Mike Rowe
55:45 Share

Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. For

$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. So the current debate over AI, artificial intelligence, is about whether the technology will become sentient and autonomous and enslave us all. And of course, that'll probably happen. But in the meantime, we thought it'd be interesting revisiting the original debate about AI, which is about how it affects work.

What are the rest of us going to do for a living when machines can do it for us? And there's nobody who's thought more deeply about this and about work in general and its centrality to human dignity than Mike Rowe. And we are, as always, honored to have him in studio. Mike, thank you for coming on. First of all, you win the desk. It's wood. Are you kidding? I mean, how old is this? I don't know. It's ironwood. And it's actually, it's funny, the person who got this, I have asked him to go run it down because I...

i'm like the only right wing in the world who loved julia butterfly hill who lived in a redwood to keep but i just think trees are really important and i think being surrounded by wood brings a resonance to your life what happened after the hurricane down here because i know i know that was a big deal and i know you love trees and i know that couldn't have been great yes but most of the trees in florida are fake trees actually they're not real

I don't think a palm tree is actually a tree. I mean, a tree is a white pine. A tree is a sequoia. A tree is, you know, all the various hardwoods, oak, beech. Locust. Locust, exactly. Cut some locusts this summer. Anyways, sorry. Chop your own wood. It'll warm you twice. Yes, that's exactly right. Three times you can just stack it.

And then split it. So what the AI, so like seven years ago, I remember talking to you, I think it was about seven years ago, about what AI was going to do to working class America, to truck drivers, the most common job for high school educated men. And you had a lot of thoughts about that, but the conversation has progressed so dramatically since then. Right. And so has the technology. Right. So where are you on thinking?

So there was a time when the big conversation, at least in my lane anyway, was really more about robotics and tech, right? The robots are going to come and they're going to displace a lot of blue collar jobs. And how do we stop that? How do we think about that? And I remember you and I talked about the Luddite rebellion. Yes. We talked about- Endorsing it actually. Yes. Right. And it's like, and the disruption theories and this idea that,

real replacement is going to happen. It almost never happens as I understand it. I've seen it in our industry too. There's a lot of talk about what was going to happen when... What was going to happen to newspapers when film came along? What was going to happen to film when TV came along? What was going to happen to music and DVDs? I mean...

None of it really goes away, but it all shifts. It's all impacted. Yes. So I was struck by the fact that all of a sudden we weren't talking about the impact of robots on blue collar jobs, but the impact of AI on white collar jobs. Right. That's what interested me.

Which I enjoyed. Well, I mean... Sorry, I'm a bad person. But look, it is super creepy. I mean, I got a link from a buddy who said, hey man, not for nothing, but I went on to one of these sites and I said...

narrate for me in the style of Mike Rowe these two paragraphs, right? And he sent me a link to this. And basically, it was two paragraphs from an old episode of Deadly Sketch. And I hit play and I listened to me. Now, had I not known it was not me, I would have thought, well, that's something I narrated, you know, four or five years ago. You couldn't tell the difference. Couldn't tell. When I listened for it, I heard some things that made me go, ah, maybe not quite right.

But that was two months ago, which might as well be two years ago or 20 years ago. So the speed with which artificial intelligence, something about Moore's Law, something faster and faster and faster. So part of me wants to say, don't forget the lesson from the Luddites. It's not going to completely upend everything unless it does.

And I don't know, because this does feel different. I don't know. I had a motorcycle once with a crack in the intake manifold that I didn't see, and it made it obviously run lean. And the bike ran so great, faster and faster and faster and faster, until literally this spark plug burned a hole through the piston. I use it as a pen holder on my desk today. But there's something about speed and acceleration that has a natural limit, doesn't it? Well, I mean, Einstein said, right, the

You can stand this close to another person and then this close and half it and half it and half it and never, ever stop halfing it, which my brain doesn't understand because it seems like surely, surely you're going to collide and then be on the other side of each other. Yes. He's like, no, no, that doesn't really work. Or at least have a sexual encounter with the person. Look, here's how jacked up it is for me. My entire career is actually based on AI. Early on in Dirty Jobs,

There was this big conversation at the network when they were like, look, this show is, it was a nightmare for them because it was rating really, really well, but it was off-brand. Dirty Jobs was not supposed to be the show that people went to Discovery to love. It was, those were still the days of Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall, right? Yes. Me, a smart aleck looking under rocks making poop shows. That's not supposed to be the number one show. No.

So they're like, can you smarten it up a little bit? And I said, well, I've been looking at some science type jobs. And they're like, like what? I'm like, well, I'd like to take a deep dive in AI. And they're like, that's great. That's great. If you can find dirty jobs in AI, we're golden. Now, did they think I was talking about artificial insemination? Probably not. Probably not. Did you do that episode? Yeah.

