The Highwire with Del Bigtree - MIKE ROWE – THE MISEDUCATION OF AMERICA

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

Dirty Jobs Star, Mike Rowe, joins Del at Freedom Fest 2023 in Memphis, TN, to discuss the mission of his foundation, Mike Rowe Works, which is changing the way America views education, and helping risk takers become success makers, while helping to fill the US skilled workers deficit. Further, Mike ‘goes there’ on medical freedom, scientific debate, and more. #MikeRowe #MikeRoweWorksBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

You never know what's going to happen when you come to a event like Freedom Fest, especially here. So many powerful speakers are wandering around. Well, I ran into one that is one of the highlights of this festival here, and that's Mike Roe. I was able to get with him this morning. He was very busy, but took some time to sit down and talk. If you don't know who Mike Roe is, I guess you never had a dirty job. Mike Roe. Mr. Mike Rowe.

Mike Rowe's CEO of the MicroWorks Foundation and all-around great guy. America's famous Dirty Jobs guy. You, of course, know Mike for hosting Dirty Jobs. He's an activist for the trades and for regular working people. Host CEO, Mike Rowe of the Micro Works Foundation. I run a foundation called MicroWorks, and it evolved very organically 15 years ago out of a show called Dirty Jobs. Scale of 1 to 10, how bad is this?

10's the worst, right? Yeah. Yep, 11. No doubt. Most people in the country got to know me as a guy crawling through a sewer. And so they saw me literally covered in other people's crap as I attempted to do whatever the god-awful job was. There's a lot of poop in there. Yeah, yeah, fever poop.

It's a new one. And on my little show, Dirty Jobs, everywhere I went at this time of record high unemployment, all we saw was help wanted signs. And so that's when it first occurred to me. We got 7.2 million able-bodied men in prime working age, sitting out the workforce. That's never happened in peacetime. Nothing in the history of Western civilization has gotten more expensive, more quickly than a four-year degree. Yet we're still putting incredible pressure on kids. We're telling them if they don't take this path, they're going to be screwed.

And it's crazy. The best path for the most people can't. be the most expensive path. Mike Row, it's really a pleasure to have you joining me this morning. I know you're running around as I am here at Freedom Fest, so I appreciate you taking the time. It's a festival, man. It is a festival. And if there's a schedule, I don't know what it is.

This is so cool. Literally, it's kind of early for me anyway. And they said, we're in a hotel. We're on the second floor. Come down, have coffee, sit, chat. I said, fine. Here we are. Here we are.

So tell me, I mean, obviously we've all watched you in, you know, dirty jobs, taking us around the world and all these, you know, crazy things that people do rolling up their sleeves. But how does that connect you to Freedom Fest? Why, like a libertarian conference or, you know, and you're one of the hot tickets here. A lot of people looking forward to seeing you speak. So what's connecting these things together for you? Well, I mean, the honest answer, I'm probably not equipped to know for sure. They've reached out over the years, many times, and this is the first time the schedule lined up. But I suspect, In fact, as I understand liberty and freedom, there's an unscripted element to both, right?

Yeah. I mean, people who truly live that life have to embrace a certain randomness and uncertainty about the future. They're very certain about the present, and they have great respect for the past. And I do too. Yeah, I'm a big fan of history and whatnot. But when you look forward, the sense that I get from the people here is that, you know, We don't know with certainty what's coming, right?

But we're still good-humored about it, and we're still optimistic. And humor and optimism were the pillars that held dirty jobs up, right? You can't crawl through a sewer for 20 years and not be in on the joke, right? Right. And not have a healthy respect for what could happen. And also, you meet people day after day after day who share that sensibility. You know, Dirty Jobs was never a polemic. It wasn't a political show at all.

It was just an honest look at regular people working for a living. And our cameras were really unobtrusive. A very small crew. We never stopped rolling. We never did a second take. We just, they let me be a fly on the wall and work as an apprentice. So to answer your question, I think that that sensibility, that sense of curiosity and maybe even wonder at the world somehow resonates with the people here.

