[9] Rowe has hosted On-Air TV for American Airlines, No Relation for FX,[10] and New York Expeditions for PBS.

In the early 1990s, Rowe hosted the CD-ROM music trivia game Radio Active (as "Bobby Arpeggio") for defunct Sanctuary Woods.

When told in a 2008 episode of Dirty Jobs that the gourds he was working on would be sold via QVC, he said he was familiar with the corporation and proceeded to ad-lib a sales pitch for them.

[12] In the 1990s, Rowe hosted Channel 999 instructional guide for the defunct PrimeStar satellite television service.

During this time, he appeared in a news segment called "Somebody's Gotta Do It", profiling a number of unpleasant professions; the concept later grew into Dirty Jobs.

In September 2012, Rowe hosted a three-part series How Booze Built America on the Discovery Channel.

CNN announced on April 10, 2014, that Rowe would host Somebody's Gotta Do It, a new "Original Series" that began in the fall of 2014 lineup.

Other narration work by Rowe includes Mystery Diagnosis, Drydock: A Cruise Ship Reborn, Southern Steel, Powertool Drag Racing, Scavengers Rock (Animal Planet), Airplane Repo and the opening of Ghost Hunters, a Syfy series from the producers of American Chopper.

[17][18] He hosts a podcast called The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe, in partnership with Red Seat Ventures.

His tasks include finding and counting stinky cheese, sorting trash, and giving his pet pig, Spot, a mud bath.

[20] In 2012, Rowe appeared in the 'Baxter & Sons' episode of the ABC sitcom Last Man Standing playing the role of Jim Baxter, the brother of Tim Allen's character.

In June 2013, Mike Rowe spoke to the delegates at the 49th Annual National Leadership and Skills Conference for SkillsUSA in Kansas City, Missouri.

This first project of the season spotlights "Generation Next", an organization that is training young people to learn the building trades.

[27] On Labor Day 2008, Rowe launched the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which is focused on the decline in the blue collar trades and the crumbling state of infrastructure.

During the 2012 presidential election, Rowe contacted GOP candidate Mitt Romney and appeared with him on September 26, 2012, at a campaign event in Ohio.

While in high school in 1979, Rowe saw a poster in his guidance counselor's office that read "Work Smart, Not Hard".

He has stated that he feels alienated from the current U.S. political system given that both business owners and regular workers receive, in his opinion, unfair criticism, with issues such as geographical mismatching and a lack of job training causing unemployment.

Rowe has stated that he is a gun owner and a supporter of the U.S. 2nd Amendment, but not a member of the National Rifle Association because he is "not much of a joiner".