Joe Rogan Experience #2235 - Mike Rowe

Mike Rowe 0:00 (drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) We got cigars. We got coffee. We got Mike Rowe.

Narrator 0:16 Cigars.

Joe Rogan 0:16 We got Carl, Carl's over there snoring. (laughs) So what were you doing on QVC? What were you selling?

Mike Rowe 0:24 That was the greatest line from Blazing Saddles, by the way, when Gene Hackman-

Joe Rogan 0:28 Which line?

Mike Rowe 0:29 He says, "Cigars?" Remember? Peter Boyle is coming... He had just left and Gene Hackman is there after getting the soup spilled in his lap and he's basically saying, "I had cigars," as the creature stomps off in Frankenstein.

Joe Rogan 0:45 I don't remember that.

Mike Rowe 0:47 Hmm. Tiny little moment.

Joe Rogan 0:48 It's been too long since I've seen that movie.

Mike Rowe 0:52 Best, uh...

Joe Rogan 0:53 He's a little bit of a fucking distraction. Can he, uh, calm down?

Narrator 0:58 I don't hear him on the audio.

Joe Rogan 0:58 Trank him.

Narrator 0:59 I don't hear him at all.

Joe Rogan 1:00 Oh, we hear him-

Mike Rowe 1:00 Geez.

Joe Rogan 1:01 ... because we don't have our headphones on. Maybe we should put our headphones on.

Mike Rowe 1:03 I thought you were talking about me.

Joe Rogan 1:04 No, Carl.

Mike Rowe 1:05 For an awful moment-

Joe Rogan 1:06 He's-

Mike Rowe 1:06 ... I'm like, "God."

Joe Rogan 1:07 We wore him out. Jamie was throwing the toy for Carl and now he's like (imitates Carl's snorting) .

Mike Rowe 1:12 He's such a great dog. He's got, I mean...

Joe Rogan 1:15 He's adorable.

Mike Rowe 1:16 I mean, it's such a personality thing at that... For me, with dogs and pets in general, you know? Like you know right away if this thing has a personality.

Joe Rogan 1:25 Oh, he's got a lot of... Carl's got a lot of personality.

Mike Rowe 1:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:28 There's no doubt about that.

Mike Rowe 1:30 Yeah, and, and-

Joe Rogan 1:30 He's like a little kid.

Mike Rowe 1:32 And a person name, which I think is super interesting. Mine's Freddy. He's a terrier, but I love him.

Joe Rogan 1:36 I like a dog with a person name.

Mike Rowe 1:38 Yeah, me too.

Joe Rogan 1:38 Like Fido. What the fuck is a Fido?

Mike Rowe 1:40 No one knows.

Joe Rogan 1:41 Unless... Well, actually, oh no, that's Philo. I was thinking of Clint Eastwood in Every Which Way But Loose. He was Philo Beddoe.

Mike Rowe 1:48 Could also be Philo Farnsworth-

Joe Rogan 1:51 Mm, who's that?

Mike Rowe 1:51 ... who created the television.

Joe Rogan 1:53 For real?

Mike Rowe 1:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:54 Did only one guy do it or was it one of those, like, light bulb type deals where, like, a bunch of people are scrambling for it and...

Mike Rowe 1:59 What do they call that?

Joe Rogan 2:00 Thomas Edison kind of...

Mike Rowe 2:00 Like a, like a hive mentality.

Joe Rogan 2:03 Hmm. Yeah.

Mike Rowe 2:04 Right?

Joe Rogan 2:04 Right, right.

Mike Rowe 2:05 Like that happened with the integrated circuit.

Joe Rogan 2:07 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 2:08 Right? When, uh, Kilby at Radio Shack was doing the same basic work, I think, that Robert Noyce was doing for Intel.

Joe Rogan 2:18 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 2:19 And one was here in Texas and the other was in California. And they had never met, and they had never compared notes, but the work on the circuitry was so close that they wound up sharing the Nobel Prize.

Joe Rogan 2:31 Oh, that's interesting.

Mike Rowe 2:33 Super, super strange. But that, you know, I don't know-

Joe Rogan 2:36 That's a common thing with human beings and, and... It's this concept of, uh, morphic resonance.

Mike Rowe 2:43 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 2:43 Have you ever heard of that concept?

Mike Rowe 2:45 No.

Joe Rogan 2:45 Uh, Rupert Sheldrake, he wrote about this and the idea is... And it's based on some actual facts too about... There's, um, some real statistics about rats. Like if you teach a rat how to run a maze in ea- on the East Coast, a rat on the West Coast will run it faster.

Mike Rowe 3:04 Why?

Joe Rogan 3:04 It's like they learn the pattern somehow or another. It's very bizarre. There's like information that's apparently shared across species and the idea is that somehow or another they're quantumly entangled. Like that the entire group of these specific types of animals are quantumly entangled or it's entangled in some way that we don't understand.

Mike Rowe 3:27 So it's a kind of, I mean, I would think biological evolution-

Joe Rogan 3:30 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 3:31 ... might, might flirt with that. I read a paper a guy wrote, name was Patrick House. He, this was his PhD and he was talking about Toxoplasma gondii and histoplasmosis and it was a crazy paper. His real premise was trying to understand the phenomenon of the cat lady and why every-

Joe Rogan 3:52 Right. (laughs)

Mike Rowe 3:52 Like why, why every culture, like this isn't unique to America.

Joe Rogan 3:56 Right.

Mike Rowe 3:57 In, in every culture you can find a woman who, you know, two cats, three cats maybe, but like went all the way to 38, right?

Joe Rogan 4:05 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 4:05 And just was like, "This is perfectly normal." So his paper was what happens to a person's brain to tell it it's normal to have 38 cats.

Joe Rogan 4:15 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 4:15 And then it gets super complicated because he identifies a gondii that lives in the cat's gut and, and basically breeds there. And what he learned was when the cats were crapping, the gondii would, would come out and then the rats and the mice that ate the cat crap, something was happening to their brains on a neurological level. This gondii basically disabled the part of the brain that would tell an otherwise sentient rat to run from the cat. But suddenly they weren't running. They became prey and they became docile and the cats started obliterating the mice and rat population because this thing that was breeding in its ass was effectively making its prey easier to catch. So Dr. House thought, well, you know, we've all heard about why pregnant women should stay away from cats, because that, that can have an effect. And a rat's brain and a human brain have a surprising number of, of parallels.

Joe Rogan 5:24 Mm.

Mike Rowe 5:25 So he basically postulated that, you know, Doris the cat lady was living a fairly normal life until she got just a little bit of cat shit on her-

Joe Rogan 5:33 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 5:33 ... on her fingers and, and ate it. And the gondii disabled the part of her brain that said, "Hey, maybe two cats is enough."

Joe Rogan 5:41 (laughs) It's worse than that. It actually makes the rats sexually attracted to the smell of cat urine.

Mike Rowe 5:47 Exactly. Right.

Joe Rogan 5:48 Yeah. It actually makes them aroused.

Mike Rowe 5:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:51 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 5:52 Now, I don't know if Doris went that far with her feelings.

Joe Rogan 5:54 Have you ever seen them like run up to cats?

Mike Rowe 5:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:56 The toxo-infected rats?

Mike Rowe 5:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:58 It's bizarre.

Mike Rowe 5:59 Yep.

Joe Rogan 5:59 They run right up to them.

Mike Rowe 6:00 It's-

Joe Rogan 6:01 And the cat's like, "What the fuck is going on?" And the cats like bounce away from the rat.

Mike Rowe 6:03 No, and it's like, it's like watching The Beatles at the Ed Sullivan Theater.

Joe Rogan 6:07 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 6:07 You know? People are like, "What are you... What's wrong with you people?"

Joe Rogan 6:10 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 6:10 "Why?"

Joe Rogan 6:10 "What's happening?"

Mike Rowe 6:12 That is-

Joe Rogan 6:12 Mass psychosis.

Mike Rowe 6:13 Yeah. Yeah, that's super interesting.

Joe Rogan 6:14 Do you know there's also a disproportionate number of motorcycle victims that test positive for toxo?

Mike Rowe 6:19 Did not.

Joe Rogan 6:19 Yeah, it makes people more impulsive. It makes them more reckless and impulsive, and countries that have high rates of Toxoplasma have more successful soccer teams.

Mike Rowe 6:31 I read, and I think this-

Joe Rogan 6:33 I got more of these too. I object-

Mike Rowe 6:35 Look, I don't wanna compete. I'm gonna lose, but you'll love this, and you probably already know it, um, homeostatic risk and risk equilibrium and the unintended consequences, especially with motorcycle riders that emanate from safety protocols gone too far.

Joe Rogan 6:51 Really?

Mike Rowe 6:52 Yeah. So like every... Like if you study the way you drive your motorcycle, like you measure every decision that you make in terms of cornering and speed and braking and all that stuff, uh, and then you measure the same things with all the safety gear employed, including a helmet, especially a helmet, you drive faster. You corner tighter. You take more chances because the risk equilibrium that we all have in our brain is different from one person to the next, but what's the same is our desire to compensate for the environment around us, so compensatory risk and the subconscious decisions that we might make behind the wheel when we're buckled up versus not buckled up-

Joe Rogan 7:44 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 7:44 ... when, when we have ABS brakes as opposed to not having them. They did a big survey in Berlin years ago where they took half of the taxis and they put in state-of-the-art braking systems in half of them and left the others the same, and then they hooked up the, the cars to monitor every driver decision, and in, and in virtually every case, the drivers with the better safety gear took more chances because their brain is subconsciously compensating-

Joe Rogan 8:14 Oh.

Mike Rowe 8:14 Right? It's, it's the same-

Joe Rogan 8:16 Makes sense.

Mike Rowe 8:16 It's, uh, yeah. I mean, it's, it's controversial, but I, I understand it. It's, it's why the most dangerous intersections have signs that tell you when to walk and when not to walk-

Joe Rogan 8:28 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 8:28 ... and have, and have cross wi-... Because you... It... The little man is walking. It says go, so you step off and there's the big blue bus-

Joe Rogan 8:36 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 8:36 ... and then you're, and then you're spattered. So yeah, the unintended consequences of following traditional safety protocols, you know, is, has always really been interesting.

Joe Rogan 8:46 This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. It takes a lotta hard work to put this show together, which is why I'm grateful for the small circle of people that work behind the scenes. A team effort is what makes this show successful, just like it takes a solid team to make any business successful. If you're hiring and you wanna know how do you find the best person for your team, I think the answer is ZipRecruiter, and right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/rogan. ZipRecruiter is the hiring site that employers prefer the most based on G2. You'll immediately get your job posting in front of qualified candidates, and then you can invite top candidates to apply. See why so many business owners and hiring managers are thankful for ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Go to this exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter for free, ziprecruiter.com/rogan. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com/R-O-G-A-N. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.

Mike Rowe 9:55 To me.

Joe Rogan 9:55 Well, it completely makes sense if you have a vehicle that's more able and capable, you're gonna probably drive it faster-

Mike Rowe 10:02 Right.

Joe Rogan 10:02 ... and you're probably gonna take more risks-

Mike Rowe 10:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:04 ... 'cause it can do stuff. Like I used to think... I, uh, I used to have a Lexus SUV, this big boat Lexu-... And you know what I loved about it?

Mike Rowe 10:11 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:11 I drove slow in it.

Mike Rowe 10:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:13 I was just, like, real... 'Cause it doesn't stop that good, it's not that fast, but it's just, it's big and comfortable, and it just chilled me out. And then I had an M3. I had two cars at the time, and my M3 was a zippy little thing, and I was flying around that thing. I was like, "Why do I drive different in this fucking car than I do in the big car?" The big car would just chill me out. I'd just get in that big old boat and I'd just, "Whoo."

