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Hey, it s Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs.
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This is called The Art of Charm with Jordan Harbinger, but between you and I, it s disgusting.
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Welcome to the Art of Charm.
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I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
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Today, I ve got a, I m super excited about this guest.
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I ve been excited about this guest for a really long time.
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I ve watched and read just about everything that he s created.
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He started in the opera, believe it or not, to get more popular with the opposite sex, and that was a backdoor for him to get a SAG card, Screen Actors Guild, to make some money.
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Because when I think ladies  man, I think falsetto and a viking hat.
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He went to the opera, he went on Home Shopping Network and made fun of the products, and he s done just so many really interesting things on television and beyond.
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One of the central tenets of this show is that no advice may be given unless that person has direct or nearly direct experience with the same or similar situation.
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And one reason why I admire this man so much is because he s getting the experience the whole time.
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It s not a documentary where he s filming other poor schlubs doing something he d never subject himself to.
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He s in it, often literally, and I think there s so much here.
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By the way, if you re new to the show, we d love to send you some top episodes and the AOC toolbox.
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That s where we discuss concepts like reading body language and charismatic nonverbal communication, attraction science, negotiation techniques.
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networking and influence strategies, persuasion tactics, and everything else that we teach here at The Art of Charm.
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Check that out at theartofcharm.com slash toolbox, or in our iPhone app at theartofcharm.com slash iPhone.
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Also at theartofcharm.com slash podcast, you can find the full show notes for this and all previous episodes of the show.
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We re glad to have you with us here today at AOC.
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There s no need for further intro.
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Enjoy this episode with Mr. Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs.
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My dad, when he found out that I was gonna interview you, he said, you know what you should do is wear some dirty clothes because you re interviewing the guy from Dirty Jobs.
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And I thought, well, that s why he s no longer the chief creative director of The Art of Charm.
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That was the last straw.
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Yeah, it s a little bit much.
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He s a Ford guy, by the way.
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He wanted to make sure that you re still driving that truck they gave you for one day.
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Is it really?
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Yeah.
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Oh, okay.
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I got it.
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It s parked right downstairs.
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Oh, no kidding.
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I ve never in my life bought a new car ever.
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Really?
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And I haven t purchased a piece of clothing probably at least 15 years, maybe more.
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Because you keep getting things for free or because.
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No, I steal.
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You just like.
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I steal them.
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Shoplifting.
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No, I would never do that, but there s sort of this unspoken thing on a, like on a commercial shoot.
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They bring in wardrobe and nobody knows what you re going to wear, but I always wear the same crap.
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I put it on and they bring alternates and everything else, and at the end I just take them.
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And they don t care.
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They don t care.
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They re so happy we had a good day.
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Keep the clothes.
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So that s why I m almost always dressed in an outfit that millions of people have seen me in.
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Almost always.
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And it s weird.
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That s why you re so recognizable.
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It s part of it.
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You re wearing the same thing.
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I went without the hat today, though, which is a bold departure, I think, for me.
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Well, we were gonna bring you a hat, and we were like, oh, we forgot an Art of Charm hat, and then we thought, he s got 150 hats at home.
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I don t have any that say charm, though.
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Tell me about your podcast.
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What is this?
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What is the Art of Charm that you re looking to unlock?
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So essentially what we do on the show is we ask brilliant people, such as yourself, interesting questions.
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and try to make their wisdom available to everyone.
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So, we ve had people like Larry King talk about interesting conversations.
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We had General McChrystal come on and talk about making tough decisions because he s made a lot of those.
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General Hayden came on and talked about
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some of the ethics involved in surveillance and things like that, and we ve had body language experts and hostage negotiators come on and talk about negotiation and things like that, so we thought that something that people can apply, rather than just be quote-unquote inspired, because inspiration s kind of cheap, it s more like you can do it, but can you do it?
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So you ve redefined charm to include elements of challenge, inspiration, obviously,
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but rooted in a broad-based level of overarching practicality.
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Exactly.
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I thought that s what I said five seconds ago.
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You did, but I don t feel like you used any of those words.
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No, I didn t, I didn t really.
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I m going to next time, though.
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Okay.
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So when we edit that part out and then I say it again on camera, it s gonna sound really good.
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It ll sound good, but it won t be charming.
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See, what we just did was charming.
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What you just described would be polished.
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In many ways, I believe the enemies of charm are deliberateness.
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In much the same way, I would argue that the enemies of authenticity are production.
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Yes.
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We put barriers in front of that which we declare to be our objective.
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We do it all the time.
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We do it with everything, in my humble view.
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Now, I agree with that.
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When the show first started, it was about taking off the social mask, the representative that everyone meets when you first put yourself out there.
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And when I was in law school, it was like, yo, in order to get a job, what you need to do is this, this, this, this, and this in the interview.
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And I thought, wait, isn t that not going to work when I m spending 25 hours a day with every single person in this office?
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They re gonna figure out pretty quick that me coming in dressed in a certain way, speaking a certain way, with perfect eye contact and a firm handshake,
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only lasted 40 minutes on a good day.
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It just proves you read the manual.
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Yeah, which is maybe what they want when you re becoming an attorney.
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Yeah, protocol.
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But not good for spending time in airport lounges with other people who are equally miserable.
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No, but therein lies the dichotomy, this idea that if you re in compliance, then you re in good graces.
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It s sort of like with OSHA, with safety, the idea that if you re in compliance, you re out of danger.
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It s fundamentally specious.
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It s not true.
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That organization must have
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multiple issues with what you ve done over the past few years, I would imagine.
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We inspired what I called an army of angry acronyms left in the wake of dirty jobs.
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I mean, OSHA certainly fired off more than a few strongly worded memos.
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The EPA was constantly at high alert, angry.
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PETA was probably the biggest source of
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congenital, predictable rage.
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The Humane Society was right there, even the FBI.
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I heard from the FBI on a couple occasions.
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What did they want?
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It was a crime scene cleanup thing, and they heard some things.
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See, the thing is, today, as you know, the interwebs, they re populated almost entirely by correctors.
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The world is standing by now to tell you that you got it wrong.
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Sure.
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And thanks to our devices, we can immediately find proof
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that we re right and the other person is wrong.
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Of course, they can find proof too because there s no end, right?
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There s just no end to the sources that can gain, say, the other source.
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And so we ve just become this extraordinarily pedantic people.
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And I think we ve confused noise and sound and argument with conversation and communication.
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At first, it was like, wow, this Mike Rowe guy s really funny.
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And then it was like, wow, his fans are, including us, even more ridiculous at some points.
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I mean, the letter you got from Fleet Week that was like, it s just annoying.
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I can t see the water on this day.
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And it s like, because there s a battleship in front of you full of veterans who just came back from a war zone.
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Sorry.
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Yeah, you know, just kind of risking their life for you.
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Yeah.
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That s all.
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I know it must be very annoying, very distracting.
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Yeah, messing up your view.
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Sorry your dog gets scared when they do flyovers of fighter jets from pilots that have been getting shot at.
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God, people.
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It s just unreal.
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People, you just love them.
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I mean, it s enough to make you crazy, but the truth is you have to keep reminding yourself, if everybody saw it your way, I mean, really, whether it s politics or social or whatever it is, if everybody agreed on everything, why get out of bed?
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Sure, yeah, I mean, we d be in North Korea, so.
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Basically.
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You d have to get out of bed for other reasons if you had a bed.
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And it s cold up there.
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It is.
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And they all talk different.
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They do.
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They talk different.
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That part s definitely true.
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Have you been to North Korea?
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I have.
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I have been there four times.
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Why?
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First time I went because I thought, this place is weird, I gotta go check it out.
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This was almost 10 years ago.
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The second time I went was because I talked about it on this show that we re doing right now, and people said, wait a minute, you can go check that place out?
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And I said, yeah, we can go on tours and you can see it for yourself.
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So I brought a group of show fans and friends with me to North Korea, talked about that on the show as well.
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And that filled up another trip and then another trip.
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But when I go there, I bring people to talk and see the culture and engage with the people, because as you might imagine, there s a lot of normal people there that live in a regime that they know at some level is not working out for them.
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At every single level.
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When you go there, they ask for things like,
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that camera that you re using, how does it work?
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And you re explaining to them things like iPads, cameras, phones.
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They re looking at videos, and they can t believe it.
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And they ve heard of Facebook, but they ve never seen it.
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And every time we go there, the guides will say, do you have any games on this?
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Because they maybe never played one.
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And so they ll sit there and play all day.
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You know, I used to read all the time, like back in the 20s and 30s, accounts of civilizations or tribes being discovered, you know, who had never seen anything post-industrial revolution.
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And obviously, it s harder and harder to find that today.
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But I remember like 15 years ago, I was hiking from Cusco to Machu Picchu.
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Yeah, my dad did that.
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It was a great hike.
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We were headed up to Titicaca, but along the way, we took the side hike.
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You know, we hired some, they re not Sherpas over there, but we just hired some help.
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We had a ton of gear and we were lazy and we were just slumming it.
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These kids humped our crap for about four and a half days and they were just amazing.
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I mean, they would run, they would sleep in, like we d start around seven, they d get up around 10 and pass us around 10.30 or 11 and then make our lunch by the time we got there.
