An Army of Normal Folks - Is Coach Bill Bad for the Environment?! 

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

For Shop Talk, Coach Bill pontificates on the bad wrap that the lumber industry gets about chopping down trees. When the reality is that their work leads to more trees and so many other fascinating environmental benefits! Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everybody, it's Bill Courtney. Welcome to the shop. Shop top number 83. You got any 83s? 83. Dave Casper was 88. 83. I don't know.

Oh, Dave Casper was 83. 83? Yeah, yeah. Can you believe that? Is that not weird? Ted Hendrix. Brains working weird ways. Ted Hendricks.

Yeah. He was a great play. Those are two Hall of Favors. Andre Risen wore it what the Falcons. Oh, Andre Risen. Andre Badmoon or Risen. And the only one I really remember being a Chicagoan is Willie Galt or 83. Oh, Willie Galt was good.

When we won the Super Bowl. Who also played for the University of Tennessee. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Shop talk number 83. We're going to talk about Alex has been wanting me to kind of do this shop talk. And I think it's valuable to think about.

It's the inaccurate notion that those of us in the lumber business are bad for the environment. Not only is it inaccurate, it's the antithesis of the truth. And I cannot wait to expose you haters right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltson. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville, tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed. We have some breaking news to tell you about. Tennessee's attorney general is suing a Nashville doctor. In April 2024, a fertility clinic in Nashville shut down overnight and trapped behind locked doors were more than a thousand frozen embryos.

I was terrified. Out of all of our journey, that was the worst moment ever. At that point, it didn't occur to me what fight was going to come to follow. But this story isn't just about a few families' futures. It's about whether the promise of modern fertility care can be trusted at all. It doesn't matter how much I fight. Doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this. It doesn't matter how much justice we get.

None of it's going to get me pregnant. Listen to what happened in Nashville on the I-Harmament. Smart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you.

Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this, from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman.

There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium

businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988, to a town in northwest Alabama, where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. Thirty-five years. That's how long Elizabeth's and its family waited for justice to occur. Thirty-five long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering,

we all too often make suffering worse. He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family, and apologize, turn to the left, tell my family I love him. So he would have this little practice, to the right, I'm sorry, to the left, I love you. From Revisionous History, this is the Alabama murders. Listen to Revisionist History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Like if we're on the air here, and I literally have my contract here, and I'm looking at, you know, as soon as I sign this, I'm going to get a seven-figure check. I've told them I won't be working here in two weeks.

From the underground clubs that shaped global music to the pastors and creatives who built the cultural empire. The Atlanta Ears podcast uncovers the stories behind one of the most influential cities in the world. The thing I love about Atlanta is that it's a city of hustlers, man. Each episode explores a different chapter of Atlanta's Rise, featuring conversations with ludicrous, Will Packer, Pastor Jamal Bryant, DJ Drama, and more. The full series is available to listen to now. I really just had never experienced anything like what was going on in the city as far as like, you know, seeing so many young, black, affluent, creatives in all walks of life.

The church had dwindled almost to nothing. And God said, this is your assignment. And that's like how you know, like, okay, oh, you're from Atlanta for real. I ain't got to say too much. I'm a Grady, baby. Shut up. Listen to what Atlanta is on the I Heart Radio Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here.

My book The Big Short tells the story of the buildup and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from their. perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Isman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The big short story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, it is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics.

Get the big short now at Pushkin.fm.fm. slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Welcome back to shop talk number 83, Willie Gall. All right. Hater's going to hate. Hater don't hate. All right. I don't have this written down or organized in any way other than in my head. But I think you've done this a couple of times before.

Yeah, but I'm going to try to do it all together at once for you now. I'm in the lumber business, the hardwood lumber business. For those of you who don't know, there's a difference in softwoods and hardwoods. A lot of people when they hear lumber business, they think two by fours, four by six is four by eights. That's softwoods. Practically, think of it this way. Softwoods build a structure, hardwoods furnish it. So softwoods are the two by fours and the structural stuff.

Hardwoods, my products, go into things like flooring, furniture, cabinets, molding, millwork, all the things. inside your home scientifically the difference in softwoods and hardwoods is that hardwoods are deciduous which is just a fancy word for hardwoods lose their leaves during the winter so the difference in hardwoods and softwoods really don't have anything to do with hardness and softness or texture of the wood itself it is just hardwoods lose their leaves during the winter softwoods don't so if you see a pine tree or some conifer that maintains its foliage during the winter, that's a softwood.

And if you see a tree that has no leaves during the winter, that's a hardwood. And to keep in mind of the uses, softwoods build a structure, hardwoods furnish it. That's a basic rule of them. Why does it matter if they lose their leaves or not? What do you mean? What does it matter? Like, what's the difference in material? Well, the softwoods that don't lose their leaves are typically a little sappier, and they have long structural integrity, but are not typically as visually impressive as what we call hardwoods or show woods.

