Mike Rowe | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 12

she says Michael your your grandfather is not doing well he's 92 right it would be so terrific though if if before he died he could turn on the television and see you doing something that looked like work here we are in the Sunday special with Mike Rowe we'll get to talking with him he's the host of dirty jobs and the way I heard it it'll be awesome but first let's talk about your impending death so you're going to die sometime soon maybe not that sumit hopefully it'll be decades but when you do you're gonna feel bad because you didn't have life insurance 71% of people say they need life insurance only 59% of people have coverage that means at least 12% of people are procrastinating and sure normally procrastinating is a bad thing but if you've been avoiding getting life insurance procrastinating may actually have worked in your favor this time because you're not dead and well you were putting it off policy genius was making it easy so policy genius it's the easy way to compare life insurance online you can compare quotes in just five minutes when it's that easy putting it off becomes a lot harder you can compare quotes while sitting on the couch you can do it while you're listening to this podcast try it policy genius has helped over 4 million people shop for insurance placed over 20 billion dollars in coverage they don't just make life insurance easy they also compare disability insurance and renters insurance and health insurance if you care about it they can cover it so if you need life insurance but you've been putting it off because it's all a little too confusing or you don't have the time checkout policy genius it's the easy way to compare top insurers and find the best value for you no sales pressure zero hassle and it's free policy genius.com when it's this easy to compare life insurance there's no reason to put it off well Mike thanks so much for coming by really appreciate it that was terrific thank you honestly you're the first person who's ever praised the ads at the beginning of the show so thank you for that procrastination is the thief of time I really thought you're going to sneak it in there with that but kidding aside I I love I love that there's no daylight between you and the people who make the program possible it's it's refreshingly dare I say authentic well thank you I appreciate it because usually what I get is how dare you interrupt these great conversations with your money grabs and then I have to remind people they're watching the show for free because this is how commerce operates yeah people don't like to be reminded of that you see the filthy lucre somehow pollutes what would otherwise be a really wonderful series of observations but now I'm afraid we can't take you seriously because somebody somewhere has decided to give you some money I stretched I'm spent so folks you can see why I love micro just from the outset here but let's start from the beginning so you now do this podcast that's listened to by tens of millions of people and you have various billions billions ok billions people yet unborn on planets that have not yet been reached and you have the and you have here your TV shows which have been wildly popular you have books your mom wrote a book they you but they've been pressing lately you know all about her mom and that's that's really fantastic so how did you get from doing what you were doing when you were 18 is this way you saw yourself doing when you were 18 how did you get from point A to point B Wow how long is this room it's about an hour so okay so the short version is I was convinced as a young guy growing up in Baltimore that I would follow in the footsteps of my grandfather who live right next door my grandfather was a guy who went to the seventh grade and then he went to work by the time he was 30 he was a master electrician after that he mastered every other trade there was the guy could build a house without a blueprint he was that guy had the chip right you just knew how to fix stuff take your watch apart build your house do whatever the handy gene tragically is recessive so past me I didn't get that and by the time I was out of high school I realized that I would have to get a different sort of toolbox I learned to act sort of I learned to sing a little bit and I I just looked at a completely different way to go I eventually got in entertainment kind of Forrest Gump my way through the whole landscape of narrating you know I started narrating when I was really young if there's a wildebeest trying to get across the vast reaches of the barren Serengeti but being slowly eaten by crocodiles and and hyenas the odds are decent that I'm telling you about it sidenote it never works out for the wildebeest right never leave the herd so I started doing those things and like frost says you know way leads on to way and the next thing you know I'm impersonating a host in front of various cameras for various networks and one show leads to the next and by the time I was 42 I realize that impersonating a host though I become somewhat facile at it was not nearly as rewarding as as telling the unvarnished truth which dirty jobs was it wound up being a attribute to my granddad my mother my mother called me I was working for CBS at the time 2001 I'm in my cubicle and she says Michael it's hosting a show called evening magazine terrible show she says Michael you're your grandfather is not doing well he's 92 right I'm like oh you know what do you think she said maybe another year it would be so terrific though if if before he died he could turn on the television and see you doing something that looked like work so my mother calls me out when I'm about 42 dirty jobs began as a special for my grandad people saw it 10,000 letters came in you should meet my grandad brother uncle cousin's sister aunt uncle right and and so for 12 years I went around the country profiling real people who do real jobs that typically unfold in real towns you can't find on a map and that gave me a certain notoriety in cable TV and way continued to lead on two-way and a lot of other great things have happened I have a foundation now that focuses on closing the skills gap and the podcast you mentioned has been so much fun it's a writing exercise it helps pass the time on planes their short stories told in the style of Paul Harvey's the rest of the story and while I would never imagine for a moment I could I could fill his shoes it's been fun trying to follow in his footsteps well it's all really fun stuff to listen to and certainly fun stuff to watch but it's also really meaningful because you're one of the few people in the entertainment industry who really does take seriously the stuff that people in the middle of the country are doing and as the country sort of polarizes between the folks who are in the entertainment sphere or the journalism sphere or the the sort of high IQ is how they would term themselves it's fear and the people who are actually working the jobs that actually get things done across the country that that's a voice that seems to have been lost a lot what do you think is it do you think that's it that's a really serious gap Ann do you think that's a bridgeable gap or is that is that gap between sort of the people who deem themselves to be smart and the people who deem