Transcript of #319 Mike Rowe - What Happened to the American Dream?

Mike Rowe.

Guilty.

Welcome.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you for coming. Like I was saying earlier, this is pretty surreal for me. I don't know how many episodes of Dirty Jobs I've watched, but it's been a lot of them. And, uh, and outside of, outside of TV, when you chime in on certain topics, you always just bring a very well-articulated sensibility to the topic that I think that everybody seems to rally around. And it's good to see.

Well, as Steve Martin said, you know, when it comes to communication, some people have a way with words and other people not have way.

Nice.

Well, look, we're in the communication business. You can call it whatever else you want— the entertainment business, the whatever it is, TV show, podcast, influencers, you know, journalism, whatever it is. We're in the business of trying to articulate an idea in a way that is credible enough to be taken seriously, but not so credible that it's douchey. And It's impossible to articulate and, and really know when you get it right. It's kind of like a, like a, like a fat girl on a balance beam, you know. It's just like you're, you're all over the place, always trying to find your equilibrium, you know, not wanting to, to go too far, say too much, not overreach, not sit the fight out, stay in the middle. All that stuff is, is, is is challenging to navigate. Yeah, but fun. I mean, look, the whole thing is a kick, and if you're not in on the joke, well, you lose.

Nice. What do you—

how do you like podcasting? Um, I guess I love it. Um, you know, I was late to the party. We were talking earlier about the, um, you know, so much of what you do, I think is dictated by when you started. And I started in entertainment a long time ago, and, and I got very lucky to have some success at a time when podcast wasn't even a word and traditional media was still traditional. And so, you know, I, I got some breaks early on and eventually got a show on the air that I, I was proud of. And then had a network behind me that supported it, and then had a bunch of spin-offs that magnified it. And so I just came around at a time when I could have a, uh, God, I hate to say brand because that is douchey, but I could have a point of view and I could be consistent with that point of view in a way that the broad media was okay with. I couldn't do that today. I couldn't get Dirty Jobs. I couldn't sell that show today.

You don't think so?

Never in a million years. Couldn't sell it, couldn't film it, couldn't do anything like the way we did back in the day. We— that show literally Forrest Gumped its way onto the air. It was, it was deemed off-brand. I shot the pilot myself.

Did you really?

3 of them. Yeah, yeah. I, I was working, uh, for CBS at the time, hosting a local show called Evening Magazine. It was just a little segment that I was doing, and, uh, it was very inappropriate for that, for that show, but the viewers really I was going to say the viewers loved it, but that's not entirely true either. They— every time I put up a segment, I was calling them, uh, Somebody's Got to Do It. And it was, it was just like Dirty Jobs, but it was a, it was an honest look at work, uh, through the eyes of the worker. Unscripted, no second takes, nothing like that. And, um, the feedback from those segments way back in 2001 was, "You think that's dirty? Wait till you see what my dad does. My brother, my cousin, my uncle, my sister. Wait till you see what they do, like, for a living." And I'd never seen feedback like that before around anything I had done. And I'd been freelancing in entertainment for 20 years before that. I was 42 at the time. And so I was like, wow. These are viewers who, who want to program this segment.

And I thought that would be cool if it translated into a larger platform. So that's, that's kind of how it, how it started with like this idea that I work for the viewer. So to answer your question, do I like podcasting? Um, I love it, but I didn't start there. And so, and so for me, getting into your world was really an attempt, ironically, to get rid of, um, a lot of the production, because production can be the enemy of authenticity. And I find this so interesting because I've been on a lot of sets, Sean. I've been interviewed a bunch of times and This is crazy what you've built here. No, no, dude, you, you surely you must understand, but your, your viewers should understand too, that in a relative world you've created an incredibly authentic space with a ton of production in it. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Like 13 cameras in here. I filmed Dirty Jobs with a GoPro in this hand and a couple of lunatics behind me trying to figure out what the shot was. Like, we never did a second take on Dirty Jobs ever, right?

I had a behind-the-scenes camera that never stopped rolling because I, I wanted the viewer to see the business of making the show. And this is the first set I've ever been on where there's so much production that actually doesn't get in the way of what you're doing.

Yeah.

So there's a compliment baked into all that because it's a really, really— it's a hard thing to do, to build a home where a guest can feel this comfortable but still be surrounded by this much bullshit. And I mean it as a compliment.

I really appreciate that. I really do. Um, yeah, you know, I just— when I kind of got into this, it was an accident, to be honest with you. And I was just really— I used to teach weapons and tactics, and I just got so tired of that. And, um, that old story. Yeah. And, uh, so I was like, well, this podcasting shit seems to be taking off. Maybe I'll take a stab at that. And I am not a conversationalist. I have severe social anxiety, especially back then. But I want to do— I kind of saw me— I don't know if you would call it a hole in the market, but everybody was doing the Joe Rogan thing. And what I really wanted to do is bring on former colleagues and do a life story and document history and talk about overcoming struggles, is about combat veteran and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, I was like, the way I want to do it, I want it to be a legacy piece. And I kind of studied— I don't know if I'd say study, but I saw TV, you know, The Thing changed, the, the— it changes like every 3 to 5 seconds.

Sure. And I was like, okay, that must be an attention thing. So I, I wanted multiple cameras and I wanted a comfortable set, you you know, where you're not sitting erect in front of a microphone, and so that people can really kind of, you know, peel back the onion.

I'll let you know if I'm sitting erect. I don't anticipate anything like that in the next couple hours. Hey, look, at this point in my life, if it happens, I'll take it as a win.

I'm sure that'll go viral.

But, but, uh, no, but, but, but it's the It's the combination of deliberateness and honesty that gives you authenticity. You're a weapons expert, right?

Mm-hmm.

That's a very deliberate thing to be. That's a very consequential space to occupy. Don't have a lot of room for mistakes, and when you make one, it leaves a mark. Right?

Yes.

So you bring that sensibility into the communication world. That's interesting. It's thoughtful, but it's dangerous because if it goes too far, then everybody gets a stick up their ass and then nobody has an honest exchange. On the other hand, you're so aggressively self-deprecating. You're so like, you're in the communication business as a self-described introvert and a terrible conversationalist. Who has conversations that often eclipse 3 hours. Now, that makes you really interesting to somebody like me, and obviously to the millions of people who are watching this now, because people love to buy things, but they don't really like to be sold anything. And so, you know, if, if I were interviewing you which I hope to one day, I would love to talk to you about the way you think about sponsorship and the way you think about endorsements. Because I make my living in that space, you know, whether directly or through the podcast or just by delivering a show like Dirty Jobs, which was paid for 100% by advertisers. You and me, we're, we're in the advertising game.

Mhm.

And, uh, And I think being honest about that and being honest with your viewer about that, that's the first thing to do to get permission to talk as candidly as you do about the subjects you approach. And that's fragile and it's valuable. And whatever you've done to navigate that.

I really appreciate that. Thank you.

I mean it. It's short. It's a short list and it's ever-changing. So be careful out there. I will.

I will.

Thank you. No misfires, no backfires.

We've already had a couple.

Check the chamber. Yeah, yeah.

But well, let's get to you. So I'd love to do a life story on you, and then I'll wait in the car. And then, um, I know we're going to talk about some AI data centers and all of that good stuff.

And I can't wait.

And this—

I can't— I did— I'm so— is this Black Rifle Coffee I'm drinking? I think it is. I got it out here.

Is it? It might be.

I think it is. It's pretty good, right?

It might be Dunkin' Donuts. I don't know.

I'll let you know when I have to get rid of it.

All right.

Because from what I can tell, I'm liable to be here for 5 hours. Oh.

Let me give you an introduction.

All right.

Mike Rowe, you're an Emmy Award-winning television host, producer, narrator, and bestselling author, best known as the creator and host of Dirty Jobs. Through the Mike Rowe Works Foundation, you've helped award millions of dollars in work ethic scholarships and become one of the nation's strongest advocates for skilled trades and vocational education. That's fair. You're also the host of The Way I Heard It podcast, where you interviewed where you've interviewed everyone from entrepreneurs to tradespeople to scientists and everyday Americans with extraordinary stories. Throughout your career, you've challenged conventional ideas about success, arguing that opportunity often exists in the jobs many people overlook. Welcome to the show.

Wow, wow, wow. I mean, it was very, uh, concise and, uh, I got no beef with any of that. It's very flattering and accurate, if I don't say so myself. Thank you.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I did. I'd like to hear it again. All right.

And everybody starts off, everybody gets a gift.

Oh, tell me about these.

So those are Vigilance League gummy bears. And I was just telling you, actually, that, you know, that when I started this podcast in my attic with my wife, We couldn't get any advertisers, probably because I had no filter. And, uh, and, uh, so we started a Patreon account and we started selling gummy bears, and we're still selling them to this day.

You got to remember your roots.

Yep. So they're made here in the USA, up in Michigan.

Love it. Oh, with that in mind, I brought you two things. I was only going to bring the one, and then I did a little, you know, research. You don't drink anymore, right?

I don't. Sober 4 years.

And yet, what are we looking at here?

A lot of booze. Ah, doesn't control me anymore.

You're Sam Malone. You're the bartender in Cheers. That, that's the dichotomy I was talking about before, right?

Yeah.

So my pop was, uh, Carl Noble. He, uh, inspired Dirty Jobs. He was a, uh, he only went to the 7th grade, but by the time he was 30, he was a licensed electrician, a plumber. He, he, he could take your watch apart blindfolded, put it back together. Wow. He had the chip, right? Could build a house without a blueprint. That guy. And I was— I grew up on a little farm in Baltimore County next to him and my, my grandma. And he was the guy. He cast like a long shadow, man. He was so smart and so kind. And my earliest memories are of he and my dad Like waking up clean and going out into the world to fix some problem and coming home dirty. Like, that was, that was my first look at work. Anyway, um, he, uh, he turned 90, and my— I was working for that thing at CBS I was telling you about, um, Evening Magazine, and my mom called to say, Michael, your, uh, your grandfather's turning 90 years old, and I've got, I've got the perfect gift for you to give him. I'm like, all right, what is it?

Now, at the time, I'm hosting this, this local TV show, and I, man, I'd sung in the opera, I had sold stuff on the QVC cable shopping channel, I'd had 300 jobs in broadcasting because the handy gene is recessive. And even though I wanted to follow in my pop's footsteps, I just didn't get the, you know, it didn't come easy to me.

Yeah.

Long story short, his name was Carl Noble. And when we rebooted Dirty Jobs during lockdown, I decided to put his name on some whiskey that's made down the street here as a fundraiser for my foundation. That is cool. Well, we're in 30 states now. The thing has won. I don't know how many gold medals. And it's totally out of control. And I'm like, I guess I'm in the liquor business. I didn't mean to be, but my granddad, who really didn't drink either, his name is now on a bottle of award-winning whiskey. And I just wanted you to have it to do with what you will. Give it away, put it on display.

Thank you.

And then—

Very cool.

You definitely don't have this one, but you strike me as the kind of guy that probably has a knife or two lying around. So I become friends with a guy called Josh Smith.

Oh, I know Josh. Do you? Yeah.

Have you had him on?

No, I've met him at a couple events.

This guy came on my podcast a couple years ago and said some really nice things about my foundation and, um, And I said, if you make a MicroWorks knife to help me raise some money for these scholarships we do, uh, you know, that would be awesome. So of course he did, and we raised like $100 grand in 3 days. And then he said, Mike, this matters to me a lot. So he, he, he made what he described as the ultimate blue-collar utility knife. He called it the Rocker. And he gives a chunk of every sale back to my foundation. I didn't ask him to do this. This guy started— he was a lineman who starts making knives in his garage.

He was a lineman.

He was a lineman for years. Farm boy working with electricity. Also a bladesmith. Gets a deal when he's a teenager to go make a sword for a sheik over in Saudi Arabia somewhere. And he does it, comes back, winds up getting on— what is that show? Forged in Steel or something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

Right? So he gets a little notoriety and decides, I'm going to make the best knives in the country in my garage. So that's basically what he and his wife did, just like you started this podcast. Wow. So he opens his facility a month and a half ago. He took it up a notch. The same way you did, dude. He's got 120 employees. He's doing like $12 million a year making knives in the USA.

I love it.

And this is the very first version of the Rocker. He's just re-upped it. It benefits my foundation, and he wanted you to have the first one.

So take a look here.

And, and for me, man, look, this country is either going to figure out how to start making things again or it's going to circle the drain.

Yeah.

And if we can do it with a knife, we ought to be able to do it with a car. We ought to be able to do it with the chairs we're sitting in.

Look at that beauty.

It's ridiculous. Oh yeah, it's sharp, and he'll keep it sharp for the rest of your life. Just send it back if it needs sharpening.

No kidding.

It's a great American story. It's a great product. And, you know, modesty aside, I was just last night, I was talking to my partner about this. It's like, you know, The business of making whiskey and doing it right, the business of making a knife and doing it right, the business of making a podcast, doing it right, shooting a gun, doing it right. Get that— getting it done, whatever the it is, that's the, that's the jam. That's the, that's what's for sale, I think.

What a great guy. I'm glad you guys are partnered.

Yeah.

And, uh, yeah, I've seen his facility and, and, uh, I didn't know where he kind of— know he's a lineman, but I know he had just built that facility. And I think— I know it started as kind of a grassroots, very small shop. And I, I just— I love those stories because I think that's what, that's what brings hope to all the people out there that are saying you can't make it. There's no way, American dream's gone. It's like, no, it's not. You just got to find the thing. Yeah, that resonates with you.

And what is the American dream?

I think the American dream is the fact that you can come here and build anything you want and find success if you work hard, if you have a hard work ethic, a good work ethic, and, uh, and a creative idea.

Let me run this by you. I got one of the news agencies asked me to write 400 words on whether the American dream is alive or dead and why. And, you know, I normally don't, don't do that stuff, but it was, it was on my mind. And, you know, we're going to be 250, right, in a couple of weeks. And so I went this way just because I didn't want to say the same thing I thought everybody else would probably say. I said, uh, Uh, the American dream died a long time ago, and I'm really glad it did, and I'll tell you why. It died in 1783 when we signed the Treaty of Paris and actually became the United States. Prior to that, everything we had dreamt of— life and liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the Bill of Rights— all these ideas they were dreams, and then they were real, and they've been real ever since. So yeah, the American dream was a thing, and then it turned into the American reality, and now it's a reality that we get to shape for ourselves. And your experience may vary, you know. Maybe you'll make whiskey, maybe you'll make knives, maybe you'll make TV shows about work, maybe you'll make a podcast that Whatever it is.

But the idea that, that, that, that doesn't exist, it's just bananas. Of course it exists. It has for as long as I've been alive. And I think for as long as we've been us.

Yeah, I know, I know it's still alive. I mean, I got two examples that are recent. Within the past 4 years. One of them, when I finally got out of my attic—

dude, that should be your book if you haven't written it yet—

when the wife finally kicked me out of the attic, so I don't want these people over here anymore, um, I went and got a very small garage, like an auto mechanic's, you know, one, one, one bay garage, and, uh, with 2 offices in it. And we built the studio in there. And I had— I couldn't afford a construction, you know, crew to come in and design it, do all that shit. And so there was a building being put up right across the street. Of course, a bunch of Latino workers that went over there, none of them spoke English. I speak Spanish. They come over, they're like— it was around Easter, and he's like, I can come over on Easter Sunday and I'll frame this whole thing out for you. And I was like, perfect. Couple years later, I had him do some more work, and he's telling me, comes around, he's speaking English now, he's got some new cologne, got a nice watch, good sunglasses, a brand new car. And he goes, he's just telling me, he's like, you know, I have like 5 crews now. And I'm like, That's fucking awesome, man. Good for you.

Like, come here, you work your ass off, you don't bitch, whine, complain.

You work on Easter Sunday.

Now you have 5 crews.

Yeah.

And you can't even keep up. That's awesome. And then another one, uh, Laura, who you met.

Yeah, uh, she's awesome, by the way. Your whole team, solid, dude.

It's like a family here.

Really great.

But But her husband just— he started a fence company earlier this year, and, uh, I think he's going to clear like $200,000 or $300,000 in revenue on his first year just building wood fences. It's awesome. It's hard enough to find clean food for ourselves, let alone our dogs. And with a lot of dog food, you look at the label and it's full of ingredients you don't recognize. A lot of kibble is cooked with extreme high heat so it can stay shelf-stable and inexpensive, and then brands have to add synthetic vitamins and minerals back in. That's what made Sundays stand out for me and why this is the only food I use for my dog. Sundays for Dogs was founded by Dr. Tori Waxman, a veterinarian and dog parent, and it was created to meet the standard she wanted for her own dogs. Sundays starts with over 80% all-natural meats, then adds superfoods like kale, ginger, and blueberries. No fillers, no nutritional blends, no weird chemicals, just simple, complete nutrition. Stanley has always been a picky eater. We've tried different foods, mixed stuff in, done the whole routine, and sometimes he'd still just stare at the bowl like he was negotiating with us.

