The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 443: Rick Perry—The Fight of a Lifetime

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

Former Texas Governor and U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry stops by to talk about two things most folks wouldn't expect in the same sentence—AI data farms and psychedelic therapy. Perry breaks down why the Lone Star State is set to become a digital powerhouse for AI server farms and what that means for energy, jobs, and infrastructure. Then the conversation turns to ibogaine—a little-known psychedelic that holds big promise for veterans and first responders battling PTSD and addiction. Texas just approved $50 million to study it, and Perry explains why.

Hello, friends, Mike Rowe here with another episode of The Way I heard it, starring Chuck Klausmeier. Yes, thank you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. It's good to be here. Our guest today is actually a man who needs no introduction. I mean, and yet, and yet, I must tell you that he was once the governor of California and the... I don't believe he was the governor of California, Mike. Oh, I'm sorry.

What is the... Was it Texas? Yes, it was Texas. I confused. He would probably, if he heard you saying that, he would probably want to belt you. Well, you know what? He's going to hear me. Because I'm not going to edit it out.

I'm sitting here in California, looking out at California. And I said California. Look, it's not the first mistake you'll hear me make in the next 90 minutes. Actually, I think I did pretty good on this one. He's easy to talk to and easy to listen to. Oh, super easy. And just seems like a genuinely nice guy. Yeah.

Real nice guy. We met Rick Perry in person. about four months ago. At this conference, you'll hear us make reference to in California, not Texas, hosted by our friend Alex Epstein. And it was at this conference that I first heard the governor refer to the modern-day Manhattan Project. Yeah. And he spoke to a room full of big shots with a level of urgency that certainly got my attention. Like many today, Rick Perry believes we're in the fight of a lifetime. We have to win the AI race.

Electricity really is AI as processed through these data centers that need to get built. And he believes that Texas or California, who knows, really. I think it's Texas. I think he really wants to do it in Texas. Rick Perry is damn sure that Fermi, America, is a Texas company co-founded by him. They're going to be building the largest energy and data complex of its kind, powered by nuclear, natural gas, and solar. This is a big, big deal. And if they pull it off, not only are we going to beat the Chinese who were trailing at the moment,

but Texas is going to lead the charge. But wait, there's more, Chuck. He's just simply not content to have this fight of a lifetime. He needs two fights. He needs two fights. He needs another fight. And that fight, Mike, is fighting for veterans with PTSD with a, not necessarily a new drug, but a hallucinogen drug, a psycho drug or whatever. What would you call it? An ancient plant. Yes. That gives us a substance called Ibogaine.

It's now in the headlines all over the place because, as you'll hear me say, the evidence around this kind of thing does demand a verdict. And the stakes are very, very high. You know, 6,500 men and women punched their own tickets last year, soldiers who came home and just simply couldn't cope. The problem is real. This solution now seems like more than a potential solution. He's worked really hard at this for over a decade and just got Texas to commit, I think, $50 million. $50 million, yes, to study this.

Yeah. So this guy pushes a lot of boulders of a lot of. lot of different hills and he always has but he's fighting really hard for our vets and he's fighting really hard for our energy independence specifically with regard to AI these are massive battles and he's up to his neck and both of them so I invited him on because we got along pretty well and he's also been very supportive of my own efforts around reinfigurating the trade so we're in violent agreement on a great many things and because our friend Sean McCourt, who I know many of you know, Sean and I've worked together for years, both on

Deadliest Catch and on the stories for the way I heard it. Sean has produced a terrific documentary called The Fight of a Lifetime. Ibegain, The Fight of a Lifetime. You'll hear a struggle to find the title later in the show, which is kind of funny. But we found it. But we found it. And that premieres on Fox Nation soon, Chuck. July 17th, that'll be on.

I have no idea if that's before or after this appears. Who knows? Who knows? We're making it up as we go. But I watched the documentary this morning. It's important and it's really well done. And of course, I'm up to my neck with these other issues too. So strap in.

It's a great conversation with a guy who loves this country a lot and truly believes that Texas can lead us to the promised land. Right after this. I love it. 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 domestic and decided to fix the problem. The result was a company called Good Ranchers. It's a completely honest, totally transparent meat company that deals directly with American farms and ranches and promises to deliver high-quality American-grown meat for a fair price.

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He's a good buddy of ours. He helped with this podcast years ago, helping to write the stories for, we used to do like Paul Harvey type stories. That was the whole deal. It was a real short podcast. I love this guy. He works for us now. you know, on a contract basis, you know, editing a new project we have. But anyway, he shared with

us, you know, the, what is it, the documentary that he's doing with you. Fox Nation. Yeah, that Fox Nation doc. Pretty strong. And a very strong. I'm like, I'm very excited about this. Yeah. So there was an interesting movie made about this subject called Of Waves and War. It's out now. And it was well done. I mean, it was a Hollywood director that put it together. It's well done. Of waves of war?

Of waves and war. Waves and war. Yeah, of waves and war. That's a quote from the Odyssey, Homer's Odyssey, when his guys came home from the war. And anyway, that's where this is taken from. But it is a very, well done. It's a little too woo-woo for me. I mean, there's a little bit too much psychedelic,

you know, imagery. Not that that's necessarily bad, but for my purposes in selling the general public about what we're doing here, healing. There's nothing magical about it unless you believe, you know, medicine and God are magical. It's just a definition, a different definition. I would suggest. But my point is what Sean did with his one hour was some number X

better than this this movie. Number one, the movie's too long. It's like an hour and 47 minutes. Unlike, you know, Mike Rose podcast, which it's going to take an hour

and 40 minutes to really say hello. Educate the public. I hope you're comfortable, governor. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Hope you were in your stadium, pal. Hey, I put on a t-shirt, man. I'm kind of like, if anybody's looking for Mr. Professional here, good luck. Well, you know you're in the right room when you just pop in in time to hear the governor talking about Homer, God, magic, modern media. And psychedelics. And psychedelics, man. What a world. Okay, here we go. Grab a deep seat, cowboy. We're fixing to take off. Charlie, we're rolling? We're good to go. I just need to do something. Yeah, that was the introduction, Mike. Yeah, look, you know what, assume I've said something both flattering and cogent in the preamble, and we'll just... Right, go from there. Here we go.

We'll just start where we are. I'll just start by saying, I don't know about you, but my life has been very weird since I saw you last in Newport at that energy festival. You're not the first person to ever say that. Well, it was really a pleasure to finally meet you. there and like everybody else in that room, I hung on to every word that you said that day. A lot of stuff I want to bounce off of you, but in particular, lichening this race for data centers and our current energy situation to a modern day Manhattan project. I mean, forgive me for jumping right in, but that's been on my mind for the last few months. And I wonder if you've improved on the metaphor or you're sticking with it.

I'm not sure you can improve on that metaphor because a lot of your podcast listeners and viewers may not be familiar because this was 80 years ago that America found itself at this very precarious place of the Germans had invaded. The UK was out there by themselves. The Germans seemed to be almost unstoppable in 1942. There was talk that they were on the precipice of being able to find this weapon, this atomic weapon. And so Franken Roosevelt and some other very bright and knowledgeable individuals, some scientists, you know, military leaders, they made the decision that we had to get in this race. to win it because literally mankind, or freedom-loving mankind, at least, was in the balance here. So they put together this project to go build this device, if you will, to go find the materials,

go find the elements to make this work. And listen, I'm an animal science major from the blood, Texas A&M. So me talking about nuclear materials and what happened is a bit humorous. But where my life has taken me from being, you know, the governor of Texas to the Secretary of Energy and what have you. And I actually visited that site. It's in the Columbia River Basin in eastern Washington State where that piece of just raw dirt, Mike. I mean, they got given the task. They said, we got to go win this race.

And all hands on deck, let's go do this. And in that area in the Columbia River Basin, from just a flat piece of dirt out there, it's almost deserty looking in that part of Washington, if you've been there. Sure. In 11 months, they went from a flat piece of dirt to producing pluton.

Now, were some mistakes made, were some corners cut? I'm not going to, I don't know that. What I know is that literally freedom in the world was saved because there were people who believed they could do this. They had a leader that said, let's go do this. And plutonium, which is a very important part of that building, that weapon that was used to stop the end of the world. at Hiroshima and Fukushima, or excuse me, at Nagasaki. The dogs like that. Which dog is that? What do you call them? Well, that's one of five. So we're rescue dog people. That is, I think by the sound of that, that was Cody. He's a Belgium Malinwa.

