Eric G is diving into the whirlwind of chaos this week, and trust me, it’s a doozy! We're talking about trades, YouTube influencers getting tangled in legal messes, and some serious recalls that might just make you reconsider your latest home improvement project. Seriously, if you thought your week was rough, wait until you hear about the YouTuber who decided to play fast and loose with tax laws—spoiler alert: it didn't end well. Plus, we've got some hot takes on the skilled trades shortage that’s got 7 million prime-age men sitting on their couches instead of getting their hands dirty. So buckle up, grab your tool belt (or maybe just a snack), and let’s unpack this wild ride of a mid-week update!

What a wild ride this mid-week update turned out to be! Eric G dives into the chaos going on in the world of home improvement, and boy, does he have some tales to tell. First up, he shares a personal saga about a nagging shoulder injury that has him facing surgery. It’s not just any injury, folks; we’re talking about the remnants of a mountain biking accident from two decades ago. Who knew that trying to relive your glory days would lead to a torn rotator cuff and a rendezvous with a surgeon? Eric’s humor shines through as he jokes about how we might soon see him in a sling while filming his next DIY video. As if that wasn’t enough, he passionately advocates for the trades, calling out the shocking stats about able-bodied men not seeking work. With a mix of sarcasm and encouragement, he challenges everyone to get off the couch and into the workforce, especially given the plethora of job openings in skilled trades. It’s like a motivational speech wrapped in a DIY podcast—who could ask for more?

But wait, there’s more! Eric also tackles the recent drama surrounding YouTube influencer Cody Dewiller, aka Whistling Diesel, who found himself in hot water for tax evasion. It’s a classic case of “you can’t hide behind a camera” as Eric breaks down the absurdity of trying to dodge taxes while flaunting a flashy supercar on social media. He raises an eyebrow at the irony of getting caught while broadcasting your life to millions. As if that wasn’t enough, he rounds off the episode with a slew of product recalls, including Tesla’s Powerwall and some alarming baby products. There’s a lot going on in the world, and Eric is here to keep us informed while keeping it real—because who doesn’t love a good rant mixed with a bit of home improvement wisdom?

Takeaways:

• Eric G is dealing with an impending shoulder surgery, so don’t be surprised if he’s rocking the one-arm sling look in future videos.
• The podcast dives into the absurd reality that 7 million able-bodied men are not in the labor force, which is just a wild stat that needs addressing.
• We discussed the drama surrounding a YouTube influencer who got busted for tax evasion, proving that sometimes, fame doesn’t come without a side of legal trouble.
• Eric passionately rants about the education system pushing kids towards college instead of the trades, because honestly, who needs practical skills, right?
• A major recall has hit Tesla's Powerwall 2 systems, reminding us that even high-tech gadgets aren't immune to the occasional hiccup—like catching fire.
• We also cover numerous recalls on baby products and tech, because safety should always come first, even if it means returning that adorable stuffed bear.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Ford
• Tesla
• Belkin
• Great Lakes Wholesale International
• Trek
• Steel

To get your questions answered by Eric G give us a call in the studio at 833-239-4144 24/7 and Eric G will get back to you and answer your question and you might end up in a future episode of Around the House.

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We love comments and we would love reviews on how this information has helped you on your house! Thanks for listening! For more information about the show head to https://aroundthehouseonline.com/

Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

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Foreign.

The House with Eric G. Your go to source for everything home improvement.

Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or just looking to make your space shine, Eric.

G. Is here to guide you through.

The latest tips, tricks and trends.

So grab your toolbox, put on your thinking cap, and let's get to work right here on around the House with.

Eric G. Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for home improvement.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for joining me today.

This is our weekday update.

This is that midweek special that we do that talks about the stuff.

Of course it didn't make it into last weekend's show and of course not going to make it into this next weekend show.

And boy, do I have a lot to talk about today.

First off, man, I tell you what, it has been a crazy week or two here, boy.

Tell you what, hurt myself again.

We'll put it at that.

I always in the midweek put some of this stuff out there.

What's going on in the world around the house and been fighting some shoulder injury from a long time ago when I was mountain bike racing and was basically out testing to see if I could do this course.

And this was probably 20 years ago and I was doing about 30 miles an hour down a hill and of course hit the sand at the bottom.

Bike folded, broke my collarbone, dislocated shoulder broke five ribs healed back up, did pretty good.

Now I'm paying the price for that because due to all the work I was doing on my house and TV stuff here this last year and a half, two years.

Yeah.

Torn rotator cuff.

So I'm gonna have to go in for surgery on that.

And boy, that's pretty miserable night.

I've not been getting the sleep that I used to get.

You move around and you get on the wrong side or something, you just lights you up like somebody stuck a knife in you.

So working through that, I expect surgery on the horizon.

So don't be shocked when you see me doing videos with one arm in a sling.

