458: Johnny Joey Jones—Mind Your Wake

In honor of Veterans Day, Mike speaks with co-host of The Big Weekend Show Marine Staff Sergeant (Ret.) Johnny Joey Jones, who served eight years as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician in Iraq and Afghanistan—where he lost both legs in the line of duty. These days, he's on a mission to highlight those who serve, from American warfighters to first responders, which he does powerfully in his new book, Behind the Badge https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Badge-Anon9780063432109/dp/0063432102/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1SP4NRQY46CAH&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qctIzwGtQ2KDT-9JyaGXDy8tgaXQvKRk2Im-xyoybVCMLe9zPn9-Eer7mMeShLeTqX9x9fT0keA6bwIeJvFEMdvOuFe26hJy1xl2nvFNFZCXHiMEf2LDI17yi_wlyabblDfEAq6TEqbnuWOoxd1xHriFU68m_FG2hwemeCAJHSzww6-yWlDyCYU-rbdvbJVwY3xTv9kCokQDdeOkQja-fSx1NPSPL0enJX-wqcGHQm0. QtsgYCRuIgKYqBHOS4an5fbTO-uSlhcyaTmYmuPxTB4&dib_tag=se&keywords=behind+the+badge+johnny+joey+jones&qid=1762822097&sprefix=behind+the+badge%2Caps%2C165&sr=8-1. It's a honest tribute to those who run toward the danger when others run away. With his trademark humility and humor, Joey talks about courage, purpose, and the importance of minding the wake you leave behind.

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

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Hey guys, Mike Rowe here. This is The Way I Heard It. My guest today is the one and only Johnny Joey Jones. Chuck, why do people say "the one and only" in front of certain individuals but not others?

• 0:16Speaker 01

  In all fairness, there probably is another guy named John Joey Jones out there, you would think, with those three. But I think it's just too... They're the one that most people know.

• 0:27Mike Rowe?

  I think it's more. I think it's like, of all the Johnny Joey Joneses that are surely out there, this is the one and only one that I'm gonna have on the podcast.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  He's the one and only on the podcast. And he's also the real one, you know? And you know how you're the real Mike Rowe on Facebook.

• 0:42Mike Rowe?

  If he were sitting right here in front of me, right this second, I would not describe him as an American hero, because he's the kind of guy that would take off one of his prosthetic legs and hit me over the head with it for calling him such a thing. But he is heroic to me, not just because of the injuries he sustained in Afghanistan and the way he's overcome them, but for the way he's really built an identity around the business of celebrating other people in a way that's not icky, or earnest, or saccharine, but just honest and compelling. And it's really been fun to watch him become the one and only Johnny Joey Jones.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  I gotta tell you that about five minutes into the episode, I wrote down one word, and then I didn't write anything else down except for potential titles, and that one word was "humble."

• 1:34Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Yeah, if you can fake that, man.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  He got it made.

• 1:39Mike Rowe?

  Not only is he genuinely humble and gracious, but you'll hear, really, calamity might be overstating it, but this was such a rough morning for me personally, and I'm not gonna wallow in my own self-pity, but we're on the fifth floor of a building in Santa Monica, and the one and only Johnny Joey Jones, you know, he's got no legs, left those over in Afghanistan, or Walter Reed...

• 2:02Speaker 01

  But thankfully, we have an elevator.

• 2:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, we have an elevator, because, boy, if we didn't have an elevator, Chuck, can you imagine?

• 2:07Speaker 01

  That would be terrible.

• 2:08Mike Rowe?

  It would be terrible.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10Mike Rowe?

  Now, elevators do go down for repair from time to time.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  It's very rare, though, Mike, very rare.

• 2:15Mike Rowe?

  Extraordinarily rare. And, well, you can imagine just how weird and awkward it would be to explain to the one and only Johnny Joey Jones. That he'd have to take. You know what? I don't want to spoil it. You're not saying that that actually happened. You're just saying it would be weird. It'd be incredibly weird. Understood, yeah. But if it did happen, if it did happen, it is the kind of thing I would probably discuss in the episode. Okay. And let me tell you, it was something that may not have been discussed in the episode. If it did happen, it's definitely my fault. Oh, for sure. Yeah, we didn't get into that. We'll, we'll get into that at a later date. I haven't been fired yet, but it's getting closer and closer.

• 2:58Mike Rowe?

  The book is called Behind the Badge. It's written by the one and only Johnny Joey Jones. It's so good. And we're going to talk about it at some length, but we are going to discuss a great many other things as well. As is inevitable when you have a man whose brain is as facile as his. Uh, we're calling this episode Mind Your Wake. It's one of his dad's many, uh, witticisms, uh, platitudes. He had a lot of them, yeah. Yeah. But this is a good one. And, um, in terms of advice, uh, somebody ought to put it on a T-shirt, man. Mind your wake. Those ripples from your little dinghy make it all the way to shore. Hey. Not your specific dinghy. Thank you.

• 3:42Mike Rowe?

  Whatever sort of boat you're in. Mind your wake. The one and only Johnny Joey Jones, right after this.

• 3:52Mike Rowe?

  I'd like to talk about initiative if I could for just a moment. Here at MicroWorks, we value it a great deal. In fact, it's the most important quality we look for in our work ethic scholarship applicants, but everybody wants it. I'm talking about the, uh, the quality in a Lyft driver that inspires him or her to carry your bags to the door without even asking, or the grocery clerk who shows you where an item is on the shelves, or a doctor who personally calls you to explain your test results. If you're hiring, you want to encourage initiative because it's invaluable. And ZipRecruiter has a way to allow a candidate to tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job, not just why they're qualified. But why they're interested.

• 4:37Mike Rowe?

  This is a way that allows the best candidates to distinguish themselves from the competition. And a great way for you to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Right now, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/row. ZipRecruiter is the number one hiring site, in large part because of this new initiative that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first. So you meet the right people faster. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within one day. Try it for free. ZipRecruiter.com/row. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Build your team. Build it sooner. Meet your match at ZipRecruiter. Try it free.

• 5:30Mike Rowe?

  I don't even know where to start. Obviously, the book is behind the badge, and we're going to rant and rave about it for a while. Johnny Joey Jones is in the studio. He's just given me a challenge coin for the book.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:41Mike Rowe?

  And that's the first time I've seen a challenge coin pegged to a book specifically. I have a drawer full of challenge coins. I'll cherish this one, but why'd you do it?

• 5:51Speaker 03

  So you'd put it in your drawer. That's why I did it. So it lives safely in a controlled environment? No.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  People have asked me for years for a challenge coin. And the challenge coin for me is something that's like this military tradition. And you get one from your commander of a unit or a Medal of Honor recipient.

• 6:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  What am I going to put on a challenge? What did I do special as a Marine to go on a challenge coin? Has always been my mentality. And I come from a job field, the bomb technician world, where seeking glory is really bad.

• 6:22Mike Rowe?

  Frowned on.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. To the point that we charge beer if you get caught on television.

• 6:28Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  If you get caught, because we end up going out in town. Like, say they find an old piece of Civil War ammo at somebody's junkyard. We're going to go out and do it. If you get caught doing a television interview, any kind of media, you're charged beer. It's different when media is your job, so I get a little bit of a pass. But there's going to come a day where I've got to roll up, you know... You know, a Bud Light truck to first OD company over here on Pendleton and just say, have at it, boys.

• 6:49Mike Rowe?

  I don't know, like, would Bud Light even satisfy that, uh, that obligation today?

• 6:54Speaker 03

  On purpose, you know, for all the reasons, you know, for all, good and bad.

• 6:59Mike Rowe?

  Oh, the irony of, of paying a vet a debt with a six pack of Bud Light.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  It's kind of like paying your fine in pennies, you know? But anyway, the challenge coin for me was this book is, is nine different first responders and they adapt much military culture to include challenge coin. Most of them have given me a challenge coin.

• 7:20Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  And to have a book that's celebrated, that's done so well, that just tells their stories and lets, lets them answer questions that are hard to answer. I thought a challenge coin for them would be really unique and cool.

• 7:30Mike Rowe?

  People are gonna love it.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:32Mike Rowe?

  They're gonna love it. Um, this book was just an idea, I think, in your mind, the last time we sat down and talked. You had written your first book.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:41Mike Rowe?

  And we were talking about Dirty Jobs, I think, and I had said to you, you know, for me, the code that needed to be cracked. On the mercenary side of things was the understanding that my story was not nearly as interesting as most people's. And if you just get out of the way and let them, either let them tell you their story. Or you find a way to present and react to their story as a guide. And that's what this is. And it reads, like, there are only nine profiles in it. But exponentially, it feels like 90.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:21Mike Rowe?

  Because as you go through these individually, and I don't want to do it right now, but I just want the listener to understand that there's a real power in a profile. The profile's different than a story. These are both. But the cumulative effect is really powerful.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  It is. You know, it's funny, you started off talking about, if I understood you correctly, basically, the best way to tell a story is to let it tell itself, kind of. And, uh, you're known as a storyteller. That's your job. But if you look at your career, the stories you've told haven't been your story.

• 8:52Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 8:53Speaker 03

  As a matter of fact, we might get the micro story one day and it, and we're all anxiously waiting, but I feel much the same way. I tell people all the time, the most interesting thing about me are the people I know. Like, that really is what makes me interesting, is that I can connect you to somebody that's as interesting as you are and I'll get out of the way.

• 9:09Mike Rowe?

  Well, with respect, that's not a thing that you can take. Credit for it. The thing you take credit for is the reason you're interested in the people you know, and that I think is, it's just basic curiosity.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 9:23Mike Rowe?

  You've been curious your whole life, man.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  And it's got me in more trouble than I know how to count, but it's also the reason for success, you know.

• 9:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  And you're absolutely right. So these, to bring that forward, one of probably the most famous in the South at least, sports announcers you can think of is a guy named Eli Gould. And he's made a million famous calls, but his most famous call was one of the first Alabama championships in Nick Saban era where he made the call to say nothing and to let the moment live for itself. And so when I wrote my first book on Broken Bonds of Battle that did really well, I felt this pressure to go in and almost re-explain things for people and to add me to it.

