(calm music) – Welcome to “Ear Biscuits”, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Rhett. – And I’m Link, this week at the round table of dim lighting we’re gonna move into a commune. – We both have our laptops out. I mean, you know, things about to get serious when there’s research happening. – We’ve got a big decision to make because we just have to decide which commune we’re gonna move into. There’s lots of them spread across this grand globe. – You wanna pinky swear right now? – Yep. – That – [Both] We are gonna join a commune by the end of this thing. – Podcast episode. – Here’s the thing, we don’t believe that pinky swears are binding. That’s the sort of the catch 22, don’t get your hopes up. But I am seriously considering it. – So maybe there’s a commune that’s an anti pinky swear commune and we’ll fit right in. People pinky swearing at all times knowing that it’s always meaningless. – No, a dinky square. (laughs) – A dinky square? – A dinky square. – That’s like a really small square? Look at that dinky square. – That’s when you put your dinkies together. – What is a dinky? – I mean, I think it’s another name- – You’re motioning something is if you’re not making this up as your saying- – A wiener. – You’re calling a wiener a dinky? – I never had before, I was just trying to come up with a joke. You saw a “Bad Trip”. – I saw the first half of it and then I fell asleep. – Did you get to the, to the dinky part? – Oh, yes, the finger trap- – Don’t, I mean. – It wasn’t fingers that were in there. I mean, what a, what a crazy movie. – Yeah, it’s nuts, man. – Dang, I’ve got, it’s my rec today. I reserve the right to recommend the first half of “Bad Trip”. I don’t know, it’s kinda, you know, if you doze off and then you wake up . and you’re like, maybe I can just keep watching this. – Oh yeah, you can doze off and come back. – That happened but there’s so many points in “Bad Trip” that like waking up and realizing what you’re watching is like, it was frightening. Like I was shocked. It’s like, that’s not how a man wants to wake up on the couch. In a finger trap with other things trapped in it. – Jessie and I watched it together and the thing that she was saying, she was like, I don’t know if you can make this kind of movie anymore. Like seriously, because- – Well, it just was made. – I know, I know, that’s the thing, she was like, I don’t know how I feel laughing at it because taking advantage of people and like the idea of consent is something that if you’re making really crazy prank videos you’re not getting any of that because you want to get the authentic reactions. Now I’m not, I’m not taking a stand on saying that I think prank videos should be outlawed. – And we don’t know that they didn’t get post scene consent. – Yeah, but is that consent? That’s not the conversation we’re having today. – Let’s, what, just get away from this! So yeah, I don’t know if we’re recommending it. It frightened me when I woke up. – Yeah, yeah. We just watched it, we’re not recommending, we’re just talking about it. – You know, I teased to this in the last episode, as the world, I mean, we’re looking through this Los Angeles lens of return to normalcy from COVID and being locked down, quarantined, safe and what, you know, and doing all these precautions. But so maybe we’re a little behind, maybe you’re in a spot where you’re listening and you’re like, well, things feel kinda already back to normal for me. – I’m mouth kissing strangers already. I mean, I don’t know. – But at this point right now I am very much trying to figure out how I’m going to re-engage with my life as it was. – And a lot of people, I’ve seen, it was funny ’cause right when I began sensing this in myself and I was talking about it with Jessie, you know, she’s a Twitter queen, she immediately points me to like five tweets that had already emphasized the same sentiment which is, as things get ready to turn back to normal you start feeling a little anxiety about life returning to normal. Now, for some people that might be like- – And sometimes not just a little anxiety. – I mean, some people it might be like a social anxiety, like I don’t want to get around people. That’s not it for me, it’s just, and I’m not much of a routine person but there’s something about the fact that we’ve been able to conduct our business kind of uninterrupted, right? We’re one of the lucky privileged that we get to do our business in a way that is, I mean, it’s changed a lot but it’s unencumbered in a lot of ways. – Our business has been altered drastically, but we’ve gotten so used to it that it is the new normal. And I mean, that’s a whole other podcast to get into all of that but. – But being at home, not traveling a lot like we used to do. I mean, I haven’t been going to the gym and I kinda turned my garage into a gym, you know. And I kind of am into this sort of predictability and routine and sort of like the simple life. Being home every night. – I’m surprised to hear that from you because that’s not something I would expect or that’s not, maybe it surprises you that you have those feelings as well. – I’m ready to travel but I’m not ready for the day to day life to turn back into always all over the place. – Hectic scramble. But you know for me and my personality type, like, totally gotten used to my world being smaller and more predictable and insulated. And it just feels, I mean, more narrow but there’s a good side to that too because there’s a sense of increased safety and you know, for me, control. – Safety? Oh, yeah, control, I understand. – I mean, it started with safety. and so you kind of have this ingrained sense of like, some people may struggle with this innate feeling of I’ve trained myself to believe that safety is hunkered down so going out must mean the opposite. Even though being fully vaccinated and the realities of full vaccination and the safety associated with that is just something that like the facts don’t immediately translate into feelings is what we’re, that’s a big discussion that’s happening in our home. You know, I was even telling Lincoln last night, I was trying to paint a picture for, you know, once we’re fully vaccinated these are some things that we can start doing. And he got this look on his face like he hadn’t even thought about it. You know, it’s like, because you go, you live in this space where it’s like, you just don’t even think about what could be or what you’re missing out on type of thing. And then so it’s like you compartmentalize. And so me giving him, just starting to paint a picture for how things could open up, it was like, he got this, he just kind of stare for a while and then he got this big grin on his face – It must be nice, you mean, you’re telling me that your kid hasn’t constantly berated you for a full year about how all this stuff he can’t do? Constantly arguing with you about that? Because that’s the way it’s been at my house. – Yeah, so it’s kinda like when you let a, you know, you got this dog in a kennel, maybe they’ve been in there for a long time. Maybe it’s their safe cave space, and then you open the door and you’re like, he’s just layin’ there. – I think what you’re saying- – He’s not bursting out. – Is that your family is much more susceptible to being in a cult than mine. – Which brings me to this sense of a commune because like, as we’ve been talking about communes I’ve had to really work to not use the word cult every single time. – Well there’s a reason that they’re associated. – But there’s some overlap that we can talk about. But yeah, this like, instead of returning back to the big wide world, what if I just skipped over to commune life where it’s, you know, a defined group of people with shared values that are keeping things simple. – And you have to imagine that most people who are in communes who were in communes before COVID and in communes through COVID and after COVID, their lives have probably changed the less. – COVID what? – They’re like, I mean, yeah, we’re in a commune. Big whoop. – I mean, sustainability, peaceful cooperation, no bills, no boss. – Eh, no boss. – No responsibilities. – Think again, my friend. – Just food that everyone gets to eat. No competition. – It does seem wonderful. – Connecting with