So. Great dogs they are, man. They will interrupt here. We've got a blind wean dog. We've got a wire-haired point of grafon that's deaf. We've got the Belgium Malin. we've got a rescue dog from the streets of Las Vegas that's not half anything. And then we had a new one show up, oh, I don't know, half a mile down the road, who's a blue healer.

So anyway, we- They all answer to the name of Lucky. Yeah, they're good dogs. Well, hang on a second here. How do you have a rescue dog from Las Vegas in Texas? Okay, so don't leave where we are here because, You know, we're just about to get the saving humanity here. No, this is the world we live in, Governor.

We can go from the very essence of consequence to where you got your rescue dog. Because in the end, right? I mean, who's not in need of a little rescue here? I think that's the real essence of the story here. When we finish this up in an hour and a half, let's look back and see it. Being rescued is not a part of that. But to answer your question, Chuck, my daughter and her husband, who's a former naval officer, a Navy SEAL, he was 07 through 16 active duty, and then, you know, and has all of the, has all the things going on in their lives that those boys had from 07 when he graduated from the Naval Academy and went into the fleet.

and then he ended up in Las Vegas working with a really incredibly interesting fellow who's an Israeli national in the real estate business out there. So now subsequently, they have moved to Austin. He started one of the largest Bitcoin mining companies in North America called, well, I think it's the name of it now is Core Scientific, which is about to be acquired by, Another big company. None of that has anything to do with the dog that was saved on the streets of Las Vegas.

I bet it does. I bet somehow it's going to come back to energy. Yeah. My daughter is, yeah, it's energy, but it's kind of one of those strange ones. My daughter is a dog magnet. Most of these dogs that are here at our place now came to us through our daughter. The Malinois did, the Las Vegas dog. was about an hour away from being euthanized and she saved it from a shelter. It was picked up on the streets of Vegas. So anyway.

Governor, have you heard of these like, I think of them like underground railroads and Chuck has a good friend, Amy, who kind of runs one of these. That's how I got my dog, Freddie. He was about an hour away from the needle. And somebody picked him up from a shelter in California and like drove him. I think from Bakersfield up to the Republic of Marin, where I found him, right? And they're constantly shuttling these dogs back and forth, sometimes across state lines. And there's this whole industry nobody knows about with regard to mutts and rescues. Interesting. I'm just listening to a book on tape called Tina, T-I-N-A, and it's about a dog rescue guy who lives in Thailand. Now, you know, we're getting way outside of the bounds of where I thought we were going to

on this podcast, but that's okay. That's what makes micro interesting. Well, look, if you're going to invoke a part of the world where the dogs are, well, forgive me, but from what I've read from time to time on the menu, and juxtapose that with Sin City, where a dog can be adopted vis-a-vis the daughter magnet that you currently have, I guess we could pivot from magnetism into electricity, which are inherently linked, and eventually get you back to that flat, piece of ground, right? So look, just to frame all of this in a way that I wanted to ask you about, isn't it amazing? Like take the Manhattan Project or take the current initiative that's really going to redefine our whole energy posture. Sometimes we are reactors. I mean, not to put too

fine a point on the pun, but greatness sometimes happens because circumstances have been thrust upon us. And other times, you've got these forward-thinking people who are able in a really proactive way to get ahead of the problem. And I just wonder, you know, you spent your life in politics, really, and in the military and all of that. What are we dealing with here? Are we reacting to something existential or are we trying to get in front of a danger that can really only be called clear and present? Yeah. And I will answer that by saying probably both. We, are being reactive because we woke up and I'm a Donald Trump fan. I think what Donald Trump is doing, the chaos that he's bringing. Look, I'll let other people argue about whether they like that or not,

what I'm interested in. I've always been a results person. Process wears me out. And of all the oddball things to have gotten into where you didn't particularly like process, government is full of process. I mean, the swamp is about as processing a place as you can find. Even Austin, Texas, it's got way much more process than I like. I like results. Go do X. Get this done. Trump's the same kind of individual. I mean, that is why he has been successful in his life. He is a results-oriented individual. And he basically, as he's come back in in the second term, you know, he's leaned back. He's analyzed the landscape out there.

And he said, you know what? China is about to kick our butt in the AI business. And AI is an energy hog. If you're going to be participating in artificial intelligence and winning that race, you're going to have to have an extraordinary supply of energy. Where do you get that energy? Well, you know, we've been told here for way too long, that if we'll just build enough windmills and enough, you know, solar panels and renewables out there that we'll live happily ever after.

And the fact is that's just wrong because they're not reliable, because they're frankly, require a lot of government subsidies to be competitive. And they're not dense enough. And when I talk about dense, I'm talking about for the amount of power that they deliver the cost going into it. So there's only two ways that you can get the type of baseload power, and that is with fossil fuels, which we're blessed in this country to have an extraordinary amount of natural gas. And I might add, relatively clean burning natural gas and nuclear power. Those are the only two. It's kind of like when people used to criticize me when I was a governor, and we were a growing state.

and I told people, I said, there's only three ways that you can build more infrastructure to handle the amount of roads that we're going to have to move things around and people around in this state. You either believe in tax roads or you believe in toll roads or you believe in the asphalt ferry. Pick ones. People were a little bit irritated because I said, look, I mean, toll roads are the answer to building out. The same is true with this energy concept. There's actually only two types of power that you can count on to win this AI race. It's either fossil fuels, which is, in our case, natural gas, and these natural gas combined cycle turbines that we, are really good at building and, by the grace of God, sitting on copious amounts of this carbon fuel. Or nuclear. And nuclear has been demonized. Well, we listened to Alex Epstein at the event out in California where you and I met. I think he's one of the brightest.

Interestingly, just as an aside, he got criticized by Tom Tillis yesterday when Tom Tillis was leaving or saying that he was going to leave the Senate for whatever reason. I'll leave that to somebody else. But he was criticizing Alex Epstein because he was a philosopher. And that is true. Alex Epstein is a philosopher. He is one of the smartest, brightest young men I've ever been around in my life. I met him in 2017, 2018 in South Africa at an energy conference. And he just, I mean, I was taken by how bright he is. He's a believer in his philosophy that fossil fuels are the answer to mankind's woes. When you think about what has happened and the quality of life that mankind has achieved over the course of the invention of the fossil fuel engine,

then the flourishing of mankind is absolutely needs to be saluting fossil fuels. And fossil fuels have allowed us to tame the environment. They've allowed us to have air conditioning and irrigation and, you know, copious amounts of water around the world. And Alex understands intellectually, I think morally and ethically, that if you're not for using fossil fuels to help mankind flourish, you might have a bit of a dark heart issue. Because you think about it, Mike.

You might be wicked. Yeah, you might just have a dark heart. You're basically saying to people in Africa, well, suck it up. You just happen to be born on a continent where you don't have, the ability to have electricity. No industrial revolution for you. It ain't going to happen for you.

Now, listen, we're not cutting our electricity off over here, and we're going to fly around in our jets and go to the climate conferences we need to. But for you people over there, you're just not going to flourish. Your children are not going to probably even be born because you're not going to have an incubator. You're not going to have electricity to have a hospital that's, up to any standards and God forbid you have a light bulb to keep away people in the dark of night. Alex told me three billion people are currently relying on wood and dung as their primary source of energy.

Suck that in every day into your lungs. And that India and China combined are on track to build a coal-fired plant every week for the next 30 years. You know, I think the thing, I'm usually a little skeptical of binary choices, but Alex has been on this podcast a couple of times, and every time he leaves, I find myself thinking, behind curtain number one is a world where man is dedicated to protecting the environment and saving the climate for the betterment of the species. And behind door number two is a world where man is engaged in mortal stakes whereby he is protecting the species from the environment and from the climate. And, you know, I realize that's probably an oversimplification, but boy, if you set the table one way or the other, the entire conversation is going to be informed by that. And that's why that meeting where we met was so, so interesting. I knew that in general, everybody there was sitting around the same table, and it was set in a way that I think most people understood. Look, these are mortal stakes.