• 10:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  And it did very well. So when I got ready to write this book, I thought to myself, what if I were just Eli Gould? You know, what if I just let these folks not just answer my questions, but through our conversation, come up with the next one they're going to answer? And so that's what we did.

• 10:22Mike Rowe?

  Brother, it's the hardest thing to do is get out of your own way.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  That's exactly right.

• 10:27Mike Rowe?

  I was just thinking the other day, I got a buddy in advertising who had the Motel Six account for years, right?

• 10:34Speaker 03

  All right.

• 10:34Mike Rowe?

  Years. And early on, there was a big conversation about, you know, how were we going to really capture in video, the essence of the value proposition that we're trying to establish vis a vis the customer experience in a certain key demographic, right? Through the lens of a single-minded proposition, all the usual crap. What they came up with was 30 seconds of black. So the commercial starts, the screen is black and you hear Tom Boat that's saying, what you're looking at right here is the inside of a Motel Six room in the middle of the night. This is pretty much what you're going to see in any hotel room in the middle of the night. Clean bed and they never go to picture.

• 11:18Mike Rowe?

  So it's just a simple story in 30 seconds with nothing but black. And if there's a moral to that story, it's that. That was 25 years ago, and I'll never forget it.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:30Mike Rowe?

  And the stories in your book have the same simplicity. They land and they hook you. And I can't say it yet with certainty because full disclosure, I haven't read all of them. But I know that books like this matter more over time. You can only do so much out of the gate.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:52Mike Rowe?

  You can put it out there, but the way they linger, you're going to be hearing from people years from now, probably about a profile or a passage that you didn't think.

• 12:04Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 12:05Mike Rowe?

  Was going to land the way it ultimately did for different people.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  When you write a book like this, there are nine people in that book. Six of them I've known for the majority of my life at this point, or at least my whole adult life, and a handful of them I've known, one since I was three years old, one since I was 15 and 16 in high school. One of them I went to war with, and they're all first responders, some of them were military before that.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  And so to tell their story, I thought I already knew it. And I know these people very well. So the phenomenon that happens with this, writing a book like this, is you write the book, then you read it a million times and edit, and then you read it again before you go to interviews because you're looking, each time you read it, you read it with a different purpose. And what I've learned is so much of what I say, explaining the book, in hindsight, I wish was in the book because I, every time I read it, I learn. I learn about these people. The dots start to connect for me better, the words come to me better to explain why this book matters, why these people matter, why telling their story is important, or how you can, like why you should be interested in the story, how it relates to your life.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  And it's so funny, I took quite a while to write the book. I could have took three times longer, maybe never have come up with those words if not for this exercise, this tell me about your book exercise, why should I care about this book exercise? And so for that reason, it's brand new all over again for me, and it's exciting, and I can't wait to tell people about it.

• 13:33Mike Rowe?

  Well, what an interesting way to think about the business of promoting a book, to call it an exercise.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  It is.

• 13:38Mike Rowe?

  That, I think, is really indicative of the version of you I think I know. You look at things as exercises. You look at things as, you know, if I do this, I get permission to do that. I wasn't going to get into it, but I can't help myself. The listener needs to understand what happened an hour ago. In the service of a good story, Johnny Joey Jones and Courtney show up here at a five-story walk-up, and my landlord promised that the elevator would be working by August 21st, Chuck?

• 14:11Speaker 03

  August 21st, yeah.

• 14:12Mike Rowe?

  August 21st, right. And so you were gonna come in earlier than that, and we were like, no, no, I think we're gonna wait, okay? I mean, it's five flights, for God's sakes. So, uh, we don't hear boo. I don't live down here. I come down and the elevator's still not working. You show up a half hour early. By the way, no extra credit for that.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  No.

• 14:32Mike Rowe?

  What is that all about?

• 14:33Speaker 03

  That was a, I was already on the side of town thing. I had nowhere else to go. That's all that was.

• 14:37Mike Rowe?

  So if we could just bring this back to me for a moment, okay? Here I am, all right? I mean, I'm never early, rarely late, usually on time-ish, but I learned this morning, in no particular order, that the elevator's not gonna be working. The elevator tech is not gonna be here when he's supposed to be here. And, uh, an Afghanistan war hero, pardon me, I know you hate that.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  Four-letter words, man.

• 15:00Mike Rowe?

  Conspicuously shy in the leg department to the tune of two, is waiting to get up to the fifth floor. So, like, with more grace and more gratitude than my vocabulary permits, Johnny Joey Jones is like, hey, man, it's just, it's just a flight of stairs. I'll make it. And you walked up here. Now, I know you're gonna give me endless shit about it on the five. I know I'm gonna hear about this, and I look forward to it. I wanna hear about it. But I want, I want, I, oh, and by the way, the first thing I do when I see you, 'cause I'm in my head and I feel so bad about this, I start complaining about my dismal cross-country flight that took 12 hours, and I realize, wait a second, wait a second.

• 15:42Mike Rowe?

  You, Travis Mills, a couple other friends of mine who have similar stories to tell, I, I can't tell you about my troubles. I mean, what do you think of when the average Joe starts complaining to you about a rough flight, or a bad day, or a hair in their soup, or some frickin' thing that in the scheme of things? Like, how do you help people like me get their perspective back?

• 16:10Speaker 03

  Well, first of all, I don't think of that. I don't think, let me educate this person on why that's not a big deal. You know, all the wisdom I have came from somebody else, which is a good thing. But a buddy of mine, Jake Schick, he always says something along the lines of never, I'm trying to phrase it correctly because he's really good at turning phrases and I speak, because I'm from Georgia, very simply, but he says something like, never compare tragedy and always share in victory. You know, it's like, don't, I'm not going to discount the worst thing that ever happened to you because it doesn't seem like it would be bad to me because I don't live your life. You know what I mean?

• 16:42Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  But, you know, just like back to this deal here, you're talking about complaining about flights. Well, you know, there aren't many people that live life the way we do in the air. So if there's anybody you can talk to about that that actually gets it, it's me.

• 16:55Mike Rowe?

  When does commiserating bleed into bitchin'? Like, where do you draw the line between a fellow traveler who shares your pain and a couple of bitter old dudes in an airport racing through with a six pack of Bud Light just to try and blunt the agony?

• 17:13Speaker 03

  I guess the answer is I bitch too, you know, about those things. Like, I'm standing here with no legs, but I'm also aggravated at this thing that's very menial and not important. You know, I consider it more of a gift that I have than a fault that others don't have. You know, it's like, I've gotten to see behind the curtain. And that's a gift. It's also a responsibility and it's a curse, but it's also a gift. This whole idea of like post-traumatic stress, like, am I screwed up because I don't want to be drunk with a thousand strangers at a concert? Or are you a little bit naive and oblivious, right? Is this really a negative thing for me? Or do I just see the world from a few stories up? And you see it at ground level? And so it's all about perspective, right? It really

• 17:55Speaker 03

  is. It's about convincing yourself that the cards you have to play are good cards, even if the best thing to do with them is fold, right? You're still in control.

• 18:03Mike Rowe?

  You didn't deal them.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 18:04Mike Rowe?

  But now you got them.

• 18:05Speaker 03

  Exactly. So they're your cards, it's your game, and you get to make the decisions. And so when it comes to things like walking up the stairs... There's a couple of things here. Number one, what's the most important thing to me today? Right? It's to get this done. It's to do this.

• 18:19Mike Rowe?

  Mission.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  What's between me and doing this?

• 18:21Mike Rowe?

  That's the mission.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  Five flights of stairs.

• 18:23Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  Number two, what's the payoff? I get to tell this story in perpetuity forever. Like, never let pain and discomfort, for a brief moment, take something away from you that you'll get to use forever, you know? Like, it's, it's, it all makes common sense, man.

• 18:39Mike Rowe?

  Look, I castrated a lamb fourteen years ago with my teeth on international television, okay? I wasn't proud of it. I wasn't ashamed of it, because that's the way they did it. And it happened, and all hell broke loose, and, you know, PETA came after the network and so forth and so on. But a year later, it was the subject of a TED Talk. And that TED Talk became the basis for a speaking career that I never aspired to.

• 19:09Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 19:09Mike Rowe?

  Or wanted. Really? Now I enjoy it a lot. And if I had to, I could probably draw a pretty crooked line to a lot of good things.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  That's exactly right.

• 19:18Mike Rowe?

  That, if I'm honest, the proximate cause of which was me biting the balls off a lamb. Right? So, you don't, you don't always know what five flights will do to you.

• 19:33Mike Rowe?

  Ever since Chapter started advertising on this podcast, I've been getting letters and emails from satisfied customers all over the country. Last week, I got one from Joseph, a retired veterinarian in Texas, who just learned his Medicare plan was shutting down. I can't tell you Joseph's last name, because his medical history is complicated and personal. But his situation is not uncommon at all. Given his medical history, Joseph was unable to find a local provider that would include the doctors he'd come to rely on. Happily, Joseph listens to this podcast, and Joseph heard me talking about Chapter just last week. And Chapter exists for one reason: to help people on Medicare find the plan that's right for them.

• 20:19Mike Rowe?

  It's a free service. Anyhow, Joseph called Chapter. He connected with an advisor named Heidi. And Heidi caught something that most people miss. Because his current plan was about to close. Joseph had a limited window to continue with his current coverage through a new plan without any additional medical underwriting. In other words, Heidi found a way to get Joseph the coverage he needed with the doctors he preferred. Then she found great coverage for his wife, too. Moral of the story? Medicare plans are constantly evolving. You are too. Call Chapter. Make sure you're on the best plan for you. Also, people who switch plans after calling Chapter

• 21:02Mike Rowe?

  save an average of $1,100 a year. 804-Chapter. That's the number. Call it today. It's free. Whole thing takes about 20 minutes. 804-Chapter.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  I've got two, uh, what? Nigerian dwarf goats, and they need to be weathered.

• 21:19Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. You should explain what weathering means to the uninitiated, because otherwise they think you're a forecaster. You bet they do.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  But, uh, I don't think, I mean, I can, I don't think it'd fit in my mouth. I'd have to, I'd have to try a different tool. They've grown too much.

