EB 269: Our Top 10 Moments of 2020

Welcome to “Ear Biscuits” the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Link. And I’m Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are doing what we’ve done for the past couple of years, which is give our top 10 moments of the year. Yes. I’ve been looking forward to this. We each have 10, so there’s 20 total. I’m a fan of nostalgia, even if it’s short-term nostalgia. I think just looking back at 12 months, when it comes to nostalgia, you gotta say, that’s pretty short term, right? I don’t consider it nostalgic. I like the process of looking back, I look back through my photos. You saw me doing this yesterday. I look back through my calendar. I look back through my digital journal and thoughts. I don’t really call it a journal. I just like- Diary, you call it a little diary. No, I have notes Little diary. on my computer, and I just have one note that’s called Thoughts, and sometimes I date it, so it’s basically a journal. I just don’t have the guts to call it a journal because I’ll just feel guilty for not actually keeping up with it. So, I just call it Thoughts. I got a journal that I don’t keep up with. I mean, just make a journal entry every once in a while. Just because you don’t feel guilty about something- Don’t make me feel guilty about it. Oh . I’m saying I got a whole folder in my Evernote. Are you using Evernote? Okay, I’ll say it. I use an Evernote. And I got a list of 10 things. Yeah. I don’t wanna sit here and talk about Evernote when we got some amazing things that have happened to us in an amazing year. Well, hasn’t this been a great year? 2020, unlike any other. I gotta tell you, honestly, in previous years, I have had difficulty narrowing it down to my top 10 moments. Yeah. I had trouble coming up with 10. Listen, I mean, it has been a good year for us, relative to a lot of folks, but this has been a tough year for a lot of people. Some of the things that made the list, it was like, I think it’s, they made the list given the year, given the state of 2020. Definitely. It’s like, oh, normally you wouldn’t think that that would make the list, but boy , with a year like this year, it’s a highlight. I know we call it the top 10, but it’s… I’ve thought of it as like top 10 most impactful moments or So, you changed the theme this year. memories. You changed it from the last two years. No. I mean, it’s milestone moments. Yeah, if there’s something They’re not all as big and impactful, yeah. enjoyable. Right. I focus on the positive personally just because I felt like it was a negative year. So, there may be some things that didn’t make the list that seemed monumental that I just was like, oh, I ain’t putting on my list. No, this is definitely a positive list that I’ve worked up as well. But I mean, there’s some… Well, how do I put it? There’s been some valleys of darkness in this year, and I just wanted to acknowledge that in some of what I put in here, but it’s mostly silver lining. Okay. It’s mostly silver lining. So, we’re just gonna alternate- It’s not true that clouds have a… If clouds have a silver lining, that’s like an environmental problem. That means there’s like silver dioxide or something that somehow if there’s some mining process got into the cloud, that you don’t wanna be breathing that in. I think the problem is yours. Being that you can’t even find the silver lining in the term the silver lining. In a silver lining. Silver lining is a problematic analogy. It’s a sun behind the cloud. And I think about silver being in the content of the cloud And I’ll let you know- having silver in it. I didn’t think I needed to explain this. A silver lining lets that there is a sun behind the cloud. It’s a bright spot that you just have to trust is gonna come out again and make you a warm and happy and better in 2021. If you drink too much colloidal silver, it can make you blue. I think there was a guy that was on like Donahue back in the ’90s that turned blue. Are you stalling? Are you afraid to celebrate No. No. your year? No, I’ll go first as a matter of fact. We do need to get started because I mean there’s 20 things on this list, there’s no reason to talk about silver linings. Join us, #EarBiscuits, let us know what what your milestone moments of 2020 are. But go first. Number 10 for me is a moment that I talked about, the vacation that we took to San Diego with my family. And there was the moment that I got to surf for the first time with both of my boys. Locke and Shepherd, Shepherd’s first time ever surfing. And there was just a moment that we’re out there and I’m like, I mean, nobody’s really killing it, nobody’s really ripping it, no one’s doing anything that they would write home about or are going to be videoed. But there were dolphins, I remember. No, that was a different time. Oh. The dolphins swimming alongside me is I think the highlight of my life. And that was not this year, it was some other year. But I lobbed that at you as an opportunity I’m sure there were dolphins to revision history yet. Well, there were dolphins probably in our midst. Also something I learned that week while we were surfing, is that there was, this year especially, an unusually high number of juvenile great white sharks that are swimming amongst the swimmers and surfers all along the California coast. Can we just take the words, juvenile and great, and just replace them both with one word? They cancel each other out, white sharks. Yeah. Fledgling white sharks. But it turns out that these juvenile great white sharks are not aggressive towards humans usually. So anyway. But anyway, having this moment with my kids doing something that I felt like, I talked about pushing Shepherd and catching a wave, and then there was the next day that we went out, all three of us surfing together. It’s a special moment doing one of my favorite things with two of my favorite people. Number 10 for me. My number- Oh, we’re already to my number 10. Yeah, I mean, with COVID hitting, I don’t know if you remember COVID hit this year. Yeah, kinda hitting. ‘Cause people are saying that it was here in December of 2019. They’re really starting to figure that out now. Right, right, right, right. But . We can’t not talk about COVID in this thing, but one big silver lining, once we really started to hunker down, this is not one of my moments, but I remember we talked about it, just like watching the news and processing in real-time with the rest of the world, trying to make sense of what is beginning to happen, and news anchors saying, “Get ready, this is your new normal.” And as much as I was trying to process it, you just kinda have to live it. And so, as it starts to sink in, oh man, this has been a month, this has been two months, I remember when we would count how many weeks we had been without going out or being in contact with people or each other. And it was in that context that my number 10 happened. Which is, we instituted a weekly Zoom call with our college friends. Ah, yes. Thanksgiving of 2019, when I went home I reconnected with a couple of the guys in person and I gave a teaser to some things we were gonna be talking about on “Ear Biscuits”, which I’m sure, with the live series podcast, which I’m sure we’ll talk more about in a little bit, and just kinda reconnecting, letting them know where we were at and how we were gonna go public with this type of stuff. And then we started a text group as those podcasts came out, but then it turned into a Zoom chat, that everybody didn’t make it every week, but especially at certain key points for me, it was a big deal to be able to reconnect with friends, just laugh and reminisce and talk about how we’re processing this thing. Right. And know that you’ve got someone that we knew so well and then reconnecting, it was like picking up right where we left off with those guys. You got Greg, our college roommate, Tim, who was the second college roommate who moved in with us. You got a Ham, who came along with Nukirk, there was the sister apartment that they lived in that we would connect with and hang out with and got into all types of trouble. That’s the apartment that we were in when we made the decision to drop the poop off at the party, we’ve never even talked about. Right. It was therapeutic, and it is therapeutic to keep that friendship going. Especially when there was a time where it’s like, there wasn’t a lot to look forward to in the week, and we really needed that level of connection. And now we’ve revived the friendship to a point that it’s something that we cherish, and it’s active. I wonder how many people reconnected in that way this year. I have to believe that. I mean, I know that there’s a thing where people are reconnecting with friends that they used to see in person. Like, hey, let’s have a cocktail hour. Or let’s have a little- On Zoom. Let’s have a dinner party on Zoom. We should’ve done a little bit of that, but yeah, connecting, it’s funny because we… And I also hung out with a couple of the guys, we went to NAC State basketball game when I went back. For Christmas. For Christmas. Yup. Nukirk and Ham and I met and went to a game. And so, we would see each other in that capacity. But yeah, it’s funny how we were talking just the other day ’cause we still have a lot of meetings all the time, just in the professional sense, and a couple of the meetings that were gonna be Zoom calls ended up being scheduled as phone calls. And then it just felt so strange to just be on a conference call where people were like, “Hold on, wait, let’s do this as a video call.” I actually got angry inside that I couldn’t see the people that I was talking to. It was like, “What? Are we in 2019?” It’s amazing how quickly, I almost felt like I can’t have a conversation with just someone’s voice, within the span of one year, less than a year, all of a sudden the capacity to just talk to somebody on the phone without seeing their face, it’s amazing how this is just a cultural revolution. But I think it was like, oh, I’m talking to my coworkers, employees, business partners through this medium, why can’t I do that with all friends? Why can’t I do that with… I mean, they were all spread out across the country. We got North Carolina, Missouri, we got Washington, we got Japan, we all hop on the call and It really gave a sense of connectedness. Connect. I mean, it’s one thing to talk to your family, but the way that you can, at least for me, the way that I’m able to open up with that friend group and kinda process, and it be this trusted environment where it’s like, we’re just friends. You can have that with different family members, I don’t have that. So, it was nice to have that, and also to kinda track their experience with where they are physically in the world because Every state is a little bit different. it didn’t matter if you were Nukirk over there in Japan, or if you were in Missouri or here. There was a shared experience that… But it was a little bit different. And you started to put your finger on the pulse of like, how things really are back at home, and really assessing that. So, I mean, it was connecting on a relational sense but also in like a socio global sense. Socio global. So, that’s my number 10. Okay. My number nine is, this is gonna get a little bit cryptic because I’m gonna tell you something but not tell