501: Andy Stumpf—Gray Noise

Andy Stumpf https://www.andystumpf.com/ knows what it takes to operate when everything goes wrong. A former Navy SEAL who served with SEAL Team Six, Stumpf spent 17 years in the military, including a tour as a BUD/S instructor responsible for training hundreds of aspiring SEALs. He was also shot at close range by an Iraqi insurgent with an AK-47—and somehow came back to serve again. In this episode, Andy pulls back the curtain on the world of special operations and the psychology of becoming a SEAL. He reveals what he learned about the candidates who ring the bell, the methods he used as an instructor to get them to keep going—or make them quit—and what it really feels like when an AK-47 fragment shatters your sciatic nerve. It's a conversation about fear, pain, endurance, and the strange things that happen in your head when the stakes couldn't be higher. Andy is the host of Cleared Hot https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/, one of the most popular podcasts devoted to military life, special operations, and the people who have lived it. Big thanks to our terrific sponsors American-Giant.com/Mike https://bit.ly/AGxTWIHI—American Giant makes clothes that last, and they make them 100% in America. Use code MIKE to get 20% off your order. American Giant—American Made. K12.com/Rowe https://bit.ly/TWIHIxK12—Find a K12-powered school near you and see what's possible for your child with K12's Career and College Prep. Digs.com/MIKE https://bit.ly/DigsMikeRowe—Less rework. Less confusion. And a much smoother build experience for homeowners. Get 40% offyour first 3 months

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Hey guys, it's The Way I Heard It. I'm Mike. You know Chuck. Hi Chuck.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:07Mike Rowe?

  You know, there are two kinds of interviews in general. There are probably more than that, but in my experience doing this now, there's the kind that leaves me feeling like I learned a lot from an expert in a subject and I feel much smarter as a result of talking to this person. And then there's the kind of interview that leaves me thinking, you know, I had no idea really who this person was and now I really feel like I know him.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you spent some time with him and confused him with someone else, I believe.

• 0:46Mike Rowe?

  It's such a weird, funny story and we'll explain it as we go, but my guest is Andy Stumpf. And Andy did, has done and continues to do one cool thing after the next. 18 years as a Navy SEAL, served with SEAL Team Six, multiple combat deployments, lots of, oh, what do you call them? Medals, accommodations.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think five Bronze Stars.

• 1:12Mike Rowe?

  Five Bronze Stars. Got shot pretty badly, recovered remarkably, went back as an instructor in BUDs.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  BUDs, yeah.

• 1:21Mike Rowe?

  He's that guy, you know, and then he gets out of that and then he's like, now what? And jumps out of a plane 8,500 times and gets one of those wingsuits, you know? Probably seen the videos of these, God, these people, they're just flying through these alpine valleys and landing in these meadows all over the world. And you watch these things on YouTube or wherever they pop up and you shake your head and you go, what kind of nut job would do that?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  This kind of nut job.

• 1:48Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. And then of course, because he's all that and more, he's, you know, he's running a Black Rifle franchise out there in Montana. And he's got a podcast and the podcast is called Cleared Hot. And I've stumbled across it a few times and just instantly liked the guy. He's just a likable.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10Mike Rowe?

  Dude, who has lived a big life and written a terrific book called Drown Proof. And full disclosure, I thought a guy named Greg Stumpf was coming in here, who I met many years ago, a Green Beret. And when I learned it was Andy, I was like, oh, oh, yes. Okay, this will be fine. I figured we'd chat for an hour about this, that and the other. Two and a half hours later, I was like, I think I barely scratched the surface. But with respect to your time and Chuck's and mine, I cut it short.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  That was damn decent of you.

• 2:53Mike Rowe?

  We're calling this episode Gray Noise, because at some point in it, apropos of whatever we were talking about, Andy looked at me and said, you know, man, you need the gray noise. And I'm sitting here trying to remember exactly what I said that would inspire him to say that. And I can't remember. But I like the turn of phrase. So what do you say?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Gray noise.

• 3:15Mike Rowe?

  You need the gray noise, man. Andy Stumpf, so glad I got to know him. Stick around. I believe you'll say the same thing. Two and a half hours hence. Right after this.

• 3:31Mike Rowe?

  Pardon the interruption, but I just want to take a quick moment to thank my friends over at American Giant for continuing to prove definitively that high quality clothing can still be made in America for a fair price. They've been at it now for 15 years. So clearly they know what they're doing. And what are they doing exactly? I'll tell you. They're sourcing locally grown cotton and they're building factories in towns across the nation where they can find and hire a local labor force that cares about making a quality product. It's simple. It's not easy, but it is simple. Consequently, when you buy a piece of clothing from American Giant, you're not just buying a sweatshirt or a tee shirt or another pair

• 4:15Mike Rowe?

  of jeans. You're investing in a local supply chain. Also want to thank them for putting the MicroWorks logo on a limited line of tees and sweatshirts and donating the proceeds back to my foundation. We're using that money right now to fund our next round of work ethic scholarships. And I'm grateful. Check out the high quality staples, the hoodies, the tees, the denims built to be worn year after year after year at American-giant.com/mike. It's quality you can feel and a true American success story. You can be proud to support. Use code MIKE at 20% off your first order at American-giant.com/mike.

• 5:09Mike Rowe?

  And I do apologize, my producer gave you one of the magical glasses, which is heat activated and reveals my face apparently. It goes away as it gets cooler. So yeah, you're drinking from my noggin, dude. Thank you.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Not all ideas scale.

• 5:28Mike Rowe?

  The etymology of your, of your surname, do tell.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  I guess German, Germany somewhere.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  I haven't been able to trace it back an incredible distance. Many years ago, I'm going way back in the time machine for me, an aunt, I believe.

• 5:50Mike Rowe?

  You mean an aunt?

• 5:51Speaker 01

  An aunt, an aunt, depending on where you hail from. I swear in Salt Lake, there are genetic, not genetic, but familial records that go back. For whatever reason, that's the repository.

• 6:04Mike Rowe?

  Oh, it's the Mormons, man. They kept track of all this.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Probably. So four or five generations in the US, hazier as we got back from Germany. But the Stumpf is, I mean, my father's name is Vaughn. So.

• 6:18Mike Rowe?

  Vaughn Stumpf?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  I have an uncle, a great uncle that I've never met, who changed his name because his birth name was Adolf Stumpf.

• 6:28Mike Rowe?

  That was a good call. That was a good call.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  He went, he went by Audie for the rest of his life.

• 6:32Mike Rowe?

  I bet he did.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  So I'm going to guess, given that name's popularity, really went off the charts on the other end, over the end of the bell curve, that Germany is largely where we draw our lineage from.

• 6:45Mike Rowe?

  I'm guessing the gene pool is deep.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:47Mike Rowe?

  Stuttgart. I love the story you shared with me off camera. We'll revisit that in a second. But I got one for you too, full disclosure.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:55Mike Rowe?

  A guy called Stumpf.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:57Mike Rowe?

  Reached out to see.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  I didn't think you were really going to tell him this.

• 7:02Mike Rowe?

  I'm going to tell him.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  There's not that many of us.

• 7:04Mike Rowe?

  Well, this guy was Greg Stumpf.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:09Mike Rowe?

  I just had a trace recollection of meeting him, maybe 15 years ago. He was a Green Beret and he got shot up and he was running some sort of organization in DC and I had something to do with it once upon a time. Sorry, it's sketchy. It was a long time ago.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:27Mike Rowe?

  But I remember the name. Stumpf, you know, and I'm like, oh yeah, that guy Greg Stumpf. And like, I checked him out online. I'm like, yeah, he was great. Let's have him on. So we booked him. But it was you.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  That's fair. To be honest, that's totally fair. He probably would have been more interesting. Green Berets are fascinating. They know so much about warfare in general, let alone their tactical prowess.

• 7:52Mike Rowe?

  They're utterly, I was going to say unexampled. And I guess that's fair because all you guys live in a different sort of vertical and it seems like.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Less than you would think.

• 8:03Mike Rowe?

  But the person, like you know Evan, I'm assuming, given your.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:07Mike Rowe?

  Your shirt, you know.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  I call him wee man. He could stand under this table and not touch his head. I believe he, well, I actually call him Micro SF to his face. Cause I think he's the shortest SF person to have ever have lived.

• 8:18Mike Rowe?

  Special Forces.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Correct. Green Beret. Odd that they chose a painter's hat to really round out the uniform, don't you think?

• 8:28Mike Rowe?

  How is Evan?

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Well, he is, I've known him for quite some time. He's one of my best friends. I have.

• 8:35Mike Rowe?

  Didn't know that.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I have watched him toil for years in his journey through private to public company and just building and scaling, scaling back, building, scaling, scaling back.

• 8:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Watched the wrong people be brought into the rooms. You need to bring the adults into the room now.

• 8:56Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Shockingly enough, the adults really cared about themselves and less about the company. My opinion, not his. I'm speaking for myself, not for Evan.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  It sucks to see somebody who has built something so impressive, struggle to be able to enjoy it because he's still so just in the trenches with it.

• 9:14Mike Rowe?

  I had him on, I think it was a few years ago, I guess. I think it was a.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Did you use a booster seat?

• 9:18Mike Rowe?

  No, but we were long distance. So it was, it's such a prophylactic, you know, these, I mean, I was, I was so glad when we were locked down to have the ability.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:29Mike Rowe?

  Right. But it's just so not.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  It's way different.

• 9:33Mike Rowe?

  It's totally different. But he, he was great. And I was struck by this idea that he was building a coffee company with a Green Beret attitude, you know, and it was informing the way they marketed it. And I was trying to get to, you know, how else do you think about business that sort of rhymes with the business of, you know, being lethal. And he was still kind of sorting it out. And, and as I watch the whole thing continue to evolve.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:03Mike Rowe?

  It's not easy what he's trying to do.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  No. The lethality is a very small portion of any of those worlds. So special, special forces for people who don't know, because people confuse this all the time, is the painter's beret. It is specifically the Green Beret. And they'll probably recognize the, the movie with, I want to say Eastwood, but that wasn't it.

• 10:21Mike Rowe?

  John Wayne.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, which inspired generations of people to join the Green Berets.

• 10:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  We had Charlie Sheen in the documentary known as Navy SEALs, which also got many generations of people. I'm not sure for the right reasons.

• 10:34Mike Rowe?

  It inspired something.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  The only scene in that movie that's accurate is when he's so drunk, he's laying face down in the ocean with a stripper's high heel shoe in his hand. That's about the only accuracy there. But special operations is all of that. The job I used to do, Evan's job. The lethality is the tail end of just coming from a career that solves problems. It's just nonlinear problem solving is all it is. Then you can apply that to a mission set where you get to take a ballistic tool with you and use it or not, depending on the problem that you are presented with. But it actually is, I don't want to say it's simple, but it's not easy. But that is what that world is. It's just problem solving.

• 11:12Mike Rowe?

  What years were you over there?

• 11:14Speaker 01

  So I joined in 1996. So I had a good amount of time pre nine 11, which I'm thankful for because I got to watch the evolution of that community.

• 11:21Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  And then the last day of June, 2013, they medically retired me.

• 11:26Mike Rowe?

  You were shot close range AK.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 11:31Mike Rowe?

  It's like four or five medals. What is it? Was it Bronze Stars?

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:37Mike Rowe?

  What do you do for Bronze Star exactly? How does that happen?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Hell if I know. The award system is so weird. If you look at a Bronze Star from World War II, and I'm not talking, people are going to get very upset at me, but they can do this exercise. Do a Bronze Star review from World War II. And then do a Bronze Star in general review from the global war on terror. I feel like I would give mine back for a cocktail napkin, just a nice thank you, because what they were getting, you know, it's like single-handedly charged several machine gun nests without any cover nude. You know, wrestled somebody to death, picked up the machine gun, ran it several kilometers and somehow sunk a destroyer. Bronze Star with the.

• 12:24Mike Rowe?

  Like, like, like Audie Murphy stuff.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  It's insane. I'm appreciative of the awards. You don't have a heavy hand in it. So the direct answer is there is no specific guidance in the military. If you do this, you get this. If you do that, you get that. It's very subjective.

• 12:41Mike Rowe?

  Is it weird in the way that I talked to, you know, Clint Ramesh?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Not well, but I know who he is.

• 12:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, he wrote a book called Red Platoon.

• 12:52Mike Rowe?

  Keating, Fort Keating.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:54Mike Rowe?

  Right. I think he, oh God, they were outnumbered four to one. He got out, ran back in, got his dead buddies out. And just was instantly tapped for that, rightly so. And I've talked to him and I've talked to Gary Sinise and met a bunch of other guys. And there's just this, there's an awkwardness about receiving such a thing.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  I just left the Medal of Honor Museum in Texas.

• 13:24Mike Rowe?

  Really?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  We were just there for Black Rifle, actually.

• 13:26Mike Rowe?

  Uh huh.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I can explain the, yeah.

• 13:30Mike Rowe?

  Because they were looking at a World War II Bronze Star.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  So the Bronze Stars, yeah, I mean, again, for people who don't know this, the Bronze Star is the highest award that you can get for both combat and noncombat operations. So the V device is what separates whether or not your actions occurred under enemy fire or in a combat environment. But you can, the citations will start one of two ways. It will say for heroic achievement, which would be a Bronze Star with a V, or for meritorious achievement, which is a Bronze Star without a V. Beyond that, above a Bronze Star, everything is assumed or by doctrine has to occur in combat. There's no Silver Star with a V, which is a really good way to, when you see people wearing those, engage in very interesting conversations about the story behind it.

• 14:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Or Purple Hearts with a V. No, there's none of those things. It's just what, what they, the difference in what those people did was extraordinary. And then again, after leaving the Medal of Honor Museum, we were there three days ago. Black Rifle was celebrating the 100th birthday of eight veterans. So there's a banquet hall there that you're able to rent out and it gave us access to just walk around the new facility in Arlington. I left that, never wanting to speak of my own military service again.

• 14:45Mike Rowe?

  That's, well, you've made the point better than I could.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  I just, you're, I'm sorry, submarine captain that sunk a train, still trying to figure out how that happened.

• 14:54Mike Rowe?

  Wow.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Yes. He had a flag of all the ships and on the bottom center is a locomotive. I don't know if it was on a boat. I want to know, did he, was there a bridge going around and he torpedoed that and it fell in? It's the most fantastic thing I've ever seen.

• 15:10Mike Rowe?

  He sunk a train.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  That's what it says on his citation.

• 15:14Mike Rowe?

  That's fantastic.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  It is. And there's the, you know, at the dinner table, we had a living Medal of Honor recipient from, I believe it was in either Iraq or Afghanistan. The guy bum rushed to suicide. Bomber. Grab him, drug him away. The vest came off, detonated his feet. I think he was one of the few people to live. Cartwheel him 50, 50 yards away. You know, multiple, I'm like.

• 15:36Mike Rowe?

  Can't beat that. Yeah, you got me.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  It makes you not want to say anything about any of your service. Let's just focus on those people.

• 15:46Mike Rowe?

  Do you ever think about the way recognition kind of migrates in and out of the military? Or maybe, I don't know, tactical to practical, awards versus trophies, the proliferation of recognition, we all have to get something, the absurdity of the, the ribbons. Like whatever it is, I've never really thought about it, but I would imagine it kind of started in the military. And how did it get so deep into civilian life?

• 16:18Speaker 01

  I don't know. There's a lot of confusion about it. The problem is, you know, we had the, the Bronze Stars up. That is a particular medal in the global war on terrorism realm that people don't understand the difference between a V and not having a V. And it happens so often where somebody will have a Bronze Star without a V, which they should be incredibly proud of. And what they did is enough. And they will start talking about how it came from their combat service and all of these things. And I don't dig too deep into the pool because you'll go crazy. But it's not a good thing that people don't understand that because it can be manipulated.

• 16:55Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  And quite frankly, I can only speak from my experience and only the community that I came from. The award system is not as pristine and clean as people would like to think. At some point, and this is my opinion, I'm not speaking for the Navy, but early on, I would say around 2003 or four, the award system at least became loosely tied to the advancement system. So let's say you are the officer in charge of an element that is overseas. And the person who held that role before you and the unit that you are replacing got X award. And they go to a promotional board and they are highly promotional because of that.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  You then go hold that role and maybe you didn't do anything that would necessarily be commensurate with that level of award, but you get it because you're in a leadership role. And then it starts becoming an expectation. And then awards start being in some sense tied to the rank and position that you're holding as opposed to the actions that you are supposed to take to justify them. And that happens on the enlisted side as well. Because you have to hit leadership wickets to be at least eligible for advancement. And as soon as that happens, the validity of the system, at least in my opinion, is broken to a degree.

• 18:15Mike Rowe?

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• 19:00Mike Rowe?

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• 19:39Mike Rowe?

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• 20:06Mike Rowe?

  Wealth, look, I'm asking you this because I, I think a lot about honorary degrees. I think about degrees a lot, you know, a college degree, it's a thing that, you know, my foundation deals with a bunch and, and.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  It's very elitist. Well. As somebody who has neither an honorary or a real degree.

• 20:29Mike Rowe?

  Well, I, I remember I graduated from a community college a long time ago and then a, and then a university after that. And I owed him $330 in parking tickets. And before the commencement, they called to say, pay up or there's no, there's no degree. You know, you're just gonna be on stage, you'll get an empty thing.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:52Mike Rowe?

  And I thought, well, you can't, like, there's no way you can't give, not give me the degree, you know. I don't think I've ever told you this, Chuck, but I went down like the rabbit hole of just like resentment and weirdness. And I wound up going to see a Styx concert with my friend instead of going to graduation up in Madison Square Garden, Jeff Wilson.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:12Mike Rowe?

  And they, they mailed the degree to my dad's house. And I remember he called me and said, oh, I got your receipt in the mail today. Like, my receipt. Because, you know, receipt, degree, whatever. I'm like, oh, man. And so now, just, and people have invited me to, to speak at graduations a bunch and, and I've been offered honorary degrees. And I've never really been able to do that, just because that, for me, that's where it started to feel like, what are we doing? Why, like Maya Angelou, God bless her, she had a lot to say and she said it beautifully, but she had many, like 40 or 50 honorary degrees and.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  What does it mean at that point?

• 21:57Mike Rowe?

