#577 - Mike Rowe

Mike Rowe is a best-selling author, narrator, podcaster, and TV host known for his hit show “Dirty Jobs”. He also started the mikeroweWORKS Foundation which gives out millions in scholarships every year. His new show “People You Should Know” premieres on his YouTube channel May 2nd. Mike Rowe returns to talk about some of the big issues facing America’s workforce today, if Trump’s tariffs will bring manufacturing back, and why he thinks there’s a war going on against the idea of work itself. Mike Rowe: https://www.instagram.com/mikerowe/ Mike’s Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@therealmikerowe Mike’s foundation: https://mikeroweworks.org/ ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ BetterHelp: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp — go to http://betterhelp.com/theo to get 10% off your first month. ARMRA: Go to http://tryarmra.com/THEO or enter THEO to get 15% off your first order. Valor Recovery: To learn more about Valor Recovery please visit them at https://valorrecoverycoaching.com or email them at [email protected] ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Colin https://instagram.com/colin_reiner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Theo Von?

  I have some tour dates to tell you about. I'll be in Chicago, Illinois on April 24th. Miami, Florida on May 10th. Cedar Rapids, Iowa on June 19th. St. Paul, Minnesota on June 20th. Fargo, North Dakota on June 21st. Rapid City, South Dakota on June 22nd. Winnipeg and Calgary in the Canada. All tickets at theovon.com/TOUR. Please go through those links so you get accurate pricing and I appreciate your support for the return of the Rat Tour. Today's guest is a host. You know him from Dirty Jobs. He's also an author and a podcaster.

• 1:14Theo Von?

  He has a new show coming out in May called People You Should Know, where he travels the country interviewing regular people who are making a difference in the world around them. It's always a good time chatting with the one and only Mr. Mike Rowe.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Oh, he's bringing him a cup of coffee.

• 1:52Theo Von?

  That's how they used to do it.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Oh, I see. Like, you really gotta work for it.

• 1:55Theo Von?

  You wanna be in the labor force.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  You gotta heat it up. Yeah. That's awesome.

• 1:59Theo Von?

  Yeah, see.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Is there cream in there?

• 2:01Theo Von?

  See, this is the difference between today. Look, this is the difference between my parents and us today. This is how you got a cup of coffee, like my grandparents.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 2:11Theo Von?

  They would serve it like this.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:12Theo Von?

  And you figure it out.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Good luck. Figure it out, man. You're on your own.

• 2:16Theo Von?

  And here we are.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Well, remember, the last time I was at your place, I had, I had rolled out of the hotel, come to your house. I wasn't quite sure who you were or where I was or anything. And all I knew was I needed coffee and you ordered some for me. And they brought it in and it was so frickin' hot. I didn't make a big deal about it, but we were like two minutes into our conversation. I thought, damn it, man, I just, I literally cleaved my tongue to the roof of my mouth there for a second. I wonder if I could still be interesting. And I just powered through and decided, you know what? It's, uh, whatever. It's just pain.

• 2:49Theo Von?

  Well, thanks for doing that, man. Oh, that's the worst, bro. When you drink something so hot, but you wanna be a man. That's why I think our grandfathers, no wonder they couldn't express their feelings. They couldn't talk.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  They couldn't talk, man.

• 3:01Theo Von?

  You know how hot, how hot the coffee was then?

• 3:03Speaker 02

  It was, it was magma.

• 3:04Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  And, and how jacked up their teeth were. They were in constant pain.

• 3:08Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Like, people died of their teeth back then, all the time.

• 3:11Theo Von?

  Yeah. We lost at least a grandfather to his, to teeth infection or to gum infection. At least. But, yeah, people died. It was crazy.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  It's bananas. Yeah, I, um, I bit my lip the other day. And this is a, this is a funny thing for me anyway, but the third, like, the first time you do it, it's, it's, it's annoying and it really takes you out of your meal, takes you out of your conversation.

• 3:35Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  And part of the reason is, because you know it's gonna happen again. And then when you do it again, it's a different kind of rage, right? And because it's tinged with the inevitability, like, it's gonna happen. And then when you bite it the third time, it's just white, hot pain and like an anger at the universe. And it's irrational.

• 3:55Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  But it's, it's just one of those things. When I And maybe four or five times you're gonna bite it and it's gonna be like that for the next 24 hours until your body finally sends some sort of message and the swelling starts to go down. But it is a, it's a horrible moment in your day when you start that crucible.

• 4:14Theo Von?

  It's an oral Vietnam, man. There's nothing like that. Going down that journey, the D day of every bite you take and one of them is gonna land, step on that, on that hidden IED of a previously bitten inner lip.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  An oral Vietnam.

• 4:32Theo Von?

  Can we get him some coffee? It's gonna happen again.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Some cream.

• 4:36Theo Von?

  They just bring you more coffee?

• 4:37Speaker 02

  You know what, maybe I should. I used to drink, I used to drink black all the time and then I went two creams and one cream. And you know what I find? My, it upsets people when you change your coffee order. Like the people around you in your circle, like I always thought you were a black coffee guy.

• 4:54Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  And now what's with the cream? Or what's with the almond milk? You don't wanna do that. That sends a whole different message.

• 4:59Theo Von?

  Yeah, definitely. In some communities, that is not good.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Well, there's no, uh.

• 5:04Theo Von?

  It's not good.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  There's no nipples on the almond.

• 5:07Theo Von?

  Yeah. And if you're looking for them, you are a randy character.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Well, you can't, I mean, curiosity would require some, some kind of cursory inspection from this milk delivery system with no nipples. Oh, look at you, Zach. That's amazing. Thank you very much.

• 5:23Theo Von?

  Where'd you get those out of? Did you go into the cow?

• 5:27Speaker 03

  I saw the one we had was expired.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Did you really?

• 5:30Theo Von?

  Oh, my.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  You went to the corner to get me some of these little poisonous pods. These are good. There's a whole.

• 5:37Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Why, why is everything?

• 5:40Theo Von?

  They have melatonin in them now. I'm like, should coffee creamer have melatonin in it?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  I don't know. Isn't that the stuff that makes you tired?

• 5:47Theo Von?

  Yeah. It's like, what's going on?

• 5:48Speaker 02

  That is a mixed message.

• 5:49Theo Von?

  I know.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Here's some, here's some caffeine with a little sedative for you. Just let your body sort it out.

• 5:54Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's where we are.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Next thing you know, you're biting through your lip. Curse in the universe. Oral Vietnam. Dying of your teeth. Oh dude. Dude, do you have any idea how much, I mean, feedback I got? I don't, I don't know if this happens to you. Like you see yourself maybe on YouTube and it's clearly you, right? This is the thing, you're like, you don't dispute it. It's you, you did whatever it is, whatever conversation you're having. Yeah. But you don't have any real recollection of the conversation. Yeah. You're just seeing yourself, right? Like this happened to me a lot years ago when people started uploading these, uh, these incidents on QVC. Like in the middle of the night where I'd been, you know, fired for various inappropriate interactions with product.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Oh, you were on QVC? Oh, yeah, yeah. But, but when like, when I look at those old clips and, and I can't deny that it's me, but I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen. Yeah. Or what I'm, or what I'm going to say next. It's very unusual. It's like biting your lip. Yeah. Because nothing you do about it. You just sit there and you watch yourself doing things you don't remember doing and you just hope, you just hope to God you don't, you know, blow it. I didn't know you got involved in this. Seriously involved. This is the dark arts, selling jewelry to people that are high on sleeping pills. Yeah, I mean, they're lonely hearts. They're, you know, that look at my nails so nicely manicured and all that. That was 1989. That's you selling those? Or 90. Were you going to a Poison concert? What were you even wearing those for?

• 7:27Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, as long as you're gonna do it, find the cat sack. That's when I knew my life had taken a weird turn. This was 1990, it was my first job in TV. Was it really? That's crazy. Like, I didn't even know that. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, my gosh, look at you. Look at that hair, right? Where were you from, Transylvania? So this is a lava lamp, right? And I'm, uh, I have no idea how to behave. I, I just want to know if it's really hot. Well, guess what, dude? It's hot, man. And put two creamers in it. It's like, that lava, I mean, obviously it's not really lava, it's magma. Nuh-uh. No. That's not lava? I opened this thing up on the air just because it's three in the morning, right?

• 8:11Speaker 02

  And you're just trying to make sense out of whatever they bring you next. It could be the Amcor Negative Ion Generator. It could be the Health Team Infrared Pain Reliever, could be a lava lamp. Oh, yeah, it could be a child's diaper that sorts coins. They brought me a, um... A cat sack, K A T S A K, it's a cat sack. Uh, I thought it was a joke. It's not. It's a, it's like a grocery bag lined with Mylar. Right? And your cat crawls in it and it makes a crinkling sound and cats love it.

• 8:42Theo Von?

  Oh, that's nice.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  So this is the kind of thing, man, you just, I would sit there for three hours in the middle of the night. Uh, trying to, there's no, there was no training program or anything, you know, they, they would just bring you these things that look, look like you'd get them out of that machine on the carnival midway with the claw.

• 9:00Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was really just stuff that had failed to sell in prime time. Uh, and so if you're new, there's no training program. They just put you on the middle of the night and they just bring you this stuff, man. One thing after the next and you talk for eight minutes.

• 9:13Theo Von?

  I love that. We should bring that back. What if we brought something like that back?

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, QVC is still on. It's just that back in those days, uh, no one really knew about it. Um, they didn't have any big vendors or anything. Today, you know, they do six, seven billion dollars a year.

• 9:30Theo Von?

  Do they really?

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Giant. It's huge. Home shopping is huge.

• 9:33Theo Von?

  Wonder if we should do, what if we did a fun one on like YouTube and we sold American products that were American made, Mike?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  I'm not, I'm in, I'm in. It, look, there are no new ideas. Like I joked the last time I was at your pad in Nashville, it was like, I really felt like you had tapped into like a Wayne's World meets Charlie Rose, right? And, and so all those old ideas are, will come back. Telethons will come back.

• 10:00Theo Von?

  Oh, I love that.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Home shopping never really went away.

• 10:03Theo Von?

  Telethons were great though. You'd call up and you'd be like, who's crippled? Sometimes my stepdad would get drunk or whatever.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:09Theo Von?

  And he'd like want to impress my mom. So we'd ring up one of those telethons that were on just to, he'd be like, oh, hey, it's Randy who's crippled over there. And they like. Tell you who's crippled or whatever. He'd be like, yeah, put thirty dollars on that one.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Well, do you remember Jerry Lewis doing the telethons?

• 10:25Theo Von?

  I, yup. Jerry's kids.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Jerry's kids. He was real. I mean, he raised like a lot of money. He did a lot of good in that world. But you get in thirty-six hours into a telethon, right? You've been up thirty-six hours.

• 10:37Theo Von?

  Yeah, you're on QVC then.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  That's like, and I did, there were times on QVC where it snowed and like the next host couldn't come in. So when you're, when you've been up for that long and you're on live TV and they bring you like a collectible doll.

• 10:55Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  And you're hallucinating and you don't even understand that people collect dolls, but they do, right? They do. And so you're just sitting there like this doll would be next to me and her name would be Rachel. And she'd be dressed up like a tramp from Little Women or something.

• 11:10Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  And you just give them stories, you know?

• 11:13Theo Von?

  Pride and Prejudice.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 11:15Theo Von?

  I loved him as he loved me.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  So Emily Bronte, or was it Charlotte?

• 11:21Theo Von?

  Oh, I'm not sure. I think they've dated for a while. I'm not sure who it was. They may have. One of them took the other one's name.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Well, this is like what you just did is exactly what I would do every night. It was free associating over whatever they brought. I wasn't a very good salesman, but I was good at like starting sentences with no clear end.

• 11:40Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  And just keep going. So the next thing you know, you're, you're giving these dolls like very elaborate backstories. You know, like, you know, she's a doll that gives you just a hint of possibility. She says no, but there's yes, yes, in those eyes. And then the camera guy pushes in close, really close.

• 12:00Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  And I'm sitting here like this, looking at a monitor, looking at myself, looking at the doll and a million people are watching.

• 12:07Theo Von?

  Yeah, like she's new in town.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  She's new in town and she's keen to make some friends and there's really no telling how far she'll go. Or how far you'll let her because it's really up to you, caller, for three easy payments at twenty-nine ninety-five. Young Rachel here will be on her way to you and whatever you do with her and the privacy of your own curio is between you and your lord. I'm just here to tell you that she's on sale and she looks like a sport. Alrighty, what's next?

• 12:33Theo Von?

  Next up, Mike, we actually have the. Princess Diana Beanie Babies that are in town.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Hey, that's fantastic.

• 12:40Theo Von?

  They're just passing through, actually. Mike, there's not many of them.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Well, you know, aren't we all just passing through, Theo? When you really think about it, this whole notion of permanence, as it relates to porcelain dolls, I think that's something we can dive into to kill three, four, maybe five minutes.

• 12:54Theo Von?

  Oh, I believe that. And I'll tell you that, that, I'll tell you this, that these Beanie Babies are stuffed with, um, what's the, it's not cotton, what is it?

• 13:03Speaker 02

  It's styrofoam, Theo.

• 13:05Theo Von?

  Oh, yes, styrofoam.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  They're stuffed with styrofoam. And I'll tell you, it was a bold move on a manufacturing.

• 13:10Theo Von?

  Russian cotton, as they call it.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  That's right, because when you get it wet, it swells up a little bit, like those nesting dolls in reverse. When you see that little Princess Di Beanie Baby swell up like a tick, your heart's gonna beat with anticipation and wonder about what could possibly happen next.

• 13:26Theo Von?