you fully what it was. And relatively recently, I’d say in the past month. Do I get credit for this? Do you get credit for it? Yeah. I had to remind you of this. Oh, I thought, do you get credit No. for adding the idea to the list? Reminding you that it should be on your list, yeah. No. No, you didn’t because that’s another one. That’s also gonna be cryptic. Oh, dang, you got a bunch of cryptic stuff. I got two cryptic things on the list. Okay. All right. So, what is this? This is where you and I… Now, I mean, this is a twofer because I’m also gonna talk about the creative house. This was a year of the creative house which has been a godsend for us. Having a place that we could go that is not our homes and not our office. It’s a homey office. I believe we moved in in February. That makes sense. Maybe late January. And so, the timing was just serendipitous that it happened to work out in the year of COVID that we had this place that we could go. And we’ve had some good solid creative time there. And relatively recently, we spent an afternoon conceptualizing an idea for a movie that we would like to make. You know this, we always got things that we were trying to do. We got things we’re trying to get off the ground. Yeah. And we spent, I don’t know how long it was. I mean, it took us about an hour to no more than two hours with this full discussion of kinda unpacking… Boy, if this movie gets made… Then we’ll have to release the recording of us coming up with the , ’cause we did record it. Yeah. The idea has shifted a little bit, but sure, we can release it. It is You know it’s a good idea potentially the most- when you’re like, hold on, let’s record this conversation. Just audio. Man, you also know it’s a good idea when the next day you’re like You sleep on it. is this idea too crazy? Yes. Is this idea too crazy for us to do? Yes, but let’s do it anyway. Right, and I think that’s kinda where we’re at. So anyway, we- Can’t do it alone now and you can’t guarantee that it will ever get done. But even that feeling, it’s not on my list but it should be. I mean, we’re moving forward, we keep talking about it. We’re adding some meat to those bones. The busier that we’ve gotten, in spite of, how do I say this? We haven’t traveled because of COVID, we haven’t toured, we haven’t done a lot of the things that would normally really make our schedule super packed, super busy. What things that made 2019 an extraordinarily packed year. Right. There was so much travel, a lot of touring. But you would think that we would have replaced all that time with all this unfettered, creative time. And really what it’s been replaced with is Struggle. just trying to maintain a business and a show in the midst of all the turmoil. Yeah, trying to keep Keep it a flow. what’s going going. And it has taken more of our time than I think we ever anticipated, but- And it took a huge emotional toll because there was this pervasive undercurrent of emotion and anxiety that was like, are we doing enough to preserve? And we discussed this. I mean, if you go back through the podcast of this year, I think it was something that was just always there beneath the surface when we weren’t discussing it. And that was, we were constantly reacting to news and requirements and guidelines and restrictions and just feeling the weight of making decisions, not only for us and our families, but for all of our employees. It was a lot, man. And yeah, and then you add on, I feel like we should be able to capitalize on this and be more creative. We should write a whole screenplay or this, that, and the other. And we have been. And so, that was part of the struggle. Yeah. And we have been… And again, another one of my items on the list will allude to this, but we have been able to conceptualize some things that we’re excited about. But there was something about the nature of the way that this particular idea was birthed, and there was just this reckless abandon and commitment to just like, let’s just follow this and not judge ourselves or the idea as it’s happening, we’ll do that tomorrow. And it was just, again, it was an unfettered creative exercise that led to what could be, we’ve had a lot of dumb ideas, what could be one of our stupider ideas but hopefully stupid in a smart way. And hopefully something that will get made. However many months or years from now, we’ll be like, hey, yeah, we made that. We made that movie, man. I think, yeah, that brainstorming session, it really represents the, not culmination, but kinda like the, what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s like the payoff, the realization of the vision of running this The creative house. creative house. Yeah. That it was a place where we could go and isolate and not worry about being interrupted and just unabashedly just come up with stuff. It was fun. So much of what we do now in terms of our creative work is compartmentalized, literally on a calendar. This is when you’ve gotta start, and this is when you gotta stop. And even if you don’t start when you need to start, this is when you need to stop because there’s something right after it that you gotta move on to. And it pressurizes things in a way that that pressure can lead to frustration when you have to move away from it, or it’s just not going well or nothing comes from it. But to give ourselves permission and the physical space to just have a pure creative conversation and that be the objective. And then for something crazy and beautiful and potentially career melding, to come out of it, I mean, I would say is just a bonus. Because the experience itself was worthy of being in anybody’s top 10 list. Did it make yours? No. Okay. Well, all right. So, go ahead and pitch the idea. No. Tell them what the movie is about. I’m not going to. Tell them who stars in it. I’m not gonna say anything. I mean, just give them one word. Give them one word so that when it comes back, when they start to hear about it, if it ever happens, they’ll remember it, they’ll have confirmation that that thing was this thing. A guy. No. Okay, that’s a guy. A guy wakes up. Okay, all right. All right, that’ll work. I don’t think that part will change. Yeah. It could though. All right. So, I’m gonna go to my number nine. Man, this is gonna take a while, but I promise it’s gonna be worth it. And if it’s not just stop listening. Some of them are, I’m pretty sure. But the way that we’ve structured this, is that we’re counting up. Which implies that the moments get more meaningful to us as we go. So, even if you don’t like what we’ve talked about so far, chances are, they increase as we go on. That’s weird. But first, let’s promote some merch. Oh, you wanna do that. We got these mythic cups. If you pour cold water into them, they change color. This one turned purple. Only where the cold water touches. This one’s purple, and this one turns blue. That one turns red and that one turns purple. ‘Cause we both have a blue one. Wouldn’t it be cool if you poured something coal in it and it just incinerated. That’s a 2021 idea. We gotta get rid of this stock. I think that that’s just making something out of like rice paper or some disintegrating cups that- You pour water on something and it burns. Oh, and it burns. And to find out how to burn water, mythical.com. Get yourself something to drink out of. These are nestable, they’re stackable, here. Nest those other two, man, come on. Look at that. You could probably stack them 100 high if you want. This right here, these four cups, which they come in a set of four. But don’t wash them like that. Don’t wash them. ‘Cause only one of them will get clean. Don’t wash them like that. Mythical.com got everything you would need. Spend that Christmas money. Okay. Number nine My number nine is something that… Are you looking at my list? Don’t look over my list, listen to what I’m saying. I can’t help it. Why? You’re like cheating at my list. You want me to say what it is? No. Okay. It’s kind of my thing to say what my thing is. Well, I, wasn’t gonna say it, I was just looking at it. Now you can interject and say, now, do I get credit for this? It’s like when That’s cool. you accidentally can’t turn the subtitles off to a movie. You can’t help, but read them. Yeah. I hate that. You’re like, oh, man, I totally understand everything that they’re saying, but I have to read it as well. The one… I wouldn’t say the one, I would say this is the preeminent constant of COVID for the Neal family. I mean, and we never talked about it. We never talked about setting a rule or an expectation that this is the one thing that we as a family are gonna fixate on and is gonna align us. It is gonna create a family meeting. It’s gonna create something where we will come together and everyone will be motivated to be in the same room with everybody else, every single night. Hold on, you do it every night? Week night, even weekends. The conversation we have to have is, not are we gonna come together to fixate on this, but we have to have conversations when we’re not going to. Heads up, I’ve got something. So, we’re not gonna be able to all get together for this thing that is the life force of the Neal family in COVID. I didn’t realize you did it that often. Say what it is. “Survivor”, the television show. Reality competition show, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. Two years ago, at the end of 2018, we went on a Sedona trip. I’m sure I talked about it at the beginning of 2019. And I remember talking about how we started watching. So, that’s when we started. We watched “Millennials vs Gen X”, and then we were like hooked on it. And then I was like, we’re gonna keep watching “Survivor”, and we never did. We never went back to it. And then I just remembered, we had so much fun watching “Survivor”, we’re gonna start watching. I’m sure I talked about this There’s a lot to watch. whenever we did the podcast from home, I told you at that time that we started watching “Survivor”. Well, let me tell you now, we are still watching “Survivor”. How many seasons have you gone through this year? We went back and we started with, I think season… I did some research on, if we’re gonna binge watch but skip the most boring ones. Yeah. You started watching the most recent episode The most recent season. which is like an all-star season with like winners and stuff and fan favorites or whatever it is. Where’s the winners. And I said, I know how the Neals are- It spoiled all the seasons. Yeah, it spoiled all the seasons. But I’m not gonna sit with my family and watch every season. So, it’s okay. And I was like, listen, I know that’s gonna work for the McLaughlins, but for the Neals, I know how we are. If I can get the family rehooked on “Survivor”, then it can be our thing for COVID. And again, I said, I think this may be the case, I wanna do some research. And then I said, we’re gonna start with season, I think is 17, it may be 19, the first HD season. And then we started watching through, skipping the ones that the consensus said sucked. And then we got to a certain point and we said, we’re even gonna watch the ones that suck because we’re such a fan of “Survivor” now that we’re just gonna watch them all. ‘Cause I don’t wanna run out. Are you gonna go SD all the way? Are you gonna go to SD? No, we’re still moving forward in time. You’re not going