The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 383: Coffee with Mom—Nude Sunbathing with America's Grandmother

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

The three-time NYT bestselling author, a.k.a. Mike's mom, talks the chosen frozen on Easter Sunday, speaking in tongues, the Key Bridge tragedy, Fort McHenry and Ranger Vince, our expanding universe, great illusionists, and how Peggy gets her vitamin D—doctor's orders. 

A cup of coffee with my mom. Easter was, and I said, well, we went to church on Easter. Instead of our meager congregation, we had a good-sized congregation, and that was encouraging. I'm sure the minister likes to look out at a full house. What do they call it, the C&E crowd? Yeah. Yeah. We call them CEOs, Christmas and Easter only.

Yeah. Oh. Oh. That's nice. I logged in just in time to hear somebody talking about talking in tongues. What is happening? Who's talking in tongues? Well, Chuck said that from time to time someone in his church will speak in tongues. And I said that we had visited a church some years ago and someone on the right side of the church spoke in tongues. And then somebody over on the left side interpreted what he said. And I said that, that I'm afraid I'm a little skeptical about that. Well, that's because you're sane, mom. You're still sane. You haven't entered that part of your life where you would sit there in a pew and give any credence at all to some blabbering, jabbering nonsense. And then somebody else hops up and says, oh, oh, I know exactly what he's saying. You're saying you're parked illegally.

Chuck, you better stop recording. It's in the Bible, Mike. People talk to tongues. You have just offended many, many people. Our entire audience has checked out. Oh, what percentage of this audience do you think speaks in tongues or goes to a Pentecostal church? Not that there's anything wrong with it, but I mean, I'm genuinely curious. Well, let me tell you something, Mike.

You know, we're Presbyterian. Presbyterians are often referred to as the Chosen Frozen. We don't wave our arms in the air. We don't yell out. In fact, on Christmas morning, our minister said, Christ has risen. And we were all supposed to shout, Christ has risen indeed, and put our hands up. Well, I don't think many people at all did that. And I'll tell you the truth, I have a hard time calling out, raising our hands or getting out of our seat.

I mean, I think that in the same way church should state have a certain line. that this country respects. I think church and calisthenics could also draw an equal line. I see no need to combine exercise necessarily with worship, you know, especially with an elderly congregation. Somebody's liable to take an elbow to the nose or any number of calamities could ensue. You get the whole hoi-polloy riled up, hopping around, talking in fake languages and doing calisthenics. It's only a matter of time until something very old. Testament is going to come to pass. You've just gone to an extreme.

But, you know, on Palm Sunday, the week before Easter, we were given palms. And at some point in the service, we were supposed to wave our palms around. Not a lot of people did it because we were frozen. We held our little palm up like this because I didn't want to be an exhibitionist, you know. Again, it's only a matter of time. until somebody takes a palm frond in the eye or in up the nose or in the mouth. Somebody's going to be blinded. And then you're going to be in need of a real miracle because, I mean, I don't know.

Do you remember that phase we went through when we were like, look, we just don't want to sit there in that church anymore? You know, we love the church. You know, the Boy Scouts were in the basement. But my brothers and I, we were just, you know, you're just going through that stage where you're like, we don't want to go. And you and dad were like, you're going to go. You're going to go.

I'm like, well, we really don't want to go. So we compromised, and you dragged us all over Baltimore to some churches that weren't quite so frozen. It was an experimental thing. Every Sunday, we would go to a different church. And we went to a synagogue. We went to a Catholic church. We went to, oh, I can't remember the name of it. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Unitarian.

The Unitarian. That Unitarian Church was a, what a kick that was. Well, Mike, you know, you guys really did love it. We sat there. There was no ornamentation. There were no stained glass windows or fancy pews or, you know, picture of Jesus on the wall. No, we're like in a barn.

The windows were wide open. It was in the spring. You could see the fields outside. And guess what the hymn of the morning was. Oh, what a beautiful morning. Did you remember that? Yeah. Of course.

Yeah. It was Open Your Hymn books to page 66 and join us in that time-honored classic, that Broadway smash from Oklahoma. Oh, what a beautiful morning. Yeah, it was great. Well, whatever, different strokes for different folks. But we were looking for something, you know, different, something a bit less rigid. And that place was.

