Dan Carlin
Appearances
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
Show 72 - Mania for Subjugation II
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Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
Show 72 - Mania for Subjugation II
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Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I, I used to, I, I, it is exactly. And I used to have these conversations with these, um, these, uh, venture capitalists. And I would say, you're going to have all these people making content. And they said, listen, anybody who's making content, anybody else wants to see is going to get paid for it.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And I said, look, you might be right that there's going to be a lot of trash out there, but there's going to be economies of scale. I said, if only 1% of this stuff is good, there's going to be a lot of good stuff. And I said, it's going to also jump lines that we can't jump right now. I mean, you don't have any 15-year-olds writing television for 15-year-olds.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
but you're going to have that with, with what's coming, right? You're going to have people who are writing for their own age group and their own age group may be far younger than anyone who would get hired. I did a, I did a Ted talk once and my kids were, were watching, you know, when I did it, we're watching a show where two kids, their own age. So we're talking 11 or 12.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So their parents obviously helped them, but they were doing a podcast and getting paid. tens of thousands or 20,000 people watching every single one. And I said, when I was a kid, I used to flirt when I was a child of making my own magazine, right? So you'd sit there and you'd get the neighbor kids and it was very our gang-ish and I would dress up in my dad's button-down shirt when I was like,
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
six and we're trying to do this thing. And finally, my dad had to sit me down and explain why that was just an unfeasible idea. And he talked about distribution and printing costs and all those things that would shut you down. And then I thought when I was doing that TEDx talk, I'm going to bring up these two little girls who are the same age as my little girls and are doing the exact same thing.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And if you had told me at six years old, I could have gotten 20,000 people reading my silly magazine, you know, in Toluca Lake, you know, I So but think about how that changes. You know, we talked about downstream. Think about what a downstream impact that has. You mentioned influencers. What a weird.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So I was like apologizing to him. And he said he just laughed. He said, I'm not worried. Meaning, you know, when you have two people who talk should be OK. But it just went where it went. And it touched all sorts of subjects, including some politics. So if that is something you can't listen to, don't listen to this. It's not a huge part of the show.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I mean, if you'd have gone back to the 50s, 1950s and used that word, it wouldn't have even had a meaning.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I don't think so. We have a Bohemian thing here, but I doubt it's the same thing. What is Bohemian Grove?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Oh, okay, all right. I didn't know that, actually.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Is this your big meeting with the Illuminati that you're going to spill here now? With the alien at the table and Homer Simpson.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
The biggest part of the show is probably about something that needs to be talked about more anyway. And not by design, just by where the conversation went. And, you know, I think good conversation is a dying art. But I'm getting older and it's normal to look back on the good old days and say, back in my day, we'd have long, deep conversations with people that were stimulating, right?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But there's crossover. So let me ask you, did they film that TED talk you did?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So I watched like Sir Ken, Sir Ken Robinson or Ken Anderson, the one who did the wonderful and a bazillion people have seen that. But you're right when it was live, it was a small room full of people. But I feel like I feel like everything you said about the audience and being there and the one off is all true.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And yet he was able, along with everyone else, to sweep that then into a place where people who live across the world and who never could have gotten to that event got to share... Well, first of all, not just share whatever he was transmitting, but, I mean, I'm looking at it from the guy...
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
When I did my TEDx thing, it was right when we were trying to get the very last, and I mean literally the day of, Blueprint for Armageddon out. And so I'm trying to remember this script I wrote because I never work with scripts and they don't let you have notes, right? And I'm trying to remember this while I'm taking phone calls about the artwork for the show. We're trying to get out that.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So it was one of those things where I turned to my wife. I said, I'm not going to remember this. And I was the featured speaker, too. So it was not the greatest day of my life. But when you get in there and you realize how many people can then watch it later, you realize, OK, so whatever work I put into that script was not just for those.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I don't know what the crowd size was, but but all of a sudden you realize, just like with a podcast, I always say I'd love to know. you know, in 40 years, how many people heard, we'll just say Blueprint for Armageddon 1, right? And the answer is, of course, you don't know. How many people will eventually see the Sir Ken Robinson thing? It's like, I compare it to like record albums.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And if you say, because people will say to me, well, how many listeners or subscribers or whatever do you have? And I'll go, that's not, I can't figure it out that way. I said it's like a Jimi Hendrix album. Right. If you say how many people have heard the Jimi Hendrix album? Well, that's a different number yesterday than it is today than it is tomorrow. Right. It's a move.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So what we're doing here is so so what you're doing with your your podcast, what I'm doing with mine is different than like Dirty Jobs, where that's something that that that, you know, it airs and people see it when they see it. But but our thing is ongoing.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Um, but they're particularly good if you happen to be, uh, just finding the open spot at the cocktail party. And if you're a wallflower like I am, you sit on the couch and you turn, you realize you're going to have to talk to the person next to you for a while. And it turns out to be, uh, Rick Rubin or somebody like that. We had a show we did with him and
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
What we're doing is a continuation, and the number of people that are eventually going to see it, maybe it's similar because how many people are going to see Dirty Jobs before it crumbles into the ocean, right? Unknowable.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Well, constantly is a nice word to use for how often I get stuff released, but thank you.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Yeah, the uncertainty principle, yeah.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
It's hard to have a bad conversation with him. So just, you know, I always say half the battle here in choosing a hardcore history topic is the topic. You pick an Alexander the Great. You're far ahead of the game because the story is already good. Now it's yours to screw up. You have Rick on the show and it's, you know, if the conversation is not good, it's your fault.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I'll tell you something about what you said is right, because because I used to talk about it to the the the blessing that we had, like when I was on the radio, making all the mistakes that would make like I've got a thousand cassettes somewhere in my garage here from my old radio days. I can't listen to any of them for 30 seconds. Right.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And it's one of those things where you go, thank God that was off into the ether. And if you didn't hear it live, you didn't hear it. And I thought it's sad. I think Dan Patrick said something about this, too. He would hate to see all of the mistakes that he made as an up and coming person replayed now. But he doesn't have to worry about that.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But you sure as heck do if you're coming up these days. I mean, any little learning error, like you said, faux pas, and if you've never been, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, in a live shot ever, I can just tell you, you don't always even know what's coming out of your mouth.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So to be held responsible for it for the rest of your life, you know, there was something to be said for the era we came up in and stuff being gone after you did it.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Everybody always says, what's your favorite show that you've done? And I always say, the next one, because I haven't screwed it up yet. But it is. I mean, you know a lot of painters and people like that. I'll tell you a story about my wife, just to get back to this idea of how we hold people responsible for things. But you need to do dirty jobs about what it's like to be a TV reporter sometime.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
