Episode 1 - Vice President JD Vance | The Katie Miller Podcast

9:48JD Vance:Peter's Basilica and her eyes get so big and she's like you can just tell in her mind she's like what the hell is going on like Alice in Wonderland where am I it's Alice in Wonderland absolutely so she kind of looks around and then she just puts her head back on my shoulder and closes her eyes like this is a bad tree. But that was a very cool moment. And the Pope who actually died the day after we met, he gave the kids like these very sweet Easter gifts and these, you know, he gave them rosaries and it was just a very cool thing. And there, you know, there are a lot of cool things about this job that I didn't fully appreciate, but having the Pope give your kids an Easter present, that's, that's my list.

10:27JD Vance:Yeah.

10:27Katie Miller:So what's your dad ick? Something you swore you would never do but now totally do as a dad?

10:34JD Vance:I mean, like all of the diaper changing related stuff is just stuff you have to do. And it's disgusting, but you get used to it. I mean, I would say I think that I've really gotten into cooking since the kids were born. And I always, you know, I didn't hate cooking, but I wasn't really into it. But I think just for some reason, having that thing that me and Usha do together, that the kids now participate in. I'm a really big baker, so I like to make cookies and cakes and cheesecakes and all this stuff.

11:08Katie Miller:What's the best thing you bake?

11:09JD Vance:I make a very good peanut butter and chocolate cheesecake. It's very solid. I use mascarpone instead of cream cheese. I think it's a little bit less tangy. So, you know, I just, but it's really fun. The kids really get into it because they get to participate. Are you baking less these days? I bake way less these days. But I still try to do it. And when we get free time, I always try to do this stuff because the kids really like it. It's something for us to do together. And again, when you have a crazy job, sometimes you just kind of want to zone out and do something that feels comfortable and familiar.

11:40JD Vance:And for me, a lot of times, that's baking with the kids. So that's definitely something that I do that I didn't think I would be doing 10 years ago.

11:46Katie Miller:What's your superpower as a dad?

11:48JD Vance:Oh, I don't know.

11:50Katie Miller:Is it like finding lost remotes, making the best eggs?

11:54JD Vance:Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I actually, so Usha's a super heavy sleeper, and I'm a very light sleeper, and I also sleep way less than she does. And so, like, if we go to bed at midnight, I'll wake up at, like, 5 or 6 a.m., just kind of naturally, and I feel like I'm on top of the world. And so I guess my dad's superpower is probably 90 % of, like, the nightmares or the things that kids just do that wake you up in the middle of the night, like a stuffed animal on the top bunk that falls off and you wake up and, like, what the hell was that crashing noise?

12:24Katie Miller:Do they sleep in bed with you? Do you keep them in their beds?

12:26JD Vance:They stay in their beds. Yeah. Usha was like very hardcore drill instructor about sleep training. And so the two youngest kids, bottom bunk, top bunk. And then that was actually when we moved in the VPR, our oldest kid got his own room. That was a big deal for him. And so, but, you know, they're at the age where they still once a week, at least one of them will wake up. And it's one of those things I kind of like, even though I don't want to be woken up at three in the morning, it's kind of nice that they still like need that, need that affection and need that attention, it reminds you they're still babies.

12:55Katie Miller:So what's your house vibe? Are you guys like eating on the couch? Are you no shoes inside? Are you like pizza night? Like what are we doing here?

13:03JD Vance:Yeah, definitely we try to eat at the dining room table and try to be sort of, it's like the one chance where I try to zone out. I try to leave my phone. I figure if somebody really needs me, one of my staff members can come and grab me. So we try to eat at the table. No shoes inside. That's my wife's rule, but all is violated. It kind of drives her crazy. and I definitely grew up in a house where you just wore your shoes everywhere. She was a no shoes inside person. Those two people always find each other and get married. That's right, exactly. What's your situation? Are you no shoes inside?

13:34Katie Miller:We're no shoes inside, but Stephen wears shoes up and down the stairs. Everywhere the kids eat off the floor is his shoes, and it drives me insane.

13:43JD Vance:Yeah, so it's exactly the same with me and my wife. But we're pretty chill about most things, And so, you know, the kids, they go to bed somewhere around 8 o 'clock. But if it's a little bit later, if they're really exhausted, that's fine. We definitely, we try to make them eat pretty healthy, but we're not super intense about their diets. Do you like the 80-20 rule? Basically, yeah. I mean, we try to sort of do things as well as we can, but there's a lot of flexibility.

