The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 210: Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

Mike takes a deep dive into the nature of authenticity, with a little help from Sean McCourt – a former Broadway actor who works today as a producer on After the Catch and contributor to The Way I Heard It, and God only knows what else. Sean also happens to be the father of Charlotte, the eleven-year-old Girl Scout made famous by her blisteringly honest critique of the cookies she was trying to sell to her Daddy's wealthy friend five years ago. A critique that unleashed a media blitz for which Mike accepts most of the blame. It's a rumination on the power of action, and inaction, and the squishy middle in between.

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Hey guys, it's Mike Rowe. This is the way I heard it. Episode number 210. 210 of these things we've done. Can you believe it? This one's called Don't Just Do Something. Stand there. Today's episode was difficult to title, honestly, because there were so many viable options from which to choose. My first choice was a wash in a weird mix of scripture and disappointment for reasons that will become self-evident. Followed by with apologies. to Dolores, which is also very strong. But then my guest, an old friend called Sean McCourt, who I work with on After the Catch, told me, with regard to his career on Broadway. And I'm quoting, I was in Mary Poppins, which is simply impossible to ignore if you're a sucker for juvenile double entendre. But then Chuck did a Mike Tyson impersonation, which made me think I'd better call this episode, please don't tell Mike Tyson about this episode, which I also think is very strong, but not as strong as the advice that Sean shared halfway through our conversation. Advice he received from the Captain of the Titanic, another Broadway show that he appeared in before he was in Mary Poppins.

Advice that came down to this, don't just do something. Stand there. It is quite possibly the best advice an aspiring actor could ever hope to receive, especially if that actor was striving to do something authentic. And since authenticity is really the point of this whole episode, that's the title I'm going with. We start with the true story of a man whose name has become synonymous with all things authentic and whose many inventions have improved your life immeasurably. Then some personal reflections on Anthony Bourdain and Phil Harris, two men I had the pleasure

to know, who also, for better or worse, epitomize authenticity. then the most authentic of them all, a Girl Scout named Charlotte McCourt, who just happens to be the daughter of my guest. Charlotte McCourt was 11 years old when she wrote a blisteringly honest critique of the Girl Scout cookies. She was attempting to sell. I found her critique to be hysterical, compelling, and weirdly instructive, so I recorded it and posted the video on Facebook about five years. ago. Well, what followed was a, what they call a viral moment that led not only to a new world record of Girl Scout cookie sales, but to an international media blitz that Sean and Charlotte are still trying to digest. It's all in episode number 210, which is called, as I may have

mentioned, don't just do something. Stand there. 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.

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ZipRecruiter.com slash row. Ziprecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hire. Chapter 32. The grease man cometh. The grease man dragged his shovel across the wooden floor and stabbed it into the towering pile of coal with a satisfying crunch.

Technically, this was a job for the fireman, but the grease man wasn't one to complain. In 1869, complaining on the Michigan Central Railroad got you nowhere. Lifting with his legs and pivoting with his hips, the grease man flipped his wrist, sent the anthracite sailing through the air and watched it vanish into the furnace's gaping mouth. The sounds of his work kept time with the tempo of the train that swayed beneath him, a steady Sisyphian rhythm propelling man and machine through America's heartland. As the grease man shoveled, it occurred to him that his body worked a lot like the engine he fed. The more fuel he gave it, the faster it went.

But when the train slowed and ground to a sudden halt for the fifth time that day, The grease man stopped thinking in metaphors and prepared himself for the job at hand, the job that no one wanted but somebody had to do. Armed with an oil can, a giant brush, and a bucket of rendered animal fat, he jumped from the engine car and began the business of lubricating the axles, as well as every piece of exposed metal inside the locomotive's engine. It was tough work. It was hot work. there was no getting around it. Back then, locomotives were constantly shutting down for oiling and

loosening. So, too, were engines and wheels and machines and factories all over the world. Everything that moved needed lubrication, and nothing could be lubricated while it was moving. Thus, the wheels of civilization could only turn as quickly as the grease man could work. And so, after ten minutes of contortions underneath several box-classes, cars and inside the engine itself, our hero emerged looking very much like a glazed donut, sweat streamed down his forehead and stung his eyes. Chunks of animal fat clung to his overalls and skin. Was he resentful? Did he believe that his fancy apprenticeship at a prestigious machine shop in Scotland entitled him to something more than a job shoveling coal and slathering lubricant

into the entrails of this iron horse? The short answer is no. But the Greeceman didn't think about that. He was too thirsty to think, very, very thirsty. Yet, as he gulped down cup after cup of cool water, he was struck once again by the similarities between a hard-working engine and a hard-working railroad man. Along with copious amounts of fuel,

both required plenty of internal lube. lubrication. The grease man refilled his empty cup and wondered aloud, What if a train could be hydrated as easily as a man? It was a good question, and for the next year, he tinkered in his workshop determined to find an answer. Eventually, he perfected a prototype and applied for a patent. His device was simple, a reservoir of oil that used gravity to deliver just enough of the lubricant to wherever it was needed while the engine was still running. He called it a lubricating cup. If it worked, locomotive engines would no longer need to stop in order to be oiled. True, a mechanical solution would eliminate his own job, but all things considered,

it seemed like a risk worth taking. As it turned out, the lubricating cup did work, and the impact on productivity and mobility was astounding. Word of this breakthrough spread all over the country. Soon, every engineer and conductor from Tacoma to Tallahassee was demanding one. Obviously, the grease man was in no position to leap into mass production, so for the next few years, cheap imitations popped up everywhere. They all promised the same results, but none proved as reliable as the original. In fact, most of the knock-offs made the problem even worse. If it wasn't the grease man's original lubricating cup,

well, it just wasn't worth the price. Over the next 60 years, the grease man would apply for and receive 56 additional mechanical patents. His work revolutionized the Industrial Revolution. He invented the ironing board along the way. His wife was tired of steaming his shirts, as well as the sprinkler. He was tired of watering his lawn. But it was the lubricating cup he came up with that changed the pace of modern civilization

and helped build the infrastructure we rely upon today. According to Thomas Edison, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. If he had consulted with the grease man whose name was Elijah, he might have assigned a few percentage points to lubrication and emancipation as well. Because long before Elijah was greasing wheels on the Michigan Central Railroad, hundreds of anonymous men and women were quietly greasing different sets of wheels on a different set of tracks, tracks that carried Elijah's parents from a plantation in Kentucky to a small town in Canada.

There, the Greece man had been born, unlike his father, a free man. Thanks to the Underground Railroad, Elijah was afforded an opportunity. Thanks to his parents, Elijah was afforded an apprenticeship, and thanks to his work ethic and his unquenchable thirst to build a better mousetrap, Elijah was afforded so much success that his last name still resonates today. You know it. You've probably used it. It's a slave name that's become synonymous with everything authentic, everything original, a name we invoke today whenever our search for the genuine article leads us to ask. Is that the real McCoy?

You can't script the Bering Sea. Phil Harris said that at another one of our roundtable after the catch conversations. We were having a round of duck farts and discussing the strange appeal of Deadliest Catch when Phil offered that brilliant rejoinder. He repeated it under his breath seconds later as he lit one more cigarette. You can't script the Bering C. Damn, I said. Why do you always say the best stuff when the cameras aren't rolling?

Phil shrugged. Why do you ask the best questions during commercials? I laughed and repeated the same question a few minutes later, but of course, with the cameras rolling, Phil gave a different answer, as I knew he would. It's the narrator, he said. He's the secret to our success. That sexy devil could make anything sound exciting. Well, I said, there's no accounting for taste. The captains laughed, and we moved on to another topic. But I'd been struck once again by Phil stubborn refusal to repeat himself. He saw a second takes as a performance. It drove the producers crazy because Phil said so many great things off camera. But Phil figured reality TV ought to be real, and he did his best to keep it that way. What the hell happened, he asked me, during the next break.