It's Hardcore History. The show you're about to hear was recorded a little while ago because I got a Common Sense show out, and it took everything to do it. This got put on hold for a tad, and so you'll hear us refer to some events that are now in our past and whatnot, and me focusing inordinately on my major problem at hand, which was the Common Sense show, while I did this show.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I feel like that about today's guest. who is so multi-talented. He's done so many different things. He's got a podcast called The Way I Heard It, and I was on that twice. And that's when I resolved, okay, well, I'd like my audience to hear a conversation between us two.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So she was a TV reporter. She was a radio reporter at this time. And she's off at one of the mass shootings that happened. And so she's on the scene. She was one of the first people there. And she's a young reporter at the time. It was certainly the biggest story she'd ever worked on. So because she's on the scene, she we were CBS station. So she's feeding all the info from ground zero to CBS.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And so they're using her information across the country. So they go to her live and. they're using her information for all the background. So they essentially read everything that's going on and then go to her live in the field. Well, she said, everything they read was what I just fed them. That was everything I was just going to say to them.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So they just went to her live on all the stations around the country and they just did her whole spiel as part of the introduction to her. So you're a 25-year-old reporter now sitting there in the biggest story of your life with nothing to say. So what comes out of your mouth, you know, and, and then are you held? Thank God it's not a Michael Richards situation or whatever the equivalent might be.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And we focused, as I was about to say, before I was so rudely interrupted by myself and my own train of thought, we focused on what, for lack of a better term, you always hate when the communists take over a word or something because then it acquires all sorts of... aspects to it that you don't mean.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Well, that would be a good word for that. Absolutely. Well, and I hear it on radio. Like people will say – or people will bring up something I said 15 years ago, you know, in a political sense. And I'll be like, hmm, well, I'm sure I had some context when I said that. I just don't remember what the context is. Sounds like something I might have said. Yeah, but people –
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Well, so back in the old days before YouTube and before we were all broadcasters, this was something that would only be understood by people who had done the job. That's why I'd suggested maybe show what this is like for people, especially when you're beneath the 60 minutes level, right? When a lot of people are carrying their own cameras these days and shooting their own stand-ups, right?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But, I mean, now that we're all in that position, if you're doing the influencer thing or whatever you want to call it, everybody gets a chance to feel like,
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
what that might be and especially if they're doing this is why i'm so happy to not be doing anything live anymore because you feel like you could at least listen to it and go what the hell was i talking about there or whatever it might be right i mean like even this i mean i i'm enjoying this conversation i don't know what the hell it is but i'm enjoying the heck out of it i hope the audience likes it we haven't talked about history but i don't know i mean you do a history show we should pivot here you do you do a show where you talk about history and you talked about history and you do a
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
You do a Charles Osgood. Who was it? Paul Harvey. Paul Harvey. I don't know why his name escaped me because we used to listen to him every day. He and Charles Osgood had like the dueling shows. But you've brought that back from the dead. And I always say that what we do with hardcore history, people think it's a new thing. It's not a new thing. It's an old thing.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
It's the theater of the mind from radio brought back. But you're doing the Osgood and the Paul Harvey thing. You know, they're good ideas for a reason, right?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But I mean, the working class in this country, the people who, you know, that Mike focuses on in his show, Dirty Jobs, the people that make the country sort of operate and the need that we have for those people. So one of the things Mike focuses on in every conversation I've had with him is how much society has more of a demand than we can supply right now in terms of people who do these things.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I like George Plimpton a lot. He deserves more attention than he's had.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Now you talk about a dirty job, baby. I mean, and back in that era. So for the people who don't know, Plimpton wrote a book. He used to write books about jobs, but he would like you said he would do the job. OK, but it's one thing to do a job that we could imagine ourselves doing. One of the jobs Plimpton did was he went and played pro football professionally.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
In like spring training or something, but with a lot of pro football players, and then wrote about the experience. And I recall what he said. He said that if you got a book written by a football player, you would get a lot of inside information. But he writes about it as an expert who can't see what you need explained, right?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And so he would go, and there was a total amateur, and say, well, here's what you really notice when you're a guy off the street thrown into the NFL. Right. And that's a unique perspective. So I'm glad you brought him up. And you know, little known fact about Plimpton, and I could be wrong about this, so let's check this.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I think George Plimpton was one of the guys who tackled Sirhan Sirhan when he shot at RFK. Rosie Greer and George Plimpton once again working with NFL people.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Again, I'd like to have seen a Dirty Jobs on Mike Rowe's Dirty Job.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But people have no idea. So circle back to the sizzle reel that I did right way back when. So people you talk about hitting the X spot. Right. So when I always said I was the I was the most I was the Columbo. This is something that only our age group. I was the Columbo of TV reporters.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And then the other side of that coin, which is, if anything, even more important, which is the number of people in this society that would benefit from going into this line of work and maybe don't know how much they'd benefit from it.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
thing that's right and the hair was always looking back when I had hair like it was all you know so I was a crazy looking reporter I always thought in terms of rumpledness and everything and hitting the X's and all those things I knew I wasn't cut out to be a reporter when I got promoted and I made it into like the station's promos right so when they you know your trusted news team or whatever it is and you were supposed to start with a side profile and then turn to the camera and then smile with sort of that I'm a trusted you know you're
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So everybody did this in like three to five takes. And it was my turn to get in there. And on take 50, the cameraman who was a friend of mine said, dude, he said, this is not going to work and you know it. And that's when I knew because it's like you said, the hitting of the X. Right. So on the sizzle reel I was doing, that's what the whole thing was like. What am I doing with my hands?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
