The Megyn Kelly Show - Mike Rowe on Patriotism, the Value of Authenticity, and COVID Hypocrisy | Ep. 45

Episode Date: January 1, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Mike Rowe, former host of "Dirty Jobs" and host of the new show "Six Degrees with Mike Rowe," to talk about patriotism (and why socialism never seems to catch on), the value of authenticity, the death of "expertise," what he learned hosting "Dirty Jobs," stupid celebrities, COVID hypocrisy from liberal politicians, what's happening on college campuses, the value of a degree, the decline in curiosity in America and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today on the program, we've got Mike Rowe. You know him from Dirty Jobs, among many other successful television shows. He's called the dirtiest man in TV, but he has the clearest heart. And today he's talking about, well, a new show that he's going to be having out in just a couple of days. But the thing about Mike Rowe is he's got a lot of smart insights on this country and its backbone in the same way that people have called J.D. Vance

the working class whisperer. You could say that about Mike. He's not a partisan guy, but he's one of those big picture guys who can see the country for what it is, where it's come from and where it's going. Understands the Trump voter in a profound way and isn't judgmental, but is insightful. So I think you're going to love him. There's not a dirty moment, but there's a couple of R-rated moments that you're going to laugh at. We'll bring that to you in one second. But first, let's talk about good skincare. You know, as you go in the new year, you're thinking like, I'm going to diet and I'm going to eat better and I'm going to drink less and I'm going to take better care of myself. Well, Jan Marini can help you. If you're starting to feel like your skin looks a little sun damaged or weathered or old, try Jan Marini Skin Research. She is a recognized leader and innovator in skincare, award winning. I have used these products. She sent me some and they're beautiful. The packaging is beautiful. It's sleek. There's no odor, which I love. I don't want odors in my skincare.

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two day free shipping. That's nice. So go ahead and transform your skin this new year with Jan Marini. Mike Rowe, thank you so much for being here. Well, thanks for having me. It's an honor and full disclosure, I got nowhere else to go. Perfect. I'll take you however I can get you. I'm not proud. You're a very kind man, very generous beginning, and you're also a very successful one, in part because of your honesty, your self deprecating nature, which I love. And let me just take through a couple of things that you've been doing and are about to do just so the audience understands. So not only did you host the huge, hugely successful dirty jobs on discovery, which is how most of us got to know you

also had a show on CNN and TBN, Somebody's Gotta Do It. And now you're hosting a very successful show on Facebook Watch, Returning the Favor. It's been a big hit. You got a mysteries pod, which I listen to in the car sometimes, called The Way I Heard It. You got the Mike Rowe Works Foundation, which awards scholarships to students pursuing careers in skilled trades.

And now on January 4th, a new show on Discovery called Six Degrees with Mike Rowe. I can barely keep, I'm exhausted just thinking about this, but I got to start with that because I read the description. It said it's going to have questions and answers on issues like how a mousetrap can cure your hangover. So let's start there. How? Help me. Well, clearly I can't hold a job, but thank you for walking me through my misspent career. It's been a lot of fun and you're right. The next endeavor is called Six Degrees. And basically it happened, I guess you remember the old parlor game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, right? Where you have to connect six movies to get to him or less. That's kind of what started it. Years ago, one of my bosses at Discovery said,

if you can ever make a history show for people who don't watch history shows, you can probably write your own ticket. So I've been thinking about that for a long time. And Six Degrees with Mike Rowe is just an attempt to connect two seemingly disparate those two things, in fact, are connected. And I get to use any production device, no matter how cheap, contrived, or ill-conceived. We use puppets. We use animation. We use modestly priced recreations with actors of dubious talent. We use archival footage.

And it's basically me walking through time on a budget with a little help from my best friend, Chuck, who's a guy I went to high school with, a very talented actor who's about my age, but continues to push the boulder up the hill here in Los Angeles. So I hired him to play 40 or 50 different historical characters. So the two of us have a great time putting together a show with Kleenex and Spit. And somehow or another, what came out the other end was a fun look at the surprising ways people are connected through space and time. And the Discovery Channel picked it up. They're putting it on their new streaming service.

And if I can believe the press release, it starts on the 4th of January. And I don't want to overstate it, Megan, but I think it's going to be the feel-good hit of the winter. Wow. Well, congratulations to Chuck on finally making his friendship with you pay off. I mean, first of all, 40 years the hard way, right? That's good work. But so is there do I have to watch the show? You're not going to tell.

Is there actually a way in which, you know, because like I dealt with a lot of mousetraps. I know you're from Baltimore. I lived there for a year and we killed 21 mice in one year. We were right by the harbor. It's a problem. And I use a lot of mousetraps while there, but, and I was also hung over many times. So I, I am genuinely curious whether there's a connection between those two things. Well, there's a connection between everything. I don't care how convoluted it is. If you have enough time and enough wine, um, and enough,

you know, producers around you, I get, I promise you, you can make a show. Now I can tell you how it works, but it's kind of like my podcast, you know, I don you, you can make a show. Now I can tell you how it works, but it's kind of like my podcast. You know, I don't want to wreck it because part of the, what I hope is the fun of the show is having viewers right from the start say, Oh, what? No way. How can you possibly land that plane? But, um, but you can, because the mousetrap, the search for a better mousetrap is universal. And we began our story with a guy named Hiram Maxim, who's a very famous inventor, who as a kid was working in a shop up in Maine that was overrun with mice. And he literally went on a quest to build a better mousetrap. This guy patented or should have patented everything from the

mousetrap to the light bulb. He didn't. Consequently, he lost out on a lot of opportunity, but he did invent the Maxim machine gun, which changed the course of the first world war, which also produced war tubas, which allowed us to search for oil. Ultimately, war tubas were these things that you pointed toward the ground to figure out where the gunfire was coming from, from your enemy. One thing leads to the next, and before you know it, well, I'm just not going to tell you how it ends, Megan. In the business, we would call that a tease. I love it. It worked. I'm in. You're good at it. I didn't realize until I read up on your bio before today that you had worked at QVC for three years on the overnight shift as a result of your ability to spend eight minutes talking about the values of a pen.

So you were meant to succeed in this kind of a career, and your tease is further evidence of that. Can we spend one minute on QVC? Because I actually have a friend who does some work on QVC right now. I find it fascinating. It is a skill set. Well, it's a weird muscle. And back in 1989, 1990, when I Forrest Gumped my way onto the air, there was no real playbook for how to hire a host. No one really knew what to look for. People with TV experience didn't necessarily know how to sell and professional salespeople weren't necessarily good on TV. So they determined the only way to logically cast was to go around the country and set up cameras and ask people to talk about a pencil until they

told them to stop. And I didn't know it, but that was the audition. I was singing in the Baltimore Opera at the time, and I crashed a national talent search for QVC host really to settle a bet. Anyway, I talked about a pencil for eight minutes. They gave me a job on the spot. I took it and entered a three-month period of double secret probation where from 3 to 6 a.m. every morning, I tried to make sense of just a bottomless bin of doomed products that had failed to sell in prime time. That's how you learn, right? That's how you sit there in the middle of the night talking about the various features and benefits

of the Health Team Infrared Pain Reliever or the Amcor Negative Ion Generator, whatever that is. Oh, wow. And yeah, long story short, I made fun of the products I didn't understand, sparred with the viewers who at that hour were mostly an assortment of narcoleptic lonely hearts and turned my shift into a weird talk show which went on for three years.