nature and with strange people who are misfits in normal society, but perfect fits in some of these communes that we’ll talk about. I’m like, let’s go! And I’m not saying it like the kids use the phrase as like just a form of- – They say let’s go? – Like a positive expletive. Yeah. – No, like you mean like that’s a new slang or a? – What? I mean, it’s a few years old but everybody’s like, let’s go, if they like something. – But this is like newer than just like 50 years ago, let’s go, like you would say to like a team that you’re cheering for, this is like slang? – I’ve heard your own children say that. – I don’t listen to what my kids talk about. – You haven’t heard, like, I mean, if you listen to DaBaby every so often he’s gonna interject, let’s go! And he’s not asking people to come with him somewhere. He’s just like, it’s a celebratory phrase. – But I don’t think it’s changed. I thought what you were saying is that let’s go has changed meaning since like the 50s. And I don’t think it has. – Yes, it has. It doesn’t mean, let’s gather together and head towards the same destination. – I know, I’m just saying that like, let’s go, like get pumped up, yeah. – That’s not what it means now. It doesn’t mean, let’s get pumped up. – Okay, what does it mean now? – It means, I’m excited. (Rhett laughs) – It feels like some semantics here. Let’s get excited, oh no, what did I say, let’s get pumped up and let’s get excited sort of feel like the same thing. – Let’s go is trying to pump someone up, like to conjure up the energy to do something. But let’s go, it’s just like, I love this. I’m celebrating this. I don’t need to conjure anything up. I have an overflow of emotion that now translates into a hip hop track interjection. – So you’re not saying you want to go to a commune, you’re saying you’re excited about the idea. – No. – So you are using it in the 50s way. – I’m using it in the traditional old out of touch sense that you should understand. – I’m not confused. – Let’s you and I head towards the world of communes and decide which one we want to physically go to and live, okay, are we clear? – Yeah, I’m clear now. – But yeah, they want them to be called intentional communities because people intend to go there and they’re not like held there against their free will, at least that’s what they say. – Well, communes have a bad rap, which we’ll get into. – Well, a throwback to a conversation we had with the, when we were talking about Pythagoras, he is credited- – We’re always talking about Pythagoras. – As creating the first intentional community in recorded history at Homakoeion, it’s a Greek word, in 525 BCE. They tried to create an ideal society, gave up private property and meat. and apparently beans as well as we discuss. – I would just interject quickly here. – People were getting killed. – I take issue with this. This is kinda like when a white guy in a boat like discovers something that brown people who’ve been living there for thousands of years have already known about for along time. – I guess that’s fair, yeah. – Because intentional community is basically the history of the human race. Like the idea of private property is something that the western world brought over here to the Native Americans. So like the idea of intentional community I think is actually the baseline understanding of human community, but it wasn’t until agriculture and property and all that stuff that we didn’t have to kind of undo that to then create what we’re calling an intentional community, I guess in 525 BC. – Yeah. Okay, point taken, within the context of- – Western civilization. – Okay. – Yeah. – Then you’ve got to have, if you have the shared belief or approach to life that means you’re gonna give up your personal belongings which you have. If you’re giving it up in order to be a member of a community where you’re sharing everything- – Basically post property ownership. Post the idea of property ownership, yes. – I mean, the early Christians, they lived communally. A few centuries later Christian monasteries became a major form of international, I said international, intentional community. So we could become monks. – You know, this is interesting ’cause I’m reading this book kind of about early Christian history and it’s actually kind of fascinating just how, you know, whatever word you wanna use, communist, socialist, progressive, whatever you wanted to use, that early Christians were at the time. And I’m not talking about in the like sense of like the way they saw government or necessarily, but just the way that their community was very much communist in the strictest sense of the word. And it was like, it was the lower class, it was men and women, and it was so interesting that Christianity got hijacked by the powers that be and kind of became what it has been for, you know, well over 1,000 years. But in the early stages it was very, it was a kind of a different thing. It was a lot more about class and it was a lot more about kind of rebelling against the powers that be and then the powers that be were like, oh, we can use this to our advantage and kind of created the hierarchy that we kind of see within the, you know, the church. – Am I right in remembering that in Paul’s letter to one of the churches he kind of talks about the mechanism of sharing everything. And he kind of puts some specifics in that about like, kind of like the heart and the motivation behind giving up your possessions for the common good. – I’m sure he talks about that. I mean, I think it’s mostly in Acts, you know, Luke wrote Luke and Acts and so. – Ah, that may be what I’m thinking about. – Acts, basically the history of the early church kind of talks about what they did and kind of sold their possessions and came together and live communally. and were kind of specifically, specifically reacting to what was happening on a societal level, and that was one of the things that made it attractive. And also controversial at the time because it was kind of saying that the authority doesn’t lie with these dudes who say that they’re in charge, authority lies with God. But it quickly got taken and, you know, distorted, in my opinion. – We could also go to Israel and join a kibbutz kibbutz, kibbutz, I think is how you would say it. I mean, those are around now. They’ve been around and there’s like, there’s the religious and the non-religious kind. And there’s a lot more of the non-religious kibbutz. Sorry, I apologize if I’m saying that wrong. – Well, and I would think that this is something that especially with what we’re seeing with what we’ve experienced in 2020 and 2021 thus far, you know, this deep wealth inequality and people just, so many people struggling. I think the idea of kind of stepping out of this pursuit of the American dream. And I know, you know, we’re not talking about just Americans, but we’re in America. It’s gotta be an attractive thing, like, you mean I can quit trying to keep up with the Joneses and worry about- – Don’t cliche the Joneses. – Going to the right college and getting the right job to pay off the deep debt that I acquired in order to go to college. The idea of saying, hey, can’t we all just get along? I believe that this has never been a more attractive idea. I mean, in recent history, this has got to be a super attractive idea right now. So I do think that we probably should start with some cautionary tales before you get too excited. – Okay, yeah. – About being a part of a commune, or an intentional community. – All right, let’s get into the bad news. Or just, you know, we need to tread lightly. – The one that you’ve all heard about, Jonestown Massacre, where the saying, don’t drink the Kool-Aid comes from. Late 70s. – I did not know the details of this. – Yeah, so lots of really good documentaries that you can watch about this. But late 70s, Jim Jones was a preacher. He began his commune for social justice and equality, he was calling it the People’s Temple, that sounds good. For the people, you know. – It’s got like a temple in it, that seems fancy. – But then he made the move, he moved it from San Franciscu, San Franciscu. – San Franciscu. – San Francisco to Guyana. First of all, you just gotta, okay, maybe a red flag here. He’s moving further