If you've had that surgery, send me a note over aroundthehouse online dot com.

What were your tricks to getting through that?

Always curious to see, but had lots of surgery so I'm not worried about that at all.

But just if you have any tricks or tips on that, I'm always open to hearing ideas.

Let's put it that way.

I was at last weekend, I was at Girls Build, which is my favorite nonprofit here in the Portland area that helps young girls get into the trades.

And of course my algorithm changes A little bit.

And all of a sudden I see micro come up again on there.

And I love micro.

He's a truth speaker out there.

He just set one out across the bow of many people.

He was talking about 7 million men in their prime working years are not in the labor force and not actively looking for jobs.

Hey guys, I'm going to call you out on this.

Is that because maybe the SNAP benefits are a little bit easier or what's going on?

What's going on if you're not able to work, that's awesome if you are.

Come on guys.

There are so many great jobs out there.

We were just talking about the president of Ford said he's got 5,000 openings for technicians across the country for Ford.

Can't find people, dude, they'll train you.

Go make a hundred grand.

120 grand a year.

Get off the couch.

Get off your mom's couch.

Let's do it.

So between the ages of 18 to 64, there's about 7 million able bodied men not looking for work.

That's, as Mike Rose says, is definitely a horror story for the American labor market.

Seven million dudes.

Come on.

There is a will gap out there and I agree with Mike on this.

There's a skills gap of people not having the skills to do the jobs, but there's also a will gap of the people not wanting to get off the freaking couch.

That's a whole other story.

Now getting into the skilled trades is the easy solution.

Going to college for four years.

I can't tell you how many friends, family out there that I know that went and got a degree, four year degree.

And they're working at Starbucks, they're working at Popeyes.

They're doing something like that because that's all they think they can do.

I also know a lot of people in the trades that have four year degrees, even master's degrees and they're out there as a H Vac technician making more money than they did with the college.

And I have to scratch my head and go, boy, your teachers, your counselors at school did you absolutely no favors.

Now I'll be the first to say that we have the big business.

Everybody complains about big business, big business.

I get it.

That's the evil monster we all talk about out there.

Let's put it, let's put it to the real test here though.

The big business is also the college education out there.

You have teachers and you have many counselors as well, pushing kids.

Oh, these kids should literally be in the trades.

They're perfect for it.

They want to work with their hands.

You can see it.

We've taken the wood shop classes out, We've taken the shop classes out, we've taken the welding classes out.

Now I will say there are some school districts and some active parents out there that have kept those in great school.

Here in my area, Forest Grove School District, they're doing it right.

If you're in high school and you want to learn how to build a house, you want to be a cabinet maker, they got you covered.

Down in Sweet Home, they have a wood shop class, they have logging class, they have forestry classes.

Heck, they get wood donated logs out of the forest by forest companies that own the logs.

Goes to their school, they teach the kids how to run a mill.

They actually cut their own wood and lumber for their shop classes.

So there's no financial barrier to get in there.

There's ways around it.

But so many school districts are so into how many kids can they feed into the college programs.

So they can see that statistic at the detriment of the students.

They don't care.

That kid's gonna go spend a hundred thousand dollars and end up working a minimum wage job because there are no jobs.

If it was me, and here's my solution for this, this is a little bit of a rant and I apologize.

I do want to keep this positive and I think it is positive.

I want to get this outright.

I think that if kids going to college, we're going to get student loans, they should have to show that they can get a job to pay that back with that degree.

If you're going to go get some, I'm not going to pick on anybody here.

But if you're going to get an underwater basket weaving degree, guess what?

Can you get an underwater basket weaving job that's going to pay that back?

I think we would see a whole different mindset if we had some rules for these kids.

Just if you went and got a car loan, house loan, hey, cool, I know you want this.

Is there a chance you're gonna pay us back?

And I think that's might be some of our solution here in the U.S. but the college machine is so big, hard to fight that one.

We have such a huge over emphasis on a traditional college education that we need, we need doctors, we need lawyers, we need accountants, totally get it.

But some of these other degrees that there is no jobs for, why are we offering that People want to pay for that out of their own back pocket because they want to have a good education on Something, let's not get in the way of that.

But where are we loaning money to kids?

These kids, if we want to measure it up at age 17, aren't old enough to buy a firearm because they're going to make a bad decision.

They're not old enough to have a cocktail because they're going to make a bad decision.

But we can go sell them a college education they can sign on the dotted line for and make that same bad decision on.

I think we need to help guide them a little better and make sure that we've got them going into a career that's going to be self fulfilling, self producing.

If they want to be a doctor and they got the skills, awesome.

But if you're taking a kid that would be an amazing plumber, an amazing H vac technician and you're trying to put them into some sociology degree and then they come out and go up, you just got 100 grand of my money, I'm going to go learn how to swing a hammer.