So as much as I make fun of those crazy days and the incredible weirdness of the whole home shopping industry, the truth is I learned everything I ever needed to know about TV in the middle of the night, selling products I didn't understand to an audience I couldn't relate to. You know, but it does underscore sort of the paucity of options we had in television back then. I grew up at the same time and that would pass as entertaining back then. You know, especially overnight, We didn't have the ability to download anything we wanted. You were stuck with what was on television. And somehow at those hours in particular, whatever you talk, the ionic whatever,

is a lot more interesting than the back of your eyelids at two in the morning when you can't sleep. So on behalf of all those who suffered alongside me, thank you. Well, look, you know, you probably remember the moment in your life on TV when you learned a lesson or two that changed everything. I had a few of those moments. And for me, the first one was on QVC, where I realized, you know, the most important thing to do is not to entertain the audience. It's to, it's to entertain me, you know, I mean, you have to amuse yourself. I think my favorite comedians, you know, when, when I watch them work, I don't, I don't see people trying to make me laugh. I see people trying to make themselves laugh. Same thing with writers. It's a subtle distinction, but it matters. I remember really the first big lesson for me

was the first night I was on the air. They brought me that thing I mentioned, the Health Team Infrared Pain Reliever, which looks like a small flashlight with a small red knob on the end that emits infrared light that purportedly relieves your arthritis. You're selling millions of them right now. I thought it was a joke. It was 1999. I couldn't believe it was real. So I looked into the camera and I held this thing up in my hands and I said, hi, everybody. I'm Mike. I'm the new guy. This is the Health Team Infrared Pain Reliever. I don't know what it does. If you have one, could you call the number on the screen and maybe explain it to me? Honestly, it was very much a Mark Twain, help me paint the fence kind of thing. But the phone lines exploded and I spent three hours

literally sitting there, listening to viewers explain to me what the various widgets were that they brought me. And that was a big lesson too. That is brilliant. And did you wind up going home with all the products? rare and precious, which of course stood for crap. And I would auction these things off, usually with a story and an autograph to raise money for my foundation. But some of the stuff from the old days at QVC went for thousands of dollars, like a doll. We used to sell collectible dolls. I didn't know people collected dolls, but they do. And somehow or another, I wound up on the doll collector hour. There's still footage out there of this. But when I tell you things went wrong, I mean, they went so breathtakingly, gobsmackingly, horrifyingly wrong that you just have to refer to the video.

But to see a grown man with a nun doll in his lap trying to wind her up so she can sing Climb Every Mountain, it doesn't get much weirder than that, really. I heard you tell a story on Ben Shapiro about that crap. And it involved Donald Trump, that you reached out to him, among others, to try to make a donation, to get them to make a donation. Can you enlighten the audience on what we're talking about, what happened? Yeah. In fact, that story had an unexpected chapter two, which just came to a close, but it started in 2015 when I had a show on CNN that was getting preempted every week because the world was heating up and the election was coming and the show was called Somebody's

Got to Do It. And like every single week, I changed the title to Somebody's Got to Find It because Jeff Zucker kept moving the thing around because I'm constantly preempted by all the trouble in the world, you know. And so eventually he said, Mike, just take the show back. The election's coming. We're going into the Donald Trump business full time. And I said, all right.

So I wrote an open letter to all the candidates at the time, Hillary, Bernie, and Donald. And I said, look, guys, thanks to y'all, I just got booted off CNN to make it up. Why don't you each send me something I can auction off for my foundation? I said, Hillary, why don't you send me one of your pantsuits? Sign the pants, right? I said, Bernie, send me one of those awful wrinkled tweed jackets you always wear. Sign the inside pocket. Then to Trump, I said, send me a bathrobe. Just grab a bathrobe from one of your gajillion hotels and autograph the thing, and I'll auction it off, and the money will go to our work ethic scholarship program, and it'll be fun. Well, I didn't expect to hear from any of them, but Donald Trump sent me an autographed bathrobe

two days later. And two days after that, I'm wearing the thing, making a video for Facebook. I got 5 million people on his Facebook page and I know half of them are going to lose their minds, but I say, look, a deal's a deal. It's an autographed Donald Trump bathrobe. I'm auctioning it off the highest bidder. Within 24 hours, a woman named Angela Phillips bid $15,550. No. I swear to God. So the bath, the Donald Trump bathrobe became a thing. And so I sent it to her and she sent me the money and it took our whole crap auction thing to a new level. But then this year, because I got so much crap from people who were upset that I would do or say anything remotely complimentary to Trump, I said, look,

I'll do it again next year and I'll make the same offer to all the candidates. So I wrote an open letter to Joe Biden and I said, look, man, fair is fair. Send me an autographed robe and I'll auction it off. I never heard from him, but Angela Phillips sent me the robe back and said, Mike, I have a feeling it's going to go for more this year. I love your foundation and I hate to part with it, but why don't you auction it off again? Right? I mean, amazingly generous. So I put the thing on, sat in the same place, auctioned it off. It went for $45,000. OMG. Now here's the crazy part. You are kidding me. Who? What? She was Stormy Daniels. Stormy Daniels. No, she already has one. She had one. What am I saying?

No, she's got the slippers. No, Angela Phillips bought it back. Oh, God bless her. Right? Oh, I love Angela Phillips. This woman. Who is she? Do we need, am I supposed to know her? Well, no, I didn't know her, but I just Zoomed her the other day because enough already. Like, I got to know who you are. Angela Phillips lives in Ohio and she runs a terrific company called the Phillips Tube Group. They make tubes like pipes, you inside of... And so just another one of those companies you would never think about. I mean, who makes tubes, right? But tubes

and pipes hold civilization together. And Angela Phillips happens to own a going concern in that vertical. And she loves my foundation. And so rather than just write me a check for 60 grand, she bought Donald Trump's bathrobe twice. I mean, that's just not a sentence you would think you'd ever say in the course of life, but there it is. So I wouldn't describe this as crap exactly, but I do have something that you could potentially auction off one of these days, which is I interviewed Dennis Rodman, the Henry Kissinger of our time, and he gave me a basketball with his picture, Donald Trump's picture, and Kim Jong-un. Holy smokes.

I mean, I think we could get big bucks for that. That is a major trifecta. You and I together hawking that thing for a week between Facebook and our podcasts. Man, we could probably close the skills gap single-handedly. Totally. That could be a seven-figure payoff for people who really could use it. Had we had more time with this last bathrobe and the election hadn't gone so completely berserk, I was going to reach out to his campaign and say, Donald, if you want some, I mean, the kind of press you can't buy, not that you need it,

but why don't you buy your own autographed bathrobe back for a million bucks? It'd be a great donation and people would love you. But I never had time to do it. I don't think that would have gone as well as you would have hoped. No. One of the things I laughed about on your list of many accomplishments, I mean, cheered and then laughed, was you listed that Forbes has identified you as one of the country's 10 most trustworthy celebrities in 2010, 2011, and 2012, which led me to ask, what happened? What did you do in 2013? It was a rough year, Megan. Lots of choices.

That's got to hurt. Yes. I was number four, I think, on the list of most trusted celebrities, which is kind of backhanded compliment if I ever got one. But I don't know that anything completely crapped the bed in 2013, but what happened in the five or six years prior to that,

I was the discovery guy for a long time. In fact, you could make a case. I still kind of am because the show still airs every day and will continue to for the rest of my life. But Discovery is a big blue chip brand. It's a big family brand. And people trust that brand. And at the same time, I was also up to my neck with Ford. I probably did 300 commercials for Ford. And Ford also had a great, great reputation at the time. That was back when Malali famously

didn't take the money when everybody else did. And I was out there on his behalf telling the story of Ford, a company that basically is just a great comeback story. So between Discovery and Ford, I was associated with some pretty likable brands. Plus, if you knew me in those days, it was probably because I was crawling through a sewer once or twice a week. And studies show, Megan, when you see a guy on the TV covered in other people's crap, he's probably not trying to sell you anything. I mean, that's a guy you can trust. Sadly, people did not have the same reaction to my experience in cable, where I was also covered in crap for many, many years, but did not emerge in the same way.

