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

>> My Crow 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 since it's been a lot of them. And 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 rally around, and it's good to see. >> Well, Steve Martin said, you know, when it comes to communication, some people have a way with words and other people, not have way. [LAUGH]

>> Nice. >> Well, look, we're in the communication business. You can call it whatever else you want, the entertainment business, whatever it is, TV show podcast, influencers, 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 really know when you get it right. It's kind of like a, like a fact girl on a balance beam. It's just like, you're all over the place.

Always trying to find your equilibrium, not wanting to go too far,

say too much, not overreach, not sit the fight out, stay in the middle. All that stuff is challenging to navigate, 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? >> I guess I love it. You know, I was late to the party. We were talking earlier about the, it's just so much of what you do,

“I think, is dictated by when you started.”

And I started in entertainment a long time ago. 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 got some breaks early on,

and eventually got a show on the air that I was proud of. And then I 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, 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 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 forced gumped its way onto the air. It was, it was deemed off-brand. I shot the pilot myself. Did you really?

Three of them. Yeah, yeah, I was working for CBS at the time, hosting a local show called Evening Magazine. It was just a little segment that I was doing. And it was very inappropriate 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, somebody's got to do it. And it was, it was just like dirty jobs.

But it was an honest look at work through the eyes of the worker. Unscripted, no second takes, nothing like that. And the feedback from those segments way back in 2001 was, you think that's dirty? Wait, you see what my dad does.

My brother and my cousin, my uncle, my sister. Wait, do 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 it was like, wow, these are viewers who who want to program this segment.

platform.

“And so that's kind of how it started with this idea”

that I work for the viewer.

So to answer your question, do I like podcasting? I love it. But I didn't start there. And so for me, getting into your world was really an attempt, ironically, to get rid of 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 done for it. No, no, no, surely you must understand. But your viewers should understand, too, that in a relative world, you've created an incredibly authentic space with a ton of production in it.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And 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 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. So there's a compliment baked in 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.

[LAUGHTER] I mean, it's a compliment. I really appreciate that I've really do. 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 that old story. And so I was like, well, this podcasting shit seems to be taken off. Maybe I'll take a stab at that, and I'm not a conversationalist.

I have severe social anxiety, especially back then. But I want to do, I just, I kind of saw, maybe I don't know if you would call it a hole in the market, but everybody was doing the Joe Rogan thing. And now, what I really wanted to do

is bring on former colleagues and do a life story and document history and talk about overcoming struggles as a bad 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. It changes like every three to five seconds. And I was like, OK, that must be an attention thing.

So I wanted multiple cameras, and I wanted a comfortable set. You know, we're not sitting erect in front of a microphone. And so the people can really kind of, you know, peel back the onion. I'll let you know if I'm sitting erect.

[LAUGHTER] I don't anticipate. Right, everything like that, the next couple hours. Hey, look, at this point in my life, if it happens, so I'll take it as a win.

I'm sure that'll go viral. [LAUGHTER] But-- Oh, no, but it's the-- it's the combination of deliberateness and honesty

that gives you authenticity. Your weapon's expert, right? That's a very deliberate thing to be. That's a very consequential space to occupy. Don't have a lot of room from 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 three hours. Now, that makes you really interesting to somebody like me and, obviously, to the millions of people

But they don't really like to be sold anything. And so 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, 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 in the advertising game.

“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'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 the car.

“And then I know we're going to talk about some AI data centers and all of that”

good stuff. I can't wait. And the stuff. I'm so, is this black rifle coffee I'm drinking? I think it is.

I got her out here. Is it? Did my pee? I think it is. That's pretty good.

Might be dunked donuts. I don't know. I'll let you know when I have to get rid of it. All right.

Well, I'm glad I'll be here for five hours.

Let me give you an introduction. All right. Micro. You're an Emmy award-winning television host, producer, narrator, and best selling author, best known as the creator and host of Dirty Jobs.

Through the micro 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. It's fair. Most of the way I heard at podcasts 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. I mean, I was very concise and I got no beef with any of it. Yeah, 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, when I started this podcast in my attic with my wife, we couldn't get any advertisers, probably

because I had no filter and so we started a Patreon account, and we started selling gummy bears, and we're still selling them to this day. You've got to remember your roots. Yeah. 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 four years, and yet what are we looking at here?”

A lot of booze. Ah, doesn't control me anymore. You're Sam alone. You're the bartender and cheers. That's the dichotomy I was talking about before, right?

So my pop was Carl Noble. He inspired dirty jobs. He was, he only went to the seventh grade, but by the time he was 30, he was a licensed electrician, a plumber, 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 a grow up on a little farm in Baltimore County next to him and my grandma. And he was the guy. He cast a long shadow, man.

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, he turned 90 and I was working for that thing at CBS, I was telling you about evening magazine. And my mom called to say Michael, your grandfather, I was 39 years old and 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 local TV show. And I had sung in the opera, I had sold stuff on the KVC cable shopping channel, I had 300 jobs in broadcasting because the handy gene is recessive. And even though I wanted to follow in my pops, foot steps, I just didn't get the, you know, he 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 on my foundation, that is cool. Well, we're in 30 states now. The thing is one, I don't know how many gold medals and it's totally out of control. And I, 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 like a crowd. So I've 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 of ants. This guy came on my podcast a couple of years ago and said some really nice things about my foundation and I said, if you make a microworks knife to help me raise some money for

these scholarships we do, you know, that would be awesome. So of course he did and we raised like 100 grand in three days. And then he said, my, 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 blade Smith.

Get to deal when he's a teenager to go make a sword for a chic over in Saudi Arabia somewhere. He doesn't comes back, winds up getting on what is that show forged in steel or something like that? 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 in the notch and the same way you did. He's got 120 employees.

He's doing like $12 million a year, making knives in the USA.

And this is the very first version of the rocker. He's just re-opted. It benefits my foundation and he wanted you to have it first one. 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 and if we can deal with a knife, we ought

to be able to deal with a car, we ought to be able to do it with the chairs we're sitting in. Look at that beauty. That's ridiculous. Oh, yeah, it's that.

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

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 sorry. I'm sorry. Guys are partnered.

Yeah. And you have seen his facility and I didn't know where he kind of know he's alignment, but I know he just built that facility and I think I know it started as kind of a grassroots,

“very small shop and 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 dreams gone, it's like, no, it's not, you just gotta find the thing. Yeah. That resonates with you. 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 a creative idea. Let me run this by, I got one of the news agencies ask me to write 400 words on whether the American dream is alive or dead and why and, you know, I normally don't do that stuff,

but it was on my mind and you know, we're going to be 250 and a couple of weeks. And so I went this way just because I didn't want to say the same thing, I thought everybody also probably say, I said, 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 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 it's still alive. I mean, I got two examples that are

recent within the past four years. One of them, when I finally got out of my attic,

do that should be your book if you haven't read that yet. When the wife finally kicked me out of the attic, so I don't want these people over here anymore. I went got a very small garage, like an auto mechanics, you know, one one one one big garage and with two 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 and do all the 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 these studies. Like, I can come over on Easter Sunday and I'll frame this whole thing out for you. I was like, perfect. A couple years later, I had him do some more work and he's telling me he comes around. He's speaking English now. He's got some new clone. He's got a nice watch. Good sunglasses,

the brand new car and he goes with ETC. He's just telling me he's like, you know, I have like five 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. Why don't you complain? You work on Easter Sunday. Now you have five crews.

“Yeah. And you can't even keep up. That's awesome. And then another one, Laura, who you mad?”

Yeah. My wife is awesome. Your own team. Salt. It's like a family here. Really great. But her husband just, he started a fence company earlier this year. And I think he's going to

clearly like $200,000 in revenue on his first year. Just building wood fences. It's awesome.

