(upbeat music) – Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I’m Rhett. – And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are going into un-sharted territory. – You said un-sharted. That’s– – Well– – I’m sorry, you said un-sharted. – I said un-sharted, but I have this toothpick in my mouth. – I certainly hope this is un-sharted territory because I do not have plans to shart in the next hour or so. – I thought it would be a good idea to have this toothpick. As I was coming back here to sit down, I walked by the front desk and you know, usually we have like gum up there, which I’m not gonna chew gum but maybe there’s a mint. – Yeah, why chew gum? – So I gaze in that direction as I’m walking by and I’m like “What is that plastic box?” It gives me pause. I looked more closely and it’s toothpicks. And I’m like, “What in the world.” And they’re– – Why would that surprise you a lot? Why are toothpicks surprising? – Because it said flavored toothpicks. – It’s better than, well, wood’s good though. Wood flavor is good. – I’m like, “Flavored toothpicks?” – What flavor? – Cinnamon. – All of them are cinnamon? – And then someone, a Mythical crew member who shall remain nameless, said, “Yeah, I quit smoking with those.” (Rhett chuckles) It was like you just needed something dangling from your lips in order to quit smoking? Good for you. – They quit smoking with those, meaning they were previously lighting those on fire and smoking them? Or they were smoking cigarettes and this is the method that they used to stop smoking cigarettes? – It’s kinda like Hank Williams Jr. using lifesavers to get off cigarettes. – What is that line? ♪ I use lifesavers to help me ♪ ♪ Get off cigarettes ♪ ♪ But you know for your love ♪ ♪ I ain’t found no lifesavers yet ♪ – We won’t sing the whole song but you should listen to the whole song. ♪ But the toughest ♪ – Okay, we won’t. So I thought– – Old Habits by Hank Williams Jr. – Good song. I thought I would give it a shot. And then lo and behold, right off the bat, I said sharted. – Yup. Well, it’s just because of the flavored toothpick. If it wasn’t flavored, you would have definitely hit uncharted. – Now it’s just dangling right there. Does it make me, what I was trying to say was we’re going down the rabbit hole in this episode. We’ve got an envelope there. We do not know what’s inside of it. – A completely un-sharted rabbit hole. (laughs) – But I mean– – Totally clean rabbit hole. (chuckles) – I mean if you didn’t know me– – Yeah, that would be a different life, wouldn’t it? – And you clicked on the video version of this podcast or just met me on the street and we had a conversation and I had this toothpick dangling from my lips like I do right now– – Douche bag. – Douche bag? – Definitely. – Or a hayseed, hillbilly? – No, I mean there’s nothing else about you, unless you start talking, that would that would make me think that you were a hillbilly. And so I would go straight to douche bag. I would bypass hillbilly straight to douche bag. – What about former smoker? – I mean I’m saying this as a person who recently wore sunglasses during an entire episode of Ear Biscuits, which was the ultimate douche move, and I caught it on the Twitter and the Instagram and the people who took the screenshots, et cetera, people who got it out of context, just like I predicted, said, “What is Rhett thinking? “Who does he think that he is?” – Yeah. – Yeah, won’t do it again. – Well, that’s why I’m not– – Except I probably will. – I’m getting rid of this toothpick because it messes up the audio experience as well. You want it? Try it – That’s not how toothpicks work. – Use the other end. – No. I can imagine what it tastes like. – The cinnamon kind of makes my lips burn. Tell me something I don’t know. – Well, I wanted to talk to you a little bit, before we get into the rabbit hole. – Now first of all, these will be a sponsor in a couple of weeks, and we’ll talk about how great these are. We’ll both be having them the whole Ear Biscuit. – Sure, definitely, if the price is right. I went hiking, family hike. You know, sometimes when you’ve got a weekend and you begin feeling like your children are spending too much time with the media, and I don’t mean like the news media. I mean like, you know, screens, we call it. – Leaking information to the media. – You’re just like, “We gotta get out.” – Yeah. – We gotta do something as a family. And interestingly, when you live in Los Angeles, unlike when you live in North Carolina, you know, when I was a kid, if you got stir crazy, you just went outside and there was woods behind my house that you could kind of explore indefinitely. There’s just a whole world that you could kind of explore. You and I– – If you get bored with that, there’s manholes you can pry open. – Yeah, we did lots of things that we shouldn’t. – Go down in the sewer. We did that. – But it’s kind of a combination of the fact that it’s 2018 and this doesn’t happen as much, and also the places that we lived. You just don’t let your kids just, “Hey, kids just go out “in the neighborhood and I’ll see you in a few hours.” That just doesn’t really happen that much. – No. – And so you have to orchestrate outings. You either like take them to somebody’s house where they’ve kinda got some room or something like that. But most often, it’s like let’s go to a place that has been– – Kids, I’m gonna take you to somebody’s house. They’ve got a room or something. I’m sure you’ll just have a blast. – But typically, the way it works is you find a space that the people of the Greater Los Angeles area have deemed appropriate for outdoor activities. Sometimes that is a city park. That gets old. But one of the cool things that we do have is you just head a little bit outside of town and you got these, you’re in Angeles National Crest, Angeles National Forest. – Forest. – That’s a National Forest. I don’t know exactly what that means, but it’s a National Forest. It is recognized on a national level as being a forest. That’s something to say, you know. – You said it, brother. – (chuckles) And so we went, I have the adventure pass. You gotta have the adventure pass just to get into the National Forest and park your car. I don’t exactly know why. But we drove up into, you been up to Little, I don’t know if it’s little or big, Tujunga Canyon? – No. – Tujunga Canyon is a canyon that goes up into the Angeles National Forest, and I guess it’s Tujunga Creek. Anyway, there’s a hiking trail up there that– – Was it burnt? That’s where the fires were. – Some places were burned. – Okay. – But I grabbed the family. I put them in the car. We brought Barb along with us because she also is into the media. – Gotta get your dog off of screens? – Yeah, yeah, she loves cable news. I mean she would just salivate over cable news. She can’t get enough of it. – People yelling at each other. – And so we had to pull her away from that. And she needs grooming right now. She’s got a little too much hair. But so I was a little bit worried ’cause it was getting to be like an 80-degree day, and we were gonna be hiking and lots of sun. – I think I saw you on the way there. Didn’t you pass me on your– – Oh, yeah ’cause you were dropping off– – Lily at a friend’s house. – Lily’s friend at her house. – Yup. – Yeah, I passed you. – I saw all of you in the car. – And I gave you a head nod. – Yeah. You didn’t stop– – Did you notice? – You didn’t stop and– – I had seen you the night before. – Yup. – No need to reconvene. – No. – So– – I can tell you were on your way to a National Forest. – I had my hat on. – Yeah, you had a hat on. – Could you see the sunscreen? – No. Oh, you put on– – Probably not because I– – You really prepped up. – I rubbed it in. Well, you gotta put sunscreen on at least 30 minutes before exposure. – Did Barbara get hot or something? – She did. Well, we get out on the trail. And these are the things that we dealt with as a family. Number one, is your family this way? When you hike, is it not peaceful? I mean the point is being peaceful but– – First of all, no, it’s never peaceful. – Not peaceful. – From the moment, you know, I got home, and we actually went for what I did not call a hike. I said, “Alright, kids, you’re getting off screens.” – A nature walk. – I said nature walk actually. – (laughs) That’s the only other thing it could be. – You’ve tried that? – No, but I should have. – Yeah, I call it a nature walk. – It seems very sciencey. – And they just roll their eyes. They’re like, “Dad, you’re trying to take us on a hike.” (Rhett laughs) I was like, “No. “The place that we’re gonna go is relatively flat.” – Yeah, ’cause take a hike has got a negative connotation, but take a nature walk is like, “Well, I’m in. “Field trip?” – Yeah, it’s about, nature walk implies no incline, no grueling nature to it. – Right, just shade. It also feels shady. – It shade, peaceful. – Well, we were