  Yep, and we also, she comes, if you buy her now, she comes with these two CIA dolls.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:31Theo Von?

  We're not saying anything. You say potato, I say massage.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  I say cavity search, because with the Beanie Baby, it's really your property. That's the beauty, especially the Princess Di Beanie Babies, because with a touch of royalty, well, they're dressed in purple, too, the color of kings, Theo.

• 13:49Theo Von?

  Oh, say it, Mike. And if you order right now, within the next forty-four seconds, both of these CIA Beanie Babies will be stuffed with pure polyester, or gay cotton, as they call it in some circles.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  That's right. And for this week, just to mix things up a little bit, each one of these Beanie Babies, every one out of a hundred will be stuffed with cocaine.

• 14:10Theo Von?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  So it's really going to shake things up, because who knows who's gonna get it?

• 14:15Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  And who knows what's gonna happen next?

• 14:17Theo Von?

  Oh, I wouldn't put it in a baby's crib unless you want him to walk this week. That's what I'd say.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  I just bit my lip.

• 14:24Theo Von?

  My, I'm gonna put two creamers inside of myself. Um, Mike, let's, we have you here.

• 14:33Theo Von?

  Thank you, dude. I didn't know you were in those trenches. If, if we, uh, cause you know what I've thought about? It would be neat to do something if we did it with products, only products that are American made, right? I just got this, uh, shirt, um, and a jacket from this company, American Giant, right?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  So, uh, Seriously?

• 14:48Theo Von?

  Yeah. Bring in that jacket if you can.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  I know those guys.

• 14:52Theo Von?

  Do, uh, Bathrop or what's a Winth-?

• 14:54Speaker 02

  Byard Winthrop.

• 14:55Theo Von?

  Byard Winthrop.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Is the CEO of American, this, are you messing with like, did?

• 15:00Theo Von?

  I swear to God, dude. Bring it in. It's a gray one out there.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  I'll tell you a true story about this guy, Byard Winthrop. 16 years ago, he sent me a sweatshirt in the mail. Cause he saw me on Dirty Jobs, getting the absolute crap knocked out of me and he saw my clothes being destroyed right and left. He goes, this is an indestructible sweatshirt. It's a hundred percent made in the USA. And Slate Magazine had just written a story called the world's greatest hoodie.

• 15:32Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  So it wasn't cheap, but it was made from cotton that was literally picked, like outside of Gaffney, maybe, or Middlesex, South Carolina, where their factories were. He showed me pictures of the employees who stitched it, you're right, the yarn, the everything. And, uh, I still have it.

• 15:50Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  I wore that thing. It was completely in it. There it is, Slate Magazine.

• 15:54Theo Von?

  This is the greatest hoodie ever. This is December 2012.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  So he sent me this sweatshirt and I wore it and I gave him some love on, uh, on Dirty Jobs because it really is amazing, you know? It's, it's the kind of sweatshirt, do you remember the Champion sweatshirts?

• 16:09Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  The, with the reverse weave.

• 16:11Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Right? There were like the varsity sweatshirts, the Harvard Crew guys. It's the kind of sweatshirt your, uh, your girlfriend steals.

• 16:19Theo Von?

  Hmm, God.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  So anyway, I, I never knew what happened to the guy, but he reached out a couple of years ago and American Giant is still doing it. Like, I mean,

• 16:29Theo Von?

  Yeah, they're making clothes in America, right? Cause this is, yeah, um, how did I come across this? Oh, a friend of mine showed this to me. Um, they sent me a clip about a guy was trying to make a product in America.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:41Theo Von?

  And he couldn't do it. Yeah, I'll put it on for a few minutes. This is my AG radio, Daddy.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  That's great, man.

• 16:46Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Yep, they're doing it. They're actually doing it. People don't understand how jacked up this is that back in nineteen eighty-eight. Eighty percent of all of the clothing we wore was made in America.

• 17:03Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  And today it's two percent. It's bananas.

• 17:06Theo Von?

  It's unbelievable. Um.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  The problem that those guys have is there's a labor challenge because what what's happening is they're competing. Obviously with China, with Vietnam and with a lot of other places and and those places, you know, they don't have the same regulations. They don't have the same um requirements. They don't have the same conditions and factories, all that stuff.

• 17:34Theo Von?

  Right. You don't have to be fully awake to work.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  You don't even have to really be human. I'm not I'm not sure what the what the laws are. I just know that when the dust settles, it's a it's a hell of a lot harder to do it here. So they do it. They're trying to do it.

• 17:49Theo Von?

  They do it elsewhere.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  They do it in South Carolina.

• 17:52Theo Von?

  They do it in South Carolina, American Giant.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  American Giant does.

• 17:55Theo Von?

  But it's it's crazy to think that when you think about, this is a misconception that I started to realize that I had. That when I travel around the country, because we've probably, and I just said this recently, but we touring comedy, we've probably done the top two hundred cities. Size wise, right? Like some comedians, they go to fifty cities, right?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 18:14Theo Von?

  And they go to the, we went as many places you as you could go and we still have more to go. But I mean, like, you know, anywhere from like um. You know, Lubbock to La Crosse.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Wisconsin.

• 18:27Theo Von?

  Yeah, I mean, just we we to Fargo. I mean, we're going to medium sized cities. And you always think like, oh, well, there's factories everywhere that make things and stuff like that. There's not.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  No.

• 18:38Theo Von?

  There's not. And you you think, oh, well, I'm sure there's always, we were flying on an airplane, you're like, oh, I'm sure we're passing thousands and hundreds of thousands of factories that are making. Products and sweatshirts. We're not.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  No, it used to be, I mean, the Rust Belt in particular, like that part of the mid-Atlantic, those were factory towns.

• 18:55Theo Von?

  The tetanus belt, too, they called it.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  The tetanus. Well, I mean, it was, you know, there's so many rivers up there, and so the mills were by the rivers, and so the factories were near the mills and the cotton was spun there. But this guy Byard, he's actually become a friend of mine, and he's on a mission, and like, flannel, like, hand-dyed yarn in flannel was something like those old, thick flannel shirts that we grew up with. You can't get them anymore. So American Giants started making those, they started making these hoodies, and the more I read about them, the more I liked them. So he's become, like, he's in my world now, because I tried on my podcast, I'm not there

• 19:35Speaker 02

  yet, but I'm really trying to make sure all the sponsors have an American-made story. Just because, why not? See, the thing is, man, if Trump succeeds at the reshoring effort...

• 19:51Theo Von?

  With the tariffs.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's part of it. But if, in, if in general, he gets manufacturing reinvigorated in this country, then there's gonna be a challenge that, like, a lot of people aren't talking about, which, which is labor.

• 20:07Theo Von?

  Right.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  So there's, in January, there were 482,000 open positions in manufacturing in this country, right? 480,000 open positions. If he gets his way, and this all gets reinvigorated, you're talking about two or three million new jobs, but there's, there's no workforce sitting there going, "This is what I want to do."

• 20:32Theo Von?

  Or prepare to do it?

• 20:33Speaker 02

  They're not, so there's a skills gap, for sure.

• 20:36Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  But there's also a will gap.

• 20:39Theo Von?

  Right. Okay, so let's talk about a couple of these things, Mike. So first, let's talk about, I'm taking this off because it is pretty warm in here, but I will say this, this feels great.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  You'll sweat your balls off in that thing.

• 20:48Theo Von?

  They made a t-shirt, oh dude, you will never, this thing will keep your coffee warm for seven eons, dude.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  It gets, it's, I mean, not to turn it into a commercial, but I swear, it's weird how soft it'll get. It gets softer, and it gets thicker, it'll smell a little funky.

• 21:02Theo Von?

  Oh, God, it's gonna turn into a wife.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Spit my lip again.

• 21:07Theo Von?

  Hey. Um, but no, this is really awesome, Mike. And, um, and I know you have a new show that's coming out on your YouTube on, uh, on May 2nd. Um, where you went and met with a lot of, uh, just workers on the ground, right?

• 21:19Speaker 02

  We do a lot of that. Um, but this, this thing is kind of important.

• 21:24Theo Von?

  The tariff stuff?

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:26Theo Von?

  Okay, let's, so let's start there. So Trump has put in a lot of, he's, he's started this kind of tariff war, right?

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:33Theo Von?

  And you hear people say it's good, you hear people say that it's bad. From my perspective, after traveling on the country, I, I don't know how else you're gonna get jobs back here because it just, there's a lot of towns that are boarded up. There's a lot of small cities that are boarded up. I mean, a whole city. You walk through the city of Jackson, Mississippi during the day? It looks like a movie set. It's very clean, it's beautiful, but there's nothing, and that's one of 40 probably cities that we've seen that are like that. Um, so I'm just thinking, what's gonna come and save these cities if something needs to? And so then you start to see Trump put these tariffs on, and then you start to get the idea, well, it's to bring jobs back. So we have jobs here, so it keeps cities busy.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so, so it's two different conversations, I think.

• 22:15Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  And obviously, I'm not an economist.

• 22:17Theo Von?

  Me neither.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  In fact, I don't know an economist who thinks tariffs are a good idea. I really don't.

• 22:23Theo Von?

  I don't know an economist.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  I know a couple, but the ones I'm most interested in are like slightly right of center. Where they don't agree either, right? So like everybody is either having a conversation about whether or not it's a good idea economically. I call that like a tier two conversation. You're having a tier one conversation. You're saying, well, wait a minute, what if there's something in the country? That's actually more important than the economy long-term?

• 22:53Theo Von?

  Right.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  What if, like, what could that be?

• 22:56Theo Von?

  The economy, the human spirit, I think.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  It could be that. And, you know, I get, I get all kinds of grief for this, but I, I think it's a fair analogy. I think about, um, Well, hell, I think about slavery in 1870, right? And I think about the conversation that was going on in the country. And a big part of it was, wait, if we get rid of this, do you have any idea what it's going to do to the economy? Not just for the South, which would collapse, but for the North.

• 23:23Theo Von?

  Who was buying all the products.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Who's all dressed in cotton.

• 23:26Theo Von?

  Right.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  And of course, there's the triangle trade, molasses, rum, slaves, right? This, this is an eternal wheel that had been going on for time immemorial.

• 23:34Theo Von?

  Yeah, dark rum, where do you think that came from? You know what I'm saying? You put a couple, you know?

• 23:40Speaker 02

  I think I know what you're saying.

• 23:41Theo Von?

  I'm just saying, you mix a few items and you got some, that's the best rum they got.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  It's good rum. But if you fundamentally were to make the slavery decision based on nothing but whether or not it was good or bad for the economy, well, we'd still have slavery.

• 23:57Theo Von?

  Right.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  So we got to a point where people said, wait, wait, wait. This can't, this can't keep going.

• 24:04Theo Von?

  This isn't human.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 24:05Theo Von?

  Right.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Right. And so, uh, it was bad.

• 24:09Theo Von?

  Right.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  The economy crapped the bed. We fought a war. A lot of people died. And I don't mean to sound glib when I say it. I don't know what the real ramifications are going to be. I don't have a crystal ball. But I do think that the reason people are talking past each other with the tariffs is because some people are saying, look, it's a tax, period. It's not good for global trade, which is true. But if there's this other, if you're trying to transform Jackson, Mississippi, then you at least have to elevate the, the conversation to these, this other set of consequences that might happen if you shake the whole thing up.

• 24:47Theo Von?

  Right.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Now, I, again, I put a big like asterix on that. I, I don't really know what I'm talking about. But I do believe that there are unintended consequences and intended consequences. And, um, the consequences of, of messing with the tariffs, uh, are, are probably both.

• 25:08Theo Von?

  Right. But do you feel like, do you think Trump, his intentions are good?

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Here's what I think. When I started my little foundation, which by the way, we're still doing it. We've got three million bucks we're giving away this month in these work ethic scholarships. So we're, we're training people for skilled jobs. We're, we're training people for manufacturing jobs. We've been doing it for years. That's me in a cap and gown, sitting there without any pants on, as if to indicate optically that even though I have my degree, I'm not actually trained for any of the opportunities that currently exist.

• 25:41Theo Von?

  You look like you just graduated from San Francisco. I'll say that, dude. Nice legs.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  It was an experimental phase.

• 25:47Theo Von?

  My dad used to wear those shoes, dude.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Hey, you can see my shark bite there on my left, uh, my left knee. That's, there you go. Looking at that, that hurt.

• 25:54Theo Von?

  Yeah, a lot of sharks over there in San Fran, those bays, buddy, you know?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  So Trump's intentions, right? I don't know. I don't know the man. Uh, I'm rooting for him. But here's what happened to me. When I started that foundation.

• 26:07Theo Von?

  You started this?

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 26:07Theo Von?

  Because your foundation gives out, um...

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Work ethic scholarships.

• 26:11Theo Von?

  Work ethic scholarships, and people can apply on the website.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  If you click on scholarship right there, uh, up at the top, uh, yeah, it'll take you to a... You know, well, that's me and a bunch of people who got the sc... There you go. Yeah.

• 26:24Theo Von?

  That's awesome. Can we donate to that?

• 26:25Speaker 02

  You can donate to it, sure.

• 26:27Theo Von?

  Awesome, man.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, in fact, we just auctioned off, these guys up in Ohio made me a truck. They made a MicroWorks work truck. Rogan's head exploded when he saw this, right? This is a 1964 power wagon, and they, they built it from scratch. It was beautiful. And they took it to the Barrett-Jackson auction, and we got one and a half million bucks for it.

• 26:49Theo Von?

  No way.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  So that all went to scholarships. I, I remember last time I was telling you...

• 26:54Theo Von?