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Or you can use code SRS50 at checkout. That's 50% off your first order at Sundaysfordogs.com/SRS50. Sundaysfordogs.com/SRS50 or use code SRS50 at checkout. I've got a couple questions for you. Hit me. TJ Smith. Mike, you often champion skilled trades is 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, or the results 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? How do I do this if great question? I think that America's just an entitlement problem. 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 has a lower IQ who's not as smart

at this time and not as well-educated, but they have the work ethic, and they don't have that entitlement, and it just works. Yeah. I was thinking about this in the shower this morning, weirdly. I feel like maybe to some extent, some excuses have been removed. Like, I don't know. 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 like, so that's one thing. But the other thing about all the information, all the podcast,

“all the interesting guests is that it's all that to Jason, 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 percent of every single thing, we've ever known, and it's accessible. Point is like, if you don't

for the relevance of the stoics or philosophy, if you can't talk at all about Nietzsche or

Descartes or four sequels, 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 looked like this, I looked 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. 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, from my hotel room the other day, for free. It's like we're living at a time where there's absolutely no excuse, not to be informed. But at the same time, we are so overwhelmed with information that were 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 want to hear about it. But I can't get to all of them. And I turn on the news and I saw this clip the other day that really made me laugh the guys like, "Is it just me or does anybody else just not give a shit

“anymore?" 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? They're straight of four moves. 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 at all that, it's that people love your show because you're

you're a dosent, an emosent. A dosent 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 Smith Sonian,

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 dosent to walk you around and explain what's what the context like I need a dosent 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. It's the last time you went at a cheesecake factory. It's been a while. Check out the menu. It's a stick. Yeah. There are hundreds of entrées. There are 1,000 desserts. There are pictures. Everything from a chill bulletility to sushi. There's an index in the menu. There's a tape of contents because the menu is so big. You need a dosent, you need a guide to figure it's just

one a cheeseburger. Well, what kind? On page 34 you'll notice we can get the waggle. You got the

“I think people are exhausted by the amount of information and 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 a podcast landia. This mythical kind of nardia evolved where dosence and guides have appeared to help us make sense of the inexplicable. It's a good point. A couple of things. The coolest thing in this room is that sword up there. That's from a hundred. He's going to be 103 this year I believe.

flamethrower in Iwo Jiva and he came in and 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 said, oh, I have something for you. And he sent in that sword that he took off a Japanese. The mandatory one they carried for the

“well, what's the name of the SapoCo? I can't remember. You could support who or something like that,”

so he was on E-well. Yeah. Another thing. So the you had just mentioned there's so much in from you thought you knew so much from all the information that you've

gathered that you've 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 five years of building this, I thought I knew who our biggest enemies were. All these things, right? All the stuff and tack and I was building this, you know. Thing of knowledge. Little monument to yourself. Yeah. And then everything I thought I believed in and was for is the complete opposite. And 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. The Greeks have a great word for it. They have two great

terms. I love the Greek word for discovery is an agneresis. And Aristotle writes about it a lot when he tries to define what makes a plot good. Plots are driven forward by discoveries, the characters on a hero's journey. They discover things along the way that informs their world view, their perceptions, and so forth. All good dramas, especially a heroes journey, are littered with an agneresis. But the great stories,

the ones that win Emmys and the ones that we quote, they all have a specific form of an agneresis. It's called a parapetia or a parapatetic moment or a peripity. You can find it in your favorite movie, a guaranteed or your favorite book. And it's a form of discovery when our hero 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 defined a tragedy as the moment in an narrative

when the hero comes face to face with the undeniable and inescapable truth of his own reality. So these parapatias, if you look for him, you'll find him everywhere. Like the most famous one is probably an edifice, the famous king who discovers through the story, through an agneresis, a great many things about life and leadership and war. Among these discoveries is the fact that he really enjoys the company of older women. And so he, of course, famously, Mary Swan.

“And the plot goes along in edifices, the king. And then an act four, I think, you know, he”

has his parapatia when he realizes his wife with whom he's had several children is his mother. Now when you realize your wife who's also your mom, your narrative goes in a different direction. OK, this is why people still quote edifice today. It's why, like if you watch the sixth sense, like Bruce Willis, the whole moving is an agneresis. Ah, 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 that this little kid is pretty great. And in fact, you know what, maybe he's not crazy. And in the end, he has

him. Ergo C, he's dead. And when you realize you've been dead, the whole movie. And you're the hero, changes direct to the narrative. So, so maybe maybe you had a parapatia. Maybe you realized everything you thought you knew or believed in, just kind of shit the bed. And now maybe you got to figure out what do you do about? I don't know what the hell you do about that. But well, start and over. This 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. I think, I mean, that's my theory. And I, I look back at”

the parapatias in my life. And they are always 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, grip 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 stuff made to be a lot more open-minded. And I always considered myself

pretty open-minded. But 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? Were you just, it kind of just happened. It kind of just happened. And I would say I'm involved in politics just through the interviews. You know, but yeah, 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 or did a couple press releases to try to pressure her to get on. We were talking about their team and she wouldn't come. But 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 better? I want to know, I think it's important”

that you know whatever buddies perspective on things are because one thing that I did that would just go away against what I thought my audience would like is I interviewed this guy's name's Chris Beck. Are you familiar with him? Give me more. The first transgender Navy seal. Yes, he wrote the, the warrior princess and everybody in the seal team just despised this person and to be honest with you, 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 he's just really, really bright guy. But anyways, I wanted to bring him on because I was, I have an opinion about that issue, especially what 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 and to how it happened, what the process was like, why he decided to come back without injecting my own opinions or biases? And the kind of the

point was the interview for me was I wanted to showcase this is what this is what your kids are in for. If you're looking to do this, here's the road map. This is what you're in for. It help him make maybe some out 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, when he describes how it happened, it kind of for me at least it kind of

understand, you know, like how the how the fuck and 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, 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 would go up to the attic and try this fucking dress on and he would pretend that he was a sister because a sister was like the golden child of the family. And it wasn't a dress, obviously. It was armor. Yep. He put his armor on. So fast forward, then he becomes an avicill, has all that trauma to deal with, gets hooked on cocaine. He's riding with the hell's angels. He started to start 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 it is childhood. And she's 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 he wrote the book, "High on Drugs." And while he was high on drugs, she slipped him an NDA or not an NDA, whatever, a contract. She signed over the

“rights to the book to this therapist. Anyway, 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 you came back or not though, I could still understand. Yeah. I don't know, like, I don't know. 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 an agnaresis and the hero's journey, if you understand parapetia,

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 is that 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, the real gift of that is that you can see it in other people. And maybe it helps with your empathy. Maybe it just

helps to be a better human, you know, to be honest. Now, your parapetia may vary. You know, like, oh, no, my wife's my mom. Wow. I mean, like, that's, that's over here. My parapetia was, I, I realized I was who 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, 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'm personated a host on dirty jobs. I realized actually, I wasn't. I was more of a guest, were an apprentice, maybe, were 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, for a light bulb. I'm way better not knowing things I don't know than pretending to know things. 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 parapetia for me, because I've been paid for 20 years to hit the mark and say the line. It's not that I'm a bad host. I can look in the lens and I can talk like this. And I can stay any number of things that, you know, would generate a paycheck once upon a

a parapetia. Like, oh, you know, anyhow, when you tell your brain what to find, it'll, it'll find it. And 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 anti-goriesis? Who's having the parapetia? And right now, I think, God, man, that's, that's part of the, back to your first question.

