The Tucker Carlson Show - April 17, 2024


Mike Rowe


Episode Stats

Length

54 minutes

Words per Minute

162.10435

Word Count

8,792

Sentence Count

776

Misogynist Sentences

10

Hate Speech Sentences

7


Summary

The current debate over AI, artificial intelligence, is about whether the technology will become sentient and autonomous and enslave us all. And of course, that will probably happen. But in the meantime, we thought it d be interesting revisiting the original debate about AI, which is about how it affects work: what are the rest of us going to do for a living when machines can do it for us? And there s nobody who's thought more deeply about this and about work in general, than Mike Rowe. Today's guest is Mike Rowe, CEO and co-founder of BDC, a bulge bracket investment firm that helps companies grow at double the average rate, and the CEO of a company that's betting on the future of their business on artificial intelligence. Mike and I talk about how AI has changed the way we think about work, and what it means for us, and how we can prepare for it, in this episode of StartUp s newest podcast, StartUp's New Year's Eve Special. Music: Fair Weather Fans by Nordgroove Art: "Not For Nothing" by Jeff Kaale (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 42, 47, 44, 45 , 45, 47 , 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 56, 55, 57, 58, 56 & 57, is a production of Gimlet Media and is edited and produced by Alex Blumbergen, a co-producer, and Music: "Goodbye Outer Space" by Ian Dorsch ( ) and ( ) is produced by David Fincher ( ) and , . Produced by: John Rocha ( ) Executive produced by: Music by: Jeff Perla ( ) & & (Music: "Instrumental music: "Outer Space Warning" by by ) (feat. by , "Sonic ) is a song written and produced and edited by (Alicia Keys ( ) ( ) ( ) edited and ) and "The White House ( ) by ),