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Is this for Patreon?

Yeah, this is for Patreon. We got a couple questions for you.

Hit me.

TJ Smith: Mike, you often champion skilled trades as a path to opportunity. How can young Americans entering blue-collar careers today realistically achieve financial stability, a healthy family life, and a promising retirement when the cost seems to demand more hours, more overtime, and less time at home.

I would start by saying that virtually everyone who is working in the trades through my scholarship is mid-six figures. They're killing it. Not everyone, but it's not like the challenges you're going to face as a young person getting started are the result of the trade. People hate to hear this. Why do you think stories like that inspire certain cohorts but anger others? Like, why is success so annoying to some people and so inspirational to others?

I think that's a great question. I think that, I mean, it's just an entitlement problem. I think people don't—

they—

I don't really know where it comes from, but I think that there's just a lot of people out there that are unwilling to put the work in, or maybe they went to a prestigious school and thought something was going to happen afterwards and didn't. And they see somebody who maybe have— maybe has a lower IQ, who's not as smart as them and not as well educated, and da da da da da, but they have the work ethic and they don't have that entitlement. And it just— it works, you know.

And yeah, I was thinking about this in the shower this morning. Weirdly, um, the— I feel like maybe to some extent some excuses have been removed. Like, I don't know, I, I feel sometimes like there's so much information out there, like I'm drinking from a fire hose, you know? Like there's so much to learn, and no matter how much you learn all you really wind up concluding is that the more you realize you don't know. Yeah, but the more you know, the more you realize you don't. And it's, it's like, like, so that's, that's one thing. But the other thing about all the information, all the podcasts, all the interesting guests, is that it's all that's adjacent to all the knowledge in the world, right? I mean, like, if you have one of these things and an internet connection, you have access to 98% of every single thing we, we've ever known, and it, and it's accessible. Point is, like, if you don't understand algebra or trigonometry or calculus, if you don't, if you can't make a persuasive case for the relevance of the Stoics or philosophy, if you can't talk at all about Nietzsche or Descartes or force equals mass times acceleration, if you don't— like, if you don't have any of that, what's your excuse?

Like, for a long time, like maybe most of, most of all of time, you could say, I don't have access to that. I don't have money. I can't go to a school. I don't— I was born here. I look like this, I look like that. I just don't have access. Like, there's no way I could ever, you know, be that informed. But if you're curious, which I think is a choice, right? It's kind of like work ethic. Like, you, you can choose to be curious. Well, now your accessibility is unlimited. You can get to any site anywhere, anytime, 24 hours a day. I literally just watched a lecture from MIT for my hotel room the other day for free. It's like we're living in a time where there's absolutely no excuse not to be informed. But at the same time, we are so overwhelmed with information that we're exhausted by it. So I'm not sure what the point is exactly, except back to your first question, how do I like podcasting? It's kind of hard to answer because I feel like part of what I'm trying to navigate is all these smart people with all these incredible ideas, and they've made their documentaries and they've written their books and they've accomplished so much.

And I, and I, and I want to hear about it, but I can't get to all of them.

Yeah.

And, and then I turn on the news, and I saw this clip the other day that really made me laugh. The guy's like, is it just me, or does anybody else just not give a shit anymore? Like, is it just me, or like, what is happening with the chemtrails? Why do I care? How much should I care? The seed oils? Is this a problem? Is it a big problem? Maha? MAGA? What? The Strait of Hormuz? Why do I know about that? Why do I know? Don't you care? Don't you want to know what's going on? Well, yes, I do. But then once I know, you're just going to tell me about something else that I didn't know, and I don't know what to do with that information. Yeah. Anyway, if there's a point in all that, it's that people love your show because you're a, you're a docent. A docent is a fancy word for a guide in a museum. Like, you walk into a museum for the first time, it's overwhelming. I don't know if you've been to the Smithsonian. It's overwhelming. It's like you can't even begin to get your head around the totality of the exhibits.

So you need a docent to walk you around and explain what's what, the context. Like, I need a docent in this room. We could probably spend an hour. You could walk me around and you could explain why the things on your wall are there, and they would have new meaning for me. But I can't look at any of it and know anything. I need a guide, dude. I need somebody to walk me through the weaponry. I need somebody to— we all do. I was at a Cheesecake Factory the other day. When's the last time you went to a Cheesecake Factory?

It's been a while.

Check out the menu. It's as thick.

Yeah.

There are hundreds of entrees. There are 1,000 desserts. They're pictures.

Everything from a bowl of chili to sushi.

There's an index in the menu. There's a table of contents because the menu is so big. You need a doset. You need a guide to figure it out. I just want a cheeseburger. Well, what kind? On page 34, you'll notice we can— you got the Wagyu, you got the— I think people are exhausted by the amount of information. Aware that they're never going to be able to process all of it. And on the other hand, I think people are embarrassed by their own ignorance because there's no excuse for it. And somewhere in between, this place called— I call it Podcastlandia— this mythical kind of Narnia evolved where docents and guides have appeared to help us make sense of the inexplicable.

It's a good point. A couple things. The coolest thing in this room is that sword up there. That's from a 100— he's going to be 103 this year, I believe.

Up there?

Yep, that sword up there. 103-year-old World War II veteran. His name's Don Graves. He was a flamethrower in Iwo Jima. And he came in and he saw all this stuff. The majority of this stuff is not mine, it's from guests that have been on the show. And so he, he said, oh, I have something for you. And he sent in that sword that he took off a Japanese—

that a Japanese— yep, the mandatory one they carried for the— what's the name, is seppuku? I can't remember, I think it's seppuku or something like that, but So he was on EWO.

Yeah. Another thing. So the— you had just mentioned there's so much info. You thought you knew so much from all the information that you've gathered that you made— it made you realize you don't know anything. Yeah, that's where I'm at. Pretty recently came to this conclusion. I mean, after, what, 5 years of building this, I thought I knew who our biggest enemies were. All these things, right? All the stuff in tech.

And I was building this, you know, thing of knowledge, a little monument to yourself. Yeah.

And then everything I thought I believed in and was for has been the complete opposite. And, uh, it just, it just made me realize, Sean, you don't know shit.

Nothing.

Well, when did you arrive to that conclusion?

Oh, I have a version of it every day. Um, the Greeks have a great word for it. They have two great terms I love. Uh, the Greek word for discovery is anagnorisis, and, uh, Aristotle writes about it a lot when he tries to define what makes a plot good, right? Plots are driven forward by discoveries. The characters on a hero's journey, they discover things along the way that informs their, uh, their worldview, their perceptions, and so forth. All good dramas especially a hero's journey, are, are littered with anagnorisis. And, um, but the great stories, you know, the ones that win Emmys and the ones that we quote, they all have a, a specific form of anagnorisis. It's called a peripeteia, or a peripatetic moment, or a peripety. You can find it in your favorite movie. I guarantee it, or your favorite book. And it's a form of discovery when our hero, uh, realizes that everything he thought he knew was wrong. It's literally the realization that changes the course of the narrative. And remember, Aristotle, he, he defined a tragedy as the moment in a narrative when the hero comes face to face with the undeniable and inescapable truth of his own reality.

So these peripeteias, if you look for them, you'll find them everywhere. Like, the most famous one is probably in, uh, in Oedipus— Oedipus Rex, the famous king who discovers through the story, through anagnorisis, a great many things about life and leadership and war, you know. And, uh, among these discoveries is the fact that he, he really enjoys the company of, uh, of older women. And so he, of course, famously marries one. And the plot goes along, and Oedipus is the king, and, and then in Act 4, I think, you know, he has a— he has his peripeteia when he realizes his, his wife, with whom he's had several children, is his mother. Now, when you realize your wife is also your mom, your narrative goes in a different direction, okay? This is why people still quote Oedipus today. It's why, like, if you watch The Sixth Sense, like Bruce Willis, the whole movie is anagnorisis. Oh, he's a psychiatrist, and there's this little kid, Cole. Poor Cole's— he's got mental problems. Why? Well, he sees dead people. And the plot unfolds, and it's wrapped in mystery, and pretty soon Bruce discovers this little kid is pretty great.

And in fact, you know what, maybe he's not crazy. And in the end, he has his peripeteia when he realizes, A, the kid really can see dead people, and B, the kid is looking at him. Ergo, C, he's dead. And when you realize you've been dead the whole movie and you're the hero, changes the direction of the narrative. Yeah, so So maybe, maybe you had a peripeteia. Maybe you realized everything you thought you knew or believed in just kind of shit the bed, and now maybe you gotta figure out what do you do about that.

I don't know what the hell you do about that, but well, starting over.

This is why God gave us a sense of humor. It's why he gave us a sense of curiosity. And most of all It's why we have a thing called humility.

Mhm.

I think— I mean, that's my theory. And I, I, I look back at the parapatias in my life, and, uh, they are always, uh, humbling, discerning, unsettling, and really important.

Yeah, I definitely took something out of that one.

Well, what was it, man? What was the inciting incident? I saw your interview with Megan.

Well, there was a lot of it was within that, but I mean, drip, drip, drip, frog in the boiling water, or like— probably drip, drip. It didn't take long, so probably frog in the boiling water. It was from the get-go, I was kind of like, I don't know about how this is all going. But what it taught me is, you know, maybe don't get so fucking tied to your own opinions.

Don't fall in love with your own smack.

Nope. So it's taught me to be a lot more open-minded, and I always considered myself pretty open-minded, but, uh After this last go-around, I don't think I will involve myself in politics very much longer.

Were you ever really involved in politics, or were you just—

it kind of just happened. It kind of just happened. And, uh, and I would say I'm involved in politics just through the interviews, you know, but, uh, yeah, it's— it just, uh That last presidential election, I tried to get everybody. Actually, I did try to get everybody. I really tried to get Kamala. We did a couple press releases to try to pressure her to get on. We were talking with her team and she wouldn't come. But, uh, she said she was going to come for a while and then it just kind of fell off. But because I always wanted to be fair and balanced, but unfortunately I couldn't get anybody from that side.

Why do you want to be fair and balanced?

I want to know. I think it's important that you know what everybody's perspective on things are. Because one thing that I did that would go way against what I thought my audience would like is I interviewed this guy. His name's Chris Beck. Are you familiar with him?

Give me more.

The first transgender Navy SEAL.

Yes.

He wrote The Warrior Princess, and everybody in the SEAL teams just despised this person. And To be honest with you, he's, he's one of the most brilliant people I've ever sat with. I mean, the way his mind works and what he's invented and, and he's just a really, really bright guy. But anyways, I wanted to bring him on because I was— I have an opinion about that issue, especially when it comes to kids. And he has since transitioned back. To male. And so I wanted to give him a platform, and I wanted to hear his journey, you know, like his legit journey into how it happened, what the process was like, why he decided to come back, without injecting my own opinions or biases. And, you know, the kind of the point was the interview for me was I wanted to showcase this is what it This is what your kids are in for. If you're looking to do this, here's the roadmap. This is what you're in for. It helped them make maybe somewhat of a more educated decision, you know. And nobody else would do it. And it was fascinating. And it made me understand.

I was like, okay, that's how that could happen.

So He came in or no?

He did come.

He did come.

It's an awesome episode. It's one of my favorite episodes. And, you know, um, when he describes how it happened, it kind of— for me at least, it kind of opened my heart up to the transition, or the retransition to the transition. I just wanted to understand, you know, like, how the— how the fuck can somebody go through this?

Yeah.

And the way he described it and what happened to him, which was horrific— I mean, Cliff Notes version: horrific childhood, severe abuse, lots of sexual abuse, the whipping boy of the family. And so he would go up to the attic by himself and wear his sister's clothes, not because he wanted to be a woman, but because all that kid knew was getting his ass whipped by his old man and being sexually abused by the neighbor. And so he just wanted to feel like he was somebody. He just didn't want to be him because he had no happiness. He just lived in fear and, and dealt with severe trauma from a very young age. And so he'd go up to the attic and try this fucking dress on, and he would pretend that he was his sister because his sister was like the golden child of the family.

And it wasn't a dress, obviously. It was armor. Yeah, he put his armor on.

So fast forward, then he becomes a Navy SEAL, has all that trauma to deal with, gets hooked on cocaine. He's riding with the Hells Angels, da da da da da, starts going to therapy to clean it up, tells the therapist— you know, if you've ever done therapy, you know you're going back to childhood— and tells the therapist about the dress when in his childhood. And she is an activist. And there it is. You want to be a woman, you want to write a book, you want to do this, you want to do that. And, um, he wrote the book high on drugs. And while he was high on drugs, she slipped him an NDA— or not an NDA, a, uh, whatever, a contract. She— he signed over the rights to the book to this therapist. Anyways, so That's how it happened. And when you think about it, well, it wouldn't be the direction I would go. I can at least understand, like, fuck, man, you've been through some horrific shit that most people can— will never understand. And this is a path that you kind of got coaxed into, but now you're— now you're back.

Whether he came back or not though, I could still understand.

Yeah, no, like Okay, because, you know, it feels to me sometimes like people think in order to understand a person they have to understand their circumstances, but you really don't. Like, if you understand anagnorisis and the hero's journey, if you understand peripeteia, and if you can find one in your own life It's a lot easier to see them in other people's lives. And even though the circumstances might seem wildly divergent, the feeling isn't. When you realize that everything you thought you knew about a thing that you were good at was wrong, that— I mean, if you're being honest with yourself, in my opinion, uh The real gift of that is that you can see it in other people. And maybe, maybe it helps with your empathy. Maybe it just helps to be a better human, you know, to be, to be honest. Now, your peripatia may, may vary, you know. You like, oh no, my wife's my mom? Wow. I mean, like, that's, that's over here. My peripatia was I realized I was a— was not a very good host, actually. I was in the hosting business.

You know, I don't consider yourself a good host.

I'm okay. I'm good enough. I'm a good enough host to make a living. Like, I'm— if I'm at the slot machine and I'm pulling the lever, the host lever, it pays enough to keep me pulling the lever. And that's what I did for 20 years. I impersonated a host on Dirty Jobs. I realized actually I, I wasn't. I was more of a guest or an apprentice, maybe, or like an avatar. Like, I started to think differently about my own job in the sewer in San Francisco when I was filming the first episode. It was like, oh, and light bulb, I'm way better not knowing things I don't know than pretending to know things. Oh yeah. I'm way better, and the viewer likes me a lot more if I'm honest about my shortcomings. Yeah, of which there are many. That was a peripatia for me because I'd been paid for 20 years to hit the mark and say the line. I— it's not that I'm a bad host. I can, I can look in the lens and I can talk like this, and I can say any number of things that, you know, would generate a paycheck once upon a time.

That's not what Dirty Jobs was, and that's not what most of the stuff I've done since then is. Peripatia, like, oh, you know. Anyhow, um, your brain— when you tell your brain what to, what to find, it'll, it'll find it. When you tell it what to look for, you know, it's a very simple yet complicated mechanism. So with regard to everything that's been in the headlines, from my point of view, for the last however long, I, I try and think, well, who's, who's having the anagnorisis? Who's having the peripeteia? And right now I think, God, man, that's, that's part of the— back to your first question, how do I like podcasting? Well, I love it because it's filled with these peripatetic moments, you know, and a lot of people are writing books and telling stories, whether they know it or not, that kind of hinge on that moment. Chris Beck certainly did. I mean, that, that book is peripatia 101. Um, so yeah, I, I— the only way to, to understand all the craziness and all the divergence around us is to have a look at the divergence and the craziness within us.

Have you had any recently?

Hmm, peripeteias? No, I'm— right now I'm having a pretty good run on, uh, you know, the I told you so circuit, uh, which is the opposite. I mean, I run this foundation called Microworks. It evolved out of Dirty Jobs. Uh, we award work ethic scholarships to kids who want to learn a trade.

I saw that. This is your first year. It's $10 million this year, correct?

It's $10 million this year, but 18 years ago it was zero. Um, I started it when Dirty Jobs was at its height. And you're old enough to remember, it's 2008, uh, Dirty Jobs was on in 140 countries. It was launching spin-offs every week. I was killing it. I was having the time of my life. I was doing the show I should be doing on the network I loved. Everything's perfect. Uh, the country went into a recession. And every morning there are these headlines about the number of people who are out of work. 6 million, 8 million, 10, 12 million people. And on Dirty Jobs, it seemed like everywhere we went, we saw help wanted signs. So I was like, well, what's— why are all these people unemployed? And why are all these opportunities open? And that was my first introduction to the skills gap in America. At the time in 2008, there were 2.3 million open jobs. Most of them didn't require a 4-year degree. They required training and people who were willing to show up early, stay late, and work, you know. And I would go out after most of these shoots with the people who invited us in.

