426: Tim Allen Loves the Ballet

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe – Episode 426: Tim Allen Loves the Ballet

Release Date: February 18, 2025

In Episode 426 of The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe, longtime friends Mike Rowe and Tim Allen engage in a deep and engaging conversation that spans over two hours. This episode delves into a blend of personal anecdotes, philosophical musings, and discussions about craftsmanship and the arts. Below is a structured summary capturing the essential points, notable quotes, and the natural flow of their dialogue.

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1. Reunion and Setting the Tone (00:00 – 03:00)

The episode kicks off with Tim Allen expressing his delight in reconnecting with Mike Rowe for the second time on the podcast.

• Tim Allen (00:11): "I thought the time flew by. Tim is such a pleasure to be with... You may not have known, Tim Allen loves the ballet right after."

This introduction sets a relaxed and intimate atmosphere, highlighting their camaraderie and hinting at unexpected topics ahead.

2. Early Conversations and Unexpected Topics (03:00 – 07:00)

The conversation swiftly moves from casual banter to discussions about finances, tools, and the unpredictability of expert advice.

• Tim Allen (00:55): "This... Dumb well, I've been talking to some financial experts and I have some interesting information to share..."

They critique the conflicting advice from financial experts, humorously segwaying into a plug for NetSuite's ERP solutions. Tim Allen shares his appreciation for quality tools, emphasizing their importance in business operations.

3. Personal Anecdotes and Humor (07:00 – 15:00)

Tim and Mike exchange humorous stories about everyday mishaps, such as dental issues and coffee mishaps, showcasing their ability to find humor in life's inconveniences.

• Mike Rowe (04:09): "I don't know what that is, but seems fine right now because I'm listening to..."

• Tim Allen (04:51): "Hear something about your tooth?"

These light-hearted moments provide a balance to the more profound topics discussed later.

4. Philosophy and Consciousness (15:00 – 35:00)

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to philosophical discussions about consciousness, free will, and the nature of existence.

• Tim Allen (15:22): "Men are pigs."

• Mike Rowe (29:01): "Consciousness is without time. Just did it this morning..."

They explore complex ideas such as Schrödinger's cat, the concepts presented in the movie Lucy, and the philosophical implications of knowing one's fate, as depicted in the film Arrival. Tim Allen shares personal reflections on grief and loss, particularly relating to losing a parent, drawing parallels to mythological and religious narratives.

5. The Intersection of Art and Craftsmanship (35:00 – 55:00)

Tim reveals his newfound appreciation for ballet and the arts, which contrasts with Mike's lifelong passion for mechanical work and restoration.

• Tim Allen (18:00): "I used to hate dance. I thought it was phony and stupid. And now I've like ballet and like art..."

• Mike Rowe (27:06): "I find it amazing... expressing the best of creation there."

They discuss the dedication and precision required in both artistic endeavors and mechanical craftsmanship. Mike shares his project of building an electric hot rod, highlighting the challenges and interdisciplinary collaboration between traditional hot rodders and electric vehicle specialists.

6. Personal Tragedy and Resilience (55:00 – 75:00)

Mike bravely shares his traumatic experience of losing his father to a drunk driver at the age of 11, delving into the emotional aftermath and the lingering questions about why bad things happen to good people.

• Mike Rowe (37:58): "I have a technical house... understanding what happens with copper wires..."

• Tim Allen (58:17): "That's the essential."

This segment provides a raw and heartfelt look into Mike's personal struggles, his search for meaning through religion, and his commitment to self-improvement. Tim Allen offers empathetic support, reflecting on similar themes of loss and resilience in his own life.

7. The Value of Skilled Trades and Education (75:00 – 95:00)

The dialogue shifts to the importance of skilled trades, industrial arts education, and the declining appreciation for craftsmanship in modern society.

• Mike Rowe (85:24): "They don't want to fix it because it's too bouncy..."

• Tim Allen (94:07): "That's so interesting, man... reinvigorate that curiosity."

They lament the erosion of industrial arts programs in schools and advocate for a resurgence of hands-on skills education. Tim discusses his initiative at Tara Linda High School, emphasizing the need to inspire the next generation with practical skills and curiosity.

8. Reflections on Industry and Innovation (95:00 – 115:00)

Mike and Tim examine the complexities of modern industries, intellectual property challenges, and the balance between functionality and aesthetics in design.

• Tim Allen (108:11): "I have to make a chair that you can disassemble quickly..."

• Mike Rowe (110:32): "It's about translating it..."

They delve into case studies of companies like Caterpillar and Moog, discussing the intricacies of manufacturing and the impact of globalization on craftsmanship. The conversation also touches on the role of leadership and the undervaluation of frontline workers in various sectors.

9. Personal Stories and Humor Amidst Struggles (115:00 – 133:00)

Towards the end, Tim and Mike share personal stories that blend humor with poignant moments, illustrating how comedy and resilience have helped them navigate life's challenges.

• Mike Rowe (121:07): "I switched phones one time because I work with Apple..."

• Tim Allen (126:53): "Thanks for coming in and doing this."

Mike recounts a harrowing yet humorous incident from his time in prison, where laughter became a coping mechanism in a life-threatening situation. Tim Allen reflects on the therapeutic power of comedy, both in personal life and professional endeavors.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Tim Allen (00:55): "This... Dumb well, I've been talking to some financial experts and I have some interesting information to share..."

• Mike Rowe (15:25): "Quality is the enemy of capitalism. That's when I've turned into a Marxist, because he's right..."

• Tim Allen (18:00): "I used to hate dance. I thought it was phony and stupid. And now I've like ballet and like art..."

• Mike Rowe (37:58): "I have a technical house... understanding what happens with copper wires..."

• Mike Rowe (55:00): "My uncle worked for Ford Tractor when Ford used to make tractors..."

• Tim Allen (94:42): "We are living in a tinderbox. We're living in one..."

• Mike Rowe (116:15): "It's a balance. It can make it look good. You know, there's people that make this whole device..."

• Tim Allen (120:52): "But the minute you get too close, now you're Ed Sheeran. Now you're in court for five years. Now it's copyrighted."

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Conclusion

Episode 426 offers listeners a rich tapestry of discussions that intertwine personal experiences, philosophical inquiries, and a profound appreciation for the arts and skilled trades. Tim Allen and Mike Rowe's candid dialogue underscores the importance of craftsmanship, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of understanding the complexities of life. Through humor and heartfelt stories, they inspire a deeper appreciation for both the seen and unseen labor that shapes our world.

Transcript

[Tim Allen]

Chuck, I could talk for hours about the conversation I just had, but what's the point? Since the conversation I just had went on for hours with my old friend Tim Allen.

[Mike Rowe]

Two hours and ten minutes to be precise.

[Tim Allen]

But who's really counting? Well, aside from you, no one. I thought the time flew by. Tim is such a pleasure to be with. Now I owe him another one because this is the second time he's come by on the podcast. But boy, he came armed this time with a whole slew of topics that I did not anticipate. I'm not going to say anything else because the conversation speaks for itself. It takes its time. I hope you'll strap in and enjoy it. I don't think it's too big a spoiler alert to tell you that among other things you may not have known, Tim Allen loves the ballet right after.

[Mike Rowe]

This.

[Tim Allen]

Dumb well, I've been talking to some financial experts and I have some interesting information to share. According to the experts, there's going to be a bull market in 2025 or a bear market. Interest rates are definitely going to rise. Unless of course, they fall. And happily, according to the experts, inflation is no longer a concern. Unless, of course, it is. Yeah, this is what happens when you talk to experts. They don't seem to agree with each other about anything. Which is precisely why 41,000 businesses have future proofed their business with NetSuite by by Oracle. This is the number one enterprise resource planning cloud based software in the world. Brings accounting and financial management, inventory, hr, everything in the one fluid platform. And that means you can close the books in days, not weeks. That means you're spending less time looking backwards and more time looking forwards. And of course that means if I didn't have a business manager overseeing my modest operation, this is the product that I would absolutely be using. Learn [e-mail] Mike and while you're there, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning. It's a fascinating read if you want to get an honest hint at what's waiting just around the corner. It's an eye opener. Get yours for [e-mail] Mike that's netsuite.com Mike that's netSuite.com netsuite.com netsuite dot com netsuite yes, netsuite. I said netsuite. He said that Mike. Like I said, cutbacks.

[Mike Rowe]

Only the best. Because you can't afford a piece of bamboo with little stripes on it. Because that would have been a lot of money to have A clapboard.

[Tim Allen]

Oh, God. Is that what they're officially called?

[Mike Rowe]

It's a clapper.

[Tim Allen]

A clapper.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, I think so. I do. I'm constantly messing with our lady. I always put a ruler when she's not looking in there, so it doesn't.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And she go, what the. It's not funny to her.

[Tim Allen]

But I do one where I lean in super close and then act like they catch my nose and really just keep going with it. I've made people cry.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah. I mean, if you commit to it. Yeah. Here comes your coffee. Look at that, Lucas. Weirdest Logan is coming in hot with the coffee.

[Mike Rowe]

He's just kind of.

[Tim Allen]

We asked him if he, like, would you like anything at all? Anything? And he was like, no, nothing. Maybe. Maybe coffee iced with a straw. Because that's what we have sitting around.

[Mike Rowe]

Anything that's horribly hard to get. And then this wasn't. There we go. I hate iced coffee, but I need a little caffeine today. Sorry, we couldn't get a large. Never. Yeah. Is this enough? Because I'll be pissing this out pretty soon.

[Tim Allen]

Oh, terrific. All right, well, we'll keep this one short. How much time do you have, by the way?

[Mike Rowe]

I don't have a time. I don't want to say I don't have a time limit because it sounds like.

[Tim Allen]

If you ask for a Chuck, let me know. What's been three hours. I don't want to be disrespectful to the man.

[Mike Rowe]

You got it. Hard to deal with now.

[Tim Allen]

We'll get you out of here in no time. What's wrong with your tooth? What happened?

[Mike Rowe]

Something happened to the nerve on the inside of one of these teeth, so they polished on the inside. The guy said I would avoid hot beverages. If you have to drink coffee, use a straw. I don't know what that is, but seems fine right now because I'm listening to. Generally, I don't listen, but I have a. I bought a sports car this year.

[Tim Allen]

That's weird. You.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I got big, you know, big V8s. And I bought an old Porsche, but you can't drink anything in it. And here you're in a car. If you're ever driving to do any of my production errands.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

You're in your car as an office. Right. Drinking that car because it's too bouncy. So my life is over.

[Tim Allen]

Hey, did you see my truck? That I did. Well, what do you think?

[Mike Rowe]

Loved it.

[Tim Allen]

I thought about you every step of.

[Mike Rowe]

The way the whole show. I don't clearly I don't. Totally lost what you were talking about half the time going, but look at that freaking bronco. Wow.

[Tim Allen]

It wasn't a bronco, man. The one I sold at the auction.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, that one on your show?

[Tim Allen]

No, not the one on the show.

[Mike Rowe]

That was the one on the show is overdone. Like everything else, it's just. You'll never use it.

[Tim Allen]

No, no. Somebody bought it at Barrett Jackson for $1.5 million.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, but for a show, right?

[Tim Allen]

No, they're anonymous. I don't even know who it was.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. I've been to Barrett jackson and bought probably five cars down there. Yes, I did see that car. And I said, who made that for you?

[Tim Allen]

The company is called sugar creek. They're up in Ohio, Washington courthouse. And the guy is called John richardson. You should know him. You'd love him. He.

[Mike Rowe]

That's what he does is resto rods or whatever you call it.

[Tim Allen]

Well, yeah. And no, what he does for real is he sold you all the bacon you've ever eaten. He's the guy that sells all the bacon to like Oscar Mayer and Smithsfield. And they're like the major bacon wholesaler, but he's crazy for cars.

[Mike Rowe]

And so I'm stuck on the bacon thing.

[Tim Allen]

I know. But literally, at sugar creek, there's this bacon factory and across the street is a 10,000 square foot fabrication house with a couple dozen dudes who are the best at what they do. He's probably got 200 old junkers behind the building and they're constantly in the process of turning these old turds into these beautiful, beautiful classics that guys like you would buy.

[Mike Rowe]

I just had a car dealer come by my shop in north Hollywood and the same thing I said. Resto rods have taught me the value of gm, Ford, Chrysler, Ferrari. That's what they do for a living. Yeah, we build hot rods at my shop. Isn't that beautiful? And then me, the functional guy goes, has anybody driven this? Because generally it takes three to four years to make some of these really high end restaurant rods and takes five years to sort them out because they don't work. They're not functional. Yeah, that's old Porsche design. Form follows function, right? I love that. Sometimes it looks horrible, but it works. Porsche has been able to manipulate, at least in my view, they've been able to manipulate beautiful design into a functional piece.

[Tim Allen]

Was that really Porsche that had that turn of phrase?

[Mike Rowe]

I studied. That was minor in college. Design and forms falls function. I thought that was ba house, actually. Yeah. Yeah. I've always Loved that whole thing.

[Tim Allen]

Well, it's design, but it's also philosophy adjacent.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Tim Allen]

And you're an old philosophy freak.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. Quality is the enemy of capitalism. That's when I've turned into a Marxist, because he's right. They don't want Fisker tools. I believe was the. If I got the guy right, he said, just make me the best wrench, I'll figure out how to sell it. Don't make the one that sells best, which is a bag of wrenches from overseas for like 11 bucks. For 30 wrenches?

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And they're broken in the bag. They're really broken. And if you pick up a Fisker flat nose pliers, as soon as you hold it, you go, huh, yeah, That's. Wow, that's weird. But it's also $39.

[Tim Allen]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

For one wrench. Or Wilton Vice Company. I make jokes about them all the time. I wanted to replace the vise in my house, and it's an old. It just started wobbling. I didn't notice that it was wobbling. And I said, do they make better vices? And Craftsman, Sears, old company, used to make in the 60s. They were pretty good. Craftsman has since turned into mass production. So I'd go online, and I do this all the time, search. How much could you pay for a vise? And so I get into this. Wilton, I believe. Will Turner. Wilton, I think. Wilton. And it was in Ohio, I believe again. And then I'm going, I called up, I said, who pays 2,400 bucks for a vise? And she goes, sir, you called me. And I go, okay, point taken. She goes, you're looking at a machinist vise. You probably don't need that. It has declinations on the. So you could put a watch in there. It'll only do. And I go, all of our gears are internal. What's it called? It's forged steel. It's not pounded. Or 50,000 pounds per square inch. The anvil on top. You can actually use that anvil that's on the top of the vise.