One minute, I'm watching Jacques Cousteau, Jane Goodall, and David Attenborough. Now, all I see are, real housewives who ain't real at all and survival experts drinking their own pee. What the hell's next? He threw back another duck fart and lit one more cigarette. You're right, I said, because he was. Not long after that conversation, the Amish got a mafia, the ducks got a dynasty, honey got a boo-boo, and reality TV became profoundly unreal. Today, it's all about making moonshine, flipping houses, panning for gold, pawning crap in storage lockers, and getting yelled at by angry chefs who've been paid to get angry.

Everyone else is naked and afraid. I've seen the scripts for many of those unscripted shows. Believe me, they exist, and they're no less detailed than the script of a sitcom or a movie. But one thing's for sure. No matter how hard Hollywood tries to produce. reality. Phil got it right. You can't script, the Bering Sea. There was a great moment in Anthony Bourdain's show, Parts Unknown. Phil Harris didn't live to see it, but he would have loved it. Tony goes scuba diving for Octopi in Sicily, but there are no Octopi to be found. Then, out of nowhere, they appear,

all around him. Unbeknownst to Bourdain, a local producer is dropping them off the side of the boat above him. Imagine the scene. Bourdain is 20 feet down with his cameraman and his spear when store-bought frozen octopi began to float by his head. That's what any reality producer in my business would do to salvage a scene, but it makes Bordane crazy. He's so appalled he does the only sensible thing he can think to do. He starts drinking in protest and continues to drink for the rest of the episode, to the point where he's useless on camera. Later on, in voiceover, he rips into the producer for attempting to fool his viewers and demands that CNN air the raw footage, which, to its credit, CNN does. The one time I got to meet Tony, I complimented him on that episode. Like Joan Rivers,

Phil Harris, and the Bering Sea, Tony could not be scripted. On the very first season of headliest catch, back before anyone understood what the show might become, someone at the network thought crab fishing would make for a terrific game show. I'm not kidding. As the host of whatever this thing was, I was instructed to award a cash prize of $250,000 to the winning boat on camera. The ingenious producer who came up with the idea was not in Dutch Harbor when the commander of the Coast Guard found out about it, but I was. Are you people out of your minds? It was a general question posed to a small group of producers, cameramen, and me. Gentlemen, this is the most dangerous job on the planet. How much deadlier do you want it to be?

The commander was looking directly at me. In the ensuing silence, it seemed rude, not to reply. Well, sir, I can't speak for the network, but it seems to me. me, what's your name, son? The commander was my age, but he called me son. How awesome is that. I'm Mike Row, I said. Are you the star of the show? No, I said, I'm the host. Do you work for the Discovery Channel? Yes, sir, I do. Then why the hell can't you speak for them? I understood the commander's frustration. Every week, the Coast Guard answers multiple calls from fishing boats in distress, boats captained by mortal men who sometimes push things a little too far in the race to get as much crab on board as quickly as possible. In the commander's eyes, we were morons who'd flown in from Hollywood to throw gas on a fire that was already burning out of control.

The commander wasn't entirely wrong. Trust me, I said, I'm sure that my masters won't want to turn your crab season into a free-for-all. The commander sighed and shook his head. You don't get it, son. It's already a free-for-all. And you guys are making it worse. Once again, he wasn't wrong to worry. The act of watching a thing always changes the behavior of the thing you're watching.

It's called the Observer Effect. It's true in physics, and it's true in crab fishing. With or without $250,000 to dish out, a film crew in Dutch was going to change things. But the commander wasn't entirely right either. Two weeks after this conversation, the Big Valley went down. But there was no film crew on board. No one was there to watch as it sank. And injuries and fatalities didn't increase after filming began. In fact, after our first season aired, a new law was passed that eliminated the Derby approach that many believed made Cravee fishing more dangerous than it had to be. I could argue that our show actually helped make things

safer, but I won't because people still die up there, no matter how careful they try to be. You can't script, the Bering Sea. As for duck farts, those are easy. Calua, Baileys, and whiskey, layered in equal parts, just in that order. They were Phil's favorite, but, as I told him so many, Many times, there's no accounting for taste. Do do, do, do do do do, do, do, do, do... Dumb! 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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Well, the answer to that question varies, but you'll find it in a free guide that you can get right now at netsuite.com slash Mike. It's called demystifying AI. It's totally free. It's essential reading for anybody trying to make sense of a future that appears to have arrived yesterday. NetSuite, of course, is the number one AI enterprise resource planning software out there, trusted by over 43,000 businesses. with NetSuite, you can use the AI of your choice, GROC or Claude or chat, GPT, whatever else is out there to connect to your actual business data,

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NetSweet. slash Mike. I think you're going to just handle everything and I'm just going to sit here like a Christmas hand. That's new. That's exciting. You're really looking forward to that. To me not doing much.

Let Mike do it. I mean, I can't stop you, man. I mean, listen, just, you know, the way you talk, it's unbelievable how you can stop one thing and then start another one, a new sentence. There's just never a period. There's never a place to, like, jump in. Oh, I tell you, the most magical moment in my whole education of television was watching Mike do, I guess it was the promos for after the catch in Germany where they came to us. And it was the end of the day and you were pissed off and you were tired. and they were like, we need you to sort of tell the people in Bonn

that they need to change to channel Oxvoof or something like that. And Mike gave it to him once, and the producer comes out, it was one of those discovery guys. Let's try it again. Mike then launched into like nine in a row, and they got progressively more blue and more long. We couldn't stop him. And nobody had any intention.

We're like, let him go again. And you're like, hello to the people of Bond. One more thing. Hi, Mike wrote, this out of the cats. But it was the, it was the, The lack of stop that was uncanny. That's what I'm talking about. He's got that ability.

Well, it's not about not stopping. It's just about not stopping at the end of a sentence. That's the key when you're essentially trying to just fill time, which is what most of my career has been. Are we recording, by the way, Chuck? Because this might be interesting. Should we be? Come on. You're recording, aren't you?

All right. Yeah, I'm recording. We're just saying so much of my own. career has been spent trying to fill time that when I find myself actually talking with somebody who's legitimately interesting, I regret a lot of what I do. I feel like I talk too much, but that's just spillover from days gone by at QVC and your new home. Well, that's a huge part of editing after the catch, which was one of my first jobs in TV, was taking mic out. And because everything you said was funny and fun, but the point of the show.

was to hear from Captain Phil, Captain John, Captain Keith, Captain Sieg. And so we would have these, you could see them on the timeline, like these long sort of Mike analogs. And then we had to sort of take, as we used to do when I was studying Shakespeare, if you were late for class, you'd like, I'm going to learn the first line and the last line, and then just pretend I did the whole thing. So Mike would get going. But what you, but what those served to do was to move the conversation from Phil to SIG to John in a way that felt seamless. That was seamless in the room, but it was three hours and it needed to be 42 minutes. You're listening to an old friend of mine called Sean McCourt.

Fans of the podcast will have heard his name invoked from time to time because Sean helped me right from really right around the beginning with ideas for these stories. He wrote some terrific stories, which I took and changed, not because they weren't terrific enough, but because, well, you know, Sean, that's just kind of what I do. I can't help it. Absolutely. He's a terrific producer, and we were just talking about After the Catch, which, by the way, Sean, I was thinking of this the other day. I think this last year, the at-home versions of After the Catch were the first Zoom productions in prime time anyway.

I've heard you say it, and I have not found any information to the contrary. I hope it's true. Who's going to argue with me? I mean, really, who's keeping track of Zoom shows? I don't think there's an arbiter, really. We were just talking about this the other day because when I first called you, it was basically begging. And I'll never forget. I mean, it was a gift that you gave us.

