The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 493: JD Vance—Communion

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

Vice President JD Vance joins Mike for a wide-ranging conversation about faith, family, and the future of America. From the dignity of work and the lessons he learned in the Marine Corps to his return to Christianity and the deeply personal journey that inspired his new book, Communion, Vance reflects on the people and experiences that shaped him. He also explains why America's energy future may determine whether we can keep pace with China in the decades ahead. Big thanks to our terrific sponsors K12 Schools— Find a K12-powered school near you and see what's possible for your child with K12's Career and College Prep. An Army of Normal Folks—The feel-good podcast that makes being of service easier for all of us. Good Ranchers—Sourcing 100% of their meat from American farms and ranches and delivering straight to your door. Use code MIKE for free meat for life and $50 off your first order. ZipRecruiter—The recruiting site that really is the smartest way to hire. Post a job for FREE and find a qualified candidate in 24 hours.

Hello, friends, it's Mike Roe. This is the way I heard it. Today's guest is the vice president of the United States. J.D. Vance. Yeah, the vice president of the United States. I mean, the sitting vice president of the United States, he holds the office right now. That's crazy to me. You know what's crazy? He showed up with 100 of his closest friend. Let me tell you, man, I had a week. I had a week preparing for this. I got a pocket full of challenge coins and, you know, shook a ton of hands. Obviously, there's going to be security. There's going to be Secret Service. There's an advanced team. There's a communications team.

Alternative forms of communications need to be set up in case something should happen that requires immediate attention and so forth and so on. But what an enjoyable conversation for me. Super nice guy. Super nice guy. He's written a book called Communion, which I'm nearly finished, which is really good. It's a very personal book. about his faith journey and how he lost it and then how he got it back.

And it's not a political book by any stretch. And the conversation you're about to hear is not a political conversation by any stretch. I'm pretty sure I'll get some grief. Probably. Here and there. Of course, I don't care about that. In fact, we had a really, I think my favorite exchange, he had to cut it a little short. because Bill Maher's waiting.

Right. And he asked me, you know, should I know anything? What can you tell me about Bill Maher? And I told him the true story of the week I went on Bill Maher and Glenn Beck at the same basic time and how all hell broke loose and how, in my mind anyway, that's the beginning of the divide that we've been living in. You know, that was the first time I noticed that, you know, something. It's the country's more concerned with, you know, who's sitting next to. to whom as opposed to what's actually being said.

And, you know, the vice president and I have crossed paths a lot, but never actually met. And it's because his book, Hillbilly Elegie, became very big at the same time Dirty Jobs was still crushing it. Yeah. And the parallels have always been interesting. And I've always wanted to talk to him about that. And we do. He's super forthcoming.

Did you learn anything, Chuck? Yeah, I mean, I learned about his grandparents more than I already knew. I haven't read the book. I did see the movie. I loved the movie. I thought it was really interesting. And I don't know, man. There's something just likable about him that, like he comes from good stock.

You can, you know, his story is, you know, he grew up very, very blue collar. You know, obviously he went to Yale, which changed things a bit, I'm sure. Well, he's lived in so many different worlds. I mean, abject poverty, Appalachian. The military, the Marines. Yale. Yeah. The Ivy League.

Yeah. And Silicon Valley. Right. Investor. Yep. And now, geez, I guess he's the second most powerful man in the world when you think of it like that. I think so, too. Yeah, he has an agenda.

He's written a book and he wants you to buy it. And I have an agenda, too. A couple of days ago in the Pentagon, the Department of War gave the Microwwork Foundation, $10 million to help reinvigorate the skilled trade specifically in the defense industrial base. We're super excited to announce that. Other companies have stepped up. We're going to raise a lot of money for scholarships this year, and we are going to be all over the place. We're going to start just in three states, but the campaign is called Build Freedom. And this is the same campaign. Really, I pitched 15 years ago in Congress, and it's finally come around.

So I wanted to tell him about that. And of course, he'd been read in. He's familiar with it. For me, it was just a real kick to be able to explain to the vice president that MicroWorks is still on the case and gratifying. So I think he enjoyed himself. It was really fun to meet all those law enforcement men and women. They're awfully buttoned up, dude. Over a hundred here.

Well, you didn't see them for the whole week. I mean, they've been here just about every single day since Sunday. Snipers on the roof. Yeah, those guys were badass. Those guys were badass. The assault teams in the stairwells. In the stairwells. Yeah, yeah.

There's an assault team as well. There's so many different teams. But they showed up on Sunday, and I'd never saw so many people in our office. How great would Santa Monica be if those guys were here all the time? Oh, my gosh. The book is called Communion. My guest is Vice President J.D. Vance.

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I can't even imagine your schedule. I can't get my head around. Your retinue, your posse. It's just unbelievable. Your life, man. It is the craziest thing. It's so annoying. You're what, 41?

41. What in the world, man. I mean, seriously. Military, Silicon Valley. Obviously, politics, Yale, and there's probably another world. Yeah. I had your foot in a lot of places. I had my foot in a lot of places.

Yeah, no, the posse is really, I still haven't gotten used to it. So I've been doing this for all of two years. You get the Secret Service detail whenever the president asks you to be the VP nominee. And, you know, just driving in here, I still don't get used to the fact that, you know, probably one in every ten cars is just parked on the first. freeway, unable to move because they shut down the, whatever, the 405 or wherever we were driving. And it's such a ridiculous spectacle. It's 40 or 50 cars trailing behind us that people just can't help but record it. Well, I took some private jets a few years ago that somebody sent and thought I had experienced the

absolute pinnacle of indulgence. I was ruined for commercial travel. Yep. But last year, I spoke at Clint Hill's funeral, the famous Secret Service. Sure. And on the way to the church, I guess we're leaving the National Monument going to the graveyard. They had a full-on escort. Okay. And in my life, Mr. Vice President, I have never felt that. I mean, to see everything shut down and the speed with which you can get from one side at D.C. to the other.

That's right. It's, I mean, I can't even talk to anybody else about it who has an experience because it's truly inexplicable. Yeah, yeah. It's the thing that money can't buy. So I was traveling, actually, Elon Musk was in my motorcade at one point. I think we were in Florida, actually. It was maybe during the transition.

