The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 251: Matt Hagan—You Wear 40 Pounds of Gear Because, You Know, You're on Fire Quite a Bit

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

Three-time NHRA Funny Car Champ and farmer/rancher, Matt Hagan discusses artificial insemination, human waste as fertilizer, and what it's like to be inside of an 11,000 horsepower funny car when it explodes.

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Episode 251 of the way I heard it is called, and I'm quoting, you wear 40 pounds of gear because, you know, you're on fire quite a bit. That's a direct quote. That's exactly what he said. And it's not a direct quote from a fireman. It's a direct quote from a race car driver, specifically Matt Hagan who drives funny cars for a living. when he's not running his ranch or his farm or growing strawberries or bringing in human fertilizer or growing CBD. Don't wreck everything.

This is a super weird, completely unscriptable, but ultimately, I think one of the more valuable conversations we've ever had. Matt Hagan got on our radar because he works with Chloe Hudson. And if you're a regular listener, you've heard us sing Chloe's praises for a while now. She's a work ethic scholarship recipient from like four years ago, who is now just a poster person welder for Joe Gibbs Racing. Chloe is her own subject, her own podcast, her own thing. But she and Matt know one another. I met Matt in New York when I took Chloe on Fox and Friends.

Remember? It's like six, seven months ago. He is this big strapping farmer who is also a rancher. And when I learned that he drove race cars, I was like, what else does this guy do? And then you wound up seeing him in a race, what, like a couple months ago? In February, yeah, at Pomona, the Pomona Fairgrounds. And I had never been to a drag race before. And it was ridiculous.

It was an experience that, I mean, very rarely am I completely, surprised by a new experience that it's different than what I expected. This was really different in a very strange way. It's a world unto itself. And for anybody in that world, this will sound ridiculously elementary. But if you haven't been to a Formula One race, then you're not going to understand it until you go. And if you haven't seen funny cars race, and if you haven't seen, look, if you haven't been on a farm, if you haven't been on a race, if you haven't been on a ranch, right? All of these experiences are weirdly foreign, and a lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about all of it. Well, Matt Hagan lives all of those things, and the conversation

we have right now is not only fun and free-ranging and far-reaching, I think there's a lot of really great stuff in it, because he is excellent at everything he does, and he's just one of these guys who, when you talk to him for a while, you realize he's a bit of a philosopher, and he's only 40 years old, but he's lived a long time, father of three, a farmer, a rancher, a driver of race cars, and a curious cat who, I can't wait to order some meat because it sounds pretty delicious what he's doing over there at true harvest farms, or is it cattle? What is it? Teggingcattleco.com, but I don't know how hard we should push his meat since we do sell some meat with somebody else. Oh, on the podcast. Look, hey, you know what? It's a big world. Our friends at

Butcher Box have been to... By the way, I just got a butcher box a couple of weeks ago, and I'm still tearing through all the goodies in there. But let's not get bogged down between guests and advertisers. Don't worry your head, Chuck, about all of the conflicts out there. It's a big world with a lot of meat in it. Everybody's hungry. I think there's enough for everyone. I'm starving right now. Yeah, I could eat. I could eat right now. I like my meat in a box. You know what I'm saying? I like my meat. I don't know why we've been singing so much on the podcast, but that happens from time to time.

It might even happen in this one. You never know. No guarantees. The only guarantee I'm prepared to make is this. You wear 40 pounds of gear because, you know, you're on fire quite a bit. Quite a bit. Here's Matt Hagan. Right after this.

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starts with N3, 2, but here, Matt Hagan, Chuck likes to start at 6 because why wouldn't he? Why not, right? It's got to be different. Where in the world are you? Virginia, at home. actually. Oh, nice. Yeah, super nice to be at home. It's just never enough hours in the day, though, man. You know how that goes. It's just trying to cut my grass this

morning. It was still wet, just trying to get it all done, feed cattle, you know, and like I got this thing to do today and still get back. We're breeding heifers. And it's just, you know, trying to get rye up and plant corn as well. And yeah, never enough hours, brother. Are you doing the AI thing down there on the farm? We are actually. We're AI and some heifers. We got about 120 that we're holding back from this group of calves that we have. had come in and AI on them up and then throw in two cleanup bulls and, you know, all that kind of stuff. So just, I hadn't really done a whole lot of AI, but I keep about anywhere from 35 to 40 bulls and we just kind of throw them in with our herd and let them go to work, you know what I mean, and just let them do their thing. And then we pull everything in three months and pregg check and stuff, but it's better if you can AI, but it's just a matter of time doing them and give them the shots to get them up and get them in sync. Just for people who might not be exactly sure what we're

talking about. This is not a rumination on artificial intelligence. This is artificial insemination. Matt Hagan knows a thing or two about that. He runs a farm. Technically, I guess it's a ranch, right, Matt? People call a farm ranch. I mean, it's 3,400 acres out here in Virginia. It's split up, though, a little bit, like 500 acres here, 300 acres there, another 800 acres here. We see a little bit of windshield time before we actually get to the farm some days. I'm just, you're paying your guys to kind of ride around a little bit, whatever it takes, you know, nowadays. And you have cattle and crops, right? Cattle and crops?

Yeah, cattle and crops. All the crops are for the feed for the cattle, you know what I mean? So we don't really sell a lot of our feed. I sell some corn salads and stuff like that, mainly just to feed the cattle that we have. Didn't you say you farm strawberries as well? Oh, yeah, we got some strawberries. You'll pick your own strawberries. I got a hemp farm for CBD.

I was going to say you don't feed the strawberries to the cows, right? No, no, that's it for people. they'll come out there and kind of pick your own. We do a couple of acres to pick your own strawberries and stuff like that. And do a bunch of flowers in our greenhouses and stuff. So a bunch of old lady stuff, you know what I mean? What you do is, Chuck, is you feed the hemp to the cows first. Then they get the munchies for the strawberries.

That's right. And then you do the AI. I had a guy that did some wine. Then you do the AI. That's called a Friday night down on the farm. There you go. Dude, I thought of you the other night because I knew you were going to to be on here. I've got like a thousand questions for you, but I gave a speech in Hobbs, New Mexico.

We opened to trade school there, and the town came out. They invited me in as part of this distinguished lecture series, which is so weird for me. But I try and talk about the stuff that's important to me, trade school, skills gap, and all that. But I also don't want to bore anybody, so I try and tell them a good, dirty job story. And last time I was there, I told them all about the sewer and dragged them through all that. And they were horrified. it was fun. This time, I took 45 minutes to describe in as much detail as I could muster the process of collecting semen from a bull, catching it in a styrofoam cup and then filling up those pipettes and then reaching in to the... Yeah, that is the process. And then the big metal rod, man,

that people, you bring this thing out that it's like this big metal shocking rod. And everybody's going like, well, what's this? You know what I mean? And they don't realize it's going in the bull's But so it's kind of... Neither does the bull know that. So real quick, not to interrupt your story, but I had one of my teammates, Ron Caps, he actually won the championship last year. I run it up. And then the year before that, I won the championship and he run it up.

So we go back and forth. We're definitely kind of one of those guys that we battle it out every year. And so he's a city guy. But to be clear, you're talking about funny car competition, not artificial insemination. Funny car competition, yeah. You do not yet have AI as an Olympic sport. although a fella can dream. That's right.

