The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 135 | Mike Rowe’s Favorite Four-Letter Word | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: February 26, 2022

A lot has changed since the last time Glenn sat down with “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe. Over the last two years of pandemic, Glenn and Mike agree that many Americans have gotten way too afraid of taking risks. As the government insists that compliance with “The Science” will protect us, Mike tells the truth about the dangers of a “safety first” mentality and why he much prefers putting “safety third.” And he explains why Canada’s Freedom Convoy and the Let’s Go Brandon movement are signs that people are growing tired of being scared into submission. Glenn and Mike also discuss Mike’s biggest lessons from decades in the TV business, why he’s so determined to offer “Work Ethic Scholarships,” and how close he got to hosting "The Daily Show." And Glenn gives Mike a new "dirty job" involving CNN … Sponsors: The ministry of Pre-Born and Blaze Media are partnering to help rescue babies from abortion in 2022. To donate, dial pound 250 and say keyword “BABY” or go to https://preborn.com/glenn Formulated by Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, the world-renowned doctor President Trump credited with his successful early treatment protocol, Z-Stack is Kosher and GMP certified and is produced right here in the USA. Go to https://ZSTACKLIFE.COM/BECK and enter the promo code BECK to get 5% off your first order. Relief Factor - If you want a drug-free and natural way to get your life back, go to relieffactor.com. Relief Factor is the only pain relief supplement that combines four 100% drug-free anti-inflammation supplements into one convenient packet. That is 4 ingredients, acting on 4 different metabolic pathways, for 4x the pain relief! Order today for $19.95. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

60% of the vans on Amazon come a vendor independent like SAC Magic. Hello, here Camille of Sackmagic. Our compresses, show of fraud are fabriced in Quebec, and our presence on Amazon enlarge our clientele

to the world entire. Trouvee to little enterprises like the other. Onesawr Today I have a guest that is interested in the moments that changed human history,

which is why he owes a special gratitude to sheep testicles. If you're a fan of this show and the show Dirty Job, you know what I'm talking about. It's ugly.

You know his voice from the deadliest catch, how the universe works in Shark Week. His new show, Six Degrees, focuses on the synchronicity of history, the way it's all connected in its own way. From the death of Ned Kelly to a super colossal volcano. He tells the unknown stories of people who have worked their butts off,

the innovators and the every man who followed opportunities. He tells us stories in a way that you don't hear these days very often. He tells American stories. He's dedicated to America. He offers solutions to the problems of our time. Because what's truly impressive about him is the way he has affected our society, the way he inspires individualism. He goes on and on and on in this podcast about a virtue that most people avoid.

Risk. Today on the Glenn Beck podcast, welcome Mike Rowe. Abortion is the leading cause of death in the U.S. and the world. It's crazy. Since Roe versus Wade over 63 million babies, aborted here in the U.S. Nearly one in four pregnancies do not choose life in the midst of this awful pandemic. You wonder if it's too big to stop. It's not. You can actually make an impact yourself. The Ministry of Preborn and Blaze Media have partnered up to help rescue babies from abortion in 2022. Preborn is the direct competition to Planned Parenthood and the largest provider of free ultrasounds in the U.S.

And they have found that if you show a woman, their baby with ultrasound, they hear the heartbeat. They're 80% more likely to choose life for their baby. So that's all that preborn does. They just provide those ultrasounds. That's expensive. But if we're all pitching in together, over the past 15 years, preborn centers have counseled over 340,000 women considering abortion. More than 169,000 babies are alive today because of this. $28 that sponsors one ultrasound to help save one baby's life.

$140 sponsorship, five babies a chance. at life. All the gifts are tax deductible. You want to help? Donate. Dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby. That's pound 250. Keyword baby. Or just go to preborn.com slash glen. It's been how long since you sat on this set with me? I think it was, it feels like seven years. Yeah, you were, you were early on. Mm-hmm. And I've watched you grow and change and you've grown this little. empire of yours that is just remarkable. Thanks. You did two things that helped me double down on it.

The first was, you won't remember this, but we auctioned off a poster. I was doing all kinds of different things to raise money for the foundation. And I had this work smart and hard poster. You autographed it, I autographed it. We put it up for auction and one of your viewers who were listeners paid like $16,000 for it. And that made me think, you know what, we can raise a lot of money doing non-traditional things for the foundation. And the second thing you said was, hey, the social media thing, it's kind of a nightmare, but don't be an idiot. Okay.

Get a Facebook page. Well, I had it. And I wasn't really tending to it the way I could. Yeah. But it was an easy transition for me because like you, I always thought my real boss were the people who watched and listened. Yeah. And so I just started using Facebook as a focus group of sorts. And I woke up a, I don't know, a few months later and there were six million people on there. Amazing. So it's made a huge difference.

Yeah. Are you ever concerned about saying something and being banished? Because you really, you are very frank on things. Right now, I'm thinking, yes. I mean, I'm. I'm concerned in the sense that we're living in a time, obviously, when the consequences for wandering too far out of your lane or saying a magical word can be dire. Not even wandering out of your lane. I don't know what my lane is. You take up half the pool, my friend. Your lane is wide and deep. But so you are worried about have you had a D? Oh, sure. Sure. I mean, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, first real brush with cancellation came before the cancel culture thing was a thing. I narrated a Walmart commercial and the Walmart commercial basically announced the reopening of factories

and trumpeted the company's intention to spend a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next 10 years in supply chain. I don't work for Walmart, didn't have a deal with them, but I agreed to narrate the spot because I thought it was really simpatico with my foundation. And I like the idea of a big American company investing in American manufacturing. And so I narrated this thing. A beautiful spot aired during the Olympics, in fact, about eight years ago, I guess. And, well, before I went to bed, I, you know, I posted something, shared a copy of the spot. Some people loved it, but the union issue.