And it just, they had completely shut down traffic from the airport to, I think, Mar-a-Lago. And Elon's like, you know, I can buy a lot, but I can't buy that. I can't buy that. It's fantastic. That's right. The first time I heard your name and heard about Hillbilly Elegy would have been, I guess, in 2016. Yeah, 10 years ago.

The election was over, and I had mouthed off. I was just telling Jay, your guy, this story. I, on one of the socials, answered a question saying, you know, I typically don't weigh in, but I think Trump could win. Like, I wrote it down, and I was immediately invited on Meet the Press to tell them what weird insight I might have had to make this prognostication. And your book came up. And ever since then, I've been hearing about how you and I are singing out of the same hymnal, as it were.

Different tunes, but same basic message. So I want to spend the time I have with you talking about your book, but I want to lean somewhat shamelessly into workforce, dignity of work, of course, reinvigorating the trades. And I guess the first question would have to be, given the administration's commitment to resure, re-industrialize, and reinvigorate the trades. Is that even possible until or unless the country rethinks its overall relationship with work?

That's a good question. And I think it is possible, but these things have to sort of happen together. And I think they are happening together slowly, but surely. So to give you an example, when I was, you know, I was raised by a union steel man, my grandfather, and the most important man in my life, he died when I was 13 years old. I called him Papaw. Pappell had this idea that, you know, his work was the work of the hands. You know, he was a blue collar guy, but that my work would be the work of the mind

and that I would sit at a desk and I would do that. Did he want something better for you? He wanted something better for me, even though he himself realized more than anybody that his work was very much work of the mind. And how weird is it to envy and love him so much and admire him. him and then watch him want something else for you. It's very hard. It's very hard.

I look back and I think there is a certain sadness. Tragedies probably overstating it because my grandfather had in a lot of ways a very amazing life. It was very, very young life. He died when he was 67 years old. But Papal, it was always kind of sad to me that he saw the thing that he did as somehow not something that was good enough for me. Yeah. And in hindsight, you know, there was this deep culture.

assumption that if you worked with your hands, if you were blue collar, somehow that wasn't as good or that wasn't, you know, it wasn't as prestigious as the people who went to college. I do think that our society actually has learned a lot since then. I don't necessarily think that if my grandfather were alive today, he would be telling me do something different than what I did. Now, of course, these jobs change and there's always transformation, and there's always people have to learn new skills. But I actually think that a lot of people recognize, first of all, that working with your hands and working with your mind are not two separate things. You have to do both at the same time. And number two, that a lot of the white collar jobs that exist in our country are

kind of bullshit, excuse my language, right? I can take it. And there were all of these viral TikTok memes a few years ago of people going to like work at some social media advertising agency. And people, like the subtext of all of these viral videos is like, oh, you get to work at 945 and you're going coffee at 1045 and you have a meeting, but then you have lunch. And then the subtext is, oh, my God, so many of these people aren't actually doing anything. Yeah. Oh, it's shocking. Well, look, it actually opens up a riff on the dignity of work, which I think has been really confused. I think a lot of people in the country think about dignified work through the lens of the circumstances of the job itself, the conditions. Is it too hot? Is it too cold? Do I have

insurance, do I have a lunch break? Sure. Is OSHA doing its thing? Et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, yeah. And if all those things line up, great, you have dignified. But what you just said is so interesting because it's possible, under my definition, to be doing undignified work and still prosper from it because I think the thing that gives work dignity is maybe

if it blesses somebody else. Yeah. Like if somebody else benefits. Yes. Key bono, right? I think it's a good definition. I would say when I think of dignified work, whether it's a white collar or blue collar, it's doing something that somebody else actually really values.

Like if you're building a house, that really matters. If you're fixing the plumbing, that really matters. But like, yeah, if you're a lawyer and you're solving somebody's dispute, that can really matter too. It's not that, you know, I do think that sometimes there's this false psychotomy between dignified work, you know, being white collar or blue collar. There are a lot of jobs, I think especially that grew up in the COVID era. where people would sit at a laptop and not actually do much. And I think that moment in time drove home, the fact that there are jobs that really do bless people,

that really do build things that are meaningful. And then there are jobs that are kind of fake. The study that I'll never forget was conducted during the Second World War in a POW camp. Okay. And so half the prisoners were forced to build a barracks. So they're laying brick. The hours are terrible.

The work is hard. The conditions are brutal. The other group is basically charged with carrying large vessels of water across the yard and dumping them out into nowhere specific. It's not like they're making or doing anything. They're just being forced. It's just busy work. Yes. Wow.

The science after it is extraordinary. Those men building that barrack who were essentially, slave labor, but building something were so much better off mentally. And the people who lost their minds was the other country. We're the ones who just jump in water. That's fascinating, but not that surprising, right? Because again, whatever the circumstances, whatever the conditions, and obviously we want people to have good conditions, good benefits, good insurance, all that stuff. But if you do something that you know is valuable, it's very hard to get bored with it. Whereas if you do something that you know is not valuable, it doesn't matter how much you're paid. I think it's very hard to

actually take meaning from that. Okay. Which of the many worlds you've occupied? I'm picturing five in my head. Best line up with this idea that your work was blessing someone. I mean, was it the military, I mean, obviously military service has got to be up there, but Silicon Valley and politics and, you know, academia, these all add value. But for you, personally, Yeah, they all add value. I would say the military is definitely at the top of the list for me because I had never felt so clearly that I was on a team and that that team was geared towards something positive. Okay.

And I do think that that is, I mean, that's something we try to do in our office. That's something we try to do in politics is build the sense of camaraderie among the people who are working for you, working with you. But that just was constantly etched in what we were doing in the military. is the guy to your left, the guy to your right, you guys are on the same team. You may be pissed off at each other from time to time, but get over it. You've got to figure out a way to work together. That sense of teamwork was really amazing and kind of transformational for me.

Did it leave a hole when you left? Oh, absolutely. Some of the best friends that I have, I mean, I just saw one of my best buddies from the Marine Corps like two days ago. He came into my office in the West Wing. And he actually works now with unions in New Hampshire. And so he and I have taken, like, much different paths. But he's still one of my best friends.

And, you know, the most exciting thing, the most exciting thing from the day that I got inaugurated as vice president. And it was an amazing, amazing day in so many ways. But is that, like, right after the inauguration, I go into this party. Ohio State was playing Notre Dame. I'll never forget this. And we had this kind of room set up. It was a gigantic room, but for family and friends.

