Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:21 Hey everybody, welcome to Chuck Yates needs a job, the podcast, and this is kind of crazy. You know, I was almost born in Minnesota. My dad, what's the famous medical place in Minneapolis, St.

0:35 Paul?

0:38 Mayo Clinic, I think. Yeah, dad had his job. That's what you're thinking about. Yeah, dad coming out of med school, had a job offer from Mayo Clinic, and instead went to work with his father

0:48 in downtown Houston. So I wound up being in Texas Texan instead of a Minnesota, and I've always said that crushed my athletic the been have would I 'cause, greatest career goon in all of hockey

1:00 history, given the way I play basketball, so. Oh, that's great. Yeah, my co-author and I guess co-founder of our company was the goon on his hockey team So he appreciates that kind of mentality

1:16 for sure. Nice. So Isaac, who the heck are you? We we met what 24 hours ago on Twitter and nice to meet you, but who the heck are you? Yeah, that's a great question. So my name is Isaac Orr.

1:29 I'm the vice president of research at Always On Energy Research. So that's a new company. Previous to that, I worked at a company called Center of the American Experiment, which is a free market

1:41 think tank located in Minnesota. So for the last six years, I've basically been clockwork orangeing the walls administration and their policies. And we've done a lot of research on the impact of

1:53 their low carbon fuel standard proposal, their 100 carbon free electricity bill. So we basically have been writing the book on his energy policies for the last six years, which is why I put out

2:06 that Twitter thread yesterday to help people get an idea of what does Tim Wall's advocate for what does he enact and what could we expect moving forward if he becomes vice president. So, so let's

2:19 jump into that and we'll do it in the, you know, in the great thread of Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale and the Vikings losing Ford Super Bowls, but in fairness, Prince is a badass. So we'll

2:32 give Minnesota that I knew nothing about walls when he was picked to VP level set us, who is the sky and in particular, what's he been doing in the energy realm? Yeah, so previous to becoming the

2:48 governor in 2019, Tim Walz represented the first congressional district in the state of Minnesota, which is the southern part of the state. It's a very rural district and it's also a very

2:59 conservative district. So he was one of the last rural Democrats in the the house before he, you know, decided to run for governor. He had a pretty moderate profile in the House of Representatives.

3:13 He was endorsed by the NRA, you know, he was a small town school teacher. So a lot of people, and he was running against in the primary for governor, a ticket that was more perceived as more

3:25 progressive. So walls was kind of like the moderate choice in that election for

3:32 2018, you know, he, when he was, and then he won the primary So he was the candidate and he did kind of run as like the moderate centrist candidate. And then once he was elected to office, he

3:45 started to change his tune and enact policies that were more representative of the progressive wing of the Democrat party in Minnesota, as opposed to kind of striking that balance. And one of the

3:57 things that walls did when he was campaigning, his slogan was one Minnesota So he wanted to kind of be a uniter and take the perspectives of greater Minnesota, rural Minnesota, and the urban areas.

4:10 So that was kind of his campaign theme, but it hasn't really played out like that in practice. That's, I mean, very familiar, that was Biden's approach in

4:22 2020. And so, let's, did he do anything energy wise when he was in the House of Representatives? Anything of note? Are we just going to be talking about him as governor? That I'm not sure of.

4:38 I'm a Wisconsin native. So, when you say, like, Vikings lost four Super Bowls, I kind of chuckled. So, I'm a Cowboys fan. So, you know. Oh, yeah. Okay. I guess we don't like each other

4:50 because of the Packers, but we'll, we'll try to put that past us. Yeah, I think we can. I think we can. It helps for me that the Packers have been spanking the Cowboys lately, but if you can

5:01 get past it, I can get past it. So,

5:05 I moved here to Minnesota in 2016, so he had one term as a congressman, and that really wasn't on my radar. So really what I'm going to focus on today is his track record as a governor, and when

5:19 he was running for governor in 2018, he had proposed a slew of liberal policies, right? Democrat kind of boilerplate policies, but they weren't Green New Deal type policies So he campaigned on a

5:32 modest increase in the gas tax. There was an aging oil pipeline, the Enbridge line three pipeline that was operating at half capacity because of corrosion in the pipeline. So he said, you know,

5:44 the public utilities commission unanimously approved the replacement of this pipeline. This just needs to get done. And then once he was elected, he decided, okay, well, now I'm going to try and

