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 Roundtable of Dim Lighting, we’re talking about getting older. But it’s not gonna be boring. Getting older. Don’t worry. We’re gonna talk about the process of growing older, what we are enjoying about that and what we’re finding to be not so enjoyable and it’s not just gonna be talking about joints that are going bad and stuff like that. I mean there may be. Oh really, that’s all I got. There may be a tad of that. But I think it’s just as we are, I don’t know. Are we cresting middle age? Well I mean you’re just now getting settled into 44 as of the release of this episode. I don’t know what middle age is anymore because I mean the life expectancy has changed. It’s actually gone down a little bit. Okay, well. In the past couple of years. Well then yeah I feel like this is the middle age. We’re in our middle ages. So things that are changing emotionally, things that we’re learning about ourselves, et cetera, et cetera. But I thought a good thing we could start with s the fact that we recently went to a concert together with our wives. Yeah we did. We went to see Lord Huron. Lord Huron. In the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. You can go. Shout out to Lord Huron. I’m a huge fan. And then we saw him in the cemetery which the vibe kind of fits a cemetery vibe, it’s like. The vibe of their music? A little bit. Yeah I mean I wouldn’t say it’s creepy but there’s some haunting, there’s a haunting aspect to it. For sure. Like a Western haunted type thing. Yeah and we are in the West. That I like. And that the reverb only makes it more haunting but I had never been to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Well I’d seen a movie there because they will show movies there in the same spot that they do the concert which is that big lawn and there’s a giant, I think it’s actually maybe a mausoleum. Yeah. That we’re. So they will project a movie. I call them dead people drawers. They will project a movie onto the dead people drawer building. Oh. But then Lord Huron just stood right in front of it, on a stage. With no, it’s the first time I’ve been to a concert where I was that far away and there was no screen. It’s not, it’s just about the sounds man. And the ambience. And there’s no, it’s a cemetery that has not been made into a place to play music. So the only light is coming from the stage. Did you notice that? So walking out of there it was like, I mean when we were packing up, you turned on your iPhone light. That’s right, yeah. Just to find your stuff. And there were, we got there kind of late. We were at the back of the main lawn area and then there’s a walking path and on the other side of that there’s a bunch of graves and when we turned to leave I was like, I realized that that had been filled in and there were people just lounging on graves. Yeah, right. Checking out the concert. I don’t know if you’re supposed to do that. I mean some people believe you shouldn’t walk. They’re none the wiser. Walk across a grave. But I would’ve thought that maybe it would’ve been. Just lounging. There would’ve been a sign that says, “Don’t lounge on the graves.” But maybe they just thought that people would know that. Yeah, it seems like something you kind of know. But I mean when the place is full and you’re there. You gotta. Where else you gonna go? You gotta prop up somewhere. But when we parked, I got the special ticket to park inside which I didn’t know that meant just like, as parking along with the gravestones as if I was going to a graveside service. They’re directing us all the way through. We got to kind of see a lot of the graveyard. There’s some famous people buried there. The most recent of which that I know of, Chris Cornell I was just reading about. I wish we would’ve found his gravestone. Really? But the thing that is also significant about it that we learned is that the Hollywood Forever Cemetery is also a place where people who don’t have the means to maybe be buried, to have a gravestone at all can be buried. And I don’t know exactly how that process works but I just know that they’re, yeah there’s some famous people and it’s been around for a long time but there’s also some people who don’t have the means for that kind of burial. Who get these really awesome grave plots. And the thing that we noticed as we parked the car and we took the scenic route walking through these gravestones in order to get the theater location, well the concert location. The lawn. The lawn. Pretty much all of them, I wanna say at least 90% of the gravestones had an etching of the person. Like a photo. Sometimes more than an etching. Photorealistic etching. Sometimes you’re saying a photo. Like a printed photo almost. Of the dead person’s face. Sometimes in color. Really impressive. A little creepy. I mean I kind of thought as I was walking by some of them, you know when you’re walking by a painting it’s like, “Is she watching me?” But I think that’s just a principle of if the. Two dimensions. If the subject is looking at the camera lens or the simulated camera lens of a artistic painting. They are technically following you. Yeah, whenever you stand they’re gonna be looking at you and that doesn’t mean they’re a ghost. That just means it’s a painting. It’s just how physics works. Or a photo. But in a normal cemetery, maybe like you know, if you’re going down Highway 55 on the way to Angier from Fuquay-Varina. Yeah. I’m just gonna use that as a normal cemetery. Yeah. There might be a couple of people who have paid a little extry. It’s like oh he got his face. Got his face on there. But like you said, almost everyone, at least in the section that we were walking had their photo and then that started a conversation. I think that Christy or Jessie, somebody pointed it out. They were like, “It’s interesting that most of these people “have chosen to have a photo of them in their old age.” Presumably the last good portrait that they had taken of them before they died. Yeah. And there’s a few people and I would say a much smaller percentage had their peak physical prime photo. “Oh when I was 25 years old or when I was 35 years old “and now I died when I’m 90, “but you see my 35-year-old self up there.” And that started the conversation about what photo