Yeah. That was like a cast party. It was nice. And they had nice refreshments afterwards. I remember that part. It was a good experience. But, you know, what's interesting is that our children were raised in the church. I mean, from the time they were in the cribbery, the time they were in our arms and we would drop them off in the cribbery and then go and worship.

And none of our children are really regular churchgoers now. I think Scott and Marge might go. You got it out of our systems at a young age. You absolutely. You used us up. Is this something we did? I like to think, and I know that you all are people of faith and you're spiritual, but you are not churched. You do not attend church regularly.

I don't hold it against anybody. Not even irregularly. I've been very irregular in church from time to time, actually. And you know what? I love it. But not to the point where I go every week. I love the idea of it. I love the egalitarianism of it. I'm frustrated and sometimes amused, I think, by all the internecine differentiation. I mean, you're right. There's the Presbyterian,

and then there's the Reform Presbyterian. You got your Baptist, got your Southern Baptist, got your Episcopalians, got your Methodists. These are all basically... The Methodists. Yeah, the Methodists have some issues for sure. But they're not. They all do. Oh, did she? Mike, you haven't offended the Catholics yet this morning. I think some things go without saying, mother.

Oh, I think we'd better change the topic. You think anybody's left listening? You know, it's been on my mind a lot, actually, because I just did seasons five and six of the story behind the story, right? So I went to the barn in Colorado that Matt Crouch basically, controls. You know, it's part of TBN. And we sit there in this very unitarian type setting. It's a real barn with real barnyard implements all through it. Matt loves to talk about, obviously, the scriptural underpinnings of the stories that I write and the morality play notions of them. And I,

I good-naturedly tell him why I really wrote these stories, and we have a jolly conversation. But a lot of this has been on my mind because you spend a week with the son of a preacher man talking about all of this stuff. And it is, it's overwhelming. The Bible is an amazing book. I remember a course that Lois Backshider recommended I take called The Bible is Literature. And I thought it was great. Yeah, there's no shortage of stuff to talk about between the Testaments, old and new,

unless I've made you both so uncomfortable that we're all just breaking out into tongues in a moment. What's it sound like, Chuck, when they go all tongues at your church? The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure, but if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level, we need more organizations like Skills USA making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965, and today they are relevant like never before with hundreds of chapters in schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students participating and competing every year. 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.

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That's skillsusa.org slash mic. I'm talking skills, U.S. Skills, U.S.S.S.S. Skills USA It's not a Everybody goes all tongues I hear people who speak in tongues, that's all. It's not very loud, but I can hear. What's it sound like?

It sounds like someone's speaking a foreign language. How do you know they're not speaking a foreign language? I don't know. They could be speaking a foreign language, you know, and it could be gibberish. I don't know. You know, my pastor says that sometimes that it's not necessarily

an actual language. It's a God language. I don't fully get it yet. But it is in the Bible. People talked in tongues and other people understood them. That's the thing. There's sort of two schools on this, that the tongues is a real thing and the tongues is a cray-cray thing. I think we've established where my mom's coming from.

Well, it really doesn't matter, does it? Oh, it matters, mom. It matters a great deal. Not if you don't care about hell, I suppose. We have a Cameroon congregation that joins us. And, I mean, there are not a lot of people, maybe 20. I don't know what that means, a Cameroon. They're from Cameroon.

It's a country. Oh. The Cameroon congregation. I thought that was a... They're from Cameroon. Okay. No, like they all were from. And the older generation speak with a very heavy accent, and it's hard to understand them.

So it sort of sounds like they're speaking in tongues, but they're not really. Could be. So anyway... Wasn't the tongue thing all just before... I'm not done, Mom. Wasn't it all before, like the Tower of Babel? Yeah, that has something to do with it. Yeah.

We just went over this on Sunday. Oh, you know what? I just remembered that one of the parishioners described tongues as sounding like, I could have bought a Honda. I could have bought a Honda. That's like a way to, that's a, that's a, that's, I could about a Honda, got a Toyota. Could about a Honda. I could about a Honda.

I could about a Honda. I could about a Honda. Anyway. Now, what's that mean, Mom? If you were to translate, I could about a Honda. What would you go with? Aside from the obvious, I could have purchased an automobile made by Honda, but if it was something else, I could have bought a Honda.