Oh my God. People were like, how could you? How could you get in bed with a company that treats its workers so poorly? And so I thought, whoa, you must be this tall to get on that ride, right? I didn't sign on for that. I just had a glass of wine, wrote a post, and was going to bed. Well, I got up in the middle of the night, as men of our age do, to take care of business. I looked again at the Facebook page and this thing had gone around the world. What happened next was incredible. I was boycotted by an organization. organization called Jobs for Justice. And they were challenging me to come out and meet with Walmart workers. Meanwhile, like I said, I have no relationship with the company. And I just did the voice work. I need a labor nightmare. Like I need a hole in the head. Right. So I'm like, I can't really deal with that. But they crashed my website. They had thousands of people writing letters. And they were calling for boycotts of everything that I was involved in. I didn't know who these people were. Meanwhile, I'm out in the press defending both myself and weirdly enough Walmart, right?

And so the next night I'm on CNN, then I'm on Fox News, and we're having this giant conversation about work and about unions and about manufacturing. And suddenly I realized, wait a second, there's a weird upside to this because I'm in the midst of something, but I'm also using it to promote my foundation. Meanwhile, Walmart's getting all kinds of tailwind because the dirty jobs guy is out there in the world talking about the importance of revitalizing the supply chain. Next thing you know, we got a call from the president of Walmart and his head of PR saying, in no uncertain terms, what the hell are you doing? You're out there speaking on our behalf. I'm like, well, somebody should. And I'm not really speaking on your behalf. I'm speaking on my behalf.

Right. So were they kind of mad at you? They weren't mad because on the one hand, they loved this commercial and their initiative, I believe, was sincere. And they were getting more unearned media and attention than they ever imagined. I was getting boycotted, on the other hand. And so, Mary, my partner and I, we just decided, you know what, we have to get in front of it. We scheduled our own satellite media tour. We called our own press people and I went out in the world to have the conversation.

And it was the craziest thing, right? But it was like stepping off the curb and having someone grab you at the last minute when the big blue bus goes by. Right. Because it could have tilted, right? So what I wound up doing was writing an open letter to jobs with justice. And I explained that they crashed our website and were a small MonPah company. And I further explained that the people you're representing who work for Walmart, what are you doing? and you're trying to get them another eight or ten cents an hour.

I'm offering to train them how to weld or how to learn a skill that's actually in demand, double, maybe triple their salary. So that conversation took a whole different turn. But that's a long way of saying, yeah, I'm mindful of it. Yeah, I've seen your pushbacks and they're brilliant. I mean, they're really, really brilliant. Thanks. Let me stay with unions for just a second. there's a goal now of

tripling the union membership in the next few years by the administration. They're pushing good union jobs. I don't have a problem with unions when unions are needed. It's always the balance. Sometimes people get too greedy at the top and that's when a union needs to pull them back. Sometimes the unions get too greedy.

They need to be pulled back. Why is it we can't ever find the reasonable middle ground? Because everything is always changing. You're nailing jello to a tree, right? The times are different. When the unions, the trade unions anyway, when they came about in the turn of the century,

I don't know that anybody would have argued or disputed their relevance from everything, from safety to working conditions, all that stuff. They made their point in some areas. In some areas, they didn't, right? And so everything was always, constantly evolving. I wandered into this morass, this myasma, and was in a really odd position

because my foundation makes no distinction between right to work and union. I've trained lots of people who are happy in unions, and I've trained lots of people who are working in non-union states. But for my own self-glen, right? And I think we're probably, we've probably been in the same unions. Screen Actors Guild, AFRA, Agma. I've been in those unions for decades. And I'll tell you a true story. When I auditioned for QVC, very first job in television, unions told me not to take it. Wasn't a union shop, right?

And they told me that there would be serious consequences. I had no choice. I needed to work, and it was a steady paycheck. So I violated Global Rule 1. And they didn't throw me out, but they didn't like it. And a couple of years later, when I started a show called Your New Home and Baltimore that ran for 15 years, they said, you can't do that. You're not a signatory. And I said, well, I don't really have much of a choice.

And they said, we're going to, you know, big con. I did it. I had to do it. They told me not to do dirty jobs. So, look, that's crazy. The union has done a lot of good. The unions I belong to. But they affirmatively, at the three most important points in my life, affirmatively, affirmatively,

urged me from taking a risk. And risk is really the four-letter word we should probably concern ourselves with most these days. And I feel like, you know, everybody's searching for progress. But I feel like we're being pulled back into all of the old systems. All the old systems are saying, no, no, no, got to do it my way. Got to do it my way. I feel like our government all over the world. It's like living in the 1950s. mainly because a lot of our politicians were there in the 1950s. I feel like the big media corporations are doing everything they can to hold on to their power. And it's a weird thing to have progress be labeled progress when it's actually taking us back the other direction.

Sure, because people are, it's water in their hands, you know. You can hold it for a while. But look what we're doing right here, like 10 years ago. Couldn't have done this. A podcast wasn't a thing. Like you built this studio. You got out from Fox and you just said, wait a second. There was madness when we did it.

It was risk. Mm-hmm. You, you know, you saw the risk, but like a lot of successful people, you didn't run from it. You actually used it, you know. And that's the thing I worry most about today. And it is germane to the union conversation. but it's also relevant to everything from masks. Our risk-averse nature, I believe, is the answer to your question.

That's the thing that holds us back. It's the fear of trying a new thing. It's the fear of consequences. It's our desire for certainty. Boy, there's been a lot of certainty over the airwaves in the last couple of years. A lot of certain sounding experts. A lot of certain sounding. politicians, you know, we're long uncertainty, but we're very, very short in authenticity and

and in facts. That's funny. I said about five, six years ago, the one thing I'm certain of is that I am no longer certain of anything. And you don't see that from people. We are all. You're exactly right. Everybody is certain.

Let me go to the mass for a second. Because at the beginning, you were, you were, I think everybody can give a pass at the beginning of the of COVID because we had no idea what we were dealing with and we all wanted to do the right thing. You know, nobody wants to kill anybody and nobody wants to die. When did you change on that? What is, what's, how have you evolved on that? Because you were, I gave, I was the last public speaker at the last large public event in the country started on March 9th. It was the construction expo in Las Vegas. And had it started on the 10th, they would have canceled the whole thing. But once you get 300,000 dirty jobbers in Vegas to buy heavy equipment, right? That party

doesn't end. Right. Right. And so it was the strangest thing. You know, Monday NFL starts canceling and then the NBA and then baseball and then Broadway closed. And meanwhile, my job there is to shake hands. and every 10 minutes, the loudspeaker says, avoid all contact, don't touch anybody. When I went home after five days of shaking tens of thousands of hands, I was pretty sure I was riddled with it. Got home on Friday the 13th, just in time for the governor to lock California down. And like everybody else, obviously, I'm washing vegetables.