  Well, in her case, it meant that, you know, she was referred to as a, as a doctor and a credentialed, it's just so odd to me.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  I agree. I don't understand it.

• 22:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  I don't understand a non honorary degree, let alone, I don't understand the point of it. Why bestow that on somebody or gift that? What are they supposed to do with it?

• 22:18Mike Rowe?

  I don't know. I guess you hang it. But my point is, I think it all, it's like the, it's like that movie with Keaton, Multiplicity. Like, if you look at the guy you described before, the guy who sunk a train, okay, under, under insanely hazardous conditions.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Let alone many other things that he sank.

• 22:39Mike Rowe?

  Who assumed all the imaginable risks.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:43Mike Rowe?

  You know, and put his life and his men's lives on the line, did whatever they did, sank all those things, and then just a train to let everybody, okay, that guy gets something.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  He got the Medal of Honor.

• 22:52Mike Rowe?

  Okay, there you go.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:55Mike Rowe?

  Now, everything is lesser than. Everything is a version of, okay, that was pretty brave.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:03Mike Rowe?

  Not quite as brave as that guy. And then we're in this crazy chronology, this crazy hierarchy. And I don't know, man, it just seems like a, an odd way to order our lives.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  I agree. And then, like I said, the system I described, what if there wasn't any bravery, but the advancement board is six months away? What do you do?

• 23:26Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  It breaks the system. And everybody's aware of it. I mean, I know I am not the only person that feels this way. Maybe I'm the only person who wants to say it publicly, but it's the reality of what it is. And it sucks because I think, I would hope that those things mean something. Because I've watched people do things that they got those type of awards for. And I don't have the words to describe it.

• 23:52Mike Rowe?

  And yet you talk a lot about, I mean, you've got words. Your podcast is.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  You know what, maybe. I try to get other people to talk more, though.

• 24:01Mike Rowe?

  Hey, I've noticed. I've noticed. But you're the guest here, so.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  No, I'm not saying here, I'm saying on my own show.

• 24:07Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  I'm fascinated by other people. I think you're probably the same way. It's, I think it's easy to host a podcast and talk for hours, especially if you're legitimately interested in other people's life and experience. I'm the most resoundingly born person that I know. And you could ask my children, I think they would agree with you.

• 24:27Mike Rowe?

  Well, here's how boring you are. And I don't know you, but we just met, you literally fell over yourself confessing that you saw me in a hotel restaurant.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:37Mike Rowe?

  A month ago, eating. And you knew you were gonna come here to see me, but you and your wife, you just sat there and observed.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  She wasn't observing, she was focusing on eating. I was concerned about your safety. And I was just making sure you were okay.

• 24:56Mike Rowe?

  But you didn't walk over to say hello?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Never. You were enjoying a private moment. Why would I do that?

• 25:02Mike Rowe?

  Well, I can only defer to the species to which I believe you belong.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:09Mike Rowe?

  And suggest that what you've just espoused would put you in a very skinny minority.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Some buses are shorter than others. You know, some have flavor windows, some do not.

• 25:25Mike Rowe?

  Have you ever walked up to somebody you've recognized or were curious about out there in the wild and just said hello? Do people come up to you these days?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  I have never approached a celebrity, even when I have worked in environments when they're present. If the meeting is natural, I will say hello, but I leave them to do their thing. And that's just based in, I think, people in that world. It's fascinating to me. I know some relatively famous people and I can see the struggle of them living a normal life, whatever that means. But as an example, I was at an archery event with Joe Rogan. He was trying to get to the bathroom.

• 26:01Mike Rowe?

  Oh, Joe can't take a piss.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  It took 30 minutes for him to go, maybe 30 yards. And I remembered that. And he's the kindest man, stopped and said hello to everybody, shook their hand, took pictures, all of those things, because he's very appreciative of it. But I know he wanted to take a piss.

• 26:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  So, and I remembered that, that left a mark on me for sure. So I just let people do their thing. I knew we were gonna sit down in a month and I could tell you a weird story. It's probably one of the more awkward stories that you've ever had to open with. So, you know.

• 26:30Mike Rowe?

  No, man, but you could have made it so much weirder. As we discussed, you could have simply walked up, taken a piece of sushi, put it in your mouth.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Or just touched it as I was talking.

• 26:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, just touch, walk up, touch food and say, you don't know me yet, but you will.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Just a sip out of your wine glass and just walk off into the smoke.

• 26:48Mike Rowe?

  That would have been amazing.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not, it's not me, though. I, it's.

• 26:54Mike Rowe?

  But you thought of it.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Oh, trust me, I thought of a lot of things. It doesn't mean I'm gonna do it. My mind is a, not a place you probably wanna go visit.

• 27:02Mike Rowe?

  I honestly don't know what I would have done. You walk up, you just put your hand on my meal.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:09Mike Rowe?

  And say, big fan. And then just walk away.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:14Mike Rowe?

  I just don't know what I would have done.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  What would anybody do, other than sit there and probably paralyze shock?

• 27:18Mike Rowe?

  I, I'd like to think I would have applauded, just to say, good for doing something that's, you know, it's rare to see something you've never seen before, to experience something that's just brand new.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  I'd rather let you have a nice meal. You guys seem like you're having a good time.

• 27:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I was there with, what's her name, Mary.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  I've heard of her.

• 27:36Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  People do come up to me a little bit more now, and I always just thank them for doing so. And, you know, usually they want a picture, or these days they'll ask me to sign the book. And of course, I mean, what am I gonna do other than say yes?

• 27:50Mike Rowe?

  The book is.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Drown proof.

• 27:52Mike Rowe?

  Drown proof.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, has nothing to do with the water or swimming, but, you know, catchy.

• 27:57Mike Rowe?

  Is it actually a word, Andy? Or is it two words?

• 28:01Speaker 01

  It's a word in common usage.

• 28:04Mike Rowe?

  Drown proof.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  In the world, it is a physical evolution at buds. And I think it was actually called drown proofing. I think it's a word. On the title, it's one word, you know?

• 28:15Mike Rowe?

  Because you guys go through all sorts of, you know, delightful little crucibles.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  That one actually isn't that bad. Assuming, and I'm gonna put a huge asterisk on this, that you are comfortable, yeah, there it is, that you're comfortable in the water.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Now, so this title picture nerds people out and I have to tell the story of the picture too. So the person who took that used to be a SEAL. He became a very high-end photographer and he had access to the training facility because of that, because he was a known entity. So they let him come in. He has an entire book of images that would just blow you away.

• 28:51Mike Rowe?

  Well, let me just say that as images go, that's terrifying.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  That was one of my favorite evolutions because your head is only above the water for about a second. So that's all you can hear them yelling at you as you go back down to the bottom, which is why if you're comfortable in the water, but for people who are audio only, this is a portion of the evolution called drown-proofing. In the picture, their feet are tied together above the ankle. Their hands are tied behind their back with a similar piece of rope. We don't do that to them on the first day.

• 29:19Mike Rowe?

  Coming in hot.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  It's a crawl, walk, run training pipeline. People think it's ultra-high speed. It's not. They probably spend a week just holding their hands behind their back. And then I think we start with the Velcro straps that you can undo. Eventually, so you have to bob for an hour, which it is, if you can relax and control your breathing, exceptionally easy. You exhale to become negatively buoyant. You bounce off the bottom, come to the top, grab some air, somebody yells at you for a little bit and you just, you go back down.

• 29:47Mike Rowe?

  So it's opposite, Bill. You exhale.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Exhale to go down. You get your air on the way up. Then you have to swim the length of the pool with your arms and legs tied behind your back. It's not that hard either, but it's different. You need to keep more air in your lungs to maintain that positive buoyancy. You're basically dolphin kicking. Then you come back and I still don't understand why we do this. They start bouncing again. They throw a mask into the pool. You have to wiggle your happy ass over there, pick the mask up with your teeth and then bob with that in your mouth for an indiscriminate amount of time. Then you have to do a front somersault and then it's over. Again.

• 30:22Mike Rowe?

  Why do you have to do a front somersault?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Everything beyond the swimming back and forth, I don't understand. I think comfort in the water. Also, what is not shown in this picture are there are instructors in the water and it's a one-to-one ratio.

• 30:33Mike Rowe?

  Oh, a somersault underwater?

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Underwater, yes.

• 30:36Mike Rowe?

  Oh, okay. Like, now get out and dive.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, the job requires a variety of physical skills. Sometimes the somersault is one of them. There is a robust safety net for the students. It's one-to-one. One student is watching a student as they're in the pool. So one's on the pool deck and there are instructors all around. There's dive medical officers on the pool deck. It's really not that bad. If you're comfortable in the water, which is actually what this is testing.

• 31:01Mike Rowe?

  How many people sign up, try out, who aren't comfortable in the water? And how many of those somehow power through on a percentage basis?

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Man, I don't think there's any studies on that one, but I think we can hypothesize it's a single-digit percentage.

• 31:19Mike Rowe?

  It's gotta be.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  I was a BUDS instructor for 18 months and I don't remember why I was out there. The training facility butts the Pacific Ocean with large sand burms. There was a student standing out there on the sand berm, just marveling at the Pacific Ocean. So I walked up and said, what are you doing? He said, I've never seen the ocean before. He did not last long.

• 31:39Mike Rowe?

  Jesus, what was he thinking?

• 31:41Speaker 01

  That is a question I've been asking myself and my children since they were born and I was young.

• 31:46Mike Rowe?

  This is pretty high cotton from Joe, who wrote, "If the world went completely sideways from a zombie virus outbreak and we had to put together a militia to save the human race, Andy Stumpf would be my top draft pick."

• 32:00Speaker 01

  I will say this. He wrote nearly five paragraphs. It was incredibly personal endorsement and they had to pull what they thought, I don't know what they thought people were going to get from that, other than maybe I'm somebody good to have on a team if there's a draft pick, but.

• 32:16Mike Rowe?

  Did they leave the rest of it somewhere in the book? Did they?

• 32:18Speaker 01

  No, no, it would have been the entire front cover, which I don't know if that sells.

• 32:29Mike Rowe?

  If I'm being honest, and I always try to be, especially in these commercials, there's a lot about AI that makes me uncomfortable. I don't like the way it's impacting the publishing industry, or the film industry, or the music industry, or frankly, anything artistic. What I do like are companies that are using AI to make hard work more productive. That's exactly what Diggs is doing. And the entire construction industry is now paying attention. Diggs has built a software tool driven by AI that keeps builders from drowning in reams of disconnected information from toxic text threads to rogue PDFs. It simplifies everything

• 33:11Mike Rowe?

  by taking blueprints, takeoffs, homeowner approvals, all that stuff, and putting them in one place. So when you need to know the exact tile option that a homeowner approved weeks ago, you don't have to call three people or scream at your dashboard for a half hour. You just ask Diggs and the AI finds the answer in two seconds. This technology is saving builders 40 to 50 hours per project, which is why Diggs is expanding like crazy. Full disclosure, I haven't used the product personally because I don't build houses for a living, but if I was having a home built, I would absolutely insist that builders use Diggs. I've also met the owners of the company, Ryan and Ty. They're awesome. I've kicked

• 33:53Mike Rowe?

  the tires and I've personally invested in Diggs because I think they're going to be huge. Go to digs.com/mike. Save 40% off your first three months at digs.com/mike. Can you dig it? Do you still have the entire quote?

• 34:14Speaker 01

  I do.

• 34:16Mike Rowe?

  Is it framed?

• 34:17Speaker 01

  No, but I'm going to with some of the worst reviews of the book. I'll just do them side by side.

• 34:23Mike Rowe?

  That's great.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  I love it. People's internet behaviors and actions are fascinating to me.

• 34:28Mike Rowe?

  Oh, man.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  I love to see the expression of just humanity coming apart.

• 34:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  I got a raving one-star Goodreads review that is several paragraphs and I currently have my producer framing it to go in the studio because it just warms my heart.

• 34:44Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, I mean, it's a way to take your power back. I had a lot of interesting mail years ago. I paid my dues at CBS for a while and then on the QVC cable shopping channel, you know?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Strong.

• 34:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah. Three years there.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  How was that?

• 35:01Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'll tell you, it was instructive. Looking back, I actually, I didn't talk about it for years. And then when I started to talk about it, it was kind of funny and kitschy. And then the more I thought about it, the more I realized, well, it certainly wasn't BUDS, but it was a training ground for sure.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  I bet.

• 35:21Mike Rowe?

  And it was sleep deprivation and it was very, live TV is very uncomfortable and we have no training at all. And they're just bringing you things and your job is to kill eight minutes at a time. It's not exactly mortal stakes, but it's a weird set of muscles to develop.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:39Mike Rowe?

  And you either do it or you don't. And, you know, like so many useful things in this ridiculous industry I learned there. This has what, eight, eight lessons, eight life lessons to keep your head above water. That's pretty clever, too.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  I didn't come up with that.

• 36:00Mike Rowe?

  Did you come up with the lessons?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 36:03Mike Rowe?

  Did you do anything, Andy?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  It can be argued. I mean, how far back in time do you want to go? I like to set the bar low and then trip over it.

• 36:11Mike Rowe?

  Well, I don't want to dwell on all the combat stuff because I think you're probably sick to death of talking about it.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  You'd be underwhelmed by it anyway. It's not what people think.

• 36:20Mike Rowe?

  Okay, what is it?

• 36:21Speaker 01

  You're making the best decision you can in the moment with limited information and then you get the rest of your life to think about it. It's about what it is.

• 36:29Mike Rowe?

  This is a pure oil. I could do so much better than this, but to get shot at close range with an AK, what flavor is the pain?

• 36:41Speaker 01

  The best way I can describe it, you're old enough to remember this. Remember the Bash Brothers, Kenseko and McGuire?

• 36:47Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  We're talking peak juice, not early, when they were somehow evading the drug testing program, if there was one in baseball. If you would have given either of them a baseball bat with about a nine-inch nail sticking out of it and let them wind up, that's what I think, I've never tested this, but in my mind, this is the way that I could describe it. That's about what it felt like.

• 37:10Mike Rowe?

  Where'd it get you? Hip?

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, high up on my left hip. Spun me towards the person that was shooting at me. About a year later, I found the belt that I was wearing that night because they cut most of my clothes off me. The second round that that guy shot at me, I'm thankful that it spun me towards him and then I pushed off with my foot. I ended up stuck under a vehicle just watching a guy shoot at me, very, super heroic, just pinned because of my gear. And just like, ah.

• 37:35Mike Rowe?

  On the positive side, here's another star.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. The second round the guy shot at me traveled down my belt, about six inches, burning it along the way. And then the copper jacket of the round is still attached to my belt. So had it not spun me, again, this is a hypothesis, that one was higher, I couldn't have put a tourniquet on the one that did hit me, but it missed my femur. It missed all the arteries and veins. The second round had it interacted with my pelvis, very unlikely that we'd be sitting here today. Those are generally fatal and excruciatingly painful.

• 38:07Mike Rowe?

  Can't even imagine.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:10Mike Rowe?

  So does the pain, how does it linger?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  I was just about to say, it wasn't that bad.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  But it wasn't that bad. By the time I got to the hospital, so eight Americans got hurt on that objective that night. I was one of the least injured. We were flying in TF160th Little Birds to load the people up to get them out of there. And some of that was blue on blue. That was not all enemy. That was, it was a breaching charge that was detonated when American forces were close. It was, it was gnarly. By the time I got to the hospital, I took a Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the back of one with a guy who'd been shot in the hand. My ankle actually hurt worse than anything because the round interacted with my sciatic nerve. And so it short circuited it from the point of impact all the way down to my ankle. So my chief complaint when I got to the hospital was actually my ankle.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  I felt like that Bradley somehow I'd been taken outside, roll over my foot, and then put me back inside of it. So the doctors were very gingerly, you know, cutting off my shoe, cutting the pants off, exposing everything, putting me into the x-ray and the CAT scan and then looking at me.

• 39:17Mike Rowe?

  Nothing.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  There was nothing, not that they could see. And then they were asking about the pain. And like, yeah, it's great. I couldn't move my left leg for about a year. I was a hemiplegic for about a year, so inability to really control my left leg. And then.

• 39:32Mike Rowe?

  Hemiplegic, so one.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:35Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, of course. I just don't hear that word a lot.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  I didn't know it until the doctor told me this is essentially what you're dealing with. The nerves grow back though, about a millimeter a day or an inch a month. And so I started regaining function in my leg. But for probably two years, it felt like my leg was dipped in gasoline and lit on fire.

• 39:54Mike Rowe?

  What did they tell you in terms of recovery? What did they tell you to expect?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  At that point in my life, I had never heard so many educated people tell me, I don't know. They didn't know if it had completely severed the nerve. They didn't know if, have you ever watched Ballistic Joe when a rounds going into it, those concussive shockwaves? That can interact with the sciatic nerve. They didn't know if they clipped it. So they, to their credit, I'm glad that they didn't promise something that couldn't happen. They just said, listen, we don't know. It will grow back at a millimeter a day, about an inch per month. If you were to regain full usage, it would have to grow from the point of impact all the way down to your ankle. So maybe, but also maybe not. And it's, I still have a loss of sensation on the outside of my left leg from just below the kneecap down. So that's about where it ended. And it's been that way ever since.

• 40:47Mike Rowe?

  Was that it for your career? Were you out of the fight?

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Nope. I went to BUDs and became an instructor for about 18 months. That's where I picked up my commission and then I redeployed again with SEAL Team Three.

• 40:58Mike Rowe?

  How many SEAL teams are there?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  So odd numbers are on the West Coast. You got 1357. And then evens are on the East Coast, 248 and 10. Development Group is on the East Coast, and then there's an SDV team out in Hawaii.

• 41:11Mike Rowe?

  248 and 10. Where's six?

• 41:13Speaker 01

  It's on the East Coast as well. We don't, nobody talks about that.

• 41:16Mike Rowe?

  I was gonna like.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Not that many people.

• 41:18Mike Rowe?

  You realize you just skipped right over an even number.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's arguable whether or not it exists. There's not been a lot written or talked about it.

• 41:27Mike Rowe?

  How many are on a team, in a team?

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Uh, man, so I've been out for a while. I can only talk about one I was in. So a team will have usually eight operational elements. That's called a platoon. In that will probably be, a platoon will be 16 that can then be further divided into eight, which can then be further divided into four mutually supporting along the way. So eight by 16. And then there is the headquarters element and all of the support network associated with that. So probably 250 to 300 total people.