Well, I'd say that your father and I are too old to change cars right now. We have to go with something we're familiar with. You know, we rode back from Silver Spring on Sunday in a Cadillac Escalade. That must have been nice. Oh, my, it's a very nice ride. They are nice. That was coming back from Jan's 90th celebration. Yes, my sister turned 90 on the 14th and had a really nice dinner gathering of just her immediate family.

Janet lives in the home also, but a different home. It's a sister home to this one, and she lives in Richmond, a place called Short Pump, actually. Short Pump. Short Pump. S-H-O-R-T. Pump. That's just the name of the... Sounds like a character

in an Indiana Jones movie. Short Pump. Well... Oh, no, that was short round. Short round was a character. Short round. In the Temple of Doom, I think. Yeah, short pump.

Well, anyway, it was a nice visit. It was good to see her. I haven't seen her in almost a year. And since then, she's had some devastating health issues that have confined her to a wheelchair. I don't know if she'll walk again, but she's amazing.

She's so positive and uplifting and never complains. Therefore, she has a lot of friends. Yeah, that's great. To be 90 and to have so many friends still. Amazing. Yeah, yeah. Well, you're going to be like that. You're going to be surrounded with people for the next, well, however long, 10, 20, 30 years.

People love you, Mom. You know, I try and prepare for these things, so I go to your Facebook page and I just scroll through, and it's just, It's just a faucet of love. Everybody just loves you. I can't find one single negative thing anywhere, 310,000 people. It's not like that on my page. I got some Akuta but a hundas over there, man.

They're not pleased with me at all. Well, you ask for it. I mean, you bring up issues that are controversial. What's controversial about talking about date night with your husband on the sofa, really? That doesn't offend anybody. Maybe you should talk. I don't know. in a bit more detail. In tongues?

Well, I mean, if you want to offend people, let's talk about, you said you came back in an escalade, a Cadillac escalade? We did. And a brand new one. It was just three weeks old, a 2024. And it was really plush. I mean, coming home, I felt like I was slumming it. It was really, really a nice ride. But then your cousin brought us from Richmond to Silver Spring. And he has a new car. also. I can't remember what it's called. Honda, a something Honda. And it's a big SUV. A kutabutta? I think so. And because you know, Gary's about 6-3 or 6-4, so he needs a big car. So this is room. No, no, no, no. Lots of... Gary's like 6-7. It has a lot of head space. It was comfortable also. So we got spoiled.

Gary's 6-6 or 6-7. And Steve is... About the same, maybe a little shorter, I guess. I think so. They're both at least six, six. Well, I tell Dad, don't stand near them. It doesn't look good, because Dad's about five, six. Yeah, don't stand between them. I tell all our children that.

I'm looking at a Cadillac Escalade. At least it looks like one. It's very, it's far in the distance. It's on the Golden Gate Bridge, and it's stopped, along with every other vehicle, because there's a protest going on on the bridge. right now. It's had traffic snarled up for over an hour and a half. Yeah. Is that allowed? No, they're arresting them right now, but it was pretty well organized. A bunch of people stopped all their cars in the southbound lane, and they got out, and they started protesting the war. Let me guess.

They're protesting against Iran for attacking Israel, right? Is that what they're protesting? No. Did I get that right? Nope. No? It's not that. It's not that. It's, it's, it's, something else altogether. But you know what? I look at these things and it really does, I'm a constitutionalist. I get it. You know, you've got the right to protest, you've got the right to do all sorts of things. But this, this, you know, imagine your kids in the back of an ambulance and you're trying to get to a hospital or your house is on fire and the fire department can't get to you. Right. It's just, it's unbelievable. It's more than an inconvenience. It could be, you know,

cause a life-threatening situation. Well, at least it's not the key. bridge. Oh, man. That was devastating. Isn't that terrible? You know, if there's good news to come out of that, is that they were able to stop the traffic right before it hit. Oh, and it was not rush hour.

It wasn't rush hour, and they put out a May Day, and I think the Maryland State Troopers got to both sides and stopped the traffic right before. It all happened within like a minute and a half. And that's why there weren't, you know, more vehicles on the bridge at the time. Just very, very fortunate. Very fortunate. The scope of it is unbelievable. I see pictures of, I mean, this metal, they're not little sheets of metal.