Mike Rowe 10:35 Sure.

Joe Rogan 10:36 The world was, like, quiet out there. It was nice and relaxed.

Mike Rowe 10:39 I think it's a, I th- I think it's a slightly different analysis, like if, if, if you're going to adjust your behavior consciously to adapt to the, uh, to the externality, right? Like, you know, you're gonna drive faster if you have a fast car because you know that's why the guy built the thing.

Joe Rogan 11:00 Right.

Mike Rowe 11:00 And, and it would almost be rude-

Joe Rogan 11:02 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 11:02 ... right? It, it would be rude to drive a hot rod like a boat, you know?

Joe Rogan 11:06 Right.

Mike Rowe 11:07 It's the unconscious things that you do, uh, when you assume or mitigate risk as a result of employing an externality that I think is-

Joe Rogan 11:19 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 11:19 ... is just super interesting 'cause it-

Joe Rogan 11:21 It is interesting.

Mike Rowe 11:22 Well, 'cause if it's right, Joe, if it's right, what it does is it turns all the safety first protocols not necessarily on their head, but... This happened in Dirty Jobs. I did a whole special called Safety Third because, because safety isn't really first, not really ever, and-

Joe Rogan 11:43 'Cause if it was, you would never get a lot of things done.

Mike Rowe 11:45 Well, you'd never get out of the studio.

Joe Rogan 11:47 You would definitely never do construction.

Mike Rowe 11:48 Heck no.

Joe Rogan 11:49 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 11:49 No, you wouldn't do anything.

Joe Rogan 11:50 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 11:50 You w- you wouldn't do anything. It's, uh... You know, I... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:54 How are you gonna move steel girders if safety's first? You'd be like, "The first thing we should do is not move this fucking girder." (laughs)

Mike Rowe 11:59 That's right.

Joe Rogan 11:59 "This thing's too big." (laughs)

Mike Rowe 12:00 That's right. Look, I mean, f- for me it was really, uh... It, it took two years to kinda puzzle it through because on Dirty Jobs for the first two years nobody got hurt, you know? We were... And, and we sat through probably 50 mandatory safety briefings, whether it's mines or confined spaces or high spaces or-

Joe Rogan 12:24 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 12:24 ... you know, lockout, tagout. All those protocols and procedures were, you know, super intense.... and we were really, really focused on coming home alive and in one piece, so we, like, really paid attention. But after two years of these mandatory compulsory meetings and all of these procedures, um, we all started getting hurt. I mean, not, nothing serious, but broken fingers and, you know, a cracked rib and singed off my eyebrows and my eyelashes and, and mild concussions and things like that. I was like, "What the hell's happening?" What was happening is the, the safety experts in all of these mandatory meetings started to sound like... remember Charlie Brown's teacher?

Joe Rogan 13:09 Yeah. (laughs)

Mike Rowe 13:10 Mrs. Othmar. Wa, wa wa. We were just falling asleep.

Joe Rogan 13:13 Right.

Mike Rowe 13:14 So, it was like, "Holy crap, we're in compliance, but we are not out of danger."

Joe Rogan 13:20 Got it.

Mike Rowe 13:21 And so, that begs the question-

Joe Rogan 13:23 Yes.

Mike Rowe 13:23 ... what, you know, what happens to a normal person who actually comes to believe, either on the job site or, or just in life, that somebody else cares more about their wellbeing than they do?

Joe Rogan 13:38 Hm.

Mike Rowe 13:38 And, and it's like that's when complacency rears its ugly head. So on Dirty Jobs, we just... it was just shorthand among the crew, but it was always, "Safety third," which meant, "Heads up, man. Keep your head on a swivel. You can be an... You can be as compliant as you want, but in the end, if you don't wanna fall off the bridge, that's, it's kind of on you."

Joe Rogan 14:01 Is there also a factor when you have a, a person who's the safety officer-

Mike Rowe 14:06 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:06 ... who's kind of annoying, and they're like really, like super interested and, and maybe you kind of like pawn off the, the safety aspect to them, and then you don't think about it as much-

Mike Rowe 14:17 Of course.

Joe Rogan 14:17 ... because someone's supposedly looking out for you?

Mike Rowe 14:19 How, how much do you think about proper driving technique when you're sitting in the back on your laptop?

Joe Rogan 14:26 Right.

Mike Rowe 14:26 Or even up front, next to it?

Joe Rogan 14:27 Depends on who's driving.

Mike Rowe 14:28 For sure.

Joe Rogan 14:29 If my, if I was driving and my wife was in the back seat, she'd be paying attention a lot, you know?

Mike Rowe 14:33 Uh, sh- shout out to-

Joe Rogan 14:33 Just that.

Mike Rowe 14:34 ... your, your guy, uh, what was his name? Ashton, who picked me up this morning. Excellent driver, man.

Joe Rogan 14:38 Oh, I'm glad you're happy with it.

Mike Rowe 14:40 Just so you know.

Joe Rogan 14:40 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 14:41 I mean, I know he drives a lot of your guests-

Joe Rogan 14:42 Yeah. (laughs)

Mike Rowe 14:43 ... and I... this is the feedback I wanna pass along.

Joe Rogan 14:44 All right.

Mike Rowe 14:45 He was, uh, you know, very frosty. But yeah, look, I think any time, any time that we abdicate-

Joe Rogan 14:53 Responsibility.

Mike Rowe 14:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:54 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 14:55 There's gonna be... it's like Whac-A-Mole, it's gonna pop up someplace else, and, a- and it's probably not gonna be in your interest.

Joe Rogan 15:01 Well, your show, l- like, sort of illuminated a lot of really crazy jobs that people probably weren't aware of, that you go, "Oh, yeah, if this guy didn't do this, we'd kind of be fucked."

Mike Rowe 15:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:14 And you don't even think about it.

Mike Rowe 15:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:16 It's just a thing that's going on behind the scenes or, you know, out of your radar.

Mike Rowe 15:20 Yeah. That was it, man. It was... I-

Joe Rogan 15:23 How did you get started in that? Like, what... who came up with the concept?

Mike Rowe 15:27 Well, I mean, technically I guess I did, but, I mean, I... honestly, there are no new ideas. This... I stole this from George Plimpton, uh, Studs Terkel a little bit, Charles Kuralt some, uh, Paul Harvey a little bit, you know? That, that kind of storytelling was always kind of interesting to me, and, um, I, I freelanced for years, probably 20 years, in the entertainment business, uh, working, uh, pretty much whenever I wanted on shows that I didn't care about at all.

Joe Rogan 16:03 Hm.

Mike Rowe 16:03 And I was, uh, I was taking my retirement in early installments and really happy with the model, you know? I'd been fired a few times from QVC and hired back, and it was 1993 when I finally left, and I had a decent toolbox. I was great in auditions, so I could get cast, but I didn't, I didn't really much care about the nature of the work, and, uh, had a pretty good balanced life, really. And then I was in, uh, San Francisco working for, uh, (laughs) CBS on a show called Evening Magazine. You know the show? It comes on after, like-

Joe Rogan 16:41 Sure.

Mike Rowe 16:41 ... like the local news. And I was a host, and I would go, um, every day. This is a cushy gig. Nobody watched the show, but it was fun to work on. It was, um... you know, go to museums, you go to wineries, and then you throw to these wrapped packages, right? It's all just l- it's... if there's a three-legged dog in Marin overcoming a heart-tugging case of canine kidney failure, you know? That, that was like an Evening Magazine story.

Joe Rogan 17:09 Right, right, right, right, right.

Mike Rowe 17:10 I mean, we did these all the time. Um, and, uh, my mom called me, and I was in my cubicle at CBS, and she says, "Michael, your, your grandfather will be 90 years old tomorrow." And, uh, my granddad, by the way, seventh grade education, uh, electrical contractor by trade, but also a plumber and a steam fitter, pipe f- he could fabricate, fix anything. He had that, that chip, you know? And he... I grew up next to him on this little farmstead

Mike Rowe 17:40 north of Baltimore, and I, I knew I was gonna follow in his footsteps. I knew it. But the handy gene is recessive, right? I didn't get that, and it was my pop who got me... he, he basically said, "Dude, just get a different... you, you can be a tradesman. I know you're enamored of being a tradesman. Just get a different toolbox." So that's what got me into entertainment, and 20 years later, I w- I had completely run amok. I had sung in the opera, I had sold stuff on QVC, I-

Joe Rogan 18:07 You sang opera?

Mike Rowe 18:08 Eight years, man.

Joe Rogan 18:09 Did you... were you classically trained?

Mike Rowe 18:11 Not really.

Joe Rogan 18:12 (laughs) How did you get, how'd he get involved in opera singing?

Mike Rowe 18:15 Well, it's a weird... look, s- sidebar, you go to the Rosedale Public Library, and you ask the librarian for the shortest aria they have, like ever written, which happened to be by Giacomo Puccini.

Joe Rogan 18:31 Is an aria a song for some things?

Mike Rowe 18:32 An aria is a song. It's the... there... in an opera-... m- most of the big moments are arias, right? And, and most of the arias are, you know... I mean, they're, they're sung by the main characters, and they're lots of ones that you would recognize. And they're in German, they're in Italian for the most part. Uh, this one was Italian. It was, uh, from La Bohème, which is just another version of Rent, essentially. But, uh-

Joe Rogan 19:01 Ah.

Mike Rowe 19:01 ... it was called the Coat Aria, and, uh, it was only two minutes long, and it was in Italian. So I walked around Baltimore (laughs) with... You remember the Sony Walkman?

Joe Rogan 19:12 Yeah, I remember. I had one of those.

Mike Rowe 19:14 I had one, too. And I listened to a guy named Samuel Ramey singing the Coat Aria, about 2 minutes and 40 seconds. And the words didn't mean anything to me, but the sounds did. And I can carry a tune, so I just memorized the sounds, and then I crashed an audition for the Baltimore Opera, uh, in 1983.

Joe Rogan 19:35 So n- no classic training at all, just a Walkman-

Mike Rowe 19:39 Uh-

Joe Rogan 19:39 ... th- and a cassette?

Mike Rowe 19:41 Yeah, I'd had a music teacher prior to that, like a, like a Mr. Holland type of guy, who actually changed my life. He kind of fixed a, a stammer that I had, and then he forced me to audition for plays that I didn't really wanna be in. And then, the craziest thing ever, this guy, his name was Fred King, he was known as King of the Barbershoppers. He was like a legend in this weird world of acapella singing, and he put me in a barbershop quartet when I was in high school and opened up, like, this very weird world of music written long before I was born that I found super interesting. And so, my best friends and I, uh, we (laughs) we just started learning these ancient songs and singing for people, usually unsolicited, from nurses-

Joe Rogan 20:36 What kind of fucking dudes are you hanging out with-

Mike Rowe 20:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 20:38 ... that were interested in doing this with you? (laughs)

Mike Rowe 20:39 I do n- uh, well, one of them is basically my producer, guy called Chuck Klausmeyer, who I went to high school with, produces my podcast, uh... And we still write, we- we'll write unauthorized jingles for our sponsors and sing them in four-part harmony. I'm not saying it's cool. I'm just saying it's a thing that I did when I was young, and I never really shook it, 'cause, like, way leads on to way, and-

Joe Rogan 21:02 Right, so you knew how to sing.

Mike Rowe 21:04 I could carry a tune.

Joe Rogan 21:05 You g- e- so you had some experience singing, kind of?

Mike Rowe 21:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:08 And then you decided you were gonna learn how to sing opera?

