Letitia James faces Mortgage Fraud Charges + Comedian Dean Delray + Actor Titus Welliver

Summary

Adam Carolla Show: Episode Summary Release Date: April 21, 2025

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Overview

In this episode of The Adam Carolla Show, host Adam Carolla engages in in-depth conversations with Colonel Brian Saucer of the Army Corps of Engineers, legendary TV host Maury Povich, and Steve Williams, a renowned golf caddy and racing enthusiast. The discussions span a range of topics from disaster response and military careers to media evolution and the intricacies of professional golf caddying.

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1. Army Corps of Engineers and the Malibu Palisades Cleanup

Guest: Colonel Brian Saucer
Timestamp Highlights:

• [04:24] Military Background: Colonel Saucer shares his 30-year career, beginning at West Point and detailing his roles within the Army Corps of Engineers.

  "I've been wearing a uniform with the US Army over my heart for 30 years." — Colonel Brian Saucer ([04:24])

• [06:09] Decision to Join Corps of Engineers: Discusses the selection process and his preference for the engineering branch based on his West Point class rank.

  "I was fortunate enough to graduate high enough to get what I wanted." — Colonel Saucer ([06:09])

• [07:42] Malibu Fire Cleanup: Highlights the scale of the current fire debris removal mission, noting it as the largest the Corps has undertaken.

  "This is the largest fire cleanup that the Corps of Engineers have ever been a part of." — Colonel Saucer ([07:42])

• [09:23] Addressing Misconceptions: Clarifies rumors about the Corps' involvement in the Katrina levee failures, affirming there was no intentional detonation.

  "There was not an intentional detonation of a levee during Katrina." — Colonel Saucer ([09:23])

• [13:18] Progress Update: Reports on the cleanup progress, with over 30% of eligible parcels cleared and projections for continued advancement.

  "We've cleared today over 1600. So that gets you over 30% cleared at this point." — Colonel Saucer ([13:18])

• [24:17] Future Assignments: Announces his upcoming move back to Germany to command the Memphis district, ensuring continuity in the Corps' efforts.

  "Jeff Palazzini… he's coming in not cold. I would venture to say he's coming in warm, if not hot, and being able to execute this mission." — Colonel Saucer ([24:17])

• [46:19] Restoration Efforts: Discusses the collaboration with utilities to restore power along Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and future infrastructure projects.

  "We're surging on power on PCH right now because it is a vital artery." — Colonel Saucer ([46:19])

Key Insights:

• The Army Corps of Engineers plays a crucial role in large-scale disaster response, often collaborating with federal, state, and local agencies.
• Effective disaster management requires meticulous planning, coordination, and the ability to adapt to evolving challenges.
• Leadership rotation ensures that missions continue seamlessly even as individual leaders transition between assignments.

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2. Media Evolution and Podcasting with Maury Povich

Guest: Maury Povich
Timestamp Highlights:

• [65:03] Podcasting Transition: Maury discusses shifting from traditional TV to podcasting, emphasizing the depth and intimacy podcasts offer.

  "The podcast for you is a way to have little more in depth conversations, longer form conversations with people." — Maury Povich ([65:03])

• [67:42] Unique Interview Moments: Highlights the value of discovering untold stories and personal facets through long-form interviews.

  "The best feeling I get in an interview is when somebody says to me, you know, no one has ever asked me about that." — Maury Povich ([67:42])

• [73:32] Career Beginnings: Reflects on his early career challenges, including navigating nepotism policies and finding his footing in journalism.

  "They say, well, you can't be a reporter unless you have experience. I said, yeah, but I got to get on the air in order to have experience." — Maury Povich ([73:32])

• [79:53] Beliefs on Family: Shares his views on the importance of the nuclear family and its impact on children's well-being.

  "The statistics say that a child has a better chance with two parents in their life than one." — Maury Povich ([79:53])

Key Insights:

• Podcasting allows media personalities to explore topics and personal stories in greater depth than traditional broadcasting.
• Building genuine, long-lasting relationships is essential for conducting meaningful interviews.
• Maury emphasizes the importance of family structures in fostering healthy child development.

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3. Golf Caddying and Racing with Steve Williams

Guest: Steve Williams
Timestamp Highlights:

• [99:02] Caddying for Tiger Woods: Details his 12-year tenure as Tiger Woods' caddy, highlighting Tiger's unparalleled competitiveness and work ethic.

  "He's once in a lifetime player, once in a generational player with all the skill set and the desire to go with it." — Steve Williams ([99:02])

• [107:55] Caddying Economics: Explains the financial incentives of professional caddying, including percentage-based earnings from tournament winnings.

  "The main income from a caddie is a percentage of the winning... it's a very lucrative living to be made for a job that doesn't require any training." — Steve Williams ([107:55])

• [115:49] Sporting Rivalries: Discusses the intense sporting rivalry between Australia and New Zealand, particularly in rugby and cricket.

  "It's a very healthy rivalry. It's a very good one." — Steve Williams ([115:49])

• [123:35] Casey Martin Controversy: Provides insights into the debate over allowing disabled golfers to use carts, referencing Casey Martin's case.

  "Golf is a sport where you've got to be able to walk the golf course. That's basically what it is." — Steve Williams ([123:35])

Key Insights:

• Professional caddying is not only about carrying clubs but also involves strategic thinking, psychological support, and providing real-time advice.
• The financial rewards for top caddies can be substantial, making it a coveted position in the golfing world.
• Sporting rivalries, such as that between Australia and New Zealand, play a significant role in national identities and competitive sports culture.

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Conclusion

This episode of The Adam Carolla Show offers listeners a multifaceted exploration of disaster management through Colonel Saucer's experiences, the evolving landscape of media with Maury Povich, and the high-stakes world of professional golf caddying with Steve Williams. Each guest provides unique perspectives, enriching the conversation with personal anecdotes, professional insights, and thoughtful reflections on their respective fields.

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Notable Quotes:

• "There's a lot of humanity out there driving these trucks, working these excavators... it's been incredibly impressive." — Colonel Brian Saucer ([20:04])
• "Just get in the door." — Maury Povich ([68:09])
• "If you're getting paid 10% on a win and the player makes $5 million, the caddy is going to make $500K." — Steve Williams ([127:13])

For more detailed insights and discussions, listeners are encouraged to tune into the full episode available on PodcastOne and other major podcast platforms.

Transcript

[Adam Carolla]

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[Dawson]

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[Adam Carolla]

Well, this is a jam packed episode. We have Colonel Brian Saucer, that's the guy from the Army Corps of Engineers I did my vlog with. So he'll answer every question you may have or I may have about the whole Malibu Palisades cleanup and beyond. Steve Williams, who was Tiger woods caddy for many, many years all through. And of course the legendary Maury Povich is on as well. And we'll do all that right after this. Hey, this is Adam Carolla from the Adam Carolla Show. Betonline is the world's most trusted betting platform and your number one source for all sports betting action. Baseball season's in full swing. See what I did there? I said swing when I said baseball and we're into the home stretch of the NBA and NFL. I should say NHL playoffs. NFL's coming up sooner than you think as well. Betonline has more ways to stay in on the action with the latest odds, news and scores, even live in game betting while the games are going and being played with the largest selection of odds on everything from MLB, NHL and UFC professional golf, BetOnline remains the number one online source for all your sports wagering info. In between games, head on over to Betonline's casino with all the top Vegas style games including poker and live casino Betonline. The game starts here.

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[Dawson]

Airline Turbulence. Survivor Adam Corolla.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Get it on. Got to get on. No choice. We got a mandate. Get it on. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for telling a friend. Colonel Brian Saucers in studio now. Good to see you again, my friend.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, great to see you.

[Adam Carolla]

So, a little backstory. When we were out surveying the damage in the Palisades in Malibu, we went out on our own and we just sort of shotgunned it. And then at some point, we got in contact with the Army Corps of Engineers, and they said, you should talk to Colonel Saucer and go out with him, and he could fill in a lot of official particulars. So we did for the vlog, and people liked you a lot, possibly quite a bit more than me. And so we said, well, we should have Brian in and talk to him in the podcast, because it makes sense. We have another vlog coming out today where you're featured in it, so we thought it'd be good material for this. So it's good to see you in the studio.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, no, appreciate it, and thank you for the opportunity.

[Adam Carolla]

So let's just set the table with you before we get into the official particulars. You joined up when?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, so I actually joined up out of high school. I went to the United States Military Academy at West Point. So, yeah, that was out of High School, 1995. So I've been wearing a uniform with US army over my heart for 30 years.

[Adam Carolla]

So you went directly to West Point?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

That's correct.

[Adam Carolla]

Where was your high school?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

It was in Salem, Oregon. Salem, Oregon. McKay High School.

[Adam Carolla]

And is this a family thing?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

So my father served in Vietnam. He was wounded pretty severely in Vietnam, so he was medically discharged. He was actually a combat engineer officer, just like I am. And then my grandfather served in World War II as well. Not necessarily a family business. I was never. My father or my grandfather never necessarily pressured me into the military, but it's certainly something that I had an affinity for. Pretty young.

[Adam Carolla]

And so you go to West Point, and then once you graduate West Point, then what?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, so after you graduate West Point, you're commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States army, and then at that point, you get posted to, you know, various installations in the United States or in Germany, you go off to school first, a military school. So as an engineer officer, the home of the engineers is Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. So I went there first, and then my first assignment was actually over in Germany, so I was over in kind of Upper Bavaria for those Initial years, and this is now 2000. So you're, you know, you're. You're nine years or so after the fall of the Soviet Union. So you still have the remnants of the Cold War army, and we're kind of going through a transition as an army at that point. This is before the global war on terror.

[Adam Carolla]

Mm. And you decide on Army Corps of Engineers, somebody pushes you toward Army Corps of Engineers. How do you make that decision?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, so, I mean, it's changed a little bit on how they do what we call branching in the United States army than when I went through. But essentially, I had a preference list, and I was able to put in preferences for the branches that I wanted to go into. And then the army goes through a selection process in that. And at the time, your class rank at West Point is what mattered the most, because the higher the rank, essentially, the much greater chance you get your preference. So I was fortunate enough to graduate high enough to get what I wanted. I wanted the Corps of Engineers early on, and so it worked out for me.

[Adam Carolla]

So, as we saw. When I went out and saw you in the field is the Army Corps of Engineers. Is a Corps of Engineers, but most of the work is subbed out right to the private sector.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, that's absolutely correct. And so, really, the vast majority of my career, I served in the operational Army. I think that's what most citizens think of the Army. Kind of the business end, as an engineer officer, you have the opportunity to. To move over to the Corps of Engineers periodically. And the Corps of Engineers, like you just mentioned, is primarily civilians. It's over 35,000 civilians. And then we got a small cadre, essentially, of uniform officers that command districts and divisions of those civilians. And they're professionals. There are all sorts of different professional trades. We have tradesmen as well, that are in the Corps of Engineers. And then when we come to a disaster like this, like you just mentioned, you know, we set up the operation, but we hire it out for operation like this. So. Yeah, so it's private subs.

[Adam Carolla]

Is this the big cleanup, fire cleanup you guys have ever done?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

It is. This is the largest fire cleanup that the Corps of Engineers have ever been a part of. Recently, the Corps we have. We're really kind of finishing up over in Maui right now in Hawaii with that. That fire that took place a couple years ago. But in terms of a fire debris removal mission, this is the largest one the Corps has ever participated in.

[Adam Carolla]

How did this compare to something like Katrina?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Well, amount of debris there was. Were you around For Katrina, I was. I was in the military at the time. I was overse when Katrina went down, so I was not in the Corps. But the Corps did obviously play a part in Katrina as well. And frankly, we had a lot of lessons learned that came out of Katrina. In terms of volume, the debris volume was greater in Katrina than you're seeing here. But obviously you have hurricane damage versus fire damages. So there's certainly some nuances there.

[Adam Carolla]

I took a flight home many years ago, and I was in first class with Spike Lee, and he told me that the Army Corps engineers blew up the levees on Katrina intentionally. And I said, well, you know what? I'm gonna ask someone if that happened or not. So now I can ask you, Brian, did the Army Corps engineers blow up the levee so they could drown people? Katrina?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Well, the short answer is no. But certainly New Orleans is a challenging problem. Set one of my good friends, Colin Jones, Colonel Colin Jones, he's actually the New Orleans commander there right now. We've made significant advancements with protecting and flood risk mitigation in and around New Orleans. But no, there was not an intentional detonation of a levy during Katrina.

[Adam Carolla]

And as the Army Corps of Engineers, what falls under their purview? Like, are they walking around or traveling around and looking for bridges or dams or levees that are not in a one condition?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, you could think of it that way. So we have a series of what's called federal projects throughout the United States. Typically, that's a cost share program with the local authorities, so state or local authorities. And we do a lot of flood risk mitigation. So we are going to be more on the levees and the dams and the locks and the floodways and the spillways to control the movement of water, to include navigation as well. We're going to do dredging in your harbors, in your rivers. So we're moving. We're helping move commerce up and down all the inland water systems and the coastal harbors. And then. Yeah, and then performing the flood risk mitigation is some of the primary, what we call civil works tasks that we have out there across the nation. And we've been doing that historically, really, since for our origin goes back to 1775. But the modern mission, you can trace back to the time of Thomas Jefferson and Lewis and Clark and moving through and mapping the United States. And then waterways were our highways.