away from prying eyes, right, I mean, that’s one way to see it. And I think that’s what was happening. So people started to, because there was a lot of American people who were involved with this and they were worried that they were being held against their will and it kind of became this story, so much so that a congressman, Leo Ryan, decides to visit to make sure that the residents are okay. – And this is the late 70s. – Late 70s. And he shows up along with four others and they are shot to death when they get out of the plane at the airstrip. So another red flag. – Yeah, that’s not a good start to the diplomatic oversight mission, dang! – And then shortly thereafter, I don’t really remember the timeline, but Jones, he forced or strongly encouraged his followers to drink a cyanide laced flavor aid, starting with the children. – Poor Kool-Aid, it wasn’t even Kool-Aid. It was flavor aid, you know, but now you got this saying, don’t drink the Kool-Aid. Matter of fact, I heard it on an episode of “Survivor”. You hear it everywhere, but of course, I hear everything on “Survivor” ’cause that’s all I listen to these days. – It’s your sole source of media. – That’s gonna have to be in any commune I attend. – Don’t drink the flavor aid just doesn’t sound quite, ’cause like, what’s flavor aid? So some people tried to flee and they shot them. – Kool-Aid survived it, but those people didn’t. – Some people tried to flee and they shot them. – ‘Cause they didn’t drink the Kool-Aid. – And over 900 people were killed. Almost 1,000 people. – That is gross. So anyway, I mean, it’s- – 900 people! – It may have sounded awesome at the beginning. – That’s a lot of flavor aid. – So that’s one cautionary tale. – Gosh. Now you and I have talked about the Source family before, we may have talked about it on this show, there was a Netflix documentary. In the wake of, what was that Netflix documentary that the Duplass brothers were executive producers on? Country, back country? – Nope. – No country for commune people. – “Wild, wild country”. – “Wild, wild country”. – Great! – Feeling when you remember some great that you’d forgotten. So on the heels of that I think we were looking for other stuff to watch and I watched the documentary, you watched it too, on the Source family. – This is a great documentary as well. – World War II vet who became known as Father Yod. – Great name. – Yeah, I don’t think that was his original name Father Yod. That’s one thing I love about communes is that you can change your name. You can change everybody’s name as it turns out. He created the first vegetarian restaurant in L.A. Had many young wives and had many younger children with those young wives, that’s how children work. They recorded music and sold the albums. Very hippy dippy like. – Seemed like a great time. – 70s situation. You know, you gotta watch who you’re following because this is when this stuff, you know, this is when you get into cult territory in both of these situations. But the thing that I didn’t realize until I went back and read about this was how Father Yod died. They had moved, they’d sold their restaurant and moved to Hawaii in 1974. And then on August 25th, 1975, according to Wikipedia, despite having no previous hang-gliding experience Father Yod decided that he would indeed go hang-gliding, presumably solo. Yod used a hang glider to leap off a 1,300 foot,, that’s 400 meters Rhett, cliff on the eastern shore of Oahu. Spoiler alert, he died, I already said that. He crash landed on the beach, get this, suffering no external injuries. He just looked like Rick Rubin lying on a beach. You know, it’s just like white dude with a really long white beard. You know, like Rick looks like these days, just laying on a beach suffering no external injuries. But he was unable to move and he died nine hours later. That’s a horrible death. If that’s what getting into a commune means I’m out. I mean, there’s a guy at the end of my street who has a hang glider. And I look at that thing and it freaking, it makes my balls hurt. – I don’t understand that. – You never stood on the edge of a cliff and your balls hurt? – You say all’s hurt you say this every single time. – It’s a defense mechanism for not falling off a cliff, or Yodding your way down on a hang glider. – Well, I didn’t- – My Yods tell me, don’t hang glide. – Oh, I didn’t tell you this, so, you know, a couple of weeks ago we talked about the eject button that you press in order to- – Lots of convo about that. – Leak the lizard. And in our conversation that you weren’t able to join last night with our college friends, it was confirmed that neither of them knew about the buttons. – What? – Yeah, they didn’t have, they haven’t pressed the button. So apparently something I thought was very common. – We educated a lot of people is what I learned. – Yeah. So anyway- – Especially me taking it to the next level. – Okay, so yeah, I don’t know, I know how it ended for Father Yod, and first of all, I do remain open to the fact that I might be Father Yod reincarnated just because of the time of his death and the time of my birth and this is the way we look. – Your affinity for hang-gliding. – I like the idea of hang-gliding, never done it, but it doesn’t make my balls hurt when I think about it. – But let’s get into some current ones and make a decision. But first let’s promote some merch. – Speaking of cults and communes, I mean, this is one of the more culty Illuminati ish. – Let’s make sure they can see it. – I mean, basically, you know, this is supposed to be a magic eight ball but it’s that triangle, which is the, you know, which is definitely an Illuminati ish mythical outlook. What does it say, Good Mythical Morning? – Outlook Mythical, yes. – Outlook Mythical. – It just says Mythical, Mythical, Outlook Mythical. – Oh, okay, Mythical, Mythical, Outlook Mythical. – And if you shake it changes. – Yeah, it changes, in your brain. – We should have made the shirt where when you shake the friction with your booby area or sternum makes that triangle make something else appear – Do you think we could have put a little pocket in there that held liquid and a little dice? – Why don’t we just make it a hole? You can just see your chest hair through it. Well, why don’t we sell a t-shirt with two holes over the nipples? – Not everybody’s nipples are in the same place, I’ve thought about this many times. – Cut ’em yourself, but we sell the scissors. – Okay, all right. – Mythical.com – You might be onto something. – Rep your boys. – Okay, tell us about a current cult that we might want to join. – I wanted to start close, okay, so in America. – Sorry, commune, I keep saying cult, I’m sorry. – I know, it’s hard, and there’s for that. – Commune, intentional community. – So let’s go to central Tennessee near the town of Summertown, Tennessee. This place is called the Farm. There’s 200 residents. – I like everything about this so far. – It started in the 70s by this hippie guy, last name Gaskin. He still lives there but I mean, this commune, which is like, you know, it’s out in rural Tennessee, you got a whole bunch of buses that people are living in. – Buses? – It got up to like 1200 people in the 80s and then they kind of, they had to change things in order to, they had a lot of debt and then they had to figure out how to, okay, you gotta start supporting yourself. And of course, a lot of people left when they’re like, hey, it’s a commune but you support yourself. – Yeah, what’s the point? – That doesn’t work. But they were kind of revamped everything and they developed their own little cottage industries and now they’re at 200 people and you can go visit for like a long weekend and decide if you want to stay there. It seems like a lot of journalists go there in order to write a little piece to titillate the minds of people like us. But I mean, I’ll just point out some of the pros with this place. It’s in America, so it’s accessible to us. – I’ve been to Tennessee. – If you need to get to Nashville, you know, in an hour and a half or so you can do that. – Is it close to Gatlinburg? ‘Cause that’s what I’m concerned about. – They have an extremely successful midwifery, you know. – People who help you have birth? – Yes, the wife of the founder, I