We'd have a beer, we'd talk about the day. And a lot of these guys were, you know, small business owners, men and women. And I would ask them, you know, what's the biggest challenge you have to make a go of it, whether it's whiskey or knives, or like, what's your— what's the sticky point? And it was always that. It was finding that person who wanted to master a skill and apply it. Anyhow, Microworks was an attempt to shine a light on those jobs that were open because those industries had been had been very good to me. And, and it grew from there. Fans of Dirty Jobs built a massive trade resource center online. It was like zip code by zip code that hooked people up to jobs that were available right in their area. And this was kind of alarming because the headlines, remember, were like, there are no jobs. All these people are out of work. And so there's this idea, which is really like an artifact, I think, from the Great Depression, that the way to get rid of unemployment is to create more jobs. But that doesn't quite line up because there were 2.5 million open jobs in 2009 when 12 million people were out of work.

Today, there's 7.5 million open jobs right now. Are there really? 7.5 million. Most of them don't require a 4-year degree. They require training and a willingness to work. Also, quick sidebar, but outstanding student debt is $1.7 trillion. Most of that's held by people who went to university, many of whom didn't graduate but got the debt nevertheless. You've got 6.9 million men, able-bodied, who are not only not working, they're not looking for work. And that's never happened, not in peacetime anyway. And maybe you could argue we're not exactly in peacetime, but you got 7 million guys not working. You've got 7.4 million open jobs. You've got $1.7 trillion in outstanding student loans. We're still telling kids that the best path for the most people is the most expensive path. And we're lending money we don't have to these same kids who are never going to be able to pay it back to train them for a bunch of jobs that don't exist anymore. Bananas.

Stupid.

So Microworks became an attempt to just cry foul on all of that and make a more persuasive case for the jobs that we do have. So flash forward, I was kidding about the victory lap, but a lot of what I was arguing back in the day has come to pass. I went to Congress twice to talk about the need for a national effort to reinvigorate the skilled trades. My basic argument was, look, you have to prove to this generation that you can make six figures working with your hands. You have to show them welders who are prospering and electricians and steamfitters and pipefitters and mechanics, people like my granddad, you know, who weren't cut out at all for college, but who were freaking smart and eager to apply their knowledge. You know, like you've got to find that kid and you have to show them this path. Because that's the right path for them. And right now, look, we took shop class out of high school. Had to be the dumbest thing in the history of modern education, right? So we set the table in a really jacked-up way, and today we have, uh, a colossal imbalance in the workforce.

Now, most people simply don't realize how bad it is, but Not a week goes by— I'm not, I'm not even exaggerating— that Microworks doesn't hear from the leader of some consequential industry or the CEO of a big company or some elected official who is really like ringing the alarm bell, worried about the skills gap. Blueforge Alliance, the company that oversees the maritime industrial base, I'm sure you're familiar. There are 15,000 companies who are collectively charged with delivering our submarines, our nuclear-powered subs. 2 Columbia, 1 Virginia class a year. I think it's a 2+1 cadence. I might have them reversed, but it's a massive undertaking. We need 3 a year. They called. They're like, we're having a hell of a time finding, finding welders. And electricians. Can you help? I said, maybe. How many do you need? 400,000. 400,000 welders. For— in, in the next 8 years, they need to hire 400,000 skilled workers. Many are welders. The shipbuilding industry— China built 1,000 ships last year. We built 3. Yeah, right. Rare earths, critical minerals— we can get into all that stuff too, but The front line of this is skilled labor. The data center thing, dude, Larry Fink, who runs BlackRock, told me that the companies in his portfolio alone needed 300,000 electricians.

What's coming is an infrastructure build-out that's being calculated at $9 to $10 trillion over the next 9 years. A lot of it's data centers, but it's a lot of other stuff too. And we can get into data centers and AI. It's all fascinating to me, but it's all kind of academic if you can't build them. And if you can't build them because of a shortage of skilled labor, that'll go down in history of one of the greatest unforced errors of all time. And that's what people are beginning to realize. We have to reinvigorate the trades. We must, or we're going to be in a level of trouble that's truly unprecedented. Sorry, I know I'm, I'm rambling, but every 5 tradesmen— for every 5 who retire this year, 2 replace them.

That's what I was going to ask. Do you have any idea how many welders there are in the U.S. right now?

I can tell you that whatever the number is, we need 400,000 more. I can tell you we're underwater. Like, it's worse with electricians right now. I was in Plano, Texas a couple months ago, got a tour of a data center. Been talking about them for a while, but I hadn't really seen one up close. Oh my God, I mean Amazing. Uh, kind of terrifying, but also kind of awesome. Uh, enormous. I ran into 3 electricians, all under 30, all making north of $240 grand a year, all debt-free. Now here's the craziest part: all 3 had been poached 3 times in the prior 18 months. Now, does that mean that's going on in Sacramento and Phoenix and Tallahassee and Bangor? I don't know, but it's going on in Plano, and it's happening in different areas. The, the shortages are so acute that the companies don't have time to, to train. They have to poach. And so Great news for an electrician, but it's a little weird for the economy overall. So long story short, uh, this issue has been in front of me for years, and it evolved organically out of Dirty Jobs. And now I'm back in DC because the Department of War got the memo, and they're going to launch a big campaign in the next couple of weeks.

I'm going to be in it. It's going to be called Build Freedom, and we're going to try and make a more persuasive case for these jobs that exist in the industrial base. I just sat with the president of Meta yesterday in front of Maria Bartiromo to announce their initiative. It's called America's Workplace Academy. Dude, these guys are— they're, they're in 4 states. They're— they want to be in all 50. But the pilot program is an appeal to anybody who wants to learn to be an electrician or a, or a fiber optic specialist. These, these are all in demand. They're paying you to learn. It's a 5-week accelerated course. You, you're guaranteed your certifications. All your expenses are covered, travel, everything, and you're guaranteed a job. On the other end. Wow. Now, that's what's going on in workforce. And you can go down the list. Met is one company. You look at Lowe's and Home Depot and Ford. You look at Wells Fargo, who supports my foundation. A bank has become the biggest supporter of my foundation and not a traditional, like, blue-collar company. Why? Because they know. They know what's coming. They've done the math.

It's a problem. Wow.

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Well, on a personal level, uh, I become friends with the guy that built my house, and I think the youngest guy on his crew was 55. And so I started talking to general contractors, you know, in the construction game, just to say, what— how's the— how do you recruit? How do you keep them? How long do they stay? What are the barriers? And, and it's just shocking. Look, this whole thing, the, the sheer numbers are a problem. The demographics are a problem. There's just— you don't need to be an economist to know that 5 out and 2 in No bueno. Um, but it's the stigmas and the stereotypes and the myths and the misperceptions that have kept a whole generation of kids from really looking at these jobs. Um, to this day, if I tell you this— we've had 3,500 people go through my program— I got a story just like the one you told me, uh, the guy that helped build your place out. Do you remember his name? Do you remember the, the whole situation? I mean, I don't want to—

uh, I don't off the top of my head.

It's just, it's just funny for me, like, the ones who, who, who stick out. But there was a kid named Michael Gamez who applied for a Work Ethic scholarship from my foundation, maybe, I don't know, 6 years ago. Uh, first kid in his family to go to college. He was 2 years in and he was in a panic. Because he realized, as it turns out, mechanical engineering wasn't the thing he really was passionate about. He, he just wanted to work on cars like his granddad. And he was a gifted mechanic, but he was going down the wrong road and he already had debt. So he fills out his application, which is a pain in the ass. I admit it. You got to jump through hoops if you're— I'm very stingy with the money I raise. But this kid said all the right things, signed our sweat pledge, made a persuasive case for himself. All the references were good. Gave him some money. He went to UTI, got his, uh, got his certification, and a year later was like running the shop for Beverly Hills BMW. And now he's way up the food chain at Rivian.

Like, he's making six figures, he's got a kid, he's living a— he's making his own knife, he's making his own hooch, he's making his own podcast, he's, he's He's carved out a, like, a real chunk. It's exactly the story you were telling me. I got 3,500 of those, man. So yeah, I'm talking to the Department of War and Meta and Ford and a lot of people at the grown-up table, and I'm telling them all the same thing. It's like, you've got employees who are like Michael Gamez. The country needs to meet them. I can tell a story anecdotally, and so can a lot of big companies. But in the same way your viewers can smell bullshit, the bullshit meter is finely tuned in this country right now. Not anywhere more so than in the generation that needs to enter the skilled trades. So they can't be marketed to in a traditional way. They can't be oversold. The good news is that there's a persuasive case to be made and there's plenty of evidence, and the evidence demands a verdict. And so to answer your question, I'm not experiencing a parapetia at the moment. I'm experiencing something more like irony and, and the surreal moment when the headlines catch up to your own smack and, and make, and, and make you relevant in ways that you didn't totally anticipate.

Yeah, maybe that you didn't want to happen.

No, I'm good. I'll take it this time. I want this. I want it. I'm, I'm proud of my team. I'm proud of my partners, and I, and I'm I'm really proud to have a seat at the table, you know? And if that's what Dirty Jobs was for— and look, I love that show, and I loved every moment of it, really. But it's just a show. Shows come and they go, and people remember it fondly, and I'm happy for that. But it launched this thing, and it gave me permission to sit with the Secretary of War and the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Energy. And all the cats who are now paying attention, that's a kick, man.

What I meant is maybe the situation that we've found ourselves in right now, not, not what's happening for you and your foundation, but just the situation in general, because I feel like it's pretty fragile.

When has it ever not been fragile?

True.

I mean, in this way it is a little unnerving because an out-of-balance workforce is, is a problem. But man, this last 250 years, if it's not one thing, it's another. If it's not a civil rights problem, it's an infrastructure problem, it's a corruption problem, it's a fraud problem, it's a trust problem. We've had problems. We've had the same problems for a long time. I think maybe they feel a little elevated right now?

Yeah, I would say that's, that's a good description.

A little amplified.

So what, what is it that you and the Department of War are going to do?

Well, their objective is to make a more persuasive and more honest case for a couple hundred thousand jobs that are wide open in the DIB. That's the defense industrial base. And my, my suggestion is to visit the companies, consequential companies that a lot of people probably haven't heard of, that are really anxious to hire and have great AI-proof six-figure jobs that they're trying to fill. That I call them jobs of consequence, you know, like, like a chance to work on the kind of tech that I think is going to define the future for the, for the country. So maybe it's Anduril, maybe it's Palantir, maybe it's a, maybe it's a company called Hadrian, maybe it's Apex. They're making satellites, uh, in a mass-produced way. Bit of a game changer. Take the satellites out of the sketch and there's, there's no strategy. There's, there's no warfare as we understand it today anyway. So introducing people to some of these, some of these companies— there's a company called Mok who I'm going to talk to in a couple of weeks.

You're gonna love, you're gonna love—

you know, I'm talking to Ethan. Yeah.

Fucking amazing guy.

He's—

love that guy.

He's coming on my podcast next week, so I'm going to talk to Ethan, and with his permission, I'm going to take cameras to the facility. I want the country to understand what that brilliant 22-year-old is doing. He's got his hands on something really important. And I know you know this, there's like a— there's an ecosystem of people under 40 who are running companies and doing things that are so freaking cool. They're just cool. And, and those opportunities need to be presented, not sold, because nobody wants to be sold anything, but people want to buy into something that, that matters. And so yeah, I'm looking for companies like that. I'm looking for entrepreneurs like him that are creating jobs like the ones that are AI-proof and six-figure-ish. And then I, I want to tap the country on the shoulder and go, hey, get a load of him, get a load of her, look at what they're doing. Can you see a future in there? For yourself? No wrong answer, but at least look at it, you know, because if you can't see it, you can't even— you can't even process it. That, that was the crime of taking shop class out of high school.

It, it didn't just build a detour for a lot of kids who could have entered that vocation. It removed the work from, from sight. So just a, a guy like me who was going to get in the entertainment business, just walking from math class to English class, you know, I could stick my head into a to a woodshop or a metal shop or an auto shop, and I could see something going on that looked like real work. That went away. We had a whole education of kids weren't even exposed to anything like it, man.

I mean, you see a lot of kids now, they don't— you can't even change a light bulb, you know. But, um, you know what, so what is the Department of War gonna do? That's what I'm— because I have a suggestion. I mean, there's, there's all these military jobs that are also going to go away. Pilots— I mean, pilots have been on the chopping block since I was at war back in, what, 2005? We had drones back then. Now it's all, it's all going to drones. You don't need drones, you don't need boat captains, or I mean, excuse me, you don't really need pilots much anymore. You don't really need boat captains. I mean, the AI is handling a lot of these kind of things. Why don't we just start manufacturing our own shit from within the military and start— start instead of, hey, recruiting for pilots, recruiting for whatever the job is that AI is going to replace, why don't you recruit for fucking welders and plumbers and metal workers and that, all of that? Why don't— why don't they do that? And then those people get out and then they go into the economy and it just fucking works.

That's what this is. This is not a be-all-you-can-be pitch to join the Army or the Navy or the Marines. This is not that. This is more look at the massive civilian infrastructure that serves those endeavors. You never meet the people who are most responsible for making the hardware or in other adjacent industries. That's, that's where, that's where most of the action really is. That's where most of the work really happens. You know, most people, you know, they can aspire to be a pilot and it's a good point. You can see what's going to be downsized. You can see what's going to change, but like the work that's not going to— electricians are not going to go away. Plumbers are not going to go away. Welders are not going to be replaced. Not anytime soon anyway. So, yeah, I can't speak to what the DOW is going to do specifically within that vertical. I can only tell you that after going to Congress multiple times and making this case to multiple administrations, you can still find an open letter from me online to President Obama in 2009, right after I launched this thing. I, I've offered every administration— for what it's worth, I just, just so you know, we're doing this and it's working.

Should you ever get to the point where you're on the same page, let me know. I consider myself a patriot. I don't care who's in office. I want to help. So I wrote this letter to the president. Do you remember 3 million shovel-ready jobs? Do you remember that headline? No. All right, so in 2009, that was the pitch. There was a big infrastructure pitch, and President Obama had pledged to create 3 million shovel-ready jobs. And I wrote him a letter that you can find today, and I just said, look, man, I'm rooting for you. I love it. Remember, Dirty Jobs is killing it at this point. And I'm, I'm out there and I'm saying I'm not an expert, but from what I've seen, and I have had a front row seat for a while to a lot of this, I don't think you can— I think you're going to have an easier time filling these positions if you're talking to a country who feels enthused about picking up a shovel. Right. And if you're assuming that shovel-ready jobs are just going to be filled because you create them, I'm afraid you're going to have a hard road.

Right. So that's my message. A year ago, I was at an energy conference in Pittsburgh held by— convened by Dave McCormick, who I know, you know, Senator McCormick does this right. All the cats are there, man. 35 CEOs, the President of the United States, they're all there. I'm on a panel with Howard Lutnick, Secretary of— what the hell am I doing on a panel with this guy? I don't— but that's what I meant. They— I get invited to these things now. So I'm sitting in the room with the CEOs and the President of the United States. And they're talking about the commitment to Pennsylvania that needs to happen to usher in this giant infrastructure buildout that's absolutely, positively coming. I'm in the room, Sean, when the CEOs pledge $94 billion to Pennsylvania alone to get this thing going, right? And when it's my turn to talk, I say, well, look, I'm, I'm rooting for you, Mr. President. I am. I'm always rooting for you. And this reshoring, this reindustrialization that's on everybody's mind, this building things in this country again. Knives, whiskey, podcasts, whatever, right? I'm for it. I am all for it. But the 2 million jobs you're talking about creating in the manufacturing sector, I gotta, I gotta ask you, what about the 480,000 open positions in manufacturing right now?

If we can't fill those, if we can't fill those, how are you going to fill these? So it's a math problem, which is weird because I'm not a math guy. But that's, that's been my question to every CEO I've met in the last 20 years and every elected official who has called me up and put their arm around me and said, hey, it's great to meet somebody who thinks like you. We can work together. Great. But when the, when the chili meets the cheese, what do you, like, what are you guys going to do about the fact that the people aren't, they weren't lining up for 3 million shovel-ready jobs 18 years ago, and they're not lining up for these jobs now. So what are you going to do to get this generation's attention? How are you going to meet them where they are. This is the first time somebody answered me.

What did they say?

They said, "You tell us. What can we do to help?" And I said, "Well, modesty aside, I do want to be a part of it. I do want to help deliver it, but I can't. We have to hear from the people doing the work. We have to hear from Michael Gammas. We have to hear real-world success stories, people crushing it and loving what they're doing. I said, that's the good news. You've got plenty of people. I mean, you can find them in the primes. You can go to Raytheon, you can go to Lockheed, but you can also go to Palantir and you can go to Anduril and you can go to MACH and you can go to Hadrian and you can go to Apex. And so forth and so on. Like, so, you know, there ought to be a show like Dirty Jobs that focuses on this. We can do that. There ought to be a campaign, like there ought to be a big media campaign that constantly taps the country on the shoulder and says, get a load of him, get a load— here's another one, they're killing it, right? You, you just have to drip, drip, drip.

