The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 230: It's Not the Itching, It's the Chafing

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

Mike chats with Sarah Yourgrau, one of the producers of Returning the Favor, to discuss why so many people loved the show, why it won an Emmy, why it made so many people cry tears of unbridled joy, and why it's cancellation took so many by surprise.

Hello, friends, and welcome to the way I heard it. This is episode number 230, and it's called It's Not the Itching. It's the Chafing. My guest today is one of my very favorite TV producers of all time, and one of my favorite humans, too. Her name is Sarah Your Growl. And she is quite possibly the most positive, upbeat, optimistic, glass-half-full kind of gal to ever work in television. Sarah is so sweet that she makes my teeth hurt sometimes. But I love her. her anyway because her relentless, unwavering brand of optimism is not an act. Sarah Yor Grau truly loves her fellow man and is dedicated to making our world a better place by working on TV shows that highlight the best of our species. We spent a few years together, Sarah and me, working together on one such show the Emmy Award-winning program called Returning the Favor. For those of you who

don't know, returning the favor was a Facebook show that celebrated people who did nice things to make their communities a better place. We celebrated these people by, well, by lying to them, by making them think we were making a documentary, getting to know them, and then surprising them with an elaborate gift at the end of each episode. It was a feel-good show. Like Dirty Jobs, RTF was programmed by the viewers. We had a large, super-engaged, audience, and I figured I'd be hosting it for the next five or ten years, because honestly, I've never worked on a show that was more apropos to a divided country than returning the favor. We went on the air shortly after the election in 2016, which, as you might recall,

was somewhat contentious. And I think we did a really good job of proving that people on both sides of the aisle were still capable of kindness and decency. But then, to the surprise of Sarah and me and everybody else involved, including roughly two million loyal fans, Facebook canceled returning the favor after 100 episodes. So, full disclosure, the conversation you're about to hear might sound a little indulgent, worse. It might even sound in parts like we're pissed off about Facebook's decision to cancel our show at the height of its popularity. For the record, we're not, we're not angry. We're still a little confused, but Here's the thing. Not a day goes by that somebody doesn't ask me why returning the favor was canceled

and whether or not it's ever coming back. And the short answers are, I don't know and I don't know. But I do think the fans of the show might like to listen in on a candid conversation between Sarah and me, since, truth be told, Sarah was in many ways more connected to returning the favor than I was. And because really who among us today couldn't use a blast of unbridled sunshine called Sarah Yorkrow? With that said, this is episode number 230. It's not the itching. It's the chafing. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources?

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happens to be a great fit for your company in 24 hours or less. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hire. I can't believe we're going to start another one of these things by bitching about my producer and the audio, Sarah. But we're going to. Could you expect anything less than me? I am consistent in my performance.

These are just mere props for me. Where are you? It looks like you're in a bunker. Yeah, I'm in a pretty unfortunate environment at the moment. So I just returned from six weeks traveling where two weeks prior I moved into, I finally did it. And I moved to California, something I've been wanting to do for years after 10 years in New York. And so I'm in this beautiful home that I loved from all the hardwood floors, but from a listening perspective, it's just awful. Yeah, and I understand the place is full of Jews.

The face is bubbling with Jews. I've just returned from two weeks in Israel, right? A place that like, if anyone has family who's Jewish or mainly Israeli, the walls are merely a metaphor, right? There's no such thing as a wall or a door. And so now I have, that has followed me home. So it's this really sort of cultural ballet downstairs. How many people are in your house right now? At the moment, six to nine.

at any given moment. Six to nine. Six to nine. And so... Six to nine Jews. It actually never, never ends. And I am just, it's an identity crisis under siege. I can only speak to an extent. If they come up with a whole other vocabulary word, I'm out of the conversation. I'm just out. Like what? Like what kind of terms are being just thrown around right now? Okay, so I've given them a task because my father-in-law is a plumber, and a really, really incredible craftsmen with these things. So I'm like, listen, if you're going to be here, you're going to work.

And so they're right now dismantling. I don't know what they're doing. They're breaking all kinds of building codes, just classic, classic Israeli. So we have these conversations that like him and I, I'm very clearly a verbal person. I could talk to a while. I love people. And him and I, we like barely can be in the same room together because we can't speak. He has the shame about not speaking English and I have this sort of exhaustion about my Hebrew level, right? Because I'm very, I can go and order like, you know, a juice on the street and I can make everyone think I'm a local, but do not talk to me further than that. So I planned my wedding in Israel, as you know, Mike, and there was a whole genre of language I just had never used before. They didn't teach us that

in Hebrew school, right? I didn't know how to say, like, not in the contract or things like that. It toughens you up real fast. And the literal translations back to English are very abrupt. Like a lot of give me. I don't like that. Things like that. They don't have the same sort of padding. Their bowling alleys don't have bumpers on it.

Let me just say that. Yes, your people, I mean, not to stereotype shamelessly, but you're not really known for gilding the lily. There is a directness. But you, one of the first things I know, about you was just this annoying and chronic level of kindness and optimism and eagerness to both be understood and to make sure everyone around you is always comfortable. You're just so annoyingly nice.

I'll never forget the day we met on returning the favor. And by the way, thank you for doing this with me. I haven't really talked to anyone publicly since the show was canceled. And part of the reason is because for the life of me, I don't understand it. It's absolutely one of the most baffling decisions. I've, not to overstate it or make it personal, but the most baffling decision I've ever seen in show business. And so here we are, Christmas, your favorite holiday. And I thought, what better time to look back and reflect a bit with the most optimistic person I know.

here on the heels of her nuptials and her great traveling adventure, there's so much I want to talk to you about. But I love the fact that we just kind of stumbled into this thing around travel, because I think that might be part of the essence of who you are. Deeply, thank you, Mike. I always feel very seen by you. Even reluctantly, you've always seen me. Can't miss you. You're like stepping in gum. You're everywhere.

But it's always your favorite flavor, isn't it? I also felt this really, I mean, it's been this huge, there was a grieving process right after RTF because we were in it. The momentum was still rushing and gushing. And the people, I mean, the messages and the sort of almost desperate calls for action that they were just flooding inboxes with about why is this program gone? And this is such a huge part of our lives. And it was a movement. And I'd say it's taken probably six months to really wrap my head around. this identity shift, and then also now a real desire to return and continue in this wave in some way,

continue in this work, because it's who I am. I would venture to say it's who you are too. No, no, no, no. No, no, it's not. It's not, no. Not even close. I'm slightly nicer, I think, than most people in this industry, and maybe a little bit kinder than the average homo sapien, but next to you, you, I'm Jeffrey Dahmer. Next to you, I'm a mass murderer. You are a little ray of sunshine, and I didn't realize it right away, but returning the favor was, it was your show in a weird way. You were the dominant producer, and you wormed your way with so much screen time.

I've really never seen anybody just sandbag a host like that before, the way you just took over that show. You and I on camera had a really great vibe because you are unapologetically and aggressively and optimistic and I'm older than I've ever been, somewhat bitter, broken. And I think between the two of us, the viewer got a pretty honest sense that two people who really liked each other were out in the world to try and find people that you wish you had for neighbors. And that's why our little show wasn't really a show at all. It was a mission with cameras following us around. Can you see the Emmy in the background okay there, Sarah? Do you see it?