• 42:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. I was surprised the first time I heard it. I don't know, but when you say team, SEAL Team Six, my first thought is, oh yeah, six guys went in there, you know? But that's like watching Deadliest Catch and going, oh yeah, the crab fleet, it's six boats. It's like, no, it's like 120. It's a lot more than you think.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Oh, I like the six though.

• 42:18Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know what? The cameras do make a big difference.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  How often did you go on those boats?

• 42:24Mike Rowe?

  The first season, I spent six weeks up there. We didn't know what it was.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:31Mike Rowe?

  We didn't know if it was a show or a mini series or a movie. And the network was, I mean, there was no real reality TV at the time. There was like Survivor, which is a competition show. So the network figured, well, there should be a prize for the one who gets the most crab. So I went up there.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  There is, it's called money.

• 42:52Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's bigger than that. It's called living.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:56Mike Rowe?

  We didn't understand any of it.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:57Mike Rowe?

  We, we went into a completely alien world with a $250,000 prize for the winning boat, which made the Coast Guard lose their minds because they're already flying around in Jayhawks risking their life to pluck these poor guys out of the Bering Sea when things go sideways, which is every day. And so they see this weird bunch of Hollywood douchebags show up with some ideas for a show, putting cameras on this boat, but not those boats, making deals with these captains, but not those captains, inciting total, like, if it were Star Trek, this would have been

• 43:39Mike Rowe?

  the ultimate violation of the prime directive. Just like show up and infect everything with your filthy money and your dirty fame and your promises of whatever.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:53Mike Rowe?

  And so we didn't know. And we learned fast. Six guys died that first year.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  It's rough.

• 44:00Mike Rowe?

  Six funerals. And suddenly you're like, wow, what are we playing at? So I, I worked on the boats and filmed on the boats then. And then I was trying to get Dirty Jobs on the air at the same time. And that wasn't working because it was off brand. But by the time they saw the totality of what work TV might, maybe could be, they ordered both, but I couldn't host both. So when in doubt, pick the one with your name and the title.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  I always just imagined you slightly off camera, narrating with a lapel mic.

• 44:40Mike Rowe?

  You know, we went up there several times after that to interview captains and to do a show called After the Catch, which was. Yeah. And of course there were spin offs and a lot of adjacent things. But yeah, I went another way. I went the full dirty every, every week, a couple of new jobs rather than, you know, the doc. And in hindsight, credit where it's due, you know, the network was right. That show didn't really need a host. It just needed a, a voice and I was happy to do that.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Dirty Jobs is a fantastic show as well.

• 45:16Mike Rowe?

  Thank you.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  I've watched many seasons of it.

• 45:17Mike Rowe?

  Damn near killed me. Good fun though.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  That's your own fault because of what you were choosing to do.

• 45:22Mike Rowe?

  You know, I'll tell you.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Last I checked, you were the one volunteer to crawl into some of those spaces.

• 45:28Mike Rowe?

  No, no, no. I, for sure. But really the, people have said nice things over the years, except for people who stalked me in restaurants and don't have the decency to come up and, you know, say hello.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 45:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. But running into guys who were in Afghanistan, in particular, it seemed, I don't know what the, like, the military channel really was all about, but there wasn't a ton of stuff to watch.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:53Mike Rowe?

  But the Discovery feed was alive and well. And I probably got 100 invitations in 2008 to come over and do a burn pit alone with so many other suggestions. And when I ran into people who would pull me aside and say, you know, watching that show over there helped. That was awesome, man.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  You should be proud of it.

• 46:24Mike Rowe?

  I am.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  The AFN Network, Armed Forces Network, no idea what they decide, but Discovery for sure is on there. It's basically you have that and the Band of Brothers series that you re-watch ad nauseam. But I cannot, you want to have a little piece of home when you're over there. You need the downtime. You need the, the gray noise, not to be diminutive to the show at all, but you need something that is familiar that you can just kind of connect with at least a little bit emotionally and mentally for the off times. I'm glad you didn't do the burn pit stuff. That is a.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Man.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Why they ever thought that was a good idea to begin with doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

• 47:04Mike Rowe?

  You know, I know it's been talked to death, but just so people understand.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:07Mike Rowe?

  What exactly was it? And just how damaging has it turned out to be?

• 47:14Speaker 01

  I mean, I think the severity of what it was, or the totality of what it was, really depends on where you were. At a place like Bagram, I would imagine they had a little bit more of a sophisticated trash sorting system, if you will. Let's not call it much more than maybe just piles over here that probably got burned to. Maybe they burn stuff separately. But if you were to get out in the Western areas where you're in these fobs, where you're just out by your lonesome. Everything you consume, everything that comes out of your body, every expendable item that you're going to use is going to end up in a pit. And it's going to be lit on fire and I can still taste what they smell like.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  And if you, it has, it has the most distinct smell and taste, which I cannot describe, but I would recognize it instantly. And my, my associate with it was very brief. We would pass through or be near, but I remember looking back and watching these just blacker than black plumes of smoke that seemed to be incredibly close to the forward operating bases, which does make sense because you don't want to go take the stuff two kilometers away where you're outside of effective gunfire, where you might get ambushed. But the smoke is just rolling over the HESCOs, which are just these large containers that have rocks in them that are ballistic barriers. And just, you know, just rolling over the top of the birthing areas, maybe just a little swirling here and there, maybe just

• 48:36Speaker 01

  making the entire back of it just black and ashy. That's a great idea. As far as how dangerous it is, I don't think they've figured out yet. The long-term consequences of that. But the cancer rates are statistically outside of every model that I have ever heard when it comes to the exposure. Lot of people dying in their late 30s, early 40s, maybe even sometimes in their late 20s.

• 49:01Mike Rowe?

  Crazy.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. We had the whistleblower, the whistleblower on the podcast, Dan Claire at the DAV, remember?

• 49:08Mike Rowe?

  Of course.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  He was the guy who, who blew the whistle on the whole thing.

• 49:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. And who else? Scott Mann.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Scott Mann, Green Beret, yeah.

• 49:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Do you know Scott?

• 49:18Speaker 01

  I know who he is, but again, never had any interaction with him.

• 49:22Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know, I mean, that's kind of an interesting pivot because Scott, he wrote Pineapple Express and basically orchestrated it from Florida, I think, where he was living at the time.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:34Mike Rowe?

  When everything went to hell at, what was it, Abbey Gate, I guess.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:38Mike Rowe?

  And when I look at what he's doing with his life now, it's books and it's lectures and it's, he's done a pretty good job, I think, of distilling everything, or a lot of what he experienced over there. And making it useful somehow. And it feels like you're singing out of that same hymn book to a degree. So I guess if there's a question, it's how, how does that happen? How do you go from getting shot in the hip, accumulating half a dozen brown stars or whatever it is, to hanging out with Evan Hafer and Joe Rogan? And now you got your own podcast, Cleared Hot, which is awesome.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  And then you and I have done a Change Agents episode. It's not a big deal. That's actually where we were, the first time we ever spoke. I've actually, I think about this, I've had Scott on Change Agents.

• 50:28Mike Rowe?

  Oh, really?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did a remote interview with him. That's why I'm familiar with what his name is. Yeah.

• 50:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Uh, how does that happen? I don't know. Can't figure out anything else to do with your life, I guess.

• 50:39Mike Rowe?

  No, there's an inciting incident somewhere, somebody somehow, something.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  I can't point to an incident. I can point to a realization in my life within the last few years that I just want to try to have a positive impact. That's really, I don't know how I'm going to do that, but that is what I would like to try to do with the remainder of my life is just to do my absolute best to try to make the world 0.00001% better than when I came into it. I did my fair share of destroying plenty of things along the way, hopefully for at least a net neutral, not a net negative, but what got me there is the, my military background is not, it's not unique to me. It's who, it's ingrained in who I am, so it, I am, it's not interesting to me. The people that I grew up, almost 20 years of very formative years in my young adult life, it just, you know, it's cool. That's what I did. I know all the stories.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Other people though, are far more fascinated by it, which I understand, of course. But probably the most common thing they'll say is, oh, man. Those experiences must have been so incredible. And they'll follow it up with, I'll never be able to do that myself or have those experiences. And I was thinking about it, not like sitting down to focus thought, but just over time. If I go and end up on my deathbed

• 51:54Speaker 01

  and had the realization that I did have experiences that at least mathematically are unique for a lot of people, because many people are smarter and choose other career fields. And it is a unique type of person that wants to do that for a living. But those experiences were tremendously formative in my life and they are the key to how I think through problems and how I try to live my life. If I don't do anything with that and it only impacted my life, I think I'd be very regretful on my deathbed. So my goal is to try to take those experiences and put them into a package or a delivery where people, they don't need to have the AK-47 slash Jose Canseco batting practice, but they can learn from that career and do something with it.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  But I can't think of a moment, like a formative moment where that became my shift or this happened and so I said, this is going to be my true north. It was, it was slow over time.

• 52:53Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week, highly immersive pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 53:35Mike Rowe?

  I'm talking about AI-proof, six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you or your spouse or your kid or your grandkid are looking for a straight path into a career with no cost at all,

• 54:21Mike Rowe?

  check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com slash America's Workforce Academy. That's meta.com slash America's Workforce Academy. Was it fun? The whole Band of Brothers thing, when you were in the thick of it.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:38Mike Rowe?

  Is like fun even a word you can?

• 54:40Speaker 01

  Oh, it's the funnest, most fun I've ever had, it's the funniest shit I've ever seen happen. I watched one of my closest friends run into a room that was used as a bathroom, slip into piles of human shit. And I was supposed to follow him, but instead I just closed the door.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  And he, I heard him dry. I was combat ineffective for at least five minutes because I was crying, laughing, just dying. I watched a man running full speed get clothesline by a clothesline, feet, under night vision goggles where you can't actually see shit that's thin like that. Feet up in front of him. And again, five minutes of hands on my knees, just tears.

• 55:17Mike Rowe?

  Like hold on, Tom and Jerry, like.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  All the time and you have limited depth perception when you're walking around. So watching people just stumble over and fall or just go, you know, the classic taking a step off a step you don't know is there. But he's almost blowing out all the CLs in their leg and it was the absolute worst and the absolute most fun that I've ever had in my entire life. And the funniest stuff I've ever seen happen. It's the most beautiful and the most horrific thing I've ever experienced, all wrapped in one. And what's crazy is it can flip back and forth in about a quarter of a second.

• 55:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Interesting. Cause you said about a half hour ago, that's not all it's cracked up to be. It's, you know, but.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  It's not all it's cracked up to be. The combat is what a lot of people focus on. And I mean, it is again, making complex decisions on limited information where you get the rest of your life to think about it. There's a burden to being put into that environment. And I'm glad that most people don't experience that. However, I do personally believe that being in that environment can make you a better version of yourself. It doesn't have to destroy you. And I wish that portion of the narrative got an equal amount of traction as the broken toy narrative often does with service members. But it isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's not like the movies. It's, people would be so underwhelmed at how little we run, how slow we actually move, how little we actually say.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  I knew the people with me so well, I could tell who they were by their shadows in my night vision goggles. We're not running around, we're not, I wish grenades would take one of these oak barrels and throw them up into the air into a fireball. It's just not the way it is. It goes crack and it throws dust up in the air. I wish it looked as awesome to get shot at as people think it is. It sucks. You try to find the biggest rock to hide behind humanly possible. It's just not what people think it is. And then in that same breath, it's more than they could ever think it would possibly be. If that makes any sense.

• 57:17Mike Rowe?

  Well,

• 57:19Mike Rowe?

  how much did you ruck? How much were you carrying?

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Probably body weight. When I was at last deployment at Team Three, at Development Group, you're lighter.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  And they got way lighter after I left.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  When I was at Team Three, I was probably body weight plus 90 to 110 pounds minimum.

• 57:44Mike Rowe?

  What?

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:45Mike Rowe?

  Body weight plus?

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, plus 110. I had my primary weapon. I fashioned a backpack that made myself look like Buzz Lightyear. I had two Javelin missile tubes. I had the Javelin missile launcher on top of that, the clue. And then I would put my 300 W mag sniper rifle on top of that too. And that was my backpack for little activities.

• 58:07Mike Rowe?

  You got out in sixteen?

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Thirteen, last day of June, 2013.

• 58:12Mike Rowe?

  What do you take? Where do you put?

• 58:17Mike Rowe?

  I'll get to the lessons later, but where do you put the? Where do you put the risk? Like, processing and living with that level of risk?

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:32Mike Rowe?

  Has always interested me because I think it seems as though the only way you can manage it is to tamp it down. We can't live in a constant state of fear. It's it's boring, frankly, it's exhausting.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:48Mike Rowe?

  But when you get out of that whole environment, how do you not get bored with the banality?

• 58:56Speaker 01

  I mean, this might lead into my choices to be a professional skydiver and wingsuit base jumper for a few years.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  No, but the risk thing, that is something that is not shown in the movies and TV shows. If they give us enough time, you'll plan for 72 hours to 96 hours for a single objective that may that should and hopefully occur in a single cycle of darkness. So you are going through the MDMAP process or the military decision-making process and the ORM process, operational risk management, as you are planning and it's contingency planning. You're looking at weather, you are looking at satellite imagery, you are talking to specialists, you're working with the fixed wing aviators that are going to provide the overhead assets, the rotary wing assets, working with them, where can we land, how can we hide our signature, what's the best way to approach this? You're doing rehearsals, taping stuff out on the floor to the best of your ability to replicate what you're going to be going into.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  All of that is to reduce the risk to as low as humanly possible. You have to assess and mitigate. And then the residual risk left over is what you have to put on your mission approval slide. And I tell people this, they don't believe me. If you want to shut down the modern military, but specifically special operations, just kill the Microsoft Office suite. We're done. Because that's how we got mission approval. You take a PowerPoint deck, you drag it over to an email and you send it to the battlespace commander. But on that first slide is the risk associated with it because as the risk goes up, you are going up in level of authority to approve those type of operations. So Neptune Spear is an example that people would recognize. Cross border into Pakistan without telling Pakistan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Presidential approval because of the risk associated with that. And if you talk to the guys that were there, they were thinking it was a coin toss, one-way trip. Because they didn't know what they were going to get into. They didn't know if he was going to live up to kind of the bravado that he had put out, you know, going to go in fighting, everybody's going to be rigged with suicide vests, the building's going to be rigged to blow. They didn't know very, and how do you reduce that risk even in planning? Super ultra-high risk, they probably didn't say exactly that on the slide deck. Presidential authority, a lower risk operation, you might have a battlespace commander that can approve that. So we're always looking at risk. And then you can mitigate it by being ultra-current and ultra-competent in your skillset. I mean, that's when you're not overseas, you're training.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  And then when you're overseas, you actually are losing your currency and competency faster than you do back home. Because you are operating less frequently than you are training when you are back in the United States, depending on what element you are associated with.

• 1:01:32Mike Rowe?

  So it's a kind of muscle memory.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  You get to as lethal as humanly possible as a unit and as an individual, hopefully the day that you get overseas, because it's going to be a slow decline until you come back.

• 1:01:44Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, so I guess my question is, how do you turn that off? Just because the circumstances change?

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Turn what aspect of it off? It is a very objective and logical assessment of the risk. And I don't know if people should turn that off. I think you should look at risk objectively and logically.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  I don't know of anything in my life that I truly valued that came without risk or without work. And I think most people could probably say that, so I don't think it should be avoided. But there's a difference between risking and gambling and you need to be sure that you're not falling into one category or the other without knowing what's going on.

• 1:02:19Mike Rowe?

  Let's go back to jumping out of planes and wing.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  Wingsuit?

• 1:02:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Mike Rowe?

  So were you jumping out of planes in the military or is that?

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  That was my first exposure to it.

• 1:02:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  Static line jump school in Fort Bedding, Georgia, which I think is a three or four week course that I feel like could be done in about 48 hours. But the army has its way with things. You practice falling down for a week, PLF parachute, landing, fall, hitting all the points of contact along the way.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Then they put you in this swing landing trainer and you do all these, you jump out of a tower. I forget, I swear it's 34 feet or some, they said it was the mathematical height that produced the most fear in people. So it's the, you hook up and you do the whole shuffling and you're wearing a fake parachute and you jump out onto it. And then one day you find yourself wedged in between a bunch of army people in a C-130 flying over Georgia.

• 1:03:10Mike Rowe?

  You're 34 feet in the air?

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  I think it was 34, something around.

• 1:03:13Mike Rowe?

  And you're jumping off a platform?

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  So it's a platform that simulates, the platform just looks like a fire lookout essentially, but stairs going up, but it replicates the doors of the aircraft. And you have to, it's a very coordinated, both military static line and freefall are very coordinated and synchronized evolutions. There's a jump master static line and a jump master freefall. You can be both, but each are individual skillsets. And you have to stand the people up. You get them to hook up to the cable, you have them check their equipment, check the person in front of them, the person behind. It's very coordinated and the jump master is giving all those signals. Then they approach the door and that tower allows a small group of people to practice that whole thing and the body position to jump out without the fear of being in an aircraft that's about 1,000 feet off the ground.

• 1:04:01Mike Rowe?

  And your first jump?

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:04Mike Rowe?

  Was there fear?

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Oh, God, yeah. I, I think if I hadn't been wedged in between the person in front of me and I was dead center of the stick, I don't know how they fit that many people on a C-130. It was elbows and assholes for sure. And once the line started going, I, I mean, you're lemmings at that point. The person who really has to deal with that emotional situation is the first jumper out. Who is standing there, because you get standby at about 15 to 30 seconds and they're just like, huh, why am I here? Everybody else in the line, you know, once the cows start heading home to chow time.

• 1:04:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  We're off.

• 1:04:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, follow him.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:42Mike Rowe?

  How many jumps?

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  I think I did 80 static lines in total and I have about 8,500 freefall jumps. Yeah, I like gravity.

• 1:04:53Mike Rowe?

  Well.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  I'm a gravity enthusiast.

• 1:04:54Mike Rowe?

  Like it or not, you know, it, it believes in you.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Every time so far, I've jumped on every continent and it is undefeated.

• 1:05:02Mike Rowe?

  Every continent?

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Mike Rowe?

  But not in the military?