You got to do it. And, you know, it's easy because people hear me say that and they're like, oh, so it's PR. You're saying we need better PR? Yeah. Yeah, you do.

What they need to do is set an example. I just feel like nobody does that anymore. They don't. Nobody sets the example of what they want everybody else to become or what they want them to be.

You're right.

Just tell them.

Well, you're right, because it's easy because everybody's got a podcast. I'll just tell you, you know, tune in and I'll tell you what I think today. And then tomorrow I'll tell you something else. And here's another guy. You know what he thinks? Go ahead, tell him. That's what I meant earlier. This firehose of people telling me things, you know, whether it's a journalist or a podcaster or an author or a documentarian or me. I'm not— I'm part of the problem. But what you're saying, I completely agree.

I don't think you're part of the problem, Mike. You're doing— you're— there's a—

you're doing an actionable thing.

You're not, you know, you're talking about these politicians and these CEOs of big companies that you've been talking to for the past 20, what, 20 years, 18 years, and they're just doing this over and over again. They just do this.

Yeah.

And then you come along and you start a foundation, and I don't know how many people you're pumping through trade schools or, or, or, um, helping get through helping financially get through trade schools, but it's got to be a lot. $10 million a year, that's a big number.

That's our—

trade school's a 2-year program. I mean, it's got to be— you're doing something, so you're not part of the problem. You're, you're, you're part, you're part of the solution.

That's nice of you to say. Thanks. I didn't, I didn't—

there's not very many people like that.

I'm part of the problem. Then they are like— you flick on the TV, you scroll around, you hit your news feed, and there's, there's Mike Rowe mouthing off about something, or maybe I'm just telling a funny story, whatever it is. Like, I'm in the ecosystem, I'm part of the noise. That's why I'm not part of the problem, but it's a noisy solution. And everybody's out there, man. It's— it's— isn't it amazing? Like, I think of how many guests have I had on my podcast who have their own podcasts. That's interesting. I got a podcast. I'm on your podcast now. You got to come on my podcast. It'd be rude not to do that, right? So you know you got to come to— you know you got to do that. You know I'm going to hit you up to do that. Pretty soon, you know, everybody's going to have a podcast. Like, the entire audience is going to be the influencers. Like, what happens if Andy Warhol was really right? What if this is everybody's 5 or 15 minutes of fame? What if What if the audience becomes the creators in total?

Do you think that'll happen?

Statistically, no, it can't. But I'll tell you what has happened, man. People have, uh, people have forgotten. I don't think you have. You're— since we're complimenting each other, Um, who do you work for? Me. All right. Anybody else?

My family. My team.

Next. Keep going.

My audience.

There it is. There it is. Sponsors in there anywhere?

I mean, I guess technically I work for them.

Sure.

But I don't I have to be me. I cannot fucking be an inauthentic me. I cannot be controlled. I can't. I just— I can't. And those, those conversations happen. We just lost a sponsor from the Megyn Kelly episode.

Bye-bye.

Yep, see you later. We don't like what you said about MAGA.

Okay.

Great. And then they want to know, you know, I'm like, then they want to know that I'm not going to tell anybody that they're dropping me.

How'd that work out?

I said, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna— you've already fired me. And if you don't fucking like who I am, then don't fucking— don't advertise on my show. I don't give a fuck.

There are only 5 million other podcasts.

Like, go to them.

We're down to 5 million now, right?

And so no, I'm never— if, if anybody comes in and tries to create a narrative or take me away from being who I truly am, then this— it doesn't work. Okay, so then you are the noise.

Well, we're all the noise, but, you know, noise is different than sound. Like, you can make a joyful noise, you know, you can be a symphony, or you can be screeching. You can— you could be the woman at the end of the last election, whether it was just screaming at the sky in frustration. You know, they're— all of it together is just a cacophony. It's, it's just a— my only point is it's super, super noisy out there. Why is your podcast near the top of the food chain? It's because your audience believes you, and it's because you know who you are, and they don't think you're faking it, and I don't think you are either. But it's a great answer. Who do you work for? Me, my family, my team, my audience. Okay, that's great. Um, the answer would be different if you ask different people. People will put the audience in, in different places. Uh, I'm a little different. I, I I don't think I'm as ethically sound as you are. I'm pretty good, but like, I put the audience at the top, um, because, because if they go away, obviously the sponsors go away.

If they go away, my guests go away. If they go away, there's just— I'm just a guy sitting alone talking to himself, you know. And so I think that, um, the audiences— like, people, people forget, like, just how important it is when you're in a— on a stage especially, you know, to, to look out and, and see those people. Like, you, you completely work for them, and they're, and they're They're so special and it's so easy to forget. I, I shouldn't tell this story. I'll try and do it without getting myself in trouble. But I went to an event years ago, a kind of a, kind of a, I guess, elite, quiet event that I was glad to attend. And at the event, a play was performed and it was really good. Like, it was an original work and there was singing and there was acting and there was a story and there was a peripeteia and there was an orchestra. It was amazing. And the audience, maybe 400 people. And at the end of the performance, the authors took the score and the script and threw it in a bonfire. Gone. Never to be performed again.

Interesting. Fascinating. And my first thought was And that's just so indulgent. Like, why would Mozart throw away Requiem? You do it once. Why would— like, why would— what just happened? And then later I realized, oh, what just happened was the producers and the talent in this production, um, gave 400 people a memory that no one else has. And they turned those 400 people into, uh, apostles of a kind, evangelists for that moment, that night that they had together, where something creatively cool happened, and it was transferred to the people who sat there waiting and and watching and wanting to be entertained or challenged or whatever, you know. And, um, that filled me with really a feeling I had never had before. And, um, you know, if you think about all of the performances that predated mass media as we understand it, where like nothing was recorded, nothing was ever filmed. It— the whole thing, that production of Oedipus we were talking about before, took place in, in Greece in front of an audience, and that was it, right, until the next performance. So, you know, the audience used to be such a like a vitally integral part.

They were the witnesses to the thing. They're the witnesses to this thing. There's millions of them now, and then we'll be cut up in clips and it'll go out. And but see, that's, that's such a different ecosystem, you know. I think of why— I mean, like, like, how do comedians get great today? Well, the same way they always got great. They They suck, and then they suck less, and then they get in front of more audiences until they suck less, and then the audiences grow, usually in proportion to their ability to not suck. And then eventually they don't suck, then they're good, and then the audience is— and so forth and so on. Like, that's how you get better. You get better in front of an audience, and when you're just starting, the audience is, is small. I think about Lenny Bruce, you know, and some of the great comedians who, you know, bombed horribly and early on in a little club in Greenwich or someplace, right? Big deal. You had a bad night. Not today. Today, everybody is sitting there documenting you on your first night out. All the time. 14 cameras in here, dude.

14 cameras. So look, I say the wrong thing on a podcast like this, they'll be hell to pay. You say the wrong thing, you lose a sponsor. Okay, that's cool. We're all grown-ups, you know. The stakes are actually— there are actually consequences to mouthing off. They're consequences, and those, those are great. But I just think about the consequentiality of the audience, and I think about how that's changed now. And I just— two nights ago, I was on stage, big venue, and I'm looking out at the crowd, and I swear to God, dude, 90% of them were looking at me on the screen on their phone. There's this giant filter between between the audience and the performer/influencer, whatever it is. And for time immemoriam, it wasn't there. And now it is. And I reckon a lot of what we're grappling with all the time, in every way, shape, or form, is a version of that. We're trying to navigate this weird filter that we've put between ourself and everything that's real.

Makes sense.

This is heavy, dude.

It is heavy. I wasn't expecting it.

I was going to tell some poo stories from Dirty Jobs. Get us some artificial insemination stuff.

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You know, I just wouldn't— you know, something that, uh, I interviewed Jim Caviezel once, and we were talking about money. That brought this up a couple times on the show, and he was talking about cars and motorcycles and all the fancy shit that he's bought. And, you know, it was at a time where I was kind of just starting to make a little bit of money. And, um, way more than I'd ever made before. And we kind of had this discussion, and it was— I was kind of picking his brain. I was wanting some advice, and, and he had mentioned something along the lines, he said, you know, you just have to think of it as it could be taken away by God at any moment in time. And you can enjoy it. And that's what we were talking about. We were talking about the Bible, and there's a, there's a verse in there that says, uh, something about a rich man will, you know, has a something about through the eye of the needle.

There it is. Yeah.

And, uh, he, he had, he had said, you know, I just, I don't get attached to my shit, and I'm ready and willing to give it back at any moment in time. And for whatever reason, that just really stuck with me. And so I kind of consider this— it's not mine. Every day I wake up, I look around and I'm like, this can't be fucking real. I have no college education. I only have 6 years in the SEAL teams, which is a very unimpressive career as a SEAL in that community. This should have never happened, you know, just should have never happened. I have no—

you're a bonus time business. Yeah, exactly. You're the samurai, and it'll take—

it'll be taken away at some point in time. And if that happens, it was a good run. I was true to myself, I was true to my family.

And you're so fatalistic at this point in your life, man. It's so interesting. You are such an introspective cat. By the way, you know the eye of the needle? In that scripture is not the eye of a sewing needle. It's the— it's the, the door through which people can pass into a fortress.

Okay.

It's, it's like you can pass through the eye of the needle if you're a rich man. Um, it's just difficult. For other reasons that have nothing to do with geometry. It's not like you can't force yourself, you know, through this tiny aperture. The whole metaphor was lost in the language, which happens a lot, you know. I think it happens in the Bible, it happens in the Constitution, happens all over the place. Languages always changing. But yeah, it's, um, it's not a It's not a peripatia, but man, this is a weird thing to wish on anyone. But, uh, you ever lose? You ever lose everything? Oh yeah, like flat broke.

Everything?

Not everything, of course, but like financially, your whole— your safety net, if you ever had one.

Yes. I mean, when I left, when I quit contracting for CIA, I had, I had nothing going for me.

Uh, but you quit.

I quit.

You didn't have to.

Well, that's not exactly what happened, but, um, um, there was some shit going on that I did not like, and I knew nobody would stand up to it. It had to be me. And I was going on 8 or 9 years at that point. And I kind of saw the writing on the wall. I was single, late 30s, mid-30s. And I just, I just, I was like, this is a lonely life, man. Just redeploying to fucking war zones over and over and over and over again. And that's just— I've done everything I wanted to do here, and the things that I haven't done— I've been hanging out over here for 14 fucking years. Yeah, it probably isn't going to happen. And, um, and there were some really unethical things that were happening, uh, from a, from a leader, and nobody else wanted to sound the alarm. It was dangerous. It was going to get guys killed. And so I kind of made a stand and told them if they didn't get rid of them, then I would, uh, hit the media, knowing that I would never be invited to go back. And, uh, because they never really fire you, they just— you don't get the invite to go back.

And, uh, and that's what happened.

So the sponsor of yours clearly didn't know who they were dealing with.

I don't think they really gave a shit, but that guy did— never did redeploy. And, um, those guys never had to work with that fucking asshole ever again.

Good.

And I moved on and reinvented, and everything wound up being just fine. But I think that all comes down to a work ethic.

Well, I think it comes down to a code. You have a code, you know. I know people with the code that don't work hard, and I know people who work hard, they got no code. Um, the code's important, and you pulled the pin on that scenario yourself and you walked away from it at obvious cost to you, but you did it because your code demanded it, right? Yeah, that's, um I file that under character, you know, not, not work ethic. It's adjacent, you know, the, the willingness to do a hard thing at a difficult moment. That's, that's character, you know. Uh, but when you lose everything as a result not as a result of pulling the pin yourself. You know, I think that's what Caviezel was maybe talking about, you know, sort of an act of God or just an unfortunate circumstance where you, you're out of control. The decision is not yours. Somebody else made a decision and you look down and your safety net's gone, you know. That, that will either, you know, break you or send you in another direction or reinforce whatever character you have. And, uh, you know, it's, it's another thing that I, I'm interested in, in people when I, when I talk to them.

It's like, would— did that ever happen to you? Was there a moment really when the rug got pulled out? And what'd you do? Did it, you know, iron sharpens iron and all that, you know, did it temper you? Did it break you? Did it make you a better version of yourself?

It almost broke me. I mean, I just had a suicide attempt in there. But looking back, I sure as hell wouldn't change any of it. It was much more impactful and much more enjoyable, uh, than anything I ever did for CIA or the SEAL teams.

What are we going to do about PTSD?

Well, actually, I just invested in a company. Um, this is more about the suicide epidemic, but I invested in this company called Invi, and it's, uh, founded by a guy named Johnny Wilson, who's also a former SEAL. Left the SEAL Teams, got into big tech, started this company called Envy. And it is— you— all these wearables that everybody's wearing to track their health, you, you get the, what, API keys that go into that. And then basically what it does is it, it kind of tracks your health. But what it will do is— so let's say me and you were, I don't know, sniper buddies. Back in the day, and we got two other guys that were sniper buddies. And we, we, we get this thing and, and they package it up to where we're kind of accountable to each other. And so when you see the biomarkers of depression start to kick in, you know, your sleep starts getting fucked up, your diet starts changing, blood pressure's up, all, all of these kind of things collectively together, it will kind of notify your team. Hey, Mike's not sleeping good, his blood pressure's elevated, his heart rate's a little elevated, you know, all these things.

Maybe, maybe call him, check up on him, just see how he's doing, you know what I mean? And so, and it's a lot more advanced than that, but, but, uh, that's kind of the gist of it. And, you know, I've tried— well, that's one thing that we've done on the show is try to find all these different avenues to find to get out of that. You know, when you ask how I started it, or maybe I just told you, you know, documenting history, elevating the veteran, talking about the struggles— this is what I'm talking about. You know, psychedelics, a lot of guys have found, including myself. That's when I quit drinking. Haven't had one in 4 years.

Ibogaine?

Yep, ibogaine.

Have you talked to Rick Perry?

No.

You should, man.

But I'm aware of the, the thing, the push.

Yep.

And I helped the Tennessee chapter get pushed through here in Tennessee actually just a couple of weeks ago and it passed.

Yeah.

And so I've been on this kick for a pretty long, about 4 years, and that's been very promising. But I think the Envy wearable is kind of the the, the new thing that I think brings the most hope because it's an actual alert, like, hey, the signs of depression are kicking in, check on your buddy.

Yeah, I did a show, uh, for Facebook a few years ago called Returning the Favor, and it— I probably did 8, 8 or 9 segments on non-traditional approaches for suicide prevention with vets in particular. And it's just so interesting, like, so, so many of them really just came down to, uh, you just got to get out of your head. You got to dive into something. Um, like, there was this thing, motorcycle, uh, Combat Bike Saver, it was called, up in Indianapolis. Guy named Jason Zadiman just started— didn't know anything about motorcycles, but he was struggling, you know, and he started rehabbing these old bikes. And then his his buddies from his unit started. And chapters all over the place now, you know. It had a huge impact. There's these guys getting together, working on something that was so tactile. Um, there's a guy named Steve Hotz. God, you would love him. He's got a forge down in Fredericksburg. He lost an eye and got his back all jacked up in a jump that went wrong. And pulled out an old forge and started, started making knives actually in his garage and kind of saved him.

And then he reached out to some other guys who were struggling. This whole forge thing Steve built, he's, he's got over 15,000, 20,000 people have come through it. Zero suicides. Wow. Just amazing stories of You know, I mean, it just feels like getting— forgive me, I don't mean it like getting the band back together, but it's like getting the band of brothers back together, getting the, you know, like that sensibility that exists so obviously in the military. It exists in work too, you know, it exists. I saw it on Dirty Jobs everywhere. And getting people reconnected to that. Is something I've always been interested in.

Yeah, I think that's— that's how many people?

Thousands.

That's incredible.

Thousands. I'll get you a link. It's, uh, what's it, Blue Forge? Black Forge? I'll get it. It's in Fredericksburg. Steve Hotz. You can Google the episode. It's one of the best success stories I've seen.

I think one of the biggest— one of the biggest issues, maybe even bigger than the war trauma, uh, itself, is the loss of identity. I mean, especially in, uh, where I come from, you know, like, like for example, when I left the agency, I mean, I joined the, joined the Navy, had really joined at 17 years old, left at 18. Basically my adult, my young adult, I was raised in the fucking SEAL teams, took about a year off and then, uh, hated civilian life and went back to contract for CIA. And did that for 8 or 9 years. And, um, you know, when it was gone, I mean, you know, that has a— people want to hear about that shit. They want to know, they want to know what's it like. It's cool. It's got a wow factor. It's got a cool factor. When that goes away, it's painful. Just like what you were saying, if your audience goes away, well, now you're just some guy fucking sitting there. Some days I think that's the best outcome. I would love to be just some guy sitting there, uh, and not have to worry about all this.