Four days later, I was at the Circle X Ranch, somewhere outside of Houston, with my arm up to my shoulder inside a couple of dozen cows, taking instructions from a cowboy named Steve, who was walking me through the process of artificially inseminating the cows. I also had a remarkable encounter with a bull called Hunsucker Commando, and the process whereby the sperm is extracted from this minotaur, right, and then put back into these unsuspecting bovines, giving us

It's basically a Brahmin bull and an Angus cow gets you Brangus meat. The point is... Without getting specific, did you go through that entire process? Extraction? Oh, extraction. Oh, yeah. No, I gathered. I had a styrofoam cup. There were probes. There was insertion into the bull. Light current stimulated the prostate. The white gold flew through the air. I captured as much of it as I could, and I put the whole thing on the air a week later.

And I got called to the principal's office. You did? The question was, you promised us a show on artificial intelligence. And I said, did I? And then we had this big conversation about science. And the moral of the story is there's more science in artificial insemination than there is in AI, or at least as much. And in a much deeper, much more meaningful way. We are so disconnected from our food.

We're disconnected from our energy. And Dirty Jobs on the surface was just a romp. It was exploding toilets and misadventures and artificial or animal husbandry or whatever it was. But in reality, it was a pretty thoughtful look at what keeps us connected and what we've become disconnected from.

And so ultimately, the show stayed on the air, and that episode aired to ridiculous ratings, by the way, which is why I violated every other barnyard creature known to man. Ratings gold. But the thing is, there's no McDonald's, there's no Carl's Jr., there's no fast food, there's no slow food, there's no meat industry as we understand it without the other AI. Yes. So that's kind of a long way of saying I'm most interested to see how artificial intelligence works.

and artificial insemination are going to somehow hopefully come together. So how does... No, that's such a smart point. How does this quantum increase in computing power, which is really what artificial does, it's just faster computation, how does that affect the real economy? Like the actual physical stuff that keeps us alive? Well, I don't know, but I do think that what's going on in the real economy and what's going on in the real country is this...

this unraveling of connectivity. People, and I put myself in this group, we've become really disconnected from some very primary things. Yes. I commented on your desk right away that it's primal. It's fundamental. That's why I love it. It looks like what it is. Yes. You know? And I don't know, it's to reconnect with basic things is to be around fundamental things.

I like what you've done with the place. Oh, I like to sniff it. If you're going to sell T-shirts, do me a favor and put that on it. The thing I don't like about the digital experience is it doesn't smell like anything because it's not real. It smells like ennui. Yeah, it smells like ennui and self-hatred. Yeah, you're right. But anyway, so helping to be reconnected to where our food comes from, to where our energy comes from, to what our history is, and to do it with humor.

That was the goal of that show. Today, not to sound too high-minded, but it's one of the goals of my foundation. And I don't really have permission to talk about AI. That's not really my lane. I don't really quite know what I'm doing. But on a personal level, when somebody sends you a link that sounds so much like you, you can't tell the difference, then you start to connect to it because it gets personal. So I think what I think

What's going to happen is this stuff is going to stop being ephemeral, theoretical, and people are going to find real, real, real personal stuff with regard to AI. This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

Forget the frustration of picking commerce platforms when you switch your business to Shopify, the global commerce platform that supercharges your selling wherever you sell. With Shopify, you'll harness the same intuitive features, trusted apps, and powerful analytics used by the world's leading brands. Sign up today for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash tech, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash tech.

Hey, it's Kimberly Fletcher here from Moms for America with some very exciting news. Tucker Carlson is going on a nationwide tour this fall and Moms for America has the exclusive VIP meet and greet experience for you.

Before each show, you can have the opportunity to meet Tucker Carlson in person. These tickets are fully tax-deductible donations. So go to momsforamerica.us and get one of our very limited VIP meet and greet experiences with Tucker at any of the 15 cities on his first ever Coast to Coast tour.

Not only will you be supporting Moms for America in our mission to empower moms, promote liberty and raise patriots, your tax-deductible donation secures you a full VIP experience with priority entrance and check-in, premium gold seating in the first five rows, access to a pre-show cocktail reception, an individual meet and greet and photo with America's most famous conservative and our friend, Tucker Carlson.

Visit momsforamerica.us today for more information and to secure your exclusive VIP meet and greet tickets. See you on the tour. When you go on Twitter and there's a video of you praising Hitler, it's not really you. Deep, deep fakes. Come on, that's going to happen, right? That's going to happen. And porn, you know, porn is on the leading edge of every new tech all the time.