[Tim Allen]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

I end up buying two. One for my buddy Hanks, who's got an office around here. And I said, it is like buttery smooth. No matter who comes into my shop, the big shop, they'll sit by the vise and go, what is. Ooh, what is that?

[Tim Allen]

Hanks isn't Tom.

[Mike Rowe]

Huh? He's got it.

[Tim Allen]

So you guys are still on a last name basis? You're that tight?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, we are. Hanks. Well, it's Woody or Hanks. One of the two. It's either a fabric cowboy that nobody wants.

[Tim Allen]

So is he a geek, too? With this and by. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah. We got more mail. Last time you and I chatted, I told the story of the time you and I missed our queue on Last man.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Tim Allen]

Because I asked you some question in passing backstage, and you started talking about it was a blender and you were trying to take a busted blender and explain to your grandkid or something, you know, show them how it could be fixed. But it was all like one piece of extruded plastic, Right? Dude, you lost your mind.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Tim Allen]

It was just the two of us in the shadows behind the flats. And you're like, in my face and you're frothing and you're like. And I'll tell you something else, Ro. The way they made this thing. And meanwhile, the audience is like, who cares about them?

[Mike Rowe]

I care about this little piece of rubber that caused this entire problem of this stupid. And that caused. I did a History channel show over that. Yeah, over that blender. April Wilkerson, who is this do it yourselfer. That's the best in the world that we had on that show. She got a hold of it. My shop got a hold of it. Nobody could fix it. April did fix it eventually. First off, I don't want to give the brand away. There's no way to get the. After what you just did to Fisker. Well, Fisker was good. I love Fisker. It's great.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah. What was the bag full of wrenches that showed up already busted?

[Mike Rowe]

I don't think you alluded to.

[Tim Allen]

Craftsman went all commercials.

[Mike Rowe]

Craftsman used to be the best. I thought Craftsman. I thought they should have branched off when Sears went under. Craftsman should have been his own hardware store. I've always thought it should have been their own hardware store. Because now I don't know who makes good ratchet anymore. Craftsmans are okay.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't know who makes the top. The high end one.

[Tim Allen]

I'll tell you this. Craftsman saved QVC when I was there in 1990. They were starting to circle the drain because they couldn't get any name brands. It was all just stuff for sale. You'd went on a carnival midway, you know, and then they made this deal with Craftsman and all of a sudden the viewership went crazy and we started selling all kinds of tools. Thanks to Craftsman.

[Mike Rowe]

Thanks to Craftsman.

[Tim Allen]

But that was 1990.

[Mike Rowe]

Right then when they made it. But I said that the blender idea was. It has not Stopped. I have a technical house. I like my house technical. But my technical department in my house looks like a battleship. The room down the basement where all my furnaces are. Even guys that come fix it who did this because it's all bleach white walls. And I got. So you can get behind the air conditioning unit. Behind any kind. I want. Where you fix it is. Looks better than where you operate. Yeah, that's my deal. My whole thing is I'm out in the brand as questron as you can. From a distance. I can turn on lights in certain parts of the house. It's. But it started going funky on me three weeks ago with some lights. Didn't work. Some lights went on all by themselves. It got so frustrating. And then you get it, guys. And I said, I know. What can I do before a white van with ladders on it shows up? And it's always the same thing. Unplug it now. I don't care how big the components are. Eventually a guy goes, we'll try the free phenomena turn. Then a fun to plug this front.

[Tim Allen]

Of it or hard restart.

[Mike Rowe]

Hard restart. I go, isn't there a switch you could have that has a hard restart in it? Well, anyway, they tried that. Nothing. Then he goes. He sends me a video. And he goes, I don't know what I'm even looking at. And he says, that's the back of the fluffels. There's a two module, the green area, which is a sticker function of anything. They go. Do they just unplug? No, no, no. Unplug it. You know, put your elbow on your knee, look at the gods and then blink and there's something you got to pull. Sure. The whole thing was based on. Don't even understand it. Copper is brittle. Copper wire sometimes just separates. I mean, in the middle. It's something about copper. Hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold. Electric. Eventually it just popped. And I'm talking about a wire. You could barely see, barely see it between another clip that had nine wires in. But a ground wire was in there, and that ground wire was tapping. Once it stopped, all the lights went out. The whole house went out because of a little tiny wire. And I said, that is something about technology and something about how things get done is what's fascinating to me, which is why I love what you do. I love being part of this thing. And as I told my shop, I break stuff literally before I fix it. Like this guy came through, the second guy came through, and he found that. Yeah, without yanking stuff out. I don't know what he used, what tool he used. But that's my weakness is plumbing and electronics, electrical stuff.

[Tim Allen]

Well, your strength is reductive. I've always admired that about you. Two things. First of all, you distill stuff really fast to the tiniest component part, whether it's a little filament of copper or an O ring or some little rubber knibbling pin or some Johnson rod or whatever it is. And then you build from that. And, and I think that's just interesting as a personality quirk. But what I like is that you, you work in this big machine. Like you're in the Disney machine, you're in the network machine, you're in the scripted machine. And you, you gotta be in rooms all the time with writers who don't know their ass from a hot rock, but who want to write.

[Mike Rowe]

I wouldn't say it that way in.

[Tim Allen]

No, you wouldn't. But here I am. I'm not in that world. But I know for a guy who's a bit of a pedant when it comes to the specificities of maybe his automobiles or electronics, you want to get it right.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Tim Allen]

Even in a world of fiction, you want that stuff to be right.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't think you can base fiction on reality, even the comedy. I do. And we've had this discussion, Last Man Standing. And now when I decided to do Shifting Gears, I said, if you did another one. I said, well, I thought they were kidding because I was doing Santa Claus, the series. At the same time, they're saying, how would. Would you do a linear TV show?

[Tim Allen]

Hey, look at this, by the way.

[Mike Rowe]

There you go.

[Tim Allen]

We're not screwing around.

[Mike Rowe]

Not screwing around.

[Tim Allen]

Chuck is actually doing something over there.

[Mike Rowe]

Something to see it come from. Caroline Cassidy and Carrie Burke from 20th century. We had lunch and they were saying, what would you do? Caroline Cassidy, fortunately, her family lost their home in this fire. I keep thinking about all that she's done and just amazing that the amount of pain this has caused this business. And they move on. She had seen me in Vegas and she said, I had no idea. Didn't sound like a compliment. She said, I had no idea that you had this sort of an impact on people. And I said, because I've been working stand up for years and still sell out these big venues. And she said, it just. Just don't know it. I said, well, my publicity people push other stuff. It's not about my stand up. And so she says, there's so many people that in your sense of humor and it hasn't really been. The show is partially. Home Improvement was based on my act. The first six episodes were my first act. My first showtime act. Men are pigs.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah, good stuff. 1990.

[Mike Rowe]

1990.

[Tim Allen]

I felt terrible about myself after watching that.

[Mike Rowe]

I love and hate men who grew up in a family seven boys and two girls. So it's. It was all about men's perspective, but run by women, which is life in itself how it is. Anyway, I told these people if I did another one, I want to be a widower, recently widowed. And they love that because they said then we could date network like that. I'm not so interested in that part of it. I love grief as it's run my life with loss and other people's loss. I've always admired people that have lost something deep, and yet they still have a true north again. I don't understand that. I've fought it my whole life, and so I want to do that. And then I want to be in the car restoration business because I love construction. I did that home improvement. I loved the outdoor equipment business. Did that last minute. If I did it again, I want to be in Resto Rods in this business right now where the. I'm not finding the new generation that into it.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And in my case, my shop is next to a dance academy. And I used to hate dance. I thought it was phony and stupid. And now I've like ballet and like art. I said, that's the best of mankind. How did that happen?

[Tim Allen]

Like, that's really interesting to me because I. I got a riff on every bad thing that's ever really happened. Socially starts when you take the art out of it. Yes. Like when the vocational arts became VO Tech, and then sha. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then shop and then whatever. But like, when did it occur to you that maybe. Maybe the art was the thing worth saving? Dumb. Chuck, I have a quick question, and I'd appreciate an honest answer. Shoot. Mike, do you still have your American Giant sweatshirt?

[Mike Rowe]

Of course. I got several of them, actually.

[Tim Allen]

Good. Well, you need to know something. Do you think you're going to live to like, 90?

[Mike Rowe]

Geez, I hope so.

[Tim Allen]

Well, I got news for you. You're still going to have that American Giant sweatshirt. No doubt. You might even want to get buried in it. Or not. The point is, it's indestructible. And if you haven't learned that yet, you will as time goes by. I've had mine now for nearly 15 years. There's a reason American giant made headlines 15 years ago with the finest hoodie ever made. Honestly, the detail and the time and the care that Bayard Winthrop and his whole crew over there put into making that product in America, it translates into all their stuff. Now. They've got jeans, they've got T shirts, they've got everything. @american-giant.com Mike you can get a look at what a company who's truly dedicated to making high quality stuff in America is doing today. They're just doing so many things right. I just had coffee with Bayard last week and we had a great catch up. And he showed me their latest heavyweight hooded sweatshirt. Chuck, I'm telling you, this thing is hot off the loom and it must weigh five pounds. Yeah, that's great. It's just. I mean, I don't know how anything can be that sturdy and that comfortable at the same time. But see for yourself. That's over there along with so many other great choices. Use code Mike at 20% off. T shirts, jeans, jackets, sweatshirts, pants. And the five pound sweatshirt I just saw at american-giant.com Mike american-giant.com mike american giant, american made. American Giant, American made.

[Mike Rowe]

Because of that. When you remove that part of it was a bad joke, perhaps, is Stalin. I was looking at the murderers in Mao Tse Tung. Hitler was a child compared to those two, Mao Zedong and Stalin. There was 20 million or millions and millions of people. And I don't understand that process of a human being that gets that low. And then Stalin would go, kill. You know, I want all of them dead tomorrow and all these dead, but don't touch the ballet dancers. And somehow it always was weird to me that the Russians were so violent in their own people. And yet. Oh, the dance. And what was it about dance? And then I took my family to Francis aux Versailles, where I think King Louis invented the tap shoe and all that stuff. And my niece is in the Washington Ballet. And I said, the work these people do is amazing. And I say this and the only word I come is for nothing. They're just expressing. They're not using a tool. Their body is an expression of. I don't get it. I don't get any of the opera, any of that, but my gosh, it's these people expressing the best of creation there.

[Tim Allen]

And do you remember the scene in Shawshank when Robbins locks himself in the warden's office and he plays an aria and it's broadcast all throughout the prison? And the men have never heard. Right, this sound. They've certainly never heard opera. I think it was Maria callas and they just stand there and they weep. They don't even know why they're weeping.

[Mike Rowe]

Exactly.

[Tim Allen]

It happened to me a couple years ago, weirdly in Vegas. I was probably just super tired after a long day of shooting. And I wound up at Cirque du Soleil. It was a production of ka and I'm just sitting there like the fourth row watching the body bend in ways that men can't in such an incredibly synchronized, beautifully choreographed work of deliberate art. And I realized I'm crying like a baby. Don't know why. That to me is art.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. And I said that's. I've lost track of why we were on the subject.

[Tim Allen]

I said that or your tooth in a straw.

[Mike Rowe]

And that's why I get. I said, oh, getting back to my show. And I said that I want it based in this and I want the creative process. I want a contrast between the people that do resto rods. You get the guys deep into the process that we just had. I don't know if it's a word. It's called filigree. Where they etched the bumper. I'm building a really love of this project, but it's been so stressful. I'm doing a 30, 1932 Victoria Victor. I call it Coupe. And it's. I bought it from a guy who had it. I saw it on a auction site. Had been in the Detroit auto show in the 60s. But it's been through guys garages. But the stance of it. I always buy stuff. The stance of this thing. I said, damn, that's nice looking.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

So I took it all apart and then I saw King, one of the English guys had a XKE that he put electric motor in. And I had it all backwards. It was the inverter I was looking at. He opened the hood and the inverter was in there. I said, damn, that's not bad looking. I love big V8s. As I'm designing it. I said I'm going to make a electric hot rod because it's really about the style of the body that I care about. So this has been about a six year project because I don't know diddly crap about electric motors. And nor do most hot rodders in North Hollywood. And the guys, the EV people in Southern California didn't know how to speak. Nor did the hot rodders not to speak to them without annoying them. It got into a name calling. And I said, guys, this is not helpful. The hot rodders need the thing to then build around it. EV guys, no, we need the plan first. We don't want you. And they were just trying to protect. They'd start talking real slow. You don't understand the synchronicity of the inverter to the battery.

[Tim Allen]

Guys love to be talked to like that, by the way. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Really?

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Hot riders love that.

[Tim Allen]

They love that.

[Mike Rowe]

That little.

[Tim Allen]

I hit them on the head sometimes. Oh.

[Mike Rowe]

And it's. But the art form, the guys that actually do it now we've gotten synchronicity between the EV people so we can make it work. That in parentheses said, now there's a lot of batteries under my ass because it's a hot rod. They're not. The gas tank. I thought in my head, you just take the gas tank out, put a battery that back there. That's for about six miles. You have to put them under the seats. And I'm going through. Technically, if these ever catch fire or arc or whatever they do, he goes, yeah, that'd be a problem. You switch them off. He goes, no, it doesn't work like that. Once they arc and they get into that, it's kind of dangerous. I said, my voice usually goes, well, I would have my kids with me, you know. Would you drive your kids in this? He goes, yeah. And it's always that Oppenheimer moment, you know. Sure. Will it light the whole atmosphere on fire? There's a chance it would, but can we eliminate that chance? No, there's really a. You know, we don't really know.

[Tim Allen]

It was like that Higgs boson thing, remember? And so it's like, yeah, we're gonna basically break this beat of light a couple times over, and we're gonna go ahead and collide a couple atoms and, you know, could. Could be an event horizon, I suppose. Could be the end of. The end of everything.

[Mike Rowe]

Could be.

[Tim Allen]

Probably not.