themselves to be doing jobs that matter that is that destined to sort of increase as time goes on here well there's always been a gap right sometimes it's wide sometimes it's less wide and we all fall in love with the romantic version of ourselves right whether you're a journalist or whether you're an actor whether whatever it is you think you are and whoever it is you think you are that becomes you become the Sun in your own solar system so you everything else is just a planet in orbit right so I think with regard to the skills gap in regards to really any gap it's all just symptomatic of a series of what I would call disconnects we've become slowly and inexorably and profoundly disconnected from a lot of very basic things that when I grew up I was really connected to like where my food comes from where my energy comes from basic history basic curiosity you know the things that fundamentally allow us to assume a level of appreciation that in my view is the best way to bridge those gaps if we don't have appreciation right if we're not if we're not blown away by the miracle that occurs when you flick the switch and the lights come on if we're not gobsmacked by flushing the toilet and seeing all of it go away right when we start losing our appreciation for those things the gap deepens and I think the gap right now is most extraordinary there's 6.3 million jobs that are available as we speak we have 75 percent of those jobs that don't require four-year degree and yet we're still pushing the four-year degree as the best path for the most people and it just happens to be the most expensive path and a lot of people as you described who are kind of in the middle have enough common sense to realize that one five trillion dollars in outstanding student loans there's a version of lending money we don't have to kids who can't pay it back to training for jobs that don't exist anymore and that's crazy so you know I think there's great common sense that is still alive and well and a lot of people and I think that as they look at the headlines they're frustrated and to be fair I think people on the coasts are coming at it from their own bias and they're frustrated and so a lot of frustrated people are talking really loud past each other and a lot of truths are inconvenient for a lot of people and so it just gets noisy which is a long way of saying no I don't think the gap will ever close I I really don't but but I'm not freaked out by that because I think the the point is Sisyphean the point is quixotic right so d let's talk about the college thing for a minute because let's say that you're somebody who's thinking about going to college under what conditions do you think somebody ought to go to college and somebody who was a Poli Sci major which is about the most useless degree can have outside of like lesbian dance theory or something then my minor than that if you Poli Sci is basically so you can go to law school that's that's how poly SCI is and this is true for what we at UCLA called North Campus majors right all North Campus majors was like English and poly SCI all the liberal arts they all this stuff was prepped for grad degrees or for getting a low-level job in a newspaper or something like that the South Campus majors people were in the sciences and maths those people were actually doing something useful who do you think ought to go to college especially because there is a concomitant worry that if you don't go to college and you go for one of these blue-collar jobs that you're talking about that don't necessarily require a four-year degree that those are you get automated in the in the near future do you what do you think the threat of that is and you have an eighteen-year-old kid you tell him to go to college or not concomitant College word right I'd have gone with contemporaneous but either way either way those two see words leads to the other C word which is curiosity no not that one right look anybody who's curious and who can afford it should go to college the thing that I deal with most often with my foundation which focuses primarily on jobs that don't require four-year degree that actually exists when I come out in favor of those opportunities what comes back over the net usually with a lot of topspin is the accusation that I'm anti college or anti education I'm not my liberal arts degree served me really really really really well I got it in 1984 it was the product of a two-year Community College and then another couple years at a university and when the dust settled the whole bill was $9,800 same exact thing today is eighty-eight grant right so my answer to your question is hey can you afford it if you can't don't know that doesn't mean don't borrow money but if you don't if you're not afflicted with a passion for the major and you have to borrow 20 30 50 80 hundred thousand dollars in order to pursue the thing you may or may not be truly passionate about then I don't know what to say to you other than that has to be a function of either pure pressure parental pressure were really bad guidance counseling because I get it it's not fair to compare a liberal education to workforce development right but at some point the only four-letter word that truly matters is debt and you can either do it or you can't I'll say this to you know when I went to school part of what you paid for was access a big part of what you pay for right all this information exists in obviously libraries but mostly in the minds of professors and you get access you sit in front of them and you and you learned well you know we have in our pockets right now a device that gives us access to 98% of the known information world you can watch lectures from MIT Yale Dartmouth William and Mary and all the great schools for free I'm not saying it's the same thing I'm just saying that the cost of college is unconscionable and and to to say that questioning it is somehow fundamentally you know out of bounds I just think it's the it's the height of hubris so what do we do there there's a lot of talk pretty I dove the political aisle right now about the about the sort of falling down of American industry supposedly this idea that manufacturing is going away we're moving toward a service economy that a lot of these jobs are eventually going to be automated or outsourced what do we say to people who may not want to go to college may want to get one of these jobs worries that ten years from now they're gonna be basically priced out of the market by they want to be a trucker and now there's gonna be Google trucks on the roads what do we do about that is there a solution to that or is it just a matter of human beings have to be adaptable that you know I mean look when my grandfather saw me mess up the foundation and hang the drywall not plumb you know he was very nice but eventually eventually he just said look you know you can be a tradesman if you want to you just need a different toolbox and it was really wonderful advice in hindsight you know the idea that I could work in Hollywood like an electrician you know the ultimate freelance really by the way the origins of that word you're familiar with freelance now it was literally a free lance in medieval days you know you're a knight who served whoever hired you you're a mercenary mhm well if you have a skill you can do that because the skill goes wherever you