Transcript

00:00:00.220 Growth is essential for every entrepreneur. At BDC, we get that. And the businesses we support grow at double the average rate. Accelerating the pace, we're on it. BDC, financing, advising, know-how.
00:00:13.980 So the current debate over AI, artificial intelligence, is about whether the technology will become sentient and autonomous and enslave us all. And of course, that'll probably happen.
00:00:36.940 But in the meantime, we thought it'd be interesting revisiting the original debate about AI, which is about how it affects work. What are the rest of us going to do for a living when machines can do it for us? And there's nobody who's thought more deeply about this and about work in general and its centrality to human dignity than Mike Rowe. And we are, as always, honored to have him in studio. Mike, thank you for coming on.
00:00:59.420 First of all, you win. The desk?
00:01:02.100 It's wood.
00:01:02.880 Are you kidding? I mean, how old is this?
00:01:05.880 I don't know. It's ironwood. And it's actually, it's funny, the person who got this, I have asked him to go run it down because I'm like the only right wing in the world who loved Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived in a redwood to keep it. I just think trees are really important. And I think being surrounded by wood brings a resonance to your life.
00:01:25.360 What happened after the hurricane down here? Because I know that was a big deal. And I know you love trees. And I know that couldn't have been great.
00:01:33.140 Yes, but most of the trees in Florida are fake trees, actually. They're not real. I don't think a palm tree is actually a tree. I mean, a tree is a white pine. A tree is a sequoia. A tree is, you know, all the various hardwoods. Oak, beech.
00:01:49.280 Locust.
00:01:49.860 Locust, exactly. Cut some locusts this summer. Anyways, sorry.
00:01:54.880 Chop your own wood, it'll warm you twice.
00:01:56.860 Yes, that's exactly it. Three times, you could just stack it and then split it.
00:02:00.820 Yeah.
00:02:01.440 So what, the AI, so like seven years ago, I remember talking to you, I think it was about seven years ago, about what AI was going to do to working class America, to truck drivers, the most common job for high school educated men.
00:02:14.800 And you had a lot of thoughts about that, but the conversation has progressed so dramatically since then.
00:02:18.920 Right.
00:02:19.120 And so is the technology.
00:02:20.700 Right.
00:02:20.940 So where are you on thinking about that?
00:02:23.160 So there was a time when the big conversation, at least in my lane anyway, was really more about robotics and tech, right? The robots are going to come and they're going to displace a lot of blue collar jobs. And how do we stop that? How do we think about that?
00:02:37.060 And I remember you and I talked about the Luddite rebellion.
00:02:40.820 Yes.
00:02:41.260 We talked about.
00:02:42.460 Endorsing it, actually.
00:02:43.500 Yes. Right. And it's like, and the disruption theories and this idea that real replacement is going to happen. It almost never happens, as I understand it. You know, I've seen it in our industry, too. You know, there's a lot of talk about, you know, what was going to happen when, what was going to happen in newspapers when film came along? What was going to happen to film when TV came along?
00:03:06.040 Yes. What was going to happen to music and DVDs? And I mean, none of it really goes away, but it all shifts. It's all impacted.
00:03:15.700 Yes.
00:03:16.040 So I was struck by the fact that all of a sudden we weren't talking about the impact of robots on blue collar jobs, but the impact of AI on white collar jobs.
00:03:27.840 Right.
00:03:28.660 That's what interested me.
00:03:30.840 Which I enjoyed.
00:03:32.880 Well, I mean.
00:03:34.020 Sorry, I'm a bad person.
00:03:35.280 But look, it is super creepy. I mean, I got a link from a buddy who said, hey man, not for nothing, but I went on to one of these sites and I said, narrate for me in the style of Mike Rowe, these two paragraphs. Right. And he sent me a link to this. And basically it was two paragraphs from an old episode of Deadly's Catch. And I hit play and I listened to me.
00:04:02.120 Now, had I not known it was not me, I would have thought, well, that's something I narrated, you know, four or five years ago.
00:04:10.100 You couldn't tell the difference.
00:04:11.060 Couldn't tell. When I listened for it, I heard some things that made me go, ah, maybe, maybe not quite, but that was two months ago, which might as well be two years ago or 20 years ago.
00:04:20.300 So the speed with which artificial intelligence, something about Moore's law, something faster and faster and faster and faster.
00:04:27.840 So I, I, part of me wants to say, don't forget the lesson from the Luddites. Don't forget, it's not going to completely upend everything unless it does. And I don't know, because this does feel different.
00:04:42.940 I don't know. I had a motorcycle once with a crack in the intake manifold that I didn't see, and it made it obviously run lean. And Mike ran so great, faster and faster and faster and faster, until literally the spark plug burned a hole through the piston.
00:04:56.200 I use it as a, as a pen holder on my desk today. But there's something about speed and acceleration that has a natural limit, doesn't it?
00:05:03.520 Well, I mean, Einstein said, right, you can stand this close to another person and then this close and half it and half it and half it and never, ever stop halving it, which my brain doesn't understand because it seems like surely, surely you're going to collide and then be on the other side of each other.
00:05:20.880 Yes.
00:05:21.220 He's like, no, no, that's it. That doesn't really work. Or at least have a sexual encounter with the person.
00:05:24.700 Look, here's how jacked up it is for me. My entire career is actually based on AI. Early on in Dirty Jobs, there was this big conversation at the network when they were like, look, this show is, it was a nightmare for them because it was rating really, really well, but it was off-brand.
00:05:45.840 But Dirty Jobs was not supposed to be the show that people went to Discovery to love.
00:05:51.760 No.
00:05:52.420 It was that, those were still the days of Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall, right?
00:05:56.960 Yes.
00:05:57.200 It was me, a smart aleck looking under rocks, making poop shows. That's not supposed to be the number one show.
00:06:02.260 No.
00:06:03.160 So they're like, can you smarten it up a little bit? And I said, well, I've been looking at some science type jobs. And they're like, like what? I'm like, well, we, I'd like to take a deep dive into AI. And they're like, that's great.
00:06:14.800 That's great. If you can find Dirty Jobs in AI, we, we're golden. Now, did they think I was talking about artificial insemination? Probably not. Probably not.
00:06:28.020 Did you do that episode?
00:06:29.460 Four days later, I was at the Circle X Ranch somewhere outside of Houston with my arm up to my shoulder inside a couple of dozen cows, taking instructions from a cowboy named Steve, who was walking me through the process of artificially inseminating the cows.
00:06:45.440 I also had a remarkable encounter with a bull called Hunsucker Commando. And the process whereby the sperm is extracted from this minotaur, right? And then put back into these unsuspecting bovines, giving us, it's basically a Brahmin bull and an Angus cow gets you Brangus meat. The point is.
00:07:05.060 Wait, did you, without getting specific, did you go through that entire process? Extraction?
00:07:09.480 Oh, extraction. Oh, yeah. No, I gathered. I had a styrofoam cup. There were probes. There was insertion into the bull. Light current stimulated the prostate. The white gold flew through the air.
00:07:22.280 I captured as much of it as I could. And I put the whole thing on the air a week later. And I got called to the principal's office.
00:07:29.220 You did.
00:07:30.320 The question was, you promised us a show on artificial intelligence. And I said, did I?