So they saw something of that in me. And here we sit. A lot of conversations that I've seen you in right now. When we look at working class versus sort of white collar, blue collar, I guess what you've really been covering. And it's weird that this show was so successful looking at, what, you know, had always been considered just mundane jobs. Yeah. Things that were overlooked, as though we were watching it inside of a zoo or something.

Like, whoa, you can't believe what these people actually do, yet they keep our lives going. Yeah. So at a glance, you can look at that show and see a love letter to Blue Collar America. And in many ways, it was. But if you peel back the layers, you'll really see that underneath all the dirt, it was never about the color of collars. It was about the willingness to do a thing, a hard thing in many cases, the willingness to be uncomfortable, you know, and most of all, the willingness to assume risk. So a lot of people on that show were small business owners, and many of them, maybe upwards of 40, were multi-millionaires. You would never know it.

Yeah. Because the show wasn't about saying, look what I've built, look what I've done, look at the money I've made. And it's also very difficult to look at a person covered in somebody else's crap and go, ah, multi-millionaire. Right. So we presented over time again and again many examples of success that didn't look like success. But we always had, at the heart of the show, a celebration of labor. Right.

So I think when you look at that combined with the willingness to take risk, and also, remember, Dirty Jobs went on the air in 2003. There was no reality TV, as we understand it. There was Survivor, which was a competition show. I think Jesse James was building motorcycles in his garage, right? Right. But that was it. So to send a knucklehead like me out into the world with no script, no production,

no pre-production, no second takes, and really trust me to satisfy my own curiosity simply by working with people, that was weird. Yeah. Nobody quite knew what to make of it when it went on the air. And then, as you've experienced, there's always a moment when you realize who you really work for, right? And it's almost never the people who are signing the checks. It's almost always the people who are watching.

Yeah. And the feedback that came in, the minute that show aired, it's unlike anything I'd ever seen because it wasn't it wasn't oh that was so funny or oh that was so interesting it was Mike you got to meet my dad you think that was dirty you got to meet my granddad my uncle my brother my cousin my sister my mom way do you see what they do and that was the moment where it was like oh this isn't a show at all this is a mirror that people can see themselves in yeah and so when the audience responded in that way. I knew that we'd be on the air for decades. Absolutely. At the heart of it, you know, I feel like my generation, I could be wrong,

but I feel like my generation, you know, I was born in 1970, that suddenly the idea of fixing cars or being a plumber, it was just this, that was not a life. It just became, you had to go at college, you should be going to university, you know, that is not a way, you're not going to have a family, you won't have a house. I mean, I just feel like there's this shift where, you know, the daughter of salesman, you know, all these ideas of people that just are out there on the ground working are good, solid American stock that are doing what a nation does, what people do, suddenly there's just this shift. We really look down upon those working class jobs. Do you feel that that, do you have a sense of that?

Yeah. I would say that we didn't start looking down on them. We simply stopped looking at them, right? Before you can disparage a thing, you have to ignore it. And we started ignoring it. My granddad went to the seventh grade. He became a master electrician, steam fitter, pipe fitter, mechanic. He could build a house without a blueprint, right?

He was that guy. And in his day, he was heroic. I mean, his skills were highly valued. And toward the end of his life, he and many other men and women in his world became transparent. There's a song in a, I forget the music. It's called Mr. Selifane, right? You can just see right through them. So that's what started to happen, I think.

And part of the reason it happened is because, because of the music. because a lot of well-intended parents wanted something better for their kids. And that desire really reared its ugly head in the way we talk about education. It started there. We took shop class out of high school. Yeah. Right? And we started telling a whole generation of kids that the best path for the most people was a four-year degree.