Clear as day, Mike. I see it clear as day. Good, because about two weeks after I got it, that's when they canceled the show. How the hell does that happen? I genuinely have no idea. And really, when it ended, Mike, I felt like we had this deep mission that we had started

and we needed to get, like, if anything, it has shown us, it is proof of concept that I will be doubling down on in some capacity. Let's use the data, the numbers, the boring terms that gets thick screenlit sometimes. But it's so much more. It's superseded its platform. It was beyond, it was a movement. It was really a movement. It was a speaking beyond a lot of the junk food that people get served to say, no, we actually want and demand something more nourishing. And we want to see our higher selves reflected back in us in an accessible way, not in this weird. You know, my favorite part about these last few years has been this really demise, I think, or this massive shift in our celebrity

culture, right? And this idea of like these are the gatekeepers for conversation or for impact or anything. And I think the power of our show, and you and I have talked about this at length, sometimes on camera, sometimes off, the power is that it's the people, that it's the everyday people. It's the people who also are grumpy in the morning at times or, you know, mark their almond butter is peanut butter. Or something, they're not these perfect creatures, but they're people who have, once you get a taste of what service can feel like, and once you get a taste of what it feels like to amplify a cause and a mission bigger than ourselves, there's just no filling that with anything

else, right? It's the best drug in the world. Yes, everything in moderation is where I come from. So I usually draw the line before things lapse too far into that earnest, sickeningly sweet. goal that you hold so dear. But for me, this will sound weird to people, I'm sure, but I genuinely love finding people I think you should know and introducing the country to them. That I think is my job more so than hosting shows. That's my job. It's your life. It is your whole thing. And so you were different than the other producers on the show, Jacob and Michael and all those guys. Chuck,

how much you knew about their background, but these poor bastards, they were working on, you know, real housewives. Real housewives, right? I mean, like, week after week after week after week. And so it's like the opposite of anything that I would ever watch with respect. And so to see Michael Rourke truly, you know, I mean, a TV guy for decades, all of a sudden get this show on the air. He pulled me aside one day.

I think we were at, oh, we were over in Richmond, not far from me here, giving away musical instruments. Music man. Yes, the music man. And he pulled me aside. He said, Mike Roe. He always called me Mike Roe. He's like John Rich. You couldn't call me Mike. He's like, Mike Roe. My family pulled me aside the other day and said that this project is the first time they saw anything that made them proud of me. And this is a man encroaching 50 at that time, right? Or no, in his 50s, right? Approaching. He waved goodbye to 50 five years ago. To watch the most jaded TV people weep during some of these reveals and just sit down after the show and just talk about what a joy it was to work on it. Honestly, that kind of thing makes my teeth hurt, but I couldn't help but be touched by it. And so we were really lucky, Sarah. We did 100 episodes of a show that snuck its way. into social media and was downloaded over 400 million times.

We had a good run. We had a great run. And to me, that's the deep inspiration of the run can continue. I have such deep hope that this is a transition happening on a larger level for show. I mean, we really changed the game in that in terms of being a show, I think predominantly because of your insistence at the beginning that this needs to be a transparent experience. We need to remove that fourth wall that makes it actually. feel accessible versus feeling like, oh, this is smoke mirrors, Hollywood. My minds can't make

that jump to doing it in my own life because it already feels so separate from. You removed that barrier, showed all of it, showed the sloppiness, showed the grind, because TV making is a grind, right? This is how it all comes together. But I'm just so inspired and revved up. I believe in people. I really believe in people. And once you get a taste of that, there's nothing else that's really palatable, you know? So if you take that basic belief that you just described and then kind of filter it through the world

we're living in right now, after a year and a half of lockdowns, I want to get your take because you have been all over the world since I saw you last. I've said from the beginning that people are dealing with this, whether it's Omicron or Delta or Alpha or the lockdowns or the loss of their

jobs or whatever, like the five stages of grief, but everybody's going through the stages at different speeds, to this day, walking around, you can still see it, right? There's anger, there's denial, there's bargaining. Oh look, that one's just depressed. That one accepted it. So what are you seeing out there in your travels?

And where are you, as if I didn't know, you accepted this thing about two seconds after it was announced? I'll first start with where I'm at and then I'll take you on a little tour because there is definitely a massive difference. And I do think the seven stages of grief is a really great way to aligns to view it. Five. Five.

Five. Don't make it worse. They're only five. They're only five. You of all people want more grief? I know. No, I think we need seven. We need abject despair and hopelessness.

You know I love shadow. I'd like to throw that in between. Why stop with depression? Yeah. Yeah. Depression, depravity, despair, contempt, hopelessness, and resignation. Mm. Beautiful. Okay, so the five, the strong five. The full five. Number one, I've been in and out of therapy

since I was eight years old because my mom's a child family therapist. So learning how to identify and name my feelings is a very, it's a practice. Like even if I was talking about a painting I painted and I had nothing to talk about, I learned how to talk about it. And so I'm really fascinated by resilience and optimism for me becomes a strategy. It's like hope is a cognitive function versus an actual arrival. It's really retraining. Can you hear them sawing outside?

I do. I do. Okay, let me just... No, no, it's okay, I like it. Let it go. Do we like it? We just feel... Yes.

It's become this intense sort of drill into my skull has become just like ambient noise for me. I want to see how a fundamentally optimistic soul handles that soul dead drip of environmental torture. I just want to see how you hold up.

All that to be said is I got my first reaction when all of this hit really right away. I feel a lot of sense of self in, I think you can only amplify your light gets built by the more time you spend in the shadows, right? That's actually how I can amplify it by being in the shadow and helping to spread that light more. And so I felt deeply sort of mission-centered and full of purpose and, you know, my tank filled during this time. And I think by virtue of like, listen, I got the privilege of having almost four years in my tank of seeing people, seeing incredible people, doing incredibly selfless

things, and then getting to award them and pour rocket fuel on whatever their missions were and getting to dive in there and seeing them light up. Even seeing them light up traveling around with you who was beloved by all, like so many of these people and gave such a sense of hope. I mean, my tank was full. So I have to acknowledge that to where I was at at that time. But I really believe, like, my optimism is a daily practice. It's a daily choice. It got fiercer and stronger throughout this whole time.

And now I feel like more than ever people are wandering these five stages of grief. I'll speak specifically when I went to Israel. People looked shell-shocked. They looked traumatized. And they looked tired. I can see a degree of fatigue in everybody. that I meet, regardless of the countries that I'm in, because there is just like, even the managing of that change, the constant, I mean, life is nothing but transition, right? And it's our

relationship with change that determines what sort of life we're going to live, right? But this has been an incredible amount of change in such a short amount of time. And not everyone has had the resources to deal with it. And, you know, everything we know, all the pretense around that. Let me talk you through what I felt in the countries I went to. I was filming in Lisbon. Lisbon is hold it out. Portugal, it was as if they were not. I don't want to speak to anyone's experience who's been living there and had another experience, but I do tend to feel like those who live by the sea, they have a lot of nature, they have a breathing space. Hold on a sec, Chuck, just by way of explanation, part of the reason I wanted to talk to Sarah today was probably four or five

months ago, I think I was down in Florida doing something, and I was in a Marriott, and it was like two in the morning, and I was all jet lagged, and I'm flipping the TV around. And there is this woman being shot on this long lens, like walking in slow motion through fields. And I don't know where she is, but she looks familiar. And I'm like lying there. I'm like, Goddammit, that looks like Sarah. That's so weird. I look so much like Sarah.

And then the woman starts talking in voiceover about what it's like to wander through the Azores and Portugal. I'm like, that's Sarah. So she's one of these bonvoy travel specialists now. telling her story. You know, I was so tired, but I couldn't fall asleep now. I'm there in a Marriott watching Sarah. I'm like, what is she doing? Why is she in the Azores?

Anyway, go ahead, because obviously, you said Lisbon, that must have been what you were filming over there. This is hysterical. First of all, absolutely hysterical. I was looking for the porn channel, and there you were. Exactly. Walking through Portugal. What a bummer.