Well, look, there's some showers that can actually cleanse you. I'm afraid that the that the world from which you emerged, you know, it was a different kind of poo, a metaphorical poo. But I hear you, you know, I poo, a metaphorical poo. But I hear you. And it's fascinating. I remember watching you every day and thinking, this woman is completely in on the joke. And that's something that I used to say about the people we featured on Dirty Jobs. In a very general way, there are some people who have their

tongue in their cheek and they get it. And, and for me, you know, when you were really blowing up on Fox in the early days, I really enjoyed watching you because I, it felt to me like you were a reformed lawyer who was having to go at the TV thing and just laughing yourself sick as soon as the camera stopped rolling because you were figuring it out, you know? Well, you're not wrong. I mean, I do think there's a lot of value for any media person in having done another job, a quote, real job prior to going into media. Because it's like the media navel gazing and the willingness to take themselves so seriously is laughable. It's like, you're on the sidelines. You're not on the playing field. So don't act like you're the star quarterback. You're not, right? That's

how I always saw it. And don't act like you're a paragon of authenticity. I mean, every single thing about our stupid industry is an artifice. It's all pretense from the prompter to the makeup to the, I mean, all of it, you know, and, and it's so ironic to me because today it seems like authenticity is for sale like never before. And yet, from a production standpoint, when I look around, you know, and I put myself in this category too, the barriers to authenticity that we build ourselves are mind boggling and endless. And we do it all the time. And I just think part of what's gone on in the country these last few years, and part of what's happening right now

on a communications level, is people's patience, their BS meter, is so finely tuned that skepticism, and I think this is a good thing, cynicism, not so much, but we have to be a more skeptical people if we're ever going to get to a place where we can be more discerning and hold people's feet to the fire. Experts are under siege like never before. And rightfully so, because you know what? They all sound this, they sound when they're wrong, they sound the same way they do as when they're right. And I mean, it's, it's so fundamental, but you can't blame a reasonable

person for saying, you know, Dr. Fauci, when you told me the mask was a bad idea, you sounded just as credible as you do when you tell me it's imperative. And I believed you. I believed you. I believed you. And now, and now what? I'm being told I have to believe you again because science, because initials after your name, because you're telling me what you're telling me on a name in news that's most trusted or fair and balanced or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. People are right to be skeptical. Yeah. Or I'm a bad person. Well, I don't, you know, you, you sort of sacrifice that credibility early on. So I don't feel bad. I will say one, one word in

defense of cynics. They're very fun to have around. I love having a, a drink or a dinner with a cynic at the table because I just love that sort of dark outlook every once in a while from, as opposed to, I'll give you one example. When I was on the today show, I went, we did like this round table. It was Hoda Kotb, Savannah Guthriehry um i can't remember a couple of other folks maybe jenna and um there was a question that was circulated like on a scale of one to ten how happy are you and on a day-to-day basis and and literally they were like at 10 10 10 10 i was like maybe six i'm coming in about four today yeah like a four sometimes a nine and like amazing you know the birth of my child um and they were looking at me like i was nuts i like who this is bullshit

nobody is a 10 out of 10 like come on that's nonsense and so i always love the cynic who's like two fuck off right they're just fun to spend time with right but the cynic you know is just kind of another word for the devotee of the reverse commute if everybody at that dinner party had said four or five well then what would the cynic do I mean, where do you go when, you know, the consensus is clear? The cynic goes the other way. Usually, you know, it's the contrarian. So, you know, it's kind of like salt, you know, it's a really important part of the meal. But, you know, when you're surrounded by cynics, then you're going to need a vacation real soon. Yeah, it's true. You can't have too many at one dinner table.

No. I think your point about authenticity is a good one. That word gets used so much. But one of the things I love about you is I feel that you have it. I can tell in the way you talk about yourself. And I have it now, but I didn't always. I had to work at it. And one of the gifts that I received from Roger Ailes, with whom I now infamously have documented, had a strange and tough relationship in many ways. But one of the gifts he gave me was honest feedback about how I did not appear authentic at all. And about how it was very clear to him when I first started on the air at Fox, I had these walls up around me meant to protect myself, which is a human thing. Most of it, most of us have those walls. And certainly if you put most people up in front of millions of

other people, you know, just, just take a fraction of that, take a football stadium, you know, let's say 130,000 people, they're going to freeze up. They're not going to want to show their weaknesses or talk about themselves in a way that reveals any vulnerability. And I 100% had that, especially coming out of the law where it was like killer adversaries everywhere, you know, who I think are smarter than I am. And I don't know if I can measure up and I've got to put on my, my warrior gear. Yeah. It took a while, took a while to dismantle.

Well, the stakes, the stakes of being wrong as a lawyer are very, very high. You know, the stakes of being wrong as an anchor are, are also high, but at least you can, you know, there are a whole bunch of people you can blame. And it's just TV. In the end, it's just TV. It is just TV. But, you know, the more we crave authenticity, the more I think socially we become pedants. You know, we are a nation of correctors right now, and people are sitting there on the edge of their seat waiting to scamper off to their little piece of social media to explain why Megan got it wrong or how Mike got it wrong. That participle was dangling.

I mean, it can be anything. So true. On the one hand, I do applaud a heightened level of skepticism. On the other hand, I bemoan this obsession with correction. Have you ever Googled yourself? You know, you have your neighbors. How about that? Well, the majority of Americans admit to keeping an eye on their online reputation.

But Google and Facebook are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to finding public records. There is an innovative new website called Truthfinder, and it is now revealing the full scoop on millions of Americans. Truthfinder can search through hundreds of millions of public records in a matter of minutes. Truthfinder members can begin searching in seconds for sensitive data like criminal traffic and arrest records. Before you bring someone new into your life and around the people you care so deeply for, consider trying Truthfinder. What you find may astound you. This might be the most important web search that you ever do, so do it. Go to truthfinder.com slash Kelly right away to start searching. Again, that's truthfinder.com slash Kelly right away to start searching again. That's truthfinder.com slash Kelly. With regard to authenticity, the most confusing thing for people is to conflate it

with being correct. You can be authentic and be dead wrong. Um, you know, know, that same Forbes piece that you referenced, in that same year anyway, Jon Stewart, at the height of The Daily Show, was evaluated, weighed and measured by all kinds of pollsters, and determined to be the most trustworthy name in news, more so than any of the anchors. And it's not because he was more accurate. It was because he made a lesser claim. He didn't claim to always be right. And the lesson in that, I mean, I mean, on dirty jobs, the mission statement, you know, I, I wrote it very, very specifically. This was before John was on, but, you know, it's just managing expectations was the whole thing. That's why your industry is so screwed, you know, because there is no management of expectations, fair, balanced, most trusted,

you know, it's like, okay, that's some pretty tall cotton on dirty jobs. I said, my name is Mike Rowe and this is my job. I explore the country looking for people who aren't afraid to get dirty, hardworking men and women who do the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us. If you really look at that claim, what did I say? My name's Mike. I'm going to explore the country looking for people. I didn't even promise to find anybody, much less do a good show. I mean, and so- It's good. Yeah. Expectation setting. Yeah. I'm not saying anything new or revelatory, but it just seems like so many people who fall from grace do so because they hoist themselves up there. And in my industry,

in nonfiction, these survival experts will tell you, I've got information that can save your life. Well, Jesus Christ, really? All right. Show me. Show me how you're going to save your life. Well, Jesus Christ, really? All right, show me. Show me how you're going to save my life. We're over here. Mike is saying, look, I'm just going to crawl through this river of shit with a sewer inspector and maybe learn a thing or two about the second law of thermodynamics vis-a-vis the disintegration of the bricks. Oh, wow. Yeah, it could be fun.

It could be entertaining. And maybe you'll learn something. Maybe you won't. Maybe you just have a good time. I mean, I'll steal the last word on Jon Stewart, though. I have to tell you, it always bothered me when people would celebrate him in that way, because having been the target of his attacks many times, they were, not every time, but they were so frequently dishonest, like completely invented and out of context. And one time on the air, I actually said, he's mean.

I thought he was mean. And he called me. He called me because he didn't like the fact that I said that. And my assistant, Abby, who I love, she was outside my desk. She took the call and she said, oh, my God, he says he's Jon Stewart. I don't think it's Jon. It couldn't possibly be Jon Stewart. Is it Jon Stewart?

And I took the call. We had a long talk about it and he didn't want to be called mean. He sort of fell back on the old, like, I follow a cartoon, you know, that's kind of my gig. And I was like, that's bullshit. You know, you're being taken. Yeah. You're being taken seriously. You're putting out this messaging as though it is real, except you don't have the balls to own it. Like you got to own it. If you're, at least I go out there and I say that I'm doing my best to tell you what the news is, what I see as true. You can try to check me, you can challenge me, but this is how I see it. He wouldn't do that.

He'd always fall back on, ha ha, comedy. Yeah, I'm a comedian. Into a dangerous place. No, look, I wasn't trying to compliment him specifically for the level of trust he garnered. I'm really just saying that when the landscape is so saturated by people who are promising you the absolute truth and a guy comes along and says, jokes, comedy. But by the way, all of a sudden that cuts through. That's the reverse commute. That's the cynic at your dinner party. And by the way, not to make it all about

me, but they hired me to do that job twice. Twice. What do you mean? To sit in for Stewart? No. When Comedy Central launched The Daily Show, they did an exhaustive search. And I auditioned two times and they hired me. They hired me on a Friday and said, come on in Monday, meet the writers, the job is yours. And over the weekend, I think it was Doug Herzog, who really wanted Craig Kilbourne to do that show, called ESPN and ESPN relented and let Craig out of his contract. I went in Monday to meet the writers and there was nobody in the writer room except Madeline Smith. Oh, that's terrible. Yeah. So this is funny. They offered me a correspondent role and I was like, ah, God, that's frustrating. And at the same time, Dick Clark hired me to host a

game show out in LA. So I took the game show. And then a year later, of course, Kilbourne just eats their lunch, quits, goes off to do his thing. And they call me back, Megan. And I swear to God, this is true. They call me back and they say, Mike, we're sorry about last time. You're our guy. The job is yours if you still want it. I said, of course I want it.