[Adam Carolla]

Who's monkeying around with the canals? I mean, such as the Suez Canal or other canals. Is that an Army Corps of Engineers thing?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Well, you Would have thought I would have seeded you as a softball. That question, but yeah. The Corps of Engineers built the Panama Canal, not the Suez Canal.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, well, the Panama Canal. I think they tried to build it for a while, but it didn't really work. And then we showed up.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

That's correct. Yeah. That's exactly how it went down.

[Adam Carolla]

But is the Corps maintaining the Panama Canal or if something breaks on the Panama Canal?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Not currently. We don't have a mission with the Panama Canal at this time. And so, as you may know, it's been handed over to the country of Panama. So the Corps does not play a part in maintaining the Panama. Panama Canal at this time.

[Adam Carolla]

So you. What percentage of folks that are working. I went out there. You're doing Malibu, Palisades. There's Army Corps Engineers and Altadena as well. Are you guys. Last time we spoke, you were getting up to full capacity. Are you at full capacity?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

We're about there. We're actually going to add some additional crews here in the next few days and weeks. We're very close to full capacity like we talked about last time. You know, we're in terms of, I think, what people see out there right now. You see what we call debris crews. And that's an excavator with an operator. That's a skid steer with an operator. There's a water truck there. Famously, we have. We have folks, hoses. Yeah, I figured you might want to get into that.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, off the air.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Off the air, yeah, absolutely. And so we have. We have a team and then we have laborers on site as well. That's what people see during the physical removal of debris. But there's a lot going on behind the curtain before you get to the debris removal. We're doing a lot of surveying and collection and materials before we do the mass debris removal. And so that, you know, we have arborists on site. We have. We have to go through the asbestos process. We're going to certified asbestos consultant out there. We're going to do testing, and then we're going to do an abatement if you have asbestos. So there's a lot that goes on before you get to the actual debris removal. But to your point, we are. If it's a bell curve, in terms of our response, we're at the peak of the bell curve right now. And I think that's the months of April and May where we're going to be at, you know. You know, full velocity, if you will.

[Adam Carolla]

So what is the prognosis? You're going to Be you're doing a parcel every day or so. It depends on the side of the hill or out in the ocean with pilasters or pylons or caissons or whatever. But how many have you cleared? Yeah, versus what's still left?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

That's a great question. So in total, what we're seeing out in the Palisades fire to your point, Malibu, the county areas in the Pacific Palisades, you know, that's around 6,000 parcels that were burned that are considered eligible by FEMA. We work for FEMA through the authorities and essentially they're deeming what is eligible or not primarily destroyed structures on parcels. So if we're sitting at 6000 right now, we've cleared 1600. But we also know that there's about 1200 opt outs as well.

[Adam Carolla]

So that's about 7200.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Well, 6000 total. 1200 opt out.

[Adam Carolla]

Okay.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Our homework assignment is going to be more like 48.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

We think we're going to get probably a little bit more. So I think a nice round number is 5000 to think of. And we've cleared today over 1600. So that gets you over 30% cleared at this point.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. And a lot of that wasn't when you guys were ramped up fully.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Oh, absolutely, right. I mean, we had.

[Adam Carolla]

You're moving faster.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

We're moving faster. We're right now a five day average. We're doing about 50 parcels in a day. So, you know, you know, fairly easy math. You're, you're, you're achieving about 1% cleared per day. So if we're at 30% right now, you know, we're projecting by the middle of May, we'll be at 60%. And then to your point, not all parcels are created equal. You saw that in your videos, your great drone shots that you put on the vlog.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

And so your earlier question, how long does it take to do a parcel? Well, we're doing 50 today, but there's parcels that take one day, a lot of them, and then there's parcels that can take up to 10 days. And so there's a, there's a spectrum there.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm guessing they're moving faster in Altadena because it's flat and it's sort of on a grid and it's not hilly and it's not out in the ocean.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Right.

[Adam Carolla]

And it's just an easier, it's just easier. It's just flatter, smaller, grittier, kind of laid out for the most, for the most part. I don't know if you're keeping track of the guys over there in Altadena, but they must be having a slightly. Moving at a slightly faster clip.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

You know, my comrades in arms over there, Colonel Eric Swenson and Colonel Sonny Avichall, they're out there working that problem set and to your point, yes, Eaton's moving a little bit faster. It's comparable amount of crews that we do have. There are around 900 parcels more than us cleared over in Eaton right now, and they have a little bit more than we do to in. In terms of their overall homework. But, yeah, they're a little bit ahead of this and to the points that you just articulated. That's exactly right.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. I'm going to savor you saying that's exactly right, because my whole life people are going, no, but. No, but still. But hold on. But what about. Yes, that's exactly right. See, that's what smart people say. Are they. How many units or how many parcels are in Altadena? Not that you're an Altadena expert, but I really don't know. The size of the Altadena fire in terms of structural damage versus Palisades in.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Malibu, it's very similar. And I know that it sounds like I'm punting on this question a little bit, but the numbers are always changing. There's a little bit of noise in the data because as you go through the properties, some will be eligible, some will not be eligible, but all in 6900 or so.

[Adam Carolla]

So it's all about the same.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, it's very close.

[Adam Carolla]

So these two fires are separated by a pretty good distance. I mean, if somebody. I lived in the middle of Malibu and my dad lived in Altadena, my dad said, come on over Sunday and pay me a visit. I'd be like. And not for only personal problems, but because it was a long schlep. It's sort of one side of town to the other side of town represents Altadena and Pasadena. Sorry, Altadena and Malibu. But it still ended up being about the same in scope and scale, huh?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah. I mean, in terms of the amount of acreage that was burned, I think the Pasadena fire, from memory is larger. A lot of that's up into the Santa Monica Mountains that was. Did not have structures on it. And what we call the Eaton fire, which was right there, Altadena and Pasadena and Sierra Madre, I think in total acreage, Pasadena is a little bit better, bigger. But to your point, it is, yeah. I mean, unfortunately, with this disaster, it ended up being in and around the same number of parcels at each fire that were destroyed.

[Adam Carolla]

Any interesting anecdotes? Did Mel Gibson bring you muffins or any the Sheen boys come by and ask you if you want a little Gatorade or any. Any of that kind of stuff?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

No, I. You know, I have. I have four. I have four kids and I have three teenage daughters. So, you know, their knowledge of their father coming over to Los Angeles, everything that I do over here is mildly interesting. But I did have the opportunity. Kim Kardashian came out with her crew and they were filming her show, and I got a picture with Kim Kardashian. So at that point, I was kind of cool with my girls. Okay, that's kind of cool what you're doing out there now. So up until that point, it was just standard dads away doing some stuff.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I get the same thing. My daughter cared about me for 10 minutes when she found out that Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas hit on me at a party in 2002 or something like that. Maybe it was 99. She pepped up for that for about 10 seconds. And then. Then was back to ho hum. So you're out here, what. And I see these crews and there's a lot of humanity out there driving these trucks, working these excavators, so on and so forth. It's an army, pardon the pun. How many of these people are coming in here from somewhere else and what's local and do you even know?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Well, I don't have a great distribution on where all the different subcontractors are coming from. I will tell you that the majority in a very high percentage are coming here from Southern California, and that's obviously due to a little bit of proximity. So most of them drive in for a day, and most of these guys are coming in 4am in the morning, and then they're working a standardized day and they're working seven days a week. They rotate the crews, so they give them a rest cycle. But I will tell you, having served in the army in my entire career and not having served with a lot of private contractors this close and this often, I mean, it's really, truly, and I mean this sincerely, it's been an absolute joy to work with these great Americans. I mean, you get some really hardworking individuals out there and very dedicated to this mission. For a lot of them. You meet them all the time. This is personal for them. They may have known somebody that lost a house or the very least was displaced. And so the dedication out there that I've seen, and I mean this sincerely, has been incredibly impressive. We got some amazing operators out there too. They're like artists on an excavator. It's amazing.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I'll say this, I spent a lot of time with you and touring the sites with you. I've done it without on my own. And going up to Mescal Canyon, I didn't hear, I didn't hear one horn honk which is a very rare thing because there's trucks queued up for 20 blocks along. They're guys backing trucks up, there's a lot of congestion, you know what I mean? And normally when there's that situation, somebody starts texting on their phone, they look down, someone's waving them forward, some behind them gets impatient, they start leaning on the horn a little bit. I didn't hear any horn honking. I didn't hear anyone yelling out a window, let's get moving. Whatever. There was no friction. It was just people sort of moving lots of well oiled gears just sort of rolling along, doing the job.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, to your point, I think that's largely true. This is still a human endeavor and so there's going to be naturally some friction out there. We're working this. If you look at the percentages of the work out there, the core of engineers through the private contractor partnership that we have, have, that's about 80% of your effort out there right now on debris clearance. But you got that 20% that is private contractors. And you can naturally have some friction there because it's a confined space. You know those streets up there in the Pacific Palisades, pretty narrow. Yes, space is an issue. So there is some friction every once in a while. But I, you know, we certainly try to work and partner with the privates and you saw that obviously there on Pacific coast highway where. Yeah, that encroachment zone or that, that construction zone that we built out in cooperation with Caltrans. You know, we're bringing in the private contractors just trying to work this thing together. So trying to alleviate as much friction as we call it in the military as possible. But this is still a human endeavor. So there's gonna be some mad individuals sometimes.

[Adam Carolla]

Do you have any idea what the average guy is driving one of those dump trucks is getting paid?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

They are doing well. They are doing well. If I gave you a number, I would probably be wrong. I'm pretty close on that number. When we came in, you'll see that most of the material that we're using are using the Super 10 dump trucks certified Here in the state of California. And there's a finite amount of those even here in the Los Angeles area. And so in order to contract out and reach that type of capacity that we needed to reach. Yeah, it's a very competitive wage. I'll leave it at that.

[Adam Carolla]

50 bucks. Plus.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

I think the plus. I would lean on the plus.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. And the guys working the heavy machinery are getting more than that. Right.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

As you know, a heavy machine operator that's experienced is a premium. The skills trades and that you translate that to heavy equipment operators. Absolutely.

[Adam Carolla]

It is. It is amazing. And I don't know if you've seen any of this stuff online, but they do have those competitions now where the guy tries to peel a boiled egg with his. With the claw of his excavator or. Or dunk a teabag or something. Like it's getting really granular now. Like what they can do, they're not just moving boulders. Like they can really sift through it. I saw it, but because it was in the vlog and I talked about it a little bit, Temescal canyon is all what you guys have taken over. And then you have the dump trucks and the concrete pulverizers and the guys pulling all the rebar out of the concrete, which is obviously embedded in the center of the concrete because that's how you lay out concrete and rebar and pulling it all out and using just the. You got this 20 ton machine that stands 60ft tall, but they're using fingers like a surgeon on that thing, pulling out all the rebar. The average salary. I got a lot of my team.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Your team did some digging very late.

[Adam Carolla]

Similar roles. Engineer operators. All right, I'm not. It's too much. It's too much reading for me. Okay, so you are. We got a core out here. We got the Altadena core. We got you. And I know you're shipping out real soon. Right back to Germany.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah. So my day job is I command the great Memphis district at the upper end of the lower Mississippi. And you may have seen there's been some significant storms in the past couple weeks. So we have what we call high water throughout that area on the Mississippi river and the tributary. So we got a lot of flooding going on out there. That's flood risk. Mitigation is one of the primary missions for the Memphis district. And I'll be heading back there. I change. We call it change command. So I'll hand the colors to another colonel over there and then I am going to move back to the operational army in Germany.

[Adam Carolla]

So why not leave you here for another several months and have you complete the job since you're so familiar with the terrain now?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

You know, I would say, and, you know, obviously I'm going to be a little bit biased here, but the Corps of Engineers has a pretty deep bench of leadership. We have all the expertise that we've already talked about in the Corps of Engineers, but we also have a deep benchmark of leaders. And so we do rotate out the colonel, Jeff Palazzini, a good friend of mine for 30 years, he was actually one of my roommates at West Point. He's come in to take over for me.

[Maury Povich]

And.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

And Jeff actually has more disaster response experience than I do. And so, you know, him coming into this theater, he's coming in not cold. I would. I would venture to say he's coming in warm, if not hot, and being able to execute this mission. And so we do this regularly in the military. And so, you know, naturally for me, it would have been a joy to stay here and to see this one all the way through. But, you know, I'm fortunate enough to have orders to move on a different assignment. And I don't think you're going to see any. You will not see any decrease in momentum with the team that we have coming in. In addition, Colonel Eric Swenson, who's overseeing both fires right now, he was out in Maui for six, six months. And so that coverage overlaps. And then we have another colonel just focused on Eaton like I'm focused on Palisades. And so. So that layering of leadership and leveraging experienced leaders and rotating through, that's something the Corps does with all disaster responses. And I would say that's kind of ingrained in the U.S. army. That's what we do in the U.S. army all the time.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, man. Soft toe. That's the name of the boot I'm holding from Brunt. Now I'm only holding one because the other one's on my foot, because I've been wearing them around. They're nice. They kind of remind me when I used to hit the construction sites, Sears used to make a boot that had a white sole, and it was really cool. And I used to have a pair way back in the day on the construction site, but, man, they weren't as good as these. Founder of Brunt, Eric Girard grew up with a blue collar background and started Brunt Workwear after his friends in the trades encouraged him to start a workwear brand that was really built for them. And that's why all the Brunt products are named after guys he grew up with. So like I said, I'm wearing the old man soft toe right now. These Brunt boots were comfortable right out of the box, most of them. You know, stuff you got to break in. You don't have to break into Brunts. They feel great. Most other boots require, you know, you got to get the mink oil out, you got to run it around, you're going to get blisters. Otherwise this stuff right out of the box, totally wearable. Brunt isn't just about work boots. They offer a full range of high performance gear built for tough jobs. I used to be in the trades and I can tell you this Brunt stuff is top shelf. It's Brunt, right Dawson?