Mike Rowe 21:13 Well, what really happened was I decided that my toolbox wasn't gonna let me work in the construction trades or do anything my pop could do, and he really was a magician, and I really took his advice seriously. So, I wanted to be in entertainment. I didn't wanna be in the opera. I wanted to be on TV, but I, I needed an agent, and I couldn't get an agent unless I had my Screen Actors Guild card, and I couldn't get my SAG card unless I had an agent. So I couldn't audition for things that I wanted to do unless I found a way around this weird tautology. And a friend of mine, guy called Mike Gellert, told me, he said, "Hey, so there's the Screen Actors Guild." There, at the time, there was AFTRA, and I'm sure you were-

Joe Rogan 21:57 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 21:57 ... part of both.

Joe Rogan 21:58 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 21:59 But the thing you didn't know about was AGMA, the American Guild of Musical Artists.

Joe Rogan 22:05 Oh.

Mike Rowe 22:05 It's a sister union to the Screen Actors Guild and to AFTRA, who have since combined. And the rule back then was, if you could, if you could get into any of them, you could simply pay your dues to the other, and then you'd, you were in.

Joe Rogan 22:22 Ah.

Mike Rowe 22:22 So for me, it was easier to kind of fake my way into the opera than it was onto a sitcom.

Joe Rogan 22:30 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 22:31 So my plan, uh- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:33 This is all diabolical.

Mike Rowe 22:35 Well, I mean-

Joe Rogan 22:35 It's a great plan. I mean, it- it's like, that kind of strategic thinking is very val- you should be in the Navy or something.

Mike Rowe 22:41 Well, um...

Joe Rogan 22:43 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 22:43 Look, I was just, I was just trying to get a job.

Joe Rogan 22:45 I know, but it's clever.

Mike Rowe 22:47 But there's always a stage door, right?

Joe Rogan 22:49 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 22:49 I mean, there, there, there's always a back way in.

Joe Rogan 22:52 Right.

Mike Rowe 22:53 And so I thought, you know, I'm, I memorized the aria. I, uh, I auditioned. I was stopped halfway through it by the musical director, guy named Bill Yannuzzi, who was like, uh, "Mr. Rowe, you, uh, you have no idea what you're saying at all, do you?"

Joe Rogan 23:08 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 23:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 23:09 'Cause you were saying the words wrong, you were just repeating the sounds.

Mike Rowe 23:11 I was singing it loud, and I was singing it like I, like I understood what I was saying.

Joe Rogan 23:17 Right.

Mike Rowe 23:18 All I really understood was the repertory company was desperate for young men with low voices. I-

Joe Rogan 23:24 Ah...

Mike Rowe 23:24 ... I knew that, and so I kind of looked the part.

Joe Rogan 23:27 Ah...

Mike Rowe 23:28 So, whatever, I got into it, and my plan was to do, uh, one production or one season. Like, they would do three shows in a season, and I had some friends who were in the chorus. And I, I was just a chorus member. You know, I'm just holding a spear, and just singing along with the rest of the chorus. And my plan was to do one or two of those, get my card, and then buy my SAG card, and then go about the business of being a famous TV star, right?

Joe Rogan 23:54 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 23:54 Simple.

Joe Rogan 23:55 Simple.

Mike Rowe 23:55 Well, the music, man. The, the music was so much better than I, than I imagined it might be. And l- like, when you get up in the catwalks of like a, a real theater, you know? I mean, you've done shows in these theaters. It's just nothing magically different about them. But when there's a full orchestra playing the hell out of Verdi or Rachmaninoff and, and, and you're looking down on the scene, and you're looking out at the audience, and the sound is just... It's just amazing.

Joe Rogan 24:25 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 24:26 And the girls... So, like, there... Well, I wonder what they were. There were, uh, 80, 80 people, I guess, in the rep company, more or less, 45 women, 35 guys.... 30 of the guys had zero interest in 100% of the women, and of the remaining five straight dudes, three were married, and the only other single guy (laughs) had a, had a mole the size of your thumb on his eyelid with thick black hair-

Narrator 24:56 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 24:57 ... like, growing out of it. It was just, I was the, really the only straight dude.

Narrator 25:01 You were the belle of the ball.

Mike Rowe 25:03 And I'm dressed like a Viking.

Narrator 25:05 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 25:05 Or a pirate. And I'm going on stage and I'm, I'm a fake. I mean, I admit it. I, I, I barely learned the language enough to kinda keep up, and people in the, in the chorus took pity on me, you know? And it was a world, really. It, it was a world that I didn't know existed, and once I saw it, I didn't fall in love with it, but I fell in love with the idea that there were worlds out there that I didn't know anything about.

Narrator 25:39 Mm.

Mike Rowe 25:40 And that were maybe more interesting than I thought. And so I stayed for eight years.

Narrator 25:45 Wow.

Mike Rowe 25:46 Yeah. I mean, I never got out of the chorus. I never had like a, you know, a featured role. I had a couple lines here and there. But the Baltimore Opera was a big deal, looking back at it. And that was, for me, '80, hmm, '83 to, to '90.

Narrator 26:03 Wow.

Mike Rowe 26:04 Yeah. And then, oh Christ, since we're talk ... Well, it was a Sunday and, uh, during the intermission of something, I think it was Der Ring des Nibelungen, this giant Wagner epic torturous thing, and the, the chorus didn't have to be... This is the one, you saw it on Bugs Bunny. "Killed a rabbit, killed a rat-" It's that one, right?

Narrator 26:29 Right.

Mike Rowe 26:30 Um, so there's an intermission and I'm, I, I'm not needed on stage for, like, 40 minutes after the intermission. So I go across the street to the Mount Royal Tavern, uh, to drink a beer and watch the football game, dressed as a Viking.

Narrator 26:47 Ugh!

Mike Rowe 26:47 Which I, which I recommend by the way. Would you-

Narrator 26:49 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 26:49 Like, would you walk in a bar with the horns and the spear? The bartender knew me. Everybody laughed and I, I sat down, but the game wasn't on. The bartender was watching a fat guy in a shiny suit selling pots and pans. And it was the early days of the QVC cable shopping channel. I'm like, "Rick, why are we, why are we watching this?" And he says, "'Cause I'm auditioning for that guy's job tomorrow morning."

Narrator 27:14 Oh.

Mike Rowe 27:14 QVC was doing a national talent search. Anyway, uh, we had a conversation about the end of Western civilization and what it meant for polite society to have a 24-hour infomercial that just never went away, and whether or not, you know, there was any honor at all in auditioning for such a thing. And at that point, I thought it'd be great to have some money, you know? I hadn't had any before. And, (laughs) and I'm sitting there drinking this beer dressed as a Viking thinking, "I, I could probably do that job if I had to." So I went with him the next day and auditioned, and got hired.

Narrator 27:54 Wow. Was he mad?

Mike Rowe 27:56 The bartender?

Narrator 27:57 Yeah, that you got the gig?

Mike Rowe 27:59 You know, I-

Narrator 27:59 'Cause he didn't even know about it.

Mike Rowe 28:01 Well ...

Narrator 28:02 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 28:02 It's, it's a good question. I, I, I don't know what became of him. Um, we had a friendly-

Narrator 28:06 He's probably got a fucking voodoo doll of Mike Rowe-

Mike Rowe 28:08 (laughs) ... with a bunch of pins in it.

Narrator 28:10 We had a wager. I said, "Look, I don't know if I'll get the job, but I, but I bet I'll get a call back." He was like, "You're not gonna get a call back for this thing." You know, we were just actors at the time. We were like people pretending to be actors, trying to find work. He sounds like a hater.

Mike Rowe 28:23 You know, he was nice enough. He sang in the opera with me too, actually. He also tended bar. He just, he just wasn't in that one. But, um, yeah, it, it was a very strange thing, man, to ... That, that was my first job in TV. Look, I've done some minor local commercial stuff, but I talked about a pencil for eight minutes. That was the audition. It was so strange in those days. They didn't have a, um ... Like there's no playbook to see who can sell stuff on TV, you know?

Narrator 28:58 Do you have a script or are you-

Mike Rowe 28:59 No.

Narrator 28:59 ... kinda like you have this-

Mike Rowe 29:00 Oh, no.

Narrator 29:01 ... facts about the pencil?

Mike Rowe 29:02 No.

Narrator 29:03 No? Nothing?

Mike Rowe 29:03 Nothing. Here's what happens. It, again, it's, it's probably changed today. I think QVC did eight billion dollars last year. Back in 1989, 1990, it was nothing like that. And if they hired a salesman, that didn't mean you had anybody who understood really how to behave on TV. And if you hired a TV person, that didn't really mean you-

Narrator 29:27 Look at you.

Mike Rowe 29:28 Oh, Jesus. That's the Cat Sack right there, dude. That's a sack for your cat.

Narrator 29:33 What are you selling? Let me hear this. A sack for your cat. What the fuck?

Mike Rowe 29:38 Just crazy. They just love it. That's why this is a cat toy, though.

Narrator 29:42 So the cats play with it?

Mike Rowe 29:44 Yeah, they crawl inside it.

Narrator 29:45 And they just go nutty 'cause it makes a lot of noise?

Mike Rowe 29:47 Yeah, it's 25 bucks. No, they're drawn to it.

Narrator 29:49 That's 25 bucks? (laughs)

Mike Rowe 29:50 They fall in the bag. Then they'll crawl around and sort of wrestle with the bag. And just really experience-

Narrator 29:58 So this is, like, sort of just personality, fucking around-

Mike Rowe 30:03 No.

Narrator 30:03 ... having fun with the toy then selling it?

Mike Rowe 30:06 Well, that's what I did. I, look, remember ...

Narrator 30:09 That's what you did? Was that novel that you were doing it that way?

Mike Rowe 30:12 Yeah. Yeah.

Narrator 30:13 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 30:13 In, in relative terms, like, that was actually one of the great, one of the, one of the true great life lessons, you know? You, you don't have to be, um, outrageous to stand out. You just have to be relatively outrageous. So QVC was a steady diet of, of men and women-

Narrator 30:34 Right.

Mike Rowe 30:34 ... doing the same exact thing-

Narrator 30:36 Right.

Mike Rowe 30:36 ... all the time.

Narrator 30:37 Right.

Mike Rowe 30:38 And then at midnight or 3:00 AM, I showed up and put a cat bag over my head or busted open a lava lamp. So-

Narrator 30:45 So you were like a morning DJ?

Mike Rowe 30:47 ... kind of, except-

Joe Rogan 30:48 Right? Because, like, they're kind of fun, and that was different than the regular radio guy.

Mike Rowe 30:53 You know, I would... I mean, for me, I thought of it more like, um, like my favorite comedians. And by the way, I, I saw one last night. Thank you. Uh, Ron White was over at the mothership.

Joe Rogan 31:07 He's there tonight too.

Mike Rowe 31:08 I stopped by last night.

Joe Rogan 31:09 Are you around tonight?

Mike Rowe 31:10 No, I gotta get back tonight.

Joe Rogan 31:12 Ah.

Mike Rowe 31:12 Something about Thanksgiving. But I watched his-

Joe Rogan 31:14 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 31:14 ... set last night.

Joe Rogan 31:14 He's awesome.

Mike Rowe 31:15 He was, he was great. And the thing I love-

Joe Rogan 31:17 He's never been funnier. He's-

Mike Rowe 31:19 I-

Joe Rogan 31:19 ... he's in top form right now. He's amazing.

Mike Rowe 31:20 And he's gone, he's gone full Messiah, dude. He's... I mean, I didn't recognize him.

Joe Rogan 31:24 Oh, with the look? Yeah.

Mike Rowe 31:25 He said, "Hello," and I'm like, "Hey, how are you?"