And the reason it's called show is because it's wood that shows. I mean, have you ever seen a piece of furniture made out of a pine versus a piece of furniture? are made out of walnut the walnut's much richer much prettier so it's it's it's uh it the hardwoods have a certain um uh attractiveness to their grain pattern texture the saltwood stone all right the center of the hardwood log has serious industrial uses um the center of the log is what we have uh we make railroad ties out of. It's what we make crane mat out of and board road, which are very important in the exploration of gas and oil.

Tons of purposes for the inside of the log. And then the outside of the log is where mulch and beds come from. And then the lumber that's cut off the log, the 50 or 60% of the lumber on the outside of the log, is the grade lumber that's made into the products like furniture cabinets, molding, millwork. So do you tell people about your part of the process? Like, what do you receive and then what do you give out?

I get grade lumber of all grades and all thicknesses from logs all over the eastern half of the United States. I bring it here. I stack it outside, put sticks in between each layer. Lumber is 60% moisture, and to make it into products that you put into a house, it has to be around 7% or 8% moisture. So part of our job is to get the moisture out of the lumber without destroying it, and that's a very involved, very specific process, where we put sticks in between each layer of lumber so that airflow can get to it. You can get the moisture content outside based on relative humidity and the temperature at that time of the year, depending on the species, between a week and a year, down to about 22%.

And then once it's down to 22, 23, 24%, then you put it in a kiln and you use sophisticated measuring devices to introduce heat and steam and air and airflow and venting to bring the lumber down to 6, 7, 8% moisture content without destroying it, warping it, cracking it. And then you've got to take it off sticks and you've got to grade it and you got to mill it to then sell it to people all over the world who make furniture and cabinets and flooring and stuff. So that's basically what I do. So someone's already giving you a piece of lumber on the front end too.

Not given. Huh? Purchased. Yeah, purchased. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking about like the iPad. story all the steps it's oh it's insane it's interesting yeah it's it's insane so that's basically what we do

why am i talking about this because i am tired of an inaccurate um narrative that uh people who do what i do in and around the forestry all over our country are bad for the environment here are some inconvenient trues. There is 60% more harvestable timber standing in the United States today than there was in 1950. We have grown our forest and thereby grown our positive environmental footprint. Now, people will be like, no, that's not true. Yeah, it is true. And here's why. We professionally manage our forest. Every tree needs light and water to grow. That's basic. kindergarten stuff. Well, in our forest, when very large mature trees grow, their canopies, if you'll think about the square footage of a canopy, everything underneath that canopy is not getting

light and not getting water, so the saplings under it aren't growing. So when you take out of the forest big mature trees and you harvest those, but you don't take all the small saplings underneath it, many times two and three replace one because those saplings now get sunlight and water where the canopies are gone. It's called selective cutting. The second thing you need to know is a tree's respiratory system is the exact opposite of humans. We inhale oxygen and exhale CO2. A tree inhale CO2 and exhales oxygen. So the more trees, the more oxygen, the more oxygen of available for us to breathe, and more importantly, the more CO2 that is sucked out of the atmosphere, which is that carbon footprint that everybody's concerned about with regard to global

warming. The cool thing about a tree is every ounce of carbon it's sucked out of the atmosphere remains in itself forever unless it does one of two things, burns or decays. So the floors, the natural hardwood floors, not the plastic crap that you guys are buying these days, the LVL, but truly solid hardwood floors, solid hardwood furniture, cabinets, molding, millwork. That tree, when it was growing, every bit of carbon it ever sucked out of atmosphere remains in the cells of that piece of wood. So this table you're sitting at, each of the trees that made this table, Alex, all the carbon it sucked out remains here, stored forever.

It does not escape unless it burns or decays. So what happens in forest when we don't take the mature trees, they die eventually and fall over. And when they decay, all of the carbon sequestration that that tree has engaged in its life is released back into the atmosphere. I've never heard that before. That's exactly the truth. Okay. Second way is fires. If it burns, the carbon's gone.

So, by professionally managing forest and taking the mature trees, you capture that carbon sequestration. And when two or three trees replace that one tree, you have more carbon sequestration taking place. And you're putting more oxygen into the environment, thereby actually helping to dissipate global warming and all of the carbon issues. by professionally managing forest. So we are actually a friend to the environment, we're a friend to ecology, and we're growing the number of the forests in the United States by professionally managing it.

We'll be right back. I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltson. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville, tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed. We have some breaking news to tell you about. Tennessee's Attorney General is suing a Nashville doctor. In April 2024, a fertility clinic in Nashville shut down overnight and trapped behind locked doors were more than a thousand frozen embryos. I was terrified.

