Ep 135 ｜ Mike Rowe’s Favorite Four-Letter Word ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 11 minutes
Words per Minute
158.90265
Summary
In this episode of the Glenn Beck Podcast, host Glenn Beck sits down with his good friend Mike Rowe to talk about his new show, Six Degrees, which focuses on the synchronicity of history, from the death of Ned Kelly to a super colossal volcano, to the unknown stories of people who have worked their butts off, the innovators who followed opportunities.
Transcript
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Today, I have a guest that is interested in the moments that changed human history, which is why he owes a special gratitude to sheep testicles.
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If you're a fan of this show and the show Dirty Jobs, you know what I'm talking about.
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It's ugly. You know his voice from The Deadliest Catch, How the Universe Works, and Shark Week.
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His new show, Six Degrees, focuses on the synchronicity of history, the way it's all connected in its own way, from the death of Ned Kelly to a super colossal volcano.
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He tells the unknown stories of people who have worked their butts off, the innovators and the everyman who followed opportunities.
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He tells us stories in a way that you don't hear these days very often.
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He tells American stories. He's dedicated to America.
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He offers solutions to the problems of our time.
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Because what's truly impressive about him is the way he has affected our society, the way he inspires individualism.
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He goes on and on and on in this podcast about a virtue that most people avoid, risk.
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Today on the Glenn Beck Podcast, welcome Mike Rowe.
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Abortion is the leading cause of death in the U.S. and the world.
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Since Roe vs. Wade, over 63 million babies aborted here in the U.S.
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Nearly one in four pregnancies do not choose life in the midst of this awful pandemic.
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The Ministry of Preborn and Blaze Media have partnered up to help rescue babies from abortion in 2022.
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Preborn is the direct competition to Planned Parenthood and the largest provider of free ultrasounds in the U.S.
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And they have found that if you show a woman their baby with ultrasound, they hear the heartbeat, they're 80 percent more likely to choose life for their baby.
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But if we're all pitching in together over the past 15 years, preborn centers have counseled over 340,000 women considering abortion.
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More than 169,000 babies are alive today because of this.
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That sponsors one ultrasound to help save one baby's life.
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It's been how long since you sat on the set with me?
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And you've grown this little empire of yours that is just remarkable.
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You did two things that helped me double down on it.
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The first was, you won't remember this, but we auctioned off a poster.
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I was doing all kinds of different things to raise money for the foundation.
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And one of your viewers or listeners paid like $16,000 for it.
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We can raise a lot of money doing non-traditional things for the foundation.
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And the second thing you said was, hey, the social media thing, it's kind of a nightmare,
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Well, I had it and I wasn't really tending to it the way I could.
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But it was an easy transition for me because like you, I always thought my real boss were
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And so, I just started using Facebook as a focus group of sorts.
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And I woke up, I don't know, a few months later and there were 6 million people on there.
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Are you ever concerned about saying something and being banished?
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Because you really, you are very frank on things.
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I mean, I'm concerned in the sense that we're living in a time, obviously, when the consequences
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for wandering too far out of your lane or saying a magical word can be dire.
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I mean, my first real brush with cancellation came before the cancel culture thing was a thing.
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And the Walmart commercial basically announced the reopening of factories and trumpeted the
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company's intention to spend a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next 10 years in supply chain.
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But I agreed to narrate the spot because I thought it was really simpatico with my foundation.
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And I like the idea of a big American company investing in American manufacturing.
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A beautiful spot aired during the Olympics, in fact, about eight years ago, I guess.
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And, well, before I went to bed, I posted something, shared a copy of the spot.
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How could you get in bed with a company that treats its workers so poorly?
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And so, I thought, whoa, you must be this tall to get on that ride, right?
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I just had a glass of wine, wrote a post, and was going to bed.
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Well, I got up in the middle of the night, as men of our age do, to take care of business.
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I looked again at the Facebook page, and this thing had gone around the world.
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I was boycotted by an organization called Jobs for Justice.
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And they were challenging me to come out and meet with Walmart workers.
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Meanwhile, like I said, I have no relationship with the company.
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I need a labor nightmare like I need a hole in the head, right?
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So, I'm like, I can't really deal with that, but they crashed my website.
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They had thousands of people writing letters, and they were calling for boycotts of everything
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Meanwhile, I'm out in the press defending both myself and, weirdly enough, Walmart, right?
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And we're having this giant conversation about work and about...
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There's a weird upside to this because I'm in the midst of something, but I'm also using it to promote my foundation.
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Meanwhile, Walmart's getting all kinds of tailwind because the Dirty Jobs guy is out there in the world
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talking about the importance of revitalizing the supply chain.
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Next thing you know, we got a call from the president of Walmart and his head of PR saying, in no uncertain terms,
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They weren't mad because, on the one hand, they loved this commercial.
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And they were getting more unearned media and attention than they ever imagined.
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And so, Mary, my partner and I, we just decided, you know what?
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And I went out in the world to have the conversation.
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It was like stepping off the curb and having someone grab you at the last minute when the
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So, what I wound up doing was writing an open letter to Jobs with Justice.
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And I explained that they crashed our website and we're a small ma and pa company.