And pretty much every single one of my Marine Corps buddies showed up for that. some of them I hadn't seen in 10 years. And when you talk about leaving a hole, you maybe don't realize it until it gets filled in that moment where you were just surrounded by all these friends. So I think a lot about it. Isn't that why there's a VFW? Absolutely.

That's why there's a VFW. And that camaraderie, it's not just camaraderie. I mean, you think about the military. The craziest thing about the military is a job that you never, ever leave. And what I mean by that is, you know, the guy who's in charge of you, yeah, he's making sure you do your job, but he's also a guy who could walk into your barracks room at 9.30 at night to make sure that your barracks room is properly cleaned.

Now, that's kind of crazy in some ways, and when I went to college, I was glad to be away from that part of it, but it's just so immersive. Every part of your life becomes the Marine Corps, and I do miss that from time to time, but I certainly miss the people all the time. One of my favorite chapters in your book, which, that's a stupid way to start the sentence, because I'm not done it yet, full disclosure. But I think the second chapter is called Semper Y. Yeah. Well, obviously a play, there's the cover of the book there,

and a play on the Marine Corps motto of Semper Fidelis, right? Always faithful. At last count, there were 115,000 orphans in this country and 380,000 churches. That means if just one person in one out of every three churches were to adopt a kid, there would be no more orphans in America. None. That's why Mike and Tracy Taylor adopted their kids.

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But the irony, I think, you know, the book is in some ways just a personal journey about how I lost my religious faith and how I got it back. But a big part of the story of how I lost my faith would happen in the Marine Corps. And for reasons it had nothing to do with the Marines, but because my grandmother, who, you know, married to my grandfather, Papal and Mammal, the man and woman who raised me, my anchor to my Christian faith was Mammal. And I didn't realize this at the time. but we didn't really go to church that much. It wasn't a particularly, you know, institutional faith, but it was very devout and very personal.

I'm all read the Bible every day. She would ask me about God every day. We would pray every day. And she died about three months before I left for Iraq. And as soon as she died, my religious faith kind of started to whittle away. And I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the reason is because she was my anchor. She was actually the person who connected me to it. And when I lost that, I slowly lost my faith.

And that chapter, I believe, is really about how that whole thing happened in the Marine Corps. Laugh out loud line from your mom, when she says, you're asking her to kind of explain, you know, the whole man-god relationship. And she, you know, gives her best shot. And you say, oh, it's kind of like a bullet, right? Like you fire the bullet. And the casing is the body, and that falls to the ground. and the bullet goes to heaven. Yeah, that's right.

And she says, yeah, goddamn it, I guess it is like that. That's exactly what she says. Oh, man, she was a truly amazing. I mean, when she died, we actually made a CD. Back when people make burned CDs, we made a burn CD of all of her favorite songs. We called it a force of nature because that's what she was, man. She was just absolutely off the wall.

The biggest personality, super charismatic, cursed like a sailor. I'll never forget when we start having kids and my wife would get kind of annoyed at me because when you start having toddlers, the toddlers say whatever you say. And so it doesn't matter if you say the F word when your kid's 18 months old. It kind of matters when he's three and a half. So I had just been elected to the Senate. I was taking my kids from, you know, Cincinnati to D.C. And I would always, not always, but sometimes I try to just take one kid with me to spend special time with dad.

because for the first six months I was in the Senate, my family lived back in Cincinnati. So I take one of the kids back to D.C. They'd get to hang out with me. And I'm like from Cincinnati to D.C., everybody on that flight knows who I am, especially right after the election. And my kid, who's three years old at the time, he drops one of those Delta Bisccoff cookies between his seat. And he goes, well, shit. And it's like every single person in the plane turned around judging me. If they didn't already disagree with me politically, they certainly judge me as a father.

But I picked that language up from my grandmother. And I've gotten better at it. But man, she was so non-conventional, right? She was not like a sit-at-home and knit you a sweater kind of grandmother. She was a woman of very devout Christian faith. She loved the F-bomb. You know, when she died, we discovered 19 loaded handguns in her house. And I know you're a Second Amendment guy.

But 19. But not just 19, but 19. spread randomly all over her house and we're thinking ourselves, you know, obviously we can't ask her because she had died. What the hell did she need with a loaded handgun in the silverware drawer? And we realized, why take chances? It's because she couldn't get around that well towards the end of her life. And it sort of hit us. And she wanted to make sure that no matter where she was, if somebody walked into her house in Middletown, Ohio, she had a loaded handgun within arms reeds because she couldn't move around that well. What in the world would she say today, assuming she's looking down?

and Pap Paul, for that matter. Yeah. How would they, well, what would they think of your book, but what would they think of their boy? Well, you know, you never know. I think and hope they'd be proud of me. I think that what Mamaw would say in particular is don't get too big for your britches.

She was... Don't get too big for your goddamn bridge. That's right. That's right. She was particularly worried that... I think Mamaw always had very high expectations for me. So I don't think that she would necessarily be surprised. though how could you not be surprised by how crazy my life has been the last 10 years?

But I think that what Mamaw would be worried about, and it's something I worry about too is, like my life is, dude, totally transformed. I don't go to the grocery store anymore. People go to the grocery store for me. Most of my meals, like when I cook a meal, it's like I love to cook, actually, a big baker. I like to cook for my kids as a special occasion, but I don't have to cook anymore because I've got an army of people who are willing to, like, cook me my food. my life is so weird. I fly around on a 7-57, no more TSA lines for me and the kids. It's so weird,

but it can become the sort of thing that if you internalize it, you start to be an entitled asshole. And I think that's the thing that Mamaw would really be insistent on. It's don't become entitled about this. Recognize it's cool. It's a blessing. Obviously, it comes along with duties and responsibilities, but she would be very proud of me. I know she would. She would also make sure that I didn't get too big for my purchase. So my mom is, I had a Nana, by the way. Yeah. Not a mammal, but they sound like pretty much the same people.

My mom is now 88, and people who watch this podcast know her well. She wrote her bestseller when she turned 80. Okay. And she's written four more since then. But she called literally right before you walked in. She's like, Michael, I just want to have a chat with you. It's been a couple of days. And your father and I said, mom, listen, can I call you back?

