The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 179: A Shot in the Dark

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

After listening to chapter two of the best-selling book, The Way I Heard It, Mike and Chuck discuss three catastrophes and the role booze played in each of them, the joys of sharing shots with famous people, why Mike is NOT hosting one of the longest running TV shows in America, and the perils of primetime pixelated vomit. 

Hey guys, it's Mike Groh, and this is the way I heard it, the only podcast for the curious mind, with a short attention span that's been recently expanded to include a conversational component that will hopefully increase listener engagement and allow for a modest level of enhanced monetization. Too much? Too wordy? Yeah, I've been struggling to find a new and snappy way to introduce the podcast since it is no longer for the short attention. spanned among us. The new and improved version is a bit lengthier, as you have no doubt, noticed. I'll work on it. See what we can come up with next week.

For now, we're posting the second chapter of my book, which deals with three separate catastrophes, each of which have touched the lives of millions of people, and each of which I happened to witness, sort of. Chuck and I then discussed the role of booze in each of these. disasters, along with the advantages of drinking shots with famous people, and the reason that I am not currently hosting one of the longest-running TV shows in America. We then reveal my proudest moment in the history of dirty jobs and the network's bizarre decision to pixelate my vomit in prime time. It is, all modesty aside, another riveting conversation with my old

buddy Chuck that I like to call the way I talked about the way I heard it. And it's all part of episode number 179, a shot in the dark. And it all starts right now. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the country. I do. It's just that I don't envy him. That's why MicroWorks doesn't have an HR department. for better or worse. And it's also why I use ZipRecruiter whenever we need to expand. ZipRecruiter has proven themselves a million times over by helping countless employers get through the hiring process faster and more effectively than ever before.

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The smartest way to hire. Chapter 2, a hero under the influence. Like everyone else at Ground Zero, Charlie was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He'd spent all day in the kitchen, overseeing a crew of 13 junior bakers, churning out breads and cakes and pies and pastries for a crowd that never seemed to dwindle. Charlie had always hoped to make a name for himself in a famous kitchen. He'd headed off to a faraway, famous city armed with dreams of success. Now, those dreams were coming true.

As the chief baker in one of the world's premier restaurants, Charlie was practicing the trade he loved and devoted to pleasing his customers. To be clear, Charlie was drunk on the day in question. His blood alcohol content a few hours after impact would have confirmed an almost inconceivable rate of consumption. But that's the point. Charlie's drinking did not precede the impact. It followed it. And really, who can blame him? When the walls and floor shuddered around him, Charlie knew something had slammed into the towering structure, something big. And when he saw the extent of the damage, he didn't panic. He merely retired to the bar of his now empty restaurant to enjoy what he knew would be the last drink of his life.

But what exactly does one drink as one ponder his own mortality and considers one's final actions on earth? For Charlie, the options were endless. From the finest champains to the very best Italian wines, they were all there for the sampling, and Charlie sampled them all. There were bougeleys and sherry, brambouy and absinthe, cognac and arminiac, endless rows of schnapps and beers from around. the world. Mostly, though, there was some old Irish whiskey. Ah, yes, that was just what the doctor ordered, the perfect elixir to prepare Charlie for the job at hand. The job he believed he was duty-bound

to execute. Charlie pounded half the bottle and poured the rest into a large flask. Then he filled a sack with breads and pastries and made his way slowly up to the top floor. Elevators were were not an option, so he took the stairs, encountering dozens of panicked customers along the way, people who just a few hours before had been sitting in his restaurant, eating his cakes and pies, luxuriating in five-star elegance. Follow me, he said. I know the way out. Up top, it was pandemonium.

Charlie did everything he could to calm his customers. First, he handed out his pastries. Then he offered shots of courage from his bottomless flask. When it became obvious that the first responders weren't responding, he did what he knew had to be done. He began to push his customers over the edge. Understandably, many resisted, but Charlie knew there was no other way out. He grabbed them, one after the next, and heaved them over the side.

