The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 232: Wanna See Something Really Scary?

Episode Date: January 5, 2022

Mike rings in the new year with a case of Covid. Chuck has questions.

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Well, I just got some more news in that vein earlier today, and I want to share it here. My plan, full disclosure, was to kick off the 2022 podcast year with what you call a high-profile celebrity interview. which I've already recorded. But in light of this new information, I thought it might be useful to some of you, and cathartic, quite frankly, to me, to have a conversation with Chuck instead, a conversation about what's going on in our crazy world right now, and what the new year might hold for Chuck and me and you.

It's not the kind of conversation I normally have on this podcast, but it is an honest one, and I do think that many of you might relate to it. It is not, however, a conversation between two experts. We are not doctors or anything close to it. We're not scientists or epidemiologists. We're just a couple of old friends trying to make sense of some incredibly confusing information on the advent of a new year. It's episode 232. You want to see something really scary?

Where are you? You're still down in Carolina? Yeah, Carolina Beach, North Carolina. all morning, it was all about tornadoes. We were on a tornado watch from like 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. today. It was crazy. And it's really super windy out there. It looks like it could...

It's just unbelievable, man. If it's not hurricanes down there, it's tornadoes. If it's not tornadoes, it's pandemics. Not pandemics, it's wildfires. Not wildfires. It's lockdowns. It's... Oh, what was that thing up in Iowa? A Doraco.

Oh, the Doraco. Jesus. The inland hurricane. It's amazing. A plague of ants this time last year. I'm glad we're not having them now. You had the ants. Yeah, that was bad.

There was a day. The house was full of ants. The air was so thick with smoke. Nobody could breathe. A hurricane had just come up the Gulf. The Doraco had leveled Cedar Rapids. We were locking down again. In the midst of all of that, I was going out to shoot.

dirty jobs here we are it's a brand new year Mike things are supposed to get better right it's a new year let's be hopeful we're kind of calling an audible folks we had a plan and then things just got so incredibly hinky

over the holiday that Chuck and I thought look let's just kind of check in with each other let's talk about what's just happened and let's talk about the year before us let's do it with the level of transparency that we normally don't do on this podcast. Are you saying we're not transparent normally?

I'm saying we're transparent to a point. And I'm not saying I want to venture too far outside of our respective lanes. But I kind of feel like I got the COVID. I got tested. I failed my test on Christmas Eve, which is to say I tested positive. And I posted about that. So that's been kind of a thing. And I've been locked down over the holiday.

as you know, and I guess people on my Facebook page know. What they don't know is that I literally just got a text from my mother saying that she is tested positive for COVID. My dad has tested positive for COVID. They're back in Baltimore, in their retirement home right now in the midst of contact tracing. And they have so many questions for me. And of course, I don't have any answers, Chuck, because contrary to popular belief, I am not an expert. They should have asked me. I could have told them that. I want to talk about COVID. I want to talk about the coming year. I want to talk about whatever you want to talk about, because as the producer of this fake podcast, I do feel like you bear some responsibility for keeping this thing on the rails.

We have an extraordinary commitment that we've made to listeners of the way I heard it. over the course of the next year, to put up another 50 of these things, now have advertisers involved, dirty jobs is back in the sketch, not sure what's happening with how America works, looks like that's coming back for another season, got a book thing I can't figure out if I can deliver or not,

got a number one song on the iTunes thing, which now has raised all kinds of possibilities for other things. Somebody's got to do it is back in the works. This podcast is being turned into a TV show. Did I mention I got COVID? Because I got the COVID. Mom's got the COVID. Dad's got the COVID.

What do you want to talk about? You just listed everything that I have on my list to talk about. All right. Well, hit me. Well, let's start with COVID because what was your experience like? I tested because I had been invited to a holiday party, and I knew at that party were going to be some friends who were in the midst of chemotherapy and radiation.

And I knew there would be some elderly people there as well. And I had had a dry cough for the last day and a little bit of a, like a rough night's sleep, like the kind of sleep you get when you might be fighting a low-grade fever. Hadn't taken my temperature, so I wasn't sure. But the bottom line is, in any other world, I'd have gone to that party, but not given it a second thought. I wouldn't have coughed in people's faces. it never would have occurred to me to test for COVID.

But of course, we're in the midst of it now. And so I did, and it was positive. And so I stayed home for the next five or six days. I had very mild symptoms. The next day or two, I did feel a little congested. Kind of felt like a hangover with a runny nose. But the day after Christmas, there were no symptoms at all. You know, I laid low for the rest of that week.

and that was really my COVID experience. You know, I shared it on Facebook, upset some people, because it's impossible to talk about this at all, it seems, and not upset somebody. And then I just heard from my folks, of course. So it's weird for me because I've got a specific set of beliefs around this thing, and I have some opinions about what's smart and what's not smart and what makes sense and what doesn't make sense.

And now I get to consider all of those beliefs that I've shared here and elsewhere, not just through the lens of my own diagnosis, but through my elderly parents now. It's a lot to think about. Well, it begs the question, does this news of your parents contracting COVID affect your position on it in any way? Well, yeah, but not in a replacement way. Every time we've talked about this online and offline, I've always said that two things can be true at the same time. It's true that I believe in a very very important. macro way that our country has overreached in some areas and dealt in platitudes and cookie

cutter advice in many areas that have created all kinds of problems for all kinds of people and lots of areas. I've kind of weighed in, I think, as a non-expert in that space. But when your mom, like, look, she literally just sent me this text a second before we started talking. So when your 83-year-old mom, soon to be 84, tells you she's positive and she's living at a retirement community with her 89-year-old husband, who has also tested positive, then yeah, you've got to think about your feelings through both of those lenses. So as a guy who loves his parents very much and realizes they're in an at-risk group, then, yeah, my sphincter just slam shut a little bit reading that. But as a reasonably informed guy who still believes