She goes, oh, are you big day busy? I'm like, well, the vice president's coming in and I'm interviewing him. I won't repeat exactly what she said, but your mom all would have been proud and she just hung up. Okay. If I'm being honest, I kind of, I think maybe looking back, I kind of hit her over the head with that on purpose just to let her know that, you know. Yeah, every now and then, you know, somebody in a suit walks in here. Is she impressed with you? Yeah, that's her.

Oh, I love it. She's impressed with me. You know what? But she's actually more bemused. She's bemused. She's like, you know, your father and I, we did what we did. And now we're watching you. And it doesn't quite make sense.

But I am gobsmacked by her because she wrote every day for 60 years. Her dream was to be a writer. Okay. Every day, 60 years, never got published. Did you know that when you were a kid that she wanted to be a writer? She would write unauthorized biographies of strangers she met in the elevator at the Bob's Big Boy, a cop on a horse. Right? Okay.

And she'd stick them to the fridge, and my dad would read them to strangers the next day. That's what I grew up watching. So her first book was a bestseller when she was 80, which leads me to my question. I asked Jay, your man Jay earlier, who's busy over there on his probably not a Blackberry anymore. But, you know. I hope not. I said, if so, Jay's fired. I said, sorry, Jay.

See yourself out. No, I said, Jay, don't bullshit me. Did he write this book himself? And he got, he was like, yeah, he did. Every word started in 2017. Yes, he did. And I just want to say, on behalf of my mom and I, good for you. I don't understand how you could have done it, found time to do it or anything else, but that's my question.

Well, I appreciate it. And give my best to your mom. Okay, I have to ask, though. Those biographies she wrote about strangers, is that what was in the first book that she published or any book that she's published or is it all? Since you asked, what happened? was she wrote the funniest story I'd ever read about losing her big blue purse at the Walmart and the calamity of events that happened in the wake of that. I read her story and posted it on Facebook. Yeah. 70 million people watched me read her story. That's amazing. The publisher's called

you'll love this and said if your mother can churn out 20 of those and just make sure you're in them so we have a hook, right? The mother of the, dirty guy. And so I say to my mom, hey, look, you're not going to believe this, but I think it's your book deal. And this is what you have to do. And she says, well, Michael, you know, I have two other sons. I'm like, Mom, just write the book. Okay. We'll deal with my brothers later. That's right. She goes home and she writes a book called About My Mother, a story about my mammal, a story about my Nana. Oh, wow. I'm not even in the freaking thing. It's a book about my grandmother, Thelma Noble, who no one has ever heard of. And the publisher is like, I can't do

anything with this. So my partner, Mary, is like, screw that. We'll print 10,000. We sold them in three days. Then the publisher came back. Wow. Second printing, number four, been a bestseller ever since. That's amazing. Crazy. That is such a cool story. I mean, but it's, how did elegy happen? How did it lead to this? And why is it, are you that arrogant that you have to write your own stuff, Mr. Vice President. Is that what this is? No, no, it's not that. It's that, look, writing is one of the ways, going back to when I was a kid, I've always worked things out in my head through writing. So, you know, when we did debate prep for the vice presidential debate, one of the ways that I actually prepped is to write out what I thought they would

say and how I might respond to it. I just, I've always been fascinated by arguments. And one of the ways that I sort of argue things with myself, with other people, was through writing. So Hillbilly The Polyology comes out, we did an initial print run of 10,000 copies. We sold out of it, because I have this mega viral interview on a, you know, a magazine called the American Conservative, sold out immediately to the point where it was like two weeks before people could even get the book again. Anyway, it becomes a publishing success. And I immediately sign on to write a book.

They're like, what are you thinking about right now? I'm like, honestly, I'm thinking about faith right now. And not just personally, but how it, you know, the effect that it has on American life, the ability that it has to unite us together as a people with a lot of diverse interests and backgrounds, but faith is one of these things that's been a commonality in the American story. So I was thinking about writing a book about faith. So the publisher's like, great, let's sign a deal. So in 2017, I do a contract to write this book and I start writing it right away.

Actually, I guess I'd already been writing it even before then. So over time, it's just, you know, things happened. You know, I started my own venture capital fund. We started having babies. We had three kids. We actually have a fourth on the way. Congratulations. Thank you.

And all that stuff is happening. And I'm still kind of every now and then, I sit down at my computer when it's late at night. The kids are asleep and I start writing this book. Okay. So it gets to the point where I'm the vice president of the United States. And the publisher's like, you know, kind of time to shit or get off the pot. Yeah. And I'm like, all right.

Well, I need to write probably another two or three chapters and then edit this thing and make it work together. because, you know, you're a writer. When you write something over 10 years, it's kind of disjointed. So I had to, like, make it so that it actually fit together. And so I decided to just do that. And I got it done. And, of course, my wife helped me a lot, not with the writing, but with the editing. She's a vicious editor.

Love my wife. She's one of the few people who can just tell me, like, this sounds like garbage. And help me fix it. Sidebar, too. I love the fact that if she recommends a book to you, You immediately read it. That's right. Didion's book, Year of Magical Thinking.

The Year of Magical Thinking. Have you ever read that book? Yeah. Okay. And wow. Wow. Rough year. Rough year for Joan.

Totally rough year for Joan. I mean, and then you read, like, there were things that happened after the publication of that book that were even worse. Her daughter passed away. Her daughter dies. It's just, it's heartbreaking. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do dumb. So apparently, July is officially. National grilling month.

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But I wrote the book myself and didn't use chat GCPT. And sometimes when politicians write books, by the way, the other thing I wanted to make sure is that it wasn't just another like politician book. Yeah. Right? It's not here are eight problems with America and here's my 12 point plan to fix it. It actually really is just a book about one guy's faith journey and then some broader thoughts about what Christianity means in America in 2026. The one thing, it's funny, just the one thing about the book that is still controversial in my brain is when I finished it, I had a couple of people, close friends read it.