back to standard definition. Standard definition’s for suckers. That would be that. That’d be a difficult move. It’d be worse than a phone call. You can’t see anything. If we have to do it, we’ll do it. But we’ve watched “Survivor” since that point in quarantine until now. Again, it is our default expectation that we are going to watch it every single night. And so- So, do you like Jeff Probst more or less now? Oh, more. I would love to meet him. You can’t get enough Probst? I can’t get enough of this guy. I think he’s great. I feel like I know him. I love the show, it has something for everybody in our family. It aligns us. It’s a powerful force and it’s a great show. And your teenagers have not tried to stop this. Lily and Lincoln love it too, yeah. My family had a great time watching You said- last season. But if we try to do it every night, that would cause problems for us. That’s my number nine. And I’m gonna keep going. I’m not really gonna hit rock bottom, unless, for some reason, like come halfway through 2021, we run out of “Survivor”. And then we’re somehow still locked down. You’re saying, when your life turns back to normal, which will happen sometime in 2021. We won’t keep watching “Survivor” every single night as a family. No, ’cause that’d be like, kids won’t be gonna school. Yeah, they’ll have life. Yeah. And my daughter hopefully will go off to college. Maybe she’ll stick around for “Survivor”. Can’t argue with that. You gotta think about the effect you’re having on these kids. Number eight. I alluded to this in the episode we recorded about all the purchases we’ve made on Amazon. Cooking for me, is a general highlight. I’ll zero in, or home in, or even hone in on one particular moment. But I think cooking has been a… Home cooking, I’m sure- Hone cooking? Home cooking has been a big part of a lot of people’s lives this year, right? You’re not going out to, well, some of you, if you’re like us, not going out to restaurants, doing a lot of takeout, maybe, but I think that there’s only so much takeout that you can do or afford. And so, a lot of people are like, “Well, I’m gonna figure out how to cook myself.” And we finally finished the outdoor area. I’ve got my little grill smoker area out there that was featured in an episode of “Fancy Fast Food” with Josh. Mythical chef, Josh. And I am really enjoying. I go out there, I play music and I cook. I mean, over Thanksgiving, I- You cook in the house too, though. I cook in the house, but there’s just something about that outdoor area. I brined and injected and smoked a turkey over Thanksgiving. I also deep fried two . I think, the one for Mike- Well, that said, that was a good . The one for Mike and Jenny turned out to not be nearly as dry by the way, I got a report on that. But anyway, has so much joy making that. And then- Is that your claim to fame? That’s your thing? You said you were homing in on one thing. You’re talking about the turkey. No, no, no, no. The thing I think is the bigger highlight was when I was able to cook those, the Nashville hot chicken sandwiches for your family. Oh yeah. And my family. I was there for that. I think that’s the best tasting thing that I’ve ever personally made. I’ve made some good tasting things. I’ll vouch for that. But there’s something, and if you cook on a regular basis, you can relate to this. My mother-in-law used to say this all the time and I never understood. She’s an incredible cook. And we would sit down to eat and I’d be like, “This is so good.” And she’d be like, “It’s not that good if you’ve been cooking it all day.” And I was like, that’s interesting. I have found that to be the case, that if you spend all this time with this thing and then you serve it, a lot of times it’s not as satisfying if it’s somebody else did it and gave it to you. I don’t understand it. You can onto it. I don’t understand the psychology of that. So, usually, even if something is really good to other people, I’ll be a little bit disappointed in it. Those Nashville hot chicken sandwiches that I pickle brined the thighs for like six hours, deep fried them in peanut oil, served them on Hawaiian buns with a little bit of comeback sauce and some dill pickles. It’s the best thing I’ve ever made. And I had so much joy making it and so much joy serving it. That you tricked yourself into eating it as if you didn’t make it. No, I’m saying it was so good that it overcame that psychological barrier. If you do say so yourself. No, I do say so myself. Well, you can. I was there, hey, it was good. I mean, I’m not gonna take credit for it, it was a recipe. People who get really excited about being able to follow a recipe, is like somebody following directions to a town and being like, “Hey, look at what I did.” I invented the town. Right, you didn’t invent the town, you just followed directions to get there. You’re not the mayor because you took MapQuest. You know what I’m saying? So, what are you doing? So, what I’m saying is that, I have discovered the joy of cooking. MapQuest. Isn’t that a book by Julia Child? No, it’s a website like Google Maps but people don’t use it as much anymore. The joy of cooking. MapQuest. That’s what I’m talking about. So yeah, the joy of cooking in 2020, it’s one of my highlights. In fact, number eight. I almost skipped to number four for time. Just kidding. Okay. What number am I? I’m on number- Eight. Okay, I’m after you. And what you said reminded me, I mean, a milestone, again not on my list, we launched the Mythical Kitchen channel at the top of this year. Yeah, we did. And I’m super proud of those people making it happen. Yeah, speaking of the joy of cooking. Josh, even Nicole and Trevor over there. Even Nicole and Trevor. No, they’re doing great stuff. My number eight is, we launched our vlogs. Now, they went away and I run the risk of… Disappointing. Yeah, just bringing up the- Opening a wound? Opening a wound that we made an announcement towards the end from our handheld phones, filmed in separate locations, you at your home, me in my home saying, “Hey, you know what? This has gotten away from what we wanted to do, what we wanted this to be. And yeah, we haven’t gone back to it.” But it was a special era to make those vlogs. A few that stand out for me, finding the rat in the attic. I’m super proud of you taking a shower at my house. You helping me find Yeah, I’m proud of that too. a rat at my house, and us going off-roading with Shepherd. One of the last ones that we filmed before we went into quarantine. And then we started trying to do things every week separately. And we were under a lot of pressure. Yeah. We lost the joy of it. It wasn’t the outlet it was supposed to be because it was, oh my gosh, what are we gonna do now? And it’s not really about what we wanna do together. It’s about what we can do to make do. And that’s not what this was about. I’m glad we stopped doing it, and we reserve the right to pick it up and do it whenever we wanna do it, and release something over there. And I’m sure we’ll do that. But I look back on those videos, especially those that I’ve mentioned, like the skin walls one did really well. But it was a little different than the other ones, but I look back on that really fondly. I do as well. I don’t know exactly why I didn’t put it on my list, and I think that I have a little bit of… I associate some negative energy with that because I know how the folks who really liked it feel about the fact that we did it and then stopped. And so, yeah, I do feel, I don’t know, maybe shame is the word. But I like that you’re seeing it for what it was and how special it was as it was happening. And like you said, I’ll go ahead and tell you, we already filmed one. We haven’t finished filming it, but there is gonna be at least another one. I don’t know when it’s gonna come out. But, in fact, we’ve got a cart in our inbox that we need to review. That’s right. That’s right. So, there is gonna be at least another one, it’s just, how regular is it gonna be, I don’t know. I’m filming another one too. And you’ve got one that you’ve been working on. Yeah. Something else that didn’t make the list is that like, well, it reminds me, I… An honorable mention was, there is a furry addition to the Neal household. Yeah, that happened. Of the feline variety. And I’ve been holding back a lot there. Right, but we’re gonna- Including putting in my top 10. But we’re gonna put it, we’re gonna let it loose on them. That’s the plan. Even saying this, I hope will help me follow through with that. Yeah, I feel like And you know what? committing to it. ‘Cause we filmed the couple like we had the idea whenever we were focused on doing original TikToks. Yeah, we filmed some stuff. Once we started getting back together and we were trying our hand at that, we decided to document that. I hate that I’m saying this ’cause it’s just gonna frustrate people, but there’s a decent amount of footage associated with us, we started documenting the process of figuring out TikTok and then that fills it out. I mean, just because we reallocated ourselves to other things and- Sometimes we squeeze our tubes a little too hard. We squeeze too hard. Us being the tubes. Yeah. And you will hear about, in fact, my next one, you’ll understand maybe some other places that the tube was getting squeezed. Oh my goodness. So, that’s just the thing, to me, one of the themes of our experience this year is just trying to figure out what it is we need to be investing in. Yeah. Investing our time in. Creatively, business-wise, personally, and just trying to balance and maintain some sort of semblance of personal wellbeing. And not really being able to quantify how much effort and time and care we needed to allocate to ourselves and our families in order to hold things together, internally and externally. It was the thing that we talked about, but it turns out, you couldn’t have talked about it enough. And I think that that’s, with the things that we did do, it was always running parallel with this assessment of, is this the right thing to do? Because so much was up in the air and changing so much. Well, I can use that as a segue into my number seven. Because I feel like the reason we started doing the vlogs was, we’re always on things. There’s very few idle moments in the business day for us. And we talked before about all the things that we work on that don’t see the light of day because they’re not just things that we make for YouTube, they’re things that involve working with other people, developing things, gatekeepers, more traditional media stuff. And I think that after many years of doing that, there was a little bit of frustration that like, man, everybody moves so slow and it’s hard to convince people to let us make things, and let’s do something else on YouTube. And I think that the vlogs kinda came out of a little bit of creative frustration, but then COVID really complicated it and made it difficult for us to even be together. And then it was around the same time we were realizing that this is becoming an obligation, a weekly obligation. And it’s also like, well, we still wanna do other creative things, and again, there’s only so much toothpaste in the tube. So, there was a confluence of factors that led to that, but one of them is a real positive thing. And again, I’m gonna be cryptic again. But… I cannot