(upbeat music) – 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, you could kind of call this a part two to what we did last week where we talked about all the ideas that we’ve had that have never seen the light of day. – They failed. They fizzled out. – They were rejected. – We were rejected. ♪ Bu-duh-ba-ba-bow ♪ – Now let me also say that some of the stuff that we went through last week, I thought about this after the fact, some of those ideas we kind of rejected. Like they didn’t even make it to the first level of, or maybe they were considered by like an agent or someone who looked at a list of ideas and said, “Okay, this is the one that I think might be viable.” So I didn’t want to give the impression that every single idea that we went through last week, we had sat down in a room with a group of people and pitched it to them and it was rejected. Some of them were, they were all rejected on some level but some just never, like little baby birds that never even got pushed out of the nest. They just came out of the egg and then die. – I don’t like picturing a dead baby bird. – A dead baby bird. Some didn’t even get out of the egg. They’re in the egg and they die inside that egg. – Okay. That’s better. – And then you just have a dead bird inside of an egg. – That’s fine. – It slowly rots. – I’m cool with that. – Well, hold on, that’s even grosser to me. – No because it’s in an egg. – Because I eat eggs, I crack eggs and I always have a fear, every time I crack an egg, I think to myself is there going to be a bird in this one? – That’s why you need to shine the light on it first. – I don’t want to do that. – But the baby birds that are like out and like they don’t have any feathers and they’re like- – They’re cute, man. They’re like little dinosaurs. – Their eyeballs are like huge and like bruised. They look like they’re bruised all over. – You look like you should be talking with a German accent. (laughing) – I’m going for a different look today. I found this sweater- – But the combination of your glasses and your sweater. – I bought this sweater cashmere, by the way. – You look like… – It is peach. – What was the old SNL skit? Sprockets. (laughing) – Sprockets. They wore black, man. – I know, you look like- – They didn’t wear peach. – The 2021 version of Sprockets. – Hey, man. – If Sprockets came back, it would be peach. – I look different. but I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, I think I look good. – Hey, I didn’t say you look bad. – And then Christy came in- – I said you look German. – I was fully ready to come in. Yeah. I’ve got different glasses on today. My signature Link glasses. – I heard about this. – Broke. – Yeah. Sorry about that by the way. – And- – I punched him. – I’ve been wearing them for a couple of months broken. It’s just, right here. I just noticed one day the lens just fell out in my hand. And it’s because part of the frame, it just broke clear in two. Now I can superglue it, but consulting with Jenna we’re gonna take it to a professional because- – Right and they’re gonna glue it. (laughing) – Right. – And you’re gonna pay ’em for it. – I cannot buy another replica of these go-to glasses of mine that I’ve had for years. Like four years ago, I did buy a second pair- – And he lost them. No, they got stolen. – I kept them in my car. – Thanks for spoiling all of my stories this morning. – Wait, I mean, come on, man. I’m just continuing the conversation. – That was the punchline. And guess what? It was stolen. Yeah. Stolen out of my car in my own freaking driveway. My second pair of glasses. – Sorry about that by the way as well. – So that when this happens- – You know what? I should probably give those to you now. – I still have my glasses. – I stole those from you so when you broke your other ones, I could give them to you and I think I’ve misplaced them at this point. – These aren’t, I’m not sticking, I’m not switching to these ’cause I don’t like them enough but- – It’s a nice change of pace though. – I thought, you know what? It’s a nice change of pace for the day, I’m wearing this peach sweater. – You look two or three IQ points smarter. – Than you. Yeah, exactly. And I was thinking, I looked in the mirror- – Than your previous self is what I was getting at. – I’m like hey, I kind of got a different look, but I think I like it. I go downstairs and I’m like ready to walk out the door. And Christy looks at me and I’m like, yeah, she’s gonna say, she’s gonna give me a compliment or at least say, I’ll look like that guy from Sprockets. – She’s gonna laugh at you probably is what she did. – The first thing she said was, “There’s like a like a red dot on your neck and you got another one.” I actually put a little makeup on it so you can’t see it. – Oh, pull it out again, what in the world? – Is it there? – Yeah. You got a rash. – I don’t know what that is. Maybe it’s from the sweater. You got, pull it down again. Yeah. You got a rash man. – I actually feel, I think it’s just that I’m flush. I’m kind of wired this morning. – Oh. – Anyway. – ‘Cause you went to the gym. – I’m in the market to some new- – You went to the gym and you got your heart rate up. – That’s what it is. Yeah. Maybe. – Yeah. – I’m in the market for some new glasses, but I’m gonna get as close to my go-to glasses as I can get because going this far away, I never wear them because they’re too far. – Well- – Too far from the real me. – And speaking of being too far, we went kind of far a field there. What I was getting to was- – Uh-huh. – What we’re going to talk about today is how we’ve dealt with that rejection, you know? More on an emotional level and what that has done to us. Years of having things, you know, rejected, multiple things that we can never bring to the light of day. – Or things that were brought to the light of day that then, I mean, are considered failures. Like how do you move on after failure from a creative standpoint? – Yeah. – So we’ll discuss that. – I do want to give you an update on one of my children. – Choose one. – I’ll pick the older one. And so I think we’ve covered the fact that our kids got a little bit later start with the whole getting their driver’s license thing. It’s a generational thing. Kids are not rushing on their 16th birthday to get their license, at least not in Los Angeles, I guess because of Uber. And then COVID of course had a pretty large impact on everybody’s plans. – Yeah. – Like for Locke, it was he needed to get his driving lessons and then once COVID hit, it was like, well, you can’t. We don’t really want you to get into the car with somebody right now. So, but anyway, since we’re coming out on the other side of that, he’s got his permit and so he can drive us around. Now, Jessie- – Even though he is now, he’s already 17. – He’s already 17. He could have had his license long ago. – 15 and a half. He could have- – right. – He could have taken his drive, what he’s doing now. – And every day he tells me how much he regrets not going with the original schedule. And I say, “This is why I told you 100 times at least that you should do this.” He was like, “I know, sometimes I just have to learn things the hard way, Dad. – Damn, that’s a milestone, man. I mean, that right there is what every parent lives for. The when you say that I told you so, and they’re like, “You’re right.” Like how often does that happen? – Well often in my house. No, no, actually. – Oh, God it doesn’t. – No, it’s interesting because it is happening more lately with him. Like I thought that there would be things that would be like, okay, you know, when he’s- – Is it a pill that I can get my kids to take? – When he’s like 28 he’ll come home for Christmas and he’ll be like, “You know what? You guys were actually pretty good parents.” You know? – Yeah. – But he actually, I told you this yesterday, he recently said, “I’ve actually realized recently that you guys are actually pretty good parents.” (laughing) And you just got to understand- – What? Did you get suspicious, like what do you want? – No, he wasn’t asking for anything. He was just experiencing some things with other parents and stuff and has points of reference and stuff. And he’s, you know, appreciating his own parents. So- – Oh, us? You talking about the me and Christy? – Yeah, the Neals. (both laughing) No. So anyway, so he is driving now and Jessie had this stipulation. She was like, “I’m not driving with him. You can drive with him.” Her and Locke tend to kind of get into it sometimes. And I get only imagine and she could only imagine what it would be like if she’s trying to, you know, the classic trope of the new driver and the parent in the passenger seat losing their mind. – It’s funny ’cause Christy said the same thing about Jessie. – Said what? – That she wasn’t going to ride with him. – Yeah. Well, can you imagine Jessie’s offspring? But it’s also my offspring, so I was like, okay. I mean, then that means that we’re just gonna be driving on the weekends ’cause that’s like the time that I’ve got in order to do this. And so the first couple of like driving lessons were going to a big parking lot and getting the basics of the car down, like, okay, this is, you know, literally… You know, when we grew up, we had driven like golf carts and go-carts and four wheelers. We had a lot of driving experience. My kid’s a city kid. It’s just, he’s come up different. And so there wasn’t like all this driving experience that you could just transfer over to a car. So it was a little bit like, oh, the gas is here and the brake is here? Like we were literally at that point. – And I’m just, I’m basically just getting through that point with a Lincoln who is, you know, he just turned 16 and you take him to a parking lot and for the reason you’re talking about, there’s not