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And I further explained that the people you're representing who work for Walmart, what are
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You're trying to get them another eight or ten cents an hour.
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I'm offering to train them how to weld or how to learn a skill that's actually in demand,
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So, that conversation took a whole different turn.
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But that's a long way of saying, yeah, I'm mindful of it.
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I've seen your pushbacks and they're brilliant.
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There's a goal now of tripling the union membership in the next few years by the administration.
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I don't have a problem with unions when unions are needed.
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Sometimes people get too greedy at the top and that's when a union needs to pull them back.
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Why is it we can't ever find the reasonable middle ground?
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When the unions, the trade unions anyway, when they came about in the turn of the century,
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I don't know that anybody would have argued or disputed their relevance from everything
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from safety to working conditions, all that stuff.
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They made their point in some areas, in some areas they didn't, right?
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And so everything was always constantly evolving.
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I wandered into this morass, this miasma, and was in a really odd position because my foundation
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makes no distinction between right to work and union.
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I've trained lots of people who are happy in unions and I've trained lots of people who
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And I think we've probably been in the same unions.
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When I auditioned for QVC, very first job in television, unions told me not to take it.
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And they told me that there would be serious consequences.
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So I violated global rule one and they didn't throw me out, but they didn't like it.
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And a couple of years later, when I started a show called Your New Home in Baltimore that
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ran for 15 years, they said, you can't do that.
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And I said, well, I don't really have much of a choice.
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And they said, we're going to, you know, big con.
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But they affirmatively, at the three most important points in my life, affirmatively discouraged
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Risk and risk is really the four-letter word we should probably concern ourselves with most
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And I feel like, you know, everybody's searching for progress, but I feel like we're being pulled
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All the old systems are saying, no, no, we've got to do it my way.
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I feel like our government all over the world is like living in the 1950s, mainly because
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a lot of our politicians were there in the 1950s.
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I feel like the big media corporations are doing everything they can to hold onto their
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And it's a weird thing to have progress be labeled progress when it's actually taking
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Because people are, it's water in their hands, you know, you can hold it for a while, but
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Like 10 years ago, when a podcast wasn't a thing, like you, you built this studio, you
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got out from Fox and you just said, wait a second.
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You, you know, you saw the risk, but like a lot of successful people, you didn't run
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You actually used it, you know, and, and that's the thing I worry most about today.
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And it, it, it is germane to the union conversation, but it's also relevant to everything from masks,
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our risk averse nature, I believe is the answer to your question.
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Boy, there's been a lot of certainty over the airwaves in the last couple of years.
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There's a lot of certain sounding experts, a lot of certain sounding politicians, you
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know, we're long on certainty, but we're very, very short in authenticity and, and in facts.
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I said about five, six years ago, the one thing I'm certain of is that I am no longer
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Cause at the beginning you were, you were, I think everybody can give a pass at the beginning
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of the, of COVID because we had no idea what we were dealing with and we all wanted to do
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You know, nobody wants to kill anybody and nobody wants to die.
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Cause you were, I gave, I was the last public speaker at the last large public event in the
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It was the construction expo in Las Vegas and had it started on the 10th, they would have
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But once you get 300,000 dirty jobbers in Vegas to buy heavy equipment, right?
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And so it was the strangest thing, you know, Monday.
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Monday NFL starts canceling and then the, then the NBA and then baseball and then Broadway
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And every 10 minutes, the loudspeaker says, avoid all contact.
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When I went home after five days of shaking tens of thousands of hands, I was pretty sure
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You know, got home on Friday the 13th, just in time, uh, for the governor, for the governor
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And, uh, like everybody else, obviously I was, you know, I'm washing vegetables.
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Um, and two weeks to flatten the curve made me nervous, but it also made sense.
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Our healthcare system is either overrun or it's not.
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I said about probably very, very early in April, I was doing the first zoom show in prime time.
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I was interviewing the captains on deadliest catch and we were doing it long distance.
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And I thought it was terribly clever for me to tell these captains, you know, guys, for
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the first time in my lifetime, anyway, we're all in the same boat and everybody nodded and
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That guy's holding on for dear life to a piece of floats them or jets them.
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And the way we weathered the storm started to become really interesting to me.
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And then the way we processed the risk and then like the frog in the boiling water, the
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more we got used to being told by certain sounding people, you know, we are, we began
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And of course, that's what happens when we're scared.
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I was scared for my mom and dad, you know, who were in their eighties.
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I was scared because I couldn't for the life of me understand how it was going to end.
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And when you take the measures that we were taking with no clear rubric for success or
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termination, then it's just very, very difficult to, to feel good about the terminus.
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I know there was just no terminus in this thing.
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If the last two years have taught us anything, is it, is it that we have to take control of
00:18:13.760
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00:18:24.840
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00:18:34.920
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00:18:40.760
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00:18:52.820
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00:19:02.540
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00:19:06.480
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00:19:12.280
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00:19:30.700
I remember thinking, why aren't more people saying,
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why can my Home Depot open, but my local True Value hardware can't?
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It was for a country that, you know, questions the big pharmaceutical companies
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I spoke at a gathering of the, you'll laugh, because this is just one more association.