And what does that mean for the next generation? Well, I notice that with its rise, never talk about intention. Really? Yeah, it was. It was. Thank you. Fewer people have sex with human beings. And no one ever says that. And I don't even like doing topics with stories on it because it's too embarrassing. But it's true. But here we are. Here we are. You make me very comfortable. I just, look, I just confessed an encounter with a bull. You had your hand up a cow. But...

It does seem like... That cow still calls me, by the way. Totally. When you're coming back, fancy man, with your opposable thumbs and whatnot. 2 a.m. booty calls. Hey, what are you doing? Excuse me. Miss you so much. What are you wearing? So it does seem like the net effect of almost all digital or even maybe technological advance is to separate us from each other to a greater degree. Yep.

So do you remember Faith Popcorn? Yes, very well. So the Popcorn Report, it was this thing that's published every couple of years. It was a futurist, right? A trend spotter. Correct. And a relentless self-promoter. Relentless. I think I had her on about 15 times in the 90s. Did you really? Of course. Come on. I worked at Cable News. Oh, right. No short-term recall. She talked about...

burrowing. Yes. Right? This idea that as technology advances, we're going to have an easier time making our world smaller. Yes. And we're going to burrow into our homes and eventually we're going to be able to see movies on very intelligent TVs and so forth. She kind of predicted all that. Of course, it all came true. And then she wrote about something called cocooning. So after you burrow,

You just cocoon. So it's deeper and deeper. And our homes become smarter and the tech becomes more omnipresent. And anything we want can be brought to us by a giant company that owns all of the vans and every every. So in a way, we're more connected now.

vis-a-vis fiber optics and relationships and so forth than we've ever been. But on the other hand, I think she was right. We are so deeply burrowed into our space that, yeah, AI is going to take us to whatever that next level is. And sex is going to be a topic we're probably going to have to talk about. Because I mean, I've read these studies that say young men in particular are not, it's not having sex.

What that means is they're not having deeper levels of human connection. I don't have any great insight to it. My personal belief is people are having as much sex as they've ever had, maybe more. They're just alone. Yeah. Well, that's... But no one... I don't know why that's not described as a tragedy. That seems like a tragedy to me.

It's the whole point of life as you arrive alone and depart alone. In the interim, you try to connect with other people. Yes. It's this. And we are slowly arbitraging the wood out of the desk. We are slowly getting rid of all the human this. Yes. It's just, you can feel it happening. My favorite author, actually, you probably know him. He's a very, very famous writer.

In South Florida, John D. McDonald wrote the Travis McGee mysteries, best pulp fiction ever written. And that stuff today reads like a prophecy. McGee talked all of the time about this slow unraveling, and he was so wary of so much mystery.

Of what he predicted was coming and of course it it did he lived off the grid on a houseboat called the busted flush that he wanted a poker game He solved crimes essentially he helped people recover that which was so he's not the only the only one and I'm not even there are some very controversial very bad people actually but who lived very isolated lives who were able maybe therefore to see the future more clearly why is it that solitude silence

removal from the bustle of human society allows some people this extraordinary vision into the future. You wouldn't think that. Yeah, but it's sort of the virtue of boredom. Michael Easter writes about this, a book called The Comfort Crisis that I liked a lot, where we've identified boredom as a great enemy.

And we're surrounded by things to make sure we're never bored. It's why we can do this. It's why we can do this. And it's why our attention spans get smaller and smaller and smaller because we've waged a war against boredom. But it's the process of not doing anything, putting all the devices down and being alone with yourself.

That lets your brain wander. And pretty soon, you'll just Forrest Gump your way through a bunch of things you didn't even know you were going to think about. And then you arrive at conclusions you didn't know you wanted to arrive at, but you're glad you did. That's where ideas come from. If you're never bored, if you're always stimulated, then you've made a trade, you've made a bargain. And it's probably a bad one.

Fraught with unintended consequences. And for a guy who does artificial insemination shows, it's pretty deep and spot on, I would say. I did it very well. So let me, the other, I want to put up a clip from former President Barack Obama talking about the other AI, the digital AI. And his idea for how this can bring us together or solve our economic problems.

crises, et cetera. Here he is. If you are interested in helping to shape all these amazing questions that are going to be coming up, go to AI.gov and see if there are opportunities for you fresh out of school, or you might be an experienced tech coder who's done fine, bought the house, got everything set up and says, you know what, I want to do something for the common good. Sign up.