what's going on here or like they took after a while we're on like take 25 or something they bring in a wardrobe person and again you'll probably know this i never even knew this happened and they start um uh what the clothes hanging clips what the little and they they go behind me and they start pinching my clothes tighter and then putting clothes pins on the back of it and i'm sitting here going what the f am i even doing here
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
You know what I mean? And for people who are like this dirty jobs idea, I understand that getting into a sewer is awful and castrating sheep with your mouth is... I'm still trying to get over the damage you've done to me with that mental image, but there is something about the... I don't want to call it the fakeness.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I want to call it the sausage making of doing news and reporting and everything else because... There's something I think that would actually help the news audience to see more of how that sausage is made.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Yeah. Yeah. But I want, you know, we should get into all the crap that I'm going to take crap for and you're going to take crap for.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And so as a person who believes that in a healthy society, especially a healthy democratic republic like ours, making sure that that particular class of people is a healthy segment of your society is part of keeping the ballast of your society where you need it, right? It anchors society sort of to some important roots. And if you lose that or it suffers or it degrades or degenerates,
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Your job is to set up his stuff, yeah.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
it's not an interview it's a discussion i'm not the world's greatest interviewer as many of you know it's a weird thing to admit to oneself though when i've been doing it as long as i have so clearly been getting by on my looks all these years now this is a conversation that we're going to have on today's show and it's reminiscent of conversations we've had on other addendum shows um
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
It's the magic secrets, exactly.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
It's called making lemons into lemonade.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Well, then you're talking about damage at the roots and then the tree can fall over. Right. So you'll hear a lot of that in the show. And as I said, there'll be a little politics. There'll be some other things. Mike doesn't shy away from anything.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I did say that if it goes into any directions where we think about it afterwards and go, oh, God, that that's not something we really need to be talking about, that we could take it out. But we change nothing. We did no editing on content at all. This is as it appeared. And my goodness, at two hours and 22 minutes, you may have wished we took some stuff out.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And let me stop you, though, because I think there's a romanticization or we're romanticizing some things here, I think. And I think it has to do with so. So it's like when you talk about the age of authority. Or when people talk about when media was credible or or unbiased or, you know, fill in the blank. Right.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I try to tell people that, well, if you look at the history of media, we actually have about a 15 or 20 year era where I would consider it the golden age and everything else was. I mean, look, there's a reason we have freedom of the press, because in the 1780s and stuff, you know,
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
People would put out newspapers that we would today, you know, you and I remember the age when people would just Xerox a few pages together, staple them and stick them on everybody's windshield at the local market. Right. That was somebody's idea of of a new. But that's very close to what some of the newspapers were in, like colonial America and whatnot. And they were biased as hell.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And they would take shots at individuals because the person doing the printing didn't like this other individual. And then, of course, you know, you go through the whole era of American newspapers and stuff until you reach the late 1800s. And then we have the yellow journalism era. Right. And then you go to the 20s and 30s. And if you listen to a radio news broadcast, oh, my gosh.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
all of our spidey senses start going off like crazy. Cause it sounds biased as hell. It sounds like here's the official word from on high, you know, from the government though, not from the station. They're just parodying whatever the, and then we hit the Vietnam era. And if you look at the, the reporting up until about 67, it still sounds very much 1950s rah, rah, you know, good guys, bad guys.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And then the crap hits the fan, right?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
when we get like the 67 68 reporting and all of a sudden we have reporters in the field i'll never forget this you'll remember this this is an age thing i don't mean i don't mean you remember it live but you've seen it a million times just like i have when the it's during the ted offensive it's outside away i believe and the reporter is literally there at the firefight and this is you know these are not embeds these are i mean hunter thompson went to vietnam and almost ended up in the wrong area right because he's because you could just get a jeep get an interpreter and go right and
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So this reporter is literally interviewing our soldiers as they come down from shooting their rifles over a wall to reload. And he sticks the mic in the face. And I remember the one soldier, he says, it's hell. I just want to go home. Okay, well, that's where you get your war lost in the American living room idea, right? That's when we started embedding reporters.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But Mike Rowe is, as you know, the Dirty Jobs guy. He's narrated about 100 million shows. He has one of those voices that if you're in a business, as I've been for a long time, where people notice voices specifically, he's got one of those voices where you just go, well, you know. What are you going to do? It's like watching an athlete run a 4-2-40 and just go, okay, he's born that way.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
That's when, during the Reagan administration, during Grenada and stuff, they started all these new rules about how... Because the idea was we're going to manage this... because we used to manage it and it went better, but letting these people go rogue.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And then, of course, that was when there was, if you're looking at CBS, NBC, ABC, that's when there was a bit of unanimity in the way they were covering things. Once you get foxes and cables and CNNs and 24-hour news cycles and analysis up the wazoo, the entire thing changes again. And the part that people forget is that once upon a time, news wasn't about ratings, right?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
When Walter Cronkite and those guys were doing news, it was a requirement to own your broadcast license. And yet they tried to figure out a way to make it pay. And all of a sudden, Walter Cronkite would be selling cigarettes in the middle of the newscast. Right. People forget about that. Or Edward R. Murrow goes from interviewing movers and shakers to the latest movie star.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
People forget about that, too. But then once you get past that period, you forget that now this is ratings. Right. Right. This isn't we got to do 15 minutes of news as part of our public service to keep our broadcast license. And you have to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing it. It's also not the era where you and I both came up in when I was at ABC.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
We had to have confirmation from our own people before we went on with anything. And you couldn't quote another. First of all, you wouldn't want to quote another news station. Last thing you wanted to do in the era before, you know, taping and videotapes and stuff was to tell somebody to change the channel. So we would have our own people confirm everything.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So at no point would we at ABC go on and say, well, NBC News is reporting this. It looks terrible, right? So when that happens, there's a certain level of trust that goes with it.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