I'm looking at the news. I'm trying to make sense of all this. And two weeks to flatten the curb. made me nervous, but it also made sense. Our health care system is either overrun or it's not. And we don't want it overrun. So I was on board with all that. Me too.

I participated in PSAs. You know what I regret most, Glenn? I said about probably very, very early in April, I was doing the first Zoom show in prime time. I was interviewing the captains on Deadliest Catch, and we were doing it long distance. And I thought it was terribly clever. for me to tell these captains, you know, guys, for the first time, in my lifetime anyway,

we're all in the same boat. And everybody nodded and everybody agreed. Later, I thought about it. We're not in the same boat. We're in the same storm. What does that mean? It means your boat may vary. That guy's in a dingy. That guy's in a yacht. That guy's on a barge. That guy's hold on for dear life to a piece of floatsum or jetsome. You know, that guy's on a pleasure cruise. And, The way we weathered the storm started to become really interesting to me. And then the way we processed the risk. And then like the frog in the boiling water, the more we got used to being told by certain sounding people.

You know, we began to crave certainty. And of course, that's what happens when we're scared. And I was scared. I was scared for my mom and dad, you know, who were in their 80s, who got it, by the way, they're fine. And I was scared for myself. And I was scared because I couldn't for the life of me understand how it was going to end. And when you take the measures that we were taking with no clear rubric for success or termination,

then it's just very, very difficult to feel good about the terminus. And there was just no terminus in this thing. If the last two years have taught us anything, is it that we have to take control. of our own health and our own lives. We can't rely on the government or the so-called exports. We can look to science, but not the science. This is where Z-Stack comes in. Z-Stack is a specially formulated immune boosting supplement.

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taking it right now. Stay ahead of any potential variance. Boost your immune system. It's z-stacklife.com slash Beck. Z-stafflife.com slash Beck. I remember thinking, why aren't more people saying, why can my Home Depot open? But my local true value hardware can't it was for a country that you know questions the big pharmaceutical companies and questions big business we threw mom and pop down way under the bus way under the bus i spoke at a gathering of the you'll laugh because this is just one more association maybe you know about it maybe you don't but the national association of hardwood floor and carpet installers. Okay. All right. So 5,000 people show up at this thing and they're all Monpa operations and

they do what their association's name would suggest. But for the last two years, they couldn't work. To your point, all the big box guys did. Now, this association needs to hire in the next four to five years, 180,000 people. They're paying $25 an hour to apprentice, right? People that have no experience putting in a hard floor and they've got a path to a really good career. Glenn, they can't find anybody. They can't find them. And this is one association representing tens of thousands of people that have to hire a lot. There are so many associations in the country right now. The energy business has its back against the wall. The cable business, the broadband business, everybody's looking for skilled labor, right? And nobody can find it. So that really started to work. And that really started to

worry me too as this one on. You laugh at this too. Regarding masks. Safety third. Safety third. I love that. This crazy mask, look this thing. Right now, it's become, I think, like a collector's item. We've sold tens of thousands of these raised over $400,000 for the MicroWorks Foundation. And we started doing this.

I think it was in July of 2020. when it became clear to me that, okay, cloth masks don't work. And we're being told that we have to wear a thing that doesn't work. Correct. That's what I believed then. And today it seems self-evident. And I thought, well, what do you do for people who have to wear a mask but don't want to? And who understand that just because you're in compliance,

doesn't mean you're out of danger. Correct. Right. So I wasn't taking the situation lightly or suggesting that the disease wasn't highly contagious and very, very serious. I was just saying, wait a second. This doesn't work. This isn't going to work.

But if you're going to make me do a thing that doesn't work, I kind of want to be able to at least give you half the finger. Right. Right. Right. Right. Maybe just a pleasant reminder. Just the two.

Just the tip. Right. So, you know. Explain Safety Third for people who don't know your rules. So Safety Third does not mean that safety isn't critically important. It just means that there is an orthodoxy in our country that has become platitudinous. And that is based on the old trope, Safety First. Safety First came out of the vocational world.

And it was an attempt and a pretty successful one to get workers more focused. on the importance of being safe. But like so many other campaigns, they overreached. And in their attempt to get people more focused on safety, they said that there was nothing as important as safety. And everywhere on dirty jobs that I went for the first couple years, I saw these safety first banners. My crew and I sat through dozens of mandatory safety briefings,

lockout, tagout procedures, confined space procedures. We went through all of it. And believe me, Glenn, we paid attention because we wanted to go home with everything working, right? And so first couple years, nobody got hurt. Season three was the craziest thing. Broken finger here, broken toe there, cracked rib, singed off my eyebrows in a blast furnace. A couple concussions, nothing serious, stitches. Like, the wheels came off the bus.

Why? We were still going through all the safety first. machinations. We were just not paying attention. It was like Charlie Brown's teacher. You sit through 50 safety briefings, right? The idea that somebody can tell you that your safety is their top priority, the minute you believe that, you're in danger because nobody can be more responsible for your safety than you. And if the real enemy is complacency, and I believe that to be true, then we have to say

something to cut through all the platitudinous garbage that lulls us into a false sense of security. Safety third became the rallying cry on dirty jobs. It simply meant, be careful. Be careful. I was in, I was at the Grand Canyon and I went to the Native American side.

not a fence to be found. They built that huge glass platform out that you walk on. Isn't that magnificent? It's amazing. It's amazing. And if you've been there, you know there's no safety anywhere. There's no warnings. Hey, a couple more steps.