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  No, a few years ago, we did seven jumps in seven continents in just under seven days to raise money for Folds of Honor, the scholarship foundation.

• 1:05:14Mike Rowe?

  You know Colonel Nichols?

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  I don't know him personally, but we wrote him a nice check.

• 1:05:19Mike Rowe?

  Is he going to be here tomorrow?

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  He's going to be here tomorrow at 11, yeah.

• 1:05:22Mike Rowe?

  What are the odds of that?

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  I'll already be on my way home to Montana.

• 1:05:25Mike Rowe?

  You sure you don't want to hang around?

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  100% positive. Montana versus Los Angeles, sorry.

• 1:05:31Mike Rowe?

  You know my buddy Josh?

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Uh, I like to think of it that you know my buddy Josh.

• 1:05:37Mike Rowe?

  Fair enough.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Have you been to his facility?

• 1:05:39Mike Rowe?

  No, but I had him here right after the opening.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  You went to his old facility though, right, right at his house? Or you've never been through Montana?

• 1:05:48Mike Rowe?

  No, I've been through Montana plenty, but it never worked out for me to, I mean, I've never been to the garage where he started it.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's where he was when I met him.

• 1:05:58Mike Rowe?

  Is that right?

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:59Mike Rowe?

  How did you guys get in each other's world?

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  Probably the internet would be my guess.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  I don't actually remember, it might have been an introduction through Evan, because he knows Evan as well.

• 1:06:13Mike Rowe?

  Are you from Montana?

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Mm-mm, I'm from Santa Cruz, California. Traditionally known for their military recruiting.

• 1:06:19Mike Rowe?

  What are you doing in Montana?

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  My ex-wife was from Montana.

• 1:06:23Mike Rowe?

  Ah.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Montana people who have been born and raised there. It seems to be this gravitational pull to come back at some point, either to visit or to return. And I'm exceptionally grateful that we did that and put our roots down there because I don't think I'm ever going to leave. It's pretty awesome.

• 1:06:39Mike Rowe?

  Where are you exactly, in Missoula?

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  Uh, no, so Missoula is where Josh is. I'm 120 miles on the north end of Flathead Lake, so Kalispell or, and it's weird, most people haven't heard of that, even though that's the airport they fly into, many more have heard of Whitefish.

• 1:06:51Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  But essentially the western entrance to Glacier National Park.

• 1:06:55Mike Rowe?

  I got kicked in the head by a yak in Kalispell.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:06:59Mike Rowe?

  Well, I was castrating it, so I feel like I had it coming, but.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  I mean, I would probably kick somebody if they tried to castrate me as well.

• 1:07:05Mike Rowe?

  It really rang my bell and it freaked everybody out, so we stopped shooting for a bit and I was fine. But I had the access to the production van and did the drive, I know you know.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Mike Rowe?

  Up to the border.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, up to Roosevelt, yeah.

• 1:07:21Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, up to Roosevelt and down through Glacier back and it is, it's about the prettiest place I've ever seen.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  I don't know why I would ever leave.

• 1:07:29Mike Rowe?

  Well, to be interviewed by the likes of me.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I'll go back.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  My wife was born and raised, my current wife is born and raised in upstate New York, and she worked in Alaska and she, she's just a jujitsu nut. She's a world champion jujitsu practitioner and coach. And so she's been up in the Pacific Northwest, but not a lot of time down here. Every time we come down here, she says she wants to stay and move. And I just say, absolutely not. We're not. No. I don't mind a two hour drive in Montana because you'll get about 150 miles. A two hour drive in LA might be 1.5. And she just hasn't experienced that yet.

• 1:08:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  I enjoyed, I mean, I lived in San Diego for probably 15 years. I enjoyed it. I was up here all the time, but I'm ready for a sustained change of pace.

• 1:08:17Mike Rowe?

  Jack Carr in your life?

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  We started BUDs together. Same class.

• 1:08:21Mike Rowe?

  Get out of here.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, know him well. He did not graduate with our class. It was a deficiency in mental and physical toughness, but.

• 1:08:29Mike Rowe?

  I'll give him your regards. He just sent me his latest book.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:33Mike Rowe?

  Geez, his books now, they come out in like, he sends a briefcase. It's basically like it's an ammo case.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like the nuclear suitcase.

• 1:08:40Mike Rowe?

  I mean, he's having so much fun with it. And he, he sat across, but he basically said, Mike, you know, I had two dreams. I only wanted to do things. I want to be a Navy SEAL and a bestselling author.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Let me tell you what, though. He kept that second one real quiet when he was in. I don't get those briefcases. My back is still sore from carrying him through BUDs, and I don't get one of those briefcases.

• 1:08:58Mike Rowe?

  Geez, I think he might listen to this, man, just so you know.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Oh, I text him this all the time. I sign his books in bookstores and write glowing endorsements of myself. Dearest Andy, thank you for being my inspiration throughout my entire SEAL career. Jack Carr. I leave them all over airports. And then I take a picture and I tag him in it.

• 1:09:19Mike Rowe?

  You should write, it's no drown proof, but I did my best.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  I will start doing that. Yeah. No, everything, I would say everything directly to his face because I do. And then every book of his that I signed, I have people send me his books to sign for him. And I do.

• 1:09:36Mike Rowe?

  So Josh, I'm so proud of him, man. I mean, I was, and I was so sad not to be able to get to his opening, but he came down here right after that. You know, he's raised for my foundation over $200,000.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  It doesn't surprise me.

• 1:09:51Mike Rowe?

  By, he's.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  In fact. You got two blades over there, yeah.

• 1:09:54Mike Rowe?

  And this is Josh Smith.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Yes, Montana Knife Company.

• 1:09:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, what did I call?

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Just Josh.

• 1:10:00Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, this is, um, yeah, so this is one of the ones he's done that.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Oh, nice.

• 1:10:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, so like 10% comes back to the foundation. I, you know, I didn't ask him to do that.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  You sure you want to unwrap this thing?

• 1:10:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, go ahead, man.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, because they come expertly rolled up in this.

• 1:10:19Mike Rowe?

  I mean, I assume you have one.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  I have quite a few. Montana Knife Company blades.

• 1:10:25Mike Rowe?

  I bet you do.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Mike Rowe?

  Isn't it, I mean, I mean, it's impossible not to admire the handiwork.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, these are the really cool ones, too.

• 1:10:35Mike Rowe?

  But the enthusiasm and the amount people will.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  The brand loyalty.

• 1:10:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, that's what's bananas.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, these are amazing.

• 1:10:43Mike Rowe?

  Isn't that great?

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of them, you know, they have the plastic, I believe it's a G10 handle, which is great, but the wood and the sheath associated with it, he's killing it.

• 1:10:51Mike Rowe?

  I know.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I met him when he was, he forged my wedding ring with me. He helped me make Damascus. Yeah, it's just a classic Montana story. No big deal.

• 1:11:00Mike Rowe?

  He forged my wedding ring?

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  He did.

• 1:11:03Mike Rowe?

  Okay, I guess you know him.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, but he was just in the garage and he was talking about building, we'll call it MKC 2.0, which he built right next to that garage.

• 1:11:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  And I remember being there when they had laid out the floor plan and they hadn't moved in yet. And I remember saying to him, so what's the next building gonna be? And I remember him saying, oh, there's no way. A few months later, yeah, we don't have enough space.

• 1:11:27Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  Just exploding vertically. And he's vertically integrating all of that stuff. It's amazing.

• 1:11:32Mike Rowe?

  It's fun to watch him. It's fun to watch Evan.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11:35Mike Rowe?

  Do his thing. What is your thing gonna be? Is it gonna be?

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:11:40Mike Rowe?

  No, I mean, maybe. Is it gonna be cleared hot? Is it gonna, like, what do you?

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  I do enjoy the podcast because I am fascinated by other people. I love sitting down and talking with people about their accomplishments, what they learned along the way, the mistakes that they made.

• 1:11:57Mike Rowe?

  Are you genuinely curious?

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I'm.

• 1:12:00Mike Rowe?

  Then you'll do well.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's, uh, you exist in this world. There are cheat codes that you could do to rapidly grow audience, which I don't know necessarily are sustainable. And at every turn, I have avoided the opportunity to do so because I want to be able to sleep at night. And I want it to be something that I legitimately enjoy doing. And, you know, it'd always be great if the platform was bigger, but there's always, you know, somebody you can compare it like, like, hey, Joe, you'll never believe it. I gained five followers. You'd be like, good job, buddy. Me too. Billion. And, uh, but I don't know. I was actually just thinking about that. The last thing I had in front of me that I was kind of working towards was the book. I don't have a next thing that I'm thinking about right now. I'm

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  enjoying the things that I do. I know what I want to do. I don't know the exact mechanism, means, or ways that I will necessarily do so.

• 1:12:54Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, with respect to your originality, there are no, no ideas.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  This is true.

• 1:13:01Mike Rowe?

  So like, when you watch Rogan, when you watch, have you been on Sean Ryan's?

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  No, we're connected, but I haven't been on his show.

• 1:13:07Mike Rowe?

  Oh, I just did it a couple of weeks ago.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  Awesome. How was it?

• 1:13:11Mike Rowe?

  Great. I'll tell you, man. I think in some ways he's, he's important.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:13:19Mike Rowe?

  To this space because he's tortured. He's very curious, but he's very suspicious. Maybe that's the wrong word.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  No, I think it's the correct word.

• 1:13:29Mike Rowe?

  Well, he's skeptical of his own success and he's very, he's always weighing and measuring why he's doing what he's doing.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  He's suspicious of the world around him, too, which I think is, that's what I meant. Yeah, not that the success part, he deserves his success. And I do think it's healthy that he's constantly weighing and measuring it.

• 1:13:48Mike Rowe?

  What I enjoyed about it is he's not in a hurry. And he's not scared of silence. And he'll discuss anything. And he's a weapons expert, which means obviously you have that thing in your brain, which will really keep you super focused on getting it right, whatever it is.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Are you talking about autism?

• 1:14:16Mike Rowe?

  You know what? Maybe. I'm talking about.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  A touch of the tism? It can nick you sometimes.

• 1:14:22Mike Rowe?

  It's not just that. It's that in conjunction with something that's diametrically opposed. And in Sean's case, he doesn't, he doesn't really like conversation. He doesn't really, like instinct, like, like he's curious.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Mike Rowe?

  But he's not outgoing. And so when you, when you bundle that skepticism, that kind of skepticism with that kind of curiosity, what you get is the most remarkable studio I've ever seen. Because on the one hand, it's free and easy and there are no rules. On the other hand, there is real production structure. His team is like buttoned up and they have very specific things that they do that I would never do, like a super specific handshake and a very stylized way of marketing the show. It's, it's great.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:15:20Mike Rowe?

  It's just not consistent with his approach to an interview. And in the end, you wind up loving it. Here's the best example. We have four cameras, three of which matter. We put one on Chuck because you never know.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  It's not even plugged in. I saw that.

• 1:15:36Mike Rowe?

  You never know. Sean has 14.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  Maybe he got a little bit more nicked by the tism than.

• 1:15:46Mike Rowe?

  Maybe.

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  Maybe he got winged.

• 1:15:48Mike Rowe?

  Maybe.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  But here's the thing, he, I don't know him well. We'll text back and forth occasionally. He doesn't seem to be a man that dabbles, and I can appreciate that. He's either in or he's out. And I have nothing, yeah. I mean, I'd probably recommend he has 16, but then he'll get there, you know, if he sticks with it.

• 1:16:05Mike Rowe?

  He's built a compound.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:07Mike Rowe?

  He's built a lake. The range is right there.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:12Mike Rowe?

  It's beautiful.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  It's amazing what he's built.

• 1:16:14Mike Rowe?

  And, and, you know, here's the thing I want to ask you about, man. And this, I think you guys will, you'll have a lot to talk about regarding this, but I ask him what, what's the most important thing on his podcast in terms of who he works for? He's like, no hesitation. He's like, me. It's me. I have to be flat with what I'm doing. I have to understand it. I'm like, okay, then who? And he says, my family. All right, okay. Then who? He says, my team. Like, okay. Then who? He goes, well, I guess my audience. Like,

• 1:16:56Mike Rowe?

  okay. Where's the sponsor? He's like, oh, I, I don't know.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  There it means to an end.

• 1:17:05Mike Rowe?

  Uh, September 19th, I flick across yours.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:17:12Mike Rowe?

  So that's what, maybe a week, nine days after Charlie was shot.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:17:17Mike Rowe?

  And uh, it's Friday. And you, you sat there and you said what you said, which I appreciated a lot. I thought it was really good, but you were uh, like you went out of your way to ex,

• 1:17:34Mike Rowe?

  to apologize, not to the advertisers, but for the advertisements.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  It dirties the water, but that's the water we swim in.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  Sean didn't get 14 cameras without sponsors and advertisers.

• 1:17:48Mike Rowe?

  That's right, or without an audience.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  And the audience, I think at this point is conditioned to the advertising, but that subject matter that day, I wish I could have pulled those ads off of the schedule. But I couldn't, that's not the deal that I have with them, and you understand sponsorship relationships, but.

• 1:18:02Mike Rowe?

  I do.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  For the people out there listening, perhaps they don't, I'm sure there's a variety of structures, but you essentially enter into an agreement, they're gonna pay X amount for what you are going to provide for them, and for me, it's an Excel spreadsheet, I have it laid out for the year, I know what dates and what reads are gonna happen, and I can't control the events that happen in the world, but yeah, I felt like the need to apologize, because I have to take a break from somebody publicly losing their life to sell you fucking toothpaste, or whatever it was, and it grates on me at a moral level.

• 1:18:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  It's also the game that I willingly chose to play, and if I tell somebody I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it.

• 1:18:39Mike Rowe?

  You mean, you must be this tall to get on this ride, however tall that, and you are, and you're on it, but I, I ask because I, I think about that a lot, too. I love our sponsors.

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  I say no to about 80%.

• 1:18:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah?

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Like, I have some hard stuff I won't do, I won't do alcohol and gambling, not because I am not a fan of both at the same time, at times in my life. It's not something that I want to advocate for or promote.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  So those are hard no's for me.

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  God, I get a lot of online gambling ones too, I'm like, what, just stop, just say no for me, you can go ahead and just hit NO.

• 1:19:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Or just drag it to the garbage bin, whatever suits your fancy. Um, I have to believe in it, and it has to be legitimate and something that I can stand behind, otherwise I won't do it.

• 1:19:29Mike Rowe?

  Good for you.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just won't do it. I only wanna make enough money in my life to be able to say no to things, so I can spend the time with my family that I want to.

• 1:19:37Mike Rowe?

  How much is enough? I don't mean specifically, but there's a great book written by a guy I admired a lot named Jack Bogle called Enough. Jack started Vanguard.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:49Mike Rowe?

  Once upon a time.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  I'd add another great book that Huberman actually recommended to me, The Art of Spending Money. It digs into a lot of the why, is it internal versus external, is it status versus utility? Enough for me is, I would say, I don't know, a six month buffer, it's where you don't feel like you're in a vice, where you don't feel like you have to say yes, because I've been in those places, when I got out of the military, I was working for a strength and conditioning company, it was a great economic bump from getting out of the military, but I was really, really unhappy with the person I was directly working for. So after, you know, a couple margaritas, most good decisions come after that, I decided to, you know, share my thoughts about working for him over a text message, which is also

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  good, uh, and quit, and went from making six figures to zero, like legitimately zero. And the next morning, I was in my garage, looking at things I could sell on Craigslist, because I knew I had to lower burn rate and do what I could, and I've spent many years, when I was, call it like the E4 to E5 range in the military, my children have no concept of what floating a check means, because they pay for everything directly, but.

• 1:20:57Mike Rowe?

  That's bummy.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  Who, who hasn't gone to the grocery store on a Friday, hoping you can buy some stuff, and maybe you're gonna get paid on Monday, and not knowing whether you can be able to pay your mortgage, and I hated that feeling, but I'm also really appreciative that I've had it for years in my life. And I don't ever wanna be there again, but beyond that, I've proven to myself that I can make extraordinarily stupid decisions with money.

• 1:21:20Mike Rowe?

  True.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  And I've bought flashy things that you, I instantly wonder why you bought it, the acquisition was where the dopamine hit came from, and then you're like, shit, how do I hide this from my wife?

• 1:21:34Mike Rowe?

  You don't.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the correct move, actually. So I know it, a lot of my life is not necessarily knowing what I want to do, but being able to identify what I don't wanna do, I don't wanna have that feeling ever creep back into my life.

• 1:21:54Mike Rowe?

  One of the things I like best about the way MicroWorks has evolved, is the way it lets my foundation partner with other like-minded entities, companies, foundations, whatever, everybody is now up to speed with the fact that the skills gap has gotta get closed, but nobody's doing more about it, in my estimation, than the Pentagon. BuildFreedom.us is a partnership I'm really excited about, it's been in the works for 15 years, when I originally pitched it, back in 2011, I guess, to Congress, well, the government's on board, 400,000 AI-proof, six-figure jobs are waiting in the industrial

• 1:22:36Mike Rowe?

  base to be filled, and you can find all of them at BuildFreedom.us, you know what you'll also find? $10 million that has been sent to MicroWorks, which we've earmarked to get you the training that you need, or your son, or your daughter, or your niece, or your nephew, or your grandson, or your granddaughter, the money is waiting, and the need is extraordinary, and the opportunities are incredible, these are AI-proof, six-figure jobs, building stuff that really matters in our defense industrial base, the jobs are real, the money is there, it's waiting

• 1:23:15Mike Rowe?

  at BuildFreedom.us, that's BuildFreedom.us, a website that truly lives up to its name, $10 million, just waiting, BuildFreedom.us.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  And so, I don't know, enough is probably a half, half a year's worth of buffer, and hopefully, that is enough to, it's, for me, it's more, it's a more mental vice that I feel like I'm in.

• 1:23:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  How easy is it to look at a number and say, more, that's what I need, more, which seems to be a lot of people's number, by the way, if you said, you have a million bucks, so I need 100, I need 150 million, you know, I need 1.5 million, whatever it is, and I've been that person, I don't wanna be that person again, so it's just enough to take a few spins off the vice, not completely, but a few spins off.

• 1:24:01Mike Rowe?

  You need some pressure.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  I think we all need some pressure, you just don't want too much, too often.

