Made in America?

Made in America. You'd have to take out a mortgage.

It's one more.

Thing, one more thing.

Before we get to that. Okay, do you go to the gym every day? I've heard of these my whole life. I've never done them. What is a crunch.

It's like a sit up where your knees are bent and your elbows and your knees touch.

Sit up where your knees are bent and you touch your own.

Feet off the ground.

Yeah, so you don't have to have your feet off the ground really technically, but it's not like a full set up because they figured they found out that it's not good for your back or something.

So it's like a semi sit up.

I've done a gazillion sit ups in my life, but it's working the same muscles. Crunches and sit ups.

Yeah, you can terminal muscles, yeah, different parts anyway.

You can like alternate elbow, right elbow to left knee and back and forth and that sort of thing.

I just up halfway.

I just saw this. Uh, how many crunches you should be able to do at different ages? And it's a like thirty one you're in your forties and twenty one you're in your fifties.

And how likely should I be to fall for listicles at various ages?

Right, yeah, I don't know anyway.

I was just thinking about that because I I one of the reasons I've never done any crunches is for whatever reason, that's not a body part. I've been likened the one body part, like if there was a great exercise for my calves. I am so embarrassed by my calves. That's like, if I have to get undressed anywhere, what I think everybody's staring at is my calves.

So if I really, yes, are they get leggedday?

Or is that what? My calves are so skinny? I'm just genetically that's just the way I'm built. I mean, they are like little toothpicks. They're probably sinewy though, right somewhat. But my ankles I have tiny bone structures, So my ankles are tiny like a pencil. And then it goes up there to the knee and you're like a racehorse or chicken. I used to lift weights with this big chicken. Yeah all right, right, or that's what a friend of mine used to say, are those your legs or are

Wow, I don't know how much you can build up angle.

Well, right, you can't do anything about your ankles. Your ankles or your ankles.

There are few things that hurt more than your calves being sore after like really working them out. It makes walking so difficult.

But I've been I've been in the gym like almost every day for I don't know how many months now a lot, and and it's it's been good for me, but I don't do anything for my calves, and it's so and it's becoming more noticeable, not less.

So.

The rest of my body has like you know, improved, but I still look like I'm are you writing a chicken? It's not like an important thing in my life, but I just look at and I wish there was something similar to crunches that they've really developed that they think, man, this really targets your calves and mandous results.

Well, you could just you know, you stand flat footed, then raise up on your toes, hold it for two three seconds and do that.

Thirty A lot of those, and I've never seen anything ever happen.

What could be just you're not built to that's having been moderately overweight my entire life.

I have very beautifully developed calves.

You ever, you know, you see a big fat guy on the street, if he moves around a lot, he's not a sedentary fat guy. He's gonna have massive calves from one of the few benefits of being overweight.

Because you're exercising them just by moving around.

You're lifting weights.

I like what my coach said to me the other day. I work out for everyone else's safety because you get you get all the aggression out, and then you can go about your day.

Oh there you go. Yeah.

Final note before we get into the gist of the podcast today. I just have a very tight schedule today and I was texting my beloved bride, do you have time to make me a ham sandwich? But inexplicably I typed, do you have time to making me a man sandwich? And I realized just before they sent it, I don't even know what that would be.

But it doesn't sound.

Good, and it's not the way to introduce it through text unless you do it regularly. And let's this is something. Maybe that's it? Okay, so you and make man sandwiches on a regular basis. So it was pickups, and you know that's what we call it was an odd for you gardener down the street. It wasn't odd for you to say you have time for man sandwich today. The gardeners here.

Oh boy, oh boy, glad I did not hit send. Where were we are? Speaking of smartphones? Johanna Stern, who writes the tech column for The Wall Street Journal, an American made iPhone just expensive or completely impossible?

And you know, I'm kind of curious.

About that question, and it might be something we all find out at some like soon, but I just I'm more interested just in what it takes to assemble something like a smart.