a big parking lot that you can find that’s empty. – There’s like five other people. – And then there’s at least four other cars just like parked or lurching slowly. – Yeah. – And so that actually seems worse because it’s like all these cars are just gonna lurch into each other ’cause they don’t know the difference between the gas and the brake. – This is actually a great time. I mean, the traffic is picking up, but I would say that a couple of months ago when we started doing these little adventures, LA traffic is as low as it’s ever been in the history of our 10 years of being here, but probably in the past 30, 40 years, because of COVID. So- – But if you want to experience going back, you can watch the latest Tarantino movie. It has a lot of LA driving. That’s basically all I remember about the movie. – Which one? – That and Brad Pitt on LSD. – Oh. The Hollywood… – “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood” – So anyway, so yeah, so we did the parking lot thing and I wasn’t too confident. I was like, I wanted him to get the feel of like, okay, this is how you pull up into a parking space. This is how you back out. And this is how you put the brakes on, you shift the gears and you’re… Getting those, the transitional points of driving which is a really big part of driving. – Yeah, yeah. – Just being on a road and going straight and stopping and then starting again, that’s not driving. – That ain’t driving. Yeah, I remember telling, I was telling Lincoln, I was like, he was in the driver’s seat and I realized I needed to tell him what to do with his hands in order to turn a 90 degree turn. – Same thing. – And I’m like, “Well, you’re supposed to grab.” And I told him what to do based on what I thought I would do. And then I was like, I was like, “You know what? Pull over. I think what I’m telling you is not what I do.” And I was totally right. It’s like, you think you should, you’re supposed to like grab hand over hand. And then when I did it, I was like doing something totally different. – Right. – Now, I just want to get a timeline straight here with your story with Locke, because you have told the story of when we went to Death Valley, you let him drive in the desert, which was like a series of- – Well, that was the first time, that was the first time he ever drove. (Link laughing) And it was a little bit traumatic. – Right. So. – And I was a little bit worried, like is he gonna be okay? Well, when we got back from Death Valley and you know, he actually, he didn’t have his permit at that time I don’t think. – And Lincoln still doesn’t, that’s why we’re only in a parking lot. – So, but now he has it and so we’re able to like legally let him drive, not just in the middle of the desert. So he did the parking lot thing and there was a couple of times where I was, you know, sometimes you find yourself becoming the stereotypical dad who’s like yelling and saying things that you’re gonna regret and you kind of catch yourself. You’re like, ah, I feel like I’m on a sitcom right now. Like I’m Murray Goldberg or whatever, you know? And- – Some grunting. The occasional fart. – But he was doing pretty good. And so then I was like, all right, well, let’s take this out into the neighborhood. – Mm-hmm. – So we kind of drove around some like quiet neighborhood streets. – Yep. – And then I realized that that, so he was coming to stops abruptly. Like we would stop and he’d be going a little bit too fast and he would stop. And then even he was going a little bit too slow when he would come to a stop and roll to a stop, there would be like a jerk. – That moment where the brakes totally seize. – Totally seize. And then when he takes off, he would go, and then I found myself- – You feel your brain hitting the back of your skull every time, yup. – I found myself becoming my dad. You know, my dad didn’t just tell you how to do things. He like, there was like a second level of like style that he thought was important. – It was philosophical. – So I was like, “Locke, listen, I’m gonna tell you as I teach you to drive, I’m going to tell you a lot of things that are going to make you a better than average driver. That’s your goal is to be better than average.” Right? And I was like, “There’s a lot of people who are never going to learn some of the intricacies that I’m gonna teach you. – Yes. – And then one of the things is I’m gonna teach you is the smooth – Yes. – To be smooth. – Yes. – And there’s three ways that you can be smooth in a car. – Uh-huh. – Okay? The first way is stopping. The second way is going. And the third way, the third way- – Oh, whoa, hold on. I’m on the edge of my seat now ’cause you already covered stopping and going. And there’s a third one? – The third one is- – But we’ll get to the third one right after this, nope, psyche, here it is. – While you’re driving. Now, you know this, ’cause we talked about it a million times. You get into a car with like an Uber driver and there are many Uber drivers and drivers in general who do this like pulsating acceleration thing where they’re like (grunting). It’s like instead of just like treating, you need to treat the gas pedal and the brake like I don’t want to get sexual here. – A lover. Go for it, man. – It’s like foreplay, you know what I’m saying? – Is this what you told Locke? – I was like, you got, I didn’t use foreplay as an analogy. I thought that would be inappropriate but I’m using it here. – Good. – That’s a fun, I mean, talk about a fun driving lesson. – “You want your foot to be on that brake and you want it to ease.” And then I was like, “And there’s the art of the role right when you sense that the brakes are about to lock up, you release, you release a little bit. And this is of course, to carry the foreplay thing, right when you’re about to- – Uh-huh. – You pull back. Okay. And so, and then when you take off, you want to go, you don’t want to go straight pedal to the metal, you want to ease. And I said, “Picture it as-” – Jenna, I didn’t know this is what he was gonna talk about when I said, “Hey, you should sit in on this one because we’re fully vaxxed.” – I said, “Picture it as if you had a glass of wine,” and I don’t know why I chose glass of wine, again. – Oh, this is good. – I said, “You’ve got a glass of wine on the dashboard and you want that to stay perched on the dashboard. That’s how smooth do you need to be at all times. Because you’re creating an experience for the other passengers in your car.” – And then every time you come to a smooth stop, you want to take a deep gulp of that wine. What? – And so, and then I said something like, actually at one point I switched it to, I said a glass of water. He said, “You just said a glass of wine a second ago.” (both laughing) – He was with it. – He’s like totally on board. – Oh, man. – And like, you know what? He’s getting it. So we’ve been driving together and like he, the thing is, is that Locke’s mind works a lot like mine, and so instead of thinking that what I was saying was ridiculous, he understood that there was a standard that we could hold ourselves to driving that was above just getting around safely. – That’s profesora. – Getting around with style is what you’re aspiring to. – Now, if you want to, if you as the tutor or the professor of driving school, if you want to go full Miyagi on this thing, you need to bring a glass of wine. – Yeah. I thought about this. That’s the ultimate test. This is not, he’s got his driving test in a couple of weeks and I’m gonna tell him to take a glass of wine. – Take a glass of wine. (both laughing) – He’s like, my dad told me to bring this. (both laughing) – That’s good, man. I mean, it’s so funny because that’s, one of the first things that I was teaching Lily and that I’ve started to instill in Lincoln is this same principle of like, as you’re stopping you got to picture the break- – About to grip. – It’s like I try to explain how the break works. – You become the antilock brakes. – Right, so that as it closes down, as the brake pad closes down on it, then at the last second you want to release it a little bit. – Right. Exactly. – But I didn’t use the, I was very practical and I think I missed the mark with an inspirational analogy. – Yeah. I don’t think you have to go foreplay. I think the glass of wine kind of covers everything. – Mm-hmm. – You put the glass of wine on the dashboard. You want it to stay filled. You don’t want it to spill when you’re stopping, starting or anytime while going. Taking a turn, all about smoothness. – Yeah, you want to be stopped before you realize it. That’s the surprise. Oh, we’re stopped. – And let me tell you right now- – Oh, we’re going again. – Let me tell you, in the same way that many people go their entire lives without dealing with their own halitosis, which it there’s a certain percentage of the population that doesn’t ever deal with the halitosis, right? There’s a certain percentage of the population that never ascends to the smooth driving level. – This is our new, this is the second- – This is our second mission in life. – Yeah, it is. – First mission is to get people to deal with their nasty stank ass breath. And the second one is to get them to be smooth drivers. – And let’s us take the opportunity, gargle with 50% hydrogen peroxide, 50% water, or mix it with wine if you’re feeling freaky. – You can put a glass of hydrogen peroxide on your dashboard and do both at the same time. – Oh, yes! There it is! – Yay! We just figured it out! – We need to start the Rhett Link driving school, man. (Rhett laughing) It’s like- – When you leave here, your breath will smell like a, I was gonna say these bottom, but that’s actually, that’s ridiculous. – BYOHP. BYOHP, man. – Yeah. I like this. Anyway. Locke’s doing great. His driving instructor told