Chris Skates - From Coal Mines to the White House

Cleared Hot

Society & Culture

4.9 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2024

⏱️ 138 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chris Skates is a man whose life journey is a testament to resilience, redemption, and the power of storytelling. Starting as a coal plant worker for 30 years, Chris harbored a dream of becoming a writer, keeping a journal of short stories since the 1980s. His persistence paid off when he published a heartfelt story about his grandfather in 2000, leading to over 200 published pieces and a career that took him from the coal mines to the corridors of political power.

Chris shares how he wrote his way out of the plant to become an advisor and speechwriter for Governor Matt Bevin of Kentucky, and eventually penned speeches and tweets for President Donald Trump. But his journey took a harrowing turn in 2020 when he collapsed on a D.C. sidewalk and was diagnosed with the deadliest form of leukemia. Defying medical odds, Chris not only survived but was dubbed "the toughest SOB" by his oncologist at Johns Hopkins.

Chris shares the inspiration behind his latest book, Moonshine Over Georgia, a riveting account of his grandfather's fight against the deadly moonshine epidemic during and after Prohibition. Armed with unparalleled courage and tracking skills, his grandfather was a legendary Revenue Agent who, according to a 93-year-old moonshiner he once arrested, "shut down the whiskey business pretty much by himself."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back everybody. Man, hell of a week. Just finished up my first
0:04.7	haunting trip of the season in Utah. There were some miles put on the feet. There were
0:09.5	some elevation lost and gained.
0:12.6	It was a good week, got a killer bowl, recovering,
0:17.8	another hunting trip coming up in a few weeks.
0:19.4	But again, let's get into this podcast, shall we?
0:23.0	We're going to go straight to Black Rifle Coffey's website because you know that they are the ones who
0:27.9	sponsor the podcast.
0:29.6	Something cool here, they have a Gothic Serpent Ro roast. For those of you unfamiliar with gothic
0:35.6	serpent you may have heard of the movie Black Hawk Down that is the actual
0:40.9	operation not black-hock down that was the movie gothic serpent was the operation associated with that so
0:47.8	Says it right here gothic serpent honors the US delta force and army rangers who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu.
0:53.0	This Sumatran roast tastes like rich, dark chocolate, cherry, and citrus, topped off with a
0:58.4	chocolaty aroma. You can sign up to get notified when the ECS drops it's got a countdown timer going on right there.
1:05.0	Let's see what else we got going on.
1:06.0	Buy two coffees, get a free gift.
1:09.0	I mean that's pretty sweet, National Coffey Day.
1:10.0	I have no idea what day that is.
1:12.0	I already covered pretty in-depth, you know, the
1:14.6	website. This slider here can take you through the ros. And, you know, I talked about hunting
1:19.8	and getting ready and the things you could use, whether it's in the bundles, samples, or the gear section,
1:25.6	I'd start thinking about holiday season as well. That's right around the corner and that's
	...

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