I had a team of people who were going to be out of work. And I thought, Mike, if you would say yes to this, if you called Discovery, they'll say yes. The network and its infinite wisdom had realized that Deadliest Catch was not just a hit. It was a thing, you know, it was a cultural thing. And I want to talk to you a little bit about why you. think that is. But once that realization took hold, it was an obvious choice to keep it going in some way. And so after the catch, which I used to describe as Charlie Rose with whiskey and cigarettes, these conversations in these bars begin to unfold. And they too became a thing. And Sean and I

met because he was working for the company at the time, Silent Crow. And they were responsible for creating these conversations and producing these shows. And Sean was the voice in my ear from the very first one because Sean, as you no doubt recall, we shot those things really like they were live, right? It was live to tape. And I was, and I was not from the first one. Actually, I was, I came much later. Oh, in Colorado maybe. Yeah. My first one was actually the year that you couldn't do it. And I worked with Ben Bailey. That's right. And I was a production assistant on that. And then the next year you come back and they throw me into the booth. I'm so vastly unqualified for that job. I had no concept of what to do. And I just knew that the guy in the

ball cap seems to be in control. And my job, I was laughing the other week when you said, you said, oh, I liked Sean because he was a nice guy. And I was like, that's actually not true. You liked me because I stayed out of your way. That's true, too. There's the, there's the microphone. and there's the button. And as soon as you started talking into the booth comes a network executive out of central casting. You know, he's got the $400 sweat here and the Gucci loafers, and he just begins to berate me. And he's saying, you know, tell Mike he's got to ask Jonathan this. Tell Mike he's got to ask Sig this. Tell Mike he's got to go to a commercial. And I was, as I say, completely way over my head. But I could tell that the Gucci guy didn't understand what was happening. And the ball cap guy

did. And so I just began to parrot every single thing he said into the microphone, but I didn't press the button. I don't even think one time. So the day ends. And Mary, your lawyer and your wonderful friend, she came up to me and she goes, I don't know what you did, but I've never seen Mike get through an entire session without pulling the earpiece out of his ear. I said, I just, I didn't. That's what I did. Oh, man. That was so much fun. You know, But you were running it and it was silly to try to interrupt because you knew the guys. Well, this is part of, I assume you listen to the podcast. Everybody else just listened to the stories.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, of course. Okay, great. I don't want to assume too much. They're guests on here from time to time who are so willfully disobedient. Like Tom Frank last week. And he took it on the chin from you. So I, you kidding. I studied, I could actually recite it like a Robert Frost poem right for you now if you would like.

Something about there be dragons, right? I don't doubt that you could. So again, just like a little stage management here. So Sean is in a trailer pretending to tell me what to say. I have an earbud in. They call them IFBs. It stands for an interruptible foldback. And that's the device and the technology that allows people to tell anchors, for instance,

what to do, where to look, how to behave. If you've seen broadcast news. That's exactly what I was going to. say, right? Holly Hunter was the voice in William Hertz's ear, and Sean was the voice in mine, except he knew better than the press the button. Because, what is Albert? Albert Brooks says? He says, you know, I say it here, and it comes out there. And it comes out there. Right. And, you know, as a guy in front of the camera, and you've spent plenty of time in front of the camera, too, that can be either a lifesaver or the single worst thing, as you're trying to collect your thoughts to keep a conversation

on the rails, somebody is in your ear giving you advice, right? It can be either or a lifesaver or the kiss of death. But what you're referring to, or what Mary was referring to, actually, was, and I still have this on tape, but back in the old days, when the technical director of QVC used to start filling my head with absolute garbage advice, really yelling at me, telling me what to do, I would take the IFB out of my ear, not simply so I couldn't hear. I would take it and I would press it against the microphone I was wearing. So now suddenly three million people are hearing this lunatic screaming at me. And once his own voice filled the control room, that shut him up.

That's the only way I've ever found to shut people up. But you beat me to it by simply not pushing the button. Hallelujah. Amen. That's smart producing, Sean. That's producing the producer producing you. It was, I tell you, it was absolute instinct. I was in a show called Titanic, a thousand and one years ago. Spoiler alert. There's an iceberg. Yeah, right? But when we were, is this based on the actual ship of the same name? Yes. And it's a musical. Oh, it's a wonderful musical. Sounds delightful. Is it really? Oh, my God. It's probably, I will say, hands down, the greatest score I've ever been a part of. It's how do I not know this? Sing, what's the most.

memorable. What's oh, what a beautiful morning in the Titanic? That's probably the problem. There's no beautiful score, no beautiful songs. Yeah. It's, I mean, the, the, the, the, the night was alive with the sound of music. You got these, you know, these, the guys singing that did, did that did, that did, fair the well. It's, it's just, it's lush and gorgeous. But anyway, the guy who was the sound designer would, would, would walk around the stage. during rehearsals and actors would come up to him left and right and say, I'm not hearing enough out of the monitor. He'd go, okay, great. And he would speak into his, essentially into his sleeve, you know, at the board, give us some more at the left speaker. And then somebody else would want something. And he gave everything to everyone. And everybody was happy. And I went up to him at the end

of the day and I said, how often do you actually press the button? He said, never. So you've done your share on the boards, your trained singer, you're a stage actor, you've been on Broadway, you were, what'd you do in Beauty and the Beast? I saw it. Wait, weren't you in Beauty of the Beast? Never. No, no, no. No, I saw the last, saw the closing night of Beauty and the Beast. I was in Mary Poppins at the time.

Oh, okay. I can give you a few from from I went to Sean's Wiki page as I'm going to do when this happens. And when you say you were in Mary Poppins, you're referring to the show, obviously. See, here we go, here we go. Don't set me up with that kind of nonsense. You know, I have to tell you, I took some abuse the other day at church. Dolores from the sixth row came up to me. Dolores who wears a Mike Roe mask.

Oh, she comes up to me and she says, he went potty mouth last week. And I said, potty mouth. that's not like Mike to curse. And she goes, no, he's talking about his nose and it was disgusting. And then she said, if he had any listeners left at the end, I don't think he did. And then this long pause, she touched my elbow ever so gently. And she said, he said nice things about you, dear. Does she know you wrote the song, River of Blood?

Does Dolores know that you contributed? I mean, in a huge, like you provided the soundtrack for the most graphic surgical. you know, retelling ever on a podcast. Delores could use an apology from Mike Roe right now. I'll tell you that because I know she's listening. Hey, Dolores, I'm here with, I'm here with Sean. And, you know, I feel just terrible. The idea of you sitting there in the sixth pew with my face on your face, wearing a micro mask, but yet a wash in this weird mix of scripture and disappointment. Dolores, I'm sorry I let you down, but on the positive side, listen to this. That's the sound of a working nose, Dolores.

Fantastic. Hallelujah. Amen. Sorry, Sean. Wash in a weird mixture of scripture and disappointment. That's why you're a television star. That's, that is good. Sadly, this is a podcast.

That is fantastic. Tens of people shall be listening. So, listen, at the risk of impersonating a host, what I want to ask you, you've got a lot of experience on stage. You've got a lot of experience with the classics. You've got experience in TV. You're the narrator, I believe, of Barnwood Builders. I am the micro understudy of several shows.

I want to know what it felt like, never mind the business of production, but you know deadliest catch. You've seen those guys. Watching them sit around, trying to be as real as they could possibly be, in a production setting. What was your take on it overall? Sig, Phil, Jonathan, all of it together. Was it, was it anything you thought you might have imagined?

It was constantly surprising and delightful. As I said, I started as a production assistant the year that you weren't there. And my first day, I walked through the San Diego Aquarium with Phil and John and Andy and I guess Keith. And I was blown away at the way. people approached them. It wasn't autographs. This was before selfies. People came up to them in mid-conversation, and they responded in mid-conversation.

People felt like they knew them, and they were kind of right. And the guys had a level of gratitude that I hadn't seen before in a lot of performers. I don't like to call them performers, but they're celebrities, say. And the next time that I witnessed that was actually the following year in Colorado, and that's with you at the risk of blowing smoke. But I remember walking from the venue out to the truck. We went across the street. And it was, I think three people came up to you again in mid-conversation. And it wasn't, oh, my God, Mike Roe.

It was, hey, Mike, XYZ. And you met them there. And that's not a thing that you, you. you see a lot of on television or otherwise. And I love that about that show. I did too. That's a terrific answer because it was an education for all of them. You know, that first year in Dutch Harbor, a lot of people, you know, look at the show and they see six boats and they figure that's the totality of the fleet. Well, that year, 2003, when I was up there the first time, there were 150 boats, 150 crab boats. And the fact that cameras wound up on half a dozen,

of them created a very, very interesting dynamic for those captains, not just on board their boat, but as members of a much larger fleet, you saw every imaginable permutation of envy, jealousy, resentment, fear, not among the captains you know from the show, but we came into this place with cameras. And it was in a lot of ways, it kind of felt like the prime directive on Star Trek. When you beam down onto an alien world, you don't leave your phaser behind, for God's sakes. You know, that's going to have some real unintended consequences. Well, you mentioned it last week, talking with Tom as well, or last time I listened, about this idea of the observer effect.