So here we have a former president saying the government is going to harness AI for, quote, the common good. You know, I don't want to be skeptical or cynical at all, but that does sort of make me wonder what's going on here. Any idea? Again, it's a bit outside my lane. I think I'm sure there's some validity in the message, and there's probably real opportunity in the vertical, as they say. We have 11 million open jobs right now.

that we're struggling to fill. None of them involve or require an understanding of... You have 11 million? Well, 10.8 was the last number I saw according to the PLS. And what are they exactly? Well...

Speaking broadly, most of them don't require a four-year degree. They require training. Most of them require a willingness to roll up your sleeves and sometimes get your hands dirty. Welders, plumbers, steam fitters, pipe fitters, electricians, heating, air conditioning, so forth. For the last 20 years or so, for every five who retire over the course of a year, two replace them.

It's troubling math. Terrible arithmetic, as Lincoln would have said. And so the skills gap is a real thing. And that part of our workforce has been woefully neglected, beginning really around the time we took shop class out of high school. And we've had our thumb on the scale of education in a very specific way for a long time. We've made a very persuasive case

for higher ed and the former president's making a pretty persuasive case for careers in artificial intelligence and fine we could all do two things at the same time i hope but um this thing's right in front of us but if we changed the emphasis on higher education i mean it's hardly possible we could run out of sociologists at some point and then what there's something to think about so i mean you've been saying this for a long time

Pretty much a lone voice, but I've never heard anybody disagree with you. Because, like, on what grounds could someone disagree with you? I'll give you a list. No, but I mean in a substantive way. Well, what people disagree with is the idea that you can promote one thing without tearing down another. That's the trap that we're in. That's what happened to us. Higher ed needed better PR. And in the 70s and 80s, we got it.

And thank God we needed more engineers. We needed more scientists. Don't know about sociologists, but the higher education needed a shot in the arm. Unfortunately, we weren't content to simply make the case for higher ed. We had to do it at the expense of everything else.

And so trade schools took it in the neck. Community colleges were relegated to something your kid did if they couldn't. Right. It was embarrassing. But of course, those forms of education are also attached to a big chunk of our workforce. And so we kind of waged a war on...

alternative education, or call it lower education if you want, because if it's higher over here, it by definition has to be lower over here. So we drew a real clear line, and we told people that if you don't get the most expensive degree that you can, if you don't take the most expensive path there is, you're going to wind up doing something subordinate. The result is this idea that all these great jobs are essentially vocational consolation prize.

Meanwhile, the opportunities that exist, Tucker, I mean, look, I appreciate the kind words. I have been beating the drum for 15 years. Foundation turned 15 on Labor Day. We've helped about 2,000 people get trained in these areas. And I'm telling you, most of my soapbox stuff in the early days was anecdotal. It was what I thought and it was what I saw on Dirty Jobs. And it was this feeling that we were affirmatively neglecting a whole lot of opportunity. Now,

Now the stats have bolstered that. The headlines have caught up to my own smack. But most importantly, the people we've helped five, six years ago are sitting down with me today and answering questions like,

Well, how's it going? I'll say. And they'll say, I'll tell you how it's going. You helped me get a welding degree six years ago. Today, I own three vans, a mechanical contracting company. I've got a plumber and I've got an electrician that work with me every day. We're all making six figures a year. We work when we want. And I hear these stories day after day after day after day. And I look around and I...

I'm not asking the feds to do anything. I did. I went to Congress three times over the years. And I said, guys, we need a better PR campaign for this chunk of the workforce. The math is awful. And we're not going to be having a conversation about, oh my gosh, you mean a plumber can really make that much? We're going to be having a conversation about, what do you mean I have to wait four days for a plumber? And that's what's happening now. So with great respect to Barack Obama.

Fine, make the case for opportunities at AI, but who the hell is making the case for the opportunity to make this table? Totally right. Where is the passion or the prosperity that will surely follow if you take the time to learn a skill that's in demand and work your ass off? That's still for sale. It's still real. And I can't find anybody. And I've looked.

Hey, guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.

There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer. You make such a rational, logical, fact-based case that, as you suggested, has become indisputable with time. Arguing at this point.

But there's also something that I'm having trouble describing, but there is something morally or spiritually different and elevated about making things over rearranging things or being a parasite in the real economy. In other words, it's better for you as a person to run a sawmill than it is to be, say, a high-speed trader. Yeah.

You know, I just think that, I mean, am I being crazy? And I don't think I'm just being like stupid populist. Oh, the working man is always better. The working man sometimes drunk. Okay. In the morning. I get it. Yep. But I just think the nature of the work matters. If I'm a pornographer, it's probably not good for me. But if I'm, you know, a really skilled drywall hanger, maybe it is. Of course. Yes. But I would only say that it's the trap of the binary again.