The opposite of what you were looking for, no doubt. Telling you some sort of slurring. slow humdrum about like I don't want to hear about wheat fields and family trees that's not what I'm looking for at two in the morning and a marriott brown chicken brown cow

I'm looking for a mini bar in a little quiet time I got that dead ball going on my door I'm ready to rock do not disturb do not come in here now What has happened? I'm going to be popping up for the next two years.

I would keep scanning through your channels quickly and with caution. It was beautiful, by the way. All kidding aside, it was beautifully shot, and you told a great story about, I think, if I remember the Jewish diaspora, right? Or diaspora, your people all over looking for your roots. Did you find them? Totally.

I found aspects of it. So my family traced back, to good old 23 and me and some help from ancestry.com, I have found that my family traces back to the Azores. And there's this one synagogue that's left on the Azores. And my dad, who used to own a documentary film production company back in the day, did this voyage across over there and built these sort of initial relationships for me to be able to go in there. And the aging process of every year of your life, whenever you're confronted more with your mortality, I get everything gets more poetic.

You have more interest and curiosity to figure out where you're from and connect you to something bigger. We found that we're from this small enclave of Jews that were kicked out in the Inquisition and were underground, really. We're probably masquerading as Christians at that time, or Catholics, and we're really observing and keeping Jewish tradition within these beautiful hills and in these like sort of cave temples

and all these places. But what really struck me and moved me and probably impacted me most about even just studying this is just how as anyone in the diaspora story is the only thing that maintains, right? Like half of your, most of my family was in Western Europe during World War II.

Jews, it wasn't exactly like an ideal time to be there. So you lose a lot of... Exactly. So you don't have the same tangibles to return to. And I could argue most people don't have that as it carries to the line, but story is really just what maintains. I'm sure these things get amplified. Someone draws a little something extra on a cave wall.

Larry's always exaggerating, adding another cow to the dowry. I mean, these are stories that my grandfather, my dad's grandfather told us through time and through that game of telephone. It's just been so powerful to travel that area with another set of eyes and a sense of sort of connection. because America is so, we're such a hodgepodge. We're all from somewhere else. And we've arrived here and I would argue all rallying behind this idea,

the ideal of America that we want to defend, it's an idea. But we're all from so many different places and I'm seeing us develop more of a, I don't know, relationship with that as our world gets more global. It's just happening in real time for me. So I'm sort of in it and observing it simultaneously. So by and large, it's still fun, right? Losing returning the favor was kind of a shock. I worry about some of the other people who were involved in the show

because I know it really was like, wait a second, you seem to have just kind of doubled down on being Sarah. Are you expecting this thing to resurrect itself in some way, shape, or form somehow or another? I would very much love that. I just can't see. Any scenario I have about the future that's authentic and happy and full and real and me, it has huge amounts of RTF in it, right?

Whatever new manifestation of that and I feel like I kind of feel this responsibility to continue moving forward, right? I have the power and the energy and the interest. And on a selfish level, nothing that makes me feel more full and whole than elevating the right people in stories, getting people to rally around that. And mainly getting people, I think, the thing that makes me most exhilarated,

you know, I'm a musical theater personified. Sorry, Chuck. You're not as probably used to the... No, I grew up. Oh, yeah, you did a play in Israel. I did, yes, yes, yes. And on Broadway. Oh, you're my people.

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Learn more at netseweet.com slash mic, and while you're there, pick up their free business guy, demystifying AI. It's filled with super useful information, and again, it's free at netsuite.com slash mike. That's netsuite. Or I'm yours. What I've been really like during this whole year because I also wanted to sit back and the world is changing rapidly, right?

The stories that we're needing and people are tired, right? People are really tired right now. I'm exhausted, yeah. Exhausted. And so it's a little bit of a different world where we were riding that upswing with RTF and now people are just needing that rest on the plateau for a moment. And then we get our energy to climb another mountain or whatever our next thing is. RTF made me realize we can do things so differently. We can do things so, so differently.

And I want to inspire people in whatever way I can, whether it's amplifying stories or sharing different messages or just rallying my energy behind. I want to ignite people's sense of agency to feel like as an individual, they do have the ability to impact a collective. They recognize the power of what it means to start in their community and at home. And what an act of kindness really can do beyond a buzzword. When was the moment when you thought, oh, crap, this thing is bigger than I thought. Maybe we got a tiger by the tail.

At one point, we sort of stopped needing words to connect with each other. And there was this real improv magic of just understanding each other and the ball throwing back and forth and black and forth while we were building something bigger than ourselves. That was just such a nourishing. I don't even know a better word for it, but just such a full, wholehearted, it's the feeling you get probably Chuck when you're performing and you have your lines and you're in that moment and you've built a paradigm in that reality

with any of the other players on the stage. And it's really this special paradigm that you've built that all the noise of the outside world melts away and you're just present. You're just focused so deeply on these moments. Because I'd done so many shows before this, so many. You have to really work at it. that. And you're usually alone, kind of the one trying to not be negative while everyone

chained smokes their cigarettes and has 96 cups of coffee. I can tell you, as an observer of this, seeing you, I don't remember what the episode was, but I do remember the first time I saw you interacting with Mike. And I was like, oh, wow, because it really was special. You guys had a great chemistry straight out of the gate. And let me just say this as a guy who doesn't like, I can be sappy, I suppose, but you mentioned before about how breaking the fourth wall was such an important thing. Mike insisted on that and said, this isn't a feel-good show. This is the making of a feel-good show. And I think it made all the difference in the world because I never watched an episode of this show that didn't get me a little misty at the end.

And usually it was because it was so casual, a lot of back and forth, because we were seeing the warts in all aspect of it, all of a sudden when something real got there, it was like, oh, wow, you know, this is really good stuff. It was just beautiful and I never should have gone away. I agree. And I do think, though, that there's, the audience has voted, right? They voted with their attention in a time that's the only kind of metric that really matters in real impact way. They very clearly showed up for that. It showed us that people are able to draw a connection between what they're observing behind a screen to their real lives, right? Like I always said we're an online show that creates offline action. And it's the constant, which, you know, I do attribute to Mike completely for

holding that cultural pillar that he sort of continued, that torch passed along to me as well, it's now also like really maintaining that and demanding that, that it's got to feel like you've kicked your shoes off and you're curling up with something warm on a friend's couch. And it's got to be a Trojan horse. Like, we need to be entertained. Edutainment is real. I learn best when I'm laughing. I can relate. And what do they say that laughter is like another form of prayer, the highest form of prayer, even if we're telling fart jokes and I'm one of one women with 900 guys, but I would argue that I could hang and handle it. I have a twin brother. I'd argue that you can fart too. I've been in the cab with you, that Fort Explorer.

We were coming back from that Mexican joint. We were running late. You were super excited. You're barking out orders and suddenly I'm like, you want to crack a window, Sarah? I mean, honest to God, what happened? Family baby. We lived. We lived on the road. People said, Chuck, in regard to the dynamic you're talking about, that the show worked best when we finally let Hudson be Hudson, the production company, and let Mike be Mike. But the truth is, Sarah was somewhere between the two of us. She was the connective tissue that allowed a pretty traditional production company who wanted

to do a fairly straightforward. show. And by the way, that's what Facebook wanted to. Right? They wanted to move that bus. They just wanted to go straight for the feels. But you can't get straight to the feels without manipulating people. And so I didn't want to do that. And that was the tricky balance. And Sarah is actually, Sarah's filthy, Chuck. I mean, you don't get it.