  We're gonna donate way less than that.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  I was auctioning off all kinds of crap from Dirty Jobs to raise money. We've given away about 12 million bucks in these things.

• 27:01Theo Von?

  That's amazing, man.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  But, but I'm not saying it because I'm awesome.

• 27:04Theo Von?

  No, you're just saying this is, so this is a way that you're trying to be a part of the things that you've gone through and seen. You want to put guys back in the workforce and make them be prepared. Is that right?

• 27:13Speaker 02

  That is right. And the answer to your question regarding Trump actually starts with Obama. Because the year we started this, in 2008... I don't know if you remember it, but he had a thing called the Highway Infrastructure Act, and it was big news, headlines everywhere. He was going to create 3 million shovel-ready jobs, right? And I was rooting for him. And then Dirty Jobs at the time was at its absolute peak. And what was weird, as the country was going into a recession, was everybody I was talking to on Dirty Jobs, there are 12 million unemployed people, but they all had, like, help-wanted signs out. They were really struggling to hire. And their basic bitch was, "We just

• 27:57Speaker 02

  can't find people who are excited to pick up a shovel. We can't find people who want to do the work that we have." So I reached out in an open letter to the President in 2009 and just said, "Look, man, I am rooting for you. I think 3 million shovel-ready jobs sounds great, but part of making that succeed has to include a campaign to help make shovel-ready jobs cool, because right now, people aren't buying it." There it is. Look at that, man. You guys are unbelievable. That's an open letter to the President.

• 28:30Theo Von?

  11/11/2009, "I am awed by the task at hand and compelled to tell you about Micro Works, a public awareness campaign designed to reinvigorate the trades." Yeah, I've, I, we need, there needs to be, um, you're saying, look-

• 28:43Speaker 02

  I'm saying it because it's about to happen again.

• 28:45Theo Von?

  Right.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Donald Trump is going down a road, and if he succeeds, he's going to create millions of manufacturing jobs in a country that currently has nearly 500,000 manufacturing jobs open because the people who run those factories can't find people who want to do the work. So it's not enough to create the jobs.

• 29:12Theo Von?

  Right.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  And, look, a lot of your listeners are probably thinking, "Well, make the pay better. Make it more, make it more interesting. Make it more palatable." And we can have that conversation, for sure. But the bigger issue still is, there's no enthusiasm for the work. We took shop class out of high school. We robbed kids of the opportunity even see what that kind of work even looks like. Meanwhile, we told a whole generation of kids they were fucking screwed. If they didn't get a four-year degree, right? And so people say, Mike, how did college get so expensive? I know you know this, but nothing has gotten more expensive in the last 40 years than a four-year degree.

• 29:52Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Not, not real estate, not healthcare, uh, not, not energy, nothing, right? And so we keep telling kids, they're screwed if they don't go in this direction. We free up endless money to loan them. So now you've got 1.7 trillion dollars in student debt on the books. You've got 7.6 million open jobs right now, most of which don't require a four-year degree. And here's the other screwed up part. You've got 6.8 million able-bodied men who are not only not looking for work, they're, I mean, they're out of the, out of the workforce and not looking.

• 30:32Theo Von?

  Right.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  So, so all of that together.

• 30:35Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  We've never seen that before in, in peacetime, anyway. So, so something beyond the tariffs, something beyond policy is, is gonna have to happen to make 22-year-olds go, yeah, man, I would consider doing that.

• 30:51Theo Von?

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• 31:36Theo Von?

  Armra colostrum. We've worked out a special offer for our audience. Receive 15% off your first order. Go to try Armra, T R Y A R M R A dot com slash Theo, or enter Theo to get 15% off your first order. That's T R Y A R M R A dot com slash T H E O. I like Armra colostrum. I put it in my smoothies. I enjoy it and I'm happy that I take it. Armra colostrum. Well, I've got some thoughts on that. So one is, do you think that the college, the one of

• 32:16Theo Von?

  the reasons it went up was because most of that money was loans and then that was almost a scam, not a scam, but a scheme to?

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Scam's good.

• 32:24Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Wow. Look, it's a product, man. You're, what, what you're selling.

• 32:29Theo Von?

  Right. But how does that money? So just so I know, so I'm clear. So that money works because then, um, the college loans it to you, they put interest on it and then you have to pay it back.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Well, the college doesn't loan it. Sometimes you might get a scholarship from the college. That's not a loan. Uh, but financial aid packages can involve like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

• 32:48Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Which sounds like your awesome aunt and uncle.

• 32:51Theo Von?

  Yeah, it also sounds like you borrowed some money from a guy in Memphis.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Well, actually what it is, is some faceless bureaucrat in a tall, soulless building in Kansas City that's just crunching the numbers, right? So.

• 33:04Theo Von?

  So the more people that they can get to go to college, the more like, um, the more interest that they can get off of these big loans, right?

• 33:10Speaker 02

  So sure, the people loaning the money are getting interest on the loans, but it's the colleges themselves that, like right now, like literally as we speak, there's a screaming headline. Uh, Trump just put a, a hold on $2 billion of federal money that was going to go straight.

• 33:30Theo Von?

  To Harvard.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  To Harvard. That's right. Now, why would he do that? You know, people are screaming, oh my God, it's an, it's something about free speech and, you know, $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard has been paused due to activism on campus. Where in the headline does it tell you that Harvard has a $52 billion endowment? Hmm. Nowhere. But they do.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  They've got over fifty billion dollars in an endowment.

• 33:58Theo Von?

  Yeah, that might not even have an effect.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, look, it it colleges, especially the top tier colleges, have an awful lot of money and and they have a steady stream of customers because in our society, we have completely bought into the notion that that what you're purchasing in these schools is an education. What you're actually purchasing is a credential.

• 34:23Theo Von?

  Right.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Whether or not you're educated or not, your your experience may vary. Look, dude, I'm I'm looking at my iPhone right here. If you've got an internet connection.

• 34:32Theo Von?

  You're you have.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Well, you have access to ninety eight percent of all the known information in the world.

• 34:36Theo Von?

  Right. How you process it and how you utilize it, it's up to you. Yeah.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  That's you. So I'm not. It's not fair to say that you can get a liberal arts degree on your iPhone, but you can. It's not. It's not fair to really compare, you know, lying in your bed like I did two weeks ago, watching a free lecture at MIT and saying, you know, it would be the same experience if I were there in the classroom. But it's close enough to say, well, wait a minute. If the first one cost me zero point zero dollars and the second one is gonna keep me in debt for over twenty years.

• 35:10Theo Von?

  Let me take the first one.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  What am I doing?

• 35:12Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  So I don't know, man. I I I feel badly about painting with too broad a brush. My liberal arts degree served me really well. I I was. I graduated four years after you were born, I'm guessing. Nineteen eighty four I graduated.

• 35:27Theo Von?

  Beautiful year.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  All right. It's a great year. Um, I went to two years in a community college.

• 35:31Theo Von?

  A lot of hot chicks then, too, huh?

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a prospect.

• 35:35Theo Von?

  God.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  You know those collectible dolls on QVC?

• 35:38Theo Von?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  It's very, very similar.

• 35:40Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  It was a good time to be alive. I was also singing in the opera back then.

• 35:46Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot you were a opera, that you were an opera guy.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was. It was a thing I did.

• 35:51Theo Von?

  Cat calling. Dude, if you hear that cat call, you stop. If it's just some fucking Chicano whistling at you, dude, I'm keeping walking. But you hit a guy, fucking hit a half of an Ave Maria on his lunch break near an open manhole, dude. You gotta stop.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Well, people pay attention, man. That's what like in the first season of Dirty Jobs, I I sang. I didn't even know the cameras were rolling. I was just blown away by the acoustics in a sewer in San Francisco.

• 36:17Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  So I sang a

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Right?

• 36:34Theo Von?

  Okay, I'll have the anapasta.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  But it was like the image of a dude wearing a rubber suit, squatting in a sewer, covered with other people's shit.

• 36:47Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Singing Puccini.

• 36:50Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  To your point.

• 36:51Theo Von?

  Literal Puccini.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Poop Chiny, that's good. Yeah, people didn't know what to do with that. You don't know where to, it's like a lot of cognitive dissonance in your, in your brain.

• 37:02Theo Von?

  There's a lot going on at once.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  And there's a parallel here.

• 37:06Theo Von?

  It's kind of what's going on right now.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  That's it. People, like if you sing opera, you shouldn't be in a sewer. If you're in a sewer, you should be getting paid crap wages. But what do you do? What do you say about a guy in a sewer who's a multimillionaire? Right? Like, what do you mean he owns his own septic tank business? What do you mean he worked his way up to become a successful entrepreneur without a college degree? How, how is such a thing possible?

• 37:32Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Every day, Theo, we've got 2,200 people have gone through MicroWorks. I'd say 30% of them are welders. I'd say half of them are making mid-six figures.

• 37:47Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Nobody believes it. I spend most of my time now in, in this space, sitting down with people who are 25 years old and looking at a camera and saying, hey, I get it. Don't take it from the opera singing rich dude covered with other people's crap. Okay, I get it. I'm not, I'm not persuasive.

• 38:06Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  But listen to her, listen to him.

• 38:10Theo Von?

  Right.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  Right? And so that's how the needle starts to move and that's, that's part of what has to happen.

• 38:15Theo Von?

  So you're saying that if the tariffs work, right? Part of that is going to have to be that we're going to need people who can do the jobs, do the manufacturing jobs here. We're going to need those skilled labor workers, right?

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 38:26Theo Von?

  Okay. So, and we don't have all those right now. We need them, we don't have them. How do you, so we almost see like a, like remember that Uncle Sam poster? Like I want you, like we need that PR campaign.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:38Theo Von?

  To get people hype because, because yeah, you just need that thing that's going to get people hype a little bit.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  It's, it's not just PR.

• 38:48Theo Von?

  It's ethos too, you think?

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Well.

• 38:50Theo Von?

  What is ethos? Bring it up.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, bring up ethos and tell us and all these Greek words, you know, the Aristotelian definition of a tragedy, anagnorisis and peripetia, a characteristic of spirit, a culture, era, or community is manifested in its beliefs and aspirations. That's it. A challenge to the ethos of the 1960s.

• 39:10Theo Von?

  So can I have an ethos of myself, kinda like my own spirit?

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 39:14Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  So if it's an individual, it's a worldview. I think, and even better way to think about it is a code.

• 39:23Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Do you have a code? If you do, what is it?

• 39:26Theo Von?

  Like Dexter kinda, but my own thing? Like a lit, like a code?

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:30Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, look, man, this will sound really outdated and hokey.

• 39:34Theo Von?

  Integrity, you mean?

• 39:36Speaker 02

  I do mean integrity. I mean, when I was a kid, like, the first time I had to raise my hand, well, the first time I had to take a pledge, it was the pledge of the flag.

• 39:45Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  I didn't really know what it meant. I was too young. I just memorized it, right? But later, in the Boy Scouts, you know, I had a scout master who was a retired Army Colonel. He was a hard ass and he took this really seriously. So you like raise your hand and pledge, you take the scout oath. Now, I'm only like 12 years old at the time. But I remember thinking, this feels like there were candles lit in a darkened room and it was serious, you know, it was as serious as could be. It's easy to look back and laugh and poke fun, but...

• 40:19Theo Von?

  No, we did the same thing.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  It mattered, man. On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country. Like, wait, that's just the first sentence. Never mind whether you like it or agree or disagree. Challenging kids to take an oath and to make a pledge. My foundation has a thing called a sweat pledge. You have to sign it if you're applying for the particular pile of money that I've accumulated through donations and I'm super stingy with that money.

• 40:47Theo Von?

  Well, AA has a, they have a pledge in the beginning that you do as a group. There's something about doing something as a group that makes you feel a part of a group. That's how a group works. It's how tradition happens, right? You can't just have it with... Without actually participating in it and and vowing to it.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  You you you must assume individual responsibility, but you must do that in the presence of other like minded people.

• 41:09Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  So my sweat pledge, which I ironically wrote after some bourbon, stands for skill and work ethic aren't taboo. I was just looking for a way to make people make a promise. And you can find it out here. It's it's now a curriculum, actually, in 70 schools, but it's based on the 12 step recovery process. And the Boy Scout law. Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, combined with these really old school

• 41:43Speaker 02

  affirmations around things like gratitude and delayed gratification and personal responsibility and and work ethic and and aversion to debt. I actually have something on the sweat pledge that says, um, I would rather live in a tent and eat beans than pay for things I can't afford. Now, people call me, they're pissed, their parents call, right? There there's there's a tenant on the pledge that says, I um, I believe that my safety is my responsibility. I understand that just because I'm in compliance, doesn't mean I'm out of danger. Now, I believe this because I nearly got killed half a dozen times on dirty jobs. There it is, number six, right?

• 42:27Speaker 02

  So this thing makes people crazy. It they

• 42:34Speaker 02

  they they they resist it.

• 42:35Theo Von?

  But this is a code really here.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  It's it's my code.

• 42:38Theo Von?

  It's your code.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  And it starts right at the top, man. I believe I've won the greatest lottery of all time. I'm alive. I walk the earth. I live in America. Above all things, I'm grateful.

• 42:48Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Now, you can disagree with that and we can still be friends. But when I get calls from from parents or teachers or kids who are going through this application process and they say, look, I'm not really comfortable signing this. Then I say, well, then this particular pile of free money might not be for you. It's okay, man. I mean, I work really hard and I raise a lot of money and I give a lot of it away. And I I make no apology for wanting to to help people who at least. See the the world.

• 43:20Theo Von?

  The same way you do.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Or or something adjacent.

• 43:22Theo Von?

  Oh, I agree. I think that that makes perfect sense.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  But but but you can't like you can't run a business that way.