How do I look, like podcasting? Well, I love it because it's filled with these parapetetic 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 book is

“parapetia 101. So yeah, 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 if you had any recently. parapetia's, no, I'm right now. I'm having a pretty good run on, you know, the I told you so, circuit, which is the opposite. I mean, I run this foundation called MicroWorks. It evolved out of dirty jobs. We award work ethic scholarships to kids who

would learn to trade. I saw that. It's just your first year. It's 10 million, that's your correct.

It's 10 million this year, but 18 years ago, it was zero. I started it. When dirty jobs was at its height. And your old enough to remember is 2008, dirty jobs was on in 140 countries. It was launching spin-offs every week. I was killing it. I was having the time on my life. I was doing the show. I should be doing on the network. I loved everything's perfect. 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 one in science. Why are these people unemployed and why are all these opportunities open? 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 four-year degree. They required training. And people who were willing to show up early, stay late and work. 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 small business owners, men and women. And I would ask them,

“"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, uh, and it grew from there. Uh, 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

aren't 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 two and a half million open jobs in 2009, 12 million people were out of work. Today, there's 7.5 million open jobs right now, are they're really, 7.5 million. Most of them don't require a four-year degree. They require

$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've 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 training for a bunch of jobs that don't exist anymore. It's been added. 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 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, who weren't cut out at all for college, but who were breaking smart and eager to apply their knowledge. You've got to find that kid and you have to show them this path. Because that's the right path for them. Right now, look, we took shop class out of high school,

had to be the dumbest thing in the history of modern education. So we set the table in a really jacked up way. And today, we have a colossal imbalance in the workforce. Most people simply don't realize how bad it is, but not a week goes by. Even exaggerating that microworks doesn't hear from the leader of some consequential industry or the CEO of a big company where some elected official, who is really like ring in the alarm bell,

worried about the skills gap. Blue Ford's Alliance, the company that oversees the maritime industrial base. I'm sure you're familiar. They're 15,000 companies who are collectively charged with delivering our submarines, our nuclear-powered subs. Two Columbia, one Virginia class a year.

“I think it's a two-plus-one cadence. I might have them reversed. But it's a massive undertaking.”

We need three a year. They called, and like, we're having a hell of a time finding welding welders and electricians. Can you help? I said, maybe. How many you need? 400,000. 400,000 welders. And the next eight years, they need to hire 400,000 skilled workers, many or welders. The shipbuilding industry. China built a thousand ships last year.

We built three. Yeah, right? Rare Earth's critical minerals. We can get in all that stuff too. But

the front line of this is skilled labor. The data center thing? Larry Fink runs black rock. Told me that the companies in his portfolio alone needed 300,000 electricians. What's coming is an infrastructure buildout that's being calculated at nine to ten trillion dollars over the next nine years. A lot of its data centers, but it's a lot of other stuff too. And we can get in a 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 rambling, but every five tradesmen,

any idea how many welders there are in the US right now? I can tell you that whatever the number is,

“we need 400,000 more. I can tell you we're underwater. It's worse with electricians right now.”

I was in plain up, Texas. A couple months ago, got a tour of a data center. I've been talking about

them for a while, but I hadn't really seen one up close. Oh my God. I mean, amazing. Kind of terrifying,

but also kind of awesome, enormous. I ran into three electricians all under 30, all making north of 240 grand a year. All dead free. Now here's a craziest part. All three had been poached three times in the prior 18 months. Now does that mean that's going on in Sacramento and Phoenix, Tallahassee and Bangor. I don't know, but it's going on in Plano. And it's happening in different areas. The shortages are so acute that the companies don't have time 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,”

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 Bartoromo to announce their

initiative. It's called America's Workplace Academy. These guys are there in four states. 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 fiber optic specialist. These are all in demand. They're paying you to learn. It's a five week accelerated course. Your 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. This episode is sponsored by Better Help. We talk about mental health more openly now,

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I know you've been beaten this drum for a long time, but when did you? I mean, this was

way before AI and all this other shit was even on the radar. What was the first inkling

that you got that you were like, "This is going to become a problem." Well, on a personal level, I become friends with the guy that built my house. I think the youngest guy on his crew is 55.

"How do you recruit? How do you keep them? How long do they stay? What are the barriers?" And

it's just shocking. Look, this whole thing, the sheer numbers are a problem. The demographics are a problem. There's just, you'll need to be an economist to know that five out into it is no bueno. But it's the stigma in the stereotypes and the myths and in this perceptions that have kept a whole generation of kids from really looking at these jobs. To this day, if I tell you, there's, we've had 3,500 people go through my program. I got a story just like the one you told

“me, 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, I don't off the top of my head. It's just, it's just funny for me, like the ones who who stick out, but there was a kid named Michael Gamas who applied for a work ethic scholarship from my foundation. Maybe, I don't know, six years ago.

First kid, this family to go to college, he was two 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 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 on, he's making his own knife. He's making his own hooch. He's making his own podcast. He's carved out of like a real chunk.

It's exactly the story you were telling me. I got 3500 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 Gamas. 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 finally 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 that'd 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 the surreal moment when the headlines catch up to your own smack.

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 proud of my team. I'm proud of my partners. And I'm really proud to have a seat at the table. You know, and

“and if that's what dirty jobs was for, I look, I love that show. And I loved every moment of it,”

really. But it's just a show. The show's common. 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. What I meant is maybe the situation that we found ourselves on right now, not what's happening for you in your foundation, but just the situation in general.

Because I feel like it's pretty fragile. When has it ever not been fragile? That's true. I mean, in this way, it is a little unnerving because an out of balance work forces is a problem. But

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 a description. The level of the lampified. So 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 div. That's the defense industrial base. And 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 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 Andrew, maybe it's Palantir, maybe it's a, maybe it's a company called Hadrian, maybe it's apex. They're making

satellites in a mass-produced way. But if a game changer take the satellites out of the

sketch and there's, there's no strategy, there's no war fairs we understand it today anyway. So introducing people to some of these, some of these companies, there's a company called Mark, who I'm going to talk to in a couple of weeks. You're going to love, you're going to love, you know, Mark talking to Ethan? Yeah. Fucking amazing guy. Good. 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, you know this, there's like”

him. There's an ecosystem of people under 40 who are running companies and doing things that are

so freaking cool. They're just cool it. And those opportunities need to be presented. Not sold, because nobody wants to be sold anything. But people want to buy into something 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 figureish. And then I want to tap the country on the shoulder 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 was the crime of taking shop class out of high school. 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 it's just a guy like me who was going to get the entertainment business. It's just walking from math class to English

class. You know, I could stick my head into a to a wood shop or a metal shop or an auto shop. And I could see something going on that looked like real work. That went away. And a whole education of kids weren't even exposed to anything like it. Man, I mean, you see a lot of kids now, I don't know, he can't even change a light bulb. You know, but you know what? So what is the apartment

“of war going to do? That's what I'm because I have a suggestion. I mean, there's all these military”

jobs that are also going to go away pilots. I mean, pilots have been on the chopping blocks since I was at war back in what 2005. We had drones back then. Now 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, 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

instead of hate recruiting for pilots recruiting for whatever the job is that AI is going to replace

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. There's 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 where most of the action really is. That's where most of the work really happens. Most people, they kind of 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 the work that's not going to be electricians are not going to go away. Plumbers are not going to go away. Wellders 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 for me online to press our nobama in 2009 right after I launch this thing. I've offered every administration for what it's worth. I just just say 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 an office. I want to help. So I wrote

this letter to the president. Do you remember three million shuffle 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 three million shuffle ready jobs. And I wrote 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 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 shuffle. 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 doesn't say. All the

cats are there, man. 35 CEOs, the president of the United States, they're all there. I want to panel with Howard Lotnick, Secretary, tell him I'm doing on a panel with the sky. I don't, but

“that's what I meant. 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 dollars to Pennsylvania alone to get this thing going. Right. And when it's my turn to talk, I say, look, I'm a, I'm rooting

for you, Mr. President. I am. I'm always rooting for you. And this re-shoring, this re-industrialization

that's on everybody's mind. This building things in this country again, knives, whiskey, podcast, whatever. Right. I'm for it. I am all for it. But the two million jobs you're talking about creating in the manufacturing sector. I got it. I got to 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,

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 was called me up and put their armor 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, 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 or 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 Gamma's. 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 prime. You can go to Raytheon. You can go to Lockheed, but you can also go to Palantir and you can go to Andorill and you can go to mock and you can go to Hadrian and you can go to Apex and so forth and so on. 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 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, 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. 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? God tell him. That's what I meant earlier.”