When those guys can simply say, hey, somebody else whose ass is on the line if this isn't real is saying this, but we're going to piggyback on the story and tell you about it anyway, quoting them, that's a bizarro world to the news world I grew up in. But all of those decisions, by the time I'm in news, are all financial, are all ratings related, are all audience related.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
To piggyback on the story you said, though, about these guys looking in the teleprompter, I will never forget, and every newsroom in America has something like this. In Los Angeles, it's earthquakes. So you have cameras for like quick little things.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I don't even remember what we call it, like Instacams or all these things that are sitting in the room, right, where you can do an update or a news tease or whatever. Right. But when the earthquake happens in Los Angeles, the entire newsroom stops.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I've never seen anything like it, by the way, because it's like, you know, an ant farm and everybody's going on their own little business, working on their own stories. The earthquake happens, everybody stops. And then the second the earthquake is over, everybody moves in a different direction because they know their whole job has just changed 180 degrees.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Everybody got that message at the same time. But what would happen is nothing was ready at the set where you do the nightly news for this. So you turn on the Instacam or whatever in the newsroom and there is no copy for the person who's on the... Right.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So all of a sudden, so all of a sudden, some of the most high paid and I will not mention their names because there are many of them are still alive. Some of the highest paid, most well-known anchors in America are up there fumbling over what to say. And other people that were not as high paid and not as well known just slay it live like that.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And let me just say that that was where I figured out what history majors who don't want to teach history can do. Right. History journalism is the first draft of history. So wouldn't you want a history major up there sort of trying to whenever the assignment editor would need to assign stories? And again, this is Los Angeles. So we had Hollywood reporters.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
What are you going to do? Most people can't run that no matter how hard they work. And Mike Rowe works really hard. But when you listen to that voice, you just go, okay, well, he's a really interesting guy with a ton of really interesting life experiences. And he's my guest today on the program.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
We had you know, you had you had your reporters for certain gigs, but we kept about 15 to 20 percent of the staff for hard news. And the number of people in the hard news group that were history majors, um, that was where I first realized, Oh, this is where you can go with a history degree. And they never tell you that.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Um, no rainbows and unicorns on this show, Mike.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Something that appeals to me about that, but I don't know what that says about me.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And we start off right like at the phone call where I'm apologizing for having done no prep for this at all. And at one point, Mike has to say, has the show started? So without further ado, my conversation with Mike Rowe. Hey, compadre, this looks weirdly familiar. It's all coming back to me. Dude, I've only been doing this for 35 years, so I just want to apologize for what today is like.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I'm totally bedeviled right now, yeah.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Oh, so you want your Michael Richards moment. I want your Michael Richards moment.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I got a different take on that. First of all, did Trump really say this is going to be great television? Oh, yeah. Okay. So right there is part of the problem to me. Because we talked about authenticity or seeing the sausage made. If you're able to be outside yourself enough at that moment, right? We've talked about the live shot and how you don't even know what you're saying. The TED Talk.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But if you can see outside yourself to the degree where you're realizing, holy hell, this will be great television, right there in my mind, you're not thinking about this correctly. We have to remember you're sitting across from a guy who's, I mean, you just have to think about the stakes from his point of view. Death, destruction, everything, right? Survival, the whole thing.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I don't even care about Zelensky as an individual. I'm just, look at what that country's been through, right? And to sit there and talk about it being great television is, You know, you talked about being whipsawed earlier. I mean, you know, you're talking hundreds of I just I can't get my mind around the seriousness of what Zelensky is dealing with, the unseriousness about what we are on our end.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
It shows. Look, I said years ago and I took a lot of flack for this 2014. I think it was where we were talking about the situation that was already going on in that area. And I had said to people that the U.S. should not be the ones backing this situation. But it wasn't because it wasn't the right thing to do or anything else. It was because we weren't going to be there down the road.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I mean, I told Ben, I said, I'd like you to minor depression here because, you know, I don't know if you ever heard the Common Sense Show, but our main concerns were like... The Constitution, executive power, the growth in executive power, which, of course, has been going on for 250 years. I mean, there's nothing new about that.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
It is too far away. It is going to cost too much over the time. And people, we have a tendency in this country, if you know the history, right? We are not in it for the long haul. That's not a slam. Americans do things they want to. I would say American archaeology is what happens when they're going to they're going to flood a whole valley with a dam that they're building.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And you have six weeks to get everything out of there. And instead of working with little teeny, you know, makeup dusters, you go in with bulldozers. And if you break crap, it's OK because it's just going to get flooded anyway. Well, American aid on the foreign front is very similar. We get in there. You know, if it's three, four years, a world war, we're going to take care of it.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But if it's a long commitment. Right. That's got to go through multiple administrations from various points of view. And it's it just we're not the people I told. I said in that show that the people that should form a regional alliance, which used to be big things before we got into these global ones. Right. With all the countries that feel threatened by Russia, just put them all together.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
You all have skin in the game. The last thing Russia is going to want to do is be at war with Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, all these places at once if they attack any of them. And I got savaged. I even said maybe we should consider handing that new alliance of multiple countries a nuclear weapon or two. I got a letter from a Romanian guy who said, we don't want your nuclear weapons.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
We don't want, you know, this will be fine. And now you want to turn around and go, well, I mean, it is what it is. It was never going to be forever. But it's terrible that people make these life or death choices based on these ideas that nothing is going to change when everything changes all the time.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