That's on the school district, that's on the teachers, that's on the counselors.

That kid had no hope getting feed fed the bad information that they get fed.

So that goes my rant on that, guys.

But I tell you what, that is a big thing right now and it isn't getting better, it's getting worse.

As we see more and more people out there retire, it's going to be a bigger issue and hopefully all of us out there in the nation in the round house are fighting to get those shop classes back in the schools and back in there where these kids can learn, get some basic skills.

Even if they're going to be home owners one day, they should be able to fix some basics.

That would be a good place to start.

Next up, I want to comment on something that we've been seeing on the YouTube community out there about the whistling Diesel guy.

And here's the thing, guys, Some of these YouTubers out there, some of them younger maybe haven't been around the block a few times.

But there, if you don't know what's going on, this YouTuber got a lot of views out there.

We'll just keep it at that solid channel.

But he made one big fatal mistake that I've seen others make.

You've seen others like Chip and Joanna Gaines, you've seen plenty of other on HDTV channels that have made the same mistake.

When you go out and do stuff in front of the world, you better do it right.

And if you're trying to evade Taxes by licensing your supercar in Montana, where they don't have any sales taxes or anything on those cars, that can really save you a lot.

So here's what's happening out there.

If you don't know what's going on, we're going to talk about it because it's been all over the news.

And I'll catch you up real quick.

So what we had is we had this Cody Dewiller who's whistling Diesel on YouTube.

He was arrested for tax evasion in the home state of Tennessee, where he's located.

Now.

This isn't federal, this is state.

And he tried to use the Montana licensing loophole that we saw out there.

Doesn't live there, but he started an LLC in Montana, registered the car there, which saved him thousands and thousands of dollars because there wasn't really any licensing fees.

There weren't no taxes.

He didn't have any of these other licensing stuff, depending where you're located.

Supercar taxes, all those crazy things you can see out there.

The problem is when you're driving your supercar around, you got a Montana license plate about it, even if you didn't talk about it, asking for problems.

And those problems caught up with him.

This last week, Tennessee came in there and walked in, arrested him because of tax evasion for possibly $30,000 in sales tax that would have gone into Tennessee's coffers.

Dude's got 10 million subscribers on YouTube and all the other social media channels.

Probably would double that, My guess.

But here's the thing.

When you go on there, we saw this with lead paint, we saw this with asbestos in the home improvement world.

I don't know why these guys are shocked when they show up on there and go, oops, I'm busted.

You are giving these people a case recorded live sometimes, and you're giving them a huge excuse to go, dude, I can go on his page.

The Ferrari burned up at a Montana license plate.

Can you make it any harder?

No.

Can't make it any easier, that's for sure.

So be careful, guys.

Anybody out there that is gonna be filming their own stuff, Awesome.

I love it.

Use some common sense.

Use some common sense, because you're not going to get away with it.

You're not going to get away with it at all.

So not shocked about that one.

It's just the unfortunate case of people getting a little bit too cocky and things happen way before we go here, we're running a little long today.

Tesla is recalling its Powerwall 2 AC battery power systems.

That's the big Powerwall system that goes on the wall.

The lithium ion battery cells in certain Powerwall 2 systems can cause unit to stop functioning during normal use, which could result in overheating, smoke or flame.

Consumers should ensure their Powerwall 2 system is online and check the Tesla app for notification about whether their unit is included in the recall.

Tesla has remotely discharged removed energy from the battery of affected Powerwall 2 systems that are online to prevent overheating until the replacement is installed.

That's where technology is cool, where you go out and prevent that from happening remotely.

Hats off to Tesla on that one.

There's about 10,500 of those.

Lots of babyware out there.

And Belkin recalls portable power banks and wireless charging stands due to fire and burn hazards.

That's a big one there.

About 83,500 and about 2,300 in Canada.

Great Lakes Wholesale International.

There's a bunch of battery packs that don't have the child resistant packaging.

Trek recalls bicycles with coaster brakes, replacement rear wheels due to crash hazard.

And looks like we got a lot of toys, stuffed animals, baby stuff all across the board.

That's the big one.

And if you missed last week, we did have a huge one.

This was dangerous.

Still recalls BR800 backpack blower due to the fan wheel blowing apart.

Yeah, blowing apart, creating a laceration hazard.

So if you've got the steel BR800 backpack blower, there's almost 50,000 of those out there.

Take a look at it.

If it is, contact your steel servicing dealer for a free inspection and replacement of the fan whale.

All right everybody, we had a great show coming up here this weekend.

I can't wait to share that one with you.

And our pre Thanksgiving, pre holiday show.

It's going to be a good one coming up.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for tuning in to around the House.

If you have any questions for me comments, head over to aroundthe house online.com and I will message you back.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for tuning in to around the House.

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