00:07:36.820 And then we had this big conversation about science. And the moral of the story is, there's more science in artificial insemination than there is in AI, or at least as much, and in a much deeper, much more meaningful way.
00:07:49.840 We are so disconnected from our food. We're disconnected from our energy. And Dirty Jobs on the surface was just a romp. It was exploding toilets and misadventures and artificial or animal husbandry or whatever it was.
00:08:05.020 But in reality, it was a pretty thoughtful look at what keeps us connected and what we've become disconnected from. And so, ultimately, the show stayed on the air. And that episode aired to ridiculous ratings, by the way, which is why I violated every other barnyard creature known to man.
00:08:23.560 Ratings gold. But the thing is, there's no McDonald's. There's no Carl's Jr. There's no fast food. There's no slow food. There's no meat industry, as we understand it, without the other AI.
00:08:37.320 So, that's kind of a long way of saying, I'm most interested to see how artificial intelligence and artificial insemination are going to somehow, hopefully, come together.
00:08:47.600 Right. So, how does, no, that's such a smart point. How does it, how does this quantum increase in computing power, which is really what artificial intelligence, just bastard computation, how does that affect the real economy? Like, the actual physical stuff that keeps us alive?
00:09:02.140 Well, I don't know. But I do think that what's going on in the real economy and what's going on in the real country is this unraveling of connectivity. People, and I put myself in this group, we've become really disconnected from some very primary things.
00:09:23.820 Yes.
00:09:24.500 I commented on your desk right away. It's primal. It's fundamental.
00:09:28.320 That's why I love it.
00:09:29.080 It looks like what it is.
00:09:30.740 Yes.
00:09:31.320 You know?
00:09:31.880 Yes.
00:09:32.040 And I don't know, it's to reconnect with basic things is to be around fundamental things.
00:09:40.100 I like what you've done with the place.
00:09:42.040 Oh, I like to sniff it. You know, I do.
00:09:44.960 If you're going to sell t-shirts, do me a favor and put that on it.
00:09:47.780 The thing I don't like about the digital experience is it doesn't smell like anything.
00:09:51.220 Because it's not real.
00:09:52.260 It smells like ennui.
00:09:53.320 Yeah, it smells like ennui and self-hatred. Yeah, you're right.
00:09:58.100 But anyway, so helping to be reconnected to where our food comes from, to where our energy comes from, to what our history is, and to do it with humor.
00:10:09.420 That was the goal of that show.
00:10:12.360 Today, not to sound too high-minded, but it's one of the goals of my foundation.
00:10:17.920 And, you know, I don't really have permission to talk about AI.
00:10:21.140 That's not really my lane.
00:10:22.720 I don't really quite know what I'm doing.
00:10:26.720 But on a personal level, when somebody sends you a link that sounds so much like you, you can't tell the difference, then you start to connect to it because it gets personal.
00:10:39.240 So I think what's going to happen is this stuff is going to stop being ephemeral, theoretical, and people are going to find real, real, real personal stuff with regard to AI.
00:10:57.380 Tucker says it best.
00:11:03.860 The credit card companies are ripping Americans off, and enough is enough.
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00:11:17.740 Every time you use your credit card, they charge you a hidden fee called a swipe fee, and they've been raising it without even telling you.
00:11:25.960 This hurts consumers and every small business owner.
00:11:29.400 In fact, American families are paying $1,100 in hidden swipe fees each year.
00:11:35.280 The fees Visa and MasterCard charge Americans are the highest in the world, double candidates, and eight times more than Europe's.
00:11:43.240 That's why I've taken action, but I need your help to help get this passed.
00:11:47.260 I'm asking you to call your senator today and demand they pass the Credit Card Competition Act.
00:11:54.620 Paid for by the Merchants Payments Coalition.
00:11:56.320 Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
00:11:58.600 www.merchantspaymentscoalition.com
00:12:01.520 Hillsdale College offers many great free online courses, including a recent one on Marxism, Socialism, and Communism.
00:12:09.440 Today, Marxism goes by different names to make itself seem less dangerous.
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00:12:32.940 That's Tucker, F-O-R, Hillsdale.com.
00:12:37.980 When you go on Twitter and there's a video of you praising Hitler, it's not really you.
00:12:45.740 Deep, deep fakes.
00:12:46.920 Oh, man, come on.
00:12:48.180 That's going to happen, right?
00:12:49.920 That's going to happen.
00:12:51.000 And porn, you know, porn is on the leading edge of every new tech all the time.
00:12:58.460 And what does that mean for the next generation?
00:13:03.420 Well, I notice it with its rise.
00:13:05.500 I never talk about intentions.
00:13:07.920 Yeah, it was.
00:13:08.860 Thank you.
00:13:10.740 Fewer people have sex with human beings.
00:13:14.100 And no one ever says that, and I don't even like doing topics with stories on it because it's too embarrassing.
00:13:18.740 But it's true.
00:13:19.440 But here we are.
00:13:20.180 Here we are.
00:13:21.300 You make me very comfortable.
00:13:22.420 I just, look, I just confessed an encounter with a bull.
00:13:26.380 You had your hand up a cow.
00:13:28.200 But it does seem like...
00:13:30.220 That cow still calls me, by the way.
00:13:34.240 Totally.
00:13:34.800 When you're coming back, fancy man, with your opposable thumbs and whatnot.
00:13:38.580 2 a.m. booty calls.
00:13:39.680 Hey, what are you doing?
00:13:42.320 Excuse me.
00:13:42.980 I miss you so much.
00:13:44.480 What are you wearing?
00:13:45.300 So, it does seem like the net effect of almost all digital or even maybe technological advance is to separate us from each other to a greater degree.
00:13:57.100 So, do you remember Faith Popcorn?
00:13:59.400 Yes, very well.
00:14:00.180 So, the Popcorn Report, it was this thing that's published every couple of years.
00:14:04.040 It was a futurist, right?
00:14:06.460 A trend spotter.
00:14:07.660 Correct.
00:14:08.260 And a relentless self-promoter.
00:14:10.220 Relentless.
00:14:10.620 I think I had her on about 15 times in the 90s.
00:14:12.580 Did you really?
00:14:13.060 Of course.
00:14:13.480 Come on.
00:14:13.960 I worked at cable news.
00:14:14.880 Oh, right.
00:14:15.300 No short-term recall.
00:14:19.140 She talked about burrowing.
00:14:22.960 Yes.
00:14:23.780 Right?
00:14:24.160 This idea that as technology advances, we're going to have an easier time making our world smaller.
00:14:30.560 Yes.
00:14:30.900 And we're going to burrow into our homes and eventually we're going to be able to see movies on very intelligent TVs and so forth.
00:14:38.620 She kind of predicted all that.
00:14:40.120 Of course, it all came true.
00:14:41.600 And then she wrote about something called cocooning.
00:14:44.480 So, after you burrow, you just cocoon.
00:14:48.120 So, it's deeper and deeper and our homes become smarter and the tech becomes more omnipresent and anything we want can be brought to us by a giant company that owns all of the vans.
00:15:02.280 So, in a way, we're more connected vis-a-vis fiber optics and relationships and so forth than we've ever been.
00:15:11.600 But on the other hand, I think she was right.
00:15:13.420 We are so deeply burrowed into our space that, yeah, AI is going to take us to whatever that next level is and sex is going to be a topic we're probably going to have to talk about.
00:15:28.280 Because, I mean, I've read these studies that say young men in particular are not, it's not having sex the way they...
00:15:37.780 What that means is they're not having, like, deeper levels of human connection.
00:15:42.720 I can't...
00:15:46.360 I don't have any great insight to it.
00:15:47.920 My personal belief is people are having as much sex as they've ever had.