And if you didn't do that, well, woe unto thee. Right. Right. So college and what we call higher education did need a PR campaign around the time you were born, 60s and 70s. We needed more people going to the big universities to pursue things like medicine and science. There was no doubt about that. But the thing is with PR, it always goes a little too far, sometimes a lot. So instead of just simply making a persuasive campaign.

for a four-year education, we started to tell the generation you're talking about that if they don't go that way, they're screwed. If they don't go that way, they're going to wind up turning a wrench or welding something and some dark, dirty hole somewhere. They were going to, in other words, receive some kind of vocational consolation prize. So the push for college came at the expense of all other forms of education. And then, because our workforce is so tied to learning, a certain category of good jobs that required that four-year degree, became ascendant, and everything else became subordinate.

And in my view, that's where the gap really presented itself. That's where the line between blue and white collar appeared. that's where ideas like entrepreneurship and freelancing fell out of favor. And a lot of unfortunate things happened after that as a result. But it began with the incredibly hairbrained decision to take shop class out of high school. Right. I mean, and HOMAC and all these things. Like how to, you know, and frankly, I feel like we've been economics, most people can't even

don't know how to work a checkbook or you mean all that disappeared we were going to have servants that take care of that all I guess while we right went and went to you know these higher spaces of learning it's interesting you say that because there there is a line I think you can draw between the practical skill of being able to change your oil right right and good luck today I don't know if you've looked under the hood but you need a software engineering degree I don't even know where the oil is anymore. Right. And so bit by bit, the basic tasks that I grew up with have become arbitraged out of the set of necessary skills. And with that is financial literacy. Right. I talk to Dave Ramsey about this a lot. Because being financially literate,

understanding how to balance your checkbook is every bit as much an important skill as all the other things we're talking about. And so somehow all of that did fall out of favor. We stopped valuing it to the degree that we should. And like I said, the first step to marginalizing or disparaging a thing is to ignore it. One of the things I think about, you know, I feel lucky. I have a life, you know, I waited tables for 20 years trying to get into the film business and directing and writing and doing all of those things. Probably because to be, ought to be put it out there, my parents were not, they were 60s, hippies, but by the time I was college age, my dad was like, if you want to make film, why go to school? Like, you don't need to, you know, get and educate, what degree

is going to do anything for you? I ended up just going to, like, a vocational film school and learned how to work cameras and started just, I mean, I went in debt, you know, on credit cards, making short films, music videos and things until I finally sort of found my stride. But I, I I think, you know, I'm very great for my life. I love what I do, but I'm a workaholic. I work all the time. I'm obsessed with what I do. And I will drive down the street and see, you know,

Latino communities that are doing menial, like the hardworking, task-driven jobs, but by four in the afternoon, they're all playing with their kids in the yard and enjoying themselves. And it looks like what our picture of America used to be. mom, dad out there, barbecuing, kids running around. And I don't feel like most of the people I know live that life anymore. There was beyond just sort of having education or looking down at certain ways of living, I feel like there was a shift where my job defines who I am.

I'm supposed to be totally, you know, fulfilled by my work. Right. It used to be, and you go anywhere else in the world, culturally most other countries still, I have a job. My life, my kids, my vacations are what I live for, not my job. Does that make some sense to you? It's like this weird notion that we are our job. Well, I think the American dream isn't that or this. The American dream is being able to choose which one you'd like.

I'm a workaholic too. But I like it. Right. I like what I do. I like the fact that no two days are the same. I like the fact that today I can be sitting here with you, waxing philosophical about all the problems in the world. And yesterday, I was here at a liquor store called Busters right around the corner selling a whiskey brand that we launched to help benefit the foundation that I run today. Those two things, they have very little to do with each other unless you choose a path.

that we've chosen. But this other thing that you talk about, you know, that's one of the big lessons from Dirty Jobbers that is fun to talk about. If you're looking for lessons from the dirt, I think what you've just described is balance. So you find people who again and again are happy to bust their butt 40, 50 hours a week,

who are really good at what they do. but because they're in a trade and because they've crafted the life that they want, they flip a switch. And then they coach their kids' Little League. Yeah. Right? And then they go to the PTA. And then, you know, maybe they're in a botchy ball tournament.