him, now this is after a few lessons with dad. Okay? The Mr. Miyagi of driving as Link has just coined. – I did not say that. You fell short of that. – The driving instructor said, “You know what? You’re a natural.” And he said, “I got to tell you a lot of these kids that I teach are just dumb asses.” – That’s what he said? – And he was like, “But you’re a natural, in fact,” he says, “You could pass your test right now.” And he drove on the highway. And then just the other day for a Mother’s Day brunch, Jessie and I, I mean, the boys and I drove to meet Jessie at a, she was getting some time alone for Mother’s Day in a hotel and we met her for a brunch in West Hollywood. So this is like a 40 minute drive. And he drove, he had the full LA driving experience, driving on the 101, driving over the canyon, Laurel Canyon. Like I was like, and then driving in West Hollywood and the traffic wasn’t that bad on a Sunday, but I was like, “Hey man, you know, if you can drive here you can drive anywhere in the United States. North Carolina would be a breeze at this point for you.” So I think he’s getting there. – See, Christy was in the car, we also went to West Hollywood for Mother’s Day. – It’s the place to be. – But Christy was in the car so I did not, it didn’t even cross my mind to suggest that Lily drive the car. – Oh, ’cause Christy will get- – A little anxious about it. Yeah, and Lily will also get anxious. You know, if like, this is our big, we gotta make it to the brunch. – I only yelled very loudly one time. – What did you yell? – It may have been a curse word. I think it, “What the hell,” like that kind of thing, you know? But I think it was, he was doing great, but then there was a car that was stopped in the middle, like a car that had broken down in the middle of the 101 and he got right up behind it and he pulled in front of somebody but then he moved over one more lane and like really cut somebody off, and I yelled at that point. But then I immediately, let me say, I immediately apologized. – Okay. Okay. – I was like, “Hey, I’m sorry about yelling.” – Because crisis averted. – And he was like, “Dad, I’m calm.” – Ooh. Ooh. – And I was like, you know what? That’s good. – That had to hurt. Master becomes the student. – Yeah, well, I mean, Daniel did win his match at the end of “The Karate Kid.” – I wouldn’t know. When we, you know, to harken back to when we did the college visit, that was a long drive. And I got Lily to drive some of the way even though she did not want to. – You got to get them on the freeway. You got to have them merging. You got to get merging. That’s what they’re all scared of. – Well, I’ve done that. Like we did the whole, well, let’s go out and let’s merge. Let’s take every off ramp and on ramp. – Oh. – Every off ramp and on ramp. – That’s called the Miyagi merge. – Yeah, we did that. – Because that’s on and off, yep. – I only wish there was wine involved. – Merge on, merge off. – Okay. That sounds familiar. – This school. – We got this man. – Is Mr. Miyagi, is a guy who played him dead? Does that mean we have the rights? – Yes. – Is that how it works legally? – Pat Morita. – Pat Morita is dead. – How do I know his name? – I don’t know, but you know what? If you had given me like seven hours, I could have arrive at that. – Wow, I mean, I have really impressed myself. – You still haven’t even seen the original “Karate Kid”? – Not all of it. I feel like I have. – Pat Mortia. – I watched the pilot of the, I don’t want to get off on that. So I got Lily to drive and we’re on the freeway and then we’re like going, we’re going through some hills off the freeway, okay? And she’s doing good, but it was a little scary. It’s the first time we were all in the car and she was driving and I want her to get an idea of like- – How was Lando doing with this? – Longer distance driving. Well. – Was he scareder than Christy? – At one point he said, “I don’t feel good.” (Rhett laughing) And then he said- – I don’t feel good. – Few minutes later, he’s like, “I don’t feel good.” You know how the I don’t feel good gets shorter and shorter, more staccato. – Eventually it turns into, “I feel bad.” – And then- – You transition. – It turned into Christy’s like, “I think we need to pull over.” And then I’m like, “We gotta find a good spot. And Lily, I don’t want you to panic, but you know,” we were going like 70 miles per hour on kind of curvy roads, four lanes. It was challenging. I was like, okay, I see a spot. “You’re gonna pull over up there. Lando, we’re pulling over up there.” We hit the gravel and then the vomit from the very back of the car hits Christy’s seat in the middle of the car. He threw up on her as we were stopping and pulling out. And you talk about dad yelling, I’m like, “Just hold it in your mouth!” – Oh, that’s what he meant. – “Just hold it in your mouth!” – I didn’t realize he was getting sick. – He was getting sick. – I thought he felt unsafe. – No, he felt nauseous. And he vomited in the car. – And that’s where the smoothness comes in because- – Then he got out. – You make your passenger sick if you don’t take those, and sometimes the roads are, you can’t avoid it. – And when you’re in the very back, like the way back- – It’s even worse. – And your a Neal, we get car sick. – And that’s what we teach at the Miyagi school of driving and fresh breath. – Christy was trying, so Christy hopped out. It was like there was a fire inside of the car. It’s like if you were watching from across the street at the fruit stand where the guys were watching. We pull over the, all the doors open. We’re trying to get Lando out. Christy gets out of her seat in the middle of the SUV. And she yanks up on the thing to make the seat fly forward. – The eject button. – Yeah, to make the seat fly forward so that Lando can crawl out from behind the seat. And as she’s doing that, he’s vomiting on the seat- – Oh, he’s vomiting again. – I think that was the first vomit. Like as we stopped, she hops out. – Okay. – He’s vomiting on the seat. He’s gonna kill me for telling this story but he’s not gonna listen and no one’s gonna tell him. – Right. Don’t add him on Twitter. – Christy’s panicking so much because I’m yelling for him to “Hold it in your mouth!” – Yeah. Like a good dad. We don’t accept that at the Miyagi school. You cannot vomit in a car. You are expelled. – She ripped the handle that makes the seat go forward. She rips it off, it’s in her hand and then Lando has to crawl across the seat and get out and vomit some more on the side of the road. And I still don’t know how fix it. – How did you, how did you clean it up? Did you have vomit smell the rest of the ride? – We had wipes. The Neals got wipes, man. Wipes for days. – The McLaughlins would be in trouble. We’d have like one napkin from McDonald’s in the glove compartment. – So we blame that on Lily. And then I took over from there but I think it was- – With the windows down. – I think it would have been me. It would’ve happened if I was driving anyways is what I’m trying to say. – Right. It was the road. Well, anyway, the kids are doing great. (laughing) – Listen, enough of their successes. Let’s get to our failures. – But first let’s talk about the wonderful collection of grooming items that we have that all fit nicely into a Mythical green bag. – We care about what we look like. I mean- – Can you tell? – I mean, just look at me today. I mean, I look like, I’m told, I look amazing by friends, by my wife, by strangers. We developed everything in this sack to make you look as good as we think we look. – Can you use the term bag? – We got a Mythical brush. This is, this is… – It’s like a wet/dry brush. – Is this Jenna approved? Yeah, it is. – That’s great for, it works on my hair. – Jenna approved. – Works on Jenna’s hair. – Jenna has so much more hair than we do. Mythical hand lotion, Subtly Scented But Soothing. – I don’t use that, I gotta be honest with you. I’m not a lotion guy, but Link, boy, he’s covered in it. – I love it. I love the scent of it. The Mythical number nine. – When you teach in driving sometimes putting lotion on your hands makes it slippery on the wheel so. – Clay pomade. It’s what I use in my hair. – We don’t do that in Miyagi school. – That right there, I love the smell of that too. Smell of that. – We’ve got a musical comb. I mean, this thing as we’ve already establish is incredible. (comb music) – That’s fun. We got some beard balm. The pomade’s not in here, but you get the idea. We got the beard oil. And we’ve got the Peculiarly Perfect Peanut Butter Peppermint Lip Balm and the Candy Milk Lip Balm. Get yours today at mythical.com. I’ve got to put this stuff away. Stall Rhett, say something. – Oh, you know what I can tell you about? I can remind you that the first two episodes of the scripted podcast that we’re starring in called Ronstadt drop tomorrow. Again- – That’s right. – This is a scripted podcast. This is a totally immersive world. It’s about a dude named Ronstadt who is a 911 phone jockey who answers all the weird sort of supernatural calls. He has a special ability that gives him the ability to maybe make some, to exercise some decisions based on the calls that he gets. – And you know, all about Ronstadt because you embodied the role of Ronstadt in this. And a lot of you have been asking us as the trailer and stuff has come out and now the episodes it’s like, “What was your inspiration in creating this?” Like, well, we didn’t create Ronstadt. We want to be clear about that. QCODE brought the opportunity to us and we got to know Johnny and Brando who created it. And they wrote the entire first season so we had the benefit of being able to read the plot and the world that they’ve created, and it really resonated with us. There were a lot of like Mythical esque