not in the shade. We were in the extreme heat. I did an orientation before we got started because apparently, rattlesnakes are really bad this year. More on that later. – Oh. – (chuckles) That’s what they call a teaser. And so I was like, “Kids, you gotta stay on the path. “Do not go traipsing off into the grasses “because there are snakes in the grasses. “And I don’t want you to get bit by a rattlesnake. “I don’t wanna deal with that today.” – Yup, it would inconvenience you. – It would be a horrible day for dad if kid got bit by a rattlesnake. – Yup, yup. There’s nothing more inconvenient than a child losing the use of a limb. – Right. So I’m out on the trail. And again, it’s not peaceful because we can’t seem to have a conversation without somebody having a problem with something else that somebody says. Everybody in my family has a strong will, me included. And eventually, I was like, “Let’s just be quiet “for a little bit and just hear the sound “of our dog panting,” ’cause she was, and the sounds of our own footsteps and the nature walk. And this trail, by the way, highly recommended if you’re in the Greater Los Angeles area. I think it’s called Tujunga Canyon waterfall trail or something– – Question mark. When you search it, put a question mark at the end. – And it’s like a two-mile hike that continues to rise in elevation as you follow along. And first of all, you’re inside the National Forest, but right at the top of the trail, there’s all these people who, I don’t know how they’re doing it, they’re living out there in houses that look like houses that have been there for a long time that we’re like ranger cabins or something. – I’ve seen this in multiple places, yeah. – But they live there. – And they’re like grandfathered in. So even though there’s gates that you can’t drive through– – They have a key. – They have keys to the gate. – They have a key to the gate. – And then they’ll drive up in there and just live there. And there’ll be signs that says private residence. – Yeah, there was a guy in a Mazda. – Don’t mess with me. Don’t ask me questions about your nature walk. – Yeah, it said private, do not disturb the residents. – Yeah, yeah. – I didn’t, but I was so interested in what their lives were like. – Disturbing ’em. – Wanted to disturb ’em so bad. – I bet they had screens. – Oh, I heard, at least I heard audio. I heard definite media. – Radio. – Something was going on, maybe an AM radio. I don’t know. – Listening to like the Grand Ole Opry or something. – But I was fascinated with that. And then, you know me, I have a tendency, when introduced to a new environment, I have a tendency to continue to point out what I think is cool about it. It’s just in my nature to be like, and then I have a tendency to try to get the people that I’m with to also think that it’s cool. – To share an enthusiasm. I do that too, man. – I think it’s a dad thing in general, but I’m like, “Hey, guys, isn’t this awesome? “These people live up here.” (Link laughs) And they’re all kinda like, “I’m kinda glad we don’t live up here.” I’m like, “Isn’t this cool? “Isn’t the fact that this is so close to our house awesome?” And then Locke is like, “Dad, why do you always “have to try to get us to like things?” – Yeah, yeah, I– – Well, because you’re not saying how much you like it! – I take the kids to school a few times a week. I consider it a special occasion. – Yeah. – And I’m taking Lily and Lincoln to school, and the way that I go is down this one particular street. And there’s this one house that has a whole bunch of trees, which is unusual. – And cool! – It’s like a forest. So every time I, and then right, the house right beside it has a bunch of cacti. – Oh even cooler. – So every time I go by it I’m like, “Hey, look at that cactus,” and they hate it! – Yeah, they don’t wanna be told what to look at. – Lily hates it. She’s like, now before I say anything, she’s like, “Point out the cactus, Dad.” And then the very next light, there’s all these trees and I’m like, “Look at that one tree. “It grew and then it went sideways and started growing. “It’s shaped like a lightning bolt.” – Yeah. – And they’re like– – “We don’t care, Dad.” – She’s so annoyed by it. I don’t get it. – I know! My whole family hates me for it. – For just enjoying life. – I’m a cool spotter. – I mean, yeah, I spot cool stuff too. – I know when things are cool, and I like to point ’em out. I guess somehow, when I start saying it’s cool, it’s no longer cool. – And matter of fact– – I just felt so defeated. – Right before I saw you on the way to the National Park when I was dropping off Lily’s friend at her house, we went down the same street and Lily goes, “I just wanna warn you, Dad is going “to point out this cactus. (Rhett laughs) “And then he’s gonna point out this tree “that’s shaped like a lightning bolt.” And I was like– – Daggumit. – I’ma get ‘er. And I drove right past, I didn’t say a word. – Ooh. – Didn’t point out anything. – Look at that. Just take it in. – She felt stupid. – Nature walks. – Stupid. – So the highlight of the trip though was when we got to the inn and Barbara was having a very difficult time. Barbara is not used to this. Again, watches a lot of cable news, spends a lot of time inside. In fact, when you get the leash, we’re ready to walk her, she goes underneath the couch. – (laughs) She does? – She does not wanna go outside, such a diva. – She has a lot of energy inside the house. – I mean she’s losing energy, man. She’s losing it. She passed two and a half now. – She’s depleting. – She likes to get love and to give love, and that’s about it. – Oh, okay. – But we get down to the place where we’re gonna descend to the waterfall, which by the way, best waterfall in the local area as far as I can tell. I showed you a little video of the– – Yeah, I was amazed. – It’s like a 30-foot waterfall with a swimmable little pool at the bottom a few feet– – Wow, that just doesn’t happen. – I mean it’s incredible. Also a little crowded because of that, because it is Los Angeles even if you’re way out there. But we get to a place where you have to descend down to the waterfall via a very steep incline and a rope. You have to back down a rope. – You have to freakin’ belay into the– – Yeah. – Like right beside the waterfall? – No, this is about 100 yards down from the waterfall, but this is the place to get down to the creek to walk back up because you’ve been on an incline that’s getting steadily higher and further away from the creek and then you kind of come back down to the creek. – So all of a sudden you weren’t pointing out something that was cool. You were like, “Look, kids, a rope. “Oh, crap.” – No, Locke and Shepherd had already got way ahead of us and descended down into the canyon. And I got up there and Jessie was, and she was like, “Are you gonna be able to, “I mean how are we gonna get Barbara down.” And then I saw a woman– – You can catch her. – At that moment, a woman pulls herself up to the top of the cliff with a baby in a Bjorn. – Oh, yeah. – And at that point, I’m like– – Can I borrow your Bjorn? – And at that point, I’m like, “Well, even if I or Barbara “or both of us die in this process, it’s worth it “because a woman with a newborn baby “just ascended the cliff.” – It’s worth it, or that she challenged you non-verbally? – She put my pride on the spot. – Right. – So I went down with one hand on the rope, one hand on Barbara because Barbara, again, if you put her down on the slope, she’ll just literally lay down and will not move. She had done that multiple times. Every time she got to a shady spot, she just laid down and you had to kinda tug her on her leash. – She’s like, “I know you’re coming back this way. “I’ll be here on the flip side.” – So after some intense rope burn on my right hand, I did get down. And then I got to the bottom and I looked up and I was like the real problem is not getting down. It’s getting back up. But let’s not think about that right now. – Which now you have to do. – Let’s enjoy the waterfall. Again, there was three ladies, friends who were up there enjoying the waterfall, and I go up there and my kids are yelling at each other and pushing each other. And I was like, “Guys, show some respect!” I went into dad mode. I’m like, “These women are sitting here “trying to enjoy themselves.” Of course, they hear me talking. – You can’t help going into dad mode. You know if it– – I’m like, “Don’t you have any self-respect for these women “that are enjoying themselves?” – If you’re not pointing out something cool, you’re reprimanding kids. – Yeah and then once I got them to stop pushing on each other, and by this time, I noticed these ladies are laughing ’cause this is like a sitcom that they’re they’re witnessing. (Link laughs) Then I’m like, “Hey, Locke, “take a picture of me and mom in this waterfall.” Oh, gosh, I had to redirect his freaking picture seven