14:13Katie Miller:So how do you handle a toddler tantrum in a public place?

14:18JD Vance:Usha and I handle it very differently. So it's crazy. In airports, people would always come up to her, like we had this woman come up to her a couple years ago and say, I'm like a child therapist and the way that you interact with your son is so amazing and like praising her and I'm like, it is amazing. She's super patient. She'll try to reason with them. If they have a tantrum in a public place, I immediately grab them, take them to the bathroom and say, you got to cut this shit out. Like I'm the parent who's like, no, no, no, this is not okay. She's the gentle parent. She's the gentle parent.

14:47JD Vance:And the thing is, I actually, even though she has her way, she's kind of become sympathetic to my way. Because if the kids have a total meltdown with all the cameras on, then it becomes a viral moment through no fault of their own. I mean, a three-year-old is going to have a temper tantrum from time to time. So one of the things we do try to do is protect them from becoming like the subject of a viral moment. And sometimes that requires me to be very quick and to sort of anticipate this stuff as it happens.

15:14Katie Miller:What's your secret to keeping your marriage solid while the entire country and the world is in your business?

15:19JD Vance:So something, I actually came up with this idea, and it's one of my better ideas as a husband, is probably six or seven years ago, we do a husband-to-wife book club, and we try to do it once a month. And so we've fallen a little bit behind just because I don't have enough time to read. But even during the time I've been vice president, we've done two books together, and I'm currently working on the third. She's done with it. but but but like actually forcing us to do something together that makes us think that makes us talk that gives us something that we're sort of thinking about and talking about at the exact same time that's been very good we always try to you know have have a have a drink once a week like put the kids to bed I mean it used to be you know go to a local bar in Cincinnati and

16:01Katie Miller:hang out now it's like make a cocktail at home and sit outside on the porch being able to go to

16:10JD Vance:a place and have nobody know who I am. That's the thing that I probably most miss about not being the vice president of the United States.

16:16Katie Miller:Do you miss like when you get in the car after like a date night and you have just three guys sitting in the car with you, like getting to enjoy your conversation?

16:23JD Vance:Yeah, that's sometimes unusual. Yeah, you know, you have these moments where you're talking and you kind of forget that they're there and then you realize, oh shit, somebody's actually paying attention to this like very intimate personal conversation that we're having. But no, I mean, again, you kind of just get used to it, but it is odd and it's definitely something I miss.

16:41Katie Miller:What's something men your age do that they're getting wrong about marriage and fatherhood today?

16:47JD Vance:Oh, that's such a tough question. I think that I'm wrong about marriage and fatherhood. I mean, I guess two very different things. But I think that in an era of social social media, it's very easy to allow yourself to be influenced. And sometimes you just gotta do it your way and you gotta be natural. Like I know some dads who would sort of be super affectionate with their kids, but they assume that that's not something dads do or maybe they would be like not that affectionate, but they try to sort of calibrate it or correct it because they know that everything's gonna be put on Facebook or Instagram and they, basically even though they're not famous, they try to perform the act of being a husband or father to Instagram or to Facebook or to Twitter or X, whatever the case may be.

17:39JD Vance:And I think that the best advice I can give is just try as much as you can just to be the kind of husband and father that you want to be. And that's a decent bit of advice. I'm trying to think. It's funny. In our marriage, like the stereotypical thing is that women are more emotional and men are less emotional. That's probably the opposite in our marriage. Usha is definitely like super stoic and I'm the one who gets fired up about things. And so, you know, sometimes there's this attitude of, well, I'm not going to be who I am because that doesn't fit into the right mold. And I think, again, you just got to be who you are.

18:19JD Vance:and the last thing I'd say is, look, I've been married for 11 years, going on 12. We have a very happy marriage. I've been very lucky in the person that God put me with but we just try to talk about everything. Like we are super brutally honest about things. Like I see friends of mine and they've been like in a slow burning cold war with their spouse because they're pissed off about something they haven't talked about it in four days. If Usha and I are mad about something, we talk about it like three minutes later. And that communication has been very good for us.

18:53Katie Miller:Who's the better debater?

