ramble [Music] welcome to best friends back all right the show where two High School best friends try the best friend thing again I’m Stevie win Levine and I’m naking homafat and today we’re going to be talking about ourselves the who the what the where the when the why of best friends back all right we’re recording I can’t believe you finally 15 years later that and also I can’t believe we’ve gotten through the intro uh due to the number of technical issues that we’ve had and also the um plight of sickness I came down with last week that caused us to move this whole recording twice and it almost didn’t happen yeah how how are you doing I’m I sound I think I sound a lot better than I sounded previously and for a touch of symbolism I did finish the last tissue in my tissue box from last week right before I came to the studio to to record with you well I feel beautiful yeah you know it’s closing a chapter um I told Cassie that I finished the tissue and she said well why didn’t you tell me because I could have gotten other tissues and I was like no babe no it’s it’s I was telling you because it’s on purpose yeah right right um well you have two sleeves just in case you need them ew I would never um okay there’s there there are people listening hopefully who have no clue what the heck they’re listening to so um hi Mom why don’t you think your mom’s listening oh 100 I thought you said that you were gonna tell her not to listen I told her that it was not geared towards her or her demographic but she has been asking me every day when it’s going to come out so she can tell all her friends and that’s her problem you know I’m ex I’m excited for her to discover things about me and keep them are you okay so you’re feeling okay about that I’m feeling okay about that yeah I um I talk to my parents every Sunday as you know it’s the Lord’s day um and so I talked to them yesterday they were in uh Walmart of course um doing some grocery shopping oh I talked to my mom first and immediately she was like I heard the trailer for your new podcast I’m so excited I love it and I was like thanks Mom um that’s about all I want you to hear yeah I was like it’s not I would like I don’t really want and she was like you don’t want me to listen to it do you and I was like it’s just not not for you Mom I was like if you really want to listen like I’m totally fine with it but um you know I mean I I left the we said in the in the trailer that neither one of us was having sex in high school so I feel like she has all she needs to know and she can just move on I mean my parents there was never any question for them that I wasn’t having sex so those were just like stating the facts yes and yeah okay well my dad who I talked to you know he he he’s the second talker um he I told him you know I told Mom I I would prefer if you don’t listen to this podcast and he goes well Stephanie we don’t listen to 99 of the stuff that you make and I was like thank you Dad that is so kind what a great reassurance all right the most thoughtful thing you could do for me yeah um okay there are people listening who don’t know what they’re listening to uh you know we we advertise the podcast as two best friends who haven’t been friends since high school we are not really lying about that saying we haven’t been friends seems like me you know we haven’t not been nothing nothing right it’s not like anything happened yeah exactly but it’s been like 16 years but 15 sounds better so more than 15 years um so I know for a fact via the comments on a couple of our social posts that people are tuned in for this first episode just to see how much of a [ ] show it is because they want to see if it’s super awkward between us and they wanna these are the type of people that like living in second-hand embarrassment I cannot stand second-hand embarrassment but wow we have some like accidents supportive really supportive group yeah yeah what is the phrase for people who oh Rebel ambulance yeah I was thinking like an ambulance Chaser come on Harvard What’s the phrase oh I’m sorry uh um you know people I don’t know just generally like people that are looking for tragic entertainment yeah which is like we should add that tag to best friends back on me culture friendship tragic entertainment so everything that we’re talking about is real this is not a fake setup for a podcast I’ll also say throughout the series we are going to be talking about real people who exist but we don’t want to trample on anybody’s toes offend anybody um so we’re going to do a fun thing where we uh go back and record over their voices with obviously very fake names um that I’m sure we will create and just be you know um excited by our own creativity as we create these names after the fact but just a heads up that um you know it’s not like we went to school with them someone named like Lucinda Melvin or whatever Lucena Melvin sounds realistic to me though it’s nice it’s too many syllables to make it like like work I think we’re getting notes two minutes okay uh and you know in order to rekindle our friendship what we’ve decided to do is spin this first chunk of episodes talking about High School themes adolescent themes so um you know we’ll be going through various different relatable High School topics and uh adding in our kind of personal experience and one thing I forgot to tease at the top of the podcast I have my freshman year whirlygig yearbook oh uh and you wrote something in it and I cannot understand a single [ ] thing that you wrote in this and I want you to try and translate everything because I’m curious what my handwriting looked like with it that’s great um you know there might be a lot of mythical listeners out there right now uh Nagin I I want to give you a chance to to introduce yourself um to to our listeners okay hi guys uh I’m Iranian American I was born in Tuscaloosa Alabama and