I mean, they're huge hunks of metal that have to be cut through. And there's so many of them. It's devastating. But it is. It was very strange for me. I was in L.A. I was staying at the Huntley Hotel where I stay a lot when I'm down there now. And I fell asleep around 10.30 that evening, but I left the news on.

And around 2.30, I got up because now I get up at 2.30 to do the thing dad does at 3.30, 4, 30, and 5.30. And I came back into the bedroom. And I'd left the TV on and I went to turn it off. And I'm like, wait a minute, what is that? and they were covering, it had just happened about an hour earlier. And it kept me up for the rest of the night or for most of them. I bet it did. I mean, how many times have I driven over that thing?

How many times have I sailed under it? To see it come down like that, I mean, like an erector set, crazy. Remember, Chuck, the next day we were just, we just kept watching it over and over. We're like, how in the world could that have happened that way? Yeah, and the path that it took and why it veered to the right and people were saying all these crazy conspiracy theories and I'm just like, oh, man, it's a tragedy. Well, today I just heard that it has gone to the courts and they're going to charge them criminally.

Really? The company, yeah. Dad read me the news from his phone this morning. He is good at that. He is a good reader. He's a good news reader? He's a town prior. He's a good anything reader.

He is just a good reader. It's going to take years to rebuild the bridge I mean, you know, it's 18, 17,000 people immediately out of work in the Port Authority. And who knows how many more, it just ripples down and goes and goes and goes. And it's mind-boggling. Last time I was there, I was on a sailboat. We were anchored right under it with Pat, Dave, and Rick, drink a natural light and singing the old songs where nobody could be bothered by us. There's a great place to anchor under that bridge.

Not on that day, but... Not anymore. Well, every time we've gone out of Baltimore on a cruise, we, of course, go under the bridge. That was my only experience going under. And we've been over it, but not a lot. We prefer the tunnel. Tell you the truth, I found it kind of scary. It was so high.

So high, yeah. And you're out there in the middle of nowhere, way up in the air. I didn't feel very safe. But, you know, being under the harbor in a little tube, You don't like to think about that either. But when we went to Virginia this week, I expected terrible tie-ups because we left at rush hour in the morning. And the tunnel was wide open. We just breezed right through it.

You never know. We were fortunate. Well, I'm going to be back there this week. So I guess if you're listening to this, I've already been there. But I'm headed back. I'm actually going to be at Fort McHenry. looking straight out to where the star-spangled banner was written, not far from where the Key Bridge used to be. Are you going to see Vince again? Ranger Vince no longer works there.

I think Chuck, he was assigned to another park. Yeah, I forget the name of the park, but it's near D.C. And, you know, I've been trying to get Ranger Vince on the podcast as a guest. He'd be great. I've had a couple of conversations with him, and he seemed very excited about it. and then he just disappeared. He's not returning my phone calls. So I guess maybe he's been reading your posts, Mike, and he's pissed at you, probably. He's put off.

Well, he probably goes to a church where they wave. Oh, gosh. He'll never be a good guest. He was so interesting. He was great. He's kind of a character. And he kind of talks in tongues, if you think about it. It's got such a Baltimore accent.

Baltimore is, you know, he talks like, yes, oh, yeah. War of 1812 was hard. Civil rights was hard, Mike. You got to imagine, Mike, those ships were out there taking heavy fire while they were giving it back. And all hell was breaking loose over here. You want to see the ramparts? You're standing on one right now, okay? Yeah.

This is where it happened. You're standing on history. Yeah. He really does bring it to life. D-DU-DU-DU-D-D-Dum. I love stories. like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company, but he was annoyed that so much imported meat was being deceptively marketed and labeled as

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don't take a chance on a foreign ranch, get good ranchers now. Hey-haw! And for those who don't know, that's an episode of somebody's got to do it, where Mike interviewed and spoke with Ranger Vince at Fort McHenry, and it's a great episode. You learn a lot. It is. This is a good one.

He's amazing. We saw him when we visited Fort McHenry one day. Of course, he didn't know us. and I didn't know him, but I observed him talking with other people. I might have taken a picture or two. It's a great fort to visit. I mean, I don't know if schools still do field trips anymore. I hope they do.

