418: David Alan Arnold—Dead Man's Curve

Multiple Emmy-winning aerial photographer David Alan Arnold http://davidalanarnold.com/ has shot World Series, Super Bowls, X-Games, commercials, and movies. But he truly earns his paycheck risking his life on television shows like Survivor, Amazing Race, and especially Deadliest Catch, the show he worked on with Mike Rowe. Dave and Mike share true stories of harrowing flights, near misses, and fisherman funerals, all of which can be found in David's book, Help From Above https://www.amazon.com/Help-Above-Sweeping-Floor-Painting/dp/1732138702/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2EA81XZOQK0C&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.r8zZeiwVnDWhc_bG8pFdBNBzUr-oRduxIB_uBBQQi2ERca0I7QIw0XqOXeW2rQ5PdaD7-erW98LB7lghd8YLbXpMp0tjC9vvY8AVZvCxY_yBtswTVQLcwRyfwQRUAfix9211i18Yx8kDZKadBPj6nayzzKS3iQ5kB-4KMdHAzWDylS7jClQ42akUI7K_wSkSZ1bZviK6SxcJa3AXQGGurAagGuzb8r4CGpmGKZUGnSc.buncd4iCQlkCbgPxdd9p7uISG2dn2JFD0xPJBDiwiWQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=help+from+above+book&qid=1733796898&sprefix=help+from+abo%2Caps%2C190&sr=8-1.

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

• 0:04Mike Rowe?

  Dude, that was fun.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 0:06Mike Rowe?

  A fun and unexpected, another one of those, it's micro by the way, the way I heard it, that's Chuck, oohing and aahing in the background because we, uh, don't make it weird, because we just had, uh, a really, for me, unexpected conversation with a guy named David Allen Arnold, who I hadn't seen in 20 years, maybe 21 years. It'd been a while, but David, I met up in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, when we were filming the early episodes. In fact, it was season one of Deadliest Catch.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  That qualifies as an early episode, I would think.

• 0:42Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'm thinking, you know, people don't like, there's pilots. This show didn't technically have a pilot.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 0:49Mike Rowe?

  It had three episodes of something that aired the year before called Deadliest Season. And during Deadliest Season, you know, the producer, Tom Beers, he shot it as best he could, but he didn't have a deal with the network or anything, so he kind of bootstrapped it. And then he went on to sell the series, but we didn't know what the series was. We didn't know what it looked like.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14Mike Rowe?

  Network didn't know what it looked like.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  They hired you on camera for it?

• 1:18Mike Rowe?

  They hired me to host the thing, yes, and I was later cut out of it, which kind of broke my heart, but ultimately, it gave me dirty job, so no harm, no foul. But what they knew was to tell the stories properly, they needed to film from above.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:36Mike Rowe?

  And so they hired a pilot, a guy called Sam Igley, who I don't think has the part of your brain that tells you to be frightened of things.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:47Mike Rowe?

  And they hired a young guy who had already established himself as a great aerial photographer. And that's my guest today, David Allen Arnold, who lives basically in the back of a helicopter, getting those amazing shots that you see in so many movies.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:08Mike Rowe?

  In so many TV shows.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:11Mike Rowe?

  He didn't even know how many Emmy Awards he'd won.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, he'll tell it in here, but basically, he, someone said, "Congratulations", and he hadn't realized that he'd actually won his seventh.

• 2:21Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  So, that's pretty good, but let me just tell you that if you're a fan of Deadliest Catch... You are gonna love this episode and hearing from David because it is all about that. And secondly, I want to just say one other thing. I found this particularly interesting because it was just like the Nathan Fillion episode where I got to see two people who hadn't seen each other in 20 years reminisce about stuff that happened with them. And that was really fun.

• 2:51Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's fun for me too. And, you know, he reached out because I'm pretty sure he's a big fan of what's going on at MicroWorks. And we share a lot of that same passion.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  And he listens to the podcast.

• 3:03Mike Rowe?

  He listens to the podcast, which by the way, this episode is going to be called Dead Man's Curve. And let me tell you why. I'm going to read a very short paragraph that explains what this is. Most people think about it as a stretch of highway that's particularly perilous and one that claims lots of lives. Well, it is, but it also means something else for people who make their living in helicopters. The unique attributes of vertical flight have many amazing benefits, but they also come with some downsides. Fixed wing airplanes have a coffin corner close to the limits of their flight envelope at high altitude. Helicopters have avoid areas close to the ground where a combination of height

• 3:48Mike Rowe?

  and velocity can render them vulnerable in the event of a power loss, which by the way, is not uncommon at all. This combination of height and velocity is graphically depicted in the Rotocraft Flight Manual in the HV diagram. A more ominous epithet for the HV diagram, but one commonly used in the field is Dead Man's Curve.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:13Mike Rowe?

  David Allen Arnold makes his living in the Dead Man's Curve.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:17Mike Rowe?

  He's been there for a long time and he's still standing. And he is a meticulous man who is very cautious, but who nevertheless assumes an extraordinary amount of risk. Sorry, I'm distracted because I hear a helicopter flying over us right now as I'm talking about Dead Man's Curve, which is my cue to shut up and introduce you to my old friend, David Allen Arnold, whom you shall meet forthwith.

• 4:48Mike 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:

• 5:29Mike Rowe?

  to help people on Medicare find the plan that's right for them. 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.

• 6:13Mike Rowe?

  Also, people who switch plans after calling Chapter 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.

• 6:34Mike Rowe?

  The day you were supposed to be here, you were surrounded by fire and the earth was quaking under our feet. And it leads me to my first official question, which is: How much of the last 25 years of your life have you spent with your sphincter slam shut?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Um, a fair amount.

• 6:56Mike Rowe?

  This entire book reads like, I mean, it really reads like a thriller. And I gotta tell you, man, it was so interesting for me to go through it and then suddenly find myself looking back at me over here on page, whatever it was. I'm so honored to make your book and you've got photos of me when we were in Dutch Harbor in that, I guess it was 2024. Was that right? Does that sound right? Twenty, oh, oh, four.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Oh, four, yeah. Yeah.

• 7:26Mike Rowe?

  Two thousand four.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Two thousand four, that's correct.

• 7:28Mike Rowe?

  All right. I'm still narrating that show, as you probably know, but paint the scene for people, right? For people who haven't watched Deadliest Catch or really don't know much about Dutch, for a guy just to show up there and start working, doing what you do, that was a hell of a time.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  You know, um, I get a phone call, I'm in Los Angeles, which is pretty much 72 degrees most of the time, and they're telling me they want me to go to Alaska and fly in the Aleutian Islands over the Bering Sea for this new show they're gonna make about crab fishing. And I'm listening and I think, oh, that sounds really dangerous. So, yeah, let's go. And, um, I get in the helicopter, we build the camera on, and we fly across the Aleutian Islands, which is a Dr. Seuss surrealist landscape.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  I mean, there's no one for hundreds of miles. It's just these islands, some of them have black volcanic sand beaches.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  One of the black sand beaches has a boat, a crab boat, sticking up out of the sand. So the whole boat wrecked and just it washed into the beach. And this is such a forbidding landscape that like no one came to get the boat or to fix it. Or the boat's still there all these years later. And the sand from the ocean waves has buried the boat. And only the wheelhouse is sticking up out of this black sand in the middle of nowhere.

• 9:18Mike Rowe?

  So I'm looking at a photo that I think you must have taken. Cause there was nobody out there except me, you and Sam, the pilot. And this is a photo of me and Sam standing on that black volcanic beach. I mean, didn't Sam find that derelict? And bring it back to production, at least as a potential shooting thing?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Yes, as an Alaska pilot, he had flown up and down the Aleutian island chains. And he knew, cause he just went by them, like on his way to work. Like there's a shipwreck, there's a shipwreck, there's a shipwreck. And so our pilot on season one of Deadly as Catch, he told me, he said, well, you know, they used to just leave shipwrecks wherever they landed. And you know, now in modern times, if you're shipwrecks, they make you come and pay to have it, you know, taken away and cleaned up. But he knew where all these shipwrecks were. And so one of the things we started shooting right away for Deadly as Catch was not just

• 10:24Speaker 02

  the fishermen and the boats, but also the boats that didn't survive up there.

• 10:30Mike Rowe?

  Cause people should understand, if there's a shipwreck in the Chesapeake Bay, or the San Francisco Bay, or really anywhere in the lower 48th, you clean it up.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:41Mike Rowe?

  You get it out of the water, you do whatever you have to do. Not up there, man. They just dot the landscape and nothing quite sets the tone for danger on the high seas. Like acre after acre of wrecks.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, boat skeletons. So the crab boat was literally, I mean, when you and I were climbing through the wheelhouse in the sand. Somewhere on the wheelhouse it said Retriever, and I think we had a boat called Retriever on the first season, coincidentally.

