"Pete Buttigieg"

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Speaker 1 Sean, good morning. I know that this is

Speaker 1 a weekend morning. I know it doesn't line up with the episode people are about to listen to, but it's an actual Saturday when we're recording this.
That's correct. Be honest.
Your plan for the day.

Speaker 1 Go be fucking ruthless with yourself right now.

Speaker 1 Totally. I'm going to have, I'm not even kidding.
I'm going to have chili cornbread casserole right when this is over. No, no, no.
But tell us something unusual.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Smartless.

Speaker 1 Smart.

Speaker 1 Oh, Sean, get a good stretch in you like a little kitty cat stretching. Wait, listen, I have a story to share with you all.

Speaker 2 Here we go.

Speaker 1 Is that why you had to stretch for your story? Yeah. Is that what just happened?

Speaker 2 Did you write notes, or are you just going to kind of free it?

Speaker 1 Oh, no, this is serious. Look at the look on his face.
I know, because I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but two days ago, I'm in my car

Speaker 1 and I'm on Wilshire Boulevard in between appointments because if I drive home, by the time I get there, I have to come back. So I'm driving around like 20 minutes trying to kill time.

Speaker 1 You're driving.

Speaker 2 You don't pull in somewhere.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're just burning fossil fuel because.

Speaker 1 Well, it's an electric car.

Speaker 1 It's an electric car.

Speaker 2 It doesn't charge for free, you know?

Speaker 1 Go ahead. Okay, so.
It does mitigate it somewhat. Okay, go ahead.
So I'm in the center lane on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, and the car goes dead.

Speaker 1 And I have plenty of battery, and I'm freaking out. And the display on my dashboard says

Speaker 2 what it said. And you're wondering what neutral means?

Speaker 1 Stupid ass. I was like, it says

Speaker 1 first of all, by the way, first of all, has your car ever broken down in the middle lane and like a busy, like the stress is crazy. Yeah.
And you get out and try to start pushing your car?

Speaker 1 No, but I freaked out. I was, I put on my hazards, everybody's driving by, like, fuck you.
And I'm like, what am I supposed to do? My car died.

Speaker 1 Then it says the key, does the thing on the display on the dashboard said, is your key in the car? If so, hold it up to the designated area. And I'm like, what's the designated area?

Speaker 1 Anyway, I freaked out. So I take the, I take, this is the longest story in the world.
I took the manual out. And while people are driving past me, like, oh, so you weren't alone.
Manuel was with you.

Speaker 2 But you took him out, right?

Speaker 1 So he was must have been in the trunk. So you let manual out.
Yeah, and I asked him what was wrong.

Speaker 1 So you're reading the manual, and meanwhile, you're screaming, guys, stop honking. I know.
It's not my

Speaker 1 fault. Have you ever had that happen? Like, I was so stressed out.
And so I have my head down. I'm looking at the manual looking for like keys or whatever, like key fob.

Speaker 1 And they say, anyway, so I, anyway, I panic and I call Scotty. Scotty's like, what do you want me to do about it?

Speaker 1 And so I

Speaker 1 with a tone

Speaker 1 freaking out. And I find a YouTube video of a guy who went through the same thing.
It's the same kind of car. And he's like, you got to put it in the cup holder.
I'm like, the cup holders.

Speaker 1 I put the key in the cup holder and I hit it again. Thank God it started.
But that was like 20 minutes sitting there with my hazard on.

Speaker 1 And then I finally, because I'll be damned if I didn't make to my massage.

Speaker 1 So I got to my massage.

Speaker 1 That was your appointment. That was my appointment because I hadn't had one in like a year.
Sounds like a real busy day.

Speaker 1 Middle of the day massage? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, middle of the day.

Speaker 1 Middle of a workday massage? Okay.

Speaker 1 So, and you give me shit, JB, for not going to the office. This guy's doing middle of

Speaker 1 weekday massages. Wait, this is the end of the story.

Speaker 1 Living like a fucking Saudi prince over here.

Speaker 1 So wait, the end of the story is. Sure.
I get out of my massage. I just passed the front desk because I already paid.
And she goes, oh, wait.

Speaker 1 And she could tell she was too embarrassed to say the word husband. So she goes, your friend dropped off a spare key.
And so I used my spare key.

Speaker 1 He dropped, Scottie drove all the way to the thing to drop off a spare key that I didn't even know I had

Speaker 2 while you were getting them.

Speaker 1 Your roommate. Your roommate came by.

Speaker 1 Your roommate. I know that you're a confirmed bachelor and your roommate came by.

Speaker 2 The guy in the other room.

Speaker 2 Oh, poor Sean.

Speaker 1 Oh, God, that was the worst.

Speaker 1 Has anything ever happened like that? I mean,

Speaker 1 I have had that feeling.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's called a car breakdown.

Speaker 1 I know, but I have the worst feeling. I have to see where it has to be.
It's not being recognized. But usually I just usually just move it around to different points of the car.

Speaker 1 But they don't tell you that.

Speaker 1 I'm supposed to know that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's a picture usually. It shows like a little picture somewhere on your on your your your screen

Speaker 1 where to stick it.

Speaker 1 But anyway.

Speaker 1 Anyway, yeah. Great story.

Speaker 1 Did anybody stop for a selfie with you?

Speaker 1 No, I had my head down so far.

Speaker 2 Did you think that maybe you should pop the trunk or the hood so that no one rear-ends you or honks at you?

Speaker 1 Well, I have my hazards on.

Speaker 2 It doesn't work.

Speaker 1 You have one of those little triangular

Speaker 1 orange reflecting things in the trunk of your car. Set on the tone.
Do you snap a flare off?

Speaker 1 Whereabouts in Wilshire? By the way,

Speaker 1 I was in the thick of it. I was like Wilshire, like just off of Santa Monica and like, you know, Rodale, like in the middle of that section.
Oh, in Beverly Hills. Yes, in the middle lane.

Speaker 1 You didn't get much.

Speaker 1 So your fancy car breaks down on Welsh or in Beverly Hills on your way to your massage.

Speaker 1 You played well

Speaker 2 in the war theater.

Speaker 1 Hey, listen, man, the price of eggs must be crushing you right now. You're just going nuts over this, right?

Speaker 1 Guys,

Speaker 1 it's a great segue.

Speaker 2 I've got a guest that can answer a lot of high-stress driving questions for you. Oh, good.

Speaker 2 Today, we've got a guest that's going to prove to you, too,

Speaker 1 that hard work can bring great results.

Speaker 2 Fellas, if you just show a little discipline and focus, read a book for God's sakes and apply yourself, you can reach great heights, Will, Sean.

Speaker 2 Okay, I'm working on it. This guy was named valedictorian in high school.
voted most likely to become president. He went on to graduate college magna cum laude, and that would be from BTW Harvard.

Speaker 2 Then he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford. So he did that, graduated first-class honors of philosophy, politics, economics.

Speaker 2 Then he came home and split his time between serving in Afghanistan and mayor at 29.

Speaker 1 Oh, I know this fella.

Speaker 2 He's since served four years as United States Secretary of Transportation, and hopefully his high school class is right, and he'll be our president one of these days.

Speaker 1 That's what I missed.

Speaker 2 It's an honor to have on SmartList, Mr.

Speaker 1 Pete Budijudge.

Speaker 2 Hi there. Now, so can you explain to Sean? Because in Afghanistan,

Speaker 1 you were driving, were you not?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was a big part of my job.

Speaker 2 High stress driving. And so what would you suggest to him there on Wilshire and Rodeo?

Speaker 1 Should he pop his trunk so he doesn't get rear-ended? Right. Well, in Afghanistan, you definitely would not want to open any part of the vehicle.
This was one time. Sure.

Speaker 2 Pop a flare, perhaps.

Speaker 1 Actually,

Speaker 1 knocked a mirror off the first time I was driving. Come on, Pete.

Speaker 1 Yeah, got...