think her name’s like Ida May or something, she’s more famous than him because of the book she wrote about midwifery. In fact, the Farm was the setting for the rebirth of midwifery for the United States and the creation of the modern home birth method. – Wow! – And movement. – I love watching those on YouTube. – So you can live in a bus and then have a baby in the bus. – So is this just people who are members of the commune who are having babies? Or is it like, if you want to have a baby, you can go? – I don’t know, but I think because she’s so famous maybe people will go to her for, I mean, if you really want to like have a famous midwife she’s the one, she’s the one. – She’s still around? – Yeah. You gotta be a vegan. But that’s kind of an assumption for all of these. – That seems right. – And there’s a lot of, you know, with the whole change over and everything, there are still some residents that were there from the beginning in the 70s and went through the whole change over and they saw it in all its glory. And like I said, even the founder and his wife are still there but there’s a lot of infighting between those boomers and newer residents who are coming in, trying to do it differently. Which that kind of reminds me, you have this idea of you’ve got this group of like-minded people that you’re living off the land and supporting each other and every, you know, everybody helps raise the kids and you share everything. But, and this is not really that much of a legitimate comparison but it’s kind of all that I have to go on. Like in all the like Bible study groups that I was involved in, you were involved in growing up, especially like the young married groups, like once we graduated from college. For me, it was like, it was no way like a commune except that like you get together with these people and you start making these connections with a small group of people and it gets really exciting. And over the course of my life in that world there were a few phases or iterations of a small group getting together, like a Bible study or like a family group or whatever you might call it, and you’d be like, this is a magical connection. We all really like each other, it’s like, now we have this like dynamic friend group and it never, it never lasts more than like two years. Because you know what, it comprises of people. People like getting in each other’s business is a tough thing to maintain. And even when it just comes to, hey, let’s get together once a week and encourage each other and help each other and in this case study the Bible, it was like, we were all very well-intentioned and it wasn’t that, it wasn’t dogmatic in really any way. But still personalities and like the slight different pulls of agenda. I want it to be like this, well, I wanna do this and this is the vision I have and my needs aren’t being met, my expectations aren’t being met. Any group of people, it’s not just a church thing or a commune thing, it’s so hard to keep it going. – There’s an additional factor that may actually be the sort of foundational problem, even beyond the personalities. – Hang gliders? – Not hang gliders. The fact that you don’t have to be in that group. In the modern world every community that you’re a part of, that’s why they call it intentional community, it’s not, we have no choice but to be this community. – That’s called a prison. – Right. – Or a cult. – Well, no, but if you go back, okay first of all like, if you go way back in the distant past where there was no choice but to be a part of your community, and even in some places still in the world where it’s just like, I can’t, I don’t make the choice about where I go to church. There’s one church in town. I don’t make the choice about what religion I’m gonna be, there’s one option in this particular place. And when your community is constituted in that way there’s just so few choices that those personalities are something you deal with, but in the modern world and modern America in the south world, and this is true in all of America but, like if you think about this Bible study group, if I don’t like the voice of the person leading the Bible study I can go to another Bible study in the same church or I can go to another church. – Probably in the same house. If you want an all women’s one, that one’s happening downstairs. – We’re overwhelmed with options and so, I mean, you literally can go to a first Baptist church or a second Baptist church or even in some towns I’ve seen a fricking third Baptist church in the same town and that’s just the Baptists. And that’s just the Christians. – Let’s not just pick on churches. – I’m saying, this is everybody. – Any group of people. Like, if you want to talk about, you know, I mean, our friend group post church, you know? It was like, there was a dynamic experience for like a little over a year and then things just, you know, people went their separate ways. – Well, a lot of people have said, even after us telling our stories and, you know, because we exhibit an openness towards spirituality in general and we’re not trying to be like naturalists, atheists, and just basically rule out all mystical things, people are like, you know, it sounds like you guys would really enjoy a Unitarian Universalist church. Now, I’m not saying I wouldn’t and I’m not saying that I would never try it, but the idea that somehow because that particular group of people is committed to a more open or progressive mindset, that then there would no longer be the problems of people working together and ego, that’s just not true. No matter how wonderful the foundational principles of your community, like you said, it’s still gonna be people, and it’s still gonna be people in the context of this society where I can be like, I don’t have to be at this place, I can just go to the other place. And as long as those options exist long-term peaceful community of any kind is gonna be very difficult. – Even if you don’t, to get back to communes, you don’t have like a strong centralized leader, like a dictator that kind of makes it more cultish, I was reading about another one in Virginia that like they all shared the duties of raising the children in this particular commune. And there was a couple that wanted to have another child but there was a protocol that you had to go and get permission. – Because we all got to take care of this kid – To have a child, so it’s like, it’s even coming from like a logistic place that makes sense but you find yourself having to get permission to have a child? – Well, which is something that completely rubs up against the rugged individualism of our modern society, and especially America. The idea that I would have to, that I wouldn’t own this piece of property and the fact that I’d have to ask permission to have a kid, it seems almost offensive to most of us. But I do think the idea that, hey, I’m a member of this collective and every decision that I make is gonna impact every other member of the collective, it kind of makes sense, it sort of follows. But it violates our sense of individualism. – I mean, we went to different churches as newlyweds and as we graduated from college. We didn’t actually, you know, we never went to the same, we grew up in the same church but we didn’t go to the same church after college. – Right. – Until the point where we no longer went to churches. – We didn’t think people could handle us going to the same church. – I mean, it was good to have some autonomy but I mean, so in that phase of life did you have a similar experience to me that like, you had this supercharged small group that you thought was gonna be like connected forever? Did you experience the magic before the disappointment? – I wouldn’t say it was as a marked of magic and a disappointment as it seems like you’re talking about, but I completely understand. I mean, we had a pretty consistent group. It was sort of a core group of people, probably four, five, six years or so. But again, it was the kind of thing that we came together as a Bible study and it was a great time, but there wasn’t a whole lot of interaction outside of that group and then Sunday. Because everybody had other friends and everybody had their lives and their jobs. Again, you did, there