449: Theo Von—A Troubled White

Hello, friends.

Mike Rowe here.

Chuck Klausmeyer sitting across from me at the MicroWorks World Headquarters, where we are now recording.

It is nice to do this in person, isn't it?

I think this is the best way to do it, honestly.

It's the only sensible way to do it, especially when your guest is the one and only Theodore Capitani von Kernatowski III.

Yes, yes.

Other aka Theo Vaughn.

AAKA, or AK,

also known as,

I guess it's A-A-A, also known as

a Troubled White.

Yes, right.

Self-described.

Self-described.

I don't know if you know Theo Vaughn or not.

I suspect some of you probably do.

He has the fourth or fifth largest podcast in the world.

Yeah.

I met him a couple years ago.

No idea who he was, but

I was invited invited to be on his podcast and i happened to be in nashville where he spends most of his time and uh we got along great and then a year or two later he invited me back and i said sure yeah and that was here in los angeles and that conversation was a ton of fun but memorable for me anyway because i really learned some things about the guy that i didn't know first and foremost was he uh He cares an awful lot about this country.

He's determined to do his part to reinvigorate manufacturing.

Yes.

He cares about the country and the people in it.

And maybe not even in that order.

You know, two things.

This is what you call a restricted

podcast.

Is that what we're doing?

Explicit.

It has to be marked explicit because, you know, he uses, he's a little fast and loose with the

swear words.

And actually, I think we both were.

We all three were.

We might have been.

We might have been.

Apologies if you're put off by that sort of thing, but this is an unfiltered American original.

His story, I'm not going to tell you the whole thing.

He'll tell you part of it, but he came from a poor part of the country for sure.

And he has risen to become one of the most popular comedians in America.

Like I said, he's got one of the most listened-to podcasts anywhere.

He does a lot of good work.

He's helped a lot of people, too.

His own path to recovery has led him on kind of an odyssey, and a big chunk of his audience really calls in and and shares some surprisingly personal things.

And he's,

I just think he's occupying a really unique piece of real estate in this weird industry of ours.

Yeah, he is.

And like you said before, he really does care about people.

And he's the kind of guy who, he's the kind of comedian who, it seems to me, doesn't tell jokes or doesn't need to tell jokes.

He tells a story in a funny way.

And he just phrases things in such a funny way that you just can't help but smile.

I mean, I think you're going to hear me just laughing in the background quite a bit because I couldn't keep quiet.

He's funny in a strange way.

He doesn't fit.

And what makes him interesting is that he doesn't care.

He's just who he is.

And this kid from a border town between Mississippi and Louisiana.

has interviewed the president of the United States.

Yes.

The vice president of the United States.

Ranking senators.

He's an American original.

In fact, it probably would have been more respectful to call him that in the title, but since he invoked

a troubled white,

we can quote him directly.

This is Theo Vaughan.

He is, by his own admission,

a troubled white, and he'll prove it right after this.

He's not like the other celebs, you know, but it occurs to me that Theo Vaughan, like so many other guests on this podcast, is a true American giant.

What he's built with his own massive podcast and his comedy tour and his advocacy for people struggling with addiction and his whole unlikely overall rise to fame, it's not just a monument to hard work.

It's a love letter to reinvention and to the American dream.

I can say the same thing, of course, about the men and women who work.

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Mike, thanks so much, dude.

Are you kidding?

It's so cool.

It's so crazy this world that we're in, you more so than me probably, but the business of being a guest on a podcast, if you host a podcast, It's part of the bargain.

I didn't really understand that when I sort of forest gumped my way into it.

But what is it?

Quid pro quo?

I think it's pretty understood.

Kind of you want to be supportive of your friends podcasts.

I think there's people sometimes that you want to have conversations with.

So yeah, I guess sometimes it's a trade-off.

Like, why did you call me?

And just so people know, this is over two years ago.

I happened to be in Nashville.

Full disclosure, I had heard your name.

I didn't really...

quite understand

who you were or what you were doing.

Yeah, I was just another troubled white, you know?

And I think I was having a tough week, and I was like, oh, I know who troubled whites reach out to.

I can help.

Mike wrote.

I can help.

No, I mean, obviously, I knew so much about you.

You know, I worked on a farm growing up, not forever, but I worked there for two summers and in Louisiana, right on the Louisiana and Mississippi line over there, like outside of like Faraday, Louisiana, which is, I think, where Jerry Lee Lewis is from.

So anyway, you know, people then would like talk about, you know, episode that they'd seen, like, you know, different stuff that they'd witnessed or whatever.

So Louisiana was very good to dirty jobs.

Yeah.

You ever been down to cutoff?

No, I knew a girl from there, though, and I quit knowing her, thank God.

You cut it off.

I mean, I guess I did.

I think it's a lot of ex-wives down there.

It is, it's part Everglades, part Redneck Riviera.

It's shot through with the level of consequence.

Like, I knew an alligator farmer down there named Jerry Savois.

And it's such a kick.

I mean, you travel everywhere, but when you get to a town that you've never, A, you've never been to, and B, you didn't know existed, and then you meet a guy who raises alligators, and then you're in like a homemade helicopter, and he's flying you around, and you're throwing spears with E-perbs and radar-guided stuff into alligator nests so you can come back in an airboat and rob the eggs.

Yeah, it all happens very quick, and it's very consequential because you can be cut in half and cut off easy.

You can be bit right in half.

What is an E-perb?

An An E-perb is an electronic something beacon.

Check it out for me, Chuck.

It's an acronym.

All boats have them.

If you go, say, on Deadliest Catch and you fall overboard and you've got a survival suit on, there's an EPERB on your suit.

So it sends out some sort of signal that lets people at least get close.

Yeah, like Ricky's drowning or whatever.

Ricky's drowning and the water's 38 degrees, so we got to get there in about three minutes.

Yeah, emergency position indicating radio beacon is a device used to alert search and rescue authorities.

In maritime emergencies, it transmits a distress signal on a designated frequency.

There you go.

Why would you guys use that from the air just like a locator to come back?

Yeah, I think the Coast Guard first introduced them because, you know, up there, guys are overboard a lot.

You really don't have much time.

If you're in a suit, you can survive for a while.

But it's like the most desperate thing you'll you'll ever see is a Jayhawk being scrambled, right?

Filled with Coisies who are deployed in the middle of the night because a boat went down somewhere off the Pribloff Islands.

And the E-perbs are going off, and you know, you got dudes in the water.

Yeah.

And it's just, I mean, it's just, you know, it's intense.

Anyway, I'm sorry.

Just another white boy in trouble.

There you are on the border of...

Mississippi and Louisiana.

Yeah, and I think your show just always made people feel like I was doing hard work, even if I wasn't, you know, it was like, I'd even like clock out at the end of your show.

I'd be like, oh, shift's over, that type of stuff, you know, or something or yell at my fictional wife or something, you know, or just slam a door and just like scream out the name of a TV dinner, just that kind of shit, you know?

Well, you know, when I first met you, again, just so people understand, I'm in Nashville.

I'm meeting, I think,

John Rich and shooting something.

And my office calls and said, yeah, this guy, Theo, here's the address.

So I get over to your place.

And I don't know how long you'd been living there, but like you answered the door, like you're in your bathrobe and your boxes.

You're like, hey, come on in.

I'm like, oh, God, what is this?

Oh, Kevin Spacey's here, huh?

No, I think I just was running late.

I've always run late, you know, or the clocks.

They, a lot of these clocks are fucking, they're fast, huh?

Well, what's going on in the solar system now?

What is it?

The lion thing, the lion's portal or something?

Oh, yeah, the portal was just open.

There's a cosmic,

I'm going to totally botch this, but I know it's a cosmic time where there's some alignment.

I think in Orion's belt, the Lions portal is open.

It's like the hottest time of the year to get out there and manifest to,

you know, just to kind of shake your chakras for the Lord out there in the moonlight kind of.

And so somebody sent me a link to it the other day.

And so then I'm just out there manifesting and just like.

Explain what that means to you.

Like when you manifest a thing, has it happened in your life before?

I will say this, I felt good the next day, but that could have been, it could have been from peptides I was on.

It could have been different things, you know.

Like, when I say it, like, I try not to exaggerate,

as a rule.

Really?

As a rule, I never exaggerate.

I mean, there are things that I feel confident are going to happen that haven't happened yet.

And sometimes I'll say they've happened because I actually believe that saying they're going to happen, and I'm not a big supernaturalist, but will in some

reframe the world order.

Like my whole foundation was based on, I just started talking about it before I had it.

Works, you mean?

Yeah, micro works started.

And then I started, I mean, and this sounds kind of gross, but I was saying we awarded a million dollars in work ethics scholarships before we had.

I felt like we were gonna that year, and we did, right?

Yeah.

And so, I don't know, there are just occasions where you say a thing out loud and all of a sudden it's made real.

Well, I think like there's definitely when I think back in my life, there's been things that I think have felt that way.

But I think it's almost, you feel like if you would have said them at the time, we would feel kind of egotistical, maybe like just little daydreams or something.

Yeah.

But it kind of makes sense, like, say, if you had like a piece of metal and you loaded it up with like

whatever like the one half of a magnet is called, like one side of it or something.

A mag.

A mag, yeah.

So if you like,

I don't know if you're going to be able to get your bottom and you got your net.

You got your mag and your net.

You got heads and tails.

But it's like if you stacked a mag with everything, with all your dreams in there, you'd think, like the way a magnet works, that a net would eventually,

if you load a mag up enough with enough mag,

a net would be.

The net has got to come.

It's got to fly.

Literally, because of the power that would be the pull that would be in it at that point, something would fly over and meet it, you know?