You fall off the cliff. And I asked one of the guides. I said, how many people fall off the cliff? He said, we don't have any. Correct. There's a thing, it's somewhat controversial, but it's actually at the root. This isn't just me being a smart ass, right? I actually read a paper.

It's published in Canada years ago by a guy who talked about risk equilibrium, homeostatic risk, and compensatory behavioral. So basically what all that means is everybody in this room has a different risk tolerance. And when you introduce safety protocols, an interesting thing happens to your behavior. For instance, if I put a helmet on you, study after study after study shows you drive a little faster on the motorcycle. I think that's why there's so many problems. You don't have the problems in rugby that you have in the NFL. Correct. Correct.

I'm safe. That's right. I'm in compliance. I got my gear. I can go more. Therefore, let's rock it. Right. I'll never forget standing on the deck of a crabboat on the Bering Sea in 2004.

First time we were up there for deadliest catch. And it was sporty. I mean, 15 foot seas, sideways, sleet. And we're still working at it. Right? We're hauling up pots. We're doing the whole thing. And I walked into the wheelhouse at one point.

And I'm like, hey, Captain. OSHA? And he, like, looks at me. He got a cigarette burning in his mouth. He's got one behind his ear also lit. Cigarettes out of everywhere. He's looking out the window and green water's coming over the bow. And he says,

Ocean. Ocean. I'm like, I get it. We're all terribly brave. But, I mean, at what point, at what point do we kind of wrap this up? I have cameramen out there. I got all sorts of stuff.

It's going off the rails. And he says, son, calls me, he's my age, basically. He says, Look, I'm the captain of a crab boat. My job is not to get you home safe. My job is to get you home rich. You want to be safe? Be safe.

That's on you. Now, nobody in the lower 48, whatever, talked to anybody like that. And I'm not even saying this was a good thing. I'm just making the point that when somebody who you think is primarily concerned with your safety reminds you that they're not, you make sure your life jacket is on properly.

You make sure you've got three points of contact all of the time. It's just like being at the edge of the Grand Canyon. There's no fence to lean against, right? And so, somewhere in all of that, again, I'm not. But I see, this goes back to that because it goes back to risk. Everything goes back to risk. Yeah. I mean, if you're not, you know, there's people who, I'm sure we'll say this to you.

Oh, you got a great job. I wish I had your job, blah, blah, blah. Do you? Because I can sit down and I can tell you about what I do and the risks that I have to take every day and everything else. And you'll probably say, I don't want to do that. That's correct. Right. With everything, there is risk and there's a bunch of dirty jobs.

You don't want to do, but that's what takes you there. Correct. Look, if anybody takes anything from this, I think the whole safety third conversation really comes down to just rattling your cage and doing something to break your pattern. Something that scares you. Right. Like, I probably have signed 200, well, probably 1,000 general releases. You know, you're on a TV show. You've got to sign a release. Although you didn't give me one. That's weird. That's right. What are we doing here? That's right. No, you have to sign the release. And the more hazardous, the activity, typically the thicker. The release.

The release. And the finer, the print. Correct. Right. When I tested a shark suit, we made a stainless steel shark suit a few years ago with the inventor. And then we chum the water. Dozens of reef sharks come in. And I'm dressed up like Ivanhoe.

And this guy's dressed up like Sir Gala. And we jump in to deliberately get bitten to test the suit. Crazy job. Well, his release said, I, blank, do hereby understand that I'm about to engage in an activity that is stupid on its face. The idea that I'm going to survive this is wishful thinking. It's going to hurt. I'm going to get bit by a shark. I know this is going to happen sincerely, right?

I mean, it was the most straight up. So it should be. I was like, huh. So if I sign this now, I'm, I'm. very, very, very clear headed about it. We would be so much better off. Just doing that. To tell the truth in releases, to tell the truth about safety.

And if you look at our relationship to risk over the last couple of years, the whole notion of COVID-Zero, the whole notion of eliminating it. You know, it began with, which is name, that genius, Cuomo, right? Genius. This guy, I mean, look, again, I'm trying to stay in my lane, but we're on this topic. You're right. I know. I know. No, I know. You'll remember the moment. No measure, he said, no matter how draconian can be deemed an overreach if it saves a single life. That is when I started making safety third masks, honestly, because good grief. The number of people who believed that, Glenn, that is incredible. We've lost all sense of balance between freedom and safety. All sense. So where is it? How do we gain that back? I want my freedom. You know, it's not, where in the Constitution does it say the government's supposed to keep us safe except for guarding our borders, which they don't do, and making sure that we have a military for anybody that comes in to evade? That's it. That's all.

It's almost as if we realized at some point over the last couple of years that we were mortal. It's like, what do you mean? No, no, no. We're living forever, right? This is, what are you telling me about this new danger thing? It was the novelness of the novel coronavirus that also made me say, wait a second, what's really novel here? I suspect you're a fan of C.S. Lewis. He wrote, and this is worth a Google, too, if you haven't seen this.

In 1948, he answered a question, and the question was, how am I to live in the atomic age? And people were just getting their heads around the novelness of the fact that a bomb, a missile, could land. I mean, a terrible, terrible thing. And I didn't live through it, but can you imagine the anxiety of the fact of the bomb? of living in a world where you suddenly realized that there was a nuke pointed at you, right? We're freaked out with masks and kids and schools right now. They were diving under chairs. I remember, Mike, you and I are approximately the same age.

I remember we're waking up in terror because we'd have these instructional films shown at school and be like, wait, the whole world can be gone tonight in 11 or 18 minutes? That's crazy. I remember that too. We would have been in grade school, right? But our parents in 1948 were three years after Hiroshima. Correct. And they were all grown up. And they were looking around going.

That was a big bomb. And it's only a matter of time until the Soviets get it and so forth. And so what C.S. Lewis says in this is how to live in the atomic age. It's the same way you lived when at any moment the like, Kings could arrive on the shore, rape and plunder and do whatever the way. The same way the next smallpox could come, the next black death, he goes down the list. He says, look, it always feels different. It always feels new, especially when you give it a new name, the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.

