What’s Valid Work?: Mike Rowe, “Dirty Jobs” Host

[Music] micro uh I need your help all right what can I do you you've done so much great work you uh the show dirty jobs where you you go in there and you know take on these job take on these jobs that were essentially horrible jobs that nobody did that people think they don't want and yet are incredibly useful to society you sort of underlying the usefulness and underline how incapable you are of doing those jobs that's kind of your the main show you've been known for but you've been involved in everything from QVC to The Deadliest Catch to a million other shows that I didn't even know you were involved in until I researched this but you've been a TV personality for a long time you just wrote this great book the way I heard it it's and as soon as I started reading this because at first I opened it and I started reading in the middle and I was like those Paul Harvey books and like he starts off telling a story like you know Jack was just swimming after crashing his boat and you find out at the end it's John F Kennedy or something like that sure and so you have these great brilliant stories of all these different people same source but then you interweave your own autobiography which I hadn't really known you know all the different details and I was really fascinating to watch as you grew and evolved in terms of your standards and your career and your successes and your ups and downs I didn't know about how you lost your first you know the money you made from your first big successes and and how you came back from that so but what I'm really but the first thing I'm curious about is you're on QVC that's your first big TV thing and it and I'll let you talking to second this is just like my way of doing intro I you're you're you're on QVC and you're Hawking these just the shittiest products of all time and you know it's hard you you're young you want a career but it's hard to weave authenticity and integrity with kind of like you know opportunity like oh you could be on you know make money with this QVC thing and yet you did it you and you did it in this ingenious way maybe this is a good way to start well performance is the enemy of authenticity or production is the enemy of authenticity and everybody mean production well I mean in my world everybody says they want an authentic experience but if you look at the things that we do in television to make sure that authentic experience can't be achieved it'll break your heart from makeup to lights to teleprompters I mean is there anything more inauthentic than a guy reading a teleprompter who wants you to believe he's not reading a teleprompter and yet this is how we get most of our news from people who pretend to know more than they do and if you look at all the constructs around them they're designed to facilitate that deception a performance is a deception and I like deception you know I like I like acting I like performing but if you're going to make your living in the world of nonfiction more specifically in the world of reality then you have to at least comport with some prevailing definition of what nonfiction means and what reality is I figure in a world of nonfiction you're not supposed to do the things that get in the way of an authentic experience and back in those days with QVC I hadn't given this much thought I just realized for the first time in my life I was on live television expected to talk extemporaneously about products that looked very much as though they'd been purloined from the Midway of some condemned carnival from those machines you know with the cloth that brings stuff out and I mean these were things that didn't sell in primetime and suddenly at 3:00 in the morning I'm being asked to pontificate ad nauseam about them and so I did the only thing I could do when I realized I didn't know what I was doing I looked into the camera and said I do not know what I'm doing and I introduced myself to the to the viewers and said I'm new my name is Mike this is the health team infrared pain reliever according to my blue card here you can have one for $29.99 I don't know what it is and I don't know what it does and if you have one call the number on the screen and ask for Marty the producer he'll put you through and maybe you can tell me what the damn thing is and that's the honest-to-god truth those are my first words out of my mouth on QVC and the phone lines exploded oh yeah didn't you do a product or two right before they're like maybe even that same first evening where you were you were trying to yes and then my first shift yeah I tried I tried with the Amcorp negative ion generator to explain the importance of negatively Orange yeah I tried because you know I I had a little bit of knowledge and I thought oh I'm gonna share my knowledge my knowledge bomb you know but 20 seconds later I told you everything I knew about negative ions and I still had 7 minutes and 40 seconds to go so still I think that requires a lot of skill to come up with even a few seconds about negative ions because people always tell me oh yeah wind causes negative what are negative ions I can't even imagine what negative ions are right and but what's going on in your brain right now is that you're on live television it's the middle of the night your audience consists of an undefined number of narcoleptic lonely hearts are you really going to persuade them to part with 2999 by taking a deep dive into negative ion theory probably not and yet you have to kill eight minutes and so you play the cards you have the best you can and those hosts they all did their shows the same basic way what I did was the only thing I could do because I didn't want the job James do you understand I mean I I auditioned for the job to settle a bet while I was singing in the Baltimore Opera I got hired I think on a dare and I took it just because I wanted to see what the experience of earning money actually felt like in my chosen field I did not for any moment think I'd spend three years there free associating about an endless litany of indescribable products that I was nevertheless required to describe but there's so much to unpack there first off you were and and we're gonna get to so much stuff I'm respectful here time you have it now we're gonna get to a lot of stuff including dirty jobs which i think is really was a really important show um and and everything you're working on on now if this goes well by the way I got more than an hour we'll call an audible 45 minutes in we don't have to be to the next place to like 2:30 so let's just see how it goes yeah you strike me as an amazingly facile open-minded genuinely curious cat I'll talk to as long as you want oh well thank you so much so so you measuring you were singing in the Baltimore Opera and a lot of things I noticed about your career is that I don't want to call it skipping the line cuz it's not quite that but you know everybody sort of thinks a career moves in a straight line like you go to college and grad school then you get a job you rise up you you you you start making huge salary you put in a 401k you retire life is good right that is not the way you have chosen correct but but even in a in a meta way you don't go the straight line it's not like you went to opera school fine tuned your voice like the amazing magical instrument it could be and then join the Opera you took a you you you kind of went through a back door which i think is is a skill people have forgotten because because of the brainwashing of guidance counselors and parents and peers in high school and so on absolutely my partner Mary and I discussed it in terms of Forrest Gump away forward I often liken it to falling down the stairs you make progress and sometimes pretty good time but you get knocked around a little bit you know and that's okay I personally I realized when I was 17 that I was not going to do any of the things I thought I was going to do I wasn't going to be the guy I thought I was going to be what did you what did you initially want to be like when you were 17 well I grew up next to a magician named Karl Nobel who was my grandfather and he wasn't a you know make the rabbit disappear magician he was the kind of guy who could build a house without a blueprint magician he went to the seventh grade but he was brilliant he began working early in his career and by the time he was 30 he was a steam fitter pipe fitter electrician by trade a plumber a mechanic welder he just I just figured I would do everything he did because as a boy all I ever saw were problems being corrected by he and my dad you know they did they wake up clean they come home dirty and the world was a better place so I wanted to do that the Handy gene tragically is recessive and I I didn't get the natural ability my pop got he told me get a different tool box you could be a tradesman just get a different toolbox I didn't go into the Opera because I wanted to sing opera I got into the opera cuz I wanted to meet girls and I want to get my union card in the what's called a gamma the the American Guild of musical artists and that would let me buy my sag card then the Screen Actors Guild so I could go about the business of becoming a sitcom star or maybe a movie star I didn't know how any of it worked well you're actually and just so people