• 43:27Theo Von?

  No.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Like you can't hire people based on their worldview regarding gratitude or personal responsibility, at least not in California.

• 43:36Theo Von?

  Yeah, probably not in California. You can't. But I think just, you know, you you got to keep it off the documents, but secretly in your head, you can low key have some ideas.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

• 43:44Theo Von?

  Do you think there's something different about the Gen Z workforce? Or do you think there's just they haven't had the same examples that previous generations had, you know?

• 43:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. I think, well, look, again, painting with too broad a brush sucks. And, you know, I've.

• 43:59Theo Von?

  I agree. We're not pointing at the Gen Z workforce like you're bad or anything like that. Because, you know, it's so funny. It's like, we had a guy on recently, um, this guy Alexander Wang, and he's not the fashion guy that got murdered. He's a Chi- he's a, he's a kind of a semi-Chinese guy, but he founded, uh, Scale AI. It's an AI company. And he was saying that one way to look at AI is that everyone one will kind of level up, right? It's like suddenly, uh, kind of robots or computers will do a lot of the more menial tasks.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:30Theo Von?

  And you'll, everyone will kind of be a manager. And it's interesting because if you say that to me or your generation, our generation, kind of that, people would be like, well, I don't want to just be, I don't want to be the manager of five robots and I sit in a small, dark room all the time and, and, you know, and that's my life. And maybe I get four day work week instead of five.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:53Theo Von?

  But if you told my nephews that, hey, you get to be the manager of five robots, you just sit in this room and control them all day, they would think that's awesome.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:04Theo Von?

  Just because of how they've grown up, you know, like everything is so gamified. So it's kind of interesting because you start to get into what the whole like. Perception of work of being alive even is to people. Does that make any sense to you?

• 45:20Speaker 02

  It makes, look, it starts.

• 45:22Theo Von?

  I mean, there's a lot in there.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  There's a lot, but what you're really saying is like, what is a good job? What is a bad job? What is a clean job? What is a dirty job? And, and once you start to create some sort of hierarchy, which makes sense, everybody's free to do it. You ought to do it. But, you know, if Byrd were here, the American Giant guy, he would, he would tell you a story about the individuals who made that sweatshirt. Right? He would, he would show you the factory line. He would introduce you to the farmers who grew the cotton. He would show you step by step how his entire supply chain is insulated from these tariffs. These tariffs hadn't affected him at all because he, he doesn't rely on any of them.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  He's totally independent. So he's taking kind of a victory lap right now. But his big point would be you would have to see the enthusiasm among his group of workers when they created a sweatshirt that became the greatest hoodie ever made. And you can look at that and go, it's a frickin' sweatshirt, dude. But it's not a sweatshirt.

• 46:28Theo Von?

  Right.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  It's not that, it's not about the sweatshirt. And this might put it into even better focus, just so your listeners understand how jacked up things are. I got a call six months ago from a company I bet you've never heard of called Blue Forge Alliance. All right. Blue Forge Alliance.

• 46:46Theo Von?

  Did you siding or no?

• 46:49Speaker 02

  In a manner of speaking.

• 46:51Theo Von?

  We went through a siding phase. We'll come right back to this idea. I remember we went through a siding phase in our town once. Somebody came through with a, like a semi truck full of siding. It over, it fell over and they said, people, we had a bunch of people stealing siding, you know, and so.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  We sold that on QVC.

• 47:07Theo Von?

  Y'all sold siding?

• 47:08Speaker 02

  No, the same siding. We had a whole racket. They would bring us the siding that was stolen from the neighbors. And I would sell it in between collectible dolls.

• 47:14Theo Von?

  People in our area hadn't seen siding before, so they were putting it on the sides of everything, dude. You put siding on a house, siding on a floor.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 47:20Theo Von?

  Yeah, you'd have siding on the ceiling. It's like, it is not supposed to go up there. People had siding, bro, they put siding on the, on a damn baby while it was resting, dude. They were just.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Siding on a ceiling. It ain't supposed to go there. This is basic.

• 47:32Theo Von?

  Crazy face, dude.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  It was a crazy face.

• 47:35Theo Von?

  Um, but back to Blue Forge.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  This is crazier.

• 47:37Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  This crazier than that.

• 47:38Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Blue Forge Alliance is in charge of the American Maritime Base, and there they are.

• 47:44Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  The American Maritime Base is in charge of delivering three nuclear powered submarines every year to the US Navy. Two Virginia, I think, and one Columbia class. These things, these things are longer than the Washington Monument is tall.

• 48:00Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Okay, they are the, the, the pointy part of our national defense.

• 48:05Theo Von?

  Yeah, they'll seat about 40, won't they?

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Well, look, if things go sideways with Taiwan or China and get hypersonic, I worry about our aircraft carriers. They're exposed like they haven't been before.

• 48:16Theo Von?

  Yeah. Oh, shit, if things go sideways in Baltimore, we'll send one over there, you know?

• 48:20Speaker 02

  So it's the subs that matter. Now, Blue Forge represents 15,000 individual companies, and these companies have to deliver three a year for 10 years. They called me, right? And they say, look, we're, uh, we're hiring tradespeople and we're kind of in a rush. I'm like, well, what do you mean a rush? And they said, well, we're, we're desperate. And, and can you help us find them? And I said, I don't know, man. It's pretty skinny out there right now. There's a lot of competition. How many do you need? The guy says 140,000.

• 48:51Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  I swear to God. And you can find it on the site there. They're hiring over the next nine years, 140,000 welders, steam fitters, pipe fitters, electricians, um, all of the construction trades, plus all kinds of, uh, electronics and, and technical stuff. Very, very few of those positions require a four-year degree.

• 49:14Theo Von?

  Right.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  140,000 openings. And the guy says, Mike, we, we've looked everywhere. Do you know where they are?

• 49:21Theo Von?

  Can you send me a few phone numbers?

• 49:23Speaker 02

  I said, actually, honest, I said, yeah, dude, I know where they are. They're in the eighth grade.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  That's where they are. And if you, and if you want to get them, you, oh, holy crap. They put my face on an, I want you to work in the trades. Who's doing that back there? I don't know, dude, but what we need are robots, R O W E B O T S. Would you send me that? Whoever you are doing this amazing, non-authorized, copyrighted stuff, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use that. I thought robots was a good pun that deserved a little bit more than that, but. It's not bad. You could have Mike, Mike robots. Little tiny versions of me. Yeah. That's a cute idea. It's adorable. They would sell on QVC, man. They, they would kill. This is the smallest workers. This is the, the fire ant of the work community. Let me land the plane. Okay.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Here's the point. That crisis that right now is impacting our submarine base. You, I think you can draw a line between the enthusiasm of the workers who build one of these subs. And believe me, you should meet these guys. They're like, they understand they're moving the needle. They understand that they're the pointy part of the spear with regard to national defense. It's a big deal. You can compare not, not the work, but the feeling to the satisfaction that comes from making the greatest sweatshirt in the world. And if you can do that, you can do it for virtually every product in between. That's what I'm talking about. Right.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  There's some, somehow or another, and I, I started talking about this early on in Dirty Jobs. It just, it just became clear that in our society, we had identified work as the enemy. It's like the, the proximate cause of all our misery is the fact that our frickin' boss is up our ass and every day for eight or 10, 12 hours, I gotta go make little rocks out of big rocks and, and life isn't fair. And damn it, something ought to be done. And this whole thing, this whole thing is modeled around the idea that I have to do whatever it is I have to do until I get to the point where I can retire.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Right? So like I'm, I'm retirement age now. I like the idea of retiring is so insane to me.

• 51:44Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  So why?

• 51:45Theo Von?

  Still work to be done.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  There's more than ever. So look, I'm, to answer your question, I, I'm super sympathetic to Gen Z. I, I want them to find meaningful work, but the meaning, it, it's not, it's not inherent in the work. It's in the dude.

• 52:04Theo Von?

  Right.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  It's in you and you get to assign whatever level of meaning you want to that sweatshirt or that nuclear sub or this cup of coffee or this poisonous cream that your people brought me that right now is either making me tired or jacked up. I can't decide yet, you know?

• 52:21Theo Von?

  In 30 seconds, you're gonna tell us all your secrets, you know? You're gonna tell us where you keep your favorite wood whittle?

• 52:25Speaker 02

  My, my greatest fear.

• 52:27Theo Von?

  Is a whittle a thing, a tool?

• 52:29Speaker 02

  A whittle, a whittler could be a person who whittles.

• 52:32Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  A, a whittlet could be a thing that you whittle, but a whittle flunk is the actual tool.

• 52:39Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  In question and, and you can Google that. Now you won't find anything to confirm any of it. I just felt like it was my turn to talk again.

• 52:46Theo Von?

  Oh, that's very fair. I'm gonna say this. I, you know what? You're right. And I think that that used to be a part of kind of what you were saying even in schools. Like I pledge allegiance to my country. This country means something to me. Like my grandfather worked at this factory where they made, uh, parts. It was for FMC, right? And then made like elevator, parts of elevator shafts and stuff like that.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:06Theo Von?

  But he would go to the factory and it was like this thing. And then when we were in elevators, we would see his little emblem on the thing of like, oh, grandpa made this, you know?

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Dude, that.

• 53:14Theo Von?

  And that kind of stuff was huge. It was, it was like, even like native, like in cultures, there are stories that you tell your grandkids. It's like, like the meaning of being human, we passed from each other. We passed it in like relics and in, um, artifacts and, you know, you keep things from people that meant, meant something to you. So I think to think of that, just because that only happens, it doesn't only happen like in your family. Like if your grandfather passes away and you keep something that meant something to him, but it happens as a community too. It's like you have things that mean something to you and, and that carry on.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  What am I, uh?

• 53:49Theo Von?

  Does that make any sense? Am I rambling? I'm okay.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  No, dude, I'm telling you.

• 53:52Theo Von?

  Yeah. What the fuck are you talking about? Of course it makes sense, dude. Yeah. It makes you feel alive, dude. You know, it makes you feel alive and then like you see something across town. You're like, man, I was a part of that. And you get to drive by and tell your son, I built that house. And your son's like, no way. I want to learn how to build something, you know?

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Why do you think people lost their shit when Obama said, you didn't build that? You didn't do that. We all did that together. It was, it was an insult to what you're saying.

• 54:19Theo Von?

  That part of us.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  It, it doesn't mean that we're not all part of a, of a team, a country, a concerted effort. But it does mean, like if you, if you rob an individual of that feeling, then you have reduced his work to only the transactional component. It's just a paycheck now.

• 54:38Theo Von?

  Right.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  But I, I'm telling you, my life changed. It was early on in Dirty Jobs and we, and we weren't even really filming yet, or it was, it was after we shot and I was, I was working with a mason and I was in his pickup truck and, and he was dropping me back at the hotel. And as we're driving down, we were in some little Midwest town and we were driving down some, some easily forgettable street, but the architecture on either side was super cool, right? And as we're driving, he was like pointing up to the facade. He goes, yeah, we did that one. And then around the corner, he's like, yeah, we did that one too. And see over here, the way this, that one took. And as he was talking, like his, his, his eyes were filling up.

• 55:22Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  And he was, he was driving past hi- his life's work and it was there on display to be seen. And um, I was very happy for him to be able to have that, but also very mindful of the fact that you can see the same wonder in, in the sewer, right? Like the, the architecture down there and the technology. Now, except you'll never see it and you'll never see the guys who tend to it. Cause it's all out of sight and it's all out of mind. And, and, and that's part of the point too. You don't. That thing you described, I got a call from a, have you heard of Moog? M O O G?

• 56:03Theo Von?

  Mm-mm.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  You'll let us down in your neck of the woods. It's actually Boaz, Alabama.

• 56:07Theo Von?

  Oh, damn.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  Okay, little, it's, it's not so little. Moog makes virtually every ball bearing in your car or your truck. They've been making ball bearings for years, forever and ever. They turned a hundred a couple of years ago. And, you know, the guy called me, they're, they're part of Federal Mogul Motorparts. And they were like, can you, can you maybe just come down here and look at our factory? And can we film you looking at it? And can you just talk to some of our, our people? And I said, well, yeah, probably. Why? And they're like, well, we just think it would be great if somebody were paying attention to the fact we've been doing this for a hundred years, and that there is no automotive industry without us.

• 56:51Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  So I did. I went and I, and I brought a little crew with me. And I wound up giving them a, a 60 second love letter. You know, I know a place in Boaz, Alabama, where people and, right? They played that at their annual thing. And, um, and I got a video of, of people watching the video I made.

• 57:11Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  Tears streaming down their face. So.

• 57:15Theo Von?

  Purpose.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  Pride. Code, integrity, all that stuff, man.

• 57:19Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Well, there it is. 30 pounds ago, you fat bastard. But there I am. Going the extra mile. American pride with Mike Rowe.

• 57:26Theo Von?

  Some hotties in the back.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  Well, you know.

• 57:29Theo Von?

  Going the extra mile, right there. American pride with Mike Rowe. Um.

• 57:33Speaker 00

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• 58:02Theo Von?

  This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know, some people think that mental therapy and mental health and getting mentally regular are luxuries, that only fancy people can do it. "Oh, I can't be mentally well." That's for them, you know? That's for them fancy folks. But that's not true. Everybody deserves to feel comfortable in their own skin and in their own skull. And sometimes if you're troubled, you can't, you know, you can't figure something out. It's better to share it with someone, talk to a therapist. Therapy should feel accessible. BetterHelp, that's who I'm talking about. With online therapy, you get quality care at a price that makes sense and can help

• 58:45Theo Von?

  you with anything from anxiety to everyday stress. It's convenient, too. You can join a session with the click of a button, helping you to fit therapy into your busy life. Plus, switch therapists at any time. Your well-being is worth it. Visit betterhelp.com/theo to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com, slash, T-H-E-O. Is pornography causing a problem in your life? Do you find yourself watching porno for longer periods of time and having trouble stopping? Is porn affecting your relationship or dating life? Well, you're certainly not alone.