And back to the Manhattan Project, the thing that is stuck with me about that is that we can compare the race to get data, AI, and all of that. built with enriching uranium. It's the stakes of what happens if we fail that keeps me up. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time. Do you miss the rotary phone? Well, get over it. The genie is out of the bottle. The poop is out of the goose. I'm afraid. AI is here to stay. And every business in the country is asking themselves the same question. How do we make it work for us? Well, the answer to that question varies, but you'll find it in a free guide that you can get right now at net suite.com slash Mike. It's called demystifying

AI. It's totally free. It's essential reading for anybody trying to make sense of a future that appears to have arrived yesterday. NetSuite, of course, is the number one AI enterprise research. resource planning software out there, trusted by over 43,000 businesses. With NetSuite, you can use the AI of your choice, GROC or Claude or Chat, GPT, whatever else is out there to connect to your actual business data, all of it, and automate all of those tiresome, time-sucking, soul-deadening manual processes. This is AI built into the system that's currently running your business. Learn more at NetSuite.com.

slash Mike. And while you're there, pick up their free business guy, demystifying AI. It's filled with super useful information. And again, it's free at netseweet.com slash mike. That's netsuite.com. And that's a really good comparison, Mike, because in 1942, the world was facing Nazism, fascism. And today, the world. is facing communism from the Chinese Communist Party. I mean, that's the comparison. And I think it's a correct comparison. I've dealt with the Chinese enough to know that they do not play with the game rules that we have learned in Western civilization. They just don't. And I'm not

sure that ever changes. I think they understand power and they understand overwhelming power and artificial intelligence and its ability to be used in a large number of areas is our big challenge, I think, in the Western world. Are we going to get there first? Are we going to win this? We used to say over at the Department of Energy when we were over there and working towards quantum computing, that which the Department of Energy, as some people may or may not know, it's got 17 national labs, and these national labs are absolutely the crown jewels of this country. The work that's done out there, that project out in Washington at the Pacific Northwest Lab, which is one of those 17 labs today, are those jewels.

The most extraordinary work, I think, in the world is being done at these various Nessundry labs. There's Sandia, there's Al. I'm sorry, but it just really strikes me that the three words I heard when I jumped into this room were Homer, God, and magic. And there is a magical element to everything you're talking about. The mystery in which plutonium is immersed. I mean, people just, most people don't have a freaking clue and how could it? they? The science is so big and so wondrous that it feels like magic. And AI feel like magic. So do you think that part of getting this thing over the finish line will involve demystifying

the magical components of this? Or are we better off just looking in wonder and letting the experts get in there and sprinkle their fairy dust on it so we can all live happily ever after. Well, I'll answer it like I did your previous question. It's probably a little bit of both. You know, for those that want to understand quantum computing is, and why that's important, for those that want to understand what artificial intelligence will allow us to do, the book is there to be read, the movie's there to be watched, for the vast majority of us who just want to enjoy life and quietness and calmness and in peace. You know, y'all figure this out and let us enjoy it.

And I'm good with that. Our history of our country has been full of people, you know, the Einstein's, the Fermis, the scientists that understood it but made our lives so much better. And that's where I kind of think we find ourselves today. That's the reason that Donald Trump's saying and signing these executive orders that said, go make this happen. Here are these executive orders on nuclear power. Here are these executive orders on energy development. Go make this happen.

He understands it. I think Donald Trump is a visionary. I'm not sure, you know, and I share that visionary title with him. Listen, I'm not trying to get confused that I'm the smartest guy in the room, never have been. But I really like to hire the smartest people in the room, and then they'll make me look good. And I think Donald Trump is not unlike that. He goes and brings people in. He says, you go do X and Y and Z.

and I'm going to tell you I'm enjoying greatly watching what I'm seeing right now. Sometimes it's fun to watch MSNBC's heads blow off every day, but that's, you know, I'll try not to be too political here. But the point is he has given this directive. And he said, go win this race. And when I saw you four months ago, we, this, small group of people, my son being one of them, and a couple of other really bright, extraordinarily talented people, put together this concept that we were going to build the largest AI-driven

data center in the world. And that was what you saw announced the last week in June to be, Our goal was to do this on the 4th of July. Independence Day, that's not lost on anyone, that if America were able to build, to power, the largest data center in the world, then we would send the message to the Chinese. Nice try, but you know what? America is leading in this race, and we're going to win it. and that's exactly what the plan is. So Fermi America is, matter of fact, today, which is, I don't know whether I can say the dates or not, but the end of- It's not a magic.

We're recording this on July 1st. First day of July. We announced today that we've got some substantially large Siemens equipment headed our way to go to that site. And let me just give you a little look under the hood here so people will understand just what an extraordinary project this is. So Pantex is a Department of Energy piece of property just outside of Amarillo, Texas. It's on, I don't know how many acres. I want to say it's six to eight thousand acres just east of the Amarillo Airport. it all belonged to Texas Tech University at one time.

I won't take you through all of the back and force, but the Department of Energy ended up with this property in the late 40s as a place to dispose of the nuclear materials that we had, and it's been there used for multiple purposes, the least of which is not to disassemble nuclear weapons from around the world. substantial amount of the weaponry that when the iron curtain fell, when Reagan helped bring to a close, the great Soviet Union, and a lot of the weapons that they had were relocated to the United States and disassembled. there's probably more nuclear material right outside of Amarillo, Texas, than there is any place in the world.

Now, that's, I don't think I, well, I didn't tell you anything that's classified, but we have nuclear materials in a lot of different places. But that facility right there has been the home to high explosives, to nuclear materials for literally over a half of century. The reason that's important is the people of Amarillo and Carson County and Randall counties, which are two counties up there, they're kind of like, you're going to build some nuclear power plants over there to drive data centers? When you're getting started, they are very supportive of that. And then into your core issue and mine, I might add, there are two.

limiting factors for building AI-driven data centers. One of those is the energy. Are you going to have enough energy to keep those data centers running? I mean, they are literally data hogs like you can't imagine. I mean, gigawatts of power. As a matter of fact, this facility, when it is completely built out, 11 gigawatts of power. That's enough to keep Manhattan light it up for a year. This is a stunning amount of energy. So having enough power, and again, we go back to the point is, you've got to have, I mean, listen, wind and solar are fine. I'm not an anti-wind, anti-solar guy, but they're not going to be able to drive the base load that you're going to need to be competitive in this race. So, I mean, that's a given. That's not my theory or anything. That's

just a given. Nobody disagrees. Nobody disagrees very well. So building that power is, consequential. And the second issue is the trades. And having the men and women with the skills to go build these facilities, the plumbers, the electricians, the HVACs, my favorite, the welders, all of those trades men and women. That's the future of this race. And we're behind in both of those, Mike. One of the reasons I was so excited to get to do the Mike Roe program because everybody knows where you are when it comes to the trades. And you're right. You've been the Johnny Appleseed. You've been the Messiah of the trades.

And rightfully so. I think people are just now starting to sit back in their chairs and go, you know, Mike Roe. Mike Roe is right. We've got to go get focused on teaching these young people, these skills that are very, sellable to make a big difference in their lives, but more importantly make a big difference in this country. The welding school over at Bernie, Texas, that my friend Dorman Vic, I mean, he's, what a great and extraordinary story. Young kids who come in at 14, 15 years of age, and at 18 and 19, they're graduating from Bernie Champion High School with a certification as a welder.

and starting to work making $80,000 to $120,000 a year with zero debt, they're happy as they can be. They're doing what they want to do in their life. They're not trying to figure it out. They're not going to college and being taught how to be woke. They're literally going and doing their life's work. But more importantly, from my perspective, they are filling the jobs that this, This country must have if we are going to win this AI-driven data center race. Do you see a kind of Rosie the Riveter rhyme here?

Do you see an Uncle Sam wants you kind of recruiting message for this? I do, but I also see at its core something that over the last 17 years I feel like has been somewhat dismissed because it's Saddam's simple. But it really comes down to the kid you just described, making 150 grand a year with no college debt, maybe welcoming his first kid into the world, maybe he's 27, 28 years old. That guy, he needs to be on a billboard.