[Mike Rowe]

It. I don't think so. This is. I. I used to do this bit on. And it was in the movie Oppenheimer, and they did it where they had. They said. Where the. I think Matt Damon's character said, what are the. You said, barely any chance. Well, it's minute. And they're arguing about it. And they have, I think, Little John or Little Boy and Fat man or whatever. It was the only two they made. They never really tried them. And they said, well, so it could light the atmosphere in New Mexico on fire. He goes, could probably won't. Probably could. Is there a chance it would light all the atmosphere on fire? Well, that's, you know, an outside possibility that. So you could catch the. The world's Atmosphere on fire. And he goes, it's a very, very slight chance of that. And then you have a bunch of guys going, ah hell, let's try it. And they went ahead and blew it up. And in the even the movie they were a little too close to that thing.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

The point I trying to make was that the art of putting stuff together. I admire where you're pointed with it. Why I love ballet and now I say I love it. I still don't get it. And it's hard to watch except with my niece and my daughter was in dance school.

[Tim Allen]

You need a docent, right? You need somebody to say and this is why.

[Mike Rowe]

This is why. This is what's important to it. But mostly now I'm fascinated by the workload it takes to be able to do that. I didn't even know those wood shoes, whatever they're called. I didn't know that they put their foot in a wood shoe or clogs where they dance. They're not slippers. It's a thing I didn't know that that's where they can spin on top. But the muscles and what it takes to do it. And why are you doing this? To express a movement of my body compared to music. And I go, I find it amazing.

[Tim Allen]

Like that's why I said it's. You don't. Weeping is fun. I don't cry much. I'm not a crier. But I think, you know, when it. When I see something like that, that is transcendent. It's Shakespearean. It's what a piece of work is, man. That's all. It's like, wow, you know, is it?

[Mike Rowe]

I spoke as I walked in here, as I've had between my philosophical studies, been real intense with a bunch of my guys that we talk philosophy. We're right back to where and even in college in the last 3ste or whatever you do the four hour session you have to give your profile and Dilworth, that was my professor's name. It's the most depressing group of men in a room that's like. And I'm going, were any philosophers funny? I mean was any any of these guys? There are currently. There's some guys, but not Schrodinger or any of these guys or Schrodinger's cat.

[Tim Allen]

Nietzsche could tell a joke.

[Mike Rowe]

Some of them, but none of them actually. I think Wigginstein, I think Heidel, he eventually got out of philosophy because there's no end to this. There's no. You're asking. It's just because the question exists doesn't mean there's an answer to it.

[Tim Allen]

Right?

[Mike Rowe]

And you get into this darkness. And then I said, this whole occurrence, I call it, this emanation I call it, is temporary.

[Tim Allen]

You're talking about life, life itself, existence.

[Mike Rowe]

And we're. I just saw in a movie Lucy with Scarlett Johansson, just. Which is.

[Tim Allen]

We're.

[Mike Rowe]

We're trapped by time. There is a concept without time. That's where we emanated from. It doesn't exist. And then the physicist in cern, I took my younger daughter to cern. He says, time is a construct. There is an element in the quantum level that time is irrelevant. And I said, irrelevant. And it was called spin dynamics. And I go, first off, I don't. What math proves this. But that's all they're doing, is slowing the spin down of a packet. That's what they call particles. They use the word particle for your head. But there's. When you keep looking at it, smaller and smaller, or scale, they call it. There's nothing there. It's a packet. But if they slow it down, whatever the hell that means, the antiparticle also will slow down. And if you turn the particle the other direction, the other one does the opposite direction. It's antiparticle. I said, well, that's not. I guess I can understand that. No matter how far away the other one is.

[Tim Allen]

Ah.

[Mike Rowe]

I said, that's exactly the noise I meant.

[Tim Allen]

Ah.

[Mike Rowe]

What does it mean? Like a couple miles? No, sometimes the antiparticle is several billion light years from here. And I said, first off, how do you know that? Oh, and they'd show me a blackboard.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah. With squiggles on it.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, that. That says, don't you think so there's an element at the micro level. And he even said, it's not even a level. We don't call it. Because I said, how many miles small is a boson? Higgs boson? He goes, it's not miles. At that point. We call it scale, but we're at zero. Let's say +24 is the event horizon, -23 zeros is a Higgs boson. They think, yeah. And I said, so you. How do you know that? And what a weird world it is at the quantum level, that time is irrelevant. It doesn't exist. So then I'm starting to think what I is consciousness is human. Consciousness is without time. Just did it this morning. I'm conscious of a dream that a lot of things happen. I was on a motorcade. I did something and we went and ate and. And it was eight. Oh, eight. When the kids went to school and I was still in bed. My wife took them to school and I said it was 808. And all of a sudden it was 8 14. And I had had a day trip.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

In my. So wherever that world is, I'm experiencing consciousness in a dream. It is a dream. However, time was irrelevant. It was very manipulatable.

[Tim Allen]

Just so I understand we're talking about the events of this morning.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Tim Allen]

And you got up and you went to some philosophy group where you sat down with friends.

[Mike Rowe]

I work out what I'm. What I'm talking about. I've got two other guys that don't like this whole thing. I've got.

[Tim Allen]

What do you mean, don't like? What whole thing?

[Mike Rowe]

Is this determined or is it free will? This is the oldest conversation ever. Schrodner's cats. That whole thing at the quantum level, it appears to be both at the same time at the same moment. The slit experiment with light. It's particles and it's a wave, and if it's a wave, it's predetermined that light knows where to go. We did it on Last Man Standing because it was in the movie Arrival where the aliens didn't understand anything that that woman was saying. And she says, I got 30%. We just have no background. But they did. What is boil? When you stick a pencil in water.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

It bends. No matter what water, no matter what pencil, no matter what day, time of day, the light immediately goes the fastest direction. Never been in that water, but it always goes the fastest direction. The formation of thought is that light has already been everywhere. It's timeless. And so the aliens in that movie said. Yeah, we understand that. And that was this thing about.

[Tim Allen]

That was Jody Foster, right?

[Mike Rowe]

No, no, no. Amy Adams.

[Tim Allen]

Oh, right, yeah. That's a good one.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes. And so in that. In my brother in the philosophy guys. But I can make a decision. I have free will. I said, it does appear that way. Why do you say it like that? It says, because I can't. I went and edited a film once in college and the best looking girl in school finally responded to me. I was a geeky kid with zits and half into the weightlifting thing with the football team and half with the geeks. And I love industrial art. So I was all over the school. But this girl I made friends with, her mother is what you do when you want to get her mother. He is such a kind boy. I would go to their house and help Clean up stuff. And at one point she got, why don't you come over tonight? And I went, I can't believe it. I'll be over there after I edit this film. If you've ever edited a film, you're good. Pretty soon I'm done. Oh, God, it's 3:00am and she's pissed because I never showed up. And I've always wondered what would happen had I not edited that film and gone to her house.

[Tim Allen]

Sliding doors.

[Mike Rowe]

Sliding doors. And I said to my buddies, it's impossible. Metaphorically. There's no way that I can't go back and do it. Then it would be going back and it'd be doing a different way.

[Tim Allen]

Sure.

[Mike Rowe]

And I said, so there is a potential that it is both. Now there's an old. I believe it's mystical Judaism, I think it was, what, a Kabbalah thing I'd read. Guy goes out of an office building. There's a homeless guy sitting on the side. The first go round, guy goes out, ignores him. I don't want to deal with homeless people. I've got my own life. And he walks out and there's a pillar, a light post, and there's a doctor between him and the light post across the street. He walks out, gets hit by a car because the pillar was there. The doctor didn't see any of it. He walked around the corner and he gets hit. Not gravely injured. Second guy goes out and at least looks at the guy and says, hello, you know, he says, you know, I don't. But he pauses a minute. This time, the doctor now can see all this, hears the noise, comes across and helps him. Third guy goes out and helps. The guy, misses all the drama and he said, so those three choices could exist temporarily in different worlds that we have. Every decision you make, free will is another world. And deja vu is when one crosses the other one. You come back, go, I've been here, I've done this before. If you go, this is a mystical religious idea. If you go by the will of the emanates, where the emanation comes from is kindness. Love conquers all. Love might be. And consciousness might be eternal. They don't have any time frame to them. And if you go with what they try to say in religion, help somebody, be there, extend yourself, then that will. You go by that will and things will go better for you.

[Tim Allen]

Are we talking about this because of the fires? You think if you want to learn a skill that's in demand, there are a number of scholarship funds out there, you should know about including Microworks, which I'm partial to as I'm sure you can understand. But I am equally impressed by the Marine Corps Scholarship Fund and I am happy to encourage every child of a Marine to apply for this scholarship today. This fund is the real deal. The they provide more than $10 million in scholarships every year exclusively for children of Marines. I'm doing what I can to make sure every Marine in America knows about this opportunity. Because 100% of eligible applicants will receive some form of financial aid. And because this month is National CTE Month and that's close to my heart. The Marine Corps Scholarship Fund wants to encourage applicants to consider careers in health science and mechanics, information technology, plumbing, electric, manufacturing. CTE professionals are on the cutting edge of today's hands on careers and they are making an immediate impact on our nation's workforce. But really, it doesn't matter what your career path is if you're the son or the daughter of a Marine. The MCSF wants to help pay for your education. So let them check your eligibility and apply today at mcsf.org/apply. Can I get an URA?

[Mike Rowe]

No. I've been doing this as a, I've been a religious kid because I was forced to as a kid and then spent some time incarcerated. So I had to search. You know, why is this. It wasn't even just me. Why do horrible things happen to good people? What is that all about?

[Tim Allen]

That's the essential.

[Mike Rowe]

That's the. I just don't know that. And then I was given a little message and it's actually the book of Job which cut to. I don't even know where that's from. And I'm this has been a year, almost a little over a year. I read the, the Aramaic, French, Latin and Greek versions of the Old Testament page by page. I put it down if I drift. I got all the way through the Old Testament. I'm four pages into the New Testament as of this morning. Reading it as a scientist is one of two guys told me a priest and a rabbi Exe let the words come to you. Do not look for meaning. It will come to you. And all of that. It's been life changing. I mean I can't believe it's not what I thought it was. The Bible is not what I thought it was. Is very little preachy stuff. You know, it's mostly the Torah is about law, you know, consequence. Yeah law and consequence and all this. And the book of Job is the one that affected me most. And even in this version they're not sure where that was even written. It might have been written way before the Old Testament. This whole story about a guy who asked the Emanation, why are you so mean to me? And I said, this one time in a prison, you know, I was doing a shop thing, I was cleaning up, and I said, I saw some of the meanest people that were treated well and some of the nicest people treated horribly. I just never got that. And I got this kind of wind. I said, listen, you keep asking me this question, I'm going to tell you, and I guarantee you're not going to like the answer. And that was Job. It was a reminder of a short story I'd done. Magician. When I was on the road early and doing comedy, we'd open for magicians. Yeah, or strippers. I actually prefer magicians because it was more fun to watch. After a while, you watch strippers, it's like working in a chocolate factory. You're just kind of bored with chocolate. I get it. You got the boobs bouncing. I got it with the pole and all that, but magicians.

[Tim Allen]

But a good trick.

[Mike Rowe]

A good trick. You. Oh, what is that? And I asked Mark Kornhauser, this magician, I said he would rip a newspaper until all these pieces, and then he goes, and it's all back together. And I'm. Oh, God, that's magic. He's really a magician. So I'd ask him, can you show me how you do that? He goes, no. But it was so direct. Yeah, come on. Pay you. No, not paying. DM not showing you magic trick. It's. And it's the same line. He goes, if I showed you, several things are going to happen. You're going to go, that's stupid. And then magic will no longer mean the same to you. And that story kept back with the story of Job. If you ask the Emanation why this is like it is, first off, you're going to go, what? You won't understand anything. And in that book of Job, one variation, the Emanation very rarely talks to humans because it's like speaking to an ant. He can't understand anything it says. And it said, listen, do you understand why the waves stop at the shore? Probably not. Do you understand why birds fly at a certain time of day but not others? No. You know, part of this planet is frozen solid. Like, you know, the stars all move in the same direction. Do you know any of that? You weren't here when I started it. You weren't here when I created this. You weren't here for any of this. And this is the first question you want to know is why did you do this? I'm so angry I want to split you into little pieces. But my anger is mitigated by my amazement that you do. That's the thing about man. There's something about Job. I liked that whole story that as dumb as we are, we do ask.

[Tim Allen]

Some amazing, stubborn son of a gun.

[Mike Rowe]

He was stubborn son of a gun. And we add, why is this and how can I help? If you add that to that, why.

[Tim Allen]

Is this and how can I help?

[Mike Rowe]

Why is it? How can I help?

[Tim Allen]

I think the magic thing is super interesting both in the context of your career and your philosophy and in everything you're saying. Because I went down deep a YouTube rabbit hole the other day. Have you seen. I think it's Card Tricks by Jason Chuck, the stuff I send you.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh yeah, love that.

[Tim Allen]

This guy, if you haven't seen him, Tim, I'll send you a link. It's card tricks. It's, it's sleight of hand. Yes, but it's so good.

[Mike Rowe]

So good.

[Tim Allen]

But the context, like, you know, he is a master of ledger domain. You know, it's just like the Cirque du Soleil. It's just like the art we're talking about. He's, he's human and he's doing a thing that you can't do. But forget the context and imagine having that skill throughout the long history of time and imagine being able to show somebody a thing not in the context of a magician, but of a firebringer, a God. Right. Wow. What choice do we have as mere mortals when confronted with something so outside our bounds of imitation or comprehension that to accept that, yeah, this is a superior being or this is a different kind of being. They're not. They could just do a thing we can't do. But if it's not for the magician construct, we're not capable of thinking about it in that way make any sense yet.

[Mike Rowe]

I call them naturals. You meet people that have an ability that's. It's almost a anti constitution thing. We all are created equal. We are not. I've had naturals in my life. Where did you get that ability? Where did that come from? Why is that different from the dancers that are the best of the best? I have. My agent is a Stanford scholarship for golf. Within three weeks of being at Stanford, he realized he's never going to be golfing like the guys that, that he's golfing with. Yeah, I was a race driver for Ford on Trans Am for about six years. And I took a whole bunch of big movie producers out to Willow Springs here, to just goof around and with some of my race cars. And I took some famous director, and two of them were so slow that the guy said, I think we're gonna put you in a kid's car. And they weren't being joking. And the guy, such a formidable director, he went, I would like that. He liked. He wants to go. And the other guy, who's directed big films, never been a race car. He was two seconds faster than me. Immediately. Never been in a race car. It's so humiliating to see a guy has a natural ability. People that paint or fix or that some. I find that formidable about in what. What is their vent to the source? I've often said humbly, when I'm killing in a big audience, this is not coming from me. Yeah, I'm working it. I'm riding this. I don't know what political, religious persuasion I really am, because the more I look at the emanator, I tag it, I make names, and it's. Then I go through these whole things. It's in a big chair and it's got a beard. For some reason, it looks like Father Time if it doesn't have a beard. You have no idea. I keep saying to. Is as though it's saying to me, you have no idea how big I am.