[Dawson]

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[Adam Carolla]

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[Dawson]

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[Adam Carolla]

Shopify.com corolla I hear that recruitment is up now with all the branches with Pete, Hegseth and Trump and the sort of little more I would call pro American crowd. I guess I don't know if you've experienced that. I don't know if you can hear people talking in the ranks. But do you have a take on that?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

I do think you're right. I think in the numbers that we're seeing on recruitments, what I've seen from the news reports, just like you, I think there's been a bit of an uptick. The great thing about the US army is we always fall under the civilian leadership, the duly elected civilian leadership above us. All elected leaders, regardless of party. I've served under three Democratic presidents, two Republican presidents for us. We swear an allegiance to the Constitution. And I like to think that we're part of. We represent the United States. And so staying right down the middle and just executing policy. We don't make policy, we execute policy. And so, you know, I haven't dug into the recruiting numbers, but I have seen the same news reports that you have.

[Adam Carolla]

So you come out as we talked about. You get assigned here, you get a stipend, you set up here. You live in Germany, right?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Well, I'm going to Germany. I live in Memphis right now, and so my family's in Memphis.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, your family's in Memphis.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

We're moving to Germany this summer.

[Adam Carolla]

So your family has to pick up and move?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

They do, yeah. I mean, my poor wife, she's moved the house. Honestly, I should have looked. I should have done the math before came in here. We've probably moved 15 to 17 times in our military career, so she's pretty adept at it. You can't say that you ever enjoy it, but it's part of the process. But we've certainly enjoyed the journey because there's been just a whole set of experiences that we've had that the Army's provided for us. Living abroad, living in the United States, listening, living in different parts of the United States. And so overall net gain. And we've enjoyed it.

[Adam Carolla]

No, I agree. I mean, I've always said kind of like about the military, which is it may not pay a ton, but if you're on the deck of an aircraft carrier, I mean, how could you ever pay for that experience? You know what I mean? The things you get to do are kind of priceless. Even if you're not getting rich off at the places you get to see the experiences you get to have.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, I think as a colonel that's been in the army for quite a while now, several decades. I'm certainly a fan of the military. What I like about the military, the US army in particular, is opportunity. There's a lot of opportunity out there, I would argue, for young people looking for Purpose, motivation, direction, that the military is a great place to find that and then get opportunities like you just talked about. I mean, I've, I mean, I. Before the fire has occurred, you know, I'm. I'm on the Mississippi river, worried about flood risk mitigation and navigation on the river. And then before I know it, 48 hours, I'm in Los Angeles working on a fire response. For me, I enjoy that variety. I enjoy that kind of the new challenges. And so you get those, those catalysts that come along every once in a while that kind of, you know, you know, speak, you know, peak your interest and pique your motivation. Again, opportunity. And the army certainly provides that for you. If you stick around long enough, you're going to get a lot of opportunity.

[Adam Carolla]

So when can you retire? When you plan on retiring.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

I mean, really, I could, I could retire anytime. Traditionally, I'm kind of grandfathered into the old retirement system, which was classically 20 years, and I've crossed the 20 year mark. I'm approaching 26 of active duty years. I could retire anytime I want. But I'll tell you that, I mean, I love this profession. I love being in the Army. I love what it represents. So at this point in my life, I'm probably going to stay in the army till the Army's done with me. It's a young person's game, if you will. And so I'm certainly closer to the end of my career versus the beginning of my career, but just trying to enjoy all the opportunities that are before me.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. And when you retire, do you take a significant pay cut?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

I mean, not necessarily. You can, certainly when you retire, you have a set of experiences that is desirable, that can be desirable in the private sector. For me, as an engineer officer, I'm academically civil engineer, industrial engineer with a decent amount of experience. And so. So a lot of us, you can translate that into working for private industry in very similar fields, or you can go become a high school history teacher or whatever you want to do. But there's, you know, for my peers that have transitioned out of the army, they've always landed pretty well on their feet. And so I don't know necessarily what I'm going to do after the military, but I would say that it sets you up for any number of opportunities post military.

[Adam Carolla]

Have you had any combat situations? Fired the gun, the opposing enemy? I mean, I see here you got a bronze star.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Oh, my gosh. You guys dug into the Internet. We dug into that, yeah. In our generation that came up during the global War of terror. I did have some time in Iraq, did have some time in Afghanistan, did have a lot of time in Eastern Europe. Certainly some of those times were more difficult than other times being in those combat theaters. The way I look at it, though, I mean, of my peer group, there's guys that have served more often overseas in combat tours than I have and gone through greater hardships than I have. But I have had the opportunity to serve in combat, yes, in the United States Army.

[Adam Carolla]

See, for me, it seems like maybe sort of luck of the draw, but your dad went to Vietnam. Vietnam seemed like a tough draw. Iraq, Iran, these Middle east theater seems tough. Then there's World War II. You may end up liberating Paris and drinking some red wine with a lovely lady after you vanquished the Krauts. You could get assigned to Malibu, essentially, versus, as I said, Mogadishu, like when I was talking to you earlier. So there's a lot of just kind of cosmic wheel in the sky stuff, right? The Middle east stuff, Iraq, Iran stuff, that just seems tough to me. It seems dusty and flat and dry and doesn't seem like being, you know, if you were in the Air Corps, 1942, and you were stationed in England, you know, like, man, you could go out to a pub and have a pint, you know, and enjoy it, then maybe you'd get shot down by a Stuka. But at least while you were there, the surroundings were kind of interesting.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, no doubt about it. I mean, you never know what you're going to get in terms of where you deploy. I would say, to your point, you go to World War II, Army Air Corps, you might have had a drink at the local pub, a pint. But being up in the sky over Northern Europe in that time would have been pretty. Not a great survival rate. And I will tell you, I think, you know, for me personally, what resonates for me is, you know, I do a lot of reading and do a lot of historical accounts, and you ever start feeling sorry for yourself, read this Kind of War by T.R. ferenbach about the Korean War, and you'll suddenly realize that it's really not that bad what you got. And so no matter what situation that I think you can find yourself in, there's those that have served that have certainly gone through greater hardship than what you're in right now. And that, for me personally, that's always helps put it into perspective to a certain degree.

[Adam Carolla]

So your dad was injured in Vietnam?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

Was he in the Army?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

He was. He was a combat Engineer lieutenant in the United States.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, he was a combat engineer.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yep.

[Adam Carolla]

So there are times when the combat engineers show up later and times when they show up earlier. Yeah, right.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Well, combat engineers historically embed with the infantry. And so you're at the, you know, the tip of the spear, if you will. And so in the case of my father, that's exactly what he was. He was ingrained into an infantry task force and they were forward and yeah, they came under enemy attack and he essentially was. He was actually riding on the top of the tank at the time and he took a piece of shrapnel on the chest and it almost killed him. He was in hospitals for about four months afterwards.

[Adam Carolla]

So he didn't try to discourage you from following in that route?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

No, he didn't. He never did. He really, I think a lot of folks like his generation, World War II generation, he really didn't talk about it a lot. But my dad was very patriotic. I was raised in a patriotic home, pretty proud of that. And he certainly communicated to me and my brother the nobility of service, but he didn't push us at all. And so I think when I started, you know, communicating my father that I was interested in going to the military, he did not put a stop to it and really didn't talk about his combat experiences with me until I went to Iraq for my first tour.

[Adam Carolla]

And yeah, when you were in Iraq, where would you, where were you based?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

So that was the first tour in Iraq was 05 06. That was in Ramadi. So that's in the Al Anbar province. That's out there in the west. It was right next to Fallujah. There was a significant battle in Fallujah just prior to when I got there to Ramadi. Ramadi had kind of seen a lot of the insurgents in the enemy fighters that we did have progressed from Fallujah, moved a little bit west into Ramadi. So it was, it was a pretty trying time in a challenging one year tour. But from that, I think shared hardship. On the flip side of this, not to take this to a depressing tone, but on the flip side of it, I mean, you established some bonds with those that you serve with that I think are deep and lasting. And then you can kind of have friendships that are a privilege to have as you move through the rest of your life. And so there's a positive there.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I mean, you have to have those kinds of environments to galvanize those kinds of relationships. It can be that way to, I mean, a lesser degree with real competitive Sports. When you're on a team and you're sort of doing battle with the other team or whatever, you're not literally doing battle, but I mean, when guys, especially young guys, are in a situation where it's life or death. Yeah. Then you form that. Right. Which is much more, much different than an office environment or something.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Well, I mean, I don't want to take anything away from anybody's experience, but I think to your point, you know, competitive sports, you could have that as well. No doubt. I think that, I think in general, shared hardship. Shared hardships are good for the human spirit. Yes. And so that can come in many different forms. It doesn't need. I mean, you could find that in the Peace Corps. I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean that you only find that in the military, but I think those type of bonds, I think they're healthy for people. And it's certainly. I appreciate all the friendships that I've had that I've made in the military.

[Adam Carolla]

No, I agree. I think part of the problem with some of the younger folks is we're getting away from the environment where you're putting yourself in a dangerous situation or you have some superior sort of yelling at you and telling you what to do and really like, like testing yourself. You know that feeling of I can't go another inch. And somebody's yelling at you go. And you're yelling, I'm gonna throw up. And they're going, get down and give me some push ups. Like, we eliminated all of that, but it wasn't a good idea. It's necessary. And then you apply it in every facet of your life, which I don't think people really understand. Like, I never was in the military, but I got, but I did football back when they used to be able to kick your ass badly and deprive you of water and stuff like that. And they just tortured you. And part of it was like, they go, well, why wouldn't they give you any water? Part of it was like, they didn't care about hydration back then. But the other part was it was to break you down. Like they were trying to break you.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

That's right.

[Adam Carolla]

They didn't give you water because you wanted water that didn't have anything to do with hydration or, or any of that. It was like, you want water? Yeah, no water for you. The trick question was always after they'd run everyone ragged, they'd go, who's tired? And then people would be like, should we say we're tired? This is a bad question. Because if you go, we're not tired, they go, good, we're going to run some more. And then if you go, we are tired. They'd go, well, you're in bad shape, so we need to run some more.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

That's.

[Adam Carolla]

I realized there was no good answer to who's tired. But they ran you. They're real tough. And then at some point, you've gotten out in the real world and there was a little diversity or adversity, I should say, and you sucked it up. Like, you just rallied. You know, you were able to do it because of that experience of getting your ass kicked.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Fully agree.

[Adam Carolla]

And now we've decided not to kick anyone's ass. And now we got a bunch of soft folk out there.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

I. I can't. I mean, I. I agree with you. I. I still remember, like, you high school football. I mean, I remember, you know, Coach Ron August, and he would just tell us, and, like, you're going to keep running until I get tired is what he would say. Right. And he's sitting there with a whistle and a clipboard.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

And I always, you know, I remember those, you know, times like you high school football, whatever, and that kind of where it starts. And I think there's a lot of great. There's goodness there when you get some callus on your hands and callus on your feet.

[Adam Carolla]

I agree. But here's a. There is a little. Here's the disconnect. And I don't know if you run into this in your own life, family life, or maybe with young guys who show up that you. That you in your. I don't know, we're calling your platoon or your. What do we call your.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

As a lieutenant, when you come out? Platoon. Yeah. You're a platoon leader Initially.