we would have on our grave. Well first of all I have made the decision, I’m not gonna get photo on my gravestone. I mean it. I didn’t know, I didn’t how awesome of an opportunity this was. Now you said because you’re planning on getting cremated which I am also that there is no gravestone. Yeah that’s what I thought. Is that true? Is it just an urn and that’s it? I mean you just. First of all, I think I’m leaning towards being cremated but I think that’s bad for the environment and from way back in the day when we did the Bury Me Naturally commercial, that’s the name of the company that produces biodegradable cardboard boxes that you’re buried in and the worms come in and the maggots come in and they make you one with the earth. And you also in the process, you do not get embalmed. Yeah. So this, it’s a quick burial. And then. You better hope you die close to home and we can plan your funeral really fast. I think they swap. I just kind of assume you’re gonna die first. Am I right in remembering that after X number of years of decomposition, they can then bury somebody else in the same spot? I think that’s true after awhile. I mean it’s definitely true in general. They had to be buried longer than I was. Just a quick plug, if you wanna watch me get buried alive, you can find that old episode of Commercial Kings. I know it’s available on iTunes. Amazon Duo. And Amazon streaming as well depending on what country you’re in. Yeah, we got. That was the pilot episode. I got buried alive and then we also made a commercial for a guy who picked up people’s trash. Yeah. Pretty awesome. Heavy hill. So I don’t think. I don’t like the idea of a gravestone. I mean of all the people that have been buried, like I said that day, the last time, the only time I’d visit a gravestone is for the graveside service. As much as I love my relatives that have passed on and maybe it’s a function, I don’t think it’s a function of living in California. I think even if I was local, I don’t know. I just don’t, something about, I guess my beliefs. I just don’t think I need to go there in order to reconnect with somebody or pay homage? I haven’t found myself being motivated to do that. I don’t know, maybe it’ll be different. When my mom passes away, maybe I’ll be motivated to go there and commune with her. I really, but I. So it, but at this point in my life, I guess because I, I don’t have any connection or like ongoing experiences at talking to a person at the gravestone like they do in the movies. I actually just thought that’s something they do in movies. Well go to a grave, go to a cemetery and see how many people are showing up. Because there’s quite a few, I don’t. I haven’t done it because anyone that I was close to in terms of my grandparents, they’re all buried in Georgia. So. And it’s not. I never lived, I feel like if I lived in the town with the grave site of someone that I loved, I would go to it. You’re totally right. Yeah. That you don’t have to go to it in order. I’m second-guessing all this though because I’m. It’s so ceremonial. I just think that. It’s the most tangible expression of their lives. Yeah. Or their presence that you can achieve. It’s like the body that they inhabited, whatever your belief system is. Is in there. Or the body that they were, that’s as close as I can get to it. And if you just have the urn in your, even if you just keep it in your house on your mantle piece, it’s gonna be harder to make an occasion of communing in reverence. Maybe on the dead relative’s birthday you’ll take the urn down and you’ll look at it and say something but you’re still in your house and you’re like, “Okay now I’m gonna put it back “and I’m gonna do the rest of my life.” But when you have to get in a vehicle, drive to a grave, walk or drive to the gravestone and sit there and have one of those cinematic moments, it actually seems very much up my alley to err on the side of over-dramatizing things. Yeah. And by the way, I think this is a middle aged thing for me. As I was talking about Lily leaving for college and how I tended to be, I was pretty dramatic about that. You know, now I’m rethinking if I want a gravestone. As we’re talking about it right here. What about a drawer? Have you thought about that? I think the drawers are really expensive. Yeah, that’s. And also, all you get is a drawer with your name on it. But then you’re right on the other side of that drawer. It’s like I could yank this thing out and I could see what’s left. But with a gravestone you can go, you can go up. You know? I mean there was somebody out there that had a literal. What do you mean, you can go up? The gravestone can be really tall. Oh, like a monument. And so there’s really, there’s really no limit. There probably is some sort of ordinance but we saw one guy who had a Roman column that was part. Yes. That had partially carved out of the stone and it was like at least 11 feet tall. It was sculpted in such a way to look like a ruin. Yeah. That was cool. It was actual ruins. Well see, this is where the Enneagram 3 in me comes out because I’m actually thinking about how impressive my gravestone could be. Like current me is thinking about the potential of winning the cemetery competition. People who. I know that it makes no sense. People who don’t know you, you want them to come to your gravestone just to look at the stone. I’m thinking about the experience that somebody can have because this is a very McLaughlin thing that my dad and my brother and my mom and I and really just my brother and my dad and I because my mom doesn’t really partake in this particular thing. We’re to visit a cemetery, what would the conversation devolve into very quickly? Who has the best gravestone right? And my dad would be like, “Well that guy’s got a column, he wins.” Yep. It’s like we would, we would just, that’s what the conversation would morph into is like well this guy paid a lot of money. He’s got a full color thing and that’s kind of what we did. We were doing it for entertainment purposes and that’s why we would be doing it but then once you start talking about that you’re like, “Well what am I gonna do?” ‘Cause I am on team cremation right now. Okay. And I do understand the environmental impact. Not from my individual cremation but the collective cremation