[Tim Allen]

Right?

[Mike Rowe]

And how insignificant you are. And yet you have a capacity to go, yeah, I think I get it. You know, right? I'm bigger than big. I'm past big. I invented big. I invented every. And you will sit there and go, all right, I think I got it.

[Tim Allen]

It's like infinity. It's like, well, here's what it is, right? It's like, okay, I got it.

[Mike Rowe]

I got it.

[Tim Allen]

No, actually, you don't.

[Mike Rowe]

You don't got it.

[Tim Allen]

You don't have it.

[Mike Rowe]

You know, you'll step back from there. You go, oh, I get it. Okay. I don't have it.

[Tim Allen]

Not. You know, I got it. Once I was talking to you earlier about this show, how the universe works, which I've been narrating forever in there, like every episode. Both is a reminder that nobody's getting out of this live. And I got to go back to that.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, thanks a lot. I'm going to go have a hamburger, because why not?

[Tim Allen]

We're trapped by the language. We only know what we think things mean based on our understandings of the world. Words we think we know. If you think there's life on other planets, then you have to be prepared to accept that there is life on an infinite number of planets, because in an infinite universe, there is infinite life by definition. And so it's really interesting when people are making an argument for, well, yeah, look, the universe is so big that there has to be life somewhere else. It'd be crazy if it was just this.

[Mike Rowe]

So.

[Tim Allen]

So at least one other place. But it's like, no, no. If your argument is it's got to be at least in one other place because it's infinite, then ipso facto, there has to be life in an infinite number of other places, because that's what infinite means. Infinite can't catch up to infinite ever.

[Mike Rowe]

They again, this is cern, the guy now, this is what other group of physicists that are working. I can't remember what they're doing now. They're all working in New York on something.

[Tim Allen]

I can't wait. Sidebar. My other group of physicists.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, some of these guys.

[Tim Allen]

What's really happening with you? I don't understand what's.

[Mike Rowe]

There's some guys I've met when I went to cern, and then there's some guys that I met because of that, that are doing stuff that happen to have physics backgrounds. And I said, so they all will reach out at certain times. And. And then a lot of doctors I know are kind of physics heads. Like, we're all thinking about why are we not figuring out breast cancer in women. It's like there's a. There's a whole bunch of us going, I. I need physicists and working men to think about, get to take it. Take it outside of the people. I can't stand that this many women are suffering from this. Mothers, family, friends. And then why are we not focusing on that? When. What's the lack of focus on that in what I said, you got to bring in sometimes my mechanics. If they looked at the problem, and I've done this to my doctors many times, is what if another guy looked at what you're looking at? Would they come up with another solution? It's another version of eyes. What's today's. I think I told you the harvest is great, but there's not enough farmers. There's sheep or sheep and shepherds. Sheep and shepherds. And I said, I'm missing that. Problem solvers, which is what. I've been such a fan of yours because that's where your head is, you know, dirty jobs. I loved how you looked at things in case you got a sense of humor and you'd be self effacing. That's the character. That's wonderful. The fact that you're the type of guy that gives credit to these people that fix stuff and these are the people that don't need any credit. That's the weird thing. I went to a Medal of Honor dinner. It was five, I believe, surviving Medal of Honor winners and two Victoria Cross guys. And you, My youngest daughter, my wife and I. You're speechless. The thought process of these guys. Well, I'm not going to leave the guys there to get killed.

[Tim Allen]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

But you don't know how to fly a helicopter now. I figured it out. I took it back in there. And he took it back in Vietnam on a hill, if I got it right, that was compromised by a Viet Cong had gotten involved in the radio operator and they had ratted him out. So the Viet Cong surrounded him with I think 14,000 or 5,000 troops. They had 1200 on top of the hill. He said, we had position but because they were so close, artillery couldn't help us. So we were getting surrounded. So we were flying people in and out. I got shot five times, but the helicopter pilot got hurt. And I said, I'm not leaving these guys there. And I go, I would run screaming like a hyena. And you went, oh boy, I wonder how these work. And so you're going to pull this. And then the Trump. And he figured it out, went back and saved numerous guys. And I saw these different guys that fix, fix stuff, look. And I get, I guess, who are these? How do I become better at it? How do I motivate other people? So many mechanics in my group that I like this an Armenian guy in North Hollywood. The car will come in and he always, he just stands there going like this. It's not where you think he calls it transference. Generally where the noise is isn't what the problem is. It's something on the other side of the car is doing this and it's causing it to do this. And that guy is so freaking good at.

[Tim Allen]

It's like Dr. House.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Allen]

It's like you're diagnosing a sick person.

[Mike Rowe]

Right?

[Tim Allen]

Same chip.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Look what happened two weeks prior to this. What, what does that have to do. And my physician, who I love that we sometimes we talk in the examination room for my physical and I'd walk out and I go, did I get a physical? He goes, I think we forgot because we're both talking about their last one that we both got off track and got into another surgeon that he got me with, do viruses speak to each other? That was after Covid. He said, no. The virologist said, that's not possible. And I said, what's a mutation? What motivates a mutation? Nothing. It mutates. I know, but it was moving in a direction, let's say. And then it mutated at one point. So it's decided to go left instead of straight. It mutated because it had a. He said, it mutates generally because the cell figures out that's not friendly. And they have this handshake, some genetic handshake. Goes, yeah, it's called level of some word. But bacteria will know because they fight viruses all the time. He goes, yeah, they don't like each other. Well, these are human terms. But it knocks on the cell wall, and the virus can figure out how to get in there. Manipulated. They're not parasitic in a way. They're not, you know, they don't. Like alien. They don't turn it in. I don't know what they actually do. They're not living like bacteria. Bacteria actually eat and poop, right? But they get into the bacteria, and within a short period of time, the bacteria, before it dies, is able to send a chemical signal to all other bacteria that they've been compromised. So bacteria will change their coding.

[Tim Allen]

Sure. And he says, yeah, like evolutionary biology.

[Mike Rowe]

However, the virus then knows it's been compromised. He goes, oh, God. And he started to go, yeah. So the virus then tells other viruses, that's. That we got to come up with another signal. And he goes, let me get back to you. He comes back a couple days later, goes, this is not new thought. He goes, it's new for me as a virologist. I didn't know that there's. They're actually beginning to think, I think, what is it? It's called virus. Lynn Margolis. I hope I got the right book. It's about that.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

That viruses may speak, communicate on a wavelength you don't. We don't even understand. Maybe it's a hive mentality. But why do they mutate? It's not chance. They're not working. So it changes its direction. That means it was aware, in a weird sense, that something happened. So I bring it up to these. The philosophy part of people, the problem solving thing. That's philosophy. You just wonder why this happens. The problem with philosophy with me is that you get to literally, some guys, like. I think it was Wittgenstein. It was a linguist philosopher. He says, I don't know that you visually are Understanding anything that I say.

[Tim Allen]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

There's. I don't know. In your head. Yeah. When I say orange, if I was in your head, I go, what are you looking at? That's a monkey's ass. See, that's not an orange.

[Tim Allen]

It could be an orange monkey's ass.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, baboons definitely have that weird ass shape, whatever that's all about.

[Tim Allen]

But it's the. I mean, sticking with philosophers, it's Kierkegaard, right? It's the. It's the unexamined life.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Tim Allen]

Is not worth living. And sitting here with you now, man, it's clear. I don't know how long you've been this curious a cat to bring Schrodinger back into it, but you seem to be really, really kind of centered around something other than comedy. Is it curiosity? Hey, how about that Super Bowl, Chuck? That was a dud, in my opinion. I was in D.C. sitting at a bar by myself, really watching this thing, and, man, oh, man, I thought of you. And I wonder, you know, if you were doing the prize picks thing and if you were happy or sad. Oh, I'm always doing the prize picks thing. And. But unfortunately, I actually didn't get it in in time for the big game, which was ridiculous. I knew what I would have done. Chuck is one of the 10 million members who is literally playing around with billions of dollars in award winnings. Prize picks is a. I guess, what do you call it? It's a daily fantasy accessibility play that has brought millions of people into this world. It's kind of phenomenal what they've done. Yeah, it's daily fantasy. You know, there's always been fantasy football, fantasy baseball, stuff like this. This is daily fantasy where, you know, it's real simple. There's a stat, and you either pick more than or less than what the stat is, and you do that with two or more players, and you can win up to a thousand times your money with prize picks. Well, I don't know what any of that means, folks, because I live in the world of reality. But if you're into this whole fantasy thing, it does look like fun. Look, I never got over it. The Colts left Baltimore. I've been pissed off ever since. But I know this. You can download the app today. Use code Mike. You get $50 instantly after you play your first $5 lineup. That's $50 right after you play your first $5 Lineup, Chuck. Do you know what that means?

[Mike Rowe]

Yes, and it's win or lose, Mike.

[Tim Allen]

Win or lose, you get the 50 bucks. Well, why Wouldn't you do that then? That's what I say. All right, well, go do that. Prizepix.com Mike keep your eyes on the.

[Mike Rowe]

[e-mail] Mike not even generally. My father was killed by a drunk driver when I was 11 years old. I realized it at a neighbor's house. I had University of Colorado football game. He took all my other brothers and a bunch of carload of kids. Luckily he was the only one killed, but he died in my mother's lap. My other two brothers were thrown around the car. A lot of kids were hurt. He wasn't. And then I'm walking down to my house knowing something terrible had happened. Even though I didn't do it. I'm praying, weeping. I said, I will eat vegetables. Whatever is a kid. Just make whatever is going on. This is terrible. I will, you know, do my homework or what. I was walking down and none of that happened. I get to the house, there's police and my uncle was there, said, man up, you know, your mom needs you right now. So no crying, none of that.

[Tim Allen]

How old are you at this point?

[Mike Rowe]

11. And I walked there and the whole time I'm going, huh, Literally as a boy, for your fat. He was a great dad. Love of my life. I said, this doesn't make any sense. I don't like this. This is. And everybody's answer was, and he was a funny guy. And everybody, as I look back, did the best they could. The priest said, he's in a better place. My first reaction was then, why are we in this hole? Why are we just start there? And it never got answered. You know, he was carrying a bourbon around, I don't know. But he never had the right answer. I don't think he knows why. Why is this? What's this? That never stopped the pain of it. Never stopped the discomfort of it. I took for many years. I didn't care. This is meaningless because at any point, like the aliens in that movie Arrival, Ted Chang, I think, wrote the book. I know he did, wrote a series of books about that. If the aliens live their lives knowing the end of their life, they know that I'm going to die in this time.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And to the humans, that's terrifying to.

[Tim Allen]

Know that it would change everything.

[Mike Rowe]

So the aliens point of view, how do you live not knowing one minute to the next if you're going to live? They were terrified of us. How do you deal with that? And this is what I kept thinking too.

[Tim Allen]

So we were terrified by the certainty of knowing when our death and they were terrified. They're terrified by the uncertainty of not knowing. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And all of a sudden I said, you know what, I kind of see where you're going with that. And I said, I don't think either one's good. I asked Amy Adams at a premiere of it because in the story she let her daughter in the book. It's tremendous. They weave all these stories in where she had a 21 year old daughter. And you're watching. She can't have a 21 year old daughter. She's young scientist. And you really realize that she's starting to see her future the more she spends time with these aliens. And her daughter dies in the book about 22 fall in a hiking accident in Tibet. And I asked her, so you know the future and your daughter's going to die. Would you have that daughter? And she said it was worth the love I had for her while she was here. And I said, it's inherently my view, it's inherently selfish.

[Tim Allen]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

So why not just conceive the girl two seconds later? Or not have, don't have sex that night with that husband.

[Tim Allen]

Hey, you get a different girl.

[Mike Rowe]

You do get a different girl. So you do lose her, but you lose her a different way now. You don't know how she's going to die. And that whole thing of certain of.

[Tim Allen]

Knowing that and she never had the 20 years.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Allen]

@ all.

[Mike Rowe]

At all. So I get where she's coming from. So if you know the outcome, would you still do it? Know that they suffered at the end, but you had the 20 years. It's a real quandary about. And again, this is a philosophical guide that said the universe isn't expanding. The physicists I talked to said it's just getting more complex. We call it expanding. Does it make sense to you people? It's easier to understand. It's not growing. It's just learning more about it. It gets more and more complex as we learn about it. That whole process started me on asking questions, generally getting no answers. That said, shop teachers always had an answer.

[Tim Allen]

Right?

[Mike Rowe]

Put your hands down, stop asking. Figure it out. That's all you can do. And I used to love that about shop teachers. I used to love that. It's a. Yeah, yeah, that's great. All right, so just put this does is worthless. Engaging.

[Tim Allen]

Well, it's worthless without this. And this is really worthless about that.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Tim Allen]

It's two sides of the same coin. And that's where I reckon we're out of whack. And that's why I do what I do. I'm just trying to get some equilibrium back in the world where the reverence that you clearly feel for people who are capable of flying a helicopter who weren't trained to fly one. I'm gobsmacked by that as well. But that's adjacent to putting up drywall that's perfectly plumb.

[Mike Rowe]

Exactly.

[Tim Allen]

And laying pipe that's perfectly laid, if you will. And so forth. Like, there's majesty. I mean, I talked to a Medal of Honor winner as well, not long ago, and it's the same thing, man. Like, there's a weird obviousness with which they respond to questions that we don't take, that we don't think are obvious at all. Well, clearly, I'm not gonna leave the guys behind.

[Mike Rowe]

The guy, one of the SEALs, they're shooting NF gamut in it. When they got. I love military strategy. I was a strategy guy. It was all supply lines. To me, the most boring part of it is, where are they getting the tires?

[Tim Allen]

Quartermasters.

[Mike Rowe]

Where are they getting ball bearings? And that was. I opened that up, and my admiral friends in the Navy said, we learned that early in the war, we started bombing German factories. They had no ball bearings, and they tended to use stuff that was very maintenance heavy.

[Tim Allen]

Excuse me, but if you're keeping track, he's got the admiral friends, he's got the physicist friends, he's got the doctor friends. These people exist in small groups that are unknown to. This is so interesting. You're. What are you, 71? Okay, so you're 11, and your dad dies in your mom's lap, and you come face to face with the uncertainty of the universe and then meanness of it.