And they're like, look, we really like this. You know, they had some specific feedback, but it is very weird. You're the vice president of United States, and you don't talk about politics at all. And so I kind of went back and added a little bit of political reflection in there. Not much. Not much. But even what's in there, I kind of wish that I hadn't put it in there, even though I understand the arguments from people who are saying, you can't not talk about politics like

you're literally the vice president. So anyway, I mean, I wrote the book myself. Good. It's important. I think it's important. I agree. But my bigger concern when, before I read it, it wasn't whether. or not you're going to get political in it. It's that this is such a personal journey. Sure. And it can't

be over yet. Of course. Because if you haven't noticed, you're 41 years old. That's right. So it's sort of, it's a very clever conversion story wrapped into a memoir. Yeah. But it's still the product of a 41 year old man. Correct. So as you're writing this over a 10 year period, are you ever sitting down and going, the story's changing as I'm writing it? Oh, of course. Of course. Like in a fundamental way, begging the obvious question, aside from the fact that it ends at 304 pages, how do you know when you're done? Yeah. So my experience having written all of two books is that you're never done. And there are still times when somebody will read something from Hillbilly Ellogy, which came out in 2016. And this thing came out in 2026, obviously just a couple of weeks ago, where I will say, I wish that I put that in there. And so my attitude towards writing a book is it's never actually done. You just have to get to a point where you accept it's like a hostage negotiation

where eventually you send it off, you get the hostage back, you send it off, and you hope that you never have to deal with the hostage person again, right? The hostage taker again. And that's kind of how I think about writing a book is the hostage taker is the publisher. Eventually you just pass it off to the hostage taker and you hope you have to never have to deal with it again. So I've definitely thought of this issue a lot. The most time that I spent writing this book over the last six months was not writing new material. It was going through and trying to like make the material that I wrote in 2017 fit with the material that I wrote last year. And that

was definitely a part of the writing process, but man, it's never done. What is the most brutal critique your wife has offered? Oh, you mean it definitely would be about writing. because she's a very sweet person, but she is a brutal editor. And I would say that, I mean, hell, I could go through pretty much every chapter. There was one chapter that she went through where she, like, marked up every single paragraph and just kind of like wrote through it. And basically, like, when I was like, well, there are so many markings here, like, what do I even do here? And she's like, basically, I don't know what you were trying to say there.

and you either have to completely delete everything or rewrite it so that it's clear what you're trying to say. And it's like, Jesus. So my... Dagger to the heart, but you need that. My mom dedicated one of her books to my niece, who was like six years old when she read a short story that my mom had written. And her critique was, it's really good grandma.

But I was thinking, what if you just move the good parts closer together? That's good. And it's good. You know, my mother was like, well, thank you, Katie. But in the end, I mean, that's life. It's certainly copyrighting. I need that. I think all people need that, but I particularly need that.

The hardest thing, you never hear me complain about my life, because it's very blessed in so many ways. I'm a very lucky guy. The hardest thing about my life is that I live in a bubble. and I have a lot of people who really want to tell me how great I am. And some people wouldn't tell me how terrible I am, of course. But people who surround me, it's very hard for them to give honest feedback. Yeah.

It's not hard for Ushsh to give me honest feedback. Well, that's what you need. You're very lucky. Years from now, I mean, I know you couldn't have possibly known the impact that Hillbilly was going to have on the country. Sure. So riff quick on that, to the degree to which you're pleased, buy it and how you think the book may have improved social discourse.

And what do you hope this does? Yeah, I mean, I think that what Hillbilly-Logy did, and in some ways is still doing, is it gave people who didn't come from my world an insight into a group of people that are complicated, certainly messy. I'm not saying we're perfect, but we're fundamentally, like, the people who raised me are very good people. Yeah. And it gave an insight into the world or of the world into that group of people.

And I still will have people come up and tell me like I didn't know anything about this like massive group in the middle of the country until you wrote this book about it. The most important thing though that Hillbilly Elledogy did. And I don't know if it's happened to a dozen people or hopefully more. I'll never forget this. The first time it ever happened to me, I was at the West Virginia Book Festival. And, you know, I gave a little talk and I signed some books. and then this woman who was similar in age to me, she came up to me afterwards,

and she said, like, your book is why I had my dad over at Thanksgiving for the first time in 10 years. And she said it gave me this perspective on him. And my attitude was like, if you can forgive people in your family, then I can forgive people in my family. We all just move on together. I've heard that from a few people,

that like recognizing that somebody who is in your life, maybe, whether it's a parent who screwed up, isn't a fundamentally bad person just because they screwed up and that forgiving them is a much better way than holding that grudge and holding that resentment for the rest of your life. That's really what Hillbilly Elogy is about. It's kind of coming to terms with my grandparents, my mom, and how their crazy story fit together. You know, if that happened with 12 people, Hillbilly Elogy was worth writing. Was it a phenomenon because it was entertaining and enlighten? or did it catch fire because people saw themselves in it?

I think both. And I think the third thing is it was very much the beneficiary of the 2016 election campaign. So many people were so shocked by what happened in 2016. You weren't. Yeah. I was not. But I think that they were looking for something to try to understand what the hell had just happened. And that is certainly a big part of the reason why it became such a big bestseller.

Why did my neighbor's kids just convert to Catholicism? Why? Like, is there a revival of some kind, like, simmering underneath all of this divisiveness? I think that there is. So I have to know, though, your neighbor's kid, was he not raised Catholic? Was she not raised Catholic? He is 22, living a very nice life in a really great school, surrounded by all of the advantages you could want. Yeah.

And out of the blue converted, it seemed, and just started going to a Catholic Mass again and again. And now it's official. Sure. And many of his friends have followed suit. Yeah. So I definitely see this among young people. And I don't think it's all Catholicism. I do think there's a broad speaking Christian revival in the country among young people.

But I do think that what Catholicism, those who have gone to Catholicism, and this is certainly true of me, I think a couple of things are true. Number one, there is a beauty to it. Catholics are very good at aesthetics. If you walk into one of these old churches, whether it's a small church or a giant cathedral. That's the exciting incident in your book. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. I was in a cathedral and I saw the light in a stained glass window. And it was just, it was hitting at just the right time where you could literally see the dust in the church, kind of moving around in the light. And it was this really beautiful thing.

And I do think that at its best, beauty calls us to God, sort of reflects God. And there are a lot of people who, you know, maybe they're not used to seeing beautiful things. I don't think that we build beautiful buildings in the same way in 2026 as we did 100 or 200 years ago. And so I think the beauty of it is attractive. I also think that there is something stabilizing about it. The world is such a crazy place. Social media has transformed the way that we communicate with each other. It sometimes seems like the world is changing so quickly that a lot of people are looking for a kind of arc from the instability and the chaos.