know there's that catch-22 with the Screen Actors Guild which is that in order to get into sag you have to be a performing actor in order to be a performing actor you have to be in sag correct I mean I couldn't even get I couldn't even audition for national network spots unless I was in the Screen Actors Guild and agent after agent told me well we don't really take on people who aren't in the Screen Actors Guild so there were there were multiple barriers into my chosen field and the only way I could find in was a very circuitous route into the Baltimore opera so my plan to the extent I had one was to do one show well first of all learn an aria crash an audition get hired do one show and then excuse yourself and get on with your life well you know the music was better than I thought the girls were extraordinarily friendly I was 22 dressed like a pirate or maybe a Viking surrounded by young coeds dressed as French courtesans and we're singing Verdi and we're singing Puccini and and we're having a hell of a time so I I stuck around for a few years and so you hear your first audition we should you described in the book or your first time meeting them they they saw something in your voice but it was obviously not professional your Italian was awful but you knew the words what did they how did you cuz because part of taking the back door is is a little bit persuading people to open the door correct so so what what do you think was the the magic there I think they saw in me a an absence of guile you know I mean I I really wasn't trying to be terribly clever and I think for a while they they can you say bad words on this yeah yeah they thought I was [ __ ] with them honestly I think there was this guy named Michel Geller who was a barbershop er and I and I knew him through this weird barbershop harmony Society he got me the audition in front of a guy named Billy a Nazi who spoke five languages and could play any Aria start to finish from memory and Tom Hall who was the course master I think those two fought that my friend Mike Geller was simply joking they brought me and completely untrained I had a decent voice I could carry a tune I had memorized the shortest Aria I could find from La Boheme and bill started playing it and I immediately stopped and I said mister you Nazi that's a that's a bit higher than I rehearsed it could you take it down a key or two can you play it in a different key I said he said I could play it in any key you wish which key would you prefer other than that which mr. Puccini desired so yeah they just think I'm messing with him but I'm not and I I sung that Aria as loudly as I could as as well as I could which wasn't very good but at the end of it they realized I wasn't I was serious I really wanted a shot and I think I think what they heard was a certain amount of potential and then a couple of things I couldn't control I was young I had a low voice and they were in desperate need of people with both those qualities and so the stars just lined up and they gave me a shot but the joke was really on my friend Michael Geller when billion us he said he is your responsibility mister Gellert our plan and our hope is that he shall attend a series of rehearsals and the in the immediate near future suck considerably less well and you stay with them for three years seven that's uh so again it's not that you tricked anybody into anything it's not that you avoided Opera skill school I clearly got training on the job um and this was legitimate you they wouldn't have kept you there for so many years without you you know being up getting up to par and I think this is an important lesson that it's not about there's many ways to get to a goal and I think your whole career sort of exemplifies that you know what is attractive right I mean that's a question and and anybody can ask it of of anyone but in the hiring process it's still for sale I don't mean a physical way but I mean what what qualities are attractive you know who do you want to surround yourself with in general I think curiosity is attractive I think enthusiasm is attractive and I think a willingness to be in on the joke and find the laugh or at least a knowledge acknowledged the possibility that there's that there's humor and virtually everything I think that's attractive and you know I I wasn't trying to be terribly calculated about it but looking back at it you know as an employer myself today you know what would I respond to in a in a prospective employee I would respond to me thirty-five years ago thirty years ago I didn't know him I asked from a hot rock but I wanted to learn and I was genuinely curious about the business I was applying for I had no references to speak of I had no bona fides but I also made no apology for it and my guess is also if you had been completely rejected it's not like you would have said oh that's it I can't get my sag card you would have tried this was essentially an experiment correct and you would have tried another experiment and I think experimentation is something that's the you know I think I think repetition is often valued in our society over experimentation and so you get the college degree and then you send out 50 resumes to be to an accounting firm and hopefully one of them picks you but there's lots of again there's lots of experiments one can do it's it's worse than repetition it's a kind of soul deadening duplicity and derivation I McGee we mentioned Network News before why why does all local news look the same why does everybody sound the same when they're on the radio why why does so much FM sound the same why did so much music sound the same why do so many talk shows look the same and why do so many reality shows follow the same format the answer has something to do with what we reward and what we discourage and it has something to do with the way we mitigate risk today so if you're if you're a producer and you somebody shows up to your office like I did with a pilot for Dirty Jobs once upon a time and you look at that show all you really see if you're interested in extending your career all you see is risk because you don't see a show that looks like other shows now if you greenlight a turd that resembles other turds and that turd fails you don't get blamed for green-lighting something that looks familiar anybody could make that mistake but if you greenlight a turd that no one's seen before then you're gonna lose your job so the podcast industry is not going to be so different either in fact it might already be suffering from the same kind of sameness you know what I mean it's because we because we don't we we we want to make safe bets whether we're running a hedge fund or whether we're green-lighting a show or whatever it is and so I think real opportunity exists on QVC certainly for 21 hours a day every day the viewer could see the same basic hosts doing the same basic thing in the same basic way now at 3 in the morning you got me and I wasn't nearly as radical as people remember me I was just surrounded by such breathtaking sameness that I could put one toe over the line and I would sound like Howard Stern in the morning but you know what's great is you created almost your own genre on QVC which was you know you have all like you said you have all these people are 3:00 in the morning watching you and what do they want maybe they want the products but what they really want in 3:00 in the morning is human contact and that's what you gave them you said call me if you know about this product so you let them do the job for you but you also you basically made them the hero of the story rather than the product you invited them into the world of the extraordinary they could call you and now suddenly they could be on TV correct look that you just summed it up better than I have and I've been trying to do this for a while but when you put it in terms of heroism then you're talking about protagonists but if you're gonna talk about protagonists you're talking about narrative if you're talking about narrative if you're talking about an AG norisse's and peripeteia and all kinds of Aristotelian themes that inform our decisions in everyday life I doubt seriously that anyone who's read Plato or Aristotle has tried to apply those themes to the business of home shopping but they're there and they're also there in the sewer they're there on dirty jobs they're there in podcasting we're all the hero of our own story whether we know it or not and the way we think about ourselves talk about ourselves write about ourselves present ourselves you know that's all a version of the Romantic vision we have of ourselves and they're different points in our life I reckon you know when we adhere to it more or less yeah and and and again we're gonna get to how this applies to other areas of your life but I really am initially fascinated by the QVC stuff which I will there's a small part of your career but I think it's it starts to define who you are for it for the rest of it there's there's this aspect of transparency there saying I I don't know and for instance you've been on all the news channels I've been a news pundit they kind of tell you if you say I don't know we're never letting you back like you're not allowed to say I don't know right and but and yet most people don't know most things and and and they interesting