elements and just the world and the tone and the fact it was exciting for us to get involved. So we’d love to say that we created it, but we didn’t. We were brought on to the project later and brought on as producers as well. – And so that kind of helps answer some of the questions that people have had. It was just like, “Well, usually when you guys do something like it’s about two dudes because you’re two dudes and this is not really like that. Like Rhett’s playing Ronstadt and Link’s playing like three other roles.” – Yeah, it was, yeah. And there was a moment that’s like, okay, is this for us? But I think, you know, because we were really excited about the project and doing something that was getting our feet wet in a different genre, scripted audio podcasts, like you get back into that radio teleplay type stuff, all of that’s coming back around. And maybe we’ll create something from the ground up later. – Yeah, sure. – But to get involved in that project like we first heard about it in January. I mean, if you were a part of the Mythical Society AMA, you already know this, but- – Right. – The pacing with which we were able to just jump in and get involved, kind of made it, it made it a no brainer. And it also gave me the opportunity to say, “You know what? I can play a couple of different roles here and see where I fit in.” So you’ll see where I fit in as the season unfolds, you just wait. – So super immersive world and the fact that all this can happen just between your ears and it’s as big as your imagination wants to make it. It’s just something that, it’s a medium we’re excited to be involved with. Ronstadt. First two episodes drop tomorrow. Wherever podcasts are found. – Okay, before we get into creative failure and rejection, I just wanted to start off with like some relational rejection. Have you ever, Rhett been relationally rejected? – Of course not. (Link laughing) – I know you’d set your sights on a girl, but that didn’t necessarily mean that their sights were set on you. – You know, I’ve actually, I’ve thought about this recently. I actually had a tendency, well, I think there’s two things going on. First of all, I just really like women (laughing) and that started very early and it was very intense, like from well, I’m not talking, this was like not at puberty. This was before puberty. This was like first grade. Right? I just I had infatuation issues and I would kind of get focused on a girl. And typically I would focus on someone who- – You dream about flying to her house. – Well, I would focus on girls that were for lack of a better word, unattainable for me. Right? Like I don’t know what it was. It would be like, okay, this girl is two years older than me. – Mm-hmm. – And it would be embarrassing for her to date me. Even if we were in the same grade, she probably wouldn’t date me, right? I mean, you’ve seen pictures of me growing up. And so I was a little bit gangly but I had a lot of confidence and I would, and once I kind of made that decision, I would begin what I guess my was my version of flirting and talking and telling other people that I like this girl, telling her friends that I like them. – Moving and shaking, trying to get something going. – And there were a couple of times where this was a successful strategy and that was all I needed to continue doing it. But I would say that just the percentage breakdown, it’s probably 80, 20, 80% rejection, 20% success. So rejected more often than I was accepted. – So, I didn’t think it was that much of a spread. Sorry to use the term. – I mean… – So does that mean that no one rejection stands out? – Well, I mean, if you’re talking about my biggest crush in high school, I don’t even consider that a rejection because it was so unrealistic. But like, there were, I remember a girl- – But like do you like, one where you were like to her face saying, “Will you be my girlfriend?” Or “Will you go with me” or “Will you go out on a date?” And she was like, “Ah, no. – I don’t think, well, you know it was in like middle school, high school. It never really got to the point where you were face to face asking and being rejected. The rejection usually came through a friend before you got there. – That helps. Right. – Yeah and I mean, the funny thing is is I don’t ever remember, again, it’s hard to remember exactly emotionally what was going on in high school. But I would kind of just be like, okay. All right. That’s not happening. So I would just kind of move on. – So you never, like, it never shook you that you can recall? – No. – Hmm.Okay. Because for me, I mean, my problem was the opposite. Like I never got, I was so anxious and self-aware and just kind of felt like I didn’t know what I wanted. And it was so much about what should I be doing so that I can, you know, fit in or whatever. So like girls would, I would hear through the grapevine that some girl wanted to date me. And then I was like, “Oh crap, this is a huge test. I feel like I’m gonna fail.” There was a lot of fear and anxiety that short circuited, it was just like the polar opposite of you at that time. You know, it short-circuited so many of these experiences. So for me to say, well, you know what? I don’t think I was ever rejected is definitely not a brag at all, and I think this is something that when we talk about the creative ramifications of rejection and failure it’s this dynamic of fear kind of keeping you from action. And if you overcome that whether that’s to create or initiate with somebody or try to initiate some sort of a relationship, you never know what can happen if you go for it but you know what’s gonna happen if you don’t, nothing. – Right. – And, I think for me, the only rejection was, I mean, definitely I was dumped by Jana. – Yeah. – My sophomore year. She was a freshmen. And she wrote me a note and I put it in my, yeah. She wrote me the note that we were breaking up because I was just a friend to her because I clammed up so much around her. And I was so anxious and in my own head. And it was about what should I be doing and not what do I want to do? I was so in my own head and she was very nice and she let me off the hook, but it was a, I mean, I remember reading that letter and boy, it was embarrassing to be like, okay, you’re a great person. I read the letter on Good Mythical Morning, because once we moved to LA, I found my, I brought my soccer bag out here for some reason, – Yeah, got to keep your soccer bag. – I thought I was gonna play some soccer after not playing for like a decade or something. It was sentimental value to have my cleats and stuff in there. But I found that I had kept that rejection letter. I guess, I don’t know why I did it. I’d like to think it was some sort of lesson that then I was gonna go after what I wanted from then forward and I wasn’t gonna let fear clam me up, but I don’t think that was actually the case. I just think it was just like, man, this hurts. I’m so sentimental. I’m gonna shove it in this bag and I’m never, maybe I didn’t go in that pocket anymore and maybe it was just sentimental. – I was giving you good advice at the time, man. I was like this is quite an opportunity that you’ve been given. Because she like invited you to her house. – I went to her house. – And I was like, “Well, you should definitely accept that invitation.” – Yeah, one of my biggest regrets is not riding the four-wheeler with her. – Right, yeah, and that’s not a euphemism, that’s literally riding a four-wheeler. We were in North Carolina. – But I mean, it would have been so awesome. I mean, here I am, you know, about to turn 43 years old and I’m still regretting not straddling her on that four-wheeler. – Right, yeah. – I mean, we both be facing the same, I don’t know, who knows what directions we would have been facing. – There’s lots of things. The seat is very, very wide. – We could have been facing every direction, man. – The seat is very wide and long. – I mean, once I got away from her- – There’s probably a whole like section on some porn website of just stuff that happens on ATVs. I’m not saying I know about it. I’m just saying that that’s how specialized things can get. – Now, you gotta wield the power that we have with caution, because just saying that is gonna like spike that search. – What if it generates a whole new category of porn? I mean, we can take credit for that too. The Miyagi school of driving, fresh breath and ATV porn (both laughing) – Okay, so we’re teaching people how to have sex on an ATV. – There’s a bunch of ATVs there. Are those for driving? No, that’s just for sex. (both laughing) – Oh, man. – Okay. – That rejection hurt. So I guess, I mean, that’s all we have to go into the relational stuff, but just get back to the creative stuff, let’s get in our minds what we feel like is not rejection, but failure. What’s our like biggest creative failure? Do you have something in your mind? I have something in my mind. – I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is GMM 22. – Yeah, that’s my answer. And we’ve, I mean, we devoted a whole episode at the time. It would be interesting to go back and listen to that. – Oh, I’m not gonna go back and listen to that, – I don’t want to do that. You can do that, because it was like- – That was one of my, I am not proud of, I’m not, but we can talk about that because I think that’s a good example of the way that failure and rejection can kind of get into your head, you know, because I got very, well, just a little background. – Categorize what it was. – So what year was that? 2017? – I don’t know. – 2018? 