But that was a really good one. I think it must have been fifth or sixth grade. We all went to Fort McHenry and then went back again, I think, in the eighth or ninth grade. It was so great because to be a kid, and you know, you kind of get in the back of a bus, and you don't really know where you're going. You don't have a good sense of the geography of the town, really. And I just remember being so shocked. All of a sudden, I'm standing there flanked by cannons looking out over the water.

And you didn't drive that far, right? Not that far. Not that far. In fact, from the fifth and six floors here at the home, you could look out and see the key bridge. Wow. So, you know, you can probably see Fort McHenry, too. we're on the third floor. You don't see much from the third floor.

No, I don't. Sadly, I would like to see more. But I've discovered one advantage of being here on the third floor. We have a balcony. It's called recessed. So much of it is under the balcony above. But we get at least a foot, maybe 18 inches that's not covered. And in the afternoon, after like 2.30,

from 2.30 to 630, we get the sun. Well, at my last doctor's visit at the medical center, my blood work showed that I need more vitamin D. You know, your blood is just the story of your existence. It just tells everything. So I need more vitamin D. So the doctor suggested that I go out in the sun 10 or 15 minutes. Just that's all it takes.

and expose your bare skin to the sun. So I discovered, I probably shouldn't tell people this, but I took a shower the other day, didn't get dressed, but just put a robe on. And I went out there and I sat in a chair. Dad was off playing pool, sat in a chair, and the sun was wonderful. I just opened up my robe.

Don't tell anybody. And the son was giving me vitamin D. raised like all over me. But I was ready to close up that robe. And then it occurred to me. There are like 90 windows right across the parking lot. And three floors are higher than us. And people might have binoculars.

I don't know. So I have to be careful about that. I wouldn't want a petition to circulate the woman on the third floor balcony. Yeah, well, let's be as clear as we can, Mom. What's your exact apartment number over there so you know? Can we give them some coordinates, maybe? I don't remember, hon. Nude sunbathing at the home.

Well, I call it. Getting your vitamin D the old-fashioned way? I call it skinny bathing. Is that a good word? Skinny bathing? Skinny dipping is the expression. Instead of sunbathing, it's... Indecent exposure is what you're looking for.

Oh. Okay, but only 10 or 15 minutes, really. Because I think the more surface that gets the sun, the less amount of time you need to spend in it. Save that to tell to the officer when he shows up. If you're just exposing your hands and your face, then you've got to be out there 15 minutes. But if it's things that have not seen the sun before, if I had a patio apartment, I couldn't do that because people walk by. You could do it. I mean, you should just do it.

That's what needs to happen over there at O'Krest. Everybody with the doctors, under doctor's orders, should just go out on their balcony with all due speed and just drop trial, spread out, and let the vitamin D just wash over all of it. Actually, the sun is coming close right now. The sun actually stays fixed in its place. It's the Earth that spins around it and all of the planets.

It's such an illusion, I know, but I like to think of the sun is moving. No, that's something. We debunk that on another field trip in the sixth grade. We went to the planetarian and learned a great many things. Well, I'm glad you paid attention. The universe is also expanding, though. So it's not like the sun is truly fixed. The sun is moving at something close to the speed of light, but so is everything. You know, in the great sort of cosmic map of everything. We're all moving very quickly and spinning and rotating on our own axis and less so. Of course, we're tidily locked like the moon, in which case there's no rotation. It's really hard to comprehend, doesn't it? It's a lot. It's a lot. It gives me a headache.

An expanding universe. Yeah. It's mind-boggling. You know, you've got bridges here where people are protesting and nothing's moving. You've got bridges in Baltimore that are now at the bottom of the bay. There's so much to think about. The expanding universe is hard to articulate, but not as difficult to decipher as the guy next to you. in church going on about a could have bought a Honda.

And now somebody else jumps up to say, I know exactly what he means. And then the next thing you know, money's being collected and riffs are starting to form. Because people don't understand. What is that? Why are we having a conversation about whether or not somebody is really capable

of understanding that kind of blather or divine speakage? I don't want to cast aspersions. But it's a lot to talk about, Mom. It's a lot to think about. Yes, it is. Oh, and you know what else? What?