Speaker 1 Big trouble because you couldn't like just, you know, stop and pick it back up.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 And, you know, Wilshire Boulevard, much like central Kabul, I imagine, is a place where you have to be. Sure, very simple.
Watch your back.

Speaker 1 It's kind of dangerous. But JB,

Speaker 1 but as Secretary of Transportation, you might have some advice for people like Sean, who's

Speaker 1 portrayed. Because I've written down.
It's amazing how many people just don't want to stop and help. No.
Exactly. They just want to help.
Maybe they got to look.

Speaker 2 Now, do the up-armored Humvees even have hazard lights?

Speaker 1 I didn't even get a Humvee. It was a slightly up-armored

Speaker 1 Toyota truck. It was a Highlander, I think.
That's kind of cool. Yeah, well, that's all they drive there, right? Pickups.
Yeah, they love their Hiluxes. That's kind of the go-to vehicle.

Speaker 1 Or at least it was in my day. High Lux.

Speaker 1 I don't know that. I'm not familiar with that term, Hilux.
Yeah, I think they only sell those abroad, but it's really big over there.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 there's nothing like seeing a pickup, a Hilux storm in your way with like 12 guys in the back and a 50 cal mounted roughly on the

Speaker 1 button dangerous it's dangerous yeah it gets your blood flying sure sure and now and so you were driving top speed looking out for for the for the the the the road mines um on your way to uh reconnaissance and things like that and that sounds very stressful uh yeah yeah it was pretty stressful but you know the folks i was with were really good at their jobs i was well trained in my job um so we we called it military uber basically making sure people and and gear could get to where they need to go.

Speaker 2 Would you ask your passengers to rate you favorably?

Speaker 1 You know, I should have. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, you know, I'm getting reacquainted with Uber now because I,

Speaker 1 you know, for the last four years, I would still drive like if I was dropping off the kids at school or something like that. But the most time, most of the time, I was, you know, being derived.

Speaker 1 That's how it works when you're in the cabinet. So I had to get Uber back on my phone and get used to all that.

Speaker 1 It's changed a little bit since I remember. You got more options now.
Yeah. Yeah.
But nobody can accuse you of being of being highfalutin.

Speaker 1 We mentioned your service

Speaker 1 in the armed forces. Like, you, what an incredible career you've had.
I'm really impressed by it. Unbelievable.
That you went to Harvard, you're a Rhodes Scholar.

Speaker 2 Are you impressed by it, Will?

Speaker 1 I mean, she's

Speaker 1 unbelievable. I mean, of course,

Speaker 1 he was an insult that you would never get assigned to. He was an intelligence officer.
Okay. What does that mean? So

Speaker 1 he's going to tell us right now. Well, I could tell you, but then I'd have to, you know.
Yeah. Yeah, then you'd have to.

Speaker 1 Oh, please kill him.

Speaker 1 On the podcast, the meetings would be phenomenal.

Speaker 1 But what an unbelievable

Speaker 1 when you were sort of 15 in high school, you couldn't have imagined the

Speaker 1 sort of the

Speaker 1 trajectory your life was going to take, could you? No, there's no way. When I was 15 in high school, all I wanted to be was an airline pilot, which I still think is an amazing job.

Speaker 1 I respect pilots so much. By the way, it's a great job.
It pays very well and it's very in demand. But I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
My dad would go on business trips sometimes.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they would have

Speaker 1 on the on the like wide body planes that would that would fly over the Atlantic. They used to have this custom where they'd they'd they'd pin up a carbon copy of the flight plan.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you ever saw this. It'd be

Speaker 1 about the size of a small poster and they would stick it to the wall in the back of the plane. I think this was before they had monitors where you could see where the plane was.

Speaker 1 So it would show the track of where the plane was supposed to go in this kind of carbon line on this on this map. And anyway, if you asked, they would give it to you.
And so he would bring them back

Speaker 1 for me when he came back from a trip. And I just wallpapered my room with them.
I was so

Speaker 1 obsessed with that. I knew the names of the pilots that had

Speaker 1 signed the things.

Speaker 1 They were like celebrities to me.

Speaker 2 Did you ever consider getting your pilot's license and joining the Air Force instead of the Navy?

Speaker 1 So I discovered some things about my eyesight that meant that I was not going to be a candidate for military aviation. Same.
Same.

Speaker 1 Colorblind, right? Oh, that was the reason. Not colorblind.

Speaker 1 Hang on. Hang on a second.
Sorry, Mayor Pete.

Speaker 2 So, Sean,

Speaker 2 your kind of fuzzy vision derailed a long career with an aviator.

Speaker 1 No, I thought you were going to, so you're colorblind because you can't be a pilot if you're colorblind, and I'm colorblind.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no it just had to do with how nearsight i think now it's not such a big deal but i was so nearsighted uh that uh and astigmatism you like at least in the 90s like you

Speaker 1 can't uh look forward to a career no colorblind that's a thing you've got headphones i've got headphones too that's crazy that's a whole subplot and what's the

Speaker 1 little missed sunshine right there's a whole subplot

Speaker 2 very good very good so then all right so then your vision kept you all right so then it was but what what about now there wasn't you both your parents are um

Speaker 2 are academics and educators um but there's no is there military in your family at all? What got you to lean that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, there is, yeah.

Speaker 1 Not my parents' generation, but before that, a lot in my family were career military. Matter of fact, when I was growing up,

Speaker 1 we had a portrait painting in the living room of this Army officer. And we were, you know, I mean, my parents were professors, middle-class neighborhood Indiana.

Speaker 1 We were not like portraits of ancestors on the wall kind of family. So it always stood out to me, and I asked about it.
And the story, it turns out,

Speaker 1 it was my great uncle uncle who died in a plane crash in 1941. But he was an Army Air Corps officer, which was the predecessor to the Air Force.

Speaker 1 And the reason that painting exists is because his brother, my grandfather, was

Speaker 1 also an officer. He was a doctor, actually, who's an Army doc.

Speaker 1 at a, I guess there was a prisoner of war camp in, I think, New Mexico, where World War II prisoners would interact with American officers. And he got to know

Speaker 1 an officer could who could paint and asked him if he would paint from a photograph this portrait of his brother who had been killed.

Speaker 1 And he did.

Speaker 1 And so I grew up with this. He's kind of sitting in a classic World War II style army uniform, kind of staring right at you.

Speaker 1 And I felt like it was kind of my family's version of the Uncle Sam poster, you know, saying, like, why not you? Why aren't you serving your country? Yeah. I want you.

Speaker 1 And I think that was that was in the back of my mind. It was a big part of why I wanted to serve.
You know, and then like a lot of people my age, 9-11 had a big impact on me.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then when I got to Oxford,

Speaker 1 a lot, often some of the Rhodes Scholars are graduates of the military academies, West Point Naval Academy. And my class had quite a few.
And I respected those guys so much.

Speaker 1 It was one more reason I wanted to serve. And

Speaker 1 so I entered the reserve. Once I got back and kind of started my professional life, I joined a reserve unit.
And we'd, you know, it was one week in a month, two weeks a year.

Speaker 1 But then part of the deal is if they call you up, you go. And I got called up while I was mayor, actually.
So I put my mayoral service on hold.

Speaker 1 I took a leave, had a deputy mayor who stepped in for me for the time I had to go and went off to Afghanistan. Is there any part of it you missed? Like,

Speaker 1 yeah, actually, yeah. I mean, the people, most of all, like the people I served with, and they were totally different from each other and from me

Speaker 1 in every way, different, you know, politics, different upbringings. But

Speaker 1 we all just really trusted each other and looked out for each other. And it's something,

Speaker 1 yeah, I wish, you know, obviously the military is not for everybody, but I think a moment like this is one where it would be great if more people had some experience of doing something hard together with other people that just builds that kind of trust that we don't seem to have enough of right now.