times ’cause I was like, “Listen, I want us and the waterfall, “the whole waterfall, from the top to the bottom.” And by the end I’m speaking like that and trying to get a nice picture of me and my wife! (Link laughs) Just take the freaking picture! – Yeah. And the women were still there watching the show. – They’re loving everything about it. (Link laughs) – So then we have to leave. And at that point, they begin to talk to us and they say, “How are you gonna, I don’t know “how you’re gonna get that dog–” – [Link] Off that cliff. – I was like, “I don’t either.” – But then I said– – You want a dog? (Rhett laughs) – That wouldn’t have solved anything ’cause then they would’ve had the same problem. – I assume you ladies live down here. – So what I ended up doing is putting, taking everything out of my day pack, putting it around like a Bjorn in the front, strapping it in the back so that it was nice and secure, opening it up, giving the stuff that I had, the snacks and stuff to Jessie. And she put it in this weird fashionable double fanny pack that she was wearing. Never seen that before. She just broke it out for the nature walk. And then I put– – She’s probably had that for four years. – I put Barbara inside this thing. And Barbara no likey the bag. She wants to get out and so I have to hold her in the bag, which kind of defeats the purpose of the bag but it is easier than actually holding her whole body. – You could have puncher her in the head and knocked her out like B. A. Baracus in The A-Team. – That was Plan B if it had to get there. – You know, every time the A-team traveled, they had to knock him out. You’d think he would know it was coming, but every episode where they have to fly– – But it was a shot. – They knock him out. – Yeah, with a drug. – No, sometimes he’d get punched in the face. – Yeah, but a lot of times, it was an injection. – Injection? – If I remember correctly. – Either way, he should have known it was coming. – You know, the A-Team theme song plays on my phone all the time. You know how it’s the first song, by alphabetical order, in my iTunes. And so when my phone hits the signal sometimes with Bluetooth, I’ve heard the beginning of the A-Team song at least 1,500 times. – I can think of no better song for that to be the case with. – 1982 a team of, oh, I can’t– – Oh, it has the voiceover. – Oh, yeah, I should have it memorized. (Link laughs) Anyway, so I bypassed the rope. I had to bypass the rope and climb up the cliff without the rope because it was actually easier to just grab hold of rocks while holding on to Barbara. It actually wasn’t that bad. – Oh. – I got back up, felt a little bit like a hero, and then silently nature walked back to the car. – Did you keep her in the bag the rest of the time? – No, she got out as soon as she got to the top. And she was panting. I notice when she gets really hot, she pants a lot, and her tail, which is normally up, falls down. It’s like a thermometer. – Did she have water, man? – Yeah. We had a little cute little pink little collapsable thing that we would put water in, and she had plenty of water. She just didn’t like the idea of the nature walk. Anyway, I suggest hiking with your family. – We’re gonna open an envelope here in a second. But first, let’s plug some Mythical merch, shall we? – Let’s do that. Look at this. This is the Good Mythical Summer Camp shirt featuring yours truly and Link around a campfire that has the GMM logo coming out of the fire as it is. – There’s some details in the background that you’re really gonna appreciate when you have it on your person and you’re looking down at it. – This is a ring tee. We recently were given reason to believe that this makes you look more muscular when you wear it. – I wore it in the Will It Slip ‘N Slide episode and Good Mythical More where we’re spitting watermelon seeds. I’m reading the comments and I’m like, everybody’s talking about how, “Is Link working out? “Link looks buff.” And I’m like, it must be that shirt. Literally, I’m sure that it’s the shirt. – Well, the shirt has a lot to do with it. So get yourself a ring tee and you don’t have to work out. – Yeah, it makes you look muscular. – Mythical.store, that’s the website. – Thanks for supporting, internet team. – All your needs. Okay, you wanna open up this envelope? – I do. I get a little nervous at this point. Like what can it be? – Oh, gosh, that could have been smoother. – If we don’t talk, we’re gonna have to put a drum roll in there. (drum rolling) – Okay. Carolyn17980742, because a lot of other Carolyn’s were taken, asks or actually demands, “Find the 15th picture in your phone camera album. “What is it? “And give us the backstory behind it.” – Oh, wow. – Winky emoji. – This is– – Hmm, I got a lot of pictures in my phone. – Now here’s the thing about pictures in my phone. I have every picture I’ve ever taken in my phone because I semi recently went through the tough work of moving all of my pictures to Google Photos, which then, you know, they update to the cloud immediately. – Can you back out to years, organized by years like I just did? – How do you do that? – Go to Collections on the lower part there. You’re saying you’re in Google Pictures, okay. – Yeah, the first picture I have is from February of 2004. – Well, the fist picture I have is October 9th, 2003. – Oh, my gosh. Okay, so before we answer her question, let’s look at the first picture. Well, the very first picture I have from February 2004 is a picture of my driver’s license, Christy’s driver’s license, my social security number card, and Christy’s social security– – Let’s put that on the screen please. – So let’s put that– – Yeah, let’s roll that with no censoring. You shouldn’t have that on your freaking phone, man. Why do you have that? – Well I got my driver’s license in my pocket. What’s the difference? – I just feel like having it just out in the open. – And look at the picture of me. I never remember having this configuration of facial hair. – I remember thinking that I should talk to you about it. – I’ve got the hair of defeat, like I’ve got engineering hair. – Well, I cannot– – I have a goatee with no mustache. – Let me see. – It’s a goatee but I have no, I did not, I like did this for one day and it was the day I got my driver’s license. – You did it for more than one day. You did it for more than one day. – I don’t remember that. Then the next picture I have is from January 2006. – You’re gonna go through all the pictures? – Yeah. It’s a picture of me and Christy in front of our white minivan. – [Rhett] Oh, that was a good minivan. – This was a picnic that Christy and I went on when, this was in the little patch of grass beside the Imperial Theatre in Cary, North Carolina when we went to see a movie. – Now you do know that Carolyn asked for the 15th picture. – Oh, I know. I was just sidetracked by… What’s the oldest picture you have? – But to match you, I will say the oldest picture I have is from October 9th 2003, and it is my pregnant wife. – Oh, wow. Oh, wow. – And us standing in front– – When I say oh, wow a couple of times, I’m making fun of myself because I hate it when I say– – Oh, wow. – Oh, wow. – Yeah. – And whenever I say it, I say it again. And then I realize no one knows I’m making fun of myself. They just think I’m saying oh, wow twice. – Yeah, say that three times– – Oh, wow. – So this was in– – She’s rather pregnant. – This is October 2003. Locke was born in February 2004. So she had a good five months to go but– – She’s standing in front of a closet door, which is where I think she slept. – This is not a closet door. This is the door– – It’s a thin door. – To our bedroom – What? – This is when we lived above my in-laws’ garage. Remember that? So we lived in Chapel Hill, bought that house in Chapel Hill, and then we moved out to move to Fuquay while we’re getting ready to buy the house in Fuquay. – Oh, yeah. – And we spent a whole year– – The backhouse. – Living in her parents backhouse above the garage, which was just the– – But why is the door that thin? – Because everything was small, man. Everything was small, and that’s the– – She’s almost so pregnant, she can’t fit through the door. – That’s the door going into the bedroom which I couldn’t stand up in. But let me tell you, I didn’t need to. (chuckles) Okay. – Yeah, because you slept in there. It’s a bedroom, you jerk. Man, remember back when our wives were pregnant. – Yeah, oh, boy. – When Christy was pregnant with all three kids, we slept in a double bed, I mean– – But not with the children. – In the belly, yes. – Yeah, I know, but you just made it sound like your whole family slept in a double bed, and I know that’s not what you meant. What you meant was the two of you slept in a double bed. – No the three of us, but one was in utero. – And so very, very, very recently, actually. – Yeah. – Relatively recently. – I didn’t get a