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What It's Like To Be...

A Welder

What It's Like To Be...

Dan Heath

Curiosity, Jobs, Careers, Business, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Human Interest

4.8646 Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Pushing perfectionism to its limits, suffering third degree burns from slag, and having your welds “shot” by X-rays with Matt "Lucky" Reed, a welder in Florida. What happens to welders' eyes if they don't wear protective hoods? And what's a time-tested way of trolling a fellow welder? GOT A COMMENT OR SUGGESTION? Email us at [email protected] WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW? Leave us a voicemail at (919) 213-0456. We’ll ask you to answer two questions: 1. What’s a word or phrase that only someone...

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Some people know what they want to do with their lives from a very young age.

0:04.4

And other folks learn very early what they don't want to do.

0:08.0

I grew up on a tobacco farm.

0:10.5

I know hard work.

0:11.6

I've had to work every day from five years old all the way up.

0:15.1

And so I did a nasty job that I didn't like to do.

0:22.5

That's Matt Reed.

0:23.8

He goes by Lucky.

0:25.2

As a kid, he says his chores on the farm started at 4.30 a.m. every day.

0:30.5

I'm from a small little town in southern central Virginia, got about 200 people in it.

0:36.2

So a lot of people there, you know, they don't go

0:38.5

many places. And I knew right then and there, I was like, two things is not going to happen.

0:42.6

I'm not going to be a farmer. And I will never work a job that I hate ever again. Whatever I do

0:49.2

for a living to make me money, it's going to be something that I love more than anything

0:53.7

in this freaking

0:54.4

world, because from five years old to 18, I did a job I did not like to do. I hated it.

1:00.3

But then, in high school, Lucky figured out what he did want to do. His guidance counselor

1:04.9

had suggested that he'd take welding, and it clicked. So it ended up taking two periods of welding. I smoked his whole course

1:13.4

out in two weeks. And he looked at me and he said, so you really want to learn how to do this?

1:19.4

I said, absolutely. And that's all I did every day for three hours a day, all the way till I graduated

1:26.9

high school, I just welded. I'm Dan Heath, all the way till I graduated high school.

1:28.9

I just weld it.

...

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