He needs to be on PSAs. He needs to be pointed to as the proximate cause of success and the American dream. And as, citizen who, back to my earlier question, who answered a call, right? I mean, there's a bit of the first responder component to what you're talking about. And what I really want to say to you is since we met, and I've said this to Chuck and Mary, my business partner, and really everybody in my world, it's like a memo went out to every CEO and half the governors. I met with Governor Abbott

in detail about a potential campaign around the very thing you're discussing in Texas. We're having similar conversations in Pennsylvania. We already did it in South Dakota. But it's just a heck of a thing when the ship actually turns around. Now, I'm not saying we're nowhere near ready for a victory lap, but at least in terms of acknowledging the problem, I was so heartened to hear your comments and Alex's. And Toby Rice and guys who have a front row seat to this.

And I'm just waiting for somebody to pick up the hammer and really hit the alarm, like with real urgency. Yeah. Because five out, two in, five out two in. That's not sustainable math. No worry. It scares the hell out of me. Well, you're spot on. And Governor Abbott, to his great credit, took your challenge.

I think you're seeing him speak about this. I'm going to continue to talk about it. And I'm not blowing smoke up your dress here, but I don't think anybody has sounded the alarm any louder, any better than Mike Roe has. You move the needle. But there needs to be more Mike Rose out there. There needs to be more governors out there. There needs to be, you know, Chris Wright, the current Secretary of Energy, Chris gets this. Yeah, he does.

And when we showed Chris this Fermi America plan, and I don't think I've even mentioned this, our site is almost 5,800 acres, and it is contiguous too. It shares a border with the Pantex facility in Amarola. This is land that Texas Tech has had. They've been grazing cattle on it for many years. The government has used it from time to time. but this will build a monumental. As a matter of fact, this will be a monument to the American trades. This will be a monument to the America ingenuity.

This will be a monument to the Trump administration for seeing and having the vision that America can win this race. and this is the right place. This is the perfect site. This is I told you. You've got the workforce. You've got a city that sees this and goes, let's get started today. What are we waiting for? This is a state that is sending the message out, you want to come and risk your capital and have a chance to keep more of it. You move to the state of Texas. Think about what they've done over in Dallas during this last year in the legislative session. they created the Texas Stock Exchange, which has sent the message to New York City. And now particularly with this Marxist communist person that may be the mayor of New York City, who basically said, you know, we don't even need police here. We're going to have our own grocery stores. And do you think the communist did socialism, right? Watch us.

You know what I realized the other day? His name, what is it, Mondami? Mom Donnie. It's basically an anagram for I, Madman. I hadn't thought about that. But seriously, you think about if you're a Wall Streeter and you have just been told your city, potentially in a year, is going to be a war zone. You want to raise your family there. You want to have, you want to walk down Wall Street to go to work and there are people lurking around who, no, there's not any police, no, there's not any,

law enforcement. No, there's not any protection. And socialism has taken over New York. And there is a place you can go called Dallas, Texas, with the Texas Stock Exchange, where you're going to be safe. And the mayor of Dallas is a law-abiding, freedom-loving individual. What are you going to do? You know what you're going to do. You're going to start saying, you know what, we've been here for 100 plus years, but we're thinking the new frontier down there in Texas, that's looking pretty good. Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. And if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page.

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Right. I'll be a tune, you know. Yeah. You know, I want to tell you an interesting story about how government can make a difference, and they basically can make a difference by getting out of the way. In the early 2000s, Boeing was deciding that they were going to get out of the Pacific Northwest, and they were going to go to another location. You know, I think, let's see, was it United and Continental? that had either merged or were thinking about merging at that same period of time. And the two cities that it came down to was Chicago and Houston.

Those were the two places. And that may have been the United Continental, but beside the point. They chose, we recruited them. This was the early 2000s. This was before we really got good at recruiting. businesses in the mid to late 2000s. We got really good at it in Texas. We got HP, we got Toyota. They came by the literally tens of thousands to the state of Texas over the end of the 2000s. And Governor Abbott has kept it going. In matter of fact, he's expanded it substantially.

Was it a recruiting message that worked? Or did you just simply incentivize them? And really, you just run the numbers. And then you're left. square it or ignore it. We did both. We had a, I had like a $35,000 radio ad campaign in Texas in 2006 or seven. I mean, you think $35,000, I mean, that's pretty tiny. But we advertised it. I was going out to California.

We were going to recruit these businesses. We literally bought some ads to put on some taxes. You remember when they used to put ads on the back of taxis and drive around? It's like, you know, come to Texas. You know, we're wide open for business. And we had a little TV spot that showed me flipping a sign on a door to open for business. And anyway, Jerry Brown, who was the governor of California event, he got to ask about it. Somebody stuck a microphone on his face.

He says, you know, Governor Brown, what do you think about this ad campaign that Texas is doing here to recruit businesses back out of California to Texas? And Jerry kind of, you know, gave him the back side of his hand signal and said, that ad campaign doesn't even make a fart. Could not have been a greater. That's all you needed. That took a $35,000 little ad campaign, and it was on every TV. It was made national news. I mean, it was a multi-hundreds of thousands of dollars, a little ad campaign.

It was kind of like Jerry Brown says Texas ad campaigns, not even a fart. It was awesome. That's it. Well, you know, today they call that earned media. Earned media. Right. And I know I really want to dig into the Ibogaine thing soon, but this all comes down to what's persuasive. You know, I'm kind of obsessed with that.

And I want you to make your point about, what was it, the airlines. Yep, the airlines. The airlines were moving. And here was the point with this. that I saw in later years, they chose Chicago. And the wives of the decision makers, I heard a couple of years later, they were very influential in where the headquarters went, and Chicago was chosen over, as a matter of fact, I think it was Dallas rather than Houston.

It was either Dallas or Chicago, and they chose Chicago. And I picked up through very good sources that the spouses of the decision makers helped to make that decision because they thought the cultural arts were more expansive in Chicago than Dallas. And maybe in early 2000s, that might have been the case. But here's what happened in a decade in the state of Texas. And the reason this happened in the state of Texas over that decade is because we didn't overtax, we didn't over regulate, we didn't over litigate, and we had a skilled workforce, which basically means you've got accountable public schools. Those four things are the real message for anybody who wants their state to get ahead.

Don't overtax, don't over-regulate, don't over-litigate, have skilled workforce. Because in that decade, Fort Worth built a new museum of modern art. The Formula One race came to Austin, Texas. Dallas built another performing arts facility, the Meyerson, on the Formula One race. top of a performing arts facility they already had. Ross Perrault's family built a museum of natural history. There was South by Southwest. One of the biggest music and film festivals in the world now came to Austin, Texas. You know, Austin got the Formula One. I mean, all of these things happened in a decade because I'm going to be just a little political here. When I became

the governor, the next year, the next legislative session was the first time in the history of the state of Texas that we have all Republican leadership. And that's when we put these policies into place that didn't overtax, overregulate, over-litigate. And we really changed the thought process, if you will. We changed the character of the state of Texas where people were like, that's where I want to be. I want to come into this state, be a part of this, enjoy the freedoms that are there. And if you get to keep more of your money, you you'll decide where to put, the state of Texas, and I'll suggest very few other states, if any, would have built a Performing Arts facility, would have built an F1 track, would have done all of these things.

That was the private sector being able to have more of its money to decide itself. And that is a great, I think, lesson to everyone who's in public service. If you want your community to grow, let the private sector keep more of their money. Government is never going to be able to build these great museums and edifices, I will suggest to you. Now, they may help, they may can participate, they can get out of the way. Right. But in 2011, on Reagan's birthday, I was on the USS Reagan, doing one of my buses, doing one of my bucket lists in life,

and that was to do a catapult launch and a trap in an F-18. My friend Jake Elsie, who is now a United States congressman, was the Air Boss on the Reagan, and he got that done for me. And as one of the Cods landed and the door let down, and I was watching the people walk off, one of the individuals was the head of that company that had chosen to go to Chicago, and I recognized him. And I went over and just shook his hand.

I hadn't seen him since a meeting probably a decade earlier. And I said, after some pleasantries, I said, where are you living now? And he gets his big smile and literally belly laughs. And he went, well, governor, he said, I'm in Plano, Texas. So in the decade since he and his wife had moved to Chicago, the cultural arts had gotten good enough for him to move to the state of Texas, and he got to keep a lot more of his money because we don't have a personal income tax. Here's how we get to Ibegain.