was nothing that was forcing your involvement with the other family and so it wasn’t as, it just wasn’t as stark. But yeah, I completely get what you’re saying. – I’m passing on the Farm because I’m not gonna have any more kids and I love the idea of living in a van, but not a bus. – The reason I’m passing on the Farm is because it just doesn’t seem cool enough to me. But I’m about to give you something that I think is getting into, because if I’m gonna do a commune, I want it to be weird. – Let’s go! – How about Auroville in Indiana, or India. – I thought I said Indiana, India, man, big difference. – Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s not Indiana, I was telling you a curve ball, this is in India. – You gotta travel to this one, it better be good. – Now you can go to the Auroville.org website which has got a lot of content. Okay, this is a multicultural city started in the late 60s. They believe in human unity and transformation of consciousness. Over 3,000 residents from 58 nations. Residents are expected to build their own house and make donations to the community, but beyond this, all necessities, including public school, utilities, healthcare, are covered by the community, which is technically partially funded by the Indian government, but let’s not complicate things. Now, let me just say, I have created what I’m calling the cool shit factor, okay? – Okay, yeah. – To judge these communes by. – All right, all right. – And Auroville- – That’s really what it’s all about. How cool is your shit? – Auroville has a lot of cool shit and let me just tell you a few things. – The first thing- – I see these pictures, man. – Now, they started the community in this area in, not Indiana, India, and they decided that the center of the entire thing would be this, I think it’s banyan tree, I think it’s how you say that. But those are those sort of iconic, you’ve seen these trees on like postcards if you haven’t seen them in person. – The Buddha was enlightened under one. – And so there’s this Banyan tree that is in the middle of this kind of stark landscape and they decided that this was the center of the community. I just like that kind of thing. You know, me and you with our like declaring a tree special. – Yep. – We do this. But they didn’t just say, hey, here’s a tree, no. Then they constructed this thing called the Matrimandir, and this is- – Matrimandir. – It looks like a golden Epcot Center, right? – The shiny Epcot sphere. – The sphere at Epcot. And this thing has took forever to build, But, first of all, you can visit this thing, like anybody can visit this thing. But inside this golden ball structure there is the largest optically perfect glass globe in the world. And on the website, they go through how they had this thing manufactured. – So like a big paperweight. – Well, but it’s optically perfect. – Hold on, optically, meaning it looks perfect but it’s probably not? It’s not microscopically perfect. – Well, I think it’s as perfect, there’s no other glass globe of this size that is this perfect. – And what did they do with it? – I mean, I’m sure they get energy from it or something. I don’t know, it’s cool. – They meditate on it. Do you sit on it and try to hatch it? – I don’t think you sit on it. I think that would probably be like a violation. – Yeah, that’s probably rule number two. – I don’t even know if you can touch it or lick it. – That’s rule number one. – But you can look at it. I’m sure we’re gonna get facts wrong about this, sorry those of you who are like from, welcome, first of all, those of you from Auroville who are watching, welcome to the show. – Thanks, we think you got some cool shit going on. – It’s a podcast called “Ear Biscuits”, we do it every week. – We’re coming for ya. – If you wanna broadcast this. You could broadcast this inside the, I know I’m saying it wrong, Matrimandir. – Put this on repeat, like this part of the podcast, just loop it. – You know what, feel free. We are officially giving you permission to take this, our description of your place and put it in a little video vignette on your website. Okay, in like a video brochure, if you will. Anyway, you got a lot of cool shit. And there’s also- – I like that big focal point, the Epcot focal point. – I don’t wanna just show up and see buses. – Yes, exactly. – I want to see something that like, oh, that alien may have been involved. They don’t just have that, they have a giant amphitheater and in the middle of the amphitheater is just this marble urn. Just a marble urn. – I see a picture where they’re like, there’s a huge fire. – Yeah, I mean the website’s got some very intoxicating images. So anyway, I know there’s more cool shit, that’s just what we’re gonna talk about now. The pros of this one, you got your healthcare, your school taken care of, you can stay for a trial period. – Okay, how long is that? – I don’t know. – As long as it needs to be. – Large group, diverse group, very high cool shit factor. It was started by a woman they called the Mother. And I want to take a second to camp out here, because you know, I’m generalizing, but you know- – Does everyone camp out there? – When a dude starts a cult 99.7% of the time it’s because he wants to get with a bunch of women. – He wants to get his Yod on, or get his Yods off. – But a woman, in my experience, women are not just interested in ripping families apart and having sex with everybody as much as men tend to be. – Wow, Rhett. – So I think that there could be, this could be a purer motivation here. They call her the Mother and I think the fact that she started, now she’s dead, But I think she, according to them, she passed on into a different form and still is involved in some way. Maybe she’s in the ball? Maybe she’s in the urn which would make more sense. – No comment. – Again, if you want to take this part out of the little video brochure on the website if I’m getting all the details about the Mother wrong, I’m sorry, you can do that. I’m just saying, I love the fact that a female started your commune. Cons, you gotta relocate to India. You gotta build your own house. I don’t even like to change the light bulbs anymore. I mean, I just am gonna be honest, I did a bunch of like manual stuff like in my 20s like, you know, I was like a a Mr. Fix-it man like working on rental properties and stuff and I just, I don’t like it. – You bring up a good point, I think communes are really for that like young and vivacious type that wants to go grab life by the Yods. – There’s a lot of things I want to do though. – And then if you’re old it’s ’cause you’ve like, you’ve been there for awhile, you know? – I like the idea of maybe gardening a little bit, maybe a little bit of woodwork, just for like an artistic standpoint, but not building a house. – That’s a lot. That’s a lot. – And also, and I don’t know if this is necessarily a con but you know, the idea is to lose your sense of personal possessions and your ego, which I actually think that that’s a positive. I wouldn’t put that in a con list. – Sounded like you did. – Well, I think you put this in a con actually. – Yeah, I did. I love my ego. – Maybe that says something about you. I would love to lose, if I lost my ego completely. – Yeah, that’d be great. – Then I would lose any desire for personal possessions. So I wouldn’t care, so that’s a positive to me. If I go and I, I guess if I sit on or touch the glass orb, maybe my ego gets taken and stored inside the optically perfect orb and then maybe if I want it and I want to leave and I’m like, I gotta go to America, I need my ego, I’ll touch it and get it back. Is that how it works? You can take this out of the, take this off the website if that’s not true. – I think that one just rolls into a commune and then explains how all of their very meaningful things work. Hey, I got news for you guys, I’m gonna be sitting on this orb and I’ll, you know, I’ll post the times when I’m not on it if you want to bring in tourists to look at it. Otherwise you’re just gonna be looking at me kinda nesting on this thing. – No, no, I’m not gonna spend a lot of time, I’m gonna deposit my ego into it and then I’m gonna walk out. And then if I need my ego for some sort of like competition or like a sporting