Out of all of our journey, that was the worst. worth moment ever. At that point, it didn't occur to me what fight was going to come to follow. But this story isn't just about a few families' futures. It's about whether the promise of modern fertility care can be trusted at all. It doesn't matter how much I fight. Doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this. It doesn't matter how much justice we get. None of it's going to get me pregnant. Listen to what happened in Nashville on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page

as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratlift. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person, a billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game.

This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control.

35 years. That's how long Elizabeth's and its family waited for justice to occur. 35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often make suffering worse. He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family,

and apologize, turn to the left, tell my family I love him. So he would have this little practice, to the right, I'm sorry, to the left, I love you. From Revisionist history, this is The Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Like if we're on the air here, and I literally have my contract here,

and I'm looking at, you know, as soon as I sign this, I'm going to get a seven-figure check. I've told them I won't be working here in two weeks. From the underground clubs that shaped global music to the pastors and creatives who built a cultural empire, the Atlanta Ears podcast uncovers the stories behind one of the most influential cities in the world.

The thing I love about Atlanta is that it's a city of hustlers, man. Each episode explores a different chapter of Atlanta's Rise, featuring conversations with ludicrous, Will Packer, Pastor Jamal Bryant, DJ Drama, and more. The full series is available to listen to now. I really just had never experienced anything like what was going on in the city as far as like, you know, seeing so many young, black, affluent, creatives in all walks of life. The church had dwindled almost to nothing. And God said, this is your assignment.

And that's like how you know, like, okay, oh, you're from Atlanta for real. I ain't got to say too much. I'm a Grady, baby. Shut up. Listen to Atlanta is on the I Heart Radio Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book The Big Short tells the story of the buildup and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become

and eventually made billions of dollars from that. perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The big short story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the big short now at Pushkin.fm.fm. slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Now, hardwoods primarily grow east of the Mississippi River.

Let's talk about west. There are, I think the estimation is, 17 times more lightning strikes than the east half of the United States says there is the west half. And it would make sense. It rains a lot more here. there's more clouds, so there's a lot more lightning strikes. Yet, yet, there's like 80% more acreage out west burns due to lightning strikes than does out east.

We have more trees, we have more lightning, yet we have 80% fewer acres lost forest fire. And the question is why? Well, some decades ago, a bunch of people armed with some. some really inaccurate, faulty science convinced the public and politicians that logging was bad for the environment. And they slowed logging, almost brought it to a halt in a lot of places because they felt like they were saving trees. Again, a lot of bad policies that I think had good intentions candidly. But as a result, the forest all over the west had deadfall. all over them. The very trees that just die and fall in decay. So these dead fallen trees

that are decaying that are releasing their carbon that they sequestered into the atmosphere create tender so that when a lightning strike happens, there's all this hindling, basically, all over the forest floor, to just explode. And there's no way to stop it. The second thing is, when you're professionally managing forest and you're creating log roads, those log roads to get to certain acres, they create fire breaks. So when a fire breaks out, it burns,

but when it runs out of tender, it stops burning because there's nothing for it to burn anymore. So when forest are professionally managed, and there isn't these mature trees that are fallen over that are decaying, there's no tender on the ground. And if there's logging roads in and throughout the forest, even when a fire does break out, it gets to a logging road,

and it has a hard time continuing to burn because that creates a firebreak. Well, when you don't have logging roads, you don't have fire breaks. And when you don't have logging, you've got tender all over the ground. And so when a lightning strikes happens, these damn things burn uncontrollably for thousands of acres.

And the irony is the only way the carbon that the tree sequestered ever escapes is through deadfall and fire. which is exactly what is created by the absence of professionally managed and logged forests. And there's so much more fires out west than there are out east. And out east is where there's logging and out west is where there's not. So what's the answer? The answer is not to go clear-cut the forest and run out of all of that.

What person who makes their living in an industry wants to strip the world of the products they make they're living off of. The answer is to professionally manage by selective cutting and harvesting the mature trees so that the saplings underneath it continue to grow, thereby infinitely increasing carbon sequestration, infinitely increasing the oxygen released into the atmosphere and cutting down on the destructive,

out-of-control raging fires through making sure that tender is off the bottom of the ground and there's logging roads for fire breaks. And in doing so, you create industry, you create jobs, you create natural products for people to enjoy in their homes, you increase carbon sequestration, you increase the oxygen released into the atmosphere, and you grow the forest. that is the true reality of what the timber and lumber business in the United States is capable of if wrong-handed environmental and political policy would simply get out of the way. Anything else?

I don't know. Do you know anything to comment on all that? Number one, it's fascinating. You've asked me to put it together one big story. I was just joking. That's hard to do. Number one, it's fascinating. Number two, I think it's helpful for people to know more about you.

and I think we'll be naturally curious, and I learned a lot of stuff, too. And then I do think it's an important lesson of just looking at the surface level of something, like saying, hey, we want more trees, we don't want to cut them down. But if you don't do that, you're going to end up with less trees than if you do cut them down the right way. Yeah, and you're going to end up with more carbon and less oxygen. I mean, listen, one of the reasons Great Britain really wanted the United States back in the 1700s is because England cut all their trees down. It is true.