There. That's the trap. Do you remember, I guess it was 2016, Republican debates, all 17 are up there, right? 27, something like that. Amazing. I forget the exact question, but Marco Rubio's answer was, let me tell you, what we need in this country are fewer philosophers and more wealth.

So the crowd claps, big applause line. There was a lot of your comment about sociologists earlier. I said, it's fine. I get it. But what was interesting was like my social channels blew up with people going, hey, this guy's really singing your song. I said, actually, no. No, that's not my point. My point would be what our country needs are more welders,

who can talk intelligently about Nietzsche or Descartes or Kierkegaard. And we need more philosophers who can run an even bead. Okay? Yes. It's this idea that a welder is somehow consigned. But look, I don't know where my cell phone is now. There's yours. You and I, with this internet connection, we've got access to something we didn't when we were in school, which is 98% of the known information on the land. It's unbelievable.

So in my foundation, I try and make the point to the people who apply for our work ethic scholarships. I say, look, this is learn the skill. Be great at it. But for God's sakes, go get your liberal arts education. Not at Brown. You don't have to borrow all that money to do that. Just be interested. Be curious. I watched a lecture four nights ago from MIT on my phone for free.

for free. Now, I'm not saying it's the same experience, but it's the same information. It's all available. And if that doesn't fire you up as a curious person to not be completely engaged by the undeniable fact that most of the known information on the planet is in your pocket,

And accessible, right? That's a very liberal arts kind of thing to say. But I'm not saying it to your basic liberal arts student. I'm saying it to the welders and the steam fitters and the pipe fitters and the mechanics that have come through our foundation. Because the most interesting people on the planet, and I know I'm preaching to the choir, do you know the person who made this desk? I don't.

I wish I did. I do too, because I guarantee you they got a story. One of my best friends runs a sawmill. No, no, I'm all about sawmills. I'm all about sawmills too, but I'm all about the well-rounded proprietor. I really think that the thing that's most missing today is that balance. You ever read Wendell Berry? Yeah. Philosopher from North Carolina? Well, there's a...

Truth bomb. Yeah. One after the next. After the next. Sure. So do you see any evidence that, I know people are listening to you, and I again would argue I haven't seen anyone kind of refute what you're saying, but do you have any sense that it's changing, that it's moving? I do. Yeah. So there's this guy who runs a think tank, Opulus. His name is Todd Rose. He's become a friend of mine. In fact, I had him on my podcast not long ago.

And they do really, really important research that has to do primarily with collective illusion. In fact, he has a book called Collective Illusions. And one of the things that personally really struck me was that 80% of the information on Twitter is created by 10%, the people on Twitter. And so it's really easy to

to look at that platform and many others too and assume a consensus. And so once we, as humans, realize that there is a consensus or a majority who believe a certain thing, then we'll, by and large, fall in line, many times supporting things that we personally don't really support. Like, for instance, right now there is a... I've seen this my whole life. Well, and if you look for it,

You'll see it everywhere. It's mind-boggling. And this was kind of a wake-up call for me because for 15 years, I've been talking about this deeply held belief that parents and guidance counselors truly believe that the best path for their kids is this most expensive path. But the latest research, when you really sit people down and take a deep, deep dive, Gen Z right now.

is ranking the importance of a college education out of 50 different things at 47. That's high. Well, it used to be three, right? But in the course of the last five or six years, like a lot of people, it made me wonder as something shifted,

in that generation that I just haven't seen. And I'm hopeful that it has. People are starting to get the message that just because you've got $200,000 in debt and a nice diploma doesn't mean the world's going to be the pathway to your door. It doesn't mean you're going to get hired in your chosen field. It doesn't mean you're well-educated. It doesn't mean anything at all except for the fact that you owe $200,000. That's what it means. That diploma is a receipt.

as surely as it is anything else, right? And the information you got in exchange for it, well, that's a tool. And how you use it is none of my business. And people are starting, I think, to realize, at least this research indicates, that our fascination with the golden ticket that's always been a college diploma is starting to wane.

And honestly, I think that's a good thing. Yeah. One of our many post-war assumptions that probably should be updated after 80 years. Yeah. What's the state of our vocational education in the United States like? I think our engineering programs are still really good. Yeah. But like welding, plumbing, electrical, and then some of the higher, electrical engineering, et cetera, are we still leading the world in that stuff? I don't know of any company.

in this country who doesn't have some sort of internal training program to try and get those skills taught. Certainly nobody's coming out of high school with those skills. People are coming out of trade schools with the basics, but the actual finishing almost always happens within the company. So a lot of that work is being done privately.