queen size bed until, well, if your partner’s pregnant, I’m choking up. – If your partner’s pregnant, it’s a beautiful thing. – I think you need at least a queen bed if you’re gonna keep sleeping with ’em because– – I don’t know how you did that, man. – She would roll over and it would be like an act of God for her to roll over. – Like the tides would shift. – Yeah, it’s like there’s a lunar part of the equation. (Rhett laughs) – You’re drinking a glass of water and you’re like– – I mean it was that, it got to be that big, you know. I mean she would have to roll over. – It was an event. – She would have to roll over like one of those hot dogs in the 7-Eleven like– – [Rhett] I’m sure that she appreciates this. – In place. – I’m glad she doesn’t listen to the podcast. – Actually, she started listening to it. – Oh, she has. We got one of ’em now. (chuckles) – But she would, both of us would have to roll over in place like a hot dog. You know what I’m talking about, on like the rollers in the 7-Eleven where it doesn’t– – I’m fully aware of that. – It doesn’t change its location. It just changes its orientation. And she had to do that with a, I mean and you can’t, I can fully roll over like a hotdog, but when you have a baby in your belly, can you imagine having to do that? – No. – Boy, I’m glad that was over. It made me uncomfortable being that close to a human being inside of a human being’s belly. – [Rhett] Yeah, yeah, yeah. – Because it just, I mean it just, it was uncomfortable for her. – You just feel like you can hurt somebody. You’re gonna hurt somebody. – But we were so close. I mean like we were, the thing that we loved about it was our bedrooms are always small, so it wasn’t just a bed and nothing else. We were able to have other furniture. That’s how small our bedrooms always were. And it also made us physically more close to one another. – But you can do that in a king bed. You can also not do that. You have an option. – Right, but it kind of forced us together. So if we were having a fight, it’s a good habit to not let the sun go down on your anger so to speak. You need to resolve it before the next day. It kinda forced us to do that (coughs) because you can’t you can’t be in like a big argument with somebody and then hop in bed and just spoon. – I think I can. – Were you back spoon or the front spoon? – I don’t recall, but I known I’ve gotten in bed mad before and my wife is also mad. – But you still spoon? – You know. – But you have a king bed. You’ve never had a double bed. – No, yeah. Right from the beginning, we went, I mean I’m a big man, you know. I need a big bed. – I mean I’m not shaming you. – That was one of the things I was most excited about getting married was a king size bed, California king. I went straight to California before I ever moved to California. I was in California when I was in North Carolina. That’s how much I was into it. – But a California king is not longer. It’s just wider. – Nope, it’s just longer. It’s actually more narrow. – Oh, is that right? – So a typical king bed is 80 by 80, but a California king is 84 by 76. It’s 84 inches long, so you’re a little bit closer but your feet don’t hang off if you’re the Rhettster. I should do commercials. If you’re a California king company, contact me. – So you need that extra four inches to not have your feet hang off the bed? – If I got some a couple extra pillows, yeah. I mean you never– – If you’re sliding down. – You never know. On a regular king size bed, I get close to the edge, yes, definitely. – You mean the end. – The end or the edge, whatever you wanna call it. Can I count to my 15th picture? – No, it’s the rabbit hole, man. Now I sleep with my– – But that doesn’t mean you don’t answer the question. – And my dog, and she takes up too much room, that dog. – I’m just gonna need, I’m gonna need just a moment of silence– – It’s kinda like she’s still pregnant. – To count to 15. – Just count out loud to 15. – Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Oh, gosh. Oh, gosh. I’m not gonna be able to show this picture without permission. – It’s my wife in the hospital bed and she just had the baby. – Hold on. You went 15 from the back. You went 15 the wrong, you counted the wrong direction. The 15th picture in your– – The 15th picture in your phone camera album. – Oh, I thought it meant from most recent. – Well, we can do that too, Link, but that typically would be– – That’s why I was so happy to be going all the way back. – Yeah, I was wondering. – I thought we were off topic the whole time. – No, we were very close because we had to go back to the first one to get to the 15th. – We were 14 off. I thought we were like thousands away. – I deal with this all the time by the way. – Hey, it’s a common mistake when you sleep in cramped environments your whole life. – Okay, so this is, well, Jessie is waiting, and I’m not gonna show it. I’m not gonna talk about this picture too much because I’m not gonna show it. I don’t wanna frustrate you, but I’ll just tell you it’s my wife lying in the hospital bed and her parents next to her. Her dad is caught with his eyes closed in a weird expression. – The baby has not been delivered yet. The baby’s still in the belly. – And somebody’s hand is in the frame with a sippy cup of some sort. Probably my sister-in-law with a sippy cup for her second oldest son who is just like a year and a half older than Locke. – It could be a nurse, because right when that baby pops out, you know the first thing you do is slam a sippy cup in their hand. Let ’em get hydrated. – The more interesting stuff I’m seeing around that– – Can’t talk about it. It’s not 15. – Is the pictures that we took before. – Let me count mine then you can go to that. – Okay. – Unless you wanna go to it. – Well, it’s not that interesting. It’s just I remember we had a meal, and I was like this is the last meal we’ll ever have as two people as opposed to three as the McLaughlin family. Again, my wife doesn’t want me to show you pictures of her the day before she had our baby. That would be that would be like talking about your wife and how her turning over while pregnant is like being a hot dog at the 7-Eleven. It’s not the kind of thing– – I was just saying she had to do it twice. – It’s not the kind of thing a self-respecting person does. – With the help of God. Alright, now should I count duplicates because– – You know what, I think this gives you the option to do both. Why don’t you go 15 with duplicates and then 15 bypassing the duplicates? – Alright, one, two. Oh, I clicked on it. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Yeah, that one’s nothing. So if I do skipping– – Nothing? You can’t just say nothing. You have to say what it is and tell us why it doesn’t matter. – Okay, okay. It’s my father-in-law with one of my children. I can’t tell which one it was. (chuckles) They all look the same when they’re kids. – That’s Lincoln. – Yeah, that’s Lincoln, you’re right. I was just joking. And a guitar. When Lincoln was a baby, he was obsessed with the guitar. He would call it, “My ‘tar. “Give me my ‘tar.” He’s probably, he’s not two years old. I mean– – [Rhett] No, that’s like 18 months max. – One and a half, yeah. And he would go crazy for this guitar. Here’s another picture of him. See, he’s playing the guitar there. And that’s not at my father-in-law’s house. That’s at my nanny’s house, my mom’s mom. – I don’t wanna frustrate the audio listeners too much though because while we, well, I’m not gonna. I don’t think I’m gonna show any of these pictures. I can talk to my wife about it, but it’s just, you know, she’d rather me not show pictures of very late stages of her pregnancy. – Okay, because of the hot dog. – Yeah, and so out of respect for her, I won’t do that. But out of respect for you, listener and watcher, I’m not gonna talk too much about them. – The specifics of the picture. – Just the things that make me think about. – Yeah, Lincoln was obsessed with guitars, and he would just go nuts if you took the guitar away from him. Like one time at nanny’s house, we took the guitar away from him in order to, I don’t know, leave or do something else, and he went so ballistic. He started screaming and throwing a tantrum. And he turned so red that then he started to turn blue. Everyone got legitimately scared and then gave him the guitar back, and he was totally fine. I mean it’s like even from that young of an age, it’s like sometimes you just, you can’t win, you know. You have to lose. It seems like they’re gonna die. Are you saying you don’t wanna look at any other pictures? – No, no. Well, did you find your actual 15th with duplicates? – Let me do that. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Oh, it’s the other guitar picture, the one that I already talked about. That’s the the actual 15th if you count, hmm, so nothing there. – Well, the thing that this makes me think about in general is that our only pictures when you go back to the first digital pictures that we took– – Yeah. – Are these pictures that are very much like family oriented. And I look at all the pictures from 2004 and 2005, and it’s just my kids. It’s just all my kids. It was like that was, those were the occasions to take pictures. I thought about this quite a bit and our kids were born, like we were born in a really interesting time when it comes to the way that our lives were cataloged, right? So for us, there’s absolutely no evidence, no video evidence of us up until middle school at the earliest. And I think that probably, I mean the Oedipus video that was online at some point and I think you still have somewhere– – Yeah, that was like a school project video. That’s the first video that we ever made. – Yeah, that is amongst, if not the first– – That was eighth grade. – Video evidence of us that is available out there. – 1991. – We were already teenagers, basically, like 13 years old. And then of course, there’s not really anymore, I mean once we started, of course, there’s a little bit as we got older. And then once we hit, you know, we didn’t really get started in this business until mid, late 20’s. And then from then on, there’s too much evidence of us. – [Link] Yeah. – You can’t get away from it. But with our kids, they were born at a time when, you know, when our kids were born, the phones that we were using did not have cameras. – Yeah, I remember being obsessed with getting a small video camera that I could like keep in my pocket. And then I finally picked out the one that I wanted. It was like some sort of Canon. It was like you held it like a gun, and then it had a thing that popped up on the side. – Yeah, I know which one you’re talking about. – It was very small. And within the first couple of weeks, it got stolen or I lost it or something. And then I never replaced it. I was like, “Man, one day, this will be in the phone, “like video capability.” – But we both had Digital8, Sony Digital8 cameras. – Yeah. – We each bought one, and our very first stuff that we ever shot was shot on this Digital8, like a mini, a Digital8 tape which is a small tape that then, I can’t remember exactly how this worked, but because it was digital– – But this was still like 1997, 1998. This was college. – Yeah, but we continued to use that technology up until like, and in fact, just recently, I took all my, there was like four hours of video footage that I captured on my honeymoon. – Whoa. – I don’t know how I got four hours worth of video. – You must have been bored. I was busy doing other things. – I was videoing everything and just like we’re constantly running this video camera. We’ve never ever looked at any of it. And just six weeks ago, I took all those tapes, including a bunch of other tapes that I had, just random stuff, took it to a place in Burbank and they digitized the whole thing and then gave me a drive. I haven’t looked at it. – Oh, you have a drive? – I have a drive with all that footage on it. So Jessie and I, at some point, with the kids, after I probably screen it, are gonna look at all this footage. But it’s crazy to think about the– – You should have paid ’em to edit it down to a four and a half minute montage. – Yeah, I don’t want that though. – Did they look at all of it? Or did they like mindlessly press play on a tape and then digitized it? – Well, when we asked them to, because they had it for a few weeks. When we asked them what the status was, they were like, “We’re doing some color correction,” or something like that. – What? – I think what they do is they have some like effect that they can put on there to, they know that, okay, Digital8 tape that’s from this time, it isn’t like they’re going through and literally analyzing every scene. They’re doing like a overall post treatment to it. But it made it sound like, “We’ve been reviewing “your four hours of honeymoon footage.” And by the way, it’s also stored locally on our server. Hopefully, they’ve deleted everything. I don’t know how it works, the privacy issues and that kind of thing, but I’m thankful for the service. And I have sporadic, what I’m getting to is the record of our kids’ lives that we have and how they were born in this really weird time in which we began to have the ability to video them with these weird formats. So actually, there was a Sony camera that I had that was a still camera. – Point and shoot, but then it had a video– – But it had a video capability. And it created a file that was this proprietary Sony thing. And I took all my video of Locke in his first year, most of my video with Locke in his first year, maybe even more than that, with this video, with this camera. And then in the process of my library getting backed up, and you know how it’s like you get a new computer and it like moves over and then it moves to iCloud. Before iCloud, there was something else. And anyway through this process– – Can’t open it. – You can’t get to any of those. In fact, they’re no longer video files. It’s not that I can’t open them. I have these video files and the only thing that it saved at this point is just the thumbnail, a still image from that video, and it’s heartbreaking. I don’t have that part of his life because he was born in 2004, the time when everybody was coming up with weird video formats to put on your little point and shoot camera. And then Shepherd had the benefit of being born in 2008. Just the time between 2004 and 2008, I got to a place where I was using a camera that I can actually access those files. – You were an early adopter, man. – I was just like everybody else. Everybody, I mean in that time– – I’m sorry if that’s how Locke finds out that he’s adopted. (Rhett chuckles) – That’s the story, son. – You should have told him before now. I mean, I kinda feel like I don’t want to look at, like I have a box of that same type of footage. I actually have that Digital8 camera that you referred to. I have mine. I also have yours. – Oh, thanks. – I don’t know how but I have both of them in storage along with a bunch of tapes. – Double barrel. – (clears throat) And I can have those digitized too, if this works out for you, but I’m really hesitant to do it. There’s something severely depressing that I experience when I look back at old videos. I can barely bring myself to do it because it makes me, it just feels like, I don’t know, I’m just overwhelmed with sadness when I watch it. Can you relate to that? I can’t even articulate exactly why. It must have to do with like, it’s much more complicated than just thinking that I’m getting old. But yeah, it’s like– – Well, I understand that. – Oh, my gosh, so much has happened. But it’s interesting that I don’t, the only way I will remember a lot of things is if I were to look at old photos or videos. The videos are harder to look at too. It takes effort. You have to sit down. You have to do it. But it just, it seems like it’s this bittersweet experience that ultimately has an overarching sadness. – Well, I understand what you’re saying, and it is difficult to articulate. The other emotion that enters me when I’m looking at this stuff is this sense that, there’s a frustration. There’s a two-part frustration. There’s a frustration with I don’t know, it’s like I got these files of Locke that I’ll never get to. Really, every time I go back to old photos and old videos, I get frustrated with the fact that I lost that. Then I start trying to talk myself into it doesn’t matter because he’s here. And it’s just like what is this really gonna impact other than like his rehearsal dinner? You know what I’m saying? It’s like, oh, there’s a little gap there in the videos of Locke. But then there’s this frustration that sets in with shouldn’t I do something with this? – Like– – Like edit it. – Shouldn’t I edit this into something? And so not too many years ago, I took like, we actually have some of Locke’s birth, I guess I used a different video camera. It was like his birth I got, but it was like I transitioned to a new camera when he came home and that’s where I lost. But I took it and like made it into like, you know, a five-minute video that like kinda captured his birth. And then it’s got some music and that kind of thing. But there’s this sense that I should do something with this. And that’s why I haven’t looked at the honeymoon footage because I’m sure it’ll be fun but there’s also this sense of like I gotta do something with this now. – ‘Cause it’s four hours of footage. – But what I have noticed is the technology, you know, it’s getting better all the time. And what they’ve done now, you’ll notice this and I’m sure this is available on other services, but if you’ve got an iPhone, now they take your videos and your photos when you go off on a trip and they recognize that you were at a specific location and they create what