right? But can I do some sort of carbon recapture or something on myself? What if they could carbon recapture me and then they could also take that and do something with it. I don’t know if there’s, there’s gotta be other ways. Like a high time, high desiccation rate kind of a thing where it’s, you’re not burning you, they’re just drying you out and then they’re just, like a porter. Like a jerky? Yeah like turn you into jerky and then turn you into a mortle and pestle? Desk jerky. I said mortle and pestle. Mortar. Immortal and pestle. Okay so we’re gonna be freeze dried and then crumbled into something. Yeah I wanna be, I wanna be crumbled for the environment. If you freeze dried and crumbled, you can still make out some stuff. Oh there’s some hair on that piece. You know what I’m saying? That could be. Yes. Yeah. Oh this might, this could be a nipple. That could be an interesting thing for your kids to have to sort through. Versus just this nondescript ashes that could be a cow. It’s like, oh there’s dad’s nipple. Freeze dried nipple, let’s throw that into the Kafue River ’cause that’s another thing. I am interested in cremation because I want to scattered. Smothered and covered. But, I don’t even know why. So you’re gonna buy a really fancy headstone and no part of your remains are gonna be there? No, no no no no. I think, part of me will be. Maybe the gonads ’cause if I’m gonna, if I’m going to, “Here lies Rhett McLaughlin’s gonads, “freeze-dried gonads.” Gross. Maybe they’ll be in a jar. There’s probably lots of rules about this and we’re probably violating them in theory here. Yeah, all I know is that I didn’t like the idea of a picture because it’s very, it’s very committal. If you’re a famous person, then the moment. I guess if you die later in life, well after the peak of your fame, I would think that you would want the, what most people know you, that peak fame picture. What picture do you want in the paper? What picture do you want in the obituary? What picture do you want? I mean, I don’t know. If we’re still relevant, maybe there’ll be an article about that. I just don’t want the conversation, I just don’t know that we’re famous enough. Maybe we are. You’d get a. I think if one of us died, we might trend on Twitter. Well, I. Probably for the first time ever. But I think, yes. That might be what it takes. Yeah, but I’m. You wanna go for it? You wanna experiment? I’m really, no. Because I’m thinking about dying in old age. You’re definitely not gonna trend on Twitter in your old age. What part, what would my face on my gravestone be because the last thing I want people talking about is what I looked like when I died. It’s like, “Oh man, that’s what he looked like in his old age?” I remember him from 30 years earlier you know? I don’t want that to be the conversation. Oh wow, he really got old. Well it kind of figures that he died, you know kind of? It depends on how old you get. Man he was ugly. He really changed. If you’re talking like Kirk Douglas old, man that man was old looking you know? Yeah and so his picture on his gravestone is like Spartacus. But if Michael Douglas were to pass away and you saw current Michael Douglas you’d be like, “That’s an old man but ah, it’s a good looking guy.” I mean if it were him, I think I would want Catherine Zeta-Jones on my gravestone too. Just to make it more interesting. And like a clarification that she’s not buried there. Yet. We were just married. So, look at her on this gravestone. It’s a lot better than looking at old Michael Douglas. Which isn’t bad in and of itself. I’m not getting the picture is what I’m saying but if I do. I think if you. It’s gonna be of, I think it’s gonna be my Velma haircut. You’re going back to haircut like circa 2010? Yeah you remember our peak? Well that is a conversation I wanna have and one of the things about getting older. I think just where I land on this conversation is I haven’t really thought about the gravestone until I saw them out there. I don’t necessarily think I’ll get a picture because where I’m gonna be buried is probably not Hollywood Forever Cemetery. I don’t know where I’m gonna get buried. Well I’m gonna be cremated. I don’t know what I’m gonna do but if I do get a picture. So you don’t. It’s gonna be an etching and I think you can get away with an ambiguous age in the etching. Just make me look like it could be the me that died, but not as old. Like take out the bags under the eyes which I think you can get away with just with an, sort of a line drawing. An example would be helpful. David Letterman’s a good example. He was famous for years for this one thing he did, then he went away and then he came back and he had this huge beard and he looked older and different but he looked distinguished and he was doing interviews on Netflix. That’s a good example. And I think that part of his career is still kind of happening. He’s certainly not dead but if you told me, if a couple of months from he passes away, what version of him is gonna be on his headstone because I think both are viable. I think the. I mean the height of his career was like. I think it come, to me. The Last Show height. There are three different options for David Letterman. Might even be late 80s. There’s three options for him. There’s NBC Letterman, CBS Letterman and current Letterman and I think the current Letterman just doesn’t stand a chance at being, at being on the gravestone. If it. I think it comes down to NBC or CBS. If it were there, I wouldn’t be appalled you know? He was still working, he was still active, he was still a public figure. So it’s not like I would be like, “That’s strange.” And he may. I do know that he looked that way. And he may continue to, I mean first of all has he still got the huge beard? I believe so. 10 years from now he might not have the huge beard. Is he gonna really roll with that for the rest of his life? But his legacy is his main show. So I think from a legacy standpoint, if you can make a tie to that, then that’s what you gotta put up there. I think it’s early CBS. So it’s not just completely unkempt curly hair, it’s sort of a tight curl but it’s not late era CBS where he basically had a buzz cut. Yeah. He needs the curls to be Letterman in my mind. Yeah, yep. There we go. We figured it out