But on that topic, I keep seeing these memes of or comments about, so this is what we want Americans, you know, sewing shoes together or tuning, turning tiny screws and iPhones.

Yeah.

Wait, when do we become this precious about jobs?

Yeah?

I lifted up bales of hay every single day first four years because it was a great job and I made money, and I bought a motorcycle in high school and everything I did it willingly. There are people that would turn screws and iPhones willing it's not your dream job or you want to end up in life. But if it's a job that pays enough to do, why why you decided that that's I don't know, I don't I don't get that angle of attack on this whole tearf thing.

As that young man who we talked about, who was a Navy seal, Harvard doctor and astronaut, said there's no job that you're better than. I'll go with his attitude. But anyway, mm, I find some of this stuff really interesting, you know, and not to get to terrify on you on the podcast, but so Commerce secretary who told CBS has faced the nation it's.

Going to be automated.

We're going to make the iPhones in the country, and they point out, except the iPhones contain a patchwork of sophisticated parts sourced from many countries and put together primarily in China, where electronics manufacturing has been perfected over a generation. America doesn't have facilities that resemble Chinese ones, nor does it have skilled manpower to assemble iPhones at that scale. I don't know how long it would take to pick up those skills Honestly.

I don't think I've ever seen the inside of an iPhone. Oddly enough, so, she.

Writes, we assembled a panel of manufacturing and tech experts to find out how hard it would be for Apple to bring iPhone production to the US. The short answer, it's easier to teach a bald eagle to use a screwdriver. They unanimously agree, it's very difficult. They have talents, jack and no thumbs. Building the full stack of iPhone com opponents and assembling in in the US impossible. Shifting some

In the land of the free.

There are parts from over forty different countries inside a single iPhone.

And that would be the free market of building iPhones at work. That each part is, where's the cheapest way, cheapest slash fastest we can get this part to us?

Yeah, and the most complex and specialized components come from about a half a dozen different countries. According to this Duke University professor who spent decades studying global manufacturing. Right now, many of those parts, the sophisticated ones are made in or near China, Taiwan, South Korean Japan, which benefit from

Does this agree with?

Other?

Apple said this, and then another news story said the iPhone would cost thirty five hundred bucks if you made even some of it in the United States. Uh, yeah, I'd be a pre expensive dang phone. Yes, Michael, Yeah, this go ahead, Michael.

I was just thinking, what about cheaper components. You know, they got the fancy glass on it suddenly becomes really plastic and.

It wouldn't be the iPhone if they started doing cheaper stuff, no doubt.

Yeah, And again, this isn't about scaring into anybody into supporting Trump or being against him or anything. I just thought it was interesting describing the realities of the global assembly of electronics. And they mentioned that when Apple began building the MacPro desktop in the US, one of the first roadblocks was sourcing enough parts, including screws close to home screws and yeah, yeah, the little screws that hold the thing together.

They're made in Asia.

That seems like something we should surely.

We can make those. Well, of course we can.

Yeah, and instead of being ten dollars a gross, they'd be one hundred dollars of gross. Times the dozens and dozens and dozens of components in an iPhone. That's the problem, these little elements in assembling the thing.

They would all go.

Up, and it would take a while to build a plant that built those screws to those specifications. It's not impossible, it's just very time consuming and expensive. Even if funding were no object, this expert estimates it would take three to five years to build out the scale and qual required for us to join hands in a big American manufacturing kumbaya.

I'm not going to make a man sandwich with you. Your calves are too small otherwise at all in.

Yeah, yeah, uh, Then they talk about the severe labor shortage that we talked about the other day. Fox Khan, which assembles iPhones, has said it employs three hundred thousand workers in Jungxhu, China, known as iPhone City. Was that three hundred thousand? Is that where the least?

The rumors were that they had like putting nets outside the windows because so many people were jumping out the window to kill themselves'ck.

The nets were just to keep people the people got past our suicide guards.

That wasn't a lot of people.