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With all your stuff.
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With all our gear in sandals running.
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I can still hear them running behind me.
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It was like, con permiso, con permiso.
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And they d run by.
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Anyway, we tipped them, obviously.
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But I had this old Walkman, this old Sony Walkman.
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And Soundgarden had just come out.
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Oh, yeah.
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Right?
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Sure.
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So Superunknown, right?
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Right.
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It s the first album.
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And I had been listening to that.
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And I put these headphones on this kid.
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And I said, hey, what do you think of this?
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Because he played the flute.
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Right, some sort of wooden thing.
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So this is the first time he ever heard an electric guitar.
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It s the first time he ever heard that big screeching tenor harmony.
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It s the first time he heard a drum kit like that.
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And you could just see his head exploding.
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He couldn t have looked at me with more wonder had I pulled my own head off and presented it to him while it was still talking.
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So I said, look, keep it.
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You know, just keep, enjoy the album, enjoy the thing.
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But then when I left, I was like, oh crap, what have I done?
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You know, like the... Polluted the... Well, it s like the Prime Directive on Star Trek, you know?
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You messed with something and what happened with the batteries ran out.
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Or like, is there a giant monument now there somewhere that looks like a Walkman, you know?
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1989 first version one Sony Walkman with like the futuristic looking digital phone on the front.
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Right.
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So, you know, the ultimate arbiter of knowledge is Chris Cornell.
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Right.
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Right.
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We have to consult the the Oracle, the records.
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That s like the Boy Scout rule is what, take only pictures, leave only footprints, and possibly a Walkman with a Soundgarden cassette in it.
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Take all you want, eat all you take.
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Yes.
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10 years ago, or over 10 years ago now, I m watching TV in my friend s basement where essentially I was living and studying for the bar exam.
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and I m miserable as can be starting for the New York bar exam, and I see this guy sticking his hand deep inside some animal, and I remember thinking, this is really cool.
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I mean, how do I get that job?
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And at this point, you have your hand up a bull s ass, so I should have probably taken a cue.
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about my career choices from that, thinking, you know, doing the whole compare-contrast back then, in retrospect, 2020 hindsight.
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And it seems like now that we ve come full circle, AOC Art of Charm is very big on pushing outside the comfort zone, making sure that we are always pushing that bubble.
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And you ve got that same thing as well.
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You ve got the parapetia.
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Anagnoresis and peripateia, that s right.
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I only got to the last part.
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Well, you know, anagnoresis is a Greek word for discovery.
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Peripateia is a form of discovery.
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Aristotle basically argued that all insight comes through a series of discoveries and great narratives are informed by anagnoresis that lead
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to a peripeteia, and that s a discovery that changes the direction of the narrative, right?
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So when Bruce Willis realizes at the end of The Sixth Sense that he s dead, that s a peripeteia, right?
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Now, along the way, he has all these anagnoreses, but when he makes that kind of realization, that s when the narrative, the story changes, that s when his life changes.
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You know, just like when Oedipus realizes, you know,
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He has an anagnoresis, Oedipus does in Act II, when he meets this hot older chick, and they start to make love and fall in love, and then they have babies, you know, and then they re married.
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All anagnoresis.
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Act V, he realizes the hot older chick is his mom.
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Oh, man.
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Peripeteia.
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Right.
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It changes the direction of the narrative.
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So mine would have been sitting in an office in Manhattan, checking for commas in an 800-page document and going, I wish I had my hand in a bull s butt somewhere like Mike Rowe.
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Yeah, I mean, look, people would look at Dirty Jobs and find whatever they were seeking.
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You can look at that show, you can look at that segment and see a big cautionary tale.
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And a lot of people did.
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A lot of people watched it with their kids to say, see, could be worse, could be that guy.
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But equally passionate among the viewers were the people who watched and said, see, there s dignity in that.
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You know how important it is to put your hand up the bull s ass?
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It s kind of critical because that s where you insert the probe that stimulates the prostate that ultimately triggers the ejaculate, which allows you to artificially inseminate 100 cows.
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You take artificial insemination out of modern agriculture and McDonald s isn t feeding billions and billions.
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This is not going to happen.
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So, you know, that show was a hot mess.
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It was a scatological romp.
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It was exploding toilets and misadventures and animal husbandry, but we were always able to find a peripatetic moment, either for me.
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I mean, that was really my job.
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You know, I wasn t a host.
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I was more of this avatar, a guest.
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Sure.
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It was very, very liberating not to have to tell the viewer the truth of a thing, you know, not to be judged by one of the correctors we were talking about, but rather try it as an apprentice would on the first day and do your best.
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Maybe you re right.
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Maybe you re wrong.
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What do you think when people say things like, oh yeah, I watch your show with my kids so I can tell them what happens if he doesn t go to college.
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I mean, that at some point, if I were in your shoes then, I would be annoyed by that.
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I mean, you can t afford to be.
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I mean, the dirty jobs first and foremost was an entertainment proposition.
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So when people stop me because they know me or they want to talk about the show, I ve never looked at them as fans.
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I ve looked at them as my boss.
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You know, so like when your boss stops you to talk about your work, you better freaking listen.
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You know, you may not like it, but you have to listen.
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You know, I used to tell this story in Newark.
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I got off a plane, I was walking through the terminal, and the first guy that stopped me, he was on a ladder up in the ceiling.
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And he came down from the ceiling and said, hey man, I just got to tell you, my wife and my kids and I, we watch your show, and it s just so great because I can show them
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opportunities that they didn t know existed.
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And I can use what you re doing as proof positive that opportunity s not dead.
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And then 15 feet later, a guy in a Brooks Brothers suit stopped me, Wall Street type, you know, and he said, man.
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SPEAKER_00
I know the type.
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Watch your show with the wife and kids every Tuesday.
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SPEAKER_00
It s so much fun.
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SPEAKER_00
You re very funny.
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And I can point to my kid and say, see, see what happens if you don t go to college.
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SPEAKER_00
And so, look, in the end, not showbiz.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the boss analogy works great, because in truth, if you treat fans like they owe you something, you won t have them for very long.
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Nobody likes a kiss-ass.
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Right, and then you re in trouble.
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Why are you always running towards the thing that makes you uncomfortable?
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, that s something you ve mentioned in some of your posts and in some of the shows.
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Why is that sort of a personal motto?
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It s not really, to be honest, in real life, that doesn t inform my every position.
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But in TV, it does.
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Because in TV, I believe, certainly in 2001, the Discovery Channel was completely reliant on a nonfiction model that elevated the host and the expert to a level of absolute primacy.
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SPEAKER_00
So, if you saw somebody on Discovery, it was because they knew what they were doing, they knew what they were talking about.
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SPEAKER_00
It could be Jacques Cousteau, it could be David Attenborough, you know, it didn t matter.
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SPEAKER_00
But fundamentally, they were an arbiter of accuracy.
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In the wake of that, my feeling was they had an opportunity to be an arbiter of authenticity.
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SPEAKER_00
It s a different model.
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It doesn t require a host.
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It requires a guest.
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It doesn t require an expert.
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It requires an apprentice.
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SPEAKER_00
So the idea of saying, look, I want to do a show that fundamentally challenges the underlying perception you have of your own brand, that s a tough sell.
1
SPEAKER_00
But they gave it a try, to their credit, because Dirty Jobs is still fundamentally rooted in curiosity.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we were still satisfying curiosity, but I had assumed this different sort of mode, this cipher of sorts, and that changed everything.
1
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It just means I didn t have to ever be right.
1
SPEAKER_01
Did you come up with those kind of rules for the creative process, or was that something where they were like, look, we need somebody who s gonna do it this way, and you just nailed it?
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, it certainly wasn t that, and as much as I d like to tell you that
1
SPEAKER_00
All this is the result of a well-executed plan.
1
SPEAKER_00
I kind of Forrest Gumped my way into it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I knew I didn t want to be held to the same standards as a host.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I d been freelancing as a host for 15 years before that here in San Francisco, Evening Magazine.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, I mean, that s what I did for 10, 12 years.
1
SPEAKER_00
I would go out and I would host a show from a restaurant or a winery or someplace.
1
SPEAKER_00
And hosts and reporters, they re, with respect, they re empty suits.
1
SPEAKER_00
Commodities, essentially, of talent.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, we re interchangeable.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, why do you imagine the news looks the way it looks in every market?
1
SPEAKER_00
Why does FM radio sound the way it sounds in every market?
1
SPEAKER_00
Once you codify the system and then you start putting humans in it, all they can really do to find certainty in their life is something derivative.
1
SPEAKER_00
They have to imitate something that they saw before that makes sense to their brain.
1
SPEAKER_00
So pretty soon, all the DJs talk like this.
1
SPEAKER_00
What the hell is that?
1
SPEAKER_00
Why does that happen?
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, as a host, I was doing the same thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, hi, San Francisco, Mike Rowe here tonight on Evening Magazine, blah, blah, blah.
1
SPEAKER_00
I listen to those old tapes.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m like, Jesus, what were you doing?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, a little painful.
1
SPEAKER_01
What are you doing?
2
SPEAKER_03
Why are you wearing makeup?
