Mike Rowe Invites Us Into the Classroom with New Show

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

In 2016, Mike and his team came up with the idea for a podcast which tips its hat to radio legend Paul Harvey, famous for his show “The Rest of the Story.” Mike’s version, “The Way I Heard It,” has a similar format, with Mike telling “true stories you don’t know about famous people you probably do.”  

Mike adds, “All good stories have a twist, and all great storytellers are just a little twisted. ‘The Way I Heard It’ is a series of short mysteries for the curious mind with a short attention span.” Mike also wrote a book of the same name, which includes 35 of his favorite stories.

One of those centers on Corporal Melvin Kaminsky, of the Army’s 1104th Engineer Combat Group, set during WWII’s Battle of the Bulge. The corporal climbed up a pole holding a German loudspeaker, swapped it out for one of their own, and proceeded to blast Al Jolson’s “Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye!” That Jewish soldier later became the famous entertainer Mel Brooks.

Having recorded more than 200 episodes, the team discussed bringing the stories to life with a TV show based on the podcast. The Story Behind the Story is that program and premiers May 7, 2022.

Each 30-minute episode starts with Mike telling the first part of a story in a 1920’s Art Deco Theatre in Santa Monica. As the story goes on, reenactments are shown, which illustrate it. “Meet the world’s worst baseball player. Investigate the death of a dictator. From code breakers to Hollywood bombshells, unlikely inventors, to naked bank robbers, Mike sits down with TBN president Matt Crouch to reveal the story behind the story … and perhaps a moral or two,” touts TBN marketing.  
 
A COLORFUL CAREER

Mike’s performing career began in 1984, when he says he faked his way into the Baltimore Opera to get his union card and meet girls, both of which he accomplished during a performance of Rigoletto. His transition to television occurred in 1990 when — to settle a bet — he auditioned for the QVC Shopping Channel and was promptly hired after talking about a pencil for nearly eight minutes. Mike worked the graveyard shift for three years, until, he says, he was ultimately fired for making fun of products and belittling viewers.  

“Thanks to QVC,  I became practiced at the art of talking for long periods without saying anything of substance, a skill that would serve me well as a TV host,” he quips. Throughout the ’90s, Mike had hundreds of jobs and says he relished his role as a chronic freelancer with lots of time to loaf around. Then he pitched a three-hour special to The Discovery Channel that resulted in the show Dirty Jobs. Viewers liked it and Discovery responded by ordering 39 episodes — a shocking commitment that Mike was contractually obligated to honor. For the first time in his career, he says, Mike went to work with a vengeance.

Over the next decade, Mike would become known as “the dirtiest man on TV.” He traveled to all 50 states and completed 300 different jobs, transforming cable television into a landscape of swamps, sewers, ice roads, coal mines, oil derricks, crab boats, hillbillies, and lumberjack camps. For this, Mike says, he has received both the credit and the blame.

Looking for a simpler way to make the rent, Mike says he began to seek out opportunities that didn’t require multiple showers. He narrated hundreds of documentaries about space, nature, war, serial killers, hurricanes, dinosaurs and how stuff works. (If there’s a wildebeest getting eaten alive by a lion, it’s probably Mike telling you about it.) As a public speaker, Mike is routinely hired by Fortune 500 companies to frighten employees with stories of maggot farmers and sheep castrators. And when Madison Avenue came calling, Mike said, “Sure.” He has forged dozens of partnerships with many iconic brands, and says he’s filmed approximately 1 million Ford commercials.

Eventually, Mike says he was overcome with a strange desire to give something back. On Labor Day 2008, he launched mikeroweWORKS, a PR campaign designed to reinvigorate the skilled trades. He’s since written extensively about the country’s relationship with work, the widening skills gap, offshore manufacturing, infrastructure decline, currency devaluation and several other topics for which, he says, he has no actual credentials.  

Mike once gave a TED Talk on the Changing Face of the Modern-Day Proletariat. In May 2011, he testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce about the importance of changing perceptions and stereotypes around blue-collar work and was asked back to testify to the House Committee on Natural resources in 2014.

In late 2013, Mike and Caterpillar worked together to launch Profoundly Disconnected, a new initiative focused on technical recruitment as well as the book Profoundly Disconnected®, A True Confession from Mike Rowe. 

Today, Mike runs the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which awards scholarships to students pursuing a career in the skilled trades. He is closely associated with the Future Farmers of America, Skills USA, and the Boy Scouts of America, who honored him as a Distinguished Eagle Scout. For reasons he says he can’t explain, Forbes identified Mike as one of the country’s 10 Most Trustworthy Celebrities in 2010, 2011 and 2012.  

In addition to his foundation, Mike’s website, mikeroweWORKS.org, focuses on all the issues related to the widening skills gap, aging workforce, high unemployment and millions of unfilled jobs. It also provides comprehensive resources for anyone looking to explore those vocations, as well as continue to focus the country on the real dilemmas facing our trade workers, miners and farmers.

Mike’s show, Somebody’s Gotta Do It, debuted October 8, 2014 on CNN, whose press room stated, “Rowe’s series Somebody’s Gotta Do It, brings viewers face-to-face with men and women who march to the beat of a different drum. In each episode, Rowe visits unique individuals and joins them in their respective undertakings, paying tribute to innovators, do-gooders, entrepreneurs, collectors, fanatics–people who simply have to do it. This show is about passion, purpose, and occasionally, hobbies that get a little out of hand.”

In 2017, Somebody’s Gotta Do It began airing on TBN on Saturday nights.