thing about the word transparency is it's not it's not thought it's an action so when you were transparent on QVC like I don't know here's the number call me if you know about this product you're it's almost like you're trading your vulnerability for you know you your you know for basically audience you're giving them something so you're getting you're getting this audience and appreciation back they want to know that this is the real deal here's the in my view here's the transaction we grew up in an age of authority and in my industry Authority is the cornerstone of nonfiction it's also the cornerstone of news it's not just about being correct it's about sounding correct so in the age of authority you must come from a place of informed knowledge what if something happened in the early 2000s where Authority was slowly supplanted by something else and what if that something else was authenticity what if we went from an age of authority into an age of authenticity where I'm not saying necessarily that everything is authentic today it's not but at some point I think we began to value an authentic experience as much or more than we valued an authoritative one and what that means socially I'm not a I'm not an anthropologist I don't know but for me it was positively liberating because remember after QVC I got my toolbox now I know how to get work I'm actually fairly facile and pretty good at it so I get booked for hundreds of jobs between 1993 and 2001 hundreds and I work for all the networks and I'm really good at hitting my mark and saying my line and sounding like I know more than I do my job was to create the illusion of credibility and competence and short bursts so I know for a fact that that's what most people do in the news that's their job but happily I wandered into the Discovery Channel one day with some tape some footage that I thought would be a new kind of show and what that show really was dirty jobs was was a chance to let me stop being a host and start being a guest to stop being an expert and start being an avatar and that subtle distinction changed my own view of my own heroic self it changed the direction of my narrative and it allowed me to interact with people in a way that was more a reflection of authenticity than Authority the authority in other words went from me to my to my guests and so suddenly a septic tank inspector or a welder or a skull cleaner or a golf ball retrieval specialist is treated like like Access Hollywood would treat Brad Pitt they become the authority I become a kind of cipher and for me a new sort of of model emerged and it suited me I think I think because of again that authenticity your audience is relating to you and so you're looking up to the golf ball retriever the skull cleaner the welder and so they become a hero and we the audience realize oh this is kind of how the world is built and keeps on running as opposed to you know all the other sort of BS stuff that we all are told to aspire to this is where it's happening and you know even in the branding of this show and I think we have in part Mary Sullivan to credit for this when they were trying to say hey Mike let's put you out front we're gonna make you kind of the everyman hero you were like you were basically saying no no it's these guys you have to you know that's where you pulled out the the pig as the as the branding element for this show sure and and I think you know I think what was so important about Dirty Jobs is that the the mediocracy doesn't allow people to think these jobs even exist nobody asks the golf ball retriever what do you think of tariffs so you know it's like everybody's talking about well where what's going on are we killing babies in Syria anymore or what's going on over there and you know you're basically saying hey we should these people are important to and we shouldn't forget them yeah I mean the the pig on the pedestal you know and you're right it was it was married who said listen if you're if you're going to do a different kind of show why would you allow it to be promoted in such a predictable way all the tropes all the bromides all the platitudes you know of the you know the blue-collar apologists the hero working guy that there was a lot of pressure to embrace that kind of iconography you know but at the time MasterCard or maybe Capital One I mean MasterCard was doing what's in your wallet you know they're still doing that campaign my question was what's on your pedestal so the pig you know rather than highlight a specific worker or myself a pig you know a pig who makes the ultimate sacrifice you know countless times a day for our breakfasts and and various other you know things put put that creature on a pedestal and I'll stand next to it on a white site and extol the virtues of work and promote my show next to a pig you know visually it's gonna it's gonna make you stop well not only did it work but when that pig shat itself during the promos and some of the most spectacular lower GI tract failures I've ever seen certainly among poor signs and all species for that matter you know that was just delicious you know to stand next to a pig crapping in a national promotional campaign while I'm trying to describe what my show is and while the pig is actually showing you what it is from a pedestal I mean come on metaphorically that's some pretty high cotton yeah and you know I think having having mistakes and airing them is is real like that's what's interesting like you say even these reality shows are so scripted now it would be you know being the very initial reality shows I feel were were unscripted let's even take um like HBO's taxicab confessions in the 90s those were very from what I can understand those were very unscripted and it just felt so much more poetic as opposed to kind of the high drama and let's call it even like lipstick drama like everything's just painted up and and we get the drama that way and like you say there's there's there are reality the funniest thing is that there are reality show writers yes look it's I mean it's funny like tragic funny but that's true I mean you know duck dynasty was no less scripted then married with children the format's were almost identical you know they were scripted in the field and they were scripted in the edit I mean the Edit is where you really you know take control of the narrative and it's not your narrative it's the editors narrative or some other executive somewhere so yeah I mean with regard to reality the purest form is a fly on the wall that's why taxicab confessions made a certain amount of sense cops is maybe the greatest reality show because you're just along for the ride so what I try and do in the shows I work on is make sure that component is present and we don't do it as well I used to call it behind the scenes camera and then of course you've heard the expression breaking the fourth wall but none of that really works anymore today it's about ignoring the fourth wall you can do whatever show you want to do but if you're working with me you have to be alright with a documentary camera coming along and simply chronicling the entirety of the process now I don't know to what degree I'm gonna use that footage but I'm gonna use it in some way shape or form I'm gonna make sure the viewer knows that we're making a show and they're gonna get to know the camera people and they're gonna get to know my producer they're gonna get to know the people who are a part of the team because that's what that's what making TV is especially in the world of nonfiction in reality now if you're gonna make Game of Thrones get it right you know I don't want to see a guy holding up a fake dragon in the background I'm along for the fantasy but if you're going to call it reality and if you're going to ask me to spend time with real people and if you're gonna tell me that you should get to know these people for whatever reason then don't [ __ ] me show me the people show me the business of meeting them and and let me connect the dots for myself as a viewer well even the episode of dirty jobs where you have to and you document this in the book where you have to kind of climb up the bridge and go over the I don't know what you're carving you have to walk 15 feet on the bar how high up were you six hundred eighty feet six 480 feet you didn't have the safety line you need forgotten it yeah and you were scared yeah and I don't know if you had fallen to your death that would've been great reality TV well it would have been a heck of a moment some you know we wouldn't been repeating it I should but it'd be a fine where he'd go out I suppose yeah that was the Mackinac Bridge over the Straits of Mackinac connecting the Upper Peninsula and the Lower Peninsula in Michigan and at the end of that day you know something that happened a lot on jobs was I I realized I could ask people for permission to do something and I knew they couldn't say yes so I looked very brave on camera asking and typically if it's a government agency or a municipality they've got you know lots and lots of forms that will absolutely forbid me from in this case walking up the cable of the Mackinac Bridge to change light bulbs but we had a helicopter and I knew the shot would look great and I also knew they wouldn't let me do it so when the cameras were rolling I said