The Tucker Carlson Show - Mike Rowe

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

Mike Rowe, still one of the best guys in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's D-A-Z-N.com slash FIFA. So the current debate over AI, artificial intelligence, is about whether the technology will become sentient and autonomous and enslave us all. And of course, that'll probably happen. But in the meantime, we thought it'd be interesting revisiting the original debate about AI, which is about how it affects work. What are the rest of us going to do for a living when machines can do it for us? And there's nobody who's thought more deeply about this and about work in general and its centrality to human dignity than Mike Rowe. And we are, as always, honored to have him in studio. Mike, thank you for coming on.

First of all, you win the desk. It's wood. Are you kidding? I mean, how old is this? I don't know. It's ironwood. And it's actually, it's funny, the person who got this, I have asked him to go run it down. Because I'm like the only right-wing in the world who loved Julia Butterfly Hill. Who lived in a redwood to keep it.

I just think trees are really important. And I think being surrounded by wood brings a resonance to your life. What happened after the hurricane down here? Because I know that was a big deal. And I know you love trees. And I know that couldn't have been great. Yes, but most of the trees in Florida are fake trees, actually. They're not real. I don't think a palm tree is actually a tree. I mean, a tree is a white pine. A tree is a sequoia. A tree is, you know, all the various hardwoods, oak, beech. Locust.

Locust, exactly. Cut some locusts this summer. Anyways, sorry. Chop your own wood. It'll warm you twice. Yes, that's exactly right. Three times you can just stack it and then split it. So what the AI, so like seven years ago, I remember talking to you, I think it was about

seven years ago, about what AI was going to do to working class America, to truck drivers, the most common job for high school educated men. And you had a lot of thoughts about that, but the conversation has progressed so dramatically since then. Right. And so has the technology. Right. So where are you on thinking about that?

So there was a time when the big conversation, at least in my lane anyway, was really more about robotics and tech, right? The robots are going to come and they're going to displace a lot of blue collar jobs. And how do we stop that? How do we think about that? And I remember you and I talked about the Luddite rebellion. Yes. We talked about- Endorsing it actually. Yes. Right. And it's like, and the disruption theories and this idea that real replacement is going to happen. It almost never happens as I understand it. I've seen it in our industry too.

There's a lot of talk about what was going to happen when – what was going to happen to newspapers when film came along? What was going to happen to film when TV came along? What was going to happen to music and DVDs? I mean, none of it really goes away, but it all shifts. It's all impacted. So I was struck by the fact that all of a sudden, we weren't talking about the impact of robots on blue collar jobs, but the impact of AI on white collar jobs. That's what interested me. Which I enjoyed.

Well, I mean. Sorry, I'm a bad person. But look, it is super creepy. I mean, I got a link from a buddy who said, hey man, not for nothing, but I went on to one of these sites and I said, narrate for me in the style of Mike Rowe these two paragraphs. And he sent me a link to this.

And basically, it was two paragraphs from an old episode of Deadly Sketch. And I hit play, and I listened to me. Now, had I not known it was not me, I would have thought, well, that's something I narrated, you know, four or five years ago. You couldn't tell the difference. Couldn't tell. When I listened for it, I heard some things that made me go, ah, maybe not quite. But that was two months ago, which might as well be two years ago or 20 years ago.

So the speed with which artificial intelligence, something about Moore's law, something faster and faster and faster. That's right. So part of me wants to say, don't forget the lesson from the Luddites. It's not going to completely upend everything, unless it does. And I don't know, because this does feel different. I don't know. I had a motorcycle once with a crack in the intake manifold that I didn't see, and it made it obviously run lean. And the bike ran so great, faster and faster and faster and faster, until literally this

spark plug burned a hole through the piston. I use it as a pen holder on my desk today. But there's something about speed and acceleration that has a natural limit, doesn't it? Well, I mean, Einstein said, right, you can stand this close to another person and then this close and half it and half it and half it and never, ever stop halfing it, which my brain doesn't understand. Because it seems like surely, surely you're going to collide and then be on the other side of each other. Yes. He's like, no, no, that doesn't really work.

Or at least have a sexual encounter with the person. Look, here's how jacked up it is for me. My entire career is actually based on AI. Early on in Dirty Jobs, there was this big conversation at the network when they were like, look, this show is – it was a nightmare for them because it was rating really, really well, but it was off-brand. Dirty Jobs was not supposed to be the show that people went to discovery to love. No.

Those were still the days of Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall, right? Me, a smart aleck looking under rocks making poop shows. That's not supposed to be the number one show. So they're like, can you smarten it up a little bit? And I said, well, I've been looking at some science-type jobs. And they're like, what? I'm like, well, I'd like to take a deep dive into AI. And they're like, that's great. That's great. If you can find dirty jobs in AI, we're golden.