Have I talked to you since we went to Pennsylvania and saw the illusionist? Have you ever seen an illusionist? I thought I did once, but as it turns out, he wasn't there. Oh, Michael, you've been waiting to use that, haven't you? Actually, no. We didn't set this up ahead of time. But anyway, he was so good. But that was a few weeks ago, and I've forgotten his name already.

But he was really good. That good. That's another great plug. He made his name disappear. Yeah. But I used his name in my post. I posted about it. Oh, yeah.

Let me see if I can find it. Okay. And I used his name. And afterwards, a lot of people responded. Afterwards, he sent me a, what do you call that one? somebody sends you something, but nobody else can see it but you. A DM. See a synthesist?

Put your robe together, Mrs. Roe. A DM, people call it. Yeah. Hey, can you make my robe magically clothes? Can you make my mom's robe clothes? If you can, you're hired. So what was it like a bus trip? The whole gang went?

What was it? It was a bus trip here from the home. It was our first one. And it was filled with like 35, almost. filled, 35 people on the bus. And we had lunch. It was up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And then we had the show. The show was delicious. The show was so good. It was excellent. But, you know, I find it almost makes me angry. How dare he, how can he put that woman in this box and turn around and she's in this box? And he moves it around the stage. I don't get it. And I don't get it. And I resists.

that he's so good at it. But anyway, he PM'd me. He messaged me afterwards. D-D-M-D-M'd, I think. Direct message. Oh. Yeah. But it was private.

I guess PM makes sense, private message. Oh. But that's also prime minister. So I probably just needed a new. And something postal menopause. But anyway. So he messaged me. Brett Myers is his name, by the way.

Brett Myers. And he thanked me. for my kind words, and he thanked me for coming. So wasn't that nice? But the interesting thing is he was just there in the audience, welcoming us, serving meals. He did all that stuff, and his wife did. Anyway, it was interesting. We don't get out all that much, so we're impressed by everything.

Well, good magic is very powerful. Up close magic in particular, I think. It's just the big illusions. the girl only cut in half and making the Statue of Liberty disappear and all the stuff that Copperfield has done. That's great. For me, it's still, I'll send you a link and this will, I mean, if you get upset by not being able to figure out how things are done, this guy will angry. His name's Jason and Chuck, I've shown you some of this stuff. Yes. Yes, he's really snarky and irreverent and just a little irritated, you know,

at his audience for some reason. I don't know, but it's very funny. And he's very good. He really doesn't care what you think of him. He makes fun of the people in the comments who offer him money to do something that can't be done. And then, of course, he does it. Yeah, he's rude, but he is so gifted with a deck of cards. Not since there's a documentary called Delt, which you should also see, about a guy named Richard Turner, I think his name is. And he's blind.

and he's a card mechanic. He's not a magician. He's a mechanic. And if you take a deck of cards out of a deck, you know exactly how they're arranged. And once you know how they're arranged, as long as you're controlling them, it doesn't matter how many times you shuffle or cut.

You know where every card is. It's not a trick. It's just a part of your brain that most people can't access, you know, and then years and years of practice. And these guys, it's just mind-boggling. mom. There are tricks that you just, if this guy, Jason, wasn't rude and wasn't snarky, but came instead to Chuck's church, or yours, for instance, and said, I have been sent by God. I am here with

good news. And to prove I am divine, I will show you some miracles. Well, I'm telling you that if you filled a room full of otherwise rational people, they would look at these manipulations with this deck of cards and conclude that he was sent from a supernatural power. He's that good. Did you see him in person in the flesh? Or did you see him? Yeah, it's very different in person. But in some ways, it's better on reels because he'll put a stopwatch next to him. So you can look at the watch and you can see it. It never stops moving. So he's not editing. He does all kinds of things to prove it's legit. It's mind-boggling.

Do do do do do do do-do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-dum. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the country. I do. It's just that I don't envy him. That's why MicroWorks doesn't have an HR department for better or worse.

And it's also why I use Zipert. Recruiter whenever we need to expand. ZipRecruiter has proven themselves a million times over by helping countless employers get through the hiring process faster and more effectively than ever before. And now they have a new feature that instantly shows you the most interested, the most passionate, and the most qualified candidates first. This is a huge time saver, hours and hours of save time. and it helps people like me find the people who can function in a non-traditional work environment like microworks. In other words, ZipRecruiter works for me, and they'll probably work for you too. Post a job for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash row.