Yeah, you're a funny car competition. He's kind of from California. I'd never been on a farm before, you know, just golfs and hangs out in the sun, you know what I mean, when he's not driving a race car. And so I was like, man, you got to come out here to the farm and we're going to get you dirty. I think he went in a tractor supply

and bought him a pair of bibs the night before, you know, and he never been dirty in his life, you know. Great guy, great guy. So I got him out here, and we were actually doing that. We were doing fertility soundness. exams on bulls. And so I got like 30 or 40 bulls to get through. And so I was like, Caps, you know, every mammal except for humans and whales have bones in their penis, right? And a bull, you have to stick your hand in its ass and make sure there's no bone spurs or anything

like that. And he looks over at me and he's like, you're done. And he's like, I was like, caps, you need to stick your hand in his ass. You know, check, make sure he's good. He looks at me. He's like, you've done this before. I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. And, you know, so he's over there. He's elbow deep in this bull. And he's like, man, this is different. I was like, yeah, I've never done it before, man. He just, like, fell apart. ESPN was there. So we had him on camera with ESPN and everything else.

And it was great, man. It was great. I was like, yeah, I mean, I've always let the vet do it. He was like, man, you got me, you know. But it was funny. He was a good sport about it. Well, as weird as that was for your buddy, you know, I can tell you it was a thousand times weirder for the executives at the Discovery Channel back in 2003.

Because these people, they, okay to story on AI and they thought I was going out to do a dirty job with like robots, right? Artificial intelligence. Right. We came back from collecting the sperm from a bull called

Hunsucker Commando. And dude, when you say a rod, you know, what you're talking about is like it's like a miniature version of the Hindenburg. It's about a foot and a half long. Yeah. It's got to use. Big old handle. It's got a handle and it's got

wires hanging out of the back of it. And I pulled this thing out of what I called the tackle box from Amsterdam because inside it was just tubes of lube and this giant probe, which basically goes into the bull to the point where the tip touches its prostate. And then you run a little current through. And that triggers a reaction. Right. And you got to catch it. You got to catch it. I still remember the rancher saying to me, Mike, what would you rather do? Turn the knobs or hold the cup. Turn the knobs. Turn the knobs. Turn the knobs is the right answer. But on dirty jobs, I'm like, nah, I'll hold a cup. I'll hold the cup. Yeah, it's a dirty job there. That's for sure. And poor old bull, man. It's impossible to know really where to start with you because you drive cars at

speeds approaching 330 miles an hour. And you're raising beef and you're shipping it all over the country and you're violating the laws of God and man with your cows and your hands and your fingers and your friends. And so let's start with this belief that I have that one of the things we've gotten so disconnected from in our country, aside from where our energy comes from, is where our food comes from. So as a guy who's providing it, what's your take on all of that? And what is it like? Because you're a first generation farmer. You didn't inherit land.

And that makes you really, really, really unusual. What's it like? It makes me really rare just because it's almost impossible to go out here and be a first generation farmer nowadays. Unfortunately, I mean, the cost of equipment, the cost of land, just the fertilizer cost, all that kind of stuff just doesn't happen. And what allowed me to do that was my racing career, obviously, you know, and being able to borrow some money from the bank banking on some of my assets that.

I had from racing and different things like that and that my dad does a lot of business and, you know, they kind of like, okay, yeah, we'll loan you the money. But normally that just wouldn't happen, you know, and unfortunately, you know, America today is just these farms are going away. And my dad's a big reason for it. I mean, he's a land developer and he does a thousand homes a year, but he makes a pile of money at it. You know, when I first started farming, he said, you must hate money, son, you know, it's just one of those things where you go like, yeah, but I love doing it. And when you're passionate about doing something, you find a way to make it work. And they say in the cattle industry a lot of times that you split pennies to make dollars. It's one of those things

where you find a way to make it work. And one of the first farms I ever bought, it was kind of funny. I knew what I was going to get the guy that owned a farm before me for Christmas. It was a roll of solid wire because everything he had was tied up with bobwire. And I'd cut my hands all the pieces trying to get through the gates and everything else. And it's just like, man, alive, you know, the days of going out here and buying a chain and a lock and something that costs five bucks to do, you know, they just don't do it. But that's how farmers kind of get through it. That old guy, he me kind of shadow him when I first started farming. He was 87 years old and did everything one way. And he just kind of let me, when I took the farm over, I allowed him to farm for two more years before I was like,

hey, you got to get the cattle out and we got to do all this. But he taught me a lot. His name was Bill Till and just an old school, you know, slow-paced kind of farmer. But the things that I learned was, you know, you don't always have to have the best technology or the best tractor or this or that or the newest bailer or any of that kind of stuff. You just got to get it done. And that's helped me out a lot getting going. But our farms are going away. And people don't realize that your beef, when you pick it up at the grocery store, it's changed hands six times before it ever hits your dinner table.

And so what we offer with our cattle company is basically we raise them, we feed them. There are no antibiotics, no hormones. And then it goes from us to a USDA of kill facility to your dinner plate. The process of changing hands so many times and different ownership of cattle and different chances for people to put antibiotics in them and different things that are hormones to make them grow faster is rare nowadays because you're selling weight and people are doing it on a time schedule. These beef have to grow. They've got to put on an average daily gain of three pounds, if not more, and if they can get them to do it. And the only way to do that is put them in a pen and shell feed down their throat and put hormones in them.

And unfortunately, that's just what you're getting at a lot of these stores and places. And a lot of folks don't even realize it. So it's not that we're trying to do anything different. and my business is so small because I'm bottlenecked to a USDA kill facility. I can only get so many kill dates a month anyway. So it's not like I'm saying this to try to grow my business because I'm pretty much maxed out with my business as it is because I don't want to open up a kill facility. It's just one of those things where people do need to know where their food's coming from and people need to know that it's changing hands so many times and what to look for. And I wouldn't say, you know, always grass feds the best way or anything like that.

There's just a lot of stuff we do is we grass feed our cattle, but then we finish them on. corn and cotton seed holes and soybeans and different things like that to give it that marbilization and flavor and stuff. And like everybody says, there's a different way to skin a cat. You know what I mean? Like it just, a matter how, what works best for you, it just takes us a little bit longer to finish out our cattle than it would in some of these big feedlots and stuff like that. How much harder is it right now?

I mean, everybody's talking about the cost of energy. And I think most thoughtful people understand that you can't talk about energy and not talk about agriculture. those two things are linked. But I think a lot of people are missing the impact on things like fertilizer right now. And I don't know what your thought is. I'm worried about Ukraine and Russia and wheat and all of that stuff that impacts the feed that you need to give your animals. The cost of all of it is snowballing in a way that is so exponential. I wonder what you think. the cost of a steak is going to look like six months from now.

You know, kind of that old saying of that $10 bill is a dollar bill now. And you look at things where right now, I mean, I'm doing the math on what our fertilizer and input cost is on diesel fuel. When we're making, hey, we have to run over a field four times before we're ever finished with it. So what can I do to be more efficient? We're looking at growing more corn this year than we are, hey, cattle need roughage and they have to have dry matter as well and different things like that.

So it's kind of minimizing one thing to grow on the other side of things. It's just trying to look at when you put a pencil to it. Does this pencil out? Does it work? The cost of diesel fuel nowadays is just out of control. All that factors into everything that you do with your overhead and your people and the overtime they get and different things like that on top of the fertilizer cost. And it's got to go somewhere. You can't just keep take, take, take.

There's nothing to put back. You can't not fertilize. You can't not run the tractor over the field that many times. That's the fixed in cost of what it is. And people are like, well, I'll skip it this year. But you're going to have to put it back on next year. Like I said, you can't keep robbing from the ground and expect to have the same amount of yield every year. It just doesn't work like that.