Now, did they think I was talking about artificial insemination? Probably not. Probably not. Did you do that episode? Four days later, I was at the Circle X Ranch somewhere outside of Houston with my arm up to my shoulder inside a couple of dozen cows taking instructions from a cowboy named Steve who was walking me through the process of artificially inseminating the cows. I also had a remarkable encounter with a bull called Hunsucker Commando, and the process whereby the sperm is extracted from this minotaur, right, and then put back into these unsuspecting bovines, giving us, it's basically a Brahmin bull and an Angus cow gives you Brangus meat. The point is... Without getting specific, did you go through that entire process? Extraction, as we say? Oh, extraction.

Oh, yeah. No, I gathered. I had a styrofoam cup. There were probes. There was insertion into the bull. Light current stimulated the prostate. The white gold flew through the air. I captured as much of it as I could.

And I put the whole thing on the air a week later. And I got called to the principal's office. You did? The question was, you promised us a show on artificial intelligence. And I said, did I? And then we had this big conversation about science. And the moral of the story is, there's more science in artificial insemination than there is in AI, or at least as much. And in a much deeper, much more meaningful way. We are so disconnected from our food. We're disconnected from our energy. And Dirty Jobs on the surface was just a romp. It was exploding toilets and misadventures and artificial

or animal husbandry or whatever it was. But in reality, it was a pretty thoughtful look at what keeps us connected and what we've become disconnected from. And so ultimately, the show stayed on the air and that episode aired to ridiculous ratings, by the way Carl's Jr., there's no fast food, there's no slow food, there's no meat industry as we understand it without the other AI. So that's kind of a long way of saying I'm most interested to see how artificial intelligence and artificial insemination are going to somehow hopefully come together. So how does, no, that's such a smart point. How does this quantum increase in computing power, which is really what artificial intelligence, just faster computation, how does that affect the real economy? Like the actual physical stuff that keeps us alive? Well, I don't know,

but I do think that what's going on in the real economy and what's going on in the real country is this unraveling of connectivity. People, and I put myself in this group, we've become really disconnected from some very primary things. I commented on your desk right away. It's primal. It's fundamental. That's why I love it. It looks like what it is. Yes. You know? And I don't know. It's to reconnect with basic things is to be around fundamental things. I like what you've done with the place. Oh, I like to sniff it. You know, I do. If you're going to sell t-shirts, do me a favor and put that on it. The thing I don't like about the digital experience is it doesn't smell like anything because it's not real.

It smells like ennui. Yeah, it smells like ennui and self-hatred. Yeah, you're right. But anyway, so helping to be reconnected to where our food comes from, to where our energy comes from, to what our history is, and to do it with humor. That was the goal of that show. Today, not to sound too high-minded, but it's one of the goals of my foundation. And, you know, I don't really have permission to talk about AI. That's not really my lane.

I don't really quite know what I'm doing. But on a personal level, when somebody sends you a link that sounds so much like you, you can't tell the difference. Then you start to connect to it because it gets personal. So I think what's going to happen is this stuff is going to stop being ephemeral, theoretical, and people are going to find real, real, real personal stuff with regard to AI. behind me. Well, you're a tall guy. You throw a decent shadow when I'm walking in it to keep out of this bright sun. It hurts my eyes. Okay, well, you know what? Specsavers, you can get two pairs of glasses from $149. And oh, you'll like this. One can be a pair of prescription sunglasses. Sounds great. Where's the nearest store? Not far. Come on. Let's hurry then. To my count. One, two, one, two, one, two. Visit Specsavers.ca for details.

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Deep, deep fakes. Come on, that's going to happen, right? That's going to happen and porn, you know. Porn is on the leading edge of every new tech all the time. And what does that mean for the next generation? Well, I notice that with its rise, never talk about intention. It was.

Thank you. Fewer people have sex with human beings. And no one ever says that, and I don't even like doing stories on it because it's too embarrassing, but it's true. But here we are. Here we are. Here we are. You make me very comfortable.

I just, look, I just confessed an encounter with a bull. You had your hand up a cow. But it does seem like. That cow still calls me, by the way. Totally. When you're coming back, fancy man, with your opposable thumbs and whatnot. 2 a.m. booty calls. Hey, what are you doing?

Excuse me. This is so much. What are you wearing? So it does seem like the net effect of almost all digital or even maybe technological advance is to separate us from each other to a greater degree. So do you remember Faith Popcorn? Yes, very well. So the Popcorn Report, it was this thing that's published every couple of years. It was a futurist, right?

A trend spotter. Correct. And a relentless self-promoter. Relentless. I think I had her on about 15 times in the 90s. Did you really? Of course. Come on.