go what' question again anything question was what do we do about the manufacturing jobs that could be disappearing is it something that the government can solve or we tie is it a trade problem is it a technology problem or is it just gonna have to be people adjusting as as time goes on what if it's not a problem at all what if it's simply the oldest story in the world I mean I'm not a history major but I read about the Luddite revolution I read about what happened in textiles I read about the advent of looms and what that meant the same exact argument then everybody always says it's different this time and maybe it is I don't know but everybody always says it's different and it almost never is in fact I don't think it's ever been different so I don't know I don't know what's a can I envision a time when driverless cars and pilotless planes are going all around I but I think we'll live to see it I don't think so I think we might I think you might see a truck driving down the highway in the next twenty years that's being completely automated I also think you're gonna see a human sitting behind the wheel so okay so he's here you're just optimistic in general about the possibility that a lot of these jobs will continue to exist because there's a lot of pessimism from people like for example we had aaron eric weinstein from the from Peter Thiel's company last week and he was deeply concerned about the possibility as a lot of people are that a lot of these blue-collar jobs are just gonna go away and you're gonna have to end up with some sort of universal basic income or people who are not the creatives end up not working but being supported by the creatives because all of these blue-collar jobs eventually ends up being automated and and destroyed over time I only answer that first I'm gonna make an obscene profit pitch so let's do that with all the recent news about online security breaches it's hard not to worry about where my data goes making an online purchase simply accessing your email could put your private information at risk you're being tracked online by social media sites marketing companies your mobile or Internet provider not only can they actually record your browsing browsing 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slash penny at three months free with the one-year package expressvpn comm slash band to learn more okay so it says restate the question for those who forgot it during that ad the basic the basic question was a lot of folks right now on both sides of the aisle are worried about the bifurcation of an economy where it becomes in what they are calling now an IQ economy the idea that if you are a creative type if you're somebody who can do stuff that machines can't do that artificial intelligence can't do you'll have a job in the future and you will and and your job will be relatively safe and if you are somebody who is working as a truck driver that you're basically going to be screwed and there isn't gonna be a lot of job opportunity available to you do you think that's something that's not going to happen or if it does happen is there a solution like universal basic income that people are talking about that's beyond my paygrade I personally am very suspicious of that simply because I you might solve a financial problem but I think you're gonna create some unintended consequences by essentially telling people that here's a big pile of something that you need and you don't have to do anything for it I just think on a really fundamental primal level you're moving the cheese and I don't know what's gonna come out the other side but I just can't imagine it's gonna be good you said bifurcated right I mean yes I think spine is splitting it yeah exactly I think it's a false choice you know I think I I think heads and tails are always going to be on the same coin and this idea this idea that you're an artistic left-brain person over here or this non artistic right brain or what is that you know I remember in the election I think it was Rubio who talked about more welders less philosophers which is very much in keeping with with what my foundation says right but only on a practical need but i but i objected to the idea that a welder can't quote Nietzsche or Descartes right i mean III object to the idea that a philosophy for can't run an even bead down a seal this idea that it's one or the other is a very limited toolbox kind of thought and I think what you said before is is exactly right the answer to that question is purely adaptive it's our ability to adapt and to think more broadly and to take more advantage of the unlimited access that we all have to the same bottomless compendium of knowledge and it be excited by it to explore that I just think part of the solution has to start with curiosity it has to the I don't have a magic 8-ball and I have no idea what's truly coming and I would never want to pretend to but just because I can't tell you why I think we're gonna be okay yeah doesn't mean we're not mm-hmm we're gonna figure it out because we always have and I'm just very suspicious of the argument says this this time we won't it's just too complicated one of the things that troubles me is when I look at the the politicos I juice politics all day right so when I look at the political situation what I see from both sides is this tendency toward seeing yourself as a victim of general trends so on the one side you have people who say we're victims of racism or institutional privilege and on the other side you have people saying we're victims of foreign trade and were victims of economic development and people who say you should put your own house in order first seem to be getting a lot of flack for that so as an example my friend Kevin Williamson wrote for National Review he wrote a piece specifically about some of these dying towns in the Rust Belt that were very heavily based on manufacturing and factory work and he wrote this piece basically saying if your town is dying and you're sitting there waiting for your job to come back you're being a fool leave the town that goes somewhere else it got all sorts of blowback and somebody who's supposedly looking down his nose at the working class and Kevin grew up so poor that his mom was stealing hangers from motels when he was a kid yeah is that something that we as a people can overcome or is this just endemic to human nature that we're always gonna blame everybody else for our own problems yeah we're always going to blame people for our problems I mean I think I think that's how we start I think you know I mean we don't come into the world in my view as pure as we're often told I mean you have kids right I mean you've got two kids sitting next to each other once three ones - they're playing this one wants that toy this one doesn't want to give the toy up so the one is over it takes the toy maybe Bosch is the over one over their head what I mean is this is you know we come in covetous we want we take a whatever it is it can't be our fault we're where the Sun in our solar system we're the center of our universe you know how do we realize that we're not you know it's kind of a clunky analogy but but whatever it is that allows us to assume in our infancy that there's this somehow the universe has come around us to take care of us that translates to this idea that my town can't die my job can't