2
SPEAKER_03
Why do you look at a prompter and read it in an attempt to convince someone you re not reading it?
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it does make sense.
2
SPEAKER_03
Barriers to authenticity, right?
2
SPEAKER_03
So anyway, all of that sort of informed the first episodes of Dirty Jobs.
2
SPEAKER_03
And once people started to watch it, it became for sale.
2
SPEAKER_02
Why the emphasis on authenticity?
2
SPEAKER_02
I mean, this is something that we focus on at AOC all the time.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s all about authenticity, becoming more authentic, trying to ditch the performance aspect of things.
2
SPEAKER_02
Even the show that I do all the time, the intro, nothing has got to be scripted because it just comes across as plastic.
2
SPEAKER_02
And people want to get to know, nowadays, people want to get to know you.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s not 1940 radio where you re a disembodied talking voice or a TV host with the Evening Magazine.
2
SPEAKER_02
It seems like you swam upstream in some ways, trying to become authentic in a market that wasn t necessarily thinking that they wanted that at the time.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I did, but don t confuse it with bravery or foresight.
2
SPEAKER_03
I swam with the salmon.
2
SPEAKER_03
I was gonna say, the salmon of showbiz here.
2
SPEAKER_03
Well, before Dirty Jobs, I was right in the middle of the herd.
2
SPEAKER_03
It took me 15 years of sort of mastering my toolbox, you know, and understanding what worked and what could get me paid.
2
SPEAKER_03
You know, I was basically paid to impersonate a host.
2
SPEAKER_03
for 15 years, and I became facile at it.
2
SPEAKER_03
I was never properly acquisitive.
2
SPEAKER_03
I got to know Tom Bergeron, and Tom hit it big as a host.
2
SPEAKER_03
I went as far as I wanted to go as a host.
2
SPEAKER_03
Dick Clark hired me.
2
SPEAKER_03
I worked for a lot of guys.
2
SPEAKER_03
But to me, the most interesting thing
2
SPEAKER_03
doing the traditional route was to approach hosting and TV like a tradesman would a project.
2
SPEAKER_03
So short term, small bites.
2
SPEAKER_03
Don t get stuck with a hit.
2
SPEAKER_03
God knows you don t want a hit.
2
SPEAKER_03
Then you re going to be, you re just sucked in forever.
2
SPEAKER_03
Right.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I felt really smart and clever for about 15 years working on jobs and projects that were so doomed, so poorly conceived, that no amount of luck or talent could possibly salvage them.
2
SPEAKER_03
I would attach myself to those projects, essentially like the Titanic looking for an iceberg, you know.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I knew they would fail, but I would do the best work I could.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so I never took heat for it.
2
SPEAKER_03
And in that way, I was able to work and take a lot of time off and feel all clever about it.
2
SPEAKER_03
Dirty jobs is just a miscalculation.
2
SPEAKER_03
Right.
2
SPEAKER_03
You accidentally made something that people really liked that went on for a long time.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_03
I made a deal with the network that allowed me to narrate their big tentpole shows, you know, like Planet Earth and
2
SPEAKER_03
big brand-friendly shows, and go on these various expeditions.
2
SPEAKER_03
And they said, let s do something to introduce you to the viewer.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I pitched what was at the time called Somebody s Gotta Do It, which I did here in town.
2
SPEAKER_03
And they said, well, let s call it Dirty Jobs and see if anybody cares.
2
SPEAKER_03
They had no idea anybody would watch.
2
SPEAKER_03
And they were horrified when they did, to tell you the truth.
2
SPEAKER_03
Why?
2
SPEAKER_03
For the same reason the GOP was horrified when Donald Trump was standing in the middle of that stage.
2
SPEAKER_03
for the same reason, because there s a cognitive dissonance.
2
SPEAKER_03
And big brands hate that.
2
SPEAKER_03
So Discovery, in 2004, this show went on the air in 2003.
2
SPEAKER_03
It raided through the roof.
2
SPEAKER_03
They took it off.
2
SPEAKER_03
It was off-brand.
2
SPEAKER_03
It scared the heck out of them.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I went back to going to Alaska and Egypt and doing these other shows.
2
SPEAKER_03
But then, about eight months later, you can t make this up, they had Steve Irwin, and they had the Mythbusters, and they had
2
SPEAKER_03
a bunch of new talent and a bunch of old talent, and they wanted to get a sense.
2
SPEAKER_03
They had like 18 new shows in development.
2
SPEAKER_03
So they sent them all to Vegas and locked like 500 people in a room for a weekend and made them watch everything.
2
SPEAKER_03
Big focus group.
2
SPEAKER_02
Focus group, ugh.
2
SPEAKER_03
Somebody, somebody at Discovery took an old episode of Dirty Jobs off the shelf and threw it in this pile of stuff, really just as fodder, you know?
2
SPEAKER_03
The results, after the focus group, were deeply disturbing to people who were in the business of predicting results.
2
SPEAKER_03
Oh, right.
2
SPEAKER_03
Dirty Jobs was by far the number one show, and I was rated very, very favorably as a host, which in my world is avatar, guest, that kind of thing.
2
SPEAKER_03
That s when they ordered the series.
2
SPEAKER_02
What were you thinking when they said, look, we want to do more Dirty Jobs?
2
SPEAKER_02
Were you elated when they wanted more Dirty Jobs, or were you like, ah, crap, I m stuck with this now?
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it was very much a careful what you wish for moment because remember my contract, you know, it just had three one-hour versions of jobs and then all the other stuff that we really made the deal for that s where the focus was.
2
SPEAKER_03
You know, dirty jobs happened because my mother called me.
2
SPEAKER_03
Here in San Francisco, she was in Baltimore, and my granddad was 91 or 92 at the time.
2
SPEAKER_03
He was dying.
2
SPEAKER_03
And this is a guy who could build a house without a blueprint.
2
SPEAKER_03
He was my inspiration as a kid, and I wanted to follow in his footsteps.
2
SPEAKER_03
He only went to the seventh grade, but master electrician, a plumber, steam fitter, pipe fitter, welder, mechanic, right?
2
SPEAKER_03
So, he s dying, and she calls and says, Michael, it would be so nice if your grandfather could turn on the TV before he goes and see something that looks like work.
2
SPEAKER_03
To see you do something that looks like work.
2
SPEAKER_03
So that s why it started.
2
SPEAKER_03
It was very personal.
2
SPEAKER_03
I was doing jobs that I knew would make my grandfather laugh.
2
SPEAKER_03
But of course, that s exactly why it worked.
2
SPEAKER_03
Because when it aired, people saw those jobs and said, oh, man, you should talk to my brother, sister, uncle, cousin, grandfather, dad, mom, right?
2
SPEAKER_03
And it just became very, very relatable overnight.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so when they ordered more, I was flattered.
2
SPEAKER_03
that people would like it, but that show was hard, right?
2
SPEAKER_03
I mean, you can t cheat on that show.
2
SPEAKER_03
The big advantage I had was I didn t have to be competent, and I didn t have to be correct, but I had to try, which means you shoot from sunup to sundown, and sometimes you re swinging a mallet, and sometimes you re dangling from a bridge, and sometimes you re testing a shark suit.
2
SPEAKER_03
You know, sometimes you re making big rocks out of little rocks.
2
SPEAKER_02
You gotta be in it, otherwise, yeah, it s like entertainment tonight, where they re standing in front of the video, playing behind them.
2
SPEAKER_02
You ve gotta stand up on the wind power thing in the wind with the guy going, oh yeah, don t step back any further, and it s like, you should have maybe said that five steps ago.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, you go in the hole.
2
SPEAKER_03
You don t talk about what s at the bottom of the opal mine shaft.
2
SPEAKER_03
You go in the shaft.
2
SPEAKER_03
You have to go to where the work is.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so that was the great trade and the beauty of dirty jobs.
2
SPEAKER_03
I had one job to try my best.
2
SPEAKER_03
And then right under that was say things that would amuse your best friend if you guys were watching this together.
2
SPEAKER_03
So most of what I said was an attempt to amuse myself.
2
SPEAKER_03
And most of what I did was an attempt to keep up.
2
SPEAKER_00
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SPEAKER_02
You re very anti-bromide, which is one of the reasons why I thought you were a really great fit for the show, because cliches and these little bits of advice and things like that are meaningless, in my opinion, are things you like to pick apart and that we like to pick apart, and shoot the platitude down, dissect the frog, and find out.
3
SPEAKER_01
that it has no guts.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think one of the most common bromides that we hear, especially my generation in my field with the entrepreneurship field or whatever, you hear these things like, follow your passion, follow your gut, follow your dreams, don t ever quit.
3
SPEAKER_01
I know that you don t agree with that as much as I also don t agree with that.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s my pet peeve, essentially.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, look, any time wisdom becomes conventional,
3
SPEAKER_00
and then written on a piece of parchment, and then framed in some cheap mahogany, and then hung in some godforsaken conference room.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s where you ve crossed over.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now you have a platitude, a bromide, a trope.
3
SPEAKER_00
People are so desperate to have a playbook that they gravitate toward one.
3
SPEAKER_00
But of course, it doesn t exist.