take credit for this one? You can take credit for adding this one to the list, yes. Because To your list. I did not have it on my list. And I don’t remember when this process started, but I believe it started in 2019. Yeah. That we became friends with a person who has a rather storied television career, creating some iconic television shows, and someone whose television shows that they have created, there’s very little crossover with anything that fits our sensibility or tone. And you would be like, huh, that’s interesting. That’s not anything like I’ve seen Rhett and Link create, but we decided, wouldn’t it be fun and weird and strange and exciting to work together to create a show that is like, where does the world of this person’s ideas meet the world of Rhett and Link’s ideas. And by show, you mean television show. Television show. Yeah. And so, we have developed a television show. We have developed the world- Yeah, we had Zoom calls where we would just… Well, I don’t remember how it started. What was the nugget of an idea… It was, what if we did something to collaborate together and… We had a nugget of an idea and we kinda pitched it his way, right? I can’t remember, don’t matter. I don’t remember exactly how that the initial ball got rolling, but I do remember he sent over like a couple paragraphs of a writeup that was like an initial idea. Then we kinda took that and put our spin on it. And then it became this totally… I mean, whether or not this becomes a television show or not, which we will be trying very hard in 2021 to get people to make the show, it has been one hell of a process, and very, very fun. The world that we have created is very deep and strange and funny. And the thing that has been a joy for me has been being able to work with this person who has so much experience and specific skill in the area of writing and creating television. We took a stab at writing the pilot, and we kind of go on instinct and some experience, and also, it’s not like we don’t read about the process of what makes good writing, but there’s just something about being able to hand something over to this guy and get his insights and notes on something. I felt like I went to school this year in a real good way, and learned a whole lot about the writing process. Yeah, and we have a pilot to show for it. Literally just- Well, we have a script for a pilot, never made it yet. That’s right, yeah. We have a pilot script to show for it. But yeah, it was a cool experience, not only getting notes but like to get audio notes that were like kind of a stream of consciousness, kind of like, oh, this is how he approaches it, this is how he thinks about it, and this is what needs to change. It was a thrill. And since you’re much more of a writer, that’s why I was like, this needs to be on your list. Yeah, it was. This has been a big chunk of my time. We both have put a lot of time into it. When you ask the question of like, what do Rhett and Link do all the time? Well, one of the things is we work on stuff like this. The conclusion I’ve come to about this one is, and I’ve been thinking about this with some of our other things that we’ve developed, like we wrote a pilot for a show about musical therapy, seven or eight years ago, right, when we were trying to make our first go at like Hollywood, besides commercial gangs? Yeah. And we wrote the, we’ve got that pilot. I don’t know, it’s probably not any good. We should dig that up. But digging that up and doing a some kind of reading or something, Yeah, that’s a good idea. I think maybe put it on a society, that would be a good thing for the society. Yeah, we’ll figure it out. But the stuff that- Legitimate, that’s what we call it. Right. The town The name of the town was legitimate. was called legitimate, but it obviously had a double meaning. Yeah. But this idea, the movie idea, again, these things would probably never see the light of day, but I’m believing that both of them will. And hoping that both of them will. Who is the guy? You’re gonna tell the people who the guy is? Nope. I’m not. And I’m a little fuzzy on why we can’t but it’s just like, you gotta keep the lid on these things, and I understand that, so I’m sorry if you’re frustrated. They’re not frustrated, this is a tease. It just gives us something to look forward to when we are able to announce it. My number seven is the Jimmy Fallon hug. Whenever we had to move our production to our homes, we were like, of course, we’re gonna do this. And this is an opportunity. And a lot of this podcast for those weeks, I think, we would unpack the discovery that this is tough. This is demanding. This is more demanding than we anticipated. This is exhausting. This is frustrating. Not fun . There were fun points. But I remember getting up the morning that we were gonna be on the tonight show without leaving our respective homes. We were gonna institute the split screen that we’re employing for GMM, and we were gonna make a three-way split screen. And then we had this idea to bring in arms and get Jimmy to be in the middle and then give us a hug. And Jessie’s arm came over your shoulder and Lily’s arm came over my shoulder and it seemed like it worked. It seemed like Jimmy had really short arms and feminine hands, giving us a hug. But I remember getting up that morning and it wasn’t the only thing we had to shoot, but there’s a different type of nervousness with being on the tonight show when you’re in charge of the all the technical side of it from your own home. But we had slotted to shoot our carpool vlog that we do every month for the Mythical Society. A 20 minute, basically unedited, us driving in a car, but we had to figure that out. We were sitting in separate cars filming it in a split screen in each of our driveways, and I was so keyed up about being on Fallon and frustrated about having to process all this additional things that I just didn’t feel like it fit in my brain. And I kind of felt like I could burst into tears in . I felt like that a few times this year. And that carpool vlog became the most raw and honest, not in an “Ear Biscuits” kind of way, but in like a, hey, we’re about to be on Fallon. What are we gonna wear? Oh yeah, I remember this. Remember that? Yeah. It that it just became a very like, we’re having a conversation that we just needed to have. And we were making content at the same time. And it was like, we were gearing up for this thing and processing how it felt to get ready to be on the tonight show. I’m glad we have that documented. Because to me, that was the professional feeling of quarantine. What was captured in that carpool vlog. But then the payoff was this thing that we got to… I mean, one of the highlights 2019 was like wrapping the first song that we ever wrote while playing with the roots on the tonight show the year before. And then a year later, Jimmy’s at his house, we’re at our homes, it was just so surreal. There’s so many moments this year of like, especially as it was unpacking itself, it’s like, this can’t really be happening. It’s like, I’ve never experienced in something that so consistently felt like a dream. Or a nightmare. And oscillated between the two very frequently. So, the Fallon hug is like the beautiful silver lining that to me, represents everything production that we put ourselves through. I’m glad you put it on your list. Again, I did- I think, we have a shared list. I think we just have a top 20. Yeah, well, but I’m just saying that the reason that I didn’t again is, that period of time was so frustrating. And the Fallon thing was one of the highlights, but making the show at home, what seemed sweet and endearing for a few episodes became a real frustration in a chore, in a lot of ways. And for whatever reason, just very few people, like lot less people watched it. I think it just was a different thing, we’re not together. But I’m glad it’s on your list. Number six for me, this isn’t something that my wife and I discovered for the first time, but it is something that we connected over maybe in a new way. Oh, you talking about a position? No, I didn’t discover any new positions for sorting the mail, I think I’ve figured them all out. Challenge accepted. You want me to send you a diagram of all the different ones? I’ll tell you what you’re missing. Okay. Watching trashy reality TV. We’ve been here, I’ve done a couple, I think I did a whole episode essentially about “Married at First Sight”. And may be also, “90 Day Fiance”. Man, we love some trashy reality TV. We love just… We’re watching “The Bachelorette” right now, which “The Bachelorette” is almost not trashy enough for us. It’s almost too like respectable. The people on “The Bachelorette”, the dudes on “The Bachelorette”, I mean, there’s some that they embarrass themselves on a regular basis, but they don’t embarrass themselves enough and to a degree, that is pleasing enough to me personally. Here’s what I need when it comes to trashy reality. Okay. I need people who just make one bad decision after another. Just like an avalanche of bad decisions. Yeah. And I need it. I need it nonstop. And I need to cut from one person making a really bad decision to another person making a really bad decision. And then figuring out who made the worst decision. And I don’t know what it says about me, but first of all, apparently this is the case with many of y’all because A, these shows tend to be incredibly popular, but every time I’ve talked about them, the most response I ever get on Twitter is people talking about these shows. ‘Cause anyway, Well, you realize you’re doing it again. my wife and I- You’re talking about the show, you’re not talking about whites, you’re not talking about you. Well, no, I talked about whites I’m just messing with you. ’cause it’s people making bad decisions, but anyway- I just don’t want the next 30 minutes to be talking about “The Bachelorette”. Oh, okay. Anyway, I can tell you some details. But it is our little time, in fact, tonight, we’re gonna watch an episode. But we connect. It’s funny we’re connecting with each other, we’re both on our phones, seeing what people said about it when they watched it, we’re usually a little bit behind, and we’re also watching on the West Coast. So, we’re seeing the tweets that people made about it when they watched the East Coast feed. And you don’t have to really pay attention. And you know when you look up, it’s just gonna be somebody making a bad decision or saying something stupid. And there’s just something, my wife and I have bonded deeply over this. My number six, in stark contrast, due to your last entry is the Black Lives Matter movement. Okay. So yeah, I’m making a hard turn here into some meaningful and potentially heavy waters. It’s such a pivotal point in history. I actually still feel, whenever I start to talk about it, I get really hesitant because I’m like, who am I to talk about this? Or to figure out what to say. What if I say the wrong thing or the right thing? There’s still that residual thing that’s happening. But for me, it’s learning that you know what, I’m engaged in this. And this is not just something that I can hold at arms length, further away, I need to look at these issues, I need to become educated, that’s what this year was in terms of me stopping and paying more attention to the movement. And also, I