Joe Rogan 31:27 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 31:27 I mean, "You're back. Jesus, good to see you." Um, he was great. And, uh, and as I watched him do his thing, um, it, it reminded me, like, my favorite comedians, I, I never get the sense that they're trying to make me laugh. I get the sense that they're trying to amuse themselves.

Joe Rogan 31:47 Right.

Mike Rowe 31:48 And I... Uh, and, and that's what makes it comfortable for me to be in the audience, to see somebody who, you know, hey, if I laugh, that's just a happy symptom of whatever it is you're gonna do anyway. It makes me comfortable, and then that, that's why he's fun to watch, you know? That, that's-

Joe Rogan 32:03 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 32:03 ... why this podcast is fun to listen to, the same reason. I, I couldn't have articulated that, um, 35 years ago, sitting there selling a cat sack, or-

Joe Rogan 32:13 But you intuitively knew something.

Mike Rowe 32:15 I knew in the middle of the... Like, everything that I, that it turned out that I needed to know about this crazy business, I learned in the middle of the night on the QVC Cable Shopping Channel over a three-year period, trying to make sense-

Joe Rogan 32:34 What were the shifts?

Mike Rowe 32:34 So three hours at a time, usually, over the course of 24 hours, so call it a shift.

Joe Rogan 32:40 So you would be on three hours at a time?

Mike Rowe 32:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:42 Would you come back again or would you only do three hours?

Mike Rowe 32:45 I'd do three hours and I'd go home. And, I mean, have you done overnights before?

Joe Rogan 32:51 No.

Mike Rowe 32:52 So, I guarantee you, there are a lot of people listening who have worked an overnight shift in their trade, in their vocation.

Joe Rogan 33:00 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 33:01 It, it changes you, just as surely as Doris the Cat Lady's brain was scrambled by the gondii and the, and, and, and the toxo. It, it does something-

Joe Rogan 33:09 Your circadian rhythm? Yeah.

Mike Rowe 33:11 It's not just that. It is that, but it's, it's something primal, even more primal than that. It just messes with you and it, it, it forces you... For me, it, like, changed colors. It, it changed taste. It changed-

Joe Rogan 33:27 Ah.

Mike Rowe 33:28 Yeah, 'cause I, I'd never... I mean, I was upside down.

Joe Rogan 33:31 (clears throat)

Mike Rowe 33:31 After I talked about a pencil for eight minutes, I was on the air 48 hours later, at 3:00 in the morning, trying to make sense of the Health Team Infrared Pain Reliever.

Joe Rogan 33:42 Ugh.

Mike Rowe 33:43 And the Amcor-

Joe Rogan 33:44 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 33:44 ... Negative Ion Generator. Like, what the hell? Like, and-

Joe Rogan 33:49 Did they give you a rundown of what these products were at all?

Mike Rowe 33:52 It was up to you. If you came in a couple hours early and you took the time to look through. Like, there was a table, like this, with all of the stuff on it that you were gonna be selling, and you could take the time to prepare.

Joe Rogan 34:04 But there was no Google back then. It's not like you could just watch a YouTube video that would explain what this thing did.

Mike Rowe 34:09 No, what you got was a blue card, usually from the manufacturer, that said a couple of sentences about what the thing was. You had an item number, you had the price, the retail price, the QVC price, and maybe some easy payment terms. All, all the stuff, right? But it was just a blue card. And then you, you would kinda go off and think about how you would make sense out of this skull, uh, and where it came from and why it's interesting and you... It's feature-benefit selling, you know? And if you understand that, you can talk about anything for as long as you need to, you know. You never talk about a feature without talking about its benefit.

Joe Rogan 34:51 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 34:52 And so that's kinda how that world worked. So you don't say it's a pencil for 99 cents. You say it's a, it's a yellow, number two pencil, um, with an eraser that is of the exact proportion necessary to last for the life of the pencil. So when this thing is down to a nub, you'll still have enough eraser left. It's really a monument to efficiency and ingenuity. And it's not just yellow. It's yellow because you're a busy professional, and when you need a pencil, Joe, and you open up your drawer, you don't have time to root around for some vaguely beige-colored writing implement. You want that canary yellow to pop and you can pick it up, right? And it's not... It's a number two pencil. It's not three, with that thin, wispy line that you can't read or, or that thick, disappointing skid mark of a number one, right? So you just-

Joe Rogan 35:42 Right.

Mike Rowe 35:43 ... just, like, train yourself to fill dead air-

Joe Rogan 35:47 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 35:47 ... with nonsense.

Joe Rogan 35:48 While you're fucking up your circadian rhythm.

Mike Rowe 35:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:51 Wow.

Mike Rowe 35:51 Wha- wha- while you're wondering, like, w- when your next meal is and who you're gonna have it with. And you wind up making friends and essentially hanging with, with other people who live in that same weird, like, shadow land.

Joe Rogan 36:08 Yeah. Shadow land, that's a good way to put it.

Mike Rowe 36:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:11 I have kind of an experience with overnight, but it's not the same. Uh, I delivered newspapers.

Mike Rowe 36:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 36:16 And so, uh, at least one day a week, on Sunday, I would basically show up Saturday night at 3:00 in the morning.

Mike Rowe 36:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:23 'Cause you would... I would deliver Sunday papers, and the Sunday papers were... It was a, a huge under... You had to flip the top.

Mike Rowe 36:29 Flip the... Oh, I forgot to flip the top.

Joe Rogan 36:30 Flip the top.

Mike Rowe 36:31 Oh, of course.

Joe Rogan 36:31 And then hit the button. There you go.

Mike Rowe 36:33 Oh.

Joe Rogan 36:33 Hit it ag- there you go.

Mike Rowe 36:34 All right.

Joe Rogan 36:35 Um, and so I was all fucked up from that. I would get up every day at 5:00 in the morning, uh, normally to deliver papers 'cause I had a large route.

Mike Rowe 36:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:45 It was my way to make money without having to do a job where I had to listen to anybody.

Mike Rowe 36:50 It's also a perfect example of a kind of job where you always know how you're doing while you're doing it. Like, lots and lots of little visual undeniable cues, right? You got a... your bags, or your baskets full of paper, or your car, or whatever you were doing.

Joe Rogan 37:08 Mm-hmm. I was in a car.

Mike Rowe 37:08 You're tossing them out one at a time.

Joe Rogan 37:10 Yup.

Mike Rowe 37:11 You know? You're making progress. You know the progress you're making as you make it.

Joe Rogan 37:16 Right.

Mike Rowe 37:17 You know, it's-

Joe Rogan 37:18 You know you only have 120 houses to go.

Mike Rowe 37:20 That's right.

Joe Rogan 37:21 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 37:21 And then it's 110.

Joe Rogan 37:22 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 37:22 And then it's like, and then it's-

Joe Rogan 37:24 People always go to Dunkin Donuts.

Mike Rowe 37:26 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:26 Get yourself a nice donut and a coffee, reward yourself, day's over.

Mike Rowe 37:30 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:31 Yeah. My day would be done workwise by, you know, 8:00 A.M., 9:00 A.M. on a Sunday. 9:00, 9:00 was rough.

Mike Rowe 37:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:38 Occasionally, they would make enormous Sunday papers. They would have like... and that'd be a real problem, 'cause you'd have to make multiple trips. And I bought a van.

Mike Rowe 37:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:46 So I had a big cargo van, and I drove that around to deliver newspapers for a while. That made it a lot easier, 'cause I could stack 350 Sunday papers in the back of that van.

Mike Rowe 37:56 But see, you remember and you knew. 350, that's an interesting number.

Joe Rogan 38:02 Oh, yeah.

Mike Rowe 38:02 That's a-

Joe Rogan 38:03 Well, I had bigger routes, but 350 was manageable. I got-

Mike Rowe 38:06 How o- how old were you?

Joe Rogan 38:07 I started when I was just driving, so I was in high school still. So I think I started delivering papers when I was 17 or 18, whatever l- legal age they allow you to do it.

Mike Rowe 38:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:19 So I was probably 17 or 18. I started driving, and I drove till I was 22. I just started doing standup comedy. I, I drove all throughout my competitive martial arts career. I drove in the morning. It was good because it gave me discipline, 'cause, uh, I had to do it seven days a week, 365 days a year. You did not take any days off. It didn't matter if it snowed or rained or fucking frozen rain on the streets, black ice, didn't matter. You gotta deliver newspapers. And if it, if they did delay it, you would just, it would delay your delivery of the paper. So you'd have to call the depot, you know, "Hey, are we delivering yet?" 'Cause they didn't wanna be responsible if it was a blizzard for people dying and get lawsuits. So they, they didn't make you deliver papers if it was unbelievably bad out. But for the most part, you drove every day.

Mike Rowe 39:09 So you had a co- you had a sense of consequence, too.

Joe Rogan 39:12 Yes.

Mike Rowe 39:13 Like, you, you'd know-

Joe Rogan 39:14 Discipline, consequence.

Mike Rowe 39:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:16 You didn't deliver the papers, you didn't get paid. It was very simple. It was a very simple job. You would sh- I don't even remember how they trained us. I think that m- maybe they trained us for, like, one day. You were taught how to fold the paper, one, two, stuff it in the bag. You had plastic bags were great 'cause you could chuck them out the window and it never damaged the paper. Rubber bands were a real pain in the ass-

Mike Rowe 39:35 Sure.

Joe Rogan 39:35 ... 'cause you could hit a corner on the concrete, it would rip the corner of the paper, and then the customer would complain 'cause they're trying to read about what's going on in Syria and then there's this fucking-

Mike Rowe 39:43 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:43 ... broken piece of paper. I delivered the New York Times only because it was cool. Like, I delivered the Boston Globe 'cause that was the biggest distribution. Like, I could get the biggest route. And then the Boston Herald 'cause I wanted more papers to deliver, so I would do two papers, and the New York Times. The New York Times was a pain in the ass, 'cause it would be like one every 10 blocks.

Mike Rowe 40:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:05 You'd have an enormous route. If you had 150 New York Times, that's an all-day excursion.

Mike Rowe 40:12 Did you start to equate the type of home you were delivering, the type of paper to?

Joe Rogan 40:17 Oh, yes.

Mike Rowe 40:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:17 The New York Times people took themselves very seriously. They were very serious people. They would ask me what I'm doing with my life. I remember this lady, I was, uh, I was taking courses at Boston University just so people wouldn't think I was a loser. That was literally the only reason why I was going to college. And, uh, you know, she's asking me, I was like, "What are you gonna, what are you gonna, what are you planning on doing with your career?" I'm like, "I have no idea." Like, and she didn't like it. She didn't like that I had no idea.

Mike Rowe 40:42 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:43 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 40:43 Yeah, it makes people uncomfortable.

Joe Rogan 40:44 She liked me, but she didn't like that I had no idea.

Mike Rowe 40:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:46 She was, like, very motherly to me, I guess.

Mike Rowe 40:49 It's funny, we had the, uh, the, the Baltimore Sun, which was the paper of record, and then we had the News-American, which was sort of like the upstart.

Joe Rogan 40:57 Mm.

Mike Rowe 40:58 And I never thought too much about the difference between the two, uh, until summertime and crabs. Like, Maryland blue crabs are a big thing. They're a big thing in my family, a big thing where I grew up. And everybody who eats crabs in the summer eats them outside on a picnic table.

Joe Rogan 41:16 And you lay the newspaper out.

Mike Rowe 41:17 But which one, Joe?

Joe Rogan 41:18 Oh.

Mike Rowe 41:19 Which one?

Joe Rogan 41:20 It matters.

Mike Rowe 41:21 I, I don't know why it does.

Joe Rogan 41:23 So, is it disrespectful to use the paper of note?

Mike Rowe 41:26 No.

Joe Rogan 41:27 No, it's better?