And maybe they're hanging out with their kids or maybe they're just reading a book. So I'd be lying to you if I didn't say that there were times when I look at that vertical and I envy it. Yeah. Right? I'm just like, that's a good path. But I also know from living long enough that there are a lot of people who have chosen that path who look at my choice and go,

dude, you're living the Vita Loka. How'd you do that? That looks like fun. Yeah. And of course it is. But part of its fear of missing out, part of it's just greener grass on the other side. Sure.

But to me, you know, being able to become an adult with a fully formed brain and then have the opportunity to look broadly at the choices in front of you and select, that's freedom. That's worth having a festival over, right? That's liberty, you know? And also, not having to live forever with your choice, you know?

Sure. As Led Zeppelin put it, as Robert Plant saying it, there's still time to change the road you're on. Right. You know, I see this in my foundation all the time. I just talked to a kid named Michael Gammes, who applied for one of our work ethic scholarships. He was two and a half years through a university system in Southern California. He was already in debt.

He was going down the road of like a mechanical engineer when really all he wanted to do was work on cars. So he applies to our foundation, writes his story, jumps through all the necessary hoops. I'm like, that's rare today that this kid has the presence of mind. to say, I'm going in the wrong direction. Today, he's the lead service technician at a BMW facility in California, and he's making six figures, doing what he loves. So he called an audible, which so many kids today are afraid to do. And why wouldn't they be afraid? They're up, they're already in hoc. They're paying, you know, 80 grand a year to go to a school to learn a thing that they're not even sure they want to do. So this is, this all, in my view, it all gets tied together.

And before a person can make the choice of how they want to live their life, they have to be shown a whole rich, honest selection of what's possible. You know, and we don't do that for our kids. This just recently, I mean, this, in the Biden administration, and, you know, I don't want to wax political, but this idea of reimbursing or bailing out, you know, these college tuition. Forgiving, I think, is the word of giving. The debt, which is a major.

massive debt, it's a huge debt, but there was a real, I think, a real controversy in that, which was, what about everybody that either paid their debt or didn't use that avenue? Why are all the people that went and got jobs and are working and are doing my plumbing and fixing my cars? Why should they have to pay for that debt when they, you know, and it really brought about this, a new, I think a fresh look at least at what are we talking about here? Yeah. Why is there so much debt?

Why is it that the careers these college students were promised aren't happening and paying off that debt? And then what responsibility do we have as a nation to that debt, that idea? And I think part of what you're involved in right now is trying to bring some reality to this, that we need a shift here. There's something out of balance. There's a promise being made to a lot of students and children that is not being fulfilled by this system or this nation. So two things, right? There's the past and there's the problem that we have today based on decisions that were made back there. And with respect to that, yeah, I forgive you. I'll forgive your debt. I'm not going to pay for it. But I'll forgive you. Right. I mean, we all make bad decisions that we have to live with. In fairness, to the other side, you know, a lot of people who want their loans forgiven are looking around at the giant bailouts. 2008 and 2010.

Right. And they're saying, banks, hello. You know, we just paid trillions of dollars to bail out other people who made really bad decisions. And I get that, right? And I'm a little out of my lane here with regard to, you know, when to bail out a company and when not to bail out a company. Silicon Valley Bank, not far from where I live, right?

It's headline news. Yeah. That chaps the ass. of many people to see that kind of money, right? Sure. Dold out for them. So I get it. But this feels different to me for the reason you just said.

When a person is trying to make a decision about how to live their life, about how much debt to personally assume, that's a personal decision. So if you decide for yourself, look, I'm going to invest in making films. I'm going to use the tools in my toolbox, and I'm going to invest my money, and I'm going to assume my debt. And that's how I'm going to approach my career. Well, then you get to live with those consequences. So if you're a plumber and you want to hang out your own shingle and you buy a couple F-150s, that expenditure is every bit as important as the guy who wants to be an accountant who pays to go to Harvard or whatever. Right.