hey you know what we should do to be fun let me walk across the girder here off of the main road and then go ahead up that you know up that suspension cable and changed some light bulbs and the guy in charge of the whole operation looked at me and said yeah sure yeah let's do that what a terrific way to highlight what my guys do day in and day out and my sphincter slams shut not for the first time that day but I when I realized guess what dude but how many times you're gonna learn this lesson don't open your big mouth don't don't ask questions you think you know the answer to unless you're onner percent sure but looking back I'm glad I did it because it was good footage and you know what I went up there with a guy who does it every day and they they actually let me do it James they'd let me do something that nobody had done before with TV cameras rolling and that turned into a really great moment for the show and for me personally an interesting moment right because you you well a in terms of learning TV risk equals you know real risk equals viewership I think true so which again is defies sort of the way reality TV is going but the other thing is you knew you could take this risk and confront these fears and it probably enhanced the show would you were able to do later you know most importantly it was a real job we weren't trying to do something in order to ratchet up the stakes you know everyday people walk up the cables on the Mackinac Bridge to do this exact thing so I wasn't asking to to help contrive something I just wanted to do what that guy was doing and so you know we had total permission to do that it wasn't exploitative it wasn't overly dramatic it was exactly the way the job really goes stay in a day out and what's great about all these jobs is like I don't always used to walk around and you see bridges and you see tunnels and you see buildings yeah you always sort of think or I always would think good thing the world is finished good thing they finish building all these things cuz I have no idea how they made a tunnel a hundred years ago or a bridge or even a building now it just strikes me as the most a picture how they can make a computer I can't picture how they can make a building that just doesn't fall down immediately and I think with with Dirty Jobs you really sort of showed everybody these things get done they're done by real people in fact they're done by many tens of millions of real people that are often ignored in the media and by the way it could pay well sure they can pay well can we imagine we we built a Transcontinental Railroad at a time when much of the country was inhabited with people that would you know just as soon kill the workers I mean we we built a railroad through through hostile Indian territory through the worst kinds of inclement weather we burrowed giant tunnels through huge mountains we went over some of those mountains I mean it's just it's just miraculous if you're not if you're not gobsmacked by that then then you haven't really read what it took to do it we've lost our wonder today for a lot of those infrastructure things we've we I don't know that we could do it today from in part because of what you were talking about before risk you know we just can't accept the risk the way we used to and so we don't build anywhere nearly the way we we used to build and we can have a conversation about whether that's smart or dumb you know but our priorities have certainly have certainly shifted and and and we don't I think I think because of the way we process risk as a society and the way we have elevated safety as a society into what I believe is sort of a false position I think we've created a lot of unintended consequences but aren't good I mean you look at it I mean there's always the theory like why do we have so many peanut allergies now as in in part is because everyone is kind of you know using wipes on their hands every three seconds and stay away from anything that could have an allergic reaction at all so we don't get immunized at an early age these things now and you you mentioned how in your family there was you know you there was plumbing maintenance building fishing all of these things and you and it was a recessive gene and you were joking about the recessive gene but it's really true like if if I you know my kids don't want to be plumbers no there's anything wrong with it but it's just I did not value that growing up so my kids now don't value that other than they want it to work but they don't want to do it sure and I think we lose the desire to be good at being handy being good with our hands being being able to fix things look there's something about the relationship between that which we resent and that which we depend upon right and the more we depend upon a thing the more likely we are to ultimately resent it this this phone right I mean I'll use it all of the time and when the battery dies it's outrageous yeah you can put a man on the moon but you can't make a bat right it's just like I am I'm I'm offended to my core all of a sudden and it's not the fact that I that I got there it's the speed with which I got there I live in Northern California I was out power went off for four days week or so ago and you really want to see what the species is me you really want a a uniting moment watch a wealthy part of California come to the immediate realization that a they don't have power B they can't get it and C they don't know how to fix it they don't have a generator they don't have the knowledge the minute you realize the degree to which you depend on those lights coming on when you flick that switch is about the same speed you'll start blaming either PG&E or the linemen they or the government or anybody but you right because the more you depend on a thing the more likely you are to resent it when you flush the toilet and the turd doesn't go away by god something must be done how could this be right and as an at the same time it's the most terrifying thing in the world because you don't know how to do it and maybe you're visiting someone else's house something like that thing you know you're shoveling your own crap out of a strange toilet and throwing it out the window to keep a little dignity I've done it it's happened it reminds that louis c.k has a joke where someone has their phone and then for a brief moment they're out of range or their phone has some static or whatever and everybody starts complaining and Luisi is like really then instead of complaining about Brent why don't you build Verizon like why don't you build it like May put the phone towers up and all the millions of miles of lines and you create a phone network if you don't like this one this is normal right I mean none of us are immune to it I'm flying from San Francisco to New York yesterday my internet goes out it's an outrage I can't believe my internet goes I just paid twelve dollars for this and now it's out never mind the fact that I'm in a steel tube going yeah you know a thousand miles an hour 37,000 feet in the air defying gravity you know warping space-time doing what my great-great grandfather would have taken a year to do just to you know horse and buggy across the country we we've just lost but we're an incredibly impatient people and I think it's not because we're bad it's because deep down we know we know we're disconnected from a long list of stuff that really matters we're more connected than we've ever been in in this way right we're we're got five and a half million Facebook friends you know they're there drumming their fingers on the table right now wondering what I'm doing why haven't I checked in in 24 hours you know I love them they're actually my boss and my bin my world I work for them but they're like a barking dog in the backyard it never stops so but that's an interesting question though because guess the audience you always have to you can't completely ignore the audience you can't be an artist and say well you know screw the the audience I'm just gonna do what I want to do now you can do that to some extent but it probably won't work out so well you see it so there's this this give-and-take like on the one hand I think you always have reverted back to authenticity and integrity - to take these next steps in your career on the other hand you have to listen to the audience as well yeah but if you listen to them to carefully they'll hate you balance you you know what it's the same way you find out the stove is a little too hot you touch it and then you pull your hand back real fast you go okay all right that that that was too hot you know it's like the iron is it on I mean how do you really know it's you know you got you lick your finger and you touch it right you iron your clothes well I mean I'm just saying metaphorically I've heard of these things these irons I don't I've never actually used one no I just hired Believe It or Not iron this shirt this morning but it didn't work out which is why I put the sweater over so what was I said just in terms of whether you pay attention to the audience you have to if you work too hard to please them they will hate you if you completely ignore them they will hate you somewhere in between that contempt and the disdain that comes from currying favor or outright apathy is the willingness to amuse yourself so