I worked at Cable News. Oh, right. No short-term recall. She talked about burrowing. Yes. Right? This idea that as technology advances, we're going to have an easier time making our world smaller. Yes. And we're going to burrow into our homes, and eventually we're going to be able to see movies on very intelligent TVs and so forth.

She kind of predicted all that. And of course, it all came true. And then she wrote about something called cocooning. So after you burrow, you just cocoon. So it's deeper and deeper. And our homes become smarter. And the tech becomes more omnipresent. And anything we want can be brought to us by a giant company that owns all of the vans

and every, every. So in a way we're more connected vis-a-vis fiber optics and relationships and so forth than we've ever been. But on the other hand, I think she was right. We are, we are so deeply burrowed into our space that, um, AI is going to take us to whatever that next level is. And sex is going to be a topic we're probably going to have to talk about. Because I mean, I've read these studies that say young men in particular are not, it's not having sex the way they- What that means is they're not having deeper levels of human connection.

I don't have any great insight to it. My personal belief is people are having as much sex as they've ever had. Maybe more. They're just alone. Yeah. Well, that's... But no one... I don't know why that's not like described as a

tragedy that seems like a tragedy to me it's the whole point of life as you arrive alone and depart alone in the interim you try to connect with other people yes it's this and we are slowly arbitraging the wood out of the desk we are slowly getting rid of all the human this yes it's just you can feel it happening my favorite author actually you probably know i'm very very famous um in south florida john d mcdonaldDonald wrote the Travis McGee mysteries, best pulp fiction ever written. And that stuff today reads like a prophecy. McGee talked all of the time about this slow unraveling, and he was so wary of so much of what he predicted was coming. And of course it did. He lived off the grid on a houseboat called the Busted Flush that he won in a poker game. He solved crimes, essentially.

He helped people recover that which was taken from them. So he's not the only one, and I'm not even gonna, there are some very controversial, very bad people actually, but who lived very isolated lives, who were able maybe therefore to see the future more clearly. Why is it that solitude, silence, removal from the bustle of human society allows some

people this extraordinary vision into the future? You wouldn't think that. Yeah, but it's sort of the virtue of boredom. Michael Easter writes about this, a book called The Comfort Crisis that I liked a lot, where we've identified boredom as a great enemy, and we're surrounded by things to make sure we're never bored. It's why we can do this, and it's why we can't do this,

and it's why our attention spans get smaller and smaller and smaller because we've waged a war against boredom. But it's the process of not doing anything, putting all the devices down and being alone with yourself that lets your brain wander. And pretty soon, you'll just Forrest Gump your way through a bunch of things you didn't even know you were going to think about. And then you arrive at conclusions you didn't know you wanted to arrive at, but you're glad you did. That's where ideas come from. If you're never bored, if you're always stimulating,

then you've made a trade, you've made a bargain, and it's probably a bad one, fraught with unintended consequences. And for a guy who does artificial insemination shows, it's pretty deep and spot on, I would say. I did it very well. So let me, the other, I want to put up a clip from former President Barack Obama talking about the other AI, the digital AI, and his idea for how this can bring us together or solve our economic crises, et cetera. Here he is.

If you are interested in helping to shape all these amazing questions that are going to be coming up, go to AI.gov and see if there are opportunities for you fresh out of school or you might be an experienced tech coder who's done fine, bought the house, got everything set up and says, you know what, I want to do something for the common good. Sign up. So here we have a former president saying the government is going to harness AI for, quote, the common good. You know, I don't want to be skeptical or cynical at all, but that does sort of make me wonder what's going on here. Any idea? Again, it's a bit outside my lane. I think I'm sure there's some validity in the message, and there's probably real opportunity in the vertical, as they say. But we have 11

million open jobs right now that we're struggling to fill. None of them involve or require an understanding of AI. You have 11 million? Well, 10.8 was the last number I saw according to the PLS. And what are they exactly? Well, speaking broadly, most of them don't require a four-year degree. They require training. Yep. Most of them require a willingness to roll up your sleeves and sometimes get your hands dirty. Welders, plumbers, steam fitters, pipe fitters, electricians, heating, air conditioning, so forth. For the last 20 years or so, for every five who retire over the course of a year,

two replace them. It's troubling math. Terrible arithmetic, as Lincoln would have said. And so the skills gap is a real thing. And that part of our workforce has been woefully neglected, beginning really around the time we took shop class out of high school. And we've had our thumb on the scale of education in a very specific way for a long time. We've made a very persuasive case for higher ed and the former president's making a pretty persuasive case for careers in artificial intelligence. And fine, we could all do two things at the same time, I hope. But this thing's right in front of us.