• 11:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, we did.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Of Deadliest Catch. And it's just like, well, this one didn't survive, and so it's over here now.

• 11:22Mike Rowe?

  It's almost like walking through a graveyard, except there are no gravestones. There are just these huge monuments. And, I mean, of course, you can't tell at a glance what went wrong. You only know that something catastrophic occurred. And it could have been, it could have been a fire, it could have been a rogue wave, it could have been anything.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, when you look at some of those shipwrecks, you look at that and you know, well, everyone on that boat may have died in this wreck. Because in that emergency where the boat is, you know, capsizing or whatever, the men on that boat are basically in the middle of nowhere. In an environment where if you get into the water and you don't have a survival immersion suit on, you know, you can be dead in a couple of minutes.

• 12:17Mike Rowe?

  Minutes, for sure. I want people to understand how, I mean, I definitely want to get your perspective as a cameraman in a chopper, experiencing this landscape. But by way of contrast, my experience as a host of sorts. We had shot the pilots for Dirty Jobs, but we hadn't really sold it, right, as a series? And the network was trying to figure out what to do with me. And I wasn't sure, really, what I wanted to do either. They were on the fence about Dirty Jobs, called it a talk show in a sewer. But they said, if you like this kind of thing, and they went on to describe Dutch Harbor. So I flew up there. I met you, I met Sam.

• 13:00Mike Rowe?

  Brian Catalina's there calling the shots for Original Productions. And the truth is, man, we didn't know what this thing was. We didn't know it might be a mini-series. It might be a documentary. It might be a feature film. It could be a series, but we just didn't know. In fact, when I went up there the first time, as the host of this thing, they had $250,000 set aside for me to give to the captain that got the most crap.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 13:34Mike Rowe?

  They thought it might be a reality show.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Like a competition show.

• 13:38Mike Rowe?

  Exactly, because Survivor was killing it. And they knew there was money involved. But Chuck, they didn't understand. They didn't really understand how dangerous it was. And how crazy it would be to suggest that you could somehow raise the stakes when people are dying every year. So that's the world I flew into. And as I'm trying to sort it out, all we knew for sure is that I was gonna do some weird impersonation of Stone Phillips meets a Green Horn, right? I'd be working some days, I'd be hosting other days. But the day I met you, Sam welcomed me onto his death mobile.

• 14:22Mike Rowe?

  The chopper, what was it, a 206 Bell?

• 14:25Speaker 02

  It was a Jet Ranger.

• 14:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. You're in the back, doing whatever magic you do. Was that a Westcam unit in those days?

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, so season one, we were a standard-definition television show. So kids today probably don't even know what that means. Basically, before we had HD, which we now all watch on our TVs, we had a much lower-resolution format of television. And so, season one, we were using standard-definition. And I had a a Westcam gyro-stabilized platform, which was basically a military machine that they had adapted for TV and stuck a TV camera in it for what we were doing.

• 15:11Mike Rowe?

  And to further paint the picture, Sam Egley, if you were to Google rugged, partially-off-the-grid bush pilot, there'd be a picture of Sam, right?

• 15:24Speaker 02

  I learned a lot about Alaska talking to him because he would tell me, I think he came from Utah and he started flying in an airplane produce out to native villages.

• 15:38Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  He's telling me all these stories and I go, really? And he goes, yeah, they didn't have produce. And now I'm just picturing this, like you live in this middle of nowhere landscape and you don't have tomatoes and bananas, like they don't exist here.

• 15:55Mike Rowe?

  They don't have trees. They don't have trees in Dutchland.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  There's no trees out in that part of the Aleutian Islands. And he started flying produce to these villages and delivering it. And it was like this, it's a really neat thing. It's like, it's the entrepreneurial spirit of like finding a need and then figuring out, he's by himself in an airplane in the worst, most unforgiving wilderness you can imagine, in the worst weather in the United States. And he's flying these little airplanes, you know, full of bananas and stuff. And then the people who live in this bleak environment, they see all these beautiful, colorful fruit and vegetables come out of his airplane.

• 16:39Mike Rowe?

  I bet they wept. It's Christmas. It's Christmas morning with food.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  You know, it's a human need. That was one of his jobs when he first started flying in Alaska. And so just hearing his stories of, you know, things that would happen to him, you know, what the winds would do to his little aircraft. I mean, it's just stuff, not only did they not teach it in flight academies, they couldn't even imagine.

• 17:03Mike Rowe?

  What was he flying, like a Beaver?

• 17:06Speaker 02

  He had a number of different airplanes. I think one of them was a Beaver. And our helicopter, he was telling me, they had a pattern of winds up there called the Willows. And he's telling me all this and he goes, yeah, I was walking to my aircraft one day and one of the blades bent straight up because the winds were so violent that they just grabbed the blade and just bent it in a way it's not supposed to bend. And he said, you know,

• 17:38Speaker 02

  It was just like just hearing those stories of how terrible the conditions are there.

• 17:43Mike Rowe?

  I screamed at the top of my lungs. We flew over Ballyhoo and everything was great. Everything was calm. And then it felt like we were gonna flip over and crash in a second. And he may have yawned at some point, you know, he may have said, you know, it's gonna get a little sporty. Hang on. He was unflappable. But the day we met, he flew us over to that wreck. Not the one I'm looking at here, not the ship in the sand, but that giant old derelict. Remember the big rusty?

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:20Mike Rowe?

  Giant thing.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:22Mike Rowe?

  Well, to get to this, we had to basically get to the top. I'm gonna call it a mountain. It's probably a hill. But it was like, I don't know. It felt like it was about a thousand yards up there. And he had to drop us off. He couldn't land. So Sam like crabs in and gets the runner right on the hillside. And I'm with a guy called Matt. Remember Matt Renner?

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:48Mike Rowe?

  So Matt's sort of with me. I just, I don't really know why. I think he was just, somebody said, keep an eye on it, man. He's, we'd hate to lose him on the first shoot.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Well, Matt was instrumental in recording your audio for those.

• 19:02Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  I remember Matt, we recorded one stand up. You were on top of a snow covered mountain. And somewhere nearby, Matt is under a white sheet.

• 19:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  And he's got the wireless audio gear so we could record your

• 19:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  audio of you talking to the helicopter camera as, as we fly around you.

• 19:22Mike Rowe?

  It was insanely complicated, the shot. And for me, it was the best thing I had ever done as a host. It was the most fun. It was the most exotic. It was the most thrilling. And so here's Sam. He's crabbed up, like, there's ocean under us, a steep, steep hill, and he's right perpendicular into the mountain. Matt goes out onto the runner and I follow him and we jump. And the first job is not to roll backwards because if you start to roll, you're just not going to stop. So you kind of land on all fours and then you crawl up and then over and then down to the wreck. So we get off the plane, Matt's got a knapsack with the gear in it.

• 20:03Mike Rowe?

  And our idea is for me to scramble out onto this derelict and strike the best pose I can. High up, blue water all around me, big rusted hull for, this thing's the size of a football field.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:17Mike Rowe?

  It's huge. And we get settled in there and then you guys vanish. You're just gone.

• 20:26Mike Rowe?

  You know, it's just off into the distance. Matt is hiding under his, wherever he is, I don't see him. And man, you are, it's lonesome out there and quiet. And it just feels so deadly. And then I got my walkie talkie and Matt's talking to him and he's talking to me. And you guys come around and I really don't know what's going on, man. I've never shot to a helicopter before. And it's just a little dot in the distance and they're coming towards you and they're coming towards you and they give you a cue and you, you stand there, you can't even really see where the camera is, but you know, you know, you're right on me.

• 21:06Mike Rowe?

  And it was just so great to have you land and then show me what you shot. Cause I had no idea what you were seeing. And David, it took my breath away, man. Some of those shots you grabbed there were, I just thought, beyond epic.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, I had done shots like that for other television shows. But when the host of the Amazing Race walks out and he's talking to the helicopter camera, he's usually on the roof of a building or something, normal. Like, he didn't risk his life to get there.

• 21:44Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  And we would land, like we had this idea to put you in these.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Deadliest catch looking places where you could talk to the camera and and explain the episode. And you would get out of the aircraft and I'm watching you like walk maybe half a mile. And everything I'm looking at can kill you. Like you could fall off the cliff. You're right. It's like a five or six story tall shipwreck, which is all rusting steel.

• 22:18Mike Rowe?

  Nothing but points and edges.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm thinking, he could cut himself on that.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  He could fall through a rusted.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  He could fall through it.