• 21:34Mike Rowe?

  Well.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  That's a whole nother.

• 21:36Mike Rowe?

  I guess you don't really know until you try.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 21:38Mike Rowe?

  You really gotta get in there and give it the old college try.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Oh, man. I'm getting nervous over here.

• 21:44Mike Rowe?

  Good goat'll do that.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  That's awesome. Do not tell that joke.

• 21:50Mike Rowe?

  We're not gonna tell that joke, but it is worth the sidebar, and I bet it is relevant to the book in some way.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  More so than you know.

• 21:57Mike Rowe?

  Well, the real, like, the real parapetia, the moment, like, the learning moment in that castration episode we did was, PETA had told me the right way to do it was, you know, banding. You've seen that on the phone. You put the rubber band around the testicles, and the blood stops flowing, and then, you know, the nuts fall off, and no big deal. It doesn't seem as violent at a glance, obviously. But the truth is, in that segment, we did it that way. After the rancher, you know, cut the scrotum and bit the testicles off and spit them in a bucket, and I yelled, "Stop that. You can't do that on the TV. It's against the laws of God and man and the MCC and so forth." And then we did it the proper way and the lamb was absolutely miserable.

• 22:40Mike Rowe?

  As you might imagine, one would be with a rubber band around its testicle. For three days, it would be miserable.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 22:47Mike Rowe?

  And meanwhile, the one we just castrated was just prancing around, not a care in the world. No blood, it's over. So, sorry to hijack that, but the thing that you think you're looking at and the reason you think you're doing a thing is like not really germane. And that comes through in all kinds of examples in the book.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  Just need to take this moment to appreciate the fact that I get to go to nine of my buddies and tell them how their life story is equivalent to biting a lamb's nuts off. Well, testicles.

• 23:18Mike Rowe?

  You're welcome.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  And every person in that book, female included, would find that to be absolutely hilarious. And that's the type of people that these people are. You're not wrong. It's just, you know, there's a lot of places I can take this because you're like me, you live life in analogy, so everything represents something that can be applied somewhere else. And it's this idea for me in the book, everybody thinks they know what a first responder does. Everybody thinks they know, unfortunately, in this like world, what their motivations are. And almost everybody's wrong. And the biggest of ways and the smallest of ways. For example, the biggest of ways, that cop wants to kill someone because of how they look. You know, you couldn't be more wrong.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  That cop wakes up every day dreading the situation where lethal force is necessary or even an option. And if you read this book, you learn that internal dialogue and struggle and conversation, that psychological battle that happens for them if they work in some places on a daily basis that is torturous, not just on their mind, but on their soul. In the smallest of ways, a fireman's job today is less than 10% putting out fire. Because we've spent a couple hundred years learning how to prevent fire.

• 24:37Mike Rowe?

  And the average cop never draws his gun in the course of his whole career.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  You're exactly right. So the misunderstanding here is, you know, every cop wants to use their weapon and every fireman just puts out fire. And the truth is, every fireman responds to the death, tragedy, destruction and terrible things that we do to each other and happened to us. And every cop is put in an impossible situation of treating every villain like the victim that they're trying to save.

• 25:05Mike Rowe?

  I don't want to get into spoiler alerts, but who is the cop? Who is the fireman? Who you write about?

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, obviously, there's nine, but some of them I'm closer to than the others. The first two chapters, the first one's Clay Hedrick. And if you think that I talk country, he is pouring sweet tea over a banjo and listening to the music it plays, right? That's who he is. He is one of the smartest people you'll ever know, but not one of the most educated. He's a blue collar guy, and that's the difference between intelligence and education, man. It just shines through in this book. And when you have Clay as your first chapter and then a dual master's degree is the next chapter, who's his best friend? Keith. But Keith and Clay, I've known my whole life. Keith is my brother-in-law, and Clay was my uncle's best friend. And so they work at the same fire department. Keith is the, in charge of most of the fire department, and Clay is in charge of a shift.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  And so they have very different careers, come from different worlds. Keith's dad's a millionaire, sent Keith to college. Keith said, no, I want to be a fireman. His dad said, I know that son. Clay going to the fire department was the opportunity such as going to college. That was the opportunity out of it for him. So Keith is kind of moving downward in society's perspective to be a fireman. Clay, this is his opportunity out of it. And they worked side by side for 25 years. And just the duality in that experience and the fact that they both landed at the same place with completely different perspectives. And the only thing they have in common is that they love the fact that their job is to risk something of their own to help other people.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  The majority of a fireman's job in 2025 are medical calls, and the majority of those medical calls are accidents and, you know, bad things people do to each other, whether it be drugs they're taking or domestic violence. You know when you want the police around and when you don't, but when the crap has hit the fan, you call the fire department, you call 911, and they dispatch the fire department. And so to give people insight into that, and that when you think about like a car wreck on the interstate, you pass by and you see a fire truck there, but you don't, you never really connect those dots, that that's what firemen do. And so the example I give that's somewhat in the book in different ways, but it's what really drove it home for me was in 2023, I moved back to my hometown where Keith and

• 27:22Speaker 03

  Clay work. And I realized one day. In just regular conversation, that Keith and Clay drive their kids to school on the roads and through the intersections, that they've seen other people's children die. And to think about doing that, like, the easiest thing about war for me, to make it make sense, was, I'm over here going through this, so the things I care about don't have to. What's the opposite is true for them. They're doing it because these things happen to the people they care about. And I just wanted to give people that perspective. Do with it what you may. I've found mandates, post-writing it, that I didn't have going into it. You know, if you really want to write a book that explains things to people, don't have

• 28:06Speaker 03

  a hypothesis, have a mission, you know? Well, don't tell me. Show me. Exactly. Find a way to show me. And then, on the law enforcement side, because there are various types of law enforcement, probably the most surprising and enlightening is a Maine game warden named Jeremy Judd. Now, game wardens have, you know, Department of Natural Resources officers have different responsibilities for where they are. There's different geography, different... But if you go to the state of Maine, it's mostly a wilderness, there's a lot of lakes, there's some coast. And a Maine game warden, a game warden in Maine is extremely tied into law enforcement, because if a crime or any type of tragedy happens in that wilderness or on those lakes, he or she is the person with the knowledge to get there and get back.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  A cop from Portland, Maine, chasing a fugitive, is gonna get lost in the woods. No bueno. Right? And so Jeremy Judd's the only Maine game warden to have to use his firearm in the line of work. He ended up having to use it to save his life and others. The story's tragic. Prior to that, he spent years on a search and rescue dive team. In his way, he says that with a chuckle, and he goes, "You don't rescue anybody underwater." Right. That's just a recovery mission. That's just recovery. And so then you go into, you explore this whole idea of how he put his life on the line, because, I mean, it gets cold. Diving to recover someone's dead body, not to save someone's life, but to recover their dead body because their family deserved peace.

• 29:35Speaker 03

  And he was willing to risk his life, and does, and almost dies, to find a young girl for her family, because that's the only thing that's gonna give them peace. And then this happens, where he has to use his firearm in the line of work, it shakes him, as it would any human being, and he realizes, I need a happy ending, every now and then. Gets a dog to be a hunting dog, realizes it's a special dog, buys it on his own, trains it himself, realizes, hey, this dog's special, takes it to their search and rescue school, and it passes all the tests the day they show up. It becomes the most recognized and awarded rescue dog in the state of Maine, gets national awards, the team, Jeremy and his dog, Tunny, Tundra. It's miraculous.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  It's God working. It saved Jeremy's life. In the process of saving all these other people's lives who otherwise wouldn't have been found alive.

• 30:27Mike Rowe?

  And that's why and how your book is both extraordinary and very relatable at the same time. Everybody listening has had a relationship with a pet that feels, I don't want to put words in people's mouths, but godlike, supernatural, special in a way. I'm fascinated by the bipedal relationship with the animal kingdom and how it's evolved over the years, but really specifically with dogs. And yeah, to be able to read about somebody who answered a call that you yourself would probably, I don't mean you personally, but the average person would probably not answer.

• 31:10Mike Rowe?

  Because let's face it, we don't live in a country filled with first responders. These are exceptional, extraordinary people who march to a beat of a drum, I think, that really only they can hear, but they love their dogs just like us mere mortals, right?

• 31:25Speaker 03

  What's awesome about this book, and you just hit on it, and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to distract you.

• 31:31Mike Rowe?

  No, not at all.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  Thought I could get there quicker, but.

• 31:33Mike Rowe?

  I'm just curious to see if you stumble across anything you don't recognize in your own book.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  Fair enough. But read the title of the first chapter.

• 31:40Mike Rowe?

  Oh, there you go. Ordinary guy, extraordinary circumstances. That's your buddy Clay, the firefighter. At some point, this job is going to hit home, something is going to physically, spiritually, or emotionally break you.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  That's the point of the whole book.

• 31:55Mike Rowe?

  You're gonna break.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  The point of the whole book is, none of us can do it. These guys and gal couldn't do it.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  They did it. It broke them. Something early on in every one of their career made them question the fact that this is what they do. And there was something inside of them that said, but it's worth doing. And I really do think that maybe we are a country full of first responders. Maybe we are a country full of people who can't do it until they have to. And I don't want you to have to lose your legs, or go to war, or choose a 30-year career in first response, to understand that about yourself.

• 32:35Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  You know, it's like, he considers himself, and I think it's true, an ordinary guy. He just shows up to work in extraordinary situations.

• 32:43Mike Rowe?

  Look, I'm not the first to have said this, but when it comes to awards, and when it comes to bravery, and when it comes to sacrifice, and all these things that we kind of look back on and try to magnify in a way that makes sense, it's the role of fear that's most interesting to me. Because on the one hand, we love to lionize men and women who are fearless.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:08Mike Rowe?

  They're fearless. Maybe it's Audie Murphy, right? Maybe like-

• 33:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:12Mike Rowe?

  Right? But right next to him, you know, you got an ordinary guy-

• 33:17Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:17Mike Rowe?

  -who's scared shitless.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:20Mike Rowe?

  Who does the same thing anyway.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:22Mike Rowe?

  So, without fear, what is courage? Right? Without doubt, what is faith?