[Adam Carolla]

Okay.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

I find myself saying to a lot of young people, and they go, I'm not feeling it today, bro. I go, just get up. You're fine. And they go, yeah, but my stomach hurts. I go, your stomach's fine. Let's go. And they go, whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you being such a douche for? And I'm going, I'm not, but let's go, you know? And they go, what have you been so hard on the boy for? He says he's tired, he wants to sit. He says his stomach dips in. FIBA says he may have a headache. He ate something earlier that disagreed with him. I go, get up. Let's go. Here we go. You can do this. Just, let's do this. And they go, whoa, whoa, whoa. And I'm like, like, I don't wanna sound like a douche, but I do know what this is and I know what you need. You need someone going, get up, you're fine, let's keep going here. Yet society does not like this form of parenting or governing. And I don't know, you must run into that a lot, cuz you went through all it and then when you see it in somebody else, you know they're good. They're just saying they're not good. And maybe they believe they're not good, but they're good.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, you know, the. I'll say in the military, obviously we're gonna, in the United States army, we're gonna, we're gonna bring in soldiers from all across the country, all walks of life, all different backgrounds, and they're gonna have different experiences as they grow up. Certainly early on in my career you learn that, you know, kind of the, kind of the greatest thing that you can do for your soldiers and for your unit is to train them and train them hard. And it goes back to what you're saying right there so that you can break down some of those mental blocks that they may have and collectively make the greater unit stronger. I mean, that's the whole purpose of it. And so, yeah, I identify with that. I mean, you train hard and you train as you fight is another moniker that we have in the United States Army. Train as you fight. So when you get to an actual fight, it's not completely foreign to you and you have a little bit of grit and callous built up. That's certainly part of it. Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

So we're going to be cleared out of Malibu and I hear the powers back on, but I haven't been out there in a little bit, but we're going to be cleared out by the summer. You think that things will be semi back to normal on pch, Although there's a lot of traffic issues. Like we were talking, I think off the air, there's a steakhouse named Mastro's right in the middle there. Great steakhouse and love going over there, having a steak and a martini once in a while. They're down, but they're gonna come back. Come back. But we know not when exactly, but I want mastros. So what do you think?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

So what we're seeing on PCH right now and working with the state and the state has communicated to fema who we're working on behalf of fema. It's in a great partnership with both organizations. You know, we're surging on power on PCH right now because it is a vital artery. I mean, it really is your vital artery from Malibu.

[Adam Carolla]

So you guys are working on you focusing on PC?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, much more so than when you were there last time. When we walked around with the camera. We've effectively tripled, if not quadrupled our crews on PCH right now. So when we were on Las Flores beach last time, Las Flores beach, as we're speaking here today, has essentially two properties are not done. Those are both opt outs. And so those are. We're waiting. I don't know when the private contractors are coming to do those, but then we surged on Lost Tunis and then we're doing, we're simultaneously, we're really now working the whole stretch. We're trying to speed the whole thing up. And so the idea is by the time you get to May, that pch, both seaside adjacent properties on the mountainside and even into the canyon communities are cleared as much as possible. Because, you know, there is, there's certainly a need to try to open up PCH again for commercial reasons for the residents. You know, a lot of folks got to take grandma to, to the doctor and now they got to go all the way around the Santa Monica Mountains. And there's no doubt there's, you know, additional hardships by having restricted access to p. So, you know, working with the greater team, all the local and state partners, we are surging on PCH and we really believe when the sun rises on the 1st of June, it's going to be a very, very different place and perhaps different configurations of PCH to allow more traffic.

[Adam Carolla]

So June 1st, you're saying when the sun rises on.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yep, I think so. I mean, we're looking at the end of May to have a very, very different looking pch. And you know, we're doing that in concert with Southern Cal Edison. As you, I think you were there when they were burying some of the transformers and preparing to have the underground lines.

[Adam Carolla]

They were. Are they? All right, so that's a good question. And by the way, you're not from here and you only been here for 10 minutes. And I know people have been here for 20 years from Michigan or Baltimore and I tell them, stop saying the pch. And they go, go, it's the pch. And I go, just say pch. Just say, that's what we do. Did somebody coach you up? Did somebody tell you just say pch. Because every jack off who comes here from somewhere else, which is everyone in the comedy community and the acting community, they're all from somewhere else. They've all come here and they've been here for 20 years, and they go, I'm going down the PCH. I go, Stop saying the PCH. And then we argue. So you've been here for 10 minutes and you say PCH.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Well, you know, I think it's part of just embedding yourself in the community. We're out there seven days a week.

[Adam Carolla]

Did somebody tell you or you heard from the locals or just heard people saying pch?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

I don't know consciously how I got to pch.

[Adam Carolla]

Okay, but listen, let me stop and compliment you. That's the fighting spirit. That's the spirit of the soldier.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

There it is.

[Adam Carolla]

Your dad will be proud. Because. Because all the other idiots who have no discipline and are not in the army and they're not any of this whatever you have, they just argue and argue and argue. And I just go, it's just called pch. Just say it. Just say it. Ten minutes later, they go, we're going to meet up on the pch. And I go, okay, you won't do it, but they won't do it because they can't do it. But they don't have your discipline.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Okay, you heard it and you want.

[Adam Carolla]

This is how you say it. And that you've been here for three months.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Three months, Yeah, a little bit over. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Three months. And you say PCH. I know people been here 30 years. Won't do it. Can't do it. Been talked to it about a thousand times. And I know it sounds like nothing, and I know it sounds like this is trivial, but what I'm saying is, you hear something and you go, okay, that's how we do it. And then from that point on, you do it. The other people argue for the rest of their life to do it the wrong way, and that doesn't work in this man's army. So take that as a compliment.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

I did not wake up this morning thinking that saying PCH was gonna get me the greatest compliment. But thank you. I appreciate that.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, it sounds like nothing. It really sounds like nothing. But it means you're able to do in three months what most people I know in this city who are from somewhere else couldn't do in 25 years, but it's an attitudinal thing. And I know this sounds like minutiae, but it's really not. It's you going, I want to learn, I want to adapt, and I want to blend in versus I'm headstrong, and I'm going to Argue with whoever's telling me anything for the rest of my life, which is the lack. Which is the opposite of playing football in high school and then going right to the academy. So there you go. All right, so you're going to ship out PCH, not the PCH, hopefully June 1st. Are they going to bury the lines on PCH or not? They're burying the transformers and it's really kind of cool if you see it. We didn't really highlight it in the vlog, but they have those shoring units for those trenches that they just drop. They drop into the trench with the kickers and the walls and everything. It's like for a safety thing, so it doesn't cave in on them, but it's kind of, it's kind of interesting that they dig the hole, then they drop in the walls with the kickers on it, and then they safely can go in there and bury their transformers. But the poles along pch, I've heard some talk about bearing lines in other parts of the city and the state and that nature, but are they bearing the lines on pch?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

So I, you know, I don't, I guess I, I can't, I can't comment because I don't know for sure on progressive what lines are going to get buried, when they're going to get buried. I do know that they're really focusing on the power right now, but of course you got telecommunication wires as well. I don't know the timelines on those, but they are. I mean, Edison is working on burying, I believe, the power lines, but it is a spatial issue as we work. You know, we need, when we're doing those coastal properties right on the seaside, that's about a shoulder and getting into two lanes. And so now you've restricted traffic to the mountainside and then you only have two lanes there. And that's really where they're doing a lot of the, the power work right now. And so we're, we're working with them twice a week. We have communications with Edison and we're, hey, this is where we're at. This is where we're working. And then they move on to their work timelines. What's going in the ground, when is it going to be functional? I don't have those.

[Adam Carolla]

Do you know anything about putting those homes on a sewer system versus a septic system?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

From my understanding, there's a bit of history there with the city of Malibu primarily on sewer versus septic. As you know, at the time of the fire, everyone was on septic I do know there's a lot of discussion about it. I don't want to get in front of my skis. I don't know how that's going to land.

[Adam Carolla]

It's a kind of a thing where everyone was on septic and there's never a good time to go from septic to sewer because it's such a large scale project that creates so much turmoil. You have to close lanes and pick things up and it's very expensive. But if there was ever a time to transition from that to this, now would be the time because everything's down and the trucks are all there. And you know, it's a sort of, of great reset going on in Malibu. So if you want to bury the power lines or you want to get them off of septic and onto the sewer, whatever, this would be your window because it's not really going to open again. Once they rebuild everything and get everything up and running, you know, once they take all those multimillion dollar homes along PCH and rebuild all that, 10 years from now, nobody's going to want them to close off PCH for three years so they can get the, the sewer system laid. So now would be their window. But we'll, we'll see how, how's the city been? How's the mayor been, how's the governor been? Have you heard from those people? Are they coming around? Are they checking on progress? Are they getting their boots on the ground?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Absolutely, I gotta say, for the, all, all the local community there. So you have the city of Malibu, obviously you have the state, you have the city of Los Angeles and the Pacific Palisades, and then you have those unincorporated areas, this is essentially LA county. And all the different political offices that we've dealt with have been incredibly supportive. And I deal with all those political leaders as well. And they're very knowledgeable and informed and asking a lot of questions and incredibly supportive of our efforts, I have to say. And so it's, you know, like any, when you come in and you're a guest or you're a foreigner to an area, the first thing you have to understand is the operational environment. And they're part of the operational environment and it is a, it's a team sport here, it's a collective that has to figure this out. So, so the corps comes in, works for fema. FEMA is working with the state and then we work with those local authorities to, you know, gain as many efficiencies as possible. So there's a lot of weekend conversations, there's a lot of coordination meetings. You know, we're laying out plans. But as a. As an engineer, especially coming from the army, we're not policy right. We execute. So we provide best in the army, we provide best military advice. In this case, we're providing best engineering or crisis management advice. And then the political leaders enact the policy that allow us to move faster. So that's essentially what's going on.

[Adam Carolla]

Last time I saw you, we're up on Temescal and we looked across the way, and they were working on some retaining walls and some footings and things like that. You guys had cleared the property, but you weren't going to clear any retaining walls or anything of retained earth for reasons we discussed on the vlog. And then you said the current crew was in. There were private. A private crew who was demoing out the existing retaining wall, which had probably been compromised by the fire, and then reforming and repouring new footings and foundations, grade beams, what have you, retaining walls. And so they got a permit to do that. And so a lot of discussion has been about expediting permits. Permits have traditionally been very difficult in this town, which is just wrapped in red tape. So have you seen any new construction or at least the beginnings of new construction in your area?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

I would say it's just starting now. You're starting to see in select locations, you're starting to see some groundwork being done, compaction, bringing in fill. I haven't seen a foundation poured yet. I wouldn't be surprised to see a foundation poured in the coming weeks. I don't know of those timelines, but to your point, like the crews doing some of the. Some of the tiered vertical supports, like retaining walls on a tiered property, we have seen some of that. It's. It's limited right now. I haven't seen a lot of it, but I would imagine each and every day we're going to see a little bit more out there. And for the folks that live in and around the Palisades, they're having hardships too, because we're already stressing the road systems with just the debris mission. And now you're starting to get a little bit of construction, but remediation, H vac, painters, yard crews, there's a lot of commercial traffic coming in to do just work for standing homes. So that's the challenge right now, is you got a lot of stress on the roads.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I mean, I would imagine, as much as I'd like to move things along and expedite things while you guys are Clearing properties. You couldn't have cement trucks with a pumper going up to another property because they're going to pour the retaining wall today, and you guys are competing for road space with those guys. I mean, I think as much as I'd like to move everything along, I think you guys are going to have to clear everything first before the next crew starts showing up for lumber drops and cement trucks and pumpers and things like that.

[Maury Povich]

That.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Yeah, certainly for us. And we realize that, too. Right. So, I mean, that's. I mean, you know, that's not the reason we're trying to move as fast as possible, but it's part of the calculus in that we know that there's a. There's a shot clock, if you will. Right. And that shot clock is ticking down, and we got a little bit of time and space. This is an optimization problem. And, you know, when you have an optimization problem, how do you move faster? How do you get this done quicker to scale and to quality, with quality and. And done it and done safely? Well, with any optimization problem, you got to eliminate unknowns and you got to reduce your constraints. And so we're living in a world right now where our constraints are, you know, accessibility to roads is a big constraint.

[Adam Carolla]

We have.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

We have, you know, restricted access. So that's helpful, right? That's helpful to move faster. We're under. We. We didn't talk about it, but the declaration for whether you're opting in or opting out, that expired yesterday. So we'll kind of have a real. We'll have a much greater knowledge of what our homework assignment is.

[Adam Carolla]

Opting in to the Army Corps of Engineers, taking care of your property, clearing your property, opting out, hiring private to do it. That's correct, yeah. Last question. Any doge hits on that you felt in this man's army?

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

So out here for the emergency response? Not at all. Emergency response, we haven't seen those effects. The Corps of Engineers, like a lot of governmental agency, there's some early retirement options that have been offered to some employees. And so we're seeing some employees start to potentially elect to take some of those early retirements. And so. But certainly over here in California, we are enabled with all the capacity that we need to execute this mission.

[Adam Carolla]

All the resources you need. What can I say, Brian, it was really nice meeting you because I was worried that the privateers. I mean, listen, hold on a second. You know, when I talk about the government and big government and shrinking government, I'm never talking about enlisted people, Army Corps of engineers or the folks out building the roads and doing that work. I'm talking more teachers unions than I am army corps of engineers for the naysayers out there. But it's still nice to realize there's patriotic people who live in this country that are enlisted or not, who care, who have pride, who have a work ethic. And it was all renewed when I met you, Brian.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Well, I appreciate that, and I just really appreciate the opportunity to come here, tell the story of the United States army story, the corps of engineers and what we're doing out here. You know, a lot of times we're in the shadows and people don't know what we. What we do. So this is a great opportunity for us. I appreciate this platform. And if I leave you with anything, it go army, beat navy.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. And if you want to watch the vlog and see how easy Brian saucer is on the eye. He wasn't gonna say anything, but the rest of the nation is talking. You can go to mcroll.com and check out the vlog. Thank you, colonel.

[Colonel Brian Saucer]

Appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me.