The problem that I have, as you know, the reason I'm in trouble here in terms of I can't figure out how I even react to this is that my concerns are always constitutional executive power. I mean, these are the things we've we've rambled about forever. Hyper partisanship. I've lost on every single one of these. Right.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And now, you know, it's like I'm complaining about the horse after the after he's out of the barn. You know, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how to talk about my concerns of things that are going to happen in the future when they've happened or are happening.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And and we can we and we simply to get to your point about authenticity, we simply cannot as Americans look at this and see the same situation. We are living in different realities. And I don't know what we do about that.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But I mean, all these things that we were so hyper partisanism, all that stuff. And I feel like instead of like talking about the dangers of the future. It's like a history show now. I mean, I feel like we're past... We've reached critical mass on a number of issues we've been talking about since I was starting on the radio in 92. And I don't know how to roll with that, if that makes sense.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I know. I feel the same way. I feel the hate. I don't feel the love. I just feel the hate.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Well, to answer your question, and I always say it's not – it wasn't a show about politics. It was a show about current events. And so I was talking about current events from like 92 on the radio. And then because that was so easy to morph that into a podcast in 2005, that's how that happened.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Hardcore history happened in 2006 because we looked at the white space that was available in this medium and said, well, you know, I mean, the other show was designed for radio and poured it over. We could do this, you know, with a full understanding of the lack of limitations in this new medium.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But I had a news director once. who back in the old radio days, I could tell, just hated my radio show. But he had a nice way of, like... He was like a backhanded compliment. He says, you know, the best part about your show is the connections that you draw to history. He goes, you should be talking more about history. That was his way of, you should be talking less about politics.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
It came through loud and clear. But to me, the history thing is an easy way to sort of set up context. And I feel like...
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
you know to get back to your point about sort of what's missing in in the way we do news and current events is context because context helps so much it's the difference between like you said seeing that whole trump zielinski thing from start to finish or seeing the curated you know uh tiktok version of you know 15 seconds or 20 seconds context really matters and and that's what we're starved for um with our lack of depth in the society now and and the quickness that we need everything um
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And you're listening to me at two times the speed, Mike, that completely screws up the baritone that I don't have in my voice. But I understand that. So the politics thing, I started off with a radio. I don't know how we got to me on this subject, but I started off with a radio show where basically everybody was my enemy and everybody hated me.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I was the Martian in the day part was what we used to call it because, you know, on talk radio, you're on a station with a bunch of other shows that were nothing like mine, but they were all very like each other. But I inherit that audience, right, because I come after this guy and then I lead into that guy. And so I get those audience and I was nothing like those people.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And so all I did all day long, there was no preaching to the choir. I was fighting with them all day long. It was angry. It was, you know, I used to, my wife says, cause she worked with me. She said, you get out of the, you'd have, you know, 20 cups of coffee. You'd be pounding the walls with your fist during the commercial breaks. And then you go back in for the fight.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And then somewhere along the way, Things turned my way for five minutes. And I don't know why that happened. It was the change in the zeitgeist. Right. But I didn't realize I thought, oh, things are turning my way. I didn't realize that it was just my way was the transition period.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So I went from being the Martian in the day part to all of a sudden I'm on the cutting edge and the cusp and things are. And then, boom, the wave just crashed. And now I'm more the Martian in the day part than ever. But in answer to your question, so I thought we would step away from the common sense thing for a while because I didn't feel like we were doing any good.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
The shows were getting really hard to do. They started sounding the same. The archives were up there. So it's not like radio where it goes into the ether. Like we said, you can just go listen to the show. So I started thinking, you know, there's an opportunity cost to this.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I can use this time for other things and I can have maybe more of an impact because I felt like people were shutting down if you didn't agree with the message. There was no open-mindedness. So I thought, well, maybe there's another way to do this. But then times heat up again and I start getting feedback from listeners that I'm somehow shirking my responsibilities in this society. Right.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
How can you not be talking about politics? I said, I'm not talking about politics because I'm not talking about politics. No, you have to. But then. If you come forward because we live in extraordinary times, which I believe, and you say you're peace because people are demanding it, well, then the other side's mad.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Ah, I've been waiting for a show for years where you talk about Biden goose-stepping on the White House lawn, but where were you, Dan? So in other words, you are forced to comment because we live in extraordinary times, but when you do, everybody hates you even more. And I've lost those calluses that I used to have back in the day where I was basically everybody's enemy.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I was the Martian in the day part. You know, you were ready to fight. And I lost those calluses during the five minutes where I was on the cutting edge of public opinion. And now I'm just sitting here going, how can I help? And I don't know how I can help anymore.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Which we should mention before we get out of here. I didn't even ask you how long you had. I just assumed I'd just keep you until seven tonight or something.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I'm going to listen to this at two times speed, just so you know.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Yeah. Or the the line from Mozart when he was asked how he hears the music. And he said, I hear it gleich alles zusammen at the same time altogether. And that's that's kind of how how this feels. And I didn't want to get into politics, per se. I just you know, there's a confluence of like normally politics is like a segment of our society.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
You were talking about your work program, and then I said we have to bring that up before the end of this.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Ayn Rand things thrown out there. Just dangling it.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Okay, I'm going to ask permission to ambush you here. You can't ambush me.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And I feel like all of a sudden it's gotten woven through the fiber of any other subject we might talk about in a way that. That like if you wanted to, you know, back when we were kids, it was, you know, you don't talk about sex, religion, politics at the dinner table, those kind of things. And I just don't see I feel like there's no escape. There's no place to hide anymore on this subject.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Okay, CPAC. Let's talk about that. So you speak there. Isn't that the same event where Bannon did his, I call it the Romulan salute because I don't know what it is. So I just figure I give them all the benefit of the doubt.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I'm still sleeping through the night. So what I want to do here is, look, you and I are not close, close friends, but we're friends. And the guy I know is a really decent guy. So sometimes I'll read these things that you're criticized for and I'll go, I'm not so sure there's much context in this compared to what I'm seeing live. But let's ask this. So so but no, but it's like you would say.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So if you're talking to your left of center friends and they're angry, you're talking to Glenn Beck. Then what are the what do you what do they say when you go to the and I realize you were talking about shovels and jobs and blue collar and all that stuff. But, you know, they'll say you're taking funding from, you know, these people, you're speaking to these people. So what do we say?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