But when the opportunity came for him to follow suit, he said, no. He grabbed another customer from the panicked crowd and insisted Shigo in his place. If you've seen the movie, you might recall the dramatic finale, two lovers standing on the pinnacle of that doomed and crumbling edifice waiting for the inevitable collapse. Well, those lovers weren't really there, But the chief baker was Charles Jaffin, filled with adrenaline and booze, had taken it upon himself to fill multiple lifeboats with dozens of terrified women and children, all of whom were loathed

to leave their husbands and fathers behind. Then, defying the laws of gravity and the basic rules of intoxication, the inebriated baker crawled over the side and scampered all the way up to what must have felt like the top of the world. There, flask in hand, he rode the ruined remains all the way down, waiting until the last possible second before stepping from his perch into the 28-degree water. He should have died, just like everyone else who didn't make it into a lifeboat. But he didn't. He splashed around the North Atlantic for three hours until the Carpathia finally arrived and plucked him out of the black icy sea with little more than two swollen feet and a lingering buzz. It was the booze, they said, that had kept him alive, thinning his blood

to the point where hypothermia was kept at bay. If James Cameron had allowed Leonardo DiCaprio a few slugs of whiskey, his character too might have survived that terrible night and grown old with Kate Winslet. But of course, there was no happy ending for Jack and Rose, or for the 1500 real people who perished on their way to New York City. Thanks to an open and unguarded bar, Charles Jaffin was not among them. He was busy putting his customers first and preparing to step into his history as the inebriated baker who just happened to be the very last person to abandon the Titanic. Of all the dreadful details to fixate upon, I think about the conditions at the time of the sinking. No wind, no waves, dead calm. According to every account, the Atlantic was flat

when the great ship went down, flat and black like a duck bond, a dark mirror, With no reflection, how terrifying must it have been to be slowly pulled beneath that tranquil surface? How terrible for the captain who knew he'd been driving the ship too fast. In 2004, seven years after Leonardo DiCaprio sank to the bottom of James Cameron C, the Discovery Channel invited me to host a documentary called Deadliest Catch. It's not really on-brand, they told me. It'll never go to series. but at least you won't be crawling through sewers.

I get suspicious when network executives tell me what their brand is. Seems to me your brand should be whatever your viewers are willing to watch, but I was happy for the work and eager to see Alaska. Why are you calling it deadliest catch? Crab fishing is dangerous, the executive said. Plus, it's a snappy title. I chuckled. I'd grown up fishing for blue crab on the Chesapeake Bay,

tying raw chicken necks to long strands of twine, tossing the bait off the end of the dock, reeling in the crabs as they clung to the poultry, and watching my brother scoop them up in his net. Oh yeah, I knew all about crab fishing. How dangerous could it be? I arrived in Dutch Harbor a few days after Thanksgiving. The flight had taken me from San Francisco to Seattle, which was pleasant, Seattle to Anchorage, which was also pleasant, and then over the vast, Bering Sea, to Dutch Harbor, which was not pleasant. Not pleasant at all. Technically, I guess it was turbulence,

but not the kind I'd experienced in the lower 48. It was the kind of turbulence unique to islands with big hills that flank narrow runways buffeted by constant crosswinds. It snapped the overhead compartments open. It sent a beverage cart careening down the aisle. It was the kind of turbulence that would make hardened fishermen

blubber and curse and prey all at the same time. A hundred feet before touching down, our pilot aborted the landing and flew to Cold Bay, where he put the plane down on a runway that had been built for the space shuttle. We spent 24 hours there, waiting for the weather to clear, enjoying a variety of stale treats from vending machines in the empty airport. When I finally did arrive in Dutch, I headed straight to the docks where the film crew was waiting to board a crabboat.

Was it the fierce allegiance, the maverick, the bountiful? I don't remember. What I do remember is that the rain was blowing sideways and turning to sleet as I climbed aboard. Remember, it was 2004, and all I knew then was that I was hosting a documentary about crab fishing. I didn't know what the show would become. No one knew. But the director wanted footage of me baiting the massive 800-pound pots and chatting with the crew, giving the viewer a sense of how crabboats worked on the open ocean.

It was an odd role to assume, part host, part Greenhorn, part reporter, a strange combination that left the deckhands confused as to what my actual purpose on their boat was. It was a confusion I shared. Twenty miles out of Dutch, things got sporty. Greenwater rolled over the bow as we plunged under wave after wave and twelve-foot seas. The wind picked up. I threw up. The waves got bigger and bigger, but the work never stopped. In the wheelhouse, the captain kept a lit cigarette in each hand, even as one dangled from his mouth. He looked like a human chimney. On deck, the massive 800-pound pot slid back and forth as the swells built around us.