event. I gotta go play golf I need my ego. – So you’re losing your ego into this sphere, but you’re basically doing that to assert that you think everyone would want to look at your ego. Which kind of doesn’t sound like losing your ego. – That is how you’re interpreting it. I’m not, you can’t see anything in the orb. It’s not, my ego is not the only ego that’s in the orb. I’m assuming everyone’s ego is in the org. Orb, but it is an org, ’cause it’s Auroville.org is the website. – But what I’m telling you, Rhett, is that you’re- – You’re misinterpreting everything that I’m saying. – No one’s ego is in the orb so if you put- – You wouldn’t make a good cult member. – If you put your ego in the orb it’s gonna be the only one in there, period. You just can’t tell people that, oh, you know everyone, everyone’s ego’s in there. – No, I’m making some assumptions here and I might be wrong. I’m just saying, if there are egos deposited in the orb or the urn, or the tree, then I’m part of that, I’ll do that. – Let’s go to Scotland. I thought you’d be into this. – Yeah, I was Scotlish at one time. (laughs) – The Findorn Ecovillage. Now don’t get your hopes up, there is no hidden horn. – ‘Cause they found it. – That’s not what this is about. You know, it reminds me of like, Christie went to Meredith College, all women’s school where they, they did all these summer camp exercises, like by class, by like freshmen class, junior, senior, and I think when you were a junior, you were supposed to find the crook. That was hidden by the seniors. And it was, the crook, I don’t even know what it was. I think it’s just, I’ve never seen it and I never asked Christie what it was. I just have this, like a crook at like, a picture of the bent top of a cane or like a shepherd staff. I don’t know why, but that’s what I always thought a crook was and I’m just now realizing I’ve never seen it or really asked Christie what it was. – We could probably look it up on the internet. – But it was kind of this game to find the crook, kind of like finding a hidden immunity idol in “Survivor”. – Right, uh-huh. – What? I actually don’t want to be the guy that keeps talking about “Survivor”. – Well, you’re too late. We found that horn. (laughs) – But finding the crook is not like Findhorn Ecovillage. This thing started in the 60s but it didn’t take his current form until 1982 When residents made an effort to show that an environmentally unobtrusive community could flourish both socially and economically and obviously- – Spiritually – No, physically, like naturally. – Okay. – It’s been noted as the smallest environmental footprint of any town in the modern world. – Whoa, okay, all right. – Yeah. They’re building codes encouraged using found materials. They use wind turbines or turbines, whatever your jollies are. And they got a water treatment apparatus called the Living Machine. – Okay, I like that, that’s weird. – Which makes use of algae, snails, and plant life to purify the community’s drinking water. Oh, that’s awesome. So this place is, you know, if you look on the website, it’s got this Scottish countryside farm vibe but there’s actually a lot of buildings and a good amount of streets. – How many people, do you know? – I don’t know. Everybody bikes everywhere. No one counts how many people there are, so don’t worry about it. – Got it, got it. – But yeah, I definitely want a drink of this living machine. – I’m into this. – You have to build a house here too. – Oh really? – I mean, there’s more restrictions, you’ve gotta build it out of found material. – Can’t you just take, like people will leave or die. Can I just take that guy’s house? – Maybe. – Like, can I get on the waiting list and be like- – My ego is gonna live here with you until you decide to move out and then I’ll move in. – I want a waiting list and I just wanna be like, Hey, I don’t really want to build my house, but when Walter dies, he’s tall and he’s probably got furniture that fits me. And he’s tall so he won’t live long, put me on the waiting lists for Walter’s. – Some houses are made from old wine barrels. That’s kind of cool, that’s a cool shit situation. – You could maybe make an Instagram with that, is that allowed? – I don’t know. – Do any of these places have an Instagram? – No, they just have a website. They’re all kind of behind, you know, they don’t really seem to care about social media. – Well, Instagram is all about ego anyway so that’s not a good, that’s not a good thing to introduce. – I don’t think you can have your phone out in public and then it’s hard to get reception in some of these places. – That’s good, I like that. – This one’s basically a demonstration farm. People come and they visit and they’re like, wow, look at how eco-friendly this place is and self-sustaining, it reminds me of the demonstration farm on the edge of Buoys Creek that I never knew, what was going on there? – The one near my house? – Yeah, when I would ride my bike from my house to yours I would have to go by the demonstration farm and it was a Campbell University thing, right? And they had sheep everywhere and I do remember that we took a trip there in like younger grades. – Well, the funny thing is, is we took a field trip there and because it was next to my house and I was a little boy who’d got into everything I was like, I’ve been up in this demonstration farm- – A lot. – A lot already. – Yeah, you took me there. – No, I would go and I would jump the fence and I would run around with the goats and the sheep and pet ’em and I would get in, I would get into everything at the demonstration farm, without permission. And then occasionally- – Would people show up and would you demonstrate anything? – I would be like, I’m gonna demonstrate how a little boy runs from the farmer once he shows up – I remember that we would both kind of scurry around and you know, trespass in the demonstration farm. – There was a male goat that would ram you. – Yeah, he was aggressive. – He was very aggressive, and I thought it was the coolest thing. – But the daughter of the family that lived on the farm. – Before it became the farm. That was Jennifer Pearson. – I didn’t think we were saying last names anymore. – Oh, okay, Jennifer. – Wonder what happened to Jennifer Pearson? Man, I had a crush on her. – You did, you really liked her. – I had a crush on her, man, in kindergarten. – I spent the night at her house one time. – Every time I say that I had a crush on her, this is what you say. You gloat that you spent the night with her, with her brother. – She had a younger brother, and you know me, I would invite myself to anybody within- – He was so much younger. – Yeah, yeah, he was three years younger, I think. – That’s a lot when you’re in grade school. – I would do three years, three years younger, there was a six year range that I felt it was acceptable to spend the night at somebody’s house. Because I was very interested in other people’s homes. – I mean, you were like 11 years old and like you were spending the night with an eight year old. That’s just weird. – I readily admit that it’s weird. But it wasn’t about him, it was about- – Was it about the goat? – It was about, he lived on a farm, he had a sister my age. I mean, he accepted my invitation for myself. – It was a white house, one story. I never went inside of it, I just thought a lot about what it might be inside. – I can tell you, I mean, there wasn’t a lot of cool shit in there. – Oh really? – Yeah. – I mean, maybe that’s true of the Ecovillage. I mean, basically the only thing I’m touting is Scotland is fun. You can ride your bike everywhere. – It’s dangerous though. – But you also have to ride your bike everywhere. – My mom broke her ankle there. – Living machine water taste test. – I like that, I liked that idea. – It was criticized a few years back for advertising alternative healing practices not recommended by science. They have since rebranded. – But isn’t that just part of being in one of these communities? I mean, the whole new age deal? I mean, of course they’re healing in ways that don’t, aren’t scientific. That’s what it’s about, right? – They’re teaching good things and they’re like, I don’t think they’re religious or even philosophical. It’s more just about