just wanna give a shout out to all the mythical beasts who, we had a fundraiser early on, and then there was lots of donations made to a variety of charities associated with Black Lives Matter movement. And it was extremely meaningful to me to do something and to make up my mind to be a force for good, and to try my best to figure out how I do that. And whether that’s as a company or as an individual, and as a family, I think it’s… And do I have it figured out? And am I tooting any type of horn? I certainly hope it doesn’t seem like it. But I would be remiss if I didn’t put it on the list and say that… I mean, it was a pivotal moment for me personally to have this level of interaction with Black Lives Matter and such an important movement. And it also made my list in a slightly different way. But I’ll wait to share that when I get there. But yeah, I think that… Yeah, this was a year to be clear, these issues have been things that we personally cared about for quite a while, but I think that there is, sometimes when you’re like, why? Okay, step one is caring. Admitting that there is a problem, admitting that you might even be a part of the problem, right? Step two is doing something about it. And part of that has been being a student. Because again, like you said, we’re not the ones with the ideas, we’re in a position where the things that we say, the things that we commit to are impactful and powerful, that’s a privilege. And I think that this is a year where being a student, reading books, people who have looked at these issues, black voices who have really considered these things in a way that we could never consider them personally, but being able to appreciate that perspective and learn from it, and kind of be a student. For me, this year kind of represented going from being concerned and feeling like, yeah something needs to be done about this to begin to listen to people who have been saying that and actually taking action for years, and saying, okay, how can we be supportive and be a part of that? And I’ll talk a little bit more about a personal thing related to that. What’s your number five? This is one of my higher ones. Number five is the all day live stream that we did relatively recently. I mean, there has been some dispute over whether or not doing it from 9:00 to 5:00 was all day, but for us, that was all day . But we didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into with this. We did the live stream that benefited Inner-City Arts, a charity that we had been wanting to partner with for a while and had not really, given the nature of this year, been given an opportunity to do it. And people, influencers, or whatever you wanna say doing charity live streams, it’s not a new thing, but it was new for us. And we were like, if we’re gonna do this, we wanna do it in a way that’s effective and actually makes a difference, but we wanna do it in a way that’s mythical. We wanna do it in a way that is entertaining. And our team did an incredible job of pulling together the live stream. And then the mythical beasts did an incredible job of showing up and giving. We raised over $350,000 for Inner-City Arts. Yeah, I was blown away. And I will say, you know what, we’re in alignment, this is my number five Oh, wow. as well. Stars align. I went home that night after the live stream had ended and I just was just processing. And every way that I looked at the experience, if it was the work that Inner-City Arts is doing and how I could just feel… I know what it feels like to have to raise money as part of a nonprofit. And sometimes it feels very thankless. So, I got great joy from knowing how it must’ve felt to the Inner-City Arts people who dedicated their lives, and at times you might feel under-appreciated or forgotten, to have that vote of confidence from people all over the world was tremendously moving. Like you’re saying, to look at our team and to say how… It was within the context of their job, but I could tell that everyone involved went above and beyond and outside of the scope of their normal work to give of themselves to make this happen. I got a lot of joy from that. Seeing our kids get involved, and calling our parents and getting them involved in it and making a decision to bring back former employees like Mike and Alex and Jen, and have them show up and celebrate, basically implied it like, you guys have moved on from working with us, we’re not employing you anymore, but you’re still doing great things out there in the world, and we still have this connection that… It felt good to still be connected and to bring them back in and to have this extended family. But ultimately to make a decision that it was a family affair, I saw that one of the comments afterward was, one mythical beast, I’m sorry I can’t remember your handle specifically said, “I love being a part of this family.” Because we decided we weren’t gonna bring in guests and we weren’t gonna make it one of those telethon type things, which is great, and we love being a part of that too, but for it to be our thing in partnership with Inner-City Arts was something that I think, just like I said, and there’s many more ways, but every way I would look at it from any angle, it was just something that brought a lot of joy to invest in something in the arts. Well, it was kinda mythically coming full circle because we’re doing something that we’re having fun doing, it’s entertaining, there’s a lot of lighthearted moments and fun moments, but it’s directly doing something for good. There’s a lot of indirect good that we hear comes from the stuff that we do, where it’s like, oh, this helped me get through a difficult time or whatever, and of course we do give to charity, but to do something that is so directly tied to a course like that, it felt really good. That’s why it was my number five too, man. So, you’re number four. Number four, okay. We went on a trip with our boys, two of us, and all four of our boys, I got two, he’s got two, to Death Valley. Did a multi-day camping trip. And what we’re gonna do, this is my number four, again, ’cause it was a great trip, but we’re gonna do a whole episode where we talk about this. So, I’m not gonna go into any details. Well, I think we can kick off at the top of the year. Okay. Let’s devote it to… This trip. ‘Cause there’s a handful of stories, Things happened. things that happened. Things always happen, ever since. Yeah, so it’s like, we gotta give you a whole episode of our time in Death Valley with our boys. So that can be the next episode. Well, we’re taking a break, a holiday break, and then we’re coming back at the top of the year. As that can be the first in January. So, did you put it on your list or did you say no, I would’ve said it? Nope. Didn’t put it on my list. But was it one of your top 10 favorite things? No. Because it’s not on my list. I mean again- Well, my number four, man. The order… Doesn’t matter? It could be on my list. I mean, my trip to Joshua Tree isn’t on the list. My beach trip isn’t on the list, but there’s like, they should be. Yeah. The list can only be so big. My number four is starting and doing the listening party with Britney. Yeah, that’s my number three too. No, it isn’t. It’s not. Britney lived with us all last year. He made my top 10 last year. And then he moved out, and especially with quarantine being shut down, it’s like, we didn’t see each other. And actually, we kind of fell out of touch. Didn’t like each other any more. Even though he lived, he’s just over there in Burbank, he’s not far away, but we couldn’t get together. Right. And so, one day I’m like, I need to reconnect with him, and we were talking and I was like talking about how I missed, we started talking about music and I was like, you know what? I miss us talking about music. That’s what we would stay up late at night, just like standing around in the kitchen just talking, you know how he is. You get him talking about music, He’ll keep talking. three hours later, you’re still talking about music. And we would just play songs for each other. He’s an encyclopedia. We play songs for each other and I was like, you know what, let’s… And I’m just looking for things that become connection amidst this COVID thing. And I wanted to reconnect and I’m like, let’s start making playlist, let’s collaborate on a playlist. And that can be a way that we can have a project and we can be talking to each other. And then we were like, screw it, let’s do it on Instagram. If John Mayer can have an Instagram live, Yeah, anybody can. and that almost made the list, me and Lily watching “Current Mood” where we were obsessed with that until he stopped doing it. Yeah. It became an obligation for him too . I was like, we can do that. So, we made it a live stream, but it was very much about the two of us connecting, and anybody who wanted to share on that music, they could do it, and still can on my Instagram. But it was a very special time for us, ’cause we would talk throughout the week and get a kick out of building this playlist. And then we would experience it together on this live stream. And especially early on, it was just an opportunity for us to process, many times, the emotions of going through quarantine. And because music is so important to both of us, there’s this really experience in the soul connection that music can provide. Connecting to your own soul, but then also connecting to somebody else. And I mean, it bonded us at a time when our relationship could have moved further apart. I find it interesting that at this point, the way that I approach things, I started to approach it very like, okay, well, this is how we gotta do it, and this is what it’s about. And I started making it about the wrong things. And I was like, hey, I need to take a break from this because things are getting busy here at work again. So, for like November, we took a break from it. Because it started becoming about something else and about an obligation to somebody besides just me and Britney hanging out. Yeah, things don’t have to last forever, man. Things don’t have to last forever. There were a handful of lifelines that have gotten me through, and that was certainly one of them. And will always be very special to me. And I know, to him too. We had a lot of big laughs too. You know those big laughs? The laughs that come in the midst of when you just feel like crap. I mean, there’s few things more therapeutic. Maybe there’s nothing more therapeutic than a good laugh at the right time when you really need it. And so, that’s what a listening party. That’s the soul of that for me. And that’s my number four. My number three is related to the Black Lives Matter movement. And when everything was happening and specifically kind of the catalyst that just brought this issue to the forefront again was the murder of George Floyd, right? And there’s been a few times when I’ve written something on, I’ll write a medium article about something, and usually the thing that gets me to the point where I feel like I have something to say or there’s something I have to say that I can’t not say is when I just see people saying things online and I’m just like, I kinda feel like I can speak into this. And I get something in my mind and my heart and I just have to say it, I have to just get it out, right? When everything was coming