that we're all going to get it and the overwhelming majority of us are going to be just fine, then, well, I still feel that way too. I guess I feel both ways. And I don't know that that's dispositive or contradictory, honestly, but it's the way I feel. Well, is it safe to say that you're scared? Sure. Yes, it's safe to say that I'm scared for my mom and dad. It's safe to say that I'm scared for my friends around the corner who are fighting cancer. It's safe to say that I'm worried for all of my elderly friends. And it's safe to say that I'm also concerned for all of my obese friends. And you know what? I have a lot of obese friends. I have a lot of obese fans. And I'm very very aware that 80% of the people who have succumbed to this thing, both ultimately and through

hospitalizations, are obese. I'm aware of all of that. And I'm more aware than ever, I think, that that cookie-cutter advice thing we were talking about really and truly is the greatest threat. We're not all the same people, right? Omicron is not Delta. Delta is not alpha. morbidly obese people are not thin people. Old people are not young people. And to not acknowledge all of the differences in these variants, as well as the differences in our species, is to try and form an opinion, I think,

in a really hamstrung way. I'm scared in the place where I'm scared. I'm not scared in the other places. What were your parents' feelings about COVID in general? in the beginning of this thing, and have they changed their opinions as well? I don't know who's really listening to this when, but I just posted something on Facebook from my mom. We still communicate, by and large, in texts and letters.

And let me see if I can find the daggone thing here, stand by. I got six email addresses, as you know, Chuck, right? I do know that, yeah. I don't know which one she sent it to. I think she sent it to Google. Here it is. Hey Mike, this is your mother, the rule follower. The woman who never speeds or illegally parks or jaywalks.

The woman who returns library books and pays bills when they're due and never cheats at games. For two years now, I've been wearing masks, washing my hands until they're red, avoiding crowds and using hand sanitizer. I've gone to church on Zoom, had telehealth visits and done virtual book events. In the past year, your father and I have been vaccinated and boosted. avoided traveling to see family and have gasped for breath behind not one but two masks. In short, we've done everything right. And yet a couple of days ago, we were both coughing and congested. On Saturday morning, we made our way to patient first at 8.30 a.m. What a delightful

way to spend New Year's Day. There were 30 or so people ahead of us in line, a line that wrapped around the side of the building, many of them coughing, standing in the day. the rain. Three hours later, your father received a positive COVID test. Mine was negative. Hey, that can't be right, Doc. I feel fine. She's the one with all the symptoms, your father said. Could it be a false positive, I asked? Oh, sure, said the doctor. It happens all the time. And yours could easily be a false negative. That's why I'm doing the longer test on you. You'll get the results in a couple of days. So Mike, the point of my letter is to tell you that your father and I might or might not have COVID. Don't worry, dad feels fine and I just feel like I have a cold. It hasn't gone into our chest,

so that's good. Meanwhile, the home is doing something called contact tracing. All of the people we interacted with for the five days before our symptoms began have to quarantine for a week. We felt like we were ratting on our friends, so we called them to apologize. They took it well. and said they could just as easily have given it to us, except for one of the guys who's really mad. He used some language and said, there's no way he's staying locked up in his damn apartment for a week. I'm tired of this shit.

He said he doesn't blame us. It's the system, he says. So we'll be tested again in 10 days. I think we'll be fine. I'll let you know about my COVID results. Pretty sure we'll both need a mental health appointment at the end of this. Happy New Year, love mom. that's the letter she sent and she just sent her new update so it's official they both have

COVID they're both trying to figure out what to make of those tests though that may or may not be accurate dude it's so weird I mean imagine being 89 and getting a false positive which test did they take originally do you know they got the rapid test and were told that it may or may not be accurate and she's just been told the test she just sent me may or may not be accurate. The one that she just texted you about? Well, yeah. This is the craziest thing I've ever seen. Their doctors are telling them that they could very likely, their words, very likely have received either a false positive or a false negative. But that was for the rapid test that they took on New Year's Day, right? So that was Saturday. That's right. So, and then they took another test,

presumably like the PCR test or whatever, the blood tester that takes a couple days, and they just got the results for that, correct? Right. My mom just got the results. My dad didn't do the longer form test because he got a positive test in the rapid. So he just assumes that he's positive, yeah. You've got to put yourself in their place, right? You're 89 years old.

You have no symptoms and you're told you're positive. You're 83 years old. Your wife is. She has symptoms and she's told she's negative. Now, they go back to the home, and the first thing they have to do, based on my dad's positive test, which may or may not be accurate, they're contacted by care first. The facility where they're in tells them, okay, you need to quarantine now. And then we have to tell everybody else you've been in contact with in the facility to stay in their apartments for 10 days. based on a test that may or may not be positive.

I mean, aren't they like living in a giant dorm room sort of? Yeah, basically. Like if you're asking me, is that smart or good? I honestly don't know what to say. They're my parents and I don't want them taking chances. And obviously, I don't want them exposing people to whatever they may or may not have. But what is the point of contact tracing? in the wake of a test that isn't declarative.

What am I supposed to do right now? This is a serious question. I've laid low. I quarantined. So I'm exposed to this thing probably on the 21st of December. And my symptoms are very mild. I test positive on the 24th.

By the 26th, I have no symptoms. Now, in real time, it's what 13 days have gone by. There's not a doctor in the country that would say, I am contagious 13 days after being exposed. If you go to the CDC site right now, you can see that test results from somebody who has been exposed but isn't contagious could come back as positive for months. Up to three months, they say. Well, they just changed their policy to say that you're supposed to quarantine. for five days and then... It was 10.

It was 10, and they cut it in half, yeah. That's right. But for the second five of the 10... You should wear a mask. You should wear a mask, correct. But what kind of mask, Chuck? A cloth mask, two cloth mask, an N95? A super special N95,

supposedly. Very few people are wearing N95s. And how far should you be standing apart from people? Six feet, three feet, nine feet, 13 feet. Does this change if you're inside or outside? good God, man. Here's the world I'm in right now. I am 100% sure I'm not contagious.

But if I take another test right now, there's an excellent chance. It could say positive. Am I allowed to get on a plane with a positive test? Even though I'm 100% sure I'm not contagious? Even though I'm following the current guidelines? I don't know. That's a really good question. I mean, how do we find that out?