• 33:32Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 33:33Mike Rowe?

  So-

• 33:33Speaker 03

  This is exactly right.

• 33:34Mike Rowe?

  The book is so dense with relatable topics, and the fact that you chose to write two about people you personally know.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:44Mike Rowe?

  And maybe some not so much. It seems like it's a mixed bag, but, you know, listen, we're talking about first responders.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Somebody's doing their job right now.

• 33:51Mike Rowe?

  And in the distance. That's the kind of, not only do we ask our guests to walk up five floors-

• 33:58Speaker 03

  We ask someone to set their house on fire so we can get that-

• 34:00Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  The ethical effect.

• 34:01Mike Rowe?

  I didn't want to tell you, but the building is on fire. And things are gonna get, it's every man for himself, Chuck.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  It's good, it's gonna get sporty.

• 34:13Mike 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.

• 34:56Mike 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

• 35:39Mike Rowe?

  into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy.

• 35:51Speaker 03

  The topic of courage is something I've spent a lot of time thinking about, somewhat passively and somewhat actively in the last couple of years. Writing this book really brought it in for me. And, you know, I'm going to get very liberal with my definition here, because these are the best placeholder words for the concept I want to put out there. It's like, what's the difference between courage and bravery? They're kind of interchangeable, you know? But in my experience, we're all brave.

• 36:20Speaker 03

  If you're stupid, you're brave.

• 36:22Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  We're all capable of jumping off a bridge with a bungee cord behind us, right? We're all capable of doing something in a moment for a split second without thinking, or with just blind faith that feels scary. We're all capable of being brave for a moment. Courage is going back to do it the second time, right? Courage is knowing, not just the consequence, but knowing what it feels like. And courage is getting shot and going back to war. You know, that kind of courage is this added layer of deliberateness. And that's what they all felt. They were all brave. They were all brave the first day they showed up on the job.

• 37:00Mike Rowe?

  Cause they didn't know any better, maybe.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. Ignorance, right? The courage came five years into it, you know? And that's just, to me, it's such an amazing and remarkable thing that we have people that are ordinarily extraordinary.

• 37:16Mike Rowe?

  Childbirth?

• 37:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:19Mike Rowe?

  Right? Yeah, look, she says, I think I want to have a kid. And then they have it. And during the delivery, it's the screaming and the no way. And oh my God, this is what, you have no idea the pain. And then we should have another one.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it?

• 37:34Mike Rowe?

  We should do that again.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  It's like you don't know what you're capable of until you have to go through it. And that's why I said earlier, like, I don't fault people for complaining about what the worst thing they've been through is, because that's all they have to compare it to. You don't know what you're capable of.

• 37:47Mike Rowe?

  I'm just laughing because I'm thinking of this thing a rancher told me once, not the sheep ranchers, another guy.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  Don't forget the spit?

• 37:54Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 37:56Speaker 03

  That's, that's good advice.

• 37:58Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's how you, but teachable moment. You do it once and you learn. No, the question was, what's worse, getting kicked in the nuts or having a baby in terms of pain? And, you know, the answer without hesitation is getting kicked in the nuts is much worse.

• 38:14Speaker 03

  Why?

• 38:15Mike Rowe?

  Cause in the history of that, no guy has ever said, let's do that again.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  Oh, I love that. That is so simple and so true.

• 38:25Mike Rowe?

  Let's do that again. But your book is filled with people who did that fairy thing.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  That's exactly right.

• 38:32Mike Rowe?

  They sat on the hot stove. It hurt. So let's do it again. Not because they're sadists, or is it masochists, either one, but because there's something on the other side of the hot stove that's more important than the third degree burn.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  You have to look at it with eyes wide open because I was a marine bomb tech and I got addicted to the adrenaline. The risk was worth the reward, even selfishly.

• 38:54Mike Rowe?

  I so wanted you to unpack that.

• 38:56Speaker 03

  But there is a moment in everyone's career as a first responder, in my time in Afghanistan, where I'm still just as willing to do it, but the consequences are more real and I'm okay if you never ask me to do it again.

• 39:10Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But where does the adrenaline rush, the thing that you just said you were addicted to, is that possible to experience without a clear and present understanding of the consequence of zigging when you should have zagged, right?

• 39:29Speaker 03

  No, it's not. And I think that's what makes it, like, the best example I give is when you watch the movie Hurt Locker. Everyone in my profession hates that movie because it's so unrealistic to how we do the job and what the job is, and it's Hollywood. I love that movie because I can see past, I can see past the literal and understand the metaphor. The scariest moment in taking a bomb apart is going from standing away from it to kneeling over it, right? Because the bomb is probably designed to function by something I do. So something as simple as a footstep is the most dangerous part. If I understand it enough

• 40:11Speaker 03

  to be over it and have my hands on it, I'm in a pretty good spot. Like, that means I have a pretty good understanding of what this is and what I need to do. It's not red wire, green wire. It's what is this? What are the components? How's it operated? How's it initiated? You can't put that into movies, right? Because that's something that happens in my head.

• 40:29Mike Rowe?

  So eternal, yeah.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  And so what do you have to do? You gotta go over the top to create that suspense so people can, you know, empathetically feel just a little bit of that. And so you have to understand the gravity of the situation to go through the emotional roller coaster that brings some sort of high at the end. But then, once you, once it's put in perspective. So, two or three days in Afghanistan, the truck behind me gets blown up. That's the first explosion in Afghanistan I experienced. We run, we get the guys, none of them are hurt. They're in a truck, thank God. Put them in our truck, call in medevac. They're all dinged up, and we medevac them and then take a wrecker-ish and bring the truck back with us.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  Go on about the next day. That created the anticipation of, man, that was, that was kind of awesome. It's not until you get the call that Adam Perkins is dead and Dave Lyons doesn't have legs anymore, and they're only a couple of miles away from you, that you, it kind of, the light bulb comes on and goes, oh. Well, when it's not awesome, it sucks. And so, there's just this maturing that happens in life, for me, over a six-month deployment. For these guys and gals in this book, over a 30-year career. You reach a point to where it's like, okay, I've had enough. I don't want to risk everything every day, but I'm still willing to.

• 41:50Mike Rowe?

  What did you learn that you didn't know going in? Because, I mean, just to, not to put too fine a point on it, but you're a first responder. You've been there, you've done it, and you have, I think, not that you need permission, but your curriculum vitae more than qualifies you to weigh in on these, on these topics. But were you surprised by anything collectively from these nine?

• 42:19Speaker 03

  Two things. The short answer is, I was surprised by the fact they all hit it from different angles. There wasn't a, a single thread that seemed to sew them all together. It wasn't like they were all, it wasn't like they all were the same version, different versions of the same person. They come from all over the country, all over the backgrounds, political spectrums, what have you. That was surprising. I thought it was more of a monolith of personality, and it's not. Which is kind of ignorant on me, because I can look back at my background and say, okay, we're all vastly different, you know?

• 42:45Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 42:46Speaker 03

  The most surprising thing I can elaborate on, that people can really take hold of, is... And, you know, coming back from Vietnam, we have a country that is so tumultuous in its political understanding that it wants to blame those that were drafted in the war for the war itself. Very, very much a child's perspective. And so we grow and we mature, mostly through the efforts of those that were spat on, that when my generation goes to war, it's the opposite. No matter how politically unpopular the war is, the warriors are celebrated more than they ever have been, probably more so than the ticker tape parades of World War II. So, you know, that is growth, you know? And so, that's what, from the 60s to 2000, 40 years of growth?

• 43:30Speaker 03

  So then if you started in 2001 and move forward to 2025, we have had this journey of understanding, appreciating, and supporting the mental health injuries of going to war. It really started post 9/11. So you could say we're 25 years, as a society, into this growth of understanding, supporting, and caring about the psychological trauma that our men and women in uniform, in the military, endure in order to protect us. We haven't made it to year zero with first responders. That was the most surprising and really daunting thing about finishing this book, is that I have the Department of Veterans Affairs, I've got any number of national nonprofits,

• 44:15Speaker 03

  I've got laypeople who understand the term PTSD better than they ever have, partially because media has embraced it, it's a great story, you know, for a TV show, and partially because, you know, millions of people serve and everybody's connected to one of them and they want to understand them better, so.

• 44:32Mike Rowe?

  What is the quality that insulates some people from what George Carlin reminded us used to be called shell shock, and now it's PTSD, or combat fatigue, or, my God, we could get into the euphemisms of the language in a bit. But what is the quality that seems to insulate some people from that? I'm asking because I had dinner with a nurse last week. Pleasant dinner, fun, we were eating crabs, Baltimore. She just kind of morphed into a conversation about telling me, it's one of the saddest things, a kid basically died in her arms the day before.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:16Mike Rowe?

  And then, and I asked her about it. She was, oh, gosh, there were this and this and this. And she was just talking about these little individual tragedies that I think probably would have driven me, anyone would have driven me to my knees.

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:31Mike Rowe?

  And that's just water off a duck's back, you know, and so what is that? Is it resilience? Is it denial?

• 45:40Speaker 03

  I would say it's a million dollar question. It's kind of like the term PTSD being a blanket. It's a misnomer at some point. I've been in search of the answer to this question for a long time because you've heard of survivor's guilt.

• 45:54Mike Rowe?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  So I have survivor's guilt in a sense of somebody died myself on the IED. But the biggest survivor's guilt I live with is why am I not more effed up than I am because my buddies are? You know, why am I not a mess? You know, like, I probably should be. So why am I not? And am I wrong for that? Am I betraying them by not being a mess? And, um, and I wish I had the answer. I, I look at my own life and I think, hmm, you know, I can apply some things that create this very unique equation that ends with me as the answer. I don't know those are applicable to anybody else's life. I mean.

• 46:34Mike Rowe?

  But the externality of it, Joe, I, like, what if, I guarantee there are people who grew up in a similar situation with similar parents in a similar part of the country who endured a similar injury, who punched their own ticket.

• 46:46Speaker 03

  You know what I've learned is it's the butterfly effect. It's at some point in my life, the right little things happened that changed the trajectory, that changed the coordinates of my journey just a little bit, a degree here, a degree there. It really is, it's that nuanced. It's that small. It really should absolutely scare the shit out of you.

