The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

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 with nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, and rare earth elements that are critical to batteries, AI infrastructure, defense systems, smartphones, and modern energy technology.
Mike and Tom discuss why these nodules have become one of the most hotly contested resources in the world and how the race for critical minerals has evolved into both an economic and geopolitical battle. They also explain why many companies see the deep ocean as an alternative to opening hundreds of new land mines. Hint: These nodules sit unattached on the ocean floor just waiting to be vacuumed up without need for blasting or tunneling.
It's a conversation that feels part science fiction, part industrial history, and part treasure hunt. Because sometimes the next gold rush isn't in the mountains. It's sitting three miles beneath the top of the ocean.
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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 Peggy talk about motherhood, growing older disgracefully, and the strange adventure of becoming a beloved public figure later in life. It's funny, heartfelt, occasionally mischievous, and exactly the kind of conversation you'd hope to overhear around the kitchen table on Mother's Day.
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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—the kind that produces "shiny little screws."
Drawing from her first book, Mao's America, Xi lays out how mass movements rooted in ideology often rely on dividing people into opposing groups—"good" versus "bad"—to consolidate power. She also comments on how youth are frequently weaponized to accelerate cultural upheaval and dismantle traditional institutions, often by encouraging them to reject established norms and embrace radical ideologies. These patterns, she argues, aren't relics of history—they're recurring tactics. And they are showing up in America today!
The conversation then turns to her latest work, Made in America, where the focus shifts from warning signs to origin stories. The central theme: the rise of Communist China wasn't inevitable—it was, in part, enabled by decisions made in the United States. Xi explores how decades of policy, economic cooperation, and ideological blind spots helped transform China into a global superpower, creating what she sees as one of America's greatest modern challenges.
It's a conversation less about politics and more about people, choices, and consequences where Xi ends with a warning to America and why resisting the urge to become a "shiny little screw" might be more important than ever.
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Former congressman Jason Altmire has spent years in Washington—and even more time outside it—making the case that America's biggest opportunity isn't behind a desk, but behind a welding mask, a set of tools, or the wheel of a big machine. Now leading Career Education Colleges and Universities, he's on a mission to close the skills gap and reconnect hard work with real opportunity.
In this episode, Mike and Jason dig into why millions of good jobs go unfilled, why the stigma around skilled labor refuses to die, and what it'll take to convince a new generation that "college for all" might not be the answer.
Along the way, they unpack the ideas behind Jason's book, Trade Up: Why the Future Belongs to Skilled Trades and How Career Education is Transforming the Workforce—and make a compelling case that the fastest way to achieve the American Dream might be to pursue a skilled trade.
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Matt Ebert didn't set out to build a billion-dollar business—he just wanted to fix cars the right way. Today, he's the CEO of Crash Champions, one of the fastest-growing collision repair companies in the country, valued in the billions and trusted to bring wrecked vehicles back to life.
Mike sits down with Matt to unpack what really happens after a crash, why the skilled trades behind collision repair matter more than ever, and how a kid with no grand plan or college degree wound up leading a national powerhouse. Along the way, Matt tells how he got his start in the business, proving that sometimes the road to success begins with a single accident (or two) … and a desire to fix it.
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