She had a filthy sense of humor. She's really inappropriate. She'll fart if she feels like it. She'll tell off-color jokes. But she's so sweet. And she's so relentlessly optimistic that that's what makes her interesting. But finally, to give credit where it's due, I'll take my share of it because the idea of a documentary camera or a BTS camera originated with dirty jobs. The smartest thing I did on that show and the only reason it's coming back next month is because we got that component introduced into the production back in 2005. It wouldn't have happened here but for Mary Sullivan.

You know Mary, Sarah. You love Mary. Who doesn't love Mary? I love Mary. But I passed on this show three times. No, hell no, and are you out of your mind? Stop asking me, right? There was just no way I'm going to do a feel good show.

No way in the world. But it was Mary who pulled me aside and said, look, dummy, just do the same thing you did with dirty jobs. Just document the making of the show. Everything else will be what it is. I didn't know what that meant. But she was right. It's so difficult today to get a hit show in general, as everybody on this call knows. But to get a hit show that's unique and not derivative, that's nearly impossible.

And to get a hit show that's unique that has two million followers on Facebook who every single week are going, hey, that was great, what about this? What about him? You know, to have the show programmed for you by fans of the show. That is insanely rare. It's lightning in a bottle. It's very weird to get. And that's why I think we were all surprised when Facebook said, no, you know what?

I think, you know, we're good. We did 100. We want to do something else. It's their sandbox. No harm, no foul. But, boy, it was just a straight up surprise for anybody who works in this industry, as we all have, to have a network slash platform go,

wow, yeah, that was amazing. I guess we're done. What? Done. I would argue there was harm and foul. It was just such a missed opportunity. Here's where the truth sir comes out. Yeah. The difference between this show, everything you just said, I agree wholeheartedly, completely, and we were flabbergasted.

And as we all accelerated through those stages of grief, everyone's at different levels with this whole RTF community. It felt like this isn't even a show. This is about real people. There are real people now who are missing out on the ability to be amplified. They're real people who need this lift. This is where all the television money should go to. These are the people who need that endless amount of advertising cash or whatever it is. This is the stuff that's really moving the needle.

And if you want to walk your talk, there's no better treadmill than RTF, right? We had a formula going. But it was about real people. And it still is about real people. And that makes it bigger than my sadness or big. bigger than my frustration or bigger than my loss of that paycheck? Absolutely. Look, first and foremost, we're just friends and we're talking casually and off the cuff and honestly.

But I know that the fundamental feeling for this whole thing is one of gratitude. We were given an extraordinary platform, the chance to reach a billion people and a lot of money. We gave away millions of dollars on this show. And we all got paid fairly. I don't mean any of this to sound critical of Facebook. They gave us an extraordinary platform and a hundred swings at the pinata. And we hit it every time. It's just that Facebook is not a network.

Facebook is a different animal. I don't believe, I mean, I can't speak for them, but I don't think they looked at this as a show either. They looked at it as a thing to do for a while. And then they need to do another thing. And that's okay. We just weren't used to it. Unfortunately, neither were the fans. I don't know about you, but not a day goes by where I don't hear from dozens of them.

I mean, literally dozens. When's it coming back? Totally. And also, how is so-and-so doing? Do you keep up with any of them? Totally. You're absolutely right. And I will also say that Facebook gave us tremendous freedom.

My critique is more of just, it's an optimistic critique because I do think there's new portals open and new. We've challenged some convention these last few years. You've been challenging conventions since 2005 before that, but we've challenged some convention that makes me think there are now other ways to move around. There are other gatekeepers. There are other ways to get back to the people, which really matters. But Facebook did give us tremendous freedom and an amazing platform for that. I get messages like that all the time as well. I do my best to keep up. I have insane Google Docs of everybody that I know, any community organizer, even someone who maybe helped us or assisted a do-gooder or insider and their wife. And just little notes you'd make it like

a hostess stand, you know, like Larry, blue eyes, dad jokes or something like that. He just something that clusters. And I'm just looking at this document and it's this beautiful mosaic of the other America that's very real. and that's alive and is true, the multiple truths of all times, but there are so many do-goaters in this country, and I argue everyone's capable of it. You know where I stand. I know where you stand.

It's a bit like I watched It's a Wonderful Life Yesterday for maybe the 500th time in my life. It gets me every time, and I see something new in it every time I watch it. I think of that movie so much, or I thought of it so much, when we were filming this series, because we really are connected. And sometimes it's not the reward. It's not the money that we were giving these people.

It was just paying attention and putting them up on that platform. Think about Luke Mickelson. That may have been the episode where I met you. That was my first episode. Twin Falls. Yeah. Twin Falls. Was it?

It was twin. Mike got out of the van and I met him in real time. Yeah. On camera. Yeah, and I started correcting her in the car. Like we're driving along and she's in the back seat. She goes, well, our honoree this week is especially good. And I'm like, no, Sarah.

They're all equally good, okay? You're going to suggest this guy is special. You might as well just say the rest of them are dog crap. Okay, don't do that. She's, okay, okay, okay. And then she said something else that I correct her again, just because I'm just seeing where the line is with this woman, but the line is nowhere.

You can get away with anything, with Sarah. She'll roll with anything. My point was, I love it. You loved Luke Mickelson. Your enthusiasm for him. This was the dynamic that I wanted in the show that I hadn't experienced yet. I wanted a producer who was jumping out of their skin with enthusiasm to introduce me to someone. And that's what you got immediately.

And you did. And then we did. And then it goes on the air. And this guy went from, what, eight chapters when we met him? I think he has almost 600 now. That's unbelievable. I remember the year after he was asleep in heavenly peace. This is the guy that makes the bunk beds for poor kids and really rough parts of town. Kids have been sleeping on the ground. Every night in this country, millions of kids sleep on the floor. They don't have a bed. It's incredible. And this guy, Luke Mickelson, just said, nope, not in my town, started making beds. He had eight chapters when Sarah introduced me to him and now I think he's well over 500. I don't know how many. You think about the impact of that day,

that one day, that one meeting, and then returning the favor goes on and his entire world changes. That's not a TV show. It's not a TV show. And you see it, like I remember, I think we shot that the following year, less than a year later, I was living in New York and I met him in New York down by Central Park where he was being nominated. I came in with him and his wife, Heidi, an amazing woman. And they invited me as their guest because I was living there to attend. He was nominated for a CNN Hero Award. So he gets to be put in other camps and he gets to be recognized. And it was just that beautiful acceleration of, I've always had a strange time with the people that we amplify culturally, particularly after, you know, no shame in escapist reality television around like in the Bravo world or things like that.

I sometimes feel sad about the over emphasis we have on that with the under emphasis. of some other people, like people you would highlight in dirty jobs, right? And so this show proved that that wasn't just a sweet, lovely, charming little concept that actually could make you money on a bottom line level in terms of people being interested in it and it really actually inspired offline action, right? It was not this, that fourth wall was breaking. It engaged the viewer. It was a reciprocal process, right?

The creation of the art, the reception of the art, putting it back in. It was just really, I can't think of it. of another example of that show in any genre? No. Right? That really broke that. We very nearly screwed it up a couple of times early on because you just mentioned a four-letter word that really chaps my ass, hero.

It's used all the time. And in my opinion, it's misused more often than not. Heroes are real and heroes are important. It's something more than simply being kind and good and big-hearted. And that's part of the reason I was kind of a jagged little pill on returning the favor because I didn't want to turn these people into heroes. I just wanted to thank them for being slightly better than the average bear. Producers have a hard time with that.