Well, guess what? Now it's 22. Right? Right. and people are starting, I think, to, I think it's only a matter of time until you get bored with being scared. You're still, we're already there. I think America has changed. I think the whole world has changed.

Enough. We got it. You know, when you get to the point, because, you know, as a student of history, I know what happened in 1918. And it was much worse than what just happened. And when this was coming down, I was one of the first people talking about it really early in January. and I said, don't fear the virus, even though we don't know what it is, they're welding people into their houses. Don't fear the virus. Fear what the consequences are of the virus economically and to our nation.

And that's what we've seen. You know, you're going to deal with it. We're going to deal with it. And we're going to survive. Or fear both. But prudence, right? Prudence. You don't drive.

at 55 miles an hour, simply because the sign says you can when it's snowing. But see, but this is the thing, right? But this is the thing. We weren't. People were already self-isolating. They were already saying, I remember when the president said, we're going to close everything for 15 days. And I was like, well, join the club.

I mean, because we were already self-isolating. Sure. People, people, that made sense to people. What didn't make sense is, is how long it went on and still going on in some places, Canada. That's, look, if there's no exit strategy, then there's no exit. Talk to the people, talk to the people as we're here on Fear for a second. We're entering a time that we haven't seen maybe since World War II, the Civil War, Revolutionary,

where there are right now serious consequences for going against, you know, the accepted narrative. whatever that narrative is, it's changed. I don't know how many times here. But Canada, we have a woman who was one of the main organizers. She's facing 10 years in prison in Canada. They've lost their livelihood. They lost everything they had in the bank. They lost their truck.

Because she contributed a couple hundred bucks to go fund? No, because she was an organizer. But it was peaceful. Right. You know, everything she did was square within the law, except maybe parking fines. That scares a lot of people. You see this government come down.

Canadians right now, but we're having it here too. The government comes down. They're coming down to make sure you understand. Don't screw with us. How do you, how do you, what would you say to people about the fear of government coming down on you at this time, losing your job, losing everything? there's no mask to protect you from that. There's no PPE to protect you from that. There's no vaccine to protect you from that.

The only thing that can protect you from that are your neighbors and your willingness to stand up. It's very, very hard, as you know, to be the first one to stand up. And so much of what we've seen over the last couple of years down here, I think, reminds me that old Hans Christian Anderson, you know, the emperor's new clothes. Oh, yeah. When the emperor is told that his garments are fantastic. And, of course, the tailors haven't made any garments at all. But they convince him that he's clothed.

And he sits there in his chair and he's paraded through town naked. And all the towns, people are like, oh, well, yes, those are amazing clothes. Ooh, and on. It was the kid. It was a kid who finally says, hey, that dude is naked, man. And then some adults started nodding like you are going, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's naked. And then pretty soon, okay, we all see it. And, you know, you can't arrest the whole town, right?

So I don't know where it tips exactly. But I would say to people that in so many, it's speaking only for myself, I have felt like that kid. And I've also felt like a bystander in the crowd. You know, I wasn't the first to do or say anything. I had a lot of pushback on safety third. I bet you did. I bet you did. And had I not donated the proceeds to my foundation, I'm not quite sure how I would have positioned that publicly.

But to answer your question, I just think that when it tips is when we can no longer bear to be told the thing we're looking at is not the thing that's happening. That's happening a lot now. Everywhere you look. Everywhere. It's happening with the language. That protest was mostly peaceful. I saw someone on CNN. It was on a Saturday morning.

It was completely peaceful. I mean, the birds were chirping in the background practically. Nothing happening. And they said, this may look like a peaceful rally. But don't be fooled. But don't be fooled. Yeah, this is. They're sacrificing virgins just around the corner.

And it was the exact opposite of when they were reporting with the whole city burning day. It's mostly peaceful. But it's not. Not just that. The border's secure. Never mind the thousands of people you can see running over it. Afghanistan was a success.

Pay no attention to those bodies falling from the sky. And don't worry about the 14,000 still over there with green cards who are screwed, right? On and on and on and on and on. You know, that's actually, that's what I think the Let's Go Brandon thing was, that's not what it was about when it started, but that's what it became. because everybody in that crowd could hear what was being chanted. Yes. But the nice lady in front of the camera said, oh, can you hear them? They're saying, let's go Brandon.

And you're sitting right there, a wash and a level of cognitive dissonance that's almost impossible to overstate. And you say, no, actually, that's not what they're saying. So what we're going to do now, it was kind of a C-P third move. Do you think that's what she heard? or do you think that was a brilliant I mean that was a brilliant cover it was a nice cover and I thought she did it with kind of a smile and a wink

as if to say I guess we all know what's happening but she sold it and if you look at the transcript she's clearly saying and the crowd is so behind you let's go oh yeah yeah yeah and so the people I've talked to since that happened have adopted that expression

not to say F Joe Biden they adopt that expression whenever they're asked, whenever they're asked to be a townsperson in the emperor's new clothes. Correct. And just nod and go, yep, those clothes sure are pretty. Let's go, Brandon. Because here we go again. Yeah.

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Drug-free, natural way, get your life back. Relieffactor.com. That's Relieffactor.com. I had a job for you to do. And I think it's a dirty job, but I think you'd be great at it. I think that you should become the new CNN, Tom Budzman, that you just watch CNN, and every couple of weeks, you just come in and tell them what they've done.

You know, it's so funny you said that. Somebody the other day was talking about, like, they didn't really replace Larry King. No, they didn't. You know, and part of the reason, I think, was because they were pretty sure that people didn't have the attention span or the appetite for a longer form. Hello Joe Rogan. Hello, podcasting. Oh, I know. People are starving for it.

They're starving for it. And so it's... It's not just the long form, but they're starving for authenticity. Which is really hard to do in short bursts. Yeah. Look, and very hard to fake. But if you can fake it, it's great. Once you dig to that, then, the world's your oyster.

All right. I have an epigram in my book. Um, that's a quote from my favorite fictitious character, Travis McGee, who lives on a houseboat and solves crimes. John D. McDonald created him back in 1964. And among many other quotable things, McGee said, uh, and a big, thick paragraph full of all the things he's suspicious of and all the things he's wary of. It ends with, but most of all, I am wary of all earnestness. And that right now, we were talking about certain. before being long uncertainty.