3
SPEAKER_00
And following your passion, we did a special on Dirty Jobs called The Dirty Truth, where essentially I walked through an old office building.
3
SPEAKER_00
and hung all of my least favorite bromides on the wall and then essentially tore them apart one at a time using dirty jobbers as proof to contradict the conventional wisdom.
3
SPEAKER_00
Never follow your passion.
3
SPEAKER_00
Always follow your passion was the first one I remember.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was like a rainbow and a flower or maybe some butterflies and a waterfall.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what the hell they re talking about.
3
SPEAKER_00
Passionate waterfalls and butterflies.
3
SPEAKER_00
But this idea
3
SPEAKER_00
Whether it s in work or in romance, you know, the idea that your happiness is contingent upon finding the job that will make you happy, your dream job, for instance, is not so different than finding the girl that will make you happy, you know, your soulmate.
3
SPEAKER_00
The one out of seven billion designed for you.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s out there, and if you re not really enjoying your life right now, you just have to find her, and it ll be okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
Having a bad day at work?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s not you.
3
SPEAKER_00
You need your dream job.
3
SPEAKER_00
So never ever give up on your passion.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s what we tell people.
3
SPEAKER_00
And look, there are times when it s excellent advice.
3
SPEAKER_00
There are times when it s the worst advice in the world.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s why it becomes a sacred cow that s fun to push against.
3
SPEAKER_00
American Idol has to be one of the most amazing shows ever.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s so much about it I hate.
3
SPEAKER_00
But one of the things about it that I loved was early in the season, you know, the early auditions where they go to a town and thousands of people show up, thousands of people show up following their passion.
3
SPEAKER_00
They ve always wanted to be a singer, a pop star, and they re going to give it a shot.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s not alarming that they can t sing.
3
SPEAKER_00
What s alarming is that they discover it so often for the very first time on national television.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re 20 years old.
3
SPEAKER_00
Their whole life they ve been told, look, if you want it bad enough, it s going to work out.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you re passionate about it, it s going to work out.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re my precious little
3
SPEAKER_00
Boy, you re going to be great.
3
SPEAKER_00
Go for it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Go get them.
3
SPEAKER_00
I just think it s a massive disservice to tell people that the proximate cause of their vocational happiness is contingent upon their ability to never change course.
3
SPEAKER_01
I can t agree more.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I think the fact that we are telling young people this is especially alarming because when we get older and we find out the hard way, depending on how, I guess, plastic you are with the ability to adapt to the truth, you can find yourself in a world of hurt.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can find yourself in a real world of hurt.
3
SPEAKER_01
Even if you re a good, hard worker and you can outwork people that are smarter than you, which was my competitive advantage growing up, essentially,
3
SPEAKER_01
you still find yourself swimming with sharks when you re a lawyer and you go, oh my God, not only do I not want this, but I worked so hard to get here, and maybe your passion shifts.
3
SPEAKER_01
There were a lot of people in my class who thought, I want to be a lawyer for sure, and two years later, they re emailing me, hey, are you hiring?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because this is terrible.
3
SPEAKER_01
So even when you get what you want, you re not always going to want your passion.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a terrible inertia around passion, and really just around living.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, way leads on to way, as Frost said.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I love that, because it indicates a crooked road.
3
SPEAKER_00
But this idea, you know, real inertia, that just pushes you further and further down the path that you re on.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so if you re not sure what you want to do with your life, and you re 18 years old, well, you got a problem.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because society today is going to tell you, you need to decide.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then they re going to say, well, you need to go to school.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then they re going to say, not just any school, you need to get a four-year degree.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you decide at 18 or 20 or whenever it was, I m going to be a lawyer.
3
SPEAKER_00
Where did you go?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, actually, I went to undergrad at Michigan and then I tried to get a job at Best Buy.
3
SPEAKER_01
They said, no, you have to sell CDs.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can t build computers, even though I was building computers at the time for neighbors and friends.
3
SPEAKER_01
They said, you got to sell CDs first, then you can move up later.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I thought, well, the answer to this is clearly more education.
3
SPEAKER_01
So then I applied to law school and I went to Michigan Law, and I thought, I don t really want to be a lawyer, but more education is for sure the way to get around that.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ll be able to do anything with this great law degree.
3
SPEAKER_01
What d it cost you?
3
SPEAKER_01
Counting undergrad plus grad, at least $200,000, minimum.
3
SPEAKER_01
So there it is.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re how old at this point when you get out of?
3
SPEAKER_01
When I got out of law school, 26 years old, I graduated with a just soul crushing amount of debt.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is what we re doing to our kids, man.
3
SPEAKER_00
It kills me because why in the world would anybody ever be forced to decide what they have to do when they re 20 years old?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s I m still figuring it out.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s just an unhealthy, unrealistic, unnecessary amount of pressure.
3
SPEAKER_00
That pressure.
3
SPEAKER_00
becomes inertia.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because once you decide, then you declare a major, and now you ve written the first check.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then the first semester is behind you, then the second.
3
SPEAKER_00
All right?
3
SPEAKER_00
So now, with every passing day, it s harder and harder to call an audible and go, you know something?
3
SPEAKER_00
Maybe I m pissing up a rope here.
3
SPEAKER_00
Maybe this isn t for me.
3
SPEAKER_00
But no.
3
SPEAKER_00
$30,000, $50,000, $80,000, $100,000, $120,000, bang, bang, bang.
3
SPEAKER_00
$200,000 in a hole.
3
SPEAKER_00
looking for a job now, as you described, in a shark tank, essentially.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now those jobs don t even exist anymore.
3
SPEAKER_00
They don t exist.
3
SPEAKER_00
But the thing that kills me the most isn t the fact that people have to live with the consequences of their decision, but it s the money, it s the debt, and it s the pressure to borrow an unlimited amount of money.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re $1.3 trillion in the hole.
3
SPEAKER_00
$1.3 trillion.
3
SPEAKER_00
There is by no metric anywhere that I ve seen a shortage of lawyers, but there are 5.8 million jobs right now that exist that people aren t trained for, that don t require four-year degrees, and they re sitting there.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we re so completely out of whack with the opportunities we re encouraging and the opportunities that exist.
3
SPEAKER_01
Surprisingly, none of those 5.3 or 5.8 million jobs that exist, none of those were discussed with us in our orientation at the university.
3
SPEAKER_00
No, because to our earlier point, those jobs are optically cautionary tales.
3
SPEAKER_00
Very, very few people
3
SPEAKER_00
Very few parents who didn t work in the skilled trades go to bed at night thinking, gosh, I sure hope Johnny turns out to be a plumber or a welder.
3
SPEAKER_00
They don t wish it for them.
3
SPEAKER_00
Guidance counselors don t wish it for them.
3
SPEAKER_00
We ve had dozens of guys going through our program, welding, making over a hundred grand a year.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can t get their stories out.
3
SPEAKER_00
And when people read them, they don t believe them.
3
SPEAKER_00
And when they believe them, they still go, eh, that looks really hard.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, sure.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, it s a problem.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a mindset.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s societal and it s systemic.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know who can weld?
3
SPEAKER_00
This one right here.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah?
3
SPEAKER_00
TIG?
3
SPEAKER_00
MIG?
3
SPEAKER_00
MIG welding?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, I mean, opportunities for women welding are huge right now.
3
SPEAKER_00
Small hands, very precise movements.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
I hear that all the time.
3
SPEAKER_01
But unfortunately, she followed her passion and learned how to weld, so there you go.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now you re sort of a camera woman.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s right, today.
3
SPEAKER_01
Someone s gotta do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Literally, today, someone had to do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Trust me, I know.
3
SPEAKER_01
So follow your passion.
3
SPEAKER_01
The verdict of this, it seems like, is you re just not a fan of that little dingleberry of faux advice.
3
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for that word, by the way.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s got to get back in the lexicon.
3
SPEAKER_00
I agree.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re on the art of charm.
3
SPEAKER_00
If we do nothing else but reintroduce dingleberry into the vernacular, I think we can take some credit for that.
3
SPEAKER_00
No, I would never simply go out and say, oh, passion is no good.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would never say, don t follow your passion.
3
SPEAKER_00
What I said was, don t follow your passion, but always bring it with you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because the truth is, why in the world would you want to do anything you weren t passionate about?
3
SPEAKER_00
See, on dirty jobs, example after example, this is the reverse commute.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is the salmon we re talking about.
3
SPEAKER_00
The salmon aren t following their passion, although they are trying to spawn, I suppose, so you can make a case for it.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s some passion involved.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s some passion.
3
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But when I think about the septic tank workers I met, there was a guy in the first season, Les Swanson was his name, up in Wisconsin.
3
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I wound up in a tank with him.
3
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one of these pumping stations on the side of the road, like up to our nipples in other people s filth, knocking cholesterol off the side of the walls in about 120-degree environment.
3
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It was truly heinous.
3
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And I looked at him at one point, and I said, Les, let me ask you something, man.
3
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What did you do before this?
3
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How did this happen to you?
3
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And he said, I was a guidance counselor in high school.
3
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And then I was a psychologist.
3
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And I said, you ve got to be kidding me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why this?
4
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missing a beat, he said, I got tired of dealing with other people s shit.
