By Michaela Gordoni
Mike Rowe’s YouTube documentary, PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW, highlights Americans who are making an impact.
“You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and then, you’ll laugh some more,” Rowe said of the show.
The series is a reboot of Rowe’s Facebook show, RETURNING THE FAVOR. The series stars people like retired veteran Steve Hotz, who started a blacksmith forge for other vets to help them heal from their time at war, The Washington Examiner reported.
Hotz served on a military counterterrorist team. He got injured and was left with one blind eye, PTSD and a fused spine. At a blacksmithing event, he met a Marine who was struggling deeply, though Hotz didn’t know it.
“We were just cutting up really hardcore together, and there was a girl crying in the corner. I was like, ‘Oh, maybe that’s his girlfriend or something.’ I might’ve said something offensive,” he explained.
When Hotz went over to her, she told him “she was his therapist, and that he was in such bad shape he couldn’t go anywhere without her. She said she was crying because the interaction between him and me was the first time he had talked in two years, and there he was talking to me like nothing was wrong,” he said.
That inspired him to open the Black Horse Forge, which offers free classes to any vet, active military member or first responder. Thousands have said the nonprofit has saved their life.
Related: Everything We Know About Mike Rowe’s New Series with Angel Studios
Rowe said of Hotz, “I mean, the metaphor itself is huge, and he’s so unassuming. He’s a guy who literally saved himself by going in, figuring it out. And when he saw what it did for other people, it became his life’s work.”
“That’s the show. Great big ideas, really modest individuals trying essentially to prove that they can move the need,” he continued. “And they do.
“We’ve done it with foster care, we’ve done it with illiteracy, and we’ve done it with homelessness. So it’s a micro-macro kind of approach. It’s really a love letter to bottom-up solutions,” he said.
Movieguide®’s review of PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW Episode 1 states it has a strong moral and Biblical worldview. Many of the “people you should know” are Christians and church-based organizations. The caveat is that Rowe does use some foul language and has an irreverent attitude regarding the church.
Currently, there is only one episode of PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW out on Rowe’s YouTube channel, but there are more to come.
Read Next: PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW: Episode 1.1
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