Mike and Grubes kick off December with a lightning strike, a World Series flashback, and the age-old question: are we even gonna make it to (and through) Christmas? Then they welcome a very different kind of guest into the YDC mothership: Ed O’Keefe, CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation.

Ed takes the guys from Grand Forks to the Badlands, explaining why Teddy Roosevelt’s story is so insane it would get rejected as fiction: a sickly bookworm who becomes a cowboy, Rough Rider, president, and the original “media-savvy” politician. They dig into the brutal day his wife and mother died in the same house, how the North Dakota Badlands literally saved his life, and why his ranch became the “cradle of conservation.”

Along the way, Ed talks about inventing modern social video at NowThis, working with Anthony Bourdain, and how TR used newspapers the way modern politicians use social media. They get into Rough Riders lore, Teddy’s ties to Texas, trust-busting showdowns with J.P. Morgan, cocaine as a legit medical treatment back then (to the delight of Grubes), and why the new presidential library will feature an AI Teddy, a horse hitch, a living roof, and virtual campfires in the Badlands.

If you like presidents with actual side quests, history that weirdly mirrors right now, or the idea of riding a horse to a presidential library, this one’s your episode.

Chapters

00:00 - Lightning Strike & Cold Open Chaos

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