Why Comfortable Americans Are So Miserable | Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe

Mike Rowe (0:00)

Just three miles from here, I watched my friends' houses go up in flames in a fire that could have been avoided. A lot of my friends on the left said to me gently over the years, it's not really dignified, that job. You're covered in crap, you're working in a sewer. The loneliness epidemic has something to do with the fact that what dignified work really is, is work that benefits or blesses somebody other than you.

Alex Clark (0:22)

How do you get a generation of young people interested in the trades when their parents, which is my generation, millennials, are raising them when we were told, absolutely avoid the trades at all costs?

Mike Rowe (0:32)

We told a whole generation of kids that the best path for the most people was the most expensive path. The pressure we put on your generation to do that was scandalous.

Alex Clark (0:43)

Do you remember where you were when you found out that Charlie Kirk got shot?

Mike Rowe (0:46)

Yeah, I do. Charlie had interviewed me just a few days earlier. Charlie was so smart in a non-college-educated way.

Alex Clark (0:54)

He believed college was a scam.

Mike Rowe (0:55)

He did. I didn't disagree with him.

Alex Clark (1:21)

Who grew up in a house where you always heard this voice?

Mike Rowe (1:25)

My name is Mike Rowe, and this, and this, and this is my job.

Mike Rowe (1:32)

You really can't breathe.

SPEAKER_4 (1:33)

No, this is getting a really strong odor in here.

Mike Rowe (1:37)

You know, part of the reason I'm still doing this crazy show is because I do think that it's important people understand where their food comes from.

Mike Rowe (1:45)

Sure.

Mike Rowe (1:47)

I don't know how your life is going son, but in mine, there's always some nasty little surprise at the end of the day.

Alex Clark (1:53)

A local TV segment about artificially inseminating a cow eventually became Dirty Jobs and changed the way millions of Americans saw the people who keep the country running. Today, Mike Rowe is an Emmy-winning television host, best-selling author, narrator, host of The Way I Heard It podcast, and CEO of the Mike Rowe Works Foundation, which helps train people for careers in the skilled trades. We talk about what California reveals about America, why competence matters more than status, and whether usefulness is an antidote to loneliness and how to find purpose. Mike interviewed me last week on his podcast, so go listen to that one as well. It's called The Way I Heard It. If you're new here, we are trying to heal a sick culture physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Every week, new guests help us do just that. Please pause before we get started. Leave us a five-star review. Tell me how long you've been listening. This helps us climb the charts and become more discoverable. Please welcome Mike Rowe to Culture Apothecary.

So, you've spent, what, 20 years talking to people that literally built America?

Mike Rowe (2:55)

Twenty-five, probably, yeah.

Alex Clark (2:58)

And now we're in this place where, I mean, we are sicker physically, emotionally, and spiritually, I think, than we've ever been. I mean, from your vantage point, what do you think is going on?

Mike Rowe (3:09)

I wrote a book a while ago. It's not really a book. I was in business with Caterpillar, and they wanted to do something to draw attention to the work we were doing together around the skills gap. And I jokingly said, well, look, if I just write a book about the issue, you can publish it for me. Because I didn't have time to go to a publisher and go through the whole mishigash of writing a book. And they were like, yeah, do that. So the book is called Profoundly Disconnected. And it's really just a collection of essays I had written over the years that answer that question. And in short, it was a look at the things from which we've become untethered, fundamental, like primal things, and the way in which that happens, which is almost invariably in dribs and drabs, like we're all the frog in the boiling water.

And over time, for me, anyway, a lot of things that I grew up with and around became distant. So like I had a granddad, for instance, who was just the epitome of work, a skilled tradesman. And I had such a respect for the men and women who fashioned and built the things I depended on. You know, I had an uncle who was a farmer, and a real appreciation of where my food came from, and the individuals who made it happen, and the challenges that they dealt with every day as farmers. That was like front and center all the time. My dad was a history teacher, you know.