So you think maybe on it, like from a cosmic universal sense, if you look at it through the lens of magnetism, then the argument is there's always a positive pole and a negative pole.

And there are times when those poles can reverse, which is going to usher in a level of chaos that the astronomers freak out when they talk about.

Like when the Earth's poles,

they say when, because it's going to switch.

Once our magnetic field...

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I mean, it's not going to happen today, Theo, I don't think.

No, I know that, but I'm just like, fuck.

My mom's going to be fucking pissed.

I don't know.

Look, mine's livid, too.

I narrate a show called How the Universe Works, which ought to be called A Thousand Ways to Die, because every single episode talks about either a magnetron or a quasar or a pulsar or a supernova or, you know,

or just a batch of gay dudes coming and scooping you up.

That's one of my biggest fears.

I feel like if you're in a park or something, because a lot of gay men are way tougher than they used to be.

What happened, do you think?

When did that shift?

Because I remember watching.

What was the

Dean and I used to work in a theater years ago?

Oh, well, you guys did.

No, not back in the theater.

No, it was a movie.

It was called Cruising.

Oh, my gosh.

Hips or Lips.

Hips or Lips.

Hips or Lips.

Yeah, and I remember watching that movie thinking, you know,

this is not at all

consistent with the image I had of that particular lifestyle, which I don't in no way care to judge or weigh on.

But it was just, I mean,

it was a risky business.

It was a rough movie.

Yes, it was.

Is cruising it's called?

It's called Cruising.

It stars out Pacino.

Yeah.

Something a lot of you guys can watch on your lunch break out there.

Is it that kind of thing?

No, I wouldn't recommend it.

No, I don't think it's going to help with your digestion.

What sandwich does it go with, you think?

I'd say a hoagie.

A foot long?

Foot long?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I got a four-inch round, you know?

That's the best I can do, dude.

Something on a bun over here.

But yeah, I think that's when I, you know, like, that's when America really, you know, yeah, there was something about your world that was just fun.

It was kind of fascinating to follow and look and see in all these spaces and stuff like that.

Well, see, this is how like the wheel of Fortuna spins, man.

I'm fascinated by your world.

I'm fascinated how this,

what'd you call yourself, troubled white boy?

Yeah, troubled white.

Yeah, a TW.

Yeah, T-W.

Right.

I mean, I know kind of the story.

I know it was Road Rules, MTV, and stuff.

And then, really, I think what I'd love to get into you with you, and I want to talk too about the big idea that you and I have been kicking around lately.

Yeah, sure, man.

Let's just save that for a second.

I just want people to like you first.

I mean, not that they don't already like you.

Well, thanks, dude.

Because your charm is palpable on TV, but you know, people just might not be watching.

They might just be listening.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think I just feel lucky that this job kind of came along where you can work for yourself with podcasting.

Yeah.

You know, I had a tough time.

Like,

I didn't want to count on anybody else for myself.

I think that's something that's always just been a part of me as a human, you know?

And I think that's kind of what led me like into comedy because it's just you.

It's you up there.

Your dad can't get you that job.

You're fucking rich, whoever.

Some guy can't get you that job.

Some guy with a mustache or whatever can't get you that job.

You got to get up there, you know?

I think that's something I liked comedy.

And then I was fortunate that podcasting came along.

And,

you know, it's been kind of a neat,

I feel fortunate that this is when I'm alive so that I can, you know, just to have this job.

And it's been fun.

Theo, you've got the, it's like the fourth biggest podcast in the world, man.

I mean, that's a crooked line from the border of Mississippi and Louisiana.

You know what I mean?

That's a crooked line.

And I didn't realize it either when you answered the door in your underwear and let me into your house in Nashville for a chat two years ago.

Now, they were thick underwear.

I don't want people to think I was wearing something, you know.

I mean, whatever.

I didn't linger.

I just was like, all right, well, this is what we're doing.

Well, they were wool.

That's all I'm saying.

Hey, Matt, you know what?

Wool is an underrated fabric.

You know, it's almost always associated with the winter, but it's one of the most breathable, sensible things.

It'll keep you warm when it's wet.

Which, if you think about it.

It's thoughtful.

I mean, from a utilitarian underwear standpoint, it's an interesting selling point.

Yeah, you could be wet and warm.

Oh, yeah.

I would stop by that.

I'd stop by that.

Yeah, that's great.

You can be wet and warm.

All right.

I'll take a little.

You know, I think that's how I feel about that, I guess.

But anyway, I feel like we're talking about nine things at once, and I've had some coffee, too.

We are.

And that's okay, man.

That's what this job is, dude.

You know what, though?

I was listening to you interview Donald Trump when you walked in 20 minutes ago, which really was an awkward meet.

You know, we sort of hugged, and you knocked my glasses off my shirt, and then you bent down to get those.

I'm trying to introduce you to Chuck.

And meanwhile, I got you in my ear, and Donald Trump is talking to you about how to reform the Trial Lawyers Association.

Oh, yeah, he said that the lawyer lobby is a really big lobby.

I didn't even know that existed.

Massive lobby.

That's crazy.

And it's got to be the worst one because they have all the lawyers.

They're very hard to sue.

Yeah, you're like, you can't sue yourself.

That's crazy, huh?

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i want to know

Are we okay on this?

You good, brother?

Okay, cool.

Oh, he's always good.

Yeah, that's Taylor.

Taylor's got on a poster there right behind you.

He worked on dirty jobs with me, and somebody's got to do it, and all these other shows.

Yeah.

Handsome.

He is handsome.

Whatever, dude.

I like kicks.

You know what I'm saying?

Stay away.

You know?

God, huh?

So you're a comedian, and you're funny,

but now you're an interviewer.

And now it's J.D.

Vance, and it's Bernie Sanders, and it's Donald Trump.

And of course, it's also all the comedians in the world.

And then there's your listening audience, who I know you love a lot.

Yeah, a lot of great people out there, probably folks that are similar to you.

That's one thing that's about podcasting, I think, because a lot of times you'll meet the person, you'll be like, I would talk to this person for a long time, you know?

Yeah.

Because they're similar.

They're probably, you have to probably have some similarities to people, I think, to consume them in like a longer format, maybe.

I'd just like to know, though,

when's the last time you were nervous?

Oh, that's a good question, actually.

Not counting today.

Oh, I'll tell you, actually, dude, I freaking just forgot about this.

I found this freaking bone

on the

sidewalk.

You found a bone on the sidewalk and you picked it up.

Yeah, you think I'm fucking leaving out there, dude?

In some circles, we'd call this evidence.

Yeah, I have no idea.

It was the only one.

I looked like in a 40-foot radius.

That was the only one they had.

What do you reckon it is?

I don't know.

It looks like part of the spine.

Like a vertebrae.

Yeah.

That's what I would go with.

You might have found a vertebrae.

Where were you?

Just right across the street where I was parking.

But anyway, yeah, I didn't mean to bring it up.

I just felt it in my pocket.

I think that's worth ruminating on a minute, you know?

I mean, you're.

Dude, we found some bones when I was a kid in these wishing wells in our town.

They had like this youth group.

It was like...

Through your church?

It was kind of through the church.

It was after school, like on Wednesday night, people would meet up and they'd have like a religious guy who was like, and he'd play fun games with everybody, but everybody's just trying to sneak off in the dark and kiss or whatever.

Or just fucking even just rub their fucking front of their body against a damn tree or whatever.

It's Mississippi-Louisiana border, you know?

Oh, yeah.

And if they border, I want to, you know, that's my motto.

Oh, our states are bordering.

We should, you know.

That's a good pickup line.

It looks great on the t-shirt, man.

It's going to be amazing.

Yeah.

But anyway, oh, yeah.

And then, so anyway, they had this thing where they had like six or seven wishing wells in our town and a group of kids.

You'd go clean them out in the summertime because people would put all kind of stuff down there.

And some of it was hopeful stuff, it was wishes.

And then some of it was just people would put recyclables or used plates and dinnerware, stuff like that.

Stuff they didn't want,

luggage, stuff like that.

We found a sword out there, and they had some finger bones one time that somebody found in there.

Phalanges.

Yeah, phalanges.

In a wishing well.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Yeah, that's the only time I've ever found human bones.

I have have always wanted to find a body.

People want it.

I feel like everybody wants to.

Do you feel like that?

I did once.

Nuh-uh.

Yeah.

Mike.

Yeah.

Oh, thanks.

It was a big day.

It was a big day.

Good work, dude.

And the crazy thing is, a couple weeks after that,

I found a mannequin.

And I thought, I can't believe I found another body.

And you thought it was another body?

Yeah.

It was just a mechanic in hiding?

Yeah, it was actually down where we took our trash every night.

And somebody, not one of our neighbors, we only, we lived on a like a country lane and there weren't a lot of people around.

So like we all knew each other's trash.

And it didn't seem like any of the few neighbors we had would throw a body out, but it sure was a body, you know.

But of course, it turned out to be a mannequin.

It was a sidebar.

My mother took this thing home.

And she put it in my bed.

And I was about 17.

I came home.

I think you and i were probably hanging out back as a prank yeah yeah as a prank yeah my mom did she had a sense of humor yeah still does still does yeah yeah terrible woman though i mean she put this thing put a bandana on its head and then tucked it into my bed i was living in the basement at the time oh you have a hell's angel sleeping over or something no i just you know i i would come in late and i'd like to i didn't want to wake them up there were times i would come in through the window well on the back side of it oh yeah you know yeah she had this mannequin in the bed and uh had it tucked in and I came in, got halfway undressed and turned around.

The body was in the bed.

I jumped so high I hit my head on the ceiling.

Which is exciting.

Anyway, look, I hope you do find a body one day.

It'd be good for you.