It was an impossible situation to shoot, and our attempts to do so annoyed the captain. and the crew. I recalled the terrific line at the start of Ulysses. The sea, the snot-green sea, the scrotum-tightening sea. I survived, and by Christmas I had actually gotten used to the snot-green sea. By New Year's Day, my scrotum had returned to its normal state. It might have remained that way, but for the events of January 15, when the weather did something truly terrifying, The wind stopped howling, the waves stopped rolling, and the temperature rose to a balmy 30 degrees. For the first time all month, the Bering Sea settled down.

The boat that sank that day was called the Big Valley. She slipped beneath the surface while I was sleeping back at the hotel. Conditions were not to blame. In fact, when the ship left port, the Bering Sea was flat and black. like a duck pond, a dark mirror with no reflection. Maybe that's why the captain went out with too many pots, far too many. But the Bering Sea is an unpredictable place, and when the wind picked up, the big valley became unstable, a death trap. Six men perished as a result, 70 miles off St. Paul Island.

How terrifying must it have been to be slowly pulled beneath the surface, how terrible for the captain who knew his boat had been carrying too much weight. I can still picture the faces of the men I met a week later at the memorial, hardened fishermen who blubbered and cursed and prayed, all at the same time. Deadliest catch had lived up to its name, I suppose, but it had done so in ways that we'd never imagined or wanted, ways that haunt me to this day. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth?

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And again, it's free at net suite.com slash mike. That's netseweet.com Slash mic. Man, it is hard to believe. Deadly Sketch is looking at season 17 as we speak. That's pretty amazing. I actually don't think there's anything on TV that's like it. I mean, some shows have probably stayed in production longer,

but no reality show, or at least no nonfiction show. that takes place in such a crazy environment. I mean, it's truly unprecedented. And you were there? Yeah. On camera. Yes, that is something that people ask me a lot about today. I was on camera for every scene of that first season, which consisted of, I think, at least 10 episodes.

And like I said, in the story, I wasn't sure why I was there or in what capacity. capacity exactly, part host, part correspondent, part Greenhorn. The network didn't know what the show was. A guy named Tom Beers had conceived of it a couple of years earlier and put three episodes of something called Deadliest Season on the air. And the network didn't know what to do with it. And the same way they didn't know what to do with the three pilot episodes of Dirty Jobs that I had shot for them the year before. Those ideas were just too early. And so they sat on the shelf for the better part of a year. Remember, this is before, like the only reality shows that were out there.

I mean, it was Survivor, which was a competition show. Right. And I guess maybe Jesse James, you know, building motorcycles, but that was it. And so nobody knew, nobody really knew what this thing was or what it would be. And it wasn't until I got back and they looked at the footage that they realized, No, this is not a documentary. This can actually be a show. But you can't be in it.

And how did that come about? How did you become the narrator and not on camera? Well, a couple things happened. The three episodes of Dirty Jobs that we shot as a pilot back in 2003 rated very well. But they didn't look like the show that the Discovery Channel wanted their viewers to love. In other words, it was off-brand, right? And so it went on the shelf. And by the way, as you know, Dirty Jobs was a tribute to my granddad.

It was a very personal show. I wasn't trying to sell a franchise or even a hit. You know, I'd check the box. I did three episodes. My pop saw the first one before he died and loved it. And I felt really good about doing that. So it's not like I had a burning desire to do dirty jobs. What I wanted to do was go around the world on Discovery's Dime as a gaddleman.

fly, you know, and just see cool places. And so I pitched them this idea where I would, I would do that. You know, they'd give me a small crew and we'd go to Kilimanjaro. And, you know, we went to Egypt to host Egypt Week Live, you know, not long after dirty jobs got shelved. And so I was on my way to doing these series of adventures. And they were pretty cool. In fact, I had a deal to go to the Titanic. Really? With James Cameron later in 2004. It was just one of a dozen different expeditions we were going to do.

But in the middle of that, the network said, you know, we're looking at this footage of these crabboats up there in the Bering Sea in distress. And it really looks like the kind of thing, having done dirty jobs, you would probably enjoy this. And so everything else that's relevant, I told you in the story, I think, except for the fact that when I came back from that trip, I mean, it was really two trips, and I spent six weeks up there and went to six funerals.