Producers want the hero. We want the incredible. In the first season, I remember sitting in on some production meetings and hearing things like, well, this guy's doing great work, but he got us some trouble years ago, did a little time. So we really can't put him. out there as the embodiment of the kind of person we're looking for. And I was like, that's exactly what I want to do. I would like to show people that even the fallen and the flawed are capable

of doing something good. Arguably more, more capable, right? When you felt what it feels like to have the fall, you can empathize with the people in that, you know, you need to feel all the full range to be able to give the full range. And you need to show the full range. I'm suspicious too. I'm not sure This is a sentence I'm allowed to say. I'm suspicious of diversity for diversity's sake. Whenever I see every box checked in just the right way, it makes me think, okay, well, somebody's checking boxes. But on this show, it was really important. And we featured many people of color.

We featured people of all orientations. We featured, I think, as many men as we did women, maybe even more. And then, from my own personal bias, Sarah, we leaned into cops. We leaned into the military. I mean, how many shows did you and I do looking at organizations who were wrestling with PTSD and finding alternative ways to move that needle? I'm damn proud of that. And I'm honestly more proud with every passing month when I look back on that.

What was your moment? If there's one honorary for you, and I know that's a stupid question because just this morning somebody hit me with the old, what was your dirtiest job, Mike? I did a satellite media tour this morning. Because as you may have heard, the show's coming back on the second of January. 8 o'clock. This January, January 2022? It's coming right now, just a couple of weeks. Yeah.

Yes. It's back, man. Unbelievable. But the people have been starving for it. I think so. toss them a snack. That's it. Yeah.

What the country needs is more of me. I don't want to say you're a hero, Mike. But I'm at a loss for another word. I'm right with you, Chuck. I'm at a loss. Exactly. So who is it? The person who I feel like, so I can't say Luke, because that was very clear.

That was my first thing, right? That's the thing that rips me wide open. And I was like, and I kept questioning, is this really as wonderful as it seems? And it was every single time. I had the ability, Chuck, to be able to, like, use my superpower of warmth and genuine curiosity for people to actually connect them with money, right? I was like, I got to put my head down, I got to double down, and I got to work my ass off. It's not about me.

It's for, like, I have an opportunity to do something bigger. Golf course melts my heart. There it is. Bill Dunson. Meltz my heart. Bill Dunson was one of the few phone calls I took when I got married in Israel, Chuck, in 2019, right, for the world shifted. and Bill Dunson was one of the only phone calls I took from abroad for him wishing me off down the aisle. Bill Dunson, on paper, we were all like,

what the hell is this? A golf course, like defending the right to have golf courses is great. But when you're putting it against the opioid crisis and foster care and homelessness, you needed to do a little more digging and you needed to be convinced more. And this man became emblematic for me as this really understanding what kind of impact you have on your community with just community care

in general, like truly a do-gooder. This is just to help the listener out. Yeah, please. He was 89 at the time, I think, maybe, and he lived on a mountain in the back of beyond. What town was it, Sarah? It was right outside of Spokane, Washington. Yeah. He lost his brother not too long before we met him, and those two were just thicker than

thieves. They lived together and they built this municipal golf course together on their property, which they opened for free to anybody who wanted to golf. And they maintained it. They cut all the grass. They took care of the greens. They did everything. And they did it all for whatever donations you could leave behind. And I remember when they pitched it to me, I was like, this sounds perfect. And to your point, they were like, yeah, but it's not like he's curing cancer. I'm like, no one's curing cancer. What he's doing, he's making every day a little bit better for the people who share his geography. And so that's awesome.

Let's go meet the old guy. And man, you're right. That day was genuinely fun from sun up to sundown. Seriously, from the moment we landed and I scooped you up out of the minivan and I hopped you in my golf cart and we rattled down the hill. This man, he's just, he's. someone who makes you believe, if you forget. He really is this just pure-hearted, giggly, goofy. He's human. He'll tell a dirty joke. He'll be playful. He's just warmth.

He's the best of us. That to me becomes one of the more powerful episodes because it's so deeply accessible. And it reminds you that all we need are people to come alive and whatever makes them feel alive. And that's the stuff we need. We don't need you to go out there. Like, I don't have the skin to be in the foster care community. I wish and I salute them.

I don't have the skin. Right. I don't have the skill set for a wild firefighter. I don't have the courage. But I do have warmth and I can love on my neighbor and I can be generous

when the opportunity presents itself. And that's the stuff we need from people, right? You know? It's the danger in swinging for the fences all of the time as a producer. You want the hero, you want the big story, you want the home run.

What you really want to do is build a hit show. And the way to build a hit show is with singles and doubles. Just keep putting runs on the board. And Bill Dunson was just a solid right down the middle. It was, I mean, that's a great point. We featured some people who go so far and beyond, who are so altruistic,

who are so completely given over to their cause that it's a little unrelatable. The average person looks at that and goes, I could never dedicate my whole life to that, but anybody could do what Bill did. And to be 89 and to be so present, he touched a lot of people. And then remember, he did something else pretty extraordinary,

something that makes a show like this matter in ways that we often don't think. about, but he died. Our friend Bill died, and he died not long after we profiled him. And the letters I got from fans, the letters I got from his family, from people who knew him, who were just, Mike, thank you. Thank you for shining a light on our friend. This will happen, unfortunately, to you more and more as you work in television and you get older and older. There's a guy who we in this episode, this run of Dirty Jobs coming up, who died a month after we filmed him. No one's met him yet, and people are going to love him.

And then I'm going to hop on after the show and explain what happened. And so if you're going to do a show that's real, if you're going to do a show about life, then you're also ultimately going to do a show about saying goodbye too. 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 our economic independence, just like the business of making things. American Giant knows this, which is why they committed themselves 16 years ago to make

all their excellent clothing right here in this country. It wasn't easy, but they did it. They sourced locally grown cotton, and they built factories in towns across the nation where they could hire hardworking locals who cared about making a quality product. And then they went about the business of gently reminding people that when you buy a piece of clothing from American Giant, you're not just buying a high-quality sweatshirt or T-shirt or another pair of jeans. You're investing in a local supply chain. You're supporting communities from the Carolinas to California.

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American giant American made. American giant American made. And I'll tell you, man, if we're going to talk about reality, my very first trip to Dutch Harbor on Deadliest Catch, I went to six funerals. There have been probably 15 people who have been featured on dirty jobs over the years who have died. And when Bill died on returning the favor,

I'll tell you, I was sad, obviously, but I was also just reminded of the incredible reality of the form in which we're working. Right, right. And there's nothing, I mean, there's no greater muse than mortality. Nothing. There's nothing that drives you harder than mortality. In that way, I think that I would venture to say cautiously, these last few years have been a gift, even if it's been a painful one at times.

it really wakes you back up. And the spirit gets amplified after it's left the body, too. There's this way of feeling like you want to honor someone who's made that impact on you. I feel like that I feel motivated to continue when I know that person's not doing the legwork, right? It's like being part of a school project where you've been kind of slacking and then your all-A-student gets sick and you have to rally. Somewhere along there, that's a good metaphor. To show made me feel just we weren't alone. Separation is a myth.

We're so connected. We walk around in different bags of skin and different experiences and we have different narrative arcs and different resources. When you tap into that core part of people that's so deeply human and the messiness of it and the slippery playfulness of life that it can be, that's the stuff that made everything melt away that RTF, I really feel like, narrowed down on. And I would say you protected that. Because we came from a world where I was working a lot of jobs, the UN prior to this,

I hadn't worked on the same kind of shows, but the shows that I had worked on, you didn't have another option. You almost didn't question it. There wasn't a pushback. This is just we get this sloppy, weird model. We have to plug it in. This is the way it is.

