Joe Rogan Experience #2235 - Mike Rowe

1. 0:00 – 2:36

   Cigars, Carl the dog, and how ideas “arrive” at the same time

   1. MRMike Rowe0:00

      (drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

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

   4. NANarrator0:16

      Cigars.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:16

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

   6. MRMike Rowe0:24

      That was the greatest line from Blazing Saddles, by the way, when Gene Hackman-

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:28

      Which line?

   8. MRMike Rowe0:29

      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.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:45

      I don't remember that.

   10. MRMike Rowe0:47

       Hmm. Tiny little moment.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:48

       It's been too long since I've seen that movie.

   12. MRMike Rowe0:52

       Best, uh...

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:53

       He's a little bit of a fucking distraction. Can he, uh, calm down?

   14. NANarrator0:58

       I don't hear him on the audio.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:58

       Trank him.

   16. NANarrator0:59

       I don't hear him at all.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:00

       Oh, we hear him-

   18. MRMike Rowe1:00

       Geez.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:01

       ... because we don't have our headphones on. Maybe we should put our headphones on.

   20. MRMike Rowe1:03

       I thought you were talking about me.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:04

       No, Carl.

   22. MRMike Rowe1:05

       For an awful moment-

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:06

       He's-

   24. MRMike Rowe1:06

       ... I'm like, "God."

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:07

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

   26. MRMike Rowe1:12

       He's such a great dog. He's got, I mean...

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:15

       He's adorable.

   28. MRMike Rowe1:16

       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.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:25

       Oh, he's got a lot of... Carl's got a lot of personality.

   30. MRMike Rowe1:27

       Yeah.
2. 2:36 – 6:35

   Morphic resonance and toxoplasma: when biology changes behavior

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:36

      That's a common thing with human beings and, and... It's this concept of, uh, morphic resonance.

   2. MRMike Rowe2:43

      Hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan2:43

      Have you ever heard of that concept?

   4. MRMike Rowe2:45

      No.

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:45

      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.

   6. MRMike Rowe3:04

      Why?

   7. JRJoe Rogan3:04

      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.

   8. MRMike Rowe3:27

      So it's a kind of, I mean, I would think biological evolution-

   9. JRJoe Rogan3:30

      Yeah.

   10. MRMike Rowe3:31

       ... 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-

   11. JRJoe Rogan3:52

       Right. (laughs)

   12. MRMike Rowe3:52

       Like why, why every culture, like this isn't unique to America.

   13. JRJoe Rogan3:56

       Right.

   14. MRMike Rowe3:57

       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?

   15. JRJoe Rogan4:05

       (laughs)

   16. MRMike Rowe4:05

       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.

   17. JRJoe Rogan4:15

       (laughs)

   18. MRMike Rowe4:15

       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.

   19. JRJoe Rogan5:24

       Mm.

   20. MRMike Rowe5:25

       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-

   21. JRJoe Rogan5:33

       Yeah.

   22. MRMike Rowe5:33

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

   23. JRJoe Rogan5:41

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

   24. MRMike Rowe5:47

       Exactly. Right.

   25. JRJoe Rogan5:48

       Yeah. It actually makes them aroused.

   26. MRMike Rowe5:50

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan5:51

       Yeah.

   28. MRMike Rowe5:52

       Now, I don't know if Doris went that far with her feelings.

   29. JRJoe Rogan5:54

       Have you ever seen them like run up to cats?

   30. MRMike Rowe5:56

       Yeah.
3. 6:35 – 11:22

   Risk equilibrium: why safety gear can make people take bigger chances

   1. MRMike Rowe6:35

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan6:51

      Really?

   3. MRMike Rowe6:52

      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-

   4. JRJoe Rogan7:44

      Hmm.

   5. MRMike Rowe7:44

      ... 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-

   6. JRJoe Rogan8:14

      Oh.

   7. MRMike Rowe8:14

      Right? It's, it's the same-

   8. JRJoe Rogan8:16

      Makes sense.

   9. MRMike Rowe8:16

      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-

   10. JRJoe Rogan8:28

       Yeah.

   11. MRMike Rowe8:28

       ... 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-

   12. JRJoe Rogan8:36

       Yeah.

   13. MRMike Rowe8:36

       ... 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.

   14. JRJoe Rogan8:46

       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.

   15. MRMike Rowe9:55

       To me.

   16. JRJoe Rogan9:55

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

   17. MRMike Rowe10:02

       Right.

   18. JRJoe Rogan10:02

       ... and you're probably gonna take more risks-

   19. MRMike Rowe10:04

       (laughs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan10:04

       ... '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?

   21. MRMike Rowe10:11

       Hmm.

   22. JRJoe Rogan10:11

       I drove slow in it.

   23. MRMike Rowe10:13

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan10:13

       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."

   25. MRMike Rowe10:35

       Sure.

   26. JRJoe Rogan10:36

       The world was, like, quiet out there. It was nice and relaxed.

   27. MRMike Rowe10:39

       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.

   28. JRJoe Rogan11:00

       Right.

   29. MRMike Rowe11:00

       And, and it would almost be rude-

   30. JRJoe Rogan11:02

       (laughs)
4. 11:22 – 17:40

   “Safety Third”: Dirty Jobs lessons about compliance vs. real awareness

   1. MRMike Rowe11:22

      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-

   2. JRJoe Rogan11:43

      'Cause if it was, you would never get a lot of things done.

   3. MRMike Rowe11:45

      Well, you'd never get out of the studio.