go away I had it and now it's gone and so timeout party foul not cool right it's it's and so it's I don't mean it all to make light of it and I read the article that you're talking about you got you got cream for that just everybody yet and then he got cream began exactly like cream cream right but look we're outrageous for sale everybody know no one knows it better than you I don't think but finding a way to talk about that issue along with many others that doesn't immediately alienate half the country is the thing that I look at as a challenge every single day that's what I do on my Facebook page that's what I do with my foundation it's what I try and do on shows like this I've spent a lot of time on MSNBC CNN Fox I'll talk to anybody who wants to have a fun light-hearted yet grown-up conversation and no matter where I go people's heads explode there was a week a few years ago where I I did I went on a Glenn back and then two days later I went on Bill Maher now I had three million friends on Facebook time a couple weeks later I had two million you know my buddies on the right just simply didn't know what to do with the optics of me sitting next to Bill Maher and my pals on the left just had no notion of how to square the cognitive dissonance that forced their heads to explode when they saw me sitting there with Glenn back just to know what to do it it'll happen here it happens every six months right so what I'm saying is we're in the world now where it's not it's not what we say it gets us in trouble it's what we don't and it's not where we are that makes people's eyebrows arch it's who we're sitting next to we're all it's it's it's it's the proximity of outrage hey it's the geography what do you think has changed about that because I remember five years ago I used to speak on college campuses and I'd require any security the outrage industry was there obviously but it wasn't nearly at the tenor that it is now where people are digging through things people said ten years ago to try and find the one thing they said that they can get them fired over and obviously you know now when I go and speak at Berkeley I require 600 police officers where did all of this come from like I just don't I don't remember I remember people being very angry during the Bush administration I don't remember it being anywhere near like this the level of anger that's in the society is that some people have attributed that to economics people have attributed that to to cultural splits where do you think that that that anger is coming from well look I I hate to say it but I I think part of it is social I mean I have a show now on Facebook I'm thrilled to be on that platform and my show is a celebration of bloody do-gooder ISM but I also own guns right social is a tool guns are a tool and we are right on the verge I think of discovering some really interesting parallels between the first and second amendment and I think I think people are people who would never ever consider or associate a firearm with goodness are ironically using speech as a as a real cudgel and restricting it in in so anyways the arguments are really interesting you know and if if you look at social as a weapon then it's a weapon that you have you don't need a license for it anybody can have it the question is is how are you how are you going to use it and most people simply don't have the training or the maturity to handle it and so the violence and the anger in the outrage that you're seeing I think in part as a result of having an unlimited amount of access to a platform that gives you both the mechanism to say whatever you want and the anonymity and the comfort to hide behind it and so people are very shrill and they're very brave in that and in those scenarios and look all of that is just the portent to it to a mob it all leads to sort of mob mentality and I think that's what you've probably you've probably seen things get accelerated and then there's no place left for it to go and so I have to act out yeah conversations get shut down it really is it's it's deeply unfortunate I also think that you know that with the rise of the social media and with the rise of the technology I think there's something else that's happened too and I don't know where you are religiously or where you get your values from but I feel like there's a dramatic lack of central values in people's lives the people are now looking for value in the anger that people feel fulfilled because they're angry and the angry you are the more fulfilled you are the more it shows the or an authentic human being if you're angry if you if you quell that anger and actually have a regional reasonable conversation with someone this means you're inauthentic it means you're hiding what you truly feel but if you're really pissed off that means that you are an authentic decent human being and so more angry and indecent you are the more decent you are by this but it's perverse logic where do you think people ought to get their values I mean your values very practically based is it just from how you grew up how is it is it from a religious background where does that come from I think you know it's a nature nurture question right I mean obviously it has a lot to do with how you're raised but in the end you you have to hit the reset button and really decide for yourself not just what you think but but why this confusion between passion and conviction what is there's a line I think it was Yeats at the end of the best the the best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity yep right so that's it if you don't have the certainty of your convictions if you can't make a case if you can't answer the question you just asked me which I'll try and get to in a sec then then what is left you know nothing is left but an explanation of how you feel and so if your philosophy ultimately redounds to an explanation of how you feel then you're completely beholden to whatever feeling you might be experiencing at any given point and then you're just one of those people who follow their passion right good luck with that personally I my philosophy has a lot to do with being suspicious of anything that feels easy just as a as a general rule being wary of all earnestness in the words of Travis McGee John Dee McDonald one of my favorite fictitious characters who in hindsight actually formed the basis of my entire business model and and gratitude you know a good-natured skepticism a ton of gratitude and you know some honest intellectual curiosity will probably be the best replacements least that I can think of for getting right to the point of let me tell you how I feel right I really don't care how you feel honestly I mean over a beer it's kind of fun you're talking my language right here I just don't care I mean it's it's it's it's so much more interesting to understand why you believe what you believe than it is to hear about what you believe and that's why mobs are boring and that's why protests are tiresome because all the placards just simply say this is how I feel this is what I believe yeah well one talk in a second about some of the practical hard-headed advice again we yeah you bet it's happening right now get ready for it I'm ready but first let's talk about your sleep we're never gonna agree on everything but I think we can all agree that we can use more sleep getting a great