[Mike Rowe]

The arbitrary, arbitrary meanness of it. Because it says you. And that literally, the emanation is saying, you don't want to. You don't understand.

[Tim Allen]

You don't understand anything.

[Mike Rowe]

You don't understand. You will understand pain, but you're going to need. I think it's like. I love knife sharpening. I just love it. I've always been fascinated by knives. And I've gone to three different companies. I went to a butcher. They're a fisher fishery. And they were slicing up fish. I hate fish fishing, but I love. They were slicing up. I go, but to cut through fish skin and the fish. So it goes like butter. I go, where are you getting these knives?

[Tim Allen]

Why do you have to interrupt your story to tell me you hate fish?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I just. I'm not a fisherman. I don't. Just the whole thing. I'm Not I eat them. I like him in the kind of.

[Tim Allen]

You don't dream of fish.

[Mike Rowe]

No. And I have so many fishermen friends.

[Tim Allen]

They just love your fisherman group adjacent to the Admiral.

[Mike Rowe]

The outdoor group. I love that. Go hunting and they fish. And I used to sell Orvis rods at this outdoor shop. I learned how to fly fish to demonstrate.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And so I knew how to do it. I want to shoot guns and binoculars and all that, but I don't like this. However, the knife sharpening. In order to sharpen a knife, you have to hurt the knife.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And if you keep it honed, you can extend it without, if you will, causing pain once the knife gets dull. Honing a knife, the first thing is it's a rough stone and it takes off a little bit of the. I mean, microscopically, if I got it right, the good blades just bend microscopically. And you want to bring it back up. If it bends too far, you have to take. Get a new edge. And that's life, in a sense is honing. There's going to be some pain. And eventually you will cut through this thing.

[Tim Allen]

You'll appreciate this. A couple months ago, a guy sat right there named Josh Smith. Josh runs the Montana Knife Company. I don't know of a better bladesmith in the country right now. He's incredible, a true artist. Everything we've been talking about, this guy personifies his knives aren't cheap. And he started offering a lifetime guarantee on his knives. And he offered to sharpen the knife for his customers for the lifetime of the knife or his lifetime. And I'm like, that just seems like, like an awful lot of work of maintenance after the sale.

[Mike Rowe]

But no one does it.

[Tim Allen]

And he says, no one does it. And here's the thing, man. No one does it. Right.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Tim Allen]

And I didn't think to ask him about in the conversation. I wish I would have because part of me feels like if we have the facility and the wherewithal to buy a knife, but we don't have the capacity to care for it properly, maybe we shouldn't own it. But this guy's in the knife selling business. Like, well, no, that's not really going to work. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to sharpen it for. For you. And then that makes me think about all the other ways. Well intended. Makers of things. Right. We can't really trust the consumer to fix that blender because you're just too freaking stupid. You don't have the patience or the intellectual curiosity or bandwidth. So we're just going to make it out of one piece of extruded plastic. And it works. Until somebody like you comes along who's like, no, that. That actually offends me because you're still clinging to the uncertain universe where you get to put your hands on a thing and make it better. That's the war we're in right now. Those are the two different types of people walking around. They want their knives sharpened for them or they want to do it themselves.

[Mike Rowe]

I just read this. If you were to go back in time, could you help them at all? And that is nothing. If I went back 100 years, I would say, we have these things. They're. They're phones. We have a machine that's a thing. Freaking blender. And so there's really nothing I could help them in. And in reverse, if you've got someone from way back 200 years ago, the only thing they'd recognize here is a fruit market.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And a cobbler. And there aren't any cobblers left. I cannot find other than rare here in Los Angeles. Someone that will fix a shoe. Because everybody wears tennis shoes now. And to have some leather shoes. And I had a brand of sidewalk. It's a group. They hand make shoes in Sherman Oaks. And you can't even. In Mexico. I've home in Mexico. And they. I think they look and they go, we can't fix this. You just buy another one. I said, I'm now stubborn about that. I don't want to buy another one. What would it take to fix this? What would it take to fix. Boy, the blender started me on my washer dryer. I said, but the washer dryer is a. A motor. We used to do this as kids. We. They used to leave them on the sidewalk. And a buddy of mine, Mick Hursley, he'd go, the armature, it's got two. The early ones were just electric motor and tons of tumbler. But it's like two ball bearings that go.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Then it starts wobbling, and then it starts making that noise as you pull that out. Put a bearing in, put it back in. It's. There's not much to go wrong with a washer.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And he said, so we do that in new. So we had one in our house and it was doing. Then the guy said, yeah, it's gonna go. I said, you know, this isn't that old. You're in the warranty. And I didn't know that I was. So I said, I wasn't. He goes, yeah, it's just cheaper to replace it. Cheaper to replace it. Ting, ting, ting. This is all metal. The drum is metal. This is metal. What are we replacing? And it's that. It's that digital dashboard.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And I said. So we took it apart, went to the shop. It said, it's circuit board. And it used to be the circuit boards were all. In the back, were little welds. Not welds, but solders. Yeah, you solder two things together. Now it's all. That's all internalized. They don't let you repair it because generally what's wrong with that washing machine is that circuit board. One of those solders broke, and it's dead or it won't dry or it won't do the cycle. I said, so this whole thing is useless. All the work, all the people that made it is worthless because of a little solder joint. And you don't want to fix it. And he goes, it's just cheaper, sir. Just get you another one. And then I came up with, you know, I found I do have the warranty. He goes, yeah, I'll fix it then. Because it's. If you make. If you at that point made Lowe's or whoever did it, if they have to replace it, they will fix that circuit board. But I don't even know if they make the circuit boards replaceable anymore. I don't think the company that makes them, I don't think they.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah, I'm gonna stick with my metaphor, man. We all want a knife, and we don't know how to sharpen them.

[Mike Rowe]

And we're like, what you said, but I'm uncomfortable with where it's headed. I go to change my life to Richard Carnan. I did for the History Channel. How things break things. I don't know what we called it. It was a great show with the dwp, which I've always disliked. I don't know why I've disliked them, because it never seems like they do their job.

[Tim Allen]

Department of Water and Power.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, go down there. Completely turned me around. How hard these guys work. Yeah, the people, not the guys on the Diaz. Telling why. Well, the water system doesn't work in Los Angeles. That guy probably has never worked on it. It's much more complex how they get the water to us. It's much more complex about the maintenance. And the vision for it is different than the guys, the men and women that were down there working. I said, we're not making a generation of people that find this admirable. Yeah, we can't Live without these people, you know, you can't live with them. They were making the trusses that were the hide. The high voltage wires. Of course me, I'm going, why do they look so ugly? You know? Because in Sweden they make them look like dinosaurs.

[Tim Allen]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

Branches. Because we don't have that. That's the functional. That's what it looks like functionally. With the bolt standing that kind of rusted. You see the high tension United States doesn't. We don't. There's not. A designer goes, you could use. You could make a. Ben, where's the form?

[Tim Allen]

Yeah, it's just function well.

[Mike Rowe]

They just don't do it. But the guy was. He was on a.

[Tim Allen]

God.

[Mike Rowe]

I got the name probably wrong. It used to be Heidelberg. With these presses. It's a press that makes the parts that make the press that make the press that make the press. It's a. It's a turning wheel that is making the case that holds the bearing for the armature at the dam.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

It's such a huge machine. And I go God, that's beautiful. And he goes, It's 1939. They do not make them better. There's nothing wrong with that machine. You buy those big turning wheels or presses. They made them in 39 and they don't make them any better and they don't repair them. And the pieces. The guy was 68 years old fit. He goes, every day I finish something every day I advance DWP's ability to do what we do. And everybody in this place is all alert. And I used to work at Turret Lane. Hated it because it's repetitive. I don't know this. They fix one thing at a time. When they do those turning wheels. That has to be so precise because it goes into a sleeve and then a bearing the size of, you know, a ranch goes in there and then the armature goes in there. Does Castiac Lake dams. When I saw who makes this stuff. Who are the people that make that armature? That the bear that goes in it. That has to be. It can't wobble.

[Tim Allen]

Shameless plug. Yes, it is shameless. And it is a plug. And it's about a foundation with my name in it. You probably guessed it. Now it's Microworks. We're giving away a couple million dollars, maybe more over the next month or two. Our new round of work Ethic scholarships is wide open and you are officially and cordially invited to fill out an application or spread the word. You know, there are only 8 million open positions Right now that require training instead of a four year degree. And that's what this scholarship fund is all about. We're trying to train the next generation of skilled workers and close America's skills gap. Because you know, it's only a matter of national security. Not to overstate it. Microworks.orgscholarship It's a big chunk of money this year but the applications are going to come in fast and furious. So get yours done sooner than later. I don't know how long the enrollment period will be open, but I do know that it's open right now. Two million bucks, maybe more sitting there some perhaps with your name on it. Go get [e-mail] scholarship I'll tell you, I don't know about the armature, but the ball bearings that you keep mentioning. I was in business a couple years ago with Federal mogul who owns everybody from Anco to Champion Spotlight.

[Mike Rowe]

Is that Detroit?

[Tim Allen]

They're out. Well, it's Carl Icahn now and they're everywhere. Federal Mogul. If you look at all the brands they own, you start to understand the totality of the automotive supply chain.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Tim Allen]

And just how vast it's its own universe. One of the many companies in that universe is called Moog. M O o G. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Moog. They're down in Boaz, Alabama and they invited me down there probably six years ago to celebrate their hundredth anniversary. And Tim, it's enormous. All they make are ball bearings. Big ones, little ones, medium size, a little bigger than medium.

[Mike Rowe]

Nothing in this country runs without ball bearings.

[Tim Allen]

It's all ball bearings. It's in a town most people can't find on a map. They've been at it 100 years. Right. And the pride in this factory. It was like watching that Cirque du Soleil thing in a different way. It was just watching people so focused on one part of their job and the number of jobs required to get a perfectly round stainless steel ball bearing to specific. It's only everything, right?

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Tim Allen]

And nobody knows about it.

[Mike Rowe]

That's how I felt. I left the DWP completely a fan of that water and power. I'm just what they do. They're not the leaders. And it's like the Medal of Honor guys. You should be a leader. He goes nah, I don't want to do that. I don't. I'd like to be. He didn't say it like this. I do what I'm told and I do that very well. And I said, but I not because we're just Missing the leadership. I don't find leadership where a guy was like you. Because I remember my uncle worked for Ford Tractor when Ford used to make tractors, and he was a line foreman, but he was actually. He'd step in now and then. He was hands on. Eventually got so good they moved him and he said that was the death of him. They moved him into a white collar upstairs, and he was away from the factory. And that transition, from the people that do the stuff I think of in the military, think of more corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, and captains, maybe. Captains, yeah. Because I don't know that the captain goes into battle typically. No, that's when it ends. And they don't. You don't want your best guy in battle. You kind of want him telling the other guys. But that transition is where I find a vacancy right now. Both in sometimes studio, creative. All the. I call them the. The guys that get done in my business. A line producer.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

In Vegas. I gotta give it to pit boss.

[Tim Allen]

It's a pit boss all day long.

[Mike Rowe]

Pit bosses. I always said they should have a pit boss in D.C. so he just walks around the Congress and he taps a guy on the shoulder. Step away, step away. And then another congressman sits down. But he doesn't say anything bad about what he does. He goes, yeah, come on, come on. Every stop for a minute. Gotta go outside. Get the congressman from Tennessee. Sit there. There you go. And we're gonna do.

[Tim Allen]

Don't you see how, like, similar that is to when we started this conversation? Like the Armenian you were describing? You know, the diagnostic guy who just walks in and just kind of looks at the. Yeah, no, okay, right. They're assessors.

[Mike Rowe]

Assessors. But he's done the other part of it. And like, you gave me credit and I said, when I raced, I still think I'm good at it. I don't take credit for it because it. It isn't me. Even in the race car, I'd go, I think we got brakes in a bias problem in the left rear. And he goes, I don't think so. And I said, I generally write and I have a big car collection and I'll drive them. And we have two mechanics that I'll reuse in my car collection now in shifting gears, which is amazing because now that circles around, too. When they were writing it, they go, we'll have the guy come in and he'll. It'll be smoking. I go, if it's smoking, it ain't going to be in the shop. It would be outside. Well, we Want it in the shop to get the gag. I said, I get that. Not going to happen. He wouldn't drive it in if it's broken.

[Tim Allen]

But that's what I meant before when I was trying to compliment you. It's like the writers are looking for a moment, a scene, but you're bringing something.

[Mike Rowe]

If it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense. You know, I get it.

[Tim Allen]

That's annoying. In your industry, you're probably very annoying to a lot of people.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, you don't know.

[Tim Allen]

The point I'm trying to make is whether I go to Boaz, Alabama, you know, and spend a day filming these people who nobody has ever paid any attention to before, you know, to do something nice about the business of making ball bearings. Or whether you're like, you keep doing the same kind of show, like, you change the title every few years. And that's what I've been doing. It's a dirty job. Somebody's got to do it. Returning the favor. It's all, hey, man, get a load of this guy.

[Mike Rowe]

I know.

[Tim Allen]

Doing this thing in real life, you're doing the same thing with scripts. I didn't realize it until I met you, actually, and until we worked together. And since then, I've been watching you a lot. And you're tortured. You're a jagged little pill. You ask these big questions, and you're still pushing the rock up the hill, making sitcoms that actually have something really at their core that's pretty great.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I appreciate that. And I said, there's something authentic about having an audience. It's like doing theater, doing a movie in a live audience. And even the older guys, this last. Last week, we finished our sixth episode for this first season. And the guy says, isn't this amazing? And this is the line producer.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

There's live people laughing at what we're doing over here. And we're both standing. There was a scene that I wasn't in. I said, this is why I love doing this. And I said, the gravity of a studio. And I love the new brass at Disney, ABC in 20th, which is a big business.

[Tim Allen]

Walden.

[Mike Rowe]

There's so many of them. There's so many involved in the decision, and they don't have. Unfortunately. I look back at some of the pioneers. We just talked about this last night. A lot of the pioneers were flawed people.

[Tim Allen]

Sure.