This fire hose of people telling me things. You know, whether it's a journalist or a podcast or an author or a documentary or me. I'm part of the problem. But what you're saying, I completely agree. I don't think you're part of the problem. Like you're doing an actionable. You're talking about these politicians in these CEOs of big companies that you've been talking to for the past 20, like 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 helping get through helping financially get through

trade schools schools. But it's got to be a lot 10 million a year. That's a big number. That's

a trade schools of two 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 of the solution. That's nice of you say. Thanks. I didn't I didn't there's not very many people like that. I'm part of the problem that are like you flick on the TV. You scroll around. You get your news feed and there's there's micro mouth and all about something. Or maybe I'm just telling a funny story. Whatever. 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”

about it. It's it's it's amazing. Like I think of how many guests have I had on my podcast who have their own podcast.

That's interesting. I got a podcast. I'm on your podcast. Now you've 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 five or 15 minutes of fame? What if the audience

becomes the the creators in total? Do you think that'll happen?

I don't think you have. You're since we're complimenting each other. Who do you work for?

“Hey. All right. Anybody else? My family. My team. Next. Keep going. My audience. There it is.”

There it is. Sponsors in there anywhere? I'm in I guess technically I work for them. Sure. But I don't. I have to be be. 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 Megan Kelly episode. But boy. 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. I said I'm sorry. I'm not going to

“you've already fired me. And if you don't fucking like who I am, that don't fucking don't advertise”

on my show. I don't give a fuck. There are only five million other podcasts. Let go to them.

We're down to five million now. Right. And so no I'm never if anybody comes in and tries to

create an narrative or or take me away from me 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 you can be a symphony or you can be screeching. You can be a woman at the end of the last election. Whether it's just screaming at the sky and frustration. You know they're all of it together is just a cacophony. It's just a

minor league 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 fake in 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. The answer would be different. If you ask different people, people will put the audience in different places. I'm a little different.

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. Because because if they go away, obviously the sponsors go away. If they go away, my guests go away. If they go away, I'm just a guy sitting alone talking to himself.

“And so I think that the audience is like, people forget just how important it is when you're on a stage”

especially to look out and see those people. You completely work for them. And they're so special and it's so easy to forget. I shouldn't tell the story. I'll try and do 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 a 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 parapetia. 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. God, never to be performed again.

And just a fascinating. And my first thought was, and that's just so indulgent, like why would Mozart

I realized, oh, what just happened was the producers and the talent in this production

“gave 400 people a memory that no one else has. And they turned those 400 people into”

apostles of a kind, evangelist 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 watching and wanting to be entertained or challenged, whatever, you know. And that filled me with really

a feeling I had never had before. And, you know, if you think about all of the performances that

predated mass media as we understand it, we're like nothing was recorded. Nothing was ever filled. It the whole thing, that production of edifice we were talking about before took place 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 cut up and

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 has been 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 audiences 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 when you're first night out all the time, 14 cameras in here. The 14 cameras. So, look, I say the wrong thing on a podcast like this. They'll be held a 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 consequences to mouth things off. They're consequences. And those, those are great.

“But I just think about the consequence reality 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 percent of them were looking at me on the screen on their phone. This is giant filter between the audience and the performer slash influencer, whatever it is. And for time and memoriam, it wasn't there. And now it is. And I reckon a lot of what we're grappling with all the time and every way shape or form is a version of that. We're trying to navigate this

weird filter that we've put between ourselves and everything that's real. Makes sense. This is heavy, dude. It is heavy. I wasn't expecting something. I'm just going to tell some post stories from dirty jobs. I'm going to some artificial insemination stuff. I've talked about rownutrition's liposomal NAD plus before. And it's one of the few supplements

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who I talk to and what I talk about. You know, something that I interviewed Jim Kabeezle once and we were talking about money. That brought this up a couple times on the shelf. And he was talking about cars and motorcycles and all the fancy ship that he's bought. You know, it was at a time where I was kind of just starting to make a little bit of money and way more than I'd ever made before. And we kind of had this discussion and it was kind of pick and I was wanting some advice 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're talking about.”

We're talking about the Bible and there's a verse in there that says, "Something about a rich man will, you know, has something to do with the eye of the needle." There it is. Yeah. And 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 that is for whatever reason that just really stuck with me. And so I kind of like consider those systems. It's not mine.

I get. Oh, every day I wake up. I look around at him like I, this can't be fucking real. I have no college education. I only have six years in the SEAL teams, which is a very unempressive

career is a SEAL and in that community and this shit have never happened. You know,

just shit have never happened. I don't know. Your bonus time, isn't it? 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. It was so fatal. That was point in your life, man. It's so interesting. You're such an introspective cat. By the way, you know, the eye of the needle. And that scripture is not the eye of a sewing needle. It's the,

it's 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, it's 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 a language, which happens a lot. You know, I think”

it happens in the Bible. It happens in the Constitution. It happens all over the place. Language is

always changing. But yeah, it's, um, it's not a, it's not a parapetia, but man,

there's a, there's a weird thing to wish on anyone. But, uh, you ever lose? You ever lose everything? Oh, yeah. Like flat, like for 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 contract and for CIA, I had nothing going for me. But you quit. I quit. You didn't have to. Well, that's not exactly what happened. But, um,

there was some shit going on that I did not like. And I knew nobody would stand up to it.

writing on the wall. I was single, late 30s, mid 30s. And, um, I just, I just, I was like,

“this is a lonely life, man. Just redeploying to fucking more zones over and over and over again.”

And that's just, this is, I've done everything I wanted to do here. I'm 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 from, 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. And 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 know, 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 didn't ever debris deploy. And, um, those guys never had to work with that fucking asshole ever again. Good. 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, we 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? Mm-hmm. 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. But when you lose everything, as a result, not as a result of pulling the pin yourself.

“You know, I think that's what Kaviesel was maybe talking about, you know, a sort of an active”

god or just an unfortunate circumstance where you, you're out of control. The decisions is not yours. Somebody else made a decision. And you look down and you're safety and that'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, 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, and, and would 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, I did suicide attempt in there. Um, but looking back, I sure as hell wouldn't change any of it. There's much more impactful and much more enjoyable than anything I ever did for CIA or the

sealed teams. What are we going to do about PTSD? Well, actually, I just invested in a company. This is more about the suicide epidemic, but I invested in this company called InVee, and it's founded by a guy named Johnny Wilson, who's also a former seal, left the sealed teams got into Big Tech, started this company called InVee, and it is, you, all these wearables that everybody's wearing to attract their health. You, you get the, what API keys to 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, man, 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 get this thing, 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,

all of these kind of things collectively together, it will notify your team. Hey,

“Mike's not sleeping good, his blood pressure is elevated, his heart rates 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 that's kind of the gist of it, and you know, I'm trying to, 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 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 could drink and have it had one of four

“years. Are you okay? Yep, I have a game. Have you talked to Rick Perry? No, you should, man.”