Mike Rowe 41:28 No, no, it's, it's, uh, I think it's a mark of respect.

Joe Rogan 41:31 Oh.

Mike Rowe 41:31 It's like, "Oh, we're having crabs? Get the News-American."

Joe Rogan 41:34 Hmm. Oh, that's so silly. (laughs)

Mike Rowe 41:36 Get, get, get the News-American. Because, you know, it's all spread out in front of you, and when you got the crab guts, and the Old Bay, and the Jayo Number Two-

Joe Rogan 41:43 Right.

Mike Rowe 41:43 ... and the National Bohemian beer, and, uh, maybe you can glance down and get, get informed as you go.

Joe Rogan 41:48 Isn't it interesting that there are newspapers like that, right? Like, there's the New York Post. You want a fun headline.

Mike Rowe 41:54 Right.

Joe Rogan 41:54 You know, you want all the crazy shit, like, what happened? Who got pregnant?

Mike Rowe 41:57 Right.

Joe Rogan 41:57 You know, what's going on with this? What's going on with that? And then you have the New York Times, where, you know, it's important to put tampons in the boys' room.

Mike Rowe 42:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 42:05 It's like- (laughs)

Mike Rowe 42:06 Have you ever-

Joe Rogan 42:07 ... what is, what is happening?

Mike Rowe 42:08 Have you ever walked through the, the offices of the Post?

Joe Rogan 42:12 No.

Mike Rowe 42:12 By any chance?

Joe Rogan 42:13 No.

Mike Rowe 42:13 Oh, my... Dude, it's amazing. It's amazing. I had a, uh, old girlfriend whose sister worked there, worked for, um, Page Six.

Joe Rogan 42:23 Oh, boy.

Mike Rowe 42:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:24 That's the fun one.

Mike Rowe 42:25 Yeah, so much fun.

Joe Rogan 42:27 So that's like all the gossip and the craziness and-

Mike Rowe 42:29 Back in the-

Joe Rogan 42:29 ... this person's getting arrested and-

Mike Rowe 42:31 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 42:32 ... drunk driving and-

Mike Rowe 42:33 They-

Joe Rogan 42:34 ... hookers.

Mike Rowe 42:35 They have a hallway. It's like this place in the sense that there's so much on the walls, but it's all front pages, and it's the best headlines.

Joe Rogan 42:43 Ah. So it's the best ones they've ever come up with?

Mike Rowe 42:45 The best ones ever.

Joe Rogan 42:46 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 42:46 Starting with the classic, um, "Headless Body Found in Topless Bar."

Joe Rogan 42:51 Ah.

Mike Rowe 42:51 Which is still tough to beat.

Joe Rogan 42:53 That's great.

Mike Rowe 42:54 But so many of them.

Joe Rogan 42:55 I love the Post.

Mike Rowe 42:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:56 I, I've always loved the Post. I love the, uh, just the fun nature of the news. That was like the working person's newspaper.

Mike Rowe 43:03 This is the point I was trying to make about the comedian-... who entertains himself first and the shmuck on QVC who tries to keep himself awake-

Joe Rogan 43:14 Right.

Mike Rowe 43:15 ... before he sells the thing. That's how I felt reading the Post. It was like, these guys, somehow I'm imagining a meeting.

Joe Rogan 43:24 They're laughing. (laughs)

Mike Rowe 43:25 They're laughing, their cigars, and they're all in on the joke.

Joe Rogan 43:27 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 43:27 And they're like, "Yeah, we're gonna report the news, but, you know, it's a lot of sharp elbows out there and it's a very competitive world, so what can we do to maybe get the stick a little, you know, out of our ass? Just a little bit, you know? How can we be different?" That's what fascinates me.

Joe Rogan 43:44 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 43:45 You know, how could... Whether you're publishing a paper or eating a blue crab-

Joe Rogan 43:48 Right.

Mike Rowe 43:49 ... you know, or writing a book or a song, you know, how can you, how can you, in relative terms, distinguish yourself, not from these other worlds and other categories, but from their, from your friends, from the-

Joe Rogan 44:03 Right.

Mike Rowe 44:03 Th- that's the, that's the trick, man.

Joe Rogan 44:07 Yeah, that is the trick, and then there's people that want to be that person that is taken seriously-

Mike Rowe 44:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:13 ... that's reading the New York Times.

Mike Rowe 44:14 Mm.

Joe Rogan 44:15 You wanna be that person with their legs crossed-

Mike Rowe 44:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:17 ... reading the New York Times, like, very serious. Very serious people. V- very smart people, keep up to date.

Mike Rowe 44:23 Yeah. I said to, uh, Ashton, your very excellent driver who brought me here, uh, I said, uh, "You know, it's been fun, um, watching Joe do this thing over the last five or six years." And then I kinda stopped myself in the middle and I said, "Actually, no, I take it back. What's been fun is watching, uh, watching the world catch up to it." Like, watching the headlines catch up to you or whoever, i- i- you really haven't changed. And man, it's so interesting to, to watch people realize, oh, we're, we're gonna do it this way now, you know?

Joe Rogan 45:07 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 45:07 We're gonna do it this way now. And, and, and that's been... Whether it's comedy or whether it's music, you know, it's... When culture changes, it feels like there's some instigator, some jagged little pill who's pushing it forward, and I guess maybe that's, that's true, but I also think there's this, this larger hive mentality in the audience, and-

Joe Rogan 45:28 Right.

Mike Rowe 45:29 ... they start to realize, oh, there's a, there's another way to deliver a paper.

Joe Rogan 45:34 Right.

Mike Rowe 45:34 There's another way to do a thing. And it feels new, but it's, it's probably what you've been doing for the last 12 years.

Joe Rogan 45:41 Yeah, it's definitely the same way I've always done it. It's just having conversations with people. I like talking to people. It's fun.

Mike Rowe 45:48 Yeah, but you make-

Joe Rogan 45:49 I enjoy it.

Mike Rowe 45:50 Good.

Joe Rogan 45:51 I'm c- I'm a curious person and I like talking to people.

Mike Rowe 45:54 But-

Joe Rogan 45:54 That's... It's real simple.

Mike Rowe 45:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:56 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 45:56 But y- it, it's... Just 'cause it's simple, right, you make it sound like a parenthetical. "Oh, it's just a conversation."

Joe Rogan 46:02 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 46:03 That's only just the hardest thing there is to do.

Joe Rogan 46:05 But it's not, really. It's not if you-

Mike Rowe 46:07 Then why don't more people do it? Then why-

Joe Rogan 46:08 'Cause they don't enjoy it. They don't enjoy it like I enjoy it. Like, some people genuinely don't like talking to people. You know why? 'Cause they're interested in themselves.

Mike Rowe 46:18 Mm.

Joe Rogan 46:18 You have to be interested in other people. I think we're all connected. I really firmly believe this in a non-hippie way. I think it's, like, a scientific reality. I mean, if... I think if we could figure out a way to study it, we would recognize that we r- we're psychically all connected in some strange way. And I, I am curious as to how someone from... With a, a different biology, uh, different life experiences, d- different geographic location in which they were raised, like, how are they navigating the world and why are they interested in opera? Like, why? (laughs)

Mike Rowe 46:54 Mm.

Joe Rogan 46:55 What is it? Why... What got you to be a beekeeper? Why, why are you so fascinated with painting? Wh- what, what made you start writing music? Like, w- I'm interested.

Mike Rowe 47:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:05 I like talking to people. So for me, it is easy. It really is. It's just-

Mike Rowe 47:10 Uh-

Joe Rogan 47:10 ... talking to people like I would talk to p- Like, you and I could have the same exact conversation if we were having dinner somewhere.

Mike Rowe 47:17 For sure.

Joe Rogan 47:17 Same conversation, yeah.

Mike Rowe 47:19 But again, it makes perfect sense, and it's not that it's difficult, it's just that very few people do it. And if your explanation is because very few people genuinely enjoy it, I can't disprove it. You're probably right.

Joe Rogan 47:34 I think that's what it is.

Mike Rowe 47:35 You're probably right.

Joe Rogan 47:36 I think I just got lucky. I think I just got lucky and I found a job that I would be doing anyway.

Mike Rowe 47:41 Well, here's what I don't understand, and maybe this is not even relevant, but we did 350 Dirty Jobs, probably 60-some of this thing called Somebody's Gotta Do It. I don't even know. Returning the Favor, I think we did 100 episodes of that. I don't even... I couldn't tell you how many things I've narrated. Hundreds.

Joe Rogan 48:00 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 48:01 If there is a wildebeest trying to get across the vast reaches of the barren Serengeti, right?

Joe Rogan 48:06 Right.

Mike Rowe 48:06 Like, if I could remember every episode of How the Universe Works, 10 years of this stuff. If, if, if I could remember half of what I narrated, um, that would be something. Um, I can remember a chunk, but my sense is that, like, I can't even remember the last 20 guests I had on my podcast. And, and the reason isn't because I'm not curious, and it's not because I'm not... 'Cause I lack the requisite intelligence to remember. For me, it's just, it's so mu- There's been no time to think about what I'm gonna do next, and even less time to think about what I just did.

Joe Rogan 48:46 Right.

Mike Rowe 48:47 So, you just talked to Josh Brolin.

Joe Rogan 48:48 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 48:49 And then you talked to the musician guy, Storch?

Joe Rogan 48:52 Yep.

Mike Rowe 48:53 Y- Yeah, right?

Joe Rogan 48:53 (clears throat) Scott.

Mike Rowe 48:54 Yeah, Scott.

Joe Rogan 48:55 Storch.

Mike Rowe 48:55 And then before that, our friend, Evan, was in.

Joe Rogan 48:58 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 48:58 Right? So, like, I have a better... (laughs) It's easier for me to remember what you've done in the last two months than it is for me, and that freaks me out and I wonder i- if sometimes you get over your skis to the point where you... (laughs) where you've started to forget...... what you've done yourself.

Joe Rogan 49:18 Oh, yeah. There's no way to keep it all. Um, uh, I have a bucket that's overflowing with information. It's overflowing. My, my hard drive is not capable of retaining all of it. It's not possible. I retain a lot, though.

Mike Rowe 49:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:35 A re- a lot more than I ever would know. I got an unexpected education doing this show, for sure. Like, I never anticipated it.

Mike Rowe 49:43 Is it conscious? Like, can you choose to be interested in a thing enough to know that you're not gonna forget it? Or does the interest just kind of bubble up and certain things stick to you?

Joe Rogan 49:58 The interest bubbles up and they stick. Yeah, totally. Yeah, like my, my daughter asked me a question the other day. I don't even remember what the question about, but it's a very technical thing. And I said, "No, that's not exactly it. It seems like that, but this is the reason why. And they figured this out because of this." And I started rattling off and she's like, "How the fuck do you know this?" (laughs) She was laughing.

Mike Rowe 50:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:17 And I was like, "I don't know everything. I forget things. I forget my own birthday." But I do remember things that are fascinating.

Mike Rowe 50:26 Hm.

Joe Rogan 50:26 I remember most things that are fascinating to me. I have a unusual recall, but I've always had an unusual recall. It's like, I think it's a genetic thing.

Mike Rowe 50:33 Yeah. Yeah. I-

Joe Rogan 50:35 I think it let me get really good at things too, 'cause I can remember, like technical d- Like it was really good for martial arts 'cause I can remember technical details, like really, like, like I don't forget things.

Mike Rowe 50:45 See, you, to me, are the, are the deeper end of the pool. I'm more the, the shallow end, not... I, I don't mean the, for that to sound comparative so much, but like with martial arts, I'm interested in martial arts, I'm interested in ultimate fighting. I narrated The Ultimate Fighter.

Joe Rogan 51:05 Right.