18:54JD Vance:Her, big time. She was a very good and very accomplished corporate lawyer. And so the way that I put it, I've actually put this to the president because he's asked for her help with certain things. And he once asked me, what is it that makes her so smart? Usha has this ability to take like, she can read 5 ,000 words faster than anybody can read it, but then she somehow synthesizes it and can summarize it so quickly and so clearly and she has perfect like attention to detail for these things so it makes her a very good debater I actually hate getting in arguments with her because she always remembers details or remembers facts way better than I do so who's harder to

19:35Katie Miller:negotiate with your kids at bedtime or the Senate Democratic Conference the

19:40JD Vance:Senate Democratic Conference absolutely I I love my kids and they can be very very rebellious. But it's something, again, the way that Usha trained them for bedtime, they are very, like when it's time to go to bed, they don't really put up much of a fight.

19:56Katie Miller:So who takes after you and who takes after your wife?

19:59JD Vance:So it's interesting. It's the opposite of, I think, what they look like. So our five-year-old, everybody says looks like Usha, but everybody says his personality is like a carbon copy of what I was when I was five. Really high energy, really gregarious, hard to focus on certain things, like sometimes just goes deaf randomly because you're talking to him and it's like he doesn't hear you. But then the other two, they look more like me, but they take after Usha.

20:29Katie Miller:What's easier on your kids, the White House schedule or the Senate schedule? Which did you see your kids more with?

20:35JD Vance:That's a good question. Honestly, we've been able to make it work in both ways. So with the Senate schedule it's less, what I should say, it's more predictable but it's also you have less control. In the White House, unless the President needs me to do something, I have complete control over my schedule. But it's also there's a lot more going on and you're more reactive to world events. The thing that I try to do and maybe this is like a good advice for you know husbands and fathers is I try to take a couple of hours every day and make them as sacred as possible. And yes, if like a war breaks out, then sometimes you have to cancel even the sacred time.

21:12JD Vance:But we've been pretty good about making sure that I have at least a couple of hours with my family every single day. And sometimes that means, you know, I'm on the phone until 3am. Or sometimes that means I'm back in the White House after I put the kids to bed. But just have that sacred time that you protect, that you turn out the phone, you tune out work, and you just focus on your wife and your kids. And that's worked very well for us. And even this job, it's possible.

21:35Katie Miller:So what's your daily routine? Are you working out? What time are you getting home? Are you putting the kids to bed? Yeah, bedtime.

21:41JD Vance:Yeah, so I normally wake up before ushing the kids and if I wake up early enough I'll work out then if not then I'll take the dog out start getting stuff ready for the kids and then usually we'll come to work around eight or nine and then We'll typically you know again I try to have six to eight be that time where we have dinner together and just hang out with the kids but then usually there's something going on from eight to midnight and if it's an easy night you're done by 10 and if it's a tough night you're done at two and so what's the gym routine the gym routine is yeah so I'll work out after the kids go to bed most nights that I work out it's after the kids go to bed and I try to do I've been pretty good about this even as VP I try to do two to three days of weightlifting and a day or two of cardio.

22:31JD Vance:So a good week is I'll work out five days, a bad week, I'll work out three, but it's that same basic mix.

22:37Katie Miller:And what are you eating?

22:39JD Vance:You know, I got really into after the Senate campaign. So a few years ago, I got really into intermittent fasting. And so I try to eat two meals a day. I'll usually eat lunch and dinner and I try to be as healthy as I can, right? A lot of green vegetables, a lot of lean protein, but I also have a terrible sweet tooth. So like when I, if I -

23:02Katie Miller:So are you putting like the sugar in your coffee? Like what's the Starbucks order?

23:05JD Vance:Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So if I eat terribly, it's usually like I'll have, you know, a few scoops of ice cream at some point in the day or multiple points of the day. Like that's my poison is ice cream. And I actually, I used to do sugar cream and coffee. I mostly just drink it black now because I try to, again, I'm trying to be good and it's hard to be good with those liquid calories. So I do what I can.

23:28Katie Miller:So which fictional vice president do you most relate to? If you'd like, I can present you some options.

23:33JD Vance:Yeah, the only fictional vice -

23:35Katie Miller:You have Selena Meyer and Veep, Frank Underwood from House of Cards, Alan Trimble from Olympus Has Fallen, Catherine Bennett from Air Force One.

