds of you narrating it with that voice, very slim.

• 1:55:15Speaker 02

  Very slim.

• 1:55:17Mike Rowe?

  Very slim. And yet, there you are. Public speaking? No, not likely. There you go.

• 1:55:22Speaker 02

  That was the hard one for me.

• 1:55:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:24Speaker 02

  But it's been awesome. Just had to get up there a few times.

• 1:55:27Mike Rowe?

  Really appreciate you coming out here from the desert. You head back tonight?

• 1:55:30Speaker 02

  Heading back tonight, yeah.

• 1:55:31Mike Rowe?

  And you're on a plane, right? Obviously.

• 1:55:33Speaker 02

  I'm driving.

• 1:55:34Mike Rowe?

  Oh, you drove?

• 1:55:34Speaker 02

  If I have a-

• 1:55:35Mike Rowe?

  He's rucking. He's rucking. I'm walking back.

• 1:55:38Speaker 02

  It'll only be 115. I'm the type of person where if I have, if I do the math and I go probably door to door on a flight versus driving, there's a two hour difference.

• 1:55:48Mike Rowe?

  You'll take the drive.

• 1:55:49Speaker 02

  I'll do the drive.

• 1:55:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:51Speaker 02

  I don't want to have to wait. I don't trust the pilot. I'm like, I got this.

• 1:55:55Mike Rowe?

  I want to introduce you to my friend Blake Shoal, who made that plane. Not the model, but the actual plane.

• 1:56:03Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 1:56:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, he's bringing supersonic back. The company's called Boom. You should interview him. You would absolutely love this guy. He has been on a mission since we went to the moon and broke the sound barrier commercially that same year. And just kind of quit both. I mean, for all intents and purposes, we just quit. The fact that we're going slower now than we were in 1969 at 40,000 feet is appalling.

• 1:56:30Speaker 02

  Really? I didn't know that.

• 1:56:32Mike Rowe?

  The Concorde was flying like 980 miles an hour.

• 1:56:36Speaker 02

  I remember when, why did that shut down?

• 1:56:38Mike Rowe?

  Well, there were these things called sonic booms, which people didn't appreciate. And then there was a crash. The Concorde took off, I forget where it was. Was it in Paris? I think there was a piece of debris on the runway. Yeah, the wheel exploded. The wheel exploded, kicked up some crap, ruptured a fuel line, maybe. And then before they could swing back around and land, blow up, everybody died. So they had a big PR problem. But the, like, when I think about how fast tech has moved in virtually every measurable way, to your point, social media, et cetera.

• 1:57:19Mike Rowe?

  If we were breaking the sound barrier in commercial flight in 1969, we should be flying from LA to Paris in about two hours today. Like, we should be flying 2,200 miles an hour.

• 1:57:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:33Mike Rowe?

  But we affirmatively said, nah, that's, it's fast enough. Everything since then has conspired to make air travel miserable.

• 1:57:43Speaker 02

  Miserable. So he's bringing it back. That's his goal.

• 1:57:46Mike Rowe?

  Talk about a Masogi.

• 1:57:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:48Speaker 01

  He's already, he's already got, what was it, 130 orders?

• 1:57:51Mike Rowe?

  He's got orders from every major.

• 1:57:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, American, United, and Air Japan.

• 1:57:56Speaker 02

  Thank God for, thank God for people like him.

• 1:57:59Mike Rowe?

  Honestly, his episode is up right now. In fact, listen to it on your drive back.

• 1:58:05Speaker 02

  I'll listen to it.

• 1:58:05Mike Rowe?

  And you know what? Take Josh's knife with you. Since you drove, you don't have to check a bag. It's my gift. He left me too.

• 1:58:13Speaker 02

  Josh did give a, say a joke. He says, you know, when I gift people knives on trips like this, they always get taken at TSA. Now they gotta check their bag and they end up hating me.

• 1:58:23Mike Rowe?

  No, it's a running gag, but the fact that you're driving is perfect.

• 1:58:26Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 1:58:27Mike Rowe?

  Here, take him.

• 1:58:27Speaker 02

  I'll take anything.

• 1:58:28Mike Rowe?

  It's a great knife. That's his, uh,

• 1:58:29Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 1:58:30Mike Rowe?