they’re calling a memory. I guess this has been around for at least a year, but I didn’t notice it until a few months ago. – Oh, yeah. – When all of a sudden, I had like, oh, we went to Palm Springs and here’s a nice little video. And I can change the music, and I can take, the AI began to make the video for me. And now I just can come in and kinda manipulate it a little bit. And also the way that iPhoto kinda, you know, organizes all this stuff makes it much easier to interact with your old footage without feeling the need to sit down and bring it into iMovie and make an actual video. – Yeah, like I have one from a few weeks ago. They created an album called Saturday evening in Los Angeles. – Oh, that sounds fun. – And then there’s one, rediscover this day, May 16th, 2015. And it’s two pictures of my family made into a collage that I took on that hammock that we used to have in the backyard. So yeah, it kinda brings it up in an innocuous place where I can enjoy it and be a little surprised by it. – But what is the utility– – Want a Mother’s Day movie? Make a special movie for a mother in your life. – Oh, gosh, too late. What is the utility of it, of having having this stuff, of having your memories captured in this way in a way that didn’t exist until very recent history? But now, it’s almost a cliche at this point to talk about how you document every part of your life. – Well, what is the what? What’s the question? – What’s the utility of it? – Well it’s interesting because I mean, it’s the one thing across the board that people are gonna say is amongst their most prized possessions. They’ll run back into the burning home to get type of situation. But here we are talking about how much emotional burden is associated with it. – But of course, now it’s all on the cloud. I mean if you don’t have all your– – Right, which is what I– – If you don’t have all your photos and videos in the cloud, I don’t know what to tell you if everything burns. – But let me ask you this. Are you going to look at that honeymoon footage? You said you’re gonna sit down with the kids and do it, but it’s four hours of footage. What are you gonna do? – Pop some popcorn. – How do you think they’re gonna react to that if you tell ’em you’re going on a hike and they’re hating on it? – No, they– – Hey, kids, let’s all sit down and watch daddy and mommy’s honeymoon. – Are you crazy? – You think they’ll love it? – They will eat it up. They love old footage of us. They love to hear the way that we talked. – Oh, even without them in it. – And then they love to watch themselves. – Yeah, yeah. – I mean we do that all the time. We gather around the computer at home and just go to old videos. It’ll be like, “Alright, here’s one of Shepherd talking.” And no one knows what he’s saying, but he’s very enthusiastic about whatever it was. And his hair looks crazy and he’s got food all over his face. – So you don’t get sad, huh? – I completely know what you’re talking about, and I’ve had that, like I’ll sit down by myself and look at a bunch of old stuff and I get this like– – Sinking, life is fleeting. – I’m old and life is short. And what am I doing? And what is really important? You have this overwhelming kinda burden on you. But when I sit down with my kids, it’s like I’m creating another memory via another memory, you know, an older memory, so it’s just fun when we do that. But if I do it by myself, I get sad. So I just don’t do it by myself. Make it a family thing. – Maybe I will digitize. I mean there were, I remember, I didn’t take footage of our honeymoon. But on our one-year anniversary, Christy and I drove down to Charleston, South Carolina and had like a one-year anniversary, second honeymoon type weekend. And I took a lot of footage of that. And then when I got back home, over the next few weeks, I edited it into a video. And then I was like I just got one of those iDVD burners, and I burned it on a DVD. – Yeah, you did. – I just need to find the DVD. – Yeah. – But I remember there was like– – Remember the DVD menus on iDVD? – Yeah, there was the wedding one. – The wedding one, yeah. – And then there was the other ones that weren’t the wedding. – The non wedding ones. – Right. I don’t know which one I used, but I definitely remember that there was footage, there was like bubble bath footage. – Hold on, you took bubble bath footage? – Yeah. – Oof you and your wife? – Yeah, I did. – And that’s digitized somewhere? – Yeah. I mean it could be, you could probably Google and find it. No, you can’t but, oh, gee, I wish I wouldn’t have said that. – I don’t have any– – It’s not in the cloud. – I don’t have any compromising– – No, but it’s not compromising. Here was the story. – Before we get into that, I don’t have any compromising photos or videos– – I don’t either. – Anywhere. – So let me let me clarify– – I do not have that. – The bubble bath footage, okay? The place that we rented was in downtown Charleston. It was like a historical bed and breakfast. I really went for it. – Yeah, you did. – But they had fixed this room with a jacuzzi, jacuzzi tub. – Just for you. – And then Christy had bought the, no, it was, that’s just in the room. – They knew you were coming. Let’s put a jacuzzi in there. – Link Neal is coming with his bride. We’re gonna build a jacuzzi. – He’s brought a video camera. Put the bubble bath on. (chuckles) – Build a jacuzzi. And we turned the jets on that thing. Christy brought all her own like bubble bath stuff because we had heard about this fancy tub in our room, and she had doused this thing. And then we turned on the jets and it was like an explosion of bubbles that– – Overflowed? – It like started building up so high that I ran and grabbed the video camera and I was just filming the whole room filled up with bubbles. – Really? – Yes! – It came out and went– – It was crazy! – Oh. – And so I caught the moment in video form that I’ve never gone back and watched. But I did edit it, so I have it in the mix with, I mean I was filming everything. Back then, before you had kids, you filmed everything for a little stretch. And then when you had kids– – Well, you keep filming when you have kids but– – I guess it’s not kids that made me stop filming. But I remember when we were driving down to Charleston and you know, you’re on I-95 and there’s all these billboards for South of the Border. – Oh, yeah. – Every mile for like literally 100 miles, there’s a different billboard advertising this place just south of the North Carolina border called South of the Border. – With Pedro, the mascot and all these different billboards. – Culturally inappropriate– – A little bit. – Puns with Pedro. – You think those are still there? They probably are. – I believe they are. – Yeah. – I believe in my heart, but I don’t know the truth of it. And I actually, I filmed these. – You filmed every one? – I filmed a lot of these. And then a big part of the beginning of the video is a montage of these culturally inappropriate billboards headed down to South Carolina. – You haven’t watched that back. – I have not watched that back. I gotta dig that up and watch it back. The kids would enjoy that. – Just this morning, this is the way– – Especially now that we, I mean that could have been for my 18th anniversary. – Yeah, well, good luck with that. – I have to wait till 19. – This is the way video works now though. Like this morning, I went to Shepherd’s school. It was the end of the year and they had a school-wide assembly. And we were told by his teacher Shepherd is winning student of the month. – Which is why you went. – Yeah, and his teacher also said in the same breath to my wife when he was explaining this, he’s like, “Yeah, I mean we give out, “we got 26 students and we give out 20 awards “throughout the year, and so this is the 20th.” It was kinda like he was saying that, like, Shepherd just made the cut. (laughs) – It does sound like that. – Shepherd was almost in the six kids who didn’t get an award of any kind, but he made the cut. – Those poor six kids. They couldn’t freakin’ invent six more awards? – I don’t know, man. Yeah, in this day– – He literally just made it. – In the day and age of participation trophies, you at least could throw some of those out there. Throw the kid a bone. – He was the last one, huh? Was he worried about it? Was he like, “Dad, it’s the last time. “I haven’t gotten an award.” – Shepherd, it was a complete surprise to him. The fact that we dropped him off at school and he was like, “This is a little weird. “Mom and dad are dropping me off at school together. “That doesn’t happen.” We were like, “We’re going to breakfast together,” which we did, so we weren’t lying. But then we parked the car. I went inside, and he was in the assembly. And he looked back and saw us, and he was very confused. (Link laughs) But the point of the story is– – She was like, “Shepherd, we’re here every day. “We’re