This is the hell of it. I don't think we can. I listened to Rogan's podcast the other day with what's his name, Malone, Robert Malone. I recommend everybody listen to it. It's a fascinating conversation. Robert Belos is an expert, an undeniable expert. And he's got a lot of initials after his name. He's controversial as well for all sorts of reasons.

Point being, anybody today can find an expert to validate whatever their beliefs are. Experts are a dime a dozen. There are thousands of podcasts right now with experts on them. This is not one of them. This is Mike and Chuck who've known each other 40-some years talking about this in the wake of kind of a troubling text from my mom. Yeah. I don't know who to ask, Chuck. I guarantee you this, though.

I can find experts that say 10 days is too short. short, I can find experts that say it's too long. Likewise, five days. We can find experts who disagree over social distancing. We can find experts who disagree over masks. This is bananas. I am literally 13, 14 days out of being exposed from the day my first symptom presented. Nobody disagrees with the idea that I'm not contagious after 10 days, probably not even after 5. And yet now the tests are headline news. The president's just ordered 500 million tests. Fauci is saying that the results of those tests ought to be the thing that determines whether you get in the restaurant, whether you get on the plane.

Meanwhile, you can right now in real time go to the CDC site and see how common it is to test positive weeks or months after exposure. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time? Do you miss the rotary phone? Well, get over it. The genie is out of the bottle. The poop is out of the goose, I'm afraid. AI is here to stay. And every business in the country is asking themselves the same question. How do we make it work for us? Well, the answer to that question varies, but you'll find it in a free guide that you can get right now at netseweet.com slash Mike.

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I don't know, man. I'm at a loss for this. I'm concerned for your folks. When you told me that you tested positive, you know, I had spoken to you. You sounded like you had a little cold or whatever. And I thought you're going to be just fine. And it turns out that you are. But I know there are tons of people out there. I read some of the posts. When you told people that you got COVID, a lot of people reacted. And, you know, everybody's got a story of somebody they know who has passed away. I don't know what to think anymore. And just the idea of the CDC changing their guidelines. But you're surprised that the goalposts have moved? I don't know what to think anymore. I feel like very, very lost in this situation. I'm concerned as you are for your parents because of the age group they're in. However, and I said this to you before, I, I believe that your folks are strong like bull. I remember seeing footage of a 100-year-old woman wheeled out of a hospital when she had COVID. That was the alpha version, I believe, or Delta.

That's a point I already made it, and I want to make it again. Alpha is not Delta. Delta is not Omicron. There are other variants out there that haven't even really been named yet, but they're different. These things are different and people are different. I really think one of the fundamental things that we did wrong from the very, very, very, very jump was to treat everybody the same. Yeah. But this is a pandemic.

Why in the world, knowing how much more vulnerable the elderly are, the immunocompromised and the obese, why in the world would we treat everyone the same? and knowing that Delta is not Omicron and Amicron is not Alpha, what are we doing? We are treating everything like it's the exact same thing. And that makes as little sense today to me as it did 18 months ago. At some point, we need some metrics by which to return. And I'm afraid, man, I'm afraid that if the new metric is a negative, test, and we're living in this world where we all know that a negative test doesn't mean you aren't positive and a positive test doesn't mean you aren't negative. What kind of mischief are we in

for over the next couple of months? Fair question. Speaking of the next couple of months, would you like to turn the conversation to something a bit more cheery? No, not yet. I want to talk about acceptance again. I'll stand by that. On Christmas Eve, I wrote a post. I immediately shared my positive results on Facebook. Millions of people interacted with that post. Yeah, quite a few. And I upset some people. I didn't mean to. And I hope I didn't upset anybody in the last 15 minutes. I stand by what I wrote 18 months ago with the five stages of grief and this business of either accepting the fact that you're going to get it or not. And if you accept the fact that this thing is, inevitable and that COVID zero is impossible, then I think you're going to live your life differently than if you believe COVID can be eradicated. This is a very general statement that I made then and I made it now. And I still stand by it because if you haven't accepted the inevitability

of this thing, then you're somewhere else in the five stages of grief. I don't know where, but it's It's easy enough to look around and see people who are in denial or bargaining or depressed or angry. All of those emotions, I felt back in March and April of 2020. Almost two years ago. I mean, it's unbelievable. It is unbelievable. The low point for me personally was trying to square all of that with the plague of ants. and the Doraco and the hurricane and the wildfires.

We lost electricity here for four days right at the height of all of this. Right. And that's when I remember, again, this is just me, but that's when I was like, holy crap, are you kidding me? Are you kidding? And then I read the stats and really thought about the fact that Osterholm is not an idiot. it. And it seems like the math is pretty clear. But before this thing is done, I think it's going to touch all of us in some way, shape, or form. And once you accept that, well, that's why we started shooting. It's so crazy, man. I probably traveled 100,000 miles over the last year, stayed in,

I don't know how many hotels, I don't know how many Uber rides. I've been all over the place. I got tested pretty much every other day. I took all the precautions. It's like my mom's letter. I did everything I could, but I was out in the world and I was working. And COVID found me in my own zip code. Right. Right around the corner from a well-intended neighbor with a dry cough and a runny nose.

It's like that thing with auto accidents. You know, most of them happen within five miles of your home. Yeah. I guess the point is, I'm still where I was. I've accepted the fact, in a weird way, getting it, sort of validated that with me. Nobody wants COVID for Christmas. Nobody wants COVID at all.

But I wasn't stunned. I wasn't even surprised, really. I know it was coming. I just didn't know when. Does it sound glib? All of a sudden, here I am saying that, and now my mom and dad have it. That's the question you were asking me. I still believe what I've said, but I still clench and worry because it's them.