raised in North Carolina um I’m a middle child up a very very tight-knit Face Time heavy family okay really oh yeah group group FaceTime situation it’s um once in a while group Face Time situations we have nieces but usually one-on-one FaceTime so if I’m calling you I have nieces oh right and everybody wants to see the chill everybody wants to see these four-year-olds oh they’re adorable so it’s like any opportunity to see their faces but if I’m talking to people one-on-one it’s often in face time um what else and oh before I became an actor I helped build a global university called Minerva a little shout out some of my Minerva students back in the day pulled up a couple mythical bits that included me back when we weren’t friends a couple of mythical bits that included you oh like I uh yeah remind me something there was a photo from from from oh was it the school it was the spray tan photo it was a spray tan photo and uh that was my first kind of like reminder that oh yeah Stevie still exists oh thank you so much well whatever it was a great photo I looked you know naturally tan as I am uh beautiful you’re beautiful oh God is this going in a different direction yeah it didn’t feel right it didn’t feel um right long pause I’m sorry if anybody’s listening to this and it’s like oh my God she has such an attractive voice is she single I have a husband guys that’s what I was gonna say that’s what you haven’t said yet I have a husband his name is Zach we’ve been together for about seven years we met on a dating app and live in the real world and we have a dog named kishmish and he has um a fleet of small cars well he did he did okay I need to catch up well so Nadine and I when we did the promo shoot for this podcast she came out to um La so we went out to dinner and that’s like really the longest conversation that we have had you know in the past 15 years but um but I did think that we’ll get into at some point how you guys met and I really like that that story and um and his Fleet of little cars which I feel like is a great tease uh yeah oh yeah he’s a tall man with a lot of little cars that’s also how I describe my partner um I have a beautiful partner of of 10 years um who will be listening to this podcast uh at least the first episode oh come on Cassie um yeah does she also listen to just like a minimum amount of stuff that you do here’s that she hears it all at work all right so I am uh for for people listening that don’t know I’m the um Chief creative officer at mythical and I’m the executive producer of of all of our our content and our Flagship show is good mythical morning we just celebrated 10 years of the show so we have over 2100 episodes and that’s just that part of the show there’s also Good Mythical More and there’s also mythical kitchen and everything else that we make so um does any member of my family watch an appropriate amount of my content no they’re very over it which means I can say whatever [ ] I want because I know they won’t be watching um so if you stumble upon a compilation of every vagina joke I’ve ever made on good mythical morning or more um just shoot it right over to my mom so she can catch up on what’s been right going on and that’s on Facebook right yeah yeah yeah the copy is going to be like ketchup on Stevie’s vagina jokes um click click click click click um I I don’t know if you knew this about me I’m originally from uh South Texas Harlingen Texas and then move do I know that about you we went to spring break at South Padre Island oh Texas Texas came up yes I’m sorry I okay we’ll get to my fears and nervous things but one of them is uh that I have zero memory although that trip is very very memorable um but um he grew up in North Carolina um and I think that’s all oh very gay I’m very gay not North Carolina is not that gay but me is part of my intro um that’s what I wanted to include oh I also have um written down some Hobbies you didn’t talk about any hobbies what are your hobbies well I talked about my family I talked about my husband and I called about my dog so yeah that’s you feel like that’s enough yeah okay I mean I just feel like I don’t need to give it away all at once like get to know me well now my hobbies don’t really exist either I I just was gonna say that I I hike and brunch on the weekends which is what every La girl does so I feel like I guess those aren’t really Hobbies at this point I do read you said you do read because that is actually a hobby because I’ve recently gotten into reading in the last year surprise that I read well you seem like someone who maybe doesn’t have doesn’t make time to read okay I respect that right I that was a really respectful way to say that thank you yeah I’m ha like I’m glad you’re getting content in a different way than no seriously this this last weekend I said to um our CEO I was like I just want to read a book I was like I just I know and I got to on Saturday I like because I was just like I go outside well I should like publish a list of I I like to read lesbian fiction and I have there was a period of time where I’d read one book every single weekend but there was a new book that came out this past week so I started uh on that on on Saturday but I haven’t finished it but you were gonna say that reading is also a hobby of yours it is and I love a good fiction ex I exclusively read fiction I because but not lesbian I just don’t have I just do not um no I actually uh would read lesbian fiction I act I haven’t I don’t think I have though I really don’t know you’d remember [Laughter] I read a lot of like multi-generational family really his historical fiction lots of stuff most mostly to like female female writers right about people outside of the US um that’s really cool let’s trade some books yeah maybe a little book club little book club let’s see where this goes well you know they never knew where it was