And I do think that the church is very good at providing that to young people. And it's one of the reasons why you have seen. It's clear in the data a pretty significant shift from young people who were, you know, like me, it kind of abandoned their faith. Maybe they were never raised in a faith to begin with, but they're attracted to it because it speaks to something that they're yearning for. Now, I would say, the last thing I'll say on this is I think that what people are ultimately yearning for is a relationship with God, a relationship with Christ.

But I think they are weird echoes of that, whether it's the beauty that you see in a church or the sense of stability you feel in a church community. I think that's all calling us to something that's even more true and more fundamental, but different people come out at different directions in different ways. You said losing faith is like a divorce. Yeah. Is finding it again like falling in love again or is it like coming home? I'd say it's more like coming home because it was not super emotional for me.

There were all these moments of intense emotion that I had, but falling in love is this such an intense feeling. And one of the things that I tried to do when I reengagement with my faith was I wanted to stick. I didn't want to just start going to church and then cast it aside like I had when I was 22 years old. I wanted to stick. And so it was something that was both of the heart, but also was very inspiring to me and made me think about the world in a totally new way. Right. What is it doing for you on a day-to-day basis given the fact that you're pretty sui generous, right? I mean, you're one of one in this country, a singular position with pressures I think most of

us can't even begin to imagine. How hard are you leaning on this minute by minute, day by day, hour by hour? Very much so, very much so. And I find myself when I'm most challenged or when I'm most worried about what to do, I'm most unsure about what to do. That's when I find myself praying the most intensively. And what faith does, I told you earlier, my grandmother once told me not to get too big for my britches. She would say that all the time.

And I guarantee that's what she would say to me today. Faith does that every single day for me. because one, one of the core lessons of Christianity is that God does love us, but that he sometimes works on his time, not ours. And that's frustrating and it's even enraging, but it creates a certain humility about how much we can control events. And so what I try to do is not control events. What I try to do is just the best job that I can do. And that is not actually instinctively, especially in a position like this, I think, my character flaw would be to try to maximize, to try to completely exert control over the situation.

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What's your biggest character flaw these days? I think it's probably that. One of the things I talk about in the book is I was a striver and not striving towards excellence or towards building something meaningful. I just wanted to get ahead. That is less a character flaw today because

ahead as competitive? Competitive. of beating people. More than him, more prestige. I want more credibility. I want more money. Not, I want to like, you know, ambition to build a beautiful building or to, you know, do something profound. That's different than just the raw ambition to get ahead.

I think I've always had that flaw in myself. I feel like I've, maybe, you know, just being vice president, I'm so consumed by the day to day of the job, but I'm not so worried about raw ambition. It's also like, how much further could you go? You know what I mean? So. Well, there is that one other step. Or is that one... Yeah, but that, for whatever reason,

that flaw is not something I noticed myself in myself as much today. The one character flaw that I certainly notice in myself is just an impatience for things to happen immediately all the time. Now, that can be good because you're constantly applying pressure, hopefully to accomplish good things.

It can also be quite bad because it can turn you into a bit of a control freak, and sometimes the best way to do your job, whether you're the vice president or anything else, is to just make good decisions to work your ass off, but to let things come. Curiosity or humility, the greater virtue. Humility. Yeah.

I think that it's extremely important not to assume that you know more than other people. I think that's one of the main reasons why I lost my faith is because I started to see myself as hyper-rational and intelligent. Well, that was Yale will do that to him. Yale definitely did that. But it was not just Yale. facilitated it, but it was already there. And I think remembering that, you know, a guy who's laying pipe or a Christian, in my perspective, you know, a Christian who I would have assumed is

superstitious and not rational that maybe they're motivated by something that's a lot deeper and a lot more true, that comes from humility. And so many of the problems that I see, especially among American elites, comes from a certain arrogance. An arrogance that I know better than somebody else, I know how to do this better than you do. I know what's better for your life than you do. That arrogance is the source of a lot of what's wrong. I love curious people. Curiosity is very important.

But actually, I mean, humility, how can you be genuinely curious if you're not humble? That's right. Because the whole proposition is rooted in your own ignorance. Exactly. Exactly. Genuine curiosity, I think, comes from humility. Well, with humility in mind, can we bring this back to me for just a moment, please? 15 years ago, I went to Congress to talk about what I thought would be a pressing need for...

Yep. Oh, God. There you are. Yeah. Yeah, so that's me. That's actually in front of a Senate. Thanks for wearing a tie. You know what, man?

I could have worn a rubber suit, I suppose, really. But a year before that, I was in front of some other committee. And I, you know, the dirty jobs thing gave me. a weird amount of permission to mouth off outside of my land. I love that. I've got this foundation. It's called MicroWorks. And my message to the feds back then was, look,

we need some sort of national effort to reinvigorate the trades. Yes. I don't think the solution is .gov the end, but I don't think there's a solution without you guys. Agreed. Well, 15 years later, your Department of War called me. And I don't know if you've been read into this thing entirely. But the new campaign, they basically said yes to what I pitched 15 years ago.

It's called Build Freedom. Fantastic. There are two hats in existence. You can have one of them. I appreciate that. Yeah, sure. You don't have to put it on now. I mean, it's a – although it would go pretty well with the suit.

It would. But the idea is state by state, we're going to start with Texas, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. So, Kodnazi and that crew put $10 million into my foundation. and they've challenged big corporations all over the country and governors on a state-by-state basis to make a more persuasive case for, what is it, seven million open positions right now. Right.

So my question to you is the first question that I asked, can we reinvigorate the trades? Can we somehow? I mean, when they tell me they need 400,000 welders and electricians for our subs, and when they tell me that the new infrastructure buildout is 10 trillion and the need for electricians and data centers. Dude, the math ain't mathen.