• 1:24:08Mike Rowe?

  No kidding, man.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:09Mike Rowe?

  Well, the way I think about it is, you know, I got lucky, cause Dirty Jobs and Deadliest Catch, and really everything I did in the industry happened at a time when the industry was still the industry, I knew more or less how to navigate in that ecosystem. The world we're in now, like this, I mean, the idea that we're basically doing the Charlie Rose Show, you know, I mean, like, it's the same.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Did you guys ever talk about this during those years? Did you ever think something like this would even be possible, or did you think the, the puzzle that you guys were putting together was always gonna be the board?

• 1:24:44Mike Rowe?

  No, I knew it was gonna change, I didn't know how, I did one, I think, really clever thing early on, that I stuck to my guns on it, I'm glad I did, and that was insisting on a behind the scenes camera, while we were filming Dirty Jobs.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Arguably, some of the, if not the best footage, was from the, what do you guys call it, the B camera, or?

• 1:25:09Mike Rowe?

  Well, I called it the truth cam, because it was always wide and it never stopped, and that guy's job, you know, and, and Taylor's had that job.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:20Mike Rowe?

  Taylor's been camera A, he's been camera B, and he's been wide guy, and, you know, especially for a show like that, where you knew there was going to be the equivalent of a buddy running into a room and slipping in a big pile of crap, and going down and me slamming, like, we knew that was gonna happen to the crew, we knew it, and it did, and I knew that I wanted to, maybe not make a meal of it, but I wanted to share it, I wanted the viewer to see and constantly know that we were in the, we were trying to do something that was weird enough on its face, but we were also trying to do a show with no second takes, and the only way to pull that off is to lower the standard.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:04Mike Rowe?

  And widen the aperture, and so that was, that was as close as I got to saying, listen, something, something's gonna come sooner or later, and it's gonna turn traditional production upside down, and when that happens, I don't wanna be completely lumped in with all the others.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  What do you think this becomes, using that same lens, that you were able to recognize it was gonna shift back then, what do you see this type of?

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Content creation, we'll call it podcasting for lack of a better term. What do you think that evolves into?

• 1:26:35Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, this is going to collapse under its own weight.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:26:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah, because.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  Just it's a volume, it's too crowded of a space?

• 1:26:43Mike Rowe?

  Well, I think the first thing that will happen is you remember the promise of 400 channels. It's cable, cable TV is coming, you'll have 400 channels. And everyone's like, that's a lot of channels.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  A thousand a day, is what they say starts podcasts, starts podcasting, a thousand a day.

• 1:27:00Mike Rowe?

  Well, there are five million now.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  Well, most of those are Joe's fault. Cause he tells a lot of people to include, that's why I started mine. He said, hey, you should start a podcast. My in the moment response was, I'll listen to you when you have some success with yours.

• 1:27:13Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, he's, I mean, that's, it's great advice. And I think we're still in a place where if you want to do it, you should. But the cream's off the coffee, right? Like the cream's off the top now. And it's the quick and the dead. And you're going to separate the wheat from the chaff.

• 1:27:28Speaker 01

  So you think it survives, but there's a vast quality difference? Or do the, those at the top, call it what are top 10% for easy math? They evolve into something else or they're just the ones who survive?

• 1:27:40Mike Rowe?

  Great question. I don't know what will happen to the one, I know right now they're probably 300. I think the top 250 or 300 are the ones that the big advertisers kind of look at first.

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:27:55Mike Rowe?

  Right?

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:55Mike Rowe?

  And then there's another tier, and then there's another tier. And then honestly, it's not dissimilar from the publishing world right now. Most books, if you still walk into a bookstore, to the extent they exist, the vast majority of books you'll see on the shelves will sell less than 2,000 copies a year. Total.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  If not in the lifespan of the book.

• 1:28:18Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  I didn't know that until I started seeing some behind the scenes numbers of books working with my publisher.

• 1:28:24Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  And I don't know how private the numbers are, so I'll speak broadly. But I got a little look behind the curtain into what average New York Times bestsellers.

• 1:28:32Mike Rowe?

  Oh.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  And I've played this game with some of my friends. I'm like, oh, it's amazing.

• 1:28:36Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:37Speaker 01

  And I would say, let's go the nonfiction list, of which there is 15. For the few weeks leading up to it, the publisher was sharing the numbers. Even though they put my book in the advice how to, which is a category of 10. But I would say, what do you think the number 15 book is selling? The average answer is 50,000 in the week. And I, I'm not, again, I'm not going to share any inside baseball because I don't want to get in trouble. But let's just say there's some zeros on there that need to be taken off.

• 1:29:04Mike Rowe?

  I'll share because I don't care. I, I, my mom became a bestselling author at 80.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 1:29:13Mike Rowe?

  And she's written three more bestsellers since then. And she grew up in a time when to be a New York Times bestseller, that's what success looked like.

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  That was the rubber stamp, you are solid.

• 1:29:26Mike Rowe?

  That's it, right? So she writes every day for 60 years, just waiting, waiting for a break. She finally gets one and now she's on it and now she's number four, bang. You know, next year is like, ah, six, next year is eight and up. They, they all move around.

• 1:29:43Mike Rowe?

  And one day I said, mom, you know, honestly, why do you care? You know, and she's a smart, savvy woman, but the answer wasn't satisfying. So I did something for her and it's hanging on her wall now in a frame. I took the 15 top ones. She was number 11 at that point.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  Which category did they put her in, fiction or non?

• 1:30:09Mike Rowe?

  Nonfiction.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:30:10Mike Rowe?

  The book was vacuuming in the nude and other ways to get attention.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  I would be stopped by that title and might peruse it.

• 1:30:18Mike Rowe?

  Great book. Now, yeah, this is an 82 year old woman on the cover of the book in a kind of naked illustration, like literally vacuuming with my old man sitting behind her just leering at her. I mean, it's really difficult to ignore this book. And so it's number 11. And I'm like, man, I know a lot of people bought this book. Now there's a thing called book scan. You're familiar?

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  I think those are the numbers that the publisher was sending. I personally did look into it in the weeks leading up, they were kind of sharing because I think they were getting ready to soft launch it, being it's just a total failure, so.

• 1:30:51Mike Rowe?

  Book scan is the honest.

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:30:55Mike Rowe?

  Answer as to how many, how many of this title sold this week? They don't care if they were bulk sales, they don't care if they were independents, they don't care if it were major retailers, they don't care if it's Amazon. It's how many did your books sell? The Times does not do that.

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  Which a lot of people don't know.

• 1:31:13Mike Rowe?

  Well.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  To this day, a lot of people think that it is purely a sales list. They had to get sued to admit that it was an editorial choice, not a sales list.

• 1:31:22Mike Rowe?

  It might be on Facebook, Chuck. I might've taken a picture of this thing I'm about to describe, but it was, I, I took the New York Times list and then I took the book scan list. And what I did was I went down the list on the New York Times and I, because they'll, they'll tell you how many are sold. And I, and I would cross that out and I would write in red pencil, the actual number that sold. And, and so you could look at the list that was published. And then in the margin, you could see what the actual sales were. My mom's book went to number one. So I'm like, mom, this is the world you're in. There's this thing called book scan. And then there's this list. And then the Wall Street Journal has a list.

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  And USA Today.

• 1:32:07Mike Rowe?

  They all have a list.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:09Mike Rowe?

  Now, the publishers are very enamored of the list and the authors are too, by and large, because you're on the list, blah, blah, blah, sales and so forth. But it's a, it's a remarkable game. And it rhymes a little bit with our first topic, which was trophies and awards and how to think about what you do and where do you put that? And, and are you really going to let somebody else rank it for you? And how do you think about your advertisers as well? All these things, you know, I, the point I wanted to make about the other thing was, I love my advertisers because if they weren't here, this whole thing would be behind a paywall. And I'd be charging the people who are listening.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:52Mike Rowe?

  Cause I don't do it for free. Cause I don't, I don't have, I don't have enough yet.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Well, you shouldn't do it for free. People, no, but they're, trust me, the must be nice crowd will look at you and say, you should. But if they were to switch places with you, the first question that I get asked generally about having a podcast is, hey, man, I'm thinking about doing this, how do you monetize it? I mean, have you ever been asked that? It's, it's top two, if not the number one question that people ask.

• 1:33:21Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  How do you monetize it? I was like, I don't know, do it five years like I did without a sponsor.

• 1:33:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  And then maybe if you can not, oh, it must be so easy to do. Cool, go do one then and don't miss an episode for five years and tell me how much you are enjoying it then.

• 1:33:37Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  And then you can maybe talk about advertising.

• 1:33:40Mike Rowe?

  How do you monetize it? As applied to what military service? Uh, you're a cop, you're a fireman, you're a teacher, how do you monetize that?

• 1:33:49Speaker 01

  TikTok.

• 1:33:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, right. So we're in a very weird world and everyone's trying to figure it out in their, in their own way, I think. But I, I'm fascinated by the paywall, I'm fascinated by Patreon.

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  I haven't figured that one out, the Patreon thing.

• 1:34:07Mike Rowe?

  Look, I mean, your most loyal fans want more. And so you can give them more over here, you just charge them. For me, I just thought, I'm old school. I've been in business with lots of big brands. And really the way I think about it, I look back, I figure I've been, I'm in advertising. That's really what I do. Every single thing I've done, every episode of Dirty Jobs, every single show has been sponsored by someone. I didn't used to have anything to do with that. The network would handle it in the same way a publisher might handle, you know, whatever. But now it's all different. How do you monetize it? How do you think about it? How do you figure it out?

• 1:34:53Mike Rowe?

  Oh yeah, that's what, there it is. Chuck, look at you, you found it, dude. That's great.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  And this is true, when they.

• 1:34:59Mike Rowe?

  Look at this, hardcover, nonfiction, whatever that date was.

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:35:04Mike Rowe?

  And you can see, that's what the Times said.

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:35:08Mike Rowe?

  About everybody on the list. That week, my mom sold 14,693 books.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  Which is a tremendous amount of books.

• 1:35:17Mike Rowe?

  And she comes in at whatever the number 11.

• 1:35:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:35:21Mike Rowe?

  Up there at number one.

• 1:35:23Speaker 01

  8,950. So I also got the inside look at the numbers of the week, mine came out. They put it lower than it would have been by sales. It wouldn't have been number one, but it would have been close.

• 1:35:34Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. So look, man, I think it's, I love a riddle, I love a challenge. I love the idea that a lot of people who listen to this podcast were watching me crawl through sewers 23 years ago. And I love the fact that many of them just found it this week. I love the fact that you told me, I think before we started rolling, that your oldest daughter is welding.

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  With the time change, she just got off her second shift.

• 1:36:02Mike Rowe?

  What's her name?

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Julia.

• 1:36:04Mike Rowe?

  Julia.

• 1:36:06Mike Rowe?

  Good for you, man. We're entering a whole new economy.

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:10Mike Rowe?

  As complicated and weird and silly and strange as podcasting is, we're about to get a shot of reality around the skilled trades. And I've been beating that drum for a long time, but I can't tell you how many people I talk to every day who will tell me about their daughter or their son, who we didn't think they were going to go this way, but they're doing it and they're loving it and it's making, they're monetizing it.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  She did one interview, one job before she had graduated. The guy said he would have hired 50 people if he could have. Needs more welders than there are welders being produced where we live.

• 1:36:51Mike Rowe?

  Josh is hiring as fast as they'll show up.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  I don't know, I am not smart enough to understand AI. And maybe there is a way, I mean, I've seen the factories at Ford and the major manufacturers that are doing a lot of the welding and maybe they will handle that level of scale. But I don't think my daughter's ever going to go without a job.

• 1:37:09Mike Rowe?

  Have you seen the dark factories yet in China?

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  Tell me more.

• 1:37:14Mike Rowe?

  Oh, man.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  What do you mean dark factories? They don't turn the lights on?

• 1:37:17Mike Rowe?

  There's no need. It's all robots. Jim Farley at Ford told me the scariest thing is opening the door. And it's not loud, but there's activity, you can sense it and you can hear it. But it's pitch dark. And when they do turn on the lights, it's hundreds, hundreds of robots putting cars together 24/7.

• 1:37:41Speaker 01

  Where does that lead?

• 1:37:44Mike Rowe?

  To a lot of cars, a lot of cars.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  I get that. I'm worried that Terminator might end up becoming a documentary. I would like to avoid that fate.

• 1:37:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. What's scarier to you, Terminator, writ large, or the Matrix?

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  Why can't they both be true? Oh, man, Terminator.

• 1:38:06Mike Rowe?

  Are you worried? You worry about AI?

• 1:38:09Speaker 01

  I don't know enough about it to have an educated, formed opinion on it. What I'm worried about AI in is the world that I spent 17 years in. It's creeping towards human off the loop. I mean, there's human in the loop, which is what I think we have right now. AI type things are interacting with humans and helping them do their job.

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  It's working towards human on the loop, where it, yeah, we'll, we'll check with you right here at the end. Maybe you can hit this little red button to humans off the loop. And I think that's where we work for our daily water ration for our robot overlords.

• 1:38:49Mike Rowe?

  Well, how do you think about, I mean, when I asked you before how much you were rucking? And, you know, the things you carried, that's a lot of tech on your back. I mean,

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  the rifle, relatively low tech. I mean, it obviously has optics on it and stuff like that. The Javelin launcher, high tech for sure.

• 1:39:06Mike Rowe?

  Well, only compared to the time we're in. I mean, we've come a long way from pointed sticks and slingshots.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:39:14Mike Rowe?

  Right? So.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  We've come a long way from the time that I served. I've talked a lot with my buddies. We never once for a second thought that a drone meant anything other than a predator or a Reaper overhead providing us imagery. I never for a second thought about essentially, which is a DJI off the shelf drone that has been weaponized and is being command flown via command wire and killing other people.

• 1:39:38Mike Rowe?

  It's a missile.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  Or what they were able to do by putting them into the trucks and destroying the vast majority of the strategic bombers for Russia, that operation they were able to launch.

• 1:39:47Mike Rowe?

  What did you think when you were watching that conflict start and then not finish?

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  I feel more than anything, we are at an evolutionary pace that I don't know where it leads. I mean, it used to be you'd see imagery of Special Operations Solars and they're grabbing up to fold down their nods. And now you see it in its first person goggles.

• 1:40:12Speaker 01

  Police departments are using them for entries to clear areas for hostage negotiation type stuff. Which, and again, they could be weaponized as well, too. I don't know the legalities associated with that, but if they have a barricaded shooter that won't come out and it would take the life of an officer, I mean, you could send a dog in, but those are officers as well. And again, that's the human, you know, that's a human on the loop at least. But at some point, somebody's going to take that human off the loop. And I don't know what happens then.

• 1:40:39Mike Rowe?

  I don't either, but I know if we still keep playing by the same rules, we're not going to out manufacture China. They built a thousand ships, we built three. We're not going to catch them. So the guys I've been talking to, who I reckon probably make you pretty nervous, they're, they're all about asymmetry, both on the battlefield and economically. They're trying to build weapons that are very cheap, but very lethal and very expensive to take down.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:14Mike Rowe?

  That's the only way, it seems. I don't know what the stockpile looks like right now after Iran. I know what I hear. It's hard to know what to believe, but it sure feels like it's a finite number of.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  It has to be at some point. Yeah.

• 1:41:30Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if there is a way other than the asymmetry that you were talking about. And I mean, that's a, it's been a military tactic since sticks and stones. You know, the asymmetry of even just the terrain, we're going to get above you. You know, we'll take a smaller, more mobile force and attack from above. There's asymmetry there as well. So that's not that it's new. I don't know. I just, I don't, again, I don't know enough about the underlying AI infrastructure of that. And quite frankly, things are evolving faster than my imagination. So I don't know what to make of that, other than to sit back and try to pick my jaw up off the floor sometimes.

• 1:42:09Mike Rowe?

  You know, it's adjacent to what you asked me before, like, what do I think about the podcasting world? I, I think that there's too much information for the average viewer, listener to process.

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  If you follow six or eight shows, good luck consuming what they create in a week.

• 1:42:30Mike Rowe?

  Right, right. That's where I feel like it's going to get noisy and strident. And I don't really want to be a part, I don't want to be that competitive at that level. I'm more interested in, you know, if you get a few hundred thousand people who are genuinely interested in your worldview and the way you run your show, that's plenty.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 1:42:56Mike Rowe?

  That's plenty.

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  And I think that's manageable. I don't know how a platform the size of Joe's, which is ungodly in nature. Would it be better? I mean, I know what it would be better economically wise because of your CPM or cost per meal, which people who are in the podcasting space can tell you all about. That would be the further on conversation of how you monetize a podcast. First, maybe start one and do a few episodes, but.

• 1:43:22Mike Rowe?

  That's a cost per thousand for the record, but I like cost per meal, too.

• 1:43:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think meal means thousand in some language I don't speak, but

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  would you rather have an audience that size with no connection to it? Or an audience the size you're talking about in the hundreds of thousands, where they're actually really committed? And it's a community.

• 1:43:41Mike Rowe?

  You 100% want an engaged audience. And it really, I mean, yes, there's a number where, okay, it's got to be at least X. But once it's there, I'll tell you a true story that happened back in the day with Discovery. Ford was looking to make a play with a couple of shows that were big. And Extreme Home Makeover was, was a big show. Ty Pennard can move that bus, you know, they were getting eight, 10 million viewers every week. Dirty Jobs was getting something like two to two and a half.

• 1:44:23Mike Rowe?

  But in the end, Ford went with me and they went with Discovery and they went with Dirty Jobs. And it really wasn't even close because they had just started doing, this is a long time ago, this is like 2007. But they were really, for the first time, measuring engagement,

• 1:44:42Mike Rowe?

  which just comes down to like posture, like how are you watching Extreme Home Makeover?

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  Engagement is different than audience size as well.

• 1:44:51Mike Rowe?

  Well, sure.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:52Mike Rowe?

  But it's so much more valuable.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  Agreed. That's what I mean. You could look, do you want 10 million subscribers? Or do you want a million people who are engaged? I'm going with the latter every time.

• 1:45:03Mike Rowe?

  I, you'd be better off with 100,000.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:07Mike Rowe?

  Who were engaged.

• 1:45:08Speaker 01

  You're going to make less, but if you really want to make a difference, you will.