It's back to shop class again. You know, it starts with interest. It starts like if you're a 14-year-old kid with no real clear idea of what you want to do and you're walking down the corridor of your high school and you stick your head in the wood shop and you stick your head in the metal shop and you stick your head in any number of vocational shops, you can at least optically see what the work looks like.

or might look like. And for a lot of people who got into the trades, that's where it began. They saw something that resonated with them in a switch flick. Today, you don't see it. I mean, what more persuasive thing could you say to a kid regarding the skilled trades than, don't even look at them. We're just going to remove all proof of their existence from sight. That's what we did when we took shop class.

out of high school. And it's not a coincidence that, I mean, I think I can draw a pretty straight line to that event and $1.7 trillion of outstanding student loans, 10.8 million open jobs, and maybe even 7.2 million able-bodied men in the prime of their life, according to Nicholas Eberstadt in a book called Men Without Work. Great book. Who are sitting all

Not only not working, but affirmatively not looking for work, spending in excess of 2,000 hours a year wiping and looking at screens. That's never happened before, not in peacetime. Anyway, in fact, we are in peacetime. All of that stuff together. I can walk back, and I'll be at a fairly circuitous route. But we took shop class out of high schools, and we didn't think anything was going to happen as a result. Everything happened. Everything. That's right. People lost their dignity.

So you, I got to ask you, you were an opera singer? Well, I sang in the opera. I've also skied down mountains, but very few people say, oh, it's Mike Rowe, the skier. I've skied down many mountains. I've never sung opera.

But do you, I mean, is there ever a time when you do it still? Oh yeah. Weddings, funerals. For real? I sing all the, on my podcast, I write unauthorized jingles for all the sponsors and sing them in four part harmony because it amuses me. Do you ever sing in Italian still? So the first thing I learned, I got into the opera when I was 22 because I couldn't get an agent. I couldn't get an agent because I couldn't get my SAG card.

So I couldn't audition for commercials and roles in TV, which is what I wanted to do. And so it's this weird circle. You can't get your SAG card unless you've done union work, can't get an agent unless you have a SAG card, and you can't get a... Anyhow, if you got in the opera, you become a member of the American Guild of Musical Artists. And as such, you can buy a SAG card. You pay your dues because they're all sister unions. Of course, loophole. So anyway, I'm 22 years old.

I can't get in the Screen Actors Guild. But I had a buddy tell me about this loophole who sang in the opera. And the opera had these open auditions every Thursday, last Thursday of the month. So I went to the library and I asked the librarian for the shortest Italian aria ever written. She knew of such a thing and she said, oh, you want the coat aria from Cuccini's La Boheme. All right. So I took home as a record and I recorded it on a tape and I walked around with these things called Walkman.

This is 1982, I guess. And so I listened to Sam Raimi sing the code aria for like a month in Baltimore. Didn't know what the words meant. Wanted to get the sounds in my head and memorize the tune. But I did. And so I went to the Lyric Opera House on a Thursday and I sang it for the chorus master and a couple of swells. Do you still remember it?

It goes on. Basically, I think it's Rodolfo saying goodbye to his coat.

Very cold. And Mimi, of course, is dying of tuberculosis. Of course. As everybody did at one point. As they do. And he gives her his coat so she can live a little longer. And he loved his coat because it kept him warm and the pockets held his poetry. He was a true bohemian. So he sings a love song to his coat and then gives it to the girl with tuberculosis. And what, does she die? Sure. Yeah, they all die. Okay.

But here's the crazy, here's the moral of the story. Not that there has to be one, but I stayed in for eight years, right? I got my union card. They let me in. And the music was amazing. I'd never heard a world-class orchestra play, and I couldn't believe I was given access just to be around this level of talent. It was mind-boggling. And the girls. Yeah. What are the ladies of opera like? Well, I'll tell you something. Probably a little high-strung, I would think.

I'm 22. I'm dressed as a Viking. I'm singing real loud in languages I don't really understand. There are 80 people in the rep company. 45 of them are women. 35 are men. 30 of the men have zero interest in 100% of the women. For sure. The remaining five guys, three of them are married. The only other single straight dude. Basically, you're the straight hairdresser. It's just unfair. It was me and one other guy. And he had a mole on his eyelid.

The size of my thumb with thick black hair. I'm 22, dressed as a pirate. And the girls are all dressed up like French courtesans, plunging necklines. Oh, it's for eight years. That's unbelievable. Is anyone who is in that company still there? No. The opera company folded. The Baltimore Opera folded about six years ago. I was invited back in...

No, because Dirty Jobs had been a thing and the list of people who sang opera and crawled through a sewer apparently is pretty short. The union set pretty small. Yeah. So I went back for a fundraiser or two. Couldn't save it. There's a lot in Baltimore that's tough to save right now. But I did go back and I did a one-man show in Baltimore called The Dirty Truth and sold tickets and sold out the opera house. Stood on stage for...