Speaker 2 Can you talk about that moment

Speaker 2 to the extent you're comfortable when you got that call that you actually were going to go overseas and serve because i'd imagine uh a lot of folks join the service and they it's during it's not during wartime and they they they never get uh in in combat and you but you were going over like is that's got to be somewhat frightening um

Speaker 1 what can you talk about that yeah your first day like or that you're gonna go time to pack your bags yeah yeah i mean you you know you you take a deep breath and and it's it's sobering but it's also you know it's a big part of why you serve i mean of course if if you're agreeing to put on the uniform, you're putting your right hand up and taking that oath.

Speaker 1 That means the whole idea is you're going to be there if your country needs you. And, you know, I had one tour in Afghanistan.

Speaker 1 I spent a little time also in Afghanistan and Iraq as a civilian economic advisor. But I was with people who served four, five, six.
tours. Wow.

Speaker 1 It was incredible how many, you know, my generation, how many tours some of them did. And

Speaker 1 so I was really humbled to see how much other people had served. And,

Speaker 1 you know, that's one of the other things that made me want to do in the first place was seeing a lot of other people in my generation rogering up to go and thinking at a certain point, like, when's it my turn?

Speaker 1 But is there, does fear enter into it?

Speaker 1 Oh, of course. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The first night I was there,

Speaker 1 you know, they train you for what a rocket alarm sounds like, obviously, you know, what to do if you hear the alarm that says incoming.

Speaker 1 I started out at Bagram, Bagram Airfield, and then later on was reassigned to Kabul, the capital.

Speaker 1 but that first night at bagram there was a uh there was a rocket attack and i just remember um just my blood running cold when i heard that that sound it's the same sound by the way as uh uh i think it's called oh there's an iphone alarm that's the exact same oh the

Speaker 1 yeah that kind of thing yeah yeah it would be a great idea to just never use that yeah yeah no kidding on your iphone um

Speaker 1 at least if you're around somebody who might have memories around that but yeah my first day there was a rocket attack my last day there was a rocket attack. Wow.

Speaker 1 It's probably a different sound than when my massage is over. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's more of a gong. It's a little gong.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's probably more fear than like JB when you got the call to, that you were going to be in Heart to Heart Secrets of the Heart, the TV movie.

Speaker 1 Like that must have been.

Speaker 2 When I'm asked to force my call tomorrow, you know, it's going to need, yeah, yeah. But, well, listen,

Speaker 1 Mayor Pete, thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you for your service. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Indeed, indeed.

Speaker 1 It's pretty, it's really, really impressive.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 with your father being a professor of literature, did that, I mean, were you

Speaker 2 stupid question, but I mean, I'm just, I'm, I love listening to you talk.

Speaker 1 By the way, I do too.

Speaker 1 And I love, anytime you're on any news channel, anything, anywhere, I'm like, you're the smartest person in the room. I love watching you debate.
I love watching you debate.

Speaker 1 I mean, because you make debating not seem like debating. You just boil it down and you take the common contention, you take the contention out, which is really.

Speaker 1 Well, a lot of debating now isn't actually debating. It's

Speaker 1 just like a media opportunity, right? It's just people kind of

Speaker 1 saying their like canned things.

Speaker 2 But your ability to shape a thought, your opinion,

Speaker 2 just to make it kind of tangible for folks,

Speaker 2 I appreciate because me not smart.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I love that you spend time on

Speaker 2 Fox too. And,

Speaker 2 you know, that

Speaker 2 there's an ability to, you know, because we all need to kind of stop talking across one another and talk together. And so it's, I love that you spend some time over there.

Speaker 2 Is there a reason why more Democrats aren't talking over there? Are they not invited or do they not want to go? I just wish they'd do it more.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think I'm both. Yeah.
Look, there's a lot of reasons to hesitate, right?

Speaker 1 If you're going into a place that you know is not ideologically friendly or not aligned with you, like there's reasons to think twice about it. And I think a lot of people in my party do.

Speaker 1 But my take on it is

Speaker 1 you can't blame somebody for not embracing your message if they've literally never heard it.

Speaker 1 And a lot of people will never hear what we have to say if we're only talking to people who are friendly to us. And it's not just TV.
I mean, it's also, you know, I'm doing

Speaker 1 more podcasts, more digital stuff, just because I know that's where a lot of people get their information.

Speaker 1 I've been teaching one day a week at the Institute of Politics in Chicago, at the University of Chicago there.

Speaker 1 And one of the things I do is I'm always asking my students, whenever we sit down, a lot of times I'll do a show of hands, you know, where do you get your news?

Speaker 1 The number of students who raised their hands when I asked how many of them get their news from television was zero, like literally zero.

Speaker 1 They might see a clip from TV if it like goes into their TikTok feeds or Instagram or something like that. But

Speaker 1 I don't. Think of myself as that much older than them, but I grew up in a world where like you

Speaker 1 watched a TV story about some controversy. You heard the conservative opinion, you heard the liberal opinion,

Speaker 1 and maybe hearing the other side made you feel the way you feel even more strongly, or maybe it made you change your mind a little bit or ask another question.

Speaker 1 But, like, the point is, you'd think about it, you'd like stop and think about it.

Speaker 1 And it's very hard for that to happen now, the way our media works. So,

Speaker 1 I'm trying to cut through some of those categories.

Speaker 2 Glad you're doing it.

Speaker 1 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 1 I think one of the tricks that they've done

Speaker 1 on both sides, and this is what has sort of made me, I think a lot of other people check out from the entire process is, is that the truth is we all want a better system. We all want a better country.

Speaker 1 We all want a better America. Everybody wants everybody to have, be better fed and all, et cetera, just whatever the issue is.
Everybody wants that.

Speaker 1 And somehow we've been convinced by a few people that we are at odds with each other. And I think that everybody is actually a lot more aligned

Speaker 1 than we think. I think so.
And I truly believe that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Look, obviously there's some serious disagreements and differences in values, but there's also, yeah, you look at a lot of the biggest issues.

Speaker 1 There's like 60, 70% of Americans who agree on what to do about it.

Speaker 1 And if you look at the overlap, you know, that might not be the same 70% from this issue to that issue, but like the big things that people want out of everyday life and the big things people want their government to do for them to have stuff work, you know, clean, safe drinking water and clean air and roads that don't have a hole in them and transit that gets you to where you need to go and an economy where you can afford stuff and enough housing.

Speaker 1 Like these are these are things that everybody wants. And we've gotten into this mode where politics is treated.
like a basically like a wrestling like deathmatch.

Speaker 1 And it does, I think, turn a lot of people off. But my experience, and maybe it's because I came up locally and local politics, by the way, as everybody knows, can be very, very rough and tumble.
But

Speaker 1 there's this sense, you know, in a community, you're a little more, it's a little clear to everybody that everybody wants the community to do well.

Speaker 1 Well, and you also have to answer to each other face-to-face day-to-day. Yeah.
Yeah. You see each other at the grocery walking the dog.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And yeah, I think we really miss that at the national level. You know, Washington has its version of that because you like run into other

Speaker 1 political figures, but it's not

Speaker 1 like being part of the same thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it's, but it seems to me, and again, this is, forgive me for sort of boiling it down like this, but it does seem to me that Washington politics are a lot like the WWE.

Speaker 1 It's like everybody goes and puts on their, on their, their game persona, and then back in the locker room, they're like, hey, that was a pretty good one. Yeah, there's a good one by you, too.

Speaker 1 They all know, everybody knows each other.

Speaker 1 Do you know what I mean? I think it was like that. I think that's changed a lot in the last few years.

Speaker 1 If you talk to people who, just some of the things that are really dark, January 6th, that kind of stuff, where people were really fearing for their lives, I think has shifted that a little bit.

Speaker 1 But yeah, you could definitely feel,

Speaker 1 we spent almost four years. I wasn't living in Washington the whole time, but most of the time I was serving, we lived there.

Speaker 1 Oh, there's a headline. He Buddha Judge admits he wasn't living in Washington the whole time.
Here we go. No, you know what it was?

Speaker 1 I was traveling so much. Like I was traveling a day or two a week minimum for

Speaker 1 work. And then, you know, because my job was to partly to go around the country and look at the projects we were working on.
You know, you're in charge of transportation, obviously.