night's sleep is easier and more affordable than you actually think you don't need a new expensive mattress or sleeping pills you need to change your sheets that's why you should check out bull and branch everything bull and branch makes from its bedding to blankets it's pure 100% organic cotton means they start out super soft and then they get even softer over time you buy directly from them so you're essentially paying wholesale 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gone and it's because I keep buying everything I mean this is how to make my money so I'm glad if I can if I can get micro to fall for my advertisements I mean I can get anyone but how many times are you accused of selling out on this Sunday special like every Twitter every comment on the YouTube video below every single one I see ok so people say when I run for presidents and my inauguration will begin fellow Americans but first an ad from Birch gold like this is this is really what all the comments say below this video right here right now so I get it I get it every week right it's just that people it's their heads explode when they when this weird mix of like like Commerce and art dare we say our you know collide they come together in this happy nexus of serendipity and yet it's it's mind-boggling to people my first job in TV was at a home shopping channel I sold out before I had anything to bargain so I mean I'm I was serious before when I said I I really applaud what you're doing because it is you this show is utterly without pretense I have no idea what you're gonna ask me next and the only thing more liberating than that is I'm convinced that you don't either except we're gonna stop every 15 seconds to take care of the brute realities of keeping these or these lines and they are acting these lights are and so look I I you you use the word authenticity before in a couple of different ways I think it's one of the most important concepts going right now because the country starved for it starved for it but we're not quite sure what it is but it has something to do with the way you're doing this well I think I appreciate that I think that the authenticity break is actually it has something to do with the election of President Trump I think to get political you know the we would rather have an authentic quasi con man in the White House and we would have an inauthentic harpy like like Hillary Clinton we would much rather have somebody who is actually the person that he says he is like everybody knows what Trump is at this point everything is baked into the cake with President Trump because we because he's just out there about it like pretty much you could hit him with anything at this point and he would probably survive it he's like a cockroach after a nuclear explosion he's going to survive it and that's not that's meant in the best possible way he is a political I mean when I say cockroach after a nuclear explosion I don't mean that as bad as it sounds I mean that it's a quality in a politician that is hard to come by don't Plantin had it too but the sort of feeling like we can trust you because we know that what you're saying is what you actually believe is something that that is is really effective right now given how produced everything is because everybody is so afraid these social media mobs authenticity is in short supply what do you make of Trump how did he come about and and what have you made of him so far so it was the question on everybody's mind on everything I understand he's the son around which the universe revolves yep look I was on I was invited on Meet the Press the Sunday after the election and they asked me that same question because a couple weeks earlier I was asked that question on Facebook and I answered it very candidly I said he's gonna win he's gonna win running away I wish I'd listened to you I lost a bunch of money on the election now there's no doubt about it I mean for me look I just spent ten years in Wisconsin Michigan western Pennsylvania I'll throw it you know I mean it was to me from what I saw it was obvious but I'll tell you my Trump story all right I mean I've got it I've got a few of them but but the one that was public I raised money for my foundation and a lot of unorthodox ways you know for years I had these things called crap auctions collectibles rare and precious and I I would I would go in my garage and I would take on a piece of crap that I'd accumulated in my dirty travels right and I would sell it in the QVC style and I'd give the money we raised to the foundation we raised hundreds of thousands of dollars so when the election was at his fevered pitch I had a show on CNN at the time called somebody's got to do it and the show is no longer on CNN it's actually on TBN had to move it because it was preempted constantly because the election ramped up in such a way so I I went online and I and basically said to Donald Trump Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders had nice gone guys you just got my show booted off the network I'll forgive you if each of you will make a donation to my foundation what I'm looking for from you Bernie is you're one of those crumpled you know suit coats you always wear send that to me and I'll auction it off Hillary send me one of your pants suits right and I said to Trump I said send me one of your bathrobes and an autograph you know a bathrobe out here so heard nothing from Bernie Sanders heard nothing from Hillary Clinton Donald Trump sent me an autographed bathroom with his name signed on it he had a hand delivered to me so the next next week I put on his bathrobe and I sit down at my kitchen table you know I got my iPhone set up and I'm doing an episode of crap I auction this thing off got $18,000 for it it's like that okay so I got a lot of he for wearing a Donald Trump bathrobe I don't care the money went straight to the work ethic scholarship program the moral of the story is he understands who's watching and he understands what's happening it doesn't have anything to do I don't know I can't speak to his polemics his politics I don't need to say anything to get myself in any more hot water he sent the robe nobody else did and I really I really didn't expect him to but a deal's a deal so I auctioned it off and I thanked him and the money went to a great cause my only other interaction with him we got a call months ago from from the White House to talk about supporting a thing that just happened this week this big initiative around vocational education Duncan trumps been pushing that yeah her people called and we had a really candid conversation and look I'll tell you what I told him I said look I'd love to I mean honestly I'd love to because what what you're talking about is the mandate of micro works it's what I've been I mean from the day Barack Obama when in office we started our foundation Labor Day 2008 were 10 years this year and uh I've been to the extent that I'm able to call for anything I've been calling for this exact thing a PR campaign for good jobs and actually exist and a genuine focus on alternatives to a four-year education but I said look I if I put on and make America great hat half the country will not hear me and so it has nothing to do forget my personal politics do what you can politically what I'm doing now is not political at all it's one of the few areas I