4
SPEAKER_01
But, you know, aside from the obvious laugh line, the joke is really on the rest of us, because back to his house at the end of the day, his summer house by the pool with the margarita machine and his two trucks and his five employees.
4
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You know, once again, a guy doing a thing most people don t want to do, creating not just a job for himself, but a business.
4
SPEAKER_01
And his whole rap to me was, look, this was never my wish fulfillment.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I got to a point where I said, let s just put the opportunity before what I want or what I even think I want.
4
SPEAKER_01
And again, I don t want to say it with certainty because then it will sound like a bromide.
4
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But the idea, when I say the reverse commute, what I mean is start with the opportunity.
4
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figure out how to be great at it, and then figure out how to love it.
4
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So the passion comes from becoming great at your craft.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, or deciding that you re going to love it.
4
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I mean, I know that sounds glib.
4
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This is a bit of a stretch, but why are the divorce rates among arranged marriages so much lower than in the West?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, there s a lot of theories about that, but I think the reason is because in cultures, well, one of the reasons is because in cultures where they have those arranged marriages, they realize, look, this comes before the love part, and the love part comes into the marriage later, and we build that through hard work instead of just hoping that it falls from the sky from the ether.
4
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So I don t mean to say that anybody can marry anybody and live happily ever after.
4
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Chemistry matters.
4
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That thing we call passion, that basic attraction, that basic willingness to do a job, that has to be there.
4
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But this idea that that person is responsible for your happiness or that that job is responsible for your success,
4
SPEAKER_01
That s a non-starter.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a trap.
4
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That s true.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we just got engaged actually a few months ago.
4
SPEAKER_00
Congratulations.
4
SPEAKER_00
As part of it, since she and I are such big fans of your work, I thought, what do I have to do to somehow involve Mike Rowe in this particular element of the story?
4
SPEAKER_00
Am I going to marry you guys?
4
SPEAKER_00
Is this what s going to happen?
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, well, since you re offering, I think it s a great idea.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think that s a great idea.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, where do you want to do it?
4
SPEAKER_01
Here?
4
SPEAKER_01
It s around here.
4
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If I can t actually perform the nuptials, a recorded song?
4
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Perfect.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
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A heartfelt message?
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Something like that?
4
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She s so excited now.
4
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That, by the way, was not planned.
4
SPEAKER_00
You hit the big time, if I can throw that word around there, relatively late for a lot of showbiz people.
4
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This all hit off in what, your early 40s maybe?
4
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I was 44 when Jobs actually went on the air in an aggressive way.
4
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To what do you attribute that, if not, well, I m following my passion, the TV thing, or were you doing just that and it happened to work out?
4
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Again, there is a real element of Forrest Gumpery in this, you know, but I had come to a point in my life where I was actually my smugness with respect to my business plan regarding touching everything like it s hot.
4
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Right?
4
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Like I was doing infomercials, a lot of them.
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I was doing guest spots on soap operas.
4
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I was, you know, doing animated projects.
4
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It didn t matter.
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I didn t care what it was and I didn t want to know what it was.
4
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None of that was germane.
4
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I just wanted to get paid and do good work and then forget about it.
4
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And the truth is that can only last you back to passion.
4
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My passion was in figuring out an overall lifestyle and congratulating myself for having five months off a year where I could do stuff I really cared about.
4
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The switch that flipped on dirty jobs
4
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just meant that there was no more time off.
4
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So now the thing I m working on, it has to satisfy both a bank account and it has to satisfy my time, which is now completely consuming, and I have to love it.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, so I didn t have to work hard to love it because there was enough contrariness in the show.
4
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Like, again, here I am, remember, back to the GOP and Discovery.
4
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I m the guy at Discovery with the show that Discovery does not want you to like.
4
SPEAKER_01
In the same way the GOP is looking at those 17 people on stage going, yeah, look, this is the Jeb Bush show.
4
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We want you to like him and maybe that guy over there and maybe her.
4
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Anybody but him.
4
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Not the guy in the middle.
4
SPEAKER_01
Dirty Jobs for the first season really was like that.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it was so much fun to go to work every day and know that I was in this place of real cognitive dissonance.
4
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It was a fun show to promote.
4
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It was a fun show to do.
4
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And it just gave me permission, really, to weigh in.
4
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on any kind of work, because we tried it all.
4
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So Dirty Jobs was the Donald Trump of Discovery Channel.
4
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Your words, not mine.
4
SPEAKER_01
And there have been others since.
4
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32 shows have come out of Dirty Jobs.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can draw a straight line back to... The garbage pickers in Alaska.
4
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
4
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Swamp people.
4
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Ice road truckers.
4
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All that stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
Axemen, you know, those were all segments on Dirty Jobs.
4
SPEAKER_01
Even Duck Dynasty.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, Duck Dynasty, fundamentally different format, but all of a sudden, Duck Dynasty shows up on A&E?
4
SPEAKER_01
No one knows, I mean, what?
4
SPEAKER_01
It was confusing enough with Dog the Bounty Hunter.
4
SPEAKER_01
Where s the art, where s the entertainment, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So, this tension between brand and program, and brands who fall deeply in love with their own
4
SPEAKER_01
bromidal version of themselves always interest me, because that s when they re most vulnerable.
4
SPEAKER_01
The GOP knew exactly who their constituents were going to vote for, except they were totally wrong.
4
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And Discovery knew nobody would watch a show with a middle-aged smart aleck making poop jokes in a sewer.
4
SPEAKER_01
Whoops.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oops.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now what?
4
SPEAKER_01
Better stick your hand up a cow s butt and see what happens.
4
SPEAKER_00
Season 12.
4
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Still reaching into mares.
4
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Feces from every species.
4
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That s right.
4
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That s right.
4
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I made the mistake of watching the lamb testicles episode shortly before prepping for this.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was one of the most memorable episodes, at least for me, because it caused a visceral fetal position, not repeated convulsion, just kind of a dry heave and a stay.
4
SPEAKER_00
You recoiled.
4
SPEAKER_00
I recoiled.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s normal.
4
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Anytime someone removes the testicles from a creature with their teeth, you have to step back and take stock.
4
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That was probably one of the most important episodes we did.
4
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Why is that?
4
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Because it was my first attempt to do everything right.
4
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You know, I mean, I d had this really passive aggressive relationship with the network.
4
SPEAKER_01
They were getting flooded with complaints from OSHA and Humane Society and PETA.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we sort of had this detente, you know, and we re going to keep the show going, but I m going to be a better team player, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So I go in and I say, look, I want to do this story on lambing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I want to do all the parts of lambing, and part of that s going to be castration.
4
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And they said, well, what s that involve?
4
SPEAKER_01
And I said, well, let me tell you what I did.
4
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I called the Humane Society and PETA, and they both told me the same thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
They said the approved method of removing the testicles from a lamb is to take a rubber band and put it around its sack, thereby retarding the flow of blood to the testicles.
4
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And then they turn black over a couple of days, and then they fall off.
4
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And I m like, oh, my God, really?
4
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And I m like, so that s the PETA-approved way?
4
SPEAKER_01
And they re like, yeah, that s the way we do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I said, OK.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, in my mind, I m thinking, you know, visually, this will be good TV.
4
SPEAKER_01
Weird, but I ve never put a rubber band on the testicles of anything.
4
SPEAKER_01
My species are animals.
4
SPEAKER_01
Sure you haven t.
4
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we get there you know and we basically get all the lambs together and we start the process and Albert the rancher he pulls out a knife and he grabs the scrotum between his thumb and his finger and he pulls it toward him and he cuts the tip off the scrotum and then he pushes it back and these two pink thumbs emerge from this
4
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fleshy sack and he, before I could stop him or do anything, he just bends down and he bites them and he snaps his head back and rips them out by the root.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, here comes that singular convulsion.
4
SPEAKER_01
No, but imagine me.
4
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I got three cameras rolling.
4
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
4
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And I m standing here thinking, you know something?
4
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This is not what the Discovery Channel has in mind.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I m like, you know, OK, stop, Albert.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re doing this thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
right, that people do in reality TV, you re trying to shock me.
4
SPEAKER_01
Hamming it up.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, he was a great guy.
4
SPEAKER_01
Big old mustache, his wife, Melody, the two of them, they re just like, what are you talking about?
4
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I m like, you can t bite the balls off a sheep, dude.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re in a family show.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re in 220 countries.
4
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He goes, well, what do you want us to do?
4
SPEAKER_01
I m like, use the rubber bands.
4
SPEAKER_01
He goes, oh, God, the rubber bands?
4
SPEAKER_01
I m like, well, yeah, the rubber bands.
4
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I said, OK.
4
SPEAKER_01
So we put another sheep up there.
4
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Melody spreads the legs, and Albert goes in, puts on the rubber band with a special device that widens it, and then you put him over the screw.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, God, I can still see it in my head.
4
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, I put the lamb down on the ground, and he looks at me exactly with the exact expression you would have if you were a lamb that had a very tight rubber band around your nuts.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s troubling.
4
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And he staggers, takes a couple of steps away, and then stops and looks back at me over his shoulder.
4
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And then he walks to the corner of the pen, you know, makes a circle.
5
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and then just lies down and starts quivering.