Speaker 1 You're traveling a lot, but I went to every single state at least once. Wow.

Speaker 1 And then I would, you know, there were times when I was traveling a lot for campaign stuff too, and began to realize that it was, for our family, it was more economical for me to stay in a hotel the days I was in Washington

Speaker 1 than to pay rent there and mortgage here in Michigan where we live.

Speaker 1 And it was important to us for the kids to be around their grandparents. So my grandmother, or my mother, mother, their grandmother lives here in Traverse City now.

Speaker 1 We moved here largely because Chastin's parents, my husband's parents are here.

Speaker 1 That's where

Speaker 1 he grew up. And it's made all the difference in the world to have the kids close to their parents.
Yeah. Well,

Speaker 2 what made you think that you could become a mayor and get into politics at that early age? You became mayor at 29, I think.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 2 coming back from Afghanistan. Well, no, this is before you went to Afghanistan.
But coming back from Oxford,

Speaker 2 you'd go, you worked for the consultant firm.

Speaker 2 At what point did you think I might want to go into politics?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I finished up at Oxford, got a job in Chicago at a consulting firm, but the first time. McKinsey, is that right? Is that where you were? Yeah, McKenzie.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I learned a lot there, but I also figured out pretty quickly that client service wasn't for me.

Speaker 1 I just didn't care enough about it. I wanted to work on something I cared about, not just because I was being paid to care about, but because it was really important to me.
And meanwhile,

Speaker 1 a lot of people know that South Bend, Indiana is where Notre Dame is.

Speaker 1 What a lot of people don't realize is Notre Dame is actually across the street from South Bend, Indiana. It's not a college town that way.
And the city was completely built around the auto industry.

Speaker 1 It was the company town for Studebaker. Studebaker was headquartered in South Bend, Indiana.
Wow, wow.

Speaker 1 And even though that company went out of business in the 60s, When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, the city was still trying to recover from that.

Speaker 1 Lost a bunch of its its population, vacant, abandoned houses, collapsing factories everywhere. And so I grew up kind of inhaling this idea that success meant getting out.

Speaker 1 I mean, a lot of kids in, you know, the so-called Rust Belt and in rural America grow up with this message, right? If you want to make something of yourself, get out,

Speaker 1 which is pretty much what I did. I went to the East Coast, then I got even further away, going to the UK to study when I got the scholarship.

Speaker 1 But then I started to realize the further away I got, the more I realized that I was actually from somewhere. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And started to feel this like almost militant like pride in where I was from and what it could be.

Speaker 1 And I found that a lot of people I grew up with felt the same way, that like our city could be more than it was and could have a different future. And

Speaker 1 right around the time I got in the race for mayor, there was a national write-up of our city. They called it one of America's 10 dying cities.

Speaker 1 And we hated that so much and didn't believe it. And so

Speaker 1 I found that there were enough people who felt the same way that

Speaker 1 we could build this campaign.

Speaker 1 We had a lot, by the way, it was super bipartisan. You know, I ran as a Democrat, but we had a lot of independence, Republicans who supported it.
And then they put me in charge of the city.

Speaker 1 And then it was put up or shut up.

Speaker 2 Was that as frightening as getting the call-up to go overseas? I mean,

Speaker 1 all that responsibility. You know, I took office on New Year's Day and it was snowing.
And one thing I knew a lot about was,

Speaker 1 you know, one thing you definitely need to be on top of as a mayor is snowplowing. Sure.
Maybe not as much an issue, obviously,

Speaker 1 where you are. But,

Speaker 1 you know, we're right in the lake effect zone, a lot of snow. And it's kind of the test of the classic test of a mayor.
So,

Speaker 1 you know, right away there's this trial by fire, just making sure that we were okay dealing with this snow.

Speaker 1 And yeah, it's everything from, yeah, I worked on everything from, you know, police and fire to streets and,

Speaker 1 to the zoo. We were in charge of the zoo.

Speaker 2 Anything surprising about a mayor job that

Speaker 2 would surprise people? Something you didn't expect?

Speaker 1 I was surprised to be in charge of the zoo. It just wasn't something I thought about when I was campaigning.

Speaker 1 I didn't know I'd be dealing with

Speaker 1 golf courses as much. We had city golf courses that I was managing and we didn't like, I don't even golf.

Speaker 1 And then things that like you hear about, but I didn't really think much of it until I did it. Like you get to marry people, right?

Speaker 1 You are

Speaker 1 justice. And I remember one time I came in, I was really early.
I was the first person in. So my staff weren't around.

Speaker 1 And I stepped out of the elevator in the hallway that leads to the mayor's office. And this other couple,

Speaker 1 these two other people stepped out of another elevator and said, oh, mayor, we were hoping we'd find you here. Like just who we were hoping to see.

Speaker 1 And I thought, okay, I hope I'm ready for whatever they're going to ask because I'm all alone up here. And then they explained, she was super pregnant.

Speaker 1 And they said, well, we're on our way to the hospital. We're going to have a C-section.
And by the time we tell her parents that they're grandparents, I want to make sure we're actually married.

Speaker 1 So could you marry us? Wow.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 And it's time sensitive.

Speaker 1 Like now?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, like right now.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 you know, I don't know everything about their story. And you're like, yeah, I could, but I've assigned all marriages to the zoo.
So we got to get to the zoo real quick.

Speaker 1 so we did it like i went through my drawers and i found like somewhere in there from the last time i did this i had you know a copy of the the the protocol the things i was supposed to say and uh my my staff trickled in uh uh while we were uh putting that together and we i found a piece of pipe cleaner we were able to use just as a makeshift ring.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they ran down and got the certificates and I signed off. And

Speaker 1 yeah, but by the time they

Speaker 1 got them married and squared away and then they went off. I mean, was she in labor while you were giving? I'm like, was she like breathing whatever that is? Like was she about to go into it?

Speaker 1 I'm not sure I would have been able to handle that. Yeah, yeah.
That would have been crazy.

Speaker 2 Now, how does that differ from your first day as transportation secretary?

Speaker 1 What was that like?

Speaker 2 Was it

Speaker 2 what is day one like when you're handling that large

Speaker 1 department?

Speaker 1 Well, it's, I mean, it's a huge leap. So as mayor, I had about a thousand employees in about a $300 million organization.
So not small, but

Speaker 1 as secretary of transportation, you got 55,000 employees.

Speaker 1 You oversee everything from commercial space travel safety to the Great Lawrence Seaway to the Maritime Administration to just so many things.

Speaker 1 And the budget is the size of a mid-sized country. It's about $150 billion, or at least it was once we got the infrastructure package through.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it's pretty daunting. The really daunting thing was it was deep COVID, and I couldn't be in a room with most of my staff.

Speaker 1 And then,

Speaker 1 you you know, that was the time when the protocols were extremely

Speaker 1 intense.

Speaker 1 I got exposed to, I was in a room with somebody who had had COVID, and it was decided that I needed to be confined for 14 days just in case.

Speaker 1 So the first time I participated in an Oval Office meeting, they wheeled a television into the Oval Office so that I could participate by Zoom from this apartment where I was locked up

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 join remotely. So it was a very strange introduction to the job.
It's a very strange introduction to my own team.

Speaker 1 But you know, gradually we built

Speaker 1 a really good chemistry with a really good team full of podcasts. But the irony that you're you're now the secretary of transportation, but you can't go anywhere.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And Pete, instead of asking you what we would never know, like what we could never guess about the transportation, like safety, like I don't think I could handle that answer.

Speaker 1 I don't want to know what I don't know. So I'll just say, what is the most interesting thing that you learned that you could share with us about how it all works? Because it is kind of fascinating.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't want to know about safety stuff. I think I wouldn't be able to sleep.
You want to present? Oh, the safety stuff should be reassuring, though.

Speaker 1 I mean, one thing that people don't think about is how incredible of a civilizational achievement.

Speaker 1 our overall aviation safety record as a country is. There was a terrible crash this year.

Speaker 1 There was 15 years with no fatal crashes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow. And that doesn't just happen, right? I mean, think about what that takes.