like, eco-friendly, self-sustaining. – Well, that’s attractive, but it’s also hard to get people to fully commit. – Right, it’s a bit. – You need them to swear off their own family and swear allegiance to something above themselves. In order to be an effective commune, I think. – So Scotland doesn’t do it. I think, you know, gold Epcot. – Right now the leading candidate is Auroville. But I’ve got one that’s gonna to maybe shake things up. The Federation- – I gave you all the good ones. – Of Damanhur. – This is a good one. – In Italy. First of all, always wanted to go to Italy, I mean, just right off the bat. The Federation of Damanhur, often simply called Damanhur, is a commune ecovillage, that’s also an ecovillage, and spiritual community situated in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, about 50 kilometers, about 31 miles, north of the city of Turin. Shroud of Turin, anybody? – Oh yeah, you can swing by the shroud and then go down there and visit. I know they make tours because I watched one on YouTube. – Yeah, oh yeah, there’s, okay, this thing was founded in 1975 by a dude, Oberto. – Oberto! – So there’s a questionable deal there just because a dude founded it. But he founded it with 24 followers and by the year 2000 it had grown to 800, I don’t know exactly what it is now but they hold kind of a mix of new age in neo pagan beliefs, which I think is, that feels right to me. – We’re in a sweet spot now, neo pagan. – Now hold on to your Yods because the cool shit factor- – Thank you for using that. – The cool shit factor at this place is off the charts. – But, under the ground. – The Temples of Humankind. – Yes. – We’re talking hand dug 100 feet deep tunnels and chambers that have all this stuff, including. – I love hand dug stuff. – But that’s 100 feet too, I mean. – That’s crazy. – I love underground stuff. I haven’t done a whole lot of it but the idea of being in caves and underground, especially a thing that’s been dug into the ground, big fan. – I’m a fan of it as long as you can walk around in a pretty much upright position. Once you start to belly crawl underground. – No, no, we’re not talking to spelunking here. – I’ve done that before. – We’re not talking spelunking, we’re talking the Hall of Spheres containing translucent orbs containing water imbued with spiritual energy intended for use in meditation. So we’re not just talking about one perfect, we’re talking about multiple spear spheres with water in them that’s been imbued. The Hall of Earth, which has a dreamlike murals of landscapes and extinct animals calling attention to human responsibility to the planet preservation. – Yeah, there’s like paintings of these animals all over the wall and it’s kind of like walking through a human sized ant farm. ‘Cause like, you go through this, there’s a door and then, you can tell that things were built on and added as they went. – Yeah, ’cause it’s been around a long time. – It wasn’t some grand scheme to this thing, it was more like big room, let’s paint it, put orbs in here. Let’s make a tunnel this way, and so it’s, you know, it’s very ant-like. – And I’m not done, Hall of Mirrors, an area for meditation surrounded on all sides by mirrors. – I would expect no less. – The piece de resistance, I don’t know exactly where it’s at, but I can confirm that on the website, I saw a woman with a gong. And if you’ve got a commune in there is not a gong, you have done it wrong. Just remember that, okay? – Commune with no gong, you’ve done it wrong – And I’ve only scratched the surface so to speak. I mean, you do have to go 100 feet deep. But this is a beautiful area and their website, their website is crazy, what is the website? I guess I just went to, I get a lot of this from the Wiki entry, but they’ve got a good website too with a lot of information. And you can visit- – Damanhur.org – Okay. Should be dot orb. – Sustainability is the present and the future. The thing that I noticed is that they, they’ve got like these different, what are they called? – Symbols? – These symbols represent, There was a lot of organization in terms of like where you could fit in in this community and like your level of commitment. It’s a grand system – But they’re not trying to not be culty, which is something I appreciate. Let’s just go ahead and admit, that’s what we’re doing here, guys. We are a cult, right? This is not, hey, an intentional community eco village. No, it’s a fricking cult, let’s be honest about it. Let’s embrace it, that’s why we’re doing this. So I like that about it. And also I liked the fact that they have four levels of participation, A, B, C, and D. – Well, they call them classes, that’s what I’m talking about. Just like this whole system you can assimilate into. – So one class is you got to live there full time and that’s class A, class B, you got to be there three times a week, like three days a week. And then class C and D- – And contribute tribute money. – Class C and D you can live anywhere, but you know, at least it depends on like what kind of like course you’re in, there’s a lot of meditation, there’s a school of meditation. There’s a thing called the game of life. – What? – I don’t even understand it but I’m in, and let me say this. – It’s like an underground board game that you could die? – Yeah. The other thing is from 1983 onwards members have assumed animal names, and not just animal names, you get an animal first name and a plant last name. So the founder is called Falcon Dandelion. And I’ve already picked my name, I’ll give you some time to think about yours. – Well Falcon Dandelion is taken. – I’m going, and just so y’all know, look out for Giraffe Kudzu. – Giraffe Kudzu, you got a long neck and you grow fast. – That’s right. Giraffe Kudzu in the house. Where is he at, is he in the Hall of Mirrors? No, he’s at the gong. Giraffe’s my favorite animal and they’re very tall, that’s simple. Kudzu is a southern invasive species. – With that beard of yours, it’s like you don’t even have a neck. – It’s not about the neck, it’s about the overall height. Don’t criticize my fricking name, come up with your own. Giraffe Kudzu will be, I’m coming and I want to be the gong operator. That’s the only stipulation. Multiple gongs, in fact, I want a Hall of Gongs. I’m not necessarily gonna dig it, but I will supervise the digging and I will supervise the purchasing of the gongs and I will attempt to construct a long stick that I will use to strike the gongs. I think I could probably do that, just find a stick. – I will be called Trichinosis Rosebud. Is Trichinosis an animal? – No, that is a disease that you get from raw pork. – Right, but it is an animal. – I mean, it’s worms, I guess. I think it’s the disease you get from the worms. Trichinosis Worm Rosebud. – Rosebud, okay. – So it’s like, I’m entering into this place and- – T-W-R-B, Twerb. (laughs) Can I just call you Twerb for short? – Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. Just call me Twerb but I want you to know that like- – Twerb, could you fetch a stick for me? – I’m not trying to, I’m not a dog, I’m a man. I’m a man who’s, you know what? I’m coming to you, warts and all, Trichinosis. You know, I’m not trying to be something nice or something I’m not. – But what are you gonna do though? You know what I’m gonna do, I’ve already decided that. – I’ll probably dig holes. – You’ll be a digger? – I’m gonna be a, I like, I mean, as a kid, man, I would love to dig a good hole. – You’re also a good cleaner, you love cleaning things. Could you clean the gongs? – Once you dig a hole it creates lots of debris to clean up. – I don’t think you have to clean a gong very often. – I’m not cleaning your gongs, no. That’s an emphatic, no. – I think you polish a gong, you like a polishing things? – I’ve never, you know what, I’m gonna answer to this truthfully and thoughtfully. – You’ve never polished anything? – I can’t recall polishing anything. – The world of polishing is waiting for Twerb to show up. – When I first got that pickup truck when I was 16, and you know I would wax it, is waxing a form of polishing? – Yes, I think waxing is a sub genre of polishing. – And Trichinosis is an animal. – Yeah, okay, you can have it your way, man. – I’m a hole digger, man. I