Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 572 | Mike Rowe: These Are the 3 Steps to Loving Your Work

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Today we're excited to be talking to actor, author, and podcast host Mike Rowe — that's right, the "Dirty Jobs" guy. We talk about success and fulfillment in today's world, where college is more expensive than ever (not to mention the leftist indoctrination). But, as Mike explains, college is really not the sure-fire path to a career that it once was. Mike offers what he thinks success means after his own wild ride through life and the mindset that young people should have as they prepare to join the workforce and build a career. --- Today's Sponsors: My Patriot Supply is emergency food for your family - they're America's largest preparedness company! Right now, save $150 off their 3-month emergency food kit, plus get free shipping at PrepareWithAllie.com. Annie's Kit Clubs sends their Genius Box to your young scientists - each month they'll receive a new box bursting with 3 hands-on activities to explore an exciting STEM theme like geology, chemistry, aerodynamics & more. Perfect for kids ages 7-12. Go to AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE to save 50% off your first box! Good Ranchers sells 100% American meat & having them in your fridge makes meal time easy, convenient, & less stressful. Right now, get $30 off your order at GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE & use promo code 'ALLIE!' Good Ranchers: American meat delivered. --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Friday. Welcome to this bonus episode. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

American Meat Delivered. Go to Good Ranchers.com slash Allie. Okay. As promised, today, we are sitting down with the renowned, Mike Roe. You guys are going to absolutely love this conversation. Can't wait for you to hear it without further ado. Here's our new friend, Mike Roe. Mike, thanks so much for joining us. I don't think that you need any introduction. Everyone listening and watching already knows who you are. Are you sure? I am fairly positive. Unless we do have a few people that are known to live under rock. So it could be possible that some of them don't know who you are. Well, I've done some of my best work under rocks. So I'll target as I'm going to speak as broadly as I can to your enormous audience, including those currently living under a rock. Yes, you're big in the live under rock community. So I appreciate that about you.

All right, there's a million things I want to talk to you about. One thing that we've talked about a lot on this podcast, what's going on in Canada, particularly with the truckers. I've heard you talk about this a couple times. This really is kind of a workers of the world are uniting situation. and yet the socialists are upset about it. What's your general take about what's going on there and seeing these regular working class people push back on what they see as tyrannical mandates?

On the one hand, I think it's kind of inevitable. Somebody has to be first. Somebody, you know, in every pushback, right? Somebody goes first. What's ironic about this is that three weeks ago, these guys were national heroes, international heroes, really. And then overnight, they went straight to villains.

And that's amazing. And that's a sign of the times. I was on the cover of a magazine called Trucker about, probably seven years ago. And I remember talking to the guys then. And it's such a band of brothers. People don't realize that on the one hand, truckers live lives of isolation, traveling oftentimes alone over vast stretches, you know, but they have such a bond because they all know what the others do. They all know what it takes. They all know what it means to be essential.

And so to me, watching it all unfold, it's frightening for all the obvious reasons. Clearly, the overreach is kind of breathtaking. But to see a group of essential workers, effectively push us to the point where I think we're going to have to be, right? I don't, I think the only way out of this is going to be through some level of, um, hopefully peaceful, call it protesting or disobedience, some kind of disobedience because I, I just, I just don't think it's prudent to wait for somebody to wave the all clear flag. because I'm not sure that flag exists. You know, as you're speaking, I'm wondering about, for example, Trudeau said that, you know, he's okay with dissent because he's talked to Black Lives Matter and he's fine with their protests and things like that.

But obviously, he's not okay with these protests for raising the bank accounts of people who disagree with him and all of that. And I'm wondering if it's not so much a left versus right thing, but the protests that seem to be approved of by people like Trudeau represent ideas. that are posh amongst, you know, the elite in the intelligentsia, whereas the truckers are representing an idea that is unpopular among them, that they shouldn't be forced to be vaccinated or they shouldn't have to follow these mandates just to be in a truck by themselves all day. What do you think about the idea that what we're engaged in as far as these culture wars and political wars really comes down to kind of a class war and a demonization of the working class and the issues and the concerns that they represent.