This is, there's never been a time in my view when Americans should be more skeptical of every single thing. Everything. Everything. Including everything I'm saying right now. Every single thing ought to be held up, weighed and measured, and evaluated as best an individual can do it. But rather than being encouraged to be skeptical, we are told by our.

journalist to trust us. Trust us. And certain sounding people in a crisp well-modulated baritone will sit behind their microphone and tell you the way it is. Trust us, they say. And the experts in the lab coats, they say trust us. It's science. I'm science, right. It's not science. It's the science. Whenever you put the in front of something, somebody's trying to sell you something. Exactly right. So instead of being wary of earnestness, we are told, we are, we are cajoled, we're challenged. If you question, Glenn, you're a denier. Skepticism, which is not cynicism, by the way, or insanity, it's just skepticism. Here we are surrounded by ambiguity and experts that can't agree on all sorts of things.

and we are told that if we're skeptical of anything, then we're just a denier, a fill in the blank, a science denier, a climate denier, a mask denier. So rather than encouraging a skeptical mind, we seem, our institutions in particular seem convinced, seemed dedicated to the proposition of erasing that, right? that quality, that's what, that's what I think is under siege and that worries me. I saw an article this week in the New York Times. It was about the scandal of spying on the president and the reason why the New York Times hasn't covered any of that. And first they said it was all misinformation. And then the very next sentence was, and to be able to really tell this story. It's very complex with a lot of different names that people don't know. And it would require an enormous effort on the side of the reader to understand that, which makes us question whether

things like this should be covered at all. That's incredible. The infatilization, infantilization. Yeah. That's what it is. It's, look, we're not sure. children. And we shouldn't be treated like children. And the idea that somebody somewhere is, doesn't trust us to sift through conflicting views. This business with Rogan fascinated me, you know, because the two doctors that caused all the problems, I don't know them, you know, but, but Robert Malone holds nine patents on MRNA vaccines. I know. I know. And the other guy, McCullough, is the most published cardiologist in the world. Now, maybe they're nuts.

Maybe they're wrong. We should have caught that before. But if you can't talk to people who are that credentialed. Who can you? Right. And so for all of that pushback that he got, I found that kind of chilling. because Neil Young

doesn't think I'm capable of listening to ideas that might be incorrect. Mike, when did rock and roll become the man? Yeah. It's amazing to me. All these,

especially these aging hippies that were like, hey, fight the power, man, you got the right. And now all of a sudden they're like, hey, shut up. We'll put you in jail. Yeah.

It's crazy. Misinformation, disinformation, mal information. Oh, is that, is that thing? Mal. You know what mal information is? Had to look it up. Enlighten me.

It is when somebody knows that it's a lie and is spreading it just for malice. Oh. So misinformation is somebody who doesn't know that it's true, that it's not true. Disinformation is somebody who knows it's not true. And malinformation, is somebody who knows it's not true and has a heart full of malice. But don't forget the fourth. Yeah.

The noble lie. Okay. The noble lie is what we say when your best interests might be compromised by the truth. Let's assume masks work to tell people that masks don't work at a time when there was a shortage of mask was deemed a noble lie in order to make sure the people who need. It was just a lie. It was just a lie. And we knew it was a lie. And it infuriated me at the time because I'm like, you sons of it, you don't trust the American people. I had a bunch of masks. You know what I did? I didn't hoard them. I brought them to my local hospital. And I know I'm not alone. There were millions of people who did that. You just didn't trust us. When you don't expect the best from people, you're never going to get it. Nope. You're never going to get it. Yeah, it's a self-fulfilling kind of prophecy, and it impacts public policy, but it also impacts the way we disseminate risk. And I will always come back to that because it's our relationship with fear. Do you think you are more of a risk taker because I think your heart's always been into performance?

I mean, you were an opera singer. So do you think, I mean, you have to risk. If you're going to be good at something, you have to risk. Well, I told you earlier on your radio show, when I was a host, Dick Clark gave me some really, really great advice, which was don't walk out and say hi, hi, everybody, even though you're broadcasting, talk to one person at a time. And so for 10 years or so, I worked really hard at being the best host I could be. And I got pretty facile at it. But I didn't really have any success until I learned another lesson in the sewers of San Francisco where I realized I was a better guest. So if I could be the titular figure in a program, but think of myself as a guest instead of a host, that was a risk, right?

It was a big risk because on dirty jobs, if there was a pie in somebody's face, it was the, their pie in my face, right? If there's a brunt of a joke, it's me. I'm the new guy every day working with an expert who has never been on TV before, but who is quite good at his or her job.

And so for me, the willingness to be humbled on international television was the proximate cause of whatever success I've had, but that was a risk. And that's something I

I've wanted to ask you about, too, as a performer, you know, there's a lot of risk in dirty jobs visually, but like the risk of leaving Fox, the risk of building this, right? The risk of going, of taking the reverse commute in your chosen field, that, you know, you were rewarded for it, but you could have just as easily been crushed. You have to not want. something so much, you know. This building, I bought it for $4.9 million.

You know what we started negotiating at? 19. Okay? 19. Took a year. Yeah. But I didn't want it that much. And they were like, it's worth 19.

I'm like, well, go find that person that thinks it's worth 19. Is it? Yeah. And I started it. I said, it's worth five. And they said, no. And I didn't want it that badly. They kept coming back and I'd go, okay, it's really great.

You're offering 12. Five. And I got it for four, nine. They got to five. I said, no, now it's four nine. Now is the operative word, right? How much time did it take to get them where you needed to get them? Year?