• 22:26Mike Rowe?

  You could fall through.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Like, I'm just watching that and I'm just doing the math and I'm thinking, I have never seen a TV host do stuff like this.

• 22:34Mike Rowe?

  We got away with stuff. And again, they didn't know what it was. They didn't understand you're out of the reach of the actuarials, you're out of the reach of HR, you're out. It was like we were turned loose in not quite a playground, but something super interesting and given access to a world-class pilot, a world-class bird, world-class camera gear, and sent out into an environment unlike anything we'd ever seen and said, make something interesting. That was rare. What if, say, five years ago, some big oil company offered a promotion that gave

• 23:19Mike Rowe?

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• 24:02Mike Rowe?

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• 24:41Speaker 02

  And, you know, just to emphasize the point, like, we're putting you on stuff that men may have died on. Like, that's how deadly it is. And now we want you to go stand on it and talk to us about this.

• 24:54Mike Rowe?

  Say something interesting. I'm looking at this boat now, back in the sand. I'd forgotten. You'll send me these photos, right? Because it's ridiculous that I don't own this. But my favorite shot of that whole crazy trip was going up the ladder on the mast. So this is total master and commander stuff.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 25:15Mike Rowe?

  And standing up at the top of this thing. Here, look at this thing, Chuck. So I'm up there. It's taller than it looks. And he's coming in and Sam is circling.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Show the camera.

• 25:25Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'm sure we'll just throw it up on the screen, like, you know. We have the technology.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Are you sure?

• 25:30Mike Rowe?

  Not really. But that, that looked so, because you're, you can zoom. So like, while he's pulling out, you could be zooming in. While he's zooming in, you could be pulling out. You can do all those crazy, like, forced perspectives. It's like the beginning of Hawaii 5-0.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Love that.

• 25:53Mike Rowe?

  That's the shot we were doing. Sort of. Although we didn't shoot it backwards, the way, the way they did. Cheaters.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  I remember that setup. I remember, you know, being TV people, you know, we had talked to you and it was decided you would do one, I think, in the sand, next to the wheelhouse. I think you did one on the roof of the wheelhouse. And then you climbed up to the top of the crow's nest. And as soon as I saw that, you know, as a cameraman, you kind of just know. And I saw you on top of the crow's nest. And we're flying across the Bering Sea. We line up on this black sand beach and the Bering Sea waves are crashing over the black sand. And then we fly up to you and you're on this pinnacle of this death boat.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  And as we're circling around you, there are two active volcanoes behind you that have smoke coming out of them. And so, of course, I looked at that and I said, yeah, that's, that's the one they'll use.

• 27:00Mike Rowe?

  There's your open. Well, of course, I mean, for me, that day and two or three others like it, I was up there for two and a half weeks in October. That's when we met and then we came back in January. Still didn't quite know what the show was, but we knew what big waves looked like and we knew what injury looked like. We didn't know what, what death looked like, but we were about to see it, man. And you were there for that, too. And that's a chapter in your book.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  I remember being in the hotel in Dutch Harbor where the TV production office was.

• 27:43Mike Rowe?

  Grand illusion.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  The grand illusion. And I remember, this is kind of scary, I just remember sitting in the production office, all the TV bosses are, you know, walking around and making decisions and stuff and, and this radio traffic comes in. You could just read it in people's eyes that they... We all knew what we were doing, why we were there, but you could read it in their eyes that instantly it like took everyone's breath away that one of the boats...

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Had sunken and it just went through the room of everyone's expressions just shifted to, "Whew, that could have been the boat with our people on it." And just, it is a, it's a terrible realization. And, um, everyone always says like, "When are they gonna stop making Deadliest Catch? Are they still making that show?" And I always hear those questions and I say, "Well, it is a deadly, dangerous environment where blue collar guys can make a lot of money."

• 29:14Speaker 02

  That will never not be interesting and exciting and adventurous and...

• 29:18Mike Rowe?

  Well, the way I always put it is, you know, "Look, you can't script The Bearing Sea." And that was the day we learned that. That was the day that, you know, production had begun to do what production always does, which is plan, anticipate, think about story arcs, try and imagine what this thing could be. And then, I mean, I can think of, there've been a number of occasions, and I'm probably not as many as you, but where you get, where shit gets real, in a way that it snaps you out of your spell. And there is a spell that descends over the business of making television.

• 30:01Mike Rowe?

  You see it all the time, a lot in Dirty Jobs, but this was the granddaddy of it. And it's so difficult to explain to people who haven't experienced it, but it's a kind of invincibility, or at least a bulletproof quality. "It's not gonna happen to me, I'm on camera." It's not gonna happen to that boat, there are cameras on that boat. It's not gonna happen to Dave, he's an hour chopper, right? And then, man, there was a, they pounded on my door. Brian Catalina stuck his head in and said, I'd been up about two days straight. We'd been shooting all round, exhausted.

• 30:45Mike Rowe?

  And I'd gone down to Cape Cheerful like a thunderhead and had a couple of pops.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Why do they call it Cape Cheerful?

• 30:52Mike Rowe?

  They're all about the irony in Dutch. No, because it's pretty cheerful. It's pretty cheerful. That's the, you know, there were a couple of bars up there that were legendary. The Elbow Room probably being the most famous, not there anymore. But Cape Cheerful was in the hotel. So I'm tucked, you know, maybe 90 minutes into a sleep that's long overdue. And way, way down the rem hole. And Catalina's big bald head came crashing through my door and said, Mike, boat went down. We need you now. And I still hear it. Boat? What do you mean boat went down? Well, you know how you've been talking in those stand ups for the last couple of weeks about how anything could happen?

• 31:37Mike Rowe?

  How it's the most dangerous job in the world? And about, you know, you use statistics and you do your stand ups and you strike your little heroic pose and everything looks great and everything, gosh, this is gonna be amazing? Boat went down. Yeah, that changed everything. Every single thing. Were you at the services?

• 32:01Speaker 02

  I think we might have been flying to show the town during that time. I didn't go to the services that I can recall. I just remember, you know, worrying about all of the people on all of the boats ever since that day. And hearing how quickly it can happen. And then seeing how really, there's no one to help you in most of Alaska when something bad happens. It's too far away. You might as well be on the moon. And so if your boat rolls over.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  You know, it's you against nature. And that's all you got.

• 32:43Mike Rowe?

  You know what scared me more than anything? The boat was called the Big Valley. And it went out in calm seas. You know, they were loaded with pots, maybe too many, don't know. But they were loaded with pots. And the weather got a little snotty. But it wasn't anything like the conditions that you would film in later that month. You know? Three foot swells, maybe, you know? And, you know, they call them rogue waves, but just a, I think they were in a slack tide and a wave just caught it broadside and rolled it right over. And it was gone. It was just gone. Six on board, five died.

• 33:29Mike Rowe?

  And then during the rescue operation on a boat called the Shaman, I want to say. A guy was washed overboard as they were going through the debris field. But what were you doing during the rescue? Did they have the bird in the air at that point? Were they? How were they thinking about filming this?

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Well, that's what's interesting, the history of the show.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  People who watch Deadliest Catch, they know all the boats and the captains. And Cornelia Marie was, this doesn't relate to the helicopter, but Cornelia Marie was a camera boat.

• 34:05Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  On season one. And they're in the show and you see them basically drop what they're doing and, and steam over to the location. The story that I was told was that basically the boats have an EPRB, which is a satellite distress beacon attached to the boat. And it's on the mast. And it's set to detach below a certain depth, which means if the boat rolls over and it comes back up, it doesn't activate. If it goes to a certain depth, they know, well, at that depth, that's below the mast height of the boat and therefore the boat's underwater.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  So at that point, it breaks off from the boat, flows to the surface and starts transmitting to satellites. And basically.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  The Coast Guard gets the call and then they call all of the boats in the area and say, "Hey, we have a distress beacon from this boat. It's at this GPS location." And of course, they're going to launch a C-130 if they can and a helicopter if they can. But the first aid is basically all the boats in the area that are close that can start going that direction. So I know our camera boat did that and you see them in the show and they're, you know, they're looking hopefully to get survivors out of the water.

• 35:27Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  You know, some of that stuff happens too far away from shore for our little helicopter to get to.

• 35:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 35:38Mike Rowe?

  And it is a little helicopter, really, when you think about it.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  I started a practice of, you know, I looked at what we were doing and the environment that we're in, which is the most dangerous environment I've ever flown in. And I looked at that and I started a practice of before we would take off, we would call the producers and tell them where we're going, how much fuel is on board. In other words, how much time the aircraft can fly.