I think that would be a great, uh— anyways, but what I'm getting at is you lose that identity and you're— you, you tie yourself to it. And you know what a lot of guys can't get is, you know, being a SEAL, being a CIA contractor, or operating at that level, that, that doesn't fucking define who you are. That's just some shit that you did for a season of your life, you know. And but because it's, it's, it's got the mystique to it, it's got what everybody, everybody wants to know. They want to hear the stories. What's it like? How do you get in there? You know, when that goes away, you, you, you feel worthless.

Why does it have the mystique?

Because it's really fucking hard to get in.

And why do people know it's really hard to get in?

Because there's not very many of us.

And why do people know there are not many of you?

I don't know, probably because of entertainment and the Discovery Channel.

That's it, dude. That's it. 14 cameras, or one, or one smartass filming himself. People know about BUD/S. They know about SEALs. They know about the Rangers. They think they know about AI because they saw The Matrix. They think they know how it's going to end because they saw The Terminator. They think they understand war because they saw Saving Private Ryan. They think they know what it is to weld. Because they saw welding video. You know, we— everything it is, everything that we think we know, we, we gather because we look around and we hear things, and maybe we're curious and we take a look, and then we get a version of whatever it is we think, right? I mean, you probably saw all the war movies growing up, and then you go into the thing And I'm just guessing, but some things must have surprised you. Some things maybe disappointed you. Maybe some things felt real and were confirmed. I don't know. But I do know that the mystique that you're talking about was cultivated not by the actual people doing the work. It was, it was cultivated by the people who documented the stories and then told them the way they wanted to tell them.

And maybe it's John Wayne and the Green Berets, or, or maybe it's Apocalypse Now, or maybe we're all walking around with this incredible assumption about an endless number of topics, including war, including mental health, including the sexual habits of our neighbors, right? I mean, like, we all think— we can't help it. Our opinions are all just an amalgam of all of these different inputs. And so, you know, the closer we get to the truth of the thing, ultimately, the more we're going to be disappointed or surprised or humbled because Most of why we think we know about a thing is based on somebody else's experience of it, version of it.

Have you ever lost it all?

Not ever hit ground zero financially. Yeah. Oh yeah, man, my, my whole— so I told you I impersonated a host for years, and I did, and I was, I was good enough at it. I wanted to be in entertainment, um, but I was kind of risk-averse. I didn't want to go to Hollywood the way my buddies had, or to New York. I didn't. I stayed in Baltimore, and I got a local show on the air. And I saved my money and I started to invest my money. And then I started to like narrate shows for the National Geographic, you know, like if there was a wildebeest trying to get across the vast reaches of the barren Serengeti, I'm telling you about it, right? I got a lot of work, a lot of freelance work in entertainment. I, uh, I can sing in the opera, crazy 6, 7 years of my life in Baltimore. I, I sold things in the middle of the night on the QVC cable shopping channel for years. Like, um, I did infomercials, I did plays, I did pilots for talk shows, I did all these crazy jobs in entertainment. And along the way, when I was young, I met, um let's call this person a, a trusted financial advisor who became a close friend.

And I, um, I invested my money with this, with this person who worked for a firm that you know. And, um, this person rose to the top of the profession, and my portfolio rose with it. And when there were opportunities to invest in, in private ventures that this person was also involved in, uh, the opportunities were presented to me. And by this point, I had complete faith in this person. And so I always said yes. And it's an old story. This person left the big blue-chip firm and hung out a shingle of their own and started a company, and my money went with it, along with a lot of other money from a lot of other people. Blah, blah, blah. Complete fraud. Bad actor. And so the interesting thing for me was that at that point I was maybe 37. Uh, and looking back, honestly, I was, um, I was like delightfully arrogant about my situation. I had saved a little more than $1 million freelancing in the entertainment business and investing with a trusted financial advisor. And, uh, at the time I was in New York, like, just bumming around, taking the jobs I wanted.

And I felt so great, man, because I, I, I had this safety net. Uh, I wasn't married, I don't have kids, I work when I want, I take my retirement early and in installments. I'm traveling around the world. I had a job with American Airlines making entertainment for them on all their planes, on any flight longer than 3 hours, right? Right on, dude. I had a thing, they called it a D1. It was basically a plus one. It was a must-fly for me and my cameraman, right? This is before the airlines realized how valuable that space was. And that if you're a business traveler, you're basically— you're trapped on a plane. There's nothing to look at out the window, at the back of the head of the guy in front of you, or at the screen. And there was no— they just put garbage up there. So they hired me to make a show about any destination that American Airlines served, right? So we would fly around the world, me and a cameraman and a small crew. We'd film these shows and Like, that was just one of the hundreds of gigs that I had.

But the crazy thing is, is that that pass was good all the time. And so when that gig went away, Seinfeld— they replaced my show with reruns of Seinfeld, right? And then there was a big upheaval at American Airlines and a big, a big changeover. And one day I went into the airport, I had this pass I hadn't even thought about it, you know, and I was flying down to San Diego from Seattle and I was just going to turn it in. But I handed it to the gate agent and she did what she always did. Like, they take it, they open it, they look at it. Oh, okay then. And then they pick up the phone and they go, mm-hmm, great. So it's a must. They call them MFers, must flies, plus one. So like, seat 4A, okay. Like, they'll take somebody out of first class to put you on if you have this pass. You must fly. Wow. And, uh, but the, but the deal's over, so whatever. It was a great perk and now it's gone. Except she says, go right on board. Long story short, like, for another year and a half, this thing was active.

They never took it back. And so I could fly anywhere in the country that I, that I wanted to. For free. Plus one. That was a great date. So I'm just— so this is who I am at 37. I can fly anywhere I want. I'm freelancing. I don't care about the work I'm doing at all. I'm doing infomercials. I'm narrating shows. I'm not ashamed of it. I just don't really care, you know. And in between it all, I'm just kind of kicking around and living a really cushy, comfortable, freelance life with $1 million or more sitting there like the safety net, you know. And then literally one morning, uh, I learned about it in the headlines. It was gone, all of it. Gone, man. So, boohoo, big deal. Super interesting though. Like, what do you do if you're— like, you're on the high wire and you're comfortable up there, you've been up there a long time, and you're walking along and you're on the high wire, and every time you look down, yeah, you know, there's a net there, but you don't fall. You've never fallen before. So what's the big deal that all of a sudden the net's gone?

Well, it is a big deal, dude. It's a big deal, except only if you fall. And so that's the moment for me that I was, you know, asking you about. It's not nearly as character-driven or ethically situated. I didn't— I didn't leave because of some crisis of conscience. I didn't I didn't do that. I just, I just got ripped off because I, I bet on the wrong horse and I had to start over. So that's clarifying, you know, and it doesn't matter how big your safety net is or small, it, it's instructive to lose everything because it forces you to reframe stuff. And it didn't happen right away. I kept doing— I kept freelancing. I stayed at, like, in my lane. I was much more circumspect about, you know, spending money, but I never spent much anyway. I didn't own anything. I'm not— I'm not a collector. Like, I don't have anything. I had clothing deals, Sean, with like 4 different companies back then because I was working on 4 different shows. I had the airline show, I had this thing called New York Expeditions that was on PBS. I had a game show with Dick Clark.

I had all these different shows. I had all these different clothing contracts. I didn't need anything. I didn't have any clothes. I didn't own a thing. I had arrangements with hotels too. I'm living in hotels out of my backpack. I got $1 million in the bank. I got not one single commitment. I'm pretty good at booking work because I did 3 years at QVC in the middle of the night, and I'm a good audition, and I can sell anything. It— I had my toolbox put together, right? I was— I was all— it was so cozy, man. And then it's fucking gone. And, uh, yeah, that was— that was the end of a chapter for me. And the next chapter started with build back and stop working on projects that you don't care about. And that didn't happen until Dirty Jobs.

I mean, I think this is an important discussion because there's going to be a lot of people that lose their jobs and that are going to have to reinvent here within the next couple of years.

Yep, 100%. And A lot of people are going to look down and the safety net's going to be gone. There was this, uh, there was this moment in Dirty Jobs that you would appreciate that rhymes with this pretty good. There was an episode on the Mackinac Bridge. Um, I was invited to work with the maintenance crew on the Mighty Mac. This is a bridge up in Michigan connects the Upper and Lower Peninsula, right? It's long. It's way longer than— it's like 5 miles long. It's one of the longest suspension bridges in the country. Is that right? Fact-check me on that. It might be 2. I know it's a lot longer than the Golden Gate. You know, it's, it's, it's long and it's green, right? It's got to be painted constantly. It never stops. The minute you're done painting it, it's time to start painting it again, right? So there's endless jobs to do on this bridge. Like you go into the towers and you go down below the water into these, like, these steel coffins, these like honeycombs, and they all have to be scraped out with the corrosion and, and painted. Re— they get— everything gets painted.

It's, it's just, it's mind-boggling work, but it's municipal work, it's government work. So I'm always leery of those jobs because I know I'm not going to get permission to do what I wanted to do on Dirty Jobs, which was to tell the truth as best I could, like really do the things the actual workers do. But it was a good shoot. And as at the end of the day, as a joke on camera, I'm talking to the guy I've been working with all day, and he said, well, did you get everything you need? I've said, yeah, yeah, it's, it's great. But you know what I'd love to do? I'd love to walk across that girder there and get on that suspension cable and, and walk up that cable and change a few light bulbs along the way, right? Now I say this because there's no freaking way they're gonna let me do that. Not on camera. No way, no how. Can't happen. Guy says, okay. So, you know, I got a helicopter with me with a Westcam unit on it, right? So it's a— I got a camera and a helicopter. This is the shot of shots, right?

This is going to go into the— this is going to win an Emmy, or at least get nominated for one, and it did. This shot is crazy. I, I get over there, I got a bag full of light bulbs, and I got my safety rig on, and I got two clips because the stanchions that run up alongside that cable Like you want to be tied off two ways. You're 600 feet in the air. You look down from this thing, Sean, like freighters look like the little toy boats in Battleship. I mean, you're up in the air and you're focused, man. You are highly focused on what you're doing because falling would be very bad, right? And so I got a guy like 30 feet behind me and we're walking up together. And as you walk up, You know, we'd get to a light bulb, pause, change it, sit down, helicopter gets its shot. We're getting everything we need for the show. It's going great. I get up toward the top, like the very top, and, um, you know, as you go, when you hit these stanchions, like, so you're on this cable and you're walking and you have to unclip to get past the rail and then clip on again.

And then when you do that, you come over here and then you do that one. So you're never untethered because that would be crazy. And I get up to the top and as I'm going, like, I'm sure like anything else that starts out high anxiety, you do it, you do it, you do it, you get used to it, you get a little more comfortable, you start to move a little faster, you get confident, right? So now I'm loving the shot.

I'm so—

I'm real comfortable. I got an earpiece in, so I'm communicating with the pilot. And now we're getting the shots that are going to win the Emmy. Like, he's coming up under the bridge, you know, crabbing straight up, shooting me like this. I'm sitting down, leaning over— like, they're these lanterns, right? So you've got a— I got a light bulb in my teeth. I'm leaned over, I undo it, I take out the old bulb. I put it in there, I take this one out, and I'm screwing it in, right? I'm doing this, I'm doing that. And now he's flying back and he's coming in, and I'm, I'm changing my position. We're getting all the angles just right, all the angles. Now, I don't know how this happened. In the confusion of the moments and the back and forth or whatever, I unclipped and didn't— I just didn't clip it back in. The thing's just hanging by my side. And the other one is clipped to the wrong thing.

Oh, shit.

So if I fall, I mean, that's— it's lights out. It's 620 feet straight down. Now I got one arm wrapped around this thing and I'm doing the thing. And when I looked and I saw that I had not clipped myself in properly, like, if you listen, if you find the clip on the internet and listen carefully, you can hear the sound of my sphincter slamming shut. Right? It's like absolute abject— like, that's how it felt years before when I lost everything. I looked down and the net wasn't where I thought it was. Same thing, same feeling. I looked over, it's like, ah, fuck, man, I thought I was tied off. I'm not. I'm not gonna fall. But if I did— um, you're so right. That feeling and that moment, in some relative sense, is going to be experienced by millions of Americans this year. Yeah, they're going to look down and they're going to realize they're not tied off, or they're going to look down and they're not going to see the net that was always there. So, you know, the book that I can't get around to finishing is, is Lessons from the Dirt, and it's hundreds of stories.

You know, for me, man, if I'm being honest, this is— that's kind of where everything actually started. It was chapter 2. My old business model was just wrong for me. It was right for a long time. And it worked for a long time. There was nothing broken about it. Got my nest egg, got my safety net. I got my job, I got my toolbox, I got my ticket to ride. I can fly for free. I live on my own. It's like all that was great. And then it just was gone. And now I'm working on a show that's dedicated to my granddad about work and real people. That's totally unscripted, that doesn't require me to do anything that a host used to do. What it requires me to do is change a light bulb on a bridge, or try. So suddenly, I'm paid to try things. I'm not paid to succeed. Think about that. That's, that's a different kind of freedom. It's a different kind of drama because you're going to be uncomfortable a lot. You're going to be upside down. You're going to be in a hole. You're going to be in a mine.

You're going to be cleaning skulls. You're going to be retrieving golf balls from alligator-infested swamps, right? You're going to be in the Everglades. The crocodile is going to bite you. The shark is going— you're going to test a shark suit for Shark Week. You're going to get bit on purpose by a shark and shook like a tug toy. You're going to pee in your wetsuit in fear. All these things are going to happen, but you're going to get paid and people are going to watch and the show is going to give you permission to do a bunch of stuff. It's a totally different deal, totally different model. Uh, you know, I feel super fortunate that that all worked out, but that's a parapatia.

Interesting.

You think you're tied off. You're not.

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helixsleep.com/srs. Are you familiar with Polymarket?

Yeah, they, uh, and Kalishi, or what do they— the— yeah, thing.

Yeah, the one.

Yeah, everybody's betting on everything, right?

That's right.

What are we betting on?

Polymarket says there's a 17% chance U.S. unemployment hits 5% at some point in 2026. Unemployment's sitting at 4.3% right now, and traders have put more than $430,000 into betting on where it peaks this year. The crowd gives it about a 1 in 6 shot, 17%, that the rate climbs to 5% at some point in 2026. The odds drop off fast from there. Polly Market gives it a 17% chance unemployment even touches 5% this year. The crowd thinks the job market holds. You've spent your career around the people who actually do the work. When you hear 4.3% unemployment, does that match what you're seeing on the ground?

Where'd that come from? Who's asking these questions? It's a good one. I'm just curious. This is your question?

This is us. This is me and my team.

Oh, I should have known. It says The Sean Ryan Show right on the card. All right, with respect to you and your team, here's a better question. Why does anybody give a shit about the unemployment number? What is that? My friend Nick Eberstadt is an economist. Where is he? I think he's at the American Enterprise Institute. He wrote an amazing book called Men Without Work. It's in 2005, and I used it when I started the foundation to— I wanted to be able to point to at least one egghead with a bunch of the right initials behind his name to justify some of my underlying beliefs around workforce. And Nick was it. Well, Nick was so right about so many things that the book was republished, uh, during the lockdowns. And he writes eloquently and um, horrifyingly about these deaths of despair and what's happening to men without work and the number of men right now who aren't working. I mentioned it earlier, but it's, it's close to 7 million able-bodied men who don't have work. Are these guys unemployed? I mean, there's 7.5 million open jobs. So Nick argues that the unemployment statistic in and of itself is an artifact of the Great Depression, along with a couple of other economic indicators that simply haven't been updated or, or revisited to make sense for the times in which we live.

And I think he's right, you know. I mean, in a depression, when you had people standing in line for bread in cities all over the country, when you had millions of people out of work and hungry, then you could credibly say that the cure for this disaster is more jobs. We need to create more jobs because those people in those lines, they will take a job that's available. We don't live in that world anymore. We have millions of open positions right now. So you got 4% people unemployed. I'm not saying that's not a small number and I'm not saying that's not a big deal. I'm just saying, who, who are they? How are they unemployed? Are they willing to move somewhere else? Are they able to move somewhere else? Are they able to retrain? Are they willing to think about retraining? Has their sphincter slammed shut like many do when you realize, oh no, Are they able to be unemployed and still live the life that they're okay living? I don't know. And I don't want to paint with too broad a brush. But what Nick would say is there's a much more important stat in that rubric that we should be betting on.— or talking about, and that would be the labor force participation rate.

And I'm out of my lane here a little, and I don't want to say too much of the wrong thing, but in general, the amount of people who are participating in the workforce today is simply not hand in glove with the amount of opportunities that exist. And so to have a 5% unemployment rate in 2026, I, I— what does that mean for those who are unemployed? I know right now there are nearly 7 million able-bodied men who are able to live fairly comfortable lives without working, and they're not trust fund babies. Something's going on. Now Nick goes deeper in his book, which you will dig. I recommend it. Really, it's kind of a wonky academic look at labor.

I like it.