00:15:54.040 Maybe more.
00:15:55.220 They're just alone.
00:15:56.500 Yeah.
00:15:57.080 Well, that's...
00:15:58.440 But no one...
00:15:59.180 I don't know why that's not, like, described as a tragedy.
00:16:01.620 That seems like a tragedy to me.
00:16:03.720 It's the whole point of life as you arrive alone and depart alone.
00:16:07.240 In the interim, you try to connect with other people.
00:16:09.880 Yes, it's this, and we are slowly arbitraging the wood out of the desk.
00:16:18.080 We are slowly getting rid of all the human this.
00:16:27.340 Yes.
00:16:27.520 It's just, you can feel it happening.
00:16:29.800 My favorite author, actually, you probably know, I mean, very, very famous in South Florida, John D. McDonald.
00:16:38.060 Yes.
00:16:38.340 He wrote the Travis McGee Mysteries, best pulp fiction ever written.
00:16:44.220 And that stuff today reads like a prophecy.
00:16:48.380 McGee talked all of the time about this slow unraveling, and he was so wary of so much of what he predicted was coming.
00:16:59.720 And, of course, it did.
00:17:00.980 He lived off the grid on a houseboat called the busted flush that he won in a poker game.
00:17:06.420 He solved crimes, essentially.
00:17:08.060 He helped people recover that which was taken from him.
00:17:09.980 So he's not the only one, and I'm not even...
00:17:12.640 There are some very controversial, very bad people, actually, but who lived very isolated lives, who were able, maybe, therefore, to see the future more clearly.
00:17:22.320 Why is it that solitude, silence, removal from the bustle of human society allows some people this extraordinary vision into the future?
00:17:33.780 You wouldn't think that.
00:17:34.680 Yeah.
00:17:35.080 Yeah.
00:17:35.200 But it's sort of the virtue of boredom.
00:17:39.320 Michael Easter writes about this book called The Comfort Crisis that I liked a lot, where we've identified boredom as a great enemy, and we're surrounded by things to make sure we're never bored.
00:17:53.760 That's why we can do this.
00:17:54.860 That's why we can do this.
00:17:55.940 And that's why our attention spans get smaller and smaller and smaller, because we've waged a war against boredom.
00:18:01.200 But it's the process of not doing anything, putting all the devices down, and being alone with yourself, that lets your brain wander.
00:18:11.520 And pretty soon, you'll just Forrest Gump your way through a bunch of things you didn't even know you were going to think about.
00:18:18.120 And then you arrive at conclusions you didn't know you wanted to arrive at, but you're glad you did.
00:18:25.720 That's where ideas come from.
00:18:27.240 Exactly.
00:18:27.600 If you're never bored, if you're always stimulating, then you've made a trade, made a bargain, and it's probably a bad one, fraught with unintended consequences.
00:18:40.860 And for a guy who does artificial insemination shows, this is pretty deep and spot on, I would say.
00:18:46.400 I did it very well.
00:18:47.520 I want to put up a clip from former President Barack Obama talking about the other AI, the digital AI, and his idea for how this can bring us together or solve our economic crises, et cetera.
00:19:03.140 Here he is.
00:19:03.580 If you are interested in helping to shape all these amazing questions that are going to be coming up, go to AI.gov and see if there are opportunities for you fresh out of school, or you might be an experienced tech coder who's done fine, bought the house, got everything set up, and says,
00:19:25.580 you know what, I want to do something for the common good, sign up.
00:19:32.440 So here we have a former president saying the government is going to harness AI for, quote, the common good.
00:19:37.220 You know, I don't want to be skeptical or cynical at all, but that does sort of make me wonder what's going on here.
00:19:44.660 Any idea?
00:19:47.020 Again, it's a bit outside my lane.
00:19:49.180 I think I'm sure there's some validity in the message, and there's probably real opportunity in the vertical, as they say.
00:20:00.220 But we have 11 million open jobs right now that we're struggling to fill.
00:20:06.480 None of them all require an understanding of AI.
00:20:10.380 You have 11 million?
00:20:12.100 Well, 10.8 was the last number I saw, according to the PLS.
00:20:14.700 And what are they exactly?
00:20:16.480 Well, speaking broadly, most of them don't require a four-year degree.
00:20:20.900 They require training.
00:20:21.920 Yep.
00:20:22.820 Most of them require a willingness to roll up your sleeves and sometimes get your hands dirty.
00:20:27.920 Certainly, welders, plumbers, steam fitters, pipe fitters, electricians, heating, air conditioning, so forth.
00:20:35.960 For the last 20 years or so, for every five who retire over the course of a year, two replaced them.
00:20:43.820 It's troubling math.
00:20:45.100 Terrible arithmetic, as Lincoln would have said.
00:20:48.120 And so the skills gap is a real thing, and that part of our workforce has been woefully neglected, beginning really around the time we took shop class out of high school.
00:21:02.020 And we've had our thumb on the scale of education in a very specific way for a long time.
00:21:09.980 We've made a very persuasive case for higher ed, and the former president's making a pretty persuasive case for careers in artificial intelligence.
00:21:21.660 And fine, we can all do two things at the same time, I hope.
00:21:25.860 But this thing's right in front of us.
00:21:28.000 But if we changed the emphasis on higher education, I mean, it's probably possible we could run out of sociologists at some point, and then one.
00:21:35.300 There's something to think about.
00:21:37.260 So, I mean, you've been saying this for a long time, pretty much a lone voice, but I've never heard anybody disagree with you.
00:21:45.380 Huh.
00:21:45.600 Because, like, on what grounds could someone disagree with you?
00:21:48.220 I'll give you a list.
00:21:49.480 No, but I mean, in a substantive way.
00:21:51.840 Well, what people disagree with is the idea that you can promote one thing without tearing down another.
00:21:58.780 That's the trap that we're in.
00:22:00.420 That's what happened to us.
00:22:02.580 Higher ed needed better PR.
00:22:06.040 And in the 70s and 80s, we got it.
00:22:08.980 And thank God, we needed more engineers, we needed more scientists.
00:22:11.780 Don't know about sociologists, but the higher education needed a shot at the arm.
00:22:18.200 Unfortunately, we weren't content to simply make the case for higher ed.
00:22:22.240 We had to do it at the expense of everything else.
00:22:24.780 And so trade schools took it in the neck.
00:22:27.400 Community colleges were relegated to something your kid did if they couldn't.
00:22:31.520 Right.
00:22:31.920 It wasn't embarrassing, yeah.
00:22:33.140 But, of course, those forms of education are also attached to a big chunk of our workforce.
00:22:39.080 And so we kind of waged a war on alternative education, or called it lower education if you want,
00:22:47.900 because if it's higher over here, it, by definition, has to be lower over here.
00:22:53.060 So we drew a real clear line.
00:22:55.160 And we told people that if you don't get the most expensive degree that you can,
00:23:00.760 if you don't take the most expensive path there is, you're going to wind up doing something subordinate.
00:23:05.200 The result is this idea that all these great jobs are essentially vocational consolation prizes.
00:23:13.880 Meanwhile, the opportunities that exist, Tucker, I mean, look, I appreciate the kind words.
00:23:19.920 I have been beating the drum for 15 years.
00:23:22.400 Foundation turned 15 on Labor Day.
00:23:24.940 We've helped about 2,000 people get trained in these areas.
00:23:28.220 And I'm telling you, most of my soapbox stuff in the early days was anecdotal.
00:23:33.560 It was what I thought, and it was what I saw on Dirty Jobs,
00:23:36.280 and it was this feeling that we were affirmatively neglecting a whole lot of opportunity.
00:23:42.520 Now, now the stats have bolstered that.
00:23:47.200 The headlines have caught up to my own smack.
