What if school could be reimagined from the ground up? This week, Mike sits down with entrepreneur and education innovator MacKenzie Price , the founder of Alpha School , a model that's attracting global attention for helping students learn twice as much in half the time. Using artificial intelligence, personalized learning, and an unconventional approach to education, MacKenzie is challenging nearly every assumption about how kids should be taught. She also makes the case that meaningful change...
Jun 23, 2026•1 hr 56 min•Ep. 491
In honor of Father's Day, we're sharing several hilarious chapters from the audio version of Peggy Rowe's bestselling book About Your Father. Buy all three audiobooks from bestselling author Peggy Rowe for $30 or $15 individually at: https://bit.ly/MomsAudiobooks Tip o' the hat to our excellent sponsor PureTalk.com/Rowe Pure Talk is matching donations dollar for dollar until they hit two hundred fifty THOUSAND DOLLARS for America's Warrior Partnership, who is on the frontlines of supporting our ...
Jun 20, 2026•30 min•Ep. 490
Why do so many of the things that make us stronger, healthier, and happier require doing things the hard way? Mike sits down with bestselling author, journalist, and researcher Michael Easter to explore the surprising benefits of discomfort, challenge, and voluntary hardship in a world engineered for convenience. Easter, whose work has appeared in Men's Health , Outside , Esquire , and Scientific American , discusses the ideas behind his bestselling books The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain , ...
Jun 16, 2026•1 hr 57 min•Ep. 489
Spontaneous Order might sound like a contradiction, but according to author, entrepreneur, and educator Connor Boyack, some of society's most important innovations emerge without a master plan. Mike sits down with Connor, the bestselling co-creator and co-author of The Tuttle Twins book series that inspired the hit animated show, founder and president of the Libertas Network and a leading advocate for teaching the principles of liberty, entrepreneurship, personal responsibility, and free markets...
Jun 09, 2026•1 hr 51 min•Ep. 488
Mike Rowe sits down with Blake Scholl, the former Amazon software engineer turned aerospace entrepreneur who walked away from Silicon Valley to revive supersonic passenger travel. As the founder of Boom Supersonic , Blake explains the century-long pursuit of faster flight. From the Cold War race to break the sound barrier to the rise—and fall—of the Concorde, Blake explains why supersonic travel disappeared just as it seemed destined to change aviation forever. He also shares how Boom Supersonic...
Jun 02, 2026•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 487
Mike sits down with master card mechanic and sleight-of-hand expert Jason Ladanye , whose impossible demonstrations of gambling moves and psychological deception have earned him a reputation as one of the best card handlers working today. Jason explains how a childhood obsession with cards—and an influential mentorship with legendary magician Darwin Ortiz—shaped his career performing around the world. Along the way, Jason shows Mike how magicians secretly track cards through a shuffled deck, dem...
May 26, 2026•1 hr 54 min•Ep. 486
Founder and president of Montana Knife Company Josh Smith sits down with Mike to discuss his unlikely path from working as a lineman to becoming one of America's premier master bladesmiths. The conversation dives into the grit, craftsmanship, and obsession with quality that helped turn a small operation into one of the fastest-growing knife manufacturers in the country. The two also talk about the grand opening of MKC's brand-new 50,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Missoula, where Josh ...
May 19, 2026•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 485
In this episode Mike explores the growing race for critical minerals hidden deep beneath the Pacific Ocean with mining executive Tom Albanese, Chairman of American Ocean Minerals and former CEO of Rio Tinto and Vedanta Resources. Tom has spent more than four decades in the global mining and metals business, overseeing some of the largest resource projects on earth. Now he's focused on something even more ambitious: harvesting polymetallic nodules from the ocean floor—potato-sized rocks packed wi...
May 12, 2026•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 484
In this special LIVE edition of Coffee with Mome, Mike heads home for Mother's Day and sits down with the woman who taught him everything worth knowing — his mom, Peggy Rowe. Recorded in front of a live audience at the place Peggy refers to as The Home, this episode is filled with the warmth, wit, and wonderfully sharp observations fans have come to expect from America's Grandmother. From family stories and hard-earned wisdom to laughter that only comes from decades of shared history, Mike and P...
May 08, 2026•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 483
Mike sits down with author and Cultural Revolution survivor Xi Van Fleet for a conversation that's equal parts personal history and cautionary tale. Xi recounts her childhood under Mao Zedong's China, where conformity wasn't encouraged—it was enforced. As a schoolgirl, she watched teachers publicly humiliated, neighbors turn on each other, and young people mobilized as ideological foot soldiers. Education gave way to indoctrination, and individuality was crushed in favor of collective obedience—...
May 05, 2026•1 hr 50 min•Ep. 482