5:56 raise the gas tax by 20 cents per gallon, which was a 70 increase would have made Minnesota the fourth highest gas tax in the country. And he also decided that, uh, maybe we need to do a little

6:06 bit more study on this pipeline before we actually allow this corroding, you know, on pressure or depressurize pipeline to get replaced. So there, there we have that kind of, um,

6:22 we have the moderate policy and then you have the proposal and then you have the more progressive policy and that happened with his renewable energy mandates to he wanted to bump Minnesota up from

6:33 being a 25 by 2025 state, which was enacted in 2007, which is way before his term as governor, but he campaigned on going to 50 renewable energy by 2030 and then shortly after he said, no, we

6:47 need to go to 100. Let's turn this up to 11 And so they eventually got that passed in 2023. And the interesting thing is there were several amendments to that proposed by Republican lawmakers, but

7:04 None of them were adopted. So the interesting thing is Republicans tried to allow new nuclear plants to be built in the state. Minnesota currently has a moratorium on building new nuclear power

7:16 plants. That was defeated along party lines. They offered amendments that would have said, okay, well, if we have a blackout because we don't have enough reliable power plants on the system,

7:22 let's pump the brakes on this policy. That

7:30 got voted down And there were also amendments offered for cost containment. If this gets too expensive, let's pump the brakes on this again. And that got voted down. So, you know, Governor Wals

7:41 can't control what policy makes it to his desk, but he can decide whether or not he wants to sign it. And he signed off on that. So let's break some of these down. Was the gasoline tax pure? I'm

7:56 raising the tax to drop demand We need fewer fossil fuel cars out there running around burning. burning gasoline or was there the element? Was it pitched as we just need more revenue and this is the

8:11 place to get it? So where I'm kind of going with this is, was this driven by economics or was it driven by the environmentalist side of the table? Yeah, so when pitching the policy, it was all

8:26 about roads and bridges. We have infrastructure that needs to be upkept and this is the best way to do it is what he was saying. So that proposal also took money. Some of the general fund money

8:39 that's raised in Minnesota via taxes on other things is also used to build roads and bridges. So it was going to be a cost shift. He was going to take or stop sending money from the general fund to

8:48 the transportation fund. That's all kind of in the weed stuff. But more to your point about what was the the intention behind it. He's also proposed a low carbon fuel standard for the state And for

9:02 your listeners, a low carbon fuel standard originated in California, it's a policy that's designed to reduce the carbon intensity of the fuel supply. And basically, what it does is it increases

9:15 the cost of gasoline at the pump, because there's like a complex cap and trade system, essentially, for your emissions from your fuel supply. So people pay more at the pump, and that subsidizes

9:29 the construction of electric vehicle charging stations and other producers of low-carbon fuel. So there definitely is an element where Governor Wallace wants to increase the price of gasoline in

9:42 order to pay for decarbonizing the transportation fleet. Got you. Has there been any discussion in Minnesota that he's had a part of where the electric vehicles you pay dollar per mile or something?

9:59 because you're not paying the gasoline tax. Have y'all gone down that rabbit hole any in Minnesota? So we haven't gone down the vehicle miles travel path, but I do believe that EVs have a slightly

10:10 higher registration fee in order to try and recoup some of that lost gas tax revenue. Gotcha. I am thoroughly convinced, well, I rent my senior thesis when I was at Wright's University on the

10:25 Kennedy assassination and I believe the CIA did it So I've worn a tin foil at my whole life, but I truly believe the push for electric vehicles is ultimately they want us paying dollar per mile. And

10:39 so that's so that the government can just track us wherever we're going. And I know you say, we all have a cell phone and they can track a cell phone. Technically now they do have to get a court

10:50 order to be able to look at my cell phone. And if you're just paying dollar per mile in taxes, everybody will accept the. they've got a monitor in their car following them around. I get that

11:04 people would fall for that. So that's my grand conspiracy on why we want electric vehicles. When if you really do the math with a pretty sharp pencil, they're not that much better for the

11:14 environment. You know, I mean, it's five year payback type stuff when you come, when you look at it on a carbon

11:23 scale. You know, yes, they're better than gas powered vehicles, but it takes a while to hit payback on that. Well, yeah, and that also really depends on the assumptions that you're using for