Mike Rowe 51:05 I did-

Joe Rogan 51:06 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 51:06 ... like 10 seasons of it. But like, that's sort of the extent, like I, I don't, I don't go very deep. I've seen a couple, but I, but it's like-

Joe Rogan 51:16 Well, this is the big giant difference between, um, being, uh, a former competitor and, and also like dedicated decades of my life to martial arts. It's not as simple as like, I go and I do commentary. Like I started doing martial arts when I was 15 and it changed my life. It, it gave me discipline and a will to overcome uncomfort, discomfort and to push myself and to overcome fears and to do something that's very scary and to compete. And that was like, it formulated me as a teenager. So I started competing competitively, like serious shit when I was like 15 years old. And so we were traveling all over the country. And so my social life from like 15 to 21 was completely retarded. It was like, it's sta- retarded as in slowed down-

Mike Rowe 52:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:04 ... like the, the real term. And it was, um, m- mostly just training and competing. That's all I did. And when the downtime, I was tired, so I would just sleep a lot. I was like eating, sleeping, working and competing. And then I started teaching. So then that, I was making my living off of teaching, but not enough money. So I was still delivering newspapers. So I delivered newspapers in the morning, and then I would teach. And I was teaching at Boston University. I was teaching, I, I had my own school by the time I was 20.

Mike Rowe 52:33 TaeKwonDo?

Joe Rogan 52:34 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 52:35 So this is my point. You take a deep dive. When you get interested in a thing-

Joe Rogan 52:39 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 52:40 ... you go into the thing. Comedy wasn't a hobby. It became, I think, as important-

Joe Rogan 52:46 It became, it becomes everything. Yeah.

Mike Rowe 52:47 It becomes everything. Almost nothing I do becomes everything.

Joe Rogan 52:51 Nothing?

Mike Rowe 52:52 Almost nothing.

Joe Rogan 52:53 But what are the things? What becomes everything?

Mike Rowe 52:55 I'm not sure yet. Let me think about it.

Joe Rogan 52:57 (laughs) Is there one thing that if you have like free time, you super look forward to doing?

Mike Rowe 53:03 Um-

Joe Rogan 53:03 Like, do you have a hobby? Do you play golf?

Mike Rowe 53:05 No.

Joe Rogan 53:06 Nothing?

Mike Rowe 53:06 I don't have hobbies and I don't collect things.

Joe Rogan 53:08 No hobbies?

Mike Rowe 53:08 No. No hobbies.

Joe Rogan 53:08 Nothing?

Mike Rowe 53:09 I don't collect things.

Joe Rogan 53:10 Wow.

Mike Rowe 53:10 I don't... I, I, I own very little. I never have owned much.

Joe Rogan 53:13 I wish I had 100 lives to live simultaneously. I would have, I would do 100 different things.

Mike Rowe 53:19 This is the difference. You're insatiable in that way. You, you, you, you get a thing and you're gonna g- nail it to the wall, man. You're gonna nail it. Look-

Joe Rogan 53:28 My, my late great friend Anthony Bourdain, his, uh, headline, uh, his bio on Twitter, it said enthusiast. And I really wish that I'd come up with that, 'cause that's what I am. I'm an enthusiast. I would, I wouldn't say it now 'cause I'd rip him off. And also now my bio says dragon believer 'cause the, the use-

Mike Rowe 53:46 Congratulations on that.

Joe Rogan 53:47 Thank you. Thank you very much.

Mike Rowe 53:47 The ladies at The View.

Joe Rogan 53:48 They said I believe in dragons (laughs) . She triple checked.

Mike Rowe 53:52 It's great.

Joe Rogan 53:52 She triple checked, Mike.

Mike Rowe 53:53 Gotta be true.

Joe Rogan 53:54 But y- I'm an enthusiast. That's what I am. I am a person who, uh, is very fortunate in that I have a love of a lot of things.

Mike Rowe 54:02 Well, you and Tony were similar obviously in that way. Um, he took big bites, he took big swings. We-

Joe Rogan 54:10 We became good friends when he really got into jujitsu.

Mike Rowe 54:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:14 'Cause I kind of got him into it, and then his wife really got him into it. But he started going to the UFC. Uh, his wife was training in jujitsu. And she got really into it. She was really loving it. And then she was like, "Let's go to the UFC." And he's like, "This is fucking great." And then, you know, he came to one of my comedy shows. We became friends, started going... Going to dinner, by the way, with Anthony Bourdain is the coolest fucking thing in the world.

Mike Rowe 54:33 (laughs) It's gotta be.

Joe Rogan 54:33 'Cause you go to dinner with him and all the chefs freak out.

Mike Rowe 54:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:36 And so they just wanna feed you.

Mike Rowe 54:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:38 You know, they just wanna like, "Don't touch the menu. We got you." And they come over and bring food. And, you know...

Mike Rowe 54:43 I wrote, uh, a eulogy for him-

Joe Rogan 54:46 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 54:46 ... that crashed my website.

Joe Rogan 54:48 Oh, wow.

Mike Rowe 54:50 Um, it's really funny. I only... I met him twice and, uh, each time it was fairly brief. But there was a time when he was doing No Reservations, Dirty Jobs was early on. I bet you Fear Factor was still in production then too, so-

Joe Rogan 55:07 Yeah. Fear Factor was, nah, maybe. It was probably at the... Fear Factor stopped in 2007. And No Reservations, I think was around that time.

Mike Rowe 55:18 ... yeah, he was on in '06.

Joe Rogan 55:20 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 55:20 For sure, Dirty Jobs went on in '03.

Joe Rogan 55:23 Yeah. And then the CNN show, which is, I think, like, CNN's highlight of their time. And I think he really changed that network-

Mike Rowe 55:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:33 ... because all of a sudden that network was this fucking cool show where this guy had this brilliant narration and he had this wanderlust, but, but alth- also with this, like, real fascination with people and cultures and r- just really loved it. He just loved going to Vietnam. He loved going wherever he could go. He loved to eat their street food, he loved to talk to them. He really wanted to know what these people were all about, you know?

Mike Rowe 56:01 I've never... With the po- This will sound vainglorious, and I don't mean it to, but with the possible exception of, of me on Discovery in 2010 narrating half their shows and hosting Dirty Jobs, which was a thing, you know, I felt really triangulated then. But then when I met Tony and I had a show on CNN at the same time, actually it was a companion show.

Joe Rogan 56:30 What was your show?

Mike Rowe 56:30 It was called Somebody's Gotta Do It. It-

Joe Rogan 56:32 Oh, that's right, that's right.

Mike Rowe 56:33 It followed Dirty Jobs.

Joe Rogan 56:36 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 56:36 And, and Jeff Zucker wanted something with Tony, so he was like, "Well, let's kinda do a version of this." And I said, "Yeah, okay."

Joe Rogan 56:43 Mm.

Mike Rowe 56:44 But all the trouble in the world, man. Every crisis, whether it's Haiti or whether it's a riot, you know, the show got preempted constantly. They didn't preempt Tony, but they preempted me.

Joe Rogan 56:55 Mm.

Mike Rowe 56:55 A lot. And I was, uh, commiserating with Tony about this once, and, and that's when we had the conversation where I said, "Look, I just gotta tell you, man, I have, I have never in my life seen anybody doing the right show for them at the right time on the right network-

Joe Rogan 57:15 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 57:15 ... for them."

Joe Rogan 57:16 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 57:17 I've never seen that like that before.

Joe Rogan 57:19 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 57:19 I mean, and ne- nevermind the award. Yeah, Peabody. It, it was the Peabodys that got me, actually. I don't... Who cares about the Emmys? They're easy. But Jesus, he was just one Peabody Award after the next.

Joe Rogan 57:30 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 57:30 And it wasn't a hu- It, the audience wasn't as big as people think, but they were engaged.

Joe Rogan 57:36 Well, that's what's important. I mean, the audience, if they're really there for you rather than if they're just flipping channels. You know, 'cause there's a lot of shows that just get people that are flipping channels.

Mike Rowe 57:47 Sure.

Joe Rogan 57:47 We used to, when I was on Newsradio, everybody wanted the sho- the spot after Seinfeld, 'cause there was Sein- There was Seinfeld and Friends were on the same night, and it was just this murderous Thursday night lineup.

Mike Rowe 57:58 I see.

Joe Rogan 57:58 It was an unbelievable lineup. And if you got lucky, you were Sex in the City or the single guy. And what Paul Simms, the producer of, uh, Newsradio, would call a shit sandwich.

Mike Rowe 58:06 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:07 Because you had your brilliant show-

Mike Rowe 58:08 Right.

Joe Rogan 58:08 ... and then your terrible show, and then another brilliant show and then another terrible show.

Mike Rowe 58:12 Right.

Joe Rogan 58:12 But if you got in those time spots, oh boy, you got a good spot, 'cause people are gonna just keep tuning in. They didn't tune in for Newsradio. Newsradio wasn't really successful after it was off the air.

Mike Rowe 58:23 You were in the slipstream.

Joe Rogan 58:24 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 58:25 You, you, you were in the orbit.

Joe Rogan 58:26 Well, we weren't owned by NBC, so it was a different production company. It was-

Mike Rowe 58:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 58:30 ... Brillstein-Grey. So they didn't have a vested interest in us being successful. So (laughs) the, the writers would show up. My friend Lou would wear a T-shirt and he would write the number that we were when we would do the table reads.

Mike Rowe 58:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:45 And one day it was 88.

Mike Rowe 58:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:47 And I was like, "For real?" He's like, "Yeah." I was like, "Oh, no." 80-

Mike Rowe 58:51 With a bullet.

Joe Rogan 58:52 We thought we were gonna get canceled literally every year except the year we got canceled.

Mike Rowe 58:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:56 The year we got canceled, I was shocked, 'cause that was, like, the year after Phil died and then Jon Lovitz took his place for a season, and then they canceled it after that. And, like, in... The perfect thing for our show, we never even hit the 100 episodes for syndication. They had us out at, like, 98 episodes. That was, like, our show. It's like we were always, like, barely hanging on, you know? It was just... We... It was a funny show. It was a really good show with talented people.

Mike Rowe 59:21 I love that show.

Joe Rogan 59:22 The people, I was super lucky to work on it, and it ruined me, because I could never work on another show after that.

Mike Rowe 59:27 What, what did you lea- What was the big lesson from Newsradio, if there was one for you?

Joe Rogan 59:34 Well, it was just fortune. The, the lesson is that you could just be fortunate. You know, 'cause I was not a trained actor at all. I, uh, did a set on MTV Half-Hour Comedy Hour. They had this, uh, comedy show. I did a set, and then MTV offered me a development deal, and then my manager said, "This is terrible money. They're gonna lock you up for, like, three years for, like, $500." It was crazy, ridiculous bad money. Uh, he said, "I'm gonna take your tape and tell all these other production companies that MTV wants to sign a deal with you and it'll start a bidding war." And, and he was brilliant.

Mike Rowe 1:00:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:11 And he did it, and that's exactly what happened. And the next thing you know, uh, I couldn't answer my phone 'cause my phone was just calling. Peop- agents and people would just call me.

Mike Rowe 1:00:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:19 Like, some guy called me from Universal. I was like, "What?" Like, "What the fuck is going on?"

Mike Rowe 1:00:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:22 I was sitting in this shitty apartment on my way out the door to play pool and this guy's telling me he wants me to get on a flight that night. We have a flight at 10:00 PM leaving out of LaGuardia. I was like, "What are you talking about?" And so then I called my manager. I go, "This guy just fucking called me from..." He goes, "Don't answer your phone." Just, like, "Go play pool. Get out of here. I'll, I'll take care of it." Next thing you know, I was in Hollywood. It was, like, that quick. And I was on a show called Hardball. It went six episodes. And the only reason why I stayed in California, I wanted to go back to New York. I hated it. I hated actors. I just couldn't deal with being around these weirdos. They were these weird, phony people. They would say, "Good to see you." Because they couldn't remember if they met you.