for him. Still a little bit of weatherman in him. You think we could figure it out for ourselves. We could. I think, okay if I had to pick yours, why don’t you pick. You know what? Let’s do that, let’s do that right after the break. We’re gonna pick what we think is the physical peak. Not the physical peak, what would the physical representation of the other guy? Okay. ‘Cause we may have to make these decisions for each other. But first we wanna remind you about the last chance section at mythical.com. We’re always releasing stuff and then we replace it with other stuff and we don’t just accumulate all the things. We move on. Yeah. That’s why it’s fun to see when something new comes out and decide if you want it and then if you’re on the fence it’s like, you know it ain’t gonna be there forever. Last chance section is your place to know. Last chance section. That it’s going away, so. And once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. Hence your last chance to get it. That’s why we call it that. And part of the times those, the last chance section is offered at a little bit. Certain products are offered at a little bit of a discount. So go over there, mythical.com. Mythical.com, rep your boys. Okay I’m going to pick what I think you should have on your gravestone and I am not picking Velma. The Velma haircut. I definitely think that your current haircut is an improvement. But I think I would go with, back when you were dying your hair. So this is a color? I mean, I’m just saying. I like the gray, I think You made the right decision. I think letting it go is the right thing but I think that there’s just this. Letting it go. There was this little window of time in which you had the shape of the hair that was better than the previous version but it was still, you looked so youthful. So youthful because you were dying it black. It was so unrealistically dark. It bothers me. Yeah but I think that won’t show up as much. In an etching. On an etching. Okay. You know? And it’s also easier, to capture the gray in an etching, I don’t even know how they’ll do that. So I’m really just thinking about the artist or the carver. I mean deciding about, if your etching has long hair or not, really is an indication of what I believe about. The future? Our professional future. Are we going to accomplish enough that the most, it will be associated with our legacy? To apply that Letterman thing to us. I hope that’s the case. You’ve gotta do something man with that hairstyle. Yeah. To earn the right to look like that on your gravestone. Because right now I’m telling you, you gotta go back to the, you gotta go back to the shorter hair for your gravestone. Oh man really? Yeah, you just. I know I’m really pushing the achiever button now and I’m manipulating you. Well. I definitely plan on being along for the ride. Well the interesting thing is that that was a, what you’re getting at, not related to my hair but related to achievement is something I wanted to talk about. Well let’s talk about it. You know I was actually. In middle age. This is, I mean that’s what’s getting you thinking about this? The middle age of it all. Yeah. My wife sent me, my wife will send me a tweet. My wife is a Twitter fien you know? And she’s always on Twitter. I think there’s a D on the end of that word. Fiend. A fiend is, I thought a fiend is like, I thought a fiend was an enemy but a fien is someone who’s really into something? Like addicted to something. You lose the D? I honestly don’t know. I don’t know. I wanna learn though. All right, we’ll find out. But she’s, what is she saying to you? Well what she’ll do is she will send me a tweet. You’re so old that? No she sent me a Twitter thread from a writer who was talking about the creator of The Sopranos. Okay. I don’t remember his name. And anyway he was like, I once went to a seminar or something with this guy and basically he was super bitter about the fact that he had never made it in film. He got basically forced to make The Sopranos into a television show. It’s a long story but that was the only outlet. It may have been a contractual thing with something that. It’s not what he wanted. It was his face to do. Even though it became. It redefined television. A television institution. No, and it didn’t just become a television institution but the way that we think about television now and the golden age of television that we’re in and the fact that many actors would prefer to be in a successful series rather than a feature. Yeah. Is based on, the first person who really did that, the first show that did that was The Sopranos. The cinematic experience of bringing you into a story in a super meaningful and engrossing way that felt like a movie. This dude basically made that happen but yet he was bitter about having never made it in features. Now incidentally he did write and direct I believe that latest, there’s like a Raid of the Yoda gangster movie that is just coming out now. That’s still in The Sopranos world. The saints something? Yeah, yeah. So he got to do it and he finally got to do it. But anyway she sent that to me and she knew exactly why she was sending it to me because I’m constantly, I guess more so than I even realize complaining to her about how hard it is for us to get to do some of the other things that I think that we should be doing. Now, I’ll premise this with saying that I’m old enough and wise enough at this point to know that regardless of whatever level of success on any particular project lies in the future, it will make me no happier. It’s not about, it’s not believing that oh, I will finally be satisfied, I will finally be happy. I know that my base of level of happiness because this is just science, will always return to basically what it is. And I know that the process of making something, writing something is probably, maybe the best part of the whole thing. Even if it never gets made right? These things, I know those facts. It does not stop me from feeling this, having this insatiable hunger to achieve something else. But the thing that I’ve been thinking about lately as it relates to my age is like you know, at this point, regardless of what we accomplish next, it is very unlikely that whatever we do, even if it’s some big, even if it’s like a. A movie is a