out, most people who have a senior sort of public persona were acknowledging the movement in some way, right? And for the same reasons that you were pointing out in the beginning, it’s just like, well, it seems to me that a lot of times, I’m not speaking for all white guys, but it tends to be kind of a white guy thing to be like, well, I’ve got something to say and you should listen to me, right? Anybody can do it, but we have a pretty bad track record of believing that whatever we have to say is the most important thing to say. And so, I was sensitive to that, knowing that I don’t bring a lot of education and a lot of personal experience and perspective into this issue. So again, I was like, I want to listen, but I also want to be a responsible ally. And it hit me that the way that I could be involved was, I saw a lot of people saying things related to the incident with George Floyd that sort of reflected some things that I might have said in my past that are kind of based on where I come from and the mentality that I had growing up, and kind of the lack of experience and lack of knowledge that I had, and lack of empathy, frankly, that I had for people outside of my own experience. And so, that’s when I wrote what I call “Letter to a White Man”, which was essentially writing a letter to the old RET and saying, “Hey, listen, I know that you actually do care about these things, but a lot of the things that you think and say and the way that you react to these things are contributing to the problem, they’re not actually solving the problem.” So, I wrote that kind of self-conscious about it again, because it was ironically a white dude saying something. But again, I was a white dude saying something to a white dude, and my former self to be specific. And the thing that was really encouraging about it was the response. I mean, sure, a lot of people were upset with me, pointed out all the things that they thought, all the places where I was wrong but there were a number of people who communicated, whether it be through like an Instagram message or something on Twitter, who said, “Hey, this was legitimately impacted me. Because a lot of the things that you said are the things that I have been thinking about this, and it actually gave me a chance to reflect on that and to consider a different perspective.” And just one person saying that would have been worth it. But the reaction was super positive. For me, I wasn’t doing it for attention, and I wasn’t doing it to get a pat on the back, I was doing it simply because I know there was a lot of people out there like me, right? And I thought I had something to say to me. And the fact that- And to hear from some people Yeah. like that, that was your aim. Yeah. So, that was super, super encouraging. So, I bet that felt good. ‘Cause it’s the same reason that the live stream is on the list. Because it’s realizing that we do have a platform. And again, that pervasive question of, what’s the right thing to do with this opportunity that we have? And you’ve got things that you wanna say, it can be a treacherous path to figure out how to take a stand on issues or how to make a difference. And you can be intimidated into doing nothing, even within your own mind, not by anyone else, even. So, I mean that’s something that been inspired by with the Black Lives Matter Movement, is that you can find a way to do something. And yeah, I’m super proud of what you wrote, and how you went about it. And it’s also not on my list. Well, thanks. My number three is a painful one, I might cry, I don’t know exactly what I’m gonna say, so I just feel emotional about it. But I wanted to put this on the list again because it was an impactful moment for me this year. And maybe there’s a silver lining to it, but it’s just something that I haven’t talked about, but was a defining moment in my 2020. And that is that when my grandma, who I’ve always called my nanny, my mom’s mom, passed away. She passed away in June and I couldn’t go home. Right. And it hurt a lot. And it still hurts. It wasn’t a surprise, it didn’t happen quickly, and in some ways, that made it much more difficult. I was looking back at my Evernotes, which sometimes they’re dated, but it’s definitely not a journal, of my record of my memories from Thanksgiving last year. And I was like, who was here this Thanksgiving and is not gonna be here next Thanksgiving? And I was thinking about nanny, when you go and visit her, and I think I talked about that experience. Every year you go home as your grandparents get older, it’s like, maybe this is the last year I’m spending with her and living in California. Maybe this is the last time I’m seeing her in person. Right. Was that Thanksgiving. And it turns out that it was in. So, it is nice to have that awareness and to have those memories of, this may be it so I’m going to acknowledge that. And so, I’m grateful for that. The last time I saw her in person was, there was kind of an understanding that that might be it. I will say that it was that way for a couple of years, actually. And she was at home, and they brought an hospice, she was made comfortable as she passed. And that was about a week and a half. And it was excruciatingly difficult to come to grips with the fact that the right decision was not to fly home at that time. It wasn’t simply just the COVID of it all, I mean, there were a number of factors which impacted my immediate family. I’ll just say that the accumulation of all the factors led to it being the right decision, but it’s like, there’s still this doubt in your mind just like, should I go home or not? And it’s like, it never felt great. It still doesn’t feel great. In some ways, it doesn’t feel real, still having not been home, I haven’t had the experience of going back in the house and her not being there. I know a lot of people… She didn’t have COVID, just as a side note, but I know a lot of people have lost a lot of loved ones and it has been extremely painful to not be able to see them as they’re passing. But they’re right there. I was across the country and it was excruciating. So, my heart goes out to all those people who are on the other side of a pane of glass, having to watch someone pass. I knew that I would have spoken at her funeral. And when she was planning her funeral, she was telling her sisters what she wanted to wear, and she said, “I want Link to sing a song at the funeral.” And I don’t think she quite understood that I wasn’t gonna be able to be there. And so, it broke my heart to know that I couldn’t deliver on that. But I wrote a eulogy and I emailed it to the to the pastor who was already speaking, to read at the funeral. And I had mailed them the record that we made for the Mythical Society where we covered “Silver Wings”, the Merle Haggard song. And I knew it was my aunt, Vickie, who, for basically her entire adult life, lived with my nanny. Oldest sister, youngest sister lived together. Even when my papa was alive, aunt Vicki still lived there. And then when he passed, it was just the two of them. And now it’s just aunt Vicki, and she has another sister that she’s close with and spends a lot of time with, thank goodness. But I mailed them the record because it was her favorite song but then that was the solution. They actually played our- Yeah, they played our rendition of “Silver Wings” at the funeral service. And then they read my eulogy. But it was just tough not to be there. So, there’s a lot of pain associated with it and a lack of closure. I think until I can get back home again, I think it’ll still kind of be in, the wound will be a little more open than I would help. It’s my number three because it’s such a poignant milestone, I don’t know how it’s changed me, but you can just feel that like, okay, this is one of those things that shapes you as a person when you go through something, when it’s so frustrating and so painful to not be able to be there for your family. Well, it’s not on my list. But thanks for sharing. I have one that probably is on your list. And that is my number two. Us telling our stories the last years on this very podcast, which I guess we did in January, February? We did it… Yup, I mean, in January, the first two episodes came out and then in February And then February. is when your deconstruction story came out then mine. So, it’s January Yeah, ’cause we kind of to February. toggle back on everything. And this is my number two as well. Okay, we sync up again. So, we’re syncing up once again. I don’t think, boy, what a weird year, what a very, very weird year that this happened this year and then COVID happened. But- I think we had decided we were gonna do this At the end of 2019. October or November of 2019. Yeah. Yeah. And so, we had the sense that it was gonna be like, we’re doing it early in 2020, but it was gonna be something that would maybe reshape the course of “Ear Biscuits” or we didn’t know it would lead to. I was antsy to tell the story, right? And I think that for me, it had been kind of a long time coming. And one of the reasons I wanted to kind of tell our story is because our background of growing up as Christians, not just Christians but evangelical Christians it was the center piece of our life, and then the centerpiece of our career in the early days. There was so much tension in being vulnerable and personal, and talking about our lives, mostly in this medium of “Ear Biscuits”, but we talk about ourselves all the time. We’re constantly kind of telling the stories and stuff, and to have this giant piece of your past that informs who you are and constantly finding ways to gloss over it, there were so many tangential things about our career and the path that we’re at right now, and the fact that we worked with campus crusade for a while and it’s kind of the reason that we got into comedy, all these things that we weren’t able to say, to me, there was always this like kind of shame associated with our past, but also a shame of not being honest about it that had just created this tension. For me, telling the story and kind of just saying, here it is, without any apologies, we’re just gonna tell you the whole story of where we were and where we are now and how we got here, to me, it opened something up within me, right? The way that I think about the things that we talk about on this podcast now has kind of changed pretty dramatically for me. It’s like, if there’s something that comes up and it’s… We would avoid anything that got into spirituality at all, right? If it was just like, well, this kind of gets into talking about God or religion or faith or whatever, we would avoid it. And it’s so strange for people who, that is such a big part of who we are, to not be able to talk about it. I’m not even really gonna get into the… I mean, the response was overwhelming in every sense of the word, both positive and negative, and the way that it kind of transformed people’s perspective of us, both for the good and for the bad, we gained fans, we lost fans. But really it was so impactful for me ’cause I just felt like it was this, ironically, is the way that you describe becoming a Christian a lot of times, as a huge burden is lifted off of you. And you have this feeling, this sense of relief when you give your life to God. Ironically for me, kind of talking about how I’m in a completely different