You have to put it back, and it's a matter of when you do it and how you do it. And just really trying to cut cost and overhead and wherever you can. I mean, even trying to get plastic to cover these silos and do plastic to, you know, we do a lot of haylage and stuff like that to wrap this hay and plastic to let it ferment to make more pliable feed for our cattle and different things. Some of the plastic's even hard to get right now when we're looking at some shortages on stuff like that. So it's a challenging time for anybody that has input costs and has a lot of overhead. And like I said before, you're already splitting pennies to make dollars with cattle. I don't know, everything seems to go up except for cattle. But a lot of that has to do with these kill facilities.

There's a couple plants out there that really monopolize. They're making millions and millions of dollars a year. I mean, a day, really, to be honest with you. And it doesn't trickle back down to the producer. There's some things there on Capitol Hill that need to be changed. And some of our lobbyists need to do a better job than what they're doing for our cattlemen that are out here. that do work hard every day and do show up and do do the things they need. But it's kind of like you got the big guys up there, these four or five kill plants that are just killing these cattle.

And they pretty much price out what they're going to be by the daily. And you can look at the futures of cattle and different things like that. But they kind of got you in a pigeon hole up there to where they say what goes and the rest of it just kind of trickles down, you know? That's interesting. First of all, you don't call them slaughterhouses. You call them kill facilities. How come? I don't know.

Slaughter house sounds rough, you know what I mean? But it's a... Well, kill facility doesn't sound like a vacation. Yeah, it's probably a slaughterhouse. We call them kill facility just because they do do a good job of cleaning up. And I looked at there's government grants out here to put one in and do different things. But you've got so many folks around there, you know, your place, is it worth the headache? Is it worth all the stuff that you've got to dispose of with the carcasses and the blood and all the other mess?

That's why there's only a few of these FDA facilities around. We truck our cattle four hours down the road to get them killed and processed to be able to send them back here to put them in our freezers to be able to send them out to the folks that are behind them. It's not like we just have one down the road here. Why wouldn't you build your own? Just overhead. There's just a lot of red tape with it. You have to have an inspector there every day and dealing with that. It's just kind of a challenge, I think, sometimes as an owner and just a lot of red tape with it. It's kind of like when you dump human waste out on your land, you know what I mean? Like, no, man, I don't know what you mean. Just another Saturday night.

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Even though it's been obviously gone through all the testing and making sure the heavy metals are out of it and all that kind of stuff, it's great for us as a farmer, but no different than anybody of my neighbors are like, no, man, you're dumping human sewage out here beside us. We're not cool with that. Same with a kill facility. You're going to have some people with some blowback and they don't think it's a great idea. And so it's kind of like, is it worth the headache?

Not in my backyard, yeah. I do know. That whole way of thinking, though, to my mind, is part of the reality of dealing with the willful ignorance of not wanting to know where your food comes from. We don't want to think about human waste being used as fertilizer. We don't really want to see the probe going to the Huntsucker Commando's bottom and the sperm come flying out the other end. We don't really want to see, I shot a cow on dirty jobs. years ago, we were profiling a mobile butcher. And I didn't really enjoy it, but I thought it was really important to let the viewer understand. We're going to turn this cow into about 600 pounds of steak, and we're going to do it right in front of you. And that steak is all going to be dry aged and sent back to the family who owned the cow. And we just want to show you that. We went to a rendering facility, North State rendering right up the road here. And we saw things that made people angry and we didn't do any of it to make anybody angry. We just did it because if you,

yeah, if you pull any of that out of the circle of life, then if you just stick your head in the sand, then it just seems to me that that's how the great disconnect begins. That's really what I wanted to ask you first, because as a first generation farmer, somehow or another, you are very connected to your food and you always have been. And if you didn't grow up on a farm, how did you come by that sensibility? For me, I think that first of all, to kind of talk about what you talked about with, people think that their food just shows up on their plate. I had a guy argue another day about how awful it is to kill animals and deer and cattle and everything. I was like, he had like six cats or something like that on his profile. Well, buddy, have you read the main

ingredient in your cat food? It's meat. There's no way around it. So whether you like it or you don't like it, even when you talk about all this monocroping and everything that you do with these big agricultural, when they come in and just plant all this corn and we're making ethanol and all this other stuff, you're killing hundreds and hundreds of species of animals every time you harvest that field. Whether you like it or not, there's just no way around it. You're talking about mice and voles and moles and rabbits and squirrel and snakes, all that stuff that's living in that field. I've seen the inside of a thresher after a few passes, and you're right. It looks like the final scene in Kerry. It's a bloodline. Again, it's not a thing we talk a lot about because for the same reason, we don't want to think about human poop fertilizing our corn.

Yeah, neither do my neighbors, right? I got a funny story about that. You know, when I was a kid, we had an aunt on the eastern shore, and we used to go and visit. she grew the biggest, juiciest, plumpest tomatoes ever. My brother and sister would go there and they would say, we've got to get some of those tomatoes. They're so good. So they're eating the tomatoes one day.

So when did you start growing these tomatoes? When did you plant them? And said, oh, we didn't plant them. What do you mean? They just grow naturally out back right over the septic tank. Right. True story. You bet.

That's a truth. You don't want to think about that, but that's just what it is. I look at it as free fertilizer. Like some of the stuff that we put out there from the waste management plant, it saves me $30,000, $40,000 a year. That's just money to me. And my neighbors sometimes are like, because we have to put a sign up. And we have to let our neighbors know that we're coming in there and we're spreading sewage and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, it's a monetary gain for me because it saves me money that I'm not throwing out synthetic

fertilizer. And they give me a report every year, basically it breaks down what was put out there, how much heavy metals in it, how long they baked it to kill all the bacteria, yada, yada, yada. You'll walk out through there and find a few tampons every now and then, but that's about it. You know, I guess the grinder doesn't process everything all the time. So I try to pick that up before my family sees it every now and then. So there's a cost with everything, right? Right. There's a little bit of cost with everything, right?

Nothing's free. I very rarely send a meal back when I'm in a restaurant. Like, you've really got to bitch up the steak for me to send it back. But I figure if I pulled a string on my plate and. suddenly it was like, okay, I need to have a word with the manager. Stats. Monsieur, there's a tampon in my steak. We'll find a few of them out there in the field here and there.

So I try to put some gloves on and get everything kind of cleaned up before the family goes out there. Waiter, there's a tampon in my sleep. Wow, Matt, you took it to a place. You even surprised me with that one. That's a good one. Let's shift gears, as it were. All right, all right. I know a lot of guys in the farming and ranching business, and I know a fair amount of

in the race car game. I don't know anybody in both. And so let me just tell you quickly by way of been there, done that. I've never been there or done that, but I know Roy Hill. I know you know Roy Hill. He has a drag racing school and he tossed me the keys to some rocket ship years ago and allowed me to approach speeds of 200 miles an hour. And I swear to God, man, I can't even call it driving. At that speed, for me anyway, it felt like I was holding still and the world was rotating toward me at increasing velocity. It was part video game, part fever dream, and that wasn't even close to what goes on in funny cars. Matt goes twice as fast as you went with twice as fast.

But Chuck, 10 is not twice as much as five, only on paper. When you go from 5 to 6 and 6 to 7, you're not just going up one. You're taking all that momentum behind you. I can't even imagine. Tell me if I'm wrong, Matt, but the difference between 300 miles an hour and 310 miles an hour is more than 10 miles an hour. It feels like it, right? Yeah.

We were approaching speeds at 340 when they started slowing us down and they're like, you guys can't go this fast. So what people don't realize is that the fastest I've ever been is 338 miles an hour and 3.79 seconds, you know, in 1,000 feet. It's not that it's 338 miles an hour. It's that you're doing it in 1,000 feet. That's where your mind goes, what just happened? Because you're covering that distance and shuts a short amount of time in having your mind process that getting acclimated to the G-Force and the speed and slowing it down for you, which is amazing because your mind will slow it down for you. After my first 50, 75, 100 runs, I was never like, yo, check out the pretty girl on row two.