But if we changed the emphasis on higher education, I mean, it's hardly possible we could run out of sociologists at some point. And then what? There's something to think about. So, I mean, you've been saying this for a long time, pretty much a lone voice, but I've never heard anybody disagree with you. Huh. Because, like, on what grounds could someone disagree with you? I'll give you a list. No, but I mean in a substantive way.

Well, what people disagree with is the idea that you can promote one thing without tearing down another. That's the trap that we're in. That's what happened to us. Higher ed needed better PR. And in the 70s and 80s, we got it. And thank God, we needed more engineers, we needed more scientists. Don't know about sociologists, but the higher education needed a shot in the arm. Unfortunately, we weren't content to simply make the case for higher ed.

We had to do it at the expense of everything else. And so trade schools took it in the neck. Community colleges were relegated to something your kid did if they couldn't. Right. It was embarrassing. But of course, those forms of education are also attached to a big chunk of our workforce. And so we kind of waged a war on alternative education, or call it lower education if you want, because if it's higher over here, by definition, it has to be lower over here. So we drew a real clear line, and we told people that

if you don't get the most expensive degree that you can, if you don't take the most expensive path there is, you're going to wind up doing something subordinate. The result is this idea that all these great jobs are essentially vocational consolation prizes. Meanwhile, the opportunities that exist, Tucker, I mean, look, I appreciate the kind words. I have been beating the drum for 15 years. Foundation turned 15 on Labor Day. The opportunities that exist, Tucker, I mean, look, I appreciate the kind words. I have been beating the drum for 15 years. Foundation turned 15 on Labor Day. We've helped about 2,000 people get trained in these areas. And I'm telling you, most of my soapbox stuff in the early days was anecdotal. It was what I thought and it was what I saw on Dirty Jobs.

And it was this feeling that we were affirmatively neglecting a whole lot of opportunity. Now, the stats have bolstered that. The headlines have caught up to my own smack. But most importantly, the people we've helped five, six years ago are sitting down with me today and answering questions like, well, how's it going? I'll say, and they'll say, I'll tell you how it's going. You helped me get a welding degree six years ago. Today, I own three vans, a mechanical contracting company. I've got a plumber and I've got an electrician that work with me every day. We're all making six figures a year. We work when we want. And I hear these stories day after day after day after day. And I look around and I'm not asking the feds to do anything. I did.

I went to Congress three times over the years. And I said, guys, we need a better PR campaign for this chunk of the workforce. The math is awful. And we're not going to be having a conversation about, oh my gosh, you mean a plumber can really make that much? We're going to be having a conversation about, what do you mean I have to wait four days for a plumber? And that's what's happening now. So with great respect to Barack Obama, fine, make the case for opportunities at AI, but who the hell is making the case for the opportunity to make this table? Totally right. Where is the passion or the prosperity that will surely follow

if you take the time to learn a skill that's in demand and work your ass off? That's still for sale. It's still real. And I can't find anybody. And I've looked. This episode is brought to you by Square. You're not just running a restaurant. You're building something big.

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masachips.com slash Tucker to start snacking. Get 25 percent off. We enjoy him. You will, too. You make such a rational, logical, fact based case that, as you suggested, has become indisputable with time arguing at this point. But there's also something that I'm having trouble describing, but there is something morally or spiritually different and elevated about making things over rearranging things or being a parasite in the real economy. In other words, it's better for you as a person to run a sawmill than it is to be, say, a high-speed trader. I just think that, I mean, am I being crazy? And I don't think I'm just being like stupid populist, oh, the working man is always better. No, the working man's sometimes drunk, okay, in the morning. I get it. Yep.

But I just think the nature of the work matters. If I'm a pornographer, it's probably not good for me. But if I'm, you know, a really skilled drywall hanger, maybe it is. Of course, yes. But I would only say that it's the trap of the binary again. Fair. That's the trap. Do you again. There. That's the trap. Do you remember, I guess it was 2016, Republican debates, all 17 are up there, right?

They're all doing their thing. 27, something like that. It's amazing. I forget the exact question, but Marco Rubio's answer was, let me tell you, what we need in this country are fewer philosophers and more

welders. So the crowd claps, big applause line. There was a lot of your comment about sociologists earlier. I said, it's fine. I get it. But what was interesting was my social channels blew up with people going, hey, this guy's really singing your song. I said, actually, no. No, that's not my point. My point would be what our country needs are more welders who can talk intelligently about Nietzsche or Descartes or Kierkegaard. And we need more philosophers who can run an even bead. Okay?

Yes. It's this idea that a welder is somehow consigned. But look, I don't know where my cell phone is now. There's yours. You and I, with this internet connection, we've got access to something we didn't when we were in school, which is 98% of the known information on the land. So in my foundation, I try and make the point to the people who apply for our work ethic scholarships. I say, look, this is learn the skill. Be great at it.