believe right and left still share with these Venn diagrams there's not a lot of shared real estate left but the definition of a good job in 2018 is something we're all gonna have to figure out and look I call it as I see him what they did this week around the skills gap as you would say good trial mm-hmm so what so tell us a little more about vocational training you know as somebody who went to the Toni colleges and and has can barely pick up a hammer what is what is vocational training actually constitute because when I hear it it sounds like a welding shop class from middle school or something what exactly what exactly is it and why should people undergo it if they if they're seeking a job in one of these industries vocational training is the is the most direct line you can find between where you are now and an actual opportunity it's it's job training it's it's not esoteric it's not theoretical it's this is what you need to be able to do in order to get money for doing it it's very very simple and it can apply to it's not just well during and steam fitting and pipe fitting and things like that is this healthcare areas there's so many opportunities that require vocational training but the first thing to understand is what you just said it is exactly right the language matters the language matters hugely and you know shop class we didn't just get shop class out of high school like that it was a process shop used to be called vocational arts the first thing we did was we took the art out of it and then we made it vote tech and then it was just vocational education and that eventually it became shop at which point it's easy to walk it out back behind the barn and put a bullet in its head and that's what we did we took shop class out of high school is there a more persuasive way to show an entire generation of kids what's important than by eliminating it from view and well and the entertainment industry has contributed to this also I mean like every joke is always about shop class every joke is always about the guy who's the plumber the the ideal that you aspire to if you watch TV is never the person who actually is working one of the jobs that you're talking about it's always a lawyer or a doctor those are the glamorous jobs apparently nobody ever actually tossed a lawyer a doctor before making the show about lawyers and doctors being glorious jobs because as a lawyer and with wife is a doctor it is not a clear it's job it actually turns out but the internet ministry obviously circulated in in New York and LA made up a bunch of people like me people who can't handle a hammer what does how does Hollywood contribute to to this sort of skills gap and problem do you think mightily you know you're talking about a cold war on work and it's waged on multiple fronts Hollywood leads the charge to your point if there's a plumber on a show he's 300 pounds with a giant butt crack that's what plumbers look like right all of them are the recipients not of a skilled trade but of some kind of vocational consolation prize it's what you do if you can't do this right so that's the working assumption and Hollywood has confirmed those stigmas and stereotypes in a multitudinous number of ways Madison Avenue has done the exact same thing you see the same poor trails in advertising as you do in popular culture books I mean look I I'm pals with Tim Ferriss but you know we always laugh and we talk about this because when he published the 4-hour workweek it was one of the first examples I pointed to there's a great bestseller it's full of good advice but the titular promise is how to get so much more by doing so much less all the propositions on any financial ad that you're ever going to see or read are going to it's pregnant with the possibility of retiring sooner working less if you're unhappy the proximate cause of your unhappiness probably has to do with the damn boss or your damn job that's how you make work the enemy you identify it as the reason for your unhappiness and then you juxtapose it with all kinds of other images that you that you can't have right and now you now you have a whole new gap in there so my foundation evolved really as a PR campaign for jobs that actually exist and a challenge to this idea that you know the most expensive path was the best path for the most people so yeah I I have lots of opportunities and lots of examples because this town is rife with it but look it's everywhere Ben it's a it is on bookshelves it's on your television and and it's in parents look then and this goes back this is the reptilian part of our brain we want something for our kids better than we had doesn't matter how good we had it that matter because we want something better that's okay that's that's normal but at some point back to defining what a better job or a good job really is parents can't agree guidance counselor's can't agree guidance counselors in high schools now in many cases are are evaluated and comped based on their ability to help X number of students matriculate into a four-year school that's the goal right so we've we've got our thumb on the scale in so many different ways and ultimately what we're left with is a giant hot massive misunderstanding myths stereotypes and misperceptions that are affirmatively keeping people from pursuing a litany of opportunities so one of the things that I love that you talk about is is the meaning of work one as you say there are a lot of folks in our society who seem to think that less work is is better and that retiring early is the thing and then you see all these people who retire at age 66 and by 68 they're dead because if you're not working then you're not doing anything I am it's been my view for my entire life that people were legitimately born to work until you die and even if you don't have work you find things to work at whether it's you go and you volunteer somewhere you're working with the charity people need to feel purpose and people find purpose in work but you have a you have an interesting perspective on this because the way that I was brought up you know in the schools that I went see the way that I think people of my generation were brought up is find something that's meaningful and then try to find a job in the thing that you find meaningful where is one of the things you preach is find a job and then try to find meaning in that job which is kind of polar opposite you can you talk about that a little bit well look I mean in the end what you want is meaningful work and let's define meaningful work as as an activity that you're passionate about that moves the needle in in some way and that compensates you in a way that excites you the question is how do you get there and today the path starts with passion it starts with well sit down and think about it what would make you happy what do you see yourself as doing right identify that thing now let's put together a plan what sort of education do you need how much time should it take and you put all these hoods in front of it right and now and now you have a plan and when you get to that place congratulations you've done it right that's insane right that's insane it's kind of like saying Ari you want to be happy and you're and you're in your love life all right are you going to go in search of your soul mate or are you going to go where the people are and start getting to