[Mike Rowe]

And we don't want flawed people working. So we've done this. This thing where you take the flaws out of people. So everybody has got this check boxes. They've Got the right education, the right look, the right sensibility, but they don't have that. Like the, some of the, some of the major players will not mention names out of respect for their families. They were just decisively unattractive people. But they did the job well. These are big, big, big guys.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

That worked in the industry and they, they had vision. I was looking at the. Where did the Ford Mustang come from? Lee Iacocca. I'm not sure it was Lee Iacocca. He was probably. And I knew him and he, he was head of the department of Ford. But it was a guy in Ford that said, what if we took the Ford Falcon and did this to it? I don't know. Because. I don't know. Bill Collins was a friend of mine from Northern Michigan and he was involved in the gto. Now he, he didn't get the Pontiac gto. If you, if I'm not being clear enough. And it was. DeLorean took credit for that because it was DeLorean's point of view. It probably was he. You got a guy, I hope his name is right, Tim Kaczynski. Hope I did it right for Dodge. Who'd made the Dodge all the.

[Tim Allen]

Not the Unabomber.

[Mike Rowe]

No, could have been. You know, he did get out of jail.

[Tim Allen]

Unfortunate moniker.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, no. Oh God, I hope I got his name right. But he was the head of Dodge. I think he's moved on. He did the. The demons and all.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

He was the kind of guy that said, huh, I wonder what would happen if we put a 900 horsepower V8 into that car. And there'd be. Most people go, why would you do that? That'd be horrible gas and everything else. I just wonder, wonder what would happen. I did this to. Years ago. I got the opportunity to build a lake home. And once I started making enough money, I've been through boats. A 14 foot boat. Don't like fishing, but I like going fast on the water. 28 foot. Then I got a 34 foot. Now I wanted one that I could like, an RV. So you have to get three cabins in it. So it was a 60 foot boat. Still have it. Went to Italy to buy it and I'm in there going. The only reason the Italian uniesi built it because they're this only yacht company in the world that will make a custom made yacht under 100ft.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Now we do whatever the customer want unless they don't like it. That's the Italian way of doing it. We do whatever you want, anything you want. But we don't do blue. That was literally three weeks of me arguing with it. We used to do whatever I want. We see, we do what I want.

[Tim Allen]

It's like every great Italian restaurant I've ever been in. You can have anything you want as long as it's this and this, because that's what we're cooking.

[Mike Rowe]

And then so I said, what are the engines? It's cat. I got probably of the nomenclature incorrect. Was it cat, 780s or something. One of my buddies, they did a whole show for Caterpillar comedy show and for trade. I get one of the engines.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Instead of my pay, I got one engine. I said, what's the 760s? And he says, 760 horse diesel. I said, what's the one above that? And then the cat had a cat at that time, said, tim, no, there's a guy in the room I hear going, well, who just said, well, what is it? Oh, the 8:10s. It will fit. Oh, good, great. What's above the 8, 10, Tim, we're not going there. And the same dude goes, well, who's the guy that says, well, who says, what would it be like? Let's forget. And so 1160s, they have to put the turbo on the back. They had to switch some pumps, but it's basically the same block, just a different head on. It's cut to. I've got, instead of 1400 horsepower, I've got 3200 horsepower. The two biggest engines. I told cat, don't do the yellow. Let's do something cool called Cat Marine. For all your boats, it would be a big bubble, like you're looking through a bubble. It says Cat Marine. And all the young people loved it. Cat goes, we don't need comedians rebranding Caterpillar. I said, I'm not a comedian here. I'm an old designer from college. Anyway, got those in the car, in the boat. The downside is I didn't understand power to weight ratio of diesels. I did know the diesels don't like to be pegged. Diesels don't like flooring them. They like, you know, 8, 900 rpm. They don't like. And they. The guy said at one point, I've run out of fuel a lot. He goes, you ever see gph? Do you see that gauge? That's. That's gallons per gpm or gallons per minute or hour. And I go, no, because it doesn't work. No, because it's pegged every time you floor these things. And it is a fast, huge boat. All the captains that have taught me, I now can captain myself. The diesels really don't like running like this. And I've now learned that I beat. I've popped filters and stuff like that.

[Tim Allen]

And she got two of these engines on a boat at your lake house?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, like on Lake Michigan.

[Tim Allen]

On Michigan, yeah. I just, you know, you just kind of glossed over it, but I'm stuck on this. You basically worked for an engine like, yeah, keep your money. Just give me one of the engines.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, I did. Well, they're a lot of money.

[Tim Allen]

I'm just saying it's the big diesels.

[Mike Rowe]

And they said we'll do a custom made work with uniesi and we'll send them. But one will be on us and they'll. They blueprinted them both. Yeah, it's both of them. And they're white. They're only two cats that are white. And I will give nothing but kudos to that company. That company does things right.

[Tim Allen]

I've been working with them for 12 years probably I go to Con Expo every year in Vegas.

[Mike Rowe]

That country. That company takes quality. Correct. They take what I've heard they have. Mechanics are married to them machines and they have a, they've come out when we need them. They've been.

[Tim Allen]

It's such a history, man. That company is.

[Mike Rowe]

Can't find workers.

[Tim Allen]

They are all the time, all the time looking for machinists.

[Mike Rowe]

Machinists.

[Tim Allen]

And they have, you know, it's a, it's a franchise model and there's something like a dozen cat franchisees that are billion dollar companies in and of themselves. They're so big and they're so massive and they're so always hiring. And it's just one of those brands. You don't see them advertise much because all you have to do is drive around and like, oh, yellow iron. I remember those.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't know how they compete with, you know, that our weird competitor China because I don't know the details of it. I know what friends of mine have dealt with them on a large scale and I know comedy joke I did with some military guys, I said, so they don't want to pay for the plans to the. Whatever they call the. Their version of the 737.

[Tim Allen]

Right?

[Mike Rowe]

And they said, well, we made it better. Yeah, made it better. You didn't have an airliner until you took Boeing's designs and just made them cheaper because of the workload, right? We've made a better plane. There's a Cino or whatever they call It. The chino, whatever they call it. He goes, I know, but you took the original drawings from Boeing and never paid for them. This is. They've been fighting over this, where you're saying we stole it because saving face is a very major part of their culture. And they said, whatever you want to call it. You took designs from somebody else. We didn't take them. We made them better. Again, it's nomenclature here. If you would pay Boeing what you owe them, this will all go away. So you're telling us that we have to admit that we stole the design? Yes. You could call it whatever you want, but we go to Hague or someplace over in Europe and decide. And they go, they did decide that they would do that, but they want the final jurisdiction back in China. They said, no, that's not going to.

[Tim Allen]

This is never going to stop, Tim. I mean, this happening right now with this little thing called a lab leak, like, we kind of want to know.

[Mike Rowe]

Right?

[Tim Allen]

We kind of want to know before we can move on. And what about Deep Seek? Are you reading?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Allen]

What's going. I mean, Nvidia lost $600 billion yesterday.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. And they didn't see this coming to. I think it's lazy.

[Tim Allen]

You know the headlines. By the time this airs, it'll. We'll both be made fools of, I'm sure.

[Mike Rowe]

But more than.

[Tim Allen]

But I mean, why would we believe anything China says? Honestly, why would we just take it at face value?

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, you.

[Tim Allen]

You developed a better mousetrap. You wouldn't have taken any of these processors. Right. You wouldn't have done it. There's no industrial espionage. There's no subterfuge.

[Mike Rowe]

If you don't look at it that way. Do you recall? And I. I say this out of all due respect, because I'm huge fan of Sony and many Japanese companies. The Japanese did this many, many years ago. Remember, it was a mimic that didn't come up with the idea. They'd make the idea far better.

[Tim Allen]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

And I agree. There was a point when the Japanese were buying all sorts of land in the United States and all that. It's a mentality that I get only because I'm a comedian, and comedians maybe like musicians, we kind of naturally like Carlin. It's observational comedy. And if I'm watching another comic do something funny, I'm observing it. So I'm kind of. I can invariably steal some of his material but make it better. Well, and where. Where do you start? The line, where did you get the. Where did. Where did the idea come from?

[Tim Allen]

It's. It's music, man. For me, everything redounds to music. There are only so many notes. Yes, it's a handful of notes.

[Mike Rowe]

You know, making new notes.

[Tim Allen]

You're not making new notes now. You might group them up a little different. You might mess with the tempo, you might do something with the rhythm, but in the end, it's variations on a theme. Yes, that's what it is. And a great comic set, a great song. But, man, the minute you get too close, now you're Ed Sheeran. Now you're in court for five years. Now it's copyrighted.

[Mike Rowe]

It's too close. I get it. And I said, I use this all the time. Is it Ferrari? I think it's a 63 GTO that's been mimicked and stolen. That design, Once they did that design and I don't. I think it was fresh. I don't think that three quarter view, the roof, the front, the sides has been in Camaros, 240Z, Datsuns or Nissan's. That's been stolen, that they. They've stolen that idea. How many times is that, that beautiful shape been stolen? And I said, it's source material. The original. I got good friends with Steve Jobs and they said that iPhone was a series of mistakes. The one was called Newton, if anybody remembers. I got every device he did. Oh, this is good. Now let's see. It doesn't quite work. That doesn't. Yeah, that kind of works. And it was. The idea was. And if I got him right, and God bless him, he's a great guy, great family. He just wanted to make it simpler to dial. That's why he put the screen on there. Literally. Not his words, his vibe. He said, if you want to go to the Internet, you could do that. But who would want to do that when you could do it on the computer? Never had any idea that we would completely supplant the Internet on the computer by using it on there. But the original idea of that screen was just so you wouldn't have to go deep on the phone. That was the idea of it. That literally changed everything. I have not seen that same sense of design because I'm a phone freak. I've got probably 60 phones because I love the technology. They haven't changed. You know, up until they were starting to get really wild dial phones. Who is it? Tag Heuer. The watch company was making phones. And the phones, they're still for sale. Some Russian ones that have Ulysses Nardine watch winder in the phone. So with the phone would wind itself while you're using it. And the phones, even back then, God, I don't know what year that was. 2001 maybe they were nine grand and they were like watches. They were that fancy. It was right.

[Tim Allen]

What makes a company like Tag Howard?

[Mike Rowe]

Well they thought the phones, that's what going to be it. Let's now let's make the phone high end, better quality, better. Everything's going to be jeweled. And then literally a month later jobs phone came out and they went well that ain't going anywhere. People aren't going to go with that. It was like what was this? Dupont or Dumont? Dumont said they're not going to give up horses, you know, go with this stinky Model A or Model T. That'll be stupid. I He owned all the horse trailers and all the horse things. People love horses. Who's going to go with this everywhere?

[Tim Allen]

So certain.

[Mike Rowe]

And he. But there's a. He'd start a gm, right?

[Tim Allen]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

He said well and he lost everything and then he bought all these off brand Buick, Chevy, Cadillac and put them into one group. And I thought that what an amazing frickin story that. Well that whole story again is quality. This is from Leno and I don't know the truth of this is you could bury a Model T and it probably would start 50 years later unburied it. There's nothing. That thing is so well built. Marine stainless steel. Have you ever driven one?

[Tim Allen]

Yeah. This is so weird. Tim. A week ago up in Marin I met a guy named Charlie who has a massive car collection who has started the only automotive shop class in a Marin high school. It's at Tara Linda High School and it's called Shifting Gears.

[Mike Rowe]

Not anymore it's not.

[Tim Allen]

I'll tell him Hawaii.

[Mike Rowe]

We'll get. Hold on a second. Disney law. What is. He will sue him.

[Tim Allen]

But I'd literally wave goodbye to him as he drove one of his Model T's the two miles to the school. Because it was the Model T that he could. The kids would see it and their minds would explode.

[Mike Rowe]

Right?

[Tim Allen]

And they would have nothing but questions. And this guy Charlie, he says once I get him asking questions, once I show them that it could be a ball bearing, could be a medal of honor, could be a Model T. But once I get him asking questions, I got him. That's what we need to do. We need to find a way to reinvigorate that curiosity.

[Mike Rowe]

How would you make it like I've told my. My sister's really into kind of the jfk just to eat better. Why are we coloring? And I don't even like them when they advertise these sugary cereals. This is poison for. It really is poison for kids. Cheerios are okay. There's still sugar in it. But if you could brand the industrial arts better if you brand it to. These are cool people. It's just because hopefully guys like us. I'm astounded at how impressed I'm with plumbers. I know nothing about plumbing. I just love what they do. And I have a series of plumbers that I deal with and a series of house painters. Both of them love what they do. Their van is clean. I mean, it's real tweaked out. And the guy says, there's nothing like finishing a job.

[Tim Allen]

Oh, That's Dirty Jobs 101. You finish getting a middle and an end, then. And then you start again.

[Mike Rowe]

A guy was. When I was growing up, he had a. I think as a C5 is the smallest bulldozer. But it was perfect. He had it on a perfect trailer and in a truck. And he dug the foundation with that. He, you know, pull it out. So he make himself a ramp, and that's all that was left. He dig the whole thing by scraping the wood thing and up. And then he'd hose it off, put it back up on his trailer. And I always dreamed of that. He'd go home, honey, what'd you do today? Dug a hole. What's for dinner? But he finished a job. He had great respect for the machines that do the job. You must respect. Like in my business, it's all about the crew and especially the PAs. The PAs, the people on the start end of that do so much work for so little renumeration. The teamsters get their union covers them. The actors is a guild. I don't know what the guild does. It doesn't really protect it. The people that do all the work don't like to be Marxist about it. I don't know how to transfer this mentally. They need to be better taken care of. It's gotta be a cool job. And I just.

[Tim Allen]

Well, think about your own deal, man. You're a comedian. You don't have a guild. No, you're material. Right. And this is the thing that I find the most galling. We're so litigious, and there's so much copywritten stuff I have to worry about now, even in this little space. But, like, when you saw your act appear in the first couple seasons of Home Improvement, that material basically became the property.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes. Of Disney. Of Disney.

[Tim Allen]

Like, right in front of you.

[Mike Rowe]

I know how that.

[Tim Allen]

Like, were they just making it better?

[Mike Rowe]

I was too stupid. I didn't understand, and I still don't quite understand. That became quite an emotional process for me because I said, if anybody wrote. And this is because of mistreatment and legitimate concerns from the Writers Guild against studios that never had any rights to their own material. So the Writers Guild came up with. To protect the writers who do any. Everything. Yeah, we don't have anything without the writers. Nothing. They are the ones that do everything. They got no credit for it. They got no renumeration. That changed. And what happens is you overstep the boundaries a little bit. So that means anybody who wrote my material down, writers go protect them and not me. And they said, well, they. He wrote that, but I. I do it on stage. And so my.

[Tim Allen]

He transcribed it.

[Mike Rowe]

He transcribed it. So you're saying at one point it wasn't a threat, it was a mild threat. I don't know what that's called. We could actually stop you from. They wanted me to sign early.