  That's a new one.

• 1:58:31Speaker 02

  Very cool.

• 1:58:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:32Speaker 02

  It's a last forever.

• 1:58:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, take it on a ruck.

• 1:58:35Speaker 02

  Hand it down.

• 1:58:35Mike Rowe?

  Might save your life. Or to help you get to the front of the line in that, uh, welcome to Las Vegas sign.

• 1:58:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:41Mike Rowe?

  Just flash that thing around.

• 1:58:42Speaker 02

  Either way, just wave it. It's very regular for people to wave a knife around Las Vegas on the strip. It's just like,

• 1:58:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, people love it.

• 1:58:49Speaker 01

  They call it Wednesday.

• 1:58:50Mike Rowe?

  Michael Easter, his, uh, podcast is called The 2%. Uh, his latest book is called Walking With Weight. His prior books are Scarcity Brain and The Comfort Crisis. I assume you're working on another?

• 1:59:02Speaker 02

  Coming out next year.

• 1:59:04Mike Rowe?

  What's it gonna be called? Can you say?

• 1:59:06Speaker 02

  We don't know yet. There's that debate, but it's, uh, the through line on this is a 850 mile hike I did in Southern Utah, which is its own, go back to the no problem, no story concept.

• 1:59:18Mike Rowe?

  Like St. George, Southern Utah?

• 1:59:20Speaker 02

  Started in Arches National Park, ends in Zion.

• 1:59:24Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:24Speaker 02

  You go up and down the Grand Canyon six times. There's no trail. I did it with, uh, one of my best friends who's, uh, his name's Matt Sherman. So one of the longest serving Americans in the Iraq and Afghanistan war.

• 1:59:36Mike Rowe?

  No kidding.

• 1:59:37Speaker 02

  He was a sort of off the books diplomat type. They'd send out to meet with warlords and he'd come back and report to generals. Lot of stories.

• 1:59:44Mike Rowe?

  No kidding.

• 1:59:45Speaker 02

  A lot of amazing stories. He's wonderful.

• 1:59:47Mike Rowe?

  Lots of problems, lots of stories.

• 1:59:49Speaker 02

  Lots of problems, lots of stories. Yeah.

• 1:59:50Mike Rowe?

  Who was the kid who had to cut his arm off down there?

• 1:59:53Speaker 02

  Aaron Ralston.

• 1:59:54Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Jeez.

• 1:59:55Speaker 02

  Let me tell you, my mom and wife mentioned him a few times before we left.

• 2:00:00Mike Rowe?

  I bet you're going through, was that Zion or was that what?

• 2:00:04Speaker 02

  We ended in, uh, Aaron Ralston, he was, I think he was somewhere on the Colorado Plateau outside of Moab when that happened. He's in the middle of nowhere.

• 2:00:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:12Speaker 02

  You know, people don't understand how remote that part of Utah is.

• 2:00:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Yeah, truly.

• 2:00:17Speaker 02

  We would not see anyone for a week.

• 2:00:19Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:20Speaker 02

  Until we had to hitchhike into a town to resupply and then go back to the trail and yeah.

• 2:00:25Mike Rowe?

  What was that movie called? Was it James Franco?

• 2:00:27Speaker 02

  Franco played him. 128 Hours, I think, because that's how long he was stuck.

• 2:00:34Speaker 02

  And he probably had like a little Swiss art. He should have had this knife.

• 2:00:36Mike Rowe?

  That knife would have had it. He had no problem.

• 2:00:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, just one. Okay, we're good to go. See you later.

• 2:00:41Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, that's why Josh made it, you know? He said, yeah, here's a knife for people who take long hikes alone with the propensity to get their limbs stuck.

• 2:00:48Speaker 02

  Sealed Rolston model.

• 2:00:50Mike Rowe?

  Hey, Matt, thank you again for coming.

• 2:00:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks.

• 2:00:52Mike Rowe?

  All right, see y'all next week.

• 2:00:53Speaker 03

  If you like what you heard, won't you please, pretty please, pretty please, subscribe? Well, I hate to beg and I hate to plead, but please, pretty frickin' please, please sub, please subscribe.

• 2:01:23Speaker 04

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• 2:01:54Speaker 05

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