About two hours in my hometown telling stories about dirty jobs and answering questions and telling the story I just told you. And it was one of those moments where I was like, you know what? I don't know if it's full circle, but man, it was super strange and fun and gratifying to go back and do that. Because for me, you know, and this is just the cognitive dissonance and one of the things that people always ask me. They're always surprised by the opera.

Because they saw 20 Years of Dirty Jobs and Violating Barnyard Animals and Crawling Through Sewers. And those two things aren't supposed to exist in the same person. No, they're not. Except they are. The guy who made this table is supposed to be able to quote Robert Frost. And the guy who writes poetry is supposed to be able to, right? And so I didn't really give it much thought until later in life. But my time in the opera...

My time on the QVC cable shopping channel in the middle of the night trying to figure out how to talk about product that I could neither explain or justify for eight minutes on live TV. Those were the best times of my life. And the training, you know, I didn't realize I was getting...

the second best education of my life. The best education started with episode one of Dirty Jobs and went on for 20 years. And the third best was the community college that I attended out of high school, which changed everything for me. So today, yeah, if I mouth off a lot about this, it's because I really do believe that when I get criticized for being anti-college or being anti-education,

I really only think it's because people must think if I'm going to try and make a persuasive case for this kind of work, I must be against this kind of work. I'm not, all right? I like the opera. I like to sing. I crawl through sewers for a living. I run a foundation that is completely committed to making a more persuasive case for the opportunities that exist in this country.

And to aggressively, but good humorly, hopefully, debunk the stigmas, stereotypes, myths, and misperceptions that are keeping millions of kids from exploring real opportunities that are just sitting right in front of us. I wish the former president all the luck in the world in his pitch to bring more people into the fascinating future of artificial intelligence.

Oh, just I really do. And with that, I got it. I got to ask about the sheep castration story, because now that we've you've done a deep dive, haven't you? We've done a very we do. So sheep castration. Yeah, that that was a biggie that if you set the table for us, though, like what role does sheep castration play in agriculture? Like why would one be castrating sheep? You know.

basically adhere to the essential rules of animal husbandry. Your herd's out of control. The flock is out of control. Everything's out of control. This is in virtually every species. The males need to be controlled in this way. Like I was at a hatchery one time, Murray McMurray up in, I think it was Iowa. You know, they ship like 100,000 little chicks out every day in the U.S. mail.

People get, people order, you can order chickens through the mail. Oh, yeah. They do this all the time. If it's a girl chick, if it's a boy chicken, well, you're good. That's called fertilizer. They're ground up. Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's why, how many roosters do you see in the barnyard? There's usually like one or two. Yeah. And there's like a bunch of hens. Of course. Yeah. So for that reason, you know, if you're not castrating them, you're getting rid of them somehow or another. What happened in 2008 actually turned into a TED Talk?

But it didn't start that way. It started with me trying very hard not to run afoul of the network. Because after the first few seasons of the show, something really crazy happened. It became a phenomenon. And the network had no choice, really, but to enthusiastically get behind it. Because it was launching all kinds of other shows as well. But Dirty Jobs broke a lot of eggs. There was what we called an army of angry acronyms.

Because everybody watches TV, and if you're an expert in a chosen field, and you see me doing something wrong, whether it's OSHA, or the EPA, or the ASPCA, or the Humane Society, you write a letter, right? Of course. And my boss had many letters and many files from lots of angry acronyms. So when I went to do the sheep castration story, I wanted to be very careful to do it right, because I didn't want to get thrown off the air. And I called first to

you know, make sure I understood what was going to be happening. And then I called PETA and I said, look, I'm going to be castrating lambs. Is there an approved method? And they said, oh, absolutely. You know, and they described the rubber band. A thick rubber band is placed over the scrotum of the animal. The flow of blood is slowly retarded and eventually the business just falls off a couple days later. Right. It's going to be amazing TV. Sounds good. We get there.

Crate, Colorado. Oh, I'm on horses riding through the mountains. It's beautiful. We get all the sheep gathered up. We separate it. Got the lambs there. I got the rancher. I got his wife. The first lamb is put up on the fence and the legs are spread and the rancher reaches into his pocket to pull out one of the rubber bands to put around the scrotum, except it's not a rubber band. It's a knife. The knife flicks open and you can see that

sudden glinting off the steel blade and very quickly he leans down and he pulls the scrotum towards him and he cuts off the tip, drops the tip in a bucket, then he cuts off the lamb's tail called docking. Yeah. That goes in the bucket. Then he pushes the scrotum back, revealing two testicles like this, and then he leans down and he bites him. He yanks his head back and the testicles come out of the scrotum and he spits them into the barrel. This all happens very quickly. Stunning.