How do we how do we how do we address this when you're ambushed by Dan on this subject? What's the right answer?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And I don't know. And again, when when all I've done forever is just be a loud mouth about it, it is so weird to feel like I don't know what to say.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Yeah. Listen, you know, your base level interesting is pretty good anyway, so I'm not so worried about it. But yes, we're in the show because Ben will cut it up any way we want him to cut it. And look, if we go into some tangent or area afterwards, I will not hold it against you if you say, you know what, that's not the best thing to do. And I may do the same to you.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I think we're past the color of collars, frankly.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
where we get into a lot of different subjects. Thank goodness I made the description of Hardcore History Addendum so broad that you could drive a You know, a lawyer could drive a truck through it in terms of saying, well, of course this fits into the feed. Anything fits into the feed.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I don't know yet what we're going to end up with. Like I said, it's 40 years, dude.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Okay, but let me tell you what I'm hearing here, and this might be worth getting into. See, to me, when I hear this, and, you know, you live in California. I'm from California, Southern California. And the one thing that I'm hearing there is I'm seeing the lines cross between need and immigration.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
How do those two, because when you say that, I'm thinking of the things that, you know, I remember when Ronald Reagan tried to overhaul the immigration stuff in the middle 1980s and the big pushback came from employers, you know, one state near the border, right? One state near the Rio Grande or one state near San Diego's, you know, border, whatever it might be.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And those people were saying, hey, we have jobs that need filling. Now, I remember the debate at the time about, centered around, you know, do you just not want to pay Americans the same? You know, you want to bring in lower paid workers so that you can undercut them.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But the bottom line is there was not a huge number of people, for example, wanting to get into the fast food industry for the long haul, right? You could get a kid like yours truly because I did all those jobs. I did a lot of dirty jobs, Mike, but I did the fast food thing. And it's not the kind of thing where I'm going to be there for 25 years if I can help it.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But a lot of the people I worked with, some of whom were from south of the border, they took that job so much more seriously that the employer would look at them and go, hmm, I'm going to invest a year training this guy and then he's going to leave. Whereas I can have this young lady from south of the border. I'm going to give her this job and she's not going to leave till I tell her she has to.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Where does the line between, oh, my God, we don't we have all these positions that need filling and the people that can fill them domestically are in the eighth grade versus, OK, well, we're going to throw a lot of people out of the country. And there's a difference, obviously, between undocumented and documented, the ones who get the Elon Musk visa versus the ones who don't get.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But but how do those lines cross, Mike, when you work with these open jobs and the need to get more people who maybe have skills in the game? I mean, where do those lines cross in your mind?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I mean, I should because I'm going to ask you for some pointers afterwards, just so you know, because I have no idea who they are.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Sure, but there's two sides to this. I mean, I totally, totally see that. Totally see that. But then the other side would be the old thing we learned in capitalism 101, right? That, you know, when there's the supply and demand question, that's when wages are supposed to rise, right? So when you say that these kids are in the eighth grade that are going to fill these shovel-ready type jobs—
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Well, then one would assume that your plumber, because there's not enough plumbers, can command more money to come and do the plumbing job. Now, obviously, if we all remember our econ classes and everything, there's a connection between that and inflation and everything else. It's like so. So I understand. It's like it's like if you gave the people at the Burger King restaurant.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Forty five dollars an hour to do their job. Your hamburgers are going to cost thirty five bucks. Right. Or something like in other words, everything is connected to everything else. So if we if we just take something aside and look at the justice question of this. Right.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Somebody who works all day long at a hard job loyally should be able to support health care and a place to live, although theoretically. Right. But if you actually were to mandate that, the unintended consequences that ripple through the system are terrible. So if we did it right, though, we could say something like, well, that's a minimum wage job.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
You should you know, that's a rung on the ladder. But then the plumber should be making one hundred and seventy five dollars an hour if there's not enough of them. In other words, if it both if it all works right.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
and the justice is applied equally across the levels of society, then at some point the people at the lower rung should be kicking ass because it's their turn to benefit from supply and demand. Does that make sense?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I'm not talking about the burger rung. I'm talking about the plumber rung.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Burger rung's a different thing.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I know, I know that. I have family members who run a business. I hear about this a lot.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Cause we talked, yeah, bring that up. Let, let, let's, let's expose that to the light of day. So yeah. Uh,
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Okay, so I've ambushed you a few times and I've been a little hard on you at times maybe, but let me turn it around now though and say what I love about what you're doing. I have a brother who says a lot of the same things. So for him, shop class, electrical class, all those things were the only reason to go to high school as far as he was concerned, right?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And he wouldn't have known where he would be today if not for those things because we're all built differently, right? And what I've always had a problem with the system in the United States that's designed. And listen, I have a problem with the way Europe does it too, because they have their own system that's got its pluses and minuses.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But this idea of people having to all go into the same bins when we're all built differently. My brother is a hands guy, right? He's going to, if something breaks down, I'm going to call somebody. He's going to do it. Right. And we're all built differently. Right.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And so if you say that we live in a world where people like my brother are always going to make an inferior living, he's just never going to get to those jobs where it's all mental and creative. And although that's a silly thing to say, because my brother would tell you that the different ways to build something or fix a car, it all involves the same level of creativity, just applied differently.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But the point is, is that by building by realizing that we all need avenues and different avenues work for people with different skills and tendencies and qualities. I think that's really valuable because I think what happens when you don't is you leave lots of people behind, right? And I think what you're arguing for, and I think it does get a little bit lost in the union versus non-union.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
The whole idea is we have lots of people, like you said, the line that sticks with me that you've hit me with over and over is how much these people can make and how few people realize that. A guy lived across the street from me. He moved now, but he was a he was one of those electricians that doesn't do like consumer work. He works for like the new home.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So they're building new homes and he's just doing a bunch of them at once. He makes a fantastic living. Right. High school grad. The whole thing works with his hands. He comes over and fixes things for me when I need stuff and doesn't charge me. I mean, salt of the earth kind of guy. But you need a place for everybody like that. And he's made an amazing life.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But if you had said to him, I'm sorry, you need to go this route and I'm going to filter you down where I think you should go, he would not be anywhere near as successful. So I love the fact that you're taking a giant swath of society that for a lot of human history had logical outlets for their talents. And we're in an artificially constrained time.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And like you said, not just artificially constrained, but really almost like a phantom