You know what I mean? Like it's still a blur, right? It's still crazy. But it's just one of those things where your mind starts to, you can hear the cylinders, fire, you can feel what the car is doing. You're driving by the seat of your pants. It's making moves, and you're never ahead of the car, but you're trying to be with the car, right? Your mind's starting to slow things down and you're starting to feel it and you're making adjustments with, like, I said, the seat of your pants kind of thing. But there's been plenty of times I've been behind the car.

One of my first times I ever got in the car to run that fast and a feel funny car, I'd bought three runs, basically, from the guy that I was buying the car from. And I needed those three runs to have my license to be able to compete that year in Funny Car. And basically, if I didn't get those three runs in, I didn't get to compete or I had to buy more runs and I didn't have any extra cash to buy more runs because it's like five to seven grand a run. A lot of times when we run these cars, it costs seven grand if it doesn't hurt anything. Like if it just makes a lot of a clean run and that's just in the parts and pieces of pistons and rods and blower belts and clutch discs and valves and keepers and springs and stuff that we just throw away because

you're pushing these parts and pieces to the limit. But I had to make these three runs and I got it down to the end. It looked like a snake basically going down through there. And I was like, yeah, I got there the other end. And I come back and I tried to get a high five from the guy. And he was like, don't ever drive like that again. He's like, oh my God. He said you wrecked, but you didn't hit anything. So it just was like, I thought I did a great job. But I was just so far behind the race car because the car was so far ahead of me, my mind couldn't process it fast enough. I'm afraid some people can't process that either.

What exactly do you mean when you're behind or in front of the car, even as you're in it? Everybody thinks you get the whole lane, but there's not. There's a narrow groove out there. They call it the groove. And basically it's darker than the lane. And that's where you have to keep the nose of the car because it keeps it in good rubber right there. So you get outside of that groove. and it's not much wider than the car itself.

And you get outside of that groove, it'll smoke the tires or you'll abort the run because it's not in the groove or to push you to the center line because one tire's in the groove and the other one's out. It's real crucial to keep it in the groove is what they call. There's a lot of things that happen on a run that can push you out of the groove. Like we drop cylinders. So each cylinder is over a thousand horsepower. When you drop a cylinder, that other side is not firing. So it basically pushes the nose of that car that way. And then it'll pick a cylinder back up.

And then you have to make an adjustment. So in a funny car, you're very aggressive in the car. You're really working the steering wheel all the way down through there to keep it in the groove. So there's a lot going on in those four seconds to make that run. You're trying to stay with the car when it's making those changes and you're trying to make those adjustments to keep it in the groove. 10,000 horsepower, a car like that? They say 11, but if anybody ever puts a nitro funny car on a dono, run the other way. It's not going to be good.

It's one of those things where they do a mathematical equation of mass speed time or whatever over distance. and they come up with how much horsepower it is because of the weight of the car and different things like that. Anybody ever puts one on a dino decide to go the other way. I don't care how much cinder blocks in front of you. It's not going to end well. Ten years ago, an old friend of mine died, Dick Clark. And on the same day that his obituary was making the rounds, there was a videotape making the rounds of you blowing up.

I think you were in Charlotte. You're probably sick of talking about this. I didn't know you then, didn't know of you, but I remember looking at this video, and I remember thinking, I don't know how what I just watched wasn't an act of God, like a miracle, especially. And folks, you should Google this. Google Matt Hagan, 2012, Charlotte. There's a lot of footage of this thing out there. But Matt, you're sitting in a time bomb.

You're sitting in a rocket ship with a time. bomb under it. And the footage of this car breaking up in high speed, which is really slow motion, right, it goes on for maybe 30 seconds. And you're sitting there in the midst of this thing. It's nothing but a fireball. So I just want to hear what happened, what that felt like. And I would be remiss to, spoiler alert, but when you climbed out of what was left of that car, and I can't even call at a car. It was just a cage. You grabbed a piece of smoldering metal and threw it on the ground in anger. And I thought, that was a little upset. I'm like, yeah, he's upset. He's got hurt because that was a third time we'd done that season. So it was just like, this piece of trash. It had already blown up a

couple times like that on me this year. And I was just kind of over it and threw the handshield down. Because the handshield's supposed to deflect all that stuff from coming in on you. And I was like, well, this piece of trash. And it didn't really do much for me. But there's a little. But there's There's actually time, we'll talk about that, but there's another time that I blew up, and the rear end comes up so far when you blow it's because it's such a big concussion. So put this in perspective, those cars make 8,000 pounds of downforce. So on a run, everybody kind of thinks that we see the most G's and stuff at the hip, but we see it in the middle when the clutch goes one-to-one. It tries to pick the front end back up, you know, everything, my vision gets really blurry. And then when the clutch goes one-to-one, when I was driving a five-disc car, it sounds like you break a two-by-four and half when it welds in there.

So a lot going on in the middle of the race. Sorry, Matt. Back up. Clutch goes one to one. All right. There's probably some people listening who follow this closely, but my guess is most of them are saying, are you talking about the differential? Are you talking about what? So it just goes clutch, just drive train into rear end.

There's no transmission. There's a forward and reverse. We have a reverser in there. Do you use a trans break, like the button on the steering wheel? No, just nothing. It's direct drive. So it's a motor, a clutch sitting there, and then a shaft that runs between my legs that runs 8,000 RPM back to the rear end. So when they clutch welds.

So they put a little piece of, I guess, carbon fiber over top of them, like where my ass sits, where the drive shaft is. So I guess that's supposed to make me feel a little better that there's a shaft spin in 8,000 RPM between my legs. Another Friday night. What could go wrong? Another Friday night. There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity. And you don't know which side you're on some days, right?

I'm pretty sure I know. This one explosion. So the rear end came way up. The only thing that kept the car from going end over end. And actually the front end dug in, and I could see asphalt coming up over top of my helmet. So the front end it dug in, but then the parachutes came out and it pulled the car back down. When the car came back down, my head neck restraint did what it's supposed to. It kept my helmet where it was supposed to.

But my head rotated inside my helmet. My eyes hit my viewport of my helmet on the bottom. Well, when you cut your head, it bleeds like crazy. So this car is bouncing around everywhere. There's blood all over with my visor, big explosion, like just a lot of energy that comes at you. And I get down to the other end and I look at the guy and I was like, am I pretty still, man? Because there's no mirrors, you know, and he's like, you ain't pretty, but you're going to be all right. And so they put me in the ambulance.

And John Forrest, he's a 16-time world champion. He comes out and he's just a great showman. You know, he's done this forever. And he's 73 years old now or whatever, but opens up the ambulance. He says, kid, kid, you're okay? And I was like, yeah, I'm good, John. He said, next time roll around on the ground, act like you're on fire. He says, you don't get a whole lot of TV time.

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Nobody is doing more to train the next generation of skilled workers than Skills USA. And I'm encouraging you to at least consider being a part of this movement. Skills USA advisors and volunteers aren't just teaching trades. They're launching careers and strengthening the backbone of our country by mentoring the next generation of industry leaders. in high school, you could be among the people who are making this movement explode. Join the skilled trades movement. Support career and technical education programs through Skills USA.

There's no better way to do it. You can volunteer at a local chapter. You can start a chapter in your own town. Or you can just go to their website and see the impact for yourself. And see, too, how easy it is to get involved. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely positively moving the needle. The goal is a million members by 2030.

I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skillsusa.org slash mic. That's skillsusa.org slash mic. I'm talking skills, U.S. Skills, U.S.S.S. USA. So, Chuck, John Force,

I met 20 years ago up at Sonoma back when they called it Sears Point. I was hosting this show called Evening Magazine, Matt, and we did a story on whatever was going on up there. And that's when John was really coming in. That whole sport, it felt like was becoming a thing. He was driving real fast. There was another driver up there.

