The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

Vice President JD Vance joins Mike for a wide-ranging conversation about faith, family, and the future of America. From the dignity of work and the lessons he learned in the Marine Corps to his return to Christianity and the deeply personal journey that inspired his new book, Communion , Vance reflects on the people and experiences that shaped him. He also explains why America's energy future may...

Before he became the Father of His Country, George Washington was a young man with doubts, ambitions, failures, and a calling that would eventually shape a nation. Mike sits down with filmmaker and entrepreneur Jon Erwin to discuss his new film Young Washington , and to explore the remarkable true story behind America's most iconic founder. Jon also shares how he launched The Wonder Project and hi...

What if school could be reimagined from the ground up? This week, Mike sits down with entrepreneur and education innovator MacKenzie Price , the founder of Alpha School , a model that's attracting global attention for helping students learn twice as much in half the time. Using artificial intelligence, personalized learning, and an unconventional approach to education, MacKenzie is challenging nea...

In honor of Father's Day, we're sharing several hilarious chapters from the audio version of Peggy Rowe's bestselling book About Your Father.  Buy all three audiobooks from bestselling author Peggy Rowe for $30 or $15 individually at: https://bit.ly/MomsAudiobooks Tip o' the hat to our excellent sponsor  PureTalk.com/Rowe Pure Talk is matching donations dollar for dollar until they hit two hundred...

Why do so many of the things that make us stronger, healthier, and happier require doing things the hard way? Mike sits down with bestselling author, journalist, and researcher Michael Easter to explore the surprising benefits of discomfort, challenge, and voluntary hardship in a world engineered for convenience. Easter, whose work has appeared in Men's Health , Outside , Esquire , and Scientific...

Spontaneous Order might sound like a contradiction, but according to author, entrepreneur, and educator Connor Boyack , some of society's most important innovations emerge without a master plan. Mike sits down with Connor, the bestselling co-creator and co-author of The Tuttle Twins book series that inspired the hit animated show, founder and president of the Libertas Network and a leading advocat...

Mike Rowe sits down with Blake Scholl , the former Amazon software engineer turned aerospace entrepreneur who walked away from Silicon Valley to revive supersonic passenger travel. As the founder of Boom Supersonic , Blake explains the century-long pursuit of faster flight. From the Cold War race to break the sound barrier to the rise—and fall—of the Concorde, Blake explains why supersonic travel...

Mike sits down with master card mechanic and sleight-of-hand expert Jason Ladanye , whose impossible demonstrations of gambling moves and psychological deception have earned him a reputation as one of the best card handlers working today. Jason explains how a childhood obsession with cards—and an influential mentorship with legendary magician Darwin Ortiz—shaped his career performing around the wo...

Founder and president of Montana Knife Company Josh Smith sits down with Mike to discuss his unlikely path from working as a lineman to becoming one of America's premier master bladesmiths. The conversation dives into the grit, craftsmanship, and obsession with quality that helped turn a small operation into one of the fastest-growing knife manufacturers in the country. The two also talk about the...

In this episode Mike explores the growing race for critical minerals hidden deep beneath the Pacific Ocean with mining executive Tom Albanese, Chairman of American Ocean Minerals and former CEO of  Rio Tinto and Vedanta Resources . Tom has spent more than four decades in the global mining and metals business, overseeing some of the largest resource projects on earth. Now he's focused on something...

In this special LIVE edition of Coffee with Mome, Mike heads home for Mother's Day and sits down with the woman who taught him everything worth knowing — his mom, Peggy Rowe . Recorded in front of a live audience at the place Peggy refers to as The Home, this episode is filled with the warmth, wit, and wonderfully sharp observations fans have come to expect from America's Grandmother. From family...

Mike sits down with author and Cultural Revolution survivor Xi Van Fleet for a conversation that's equal parts personal history and cautionary tale. Xi recounts her childhood under Mao Zedong's China, where conformity wasn't encouraged—it was enforced. As a schoolgirl, she watched teachers publicly humiliated, neighbors turn on each other, and young people mobilized as ideological foot soldiers. E...