Of course I want it. And they said, the only way this isn't going to work out, and this is a direct quote, is if our cheap ass network comes up with a big pile of money for a Dennis Miller or a Norm MacDonald or a Jon Stewart. But that's never going to happen. Two days later, Stewart signs a $4 million deal, and I'm still hosting game shows. See, I told you Jon Stewart is mean. That was mean too. Wait, what was the game show? It was called No Relation and it was actually pretty good.

It was sort of a ripoff of the old To Tell the Truth. So you'd have a family on, right? The Johnsons. And three B-list celebrities questioned the Johnsons because one of them is actually impersonating a Johnson. The real Johnson is backstage watching. So the celebrities have to figure out who the fake Johnson is through a series of insightful queries. I was the host. I like that. It was.

It was pretty good. And we did 40 episodes, and we would have done a lot more, except the celebrities were so damn dumb, they couldn't figure it out. They could never figure out who the missing Johnson was. And so I gave away all our grand prizes in the first week. And then you were out of budget? We totally, I spent the whole budget, like every single contestant won. So every family wound up with an all expense paid trip to Mexico. I changed the name to Hello Mexico because everybody on No

Relation was a winner. It got so bad. The families won if they fooled the celebrities and the families won every time. It's your point. Right. Now, the only rule was you can't lie and the celebrities have to try and find who the imposter is. They couldn't do it. It got to the point where we were hiring black imposters to sit in a white family, right? But the celebrity's like, no, no, no, you're trying to fool us. It can't be that one. So anyway. But that is what's amazing.

If you spend time with celebrities, not all, of course, but a large amount, you realize I think in many cases, it takes an empty noggin to be this amazing actor, you need somebody else to fill it up. And the emptier the better because you go out there with somebody else's words and motivation. And you can make it happen. Not all some are brilliant, but some are completely numbskulls. And you think immediately where like Doug and I would go to these events, you know, with like whatever the Met Gala or what have you. And nine times out of 10, we'd find ourselves talking to like the security guard or, you know, some some guy who works for the city, you know, sanitation department who just got asked there to make some rich person

look good. You know, it was really hard to find substance there other than someone who's going to talk to you and look beyond your shoulder for somebody who's more famous or more rich. Well, you spend your whole life memorizing other people's words. I acted for maybe 20 years before I stumbled into this nonfiction unscripted world. Thank God. And I mean, I say that it's, it's not, I enjoyed it. You know, I had a lot of acting gigs and I, but, but fundamentally, you know, everything in fiction starts with the writer and everything in nonfiction starts with the principal. And so, you know, if you don't have anybody telling you where to stand or what to say or what to read or how to behave, well, then you'll either find that incredibly

liberating or, or deeply terrifying. And, you know, most actors, when you really see them out there without a net, you know, it's not pretty. No, it's not. It's not. So let's talk about it. It's interesting because as you were saying that, I was thinking that I'm, of course, a journalist and my husband is a writer. He writes novels and now he's actually working on a nonfiction book. But that's probably why we get along so well, because he's substantive.

He has ideas. He has thoughts. He's an interesting person to sit across the dinner table from and will be even when he's old and gross, which I don't ever see happening to Doug, but it's, it's one of the things you got to think about when you choose your mate, you know, cause once that initial infatuation period wears off, you better, you better have somebody who can make good conversation and ideally make you laugh. Can I sit across from this dude eating my favorite food with my hands, you know, and is he going to be okay with that? And am I going to be okay with

that? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about working because this is one of the themes of your life, your professional life, personal life, all of it. And I feel like we're both from an era that prized and continues to prize people of our generation working hard. I have seen something very different with the young people today, not to sound like that old stodgy, crotchety lady on the corner. They're off my lawn. Right, right now. But I'm right. I know I'm right that there is something going on with the work ethic in our country right now. There was a poll not too long ago showing fewer high school and college students want to work and do work during the school year. You know, we've gone from just wanting wanting to work and work hard and make a name for ourselves to feeling entitled to advancement within our companies. And the ever focus now

on work-life balance, which I feel like, dude, you got to earn that. You got to work your ass off. And once I really prize you, then you can come talk to me about work-life balance, but don't talk to me about work-life balance when you're in your 20s. And the attitude today is totally the opposite. Well, there's an impatience, which of course is the opposite of delayed gratification, which is a basic tenant of most definitions of work ethic. I've got eight people who work for me. Half of them are millennials and they're terrific. I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but if I were to criticize or at least generalize, I do think that it's the impatience that is the most interesting because it's not necessarily or not always a bad thing, but it is a thing. My foundation exists to help close the skills gap and to make a more persuasive case for seven or eight million good jobs that pre-pandemic anyway were open and didn't require a four-year

degree. So when I hire people to work with me on that endeavor, four or five months go by and they'll call me or come into the office and say, yeah, you know, I mean, it's going okay. I like what we're doing, but you know, the skills gap, it's not closed yet. Like, yeah, well, guess what? It's never going to close. This is, you know, people, I think, who have a solid work ethic understand there's a certain futility, and that's probably the wrong word because it sounds depressing, but there's a futility to most jobs and to most great notions.

We're pushing the rock up the hill. It's Sisyphean. It's quixotic. You're never going to be done. The work is never going to end. And if you measure your own success and happiness by your ability to complete a thing, then you're not going to be very satisfied and you're not going to be very patient. So if I were to throw a dart at the millennial target, I would say, yeah, that's not a great thing. But it can be a good

thing. The people I work with are very ambitious. Their bullshit meters are highly tuned. They don't want to be marketed to. They want to be persuaded. Unfortunately, they don't know oftentimes how to be persuasive themselves. And I don't know if that's a product of being a millennial or a Generation Z or how persuasive was I when I was 20? you know, I thought I had it all figured out. Maybe you did too. You know, it's, but you're either, I mean, I, I was more along the lines of put your head down, keep your mouth shut and work your tail off. And hopefully your work product will get you noticed. And today, you know, there was an SNL skit called the millennials where they had this clueless millennial young woman demanding a promotion after three days on the job.

Right. That's there was a there was a couple of years ago. There was a there was a young woman. She was like mid 20s and she now infamously wrote a letter to the Yelp CEO complaining. She was angry that she was going to have to work in an entry-level position for an entire year, which she italicized and bolded. And it was actually a great story because then Yelp fired her ass. Like, yes, good for Yelp. But I just think it's shifted now to like, what are you going to do for me?

I'm entitled to be the CEO by the time I'm 25, and I'm entitled to a seven-figure salary because I'm special. And I'm in a position and always have been when I'm looking at people who want to work with me saying, prove it. Prove you deserve it. Don't be a whiner and stop thinking I owe you anything at all. Right. Look, you'll get no disagreement from me. I mean, the scholarships we offer are called work ethic scholarships, and the people who apply need to jump through some hoops. And I've been doing this since 2012 through MicroWorks, and we've assisted a little over 1,000 people and given away between $5 and $6 million dollars modest by foundation standards but my point is it's hard to find people with the qualities that you're talking about and part of what i try and do with the scholarship fund is affirmatively test for work ethic and it's not easy and as i'm sure you know there are lots of scholarship funds out there. Most of them look for either academic achievement or athletic achievement or maybe talent. But who's affirmatively looking for and rewarding work ethic? I pull my punches a little bit when we talk broadly about millennials is that of the thousand

or so people that we've helped, all of them are going into a trade school or a certification program where they can learn a skill that's in demand. None of them are going to a four-year university. Now, if you want to talk broadly about what's wrong with college graduates, and again, I'm still painting with a very broad brush. I understand that. But that's a lot easier for me to do because when I get on my soapbox, I look around and I see $1.6 trillion in student loans. I see 7.8 million open positions that don't require a four-year degree. And I see our

country still furiously lending money we don't have to kids who are never going to be able to pay it back to educate them for jobs that don't exist anymore. Now, that's just a straight-up tautology. It's crazy, but we're still doing it. And now people are promising to forgive student loans, which is just straight up batshit crazy. It's crazy. And I'm worried. I'm really worried about our relationship, not just to debt in a general way, but our addiction to this idea that the best path for the most people when it comes to education just happens to be the most expensive path. And when people say, you know, how did college get

so expensive so fast? You know, in the history of anything valuable, nothing has ever increased in price faster. Not real estate, not energy, not healthcare, not food, nothing. The price of a four-year degree has risen faster than anything else in the last 40 years. Why? Because we freed up a bottomless well of money, for one thing. Then we told an entire generation of kids that they'd be completely screwed if they didn't borrow some of it. It's no wonder universities can charge whatever they want. They've been financed back by government money. And more importantly, there's this giant list of stigmas and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions that surround the jobs that are actually available.