• 59:29Theo Von?

  Watching pornography has become so commonplace today, and oftentimes, men use porn to numb the pain of loneliness, boredom, anxiety, and depression. Shame and stigma prevent men from talking about these issues and getting help for them. I want to introduce you to my friend, Steve. Steve is the founder of Valor Recovery, a program to help men overcome porn abuse and sexual compulsivity. Steve is a long-term sexual recovery member and has personally overcame the emotional and spiritual despair of abusing pornography and has dedicated his life to empowering men to do the same. Steve is an amazing person and he is a close friend of mine. I mean that.

• 1:00:15Theo Von?

  Valor Recovery helps men to develop the tools necessary to have a healthier sex life. Their coaches are in long-term recovery and will be your partner, mentor, and spiritual guide to transcend these problematic behaviors. To learn more about Valor Recovery, please visit them at www.valorrecoverycoaching.com or email them at [email protected]. Thank you. Let's talk about like the workforce a little bit, then let's talk about some issues that they face for a few minutes, and then I want to talk about your new show. Great. Last time we spoke, we talked about minimum wage, right?

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  Last time we spoke, I said, "There was no justice if you didn't put spunk minions on a hat." I told you a story of artificial insemination. You coined that term, at least I'd never heard it before. The coffee came out of my nose and I said, "For, for God's sakes, man, please."

• 1:01:15Theo Von?

  Hot coffee came out. It was still hot.

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Hot coffee cooled down with some of this, you know, poison. But yeah, yeah, I remember last time. It was, it was that conversation, I, I'm not blowing sunshine, dude. I got more people. More, more of the people that I, that my foundation tries to reach, reached out to me.

• 1:01:36Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  Yep. To say, "I heard you on Theo Von and I would like to apply for a scholarship." What do I do?

• 1:01:41Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 1:01:42Theo Von?

  That's awesome.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  No, you, you, you need to understa-, well, I'm sure you understand, but it was, I do this all the time. Hundreds of people, hundreds of people. Cause the problem is, man, I, I preach to the choir a lot. You know, I talk to people who already, you know, I, you're. Your audience is the future of this country. A big chunk of them are anyway. I don't know about the others.

• 1:02:04Theo Von?

  Well, I do believe that one thing I think I have in common with a lot of my audience is that the way that we feel about stuff, right? We might have different views on things, but I think our feelings are a lot the same. And we talk a lot about like purpose on here like, um, we had a guy named John Verveki come on and talk about purpose. We had, um, Richard Reeves. It's really great. He talks about how men aren't leaders in their communities anymore. You know, they're not doing Boy Scout troops. They're not teaching in classes anymore. So we're losing this male to male connection piece that is part of what keeps our desire to be like, um, performing humans, human males, you know, like, um, so we talk about this kind of stuff a lot.

• 1:02:44Theo Von?

  And maybe there's a way we can figure out something to do where we could, you know, where I can, uh, we would love to donate and then just continue to help send people your direction.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  Well, look, man, I, uh, I'll, I'll never say no to a couple bucks, but I don't need it. What, what I need is what you're doing. Right? I mean, what I need is for the people listening to, like, if they're, if they're serious about what you just framed, the book to read is called Men Without Work. It's by a guy called Nick Eberstadt. Yeah. He is a real economist and I know him. Um, and he wrote this thing years ago, but republished it during the lockdowns. And that's where, that's where the real truth of this is, man. That's where the, that's the real story, Theo. At the time he republished this, there were 7.2 million able-bodied men. Not only not working, but not looking. Now, now the question is, well, what the hell are they doing?

• 1:03:36Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Right? The research goes deep and wide and it's horrifying. By and large, the majority of them are spending 2,000 hours a year on their screens. They're scrolling, they're looking, they're, they're, they're inward, right?

• 1:03:53Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  And, uh, and what that means is they're not in the J C's or the Kiwanis Club or the Boy Scouts.

• 1:04:00Theo Von?

  Or the YMCA.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Or the YMCA, right? They're not in their local church. They're not volunteering in their community. They're not doing anything at all. Except living some version of, uh, what, what was it? Thoreau? Lives of quiet desperation. And that's, and I, I, I want to tell you one other thing too, that really blew me away. I, I knew of you. I didn't know you. And it's cool that you texted me and stayed in touch over the last two years since we talked. Oh, thanks, man. No, no, it's, it, it, it's, most people don't do that. Really? Yeah, they don't. And, um, I had so much fun talking to you that, you know, I, I took a deeper dive and one night,

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  um, just was scrolling through and I watched you sit here, or maybe you were in Nashville, I don't know. Uh, but, but somebody called in and they told you a story. And it was a common story, but it was a sad story. And it was a combination of, of addiction and, and, and struggling with that. And, and a kind of hopelessness and, and this kind of desperation that my friend Nick writes about, you know? And what you did, you did two things that, that were really interesting to me. The first thing is you sat and didn't say a word. I've never seen, I've never seen anybody do that before.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  You just sat and looked at the camera like you're looking at me, like you actually listened. And then you talked for about three minutes and about the most empathetic way I had ever seen. I took that clip and I sent it to my little network and I said, look, man, the,

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  this war is going to be fought on a lot of fronts. It's a war of, of, of public opinion, to your point. It's, it's a, it's, it's persuasion, it's all these things. But what this guy is doing right now in this space, in this way, is important. So, yeah, man, I, I don't know how big you're gonna get and I don't know how wide your audience is gonna be, but the fact that it's as big as it is, I, yeah, you're funny. You're funny as hell. Uh, I, I was gonna crash one of your shows and, and, um, I forget what town I was in, but it was like, what is it? The rat? The rat was back or something?

• 1:06:20Theo Von?

  Return of the rat.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  Return of the rat.

• 1:06:21Theo Von?

  Yeah. That's the thing. You can't keep a rat down. You could kill a rat, bam, another rat, boy.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  They pop up, dude.

• 1:06:27Theo Von?

  They keep popping up, but that's who we are.

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  You're resilient.

• 1:06:30Theo Von?

  We're resilient.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  And that's, you know, I mean, Louisiana doesn't have a lock on that, but I'll tell you what, man, your dirty jobs, Louisiana is very good to dirty jobs. I mean, from Baton Rouge to Lafayette to cut off. I did my time there.

• 1:06:45Theo Von?

  We should have been cut off and we stayed on, dude. That's Louisiana. Louisiana Purchase, first of all, thank you very fucking much. You wouldn't even have a third of this country for it than for Louisiana.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Thomas Jefferson, 1803.

• 1:06:56Theo Von?

  Making that deal and we kept the receipt. I'll say that.

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  It's a good one.

• 1:06:59Theo Von?

  And also we have nutria rats, rats that live underwater, bro.

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  I know. I know.

• 1:07:05Theo Von?

  That is something else, but thank you, bro. That's very nice of you, dude. Yeah. I think that's the one thing that connects our audience is just there's this way that we feel and a lot of it is hopeful, right? And so that's the side that I choose to err on when it comes to the tariff stuff. It's like, I have no clue. Like if it doesn't work, what the fuck, what do we lose? We're at a, we are, I believe that we are at a severe crossing point right now. Where if it gets in, if we, another generation without like a sense of purpose, it's, it's not going to matter. Nothing, nothing's going to matter anymore. There won't even be enough of a person inside of our grandchildren for it to matter too. Like even if you bring the gasoline, there's not going to be enough of a, of a amp inside of them to even spark it up.

• 1:07:48Theo Von?

  It's like, even I think the human spirit is a muscle, right? But that's how I feel about it. And I feel like it's always there, but it's like the stronger that we work it and the more that we encourage others to work it, you know? Um, and it's scary, man. It, I think people don't realize it's scary, but then I think part of all of us realize that something scary is going on.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  Well, the stakes are big.

• 1:08:09Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  I mean, 37 trillion dollars in, in national, that, that's the national debt.

• 1:08:14Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  37 trillion. Most people, like you really don't have to be an economist. You don't have to, you don't need a pedigree to understand that that's getting a little wobbly and, and it's not sustainable. So something radical has to happen. Something really unpopular is going to have to happen.

• 1:08:34Theo Von?

  Right. And it's going to be uncomfortable. It's going to be uncomfortable.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  It's going to be wildly uncomfortable.

• 1:08:37Theo Von?

  But what's going to be way more uncomfortable is. Whatever's after that sounds, it doesn't even sound human to me after that.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  I go back to the slavery thing. I mean, the idea of getting rid of that in eighteen sixty, right? It was so many otherwise rational people who were walking around influencers of the day with columns and, and people giving oratories and speeches. Really smart people were saying, "We can't do this. The country will collapse." And other people were like, "Well, then let the heavens fall because that's a hill I'll die on." Right? So every now and then, something rises to a place where you, you, you, you just can't

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  talk about it the way you'd been talking about it.

• 1:09:31Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  And look, man, I really wonder, a hundred fifty years from now, what our great, great, great, great grandkids will be saying about us, like how, right, what will be the slavery of today? Will it be the fact that we let our country become completely dependent on other countries who really don't like us much? I mean-

• 1:09:54Theo Von?

  Not that I have any care.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's insane. China, I, I interviewed a guy yesterday who you would love, Yanya Kelik, he's called. He writes for the Epoch Times. He's a senior editor over there.

• 1:10:07Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  And he has been on China hard for twenty years. And he believes one of the greatest untold stories right now is the fact that sixty to a hundred thousand human organs are being harvested from prisoners in China every year as we speak. They're called the fulongong, and they were seventy to a hundred million of these people have been persecuted forever.

• 1:10:38Theo Von?

  Fulongong. I'm gonna quit ordering it.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  Dude, you have to, it is bananas.

• 1:10:43Theo Von?

  Fulongong.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  When you look at the number of prisons in China that have hospitals built right next to them- You have to go, well, what's up with that? And when you talk to these people, and there are countless examples, who are scheduling open heart surgeries. They're scheduling kidney replacements, right? You can't schedule those. You go on a list and then you wait for somebody to become brain dead.

• 1:11:15Theo Von?

  In a motorcycle accident.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  That's right, because you can't take a heart from a cadaver. You have to take it from a living but doomed person.

• 1:11:24Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  Right? And so, cutting that line is about the rudest thing, right? I mean, that, that, that's a line you don't want to cut.

• 1:11:31Theo Von?

  My sister got a liver transplant and they, we had to wait and they called us over and we get over there and be like, nah, the guy's gonna stay alive. And we're like, well, why again? Don't call us then, we just drove over here.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  I can't even imagine what that is like, but I can tell you this. The organ industry in China is a nine billion dollar industry. And people are schedu-, they're making appointments for livers. They're making appointments for hearts.

• 1:11:57Theo Von?

  Based on knowing when the guy's gonna die? Or they're killing him?

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  They're killing them, dude.

• 1:12:01Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  It's not based on the, yes, it is based on knowing when they're gonna die, exactly. Because they kill him. And, and you know, what they tell you is, ah, well, you know, look, he's on death row anyway. And so, like, they, they tell you a lot of things and you'll go, okay, okay. And so, it's back to slavery. It's like, well, you know what? I don't really want to look at the reality of organ harvesting. If my kid needs a heart, please tell me a happy story about how the inmate i- i- is, is a murderer.

• 1:12:34Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:12:34Speaker 02

  Right? And we're gonna go, and right before we kill him, we're gonna necessize him and take his heart. Tell me that story. It's not much different than in 1860. It's like, look, I need clothes, man. My kids need clothes. Please don't show me the raping and the whipping.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  of these poor people, please don't show me the middle passage and what happened, the unspeakable conditions on those ships. I don't want to see that. Right. I just want my clothes. Now, when I'm talking 150 years from now, maybe I could be talking about 150 days from now. Please don't show me the abortion. Right. I don't want to see that. That would, please don't show me the diseased lungs in your attempt to get me to stop smoking. I don't want to see that. Please don't make me shoot the cow in the head. Now, I did that on season three of Dirty Jobs. I slaughtered a cow and butchered it with a mobile butcher, just to show viewers where their food comes from and what it takes to make a porterhouse, what it takes to get a sirloin, the difference

• 1:13:35Speaker 02

  between all these different things. People's heads exploded because the truth is, man, they don't want to see where their food comes from. Right. They'd prefer to think it's growing on a hamburger tree. And we really don't want to know the truth about a lot of this. I mean, look, we're joking about this, but you really want to know what's in this little creamer? No, I don't. You really want to know why this thing can sit on the shelf? Mm-mm. For years? The answer is nothing good. And a baby won't eat it, too. You see that one where they try to give that to a baby and they won't eat it? Yeah, because they know. They know. So, look, we're ostriches and we got our head in the sand on a lot of different things. And a lot of parents, you know, to bring it back to kind of where we started, they don't, they don't want to see that that 200

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  grand they invested in that college degree can't get their kid a job in his chosen field. Right. We don't want to look at 37 trillion in debt. We don't want to look at the fact that our country is, is making only 2% of the clothing that we wear. Dude, we have in this country, a third of the United States is covered with timber. Yeah. Covered with timber. Now, our forests are rotting and they're burning because we're not tending to them. Meanwhile, guess who the leading importer of timber is in the world? China. Us.

• 1:14:55Theo Von?

  Oh, we're the leading importer of it, but we have a great deal.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  We have more than anybody and we're the leading import. California has so much timber and they import 80% of, of what they need. How much energy are we sitting on?