going and it all went towards a book club what a terrible ending like they reunited yeah they’ve formed a book club girl we haven’t even gotten to the like part of my producery outline that has actual content in it I’m sure everybody listening is like when is it gonna begin though but here’s the thing I want people to be able to turn on our podcast and just like chill just hang out and it doesn’t matter if you’re doing the laundry or you’re on a commute or you’re uh prostrating yourself on the yeah on the on the couch or on the floor like I just feel like you know it’s time to bring that female male Millennial energy into a mythical podcast form and that’s exactly what this is so um you know it’s just gonna be chill until I get to the outline so this is like is introducing a little bit of anxiety as soon as you say chill until I get into the outline okay so this is why the outline is important for this episode I want to set the stage for people because people didn’t grow up in North Carolina and go to our school in the in the same time period I want to set like the stage for everybody listening so they can close their eyes and put themselves um you know where we were so we went to high school between 2002 2006. um so this should be broadly relatable to a number of you who who went to school around that time um I looked up things that were happening like in the world between 2002 2006 to kind of get everyone in the mind mindset of where we were at and so some of these things I think are going to be uh you know gonna jog your memory I mean I don’t mean to start off with a bad one but just as a reminder for everyone 911 happened the year before our freshman eighth grade um so that was the kind of like temperature of the nation totally I remember finding out and uh in one of my classes they like wheeled in a oh no they they didn’t let us watch it on television but we knew something could happen during the day it was you were eyeing the television you were just like yeah you have to go to the library I wanted to be informed the weird thing is I remember when I heard and I was sitting on the floor and on a carpet and then I was like okay I it felt like a child which I guess I I was at the time but then like then that was our freshman year of high school right after which is very weird to think about um I’m only giving this fact because uh we’re gonna do an episode about me being closeted at the time but gay marriage wasn’t legalized in the U.S until 2015 and not in North Carolina until the end of 2014 and to add to that the president the entire time we were in high school was George W bush um with Dick Cheney by Assad um and uh here’s some things about George W bush I wanted to tell you because because you find these lists of like notable things you can teach a man a fish that was his big one yeah so on January 13 2002 it’s very important to note that he did choke on a pretzel and he fainted briefly oh no the little ones probably I don’t you know what oh it must have been a stick it must have been a stick because if it was like the little you know like a little nugget with little holes then he would have not choked oh that’s true there would have been like exclusively eat the Sticks no pretzel pretzel that’s right exclusively put sticks in my mouth um well you’ve also he could have been eating like a pretzel from the mall okay oh like a soft pretzel great yeah great point we’ll look that up I I didn’t include that um also side note he had a colonoscopy in June of that year uh which was also listed on the events that happened in 2002. I feel like this is a HIPAA violation why do we have so much medical information I guess oh with presidents you get to know everything right yeah well and I needed to know um frankly no thank you for setting that context relevant to now because uh there’s a a what would you call it reinvention of the the franchise continuation of the France franchise the first Spider-Man live-action movie in the trilogy was released in 2002 with Toby Maguire that’s Spider-Man the upside down kiss heck yeah that was iconic yeah yeah and I didn’t think I had ever I hadn’t kissed anyone at that point so I remember that threw me for a loop and it’s upside down and it’s tongue in tongue I can just introduce introduce way too much complexity since then have you ever tried to do that kiss because I wouldn’t recommend it I have tried it yeah I have tried it and it’s not fun there’s nothing pleasurable it’s like a t too much yeah teeth and also you know that thing when you like look at somebody upside down and then their chin becomes like their eyes in a weird way they’re so unattractive yeah yeah of course I didn’t think about how unattractive I would be to them but well maybe I I almost said maybe we should try it I wasn’t propositioning you but separately we should try it but yeah be wearing the Spider-Man mask and only unfold it up to our nose because I do believe that’s how they did it in the movie and maybe oh yeah and it was it was raining it was raining yeah because I remember Toby Toby me and Toby uh Toby said that he uh got water and like would fill up his nose so he hated that scene because he was like hanging upside down with water it makes sense his nose makes sense yeah um I’m gonna try I’ll give it a try other things that happened in that time period of course the war in Iraq also holes came out wow you really picked the most important things to talk about oh my god with holes not important to you well I wanted it it’s supposed to be a fun podcast so I wanted to I wanted to mention then I wanted to move on to hold Shia LaBeouf I appreciate that I mean that wasn’t like movie for him it was a big movie also huge book that was I mean what a Time the onions you know in in the holes the the holes I mean that’s why the movies say that I feel like I need to read that book again yeah I’m