• 47:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  My dad said a lot of things, wisdom, so much wisdom in so simple.

• 47:18Mike Rowe?

  Just a faucet of common sense.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  Yes. And I think we've talked about some of those euphemisms, what you call them. But one of them, I attribute to him, and I don't really know where I found it because I had two uncles and a grandfather that lived next door and they were all my dad. But it's this idea of mind the wake you leave.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  And so

• 47:35Mike Rowe?

  Say it again.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  Mind the wake you leave.

• 47:38Mike Rowe?

  The wake that you leave.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  So if you're on a boat

• 47:40Mike Rowe?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  And you're in the middle of a lake. When you're driving through that lake, that wake goes all the way to shore. All right, it affects the people at the house that you don't know exist. And everyone else on the water. So mind the wake you leave. And it's this idea that like, we think about our responsibilities. I have a responsibility to raise my kids. But what impact do I have on my nieces and nephews when they're over for a day? You know, what impact, what impact do we have on people's lives? That becomes a core memory or, or changes how they see everything and they don't even know it. We do nothing but learn. I mean, that's what we do for years and years and years. We learn if this, then that, if this, then that. That is, we're a computer.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Everything we know about survival beyond instinct is if this, then that. And the if this, then that experience can override instinct. And so we're, each person is this unique chain of events that led to them responding to trauma and negative things and hurt and pain and in the way that they do. For me, I think it was I learned to survive early on so I could survive anything. I learned that being the positive one in the situation yielded the best outcome. It was very simple. It wasn't like this, you know, willful, like I gotta ignore the negative to find the positive. It was, you know, my mom's got these problems, my dad has those problems.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  I'm gonna be the one that's happy and when I am, everybody else is too, and we all calm down.

• 49:16Mike Rowe?

  Couple of weeks ago, on this very podcast, I talked with Brooke Rollins, our Secretary of Agriculture, about the incredibly complicated business of delivering affordable beef to our citizens without disadvantaging American ranchers. We also discussed the very controversial decision to import 300,000 metric tons of ground beef from various foreign countries and the maddening policy that allows meat packers to label imported meat as a product of the USA. Well. Shortly after that conversation, one of my sponsors, Good Ranchers, reported an unusually high level of interest in their product. And this is not surprising. Given a choice, most people would prefer to buy their meat

• 50:01Mike Rowe?

  from American Ranchers. And Good Ranchers is the number one company in America that delivers 100% American meat straight to your door. They partner with over 100 local farmers and ranchers to deliver pasture-raised meat with no antibiotics and no added hormones. They've got 25,000 five-star reviews on TrustPilot. 25,000, including my own. This month, when you visit GoodRanchers.com/row, you'll get a free Angus ground beef bundle with your first order. Again, that's GoodRanchers.com/row for four bonus pounds of ground beef raised right here in these United States. And that's guaranteed.

• 50:43Mike Rowe?

  Support your local ranchers by insisting on American meat delivered at GoodRanchers.com/row.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch. Get Good Ranchers now.

• 50:59Mike Rowe?

  Hey, haul!

• 51:02Mike Rowe?

  Why are people drawn to sad stories?

• 51:05Speaker 03

  I would love to say something poetic like, "It makes them feel not so alone." Maybe that's true. I don't have the answer to that question. I was just doing an interview at a local news station. Lady comes in and she goes, "It's really great you came in today, and we just need more stories like this, you know, positive." And I'm thinking, well, number one, it's like when somebody goes, "Man, those legs are awesome." It's like, well, they're not as good as the original. I was like, "Thank you for thinking this story is good and positive."

• 51:35Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I'm here for you. Anything else I can do?

• 51:38Speaker 03

  But number two, it's like, listen, if people would reward television news for reporting on babies being born, that's all we'd do.

• 51:46Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 51:47Speaker 03

  It's not like we're in... We're not programming you, you're programming us. So people are drawn to sad stories and tragic things. And I don't know, maybe they're yearning for conditioning. Maybe they want to develop their armor. Maybe that helps them. Maybe they don't want to feel so alone. Maybe it's all those things. But it's absolutely true. I couldn't tell you why, but it's absolutely true.

• 52:10Mike Rowe?

  Well, personally, you know, I've always been suspicious of... Earnestness by itself, it's, you know, in its best form, in genuine sincerity, it's a reflection of curiosity and humility and a lot of terrific virtues. But, you know, it's also the quality that a good con man relies on. Yeah. You know, I'm watching this thing on Netflix now, I think it's called Sneaky Pete, with Giovanni Ribisi, who's amazing, by the way. Always. Better and better and better, he's so good. But, at the end of each episode, which is entertaining, I kind of feel like I need a shower. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

• 52:53Mike Rowe?

  Even more so than Dirty Jobs, which is the ultimate shower show, right? Dirty Jobs, speaking as though I had nothing to do with it, left me feeling good about the species. Yeah. This show, entertaining though it is, just constantly reminds me of our bottomless capacity for guile. Yeah. That kind of brings me down. Your book is full of impossibly sad circumstances, and yet, each one of them makes me feel more grateful to be a part of the same species as these people. So, I don't know if it's a gut check, I don't know if it's perspective.

• 53:32Mike Rowe?

  In a way, personally, I think it's a bit like how I felt watching you walk up five flights of my stairs, because I couldn't make the circumstance right, and that drove me crazy, but you didn't care, or if you did, you hit it so well, that you made me feel even worse, you bastard. But it's like, to see grace, and to see sacrifice in your fellow man, I just think it makes people, you know...

• 54:06Mike Rowe?

  Feel better, perversely and weirdly and counterintuitively.

• 54:10Speaker 03

  I think it's easier to trust negative emotions than positive ones because in the back of your head, you know, you want to be happy. So am I happy? Does this make me happy or am I forcing it?

• 54:20Mike Rowe?

  Right, right.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  When it's visceral and negative, you trust it because you didn't want to be there to begin with, but here you are.

• 54:25Mike Rowe?

  And that's what Vice does. It gives you enough. The booze gives you enough of something that could be confused with happiness.

• 54:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:33Mike Rowe?

  The porn gives you enough of something

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:36Mike Rowe?

  that could be confused with satisfaction.

• 54:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:40Mike Rowe?

  Right? They're all just shadows of something that's actually good.

• 54:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, back to my dad. Nothing worth doing is ever easy.

• 54:55Speaker 03

  So we do a lot of things sometimes that aren't worth doing because they are. And that's the inverse of that saying. Anything worthwhile is worth doing right. So we do a lot of things half ass. I don't know why. It's part of our nature, but it is. It's better to know it than to ignore it and not, you know, it's like anything else. You're not always looking for the answer. It's just sometimes self-awareness is enough, right?

• 55:18Mike Rowe?

  All right. Well, with respect to self-awareness and Kierkegaard and the unexamined life and all that stuff, what are you, um, what are you suspicious of today? And I don't mean just as a, as a Marine who paid a certain price and an author, but as a sharer of news, as an influencer, as somebody who's become a familiar face and a trusted voice in a lot of homes, what worries you?

• 55:47Speaker 03

  So what I have to do is I have to tear down the shroud of optimism that I keep forefront in order to answer this question, right?

• 55:52Mike Rowe?

  I believe that's probably true.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  You know, what worries me, well, from a very personal perspective, what worries me most is

• 56:02Speaker 03

  I won't be there to protect my kids from something, you know? From, to answer your question, I worry about the world I leave them. I worry about the world that they're inheriting and I worry that I'm too arrogant to see that they're also building it. It's not all up to me. I try to stay optimistic, but I don't really have to because sometimes it's just the only choice you got, you know? What worries me most is that we were so wrapped up in

• 56:34Speaker 03

  This is gonna go in a weird direction and just humor me here. I spend a lot of time hunting. And animals in the wild that don't have the ability to communicate, communicate through action rather than words, right? They need to be in a pecking order so they know they have a place in this world. They don't have to be the dominant buck. They don't have to be the young buck, desostracized. But they need to be a buck in the pecking order. They need to know what their role is. Every animal out there needs to have an existence. They need to know, maybe it's that they matter, but maybe it's just that this is the space you occupy. I think human beings are the same way. I think it's harder and harder to know that. And we look for it in places that doesn't exist.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  We look for it through cloud or social media or to present ourselves a certain way. When really all it is, is we just wanna know that we have a place. We just wanna know we have a spot in society. And that community exists for us in some way. I worry the more... And I just sound like every other curmudgeon out there. Put a hat on me and call me a boomer. You know, that veteran hat that says I can be a curmudgeon now?

• 57:40Mike Rowe?

  Get off my lawn, you kids, you crazy kids.

• 57:43Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly. But I just worry that we're sacrificing so much. Like, the best example I can give you is when my grandfather or dad's generation came home from war. If they married the prom queen and took over dad's hardware store, they were the king of the world. They were, that was success in the grandest of ways. Now, you can be in that same small town and care about what some celebrity couple in LA is doing and feeling like you need to compete with that. And you need to be there. And you need to create this, this community around this extra world that doesn't exist in your hometown. So, my biggest worry is that we lose our identity

• 58:28Speaker 03

  because we've lost our community. So, we lose our ability to know what our place is in this world. What caused the world is too big to have a place. And if everybody in a town is looking at the world and not their town, the town doesn't exist anymore.

• 58:45Mike Rowe?

  Well, maybe too, if there is a hierarchy in the species, the way there is in the animal kingdom, then we oughta have an honest conversation about...

• 58:56Mike Rowe?

  Well, where do the people in your book rank? Where do we put them? I don't know. Reasonable people, I guess, could disagree. But I know if you go in a bookstore, if there is such a thing left anymore, for every book like this, you'll find 10 about the influencers you didn't know. Behind the influencer.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:17Mike Rowe?

  Not behind the badge, behind the celebrity, behind the fame, behind the music, which was a fun show, I admit, I watched that. But, you know, we get to choose which curtain we want to pull back, which layer on the onion we want to pull back and see what's underneath there. And there's a curiosity in the country about what makes Khloe Kardashian tick. We want to know. Like, there is that thing. I don't know that that's inherently bad. I just don't think it's at the top of the food chain. Or at least it shouldn't be. And that's why I like your book.