movie and movies don’t mean as much as they used to, right? I understand that. But let’s just say it was a movie that everybody was talking about for a couple of weeks which is like the best that you can hope for, or as a television show that everybody’s talking about for a few years because it gets a few seasons or whatever. These are best case scenarios. The cultural impact of those projects will probably never be able to surpass the cultural impact of Good Mythical Morning simply because. Yeah. We’ve done it for so long. It’s 10 years, it’s 2000 plus episodes. It’s millions and millions, billions, billions of views on this thing right? That at the end of the day. And that represents lives touched. Yeah and here’s the thing. I am super proud of what that show has accomplished and what we’ve been able to do through the show and I am passionate about the fact that it impacts people but at the same time it, for reasons we’ve talked about before on the show, it’s me and you just kind of hanging out and having fun. It’s not us creating something and so the artist in me and the creator in me still wants to have that thing that I can point people to. Yeah. And so. I mean, and we’ve created an environment here with the Mythical team where it’s just as much a creative expression of our team in their specific roles as it is of us expressing our friendship and our points of view whenever we do whatever they’ve set up for us. And it doesn’t feel the same. But it’s not a creative challenge day to day like it was early on. And it’s not a creative collaboration between the two of us in the way that some of the stuff that we’re working on now is. Yeah. Like if for instance the movie that we are writing and hoping to one day make, it’s so representative of us and what we want to do. You talking about, you’re talking about the S&M movie? Well that is one way to describe it. I just. But it’s misleading because it’s not about sadomasochism. Yeah but that’s what, that’s what we’re gonna call it because I want, when it is successful and when it is the reason your gravestone face changes Rhett, I want people to know that’s what specifically we were talking about. Our S&M movie. Yeah I do it. All right so now we have a code name for it. The S&M movie. Which by the way, just to give a timeline, we birthed that concept less than a year ago. It might have been about? Early, early 2021. Yeah. Early 2021. No, no no. 2020. Late 2020 because I remember this pie in the sky. It’s almost a year ago now. I had this pie in the sky idea that it would be written over Christmas break. Aha, that’s right. It’s since and literally the writing process starts today. Yeah which is why it’s so much on the forefront of our minds. ‘Cause it’s been lots of outlining and all that. But when you think about, at this age, you really start to think about legacy and there’s other ways that you think about it besides this but we might as well get, fully explore just the creative professional aspect of our legacy ’cause that is what we, that is what you start to think about at this age. Well to me it’s, yeah that’s part of it but I think the, where the age gets in there is a fear that my best work is behind me. So it’s kind of a two part thing that like okay, can you, are you even capable of this? You know, yeah okay sure you, this movie is, there’s going to be a script and that may be all that it ever is. We may get lucky enough for it to be made, for somebody to give us money to make it and then it’s like, “Well will people care about it?” And like I said, I know that the happiness is not. Even if people love it, it’s not gonna make me any happier. It might make me happy for a day but I’ll immediately begin thinking about the next thing. That’s just human nature. So it’s not about that but it’s about kind of proving to myself that I can, that I can do this. There’s this creative challenge that I can’t say no to, moving through it and being like hey, there it is. I did that, what’s the next thing? That’s just kind of how I live my life. But as I’m now 44, there’s this man, like, in reality we kind of got started at this whole creative game kind of late right? You know when most YouTubers were getting started at 20, we were getting started at 30. So we got a little bit of, we got a 10-year, we were delayed 10 years just because of the nature of life. We got into the YouTube game very early and we’ve been doing it for a very long time. But boy, there’s just part me of that’s like, “Oh man, I wish I could press a button and be 34 “because then I would have this confidence.” How many, how many artists have really created amazing things in their 40s and beyond right? These are the things that I start thinking. I’m being vulnerable and honest about my fears. It’s just like, “Man if you haven’t done it yet, you probably can’t do it. “You’re probably not capable of it.” And so then it’s like, and listen. These are very privileged problems. I understand that many people in the entertainment business would give a limb to have the success that we have had with Good Mythical Morning alone. I get that, that’s not, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying I’m not grateful for the success we have had. Yeah. But there is this just like, man is that really, is that gonna be it? Is that gonna be the thing that everyone remembers us for and is that gonna be the last thing that we got to do that was special to anyone just besides the two of us? Yeah and I think the way that I interact with this, because I also think about it is, I find that my instinctive thoughts go more towards still this scarcity mentality and it kind of being tied to well, is the money gonna run out before my life does? You know it’s like, I just think things like that. It’s like, we have a, we have a lifestyle that we enjoy. It’s like, okay I wanna. I don’t wanna have to go back to being, doing things out of obligation. We’ve been very spoiled and privileged with going after our dreams and being successful. It, you know, on top of it. So I think we balance each other out well that like, you know, I’m. I tend to be grateful for what we have, and like oh I wanna maintain this at all cost and you’re grateful for what we have but you wanna build on it as much as you can. And so I, you know I