watching your every move.” – Is that, look, the kids are all in this auditorium, sitting down, and then in the back, in a very small area behind what the kids are seated, all the parents are standing in about three or four rows deep of parents. They all got their phones out because they’re all there. Apparently, it’s not difficult to get student of the month because it seems that like 30 kids got up there. But it was one for every class, and it was both May and June. They were kinda celebrated together. But anyway I was like, ‘I’m gonna film this.” Everyone has their phone out, and you enjoy the moments of your kid experiencing this thing. And you’re like, “Well I’m never gonna remember this “unless I film it.” And also, Jessie is filming it at the same time. You see all these husbands and wives together– – Both filming it. – Both filming. I guess you can make 3D later. – She’s gonna turn around and post that on social media. – She’s not gonna post it. – She’s not? – No. – Okay, ’cause if me and Christy were both filming something or taking a photo, I’ll be like, “Why am I doing this,” ’cause she’s just gonna turn around and put it on her social media or whatever. – No, it was posterity. Also when– – You both don’t need to do it. That’s a little overkill. – But I’ve developed a technique of holding the phone up, getting the frame where I want it, and then taking my head to the side to be in the moment at the same time. I’m trying to be present and not look, not enjoy it through the lens of the camera, but make sure that the lens of the camera is capturing what I want. – You need a forehead camera. You need a headband– – How about Google Glass? That’s basically what I need, right? This is the best advertisement. Google Glass shouldn’t have never gone away. Did it? Are people still wearing that? – I don’t know, Rhett. – But that is ultimately what I’m trying to create, an experience where– – I can do that. – I am filming something up but experiencing it at the same time. – Now can Jessie do that? – She could do it as she wanted to. But if I began to mansplain to her how to look, if I was like, “What you really need to do is you need to be “in the moment while you’re filming it, “and here’s the way the way that you do that,” she would get pissed at me. – But why didn’t you just say, “Hey, you know what, I’ll film this “and you don’t have to worry about filming it.” – I was just already committed to it. But when I zoomed in on Shepherd’s face as he was receiving his award, he did not look like getting student of the month meant much to him. – Oh. – He looked like he could have been finding out anything that did not matter. (Link laughs) Name something that doesn’t matter to Shepherd, and that’s what he looked like was happening to him. And then we were like, they were like, “Okay, all parents come up and get pictures of your kids.” And all these kids are smiling, super happy to be students of the month, and Shepherd just has a completely, he’s just such a weird kid. He’s got a blank look on his face. And then I’m like, Shepherd, literally making the, and then he gives this completely fake smile where his eyes stay exactly the same. – Dead inside. – And he’s just like this. (Link laughs) Standing up there with his student of the month award. Congratulations, son. – But you have video of it, which you’ll never watch. – Or we can watch it right now you’d probably laugh at it. – But now with the AI, it’ll pop up when you least expect it, and you’ll experience it. – Yeah, you have a memory. – I love it now ’cause it’s in the cloud. You know a lot of times, I didn’t take footage because then it would be a burden for me to figure out what to do with it. So we’re finally, we have arrived. We’re finally at a point where– – You don’t have to edit it. – Your phone’s already in your hand. You might as well video or photograph something and then it’s immediately in the cloud. And then the robots assemble it in a way that you can enjoy at a time that they think, algorithmically, you want to enjoy it. This is it. We’ve arrived. – No, no, we haven’t arrived. We’ve just put our foot into the door, because here’s what’s gonna get really interesting. So you’re you’re gonna have something on your body, whether it’s an eyepiece that’s like a contact or whether it’s your glasses, that is doing exactly what we just described. It’s allowing you to be present in the moment as a normal human being but also be capturing the video and audio of what you’re experiencing and then– – For the government though. – Hold on, let’s not talk about the negative side before we talk about, explore the positive side. And the AI is going to be so smart that not only is it going to be able to recall these things, but it’s going to be biometrically measuring things in your body at the time. And it’s gonna be measuring your heart rate and your breathing and that kind of thing, and it’s gonna know when you were emotionally moved by something. It’s gonna know your emotional state that you were in when you were experiencing these things. – And then it’ll know how important it was. – And then it’s gonna know this meant a lot to Link. – Oh, stop. – And this is a special memory. Or this is when link was incredibly mad, and it’s going to be able to show you because it meant something to you. – There’s lots of bubbles on this one. Oh, boy, the bubbles– – If the bubbles meant something to you, they will be a memory. It won’t be guessing. – The rapid increase of bubbles tells me that this is a memory worth featuring. – And what will continue to happen, which is already happening as we continue to offload our minds into these devices, teachers are still teaching students to memorize all kinds of things even though, ultimately, we’re supplementing our brains with things. And it probably still is important but– – But all I’ll add to the experience because I mean if I go to the, the reason why I describe sadness is because you’re looking at these old things, I think part of it for me is that there are things that I’ve forgotten unless I look at the picture. There’s lots of memories you have that aren’t memories of the experience. They’re memories of the photo of the experience. I mean we’ve talked about how memories are created and recreated. Every time you access a memory, it kind of rebuilds in a way that it has great potential to change. To put it simply, looking at pictures from the past, it resurfaces and solidifies memories. So if you have a constant operating recording of what’s going on, in every way, including biometrics– – And a VR experience, by the way. – Then you can do something like, you can be in a conversation like we are in a lot of times like, you remember that time when me, you and Greg, we were at some park and he tripped and, boy, that was so funny, remember? We just laughed our heads off. – You’ll be able to call that up and you’ll be able to see– – Just based off of that conversation, it can be called up. You’re like, “Well, that was July 21st, 2001.” – Yeah, but not only that, not only that. Because it will be a VR experience, it won’t just be a video. It will be– – It’ll be immersive. – Immersive virtual reality experience because the capturing technology will basically capture your field of vision and what you were hearing at the same time. And then you’ll be able to, in the middle of that, say, “Switch to Greg’s perspective.” And you’ll be able to relive the memory from Greg’s perspective. Switch to Link’s perspective. And you’d be able to relive the memory from everyone’s perspective. And also, I mean we’re just talking about an episode of Black Mirror here. It’s not really that, this isn’t that revolutionary. This is just what’s gonna happen. – Is this an episode specifically? – I haven’t seen every episode of Black Mirror. – But you haven’t seen this? – I feel like they’ve touched on something very similar to this. I’m sure it has been. But this will be, without a doubt, this will be the number one thing used in court cases, right? – Yeah, that’s why it won’t happen. – It will happen. – I mean it’s invasion of privacy. – No, no, no, no. – I don’t think it will happen. – Well, hold on. It will happen because it’s legal right now to wear a virtual reality capturing thing. – But people won’t opt into it enough for it to– – You will opt into it because you want to be able to recall your memory. But what should be continued to be protected is my ability to tap into your perspective without a warrant. So you have to let me. I’m not saying you have to submit to it. I’m not saying it should be something that’s up in some cloud. But the problem is as soon as it’s captured and it will be in a cloud– – It’s in the cloud. – Anybody who has your password or anybody who hacks the system is gonna be able to get to it, which ultimately I just think that that’s all pretty much inevitable anyway. But it’d be