That's the only body you found or you found a real one also?

I found a real one, but I saw it at about 30 feet away.

And

the cops were there not long afterwards in a stream bed not far from the creek.

Wow.

I don't know what happened to it.

But the best body stories are our friend Chad Pogracki.

Chad runs barge up and down the Mississippi and Ohio.

He's like a self-appointed garbage man there.

And the stuff he finds,

oh my God, it's just cash registers with money, bodies.

I mean, like cannonballs from Vicksburg, you know,

yeah, like the rivers are amazing.

That's their big thing up there.

They're like, come look at this cannon.

You know, in like a lot of those Civil War towns or whatever.

Yeah.

Don't you want to sit the kiddos on this hot cannon or whatever?

You're like, this is fucking, this is just a gay bar or whatever.

But yeah, there's a lot of

Civil War type stuff.

We used to go to Civil War reenactments when I was a kid.

My father would take me over there sometimes.

What side were you on?

Let's go to a commercial break.

I mean, you got to cheer for the home team.

Don't do it.

Look, man,

Louisiana,

you know.

Gosh, Chuck, I don't know if you can find it.

I did an episode on Somebody's Gotta Do It on Civil War reenactors.

Yeah.

And

Taylor shot it.

Where were we?

We were outside of Orlando.

Yeah, we're in the South.

Really?

Is it big down there?

Because

there's some spillover between CWR guys, wrestlers, Ren Fair.

There's some people that work all of that.

What's CWR?

Civil War Renactors.

Oh, there you go.

Sorry.

And then, yeah, Ren Fair those guys and then dude you're talking in acronyms that means you're fully committed to this this world oh dude we spent some time over there we went from e-perbs to you know cwrs cwrs dude yeah oh i'd see them sitting out there eating fucking dirty mres and sharing spoons and whatever mre's again that's a meal ready to eat

tickling each other and shit well this is a terrific segment and it really gets into the heads of reenactors on both sides and you really get a look into the world but right after we edited, we got the whole thing ready.

And what happened?

Was it George Floyd or was it before that?

But for whatever reason, everybody got cold feet about

airing it.

Why?

Because when you mean like when the cops killed George Floyd or whatever?

Well, it was just who am I thinking of?

George Foreman, that's what I'm thinking of.

How he died.

Although, I guarantee you, he didn't die like George Floyd did.

No.

George Foreman, I think, passed in a bizarre grilling accident, if I'm not mistaken.

No.

He died recently, I think, didn't he?

He did, man.

I shouldn't have brought it up.

I got confused for a second.

I hope he's all right.

No, but Mike, the reason that the thing never aired was,

I don't think it was on CNN, but you're talking about when we put it on TBN.

Yeah.

And the reason they didn't want it was because you were rooting for the home team.

Oh, you were over the South?

I was.

You were dressed as a Confederate.

I was dressed as a Confederate.

I'm from Maryland.

It's a border state.

We never really could decide.

Yeah, and it's also like which conference is better.

I don't know.

I could see them creating a league out of it eventually once it kind of loses some of the racial stigma and maybe like two more generations.

I could totally see that.

Yeah.

A league, like how would it work?

What would the rules be?

I don't know, and I don't know what the game would be exactly, but I could just see that.

Everything, even historic, eventually over time, it turns in.

I feel like, you know, it makes it where it can become something marketable, even if it's something bad, maybe.

Do you think over like enough time?

I think you and I talked about this.

We were talking about sports in general.

Yeah.

And I think I said, oh,

I made a game game out of catching horse crap in the air because my chores involve picking up horse crap every day.

And it was super exciting to follow them around and try and catch it before it hit the ground.

Oh, and so bad.

So bad.

Right.

Now, that's a ridiculous way to pass the time, and it's probably never going to be an organized

sport.

But cornhole is, and darts are, I think lawn darts are.

too, and horseshoes and bocce ball.

So like,

you know, when does an activity go from being being a thing you do at a barbecue in your backyard to something that maybe is in the X games, but not the Olympics, eventually to the Olympics and then organized?

Like, I have no idea how to make sense of any of that, but those things come and go.

All I know is I was riveted to Cornhole.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, there's something about it.

There's something kind of nasty about it, and there's something fun about it.

I'm trying to think of what games I like.

What do you do for fun?

I've been sawing

sawning sauna ink sauna ink going to the sauna in the morning.

Yeah.

I've been getting out of bed early.

That's been making me feel pretty good.

I'm trying to think of what else I've really been doing.

Manifesting.

I haven't been manifesting yet.

I did sit out there, man.

And I did.

Yeah, I'll tell you about that.

So don't forget to tell you.

So I sit out there and I just said, like,

you know, I accept abundance.

I accept possibility.

I accept

talking to my sister, I accept everything that God wants me to accept, right?

And I

don't accept

bad thoughts about myself, just things like that, you know.

And I'd just never done it before, you know, I thought about it, and you hear about it all the time manifesting, but I thought it was kind of interesting.

And then I wanted to do it again yesterday.

You know, I just kind of like had a moment in the day where I was like, I want to do that again.

So I think something inside of me made me feel good, you know.

What did you think of Tony Robbins?

Hmm.

I think he would have,

I think Hogan would have beat him, I think.

That was my first thought when I saw him that Hulk Hogan would have beat him.

Would have wiped the fucking floor with him.

To be honest, dude.

That was honestly your first thought when you met Tony Robbins.

Yeah.

Because he big.

Yeah.

But he ain't bigger than a fucking Hulkster.

No, the Hulk's big Terry.

That's what I thought, dude.

I was like, oh, yeah, you got all your magic and shit.

I'd like to see you take that shit on the fucking ring, boy.

so i thought that was my first thought after that i thought man this guy is uh

he's very engaging i feel like he makes the most out of life i do feel like he makes the most out of his time he introduced us to his wife and kid they were really nice i thought he was yeah he's compelling you know and he's kind of larger than life so there's a lot of like things that are right there you know and yeah i just felt i felt like he was a neat guy i'm interested you know him yeah i went to one of his things back in 93.

Yeah, that sounds right.

A date with destiny.

Oh, wow.

Hot coals and so forth.

I was there as a guest, actually.

I got a buddy who's

like,

you know, powder.

Remember that movie?

Got hit by lightning, and then suddenly he can do all these.

My friends, a human calculator.

A weather honky or whatever?

Yeah, kind of like that, except he's got all the Guinness World Records for math calculations, right?

So Tony hired him to come and warm the crowd up in the mornings.

I went along as his guest.

And that was the first time I heard somebody talk about manifesting.

And everybody in the crowd was nodding their head like you are right now because they're like, Yeah, man, I can really see the power in that.

And then, all these years later, I saw you interview him.

But what you did, man, and this is what I was trying to get at with the nervous thing and with the Trump thing and with all these different roles, you know, you became like a lab rat with him.

Oh, yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like, you were so willing

to unpack and answer candidly the questions he was asking.

And that little clip was, you know, viewed millions and millions of times.

Yeah, I love that kind of stuff.

I know you do, but that's why you're so hard to nail down, man.

I just, it's like comedian, interviewer, podcaster,

or troubled white.

In the interest of complete and total transparency, I feel duty-bound to tell you that I do not use prize picks.

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You wear many hats.

Yeah, I like I mean, I guess I'll always be I'll probably always be a trouble white I don't I don't know if I feel like an interviewer interviewing never feels fun kind of it is nice when your conversations get into a place where you can just talk.

I do like I would sit in therapy all the time and just have it be podcast like like I have some moments in therapy that I think are like

you know, like I'm kind of a late bloomer in life.

So it's like I'm like learning a lot of stuff that I felt like I probably should have had more of a understanding of when I was young, but late, like, I feel a lot of times like a

not like a kid, but I feel

very

kind of childish energy sometimes, yeah, you know, and I don't mean that in a weird way or anything, but over the past years, I've kind of noticed that.

I'm like, yeah, I think some of that's just still passing through me, you know.

It just took me some years to get out of the, you know, to get out of the

magazine.

You know, no, I don't.

What do you mean, the magazine?

Or just like out of the way, you know, it just took a few years to

out of the magazine, the clip to get the money.

Oh, the clip, clip, clip, right, right, right.

No, I think.

But yeah, I do.

I love that kind of stuff.

I love it when, like, I go to recovery meetings.

I just came from one today.

I love when people are feeling something, you know?

Like in our house, when I was growing up, we couldn't, like, everything was so intense that you couldn't even let your guard down for a second to have like a feeling.

Yeah.

Because you were going to be ridiculed or or you were going to seem weak or you were going to

you knew that it was going to get you

it was not going to help you yeah right you never had a chance to like

even your feelings to kind of process sometimes because you were like this all the time and so

when I get in chances where I get to have moments like that man I really treasure them I really really love them you're just you're living it though in public in a way that I haven't seen anybody do this yet, honestly.

I pay attention, but I mean, you're touring and you're a funny guy on stage.

Yeah, we do pretty good.

You do great.

And you're interviewing some of the most important people on the planet, and you're being interviewed by some of the more thoughtful people on the planet, and you're talking about things with like such candor, you know, and I remember, you know, another clip, and I know I've said this to you before, but I started paying attention to you about a year after we met when I saw a caller came through.

Oh, yeah, I remember you telling me about this.

And this guy was, you know, he was struggling and he was back on his heels and he was nervous because he was talking to you.

And you let him talk for maybe 15 minutes.

Yeah.

And I couldn't believe it.

Honestly, it defied what you would expect somebody to do in that quasi-live format, but you just let him talk.

And what got me were the comments under that video from thousands of people who learned or felt or connected so much from watching you listen.

And that's, you know, that's an interesting set of muscles you got.