try to understand my tendency and then put it in its place and say, “Hey, I still do have ambition. “I’m not just somebody “who just wants to maintain a lifestyle.” I don’t wanna be that person. But I think we have different, different instinctive drives at the heart of us. With me it’s more of like, maintain. Yeah and my desire to work on other things is not really tied to any, it’s definitely not tied to finances because I already know that the most lucrative thing that I’ll ever do is Good Mythical Morning. I mean very likely, statistically speaking. Yeah. Right? Because it’s just so much content and it’s just, it works really well for us. If we, we would have to have just like this total moonshot of a moment in, in TV or film or whatever. And again. To begin to approach the success. I also, I wanna. Because a lot of people, whenever we talk like this, a lot of people are like, “Guys, why do you, you have this obsession “with traditional media and it’s only because of your age. “And because you guys grew up with TV and film.” Yeah, which to The Sopranos point. Yeah and. It’s like why would you? You blazed the trail for every other scripted show and you still set the standard. People are rediscovering your work every day and appreciating it. Somehow because of TikTok. Well. They’re watching Sopranos. And I think, and I think that my particular hangup is more, I’m saying this. I think my particular hangup is more justified than The Sopranos guy’s hangup and here’s why. Because he got to create a world. The difference between The Sopranos and a film, again it’s just. Right. It’s format. The difference between, when I say TV and film. I don’t mean, I don’t care about traditional media. If you told me tomorrow that me and you could make a movie with an adequate budget in order to pull it off in the way that we wanted to and it would just go straight to YouTube, I’d, that’s fine. I’m not trying to win an Oscar. I’m not trying to get respect from any particular part of the entertainment industry. I just want to be able to tell the kinds of stories that we wanna tell. And right now there’s just not a financial model to do that in the sort of completely owned and controlled independent vehicle that we have right now with digital media. So it kind of goes through the powers that be and the finances and all that stuff. So it has nothing to do with an obsession with TV and film and traditional. It’s more an obsession with storytelling, now. Until, until you check that box and then you see what it becomes next. For you, because it is a moving target. Well but it’s something, but it’s the first thing. It’s the first, I don’t agree with that. Okay. Because yeah, my interests are a moving target but we got into this business because we wanted to tell stories. We wrote Gutless Wonders at 14 because we wanted to tell stories. We did a blood oath because we wanted to tell stories. Like when we said we wanted to create something together, we didn’t know what it was specifically but both of us were talking about, we were talking about going to film school. Sure. We were talking about creating a world, telling stories and we have been able to do that in some fashion right? And we got to write a novel that was a world that came to life and maybe that will become something. It isn’t that we’re not trying, we’re still trying. But yeah, to me it’s the difference between what we do on Good Mythical Morning which is, it has an incredible value and is incredibly rewarding. It’s just, the creative process for me personally is a totally different thing than something that we have conceptualized, written and executed and birthed in that way. I get that. And I think if we, if we shift to, from a personal and philosophical standpoint what it means to be, to process being middle aged, I think we could superimpose that discussion over top of what we’ve already discussed because the next thing that comes to my mind that I’m grateful for about my age is just starting to realize perspective. Starting to realize that I actually do have some accumulated wisdom. And for me, the first place my brain goes that I’m grateful for is, I feel like I’m well positioned to know myself. Like I was telling Christy, at a younger age, I feel like I might have had the desire and some of the drive to know myself, understand what makes me tick and what ticks me off and every other type of tick. But there’s something about this age that I can, I can start to really experience a level of self knowledge that I just don’t think was possible when we were in college or when we were grinding and trying to make it early on you know? So I’m actually enjoying that. That, again we have the luxury of having some space and time to give attention to ourselves in a way that’s like, I’m still evolving. I’m still changing and I’m very committed to being in touch with that process and understanding myself. And I think that that is, a portion of that with us is aging. I think also a big portion of it is the worldview change that we had right? So I think. Yeah it’s like, we were being redefined in our late 30s. But specifically, what I’m getting at is, when you are an evangelical Christian or when I was an evangelical Christian, there is a, thinking a little bit too, too much focus on self. It’s all about attention to God right and you are small and God is big and there are some very good things about a mentality of not centering yourself and humbling yourself and I believe that there’s some good qualities there. But one of the things that kind of gets wrapped up in that is that any sort of self discovery and looking in to yourself and knowing that there’s something in there that needs to be expressed and to come out. Could begin, you start confusing that with sinful pride and so the way my personality processed a lot of that structure was this feeling that like, I’m not important enough to really figure myself out. Now I not saying that’s everybody but I think it stunted my growth of self realization and self discovery. When I got out of that way of thinking about things and started thinking like, I gotta really figure myself out. It’s not just about understanding God and the Bible and then my, my relationship to that, but it’s also like this is the body and mind that I have. I