• 59:51Speaker 03

  We have pursued the common denominator. We have pursued, in music and culture, we have pursued what can be done to appeal to the most amount of people. And in doing so, we lose everything that is unique and individual about us. These people exist in small towns. They exist in worlds within themselves. They exist to defend their hometown. They exist to defend the people and things they care about. They would never have a book about themselves. Most of them, I had to talk into being in a book. A chapter of it was about them.

• 1:00:27Mike Rowe?

  Sidebar, who had to talk you into a challenge coin with your name on it?

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was... They were coming up with a lot of ideas on how to put something unique attached to this book. And I said, "Well, we could do a challenge coin for the book." And they said, "Yeah, but you have to be on the back of it." Like, you know, there needs to be something about you because you're the author. And the only reason I was okay with it is it's impossible to put nine different people on the back of it. And for some reason, it does matter to people. You know who talked me into it? The guy at the fence at the Fox Plaza, when I'm out there doing Fox and Friends in the Morning, and I'm doing a cooking segment, and when I turn around, his whole face lights up, and it made his day that I said hello to him. It shouldn't be that way. For some reason, it is. And if handing him a challenge coin next time gives him something to take

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  with him, that's okay. I don't love it, and you bet your ass it's gonna have something more important on the other side, like behind the badge.

• 1:01:23Mike Rowe?

  But think of the role of talismans in your life, in the military. Think of the way the military makes sense of that same hierarchy you described in The Wild, whether it's a private to a corporal, to a sergeant, to a lieutenant, to a captain, to a major, to a colonel, to a general, to all the different... the iconography, and the medals, and the badges, and this... I mean, man, I've done enough shows with enough military people to know that, in a recreation, for instance, holy crap, you get a stripe wrong, or you get an insignia wrong, you'll hear from people, like, you'll hear FAS going, "Hey, man, those corporal thing, and this, and that, and the color of that." And so, people are very, very,

• 1:02:08Mike Rowe?

  very tuned in to, almost to the point of pedantry, about getting the appearance of a thing right. And that must be a reflection of something else, some desire to create maybe order out of chaos, or sense out of anarchy, or something. But that's all just to say, the cover of the book matters, the back matters, the challenge coin matters, your rank matters, your tattoos matter. They're all choices.

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:41Mike Rowe?

  Right? And we're all making them. And, damn, we're complicated.

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  We are, we complicate the simplest things. The uniform thing is really easy to understand. If you're not willing to take the time to get that right, are you willing to take the time to get the other things right? That's all it is. It's the same reason we do drill, which I hate because I'm uncoordinated. At some point, I think like your, your physical ability should also be taken into account. It's like not just can you drill perfectly? But are you trying to? That should matter, you know? Sure. A for effort. But, uh, but yeah, the uniform, the military culture of perfection that probably exists nowhere like it does in the Marine Corps, which is my experience, is all about if you're not willing to do the little things that kind of don't matter perfectly, are you willing to do the big things that do matter as perfectly as possible?

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  Like if you show an element of that's good enough here, then will you show it there? Messy desk, messy mind. Think about it. I mean, like when you're in war, you know,

• 1:03:39Speaker 03

  you make it, being a warrior in war is a series of decisions. It, it really is. That's what it is. Like I'm going to charge this hill. When do I shoot back? When do I cover my friend? When do I, you know? Is there a moment where that guy was trying to kill me and he's got an AK, but now it's on the ground? So do I still shoot him? Like you're just, you're always trying to breed these complicated decisions and make them automatic and simple. And so if you can't do that with adjusting your uniform, how are you going to do it on the battlefield? That ever happen to you, by the way?

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  Like that exact scenario? Not that exact scenario, but, um, things of that nature the whole time because my enemy didn't wear a uniform. Right. And, you know, do I need to blow someone's house up to make sure they don't make IEDs in here anymore? That, that's, that was my version of it. Um, there are 50 IEDs in this person's house. Did they put them here? Did they deserve to lose everything because they're here? If I don't, do I risk my life moving them out of this house?

• 1:04:45Speaker 03

  Ultimately, he doesn't have a house anymore. That's the decision you make, you know? You really learn that, you know, the true victims of war are not the war heroes. It's not, you know, those of us that the true victims of war don't have purple hearts. They have resentment in their heart because there was a war fought in their home.

• 1:05:10Mike Rowe?

  The service I'm about to recommend to you is absolutely free and it can easily save the average user over a thousand dollars a year. It's called Chapter and it's the best way to make sure the Medicare plan you're on is the one you should be on because every year Medicare plans change and so do you. And just because your plan might have been the best choice when you were 65 doesn't mean it's the best choice today. At Chapter, independent advisors compare Medicare plans nationwide. They look at your doctors, your prescriptions and your budget to help you find coverage that fits your needs and they're not paid more to recommend one plan over another. You don't need to sort through all the options yourself.

• 1:05:50Mike Rowe?

  You can talk to somebody who understands them, ask your questions and get help comparing the costs and benefits. So if your current plan is still the right fit, they'll tell you. If there's a better option, they'll tell you that too and they'll help you switch. Again, the service is free and a review can take less than 20 minutes. This is the time of year to make sure you're squared away for 2027. So if you haven't checked your Medicare coverage lately, give Chapter a call. It's a simple way to make sure your plan still works for you and with potential savings of 1,100 dollars a year, it's worth a free review. 804-Chapter, call them today. 804-C-H-A-P-T-E-R.

• 1:06:32Mike Rowe?

  Was Sherman a psychopath or was he brilliant? I think it was Sherman.

• 1:06:39Speaker 03

  It was Sherman.

• 1:06:40Mike Rowe?

  The only way to end the war is to make it all hell and bring it to the people.

• 1:06:45Speaker 03

  Sherman was a war hero and a war criminal. I'm from Georgia, so.

• 1:06:51Mike Rowe?

  I knew that.

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Mike Rowe?

  It was a softball.

• 1:06:54Speaker 03

  Sherman is one of the most complex individuals that I've ever studied because if he did that anywhere but Georgia, I would regard him as, you know.

• 1:07:07Speaker 03

  The guy willing to make the tough decisions to end the war. But because my mom grew up in a Civil War hospital that was spared miraculously because it was across the street from a natural spring, but everything around it was burned to the ground. I had, there's some resentment in my heart for a man that's willing to torture the lives of citizens to end the war. But ultimately, what did it result in? It resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans keeping their lives. So, you know, in that way, the people of Georgia paid a heavy price to end that war, and I'm proud of them for it.

• 1:07:44Mike Rowe?

  Truman.

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Mike Rowe?

  Nagasaki.

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  Very similar.

• 1:07:47Mike Rowe?

  Hiroshima.

• 1:07:48Speaker 03

  Very similar.

• 1:07:48Mike Rowe?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:07:50Speaker 03

  A war hero and a war criminal.

• 1:07:53Mike Rowe?

  Terrorist and a freedom fighter.

• 1:07:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's, it's, sometimes it's that thin of a line.

• 1:07:58Mike Rowe?

  You mentioned something earlier about like the slightest change in a calibration can have a huge impact downrange.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Mike Rowe?

  Right, when your trajectory changes. It reminded me, there's a, there's a sniper that you write about here.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  Tommy Whirl.

• 1:08:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Speaker 03

  Tommy Whirly.

• 1:08:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, tell me about Whirly.

• 1:08:17Speaker 03

  Well, number one, he's been my friend for years before he told me how to say his last name right. So I promoted this book for a solid six months, called him Tommy Whirl. And he goes, well, you got such an accent, I just did, I didn't know if you knew and didn't know how to say it.

• 1:08:30Mike Rowe?

  I didn't want to be rude.

• 1:08:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Mike Rowe?

  I mean, it's not like he has you to walk up five flights.

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  I know, well, he's, we went hunting together, so he's definitely put me through it. Tommy's a fantastic guy. What I love about Tommy is he says it like he means it. He doesn't sugarcoat it. He enjoys his job. He enjoys being on a SWAT team. He enjoys the art and the skill and the craft of being a sniper, but he doesn't enjoy taking someone's life.

• 1:08:56Mike Rowe?

  Was he a sniper in the service prior, or did he?

• 1:08:58Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:08:58Mike Rowe?

  Learn it through SWAT?

• 1:08:59Speaker 03

  He, uh, what's fun about his story is my brother-in-law that's a fireman. People ask him, like, do you always want to be a fireman? And he goes, yeah, I had too many friends to be a cop. You know, I didn't have anything to prove. That's his like, you know, they, you know, so Tommy is kind of the opposite. He wanted to be a fireman, went hung out at the fire department and realized that his, his personality was much better suited as a cop. And, uh, and so he's a great guy, but the story of his career is exactly what you're saying. It's making these split second decisions. The one point he drives home that a lot of people don't understand is that when you're a sniper, you don't call in for somebody to give you permission. It's all you. Once you're on the job, you've already been given permission.

• 1:09:44Speaker 03

  In the Marine Corps, we call that small unit leadership. Authority is delegated to the lowest rank so that no one dies waiting on permission.

• 1:09:52Mike Rowe?

  God, where was that with withdrawal?

• 1:09:55Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:09:56Mike Rowe?

  Abby Gate.

• 1:09:57Speaker 03

  Exactly right.

• 1:09:57Mike Rowe?

  Where the hell was that? Small, S U L, small unit leadership? Is that what it's called?

• 1:10:03Speaker 03

  Small, small, S M A L L, small, small.

• 1:10:06Mike Rowe?

  Right, small unit. I made it an acronym for you, given your extensive military.

• 1:10:13Speaker 03

  Everything's an acronym. We have a weapon called a small. So I was like, I just, I thought maybe you were getting confused. No, which ends in W. And when you talk like me, you don't know if it's a W or two L.

• 1:10:23Mike Rowe?

  You don't even know how to say your best friend's name.