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Maybe you know about them, maybe you don't, but the National Association of Hardwood Floor
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So 5,000 people show up at this thing, and they're all mom and pop operations, and they
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do what their association's name would suggest.
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But for the last two years, they couldn't work.
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Now, this association needs to hire, in the next four to five years, 180,000 people.
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They're paying $25 an hour to apprentice, right?
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People that have no experience putting in a hard floor, and they've got a path to a really
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And this is one association representing tens of thousands of people that have to hire a
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There are so many associations in the country right now.
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The energy business has its back against the wall.
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The cable business, the broadband business, everybody's looking for skilled labor, right?
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So that really started to worry me, too, as this went on.
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Right now, it's become, I think, like a collector's item.
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We've sold tens of thousands of these, raised over $400,000 for the Microworks Foundation.
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And we started doing this, I think it was in July of 2020, when it became clear to me that,
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And we're being told that we have to wear a thing that doesn't work.
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And I thought, well, what do you do for people who...
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And who understand that just because you're in compliance doesn't mean you're out of danger.
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So, I wasn't taking the situation lightly or suggesting that the disease wasn't highly contagious
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But if you're going to make me do a thing that doesn't work, I kind of want to be able to
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Explain Safety Third for people who don't know your rules.
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So, Safety Third does not mean that safety isn't critically important.
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It just means that there is an orthodoxy in our country that has become platitudinous.
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And that is based on the old trope, Safety First.
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And it was an attempt, and a pretty successful one, to get workers more focused on the importance
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But like so many other campaigns, they overreached.
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And in their attempt to get people more focused on safety, they said that there was nothing
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And everywhere on Dirty Jobs that I went for the first couple of years, you know, I saw
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My crew and I sat through dozens of mandatory safety briefings, lockout, tagout procedures,
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And believe me, Glenn, we paid attention because we wanted to go home with everything working,
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And so, first couple of years, nobody got hurt.
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Broken finger here, broken toe there, cracked rib, singed off my eyebrows in a blast furnace,
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a couple of concussions, nothing serious, stitches, like the wheels came off the bus.
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We were still going through all the Safety First machinations.
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The idea that somebody can tell you that your safety is their top priority, the minute you
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believe that, you're in danger because nobody can be more responsible for your safety than
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And if the real enemy is complacency, and I believe that to be true, then we have to say
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something to cut through all the platitudinous garbage that lulls us into a false sense
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Safety Third became the rallying cry on dirty jobs.
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I was in, uh, I was at the Grand Canyon and I went to the Native American side.
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They built that huge glass platform out that you walk on.
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Um, and if you've been there, you know, there's no safety anywhere.
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You know, like, Hey, a couple more steps, you fall off the cliff.
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And, uh, I asked one of the guides, I said, how many people fall off the cliff?
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It's somewhat controversial, but it's actually at the root.
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I actually read a paper published in Canada years ago by a guy who talked about, uh, risk
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equilibrium, homeostatic risk, and, uh, compensatory, uh, behavioral.
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So basically what all that means is everybody in this room has a different risk tolerance.
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And when you introduce safety protocols, an interesting thing happens to your behavior.
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For instance, if I, if I put a helmet on you, study after study after study shows you drive
00:26:11.780
It's, I think that's why there's so many problems.
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You don't have the problems in, uh, in rugby that you have in the NFL.
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I'll never forget standing on the deck of a crab boat on the Bering sea in 2004.
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First time we were up there for deadliest catch.
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I mean, 15 foot seas sideways sleet and we're still working at it, right?
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And I walked into the wheelhouse at one point and I'm like, Hey, captain, OSHA.
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And he's looking out the window and green water's coming over the bow.
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But I mean, at what point, at what point do we kind of wrap this up?
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He says, son, look, I'm the captain of a crab boat.
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Now, nobody in the lower 48 would ever talk to anybody like that.
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I'm just making the point that when somebody who you think is primarily concerned with your safety reminds you that they're not, you make sure your life jacket is on properly.
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You make sure you've got three points of contact all of the time.
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And it's just like being at the edge of the Grand Canyon.
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And so somewhere in all of that, again, I'm not.
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But see, this goes back to that because it goes back to risk.
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Yeah, I mean, if you're not, you know, there's there's people who I'm sure will say this to you.
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Because I can sit down and I can tell you about what I do.
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And the risks that I have to take every day and and everything else.
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And you'll probably say, I don't want to do that.
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With everything, there is risk and there's a bunch of dirty jobs you don't want to do.
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Look, if anybody takes anything from this, I think the whole safety third conversation really comes down to just rattling your cage and doing doing something to break your pattern.
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And and the more hazardous the activity, typically the thicker the release, the release and the finer the print.
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When I tested a shark suit, we made a stainless steel shark suit a few years ago with the inventor.
00:29:39.640
Dozens of reef sharks come in and I'm dressed up like Ivanhoe and this guy's dressed up like Sir Galahad.
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And we and we jump in to deliberately get bitten to test the suit.
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Well, his release said, I blank do hereby understand that I'm about to engage in an activity that is stupid on its face.
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The idea that I'm going to survive this is wishful thinking.
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So if I sign this now, I'm I'm very, very, very clear headed about it.
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We would be so much better off just doing that to tell the truth and releases to tell the truth about safety.