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
fake image of what it is right like you said if you told somebody you can make 250 000 a year as an electrician there's gonna be a lot of people out there that go really you know and that's a light bulb moment and so i don't think enough people are turning on that light bulb and you've done you you hit that so hard that that stayed with me so when this conversation's over and i can't remember one thing we said other than my wife's story in the live shot i'm gonna remember the fact that you know that we have these jobs out there where people could be making really good middle class maybe even upper middle class living
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And they don't know it. And I think that's helpful.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Yeah, totally. But let me let me stop you for a second, though, because let me imagine because because, you know, neither one of us is too big on on politicians and promises in terms of assuming that those are all for altruistic reasons. But let's imagine for a minute that those Democratic politicians that were trying to make college free for everybody were really trying to help Americans.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
If Mike Rowe has been asked by these politicians to come in and help flesh out this plan so that it's not just for the people who want to work with their brains, but people who really enjoy getting. See, I think even the way you and I are talking about it is somewhat insulting and neither one of us means it that way. Right.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Because like you said, if you have to choose between the guy who's going to do your creative video for you, who's making seven hundred thousand dollars a year and the guy who's going to clean out your toilet when it clogs. If the toilet's currently clogged and has been clogged for two days, that's the person you're picking. So let's not.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
So but my question is, is if you were the ones because there's two ways you can go. The way you can go, number one, is you could tell these Democratic politicians that the whole idea of this free education stuff is the wrong road to begin with. But the other way to go down it is to say sort of what you were saying.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that this only applies to a segment out there that needs help.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
How could they have broadened their thinking if you were providing the the advice so that whatever it was they were trying to, let's imagine, altruistically do helped more of these people that we're talking about than just that narrow group that wants to go to college and thinks that that's a good outlet for them? If my brother's going, I don't want to go to college. He did.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But I don't want to go to college. I want to go learn how to do this new skill with my hands. How do we have a plan where the politicians could start talking about reforms and bettering? You know, you talked about the eighth grade people. We're going to need to build our future submarines.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
How do they broaden that policy idea that they're applying in a college sense so that they're helping a wider swath of the people we need?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And so sometimes I try to bring you conversations, which I know a lot of podcasts do, and I'm jealous of all of them. All those podcasts that can just, you know, have a great conversation with someone and then boom, it's up on the feed for them and a piece of content's out. The only time I get a chance to imagine what that feels like is when I do the same thing like I'm going to do today.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
You know, my history, and it's funny because you talked to my producer and this is where I met him. We were involved in a tech company back in the late 90s, early 2000s when, you know, everybody was making money with tech companies. And what we were pushing was something at the time called amateur content. Because there was no name. There was no YouTube. There were no podcasts, nothing.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But it makes it makes sense. It's about your balance. You're trying to balance out what you see is an unbalanced situation. But let me point out something. And this is my brand. So and then I should let you just say whatever you want to say before I let you go, because I've kept you here for two damn hours. But but here's where there's a corruption element involved in all this, too.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
This is how I always try to I put on the lenses and I try to imagine the impact that money is having in all this. Yeah. Working class people aren't represented very well by our politicians because they are not the ones who give the bulk of the money. If you depended upon them for the bulk of your money, it would change what we're hearing.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And and again, when we say something like college for everybody, that's like don't tax tips. It's easy to understand it. I mean, you don't have to think about it long to just go, yeah, more more opportunity, more than it's it's always when you get down to ground level and the devil's in the details. And you mentioned the key point.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
When we have a one size fits all approach to a bunch of individuals that we're going to run into trouble simply. That's not quite math, but that's just realism. Right. When you've got me in one one area who can't use a hammer properly and my brother in the same pool who's who who's going to laugh at my abilities to not use a hammer.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I mean, we need different choices and either either the choice from the old days, which says you're the wrong class of person with the wrong amount of blue blood in your system. So you're going to use a hammer or the functional equivalent no matter what versus the other idea, which is that, hey, we all need to go to college and be philosophers. Neither one of those seem right to me. And.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And listen, man, I've kept you a long time. We haven't talked about... We talked about micro works. We've talked about some of the other things, but I don't want to let you go without letting you say anything you want to say now. I mean, what didn't I ask you about, man?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And we developed a common sense podcast growing out of my radio show as an example to show potential investors what this would sound like, because they literally couldn't envision it without an example. Right. And I had to do these. My job was to go to these investors and sort of explain to them what the world was going to look like when we could all be broadcasters.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And I recently went and read some of the material because I was cleaning out some files. And it is amazing how we can fool ourselves into thinking that it's all going to be awesome when we can all do because I'm sitting here. Oh, you know, you're going to be your own reporter. You're going to be on the scene. You're going to be. And then when you actually get there.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Yeah, you didn't say that, though. You haven't told that story to the audience. You just told it to me.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
and you get to see all the unintended downstream consequences that never entered into your head when you were pushing, you know, all of us being the news media and all that kind of stuff. It is fascinating, but I will say I do feel like, and I've said this to you before, that we're entering into guinea pig generation territory now.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Let me bring up a side thing that you keep alluding to, but you've not openly said it. But if it works out the way you're hoping, it's another angle on what you're talking about that I think— plays very well with what you're pushing forward.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And that is this idea that if you're able to reinvigorate the trades through education, skill education, all those things we've been talking about, you may end up lowering the cost for college. So in other words, by helping the people...