23:43JD Vance:Oh, wow. Okay, that's good. Thank you, Catherine Bennett from Air Force One. She was a real badass. She was awesome.

23:49Katie Miller:Give you some options.

23:50JD Vance:The one from Veep is, man, we watched Veep. I'd never seen Veep until I was elected vice president. We watched some during the transition. And I just thought to myself, I hope to God that that's not me and that that's not my job. And so far, I think we've avoided both.

24:06Katie Miller:There's definitely some moments, though. Come on, I'm sure you can pull out one where you're like, man, this could be an episode of Veep.

24:11JD Vance:No, there are definitely some moments where it could be an episode of Veep. In fact, we had a call today. I won't say with who, but it was one of those moments where every single person on the call was very important. You can probably guess, but it like every two or three minutes a new person would join the call and be like, Hey, what's going on? And then you would have to summarize it. It felt like an episode of the office because by the sixth or seventh person who joined the call, one of us had summarized the previous events for the sixth or seventh time. And I was like, what the hell is going on?

24:39JD Vance:get me out of this and marco was actually on the call and just started like laughing hysterically because it really was like an episode of eve so it's a good transition to say now we're going to do some cabinet confidential here okay great your answers can only be that of cabinet members okay

24:56Katie Miller:okay who would you draft first on your basketball team

25:01JD Vance:um oh marco okay yeah he's fast he's well coordinated he's not the tallest guy in the world but

25:10Katie Miller:yeah okay i would have gone with scott turner maybe okay yeah that's a good one okay that's

25:15JD Vance:a good one who would you pick in a chess tournament doug bergham very logical very chill

25:22Katie Miller:who is sitting next to you on a long-haul international flight as your seatmate

25:30JD Vance:Maybe your husband actually, though I guess he's not technically in the cabinet. Probably Chris Wright. Very good guy.

25:37Katie Miller:Who would you trust most to babysit your kids?

25:40JD Vance:Kelly Loeffler.

25:42Katie Miller:Which cabinet secretary would totally get rolled by your kids?

25:49JD Vance:Maybe also Kelly Loeffler. She's got a good heart. She would take very good care of them.

25:57Katie Miller:I feel like Linda would be giving out all the candy.

25:59JD Vance:Yeah, Linda McMahon would be giving out all the candy. Maybe actually, maybe the person who would get ruled by the kids is Sean Duffy. Because he's a great dad, but he's kind of in granddad mode now. Oh yeah, for sure. Any kid, anything they do is just the cutest thing in the world.

26:18Katie Miller:When you have that many, I feel like you're just letting the small things just go.

26:20JD Vance:Exactly, exactly.

26:22Katie Miller:President Trump said that you would likely be the heir apparent to MAGA.

26:27JD Vance:I saw that, yeah.

26:28Katie Miller:Yeah, okay. And he said Marco would be involved some way, somehow. So we'll go down to some Marco questions. What's the most surprising thing you've learned about Marco?

26:39JD Vance:He also has a sweet tooth, which, you know, he's in great shape, he works out, but he can, I mean, house ice cream. to the point where half the time that I see Marco in the hallway, it's because he's just been down to the Navy mess in the White House and he's gotten a bunch of ice cream.

26:55Katie Miller:What's your favorite topping in the mess? Did you know they had toppings?

27:00JD Vance:I didn't even know they had toppings. I mean, I guess sometimes they'll bring me M &Ms to put on them, but I've actually never gone down there and got ice cream myself. That's the life of the VP.

27:08Katie Miller:So Marco Rubio is known as a funny jokester. What's the funniest joke he's told you? Or the funniest moment you've had with him?

27:16JD Vance:Okay, so you guys will have to determine whether we can actually put this in the final. We can cut it if not. We can cut it if not. So we were talking about something very serious related to the Middle East. And he starts this joke totally deadpan. He's like, you know, I learned something interesting about the Middle East because I had a constituent call a few years ago when I was in the Senate and a woman was visiting Israel and her husband died while they were in Israel. and I was like, oh man, that's terrible. And she was trying to get help from us for how to get the body back to the United States.