A year, a couple months, maybe, yeah. But it's, it's the concept is, and this happens to TV people and stars, I think, all the time. And you can see it. in them. They get some success and then they want it and they want it to stay. And so they'll start compromising and doing anything to get it. And that's, I think, what is happening in all over the world. People are willing to compromise because they just want this. And what they don't realize is you're not going to have this. It's not going to be the same. Once you start compromising, you not only lose that, you lose everything. It's, to my mind, it's not just the

compromise. It's the duplicativeness. Why does so much news look the same? Why does so much FM radio sound the same? Why does so much music sound the same? You know, it's once you have a little bit of success as a producer,

as an executive producer, somebody who can make a call, right? Dirty Jobs been on the air 20 years. The first three episodes that aired were the highest rated. of the week, but the show was put on the shelf for a year because it wasn't consistent with what the network saw at the time as their core audience, right?

This is not on brand. So they put it on the shelf. Now, that was a safe bet for somebody to do, but... And probably made sense somewhat at the time. It doesn't make sense now. But somebody later took a risk. And they put it back on the air knowing it wasn't quite consistent with the brand. And guess what?

It became the brand. 39 shows have evolved out of Dirty Jobs over the lesson. 39 shows. That's crazy. It became the brand. The whole construct of a host as a guest or a guest as a host. You see it all the time now. The whole device of bringing the behind the scenes guys into the show.

That was Dirty Jobs, right? That level of authenticity, that kind of shooting was risky. We didn't do second takes. That was one of my mandates. It's like, look, back then, I figured reality TV meant reality, right? So let's show you a day on the job exactly as I see it. Now, of course, we can edit, but I wanted the viewer to see a linear, chronological look at my day, not a montage of some stuff and fast cuts and everything else.

And you know what Take 2 is. Take 2 is a performance. So, yeah, I had a, I called it the truth cam. It's just a behind the scenes camera, like a dock cam. But the mandate was simple. Mandate, geez, am I even allowed to say that one? The mandate was simple. You never stop rolling.

Correct. Whatever else happens here. Happens. Camera goes down, plane flies over. I could always look to the truth cam and tell the viewer what was happening in the moment. And you use the word before. If you're looking for authenticity, you find it in those little moments and it's worth its weight and gold. Part of the problem with what we're facing, and I think it's happening to our children,

and if we keep paying people to stay home, we're going to have more and more problems, I think meaning has to change. A lot of people get their meaning from their jobs. I think it's why a lot of guys die after they retire. So how do we find meaning? And talk about the meaning of a job and the meaning beyond the job. Well, on the long list of things we can't control is virtually everything. on the short list of things we we can is is that like there's no you you can't find meaning in a job

there's no meaning in a job there's a meaning in you and the thing to which you assign your meaningfulness is 100% in your control this is why we have wretched garbage men and happy garbage men and wretched actuarial accountants and happy actuarial accountants. The job. And wretched billionaires and happy billionaires. Correct. There is nothing inherently transformational about a job beyond its existence. Now, if they don't exist, then you don't have the opportunity to assign your meaning to a pursuit.

And that's tragedy, right? But in the wide world of work, what we've done, I think somewhat stupidly, is elevate certain jobs at the expense of other jobs. It's precisely what we've done with education. We've said, look, there's higher education, and that's the thing we want to encourage people to do. And then it's like there's this ellipsies, right? Because, well, if there's higher education, if so facto, there must be lower jobs. Higher jobs, but lower education. Yeah, yeah.

Right? Now, we don't call it lower education. We call it alternative, right? So maybe the four-year thing is not for you. So we've got a lovely trade school over here for you. Or maybe this community college program, right? Which seems like, you're right, it does seem like that's a consolation price. It's a vocational consolation price.

These safety third masks led to an apprenticeship program at a little company that was on the verge of closing in North Carolina. and the woman, Donna Bryn, who runs it, went to the community college, hired four or five seamstresses, taught the craft. Their whole business came back on its feet starting around these goofy little masks as a fundraiser for my foundation. So look, elevating work, celebrating work, looking for opportunities in places where we're told that they might be subordinate. it's important to do that. That's why Dirty Jobs is still on the air. Nobody knows it because I never talk about it, but the number of multimillionaires on that show that we profiled,

oh, I bet. 40, maybe 50. I bet. You just didn't know it because they were covered in crap or something worse, right? And so they didn't look like success. So this is our fundamental problem. You know, if a good education can happen in a trench or through an apprenticeship program or, well, then that,

that is perceived as a threat to people who are trying to control what higher education ought to mean. And then, of course, you just follow the money. So what are the secrets to success? Well, there's no real shortcut in my view. Like the old Horatio Alger stuff, and my foundation talks a lot about it. And I know I sound like an old wealthy white guy screaming from his porch at the kids. I don't mean to, and I try really hard not to go there, but there's just no substitute. You know, delayed gratification, a decent attitude, a sense of humor.

Why sense of humor? Well, because if you're not laughing, as my pop said, the jokes on you. Yeah, okay. Right? I mean, that was such an important part of dirty jobs. It still is. You know, I don't want to go to job sites where there's no lightness. It doesn't matter how grim the work is or how difficult or how dangerous.

The vast majority of those sites that I've been to always have this element of camaraderie, this band of brothers, which is humor's neighbor, right? And so it was really important for me on that show to make sure that we captured that in some way, shape, or form. Because, I mean, whatever version of success you have, how can it not include joy, cheerfulness, probably the most important scout law, cheerful, right? So again, that's in your control. Your work ethic is in your control.

The affirmative decision to show up early, stay late, take a bite of the crap sandwich when it comes around to you and laugh through it. Those are all choices. So our work ethic scholarship program specifically looks for people who have those traits. those traits won't make you successful. But I don't go a long way. I don't know any successful person who doesn't have them. Yeah.

You know, absent some lotto winners and trust fund babies, but, you know, that doesn't count. Yeah. Let me take you two places. First of all, your favorite storyteller. Well, I mean, Paul Harvey. Paul Harvey took risks. he uh as you know he's a radio guy showed up every day in a suit and tie yeah every day at his own

office with just him that's right early early yeah early really early typed his own stuff you know he and his boy developed the rest of the story yeah which inspired my podcast the way i heard it still does um you know harvey studs turkle um oh gosh donald blank CBS this morning uh yeah yeah Yeah, yeah. On the road. Yeah, yeah. Corralt. Charles Corralt.