No, it's not. But I feel like truly after 15 years, the Pentagon got the memo anyway. Yes. What can you tell me about this? So a few things. Number one, there's both a cultural but also a policy shift that has to happen. And the policy shift is happening in the administration. So if you look at what we've done with making it easier for parents use 529 accounts to

and their kids to vocational education, making Pell Grants accessible, not just a four-year traditional college, but to a whole host of options. You're seeing it happen, and of course what we're doing at the Pentagon, which is just really facilitating industry to get people into these positions,

to train them in these positions. This is all happening in a big way. But the cultural shift that has to happen is you've got to take people like my grandfather and persuade them that we still need skilled tradesmen in this country, that you can't just tell everybody that they're going to go to a four-year college

because, number one, some kids don't want that, and that's okay. But also, number two, a lot of the people who are going and getting four-year degrees, they're not like engineers and doctors. They have effectively fake jobs. And that's like both of those things are true. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

You know exactly what I'm talking about. So I think the cultural shift has to happen from people like me and you talking about the importance of the skilled trades. But I also just, you know, so much of it is just doing it. Like, you take the first step and sometimes you're hooked. I mean, I, you know, the thing that I am probably the best at around the house is I'm a decent bricklayer and mortarman.

And so we've got a lot in our house in Cincinnati, a lot of old stonework. It's about 150-year-old home. And so, you know, sometimes there were periods where it was hard to actually get a stone mason to the house to do the repairs that you've got to do. But, man, like, obviously, I've chosen a different option, but you could make a really good living, but also do something that's really cool if you are just really good at Stonework. And honestly, I would have had no idea when I was 18 years old how to even get on that track. I think that's different today. I think that if you're an 18-year-old today and you want to get on that track, there's at least more of a sense of optionality. There's a lot more to do,

but I actually think that we're in a better, I don't know if you agree with this. I think that we're in a much better place today than we were when I was graduating from high school. Well, anecdotally, I can tell you that we've been doing our work ethic scholarship program now for about 15 years. And this year, we got 10 times the applications than we did the year before. Now, I'm not doing anything different. So, yeah, maybe it's the student debt message. Yeah. Maybe Gen Z got that memo.

Maybe the parents got the memo. Or maybe we're just looking at the math, too, man. I mean, for every five tradespeople who retire, like the one you just described, two replacements. place them. And it's been that way 11, 12 years. So the math ain't great. The stigmas, the stereotypes, the myths, the misperceptions, all those things need to be debunked. And really what this campaign aims to do is, if I have my way, anyhow, I almost always do. I can tell a story anecdotally, but we need that the 18-year-old version of that Stone Mason. That's right. And the electrician and the steam fitter and the pipe fitter and the welder and the CNC operator

who are prospering as a result of mastering a skill to, in their own words, their own words, tell their own story. And if we can condense that and blast it out through the channels, I've seen, that's my question, and that's my question, the power of good PR. Like you said you love to debate. Yeah. What do you find most persuasive at the,

guts of the argument I'm trying to make. It's exactly what you're talking about. It's stories. Ideas and abstractions have never moved me and have never particularly persuaded me. But I think that the people's stories, this idea that there's a connection between a kid's skill level, a kid's ambition, a kid's work, and some outcome that's very good. I think that we've got to tell more of those stories. And, you know, the thing about the skilled trades that is also different, probably from certainly 10 years ago, 15 years ago, is the financial part of it. And again, all this stuff has to work together. But I think people recognize that you could make a very, very good living. Again, the attitude when I was an 18-year-old kid was if you become a welder,

if you're lucky, you'll make way less than the kids who went to college and your job may very well disappear by the time that you're 50. That's not the story that we're telling today. And it's clear the market is sending a signal that these skill trades are valuable, and you're seeing it in the wages that people are able to earn. I still think fundamentally the storytelling, because here's the thing. One of the insights that I've had, just look back at my grandfather and at various people that I grew up with, is you have to have a pathway for both the hyper-ambitious, but also the people who just want a normal life. And by the way, I'm indifferent between the two. I admire hyper-ambitious people. I also admire people who are just like, you know what? I want to do something meaningful. I

I want to hang out with my kids. I want to, you know, I just want to be there for my family. But that hyper ambition rhymes with striving, which rhymes with pride. Correct. Exactly. And now that's your... But hyper ambition towards something valuable is different from hyper ambition because you want to be better than other people. That's the thing that... I mean, I wouldn't call it hyper ambition, but like if you're ambitious because you really want to build a beautiful home, that's different than I want to be better than all the other home builders. There's just a fundamental difference between... It's almost like... social ambition of the desire to be better than other people, I really mistrust that. I think it's

fine if you want to start a construction business and build beautiful homes that people can live in. I think that ambition is very good. It's also totally fine to be the guy who just wants to work for the guy who started for the construction business and help him build beautiful homes. One of the things that I worry about still with the skilled trades is that I think a lot of people see the pathway to a decent job where you're making 70, 80, maybe more than that, $1,000 a year, not as many people see the optionality to build something that is long-term and sustainable. Now, I'm not saying it's not there, but I think those stories, they have to be told too, because for every 10 welders who are going to build something amazing and build a good life for

their family, one of those guys is going to want to start his own welding business and do something a little bit different. And I think you've got to tell both sides of that story. Boy, I mean, you buried the lead, in my opinion, that in reverse, you know, we've had 3,500 people come through our foundation. The number of people who start with a welding cert and then wind up getting a plumbing certification and then get an electric and then they hire a buddy to work with them. Now they've got a van. Now they've got two vans. Now they got an HVAC guy. And now you've got a mechanical contracting company. Yes. a going concern.

So that's the second stage of build freedom. We have to, first of all, make the case for the opportunities in the Dib, the defense industrial base, right? Yep. But then we have to go as wide as we can. And I wonder, and I know, how are we doing on time? He's got, I know he's got somewhere to be. It's 3.30 right now.

2.30. We get a little more time. Are you sure? Yeah, yeah. Okay, because you're going to see Bill Maher. I'm going to see Bill Maher, yeah. I'll see, by the way. Okay, so let me, quick sidebar.

Tell him I said hello. Okay. That same year, I went on Meet the Press. Yeah. The great Canary in the Coal Mine for me was the week I did real time with Bill Mark. Okay. Not because of that show necessarily, but because three days later, I went on Glenn Beck's show. Now, at the time, I'd been trying to build my social profile, and I had like six million people on a Facebook page. Yeah.