know them and it's just it just depends on how hard you want to make so one of the big lessons from Dirty Jobs was the people on that show collectively were having a much better time than the average person would suspect they would be having given the fact that most of them were covered in other people's crap we're crawling around in some godforsaken pit of despair we're doing some vocational consolation prize thing right these people aren't supposed to look happy they're not supposed to look self-actualized they're not supposed to look prosperous the dirty little secret of dirty jobs was that easily 40 of the people we featured on that show were multimillionaires we never talked about it because I didn't want it to be a polemic but success doesn't look like the version we've been sold at all at all so you know having fun with that that kind of cognitive dissonance is is great showing people examples of the plumber who began his or her trade with learning a skill and now had seven trucks and 32 employees that's important those people over and over again the septic tank inspector up in West Wisconsin the the skull cleaners in in Oklahoma City I can go down the list none of them set out to do what they were doing none of them began with what would make me happy these people looked around to see where everybody was running and they ran in the opposite direction that's where they found opportunity then they found a way to get good at it then they learn their trade and then they they mastered it then they found a way to be passionate about it so they got to the same place but they didn't start on this snipe hunt of what will make me happy they looked around and said where the jobs and they got him and do you think the weird question for you do you think that same thing applies in personal relationships 100% I think it applies in everything I think you know our brain is obviously our our best friend and our and our worst enemy you know it it'll do whatever we tell it to do right I mean if you assign it a task it's gonna go until it can complete it we're die trying just be careful of what you assign it to you know I mean if you if you tell your brain the only way you're going to be happy is if you find your soul mate you better be prepared to embark upon a worldwide never ending tour of chronic disappointment it's gonna be expensive right I'm not saying settle see it's another binary choice this is what people are gonna say to me well they don't be like so you're just saying just go buy just what arranged marriages well I don't know but statistically arranged marriages do pretty good you know they do pretty good so I'm not saying that I know you're right in the sense that you know there's also talk about passion nowadays passion and marriage and what the social science tends to show is that passion in in any relationship is it it's very high at the very beginning and companionate love is it it's very low and then in very short order passionate love drops precipitously in companionate love increases precipitously and so you can bet on passionate love but no matter how you bet I'm passionate love within a year that passionate love is gonna be declining question is why the companionate love is actually going to last and so if you go into it exactly if you go into it with the mentality that this is something you're gonna have to stick to the chances you have a successful marriage are gonna be a lot better than I'm gonna go into it because I'm passionate about it because every job eventually becomes a job no matter how passionate you are about your initial belief in a job and I love my job and I'm sure you love your job eventually it gets to the point where yeah I got to get up this morning gotta go to work right still you getting up and going to work happiness is a it's a it's a terrific symptom it's a terrible goal right it's just a terrible goal because it's a it's a sucker's bet if it were if happiness were that tangible than everything the same thing would make everyone happy but obviously it it doesn't you know but I just I'm sure of that I'm not sure if much but I'm I'm sure of that I wrote this thing you'd get a kick out of it it's a it started like most everything I do as an attempt to amuse myself but after a bottle of wine one night you know I'm my foundation Awards work ethic scholarships so we need to have some mechanism by which we can try to account for work out I mean how do you measure character it's virtually impossible but I wrote this thing called a sweat pledge skills and work ethic are not taboo aren't above sweat right and you have to sign it it's a 12-point pledge sort of part 12-step process part Scout law right and and some people really really really hate it but one of the first things is you know you know I'm I'm grateful I won the greatest lottery of all time I I live in America too I do not follow my passion right at 3:00 I make it goes down all of these things it was just it was like a little personal manifesto for me but I only bring it up because it's become increasingly more important to my foundation and now the more I look back on it it's hysterical been how how outraged people get yeah I give away I mean maybe 5 million dollars so far right not a ton by foundation standards but it's a ton on en every year about eight hundred thousand dollars goes out and every year people say well why do I have to sign the sweat lodge and I said well you don't have to it's entirely possible this particular pile of free money might not be for you I mean there are many scholarship funds that award academic achievement I'm more interested in or in awarding attendance right I mean athletic achievement talent they're there all kinds of rubrics and metrics for measuring value but where's the work ethic so that's what we try and do and forgive me I'm trying to bring this back to the answer to the question you posed but I forgot what it is again so if I mean I think you took me on the journey and now now we're left adrift here but they were sweat pledge I'm gonna send you a sweat pledge okay sounds good well and let's hone in on for a second the first principle do you mention which is that you won the lottery because you live here which is something with which I totally agree but that's a pretty controversial proposition these days sure and it's it's become almost partially a left-right proposition unfortunately where you see there's a poll that came out just within the last month it suggested that Republicans particularly we're very proud to be members of the United States very proud to be American and they were very proud to be American when Obama was president this was not dependent on who was president it was 73% of Americans where Republicans were proud when Obama was president at 77% now and for Democrats was like 54% were positive when it was Obama and now it's like 38% because of President Trump why do you think there are so many people in the country who look at the situation that they've been handed which is the freest most prosperous country in the history of humanity and and think to themselves I'm a victim in this scenario and that not to discount anybody's actual hardships are past but why do you think that that's become such a prominent thing and what clearly is a land of opportunity because it's not clear it's not clearly right the big of all the