00:23:50.100 But most importantly, the people we've helped five, six years ago are sitting down with me today
00:23:56.580 and answering questions like, well, how's it going, I'll say.
00:24:02.240 And they'll say, I'll tell you how it's going.
00:24:03.780 You helped me get a welding degree six years ago.
00:24:06.640 Today, I own three vans, a mechanical contracting company.
00:24:10.640 I've got a plumber, and I've got an electrician that work with me every day.
00:24:16.500 We're all making six figures a year.
00:24:18.660 We work when we want, and I hear these stories day after day after day after day,
00:24:24.120 and I look around, and I'm not asking the feds to do anything.
00:24:28.320 I did.
00:24:29.180 I went to Congress three times over the years, and I said,
00:24:32.720 guys, we need a better PR campaign for this chunk of the workforce.
00:24:38.760 The math is awful, and we're not going to be having a conversation about,
00:24:43.380 oh my gosh, you mean a plumber can really make that much?
00:24:45.440 We're going to be having a conversation about, what do you mean I have to wait four days for a plumber?
00:24:49.860 And that's what's happening now.
00:24:51.900 So, with great respect to Barack Obama, fine, make the case for opportunities at AI.
00:24:59.180 But who the hell is making the case for the opportunity to make this table?
00:25:03.420 Totally right.
00:25:04.020 Where is the passion or the prosperity that will surely follow if you take the time to learn a skill that's in demand and work your ass off?
00:25:14.620 That's still for sale.
00:25:16.780 It's still real.
00:25:18.360 And I can't find anybody.
00:25:21.660 And I've looked.
00:25:23.100 You make such a rational, logical, fact-based case that, as you suggested, has become indisputable with time, arguing at this point.
00:25:38.900 But there's also something that I'm having trouble describing, but there is something morally or spiritually different and elevated about making things over rearranging things or being a parasite in the real economy.
00:25:50.480 In other words, it's better for you as a person to run a sawmill than it is to be, say, a high-speed trader.
00:25:57.720 You know?
00:25:58.940 I just think that, I mean, am I being crazy?
00:26:01.360 And I don't think I'm just being like stupid populist, oh, the working man is always better.
00:26:04.820 Oh, the working man is sometimes drunk, okay, in the morning.
00:26:06.660 I get it.
00:26:07.180 Yep.
00:26:07.700 But I just think the nature of the work matters.
00:26:11.120 If I'm a pornographer, it's probably not good for me.
00:26:14.160 But if I'm, you know, a really skilled drywall hanger, maybe it is.
00:26:18.360 Of course.
00:26:19.720 Yes.
00:26:20.480 But I would only say that it's the trap of the binary again.
00:26:26.540 Fair.
00:26:27.180 That's the trap.
00:26:29.460 Do you remember, I guess it was 2016, Republican debates, all 17 are up there, right?
00:26:35.320 27, something like that.
00:26:37.560 Amazing.
00:26:37.820 I forget the exact question.
00:26:41.080 But Marco Rubio's answer was, let me tell you, what we need in this country are fewer philosophers and more welders.
00:26:50.640 So the crowd claps, big applause line.
00:26:53.960 There was a lot of true, a lot of your comment about sociologists earlier.
00:26:57.700 I said, it's fine.
00:26:59.060 I get it.
00:26:59.700 But what was interesting was, like, my social channels blew up with people going, hey, this guy's really singing your song.
00:27:08.100 I said, I said, actually, no.
00:27:09.660 No, that's not my point.
00:27:11.780 My point would be, what our country needs are more welders who can talk intelligently about Nietzsche or Benkart or Kierkegaard.
00:27:24.300 And we need more philosophers who can run an even bead, OK?
00:27:28.820 Yes.
00:27:29.200 It's this idea that a welder is somehow consigned.
00:27:35.520 But look, I don't know where my cell phone is now.
00:27:37.840 There's yours.
00:27:38.500 You and I, with this internet connection, we've got access to something we didn't when we were in school, which is 98% of the known information on the land.
00:27:47.380 So in my foundation, I try and make the point to the people who apply for our work ethic scholarships.
00:27:54.800 I say, look, this is learn the skill.
00:27:58.140 Be great at it.
00:27:59.580 But for God's sakes, go get your liberal arts education.
00:28:03.380 Not at Brown.
00:28:04.560 You don't have to borrow all that money to do that.
00:28:07.400 Just be interested.
00:28:09.320 Be curious.
00:28:10.160 I watched a lecture four nights ago from MIT on my phone for free.
00:28:17.380 For free.
00:28:18.340 Now, I'm not saying it's the same experience, but it's the same information.
00:28:23.740 It's all available.
00:28:25.780 And if that doesn't, like, fire you up, as a curious person, to not be completely engaged by the undeniable fact that most of the known information on the planet is in your pocket and accessible, right?
00:28:41.840 That's a very liberal arts kind of thing to say.
00:28:44.780 But I'm not saying it to your basic liberal arts student.
00:28:49.200 I'm saying it to the welders and the steam fitters and the pipe fitters and the mechanics that have come through our foundation.
00:28:54.440 Because the most interesting people on the planet, and I know I'm preaching to the choir, do you know the person who made this desk?
00:29:02.380 I don't.
00:29:04.640 I wish I did.
00:29:05.720 I do, too.
00:29:06.600 Because I guarantee you they got a story.
00:29:08.280 One of my best friends runs the sawmill.
00:29:10.000 No, no.
00:29:10.600 I'm all about sawmills.
00:29:13.040 It's the...
00:29:13.940 I'm all about sawmills, too.
00:29:16.100 But I'm all about the well-rounded proprietor.
00:29:20.920 I really think that the thing that's most missing today is that balance.
00:29:27.520 You ever read Wendell Berry?
00:29:29.140 Yeah.
00:29:30.380 Philosopher.
00:29:30.920 Yeah.
00:29:31.420 From North Carolina?
00:29:32.420 Well, there's a...
00:29:34.000 Truth bomb.
00:29:35.120 Yeah.
00:29:35.600 One after the next.
00:29:36.620 After the next.
00:29:37.440 Sure.
00:29:38.520 So do you see any evidence that...
00:29:41.180 I know people are listening to you, and I, again, would argue I haven't seen anyone kind of refute what you're saying,
00:29:47.480 but do you have any sense that it's changing, that it's moving?
00:29:51.040 I do.
00:29:51.320 Yeah, so there's this guy who runs a think tank, Opulis.
00:29:58.840 His name is Todd Rose.
00:30:00.400 He's become a friend of mine.
00:30:01.880 In fact, I had him on my podcast not long ago.
00:30:05.240 And they do really, really important research that has to do primarily with collective illusions.
00:30:13.720 In fact, he has a book called Collective Illusions.
00:30:15.780 And one of the things that personally really struck me was that 80% of the information on Twitter is created by 10%, the people on Twitter.
00:30:31.140 And so it's really easy to look at that platform, and many others too, and assume a consensus.
00:30:40.160 And so once we, as humans, realize that there is a consensus or a majority who believe a certain thing, then we'll, by and large, fall in line.
00:30:53.660 Many times supporting things that we personally don't really support.
00:30:58.360 Like, for instance, right now there is a...
00:31:00.900 I've seen this my whole life.
00:31:02.340 Well, and if you look for it, you'll see it everywhere.
00:31:06.860 It's mind-boggling.
00:31:07.840 So, and this was kind of a wake-up call for me because for 15 years I've been talking about this deeply held belief that parents and guidance counselors truly believe that the best path for their kids is this most expensive path.
00:31:24.120 But the latest research, when you really sit people down and take a deep, deep dive, Gen Z right now is ranking the importance of a college education out of 50 different things at 47.
00:31:42.320 That seems high.
00:31:43.360 Well, it used to be three, right?
00:31:47.720 But in the course of the last five or six years, like a lot of people, it made me wonder, has something shifted in that generation that I just haven't seen?