Well, that's a lot, you know. But I think there's a lot of truth in the demonization thing, but I think there's something even more fundamental than that that's going on. And that is our tendency to resent that which we rely upon. And it doesn't happen overnight, but it's a slow burn. And the more disconnected we become from work, the more, the less competent we become at fixing our own toilets or putting in our own air conditioning or running our own pipe or our own electric. Those areas are highly mystical to a lot of people. You know, we need somebody else to come in and do that.

Well, the need that we have for truckers is, you know, enormous. Every single thing in this studio, every single thing in your home was either on a train or a truck. We're quite likely both, right? And so I do think as a group, truckers, and I can't speak for them, but from what I've seen and the guys I have talked to, they know they're underappreciated. Most often they're cursed. They're on the highway and they're big old thing and they're in the way. They're going too fast in this lane. They're going too small. slow in that lane and people shake their fists at them, you know. So they're not appreciated the way they ought to be. And I think some of what we're seeing now, that is part of it. You know,

when things get dire and people feel disrespected, they speak out. And when they come together like this, and look, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the government's position. When you have a protest that is affirmatively stopping commerce and disturbing neighborhoods. You can't sit by indefinitely. Something has to be done. Freezing people's accounts? Okay, that's something. But it seemed to me like there could have been a chronology of sensible things to do

before you got anywhere close to that point. Like talking, right? Like talking to them. We hear you. let's talk. But they never gave an inch, right? And so people got dug in real fast, and now it's a crisis. Yeah, it's kind of a clash between, I think I heard someone in the New York Times put it this way, the virtuals and the practicals. So the virtuals are the people who talk about ideas. I'm one of those people. And then the practicals are the people who do all the things that you just

describes that we rely on. And really, we listen far more to just the virtuals, the talking heads, academics, not saying that that's a bad class of people, but we listen far more to them than we do to the practicals. And very rarely do the virtuals and the practicals come together to have the conversations that you're talking about. But that's one thing that you do. You kind of try to merge the virtual and the practical to give people an understanding of those jobs that, as you just described, most people take for granted and don't think about. What do you think some of the consequences have been in kind of the separation of what we have from the knowledge of the people who built what we have, that transport what we have, the separation between the virtuals and

the practicals. What are some of the consequences of that, do you think, in society? The incredibly inflated cost of college, the 11.1 million jobs currently open that nobody seems to really want. The consequences of separating our workforce is really what you're talking about. And it's very similar to the consequences of separating our educational system. Higher education over here, alternatives over here. If they were equal, that would be fine. Different strokes for different folks, right? But they're not equal. We elevate one form of education at the expense of all of the others. And so we place a huge value judgment on how we learn. We do the same thing with how we work because training by and large is looked at as a subordinate way to get smart.

And consequently, it leads to jobs that are widely considered to be less important. But it's exactly the opposite, right? When all of a sudden the truck stop running and the virtuals can't get the things they practically need to, to live delivered to them, then you see the resentment I was talking about before. Right. And look, you can call the separation a lot of different things, right? You can call it higher ed versus alternative. You can call it blue collar versus white.

You can call it essential jobs versus non-essential, right? And that's, I think that's, it's been very humbling for me personally because, you know, Dirty Jobs was the, like the granddaddy of essential working. shows. And over the last couple of years, we rebooted the series because I wanted to use it as an excuse to talk about my foundation and get that larger message out there and so forth. But everybody asks me about essential work now. And my answer is different than it used to be. You know, my answer now has to do with the fact that everybody is essential to somebody, even if it's just themselves. Yeah. And all work, whether it's your practical,

or your, would you call them virtual? Virtuals, yeah. Right? So there's always going to be an unintended consequence when you separate people, things, and ideas. We separated shop class, for instance, from the rest of high school. You're probably too young to remember it, but shop class used to be everywhere. I wish that we had had that, but we did not.