But for God's sakes, go get your liberal arts education. Not at Brown. You don't have to borrow all that money to do that. Just be interested. Be curious. I watched a lecture four nights ago from MIT on my phone for free. For free. Now, I'm not saying it's the same experience, but it's the same information. It's all available. And if that doesn't fire you up as a curious person to not be completely engaged by the undeniable fact that most of the known information on the planet is in your pocket and accessible, that's a very liberal arts kind of thing to say. But I'm not saying it to your basic liberal arts student.

I'm saying it to the welders and the steam fitters and the pipe fitters and the mechanics that have come through our foundation because the most interesting people on the planet, and I know I'm preaching to the choir, you know, do you know the person who made this desk? I don't. I wish I did.

I do too. Cause I guarantee you they got a story one of my best friends runs a sawmill no no I'm all about I'm all about sawmills

it's the it's the I'm all about sawmills too but I'm all about the the well-rounded proprietor I I really think

that the thing that's most missing today is that balance. You ever read Wendell Berry? Yeah. Philosopher from North Carolina? Well, there's a truth bomb.

Yeah. One after the next. Sure. So do you see any evidence that, I know people are listening to you, and I again would argue, I haven't seen anyone kind of refute what you're saying, but do you have any sense that it's changing, that it's moving?

I do. Yeah, so there's this guy who runs a think tank, Opulus. His name is Todd Rose. He's become a friend of mine. In fact, I had him on my podcast not long ago. And they do really, really important research that has to do primarily with collective illusions. In fact, he has a book called Collective Illusions. And one of the things that personally really struck me was that 80% of the information on Twitter is created by 10% of the people on Twitter. And so it's really easy

to look at that platform and many others too and assume a consensus. And so once we, as humans, realize that there is a consensus or a majority who believe a certain thing, then we'll, by and large, fall in line. Many times supporting things that we personally don't really support. Like, for instance, right now there is a… I've seen this my whole life. And if you look for it, you'll see it everywhere. It's mind boggling. So, and this was kind of a wake up call for me because for 15 years, I've been talking

about this deeply held belief that parents and guidance counselors truly believe that the best path for their kids is this most expensive path. But the latest research, when you really sit people down and take a deep, deep dive, Gen Z right now is ranking the importance of a college education out of 50 different things at 47. That seems high. Well, it used to be three, right? But in the course of the last five or six years, like a lot of people, it made me wonder has something shifted in that generation that I just haven't seen? And I'm hopeful that it has. People are starting to get the message that just because you've got $200,000 in debt and a nice diploma

doesn't mean the world's going to beat a pathway to your door. It doesn't mean you're going to get hired in your chosen field. It doesn't mean you're well-educated. It doesn't mean anything at all, except for the fact that you owe $200,000. That's what it means. That diploma is a receipt, as surely as it is anything else, right? And the information you got in exchange for it, well, that's a tool. And how you use it is none of my business. And people are starting, I think, to realize, at least this research indicates that our fascination with the golden ticket that's always been a college diploma is starting to wane. And honestly, I think that's a good thing. One of our many post-war assumptions that probably should be updated after 80 years.

Yeah. What's the state of our vocational education in the United States like? I think our engineering programs are still really good. Yeah. But like welding, plumbing, electrical, and then some of the higher, you know, electrical engineering, et cetera. Are we still leading the world in that stuff? I don't know of any company in this country who doesn't have some sort of

internal training program to try and get those skills taught. Certainly nobody's coming out of high school with those skills. People are coming out of trade schools with the basics, but the actual finishing almost always happens within the company. So a lot of that work is being done privately. It's back to shop class again. It starts with interest. If you're a 14-year-old kid with no real clear idea of what you want to do and you're walking down the corridor of your high school and you stick your head in the wood shop and you stick your head in the metal shop and you stick your head in any number of vocational shops, you can at least optically see what the work looks like or might look like. And for a lot of people who got into the trades, that's where it began. They saw something that resonated with them in a switch flick. Today, you don't see it. I mean, what more persuasive thing could you say to a kid regarding the skilled trades

than don't even look at them? We're just going to remove all proof of their existence from sight. That's what we did when we took shop class out of high school. And it's not a coincidence that, I mean, I think I can draw a pretty straight line to that event and $1.7 trillion of outstanding student loans, 10.8 million open jobs, and maybe even 7.2 million able-bodied men in the prime of their life, according to Nicholas Eberstadt in a book called Men Without Work, who are sitting

all, not only not working but affirmatively not looking for work, spending in excess of 2,000 hours a year wiping and looking at screens. That's never happened before, not in peacetime anyway. In fact, we are in peacetime.