11:35 how often you're using your EV, because,

11:40 you know, if people have an electric vehicle, they probably also have an internal combustion engine vehicle that they're using for longer road trips. So maybe the EV is your local grocery getter or

11:49 your commuter car, but you are also keeping that internal combustion engine vehicle if you want to take a road trip. For me, my folks live four hours away in Wisconsin and it is just not feasible

12:01 to take an EV from Minnesota back to rural Wisconsin. Just charging is going to be a nightmare. But also, if I want to go back for Christmas, the range of that vehicle is going to decrease because

12:15 anything, well, I forget the exact temperature cut off, but you get a pretty significant reduction in battery range and colder temperatures. Yeah, no, it

12:25 was funny. I drove a Tesla, but then my internal combustion engine car, like you said, because you have to have backup was a Hummer H2, and I always had the joke that I was prepared for whatever

12:38 investor I was meeting with. Oh, yeah, I'm saving the environment with my Tesla. Don't worry about gas demand because I'll suck it all up with my H2.

12:48 So this Enbridge line is, again, the pause he put on it is, you know, I've had a former member of Greenpeace on the

13:02 podcast, and we've chatted about it, and Kelly's delightful. She's a dear friend. We disagree about everything. But her take on any sort of energy infrastructure, 'cause I would make the case of,

13:12 let's please go make this Enbridge line safer, you know? Let's do that. That's a good thing. That's incrementally making it better. I'm sure it'll drop emissions. And her point always is, yes,

13:24 but the second we put that in, that means we have 50 more years of hydrocarbons. And we've got to get rid of them sooner than that. So is that kind of his take now on the

13:36 delay, or is he just delaying and we don't know why? Yeah, so a court essentially ordered the pipeline, or basically said they could build the pipeline. So the pipeline has been replaced now,

13:50 but there was a delay of like three or four years after he was elected. to the governor's mansion. And he said, okay, well, the Public Utilities Commission looked at it, they decided that this

14:02 was gonna be better for the environment, they approved the process, it's gone through a rigorous four-year process. But then he said that there needs to be a social license for these types of

14:12 things too. And one of his big claims is he's always gonna follow the science, whether it's copper nickel mining in Northeastern Minnesota Minnesota has the world's largest undeveloped deposits of

14:25 copper and nickel in the world. So he's like, oh, well, you know, I'm gonna follow the science on that. But introducing a social license to something is the antithesis of actually just following

14:36 the data, right? Because you're finding new fudge factors in order to appease your political constituency. So that was part of it. But then also he instructed his Department of Commerce to say,

14:49 oh, well, you know what? I don't think that we're gonna need this oil in the future. delay this pipeline until we can study the future oil demand, and that looked pretty silly in the wake of the

15:02 Russian invasion of Ukraine. So when line three was operating at half of its capacity, it was bringing in about half as much oil as we were importing from Russia at that time. So the full line

15:16 three oil pipeline can import more oil than we were importing from Russia in 2000, or 22. So this is a major conduit for Canadian oil. It's energy security for North America. And frankly, when

15:32 you look at total energy consumption worldwide, we're still using 80 fossil fuels. And wind and solar are contributing pretty minuscule amounts to that. So I just think that the delay was kind of

15:45 pandering to political constituencies again, and not really based on the data or the science Yeah. So now that he wants

15:56 to produce all electricity carbon-free, has he given much meat on the bones to that plan? Or is it the typical environmentalist liberal line of just wind and solar will do it if evil oil companies

16:12 get out of the way?

16:15 Yeah, there's an element of that for sure. So the most prescriptive thing that is in the 100 carbon-free mandate is the fact that they didn't legalize the new nuclear power plants. And that really

16:26 limits the options in Minnesota. We don't have a great opportunity for hydroelectric power because we're so flat here. And for hydro to work, you need a big difference in energy. So if you've got

16:38 mountains like the Pacific Northwest, it works really well. If you're here in Minnesota, you would need to flood a huge amount of land. So we can import a good amount of electricity from Manitoba

16:49 hydro, 'cause they've got large hydroelectric dams, then you need to build transmission lines that are several million dollars a mile. So we have essentially painted ourselves into an energy corner

17:02 here in Minnesota where it's wind, solar, and battery storage and also imports from other states. So Minnesota is part of the mid-continent independent systems operator system. So the MISO system,

17:14 it's a regional electric grid that has parts of 15 states and the

17:19 Canadian province of Manitoba And the thought among

17:24 the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, all of them who have been either appointed or reappointed by Governor Wals is we can shut down our coal plants, we can shut down our natural gas plants or

17:35 some of our natural gas plants. And then we'll just buy from the MISO market when we are short of electricity. So the problem is Michigan enacted a similar policy, Illinois enacted a similar policy.