• 1:15:10Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  Right? I, I, I just look at all of it and I don't need to get politi- it's not political. It's a, but it's some weird combination of virtue signaling and, and, and head in the sand.

• 1:15:23Theo Von?

  Well, and also I think our media is probably a lot of it has been under control of people who don't want to champion America, maybe, you know? I don't know if that's true or if it's just the fads and the way that things have gone. But are, yeah, it's just, it's always, it seemed like things have gotten like anti-American somehow in the past even 10 years, like the American flag even became like kind of a right wing symbol as opposed to the symbol of our country. And whoever's stra- people think that things just happen. I believe that there's strategy behind a lot of stuff that's out there. Um, I want to switch to a topic of, so we, but we talked before about minimum wage. I don't think people can survive on minimum wages these days. I just don't think that they can do it. And I, and Bernie Sanders talked about how, well, if a company makes more money

• 1:16:07Theo Von?

  because they start using AI or for whatever reason, that shouldn't that minimum wage go up within that company for the workers? You know?

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  What do you think?

• 1:16:16Theo Von?

  I think we have to do something i- i- if, if, if somebody makes $8 an hour and they work for eight hours, that's $64, you can buy food for your family for that day these days.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Theo Von?

  With that.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  Well, look, I mean, I've, it's a, there are a lot of thoughts on that.

• 1:16:31Theo Von?

  And I know there's not one perfect answer.

• 1:16:34Speaker 02

  There's not, but you can learn, I think. I mean, you have to understand that those jobs, minimum wage jobs were, were, were never designed to be careers.

• 1:16:44Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  They're, they're rungs on a ladder.

• 1:16:47Theo Von?

  But for some people, they are careers though.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  But.

• 1:16:50Theo Von?

  But the majority of their

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  Have that conversation next.

• 1:16:52Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  But, but, but like the first thing to understand is you don't like, the purpose of work is not to merely make money. It's probably the biggest reason. You've got to put food on the table. Like, I, I get all of that. But you don't go from a kid into a fully actualized, mature, working person. You, you, you have to go through all kinds of, like a crucible of fits and starts and good jobs and jobs that make sense. And, you know, whether it's fast food, or whether it's maybe digging a ditch, or maybe putting siding on a house one hot summer. Right? It's like these jobs, uh, that don't pay very well, offer something else that's really, really, really important

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  to a person who is maturing and, and, and growing.

• 1:17:41Theo Von?

  I know what it is, I bet.

• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  Say it.

• 1:17:43Theo Von?

  They offer you the time to think and plan and strategize and get excited for something that you want to do. It's almost like a soil that you get to be in for a little bit.

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  It's like a buffet.

• 1:17:53Theo Von?

  I remember that now.

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  It's a buffet, man. You, you, you don't, you're not going to eat all of it. Yeah, it's not all going to taste good to you.

• 1:18:01Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  You, you, you have to experience a, a whole long list of shit. And, and, and most of it is going to leave a funny taste in your mouth. But most things aren't for most people. It's a, it, it, it's a giant process of, of figuring it all out. And in the, and, and also learning who you are. Now, I get it. That doesn't address the fact that somebody busting their ass, eh, with inflation being wherever it is, and the cost of goods being wherever that is, can't afford to feed their family on that salary. Now, the other side's going to say, yeah, why'd you have a family? What are you doing? What are you, why would you have a family before you have the means to provide for them? And then we're going to have that whole conversation and it's, and it's going to get politicized.

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  But if the basic argument is, wait a second, the people at the top of this company are being unfairly enriched at the expense of the work, I totally get that.

• 1:18:56Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  I totally get it. And I'll tell you something that gives me hope. All right? Cause I get constant.

• 1:19:02Theo Von?

  Thank you. Because, yeah, we get stuck in the doldrum sometimes. We get stuck in the ditch and we don't look for the light.

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  I'm going to give you the light. At least a couple beams of it. The doldrums and the problem almost always happens because it's door number one or door number two. Everything is binary. So in this conversation, it's, well, are you union? Or are you management? Are you labor? Or are you management? And like, people have to choose. And now, it's easy to forget that these are two sides of the same coin. Because we always pit them against one another. And then, people wind up in interviews like this, or any one of a thousand other conversations. And they're gonna get tagged as one or the other.

• 1:19:45Speaker 02

  So, my hope is in an organization called Opportunity Works. And I learned about these guys pretty recently. But two years ago, a company called Groundworks, who you'll love, hired me to give a speech in Virginia Beach when their CEO turned 5,500 of their frontline workers into owners. Wow. Okay? So, so here's what Groundworks does. Groundworks will fix the foundation on your house. They will encapsulate a crawl space. And they will waterproof your basement.

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  Oh, I was hoping you'd say hide your stepmother down there. That's okay? Well, that's an upsell. But they'll do, I mean, look, you gotta know who to talk to. But, but they, like, if you scroll through that, that's Dirty Jobs 101. Yeah. I spent the first, a big chunk of the first season underneath houses, doing this kind of work. Now, a lot of these people, they've got a high school education. Some went further, but a lot of the 5,500 guys I met on that day, they spend their life doing backbreaking work. They were made owners. It's like an ESOP plan, and it goes all the way down, all the way through the company. Wow.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  And it's another one of those moments, Theo, I'm sitting backstage, and I'm watching, these guys are there with their families, and this is a financial event, like, it changes their life. So I said to the owner, hey, man, I'm... I like this because now I don't think there's any frankly need for like, how does a union negotiate against a member if they're they own the company? Right. It's like you just took all the air out of that tire. And he said, well, if you like this, you got to meet my friend Pete Stavros. Pete works for KKR. Now. Ooh, that third letter I wasn't sure was gonna be. No. I was like, whoa. Well, Mike. I'm not feeling hopeful. We're trying to head forward.

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  KKR, the these were the original barbarians at the gate, you know, the whole Nabisco, like that world of private equity gets a really bad rap. And in some cases, I think probably deservedly. I don't know about them. Well, it's a. That's okay. It's a deep dive, but it's like when you think when people talk about rollups, what they're talking about. I don't know about that either. Okay, let's say you've got a heating and air conditioning company. Yeah. Plumbing company, electric company. Let's say you've had it for 25 years and let's say you'd like to retire, but but you really can't and you got 30 employees and you love them and it's their job and so forth and so on.

• 1:22:34Speaker 02

  So the industry consolidates when private equity comes in and says, wait a second, we'll buy you. Okay, we're going to make you more efficient. We're going to put you under somebody, some other name. Okay. And and and you'll be able to retire because you've worked hard and your people will, well, you know, we're going to do in some cases, it's it's it's good for the workers and other cases it's not so good because in the name of efficiency, you can gut a company. Right. So that's the the negative rap on private equity has has been that. But now what's starting to happen, at least in these home services businesses, is that

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  this ownership works element, this guy Pete Stavros, who works for KKR, has done this groundwork deal. There's Pete. Hmm. He's awesome. They've done this with like 70 companies where they'll go in and they will.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Work with management to make everybody in the company an owner. And it's it's a tough sell for management because they gotta let go of some

• 1:23:42Theo Von?

  Some stuff.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  Some stuff, but the research is incredible. Over time, what happens is these companies explode.

• 1:23:51Theo Von?

  They stay alive and people are excited about it and hopeful about it.

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  Dude, there's, I mean, who?

• 1:23:55Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  Who do you want to come to your house to fix a plumbing problem? An employee who, you know, is is the the epitome of a stereotypical plumber.

• 1:24:07Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:24:07Speaker 02

  Butt cracked, hanging out, pissed off, overweight, right? Like, everything you've seen plumbers portrayed as.

• 1:24:14Theo Von?

  Yeah, drugs, coke.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  Or would you like the owner of the company to come out?

• 1:24:18Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:18Speaker 02

  And fix your problem? It changes everything. And I've seen, like, you guys should take a deep dive if you want, but look at some of these videos where, like, I saw one the other day, a company, I think they were outside of Chicago, Nucor, maybe, they they make garage doors. It's another one of these companies you would never think about. It's like Moog and their ball bearings and what is that? Well, all of a sudden, like, you got truck drivers in these companies who have been there for 12 years, and when this scheme goes into place, they leave this gathering with a check for four, five, $600,000.

• 1:24:54Theo Von?

  Changes the.

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  That's a that's a financial event in their life. And and it changes the way you think about that sweatshirt.

• 1:25:02Theo Von?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  Right? It's it's that's what I'm talking about. There there is a way forward that doesn't keep us stuck.

• 1:25:09Theo Von?

  Yep.

• 1:25:09Speaker 02

  In the the binary of labor and management.

• 1:25:12Theo Von?

  And I think we have to, you have to realize, like, I start thinking, like, the only way to compete with big business is you have to start a new way to do big business that, like, I wanted to sell like a water, right? I thought, like, so many people are in recovery and so many more people are headed into recovery for drug addiction.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:29Theo Von?

  Um, sex and pornography addiction, like, that's one of the biggest epidemics that's coming right now is pornography addiction, right?

• 1:25:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:35Theo Von?

  And it's not even here yet. It's coming. Um.

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  I see what you did there.

• 1:25:40Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:41Speaker 02

  It's coming soon.

• 1:25:42Theo Von?

  Uh, I don't know. Hopefully not super soon.

• 1:25:44Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 1:25:45Theo Von?

  It's just you and me in here.

• 1:25:46Speaker 02

  Stay on that bull for eight seconds and we'll hope for the best.

• 1:25:50Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I bet that creamer over there.

• 1:25:53Speaker 02

  I feel sleepy. Can I lie down?

• 1:25:56Theo Von?

  Yeah. That's it. Uh, okay. I could keep going on that, but, um, but yeah, it's like you have to fight fire with fire and you have to fight it with more compassionate and empathetic fire. I was like, well, what if we sold a water where the proceeds of it went to put people in rehab, right? So then it would be really hard, especially these days where so many people, all they have left is how they feel kind of, because a lot of other things have been taken away from them. It'd be hard to say, okay, I'm not going to buy this. I know this is going to help somebody get better, right? It's like, I think you have to start thinking beyond like this circle that we've been in of, of just like profiteering, um, and of like combining everything. Everything's just like, like, uh, these,

• 1:26:40Theo Von?

  um, what do they call it when they all get together, but it's one owner, whatever?

• 1:26:43Speaker 02

  Um, co-op.

• 1:26:45Theo Von?

  Co-op or like, um, because a lot of the stories that I heard, this is, I just thought about this. Um, my, a lot of my friends' stories were that their dads got laid off after working at a place for 20 years and 25 years, or their grandfather. That was the story that I heard where I bet a generation earlier was, you know, my grandfather got a big severance thing and he got this and that. And he was like the pride of the company. A lot of the other stories became, my dad got laid off after 22 years. They didn't get, you know? And I think a lot of that happened because like you're saying, umbrella companies came in, things got consolidated. Um, I mean, we're meeting with Mark Zuckerberg and they're like up against antitrust stuff right now.

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. Big time.

• 1:27:27Theo Von?

  Which is pretty crazy and scary.

• 1:27:29Speaker 02

  Oh dude, I, I mean, there's so much to think and say about Facebook. And Mark's coming in here specifically?

• 1:27:34Theo Von?

  We're going to see him in, um, Lost Out or whatever they live at, Facebook.

• 1:27:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're down the peninsula, um, from where I live, north of you. Amazing campus. Check out the roof.

• 1:27:45Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:27:45Speaker 02

  When you go there. Yeah. I don't know if it's changed.

• 1:27:48Theo Von?

  Is it siding?

• 1:27:48Speaker 02

  It's sushi and a lot of siding.

• 1:27:50Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:51Speaker 02

  Sushi and siding. Pretty amazing. Oh, a roof is just brave siding. Let me tell you what Mark did for me, just so you get a say, I mean, there's just endless things to say about the guy. I'm fascinated to get to spend time with him. Well, you know, I, I wouldn't be here without Facebook. I know it's crazy because I, there's clips of me out there telling Jay Leno, I'd rather have hot needles stuck in my eyes than book a face or send a tweet or whatever that was. Oh, yeah. But, you know, once I realized that all the shows I work on could be programmed basically by the people who watch them, that was, that was amazing to me. So I got, you know, eight, nine million people out there now, uh, six on Facebook and a couple.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  That's great. Oh, no, look, it's, this is my, uh, these are my bosses, you know, and, and I'm super late to the YouTube party, but I just got a million over there. You did? Yeah. Well, you have shows on there too, it comes out May 2nd. You're right, and that show wouldn't exist without Zuckerberg. Okay, so let's hear about it. So, so six years ago, Mark, uh, invites me down to Facebook and he talks about this thing called watch, Facebook watch. And the thought was, who are we gonna be, you know, 10 years from now? And who, who are we really gonna compete with? And how is that gonna work? And, and could we be Netflix? Should we be a kind of Netflix?

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  So that company basically committed to spending close to a billion dollars to answer that question. So how do you figure it out? You green light a couple of shows and they did something called Ball in the Family, some famous basketball player, they did something with Jada Pinkett Smith, and they did something with me. What they did with me was a show called Returning the Favor. Returning the Favor, I think you would dig. It, it, basically I would look for and Facebook would. Tell me about people in these little towns that you probably couldn't find on a map. Uh, that were doing something super cool in their neighborhood and a, in a totally selfless way.