need to figure out who I am and there’s nothing wrong with that and that sort of, you can call it selfishness but directing some actual attention to yourself, learning how to love yourself so that you can actually be a better citizen and a better, love people better and be less selfish and self absorbed. For me, I think that was the beginning of a process that eventually led to therapy and led to the sort of self discovery and figuring out who I am and as a Enneagram 3, another thing that happens is that you’re really good at figuring out who everyone else wants you to be. You can analyze a person or a group of people, figure out the ideal and then you just adopt that ideal. And it wasn’t until the past five years or so that I began to figure out that so many of the things that I liked or a lot of the ways that I presented myself were just based on people’s perception and so for me, getting older, a part of it has been A, discovering myself. But B, also being able to embrace some things about myself irrespective of people’s perspective of me. Is there an example that comes to mind of something that you realize you were doing because of that? Because I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about as it relates to you. Well it’s more of a disposition of thinking about like, oh is that something that I want or is that something that I think that someone thinks I should want? And it could be something as simple as oh I’m going to like this movie or whatever, I’m going to say that I like this movie because I think that other people like this movie and I started realizing that it was just kind of built into my DNA to be able to anticipate what the collective consciousness about something was gonna be and tapping into that and this is still a struggle for me. To be like what do you actually think about this? Right, I mean a good example is what we talked about a couple weeks ago with the guitar right? Oh. Getting a Taylor guitar because it was what I thought that I should like at the time and environment that I was in. And then slowly as I got older, being like I find myself liking these other sounds and then I go and I look up well, what does so and so play? What does so and so play? That’s not a Taylor, that’s a Martin. Okay. Or that’s a Gibson. And it’s like that’s a sound that you actually liked but when I went to a music store, even the last time I bought a guitar, when I went into the music store it’s like I only, I sat down and I just played the Taylors right? And it’s just this weird thing and it’s not because that I think oh liking Taylor is better. It’s just you made that decision in the past for somebody else and now you kind of just carry it through into adulthood. So it’s kind of this peeling back things like that. Yeah the peeling back experience to get to the core of myself is something that I’m now in a position to do. For me, Evangelicalism, growing up in that was like, “Okay, I want to aggressively learn the system “so that then I can know enough about it “and put into practice the spiritual disciplines “and then I can go about the rest of my life “having fully explored the manual “and just executing it.” Yeah. It’s not about asking difficult questions or wringing my soul out to really analyze who I am and the whys of life for me. Because that felt like a scary burden apart from someone just giving me all the answers in a nice package. Yeah. Turns out the package wasn’t completely nice but I gained a lot of security from that and I did have this mentality that was, I’m going to just, the second half of my life is just gonna be about applying everything that I’ve already learned. I just didn’t anticipate that there could be so much more to learn out there and there was a lot of fear in crossing over to the other side because of all the unknowns that we’ve discussed but yeah, actually being there is a very freeing and rewarding, and still at times very scary process because it’s, it’s not well laid out and rigid. It’s much more fluid. But it’s enabled me to know myself at a totally deeper level and I think that’s the experience that I want to define my life. I found myself talking a lot in therapy about situations that I’m going through and experiencing and then discussing making meaning of it. You know, how as humans we want to, we wanna make meaning and that enriches an experience and kind of codifies it in our memories. As not, and being present and making the most of something. Just wringing everything out of it that there is I think is the philosophy and the approach that I’m taking now. And it’s something that, I think it’s still a struggle for me. It’s something I’ve identified, this is how I wanna live my life. But I also know enough about myself that I’m prone to be stuck in my ways. Like you talk about the second, the second half of life and just the whole trope of being set in my ways is something that is a discussion that goes on a lot at my house. Whether it’s you know, just deciding that I want things to be in a certain way and routines are so huge for me. Especially as an Enneagram 1. It’s like once I’ve figured something out, I’m gonna make this movie this way and not only that but I’m gonna make it at this time and I’m gonna get my ingredients in this way and if anybody messes anything up, that really irks me. Or I have these plans to do something with the kids. Like yesterday, we’re gonna go one wheeling and I’m texting you so I can borrow one for you from Lincoln. I’m like, “Make sure thing thing’s charged up.” And then I go out to get them, mine, and put them in the trunk before I go pick up your fully charged one when I realize, Lando’s has been in the back of my car for two weeks and it barely has any charge and I was so upset. And that’s one of the first things when I was bouncing this discussion off of Christy, she was like, you know, “Getting older, you have a tendency “to be set in your ways and anything that throws that off, “just it really, it really throws you off. “And if you don’t.” And I agree with this, so it wasn’t like a warning out the blue. Right. = But it was like, “Hey if you don’t look out for this, “you’re gonna become somebody who builds this, “these walls around yourself and says, “‘I’m just trying to maintain what I have “‘and the way