Jamie McMurray, I think, tossed me the keys to his car and let me take a few laps, which was just a blast. But, Matt, what's so crazy for me is, in my mind, John Force was and still is a force of nature. He did the equivalent of things like breaking the sound barrier on the ground. You're ahead of him right now. You're like at the top of the list of dudes who ride bombs for a living and explode every so often. And what is it like, not that you look over your shoulder, but to look over your shoulder and see John Force.

I mean, your hobby, dude, is so completely out of hand right now. Honestly, it's amazing. First time I saw John Force was on CNN. And I was a young kid and we were just kind of hanging out at the house. And this guy comes on CNN, like Larry King Live or something like that. I forget what it was. But he's just talking and talking and talking. I was like, he got my attention.

So I was like, who is this guy, you know? And so talking about drag racing and this and that. And I think he had had some of fire or something they had him on CNN about or something, winning upside down on fire or something, you know. So anyway, kind of got my attention. And then later to be racing the guy, you know, he's obviously the goat. He's a living legend. And what he does and has done for the sport is phenomenal.

And so last weekend when we raced, he won the event at the forewight. And the weekend before that, I raced him first round and put him on a trailer. It's back and forth. It's wild. There's a lot of times I'll be sitting in the car, and it's 120 degrees on the asphalt. And all that heat radiates up into the car and the cockpit and everything else. And I'm over there. You know, I'm 39 years old.

You got so much fire gear on. Like you wear 40 pounds of gear, basically, you know, because you're on fire quite a bit. And the only thing that you got is a little eye hole that's like cut out, wiping your eyebrows all the time. And I'm over there. I'm kind of upset. I was just like, God, can we this hurry up? Can we get this going? And then you look over and there's a 73-year-old man sitting over there and you're going like, quit bitching, dude.

You know what I mean? He's getting it done. Quit being upset. It's hot. So for people who have never been to a race, a funny car race, much less sad and one, I could do probably a mediocre job of trying to describe the feeling of being behind that wheel, which isn't really a wheel. It's this thing. It's like a butterfly, yeah. Yeah, it's a butterfly.

And watching the Christmas tree tick down and Roy Hill drove this into my brain, he's like, look, if your mind wanders, you lose. If it wanders too far, you die. And so just talk about the mental commitment that you have to make in order not to become a stain in the asphalt. Well, Mike, that's a great question. A lot of people know how to go to the gym. They know how to eat right. They know how to get up and go wrong every morning and be in shape and be healthy.

But there's very, very few athletes that really know how to work on their mind game. And I feel like I've worked with quite a few sports psychologists. There's a great book out there called Mind Gym by, I guess his name's Gary Mack. I wanted to work with the guy so bad. I read his books two or three times. And man, everything this guy does is great. And that's one of those things where I called email, did everything I could to get in touch with this guy. And finally his wife calls me back and is like, he's been dead for years.

Please quit emailing, you know, and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. But just a great book. And you look at any sport and you have just talented people, right? They're all there for a reason. They're gifted athletes and stuff. But what separates champions from average folks that are gifted athletes is their mental game and working on your mental game daily and be able to rise to the occasion and be able to take a pressure situation and turn it into a positive situation. And no one does well under pressure.

I mean, if they say that, they're full of it, right? Like, people do different things under pressure situations. And some people are going, oh, my gosh, I don't want to mess up. And other people are like, this is the time that I get to make my moment. I get to arise to the occasion. It's like, coach, give me the ball kind of thing. And those are the things in your mind that what separates you from being great and from just being average. And the mental side of things is really, really big on what we do.

And it's really carried over into my life, into my businesses and in a family, into everything that I do. And you have to work on your mental game every day, every day. I mean, as much as you go to the gym. How does it translate? Yeah, to farming. To everything with business and being mentally tough and figuring out how to get through situations of like, how am I going to make these numbers work and how do I deal with people and how do I get through those pressure situations of keeping people happy every day and on time and working and productive. And just, you know, on my racing side of it, it's dealing with pressure situations there. But every day in business, you show up and there's some problem and there's some fire you got to put out.

And there's something that you have to do to keep your business. float and keep things moving forward and this problem is shut down and but this one comes up over here and you make this personnel change here but these people don't get along there and it's just that is pressure that is stress that is different things you have to deal with in business and learning to do that with these books and sports psychology and different things i've learned to do on the track and dealing with pressure with that but it translates with everything with your family with life with just being able to be positive i talk to myself a lot in the car if you walk by my car before a run, you would think I was a crazy man because I'm telling myself what I want to do and how I

see it. You build that image and you put it in place. And it's no different than like when you line up to shoot a basketball, you see yourself make the shot before you shoot the ball, right? Same with golf. Different things like that. Same with me on the racetrack. You go up there and you look at the starting line and you look at the groove and you look where other guys have been driving it in or pulls them out and different things like that. Those processes, you know, you go up there and you tell yourself, leave on time, keep it in the groove, turn the windlight on, you know, shut the car down, you know, just different things that you tell yourself how it needs to happen. You see it.

You think it happens out there on the racetrack. And same with life. So I'm a big, big believer in mental toughness and working on your mental game every day. And that carries over into everything in life. But there's another thing, too. I don't think you give a damn if somebody looks at you talking to yourself in the car and conclude. If I did, I wouldn't be doing it, right? You just don't care.

But, right? Yeah. This is a compliment. because there's a great story about Will Chamberlain, who obviously was one of the greatest of all times, but God, I hope it's Will Chamberlain. I think it is. But a terrible free-throw shooter, just terrible, like 40%,

to the point, like worse than Shaq, to the point where they just fouled him all the time. And then one season he just thought, I'm going to do something about it. And he started shooting free throws like the granny shot. like squatting and throwing it from between his legs. He was at like 94, 96%. He completely turned his game around.

In fact, I think the game where he set the all-time, at the time anyway, scoring record, he didn't miss a single free throw. And he took like 40 of them. Plus he made all his other shots. And then the next season, he went back to shooting it the normal way because, you know, he didn't like the way people made fun of him.

for shooting it from between his legs. That's fascinating. So one of the first sports psychologists that I ever worked with, he had me out there in front of all my peers playing pretend catch with him. So I was like, man, do we really got to do this? Are you sure we have to do this in the staging lanes? You know, we're all of my guys that I raced against are out there watching me. And he was like, well, yeah, we got to do this.

So, of course, I was out there playing pretend catch in front of everyone with my driver's suit on and everything else, but it's getting through those mental blocks and going up and doing like high ropes courses and overcoming those fears of different things that you're not used to doing and getting in that state of being comfortable, being uncomfortable and stuff like that. That builds mental toughness, right? So that's what he was doing, it was getting me out there going, you're going to look like a fool. This is part of being uncomfortable and being comfortable with it, and stuff like that. So yeah, learned a lot, but it also carried over to a lot of different things in life. And it is just going like, God, did I really do that really do that?

do that, you know. But those are the things you have to do to be successful. That year that I worked with him, I won a world championship. I run it up the year before. Two of the championships I won, I've run it up the year before. And that in itself is mentally challenging because you're so close and you do all the work. And it always comes down to the last day and the last race. And your guys, they do all the work. And to come in second, it feels like someone rips your heart out. And I think those years that we do that, like we run it up last year. And this year, we're leading the points. We've had the best successful season that we've had so far. I've already won a few races, you know, early on and those feelings that you get when you come in second, it's like

it's disgusting. You don't want that taste in your mouth anymore and you do whatever it is. Not that you're not working hard all the other years, but it's just a reminder of how close you are and how disgusting that taste is not to be able to hold that championship trophy up and to see those other guys get the bonus check and all that other stuff that goes with it, it seems like those are the things that make you drive and work harder because you're so close and every year like that we've kind of come back and won the championship the next year. So maybe we'll figure it out to where we don't have to run it up. You know what I mean?