Well, thanks for checking that out, dude.

I, uh,

you know, my brother, like a few years ago one day, I was having like the worst day.

And we're just similar growing up.

We just had, like, you know, it was just so intense growing up.

You didn't even develop.

You know, you just didn't even develop when you were young.

You just didn't,

I don't know.

And nobody in our family did.

None of the kids did, really.

And so.

You got an older brother.

Yeah, I got an older brother.

He's two years older than me.

And then one day I was having a tough day, and I was sitting in my truck.

It was in Nashville, and I pulled over, and I was just bawling, dude.

I was just like, I think I was just kind of at my wit's end.

everything just felt impossible just that kind of moment you know and he was just like hey man if you want I'll just sit here with you for a little while you know he's like we don't have to say anything you know I can just sit here with you and just be here with you you know and

yeah and when he said that dude I just like

I mean I think tears came out of my fucking meta tarsals you know are those feet

yeah I believe they are yeah

I mean it was just like stuff just because in my life, nobody had said that.

Like, hey, I'm just going to be here.

And that's it, right?

Like, there was no other part to it, you know?

And it was just a powerful moment for me.

So sometimes there are moments like, anyway, all I'm saying is I learned little things from my brother.

And sometimes if there's days or moments where I'm even like a tenth of what he's been for me, then

that's where some of those like kind of little moments come from.

That's why I think I care about that kind of stuff.

Because when you're in like recovery meetings, you hear that kind of stuff you know

and you have you hear people like that have just stuff that's real you know and so I really love that anyway I'm kind of rambling no man look I'm super interested about

I don't know a lot about AA

but I know a fair amount about celebrity and I've always been interested

like what is it like for you and what is it like for like because you can be in a town you've never been into and you can show up at a meeting what's the dynamic like when you walk in for people who know you and like anonymity is such a big part i mean it's in the title of the whole organization you can't be anonymous if you're theo vaughan and yet there you are yeah i think sometimes it's interesting i used to think about it i can tell like if i'm worried about that when i walk in there then i'm not doing well personally right because i'm more like in the like what's my needs and my image that kind of stuff but if i hadn't gone to meetings in a long time and I go in, or if I'm in a new city, like whenever I moved to Nashville, I was like worried about that at first, like I just like, I guess, concerned.

And also, you're going into meetings in a new place, so that feels interesting.

But you can kind of map out what's going on, you know.

And then also, we're all in there because we're, something's wrong, or like something's awesome about us, but also had drugs and alcohol involved with it.

And so, you know, we're all kind of on the same page.

But there's been moments where people are like, yeah, I guess we'll want to take photos.

Some of meetings.

And so I usually just kind of say, you know, I don't do that at meetings or something like that to kind of keep it cool.

But then I'll try to check in with that person too.

So I don't want them feeling,

you know, like bummed out or something, you know, because alcoholics get their feelings hurt easy sometimes.

So it's like, you know, I think it's probably

unique for them and unique for me in some type of way.

And not everybody, but sometimes.

Sometimes you go to meetings and nobody knows, dude.

There's some guy in there.

There's a guy in there.

I think there was a meeting I walked into once and I don't even know.

I didn't go back in, but it was just one dude in there and he could have been dead.

It was an old guy.

I was like, I'm not fucking checking if that, you know, I was like, I'm not EMT or whatever, you know.

Well, there's the body you were looking for.

I know I should have stayed.

I still think of it.

He had his shoes off.

How important is it?

Like,

dying with your shoes on has to suck, right?

I mean, it would depend what you're doing.

What?

Who wants to have their shoes on forever?

Oh, well, I mean, yeah.

Imagine you have your shoes on in heaven and somebody has their fucking shoes off.

Yeah, somebody didn't get the memo.

There's an old song, he died with his boots on.

Famous.

Unlucky, dude.

Walking around in boots forever, it would piss me off.

I'm not sure that's how the afterlife works, for sure.

I mean, you might be right, but I think you're basically transformed.

You know, it's not your whole...

I don't think your wardrobe goes with you.

But I think you still know how it feels to have shoes on your feet and you die with that feeling.

And I think that that stays with you.

Do you?

I do.

Well,

and I would hate that.

Yeah.

Unless it's cold.

You know, you want to be barefoot?

What if the terrain is rocky?

I mean, I'm sure heaven is not typically imagined as a rough, terrained, chilly place.

Yeah, I wonder what kind of land they have up there.

Milk and honey is what I've heard.

Really?

Well, the land of milk and honey

is a thing.

So you fellas have been friends for a long time, huh?

I've never seen this guy before.

First time?

How long?

44 years old?

Oh my God, you perverts, dude.

No, we were in high school.

You didn't know somebody for that long, dude.

Meet somebody else, dude.

I'm trying.

Believe me, I'm trying.

I know.

It's like

out of the house.

It's like stepping in gum, man.

I can't shake it.

Have you guys ever been on a double date before?

Oh, yeah.

No way.

Yeah, we went on a double double date.

With twins or regulars?

Regulars.

We went on a date.

Was it...

Oh, dear.

Can I say it?

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was Danielle and Terry.

That's right.

It was Danielle and Terry.

Yeah.

Until it wasn't.

That's right.

Is that your ex-wife?

Oh, no, no, no.

God rest her soul.

Oh,

someone passed away.

Oh, no, she's just dead to me.

Oh.

Thank you.

I'll be here all podcast.

She died with her boots on.

Oh, damn.

And the spurt.

I kid.

I kid.

I kid.

I kid.

We're just kidding, Danielle and Terry.

Terry's your wife.

No, no, that's not true.

I haven't seen Terry in years.

Really?

But she, yeah.

But that was a, I'll never forget that night.

Where did y'all go?

I'll never forget that one.

That one will.

We went to Danielle's house.

Yeah.

You know, in the basement.

Way.

In the basement?

You fucking freaks.

What are y'all doing?

All right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just, you know,

talking.

Yeah.

Yeah, we were just talking.

We were having a chat.

But were y'all boozing down there playing a game?

Like, what was the setup?

Was there a reason?

Like, was it movie night?

Was it just kind of like...

Was it movie night?

I don't recall any photographs being taken.

Y'all are creeping me out now, all right?

Just tell us what happened.

Are these women okay?

I sure hope so.

Yeah.

I haven't talked to Terry.

Let's bring her in right now.

She has a tattoo of Mike rolling her back.

I'm just joking, Terry, and that's and that's insane.

Terry was good.

You know what's funny?

I hope she's doing good.

There's another night, but I brought Terry back to my parents' house.

I'm still living in the basement.

Very place where the mannequin was waiting for me when I crawled through the windowsill.

Oh, yeah.

Sounds like a John Irving novel or something.

Are you a fan of Irving, by the way?

Yeah.

Prayer for Own Meanie?

Oh.

Hotel New Hampshire?

Yeah.

Oh, sorry.

Setting Free the Bears, dude.

Oh, good.

Oh, good.

My favorite author.

First book I ever read, like as an adult book

was

The World According to Garp.

That was

me too.

That got everybody in.

Garp was early from, well, that was done in like 81 or 82, I think.

That was so good.

Yeah, always wrestling.

Irving was a big wrestler.

With Exeter and stuff like that.

Yeah.

And the bears and the neighbor's dog and just the way he put life together and stuff.

For some reason, it just, I absorbed that really good.

He just put out a book about a year and a half ago that I got.

It was kind of hard to read.

It was just a lot of words.

I don't like that.

I used to date a real chatty girl, and I fucking, I do not like a lot of that.

Hey, Chuck, see if you can find the last paragraph to a prayer for Owen Meany.

It haunted me.

Yeah, the book is called A Prayer for Owen Meany.

It's by John Irving.

And I wonder if the last paragraph exists.

I wonder if you could read that if it's exactly.

And they made a movie called Simon Birch, if anybody ever got to watch that movie.

That is a neat movie, too.

That's the Owen Meanie take, essentially.

That's cool, man.

So I bring Terry back to the house.

Yeah.

And

Terry was

voluptuous.

Yeah.

She's a beautiful, beautiful woman, but she looked like a movie star.

And

she looked like a mature 35-year-old.

Like Kate Thurtson or something?

Movie star.

Who's Kate Thurtson?

I have no idea.

And me neither.

Oh, God, please.

I can't work this thing.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

You got to get the whole last paragraph, not the last line.

And this is a spoiler alert, by the way, if you haven't read A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Do you use perplexity?

No, what is that?

Perplexity is a cool AI.

Oh, we just live in a constant state of it.

As you may have heard me say several thousand times before, we need to close the skills gap in this country and we need to do it stat.

I hate to be an alarmist, but there are currently 7.6 million open jobs out there, most of which don't require a four-year degree.

And currently, 250,000 of those jobs exist within the maritime industrial base.

These are the folks who build and deliver three nuclear-powered submarines every year to the U.S.

Navy and there's a real concern now that a lack of skilled labor is going to keep us from building the subs that need to get built.

On the positive side, there's a growing realization that these jobs are freaking awesome.

I'm talking about incredibly stable, AI-proof careers, just waiting for anybody who wants to learn a skill that's in demand and start a career with some actual purpose.

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All of it is spelled out for you at buildsubmarines.com.

That's where all the hiring is happening, and you really need to see it to get a sense of just how much opportunity is out there.

That's buildsubmarines.com.

Come on and build a submarine.

Why don't you build a submarine?

That buildsubmarines.com.

Anyway, my mom and dad are in bed and the light's on in the room.

In their room?

In their room.

And have they met Terry before?

No.

No, they haven't.

And she wanted to use the restroom and I wanted to, you know, send her home with a bottle of water and stuff.

She had left her car at my parents' house.

Nice kids.