And watch what happens. Odds are you'll find a human resource that just happens to be a great fit for your company in 24 hours or less. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hire. There's a very good show that I actually love, Peggy. I think you'd like it too. It's Penn and Teller.

It's called Fool Us, where they invite magicians from all over the country and the world, in fact, to show them a trick that they can't figure out how it's done. And if you do that, you win a giant, a Fool Us trophy, which just has FU on there for Fool Us. but it might mean something else as well. I don't know what you're talking about. It's quite good. I'm glad you don't. I mean, they're very entertaining. And they don't tell the audience how the trick is done,

but they say things that the magician knows that they know that they weren't fooled. But some of the magic that I see on that show is just mind-boggling, where you're just like, a guy's got a deck of cards, and the cards are as big as my torso. and he's manipulating like three cards and they change. He'll turn it around and then it's the ace of diamonds. He turns it around again. It's the king of clubs.

And you go, wait a minute, what? How does that, where's he hiding the other king of clubs, you know, that he's switching out with the ace of diamonds? It doesn't make a lick of sense. It just my brain goes, ghe. Well, I thought Brett Myers was really good. But then I guess I'm easy to fool. So I wrote back to him and I said it was my pleasure.

And by the way, my husband's sitting here, and he said that if you would like to saw me in half sometime, you're welcome to do it. I said, I'm not sure how to take that. He didn't write that. Well, then there'd be two of you. Well, I think there's something here, 37 minutes in. Oh. It's a good place to land the plane because, you know, I love the fact that we touched on everything we touched on. But I'm most interested in this idea that this Brett Myers guy,

or this Jason guy, or Penn & Teller, or really any gifted magician. In so many different times in history, you started this mom by saying you were skeptical. You were skeptical that the person on one side of the church was able to decipher the gobbledy gook coming out of the mouth of the other person, you know? No disrespect. No, no disrespect intended. None meant. No, hear me out.

If you're not skeptical, then you would... You're gullible. Yes, yes, or faithful, right? So if you dare to be skeptical, you're a doubting Thomas, and therefore ye of little faith. And so the pressure for people to believe that this person is genuinely interpreting a kutabata or whatever that is, right? There's a lot of pressure on people to either believe it or to dismiss it. And in the course of figuring out what to do, you know, to figure out whether Brett Mice,

is here to bring us the divine word, we have to start with skepticism. We have to say prove it. The problem is if you're Jason, you really can. You can prove it. But happily, he's not making some big claim. Anyway, I think we're all just left to make sense of the things we hear and see with our own eyes, whether we're in a church or watching an illusionist or just trying to drive home across the bridge and being stopped by a bunch of knuckleheads with signs or a clumsy captain driving a boat that wasn't up to snuff. Tech of a world out there, Mom. It really is. Just when you think you've seen everything, put yourself in your neighbor's place where you just walk over to the drapes and open it up to look out on the day. And there you are. There you are

with your robe all open and the sun reflecting off your alabaster skin. In a big spotlight, like a beached whale. I hope not. The Full Monty by Peggy Row. Well, it's not really full. All right. Well, we better say no more because, you know what? A lot of people here read my posts.

Oh, and a lot of people say, oh, I love your son's podcast. Yes, and when you were on there, it's... Especially good? Yeah, especially good. Well, that's good. Hey, speaking of By Peggy Row, I had dinner with your publisher last week. You did.

Yeah, I saw Jonathan in New York. He said to send his regards, and he's really excited about your fourth book, and he can't wait to read it. I told him I read your preface and thought it was pretty good. And then I told him you asked me to consider writing another forward, which is absurd, of course, This would be the fourth one.

Anyway, how's it going? It's a fourth word. I like that, Peggy. It's a fourth word. Yeah. That's what you'll have to call it, Mike. That's very clever. A fourth word.

But how's the book coming? Are you on track? Is there any shot we're going to get this on the shelves by Q4? Oh, I have written the book. But I still have a little more to do because I'm adding, and it's strictly humor, my journal. Oh, great. I love that. And I'm adding some of my journal in between all of the stories.