27:50JD Vance:And she said to me, you know, man, I don't know. Maybe I don't want it back. The last time somebody was, sorry, the last time somebody died over here, they rose from the dead three days later. And I didn't know until the very end that it was a totally bullshit joke. I was like on the edge of my seat, like what happened with this poor woman and her husband? He's got jokes. He's got a lot of Florida man jokes. Yeah, he does. Because, you know, you'll take some crazy story from the Jacksonville Times, and then it ends up, you think it's a joke, but it's actually something that actually happened in the Florida panhandle.

28:31Katie Miller:Next, we'll go to a game of Would You Rather.

28:33JD Vance:Okay.

28:33Katie Miller:Okay. Would you rather have your daughter paint your nails pink before a televised Oval Office meeting, or Ohio State never win another national championship?

28:41JD Vance:Pink. Yeah, I'm going with the pink fingernails. Absolutely.

28:43Katie Miller:Would you rather be stuck in a Secret Service driven vehicle for 12 hours with your kids where you are not the driver or be stuck in an elevator with Stephen Colbert?

28:52JD Vance:Oh, that's really tough. I would try very hard to avoid both of those situations, but I'll take my kids for 12 hours over Stephen Colbert. Well, Stephen Colbert of like the past couple of years or Stephen Colbert of 15 years ago?

29:06Katie Miller:The past couple of years.

29:07JD Vance:Okay, no, I'll take my kids.

29:08Katie Miller:Would you rather try to explain the latest TikTok trend to President Trump or explain the Electoral College to your kids every night before bed?

29:15JD Vance:Explain the latest TikTok trend to President Trump. He loves TikTok. He's very interested in it. So that would be an easy conversation.

29:21Katie Miller:Would you rather read excerpts of Hillbilly Elegy to a Gen Z influencer or to a group of coastal elites from Brooklyn?

29:29JD Vance:Oh, that's a tough one, too. I would say Gen Z influencers.

29:33Katie Miller:Which passage would they find most interesting?

29:36JD Vance:Probably all the stuff about my grandma and grandpa when they were young, because they were just, they were great people, but they also, they were kind of wild.

29:44Katie Miller:Would you rather your kids publicly rate your parenting on C-SPAN, or never be able to tell a dad joke again?

29:50JD Vance:Never be able to tell a dad joke again. No, my kids, they are very judgmental of our parenting in public, and I think they know that, you know, there are always cameras around, so they use that as an opportunity to say, oh, you know, dad should, he should have Child Protective Services called because he didn't give me two scoops of ice cream last night. It's like, no son, that's not how this works out. But they know they have an audience.

30:12Katie Miller:What's your best dad joke?

30:15JD Vance:I have a few, I have a few. So this is from Pulp Fiction and my kids love this because they kind of get it.

30:25JD Vance:Mama Tomato, Papa Tomato and Baby Tomato were taking a walk one day and Baby Tomato started lagging behind. So Papa Tomato got kind of angry, went back and squished him and said, catch up. Not bad, right?

30:40Katie Miller:That one's good. There's a lot of memes of J.D. Vance on the internet.

30:46JD Vance:There are.

30:47Katie Miller:What's your favorite meme? Or like funny joke about yourself, like after the Pope or, you know, there's a lot of options to pick from these days.

30:54JD Vance:So my favorite meme was, and this is very inappropriate, but maybe it's not too soon. but you know there was the whole thing about how I was into couches and right after the Pope died there was, did you see this one? There was just a meme of the Pope, Usha, and a couch and it like took me a second to get it and then when I got it I was like man that's pretty good that's pretty good in fact I like to think the left isn't very good at memeing so my hope is that a right winger came up with that because that was a very funny meme

31:30Katie Miller:what's one thing you do that would be 100 % like a political scandal if people knew

31:37JD Vance:I'm I used to be really into and I still have the cards and I'm trying to get my eight-year-old to play with me I really I used to be really into Magic the Gathering so like really nerdy really nerdy in fact the last podcast I did the podcaster had me sign a Magic the Gathering card and I knew the card that he had and I felt really embarrassed about it like more embarrassed than anything in like the past six months.

32:00Katie Miller:What age would you let your kids watch Lord of the Rings?

32:03JD Vance:Oh, the Peter Jackson ones? Like seven or eight. Our oldest has seen at least The Hobbit and the first Lord of the Rings. We're not super, like I said, we're pretty flexible about stuff. We're not super strict about like violence in their media. Maybe we should be. But, you know, so long as it doesn't have like a really deranged message, we're pretty open with what the kids consume. You know what's funny? We tried to show our eight-year-old Harry Potter 4 recently, and it was like way too scary for them.