Speaker 1 I wish we had that on auto safety. We don't.
Like on the ground, like in cars, we lose more than 100 people a day in those countries. One of the big things I worked on.

Speaker 1 We finally got the numbers starting to go down again on my work.

Speaker 1 Are those numbers, are a lot of those numbers still

Speaker 1 the result of people being intoxicated? Is that

Speaker 1 still there? Or is it a lot of texting? Both. Yeah.
Distracted driving is a huge deal. I mean, I cannot distracted driving.
I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to just put down the phone.

Speaker 1 Just don't, it can, it can, it can wait. Uh, but, but anyway, the work that goes into making sure people are safe and stuff I never thought about in shipping, like

Speaker 1 making sure that things that go into packages are are safe.

Speaker 1 You know, we learned things like there was a cottage industry of custom kind of homemade nail polish, which sometimes is using compounds that were unsafe to put in the mail.

Speaker 1 Again, not on my bingo card for things I would be dealing with, but

Speaker 1 it was a thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because can't you mail anything? I mean,

Speaker 1 how do they find out? Not hazardous materials. Asking for a friend.

Speaker 1 But people, that's the thing. People don't know.
Like, if you're on Etsy, you know, selling custom nail polish, you don't think of yourself as a person who ships hazardous materials, right?

Speaker 1 You think of yourself as a small business. And so,

Speaker 1 you know, trying to do that without over-regulating everybody to where nobody could do anything. Jason, quick, do you know what Etsy is?

Speaker 2 She, she's

Speaker 2 Sean's cat.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much. All right.
Sean's cat.

Speaker 1 Come here, Nancy.

Speaker 2 So, Sean, did you get enough of an answer there for a friend about how to properly mule something?

Speaker 1 What to look for, how they can.

Speaker 1 No, I always thought that because, you know, like gummies are legal, but you can't mail them. Here we go.

Speaker 1 You know what else I learned a lot about? Fish.

Speaker 1 Fish. I wound up having to learn more than I thought I would about fish.
Why? Why?

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 a lot of fish, you know, famously swim upstream. And

Speaker 1 if a road is built through a stream or a river and you don't put the right kind of culvert so the water can go under it, it blocks the fish passage.

Speaker 1 And it turns out a lot of roads were built in the 60s and 70s. The culverts either weren't built the right way or they've failed over the years.

Speaker 1 And it was screwing up fisheries, especially in the Pacific Northwest. But this is happening all over the country.

Speaker 1 And so we started working on fixing it with some of the funds in the infrastructure package. Huge deal for the Pacific Northwest, especially for tribal tribal communities, but also just in general.

Speaker 1 So I wound up having, you know, I was

Speaker 1 in PowerPoint briefings on the difference between anadromous fish, which swim upstream and

Speaker 1 catadrimus, I think is the word for the ones that fish go downstream. And it's not just salmon.
I mean, there's... There's a lot of

Speaker 1 fish-related things that turn out to be at stake.

Speaker 1 But Pete, you know,

Speaker 1 like you look at, I've never been to Japan, but everybody I know that's been to Japan is like, every street is flawless. Everything is clean.

Speaker 1 Every like road and it's Sean, you would love Japan for real.

Speaker 1 I know I really want to go, but you go, God, there's hunt link. You just said the budget.
Like how is it? And I can only speak to Los Angeles. Every road I drive on has massive potholes all the time.

Speaker 1 Like what's going on? Yeah, so some of it is you get what you pay for. And that's a country that just really invests in its transportation.
But they also have a culture.

Speaker 1 of taking care of things that I think we could we could learn from.

Speaker 1 I went there because they hosted the G7, all the transport ministers from the G7 countries get together and it was their turn to host.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 with this great meeting, but yes, I kind of saw that up close, got to ride the bullet train and see the fronts in the bullet train, which is an incredible experience.

Speaker 1 But there's a culture, like it's

Speaker 1 like you don't eat while you're walking in Japan.

Speaker 1 A couple of us made this mistake and learned very quickly you're not supposed to do that. Like you don't just walk down the street with an ice cream cone or

Speaker 1 which is, um, it's just you're supposed to stop and eat at a table. And then they give you, uh, if you get something to go, they give you a little bag to put your trash in that you take with you.

Speaker 1 Um, wow, it's incredible. Like, you're supposed to look after your own trash.
So it's just this like culture of cleanliness and taking care of things.

Speaker 1 Well, we've got, first of all, I think that it might go beyond, I don't want to go too deep on this, but as a Canadian, it goes beyond a little bit, just a culture of cleanliness. And it is a culture.

Speaker 1 There is a thing that is lacking this idea that we have to lift each other up and be responsible to the greater good.

Speaker 1 I once said to my dad, and I don't know if I've shared this on the show before, I said, why didn't you move to the States?

Speaker 1 When I was younger, I said, he was a lawyer for many years and he went into business. I said, you could have made way more money.

Speaker 1 He said, because I have an obligation to the system that brought me up, and he came from nothing. And I don't think that that exists as much in this country.

Speaker 1 There's much more of a fuck you, I'm getting mine,

Speaker 1 which is fine. You know, it is the land of opportunity.
But there is, to answer, Sean, your question, I think that there is a little bit of that that kind of bleeds into everything.

Speaker 1 And you look at,

Speaker 1 you've seen those videos, Pete, I'm sure, of when they decide to rebuild a bridge, a small bridge in the Netherlands

Speaker 1 on a highway. That's incredible.
And they do it in 48 hours because they don't want to destroy the whole system. Really? So everybody, they prep, prep, prep, prep, prep.

Speaker 1 They shut it down and they quite literally build the bridge in 48 hours. That's all hands on deck.

Speaker 1 No, no,

Speaker 1 it's incredible. We worked on ways to emulate that.
But I think I half agree with you, but I think there's a deeply American tradition around that, too.

Speaker 1 It's always kind of in a bit of a push-pull with the

Speaker 1 individualistic tradition. But

Speaker 1 a lot of the great infrastructure we count on, the aviation system, the highways,

Speaker 1 are built on that spirit. And so is the idea of preparing.
It was Lincoln who said,

Speaker 1 give me six hours to chop down a tree and i will spend the first four sharpening my axe and i think about that a lot because if we apply that to infrastructure we'd be better off hey i gotta ask speaking of speaking of fathers um uh there's something i've always wanted jason to ask you about which is that i once read a shot at sean um

Speaker 1 no i i once read that you are a um uh maybe the most prominent maltese american uh figure in hollywood and i wanted to know that's the country my dad immigrated from i was kidding have you ever been there like do you have a connection to maltese culture I went there when I was a little kid.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 actually, it's my mother's mother that

Speaker 2 was from Malta. Okay.
And that's where she met her husband, my grandfather, because he was in the British Air Force.

Speaker 1 Ah, classic, yeah, classic thing that happened a lot in that generation.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 What an interesting little island out there, incredibly strategic and rich in history and a great filming location, right?

Speaker 1 The great Popeye was shot there and yeah yeah in fact i was there i was with a friend and we we stumbled onto the set of world war z because uh because you know it's it's a

Speaker 1 tiny mediterranean country which means it can be made to look like lots of places especially lots of places in the middle east or north africa i think they used it for gladiator um but um they just changed the signs and they could make like i think a lot of the scenes in munich whether it was in lebanon or greece or uh or israel palestine like a lot of that was shot in malta but yeah world war z was going on i didn't know what that was, but I was walking with a friend and we just suddenly like the signs on the

Speaker 1 businesses switched to Hebrew and there was this overturned tank and we had maybe like wandered past a stanchion and didn't notice because they were taking a break.

Speaker 1 And then this bus pulled up and a bunch of zombies got out.

Speaker 1 And it's really unnerving. You looked at your drink.
You know what was really unnerving was not to see zombies, but to see zombies acting not like zombies, right? They're extras.

Speaker 1 I think they were Maltese extras. They were waiting for their talking cats.
Yeah, there's like a zombie smoking a cigarette. There's like a zombie like checking his phone.