And it's, I mean, it's pure humor, if I have to say so myself. I think it's going to be good. I feel very optimistic about this book because there's a real audience out there for it. And I don't believe it's exclusively for seniors or old people. but I think they will especially get it and appreciate it. Your last one was great for any age. I love vacuuming in the nude, and I've been trying to think about how we can take it up a notch,

just workshopping it here. But if there's a cover of you... Sunbathing. Like, let's say we call it Doctor's Orders. Exactly. It's called Doctor's Orders. It's you. The robe is open.

The sun is reflecting off of you. So we don't quite see you in all your nakedness, but you're kind of looking over your shoulder somewhat coquettishly at the reader. And yeah, you're there because the doctor told you to get more vitamin D. And you still respect authority, really. You still basically listen to the experts.

I do. I do. Do you know how red your skin gets that has never seen the sun before after just five minutes? Pretty quick, yeah, I'm red. Yes, pretty quickly. Yeah. I think that's something to leave the listener with, you know.

I mean, we talk in pictures here. Speaking of talking in pictures, has anybody else at the home been erroneously declared dead? How's Eddie Betts? He's fine. He's fine. We had dinner with him one night, and he eats, he swallows, he digests, he talks. It's a low bar, Chuck. He's good.

All of those things indicate life. So that's very good. Still digesting. I did come across a rude resident yesterday. You know, there are 2,000 of us here. And by and large, the people are really so nice. Good neighbors. But I heard a man who was sort of rude yesterday and it was off-putting.

What do you do? Well, we have the option of making reservations for the dining rooms and the eating venues. Or we can just show up and walk in. If you just show up and walk in, you give them your name when your whole party's here. They give you a buzzer and they reserve a certain number of seats for walk-ins. So a man wanted to do a walk-in and before the girl, the young lady behind the desk, gave him the buzzer. She said, is your party here? He was reserving for six people.

He said, no, they're not here yet. they're in the pool, but they'll be here. And she said, well, I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to give you the buzzer until your whole party is here. Because, you know, that means they reserve it for you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he got very upset.

And he was just practically shouting. Well, they'll be here. They're at the pool. Here's the number. Give them a call. And she said, I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to do that. He was getting very upset. So finally she said, let me get my manager.

And so the manager came out and he didn't give him a buzzer, but he said, let me write your name down. I'll write your name down. And you let us know when your whole party's here and we'll give you the buzzer. So the man said, oh, thank you. You went over and he. But anyway, that was, I hope he doesn't listen to this. But that was kind of rude because the wait staff are high.

school students, they've been trained, they follow directions, they follow the orders, and they try to do what they're supposed to do. And we really need to be respectful of them. Sometimes you just want a buzzer, Mom. You know, you just want the buzzer. You just don't want a whole federal case of it. I mean, just take the buzzer. Maybe you don't go in and sit at the table, but just take the buzzer and walk around. Just show everybody, I've got the buzzer. Look, I got my buzzer. I'm full buzzed up with this thing. It's nice because we can go over and play a game of pool, and when the buzzer goes off, we just head to the dining room.

Anyway, that's life at the home. Nice. You know? It is nice. Some days you get a buzzer. Some days you don't. Some days you get a buzz on. Not us.

Some days the sun is shining. Some days, you're mind of your business. You look over your shoulder, and just like that, you turn to a pillar of salt. because she saw Peggy Row under doctor's orders. Well, I'm pretty far away, but if they had binoculars, then that might be a different story. That would be. Yeah. Well.

That would be. All right. Well, this was fun. I'm glad we got everything straightened out. Me too. I feel much better about an uncertain universe, an expanding universe, bridges to nowhere, and naked mothers. Yeah. Thanks, Mom.

Say, hey to Dad. Okay, I will. I think I heard him come in. He was practicing Bachi ball. In the living room? Well, no, he was out on the court. But I think I heard him come in and get in his recliner on his recliner. That makes more sense. He's taking a little nap. Oh, and it's time for me to go outside for it, just a few minutes. All right. Well, this is a good time to end it then. Yes, it is. Yes. We'll just end it now with all your clothes on. Thank you. All right. My pleasure. Love you, too. Call you later.

Oh, you too. But do, do, do do do do. Here's to the guys who advertise and subsidize. The podcast that I do, they spend their dough, and you should know before you go. That's why it's free for you, because it's free. I hope you see and then agree. Their bottoms should be kissed without the guys who advertised.

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