2018. – 17 and 18 she says. – 17 and 18. Okay. So we were given the opportunity, we were approached by YouTube. They were investing in different kinds of content. They actually originally came to us, I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about this part of it, but they originally came to us and asked us if we would make like a late show version of Good Mythical Morning. So like a Good Mythical Night or something like that. And we were like, that sounds like a great idea but like “We’re already kind of really doing all we can with Good Mythical Morning.” And we’re like, “Is there some way to expand Good Mythical Morning itself?” Which going back in time, it kind of feels like we should have just done the late show version. But anyway, in addition to GMM, because we ended up doing five parts of a show every single day. I think it went down to four, but anyway, it was like a multi-part thing and- – The technology worked against us, but also, you know, we said, yes, we wanted to go for it. And it did not work. I mean, long story short, it didn’t work. And it hurts when it’s, you know, if you create something and you put your heart and soul into it, I’m saying this by contrast, I’m not describing what we did with that. But as an artist if you create something that you pour your heart and soul into, and then nobody sees it or cares about it, that’s a certain type of failure. – It’s a different thing. – What we experienced was something that was near and dear to so many Mythical Beasts that they cared about so much. And we messed with it in a way that frustrated them and was not a good experience which then made it an even more difficult experience for us, because we were trying to take into account all of the feed, there were so much feedback. – Yeah. – So that was a certain type of very scrutinized failure. It’s kind of like the “Waterworld,” like big budget movie scenario where everybody’s geared up to see it and then it’s just horrible. So it becomes the object lesson of cinema no-nos. And because there was, the digital space is much more experimental and frontier-like, I don’t think it serves, and no one’s emulating GMM to the point where it becomes a cautionary tale. So I don’t know exactly what we learned, but I think I’m sure we learned a lot of stuff. – Well and we both agree that we’re very glad that we said yes and we tried it. I mean, ’cause there are number of things that came from that. It honestly, it transformed our business. Right? – Right. – We ended up moving into the space next door, and we ended up more than doubling our staff. – The funding that we had, we put to work in ways that we’re still seeing those benefits now. – We were able to take so many of the things that we learned just from a creative and a production standpoint, and then incorporate it back into GMM when we went back to the one episode a day version. – So, I totally take back what I said. It’s like I don’t know if we learned anything. – No. – Because I think the point, the principle is absolutely we learned a whole bunch of stuff and that’s kind of the point and it kind of redeems the experience, right? If that didn’t work but it changed the trajectory of where we’re headed and I can’t even articulate all the lessons that we learned but they’re ingrained in our experience and impact the decisions that we have been making ever since then. And I think that’s a principle of failure is it’s less of a failure if you went for something, tried something and learned from it, than not going for anything and learning nothing and you might’ve saved face a little bit, but I mean, if it would have destroyed Good Mythical Morning and it wouldn’t have recovered. – Then we would maybe be thinking differently. – I mean, that could happen, businesses go bankrupt, people try things, they have bad ideas. Or they have good ideas that just, things out of their control tank it. That absolutely could have happened for us and then it would have been a regret and it would have been what we call a mistake- – But even then- – But a creative failure- – I choose to believe that even then it would have led to something else because that’s just my experience is that always there’s a lesson. Thankfully the lesson didn’t come along with a complete fumbling of Good Mythical Morning and killing it. It came back. But there’s always a lesson and you know, and I’m especially grateful for it because that’s why I started going to therapy. And because of just how difficult that time was, not just the rejection, the rejection was difficult, but it was more just, it was too much to take on. But you know, the reason I don’t want to go back and listen to that episode where we like essentially complained and defended ourselves, and I did it more than you did so I take credit for that. I was defensive. I was in a bad place. I was hurt. I was trying to, I said some things I regret. Now, I think that my, if that were to happen today, post-therapy, my processing of what was going on would be very different. Because one of the things, and is it next week that we’re gonna start talking about the Enneagram? – Yes. We’re gonna do it. – So we are gonna start, so stay tuned next week and maybe even the following week, we may do a two-part thing with the Enneagram where we’re gonna talk about what the Enneagram is a little bit, but more just talk about our experience with it, what numbers we are and how that has impacted our lives. But I am Enneagram three, I’m a performer. And there’s a number of things that might go into that, meaning that, it’s part nature, part nurture that I have been a very performance minded person. And when you’re a person who finds their worth in their success, you might also be a person who finds their worthlessness in their failure. – Their failure. – And so I think that there is and again, and I have been, you know, things have gone really well for me. You know what I saying? Things have gone really well for us. Things have also gone well for me individually. Before we ever started doing what we did, it was just like I kind of prided myself on being good at stuff, right? It’s like okay, I’m gonna make good grades. I’m gonna be good at basketball. I mean, the things that I choose to do, I’m gonna do them well, right? And, so I kind of developed this sense of self that was based on being good at things. And then when it keeps happening, when you keep trying and of course, there’s lots of failures, there’s rejections like those relational, I wouldn’t say that dating was one of the things I was good at so I’ll just put that out there. I did really well one time with my wife and things have worked out really well since then. But this idea, I think the thing that was so difficult about GMM 22, it was because such a public failure so many people saw it as you guys tried something and it did not work and it’s so obvious to everybody. Why don’t you just admit now- – Isn’t that embarrassing? – Yeah. And again, there’s this you start, if you’re me, you start, you’ve placed some of your own personal value in the way that what you’ve created is received. Right? And so I told you last week, my recommendation was Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic,” which I was talking to my therapist about that and he was like, “Oh, you know, I used to recommend to a lot of people her TED Talk.” which if you don’t want to read the book, which I do recommend the book, you can kind of get a lot of the same ideas, and she’s actually done a number of really popular TED Talks, where she talks about this. But she kind of emphasizes this idea of what you create matters a whole lot but also doesn’t matter at all, right? There’s this sort of built-in irony like it’s sacred and it’s awesome and creative creative expression is an incredible thing, but also you kind of have to live as if it doesn’t matter, especially how it’s received. The thing that you can’t control. The thing you can control is what you create and how you create it. The thing you cannot control is this reception. And we operate in this world where reception is such a big piece of the pie because we throw things out there constantly. We’re throwing things out there to this, the most interactive media genre that’s ever existed. You know, what has happened since YouTube, right? So immediate feedback, and also this high quantity of content that’s going out there. So you’re just getting this constant feedback that shaping everything. And so that’s been very difficult for me, a performance-based person, to create in a medium where approval, literally like how many people like this, how many people watch it, the approval is quantifiable. – And it’s a reflection in your mind of what people think of you, their assessment of you as a person. Oh, you must not be as smart as I thought you were, Rhett and Link, because you made a decision that led to something that was embarrassing. – Right. – That was a failure. You know, I think the thing for us though is because we have this longstanding and growing relationship with our audience, that it created a soft place for us to fall. You know, where… I think any anybody who listens to this podcast weekly has a sense of who we are and is on board. We have a, you know, there’s an understanding and there’s a belief in, “Hey, I might, I like these guys, you know, I’m loyal to these guys.” – If you stick around. – Even if some things that they create aren’t the best thing for me. Like, you may have a favorite artist who has a body of work that from album to album, and you may not like every single album the same, like Sturgill Simpson. Like I feel I have a relationship with his work, not with him that is, you know, it’s special to me but there are certain albums that like I really applaud the fact that he’s doing his thing and it wasn’t for me. And there’s been a few of those albums. Right? But I still, I still believe in him and like give him, and those weren’t failures. They just weren’t for me. But even if they were