sure it holds up yeah after this podcast comes up it’s like sales of holes uh which I honestly absolutely run I like that headline as if we could turn around to PR and pitch that best friend best friend’s back comes out Wholesales on the rise on the rise yeah I think that there’s like a little feminism there’s something girl um Martha Stewart was indicted 2003. this is when she went to jail yeah yeah and then that was a kind of I mean I know I bet that was a difficult time for her but it was kind of a felt it felt like that was a romance yeah but I think she had a nice time in jail like I’m sure they had they had like nice setting up also sometimes don’t you want just a little bit of like jail break sometimes don’t you want just a little bit of jail just a little bit of job because you know the jail that she went to was more like a well a little do you um did you watch uh Orange’s New Black I watched the first season oh that did not it had a lesbian so oh yeah yeah everything I’m aware I’m aware uh so they had a season where they had like a Martha stewart-esque type of character who oh yeah and so that was like there’s a whole season with that storyline of like her better treatment and everything but it was pointed at that so you know probably not true at all but um did I watch it yes is there another fun fact about the 2002 to 2006 period oh I’m sorry you want to move on um yes uh Myspace launches in 2003 um did you have a MySpace I didn’t my sister was really into Myspace like you you kind of had to be a MySpace kid I I did have a MySpace though but remember it was like if you knew HTML you could make your Myspace really cool but if you didn’t it was really lame you don’t remember like going on people’s myspaces and like their music would play I Remember the music thing but I think I used or I like accessed my space or interacted with it only with friends that had it so when I was at their house but I don’t remember being a big Myspace I just remember it being a super it felt really emo and that wasn’t my thing at all yeah and so it’s just like how many more bangs am I gonna watch uh just how many more bangs everybody had bangs like oh you know that word is slang for something else that I I didn’t yeah I thought you were watching She’s Like bangs uh like do you want me to adult adult yeah yeah yeah adults you need more help there you want more do you want me to spell it out for you that was uh probably also I just how many more bangs can you can you watch um yeah badly styled hair uh yeah I remember the Swoosh um 2004 friends ended the original run of friends Ended as we know friends back in back in style I I did not watch The Reunion on uh on HBO um I have mild interest there’s other things to watch I haven’t gotten to it yet right I have a lot of bangs to watch um 2005. here’s a big one for the listeners uh the listeners can we come up with a different thing just that sounds like what about here’s another one for our friends ew now I is that weird yeah it’s like it has like a Mr Rogers like Vibe and he was so gross wasn’t he laughs uh okay fine friends uh YouTube launched in 2005. yeah wow you don’t have to feign excitement no that’s cool that’s like the beginning of your professional life well again again I was in high school uh right but like your professional life was birthed the platform on which our show’s go was birthed um also side note Hurricane Katrina was in 2005. see that’s why I’m trying to gloss over the I remember that gloss over but you know um 2006 and this one’s gonna this one is extremely relevant Blu-ray discs came out 2006. uh so and as you know we we do um rely on on those for our programming which is actually I’m gonna watch the um the Friends reunion on Blu-ray on a Blu-ray yeah yeah I love that I love that for you and then 2006 uh of course the most important thing for this podcast is uh we graduated graduated girl even my version of it yes like you can sing you can sing and sing off key and I’m not saying that’s what you did and only sing for like three seconds and they will just freaking come in and NAB your ass yes and when I say that I mean physically like watch out behind you um because they will hear and they will break into your home oh that’s what we didn’t say that’s what you didn’t say to the listeners you’re in Atlanta you live in Atlanta I’m in Atlanta yeah yeah so um we are we are so we’ll take them a little bit longer for them to get to get all the way over there they are yeah but [Laughter] you know I did I did uh I did karaoke a little bit this week uh with my weekend with my family at my sister’s house they have a little karaoke machine for the girl for the nieces that the adults used and I had a really um kind of depressing moment in the middle of a Celine Dion song where I heard my voice through the microphone like I love it that’s usually not the um depressing moment that most people have while listening to Celine Dion It’s usually the song itself but and I I just like I stopped in the middle of it I was like what’s is it the machine broken or this is literally the reality of my voice well then you should be totally fine not singing songs on the show like so Greensboro North Carolina is where we’re both from and where we went to high school now I did some research that I know that you that I explicitly asked that you not look at so that I could uh yes I could run by you um but for the people listening so Greensboro is kind of in the middle of the state it’s in the Piedmont area um and for Rhett and Link fans listening it’s an hour and a half away uh from Bowie’s Creek where Rhett and Link are from and it’s a heck of a lot bigger than Bowie’s Creek it’s the third largest city in North Carolina and at the time it had like 230 000 uh people and now it has about 300 000 people so it goes Charlotte Raleigh and then Greensboro so I mean we’re talking