[Tim Allen]

They could stop you from doing your act.

[Mike Rowe]

They wanted me to stop me doing my act. They said we could come into. I said, you know what? I'd like to see it. And I did a big concert in Frisco after that argument. And I said, I want you to have guys come in with the little mouse lapels in the middle of an act. 6,000 people go, cut. We don't want him doing any of the material until he signs his contract. Yeah, no, we own the grass. We own that. And they said, we're not going to do that. I said, yeah, but you threatened that there's comics. We're in the burlesque union, I believe, Magicians, strippers, and comics.

[Tim Allen]

Back to magic again.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. I don't think magicians are protected.

[Tim Allen]

No, but I'm just saying, this whole conversation like something. Magic hangs over it. Whether it's the art in the vocation or the art and the comedy or the art and the writers. This desire, or all the philosophy and all of the physics, this desire to try and quantify and understand these things, man, it's what makes interesting people interesting.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I appreciate that. It's also about translating it to. I so admire what you're doing with. I've seen it in some young men that come to my shop, and some of my friends have little boys. They are now fascinated by cars and fascinated by how it works in this world. I know that the little girl across the street's going to be a physicist or scientist. This girl has figured out it's not just a male thing. I know more about males because I grew up in a boy's household. So I don't understand how the women in my life and also the friend's daughters have that same look there. It's. How does that work? I'm wondering. This girl measures stuff visually. She goes, but if you just. If we did this, you know, she's making something to do with her dollhouse, however, she's forming math as it equates to a building process.

[Tim Allen]

She's figuring it out.

[Mike Rowe]

She's figuring it out. And I said, I want that on a fundamental level because whatever we screw up, and we do screw up a lot, we can fix. That's where your genius and I've watched you and that's what I so admire. But whatever we screw up, we can unscrew up. We'll see it in the Palisades. I pray that they figure out culling the forest. It's been going on. I'm a 4H guy from way back. Why don't at least 20. At least 20ft to 100ft around houses, you cull it. You don't allow that scrub to come back. And whenever the power wires go through the forest, it has to be 50ft on either side. They don't go through the forest. You just can't have that.

[Tim Allen]

Those timber roads were natural fire breaks for years and 30 years ago. Ed Ring sat here a couple weeks ago, right after I called him. The guy runs the Policy Institute Water and Energy for California. He's like, we were taking 6 billion board feet of timber out of the national forest for decades. Now we're taking less than a billion. There's so much fuel, it's just everywhere, right? We are living in a tinderbox. We're living in one. And I know you're sensitive to this. We all just went through it. I was down here when it happened too. And I just, I keep thinking like, what would happen in New Orleans if after Katrina we learned that the governor had refused to put in levies, Right? Just not going to do it.

[Mike Rowe]

Just not going to do it.

[Tim Allen]

Or maybe in Oklahoma, Moore's, whatever that was. God, at poor town, you know, they just decided, well, yeah, it happens, but we're not going to. We don't put in tornado shelters here. Yes, we live in tornado alley, but we just, we're just not going to do that.

[Mike Rowe]

And what is it again, you get the philosophical. What is the mindset in that group that decides I'm not going to do that. And I said, why don't these happen in Germany or Spain or other countries? Why just here? And oddly enough, one of the firemen said a lot of this is natural. There's a lot of seed pods that are indigenous to California that do not pop unless they're burnt. So he said, if we weren't living here prehistorically, that's exactly how this thing recircles. It gets wet, scrub comes up, it catches fire and all the seeds pop. He said, that's how this thing goes. I said, okay, we have to manipulate. Unfortunately, we live here too now, so you'd have to at least cull it. And I was in the Serengeti with my family and they have these. I think they're called date palms. I hope I got those ones you see in all the pictures where the stem goes way up and, and there's an umbrella. And if California at least close, they're not. What do they call savannah. They don't need a lot of water, but they shade the ground so the scrub can't grow. So at least close to humanity. And you'd have pillars of that. We start growing the African trees that are. Because we don't have indigenous trees. I've been planting trees in my area. That's one of my fan. Very difficult because California, if I want to do it for free, I mean I'm doing it. I'll. I'll put them in and I'll take care of them, but I need permission to put it in. And they sometimes the California tree people. I'm a treper Arbor Day guy. I don't know why are we picking in our set? The set deck people near me, the trees for the movie community for sets. He even asked me, why did you put date palms in here? He said, well, that's what the city wanted me to put in there. He goes, say it out loud and tell me why that's not going to be a good idea. I said, date palms, which is tropical and they're palm trees, which is not. It's. It's nut bearing. He goes, so nut bearing means bugs and birds. Date palm means it needs a lot of water and it's going to droop. So I've got all these in the state. They were, well, it's good look. And I said we're back to that good looking thing. They're not functional. I've got trees in my horrible area that I've updated all along. Me planted trees all along this bad area in North Hollywood. And they go, well, what is that thing? It's been hit by a garbage truck. Homeless people slip under it. It's been caught fire and it's still there. And that's an indigenous California tree that somebody clipped early on. So it's a bush actually, but they kept trimming it so it grew into a tree. It's literally indestructible. And it's indigenous to California. I said, and I wish I could remember the name of it because now I'm planting those in a nursery and culling them as babies so that they grow up. And then I find most shop owners don't want trees in front of their stores because they flower right at the sign level, right? So I said, okay, now we got to change it so you got to call them longer so they don't flower till they get above 8ft and then it's right at the top of their sign. Then they don't mind it, but they don't want to take care of them. Well, these don't need taken care. I don't know what they are. It's a bush that you call it into a tree. It turned into a tree, but I'm not kidding. That's hit by a car. It caught fire. Still there. These date nut palms that the city made me put in. I've got two trucks that got to go out to take care of 25 trees that are so buggy they drop fruit. And the guy says, but this is working with the translation between getting stuff done. Shop foreman, pit boss, line producer. I need those men and women trained with a nonpartisan perspective is how do we get this done? I used to love the line producer. He has to work with the studio. Studio says, we're not paying this for that movie union. We're not working for this. He goes, okay, then we're not going to do it. Okay, stop, stop, stop. We're willing to go to this, and we're willing to go to this. It's a thing called compromise. It's not going to look like you want it to look, and it's not going to get the money you want to get. But we're going to move it forward and we'll do the next one. That line producer, foreman. I don't have them. I don't see them. I don't. They're not being trained for it. In school I make jokes because I hope they don't say it. The kids at my kids school, the boys. Suspicious, huh? How you doing? They don't seem to have a Skill set for. For anything. There's no industrial arts at the school anymore. They've taken that out, thank God. They have a dance part and they have the art part and the photography, but still there's no. And if I donate any more money to the school, I'm going to demand. I can't think of a name for it.

[Tim Allen]

Shifting gears.

[Mike Rowe]

But you know a name from industrial arts. How do you. I guess the word art has to be. It has to be branded better.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah. I'd probably go back to.

[Mike Rowe]

To that industrial arts.

[Tim Allen]

I really would. I don't think with regard to our earlier point about borrowing material and making it better. I don't think you can make it better. I think that's what it is. It's industrial, which is masculine and broad and universal. And it's artistic.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Allen]

Which is something different, something more sensitive. But the two smash together.

[Mike Rowe]

Smash together. I used to use the term. I took painting and art most of the time and got so add. I get so bored with. Where are the. The paint brushes? Oh, we use those for a display over there. So that you go to the art department and nothing was where it was.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Industrial arts literally was setup, cleanup.

[Tim Allen]

That was basically everything in its right place.

[Mike Rowe]

And then you got about four minutes to do your work because it's all right, set up and everybody go get their tools. They get their workspace. Then you get working on. All right, clean up. And I go, did we do anything here? And most of it was. But the tools are always where they're supposed to be. When I want anything, it's in the. Because you spent most of your time out of respect for the area that you're working in first. And then finish the product is where. What today we're going to do hinges. That's. We're working on hinges. So that's focused on what you're doing. And then remember, you got 15 minutes at the end. I want everything put back. You don't just leave it there. The bell. Oh, shoot, we were late. No, that's not how it works. And I said that. I'm missing that. What I didn't like about art was that what I didn't like about IE was design, because I did get in trouble with my. My industrial arts guy because he said, we're making. What are we doing? Chairs or something. I said, but I want to make a chair that you can disassemble quickly. We're not good. We're not doing that. And I go, well, I don't want to make a recipe box. He goes, and he even told me, he said, I appreciate what you're doing. You wanted something useful instead of a box, you're going to fail. And I said, I'm willing to fail if I. If you'll help me make the chair. And I made it a kind of a custom made chair, which I still have. I wanted to make a chair that you could mass produce for college kids. That was $6 in wood. But it looked. And I even took it down to Tennessee to a place they were going to buy it. But they said, you know, this is a brilliant idea. And I said, I think so. So we'll need $500,000 up front to make it. We'll do the rest. I went, oh, yeah? Well, I didn't. I have about $36. I thought, you know, I thought I'd sell the idea. And they said, here's what the problem with chairs is. Mr. Allen, how old are you at this point? It was a second year in college.

[Tim Allen]

Okay.

[Mike Rowe]

And he said, this is a. Chairs have already been designed, so you have to make a lot of these first. Because as soon as it does well, you're going to get people copying it because you can't patent a chair. It's making it better. Variation on a theme, making it better. And I said, I called industrial arts. I called design is useful art. That's what I loved about design.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

It's the sensibility of art. But I want to use it. I don't want to put it on the wall. I have a lot of paintings. I love paintings. And I'm a painter. And I love all that I love about industrial arts. The people that make furniture, tripods, they just. There's an artistic view. It's like you just said, it's a balance. It can make it look good. You know, there's people that make this whole device, forgive me, that looks better than this one.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And sometimes it's the most expensive one and sometimes it's the cheapest one. It's just somebody, somebody had an artistic point of view, which is why I love the liberal heart, liberal politicians. I love where you're coming from.

[Tim Allen]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

You don't want people starving. There's nothing around that. How you do that is California all the time. Affordable housing for the, the 62,000 that live downtown.

[Tim Allen]

Most decent people that I know that are on opposite sides of the aisle actually want the exact same thing.

[Mike Rowe]

Exact same thing. It's just, how are you going to do it? I said, the shortcuts or not shortcuts.

[Tim Allen]

Or not is the way it's like, well, you know, we want people to make a living wage, but should you just raise the wage to make it a living wage? And that's going to be. That's a shortcut. You know, an elevated minimum wage is a shortcut. A rent control is a shortcut. And if you're not terribly concerned about the unintended consequences.

[Mike Rowe]

Unintended consequences. What a great word. You think this through. Oh, God, I hate even to bring it up. I. I wanted to utilize. I love utility knives, so I built one. I designed it so that the handle, I took a piece of clay and I squeezed it like this. And then I took that and made that into my utility knife. I got a Canadian company to help me fabricate it. It comes apart, but it's got a little dial at the back and it's got 12 blades in it. But you pull the cartridge out, turn it around and you got 24. And we will all sharpen those blades. You send that cartridge back for us. And it got huge reviews. I can't remember. We got a million dollars in sales up front from Builder Square at the time. They've gone away and everything was going well. And I was going to do it like Paul Newman. I was going to sell it and drill, which I did a drill at the time.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And I was going. All the money was going to go to charity and it was brilliant. We didn't do the metal one. The metal one was formidable, but it was, it was going to be 19 bucks. And it's a lot for utility knife. And because there's a lot of other utility knives, as you know, you unscrew them and you flip the blade around. This was unbelievable. My brother in law is a drywaller and he said. I sent him out to a bunch of people first and we'd already sold the first batch. He goes, this is just unintended consequence. This is brilliant. Tim. Everybody loves it drywalls, especially because they go through blades and just let. New blade, new blade. He goes, how do you clean it? I go, what? What? Well, when we're doing drywall, we're pulling a lot of the dust and sometimes it's wet back into the casing. I go, can you give me a minute? And I go, take it. And there's no way you can clean it.

[Tim Allen]

Want to buy a chair?

[Mike Rowe]

Holy God. It was. It was horrifying. I had to call up all the vendors. I said, we've got unintended consequences. We worked it on every single application. We never worked it with Wet drywall.

[Tim Allen]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

And that's what it was meant for. And they pull the drywall back in there and you'd have to unscrew it, take this cartridge out, soak that in water. But it made everything. And I just.

[Tim Allen]

Oh, God.

[Mike Rowe]

And I think about failure is the foundation of success. You've got to fail at this over and over again to do any of this. And none of the designs I've worked at, whether that my drill was the best that was I moved the handle forward. Now they're all like that. It used to drills with the handles at the back. It was like this. I. I moved it forward. So it's middle all my first prototype drills, it's now they all do that. And I put bearings on both sides of the armature. Unfortunately, that made the drill last forever. Most drill companies don't want that.

[Tim Allen]

And now you got no planned obsolescence. So you don't have a customer for life.

[Mike Rowe]

I said, and my first hammer, the Tim Allen hammer, I used an axe handle instead of a hammer handle. So I had that swerve to it.

[Tim Allen]

What's the corollary for your shows? Are they getting better as they go? Are they getting better? Like, are they evolving the same way?

[Mike Rowe]

Right now we've got. They see what I'm doing. I put the shop. Part of it is run by a woman named Kate Fox who did all my History Channel stuff. Who's been in the shop. Arguably happens to be my older daughter. However.

[Tim Allen]

Arguably.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, because for some reason, if you're a plumber, you want your kids in your business. But for some reason, if you're an actor, it's nepotism. I don't understand that. She did all the work on History Channel and she's one of those line producers. And so I said, listen, you got to talk to the writers and they got to pitch a show and you got to go. You have the guts and the authority. That doesn't work. You can't have that happen. So you give them a foundation of why the car shop works. And now it's starting to gel. Where number one, when you see the shop scenes in Shifting Gears, it's gorgeous. Because we're using some really cool cars that are in process.

[Tim Allen]

Are they your cars? That's. See, that's.

[Mike Rowe]

We did genius. I didn't want it that way because I. These are rare cars, what we've done. And also in a real cool way, we're going backwards with wrapping. It's a 100 point restoration 455 GTO. That now we've wrapped it to look like it's rusted and needs restoration. So we'll just pull the wrap off over the series. So it. Because we can't restore a car right. In real time. You know restorations as much as they show on those TV shows. You don't restore a car in a week. That. I don't know how that happens.