failures, I’m like, “Hey, you know, I’m still a fan and I respect the fact that just because I don’t like it, or even if people didn’t like it, that he was doing his thing and I’m on board for that.” And we have the benefit of having that soft place to fall because we have that loyalty and that relationship built. There’s, you know, I was reading Questlove’s creativity book, which spoiler alert, I’ll recommend at the end and give you details about it. But he’s talking about, he talked about a creative failure and the type of failure that like if you put something out into a world and nobody notices or cares, and he was spinning that in a positive way as there’s freedom in that. There’s freedom in that to do something, there’s freedom that we don’t have because everything we do because of our success has a level of scrutiny that if you’re a developing artist and you do something that doesn’t work, you can focus on the freedom to then try something new and not be under the thumb of people’s expectations. I think there’s a way to redeem every failure or every rejection. And I definitely think that’s, finding, there’s always, you can always see it as an opportunity if you want to, you can always spin and focus on the positive and you can learn things from it. You know, if it builds into who you are and changes who you are, then it was worth it. Right? And it enables you to move forward as you don’t allow it to keep you from moving forward. And I definitely feel that if we, yeah, as we talk about GMM 22 now and if we continue to talk about it and we’re not, ’cause I’m just not that interested in it. But I’m interested in talking about some other failures and rejections, our conversation would continue to be different. Like so all the stuff that you said, and that I would say if we were continuing to talk about it, will be different than what we were saying at that point in time and we were still really reeling from it. You know? And that may be the biggest takeaway, that the experience made us, maybe maturity’s the right word or- – Well, we had the, you know, we have the benefit of being able to kind of get back on the horse and throw something else out into the world. It’s kind of what you’re saying, a soft place to land. You’ve got an audience. It’s not like when we made a television show that got one season, which we can talk, our two TV things, both our very first foray in 2007 as hosts, that show was short-lived. And then the show that we actually helped make and create that was much more about us, got one season. – Commercial Kings. – And then it’s like you can’t just turn around and churn out another television show, but you can turn to the internet and turn to a faithful audience so we do have this ability to kind of, we have this distinct advantage of not having to sort of sit in our failure and not be able to move forward creatively. And one of the things that Elizabeth Gilbert talks about and this just may be in a book, but it’s definitely one of the TED Talks, but she talks about how, you know, she had the incredible success of writing “Eat, Pray, Love” which got turned into a movie. I haven’t read the book or seen the movie. I don’t necessarily plan to, I’m not sure it’s for me but it was a huge success. It was on a bestseller list for like three years. And then she experienced this incredible success and then there was all this pressure on writing her next book, and she wrote her next book and it bombed. And she was like “Thank goodness. I got that out of the way.” Unlike Harper Lee who she talks about in “Big Magic,” who wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird” and then didn’t write anything else. And she didn’t write anything else, because she was scared of not being able to repeat the success of “To Kill a Mockingbird”. – I thought there was a hidden novel though. – No, she did, something else was released later but I’m saying for a long time, she didn’t write. – Yeah, but it wasn’t, Harper Lee did not publish it I don’t think. – Right. She was so scared. So one of the things that she talks about is how you’ve got this home position, right? And then success throws you away from home and failure throws you away from home, but emotionally you don’t really have the cognitive ability to feel the difference. In other words, success can be just as disorienting as failure can, right? And it also, it goes to your head in a similar way, right? So success can breed fear, failure can breed fear. And she’s like whether you are super successful with something or it’s something is a huge flop, the goal for her is to return home, is to return to home base. And for her home is doing the thing that she would do anyway, if success or failure, you know, whether people are watching or not and that’s writing for her, right. It’s simple for her. She’s gonna go back to writing and that’s what she’s gonna do whether or not you’re buying it or not. And I think that now, our creative process is complicated. It’s not, we’re not just writing we’re doing a bunch of different things. And also the larger, the more success that we’ve gotten and the bigger our company has become, there’s more people depending on the stuff that we come up with working than there were 10 years ago. Right? So now it’s like, okay, now we’ve got, there’s people’s livelihoods are on the line, right? There’s a company, there’s employees. And so something working isn’t just about us and our like personal creative fulfillment. So it’s a little bit complicated, but the advantage we have with being able to turn around and just be like, well, there’s gonna be another video on Monday. There’s gonna be another podcast next week. There’s gonna be another, we’re gonna right back to the drawing board and start writing another pilot for something or writing a movie, is that our home is pretty clear. We always know where to come back to and that’s just coming back to the creative process and just churn something else out. – But specifically, Good Mythical Morning and Ear Biscuits being kind of like a creative home base where it’s properties that are working, where we’re reaching you listening or watching. You know? It’s quite a luxury, especially because we’ve been able to structure our professional lives to then spend a good amount of time on speculative stuff. And I do want to get back to that and reference the stuff we talked about last week, everything that fizzled out was rejected or failed. You know, it’s difficult for me because I’m more of an, you know, I thrive more in the execution phase and I don’t mean the killing, but I’m meaning carrying out of the creative process then in the ideation and the writing of it, which is a point that you thrive in. So I’m actually curious how you interact with, you know, a premature rejection. Like we write a pitch, we write five pitches on a page like we read last week, and then, you know, maybe none of them, nobody’s excited about it. So then we all say, “Oh crap. We’ll just put that in a Google Drive and read it on Ear Biscuits years later and laugh about it.” But in the moment it’s like, ah, gotta start over. Already starting over. And I’m sitting on my hands like, oh, okay. Gotta start over. You know, or we are writing, we decide to go write a pilot and spend that amount of time to invest in that, knowing that because it’s a foray into traditional entertainment, it’s skipping tracks for us. And we have this, you know, it’s something that we really want. We want to, we want to stretch our arms and to build our muscles creatively and take some swings in other places just to to get those type of things out into the world, just to make that type of stuff, to have that challenge and that experience and that reward. But we know that we’re not as special. In fact, what we discover is that, I guess in most people’s ideas and these gatekeepers, like the things that make us special or at least the popularity, and the momentum that we have. (clears throat) Excuse me. And the success that we have. – Not an asset. – It just doesn’t seem, it gets us in the room but it doesn’t necessarily get things made. – And I would go as far as to say it’s not an asset, it’s a liability. – Hmm. Yeah. I mean, we at least start to question that because it’s like, okay, we can get in the room, but is it, okay, are our ideas and what we’ve written and what our pitch is, are they not good enough? Well, there’s other reasons that don’t have anything to do with who we are and like our ability and talent as artists, but it is a part of it. So it’s like, you start, you can get in your own head about that type of stuff. Because you pitch in the room and they’re like, there’s a million reasons to say no and there seems to only be a few reasons to say yes. And then even a yes to a pilot is some, it’s an unknown length process to then, and it’s a crap shoot that something ever gets made. So it’s like, it’s setting us up for a beating and so even though we’re so successful, we focus on what we want to go after. And we do have this experience of taking a beating, you know? So how do we deal with that? And ’cause we keep signing up for it and it’s more frustrating for us because we know the experience of making something and have it and people seeing it and people liking it, you know? Or if they don’t, it’s a soft place to fall. We’re spoiled. Right? But we’re trying to switch tracks and do something different. I mean, so I’ll let you respond to that and then I’ll talk about how like I’ve tried to adjust my approach mentally to this entire process. – I mean, I’m thinking a lot of things. You know, I definitely, there is a part of me that I’ve always kind of had this belief that’s not a realistic belief that we can do anything. Right? (laughing) That if we- – It’s kind of like you can