Keep moving, robotically. And you really rewired my brain in that way. And the show then continued to reinforce that as a truth and a possibility. So this full circle, I'm more an RTF, and I'm so fueled to continue. the work in the world. Like, I just feel so inspired by that. Good. I'm glad you do. I think at this point, you're definitely too young to be bitter and broken, but you're maybe too young, too, to, I don't know. The thing about the moments you're talking about is that you can't really appreciate them until some

time goes by. Like, I knew that Bill was super special when I met him because he reminded me of my granddad. And my granddad is the reason dirty jobs went on the air in the first place. And my personal feeling about the way we've become disconnected from the elderly in our country is, well, it's personal and it makes me angry and it makes me, I feature a lot of old people on the shows that I work on whenever I can. You still don't know. You have to shoot it and then you have to leave and then somebody else has to take it and they have to edit it and then it has to sit and then it airs. And then you still don't get to decide. The viewers get to decide.

You just put it out there. You make the best guess you can. I felt pretty sure that people were going to love Bill, and they did. I've been wrong before, too. I bet heavily. It's humbling, Sarah. You just don't know. Right now, I've got a ridiculous song on the charts called Santa's Got a Dirty Job.

Right? Now, that thing turned into a thing. Last week it was the most downloaded song in the world. I did. I was half in the bag when I did it with the guy I just met and we just did it as a fundraiser and it turned into this giant thing. That's the most micro sentence and experience I've ever heard in my life. What you just said, that entire experience from top to bottom.

Unbelievable. Yeah. I mean, if it's not that, I'm in a marriott flicking around and I see Sarah walking through a field of flowers and I'm like going, what? How much weirder can my life get? But the point is, I've got treatments around here that I've written years ago and I've got pitches for all kinds of ideas that I really think are good and I've worked on him and I've done everything I can to make them work and they don't work. The stuff that works is the stuff that, I don't

know, you just never know which piece of mud is going to stick. I think the point I was trying to get toward was, I can't believe you brought up Bill. That was going to be my answer. But what about Mama, was Abigail? Ma Harper. Ma Harper for crying out loud, Abigail, she's from the stand. I'm conflating fiction with nonfiction. Ma Harper. Ma Harper. I still talk with Ma Harper. I haven't talked with her probably in, well, now it's like probably seven months.

She is kicking and striving. Ma Harper is a delicious human being. Ma Harper ran a, oh, I can't remember the name of it. It's in... I'm stuck on delicious. I don't know that you can describe humans as delicious, Sarah, especially ones who run a kitchen. If you're Jeffrey Dahmer.

We're switching positions. I've been spending too much time with the Dahmer family, maybe, over the last few seasons. Christmas with the Dombers. This is with the Dombers. That's the next hit. Ma Harper is a woman who understood how to give love and really was relentless with not,

she didn't give up on souls. She ran a kitchen and it was employed almost, I think, exclusively by. ex-cons. She hired ex-cons to do everything, to cook, to wait, and she was like maybe 140 years old. Truly. My Harper's Creole kitchen. San Antonio. San Antonio, of course. She ran a tight ship. She was sweet. She was ancient.

We gave her some money and threw her a little surprise party at the end. I was touched by that one too because the enthusiasm and the gratitude of her own family and the people who came out there. It was another one of my favorites because it was small and big at the same time. It was micro and macro. It was a good one. That was mine as well. Part of my job was to sort of get boomeranged out into this community

and I had to sort of go build relationships and build trust with the community. So I sat in a lot of church pews and diners and living rooms, which you know I feasted off of. I love that. I love that. Anthropology Major. With Maherper's Kitchen, I went in there and I was immediately dancing some sort of,

sort of local dance they were doing in her kitchen. We were just dancing around there for so long. And this woman is tiny. She's a polypocket of a human being, truly. And she's just booming with life and vibrancy. And she immediately feels like everyone's grandmother. But just that special kind of love where you can't get from. And she just never gave up on a soul. She's had about 900 strokes. I don't know if any of her organs are the organs she was born with. No. Like this woman is resilient and she just kept her kitchen open. I mean, it was not a for-profit business at the end of the day, even if it was functioning as that. If you needed a hot meal, you came to Ma'Harper. If the world felt cold and lonely, you came to Ma' Harper. She'd give you tough love. She'd give you

a meal, but more than a meal, she'd give you a job, right? You don't want to be fed. You want to work. You want a job. She was incredible. You just felt so at home with her. Guys, my computer's dying one moment. Classics. Computer's dying. Classic, of course. She's a producer. She's been operating with a computer that's not plugged in this whole time. She's very enthusiastic and very pretty, but she's not that bright. I got to tell you my favorite. Like, it just hit me really hard. I remember really getting emotional with it.

Was Operation Micsaver? I'll tell you what got me more than anything was not necessarily the story of the individuals. Like, you're talking to guys who are missing limbs and stuff like that. But what got me was that all. the cops showed up, the firemen showed up, the bikers showed up, like the whole community came out to surprise this guy. And I was like, wow, this guy, that's a, it's a wonderful life moment. You see all those people were affected. That was every ending episode of RTF, all of the people in the community. But that one got me really, I think I cried every single, save for like one or

depending on how challenging the episode had been, just with the battling of the elements. I'm just thinking of raw fairy's finale. There weren't as many tears at that. The sweat glands had emptied all of the water in my body at that point. The show became addictive. You were running for that feeling of this is real life. And you're having a, this is a wonderful life moment

all the time, but it's real life. The people coming together rallying behind this person, that was the most moving part of every episode for me. It was also the thing that I worried the most about as we got into the second and third season because the act of observing a thing changes the thing, the uncertainty principle, Heisenberg and so forth. That is true in TV on steroids. When people know they're on TV and they've seen a show, this started to happen with dirty jobs early on and I found a way to fix it where people would start to perform because there was some sort of expectation. This

was especially difficult because it was a surprise. And so the first season, Chuck, part of the reason that episode with Jason Zateman got you, part of the reason Operation Biksaver worked so well is that Jason and his wife thought I was there to do like a dirty job. They were like, why is the dirty job guy here? This is so cool, you know, because they knew me from that. And so the possibility that they we're going to come around the corner and see the entire community waiting for them with $80,000 worth of new parts and equipment and tools and a painted structure and all this stuff. It was inconceivable that it would happen. And that I thought was pretty great.

And then season two comes along. And I'm like, okay, so that episode was viewed over 50 million times. So now we got to do it again. And now people are going to be like, oh, it's you. oh my god i'm going to get a present what's it going to be and i'm like okay so you probably don't know this i just went and i said look we had a good run but we only have two columns here kill the show or replace the host you know that i was ready to step aside i said it to facebook and i said it to michael i said look i'll step aside i think you have a good thing going here but how are you going to surprise

people if they know I'm there. And so I really struggled with how to do that. And then for a while, it was like, well, you're the surprise, Mike. So they'll know when you show up that something good's going to happen. They just don't know what it is. And I thought, well, I guess it's Christmas morning. You know you're going to get something. Exactly. You just don't know what. We settled into that. And then it worked. I love that. You really maintained the integrity belt on the whole show in that way. It's a good motivator to get fundraising outside fundraising when we wanted a project that was bigger than maybe what we were given by the network to give on this show. Being seen, being philanthropic tends to motivate people to want to double down and get on stage. That's fine. That's great.

We used that in our favor and everyone won. It was a thing. I mean, the amount of fake production companies, the amount of pseudonyms we responded to, we were filming a high-level operation trying to get my. Mike in and there were some people that were just, we would love when it was someone who had been living under a rock and didn't know or just had never seen Mike before. Those are few and far between. But we would love that because it was just this very rare moment where we could really, we had a little more time because they always figured it out. We had probably like a half hour window before they really started to be like, wait a second, that voice, that face, something.