Anyway, I knocked on the door and opened it up and my dad's lying in bed.

He's reading.

He's got the glasses down on his nose.

My mom's reading, too.

And I said, oh, I just want to introduce you to Terry real quick.

Terry steps in the room and like the light's coming down from above and she's a luminous.

It's like Glenn Close in,

what is it, Field of Day?

Family Man or something?

Field of Daniel Daniel.

No, just radiant and beautiful and voluptuous.

And

my dad still laughs about it.

He's just like, you walked her in there and she just stood there by the bed and smiled.

I looked at you and your mother looked at me and we looked at her.

And then we all just kind of looked at you and said, how in the world?

what's going to happen next and then you just excused yourselves closed the door wow and we've really never spoken of it since hmm it's really none of their business yeah I don't think so but I think it's nice that they were willing to let you guys stand in the room for a minute you know

I think that's where were they in bed yeah yeah that's bizarre yeah it was it was about it's odd it was like 1230 I was sure but I saw the light on and which means I knew they could hear me and the whole business of sneaking in like you want to be sneaky don't want to be sneaky sneaky yeah sneaky is the worst dude I freaking met this lady at a car wash one time anyway it was Tucson so everything there is a fucking car wash but I met a woman there and then in the morning she ended up staying over at my freaking house when I was at my mom's house and

And in the morning, I went in the kitchen.

I was like, guess what, mom?

She's like, what?

And I was like, remember that lady from the car wash?

And she's like, yeah, I was like, she's here.

And she's like, you are fucking kidding me.

Does Charlie Charlie know?

Charlie was her husband.

He was in the war.

And I was like, I don't know if Charlie, I don't, she's like, Charlie cannot find out.

So we had to sneak this lady out of the house.

It was so hilarious.

How old were you?

Probably 34.

Really?

Yeah.

You were,

what's the word?

You were emancipated.

At like, what, 14 or something?

Yep.

Got out there pretty early.

Kind of a DIY guy, you know?

Yeah?

I think I was kind of a DIY guy.

Your dad had you late in life?

Yep, my dad was 70 when I was born and

they were my dad was an older man and pretty cool though.

But he had like another family of like kids that were well, he had some earlier children and they were pretty well off and they didn't want anything to do with us and we were just this kind of

you know it was tough for him to be a dad as he got older.

Yeah.

You know?

It was it's kind of weird to watch that, I think, as a kid.

And how I wonder sometimes I still don't even know how that formed how I i thought about stuff and do you think that's why your brother was so influential being a couple years older than you i think there's moments in the past couple years where i felt like my brother in certain regards uh

embodied some of the dad i didn't have you know yeah but he also

i think he was also conscious to make sure that he stayed my brother like it didn't get into like an uncomfortable space or something you know they're good guinea pigs older brothers They are.

Oh, dude.

Shout out to older brothers, man.

Yeah.

They take all of the shrapnel.

They take all of the bullshit.

They take your parents' best shots usually.

Yep.

And some of them

are

drug addicts or whatever, felons.

Some of them are good.

But all of them are out there on the front lines of a family's existence.

That's right.

And that is a fucking, that is a real thing in the world that does not get shouted out enough.

I don't think so either, but you're the thing your parents are practicing on.

They're figuring it out with you.

Yeah.

Theo,

Mike is the oldest brother.

Oh, he is?

He doesn't have an older brother.

I would have loved to have an older brother.

That would have been amazing.

I don't know.

But I didn't.

Oh, yeah.

You get to see the things your brother didn't do well or did well or something like that, you know?

Oh, God, yeah.

But then what if your brother's absolutely like my brother was certainly, I looked up to him for sure.

But like,

but yeah, I just wonder, like, what if your brother was like

Michael Jordan or something?

Would that be tough?

I wonder.

I think maybe it would.

Yeah.

Unless you hate playing basketball and you'd be like, ah, fuck it.

I don't know.

I mean, my brothers and I are all very different, but I do have one, I think, that is kind of adjacent in, like, to this career, this industry.

And I think I was probably,

you know, like what happened with Dirty Jobs and everything was probably fascinating to watch.

I mean, think about the guys you grew up with you know I mean the fact that you got out of that town and I think it seems mystical to some people

you know you must be a source of great mystery to a lot of the people you grew up with they're on the border of Mississippi and Louisiana

see you out there now I mean well that's where I spent the summers I grew up down in Covington Louisiana which is a little bit north of New Orleans It's a nice place and

tallest statue of Ronald Reagan if you want to look that up.

Oh, in Covington?

Mm-hmm.

Well, that's something.

You gave up on the Owen Meanie last paragraph thing?

You can't get it.

You got to buy the book.

You got a copyright?

Buy the book real quick.

Okay.

I don't know if that.

And I don't want to call him out.

I just met you.

No, you're calling me out.

Go ahead.

I don't know if that's true.

Yeah?

Okay.

Do you find that hard to believe or not?

And I'm not judging anybody.

I don't.

I think it's highly unlikely that anything ever written can't be found.

on the internet with a proper search.

I just think it's highly unlikely.

Okay.

God, I wish we were down there with Danielle and Terry.

Man, that'd be something.

Boy, it was a

simpler time, Tio.

It was before you were born, man.

It was probably 1981.

Fuck yeah.

Two.

Did y'all have deodorant then?

No.

Fuck yeah.

No, dude.

Deodorant's for pussies.

Oh, yeah, dude.

It should have been back then, I bet.

That's crazy time, dude.

I bet the freaking the uh

damn, what's it called when you take care of yourself or something?

Responsibility.

Personal hygiene?

I bet.

Personal hygiene was crazy back then.

It was loose.

It was great.

It was loose.

There was a lot of patchouli in the air.

There's Reagan down there in Covington.

He did not come.

Oh, they sent Dole down there.

Oh, yeah.

Reagan is huge.

He was enormous.

Look at the size of that guy.

That's not even in Covington, I don't think, is it?

I don't know.

Nah, that's somewhere else.

They might have some.

Is that the wrong one?

Did you just Google the Reagan statue?

Tallest statue of Ronald Reagan is what I Googled.

In Covington.

Yeah.

Somebody could have beat us.

No, it's exactly the kind of thing that's fleeting, man.

One minute, you're, you know, on Rushmore and then you're off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Not that he was ever on Rushmore, to be clear.

Stand by.

I'll get this out of here.

You know, one thing that I saw that was interesting recently was they had,

we went to Mount Rushmore not long ago.

We had a show in up in the Dakotas, a couple shows up there, and we went over to Mount Rushmore.

And

there's another face, a native face that's on the other side of that Crazy horse just down the road.

And they've never finished building it.

Yeah.

They were supposed to finish building it.

Yeah.

The fact that they didn't even,

they took all the land from those people.

They're still building it.

Gorchok, what's his last name, Taylor?

He passed away.

I think his son is handling it maybe.

Yeah.

But the fact that they, it's like...

He had 13 kids.

They should have done it then.

He had 13.

That's partly why he had so many kids.

Wow.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

We tried.

I wanted to shoot an episode at Mount Rushmore.

I wanted to do like a dirty job.

I wanted to sandblast Jefferson's nose.

Oh my God.

Right.

I thought it'd be a really fun way to look at history and get people, you know, maybe interested who otherwise wouldn't be.

And, you know, that's a federal park.

It's a federal property.

And the feds are like, absolutely not.

We would never, ever consider.

letting somebody film.

Like, I mean, I think I offended them and I didn't mean to.

But we reached out to Crazy Horse like a week later.

They rolled out the red carpet.

They gave us a whole tour of I met the surviving kids, repelled down the face of,

I mean, that thing's going to, it's going to take another 50 years to finish that thing.

Yeah.

The work has never stopped.

They've never taken a penny of federal money.

Oh, the work has never stopped?

No, no, they're still doing it.

Why was doing it?

They're still doing it.

But

how long have they been doing it for?

I think they started in the.

years now yeah it's close to 70 years but how long did it take to finish rushmore about two weeks no no it took much longer than that that's not like a hundred years huh no no no so what's the holdup there hey we've moved on from reagan you got crazy horse in there somewhere god bless america all right yes you know what man who's your jamie you got to have it you got a jamie yeah we got a guy named zach and nick we have two guys zach and nick yeah i met you you met zach he went over to your place did you know that oh to see what it was like yeah yeah they were great man They were really great.

Showed me everything.

Yeah, they're good guys, man.

They're hard workers.

I feel lucky to be able to work with them.

14 years for my Rushmore.

14 years for Rushmore, and it's going to take probably 100 for Crazy Horse.

Then I don't understand why.

Is there just not...

There's no federal money.

There's no mandate.

So that difference is finances.

It's all financing.

But the guy, Gorsha, who started it, he was alone.

Like, there's an old video.

If you haven't seen this, it's on YouTube, but it's like, it's all color-saturated the way it looks in the 50s, you know?

Oh, yeah.

And this guy is dynamiting himself.

He built the stairs up to the front himself.

There it is.

Look at that.

That makes me nervous.

Look at that thing.

Oh, my God.

So they got the face done.

I worked on the arm, but when this thing is done, like the arm is going to go all the way out there.

Oh, they're doing all that then?

Not all of it, but all the way to the tip.

There's going to be...

And

I think he's on a horse.

I mean.

Well, I'll get you a picture of what it's going to look like.

Yeah, I mean, that's his last name, Horse, right?

So you got to have the.

Oh, they're doing all that, dude.

It already looks better than the one of that Miami Heat guy that they did a few years ago.

Remember that one?

I think it was Dwayne Wade, maybe?

Oh, it already looks better than that Dwayne Wade.

Where was that one?

In Miami?

Yeah, I think so, or somewhere.