00:31:59.840 And I'm hopeful that it has.
00:32:02.200 People are starting to get the message that just because you've got $200,000 in debt and a nice diploma doesn't mean the world's going to be the pathway to your door.
00:32:12.220 It doesn't mean you're going to get hired in your chosen field.
00:32:15.080 It doesn't mean you're well-educated.
00:32:16.580 It doesn't mean anything at all except for the fact that you owe $200,000.
00:32:21.700 That's what it means.
00:32:23.120 That diploma is a receipt as surely as it is anything else, right?
00:32:29.560 And the information you got in exchange for it, well, that's a tool.
00:32:35.860 And how you use it is none of my business.
00:32:39.180 And people are starting, I think, to realize, at least this research indicates, that our fascination with the golden ticket that's always been a college diploma is starting to wane.
00:32:53.700 And honestly, I think that's a good thing.
00:32:57.180 Yeah.
00:32:57.320 One of our many post-war assumptions that probably should be updated after 80 years.
00:33:01.440 Yeah.
00:33:02.620 What's the state of our vocational education in the United States like?
00:33:06.640 I think our engineering programs are still really good.
00:33:09.940 Yeah.
00:33:10.120 But, like, welding, plumbing, electrical, and then some of the higher, you know, electrical engineering, et cetera, are we still leading the world in that stuff?
00:33:18.420 I don't know of any company in this country who doesn't have some sort of internal training program to try and get those skills taught.
00:33:30.960 Certainly, nobody's coming out of high school with those skills.
00:33:33.800 People are coming out of trade schools with the basics, but the actual finishing almost always happens within the company.
00:33:42.860 So a lot of that work is being done privately.
00:33:47.620 It's back to shop class.
00:33:49.560 Yeah.
00:33:50.080 You know, it starts with interest.
00:33:51.780 It starts, like, if you're a 14-year-old kid with no real clear idea of what you want to do, and you're walking down the corridor of your high school, and you stick your head in the woodshop, and you stick your head in the metal shop, and you stick your head in any number of vocational shops, you can at least optically see what the work looks like or might look like.
00:34:17.620 And for a lot of people who got into the trades, that's where it began.
00:34:22.400 They saw something that resonated with them in a switch flick.
00:34:26.840 Today, you don't see it.
00:34:29.980 I mean, what more persuasive thing could you say to a kid regarding the skill trades than, don't even look at them?
00:34:39.540 We're just going to remove all proof of their existence from sight.
00:34:43.940 But that's what we did when we took shop class out of high school.
00:34:48.720 And it's not a coincidence that, I mean, I think I can draw a pretty straight line.
00:34:54.160 That event and $1.7 trillion of outstanding student loans, 10.8 million open jobs, and maybe even 7.2 million able-bodied men in the prime of their life, according to Nicholas Eberstadt in a book called Men Without Work.
00:35:10.780 Great book.
00:35:11.740 Who are sitting, oh, not only not working, but affirmatively not looking for work, spending in excess of 2,000 hours a year wiping and looking at screens.
00:35:23.540 That's never happened before, not in peacetime, anyway.
00:35:27.840 In fact, we are in peacetime.
00:35:28.940 All of that stuff together, I can walk back, and I'll be at a fairly circuitous route.
00:35:37.000 But we took shop class out of high schools, and we didn't think anything was going to happen as a result.
00:35:43.540 Everything happened.
00:35:44.760 Everything.
00:35:45.820 Great.
00:35:46.240 People lost their dignity.
00:35:47.980 So you, I got to ask you, you were an opera singer?
00:35:52.480 Well, I sang in the opera.
00:35:54.420 Okay.
00:35:55.300 I've also skied down mountains, but very few people say, oh, it's Mike Rowe, the skier.
00:36:00.760 I've skied down many mountains.
00:36:02.200 I've never sung opera.
00:36:04.320 But do you, I mean, is there ever a time when you do it still?
00:36:07.260 Oh, yeah.
00:36:07.960 Weddings, funerals.
00:36:09.160 For real?
00:36:09.920 I sing all the, on my podcast, I write unauthorized jingles for all the sponsors and sing them in four-part harmony, because it amuses me.
00:36:18.760 Do you ever sing in Italian still?
00:36:20.020 So the first thing I learned, I got in the opera when I was 22, because I couldn't get an agent.
00:36:28.040 I couldn't get an agent because I couldn't get my SAG card.
00:36:31.580 So I couldn't audition for commercials and roles in TV, which is what I wanted to do.
00:36:37.600 And so it's this weird circle.
00:36:39.060 You can't get your SAG card unless you've done union work, can't get an agent unless you have a SAG card, and you can't get a SAG card.
00:36:44.740 Anyhow, if you got in the opera, you become a member of the American Guild of Musical Artists.
00:36:52.260 And as such, you can buy a SAG card.
00:36:55.660 You pay your dues, because they're all sister unions.
00:36:57.860 Of course, loophole.
00:36:59.700 So anyway, I'm 22 years old.
00:37:01.280 I can't get in the Screen Actors Guild.
00:37:04.080 But I had a buddy told me about this loophole who sang in the opera, and the opera had these open auditions every Thursday, last Thursday of the month.
00:37:13.460 So I went to the library, and I asked the librarian for the shortest Italian aria ever written.
00:37:19.620 She knew of such a thing, and she said, oh, you want the coat aria for Cuccini's Lobo M.
00:37:25.200 All right?
00:37:26.160 So I took home, it was a record, and I recorded it on a tape, and I walked around with these things called Walkman.
00:37:33.900 This is 1982, I guess.
00:37:36.960 And so I listened to Sam Raimi sing the coat aria for like a month in Baltimore.
00:37:42.320 Didn't know what the words meant.
00:37:44.080 Wanted to get the sounds in my head and memorize the tune.
00:37:48.080 But I did.
00:37:48.820 And so I went to the Lyric Opera House on a Thursday, and I sang it for the Chorus Master and a couple of swells.
00:37:57.040 Do you still remember it?
00:37:58.520 Becchia zimara senti, irresto al pianto, shende re sacriamontio devi, leme kratzia recevi.
00:38:12.920 It goes on.
00:38:13.520 Basically, I think it's Rodolfo saying goodbye to his coat.
00:38:20.680 Very cold.
00:38:22.700 And Mimi, of course, is dying of tuberculosis consumption.
00:38:26.380 As everybody did at one point.
00:38:28.580 As they do.
00:38:29.100 And he gives her his coat so she can live a little longer.
00:38:36.360 And he loved his coat because it kept him warm and the pockets held his poetry.
00:38:41.200 He was a true bohemian.
00:38:43.060 So he sings a love song to his coat and then gives it to the girl with tuberculosis.
00:38:47.860 It's an opera.
00:38:48.700 And what?
00:38:49.060 Does she die?
00:38:49.900 Sure.
00:38:50.080 Yeah, they all die.
00:38:57.220 But here's a crazy, here's a moral of the story.
00:39:02.620 Not that there has to be one, but I stayed in for eight years.
00:39:08.700 Right?
00:39:09.240 I got my union card.
00:39:11.320 They let me in.
00:39:12.200 Uh, and it was, the music, the music was amazing.
00:39:19.920 Like, like world, I'd never heard a world-class orchestra play.
00:39:23.320 And I, I couldn't believe I was given access just to be around this level of, this level of talent.
00:39:29.700 It was mind-boggling.
00:39:31.100 And the girls.
00:39:32.900 Yeah.
00:39:33.460 What are the ladies of opera like?
00:39:34.720 Well, I'll tell you something.
00:39:36.360 Probably a little high-strung, I would think.
00:39:38.400 I'm 22.
00:39:39.460 I'm dressed as a Viking.
00:39:40.460 I read, I'm singing real loud in languages I don't really understand.
00:39:46.320 There are 80 people in the rep company.
00:39:48.740 45 of them are women.
00:39:50.200 Yeah.
00:39:50.640 35 are men.
00:39:54.340 30 of the men have zero interest in 100% of the women.
00:39:58.640 For sure.
00:40:00.440 The remaining five guys, three of them are married.