Speaker 1 There's a zombie with a bottle of water.

Speaker 1 That was almost more unsettling than seeing a bunch of people.

Speaker 2 Then you saw Brad Pitt walk by and you just passed out completely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he sadly was not, was not present.

Speaker 2 Have you been there recently?

Speaker 1 It's been a few years, but I'm hoping soon to be able to take our kids there because I want to introduce them to, I want them to know like the one place in the world where their last name is a common name.

Speaker 1 i want them to like you know meet their cousins and is that true is that

Speaker 1 is that incredibly it's like smith over there i mean you there was a statue to uh anton buttigej who was the president of malta and a great poet and like we're not even related um

Speaker 1 they were like i think like he was like neighbors with my great grandparents or something like that i mean but it's incredible it's a fascinating place it's just it's beautiful and how old are your kids by the way now uh they're three they're turning four this summer that's great that's so cool boy and a girl twins

Speaker 1 That's great.

Speaker 2 And we will be right back.

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Speaker 1 And now back to the show.

Speaker 2 Hey, I want to get back to infrastructure for one second.

Speaker 2 You guys got that huge bill passed and

Speaker 2 got a lot of great stuff started. I'm assuming a lot of that stuff is still happening and marching forward.
And if the answer to that is yes,

Speaker 2 is there anything you can talk about that maybe we might not know about that you're super excited about

Speaker 2 that is still a couple of years away from being completed? Because a lot of these things are obviously long-term builds. But like

Speaker 2 you said, like Bullet Train in Tokyo,

Speaker 2 stuff like that.

Speaker 2 What's coming down? What's coming down? Yeah, there's a bunch.

Speaker 1 So we funded about 70,000 projects. Roughly 20,000 of them are done.
But yeah, most of them, by their very nature, they take years and years to do.

Speaker 1 Matter of fact, I drive past one almost every day here in Michigan that I remember signing off on. That's now

Speaker 1 actually now everybody's grumbling about it because

Speaker 1 it's in construction and blocking traffic. But eventually it's going to be great

Speaker 1 redesigning the road there to make it safer. But yeah,

Speaker 1 there is a high-speed, there are a few high-speed rail things going on. One I'm excited about is a high-speed rail connection from Las Vegas to Southern California.

Speaker 1 And it was a public-private partnership.

Speaker 1 We funded it with federal dollars, but there's also a private company bringing a lot of the dollars to the table and partnering with the state of Nevada to get it

Speaker 1 That, if they hit their marks, it'll be going before the end of this decade. And

Speaker 1 just zip down.

Speaker 1 A lot of it is actually straight down the median of I-15.

Speaker 1 That's how they solved the real of getting the, yeah, because one of the hardest things when you're building a railroad is to put together the right-of-way, right? To get the land lined up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, of course. And so there was a big portion where they were able to take advantage of the right-of-way that's already there on the interstate.
So that's one that I'm excited about.

Speaker 2 How long would that take, do you think, to get from Vegas to LA?

Speaker 1 I know it's dramatically quicker than driving. I think I got to look it up, but definitely under the, because it's hours and hours.

Speaker 1 I like the idea of the train of like the one, like going to Vegas, that train is filled with happy, excited people and coming back. It's all somber and hungover.
Yeah, you'd rather walk.

Speaker 1 Everybody's broke.

Speaker 1 Totally. No, what excites me is the idea that like instead of going to Japan and coming back and talking about how amazing it would be,

Speaker 1 you know, to have something like that, like we'd see that somewhere in the U.S. Cause I think if people experience that

Speaker 1 somewhere in the the U.S., then people are going to want it everywhere. And it's, you know, it's, it's, yeah, I'm looking it up now.
It's two, two hours and 10 minutes is what they're shooting for.

Speaker 1 Gotcha. Oh, wow.
That's pretty good.

Speaker 2 Did you push forward stuff that we can expect to see a bunch of cars driving around without drivers behind it or trucks without drivers? Is that stuff coming as well?

Speaker 1 So, yeah, we worked on that. You know, we, we know the industry is, is creating that.
That's the private sector.

Speaker 1 But, but, uh, but our job was to kind of work on the policies to make sure it was safe and to try to support some of the pilot programs that were going on. I I actually really

Speaker 1 believe in the potential of this technology. I know it's spooky for people.
You see a car, there's nobody behind the wheel. It's definitely possible.

Speaker 2 But as you mentioned earlier about distracted drivers and stuff, that takes the main cause of danger out of it.

Speaker 1 Exactly. No, it's definitely possible to envision a future where people are shocked that we drove our own cars.

Speaker 1 Right. But I have to say, though, because I just, actually, I was just talking to you, Jay, and Will, at the end of the Waymo day.
Yeah, I was talking about Waymo, which is a self-driving car.

Speaker 1 And I've been in one before. But I'm like, of course, I'm a catastrophic thinker.
So I think of all the bad parts and all the bad things that could happen.

Speaker 1 So I'm like, well, this is a terrorist's dream to have, I mean, there's so many scenarios I could come up with. I could tell you right now about how to use self-driving cars in a horrible way.

Speaker 1 Well, just one. Give us one.

Speaker 2 Well, maybe you'd be late for a daytime massage.

Speaker 1 Start there. Imagine that.

Speaker 1 It didn't need to know to put the key in the cup.

Speaker 1 No, yeah, it's a key.

Speaker 1 Pete, how many billions did you guys put towards the bus? Yeah, no, that's the kill switch. You take the key out of the cup holder and then you don't have a problem.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, you've got to be able to do it.

Speaker 1 But my thing is, Sean, as I said to you, is like, I'm worried about cars showing up at restaurants with people who have reservations, and it shows up at valet as just like a dead person in the back.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Yeah, that's it. Like they had a heart attack on their way to work.
Yeah, or that. Yeah.
Or that. Wow.
I will admit I never thought of that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 All the scales.

Speaker 1 I really like it. You know what I mean? And then all of a sudden.

Speaker 2 So, well, Pete,

Speaker 2 you've got such a,

Speaker 2 you know, you seem to

Speaker 2 treasure, like we all do, our private life. And I would assume that

Speaker 2 your incredibly, you know, accomplished career in public life has

Speaker 2 made that difficult to maintain.

Speaker 2 Was that a part, as we all try to battle with it? Is that a part that you are comfortable maintaining?

Speaker 2 Do you guys, do you find the ability ability to be private or are you guys because I you must get stopped all the time on the street? And

Speaker 2 is that tough for the kids?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I definitely think about it differently.

Speaker 1 It's one thing to like, you know, take a selfie with somebody at the airport or at a restaurant when I'm just doing my thing.

Speaker 1 It's another, if I feel like somebody might be like taking pictures of our kids or, you know, we're, we're, you know, just pretending to be reading an email.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, you, people, I'm sure you've had this experience where like people go through all kinds of links to look like they're not taking a picture when they're taking taking a picture.

Speaker 1 I'm usually pretty oblivious to this.

Speaker 1 Chasten detects it and then usually takes a picture back at them or

Speaker 1 teases them about it. But it's like, you know, just like I do real loud.
Did you get it? As for a picture, it's fine. But yeah, obviously you think about those things differently with your kids.

Speaker 1 But I'll say like the community we're in in Michigan is really great, really warm, welcoming, supportive.

Speaker 2 And they know you're there. So yeah.

Speaker 1 And generally, when we're out and about, I mean, people understand that we have a family. But yeah, you think about this differently.

Speaker 1 You know, they're three, so they're not old enough to really notice or uh or care um about you know stuff that goes with being high profile right now but it it uh yeah it definitely changes the stakes i think for anyone who's in public life who's thinking about what to do next right go ahead john i was just saying have you ever heard of a place uh called galeen michigan

Speaker 1 yeah yeah it's a really far from south end i think okay so you got a timeshare you want to offer no reina my one of my

Speaker 1 reina lives she has a restaurant there called ray and al's and it's one of the greatest restaurants so you check it out. Good to know.
All right. Thank you, call her.
Thank you. Good plug for Reyna.