Oh, my God. What time of year was it? Oh, we went up the first time in late November, and I came back for Christmas, and then I went up in early January to shoot the O'Pelio season. So it was, and that's when the accident happened. you know in in early January and so it got very real very fast you know and and I was suddenly the host of this show where people were dying that's weird it was crazy Chuck it was crazy because

nobody knew no one knew what it was and nobody knew what the network wanted it to be in fact there's a chapter later in the book that talks about an attempt to turn it into a reality show which went horribly wrong. Right, right. We'll get to that later. But at this point, I was just a guy who was pretty happy with this gig,

with the network he always wanted to work for, suddenly hosting a show that was the very definition of reality, you know, and people were actually dying. Anyway, I came back with that footage, the network looked at it and said, yeah, this is a show all right. But we think if this works,

dirty jobs might work after all right. all. So we want to bring that back to, but you can't host both. Ah, Sophie's Choice. Actually, not really. When in doubt, pick the show with your name and the title. With your name of the title, right? So Dirty Jobs with Mike Roe went into production around the same time as Deadliest Catch. And Not Deadliest Season. And Not Deadliest Season. Which was a very good name change on their part. That's right. Deadliest Season became Deadliest Catch, a show hosted by Mike Roe very, very briefly. In fact, they cut out of all of it. And I remember

thinking at the time, God damn it, you know. I mean, there's footage of me that nobody's seen, and not to sound all vain, glorious about it, but there's footage of me in a crow's nest in 20-foot seas. Oh. Right? 40 feet above the

deck and a helicopter tracking behind us as I'm talking to a West Cam, right? Underneath the helicopter? Right. And it, it it is one of the greatest shots that I've ever been

into my life. It's master and commander. It's like that shot with Russell Crowe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, literally, this is how self-absorbed I get when I talk to you about these things, but I literally just gave myself goosebumps. You know, not everyone can do that, Mike. That's a special gift you have.

Hey, I never leave the house. No, that footage, I thought, you know what, that's going to be very useful for me. and my career. And where is it? Nobody, no one ever saw it. You saw it though. Oh, I saw it.

And in fact, they may have used it in a deadliest catch look back, you know. But the network has all that original footage. I'm on black sand beaches, you know, walking along during a purple sunset, talking in a crisp, well-modulated baritone about the fickle sea and about how you can't script the Bering Sea, which is another theme. Yeah, that's in another chapter too. Yeah. But look, it's a big point, and I'll make it preemptively now too, because you just, reality TV is obviously here to stay, and it's a lot of different things for a lot of different people.

But why is Deadliest Catch still in production? Why do people still watch a show that could be retitled, what's in the pot? Crab, no crab, no crab, crab, no crab. It's crab. I think I'll smoke some cigarettes here. It comes a big wave. What's in the pot? Crab, no crab.

It's great. I mean, it's a show that. that's utterly predictable in every single way, except for the way you can die. Right. Right. You can't script the Bering Sea. And that's why that show is still on the air, I think. That's amazing.

Did the crew and the captains mess with you, treat you like a real greenhorn? Did you have to eat? Did you have to, like, chew a fish's head off or anything like that? No, it was too early. And there was so much chaos, you know, because, look, if the network doesn't know what the show is, And if the host doesn't know what the show is, the captains don't know what the show is. Nobody knows what the show is, really.

And we were seen primarily as an intrusion. Just something to be kind of, you know, tolerated. Like, why are these people here with their cameras? Don't they realize how dangerous it is? And, of course, we didn't, you know. But I'll tell you, you're very familiar with Safety Third. Sure. You know, my foundation right now is, you know,

selling masks that say safety third. And I've written all sorts of articles for all sorts of safety organs about the unintended consequences of a safety first culture. And feel free to take a deep dive on that if you're really bored at some point. But that's where safety third started.

A captain on one of the boats I was on, I don't even remember which one, looked at me when I walked into the green into the wheelhouse. I was terrified. I'd been stacking pots in 20-foot seas. Everything was icy. Things are sliding around.

I mean, it's a disaster. Yeah. And I just didn't feel safe. You know, the crew didn't feel safe. My crew was shooting. But these guys are just working through it. You know, and the wind's blown sideways, the sleets all over the place, rogue waves all around us.

