Morning Wire - Mike Rowe: Forging Hope & Fixing America

Episode Date: May 11, 2025

Mike Rowe joins John Bickley to share the stories behind his new feel-good series People You Should Know, spotlighting ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things—from forging second chances to redefining the value of skilled work in today's economy. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to RKanada com or to your agent of voyage. Since rising to national fame as the host of Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe has become a prominent voice in highlighting the efforts and achievements of working-class Americans. Those who are often overlooked by elite institutions.

In his newest project, Rowe is turning the camera on what he calls the real heroes of the country, ordinary people doing extraordinary things. In this episode, we sit down with Mike to discuss his new series, People You Should Know, as well as the cultural and economic shifts that are putting blue-collar Americans back in the spotlight. I'm Daily Wire, executive editor John Bickley, with Georgia Halm. It's Sunday, May 11th, and this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now is Mike Rowe, who has just launched a new show that we want to talk to him about, as well as some other issues that he holds near and dear to his heart, including plumbers.

So we'll get to that later. It's good to talk to you again. Likewise, thanks for having me back. We're virtually back or whatever we call this these days. We'll take virtual mic. We'll take in-person, Mike, whatever mic we can get. So your new series, you call it a feel-good series, and it focuses on real heroes of the country. Its own phraseology describes it as focusing on the ordinary, which I find very interesting.

Tell us what was the idea behind this series, what sparked it, and what are you trying to accomplish with this series? It's really the making of a feel-good show. There's certainly a feel-good component at the heart of it. But what I've always tried to do, whether it's dirty jobs or somebody's got to do it or any of the project, I work on is bring the viewer along for the ride and really try and make them a fly on the wall. We spent a lot of time admitting our mistakes and sharing the frustrations with the viewer that come along with making content. I've always done that, and so I'm certainly doing that again here. The project itself will be familiar to anybody who saw my last project, which was called

returning the favor. And this is kind of interesting because I don't think it's really happened in entertainment before, but returning the favor aired exclusively on the Facebook watch program. And it was one of the first things Mark Zuckerberg did in an attempt to decide

if you wanted to compete with Netflix. So we had this idea to elevate and reward the neighbors that most people wish they had, regular people doing something nice in their community. We'd show up under the auspices of making a documentary about the topic and then surprise them with an elaborate gift at the end, and the town would come out and there'd be a parade and people would cry. And it was just really a fun, honest celebration of basic decency, right? So we do 100 episodes of this thing.

I win an Emmy for it. And the show's canceled a week later when Facebook decides. I'm sorry. Well, look, I mean, it's extraordinary because they decided, look, they spent a billion dollars learning that they didn't want to compete directly with Netflix. But that's what they needed to do to get to that place. And so for the first time in my life, and certainly with everybody involved in a project, a hit show was canceled at the height of its popularity. I've just never seen it. happen. And so it took me a couple of years, but there were a couple million people on a Facebook page who were just rabid supporters of this project. And they've literally been nagging me,

bugging me, threatening, I dare say, for the last two years to get this show back. So I don't own returning the favor, but the format is anybody's. And so we changed the title to people. you should know. We're picking up where we left off. And it'll, it'll be on YouTube. It's on my YouTube channel as we speak. And yeah, I'm entering a brave, new digital world, late to the party, perhaps, but nevertheless, I'm in. Maybe to inside baseball, maybe you can't reveal this, but are you getting any blowback legally from this? Great. No. And honestly, I don't expect to, because, you know, Mark was super decent with me about this. We had really candid conversations at the beginning of it.

And one of the things I said was, look, there are no new ideas, right? We can all agree on that. TV is just TV. And this kind of format, it's really dirty jobs. It's a crew and I going out into the world to meet a real person without a script, without casting, without any writing, without any second takes. and a documentary camera that films the whole thing. I've been doing that for 22 years.

In fact, every seven years or so, I just changed the title of the show. I've been doing the same show for my old career. And I'm not kidding about that. Literally, if you boil it down, all I do for a living is tap the country on the shoulder and say, what about him? What about her?