place and no longer consider myself a Christian or a person of faith in that way specifically, was a huge burden that was lifted off of me. I think for me, it was a milestone in my spiritual journey because in a lot of ways, it said, okay, now I can… Not that I couldn’t move forward or I needed to talk about it in order to move forward, but it kind of was that. I don’t know, it was like, okay, I can document what brought me to this point in my spiritual journey, the exercise of talking about it and the preparation leading to that really helped me make sense of it for myself so that now I can… It made it so I could move forward in a way that I don’t think I could because I hadn’t processed it enough. I mean, I definitely really began to appreciate my relationship with guilt. And this was the year that I started therapy, and I’m continuing my spiritual journey. And a journey of openness and self discovery as part of that too. But I’m moving forward in openness, and I’m also saying, all right, I’m still coming to grips with, what is my relationship to guilt? In addition to what is my relationship to God and to belief and expectations as a human or as a father or a husband. So again, these are all things that I’m still very much in process. I mean, who’s not in process? But I do feel like it released me in some ways, and then gave me a trajectory to continue to move forward. So, it’s not about a label, it’s not about coming to a conclusion or a new affiliation or an allegiance to some other system, religious or otherwise, but there’s momentum. I do find it interesting that like, I still don’t know where… Talk about momentum, COVID really kinda truncated the experience. We put these things out there, there was a lot of response, I had to go on a hike and clear my head and figure out how to deal with the fact that so many people, it turns out, really cared about the fact that we talked about this. And they all didn’t agree with us. But then COVID hit and it kind of, in a lot of ways, it felt like it didn’t happen. I had to get reacquainted with the fact that like, remember January, February, this big milestone moment happened. And number two on our list. It seems like ages ago, I had to get reacquainted with it. We had specifically, we had done an interview for a major publication that is related to Christian faith, that never was published because COVID hit. And then we were featured in another publication. Two pretty popular Christian publications were gonna do stories on this thing. And it just never happened. And the people who were talking about it had a whole lot of other stuff to talk about. And maybe that was a blessing in disguise. I mean, again, one of the few times that I’ve written something in our medium was in response to the responses that we were processing at the time, the four of us, the two of us and our wives. I have absolutely no regrets. Obviously, you always wish you might’ve said something a little bit differently, ’cause that’s just the way it goes when you decide to talk about something, but the decision to share that story is something that I am just incredibly grateful for. It was a coming out. It really was. Yeah, 100%. It was so difficult to be a certain person and to be so open about so many things, but not be open about something that’s so core to who you are. Yeah. And that’s why I think using that terminology is applicable. I’m not gonna say it’s to the same degree or the same experience as somebody who’s coming out of the closet would have, but like I can relate at least a little bit. And it’s because this is who I am. And I don’t wanna be ashamed or scared about it. I mean, that at its core, is that relief. Because it’s like, hey, I’m just being and openly sharing who I am. Take it as you will. Throughout our career, we’ve been people pleasers in a lot of ways. It’s like, we’re pretty tame, we’re pretty safe. There’s a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds that enjoy the things that we do. And we have a pretty broad appeal by design. We want things to be accessible and we want it to be a break. We don’t want it to be affiliated with any particular view. We’re just hey, just take a load off and come enjoy this thing that we made. But we didn’t really take a stand as much as we just told our story, but it was interpreted as taking a stand by a lot of people. And I don’t think we’ve ever experienced that level of scrutiny and criticism. And that was something that was very difficult at the time. But again, as someone who struggles with and places too much value on other people’s opinions of me, it’s good to have those opinions be very, very loud and negative so that you can detach a little bit more from those expectations. Which kind of leads me into number one. Okay, we’re two on number ones. Which I think, in some ways was, at least as 2020, as concerned, kind of a culmination of just kind of what you were getting at, which the beginning of, sort of the next stage of what spirituality is to me. And I did a whole podcast on it. So, I’m not gonna go into too many details, but it was my solo trip that I took earlier in the year. And again, there were details of things that happened to me sort of just things that I kind of realized or came to grips with, whatever the word you wanna use is, that I’m not going to share because I feel like it was for me, and I’m not trying to make it for you. But I think that it’s very much tied to the fact that we told our stories because there was a little bit of stagnation, right? Because there’s this like, I’ve left this thing and I don’t know what I’m going to, but I don’t want to jump into some other kind of fundamentalism, right? I don’t wanna jump from one fundamentalism, from one ideological rut to another. Is just something that I was trying really hard not to do. And it’s very difficult to do that. It’s very difficult to maintain sort of an openness and an openness to spirituality in general when you kind of feel like you’ve sort of been duped in a way, but my trip which is something that I had been trying to organize, it’s difficult, especially this year to sort of logistically organize going off when you’re a father, husband, and business owner for, I think it ended up being like six days and five nights. But right from the beginning, it was just such a rich experience. And I haven’t even totally processed it. There was a lot of journal writing, speaking of journal, and it wasn’t just Evernote, it was a literal physical journal in a literal space pen. You should take a picture of the pages in case you lose it. I’ve thought about that. In fact, just the other day, I was like, where is that journal? And I was like, I can’t find my journal. It was in my backpack. Scan it. Or my book bag, as you say. I think it is going to be the beginning of a tradition for me. Probably annual, I don’t know. I hope, at least annual. I actually reinvested, I put some money into my truck. Since that camping trip, I’ve got a drawer. You saw my drawer. I see. Yeah you got a drawer. A drawer installed in my FJ that makes camping, like, you can be ready to go. I could go tonight if I wanted to, installed in the drawer. Got everything in a drawer. And just the value of escape, solitude, personal reflection, and just understanding that, man, this isn’t just me, this is everybody. Everybody got their own shit that they got to deal with on a daily basis. And the responsibilities and the busyness, and the distractions and all the things that keep you from really checking in with yourself. And checking in with yourself in a meaningful way, in an intentional way that’s designed to kind of like, hey, let’s keep this train going in our direction, in the right direction, whatever you wanna call it. And yeah, it was- Yeah, it’s easy to forget that your life is yours alone, ultimately. Yeah. Again, this is the case for everybody. I think that you can really begin to over identify not only with your opinions and positions, I could fall into opinions and arguments and that kind of thing, but you can also over identify with your different stations in life. Now, first of all, if you’re a father, if you’re a husband, if you’re a boss, Sure. you should lean into that and be the best that you can. But when you are only those things, and you only exist in relationship to other people or as what you can be for someone else, which is, listen, hey, you wanna be selfless and you wanna be a servant of other people, but sometimes you can get lost, you can lose yourself in that. You can also get lost in your own personality. Oh yeah. Yeah, and to me, it was like, taking that solo trip was, you got your own stink that you’re carrying around with you. Your own stink, right? I just call it my own bullshit, right? In fact, just last night I told Jessie before therapy, ’cause my therapy was kind of scheduled for a different night than it was because of our trip to Death Valley. We had a pretty difficult day business-wise yesterday in terms of just dealing with a lot of things all at once and sort of being a boss was demanding yesterday, right? And I got home and I was just like, man, I don’t wanna go to therapy tonight. I know I’m going to, I just don’t want to. ‘Cause I told you, I was just like, sometimes you just don’t wanna deal with your own bullshit. Because that’s what therapy is, right? But for me, that’s what the solo trip was. It was like, all right, I’ve stripped away all my responsibilities and relationships, and here I am sitting alone, oh, there it is, there’s my big bag of bullshit. Let’s start unpacking it a little bit. And it was good. I mean, it turns out it stinks pretty bad. But I think I left- Well, you were in a hot spring too. I did leave some of the bullshit and some of the hot springs. Okay. So, that’s my number one. And I hope that I can do it again. My number one is, if I were to translate my psyche and my emotional well-being to a physical location, it will be my garage. So, my number one is the fact that I have my garage remodeled. And then I reorganized all of it in a wonderful cabinetry. And listen, as a person who only saw your garage before and after, I can say it’s a thing of beauty. Oh yeah, I got to post one of those pictures on Instagram, the swipes. Actually kinda, the thing I was thinking about is your garage is so well-organized that it sort of feels like an Ikea. It sort of feels like something needs to be misplaced here, like a sock or something. Or like an oil stain or something needs to happen. Because right now It feels so good. it feels like a showroom. I just go out there and stand. Yeah, I mean, I’m saying it’s so good, it’s a little impersonal. All right, that’s not my number one. I mean, Christie was like, I was telling her the list last night and she was like, “You didn’t put your garage on the list?” They give me such a hard time. Once everything was organized, I gave each member of the house their own personalized tour of it. What? I took each person out there and I gave them a tour of it. I was so proud. They didn’t seem to care. Christie cared some because she helped do the redesign of some of it. But no, I didn’t put that in my top 10, that’s just an honorable mention. My number one is, same time you were on your solo trip, I was on my solo trip with my wife. Okay, so you’re just trying to make me look