Oh dude, it's just so insightful because of course Nick just doesn't leave it alone. He's like, okay, 7 million people, men mostly, not working. What are they doing? What are they doing? Well, part of the answer is what aren't they doing? They're not volunteering down at the local food bank. They're not involved in their church. They're not involved with the JCs or the Rotarians or the Boy Scouts or the Future Farmers of America or the 4-H Club or the Lions Club. They're not involved in their community. They're not involved in civic organizations. They're not— they're not doing anything, man, except one thing. On average, they're spending in excess of 2,000 hours a year behind the screen, on their screens, swiping left, watching clips, basking in the warmth of our guests, maybe. Or looking for love, or pretty deep well of bottomless pornography over there too. They're doing these things and they're all in. They're in it, man. 2,000 hours, you know, they're— what is it, 50? They're 2,080 hours a year, you know, in, in work weeks. They're working full-time on their screens. To. These guys unemployed. I don't dispute that they're not working. I just quite don't know what to say about the cohort without painting with too broad a brush.

But it worries the hell out of me, man. That the skills gap is hard to talk about. And the reason you don't hear a lot of politicians talking about it is because it's It's not a very flattering indicator of who we are as a people to have so many people sitting out and so much opportunity sitting there. And because we're in this crazy hyper-politicized time, we have to make it political, you know. And people ask me every day, you know, well, what's up? You know, why do we have 7 million open jobs? I'm like, well, look, it's complicated. I'll give you my theories. But they don't want theories. What they want to hear is, my buddies on the right want me to say that the reason you've got all these people unemployed is because they're lazy and our system enables their laziness. And we haven't allowed them to hit bottom. We haven't removed the safety net so their sphincters can't slam shut in fear and they can't reorient themselves. That's what my friends on the, on the right want me to say, and they get pissed when I don't. My buddies on the left, what they want me to say is, well, the skills gap is a myth, Mike.

It's just a question of economy. If these greedy, rapacious capitalists who control all the money and pull all the strings simply paid a better wage, why, those people would run straight into the workforce. That's what they want me to say, and they get pissed when I don't. Now, personally, I don't think either side is entirely right? Because I think both sides really do paint with a super broad brush. I think there's truth in both, you know, but it's an artifact of the Great Depression, that unemployment number. And we live in a totally different time, and we are entering yet another time. And I, I don't want to sit here and pretend to have a crystal ball I don't, but man, I know that both sides are dug in and this thing is going to be so politically fraught. Vocational education and work itself is going to become highly political this year, and that's a shame because at the moment it's still one of the few things that I think are truly bipartisan. In nature, you know.

I mean, Jensen Wang keeps saying, you know, that the tradesman is going to be the next millionaire class of people.

Do you—

what do you think about that? Do you think there's truth to that?

I know there's truth to it. He and I are destined to meet. We haven't yet, but we're— I shared— this is a good little anecdotal sidebar. I woke up a couple months ago I was home, you know, made the coffee. It had just kicked in. I sat down and Davos was going on. And the first thing that popped up is this conversation between Jensen and, um, who's Larry Fink, BlackRock. And that's where this conversation started. That's the first time he did. He described the AI technology as a, as a 5-layer cake, and he really laid it out in a way that's super simple for people to understand. But that's when he said, this all comes down to our ability to reinvigorate the workforce. And, you know, if you're me, like, if you've been beating that drum for the last 18 years and you're sitting there in your bathrobe with your hair sticking up in the air trying to get caffeinated, you know, what would you do? What I did was I backed up the video, I turned my computer around, And I hit play and I filmed me watching this conversation. And then I took that video and I put it on my social channels.

And within 2 days, like 3 million people had seen it. And I'm talking to BlackRock now and I'm talking to Meta and I'll get to Nvidia because they're all, they're all here. But millions of people saw that exchange. With me basically watching it and nodding and saying, "Attaboy." So to answer your question, I'm not betting against Jensen. He's right. And anecdotally, I have 1,000 success stories to back it up. And people are interested. That's my point. When I shared the video I made of these two billionaires talking about the opportunities in the trades, I, I was eager and anxious to see what the comments were. And to my earlier point, my buddies on the right see it through one lens, my buddies on the left see it on the other. A lot of people simply don't believe it's possible. They just, they just don't believe an electrician can be a millionaire. And I'm That's because inertia is powerful. It's really, really powerful. But I'll tell you something else about the skilled trades, man. They, they lead into more small businesses than more people will seem capable of realizing. And that path nobody talks about. And I see it all the time.

Did you say they leave small businesses?

Lead. Lead to the formation of them. I, I could literally give you a list of people who I helped get a welding certificate for 6, 7, 8, 10 years ago, whatever. People think in their minds, I said, he's going to be a welder, so he's going to weld and that's it. Maybe he'll TIG weld, maybe he'll MIG weld, maybe he'll underwater weld. Those guys make, make a lot of coin, right? Whatever it is. But that's what, that's what this person is going to be. So many times that certification leads to a plumbing certification or an electrical certification. And there's like this hierarchy within the trades. And then they buy a van and they hire their buddies. They got an HVAC buddy, right? And now they got two vans and now they have a mechanical contracting company. And now you've got a dozen guys, men, women, whatever. And they didn't go to college and they're running this business, you know. And like knives, whiskey, success. It's like there's so many paths to that. And the trades don't get their due, in my opinion. So many of the people I profiled on Dirty Jobs— nobody believes this, but I'm telling you, you watch the show growing up, right?

I know for a fact 40 of the people we profiled were multimillionaires. We never talked about it. They certainly never talked about it. And nobody assumed that kind of success because they were normally covered in mud or blood or shit or something worse. You just don't— you just don't equate that kind of success with that— with that optics. But it's always been there. It's always been right in front of us. And we're just— we so screwed up. Up as a society to make that entire part of our workforce and our entire educational rubric like a vocational consolation prize. But we did it and we're still doing it. Uh, that's got to stop. So anyway, I know I didn't answer your question, but—

oh, it makes a lot of sense.

Over-under on 5%. Yeah. I say we probably get to it, but I don't think it's going to have the impact that we think.

Does make sense. How do you think we're going to fill this shortage? Because, well, there's not a lot of— I mean, how do you think we're going to fill this shortage?

In fits and starts.

In the meantime.

Yeah. I mean, look, in, in my version of it, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure The country knows what the companies are doing, because I think that's a big part, right? I— it's not a .gov solution, but we're not going to do it without some help from the feds. We need policy to do this, but we can't look to the government to fix this problem. Those guys will be out of office in a couple years, and who's going to do the next thing? This is a social thing. The government can't get get 6.9 million men into the workforce, but they can pass policies that might encourage or discourage certain kinds of behaviors. I try and stay away from that simply because it is so inherently political and because it's so destined to, to change. The corporate side is also fraught because, you know, CEOs answer to their boards and in their own self-interest, they need to address this problem. But that's also an advantage, right? Like, you can't expect Lowe's to close the skills gap or Home Depot because they're, they're public companies and they got their own fish to fry.

But they're doing it. Lowe's has like a $250 million investment in training HVAC people.

No kidding.

Home Depot. I just, I just interviewed Ted, their CEO. He's got a— he's in for $100 million. They're doing something very similar. It's called Pathway to Pro. I told you about what Meta is doing, the America Workforce Academy. That's $150 million right out of the gate. And they're just starting. They're in 4 states. BlackRock's got $100 million in, in North Texas and some, and some other areas. Jensen's going to do something. No, there's no doubt. Jensen, there's no doubt. They have to. They have to. A $10 trillion infrastructure buildout is upon us. If that doesn't happen, there's some stuff with China that's going to be very, very, very, very, very bad. We can't lose this stupid race that we're in. We can't lose it. And I understand that we don't want to be in it. And I understand, man, you know, I just— I saw a poll that said that the general negativity around AI and data centers is around 75%.

75%.

Think about that from a, from a communication challenge. From a marketing standpoint. Like, you're in a race you can't afford to lose with a country that's 75% affirmatively nervous about the fact that we're even in it. How are you going to manage that? That is beyond my pay grade as well. But I— dude, I think about this all the time. We— our relationship with fossil fuels, it's very difficult to, to manage and, and nuance because it's still very fashionable to hate them, even though we rely upon them entirely and constantly. You know, we're, we're constantly at war with the shit we depend on, the stuff we need. Timber. There's more timber in this country than any place on the planet. Guess who the largest importer of timber is? Us. That's us. Yeah. We can't clear our own forests. We're at war with the abundance that we're standing on because we're scared to death we're somehow gonna screw it up. Meanwhile, India and China combined are opening a coal-fired plant every week for the next 30 years. 3 billion people on the planet have wood and dung as their primary source of energy. 3 billion people get all their energy needs from the single worst pollutant there is, burning wood and shit.

Where's their— where's their industrial revolution? How are they going to get to where we are, or some version of it? They need fossil fuels. They need natural gas. Personally, I think we're in a race to nuclear. We need small reactors in every town all over the country. There's no way we're going to get anywhere close to generating the energy we need Are you, are you familiar with Isaiah Taylor?

I know Valor Atomics. Yeah, yeah, I know the nuclear, mini nuclear reactors.

Yeah, I just read about it. I'm, uh, I'm following a Constellation Group, CEG. They, uh, they've done everything right. They're not far from where I grew up. They were called Peach Bottom when I was a kid, and now they're, they're going to reopen, I think, Three Mile Island. Oh, thank God. You know how many people died in Three Mile Island? No, none. Chernobyl— I mean, not to poo-poo it, I don't know, 17, 27, something like that. Many in the explosion, some from thyroid disease years later. The area surrounding Chernobyl is called the Exclusion Zone. People are still forbidden from going there. Except for the people who never left, who are now in their 90s.

Are you serious?

And thriving. Google the exclusion zone Chernobyl and you will find it to be one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. All we had to do is get all the people out and everything grew back. There's more wildlife and natural fauna growing around Chernobyl than you can believe. And I'm old enough to remember, a week after that accident, there was a black cloud in the animated graphics on ABC, like a third of Europe was blacked out. They were talking about how a third of Europe was going to be uninhabitable for 1,000 years. Wrong. Fukushima, not great. People died, most drowned. That was very bad deal. Tsunami, you know, nuclear. But the proportionality, Sean, the, the, the amount of fear that we have around nuclear is so completely baked into the fact that we used it as a weapon and that nuclear weapons still certainly exist, and that would be very bad. But what are you going to do? You can't— yeah. Put the poop back in the goose. And the need that the world is going to have for energy is about to enter that part of the map that says, here be dragons.

Way more than we have, way more than we know how to get. It has to be nuclear. It has to be.

Uh, 100% agree with you on that one. Just rewind them real quick. Just, do you think it will be— I'm just curious, because we could fill these trade positions like that.

Tell me how.

They're south of the border. Oh, um, or undocumented here, willing to work with a crazy fucking work ethic.

Listen, I can tell you anecdotally, I think you're right. There is a cultural thing. I, I'm not going to paint with too broad a brush, but what are the two examples we gave each other over the last couple hours? The guy who worked on Easter Sunday, who did what he had to do, and he built the business he has. You know, the first kid to come to mind at my foundation— they're 3,500, but Michael Gamez set the benchmark pretty high. Um, look, if we can find a path and if we can make it fair, we need the workers. But like, it's a very different, you know, documented versus undocumented. I don't think you can just shrug the difference away, you know. We have to find a way to fill these jobs, but it doesn't mean you just erase the border. You've got to do a bunch of stuff at the same time. And I don't envy the people who are, who are in charge of this, and I don't envy the people who are running the businesses who are desperate to get these jobs done. But I know a lot of general contractors. I don't know one who's on time and under budget for any project, certainly not in residential anyway.

And when I ask them why, they all say the same thing: it's labor. So yeah, there's going to be an immigrant question slash solution. There's going to be policy.

It's already happening. Like, for sure, people are going to bitch and moan about it, and maybe they should. But if you can't incentivize our own people to get their ass to work. What the fuck? What are we supposed to do? And, and I mean, it, it, it's already happening. For example, when we were building this studio out, I told you we had a little garage, you know, in town, and I interviewed Tom Holman. When Tom Holman came to town, he sat right here. Tom, he sat in the old studio. We were so close to having him in this studio, but we just couldn't get it done. And then Tom Holman came in town, and not one worker would show up to finish this damn studio for about 2 weeks. They wouldn't even answer the phones. I was on my general contractor's ass like, what, what's going on? We're going to be late. And he's like, they heard Tom Holman's in town. With ICE and they're not even going to answer the phones. So I brought that up to Tom on my show.

That was my— going to be my question. What do you say?

I can't remember. It was— it was a joke. I was joking around with him.

But well, you know, the first thing I thought of was your situation with your sponsor, right? You say something to Megyn Kelly, they don't like it, they take their marbles and go home. Okay, I mean, it's fair dinkum, right? I mean, your workers are pissed off because Tom Homan represents something they don't like. They don't come—

oh no, they didn't want to get deported. They aren't pissed, they don't want to get deported.

That's even better.

It wasn't just this construction site that shut down, it was the whole fucking county shut down for 2 weeks because when Tom rolled into Nashville So did ICE. And, and so we— I mean, I guess kind of what I'm saying is we got a small glimpse of what this looks like. Yeah, if there is nobody to take, everything just stops. Yeah, dead in its tracks.

It's— I'm having a hard time, you know, aside from a cataclysm, a natural cataclysm, finding a bigger issue. It's— you just can't overstate it. It's— that's a great— that's a great example. But look, what you said before, how do we incentivize our own people to work?

You have to change the culture.

Well, is there a difference between incentivizing somebody to work work or de-incentivizing them not to work? Like, what is the unintended consequence of every single policy in place that's allowing millions of people not to choose not to retrain? I, I'm, I'm no authoritarian. I don't want to flick my fingers and say everyone must work. I don't want to do that. That, that's not, that's not why we're walking around as a, as a free people. But I also don't want to enable people who choose not to work to not to work. I don't want to pay for that. Why should I? Why should you? Why should, why should anyone? If, if there's an option not to work and you can afford not to work, I have zero problem with you choosing not to work. You don't owe me a duty of labor. You don't owe anybody that. But you owe your family and yourself a livelihood. And if you can provide that without working, I think it's fair for a taxpayer to say, am I involved in that decision? And if you are involved in that decision, well then, okay. There's a conversation worth having.

Agree with you 100% on that one.

So it's hard to tell when you agree and when you don't.

I 100% agree. When you've got a lot of people depending on you, your time gets pulled in every direction. Calls, meetings, emails, decisions, team questions, and somehow the day disappears. So I'm always looking for ways to save time where I can. Batching calls, knocking out emails between meetings, delegating what I can, and removing anything that does not need to be complicated. We all have our own time-saving hacks for everyday life, but if you're a business owner, how can you save time hiring? ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter has a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interested, qualified candidates first, so you save time by meeting the right people faster. And right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/srs. ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology finds qualified candidates quickly. Candidates can even tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job, which helps you understand who is actually paying attention and who could be the right fit. No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. Save time, and meet great candidates sooner with ZipRecruiter. 4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

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I don't know.

I think some people, you know, they, they can't get out of their own head. They can't see themselves doing a trade. Maybe they just don't even know where to start. But like I had mentioned earlier, there are people out there that can barely change a fucking light bulb. And I think that for me, I have little kids. I'm pretty handy. I need to pass that down to them. I need to—

here's why I'm not persuaded. I, I knew you 60 seconds before you told me you were an introvert who didn't like conversation, and you're running one of the most consequential podcasts in the world. I don't want to hear that a kid doesn't know how to change a light bulb and therefore is somehow disqualified from the trades. Or therefore let off the hook for finding something he is good at. You lived outside of your comfort zone. You volunteered to get your ass shot off and shoot back. Then you left the agency on principle because you have something that resembles character. And then you went so far outside of your own comfort zone that you ignored the very qualities that you used to introduce yourself to somebody like me to do the same thing I do for a living? What is wrong with us? I had a stammer until I was 15 years old. I could barely get a sentence out. Now I narrate shit.

You—

when people tell me that they're not doing this thing because they're uncomfortable doing it. It's all I can do not to throw up in my mouth and look as bored as I feel. Who cares if you're uncomfortable? Who cares if you're scared? Really. I mean, I do. One human to the next, I would, I would love to help if I can, but To conclude that and therefore determine that the only logical way to spend 2,000 hours a year is swiping left or right or doing whatever you do, and then having a family that subsidizes that, or a government, or a society, or a culture— no. We award work ethic scholarships at Microworks, and I get shit for it every year. Why work ethic? What is it? What do you mean? How do you determine somebody's work ethic? People ask. I get this every day. I say, well, I chose work ethic because I didn't think anybody else was doing it. I know lots of scholarships out there for academic achievement and artistic achievement, athletic achievement. Where's the scholarship for the kid who wakes up early, stays late, and says, give me the shit sandwich, I'll take a bite?