Yeah, that's what it's going to look like when it's done.

Oh, my God.

So they're basically going to turn this place into a straight-up gay mecca, dude.

do not put the horse dude that horse looks like fucking it got its hair done with michael landon dude you cannot what are they doing dude actually you know what it put it up there turn it into a damn i want a damn gay high altitude gay rave dude i want people fucking doing poppers up there at 2 000 feet homie that's what kind of shit i want

i want people fucking losing their minds and hiding inside of of each other's, hiding their hands inside of each other's pockets.

You know what you can fit on Crazy Horse's forehead?

Let me guess for one second.

Let me think just for like

maybe eight seconds.

I'll give you eight seconds.

Like a rodeo.

What can you fit on his forehead?

Yeah.

I'll give you a hint.

Oh, a fiat.

A car.

A fiat's barely a car, dude.

I agree.

The answer is Mount Rushmore.

No.

Yeah.

So that's the size difference?

Yes.

You can put Mount Rushmore on the head of Crazy Horse.

You've got four faces.

Yeah.

So that's, I mean, this is, it's the ultimate Sisyphian

Quixotic.

I love that.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just, I mean, and the guys.

I don't know what it means, but.

Well,

one is a Greek reference, the other is,

you know, Cervantes,

Donkey.

Don't you

think?

Tilting at windmills.

But this guy, I mean, he worked on it his whole life.

It was his life's work, and he knew with certainty he would never see it finished.

And his kids probably won't either.

If you have 13 kids, they should do it.

You would think.

But that's easy for me to say.

Do we have any update on the children or any of them in recovery or anything?

Oh, no.

I'll look.

Yeah, good.

Don't quit your break.

What are their names?

What?

We don't even know them.

We don't know them.

I know you worked with them.

I did.

We don't know kids' names.

We're adults, dude.

You freaking crazy guy.

You're a number.

Number nine.

Get in here.

It's your turn.

Get your pickaxe, buddy.

Wow, dude.

That's pretty sick.

I'm looking into the mental health of the crazy horse guys.

Crazy kids.

Children.

Well, I just want to know if any of them had the ability to get out there and work.

I mean, it's just

who's still doing it and what their process is.

Do they fundraise?

I didn't know.

I thought when I saw the photo, it was just the same size.

I'm like, you wouldn't think it would take 50, 70 years to get that done.

No, it's massive.

Look, this is, I don't want to talk out of school because she's a lovely woman, but one of the most alarming things that ever happened to me on a set, and this isn't really a set, this is just us in the Dakotas filming.

Well, a woman.

Oh, yeah.

who's in charge of it is like the fifth daughter.

And she's very protective of her dad and the family and and we're there our whole crew is there and we're ready to shoot and I hadn't been weighed and measured yet like she hadn't she wanted to personally vet me to be up there yeah

so we had rigged her jeep with some cameras because we knew we were going to go for a drive and so we're ready to start the scene and she gets me in the jeep and she takes off without the crew.

Like borderline kidnapping.

She just runs off off with me and she drives me down and around in the middle of nowhere and she takes me to her father's grave

and we sit there there he is korchak

how do you say

yeah

yeah

wow what a great name was her name monique by any chance that might be

that might be that sounds right it might be monique yeah he died in sturgis probably listening to kid rock i bet probably

what's his name, Bob?

Bob Richie.

You're friends?

Yep.

Oh, yeah, we are friends.

Bob's a very nice guy.

We actually just went to Hulk Hogan's funeral the other day.

No kidding.

Yeah.

Speaking of Terry.

Yeah.

What was that like?

You know, it was a lot of things, man.

We didn't stay very long.

I wanted to stay longer after, I think.

Yeah.

You know.

Did you know Terry?

I knew him.

He had come to podcasts once, and then I just just knew, you know, and I'd seen him two times after that at different events.

And maybe we texted a little bit.

Did anyone get hit with a folding chair by any chance?

Oh, that would have been interesting.

At the funeral?

Yeah.

Dennis Rodman had a strong moment, I know.

He was pretty heartbroken

by the funeral moment,

at the actual service.

And

his son, Nick, got up and made a nice, like a really cool speech.

What you gonna do when Hulk Hogan watches over you, you know, or something like that like this kind of watching over idea.

I thought that was pretty cool But there was like all my heroes from childhood like not all of them, but a lot of them Yeah, you know in wheelchairs and on opioids or whatever Did you watch a lot of wrestling growing up?

Oh, dude.

You grow wrestling?

Yeah, yeah, because wrestling, dude, wrestling NWA, WWF, it felt like,

it felt like kind of, I almost feel like it felt like poor kids, like it belonged to them.

And I don't know if that's a true feeling.

It could have just been because in our neighborhood, we didn't have a lot of money and that everybody on our street watched it.

Like we would all like be out in the street hanging out and we would all go home to watch it, right?

And we loved those guys.

Like, I mean, it just felt like even as a kid, it gave you somebody to look up to.

You know, it's like, even if your life fucking sucked or whatever, if somebody, you know, if people were just, you know, just shooting up and just hiding from each other in the area or whatever, that you could watch that and you just felt excited about everything.

who else was in the the world at that time like when when hulk was at his apex okay was it was andre the giant yeah andre the giant was there for sure and then you had like iron chic you had hacksaw jim duggan you had the big boss man yeah you still had a little bit of uh dusty roads you had the steiner brothers you had the bushwhackers you had million dollar man ted di biase he was down there um

you had oh mouth of the south jimmy hart bobby the brain heenan um his daughter was there.

That was pretty cool.

So you had Jake the Snake, you had Ravish and Rick Roode, who was kind of like a

trans or what.

I don't know who what he was, but

he was using something.

He was using Harris Brand steroids, I think.

What about The Undertaker?

That was later.

That was later.

Yeah, that wasn't us.

Like,

I got out of it before that.

But you also had NWA.

You had like Sting, you had Ric Flair.

You had, oh man, there's so many guys.

See, when I was a kid, there was Chief Chief Jay Strongbow.

Oh, yeah.

The Von Ericks, dude.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chuck, see if you can find.

Fucking pull it up, fucking Chuck.

Me with WWE.

It was called Halloween Havoc.

He'll laugh at this.

Sorry to be yelling at you, Chuck.

No, it's quite all right.

He's used to it, man.

Well, we've asked him for some information that he refuses to give up.

Well, he just won't give it up because it simply doesn't exist on the internet.

It's just not there.

Old Epstein Chuck over here, huh?

Give us the files, huh?

I can't believe pedophiling is becoming a big thing in America now.

What do you mean?

The government supported or whatever.

What do you think?

Really?

I mean, I don't know what happened with all that, but it does seem bizarre.

Do you think all that stuff is a ruse and there was never anything?

Because, I mean, Epstein had charges against him.

I mean, it's just, I think the American people have fucking had it with

politicians.

Yeah.

Both sides.

There's a great phrase in Latin, and I can't remember it.

I wish I could.

It'd make me sound smart.

But translated, it means though the heavens fall.

And I say,

let's see it, no matter what.

Yeah.

I want to see it.

I really do.

I think you're right.

I think that

maybe

had we not been fed such a line of nonsense for so long on so many different topics, we might be able to shrug at this and go, whatever.

But it's the straw that broke the camel's back.

It's like we've been teased with it.

And by the way, you're talking about, I mean, that's a real topic and some real harm has happened to a lot of kids.

Yeah.

You know, not just on that island, but in general.

Right.

So you're selling it.

It's almost you saying, oh, we don't support this or care about this in a way that doesn't mean enough to us.

Yeah.

And that's fucking crazy, kind of.

Bananas.

Sorry, but that's me.

25 years ago hosting a wrestling event.

Do you remember what year it was?

My God.

God.

No, Halloween.

Halloween Havoc.

Yeah, Vince McMahon was there.

I remember Halloween Havoc.

When did Halloween Havoc start?

Would you mind looking that up for us, Miss?

Oh, it would be my pleasure.

October 30th.

On Halloween, dude.

That's your first hit.

Start with October, Chuck.

And if it's not there, check the

portal of Leo or whatever it is.

It's going to be up there soon.

The Lions Portal.

The Lions portal.

It actually closed yesterday.

No.

Damn.

So.

Give me two more hours.

I'll be right there.

And if you can't find that.

He's over there looking at his baby book or something.

It's like, what are you fucking doing?

Dude, do you have a baby book that your mom made?

Oh, yeah.

I do.

What was that thing?

Because my mom made those for us.

Is that a big thing that parents still do or no?

I don't have kids.

I don't know.

You don't have any children?

I don't have kids, no.

What?

No.

October 28, 1989.

Yep.

That's it.

That's about right.

And who fought at the first one?

Can you check for me?

Let's see.

Location.

Philadelphia.

Main event.

The Thunderdome Cage match.

Ric Flair and Sting versus Terry Funk and the Great Muta.

Ooh, yeah.

Do you know who that is?

I don't know.

Sounds Asian.

I'm going to go off Asian.

You know?

Off Asian.

What is on Asian?

I mean, you know it when you see it.

I'll say that.

This is off Asian, brother.

I don't even know what we're talking about.

Oh, Oh, but dude, there was nothing like that, dude.

Terry Funk, man, what a legend he was.

He was also brutal, but charming.

There was something special about him.

I got to end up going to talk to Kevin Von Erich one time, and that was pretty amazing.

Yeah.

The last Von Erich.

I'm just realizing talking to you, man, it's like I've been adjacent to a lot of things, but not really in them.

I narrated the Ultimate Fighter.

I did all the seasons for Ultimate Fighter.

Yeah.

For Dana White's show?

Yeah.

Previously.

On the Ultimate Fighter.

Oh, that's you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The one that was on Spike TV.