Even George Plimpton. You know, Plimpton was a guy who wanted to experience the thing before he wrote about it, which I admire a lot. Corralt was a guy who would rather take the back road than the highway, which I admire a lot. Paul Harvey was a guy who would tell you the end in the beginning, which I thought was great. He was, there's just nobody. Did you ever meet him? No. I never did. But I'll tell you, it's funny. I got, I had a fun conversation with his son, you know, because when I started my podcast, I said, look, this is, this is straight up inspired by Paul Harvey. He called it the rest of the story. I call it the way I heard it. And I wanted to tell stories about people you knew, but I wanted to share something you didn't know about them in that inside out way. So it was, it was his formula, you know. And the podcast went up and we were up for,

about a year and we were doing really great. I mean, that was killing it. And my partner, Mary called me one day and she's like, we got a FedEx here from Paul Harvey Jr. You know, was dropped off. And I'm like, oh, God, it's an injunction. It's a cease to desist. It's a lawsuit. It was a very generous check for my foundation with a note that said, my dad is looking down at this right now. Oh, how great. He's loving it. Oh, how great. How great. I'm not a sentimental fool. I'm wary of all earnestness, but I brought a tear to my eye, you know, because the rest of the story was probably as much Paul Harvey Jr. as it was his dad. He pushed that thing forward. Oh, yeah. You know. So yeah, I made me think of my own dad and the things

we had worked on and, you know, all the stuff we're talking about right now. Some days, you think you're going to get sued and they send you a check. Some days you think you're getting a check. Let me, let's end it on, on this. The two or three times that you thought you were going to be the host of the Daily Show. Yeah. It was twice in those days I was still masquerading as a host and determined, you know, I hadn't had my dirty jobs epiphany in the sewer. I was a good host.

And this audition came along. and they saw everybody. They auditioned over 15,000 people. Oh, my gosh. In New York and L.A. It was going to be a big show. And yet, still in the end, they've ended up with Trevor Noah.

I mean, wow. These are uncertain times. But back then, in the late 90s, you know, I didn't know what it was. I just knew that Comedy Central sounded like a fun place to work. Sure. And the Daily Show sounded like a show

that was on every day, right? So I'm thinking, okay, there's some job security. and, you know, I can impersonate a news anchor, and, you know, they're in on the joke. I auditioned. They called me back. I went back again. Auditioned some more.

They called me back for a third time. And I got the job. They told me on a Friday. Congratulations. Come in Monday, meet the writers. So I was very excited. I was living in New York. And I had a great weekend, celebrated all weekend, went in Monday to meet the writers.

And there was just this one woman sitting in this room. And she didn't look happy. And I'm like, is this kind of? Comedy Central, and she's like, yes, but here's what happened. Long story short, Doug Herzog, who was running the place at the time, really wanted Craig Kilbourne, who was working at ESPN. They wouldn't let him out of his contract, but over the weekend, they relented. They hired Craig. I was out.

And that, Glenn, that, I mean, rejection is important. But wow. Yeah. That was like, man, I could taste that one. Yeah. So, but they call me and they said, look, you know, you really. you got something, kid. You know, don't quit this.

You're good at this. And we think our paths will cross again. Well, son of a gun, a year later, old Craig Kilbourne gets the call, winds up doing the late show at CBS, I guess it was. And they call me back. And they say, look, this job is basically yours. We've looked at your tape from a year ago. We'd like you to come in again.

Meet the folks. Say hi. So I did. Were you skeptical the second time? No. That's the sad. No. No. It was like, look, I mean, I just thought, there it is. I thought it was destiny. I'm like, well, obviously, this is maybe. Yeah, right, right. I come in, I meet everybody, and oh, the writers were so great, and I met the director.

And I actually did a show. It never aired, but they said, let's just sit down and have some fun. And, you know, here's the prompter. And maybe you can write some stuff. And I wrote a fun thing. And I just crushed it. It was one of those days when you go home, you're like, this is it. You just know, you did your best.

Yeah. It's like if you're at the bat, you got every piece of it. Yeah. You know, it just felt so right. And as I was leaving, Madeline Smithburg said to me, she said, look, the only way this gig isn't yours is if this network, if this, her words, cheap-ass network coughs up a few million dollars for the likes of Norm MacDonald or, oh, who was the other guy, Dennis Miller, or John Stewart. But that'll never happen. He says, that'll never happen. That's great.

Three days later, John signed a four million dollar contract. Do you think you'd even be considered now? Oh, probably not. I mean, it wouldn't be funny, you know, to have a third whack at the appellate. I mean, I'm tempted. I'm trying to think who I know over there that could give you a call and say, well, but Mike, we've got. We've got a gig for you.

Are you sitting down? Unless we can get anyone else. There's the truth. And this is probably a good place for me to land the plane. I don't think I'd take it, you know, if they offered. And I don't say that because I think I'm above it or anything. A daily show is a priceless opportunity to influence and to push the rock up the hill and to do whatever it is you want to do. God bless Trevor, Noah. You know, if he's having fun and everybody's happy, I think it's great. Never. I mean, I went from that rejection to working for Dick Clark. where I learned some interesting things, and then I had maybe 100 other jobs. But it wasn't until the sewer in San Francisco when I realized I was a better guest than I was a host, and it wasn't until the risk came together

and the stars lined up and dirty jobs, got on the air, and then off the air, and then back on the air. That's when my life changed. That's when the foundation evolved. That's when every good thing that's happened over the last 20 years, that's when the die was cast.

You know? And so it's, I haven't had the most glamorous career, but I've, you've had a great career. I've had a terrific run. And I have a very unusual business with a really unique set of. My best friend from high school is the producer on my podcast and is deeply embedded in my foundation. Mary, who you know has been with me from the start. That woman managing partner at a high end law firm. firm with a lot of clients. She left to work with a guy who crawled through a sewer as a guest

in order to build a business that ultimately let me sit here with you talking about safety third and various other concepts that have allowed my foundation to give away a million dollars every year for work ethic scholarships. So yeah, the Daily Show would have been great. It wouldn't have gotten here. Not here. Mike, thanks. Anytime. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.