Sure. And that's the hell of this thing, man. It doesn't matter how expert you are. It doesn't matter how well you followed the rules or how flagrantly you ignored them. If you believe it's coming, it's only a matter of time. And then, hopefully, you can take some hope in the fact that the vaccine, while it may not have been the preventative, we hoped it was. It certainly seems to be working as a, as some kind of therapeutic. The therapeutics are great. They're on the market now. The last I

talked to my mom and dad earlier today, they felt fine. They're taking the day quill, they're taking the night quill. They're taking the Benadryl. They've got some steroids set aside if it settles in their chest. As for the other stuff, I don't know. I can't speak to the monoclon stuff or the Ivermectin or all of the other stuff, I don't know. Right. To be clear, you didn't go to the doctor. No. Was it a rapid test that you did? Yep. You took day quill, I think you told me. That was it. That's it, really. And I took a NyQuil that night. It just felt like a cold. But it's weird, man. Even saying that, I can hear the response from people. You're minimizing it. Right. Don't use this platform to tell people it's just a cold.

I lost friends from this. It wasn't just a cold. You shouldn't say that. But the truth is, for me it was. It was just a cold. And for somebody else, it was just a death sentence. Because people are different. I think this thing is just made fools of so many people, Chuck.

But mostly it's made a mockery of the sweeping generalizations. It's made a farce out of platitudes and bromides and cookie. cutter advice because there's an exception to every rule and there's an expert under every rock with a different opinion. And man, do they sound certain? Remember this whole podcast, this whole new format we're fumbling our way through right now started with a conversation early on in one of the chapters in the book that we were talking about, the whole certainty thing. How amazingly certain. Right. So many people sounded at the beginning of this show. shit show, right? So certain. Whether they're right or wrong, they still sounded certain.

Yeah, didn't matter. Biden sounded certain. Trump sounded certain. Fauci sounded certain. They all sounded certain. They were certainly right. And they were certainly wrong. There's no playbook. You know, it reminds me years ago, I used to be friends with a guy who was a cop. And he told me that he had seen a guy shot nine times once and still advance toward the cops. Right. And lived. And he also saw a woman took a ricochet bullet in the butt and died. And I thought, how is that possible? And I think it speaks to the same way that you say, for you, it was just a cold. And for others, it's just a death sentence. And there's no rhyme or reason to it. But as humans, don't we want that? Don't we want? Don't we want

to have some sort of explanation, don't we want to understand? And it's vexing when we can't. Oh my God, dude. Is it vexing? It's vexing to the tenth power. The need to find a pattern, a trend. Yes. The need to predict a thing.

Right? I mean, there's a lot of science in this. There's a lot of science in the, well, the predictive sciences. data and statistics. It's so wonky. And if you apply it to the markets, then you get books like the Black Swan and you get financial experts trying to make sense of the future based on historical patterns and trends. It's exactly what this is now. But it's also what astrology is to a certain degree, right? It's assigning meaning to things in the past and concluding, hopefully, logically, some sort of future. And so it can be a parlor trick if you're talking about fortune-telling

and all that nonsense, or it can be a highly respected discipline if you're talking about predicting markets, or it can be life and death when you're talking about the way a virus might mutate or not. We have, from the very beginning of this thing, had a working assumption, I'm afraid, that some combination of government restriction and personal behavior can rid us of this scourge. That's the thing I reject. I don't believe it's possible. When I think about 15 days to flatten the curve or 15 days to slow the spread, I see the logic in that. I was all down for that. I was completely down for that.

And I still believe it makes an incredible amount of sense to do what we can to protect the frontline health workers and not let the hospitals get overwhelmed. Of course, I'm down with that. But we all now know that 15 days was a joke. Slow the spread was not. Flatten the curve was not. But the idea that we could do it in 15 days? No, that was never real.

And that's why it's become a punchline today. But the conceit of flattening the curve in 15 days, that hasn't changed. Millions of people still believe that if we only do something for a fixed period of time, if we only come together and do something for a fixed period of time, could be masks, could be social distancing, could be both. could be vaccines, could be all three. Could be mass, social distancing, vaccines, and boosters, okay, could be all four. Could be another booster after that as well. Could be a regimen of testing along the ways.

It's all on the table, right? But the idea that there's some combination of all of these things, and that if we can only just do them, if we can only just unlock the magical combination of that, then we'll be free of this. And that I still believe is a fiction. People have reacted to you saying that by saying that the idea of zero COVID was never what we were promised or anything. And Mike, that's a straw man that you've set up. And what do you say to those people? I say that they're right.

I say I'm not speaking for everyone. I am speaking generally. And I do believe that a lot of reasonable people who support all of the restrictions that have been put in place, as well as all of the behavioral adjustments and modifications that I just referenced, I do believe that there's a fair number of those people who do all of those things in the interest of flattening the curve and not eradicating the disease entirely. Stipulated, okay? Okay, okay. But I'm talking about the immense group of people that I'm talking about.

The people who believe that all of those things should be done in the interest of eliminating the disease. Now, forgive me, but when the leader of the free world tells us we can shut down the virus, period, and that's a quote, it's not unreasonable for people to go, okay. Okay, we're going to shut down the virus. This is possible. I'm not imagining it. I didn't hear it in a chat room. I didn't read it from some biased news source.

I listened to the President of the United States. Tell me that he was going to, quote, shut the virus down. Now, what does that mean if it doesn't mean shut the virus down? If he meant something else, why didn't he say something else? He said what he said. And I'm not saying he's a bad guy.

I'm not trying to make it political, Chuck. But he said that and millions of people said, okay, let's come together and shut it down. What do we do? And we got an action plan. Stand this far apart. Wear this kind of mask. Sequester, quarantine, self-isolate.

Avoid this. Don't do that. we got the list of things to do. We got it. And so I'm talking to the millions of people who still believe we can shut the virus down. And by the way, I'm sorry, but he was pretty clear last week too, wasn't he, when he said, this is not going to be solved on the federal level. Yeah.

Look, man, you're given me a choice. you're asking me to believe what both of these things no you can't ask me to believe both of these things you can't tell me we're going to shut the virus down and it's not a federal problem well i think he's changed his tune on that i think he understands now that he's not able to do that i think he's conceded this point i don't remember exactly him saying that i can't imagine that he hasn't i can't speak for the president i can't speak for anthony fouchy i don't speak for anthony fouchy i don't can't speak for anybody who's scared of this thing or not scared of this thing. I can barely speak for myself, but I can tell you that my operating plan went in place late last April and it was based on my

steadfast belief that I was going to get it, that I was going to be okay, and that there was nothing I could do about it. And if that sounds glib or fatalistic, as a lot of people accused me of being, it's simply what I believe. And by the way, I also believe that in the context of being as aggressively responsible as you can. You saw me. I was out there in the world, but I always had my mask. I always got my tests. I always followed protocol. I don't think living in fear of this thing is in anybody's interest. But I can also tell you as my best friend and with a straight face that I'm scared. I'm not scared for me.