• 1:45:13Mike Rowe?

  You might be surprised because in the end, it was Ford who said, look, we would much rather spend the same relative amount of money to talk to people who were leaning forward and watching the show like with their mouth open going, oh my God, what's going to happen next? Then just kick back, you know, waiting for the little dopamine hit when the bus moves and everybody cries. And so, yeah, now, now Joe is, Joe doesn't count.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  No, I do love it when people will say, and there's not many anymore. I'm going to be the next Joe Rogan. And after I stopped laughing hysterically, and unfortunately, sometimes it's in their face, but I can't control myself. I'm not trying to be a dick. Like, pick a different example that doesn't scale. Pick somebody else, please, for your benefit.

• 1:46:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  I love Joe to death, but he is, what is it, the black swan or whatever? It just, you can't scale that.

• 1:46:11Mike Rowe?

  Some of you might recall the chaos that ensued last year, right around this time, when Pure Talk offered a very limited promotion called Unlimited Data for Life. Because that's exactly what it was. Unlimited talk, text and data for $29.95 a month for life. Not your phone's life, your life. Anyhow, I announced this offer in a television commercial and the offer was so popular, the commercial went viral. And unfortunately, lots of people saw it after the promotion had ended. And months later, people were still asking me if they could get in on the deal. Well, the answer is no, that deal came and went. But guess what? It's back. Unlimited Data for Life is back for a very limited time.

• 1:46:56Mike Rowe?

  Same deal as last year. No contracts, no commitments, just unlimited talk, text and data, along with a 30 gig hotspot for just $29.95 a month for the rest of your life, which I'm betting will last a lot longer than this offer. It's the Unlimited Data Plan from Pure Talk, otherwise known as the Deal of a Lifetime. Taxes and fees not included. Some restrictions do apply. See puretalk.com for details. Offer ends 11/15/26. Unlimited data for the rest of your life. Go get some.

• 1:47:36Mike Rowe?

  You can only do that, A, if you do it when he did it.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:40Mike Rowe?

  And B, if you do it how he did it.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  And who he was. He came into it with an ingrained audience as well.

• 1:47:45Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 1:47:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:46Mike Rowe?

  And, you know, this, we, we talked about this at length, Joe and I did, because he had Fear Factor. At the same time, I had Dirty Jobs. And the thing he did that I admire was that he pulled the pin when he pulled it. He didn't turn his back on Fear Factor or News Radio. He turned his back on the whole industry.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:09Mike Rowe?

  And said, I'm just gonna do it this way. And I never did that. I was a jagged little pill in my own way. And I'm like, look, I'm gonna do it the way I wanna do it, but I'm still gonna stay on your reservation. And I'll deal with the advertisers, and I'll deal with my bosses, and I'll deal with, oh, God, the ten per centery and all the other things that come along with that industry. And I was so lucky, because I have a great partner and I've got great people around me who, who are cool with it. But that's the real answer to your earlier question. It's, this ecosystem is going to collapse under its own weight the same way the old model did. I don't know when, and I don't know what will ultimately facilitate it, but I do know

• 1:48:54Mike Rowe?

  the ones who are left standing won't be the ones with the biggest audiences. Unless you're a true outlier, like, like Joe is. It'll be the ones with the most engaged.

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  I think it might be the 28 election cycle, might be the beginning of that wait.

• 1:49:10Mike Rowe?

  Maybe.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  And depending on how deep into the pond some of those hosts wanna go into the political realm, you tread with caution.

• 1:49:19Mike Rowe?

  Look at us, dude. We're a couple of guys who each have a podcast. My guess is I'll be on yours before long.

• 1:49:27Speaker 01

  If I can get you up to Montana, I'd love to have you.

• 1:49:29Mike Rowe?

  I'd always return the favor. But, you know.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  You could visit Josh at the same time.

• 1:49:34Mike Rowe?

  Of the 5 million people who have a podcast, how many have been guests on other podcasts? I would say 100% of them.

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:43Mike Rowe?

  Extrapolated, 10 goes to 20 and so forth, and pretty soon, Andy Warhol's right. We're all getting our 15 minutes in relative terms. And I actually worry about the audience, because they're, they are the most valuable. And Sean and I kinda riffed on this for a bit too, but it's like, I, I, I put the audience at the top.

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  What do you do to hold yourself accountable to them? Like, what metrics do you use having them at the top? What's your litmus test for serving them appropriately?

• 1:50:15Mike Rowe?

  I never charge them for content. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong.

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:20Mike Rowe?

  A lot of people do.

• 1:50:21Speaker 01

  That's your business model, I get it.

• 1:50:21Mike Rowe?

  A lot of people do. But my business model is, uh, look, it actually goes back to the beginning where Dirty Jobs was programmed by the viewer. All the ideas for the show came from the audience.

• 1:50:36Speaker 01

  You had to get through at least one season with your guys, right?

• 1:50:39Mike Rowe?

  I did.

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:50:39Mike Rowe?

  I had to show up.

• 1:50:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:41Mike Rowe?

  With the list when we finally went into production. I knew, and the production company had some ideas too. And so that first season was us just far scumping our way on the air.

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  Beyond that, though, you probably couldn't turn the spigot off of suggestions.

• 1:50:54Mike Rowe?

  Nope. And every show ends with me saying, hey, alright, so that happened. Uh, if you know somebody who's not afraid to blah, blah, blah, send me a thing. So, we had the largest chat room, we had the largest online presence at a time when, you know, Mythbusters and Catch were all hits. But that audience was programming the show. Essentially, they were hosting the show, because I was really just a guest. I was just the FNG showing up, trying to get through another day, you know? So, I looked at the audience as hosting the show and programming the show, and of course, watching the show. And so, before, well, long before I was on socials, I was in this chat room, talking

• 1:51:39Mike Rowe?

  to Dirty Jobs viewers, and we would do these fan meetups. And all I would ever do with them is thank them for their patience. And it's delicate, though, Andy, because you can't, if you suck up to them, they'll hate you.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  Audience capture, yeah.

• 1:51:55Mike Rowe?

  You have to be, for me, it was Facebook, and I know, hey, boomer, what else you got going? But that was like, to take a disappointed, angry, or somehow disenchanted former fan who had an axe to grind, and find their comment, highlight it, and then honestly and respectfully address it, and then post it. That works, dude. That really, really works.

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  Whether it worked or not, God, I love reading some of the diatribes that you throw back at people online. You have a way with the written word, sir. Not bad with the spoken word either, I might say. But, yeah, to steal a word or phrase from the matrix that you mentioned, it's like, wiping your ass with silk.

• 1:52:45Mike Rowe?

  Which one was that? That wasn't the original?

• 1:52:47Speaker 01

  That was the Merovingian, who was, uh, they were at the restaurant. I forget exactly what he was, oh, it was cursing in French. French was his favorite language, the Merovingian.

• 1:52:56Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, like wiping your ass with silk.

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  Yes, that's what I feel like when I read those responses.

• 1:53:01Mike Rowe?

  Thanks.

• 1:53:01Speaker 01

  I've never tested wiping my ass with silk, but I feel like.

• 1:53:05Mike Rowe?

  Well, this is your lucky day. Chuck?

• 1:53:08Mike Rowe?

  Get the silkworm in here, would you?

• 1:53:09Speaker 01

  Where's my scarf that was my gift? I shall use it.

• 1:53:12Mike Rowe?

  I've said this a bunch, what's the name of the actor who was, uh, obviously in The Matrix, but he was.

• 1:53:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:53:20Mike Rowe?

  He was also with Bale Bonds with, uh, Robert De Niro.

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  What character did he play?

• 1:53:27Mike Rowe?

  Well, in The Matrix, he was the rat who.

• 1:53:31Speaker 01

  Oh, I know exactly who you're talking about. He was eating steak. I don't wanna remember anything.

• 1:53:35Mike Rowe?

  That's it. Dude, that's the moment we're in right now. That's, to me, I'm worried less actually about the Terminator fallout from AI. That's so cinematic and terrible that if it happens, oh, well, what?

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Matt Duran was the actor's name.

• 1:53:52Mike Rowe?

  Duran?

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  Played Mouse.

• 1:53:54Mike Rowe?

  Mouse.

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  Yes, what a great character name as well.

• 1:53:57Mike Rowe?

  Well, when he's holding that stake, and he's like, I know it's not real, I just don't care.

• 1:54:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:04Mike Rowe?

  You know, he takes the other pill, and he enjoys the Impossible Burger, essentially. We are all gonna be asked, in some way, shape, or form, to make that decision, when you realize the Picasso's not a Picasso, or that song you've been humming along was a total construct.

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  Which is already happening, by the way. The music is already charting.

• 1:54:27Mike Rowe?

  14 are in the top 50 on Spotify. And what's crazier is those 14 AI songs have an Instagram page with an artist on them, also fake. And some of those pages have over a million followers.

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  I don't know where that leads.

• 1:54:45Mike Rowe?

  Well, it leads me to answer your earlier question. That's in our world too. There's only so much bandwidth for the average person. And I just made the point, it's like, I'm now anxious. Like, why, why do I know what the Strait of Hormuz is? Why do I need to know where it is? And why do I need to know what's going on? Obviously, it's, you know, it's in the news and it's important. But everything, dude, every single thing is important, and every single room is filled with experts who can't agree. And the fire hose of information is on full all the time, and we're all trying to drink from it.

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  Not everybody. I think in that tug of war, you can always put down your side of the rope.

• 1:55:31Speaker 01

  So many times, I have asked myself, is what I see online commensurate with what I see with my own eyes? And the answer has never been yes. So, the le, the less I consume, the better I feel. And I think most people are like that. It's a participatory ecosystem. You can opt out. It's not easy, but you can do it.

• 1:55:51Mike Rowe?

  It's really hard.

• 1:55:53Speaker 01

  Good.

• 1:55:53Mike Rowe?

  To opt out.

• 1:55:54Speaker 01

  The valuable things in life always are. In January, a buddy of mine, because in December, we did a show, I don't know how we got on screen time, it's like, alright, pull your phone out.

• 1:56:06Speaker 01

  Four plus hours. I'm certain it was definitely productive time, though. And definitely not on Instagram, just watching reels that are designed to just completely suck you into oblivion.

• 1:56:15Mike Rowe?

  Of course.

• 1:56:16Speaker 01

  And we made a bet that in January, we were gonna get our screen time per day under an hour. And the last week of January, I got mine down to about 40 minutes a day.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  Healthiest I've felt, mental health-wise, in a long time.

• 1:56:30Mike Rowe?

  Dude, good for you. Chuck, who is he? Who's the guy who came in here and detoxed?

• 1:56:37Speaker 01

  Carlos Whitaker.

• 1:56:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, you'd love this book. He's an Instagram influencer who went cold turkey, wound up living with monks and Amish people.

• 1:56:47Speaker 01

  I mean, I think there are things in between those two that would be enjoyable, but I can appreciate it.

• 1:56:53Mike Rowe?

  Here's the number I wanna see on your phone.

• 1:56:55Speaker 01

  What do you got?

• 1:56:56Mike Rowe?

  I wanna know, I wanna know how many unopened emails you have.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  3,000.

• 1:57:03Mike Rowe?

  Next to all them boxes.

• 1:57:05Speaker 01

  3,691. Good man.

• 1:57:08Mike Rowe?

  Good for you.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  Is that 17,000?

• 1:57:12Mike Rowe?

  No, no, that's 40,000.

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  How did you get back to me the, the first time we connected over email then? How did you even see that?

• 1:57:18Mike Rowe?

  I thought you were Greg Stumpf.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  That is fantastic.

• 1:57:23Mike Rowe?

  You were never supposed to be here.

• 1:57:25Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm so okay with that. That is fantastic.

• 1:57:27Mike Rowe?

  I have literally, I have 40,000 unopened emails. And when my partner looks at this, she

• 1:57:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:34Mike Rowe?

  She just recoils.

• 1:57:35Speaker 01

  Do you think you would feel better, though, if it was at zero?

• 1:57:38Mike Rowe?

  No, I don't, because I got, I, I was anxious at 5,000. Because I knew that in them were opportunities.

• 1:57:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:49Mike Rowe?

  And old friends and invitations to weddings and maybe funerals. And I, I just was, I was tormented. And then it got to 10. And I was like, I'll just never, I could never do that. And now it's like, oh, let's see where, where you go. Where you go. So it's also part of the answer to your question. What happens here when we know? Gosh, there's so much interesting. It's the curse of the curious. If you're genuinely curious, you're going to have to figure out a way to manage it.

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  Otherwise, you'll never leave your house.

• 1:58:21Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 1:58:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:22Mike Rowe?

  And there's a lot of cool stuff outside the house.

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  I'm curious about the world that I physically live in, that I can actually impact. Which there is an argument on your phone, you can extend that reach. But to me, it's more the, where I live in Montana.

• 1:58:39Speaker 01

  I, I value those experiences with the people that I love way more than I value experiences on my phone.

• 1:58:44Mike Rowe?

  Isn't it interesting how powerful geography is?

• 1:58:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:48Mike Rowe?

  And what an impact it really has in our lives. And most people who don't move, I don't know how people form a worldview who don't move.

• 1:58:59Speaker 01

  Oh, I do. It's a very odd worldview. But that's where it comes from. They exist in a bubble. Though what I tell people about Santa Cruz is it was an amazing place to grow up and an even better place to leave. And the military did a real good job of moving around a little bit, except I wasn't really visiting places that had five stars on TripAdvisor. So I got to see the other side of the hospitality industry, if you will. Afterwards, I mean, I think I'm on my third or fourth passport at this point. And the more you see, I think the more grounded that you can become, the deeper that you can appreciate. And I don't mean see on your phone, because like we were talking about, sure, COVID was great that people could connect digitally.

• 1:59:41Speaker 01

  This is so much better than looking at you through a laptop screen. It doesn't even compare to me. Which is why I only do in-person shows as well, even for my own show. I just, and if people can't make it or they don't want to, I totally understand. But I would rather have this type of interaction than stare at a computer screen. It's real-ish. It's real adjacent.

• 2:00:03Mike Rowe?

  I know we're going long.

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  What are we even talking about?

• 2:00:05Mike Rowe?

  I don't care.

• 2:00:07Speaker 02

  We're at an hour 51 right now.

• 2:00:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I don't, yeah.

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  No, we're not.

• 2:00:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:11Speaker 02

  Correct, we are.

• 2:00:14Speaker 01

  Whatever.

• 2:00:16Speaker 01

  Numbers aren't real. It's a matrix. I don't want to remember anything.

• 2:00:19Mike Rowe?

  So

• 2:00:21Mike Rowe?

  Given everything you've said.

• 2:00:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:24Mike Rowe?

  What does jumping out of a plane and pulling your own chute do for you? Maybe I was wrong to try and ask it through the lens of risk. Maybe that's, maybe that's too obvious. But 8,500 times, that's not a hobby anymore. It's not a job.

• 2:00:41Speaker 01

  Well, it was a job for a little bit, so many of those.

• 2:00:43Mike Rowe?

  Then it wasn't.

• 2:00:44Speaker 01

  Correct. It's really fun. It is enjoyable. There's an aspect of it being enjoyable. Skydiving has a very different risk profile than base jumping does. And I don't know how familiar you are with the two, but skydiving is essentially more altitude. You're jumping out of an aircraft, thousands of feet. You have a reserve parachute that's packed by an FAA certified rigger on a 180-day cycle now. And still can be dangerous, don't get me wrong. I describe skydiving as it's an amazing thing to do until it isn't. And then you better be on your A-game, because it can kill you very quickly. And I've seen it happen. Base jumping is very different. And I got a lot more out of base jumping, but it took me a while to figure out what it was, the hole that I was filling. And that hole goes back to my old job.

• 2:01:29Speaker 01

  And I didn't realize that it was providing for me this even when I was doing it. But it was the ability

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  to just put down for a limited period of time, the BS of life that we are all bombarded with, and focus on the next three seconds of your life. When you're on a helicopter, flying overseas, towards an objective that you think might get a little bit spicy, and they give you the old one minute out, the argument you might have been having with your spouse on the sat phone

• 2:01:59Speaker 01

  bleeds away. Oh, the dryer's not working? I'll get back to that. Whatever it is, by the time the wheels hit the ground or the skids hit the ground and you are moving towards that objective, you are in the moment. And you are in that for an extended period of time. What I didn't realize is that by finding my way to that headspace and dialing down the static of everything else, it, it made me better at dealing with that static when I came back to it. So, skydiving never provided that to me. Maybe it would in the very beginning, when you're first learning and you're just so focused that all you can think about is your altimeter. But I found base jumping about five years after getting out of the military. And

• 2:02:40Mike Rowe?

  Are you jumping with, with a chute or a wingsuit?

• 2:02:43Speaker 01

  Uh, both. So first, you need to learn how to base jump, which the difference between skydiving and base jumping is the altitude. When I learned how to base jump, instead of exiting on average from an aircraft at 13,500 feet, AGL, I was jumping off the Perrine Bridge in Idaho, which is 486 feet.

• 2:03:01Mike Rowe?

  Well, there's no reserve chute.

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  You only get one. So you pack the parachute, you only have one in your system. You pack it very similar to the way that your reserve was packed by the FAA rigger. But I'm not an FAA rigger. But I would take my time and I can iron pretty good. Not that you use an iron, but really just, really just make those.

• 2:03:19Mike Rowe?

  You're packing your own chute.

• 2:03:21Speaker 01

  Packing your own chute, yep. And 486 feet, we would test the wind by spitting and we would see where it landed. And if it went beyond a certain point, you're not going to jump. You don't do that in skydiving, because it's abstract. You look like you're jumping into a painting.

• 2:03:34Mike Rowe?

  A postcard.

• 2:03:35Speaker 01

  Yes. 486 feet, I don't, sewing machine legs, for sure, every part of your body is

• 2:03:42Mike Rowe?

  People look like people.

• 2:03:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. They look like people.

• 2:03:45Mike Rowe?

  The car looks like a car.