Get a load of that. And, you know, where dirty jobs was a rumination on vocations, and somebody's got to do it, was a rumination on avocations. People you should know in returning the favor, those are ruminations on decency, on kindness, on bloody do-goodism. And all of those things, in my view, are apolitical, they're agnostic. I don't think anybody can hold a copyright on them. I'm not a lawyer, obviously, but who in the world is going to object to a show that elevates and celebrates the neighbors that you wish you had? Indeed.

It's impossible to object. In the promotions for the show, you do emphasize the fact that you are revealing behind the scenes about making a show. I find this very fascinating. It's actually part of the vision for our video show here is a lot of the behind the scenes for the making of the show. why do you feel that that approach is effective in this circumstance? I think, I don't know when it happened,

but I think in media, we left the age of authority and entered, call it the age of authenticity. It probably started with the advent of reality TV and nonfiction programming in general, and there was a brief shining moment when reality really did mean, that. Like the early days of reality TV were were refreshingly honest and blisteringly authentic.

And I'm super proud to say that Dirty Jobs was, you know, on the vanguard of that. Why is it so important today? I think because today trust in institutions overall is at an all-time low, which means in my world, there's no. never been a less, there's never been a time where it's been more unpersuasive to say things like, trust me, or take my word for it, right? The trope of the traditional host, the traditional narrator and a crisp, well-modulated baritone telling you a story about a thing, people have become suspicious of all of that, I think. You know, and so, what do you do if you're a host and a spokesman working in a world where nobody believes hosts and spokespeople anymore?

I think part of what you have to do is show them the warts and all of your process. And if you take them for a ride and if you show them the truth of whatever it is you're trying to get at, whether it's a commercial campaign or an entertainment property, I don't think it really matters. You can see how that's impacting news. Like, you can see the numbers fall off the cliff for a lot of traditional local news, for a lot of national news. And part of the reason I think is because those guys are still clinging to those old tropes live, local, late breaking. I mean, you want to be believed, right? And so what do you do?

You slap a bunch of pancake on your face and you sit there in front of a prompter that you pretend not to read while you're reading it. It just feels to me like the whole underlying construct is rooted in a pretense. And that pretense is designed to

fool you. Viewers somehow got the memo. They know this. That's a long way of saying. I think the most honest way to do a show in the nonfiction space is to cling to the actual definition of the words non

and fiction. Indeed. I think the artifice is a turn off now, slickness, polish. Yep. We want authenticity, like you said. And this idea of manipulation, you have a camera, you have a mic, on some level, there's artifice and manipulation there, because of where you, where you choose to point the camera. But if you can have another camera, showing the other camera, being pointed, showing the decision-making going on about why we're choosing to highlight this, There is a sense of more openness about the transparency about the process. I love it. You process it.

Your brain processes in a completely different way, whether you're conscious of it or not. I think it's got something to do with the Heisenberg principle, the uncertainty principle, right? The act of observing a thing changes the thing. But the act of observing the observers observe a thing somehow reorients the equation. And what comes out the other end, I think, is some new version of authenticity. So you noted that there's no scripts, and you're choosing to highlight, you say, you know, ordinary people in some ways, but they're not just ordinary people in the sense that they do some extraordinary things. Can you talk about some of the people you've chosen to highlight in the show?

Sure. The episode that's up right now features a woman named Lindsay Phillips. Lindsay was hopelessly addicted to methamphetamine. Somehow she beat it. She nearly lost her kids, but the reason she didn't is because she accessed an incredible organization called Care Portal. This is a virtual portal that anybody can go to on the internet and see at a glance, who in their neighborhood is struggling. There's a lot of connective tissue,

sometimes churches, sometimes civic organizations, but be that as it may. It's a virtual network of bloody do-gooderers who want to help. And the real goal behind it is to keep families together. Our foster care system is busted in any number of ways, but if study after study proves, if you can somehow keep a family together, it's going to be so much better for the kids.

Anyhow, Lindsay goes through this, she comes out better for it, she's utterly rehabilitated, and now she's working full-time for Care Portal. We show up under the auspices of making a documentary. Lindsay doesn't really know why we're there, and in the end of the episode, we surprised her with a pretty elaborate gift that allows her to do more of the good work she's already doing. So you can see what I mean how that, like if I were pitching you this project, it would sound impossibly earnest.