Yes. Where we absolutely did change. We changed Dutch Harbor. I've spent a good deal of time in Dutch Harbor, shooting these pieces that would later go into the show and meeting the locals. And we, I say we as in. and I think you referred to us as morons from Hollywood, but that is,

that we as a class of moron had a measurable effect on this place far out in the Pacific. Do you think we made it better? I don't know the answer to that. I think we gave a lot of people, and they continue to do it. I have not been involved in the show in a number of years, but give a lot of people access to it.

You know, I learned so much about, how much you need to tell and how to tell a story. And you mentioned how, you know, fills this idea that you can't script the Bering C. And what I love about that is he didn't say you can't script Deadliest Catch. He said, you can't script the Bering C. You know, you have to script deadliest catch because you have to squeeze it into 45 minutes. You have to decide what to leave out and where to start the story and it becomes all about structure. Well, let's go back to the douchebag from Gucci, right? He comes in the trailer. I didn't say douchebag in case Gucci's listening. He would certainly know who he is. Sorry, Dolores. Sorry. Thoult, not say douchebeg.

Okay. The executive, the suit, comes in and attempts to steer the conversation from afar. That's what I'm talking about. And I think we're saying the same things. You can do a lot of lot of different things to guide a conversation and you should hear a show yes you must yes you must otherwise it's almost as indulgent as what we're doing right now and what he didn't take into account is that my team which was as many people had spent 10 weeks I think structuring these six conversations and but it's bullet points it's not words it's bullet points it's we're going to go from here to here to here to here to hear to here, and it has a certain sense to it. And then, you know, I would always remind everybody what Dwight Eisenhower said about planning. He said, planning is everything. The plan is nothing.

You must show up with a plan and you must be ready to throw it out the window at contact with the enemy. Yeah. But if you don't have it, you're lost. Every great plan goes to hell when somebody punches you in the nose. That was Mike Tyson said that. Is that right? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. But it was more like this. You know, every great playing goes out the window as soon if someone punches you in a nose. You better hope to hell he's not listening. Sorry, Dolores. I said not douchebag, nor did I make fun of Mike Tyson. I just want to lay that out there. Okay. Thank you. My point is there was no Bering C in after the catch. There is no bearing C in most episodes of every reality show I've ever seen. There is no egg.

existentially uncontrollable thing. And when people say, why is deadliest catch still on the air? I mean, literally, Shawnee, Monday, I'll be in narrating two more episodes toward the end of season 17. That's great. It's wonderful. It is unbelievable. And they, the producers thereof have also done an excellent job of fostering younger stories. And what's beautiful about hanging out on the Northwestern is you watched Mandy grow up.

up. You know, you know these people, but they've also reached out. And, you know, over the years, they brought in, I believe, I can't remember the name. I believe there's a guy named Sean. And they're young. John Dwyer. Yeah. And there were people that would come in for a season or two and go. and then what's his name now that the arch villain who's actually the nicest guy in the world? Oh, uh, Harley. Harley. He's my favorite. I love the nicest guy. But he's like, Steve Harley Davidson, once again, bow-darting the pots, not sharing information. Right. But that's an example of scripting the show, not the C. That's exactly right. It's just that

a lot of other great producers and a lot of other really fine shows come and go. They run a couple of years, a couple seasons, five or six if you're lucky. And part of the reason so many of them end when they do is because there is no possibility that a rogue wave is going to wash you into oblivion. But here, the possibility not only exists, it's a certainty.

And so people have come along. for a very long ride, and they've been to funerals and they've been to celebrations. And the fact that nobody in the world can produce the one thing that makes the show so singular, that was Phil Harris's point to me. Way back in 2008, when we were sitting around, I don't even remember, we were up in Seattle somewhere, maybe something called the Lock Spot or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the very first one, and then we went back there at a certain point.

Yeah. But he, that guy, it's not merely that he was authentic and that he had so many interesting things to say. It was, he was so damn casual about it. And you just never knew when just some giant truth bomb was going to come tumbling out of his grizzled visage. And it was always a delight when that happened on the TV. I got to have lunch of them one time. It was actually in San Diego. It was my first year as a PA.

And I was thinking about getting into television. And I was sort of, I could see my theater career sort of, I could see the sunset, you know. As careers so often do. Yeah. And so I took my vacation week and I went to see what it was like to work on a TV show. And I wound up, I say having lunch to them. I'm sitting in a plastic chair eating a hamburger and he's sitting in the plastic chair next to me. And he asked me something about, you know, what show are you doing next?

And I said, oh, I don't really do this. I'm going to go back to my other job. And I didn't tell him that I was in song and dance man. anything like that. I didn't think that was, you know, he needed to know. He didn't care. He just, he sort of harrumfed and he goes, huh, well, whatever your other job is, you must be pretty good at it. And then he walked away. I was like, that was a gift. That's a huge gift. Yeah. My guest today, Tom Albanyce, 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

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Man. Yeah, he invited me on the Cornelio Marie once, and we just sat in the wheelhouse for about an hour. Just talking. And I honestly didn't give it much of a thought until he died.

And it's just, I mean, millions of other people have millions of similar stories. The things you take for granted, the people that kind of come into your life, like a comet, I really do think, and Chuck, I've said this to you before when we've talked about this, had Phil died in a boating accident, whether it's from a fire or a wave or any of the other things that are just constantly bubbling under the surface of this unpredictable, unscriptable show, had that happened, I don't think it would have been as impactful to so many people. He died in such a common way, Sean. It just made the show so strangely relatable for so many other single men who were trying to raise their kids, so many, so many husbands, you know, who were trying to navigate the complexities of their own, what is it? What Therose?

Lives of Quiet Desperation. That's right. I love that one. I don't know. I don't know. I believe it was Mike Tyson. Lives of Quiet Desperation. Anyway, it was a gift, Sean, to work with you and those guys and to have this weird little after the catch thing come along.

And I want to come back to the point you were making earlier. You called me maybe a month after the lockdown. Yeah. And this just goes to basic survival and entrepreneurship. I was talking to the network at the same time. You know, we can't just sit around for a year. We have to do something. And the fact that after the catch really was the first show to poke its head up from this landscape of lockdowns,

I think we're going to be increasingly proud of that as the years go by. Oh, I already am. That team that I worked with the Silent Crow, it's funny, everybody now, everybody's grandma can get on to Zoom and operate Zoom. But no, none of us had ever heard of it before. And we scheduled these emergency meetings where we would all. get on and we would just try to figure out how to use this thing. And we're terrified. We're wiping our groceries down.

I'm sitting on my own bed, you know. And we barely have the bandwidth to do this. And we were, hey, look, there's a thing called gallery view. But now if you record gallery view and I record, I record Mike, somebody shipped microphone and it was just that sense of problem solving one thing after another. And then what I thought was fascinating about it is, as you recall, we made it work. and it was rough, but, you know, your demand was it needs to look rough. Otherwise, it's going to look bad.

That's right. And the second iteration, the network demanded that we spend a bunch of money and hire a professional company who does this stuff. And it was a disaster. It was better when we were all just punting because we were a team, we were a unit who knew each other. And when they came in with all the fancy equipment, we ended up, I shouldn't say. the show still happened, but we ended up going back to Sean record it there and somebody else recorded in your bedroom and somebody else recorded in your bedroom in it. And it looked rough and it felt rough and it was, boy, that interview you did with Sig is just seared into my memory. Wasn't that something? I mean, I honestly would put that moment against just about anything that ever happened in the show because we were actually playing the cards we had.

Yeah. And when the network tried to bring in the extra company, well, then they were actually. stacking the deck with cards that weren't really ours. Yeah. You know, and so it's, it's just another way to say, you can't script the Bering C. And to see Sig Hanson, as scared as I felt, made me feel it's okay. I'm still a man. I'm just scared out of my mind. Yeah.