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And if you if you if you if you look at our relationship to risk over the last couple of years, the whole notion of covid zero, the whole notion of eliminating it.
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I mean, look, I again, I'm trying to stay in my lane, but we're on this.
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No measure, he said, no matter how draconian can be deemed an overreach if it saves a single life.
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That is when I started making safety third masks, honestly, because good grief.
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We've lost all sense of balance between freedom and safety.
00:31:22.680
You know, it's not where in the Constitution does it say the government's supposed to keep us safe, except for guarding our borders, which they don't do, and making sure that we have a military for anybody that comes in to evade.
00:31:40.580
Well, it's almost as if we realized at some point over the last couple of years that we were mortal.
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This is, what are you telling me about this new danger thing?
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It was the novelness of the novel coronavirus that also made me say, wait a second, what's really novel here?
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He wrote, and this is worth a Google, too, if you haven't seen this.
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In 1948, he answered a question, and the question was, how am I to live in the atomic age?
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And people were just getting their heads around the novelness of the fact that a bomb, a missile could land.
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And I didn't live through it, but can you imagine the anxiety of living in a world where you suddenly realized that there was a nuke pointed at you?
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We're freaked out with masks and kids in schools right now.
00:32:51.440
I remember, Mike, you and I are approximately the same age.
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I remember waking up in terror because we'd have these instructional films shown at school, and I'd be like, wait, the whole world can be gone tonight in 11 or 18 minutes?
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But our parents, in 1948, were three years after Hiroshi.
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And they were all grown up, and they were looking around going, that was a big bomb.
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And it's only a matter of time until the Soviets get it and so forth.
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And so what C.S. Lewis says in this is how to live in the atomic age, it's the same way you lived when at any moment the Vikings could arrive on the shore, rape and plunder and do whatever the way.
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The same way the next smallpox could come, the next black death.
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It always feels new, especially when you give it a new name, the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.
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And people are starting, I think, to—I think it's only a matter of time until you get bored with being scared.
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You know, when you get to the point—because, you know, as a student of history, I know what happened in 1918.
00:34:28.400
And when this was coming down, I was one of the first people talking about it really early in January.
00:34:36.840
Even though we don't know what it is, they're welding people into their houses.
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Fear what the consequences are of the virus economically and to our nation.
00:35:02.240
You don't drive at 55 miles an hour simply because the sign says you can when it's snowing.
00:35:17.000
They were already saying—I remember when the president said, we're going to close everything for 15 days.
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I mean, because we were already self-isolating.
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What didn't make sense is how long it went on and still going on in some places.
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Look, if there's no exit strategy, then there's no exit.
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Talk to the people as we're here on fear for a second.
00:35:47.180
We're entering a time that we haven't seen maybe since World War II, the Civil War, Revolutionary, where there are right now serious consequences for going against the accepted narrative.
00:36:07.100
Whatever that narrative is, it's changed I don't know how many times here.
00:36:10.300
But Canada, we have a woman who was one of the main organizers.
00:36:26.160
Because she contributed a couple hundred bucks to a GoFundMe?
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You know, everything she did was square within the law, except maybe parking fines.
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Canadians right now, but we're having it here, too.
00:36:48.000
They're coming down to make sure you understand.
00:36:53.240
How do you how do you what would you say to people about the fear of government coming down on you at this time, losing your job, losing everything?
00:37:15.740
The only thing that can protect you from that are your neighbors and your willingness to stand up.
00:37:23.800
It's very, very hard, as you know, to be the first one to stand up.
00:37:28.260
And so much of what we've seen over the last couple of years down here, I think, reminds me that old Hans Christian Anderson, you know, the emperor's new clothes.
00:37:38.000
When the emperor is told that his garments are fantastic.
00:37:42.980
And, of course, the tailors haven't made any garments at all, but they convince him that he's clothed and he sits there in his chair and he's paraded through town naked.
00:37:51.800
And all the towns people are like, oh, yes, those are amazing clothes.
00:37:57.900
It was a kid who finally says, hey, that dude is naked, man.
00:38:02.760
And then some adults started nodding like you are going.
00:38:09.060
And, you know, you can't arrest the whole town.
00:38:15.940
But I would say to people that in so many ways, speaking only for myself, I have felt like that kid.
00:38:23.900
And I've also felt like a bystander in the crowd.
00:38:28.220
You know, I wasn't the first to do or say anything.
00:38:34.360
And had I not donated the proceeds to my foundation, I'm not quite sure how I would have positioned that publicly.
00:38:42.080
But to answer your question, I just think that when it tips is when we can no longer bear to be told the thing we're looking at is not the thing that's happening.
00:39:11.160
I mean, the birds were chirping in the background.
00:39:16.640
And they said, this may look like a peaceful rally.
00:39:23.480
Yeah, this is sacrificing virgins around the corner.
00:39:26.620
And it was the exact opposite of when they were reporting with five whole city burning down.
00:39:36.680
Never mind the thousands of people you can see running over it.
00:39:42.520
Pay no attention to those bodies falling from the sky.
00:39:44.920
And don't worry about the 14,000 still over there with green cards who are screwed, right?
00:39:51.820
You know, that's actually that's what I think the let's go Brandon thing was.