Holy shit. All my buddies on the left just clutch. their pearls and fainted when they saw me on Glenn Beck. They couldn't believe it. And all my buddies on the right, just the disappointment of seeing me sitting next to Bill Maher. Now, the crazy thing is I told the same story, delivered the same message, the exact same thing. I've been beaten, same drum I've been beating. And when I saw that reaction, that's when I truly knew that our country had entered a place where we were less interested in what was being said and more interested in who was sitting. Yes. Next to the sayer. And I don't think we've come back yet. I don't know

how we do. So sorry to completely shift it. I think we're better than we were in 2016, but we haven't quite come back yet. You have any idea what kind of grief I'm going to get? I mean, thank you for participating in the micro blows up half the country, you know, tour. But no, I don't care, and I've never cared, but I'm super aware of it. Yeah. Dude, you went on the view, which, by the way. Thank you. By the way.

You know, and I, again, said to Jay, you don't get points for being great in a debate. You have to be great in a debate, and you have to debate. Yeah. You didn't have to go on the view. No, no. But I'm glad I did. I'm glad you did, too. I mean, I think the only way to pierce through this is to actually go and try to do these conversations everywhere, right?

And you're the kind of guy where everybody from the left or the right can talk to, and that's good. That's an amazing thing. But you also need to be willing to go into more hostile places, and you need to be willing to go into more ideological places. And if you're not, I just don't, like, why are you in public life if you don't think you can carry your message, if you don't think there's even a chance of persuading, not 50% of the people who are watching me on the view, but maybe 10% of the people who are watching me on the view thought at the very least,

maybe this guy isn't such an asshole, but hopefully, hopefully they thought, you know, high bar. I mean, look, if you set a low expectation, you're going to exceed it, right? That's one of the most important lessons in life, man. That's Dirty Jobs 101. Like the whole mission statement was,

my name's a micro, this is my job. I explore the country looking for people who aren't afraid to get dirty, hardworking men and women who do the kinds of blood. I didn't promise to find them. I didn't promise to work. That's right. And I certainly didn't promise to be good at anything. I just promised to try.

That's right. And that's what I do. I try. And I think that the solution to people talk about the division in our country, I think that the division is a symptom of something much deeper. But fundamentally, one of the ways to bridge the divide is just to go and talk to people. Like, yeah, the ladies. the views. Some of them were asking unfair questions or talking over me a little bit, but they were

fine. They were nice to me. They allowed me to have a platform to say what I wanted to say. And that's all you can really ask for? Well, that was my comment, Bill, after the interview. I'm like, look, I don't have deeply felt opinions about you personally, but I'm really interested in your audience. Yeah. It's like eight million of them. Exactly. And a lot of those people have kids and they have no idea what they're going to do with the rest of their life. And they've been told they're screwed if they don't borrow whatever it takes to go in a very specific direction. Yep.

I wonder if before I let you go, you can say something unforgettable about AI. I just talked to the Senator McCormick. Yep. Smart guy. Dave. Plenty smart. Yeah, yeah. Good guy, too.

And we've been going back and forth on this issue. I think Pennsylvania could quite likely lead the charge. to reinvigorate the trades. They're doing great stuff. But he said, you know, the Chinese are doing all kinds of mischief in terms of influencing and persuading Americans to form opinions around data centers and AI. That, well, let's just say a manufactured consensus. Sure. To the point where 75% of the people in this country hold a negative view of both.

Meanwhile, 85% of Chinese citizens feel pretty great about it. Sure. What's at stake? What's being exaggerated? And how much should I be worried? Well, I think that the big mistake that we've made in the United States with respect to data centers, I had to say it to be a little partisan, more in blue states than red states, is when you build these massive data centers, they require a lot of power. By the way, you cannot do anything.

any of the AI stuff, the good or the bad, and obviously I want us to do more the good without the data centers at the foundation. The actual computing power exists in these data centers. And we obviously don't want the Chinese to control this. We want to control this. Yeah. Okay. So the mistake that we've made is when you build the data center,

particularly in a blue state, and you allow it to tap into the existing grid, but you don't build other power, then people's electricity costs skyrocket, and they don't know what the hell's going on. They just know that data center means more expensive utility bills for themselves and their families. I've said this to the AI people.

I've said this to the people who were building the data centers. I actually said this to one of them last night. A friend of mine, we were having dinner, and I said, man, the thing that you guys have got to do is build the power. The problem is not the data centers. The problem is that the United States is not building electricity generation for a 21st century economy. If you look, there's this chart I'm obsessed with,

where it looks at the amount of electricity generated by China versus the United States. Okay? In the late 90s, the two lines crossed, meaning the Chinese started making as much power as the United States of America. Since that time,

it is flatlined in the U.S. So as crazy as this might sound, in 2026, we produce about the same amount of power as we did in 1996 in the United States of America. China has three-ext. So this is actually not a data center problem.

It's a utility and power generation problem, and we're working on a lot of stuff of the Trump administration to deregulate and make it easier to build power plants, but you've just got to build more power in this country. If you do that, people won't care about the data centers because they'll see data centers as jobs and opportunity, not hire utility bills. If that's the, that's exactly the chart. Look at you, Chuck.

Deep pool. Wow, Chuck. It's a big day. Holy cow. That's impressive. That's AI right there. It's Chuck, man. That's amazing.

Let's go. He's my optimist. But look at that. That is just so crazy. Horrifying. Horrifying. They built a thousand ships last year. That's right.

What the hell, Mr. Vice President? Three. Because as much as I love my pat ball, because we allowed this sensibility to infect ourselves that, you know, working with your hands is incompatible with working with your minds. Because we allowed the skilled trades to disappear, we stopped. we stopped being good at building things. I'll tell you, though, I'm fundamentally hopeful about the United States of America

because other countries get in this cycle and they just stagnate and they don't try to fix it. We're actually fixing it. So I think that chart's going to be different in 10 years, but it's up to us to actually make the right decisions. Look, that's why we got the hat.

Absolutely. That's why we're doing the thing. Men with guns are telling me it's time for you to leave. Through long, bitter experience, I've learned never to argue with an HK or a gloss. All right, man.

Hey, man. Seriously, I really appreciate your time. It's a terrific book. It's called Communion. Yeah, I recommend it. Because sooner or later, we're all going to wrestle with everything in here. Thank you, Mike. Good to see you, man.

You too. 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 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

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