That's, I think, that's why we have a skills gap. That's why we've got monstrous college debt. And that's why we have a lot of people who are perfectly educated for jobs that don't exist anymore living in their parents' basements. Like what? What are the jobs that don't exist anymore that people are spending all the money on? Well, again, I always get pushback for this because I am the product of a liberal arts education. It served me really well. Two years in a community college, another couple of years at Towson University in Maryland. But that was 1984. And the entire experience cost me between $11,000 and $12,000.

The exact same experience today would come in at around 90 grand. So I'm not just saying a liberal arts education is bad. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that at some point, it's too expensive. And I was a communications major with a little bit of music and speech thrown in. Check the want ads, Megan. Nobody's hiring communicators right now. You know, no one's... Nor do you need to go to college for that.

Correct. Correct. Correct. And so my truck is not against a liberal arts degree. I just feel like now in my hand is my iPhone 11 and my internet connection is stable, which means I have access to 99% of all the known information in the world. I can hop on this computer right now, as I did last week, and watch free lectures from MIT, Harvard, Yale, Brown. All the information is out there. It's all accessible in ways that it's never been before.

And yet, for reasons that are hard to articulate and comprehend, it's more expensive than ever. And so, you know, I don't want to say specifically that this job or that job is, you know, overrated or inflated or whatever. Opportunities are what you make and where you find them. But in a general way, if we're going to have a conversation about job satisfaction, and if we're going to try and have a balanced workforce, then we have to have a different conversation about the typical blue and white collar. It's not the color of collars anymore. It's being able as a worker to live in both environments. That's what my foundation tries to do. That's why, by and large, we train welders. If you want to weld and you get good at it, I can list you dozens of people who are making six figures a year

with that one skill. Many others morph and matriculate and pick up a plumbing certification, heating, air conditioning. It's a long list of useful skills and nobody ever talks about this, but the number of small businesses that are out there that are run by men and women who began their careers, not with a four-year degree, but with the mastery of a skill, it's significant. And honestly, I worry for those businesses today. They're headline news right now. And yeah, I would count bar and restaurants among them. You know, there there's so many people out there who are really, really hurting right now because they have been deemed incredibly non-essential. It'll break your heart. Do you think some of the pushback we're seeing from conservatives, at least on the far left turn these universities have taken, might help.

You know, I talk to conservatives every week who don't know what to do with their, they don't want their kids going to a four-year university because they think they're going to be pushed to become, you know, woke, far left ideology, embracing people who don't like their parents. And I understand that. There aren't a lot of great alternatives. You've got some colleges out there, Liberty, which is more religious. You've got Hillsdale. But let's face it, the vast majority of universities are controlled by the left and do support that ideology. Very few conservatives in the faculty ranks there. Do you think that could help, that this is a meaningful alternative.

You don't have to spend the money. You don't have to subject yourself or your kid to that kind of four-year experience. And they can actually still make a lot of money by learning a trade and educating themselves in other ways. Yeah. Well, look, the question is, what is persuasive? What's persuasive to a kid? What's persuasive to that kid's parents? What's persuasive to a kid? What's persuasive to that kid's parents?

What's persuasive to a guidance counselor? If we're going to talk about the definition of a good job, then we have to talk about the path to that job. And if we still believe the only path to that job or the best path to that job requires us to sign on a dotted line and go off to a university, then you're going to have that disconnect. I mean, to answer your question, yeah, I think that among the conservatives in the country, that realization is what your former profession would call prima facie, right? I mean, it's self-evident. We can see it. It's not going to tip, though, until the liberals see it.

And, you know, in a weird way, and this is probably a sloppy corollary, but, you know, most of my friends here in Northern California are to the left of center. And many of them, the vast majority, are in lockstep to their opposition to Trump and to the conservative party. However, something really interesting has happened in the last couple of weeks. And this is just anecdotal. This is what I'm seeing in my neighborhood of well-appointed homes and successful people. This business with Gavin Newsom dining out at the French Laundry, it's not a small thing. That moment with Nancy Pelosi getting her hair blown out after closing salons, not a small thing.

It's happening now in Santa Monica, not far from my office. Sheila Kuhl, I think her name was, a supervisor, you know, shuts down the restaurants and then goes out to eat. I mean, everywhere you turn, we're seeing people in positions of power contradicting themselves. And, you know, my liberal friends are horrified by that and they're starting to talk about it. And it's really interesting to me because they've never acknowledged it before. And it just proves that, I don't know who said it, but, you know, it's easy to forgive people for being wrong. And it's easy to forgive them for being wrong. And it's easy to forgive them for being stupid. But it's hard to forgive hypocrisy, especially when it's that rank.

And when you see people who are being told to shut down and basically just shutter their businesses, it's catastrophic. And when the people who are telling them to do that are simply not following the same rules. Did you see what happened with the Waffle House? Just the other day, the Waffle House CEO came out and said, basically, this is nuts. He said, none of the people making these decisions to shut down the businesses ever have their own livelihood impacted. His point was you can't value enough someone's peace of mind and security in having a job that they can count on. The stimulus checks aren't going to do that. And the people making the decisions, you know, these politicians aren't going to be affected in their pocketbook by shutting down the Waffle House in Orlando or whatever it is.

You know, we see it on the streets of New York City is as our mayor, de Blasio, is telling everybody they've got to shut down and then sneaking off to the gym in Brooklyn so that he could work out just one more time. You know, they don't think about him. What do you think has changed fundamentally vis-a-vis our relationship with fear? When I look at the 1918 pandemic, when I look at any number of events over the last hundred years and the threat and the risk that they pose to us as a people. I've never seen us respond to a threat with this level. It's almost like we were just told that we're not immortal. Right, right. We just learned this. Well, I'll tell you what I think. I I, you can no longer hear words that you don't like because you're unsafe. You have college campuses, you have to have safe spaces you can go

to to avoid people who might challenge your world outlook because that's now endangering and dehumanizing. And we've actually let ourselves convince ourselves that that's what's really dangerous. And so and we have a media that completely supports all of those notions and reinforces them. And so when something serious actually hits, people hit the panic button, you know, and it's the same media deliverers who have been telling us that that is dangerous to the elderly, you know, they lose all perspective and it goes into gear 11, of course, as everything was with Trump, another gear 11. So I just don't think we don't have we don't have the resolve anymore to say, I'm fine. We're fine. We're going to be able to handle this. Some of us do. But sadly, it's been going another direction. I think you're right. And I don't think that's really a political observation. I think the observation breaks down on political points when you start to unpack it, but it's more an anthropological, sociological phenomenon,

in my view. I think that on Dirty Jobs, we were in constant peril. Risk was everywhere. You know, we filmed that show in the most hazardous places in the country. And everywhere I went, I would see banners that said safety first. And we would sit through these mandatory safety briefings all the time. And, you know, the first couple of years of the show, nobody got hurt because we were very, very mindful of our surroundings. Uh, and we were very, very careful by the third season, everybody on my crew either broke a bone, got a concussion, you know, nothing really, really terrible, but a lot of near misses and a lot of stitches, you know, and something had changed. And I realized what it was, or at least what I thought it was, we had sat through so many safety first briefings that we had started to believe that somebody else cared more about our safety than we did. And of course, the moment you do that, you become complacent.