But it would sure be nice. Would you rather be fifth or second? Would you rather be dead last or second? Well, put it this way. I don't run two on my car. It's one of those things we run a number one or we don't run anything on there. Well, we run a number. But my number is 14 this year, which is Tony Stewart's number.

So it was one of those deals. Even though we were number two, it just to have to look at it. It's disgusting. It's just kind of one of those things where my guys, I've been very, very blessed in this industry. I've been able to kind of handpick my guys with my crew chief and everything else and kept them together for 10 years. And we have such a phenomenal group of guys. They're so driven. They're so motivated.

And they work so hard. I got the best group out there. And I was named driver of the decade, last decade, because of my guys. It wasn't because of me. It was because the team they put around me and the people that I've been able to help keep in place. And two years ago, I gave my bonus to my guys to keep them there. And I was like, hey, guys, if we win the championship, these guys were COVID and people were cutting budgets and all this. stuff and I was like I need you guys to be here I can't do this without anyone else and so

money motivates people so I gave up my bonus for my championship to my guys just so they would be there so I knew that if they stayed we would win and we did it's keeping that core group there because I know how good they are that's been the philosophy of my dad in his business he owns 42 companies and has 900 employees but he surrounded himself with people that work hard and super smart smarter than he is but he's not afraid of that and he takes care of his people and that's something that I've learned from him is you have to take care of your people and they will take care of you. And I've seen it on the other side of people that just think people are replaceable and they fall.

And when you don't have people you can depend on and count on and work hard for you, you were not going to be successful in life. And if you are, it's going to be very short-lived. To surround yourself with people who are smarter than you is a hard thing to do. To only act. Chuck and I talked about this years ago, to act with people who are better than you. You don't get better at chess by playing with people who you can beat, right? Right. This whole thing is just a rumination on how willing are you to take the pie in the face?

Are you willing enough to play a game of imaginary catch or have a chat with yourself while people are watching? If the answer is no, then you better get used to second place. You know, I never went to a sports. I can't talk either. A sports psychologist. But I did have a mentor. And Chuck did too, a high school music teacher, a guy named Fred King. and tell me if you agree with this, but he summed up everything you just said with three words,

what, not how. What, not how. The minute you think about how you're doing, that's typically followed by the moment you blow up or forget your line or hit a bad note or do something wrong. It seems like the people who have the most success really don't care how they're doing. They're just looking at what they're doing. No matter what it is, growing beef, driving cars, getting tampons out of the field, whatever it is. That one's not going away, is it?

No, man, that one left the mark. That might be in the title. It could be the title. Waiter, there's a tampon. Definitely get some clicks right there. A little gold nugget there. What, not how? Should we see that on the side of a car at some point?

It's one of those things where, in minimizing, what you can control. So that's something I learned as well is you can't control everything. And I can't control my guys how they put a cylinder head on or who's torquing the bottom end or what they do. You have to trust your people to do what they're supposed to do. And when I started winning some of these championships and running, being the thick of stuff, I used to worry so much about what I couldn't control. If you really focus on what you have control over and do the best you can with that, it's up to everybody else to do their job as well. And that comes back to surrounding yourself with that great group of And it minimizes the pressure. If I can only control leaving on time, keeping it in the groove, putting the parachutes out, getting the car shut down, little things here. I was like, man, I'm really not that responsible for that much. This ought to be pretty easy. Keep doing what you're supposed to do. But when you think big picture and all this stuff that has to happen and this person has to lose this round and this guy's got to win this round and you've got to beat this person and who am I racing next. And it gets overwhelming, right? So focus on what you can control and be the best at that. And that really has helped me through a lot of situations where, you've got to beat this person and

I probably would have been overwhelmed or overcome with some of the pressure that is involved with it. One guy, he told me a long time ago, he's like he was a pro mod champion, which is a different class. And I looked up to him because I ran pro mod for six years. And this dude always just beat the hell out of me all the time. It was just like I couldn't beat him. He was a champion. And he pulled me aside when I was fuel racing. And he says, don't chase it away from you.

He said, let it come to you. He said, don't overdo it. Don't go up there thinking then you have to do more than what you already have done to get there. Just let it come to you. And that really stuck with me. Just keep doing what you're doing to be in the situation you're in. And don't overdo it. Just let it come to you.

And that's kind of my mentality. I'm good at what I do. I'm good at my craft. I'm going to keep doing the same thing I'm doing that got me in the position to win a championship. So that's what we do, you know. When you were saying about staying focused on what you're doing, that's the epitome of the what not how. Because the thing that I take from that the most is that when you are thinking about what you're doing,

you are inside your body. You are present. You are focused. you are doing a thing. Exactly. And the minute you start to think about how you're doing, you are outside of your body looking in going, is that right? Am I standing right? Is that working? It takes your focus away from the thing that you're doing and keeps you off center. And that's, I agree. I hear you saying the same thing. Yeah. It's a good way to lose. And more tragically, it's a good way to get hurt. So much of everything you just said applies to vocational and occupational

safety. It applies to just surviving, crossing the street. You know what I mean? Getting through a lockdown, getting through a pandemic. People get so focused on protocols. This is the part where I put my mask on. This is the part where I stay six feet apart. This is the part where I follow all these rules. And then they step off the curb because the little man said walk, but they didn't check both ways. And the big blue bus takes them out. Right. They were really focused on how they were doing. And they followed all the rules and splat. And sometimes you blow up, man. When I Google your name and start, when I first started, they opened up my locker and I was like, there's four fire suits in there. I was like, why is there four fire suits? And they're like,

you're going to be on fire a little bit, bud. I was like, well, I guess here we go. So it's a good perspective, I guess, to look at while I have four fire suits in my locker. Shameless plug. Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble. daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work Carl Noble did for a living, trade work, skilled labor. That foundation is called MicroWorks, and today I'm proud to tell you that we've helped thousands of people get the training they need to begin a career in the skilled trades. In fact, we'd love to help you. You can apply for a work ethic

scholarship right now at microwworks.org. We've set aside $10 million for this year's applicants. Thanks to a number of very effective fundraisers, including the one with my grandfather's name on the label. I refer, of course, to Noble Tennessee Whiskey, K-N-O-B-E-L, which is now available in a variety of delicious mash bills, all of which you can peruse at noblespirates.com. In fact, if you spend 100 bucks and use code Carl, C-A-R-L, you'll get one tube of orange bitter-infused sugar cubes for free. That's code Carl with a C to get nine sugar cubes, ingeniously engineered, to make nine perfect old-fashioned every time. It's my favorite way to support MicroWorks and my favorite whiskey to sip responsibly after a long day of interviewing people on this

podcast. Pick up a bottle at Noble Spirits.com. K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirits.com. Soon may the noble men come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. Well, this is what's so funny. Earlier when we were talking about farming and business, you were like, you know, you wake up every day and you got a lot of fires to put out.

A lot of people use that metaphorically. Not a lot of people who are actually on fire for a living talk about the metaphorical fires of running a successful ranch. So when a guy who's engulfed in flames tells you he has some fires to put out, you ought to pay attention. You should be literally, right? No, I want to say something real quick with what you guys got going on. You guys do a great job with scholarship and all the stuff that you guys are doing to help these trades folks out here.