You want to hear what's really screwed up, Sarah? I haven't admitted this before. And by the way, the integrity belt, that's very funny, like a chastity belt only with honor. I went from saying, look, I'm going to step away from this thing because people know me and I don't want to wreck it to exactly what you described, coming across people in season three and four who didn't know me and walking away and saying to myself, that hell is a matter with these people? How do they not know who I am? How do you not know me? Are you really not know who I am? Are you worthy of this?

Do you not own a television? You know what? No money for you. No surprise for you. Maybe next time you'll pay a little more attention. Not no, William. It's just so strange. Being in TV, making TV, trying hard to get out of your own way.

That's really the thing. So many of our conversations, both on and off camera, have been about, can we get out of our own way with this? How can we just let this show be? the thing we want it to be. It's like the Hippocratic Oath for producers. Don't bitch it up. Job one. Don't feel the patient. And somehow there's a lot of beautiful camaraderie that comes from when you have a healthy set and everyone's operating with a culture of collaboration and we're really working for something bigger. And I swore an oath years ago that I really couldn't compartmentalize

it's not a balanced lifestyle production and that world. You really are fully in it. It's 15, 18 hour days. You're traveling all the time. You don't have standard dynamics in your life. You're really choosing to give your life to this thing. I made the oath, I'd say probably four years before RTF, to not do anything that wasn't uplifting or didn't really, I can't sell something I don't believe in. It's not worth my time. My energy isn't served well. But this show was so much more than a show. It's a movement that I think is still deeply, it's bubbling. It's there. It's dormant and it's waiting, it's active, but these people are going to keep going

because that was how we chose people, Chuck, too. Would these people continue to be doing this if a camera was not in their face? Would they be doing that off camera? I would say everyone that we featured, 99.9% of it, they're still operating. They were operating the day we left. They were operating the day before we arrived.

That's the critical component that makes it so much more than a show. The camera makes people very strange. The camera can be a crazy maker. It really pulls out some wild parts of people and it can amplify some of the darker points of people as well. But this show, just the amount of background checks we would do that fortunately then were pushed beyond our standard background check to say, is this person really living a life now, right? Now we love a CD past. It was a process.

It was a process. But not a CD present. Indeed. I keep badgering this point. I am deeply inspired and energized and exhilarated by the future that's now been sort of, carved by RTF. We have way too many numbers for this to be something that doesn't move the needle if it gets repackaged or pitched differently or something. Look, I mean, that's part of the reason I wanted to have you on. Believe it or not, a fair amount of people listen to this thing and some of them

work in the business. It doesn't have to be Facebook. It doesn't have to be called returning the favor. Netflix could Greenlight pay it forward. We could pick up right where we left off. Do you remember I think his name was Barney? I think it might have been maybe the first thing. we did after the lockdowns. Barney's food pantry. Barney's food pantry. That was an important one too because it was just so great to see you again. It was so great to be out in the world and actually shooting something when nobody else was. It's worth remembering too. We did what 18 of these things in this exact setup, me sitting right where I'm sitting now, you guys out in the world trying to pull the returning favors long distance. Are you kidding? Those things.

I'm sure I'm not supposed to say this, but those things got better numbers than the show itself. I know. Because everybody was stuck at home is why. We can call some people, make some. Have you read Rebecca Sulton? I've heard last name, Sultan. I'm butchering her name. She has a book called The Paradise Built in Hell.

And it talks about these utopian instincts that we have in devastation. And the devastation can be anything from a shared calamity like someone has housefire. it brings out, you know, to something larger that we all experience. And pre-COVID, I did a lot of, like, my master's study on this of just how do we bring out that more utopian, philanthropic nature in people outside of a catastrophe? But RTF, the people on RTF is how, right? Spending more time with these people to remember that you can make a difference in the smaller ways. That's why I did love these stories like Bill Dunson and Maher and things like that.

Those tended to be the ones that really stuck to me even more just because they were so accessible. They left me out of excuses, too. I ran out of excuses watching them. It's modesty. That's all there is to it. If there was any ongoing debate between me and production, it always had to do with modesty. Because the size of the reveal was often bigger was better. Bigger the reveal, the better it is.

So let's get a football field. Let's fill the stadium. Let's do it from the moon. It'll never stop. And it's like, no, it's actually not that. And it's the same point you're talking about a paradise built in hell when you wait for the calamity to call the Cajun Navy. But the truth is, somebody's doing some Cajun Navy stuff right now, right down the street.

Somebody somewhere in your neighborhood is doing a thing that is actually noble. We're either going to memorialize that or ignore it. The choice to pay attention to those small acts, was the reason I ultimately did returning the favor. That combined with the behind-the-scenes camera. That was it for me. Anything else? That was on somebody else's dime

or in somebody else's lane. My job was to keep it small, try not to get in our own way, and see what happened. We all did our jobs, actually. And you said something to me once in one of those SUVs. I think you were driving,

which would explain why my sphincter was slammed shut so tight. Driving. Sarah's many things, Chuck, driving is... The passenger gal. Driver's not one of them. To be fair, she had a lot going on, right? She's thinking of a lot of things. She's producing a show.

She's driving an SUV. She's trying to get us to the proper location. But she's also on camera. We have three, four cameras in the SUV. So she's on camera. She's navigating. She's trying to have a conversation with me. Try not to get in her own way.

Trying to do all these things. but she's also driving and it's terrifying. It's just straight up terrifying. I think we were in Snoqualmie up there at the Salish Lodge. I do. Remember? The Shalish Lodge. Yeah, I was like the Shalish Lodge or the Salish Lodge.

We were shooting a show at the Shalish Lodge. And we very nearly got cut in half by an 18-wheeler. But we lived. I forget exactly what I said. And Sarah got weirdly serious for a minute. I think you were quoting somebody, but you said, look, my job is to make sure no one is ever humiliated in my presence. Frankl. Okay.

And I thought, what a great sentiment. What a great thing to bring into TV, especially in the world of reality, where people's discomfort and people's pain, people's humiliation is the stuff of hits. Returning the favor was the opposite of that. You are the opposite. of that. And here, with another Christmas around the corner, I thought one of my favorite Jewish friends could come on to spread a little sunshine as you're there, hunkered down in your bunker with six to nine Jews working away on plumbing and drilling as your computer quietly loses its power. The Jews were the original carpenters, our last remaining carpenter. We joke, but that's probably

a good place to start to land the plane. When you think about Luke Mickelson, a Mormon, maybe with the money underwear for all I know. And I think about you. Yes, and Heidi with her integrity belt, never mind the chastity. I think with four or five kids, I'm pretty sure I know how, which way the wind's blowing over there. It was an incredibly diverse cast. It was a really accurate cross-section of our country with people of various backgrounds and religions and identities, all with really one thing in common, trying to make their little slice of their zip coat a better place to be. It was a good thing we did, Miss Yagrao, a good thing. I'm itching to get back out there. I have faith this isn't the end in some capacity.

Just we've seen too much. I'm not itching. I'm actually chafing, which I believe is even worse. It starts with an itch, Chuck. And then the next thing, you know, you're chafing. And then you're ordering the Blue Star ointment off the infomercial. Oh, he knows. To get a moment of piece. Absolutely. you know, a ruler or a golf club to scratch that back. Have you seen the blue star? Sarah, what are you working on now?