17:49 We're basically playing musical chairs when it comes to our electricity supply. And eventually, someone's not gonna have a chair to sit in and we're gonna have blackouts. This is exactly what

17:59 happened in California in 2020. You had that big regional heat wave and Arizona and Nevada did not have extra power to sell to the Golden State so they had to cut demand. Yeah, when we always talk

18:14 about power and power generation power and power generation, it's shocking how much of it is really just passing

18:26 basically saying that not in my backyard, but it's okay if coal burns over there. And our running joke is always, there's no peeing and non-peeing section of the pool when it comes to the

18:37 atmosphere. You either put carbon in it or you don't. It doesn't matter if it happens in China and India Because you can make a case that a lot of our renewables. because they're built

18:52 in China, empowered by Chinese coal, is in effect just importing Chinese coal to the United States. I mean, it's an inefficient way to do it. So

19:03 it's gonna be really interesting watching that just because the thing that bothers me is I'm happy to have that discussion and I think we should have that discussion, but if you're not gonna be

19:13 intellectually honest enough to talk through, hey, this is not dispatchable power. It's intermittent. Certain times the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow, and we're not gonna have

19:25 electricity 'cause at the end of the day, battery technology is not there yet. And oh, by the way, it's gonna be way more expensive. Nobody wants, nobody can have a wind turbine in their

19:37 backyard. So you're gonna have to build big long transmission lines to do this. And so I just hate the fact that we're not having intellectually honest discussion on this. It's this magic panacea

19:50 that just, if the powers that be would let it happen, it would be cheaper and carbon free. And it's just physics. Physics are much tougher taskmaster than that.

20:04 Yeah, that's absolutely true. So we did a really extensive report on what would happen in terms of cost and reliability if we went through with this wind, solar, and battery storage grid So Mitch

20:17 Rolling and I, he's my co-partner, I guess you could say at our company. So we found that it would cost313 billion in order to build this grid and

20:26 build the transmission lines and utilities in Minnesota are vertically integrated. So they basically get to make their money back whenever they build a new wind solar battery facility, natural gas

20:41 facility, plus a seven and a half percent profit on top of that. So, The utility companies here are really incentivized to shut down depreciated assets like coal plants or natural gas plants and

20:54 build new stuff because that's how they make money. So you have kind of a Baptist and bootleggers coalition of

21:02 the green group Sierra Club and then the utilities who like the regulations because it's basically a license for them to print money. But we found that this would also cause blackouts, especially in

21:13 the winter, solar facilities in Minnesota produce electricity at about 5 of their potential output in December and January. So for all intents and purposes, they aren't very useful. We have really

21:26 short days up here, not as short as Alaska in the winter time, but in then if it snows, you have really reduced potential for solar output. And there are wind droughts in the MISO footprint.

21:40 We've looked through the US. Energy Information Administration data. We found that there was an 82-hour wind drought where wind was operating below 10 of its potential output throughout this entire

21:52 15-state region. And for 42 straight hours, it was below 15. So you can have this huge fleet of wind turbines, but a million times zero is still zero. So yeah,

22:06 we have a real reliability problem, and I don't know if you've been following the situation in MISO or PJM or any of these other regional grid operators, but they're saying with data center demand

22:18 and with more manufacturing, reshoring to the country, we may not have enough power to either connect those assets or we won't have enough power plants online to actually power them if we have all

22:30 of these coal plant retirements. So we are not only undermining our current economic system, but we're also not setting ourselves up for an optimized future Yeah, and I mean, dominion. because I

22:43 think it's, what, 30 of the world's data centers are in and around Washington, DC. Dominion's already said no more. They're telling proposed projects. We cannot provide power to you. We're

22:43 always a mess down here with Urcott, 'cause Texas has its own standalone grid And when you

23:25 study it and you look at the other, the other grids in America, Urcott's a mess, but it's usually a leading indicator, not necessarily a mess unto itself. And so we just,

23:30 when Bush was governor, he opened up our market to competition and just with the federal tax incentives for building solar and wind, we built a lot of it, grid a lot less reliable. And now you're

23:47 getting to the point where you can't even finance putting in natural gas, fired generation. And so we're fighting with that every day. And I think everybody else is going to catch up to us at some

24:01 point, because MISO of head. The tough be to going it's, yeah So likewise. doing are grids other the all, everybody like feels it

24:06 was on somebody's podcast, I think Manard Holt's podcast. And he was saying that, you know, call it

24:10 20 years ago, he had 15 excess generating capacity at any given moment that was

24:27 dispatchable. And he said on a good day, he's got two or three now. So this is coming due.