• 36:06Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  And who's on board. And from that, they could calculate, okay, if he's got two hours of fuel and it's been three hours.

• 36:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  A, we know where they were going, so we can start with that. But B, they're now overdue. And after three hours, the engine is done, is out of fuel.

• 36:27Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  So, um, so I started a practice of doing that. That way, if something happened to us, at least they could have some idea of, uh, that there's a problem and where to start looking for us.

• 36:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Didn't you also, uh, ask the pilot if, what kind of gun he was packing because of the bears?

• 36:47Speaker 02

  I ask, uh, whenever I fly in Alaska, you know, people always tell me, they go, "Oh, you fly in Alaska? Oh, wow."

• 36:54Mike Rowe?

  Sounds so romantic.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  And I go, "You don't see Alaska like I do."

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Most of Alaska is uninhabited. There's no, nothing there. There's no roads. That's why everyone flies to get around in Alaska. There's no cities, no houses, no roads. You know, probably 99.999% of the state. However, if you land your helicopter and get out, there are things that will eat you. And they've eaten a lot of people. And so, so I always, whenever I fly in Alaska, I always like to ask them like, what kind of gun? And, you know, sometimes they'll just tell me. And sometimes they'll, well, it's a, you know, it's an elephant gun. And they, they take it out of the, the hat rack. And I look at it and the bullet's that big. And I go, wow, that's a cannon.

• 37:37Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Speaking of which, what's hanging around your neck there?

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Uh, this is, uh, messages from people I've lost.

• 37:43Mike Rowe?

  Really?

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yep. I take them with me everywhere I go.

• 37:47Mike Rowe?

  May I?

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Some of those stories are in the book is, uh, people who've sent me messages. I carry them with me everywhere I go.

• 37:58Mike Rowe?

  People you've flown with?

• 38:00Speaker 02

  People, you know, members of my family or, or, uh, someone that I've flown with. And then, uh, I have a message from them after they died. I just keep it with me.

• 38:11Mike Rowe?

  What do you mean after they died?

• 38:13Speaker 02

  Um, this story is in the book. It's in Help From Above. Uh, when my mom died, I was 25 years old. And it was the first time in my life, because I'm a really happy person. We were just talking about, like, I got here like, three or two or three hours early. And I'm just sitting outside on the bench, just doing my Instagram comments. And you can just leave me anywhere.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  With, with the rest of the influencers in Santa Monica?

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Well, I would add, because coming to Santa Monica, it's like, whoa, this is like a city full of beautiful people and homeless dudes.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And never the twain shall meet.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  So I, I looked for a place to sit where I didn't smell urine. And I'm just sitting there. Just, you could leave me there all day. I'm just happy. I'm not.

• 39:02Mike Rowe?

  You should write brochures, man.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  You found one?

• 39:04Speaker 02

  I'm, I did.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  You found the spot that didn't smell?

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was a good spot. So I'm happy all the time. It doesn't matter. That's probably why I've gotten some of the jobs I've gotten over the years is because I'm just always happy. I never complain. And, um,

• 39:18Mike Rowe?

  I don't remember you as happy. I'm not saying you're not. I remember you as.

• 39:25Mike Rowe?

  Preternaturally enthusiastic and curious.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 39:30Mike Rowe?

  You were like a kid in a candy shop up there. Because at that point in your career, which I want to get into more. And I bet it's still the same. That's still not quite the right word. Wonder. You had a sense of wonder. You would look at me like after a shot and like, can you believe we're doing this? Can you believe? Can you believe this? We got this pilot?

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:56Mike Rowe?

  And your job, so people understand, it's a pretty short list of people who do what you do.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Very short.

• 40:03Mike Rowe?

  And here you are on what would become the premiere show for this kind of photography. And I guess the question is, did you understand that then? Did you have enough context in your career at that point to know that the stuff you were filming in Dutch would be a thing that you and I could potentially be talking about 21 years later?

• 40:32Mike 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 meatpackers 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 from American ranchers.

• 41:17Mike Rowe?

  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. 5,000 five-star reviews on Trust Violet, 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.

• 41:58Mike Rowe?

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• 42:06Speaker 01

  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. Hey-haw!

• 42:17Speaker 02

  I definitely did not see that far into the future. I think I was just fascinated because the environment is so dangerous and unforgiving that if you wreck your boat, they might just leave the boat wherever it is, sitting on the beach, buried in sand.

• 42:39Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  And that there's guys that make a living in that environment, and that includes us. So I'm just like, whoa, sensory overload. It's, uh, to be in, in such a violent, dangerous, unforgiving, and also bountiful environment. It's like this gold rush of crab legs and money, and it could kill you.

• 43:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. And your finger's gone today, you know?

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:09Mike Rowe?

  I won't belabor the point because I've talked about it before, but the injury rate, at least the year I was up there, according to the actuarials, was 100%. Like, if you work a full season on a crab boat, you're gonna hurt. You're gonna break a finger, roll an ankle. Catastrophic was 9%. And mortality was, they didn't have a percentage, it was one a week.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  People hear the term derby fishing on Deadliest Catch, which was how it was when we first got there.

• 43:35Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  And I don't think it fully expresses how crazy that was. And I feel like the guys who did it, I feel like they loved it, and it was like this intense game. Where they could really get rich in a very short period of time. Or they might not catch anything and they could be broke. Or the boat could sink. And because they were racing to catch the crabs, it meant that they would push into. It's not like, ah, there's a frozen hurricane out there right now. Let's, let's go in three days. No, they're like, well, the season's open. We're going.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  And then now it's like this thing of like fishing in a frozen hurricane because they don't know when the season will stop. And they've either made a million dollars or they haven't made enough to pay for the fuel and the bait.

• 44:36Mike Rowe?

  That's the point that people miss. They think, oh, you're getting crazy rich or you're dying. But there's a lot in the middle that is really not that glamorous. That's an important part to understand about this vocation, which is you can actually lose money. You know, you go out there in a boat as a full share deckhand or even a greenhorn. You know, you, you pay for the gas. You pay for the groceries. You're all on a, on a hook for that. You start in the red, right? And to break even is not wildly uncommon. It just doesn't make for great TV. And by the way, neither does a flat Bering sea. My first two, three days out on a boat was like a duck pond.

• 45:19Mike Rowe?

  I'm like, this isn't a dangerous job. It was like 68 degrees. We're hauling pots. It was like, this is pretty pleasant. These are some interesting guys. We're learning some things. And then in about, over the course of 25 minutes, temperature drops 40 degrees. And it's blowing sideways and you're still working. And you guys were up in that, man. You were up. I remember once seeing you flying. I couldn't believe you were still in the air filming us. It made no sense. There's just no way the FAA could have been cool with that.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Um, there, there was a point on season one.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Where Sam, he and I were going somewhere and he looked over at me and he goes, "How you doing Dave?" And I said, "I don't like this." And he laughed and he goes, "Welcome to Alaska." The weather in Alaska is so violent that flying up there is, it's adventurous at a level that, you know, pilots, I think in the lower 48 just cannot imagine. And it's just, that's how you get from point A to point B is, you know, it's what you said where you like, you leave Dutch Harbor and you go to fly a couple of islands over.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  But after you leave, the wind changes and becomes an 80 knot headwind.

• 46:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  So now the aircraft's only doing 15 miles an hour. We don't have enough fuel to go 150 miles, 15 miles an hour. The engine will stop running before we get there. And that's how intense it is to just go to work in Alaska.

• 47:08Mike Rowe?

  The learning curve is a right angle. It takes a while, you know? One of the first things Sam did with me, I don't think you were in the bird, because we were doing these other shots where I would sit next to Sam and I had a camera guy behind me and we were doing, we shot, God, we had so many stand-ups. But I said, kinda jokingly, I'm like, "You know that thing in the beginning of Magnum PI, when the helicopter just dives and then flattens out like 50 feet over the water? What's that maneuver called?" And Sam goes, "I call it this." And down we go. And it was so crazy fast. It doesn't feel like you're descending. It feels like the world is rushing up at you.

• 47:53Mike Rowe?

  And then he flattens out. And then you realize, yeah, that was my sphincter making that sound.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  And then you realize you've soiled yourself.

• 48:01Mike Rowe?

  There were just so many moments of it, though. My story, it doesn't end there, but it changed. Because after the Big Valley disaster.

• 48:12Mike Rowe?

  Everyone at the network understood, okay, this is not a reality competition show. This is not a movie. This is something else. We're still not quite sure what it is. But you know what it doesn't need? It doesn't need a host. Not really. It needs, we can tell this story like flies on the wall with well-placed cameras. And, and then we can follow the men who do the work and we can see what happens. Can't script the Bering Sea. And so, I went back to Dutch several times to do various specials. That was it for me. I was up there for four weeks. And I realized I had just hosted what was going to be the biggest show of my career. And then, I learned that I couldn't be in it.