And so is that guy. And so is he. So is the guy who we've seen for 16 years, like master and commander out there on the bow, the wind whipping through his ridiculous hair and him barking orders through a cloud of cigarettes. Man, there were tears in his eyes. I think he had had a couple of pops. His mother-in-law is living in the house. They're scared to death.

They're like sliding food under the door, basically. Yeah. Yeah, man. That was one of the most jarring yet real moments. And to have it happen on a crappy Zoom connection. Yeah. And then to see it on the air 24 hours later. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a good one. He was always so willing to go there, too. Because after you left, after after the catch ended, talking about survival, we went back and we pitched. I was like, all right, we can do a show for pennies on that. But we did a show called The Bate, which was basically after the catch without Mike. And what we did is we had, you know, that was all the same team. We used basically the same format.

But I played Mike Rowe, but I was standing behind the camera with. these stupid little whiteboard signs. Like instead of, instead of being able to ask a question, I had to like hold up, you know, ask him about spiders and then point at SIG and point to Jonathan. But the guys were so game.

And it was, it was really hard. It was unnecessarily so. But, uh, you, when we were bringing these guests and sometimes it was great and some, I remember one day I made a bad call and I brought in a conductor.

Because we were doing this. Our theme was leaders. And we said, what different kinds of leaders? leaders, you know, but in a teacher and, you know, and I said, a conductor is sort of a leader, and we're going to have them talk about leadership. The poor guy showed up and he was just way, way, way out of his league. He was so nervous. And I just thought, oh, my God, these guys are going to eat him for breakfast. And I pulled Sig aside and I just said, Sig, I made a bad call.

I need help. And he heard me loud and clear. He's what do you need? I said, I just, I need you to help this guy. And they rolled the cameras and the poor guy, Flop sweats, talk about broadcast news, just pouring off of his head. And Sig grabs his baton and he goes, show me how to conduct. And he just, it was not a great moment, but it was, but it could have been a disaster. And, but as a personal favor, he was like, whatever you need. Well, how interesting that you're trying to produce a show whose primary theme is leadership. and what you wind up getting is about the best example.

I mean, that's leadership 101. To get somebody out of their own head, you have to ask them not to do the thing you want them to do, but to do a thing that they do intuitively all of the time. And if there was a big lesson in dirty jobs, it was from an interview standpoint, don't try and be the host. Let the person who actually knows what they're doing,

be dominant in the conversation. And once you let a brick layer, once you talk to a brick layer while he's laying bricks, that's the key. That's when you actually have a moment. You know, so yeah, Sig knows that intuitively. So you got a conductor, put the, put the baton in his hand, let him conduct. What did you learn in that time, though? And in, like, did you make mistakes early on?

Did you over talk? In Dirty Jobs. the thing I learn most, and I think we probably get into this a little bit later, I mean, look, it's a classic an agneresis and a parapetia. It's realizing, wait a second, I'm not, it's not that I'm doing anything wrong in the course of being a host. It's the realization that I'm not really a host. Help me out with anagnaresis. I don't remember that. What's that? Anagneresis, the Aristotelian definition of a tragedy. basically says that all great plots are driven forward by discovery. In fact,

an agneresis is the Greek word for discovery. So the various anagneroses that characters experience in the course of a decent narrative are the glue that holds the whole story together and pushes the narrative forward. A peripatia is a form of anagneresis when our hero realized, that something fundamental that he believed was wrong. When Oedipus realizes, for instance, that this beautiful woman who he loves and married and had children with is his mother, that's a parapetia.

When he learns earlier in the play that it's a very nice thing to have wonderful sex with an older woman, that's an adding neurosis. When he finds out the older woman is his mother, That's a pair of it to you. So it's a discovery that changes the course of the narrative. Neat. Right.

And so, yeah, I probably talk too much on dirty jobs early on, but that was nothing compared to the moment I realized that I wasn't actually the host of the show. I was the guest. And once you go with that, then everything around you changes. And that's when I started doing a much better job at my job when I started. Was there a turning point for you? Oh, yeah. It's in the last chapter of the book. Spoiler alert, but it happens in the sewers of San Francisco. When I realized everything I thought I knew about hosting television, it's not that it was wrong. It's just that, dude, you're a better guest than you are a host. So stop thinking like an expert.

And I think most interesting people have moments when they realize, oh, I'm not what I thought I was. And this brings me into a fundamental Mike Rowe question. You always talk about going to these auditions for hosting. Now, I was an actor for 25 years. I never got an audition for a hosting. How did you fall into or land into that file in the casting director's office? I think it was the advent of nonfiction television. When nonfiction really became a genre followed by reality,

there were a lot more opportunities to host. Prior to that, most hosting gigs were game shows and talk shows. And there wasn't much call for people to just go out and start a talk show, which is why one of my first jobs, which Chuck and I talked about at length last week, was a game show. That's what most hosts were. But that's not saying, how did you get that audition? Like, who knew that you were post-category?

There are agents for that, for that particular. Are there really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're their whole agencies really at this point. You know, it's a, it's a giant chunk of performing. You know, Chuck and I were both, both fancied ourselves, actors for a while. He actually is one like you. I never really was. I, I acted like an actor. I did some plays, you know, I had had a fair amount. I was around it enough. But I don't know. I think it actually happened, Sean, with narration. Narration proceeded hosting. for me. Oh, wow. Okay. And then once I just thought of my, well, it's like, well, wait a minute. If I can narrate it, what if I sort of was on camera doing that? And then it was just a weird mix of commercials and infomercials. Look, for me, I mean, the honest answer was QVC. I auditioned for QVC. Had you done that before you started auditioning for hosting? No. Oh, wow. Let me jump in here for a second here, Mike, because I know that when you did the home show in Baltimore, you know, your new home where you would go to places you were, this was a hosting type job, you know,

where you are speaking extemporaneously, not memorizing lines as much as you are filling space, which was a precursor to what you did on QVC, which, you know, and so then when you start to put together a demo tape and you take your commercials and you take your stuff, it's sort of that way leads on to way kind of thing. Uh-huh. This is where, this is, this is the box that you've been put in because you kind of, you sort of rode the horse in the direction it ran. It was actually the other way around, Chuck, believe it or not. So you rode a horse into a box? I did. I, I, I, I, I,

no, no, no, I, uh, QVC was before your new home. What? QVC was my first hosting gig ever, aside from some local infomercials, right? I've known you for 180 years. I know, no, no. It's, QVC became before your new home. QVC was started in June of 1990. As soon as I realized that people would watch for three hours at a time. If people were willing to watch me talk about a gold bracelet for eight minutes, how long would they watch me talk about a brand new home? That was the question.

So one year into QVC, I met a guy named Dave Henniberry. who was a real estate guy in Maryland. And I don't know if you know this, Sean, but he had an idea. And he contacted me because he saw me on QVC. And I was thinking along the same lines anyway. It was one of those sort of like hive mentality. We were each thinking of the same thing.

But the idea was, what happens if I sit in a model home, in a new community that's impeccably decorated and interview the sales agent who's responsible, for selling thousands of those homes in these giant communities that are under construction many times for eight, nine years, right? How can we help the builders sell those homes? The answer was, you sit in a beautifully decorated model and say whatever you want for three minutes while you show the viewer pretty pictures of the community that's under development. People watched because they wanted to get decorating ideas, and it allowed people to get a better notion of what a community might

look like before they drove out and see it. Blah, blah, blah. Long story short, that show was on for 16 years. I hosted every episode, every week. We'd gang shoot them in advance. I thought it was the most boring show to ever air, but it was the number one show in its time slot after, it came on right after CBS this morning with Charles Caroll. The show just was huge. It was Carral's replacement, of course, at that point. And this was a local show in Baltimore, right? or the DC area? It was, yes, Baltimore, D.C., Pennsylvania and parts of Virginia. It was paid for exclusively by the builders on the show, which made it an infomercial.