Honestly, I have several folks that have gone to like Wild Tech and Western Tech these trade colleges on my car. We do an internship with some of these guys and gals out there. They come in for three or four races. And actually, I have two people right now on my car from Western Tech out of Texas. They've done the schooling. They've done the deal that they need to. They come out here. They've had to earn the right by their grades to kind of do an internship with our race team.

And they do that. And we actually place several folks out of these colleges on these race teams. And people are blown away. They're like, oh, my gosh, you get to work on a race car. And these guys and gals do that. I do see a lot of the value in what you guys are doing out here and giving the scholarship. and different things like that. So I just want to say hats off and commend you guys for doing that

and for these young folks out here doing it. Thanks. It means the world and how this works, right? Way leads on the way. And we're all just versions and examples of the people we meet who know other people. And, you know, Chloe, Hudson stumbled across our program and applied. And I liked everything she had to say. And we chatted and we were happy to help pay for her welding thing.

and then flash forward. And there's Chloe on our posters. She really became one of the poster people. What a great gal. I clicked on her Instagram and I was just like, my stuff don't look like this. And I kind of hit her. I was like,

can you help me? Absolutely. She does all my Instagram and social media and stuff like that. And what a phenomenal gal with work ethic and drive and motivation and dedication. And just wants to go out here. And I don't even know that she wants to be like a trendsetter, but she's just doing her. And that's what's really cool.

here I am in the raw and I'm gonna put my makeup on and you guys talk about whatever you want to but this is me and she's out there welding and she's killing it on my Instagram I mean my followers have increased because the video skills and the edits and all the kind of stuff that she's doing there when she works at Gibbs during the week on the circle track side of stuff comes helps me out on the weekends with my stuff on the drag side of things gets to weld be a part of it's such a small world out here with racing and gets to be a part of a little bit of everything it's almost like to me she has a dream job of falling in love with you with the circle track stuff and the drag racing side of things and just being involved with that and sponsored by Lincoln and I'm sponsored by Lincoln and just a lot of cool stuff that goes into the small world that we're in with the racing side of things. And then just an awesome fabricator welder on top of it, just out there doing it all. So just the really cool gal. That's why you're on this podcast. Way leads on way. You meet people. 100%. I'll tell you what I told her. We're constantly looking. You and I are probably constantly looking for. for the same people. Work ethic is a hard thing to define, but when you find somebody like Chloe who will show up early and stay late, be uncomfortable, play a game of imaginary catch, if that's what it takes, right? Do the thing. Well, keep an eye out for those people, Matt. And if we can help

them with the foundation, don't even hesitate to hook us up. I mean, that's, we're here to help the people you're talking about get the training they need so that they can become a part of a crew like yours. That's really it. Hacuna Matata. Circle on. Yeah. But, you know, you guys are changing lives and you change Chloe's life. And to hear the stories that she does and talks about your foundation and getting the chance to do that and helping out with the semesters and the pain. I mean, from what I understand, this is a girl that was working two or three jobs to try to make ends meet and still taking it on the chin as far as everybody telling her she can't do it. You know, it's not going to be successful and all this kind of stuff. And here is she out here doing it.

She's got a great gig with Lincoln, great gig with Joe Gibbs and helping me on the side with my Instagram. And one thing leads to another, and it started with your guys' foundation, which is really, really cool, man. You guys really are changing kids' lives out there. And it's just one of those things where I think that you have something to be proud of. You're leaving that little feather in your hat when you pass it on later on. Whether you realize it or not, it's pretty special. And you're not just handing out money. You're handing out, you know, changing lives, man.

Look, we're trying to have something approaching a balanced conversation. And this is probably a fun place to start to land the plane because that AI story I told you about an hour ago in Hobbs, that preceded the dedication of a trade school. You'll love this. Four years ago, I went there, and the city on that day was considering a bond measure to start to raise the money necessary to build this $51 million facility in a relatively small town. Hobbs is in the very lower right-hand corner of New Mexico. It's really more West Texas than New Mexico. And a lot of people have tried to do this kind of thing over the years, a lot of municipalities and cities,

and they always fall on their face because it's hard. Well, I said four years ago, look, if you guys pull this off, I'll come back and help commemorate the school. And I said that knowing that there's no way they're going to pull this off. It's a Hail Mary. A lot. Well, son of a gun, man. They did it.

They didn't just get trade schools and shop class back in high school. They built this gleaming, spectacular. facility next to the high school. And now all of Lee County is looking at this place and going, holy crap, this is like the evidence that demands a verdict. So one minute you're talking about getting the sperm out of Hunsucker commandos testicles by way of stimulating his prostate. And the next minute, you're cutting a ribbon in front of a school that you double

dog dare a community to build. So it's a long way of saying you kind of have to do. everything if you want to reach the people you're hoping to find. I agree 100%. Seeing what you guys are doing and have done in the past. What a great show, first of all. Second of all, just touching all different aspects and people and walks of life. And it takes that to be able to go out here and really find the people that you guys are looking for to help.

They're everywhere, you know? They are everywhere. But I love the idea that you have to do different things. You have to drive at different speeds. Like right now, I'm looking at a guy who drive. drives 330 miles an hour on the weekends. And at home, on your tractor, I imagine you're approaching speeds of 15, 20 miles an hour, right? Yeah, maybe.

Like six or eight. If we're lucky. Four knots. So there's a time in life to go as fast as you can. And there's a time to go slow and steady up and down the field, one row at a time. Sometimes you play the short game, sometimes the long game. and you're doing both all the time. Hey, final topic.

Let's bring it all the way back from 11,000 horsepower to one. Did you see the Kentucky Derby? I caught the last end of it there. Talk about holding back. Holy crap, dude. That was incredible. I can't stop watching the aerial view of this thing. I've watched it 30 times.

And it gets me every time because the announcer never says the words, Rich strike. He says it at the very beginning when they all come out of the gate. And then it's like that horse doesn't exist. He calls a three horse race for two minutes. And in the last two seconds, out of nowhere, this jockey gets this horse over the line. And I swear to God, I mean, as a fan of racing, as a driver, what did you think when you saw that race unfold? It was incredible. It's almost kind of like he knew to hold the horse back long enough. And then just let's go, pour your heart out into this thing. And to get an animal to do that for you, to be so in tune and so with your horse and your animal, to be able to hold him back when they're all, because I know adrenaline, right? I know how pumped up you are and how over-center you can be and how over the top. And when you're in those state of mind, and I can't imagine as an animal that doesn't have the mindset of,

all right, let's slow my breathing down. Let's make sure that we're in the zone. To be able to be a jockey to do that, to hold that horse back. and then to let him go right there at the end, I think that is just incredible. And to be able to call on your horse to do that there at the very end. I mean, talk about, that's like a Rudy movie or something. All right, here, let's go.

And the guy does it, and this horse does it. And it's just incredible to watch. That link you sent me with the aerial view, I was like, oh, my gosh, this is crazy. You know, and it just, it's incredible, though. Yeah, you were talking earlier about this weird kind of singularity that happens with the machine. When you're in that car and you are fully focused on what not how, and that Christmas tree is ticking down, and your vision becomes tunneled.

Tunneled, yeah. All of that, I think, is happening in the starting gate with those jockeys in the same way. They might go 45 miles an hour. You're going to go 3.30. But that feeling of sitting there completely focused, counting on your machine, counting on your horse, hoping the crew did everything right that they need to do. And then it comes down to that moment.

And then to have the presence of mind to just stay in the back, 80 to one odds, and somehow find a lane with 10 seconds left. I swear to God, man. It's like it's meant to be. It's incredible. It really is. It's skill. It's obviously a lot of thought put into that.

Can you imagine not just trying to let your horse run up front the whole time? There's a lot that went into that. That's really impressive to be honest. Patience. Delayed gratification. Patience is a virtue, right? Yeah. Where can I get some of your steak?