And you would hear move that bus in your mind. It would be some version of extreme home makeover. But the way we do it is a warts and all look at the, you get to see what it is we're going to try and do. And you get to experience our successes and failures along the way. You still meet Lensie. You still learn about the care portal. and you still laugh and you still cry and you still hopefully will go to your internet and check out the underlying foundation because all they're doing is changing the world.

And it's, you know, like you say, you can point your cameras at anything you want. I'll tell you another one that's coming up that really got me. The Black Horse Forge. PTSD is a horrible thing. You've heard the stats. Right now it's 17, 18 people a day. service people, kill themselves. This guy, Steve Hots,

hit rock bottom. He was an interior designer who volunteered, joined the 82nd Airborne, broke his back as a paratrooper, lost an eye, came home, rock bottom, opened up a forge, started making knives, and realized the therapeutic benefits of bending metal into something useful were enormous.

So he opened his forge, to other vets who are struggling. 22,000 vets have gone through the Black Horse Forge with zero suicides. Wow. This is, I think, headline news. It's incredible. It's an absolute game changer. So, yeah, to go meet that guy, to see what he's doing, to make some knives with him,

to hang out, to spend a day in Fredericksburg, and then to put that out there into the ether in an honest way, you know, What else am I supposed to be doing with my misspent career other than point people toward these stories? What strikes me about that, the knives, a lot of people, ordinary people, have small ideas that they think, ah, what good will this do? This seems like a very small idea on some level, right? And it's turned into something massive. 22,000 people is astounding. 22,000 people have gone through this and have not committed suicide. like you said, the suicide rates are shocking. We've done some deep dives on that,

and I actually couldn't believe the stats when I first didn't look into it. I can't believe, how is this not a national scandal that's in the headlines every day? Yeah. That's what's shocking, you know? And so, yeah, yeah.

We've highlighted, on returning the favor, we did 14 different non-traditional approaches to treating this disaster. We've hunted pythons in the Everglades with veterans. We have built motorcycles from scratch with vets who are struggling. And in every case, you see that what moves the needle is getting these men and women out of their heads and focused on a task that involves or requires a kind of plightly. mentality. So you've got the camarader, you've got the band of brothers, you have a new mission,

and then in the end you've got a motorcycle that works that didn't, or a python that was captured that needed to go, or a knife that, you know, a day earlier was a railroad spike and a piece of crash. So, you know, the metaphors are steep with this one. And I've just, all of those organizations, by the way, work. I've just never seen one work. to the degree the Black Horse Forge has. That is extremely notable. I'm glad you're highlighting it. Do most episodes, most of the people that you highlight

usually have some sort of organization that they're also attached to or a company or something that they've created? It's really fluid. Sometimes it's just super modest. Sometimes it's just the story of a kid who shoveled the sidewalks after the blizzard that wound up saving the life of the shut-in because the ambulance came when it came. and there was a way to get her out.

You know, you can tell little stories. There's a story I want to tell of a kid who worked for Ace Hardware, up in the Midwest somewhere. Old man came in, wanted to know where the shovels were. Guy was about 85 years old. This kid takes him back to the tools, gets him to the right shovel, asks him what he needs it for, learns that the man's dog died, his best friend, and now he's alone.

So what's the kid do? This 19-year-old clerk says, you know what? give me your address. I'm going to come by your house. I'll dig your hole. I'll help you bury your dog. What do you do for that kid? How do you acknowledge that kid? Right? So some of the stories are impossibly modest and just rooted in a basic good Samaritan idea. This story I was telling you about with CARA Portal, that's big. Care Portal came to me through an organization I've worked with for years called Stand Together. Stand is obsessed with bottom up solutions and scaling them. And so, you know, normally I wouldn't, I wouldn't spend time with my crew telling a

story about a big successful nonprofit that was already killing it. But when you hear Lenzie's story, you realize you can spend the day with her with one person. And then you can tell the story backwards in a way that's good for Care Portal, good for stand together. And most of all, good for anybody who watches the show? Because when it's over, people are going to go log on to see how they can participate in their own community. And that's the final point about extraordinary people. I realize, you know, when I talk about ordinary people, what I mean is anybody who's watching can relate to the circumstances of the individual we're highlighting. There's nothing extraordinary about who they are. There's nothing extraordinary about

their gifts, their skills, their talent, their wealth, nothing except for an absolute commitment to give it down. And then do something about it. Biennue at board of Viarai. Embarked and profited. Embarked and

relaxed. Ciroat. Bookine. Oh, that also. And profite. Villaray, the voice that we love that them. One more question specifically about this show, and then I wanted to ask you a broader question. Where can people view it?