date anybody. – Yeah, if you set your mind to something, we can figure this out. We can write a book. We can write a movie. We can make music. We can, you know, and so we have done a lot of those things because there’s just this persistent belief that we can do it. ‘Cause I’m always like, well, somebody figured it out, you know? And the funny thing is that in “Big Magic,” she kind of talks… One of the things I always think that, when I’m writing for instance and I’m learning a lot while I’m writing and especially if we have the privilege of working with someone who’s more experienced like we did on a recent thing that we developed that’s still kind of maybe gonna be something but probably not. (laughing) Is my lack of experience and education in the creative arts becomes frustrating to me, right? Now, meaning that I went to engineering school, right? I didn’t even pay attention in any of my creative classes. I didn’t make the connection between how there was an opportunity to pursue vocationally entertainment until YouTube came around. And so you start seeing that like, okay, well, it isn’t easy to just write something. It doesn’t just come naturally. Like there are sort of, there are some unspoken rules and there are rules that the people who are gonna be reading your scripts, no, they’ve been educated. They’ve read a lot of scripts. There’s certain things that they’re looking for. Now, I’m not, you can get way too formulaic in the process. But one of the things that she talks about in “Big Magic” is how that creative education and academia is kind of overrated, right? Like the idea of storytelling in general is something that is exists in our DNA as a species, and that this is who we are. And then I start questioning, well, do I have anything important to say? Do we have something that people will care about? Is this original enough? You know, is this an original idea? Elizabeth says, you know, “Originality is secondary to authenticity,” right? And there’s nothing, ultimately there’s nothing original. Like there’s nothing new under the sun, you know? Solomon had that figured out. And so you’re going to do something that has been done. You’re gonna come up with a melody that kind of already exists. It’s like there’s only so many combinations of notes. There’s only so many expressions of ideas. There’s only so many stories you can tell, but only you as an individual can tell your specific story in your specific way. And so I, so that- – So this whole counteract an inferiority complex or a fear of being exposed as like uneducated or untalented. – ‘Cause everyone is faking it. When you think about it, the person that you’re pitching to is also faking it. They’re trying to maintain their job. They don’t want to get fired and they want to please the person that they report to who wants to please the person that they report to who wants to be the man or whatever, you know? So it’s like, everyone is kind, I’m not saying that technical creative writing education is a bad thing. I think that would be great. I wish I had had had it honestly, right? Especially given what I’m doing now but when you kind of just are like listen, this doesn’t really matter. And also if I’m not enjoying every step of the process up to the point of rejection, which the good news is I am, I enjoy writing. I enjoy the process of it creating a role or exploring things and putting words into characters mouths and that kind of thing. And every single time I do it, I learn a whole lot. So I know the next time I do it, it’s gonna be better. And I’m probably gonna increase, the chances will be increased the next time that this will come to light. But you know, what? If it doesn’t, it’s just a lesson. It’s just an experience. And it’s what was supposed to happen. You know, even if that’s not true, even if everything doesn’t happen for a reason, living like everything happens for a reason is a healthy perspective. – I think for me, and this is something that I actually started saying out loud as we were entering into certain processes. I’m thinking of two examples. One is we were doing a pitch and we had teamed up with somebody who if the pitch went as a television show, they will be running the, they’d be the head writer and like show runner. And we were pitching that. And then the other one is writing the pilot that we collaborated with a friend and mentor. – Yeah. – So with the first one, I remember we were going into a, well, it doesn’t matter which network, but you know, a bonafide meeting, big deal. By the way, our livelihood is not connected to our pitches working for things being bought from us. Like we have this luxury of not having this, oh gosh, I gotta, you know, this I gotta put food on the table. You know, we gotta make this work. – There’s not a desperation. – There’s not desperation, but we want it so bad that it feels the same at times. – Yeah. – And I do think that as you were getting at, that can short circuit your ability to pitch and sell something I think when it’s like you’re gripping so tightly that you’re like shaking or, you know? Sometimes literally. I remember we had done it, we had gone around town pitching this thing and this the last person we were pitching to. And remember, we were sitting in the waiting room with the writer who we paired ourselves with. And before we went back there, you remember I said to him, I was like, “Well, you know what, this is our last meeting. If this doesn’t go, we may never see you again.” (Rhett laughing) You know, we were introduced to him for this project. We really hit it off. I think I could see us being really good friends and collaborators and having an entire creative future together, and that’s one of the reasons we picked the person. – Mm-hmm. – Or this could be the last time that we ever see each other. And there was like this kind of uncomfortable laughter because we all knew it was true. Right? It’s just not the type of thing that you typically say unless your Link and you’re a little nervous or you’re trying to figure out something to talk about. And there’s nothing like a good dose of the truth to really shake you out of being nervous. And that’s exactly what happened. That was over a year ago. And even without the COVID of it all, like we still would have never seen him again. I mean, we might, who knows if we’ll ever cross paths but there’s just like, you know, we could be working together for years or we could never see each other. Isn’t that funny? – Yeah. And it’s true. – And the reason why I said it is because I was trying to adopt this philosophy that like all of this stuff is so tenuous. Like the least we can do is be entertained by the process because it may not be ever anything more than this. Like we go into this pitch, we practiced it. We kind of know it backwards and forwards. Let’s have fun with it. If all that happens with this project and it never goes past a pitch, I want to have fond memories of this pitch, like I want to take the pressure off and just convey that we believe in it and leave the results to whatever power you want to leave the results to. So that’s the thing that I was trying to do was just embrace the process because the results are out of our control. – Yeah, all we can do is we can come up with an idea, we can write a story and we can have a compelling pitch but it is so tenuous because the reason that someone might say no could very easily be what they had for lunch. It could be a conversation that they had with their spouse right before the meeting. – And that can be frustrating or it can be fuel to let go of the things that you just have an illusion of control. – I think when you actually think about it and when you understand how tenuous it is, for me, it is helpful to be like you know what? Why would I place my value, my happiness in the hands of someone who just had a bad lunch? (laughing) You know what I’m saying? Like what? And so again, it is frustrating when you take the, but I feel like for me step one is finding joy in the process, what you just said and that is everything from the conceptualization and the writing to going out and talking about it, meeting people, doing the pitches, having fun while we’re doing it. And then the second thing is, and this is not easy, I want to be very clear. This isn’t easy for anybody. It’s definitely not easy for me, somebody who built an identity on impressing people . To take all the power, to give the results, my expectations, there’s no power in that. I’m just removing all my expectations altogether and trying to detach myself from the outcome. If I can enjoy the process and detach myself from the outcome, and again, there’s things that make that easier for us given the fact that it doesn’t have to work. Like we can go back, we can keep doing what we’re doing. It’s we’re gonna be okay in the short term financially, you kno?w We’re not depending on this working in order to eat. – Yeah. – So those are the, and again, and if that’s your situation, again, I know I’m biting a lot of Elizabeth Gilbert’s thoughts here but I mean, she kind of makes the point that because the process, the arts are so tenuous and because people, you’re putting your livelihood into the whims of another person who holds the purse strings, she recommends don’t quit your day job. I know that sounds harsh, but she’s like she didn’t stop working her day job until after she published, “Eat, Pray, Love” and it started seeming like it was working. Like she had all these different jobs and she was like make yourself, give yourself that creative time, but the moment that you begin to attach yourself and attach your self worth and attach your own livelihood to it, it becomes a different thing. Now we had the privilege of, okay, well, the baseline creativity stuff