And so these are tools. Why don't we forgive the debt on the 150, right? Why don't we forgive those things? Why all of a sudden is education the thing? College education in particular that we're willing to just write another check for. People need to understand. We're already $1.7 trillion in the whole. We are lending money still in real time that we don't have

to kids who are never going to be able to pay it back to train them for these jobs that don't really. really exist anymore. And that, to me, goes to the heart of the real crazy making. We have 11 million open positions right now. Most of them don't require a four-year degree. And yet, we're still telling the next generation of kids that they're screwed if they don't get their magic credential. So, the opportunities are getting larger and larger. The skills gap is getting wider and wider. The debt is getting bigger and bigger. And if the solution to that is just bail us out, well, then my question back would be, how in the world is the cost of college ever going to come down if we just keep

bailing out the universities? Right. Harvard has a $50 billion endowment. Stanford is close to that. You can go down the list. The Ivy League has many, many hundreds of billions of dollars. in cash, right? Who's asking them to help with the bailout? Who's asking the banks to help with the bailout? So I get why there's tension. And because I don't know really how to solve that, all I can do is look forward, right?

And say, let's stop making the same mistake over and over again. Let's stop telling kids. Do you imagine the pressure being 17, 18 years old, your guidance counselor is telling you you've got to go this direction your parents want you to go in this direction your cohort your friends everybody is saying you don't you don't want to go over here meanwhile i can give you hundreds of examples of welders making six figures a year living their version of the dream so right we just have to get that into the conversation well i mean everything i pay for for my house to have my septic pumped it's amazing what that costs it's amazing what these

individuals are making because I didn't want to do that job. The plumbers, like all of it, it's absolutely astounding. They're doing well. They're driving really nice cars when they're not pulling up in the truck. Or they're living a modest, balanced life, right? So yes, it's a heck of a thing. And I think, too, it's important to realize it's, this conversation is not just about, oh, being a plumber is better than you think. Or, hey, the skills gap is serious. Look at all these companies who can't hire. The conversation today is, how long do you want to wait for a plumber when you need one? I mean, I feel like our nation, honestly, like it's really starting to freak me out a little bit, is crumbling to a grinding to a halt. We just pulled in here, and there was no

cars available to, they said no cars in the airport. I don't know what that means. There was one giant line to budget, you know, and then everyone else, there was people. sitting behind desks and went to Alden, like, you know, we don't have any cars. So does that mean someone was saying they just don't have the workers to move the cars or whatever the case? But there's a lot of things that are starting to feel like images of the Soviet Union, where there's like, we're all in a giant line to the one thing that's providing something, and nothing else is working. Service is dead. I feel like most restaurants, because that was something I did for years, passion for serving, passion for understanding the wine I'm talking about,

engaging with me, you know, I'm looking around for a waiter everywhere. I like what part of your, you know, I would love another glass of wine, which makes you more money. I just feel like after COVID, we shut everything down and it's like we forgot how the world works. It's really terrifying. So look at it like this. Standards can be raised or lowered. we have it in our ability in any scenario to raise or lower our expectations. With COVID and with lockdowns, we had no real choice for a while but to lower them. And lowering expectations is much easier than raising them,

which is why to this day you'll still see signs on restaurants outside, not just help wanted signs, preemptive apologies, right? Thank you for your patience. We are still at half staff. Thank you for understanding. You know, our servers didn't show up. Our hostess didn't show up. I've seen dozens of signs like that where the service industry is preemptively apologizing.