I'm scared for my folks. And that's the most human thing I can tell you. And that's the thing that I believe unites us all in this. I never meant to come off as glib or dismiss. but I can only talk about my own self and my own life. When we're going to talk now about the other people in our lives, well, that's where you get a big help and of humility. And that's where your own beliefs are going to be checked.

I get that. It doesn't change the way I feel and it doesn't change anything I've said. It just adds something to it. I worry about my folks. Which is entirely understandable, of course. I want to ask you, though, about you mentioned Joe Rogan and Dr. Robert Malone, who's a doctor who helped create the vaccine or at least the, what is it, the RNA? Yeah. That's inside it.

And he got banned from Twitter. And how do you feel about the discussion? Like, Dr. Fauci is a doctor. There's Dr. Atlas, there's Dr. Gottlieb. There are all these doctors that I've seen on TV who all make sense. Yeah. But they don't all say the same thing. And I know Dr. Malone has said some things that got him banned from Twitter.

Right. And when I hear that someone got banned from Twitter, the first thing I want to know is, what did they say? What are they saying? And I listened to that episode and I'm like, he didn't. sound like an unreasonable guy to me. No, he didn't sound unreasonable to me either. Your fundamental question, I think, was, what do you think of the discussion? And my answer is, what kind of discussion can you have on Twitter when you're banned from Twitter? What kind of discussion can you have on Facebook if you're banned from Facebook? I think the discussions are important. And I think that

in the end, somebody has to determine whose arguments hold water. But I don't think the people who make that determination ought to be the people in charge of the platform where the discussing is happening. I think it falls to the listener. I know that that's dangerous, but look, thank God for Joe Rogan. What do I think of the discussion? I think of this. How in the world could anybody have ever imagined that a guy who got marginally famous for hosting a show where people ate maggots, for doing stand-up, for devoting his spare time to the martial arts, how does that guy with an audience of that size and a long list of world leaders waiting to get on

to have an unfiltered, unscripted discussion, your word, a real discussion in a place where we're not going to be right back after this quick ad, let's pay some bills with this. quick ad, which we're going to do in this conversation, by the way. In fact, we should probably do it right now. Let's just go do an ad, and I'll come back and make my point. Do do do do do do do my guest today, Tom Albany's, 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 their economic independence, just like the business of making things. American Giant knows this,

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Where was I? Right. That's what I think of the discussion. Chuck, I think that Americans right now are desperate to find a place where the conversation can play out. Is that going to happen on network news? No way. What, 24 minutes to deal with the issues of the day, interrupted periodically by soap ads? Are you kidding me? You're not going to have the conversation there. You're not going to have the discussion there. Are you going to have it on Facebook? Well, that depends. If you say the wrong thing, no, you're not going to have it there. If you say the wrong thing, you're not going to have it on Twitter.

Maybe this Getter platform will be a thing. I don't know. What, like a million people signed up in three days after Rogan had his conversation with Malone. That's pretty amazing. It took Twitter 24 months to get a million users 15 years ago. Getter just got a million in three days. So maybe there'll be a discussion over there. Maybe it is the world of podcasting that ultimately will be the place where people turn to for a completely unfiltered, unedited, uninterrupted conversation.

About the most important issue of our times, dude, I mean, think about it. Some of the most important conversations to have ever happened in my life have happened in my life, have happened in. in the last year on a platform that didn't exist when Dirty Jobs premiered. Right. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. And what's next? I don't know, man.

When I look at 22, when I look forward, I see so much possibility, so much uncertainty, and such a need for humility that it almost strikes me mute. Almost. I was going to say, I find it hard to believe. Well, listen, man, I think about the metaverse. I keep hearing a lot of talk about the metaverse. And I think to myself, my God, are our lives so shitty that we need to imagine something else that we need to put some goggles on? And look, I'm a guy who loves to play video games.

I love video games. But good Lord, I still want to live my life. I still want to breathe fresh air and see trees and, you know, not in a video game. Maybe that's part of the appeal. to keep answering your last question about the discussion. Because you can't take a walk, really, and watch the network news. Not really, right? I mean, and if you do, you're subject to the same interruptions and biases

and all of the other things that have made the discussion small. You can listen. Assuming that you and I actually had something of importance to say, and I'm by no means suggesting that that's happened. right now. But if it were, you could be out there doing your fast walk. You could be on your exercise bike. You could be cleaning your house. You could be driving. You could be a part of the conversation while you're still living your life. But when you want to talk about the metaverse or the virtual reality, you want to talk about that next level of engagement. Well, that just

requires you to go further and further inside of yourself and not outside into the world. That worries me. There was a woman who used to publish this thing called The Popcorn Report. Faith Popcorn, I think was her actual name. Her name was Faith Popcorn. I think so. I'm not sure. But her first name was definitely Faith. And she published this thing every year. Yeah, she's a futurist. And so the Popperist. And so the popcorn report was always way ahead. I mean, talk about predicting trends. Talk about seeing patterns before anybody else saw them.

This woman was amazing. And she wrote back in the 80s, she described a time where most people's meals would be delivered to them. And people would start staying home to watch movies on television instead of going to theaters. And people said she was crazy. And she actually called it something. She called it cocooning. She said, people are going to start to cocoon. And the technology that emerges is going to enable this cocooning to unfold at varying speeds. And of course, she was right about everything. Food delivery, big screen TVs, the movie experience at home became actually superior to going to a theater in a lot of different ways. And then she came out with another report and talked about,

oh, not cocooning, but burrowing. So the next level of cocooning was burrowing, where you would go even deeper. Well, how could you go deeper, people said, you know, you're having your food delivered and you're not going to the theaters. How do you go deeper than that? Someone's going to chew it for you. No, you get a thing called the internet, which allows you to to take these deep, deep dives. Never mind the big screen. You go on YouTube searching for one story and wind up watching hours of videos.