I don't know how to do that. Teach me. I'm uncomfortable. Let's do it some more. Where's that woman? Where's that guy? Right? That's, that's what I— that, that's who I personally want to reward. That's personally what my foundation does. But to your point, there are not enough people out there right now who will respond to that to fill the openings that exist. And that's why you're not wrong to say we have to incentivize our people. I hate that, but we do. We have to make a more persuasive case for people who are, who are predisposed to being comfortable and unwilling to venture outside of their comfort zone. Me and you alone, you know, over a beverage, I, I would speak harshly about that. In front of 14 cameras, I'm still tempted to, but the reason I don't is because I understand that everybody is different and that everybody's background is different, and not everybody had the mentor I had, and not everybody had the training you had. And not everybody was forged, you know, the same way. And so I don't— I don't want to be judgmental. I don't want to be overly harsh, but I don't want to enable.

So, look, that's why I'm in business with a lot of other companies who are wrestling with this problem in a different way. They're presenting the opportunity differently. And really, man, think about the military. As I'm sure you often do, like, that's a recruiting challenge at base, right? Like, what's the Army say? What's the, what's the single-minded proposition to join the Army? Be all you can be, man. It'll— you'll be a more well-rounded person, and when you come out, you'll be that much better off in the world. That's kind of right. There's an element of service and sacrifice, but But be all you can be was something that was way above that. You know, the Navy, see the world. You know, Coast Guard, go on an adventure. The Seabees, they all have a slightly different modality, you know, except the Marines. Probably not for you, they say. Just never mind the reality. Just think about the rhetoric. Think about what's being articulated. Be all you can be versus probably not for you. Few. Proud. They all want— they're all anxious to recruit. They all want the same enthusiasm among their cohorts. But they come at it from a totally different way.

And I just think that— I don't know if I have anything to offer to that whole conversation. It's more rhetorical than anything. Did you watch Deadliest Catch ever?

Oh yeah. All the time. All the time. Was that you? No, I'm just kidding.

Somebody mark the timecode when Sean Ryan realized that Mike narrated 23 seasons of Deadliest Catch. Deadliest Catch. Yeah, that was me. Um, and, and the first season, man, I'll never forget. I was, I was worried because it was so dangerous and the portrayals of this job were so harsh, and the greenhorn on the boat was such an important role. And, and that season, you know, 6 guys died. Greenhorn got got his finger pulled off, a boat sank. And I thought, man, this show is going to make it really hard for these captains who I'd become friends with to recruit. Like, how are you going to recruit for a job like that?

Oh man, oh, that recruiting went crazy after that, dude. Ah, fuck, I wanted to do it.

The next season, it's like, come in. The next season they were on the dock on the box waiting for a chance to lose money, die, or get their finger ripped out. Now that's you. All right? That's— that's— you can put that out there and a certain part of the population is going to be like, yeah, man, let's go. Bottom of the 9th, bases loaded. Give me the ball. I want the ball. Most people know, right? So you never know. But there's— look, there are hundreds of lessons in Dirty Jobs. There are a lot of lessons in Deadliest Catch, too. And the fact that I had— the fact that I got attached to both those shows for the last 20 years and that both are still on the air— best thing I ever did was have my trusted financial advisor rip me off.

I love that. I would like to— I wasn't— I hate the word incentivize as well, and I wasn't, I wasn't making excuses for the people that can't figure out how to put in a light bulb. What I was kind of going towards is there has to be some sort of a shift in culture, and I think a lot of people don't—

they, they They can't—

if they get a roadblock into success, then they just stop. They break down.

They hit—

I think that problem solving is gone. I think that the critical thinking and problem solving in the majority of this country and people's heads is 100% gone. I see it with— I see what's happening with my toddler when he tries to get up a hill and he can't make it, and he asked Dad for help, and I won't help him because I think there's always— there is always a way to accomplish their— your goal. It's just how you navigate it. And if you hit a roadblock, then you have to find another way. And so what I tell my toddlers is, I'm not going to help you, but I'll help you find another way. Yeah, look at that side of the hill. It's not as steep, there's no rocks. Maybe go up that way and you can get to— you know, and I think people need to start thinking like that.

Rivers. Rivers have a way of getting to the ocean. It's never straight, ever. You go around stuff, they zig and they zag. That's what we do. We have to. There's just no straight lines. Yeah, you know, I look at toddlers, I think about the way we're born, the way we're hardwired, and this idea that we're all born sort of, oh, you know, pure, and like, we're just, you know, we're not polluted, we're innocent, just honest creatures, you know, waiting to be corrupted by the world. I don't see it. You know, I see it. I see a 2-year-old playing with his 8— 18-month-old or 3-year-old, whatever, you know. I mean, he's got the toy, he's got the block, but this one wants the block. It takes the block, hits him over the head with it. We're selfish, man. We're born selfish. We're born lazy. We're born dependent. We're utterly helpless outside of the womb for years. We're unlike anything else in the animal kingdom. These, you know, like a giraffe is basically born on its feet, like boing, up, running. Like, okay, man, we're prey. All right? Best to run. You know, foals and colts, the same way.

These— I mean, it's— we are born utterly helpless for years, and we think we are the, uh, the sun in the solar system, and we think everything revolves around us. Mom and Dad, they show up, they feed us, it's all just us. Ah, just crap my pants again. I just crap my pants. Big deal, they'll fix it. Like, we— that's who we are. Mhm. And so what's the game, man? What's the— what's the challenge? How do you get a creature like that to say, give me the ball, test me? What's the uncomfortable way again? I'll take that. Mike Easter wrote a great book book called The Comfort Crisis. Don't know if he's crossed your radar yet.

Uh-uh.

You'd like him. I just thought it was interesting. Yeah, he was a, he was a reporter. It was a writer for like Men's Health and those magazines and, um, wrote a lot about fitness and, uh, and diet and so forth. And, um, was just feeling kind of squishy with his own journey, you know. Um, you know, he he, he was just struggling a bit, I think. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but he, he got an invitation or reached out to a guy called Donnie Vincent. I don't think Donnie's eaten anything he hasn't killed in 30 years. He lives off the grid, and he invited this guy on a caribou hunt up in the Arctic, Mike Easter, and they go And what happens up there over a 30-day period is really interesting. Um, and the way Mike writes about it is to essentially dissect every bit of discomfort he experienced along the way, from incredible physical discomfort to straight-up fear to boredom. Like, we have no capacity to handle boredom anymore. Right? It's very difficult to listen to an episode this long and not hit 1.5x speed. It's very difficult to go into the bathroom without the frickin' phone just to keep the thing, you know, we're constantly involved in everything.

And anyhow, so many good things came out of this book, and I'm only riffing on it because one of them was rucking. I assume you rucked your butt off.

Broke a couple of miles.

Yeah, man. I started after I read this book a few years ago. I started rucking with anywhere between 45 and £65 when I'm home, which isn't a ton, but 8 miles early every morning with weight changed my life. And it's uncomfortable, man. It's uncomfortable. Every step is uncomfortable. It's just— but there are benefits. This is not new. It's almost probably boring to a lot of your audience. It's just Horatio Alger stuff. But if you think about who we are when we're born, and if you think about like, what's the purpose of BUD/S? What's the purpose of basic training? And why isn't there a reverse boot camp? By the way, and you know what, why do greenhorns— why are they wired differently? What, what, like, all, all those things, all that stuff is shaping and tempering and, and preparing. And so that's why I get, I get a little agitated when what, what comes back from the other side is this really thoughtful kind of contemplative, well, gosh, I don't know if the trades for me. I, I don't know. I guess maybe I could give it a— like, man, okay, but how luxurious. How luxurious to be living in a time when— well, maybe I'll try it, maybe I won't, maybe I'll just keep swiping left.

Yeah, yeah. I think more people need to feel the sense of accomplishment too.

That's the single biggest question I get about Dirty Jobs. Like, when people— and like, what did you— what did those people know as a group that, that the rest of us have forgotten? And the answer is, it's not quite accomplishment, but it's feedback. It's like always knowing how you're doing. People in the trades, dirty jobbers, virtually everybody I profiled on that show, crab fishermen. You know how you're doing, man. Not at the end of the day, over the course of the hour. The feedback is constant. You don't need to be managed, really. You, you know, you know how you're doing. That's addictive. I mean, I love that.

Yeah.

And I don't know that you teach it. It's a, it's a quality and it's present in some jobs more than others.

Yeah. I don't know if you teach it, but I think a lot of people don't even realize it's there because they haven't been pushed.

But look, it's like, like I said before, man, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a hell of a thing to wish for. Gosh, what you need to do is lose everything. No, you don't really have to experience that. I don't wish that for anyone. But you— I mean, how do you— how do you describe combat to somebody who's never been in it?

It's not everything it's cracked up to be.

And who cracked it up to be everything? I'll refer you to the earlier movies. Yeah, I talked to a guy the other day, Clint, uh, Romesha, wrote a book called Red Platoon. This was the, um, COP Keating up in Nuristan, I guess it was, '09. He, uh, Medal of Honor. He led a counterattack They were overwhelmed, Taliban 4 to 1, and he went back into the fort to get the dead Americans under crazy heavy fire. Good book, Red Platoon. I asked him the same question, you know. I think he gave me the same answer. Did he really? Ain't all it's cracked up to be.

That's interesting. It's not Got another one for you. Yeah, man, I love wrapping up the interview, so I got a hot question for you. All right, we had Claude— since we're on AI and Dirty Jobs, we had Claude dig through everything out there on Mike Rowe and Dirty Jobs to find the most viral directions we could take and then narrow it down to one hot question. And here's what it came up with. Mike, I want to get into the most dangerous jobs on Earth. In Vietnam, we had a job called tunnel rats. One guy stripped down to a pistol and a flashlight, crawling headfirst and alone into pitch-black VC tunnels barely wider than his shoulders. And the Viet Cong built those tunnels to break you. Tripwires that dropped baskets of scorpions, punji stakes, They'd urinate on first so even a scratch turned septic. In the worst one, while they hit a guy, they'd leave him alive down there just so his buddies up top could hear him screaming and feel like they had to send more men down after him. Centipedes, fire ants, snakes, and maybe a guy waiting in the dark with a blade.

That's the job. You've personally done over 300 jobs, so across everything, what do you think is the single deadliest, most dangerous job in the world?

Ah, it's tough to beat. Harry Bosch— I don't know if you ever saw the show Bosch— he was a tunnel rat. He writes a lot about that. Connolly does in the early books. Um, well, statistically, just in terms of danger, and you know, they kind of go in and out. I mean, Deadliest Catch crab fishing is still up there. Commercial fishing, logging, certainly. Um, I mean, the whole confined space world, like, that deserves a riff on confined spaces. In fact, we did two specials on Dirty Jobs over the years called Really Tight Spaces because people— the viewers love the really high crazy stuff like top of radio towers and like window washing from Bosun chairs, 500, 600 feet in the air. That's a good one. Um, but they also love super, super, super tight claustrophobic spaces. They hate it, but they, but they love to watch it. I remember shooting a buoy tube with the Coast Guard. These buoy tenders, you know, they, they bring up the buoys that are out in the channel, and they're filled with barnacles and stuff, and and they clean them and refurbish them before they put them back in.

But there's a tube in the middle, it's hollow, it's about the size of your shoulders. And, uh, yeah, you shimmy up there and scrape the crap out. And I did that with a GoPro because a cameraman wouldn't— couldn't get a camera up there. And like, there's so many moments of claustrophobia on that show that are really I, I mean, what can I say to a tunnel rat? Oh, okay. There were 350 jobs. There's one that I would never do again.

What's that one?

Opal mining.

Opal mining?

Yep, opal mining in the Australian Outback in a little town called Cooper Pedy. It was 129 degrees when I was there that day. This is the opal capital of the world. And Coober Pedy is like— if you, in Australian terms, if Adelaide is like Houston, Coober Pedy is north about 3 hours in the middle of the outback. The city itself is underground. It's too hot to live above. But in the outback above, they drill prospect shafts for opals. And the way you look for opals is you, you take a Caldwell bit and you start digging these shafts about 60 feet deep. And then, uh, they got a rig over top and they put you in a bosun's chair and they and they lower you into this hole, and you get down 30 or 40 feet, you know, you got your flashlight, you got your little miner helmet, and you're looking around, and you're— you're in a grave, dude, you know. And what you're looking for are trace elements of sandstone or soapstone. They run in veins, and if you find them, in between that vein oftentimes is opal. So then you deal another prospect shaft in the same basic trajectory as the vein.

And if you confirm the vein, you dig another one. And after 3, if you know you, you're on to good opal, you bring in the heavy equipment and dig out the hillside and you create a cavern. You go into the cavern and you chip out the opal. Opal capital of the world, huge industry. The opal miners, on the other hand, are kind of like crab fishermen in the desert and on steroids because there's no OSHA in this part of the world, right? There's no— like, I've been in every kind of mine there is. Anthracite, bituminous, coal, copper, borax. All of them. When you dig these shafts, they don't fill them in. So the night before we get to Coober Pedy and I want to look at the opal fields because we're going to be working there all next day and I'm a little worried. 'Cause these guys are fucking cowboys for real. And they fly me over the fields. And when you look down, there are thousands of these prospect shafts that have been dug over the years. And none of them are filled in. Next to them are these big giant piles of dirt.

It's like an insane groundhog ran amok, right? Millions of them. And what's left are these 60-foot— shafts with these giant piles of dirt next to them, and there are thousands of them. And as I'm flying, you know, the pilot's like, yeah, you know, it's a hell of a thing because, you know, there's a lot of wildlife out here. There's emu, there's some ostrich, kangaroo, and, um, there are hundreds of them at the bottom of these shafts. They fall in all the time and they, they die down there. You know. And I said, well, that's terrible. He goes, ah, you know what's really terrible? He said, you know, Mike, what's really terrible is the tourists. I'm like, what, what, what? And he's like, every year, never fails, some tourists— there's an underground hotel in Cooper Pedy that's kind of famous because it's underground. The tourists come, and then the sunsets are incredible in the outback, and they go out in the opal fields, and they're taking these pictures of the sunsets. And his pilot tells me a couple weeks earlier they found a guy, found a fella down there at the bottom of the shaft. Oh shit.

Yeah, they figure he was down there for 2 and a half days before he died. And he was getting a picture, he's backed up, he's by himself, he trips, falls headfirst. 60 feet down, like a pinball, all the way down. Lands on the bottom, his head, you know, twists his neck, obviously shatters his clavicle and his shoulder. Now he's upside down in the bottom of a 60-foot shaft for 2 days, looking up at the inky dark sky go soft and purple and then red, and then it's day, and then it's blue, and And it's dark again. Now, I'm not claustrophobic in general, but I'm hearing this story, and the night before I know we're going to dig a shaft and I'm going to go in. And, um, and we do. And, uh, on the one hand, I was happy to go in because it was so hot. And you go down 6, 7 feet, and the flies, man, you're just covered with flies when you're topside. But you get 6, 7, 8 feet down and it gets cooler, and you get 20 or 30 feet down and it's pleasant except for the fact that there's dirt all around you and dirt's falling on your helmet.

And then you get, uh, 40 feet down and there's the sandstone and no opal. Bummer. But because it's TV and because your crew is funny and because the guys are knuckleheads, they, they send you to the bottom just so you can get a sense of what it's like to stand at the bottom of a 60-foot tube and look up, and, uh, it's not all it's cracked up to be. You stand there and, you know, the Aussies, you know, they sprinkle water on you and pretend to pee on you because they're Aussies. It's terribly funny. And you just stand down there, like, dirt on all sides. And it's like, imagine being like 3 or 4 millimeters tall in the bottom of like a liter Coke bottle.

Yeah.

And just looking up, it's 60 feet, 6 stories. And, um, anyway, they winched me up and it was just an extraordinary experience. And, uh, 3 days later there was an earthquake in Coober Pedy, a mild one but strong enough to collapse hundreds of—

holy shit.

Yeah. So for years You know, that, that was my, my dream was that tourist in the bottom of the, the opal mine.

Damn.

So mining is, is kind of an answer. I can riff on crab fishing, dude. Those stories to this day haunt me, and they changed TV too. Shark— oh, shark suit tester. That's a good one.

Shark suit tester.

Yeah. So I'm host— I'm hosting Shark Week 2008, I think. And, uh, it's like Dirty Jobs Shark Week. So it's all the dirty jobs involving sharking. And, uh, I get a chance to meet Jeremiah Sullivan, the inventor of the shark suit.

Like the chain— the chain suit, the chain mail.

Now this is before I hadn't seen it on TV at this point. You know, you see them all the time now, but like, what is it again? And Jeremiah, of course, is like the— he's like an aquatic Indiana Jones. I mean, he has been there and done it. He is G.I. Joe underwater. And so the job is to go make this shark suit because it's thousands of tiny welds. You look like Ivanhoe. You're dressed up in this thing. It's flexible. And like surfers were buying it, you know, and scuba divers because, you know, nobody wants to get bit by a shark. So I get to know Jeremiah and it's a great segment. And it's, it's really a welding segment. You know, we make a shark suit and we try it on. And then he says, you want to test it? And I said, yeah, sure. How do we test it? So we're down in Bimini, I guess, maybe, or somewhere in the Bahamas. And the next morning we agree to film the test. But that night or late that afternoon, we had to take a boat out to test the comms because there's no way you can shoot a segment like that.