And the moment you become complacent, at least with regard to vocational safety, you get hurt. And so I started saying safety third, really just to remind my crew, you know, that it was incumbent on us, not on our employer or our host, you know, we're in charge. You know, there's a huge element of personal responsibility when it comes to going home in one piece. Well, that led to a special called Safety Third on the Discovery Channel 10 years ago. And ever since I've been been speaking at railroads and big factories and big companies who have a workplace occupational safety thing to consider. And when this pandemic hit, it all kind of came back around to me. Our country has actually bought into the idea that safety is first, that safety is always the most important thing. And it's not. It's never been.

It's ridiculous to try and rank it. Safety always is the sensible thing to say. But when you're confronted with this kind of global decision where somebody else is deciding the most important thing is for everyone to survive, then you've entered a whole new realm, a whole new phase of living. Back to Mike in just one second. But first, it's officially the new year. Yay! Happy New Year, everyone. And we've got a lot planned for you here at The Megyn Kelly Show.

We're going to have a great new year right along with you. The response to the show has just been tremendous. I've just been very, very gratified to see how many people love it and all the downloads it's gotten. It's been totally record breaking in terms of its success in such a short time. So we've been inspired to try some new things, a lot of new things, actually, that I think you're going to love. And that is what we call a tease because I can't reveal them yet, but they're ready. Almost, almost going to happen very soon. So just keep your eye on megankelly.com because that's where we're going to post new stuff. And then I'll of course, bring them to you as well on the podcast. But if you happen to miss something here, you can always go to

megankelly.com for the updates. And just know we were thinking about you over the holiday season because we got you some presents and I'm thinking about you in the new year and how we can make our relationship bigger, bolder, better. And one of those things, actually, while I have your attention is I would love to hear from you on features we do like Devil May Care All Stars. If you have somebody you want to nominate as somebody who's badass and not bowing to the mob on all this craziness happening in the country, you may submit that to, well, you got a couple of options. Um, you can put everything at questions at devilmaycaremedia.com, or you can go on our Insta page, which is just at Megan Kelly show, uh, or Facebook or Twitter, any of those places we watch them all. So you can

have a nominee for devil may care all-stars, or you can have something that you want me to address in a real talk, right? Like a lot of people have said, like, I, I wish you would just submit like a five minute news update. And if there's something in the news you'd love to hear me address, uh, or have some curiosity about, would love to try to handle that for you. So anyway, all those features are wide open for your input. Keep the guests suggestions coming to those have been very helpful actually. Um, so we appreciate it. And again, questions at devil may care media.com or any of the social media platforms. And while I've got your attention still go ahead and subscribe to the show. Cause

that makes a relationship much. It's like getting married. That goes from just like dating to like getting married or married. That's, that's you really saying you like the show and me really saying I promise to deliver for you. Right? So there you go. Happy new year. Stay tuned. A lot more coming your way. Back to Mike. I think for many years now, we've been easing our way towards softness in a way that's not healthy and isn't going to sustain the human race. I think whether it's this business with COVID and the complete assumption that there can be no personal responsibility that keeps anyone well, right? Like that maybe if I live

with an old person, I will choose not to go to the bar in the restaurant because I understand I could endanger him or her, even though I'm not in the risk group. That's up to me. I can make that decision. But no, the government says, no, it isn't. Everyone has to wear the masks no matter how healthy you are. My seven year old has to wear the mask while running around at resource recess with a bunch of other seven year olds because the government has has are dangerous. Therefore, you must not speak them. And what happens as a result of that? People become weaker. They become dumber. They become less informed and less able to understand other worldviews, which makes us more insular, more tribal. I think it's dangerous on a number of levels. And the language just becomes less interesting, less words. You know, I mean, I love our language. There are a dozen ways to say any given thing. But if you deem most of those ways to be incorrect in some way, you're right.

It makes everything dumber. But look, I'll say something politically stupid. This will come back to haunt me, I'm sure. But when I was listening to you describe... Welcome to my world. Oh, God. Well, you know, it's the sameness. It's the cookie cutter approach to living that, in my experience, has never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever worked. And to get elected politicians, they need to trade in bromides. They need to, they need to hand out the platitudes. They need to, you know, talk to the fat part of the bat, but that's not who we are. We're a lot of different people. And, you know, when you tell a kid, for instance, that college is good, well, that doesn't mean college is good

for him or her. But having said that, why? Why do we treat everybody the same with regard to the pandemic? And what if the answer has something to do with racial profiling and stop and frisk? It's a bit of a leap, but go with me for a second. Some people, well-intended people, believe that fairness in a society happens when everybody is treated the same way. That kind of equality, in other words. Consequently, when my mom travels, this 82-year-old woman is subjected to the exact same rigor as a 30-year-old coming to the country for the first time from Yemen. The TSA looks at both of them the same. And consequently, everything is fair and we can all sleep soundly. Stop and Frisk obviously had

some problems, but we don't do that anymore because if you're looking specifically at one group of people in one way and not at another group in another way, that's bad. That's unfair. My point is not to say that any of those things are good, bad, right, wrong, smart, or stupid. It's just to say that there is a tendency. I know I'm generalizing, but there is a tendency among half the people in this country to default to a kind of thinking that says, we need to treat everybody the same. Hotspot, cold spot, doesn't matter. We're going to treat everything like a hotspot.

Old, at risk, young, healthy, doesn't matter. We're going to treat you all basically the same, not because it's smart to do that, but because the optics are just so jarring that we can't bring ourselves to discriminate. And you want to talk about words losing meaning or taking on new heft? How about that one? How about discrimination? Discrimination is a terrific word. It means discernment. It means, hmm, I look down the alley, it appears to be dark. It appears to be populated by some unsavory looking types. So I'm going to make a discriminating decision and not walk down the alley. It's not a bad word, but it's become a bad

word. And something you said, it just made me think, this is what's happening in the reptilian part of our brain and it's part of what's dividing us. So many people don't believe that we should take an ad hoc Chinese menu approach to treating this thing. They believe that a cookie cutter approach is the smart, fair, prudent thing to do. And that goes to worldview. That's right. It's hard to change the worldview. We've gotten incredibly risk averse

and risk is not inherently bad. Risk can lead to great reward. Sometimes you can fall flat on your face. Sometimes you can break the arm. But in my experience, usually succeed or fail, you emerge the better person for having taken it. And we're sending different messages now. If safety were truly first,

if safety were truly first, what company would be in business? You know, if safety were truly first, our cars would be made of rubber. They would not exceed speeds of 15 miles an hour. We would all wear helmets and we would eliminate left-hand turns. If you did that- There'd be no more liquor stores?

No more liquor stores. Look, the things we could do to save millions of lives every year are manifold. We don't do those things because we've made a calculation and we've decided that the risk, and by the way, it's not even a risk. We've decided from an actuarial standpoint that the certainty of 35,000 automotive deaths in the coming year, the certainty of that is a fair trade for the ability to come and go as we like and drive our vehicles at the posted speeds and so forth. It's a bargain that we made. 690,000 people died last year of heart disease. We could stop a lot of that by dramatically changing the types of foods we sell and implementing a mandatory exercise program. We're not going to do that because 690,000 deaths is a fair trade for the freedom to live the way we want to do.

Now, people don't like to say that out loud, but how else can you conclude when you look at the reality of the data? 10 million people died of cancer last year. They're going to die this year. 10 million people starved to death. I read something the other day, and maybe you can verify it, but it seems real. It seems in multiple places, the CDC has concurred that the number of starvation deaths likely to occur as a result, not of the disease, but of the lockdowns, will be between 80 and 100 million around the world. Because the logistic chain has been destroyed. Because trucks can't get where they need to go with the food. This is what the Red Cross is saying. This is what

a lot of organizations are saying. We just have no real understanding of the unintended consequences on a global level of shutting down the most powerful country in the world and every other country for that matter. it does tend to be, you know, the media seems 100% behind them. And sort of the liberal elites seem to be the ones shaming others who tend to be more working class, more dirty jobs kind of people who say, I'll take the risk. I want to put food on my table. I'll, I'll do what I need to do to protect myself and my family, but let me work. Let me work. It's not the media people who are going to lose their jobs. You're not going to lose your anchor job on CNN because there's a shutdown of bars and restaurants and other industries, as you point out, that are deemed non-essential. And to me, it seems it does seem like a class issue. And, you know, I think the dirty jobs are the noble jobs where you really do get your hands