about like a sizable City but it’s a city that’s in the south in the Bible Belt um so still a lot of that um you know conservative uh Vibes going on one might say lots of colleges lots of high schools um and a large immigrant population well so the the racial racial profile is that what you say like specifically yeah I was specifically interested in that because it’s actually 38 white 41 black 10 Hispanic five percent Asian six percent other um so it is a well I wouldn’t say it’s racially diverse because the other percentages are are are fairly low but um I guess like Greensboro itself in the Piedmont area is like a little like microcosm in a way um yeah and I think yeah I I always I always kind of people when they found out that I grew up in Greensboro they’d be like oh my God like imagining I grew up around only white southern accent oh okay Bible Belt people I’m like no actually like half of the people that I grew up around with looked nothing like I did and nothing like each other yeah yeah I guess that I would say my only counter argument is which which we’ve touched on very briefly is kind of like the Young Life culture that we were surrounded by and like yeah our our like particular group of friends which which we’ll get into in other episodes um you know oddly enough that there was uh there’s a sizable Jewish population also by the way the so the top two top two religions coming in in Greensboro are Baptists and methodists and then after Christianity the largest religion in Greensboro is this this was surprising to me Judaism I would think so given you know the the well oh I thought at least our experience it’s Islam it’s well uh 0.82 and Then followed by Judaism at point six percent oh they love it when I give percentages um wait 0.82 yeah so so it’s not it’s like yes everyone everyone is Christian and then less than one percent is this the second largest religion that’s what I’m saying like it’s interesting that you say I think it makes sense when we think about our high school exactly it makes sense that’s what I’m saying like it was you know it was very Christian I was gonna say it’s very white I would say it’s very segregated honestly yeah yeah that’s fair segregated I also I feel like I had a little bit of a different perspective on this because I’m coming from a non-white family yeah my dad worked at HBCU historically black college and we had a large Iranian Community around us and my parents were just had a lot of immigrant friends and white friends and black friends and so I think we grew up in a more diverse yeah Community um just because of where they worked the languages they spoke and the fact that like different people band together yeah meanwhile I went to private Jewish Day School and the most diverse we got was we had some like Russian exchange students and and one of them had a circumcision like in fifth grade I remember that day because like he was you know walking sideways for a while but um fifth grade doesn’t that happen as a baby yeah it happens when you’re like I once performed a fake brisk myself um uh which was a piece of content that I made my parents watch uh but I can’t recall for accuracy oh yeah we um we peeled a baby fingerling potato with a carrot peeler and then put ketchup on top of it so that’s what I imagine his experience was like yeah that’s why you have a lot of really um really supportive followers but I think that you’re right I think that we certainly and certainly before high school too Grim was Grimsley in your District technically because you switched yeah yeah I was out of District kid um and and Grimsley Grimsley is the name of our high school by the way but Grimsley was a more diverse High School than the one I would have gone to I think where would you have gone are we adring this no yeah okay yeah yes yes let’s ADR the name of this High School I would love to I would love to make up a high school name please go ahead obviously fake high school and then before that another name high school so the where my neighborhood was like the district lines were Rewritten um of Middle School uh or during middle school and so I went to two different middle schools and then I went to a high school where I knew really no one maybe one or two kids but yeah those were really uh I would say on the more homogeneous ends of the spectrum um okay this is a perfect segue into where at Grimsley um so to give everybody listening kind of a perspective Grimsley is a large public high school I think that when we started um our freshman year there were about 500-ish kids in our class and I remember this because do you remember sitting in the auditorium and it must have been our first day and I it might have been the principle speaking and um he said you know welcome to Grimsley uh you’re going to be sitting in these seats four years from now but only half of you are going to be sitting in them yeah I do not remember that really what what a terrible thing to say oh my God it scarred me you must have like blocked it or maybe you missed the first day of school he’s not talking about me he’s not talking about me yeah but the implication was essentially that the graduation rate was at like 50 so he he said like it was it was a scare tactic to basically be like you better freaking you know study up and come to class and because chances are you know you’re not going to be sitting here in four years um that’s crazy this is making me want to go NPR did a piece recently about Grimsley really yeah about Grimsley and about how the graduation rates have gone up dramatically it’s probably because of that speech they’re giving and that’s what you call a motivational speech so so by my math there were probably like eighteen hundred two thousand kids at the school so you know yes sizable I would say and I did pull up the Wikipedia page for Grimsley which I remember being a lot easier