But here's the crazy thing, Sean, in the history of infomercials, none ever had a rating. This was rated number one. Wow. It was rated so highly that we started selling commercials into the infomercial. Now, were you, content wise, were you talking about the? product or were you in the product talking about anything else? First of all, I always wore the same blue shirt and the same khakis. So you never knew if you were watching. You never really knew. Things were lean then. I was like zealig, really, just walking through these endless homes.

But there was, we talked about what made the construction interesting and what made the community special. It didn't matter what we talked about because what the viewer saw was pretty pictures. and they sip their coffee at 10.30 on a Sunday morning, and it was absolutely harmless white noise in the background. And you know what? And there's nothing wrong with that. There's something nice about this. TV can be such an assault. And you spoke recently about Bob Ross, you know, like, who would have thought that people would watch that? And yet you couldn't turn it. Talk about the, have you heard the expression watching paint dry? I mean, yeah. Yeah. There it is. And my teenagers know Bob Ross. You know, they, that's amazing.

He's been gone for how long and they, they love it. So what's the lesson, Sean? I mean, in terms of television, we're surrounded by producers and executives who are desperate to hold our interest. Desperate, measuring quarter hours, measuring it by the minute. That's the, that's the tough part. As a writer on these shows is when they start telling you, act forney, to do this because the quarter hour bump last week. And so often I've found even that they're very funny.

I have trouble getting actual numbers oftentimes from my executive producers at the network. For reasons I don't exactly understand, but they're, but judging something that way, I find is detrimental to making the overall thing something that people want to come back to. Man. Well, that's that's like looking at a, at a beautiful woman and evaluating her eyes and then her smile and then her figure. And so it's when you, when you break anything down into its component parts, right? You, you cheapen the thing. Right. And then isn't that how we get supermodels as opposed to, you know, as opposed to like, you know, somebody who is stunning because of who they are and right. And what. And that thing that you cannot, you can't define. Lauren Bacall, all right, a beautiful woman with a lot of parts that seemingly don't fit together until they do. Like her beauty is undeniable. There's so many beautiful people that aren't put together with beautiful parts, right?

Maybe shows can be like that, the good ones anyway. I just, I love the fact that Bob Ross and the joy of painting for us. Gumped its way into the cultural zeitgeist and completely made fools of many, many hundreds of producers and Gucci-type executives, right? It broke every rule. Your new home. Chuck, I don't talk about that in the book, and I haven't talked about it much, but that show sold over a billion dollars in real estate, a billion dollars. An infomercial that had a rating so high that we sold time to Lowe's and Home Depot. Which really isn't that what,

isn't TV in some ways an infomercial? It's like we're, we're giving you, it's content. That's what it is. It's just content can come in so many forms. Well, I want to be attached to it. Yeah, we've, Chuck and I talk about this a lot, you know, this, this difference. Like, where's the line between commercial television,

integrations and being in a commercial? Like I get it, micro sold out, right? I mean, I've been hearing that ever since I got on TV, certainly after the Ford campaign. It was like, oh, yeah, what a sell out. I'm like, well, A, yes, you bet you bet I am. But go back, my first gig in this whole stupid business was in the home shopping industry. I sold out before I had anything to barter, right? So I've always been interested in this difference between, but now he's making commercial.

as opposed to those pristine days when he was merely starring in a TV show that was paid for by commercials. Sure. So as an actor, you've been in commercials, you've been on stage, you've been on TV. Do you draw some sort of line between, like, where is the artistic integrity for you vis-à-vis the filthy lucre and the transactional nature of our business? Oh, gosh. I mean, I don't know. I wouldn't want to do anything that was duplicitous or patently false, but beyond that, I'm okay with it.

You know, I tried for years. It's funny, I tried for years. I did some television. I wasn't terribly good at it or I didn't have a knack for it. I did a bunch of law and orders. I tried to get into. Who didn't? I know, right?

I think I'm the only one who's never been on law and order. I lost seven cases. But I tried desperately to get into commercials, and I just couldn't do it. I would go to auditions all the time. And I didn't have that thing, whatever that thing is. And I had an old friend David Costable, who's now a big TV star. Oh, man, he's terrific, by the way. He's on billions.

Yeah. Chuck, you know who he is? He's, you know, which one? Wags. Yeah. He's wags on billions. Really? He made, he did so many commercials when we were working together.

It was like he was out, we were in Titanic and he was out all the time doing major. And I said, what is it about you? He would do these huge campaigns. And he said, he said, Sean, you, you can't care. I don't care. And that, and they love it. Shameless plug. Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter.

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we'll take a drink and go. They would go into these auditions. They can smell it on you if you do. Oh, God, yeah, I would try. In fact, my very first audition for Law and Order, I went in, this was many, many years ago, and I acted, and I put that in air quotes, but, and they didn't call me back again for years.

And I finally got myself back in the door, and I went to John Cunningham, who was the captain in Titian, Tannick. I said, John, I got, I got one more shot at this. What do I do? And he said, absolutely nothing. And I said, right. I know, but like, and he goes, no, no, no, not no, but it's just absolutely nothing. He said, I challenge you to go in tomorrow, just say the words on the page. Yeah. And not only that I book it, they, they, they, I got seven more, six more, you know. Wow. And that was it. It was just like, oh, you know, don't just do something, stand there, right?

Hold on, man. I'm writing that down. That's good. That might be the title. That could be, yeah. Actually, Chuck, I'm waffling right now, but don't just do something stand there. And I was in Mary Poppins, exclamation. I just can't decide. Think about Dolores. I'm thinking of Dolores.

Yeah. Okay. Oh. Just to validate your point last week. There you go. That's all I care for. Tom Frank literally said. When I asked him, it came down to me and Ryan Seacrest.

And he chose me. And I always thought he chose me because he felt sorry for me because I was wearing chucks and possibly ugly blue jacket. It's a good looking blazer. Good looking blazer, Sean. But he said, no, man, in the end, I just didn't think you gave it damn. And that, for whatever reason, it's kind of like dating too. I mean, what's more interesting?

Chicks dig it. Sorry, Dolores, but they do. They can smell the desperation. That's why bad boys do so well in the dating department. Yeah. Because the ladies, they, I don't know. They want to tame them. They want to do something.

I don't know. Well, one day, Sean, this is going to be, you know, miserable for you. When young beautiful Charlotte, your beautiful daughter gets out there in the world. But I'd be remiss if I didn't circle back around. A, to ask you how she's doing and be just to remind people of the, extraordinary. Oh, yeah. The extraordinary social media time, we had me. That was something out. And your daughter. That's when I realized, you know what, Facebook, there's a lot wrong with it. But every now and then, it's like a good guy with a gun. Every now and then. Returning the favor, every now and then, right? Tell us how Charlotte's doing and how she got famous.

She is certainly young and beautiful and she is out there and I have no She's in college, isn't she? No, my oldest daughter, Clara, is in college. That's her older sister. Charlotte is in high school. But yeah, she was 11 years old when she wrote that letter to my rich friend in Colorado. You know, she was trying to sell cookies. She wanted to sell 400 boxes or 100 boxes.

She's a girl scout, by the way. Yeah, I'm sorry. And I said, I said, you know, just right, I've got this rich friend, Jason in Colorado, he'll probably buy like five or six boxes. He's super rich. And he is. He's like a gargantuan rich guy. And today's his birthday.

And so she disappears with my phone. And then she comes back like for an hour. And she did it on my phone. So she did it with her thumbs. You know? And I said, she said, oh, I wrote it and I sent it. She's not someone who ever wants, like nobody else can check her work. So when people would say, oh, that couldn't possibly have been written by.

an 11 year old. I said, believe me, that's Charlotte. So I read the letter that she had written him, and it made me laugh so hard that I sent it to you and my two brothers, Dan and Kevin. That's it. And then next thing I know, you know, you marry it, back to Mary, she called and said, do you mind if Mike reads this? I said, I don't care. You know, I have no idea. We were sitting at Charlotte's basketball game. It's one of these basketball games where it's like two to two in the fourth quarter, you know. And all of a sudden, I looked down. on my phone. I said, Beth, my wife's Beth. I said, 10,000 people have responded, not just seen, but respond to this. 10,000 people, not realizing that it was just getting started.