Right. Now, in the restaurant industry, they have to do that because the choices are still there for the time being. And an angry consumer is just going to go down the street and eat somewhere else. But in your scenario, just now, I've been in that budget. Yeah. And there are no other choices, right? You're just there. And so if you want a car in order to do the thing, you need to wait. So now your expectations get lowered even further and further. Right. And so it's going to be very tempting to point a finger and blame somebody for this. But I think the 30,000 foot view comes back to what we started talking about. when you have an unbalanced workforce, when you draw bright lines between blue and white collar, when you value one form of education and labor

affirmatively higher than the other, you create myths and misperceptions and stigmas and stereotypes that keep a whole generation of people from looking at the opportunities over there. Consequently, we are where we are. The skills gap is not a, a great mystery. It's just a reflection of what we value. Yeah. Right? In the same way, the incredible cost of college is not a great mystery. It's a reflection of what we reward. And not to belabor the

point, but my God, you can't find anything in the last 50 years that's gotten more expensive, more rapidly than the cost of a four-year degree. It's outpaced inflation by something like 500% not food, not energy, not health care, not even real estate, nothing has become more expensive more quickly than the cost of a four-year degree. And we're still telling kids they're screwed if they don't get one. Is it any wonder you're standing in a line at budget for two hours? Speaking of a myth, you say myths that have been spoken. I think one of the real concerns was AI. Yeah. That AI is going to come along and it's going to rob all of those. workers like we're going to have machines they're going to build those cars you won't have a job

yet the first glimpse of AI we're really seeing chat gbt and this you know i think part of the writer's strike and things that are happening in hollywood right now are you can't let the computer do our job for us even though it looks like you could probably do it pretty well right and right so upper like it's really it it's see ai shockingly outside like almost in opposition to the myth is going after upper management writing, you know, contracts. Lawyers jobs are on the line, and what we don't see it able to do is fix the plumbing in my house. That's right.

For decades, we've heard the robots are coming to take our blue-collar jobs. And look, you can go through state-of-the-art factories today, and you can find all kinds of automated welding stations, and you can see examples of how tech and robotics have, in fact, had an impact on those traditional jobs, just like the Luddite revolution, right? You can, like the impact of looms on weavers, right? Led to a war. I mean, so it's, this has been with us for a long, long time. With regard to AI, it's, I always chuckle when I hear it because AI is the reason dirty jobs got on the air. I pitched a segment on AI. And my boss was like, that sounds great.

We're all about artificial intelligence. Well, I was talking about artificial insemination. That's true story. I mean, dirty jobs got off the ground because basically I was doing stuff to animals on barnyards that might not have been entirely legal in the name of science. The point is AI is here for real today. It's coming. And it is ironic that the real existential threat that's got people paying attention is not robots

coming for blue collar. It's artificial intelligence coming for white collar. In the end, I don't have a crystal ball, but I do know that you're 100% right. When you look at opportunity through the lens of AI, you're going to see very clearly a list of jobs that can be replaced and very clearly a list of jobs that can't. My foundation, what we do is focus on those jobs

that cannot be outsourced ever. So the stuff you're working at MicroWorks is that foundation. You have a podcast? Got a podcast called The Way I Heard it, which people seem to like. Check it out. MicroWorks.org is where to go to apply for work ethic scholarship. We'll be giving away a million dollars every six months now. Specifically for kids who want to learn a skill that's in demand.

If you know one, if you are one, hit me up. You got some hoops to jump through, but there's a way forward. Is this what it's going to take? I mean, you know, I think we're all worried that the future is looking dim. There's some really scary things. And we're here in a libertarian conference, a lot of things coming in. AI being one of them. We just went through a massive social experiment, no matter where you are in science and medicine, a lot of our freedoms and our First Amendment rights, our jobs were taken away from us if we didn't comply to certain behaviors mandated by the government. And for someone that's just sort of been on the ground with people in a really beautiful and real way, how do we get through this month? What is it that we have to do?

I believe that the trust that we've historically had in our institutions has been eroded to a point where we can't simply take people's word for anything. And that's a little scary on the one hand. On the other hand, you know, I believe that everybody should embrace a new level of skepticism. We have to. Caviette, umptur, buyer beware. Yeah. Right? And this applies to everything because we've just sat through a three-year period where a lot of very certain sounding people.