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  So it's like bloody do-gooders running amok, right? And so we would go in there and we'd meet these people and we would tell them like, I'm not there at this point. I would send the crew in and they'd say, hey, we're working on a documentary about your town. Uh, we understand you're doing some good work, maybe with foster care, maybe with PTSD, right? And we would, uh, love to talk to you about that. So meanwhile, they're filming that and I come in later and parades are arranged and we, we free up a big chunk of money. Sometimes a hundred grand to, uh, maybe that build something that allows them to do more of what they're already doing. Oh, that's beautiful. Some kind of gift. So the show, it was a feel-good show, but it was also the making of a feel-good show.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  Now here's where it gets crazy. We do a hundred episodes, which is a lot. The show's a hit. A lot. It's downloaded, uh, 450 million times. No way. Okay. Congratulations, bro. You're an infection and it's a good one. It gets crazier. I win an Emmy, okay? Like, I never won it. I hope it was Emmy Rossum, huh? Oh, man. Is she cute or not? Sorry, that joke? No, no, she's something. She is? I didn't even know who she is. I was just thinking of the only Emmy I know. Yeah, she's a, she's a good one. Um, yeah, there you go. Yeah, she's talented. Rossum damn near killed him, huh? It's an old Emmy Rossum joke. Um, so what you gotta know is this never hap- hits are hard. Emmys are hard.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  Of all the things that I've worked on to, to be recognized this way, right? So we, we got to a hundred episodes. I win my Emmy and we're canceled two weeks later. Yeah. Now that's impossible, but. What happened at Facebook was they they decided after four seasons that this whole watch platform.

• 1:31:47Theo Von?

  One more time.

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  They're just not going to compete with Netflix. So no harm, no foul. But it was, we had 2 million people on a Facebook page who who would watch that show like on the edge of their seat and it was a giant community of people who really gave a shit and they were super interested because remember not so long ago, in fact today, the country is so divided and there's so few things everybody can agree on, you know? This show was, I think, one of them. It was it was just a celebration of the neighbors you wish you had. I don't own Returning the Favor, but we're relaunching it next week, May 2nd, under a

• 1:32:31Speaker 02

  new title called People You Should Know. And dude, I'm not like overly earnest. I get all my sentimentality is taken care of in my foundation, but this thing, I mean, whether it's addiction or you're going to meet a guy on this show called Steve Hots. He runs something called The Black Horse Forge down in Fredericksburg. The PTSD thing, you're up to speed with how bad that is?

• 1:32:58Theo Von?

  Not how bad, I mean, I know that it's a, you hear about it so much and it's used so much, I think it's hard to know what's really going on with it.

• 1:33:06Speaker 02

  Well, last year, 6,407 service people killed themselves and divided by 365, it's like 17.5 a day. But that doesn't count overdoses, that doesn't count, you know, death by misadventure, addiction. You like add up all of the deaths, the preventable deaths of despair and the number's way beyond that. So on Returning the Favor, we profiled, like, we, the number of things people are doing to combat this, you would love, we hunted pythons in the Everglades.

• 1:33:43Theo Von?

  Good, I hate them.

• 1:33:44Speaker 02

  They're annoying, they're big and they're, you know, they're very snakey. Putting motorcycles together in Indiana, you gotta get these guys. Out of their head if you want to help them. This guy, Steve, the Black Horse Forge, has had twenty two thousand vets come through. Wow. Zero suicides. He's batting a thousand. Steve Hots? Yeah. We gotta get him in here. Dude, you would, you would. So this guy was like a dress designer, an interior designer. All right. He goes sideways with his boss. He decides to enlist eighty second airborne, has hundreds of jumps. Yeah. Compresses his back, damn near breaks it, loses an eye. Comes home, absolute rock bottom. He's, he, he's just, it, it's, everything he loved is upside down.

• 1:34:28Speaker 02

  And he starts making knives in a forge and realizes that when you're, when you're forging, the only thing you can think about is, is really what you're doing and don't burn yourself. Yeah. And it, it, it so completely took him out of his, out of his head. I could have gone either way. You see a depressed dude making a knife. You're like this, how's this going? He's made hundreds. Wow. There, he's got a whole line called the Jackalopes, named after zoology, cryptozoological creatures, right? Like the Beast of Bladenboro and all these things. So he's one of the guys we'll be featuring on this thing. That's him. There he is, right there. That's him, man. One-Eyed Steve, fucking tough son of a bitch. Steve, yeah, he threw me out the door. Um, you're listening to Widespread Panic? Yeah. I like them.

• 1:35:12Speaker 02

  Oh, whatever. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Am I conflating Panic at the Disco? Yeah, you might be. They should combine. You'd have Widespread Panic at the Disco. At least for one small. One massive stadium extravaganza. Yeah. That'd be something, dude. I like that. Or Def Leppard and Glorilla, maybe like Def Glorilla. Def, Def Glorilla, yeah. Dude, they should have cool bands that merge. Taco Bell and Pizza did it. How about Queen and Kings of the Stone Age? Yeah. Kings and Queens of the Stone Age. Like, have a little family. That'd be amazing. Yeah, or just like, yeah, or Trance of the Stone Age, you know? Or, yeah, buy. I was gonna say Kansas and Boston. Get, get all the, Kansas, Boston and Chicago. Hmm. That'd be amazing.

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  God, that's a great idea. I'll tell you what else they want to, this whole QVC thing dragged forward with a guy like you. I'd, if you'd have me, I'd do it too, but a celebration of American-made products done at like with this level of production. What you really need is a back office to help you with the, with the stuff. Do you know Josh Smith, Montana Knife Company? Get his ass in here.

• 1:36:20Theo Von?

  Didn't we see each other at Dave Ramsey's thing? Were you there?

• 1:36:24Speaker 02

  I've done Dave Ramsey's thing. Were you there?

• 1:36:27Theo Von?

  I think, I don't know if we might have been there at the same time or Tucker Carlson, you get that Zen thing he had?

• 1:36:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, that this guy makes.

• 1:36:35Theo Von?

  Yes.

• 1:36:35Speaker 02

  Some of the most, he's a master bladesmith. He was on, what is it, Forged in Fire? And I met him about a year ago. This guy, I mean, talk about a quest. He makes all, everything is in America, just like Byrd over at the American Giant.

• 1:36:52Theo Von?

  I love that.

• 1:36:52Speaker 02

  Only he's up in Montana. These knives are amazing. He comes on my podcast and, um, full disclosure, he's not a sponsor. But he said, you know, what you're doing with MicroWorks, anything I can do to help. And people offer, they say nice things, whatever. So I said, well, I tell you what you do. If, if, if you want to make a MicroWorks blade, you know, my real limited, you know, I can, I, I, I promise you my people will buy them like that. Because your knives are amazing. And, you know, when they go to your site, maybe they'll get a sense of who you are and what you've done and how many jobs you've created and so forth and so on.

• 1:37:29Speaker 02

  And, uh, he makes 300 of these things. They're unbelievable. They're not cheap. We sold them for 350. Let me keep every, we, we, we raised like $70,000.

• 1:37:40Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:37:40Speaker 02

  Immediately, immediately. Now they're doing a knife and my foundation participates and I'm going to talk to Byrd about doing something similar because to your point, you gotta fight fire with fire.

• 1:37:53Theo Von?

  Right. That's the thing. You can't just keep yelling at it. You can't just be like, this is what they're, this is what, you have to start to be like, well, how do we? Be in, how do you ingenuity it or whatever it's called? Ingen, ingenize?

• 1:38:06Speaker 02

  Engineer.

• 1:38:07Theo Von?

  Engineer.

• 1:38:08Speaker 02

  Well, look.

• 1:38:09Theo Von?

  Yeah. How do you, but that's how you win. It's like. But just pointing the finger at a time that you're not doing anything.

• 1:38:15Speaker 02

  Here's something.

• 1:38:15Theo Von?

  You have to, you have to win the game up here first.

• 1:38:19Speaker 02

  You gotta, it's, you know what it is? It's, it's, uh, it's asymmetrical warfare. You have to think that like, in this conversation, typically Walmart is the devil. Because, you know, the rap is, oh, well, they're buying stuff super cheap because people need it super cheap. And that's what Walmart is and whatever. The thing people don't know, and I, and I don't work for Walmart, but I'm, I'm just telling you, I, I, I know them pretty well. And they have spent, uh, nearly $700 billion on US supply chain. So what happens is, God, I hope I'm not talking out of turn.

• 1:38:56Theo Von?

  They made a deal with American Giant too, didn't they?

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  Yes, that's what I'm going to tell you. And this is what your audience needs to understand. And this is why it's really hard to get, you know, good guys and bad guys with black hats and white hats. It's not that simple. You, so you got a company like American Giant, who makes a great T-shirt. And it says like, you know, American made on the front. It's thick, it's indestructible. I got one, bad news, $75. Now, most people can't pay 75 bucks for a T-shirt, no matter how rad, right? You just can't, it's just, it's not in the wood. But what happens if a company like Walmart, the biggest retailer in the world, sets aside a real chunk of money and calls a company like American Giant and says, I tell you what, we love that shirt.

• 1:39:43Speaker 02

  If we order a million of them, or even half a million.

• 1:39:49Theo Von?

  Now they can do it.

• 1:39:49Speaker 02

  As opposed to the normal five or 10,000 IPO you might get. If we blow this thing up, what kind of price could we actually get at that level?

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  And then the price starts to come down.

• 1:40:05Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:05Speaker 02

  Fifteen, twenty bucks, you know, under twenty dollars, you can get an American-made T-shirt. That's what you're talking about. It's not going to happen with the current way of thinking. The problem is, if I go out in the world and tell that story, there's a whole long list of union people who are going to say, Mike, you don't understand. Walmart's the devil because this, this, this, this, and this. And I say, look, I get it. That's your fight. And, and I don't particularly have, have skin in that game. I'm sympathetic to your cause. But it's back to that tier two, tier one conversation. You don't talk about tariffs like it's only an economic thing? Or you want to talk about it up here? If you're going to talk about it up there, you can't just look at Walmart as the devil because you've been told they're the devil.

• 1:40:50Speaker 02

  And you can't look at American Giant as a small, scrappy US company that makes things that are too expensive because they're doing the best they can with the way the table's been set. But if you get these two guys together and all of a sudden you get a different kind of investment in a supply chain in our country in a different way. And that's how a T-shirt can be made in this country for a price most people can't afford. And that's a story that, look, that can happen with knives. That can, that can happen with anything.

• 1:41:20Theo Von?

  Anything. Imagine like a QVC type of thing, right? Where it's like, this is American-made and it's awesome, right? You would like make sure that the products were good and that they had enough of a supply chain where they could sell, or maybe they could only make fifty this month. But that's what they are and then they're limited. And then you have like something that's a real person made it. And then when you're walking around with something on your back, this is like, you're not just carrying, you don't, you don't just have a shirt on your back that makes you look cool. You have somebody's well-being and their purpose on your back, you know? And so now you're carrying something together, you know? Once you're both carrying purpose, it takes a lot of, it's pressure if it's just you, but if you put the same weight on two people, that's purpose, man.

• 1:41:57Speaker 02

  Well, look, man, that's, that's rod busting 101. Look what you just did.

• 1:42:00Theo Von?

  I sound like Dennis Rodman.

• 1:42:02Speaker 02

  Full metaphor there. Like, that's, I did a job a couple of years ago with these rod busters. They're ironworkers, right? And they, and they carry. Uh, the rebar, right? So you got a chunk of rebar, say it's like, I don't know, whatever the gauge is. It's thick. These things weigh a couple hundred pounds and you get like eight of them. So you got eight hundred pounds on eight guys' shoulders. And that's the only way you can move them. You know, you have to put the weight on your shoulder. Where it gets crazy is, well, that guy's short and that guy's six, three. Now, if you're six, three, you're screwed. Yeah, you're doing a lot of, yeah. Right? So it's like the whole, I mean, it's really a great metaphor because when you're humping the iron up to the top of the skyscraper, you're stepping through a grid of rebar that's already been laid.

• 1:42:46Speaker 02

  And if you trip and you go down, you take everybody with you. So it's an incredible metaphor for teamwork, consequences, stakes, working together, right? And, and to your point, um, there, there are, there are other ways to get the rebar to where you need to, to set it, but this is the best way. And it, and it really does take a different way to think. And then ironically, of course, have you ever seen a bridge before they pour the concrete? Where the whole thing is just like a skeleton of steel. It's, sounds very nice. It's, well, it's, it's beautiful and it's artistic and it's like what we were talking about before.

• 1:43:30Speaker 02

  The, like, there it is. That's like a whole panel of rebar there, right? Oh, yeah. And that's just on the floor, but when you see like an overpass being built, it, it's like some kind of a dinosaur and it's all done with hundreds of tons of, of, of iron. And like the guys who do this work, there you go, that kind of thing. It, it's just mind boggling. And then when they come, like the concrete guys come and they bury it, man, forever. No one ever sees the artistry. No one ever sees the work of the iron worker. Uh, you know, for a hundred years it'll

• 1:44:11Theo Von?

  It's a good point.

• 1:44:12Speaker 02

  It'll live in the concrete. Well, that's like so much of that is happening to people today. They feel like their good work has been covered in concrete. They feel like it's invisible. They don't feel appreciated. They don't feel like they're moving the needle. They don't feel like they're part of a team, you know?

• 1:44:31Theo Von?

  And we have to do it. The toughest part then is I've found in my own life when it is if I keep and not, it's not like you're playing the victim, but sometimes you're the person that gets affected by something. But you also have to be the person to be a part of fixing it. And that's the toughest thing because there's a part of me that always wants to be like, this isn't fair. And I'm not saying for me, I've been fortunate in my life. I can afford to pay my rent and I can afford to buy my groceries. But there's certainly been times where I've in the past where I've been like, you know, this is unfortunate, you know, it's there, it's the, it's a side, it's this fault, but still, it put me in a certain position. I still have to be the one to correct my position.