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  You can see exactly where you're going to leave an indentation. And your mouth is very dry and it's almost where you can look to your buddies and say, can you also hear my heartbeat? Because it feels like it is the Marine Corps Band playing in between my ears right now. Just, well, guess what else? You're not thinking about everything beyond three seconds. So for me, it had an immense benefit of me being able to fill that. I'll call it a flow state, because that's a term that people will understand. And a lot of books have been written about that, which is a very beneficial state to be able to get into for short durations of time. That's what base jumping was for me. I did enjoy zipping up in a nylon suit with a parachute and going to Switzerland

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  and jumping off of mountains and carving in between trees, five or six feet off the ground at 120 miles an hour, face first. I'm not going to say I didn't enjoy that. But the true benefit was the mental headspace that allowed me to achieve in those trips. And it would help for six months afterwards, just

• 2:04:53Speaker 01

  it just unwinds and takes a rap off everything.

• 2:04:56Mike Rowe?

  Is it, is it addictive?

• 2:04:59Speaker 01

  I mean, I think anything could be addictive. I am not an adrenaline junkie. I have some odd hobbies in comparison to other people's hobbies. But I also, even base jumping, I was doing an immense amount of risk assessment and trying to mitigate as much as I could. Jumping all the time, currency, competency, flying my wingsuit as much as I possibly could, watching the weather, studying the weather, trying to learn more about weather and mountainous environments and how it, you know, you can get yourself in trouble if you jump off and all of a sudden you have a tailwind and it starts pushing you towards the terrain versus the morning wind generally as it heats and it's coming up towards you. You gotta be, you have to be, if you're going to do it, you, you gotta do it as a professional, is my theory on that.

• 2:05:37Mike Rowe?

  So people understand, very different risk profile from base jumping in a wingsuit.

• 2:05:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:05:44Mike Rowe?

  To diving out of a plane.

• 2:05:46Speaker 01

  Even in a wingsuit, huge.

• 2:05:48Mike Rowe?

  And the video I saw of you, I think you were raising

• 2:05:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:05:52Mike Rowe?

  Money for SEAL family.

• 2:05:54Speaker 01

  Yep, that's when I exited at 36,500 feet.

• 2:05:58Mike Rowe?

  With oxygen, obviously.

• 2:05:59Speaker 01

  Indeed.

• 2:06:00Mike Rowe?

  How cold is it? Can you find that video?

• 2:06:03Speaker 01

  It's not the best, yeah. It was about negative 50.

• 2:06:07Mike Rowe?

  Okay. This is you.

• 2:06:09Speaker 01

  This isn't my best.

• 2:06:09Speaker 02

  You started at negative 50, right?

• 2:06:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:11Speaker 02

  And then it got warmer as you got closer.

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Because I was, this was in Davis, California, at the beginning of the summer. This is a horrible exit. This is just my suit absolutely owning me. Because the plane was at maximum forward speed. That's a Cessna Caravan, it's a 206.

• 2:06:27Mike Rowe?

  So you got a GoPro screwed in your helmet.

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  And a pilot with his foot on the gas pedal, essentially trying to just firewall that thing, because it's at max performance. Stripped down, that's the plane, with an oxygen bottle, an O2 tech and a pilot, just up there moving around.

• 2:06:42Mike Rowe?

  Look at you 10 years ago.

• 2:06:43Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:06:44Mike Rowe?

  So young.

• 2:06:45Speaker 01

  Indeed. There's my daughter, she's a welder now.

• 2:06:49Mike Rowe?

  Unbelievable.

• 2:06:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:50Mike Rowe?

  So why are you about to do what you're about to do? You're raising money.

• 2:06:54Speaker 01

  I was raising money for the Navy SEAL Foundation. And it was actually, you know, it goes back to how did I ended up meeting Rogan? Because of this. The first time I ever met him, I sat down across from him to talk about this. An introduction via a mutual friend, and he and I just hit it off and have been friends ever since.

• 2:07:09Mike Rowe?

  Really?

• 2:07:10Speaker 01

  Yep, that's the guy who taught me to jump off of a 486-foot bridge. But yeah, that thing went up to 36,500 feet at an exit airspeed that was well above my skill and capability level.

• 2:07:23Mike Rowe?

  So explain that.

• 2:07:25Speaker 01

  So the suit's big. If you want to, it was about, the record I was going after, we knew we weren't going to be able to achieve the altitude record, because the record before that was set in a turbo twin engine, so they were able to go higher. But distance, it was just under 18 miles. And so you want to have a suit that gives you the ability to glide based off of the rigidity of your body, because you are providing the rigidity for the wing, which is all it is.

• 2:07:48Mike Rowe?

  You freak, look at this.

• 2:07:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:52Speaker 01

  Right there, I was just questioning why I do the things I do in my life.

• 2:07:55Mike Rowe?

  What are you thinking about right there? Seriously? Or is it just mission, mission focus?

• 2:07:59Speaker 01

  I was worried that the, one of the GPSs, I had two GPS sensors on my head. I was literally thinking, did I charge these batteries last night? Are these things fresh? What if we do all this and I didn't turn it on?

• 2:08:10Mike Rowe?

  Just classic. I left the iron on. I left the iron on.

• 2:08:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, you know, you get into the door. I had, I couldn't even see the airfield. I had a rough direction of flight, but I totally, I probably could have gone another half mile if I wouldn't have messed this exit up. It was just, the plane was going at a speed that was so fast.

• 2:08:27Mike Rowe?

  Oh yeah, you spun you around.

• 2:08:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a little bit of a flat spin, but I sorted it here in a second. And then I just pointed myself towards the rising sun and just flattened out as much as I could.

• 2:08:37Mike Rowe?

  Now you have no idea really where you're gonna land at this point, do you?

• 2:08:40Speaker 01

  Nope, no altimeter either. Because there was a worry, most of the time you have it on your chest strap. But because your wrists are normally be like where your watch is, but in a wingsuit, as you can see, I'm zipped up all the way basically to the brake in my wrist. So it's not gonna go there. And the oxygen mask hose, I was worried if I had put a chest mounted altimeter on there, that the hose might snag to it. So I'm just trying to remove variables. So I had to go with-

• 2:09:07Mike Rowe?

  Do you have a reserve chute?

• 2:09:08Speaker 01

  I have a reserve chute in this. And I had multiple audible altimeters in my ears. And this is, you just, you flare up, slow your airspeed and then you deploy your parachute.

• 2:09:17Mike Rowe?

  At seventeen hundred feet.

• 2:09:18Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I'm glad they put that there. It was much lower than that because I had just come back from a Switzerland trip not long before. I'm glad I had calibrated my eyes because I'm just cruising along. I'm looking like that tree.

• 2:09:29Mike Rowe?

  Is, that's, that's either a much bigger tree than I think.

• 2:09:33Speaker 01

  I'm like, I don't know what altitude we're at, but we're gonna go ahead and land.

• 2:09:38Mike Rowe?

  So there you land.

• 2:09:39Speaker 01

  Eighteen point two, five miles, I think it was. Just over eight minutes in freefall.

• 2:09:47Mike Rowe?

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• 2:10:28Mike Rowe?

  when you're spending long days in work boots. They also reinforce the heel and the toe with double plated nylon to stand up to the wear those boots put on your socks. Remember, it's not the feet that wear out your socks, it's your boots. And they back their socks with a ten year durability guarantee. If you get a hole or a tear in the first decade, they'll replace them for free. If you're a hardworking guy dealing with sweaty, uncomfortable feet, I'm telling you, these are worth trying. I wear mine every day and I'm glad to have the company on the podcast. CamelCityMill.com. Use code ROW, get 10% off my favorite work socks. CamelCityMill.com, code ROW. So in 2016, how many people died base jumping?

• 2:11:14Speaker 01

  I don't know. I would have to go back and look at the stats, but there, there were times when I went to Switzerland. And I hate to romanticize the risk of the sport because I know some people are drawn to it because of that, but I was-

• 2:11:27Mike Rowe?

  It was a terrible year. I remember there was a French guy.

• 2:11:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:31Mike Rowe?

  Very famous.

• 2:11:33Speaker 01

  Uh, well, it happened, I mean, many people have died this year as well too. It's been a pretty gnarly year. There's a Facebook group, the Base Fatality List. You get a number associated. He may not be able to log into it because you have to be, you gotta be let in, you know what I mean?

• 2:11:46Mike Rowe?

  Well, just ask ChatGPT.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:49Mike Rowe?

  What, I mean, is there anything more hazardous than base jumping?

• 2:11:54Speaker 01

  Hmm, well, the participant number set is low, so it might skew it a little bit. You know what I mean? If there were more people who did it.

• 2:12:02Mike Rowe?

  Oh, like I could, I would say the most hazardous activity is probably cycling, followed by swimming. But those are just bulk numbers because so many people do it. But if you look at the per capita, I can't, I mean, hang gliding is up there, but it's gotta be base jumping.

• 2:12:21Speaker 01

  It probably is. I was in Switzerland with my very good friend and main jumping partner, Alex. And it may have been 2016. And we weren't intentionally doing this, but we were alternating sides of the valley in Lauderbrunnen, which is just this amazing valley in Switzerland that is covered with base jumping exits. And they don't care if you do it. They don't care if people die. You, you get a landing card. You go to the local pub, the Horner Pub, and you get your landing card and insurance. So they aggregate money to some of the farmers. So they'll cut into the wheat or whatever the agriculture had, put a windsock up. So you have places that you can land. You get helicopter insurance in, Alex and I were, we'd be on one side of the valley and the helicopter would go and pick somebody up dead on the other side.

• 2:13:06Speaker 01

  The next day we would switch and they'd pick somebody up dead on the other side. It was,

• 2:13:11Speaker 01

  I, I think it lasted for a week. Somebody was dying in that valley every day for a week. It was gnarly.

• 2:13:18Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. How's the wife processing this?

• 2:13:22Speaker 01

  Didn't tell her, not married to her anymore.

• 2:13:24Mike Rowe?

  Oh.

• 2:13:24Speaker 01

  I took all of my kids with me on a trip to Switzerland and they were right up there on exit points with me, watching me jump. And they would be down there when I landed as well too. My kids have been involved in everything. I don't try to hide it from them. I am who I am. And a lot of people would say, well, what if they wanted to do those things? Not a, not a single thing that I do has seemed to show any level of interest from my kids, whether it's military. My middle son wants to go, he wants me to take him for a tandem for one of his birthdays, which I'll be able to do. But other than that, no interest though in, hey, this is what I wanna do or this particular activity.

• 2:13:56Mike Rowe?

  Well, probably because you've been pretty consistent, you know? You're all they know. And you've assumed the risks you've assumed and you're just the North Star. And that's what that does.

• 2:14:09Speaker 01

  The worst part about the base jumping thing is my buddy Alex, who's my main jumping partner, cost him his life years later too. Uh, I think it was seven years ago now. He went overseas with his new wife to go to a wedding and snuck off to France to do a jump with a buddy. Never made it back. It's rough. It's the last time I ever did a wingsuit base jump, was shortly after he died.

• 2:14:37Mike Rowe?

  You're done with it now?

• 2:14:39Speaker 01

  For sure. I, I can't stay current and competent enough in Montana. There's no drop zones that support me being able to skydive at the frequency I would need to for it to be even remotely safe.

• 2:14:49Mike Rowe?

  So is there some tendency in you to replace it with something? Like how do you, that's out of your life.

• 2:14:57Speaker 01

  The headspace, yes. I know I need that headspace. I found jiu jitsu about the time that I stopped doing base jumping. And you also live in the moment when your friends are trying to choke you or break your limbs. So not to the same degree. And people ask me all the time, well, how do I, how do I find my way there? And my answer is it doesn't have to be prescriptive. I know people who have found their way into a flow state by playing music or meditating or doing a puzzle or Sudoku. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be prescriptive. I can talk about the things that have worked for me, but you have to figure that out on your own. Jiu jitsu was a diminished version of base jumping, but still the same benefit.

• 2:15:36Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Is Jaco in your life?

• 2:15:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know Jaco well.

• 2:15:40Mike Rowe?

  Travis Mills?

• 2:15:41Speaker 01

  Uh, I know Travis and I've met him a few times. We go out to, Jaco is a part owner in a jiu jitsu company called Origin with, do you know Pete?

• 2:15:49Mike Rowe?

  I know Pete.

• 2:15:49Speaker 01

  How do you know everybody? Yeah. How do you know everybody?

• 2:15:51Mike Rowe?

  I know everybody. I'm old.

• 2:15:52Speaker 01

  Clearly.

• 2:15:52Mike Rowe?

  I'm old and I'm curious.

• 2:15:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Jaco and Pete are partnered up. They do an annual in August, essentially jiu jitsu come Wadapalooza, you know what I mean? And you show up there and it's for a week. And so that's how I really got to know Pete and Jaco even more. Cause we've crossed paths peripherally in the military, but have spent a lot more time together afterwards. And Travis is there.

• 2:16:13Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Well, and Travis is now doing jiu jitsu, which is a heck of a thing for a guy with no arms and legs.

• 2:16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's kind of BS because he's really limiting our ability to submit him. You know, he's handicappedable and he's just really taking a lot of limb privilege away from the rest of us.

• 2:16:33Mike Rowe?

  Limb privilege. Oh man. Well, you tell Pete, uh, I haven't forgotten him. He came down, I interviewed him. God, how long has it been? Seven, eight years ago for a show called Somebody's Gotta Do It? And we wound up going another way, but I still have the footage and I still wanna tell the origin story.

• 2:16:53Speaker 01

  He's in it. You wanna talk about an industry that has shifted?

• 2:16:56Mike Rowe?

  I know. But little, that's why we, I spent, like, what Josh has done matters.

• 2:17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:04Mike Rowe?

  What Evan's doing matters. What those guys are building up there in, they're in Maine, right?

• 2:17:10Speaker 01

  They are. Yeah.

• 2:17:11Mike Rowe?

  It matters. And I'm just, I share your curiosity. For me, I'm mostly curious to see what people, I'm curious about second acts, to be honest. Like you get the first one, everybody stumbles into something.

• 2:17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:28Mike Rowe?

  And then you get to figure out, you know, do you stay? But when I think of my mom, sticking around for, you know, writing for 60 years and then getting published, you know? I, then when I think of Travis coming back and somehow getting past that, you know?

• 2:17:50Speaker 01

  Why, why limit it to two? I don't even know what act I'm on at this point. I've reinvented myself so many times. It's ridiculous. I was a professional pilot for a while, flew jets, charter, I had about, at this point, almost 4,000 flight hours, but about 400 of those are in a helicopter. I worked for a strength and conditioning company, public speaking. I own a coffee shop in Montana. I mean, why limit it for two? Just get out there, do stuff.

• 2:18:17Mike Rowe?

  Many chapters, big book.

• 2:18:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, may not be well written though.

• 2:18:23Mike Rowe?

  It's a pop up. I'm pretty excited by it.

• 2:18:26Speaker 01

  Yes, I had to outsource the, you know, the pictures, but.

• 2:18:31Mike Rowe?

  Hey, man, I really appreciate all your time.

• 2:18:33Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 2:18:34Mike Rowe?

  And coming out here and, uh, yeah, I'll get to Montana this year at some point. You probably know, uh, oh God, who's the guy I also, Renelli?

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  Uh, Renella.

• 2:18:43Mike Rowe?

  Steve.

• 2:18:43Speaker 01

  Steve Renelli. Yeah, he's in Bozeman.

• 2:18:45Mike Rowe?

  He's in Bozeman.

• 2:18:45Speaker 01

  You can make a whole trip of it. You could, if you're gonna do that, fly into Bozeman and out of Kalispell. Or reverse of that, because Bozeman is east of Missoula. You could start there. Travel over and see Josh, come due north, drive through the Flathead Valley by the lake and see me. And then you could just come in one airport, out the other.

• 2:19:03Mike Rowe?

  Let's do it. What's his name reached out from Meat Eater? Did you see that? His name's Roland.

• 2:19:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:19:10Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:10Speaker 01

  I don't know that I did see it.

• 2:19:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bozeman is a four hour drive from Missoula and Kalispell is a two hour drive from Missoula. So be, you could do all that in a day if you want, but I'd spend a day at least in each of those locations.

• 2:19:24Mike Rowe?

  Cool.

• 2:19:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:25Mike Rowe?

  Where do you do your thing? Out of your house?

• 2:19:27Speaker 01

  So I own the Black Rifle Coffee Shop in Kalispell, where I meet all the guests. And then we walk two blocks over to the studio, similar rented space where, uh, thankfully I had the Black Rifle guys help me design a new studio insert for that. And then the jujitsu gym I train at is down the block and I just try to stay in my triangle, man. Trying to make my triangle smaller and smaller.

• 2:19:48Mike Rowe?

  Well, you were, you were way out of bounds today, brother. You were in the Republic of Santa Monica.

• 2:19:52Speaker 01

  That's, I've spent enough time here. I know how to navigate among these people.

• 2:19:57Mike Rowe?

  So you said red eye? You're out tonight?

• 2:19:59Speaker 01

  No, that's tomorrow morning.

• 2:20:00Mike Rowe?

  Okay, great.

• 2:20:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:20:01Mike Rowe?

  All right. Well, look, I'm gonna keep you, but I, I so appreciate it. I didn't even, didn't even get to ask you the AI questions.

• 2:20:07Speaker 01

  What have you got? I know what AI stands for and that's about the limit of my knowledge.

• 2:20:11Mike Rowe?

  I believe it's artificial insemination.

• 2:20:14Speaker 01

  That is another AI.

• 2:20:15Mike Rowe?

  All right, here you go. 10 questions he's probably never been asked.

• 2:20:18Speaker 01

  Oh, fire away.

• 2:20:20Mike Rowe?

  What's something you learned from an incompetent person that you never learned from an exceptional one?

• 2:20:27Speaker 01

  Just keep going. I've met some really dumb incompetent people and they found their way to success by just not stopping.

• 2:20:36Mike Rowe?

  If you could permanently remove one word from leadership culture, what would that word be and why?

• 2:20:43Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:20:47Speaker 01

  One word from leadership culture?

• 2:20:53Speaker 01

  There's a couple that have been bastardized.

• 2:20:58Speaker 01

  One word.

• 2:21:03Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'd have to think on that one a bit.

• 2:21:06Mike Rowe?

  Go ahead. I'm not moving on till you give me a word. I don't care how long and weird the silence gets.

• 2:21:11Speaker 01

  It's a multi-billion dollar industry and I'm just trying to think.

• 2:21:16Mike Rowe?

  Well, every, the.