Scientists, politicians, doctors. they not only got it wrong, they haven't apologized, and they're doubling down on it. Meanwhile, we have a media that hasn't apologized either. Unbelievable, I agree. So there's a level of hubris and arrogance and hypocrisy, right? I don't mean to get it political either, because none of what I'm saying is inherently left or right center. It's just human.

But when a guy like, I'll just say it. Because I live in California. When Gavin Newsom tells us what to do and then very publicly doesn't do it, that lands hard. Yeah. Right? And when it happens in a lot of other ways, day after day after day after day, this erosion occurs. Here's what it comes down for me. I listen to Joe Rogan interview Robert Kennedy Jr.

Yeah. Did you hear that one? Of course. All right. So in that conversation, they talk about Peter Hottes. Okay. And so, all right, obviously you're, I'm pretty well versed. This is my wheelhouse space.

Oh. This is what a lot of what the high wire has gotten into. We were on top of COVID. I came from a medical journalist background. Yeah. So we saw that the vaccine wasn't going to stop transmission before anyone got it. All of that was written by the FDA. just no one was paying attention to it.

Right. This is a lot of the space. But to say that out loud two years ago gets you thrown off social. I did. I lost my YouTube channel, my Facebook channel for saying that. You're my hero. I'm going to start following you. This is terrific.

Yeah. My moment last week in listening to that interview and then Rogan's invitation to get Hotez back on just to have a debate. That was interesting. The fact that he refused was interesting. The fact that other people offered to throw in more money to see this debate was super interesting. The fact that Sam Harris, who runs a podcast called Making Sense, and who often does, he came out and he said, look, here's what I want to say about this. I wouldn't have Robert Kennedy Jr. on my podcast because I'm not going to platform those ideas that I believe have been thoroughly debunked and discounted.

I don't even want to dignify it. And that's when I said, wait, he, Sam, doesn't seem to understand that we have entered a new age of skepticism. Yes. And you just can't point to the college professor or the doctor or the scientist. Our experts, to answer your question, sorry it took so long, but what has to happen in my view is our expert class, has to step up and persuade me. Amen. They have to persuade you.

They have to persuade. It's time for the people who have been given an enormous benefit of the doubt. The people who we've trusted as a result of all the letters after their names. As a result of their credential,

as a result of all of the respect that those institutions have been imbued with, it's time for them to say, you know what, I'd rather not, but I will. I will sit down and I will debate you. And I will make a persuasive case for the science. I will make a persuasive case for my politics. And the media has to help us. They have to help us. They have to lead. We need a skeptical, indignant media. Agreed. That doubts every single thing they hear. And if we don't have that,

we're going to be left to figure it out for ourselves. I've said for some time that science and media actually have a same foundational principle, or at least used to, which is the scientific method. I'm going to throw every challenge at it I can think of, and you're supposed to celebrate my challenge because it makes the product better, it makes the theory more sound. We are now in a place where no challenge is allowed. A brand new vaccine, like a COVID vaccine, no one's allowed to say,

hey, wait, are we rushing this? Oh, you're a denier. Are we rushing this around? Right. I mean, so this name calling, we are moving into various scary places and media is doing the same thing. It's not challenging. That's right. It's not it.

We've lost the fourth estate, the fourth branch of government, which job was to challenge government, challenge industry. Any question you can think of, it should be celebrated as an opportunity for that entity, that government official or that corporation to defend itself and show why it perseveres and rises up. And I think a word maybe, you said earlier, that at least we as people maybe should let go of, is the skepticism, yes, but I think the softer and more beautiful part of is curiosity. I think we've lost our curiosity. Now, you're singing my, that's my thing, that the idea, if you're a fundamentally curious person, then you have an advantage built in that you probably don't quite understand the totality of that. to be genuinely curious, my friend John Hendricks, who founded the Discovery Channel in 1984, did so with one intention to satisfy curiosity. That was the mandate of the entire channel.