Yeah, man. Well, I'll send it to you. It's just Hayden Cattle Coke. Where can people who don't have their own podcast who are looking for a free meal? Where can they get? I'll send you some. Let's go. Don't worry about it, man.

I'll send you a steak. Don't plug your link. Don't worry about it, man. No one needs to know. But you could go just on the website there, Hagencattleco.com, check it out. We got a website there. We ship all over the country, free shipping, except for when we get out there towards California.

I've had a couple people want to buy a whole cow, and you're like, man, you know what this is going to be like in shipping. Yeah, it's really kind of crazy, right? You know, been up in business for a while. Actually, I started the meat business in the pandemic when people were really having a hard time getting food. And I was like, man, I got so much beef and just a matter of getting it in these people's hands.

One thing led to another. And next thing, you know, I got a meat company. But yeah, you can do that. And then we have a CBD business, which is TrueHarvest.com. And I started my CBD business real quickly just because I lost my brother with opioids. Yeah, I read that, man. I'm so sorry. No, it's okay, man.

Things happen in life and one door closes and others open and things happen for a reason. It's the hand you're dealt with. But for me, it was a way to help people manage their pain without being so highly addicted to a substance, you know, which CBD is not to cure all be all, but it helps people get through the day and helps with sleep and the rheumatory arthritis. and joint pain and different things. And for me, it's a warm and fuzzy because I watched when my brother went through with his pain management when basically eventually took his life. It's one of those things where if people can manage your pain with something other than oxycotins

or vicodins and stuff that's super addictive, we feel like we're winning and doing it. It's a hell of a thing. I can't tell you anything about it. You don't know. But the extent to which Americans have been impacted by the opioid thing, I can't believe, Matt, not a week goes by. Just in the course of shooting my shows, that somebody doesn't pull me aside and tell me a version of the story you just told me. What about the doctor?

What about the doctor who was involved in this? Yeah, they gave her three years. She ended up killing two other people. It's one of those things where she pled guilty or they were probably handed her down 25 years. But just had him on a dose that was high enough for a terminally old cancer patient. And he had scoliosis. So they put nine pounds of titanium in his back and got on these drugs, man. And just I watched it killing him in three years.

It's just kind of unbelievable, to be honest with you, you know. One of those things very unfortunate, but these doctors nowadays, I think it's a lot better or it's getting better, hopefully. Same reason they have suboxin clinics out there, these opioids shut down dopamine and serotonin production. And you see people laying around just doing nothing with their life. I was so upset with him for those years before he lost his life was because I was like, what are you doing with your life? Didn't realize the drug suppresses and won't allow you to produce dopamine, which is a feel good and a motivator and go out here and do stuff. that receptor binds in your brain to where you won't produce it and it just wants the opioid.

So Suboxin, I guess, allows you to produce some dopamine and stuff. That's why these people go to these Suboxin clinics that are on opioids and oxy cottons and stuff. So learned a lot about it. It was really mad there for a while about the whole situation. And it opened up the doors to where I started the CBD company with True Harvest. And we're helping a lot of people. And like I said, it's not to cure all, but it gets people through the night or it gets them through their day. And they're not on something that's super addictive.

And it makes me feel better about things. We're not probably making, you're getting rich doing it, but, you know, it's something that we're doing to help people and we enjoy doing it. So true harvest is the name of the farm, the endeavor, or the CBD. The CBD. Yeah. TRU-H-R-U-H-V-S-T dot com. Point of correction. I hate to correct you on your own website, but I'm pretty sure it's trueharvestFarms.com.

Oh, true harvest farms. Yeah, I leave the farms out all the time. Oh, man. We're going to have to talk to your social media people. Yeah. She'll be on me, man. That's for sure. Just be like, hey, get it right.

True harvest farms.com. And True is TRU. TRU. Yeah. And, you know, what's really cool about it, unfortunately, I'm not about a lot of government involvement, but this is an industry that needs more involvement because there's a lot of fakes out there. There's a lot of people just putting coconut oil and something and selling it as CBD.

And there's no real regulation. So with us, we've grown it, we've processed it. We've bottled it when we package it and we send it out to our customer. So, and with my name and racing and everything else, you know, I've got to be able to stand behind a product. It really is what you're getting, probably a little bit more than what we say in there, just to make sure that you get enough. So it's something that no different than the farming side of things. You grow up, a plant, a crop, and you get to take it full circle to be able to help someone is pretty cool. It's great, dude. If I were looking to recast a Dosecchi's spokesman and needed

the most interesting man in the world, you'd be on the list. Sooner later, you're going to have to figure out what you're going to be. But for now... My dad wants me to come home and sell cars. This office that I'm sitting in is the office he built me, you know, and I just signed a multi-year contract with Tony Stewart racing. And he was like, I guess we're not going to sell cars anytime soon, are we? I was like, that's why this stuff's still laying over here in the corner. It's like, I haven't put it up on the wall yet. He's ready for me to put my big boy pants on and come home and sell some cars. I'm trying to milk this racing thing for a little while. Do me a favor. Tell Chloe, hello. Tell her she's welcome back here anytime you are as well. And you know what,

Chuck, didn't you see him race like a month or so ago? Yeah, I sure. did in February at Pomona, where you did the Mutt Dog Show, that same place. That's right. Yeah. What was your take? That was your first time at a funny car race, right? It was crazy. It's almost like you can't describe it to see it.

I was standing very close. I was with Matt and his car all the way up to the race, just leading up to it. Cars get in line, race. Another car comes up, gets in line, whatever. You're in this long line of cars to get up there. And I was told, I'm wearing earplugs, but I said, you know, when they do, the burnout, you want to look the other way. You want to turn away. And I said, okay, I wasn't really even sure what the burnout was. And there's no warning on the burnout. So I'm maybe like 35 feet behind the car

and a little bit to the left. And all of a sudden, it just burns out where, how do they do it, mad? You hit the gas and the brake at the same time? No, you run through water and there's actually a stop on there. So it's just, you blip the throttle and it lights the tires up and start smoking. And you just kind of keep in the throttle there until you're done doing your burnout. You want them sticky. You want sticky time. Right, right, right. So the sound. So the sound. when he takes off racing is like super loud, louder than anything I've ever heard. But it's very short because very quickly he's further away and the sound dissipates. But the burnout just happens right there in front of you for a good bit of time. So when this happened and I was unaware it was going to,

I just instinctively, it made me jump up, spin around, face the other way and cover my ears, even with the plugs, because it was so loud. But I'm telling you, once I put my big point, pants on and stood there and like got my camera out to film the actual race, I could see the sound coming at me. I've never experienced that before, but I could literally, you can really see it. It's so loud. You can see it. And it's something that I'm looking forward to going back again in November. When you're here, Matt again in November, you guys are always welcome in our pit. So anytime you guys want to come out, we'll make sure you're taken care of. That would be amazing. It was amazing. It really was. Thank you so much. Well, thanks for joining us.

Hey, thank you guys. Yeah, appreciate the time. True harvest farm. Farms. There we go. Farms. Farms. Yeah. Farms. Farms. True without the E. spelled it wrong on purpose. Harvest, the way it sounds, farms, plural.com. Go there now. Get some of the best tampon free meat your money can buy. No, no, no, no. You're thinking of Hagencattleco.com.

That's where you get the meat. See, this is why you... a true harvest. All right. Okay, but the CBD is also tampon free, Matt? Everything's tampon free. I personally went out there and picked them up. What a weird conversation, dude. You're all right. Thank you for hanging out with us. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. When you leave a review, which we hope that you'll do, tell us who you are. Tell us who you are. And before you go,

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