Well, it's by and large gone now. And so the result is a whole generation. of kids, two generations, really, that never even had a look at what those jobs looked like growing up. So welding was never really on the table, you know, wood shop, carpentry, metal shop, steam fitting, pipe fitting. You didn't even see them. And so by the time those people grow up, these jobs are just shrouded in mystery. And yet, they rely. on people who have those skills to let them live their virtual slash practical life. So it makes no sense to be at odds with the people we rely on, but we are.

And that's something that ought to be bridged and fixed. And look, I did and still do try to do that on dirty jobs. My granddad was the ultimate essential worker. He was handy in ways that, sadly, that job. Gene is recessive, right? I didn't get it. And so part of the reason that Dirty Jobs worked so well was that I really was a dilettante. I am an apprentice, you know, and I can learn on camera from people who are typically never on camera.

And so that, I hope, helped bridge this gap you're talking about. You mentioned the 11 million jobs that are currently unfilled. And so are you arguing that one reason that they're unfilled is because there are these blue-collar jobs that no one wants to take or no one has enough knowledge about to take those jobs? Yeah, the skills gap is real. And part of the reason it exists is because they're not enough people with the skills. Therefore, you wind up with this gap. But it's not that simple. You know, there's also a will gap.

There's a PR problem. If you spend 40 years telling parents that all these jobs and the education and the training required to master those skills are subordinate, right, then what's going to happen? If you take shop class out at the same time you're telling people the best path for the most people is a four-year degree, what's going to happen to the cost of college? Well, you free up limitless piles of money and then tell people their kids are screwed if they do. don't get a four-year degree, then you're going to have this incredible push. I don't think it's a coincidence that in that environment, colleges have felt free to raise their tuition to whatever levels they can. And consequently, we've got $1.7 trillion of student loans on the books. We have over 11 million open positions, most of which don't require four-year degree, right? So we're still

lending money we don't have to kids who are never going to be able to pay it back. To educate them for jobs, that, in your words, are more virtual than practical. And so it's, the skills gap is not a great mystery. It's just a reflection of what we value. Yeah. And what we value in the workforce right now are not truckers. That's why we could hire 50,000 of them right now in this country, most of whom would make six figures within a couple of years.

But we don't tell that story. Yeah. I wonder why our definition of success. changed to having to get a four-year degree, to having some kind of corporate or desk job. Like I think about my own family's legacy. My grandmother was raised by farmers in Louisiana. She was the first person in her family ever to go to college. Then she got her master's.

And then, you know, my dad took 10 years to go to college, but he did it. And it just wasn't even, there wasn't even a question whether or not I would go to college. That was just something that was expected that I wanted to do. It was just a given because, you know, know, my family had worked so hard to make sure that I could and that's how you get options. But obviously, that hasn't always been the case and it's not the case for a lot of people. So in your estimation, like, how did that happen? How did that change happen?

Our definition of success that necessarily now includes for a lot of people that expensive four-year degree. I think it starts with the desire for a playbook. Parents are anxious. They don't know. right? They don't want to screw their kids up. So it'd be nice to have a roadmap, right? It'd be nice if somebody came along and said, hey, here's the thing, right? The best path for the most people, here it is, and here's how you get on it. So it starts with the desire not to screw things up. But look, to talk about college as the sole source of education, well, that's like, That's like talking about, I don't know, what do you call it, cardiologist as the sole source of medicine. It's like, there's so much more. There's just so much more to it.

So, look, the pushback that I get around this topic usually comes in the wake of a conversation like the one we're having where people go, okay, so Mike's anti-education. He's an idiot. And I'm like, well, wait, I didn't say that. I'm pro-education. You know, I went to a community college and I worked and I went to a four-year school and my liberal arts degree has served me really well, to be honest. In this line of work that I'm in, you know, a broad-based liberal education can't hurt you, really. But in 1984, when I finished, two years of community college and two and a half years at a university cost about $12,000.