All of that stuff together, I can walk back, and I'll be at a fairly circuitous route, but we took shop class out of high schools, and we didn't think anything was going to happen as a result. Everything happened. Everything. That's great. People lost their dignity.

So you, I got to ask you, you were an opera singer? Well, I sang in the opera. I've also skied down mountains, but very few people say, oh, it's Mike Rowe, the skier. I've skied down many mountains. I've never sung opera. But do you, I mean, is there ever a time when you do it still? Oh, yeah. Weddings, funerals.

For real? I sing all the, on my podcast, I write unauthorized jingles for all the sponsors and sing them in four-part harmony because it amuses me. Do you ever sing in Italian still? So the first thing I learned, I got into the opera when I was 22 because I couldn't get an agent. I couldn't get an agent because I couldn't get my SAG card. So I couldn't audition for commercials and roles in TV, which is what I wanted to do. And so it's this weird circle. You can't get your SAG card unless you've done union work, can't get an agent unless you have a SAG card, and you can't get a SAG card and you can't get a... Anyhow, if you got in the opera, you become a member of the American Guild of Musical Artists.

And as such, you can buy a SAG card. You pay your dues because they're all sister unions. Of course, loophole. So anyway, I'm 22 years old. I can't get in the Screen Actors Guild. When I had a buddy, I'll be about this loophole, sang in the opera. And the opera had these open auditions every Thursday, last Thursday of the month.

So I went to the library, and I asked the librarian for the shortest Italian aria ever written. She knew of such a thing, and she said, oh, you want the coat aria from Cuccini's La Boheme. All right. So I took home, it was a record, and I recorded it on a tape, and I walked around with these things called Walkman. This is 1982, I guess.

And so I listened to Sam Raimi sing The Coat Aria for like a month in Baltimore. Didn't know what the words meant. I just wanted to get the sounds in my head and memorize the tune. And I did. And so I went to the Lyric Opera House on a Thursday, and I sang it for the chorus master and a couple of swells. Do you still remember it? It goes on. Basically, I think it's Rodolfo saying goodbye to his coat. Very cold.

And Mimi, of course, is dying of tuberculosis. Of course. As everybody did at one point. As they do. And he gives her his coat so she can live a little longer. And he loved his coat because it kept him warm and the pockets held his poetry. He was a true bohemian. So he sings a love song to his coat and then gives it to the girl with tuberculosis.

It's an opera. And what, does she die? Sure. Yeah, they all die. No Frails with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrails.ca. The Chevrolet Employee Pricing Event is on now. Get a big cash purchase discount of up to $11,300 on the 2025 Chevrolet Silverado LDZR2 and Silverado HDZR2. With a factory-installed lift kit and Multimatic DSSV dampers on both the Silverado LD and HDZR2. With a factory-installed lift kit and Multimatic DSSV dampers on both the Silverado LD and HDZR2,

you'll have all the capability you need to leave the asphalt behind. Hurry in. Employee pricing is on for a limited time. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer for details. But here's the crazy... Here's the moral of the story. Not that there has to be one, but I stayed in for eight years.

Right? I got my union card. They let me in. And the music was amazing. I'd never heard a world-class orchestra play, and I couldn't believe I was given access just to be around this level of talent. It was mind-boggling. And the girls.

Yeah. What are the ladies of opera like? Well, I'll tell you something. Probably a little high-strung, I would think. I'm 22. I'm dressed as a Viking. Pirate. I'm singing real loud

in languages I don't really understand there are 80 people in the rep company 45 of them are women 35 are men 30 of the men have zero interest in 100% of the women for sure the remaining 5 guys

3 of them are married basically you're the straight hairdresser percent of the world for sure the remaining five guys three of them are married the only other single straight basically you're this you're the straight hairdresser it was it's just unfair it was me of one of the guy and he had a mole on his eyelid size of my thumb with thick black hair i'm 22 dressed as a pirate and the girls are all dressed up like French courtesans, plunging necklines. And, oh, it's for eight years. That's unbelievable. Is anyone who is in that company still there?

No. The opera company folded. The Baltimore Opera folded about six years ago. I was invited back, you know, because Dirty Jobs had been a thing, and the list of people who sang opera and crawled through a sewer apparently is pretty short. The union set pretty small. Yeah. So I went back for a fundraiser or two.