to edit and so I was expecting there to be some some [ ] in there but uh instead it’s just really straightforward [Music] um I will say the campus is it’s an old school and it was uh listed on the national register of historic places in 2005 because that’s how old it is my mom went to Grimsley I’m not implying that my mom is old mom and you if you’re listening at this point but I’m just saying like you know yeah yeah it has some weight to it you know yeah it’s a beautiful campus I think it was like it is it is old yes but um it was like the what you would see a high school looking like in the movies it was yes it reminded me of Greece for some reason and the hallway like so this campus was almost like a mini college so I think a lot of people go to high school like right in one giant building but the Grimsley campus is spread out there’s different buildings for different things um there’s the like the the main building with the main hall it’s the most original building and the hall talk about like daunting in terms of being a little baby freshman and walking into this thing it’s like oh my God yeah right like it feels like substantial and it feels like this is high school like it is textbook old school high school high ceilings lockers kind of Going the Distance I remember there was like a trophy case yeah huge trophy case all these Awards um dark it was kind of dark it was dark yeah but yeah bad lighting bad luck I’m really bad lighting um if we could give a note but yeah so Grimsley was uh was founded in 1899 that’s how old school it is and it also had at the time what they called well I think they had just switched from calling it the women’s gym to the auxiliary gym do you remember that you don’t remember that either why did you block all the traumatic things out and meanwhile I’m like I can’t remember it was called the women’s gym when we were there no right before is when I think they were like making the change because they were like that’s not PC we can’t call it the women’s gym we’ll call it the auxiliary gym but it used to be called the women’s gym because it was like of course the nice giant gem is for men and they’re smaller right ladies can fit in this smaller building forever with their little gate and steps and Tiny Hands yeah tiny hands um also like crumbling had a natatorium the full-on freaking pool you don’t oh yes you’re right you’re right yeah no no it was there I never went into that place though I went in one time and I don’t remember I’m not into the pool oh please not into the pool it’s just into the room yeah it was humid it had that smell it it had that like public school meets chlorine smell like not a pool you want to get in but I say like a Wet and Wild Emerald Point oh my God I got my ass grabbed at Wet and Wild and that was the last and I was like 12 like 11 like and you like to begin with [ ] now though big handful but I’m jumping back to a um uh a water park since I’m actually it’s funny because well sorry no no I was just gonna get you back on track to the natatorium to the natatorium I while I was giving the natatorium fact just to like try and impart how large you know it is yes yes yes and a huge stadium and track a big Stadium Field football stadium um it really like every John Hughes movie it really felt that classic like it felt like that’s where it happened like where Grace happened like any any iconic um high school movie I was gonna say about sprawling Wet and Wild Emerald Point um is this something that Rhett and Link and I connect on because which is a local water park yeah but for them uh it was like a really big attraction so they would come to Wet and Wild Emerald Point and it would be like a treat that like they got to come to the Big Town go to the big water park Dippin Dots oh my God Dippin Dots so there’s some other things that I wanted to say about about Grimsley well our mascot our mascot go yeah please tell them our mascot is one of the more embarrassing I mean Grimsley I think I would always I always felt proud to say that I went to Grimsley but one of the um more embarrassing parts of it was the name of our mascot we were the whirlies which is like a tornado hurricane like thing a whirlwind Grimsley whirlies and there’s a huge whirly it’s actually really cool aurorally like painting on the side of the building that I took Zach to see when he came and saw me in Greensboro the first time and he had a really hard time like understanding yeah Scott he was like so this is this is it yeah exactly well it used to be even weirder apparently according to um Wikipedia it was uh it was originally the purple whirlwinds and then it got changed the Whirlwind and then it got changed to the whirlies but you know what’s also weird is that I played for a soccer team called the twisters oh that was a tornado wait that was a really good soccer team if I remember correctly yeah thank you yeah but it was to be fair I played for I don’t know what the PC name for it was but we’ll just say the B Team oh got it yeah yes it it is a good uh I mean is it pay to play sport or is sporting like league but there was everybody was good yeah it was called it was uh classic is the classic yeah Classic Soccer um but what I was gonna what you were getting at is the reason you are proud to say you went to Grimsley it has a excellent academic record and it was one of the only schools I believe in North Carolina that did International Baccalaureate and it had a great advanced placement AP program um and we were the cool kids uh doing that type of [ ] so it was that’s how I got to go to Grimsley it was because I did the IB Program yeah I could do it at a district and it you know for many years at Grimsley I they they offered Hebrew as a language uh of course which is kind of insane in the middle of North Carolina and so I took Hebrew and Spanish and the years where they had