Right. And today, that exact same thing. same schools, same course load over 90,000. Yeah. So nothing in my lifetime has ever, nothing essential has ever become so expensive so quickly, not real estate, not energy, not food, not even health care. The cost of colleges risen faster than all those other things.

And so what are we to make of that? You know, do we just say, well, it's okay because it's so important that will pay whatever it costs. That's kind of what we've been saying. When the truth is, college is not the best path for the most people. It's just the most expensive path for the most people. And so whatever our definition of success is,

it seems to be pretty narrow when you look at it through the lens of education. But if you look at it through the lens of satisfaction, job satisfaction, life satisfaction, career, whatever that is, then it gets a lot broader. And you start to realize that it's actually not the college that makes you smart. It's actually not the job that makes you satisfied. It's you. Right. And to me, look, we have something right now that I didn't have when I was in college. Yours is sitting next to you and mine is sitting right here. And for the people who aren't watching this,

I'm now holding my iPhone and I'm looking at it. And I'm gobsmacked by the fact that with an internet connection, I now have access to 98% of all the known information in the history of the world. So if you have a curious mind and a smartphone and an internet connection, there's really no limit to how educated you can become. Now, you're not going to be as credentialed as you might be if you go through the Ivy League. but that goes to your question too. What does success look like vis-a-vis learning?

And the answer to that involves words like diplomas, credentials, certificates, certifications, certifications, and so forth. So there's a bureaucracy that comes along with success that exists separate and apart from the thing that really drives it, which is curiosity. ambition, work ethic, delayed gratification, a decent attitude, a touch of that, what you call your personal responsibility. Yeah. That stuff still matters.

That does still matter. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality.

We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. I am a mom of two babies. I've got a toddler and I've got a baby.

And my husband and I have already been talking about, well, you know, I don't know if we want them to go to college, which is kind of crazy considering that just, you know, 10 years ago, we were super excited to go to college and all that stuff. And I don't think I ever would have considered that. But just looking at the state of academia today and thinking about some of the stuff that you've talked about. I just don't know. I don't know if that's the best path for them. Maybe it is. For parents who are weighing that, maybe who have older children. and they're trying to encourage their kids to explore other options. How do they do that? Do you have any advice for parents who kind of have been raised in this world where college is the only form of success? Sure. You try everything. You know, for me, and by the way, I'm not dodging the question,

but I'm stingy with advice, honestly, because I think so much of what's wrong right now is the fact that cookie cutter advice is so prevalent. And look, we're podcasting, which is just another word for broadcasting. And, you know, hundreds of thousands of people are listening to this thing. And I don't know any of them.

I don't know where they are in their life or what they need to hear. People, it's, advice is, it's important. But like anything that's important, you have to know who you're talking to if you're actually going to dispense it. And so, you know, this happens all the time with me around this topic. But it also happens with voting, right?

I got 6 million people on my Facebook page. And every couple years, some of them say, look, why aren't you encouraging everyone to vote? Why don't you participate in the get out the vote campaigns? And I say because I don't know who I'm talking to. Yeah. Voting's important. Yeah. Right?

I wouldn't encourage somebody I've never met to vote simply because they have the right to any more than I'd encourage somebody to go buy a gun who I'd never met simply because they have a right to. I'd prefer to know who I'm talking to. Having said that, I don't think there's any harm in looking at everything. So field trips used to be a thing that we did all the time in high school. And, you know, we would go to places of work where we could see things and try things. and it's if I were a parent, that's what I would be doing. I would make sure, you know, I would make sure that my kid saw as many options as possible.

And I wouldn't beat them over the head with college, but I would with education. I would say in this world, you'll be lost if you're not proficient at something. So to encourage good cookie cutter advice that I don't think ever hurt anybody includes things like be curious. Yeah. And be uncomfortable. Try a thing. Guess what? Just because you love it doesn't mean you can't suck at it.