Speaker 1 For Ray and L's. Well, no, I didn't know if you'd be able to get it.

Speaker 1 Sean, what's there?

Speaker 1 Galeen. Galeen.
Galeen. If you're in Galeen, Michigan, go to Ray and Al's and say, Reyna, and say hi.
Say you, Sean sent you. And get

Speaker 1 10% off your appetizer. Exactly.
Exactly. So listen.
You don't have to answer this, but I would love if you ran for president.

Speaker 1 And then second,

Speaker 1 is there something, because Jason kind of asked what you're,

Speaker 1 well,

Speaker 1 what are you worried about the most in the future, in the near future? And what are you most hopeful about?

Speaker 1 Well, obviously, like politically, I think my worries about the political scene here are, I imagine, pretty obvious. I'm concerned about

Speaker 1 the things that are happening to freedom in this country.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I've been very outspoken about that.

Speaker 1 I'm also very concerned about what could happen with AI.

Speaker 1 And I don't just mean like the extinction scenarios and all the crazy stuff. I'm talking about something a little closer to home and I think quicker than people realize, which is how many

Speaker 1 jobs are at risk. Stuff that we thought would happen in like 100 years and it could happen by the end of this decade and just really, really profoundly changing everything.

Speaker 1 Pete, we were having a discussion about this the other day because we were talking about the idea of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., which we all could agree would be fantastic, right? If

Speaker 1 we could create more jobs, jobs that were lost over decades and decades.

Speaker 1 And by the way, a lot of those jobs were farmed out and sent over there by the very same people who were saying, hey, what the hell?

Speaker 1 How did we do this? Well, we didn't do it. You guys did it because it was saving you a lot of money.
However, we can all agree it would be fantastic to bring more jobs. There's no argument there.

Speaker 1 But one of the things we were talking about the other night is this idea that...

Speaker 1 Now, and you brought it up, AI, when you combine that with advancement in robotics, we have the potential to really decimate the workforce here in this country

Speaker 1 on a pretty massive scale. And as you pointed out, quite quickly.
Yeah. And not just manufacturing workers or warehouse workers.
We're talking

Speaker 1 doctors, lawyers, investors. Like it's, you know, yes, all of it.
I mean, Hollywood was ground zero for some of this, right? With the writer's strike. And that shows just how big a range of

Speaker 1 people are impacted. But that brings me to maybe the hope side, which is I think if we get it right, there's also enormous potential here.

Speaker 1 But like our politics has to be lined up the right way, and we have to to line up our economy the right way. And what I mean by that, I mean, take the example of the self-driving cars, right?

Speaker 1 There's all kinds of nightmare scenarios. There's also a chance to eliminate one of the leading causes of death in this country, which is the kind of murderous track record of human drivers.

Speaker 1 We lose 40,000 people a year. And more generally, like the same

Speaker 1 AI systems that could cause huge disruption could also help us cure cancer and solve climate change and all these other things.

Speaker 1 I think the biggest question is: do we have a political system that makes sure that the enormous wealth that's being created by this technology flows through to the people?

Speaker 1 Or does it get concentrated in the city? Oh, for sure we do, Pete. I'm not worried about that at all.
Okay, well, I'm glad you're not worried. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 I'm really excited about, are you guys excited about the new robotic AI version of Will and Grace? How could that be?

Speaker 1 Hey, everybody, it's just Jack.

Speaker 1 It's me. It's just Jack.

Speaker 1 We already saw it.

Speaker 2 But Pete, when you say flowing back through the people, people, would that be in the shape of perhaps training the workforce that would be without a job to better transition into a job that is available, maybe through the advancements?

Speaker 1 I just mean money, actually, like a dividend.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 remember, the taxpayer created a lot of this value. Like the internet.
was literally a federal research project in the 60s funded by the American taxpayer.

Speaker 1 So to me, it's only fair that Americans see more of the income generated by it. But also the thing with training is this isn't just about getting people their income back.

Speaker 1 I've seen this where I come from in the industrial Midwest. Somebody's been working in a machine shop for 18 years, and then that machine shop is closing down.

Speaker 1 And they come along and say, well, do this retraining program. Same education.
You'll get the same income. You just got to be a nurse's aide.

Speaker 1 That's a perfectly worthy job, but this guy does not. That job wasn't just his income.
That was his identity.

Speaker 1 And if you're not speaking to that, then we're going to have all kinds of social upheaval, as we already are, but it's going to get worse.

Speaker 2 So then what would be the answer then? You know, getting back to your point about maybe training for transitioning into another

Speaker 2 available occupation, if that occupation is not aligned with somebody's passion or dreams or identity, what would the answer then be to how to use

Speaker 2 the newfound funds?

Speaker 1 Well, I think, and again, I think some of the funds should just directly, we should have a tax structure where those funds are directly flowing to people more.

Speaker 1 But in terms of what we do, I think we we as a society don't know what to do with ourselves sometimes if we're not

Speaker 1 if we're not putting it all into our jobs. And I'm somebody, you know, I'm guilty of that.
Like I have meaningful work and I've thrown myself into my jobs. And that can be a very good thing.

Speaker 1 But there's so many other sources of meaning that can be connected to service.

Speaker 1 They can be connected to a lot of things that used to be considered maybe more conservative coded, but I think my party should pay more attention to them, like family and faith that can bring meaning to a lot of people.

Speaker 1 Local involvement, like shaping your community, like things where human, uniquely human skills are absolutely needed that we could show more regard for.

Speaker 1 Like as an economy and a society, we don't show a lot of regard for the work that goes into parenting. We definitely don't compensate that kind of work properly.

Speaker 1 Same thing with service. I mean, right now they're cutting AmeriCorps as we record this.

Speaker 1 They're cutting all kinds of service things that actually, in a world where AI generates more of the value and productivity, like we could, you know, a lot of people could have

Speaker 1 a shorter work week, more money in their pockets, and a chance to do things in their community that would absolutely be a source of pride and meaning. And I want to live in that kind of society.

Speaker 1 Well, Pete, I made that, and I was quite flippant about it when I made the comparison to Canada and the U.S. in terms of

Speaker 1 a sense of social consciousness. But because I do agree with you, I do agree that there is a long history of it in this country and that there is still a vein of that.

Speaker 1 I think that we've been maybe potentially distracted is the word that I use

Speaker 1 and maybe in certain areas gotten off the path and focused more on our differences and also focused more on ourselves. But I think you're right.

Speaker 1 I think that if potentially we can all start, and I mean all of us, I mean me too, if we can all start thinking about somebody, we're so hung up on our own condition.

Speaker 1 And if we could start thinking about other people, it's a really simple concept that if you think about somebody else and you think about helping somebody else, you actually

Speaker 1 improves immediately. Well, it does.
Your own situation does improve because it changes your vibration to sound

Speaker 1 too woo-woo. I totally agree with all of that.
That's totally true.

Speaker 1 And being of service is super, super important. And if everybody did it a little bit, the shift would be absolutely...
I know, but how do you get people to do it? I don't know.

Speaker 2 Put a little incentive there.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's really, if you boil it down, if you're feeling bad, just on a day-to-day,

Speaker 1 if you wake up today, if I feel bad today, if I go out and do something for somebody else, I will immediately alleviate that and raise my own

Speaker 1 vibration.

Speaker 1 Again, it sounds very woo-woo. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 Well, is this something that you're tracking on your aura ring on the app itself?

Speaker 1 Jason, this concept is tougher. Doing something for somebody else.
How about it? Let me look at that. You talk slower.
Do pictures. Pictures are better.
Pictures are better.

Speaker 2 Pete, before we let you go, I would love to hear from you who, if you could travel back in time, who would you love to sit down, have a coffee with to

Speaker 2 get some tips from on how to address this,

Speaker 2 I guess I shouldn't say uniquely challenging situation where we find ourselves in because we seem to cycle through moments like this. But

Speaker 2 who would you love to talk to right now?

Speaker 1 Well, I can definitely imagine.