And I go to the wheelhouse and I say, Hey, Captain. OSHA? And he looks at me. You know, his cigarettes hanging out of his mouth behind his ear burning on the sexton. He points out the window of the wheelhouse. Greenwater is coming over the window. He's like, OSHA, uh-uh, ocean.

And, you know, ha-ha, very clever. I laugh. And I say, no, seriously, how do you know, we're going to have to shut this down? You know, it's not safe. He said, not safe. He said, son, he's my age. He calls me son, right? Right.

He says, son, let me tell you something. I'm the captain of a crabboat. My job is not to get you home alive. My job is to get you home rich. You want to go home in one piece? That's on you. And I'll tell you, man, for the first time in my life, I truly felt utterly responsible for my own well-being.

And I doubled up on the life preservers, the life jackets. I, with my hands, was just always three points of contact. Right. And look, I don't know if, if the average person is listening to this and realizing how strange it is, but when you're shooting television

and when cameras are pointed at you, and you know this from watching dirty jobs, I've told you this story a thousand times, but you go into a fake world and you feel weirdly bulletproof. Yeah. Like you can't get hurt. Like you can't get hurt on camera.

That wouldn't, you know, that's not part of the rules. And so, you know, it's very easy to let your guard down. And it's very easy in a safety first culture to start assuming that some people care more about your well-being than you do. And of course, they don't. They don't. And that kind of complacency is the thing that really puts people at risk.

So that was a big day for me, looking back. You know, one of the things you mentioned in there, too, is that you threw up. and I happen to know it just reminded me when I heard that of that episode of Dirty Jobs where I think you were in the Chesapeake Bay and you're doing a stand-up and it was a smaller boat

and you're rolling and rolling and you're looking at the camera you're talking right at the camera and then you just casually lean over the side and just a guard like a fire hose of vomit goes over the side you wipe your mouth and continue your stand-up

And I said, that's a, that's, that's committing to the bit. Well, you know what, Matt? Thank you. It's actually, in hindsight, and this will sound weird, but it is one of my proudest moments. You know, it's, in a way, it was more gratifying to see that make it on the air than the master and commander shot. I mean, they did blur the vomit, but that was fine. They pixelated my vomit because my puke apparently is just too hideous to behold. But we weren't in the Chesapeake.

We were right where they shot. uh, Jalls. Oh. We were up in Martha's Vineyard. And I went out early, uh, with a guy named Greg Scomel. We were doing a, uh, a shark story for Dirty Jobs. And big night, the night before, a lot of warm gin and some local tourists. And, you know, Dirty Jobs was becoming a thing at that point. And so, you know, people buy you shots. And at that point in my life, I was drinking them. And, uh, and so we got up very early the next day to go out and shoot this story with Greg and I was making chum and I had a meat grinder that was built into the to the gunwale of the boat and I'm just putting. Oh yes, right. I'm dropping in mackerel and I'm turning the lever and this unspeakable pink fish flesh is coming out the other side and that warm breeze pushing that funk into my face.

I could taste the gin from the night before. And we weren't in big waves, but we were in what they called a following sea. So the waves that were behind us, and they were pushing us gently. And when you get that kind of sea, the motion in a boat is very specific. So a combination of a hangover, a following sea,

and just the stench of that chum hit me right in the middle of a stand-up. And you're right. I waited until I couldn't wait anymore. I turned my head. I vomited and I looked back the camera and I finished what I was saying. It was fantastic. But my guest today, Tom Albanyse, is an American giant. And I'll tell you why. Tom understands on a fundamental level that the business of mining is a non-negotiable prerequisite of our civilization and our economic independence, just like the business of making.

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Get 20% off your order at American-giant.com slash Mike. American Giant, American Made. American Giant, American Made. Again, the strangest things that happened after that involve network notes.

Like, look, we can't have him vomiting. on we just can't have a host vomiting on the air much less in the middle of a standoff like he he's not even in this scene really he's hosting the show and throwing up in the middle and and I argued and I got my way but then in the end they pixelated it and to this day I do think I'm the first

host to not only throw up in prime time on camera but to have his vomit pixelated Well, a dubious distinction indeed. It's the little things, my brother. Well, you know, as you were just saying that, you know, where people would buy you shots or whatever, I don't remember what year it was. But for some reason, we both wound up back in Baltimore and we went down to Fells Point. And this was the first time that I realized, hey, I think my buddy might be famous. Because we, you know, we would do as we normally do.