[Adam Carolla]

Appreciate it. Rough greens. That's right. I give it to Phil. Phil loves it. Yeah, it's good for him. I'll tell you about it. Sometimes in life you want to get to the truth, you got to look at the numbers. Naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, who's the creator of rough grains, well, he tells us that unfortunately, 50% of all dogs over 10 years of age are going to die of cancer. And most of this is attributed to their diet. The dog does not have a healthy diet. But here's some good news. With thousands of testimonials and five star reviews every month, ruffgreens is now the number one all natural dog supplement in America. And you don't have to change your dog's food. You just sprinkle it on. You don't have to change their food to improve their diet with rough greens because you just sprinkle a scoop on top of the food they're currently eating and it brings all the nutrients to the current food. Just add a scoop of rough greens. Am I right? Dawson?

[Dawson]

Fetch a free jumpstart trial bag for your dog today. Go to roughgreens.com. just use promo code Adam. That's R u f f greens.com and use promo code Adam. And just cover shipping. You don't have to change your dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a scoop of rough greens.

[Adam Carolla]

O'Reilly Auto Parts. Pow. Love me some O'Reilly. You guys hear me talk about O'Reilly a lot, but I happen to happen to use O'Reilly. Always did. Used to do it out of necessity. Didn't have much money and I'd wrench on my own cars. But now it's a hobby. I still go to O'Reilly. O'Reilly Auto Parts offers friendly, helpful service and the parts and the knowledge that you need to maintain and repair your car. Yep. There's one up on Foothill in La Crescenta. Still go to it. So whether you're a car aficionado or an auto novice, you'll find the employees at O'Reilly Auto Parts are knowledgeable, helpful, and best of all, they are friendly. So stop by O'Reilly Auto Parts today or, or visit us online at O'ReillyAuto.com Adam that's O'ReillyAuto.com Adam and now Alcoa.

[Dawson]

Presents Definitely Not a Jew on the Adam Carolla show. Dateline Surrender, Florida, a 28 year old deputy sheriff was subject to an internal affairs investigation after he caused $15,000 worth of damage to his police vehicle and another driver's vehicle. After initially claiming his brakes locked up. Body cam footage revealed the deputies was.

[Adam Carolla]

Driving while watching pornography.

[Dawson]

Definitely not a Jew.

[Adam Carolla]

Maury Povich, that was a long one.

[Maury Povich]

Dawson, I want to tell you something. That story right there, that would have been the first segment on A current affair in 1989.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh yeah, man. Maury, you've been in front of and.

[Maury Povich]

We would have had the tape.

[Adam Carolla]

Maury's got new podcasts on par with Maury Povich, which is available now on YouTube and wherever you find finder podcast. Good to see you, Maury.

[Maury Povich]

Good to see you, Adam.

[Adam Carolla]

Man, I feel like you've been a part of my life my entire adult life. I've seen you anchoring the news and on Current Affair and everything else. The podcast for you is a way to have little more in depth conversations, longer form conversations with people.

[Maury Povich]

Yeah. And I also think that it's, you know, it's at the point of my life where, you know, for the past 31 years, everybody has known me as the guy who determines who the father is of children and whether they pass lie detector test and out of control teenagers. And so there were, you know, there's always been a different part of my life. I did the news, as you said, for a long time. And now I just, I want to talk to people who I haven't talked to before.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. You know, I was thinking about it this morning, not really Apropos to this, but just in general, everybody sitting down for these long form interviews and then leaving behind an archive of.

[Steve Williams]

Of.

[Adam Carolla]

Real, in depth conversations, which historically, obviously we don't have. But I mean, it would have been awesome if Abe Lincoln would have gone on the Joe Rogan show and we'd have three hours of Abe Lincoln talking about trying mushrooms once or whatever they were getting into, but we would have this crazy archive of really interesting people not doing seven minute shots on the Tonight show that were sort of worked out and there for comic effect or to get an audience reaction, but real in depth conversations. It's going to be great for future generations.

[Maury Povich]

I agree with you. I think the whole aspect of podcasts has really changed the whole landscape of media. I mean, it's not people. I mean, first of all, I'm new to this. You're a big success at it, But I even find people, wow, I didn't know that about that guy. And I didn't know this about your wife. And I didn't know this. And you can't do that in six minutes.

[Adam Carolla]

No, I agree. Sorry, continue.

[Maury Povich]

No, I was just saying, first of all, the best feeling I get in an interview is when somebody says to me, you know, no one has ever asked me about that or that's a part of my life nobody has ever gone into. And that, to me, that. That verifies what you're doing.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I mean, I was lucky enough to sit in the studio and talk to guys like Norman Lear before he passed away, for long in depth conversations. And now somewhere digitally it exists. Norman Lear, an hour telling me about how he grew up and his mom and his circumstances. To me, the best compliment, I think, I mean, no one's ever asked me that is a good one for me. My favorite compliment is if someone comes in here and they sit down, they have this real, in depth, intimate conversation, and then at some point you go, all right, well, thank you very much for coming in and we'll be back next Monday. And then, then they look up and they go, has that been an hour? And I go, yeah, it's been an hour and five minutes. I go, oh, my God, I didn't know it was that long at all. And I was like, good, that's good. That means we're having a real conversation.

[Maury Povich]

Absolutely. I get that feeling in golf when I play a course. That's magnificent. And I get to around the 14th hole and I'm going, why is this ending now? Why can't it just go on? Well, I mean, I get the same feeling.

[Adam Carolla]

So you start off at UPenn, right? Ivy League school forever. You major in journalism.

[Maury Povich]

Yeah, well, I was interrupted there. I guess you ought to know this, Adam. I went to an all boys junior high and high school and so I kind of came to the University of Pennsylvania. Socially retarded, you might say. And so there were actual women there. And so just throwing that out. It took me five years and a summer to get through the University of Pennsylvania.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, because you love the ladies.

[Maury Povich]

Yeah. And they said, they, they also told me one year. Why don't you just leave for a year and try to find yourself?

[Adam Carolla]

Because they were looking at your academic record.

[Maury Povich]

Right, exactly. And it was putrid.

[Adam Carolla]

But you did go to an Ivy League school, which should not be discounted, I would say. No, you did enough to get into an Ivy League school. You graduated an Ivy League school with journalism. Then where'd you go after school?

[Maury Povich]

It was interesting. That was in 1962, and I had been an assistant to the television broadcaster of the Washington Senators baseball team then in the American League. So I. Television was where I wanted to go. And when you looked around the world in 1962, in the media world, everybody on television had been in radio. Everybody, everybody who was working television had worked radio first because, you know, television was still, still only like, you know, 15, 16 years old. So.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Maury Povich]

I go to radio and, and I, I want to be a reporter. And they say, well, you can't be a reporter unless you have experience. I said, yeah, but I got to get on the air in order to have experience. Like I catch 22, I started out writing publicity for a 5000 watt radio station. I hung around the newsroom just to the point where the news director said, you know, you're in the, you're in the way so much. Okay, you can be a reporter. And so that's what I did for four years. I was a reporter on a radio station and then I got a job as the Sportscaster on the 10 o'clock news on the now Fox station in Washington. And that led within four months to my doing a talk show like the Today show, because there was nothing on at noon in Washington D.C. and all the people at the White House and Capitol Hill and government agencies, they would all watch the show. So I got a reputation there. And then I started to anchor the weekend news. That's when it started.

[Adam Carolla]

I tell everyone, just sort of show up and be there. I mean, that's certainly how radio works. And a lot of TV and a lot of entertainment just get in the door?

[Maury Povich]

Yeah, just get in the door.

[Adam Carolla]

That's what I did with radio. That's every story I hear is just they were there and eventually they became producer of the morning show. And at some point it just goes from there, but just sort of show up. There isn't really much pixie dust or secret sauce to it. It's just, it's kind of show up. 90% of most jobs, relationships, sort of everything you may want is sort of just show up and don't piss people off. Once you're there, try to be useful and don't get ASCII or grabby.

[Maury Povich]

Right? And back then you have to understand there was no such thing as Internet. I mean, when you went into a station, you had to apply for a job. I mean, stations didn't have interns back then, they just had low level paying jobs.

[Adam Carolla]

So you do that, but you've always known that's kind of what you wanted to do. What does your dad want you to do? I mean, you went to an all boys school, then you went to an Ivy League school. So it stands to reason that your dad had some thoughts about what he wanted you to do.

[Maury Povich]

Well, it's interesting. My father was the sports columnist and sports writer for the Washington Post for 75 years.

[Adam Carolla]

75 years.

[Maury Povich]

75 years from the ages of 17 to 92.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh my God.

[Maury Povich]

And so he's in the Baseball hall of Fame. He, he and was there in the great golden years of sports writing with, with his like blood brother Red Smith and Jim Murray and all these great sports writers. And he was one of them. And I always wanted to go into journalism. And then I couldn't get a job because the Washington Post had a nepotism policy. And so I, as I said, I hung around this, this television announcer for the, for the radio broadcast and television broadcast of the Washington center baseball team. My father was there and so he says to me, me so, and he's looking at me, seeing me grab coffee, go for this, go for that, carry camera equipment, do all these things. He says to me, so do you have a title? I said, yeah, I have a title. What's your title? Associate producer. He said, you're in the right business, you got a big shot. Itis, you got a, you got a, you got a big shot attitude. You're in the right business. Television.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, hold on. They had a nepotism policy back right, in the 60s, early 70s, 40s, 50s.

[Maury Povich]

60S, 70s at the Washington Post.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. So that would be sort of the opposite of how most people Think, because they would have thought back then it was old man's club. And this is one guy helping, helping another guy.

[Maury Povich]

There was only one family that. That did not abide by that rule, and that was the. That was the Graham family that owned the paper. And that went from. From Phil Graham to Katherine Graham to Donnie Graham. Other than that, there were no nepotisms in the. In the place.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, that it seems like a really progressive policy to have in place that far back, you know.

[Maury Povich]

Yeah, it was. I mean, they didn't, you know, have your. Have your kids go somewhere else, I.

[Adam Carolla]

Mean, even if they're good. I mean. I know, but now we got Bronny James on the Lakers, so maybe they had something there. I don't know. So you, as I look at your bio down here covering things as a reporter, the JFK assassination, MLK riots, Vietnam War protests, Watergate, that was it covered.

[Maury Povich]

All that, I tell you, from the time I got there, from the Martin. From the Martin Luther King speech at the memorial through 1974 with Watergate, they were the most tumultuous years in Washington, D.C. you could not replace those years with any other events. And they were just, just. They were spectacular. And I just happened to be there and was able to observe it all.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, let me ask a delicate question. So Watergate, it was a big deal. And I remember being a kid with Watergate, and it was Watergate. Water so much Watergate then, now everything. We just put the word. We put the suffix gate behind it.

[Maury Povich]

The next scandal, right?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. The next camp. Someone left a hose running in a front yard, it'd be hose gate over who left the spigot on. But we do that, okay? And so we have these moments in America, and they're big and they're known and we never let them go. But when the dust sort of settles on them and you step back, you go, I don't know how consequential was that, really. You know what I mean? Like, how many bodies who died? What did it really change? Like, what really happened? And you could take something like January 6th and kind of do the same thing. We went nuts. We never stopped talking about this, the biggest threat to democracy since the Pearl harbor attack and stuff like that. But when you just sort of step back, at least in my opinion, this is kind of the news, going nuts with this stuff. Nothing changed. There's no body count, really. It's done. We could have moved on. But then I look back and I go, well, was there a lot of stuff that was sort of that way. Now, you can't say JFK assassination was that way because the President got assassinated.

[Maury Povich]

Right.

[Adam Carolla]

But was Watergate in a way like January 6th, where it was huge? We never stopped talking about it. But from a nuts and bolts standpoint, what really did it amount to?

[Maury Povich]

What it amounts to these days is that it is a moment in history. Because of Watergate, government changed in a lot of ways because of the actions of Richard Nixon. Okay. The Justice Department became nonpartisan. Supposed to be nonpartisan. It's supposed to be independent from the White House because Nixon was using the Justice Department for his own. For his own worth. And so that. That is Watergate today is only a determination of things changed. And, wow, 26, 50 years later, what's the story? Well, guess what? We might be in the. In the throes of another Watergate situation in terms of how the government is being run and for what purpose and who's benefiting from it. Now, that's not. I'm not making any judgments. I'm just saying you only use Watergate as an historical mark to find out what happened because of Watergate, and now what's happening 50 years later. That's all. Yeah, that's all it means.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I get it. It's also just funny that we have to put GATE behind everything.

[Maury Povich]

Yeah, well, yeah. Can you imagine? Because at the time. At the time time, it was the.

[Adam Carolla]

Biggest thing I know in.

[Maury Povich]

In terms of. Of political history, you know, since I don't know when, I guess, you know, maybe the war. Who. I mean, The World War II, I mean, it was. Nobody had seen anything like that. And. And now I think there are tumultuous times. It doesn't matter what. What side of the political spectrum you're on. It's. We're in the throes of that all over again in terms of what's this going to mean for the future. In other words, is what's happening now in government, is that going to last? Is it temporary? Who knows?

