All Episodes

April 9, 2025 16 mins
  • Jack reveals the body part that bothers him the most...
  • What it would take to make the iPhone in the US...

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Made in America. You'd have to take out a mortgage.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
It's one more.

Speaker 3 (00:03):
Thing, one more thing.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
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.

Speaker 4 (00:21):
It's like a sit up where your knees are bent
and your elbows and your knees touch.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Sit up where your knees are bent and you touch
your own.

Speaker 4 (00:28):
Feet off the ground.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
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.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
So it's like a semi sit up.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
I've done a gazillion sit ups in my life, but
it's working the same muscles. Crunches and sit ups.

Speaker 4 (00:45):
Yeah, you can terminal muscles, yeah, different parts anyway.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
You can like alternate elbow, right elbow to left knee
and back and forth and that sort of thing.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
I just up halfway.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
And how likely should I be to fall for listicles
at various ages?

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Right, yeah, I don't know anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
So if I really, yes, are they get leggedday?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
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.

(01:59):
Yeah all right, right, or that's what a friend of
mine used to say, are those your legs or are
you writing a chicken? And then another guy used to
lift weights with these are the big football star. Dude said, Dude,
we got to do something about those ankles.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Wow, I don't know how much you can build up angle.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, right, you can't do anything about your ankles. Your
ankles or your ankles.

Speaker 4 (02:20):
There are few things that hurt more than your calves
being sore after like really working them out. It makes
walking so difficult.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
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.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
So.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
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.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
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.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Thirty A lot of those, and I've never seen anything
ever happen.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
What could be just you're not built to that's having
been moderately overweight my entire life.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
I have very beautifully developed calves.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
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.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Because you're exercising them just by moving around.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
You're lifting weights.

Speaker 4 (03:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Oh there you go. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
But it doesn't sound.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
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

(04:26):
gardeners here.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
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?

Speaker 3 (04:45):
And you know, I'm kind of curious.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
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.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Wait, when do we become this precious about jobs?

Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (05:20):
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

(05:42):
I don't get that angle of attack on this whole
tearf thing.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
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

(06:07):
has faced the nation it's.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Going to be automated.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
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.

(06:31):
I don't know how long it would take to pick
up those skills Honestly.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
I don't think I've ever seen the inside of an iPhone.
Oddly enough, so, she.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
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

(07:02):
manufacturing here not totally insane. So here's what it would
take to build at least part of it.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
In the land of the free.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
There are parts from over forty different countries inside a
single iPhone.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
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?

Speaker 1 (07:25):
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
being very close together. The only realistic path to US

(07:47):
iPhone assembly is to reconstruct its supply chain by shifting
some of its key component manufacturing to the broader North
American region Mexico, Canada, maybe even western Europe, because we're
pretty clear to them. If a US assembly operation were
to start in the next three to five years, however,
it would depend on parts from Asia for at least
that three to five years. And they're looking at the

(08:12):
sum of an iPhone's parts and it's costs, and yeah,
memory is made in the US, that's the only thing.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Does this agree with?

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Other?

Speaker 2 (08:24):
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.

Speaker 5 (08:41):
I was just thinking, what about cheaper components. You know,
they got the fancy glass on it suddenly becomes really
plastic and.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
It wouldn't be the iPhone if they started doing cheaper stuff,
no doubt.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
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

(09:12):
home screws and yeah, yeah, the little screws that hold
the thing together.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
They're made in Asia.

Speaker 4 (09:19):
That seems like something we should surely.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
We can make those. Well, of course we can.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
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.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
They would all go.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
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

(10:03):
manufacturing kumbaya.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
I'm not going to make a man sandwich with you.
Your calves are too small otherwise at all in.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
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?

Speaker 2 (10:34):
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.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
The nets were just to keep people the people got
past our suicide guards.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
That wasn't a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
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.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Oh my god, with the calves.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Have you heard of the internet?

Speaker 2 (11:20):
How about uh uh? Well, I want actual real world experience.
The internet is full of crap. Have you used the
internet recently?

Speaker 4 (11:29):
So many And if you go to the gym every day,
ask somebody at the gym.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
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.

Speaker 4 (11:42):
That's a filler.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
But yeah, we have fillers. The implants is a thing
I couldn't do that.

Speaker 4 (11:50):
They could do that.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
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

(12:12):
I got calf filler. Yeah, no kidding, Yeah, that'd be
too much.

Speaker 4 (12:18):
The better figure it out soon because summers around the
corner you have to.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Wear short No, I am not. I have not worn
shorts in thirty years, so I will be fine. Well, why,
said Jack?

Speaker 3 (12:26):
Tell Katie?

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Why?

Speaker 3 (12:27):
Why?

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Because I'm a grown up, grown man.

Speaker 4 (12:31):
Okay, what's your actual answer for not working?

Speaker 2 (12:32):
That's my actual answer?

Speaker 4 (12:34):
You're kidding me, it is.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Would you like me to forward the New York Times
article that agrees with me that grown men should not
wear shorts?

Speaker 1 (12:42):
I wear long pants only under protest or for formal occasions.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
Wouldn't he.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, of course he would.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
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.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Wow, that's troubling because.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
They crank out all the specialized engineers. It's such enormous numbers.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
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.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
The one thing he needs to do, and he's trying
is crush the woke educational complex. Let's get back to
educating kids.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
And would that help?

Speaker 2 (13:47):
You know?

Speaker 4 (13:48):
Else? He can fill JACKX calves with some filler.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
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.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
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.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah that would that would be that? Would that would
be that? Yeah, that'd be too real on my legs.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
How the f did you find those?

Speaker 4 (14:18):
A pair of My friend has a pair of those.
It's so funny when she wears them.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
That's a terrible look.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
It's so funny every day at the gym, my buddy, Matt,
those are your legs? You right in chicken every day?

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Where do you stand on novelty socks?

Speaker 3 (14:37):
Mister?

Speaker 1 (14:38):
I wear long pants all the time, no matter how
hot it is. Do you have any like fun socks?

Speaker 2 (14:42):
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.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
O. You know what?

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Classy is the only word that pops to mind.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah, I like this thing.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
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.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
They're so funny.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
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.

Speaker 4 (15:30):
I call him my top socks.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
It's just random, weird, you know. Uh, socks for beverages, food.
My favorite pair that I yes, well.

Speaker 4 (15:41):
My favorite pair that I owned, Sorry, Hanson, they just
say polite.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
As oh more bleeping. I'm withdrawing from this conversation. I
just it's beneath me, take.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
My skinny legs and walk out.

Speaker 5 (16:00):
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.
Advertise With Us

Hosts And Creators

Joe Getty

Joe Getty

Jack Armstrong

Jack Armstrong

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

The Bobby Bones Show

The Bobby Bones Show

Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.