But I'm aware of 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 four years, and that's been very promising, but I think the envy wearable is kind of the new thing that I think brings the most hope, because it's an actual work like, hey, the signs of depression are kicking in, check on your body. Yeah, I did a show for

Facebook a few years ago called returning the favor, and I probably did eight, eight or nine segments on non-traditional approaches for suicide prevention with vets in particular. And it's just so interesting, like, so many of them really just came down to, you just got to get out of your head. You got to dive into something. Like, there was this thing, motorcycle combat bike saver was called up in Indianapolis, kind of Jason Zaydenman, just started, didn't know anything about motorcycles,

but he was struggling, you know, and he started rehabbing these old bikes, and then his buddies from his unit started, and a chapter is all over the place now. You know, it had a huge impact. This is guys getting together, working on something that was so tactile. There's a guy named Steve Hots, God, you would love him. He's got a forged down in Fredericksburg. He lost an eye, and got his back all jacked up, and a jump that went wrong, and pulled out an old forge and started

and 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, 20,000 people have come through it. Zero suicides. Wow, it's amazing stories of, you know,

I mean, it just feels like getting, forgive me. I don't mean it's 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 and 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 how many people thousands. That's incredible.”

Thousands. I'll get you a link. It's a blue forge black forge. I'll get it. It's in Fredericksburg. Steve Hots, you can Google the episode. It's one of the best success stories I've seen. I think one of the biggest issues, maybe even bigger than the war trauma itself is the loss of identity. I mean, especially in where I come from, you know, like for example, when I love the agency and I join the Navy, it really joined at 17 years old, left at 18,

basically my young adult. I was raised in the fucking seal teams, took about a year off, and then

hated some of the life and went back to contract for CIA and to decorate our nine years. And 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 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,

best outcome. I would love to be just some guy sitting there. And I have to worry about all this.

“I think there'll be a great, anyways, but what I'm getting at is you lose that identity and”

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 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 got the mistake to it. It's got what 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,

if you feel worthless, why does it have the mistake? 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 they're 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 smart ass filming himself. People know about buds. 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 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 may be disappointed

you. Maybe some things felt real and were confirmed. I don't know. But I do know that the mistake 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 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. 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 at 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 an entertainment but I was kind of risk adverse. I didn't want to go to Hollywood the way my buddies had or to New York. 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 will to beast 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 can sang in the opera. Crazy six, seven years in my life in Baltimore. I sold things in the

plays. I did pilots for talks. I did all these crazy jobs in entertainment. And along the way,

“when I was young, I met, let's call this person a trusted financial advisor who became a close friend.”

I invested my money with this person who worked for a firm that you know and this person rose to the top of the profession and my portfolio rose with it. And when there were opportunities to invest in private ventures that this person was also involved in, 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.

“And looking back, honestly, I was, I was like delightfully arrogant about my situation. I had”

saved a little more than a million dollars freelancing in the entertainment business and investing with a trusted financial advisor. And at the time, I was in New York, just bumming around, taking the jobs I wanted. And I felt so great, man, because I had this safety net. 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 three hours, right?

I thought, dude, I had a thing, they called it a D1. It was basically a plus one. It was a

must-flies 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 camera,

I'm in 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 that that pass was good all the time. And so when that gig went away, sign-filled, they replaced my show with reruns of sign-filled, right? And then there was a big upheaval in American Airlines and a big, a big change over. And one day I went into the airport, I had this pass. I didn't even thought about it, you know, and I was flying down the 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 knew. They take it, they open it, they look at me. Oh, okay, then, and then they pick up the

phone and they can, mm-hmm. Great. So it's a must, if that column MFers must fly, plus one. So like, seat for A, okay? Like, they'll take somebody out of first class to put you on. If you have this pass,

“you must fly. Wow. And, but the, but the deals over. So whatever, it was a great perk and now it's gone.”

Except she says, "Go right on board." Walks 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. I was a great date. 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

with a million dollars or more sitting there like the safety net, you know. And then literally one

morning, I had learned about it in the headlines. It was gone. All of it. And gone, man. So who 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, 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 isn't big deal. 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. It's not nearly as character driven or ethically situated. I didn't leave because of some crisis of conscience. I didn't do that. I just got ripped off because I've been 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'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 it like in my lane. I was much more circumspect about, you know,

“spending money, but I never spent much anyway. I didn't know anything. I'm not, I'm not a collector.”

Oh, I don't, I don't have anything. I had clothing deals shown with like four different companies back then because I was working on four 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 always 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 a million dollars in the back. I got an out one single commitment. And I'm pretty good at booking work because I did three years at QVC in the middle of the night. And I'm a good audition. And I can sell anything. I had my toolbox put together, right? It was all, it was so cozy, man. And then it can go on. And 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 think this is an important”

discussion because there's going to be a lot of people that lose their jobs. And they're going to have to reinvent here within the next couple of years. 100%. And a lot of people are going to look down and the safety and that's going to be gone. There was this moment and dirty jobs that you would appreciate that rhymes with this pretty good. There was an episode on the Mac and all bridge. 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 five miles long. It's one of the longest suspension bridges in the country. Sarah, in fact, check me on that. It might be too. I know it's a lot longer than the Golden Gate. It's long and it's green.

It's got to be painted constantly and never stops. The minute you're done painting and it's time

to start painting again. 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 painted. They get everything gets painted. 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 want it 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

and he said, "Well, do you get everything you need?" I said, "Yeah, yeah, 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 walk up that”

cable and change a few light bulbs along the way." Now I say this because there's no freaking way they're going to 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 West Cam 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 ambient where at least get nominated for one and it did. This shot is crazy. 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 stations 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 and battleship. I mean, you're up in the air. And you're focused, Matt. You're 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 get to a light bulb, pause, change it, sit down, helicopter gets it shot. We're getting everything we need for the show. It's going great. I got up toward the top, like the very top. And, you know, as you go, when you hit these

“stations, 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 when

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, do it, you do it, you do it, you get used to it, you know, a little more comfortable. You start to move a little faster. You get confident, right? So now I'm loving the shot. So I'm real comfortable. I got a 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, grabbing straight up,

shooting me like this. I'm sitting down leaning over like they're these lanterns, right? So you got to, I got a light bulb in my teeth. I'm lean 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 changing my position and 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 in the back

and forth or whatever. I uncliped and didn't, I just didn't clip it back in. The things just hanging by my side. And the other one is clip to the wrong thing. 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 clip 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 object. Like, that's how it felt years before”

when I lost everything. I looked down and then that wasn't where I thought it was. Same thing. Same feeling. I looked over as like, ah, I thought I was tied off. I'm not. I'm not going to 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. They're going to look down and they're going to realize they're not tied off. We're going to look down and they're

not going to see them. That 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 two,

long time. It 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 don't know. It's like all that was great.”

And, um, Dennis just was gone. And, and, 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 lightball on a bridge or try. So, suddenly, uh, I'm paid to try things. I'm not paid to succeed to 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 his 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 wet suit and 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. You know, I'm feel super fortunate that that all worked out. But that's a parapet to you. Interesting. You think you're tied off. You're not. Yeah. I've talked a lot about how important sleep is. But summer is one of those times where it gets harder to protect. It's hotter at night. Schedules get thrown off. Travel picks up and if your

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Aussie? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The one. Yeah. Everybody's betting on everything, right? That's right. What'll be betting on? Pauli Market says there's a 17% chance US unemployment hits 5% at some point in 2026. Unemployments sitting at a 4.3% right now in traders have put more than 430,000 dollars 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 obbs drop off fast from there.

Pauli 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 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

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 during the lockdowns. He writes eloquently and 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 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. 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 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 are they? How are they unemployed? Are they willing to

“move somewhere else? Are they able to retrain? Are they willing to think about retraining?”