And that's sorry, that's just the way it goes. Sometimes the thing you really want to do, you just don't have the skills for. And sometimes, and this happened for me, I had no. interest in this business. I wanted to be a tradesman. I wanted to follow in my granddad's footsteps. But I wound up getting into this business. And once I got in it and once I started trying things, I realized I was actually okay, pretty good in some cases with this toolbox. And so, yeah, change your dream. Pivot. Adjust. Don't follow your passion. Bring it with you. That's a perfect segue to my next question that I have, a lot of people feel like they have to have a calling or know

specifically what they want to do for the rest of their life in order to be happy. And if they don't have that, then they feel like, you know, they're not successful or they're not good enough or they'll never be productive or fulfilled enough. What is the balance between finding something that you really love and that really fulfills you or you feel like you're really good at? And simply a practical job that pays the bills and provides for you and your family. Well, I'd reverse engineer it a little bit and start with what you want is a job that you're competent at that pays you well that you really enjoy doing. That's what we all want.

And that's what we call job satisfaction, right? And that's what everybody talks about. the question is how do we get it? What's the chronology? And too often today, I think what a lot of parents instinctively believe and pass on to their kids is that you start by identifying the thing you love. You look around and you say, okay, this is what I want to be. This is my dream job. So how do I get the dream job? Well, all too often, it involves a whole lot of test taking and a very competitive expensive world that requires you to borrow money in order to get into the school that will equip you with the necessary tools to get the dream job. And so you pay money and you take your

tests and you do your papers and maybe you need to go further than that. Maybe there's an advanced degree or a master's or PhD, whatever it is. You go through this list of things and you get your papers and you get your credentials and you pay your money and then you get out and then you start looking for that job. You know, do you find it? Study after study says the odds are against you. Most people with higher education degrees right now aren't working in their chosen field, right? Doesn't mean it was a waste.

It just means that the odds of you getting the job that you previously identified as the thing that will make you happy is now more and more difficult. So it becomes a quest. And so you're not really satisfied until you're. you can get to the place that lines up with the thing you started searching for. The Dirty Jobs route is different. The reverse commute route is different. I'm not saying it works for everybody, but people always ask me,

why was everybody on that show having such a good time? They're working in arduous situations, disgusting locales very often, but everybody really seemed to like what they do. They were passionate about what they did. And the reason is because they didn't start their search by saying, what's going to make me happy? They started their search by saying, where's the opportunity? Right. And once they identified the opportunity, they said, what skills do I need to start working right now?

And they would acquire those skills. And then the next question was, okay, am I good enough at this to get great at it? And if I'm not, what do I need to do and how hard do I need to work? and you go down that road. And then, then you say, all right, I've learned, I found it. I learned to be good at it. Now I'm going to learn to love it. So like the whole idea that you can learn to love a thing instead of simply imagine it at the outset, dream of it.

Right. And so that's the, that to me is it's at least part of, part of. of the quest. You know, you know how you want to wind up. Well paid, challenged, and happy. Right. But the idea that there's only one path to get there or that you're going to be one of the lucky few to look out over the whole sprawling future of your future and say, all right, when all these things happen, that's when I'm going to let myself be satisfied. You just made it really hard. Yeah. Really hard. Yeah. You're doing a lot to try to help people discover that there's more than one path to that fulfillment that you just described. Can you talk a little bit more about what you're doing there?