[Adam Carolla]

I'm wondering. See, I sort of have a head on it that we're always gonna be in tumultuous times now because of so many news outlets and so many people trying to grab eyeballs that there's just always going to be something or more than one thing going on at once, because that's sort of the New World Order. Like, we need eyeballs. I think we put gate. The recent. They had a text thread that put on the reporter by mistake, and I think they put the word gate behind that one signal. Gate. Signal. Gate. Yeah, signal gate. Which is like, all right, it seems like a mistake to me and somebody probably should be punished, but I don't know. We need to put the word. It didn't rise to the level of gate.

[Maury Povich]

Right, exactly. Exactly. All they want to do is be able to put everything in a box. So if you use gate. Oh, okay. This is the latest gate.

[Adam Carolla]

So you've been married to the beautiful Connie Chung for 40 years? 41 years, yeah.

[Maury Povich]

Looking down here, over 40. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. I had a crush on her probably before you did, because I lived in Los Angeles and she was on the.

[Maury Povich]

She was a big star in Los Angeles.

[Adam Carolla]

She was, wasn't she?

[Maury Povich]

She sure was.

[Adam Carolla]

I mean, I guess back when you could be a big star doing local news. I mean, I guess if it was in Los Angeles for sure. Right.

[Maury Povich]

Yeah, she. Yeah, she. She was a really indefatigable reporter in Washington for the Washington Borough during Watergate in those years. Then went to Los Angeles to anchor the CBS owned and operated station there, and she anchored like three newscasts a day. And then she finally went back east, first at NBC and then back at cbs. And of course, the rest is history. In terms of her and getting involved.

[Adam Carolla]

With Dan Rather on the anchor desk, she seems delightful. I don't know her. I've never met her. She seems like she would be very great.

[Maury Povich]

A sense of humor. Greatest sense of humor ever.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Maury Povich]

And I'll tell you where it really came out for the. For. Because you couldn't do it anchoring the news or reporting the news. It came out because David Letterman fell in love with her and she was on the Late Night show with David Letterman for years. And every time a guest couldn't make it, he would call upstairs and say, connie, come on down and fill in. And between her and Terry Garr, I mean, that was it with Letterman, between the two of them.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. I know from some experience that if you are local and you deliver, you will be on a short list of people they call when people drop out. I used to do that with Politically Incorrect because I was in town, they always knew I would deliver. And it was on my way to go do Loveline, the radio show I was doing. And so I would get calls day of all the time, like Kenny.

[Maury Povich]

So Mara would call you and do Politically Incorrect.

[Adam Carolla]

His producer would call me and do that. But it'd be that way with the Tonight Show. There's a couple of in town shows.

[Maury Povich]

Sure.

[Adam Carolla]

Because let's face it, if you're gonna book a couple of guests five nights A week. You gotta have a Rolodex with a couple of ring in there that you know are local and can. And can come out on short notice. But she was in the building, right?

[Maury Povich]

Yes, but. Yeah, but, Adam, you got to understand this. If they keep calling you, that means, you know, you score. You scored with them. I mean, you. I mean, they. They can look at the ratings every night. They are not going down if you're on. So therefore, you scored. And. And it was the same thing with Connie.

[Adam Carolla]

I mean.

[Maury Povich]

I mean, Letterman wouldn't. Wouldn't have her on unless she was so funny. And the audience loved her and everything like that, and the crew loved her. And that's why he repeatedly asked for her.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, for me, I think it was more desperation, but. Okay, I'll take that compliment. But she was literally in the same building as Dave. Is that what you're saying?

[Maury Povich]

Yes. Yes. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

So she could just go downstairs and be funny.

[Maury Povich]

Sure.

[Adam Carolla]

Although I.

[Maury Povich]

And not only that, I'll tell you that his executive producer. I don't know if you. You ever knew a guy named Robert Morton Morty.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Maury Povich]

So believe it or not, when I was working in Washington doing this talk show, local talk show, Robert was my intern.

[Adam Carolla]

Really?

[Maury Povich]

Yes. I got it before he went to the big time.

[Adam Carolla]

I got to tell everybody, be nice to the interns because.

[Maury Povich]

Exactly.

[Adam Carolla]

I got an internal who was an intern on the man show, and now he runs reality TV for abc. And I gotta go in there and put my hat in my hand and pitch him something every couple years. And he's got a big office and never bought anything I've pitched him. But you gotta be nice to these guys on the way up. Cause you never know where these people are gonna end up. And a lot of them surprisingly end up in really powerful positions.

[Maury Povich]

Oh, I mean, sure. I mean, Bob Iger started out as a production assistant in the ABC sports department.

[Steve Williams]

Okay.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. And when. When. When you're a douche to young Bob Iger. He never forgets it. You never Forget when you're 22, who was a douchebag to you and conversely, who was nice to you when they didn't have to be nice? You. And they. They will carry that with them for the rest of their career.

[Maury Povich]

Career, sure.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. They never say it out loud. They just know how they were treated. It's a weird. It's an interesting human quality. So you recently made the news because you were talking about having sexy Sundays with Connie. So I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask you about that.

[Maury Povich]

I've never had my Sundays draw so much attention. It's. Yeah, I mean, I'm doing a podcast, and the producer says, okay, I'm going to have this little bowl, and in the bowl are going to be questions, random questions. And so Connie pulls this question out, and it says, when do I feel sexiest? Well, you know, it's Sundays with Connie. It's. It always. I mean, it's not, like, recent. I mean, we've had Sundays with Connie for a long time. And so. And then. And then Connie says, oh, never on Sunday. I said, not in my house. And then Connie went like this. And it just went viral. It just.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, it does kind of beg the question, which is, should a couple, a busy couple who's together for a long period of time, should you schedule intimacy or just have it be spontaneous? I think you could make an argument for either one.

[Maury Povich]

Well, okay, I'll end it right now. I didn't say only Sunday.

[Adam Carolla]

Okay. What. What's your regimen? You're 86 years of age. What? You're in tremendous shape. Your. Your faculties are all there. Evidently you like to golf and have a lot of sex. But other than that, what is the regimen? I mean, are you on, you know, are you on this, you know, pill? And I don't mean pill, but what I mean is, is like, what is your health regimen? What do you. What do you do when you wake up in the morning?

[Maury Povich]

So ridiculous. I have no elixir to life. I don't. I work out an hour, twice a week.

[Adam Carolla]

Week.

[Dawson]

Okay.

[Adam Carolla]

Testosterone replacement.

[Maury Povich]

No, none of that. No, I. I don't. I'm. You know, I have. Okay, let's see.

[Adam Carolla]

My.

[Maury Povich]

My blood pressure is a little high, so I take a little blood pressure medicine. Let's see, what else do I do? I. I have. I take a vitamin D. I take a vitamin B. I. I takes like four pills every day. None of them. Them particularly egregious. They're not. They're not maximum pills. And so I guess maybe because my father was 92 when he died, and he died the day after he wrote his last column in 1998, and he died peacefully in the back of my brother's car because the doctors would say, because they didn't want to give him any kind of heart surgery at that age back then. And so therefore I asked what would happen. He said, well, in about six months, he'll. There'll be a quiet incident and he'll die. And that's what he did after Dinner in my brother's car. And he had all of his faculties. He was still playing a little golf. And so that's it. I mean, I walked in the wintertime, I'm in Florida, and I walk the beach every morning with my dog. And, you know, I.

[Adam Carolla]

So genetics, I mean, I guess, I don't know. No, it is. Well, look, here's the thing. Whether it's male pattern baldness or a double chin or longevity or big schnoz or eyesight or hair, unwanted hair on your back, it's all genetics for women. It's breast size, hip size, it's all genetics. And we have a multi billion dollar industry trying to convince everyone we can beat the genetics. We can have hair where hair didn't exist, and you can have breasts where breasts didn't exist, and we can remove hair where you don't want the hair and we can spray you and make you look tanner than you normally would be. Like, we can, we'll put caps and veneers on your teeth. Like, it's a big. Everything is a big genetic sales point. But the people you know, that look good, live long, have a full head of hair, have an ample bosom. It's just all genetics. It's all genetics. And we don't want to say it's all genetics because there's pharmaceuticals and cosmetics and it's a battle, but it's really genetics.

[Maury Povich]

I've never, I mean, there's never been anything done on my face. The only thing I've ever done over the years was, you know, when my hair went white, I went some salt and pepper in it. And so I color my hair a little bit. And that's the only thing I've ever done many, many years ago. So I looked in the mirror and I said to myself, God, boy, do I have a big nose. So I said to my mother, I said, you know, mom, a lot of people are getting nose jobs. Maybe I should get a nose job. She says, don't you dare. Your nose gives you character. So that's the way it was.

[Adam Carolla]

So you say your dad died after his last column?

[Maury Povich]

Yeah. They printed his obituary and his column. Column at the Washington Post on the front page next to each other.

[Adam Carolla]

Really?

[Maury Povich]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And it was understood that that was his last column. Not everyone. I'll have a last podcast. But it may not be my last podcast. I may just get hit by truck after I talk to you. And it will be my last podcast. But that was his last column. He signed up.

[Maury Povich]

It was his last column and it was in 1998, it was the middle of the baseball season, and the great baseball writer for the Washington Post, Tom Boswell, was talking about Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire, and they were hitting all these home runs, and Maguire was hitting all these games in which he was hitting three home runs in the game. And Boswell did something that my father just reacted to. He said, this is better than Babe Ruth. My father covered Babe Ruth.

[Adam Carolla]

Wow.

[Maury Povich]

So that. That night, he wrote a column basically to Boswell, his. His protege, saying, tom, just wait a minute here. Don't you dare. Because of one season, and all of a sudden, this guy is better than Babe Ruth. And he gives all the reasons why. And then he says, because he didn't know about steroids, then he says, I'm just suspicious of this guy hitting all these home runs, drinking nutrition shakes in the clubhouse.

[Adam Carolla]

All right. Yeah. All right, we only have about two minutes left here. Maury, I'll ask you quickly. I read that you believe in the nuclear family and families staying intact, and I'm a big fan of that. Dads in the homes, so on and so forth. I believe it'll cure every ill that society has currently. But go ahead and give us your opinion on it.

[Maury Povich]

Well, here you know, everybody. A lot of media critics over the years used to tell me that I was exploiting the theme of paternity tests on the show, and I was exploiting this theme. And I said, let me tell you something. All I am trying to do is to find out if this guy is the father of this child. That child has a better chance with two parents in a his. In his, his or her life than one. It's very basic. It's very simple. The statistics say that. Okay. And I know that a substantial number of these guys got into the lives of those kids because I brought them back. The show was on so long, I brought them back 20 years later to find out how it worked out. And sure, there were. There were guys who just walked away, but there were many who. And that was it.

[Adam Carolla]

I agree, and I wish we could make it more of a national conversation. Maury Povich, on par with Maury povich is on YouTube and all the podcast platforms as well. Maura, I hope to have you back soon.

[Maury Povich]

Anytime, Adam. It's nice to be with you, and congratulations on your success.

[Adam Carolla]

And you, too, my friend. All right, we'll take a little break. We'll be back with Steve Williams right after this. Homes.com. some might say homes.com is the best home shopping site, and it may be because homes.com's super comprehensive and transparent agent directory. Or Maybe it's that homes.com is the only site that always directly connects you with the listing agent who knows the home the best. Perhaps it's because homes.com has the most in depth neighborhood content of any home shopping site that's extensively researched to highlight the personality of each neighborhood. Homes.com goes above and beyond to bring home shoppers the in depth info they need to find the right home. So if you're looking for a home or are you just like looking around online, seeing what's going on? Homes.com homes.com We've done your homework. 1-800-flowers Mother's Day is coming up quick and there's no better way to celebrate than getting your mom a fresh bouquet of roses from 1-800-Flowers. Oh, man, it's gotta be fresh. And that's where 1-800-Flowers comes in. They show up fresh, they'll show up with a little packet. Put the stuff in the water, stays nice and fresh, lasts longer. This year I'm teaming up with 1-800-flowers.com to make mother's Day even sweeter. And right now when you order a dozen roses, they're going to double it. That's right, two dozen absolutely free. They're going to add one more dozen for free. How about that? The roses from 1-800-Flowers are picked at their peak, cared for every step of the way and shipped fresh to ensure high quality, long lasting beauty. I always use these guys. They're the best. Bouquets are selling fast, so lock it in today because Mother's Day is right around the corner. It is 1-800-flowers, right, Dawson, to claim.

[Dawson]

Your double your roses offer, go to 1-800flowers.com Adam. That's 1-800-Adam. It's time to check Adam's voicemail.

[Adam Carolla]

This is Mike from Huntsville. Adam, I have a philosophical question. As Spirit Airlines brought down air travel or has it upgraded bus travel? Get it on.

[Dawson]

You can leave us a message at 888-634-1744.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, is the wallet half full or is the wallet half empty? That's a question. Steve Williams has joined us, has a book. The book is called Together We Roared Alongside Tiger for his epic 12 year 13 major runs available now as we speak in the Caddy hall of Fame and does a little race car driving as well. Good to see you, Steve.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah. How you doing, Adam?

[Adam Carolla]

I'm doing good. I started thinking about being in the Caddy hall of Fame and I think it's Sort of akin to me being in the podcast hall of fame. It's good, but I think I'd rather be in the broadcast hall of fame.