them back to back that’s cool very confusing for everybody and by everybody I just mean me Hebrew I forgot about that I don’t know why I mean I wonder if it had to do with like getting attracting funds because they also oh what are you trying to think before us they taught um ancient Greek not Latin ancient Greek yes and the Greeks have the funds no I think there’s some like the Greek festival that was the best thing one time also during that time period went to a Mexican restaurant in Greensboro ordered fully in Spanish because I was somehow a lot more confident about that at the time except for I forgot the word for cup and in my brain it was the Hebrew word so I that was the only word that I said in Hebrew and then the guy was like I don’t understand your version of what you’re asking for and he like left the table and I was like oh God I don’t understand why he doesn’t understand me I just fluently spoken in Spanish I understood everything he said and then like there was a beat and I was like oh hmm that was Hebrew that was a Hebrew word it’s pretty cool that you got to that point though that you were mixing languages if I ever go to a uh like a Chabad in Mexico oh I’m gonna break it out I’m gonna break out the hybridization of Hebrew in Spanish Okay cool so so yes great academics at Grimsley still a public high school I think one of the things that we’ll we’ll talk about in a future episode that was eye-opening for me is um because there was like the regular courses there were honor honors courses then there are AP and IB courses and uh you know going in as a freshman and coming from a very small private school where my class had 12 people in it wow 12 12. the um placement of like I remember my freshman year English class one of the first things was you know write a little essay about yourself just on you know a piece of uh notebook paper and then pass it to the person behind you and they’re gonna like Mark it up and I got the girl in front of me is uh essay and I was like where the crap am I because this is like the writing of a 10 year old like I am so confused oh yeah we’ll get into the whole like uh you know education system and how it failed a lot of people but um you know it’s just another academic tease we will have them some percentages in that um episode as well wow guys stay tuned for this education podcast what else about our High School uh Sports big thing uh in high school actually I learned via the Wikipedia page that I had forgotten our senior year um the football team did win the state championship um and I believe that was the last time they won was our senior year I can’t speak to the football record after 2006. but I do remember it being a huge deal when they won our year there’s a huge rivalry between Grimsley and obviously fake high school and um we’ll get into it yeah in an effort to wrap things up um because I want to move on to what you wrote in my yearbook because I it’s really special um I was gonna ask you like you know in in a summarizing briefly like what um did you have any fears going into this podcast do you have anything that that is making you nervous like for instance I’ll offer for the people asking why this isn’t um you know full video to start because I’m more comfortable in audio land so I was really important to me that like we started the show uh as a as an audio podcast um so you know that that’s one of my one of my things that makes me more comfortable you’re afraid of people seeing you and you’re self-conscious I think I have more of a tendency to like perform when a camera’s rolling and I it was really important to me that this podcast again feels like you’re hanging out with us and I so yeah so I’m not saying that it will never be in full video form I’m just saying it’s just one of my vulnerabilities and I I wanted to start off on the best best possible foot thank you for sharing that um one thing that I am nervous about nervous about um it’s a little bit Yeah the I feel a little bit exposed I mean I did agree to come onto this podcast I’m gonna talk about life but I’ve never done anything like this before yeah it’s a new world and it’s just it’s to people I don’t know and the people that already exist in the world not like to my five friends that are listening to something that I created and like peddled to them personally yeah um so I’m nervous about that um It’s oddly therapeutic I’m already I’m already seeing already feeling it’s it’s nice to have like for me it’s nice to have an outlet that’s not like purely mythical focused and and by that I mean like referential to our other programming because the the show that I used to host which I loved hosting um was very much a um an Ode to mythical and all the other things that we did and I feel like this podcast is very mythical but it’s not referential to other mythical programming which I really like about it and I’m hoping that um you know it’s an entry point for people also to to discover other programming that we do if if you know they like this um they like what we’re talking about in our general Vibe because um you know it feels very mythical but it for me it’s different than what I usually do because it’s about our personal lives and it’s not you know my um not that my vagina jokes aren’t personal and I yeah that’s not what I’m deeply personal yeah well you know the reality is I know very little about mythical yeah I I don’t know very much about what you do yeah and I’m excited to kind of get into that as a friend yeah right like not as not as somebody that’s like into the biz and figuring out all the behind the scenes stuff yeah like what has meant to you because that’s your your um the majority of your professional career has been yeah I mean don’t ask my parents though because I they don’t they don’t watch it I know my parents never my parents never have known What I’ve Done um just