00:39:57.500
That's not what it was about when it started, but that's what it became.
00:40:01.660
Because everybody in that crowd could hear what was being chanted.
00:40:07.720
But the nice lady in front of the camera said, oh, can you hear them?
00:40:12.740
And you're sitting right there, awash in a level of cognitive dissonance that's almost impossible to overstate.
00:40:19.980
And you say, no, actually, that's not what they're saying.
00:40:23.880
So what we're going to do now, it was kind of a C-3-3 move.
00:40:29.300
Or do you think that was a brilliant, I mean, that was a brilliant cover?
00:40:33.980
And I thought she did it with kind of a smile and a wink, as if to say, I guess we all know what's happening.
00:40:41.040
And if you look at the transcript, she's clearly saying, and the crowd is so behind you, let's go.
00:40:49.420
And so the people I've talked to since that happened have adopted that expression, not to say F. Joe Biden.
00:40:56.760
They adopt that expression whenever they're asked to be a townsperson in the emperor's new clothes.
00:41:04.800
And just nod and go, yep, those clothes sure are pretty.
00:41:15.340
If you're one of the millions in America that suffer.
00:41:31.640
Every day I see testimonials of people who have tried Relief Factor for their pain, gotten their life back.
00:41:43.900
I take one in the morning, one at noon, and one at night.
00:41:52.300
I'm not in the pain I used to be by any stretch of the imagination.
00:42:01.340
It's not a drug, but it was developed by doctors.
00:42:03.320
And you can get the three-week quick start for only $19.95.
00:42:06.360
And 70% of the people who try it go on to order more.
00:42:22.160
I think that you should become the new CNN ombudsman.
00:42:30.800
And every couple of weeks, you just come in and tell them what they've done.
00:42:38.340
Somebody the other day was talking about, like, they didn't really replace Larry King.
00:42:46.040
You know, and part of the reason, I think, was because they were pretty sure that people
00:42:52.000
didn't have the attention span or the appetite for a longer form.
00:43:06.600
It's not just the long form, but they're starving for authenticity.
00:43:19.080
Once you do that, Glenn, the world's your oyster.
00:43:21.400
I have an epigram in my book that's a quote from my favorite fictitious character, Travis
00:43:30.920
McGee, who lives on a houseboat and solves crimes.
00:43:37.460
And among many other quotable things, McGee said in a big, thick paragraph full of all
00:43:43.340
the things he's suspicious of and all the things he's wary of.
00:43:46.080
It ends with, but most of all, I am wary of all earnestness.
00:43:52.500
And that right now, we were talking about certainty before, being long on certainty.
00:44:00.920
There's never been a time, in my view, when Americans should be more skeptical of every
00:44:12.780
Every single thing ought to be held up, weighed and measured, and evaluated as best an individual
00:44:20.400
But rather than being encouraged to be skeptical, we are told by our journalists to trust us.
00:44:30.380
And certain sounding people in a crisp, well-modulated baritone will sit behind their microphone and
00:44:38.680
And the experts in the lab coats, they say, trust us.
00:44:48.020
Whenever, yeah, you know what, whenever you put the in front of something, somebody's
00:44:54.120
So, instead of being wary of earnestness, we are told, we are cajoled, we're challenged.
00:45:08.140
Skepticism, which is not cynicism, by the way, or insanity, it's just skepticism.
00:45:14.600
Here we are, surrounded by ambiguity and experts that can't agree on all sorts of things.
00:45:21.720
And we are told that if we're skeptical of anything, then we're just a denier.
00:45:31.880
So, rather than encouraging a skeptical mind, we seem, our institutions in particular, seem
00:45:39.800
convinced, seem dedicated to the proposition of erasing that, right?
00:45:48.220
That quality, that's what I think is under siege, and that worries me.
00:45:54.380
I saw an article this week in the New York Times, it was about the scandal of spying on
00:46:03.140
the president, and the reason why the New York Times hasn't covered any of that.
00:46:09.400
And, first they said, it was all misinformation.
00:46:12.400
And then the very next sentence was, and to be able to really tell this story, it's very
00:46:19.760
complex with a lot of different names that people don't know, and it would require an
00:46:25.700
enormous effort on the side of the reader to understand that, which makes us question
00:46:34.620
whether things like this should be covered at all.
00:46:41.100
The infantilization, infantilization, that's what it is.
00:46:45.680
It's, look, we're not children, and we shouldn't be treated like children.
00:46:52.960
And the idea that somebody somewhere doesn't trust us to sift through conflicting views, this
00:47:02.380
business with Rogan fascinated me, you know, because the two doctors that caused all the
00:47:07.300
problems, I don't know them, you know, but Robert Malone holds nine patents on mRNA vaccines.
00:47:17.940
And the other guy, McCullough, is the most published cardiologist in the world.
00:47:31.000
But, but, but, but if you can't talk to people who are that credentialed.
00:47:38.500
And so for all of that pushback that he got, I, I, I found that kind of chilling because
00:47:47.040
somebody, Neil Young doesn't think I'm capable of listening to ideas that might be incorrect.
00:47:55.940
And Mike, when did, when did rock and roll become, become the man?