• 2:21:17Speaker 01

  Mastermind.

• 2:21:19Mike Rowe?

  Okay, great. That's great. Yeah, because it's so, it just drips with the over promise of the thing.

• 2:21:27Speaker 01

  And that word, there's so many other words, and I'm not saying those couldn't be done well, but a lot of the examples are just, it's, yeah, it's this false promise. Or guru or.

• 2:21:37Mike Rowe?

  I'm more offended lately by, you know, ideation, when the ideation elevates the synergies and we can all get on the same page.

• 2:21:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, just verbally jerking each other off.

• 2:21:49Mike Rowe?

  What's a fear you had at 20 that turned out to be completely unjustified?

• 2:21:57Speaker 01

  I didn't think I was gonna live to see 30.

• 2:22:02Mike Rowe?

  When you've operated in environments where mistakes are costly, what ordinary civilian behavior strikes you as surprisingly reckless?

• 2:22:12Speaker 01

  Overthinking everything.

• 2:22:14Mike Rowe?

  That's great. What's a skill you've seen save more lives than courage?

• 2:22:22Speaker 01

  Simplicity and clear and concise guidance.

• 2:22:28Mike Rowe?

  Interesting. I wonder if this is, if that, if skills should be virtue. Is simplicity a virtue?

• 2:22:34Speaker 01

  No, it's a practice skill.

• 2:22:36Mike Rowe?

  You can choose it.

• 2:22:37Speaker 01

  You can work towards it. It ties into the clear and concise guidance and you can have simplicity in briefing, simplicity in tactic. Simplicity on talking on the radio if you're in a disaggregate position.

• 2:22:50Mike Rowe?

  So the guy to your right, the guy to your left, things are getting spicy. Do you want him or her to have a firm understanding of simplicity or just balls out fearless courage?

• 2:23:02Speaker 01

  I don't want to work with people who are fearless because it means they're not paying attention or they're a sociopath.

• 2:23:08Mike Rowe?

  Excellent. If every American teenager had to spend six months mastering one difficult skill, not necessarily military, what would you choose?

• 2:23:21Speaker 01

  The recognition and realization that you're not the center of the universe.

• 2:23:26Mike Rowe?

  Okay, that's good, but skill, like tangible, hands-on.

• 2:23:32Speaker 01

  It's a mental one, but I, I mean, it is breaking down complex tasks into the next step and not getting overwhelmed.

• 2:23:41Mike Rowe?

  Wow, man. What is the trick to that? How, I mean, what?

• 2:23:44Speaker 01

  It is literally that. It is hard to do, but it is easy to talk about. It is chunking your goals into the bite that you can take. Most people, when I went back as a BUDS instructor, I didn't re, it was, of my 17 years, I was there for 18 months. It was the single most rewarding position I held during a time where there was 10 years of sustained combat. And so much money has been spent on trying to figure out who makes it through. I thought it was fascinating to talk to the students who decided to quit because they'll all tell you, this is all I've ever wanted to do. You'll never be able to get me to quit. Like, why are we not spending the money on that? 85% of the students don't make it through. And all the money, it seems to be, I mean, I don't know for sure, but it seems to me is being spent on the 15% that will make it through.

• 2:24:24Speaker 01

  Almost every single one of them outside of the, my mom has cancer and I have to go, which is like, let us help you get out of here. This training program will be back whenever you're ready. Go handle life. I couldn't fill in the blank for any longer. Well, how much longer did you think you were gonna have to go? Well, the instructors told me it was gonna be forever. Do you think we can actually do that? No, but I got overwhelmed and I made a decision in that moment that I'll regret for the rest of my life. Cause I've met these students decades later and that is what they expressed to me. But it comes down to, they have a goal, they have where they are, and this is all they see.

• 2:25:06Speaker 01

  What you need to do is lay out the breadcrumbs and then get out of the macro and into the micro. My most effective tool as a BUDS instructor, I was able to get people to quit at a rate that was astounding people. And it wasn't with water, sand, telephone poles, sleep deprivation, all those things helped. All I would do is talk to them about how much longer they were gonna have to do it.

• 2:25:26Mike Rowe?

  So like, so what's the hack? Get to your next meal? Get to your next?

• 2:25:30Speaker 01

  Maybe that's too much. Maybe in the environment where the instructor is trying to talk to you about, you're so hypothermic and your hip flexors are so tense from shivering because we have you laid in the ocean for hours on end that you can't even stand up straight. And I'm sitting there talking to you and it's Tuesday in the morning of hell week and I'm saying, man, we just started. It's Sunday night. We've got five more days of this. Cause of course I set my watch to a different date and time because that's what the instructors did to me. And generational trauma needs to be passed downhill. So.

• 2:26:00Speaker 01

  It's get through me talking to you. Get to the next evolution. It, there's, and again, doesn't have to be prescriptive. You just have to understand that, how do you eat an elephant or how do you eat a whale? It doesn't matter. It's a bite at a time. The guaranteed failure, and you could see it in their eyes. It's the difference, we would go on conditioning runs and I would say, hey, we're gonna go do a four mile run. Everybody keep up versus, hey, we're gonna go run until I decide to bring us back. The mental difference in those two, by the way, we're doing four miles either way. It doesn't matter. But the mental difference in those two can either break some people or you get to a place of like, cool, just gonna keep up. Let's get through this evolution.

• 2:26:41Mike Rowe?

  God, I'm gonna mess this up. It's a famous study with a rat.

• 2:26:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:26:47Mike Rowe?

  In a bucket of water.

• 2:26:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, where, and hope is what keeps them alive.

• 2:26:51Mike Rowe?

  Well, you put one in and you know, it, it treads and treads and treads until it drowns.

• 2:26:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:26:56Mike Rowe?

  And then you put one in and right before it drowns, you take it out. And then you put it back in and time it again. And it'll tread for twice the time. And then it starts to go and you pull it back out. And then you put it back in the third time, hours.

• 2:27:12Speaker 01

  The goal of the BUDS instructor is to remove hope through the lens of time.

• 2:27:18Speaker 01

  Makes more people quit than any tool we had access to.

• 2:27:22Mike Rowe?

  The goal of the BUDS instructor is to remove hope through the lens of time. That's fricking fantastic, dude.

• 2:27:31Mike Rowe?

  What's the biggest misconception civilians have about elite performers that elite performers themselves know is not true?

• 2:27:41Speaker 01

  That they're superhuman, that they're other than what the person who has that assessment thinks.

• 2:27:47Mike Rowe?

  Flesh and blood.

• 2:27:48Speaker 01

  They, and they have the same problems. They have the same life struggles and issues. The people I served with were exceptionally normal by almost every metric, but they were sometimes asked to do exceptional things. But they're still people at the end of the day.

• 2:28:03Mike Rowe?

  If you could leave one lesson hidden somewhere that your grandkids would discover 50 years from now, what would that lesson be?

• 2:28:13Speaker 01

  You're never alone, regardless of how much you may think that you are. And you're not struggling through something that other people haven't figured out. They'll never convince yourself that you are.

• 2:28:24Mike Rowe?

  Where did that come from?

• 2:28:26Speaker 01

  Friday episodes, like the one you happen to come across. I get hundreds of emails of people who I am speaking for them a little bit, but there's one of two buckets. I have a goal and I don't know how to start. That's a super common one. They can identify the goal. They can't figure out what to do because they're right here. They're looking at the gap. It's gonna be too much. How do I monetize this thing again?

• 2:28:52Mike Rowe?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 2:28:54Speaker 01

  That's guaranteed failure. No, it's like, get a Libsyn account, get a, you know what I mean? There's so many steps along the way. The other one is, I don't have.

• 2:29:03Mike Rowe?

  Tell the truth. Be genuinely curious.

• 2:29:06Speaker 01

  Correct. The other tranche is, I don't have anybody else to talk to in my life, which is another huge issue that I don't understand what's going on there. And maybe it's just easier to reach out to somebody you don't know on some of these things. These difficult conversations can be difficult. Yeah, I used the word twice there, but appropriately. I think you know what I mean.

• 2:29:29Speaker 01

  I don't feel like anybody would understand. I don't feel like I have the answers to this. I don't have anybody to talk to. And I have gotten enough of these that I know there are a lot of people out there who think that. And I have lost enough friends post military and the things that they have left behind that one of the main driving factors in my assessment, I don't have any data to support this, is that they landed in a headspace that was similar to that as well.

• 2:30:00Mike Rowe?

  Look, I mean, it's out of my lane, but it sure feels like that is right in the center of whatever post-traumatic stress really, really is.

• 2:30:16Speaker 01

  It's a lie, though. They're surrounded by people who love them and would want to help them. And the stats are staggering. The Green Beret community has now lost more people to suicide than combat operations. I don't know where the SEAL community is along that spectrum, but I feel like soon we will join that club as well.

• 2:30:33Mike Rowe?

  You know, you gave me an opportunity to ask you about the SEAL Family Foundation. And I want to because I know they do such great work. Do you know John Galt?

• 2:30:45Speaker 01

  I know the name.

• 2:30:46Mike Rowe?

  Famous character from an Ayn Rand book, but also a major dude. He helped me put together a few years ago, we took the whole gang here. Where were we exactly?

• 2:31:00Speaker 02

  Uh, near San Diego.

• 2:31:03Speaker 01

  You guys were out in Hummer.

• 2:31:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:05Speaker 01

  I recognize the rocks.

• 2:31:06Mike Rowe?

  Couple of, those guys on the end, I forget their names now, but they, look at Taylor. What's he holding up?

• 2:31:13Speaker 01

  Very Charlie's Angels. That's just a, probably an M4 with a suppressor. I'm Charlie's Angels.

• 2:31:19Mike Rowe?

  You're Charlie. We went through, I mean, thousands of rounds, small arms and we had, you know, girls in the office who had never seen a gun, touched a gun, very uncomfortable.

• 2:31:31Speaker 01

  Shooting a Barrett.

• 2:31:32Mike Rowe?

  Shooting a 50 cal at what, 600 yards.

• 2:31:36Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 2:31:37Mike Rowe?

  Hitting the opening of champagne.

• 2:31:40Speaker 01

  It's not as hard as people would like to believe.

• 2:31:42Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's one thing to shoot at a target, it's another thing, I mean, yeah.

• 2:31:47Speaker 01

  I tell people I'm the Navy SEAL sniper with the most confirmed misses. I can slap the shit out of a trigger, hold my breath until I gray out, and combine the two, of course.

• 2:31:56Mike Rowe?

  Oh, man. Well, look, the.

• 2:32:00Speaker 01

  Did we get through our questions? Oh, you're talking about the SEAL Foundation.

• 2:32:03Mike Rowe?

  Well, say something nice about them before we go. Like, make, I mean, why, why are they worth the support?

• 2:32:10Speaker 01

  Well, I don't want to diminish other foundations. For me, the SEAL DNA is obviously ingrained in the community I came from. If you have a family tied to a different, a Green Beret, a Ranger, a Marsoc, there's communities out there for them as well. So these entities, post 9/11, the statistics just don't lie. And the wars were long and are, it's, there's a difference between the price and the cost. And the family pays the cost a lot more than the service member does. You don't realize that until afterwards. And these organizations, the military itself is not designed to help with offboarding and complicated personal issues. They're just not. And I actually, of the mindset now, we shouldn't expect them to be.

• 2:32:55Speaker 01

  I actually think this is the NGO space that I would love to see people. When you get out of the military for the next three months, you are working with this NGO and they are going to help you with all of these things. Just take it out of the military's plate because they suck at it.

• 2:33:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:07Speaker 01

  They're good at onboarding. Do your job, but when you leave, they're like, hey, go to this TAPS class for 10 days, which I got all the signatures required in 10 days and about two hours. I successfully graduated the course and then got on with my life. That NGO space is where the Navy SEAL Foundation lives. And it's everything from, I mean, it's everything. They have people that can help you financially, healthcare, families of those who have lost a service member or a service member has been catastrophically damaged, scholarships, camps, vacations, retreats, bringing family together, therapists, like all of these things that you would want to be this nebulous pocket of care that the military cannot do. And I don't want to rely on the government to do it.

• 2:33:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:51Speaker 01

  That's what they do. And for me, the Navy SEAL Foundation, again, ties into the community I came from, so it's critically important to me to support them. But whatever, if you're an Army family, awesome. There's 40,000 service-based organizations. You will find one that can help you with what aligns with you.

• 2:34:05Mike Rowe?

  So last question, I basically said, you know, what, what should Mike ask if he actually does research and is genuinely curious about his guest? What would this question be? And this is what the AI told me to ask. Andy, when did we start treating self-esteem as a prerequisite for achievement instead of a consequence of achievement?

• 2:34:30Speaker 01

  Hell, I have no idea.

• 2:34:31Mike Rowe?

  Okay, good. We're all out of time. Actually, you know what? It's such a perfect answer to such a stupid question, but it does bookend the whole thing perfectly because we started with trophies and awards. And how in the world self-esteem, oh, man, we've just confused the tail with the dog, I think, in so many ways.

• 2:34:54Speaker 01

  Many of the people, not all, and those that seem to struggle the most confuse what they did with who they are. And that goes back to the ribbons and uniform and the special flair, too. You know, it's dangerous.

• 2:35:07Mike Rowe?

  Shit, man. After two and a half hours, you said it better than me. All right. Well, look, we still got to get Greg Stumpf in here at some time.

• 2:35:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I booked him for tomorrow.

• 2:35:16Mike Rowe?

  Excellent. Good. Yeah, we're working our way through the stumps.

• 2:35:18Speaker 01

  So record both and just release the one that's better.

• 2:35:21Mike Rowe?

  I so appreciate it, man. That was really fun. I'd say keep the knife, but would it be simpler for me to ship it to you?

• 2:35:30Speaker 01

  No, I.

• 2:35:31Mike Rowe?

  You got enough?

• 2:35:32Speaker 01

  You might be surprised to hear this, I have one of these. Give this to a guest that doesn't have a direct line to Josh.

• 2:35:37Mike Rowe?

  Okay. All right, I'll do it.

• 2:35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:39Mike Rowe?

  I'll do it. And Black Rifle Coffee, hey, after nothing, man, but I drink it every day. I can't believe, what do I have to do to get Evan back here as a, as a sponsor? That's how we end this episode.

• 2:35:51Speaker 02

  Evan Hayford, get back here and be a sponsor.

• 2:35:54Speaker 01

  I can help you.

• 2:35:54Mike Rowe?

  I mean, whatever it takes. We're fans. Don't make me keep drinking Dunkin' Donuts.

• 2:36:00Speaker 01

  He's a fan of you guys, too. He speaks highly of you.

• 2:36:03Mike Rowe?

  No, we love him. He's terrific.

• 2:36:05Speaker 01

  Yep. Thank you for doing what you do, by the way. I've had your voice in my head for decades. Not in a creepy way, not like watching somebody eat dinner way, but it's, you helped, and I'm sure you heard this, when it comes to people, you know, talking about the Armed Forces Network and stuff, probably not quantifiable, but you have helped in the things that you have done, whether you meant to or not, probably more than you could ever recognize or realize. It allows people to take a piece of home with them when they're at a place where, for most of them, all they wanted to is try to get back.

• 2:36:41Mike Rowe?

  You're welcome. Privilege, honestly. And a big part of this, of course, has nothing to do with monetization or sponsors, but just, just that. Like, me again, get a load of him. Get a load of Andy Stumpf, America. Look what he's doing. Look what he did. Can't hold a job, jumps off high places for no clear reason, and now he's got a podcast.

• 2:37:09Speaker 01

  You got to check to make sure gravity works everywhere. Like I said, I got all seven continents done so far, but not every object.

• 2:37:14Mike Rowe?

  Folks, his podcast is called Cleared Hot. It's available wherever you listen to podcasts and you'd be, you'd be a fool if you didn't check it out. I'm going to try and put this back in its little box.

• 2:37:27Speaker 01

  I don't have luck with that stat.

• 2:37:28Speaker 02

  We can take care of that later, bro.

• 2:37:30Mike Rowe?

  There we go. Hey, that's certainly longer than we normally go, isn't it?

• 2:37:34Speaker 02

  Did you ever say goodbye?

• 2:37:36Mike Rowe?

  No, I'm about to. I didn't want to wreck it. I thought he'd sit here and we could do the preamble right in front of him. We've never done that before.

• 2:37:42Speaker 02

  You want to?

• 2:37:43Speaker 01

  I've done ad reads for other people's shows.

• 2:37:44Mike Rowe?

  Have you?

• 2:37:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. If they have the same sponsor, I'd be like, I got it. Just throw a picture up there. I'm like, yeah, you know, thanks to AG1, you know, you can get your microphone.

• 2:37:52Mike Rowe?

  I've done that before, too, and it didn't go over well.

• 2:37:57Speaker 01

  It's got to be the right, it's got to be the right person and you got to know the talking points well enough.

• 2:38:02Mike Rowe?

  It was, it was a radio show. It wasn't a podcast.

• 2:38:06Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 2:38:06Mike Rowe?

  It was live radio.

• 2:38:07Speaker 01

  Ooh, see, I don't mess around with the live stuff.

• 2:38:10Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:10Speaker 01

  They let me go on Fox News Live for about five minutes for the launch of the book and I'm sitting there and the only thought in my head is, don't be an idiot, don't be an idiot, don't be an idiot. And then his first question is about the political, you know, effects of what's going on in the Straits of Hormuz. I'm just like, oh.

• 2:38:26Mike Rowe?

  Like.

• 2:38:26Speaker 01

  I like grapefruit.

• 2:38:27Mike Rowe?

  All right, man, we are done. Probably out of cards or tape or whatever you use in there, Taylor. But, all right.

• 2:38:38Speaker 01

  Sweet.

• 2:38:39Mike Rowe?

  And now, goodbye. When you leave a review, only five stars will do. Not just one or just two or just three. We were hoping for more. As in, one more than a four. Hopefully, it's one more than four. Just a quick review with five stars, too. From you, five stars will do.

• 2:39:20Speaker 03

  The abundance of the season is measured in the memories made together and the healthy promise of a new year. At Azure Standard, we've always been and always will be family-owned, and we welcome you to affordable, organic, natural, and non-GMO groceries, along with health, household, and garden products. With more than 13,000 carefully vetted products, we help you shop with confidence. Find us at AzureStandard.com.