You know, my— I got 4 guys underwater with me with cameras at, you know, 40, 50 feet. We're going to chum the water like the sharks are going to come in. I don't know how anybody's going to react. I don't know how I'm going to react. But mostly I just don't know how the communication is going to work down there. And I had a guy from TV Guide with us, too. Like documenting this whole shoot. So my crew and I were a little nervous.

I'll bet.

Because now the job is to get— is to get bit by a shark wearing one of these suits. So we go out the night before, and I'm in the suit, and I'm geared up, and Jeremiah throws some chum over the side, and the sharks show up. He called them, uh, the men in the gray suits. A couple dozen of them, reef sharks, you know, 9, 10, some 12 feet long. They're big. And, uh, so the water's covered with sharks, and, uh, you know, my crew goes in and they get down to the bottom and they get situated, and, uh, I jump in and the sharks are leaving us alone. But Jeremiah's got the chum with him and we'll bring some in close. They don't want to bite you. They're not interested in you. They— but they know he's got— they know he's got food. They can smell the blood. But we're in the water and I've got my face mask on and it's a— it's not a normal regulator, so I don't have it in my mouth. Right. I got a full face mask on. So I'm breathing the compressed air. I've got a bicycle helmet screwed into the shark suit and my mask because a couple of weeks ago, Jeremiah went down with a friend and his buddy got bit in the back of the head.

So the insurance company was like, you know, you got to wear a bicycle helmet. So I look like a complete asshole. And at the time I had a deviated septum. I got my nose fixed not long ago. Not too long after this. But I mean, I'm certified, but it's, it's tough for me to decompress sometimes because I can't, I can't breathe that good. And you know, you have to— you got to clear your air. But if you have a full face mask, you can't grab your nose. So I can't decompress. I'm 12 feet down and my head's going to explode, and I can't fix this. I've got to jam the whole thing up into my nose and I'm And I'm going through a lot of air because it hurts. And I finally get it decompressed and a shark swims up and bounces off my chest. Right. Same sort of sphincter effect I described before. It's a terrible moment. And I'm just like, the sharks are everywhere. It's all dark and purpley. And I'm pulling myself down on a rope just to meet Jeremiah, who's now— I think we're 45 feet down. And he's just kneeling on the bottom waiting for me.

Sharks everywhere. My crew is at a respectable distance. The communications are working, but we just want to get to the place where we're going to be tomorrow when we actually film it for the Discovery Channel. And, um, the TV Guide guy's down there. He's very experienced scuba diver, and everybody's got cameras. The long story short, I get down there and, and Jeremiah opens up his thing, and the sharks come, and they're everywhere, and it's like like, all right, I get it, this is going to be an amazing shoot. And then the craziest thing, man, I, um, my chest started to get tight and I took a deep breath and exhaled, and I went to get another breath—

nothing.

And, uh, the TV Guide guy swims up to me and I basically burned through 40 minutes of air in 18 minutes. Holy shit, I'm out of air. Never occurred to me to check my gauge because I was only down 20 minutes. But in hindsight, who was this the whole time? Now I'm 45 feet down, I'm out of air, I got a 45-pound steel suit on, I've got no buoyancy. And my last breath was an exhale. So I start, uh, panicking, you know.

Wait, are you totally out of air?

I'm out of air.

Oh shit.

I can't— my last breath was out. I'm out. Leon was his name, this guy. He, he immediately sees the situation, and he's not in a full face mask. He pulls out his regulator to give me the air. I can't get my face mask off because the frickin bicycle helmet is all screwed into the thing. And I, I'm going to die. Like, the air is right there on the other side of the mask. So this guy floods his BC, grabs me, and together we kick and we rise at a fairly stately pace. Like, because, you know, you don't want to go up faster than your bubbles.

So dangerous.

You got the bends, right? So no, we're just going up like this. And I, uh, I mean, it's— it— again, if you've— if you've never really been out of air at depth, it's— it's hard to describe. But all I could see was the bottom of the boat, you know, and it looked really far away. And I'm kicking and I'm out of air and I lose my, uh, peripheral Oh shit, vision starts getting black, starts to gray out. And, uh, and he just stays right with me, gets me up, we rip off all the gear. Obviously I, I live and stuff and whatever, uh, but the next day we had to shoot the scene. Now that's not Tunnel Rat stuff. That's— nobody's peeing on punji sticks, nobody's torturing your buddies. But, you know, jumping, jumping back into the water the next day with all those sharks, that was—

I—

yeah, the only other thing, the only other thing that rivaled that was the Golden Knights. I jumped with the Golden Knights.

Oh, did you?

Yeah.

Right on.

And I would— I don't even know. All right. It was great. It was great. It wasn't for Dirty Jobs. It was for a show called Somebody's Got to Do It, which was very similar. And I was doing a lot of military stuff. I had just gone to— I mean, I'd done the Seabees and I had done— I was on the Stennis for a couple of days. You know, it was summer each. And, and the Golden Knights called. And I had already done— I'd jumped out of planes before, but always tandem and always for TV. And somebody's got to do it. It wasn't about me. I wanted it to be about them. But I also didn't want to jump out of a plane again strapped to a dude's, you know, guy behind me. I just had done it. And so I was like, you know, it was actually— it was the same moment on the Mackinac Bridge when I said to the guy, oh, you know what would be fun? I'm going to walk across the girder and climb up the cable, change a light bulb. Let's do that. Knowing there's no way they're going to let me do that.

I say to the Golden Knights PR guy, I said, look, the only way I can do this for a show like this is if you let me pull my own chute, because there's no way. There's no way the PR organ for the Army is going to let me pull my own chute on television, right?

It's just—

they can't do that. He says, okay. So, so I go to— was it Fort Bragg? And I mean, I'm so in my head with this thing. These guys are amazing. I work with the chute packers. I meet all the guys. We, we do a tandem jump because you have to do it. But the point of the story is to follow me through an accelerated freefall training, right? Which they can do in 8 hours, apparently. I didn't know. Who the hell knew that?

I mean, I sure as hell didn't. I didn't know it until just now.

I didn't know it. Um, but they were great, and they walked me through the whole process. And it was a 2-day shoot. The first day was the process, and the next day in the morning, I would jump alone and pull my own chute. Fine. The night before, dude, I am in my head because I had made a pact with God after the shark suit incident. I look, I'm not going to do this again. I mean, this— I've done a lot of things. I've been uncomfortable in a lot of ways. In a lot of situations. But I'm not a stunt junkie, right? I'm not in it for the adrenaline. I do it for the show, to make the point, to work with the people who do it every day, and then I just move on. Well, I'm never diving with sharks again. Bullshit. No. Not gonna do it. And I had said the same thing about jumping out of planes, but here I am. I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna break my vow. You know, and I'm nervous. I'm just in my head. So we get there early the next morning. And, you know, these guys jump 8, 10, sometimes 12 times a day.

That's all they do is jump. They go up and they're out and they're working on their formations. So I get there about 8 in the morning and they're already up. And so my camera guy's with me out in the LZ, and I'm standing there looking at the plane way up there, and, you know, the guys come out of the plane. And I turn to the camera, and I start to really just kind of spill my guts, you know? Like, "Look, man, I have nothing but admiration for these guys, and I'm so proud and privileged to be here, but I'm nervous. You know, this is not what I do. I'm older than I've ever been. You know, and why am I doing this?" You know, I don't need to prove anything to anybody, but they're so great and they're enthused. And so I guess what I'm saying is I'm glad to be here. I'm lucky to be here. But I feel like I could maybe throw up a little bit, you know? And I'm just like— So I'm like spilling my guts to the camera. Meanwhile, these guys are terminal velocity. They're coming in hot. And this is— What is it, Halo?

Low, low openings, right? So they, they're popping their chute, I don't know how, like a couple hundred feet maybe, and they're coming in like a lawn dart, one after the next, and they're doing the swoop thing. So now I got another one of those Emmy shots, right? You're the camera guy, I'm spilling my guts, and behind me the pros are coming in at like the speed of sound, and it's like— and they're coming by head high right next to So if you're the cameraman, this is— this is the— this is amazing shots. I mean, it's just forced perspectives. And the second one comes by and they're coming like within 3 feet of me, just fly. And in my head, I'm like, all right, well, this is working out. This— this looks pretty badass. They're going to do their thing. Plane's going to land. I'm going to go up and I'm going to do it. 7 of them come by. 8th one pulls up a little short, hits the ground about 35 miles an hour, maybe 60 feet behind me. So the sound a body makes when it hits the ground at, at that speed, there are a couple things happening.

The first is just a general like a— I mean, really, it's like thud. When people write thud, it's really because that, that, that's the sound. It's just— and then there's simultaneously a sound like a whooshing sound, and that's all the air leaving the body really quick. And the third sound, in this case anyway, remember when Bo Jackson would like strike out and crack the bat over his leg? It was that crack. So I instinctively run to the guy and my cameraman follows me, and he, he was shooting anyway. He doesn't stop. It doesn't occur to him. We're just following the action, like, what the hell just happened? And we get close and, uh, he's unconscious and his femur's clean in half and way out of the way out of the suit. And then he comes to, and, uh, it's terrible. He's— and then everybody runs to him, and my camera guy Taylor immediately realizes this is not— this is nothing we want to see. And, uh, the whole team is there, the guys who just jumped with him, they're all there. They get them together, they get him in an ambulance, and, uh, He's gone.

And now I know what happens next. Now I know the Army is going to come up to me— Noah, my flight, my jump instructor— and he's going to apologize and he's going to ask for the tape because this was no bueno. And of course I'm going to give it to him because I'm not, I'm not there to do anything other than honor these guys. This guy walks up to me, looks me square in the face and says, well, you ready? One more sphincter slamming shut moment. I'm like, ready? Ready for what? He said, look, I won't use his name, but he said, what happened to that guy? I don't know what happened. But I know he's jumping with an 86-square-foot canopy, and he made a mistake. Your canopy is 170 square feet. You're going to float to the ground like a butterfly, and I'm going to be right with you. I'm not going to touch you, but I'm going to be a few feet from you when you come out of that plane, and there'll be another guy on the other side, and you're going to be good. Dude, I couldn't believe it. The most bureaucratic— I mean, there's nothing I can tell you about the military you don't know.

That's just crazy.

And I was so—

I mean, horrified and overwhelmed and grateful. I just said, I just need a minute, dude, you know. 'Can we just have a minute?' And he says, 'Yeah, take all the time you need.' So we go inside. 'Planes leaving in 5 minutes.' Well, the plane wasn't even down yet, but it was coming. You know what I mean? And they're like, 'Look, we're going up with or without you, but you don't want to not do it, do you?' Mm-mm. So I'm in the briefing room, and on the walls are pictures of— I mean, it's D-Day. I mean, it's Normandy. It's just this— this is the 101st, right? I mean, storied legends. And I just like— those kids were up there, you know, 800 feet off the ground, jumping out with £100 on their— on their backs, getting shot at while the plane disintegrated. I'm like, don't be a pussy. Jump out of the plane. Just do it. Do it for— do it for them. Yeah. So, so I do it. I jump out of the plane with the Golden Knights. And, uh, now what I hadn't really thought through— yeah, they were with me when we went out, but they stay with me till I pull my chute, which I do, and then they're gone.

They're fucking gone, right? So I'm up in the air for like, I don't know, maybe 4 minutes. Figuring it out, guiding my way down. And it was beautiful and terrifying and lonely and amazing. For me, it was my first jump, and, um, I missed, uh, I missed my mark by like 10 feet and actually landed on the macadam, uh, of the runway. And I stumbled and I fell and I tore my jumpsuit, skinned my knee. I was fine, you know. I jumped up and it was just absolute euphoria. I'm fine. And, um, so we wrapped the shoot and, you know, obviously I, uh, I promised to never show that footage and I never have. But I'm telling you the story now because 12 years ago And, um, and I saw the Golden Knights jump at the Army-Navy game this year, and a couple of the guys were with me that day.

No shit.

Saw him on the 50-yard line at Baltimore Stadium where, uh, I think Navy beat Army this year by like 1 point. But he reminded me of the funniest freaking thing, man. I don't know why I did this. This is just the asshole in me, but I couldn't help myself. The guy who jumped And a couple hours later, the report was he was going to be fine. Bad break, but he's going into surgery. He's in good spirits. And spoiler alert, to this day, he's still doing his thing. He has thousands of jumps. All went great for him. But his buddies were like, he's so mortified. That this happened in front of Mike Rowe and the crew. He's so— I mean, can you imagine? Like, you're the one of the elite parachutists in the world on one of the elite teams, and, and this happens. This goes wrong on camera.

Yeah.

So I, uh, I got a cell phone from the jump master, and I sent him a photo, and the photo is me me sitting on the curb near the, near the jump site. Um, like, I'm really about this angle, right? And my, my knee is here. It's got the tear and the thing, and you can see my skin knee, right? So I sent him a picture of my knee and me thumbs up with a caption that says, brother, I know exactly how you feel. Holy shit. And so we texted and talked a few times for years after that. But that's my— I'm gonna go with that. That's the answer to that question for me.

Nice.

For me, you know, sometimes it's a tunnel, sometimes it's a plane, sometimes it's a skinny, sometimes it's a freaking shark, sometimes it's an upside-down tourist in an opal shaft. Yeah, if it's not one thing, it's another. And I'll tell you something else, it's not everything it's cracked up to be.

Well, speaking of dangerous jobs and tunnel rats, I got one last gift for you.

Oh no, I know you got to go here pretty soon, but no way.

Oh yeah.

No.

Oh yeah. Have you ever heard of Sig Sauer?

What the— so Sean is—

that is some tunnel rat shit right there.

Holy crap, dude, with a suppressor!

That is the Sig Sauer 365 Macro with Sig Sauer Lite. Holds 17 rounds plus 1 in the pipe. It's got the new Sig red dot and Sig Sauer suppressor. That's from Silencer Shop. And, uh, so I got a buddy over at Sig, his name's Jason, and a friend at Silencer Shop too.

And I don't even know what to say, dude. That—

they thought you might like that.

Wait a minute, you gave Micro a Macro?

That's right.

Wait a minute, who specifically is responsible for this? Who, who, who gave this to you?

Well, I guess ultimately it's, it's me.

Um, I got lots of shit on my walls too, dude. I've gotten many gifts. This is the best story I'm ever gonna have in the future, is going to be the day I tried to get through security at the airport with this. It's going to be amazing.

That would be a good story. Fortunately, we're going to send it to you with 14 rounds.

17. 17.

We'll leave one out of the pipe though.

Probably for the best. Yeah, my UPS guy is not totally trustworthy.

He's not qualified for that delivery.

Good. I'm, I'm so, uh, I'm so honored. We, uh, God, I should not say this out loud. But we have such a coyote problem.

Let me know if you need some help with that.

Or do we? Oh man. What, what happens now? What do we do? How long we been talking, by the way?

Well, it is now 2:42.

Is that normal? It feels normal for this.

We could go a lot longer.

At this point, I figure I talk another hour, maybe I get a flamethrower.

Let me see what I can work out.

Um, no, look, it's, uh, I remember the first time I was on Rogan. I told him obviously nothing he didn't already know, but you, uh, you can get a sense of somebody in a half hour. You can maybe get to know him in an hour. But truth doesn't really come out till around hour 3. And I think, I think maybe that's why Kamala didn't come on. Hmm. I don't know. I don't know. But, you know, if you're, if you're a handler and, and you're trying to get somebody elected, look, my own partner is nervous as hell that I'm here right now mouthing off for 3 hours. She's like, what the hell are you going to talk about? I don't know, but, but I do know that the only thing worth a damn today that's truly for sale is, is what we're doing right now. It's not the news. It can't be. It can't be, man. Yeah, it can't be the packaged, focus-grouped thing. It can't.

Doesn't work anymore.

You know what focus groups do? They get rid of the really, really bad ideas and the really great ones, and they leave you with the soft, squishy middle. Which is why most music sounds the same, most reality TV shows look the same, most newscasts are the same. You better keep doing what you're doing. Whatever that is.

You do, and thank you. That means a hell of a lot. Thank you.

What, what other country— in what other country could a guy sit down for 3 hours, give him a bottle of whiskey he won't drink, a knife he probably doesn't need, and have the favor returned with a Sig Sauer? Just—

are you telling me you like the Sig better than the gummy bears?

I'm saying I'm gonna eat As soon as I get this cig delivered, I'm gonna eat all the gummy bears at once and go out and introduce myself to those coyotes and see what happens.

Send pictures.

Yeah, from jail.

Mike, it was an honor, man.

I enjoyed every minute.

Me too.

Really.

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