• 48:58Mike Rowe?

  And then they picked up dirty jobs and we all lived happily ever after. But you went back for season two, and three, and four. So tell me, what'd I miss?

• 49:13Speaker 02

  They paved the roads in Dutch Harbor and they put up streetlights. When I first got to Dutch Harbor, there was no cell service. You see the guys in the show with like a candy bar phone? That's all, the only phones that could work up there because this cell system up there was like thirty years old.

• 49:30Mike Rowe?

  I don't know what a candy bar phone is.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  It doesn't have a touchscreen. So.

• 49:36Mike Rowe?

  Old school.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  It, you can't, like, it only has numbers, like an old house phone. It's just like the numbers that you press to call someone. That's all it has.

• 49:45Mike Rowe?

  Gotcha.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  There is no data, at all.

• 49:48Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  And, so they definitely, over the years, you know, they, they kept adding stuff. Uh, one time in Dutch Harbor, an airplane was trying to land on the runway and it hit a truck. So they basically piled rocks into the Bering Sea to make a surface so they could extend the runway. And then also put the road further away to get the airplanes more. So they could come in and land without hitting a vehicle that was going by at the end of the runway on the street.

• 50:26Mike Rowe?

  People should understand too, uh, just how jacked up landing is in Dutch. I mean, you're, the crosswinds are crazy. You're flying in between a couple of mountains. I don't remember the percentage of aborted flights or landings, but it's a bunch.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Sometimes on social media, I'll post a video from inside the plane that takes us there. And yeah, two out of 10 comments will say, it's not really, you're just shaking the camera, right? Because I can barely hold on to the camera and sometimes there's people screaming. And sometimes there's stuff falling. One time we took off out of Dutch Harbor and the guy behind me, he, after we got out of the, the airport area, he leaned forward and he goes, Dave, when we took off, my backpack went up and hit the ceiling. Is that normal? And I said, yeah, that's pretty normal.

• 51:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 51:28Mike Rowe?

  You can't overstate it. The first time I flew in was actually pretty uneventful. Second time, this is a plane, and so the, the carriers at Penn Air, and I think some of the best pilots in the world, their resumes are unbelievable. And the first time we came in, I would say 80% of the people on the plane, including me, were screaming. It wasn't like, oh, some turbulence. It was just boom, like all the overheads snap open, stuff is moving. Grizzled fishermen are praying. You don't land so much, you just kind of bounce in. Third time, we were flying into crazy headwinds and from Anchorage, right?

• 52:11Mike Rowe?

  So it's a couple hours to Dutch from Anchorage. And the captain just comes on, it's raining, pouring down raining and windy. And we're just flying and flying and flying. He says, guys, we're not gonna make it. I gotta put her down. Now, in my mind, like I'd looked at a map of the Aleutian Islands. And I'm like, okay, there are islands around, but put her down. What do you mean? Like, it wasn't clear, like, are we crashing? He landed in Cold Bay. Have you ever landed there?

• 52:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  The way you said that was harrowing.

• 52:44Mike Rowe?

  I mean, what's crazy about Cold Bay as opposed to Dutch is I think they built, didn't they build that runway for the shuttle?

• 52:51Speaker 02

  I think so. It's like a cartoon as to how remote it is. And the first year that I did Dudley's Catch, we flew out on the helicopter and we landed there. And this kid comes out and he's pumping fuel in the helicopter. And we're in the middle of nowhere. And he mentions that the plane had gone through a day or two before with TV people on it. And this, this young guy, he's pumping the fuel and he goes, man, they had real pretty women.

• 53:29Mike Rowe?

  There were some pretty girls on that, on that shoot.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  And to hear that was like, so that's what it's like to live here.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:37Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  You don't see that too often, I take it.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  And Cold Bay is interesting because it's so in the middle of nowhere. And there's no hotel there. So what we do is we stay in a house that they call like a bed and breakfast. And there's a family that lives in the house and they feed you. And there's nothing else there. It's not like you can go to some restaurant or something. So we all, we all come to the dinner table, everyone who's staying in the hotel. And sitting across from me is a Coast Guard pilot who flew in a Jayhawk to get there. And I suddenly realize this is the pilot in the book I'm reading

• 54:26Speaker 02

  about maritime rescues.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  And it like takes my breath away. I go, the guy I'm reading about is sitting across from me. And of course, in the book, it's just this crazy storm in the Bering Sea and and he's in his helicopter trying to get people out of the water.

• 54:44Mike Rowe?

  Is that lost in the storm? Is that chapter?

• 54:47Speaker 02

  This story isn't in the book.

• 54:48Mike Rowe?

  Oh.

• 54:49Speaker 02

  Um, but it's one of the craziest things that I've ever heard. And I do post on social media about the Coast Guard up there a lot because I really admire them. And so I'm talking to this guy and in aviation, you know, I fly in little aircraft all over the world. So the pilot before every flight makes a go or no go decision. So this is the mission. We're going to fly over the Super Bowl. Okay, I gotta have this amount of fuel. I'm going this far to get there. How is the weather? How high are the clouds? Can I get underneath them? Will I have enough visibility to safely maneuver the aircraft? You know, he just runs

• 55:29Speaker 02

  down a list of things that can kill us. And if anything's on the list seems too dangerous, it's a no go. The pilot waves it off. This is before every flight. So I'm sitting across from this legendary Coast Guard rescue pilot. And I just got so curious. I'm like, how do you, because someone has made a distress call and they need to be, they're going to die if if you can't save them. So how do you make your go no go decision? And he said something that I will never forget. Because it's so different from the rest of aviation. He said, well, sometimes the wind can blow 100 miles an hour. And when it gets up there,

• 56:12Speaker 02

  it's really hard for us to open the hangar doors. Because it presses against the doors and they physically can't open the hangar doors to get the Jayhawk out of the hangar. And he said, if we can get the hangar doors open, we go.

• 56:28Mike Rowe?

  We go. Wow.

• 56:32Mike Rowe?

  And if we can't, we just figured the universe is trying to tell us something. Yeah. Well, it's just a whole different metric. It's just a whole different way of thinking about risk. And like anything else, I think our ability to assimilate risk, I think that ability is a muscle. And I think the more you exercise it, the bigger it grows, you know? Or if you over exercise it, maybe you start to ignore it.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  I think it's healthy.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  The thing I love about Deadliest Catch is after 20 years, they are still going for it. And the fishermen are still going for it. Because we live in a world that's run by lawyers and insurance companies. And I love that there are people who still say yes to the call. And they go out there and try and make a lot of money and feed their families in a risky environment. I personally believe that that's something that's missing from our modern luxurious affluent culture today. And I think it's why you see kids doing street takeovers.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  I think it's why you see people fighting so bitterly on social media. Because they don't have a challenge and a risk in a meaningful quest in their lives. And so when they see someone they disagree with on Facebook, it's on. They fight to the death.

• 58:12Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Because I think that not having risk and not being willing to take a risk, it leaves a part of their human spirit starving.

• 58:29Mike 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.

• 59:11Mike 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

• 59:54Mike 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. I think about that a lot. I think of it in terms of the unintended consequences of what happens when somebody tells you that your safety is their priority. I think that, however well-intended that might be, whether it's coming from an airline pilot, or just the head of compliance at DuPont, or any other big company, when...

• 1:00:34Mike Rowe?

  When you tell your employees that their safety is the most important thing to you, you're basically saying that they don't have to worry about it as much as they otherwise might. And that's the trick. I think you're absolutely right. I think we saw it during the lockdowns. This idea that, that zero, you know, that's, that's what we're shooting for. Zero risk. Get rid of all the risk. We want to eliminate all the risk entirely. And it took a while, but I think we eventually realized, that's not how you live. That's not living. That's just existing.

• 1:01:15Mike Rowe?

  Doesn't mean you should take foolish risks, but it does mean that you'll never, ever be able to eliminate it from the equation. And if you try too hard, something's gonna, like whack a mole, something else is gonna pop up. To your point, all of the craziness that we're seeing online. I hadn't thought about it that way, but you might be on to something.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  I think it's like, um, by taking risk and adventure away from people, it's like a poisonous thing that you do to their spirit. And that's why they try to kill each other when someone gets cut off in traffic. That's not a normal reaction. That's a reaction to someone who just has nothing to fight for in their life. And so, any fight is to the death. They just like, their whole spirit is craving a risk and a reward. And I, I do think that's an unhealthy aspect to our very comfortable society that we have today.

• 1:02:20Mike Rowe?