Has their sphincter slam 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 of brush. But what Nick would say is there's a much more important stat in that rubric that we should be betting on. We're talking about and that would be the labor force participation rate. 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 what does that mean for those who are unemployed?”

I know right now they're 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 this book which you will dig. I recommend it really. It's kind of a wonky academic look at labor. I like it. 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 doing anything, man. Except one thing. On average they're spending

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. 2000 hours. You know they're what is it? They're 2,080 hours a year. And work weeks. They're working full time on their screens too. These guys unemployed. I don't dispute that they're not working. I just the quite don't know what to say about the cohort without painting with two broader brush. But it worries the hell out of me, man. The skills gap is hard to talk about. And the reason

you don't hear a lot of politicians talking about it. Because 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 there's

“fingers can't slam shut in fear and they can't reorient themselves. That's what my friends”

on the right want me to say. And they get pissed when I don't. My buddies on a 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, repatious capitalists who control all the money and pull all the strength 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 isn't

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 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 tradesmen is going to be the next

million hour class of people. 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 share, this is a good little anecdotal sidebar. I woke up a couple months ago. I was home, you know, made the coffee and it just kicked and I sat down and Davos was going on. And the first thing that popped up is this conversation between Jensen and who's Larry Fink, BlackRock. And that's where this conversation started. That's the first time he described the AI technology

as a as a five-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 beaten 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, now what would you do? What I did was I backed up the video. I turned my computer around

on my social channels. And within two days, like three million people had seen it. And I'm talking

“about BlackRock now and I'm talking to meta and I'll get to a video because they're all here.”

But millions of people saw that exchange with me basically watching it and nodding and saying, "Out of boy." So to answer your question, I'm not betting against Jensen. He's right. And anecdotally, I have a thousand 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 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 don't believe in electrician.

It can be a millionaire. And that's because inertia is powerful.

It's really, really powerful. But I'll tell you something else about the skill trades, man. 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 could literally give you a list of people who I helped get a welding certificate for six, seven, eight,

ten years ago, whatever. People think in their minds, "Ah, that's going to be a welder." So it's going to weld. And that's it. Maybe you'll take weld, maybe you'll make weld, maybe you'll

“underwater weld. Those guys make a lot of coin, right? Whatever it is. But that's what that's what”

this person's 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, their do in my opinion. So many of the people I, 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 even quite 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 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.

That's got to stop. So anyway, I know I didn't answer your question, but our 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, how do you think we're going to fill this shortage?”

It fits and starts anytime. 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? It's not a dot-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 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

The corporate side is also fraught because 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 lows to close the skills gap or home depot because they're their public companies and they got

their own fish to fry. But they're doing it. Lowes has like a $250 million investment in training

HVAC people. Home depot. 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's doing. The America Workforce Academy. That's 150 million right out of the gate and they're just starting their enforce states. Black rocks got a $100 million in North Texas and some other areas. Jensen's gonna do something. There's no doubt, Jensen. There's no doubt. They have to. They have to.

A $10 trillion infrastructure build out is a promise. If that doesn't happen, there's some

stuff with China that's going to be 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 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 75% affirmatively

nervous about the fact that we're even in it. How are you gonna manage that? That is beyond my

“pay grade as well. But I do, I think about this all the time. We are relationship with fossil fuels.”

It's very difficult to manage and nuance because it's still very fashionable to hate them. Even though we rely upon them entirely and constantly, 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? That's us. Yeah, we can't clear our own forest. We're, we're at war with the abundance that we're standing on because we're scared to death. We're

somehow going to screw it up. Meanwhile, India and China combined or opening a coal-fired

plant every week for the next 30 years. Three billion people on the planet have wood and

done as their primary source of energy. Three billion people get all their energy needs from the

“single worst pollutant there is burning wood and shit. Where's their industrial revolution?”

How are they going to get to where we are or where 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 familiar with Isaiah Taylor? I know Valar Atomics. Yeah. I know the nuclear, many nuclear reactors. Yeah, I just read about it. I'm following a constellation group,

C.E.G. They've done everything right. Then I far from where I grew up, they were called peach bottom.

“When I was a kid and now 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 know 1727 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

Chernobyl and you will find it to be one of the most biodeverses on the planet. All we have 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 black

doubt. They were talking about how a third of Europe was going to be uninhabitable for a thousand years. Wrong. Fukushima? Not great. People died most drowned. That was a very bad deal, tsunami, you know, nuclear. But the proportionality shot, 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 weapon still certainly exists and that would be very bad. But what are you going to do? You can't 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 God. 100% agree with you on that one. Just rewind a real quick. Do you think it will be, I'm just curious because we could fill these trade positions like that. Tell me, oh, they're south of the border. Oh, 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'm not going to pay with two broader brush. But what are the two examples we gave each other over the last couple hours? The guy who worked on Easter Sunday, who didn't what he had to do,

and he built the business he has. You know, first get to come to mind at my foundation. They're 3500,

but Michael Gamma's set the benchmark pretty high. Look, if we can find a path and if we can make it fair, we need the workers. But 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 we 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 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 I all say the same thing, it's labor. So, yeah, there's going to be an immigrant question/solution. There's going to be policy.

It's only somebody happening. Like, I'm sure people are going to be at your own 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 I mean, it's already happening. For example, when we were building this studio out, told you we had a little garage, you know, in town, right, interviewed Tom Holman. When Tom Holman came to town. He sat right here.

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 off to finish his damn studio for about two weeks. They wouldn't even answer the phones. I was all my general contractors asked, like, what's going on? We're going to be late. 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 Holman,

my show. That was my going to be my question. What do you say? I can't remember. I was a joke.

with your sponsor. You know, you say something and making Kelly, they don't like it. They take

their marbles and go home. Okay. I mean, it's fair to thank him, right? I mean, your workers are pissed off because Tom Holman represents something that I like. They don't come on. They didn't want to get deported. They don't want to get deported. That's even. And so better. It wasn't just this construction site that shut down. It was the whole fucking county shut down for two weeks because one Tom rolled into Nashville. So did ice. And so we, I think, I guess kind of what I'm saying.

We got a small glimpse of what this looks like. Yeah. If there is nobody to take everything just stops. Yeah. Dad and it's tracks. 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 overstay it. 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 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'm, 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's not, that's not why we're walking around 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 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, 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 conversation worth having. I 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. Thatching 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

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day. Try it for free at zippercrewder.com/sRS. That's zippercrewder.com/sRS. Meet your match on zippercrewder. I don't know. I think some people, you know, 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, you know, but like I had mentioned earlier, there are people out there that can, they can barely change a fucking light bulb. You know, 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.

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. 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 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 swipe and left or right or doing whatever you do. And then have

it 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 as I get this every day. I say, well, I, 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?

“That's, that's what I, that's who I personally want to reward. That's personally what my”

foundation does. But to your point, they're 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 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 judgemental. 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, they're presenting the opportunity differently. And really, man, think about the military as I'm sure you'll 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 be all you can be with something that was way above that, you know, the Navy, see the world, you know, a Coast Guard, you get gone on an adventure that the sea bees, they all have a slightly different modality,

the rhetoric. Think about the, 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, their cohorts, but they come at it from a totally different way. And I, 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 Deadly's catch ever? Oh, yeah, all the time.

It's all the time. Was that you? No, I'm just kidding. Somebody marked the time, but Sean Ryan realized that Mike narrated 23 seasons of Deadly's catch.

“Yeah, that was me. 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, six 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, are you going to recruit for a job like that? Oh, man, I'll bet recruiting one crazy after that, dude. I

fuck, I wanted to do it. The next seasons, the next season, they were on the docks waiting for a chance. To lose money, die, 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 ninth basis 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 Deadly's 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. The best thing I ever did was have my trusted financial advisor ripped me off.”