Right now, so I'm actually building my own little venture that's operating on kind of a five-year plan. That's really the thing I've determined for anything that's real. It's that fun. You can make a plan and then God laughs and shakes it up. So my long-term plan. So I'm building a production company that I've had for years, but I'm shifting it over to something called common,

Common Ground Studios, which I want to just be a part of creating and launching any kind of uplifting, amplifying of character, stories that make people feel inspired and think, and mainly giving people the tools and the skills and the inspiration to reignite their own agency, to not wait around for something else to make a change in their world in any capacity, make a change in their lives, make a change in their communities. And so I'm starting a podcast that I would love to have you on, Mike, and Chuck, come along for this, you guys together. It's just going to be helping people to believe in the possibility of a better future and exposing them to the voices and the people who are already making that happen, right? Because we need to see to believe.

How are you going to make it non-earnest? How are you going to make it not so sickeningly sweet that my teeth are going to start hurting again? Exactly. This is my Achilles heel. I want to make it feel the tone of the show is it's always a Trojan horse because those are the horses that get through the gate, right? And so this is going to be wrapped up in, it's going to be playful and goofy and it'll be self-deprecating. It'll be entertaining. And then within it, you're going to walk around.

Well, excuse me, but you know what happens after the Trojan horse gets through the gates, right? Okay, sorry. So the horses are leaving the gate. You know. You need to go to the rest of the story. out of the belly of the horse and murder and rape everyone in the walls. Everyone. So that's where I intercept.

I take these men, I douse them in sunshine, I twist off their skulls, I put in someone with a beating heart, they come in there and you end up feeling like, well, shit, I'm motivated to do something nice today because I already have it in me. It's really a fan to fan people's sort of dormant resilience and optimism, because optimism is a, it's a strategic way to live. You're living better for you to hope and feel like you have the power to actually make an impact, right? It's not a naive choice. I would argue it's a leadership quality in your own self, right?

To be able to say, I have no idea how it's going to turn out. But if I have a binary choice, good or bad, I'm going to go towards the good and I'm going to keep my eyes on the possibility. And because I would say that our show, what made me feel like this really is more than just a moment in time, it's that it ignited something we all know, right? Whatever faith you are, whatever organizations you're part of, when you tap into the power of service and you tap into really how good that feels for you, how unbelievably good it feels, it's not a selfless act, it's a selfish act in a beautiful way, right? It feels so damn good to feel like you can make a difference and to just even, you know, sharing generosity of your spirit, whatever it is.

But I was shocked over this year to realize how many people just felt so powerless in that and really kind of delegated their power and gave it away. And we're waiting on either the government or larger industry or something to make a change in their lives. And to after all these people that we've talked with and know intimately on RTF, I realize that one thing that they all have is they have a resilient optimism to get stuff done. They believe that they can make it happen. Well, why are we accepting?

something like this? What are the things we can do versus just lamenting and stirring up all that toxin inside? So you're an optimism activist. I'm an optimism activist. I actually, that's exactly what you're. I actually own that trademark from four years ago. Shut up. Yes. Really? Yes. I just infringed on your IP with a compliment. But please, it's my lawyer will be contacting yours. You are her 20 bucks. You know who my lawyer is. Good luck with that. I would enjoy that.

I would surrender before. I would just whatever you want to. You do not want to mess with the Irish hammer. And I love your lawyer. So that's another conflicting quality that's going to come into that dynamic. We wouldn't be having this conversation if it weren't for her. Because again, it was her suggestion that got the BTS camera on the set. It was that camera that got me on the set.

And here we sit. The itch, the chafe. That's the thing I want to leave you with. That's the way to take the piss out of this. That's the way to keep a feel-good show from turning into a lecture or a polemic or something that hurts your teeth. Just remember that sooner or later something's going to itch, probably in an uncomfortable place, a private place, and you're going to have to scratch it. And you're probably going to get caught scratching it. Just like you farted in the SUV that day with me.

It's going to happen. And one day the itching is going to go to chafing, and then you're going to come back and you're going to say, tell me more about the blue star ointment. I think that's a good place to leave this. That's really what the world needs is ointment. We need blue star. Do you know what this is, Sarah? I don't. I don't.

Chuck, get her for Christmas. Get my Jewish friend for Christmas a tin of blue star ointment. In fact, when we're done, Google it. You can probably find an old ad for it, but it literally, it's a cream you rubbed on the parts of your body. that might be itching or chafing. But it's also good for things like psoriasis, ringworm. There's a long list of things that they have on the commercial. But the one that really stuck with me over the years was Teter.

Teter, Teter, T-E-T-E-R. What is this? I'm still not sure. It's not good. It's not something you want. It's a skin condition. It could be a form of ringworm. but it's just one of the many things that Blue Star Ointment,

who is not a sponsor of this podcast, by the way. Maybe they should. Chuck, make a note. I want you to do, I want you to reach out to Blue Star Ointment, get a sponsorship deal, and then get Sarah some of the product because the itching, the chafing, the ringworm, and the tether. Google Teter, Chuck, right now while we're talking. I want to understand what it is because I literally saw the ad for this last night,

and it says it cured Teter. which I think can happen. Three T's, three T's? Three or four T's? Yes, three T's altogether. A skin disease in humans or animals causing itching or puscular patches, such as eczema or ring.

There it is. Right. I would also argue there's no more appropriate present to give to your Jewish friend than a tin called Blue Star. I think that maybe we may have invented that. Right? Yes.

Look, typically, as Chuck has seen this happen, now countless times. I talk to my guests until somehow we Forrest Gump our way into a place where it all comes back together. And sometimes it takes a long time, Sarah. But here I think we did it. This episode is really about the idea that returning the favor was the Blue Star Ointment that our country needed at the time. And right now when I look around this great land, I see itching, I see chafing, I see ringworm and I see tether about. But I also see my friend Sarah armed with blue star ointment running out there among the great unwashed, smearing this miracle cream all over their postules and making life a little better.

That's the feel good stuff that I want to leave the listeners of this podcast with. You armed with blue star ointment. Thank you, my friend. And a house with six to nine juice. At any given moment. Oh, that's beautiful. Anything else you want to plug before we go out there and go crazy with the Blue Star? Yeah, no.

Look out for possible future podcast. We'll get our friend Mike on this and our friend Chuck. Just Chuck, just come with everything. And keep looking out and pitch us some shows. We're hungry. We're chafing. We're tethered up. And we want to go.

Okay. All right. I don't think you're using that word the way it's supposed to be used, actually. Tattered up. Sarah, if people want to follow you or reach out to you with something, how can I? Why wouldn't they? Please, I welcome it. Aside from the eczema, the Severia, the ringworm, the psoriasis.

She's really lovely. She's a lovely person. I've also got the cure. Barely contagious. Intagiously optimistic. You can find me on social media. You can find me at Sarah Your Grau, Y-O-U-R-A-U. Sarah with an H.

And then you can write to you. me on sarah your growl.com and i love getting the emails on there she really does i do creepier the better guys she really enjoys the creepy ones i have a great special holder for those i'm sure smeared with blue star ointment oh god protective seal we're all sort of stumbling back into the waking life we're going to need more tools and more support than ever more things to hold on to in more mirrors of our better possibilities and our better natures. Speaking of tools, one quick pro tip just to leave you with as you embark upon this whole podcast thing.

Get a microphone that works. You can expect far better audio quality than this you can expect. There's only one way to go, huh? There's only one way to go. Yeah. Start with a mic that works. After that, your career is going to explode. Great suggestion.

All right, sweetie. I love you. I love you, too. Thank you for making time. This was really for the fans of returning the favor. I know they're still out there. Hope Springs Eternal, especially when you're chatting with the copywritten owner of the optimism activist.

So something to keep in mind if you don't want to get sued. You might want to lay off that turn of phrase. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Sarah. Bye, guys. See you all next week. Great. Bye.

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