divides the one that worries me the most is the divide between people who are genuinely genuinely convinced that opportunity is dead and those who are not right the ones who are artificially convinced or just you know paying lip service to it they don't matter but there are a lot of people who really and truly truly believe the system is rigged and they truly believe opportunity is dead that's how they scare me not because I'm frightened of them but because that belief is that that'll kill us I mean if that belief really truly spreads it will kill us this is why the skills gap becomes weirdly political it's it shouldn't be it's just opportunity it's just six point three million jobs sitting there vacant but when I point that out it's it's very difficult because everything is politicized today right it's what comes back is well what does the existence of opportunity mean in a country where we're fighting over the fact that opportunity may or may not be dead it's proof positive that it's not now that's a problem right the optics don't line up so then you have economic experts with whom I I really can't engage because I'm not an economist but they will tell you why the skills gap is a myth so here's how it breaks down if I point to six million available jobs my friends on the right will tell me that those jobs are available because human beings are fundamentally lazy my friends on the Left will tell me that those jobs are available because employers are fundamentally greedy and that's where we are we can't think beyond the fact that our basic philosophies require us to see humanity as either lazy or greedy now the truth is in my opinion we're both lazy and greedy right and we're neither lazy nor greedy we're all of it and none of it and all of it gets measured out in unequal amounts but we don't we don't have time today to parse the nuance of that it simply has to be one or the other so when I post a picture of me standing next to the flag on the 4th of July I got a lot of pushback and I think a lot of people who were pushing me back don't really want to push back they just don't want to see me doing something patriotic because the lines have been drawn and now if you're if you're patriotic well then you must be on the right that's also really super dangerous it's a it's a false choice and and we have to push back against that we it's incumbent upon us I think you're doing a decent job of it I'll try Thanks I mean no honestly look yours biased as I am yours biases the next person but you can point these cameras at anything you want and you're you're pointing them at honest thoughtful conversation well thanks let's let's talk a little bit about you have a unique perspective on life what are your parents like and this gives you the opportunity all about your mom because you have a brand-new book that your mom has written that you're pushing right now so what were your parents like well they're they were a lot like what happily they still are oh good okay so yeah my dad is 86 years old thank god he delivers meals on wheels once sometimes twice a week and he volunteers at the hospital once a week my mom is 80 she still sings in the church choir and she and she writes every day she's been writing me letters for as long as I can remember I started reading them online and people started saying you should write a book and so she has she wrote a book called about my mother if I were you right now you know what I'd do I'd say I'm gonna ask you that question real quick but first about my mother a hero it's available at micro dot-com slash mom's book Jack about it'll change your life and it will and I mean look never mind what the book is about I mean it's 14 short stories and they're all terrific and anybody who's ever been a mother or a daughter will love it what's amazing as my mom has written a book at 80 she's 80 years old and just decided I want to write a book and it's good and you know I'm so proud of her because he'll man I people half her age with way more opportunity and and they don't she did a thing you know my parents are both completely engaged with the world around them and still in love with each other so here's a final question for you before we have to run grit an opportunity and and opportunism and an enthusiasm and curiosity these are all the things that you like to talk about do you think these are inborn qualities and people are these things that you can cultivate or is it a little bit of both because obviously there are some people who there's a case may that there are some people who just can't get over that hump and there are some people who are automatically benefited from birth with with these qualities how much of it can be cultivated and how much of it is just that's the way you are I think all of it can be cultivated I really do look I think it's I think change is the hardest thing but to our earlier point we come into the world utterly selfish completely dependent and totally totally at the mercy of the people around us you know if we don't change from that then then obviously right so yeah you can cultivate in a an outlook of gratitude you can cultivate opportunism you can also cultivate hypocrisy and you can cultivate smallness and and meanness and it's it's I believe some people will always have it easier of course nobody's starting from the from the same starting line it's okay it's never been that way but it's a hundred percent up to us where are we finished well micros it's such a pleasure to have you here and I really appreciate your time everybody should go check out your podcast they should check out your mom's book everything that you're doing and what's the best way to reach you with your website I'm on Facebook I got micro comm hard to miss go check it out micros awesome thanks so much for stopping by [Music] the venture Pierrot shows Sunday special is produced by Jonathan hey executive producer Jeremy boring associate producers Mathis Glover and Austin Stevens edited by Alex Singaram audio is mixed by Mike Carmina hair and makeup is by Jess wa al Vera entitle graphics by Cynthia and Gullu the Ben Shapiro shows Sunday special is a daily wire for word publishing production copyright for publishing 2018

Channel: The Daily Wire

Views: 1,073,212

Rating: 4.9138203 out of 5

Keywords: mike rowe, ben Shapiro, the ben Shapiro show, daily wire, sunday special, poli sci, political science, economy, college, should I send my kid to college, jobs, Dirty Jobs, celeb, celebrity, trade, trade jobs, firearms, speech, trump, Donald trump, vocational, vocational jobs, work, hard work, happiness, goal, goals, purpose, value, actor, Hollywood

Id: UVqtXX6LbM4

Length: 62min 31sec (3751 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 29 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Vadersballhair]

I like how he avoided the religion question... But I still can't tell if he is religious or not.

It would actually be weirder if he was knowing how candid he is on everything else.

[u/nathan_huffine]

This was a great interview. I wish I found Mike Rowe sooner (beyond the Dirty Jobs show). His point about false choices really hit home I'd say. Why can't a plumber also read Nietzsche? Also, I love the SWEAT code he makes his scholar recipients sign!

[u/Nosferatard]

I’m listening right now!

[u/ChevyChaseIsNice]

Can’t wait to watch this one!