Mike Rowe 1:00:59 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:59 So instead of saying, "Nice to meet you," and fucking up, or go, "I'm sorry I met you!"

Mike Rowe 1:01:02 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:02 "I'm sorry I fucked up."

Mike Rowe 1:01:03 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:03 They didn't wanna be real. They, so they, everyone said, "Good to see you."

Mike Rowe 1:01:06 "Good to see you."

Joe Rogan 1:01:06 Everyone was good. And it was super insincere. I was like, "This is so weird."

Mike Rowe 1:01:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:10 It was a super uncomfortable experience. And it was the worst experience on a show because...... the people that ran the show, Jeff Martin and Kevin Curran, super funny talented guys who'd worked on Married With Children and The Simpsons. Brilliant. But the studio didn't think that they were good enough to run a show, so they brought in this hack. And this guy comes in and just butchers all the, the scripts. It was horrible. So that gets canceled. The only reason why I stay is because I had a lease. So I got a nice apartment. I'm like, the first apartment I ever had.

Mike Rowe 1:01:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:37 I was like, "I thought I was gonna be on TV forever," like this is gonna be easy. And now, fuck, I gotta get out of here, 'cause I wanted to go back to New York. I thought about breaking my lease. But then, um, NBC contacted me and they said, "We have this show. Uh, it's called News Radio, and we're recasting one of the, one of the roles. Do you wanna come in?" And so I came in and auditioned for it, and the next thing you know, I'm working with Phil Hartman. It was bizarre.

Mike Rowe 1:01:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:59 No aspirations whatsoever to be an actor. Never wanted to be on TV. And then I'm working with Andy Dick and Phil Hartman and Maura Tierney and Khandi Alexander, Vicki Lewis, and Dave Foley. Like, this is crazy.

Mike Rowe 1:02:12 From The Kids From Second City, jeez.

Joe Rogan 1:02:14 Yeah, he was brilliant. Dave Foley, by the way, was the secret producer of News Radio, 'cause he would, they would give him full autonomy. So he would completely rewrite scenes, like on the spot, come up with punchlines for everybody. We all did that for everybody. Like, we would all come up like, "Maybe you should say this. Maybe you should say that." It was like super collaborative. So just fortune. Complete, utter good fortune. 'Cause I had friends that were on terrible sitcoms, and they were living in hell.

Mike Rowe 1:02:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:39 And we'd hang out at The Comedy Store, and, you know, they were living in hell. And I was like, "Look, I'm on a show that nobody watches, but it's fun as shit, and I can't believe I'm on TV. This is nuts."

Mike Rowe 1:02:49 Yeah, you're in on the joke.

Joe Rogan 1:02:50 Yeah, it was fun. It was really fun. But it was just fortunate. I could've easily never, never done any of those things. Easily.

Mike Rowe 1:03:01 I thought for years that, really, a sitcom had to be the best gig in the world. To, to have, to do a, basically to do a play every week.

Joe Rogan 1:03:13 If it's a good sitcom.

Mike Rowe 1:03:14 If it's a good sitcom.

Joe Rogan 1:03:14 But if it's a bad sitcom, it's hell.

Mike Rowe 1:03:17 Sure.

Joe Rogan 1:03:17 Those guys who do a lot of coke and buy nice cars, those are all on, but they're on bad shows. They just wanna give themselves something to reward themselves for this-

Mike Rowe 1:03:25 That's-

Joe Rogan 1:03:25 ... fucking slave, not s- I wouldn't say slave work. I should say s- like, you're a slave to money. It's not your, you're compromising who you are for money. You don't really wanna do that show. But you're on it, and it sucks, and you have to repeat these terrible lines.

Mike Rowe 1:03:43 That's what I'm getting at. See, the, it's the, for me it came down to that. I finally got a chance to do one, um, I played Tim Allen's younger brother on Last Man Standing for a turn.

Joe Rogan 1:03:54 I never saw that show. That was a weird one, right? 'Cause they got mad at him because he was right wing.

Mike Rowe 1:03:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:59 That's so crazy. Didn't they cancel it?

Mike Rowe 1:04:01 It was, it was been that ... It was their number one show and they canceled, then Fox picked it up.

Joe Rogan 1:04:03 That's so nuts.

Mike Rowe 1:04:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:05 They canceled it because they didn't like his politics.

Mike Rowe 1:04:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:09 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:04:10 Dude, I mean, that's, that basically happened to Dirty Jobs too.

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 Really?

Mike Rowe 1:04:13 Really. Oh yeah, yeah. It's, it was mind-boggling. But, but the point was, I finally got a chance to-

Joe Rogan 1:04:20 I don't wanna gloss over that. I wanna come back to that.'

Mike Rowe 1:04:21 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:04:22 'Cause I wanna hear that.

Mike Rowe 1:04:22 All right, yeah, yeah. No, that's a great one. You'll, you'll love this. But, but to, Tim is great, by the way. And we became friends, and, and chemistry on camera, everybody loved it. And when it was over, I was like, "Well, you know, do an honest inventory, Mike. Like what, what did you love? What, what didn't you love?" And really, the only thing I loved was, was seeing people who loved each other and being welcomed into their little world.

Joe Rogan 1:04:49 Yeah, the clan.

Mike Rowe 1:04:50 That's it.

Joe Rogan 1:04:51 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:04:51 Everything, like the idea that somebody else is writing lines for me, I know that sounds impossibly arrogant, but I was so used to ... Nobody writes for me. Dirty Jobs was truly unscripted. E- everything I ever did, there were never any lines. And I-

Joe Rogan 1:05:08 Oh, so that's an alien experience for you?

Mike Rowe 1:05:10 Yeah, I mean, I'd done plenty of plays as a kid and stuff, but that's different, you know. That's a, that's different. The, o- once you're in Hollywood and once you're sort of in the machine, it, it still lingers. I mean, that's the whole reason I crashed the audition for the opera. I was just trying to find a sitcom at some point somewhere. And then when I, when I finally got it, you know, I realized just how lucky I'd been prior to that, and how ... Here, you want this?

Joe Rogan 1:05:35 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:05:36 And, and how ... Crap, man. You know, a thing can live in your mind so much bigger than it is in, in reality. And so while I loved doing it for that week, I said to my business partner over at that, this thing that I used to think of as the single most efficient way to make a living was so wildly inefficient. Are you, you ... It takes four days to rehearse for a half-hour thing? You gotta be kidding me. I could do five one-hour shows.

Joe Rogan 1:06:05 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:06:05 In the same period of time.

Joe Rogan 1:06:06 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, completely different experience in that way. It's a collaborative, fun time, and you do become like a little bit of a strange family.

Mike Rowe 1:06:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:06:15 You know, we all hung out together and drunk together.

Mike Rowe 1:06:18 And that's important, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:06:19 Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. It is important. It's, it was like we, you know ... It was a lot of fun, man. You know, and meeting people like Stephen Root, who, you know, went on to do a million different things. Brilliant, brilliant guy. You get to see people that are like really good at like, he was a character. He was the only one of us-

Mike Rowe 1:06:37 Mm-hmm. He was-

Joe Rogan 1:06:37 ... that wasn't really himself.

Mike Rowe 1:06:38 Mm.

Joe Rogan 1:06:39 Like he was this one guy who was like a super sweet guy when you meet him in real life, and then he was Jimmy James.

Mike Rowe 1:06:43 My stapler.

Joe Rogan 1:06:44 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:06:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:45 He, he becomes ... Did you see, what was that one ... Cohen brothers had some Netflix thing? A Wild West Netflix thing? He played on that. He was a fucking genius, man.

Mike Rowe 1:06:54 Wasn't he in O Brother? Did he have-

Joe Rogan 1:06:56 Yeah, he was in, I think he was in O Brother. He's been in everything.

Mike Rowe 1:06:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:58 He's in a million different things. But just being with these people that, you know, like I said, I had no aspirations to act. I, I just wanted, I was just a comic. I just wanted to make a living doing comedy, and then somebody offered me more money than I made in a year for a week, and I was like, "This is crazy." And then all of a sudden I'm on a show.

Mike Rowe 1:07:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:15 It's like, just fortune.

Mike Rowe 1:07:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:17 I, I auditioned for two shows ever and I got both of them.... those were the only two shows I ever auditioned for.

Mike Rowe 1:07:24 What was the other one?

Joe Rogan 1:07:24 Hardball, the first one that I went for.

Mike Rowe 1:07:26 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:26 It was terrible.

Mike Rowe 1:07:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:28 That was the baseball show. That got canceled, and then I auditioned for NewsRadio. So it was, it was nuts. It was just... I was just stepping in shit every step of the way.

Mike Rowe 1:07:35 That's hysterical.

Joe Rogan 1:07:36 It didn't make any sense.

Mike Rowe 1:07:37 So I never had an agent except for a very brief period when I did, and, uh, it was, you know Shaun Perry over at Endeavor?

Joe Rogan 1:07:44 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:07:44 You guys ever cross paths?

Joe Rogan 1:07:46 I know who he is.

Mike Rowe 1:07:47 His, uh, his former assistant turned out to be his wife later. Uh...

Joe Rogan 1:07:51 How's that work?

Mike Rowe 1:07:52 Nicole Taylor. That's a... Man, they're, they're living great. They live up in the hills somewhere. He, he just-

Joe Rogan 1:07:57 I mean, how's that, how's that work with your former assistant?

Mike Rowe 1:07:58 I don't do nothing with his...

Joe Rogan 1:07:59 Yeah, how's that work? (laughs)

Mike Rowe 1:07:59 That, that, that's none of my business, but-

Joe Rogan 1:08:01 That's a dangerous undertaking.

Mike Rowe 1:08:04 She called me one day, and I was in my, in my full-on freelance world. I hadn't had a job since, since QVC, so this is like 1999. And she says, "I just wanna, I just wanna send you out for, for something 'cause I know you're gonna book it." And I said, "Well, actually I, yeah, I could use a gig." So she sends me out, uh, in the same week she says, "You should read for, uh, Craig Peligian over at, uh, Pilgrim Films. He's doing something called Worst Case Scenario, and he's looking for a host." And so I auditioned for that, and then later that week, uh, she says, "This guy from, um, uh, Nashville," Michael Orkin was his name, who I had worked with years earlier. Not Nashville, Memphis. Uh, "He was hosting, uh, or, uh, the EP on that Evening Magazine thing that I mentioned, and he's ready to hire you based off your blooper tape." I never had a tape either. I just... My whole audition reel in those days was a compilation of every moment that went off the rails at QVC, all the things that led to my eventual firings, as well as the cat sack and all the other crap. That's, that was, uh, "I dare you to hire me."

Joe Rogan 1:09:12 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 1:09:13 I got hired for both jobs that week, both jobs. And so suddenly, I'm working for TBS hosting Worst Case Scenario, which lived up to its name, and then I'm up in San Francisco hosting Evening Magazine.

Joe Rogan 1:09:26 And there was no conflict of interest? There was none?

Mike Rowe 1:09:28 Oh, no.

Joe Rogan 1:09:28 Like you, you were-

Mike Rowe 1:09:29 No.

Joe Rogan 1:09:29 ... totally negotiated both of them at the same time?

Mike Rowe 1:09:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:31 Wow, that's cool.

Mike Rowe 1:09:32 Yeah. And then, um, Nicole switched agencies, and I, and I, uh, and I never really had an agent, you know, prior to that or-

Joe Rogan 1:09:40 That's fortunate.