• 1:45:11Speaker 02

  Dude, it's you. And look, whatever it is, it starts with you. That's why the first tenant on my stupid sweat pledge is about that gratitude. I don't, I don't think you can feel sorry for yourself. If your default position is grateful.

• 1:45:27Theo Von?

  Yeah. Oh, that's the truth, man.

• 1:45:29Speaker 02

  I just don't think you can.

• 1:45:30Theo Von?

  Can be a drug. I was addicted to self pity for a long time. I didn't even realize it.

• 1:45:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 1:45:33Theo Von?

  I was addicted to self pity. I was like, oh, that's a, and I would get addicted to it. Um.

• 1:45:38Speaker 02

  Feels good to feel bad.

• 1:45:39Theo Von?

  It does, especially when that's the thing you're most used to feeling. It feels impossible to even attempt to feel good. I was afraid to feel good because I would be, I was afraid I would leave my bad feelings behind. And they were the only feelings I'd ever even known.

• 1:45:53Speaker 02

  Oh my God. You, you, you would betray your negativity.

• 1:45:56Theo Von?

  Yes.

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  And thereby let yourself down again. Yeah, that's a

• 1:46:01Theo Von?

  That's crazy, and I never even knew that could happen, man. That took a ton of work to get to do that. Uh, yeah, I would love to think of something. It's so funny because I've been trying to think of that. How do we fight fire with like a fire that has a feeling in it, right? And then, yeah, what about unions though? We had Sean O'Brien come in about unions. Unions helps a lot of people. Do you feel like unions are bad or do you feel like unions are good or it's just?

• 1:46:25Speaker 02

  Too broad.

• 1:46:26Theo Von?

  Too broad, nevermind.

• 1:46:26Speaker 02

  No, no, no, it's a great question, but it's like, okay, so the ironworkers we were just talking about.

• 1:46:33Theo Von?

  Yeah, that was a cheap question to me to just fling at the end.

• 1:46:35Speaker 02

  Well, look, my, my, my own problem, I, it's first of all, twenty two hundred people through MicroWorks. I'd say maybe twenty, twenty-five percent of them are, are working through a union shop.

• 1:46:46Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:46:46Speaker 02

  Most of them are electricians, some plumbers, um, but by and large, you know, the, the percentage in my cohort of scholarship recipients and workers is, it's, it's actually bigger than the national. I think the national right now, eight percent of workers are in a union or something like that. Maybe a little less, you check and I'm not sure, but it's close to that. Um, so yeah, I don't, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but the thing, it's, it's like tier two and tier one with tariffs. If you're going to have a conversation about how best to negotiate between labor and management. There you go, ten percent in twenty-three, eleven point two in twenty-three, and uh, da, da, da, six point seven private sector.

• 1:47:31Speaker 02

  That's the, that's really what you're asking. Look at that, six point seven percent in nineteen, uh, in, in twenty twenty-four in the private sector, like, like ironworkers or plumbers, thirty-five point seven percent in the public sector. That could be the post office, that could be teachers, that could be the SEIU, that could be, you know, all sorts of different things.

• 1:47:52Theo Von?

  If businesses start to become more like groundwork, you wouldn't even need a union.

• 1:47:55Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:47:56Theo Von?

  So really, again,

• 1:47:57Speaker 02

  Fire with fire.

• 1:47:58Theo Von?

  How do you, yeah, you, it's reconceptualizing things.

• 1:48:01Speaker 02

  I call it door number three, right? You can't just give me

• 1:48:07Speaker 02

  One or two, left or right, blue collar or white collar.

• 1:48:11Theo Von?

  Republican or Democrat.

• 1:48:12Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:48:12Theo Von?

  It's all a shell game. You have to realize this whole thing has been a shell game.

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  It's a sucker's bet.

• 1:48:17Theo Von?

  Yes.

• 1:48:18Speaker 02

  It's like, the color of collars is no longer for sale. Don't talk to me about, about blue or white collar. That's the point of the groundwork story. You got a guy, covered with mud, under your house, your greatest investment, okay? Doing something to save the foundation. Now, are you gonna call that guy a blue collar worker? You're gonna call that guy just a grunt?

• 1:48:41Theo Von?

  That guy is a fucking

• 1:48:42Speaker 02

  Superhero.

• 1:48:43Theo Von?

  Surgeon at that moment.

• 1:48:44Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:48:45Theo Von?

  For your family to sleep safe at night, that guy is your surgeon.

• 1:48:48Speaker 02

  That's right. And he's also an owner of the company.

• 1:48:51Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:51Speaker 02

  So now, all of that other pride of ownership, all of that other code-driven integrity thing, right? You, you, you can start to see how you might be able to build a cohesive unit around something other than a paycheck. And that's not an excuse to say the paychecks couldn't be better. I'm, I'm just saying that if you, if you only look at the economic ramifications of a tariff, that's not much different than only looking at whether or not you like your job based on what your paycheck says.

• 1:49:24Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:24Speaker 02

  And if you, if you take the bait on that, the next thing you know, you're gonna be having an argument about, uh, UBI, universal basic income, and you're gonna get sucked into this whole conversation about, well, what are people gonna do if there is no work? And we ought to just pay them not to do anything? And then you've got all kinds of, uh, moral and ethical questions.

• 1:49:43Theo Von?

  Yeah, kind of, but if

• 1:49:44Speaker 02

  It never stops.

• 1:49:44Theo Von?

  If, if at a certain point, a, a certain point, you have to invest in your own country, in your own people, the spirit of your own people. And I can't understand how that's not extremely evident right now. And if UBI, if universal basic income helps people to get by for a couple of years or five years, while these, while like things adjust from going from, let's try to build stuff here in our own country, and make people feel empowered, and if they're, as if they're part of the, an assembly line of humanity and of purpose and, um, of a nation, and of a, a, a group think of, of a moral code, then I, I don't, I think that that's totally fine.

• 1:50:23Theo Von?

  Let's stop giving money to other places, um, who have enough money right now, and help our own people out for a little while. You know, and I know I'm opening up bigger cans of worms, but. Yeah, it's just, I fuck, I am all in, cause if you don't do it now, it is, to me, it appears like it's kinda gonna be a rap. And, but I still believe that there's that human spirit, that there's that, there's that team spirit, there's that, like, that whatever made those people, whatever that thing is, to be an American, even if it's not even real, but we believe in it. There's still that inside of us, that makes me believe that we could turn it around.

• 1:51:03Speaker 02

  That guy, Byrd, who you, who you brought up, he's a Wall Street guy, and 16 years ago, he said, no. I've just, his family came over on the frickin' Mayflower, just so you know, that's who this guy is. And he said, nope, redo. I'm gonna build a company called American Giant, and I'm gonna prove that this country can still make quality clothing. Now, that's a very personal mission that could only be embarked upon by a genuinely hard-headed dude, okay? But 16 years later, they're still standing, and they're doing it, they're proving it, right? Now, can you do it to scale? This is a whole nother conversation.

• 1:51:42Theo Von?

  Right, we'll talk about it another time, we can. But yeah, can you do it to scale? What pieces have to start? But you have to start somewhere. It's like, the crazy person, the leader was at first the crazy person. The revolutionaries were first viewed at as insane, always.

• 1:51:58Speaker 02

  It's not just that, it's, it's, it's every great accepted truth today began as madness.

• 1:52:07Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:07Speaker 02

  It was dismissed, and then it was grudgingly considered, and then it was slowly accepted as fringe, and then it was more widely believed as possible, and then it got a consensus, and then it became the truth, and then it became the self-evident truth.

• 1:52:26Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:26Speaker 02

  That's how it always, always happens. It's going to happen with every, with every single thing right now. From tariffs, to climate change, to meat eating, to addiction, all the things we think we know about all of these different things are in a state of evolution.

• 1:52:45Theo Von?

  I agree.

• 1:52:46Speaker 02

  And I don't, I don't know where or how it ends, but I'll tell you this, man.

• 1:52:50Theo Von?

  It's exciting.

• 1:52:51Speaker 02

  We are lo, we are long in certainty. Today and and and and we're very short in in understanding.

• 1:52:59Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:53:00Speaker 02

  And it's it's it's just gonna take time. It's just going to take time to be as certain about these other things as we are about slavery. You know, it it takes time for people. I don't know. I don't know how it ends, but look, I again. You're engaged. What you're doing. I I can see that you love it. You love it on stage. You love talking to people and you love helping your audience. I I my hope for everybody who is listening is that they can find a pursuit that that gives them a measure of that. And I've seen it in welders. I've seen it in plumbers. I've I've seen it in entrepreneurs. I've seen it in writers. My mom just wrote her fourth book. She's eighty seven.

• 1:53:45Speaker 02

  This woman wrote every day for sixty years, Theo.

• 1:53:47Theo Von?

  Cleaning up after my dirty son.

• 1:53:50Speaker 02

  Well, that was kind of her second one. But but no, for sixty years, her dream was to be a bestselling author. She never got published till she was eighty. And then she went to number four. And now she's had four books. I only mention it because I, you know, I I talk about work ethic all the time. I talk about my pop, I talk about dirty jobbers and everything else. My mom, right in front of me. You know, is a four time New York Times bestselling author and she's eighty seven. And that's a second act. It didn't really happen for her till she was eighty.

• 1:54:22Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:22Speaker 02

  So whatever level of hope or hopelessness or despair people are in, man, there's.

• 1:54:27Theo Von?

  I feel like we've just talked about a lot of inspiration. I mean, I feel inspired. I feel like we can do things. I just I ju- I feel like things are so possible, right? And yeah, I just appreciate that there's an audience that tunes in and I hope they just stay patient, you know, and um we'll keep thinking together and we'll find ways to do things new. I just, I I I don't think it's that far off to change things. You know?

• 1:54:50Speaker 02

  You you're a hillbilly from Louisiana who just interviewed the President of the United States.

• 1:54:56Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:54:56Speaker 02

  Are you kidding me?

• 1:54:58Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's a great.

• 1:54:58Speaker 02

  Are you kidding me?

• 1:54:59Theo Von?

  That is a great point, dude.

• 1:55:01Speaker 02

  When people tell me.

• 1:55:03Theo Von?

  Dude, I remember when I couldn't find my shirt for almost one month.

• 1:55:07Speaker 02

  By the way.

• 1:55:08Theo Von?

  Three and a half weekends, dude.

• 1:55:09Speaker 02

  You talk about shirts. I, I can't believe you got a, you got a wardrobe rack here.

• 1:55:14Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:55:15Speaker 02

  And, and the, the, the whole smiley face on the thing and the, it's exactly what you were talking about. That, that's your, it's like your credo, it's your code, it's your, it's such a simple thing. You know, what's it say on the back?

• 1:55:28Theo Von?

  It just says be good to yourself on the back.

• 1:55:30Speaker 02

  Well, there you go.

• 1:55:31Theo Von?

  Cause yeah, we're a lot of late bloomers here, but we're fucking hopeful. And yeah, I think, I think we can do something cool. Like we just have to make sure we get it right, you know?

• 1:55:39Speaker 02

  You gotta try, man.

• 1:55:40Theo Von?

  Right. You have to try. That's the thing about terrorists. Like fucking try. I don't give a, there's nothing to lose. I've been to every place, everybody I know is in addiction. What are we, what are we waiting for to happen?

• 1:55:52Speaker 02

  Tell me how it's working with 37 trillion in the hole. Tell me what's working. Okay. We're, this whole thing is cobbled together with Kleenex and spit. And we've confused the fact that we're still living in, in, in a workable situation with a situation that truly works.

• 1:56:10Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:10Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's very wobbly.

• 1:56:13Theo Von?

  Kleenex and spit. I agree, man. It's time to clear our own throat and make our own fucking glue too, I think, you know?

• 1:56:18Speaker 02

  I thought you were gonna go with phlegm.

• 1:56:19Theo Von?

  Oh, it was phlegm, but it was.

• 1:56:21Speaker 02

  Well, if you're clearing your throat, you're cutting up the phlegm, you could put the phlegm in the glue. And then the next thing you know, it's all in one of these little sunny delight things. And I'm feeling weirdly caffeinated and subdued.

• 1:56:31Theo Von?

  Micro, your new show is out May 2nd. We'll make sure to share some clips of it on our Instagram page as well and on our Facebook.

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  Thanks, pal.

• 1:56:39Theo Von?

  Yeah. And it's a rehash of, it's not a rehash, it is a continuation of.

• 1:56:43Speaker 02

  It's a celebration of the neighbors you wish you had. Returning the favor, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg. Set the standard, people you should know is what I'm gonna do. Look, I, I don't even, I don't know what else to, to do, except point the camera at people who, who are actually making a difference, whether they're making a sweatshirt or a submarine or saving lives by making knives in a forge, man. I, these stories, Theo, that's the, that's where we land the plane with your permission. If you're looking for hope.

• 1:57:15Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:17Speaker 02

  It's in the forge. It's in the sewing machines. It's, it's with a welding torch. It's, it's, it's with an attitude that says, I'm gonna cheerfully take hold of that son of a bitch and I'm gonna lift it up and I'm gonna do my part to get the rebar to where it needs to go. I'm gonna do my best, I'm gonna try, and if I fall, I'm gonna stand back up. Cause life is a, uh, it's a journey, brother. And it's a job. I'm not gonna say a dirty one, just a job. Mike Rowe, thanks so much, brother. Anytime.

• 1:58:15Speaker 04

  Coca-Cola. For the big, for the small, the short, and the tall. Peacemakers, risk takers. For the optimists, pessimists. For long distance love. For introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers. For old friends and new. Coca-Cola. For everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you.