[Steve Williams]

But yeah, Harmon, I guess in your line of work, broadcasting's the top of the tree. So you're working your way up there.

[Adam Carolla]

Adam? I guess I am alongside Tiger woods for his epic run. I've never interviewed Tiger Woods. I've heard all kinds of different stories about him being super competitive and stuff like that, but I really don't, I don't think I know I can't get a good bead on him. How would you describe Tiger Woods?

[Steve Williams]

Well, yeah, I mean, you just said competitive. I don't think in the time that I spent caddying on the tour for 40 plus years, there was someone that was more competitive than him, whether it be actually playing golf or playing ping pong or just having a putting competition with another pro. Unbelievably competitive person, but also a work ethic and a desire to compete at the highest level and a desire to be the best. Unlike no other person that I'd seen play the golf tour, Jack Nicholas was obviously in the same kettle of fish as Tiger, but probably not quite the same desire as he had. So yeah, just look, I mean, he's once in a lifetime player, once in a, you know, a generational player with, you know, all the skill set and the desire to go with it.

[Adam Carolla]

So when you're catting. Because I really, I grew up poor in North Hollywood and nobody played golf and I didn't even know anybody who had owned a golf club. We'd go the driving range every once in a while. But I did actually get thrown off a driving range for hooking too much. Many tee shots into the tennis courts which were to the side. But so I didn't have any skill. My dad never golfed. It was too expensive. Nobody knew anybody who played golf where I was from, but I didn't, never really knew what, you know, I thought a caddy just sort of carried the clubs, but I didn't really know how much strategy was involved with cadding and what kind of conversations were being had. Can you tune us into that?

[Steve Williams]

Obviously, but you know, obviously, you know, you can caddy at your local country club or your local golf course and then you can, you know, move on to being a professional caddy. I mean, a lot of caddies like myself started at a local golf course and, and move on. But you know, that everybody, that caddies obviously gives the information to the player. That's the easy Part of the job, you know, tell the player how far it is, where the pin's located, where the wind is, you know, caddies are incredibly familiar with the course. They spend a lot of time walking the course, measuring the course, detailing the course, course. So that's the ease or that's the nuts and bolts of the job. But you know, when you're playing on the PGA Tour or any professional tour, there's a lot of pressure involved and there's a lot of stake in that. And these guys need someone along them to guide them along when they're playing poorly, when they're getting too hyped up, when they're getting ahead of themselves, you know, to remind them the situation, stay in the presence, all sorts of things. It's like an on course psychologist, I guess. A caddy also has to have a good understanding, understanding of the technique. The player doesn't have a coach with them all the time and the cat is, you know, needs to have a bit of an idea of the fundamentals to look at every day if the player is playing poorly. So it's a job with the caddy where it's a role, where he wears many hats. You know, he's got to be there as a sounding block sometimes and just someone the player can confide in. But yeah, he's got to be able to keep the player grounded, keep the guy level. And you know, when you get into some big situations and trying to win big tournaments and that, you know, the players can get very nervous, they can get ahead of themselves and that. So yeah, he is an important tool or important part of the team along with the coach and the other players and the player.

[Adam Carolla]

How open is a guy like Tiger woods to you offering some constructive criticism or having an alternative viewpoint that he may want to use this club and you might want him to use that club or you're noticing something in his swing or something you'd like to correct him on.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, well, when you, when you spend a lot of time with one player and you get to know them very well and they get to know you very well, you're not going to say something without any constructive thought. So if you, if you actually have 100% in your mind that the player's got the wrong club, you've got to actually find the right way to be able to persuade the player to use the club that you, you know, you've got to be able to present that argument very quickly and very clearly and concisely and conf, you know, confidently. So. But like, what Makes a good player, team, carry, player, team is that they agree most of the time they're on the same path, the player and the carry. The carry understands how the player plays, what, what sort of shots he's going and what, you know, what he tends to do under pressure. What are his favorite shots to lean towards when he needs to. So, you know, you get a good understanding. So you don't actually disagree that often, to be fair.

[Adam Carolla]

What is the. I'm taking a nerdy deep golf dive here. But, you know, you, you tee off with your driver if it's a regular, I don't know, par five, and you, you'd putt with your putter. Where does the sort of, I don't want to say argument, but discussion about which club to use? Where, where is that? Is that at a 120 yards out? Like, where's that discussion?

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, that discussion generally comes, you know, what would be the second shot? So if it's a par four, it'd be the second shot. Could be a tee shot and a par three or a second shot to a par five. Generally, when you get to a tee, you know, you've played a practice round and you say, you come to a tee shot and you know that tee shot is either going to be a driver or it might be a layup with nine, or it could be a hybrid club off the tee. So, you know, you'll have a game plan, so you won't have too many just, you know, arguments, but you won't have any just, you know, change of clubs on the tee generally, unless the weather is completely different. But, you know, you'll have a bit of discussion over, you know, you'll get to a hole and, you know, the guy might think it's this club and you might think it's another club, you know, for reasons, you know, that the player might not be seeing the wind the same as you're seeing it, or, you know, the ball might be going a long way. Some days playing players, also, when they get into contention, they start playing and they get the adrenaline flow and they start hitting the ball further and further. And sometimes they don't see that they got the adrenaline going. They start walking quick and things, you know, they're talking quickly. Adrenaline, the juices are going. So, yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Did you do much socializing off the links with Tiger?

[Steve Williams]

Spent quite a bit of time on the weeks leading up to the major championships practicing with them. And during tournaments we might go out to dinner. But no, I tried to. I learned way back when I was carrying For Greg Norman, one of my first caddy assignments back in the 80s that, you know, you've got to keep it a very business like workman. You know, you do become good friends when you cave somebody because you can't not become friends. You spend so much time with them. But now you've got to keep that player caddy relationship and keep it fresh. So, you know, I chose to keep my, you know, not keep my distance, but, you know, not socialize too much. Like I said, the weeks before major championships, I was. I'd spend a lot of time with tigers, just practicing, getting ready for those events.

[Adam Carolla]

How much of caddy stuff is being superstitious? And I don't really mean superstitious, but like in my business they'll have a job. It's called audience warm up. It's a comedian who comes out there and gets the audience warmed up before you tape the sitcom or the late night show. And people, producers get very attached to certain guys and go, no, we gotta have this guy. But it's almost like he's good luck, he's good luck. We'll have this guy do the warmup and then the show will get picked up because we'll have a great audience. But. And as I hear him talk, I realize some of it is the guy's skill. And then the other part is just, this is my guy, I win with this guy. Like. And golfers, I guess, can be kind of superstitious. Do they have a super, sort of. Do they get superstitious with their caddies?

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, look, I mean, yeah, absolutely they do, but in the golf business and that, you know, caddies, if you spend five years counting continuously for one player, we consider that to be quite a lengthy time because, you know, golfers never continue the same form and week in, week out, year in, year out. So when a player starts playing poorly, they always look for change. And so that's when that superstition breaks. You know, the first thing they'll do is usually change their caddy or their coach and look for something else. So I think the super system thing is more like, okay, today, you know, today I started off the tournament really, really well. I practiced over on that side of the range. So tomorrow I'm going to go to that side of the range and practice those kind of superstitions. Not so much the, the caddy or the people around them. I think it's just more, more little things like that. You know, I had a great round today. I put my right shoe on first. I'm going to Put my right shoe on again first today because I did that yesterday. You know, those kind of little things.

[Adam Carolla]

Does Tiger read the book? Did he give any feedback? Did something piss him off? Is he good with the book?

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, look, I don't have any communication with Tiger now, so we sent Tiger a copy of the book. Evan and I, who wrote the book, you know, we wanted to send Tiger book, which we did, and we sure he'd be really happy about. There's no dirty stuff in there. It gives the reader a real background into, you know, arguably one of the greatest sportsmen and the greatest golfer that's ever played the game in the midst of one of the greatest sporting streaks. And it gives the reader a real background and sort of a backstage pass, if you like to, you know, how it all went on, some of the great moments, how they occurred and some of the thought process. And yeah, it's a real good journey. Even I are real pleased the way it turned out. And we both thought, you know, at the end of it, like, what would Tiger think if he read it? And we, we think he'd really enjoy. Enjoy it.

[Adam Carolla]

I know you do some super saloon racing that's kind of interesting. I was just looking up saloon cars the other day, literally like four days ago, because there's a saloon car category for the pebble beach race that I do every year coming up. And I was trying to figure out if one of my cars would qualify in a vintage race to be a saloon car. And then I also knew that the Goodwood festival has a saloon car category, which is kind of crazy. I recommend everyone listening to me go look up saloon car race at Goodwood. It's crazy. But then your saloon car is different than that saloon car and it probably means something different in New Zealand. Correct?

[Dawson]

Yeah.

[Steve Williams]

Like in America, you call them late models, we call them saloons, super saloons. So it's a dirt track car, but in America you call them late models.

[Maury Povich]

Yeah.

[Steve Williams]

So, yeah, it's not. It's complete. I've been a Woodward. I know exactly what you're talking about. And you know, completely different. They're dirt track cars. And yeah, in America you call them light models.

[Adam Carolla]

So you do dirt.

[Steve Williams]

You.

[Adam Carolla]

You won championships in dirt oval, correct?

[Steve Williams]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

Which is kind of a fun class. We do it out here. We have midgets run those. I don't even know if they allowed to call them midgets anymore, as I think about it. And we have full size cars and a lot of NASCAR guys go from the dirt oval and they graduate up into the super speedways and stuff like that because it teaches you a lot of car control because you're on the dirt and the car's always sided. Basically you're drifting around the oval. How did that come in? Where'd that come in for you? Because golf and that, I think there's two. You couldn't get too far. Sports couldn't. There couldn't be a bigger margin between golf and dirt track racing.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, look, I mean I followed dirt track racing ever since I was a kid and I got into it I think when I was 17 or 18 years old. Been into it a long time and it. But it was a real good relief for me because it's such. Like you said, you couldn't get to more different ends of the spectrum. Dirt track racing and golf and the people involved in that. I mean it's just completely. Two different, lots of people and two different completely scenes. And I found it, you know, particularly when in the years when I was carrying with Tiger and there's a lot of stress and a lot of pressure and I'd come back to New Zealand and every weekend I'd do the racing thing and it just, you know, to get away. Nobody at the racing sort of even knew anything about the golf side of things. They never asked me anything about. They didn't know anything about it really. I mean they know who Tiger woods was. But it was a really good, you know, everybody's got to have an app for something. And that was my app. But yeah, it's a sport that I even today, you know, I absolutely love the sport.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, it's interesting that I can't even imagine. It's kind of a funny thing. But guys who do a lot of racing and are gearheads aren't really into sports, which you, you society kind of thinks, oh, these are blue collar guys. They like to wrench on their cars and they like the, their cars and their big V8s and then they crack beers and watch sports on the weekend with the NFL football. No different guys. They don't, they're not into sports.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, look, I mean, yeah, look, as you said, there are two different ends of the spectrum and I really enjoyed that. You know, I enjoyed the two different sceneries, the completely different atmospheres and you know, the. Yeah, dirt track racing is a real blue collar sport, no two ways about it. But yeah, it was just something that I grew up really enjoying. We had a speedway close to where I used to live as a child and used to attend all the time and you know I just ended up getting into it.

[Adam Carolla]

Do you do other forms of racing or just the super saloon?

[Steve Williams]

You know, we have two. You know, we have two different classes. One has a 360 cubic inch in it, and then one has an open limit. And I have one car in each class, and each weekend I choose between the two cars which is a better event or maybe which is the event closer to home. But same kind of car, just a different engine in them. But yeah, so I don't get really.

[Adam Carolla]

What the advantage is to having bigger displacement and more horsepower if the rear wheels are just spinning the whole time.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, well, that's the key. I mean, you've got to be. Actually, that's what you've got to try and do, is you've got to set the car up so that it doesn't spin all the time. And of course, when the track gets slick, in a dirt track race, when the track gets very, very slick, the lap times between a car with 360 cubic inches and a car that's got 410 cubic inches, the lap times can be very, very minimally different. But when the track gets really driving with a lot of driving, a lot of grip in it, that's when you'll see a big difference in the lap times where the rear wheels are getting hooked up onto the surface.

[Adam Carolla]

So how do you get to be a professional caddy? I mean, you hit Greg Norris Norman, who's a big name, the shark in 82. You were, I don't know, 19 or something like that. Like young. He was, I don't know when Greg. When the pinnacle of Greg's. Norman's career was, but it was always a big name as far as I can remember in golf. How do you get hooked up at such a young age with someone like. Like that?