Oh, my God. I went on YouTube to figure out what happened with that crazy asteroid that burned into the unpronounceable town in Russia a few years ago. And then hours later, the sun's coming up, and I'm still sitting here at my desk watching Leonard Bernstein

teach the Pythagorean theory to his music class at Harvard. That's burrowing, where all of a sudden now you've got this technology that allows you. Time is compressed all around you, and you're taking deep dives into Rick Biotto's, you know, what makes this song great. I just lost another four hours two nights ago. Why, of course, I was quarantined. So I was happy to burrow and cocoon. For me, it was Danash. Oh, she's a crazy singer.

Oh, my God, that four. voice. Just nutty. Another two hours, folks. Dynash, I can't pronounce his last name either. D-I-N-A-S-H. Where's he from? China? He's some, I mean, I don't know.

But he's got a six-octive range. And when you find him, all you're going to do is watch videos of this guy for a day. This is burrowing. So to your point, we cocoon, then we burrow. And now there's this meta-universe. and now there's this what, this, everything is potentially virtual, from our video games to sex, all of it. I mean, it's all going to take place to those who are predisposed

in this interior way. And so, yeah, man, I don't know what kind of discussion you can have in the metaverse, but I do think Joe Rogan's doing it right, and a lot of other ones. We're flirting with it. Maybe we should. Maybe I should absolutely try and have, that kind of conversation on our humble little podcast here. Or maybe I should just shut the hell up and stay in my lane.

Or just ask the questions. Yeah, right. Be Donahue, you know. Wow. Devil's Advocate, go back and forth, but that's it. We mentioned this before, I think, on our episode with Justin Folk. I think it was with him, but the idea that Donahue is one of those shows that you can still go back and watch. And it's like, it's like looking back in a time capsule.

to a time where before instant gratification took too damn long. Yeah. Dude, that is so true. Look, you could fill a book with stuff I don't agree with Phil Donahue on. But respect. Tip of the hat. I don't know if there was, back to your point, where's the discussion happen? Yeah.

Man, it happened on Donahue. Yeah. It happened all the time on Donahue. I can still, you want to take a deep dive worth taking, Google Donahue and Milton Friedman. Yeah. And watch those conversations. I believe you said that on the Justin Volkoop episode. Did I?

Google things Mike Rowe has repeated. Take a deep dive on that. You know what? Then it must be true. I must have really meant it. Oh my God, I'm coughing. Hey man, you better get that looked at. Oh, geez.

You can't joke about these things, Mike. Yeah, but if you don't... I know. Then what? When did you talk to your mom last? This morning. And how did she sound? I talked to her this morning.

She sounds great. I'm nervous about this because I don't want to jinx anything. Certainly, I'm not going to exploit my mom and dad. But you know something? If I'm feeling this way right now, how many other people must be? How many other people are scared for their parents? How many other people feel like I'm. feel, feel like freedom matters and individuality matters and thinking for ourselves matters and

all of the things I've not been shy about saying. How many other people share that basic feeling but still can hear the sound of their sphincter slamming shut when somebody they love is suddenly dealing with this? I can't be alone. This reminds me of Sig Hansen. Remember the conversation that we had with Sig, where he got really emotional about his mom. I know you have a neighbor who has a mom who's living with them, and she's in poor health, and it's scary. If you have a pre-existing condition, it's a scary, scary time. If you're young and healthy, you probably shouldn't be afraid. Right. You have to be respectful of where you draw the line and how you draw the line. Like, for instance, the thing I wanted to say right now, but I kind of checked myself.

Okay. But now I'm not going to. Okay. What I wanted to say immediately after what you just said was, we all have a preexisting condition. It's called mortality. Yes. None of us are getting out of this alive. That is true.

This is C.S. Lewis, 1948, how to live in the atomic age. Atomic age, right. We've talked about it. And people get so angry when I refer to these four simple paragraphs by this great writer. They get so angry when somebody comes along to remind them that living in the atomic age and the threat of a bomb is no different than living at a time when the Vikings could show up unannounced and rape and pillage and burn your village to nothing. and it's no different than a time when a microbe can morph and turn in to whatever this thing is. People don't want to hear that because it feels like something large is being minimized. But of course it is. It is being minimized.

If you look at your life and your own individual mortality through the lens of the preexisting condition, that you're born with, the expiration date, right? It allows you to think and move and react and live differently than if you think somehow you're immortal. Well, it's also a question of what's in front of you, you know? How badly are the people in Tennessee whose houses were destroyed by tornadoes? Just two weeks ago, yeah. How in their face? is COVID. Is that the worst thing that they're dealing with right now? The fear of COVID. It's what's in front of you. We were on a tornado watch here this morning. It was very, very strange. You have to decide. You can freak out about anything you want. You can't freak out about

everything all the time. It can't always be a five-alarm fire. It can't always be that. It can always be something. But I think the incredible exhaustion that so many people are feeling right now is not just due to the fact that they haven't accepted their own mortality or the inevitability of this virus combined with the fact that they will in all likelihood survive it. It's not just that. It's everything. There's a great book by P.J. O'Rourke. You would love it. I'll give it to you next time I see it's around here somewhere. It's called All the Trouble in the World. All the Trouble in the World. And it's just a great look at every headline to come out of the 80s and 90s that became of great concern to certain groups.