Everything we've talked about so far really does redound to persuasion. to persuasion. And it does occur to me that everything you've done in your long career is part and parcel of that. The Manhattan Project preceded you, obviously, but there was an awful lot of persuading that had to happen. Chicago versus Dallas, these are cities making a case for themselves, right? Rescue dogs, right? Somebody needs to make a persuasive case for adopting a dog versus buying a pure bread. And that battle will go on and on and on. The environment, nuclear, certainly we have to make a more persuasive case to dispel the irrational fears that so many people carry around with regard to that. You're Sisyphus, dude. Every time I turn around, you're pushing another rock up another hill.

And I think maybe the Ibogaine story, it's certainly right there with all of the other ones. And, you know, Sean McCourt is a good friend of ours. I've known him for years. I've known him for years. and he just produced this film and you're in it and I just watched it on my walk this morning. And congratulations. I know this has been a big fight and we can frame it any way you want, but for me, this rock that you're pushing up this particular hill

goes all the way back to this weird dichotomy between drugs and medicine and plant-based and recreational and just the incredible confusion that seems to hover like the cloud of dirt hovered around pig pen. How are you going to cut through it? Yeah, it's interesting that you made the connection between nuclear and Iba game because they're alike. And they're alike because there's been this great mystery and there's been this great fraud about the truth about both of them. You think about nuclear power and what, three events, maybe four, three-mile island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and obviously the two bombs on the nuclear

weapon, this terribly destructive weapon that killed tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people in Japan. So we've been taught that all of our lives. You remember, I think it was the 64 election. You may not have been alive in 64 row, but I was. Okay, I started to say, you're just a baby. The 64 election, there was this ad, I think, that one of the either Goldwater or Johnson used, and it was the explosion. The Daisy ad, pulling the things off the daisy. And it was used to scare people. Nuclear is bad. Your children will all be barn naked if we have nuclear power.

I mean, you know, it's just kind of come up with every crazy statement you can. And people go, oh, my God, that'd be bad. So the same thing happened in the United States. the late 60s, in the 70s, and carried on through the 80s when it came to these compounds. And listen, don't ever get me confused as being some pro-drug guy. I'm not. I mean, I'm still a knuckle-dragging right-wing Republican when it comes to these issues of recreational drugs. I'm never going to be far of that. I mean, I think we're learning now about cannabis. You know, some studies are coming out right now. It's like, you know what? Just opening up these stores on every

corner might not be such a great idea. So, you know, set that aside, recreational use of drugs bad. But are there some compounds out there that got swept up in the anti-drug mentality of the late 60s and 70s? What Nixon did using these compounds as a political tool, in hindsight, really hurt our country and hurt the world in turn. And what I mean by that is Nixon saw, there were two groups that Nixon really disliked.

He hated blacks and he hated hippies. And he went after. And he really hated black hippies. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, they used the DEA and the anti-drug mentality to go after these groups. So anything that had the word psycho or psychedelics, or psychoactive or, I mean, they swept them up, put them under Schedule 1, and go get those people. And in hindsight, and so we add on to that in the 70s, and even the 80s, and the Reagan

administration, and Mrs. Reagan, who I dearly love Nancy Reagan, but her just say no to drugs, yes, don't be using these things recreationally, but it cast a pallover. Broad brush. Broad brush. So a lot of compounds that potentially could save a lot of lives, got set on the shelf, locked in a closet, put in the basement, hands off. And we're just now, literally 50 years later figuring out we may have, overreacted just to spell. So let me delve into and share with you where this transition

for me occurred. Could we start first with the problem just to make sure people understand, and I know listeners here will get it. But I mean, is it 17 a day? Is it 20? Is it 22? We don't know. We don't know, right? But we do know, if you're going to ring an alarm bell, whether it's around the skilled trade shortage or the importance of a, you know, a better energy plan, surely there's an alarm for this. Because last year it was 6,500, I believe, that were attributed to straight up suicide. I don't know that that includes deaths of despair and misadventure and all sort of things, right? So that are adjacent to this number. My point is, it's a scandal. These men and women, they need a right to try.

Mike, in Sean's documentary, they had an incredible stat that just dropped my jaw, which was in the time from 9-11 to 22, you know, the two wars that we fought, 7,000 men and women died in battle. And during that very same time, 140,000 killed themselves. Right. I mean... Right. That goes on a billboard. Just as surely as the trade school kid we're talking about. It's just, it's extraordinary. I want to hear how you came to it, Governor, but I just want to make sure people understand the totality

and the enormity of the problem because you've found success with this thing and it's still freaking people out. 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 ZipRecruiter 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,

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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. So we've never been at war for this long and this intensive war. I think I may be correct in saying this in the history of mankind. You think about the Spartans and however many millennial ago that we've been fighting wars.

And we fought for a little bit of time. Then we walked and we did some things. But the intensity of being at warfare, you know, look at the Civil War. When we fought, then we may have walked for three or four weeks. and then we fought for 24 hours, then World War I. A little more intense, World War II, a little more intense. But we were not at combat, even in World War II. I think if you were in the First Division 16th infantry, you went in on the North Africa,

you fought there for that, you know, May and summer of 43, then you went to Sicily, and then you got shipped over to England, and then on the 6th of June of 44, you invaded, and then you went all the way through Europe and the war was over with basically around the end of April of 45. That's only two years, only. I mean, if you were one of those frontline war fighters, that was a long period of time. But think about Vietnam a little bit more, maybe a couple of tours in Vietnam, where you didn't know where the bad guy was. I mean, a little more intensity on that brain, a little bit more of those chemicals pumping out into your brain.

We saw what we call it back in World War II, shell shock. Shell shock. World War I actually, yeah. Battle fatigue. Right. mask it with alcohol, which was a whole other problem. Then we get into this war on terror. And for almost 20 years, these young men and women, in some cases, deployed eight, nine,

ten times, not knowing, I mean, literally walking down the street in Baghdad, whether the person coming towards you is a good guy, a bad guy. that intensity of war fighting we have never seen potentially in the history of mankind. So we're basically test pilots right now, Mike, is what we are. We've got this massive amount of young men and women. I will suggest to you some of the finest that we've got who have sacrificed. time after time. They've held their hand up and said, here am I, send me. And then they come home and our government has been an abject failure at dealing with how these young men and women

process into the civilian world. There's no reverse boot camp. No. And anyway, as that is your basis, that our government has failed. Our government owes these young people at least some answers about why are my friends killing themselves? Why is this happening? And now over the last, I'm going to say, last decade we're starting to understand it a lot better.

We're starting to see a lot of different things. And so I want to take you back. This started for me. My dad was a B-17 tailgunner in 1944 and 45. His crew member was killed in October the 7th of 1944 on a mission. My dad got to see, he was a tail gunner. He got to see real combat. Best I can tell, my dad never exhibited any symptoms.

But what I know now is that you cannot go to combat. You cannot be an intense combat. Whether you're a tellgunner on a B-17 in 1944, or whether you're a young man on point in Vietnam in 1967, or whether you're a Navy seal dropping into some place in some God-forbidden place around the world today. You cannot go into combat and come back home and be the same person you were. I believe that with all my heart.

There's something that happens. Some of them handle it better than others. some of them handle it differently. But my point is, we have sent this entire generation of kids into war for nearly 20 years in some cases, and our government handed them a sack of opioids and said, here you go, take these until we figure out how to help you. They mask you with alcohol, and then we sit around and go, damn, did you hear that Mike or Bobby or Jane? they killed themselves last week.

Huh, wonder why. Well, we know why. And so what are we going to do about it? So this started for me back in 2006 when I met a young man, just by the grace of God, out on Naval Special Warfare Center in San Diego, gave us a tour of the place while I was the governor,

the lieutenant commander, naval aviator, just kind of show you how small the world is and how this is really meant to be. that naval aviator that actually led the tour who went in the barracks and pulled out this enlisted kid to give a Saturday morning tour to a VIP, which most of them shot the finger to that, I'm sure. But this one came because he was from Texas, and this was Texas as a governor. The boy who led that was Jake Elsie, the now United States Congressman from over in central Texas. the enlisted seal who assisted at that tour was a boy by the name of Marcus LaTrell. Lone survivor.

In 2006, this is when this occurred. About a year after Operation Red Wings. And we took them to dinner that night after they had given us the tour. I knew this was an extraordinary story as we were picking his brain about. because Jake shared a little bit with us about what happened. This was before the book. This was for the movie. Nobody had ever heard of Marcus Luttrell before.