Hiring is one of the biggest problems facing existing American manufacturers. Current manufacturers can't fill their job. What are you gonna do about that? Wise guy? Huh kick him off welfare.

So if if there's anybody listening who had skinny calves and managed to come up with an exercise that actually did anything about it.

Oh my god, with the calves.

Have you heard of the internet?

How about uh uh? Well, I want actual real world experience. The internet is full of crap. Have you used the internet recently?

So many And if you go to the gym every day, ask somebody at the gym.

That's gonna like, for a second, I'm not talking to a human being. I'm not talking to a human being in person.

That's a filler.

But yeah, we have fillers. The implants is a thing I couldn't do that.

They could do that.

The problem is one of the problems is because my ankles are so skinny. There's nothing I can do about that. There's nothing you can do about the size of your bone, of your ankle or your wrists. It's just what it is in adulthood. Even if what filler filler? Oh oh oh, that was my last tread of respect for you. If I got calf filler. Yeah, no kidding, Yeah, that'd be too much.

The better figure it out soon because summers around the corner you have to.

Wear short No, I am not. I have not worn shorts in thirty years, so I will be fine. Well, why, said Jack?

Tell Katie?

Why?

Why?

Because I'm a grown up, grown man.

Okay, what's your actual answer for not working?

That's my actual answer?

You're kidding me, it is.

Would you like me to forward the New York Times article that agrees with me that grown men should not wear shorts?

I wear long pants only under protest or for formal occasions.

Uh.

Just one more final note on the on the iPhone thing, because I think somebody probably finds it as interesting as your calves. Tim Cook told Fortune, but the incentive to build in China wasn't really cheap labor. Of course he would say that.

Wouldn't he.

Yeah, of course he would.

I think both things are true. The products we do require really advanced tooling. That's the sophisticated iPhone making equipment. In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields.

Wow, that's troubling because.

They crank out all the specialized engineers. It's such enormous numbers.

Well, that's what Trump's trying to change, though, He's trying to make it so we would have more of those kind of people. Take a long time.

The one thing he needs to do, and he's trying is crush the woke educational complex. Let's get back to educating kids.

And would that help?

You know?

Else? He can fill JACKX calves with some filler.

I'll post a picture. I'll try to get a good picture. You think, well, I've seen skinny cabs. No, you don't know. I will post a picture. It's shocking.

Did you? Did you, guys happen to see the little picture I sent you? These are a pair of socks that I will be purchasing for Jack as soon as we're done with the podcast. They turn your legs into chicken legs with a little chicken fee.

Yeah that would that would be that? Would that would be that? Yeah, that'd be too real on my legs.

How the f did you find those?

A pair of My friend has a pair of those. It's so funny when she wears them.

That's a terrible look.

It's so funny every day at the gym, my buddy, Matt, those are your legs? You right in chicken every day?

Where do you stand on novelty socks?

Mister?

I wear long pants all the time, no matter how hot it is. Do you have any like fun socks?

I'm wearing some right now that I hate to curse again, but I'm wearing some cousin eddie socks right now that say full.

O. You know what?

Classy is the only word that pops to mind.

Yeah, I like this thing.

With my suit. I'm wearing a suit, yeah, reeks of class I resisted that for years, but my kids start buying them for me, so I've kind of embraced it. Oh and you go into those stores, the socks stores that just have walls, there's so oh you have it. They're great. I have my favorite Haberdash They're great.

They're so funny.

Everything in the world, I mean, anything you can imagine of socks. Like my son really likes just the various snack socks. He's got Cheeto's, he's got Dorito's, he's got no but I have tacos.

I call him my top socks.

It's just random, weird, you know. Uh, socks for beverages, food. My favorite pair that I yes, well.

My favorite pair that I owned, Sorry, Hanson, they just say polite.

As oh more bleeping. I'm withdrawing from this conversation. I just it's beneath me, take.

My skinny legs and walk out.

Well, I don't want a man sandwich, but I'll go with a man witch. I need some sloppy jos. Yes, Well, I guess that's it.