when they figure out and get like the right words to articulate it I’m like and I’m moving on like that thing I used to do let me explain this upcoming thing um uh no and I I wanted to you know to the point of sharing personal things just to tease some of the things that that we kind of have scheduled to to talk about I said earlier that we’re gonna do a whole episode about um what it was like for me to be closeted during that time period um you know we’re gonna talk about uh things like school dances and school spirit um sex and relationships uh grades and and Academia and and how that affected the crushing pressure yeah um uh alcohol drugs um but there’s some stories there maybe maybe not the best stories um uh you know so we have a uh various different episodes coming up that we that we hope you guys can um can relate to um uh for me you know looking at that list a couple things one I have a terrible memory and so I’m really nervous that um honestly that like I’ve forgotten things that I like enjoyed at the time and I want I’m excited to be reminded of those things but I have a very bad memory um and then honestly I and I mentioned this to you at our at our dinner um I don’t know if I really liked who I was back then necessarily because I was not living a double life in the sense that like I didn’t have you know here’s my gay life that I have all these fun gay things going on um but but like you know it was I was I was hiding a big part of who I was um and so I think in that is rooted in security and when you’re trying to bat things away from your insecurity I think it comes out in ways that maybe you didn’t intend and so like part of me is like you know I was a [ __ ] in high school tonight and I and I don’t know how I feel about that um so all of that to unfold um but uh I want to get to the yearbook do you have any idea do you have any idea what you wrote in my freshman yearbook I have no idea Steph which we will have a whole episode about uh identities and names um okay man I’m finally gonna sign your yearbook Daddy was definitely not there do you know what that means daddy it was definitely there to keep going oh you think the next sentence is going to help you context helps if I was a boy I would not think she was pretty okay interesting uh another one of our friends wrote that in my yearbook three years in a row really and you don’t remember what that is and I was like what is that so it seems like it was a group friend thing ancient Greek class males uh can you say dumb I think I know what that means what does that mean oh my boys are stupid pretty literally I mean yeah I think that’s pretty literal that’s so mean um well you know this was meant to be private and now we have a podcast so um we can dub over ancient Greek so that the boys in our freshman year ancient Greek class who listened to this podcast won’t be offended um uh what is this word can you spell it I think it’s weight weight there goes Mr mccristy and that’s the end of what you wrote honestly I did not do drugs in high school your phone number’s in here too but it sounds like I did oh man finally gonna sign your yearbook Daddy was definitely not there if I was a boy I would not think she was pretty ancient Greek class males uh can you say dumb wait there goes Mr mccristy phone number it sounds like the notes app on my phone just random wow it will what do I take away from that yes that I had a very creative mind not linear not very linear and we had a lot of inside jokes so we were already good friends at that point not friends enough to not have your phone number which was written under your name I guess yes oh do you remember when we first met I was going to ask you that I I cannot recall I the the only like early memory I have is us having lunch in the Grove like at that picnic table yeah um during school but I don’t know we must have been in the same class together ancient Greek apparently or I could imagine that one of the girls that you went to Jewish school with was in a class of mine and then we all had lunch together yeah and then that’s when we came up with the um if I was a boy I would not think she was pretty which is like pretty gay coded but um okay maybe I brought that up I don’t know um all right is there anything that you would like to say before we uh close this thing out you know what I’d like to say yes is if you think this conversation was not interesting to listen to then why don’t you try calling a friend that you haven’t been in touch with for 15 years oh so you’d like to end with a threat to our friends I just want to say give me a chance give us oh you can’t it won’t get a conversation about the trolls um don’t don’t feed the trolls again I think we’ve achieved it I think we’ve achieved The Hangout you want to hang out with us here we are this is what it’s like yeah this is what it’s like um if I were a boy is that related to a Beyonce song Google it Google it uh 2008 so no oh my god did Beyonce Get Her lyrics from our inside joke yearbook it’s our inside yearbook um did you know that yearbooks are a billion dollar industry oh that’s a great tease for episodes to come stay tuned on best friends back all right we will talk about the yearbook industry and did Beyonce take our inside joke and make her career out of it and that’s all we have for you thanks for listening to best friends back all right you can catch brand new episodes every Friday make sure to follow so you don’t miss an episode and if you’re enjoying the podcast leave us a review if you’re not please don’t you can follow at mythicalpods on Tick Tock for Clips to share with family and friends and not my mom you can follow me at nageen and Stevie everywhere at Stevie W Levine and of course you can hear me every Monday through Friday on Good Mythical Morning with Rhett and Link at youtube.com good mythical morning I’ll see you there