Speaker 1 And I know it's maybe a little obvious to the point of cliche, but I can picture like if I get to have a coffee with Abraham Lincoln and I'm saying like look our country's divided. It's police.

Speaker 1 He says, oh, you think you think your country's divided?

Speaker 1 Exactly. Okay.
Yeah. You know, I mean, he was in charge when half of the country broke off and declared war against the other half, mainly for the purpose of being able to continue enslaving people.

Speaker 1 Right. So for a little perspective around our problems, I think he would be a really good person to talk to.
And also somebody who was unflappable in so many ways.

Speaker 1 And like for somebody who has the ambition to become a president and a wartime president,

Speaker 1 surprisingly low ego, there's a famous anecdote where one of his generals was getting out of hand and his advisor said, you got to cut this guy down to size.

Speaker 1 And he said, I would hold his horse if he could win this battle for me. And just

Speaker 1 attributes that I would like to see a little more of. So I know it's a little obvious, but I can't think of

Speaker 1 in the political space. I can't think of somebody you'd more want to consult than Lincoln.
That was a good answer. And I had asked Sean about a week ago that same question.

Speaker 1 You know what he said he'd like to say that? Chef Boyardee. What? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 2 Just to see you just a nice meal. It's just

Speaker 1 how did you ask.

Speaker 1 Number two, the Colonel. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Number two, the Colonel. Yeah, absolutely.
How do you make it? And then Ronald McDonald. So listen.

Speaker 2 Pete, thank you so, so much for coming on.

Speaker 1 Yes, don't ever stop talking and going on these shows. I mean, it's just,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 you're just amazing. And thank you all of all that you do.
Hey, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. All right.
Looking forward to seeing more of you

Speaker 2 in the very near future. If you know that.

Speaker 1 I'll be out there. Thank you.
Okay, good.

Speaker 1 See you later.

Speaker 2 Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much. Thanks.
Love to you and Chastin and the kids, too. Thanks so much.
Okay. Bye.
Bye. Take care.

Speaker 2 I felt weird calling him Pete.

Speaker 1 I knew me too.

Speaker 1 Did you start calling him?

Speaker 2 It came out by by accident, and I felt like that was maybe disrespectful.

Speaker 1 No, was it? I don't think he would have minded. I have had a dinner with him a couple times.
Secretary Buttigieg, is that what we should have said? Mr. Secretary? Mr.
Secretary.

Speaker 1 Well, but he's not that anymore.

Speaker 2 No, but I think you get to carry that for a long time.

Speaker 1 Oh, you do. Okay.
I don't know. He's like coach.

Speaker 2 Sean, will you write him something nice and apologize for us for the moment?

Speaker 2 And just say that you had started it and you feel bad that the other guys.

Speaker 1 Could you mail it with some hazardous materials just to test his theory out?

Speaker 1 just to test his theory by the way i didn't want to say anything but i put my hand in my pocket during that interview and i still have two peanut min m's in it oh my what from last night's rave no tonight this morning i put them in there oh god because you it was wait wait hang on hang on hang on hang on it's it's 10 30 in the morning you put two peanut mms in before 9 30 yeah well just in case you were thinking well maybe i can earn these at some point today yeah no i had a bunch of them and i ate them all but i thought i ate them all and there's two left in there what time did you have your first M ⁇ M today?

Speaker 1 9.

Speaker 2 What's the matter with you? Did that come out of the candy bowl there in the living room?

Speaker 1 Yes, you know it very well. You know, you won't eat them if you don't have a candy bowl.
Uh-huh. Wait, can you write that down? Yeah.

Speaker 2 How often do you go to the dentist?

Speaker 1 I just went yesterday. And? Everything's great.
It's not like I don't brush.

Speaker 1 I don't eat candy and then close my mouth. Do you floss? Yeah, every day.
Truly. I do every single day.
Why wouldn't you?

Speaker 2 And that's morning or night?

Speaker 1 I do morning, and if I ate something like a steak or something, it gets between your teeth, I'd do like, I'll do another floss.

Speaker 2 I'll do a second floss. And you do the little swords, or do you do the old sword?

Speaker 1 No, I can't do the swords because they make your gums bleed because you put them down so hard. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Well, why don't you be nicer to yourself and you won't bleed?

Speaker 1 But you don't have a choice because you got to get it.

Speaker 1 They're not as good as actual floss either. That's right.
They're good in a pinch, but you can control the floss, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But they're a cheat and they're not as good and it makes you lesser personal.

Speaker 2 Weren't we just talking talking about the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Budichudge? And no, no, I brought us into Floss. I apologize.

Speaker 1 How great is he?

Speaker 1 By the way, you both asked all the questions I would have wanted to ask. And

Speaker 1 he didn't answer the thing about the president. I mean, do you think he'll run?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 1 you didn't ask him. You said I wouldn't.

Speaker 2 We didn't want to ambush him with anything early.

Speaker 1 That's right. I just kind of glazed over it, but I wonder.

Speaker 2 You didn't ask him for any theater stories.

Speaker 1 I didn't ask him for anything. You know what I liked about him?

Speaker 1 He speaks very soberly, and I do like the idea. I like the idea that he goes on and he goes on to other shows.
He goes on to shows across the political spectrum.

Speaker 1 And I think that's really important because, as you both know,

Speaker 1 we have a lot of people in our lives, friends and family who live across that same political spectrum.

Speaker 1 And we all find ways to meet in the middle and talk about stuff. And we all want the best for each other.
And I like the idea that he goes and he does that very same thing.

Speaker 1 I don't feel as divided as a lot of people do from the people on other ends of the spectrum. I think it's important that we all continue to talk because we're all in this together.
That's right. Yes.

Speaker 1 I agree, man.

Speaker 2 100%. And he checks a lot of boxes that you'd think would please both sides.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I agree. And there are a lot of things that make sense that a lot of people say, you know, and

Speaker 1 sometimes the message is harder for people to digest. And I get, or not the message, the delivery and the approach.
But, you know, we do have a lot of stuff that's that's common ground.

Speaker 1 And JB, I know you're looking at it.

Speaker 2 He has a nice way about him.

Speaker 1 He does have a really nice way about him.

Speaker 2 He has a nice way about him.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 A very nice speaking voice on him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he does. And I meant it when he says he takes the contention out of it, right? He's like, I'm not here to argue.
I'm just here to talk. And, you know, let's all

Speaker 1 feel like we're getting Sean's thinking of a, one of you is a major. Oh, yeah, he's doing a massive Google search right now.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is.

Speaker 1 You know what?

Speaker 2 I think a lot, I think up a lot of them in between, like during the week, and then I forget them.

Speaker 1 That's a good story. You should open it.
You know what?

Speaker 2 A bison I heard

Speaker 2 would be a good one to work in.

Speaker 1 We did. I did that a million times.

Speaker 2 It's such a stupid thing that we're doing.

Speaker 1 You've been saying it's stupid since day one.

Speaker 2 But every single time we get to it, it's insane to me. And now it's just ironic

Speaker 2 that we're doing like, it's so dumb that

Speaker 2 we just decided

Speaker 2 so dumb. Let's just still do it.

Speaker 1 Should we not? You say you want to do it? By the way, we don't have to think of a word. We could just say goodbye.
Well,

Speaker 2 how would you wrap this thing up without?

Speaker 1 I have one that would say

Speaker 1 make your situation. Listen, we're in a situation that you don't like and you feel you don't like that we're in this situation.
And Jason, I'm going to put to change it.

Speaker 1 I'm going to put in golf terms. Oh, that's it.

Speaker 1 So sometimes you hit a good drive and you go down the middle of the thing, but you know, it's a little bit more. And you know what you can always do? What? You can always improve your life.

Speaker 1 No, not cutting it. Okay.

Speaker 1 I was going to say,

Speaker 1 I was going to say, wait, it's right there. It's right there.
He's Pete Buttigieg.

Speaker 1 He was in office. He reached across the aisle.
He was very, he was very

Speaker 1 bipartisan. Bye.
See you next week. Smart.

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