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, look, I mean, I just started cutting, right, you know, from it. From basically as a child, my father introduced me to Peter Thompson, a very legendary Australian professional, and I carried for him in the New Zealand open. It was 1976. I was 13 years of age, and I was hooked on it right from then, absolutely hooked on it. And. And I, you know, that was my path. That was what I wanted to do. And I found out how you do it, went about it and started kidding. And it wasn't long that I was cadding and I was paired with Greg Norman. I was carrying for another player, and I was paired in the same. The same group with Greg Dorman. It was. It was actually the Australian Open. It was. It was like 1981, it was the last tournament of the year and that. And he called me over the summer break and said I'm playing a few tournaments in Australia at the start of the year, would you like to come and cage me? And he, he observed my work the day that day and really liked it. And yeah, so it's, you know, kind of a lucky break to get to start off with. But yeah, I, I just, like I said, I started at my home golf course. Cadding. There's no real path to becoming a caddy. A lot of guys are players that have it on the tour or they, guys that are very good and wanting to make it on the tour and they go and caddy to see what it's all about. A lot of guys are friends of players or, or there are a lot of caddies like myself that come from the club background and just happen to know a player or that, or that it may have had a tournament, their course or what it might be. They might have a college mate that played on the tour that, you know, there's many different ways to get onto the tour but there's no like, you know, there's no set way.

[Adam Carolla]

If you like, there's not New Zealand, Australia. Is there a rivalry or do they care? It's kind of interesting that it's like the army Navy game is a big rivalry out here. But I'm like, I don't know why such a rivalry. You're both in the service and you're basically on the same side. If a war breaks out, you guys will be best friends. Friends. But it's a rivalry. It's Army Navy. You know, we do that all USC and ucla. It's a cross town rivalry. You know, it's cause their proximity. But then I think what about Australia and New Zealand? Like as an ugly American, we're sort of like, we don't even know the difference. We don't care. We don't even think about it. If you're from New Zealand, everyone will go, yeah, guy's Australian. And then you'll have to correct them. That's how bad we are. But how is it there?

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, no, it's a, it's a, it's a very, very big sporting rivalry between Australia, New Zealand. You know, we, we're only a small country of 5 million Australia's, you know, 15 million, three times the size of New Zealand. And we compete very, very good with Australia and sport, you know, rugby and cricket, our two main sports. And, and then in the woman's sport, it's netball. And we compete very competitively in, if not like, particularly in rugby, which is our national sport. You know, it's a great rivalry, so. And also, you know, when, you know, when your typical American hears the lingo or the language for someone, Australia, New Zealand, nine times out of 10 that they'll think you're from Australia. And Kiwis don't like that. They like their own idea. You know, they say, no, no, no, we're from New Zealand, not Australia. So, you know, it's. It's like we. You know, it's like the different American accents and New Zealand, I can't tell the difference between someone from Alabama, someone from Georgia, but we can tell an Australian, and a New Zealand accent is very different to us.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, people get. It's funny, there's some people here, women named Katherine, and some of them do it with a K, and some of them do it with a C. But if you say Catherine with a K to someone, to a Katherine, who spells it with a C, they go, oh, come on. On. And I'm like, I'm not trying to offend you. I just. I don't care. And I don't know. I feel the same way with Australia and New Zealand, but I'm glad you guys have a rivalry. I like that, and I knew you would, and you have to, but I don't know why.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, no, it's a great rivalry. Well, I mean, it's just, you know, I guess many, many years ago, Australia. Australia's had a bit of a habit of claiming some of our athletes and saying, oh, these people are from New Zealand, when they're actually not. But, yeah, certainly, anytime there's any sporting games between the two countries, it's a very, very good. But it's a very healthy rivalry. It's a very good one. And you've got to have rivalries in sport, as you know.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. I may be guilty of this because I was talking the other day on the show about a guy I worked with named Frazier, and then we were constructing, and I tried some of his Vegemite, and I hated it. And then I said he was Australian, but as I think about it, I think he was from New Zealand. But then I think a Vegemite is Australian. But is Vegemite New Zealand as well?

[Steve Williams]

No, ours is Marmite. Theirs is Vegemite.

[Adam Carolla]

Now, what's yours?

[Steve Williams]

Marmite. M A R M, I, T E, Marmite. And this is Vegemite.

[Adam Carolla]

Is it as bad as Vegemite, mate?

[Steve Williams]

Well, we love it. So, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, what is it is. Is it yeast? Yeah.

[Steve Williams]

One's a vegetable extract and one's a meat extract, but they both have the same kind of flavor. It's very dark, very. You know, it's a distinctive flavor. And. And, you know, most people, it's one of those things. It's like when you go to the UK and you have black pudding.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Steve Williams]

Most people just stomach the look at it and, you know, if you see veggie Mara Marmite and you're going to put it on your toast, it's not something that, you know, most people that don't know or have that acquired taste for going to use it.

[Adam Carolla]

Are there any other mites out there or is it just this in Australia and New Zealand? Because I don't know of any other mites. I don't think we have any mites out here.

[Steve Williams]

No, I've not come across it myself either.

[Adam Carolla]

Maybe I should come up with something like.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, you could.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, because.

[Steve Williams]

Well, you've got dynamite.

[Adam Carolla]

We got dynamite and then. But, you know, we have Miracle Whip or mayonnaise or something. That's basically our. That's basically our might out here.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah. Yeah. That's your go to.

[Adam Carolla]

So what was the. What was the highest and the lowest out on tour with. With Tiger? What was. What was the best moment? What was the most disappointing moment?

[Steve Williams]

Well, I think, you know, like, there's no question when Tiger won. Won the 2001 Masters, which was his fourth consecutive major, so he held all four major championships at one time. Nobody's ever done that. Obviously, that was a, you know, that was a monumental moment and probably the, you know, something I'll never forget. And, yeah, there's many, many highlights. And then, you know, to be honest, you know, I've had that question asked a lot. What were the low moments? But I guess, you know, he had lengthy periods of time when he wasn't playing, you know. But as far as on the course, I can honestly say there wasn't a lot of low, low moments. I mean, he was a great competitor. You know, you always knew every day that he gave it his best. So if it didn't work out, you couldn't really say it was a low because he was such an incredible competitor. He never left, you know, never left anything on the table. The. The score that he shot was the best score he could have shot today. So, you know, pretty amazing to be able to say, say that about an individual.

[Adam Carolla]

Was his dad around when you were around? I'm trying to think when his dad passed.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah. Yeah, his dad was around for a good, you know, a good portion of the time. He, he passed around 2006, I believe it was. So, you know, I started in 99. So he was there, you know, very influential figure, had a great impact on Tiger's game and that. And, and often when Tiger might have been struggling, something he, he could call upon his dad because his dad had a great set of eyes and to part of his career, his dad wasn't well enough to travel to all the times, but he certainly watched on TV and he'd have the ability sometimes just through watching it on TV to be able to give Tiger some little tips of help. So certainly, you know, in the short term, Tiger really missed having that connection with his father, like any son does, but also that added connection that his father had a great knowledge of his game.

[Adam Carolla]

So his dad could be watching the tournament on tv, see something in his swing, and literally call him on the course?

[Steve Williams]

Well, no, not on the course, but like, you know, he could certainly. You can't, don't have your phone turned on when you're on the course. But he certainly, if, you know, if he spotted something, he'd talk to Tiger that evening or after the round, and that would be very beneficial most of the time.

[Adam Carolla]

I remember there was some controversy some years ago about a player that had difficulty with walking, and so they talked about being in a golf cart and then that was against the rules. And I can't remember what came down with that, but I don't know, I was sort of like, ah, let him use the golf cart. I don't know how big an advantage that is because he's got a bad leg. But where do you come down on something like that?

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, the guy's name, he was a guy called. His name was Casey Martin. He's from Oregon. And he was a very good player, but he couldn't, he couldn't walk 18 holes and, and through physical disability he had with his leg. And in order to play, he, he required a cart of which he was granted some dispensation for a little while. But I guess they probably. I'm not sure. Yeah, look, if you, if you're. It's a sport where you've got to be able to walk the golf course. That's basically what it is. And you know, it is. I guess you can look at it as being a bit of an unfair advantage if the weather gets really poor and you've got a golf cart and you can shelter from the weather. You know, you're out there in the wind and the rain and you've got a golf cart and you can drive between shots without getting wet and everything. There's, you know, there's some advantages in that. Yeah, look, I mean, it's an interesting debate. They use carts on the Senior Tour, so it's an interesting debate whether whether you should bow to or not.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I know when you bring up nuances like being able to shelter from a rainstorm or things like that, I kind of go, yeah, kind of makes sense. I mean, I guess in a way it'd be like if you're a professional football kicker, but you couldn't walk out to the middle of the field. Field and kick the football. They wouldn't let you put someone in a cart and put them out and then let them kick the football. They would say, you got to walk out there. You can't be carried out there, or what have you. So I guess in a certain way it makes sense. You're saying part of the sport is you have to be able to walk 18 holes.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess also if you allow one person to use a car, I guess there might have been some thought that perhaps a lot of other people with different dispensations, you know, going to ask to use a cart because, you know, I've got a heart rate, you know, I've got a heart problem, maybe I've got this. I'm not sure. Is it? Look, you got to be able to walk. And I guess that's the bottom line.

[Adam Carolla]

So what are some of the quirkier rules? Like you can't have a phone out there? Is that a rule?

[Steve Williams]

Well, no, you can have a phone, but you can't, you know, you can obviously can't have your phone on while you're playing and that, but. Oh, look, the rule. The rule. The golf is a comprehensive set of rules in golf. I mean, there's a lot of rules, and that's why golf always has rules officially. And you always see players when they, when they. If there's any kind of possibility where there could be a penalty involved or a drop involved, they get a rules official because the rules are quite difficult in the goals, and it's very hard to keep updated with all the rules. And so tournaments have rules officials, which become big parts of the tournaments, obviously.

[Adam Carolla]

So for you, are we retired? Are you going to be out on the links? Are you still catting? I mean, once you make it in the hall of fame, you know, where do you go from there?

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, no, no, I've. I've done my Time counting. I mean I carry, you know, maybe one or two tournaments here and there. I like to carry in our local national open, the New Zealand Open and maybe get in the Australian Open or something like that. But no, you know, I did 40 plus years of cadding and yeah, I'm happily retired back in New Zealand now and you know, still good. Enjoy a bit of car racing and, and you know, just do your own thing.

[Adam Carolla]

Can you make good money being a caddy and, or is there like a base pay or is it all just up to what the golfer wants to pay?

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, look, I mean everybody has a different deal. Caddy's, you know, the main income from a caddie is a percentage of the winning. So it's become a very, very lucrative job cadding. And you know, years ago when I first started cadding, there weren't enough caddies. You could often on the first two rounds of a tournament you could carry for two different players if they're on the opposite side of the draw. If one guy was playing Thursday morning, one was playing Thursday afternoon and they flip flopped it, one was Friday morning, Friday afternoon you could carry for two players because some guys didn't have caddies. But it's, yeah, it's become a very, very lucrative job. If you think about, you know, a tournament that pays $4 million to win and the caddy gets 10%, you know, that's one week's work. It's an enormous amount of money. You know, it's, you know, you look at the live tour, the prize money on the live tour, and if you're getting it on the PJ Tour or the live tour and you're caring for one of the very good players, it's a very, very lucrative job and it's a very sought after job now. So it becomes very competitive field.

[Adam Carolla]

So is that the standard 10% on a win?

[Steve Williams]

So it can vary every, you know, generally it could be from six. Every player will play 10% on a win, but it'll be, and there are a couple of players that I've known that have played more than 10% for a win. But generally it'll be, you know, there'll be a deal where it's a percentage for a top 10, a percentage for a win, and then, and then below a top 10. So it could be, you know, 6%, 8%, 10%, could be 7, 9, 10, something like that. But it'll, it'll be in the range of 6 to 10% but generally always 10% for a win. And like I said, if you look at all the big tournaments, what they pay, it's become a very lucrative job.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I never really thought about that. But it's standard 10% on a win. So if that guy, guy's made 5 million bucks, the guy who's catting for him is going to make 500K.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah. And look, you know, not just, you know, a caddy is not a, you know, it's, it's a skilled position but I mean, it's not like you got to go to university, you're not going to put a lot of training in. It's a job that, you know, you've got to have a lot of ability and a lot of self confidence and know what you're doing. But I mean, it's a very lucrative living to be made for a job that doesn't require any training, if you know what I mean.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, well, I mean, in a weird and lesser fashion, I was a carpenter, but I never read a book on it and I never went to college or school. I never took a class. It was just on the site training, just on the site, on the job site. And then at some point you become a carpenter and I guess you did on the job training for all those years and that's what you got paid. Together We Roared is the name of the book alongside Tiger for his epic 12 year, 13 majors run. It's available now and Steve may be coming to a dirt track near you as well.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, thanks, Adam. Yeah, right.

[Adam Carolla]

Good talking to you, Steve Williams.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah, thanks for having us on the show, Adam. Good luck to you.

[Adam Carolla]

Same to you. My pleasure. All right, I'm going to be in Port Charles, Florida at Fasani's Italian Steakhouse and theater. Gonna be doing stand up there May 2, May 3, two shows Friday, two shows Saturday. I think it's Friday and Saturday and I gotta look into that anyway. May 2, May 3, four shows and then Melbourne, Florida doing that stand up there at the Melbourne auditorium. That'll be May 4th. Go to mcroll.com for all the live shows. So. So until next time, this is Adam Carolla for Colonel Brian Saucer and Maury Povich and Steve Williams saying mahalo.

[Dawson]

Pick up your phone and leave us a voicemail at 888-634-1744 and then get tickets to see Adam carolla [e-mail].

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