I said something I've never said on Dirty Jobs before because we never do second takes or anything. But I said, cut, stop, stop. I said, what are you doing? And he explained what he was doing and that that's how it had been done for many years. And that's just kind of the way it was. And I said, you don't understand. Because what I think is going on is what happens in reality TV. The guy had seen the show and he wanted to do something spectacular. Of course. I'm like, we can't be biting people.

It's a family show, okay? I don't care what you think. We can't do this. And he says, well, what do you want to do? I'm like, I want to do it the proper way. I want to put the rubber band on and so forth and so on. He's like, well, we could do that. You know, it's not very nice for the lamb. I'm like, not very nice for the lamb? You just got the ball salted thing. What are we talking about?

So the cameras fire back up. He goes over to this tackle box and he comes out with the rubber band and he gives it to me and I put it over the scrotum of the next lamb. And we put the little lamb down on the, on the ground and it's trembling on account of the rubber band around. Yeah. And it kind of walks over into the corner and kind of turns around and lies down and is in, is in clear distress. I'm looking at the lamb, say to him, you know, how, um, how long is he going to,

be like this. He said, two, three days. Meanwhile, the lamb that he had just... This thing's walking around, not a care in the world, already had forgotten that someone just bit his balls off. Gone. Yeah. He's just getting on with his life now. Yeah, the balls are gone, but, you know, it's okay. There's no blood. He's just off pursuing a life of, you know, whatever religious fulfillment a lamb would do without his testicles at that point. And this poor thing is curled up in the corner. So...

We kept filming, and I castrated probably 30 lambs that day. Did you feel any guilt at all? No. No, it was actually very quick. It's a way more efficient way to do it. Wait, you castrated them orally? Oh, sure. Google it. Lamb castration, micro, heck of a thing. With your teeth? Well, yeah. What else are you going to bite them with?

It feels like you're crossing some important barrier into a whole new world. Oh, look. When you bite an animal's balls off. There are moments in Dirty Jobs. Like inside you, I mean. You can't be the same man you were that morning. It's like a German porno, right? Once you see it, you're like, good grief. Yes, I felt very strongly that something extraordinary had happened on the show. But I also felt very strongly that something more important had happened.

Prior to the show, I'd been given bad information by experts. I had called the expert authority. I had called PETA. I called the Humane Society as well. The best minds in the business, the people who live to write disappointing emails to my boss, instructed me on the proper way to remove the testicles from a creature. And they were wrong.

Now, optically, it might have looked a little better. In their minds, I think they liked the idea of a rubber band instead of a knife and teeth. But they were wrong. That lamb castrated the proper way was the very embodiment of abject misery. And I saw 30 or 40 more that day. Last question, though. I'm curious.

Obviously, I feel sorry for the lambs, but it does sound more humane just to bite them off. Much more. But for you as a man, how hard was it? I mean, the first oral castration is probably the hardest. I think people say that. Again, if you're going to make t-shirts, put that on too. Was it like skydiving? Like, I'm just not going to think about it. I'm out the door. You know, yes, in a way. But there's also a thing that happens with cameras that...

Well, sometimes it makes you foolish. Sometimes it makes you brave. Yeah. Sometimes it's really hard to know what the difference is. But I've done a lot of things on that show because I was aware that we were making a show. And it's my job. Of course. My job on Dirty Jobs is to try. And it's maybe the greatest scam of all time that I've pulled off, not even knowing I was trying to pull it off. But I'm not judged.

on that show by my ability to successfully do a thing. No, of course not. I'm judged by my willingness to try. Your willingness to do it. And of course you're going to bite the balls. You're going to try, you know. But really, how hard can it be? I mean, I got the guy right there. Albert was his name. I can still see his mustache. Little traces of Vas Defrans dangling from it. So yeah, I mean, it's a heck of a thing. So I know...

I know I'm making an extraordinary moment in television. I know at a glance it looks salacious and probably unjustifiable, but I also know, vis-a-vis the trembling creature in the corner of the pen...

I also know that there's some weird greater truth like throbbing under all of this. That's right. That's exactly right. And so I bit them off and I spit them in the bucket. And then I took the knife and I removed the tail from the next one and then the tip of the scrotum and I got in a pretty good rhythm and felt pretty good about my castration abilities when the sun finally set in Craig, Colorado over the Rocky Mountains and the last lamb had been taken care of.

Yes, there were Rocky Mountain oysters. We fried them up. And yeah, we ate them. That was Dirty Jobs, 2008. Nominated for an Emmy that year. A great micro. Thank you. Yeah, don't mention it.