5
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And I say to Albert, I m like, Jesus, how long is this going to go on?
5
SPEAKER_01
He ll be in hell for about two and a half days.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s terrible.
5
SPEAKER_01
Meanwhile, the one he had just, you know, bit down on, prancing around.
5
SPEAKER_01
This is literally two minutes later, not a care in the world, no blood, you know, hanging out with his mom and trotting around.
5
SPEAKER_01
So that episode was important because right there on international television,
5
SPEAKER_01
We had proof that the business of being in compliance but not out of danger, all that stuff we were talking about before, there it is.
5
SPEAKER_01
I went to the expert.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was told precisely how this works, precisely what to do.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I was absolutely wrong.
5
SPEAKER_01
The way Albert had been doing it for generations was kinder to the animal.
5
SPEAKER_01
It was more efficient in the field.
5
SPEAKER_01
You needed two people instead of three.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s a long list of logical reasons to bite the balls off sheep.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s actually more sanitary, too, if you can believe it.
5
SPEAKER_01
How can that be true?
5
SPEAKER_01
Because, dude, those testicles, they re in a thing called the scrotum.
5
SPEAKER_01
They ve never been exposed to the air.
5
SPEAKER_00
Sure, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t linger down there.
5
SPEAKER_00
You get in and you get out.
5
SPEAKER_01
You get in, you get out.
5
SPEAKER_01
Poof, Bob s your uncle.
5
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, a peripatea.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_01
It was a peripatetic moment when you realize, you know, once again, everything I thought I knew about removing
5
SPEAKER_01
The nuts from a lamb was wrong.
5
SPEAKER_01
What else am I wrong about?
5
SPEAKER_01
And if you can ask yourself that question honestly, you re going to find answers.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m sure, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m sure.
5
SPEAKER_00
If biting the testicles off a lamb is wrong, I don t want to be right.
5
SPEAKER_00
T-shirt.
5
SPEAKER_00
A t-shirt or a hat or both, possibly.
5
SPEAKER_00
Why d you insist on doing the show in one take?
5
SPEAKER_00
Is that true?
5
SPEAKER_00
I heard you do it in one take.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, we did look back specials where I was actually doing a version of raps, and I would occasionally circle back and get those.
5
SPEAKER_01
And we, of course, we shot lots and lots of footage that was never used.
5
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
5
SPEAKER_01
So when you see outtakes at the end of the show, that s always what that is.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I insisted on two things.
5
SPEAKER_01
The first was never a second take, because the second take, by definition, has to be a performance.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right, sure, it s just redoing something that happened, but slightly to the left.
5
SPEAKER_01
Or, you know, clean up your language, you stuttered a little bit there, some bullcrap direction thing, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
That s what TV does, take two, three, four, five, 10, 15, until somebody somewhere says, ah, it s perfect.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s perfect, but it s a performance.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I wanted the show to be a love letter to take one.
5
SPEAKER_01
That was the thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, the argument was, well, what if we have a technical problem?
5
SPEAKER_01
What if a plane flies over?
5
SPEAKER_01
I said, I don t care.
5
SPEAKER_01
So we got a thing called the truth cam, which was just an extra cameraman with a behind the scenes camera who always stayed wide.
5
SPEAKER_01
So if Doug s camera broke or Troy s or somebody somewhere had a problem, I could always turn to the truth cam.
5
SPEAKER_01
step out of the scene and sort of narrate or chronicle the issue.
5
SPEAKER_01
Right.
5
SPEAKER_01
We didn t use it in every scene, but we used it in every show.
5
SPEAKER_01
And toward the end, we used it, we relied upon it because, you know, that camera proved.
5
SPEAKER_01
This was before you saw behind the scenes stuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
Sure, sure.
5
SPEAKER_01
So the second thing was tied to that.
5
SPEAKER_01
I need the crew in the show.
5
SPEAKER_01
They don t need to be the same crew.
5
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t matter.
5
SPEAKER_01
But we re in the process of shooting a show.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so to pretend that we re not, that s a fundamental fiction with the viewer.
5
SPEAKER_01
So the best way to make sure that take one is used is to contemporaneously make sure the crew is allowed to be in the shot.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that way, you don t have to say, oh, I got to shoot it again because I got Troy s leg or I got Jones s boom was in the shot.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t care if his boom s in the shot.
5
SPEAKER_01
you know, we re in a sewer, we re up on the Mackinac Bridge, 600 feet up, you know, changing nuts.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s like, what matters?
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, what matters is the, it s not the shot, it s the work.
5
SPEAKER_00
Speaking of the sewer shot, when you re in the sewer in San Francisco in these super old little brick round tunnels, the episode, there s a rat that like crawls over your leg or something like that, and you just kinda,
5
SPEAKER_00
freak out a little bit and I thought, why is it a stinking sewer rat that cracks the heretofore impenetrable Mike Rovanier of cool?
5
SPEAKER_01
You re talking about a scene that s cut into the open of the show, goes by in about a second.
5
SPEAKER_01
The truth is, that episode was the first one we did.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that moment, that s something I talk about all the time around the country when people ask.
5
SPEAKER_01
My transformation, my parapetia, from a host to a guest, happened in the sewers of San Francisco.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was trying to host Evening Magazine down there, the very first episode of Somebody s Gotta Do It, which became Dirty Jobs.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s me in the sewer trying to look to the camera and welcome the viewer into the sewer.
5
SPEAKER_01
But at every turn, I was thwarted.
5
SPEAKER_01
You know, I was thwarted by a lateral that exploded next to my head and covered my cameraman with crap and the side of my face.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was thwarted by roaches the size of my thumbs.
5
SPEAKER_01
Thousands, tens of thousands of them everywhere.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the final moment, that rat appeared on my shoulder.
5
SPEAKER_01
It was a big rat, man.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s like the size of a loaf of bread.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it was a big rat.
5
SPEAKER_01
It was a big rat.
5
SPEAKER_01
You know, it dove off my shoulder into my lap, and I was wearing these thigh-high hip boots.
5
SPEAKER_01
And if you squat down in thigh-high hip boots, they gap, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
So the rat goes into the gap and starts burrowing in a southbound
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, man.
5
SPEAKER_01
I jump up, scream, hit my head on the ceiling.
5
SPEAKER_01
A shower of roaches comes down.
5
SPEAKER_01
I fall face forward into this fast moving chocolate tie of truly disappointing effluvium and face first in it.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I push myself up and I spit something out of my mouth.
5
SPEAKER_01
It never should have been in my mouth.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I turned to the guy I was working with, Gene Cruz, and he said, in that moment, the thing that changed my career.
5
SPEAKER_01
He said, when you re done screwing around with the local wildlife, why don t you come over here and give me a hand?
5
SPEAKER_01
And so that s what I did.
5
SPEAKER_01
Rather than host the show, we replaced rotten bricks in the sewers of San Francisco.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was watching that episode and another one on an airplane recently, and this woman three rows or two rows behind me goes, I ve seen this guy before.
5
SPEAKER_00
How does he keep his fingernails clean?
5
SPEAKER_00
The public s dying to know, how do you keep your fingernails clean?
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, how do you go to dinner after that and go, man, am I hungry?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you don t.
5
SPEAKER_01
When we were shooting that show, it really and truly was a band of brothers kind of thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
We didn t go to nice places.
5
SPEAKER_01
We stayed in Motel 6s.
5
SPEAKER_01
We stayed in Super 8s.
5
SPEAKER_01
We stayed in hotels with numbers in the title.
5
SPEAKER_01
If you see a number in the title of a hotel... Like Four Seasons?
5
SPEAKER_01
No, Four is cool if the number is spelled out.
5
SPEAKER_01
Right.
5
SPEAKER_01
F-O-U-R?
5
SPEAKER_01
Right.
5
SPEAKER_01
Great.
5
SPEAKER_01
But if it s the four, the number four, no, don t go in there.
5
SPEAKER_01
The Super 8, the Motel 6.
5
SPEAKER_01
Numbers, for whatever reason, don t scream five-star luxury.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I lived in a Super 8, Motel 6 for years shooting that show.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I can t tell you how many times, not to your point about dinner, but just
5
SPEAKER_01
You know, you come back to the room and you just smell like ass, man, or something worse.
5
SPEAKER_01
Or worse.
5
SPEAKER_01
I would leave my clothes and my shoes in the tub.
5
SPEAKER_01
I would sign a headshot and leave 20 bucks and a letter of apology for the maid because I couldn t take them home.
5
SPEAKER_01
You know, there s no way I can take those things home.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, you left them there for disposal.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, sure.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, man.
5
SPEAKER_00
No, that s what I was saying.
5
SPEAKER_00
I haven t bought clothes in 15 years.
5
SPEAKER_00
So if you re in Motel 6 and you saw a feces covered or worse covered pair of jeans and boots and a headshot and you re wondering who the squiggly autograph was from.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was me.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was Mike Ruff.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was me with a tasteful letter of apology to the maid.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh my gosh.
5
SPEAKER_00
Celebrities get a lot of perks and, you know, free food, free travel, free clothing.
5
SPEAKER_00
A lot of my show s fans wanted to know what the biggest perk was.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I seem to recall you being granted some special VIP port-a-potty privileges on short notice.