is working. So we have this privilege of being able to kind of do that, to put these things out into the world and not have them have to work. – Yeah and with that second example of co-writing a pilot was with somebody with a lot more experience that can give, you know, just being on Zoom calls and having that time it was just like, you know, this is just, the thing that I would remind myself and just I would say out loud at times to all of us on the Zoom call is just like, you know, like you said, this may never be anything, but it’s fun to think about what it could be. And this is fun right now. Like this experience is fun. Like taking that moment to pause and recognize, oh, we just got notes, but the way he gives notes is he records it all, audio stream of consciousness and then he just emails it to you so like you’ve got this like verbal processing of what we’ve conceptualized and what you’ve written. And there’s like this detailed analysis of it that like people would pay, people would save up for years to get that type of feedback on something they’ve written from someone of this level of experience. And just saying, okay, the notes might eviscerate. And they didn’t, but even if they did, it’s like, wow, what a cool process. It’s like signing up for your driving course and then you get to the parking lot and Mr. Miyagi gets in the car with you with a glass of wine. It’s like, oh God, this is freaking cool. I need to go home and watch “Karate Kid” now and I think I would really, really appreciate this. – Yeah. – You know what I’m saying? – And it’s tough do that. It’s tough to enjoy the process because I think there is a, there’s this romantic notion of the starving artist and the desperate artist and the tortured artist, you know, literally, somebody like Van Gogh cutting off his own ear, you know? Like you have this, there’s this just cultural entity, which is you’ve got to drag yourself through a torturous experience in order to come out on the other side in success. And it’s like, well, first of all, the success on the other side may be just as disorienting as the failure and the struggle. You are who you are and your baseline happiness is kind of pre tuned. You know what I’m saying? So it’s very difficult for me ’cause I always have thought that, yeah, this is supposed to be this like, this is supposed to be a grind and you’re really supposed to just like throw yourself in this and be able to look back and be like, aw, man we worked so hard on that and then it became a thing, but it’s just like, I don’t know if it’s gonna become a thing. Can I just learn to enjoy the steps? I mean, who know? If one of these things becomes a reality, it’ll be fun. It’ll be awesome. But it’ll also complicate our lives in a certain way, right? Like, okay, we do 100 different things already. Let’s throw 101 in there and this one will be making a television show, making a movie? I’m not saying we won’t find a way to make it happen but you know what? It’ll be stressful. It’ll be a complicating factor in things. – Yeah. – So it’s not always like the success or something happening is gonna some incredible thing that is gonna change your life, you know? Yeah. So I think ultimately for me it’s just a constant battle to detach myself from the outcome and also when the outcome is failure, which is most often, especially with the stuff that we’re talking, it’s in fact only almost exclusively failure and rejection with the ideas that we’ve talked about before. Seeing that there’s probably ultimately more longterm value in those rejections and failures than there would be in one of them working out. – And I think my chief struggle is something that will make more sense in light of our Enneagram conversations over the next couple of weeks because my struggle is when things are so speculative and they’re not actually like nuts and bolts of doing and like perfecting, like execute and then perfecting, like the next parts of the creative process. Like if a project never gets off the ground and that keeps happening and happening, I get very dejected. I feel like I’m sitting on my hands, you know? Because I’m not the writer. And you know, I’m not as much of the idea, from nothing comes an idea. It’s more of like, yes, I get on board with those things and then let’s go for it. – Right. – You know? So there’s a different type of struggle for me in this kind of like, to stay engaged when it’s, you know, our hands have been tied with COVID but also so much is speculative. And now we’re, you know, we’ve actually got people whose full-time job as a development person. I don’t think I could ever be a development person because now that we’re working closely with Mallory and Taylor who are like working for us full-time to take our ideas, develop other ideas, bring projects in and like get traditional things off the ground. It’s like, it’s very hard for me to remain engaged because it’s just so speculative. I can just be like this is never gonna happen. I’m never gonna be able to engage what I feel like my gifts and my passions are because we’re just meandering around a starting line and then no one may ever fire the gun to run. You know? It’s like call me when it’s time to run, you know? And so it’s been, that’s what’s been difficult for me and it’s not even, so then I start to anticipate the rejection and just disengage, I think to protect myself from the dejection of never getting to the part that’s where I feel like I thrive and I can find my flow. – Right. – And maybe that’ll come up more or you can just kind of take what I just said and map it on to being an Enneagram one next week so. – And I think that’s one of the reasons that we end up, you know, we’ve got something planned. We have a creative exercise. – Yeah, we do. – That we have planned for the fall that is- – We have complete control over it. And it is going to happen. We’re going to make it. – Yeah and I think for me, that was a reaction to you’re talking about. Yeah, sure, I may be engaged in like the writing process, but when for years you’ve been able to put things out there, whether it was a music video or a sketch with something that’s coming from a different place creatively than, obviously, Good Mythical Morning is its own entity, but Good Mythical Morning has become, as we’ve established, it’s become an environment that we place ourselves into and we’re just kind of operating off the cuff and as ourselves, and kind of being ourselves and our friendship is on display and that kind of thing. It’s a different kind of entertainment than something that’s, because the conceptual stages are happening with the writing team and producers and on purpose. It’s like we’re not trying to like throw ourselves back into GMM creatively. We’re throwing ourselves into other places creatively. But then after a while, you’re like, well, we used to at least have like a sketch or a music video or something like that that would get out there. And it’s a different process of throwing that out into the world and having people react to it. So I think that our reaction to feeling a little bit restricted in that way is to say, “Well, let’s put something out there.” You know? (laughing) And so that- – I don’t want to build it up too much because it’s not gonna be anything that they can predict. – Yeah. I agree with that. – So if you think anything that you could predict and would then you would get excited about, don’t do it ’cause it’s not that type of thing. – Right. – But we’re excited about it and I’m gonna leave it at that. I’m gonna make a recommendation. You know, you had your creative book which I’m actually listening to it. I’m not that far into it, but I really appreciated early on she talks about fear being a barrier to creativity. – Yeah. – I was going in a record shop and I found, I knew this existed and then I’d forgotten and then I remembered, so I picked it up. Questlove wrote a creative book called “Creative Quest.” A creativity book is what I meant to say. I’m not all the way through this thing. I skipped to the last chapter so that it could inform, success and failure is one of the last chapters. And so I’m a big fan of Questlove. Honored to have met him in the halls of, actually we met him, we didn’t meet him on the halls of “The Tonight Show.” We met him during the day. We just met him during the show. – I mean, Questlove played drums for us to rap. – Isn’t that crazy? – Our eighth grade- – Questlove is awesome. – Eight grade talent show, Halloween fall festival thing. It’s crazy. – So “Creative Quest,” fun book. It talks about, you know, it’s his relationship with creativity, and the thing that got me was is his opening line “Decades into my career with many albums and songs under my belt, I still don’t know if I am truly creative. Most days I spend more time absorbing the creative work around me than actually creating myself. At times, I feel like I’m a way better student than I am a teacher or a maker.” And that really resonated with me. I think a lot of what I said just a few seconds ago about, you know, that’s a testimony to our teamwork, that we will talk about with the Enneagram. That was like, okay, a guy who is undeniably creative has this doubt in his mind if he would call himself that because of the way that he engages with the creative world is different. So if you’re into Questlove, if that resonates with you, “Creative Quest” is my recommendation. – Tell us about your experience with creativity, failure, rejection. #EarBiscuits. Biscuits, that’s what we’re calling it now, ear biscuits. – This has been a longer one. – Yeah. – We love to talk about how much we suck. – Join us, join us next week as we finally into the Enneagram. (upbeat music) – [Link] 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.