  And I'll tell you, it's the reason I'm still proud to narrate that show. It's not a perfect show, and I can quibble with any number of decisions that have been made that might unnecessarily lean into this narrative or that narrative, but all that stuff is subordinate to the big idea, which is, this is a real job. It's really dangerous. Filming it is really dangerous, but all of that risk is worth it. It's worth it because it's real and you get a look at a vocation and a community of men, not all men, but mostly men, who understand that the stakes are primal.

• 1:03:04Mike Rowe?

  And so they assume the risk. And you've had a front row seat to it, man. You have seen it through the viewfinder, perhaps.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was very fortunate to start my career in television, flying cameras. And I entered a very swashbuckling era of guys jumping into small, underpowered machines, strapping cameras to them. And I don't want to say doing stunts, but in the early days of film flying, it's like every camera flight was a kind of a risky adventure. And it's one of the first things I learned was that we were dwelling beyond a mathematical equation called the dead man's curve.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  It's a boundary in helicopter flight beyond which you can't safely land if the engine quits.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  And I slowly learned as I got more into TV and movie flying, how much of our time was spent in the dead man's curve. And, you know, in a sense, I guess it's like being on a crab boat where if you fall out of the crab boat or the boat sinks, that's it. Death is close and it's quick. So, working in that realm was a hell of an adventure. And, you know, we used to do behind the scenes on Deadliest Catch.

• 1:04:37Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  And so they would come out to the helicopter and they would film us and they would ask questions. And I'd never forget, there was a producer there. We were probably five years in a Deadliest Catch and he's, he's listening and he's doing the math in his head. And you could just see the wheels turning and he goes, "Is that dangerous?" And I said, "Yeah." And he goes, "Why do you do it?"

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  And, you know, answering that question was kind of how I started to figure out a little bit of how my work is different than other jobs, you know, kind of like a fisherman who keeps going fishing even though, you know, friends have died on other boats. I kind of looked at it and said, well, that is kind of different, you know, it's like returning to a place that you know you escaped last time and got what you wanted, but you might not make it out this time is an interesting exercise of the human spirit, really.

• 1:05:42Mike Rowe?

  Is it addictive?

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  Not to me. In the case of Deadliest Catch, I've, I've always just been so glad when I'm done filming. I worry about the people on the boats, you know, I've been doing this show for 20 years and every time they go out, I worry, uh, cause I'm not always there when they're fishing and I just, I worry about them, you know, having that one trip where something goes wrong with the boat or the weather is just too bad, you know?

• 1:06:08Mike Rowe?

  You gave me a copy of your book and you put some helpful Post-it notes in it just to direct me to various areas, but this is the most interesting one. It's a little tiny Post-it note you put at the end of a chapter called Lost in a Storm and it says?

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  I should be dead.

• 1:06:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  I realized, as I learned more about aviation, about the aircraft, how they perform and different things that can kill you, I started to recognize when I was in a situation that basically was a complete accident report, except for the ending, you know, it's like everything that can go wrong that can kill you is happening. As I wrote the book, I did write it and publish it myself and a friend of mine was helping me, like he would read it and then he would, you know, tell me what was wrong with it that day. He gave me a thousand corrections.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  Things I did wrong in writing the book. And one time he looked at it, he goes, why don't you just start the book with one of your stories? And at that point in my life, this was about 2015, I had never told my stories to anyone, you know, so writing this book was quite ordeal for me. And so I started writing the stories. And there were times, especially in a realm like Deadliest Catch, there were times where everything that can kill you in an aircraft was happening right now. And the worst one was we were offshore at night.

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  This story is called Lost in a Storm, and we're flying over the wizard and I noticed that the sodium lights on the wizard are projecting like the bat signal in front of the boat.

• 1:08:03Mike Rowe?

  That's weird.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  And by this point in my career, I was the most scaredy cat in the aircraft at all times. And so I'm looking at that and I go, hmm. So I asked the pilot, I go, how much time you got left for fuel? I got about 10 minutes left. I said, let's go back now.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Which is one of a dozen things that's probably why I'm alive today, was I was just so nervous to be offshore at night. And I said, let's go back now. And then he says something I will never forget. He goes, okay.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  Let me see if I can figure out which way town is.

• 1:08:42Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  And I was sitting in the back of the aircraft. I would always keep looking out the back windows of the aircraft so I could see the lights of town because A, that told me I could still see the town and that my pilot knew which way is up because what has killed so many people, especially in Alaska, is if the pilot loses his references.

• 1:09:06Mike Rowe?

  JFK Junior.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  And Kobe, this is what happened to Kobe, is the pilot lost his references and he got disoriented and he didn't know that he was basically tumbling.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  And so I keep watching the lights because I know if he can, if I can see the lights, he can see the lights. If he can see the lights, we stay alive.

• 1:09:27Mike Rowe?

  This is worth pausing real quick. People need to know, you're in the back of the helicopter. You're operating your gear. It's kind of like sitting in the middle seat in the back of a plane. You are utterly, utterly, I mean, everybody on the plane, of course, is dependent on the pilot, but you're helpless. You're utterly vulnerable back there.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm along for the ride. So I do try to be a canary in the coal mine, which is why I started getting scared. The lights are super bright on those boats, but once it starts projecting like a beam, that tells me that the atmospheric conditions are getting really hard to see through. So I start getting nervous. I said, "How much time you got left? Ten minutes. Okay, let's just go." And then he looks around and he can no longer see town. So then I look out my window. Sure enough, it was there a minute ago and now the town is gone. It's just ink. It's just black.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  You know, and I, and I know what he's doing. He's, he's trying to find something to tell him which way is up so he can keep the aircraft upright and then navigate where, where we have to go. And so I immediately turn off all of my equipment and I pull my circuit breakers because I don't even want the little, the little green LED on the monitor to like distract the pilot.

• 1:10:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  I don't want any light except the lights outside in the town. And the director goes, "Hey Dave, my monitor just went off." And I said, "Yes, it's not coming back on."

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  And now I'm really scared because this, no one survives this. Yeah. If you lose your references, just like JFK Junior, just like Kobe, you're not going to live through it. It's impossible to do. And so I'm just seeing that now is instantly upon us. And so the pilot starts navigating and he starts complaining, goes, Dave, turn your equipment off. Your lights are messing me up. And I'm looking around and go, I not only turned everything off, I killed the power to the turnoff switch. Like I killed the breakers. I don't have any lights.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  And then I suddenly realize,

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  20 feet behind us are the nav lights of the aircraft on the tail. And we're in such a disorienting weather conditions that the lights way back behind us, these little lights, are coming up and getting into the cockpit up front with him. And he's having such a hard time seeing any reference he can find, that that little dim light is bothering him. And I go, it's your nav lights. Turn your nav lights off. So boom, turns the nav lights off. Now we are in pitch black darkness. I'm looking from the backseat, I'm looking over his shoulder and I'm hoping to see like a horizon. So we can live and I don't see it and there's nothing there.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  But if I look away, I can almost see a little teeny tiny nothing of a light. That's how small that point of light is out in front of the aircraft. And I said, what are you flying to? And he goes, I don't know. I thought it was the lights of town, but now I'm not sure.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  And that was it. I knew we were dead. I said, turn the aircraft around right now and go back to our boats. And he's smarter than I am. He's actually a pilot who can navigate in a storm. So these are all his calls to make.

• 1:13:13Mike Rowe?

  Go, no go.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  And he knows, unfortunately, we've been flying for like 10 minutes now to this little light of something. He knows that if he turns around and goes back to the boats, we may not have enough fuel to get to shore, even if he knows where it is, even if he can find it. But he turned that aircraft on a dime. He didn't even say a word, just boom. I said it, he turned. And I told the director, I said, call our boats, because he had a marine radio.

• 1:13:42Mike Rowe?

  Director's sitting next to you?

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  He's in the front seat.

• 1:13:44Mike Rowe?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  I said, call the boats and tell them to steam towards Dutch Harbor, turn all their lights on. And I told the pilot, I said, okay. By the way, Sig Hansen, smart captain that he is, he knew exactly what was up, because we had left 10 minutes ago. And so the director calls on the radio and says to, to turn all your lights on and steam towards Dutch Harbor. I told the pilot, I said, that's going to give you your heading. And

• 1:14:12Mike Rowe?

  You're telling the pilot this?

• 1:14:14Speaker 02

  Which I have no business doing, but to his credit, he also was probably scared. And I just felt like if we're going to run out of fuel or tumble into the ocean, I'd rather do it next to our boats, people that can help us.

• 1:14:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  Maybe survive than in the middle of nowhere. And no one even knows where we're at. So Sig Hansen, Captain Sig, comes right back on the radio and says, okay.