It just sort of bar hopped down there. You know, it's a really cool place if you've never been to Fell's Point. Yeah, it's amazing. Dear listeners, it's great. And every bar we went in, and in between every bar, you got recognized. And so we didn't buy anything that whole night. And I thought, this is good. I kind of like this.

I like hanging out with my buddy being famous now. Hello, wingman. No, we had some great times in Fell's Point, but it's funny, you know, to kind of reverse engineer this, you know, I'm talking about shots of gin and Martha's Vineyard, and you're talking about shots and Fell's Point. And the story of the Titanic is the story of a guy who just got himself pickled. What a great segue. You know? And so yeah, it's not the ocean that's the through line of Chapter 2, not really. It's the booze. It's the booze. And when I read about Charles the Baker, you know, deliberately going into the North Atlantic drunk as a lord and surviving that.

I mean, that's really what hit me. And coincidentally, I wrote that story. It didn't drop until June of a few years ago, but I wrote it on April 15th, which is not only tax day, it's the day the Titanic sank. Yeah. And so looking back on it through the lens of booze and drowning and reality, And all of that stuff, you know, it was, you know, once again, personal to me. The correctors came out on this one to tell you that, you know, hypothermia is actually worse, Mike, when you have a lot of alcohol.

So this kind of story is kind of bold, man. Yeah. I mean, look, part of the reason we're doing the way I talked about the way I heard it, obviously, is to admit when I got it wrong or at least come clean when I took some liberties. I'm not admitting in this case that I got it wrong. The correctors you're mentioning are doctors. That's right. These are medical professionals who said, look, that's not how it works. Hypothermia is actually exacerbated if you're filled with booze.

And the story you just told is fundamentally contrary to that. Except for the fact that source after source after source. Says he was drunk and he survived. Right. Right. So, you know, what does one do? Right? You can take the deep dive and go all the way down and talk to, you know, it doesn't have to be you I'm talking to. I could have called the medical professional who chimed in to tell me my head was out my ass, right?

Yeah. And we can, but what's the point? Right. You know, the point I think is that there's an exception to virtually every rule. And with every one of these stories, somebody else. is going to have heard it differently. And that's okay. That's okay.

I wasn't there. Now, the corrector who did bust me on this one, for real and quite rightly, was you. Because apparently, I pronounced the guy's name wrong. Yeah, unfortunately, I did it three years too late. Because as we were listening to it just now, I went on Wikipedia for Charles Jocken, is how it says his name.

pronounced. Yeah. And I'm looking right now and that's, and you're right. Somewhere, I heard somebody pronounce it as Jophon. Yeah. Well, it looks like Jophon. That's the way I would pronounce it. I never, questioned it. It makes perfect sense. And, you know, the fact checking department was, was not feeling like fact checking that day, I think. Well, and this was episode, what, 58, 59, something like that? 50, I just, nine, yeah. Yeah. So this was around the time that, I was running out of, you know, Mel Brooks's and Bruno Mars's, right? Where it's like, you know, it's easy to write a story about somebody who changed their name from something you've never heard of to something you know.

That's, you know, that's what Paul Harvey did. And those stories are what we call layups. They're easy. You know, you run out of those people pretty quick. And so this story was really an attempt to tell you about Charles Jock. but I also wanted to deliberately write an homage of sorts to 9-11. And so this was one of the early deliberate Mr. X. Yes.

Where the fun of writing it and the point of writing it was to put you in the windows of the world at the top of the World Trade Center, September 11th, 2001. And based on the feedback I got, hundreds of thousands of people were right there with me. Yes. Until Charles stepped into the freezing water. Yes.

And then it was like, huh? Right. Right. And he's chucking babies over the side. And you're like, what is going on? I had no idea this happened. By the way, there's another account that talks about something else Jocken did after the Carpathia picked him up. He apparently went to the kitchen and crawled inside a giant oven and turned it on low.

He was so cold. that the accounts say that's how he defrosted himself, which, of course, is another dumbass thing to do. Yeah, that could have killed him as well. Easily. So he survives being in the water for hours and hours and hours because the sun had come up by the time the carpathia got there, right? So, you know, and then he survives the trip in the oven on low.