Former congressman Jason Altmire has spent years in Washington—and even more time outside it—making the case that America's biggest opportunity isn't behind a desk, but behind a welding mask, a set of tools, or the wheel of a big machine. Now leading Career Education Colleges and Universities , he's on a mission to close the skills gap and reconnect hard work with real opportunity. In this episode...

Matt Ebert didn't set out to build a billion-dollar business—he just wanted to fix cars the right way. Today, he's the CEO of Crash Champions, one of the fastest-growing collision repair companies in the country, valued in the billions and trusted to bring wrecked vehicles back to life. Mike sits down with Matt to unpack what really happens after a crash, why the skilled trades behind collision re...

Neon lights aren't supposed to be profound. They're supposed to buzz, flicker, and sell you a cold beer or a bad decision. But Evan Voyles—founder of The Neon Jungle —has made a career out of bending that expectation into something stranger… and maybe a little wiser. Evan is a self-taught craftsman who works with fire, gas, and fragile tubes of glass to make signs that don't just glow—they say som...

Numbers don't lie—but they can obscure significant information. In this episode, Mike sits down with economist, demographer, and Harvard-educated brainiac Nicholas Eberstadt to explore a different kind of arithmetic—one that measures not just how many Americans we have, but how we're actually living. In his latest book, America's Human Arithmetic, Nick digs into three uncomfortable truths: first,...

Adam Carolla sits down with Mike for a wide-ranging, no-holds-barred conversation on comedy, culture, and California. Adam breaks down his no-nonsense approach to making people laugh, building a podcasting empire, and telling the truth as he sees it—whether it's popular or not. The two also take a hard look at the Palisades more than a year after the fire, the growing frustration with California's...

What does it take to rebuild America's industrial backbone—and who's actually going to do the work? Mike sits down with Michael Cadenazzi, Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy, to discuss his role at the Department of War (DOW) and his mission focused on restoring the muscle behind America's might. Cadenazzi makes the case that while the U.S. still produces world-class engineers a...

Mike talks with Jan Jekielek , senior editor at The Epoch Times and host of American Thought Leaders , to discuss his new book, Killed to Order: China's Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America's Biggest Adversary . It's an explosive investigation into allegations of state-sanctioned organ harvesting in China. Jan shares what he's learned from years of interviews with doctors, inve...

Mike chats with Jeff Childers—the attorney-turned-writer behind the wildly popular Coffee & Covid Substack —for a wide-ranging conversation about media narratives, pandemic politics, and the strange new world of citizen journalism. What began as a daily blog written during lockdown has grown into a must-read for hundreds of thousands of devotees looking for sharp legal insight, media criticism, an...

Mike talks with Will Swaim , CEO of the California Policy Center . California has long marketed itself as the future—a place where trends are born and the rest of the country eventually follows. But Swaim argues that when it comes to public policy, that's the last thing America should do. Despite spending roughly $24 billion, California still leads the nation in homelessness. The state ranks near...

Mike sits down with comedian, voiceover pro, cookbook author, and culinary entrepreneur, Anna Vocino . Anna shares how her Eat Happy journey—from her bestselling cookbooks Eat Happy , Eat Happy Too , and Eat Happy Italian to her podcast Fitness Confidential —grew out of personal health struggles and a lot of hustle. She also pulls back the curtain on her voiceover career and explains why getting a...

Mike talks with comedy legend David Zucker , the creative force behind the movie Airplane! Zucker shares what it took to make Airplane! —pitching a spoof no one quite understood, casting serious actors to deliver absurd lines with a straight face, and why making his co-writers laugh was the secret sauce to pleasing the audience. He also discusses his new " Master Crash " course, where Zucker teach...

Johnny Carson didn't just host The Tonight Show —he defined late-night television. In this episode, Mike talks with comedian and pop-culture historian Mark Malkoff , author of the book Love Johnny Carson , about Carson's quiet influence, off-camera generosity, and the unlikely ways his legacy still shapes comedy today. It's a short history lesson, a love letter to show business, and a reminder tha...

Mike sits down with West Virginia Congressman Riley Moore , whose path to Capitol Hill began with a welding torch. Moore shares why he chose the skilled trades early in life, what that work taught him about dignity and opportunity, and how those lessons now shape his approach to policy. The discussion centers on Moore's new legislation, the Jumpstart Savings Act , a proposal designed to remove fin...