00:48:04.360
All these, especially these aging hippies that were like, Hey, fight the power, man.
00:48:10.420
And now all of a sudden they're like, Hey, shut up.
00:48:17.480
Misinformation, disinformation, mal-information.
00:48:26.840
It is when somebody knows that it's a lie and is spreading it just for malice.
00:48:33.960
So misinformation is somebody who doesn't know that it's true, that it's not true.
00:48:40.400
Disinformation is somebody who knows it's not true.
00:48:43.440
And, uh, mal-information is somebody who knows it's not true and has a heart full of malice.
00:48:55.280
The noble lie is what we say when your best interests might be compromised by the truth.
00:49:02.680
If let's assume masks work to tell people that masks don't work at a time when there
00:49:09.880
was a shortage of mask was deemed a noble lie in order to make sure it was just, it was
00:49:20.620
Cause I'm like, you sons of it, you don't trust the American people.
00:49:28.500
I brought them to my local hospital and I know I'm not alone.
00:49:36.660
When you don't expect the best from people, you're never going to get it.
00:49:43.360
It's a, it's a self-fulfilling kind of, kind of prophecy.
00:49:47.720
And it, it, it impacts public policy, but it also impacts the way we disseminate risk.
00:49:58.400
And I, I will always come back to that because it's our relationship with fear.
00:50:04.180
Do you think you are more of a risk taker because I think your heart's always been into performance.
00:50:13.680
So do you think, I mean, you have to risk if you're going to be good at something you have to risk.
00:50:18.580
Well, I told you earlier on, on your radio show, when I was a host, Dick Clark gave me some really, really great advice, which was don't walk out and say hi, everybody, even though you're broadcasting, talk to one person at a time.
00:50:32.640
And so for 10 years or so, I, I worked really hard at being the best host I could be.
00:50:40.120
And I got pretty facile at it, but I didn't really have any success until I learned another lesson in the sewers of San Francisco where I realized I was a better guest.
00:50:51.960
So if I could, if I could be the titular figure in a program, but think of myself as a guest instead of a host, that's, that was a risk, right?
00:51:03.200
It was a big risk because on dirty jobs, if, if there was a pie in somebody's face, it was their pie in my face, right?
00:51:14.320
I'm the new guy every day working with an expert who has never been on TV before, but who is quite good at his or her job.
00:51:24.540
And so for me, the, the willingness to be humbled on international television was the proximate cause of whatever success I've, I've had, but that was a risk.
00:51:38.180
And that's something I, I've wanted to ask you about too, as a, as a performer, you know, but there's a lot of risk in dirty jobs visually, but like the risk of leaving Fox, the risk of building this, right?
00:51:54.180
The, the risk of going, of taking the reverse commute in your chosen field that, you know, you, you were rewarded for it, but you could have just as easily been crushed.
00:52:06.580
You have to not want something so much, you know, um, uh, this building, I bought it for 4.9 million.
00:52:20.900
You know, we started negotiating at 19, 19 took a year, but I didn't want it that much.
00:52:30.400
I'm like, well, go find that person that thinks it's worth 19.
00:52:36.240
And they said, no, and I didn't want it that badly.
00:52:39.340
And they kept coming back and I'd go, okay, it's really great.
00:52:53.900
How much time did it take to get them where you, where you needed to get them?
00:53:02.260
But it's, it's the, the concept is, and this happens to TV people and stars, I think all
00:53:11.120
They get some success and then they want it and they want it to stay.
00:53:16.980
And so they'll start compromising and doing anything to get it.
00:53:20.880
And that's, I think what is happening in all over the world.
00:53:24.040
People are willing to compromise because they just want this.
00:53:27.940
And what they don't realize is you're not going to have this.
00:53:33.180
Once you start compromising, you not only lose that, you lose everything.
00:53:51.820
You know, it's once you have a little bit of success as a, as a producer, as an executive
00:54:05.180
The first three episodes that aired were the highest rated of the week, but the show was
00:54:12.400
put on the shelf for a year because it wasn't consistent with what the network saw at the
00:54:27.140
Now that was a safe bet for somebody to do, but.
00:54:37.400
But somebody later took a risk and they put it back on the air knowing it wasn't quite
00:54:47.780
39 shows have evolved out of Dirty Jobs over the legend.
00:54:55.120
The whole construct of, of a host as a guest or a guest as a host.
00:55:01.740
Now the whole device of bringing the behind the scenes guys into the show.
00:55:08.800
That level of authenticity, that kind of shooting was risky.
00:55:18.420
It's like, look, if back then I figured reality TV meant reality, right?
00:55:25.000
So let's, let's show you a day on the job exactly as I see it.
00:55:29.400
Now, of course we can edit, but I wanted the viewer to see a, a linear chronological
00:55:34.160
look at my day, not a montage of some stuff and fast cuts and everything else.
00:55:39.220
And you know what take two is take twos are performance.
00:55:42.900
So yeah, I, I had a, I called it the truth cam.
00:55:46.720
It's just a behind the scenes camera, like a doc cam, but the mandate was simple mandate.
00:55:58.540
So whatever else happens here, you know, happens camera goes down, plane flies over.
00:56:03.020
I could always look to the truth cam and tell the viewer what was happening in the moment.