[Tim Allen]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

You know how long this stuff takes editing. Well. So we've gone backwards in it. And now everything has to be real. Whatever we're doing in that shop. And I'm loving it because in the shop we have upholstery gets done and all this and this. The show will bleed from that. I'm able to be the actor. This cat Denning Su that plays my daughter. Same birthday as mine. Obviously many years apart. Is very much like the character I play. A little more curmudgeony. But I have him as a wonderful life. If you remember that wonderful life. Jimmy Stewart was getting on a train to go to college and his dad had a heart attack. Had to come back. I used that. I was going to the Rhode Island School of Design. Got in an airplane. Your dad owns a regular heavy machine shop in North Hollywood. He had a heart attack and I have to go take care of it. I worked there all my life. But mostly did art pieces. I was an artist. So I get to have play a character who's not bumbling. Like Tim Taylor.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Mike Baxter is more of a businessman outdoor guy. But he didn't ever camp. This guy is going to be a designer. So he's constantly in his house. There's designs. He's Billy. He's the guy that is building stuff next to a dance studio. He sees that. I want these two worlds to mix. The young people that I hate on the show because they're making a lot of noise. Just like out in North Hollywood. There's so much frickin noise in that place.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

But I walked in there one day and saw the work that these. These kids do for. No, I mean the chance of them being. Coming a dancer. What. What are you doing? My niece dancing in the Washington Ballet. Where's that go? It's just an expression of the best of human beings. Dance and the arts. And then I see the restoration business where a guy's just doing this. I was gonna say in this new Vic hot rod. That electric hot rods on the show. We will. This is almost done. So we just took a few fenders off. We'll get there. And the guy did. What's it called on shotguns where they etch the. It's filigree, isn't it? Filigree we have. The bumpers are all filigreed and you'll never see it. Yeah. When this show, when this car goes, it won't go to auction because I'm going to keep it. It'll go to sema. The detail on this hot rod. The genius of these guys, Bodie Stroud, he did most of the interior work. And now the filigree guy, took him six weeks to just do the tips of it.

[Tim Allen]

Just the tips, just.

[Mike Rowe]

But it's this. It's a guy that does this and I can't do that. I'm more of a. I wish I can. Roy Lichtenstein or Lichtenstein. I met him, I'm a pop artist. I love it. And he became like one of a lot of these guys. His process art, they got so far away from their work. They were telling, okay, now, no, paint that. And then they go to another painting. They were. And that's what I've done. I built probably 12, 15 cars that I've had very little. I love hands on. But I. However, I've got other things that need my time. So I just go, no, all green. Let's go. Matte. Matte finish. Matte finish. And then. But I have to give it up to the. The painter. He goes, I gotta. I'm gonna just do matte, but I want to put a. Now. All right, do that and then I do it. That was a good idea. So I'm mentoring other creative people, but the whole process, what are we doing this for? I said, just, it's temporary, guys. I'm not going to live, you know, so it's. Do the best you can to add value to every situation, Every single situation. And I want these kids, as I said, this one young kid coming, he said little boy. And now I see it, the kid across the street's got to be three, no, five. And I. He loves my little collection of little cars. There's a couple that I won't let him touch because they're priceless. But I said, he doesn't know that.

[Tim Allen]

You could be doing anything you want, man, at this point in your life. It's so great that you're doing this. It's so great that you've integrated everything you give a damn about into a sitcom. I mean, that's a.

[Mike Rowe]

Seems cheesy when you say it like that. Yeah. You integrate all this great stuff into a sitcom.

[Tim Allen]

Well, I mean, I just. I Say the same thing about myself when I'm trying to compliment myself quietly. It's like, you know, to be able to. To sneak your ideas into a commercial endeavor.

[Mike Rowe]

There you go.

[Tim Allen]

That's what I mean to say. That has kept me sort of sane, and it seems to have kept you sane adjacent.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I appreciate what you do. That's why I'm doing this. Guys like you, I. I can't encourage enough men and women like you that. That encourage others to be of value. Don't dismiss it, but this is not a value.

[Tim Allen]

I get it.

[Mike Rowe]

I switched phones one time because I work with Apple, so I was on Android phones and then special custom ones I had. And at one point I got on this. Finally, I got used to the iPhone, which is years ago. And I go, the battery doesn't last on this thing. And the guy said, maybe because you're on the phone all day long. And I. Even if it's videos about work, like, I. I find the. It's a mixed blessing. I can fix anything now because of that phone, right? I am shocked. And I go, I might as well try. How do you get those little weird batteries out of the small remotes for candles they have now? Remotes for candles. I couldn't open the stupid Ike. And I go, all right, how do you open the stupid remote from this? And it's. There's nine guy. There's nine guys. Some guys are good at it. Some guys just show you. The blessing is Google will answer almost any question, especially for work, workaround guys like me, how to fix stuff. I can't believe how good they are, how much they are, how much. And these guys do the work. But now they're getting somebody like these guys that show us how they do that. And that's where I come in, is I love point of view. I love shooting how we're doing stuff. And I said, that's why I love this live stuff. Having a live crew, live crowd. You fortunately or unfortunately, depending on our edits, you don't see all of the live stuff because it doesn't fit. Sometimes the laughs are too loud. Sometimes the laughs don't. They carry into the next scene. And we're fighting that right now. How do we make this like George Burns and Gracie Allen. When this is how this all started, it was vaudeville. Crowd got in there, and then we added cameras. And then pretty soon they had to stop because we have to change things. Oh, it's. The crowd has to be sequestered a little bit. And right now we're weirdly enough, I'm getting the mix. The. You know, the people that have a certain age go, yes, because I wanted to say, filmed in front of a live studio audience. And the new people go, oh, that's. Yeah, that's kind of old school. And I said, but it reminds the new people that are watching because our show's done so well on linear tv, they're not used to this. I don't know that the young viewers are used to live. They call it a laugh track. I said, it's not a laugh track. We never show it. But those are people. That's 2, 300 people in there clapping. And we do. We rehearse so much that we're not. We don't keep them there.

[Tim Allen]

But two or three hours, that's great.

[Mike Rowe]

It's alive. Well, you've done it.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah, I've done it with you.

[Mike Rowe]

When's it on Wednesday nights at 8:00 on ABC and Hulu the next day.

[Tim Allen]

Well, I'll tell you, man, I haven't seen it yet, but I watched the promo and it's freaking funny.

[Mike Rowe]

It is funny. It is tragically sad. He's really in pain over losing his wife, which I love playing that. And then two seconds later, it's, you know, making jokes with the two grandkids and Kat Dennings and it.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah, I gotta get you out of here. But God damn it, you just reminded me, too, of. I'm sorry, dude. I know we gotta go, but you told a story. You were in prison and you were about to get the absolute shit knocked out of you guys. Got you by the throat, right? And you just start laughing.

[Mike Rowe]

They had a thing called Toastmasters. You were allowed to go out of the penitentiary to a church that was adjacent. And then you got a regular meal, which is great. So we had a Toastmaster meeting. And I'm a pretty good speaker, so I'd host the meeting and everybody learn how to be express yourself without hitting somebody with a brick or whatever their problem was. So everybody's pretty cool there. And I'm starting to kind of make fun of people. And this guy I took. Yeah. And a guy like this robs a bank and doesn't think it's robbing a bank because I didn't mean to. We get back into the prison. He comes in, and it's always a bad sign when they shut. The doors are open. When it's open, count. And he gets into my cell and he comes in and shuts the door and there's a sweat. The voice goes, hey, Why'd you shut the door? And he comes in, goes right to me with this. And nobody's ever talked to me like that. You made a fool out of me, and I'm gonna make you pay for that. And he's got me up against the wall, and my face is real distorted because he's kind of missed the shit underneath here because he said to this. And all I could see behind him was my younger brother and my older brother who used to mess with each other all the time if they could see my face all distorted like this, going, I didn't know everything came out of my mouth, was hysterical. And I start laughing with. And he goes, this is funny to you? And now it made it even more funny. And now my brothers are going behind him, and he's going, this is not funny. You're gonna. Now he's starting to kind of go, you are a strange, strange man. And he just drops me. He goes, just don't say stuff like that to people you don't know. And he walks out. And I'm on the ground going, I don't know what just happened there, but I wasn't scared in that thing because I deserve it, I guess, because I can't make fun of guys. I don't know. But the fact is, the comedy part of me has saved my life more. More than any other thing. It's also got me a lot of trouble. But because I said it doesn't have it, does it? If ever I get arrested, the comedy guy goes away. Goes, hey, I didn't. It was. He goes, I thought it was funny, but, you know, I'm going to just step over and step away.

[Tim Allen]

That's where we land the plane. That's great. You're about to get the crap knocked out of you. You laugh, and somehow or another, you're still standing.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Tim Allen]

Thanks for coming in and doing this.

[Mike Rowe]

You bet, man.

[Tim Allen]

Really? Great. You barely touched your coffee.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't like coffee. I just can't, no matter how manly. We're talking about men's stuff. This is a comic. No, Mrs. Look, I would have killed everybody in this room. Goes to credibility. You don't go, there's no mafioso movie. We're gonna kill him. Two guys go in to rip him up and make sure his family pays for that. Hold on a minute. Just. There's something. Something about a straw that is just horrified.

[Tim Allen]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

But I'm gonna leave you with this one. But laugh at it. This is. My mother's not doing well at all. And I Got. Luckily I've got four siblings myself we fly with and she's really 96. Everything's falling apart. And we had to move her out of house. I built her a house that's on one level so she could. She took care of my stepfather. She married after my father died. Great guy. Broke her. She had to lift him up. She's just couldn't live in her house anymore. And if any of them have been through this, you won't be able to tell me. I live in this house. And she just wouldn't. She was fallen with help in the house. Moved her to a facility of just a quarter mile away from this beautiful house. And then my whole family shows up every Thanksgiving. There's about 30 of us and we usually use her house. And the doctor said there's a. My sister and brother. I want to take her back to her house. We'll have Thanksgiving there and we'll take her back to the home. And the doctor said 50, 50 chance she'll come out of this stupor and realize that she's back in her house and will not want to go. And you're going to go through this horrible again. Or she'll just forget and have dinner and then drive her back. In the middle of dinner, she gets up, walks to her bedroom in the house. My sister sees that. She goes to the bedroom. I hear screaming. She comes out in tears. She won't leave. She says she's catatonic. My brother goes in and he's gonna. He's swearing at her. And I go, hey guys, guys, let's get out. Get out. Granted, this a boy. It's put my mom through hell. I was incarcerated. I've been a bad kid stealing cars. I'm just not a good kid. So my mom and I have a very different relationship. She's in bed like this. I'm not going anywhere. And she's. She's Rigamor. 105 pounds. She's just stiff. Go ahead, try to get me in. I'm not going anywhere. She's screaming at me, go, Mom. Mom. Everybody. Jeff, Becky, out. I'm going to take you to the car. I'm going to lift you up. I'm going. We're going back there. You go ahead and try. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to have to use some weight so your ass bends to get you in the chair so it's going to be uncomfortable and I'm not going to hurt your knee. You go ahead and dry. Go ahead and dry. And she. So she's like this stick. I've got this stick. And I had to do one of these where you go into Bender. Oh, you didn't get hurt. I didn't hurt you. I just bent you. I get her in the wheelchair, and as I get down to put her foot in the stirrup, she kicks me so hard, my glasses go like this. But it hurt really bad. I go, jesus.

[Tim Allen]

Oh, Jesus.

[Mike Rowe]

I look over her shoulder and my brother is now laughing so hard, he's just bent over. It's the prison guy. And she kicked me. So, I mean, I go, oh, God. Right across here. I go, jesus, Mom. And then I get her in the stirrups, and then I get out to the suv and I'm going to get you out of here. And you just try to get back to this. I lift her up and she's a baby. I get her. And as soon as I get her in a vulnerable position to get her scoop like this, she hauls off and hits me. Fist, side of my head. Now the glasses fly. Fly off, hit the. And I go. My brother's not there this time. I go, I don't know how to say this. If you do that again, I'm gonna punch you back. Because the reaction, mom, is you don't want. No one takes a punch. I can't. Don't punch me again. We get back to the home, I'm getting her out of them, doing this to get her out of the wheelchair, and she looks at me, she goes, you gotta admit, that was kind of funny. I said, son of a.

[Tim Allen]

She did it all for a gag.

[Mike Rowe]

She did it all for a gag. And I said, God, mom, you. I didn't pull it, though. I didn't pull the punch. But you kicked me. That first kick was. I thought she broke my nose.

[Tim Allen]

Well, on behalf of my mother, who's 87 today.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, good.

[Tim Allen]

Thank you for sharing that. It'll give me something to look forward to the next nine years or so. You're the best. Shifting gears. Wednesday, ABC, 8:00. Fantastic. Tim Allen, everybody. The Philosopher.

[Mike Rowe]

Thanks, man.

[Tim Allen]

If you're done, please subscribe. Leave some stars.

[Mike Rowe]

Ideally five.

[Tim Allen]

Five.

[Mike Rowe]

Lousy little.

[Tim Allen]

Star.

[Mike Rowe]

Star.

[Tim Allen]

Big news.

[Mike Rowe]

Wayfair's President's Day clearance is on now through February 18th. You can get up to 70% off all things home, score deals on living room furniture, kitchen and dining, bedroom furniture and more. Our President's Day clearance is kind of like a present. Present, fence, date. While we workshop that, you can shop Wayfair's biggest deal since Black Friday with free and easy shipping straight to your door.

[Tim Allen]

Shop Wayfair's President's Day clearance [e-mail] Wayfair.

[Mike Rowe]

Every style, every home.

[Tim Allen]

Hi, I'm Chris Gethard and I'm very excited to tell you about Beautiful Anonymous, a podcast where I talk to random people on the phone.

[Mike Rowe]

I tweet out a phone number. Thousands of people try to call you.

[Tim Allen]

Talk to one of them. They stay anonymous. I can't hang up.

[Mike Rowe]

That's all the rules.

[Tim Allen]

I never know what's going to happen.

[Mike Rowe]

We get serious ones. I've talked with meth dealers on their way to prison.

[Tim Allen]

I've talked to people who survived mass.

[Mike Rowe]

Shootings, crazy funny ones. I talked to a guy with a.

[Tim Allen]

Goose laugh, somebody who dresses up as a pirate on the weekends.

[Mike Rowe]

I never know what's going to happen.

[Tim Allen]

It's a great show. Subscribe today.

[Mike Rowe]

Beautiful Anonymous.