• 1:10:25Speaker 03

  I'm telling you, exactly. Um, and so, yeah, so small unit leadership. The adage they'll tell you in boot camp, and this is Marine Corps pride showing through, but they'll say, you put two soldiers in a room of the same rank. You put two privates in the army in a room, you have two privates. You put two sailors of the same rank in a room, you have two sailors. You put two Marines of the same rank in a room, you have a leader. And a subordinate. That's the culture. We're a much smaller A service, so we're going to have smaller groups of people out there and everybody needs to understand their role as a leader.

• 1:10:58Mike Rowe?

  But there's your, there's your hierarchy again coming through.

• 1:11:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I'm sure that.

• 1:11:02Mike Rowe?

  That's like your metaphor for living. Where do I fit?

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  Where do I fit in? And then we have other things like lead from the back, you know, like it's every action you do influences somebody else.

• 1:11:12Mike Rowe?

  Mind your wake.

• 1:11:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's exactly right. And so Tommy's job as a sniper. Isn't to kill a bad guy, that part's easy. He has that skill set and those tools down pat. He can, you know, he can make two adjustments and take someone's breath away with the squeeze of his hand.

• 1:11:30Mike Rowe?

  He also has to believe in his heart that the bad guy is a bad guy, I would think, and he has trust. He's been called, in other words.

• 1:11:38Speaker 03

  That's the angle that you have to think about. He doesn't have to believe he's a bad guy. He has to believe he's capable of doing bad things to good people. He's not always a bad guy.

• 1:11:47Mike Rowe?

  In order to pull the trigger.

• 1:11:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. Think about it. Half of Denzel Washington's movies are him being a bad guy, but you'll like him anyway, kind of thing, right? And I say him because probably the most beloved actor, you know, unilaterally there is. That's what you learn when you read this chapter is it's not about his opinion of that person that he may delete. It's about his, his calculation of that person's next actions.

• 1:12:16Mike Rowe?

  So when he's called in, like what's a, what's a typical scenario?

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just know the ones from the book, right? So generally what happens is, uh, local law enforcement is engaged in something. Usually, I'd say the majority is like kidnapping hostage situation, or someone is armed and dangerous and held up in their home, and there may be innocent victims involved. So you put a sniper in an overwatch position, you try to get them elevated to where they can survey, they can see the guys they're protecting and the guys are protecting them against at the same time. So you're trying to get them elevated further away. The further away you are for something, the more perspective you have. And so what usually they're called in is to do what's called overwatch,

• 1:13:02Speaker 03

  which is to make sure the guys on the ground taking action don't have a vulnerability behind them, beside them, in front of them, they don't see, and to eliminate that threat before it becomes a harm. But it can also happen in a more kinetic way. One of the great examples he gives is a guy that was a police officer, snapped, took his kids and I think his girlfriend on a high-speed chase. They're being chased, gets away, ends up like, now they're looking for them, and the ex-wife calls and says, I think he's gonna hurt them. I think he's gonna hurt the kids. And so I don't remember the story precisely, but basically, the decision was made to use Tommy's team.

• 1:13:46Speaker 03

  In a way that basically what they were afraid of is if the guy was directly intercepted by boots on the ground police, he would, he would do the bad thing. So give Tommy's team the opportunity to do it covertly, to basically get a sneak attack on him, catch him walking out of the hotel room.

• 1:14:07Speaker 03

  And they weren't given that opportunity. Boots on the ground police intercepted him and he, he killed his kids and his girlfriend and himself. So Tommy lives with the regret of, let me do my job. Let me get in that Overwatch position. You know where he's going, let me get there first and let me do my job. And it's tough because you don't like, somebody had to make that decision. Somebody was trying to save four lives, not just three.

• 1:14:32Mike Rowe?

  Oh dude, it's so, I mean, it's the Minority Report. It's pre-crime. Well, it's not pre-crime because he already did the bad thing. He kidnapped.

• 1:14:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Mike Rowe?

  He's exhibited all these things.

• 1:14:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:42Mike Rowe?

  And now you have to decide, is he on a trajectory?

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:14:47Mike Rowe?

  To do the big bad thing.

• 1:14:48Speaker 03

  You ever watched The Mothman Prophecies, the movie?

• 1:14:50Mike Rowe?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:14:51Speaker 03

  There's a great analogy in there that I always look back at when I think about Overwatch and snipers and it's, he says, are they really, they're not, are they seeing into the future? Or can they just see from the top of this skyscraper what's, what our future looks like?

• 1:15:05Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:15:06Speaker 03

  And it's that same kind of thing. Are they good or bad or do they just have perspective? And so it's the same thing with like these snipers. By getting perspective, by getting higher, they can literally see our future. They can see what we're walking into.

• 1:15:19Mike Rowe?

  Boy, it's still though, man, it's still, I thought, you know, it was flawed, but the Minority Report as a movie.

• 1:15:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:26Mike Rowe?

  Just the basic notion of what do you do with a criminal?

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  Before.

• 1:15:30Mike Rowe?

  Who hasn't committed the crime yet.

• 1:15:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. Do you go back and kill baby Hitler? You know, it's that kind of thing. And so Tommy's job is to go back is to make that decision. Is to make that decision. What is the likely outcome here?

• 1:15:42Mike Rowe?

  Who's baby Hitler?

• 1:15:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. It, it really is like, the, the best way to explain it is the cops on the ground, the person that made that decision to intercept that guy in the car was trying to save four lives. When Tommy could have saved three. You know, that's the difference.

• 1:15:57Mike Rowe?

  So the guilt that Tommy deals with.

• 1:16:01Mike Rowe?

  Comes from not pulling the trigger.

• 1:16:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's exactly right.

• 1:16:05Mike Rowe?

  As opposed to everything you would think you would like, I have to live with the fact that it's the nurse. I mean, it's just like.

• 1:16:14Speaker 03

  And you know, there's another instance where he does pull the trigger on someone who displayed a weapon and come to find out it was like a nail gun or something. It was, he did have something in his hand that he was using to present as a weapon that was not lethal.

• 1:16:28Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Speaker 03

  He can't worry about that. He still made the right decision.

• 1:16:32Mike Rowe?

  You ever read Tim O'Brien's book?

• 1:16:36Mike Rowe?

  The Things They Carry?

• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:38Mike Rowe?

  It's a Vietnam book and obviously it's, it's about what's behind the uniform. It's about all the weight that you carry, but metaphorically, since I know you're a fan, it starts with a detailed analysis of everything in the ruck.

• 1:16:54Speaker 03

  And that was.

• 1:16:55Mike Rowe?

  And what it weighs.

• 1:16:56Speaker 03

  That's the prompt question for these guys and gals. When you come home and at the end of the day, you can take off the uniform, you can take off the kit, you can hang the weapon up, you can hang the duty belt up. How do you hang up the, the trauma?

• 1:17:09Mike Rowe?

  How do you hang up your hang up?

• 1:17:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. How do you set that aside and get in the floor and play with your kids? If I'm at Fox News and I report on floods in Texas that kill these little girls, do you know how hard it is to go home to my little girl? It's incredibly difficult, not because I don't want to be there, but because I feel this overwhelming sense of grief and guilt because I know there are these other little girls and these other families that are experiencing the opposite. I couldn't imagine seeing it on the ground level. I couldn't imagine being one of the many first responders recovering those little girls and going home to my little girl.

• 1:17:45Mike Rowe?

  How important is empathy to the human condition and how much empathy is behind the badge?

• 1:17:50Speaker 03

  It's a blessing and a curse, isn't it?

• 1:17:52Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:17:52Speaker 03

  You know, it's like, I wish I didn't have it sometimes. I bet these guys and gals feel like life would be a lot simpler if they just didn't care. You know, but also if you read like Steve Hennigan's chapter, it stops him from doing what he's justified in doing.

• 1:18:07Mike Rowe?

  Which one's Hennigan?

• 1:18:08Speaker 03

  Uh, Steve Hennigan's because of where we are, he LAPD became LA Bomb Squad. And so I know him because he helped trained us to go to war because he's older, so he's been around longer and early on in the days of IEDs, we're looking for training from anybody we can get it from. So I met him, he had, he was in the Marine Corps ironically, but he was not in the Bomb Squad. From Marine Corps to LAPD, all through the riots and everything, and then becomes LAPD Bomb Squad. But in his early days as a, as a street cop, he really gives several stories where, and I don't know if he did it on purpose, or they're just the ones that stood out to him, where he was justified in essentially pulling the trigger and didn't. And it turned out good.

• 1:18:51Speaker 03

  You know, and he says, it only took one of those to not, and I'd never have the opportunity to do it again, and I'd been wrong. He's like, but I trusted my intuition. And there's a couple of things you glean from that. One, is there a right way and a wrong way, right? We talk about the difference between a hero and a villain is who gets to write the story, right? You know, so had he not, had he, if any of those instances when he could have pulled the trigger, literally, that person killed him and went on to kill somebody else, is he now responsible for their death? You know? So it's like, it's this whole lot, it's, it taps into the psychology of doing this job that people give no credence to whatsoever. There isn't a right way or a wrong way, there's just the way you do it.

• 1:19:32Mike Rowe?

  In the moment.

• 1:19:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the outcome it yields. And we can overlay this on any number of incidents that have made the news, Daniel Penny, or, um, uh, don't know the cop's name, but the guy in Ferguson, Mississippi, and

• 1:19:46Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  It really started the 2020 wave of riots and.

• 1:19:49Mike Rowe?

  Heads up, don't shoot.

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so, or even Derek Chauvin. And, you know, you could take both sides of it. You don't sugarcoat things, you don't steer away from bad decisions.

• 1:20:01Speaker 03

  The truth is, it's an impossible job, especially on the law enforcement side. And we don't tell the stories of the ones that get it right, we tell the outrage of the ones that don't. Here's a chance to read none of them that do.

• 1:20:13Mike Rowe?

  Well, I can't encourage people more to, uh, to take that chance, you know, take the, read the book, I mean, and it.

• 1:20:23Mike Rowe?

  I tried on Dirty Jobs to get out of my way.

• 1:20:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:27Mike Rowe?

  You know, it's hard. It really is. I'm glad I did it. I'm so glad you wrote this because honestly, I don't think, I don't think a lot of, well, I wouldn't have given permission to most people, simply because I'm wary of earnestness.

• 1:20:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Mike Rowe?