pretty cool to see what it was like to be in Greg’s shoes when his pants fell down and he fell down. Well, that’ll be fun. – I mean do you think that you would opt into this thing knowing, I don’t know. I tend to think that I would opt into this thing so I could have that experience. – To be able to say I wanna go back to the day that my son was born and experience it and be there exactly like it was, the temptation is too great for the average person to say no to that, I think. I remember our first date. Think about that. I remember, the first time I met my wife, the first conversation I ever had, the first words I ever heard out of her mouth, you’re telling me that I can have the ability in the future, well, I can’t have the ability but you can have the ability in the future to access that in a perfect VR immersive experience. You’re gonna say yes every time. – There are people, with just the advent of camcorders, who lived their lives that way. There’s not a lot of them but there are people. I’m thinking of a specific documentary where there was a guy who recorded so much of his life. I can’t remember what it is. – Well, as you’re thinking about that, I think the next genre beyond daily vlogging, Now first of all, you’ve got live streaming. Justine did that thing with Justin.tv. She was one of the first pioneers. – 24/7 livestream. – And she wore a camera on her head. But what you’re gonna be able to do in the not-too-distant future is someone is going to be streaming their personal experience, both what they’re seeing and what they’re hearing, and you’re gonna be able to just live their lives. And there’s gonna be people who are, and there is a movie about this, by the way. I can’t remember which movie it is. I can’t remember who’s in it, but let us know in the comments because I know you know, where you can inhabit somebody else’s experience and they’re gonna be celebrities. And that’s gonna be, it’s gonna be a genre. It’s an inevitable genre of media. It’s gonna be this person lives an incredibly cool life. – And then you’re gonna sell it. – And then you’re gonna be able to just tap into their experience, and, eventually, there’s gonna be haptic stuff so you’re gonna be able to not only see and hear what they’re experiencing but you’re gonna be able to feel what they’re feeling, who they’re feeling. You’re literally going to be able to inhabit somebody else’s body, and people are gonna be like, “Well, my life is boring but this guy, this dude.” It’s gonna be this self-fulfilling prophecy where all of a sudden, this person has all this… People are paying and he’s looking at ads, he’s looking at an ad or there’s an ad rolling in in the middle of this whole thing to pay for it. Or maybe you’re paying for a service to hack into this guy’s stream. But you’re gonna begin to, he’s gonna become, he or she will become incredibly rich and powerful because of all of these people. But think about what’s gonna happen. I mean I don’t think that’s a good thing, by the way. As someone who looks forward to the transhumanist experience, that kind of stuff scares me. I’m not excited about that. That’s when things start getting very strange, when people are just literally living vicariously through somebody else, but it will happen. It will happen in our lifetime. – But you would sign up for the the 24/7 body documentation, life documentation technology even though you know that there are so many ways that it could be exploited that you can’t even anticipate yet, that could screw you over. I tend to say yes because– – I think I would turn it off during certain moments. – Oh, moments. – But you would probably grow pretty lackadaisical about that, and you would get to a place where you’re just like, “Ah, I’m gonna leave it on. “It’s all encrypted.” Again, we talked a little bit about this weeks ago when we talked about the ability to read people’s thoughts. What we’re really getting into is if you can tap into somebody’s experience, you’re like one step away from just basically inhabiting their brain and knowing their thoughts. The positive spin on all this is that you get to a place where you can just tap into somebody else’s perspective, and there is no privacy. And we and we’re like one step closer to that whole human organism concept that we’re all incredibly, for good reason, uncomfortable with. But I’m sure some ethicist will make very compelling arguments for why that is not only the inevitable future that we face, but something we should welcome. In a couple of generations, it’ll be like the fact that you guys were ever scared of this is ridiculous, I think. – I think I’m happy with where we are. – It’s a good place. And what if you could just tap into your kid’s, and first of all, this is an episode of Black Mirror, by the way. There’s an episode where there’s an implant that a woman, spoiler alert, and not really gonna spoil it, but just in case you don’t want anything spoiled. But there’s a girl, a little girl who goes missing for a very short period of time, and the mom has all these horrible thoughts about, “What am I gonna do if she actually gets lost?” She gets her back but then she gets this service. It’s an implant that basically allows her mom to pull up an iPad or a screen or whatever the equivalent is in Black Mirror and monitor everything that her daughter is seeing. But it also allows her to censor the things that her daughter is seeing. So anything that anything is negative, like even like a dog that’s like barking at her and scaring her is pixelated and muffled, the audio is muffled. It plays with some really interesting themes about privacy, including she keeps this thing in her daughter’s head her whole life because you can’t take it out. And there’s some really interesting things that happen as the daughter gets older and the mom has the ability to tap into the stream. Because again, you do it in the name of safety, right? You’re like, “I can know where my kid is at at all times. “I can know what my kid is seeing at all times. “Isn’t that a positive thing?” Black Mirror always takes, basically it shows you how this can go wrong. – It gets dark. The mirror gets dark. – Which is great because you cannot advance in any of these areas without being very, very familiar with all the ways that it could go wrong. – Mm-hmm. – But you look back on the history of humanity and there’s very few thresholds that we haven’t, that we didn’t end up crossing even though we’re really scared of it, because once the threshold can be crossed, it’s just eventually everybody kind of gets up to the line and we’re all looking at each other like, “Oh, we’re gonna cross it.” And then somebody pushes in then you’re like, “Okay, I guess this is where we’re going as a species.” It happens. It’s inevitable. – Well, I’m happy where I’m at. – Okay. – The fact that I could just pull up my phone based on a question in an envelope and just go all the way back to 2004, was it, except for my license, 2006 for me, that’s good enough for me. – Yup. – You know, get a couple of memories served back up to me a few years later. – We could go back to that that time we made homemade wine on Cape Fear River and passed it back and forth. – See, I feel like I can go back there in my mind right now. – And you think it’s better. – It is probably better than it actually was. – You’re probably right, and we don’t have a choice. – And by the way, it was horrible. It tasted horrible. It was a fail. – Yeah, but we could reprogram him to make it taste great. – That’s even worse. – You know what that memory, that first time we mess– – That’s what we do in our memories. – You know, you talk to your partner in your life. That first kiss we had was awkward, let’s reprogram that memory and make it great. There’s an episode of Black Mirror. Editing your memories. Again, it’s probably already been done. No original ideas here. (laughing) – That’s the subtitle of our podcast. – No original ideas. – Well, Carolyn, thanks for your question. I should be more specific. Carolyn17980742. – Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror right there. Her name. – Thanks for your question. Who knew that we’d go back more than a decade for that one. Thanks for hanging out with us and letting us talk at you. We’ll do it again next week. #EarBiscuits if you have any thoughts for us and we’ll keep the conversation going over there. – #Blessed. To hear this Ear Biscuit in its entirety and make sure you don’t miss an episode, follow the links in the description to subscribe on Apple podcasts, or anywhere else podcasts are available. – [Link] To watch more Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist on the right. – [Rhett] To watch more of our daily show, Good Mythical Morning, click the playlist on the left. – [Link] And don’t forget to click the circular icon to subscribe. – [Rhett] Thanks for being your Mythical best.