I told him, I said, give me your mother's phone number. I call her when I get back to Austin. Tell her I ran into you, doing fine. And I said, hey, if you ever buy, you're ever in Austin, come by and see me. Bad chance, right? I mean, it's a nice thing to say. You know, I told it to hundreds of people. Hey, if you ever through Austin, come by and see me.

me. And we went about our way. I called his mom, told her, I said, saw your son, he's doing fine. And, you know, I went back to being the governor doing what I did. The following May of 07, the security detail calls into the governor's mansion and says, sir, there's a young man down here who said, you told him if he was ever through Austin to come by and see you. And I literally laughed. And I said, I said that to hundreds of. people. I said, what's the person's name? And he told me and I went, yeah, I did tell that kid that. I said, well, send him in, we'll, we'll give him dinner. And that was in May of 07. And he lived with us for the next two and a half years. With your family? Yes, in the governor's residence. He was really sick. He was separated in a very odd. ball way that we subsequently got involved with and got him, you know, re-evaluated where he was

eligible for TRICARE. I mean, they literally just sent him out the door. It was the weirdest thing in the world. I know a little bit about how the military functions, being the commander-in-chief of the Texas military forces, but this was just an odd-ball deal. And this kid had the only health care he could get was through the VA. And I was just kind of like, after he came and stayed with us, My wife's a nurse, and she identified this pretty quickly. Addicted opioids had alcohol issues. He had physical issues, obviously traumatic brain injury, slept with the light on all the time,

was afraid to wake up in the dark. I mean, it was a tragic set of events. Did he tell you the story of what happened that made him famous, the whole lone survivor thing? So you knew all that. I knew that at dinner the night we first met. As a matter of fact, I told him, I said, Marcus, you have a really interesting story here.

I said, you need to find somebody to help you put this into a book form to honor your friends. And we knew his backstory. And again, he was living with us in May of, I think, 08, when his book became number one on the New York Times bestseller list. So, yeah, you may or may not remember this. The governor's mansion was being redone. There was an arsonist that tried to burn it down. We lived off campus, as we referred to it, in a private residence for nearly five years. And for two of those years, he lived with us.

We had a third floor on this house that we had moved into, and we just gave it to him. And he could come and go, and the detail knew him. And during that period of time, Marcus goes from being, you know, some unknown, big tall drink of water kid to a very well-known New York Times bestseller to, I guess the movie didn't occur until he actually had moved out with us. Now, the way I heard it, you guys were fishing when he got the word. I've actually got pictures. We're bass fishing back over here about 50 miles from where we live today. And I've got a picture of him holding him. up his number one finger as he got the call from his publisher that, hey man, you just made

number one New York Times best seller lives. But he's also got like a seven pound basque on. This is pretty sweet too. This is a pretty big day. That's great. Yeah. So then obviously he's sick. He's struggling. He's having this extraordinary thing happened to him. But I'm guessing he's not really getting better as a result of that. Where does the Ibegain happen? Yeah, well, that's actually way down in his story. We chased a lot of rabbits. I took him to multiple places, the Carrick Brain Center up in Dallas. We threw a lot of jello at the wall, I guess, is a way to say it.

And some of it would help a little bit and what have you, but he went to a place in Florida called Athletes Performance. I think it's now called Axios. He still goes there every year. It's in the Panhandle up around Pensacola, and they do a lot of work for high-end athletes, you know, special operators, NFL players, law enforcement. And it's where we got his addiction to the opioids addressed. I don't know, you know, there's a difference between being cured and healed.

We got him off of the opioids by going there. They headed him in a good way. The greatest thing that ever happened to Marcus is he got married, and he married a fabulous woman. Melanie Juno was, I mean, she literally was an angel that saved his life. Yeah, it was great that he got to live with my wife and myself. You know, I tell people, I said, you know, unfortunately, there are tens of thousands of young men, just like Marcus Lettrell, that he just didn't know a governor. Marcus just happened to meet me at a time that was very fortuitous for him. And in turn, us, but the point is, I mean, I see God's hands all over this is where we met, why we met, what we're doing now, how this is all working out.

This is, I'm just a good useful tool, just as Marcus is just a good useful tool in this to make a difference in a lot of people's lives. So anyway, let's fast forward. And during the time he was living with us, we met his brother, his identical twin brother, Navy SEAL, Morgan Latrell. And when I left the governorship, Morgan was leaving the SEAL teams. And he had some traumatic accidents. He crashed off the coast, the east coast of Norfolk in a nighttime training mission, broke his back. this was in 2009, I believe. About the same time, Marcus was down at this facility being treated for his opioid addiction,

Morgan ends up down there because he has broken his back. And they sent him to the same place. And we, you know, he became very much a part of our family as well, as did Marcus. So these two boys stay in our lives. and after I leave the governorship, I've run for president in 2015 that didn't last very long and helped Trump. He asked me to come be the Secretary of Energy. And I want to take some people to D.C. with me that I know and I trust. I sued Washington a lot while I was governor, but I didn't know a lot about Washington. And so I wanted some folks up there. And

both of these young men are peculiarly bright. I don't know whether you put them in the genius category, but they are very, very bright. Morgan was working on his PhD in brain science because he was very interested in PTSD and traumatic brain injury and what have you. I knew that. So when I got to D.C., there was a nascent program at the Department of Energy using the department's supercomputers, all the supercomputers in the United States. basically belong to DOE. And University of California, San Francisco was in a early on program to scan the brains of people with traumatic brain injuries, using those supercomputers and their power to be able to map

the brain. I asked Morgan if he would set aside his Ph.D. work. Come to D.C. with me. Help work on that program. Keep an eye on it. and quite frankly, just have my back as we were in Washington, D.C. And he agreed to do that. And that, Mike Rowe, is the first time I ever heard the word, I began.

It was through Morgan in probably a casual conversation as we were talking about brain science and what they were doing. Dr. Jeffrey Manley, Ph.D. MD out of the University of California, San Francisco, ran this program, still does. Great guy, a wonderful scientist and doctor and researcher. And Morgan worked with him. And in a casual conversation, I heard Morgan say that they were sending some of their friends down to Mexico to be treated with this plant medicine called Ibogame. And I said, Morgan, you need to be really careful with that. I said, I don't know what that is, but that doesn't sound like a good idea.

Doesn't sound like Tylenol. That was my first, sorry. They got a good rhythm going on. The FedEx truck has just pulled up out here. And this is the way that we say hi to the FedEx driver. And he loves them, but they announced that he's coming up. So we live like, I live 75 miles from Austin, 85 miles from Houston, three miles outside of a town that's population 87. So to say we're rural is a pretty descriptive term.

That's where you're sitting right now? That's correct. Nobody sneaks up on us out here. Who's over your left shoulder? right there in the frame. That? Yeah. That is the most beautiful woman in the world.

That's the first girl I ever had a date with. Wow. I dated her for 16 years before I talked her into marrying me. Wow. Really trying it on, huh? You're still trying it out, yeah. 59 years since we had our first date together. Wow.

That's pretty good stuff. Now, we haven't been married that long. We dated for 16 years. She was not an easy sell. Let me put it that way. I don't want to fry. So, Roe, I will tell you'll love this. So when I was a pilot in the Air Force, I was pretty cool, right?

You know, I was wearing a flight suit flying all over the world. C-130, right? You know, I was attractive to her. When I got out of that and came back home and moved back to the farm and, you know, old worn out blue jeans and greasy hair, I lost a lot of my cool. So she was like a really hard sell. But I persevered. It's kind of like selling the people of the state of Texas that Ibegain is something that they ought to pay attention to.