how many people listen to this podcast hundreds of thousands are you are you thinking of them now or are you just having a conversation with a guy I have to say a little bit of both I'm having first and foremost having a conversation with you cuz I think cuz I won't on the one hand a I enjoy that the most it's not fun for me if I'm just interviewing I don't view myself as a reporter on the other hand I like the audience in the back line I always think to myself what's the audience learning here's why I think you have hundreds of thousands of subscribers I believe they listen to your podcast because you are fundamentally concerned with amusing yourself or satisfying your own curiosity now much of what amuses you will amuse them that's the shared Venn diagrams that make the audience and the performer mesh when they mesh much of what you're curious about they're curious about but if they think but if they think you're only asking what you're asking because they want to know then you lose something that's really important and I and I bet louis c.k would agree you know the best comics the ones i enjoy watching the most anyway don't give a damn if i laugh or not they're trying to amuse themselves they want me along for the ride right I think I think so there was a comedian or there's a comedian Brian Regan his his he said in a recent talk at Google he just tries to eat you know he views himself as the audience so he's only trying to make himself laugh if he's not trying to make himself laughs then why is even up there watch his interview with Jerry Seinfeld oh yeah that's a great one it's terrific and and and I've always liked Brian because he's on dirty jobs we used to talk about it in shorthand in terms of being in on the joke and I'm not exactly sure what I mean by it other than that kind of Band of Brothers thing where you where you get a shorthand with people could be your audience could be your mate could be anybody but it's that it's that kind of shortcut where when you say do you know what I mean they're already nodding their head and you believe them mmm right it's a getting to that place where you can finish each other's sentences or you can bail out of a sentence without finishing it and have that be okay those are the relationships we all kind of want I think in in media well think about it and not to he went back to QVC but I think again there's a lot of seeds there that blossomed into other things but look at your interaction which you described in the book with Joan Rivers so you have this really honest interaction with her you're not you know even though she's as you mentioned like an icon and she's going up there kind of Hawking her jewelry line she's very honest about it like this is fake you know 14 karat whatever yeah and and you're very honest with her about what you're doing and and so out of all the choices she could have made when she had her own show on CBS she chose you to be her co-host not only did she choose me she insisted QVC hire me back after firing me for the third time in three years by the way personal record so yeah she she went to bat for me in in every way you could and she didn't really know me we only met twice in person is she you know we'd pass in the night you know Kathy Levin was the woman she always did her shows with I was the guy you know she would do walk-ons with you know where I'd walk on there her show sometimes just very very briefly but we liked each other and I I admired her immensely and for whatever reason look she's a [ __ ] disturber and and she knew she knew she was a Jagged Little Pill and she knew that you know she was literally selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of costume jewelry and QVC was desperate to have someone of her stature on on their air but Joan didn't fit the mold and she gave me and this is a recurring theme in my life and in in the book too but she gave me the first look at real cognitive dissonance that exists in media when you have when you have a hit that doesn't comport with your own brand then you have an existential dilemma on your hands whether you're a media company or a political party you know and and QVC had to figure out this woman is so far outside the bounds of our g-rated box what are we gonna do are we gonna kick her out of the box where are we gonna change our standards a little bit to allow this to work well you know companies deal with that every day broadcasters deal with that every day discovery had to deal with that when dirty jobs became the hit they didn't want I didn't they want it because we were coming out of the age of authority and all of the big shows on that network in those days had at their center an expert a host you could really trust or a credible insider David Attenborough jacques cousteau jane goodall you know real pear of their field you know and they didn't have a guy crawling through sewers looking under the rock making a poop joke we're coaxing the sperm out of a llama right you know I mean I was doing things in primetime that I don't think were you weren't supposed to do them I'm not even sure they were legal in some states but look my argument to them back in the day was your your single-minded proposition you know the founder of discovery a guy named John Hendricks brilliant man he had one mandate to satisfy curiosity that took the shape of big blue chip specials and very very authoritative series but to me satisfying curiosity is is child's play it's it's it can it's no less valid to wonder how a sewer works then then how the Hubble works and if you come at it with the same levels of curiosity enthusiasm and Wonder and humility well then you ought to be able to shape a lot of different shows and look humility is a big part of it and and if you think of it in terms of if curiosity is really the thing and I believe it is how how can you be arrogant and curious at the same time by definition if you're a curious guy it means you don't know so if you're approaching everything you do from a state of good-natured ignorance and if you're looking for enlightenment and if you're genuinely curious then you really can be the viewer and you really do get permission to be wrong well and this this brings to the the book so your your book again is modeled it's it's it's like half autobiography but half you telling stories of these other people in this Paul Harvey style now to describe what the Paul Harvey style is again it's you start off in a story where someone's having some problem some complication some disruption in their life and they slowly begin to solve it and it's like it's like unwrapping an onion or I don't know unwrapping a gift and at the at the when they gift us open you finally realizes okay this is Ted Williams or this is you know some other famous person I didn't realize that was their story and it's almost like a puzzle to be soft like as soon as I'm reading one of the stories I'm trying to figure out who is he really talking about I never guess like you have that with this one story where you talk about two brothers who are torn apart when the when the buffoon was elected and the end about speaking to each other I won't I won't spoil the story but you have meant what you think right it's not what you think that's always the case it's not what you think you even lead down the path you know where you're leading people down but it's not what you think but then you do what Paul Harvey didn't do which is you show what you've learned from each story how this particular story the story of Ted Williams inspires you to this other thing in your life like here's a guy who he says something really fascinating to this is a guy the only guy in history to have batted 400 in his in his career and and you asked him on your last day at QVC no less you asked him what would you bet today and he says 270 maybe 275 by the way I liked how he was so accurate maybe 275 you know one half of one percent difference like and they say women your great suitor vault what do you mean 275 I was asking him how he would do against pitching today which is very different than pitching in the 60s and 70s and yeah he said I had probably about 275 nice - Ted you're the greatest hitter of all time what do you mean 275 he said Mike you got to remember I'm 77 years old yeah I love that because obviously you were saying if he was at his prime against pitching tonight of course and so he played it's a little bit work play but then you made the really interesting observation that here he was though on QVC why wasn't he just playing golf with billionaires or whatever why is he signing baseballs at midnight yeah you know why am i talking to him in the green room this man is a hero of the Second World War a hero of the Korean War a fighter pilot who has been shot at and shot people out of the sky he he interrupts his baseball career to fight for the country goes back to playing baseball and becomes the greatest hitter of all time this guy ought to be able to do whatever he wants and here he is in a toward the end of his life signing baseballs and and Hawking he's doing the exact same thing I'm doing and you know in relative terms anyway that was a moment that made me go wait a second what am i what am i doing and what am I gonna be doing at 77 you know and maybe I ought to look at my finances differently or