bad. No . I see what’s going on. The van trip, I didn’t do a solo trip, but I need to do one. I mean, I think I got a bag of bullshit. I mean, I probably do. I don’t know, maybe you’ve been filling up my bag. Anyway . I don’t know what you’re saying. No, I wanna do that, but for reasons I’ll get into a little bit, Christie and I really needed this trip. And when I talked about it before in the podcast where I talked about it, Christie pointed out after listening to it, she was like, “You didn’t say that that was our 20th wedding anniversary.” And I was like, well, that’s because… Well, I didn’t say anything, but I was like, okay. In her mind, and I guess for both of us, we had to cancel our wedding anniversary. We were gonna go to Big Sur. I thought I did mention that, she says I didn’t, but, I mean, we were due for that to be able to celebrate 20 years of being together. But as I described, we went to Utah and one of the hikes we took was in Bryce Canyon, which is this beautiful place that has all these mud hoodoos that you walk through. And we walked around one corner- Is that a technical term. Are we having a conversation we’ve already had? A hoodoo, I don’t know, we talked about it. Yes, a technical term, that’s what they call them. We walked around this one corner, and I saw a piece of paper on the ground. I was like, oh somebody littered. There’s four rocks on it, holding it in place, and it is a letter to people along the trail. Now, technically, you shouldn’t do this. You shouldn’t be writing letters and leaving them on a trail. But- ‘Cause what if everybody did that? Then there’d be letters all over the place and it would just be Littered. It would be wrecked. It wouldn’t be a letter, it would be litter. Only one person left a letter, and I took a picture of it. I didn’t even read the whole thing. But I would like to read it now. I didn’t share this in the previous podcast. And then through the lens of this letter, I can unpack why the van trip was my number one. I will say, and I’ve got sort of a side view of your screen here, Yeah. I have not been able to interpret what that is. From my angle, which I’m just kind of seeing the side, it looked like there was some crazy stationary, like do you know how you can get stationary that has a like border, and then has like lines that somebody on? Oh, you thought that the dirt around the paper was part- I thought this was all like a printed thing that you would get at like a wedding. But no, it’s just a picture you took of a letter on dirt. Yeah, handwritten letter displaced under some rocks, the breeze wouldn’t blow it away. “Hello, if you’re reading this, you made it to a beautiful place on earth. Oh, the importance of roaming. I will say the one thing quarantine has taught us is to free our minds. They are meant to wander and you are meant to be here. I am so happy to be in this canyon. For a few years, I’ve been battling lupus and fibromyalgia. It can be very devastating to experience at 26 years old, but I realized everyone is fighting a personal battle. Maybe you’re out here to escape or start a new journey, whatever it may be, it has purpose and you are worthy of self discovery.” The letter continues, but I’ll stop there. I don’t wanna get into too many details about the summer that our family went through because a lot of it is Christie’s story to tell and not mine, but it definitely rings true that everyone is fighting a personal battle. And there was a personal battle that was going on in our home. Christie was struck with a debilitating level of anxiety associated with physical symptoms that she was having in the midst of COVID. We hear anecdotal evidence of so many people struggling internally, mentally and emotionally within the context of COVID and quarantine, isolation, health anxiety, the list goes on and impacts people in so many different ways. But for Christie and for us as a couple, and then as a family, I would say there was a couple of pockets of time, and you know what I’m talking about, where it was extremely difficult for her and for us to face together. It was something that we faced together, but I would say it was probably the most challenging concentration of struggle that we had to walk through in our 20 years of marriage. It was a scary time for her and for us. And I know we talked about it and you were tremendously helpful in that time, and I wanna thank you again for that. And again, it’s not a story that I wanna tell, but that was our personal battle that we were fighting. And there were times when I could do nothing else except engage in being there with her through that. And it was, I can’t do anything else. I can’t be present for work. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. And at times it was very confusing and scary, I’ll just say. But now, I can speak from the other side of it and say that I think this letter really rings true to our experience in that, I mean, she has lupus and fibromyalgia and says it can be very devastating to experience that, but she realized that everyone is fighting a personal battle and that everybody’s on their own journey. And whatever it may be, it has a purpose, and you are worthy of self discovery. And I do think that that was our experience walking through the trials that we went through over the summer in terms of finding out what we were really made of as individuals and as a couple and as a family. So, going on this trip, it was much more than just rescheduling a celebration of our anniversary. It was being together. If you rerun everything that I described from that trip through the lens of the trials that we had been through that I know I’m not sharing the details of, that’s the level of meaning that puts this at number one for me, because we needed it so badly, to have an experience together where we could focus on each other. And it was very special, until we were almost killed by a guy Yeah, by . who wanted to buy hot dogs from us. You were almost killed, which I think getting away from a murderer Yeah. is actually, that’s like a number one. also puts things in perspective. It’s been a difficult year for so many people, and it’s on a global scale. And so, to be able to look back on our years and to pull together 10 and have some honorable mentions, and to have made it through this year, I mean, it ain’t over and who knows what 2021 holds, but having gone through 2020, I feel like I’m a better person for it . And I’m not inviting more trials in 2021, but I think that I’m more grateful having experienced this year. And my heart goes out to the people who are still in dire straits, and they’re in the thick of it. So, I don’t have answers, but I have empathy. And if you’re going through something and it’s a comfort to you, I’ll just pass along what the letter had to say again, that whatever it may be, it has purpose, and you are worthy of self discovery. Yeah, it has been such a difficult year. And like you said, it continues to be very difficult. I think there is some light at the end of the tunnel at this point, but there’s gonna be scars on families and on people’s psyches, from just going through what they’ve gone through this year. People’s livelihoods, businesses, there’s been so many challenges. Sometimes, I sort of imagine what, you know how when you’re sick with just like a cold, not anything like COVID, but just a cold, and you can’t breathe out of your nose? And you think to yourself, man, when I can breathe in my nose again, I’m not gonna take it for granted. I’m gonna smell so hard. I’m gonna think about every breath . And then as soon as you can breathe through your nose again, most time you don’t even realize that you can breathe through your nose again, you just go on about your business and breathe in through your nose like some professional athlete breather, taking it for granted. I think about what life is gonna be like. I think about being able to just go to a restaurant without thinking about… I’m not going to any restaurants right now, but going out and not having to think about everything you’re touching and how close you’re getting to people, and whether you got a mask on, and just living life again, being able to hug somebody without thinking about it, being able to gather with people again. Man, I hope I never take that stuff for granted again. You might have had the privilege of knowing somebody who lived through the depression, would be a very old person at this point, but my wife’s grandmother who died in her 90s recently had some memories of that time and kinda came up in sort of an age of scarcity. And she would use aluminum foil or tinfoil, as she would call it, she put it on a dish and then she would take it off the dish and she would roll it back up and put it in the drawer. And she was frugal and she saved and she conserved. And it was because she had that mentality. I wonder sometimes, are we gonna carry that? Can we get to the other side of the tunnel and not take for granted the things that we’ve been missing, and just the the struggles that people, when we get through this collectively as a species, ’cause like you said, this is a global thing. Well, you know what? I think it’s up to us. Yeah. And I think this exercise, again, I cherish it every year, but I think it’s all that more important this year for that reason. So it’s, hey, this happened, but these other things happened too. Yeah. There’s things to be grateful for and I can be grateful for the trials and the pain associated with it too in due time. And I’m thankful for this, And over time. you talked about the family and we have a family here at Mythical, but this is a family thing, what we have, and you listening to this. I think so many people have… We’ve been humbled the many times that we’ve met people in person, back when we used to tour, but also just seeing people say things online about the stupid stuff that we do, and the serious stuff that we talk about, how this has been meaningful for people. And I think about that with the things that entertain me. This has been such a difficult time that the connections that you can make with people online in the outlets that entertain you, I like to think of this as, we’re not just here to entertain you, but this is, we’re having this ongoing discussion as a family. So, thank you for those of you who have stuck with us through 2020, and who have joined us in 2020 and you’re a part of this Mythical herd. And yeah, we’re honored that we have a place at your table so to speak, that we’re part of your experience and that we’ve been a part of your 2020, and a part of your silver lining. We’re honored. Of course. Just like every “Ear Biscuit”, we end with a recommendation. And my recommendation, as this year comes to a close, as this season of “Ear Biscuits” comes to a close, you know what? Just relax. That’s my recommendation. Just take the pressure off of yourself, relax, reward yourself, do something that you enjoy for the sake of enjoyment. You’re gonna get through this year, you’re gonna get through this time, and we will see you in the new year with a new “Ear Biscuit”. That’s right. To watch more “Ear Biscuits”, click on the playlist on the right. To watch the previous episode of “Ear Biscuits”, click on the playlist to the left. And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your mythical best.