00:40:03.180 The only other single straight dude.
00:40:04.300 Basically, you're the straight hairdresser.
00:40:06.280 It was.
00:40:07.280 It's just unfair.
00:40:08.140 It was me and one other guy.
00:40:09.360 Like, and he had a mole on his eyelid, the size of my thumb with thick black hair.
00:40:17.220 I'm 22, dressed as a pirate.
00:40:20.100 And the girls are all dressed up like French courtesans, plunging necklines.
00:40:25.060 And, oh, it's been for eight years.
00:40:27.560 That's unbelievable.
00:40:28.860 Is anyone who is in that company still there?
00:40:33.080 No.
00:40:33.580 The opera company folded.
00:40:34.920 The Baltimore Opera folded about six years ago.
00:40:39.220 I was invited back, you know, because Dirty Jobs had been a thing, and the list of people
00:40:44.500 who sang opera and crawled through a sewer apparently was pretty short.
00:40:48.160 The union's set pretty small.
00:40:49.500 Yeah, so I went back for a fundraiser or two.
00:40:53.720 Couldn't save it.
00:40:55.140 You know, there's a lot in Baltimore that's tough to save right now.
00:40:58.440 But I did go back, and I did a one-man show in Baltimore called The Dirty Truth, and sold
00:41:08.840 tickets and sold out the opera house.
00:41:11.400 I stood on stage for about two hours in my hometown, telling stories about Dirty Jobs and
00:41:20.080 answering questions and telling the story I just told you.
00:41:23.480 And it was one of those moments where I was like, you know what, I don't know if it's
00:41:28.180 full circle, but man, it was super strange and fun and gratifying to go back and do that.
00:41:34.780 Because for me, you know, and this is just the cognitive dissonance and one of the things
00:41:40.500 that people always ask me, they're always surprised by the opera.
00:41:44.260 Because they saw 20 years of Dirty Jobs and violating barnyard animals and crawling through
00:41:49.700 sewers.
00:41:50.280 And those two things aren't supposed to exist in the same place.
00:41:53.300 No, they're not.
00:41:54.960 Except they are.
00:41:56.300 The guy who made this table is supposed to be able to quote Robert Frost.
00:42:01.440 Right.
00:42:02.120 And the guy who writes poetry is supposed to be able to, right?
00:42:05.880 And so I didn't really give it much thought until later in life.
00:42:10.800 But my time in the opera, my time on the QVC cable shopping channel in the middle of the
00:42:16.420 night trying to figure out how to talk about product that I could neither explain or justify
00:42:22.900 for eight minutes on live TV.
00:42:24.440 Those are the best times of my life.
00:42:27.680 And the training.
00:42:30.180 No.
00:42:30.960 I mean, I didn't realize I was getting the second best education of my life.
00:42:35.820 The best education started with episode one of Dirty Jobs and went on for 20 years.
00:42:41.000 And the third best was the community college that I attended out of high school, which changed
00:42:48.360 everything for me.
00:42:50.420 So today, yeah, if I mouth off a lot about this, it's because I really do believe that
00:42:58.760 when I get criticized for being anti-college or being anti-education, I really only think
00:43:05.440 it's because people must think if I'm going to try and make a persuasive case for this
00:43:10.740 kind of work, I must be against this kind of work.
00:43:13.740 I'm not.
00:43:15.120 All right?
00:43:15.720 I like the opera.
00:43:17.360 I like to sing.
00:43:19.020 I crawl through sewers for a living.
00:43:20.880 I run a foundation that is completely committed to making a more persuasive case for the opportunities
00:43:30.620 that exist in this country and to aggressively but good-humorly, hopefully, debunk the stigmas,
00:43:38.100 stereotypes, myths, and misperceptions that are keeping millions of kids from exploring
00:43:43.840 real opportunities that are just sitting right in front of us.
00:43:47.520 I wish the former president all the luck in the world in his pitch to bring more people
00:43:56.820 into the fascinating future of artificial elegance.
00:44:01.240 I really do.
00:44:03.200 And with that, I got to ask about the sheep castration story because now that we've-
00:44:09.560 You've done a deep dive, haven't you?
00:44:12.180 We've done a very deep dive.
00:44:13.680 We do.
00:44:14.000 So, sheep castration, yeah, that was a biggie.
00:44:17.980 If you set the table for us, though, what role does sheep castration play in agriculture?
00:44:23.660 Why would one be castrating sheep?
00:44:26.300 You don't basically adhere to the essential rules of animal husbandry.
00:44:31.320 Your herd's out of control.
00:44:32.860 The flock is out of control.
00:44:34.260 Everything's out of control.
00:44:35.300 This is, in virtually every species, the males, need to be controlled in this way.
00:44:45.100 Like, I was at a hatchery one time, Murray McMurray, up in, I think it was Iowa.
00:44:51.100 So, you know, they ship like 100,000 little chicks out every day in the U.S. mail.
00:44:59.840 People get, people order, you can order chickens through the mail.
00:45:02.380 Oh, yeah.
00:45:02.680 They do this all the time.
00:45:04.380 If it's a girl chick, if it's a boy chicken, well, you're, that's called fertilizer.
00:45:12.840 They're ground up.
00:45:14.240 Really?
00:45:14.700 Oh, yeah.
00:45:15.340 Yeah.
00:45:15.520 I mean, that's why, how many roosters do you see in the barnyard?
00:45:19.360 There's usually like one or two.
00:45:20.540 Yeah.
00:45:20.900 And there's like a bunch of ants.
00:45:22.240 Of course.
00:45:22.740 Yeah.
00:45:23.600 So for that reason, you know, if you're not castrating them, you're getting rid of them
00:45:27.080 somehow or another.
00:45:29.400 What happened in 2008 actually turned into a TED Talk.
00:45:34.440 But it didn't start that way.
00:45:36.040 It started with me trying very hard not to run afoul of the network.
00:45:40.820 Because after the first few seasons of the show, something really crazy happened.
00:45:47.340 It, it became a phenomenon and the network had no choice really, but to enthusiastically
00:45:53.460 get behind it because it was launching all kinds of other shows as well.
00:45:57.740 But Dirty Jobs broke a lot of eggs.
00:45:59.960 There was what we called an army of angry acronyms because everybody watches TV and if you're
00:46:06.680 an expert in a chosen field and you're, and you see me doing something wrong, whether it's
00:46:11.300 OSHA or the EPA or the ASPCA or the Humane Society, you write a letter, right?
00:46:16.800 Of course.
00:46:17.740 And my boss had many letters and many files from lots of angry acronyms.
00:46:21.760 So when I went to do the sheep castration story, I wanted to be very careful to do it right
00:46:27.260 because I didn't want to get thrown off the air.
00:46:30.560 And I, and I called first to, you know, make, make sure I understood what was going to be
00:46:35.480 happening.
00:46:35.900 And then I called PETA and I said, look, I'm going to be, I'm going to be castrating
00:46:39.820 lambs.
00:46:41.020 Is there an approved method?
00:46:42.380 And they said, oh, absolutely.
00:46:44.380 You know, and they described the rubber band, a thick rubber band is placed over the scrotum
00:46:49.820 of the animal, the flow of blood is slowly retarded.
00:46:53.680 And eventually the business just falls off a couple of days later.
00:46:56.420 Right.
00:46:56.980 It's going to be amazing TV.
00:46:58.760 Sounds good.
00:47:00.160 We get there.
00:47:02.480 Great Colorado.
00:47:04.460 Oh, I'm on horses riding through the mountains.
00:47:06.520 It's beautiful.
00:47:07.300 We get all the sheep gathered up.
00:47:08.820 We separate and get the lambs there.
00:47:10.580 I got the rancher.
00:47:11.440 I got his wife.
00:47:13.000 And, uh, the first lamb is put up on the fence and the legs are spread and the rancher
00:47:17.940 reaches into his pocket to pull out one of the rubber bands to put around the scrotum,
00:47:22.320 except it's not a rubber band.
00:47:24.280 It's a knife.
00:47:26.080 And the knife flicks open and you can see the sudden glinting off the steel blade.