24:38 And I think what's going to ultimately happen is. We're gonna have not utilities providing the electric infrastructure

24:49 to do this just because they're big, they're bulky, they're used to being monopolies and science gets really hard. I mean, the grid's got to be in sync, it has moving pieces. And I think what's

25:03 going to wind up happening is ultimately you're going to build the data centers are going to build generation on site And the big tech companies are going to make those decisions. So it's going to be

25:16 Microsoft. It's going to be Amazon. It's going to be Google that are making these decisions and left to that. It's going to wind up being nuclear because that's what those folks want. And so we're

25:29 going to have an interesting discussion with environmentalists not wanting nuclear technology We've seen that big pharma and technology have the most pull of anybody out there and they're wanting

25:42 nuclear, so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. Yeah, and I think that's super cool, right? Like I'm in all of the dispatchable kind of person when it comes to building out your

25:52 electric grid. And I think it's Google is also working on advanced geothermal in some areas too, they're repurposing oil

26:03 and gas, I don't know, some companies, oil and gas companies, I think Fervo was like a people from a hydraulic fracturing company are doing all of this advanced geothermal stuff. And the cool

26:14 thing about Big Tech is they have enough money to possibly buy down the cost of this technology know, You. they said that the wind production tax credits and the solar subsidies allow the supply

26:26 chain to scale up and therefore you could bring down the cost of building this stuff. You know, Big Tech might be able to do that with nuclear, which would be awesome. Well, and equally, equally

26:36 is important 'cause I agree with everything you just said is big tech. has the political pull to walk in and say, Hey, Congress, we need a law that says if this is the nuclear power plant, it

26:50 gets approved in 180 days. 'Cause building nuclear plants in the United States today is all about regulatory mess. And that's why they cost so much. Where if you could streamline the rules like

27:05 they have in France or other places, I don't think we'd see any sort of drop in safety. But Big Tech has the power to do that. And anytime I preach this to energy companies, I go, Oh, the

27:18 regulation's so bigand I go for you an energy company. But not for Microsoft. Microsoft has a lot of pull in DC. So it'll be interesting to watch. So now we have to bring up the dreaded word and

27:34 we'll see if Governor Walz has said anything about it Has he talked fracking in any way for? fracking against fracking, President Harris or Vice President Harris historically has said I'm against

27:50 fracking, although her campaign is put out of press release saying she won't ban it as president. I always want to follow up with the question, Vice President Harris, just tell me what fracking is,

28:03 you know, I mean, you would probably get a delightful word salad. So

28:12 Governor Wallace hasn't had to take a position on fracking in Minnesota because we don't have any oil or natural gas deposits in the state. So he's been able to sidestep that, we'll figure out what

28:23 he wants. And yeah, I don't, I wouldn't even say there's any proxy like, obviously North Dakota is a huge oil and gas state, but you know, he's He's been able to stay out of that and Uh, You

28:38 know, Wals is a shrewd politician sometimes. So

28:43 we have these world-class mineral deposits, copper, nickel, cobalt, nickel, or sorry I said nickel, but we also have manganese. And he has taken a very low profile stance on this. He says he's

28:57 not opposed to these projects. He wants the DNR to go through Minnesota Pollution Patrol agency, go through the permitting process and figure out whether these mines can be developed safely But the

29:08 reason he's been able to do that is because at the federal level, the Biden-Harris administration withdrew the leases for twin metals. They pulled a 404 permit, which is an Army Corps of Engineers

29:19 permit for the proposed North Met mine. And we are talking thousands of jobs on the iron range. And I know the iron range became popular for two weeks during the last campaign or the last

29:32 presidential cycle, just because it is a big mining area of the state. You know, 90 of the iron ore that came out of the ground for like World War II and the arsenal democracy came from the state