5
SPEAKER_01
Are you talking about the show or are you talking about a very disappointing... Oh, I know what you re talking about.
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You sick bastard.
5
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Why would you...
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I went for a jog back when I used to care about exercising.
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This was probably seven years ago.
5
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I left my apartment in Cal Hollow and I jogged across the Golden Gate Bridge.
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Is this what you re talking about?
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Yeah, I wanted to just get a rare glimpse into the lives of the iconoclast with this one.
5
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So what happened for me was I jogged across the Golden Gate.
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I had done my normal routine in the morning.
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I had as much coffee as you can sanely drink, and I had a big old breakfast.
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And I, for the past couple of days, had been not struggling, but aware of some disappointment in my lower GI tract.
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Nothing that would preclude me from taking a jog, but I was aware of it.
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Anyway, it was a beautiful day.
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I jogged across the bridge.
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I was halfway back, and it felt like an ice pick was stabbed into my lower abdomen.
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And a couple steps later, I felt it again, and it knocked the wind out of me.
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And my knees buckled.
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And it was so horrible, you know, all I could think of was, God,
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Damn it, it all comes down to the O-ring, you know?
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The gasket.
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The dignity of the species, it all just comes down to your ability to control this tiny little sphincter.
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And I m doing the math in my head, you know?
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At this point, I m two miles from home.
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It s like labor pains.
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The stabbing is now coming like every 90 seconds.
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So if I run seven miles an hour, I m two miles away, ta-da, 20 minutes, you know, I m just not liking anything.
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any of the numbers, but I got to get off the bridge, because, you know, a B-list celebrity who soils himself on a national monument, that s the kind of press you don t need.
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You don t recover from that too easily.
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I got off the bridge.
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I came around the, uh, down to the Presidio, and I realized I m not going to make it.
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I am not going to make it.
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I am, the ultimate humiliation is going to happen right there on Lombard.
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And I walked right around the corner on Scott.
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And I honestly don t know what I was going to do.
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I didn t know if I was just going to stand there quietly and crap my pants or actually pull my pants down.
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I didn t know what to do.
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Yeah, it was I d lost my peripheral vision.
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I was hearing a buzzing in my ears like nothing mattered except.
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except keeping that damn O-ring closed.
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But, like, from Providence, you know, there was three construction workers putting in, amazingly, a sewer line.
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And they had a porta-potty next to them.
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And it was locked.
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Because in San Francisco, they locked the porta-potty.
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Somebody will live in there.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, people were dying to get in those things.
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So I said, case in point.
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I d have done anything.
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You know, I didn t have any money on me or anything.
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But I just said, guys, could I please get in here?
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And the guy looked at me and said, hey, you re that guy.
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Yeah.
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I m like, please move quickly.
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He opened that thing.
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I got in there.
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And I mean, it was as close as close can be, but it just sounded like Bastille Day, you know, and I came out and they were waiting for me with their cameras, you know, so three selfies with three sewage workers who really saved whatever dignity I have, I ve left at this point, but completely saved me.
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Three selfies is a small price to pay, I think.
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I d have paid anything.
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I d have given him a finger.
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Are you okay with the fact that you re a role model to so many people, I mean, intentionally or unintentionally, through Facebook, television?
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Doesn t matter.
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Has that changed your behavior at all in real life or online?
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Oh, I guess it has.
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I guess, yeah.
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It s odd because so much about Dirty Jobs was subversive.
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You know, but that was 10 years ago.
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I m not sure how funny it is for for me to be as silly and irreverent as I was.
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You know, I run a foundation now and I do some of the things now.
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So I people don t really know exactly yet what the default position is for me, like on this podcast I m doing.
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Sure.
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Right.
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The way I heard it.
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I did one the other day on the guy who invented a famous food, and he was a preacher, a reverend, and his entire world was a rant against masturbation.
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Ah, yes.
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Right.
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So I told the story of this man and the way his beliefs informed his diet and the way his followers ultimately adhered to what it was he was getting at.
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But in the course of telling the story,
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You know, you have to say the word masturbate like 50 times and I didn t want to do that because... It s a little crass.
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It s not crass.
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It s just the problem is it s neither crass nor proper.
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It s clinical.
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Sure, sure.
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So it s like testicles today make people weirder than balls.
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Right, right.
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Because it s like there s just something horrible about the specificity of it.
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So I just came up with, you know, every euphemism there was, you know, for corking your own bat, or polishing the spear, or burping the worm, or whatever you call it, spilling your sin sauce, you know, there s a thousand of them, and these get peppered through the entire thing.
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Well, my podcast is patterned after the late great Paul Harvey, who would really never talk about spilling one s
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heathen stew, right?
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And so I got a lot of calls, people going, hey, maybe not so much with the masturbating anymore.
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SPEAKER_00
Really?
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We listened to that one several times.
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SPEAKER_00
You would.
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Yeah, you got us, nailed us there.
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Dirty couple.
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She would pause and go, wait, okay, I get this one, what does this one mean?
6
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I mean, we knew that they meant that, and I m explaining the physics of corking a bat, for example, yeah.
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Look, my goal with that podcast, I have several, but bringing young lovers closer together as their nuptials approach through short stories fraught with self-abuse, that s certainly an aspirational goal, a consummation devoutly to be wished.
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Top three purpose of the show for sure.
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Yeah, we ll link to the show in the show notes as well for people who are listening to this and want to listen to Mike Rowe s podcast.
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But tell us about the foundation as well.
6
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Tell us what you re doing with that and why it s important, first of all.
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It s called Mike Rowe Works.
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It evolved out of dirty jobs in 2008, as you might recall, that the economy kind of crapped the bed.
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I remember.
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I got laid off.
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Best thing that ever happened to me.
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That s why I m doing this now.
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So by 2009, unemployment is
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9, 10, 11% all over the country.
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Every single day, that s the headline.
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Every single day, all these people can t find work.
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And the narrative became, it s because opportunity s dead.
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On dirty jobs, everywhere I went, in every single state, I saw help wanted signs.
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Just everywhere.
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I mean, all 50 states.
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And I just started to feel like, you know, I think maybe there s another narrative unfolding here that nobody writes about.
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And you don t have to dig far.
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Back in 2009, there were 2.3 million jobs that were wide open.
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And we had a skills gap.
6
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It was an inconvenient truth for the prevailing narrative, because how can opportunity be dead if companies can t find 2.3 million people to do the jobs they have?
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Clearly, opportunity is not dead.
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Something else is.
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So MicroWorks began as a PR campaign, really, to call attention to jobs that actually existed.
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And that s really all it was ever supposed to be.
6
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But then fans of the show started writing in all these apprenticeships and all the job training programs and things that existed in their state.
6
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So we built a trade resource center where anybody could go in 2009, 10, 11, and see what opportunities in their state exist that you re never going to hear about or read about.
6
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And then we started awarding work ethic scholarships to people who wanted to avail themselves to those opportunities.
6
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So, I started putting the arm on big companies.
6
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I started selling crap out of my garage, collectibles rare and precious.
6
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CRAP, the acronym of course.
6
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Our crap auctions, you know, kind of a throwback to my old QVC days.
6
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And we raised and gave away close to $4 million so far.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
6
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In these work ethic scholarships.
6
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So, I mean, I hate to say legacy because it just sounds so precious, but microworks evolved out of dirty jobs.
6
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Its main function today is to provide work ethic scholarships and make as persuasive a case we can as we can for the jobs that actually exist.
6
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That s what we do.
6
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What kind of jobs exist that people weren t finding?
6
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Welding and same sort of trades that we were discussing before?
6
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
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You can start with welding.
6
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I work with a school in southern Illinois called MTI.
6
SPEAKER_01
They got a call from Newport News, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Ingersoll ran shipbuilders.
6
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How many can you get us this month?
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
6
SPEAKER_01
We got 50.
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How many do you need?
6
800.
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Oh, my goodness.
6
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So it s that.
6
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Yeah.
6
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It s all day long.
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All day long.
6
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We think about work and we think about jobs in this country like
6
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You know, there are these static things that exist in a vacuum.
6
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Jobs might, but opportunity is not that.
6
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And so many of these jobs require you to do a couple of things that are really out of favor, like retool, retrain, reboot, but mostly relocate.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re not right there, necessarily, waiting for you.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it s really, you know, not to bash on millennials by any stretch, because whatever bad thing you have to say about them, it s just simply a product of the people who raised them.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, absolutely.
6
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But this idea that the job of your dreams, the idea that it even exists, is fascinating.
6
SPEAKER_01
The idea that it exists at a pay rate that will satisfy your lifestyle is doubly fascinating.
6
SPEAKER_01
And the idea that it will exist at a pay rate that satisfies your lifestyle in your current zip code is the height of madness.
6
SPEAKER_01
That s what people expect a lot of the time.
6
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I run into it all the time.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, look, this opportunity sounds great, but what do you want me to do, move to North Dakota?
6
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, how soon can you get here?
6
SPEAKER_01
I got dozens of people who do it every month.
6
SPEAKER_01
You want me to go to the Gulf?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s where they re making $140 an hour right now, welding.