To 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 it in a light bulb. What I was kind of going towards is there, there has to be some sort of a shift in culture. And I think a lot of people don't, they can't, if they get a roadblock into success, then they just stop, they break down. I think that problem solving is gone. I think that the

critical thinking and problem solving in the majority of this country and people said it's 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, any ask 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 sign of that. It's not a 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, a 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. And 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. It's 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 two-year-old playing with his 18-month-old

but this one wants the block. It takes the block. I had some over at 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. You know, like a giraffe is

basically born on its feet, like they're going up running. Like, okay, man, we're prey. All right,

best to run. You know, falls, colds the same way. I mean, it's, we are born utterly helpless for years. And we think we are the, the son in the solar system. And we think everything revolves around his mom and dad. They show up. They feed us. It's all just us. Ah, just, I'll crap my pants again.

“I just crap my pants. Big deal. They'll fix it. Like, that's who we are. 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 East, a wrote a great book called The Comfort Crisis. Don't know if he's crossed your radar yet. You'd like him. I just thought it was interesting. Yeah. 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, 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 caraboo hunt up in the Arctic. Mike Eastern, and they go. And, what happens up there over 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, it's very difficult to listen to an episode this long and not hit one and a half speed. It's very difficult to go into the bathroom without the phone just to keep the thing, you know, we're constantly involved in, in everything and anyhow, uh, so many good things came out of this book. And I'm, I'm only, uh, riffing on it because one of them was rocking

and I'm, I assume you rocked your butt off, broke a couple of miles. Yeah, man. I started after I read this book a few years ago, I started rocking with, uh, anywhere between 45 and 65 pounds. When I'm home, which isn't a ton, but eight 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 they're benefits. This is not new. It's almost probably boring to a lot of your audience.

It's just a ratio, a ratio of algebra stuff. But if you think about who we are when we're born. And if you think about like, what's the purpose of buds? What's the purpose of basic training? And why is it there a reverse boot camp, by the way? And, you know, why do green horns? 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 comes back from the other side is this really thoughtful kind of contemplative. Well, gosh, I don't know if the trades are 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 at a time when, you know, maybe I'll try it. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just keep swipe and left. Yeah, yep. I think more people need to feel this that's of accomplishment too.

what did you, what did those people know as a group 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 job, is virtually everybody I've profiled on that show. Grab 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 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 a, like I said before, and 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, yeah.

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 me. 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 Romashay, wrote a book called Red Platoon. This was the COP Keating. Up in, never stand, I guess it was. Oh, nine. He, uh, Medal of Honor. He let a counter attack. They were overwhelmed, Taliban, 41. And he went back into the fort to get the dead Americans under crazy, heavy fire. Good book, Red Platoon. I

“ask him the same question. You know, I think he gave me the same answer. He really,”

an old cracked up to be. That's interesting. It's not. You got another one for you. Yeah, man. I love it. We're wrapping up the interview. So I got a hot question for you. All right. We had clawed since run AI and dirty jobs. We had clawed dig through everything out there on micro and dirty jobs to find the most of 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 to job called tunnel rats. One guy stripped down to a pistol in a flashlight, crawling head first and alone into pitch black VC tunnels barely wider than her shoulders. In the vehicle, built those tunnels to break you. Tripwires that dropped baskets of scorpions, punchy stakes, they'd urinate on first, so even a scratch-turn septic in the worst one. Well, 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? That's stuff to be. Harry Bosch. I love your saucer. Bosch, he was a tunnel rat. He writes a lot about that. Kindly those in the early books.

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. 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, viewers love the really high crazy stuff like top or radio towers and like window

washing from boasting chairs, five, six hundred feet in the air. That's a good one. But they also love super, super, super tight, claustrophobic spaces. They hate it, but they, but they love to watch it.

bring up the buoys that are out in the channel and they're filled with barnacles and stuff. 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 yeah, you're shimmy up there and scrape the crap out. And I did that with a GoPro because a camera man wouldn't get a camera up there. And like there's so many moments of claustrophobia on that show that are really, 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? Opel mining. Opel mining. Yep.

Opel mining. In the Australian outback. And a little town called Cooper PD. It was 129 degrees when I was there that day. This is the Opel capital of the world.

“And Cooper PD is like if you, and Australian terms, if Adelaide is like Houston,”

Cooper PD is just north about three 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 ovals. And the way you look for ovals is you take a called well bit. And you start digging these

shafts about 60 feet deep. And then they got a rig over top. And they put you in a bosons 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 minor helmet. And you're looking around. And you're you're gonna graved it. 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 opel.”

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 three, if you know you're on to good opel, 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 opel. Opel capital of the world, huge industry. The opel 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 mind. There is anthracite by two of them. It's coal, copper, borax, all of them. When you dig these shafts, dental filament. So the night before, we get to Cooper Petty and I want to look at the opel fields because we're going to be working there all next day. And I'm a little worried because these guys are 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 ground hog ran a muck. Right? Millions of them. And what's left are these 60 foot shafts with these giant piles of dirt next to them. And they're thousands of them. And as I'm flying, you know, the pilots 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 they're hundreds of them at the bottom of these shafts. They fall in all the time. And they die down there, you know. And I said, well, that's terrible. You go, you know, it's really terrible. You know, it's really terrible. You know, Mike, what's really

terrible is the tourists. And I'm like, what, what? And he's like every year never fails.

Some tourists, there's an underground hotel in Cooper Petty. That's kind of famous because it's underground. And tourists come. And then the sun sets are incredible in the outback. And they go out in the open fields and they're taking these pictures of the sun sets. And as pilot tells me a couple of weeks earlier, they, they found a guy, found a fella down there at the bottom of a shaft. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They figure he was down there for two and a half days before he died.

And he was getting a picture. He's backed up by himself. The trips falls had first.

twist is neck, obviously. Shatters is a clavicle and his shoulder.

“Now he's upside down. And the bottom of a 60 foot shaft for two days. Looking up at the”

inky dark sky goes soft and purple and then red and then it's day and then it's blue and then it's dark again. Now I'm not claustrophobic in general. But I'm here in this story in the night before I know we're going to dig a shaft and I'm going to go in. And we do. And on the one hand, I was happy to go in because it was so hot. And you go down six seven feet and the flies, man. You're just cover with flies when you're top side. But you get six seven eight

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 40 feet down

“and there's the sandstone and no opal bummer. But because it's TV and you're because you're”

crews funny and because the guys are knuckleheads. 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 and look up and it's not all it's cracked up to be. You stand there and you know the Aussies they sprinkle water on you and pretend to pee on you because their Aussies is terribly funny

and you just stand down there like dirt on all sides and it's like imagine being like three or

four millimeters tall in the bottom of like a liter coke bottle and just looking up it's 60 feet six stories and anyway they went to me up and it was just an extraordinary experience and three days later there was an earthquake in Cooper PD, a mild one but strong enough to collapse hundreds of homes. Yeah so for years you know that that was my my dream was that tourists in the bottom of the the opal mine dam. So mining is is kind of an answer. I can riff on crab fishing

through 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 hosting shark week 2008 I think and”

it's like dirty job shark week so it's all the dirty jobs involving sharking and 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's GI Joe underwater and so the job is to go

make this shark suit because it's thousands of tiny welds you look like iPhone Hell you're dressed up in this thing it's flexible and like surfers were buying it you know and 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. Yeah sure how do we test it so we're down in a bit of many I guess maybe

or somewhere in the Bahamas and um the next morning we agreed 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 might I got four guys underwater with me with cameras at you know 45 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 to like documenting this whole shoot so my crew and I were little nervous because now the job is to get is to get bit by a shark where in one of these suits so we go out the night before and I'm I'm in the suit and I'm geared up and Jeremiah throws some chum over the side and the shark show up he called him uh the men in the gray suits a couple dozen of them reef sharks you know nine ten

and they get down to the bottom and they they get situated and uh I jump in and the sharks