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Get 20% off your order at American-giant.com slash Mike. American Giant American Made. American Giant American Made. So, and that's a lot of. really gets to the core of this. I'm a curious person. Yes, I'm conservative. I don't make any, you know, I don't make any excuses for that. I don't apologize for that. I'm a conservative. I think conservatism is a good thing, but I'm curious. And if you come to me with facts and data, I will, criminal justice reform is a great example of it. Sure. I was a,

do not come and talk to me about this criminal justice reform. You break the laws of the state of Texas. We are throwing you in jail and we are throwing the key away. That was my mentality in the early 2000s. And I had a district judge, a Democrat district judge by the name of John Cruzzo, who came and said, governor, here's what we're doing up here in Fort Worth with these drug courts and with the shock probation and people who are, you know, they brought the law and they need to be punished, but we're not sending them to prison where they become

professional criminals. And I found that to be curious. And I was like, that's interesting. And the more I got talked to about it and the more open I was to, this is a productive way to deal with these individuals. And Texas became the first state. I want to to say in 2007, we implemented this statewide criminal justice reform, that the product that came out of that, the result was by 2011, we had saved $3 billion in building new prisons and untold lives that were saved because they never went to jail, never went to prison, which is where you become a professional criminal. That mentality served me very well when it came to either being open to this concept of why would a psychoactive compound, why would you be open to

betting your reputation on this to potentially save a few people's lives? That same mentality and same characteristics was how I sat down with Donald Trump at Bedminster in, I think, 2018, and talked to him about criminal justice reform. And I had Brooke Rollins, who is now his secretary of agriculture, and I think the governor of Kentucky at that particular point in time, was in this meeting. And Trump sounded like me. He was like,

get behind me, Satan. He said, I'm tough on crime. And then we made the pitch to him, and he was curious. That was the meeting that started him to be open to a criminal justice reform that I will suggest to you was one of the very important reasons he got elected in 2024. because there were, particularly in the African-American community, there were people that said, you know what? He understands us. He understands what's happened to us.

He understands that the criminal justice system hadn't been fair to us. And that being open and curious has been one of the great gifts that I've been given as a person. and being able to share with other, you know, pretty conservative Republicans that you can do these things and it's not going to ruin your political career. It's not enough just to be curious. You've got to be, you know, you've got to be willing to be wrong, right? I mean, curiosity requires a measure of humility. You know, that's in short supply. I think it seems like in the political class, certainly in the journalistic class,

We're very long on certainty these days. And literally every topic that we've talked about so far has required a kind of parapetia to get Homeric on it, right? It's just the willingness to say, you know what? I was sure about this. And now I'm not only open, I've changed my mind. That's a hell of a thing. That beautiful woman over my left shoulder

reminds me on a regular basis that one of the hardest things to do in life is to admit you're wrong. Well, you know what? I've had lots of practice like anything else. It gets easier. The more wrong you are. But flash forward a bit. I don't want to keep you all day. You've got a house full of dogs and you're trying to change the world. What's happened in Texas with Ibogaine? Where are we? in this long slog to acceptance? So this last session of the legislature, Brian Hubbard, who, if you want to talk to the smartest guy on the planet from my perspective, Brian is my partner in this. He ran the Kentucky opioid abatement commission until it was shut down by their current

governor and attorney general, who someday they'll have to explain why that happened. on them. But the point is, Brian Hubbard, myself, Amber and Marcus Capone, the Vets organization, and a host of really good, capable people that don't have time to name all their names, were

out helping on this. We put together a plan. We implemented it to allow for the state of Texas to commit $50 million. That's real money.

50 million taxpayer dollars to partner with a drug development company an equal amount. The state of Texas gets to maintain any patents that come out of this and do clinical trials. The focus is on veterans, but this is a lot bigger than veterans. Because what we know about Ibogaine now is it is extraordinarily effective against addictions. I'm talking alcohol, cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, opioids. I mean, one treatment, one oral treatment with ibogaine in 80 plus percent of the cases and the addiction is gone. I mean, that sounds too good to be true, but I've seen the data. Stanford's done a clinical trial on this.

I've seen over a thousand veterans that we've sent down to Mexico to a facility called Ambio that has had extraordinary success, particularly dealing with our warfighters. That's where Markets and Morgan were Dakota Meyer, Medal of Honor recipient, all of them have been to Ambio and to be treated and had stunningly good success. So this legislation, which, by the grace of God and the people of the people, the state of Texas standing up and saying, we want to do this. Governor Abbott was fully behind this. The lieutenant governor came on board. The speaker came on board. It passed the Texas legislature, which has 150 members in the state house with only two dissenting votes. It passed, I think, on a voice

vote in the Senate. The governor publicly signed it. I mean, the governor put his reputation on the line on this as well. So a lot of courageous Texans. So just kind of as a little background, when it first became public that I was talking about using some psychoactive drug to treat veterans in Mexico, one of my political consultants came up to me and he said, what in the hell are you doing? He said, man, he said, you're fixing a throw away 40 years of, you know, conservative, history. He said, what are you doing? And I said, well, I said, I don't think so. I said, I have studied this. I've talked to literally hundreds of people that have been treated. I've been down there and looked at this facility. I said, I've done my homework on this. I probably studied this more than anything I ever

faced while I was the governor looking at issues. I said, because I knew how sensitive this was going to be. And I needed to really know what I was talking about. But I said, here's the other side of this. And this is what I appreciate about these other members that have done the same thing that have to stand up in front of their citizens for election. I said, my reputation is not worth more than those veterans' lives. And that's what's really important, is that there are a lot of courageous men and women who understand that this. This is a compound that has the potential to really change people's lives, save people's lives. And if you cannot be for that, kind of goes back to that statement that we talked about earlier, about those environmental radicals.

You got a dark heart. If you want to say, yeah, you know, there may be some compound out there that can save your life, but, you know, my being. against those psychedelics are stronger than that. So you're just going to die. I think too, Rick. May I call you Rick at this point? It's been nice. Yes, sir. I think, uh, or hey you. I will, I will answer. I mean, like, you've just jumped straight to row. So I figure I'm good with Rick, dude, t-shirt boy, whatever. Um, hearing a t-shirt. You can call me. That's just from the waist up. I don't even want to know what you're rocking. It's none of my business. But it's this idea of, of, of, you're either reacting to a circumstance or you're trying to get ahead of an eventuality. And, you know, it's a harder slog to sell when you're trying to get ahead of an eventuality because you're dealing with the theoretical thing

that might happen and you want to do this thing to prevent that. But again, the evidence demands a verdict, these guys are punching their own tickets at record and heartbreaking numbers. And I feel like, you know, I don't know who those two knuckleheads were who voted nay on this thing, but I know our country is full of people who kind of, they'll show up the houses fully involved, the flames are everywhere, and they stroke their chin, and they talk about what might be done to deal with this fire that's happening in front of them. The whole approach is just so much more suited to fire prevention as opposed to, brother, your house is on fire.

Well, our house is on fire with regard to trade schools. Our houses on fire with regard to energy. I'll suggest again that there is a fire with our four-legged friends and the incredible ridiculousness that has separated pure breads from rescues. and this is certainly a fire. I just for the life of me think we're entering the most extraordinary time of advocacy and persuasion that I've ever seen in my life.

And whether you wanted to or not, you certainly have a seat at the grown-up table, man. Yeah. So it's really interesting. We've had a meeting with, I think, 15 other states, and I would suggest it's going to grow. It's going to be more than that. as some pretty conservative members of the legislature from all across the country have contacted me and said,

hey, they're curious. And we talk about this. They're hearts in the right place. They've got veterans. They've got loved ones who have addiction problems or have PTSD or traumatic brain injury. We think that there's probably, and this is me speaking, I'm not hanging this on anything other than some data that needs to be looked at. if neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's, MS, Alzheimer's, I will suggest to you all of those may be affected in a positive way with this plant that comes from Gabon and Western Africa, and has been used for centuries over there from the Aboga shrub. And let's do these clinical trials across the country.

I mean, Bobby Kennedy, Secretary Kennedy, he and his agency, they're going to be supportive of this. I'm just, I'm comfortable that Bobby's one of those curious individuals who is going to say, let's take a look at this, Dr. Oz, I think Dr. Bottachara, you'd look over at, you know, what I'd like to see is there be a rescheduling of Ibegain. And listen, I'm not going to get into anybody else's field here. I don't want to get distracted of my mission. My mission is about Ibogaine. You know, there's some really interesting things out there with psilocybin. There's really interesting things out there with MDMA. There's other compounds that I hope this administration will say, you know what, let's go do these clinical trials so that we know and we'll find out whether or not they are what you say they are.