   4. JRJoe Rogan11:47

      You would definitely never do construction.

   5. MRMike Rowe11:48

      Heck no.

   6. JRJoe Rogan11:49

      Yeah.

   7. MRMike Rowe11:49

      No, you wouldn't do anything.

   8. JRJoe Rogan11:50

      Yeah.

   9. MRMike Rowe11:50

      You w- you wouldn't do anything. It's, uh... You know, I... (laughs)

   10. JRJoe Rogan11:54

       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)

   11. MRMike Rowe11:59

       That's right.

   12. JRJoe Rogan11:59

       "This thing's too big." (laughs)

   13. MRMike Rowe12:00

       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-

   14. JRJoe Rogan12:24

       Mm-hmm.

   15. MRMike Rowe12:24

       ... 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?

   16. JRJoe Rogan13:09

       Yeah. (laughs)

   17. MRMike Rowe13:10

       Mrs. Othmar. Wa, wa wa. We were just falling asleep.

   18. JRJoe Rogan13:13

       Right.

   19. MRMike Rowe13:14

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

   20. JRJoe Rogan13:20

       Got it.

   21. MRMike Rowe13:21

       And so, that begs the question-

   22. JRJoe Rogan13:23

       Yes.

   23. MRMike Rowe13:23

       ... 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?

   24. JRJoe Rogan13:38

       Hm.

   25. MRMike Rowe13:38

       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."

   26. JRJoe Rogan14:01

       Is there also a factor when you have a, a person who's the safety officer-

   27. MRMike Rowe14:06

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   28. JRJoe Rogan14:06

       ... 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-

   29. MRMike Rowe14:17

       Of course.

   30. JRJoe Rogan14:17

       ... because someone's supposedly looking out for you?
5. 17:40 – 26:04

   From freelancing to opera: hacking unions and stumbling into a career

   1. MRMike Rowe17:40

      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-

   2. JRJoe Rogan18:07

      You sang opera?

   3. MRMike Rowe18:08

      Eight years, man.

   4. JRJoe Rogan18:09

      Did you... were you classically trained?

   5. MRMike Rowe18:11

      Not really.

   6. JRJoe Rogan18:12

      (laughs) How did you get, how'd he get involved in opera singing?

   7. MRMike Rowe18:15

      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.

   8. JRJoe Rogan18:31

      Is an aria a song for some things?

   9. MRMike Rowe18:32

      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-

   10. JRJoe Rogan19:01

       Ah.

   11. MRMike Rowe19:01

       ... 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?

   12. JRJoe Rogan19:12

       Yeah, I remember. I had one of those.

   13. MRMike Rowe19:14

       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.

   14. JRJoe Rogan19:35

       So n- no classic training at all, just a Walkman-

   15. MRMike Rowe19:39

       Uh-

   16. JRJoe Rogan19:39

       ... th- and a cassette?

   17. MRMike Rowe19:41

       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-

   18. JRJoe Rogan20:36

       What kind of fucking dudes are you hanging out with-

   19. MRMike Rowe20:38

       (laughs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan20:38

       ... that were interested in doing this with you? (laughs)

   21. MRMike Rowe20:39

       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-

   22. JRJoe Rogan21:02

       Right, so you knew how to sing.

   23. MRMike Rowe21:04

       I could carry a tune.

   24. JRJoe Rogan21:05

       You g- e- so you had some experience singing, kind of?

   25. MRMike Rowe21:08

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan21:08

       And then you decided you were gonna learn how to sing opera?

   27. MRMike Rowe21:13

       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-

   28. JRJoe Rogan21:57

       Mm-hmm.

   29. MRMike Rowe21:57

       ... part of both.

   30. JRJoe Rogan21:58

       Yeah.
6. 26:04 – 1:19:44

   QVC at 3 a.m.: selling a pencil, the “cat sack,” and learning dead-air mastery

   1. MRMike Rowe26:04

      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?

   2. NANarrator26:29

      Right.

   3. MRMike Rowe26:30

      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.

   4. NANarrator26:47

      Ugh!

   5. MRMike Rowe26:47

      Which I, which I recommend by the way. Would you-

   6. NANarrator26:49

      (laughs)

   7. MRMike Rowe26:49

      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."

   8. NANarrator27:14

      Oh.

   9. MRMike Rowe27:14

      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.

   10. NANarrator27:54

       Wow. Was he mad?

   11. MRMike Rowe27:56

       The bartender?

   12. NANarrator27:57

       Yeah, that you got the gig?

   13. MRMike Rowe27:59

       You know, I-

   14. NANarrator27:59

       'Cause he didn't even know about it.

   15. MRMike Rowe28:01

       Well ...

   16. NANarrator28:02

       (laughs)

   17. MRMike Rowe28:02

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

   18. NANarrator28:06

       He's probably got a fucking voodoo doll of Mike Rowe-

   19. MRMike Rowe28:08

       (laughs) ... with a bunch of pins in it.

   20. NANarrator28:10

       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.

   21. MRMike Rowe28:23

       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?

   22. NANarrator28:58

       Do you have a script or are you-

   23. MRMike Rowe28:59

       No.

   24. NANarrator28:59

       ... kinda like you have this-

   25. MRMike Rowe29:00

       Oh, no.

   26. NANarrator29:01

       ... facts about the pencil?

   27. MRMike Rowe29:02

       No.

   28. NANarrator29:03

       No? Nothing?

   29. MRMike Rowe29:03

       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-

   30. NANarrator29:27

       Look at you.

Episode duration: 3:06:01