maybe maybe I can learn something from Ted Williams that he isn't even trying to teach me but the greatest part about our interaction was he went home after his shift and I went on the air during mine and and I told him you know I was gonna be dealing with an hour of collectible dolls to which he said you got to be [ __ ] me and I just loved that I mean this guy who's lived a man's life he's connecting with this other dude in the green room at QVC and we're commiserating as best we can and um you know I got to go on the air and sell porcelain dolls and he's back in his hotel in my mind anyway watching me and hopefully laughing because you I just want to interrupt you because you start talking to the collectible dolls like getting advice from them about women well yeah man look it's it's 1:00 in the morning you're you're you're surrounded by two dozen of these little porcelain nightmares you don't really know the dolls are the third most collectible thing in the world behind stamps and coins but they are you don't really know that the people who are watching are are deeply passionate about these creatures and um and so you you misbehave with them you just try and kill some time you pick them up by their hair you put them on your lap you know you ask them questions they can't possibly answer because you know they're inanimate objects but and so maybe you know mate maybe you hold a nun over your head and start singing The Flying Nun song you know like I did or mr. Mary Margaret was the name of the the collectible nun that ultimately got me fired but yeah maybe you put a maybe you put a ruler in her pudgy little hand and smack yourself with it you know what I mean maybe um you know maybe you grope insanely looking for the winder that is in the doll you know cuz if you wind up this particular nun she sings climb every mountain which you can't believe and yet there it is right on the blue card and maybe that winder against the laws of God and man doesn't come out of the area between her shoulder blades where a sane person would put it but maybe it maybe it comes out of her ass right right so so this and how you act on dirty jobs and how you you you built this career I would say it's very much you were being yourself and what is what is sometimes people say to me oh just be yourself like for instance I perform worse it we're in a stand-up comedy club I perform downstairs five or six days a week and when I first started out people would say be yourself that's the worst advice possible right or what like if someone told you the first time you're on an opera stage just be yourself it doesn't mean anything like we even do sing ABC no cause we used to say with regard to cocaine you know I ask people why do you do that and they said it it intensifies your personality he says no what if you're an [ __ ] which he may have found out what you might so so what what but you do seem like you're you you revert to your strategy for when you're on the air and and what's appealing to viewers is it very much seems like you're being yourself so what what does that mean to you well Brian Regan is partially right you know but I think he might go a little too far because he's trying to entertain he's putting himself in the audience's place i D I can't go that far because B because they're my boss but they're also a separate entity it's still me in front of the camera when I'm in front of the camera and when you're onstage here it's still you you know you can't you can't abdicate that you have to find that weird balance and I think and this might be a bit of a stretch but I mean it's it's it's a kind of empathy is what it is and empathy is in short supply today empathy is not sympathy you know but being able to to put a bit of yourself into the audience is really important and I think it's important too for the audience to be able to put themselves into the performer the total sidebar but I saw something a few years ago I saw a play that was performed in the woods and the play had a full orchestra that was this it was it it was basically an original musical and it was put on for an audience of about 400 men in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere full orchestra it was an amazing performance it was amazing I mean it could have been on Broadway it was that good in the middle of the Redwoods and after it they took the score and they took the the play itself and they threw it in the fire never to be done again and they do this every year they put on an original play and they treat it with all of the care that you would see a Broadway show and and then they burn it and at first I thought God what an incredibly indulgent weird stupid thing to do but then I realized what it does is it makes the audience the only people who can now remember that night they're the witnesses they were there they saw it it's their memory and they can share it with whomever they'd like but it was such an interesting way to sort of fuse a performance with an audience and it was jarring to see it and I still can't decide if it was more indulgent than interesting but it made an impression I liked it because it also shows that idea shows that ideas are not scarce everyone always thinks this is my play this is my work of art it's it's gotta be preserved in a museum or something and but the reality is we're creative creatures we should be and when one thing goes another one starts and look at all the different opportunities you've had and you haven't put them on pedestals you know you've hosed how many shows all together have you did you host in the 90s oh maybe a hundred right and so you weren't like when one got canceled did you think to yourself my guess is no but you could tell me if I'm wrong you didn't think to yourself oh that was my one chance that show was the best that was the best thing I'm ever gonna do not only did I not think that way I would have been mortified with a hit my my business model was based on failure it wasn't based on success at all I write about Travis McGee who's my fictitious hero John Dee McDonald created this character back in the sixties 21 great books great pulp fiction he is the central character among other things he's a guy who who takes his retirement in early installments I mean he literally says that that's how he works he's a he's a recovery expert he's the guy you go to if the cops can't help you get your fortune back somebody swindles you you're screwed you get McGee he keeps half so what he basically does is he comes out of retirement to help people and then he goes back in and starts enjoying his retirement again and and I just thought that model combined with my grandfather saying get a different tool box I thought those two things smashed together what would that mean well that would mean me going to Hollywood in New York - affirmative Lee look for opportunities that were so poorly conceived and so hopelessly doomed that no amount of luck or talent could possibly salvage them the trick for me was to do a good job to the point where I'd be hired again but not attach myself to anything that looked like a winner therefore I was able for 12 years to stay as busy as I wanted to have as much free time as I wanted and to work in a way it was utterly on my terms and this was terrific you know the only problem was with that whole model is that you can't care about anything you do you have to do your best but you just can't give a damn about the job itself but once you start a dirty job so that was something you cared about and that lasted you know many seasons it's still in discussions yep you know you're still constantly breathing new life into into the idea and two outlets for it so but but but that's where you made it work you know after all these years experience with TV and different TV shows you had figured out a formula that worked for you well I figured out a new identity not a formula I figured out that I wasn't really a host you know spoiler alert but basically the book gets you to a point where a baptism of a kind occurs in the sewer of San Francisco and with a little help from an army of roaches and a rat the size of a loaf of bread uh I was redeemed and you know I found out that I wasn't the host I thought I was I was a guest I was a perpetual guest that distinction is the only thing that happened that that changed everything and you were curious you know you were curious about these jobs and that's what created that was kind of the fuel that fired this show like I just felt like look at that point you know I didn't want to spend the rest of my life working on stuff I didn't care about you know dirty jobs happen because my mother called me at my cubicle in CBS in 2001 to tell me my grandfather who you now know was heroic to me was 90 and dying she's not gonna be around forever she said wouldn't it be great her exact words wouldn't it be great if he could turn on the TV before he died and see you doing something that looked like work the next day I was in the sewers of San Francisco trying to shoot a segment for a show called evening magazine that my pop would recognize as work it was in that sewer that I realized everything I had been doing I had been doing wrong I got that segment on the air it led to my dismissal from CBS but it also led to the show that became dirty jobs and it wasn't I