I'm focused on Ibegain because I am convinced that this compound, particularly with our veterans and particularly with addictions. And Mike, think about how many people you know. I'll speak for myself. How many people I know whose families are tragically impacted by someone who has a substance addiction, whatever it may be. And I'm convinced that this compound has the ability to reset the burden. brain. If you look at the Stanford study and the work that they did, there's measurable increases in the white matter in the brain of every one of the veterans that the Stanford study, you go to Stanford and Ibegain and it'll pop up and take a look at it. The white matter increased, that's the

myelin sheath around the exterior of the brain. That's the super highway. That's what moves your thoughts around in your brain. Every one of those veterans had measurable increases in white matter. There's a regenerative effect of this medicine. And so, I mean, this may be the most profound advancement in medicine in my lifetime. And let's look at it. That is some tall cotton. That's some tall cotton, man. I mean, you know, full disclosure, I mentioned on this podcast probably a month and a half ago that we had met, or maybe I wrote something on Facebook and I said, you know, that this was a key area of interest and I was really looking forward to talking you about it. And, uh, and I immediately heard from people who were like,

well, okay, but wait. Okay. And I mean, people really, I mean, the lines are drawn, Governor, and you've got, there are vocal detractors out there. And I don't, again, I'd be much more charitable to their skepticism in the framework of, well, we don't really know how bad. the problem is yet that we're trying to cure, so let's just tap the brakes. But come on. This is like experimental drugs being denied people with ALS. Because they haven't been properly tested. Aren't, I mean, isn't it rational to say, wait, there is nothing to lose here?

I mean, and again, not to plug my friend's movie too hard, but you really meet the vets in this movie who are really walking around with the weight of the world. They're this close to punching their own ticket. Yep, yep. And to say to that guy, or to his wife or to his kids, no, I'm sorry, I'm skeptical of all of this so you don't get to try. Well, that's outrageous. The 17th of July is when that will air on Fox Nation.

So I hope everyone that's watching, listening, will take a look at it because it is a profound piece of reporting. Sean, Sean's done a really good job with this. Yeah. Yeah, he's a real friend of the court, as it were. Chuck, what's it called, the movie, remember? Oh, I don't. Do you know, Governor? I don't.

You know what, it is. He says, in the Washington Post editorial, I said that, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. Oh. And it's something to do with the rest of... I'm sorry, I've only looked at the clip of it. He let me see a... I've seen it all, but I've be darned if...

And he told me what he named it, but Fox Nation and the 17th. And it's something about the rest of my life. Oh, it'll be easy enough to find for people. It's not listed on here. It just says Ibegain Master. Well, you know what it is. He's got it in the movie itself. It's still the rough cut, but the title's in there.

Yeah, somewhere in there. I literally saw it this morning. Yeah, it's a very strange thing, Rick, to be rucking with 50 or 60 pounds on your back, watching a film about Ibegain, huffing and puffing, sweating profusely, just stalking through the fog here in Northern California. But that's how I started my day, watching you. you interviewed. Well, not necessarily watching me, but watching it. Who was, who's your associate? He was on Rogan with you as well.

Brian Hubbard. Brilliant. That guy's good. Oh, he's past good. That guy's very good. Brian Hubbard maybe the brightest person I've ever dealt with in my life. And I've been just, by the grace of God, been exposed to a lot of really interesting, extraordinarily bright people. Brian Hubbard, maybe at the top of that list. He's got such a style about him. Like when he really gets wound up, he kind of gets close to the microphone and he tells you very quick.

And he's got a sonorous voice. Yeah, it's really... Oh, that Kentucky accent. I mean, I could listen to him all day. I introduce him from time to time. I said, now, folks, Brian is going to look like and sound like a hillbilly from Kentucky in the Appalachian Mountains.

And he is. Which he is. I mean, he grew up in, eastern Kentucky in the Appalachian Mountains in a family dysfunctional, and he, very public about this, affected by alcohol and, you know, coal mining country, and he has just found his real calling in life, and he's incredibly passionate. He and his wife are both just two of the loveliest people I've had the privilege to get to meet in my lifetime. I got the title. It's Ibegain the fight of a lifetime.

There you go. I know something about it is. The lifetime. Yeah. Well, you know what? I mean, I'm glad you found it because that might be the title of this episode. Rick Perry, it's the fight of your lifetime. Or at least it's the fight for this year. Who knows what's coming up for you?

I'm not ever going to. Somebody asked me, how do you like being retired? And I said, wouldn't have a clue. I'm not ever going to retire. I'm going to work until the last breath is taken. So bottom line, is Texas going to lead? the AI revolution in this country as well as cure PTSD? Yes.

If you don't believe it, when do you even want to start? I believe in both of these things. The team that we put together to build this AI data center, the potential for, I realize I'm biased, I get it, that Texas is a unique place. We got a unique history. We're, you know, if you drew the outline of Texas in the dirt in Afghanistan, the kid over there would know what that is. I mean, Texas is a unique place for a lot of different reasons. And our spirit of, you know what, we're going to carve out of this absolutely just hard as hell place to live, this great empire.

and you think about the movie Giant or you think about the Alamo, you think about the history of this place, and it is bigger than life. So the idea that we're going to build a data center that literally takes America to the cusp of winning the most important battle in our lifetime, why not? Why not? You know, Pennsylvania is feeling pretty consequential, too, these days

for a lot of different reasons. Our friend Selena Zito. Who I love, man, she is awesome. She and I met, and not to get off subject here, but Selena Zito is one of my favorite people in the business. I mean, I love her. She came and traveled with me when I ran for president in 2011, and just I completely became enamored with her in a professional way.

I mean, she's just the most lovely person, great family. Give her a hug for me. Well, she's my sister in some weird cosmic way. Her whole approach to journalism and writing was my whole approach to dirty jobs. It was to take the back roads and to let the people be the star of the story and just try and stay out of the way

and be an honest broker of the day you experienced. And she's so good at that. She's taken such an interest in microworks, and she's connected me with some of these, CEOs that I mentioned who are who are turning out to be very generous with our foundation and I'm wondering do you know There's a thing happening in Pittsburgh on the 15th of July that I she got me invited to it looks like McCormick and Federman will be there looks like Trump will be there Looks like a big sort of roundtable of people who are talking about data centers and AI. Yeah,

AI. Yeah. We actually are looking at how to get up there and be participating in that. So I may see you up there. I'm going to be there. I just decided this morning. It's going to. Yeah. No, I'm going to do it. I got to move up. Then I'm calling Selena when we hang up here and saying, hey, where's my invite? I just mention it because it's a good place to land the plane in terms of this weird. It's like a hive mentality. You know, I think about back in the day, I remember Robert Noy and Jack Kilby were both working on the integrated circuit. One at Texas Instruments, your backyard, and one out here in what would become Silicon Valley.

And they never met, Rick, but they were both focused on this problem and came to the same basic solution to the point where they wound up sharing the Nobel Prize. eyes, which had never happened before. And so if I'm looking for reasons to hope, I'd leave you with this. This is happening in different pockets all over the place. This awakening, if you'll pardon, that old trope. It's real and it's bubbling to the point where I wound up at one of these, the Aspen Ideas Festival, which, you know, in general I avoid festivals and gatherings and all of that kind of thing.

But I saw a remarkable panel, and there's Larry Fink, head of Black Rock, who, you know, all the ESG stuff, I was pretty vocal, that was not my jam. But he stood up there

in front of a very liberal crowd and said, don't fool yourselves. We need 500,000 electricians in the next couple of years, or we lose everything. Yes, sir. So if that guy got the memo,

I think there's reason. for optimism? I'm the most optimistic guy in the world. This country has faced so many challenges through the years, and you think about whether it was back in 1778 or whether it was in 1917 or whether it was in 1943, what we faced and what we've overcome, there's a spirit about this country

that is absolutely, untouchable, any place else in the world. We got our issues. We're not perfect. But when it comes to the can-do spirit, when it comes to having the heart of freedom fighters, when it comes to being able to sacrifice above everything else for family or country, no place does it like America. And that's the reason that I'm as excited about living at this period of time as I've ever been. Well, I'm glad you're still alive, and I'm glad you're still in the fight. Please thank the most beautiful girl in the world for giving us so much of your time and give that pack of wolves a collective scratch.

We're fixing to go outside. Shake it out. All right, Governor, I sincerely appreciate. Mike Roe, you're a great American. I appreciate you. God bless you, brother. You're not so bad yourself. Don't hang up yet.

Got to make sure all your wisdom is properly uploaded. As for the rest of you, we'll talk to you next week. That won't take long. This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in,

the way that people do. Take some time to go on a lot and leave us a review. I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge, but in this world the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Not more. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review.

And not three. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Definitely not too. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. We need five. All you got to do is leave a quick five-star Especially if you hate it. Thank you.

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