Couldn't save it. You know, there's a lot in Baltimore that's tough to save right now. But I did go back, and I did a one man show in Baltimore called the dirty truth and, uh, sold tickets and sold out the opera house, stood on stage for about two hours. Um, in my hometown, uh, telling stories about dirty jobs and answering questions and telling the story I just told you. And it was one of those moments where I was like, you know what? I don't know if it's full circle, but man, it was super strange and fun and gratifying to go back and do that. Because for me,

you know, and this is just the cognitive dissonance and one of the things that people always ask me, they're always surprised by the opera because they saw 20 years of dirty jobs and violating barnyard animals and crawling through sewers and that those two things aren't supposed to exist in the same no they're not except they are the guy who made this table is supposed to be able to quote robert frost and the guy who writes poetry is supposed to be able to that's Frost. And the guy who writes poetry is supposed to be able to, right? And so I didn't really give it much thought until later in life. But my time in the opera, my time on the QVC cable shopping channel in the middle of the night

trying to figure out how to talk about product that I could neither explain or justify for eight minutes on live TV. Those were the best times of my life. And the training, I didn't realize I was getting the second best education of my life. The best education started with episode one of Dirty Jobs and went on for 20 years. And the third best was the community college that I attended out of high school, which changed everything for me. So today, yeah, if I mouth off a lot about this, it's because I really do believe that when I get criticized for being anti-college or being anti-education, I really only think it's because people must think if I'm going to try and make a persuasive case for this kind of work, I must be against this kind of work.

I'm not, all right? I like the opera. I like to sing. I crawl through sewers for a living. I run a foundation that is completely committed to making a more persuasive case for the opportunities that exist in this country and to aggressively, but good humorly, hopefully, debunk the stigmas, stereotypes, myths, and misperceptions that are keeping millions of kids from exploring real opportunities that are just sitting right in front of us. I wish the former president all the luck in the world in his pitch to bring more people into the fascinating future of artificial intelligence.

I really do. And with that, I got to ask you about the sheep castration story because now that we've- You've done a deep dive, haven't you? We've done a very deep dive. We do. So sheep castration, yeah, that was a biggie. Can you set the table for us, though? Like, what role does sheep castration play in agriculture? Why would one be castrating sheep?

It'll basically adhere to the essential rules of animal husbandry. Your herd's out of control. The flock is out of control. Everything's out of control. This is in virtually every species. The males need to be controlled in this way. Like, I was at a hatchery one time, Murray McMurray, up in, I think it was Iowa. You know, they ship like 100,000 little chicks out every day in the U.S. mail.

People get, people order, you can order chickens through the mail. Oh, yeah. They do this all the time. If it's a girl chicken, if it's a boy chicken, well, you're, that's called fertilizer. They're ground up. Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's why, how many roosters do you see in the barnyard? There's usually like one or two. Yeah. And there's like a bunch of hens. Of course. Yeah. And there's like a bunch of ants. Of course. So for that reason, if you're not castrating them, you're getting rid of them somehow or another. What happened in

2008 actually turned into a TED Talk. But it didn't start that way. It started with me trying very hard not to run afoul of the network. Because after the first few seasons of the show, something really crazy happened. It became a phenomenon.

And the network had no choice, really, but to enthusiastically get behind it because it was launching all kinds of other shows as well. But Dirty Jobs broke a lot of eggs. There was what we called an army of angry acronyms. Because everybody watches TV, and if you're an expert in a chosen field, and you see me doing something wrong, whether it's OSHA or the EPA or the ASPCA or the Humane Society, you write a letter, right?

Of course. And my boss had many letters and many files from lots of angry acronyms. So when I went to do the sheep castration story, I wanted to be very careful to do it right. Because I didn't want to get thrown off the air. And I called first to make sure I understood what was going to be happening. And then I called PETA. And I said, look, I'm going to be castrating lambs. Is there an approved method?

And they said, look, I'm going to be castrating lambs. Is there an approved method? And they said, oh, absolutely. And they described the rubber band. A thick rubber band is placed over the scrotum of the animal. The flow of blood is slowly retarded, and eventually the business just falls off a couple days later. Great. It's going to be amazing TV. Sounds good. And we get there.

Craig, Colorado. Oh, I'm on horses riding through the mountains. It's beautiful. We get all the sheep gathered up. We separate it, got the lambs there. I got the rancher. I got his wife. And the first lamb is put up on the fence and the legs are spread and the rancher reaches into his pocket to pull out one of the rubber bands to put around the scrotum, except it's not a rubber band. It's a knife. And the knife flicks open, and you can see the sudden glinting off the steel blade. And very quickly, he leans down and he pulls the scrotum towards him, and he cuts off the tip. Drops the tip in a bucket, then he cuts off the lamb's tail.