6
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
6
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I mean, so yeah, you re gonna have to go there.
6
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And here s the thing, it s hot.
6
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And it s cold up there.
6
SPEAKER_01
We re not in San Francisco.
6
SPEAKER_01
Right.
6
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Yeah.
6
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Where it often is cold and hot at the same sometimes in the same day.
6
SPEAKER_01
Totally.
6
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So we call them work ethics scholarships because we make our applicants make a case for themselves.
6
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You know, you ve got to make a video.
6
SPEAKER_01
You got to write an essay.
6
SPEAKER_01
You got to provide references.
6
SPEAKER_01
You got to sign a sweat pledge.
6
SPEAKER_01
I wrote a sweat pledge.
6
SPEAKER_01
Twelve point.
6
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statement of belief one night after I drank a bottle of wine, and if you re not willing to sign it, then it s entirely possible this pile of free money might not be for you.
6
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Before we wrap, Mike, I ve got a story for you, and the format may seem a little familiar.
6
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This is based on a letter from a fan of the show, one Mr. Matt Panisi, who found out through our boot camp, the school that we run in L.A., that I d be interviewing you, and I thought you might appreciate this.
6
SPEAKER_00
The letter reads as follows.
6
SPEAKER_00
Dear Jordan, congrats on interviewing Mike Rowe.
6
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However, I ve been harboring a secret vendetta against Mike Rowe for years.
6
SPEAKER_00
I think once you read this, you ll understand why.
6
SPEAKER_00
In fact, I m quite interested in what he has to say for himself if you get a chance to tell him the following story.
6
SPEAKER_00
In the year 2010, I was the intended recipient of a pair of World Series Game 1 tickets, courtesy of the company for which I worked.
6
SPEAKER_00
Originally, my friend s father, one of the company s executives, had planned to go, but at the last minute, something came up
7
SPEAKER_00
and the tickets were once again available.
7
SPEAKER_00
I called my friend to see if he was up for the trip, if we could somehow play hooky from work and pull it off.
7
SPEAKER_00
But by the time I went to claim the tickets, I was informed they were already gone.
7
SPEAKER_00
After a bit of prying, my friend s father told me that he had given them to his friend Mike Rowe, who already lived in San Francisco.
7
SPEAKER_00
I, of course, objected on two counts.
7
SPEAKER_00
One, it was not made clear that the ticket lottery was open to anyone outside the company.
7
SPEAKER_00
And two, I m sure if Mike Rowe wanted to go to the game, he could have gotten his own damn tickets.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s reasonable.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s important to note that I harbor no ill will toward Mike Rowe, and in fact, my wife and I only donate to the Mike Rowe Works Foundation every year because it s the only organization we can both agree to give money to.
7
SPEAKER_00
Signed, Matt.
7
SPEAKER_00
But, there s more also from Matt.
7
SPEAKER_00
Hey Jordan, quick update, hope this makes it in time.
7
SPEAKER_00
First, I ve called my father to get more details for you, and it seems that the story about Mike Rowe getting those World Series tickets is actually not true.
7
SPEAKER_00
As it turns out, the tickets were actually given to the brother of the CEO.
7
SPEAKER_00
The reason he told everyone that he gave them to Mike Rowe is because everyone thinks so highly of Mike, nobody would be angry about him being the recipient of the tickets.
7
SPEAKER_00
In other words, the tickets were sniped, and he used Mike Rowe as a cover to make that happen.
7
SPEAKER_00
Sorry for the confusion.
7
SPEAKER_00
I guess you don t have a story for Mike Rowe after all, and I apologize for that, but au contraire, Mr. Panisi, because Mike, as it turns out this time, you were recruited for one final dirty job, the filthiest of them all, serving as a scapegoat for a ticket hustle perpetrated by a mattress company executive, an executive who in a past life served in another highly esteemed position,
7
SPEAKER_00
that of your college roommate, Mr. Mike Thompson.
7
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, that s the way I heard it.
7
SPEAKER_02
Good grief.
7
SPEAKER_00
Mike Thompson, unbelievable.
7
SPEAKER_00
This is from Mike Thompson s kid s friend who happened to be a fan of The Art of Charm, and I said, I m interviewing Mike Rowe, and he goes, I got a bone to pick with that guy.
7
SPEAKER_02
Good grief.
7
SPEAKER_02
That was a long run for a short slide, as we call it.
7
SPEAKER_02
Mike Thompson s kid goes to Bucknell, I think.
7
SPEAKER_02
And so his friend probably does, too.
7
SPEAKER_02
I don t know.
7
SPEAKER_02
But that s a hard to know what to say to that, except last time I heard Mike Thompson s name, we talked a couple of years ago.
7
SPEAKER_02
He reached out of the blue, but he was a guy.
7
SPEAKER_02
He used to work for Black & Decker in Baltimore, Maryland.
7
SPEAKER_02
And this guy, he was a freak of nature.
7
SPEAKER_02
He looked like he fell off a Wheaties box, and he also looked like every quarterback for every winning college team you ve ever seen.
7
SPEAKER_02
I always looked at him with something akin to naked envy.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m happy now he s in the mattress business.
7
SPEAKER_02
Good for you, Mike.
7
SPEAKER_00
Mike, thanks for coming on.
7
SPEAKER_02
You re welcome.
7
SPEAKER_00
Appreciate it.
7
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
7
SPEAKER_00
Great big thank you to Mike Rowe.
7
SPEAKER_00
He s got a podcast, The Way I Heard It.
7
SPEAKER_00
If you haven t heard it, the format will sound just like the way I ended this show, wasn t that clever?
7
SPEAKER_00
But really, such an awesome interview, such a cool guy.
7
SPEAKER_00
I just, I wanna be Mike Rowe when I grow up.
7
SPEAKER_00
The problem is I don t think I m ever gonna grow up.
7
SPEAKER_00
And if you re really inspired by what Mike is doing, the Mike Rowe Works Foundation is amazing.
7
SPEAKER_00
A very, very worthwhile charity, if there ever was one.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s at MikeRoweWorks.com.
7
SPEAKER_00
Again, we ll link that in the show notes.
7
SPEAKER_00
Very worthwhile charity.
7
SPEAKER_00
Jobs that actually exist.
7
SPEAKER_00
Who d have thunk it?
7
SPEAKER_00
If you enjoyed this one, don t forget to thank Mike on Twitter.
7
SPEAKER_00
We ll have that linked in the show notes as well.
7
SPEAKER_00
Remember, you can tap the phone screen.
7
SPEAKER_00
The show notes should pop right up.
7
SPEAKER_00
If they re not, then tell me why.
7
SPEAKER_00
I also post a lot of stuff on Twitter that never makes it to the show.
7
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of articles, insights, and other ways to engage with me and producer Jason.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m at theartofcharm on Twitter.
7
SPEAKER_00
Our boot camps, our live program details, those are at bootcamp.theartofcharm.com.
7
SPEAKER_00
If you come to boot camp, you ll join thousands of other guys who ve been through the program,
7
SPEAKER_00
They ll become your network for life.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re all around the world.
7
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people have gone backpacking through Europe with other AOC alumni.
7
SPEAKER_00
They ve gotten jobs at AOC.
7
SPEAKER_00
They ve met up with other AOC alumni while traveling.
7
SPEAKER_00
I do that all the time.
7
SPEAKER_00
They ve couch surfed with them.
7
SPEAKER_00
Even gotten jobs and formed lifelong friendships.
7
SPEAKER_00
I just love the program.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s the central part of what keeps AOC AOC, so definitely check that out.
7
SPEAKER_00
And remember, we sell out a few months in advance, so if you re thinking about it a little bit, get in touch with us ASAP.
7
SPEAKER_00
Get some info, plan ahead, find out what we re all about.
7
SPEAKER_00
I also want to encourage you to join our AOC challenge.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge.
7
SPEAKER_00
Or if you re driving or walking, you can just text the word charmed, C-H-A-R-M-E-D, to the number 33444, that s charmed, to 33444.
7
SPEAKER_00
We ll send all that to your inbox.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s about improving your network and connection skills, inspiring those around you to develop a personal and professional relationship with you,
7
SPEAKER_00
And like I said, I ll send you the toolbox episodes as well.
7
SPEAKER_00
Lots of practical stuff on reading body language, having charismatic nonverbal communication, the science of attraction, negotiation techniques, networking and influence strategies, mentorship, persuasion tactics, and everything else that we teach here at the Art of Charm.
7
SPEAKER_00
I also throw videos with drills and exercises in there.
7
SPEAKER_00
The idea is for that to make you a better networker, a better connector, and a better thinker.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge or text charmed in the US to 33444.
7
SPEAKER_00
For full show notes for this and all previous episodes, head on over to theartofcharm.com slash podcast.
7
SPEAKER_00
This episode of AOC was produced by Jason DeFilippo.
7
SPEAKER_00
Jason Sanderson is our audio engineer and editor, and the show notes on the website are by Robert Fogerty.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
7
SPEAKER_00
Go ahead, tell your friends, because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else, either in person or shared on the web.
7
SPEAKER_00
Word of mouth is everything, so stay charming and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
7
SPEAKER_01
Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
7
SPEAKER_01
Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.