guess if I’m a hole digger I should be an animal that digs holes. – Okay, I’m on board. – I just can’t think of one. – A lot of pros here. – A dog? – A lot of pros here, the name’s one of them, gongs, super high cool shit factor. You don’t have to live there full time, I think you can come in at level C or D and kind of feel things out. – Calling everybody in animal is some cool shit, man. – Oh yeah. Now, there are some cons. With all the pros that come from it being very cult-like, there also some cons, let’s be honest. Basically, the guru makes all your decisions for you. There is some estrangement from family. There’s some typical cult situation things that are happening here. If you’re not comfortable with that, if you don’t like the idea of being brainwashed and manipulated, which I understand some people don’t, then this might not be for you. – None of that came up in the tours that I saw, like fun for Louie, remember him? – Uh-huh. – He was there with, shoot, what is that gal’s name who was in our crate? She was in our crayon colors music video. Remember way back in the day, she was a vlogger at the time. I can’t remember her name but she, Nadine, I think that’s her name. Like they were there together like many years ago and like posted YouTube videos. – Just visiting? – Just visiting and like vlogging about it. And they went through the chambers, you can experience the chambers and probably the gong just by visiting. – Do you think that the fact that I said that- – But they didn’t mention any of this cult-like shit. – Well, I’m just, first of all, just for legal reasons might I say that everything I’m saying here is for entertainment purposes. – Seems like that should go at the top. – I’m just saying that there’s been, they’ve been accused, let’s just say allegedly there are some cult-like things happening here and some control issues that are happening. But like I said, I don’t think you can do this properly without that, you know? And I’m not trying to be, you know, listen, cults, you know- – They get a bad rap? – People have suffered incredible horrors and traumas from cults, so I’m not saying I’m pro cult. I’m just saying if you’re gonna do a community that’s got a bunch of cool shit there’s gonna be some mind control and some manipulation. It’s just kind of part of the package. You know what I’m saying? So just keep all that in mind. You also, if you’re gonna live there full-time you’re gonna be in a house with 10 to 20 people. This is gonna be an adjustment. It’s gonna be an adjustment, I mean for you, you know. I think it would be an adjustment for me. Giraffe Kudzu is gonna have a tough time with that. But I don’t know, I think I could adjust, I think I could adapt. – I’m just going to go back to Auroville in India. Or maybe Indiana, maybe there’s like a miniature version. – That quickly you went back? I mean, I don’t know the Auroville doesn’t have some of the same, what are you afraid of at? – You scared me off with the, I mean, not being able to make any decisions. – No, you can make decisions, but you gotta make decisions that are approved. – Right. – It’s probably the same at Auroville, man. I’ll take one gold orb and one really smooth or within it instead of all those chambers, even though I like to dig holes. – Okay, well. – I think that’s where I’m landing. – I think I’m going to Italy, going underground, assuming that I can get these things that I’ve requested and assuming that the people are gonna still be okay with the fact that I said the stuff about mind control. Here’s what I’m saying, I understand that it’s part of the deal and Giraffe Kudzu is showing up, he’s gonna be on the gongs, he’s the willing to let his mind get controlled. So I’m just saying, I’m gonna submit when I get there to my guru. – Okay. – Okay? – So don’t sue me. – Tricky, if you call me Tricky I might join you. – Tricky sounds like a carnie that got fired. – Short for Trichinosis, man. – I understand what it comes from, but. – Well, I’ve got the rec this week, I’m gonna, so switching gears a little bit for a rec baby, rec baby, one two three four. I’m gonna recommend a video. – A video. – Yeah, I just want you to watch a video. And this is more for you, but if like, you know, I think most everybody listening would get a kick out of this. If you Google, well, if you search on YouTube I’ve only eaten Mac and cheese for the past 17 years, here’s why, a video will show up called, “I’ve Eaten Only Mac & Cheese for the Past 17 Years and Here’s Why” It’s on the Vice YouTube channel. – I know why you recommend this. – It’s almost got 10 million views. Yeah, I saw this thanks to a Reddit post on the Good Mythical Morning thread. And it’s a profile piece of, you guessed it, a guy who has only eaten Mac & Cheese for the past 17 years. And this video tells you why. As we discussed on Good Mythical Morning, we did a whole episode about people eating only one thing. And it, you know, it did really well, this is like from many, many years ago, I barely remember even doing the episode. But I did remember a little bit and I knew from the Reddit thread that there’s a connection. Well, halfway through this Vice piece as it’s doing this profile thing, this is an 18 minute video, it’s about five minutes in, that’s when he gets into his story of after having eaten Mac and cheese for a lot of his life he talks about how he’s watching this internet show called Good Mythical Morning and they show a clip of us talking about people eating one thing and like we talk about how there’s a name for that. – It’s a condition. – It’s a mental condition. And he did not know that he had a mental condition until he watched Good Mythical Morning. And then he goes on and it’s like, and talks about like his treatment. It’s a pretty cool video to watch and that’s the only time we’re mentioned but it blew my mind and it actually, you know, if you would’ve reminded me that we made that episode of GMM and then that someone who has that condition would have watched it. You know, I would have cringed a little bit and been like, I hope we didn’t hurt that guy’s feelings. – Oh, I think we helped him. – But we clearly helped this guy. Like we were the catalyst to get him on a path of coming to grips with what he’s dealing with in treatment. Like there’s literally, it’s a little strange because he goes to a therapist session and it’s filmed, you know, they filmed the thing. So there’s a strange vibe in that exchange but maybe it was just because of the fact that it was a therapy session being filmed. But overall I was just, I was relieved to find out that we only helped the guy. So even though we might’ve gotten a kick out of people eating only one thing, it’s more of a fascination than like making fun of is what I think we struck a good balance, one so that we actually could help this guy. – Changing the world one person at a time, man. – It was surreal to watch that a couple of weeks ago. – And it’s been out for awhile. – This video came out a year ago and then our video was like before that. – Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. – So check that out. – Did you say the name of it? – I’ve Eaten Only Mac & Cheese for the Past 17 Years, comma, Here’s Why. – Okay, so basically it’s the title is the- – Yeah, the thing that I’ve said multiple times. Vice YouTube channel. – Well, thanks for listening to us. Those of you who are in any of these intentional communities who joined us for this episode, thank you for joining us. – Let us know. – We may be joining you soon. – About your experience. If you visited a commune or one of these places, #EarBiscuits. – And if we got something wrong, as I’m sure we did. In the least how we pronounce some of these things. But some of the assumptions that I made about your establishments, let us know, #EarBiscuits. Join the conversation, set us straight. – We’ll talk at you next week. To watch more “Ear Biscuits” click on the playlist on the right. – [Rhett] To watch the previous episode of “Ear Biscuits” click on the playlist to the left. – [Link] And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. – [Rhett] If you prefer to listen to this podcast it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your Mythical best. (calm music)