Well, the MicroWorks Foundation evolved out of dirty jobs in 2008. It began as a sort of PR campaign for a few million good jobs that nobody seemed to want that were open. This was at a time of high unemployment. The country was in a recession, right? And so, the fact that all that opportunity was still around, that's what got me interested in in doing something, you know. And then that morphed into a trade resource center, fans of the show built out a big online presence where people could go and see what opportunities existed and what kind of training you would need and so forth. And today, it's a, it's a scholarship fund. We give away a million dollars a year. In fact, starting tomorrow, the 23rd of February, we'll have our next. next work ethics scholarship program and your listeners are welcome to go and apply for a work ethic scholarship. Why work ethic scholarships? Because I don't care about your dream. Honestly, I don't care about your wish fulfillment. I don't really want to help people who say to me all my life I've dreamed

of being a blankety blank. I don't care. I'm looking for people who want to learn a skill that's in demand and then get really, really good at it and then learn to love it. And so we look for work ethic. That's why we call them work ethic scholarships. There's scholarships out there for everything. You know, academic, talent, athletic, no shortage of those. But who's rewarding work ethic? Who's looking for that man or woman? Yeah. Who shows up early, stays late, wants to learn, wants to advance. So that's what I'm doing to justify my, my big mouth and my, you know, I'm told my ubiquity in this space. Yes.

I'm trying to be able to. You are very ubiquitous. You know, somebody said the other day, it's like, dude, it's like stepping in gum. You know, there you are again. But what happened was really the headlines caught up with the themes of dirty jobs and microworks. And suddenly, people are desperate for answers to the kinds of questions you're asking. And I don't have all the answers.

But I'm proud to say that 14 years after starting that foundation, we now have 1,400 people who have gone through a training program, essentially. And now I'm circling back to interview them and to see how they're doing and to get their stories. And, Ali, I'm telling you, it really is inspirational to talk to somebody who just had no idea what they were going to do out of college, was getting all kinds of pressure to borrow all. sorts of money to go to some sort of school that they weren't enthused about, but chose instead to learn how to weld or get their plumbing certification. And today, you know, they're making six figures. Many of them are. Some have bought vans and hired people and began mechanical contracting companies. And it's, to answer your earlier question better than I did, that that's what success looks like. It's that reverse commute. It's finding a person who is not so focused on finding their

dream job, but ready to go to work by mastering a skill that's in demand right now. Those are the stories I reckon our country needs to hear. And right now, anyway, those are the ones I'm privileged to tell. Yeah. Finding a skill that's in demand, becoming great at it, learning to love it. I think that's That's right. Yeah, that's a really good formula for success that I think a lot of people assume that you have to have a love for something before you start it in order to feel fulfilled. But I like how you reverse that. I actually think that's a lot more hopeful. Well, what are you supposed to, I mean, 15, 16 years old, I didn't know my from a hot rock.

Yeah. What am I going to, you know, and here guidance counselors and well-intended adults from all walks are asking me the same question. what do you want to do? Right. What do you want to be? With the rest of your life. I don't know. Yeah.

How could I know? Yeah. Community College, I had two great teachers in high school, an English teacher and a music teacher that impacted me hugely. But it was those two years at community college that had the biggest impact because I had no idea what I wanted to do. And I took every course I could from philosophy to music. And, you know, I might. have been wrong about some of it, but for $26 of credit, I could afford to be.

Right. Today you can. Yeah, it's true. You can't experiment the same way. That's a shame. I guess I'm thankful. I went to a liberal arts school too, and I got as general of a degree as I could. It actually has served me well, but, yeah, a lot of people don't have that option, and a lot of,

colleges really make you make that decision when you're 18 years old. Where'd you go? I went to a school called Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina. Greenville. Yep, Greenville, South Carolina. It's beautiful. Would you major in? Communication studies, and I'm communicating.

So it worked. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Any debt? No debt. Thank the Lord. How come?

Parents help? My parents. Thankfully. Yeah. But a lot of people don't have that. But my parents, I mean, they worked so hard to make sure that they didn't want me to think about that. They wanted me to be able to go where I wanted to go.

and it was a privilege I'm very thankful for. And I'm thankful for the experience, too. What was great about your college experience? Was it the place you went? Was it the professors you had or the friends you made? You know, I wasn't expecting to be the interviewee. We'll get used to it because this thing, I'm trying to be relatable. Yes.