00:47:31.680 And very quickly he, he leans down and he pulls the scrotum towards him and he cuts off
00:47:35.640 the tip, drops the tip in a bucket.
00:47:38.080 Then he cuts off the lamb's tail called docking.
00:47:40.760 Yeah.
00:47:41.080 That goes in the bucket.
00:47:42.100 Then he pushes the scrotum back, revealing two testicles, this, and then he leans down
00:47:47.920 and he bites him.
00:47:50.220 He yanks his head back and testicles come out of the scrotum and he spits them into the barrel.
00:47:56.480 This all happens very quickly.
00:47:58.260 Stunning.
00:47:59.460 Remarkable.
00:48:00.400 I said something I've never said on Dirty Jobs before because we never do second takes
00:48:04.680 or anything, but I said, cut, stop, stop.
00:48:08.340 I said, what are you doing?
00:48:10.160 And he explained what he was doing and that that's how it had been done for many years.
00:48:14.240 And, um, and that's just kind of the way it was.
00:48:17.020 And I said, you don't understand because what I think is going on is what happens in reality
00:48:22.300 TV.
00:48:22.880 The guy had seen the show and he wanted to do something spectacular.
00:48:27.180 Of course.
00:48:27.760 I'm like, dude, we can't be biting balls.
00:48:30.200 It's a family show.
00:48:31.400 Okay.
00:48:31.960 Well, I don't care what you think.
00:48:33.580 We, we can't do this.
00:48:35.700 And he says, well, what do you want to do?
00:48:37.600 I'm like, I want to do it the proper way.
00:48:39.760 I want to put the rubber band on and so forth.
00:48:41.980 The Sony is like, well, we could do that.
00:48:44.620 You know, it's not very nice for the lamb.
00:48:46.480 I'm like, not very nice for the lamb.
00:48:47.720 You just got the balls off the thing.
00:48:49.180 What are we talking about?
00:48:50.700 So the cameras fire back up.
00:48:52.320 He goes over to this tackle box and he comes out with the rubber band and he gives it to
00:48:56.320 me and I put it over the scrotum of the next lamb.
00:48:59.500 And we put the little lamb down on the, on the ground.
00:49:02.260 And it's trembling on account of the rubber band around the scrotum.
00:49:06.280 Yeah.
00:49:07.080 And it kind of walks over into the corner and kind of turns around and lies down and
00:49:13.040 is in, is in clear distress.
00:49:15.520 I'm looking at the lamb.
00:49:17.300 I say to him, you know, how, um, how long is he going to be like this?
00:49:21.300 It's two, three days.
00:49:23.960 Meanwhile, the lamb that he had just, this thing's walking around, not a care in the world,
00:49:31.500 already had forgotten.
00:49:34.000 I mean, someone just bit his balls off.
00:49:35.460 Gone.
00:49:36.060 Yeah.
00:49:36.520 Nah, he's just getting all of his life now.
00:49:38.180 Nah, the balls are gone, but you know, it's okay.
00:49:40.220 There's no blood.
00:49:41.120 He's just off pursuing a life of, you know, whatever religious fulfillment a lamb would
00:49:45.480 do without his testicles at that point.
00:49:47.600 And this poor thing is curled up in the, in the corner.
00:49:50.220 So we kept filming and I castrated probably 30 lambs that day.
00:49:57.760 I, I've been.
00:49:58.540 Did you feel any guilt at all?
00:49:59.880 No, no.
00:50:00.680 It was actually very quick.
00:50:02.040 It was, it's, it's a way more efficient way to do it.
00:50:04.960 Wait, you castrated them orally?
00:50:07.560 Oh, sure.
00:50:08.740 Google it.
00:50:09.260 Lamb castration, micro, heck of a thing.
00:50:10.980 With your teeth.
00:50:12.340 Well, yeah.
00:50:12.820 What else are you going to bite them with?
00:50:17.040 It feels like you're crossing some important barrier into a whole new world.
00:50:21.440 Oh, look.
00:50:21.920 When you bite an animal's balls off.
00:50:23.340 There are moments in Dirty Jive.
00:50:24.780 Like inside you, I mean.
00:50:26.140 You can't be the same man you were that morning.
00:50:27.980 That's, it's like a German porno, right?
00:50:30.220 You just, once you see it, you're like, good grief.
00:50:33.680 Yes, I felt very strongly that we, that, that, that something extraordinary had happened
00:50:40.220 on the show.
00:50:41.220 But, I also felt very strongly that something more important had happened prior to the show.
00:50:48.580 I had been given bad information by experts.
00:50:52.160 I had called the expert authority.
00:50:55.000 I had called PETA.
00:50:56.460 I called the Humane Society as well.
00:50:58.900 The best minds in the business, the people who live to write disappointing emails to my
00:51:03.720 boss instructed me on the proper way to remove the testicles from a creature.
00:51:11.220 And they were wrong.
00:51:13.620 Now, optically, it might have looked a little better.
00:51:17.680 In their minds, I think they liked the idea of a rubber band instead of a knife and teeth.
00:51:24.480 But they were wrong.
00:51:27.700 That lamb, castrated the proper way, was the very embodiment of abject misery.
00:51:35.080 And I saw 30 or 40 more that day.
00:51:38.300 Last question, though.
00:51:40.500 Obviously, I feel sorry for the lambs, but it does sound more humane just to bite them
00:51:43.500 off.
00:51:43.860 Much more.
00:51:44.820 But for you as a man, how hard was it?
00:51:48.200 I mean, the first oral castration is probably the hardest, I think.
00:51:51.360 People say that.
00:51:52.360 Again, if you're going to make t-shirts, put that on too.
00:51:55.240 Too amazing?
00:51:57.020 Was it like skydiving?
00:51:58.260 Like, I'm just not going to think about it?
00:51:59.460 I'm out the door?
00:52:00.060 You know, yes, in a way.
00:52:03.240 But there's also a thing that happens with cameras that, well, sometimes it makes you
00:52:10.840 foolish.
00:52:11.500 Sometimes it makes you brave.
00:52:13.200 Yes.
00:52:13.680 Sometimes it's really hard to know what the difference is.
00:52:16.260 But I've done a lot of things on that show because I was aware that we were making a show.
00:52:22.260 And it's my job.
00:52:23.480 Of course.
00:52:23.740 My job on Dirty Jobs is to try.
00:52:26.740 And it's maybe the greatest scam of all time that I've pulled off, not even knowing I was
00:52:32.740 trying to pull it off.
00:52:33.700 But I'm not judged on that show by my ability to successfully do it.
00:52:38.860 No, of course not.
00:52:39.720 I'm judged by my willingness to try.
00:52:41.420 Your willingness to do it.
00:52:42.340 And of course you're going to bite the balls.
00:52:44.380 You're going to try, you know.
00:52:45.920 But really, how are you going to be?
00:52:47.280 I mean, I got the guy right there.
00:52:49.240 Albert was his name.
00:52:50.180 I can still see his mustache, little traces of vast defrons dangling from him.
00:52:56.920 So yeah, I mean, it's a heck of a thing.
00:52:58.640 So I know, I know I'm making an extraordinary moment in television.
00:53:03.120 I know at a glance it looks salacious and probably unjustifiable.
00:53:06.920 But I also know, vis-a-vis the trembling creature in the corner of the pen, I also know
00:53:13.000 that there's some weird greater truth, like, throbbing under all of us.
00:53:17.180 That's right.
00:53:17.700 That's exactly right.
00:53:18.460 And so I bit them off and I spit them in the bucket.
00:53:22.260 And then I took the knife and I removed the tail from the next one and then the tip of
00:53:26.840 the scrotum and I got in a pretty good rhythm and felt pretty good about my castration abilities
00:53:31.360 when the sun finally set in Craig, Colorado, over the Rocky Mountains.
00:53:36.380 And the last lamb had been taken care of.
00:53:40.340 Yes, there were Rocky Mountain oysters.
00:53:42.280 We fried them up.
00:53:43.200 And yeah, we ate them.
00:53:44.200 That was Dirty Jobs, 2008.
00:53:47.480 Nominated for an Emmy, that.
00:53:49.940 You're great, Mike Rowe.
00:53:50.960 Thank you.
00:53:51.540 Yeah.
00:53:51.840 Don't mention it.
00:53:52.480 Thank you.
00:53:54.160 Yeah.
00:53:56.200 Tell us about the townworm.
00:53:57.840 Come on.
00:53:58.720 Come on.
00:54:00.900 Come on.
00:54:06.200 Hey.
00:54:09.920 Yay.
00:54:10.500 Going in and out.
00:54:12.400 You're welcome.
00:54:13.240 You're welcome.
00:54:13.880 Come on.