They deforested their entire island because back then they did not understand what they were doing, right? And here's this massive area of all these trees. And, I mean, honestly, one of the big things Great Britain wanted from us was timber. If you'll think about old, old furniture, think about England.

It's full of English oaks and English. maples and English cherries and walnut. Well, now there's hardly any forest left in England. Well, it's an island in the ocean. There's no reason trees wouldn't grow all over that island, but human beings lopped them off and they didn't professionally manage it. It is happening in parts of South America. It is happening in parts of Africa. I'm not sitting here saying that deforestation from clear-cutting and not rejuvenating the forest is it's happened it has happened in human history and it has happened currently in other parts of the world what i'm trying to say is the problem is when one person sees that and they assume all things are like the other and that

american foresters are doing the same thing american foresters are not american foresters are professionally managing the forest they are allowing the the a tree is the only renewable natural resource on the face of the planet when we go get ore diamond steel gold gas we get it it's gone it's used up it does not replenish itself a tree will regrow it's a renewable natural resource on demand renewable natural resource see only one on the face of the planet And if we do things scientifically properly, we can actually grow more of that resource than we're currently using with all of these environmental and economic positive impacts. And the problem is when we say no to that because of what somebody's doing in the Serengeti.

And that is the danger of not getting into the weeds, understanding the details of something and trying to, you know, one broad brush paints all walls. It's just not good policy. And some of us are trying to get vocal about it to fight back about the inaccurate narratives and create new policy that makes sense based on the facts that I'm sharing with you now. And hopefully sharing that information, wisdom, and science with our neighbors in South American Africa, so they don't destroy their force i think you might have to jump but uh this is a final thought um too i mean probably the most recent big fire was the altadena you know one in the the palisades and the communities there and it's it's kind of a collective shame on us that we all

care about this for a week or two and then the story's just gone away it's true right and so i mean if we actually cared i mean people make fun of the whole thoughts and prayers thing but like there is some truth to that we can't just say that like we also have to take action and what can we do to stop this kind of thing from happening over and over and over again. Ask people in those parts of the world what their insurance rates are doing. And if there was an answer in a natural way to create less fires and thusly reduce insurance rates and risks. I mean, it just goes on and on. But the whole point is, there's an alternate truth to some of the crap you've been fed your whole lives about forestation, and I hope you guys will look it up and check me, fact check me. You might

find out that it's fascinating how so much of what you've been told has been lost. Go deep. Don't just stop at the service level. And we all know a little bit more about Bill and about the lumbers that surround us in our lives. That's it. Shop Talk number 83. If you like this episode, please rate it, tell friends about it, stand on a mountain, scream our names, wake the kids, phone the neighbors, and get people to join an army of normal folks. If you have any ideas for shop talk or an Army Normal Folks, write me anytime at Bill at NormalFolks. And if you live in Memphis, Clinton, New York, Wichitaugh, Oxford, Mississippi, there's two more. Milwaukee and Atlanta.

Write to Alex at Army Army at NormalFolks. Yeah. And join one of our. And join one of our initial chapters. We hope to have them all over the place and get a bunch of bloody do-gooders together in honor of micro and do some good stuff. That's shop talk number 83.

I'll see you next week. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc. me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There

was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your

podcasts. Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. And he said, I've been in prison 24, 25 years. That's probably not long enough. And I didn't kill him. From Revisionous History, this is the Alabama murders. Listen to Revisionous History, the Alabama murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I didn't really have an interest of being on air. I kind of was up there to just try and

infiltrate the building from the underground clubs that shaped global music to the pastors and creatives who built the cultural empire the Atlanta ears podcast uncovers the stories behind one of the most influential cities in the world the thing I love about Atlanta is that it's a city of hustlers man each episode explores a different chapter of Atlanta's rise featuring conversations with ludicrous Will Packer pastor Jamal Bryant DJ Drama and more the full series is available to listen to now listen to Atlanta is on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talking about guns with others might not always feel comfortable, but it could save a life.

Here's a way to start a conversation. Your family is going over to your neighbor's home for dinner for the first time. How would you ask if there are any unlocked guns in the home? Hey! Hey, we're so excited for tonight. Before we come over, though, may I ask if there are any unlocked guns in your home? Our guns are stored securely, locked in a safe that the kids can't access. Awesome.

Learn how to have the conversation at Agreetoagree.org, brought to you by the Ad Council. And she said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night. Along the Central Texas Plains, teens are dying. Suicides that don't make sense. Strange accidents and brutal murders. In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people. There are people out there that absolutely know what happened.

Listen to Paper Ghosts, the Texas Teen Murders, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.