And I think that's where we are now. It's almost like Faith Popcorn took PJ O'Rourke's book and burrowed and cocooned into all the trouble in the world and then puked it up in a way that now allows us to burrow and cocoon into all the pain we can find. There's pain in your newsfeed. There's misery on cable TV. You don't have to look far. We began this conversation literally with a parade of horribles. What's on your mind, Tennessee? It's probably the tornadoes. But ask my buddies north of here, it'll be wildfires. Ask anybody with an ant plague, and it's going to be ants. Ask anybody with an elderly set of parents who have just been diagnosed, and it'll be COVID. Down the list it goes, everybody has something to legitimately

freak out about. We seem to have spent 2021 focused on that. Because if you're not worried about this, then pay attention to this. You want to see something really scary? Remember that line? Yes. Total insider. There's a line in the twilight zone. Dan Aykroyd, that's right. Who else is in the car? Is it somebody famous? I don't recall. I was starting to worry. that we weren't going to come up with a title for this one. But we just did. What is it? This episode is going to be called,

do you want to see something really scary? Really scary, of course, yeah. And it is an homage to a line in the Twilight Zone, spoken by Dan Aykroyd, who I think picks up a hitchhiker or maybe it's the other way around. Yeah, it's one of the two. They're telling stories,

and somebody tells somebody a ghost story, and somebody tells another one a scary story, and then Dan Aykroyd says, hey, you want to see something really scary? And the other guy says, yeah. And he turns his face away. He goes, hang on, wait for it. And he reaches under his chin and he pulls his face off.

Like the Mission Impossible mask. Yes. And he turns around and he's an alien. That's how that movie started. And that's what 2020 and 2021 were, man. It was the mainstream media and my news feed and my Twitter feed. and my friends and my acquaintances and my fans and everybody, everybody tapping me on the shoulder throughout the course of every live long day,

all asking me the same question. You want to see something really scary? And you know what? The answer is, no. No. No, I can't. I'm good. I'm good.

How do we stop that, Mike? What's in store for 2022? It's the beginning of the year. Well, here's the thing. Here's my recipe for sanity moving forward. We don't stop asking that question. We just start asking other questions along with it. Like, you want to see something really funny?

You want to see something really surprising? You want to see something really smart? You want to see something really humbling? You want to see something really inspiring? You want to see something really stupid? Right? We ask more questions. The other day, after this whole COVID thing on Facebook

and after breaking a few more eggs and after reading hundreds of people saying to me, well, we'll see how you feel when somebody you love gets it, right? That happened because I posted I posted a meme I saw that made me spit my coffee out, man. It was the Babylon B, right? The Babylon B has become the new onion, funnier. Yeah.

And way less political. And they posted a picture of a smiling guy standing in a park wearing a seatbelt. And the headline is, CDC recommends drivers wear seat belts, even when they're not driving. in the car. Now, so in my mind, my question is, hey, you want to see something really funny? Look at this. So I share that meme thinking I'm sharing it with my private Facebook group. But Facebook has made all these changes, and I was actually in my public group.

So I shared that meme with six million people. And a lot of them laughed, but a lot of them were like, that's not funny. That's not funny, dude. You can't joke about that. Don't you know 800,000 people have died? I'm like, yeah, but what in the world does this have to do with that? This was a funny rumination on the fact that a lot of people are driving their cars right now wearing masks and they're alone in their car. There's no doctor anywhere that says that's a good idea. This was a parody. This was an attempt to lampoon that level of overreaching. But people couldn't see that. I think a lot of people.

People couldn't see that because maybe they had lost somebody close to them from this disease. And they just didn't feel like laughing about it. I understand that. I'd have posted it anyway. I didn't take it down when I realized I put it in the wrong spot. In fact, I kind of doubled down and I jumped in the comments and had a similar to conversation to the one that we're having right now. Because there just has to be more to this year than you want to see something really scary. That was funny.

And the fact that my parents are now dealing with this doesn't make it less funny. It might make me less inclined to laugh at the moment. As soon as we wrap up this call, I'm going to call my mom and dad. I'm going to see what's what. And I'm going to do everything a son would do. Who's worried? But that's not all I'm going to do with my day. And it's not all I'm going to do with 2022.

How about you? How's the New Year looking? What do you want? What do I want? What do you require with me, Charles? I'm not a resolution guy. I don't even do this on my birthday. I don't reflect and go,

hmm, all right, what could the next year hold for me? It's not the kind of thing that I do. I'm like everybody else. I'm focused on what's right in front of me. Here, we've got a podcast. And then there's, I got a meeting after this. You know, I got stuff going on. I just keep it right in front of me.

That's a cop out. I don't have an answer. I don't know what I'm going to do in this new year. I don't know what I hope for this new year other than I hope we don't lose our sense of humor. Amen. I want to laugh my way through the apocalypse. Oh, geez. We can't end it right there, but I don't do resolutions either.

But I will do predictions. Yes. Bring it on. I'm tripling down. in March of 2020, I wrote honestly and I think pretty forthrightly that I believe we're all going to get it. And I believe it's here to stay. And I wrote that again a week and a half ago. And I still believe it.

I think we're going to go through another spasm of craziness and fear-based reaction. We have to better understand this testing thing. somebody has to explain to me why it makes sense to test 12 days after I was positive, knowing that I'm not contagious, but entirely capable of generating another positive test. Somebody needs to tell me why I should take that test because I don't understand that. But I believe we're closer to the end than the beginning. and while it might have to get a little worse before it gets better,

I think it's going to get better soon. I think we're going to have a new level of acceptance around all of this, and I think we're going to be able to move forward in ways that we haven't so far. So I'm hopeful with regard to that. Regarding all the rest of the stuff that occupy, you and me, I'm super bullish.

I've never felt better about micro-works, ever. We're going to give away another million bucks at least in the next couple of months. We're going to help another couple hundred people. We're going to help close the country's skills gap. You should be proud of that, brother. I am. I'm delighted by that. I don't know what to make of dirty jobs.

I don't know if the network's going to order more. I don't know how I'm going to feel if they do, honestly. That show really hurt. But it looked like it. May I say, I thought it was a very good show. And I told you this already, but for just so everybody else can hear it, it felt like dirty jobs to me. You know, it felt like the old show. And you were doing some serious work. That rod busting is not for the faint of heart. You know, it's funny, the network aired literally 30 episodes in the 24 hours that preceded it. And I watched a lot of them.