32:35Katie Miller:So not trying that for

32:36JD Vance:a while.

32:37Katie Miller:On Disney Plus, do you let them watch whatever they want? Or do you still meter what they're watching on Disney?

32:41JD Vance:Yeah, we still meter. I mean, we only do TV through like family movie time. And so, you know, we might like put a show on if I have a phone call that I have to do and I'm the only one home. But otherwise, I'm only watching TV with them.

32:56Katie Miller:And so why were you running after your kids at Disneyland? You're on Tom Sawyer Island. Like, what's the story there?

33:02JD Vance:I saw that. And somebody was like, oh, he runs funny. No, the actual... It's like the dad run. The dad run. No, the actual answer is... So we had the island ourselves, which was very cool. I'd never been to Disneyland. They were shutting down the Disney World one. Yeah, that's... Sorry to all the people who were at Disneyland for the longer lines, but we had a very good time. But I was actually... My kids really liked this game called Ogre, where I, like, chase after them, but I don't run full speed. And so I was playing Ogre and that was what caused the great scandal of how I ran it. What's the best ride?

33:37JD Vance:Okay, so do you like roller coasters? Okay, so I used to love roller coasters. Now that I'm 41, I get like a little nauseous after them.

33:45Katie Miller:Space Mountain, did you get nauseous?

33:46JD Vance:Terribly.

33:47Katie Miller:I did too. I went like in December, it got so sick.

33:50JD Vance:It was awful.

33:50Katie Miller:So sick.

33:51JD Vance:And I used to love roller coasters, so not Space Mountain. I guess the one that is called, well, it's not called Splash Mountain anymore, but used to be called Splash Mountain. The Tiana ride. That one was really awesome. I like that one.

34:03Katie Miller:What's your least favorite ride?

34:04JD Vance:Space Mountain. Yeah. Yeah, because it made me sick. All right.

34:08Katie Miller:So you're a known watcher of Emily in Paris.

34:12JD Vance:Am I? Did I put that on social media once? Yeah, you did.

34:14Katie Miller:What shows are you watching right now?

34:18JD Vance:So we're watching Gilded Age.

34:20Katie Miller:Okay.

34:21JD Vance:So that's on HBO.

34:23Katie Miller:You don't think it's gone woke too?

34:24JD Vance:Has it gone woke? It's really bad. Really?

34:26Katie Miller:Steven and I are watching it right now.

34:28JD Vance:Oh, interesting. Okay. I guess I haven't noticed.

34:31Katie Miller:Cynthia Nixon is on there.

34:32JD Vance:Well, yeah, but she's like the opposite of Cynthia Nixon in real life. I actually made this observation that she's like a sort of a normal human being on Gilded Age. So we're watching Gilded Age. I'm actually, we're watching The Crown right now.

34:47Katie Miller:Okay.

34:48JD Vance:But we already watched most of it, but we're sort of watching towards the tail end. and we're watching, there's something else that we just started that I really like. Oh, Tires! The Shane Gillis Show. Oh, it's so good. So it's more, it's interesting. Normally, Usha and I really agree on shows. I think that it's like the funniest thing I've seen since The Office. She just kind of likes it, but I love it.

35:09Katie Miller:Who's picking your book club book then? What's in the two of you?

35:12JD Vance:We alternate, we alternate. So the current book that we're reading is actually, it's a Ross Douthat, the New York Times columnist. He has like a fantasy novel that he's releasing in serial form. she already read the first one I'm in the process it's pretty good what else have you read um the one before that was all the pretty horses and the one before that was non-fiction I don't remember what it was it may have been the Abigail Schreier book about therapy or it may have been a book about I don't remember but it's a non-fiction book that was that was six months ago at this point

35:46Katie Miller:do you have a guilty pleasure show that's embarrassing to admit other than Emily in

35:50JD Vance:Paris.