  And simply because I don't need to have virtue sold to me.

• 1:20:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:48Mike Rowe?

  Right? Like it's a book, like it's a, I don't want.

• 1:20:52Speaker 03

  I totally.

• 1:20:53Mike Rowe?

  I don't want virtue to be transactional.

• 1:20:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:56Mike Rowe?

  But I live in the world we all live in.

• 1:20:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:59Mike Rowe?

  You know, so this is a, it's a wonderful book. It's.

• 1:21:02Speaker 03

  They all decided to do it under the pretense of if this helps somebody else. You know, if telling what I went through helps somebody else feel okay about feeling the same way, or getting help, or help someone understand why that cop they're intercepting today is in a bad mood, but isn't a bad guy, if it inspires someone to take care of themselves a little better, because now they know when they act stupid and do bad things, it can ruin someone else's life that's there to save them.

• 1:21:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:34Speaker 03

  You know, all of those are positive effects that have nothing to do with those individuals. You'll forget their names, but you'll remember those lessons.

• 1:21:40Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:21:41Speaker 03

  And that's why they wanted to be in the book, or why they allowed me to put them in the book.

• 1:21:45Mike Rowe?

  Is there any explanation in here as to how Gutfeld wound up with the number one late night talk show?

• 1:21:54Speaker 03

  No, the explanation is, these are real people. These are real people.

• 1:22:01Speaker 03

  You know, and, and so, and that's who watches Gutfeld.

• 1:22:08Mike Rowe?

  The last topic, and it's not a topic, but it's just, if you would, if you could riff for a moment on the role of humor. And how it's kept you sane.

• 1:22:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Mike Rowe?

  And what role, if any, it might play in this book.

• 1:22:26Mike Rowe?

  I think that'd be a good place to land the plane.

• 1:22:29Speaker 03

  Well, I'm gonna get as deep as I can with it because you gave me the opportunity. I think what makes humor so effective is it reminds us how in how small everything really is. No matter how much it hurts you, no matter how devastating it is to you, it can still just be a punchline for somebody else. When I was in Afghanistan and a man that I would die for, that's a peer, maybe he's a rank above me, gets killed in action and I get the news, I might say something like, well shit, that opens up a spot for promotion.

• 1:23:02Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  And what does that do? It puts it in perspective, man. It means that this is a big world.

• 1:23:08Mike Rowe?

  Hierarchy.

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:10Mike Rowe?

  There you are again.

• 1:23:10Speaker 03

  You know, that's what, and so we use humor like with my legs. I use humor all the time. The best thing I can give you is it became a Facebook meme and I said it, I don't remember how I said it the first time because now I only say it in telling the story, but someone asked me, how do you stay so positive after you lost your legs? And I say, well, how are you ever negative? You have yours. Like if you're gonna reduce me to just this thing, then I get to do the same thing to you.

• 1:23:34Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:34Speaker 03

  And, and it's just, it helps us feel okay about things that are inexplicable. I mean, arguably, religion is appealing to people because it helps us feel okay about things that don't make sense. Humor works in a similar way.

• 1:23:50Mike Rowe?

  It lets the air out of the tire, that's for sure.

• 1:23:53Speaker 03

  You know, it allows you to feel okay about something that hurts.

• 1:23:58Mike Rowe?

  Hey, look, man, this is, this is so small. Forgive me, but I, you know, I was so pissed off last night about this elevator situation. And I literally said to Chuck and Mary, who you just met, I'm like, look, what? What the hell are we gonna do, man? The guy flies in to do the show. And I can see, I'm gonna invite him to take his legs off. I'll throw him over my shoulder and walk him up the stairs. I'm not sure he'd be cool with that. Do we get a leader? Do we have a couple guys? Help? Can he do it? I don't know that. My friend Manju runs the hotel down the street. And she's dialed into every first responder here in town. One call, five firemen come over. You're up the stairs in five seconds.

• 1:24:38Mike Rowe?

  And, and at some point, just a whole series of totally tasteless, out on a limb jokes.

• 1:24:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:45Mike Rowe?

  You know? And it happened because I was so frustrated.

• 1:24:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:50Mike Rowe?

  And I just, I just felt so bad about the whole little thing. And that's really just life. People just trying to deal with whatever is in front of them. And make it okay somehow.

• 1:25:04Speaker 03

  I did a TV show that Jeremy Judd was in called Fox Nation Outdoors.

• 1:25:08Mike Rowe?

  The Game Warden.

• 1:25:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so he, he guided me on a moose hunt. And in the show, you see, moose live in swamps. And Maine has swamps. You just don't realize they're swamps because they freeze over. And you think swamps only exist in, you know, Louisiana. No, they're, they're in Maine, too. And so you don't trek through a swamp with robot legs. But I'm up there to kill a moose and I'm not going to like bait it in, you know? And so yours, there's video and clips of him carrying me on his shoulders and somebody behind me carrying my legs. And we're going through a swamp. There's, he carried me on a litter with another guy, Dave, to get me across a creek so we could hunt this moose. Because the thing is like, I'm gonna honor that animal and do it the hard way.

• 1:25:52Speaker 03

  But there's a moment where the camera, you know, we just had a guy with a camera on his shoulder running around when we were at camp.

• 1:25:57Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:25:58Speaker 03

  And I've dropped my pants and I've pulled a leg off and I'm doctoring a sore on my skin graft. And he turns the corner, I go, oh damn, you caught me with my pants down. You know, it's like, but you have to have that kind of humor, you know? You gotta have that opportunity to not just make fun of yourself, but make fun of the terrible things that happened to you and that you're going through.

• 1:26:17Mike Rowe?

  And I think, to a degree, make fun of this universal.

• 1:26:24Mike Rowe?

  Dread that we all have of saying the wrong thing and doing the wrong thing and causing offense when we don't mean to. It's all just so fragile and tragic.

• 1:26:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:38Mike Rowe?

  And, you know, whatever it is, um, thank God we can laugh, man. I mean.

• 1:26:46Speaker 03

  That's exactly right.

• 1:26:47Mike Rowe?

  I just don't know. I really don't know what the point would be if we couldn't do that.

• 1:26:51Speaker 03

  You know what humor does? It allows us the, to exercise our minds on the difference between intent and execution. You know, do you intend me harm? Like, you know, when you say something, when you say a joke, is it because you want to offend me or because you find this situation as ridiculous as I do?

• 1:27:07Mike Rowe?

  It's why the cancellation was so tragic.

• 1:27:10Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:27:10Mike Rowe?

  Through the comedy world. It totally took intent out and just reduced the sentiment to the words. And like, that's like, if, if the only thing that mattered about this book were the words and the way you grouped them up, it'd be so less interesting than knowing who wrote it and why.

• 1:27:31Speaker 03

  And who are the heroes and the courageous people in that are the ones that were willing to sacrifice their career to bring us what we wanted?

• 1:27:39Mike Rowe?

  I think we should leave people with Kat Timp's ultimate rejoinder, who sat right where you're sitting, in fact, not even a year ago when her book came out.

• 1:27:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:49Mike Rowe?

  And she, of course, has had a hell of a year. And she's come back, but.

• 1:27:55Speaker 03

  With all the ups and downs.

• 1:27:56Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, man. What was the exact exchange?

• 1:27:59Speaker 03

  So she and I are old colleagues on Gutfeld's show. That's something that I've done, I think, since about the first month of his show and Kat's been on there. So we know how to make fun of each other and we enjoy it. And she had to have this round in the chamber for weeks before. When I finally went on the show in that first couple of weeks after she came back, I, I was ready. Like, I knew what she was doing. So I had, my round in the chamber was, how dare you steal the empathy card? That's all I got. You know, like, you really went and got cancer just so people would feel sorry for you? Like, that's my whole stick here. I got blown up for it. So I used, you know, I sent my salvo and her immediate response was, hey, you're not the only double APT here anymore.

• 1:28:42Speaker 03

  She knew what was coming and she had a defense for it. It was awesome. And that's, you know.

• 1:28:47Mike Rowe?

  I mean, it was a wonderful moment. And the question, of course, that we can't answer is how was it processed from sea to shining sea? How did it land? How many laughed? How many clutched their pearls? How many chose? And I say chose to be offended.

• 1:29:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:05Mike Rowe?

  How many chose not to be offended? All these things are choices, I believe. And, um, well, that's life, isn't it? Trying to figure out whether you're a sniper or a game warden or a cop or a fireman. You know, you still have to find that, that ability to laugh.

• 1:29:23Speaker 03

  And they do. The book's full of them making fun of themselves and each other. I know, a lot of them I know because we go on hunting trips together. So there was some camaraderie that kind of permeates in the book that isn't on the nose. Several of these people in the book I've introduced on hunting trips because that's kind of like my side project is I take first responders and veterans on hunting trips to get to know each other. And, um, and probably a catalyst for the book larger than I've given it credit for. But they do, they make fun of themselves, they make fun of the terrible things they've gone through. And they do it so they can go do it again. You gotta rationalize it, you gotta, you gotta shake it off.

• 1:29:57Mike Rowe?

  Stoics, one and all.

• 1:29:58Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:29:59Mike Rowe?

  The book is called Behind the Badge. You'd be a fool not to pick up a copy for yourself and some additional copies for anyone, anyone who has ever laughed in the face of adversity, done the hard thing, simply because it's such a better choice than doing the easy thing. Johnny Joey Jones, uh, if there's any justice in this world, the elevator will work and take you down. But at this point, I wouldn't count on it.

• 1:30:25Speaker 03

  We'll let gravity do the work.

• 1:30:26Mike Rowe?

  Thanks, pal.

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go online and leave us a review.

• 1:31:05Speaker 02

  I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge. But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Not four. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. And not three. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Definitely not two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. We need five. All you've got to do is leave a quick... Even if you hate it. Five. Especially if you hate it. Review.

• 1:31:35Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:31:40Speaker 04

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:32:09Speaker 05

  What's that? My fresh detector. Uh, your what? There it is. What is it detecting? Fresh produce, fresh meat. Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 1:32:23Speaker 05

  Apparently, we celebrate.

• 1:32:25Speaker 06

  At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices. When your fresh detector is going off, head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.