And I'm not sure they did me any favors, honestly. Look at the younger, skinnier Mike. him do all of these crazy things, you know. I'm very, very proud of what we did, and I'm proud of what we just did as well. It's so humbling, dude, talking about a measure of humility looking forward. I'm going to be 60 years old in a couple of months, and it was hard. That third-degree burn on my leg really hurt. That was nasty looking, too, man. I saw that divot. It's like a hole in your It hurt. I threw my hyper-extended my right elbow, sprained my wrists. For six episodes, it was a bloodbath. But watching it premiere earlier this week, I loved that. So maybe there's more of that. It looks like there's going to be more of the Fox Business Show, How America Works. And I think I'm going to do some raps for that show. So you'll be on camera this time and not just the narrator. How the universe works? Proud of that show? Because I follow the science. You see. Of course. And you sound very certain when you talk about it. That shows back. I couldn't be happier. Bering C. Gold is back. Deadliest catch is in 18th season.

The book. That crazy Santa Claus song. My God. What a great Christmas present that was. The booze. Oh, the booze. My God, the booze. I forgot about the booze. Yes, Noble Tennessee whiskey. We sold out in a couple of days. So we're going to get another 12,000 bottles. That's going to be coming in January, we raised a lot of money for MicroWorks. And to see my granddad's last name, the man who inspired dirty jobs on a bottle of five-year-old whiskey, which is delicious, so much to be grateful for and so much to look forward to. That's the moral of our little conversation, my friend. We don't need new questions. We need more questions. Conversation. Discussion. Yeah. A good old-fashioned argument.

that's fine. That's how this country was built. I saw 1776 the musical. What was your favorite song from that musical? The nasty one, I think, was my favorite. Where the... The north and the south? The southern guy is giving it to the northern guy saying,

oh, you think your hands are clean? Well, the southern guy was Edward or Edmund Rutledge. who was the youngest member of the Second Continental Congress. He was in his late 20s. He was a delegate from South Carolina. And the song he sang was called molasses to rum. That's it. The slaves.

Yes. It was a rumination on the triangle trade. Yeah. Because all of the northerners in the Congress were essentially arguing that slavery was this conceit of the South. And that it was the South that was really causing this problem and so forth and so on, but never really understanding there

the impact of the slave economy on New England. And so, yeah, Rutledge jumps up on his chair and turns to the northern delegates and says, molasses to rum to slaves. Oh, what a bit of... beautiful waltz you dance with us we dance with you

in molasses and rum and slay chilling who sailed the ships out of Boston laden with gold see it gleam whose fortunes are made in the triangle trade oh man

New England oh god it ends with Mr. Adams I give you a toast. Hail Boston. Hail Charleston. Who stinketh? The most.

Right. Yeah, man. What a song. It's a really good song. Yeah. And it's such a, it's a brutal message. Dasty.

I don't know. He among us without sin, right? Right. Everybody's got a piece of this. Everybody in the colonies was in some way, shape, or form impacted and affected by slavery. And everybody in these United States today in some way, shape, or form is impacted and affected by COVID. We're not in the same boat.

I said that in the beginning of this thing, and I feel like a schmuck for doing it. I was one of the celebs who hopped on the PSA thing and said, yeah, we're all in the same boat, folks. We're all in the same boat. No, we're not. We're all in the same storm. Our boats are different. Our persons are different. Our neighborhoods are different. The variant is different. There's a lot of difference going on. And a lot of different people listening to this and probably experiencing various levels of disappointment.

To those of you thus described, I do apologize. This was not to repeat ourselves a conversation designed to enlighten you vis-a-vis expert opinions. My old friend Chuck and I are not experts in any way, shape, or form. We're just a couple of guys who have known each other for a long time. I'm a guy who just got diagnosed with COVID, who just learned his mom and dad, share that diagnosis, trying to make a little bit of sense of that, sharing some of those feelings with you as we embark upon a new year. Your homework is to Google the Twilight Zone to see for yourself the inspiration for the title of this episode.

you want to see something really scary. Google Twilight Zone, Dan Ackeroid opening. You'll find it. Also, I think you should Google the original cast album of 1776, and I think you should listen to Rutledge, sing molasses to rum to slaves, because it's incredible.

And Chuck, I didn't mention this one, but the best thing I read at the end of the year was by Kevin Williamson. I've talked to you about him before. Sure, yeah. Kevin is a writer. I've been reading him for years. He was fired from the Atlantic

shortly after they hired him for breaking some eggs and got hired incredibly by the National Review. And he wrote something a few years ago and he re-shared it this year. It's called sinners in the hands of an indifferent god.

And it is some of the best writing ever. I'm tempted to share a chunk of it with you. But we've been talking for an hour and 20 minutes. Yeah. So let's not do that. But trust me.

Will you just trust me on this? Sinners in the hands of an indifferent God. I'm going to read it. We'll be back again next week with maybe a big celebrity. Am I right? Well, I'll tell you what's going to happen next week. A lot of what happens next week is going to be determined by what happens tomorrow and the day after with my mom and dad. Well, we'll see.

we'll see how people react to whatever this was because people love my mom and dad. I'm not the only one. And I know they're going to be worried. I know my brothers are going to be worried. But I know a lot of their friends and they're going to be worried. So if they're up for it,

I'm going to bring them on to let you hear it from the horse's mouth. Otherwise, yes, a very big celebrity is on tap. Which, by the way, Chuck, and I want you to get used to that. You know what I mean? Used to what? Celebrities.

I'm not really sure. the future the way I heard it should rely on celebrities. I'm just saying every now and then we get one. Every now then we get one. You know, Peggy Rowe is a big time celebrity. The people love her. Biggest celebrity, that's for sure. Anyway, man, you be well. Keep me posted. We'll talk again soon. No, I think this is probably it. Goodbye. Oh, it's been swell. Actually, I'm going to talk to you later today, but go ahead and get this thing posted ASAP. Do we have any advertisers for it? I hope. Nope, we did. I threw it on that earlier. Yes, we do. We got a couple.

All right, good. Well, tell them I said thanks, too, and I look forward to separating them from some of their Geltafroiken here in 2022 as well. Why you got to make it weird? I don't know. Because we don't have a producer, really? We have a producer. It's you. We just don't have a director. That's what we need. Do we? Aren't you the director? You know what? I am. Never mind. Never mind. As the director, I now proclaim.

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