• 1:14:42Speaker 02

  Follow me. I will take you right to the dock. Because the conversation is going through the director to the marine radios. And that was when the pilot said, tell them, we can't. The boat's too slow. We don't have enough fuel to fly at that speed back to Dutch Harbor. And once again, Sig Hansen, he's just such a smart guy. He goes, that's okay. He goes, you push out on my heading, and that will take you between the mountains to town.

• 1:15:11Mike Rowe?

  Wow.

• 1:15:12Speaker 02

  Because he knew what we needed to do to survive. And so that was it. That was that moment of, you know, Captain Sig is using his lights to show us the way home. But his boat's so slow, we can't stay with them. So we fly on his heading, and the lights go behind us, and it just becomes nothing, just black.

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

  And I'm sitting in the back of the aircraft and I'm just listening to the rhythm of the blades and the engine. And it's kind of comforting. It's just that sound of life, like it's the heartbeat of the aircraft, it's still beating, even though we might be going upside down. And we came around the corner and we all saw the lights of town, which means, okay, now we can survive. Even if we run out of fuel, the pilot can auto-rotate and we won't go into the ocean upside down. So we all saw the lights and I knew we were going to make it at that moment. But that's it. Until then, I didn't know. And I was just kind of sitting in the back of the aircraft, just waiting to crash into

• 1:16:22Speaker 02

  the bearing C.

• 1:16:27Mike Rowe?

  Do you think glazed hams glaze themselves? Or do you suppose there's a specific job for that specific task? This was the topic of a recent dinner conversation with some friends the other night. And while those assembled failed to resolve the question, we did agree that if such a job actually existed, then ZipRecruiter would be the only logical place to find a qualified glazer of hams. Why? Because nobody's better at helping you find qualified people who are excited to do whatever it is they do than ZipRecruiter. And right now, you can try them for free at ziprecruiter.com/row. Also, ZipRecruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first. That's a game changer.

• 1:17:11Mike Rowe?

  So you meet the right people faster and then your candidates can tell you in their own words, also important, why they're excited about your job. For instance, when Chuck first said to me, "Mike, I've always wanted to work with a glazed ham," I had no choice but to hire him.

• 1:17:29Mike Rowe?

  And that was over 10 years ago. And look, he's still here impersonating a podcast producer. Let ZipRecruiter find the right people for your roles. Try them for free today at ziprecruiter.com/row. That's ziprecruiter.com/row. Meet your match at ZipRecruiter. Build your team, build it sooner. Meet your match at ZipRecruiter. Try it free.

• 1:17:58Mike Rowe?

  Here's how you wrote it. "The camera crew leaves and takes the director back to the hotel. The pilot and I are left alone with the helicopter in the old hangar. I lean into the pilot and ask, 'When we were lost out there and turned around to go back to the boats, where exactly did you think we were heading?' The pilot scratches his head and says, 'I don't know, but I'm pretty sure we were heading offshore.' So that's it. The storm had the pilot so confused, he was flying away from Dutch Harbor with no fuel in his tank. We had nothing ahead of us but 1,000 miles of Bering Sea. If we hadn't turned around and gone back to our boats, I wouldn't be here. The Bering Sea had already claimed

• 1:18:43Mike Rowe?

  our helicopter with every soul on board. We won our lives back by turning around, going back to our boats, and asking our friends to light up the darkness. Thank God for our pilot's skill, that little voice in my head, Captain Sigehansen, and our director, who did just the right thing at just the right time to save us from the darkness and death of Deadliest Catch."

• 1:19:15Mike Rowe?

  This book's full of this stuff, man.

• 1:19:19Mike Rowe?

  I know the feeling. I got one foot off the curb out here one day. Somebody put a hand on my shoulder just as the big blue bus goes by, right?

• 1:19:30Mike Rowe?

  You're like, "Oh, that was close."

• 1:19:33Mike Rowe?

  And then you go on with your life.

• 1:19:37Mike Rowe?

  It's not the conversation I thought I was gonna have with you. I just have to ask you, because a lot of people are listening to this and they're going, in spite of all these nightmare stories, they're thinking, "I wanna do that. That sounds like a big life. That sounds like an exciting life. It sounds like a life worth living."

• 1:19:57Mike Rowe?

  Real quick, what's the path to becoming one of the most specific camera people in the world? And does work ethic or luck have anything to do with any of this?

• 1:20:10Speaker 02

  My whole life, I've always looked at impossible challenges. And I've always felt like, "Okay, this can work." And so, I lived as far from Hollywood as you can get. I lived 3,000 miles away from Hollywood, and I wanted to work in the TV and movie business.

• 1:20:27Mike Rowe?

  You were in Florida at the time?

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  I was in Florida. And there's no way to get from there to Hollywood or New York. You know, you can't get to the movie business from there. You can't do it. And, but I didn't let that stop me. I said, "Okay, I'm just..." In those days, we had the phone book, and I went through the phone book, and I looked for any company that had anything to do with film and television. And then I would just go see them about every two weeks. And one of the companies told me to stop doing that.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  The poor guy at the front desk, because every two weeks, I'd stop by, "Hey, how's it going? Remember me? I can take pictures for you. I'll work for free. You don't have to pay me. I'll just start working, and then if you like what I'm doing, you could pay me, you know?" And, um, so the poor guy at the front desk was like, "Will you just get out of here? All we do are helicopter cameras. We have no use for you." And I said, "Oh, okay." About three weeks later, the vice president of that company called me, and I was like this curiosity to him. He's like, "You make a living like this?" "Oh, yeah, yeah." "Okay." And then he said, "You know, one of my guys just quit."

• 1:21:40Speaker 02

  We didn't know he was quitting, but he's gone now, and I'm supposed to hire someone from Hollywood, "But I noticed you keep coming here. We don't pay you."

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  So he was kinda like, "What's wrong with you?"

• 1:21:55Mike Rowe?

  Fair question.

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  And he was kinda like, "While I'm talking to the guys in Hollywood, I think you should come in and interview." And that was it. So he brings me in and he tells me, "Okay, you know, well, we work on big movies and TV shows in this little office." I said, "Oh, okay." And he said, "Nobody here would hire you because you don't have any skills." And he said, "But the one thing I like about you is you seem hungry. Are you hungry?" I said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm hungry." So I go home and he said, "Well, in a couple of days, I'll decide I'm going to hire probably a guy in Hollywood." And I went home and I thought, "Oh, my God. These guys do work on big movies? I would love to do that. In my little town, there's a company that works on big movies." I didn't know that, so, okay.

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  Man, how do I, God, how do I show them I really want this job? And I was taking my trash out and in the dumpster, I threw my trash and in the bottom of the dumpster, I saw the most perfect thing I'd ever seen. I literally dove into the dumpster and got an old grimy disgusting work boot that someone had thrown away. And I brought it back to my apartment and I took a picture of myself with a fork and a knife, cutting into that disgusting old boot with a big smile.

• 1:23:05Mike Rowe?

  Like you had it on a plate?

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  I had it on a plate.

• 1:23:07Mike Rowe?

  At your dinner table?

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  Yep. Knife and a fork, cutting into this disgusting filthy boot with a big smile. And I sent him, in those days, we actually cut and pasted. So I pasted the picture to a letter and I typed it up and I said, "You asked if I was hungry. Does this answer your question?" And the marketing director of the company, she was laughing one day. She goes, "You know, the second he saw that picture of you eating your boot, you had the job." And so I always tell people, because kids always ask me, they just assume I'm some super genius or I have some incredible resume, like, "How'd you get your job? How could I get a job like that?" And I always tell them, I go, "You know what? I knocked on doors. So I recommend if there's something you want to do, you go find those people and you

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  just start helping them. Don't ask them to hire you. Just start bringing them food. Just start keeping in touch with them. Because what's going to happen is, you're going to be there one day and they're going to say, 'You know what? Someone's got to drive to Fresno.'"

• 1:24:08Speaker 02

  You wanna drive the Fresno? And they're gonna have you drive the Fresno and then, you know, a year later, you're gonna look back and go, yeah, I've been working here for a year, but...

• 1:24:18Mike Rowe?

  But dude, I did a poor job of explaining the hierarchy and the trajectory of most people who do it the normal way. Like, there are people out there who who don't really get to touch a camera, who are nevertheless working around them. Like, they'll spend a decade, like, loading cameras, being a camera assistant, and never allowed to touch one. You came in so hot, you just blasted by all that.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  I wasn't old enough to rent a car. And I literally had no technical skills when I started. I just had a love for the movie and the television industry and the storytelling. That's what I wanted to get involved with, so they threw me into this role and when I would go on to a set of a Steven Spielberg movie, my supervisor would tell me, he goes, "Okay, the assistant cameramen are all gonna come around you and they're gonna ask you questions 'cause they wanna know..." Sort of like fishing, like, "Which boats have you worked on?" And they're gonna ask you, they're gonna ask you questions and they're not friendly questions. And he said, "Don't talk to them."