dirty and you're you're in the street all day and you don't mind it. And you're you have a certain mentality of my life may be risky and it may be dirty and that's OK. And sometimes you get hurt. Sometimes not the perfect result happens. Sometimes it isn't perfectly equal. Back to your other point. Yeah. And that's the way America is and used to be. I don't know, Mike. I think for Donald Trump, has been told for four years that they're awful, that they are horrible, that because they support this guy who seemed to reach out to them and say, I'll fight for you. Not only are they just, you know, dumb and stupid and not worthy of celebrating, but they're racist. They're sexist. They're xenophobic. God, it's the old, look, this is a big generalization, but I do find some, some truth in it. By and large, my, my friends on the right will look at my friends on the left and conclude that they're mistaken. And my friends on the left will look at my friends on the right and conclude that they are evil. And there's a big difference between being wrong and wicked. And so that

is an unfortunate way to set the table. And the word deplorable was an amazing choice to make. And one of the truest things I think that was ever said, maybe not intentionally, I'm sure she'd like to have that one back, but man, that set the table. And when Hillary was certainly a moment where people looked around and said, wow, there's a line, there's a line in the country and it's being drawn as we speak. Am I deplorable? I'm not, you know, people, I mean, I know a lot of people who ask themselves that question. So, you know, it's a, it's a heck of a thing. And do you think we're losing? Because I think after Trump was elected, people started to see that. You know, I think some of my liberal friends started to see, OK, there we seem to be getting a message from, you know, the working class workers of America that we need to pay some attention to them, that not every policy can be to please the chamber of commerce.

Right. And then that was a Republican problem. But I think sort of the more elite started to say, OK, let's listen. But now now just people are angry and they seem to be. I don't know when they're looking at these Trump voters and the white working class and the black working class, they seem to be saying something very different. You know, I think it has to do with I don't know. It's just like last week I interviewed JD Vance and we were talking about the movie based

on his book, Hillbilly Elegy, that's come out. It's getting killed, killed in the reviews, which was completely predictable. But I read those reviews and I think the movie was great. And I think, you know what? It's okay to go after deplorables again. And it's not okay to humanize them as he does. Look, Megan, that's just straight up hubris. I've spent the last nine months working from home and prospering. And I know that. And I know a lot of people haven't. So therefore, and for no other reason, I can't mouth off about a whole lot

of things that I might have an opinion on because I've been able to work. The CNN and the Fox News anchors have been able to work, and yet they have opinions, and they just can't help but share them. And so it's appalling to me the lack of self-awareness among so many people who have a platform. And look, I've been accused of it too. I suppose I'm guilty from time to time, but by and large, I try to stay in my lane and I try not to get over my skis with all this. But do you remember when the smoking thing really tipped, when public sentiment really, really once and for all and forever turned against the cigarette industry, I think it was around the it wasn't their decision to smoke was not necessarily the proximate cause of them getting smoke into their lungs. And when that happened, right, secondhand smoke became a thing and it became a deadly thing. Part of what's going on right now, I think, is that our breath has been deemed to be secondhand

smoke. The mask argument is no longer about whether or not I get to choose to assume a certain level of risk vis-a-vis my decision to wear or not wear a mask. It's, oh, you selfish bastard, you're not wearing a mask. Therefore, you're filling the air with your own toxic breath and you're going to kill grandma. And that, you know, I understand that argument. It's the exact same argument I heard persuasively made around why cigarettes ought to be outlawed. Unfortunately, we're not talking about smoke. We're talking about breath. And we're talking about the fact that millions of viruses exist in a drop of seawater. And the air is filled with things. The world is filled with things that can kill us. We live in a desperately dangerous place

and nobody's getting out of it alive. But this new thing, this new thing has come along and the idea that somebody can breathe on us and infect us with a disease that has a 99% survival rate, if you happen to be under 70, has for some reason petrified us to the point where we're simply not thinking rationally. And sometimes things just have to go splat before they get better. And I don't know what that means in this case, but we've just seen a lot of rioting. We've seen a lot of protesting, and I understand why it happened. We could see that again, times 10, if this goes too far and people well and truly believe their liberties and their livelihoods and their country is being transformed under their feet. I'm fascinated and a little frightened by what could happen. Let's talk about freedom for a minute.

There was a poll that recently came out that said, it was talking to young people. As we've seen a lot with young people, the rise in support for socialism is spiking. This is actually not particularly new. A lot of young people, when they go to these universities and they get told about how wonderful the Communist Manifesto is, they suddenly say, oh, it's a good idea. I'm going to be a Marxist. Sadly, that's the truth, but then they tend to grow out of it. But anyway, the other stat that jumped out at me from this survey was that only 44% see the flag as representing freedom. I mean, that to me is nuts and a little scary, like just the erosion of patriotism and love for the country. What do you think? I think that's symptomatic of something.

I don't think it's a problem in and of itself, not to minimize it, but I just think there's something under it. I guess maybe it's curiosity. Maybe we're less curious than we used to be. You know, I mean, and maybe I'm just saying that because I work for the Discovery Channel and satisfying curiosity is their mandate. And so I, I tend to look at everything through the lens of you're either interested in it, curious about it, or persuasive, you know, but you can't be persuasive until you're informed and you can't be informed unless you're curious. And if you think socialism is a good idea, well then persuade me.

And if you can't persuade me, it's because you don't know anything. And if you don't know anything, it's because you're not curious enough to go around the world or read and make a persuasive case for socialism. Do that. I say that every day to people who take that view. I like to think my mind is open enough to be persuaded. It's just that I can't find a single example in the history of the whole world where socialism has worked. And no, I don't want to hear about Denmark or Sweden. That's not socialism. That's a kind of high tax capitalism. I'm standing by. I'm standing by to look at the study and to hear a case for it. And it can't just be, well, capitalism bad, or look at the bad things that happen in a cap. Capitalism is not perfect.

In fact, there's a lot wrong with it. I've just looked around and for the life of me, I can't find a better plan. I can't imagine of a single thing in the history of the world that has elevated more desperate people up from poverty than capitalism. It's one of the great success stories of all time. And conversely, socialism has got to be one of the greatest and most impressive failures of all time. The guy from Whole Foods just wrote a terrific book. John, what's his name? Is it John McKay? John?

Yeah, Mackey. Mackey, right. Conscious capitalism was his first one. He wrote something called Conscious Leadership, I think is his second one. But he makes this point, the evidence demands a verdict. And there is no shortage of evidence to make a case for capitalism or a case against socialism. Or you could say it the other way too, but you have to look at the evidence. and it's to me it's just it's just overwhelming we're not a perfect country we don't have a perfect system the constitution is not a perfect document the flag has evolved just as surely as the bill of rights has it's changed its complexion is different and so forth. We're a work in progress. But to affirmatively look at the iconography, the symbols of our country, and to then just lean back and evaluate the

decisions made by our ancestors and look at them through the lens of modern sensibility, that is the height of arrogance in my view, and the very definition of an incurious mind. It's a statute to laziness is what it is. This is the thing for me, the biggest difference. And again, I keep qualifying this in a stupid way. I have many liberal friends. I really do. My best friends are very liberal. And just the other night, we were sitting around, socially distanced, naturally drinking beer in between the moments where we lowered and raised our mask.

And I said to a group of my friends, it's like, it's amazing what we agree on. In fact, I can't think of really a single big issue whose outcome we, we wouldn't all like to see. It's just a matter of process. And in a general way, if I'm going to say something critical to you, I would say that you're impatient in the same way the millennials are that we talked about before. You look for shortcuts. A high minimum wage is a shortcut. Rent control is a shortcut. Now, we'd both like to see people paid fairly. None of us want to see people evicted from their homes. But if you look at the policies that are either popular or not popular, then I think you can, in a very general way, say, well, that's a shortcut or it isn't. I think, as I understand it, socialism is a shortcut.

Capitalism is not. And capitalism is messy because there's competition and people are going to fail. Good people are going to fall short. And so again, it's well-intended people can disagree over the way to get to a place. But the place that we're all trying to get to, and I take some hope in this, is by and large the same. So what are we arguing over, really? It's process. Two points on that. One, I agree with everything you said, and I also think you could expand it to what's happening right now, the discussion we're having in the country over race. I think morphed into disputes about, you know, should you be doing what Robin DiAngelo wants you to do? Or should you be doing what Professor Glenn Lowry of Brown University wants you to do? But everybody wants equality and opportunity and love and support.