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
that maybe would rather not go to college and be happier if they get to work in a way that they're they're pleased with you might be making college in other words you might be satisfying that desire that those democratic politicians by simply eliminating the cost or trying to they're trying to do the same thing one's just doing it artificially and mandating it the other is is in creating the supply and demand aspect because i just want to point out for those who don't know
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
You can go to Europe, not to say that Europe is any better than here. Education at the highest levels is so much less expensive. You can go to some of the greatest universities in Europe for what you pay for the state school near you. And that's wrong. But there are lots of societal reasons why it's gone the way it's gone.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
It would be nice to see college costs come down as part of our efforts to help those who maybe would rather do something besides go to college anyway. That would be a wonderful little elegant sidebar to an idea that you're pushing.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I mean, I got two kids, and I try to tell my oldest, she was born in 2002, that the iPhone and the texting and all this stuff that seems like concrete bedrock reality to her is, is younger than she is and that she's the first generation that we're going to see what happens when this is the world you live in.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Got a lot of online courses, all that kind of stuff.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Well, we're complicated people. You know, I mean, that's the thing that I think a lot of this forgets. And this dovetails into everything we've talked about, right? The individual, right? The fact that we're...
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
to you know and i'll tell this story that i will let you go and i apologize for keeping you this long but but i told you the story when i was on the radio and the martian in the day part thing and i just had such problems with consultants and program directors who were trying to figure out how to market me and they would say the audience needs to know where you stand on every issue within five minutes of tuning in that's an absolute quote word for word right and i said that's not a human being that's a cartoon character and they said yes but that's what we need
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And then before you get a chance to get accustomed to that and sort of evolve around it, it's going to change again because the pace of change is speeding up to the point where, I mean, we go from MySpace to Facebook, from Facebook to iPhones, and it all happens so fast we haven't incorporated and absorbed the last big change. It's like Moore's Law. It's like Moore's law.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Right. We need. And the point is, is that we've turned into this place where if you're wrong on one thing in your giant repertoire of 100 things that you're talking about. People just throw you away now. And this applies to I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about me. You're wrong on one thing and you're out.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Well, that's the binary the way we've gone to a totally binary political society now where you're with us or against us. There is no nuance. There is no gray. There is no compromise. And we don't want you trying to talk to the other side. We want you planting your flag on our side and saying which side you're on.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
And by the way, if the story of what we're saying changes while you're here, we expect you to change too. I mean, that level of groupthink when you're a Martian in the day part doesn't even make any sense.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
You confused the hell out of me.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Yeah, was the criticism legit or were you just trying to get more people to pay attention?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
really know what i'm talking i was just gonna say that it's a weird thing but not a lot of people not a lot of people are in this position and when you're in it it's it's bewildering and so to have somebody where you could just go what the hell and have them i mean you clarified a few things for me you helped me out in a way but i mean it is and for the how did we this happens every time we talk when i've been on your show a few times it just goes on forever but i mean this is one of those things where um
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I don't know how to behave in the current situation we're in. And I realize that you're not in my lane, which is a very minefield of a lane. But we're all having the same problem. Like, what do we say? How do we say it? And most importantly, I don't mind getting in trouble for saying things. I want to be effective. Right? I want to help. And, like, people are saying, we need a show from you.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I'm not against doing a show, but I want it to be more than just bitching and moaning.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
Listen, I would watch that, though, man.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
That's one of the nice perks of the gig. Listen, man, I've eaten up your time. Thank you for being so generous with it. Yeah, and I mean, hope I don't cause you any problems.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
How do you argue with that? Thanks, buddy. I appreciate you taking the time.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
My thanks to Mike Rowe for coming on the show today. We appreciate his time. I would remind you of all the things he's done, but who has that kind of time, even at double speed? You can catch his podcast, though, the way I heard it. It's on YouTube, wherever you get podcasts also, or you can just go to MikeRowe.com and get it there.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I'm going to be appearing at the Moore Theater in Seattle on April 11th, 2025, if you haven't got anything better to do and you're nearby. Love to see you out there. And in the meantime, stay safe, everybody.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
I was going to say, this is really insider stuff we're going into now. Let's explain what a sizzle reel is. Sizzle reel is what you do when you're pushing a TV show and you do a little sample, right?
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum
EP32 The Show with Mike Rowe
But I know that the conversation is going to go a long time because I've talked to this guy before on his podcast. And it always just I mean, we we turn the microphone off at a certain point. That's a good way to put it. I told his producer I was so fixated because I'm a unit tasker, not a multitasker on the common sense needs at hand that I didn't plan anything for this show.