Okay. So one of the things I loved is that I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and I decided to go to school in South Carolina, even though all my friends were going to school at a Texas school. I just wanted that independent. I wanted something different. Don't know really why I picked the school. And I loved it. I thought that I wanted to go to law school, which you have to have, obviously, an undergraduate

degree for. And so I thought I was going to double major in English and communications. Turned out I liked my social life more than academics. So dropped the double major really fast. And did the whole communication studies thing, which honestly, comparatively is a pretty easy major. But I loved it. And then I remember giving. my graduation speech. I was chosen to give that. And that's, I really did actually have a moment

before I was in any career that I knew that I wanted to do something like that for the rest of my life. So I do credit a lot of my college experience to that, helping me understand what I was good at and what I wanted to do. So I don't know you, right? We met today for the first time. Yes, we didn't. But I knew you were going to say something very similar. And I'm not sure why I knew it. But, but I think this is really important and I and I hope your viewers might might take something from this. There's so much pressure not just to go to college but to get into the right school. That whole varsity blues thing was just amazing and the pressure on parents and the pressure on kids to get into the Ivy League or, you know, once you're at that level, it's just crazy. But the truth is, in every study that I've read, the, um,

The people who seem to have the most success in terms of an indicator after matriculating through college are the people who graduated not from the best schools, but near the top of their class. The people like you who are chosen to give the graduation speech. The people like me, who in a modest little community college were given opportunities to star in plays, right? given opportunities to do all kinds of different things. This is true in athletics, this is true in the arts, this is true in academia. And the reason I think that that cohort is so much more interesting. And just to be clear, what I'm saying is somebody who graduates from the top of the class

at the school you went to will probably have a better run than somebody who graduates at the bottom of the class of Harvard or Yale. it's not really the school because there's an emotional growth that happens when you're in a college and there's esteem that happens and there's confidence. And if you're an A plus student and you crush it all the way through high school and suddenly you're at Harvard, guess what? Now you're swimming in the deep end of the pool. Right.

And somebody, all those smart people, somebody's going to be last in the class. Yeah. And that person is not prepared to be last because all they've ever been is first. That's interesting. And you know, thinking back, I do think it was a lot of confidence in being comfortable because mine was the opposite. I was an okay student in high school, very okay. And then I went to college and I found it pretty easy.

And I did well. And so that, you know, I didn't really think about that. But it probably did give me a lot of confidence and personal growth that maybe I wouldn't have had if I had gone to a more rigorous school. And there probably wasn't a crying closet back there for you guys, right? Or the aromatherapy candles? No, there probably is now. There probably is now.

It's changed, unfortunately. I don't remember having my safe space or crying closet or anything like that. And being that far away from your home, I think it's good. I think it's good for you. You know, I rant from time to time about the whole safe space thing because I really believe that so much of what can happen that's good, comes from a willingness to be uncomfortable. Yeah. And being uncomfortable doesn't feel safe.

And so once again, when safety gets elevated to a place of constant prominence, there's going to be consequences. That's all the last two years have been. That's constantly what we're hearing. Not that safety is a bad thing, always, obviously. But all we're hearing is promises of safety, safety, safety. this is for your safety, even what Trudeau was saying, what some draconian policies have promised, is all safety. Safety is one thing, but it's not everything. And I do think when we prioritize safety

and comfort over everything else, like you said, there's going to be consequences. Can I show you my mask? My safety third mask? Oh. This is a mask. My foundation sells these. Oh, nice. Safety third was an expression that came out of dirty jobs. Yes. And early on, I thought, You know what? If the masks are going to be a thing, personally, a cloth mask, it never made a lot of sense to my brain. But I'm like, well, if I have to wear one, you know, just to be in compliance. And then I thought, wait a minute, what if I put safety third on a mask and market them to people who want to be in compliance but also want to say at the same time? I don't really think safety can be first all the time. Yeah. We raised $400,000 for my foundation. Wow. People buying these masks. So, hey, you know, you get lemons, you make lemonade. Yep, that's what you've done. Thank you.