So he's just an unusual guy. Well, right. And he survives what could have been alcohol poisoning. I mean, he was smashed. You can go to the Wikipedia that says, you know, he had a bit of this and that, but no, he, the doctor told him, interestingly. The doctor told him on the ship. Look, do yourself a favor. Drink yourself unconscious.

It'll be more pleasant than freezing to death. And so in the course of doing that, this guy starts grabbing babies out of the arms of mothers and puts them in the lifeboats. That's the only way the mothers are going to leave their husbands. Can you even imagine? It's like, I mean, 9-11 is beyond comprehension. But the slow-motion way, the Titanic sank and the gradual, you had hours to get up to speed, right? And it just, it must have been just so incongruous to be out there. It looked like a duck pond.

It was flat and black, you know, and cold. And, you know, to look back at Deadliest Cascar. catch and to look back at that terrible sinking of the big valley, you know, and suddenly realize good grief. You know, how many boats have sunk over the years and how different must it be from boat to boat

if it's different at all in that moment when you know you're going down and there's not a damn thing you can do. And how hard do you fight in those last moments when you know it's a hopeless fight? How much is instant? that keeps you treading water for as long as you possibly can. I'll tell you another quick story that very few people know involving the Big Valley. Remember, we're up there.

We don't know what we're shooting. We don't know what the show is, right? We've done the King's season in December, and we've gone back up, so now it's January. The weather's awful. It finally settles down. The Big Valley goes out, and it sinks. Well, one of the guys who died on that ship was called Aaron Mars. And Aaron was a Christian and a filmmaker.

And Aaron Mars had documented the last four months of fishing on the Big Valley. He filmed everything. He had interviews with Gary Wheeler, who was the captain. He had interviews with all the crew members. He had footage of all the fishing. He had it all. And before he went out on that final trip, he sent it all home. The footage exists of all the men who died on the Big Valley as shot by this kid who died with them. And so one of the things that really haunts me to this day. When I look back at that, I think about what another network might have done or what another producer might have done. Had the family let that

footage could have been used to put together. Imagine the first season of Deadliest Catch. Most everybody listening to this has seen the show. Imagine getting to know. the entire crew of a boat that was featured. Imagine forming the kind of attachments. People formed Sig Hanson and Phil, right? And Phil Harris, all those guys. And then imagine in the final episode, the damn boat goes down. And they all die.

And they all die. So, and by the way, they didn't all die. One lived. There were six men on the boat and there were six deaths that day. But one of the guys survived the sink. of the big valley. The sixth death was a crewman aboard the first rescue boat to get there. It was called the shaman. And I don't remember the guy's name, but he was washed overboard in the midst of the rescue. And so that's what chapter two is about. It's about drowning and living and drinking and dying

and dodging a bullet and picking the show with your name. name and the title? You know what this feels to me like it's becoming? You mean this thing we're doing right now? Yes, this crazy thing we're doing aside from this incredibly self-indulgent but somewhat enjoyable way to pass 30 minutes? Yeah, it is that it feels very much like a memoir of sorts. You know, going down, it's sort of the second part of the book. Well, shit, man, you know, I hope people like it because because it's, you know, because it's, you know, it's, you know, it is a memoir. And it's a memoir in part because I'm unpacking stories, but I'm doing it with you. And obviously, people are going to get sick of you after a few episodes.

Some already are. But I can sit down and really chat with anybody. Who would want to sit down and chat with me? So who knows what the future might bring for these things? Right. You know, it would be pretty cool to get Josh Harris on here with me, for instance. or Wild Bill McCrowski or James Cameron. I mean, I doubt anybody knows more about what really happened on the Titanic. This would be the episode to have James Cameron, so we blew that one. James, I'm sorry it's too late, my friend, but remember that time when you and I were supposed to go see the Titanic and I got bumped? Yeah, well, payback. Rain check.

Well, this is a good place to ski-dattle this. Join us again for the next one. or if you want to hear the whole book or read the whole book, you can get it wherever books and audio books are sold. Like maybe you just can't wait to hear Chapter 3. Right. If you're that kind of person, go ahead and go to Amazon or audible or whatever it is. But it's free like this.

And you don't get that whimsical, spontaneous, nostalgic, reminiscing that you get with this version. So, yeah. No, but you can't autograph a podcast, Mike. So get the book and listen to the podcast. See you next time. Adios. If you work in university maintenance, Granger considers you an MVP

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