Called docking. Yeah. That goes in the bucket. Then he pushes the scrotum back, revealing two testicles. Like this. bucket then he cuts off the lamb's tail called docking yeah that goes in the bucket then he pushes the scrotum back revealing two testicles like this and then he leans down and he bites him he yanks his head back and the testicles come out of the scrotum and he spits them into the barrel this all happens very quickly stunning remarkable i said something I've never said on Dirty Jobs before, because we never do second takes or anything,

but I said, cut, stop, stop. I said, what are you doing? And he explained what he was doing and that that's how it had been done for many years. And that's just kind of the way it was. And I said, you don't understand. Because what I think is going on is what happens in reality TV. The guy

had seen the show and he wanted to do something spectacular. Of course. I'm like, we can't be biting the balls. It's a family show, okay? Well, I don't care what you think. We can't do this. And he says, well, what do you want to do? I'm like, I want to do it the proper way. I want to put the rubber band on and so forth and so on. He's like, well, we could do that. You know, it's not very nice for the lamb. I'm like, not very nice for the lamb? You just got the balls all to the thing. What are we talking about?

So the cameras fire back up. He goes over to this tackle box, and he comes out with the rubber band, and he gives it to me, and I put it over the scrotum of the next lamb. And we put the little lamb down on the ground, and it's trembling on account of the rubber band around its scrotum. Yeah. And it kind of walks over into the corner and kind of turns around and lies down and is in clear distress. I'm looking at the lamb.

I say to him, you know, how long is he going to be like this? He said, two, three days. Meanwhile, the lamb that he had just, this thing's walking around, not a care in the world, already had forgotten. Someone just bit his balls off. Gone. Yeah. He's just getting on with his life now. Yeah, the balls are gone, but it's okay.

There's no blood. He's just off pursuing a life of whatever religious fulfillment a lamb would do without his testicles at that point. And this poor thing is curled up in the corner. So we kept filming and I castrated probably 30 lambs that day. Did you feel any guilt at all? No. No, it was actually very quick. It's a way more efficient way to do it. Wait, you castrated them orally? Oh, sure. Google it. Lamb castration, micro, heck of a thing. With your teeth?

Well, yeah. What else are you going to bite them with? It feels like you're crossing some important barrier into a whole new world. Oh, look. When you bite an animal's balls off. There are moments in Dirty Jobs. Like inside you, I mean. You can't be the same man you were that morning.

It's like a German porno, right? Once you see it, you're like, good grief. Yes, I felt very strongly that something extraordinary had happened on the show. But I also felt very strongly that something more important had happened prior to the show. I'd been given bad information by experts. I had called the expert authority. I had called PETA. I called the Humane Society as well. The best minds in the business, the people who live to write disappointing emails

to my boss, instructed me on the proper way to remove the testicles from a creature. And they were wrong. Now, optically, it might have looked a little better. In their minds, I think they liked the idea of a rubber band instead of a knife and teeth. But they were wrong. That lamb castrated the proper way was the very embodiment of abject misery. And I saw 30 or 40 more that day. Last question, though. Obviously, I feel sorry for the lambs, but it does sound more humane just to bite them off much more but for you as a man like how hard was it

i mean the first oral castration is probably the hardest i think people say that again if you're going to make t-shirts put that on too was it like skydiving like i'm just not going to think about it i'm out the door you You know, yes, in a way. But there's also a thing that happens with cameras that, well, sometimes it makes you foolish. Sometimes it makes you brave. Yeah. Sometimes it's really hard to know what the difference is. But I've done a lot of things on that show because I was aware that we were making a show.

And it's my job. My job on Dirty Jobs is to try. And it's maybe the greatest scam of all time that I pulled off, not even knowing I was trying to pull it off. But I'm not judged on that show by my ability to successfully do a thing. No, of course not. I'm judged by my willingness to try. Your willingness to do it. And of course you're going to bite the balls. You're going to try, you know, but really, how are you going to be? I mean, I got the guy right there. Albrecht was his name. I can still see his mustache, little traces of vast deffrons dangling from it. So yeah, I mean, it's a heck of a thing. So I know, I know I'm making an extraordinary moment in television. I know at a

glance, it looks salacious and probably unjustifiable, but I also know vis-a-vis the trembling creature in the corner of the pen. I also know that there's some weird greater truth, like throbbing under all. That's right. That's exactly right. And so I bit them off and I spit them in the bucket. And then I took the knife, and I removed the tail from the next one, and then the tip of the scrotum, and I got in a pretty good rhythm. It felt pretty good about my castration abilities when the sun finally set in Craig, Colorado, over the Rocky Mountains, and the last lamb had been taken care of.

Yes, there were Rocky Mountain oysters. We fried them up, and yeah, we ate them. That was there were Rocky Mountain oysters. We fried them up. And yeah, we ate them. That was Dirty Jobs, 2008. Nominated for an Emmy that day. You're a great micro. Thank you. Yeah, don't mention it.