And then it was like this hot wind. For several days, our family was walking into this hot wind. It wasn't always pleasant, you know, but it went from 10,000 to 50,000 to, and I think it got into the tens of millions, as I recall. It was many, many, many, many, millions. To just in case you don't quite know what we're talking about. Sorry about that. I'm jumping. The letter, the letter that Charlotte wrote to Sean's rich friend was a blisteringly honest critique of all of the different Girl Scout cookies that she was selling, from tag alongs to thin mince. She told this guy precisely what she thought of each cookie. And I think she put them in some sort of order, because by the time you got to the bottom. She was writing about what did she say like a wasteland of disappointment?

Something like that. And that was that was the line that everybody keyed into. And it was gluten free wasteland. A gluten free wasteland, right? I mean, this is 11 year old kid, telling the truth about the very cookies she wanted Sean's rich friend to buy. And she was always painfully aware. I shouldn't say painfully. She was always very aware. And I think this is important, is that the world record for Girl Scout cookies was set in that time. She was always very aware that it wasn't something that she did. It was a thing that happened to her because Mike Roe, you did the thing that Mike Roe does is you went to 10,000 feet and looked down at it.

And you said, what does this tell us about truth in advertising? Right. And you are the one who came up with that, which was funny because then it was right after the election. I guess it was right off the, it was January, it was February 2016, I guess. So we had just been through this like bruising weird time in the country. And, and so, and you zeroed in on this idea of truth in advertising. And then what the swirl that came behind it was unlike anything, I'm sure I'll ever see again. It was we were, we finally had to stay home for a while because there was photographers banging on the windows. I only got a portrait.

shot she needs to come out so I can get it and we weren't home and so my oldest daughter who was like you know at the time I think she was 14 is fending off photographers from post we're getting like you know people at church are mad and people were jealous and you know and there's also this incredible blowback of beautiful letters from people in Afghanistan because she was going to send money right she was taking a portion no she sent 13000 boxes to troops overseas that That was sort of the thing that made it go crazy. And then she ended up on Maria Bartaromo's show with, and I'm going to, I'm embarrassed. I'm going to forget the name of the woman.

She was a co-host on the show. It was Mike Huckabee, Maria Bartoromo, and the woman whose husband was the movie Sniper was made about him. Oh, Bradley? Bradley Cooper was in it. Yeah. I don't believe he was actually the sniper. No. Wait, are you telling me Bradley Cooper wasn't?

The American sniper. But anyway, so Chris, Kyle. Yes, yes. And so his wife, his widow, was, you know, she was so lovely and Huckabee was so great and Maria Bartoromo. And then like the next day, so she's on, you know, Fox business. And then the next day she's on NPR, like a game show. Wait, wait, don't tell me on NPR. And it was just she went to all quadrants of the politisphere.

There was an article about her in Le Monde in Paris. There was, you know, there was a full page article in the post. There was several articles, full pages in the post. But it was all, everybody used the term truth in advertising, which is absolutely your term. You know, or what you found it. Well, it was, I mean, this is really a great place to start the glide path in. Like, when you think about not being able to script the Bering Sea, when you think about SIG's inherent leadership ability, when you think about the 2016 election, and the last

five or six years when we're so long in certainty, but so short on facts and nobody knows who to trust and the erosion of our institutions and this whole crisis of credibility, your daughter waded right into the middle of all of that and created a teachable moment for the country. And part of my reptilian brain looked at what she wrote. And I knew it would be big. It resonated with me immediately, partly because out of the mouths of babes. Well, for sure, for sure. Right? Had this been written...

Because she did not, well, maybe now, but she did not find it funny in any way. No, she is with... That term was not a joke. No. And she is without guile. Without guile, yeah. Right? So she's just this sweet, honest little girl scout who would like to say,

sell a half a dozen boxes of cookies to a rich guy. And in order to do it, she takes her dad's phone, doesn't let any of her work get proofed, and fires off this blisteringly honest critique. You get it to me. I'm lying in bed. I read this thing. I just start laughing out loud. I immediately walk down to the kitchen table. I set up my camera and I read your daughter's words. And that's the video I posted. Yeah. And three days later, tens of millions of views. And then you then called us at one point. And I remember you just said, you were very quiet.

And you said, she has to respond. And I was like, oh, damn it. You know, we're so careful about what we're now going to take her through. But you were right. Like, people want to hear from her. So we, she gets her hair done and she sits down and she's nervous and she's 11. And, and I tried to make a video. And it was the most stilted, awful, like, oh,

Oh, I'm that guy. I'm that dad. No, I don't want to beat his dad. You're the Gucci producer in the trailer trying to tell Mike Roe what to say. Don't do that. So finally, I said, this isn't working. And I said, Charlotte, can you just talk to my friend Mike? And she looks up at me.

And again, that gile just drifts. There's nothing there. And she goes, do you think he'd like to see my teddy bear? And I said, I do. I do. And so she goes upstairs to get her teddy bear. As she's coming downstairs, I just hit record. and I stepped away.

And she created this. It was, I mean, you couldn't have possibly scripted it. It was like 61 seconds. And it was perfect. It was sweet. It was Mike. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who's done it.

It was honest and it was so without guile. And then that, you then, you did this great. You aired it, but you videotaped yourself watching it and you said not a word. Maybe at the end you said something of hope for civilization or something. and you just closed the laptop. And that got a million plus. That went bananas too. You know, a million people.

It was a crazy time. But it's so exciting and scary and incredibly teachable for what everybody was just so hungry for some great story. And that's why it was on every, I mean, she was on the family feud? Like all of these shows were just referencing it left and right. It's absolutely unbelievable. And your friend called me a couple years. ago who wrote a book. Yes, that's the, right, the book, there's a whole chapter about her.

There's a whole chapter about Charlotte and me. And he, he contacted us. He was, I mean, that's not a, I mean, he's as a friend now, but he contacted us and said, hey, I'm writing, I happen to be writing this book about honesty in business. Could I interview Charlotte? And, you know, at that point, I'm like, whoa, well, I don't know who you are. And so he said, no, you can be on the interview. And, and he was great. Yeah. It's a good book. I have it. And I feel terrible. because he asked me to write the forward, and I wanted to, but I couldn't because I had just signed a contract with Simon and Schuster. And it was complicated. But now I've got another title.

I don't know what to do, Chuck. Let's let's, you can't script the Bering C is the theme of the chapter and another version of truth and advertising. So now I'm thinking you can't script Charlotte McCourt would be a great title, but I don't want to make more trouble for your kid in high school now is to get more, you know, weird backlash. I think she's all right now. No, that was, that was, that was, that was, that was, that was, that was, it's own thing. That's 11. So you can't script Charlotte McCourt or don't just do something stand there or I was in Mary

Poppins. I just, do I get a vote? No. Okay. You know what? You know what? You know what? You know what?

Do you have Dolores's number? I don't. I don't. We're not going to call them. Good. Because if you, look, I mean, we're in. no hurry, we're actually a week ahead now. So if you're in, if you see her in church this Sunday, I'm going to go sing the 530 Mass in about an hour. So she comes to the 530 Mass. I'm the

cancer at the 530 mass. So she sits in the sixth row opposite the baptismal font. So, well, I got, I got two requests. Run these titles by Dolores. Go ahead and focus group them. Run them up the flagpole. See you. I know she's not going to want to go with the potty mouth one. Forget it. I don't think she's going to get it. She's probably going to be like, oh, you were in Mary Popper. Yes, he was. Yes. Yes. He was great. I saw it. Yeah, he was in Mary Poppins real for a long time. How long were you in Mary Poppins? Four years.

Wow. Yes. He was in Mary Poppins and then he was out of Mary Poppins and then he got back in Mary Poppins. And so she slides up banisters. My second request is when you're singing the mass. Yeah. Can you just slip in like a light motif from the Titanic just for me? Oh.

sure there she is towering high. It's a good, oh, you'll love it. Broad and grand ship of dreams. It's a great show. Oh, my God, it's so good. All right, I'm going to check it out. And as long as you're singing, can you hit me again with the refrain of a river of blood, please?