“leave in a salon but Jeremiah's got the 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 weeks ago Jeremiah went down with a friend and his buddy got bitten the back of the head so the insurance

company was like you know you gotta wear a bicycle so I looked like a complete asshole and um at the time I had a deviated set them I got my nose fixed not 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 it I've got to jam the whole thing up into my nose and I'm 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 purply 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 the TV guide guys down there he's very experienced scuba diver and everybody's got cameras the log 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 all right I get it this is going to be an amazing shoot and then the craziest thing man I my chest started to get tight and I took a deep breath and exhale and I went to get another breath nothing and the TV guide guy swims up to me and I basically

burn through 40 minutes of air in 18 minutes holy shit I'm out air never occurred to me to

check my gauge because I was only down 20 minutes but in hindsight it 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 panicking you know where 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 is guy he immediately sees situation and he's not at a full face mask he pulls out his regulator to give

me the air I can't get my face mask off cause the for con bicycle helmet is all screwed into the thing and I I'm gonna 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 father also dangerous you get the bends right so

no we're just going up like this and I I mean it it again if you if you've never really been out

of air at depth it's 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 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 live and stuff and whatever but the next day

sticks nobody's torture and your buddies but you know jump and jump and back into the water the next

“day with all those sharks that was um yeah the only other thing the only other thing that rivaled”

that was the golden nights I jumped with the golden nights oh did you yeah and I 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 CBs and I had done I was on the status for a couple of days you know the summary shows and and and the golden nights called and I'd already done I'd jumped out of planes before

but always tandem and always for TV and somebody's got to do it I it wasn't about me I wanted

to be about them but I also didn't want to jump out of a plane again strap to a dudes you know guy behind me and since I just had done it and so I was like you know it was actually it was the same moment on the mac and off bridge when I said the guy oh you know it'd be fun I don't walk across the girder and climb up the cable the change of light bulb let's do that knowing there's no

“way they're gonna let me do that I say to the the golden nights PR guys said look the only way I can do”

this for a show like this is if you let me pull my own shoot because there's no way there's no way the PR organ for the army is gonna let me pull my own shoot on television right there's just they can't do that he says okay so so I go to was for brag and I mean I'm so in my head

with this thing these guys are amazing I work with the shoot packers I meet all the guys

we we do attend them jump because you have to do it but the point of the story is to follow me through an accelerated free fall training right which they can do in eight hours apparently I didn't know who the hell knew that I mean I sure has held it I didn't know it I'll just now I didn't know it

“but they were great and they walked me through the whole process and it was a two-day shoot the”

first day was the process and the next day in the morning I would jump alone and and pull my own shoot fine the night before dude I am in my head because I had made a pack with God after the shark suit incident I look I'm not gonna do this again I mean this I've done a lot of things I've been uncomfortable in a lot of ways and a lot of situations but I'm not a stunt chunky right I'm not I'm not in it for the adrenaline I 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

dive in with sharks again both now I'm not gonna do it and I said the same thing about jumping out of planes but here I am I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna I'm gonna break my I'm gonna break my valve 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 eight ten sometimes twelve 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 eight

in the morning and they're already up and so my camera guys 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 what why am I doing this

you know I don't I don't need to prove anything to anybody but they're so the great and they're enthused and 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 I'm gonna get something 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 shoot I don't

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 spillin 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 me so if you're the camera man

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 three feet of me just fly and and in my head I'm like I'm all right well this is working out this this looks pretty badass they're gonna do their thing planes gonna land I'm gonna go up and I'm gonna do it seven of them come by 8th one pulls up a little short it's a ground about 35 miles an hour maybe 60 feet behind me so the sound of body mix when it hits the ground at at that speed there are a couple things happening the first is

just a general like 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 wishing sound

and that's all the air leave in 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 he was shooting anyway he doesn't stop it doesn't occur to him we're just following the actual it what the hell just happened and we get close and 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 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 the whole team is there the guys would just jump within their all there they get him together they get him in an ambulance and he's gone and now I know what happens next now I know

“the army is going to come up to me no my flight my jump instructor and he's going to apologize”

and he's going to ask for the tape because this was no point 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're ready one more sphincter slamming shut moment I'm like ready ready for what you said look I won't use this name but he said what happened that guy I I don't know what happened but I know he's jumping with the 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 they'll be another guy on the other side and you're going to be good the 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've been horrified and overwhelmed and grateful I just said I just need a minute you know we just can we just have a minute and he says yeah take all the time you need so we go inside like it's even in five minutes well play one thing down yet but it was common you know what I mean and they're like look we're we're going up with it without you but you don't want to not do it yeah so I'm in I'm in the briefing room and on the walls are pictures of I mean it's

D-Day as I mean this Normandy it's just this this is the 101st right I mean storied legends and I just like those kids we're up there you know 800 feet off the ground jumping out with a hundred pounds on their on their backs getting shot at while the plane this synagogue I'm like don't be a pussy jump out of the plane just do it do it for do it for them

thought through yeah they were with me when we went out but they stay with me till I pull my

“shoot 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 four 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 I missed I missed

my mark by like 10 feet and actually landed on the Macadam other runway and I stumbled and I fell and I tore my jumpsuit skin my knee I was fine you know I jumped up and it was just you absolutely for you I'm fine and so we wrapped the shoot and you know obviously I promised to never show that footage and I never have but I'm telling you the story now because 12 years ago and I saw the golden nights 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 I think navy beat army this year by like one 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 a couple hours later the report was he was gonna be fine bad break but he's going in a surgery he's in good spirits and spoiler alert to this day he's still doing this 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 Roe and the crew so I mean can you imagine like

you're the one of the elite bear shooters in the world and one of the elite themes and and this

“happens this goes wrong on camera yep so I I got a cell phone from the jump master and I sent him”

a photo and the photo is me sitting on the curb near the near the job site 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 so we text it 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 quite for me nice for me you know

sometimes it's a tunnel sometimes it's a plane sometimes it's a skin knee sometimes it's pretty sharp sometimes it's an upside down tourist and an oval shaft yeah there'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 no way oh yeah no oh yeah do you ever heard a six hour what the

fun is that is some tunnel rat shit right there holy crap dude with a suppressor that is the six hour three sixty five macro with six hour light hold seventeen rounds plus one in the pipe it's got the new sig red dot and to six hour suppressor that's from silencer shop and uh so I got a buddy over at six names 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 got ultimately it's it's me I got lots of shit on my walls to do I've gotten many gifts this is

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 guys not totally trustworthy stand qualified for that delivery I'm I'm I'm so I'm so honored we have got 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've been talking by the way well it is now 242 is that normal I feel it's normal for this we can go a lot longer

don't at this point I figure I talk another hour maybe I get a flame thrower let me see what I can work out yeah 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 and a half hour you can maybe get to know him in an hour

“but truth doesn't really come out till around hour three 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 mouth and off for three hours like what the hell are you gonna talk about it 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 a can't be man yeah it can't be the

“packaged focus group thing we can't doesn't mark anymore you know what focus group still”

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 newscast 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 what other country in what other country could a guy sit down for three 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 six-hour just that are you telling me you like to say better than the gummy bears I'm saying I'm gonna eat as soon as I get this sick delivered I'm gonna eat all the gummy bears at once and go out and introduce myself to those coyotes but she would happen send pictures yeah from jail Mike there was an auto man I enjoyed every minute

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