00:56:09.060
And you use the word before, if you're looking for authenticity, you find it in those little
00:56:22.440
Part of the problem with, um, with what we're facing, and I think it's happening to our children,
00:56:32.540
and, um, if we keep paying people to stay home, we're going to have more and more problems.
00:56:45.200
A lot of people get their meaning from their jobs.
00:56:48.840
I think it's why a lot of guys die after they, you know, retire.
00:56:56.680
And talk about the meaning of a job and the meaning beyond the job.
00:57:01.220
Well, on the long list of things we can't control is virtually everything.
00:57:10.740
On the short list of things we, we can is, is that.
00:57:14.920
Like, there's no, you, you can't find meaning in a job.
00:57:22.500
And the thing to which you assign your meaningfulness is 100% in your control.
00:57:31.440
This is why we have wretched garbage men and happy garbage men.
00:57:38.260
And wretched actuarial accountants and happy actuarial accountants.
00:57:44.060
And wretched billionaires and happy billionaires.
00:57:47.680
There is nothing inherently transformational about a job beyond its existence.
00:57:55.260
Now, if they don't exist, then you don't have the opportunity to assign your meaning to a pursuit.
00:58:05.020
But in the wide world of work, what we've done, I think somewhat stupidly, is, is elevate certain jobs at the expense of other jobs.
00:58:17.800
We've said, look, there's higher education, and that's the thing we want to encourage people to do.
00:58:25.100
And then it's like there's this ellipses, right?
00:58:28.020
Because, well, if there's higher education, ipso facto, there must be lower jobs.
00:58:43.640
So we've got a lovely trade school over here for you.
00:58:45.860
Or maybe this community college program, right?
00:58:48.460
Which seems like, you're right, it does seem like that's a consolation prize.
00:58:54.920
These safety third masks led to an apprenticeship program at a little company that was on the verge of closing in North Carolina.
00:59:03.760
And the woman, Donna Bryn, who runs it, went to the community college, hired four or five seamstresses, taught the craft.
00:59:13.340
Their whole business came back on its feet, starting around these goofy little masks as a fundraiser for my foundation.
00:59:21.520
So, look, elevating work, celebrating work, looking for opportunities in places where we're told that they might be subordinate, it's important to do that.
00:59:35.100
Nobody knows it, because I never talk about it, but the number of multimillionaires on that show that we profiled?
00:59:44.480
You just didn't know it, because they were covered in crap or something worse, right?
00:59:52.520
You know, if a good education can happen in a trench or through an apprenticeship program, well, then that is perceived as a threat to people who are trying to control what higher education ought to mean.
01:00:07.740
And then, of course, you just follow the money.
01:00:16.220
Well, there's no real shortcut, in my view, like the old Horatio Alger stuff, and my foundation talks a lot about it.
01:00:25.040
And I know I sound like an old wealthy white guy screaming from his porch at the kids.
01:00:29.840
I don't mean to, and I try really hard not to go there, but there's just no substitute.
01:00:34.760
You know, delayed gratification, a decent attitude, a sense of humor.
01:00:43.140
Well, because if you're not laughing, as my pop said, the joke's on you.
01:00:47.600
I mean, that was such an important part of Dirty Jobs.
01:00:52.100
You know, I don't want to go to job sites where there's no lightness.
01:00:58.580
It doesn't matter how grim the work is or how difficult or how dangerous.
01:01:02.940
The vast majority of those sites that I've been to always have this element of camaraderie, this band of brothers, which is humor's neighbor, right?
01:01:14.600
And so, it was really important for me on that show to make sure that we captured that in some way, shape, or form.
01:01:21.480
Because, I mean, whatever version of success you have, how can it not include joy, cheerfulness, probably the most important scout law, cheerful, right?
01:01:39.940
The affirmative decision to show up early, stay late, take a bite of the crap sandwich when it comes around to you, and laugh through it, those are all choices.
01:01:49.500
So, our work ethic scholarship program specifically looks for people who have those traits.
01:02:02.080
I don't know any successful person who doesn't have them, you know, absent some lotto winners and trust fund babies, but, you know, that doesn't count.
01:02:27.920
He, as you know, he's a radio guy, showed up every day in a suit and tie.
01:02:41.360
He and his boy developed the rest of the story.
01:03:04.100
You know, Plimpton was a guy who wanted to experience the thing before he wrote about it, which I admire a lot.
01:03:10.860
Corralt was a guy who would rather take the back road than the highway, which I admire a lot.
01:03:16.980
Paul Harvey was a guy who would tell you the end in the beginning, which I thought was great.
01:03:30.300
I got, I had a fun conversation with his son, you know, because when I started my podcast, I said, look, this is, this is straight up inspired by Paul Harvey.
01:03:42.700
And I wanted to tell stories about people you knew, but I wanted to share something you didn't know about them in that inside out way.
01:03:51.180
So it was, it was his formula, you know, and the podcast went up and we were up for about a year and we were doing really great.
01:04:01.140
And, um, my partner, Mary called me one day and she's like, uh, we got a, uh, got a FedEx here from, uh, Paul Harvey jr.
01:04:10.520
And I'm like, Oh God, it's going to be, it's an injunction.