Oh, good Lord. You'll make me remember that? Yeah. Let's see. Uh, uh, uh, I figured how it goes. From my nasal cavity, I went sailing on a river of blood. There you go.

Oh, too good. That's what I was going to say is that somebody in one of the five-star reviews, and please leave one if you think we're worthy of it. Rescue Frog wrote episode 206, just listen to episode 206, Who's Your Granddaddy? thanks now I am humming river of blood yeah man a lot of people mentioned river of blood Sean wow wow so

now Dolores was convinced that no one was listening by the end so I'm gonna so who was listening something frog and to rescue frog rescue frog rescue frog rescue frog yeah oh I've heard I've heard a lot of feedback Sean a lot of people have heard that song yeah yeah a lot of it's very it's got a big hook in it man it's a big hook I was trying I was trying to go for like what would be, because originally we were going to chat about sad songs that were,

yeah, that made you feel good. And so that was that, that idea of a, of a really disgusting song sung by a barbershop. That was awesome, by the way. The barbershop thing was great. That was a great episode. I'm glad you liked it. We're over an hour here, Charlie. You want to wrap this up? You got anything, you got quite questions. Yeah, I got some questions that I can throw in here. What is the agoriasis and parapetia? It's called a parapetia, but it's also referred to as a peripity. Okay. I just want to say that we get a lot of comments about people's vocabulary being increased by listening to you on this podcast.

I have a master's degree in theater history, and I didn't remember that. For you. Well, good. The questions that I have for you, for you both, what's the greatest bit of generic wisdom you can offer a stranger? measure. Measure twice, cut once. Don't just do something. Stand there. I'll take that. I got to say that the reason that this question came to me, Mike, do you remember my niece Jessica's wedding? Oh, yeah.

And they had a box there and it was like, oh, write something on a card. The best bit of marital advice you can give and drop it in the box. Do you remember what you wrote? I don't. Do I want to? I think you do It makes me laugh You wrote Wipe until the paper is clean Wow After their honeymoon

She called me and told me that You know what Mike wrote I'm like probably something good I mean he's got a lot of really You know he's a smart guy And then she read it to me I just and that made me laugh Dolaus I'm so sorry

Oh geez a whiz Good stuff Here's a lightning round. You're stranded on a deserted island and you only get one of each. What is it? Quick answers. A movie? Blazing Saddles.

Oh, I was going to say that. Yeah, you were. I'm sure of all the movies in the world. Shawshank Redemption. Hmm. Young Franklin's time. Because it offers the hope of escape. Spoiler alert.

Good Lord. And he crawls through a river of crap. That he does. No, that's, you're thinking of, uh, Raising Arizona. No, no. He gets out of Shawshank by crawling through that giant sewer. The sewer, yeah.

He's literally baptized in a river of crap. That's right. Clearly, the lightning around is not. Come on, that next question. Let's move in a look. Book. One book. Oh, one book on the island?

Yeah. Oh, my God. Could it be a pop-up? George Washington's biography. I'd go with the way I heard it by Mike Rowe. It's a fascinating collection of memoir and mystery autobiography and biography.

Good, good choice. Alpham. Oh. Oh. Ah. James Taylor. J.T. You know, that's a good one.

My first thought was Revolver, but I, no, I'd want some compilation of the classics. Oh, there you go. Something that really holds up that you can't get sick of. Dvorzac, maybe. Symphony for the New World. You know, something like that. I don't know. Boston's first album is a pretty good one.

That's pretty good, but man, aren't you sick of it already? A little bit. Can you imagine you're just, you are there on the island with no speakers to listen to it on, by the way? What a way? No, you have to presume that you've got some speakers. You've got the ability. You know, you can listen. Otherwise, this doesn't think.

You ever do that? You put a pin in your teeth. And if you spin an album, you can hear it in your cranium. It's fantastic. It's how I got into the lead Zeppelin. Are you kidding me? No. Of course he's kidding you.

No. No, no, you put it on the turn table and you put a pin in between your teeth. In between your front teeth? Yeah, it takes a little practice. And you spin that thing and the vibrations, you can hear it. It doesn't, you know, the fidelity is not great in your cranium, but you can hear it. You better not be pulling my leg here because, you know, there are a lot of people in this. And it worked for real.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Never heard of this before. I think I ruined my brother's Led Zeppelin four, but this makes a lot of it. you want to go out and buy another turntable, honestly. Well, I know we're going to hear back from people who are like, you know what? I stuck a pin in my teeth. And all I got was a bloody gum.

That hurt my feelings. Speaking of a river of blood. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else, Chuck? How's the lightning gun round going there, John? Terrible. Terrible.

Last one. What snack? What snack do you keep? Jesus. Am I still on the island? Yes, you're on the island. All these questions about the island. How did I get on this island?

You can't... I just... This is not how a lightning round works. Is it an island by any chance in the Bering Sea, which we know can't be scripted? No, this is a tropical island. So it's like an endless... Does it need to be refrigerated? Do I need a refrigerator as well as a phonograph?

You can get anything that you want. You just can't leave the island. Okay. Well, then I would like my snack, which will be a... Mixed nuts, a bottomless bowl of mixed nuts, brought to me by the aforementioned Lauren Bacall in her prime. Go through that. There you go. What about you, Sean?

I answered. Cheez-it. Oh, all right. Great. Oh, yeah. I can't get enough. Can't get enough. All right.

That's all I got, Mike. Honestly, we had such good momentum going into this whole thing until the lightning round. The whole idea is that supposed to launch things. Is that really my fault? I don't get it. I don't know. I don't understand. We had so much wisdom with Charlotte's story and it all came together in such a great bow.

I learned some things I didn't know. She's such a cool kid, by the way. She's like super tall. She's way into model UN and she works for a U.S. congressman. She's like super. I mean, she's 16. She's all into politics and fascinated with history. It's pretty neat.

It's neat to watch that mind. She plays a brass instrument too, doesn't she? She does. She plays the euphonium. I knew I didn't know what it was. Yeah, I know. Yeah. It's one of those like, is that a tuba?

No. No, it's a euphonium. Well, you tell your daughters and your lovely wife that I say hello. Please apologize to Charlotte for the unintended consequences of that crazy, crazy time. Oh, I don't mean to overstate that at all. It was on balance. It was fantastic. But it was all an amazing ride.

But you just never know. You're like one minute. You got your. dad's iPhone and you're firing off a blisteringly honest review to a billionaire in Colorado. And the next thing you know, you're on, wait, wait, don't tell me with Maria Bartow. I mean, it's just, you can't script that. No. You can't script Charlotte.

You can't script the Bering Sea. And, you know, you probably can't script Mary Poppins either. But I'm glad you were in her, however briefly. Friends, you can listen to this book in the downloaded version over at Audible or wherever people do that. You can rate this podcast, which at this point I'd be grateful if you didn't do. And you can

hear more of Sean McCourt where right now. Is Barnwood still out there? It is. I'm no longer working on the show, but I still narrate to show. Oh, good. It is on the DIY network and it is it is in like season 13, I think. Yeah, man.

Yeah, I love that show. Forever too. Yeah. God bless him. Anything you want to plug, Hawk, or otherwise shamelessly extoll? No, we're all good. Oh, the Peter Cazadoy was the name of the book. Peter, right, right, right. And the name of the book was Honest to greatness.

Honest to greatness. Yeah, it's a great book about honesty. It's worth checking out. I enjoyed it. And if you're bored, Google, Mike Roe Charlotte Girl Scout cookies. Oh, that's fun. You can watch the video we're talking about. It really was funny.

And it really did open our eyes to the crazy power of whatever this is, man. Anyway, folks, thank you. Back next week, probably, with more of the same. Probably. And by more of the same, I mean, Sean will be back for the foreseeable future. Kidding. Sorry, Sean. We're not going to have you back. You know why? I didn't think so. Because you can't script the Bering Sea, dogg on it. All right. Give Mary Poppins my regards. Don't! Good to see you both. Thank you both. See you. See you. The ocean moves us. Surfing a wave or savoring the view. delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelpores. The ocean connects us. Visit Monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects. If you're a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility

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