35:51Katie Miller:Love Island redoing like the hunting wives, the samurai turned pretty. Like,

35:56JD Vance:I mean, I, I really liked the show Outer Banks, but I don't know if that's really embarrassing, but you know, it's not. I think Emily in Paris is pretty embarrassing. Okay. Here's, here's my riff on Emily in Paris. I actually think that it's like a super smart meta commentary on European culture. And it's basically, it's a criticism of millennials. I think it's basically the entire show is like kind of fun and it's bubbly and you get to see like beautiful things and beautiful people. But it's fundamentally, it's a criticism of millennial culture. And as a proud geriatric millennial, I think it's pretty fascinating.

36:39Katie Miller:What songs are on your playlist right now?

36:43JD Vance:So I'm a big classic rock guy and a pretty big 90s rock guy. So a lot of my songs are, you know, like sort of the Pearl Jam era or the Led Zeppelin era. But even, you know, some of the 90s songs, like talk about embarrassing shows. There are some embarrassing 90s songs that I'm really into, like Stay by Lisa Loeb. I'm a Barbie girl? A couple days ago. No, that's not. Don't like that one. or Fade Into You by Mazzy Star is probably like my favorite song of the entire 90s rock era. But yeah, that's pretty much it. There's some weird kid songs. We Are a Dinosaur is a song our kids are. Okay, so our kids' Secret Service names are, they had to start with a B.

37:30JD Vance:Okay. And Mirabella's B.

37:35Katie Miller:They all chose them. Okay.

37:37JD Vance:Vivek is because he's very high energy and Ewan is which is a kind of dinosaur which I didn't even realize and so each of them have a theme song so there's like this one artist that has a song about bees she's a song called we are the dinosaurs marching marching you know oh yeah okay and then she also has a song called like blast off another rocket ship run so it's their Secret Service code names actually have their own theme song which they're really

38:01Katie Miller:excited about have you seen the land before time recently because that's like on theme and on brand for you.

38:05JD Vance:I did see it a few years ago. I mean, recently, but I watched it with our oldest a few years ago and it's really like, it's a really good movie. It's a good one.

38:13Katie Miller:Is a hot dog a sandwich?

38:15JD Vance:No. Absolutely. Is that a question?

38:17Katie Miller:Yeah, it's a question.

38:18JD Vance:Definitely not.

38:20Katie Miller:Does pineapple belong on pizza?

38:22JD Vance:Of course not. No.

38:25Katie Miller:If you could only eat one condiment for the rest of your life, what would it be?

38:28JD Vance:One condiment? Yeah. Does barbecue sauce count?

38:30Katie Miller:Yeah.

38:31JD Vance:Okay, barbecue sauce.

38:31Katie Miller:Not mayonnaise? No.

38:34JD Vance:Now, mayonnaise is like in low doses is good, but it's kind of like I had a buddy who used to eat French fries with mayonnaise. I thought that was disgusting.

38:41Katie Miller:It's the only thing my husband eats.

38:42JD Vance:With French fries or like period?

38:44Katie Miller:Period.

38:44JD Vance:Okay. Wow. Yeah.

38:46Katie Miller:He's only a mayonnaise guy. Okay.

38:48JD Vance:I learned something about Stephen. I didn't know. Yeah.

38:50Katie Miller:Whatever. Are cargo shorts a rite of passage for dads or a cry for help?

38:55JD Vance:Both. Both. I mean, look, I wear cargo shorts, especially when the kids were younger because you're always carrying stuff. but they look hideous and I recognize that so I don't wear cargo shorts anymore. I don't really wear shorts anymore because I'm constantly being photographed and I just you know I always try to look like reasonably well put together and a buddy of mine once sent me a line from The Sopranos, Adan never wears shorts. So I try.

39:20Katie Miller:Are you a swim shirt now in the pool kind of guy at the beach?

39:23JD Vance:Yeah so that's been true for a while though because so Usha's, I mean she's born in America but her parents are from South India so she doesn't really get sunburnt. I do. So she always makes me wear sunscreen, but I think sunscreen is disgusting and it stings my eyes. And so the compromise that we came to was I could just wear a sun shirt. So.

39:43Katie Miller:Do you usually read the instructions or do you just wing it?

39:46JD Vance:Wing it, totally. Sometimes with a YouTube video.

39:48Katie Miller:What's the last thing you searched with on AI?