29:44 of Minnesota. So there's a really rich history of mining and an appreciation for what it's done for the country and for the region. And that's why the folks up there are very supportive of the

29:54 mining industry and they've been disappointed with the decisions at the federal level. But walls new enough to stay out of that because the range has always been a very strong union area So it was

30:06 always like a really dependable Democrat constituency within the state. It's been trending away from that lately because we had the Obama administration pull the leases, Trump reinstated them,

30:17 Biden pulled them again. So there is this kind of de-alignment happening in rural areas of the state that have been happening throughout the rest of the country. But, you know, walls picks as

30:27 battles and I think we're gonna continue to see that moving forward. Interesting, interesting Well, Isaac, this has been really, really cool

30:38 why don't we close it this way, tell us anything else we need to know about walls and then definitely tell folks how they can reach out and get in

30:50 touch with you if they want to learn more. And give a little plug for your company what you'll do and what kind of phone calls you want from people Yeah, that sounds great, you know, angry phone

31:02 calls are fine too, just kidding, prefer not to get those but so for me I grew up in a very small town in rural Wisconsin I grew up on a dairy farm so I'm just your stereotypical Wisconsin But the

31:16 largest employer in my town is the Foundry, the Wapaka Foundry, it's the world's largest grey iron ductile foundry system in the country, and they use a lot of energy. And when we increase the

31:28 cost of energy we make towns like that, we basically put them on the endangered species list and that's what concerns me. And since Minnesota passed, it's 25 renewable energy mandate in 2007. Our

31:42 electricity costs have increased 167 times more than the national average in our industrial electricity costs or skyrocketing. We had a foundry in Hibbing, Minnesota, which is home of Bob Dylan. I

31:56 can do my Bob Dylan impression later if you want. There you go. I don't think anybody wants to hear that. And they cited electricity costs explicitly and why they shut down that foundry and

32:08 basically killed 91 union jobs. So de-industrialization, we talk about it a lot in terms of Europe de-industrializing due to high energy prices, but it can happen here if we pursue the wrong energy

32:21 policies. So that to me is what's most concerning about just kind of the Harris-Wall's administration. They do not seem to understand that we are, edging near a reliability crisis, Commissioner

32:37 Christie is already talking about that at FERC, but there's also a big economic penalty that's coming along with these green new policies. And it's not really surprising that we see a lot of the

32:47 factories from the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies moving to areas with low labor costs and low power costs, it's kind of this

32:58 ironic twist of fate where the areas of the country that are most supportive of enacting it are also reaping the fewest benefits because of their more hostile business climates. So I just want people

33:09 to know that if you live in a small town, a manufacturing town, egg town, like it's gonna get tougher before it gets better, unfortunately. So if you wanna check out our work, you can check out

33:20 our sub stack, that's Energy Bad Boys. And we write an article a week and we don't spam your inbox, which I think is important in this day and age.

33:31 Also, if you want to check out Always On Energy Research, that's the research firm. My colleague, Mitch Rolling, and I found it earlier this year, you can go to

33:40 aoenergorg. We are a nonprofit, so your donations are tax deductible. If you're into itemizing your deductions, we'd appreciate your support, and I think that'll do it. Cool. How do people find

33:52 you on Twitter? What's your Twitter handle? Yeah. Yeah Well, it's the fracking guy, so it should be pretty easy to remember. Yeah, and I

34:01 can attest to if you shoot a DM, you respond pretty quick because I was like, Come on the podcast, talk about this, and I got a hell yeah back really quickly. So this is fun. Yeah, absolutely.

34:14 I hadn't heard. I saw that

34:18 you are connected with FraxLAP in some way, shape or form. Yeah, those are kind of fighting words. Those are kind of fighting words Yeah, so I, I will see. Okay, I will see.

34:30 Now, so Digital Wildcatters publishes my podcast as well, and I will just go ahead and bite the bullet and fess up. I'm probably not in real life, but practically I'm his older brother. That's

34:42 kind of the role I play at Digital Wildcatters now. Cool, cool. So I was asking Emmett Penny, like, Hey, should I go on this show? And he just said, Absolutely. Oh, that's cool. So shout

34:53 out to Emmett. So, well Chuck, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it Thanks for your standing invite to come back anytime. And if you get to Houston, let's go break bread or grab a

35:05 drink.

35:07 Thanks Chuck.