was 42 when I went to work in earnest for the first time in my life and and it was also I guess around this time you realized that the kind of the nest egg that you had built up I've been swindled away from you and I can very much relate to that how did you you know you don't describe you describe it in the book but you don't describe specifically what was the emotion upon finding out well it was very similar to the feeling on the Mackinac Bridge when I became a claw mated to the heights right so it works like this you walk up this giant suspension cable and when you get toward the top you run into these stanchions so you're tied off you've got and in fact you're tied off on both sides because you're walking up the cable you've got your hands on these cables around way hi but when you come to the stanchion you have to unhook yourself so you can get to the other side and then you want to hook the other one and you start making time and you start making better progress and you pause along the way to change the lightbulbs now the problem for me was I was doing the job but I was also aware that there's a helicopter out here with the camera and I've got a camera on my helmet I'm trying to film the show while I'm doing all these other things and so I stopped thinking about what I was doing and started thinking how I was doing it which is another big lesson we could talk about and in the midst of all of this multitasking I look down and I see a ship it must have been 200 feet long but at that height it looked like one of the ships on battleship it looked like this big you know and I was like man I'm so high in the air and in that same moment I realize I wasn't tied off now here's the interesting thing nothing changed I didn't fall off the cable I had no intention of slipping but I simply wasn't tied and when I looked at that little tiny boat and realized I wasn't as safe as I thought I was my sphincter once again slammed shut for the second time that day that feeling was the exact same feeling I had when I realized that the money I thought I had invested that I thought was in a series of well diversified portfolios didn't even exist but at all it had all been scooped up in this giant awful Ponzi type scheme nothing changed because I don't spend money these these clothes I took from a blast shoot I don't own much I never did and at that time I owned nothing you know I lived in hotels I had three different jobs I saved all the money I made and I lived in clothes that weren't really mine so it's not like all of a sudden I was suddenly in terrible debt I don't have any kids it's not like oh no oh no and yet my sphincter slams shut because my safety net was gone and it was really interesting to lose everything financially and go from you know a seven-figure portfolio to zero point zero is really no different at all than being on a kind of tightrope or a suspension cable and realizing that the net you thought you had it isn't there on the one hand nothing changes but of course what you realize is the value of a safety net isn't just the fact that it can catch you if you fall it's the fact that it can let you function when you don't and when you suddenly remove it most normal people and I do think I'm still mostly normal will will be transformed in an unfortunate way the only person I've ever seen that's immune to that is that guy who just climbed Half Dome right free solo if you haven't seen that as I was writing this story I was watching this documentary free solo tells the story of a guy who climbs Half Dome with no ropes never been done before you know and it's the most it's the most jarring shocking incredible documentary I've ever seen because that guy's brain has no regard for safety nets he's one of the few that can function without him I think it is really scary to have you know what society value so much that financial safety net that when if suddenly disappears I mean often people think or I would often think my self-worth was the same as my net worth and when suddenly your net worth goes to zero when it's been like you say in seven figures or more feel you feel like people could smell it on you and I was afraid to be desperate when I was looking for the next opportunity did that happen to you yeah yeah several times and I see I had a good skill of making it in a really good skill of losing it so I so and even now people say oh well you were so good at making it must give you some confidence if you ever lose it again and you'll make again nope it's the same horror every single time and I'm I feel like people are gonna swallow me and then they're gonna see it on me when I try for that next opportunity like when you found out and you're going to keep pushing jobs and other opportunities were you were afraid there was this extra layer of desperation that was gonna be on you no no I wasn't I was just more disappointed in myself that my I really thought I had it figured out James I mean you know I grew up in Baltimore and I have some really close friends who you know we all went through the acting thing together and I know a lot of people in in the industry and and most of them to this day are struggling there they're my age and they're still in there you know doing the best they can and it's a struggle well you know I I did something different I actually stayed in Baltimore I got a local job in media and I saved all my money I just squirreled it all away I mean literally like a squirrel putting the nuts away I think you were living for free we didn't people should read that story in the book that's fascinating too I'm living for free in a mansion right I don't have any expenses I'm saving every dime I make and along the way I became arrogant in a way I didn't even realize you know I was congratulating I mean I really had it figured out I'm taking four or five months off a year I'm traveling around the world I work when I want I'm saving money it's growing like weed because I have this tremendous advisor and you know at the time I just was very very smug in a and what must have been a really kind of annoying way and so I you know I needed some kind of comeuppance I got it and um and so it was it was humbling to lose everything at 40 and to go to work in earnest for the first time but look as I was saying goodbye to Travis McGee as I was saying goodbye to that whole business working model my mother is calling me to tell me to do something on television that my grandfather would recognize as work all of that lined up in a really serendipitous way and the fact that dirty jobs evolved out of a single segment on evening magazine a show that nobody watched and I didn't even really want to be hosting I wouldn't have gone in the sewer even even as a result of my mother's call if I hadn't if I hadn't just lost everything so a lot of things had to had to happen at the same time in order for me to have something like a second act but I think I think also it sounds like for you and this similar thing happened to me is that when you do find something that is meaningful that you see people are responding to that is almost the the glue that keeps things together that kind of patches you up so you could you you could survive and then and then thrive and it sounds like that's what happened to you look man it's you don't know how empty your glasses until somebody fills it up you know I I had never in my career ever had anybody pull me aside to thank me you know ever and on dirty jobs it still happens to this day every single day now it's funny people watch the show for different reasons you know fundamentally it was an entertainment proposition but you know III told this to Mary when I was trying to convince her to leave her law firm and actually you know run a business for me I was in Newark Airport this would have been 2006 Dirty Jobs have been on the air a year and a half it was a hit and I started walking through the airport and a guy walks up to me he's dressed in coveralls looks like he'd been doing some maintenance at the airport he said hey man I just want to tell you my wife and I watch your show every Tuesday night we love it we watch with our kids because it's a great opportunity to show them all of the different opportunities that exists and that all jobs matter and that just made me feel terrific reminded me of my grandfather I thanked him and 15 feet later another guy walks up to me Brooks Brothers suit Wall street-type says hey Mike I just want to say love the show i watch it with my wife every tuesday we watch with our kids cuz it's so great you know we can look at the show and I can say to my kids see what happens if you don't go to college I'm like ah son of a [ __ ] it's like the exact opposite thing I'm trying to do I know I but adds a whole you can't decide how people are going to react to your smack you just you have to put it out there and they'll find something they like they'll find something that resonates with their worldview but you can't you can't decide what they're gonna like you know the the college thing we could do a whole other hour-long podcast I actually just wrote about it this this morning for the 85th time but now we're we've called the audible you've got to get to your next called the audible what what time I have to be the 1:30 or 2:00 3:00 it's 1:15 no ink Oh what time is it oh