• 1:25:30Speaker 02

  And that was how I started working on these, the biggest movie productions in the world with the biggest directors was I was just this hungry kid who I just showed up with an attitude that I wanna work and you can pay me or not. And that was what got me in the door and then, once I was there, they basically said, "Don't tell anyone where you came from or how you got here 'cause they'll try and get you kicked off the set." And...

• 1:25:59Mike Rowe?

  What was this Spielberg movie?

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Oh, um, I was on set for Minority Report.

• 1:26:06Speaker 02

  Because I don't manage people. I work by myself. It's just me and a pilot my whole career. So watching how he manages 200 people was such an amazing thing to witness of uh I should get college credit just for being in the room with him and watching how he orchestrated that, how he dealt with problems. He would look around the room. He'd be talking to you. He'd be looking at something you just handed him. The whole time he's scanning the room because there's 50 guys working, building the lights for the the tank where the psychics, you know, do their visions for the the future predictions in the movie.

• 1:26:41Mike Rowe?

  Pre-cors, yeah.

• 1:26:42Speaker 02

  And um and he would he would spot a guy over here. Hey, uh, can we get some help for this guy on this light? And 16 people would lunge and help that guy to fix the light. And the whole time, he's doing other things and he's watching for things that aren't right or need more help. And he's sending people there the whole time.

• 1:27:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  While he's talking to other people and doing other things. And then there was a moment where he goes, okay, who are we waiting for? He's talking to a room full of 100 people. I just want to know who we're waiting for. And the room went absolutely silent and all of his employees went into hyperdrive because they didn't want to be named as the person that he's waiting for. And I just I watched that that mastery of how to move 200 people to the next step in his day.

• 1:27:45Mike Rowe?

  How to lead.

• 1:27:47Speaker 02

  And um and yeah, the guys who were there may have spent 20 years loading film before they were ever allowed to touch a camera. And if they knew I had just walked in off the street because I had been knocking on doors, it would have infuriated them. They would have had me kicked off the set.

• 1:28:04Mike Rowe?

  Sure, you butted. You cheated. You cut the line. You ate your boot.

• 1:28:11Mike Rowe?

  Um, last question, because I know we got to jump. Why'd you reach out to me after all these years?

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  I reached out because someone on my Facebook made a comment about your podcast. And a little light went off and I said, there's a podcast? You know, because I hadn't seen you in 20 years and I just knew you from watching your shows and seeing your Facebook posts like everyone else does. And I, there's a podcast? So I went and found it and subscribed to it and I just started listening to it. And then I just fell in love with the show and the way you guys talk to people. I love when you're just having coffee with mom and then I'm just hearing stories of your earlier lives and stuff. And I just, I told Chuck, I, I texted him one day, I said, you should get college credit

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  for listening to these episodes. And I really felt like some of these shows that you guys do and the stories that you're covering, I just feel are more valuable than, you know, some college classes that people pay a lot of money for. And I, for me, it was just such an honor. Because I, I sent an email to the

• 1:29:27Mike Rowe?

  Info@

• 1:29:28Speaker 02

  Info@microworks. And Nina, who runs my life, and she's kind of in charge of getting in touch with people and she's really good at it. She just laughed at me, she mocked me, she said,

• 1:29:40Mike Rowe?

  It's an info account, nobody reads that.

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  She said, oh, really? Info@microworks, huh? And about three days later, we both fell out of our chairs and she, because she's, she runs my email too. And she found Chuck's email in the spam box. And she goes,

• 1:30:02Mike Rowe?

  Your email went to his spam.

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  To his spam box, yeah.

• 1:30:05Mike Rowe?

  But meanwhile, we got his.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  We got it, yeah.

• 1:30:07Mike Rowe?

  That's hysterical.

• 1:30:08Speaker 02

  And so she's really good at that stuff. And she found it in the spam box and she goes, huh? They wrote back. And all I had said was, I would love to catch up with Mike. Because the last time I saw you, we were on W's Catch. And you said, Dave, you're not going to see me anymore. And I said, I'm not? And you said, no. Discovery Channel has decided that I can either be on camera for my show, Dirty Jobs, or I can be on camera here. I can't do both. And that's it. I never saw you for 20 years. And I just said, I'd love to catch up with Mike. And then Chuck wrote back and he said, well, this is, I'm the producer and, you know,

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  Mike said we could have you on the show. And I said, I know who you are. I listen to the show.

• 1:30:58Mike Rowe?

  You're Chuck.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  I go, what the Chuck? It was like, I can be on the show? Oh, my God, this is my favorite podcast. I just was felt so honored that I could come in and catch up with you and share some stories.

• 1:31:10Mike Rowe?

  Well, you buried the lead. We should have led with that.

• 1:31:12Speaker 02

  I'll say.

• 1:31:12Mike Rowe?

  Come out hot.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  Only took an hour and 20.

• 1:31:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  How many Emmys have you won?

• 1:31:18Speaker 02

  Funny you should say that.

• 1:31:20Mike Rowe?

  Wow. Did money change hands when I wasn't looking?

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I, I, you know, it's been 20 years. I just thought, well, you know, I mean, you guys are both in television. I know you have one. What do you have?

• 1:31:32Speaker 02

  It's funny, funny you should say that because I've worked on so many shows for so many years that I used to throw the Emmy invitations in the trash. I didn't have time to go to some party in Hollywood. And of course, during the Emmys, I'm working on some TV show somewhere. And today, my life has changed a lot. And last month, I had 28,000 comments on my Instagram. And one of them was a guy who was mad at me for something. He goes, you're an Emmy Award winning cameraman for Amazing Race? I wrote back, I said, thank you.

• 1:32:14Mike Rowe?

  You didn't know?

• 1:32:14Speaker 02

  I didn't know about that one.

• 1:32:20Mike Rowe?

  Oh God, that's funny. You know, Phil was on this podcast. Have you listened to that episode?

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  I can't wait. I did not know that. I would love to hear that.

• 1:32:28Mike Rowe?

  We were still locked down. We did it long distance. He was in New Zealand. But he was a terrific guest.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  Sig Hansen, too.

• 1:32:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  Gotta hear that one. That was one of my questions for you. I thought, I wonder if they've ever had the captains for Dead from Deadliest Catcher.

• 1:32:40Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know, I mean, we actually, those guys did the first national Zoom show during the lockdowns. We were probably in late April. It happened real, we were locked down in March. We were up in April and we were doing, trying to make sense of that. They're up in Alaska. They got no, or Seattle, wherever they were, the connections were all terrible. But we went on the air with it. And people loved it. And it's a really interesting group of men. It's an interesting source of perspective and information and stories, of course, you know. And I couldn't agree with you more. The country and TV is

• 1:33:25Mike Rowe?

  better for that show. Imperfect as it is, it occupies some pretty rarefied air. And the fact that you and I had a front row seat to it back in the day, what a kick. What an honor. It's nice to see you still wearing the hat, too.

• 1:33:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:33:42Mike Rowe?

  Best of luck with the fires.

• 1:33:43Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:33:44Mike Rowe?

  Watch your back for the earthquakes. The book is called Help from Above. How many have you written now?

• 1:33:49Speaker 02

  I've written two books.

• 1:33:51Mike Rowe?

  Well, I can vouch for this one. And something tell, what's the other one called?

• 1:33:54Speaker 02

  The other one is Help from Above, Book Two.

• 1:33:57Mike Rowe?

  Oh, clever. The sequel.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  What Lies Above the Clouds?

• 1:34:00Speaker 02

  What Lies Above the Clouds.

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  And your Instagram is AirborneCamera.

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  AirborneCamera. Yeah, you can find me most platforms. I'm on most of them. And you can find me with my name, David Alan Arnold, A L A N.

• 1:34:15Mike Rowe?

  Big life, brother. Great to catch up. Thanks again for reaching out.

• 1:34:19Speaker 02

  So good to see you.

• 1:34:20Mike Rowe?

  I'll give my, my mother your regards.

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  God bless you and God bless your mom. And thank you so much. And to you too, Chuck, because it's just an honor to be here. So, so thank you guys so much for having me.

• 1:34:31Mike Rowe?

  Our pleasure.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  You bet.

• 1:34:57Speaker 03

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• 1:35:28Speaker 04

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