How do you go about finding these jobs?
Well, when we started, I had a list of about 20 that I wanted to do. "Dirty Jobs" was this real simple tribute to my granddad. It was supposed to be three one-hour specials, and it got out of control. People saw those early episodes, and they wrote to me. They didn't write to me to say, "Oh, you're terrific," or "Oh, this show is so great." They wrote to me to say, "You ought to come and meet my dad, my brother, my cousin, my uncle, my sister, my mom, right? Wait until you see what they do." That's when I realized, you know what? This is a very personal show. It's personal for me to start, but it's also personal for the viewer because they see themselves sometimes in me, and they see themselves in the people that we profile.
So what I did after I finished those first couple dozen or so, I just opened a chatroom — this was before Facebook was a thing — and just said to the fans, "Look, you do it. You program the show, you know? You tell me what the job is, where the job is, and why I should do it, and I'll take all that to the production company, and we'll be in touch." In that way, the hosts of "Dirty Jobs" became the people we profiled, and the programmers became the viewers. That's a long way of saying that's where we get our ideas from, the people who watch the show. It's always been that way.
That's really special. Is there any job that hasn't been profiled on the show yet that you would like to try?
No. [Laughs] I mean, really, I'm sure there are jobs out there that I haven't done, but we passed that point a while ago. The truth is "Dirty Jobs" was never really about the dirt or about the job. It was about the people. You'll run out of jobs eventually. You'll certainly run out of industries.
The first time I went in a coal mine, it was amazing. We learned a bunch of stuff. It was a bituminous coal mine in Pennsylvania. And then a couple months later, I thought, "You know what? That was so good. Let's go into an anthracite coal mine. Let's see the difference." And then that was so good. I thought, "Well, let's go into a bauxite mine. Now let's go into a borax mine. Let's go into a copper mine. Let's go into a gold mine. Let's go into an opal mine." So we wind up doing nine shows on mining.
The same thing happened with fish boats. The crab boat was exciting. I bet a lobster boat would be fun. How about a haddock boat? Suddenly, we started doing a lot of similar jobs that had important differences. But mostly, it was the people. It was, "I want you to meet this guy because what he does is not only interesting, but it impacts you." As long as I can draw a line between the guy in the opal mine or the rod buster or the skull cleaner or the golf ball retriever, or fill in the blank, as long as I can find a way to make it relevant to you, the viewer, that's what the show is.
Anyway, no, I don't have a list of jobs somewhere that I'm dying to try. But I'm still standing by to hear about sponge divers. I mean, somebody said, "What about sponge diving?" I said, "Where do we go?" They said, "Tarpon Springs, Florida." I said, "Okay. I'm there." Two weeks later, we're free diving for sponges. I'm sure there are other jobs like that out there I just haven't heard about. I'm just not looking for them. I'm just waiting to see if somebody brings them and if the network says, "All right. Go do it."