Mike Rowe 1:09:41 ... or since. Super fortunate.

Joe Rogan 1:09:42 Uh, uh, financially it's great.

Mike Rowe 1:09:44 You know what's fortunate, man? Remember... Okay, so my mother calls me. I'm at Evening Magazine, sitting in my cubicle. My dad, my granddad's 90 years old. Remember this? I didn't f- I didn't close the loop on this. Uh, but that's... To answer your first question, what happened was my mom called me and said, "Your grandfather's gonna be 90 tomorrow, and before he dies, wouldn't it be great (laughs) if he could turn on the TV and see you doing something that looked like work?"

Joe Rogan 1:10:14 Whoa.

Mike Rowe 1:10:14 Yeah. My mother's a savage.

Joe Rogan 1:10:17 Jeez.

Mike Rowe 1:10:17 She just finished her fourth book, by the way.

Joe Rogan 1:10:20 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:10:21 Yeah, she's written three bestsellers after 80.

Joe Rogan 1:10:24 That's incredible.

Mike Rowe 1:10:25 She's out of control.

Joe Rogan 1:10:26 That's incredible (laughs) . So she was like... She wanted you to do something impressive.

Mike Rowe 1:10:31 My mother wrote every day for 60 years.

Joe Rogan 1:10:34 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:10:35 No agent, no... Got published in, like, the News-American and the Baltimore Sun, you know, local stuff, some horse magazines. We were horse people kinda growing up. And, uh, and her, her dream was to write. She finally got a book deal when she was 80, went to a, uh, number four bestseller.

Joe Rogan 1:10:53 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:10:54 And, uh, everything she's written so far. So, that's recently. Back in, whatever it was, 2001, she was just a pain in my ass, and she called me-

Joe Rogan 1:11:02 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 1:11:02 ... to say, you know, (laughs) "Wouldn't it be great if your granddad, this guy whose shadow I grew up in, you know, could see you doing something?" 'Cause like my pop, it's... He'd seen the opera. He'd seen QVC. He'd seen every godforsaken infomercial. He'd seen... You know, he, I, I'd done a lot of things, probably 200 jobs in the whole freelance world. And so I was 42, and I took my cameraman from Evening Magazine into the sewer of San Francisco the next day to host the show from a sewer.

Joe Rogan 1:11:35 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 1:11:35 And what happened in the sewer, Joe, was... I mean, it changed, it's... I wrote a book about it. It changed my whole life. Um, the roaches are the size of your thumbs.

Joe Rogan 1:11:45 (sucks through teeth) Ah.

Mike Rowe 1:11:45 There are millions of them, and they crawl all over you.

Joe Rogan 1:11:48 (groans)

Mike Rowe 1:11:48 The shit comes at you in a chocolate tide of unending disappointment, and it's filled not just with all the stuff that comes out of your body. It's filled with stuff that comes out of your (censored) medicine cabinet. Uh, plastic products and rubber product- condoms stuck to your rubber suit, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:12:07 (sucks through teeth) Ah.

Mike Rowe 1:12:08 It's unspeakably vile. You can barely breathe.

Joe Rogan 1:12:12 (groans)

Mike Rowe 1:12:13 And what, and what happened to me (laughs) down there is I, uh, I completely failed to, like, host the show. All the stand-ups went wrong. Laterals exploded, went like...

Joe Rogan 1:12:25 Ah.

Mike Rowe 1:12:25 We were all getting hit in the head with... It's like a shooting gallery. There was a rat the size of a loaf of bread-

Joe Rogan 1:12:32 Oof.

Mike Rowe 1:12:32 ... that crawled up my sh- I lost my footing, fell into... I, I was-

Joe Rogan 1:12:36 Oh.

Mike Rowe 1:12:37 I was baptized.

Joe Rogan 1:12:38 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 1:12:39 I was baptized in a river of crap.

Joe Rogan 1:12:42 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 1:12:42 And at the end... (laughs) My cameraman threw up at one point.

Joe Rogan 1:12:48 Ugh. (laughs)

Mike Rowe 1:12:49 Like, an enormous puke. And I'm, I'm squatting in the filth, you know, looking at the camera, trying to open the show, and w- when you see-

Joe Rogan 1:12:59 Uh.

Mike Rowe 1:12:59 ... when you see your cameraman's vomit float past you-

Joe Rogan 1:13:03 (laughs)

Mike Rowe 1:13:06 ... (laughs) as you're, as you're trying to articulate a thought-

Joe Rogan 1:13:07 Oh, my God.

Mike Rowe 1:13:08 And meanwhile, the guy who was like my minder was an actual sewer inspector, and he's in the background trying to do his job, which is to hammer out the old bricks that are rotting.... and replace them with new ones. Now, it's-

Joe Rogan 1:13:24 Oh.

Mike Rowe 1:13:25 ... it's 105 degrees. It's, it's, it, it's the seventh level of hell.

Joe Rogan 1:13:29 Oh. Oh.

Mike Rowe 1:13:30 It's clear I can't do my job, so I, I go over to this guy, his name was Gene Cruz, and I say, "Hey, um, what are you doing?" (laughs) He's like, "I'm putting bricks in." I said, "You need a hand?" So I start mixing the mortar and we start talking, just like people, you know? Not like a host-y thing, but-

Joe Rogan 1:13:49 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:13:50 ... like what, what you were saying, just what would happen if you had an honest conversation, totally unscripted, with a guy who didn't really know he was gonna be on camera? But what if you film it and put it on TV anyway? What would happen? Well, what happened, a week later when this thing finally aired, was, um, (laughs) I was fired g- 'cause people sitting down to hear their heart-tugging story of the three-legged dog up in Marin overcoming canine kidney failure, and it's me, a smart-ass 42-year-old crawling through a river of crap. I mean, they're, they're trying to eat their meatloaf, you know? It was, it was, it was the wrong segment for that-

Joe Rogan 1:14:27 Oh.

Mike Rowe 1:14:28 ... for that show. But talk about fortunate, the mail that came in as a result... Uh, some people said it was funny and they liked it, some people were repulsed, but, but the, the letters that changed my life were the ones that said, "You think that was dirty?"

Joe Rogan 1:14:47 Oh.

Mike Rowe 1:14:48 "Wait till you see what my brother does."

Joe Rogan 1:14:50 Ah.

Mike Rowe 1:14:50 "Wait till you see what my cousin does. My mom, my sister, my uncle," right?

Joe Rogan 1:14:53 Ah.

Mike Rowe 1:14:54 And I'm like, "Oh, my God." There's... I mean, if, if the Bay Area is any kind of a, a microcosm for the country, and I'm not saying it is, but from a TV standpoint, I was like, "This is new." No... I, I've never seen feedback like this. Cur- I've never seen curiosity among the viewership like this.

Joe Rogan 1:15:17 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:15:18 And so, that's, that's where the idea came from.

Joe Rogan 1:15:21 Ah.

Mike Rowe 1:15:22 I was like, "What, what if the viewer programs the show, A, and what if, B, the host of the show is the person that I meet who welcomes me into their shithole, or wherever they-

Joe Rogan 1:15:38 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:15:38 ... work? And what if, what if I'm not a host after all? After 20 years of impersonating a host, what if I'm, uh, a guest or an apprentice-

Joe Rogan 1:15:49 Oh.

Mike Rowe 1:15:49 ... or a, or an avatar, or a cipher, right? Like-

Joe Rogan 1:15:53 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:15:53 ... like, what if I just think of myself differently than this guy who hits the mark and looks at the camera and tells you, "The Cat Sack is 29..." I mean-

Joe Rogan 1:16:01 Right, right, right, right.

Mike Rowe 1:16:01 ... it's like, what if you just let all that go? And, uh, you know, I, I don't know that I would've thought of it like that at, at 20... at 22, certainly not, not even at 32. But at 42, I was entering a more introspective kind of phase.

Joe Rogan 1:16:20 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:16:21 And so, I, I was really just curious to see what would happen if I, if I thought of myself as something different.

Joe Rogan 1:16:27 Well, if we think about the history of just media, it's, it's very recent, right? You have radio, which is like... When w- when did people start listening to radio? It was the 1800s? Okay, and then you have television, which kicks on in the '50s, and everyone's a presenter. "Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles!"

Mike Rowe 1:16:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:50 Right? Everyone's Ed Sullivan. Everyone's Jack Carr, B- Jack Parr. Like, there's these type of people that do this job.

Mike Rowe 1:16:59 Mm.

Joe Rogan 1:16:59 It's like, you ever g- go to a... You ever do a morning radio show?

Mike Rowe 1:17:02 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:02 I'm sure you have.

Mike Rowe 1:17:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:03 Morning DJ voice, "Hey!"

Mike Rowe 1:17:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:05 "Five o'clock on the hour, let's go with Bon Jovi." There's a voice that they have.

Mike Rowe 1:17:10 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:17:10 A strip club DJ, similar. There's a voice.

Mike Rowe 1:17:12 Anchorman.

Joe Rogan 1:17:13 Anchorman.

Mike Rowe 1:17:14 And now-

Joe Rogan 1:17:14 Yes.

Mike Rowe 1:17:15 ... the news.

Joe Rogan 1:17:15 Especially local news. They have a very specific thing that they're doing.

Mike Rowe 1:17:20 It's a cadence.

Joe Rogan 1:17:21 Yeah. Well, it's fake. It's not a person. It's... No people act like that. If you had a guy like that over to your house for dinner, you'd be like, "What the fuck is wrong with Bob?"

Mike Rowe 1:17:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:17:29 "Bob's a psycho. The guy's got people buried in his fucking basement." Who talks like that, right?

Mike Rowe 1:17:35 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:17:35 And so, I think the internet opened up a lot of room for unprofessional people to thrive. That's me. So, like, I'm... I can't do the, the host, but that's what it is.

Mike Rowe 1:17:48 No, man. No, no, no, no. That's... I c- You're not unprofessional.

Joe Rogan 1:17:50 But it's like... I mean, in that regard.

Mike Rowe 1:17:53 Y- y-

Joe Rogan 1:17:53 Like, I'm not... I... So, I wasn't trying to do something that had already existed, I was just doing, like... I was doing, like, a guest on the Opie and Anthony Show. That's what it was like. Like, when you're a guest on Opie and Anthony, that's how you talk. Everybody would just hang out and talk.

Mike Rowe 1:18:08 That's a fun show. Wasn't, anyway.

Joe Rogan 1:18:09 That opened my eyes up to podcasting. And then, you know, Anthony Cumia had his own show that he did in his basement, uh, Live at the Compound-

Mike Rowe 1:18:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:18:18 ... where he would sing karaoke holding a machine gun, that fucking maniac.

Mike Rowe 1:18:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:18:21 And then, um, the other big one was, uh, doing The Tom Green Show, 'cause Tom Green had his own sort of internet talk show that he did out of his house.

Mike Rowe 1:18:31 Sure. I remember that.

Joe Rogan 1:18:32 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:18:33 That was huge.

Joe Rogan 1:18:33 So that also helped too, and I actually was in negotiation with the people that were doing his show, and I was thinking about doing something on my own, but then I was like, "I can't work with anybody. I c- I gotta do this on my own."

Mike Rowe 1:18:43 Quick sidebar. I don't know if this is of interest, and Jamie, forgive me 'cause I, I don't know if I'm supposed to ask you to do things, but I sold the first karaoke machine-

Joe Rogan 1:18:52 Ever?

Mike Rowe 1:18:52 ... in this country, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:18:53 On QVC?

Mike Rowe 1:18:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:18:55 Oh, let's see that. (laughs)

Mike Rowe 1:18:55 It's, it's out there. It's ou- I'm not proud of it.