01:04:15.320
It was a very generous check from my foundation with a note that said, my dad is looking down at this right now.
01:04:30.340
I'm wary of all earnestness, but I brought a tear to my eye, you know, because, um, the rest of the story was probably as much Paul Harvey jr.
01:04:45.820
So yeah, it made me think of my own dad and the things we had worked on and you know, all the stuff we're talking about right now.
01:04:51.940
Some days you think you're going to get sued and they send you a check.
01:05:06.100
The two or three times that you thought you were going to be the host of the daily show.
01:05:15.460
I was still masquerading as a host and, and, and determined, you know, I hadn't had my dirty jobs epiphany in the sewer.
01:05:25.420
And, and this, this audition came along and they saw everybody.
01:05:33.360
In New, in New York and LA, it was going to be a big show.
01:05:36.040
And yet still in the end, they've ended up with Trevor Noah.
01:05:39.180
Hey, look, you know, these are uncertain times, but back then in the late nineties, you know, I didn't know what it was.
01:05:47.940
I just knew that comedy central sounded like a fun place to work.
01:05:51.580
And the daily show sounded like a show that was on every day.
01:05:55.660
So I'm thinking, okay, there's some job security and you know, I can impersonate a news anchor and you know, they're, they're in on the joke.
01:06:11.260
They told me on a Friday, congratulations, come in Monday, meet the writers.
01:06:16.960
I was living in New York and had a great weekend, celebrated all weekend, went in Monday to meet the writers.
01:06:22.660
And there was just this one woman sitting in this room and she didn't look happy.
01:06:28.420
She's like, yes, but here's, here's what happened.
01:06:30.660
And long story short, um, Doug Herzog, who was running the place at the time, really wanted Craig Kilbourne, who was working at ESPN.
01:06:39.120
They wouldn't let him out of his contract, but over the weekend they relented.
01:06:44.580
And that Glenn, that, that, I mean, rejection is important, but wow.
01:06:54.340
So, um, but they called me and they said, look, you know, you really, you got something kid.
01:07:05.280
Well, son of a gun, a year later, old Craig Kilbourne gets the call, winds up doing the late show at CBS, I guess it was.
01:07:12.260
And, um, they call me back and they say, look, this job is basically yours.
01:07:21.140
We'd like you to come in again, meet the folks, say hi.
01:07:29.760
It was, it was like, look, I mean, I just thought.
01:07:34.920
I'm like, well, obviously this is maybe, I come in, I meet everybody and, oh, the writers were so great.
01:07:41.820
And I met the director and I actually did a show.
01:07:44.280
It never aired, but they said, let's just sit down and have some fun.
01:07:47.060
And, you know, here's the prompter and maybe you can write some stuff.
01:07:50.120
And I, I wrote a fun thing and it, I just crushed it.
01:07:53.760
It was one of those days when you go home, you're like, this is it.
01:07:59.940
It's like, if you're at the bat, you got every piece of it, you know, it just felt so right.
01:08:05.660
And as I was leaving, Madeline Smithberg said to me, she said, look, the only way this gig isn't yours is if this network, if this, her words, cheap ass network coughs up a few million dollars for the likes of Norm Macdonald.
01:08:23.200
Or, um, oh, who was the other guy, uh, Dennis Miller or Jon Stewart, but that'll never happen.
01:08:36.240
Three days later, Jon signed a $4 million contract.
01:08:45.280
I mean, I'd be, it wouldn't be funny, you know, to have a third whack at the apple.
01:08:52.600
I'm trying to think who I know over there that could give you a call and say, well, but Mike, we've got, we've got a gig for you.
01:09:04.780
And this is probably a good place for me to land the plane.
01:09:07.620
Um, I don't think I'd take it, you know, if they offered.
01:09:12.380
And, and I, and I don't say that because I think I'm above it or anything.
01:09:15.580
I, a daily show is a priceless opportunity to, to influence and to push the rock up the hill and to do whatever it is you want to do.
01:09:26.400
You know, if he's having fun and everybody's happy, I think it's great.
01:09:30.440
I mean, I went from that rejection to working for Dick Clark where I learned some interesting things and then I had maybe a hundred other jobs, but it wasn't until the sewer in San Francisco when I realized I was a better guest than I was a host.
01:09:44.360
And it wasn't until the risk came together and the stars lined up and dirty jobs, got on the air and then off the air and then back on the air.
01:09:58.360
That's when every good thing that's happened over the last 20 years, that's when the die was cast, you know?
01:10:05.560
And so it's, I haven't had the most glamorous career, but I've.
01:10:13.900
And, and I have a, a very unusual business with a really unique set.
01:10:20.300
My best friend from high school is the producer on my podcast and is deeply embedded in my foundation.
01:10:26.600
Mary, who, you know, has been with me from the start.
01:10:29.660
That woman managing partner at a, at a high end law firm with a lot of clients.
01:10:35.500
She left to work with a guy who crawled through a sewer as a guest in order to build a business that ultimately let me sit here with you talking about safety third and various other concepts that have allowed my foundation to give away a million dollars every year for work ethic scholarships.
01:10:56.060
So, yeah, the daily show would have been great.
01:11:02.700
Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.