And like watching that thing grow as I was doing it, but not in it was one of the strangest things.

It was wrestling, it was like that for me, too.

I was always around it, but never really in it, you know.

Right.

The Contender, do you ever remember that show?

Yeah, I remember the Contender.

That was good.

Yep.

Sebastian Salone and Rock and Ray, um, Sugar Ray Leonard.

Yeah.

God, that was fun.

What show did you like when you were growing up?

I remember something that came on that got you just so animated.

Yeah, I do.

And I kind of closed the loop on it.

It was the Rockford Files.

From the park, the murders in the park?

No.

No.

Jim Garner played James Rockford.

He lived in a trailer.

not far from here in Malibu, and he solved crimes.

His dad was Rocky.

His name was Rocky in the thing.

Rocky Rockford?

Well, his last name was Rockford, so they called him Rocky.

Oh, got it.

Yeah.

Anyway, no, James Garner in the Rockford Files.

It was very big in the 70s.

That's Jim Garner right there.

Yeah, he's great.

He drove 1977 Firebird.

And Jay Leno called me one day and said, hey, come on my show.

I'll get you any car you want.

And I didn't know if I wanted to.

I said, I want the original car that, you know,

he's going to get you a car for going on there?

Well, what you do is you drive around town in the car of your dreams, and Jay interviews you

as you drive.

Okay.

Right.

So I said, I want a 1977 Firebird, like the one Jim Rockford drove.

He went out and found the original Rockford car, the actual car

that's wired for sound that Jim Garner drove in the show.

And he got the guy to come and bring it.

And I drove that thing around for a couple hours with Jay.

But that was the show that got me fired up as a kid.

I can still hear the

theme, man.

Barron air, nina,

and air narrow narrow, narrow narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow,

that's pretty good.

That's pretty good.

He's got it.

Yeah?

Yeah.

But then it morphs into Sanford Sun.

Baron, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

Did you watch something?

Did you watch something growing up there, Chucky, or what?

No, we weren't allowed television.

It was all hand puppets and interpretive dance over there.

That was it.

Just me and Danielle in the basement.

Wishing Terry was there.

When's Terry coming back?

A tale of two Terries, dude.

Hulk Hogan and your Terry.

Both Terries.

How about that?

And acronyms all over the place from eBurb to uh what you call the uh CWRs CWRs M-R-Es I think we mentioned even at one point maybe we did we did we did that ASAP TPD or PDQ

BLM

I'll take mine with cheese yeah

I like that yeah

um why do you uh

why do you care about the country in a way that uh surprised me?

I don't know.

I mean, I don't know, I can't, I don't know what else I would care about, I guess.

I mean, obviously, I care about being alive.

I care about my family.

So people know, last time we talked, you were wearing an American giant sweatshirt, coincidentally.

And we talked about the fact that I'm friends with the guy who runs that company and a lot of other companies, too.

And I had no idea you had a thing for making stuff in this country and to the point where it's like,

you know, we've been talking about what do you what do you do with your I don't know your platform your influence what should we be doing what can we do to elevate that stuff yeah well I think listening to you and talking and hearing about micro works and putting you know recognizing that you know the country is gonna if we start to build a lot of these AI data centers or if those things start to if we need more workforce and especially if they're like like

kicking workforce out of the country or labor force, which I don't know all the technicalities of that.

So I'm kind of just speaking like wildly, but

you're going to need like people who are trained to be able to do the jobs.

And, you know, and you were telling me that you guys' program microworks help us do that.

Yeah.

Right?

You're like 500-something people this year.

526, I think, this year, just with just over $5 million,

which is crazy because I'm not doing anything

different

really than we have in the last 17 years.

But this year we had 10 times the applicants that we did the year before.

That's amazing.

Yes, I mean something has happened.

And

I don't know.

I'm super interested.

I mean, we were half joking, I thought, about, you know, the old QVC days and the Wayne's world set and the idea of like, like, why does it have to be a big, elaborate thing?

Why isn't there a dedicated network today?

where anybody who's trying to make a thing in this country can sit down and have a few laughs and show off their wares.

You know?

No, that to me sounds awesome.

I mean, that's kind of what we're talking about.

It was like, you know, I think seeing you on QVC and then thinking about like, you know, I just worry that if we get into a space where people don't have jobs, right?

Or there aren't as many opportunities, just say we do, right?

Or even if we don't, right?

Like.

People, I'm so sick of like corporations making everything and all these conglomerates and stuff.

So how do I, if I want to spend my money, how do I spend it to support a family that's across the country, even across town, right yeah and so then we were kind of talking about well what if we started like kind of a QVC type of show where we did little installments with different

people that made a product right families or a person like this guy makes you know these he makes 700 voodoo dolls a year and they're the best you know they got the most dark magic in them or whatever you know or this person makes like uh you know goat milk soap or something or i know you had said that there was somebody who made plant pots out of cow crap there you go poop pots, yeah.

That's Matt Freund in New Canaan, Connecticut.

Oh, really?

Matt Freund is an amazing musician, too, I think.

Is he?

I don't know.

Well, let's find out.

Chuck will be back in about a half hour with some non-conclusive data.

Nothing on the internet about music.

Sorry.

We've looked high at the look.

What the fuck's on his computer's not even on?

That's not even a computer.

How do you spell Freund?

F-R-E-U-N-D.

Yep, I would go with that.

I believe it's German.

Yeah, that was kind of what we were talking about.

Like, well, would it be neat if we started to get, like, find people who were making stuff and interview them almost like maybe it was like antique roadshow style?

See, that, I mean, why did you love Antique Roadshow?

What was it about it that made it work?

I mean, there's just something damn beautiful about it.

I mean, when you see it,

Matt Freud, independent singer.

Yeah, it's a musician.

Yeah.

Doesn't have anything to do with the Matt Freud I'm talking about.

Well, he asked if there was a musician named Matt Freud, and there he is.

I proved that there is.

Good work, John.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good work.

And then,

let me see that antique roadshow set.

God, that set is just damn beautiful.

Because I was up late one night and they had some guy pulled up with a damn

rare beanie baby.

A very rare beanie baby.

Oh, I mean, this was just the damn Princess Diana one, and it was missing part of its tail.

It's the,

I'm asking you because I think it's one of the most underrated, underappreciated formats ever.

Yeah.

It pays off every every 10 minutes.

Like when you think about it, what is it?

Where'd you get it?

What's it worth?

Could be nothing.

Could be a lot.

We don't know.

I mean, it's just an hour filled with little cliffhangers.

And the people are all just so random and real.

Yeah.

Right?

It's a lot like, did you ever watch This Old House?

Yes, with Bob Biela?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Same kind of thing, like old 70s style production.

Super simple, nothing flashy.

But you got to see

like a magic trick every week.

We're going to make something that wasn't there.

We're going to use skill and material, and it's going to be great.

Oh, yeah.

It was so satisfying.

I already was smashing chicks to across the country.

My buddy's dad worked with him.

Did he?

Said he was just yamming clam around the world.

This old cuck, you feel me?

Sorry, that's an old wiener joke.

But I will say this: no, I think there's nothing better than if I could say, if you could be like, Well, okay, well, how about this?

We'll just showcase your product, and then if your company can make enough of it or whatever, you know, I guess the products would have to be vetted or the company, the families that are making them.

Yeah, yeah, that would be the tough part.

That is tough.

But then it'd be so cool to know that now there's a family that has a business and they don't have to worry about their, they could, it, you can start to support one another.

Oh my God, I wish look at that.

I'm looking at that.

Oh, she definitely is gonna

she's that's tea for 200.

She's getting paid.

Oh my god, if you drink out of that, dude, oh my, oh my god, if you rub on that three times, I bet Princess Diana will come back.

We may be good right there, Mike, but I would love to talk about that idea more, man.

And I couldn't think of anybody else that, you know, you're like the pioneer of that sort of spirit, I think.

You, Paul Revere, Gary Sinise.

Wow, Paul Revere, Gary Sinise, and me.

And maybe Aaron Brockovich are kind of like, oh, you guys are the kind of Americana Mount Rushmore, I think.

That's very kind of you.

But look,

I think that

you could actually

tip the scale in a way that I can't, you know?

And look.

What I mean is, like, that guy, Matt Freund, I don't know what would have happened had I done a segment for the purposes of helping him sell his poop pots, right?

But because we did a segment on a show called Dirty Jobs that was really focused on a dairy farm that was struggling because the bottom fell out of the milk market, and I had read about this guy who was heating his house with

cow shit, right?

And it was like, that's...

Well, first of all, a guy doing that is a...

Matt is not a good guy.

Well, this is 20 years ago, and he's using the whole biodiesel like he doesn't care but but that's why you're alone fucking that's up you're fucking say it again please i'm sorry to get upset he's he's heating his house yeah of course this guy is dude are you kidding me yeah this dude is dude with basically he woke up one day theo and realized that the crap his cows were producing was more valuable than the milk Wow so what he did was he started making these flower pots out of cow crap.

Yeah.

And so they would, you know, decompose

and it was built-in manure.

And so your petunias would grow twice as fast.

I mean, he wound up crushing it in part, in a big part, because Dirty Jobs showed up and, you know, put him in 170 countries.

But I took him on Larry King a year later to tell that story.

And then he got his stuff in Walmart.

So

but this is why, like, I think you,

with your platform, where are we, Chuck?

Are we in the top 200?

This little podcast?

That was ish.

Yeah,

I think we are.

We get our share.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's like number four in the world.

That's pretty big.

I mean, why not just start with

your platform?

I mean, you probably already have.

You mean just having people come on there?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it would be neat, but I think of doing it as something new.

Yeah.