39:52JD Vance:I'm actually not a big AI guy. The last thing that I did on AI is we wrote a book my kids and I did about various, do you guys have the Who Would Win books? No. Okay. So my kids are really into like Who Would Win, Lion vs. Tiger, Cheetah vs. Jaguar. So we actually made a big cats version where we wrote it ourselves, but I used Grok to make the actual images. and some of them are completely deranged. It's like a jaguar with its fang through the skull of a tiger and it's like this is really gruesome shit. But here we are. The kids loved it.

40:29Katie Miller:What's a hill you would literally die on that nobody else cares?

40:34JD Vance:That's... Fade Into You by Mazzy Starr is the best song of 1990s rock. That's probably one where I would die on that nobody else cares.

40:49JD Vance:that I have a lot of weird things like this that I really care about that probably not that many care about. I mean, I think that like most ice creams, okay, if you're not, you can't say you have a favorite ice cream unless you're judging consistency of flavor. So if you have the vanilla at Jenny's and then you have the coffee ice cream at Grater's and then you come and tell me you like Jenny's more than Grater's, that's bullshit because you didn't actually care like to like. And there's a lot of that in the ice cream world. So you got to compare apples to apples if you're going to actually make a judgment on who has the best ice cream.

41:26JD Vance:The answer is Grater's, by the way.

41:27Katie Miller:Okay. I've never had that ice cream.

41:29JD Vance:Okay. Do you like ice cream?

41:31Katie Miller:Yeah.

41:31JD Vance:Okay. We'll get you some Grater's. Guys, remember that Grater's ice cream is incredible. It's actually the best ice cream. The crazy thing about it is if you hold a pint of Grater's ice cream.

41:39Katie Miller:Have you done like the blind taste test though to just make sure like you've seen those things presumably on the internet where like there's behind the box of like all the different cokes uh not only did we do that but we

41:47JD Vance:actually administered a blind taste test to me and our three kids oh wow three different ohio ice creams yeah and and the graters was clearly the best and also clearly my favorite but the crazy thing about graters is if you hold a pint of graters in your hand and then you hold a pint of like briars at a grocery store the graters is literally like twice as heavy because it's so calorie dense. So that's one of the reasons why it tastes better.

42:12Katie Miller:Is there a vacation spot that you and your kids are dying to go to that you have not been?

42:17JD Vance:I really, yeah, I really want to go to Hawaii. So Usha's been to 49 states. I've been to 48. The 50th for both of us will be Alaska. The one that she's been to, I haven't. It's Hawaii. And we all really want to go to Hawaii at some point in the next couple of years. Hopefully we can find some excuses. Vice President of the United States to go to Hawaii. Kamala Harris went to Hawaii, so we should be able to find some excuse to go to Hawaii, but it just seems so beautiful. I love mountains, and just like, you know, like West Virginia is my perfect vacation spot because the streams, the beautiful greenery, the mountains.

42:50JD Vance:I'm not much of a beach guy, but like Hawaii, you get the beautiful mountains. You also get the beach, so, you know, each of us gets something we like between my kids, some of whom like the beach, and then one of our kids and me who likes the mountains.

43:02Katie Miller:So are you a sauna or a cold plunge kind of guy?

43:04JD Vance:I'm a sauna guy but I I've done cold plunge it is very painful and I don't like it and so yeah that's not gonna be for me.

43:15Katie Miller:What does your perfect day look like to you from sunrise to sunset?

43:20JD Vance:So I just had my birthday and it's basically my birthday so.

43:23Katie Miller:Are you a big birthday guy?

43:25JD Vance:Not really but but you know Usha makes a big deal out of it and I had a really good day we woke up we We took the kids canoeing down the little Miami River in southwestern Ohio. And then I played golf. And then I had a really delicious meal and ice cream for dessert. That's my perfect day.

43:43Katie Miller:And if you could have dinner with three people, living, dead, alive, what do you got? Who are the three people you're inviting to dinner?

43:51JD Vance:Okay. three people I'd invite to dinner. Let's say Isaac Newton, Donald Trump, and Abraham Lincoln.

44:01Katie Miller:Who's monopolizing the conversation?

44:04JD Vance:I'm not going to answer that.

44:09Katie Miller:And with that, we will say thank you for joining the Katie Miller podcast. Thank you so much, Mr. Vice President, for doing this with me. I hope you had a fun time. I certainly did.

44:19JD Vance:Thank you. Good to see you.

44:20Katie Miller:Thank you.