yeah I'm just telling you whatever is happening next is not going to be nearly as interesting as that I mean honestly the guy is I don't know I'll keep it as tight as possible college you've been outspoken so in 2005 I wrote for an article for the Financial Times I said no kid should go to college anymore and holy did you really yeah and then there was outrage I lost friendships I lost family everything now I feel it's a more of a discussion but still you know everybody will 95 percent will argue against me but it's a discussion at least now and you know I've seen you speaking out about about college it it really makes no sense to me why kids are going to college now but I'll let you look it's whenever I talk about this what comes back over the net is Mike's anti-education what is ridiculous today you are screwed but an education is not purely the purview of a four-year degree never has been and I hopefully it never will be but in the late 70s college needed a PR push and it got one unfortunately the PR push came at the fans of every other form of education and so college became a cautionary tale you know if you don't go to college then you're gonna wind up over here with some vocational consolation prize so we set the table in a really jacked-up binary stupid way we put incredible pressure on a whole generation of kids to borrow whatever money was necessary in order to get their magic paper early on in this interview like five or six hours ago you said um you laid out a chronology of how events typically work but you left out one thing the first thing what we tell kids to do today first and foremost is decide what they want to be then right then you go through the process of borrowing money going to school getting your degree interviewing blah blah blah and then if you're fortunate all your dreams will come true because you will get your dream job and then you'll be allowed to be to be happy that whole narrative is upside down and backwards but while we're telling kids that while we're encourage them encouraging them to borrow whatever it takes we're ignoring a whole other list of viable opportunities we're also taking shop class out of high schools at the same time is there a better way to tell a kid what's meaningful and meaning less than by just removing it from sight so we took the arts out of the vocational arts vote vote tech turned in a shop we walk shop out behind the barn shot it in the head got rid of that then we watched the skills gap get wider and wider and wider and kept telling kids that those opportunities were beneath them while we put historic pressure on the same generation to borrow whatever it takes to get the magic ticket when people ask me why college is too damn expensive today I said well how can it not be we freed up a bottomless pile of money now we got 1.5 trillion dollars in student loans on the books the unemployment rate for college graduates today I just read the article coming over it's nearly 4 percent the average rates three point six your odds are worse with a degree people are gonna start talking about that real soon and those guys who you lost friendships over our gonna feel really stupid in the next I say the next couple of years because the chickens are coming home to roost they have to because just everyone talks about income inequality why do you think it happens when you're pressuring you know 50 million kids to get into more debt than a generation has ever gotten into by the time I met someone the other day was going into his junior year was already $100,000 in debt and I said what are you majoring in he said business I said well I think you need to switch majors business 101 don't get $100,000 in debt before you start having a business with profits and there's nothing there'll be no profits right we're going straight to insolvency right and and and you you know you mentioned the point of this skills gap again what was the country built on it was built on innovation it was built on all of these skills that literally built the country and this is this is the biggest societal challenge I think it's a it's a scandal it's a scandal and you know what I I'll [ __ ] about Millennials along with anybody else they're an easy target but but we're we're the clouds from which the snowflakes fell we did this we set the table we told them the best path for the most people was the most expensive path and then we step back and when you look at things like the varsity blues scandal that's going on and when you look at there's just so many things about the college experience that don't have anything to do with learning and there's so many things that are going on at college right now that are antithetical to education and and the Constitution I mean it's it's it's bananas the the safe space environment that has infected our way of thinking is really it's back to the safety net that we've been talking about it's back to everybody's sphincters gonna slam shut pretty soon if we don't get this worked out and it's funny because I always tell my daughters don't go to college none of them listen to me and I figure okay I can't you can't fight with a teenager really and and I want to be there for them later but my my oldest has recently left college so I'm very proud of her because she realizes in the classroom you learn classroom skills and to do what she really wants to do she needs to be out doing it but right after she left I got a note from her college they didn't realize yet that she had left saying she owes $16 and 92 cents or they're gonna send it to an attorney or a collection agency and they hope they don't have to do that unless she pays ASAP the usual word ASAP yeah and I wrote back and I said her tuition so far she has spent one hundred and thirty two thousand dollars and and by the way if you look at the three schools closest to you their employment rates after college are all higher than yours and their tuitions are lower so are you real and you called me the day before for a donation so are you really gonna write me about sixteen dollars and ninety two cents and what is your for so they sent me she owes it for her dorm room or her dorm ruined a microwave and they all share equally and I looked up on Amazon what's a microwave cost might even cost fifty dollars they were charging two hundred fifty dollars for the microwave and then dividing it up among like 50 kids and charging $16 this is this is part of the insanity of course it is it's it's micro/macro it's a big giant giant giant problem but the micro examples will make you crazy you know really more money for the Student Union really a bigger stadium what are we talking about this thing that we each have in front of us right now that this miracle gives us access to 95% of all of the known information in the history of the species the access right now that we paid for when we went to school it was a big part of the tuition right you know you you want to be in front of people who have access to the knowledge that that we need well we're those people now I just watched a lecture from MIT last week for free you can do the same thing with Yale or Brown it's all out there you know the information is there I'm not comparing look my experience in college was invaluable I finished in 1984 two years at a community college year off and then a couple years in a university I got a liberal arts degree it cost eleven thousand dollars the exact same experience today is 92 grand in the history of our country nothing has ever become more expensive more quickly not not real estate not health care not food not energy nothing so what's happened to higher education can't be divorced from its cost and people try and do it all the time because they want to talk about an investment in your future this is not an investment this is a shell game yeah I I agree and again we could probably there's so many aspects of that but and there's so many other industries that are affected you didn't know I was gonna be this fascinating did you know I knew because hey I've been a fan for a long time of be your book the way I heard it by Mike Rowe and again all those stories you could have just kept with your autobiography could you tell all these stories but so many fascinating people and then what you learned from them you can see this is where education comes from it is like you say about being curious about others learning from their story seeing what's possible because they're not telling they're not tell your story about Ted Williams they don't teach that in a college class but that story is invaluable all of these stories and and what you can derive for them that's a real education that's why people should read this book not just because they're curious about you but to see all the stories that then influenced you are so fascinating and how you present those stories and in such a almost puzzle-like manner but Mike Witt Mike Rowe the book is the way I heard it Mike thank you so much for spending the extra time and coming on the podcast I hope you come on again I'll be here appreciate it you bet thanks Jake sincerely appreciate it

Channel: James Altucher

Views: 5,986

Keywords: James Altucher Podcast, Altucher Report, podcast, comedy, altucher

Id: A-DfVUJN29c

Length: 84min 44sec (5084 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 04 2019