You know, it's just, but what we do in today's day and age is demonize anybody who doesn't see the root there the same way we do. And yeah, go ahead. Look, to me, the entire race thing, and I'm going to really oversimplify this, but isn't the goal of the entire conversation to become a colorblind society. Well, it used to be. It seems like ultimately the best world we could hope to live in would be a world where people look around and truly do not give a tinker's damn what color your skin is. So it's a great example because every thoughtful person I know loves that world. We imagine a world where we don't see color, but everything we seem to do in order to get to that place is accentuate color. And so, you know, it's just a fundamental tautology, I think. I mean, how can you correct a problem with affirmative action,

for instance? You know, how can you hope that the ultimate end result of that policy is going to get us to a colorblind place when the very definition of that policy precludes certain people from participating in it? Well, you know, the answer on this general argument is only white people would say such a thing, which isn't true, of course. You know, many black intellectuals are saying exactly the same thing. But it's your white privilege that makes you say, let's not make color a thing. You know, I buy that. Activists, white and black alike.

These activists would say it is an issue because America is systemically racist and we have no choice but to acknowledge that and work past that. who can't see their own place of privilege and therefore hold forth with just delightful impunity. What I'm saying here is that, okay, if you want to take everything I just said and say, well, that's easy for you to say, you rich white guy in the middle of your life, all right, I'll accept for the purposes of the argument being dismissed based on those things I can't control. But then what are you going to say to Thomas Sowell?

What are you going to say to Tim Scott? What are you going to say to Candace Owens? What are you going to say to all of the black people who said the same thing I said? Well, you're going to call them Uncle Toms. You're going to criticize anything you don't agree with, not based on the substance of the observation, but on the color of the observer. Which is the precise thing you're complaining about in the first place. And so if you can't see that, you know, then, then I'd go back to my earlier point and say, you're not a genuinely curious person. You're, you're something else. You're an advocate. And that's okay too. The world needs advocates, but it's important to know when you're being sold something and when you're going on an

exploration. These people, they're not exploring the kind of society that I would like to live in, a colorblind society. They're exploring ways to gin up conflict, to keep their thumb on the scale, and keep us more and more divided. Going back to something you said about discovery and exploring, and that really is how you've spent your life. But you were saying maybe it's because you work for the Discovery Channel that you have a different view of patriotism, America, capitalism, all these things. I think it's also because you spend a lot of time with veterans. And I do think you tend to love the country and see the flag differently if you spend a lot of time with veterans. How do you not? I mean, 1% of the population wears a uniform. Every single freedom that we enjoy has been paid for in blood. People roll their eyes when I say that because it

sounds like a talking point off of a monument, but it's true. Every single thing we have was paid for by somebody who either volunteered or answered the draft or put on the uniform and paid the ultimate price. You're either impressed by that or you're not. If you're not, okay, but Jesus, what's it take to impress you? Incidentally, one and a half percent of our country are farmers. One and a half percent feed 330 million people three times a day. You're either impressed by that or you're not. If you're not, okay, but Jesus Christ, what's it take? Our skilled workforce is a relatively small percentage of our country. But when you flick on the switch and the light comes on and flush the toilet and the poop goes away, these are miracles. These are modern miracles that we all take for granted and you're either impressed by that or you're not.

So dirty jobs and somebody's got to do it and returning the favor. And the way I heard it, every show I've ever worked on is essentially the same show. I just changed the title every couple of years. And their goals are all interchangeable. My job, I think, to the extent I have one, is to tap the country on the shoulder every so often and say, hey, get a load of him. Get a load of her. Look at what's going on over here. So on returning the favor, hey, get a load of him. Get a load of her. Look at what's going on over here. On Returning the Favor, I get to do that a lot. We've done 100 episodes and 14 or 15

have been based on veterans. Roughly the same number have been based on farmers. I didn't realize it when I was doing it, but when I look back on it, I think that in a really general way, aside from our country's fungible, ever-changing definition and relationship with risk, we have a similar fungible, ever-changing definition of gratitude. And if we're not a grateful people, and I say this on a micro and a macro level, if we're not fundamentally grateful for what we have, then we're essentially rolling out the red carpet to a long list of feelings that we're not going to enjoy. I mean, it's hard to be angry when you're fundamentally grateful. It's hard to be bitter. It's hard to be suspicious and resentful. It's hard to be envious when you're fundamentally grateful for what you have. But it just seems like because we're not as curious as we once were. We don't have an understanding of history the way we should. And so we look around in relative terms

and we don't see our country for the miracle that it is. We don't see our form of government for the singularly remarkable construct that it is. Instead, we look at Mount Rushmore and go, probably be prettier without all those slave owners up there. It's an amazing thing, this ability to judge our ancestors based on what we know to be true today. Can you imagine, imagine 150 years from now whose statues are going to be pulled down? That will depend entirely on how woke and how enlightened that generation is. I mean, 150 years from now, what will the topic be that most mirrors the way we feel about slavery today?

I don't know anybody who doesn't look back at slavery and go, oh my God, it's the human stain. It's our great sin. What a terrible thing. What a demonstrably, undeniably terrible thing that was. What do you think 150 years from now, that generation will be saying the same thing about? Could it be eating meat? Could it be abortion? Capital punishment? Anything that's in the headlines right now that seems controversial is going to be completely worked out 150 years from now, assuming we make it that long, including the environment.

And when that generation looks back at us, how harshly will they judge us? If they judge us as harshly as we judge our ancestors, then whose statue is safe? Right. Who will be left standing? It reminds me of the, there was a report not long ago about the famous, the famous Martin Luther King biographer, this guy, David Garrow, who got access to these FBI files from the 1960s studying Martin Luther King Jr. And some of what was in there was not good, suggesting he had affairs with 40 women. This is a guy who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on King, that he stood by as a friend, raped a woman. It was not good stuff. It's never going to change what Martin Luther King did for race

relations in this country. It's hard. It's hard to sum up the character of any man or a woman by, by diminishing it based on even one terrible thing. You know, people are complicated. And back then when, when, you know, Thomas Jefferson had slaves, sadly, so did a lot of other people. It just wasn't the same. And you're right. I think when it comes to even just the way we treat our animals today and when you think about what happens with the chickens, what happens with the cows and so on, it makes it hard.

But right now we're not there. It doesn't make everybody who has a hamburger a bad person. It's so delightfully glib and easy. That's all I'm saying. It's the laziness that allows us to take our standards and apply them to Alexander the Great or George Washington or William the Conqueror or Sally Hemings. Or Winston Churchill. and unpacked, completely separate from the man, as all ideas do, because all men are deeply, irredeemably flawed. Who are we kidding? We're all pigs. We all know it. We all know it. It's just... I see myself as more of a cougar hey not yet give yourself another 10 years you're still a lioness megan oh i like that better

okay i'll choose lioness over pig but the point is animals we're animals yes yes i mean look i Yes. Yes. I mean, look, I do think there's a hierarchy of species, and I do make value judgments all the time. And I can't defend it, but I look at dogs differently than I look at chickens. 150 years from now, what the most enlightened among us, who knows how they're going to make sense of our inconsistencies, our proclivities, our flaws, our contradictions, our hypocrisies. Well, I am going to ruminate on what you just said. If we're not a grateful people, then we're rolling out the red carpet to anger, bitterness, and envy as we go into the new year, which I do think is exactly right. It's profound. It's simple, but it's profound. And I like it a lot better than we live in a very dangerous world and no one is getting

out alive. Today's episode is brought to you in part by jan marini skin research dramatic results dermatologists recommended get your award-winning skincare system now at jan marini.com don't miss the next show we have coming up because it's amy chua tiger mom remember battle hymn of the tiger mother she wrote it along with some other fascinating books. She's a Yale Law School professor and mentor to J.D. Vance. We might have never had Hillbilly Elegy if it hadn't been for Amy Chua, who was J.D.'s law school professor, saw what he had written down and said, J.D., you got to keep writing and turn this into a book.

So we have her to thank for J.D., which is good. But she's written a book on tribalism. Could that be better timed? And she studied it for years and years and years and sees how it turns out in other countries that get more and more tribal, more and more entrenched in their respective camps. And she's got some predictions for how it's going to go in this country, which, as you know, is feeling more tribal than ever. She knows why it happened and where it's going. And we'll talk about not allowing any play dates, any sleepovers, any sports, any grade other than A and how that's working out. I love this woman.

We're very different in terms of our parenting approach, but she's amazing. And you're going to love her too. Don't miss it. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.