And I think that seems exciting to me.

I think, obviously, like, you know, you have met so many people and know, you know, a man who's burning shit to stay warm.

Oh, well, sure.

And by the way, there are 3 billion people in the world doing that.

Do you know that 3 billion people, their main source of energy, is wood or cow crap?

Wow.

Dumb.

I didn't know that.

3 billion.

Yeah.

He was just using science to make it a bunch, you know, a lot more efficient.

But my point is, I think there needs to be another, there needs to be an entertaining value to it.

Right.

And I think you do a great job of that.

I think maybe we could find a neat way to do it.

I think I just, it would be something fun to do.

Yeah.

I think it would be fun to do with you.

I think because our audiences are kind of different, but probably have a similar spirit.

And

yeah, I don't know.

I just, I want people to be able to,

if they want to, to be able to have some of their own destiny in their hands if they can.

And

that's what my audience, I think, has kind of afforded me.

And so that's something that I feel like if I could help create for or be a part of, just elaborating for other people who want to do that, then I think that I'll be even with life maybe.

Does that make sense or not?

Oh.

Did that make any sense?

It did?

Yeah, I thought it made sense.

Chuck's not listening.

It's hard to know.

I know.

He's still trying to find Gorchuk.

That video of him on YouTube is actually worth a look.

The video of the guy building Crazy Horse.

Oh.

It's just amazing.

It just looks like an old Wonderful World of Disney video.

You've been watching Dunkirk.

What the hell?

That's a good movie.

That's a great movie.

Yeah, it's probably one of the best movies, probably top six or seven movies past decade or five years.

I loved it.

What were we just talking about?

We're just talking about how soon we're going to start that project together, I think.

Yeah.

Or we should think about it at least.

Well, do you think you have the ability or time to do it?

I mean, the ability.

I think Antiques Roadshow,

old QVC, right?

I mean, I'm talking about like middle-of-the-night QVC.

Oh, yeah.

Back where you had entertainment that was mostly unintentional.

Yeah.

Right.

But people just kind of just love to see the train.

Maybe it's going to go off the tracks.

Maybe it's not.

And you could buy some stuff along the way, too.

I don't think anything that's so overtly focused on a transaction has the same appeal as potentially you and me talking to somebody, either together, or I'm not sure how it would work, but what I know for sure from Dirty Jobs is that the country is filled with people who are doing interesting things

that are making things.

Yeah.

Right?

Making things.

So I like that.

The question is, how do you celebrate that?

And look, Shark Tank is an answer to that question.

You can do it with venture capitalists and you can do it in that world.

But your set reminded me of like Wayne's World, which I love.

And it's like, I think there's a super

modest, lo-fi way.

In fact, the bigger the challenge, like reinvigorating manufacturing, in some ways, the more important it is to come at it modestly because you could never have a production big enough to fully

satisfy that, right?

Right.

And if you get it going in the beginning and it's going, well, small, small, then you could stay small or you could expand.

But I think you'd have a good idea, even

instinctually, then of what the energy is.

But yeah, I just, I really like that.

I really like,

you know, my mother's a hard worker, right?

Like, I always say the hardest working man I've ever met is my mother, right?

I'm sure she appreciates that.

I think she honestly does, probably.

You know, because she just, you know, she did it herself.

And so I think she kind of does respect that.

I know she, I know she was a woman.

But I do want to say that.

What's her name?

Her name is Gina.

Gina, you did good.

Look at your boy here.

She's a hard worker.

And I always

have always admired that she's a hard worker, you know?

So yeah, I just think like, yeah, I don't know.

If people can

people want to be able to defend for themselves, it's important to them, you know?

And I think it's important to the human spirit.

And I don't know.

I just feel like...

I don't know.

I think it could get scary if people can't do that.

And I feel like people want to be able to help one another and not just keep giving everything to like these conglomerates that they won't break up.

You know what else?

I think people need to see proof that other people found a way.

Yeah.

Whether they do or not, they need to see.

Like we're products of what we listen to and look at.

Yeah.

Right?

For better and worse.

Yeah.

What's he doing?

I don't know what he's looking at, but look how he is.

He's a product of it.

He's watching silent films.

We haven't heard from the guy.

I am.

I actually am watching a silent film.

I'm going to

put it right up here.

There you go.

There's your crazy horse.

Yeah, man.

This thing,

I encourage you to look at it.

His story is so unblitzed.

Him, that's 60 years ago with a jackhammer.

Wow.

Starting that thing.

That's amazing, man.

See, I think metaphorically, this is a good place to start to land the plane because this is what we're talking about doing.

If you're talking about reshoring, reinvigorating the trades, or like for me, like closing the skills gap, spoiler alert, I'm not going to do it.

I'm going to try,

you know,

but it's very much, it's a crazy horse notion.

We're not going to finish it.

That's all right.

Yeah.

I think, yeah.

It's kind of like Band of Brothers, you know, just because you put it on doesn't mean you have to finish it.

Although

it's happened to me before.

I literally spent

the whole day.

The whole day went down the tubes because that came on.

I know.

And you order DoorDash or whatever, and

you hope you pick the right food to accompany that sort of.

What does one dine on as we're seeing the liberation of France?

I don't know.

I'll probably go.

I usually go with like a fish sticks or whatever, kind of.

Not French fries.

Two on the nose?

Two on the nose.

but mike thanks but it would be an honor to try and even think about it together i appreciate you even just listening to me to even think about that and i know and i know we were talking about it together and just like trying to figure out i think like

but yeah i think people learn that stuff from you and other people that care that other people can

you know yeah we just have it's the same thing inside of us we want to be able to fend for ourselves right and so like yeah if we can figure something out to help support that i mean you're already doing it but um i know you i feel like there's a way that i can do do it.

Well, there is, man.

And I like to challenge the fucking big guy, you know?

The Rogan?

No.

No, that dude will fucking put me in his cheek like one of those damn Zen pouches.

Who's the big guy?

Big business, dude.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Look, big business will, they'll follow.

Fuck them.

They'll follow the audience.

But look, my audience is what it is.

Your audience.

What if it was a league of concerned podcasters, an LCP?

This is how we really land the plane.

In fact,

Theo and Mike form the LCP, the League of Concerned Podcasters.

We get Joe, we get a couple of other likely suspects, and then we target people who are making things in this country.

My friend,

Josh, Montana Knife Company, which is

Josh Smith.

You know Josh?

Yeah, I know Josh.

I got two of his freaking knives in my my truck.

Has he been on your show?

Take it easy.

Take it easy.

No, he hasn't.

Why hasn't he been on your show?

Because we don't really talk about knives that much.

A lot of our people are in recovery.

And I'm saying we fucking

one thing at a time.

I don't know if you get a whole group, though.

I don't know.

I think because when you try to get too many people.

No, no, they don't come all.

No, no, no, not all at the same time.

But if, like, if out of

collaboration, you find a guy like Josh, okay?

Somebody who's capable of scaling.

Yeah.

And you say, look, the only thing you don't have is notoriety.

The more people have your knives, the more people are going to love them.

The more people hear your story, right?

And in the end, what can we really do, you and me, is we tell stories and we help other people tell their stories.

And, you know, getting,

it just seems like identifying people who prove that you can still make it here.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

I think that's what this country is founded on.

I think it's important.

I don't know if that's what this country is founded on.

I don't know what I'm talking about with that.

But I think that that's important to people.

It makes me feel like,

I don't know.

I just know, you know, you know, when you think this is something that makes you feel like it would keep you excited about life, seeing some family, you know, do something and make something, and then they have like a thing or whatever.

It's conviction, man.

Yeah.

You're convicted.

Yeah.

I love that.

So you're convicted.

Well, look, man, I'm old.

I'm old, man.

I'm doing the best I can.

But people also need to know that you can grow up on the border of

Louisiana and Mississippi and wind up trying to figure out how to use your considerable influence to leave the world better than you found it.

Good for you, Theo Vaughan.

Yeah, well, thanks, dude.

I feel pretty lucky.

I'm just a product of my environment, you know, and a lot of fun people in my life.

All I am is just little pieces of them.

But I do feel lucky to get to talk with you, dude.

This has been a lot of fun.

Glad you're here.

And

me too.

Sorry to interrupt here.

It's all good.

He was watching Silent Porn.

Dude, he's watching fucking Highway to Heaven.

I saw him.

I knew he was a Victor Fannie fame when I saw that shirt.

I know you got to go, but that's a second oblique Michael Landon reference you've made.

What's going on?

I just love him.

can i tell you really fast enough to go yeah yeah um and i'll come back another time i've had such a great time thank you mike i really appreciate it dude i really do yeah thank you you're welcome um

we had a show in winnipeg canada and after the show

they this is like one month ago they're like some of the cast of little house on the prairie is here

because they're refilming the show and i was like I had no idea.

And I love that show growing up, dude.

I'll fucking beat the shit out of somebody who doesn't like it, dude.

Unless something's wrong with them and they're mentally unwell and they don't even know if they like it or not

but i loved it and uh i got to meet a couple of the actresses one of them this girl crosby fitzgerald she's playing uh the mom in it she plays laura ingalls oh no she plays laura's mother ma ingalls caroline caroline ingalls So anyway, but when I saw her, they introduced me.

I fucking, she says, she goes, you hugged me like I was your fucking mother.

And I was like, A, I am very sorry.

I do not know you, ma'am.

But B, I didn't even know that I was going to be like that, you know?

But yeah, that was our show, man.

That was that Pioneer Spirit.

Yeah.

There it is.

There it is.

That's all we're trying to reinvigorate.

That's all we're trying to do.

Mike Rhode, thank you so much, dude.

Anytime, Theo Vaughn.

Anytime.

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