When do episodes release? All that good stuff. Yeah. It's on my YouTube channel. It's the real Mike Roe, or just Google, people you should know, Mike Roe. The first episode is up right now. I shot six. We basically bootstrap this ourselves with some help from Stan together. And, you know, it's the old Kevin Costner thing, right?

If you build it, they'll come. I know the audience is there, but I'm putting six out there to see what the universe thinks about it. And if the audience shows up, I'll do 60. So, yeah, that's where it is. I hope that's the case. Broader question about plumbers. You've been banging this drum forever trying to highlight the importance of the trades, of going that route for education, and also emphasizing the trades in general as something that should be more highly valued by the American public.

And then particularly by the American elite, like the media, who doesn't give them enough attention. Wall Street Journal did a big piece on plumbers being picked out by big investors to kind of give them a boost because they're recognizing the value of these guys. This is a cash cow if you look at it the right way. Have you seen this trend? And if so, what do you think about it? I've seen it. My foundation, MicroWorks, started on Labor Day in 2008. and it started for this very reason.

We were seeing a skills gap widened with every passing year, along with a will gap, by the way. Even at record high unemployment, you're looking at two, three million people who are not working and not even looking for work. Today, honestly, it's as bad as it's ever been. There's 7.6 million open jobs, most of which don't require four-year degree,

and 6.9 million able-bodied men who are not only not working but not looking for work. ever happened in peacetime before. So throw $1.7 trillion in student loans on top of that and the steady drumbeat to get everybody a four-year degree. And you can see, you know, how all of that combined to create the stigmas and the stereotypes and the myths and the misperceptions that lead people to conclude you can't make a great living being a plumber. Well, bull crap, man, you can kill it. I've got 2,200 people who have gone through microworks. Many are plumbers. Most are making six figures.

Some are making a lot more than that. Double that for electricians and welders. So I talked to the foundation administrator, and we're right in the middle of an enrollment cycle now. And I said, how many applications do we have? As of this morning, we have 10 times the number that we had a year ago today. So Gen Z has got the memo. they are looking at the millstone of $100,000 in debt around their neck to start a career that probably and statistically won't mirror their major. And they hate that. And they're starting to look for other ways. And so too are the biggest employers in the country. I just got off the phone with a guy at Blue Forge Alliance who oversees the maritime industrial base. Those guys, that's 15,000 individual companies who are

collectively charged with delivering three nuclear-powered submarines to the Navy every year for the next 10 years. This guy calls to say, we are desperate, his words, desperate to find tradesmen. Can you help us? I said, how many do you need? He said, 140,000. Wow. So that's one company in one vertical that most of your listeners have never even heard of, who are looking to hire 140,000 welders, electricians, steam fitters, pipe fitters, and so forth. That is incredible. Throw the automotive industry on top of that. And it's just every single company that relies on skilled labor has just got the memo,

especially the energy industry. They're in a full-blown. The data centers, AI, all of this stuff trickles down to who's going to build them. And if we don't do something to reinvigorate the trades, Good luck, President Trump, with the two million manufacturing jobs you hope to create. It's the same challenge Obama had in 2009 when he talked about three million shovel-ready jobs in the Highway Infrastructure Act to a country that had virtually no interest in picking up a shovel. So there's a lot to unpack there, but, you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't tell your listeners, we have the money. It's earmarked for anybody who wants to learn a skill that's in demand, and you can go get some at microworks.org.

We will direct them that way. Thank you so much, Mike, for talking with us. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me back. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow morning with more news you need to know.