Last question for you. Very last question that I'm sure you've answered before, but I haven't heard you answer it. What was the dirtiest job or is the dirtiest job that you've ever done? It took you a long time to get there, Allie, but I figured sooner or later. Yeah. Yeah, that's the, in 20 years. That's the most common question that you get? I can't think of a day when somebody hasn't asked it, you know, honestly.

And I don't mind because it's kind of impossible not to. But before I answer you, just full disclosure, we did 300 jobs. And I used to give the same answer all the time because it was the answer that I thought was true. But then when I thought about it, I realized, no, that one, that was pretty hideous. That's dirty. So in my mind, there's a wheel, right? Like on the wheel of fortune. And they're like 30 jobs.

So the wheel's spinning right now. And wherever it stops, that's going to be the answer. That's just what you're going to say. Okay. So today I'm going to tell you, oh, concrete chipper. Concrete chipper was the dirtiest job? Well, yeah. But you can't, you can't limit dirt to grime.

Yeah. See, I was thinking like sewage type things. If you want the sewer story, I got a sewer story, I got a septic tank story. I got feces from every species. You know, but look, I'll just leave you with this. There's a thing called a lift pump. And a lift pump is a giant motor. It weighs about four tons.

And it sits in the bottom of something called a, sometimes they're in a fixed film reactor. But mostly it's just the first level of a wastewater treatment plant. And they're in like a silo that's about five stories high. And when people flush their toilets in San Francisco in this case, where I went into the waste war treatment plant, the pumping chamber fills with the sewage and the lift pump lifts the sewage out

and pumps it into the process whereby the sewage is treated. When your lift pump ruptures, the good people of San Francisco, they don't know. They just keep flushing their toilets. So the silo begins to fill with their filth. Alarms go off.

Man in woefully inadequate Tyvex suits to send a spiral staircases. and they muscle their way through these watertight doors, and they swim to the lift pump through the sewage, dog paddle, mostly. And you get to the pump and you got to climb up on top of the thing, which is hard because it's just like a glazed donut and the smell is incredible. And you're just, you just can't believe what you're doing. And but you're doing it.

And then you get on top of the lift pump. And up top, there's a crane and they lower a cable. And you take the cable and you attach it. to the lift pump and you give the signal and the guys hoist the whole thing out of this pit of despair. Wow. And when the lift pump breaks the seal of crap that had been holding it to the floor, it's a sound, well, it's a sound that'll haunt your dreams, right? It's like somebody yanked a piece of Velcro, like a giant piece of Velcro off a sticky wall. And as the pump goes into the air and you're hanging on to it, you look down and there's your cameraman. He's filming and you're getting

further and further away and giant pieces of filth slide off the pump and go end over end and land on him and you can't help but laugh because he's your buddy and now he's covered in other people's crap and you know that's how your day goes good times it was it was it was it was it's how dirty it was it was here's how dirty it was when we were done on that particular day um we always went out for a beer afterwards just to talk and decompress but the the six of us stood in a circle looking at each other covered, covered in the most vile thing you can imagine. And no one spoke for like a minute. We just stood there looking at each other, you know.

And finally I said, okay, guys, I'll see you around. And we all just walked away. You didn't even decompressed together. It was too soon to even talk about it. That much of an experience. Well, thanks for sharing that. Sorry you asked? No, I'm not.

I hope people were able to relive that in their mind. I'm worried. I'm worried your viewers. Would you say they were like young moms for the most part? For the most part. This is not what they signed on for. Oh, I bet if they're listening with their kids, their kids will love it. Well, good.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thanks for taking the time to come on. It was really fun. Okay, happy Friday, everyone. Hope that you had a great week. We will be back here on Monday with more.

See you guys then. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos.

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