And that name is now atop the largest entertainment conglomerate on the planet, right? Right. So, yes, we need to be passionately in love with curiosity. But I would say also that the, the, the, skepticism thing is so important. I had a drama teacher once. I don't know if this is true. I think it is, but Descartes famous expression, ergo cagitum, ergo sum, right? He's in jail and he's challenged to prove his existence on a philosophical level. So he basically says, I think, therefore, I am. But what he actually said, apparently, was ergo, doubtitum, ergosome. I doubt, therefore I am. There's a

difference between thinking and doubting. And I think we've entered a new age of doubt, and I think that scares the expert class. And they shouldn't be scared. They should be curious to figure out how to fix it. They should be determined to win back their reputation. They should apologize for being hypocritical. They should admit when they're wrong. You want to win the trust back of your consumers? Well, the first thing you have to do is honestly and sincerely apologize. And then you have to do something about it.

Right. This, I forget its name, but I just read an article yesterday. CEO of that brand said, I accept 100%. This is on me. This was my fault. And then he pivoted to talk about what he was going to do moving forward, as opposed to quitting. Now, I'm not calling on the CEO of Anheiser-Busch, too. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying, isn't it interesting to live in a time where you can accept 100% responsibility for devastating catastrophic results. 65,000 employees are liable to lose their job when a brand that big falls apart. So he's 100% accepting responsibility, but he's not resigning.

He's not, he's saying, as a result, I need to step back, I need to introduce you to my replacement. I believe she or he has their head screwed on straight. We're going to work hard to win back your trust. And we're going to take the slings and arrows that we deserve for violating that trust. If I hear that from a CEO who wants to win my trust back, I'll give them a chance. If I hear it from a doctor who got it wrong or a politician or a journalist, okay. Right. Now I'm listening.

But if you're going to march forward with the same old routine, la, la, la, nothing to see here. Oh, he's just a doubter. He's just a denier. He's just a skeptic. I don't think that's going to fly in 2024. I don't think it is. And I don't think it's flying. It's why I think you see mainstream media crashing.

I think the attentiveness, podcasts like mine, things that you're doing are Rogan. You know, people want to hear the whole story. They're not just wanting the soundbite anymore because it's left us short. What we've gone through with COVID these last several years have been a real wake-up call. A lot is destroyed in this country. But I love the work that you're doing because it's how we build, right? It's going to be through, you know, our own sweat equity, our own, you know, desire to get back, roll up our sleeves and realize not just for the workers out there, but for us that are, you know, electing people, that we've got to start asking questions and demanding we get the answer is not some sound bite. And I think, too, really, all things to me are big and small at the same time.

Micro, macro, right? Yeah. And we're here at this conference, and there is a political overtone, and we're talking about some very big brands and some very big companies, and we're talking about the country at large. That's macro. And guys like us, what can we do except speak our peace and push the boulder up the hill in a very stoic, Sisyphian way?

That's what we do. But there's also. also the micro thing, right? There's also our own homes. There's our own personal economy. There's our own sense of the world. And we can move that boulder too. We have to. So that's what I do like about the libertarian thing. That's what I do like about this conference. In the end, there is still a reverence for the individual and a belief that cookie cutter advice does doesn't work and that a fellow ought to be free to find his own way. And maybe that means falling on his face.

Maybe that means borrowing some money he can't pay back. Maybe a lot of things. But if we're landing the plane now, I'd end where we started. The future is always uncertain. Nobody has a crystal ball. But we can learn from the past. And we can learn from the present. And we don't just have to sit on our hands and trust the people.

who are talking to us in a crisp, well-modulated baritone, to always have the truth. If we've learned anything over the last three years, it's that we're long on certainty and short on facts. Amen. Mike Roe, it's really been a pleasure. Thank you for taking the time. I've never had so much fun in a conference room this hour of the morning.

This is great. Really appreciate it. Absolutely.