that I want it.’” And then it lets fewer and fewer new experiences in. So I think that’s the, that’s the tension that I’m experiencing at this point in midlife is knowing enough of who I am to celebrate and love myself but not allow that to keep me from who I’m still going to become. Yeah. So even having the words to say that is a part of the journey that I’ve been on just in the last few years and that I really enjoy in saying, you know, the openness from leaving Evangelicalism and saying, “I wanna be open minded and open hearted.” And then applying that to things beyond just your spiritual beliefs but to every aspect of your life is something that I’m still growing into. Well one of the things that maybe an unspoken, it’s actually not unspoken. Because Evangelical Christians and Christians in general see God, one of the characteristics of God, the attributes of God is His immutability right? Which means. Doesn’t change. He does not change. That’s one of the things that makes God God. He is always the same. So that becomes something that you kind of aspire to. Implicitly. And I think there’s also an obsession in our culture. ‘Cause when you’re right, why change? There’s also an obsession in our culture with staying the same right? We get so mad when a politician flip flops on something. And it’s like, that’s the stupidest perspective I’ve ever heard in my life because you know what? New information causes people to change their mind. Now it’s one thing if somebody flip flops, and many politicians flip flop because of convenience and wanting to be more electable. That’s one thing. Right. But when somebody’s like, “I used to think this about this issue, “now I think this because my view has evolved.” That’s something that should be, that process should be celebrated. That’s not some reason not to like somebody. But I think one of the things that because we have experienced this incredible evolution and this upheaval of our worldview, it’s given us this, just sort of underlying belief that it’s not about being this certain way and figuring that out and just staying that way. It’s just like, there’s a version of Rhett 10 years from now and then a version of Rhett 20 years from now and I hope that those versions are better but I know that those versions are going to be different and they may be different in ways that I can’t anticipate and that’s a super exciting thing. Now there are some things that may be more of a refining process of kind of figuring yourself out. You know, when you talk about the, the sort of savoring and being in the moment. One of the things that I’ve kind of embraced about myself is that I have a really difficult time doing that right? We even wrote on our whole chapter in the Book of Mythicality about stopping and celebrating and I’m not saying that I don’t agree with that in general. If you achieve something, you know, stop and enjoy it. And really appreciate this moment. But there’s also just a, there’s the way that I am and the way that I sort of operate in the world is that the moment that I achieve one goal, I’m ready for the next thing and I think that, I’m starting to understand that that’s not a bad thing for me. You know what I’m saying? That whole process, like every single stage along the different steps of a project and then it finally coming to fruition, when I get kind of focused on that moment of achieving and that moment of completing and being like, “Hold on everybody, let’s stop and really celebrate “and let’s go to dinner and let’s really milk this “for all it’s worth.” For me it’s kind of like, I wanna milk each step for all it’s worth and make sure that I’m not just looking at that, accomplishing the goal as being the end all because really, it may be, like I said, the writing, the conceptualizing that ends up, when I look back on this, the most fun part of this whole process wasn’t when we finally screened that movie, it was when we came up with the idea or when we had that breakthrough in the storytelling process. Then the thing is is that, it’s not gonna make me any happier anyway so why don’t you just move on to the next thing? Like I’m learning to not get upset with myself for, I don’t wanna say not being present because I wanna be present. I wanna be present at each step but not stopping and saying that like, “I’m going to make a huge fricking deal out of this thing.” It’s like what, does that come natural to me? Not really, I mean I’m gonna enjoy it and let’s celebrate but hey, I know that the next day I’m gonna wake up and I’m gonna be like, “What’s next?” And that’s okay. And that may be something that’s good about me right? Versus being like, “Oh you can never be satisfied and that’s bad.” Maybe that sort of insatiable hunger for the next thing is just part of my disposition and my personality and something I should embrace. The moment that I began thinking that I can find my happiness in the things that I achieve, I’ve gone off track. But if I can find happiness in the process and knowing that hey man, oh there’s one of the things I’ve been talking about with my therapist is that as I talk about the different facets of what we do professionally and of course being essentially CEOs of a media company takes up a fair amount of time. And of course that’s not my favorite part of what we do. My favorite of what we do is the creative part and the way he kind of, the way my therapist kind of described it, he was like, “You kind of get into, “the way you talk about it “is as if you’re in sort of a zone “when you’re in this creative zone “and as you get older you’re learning to make sure “that you’re getting that time “and you’re getting that creative space “because that’s where you find life.” And he’s helped me be able to see that that’s not an unhealthy thing because when I start describing it to him, I start describing it in this like, I feel a little bit guilty for how bad I wanna do X, Y and Z. That’s my threeness. That’s my achiever and that’s my performer and that’s bad because I’m trying to find my identity in the things that I’m creating. And he’s like, “Whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. “No, no no. “There is an incredible goodness and health and life “in your being in a creative zone “and finding life in the creative process.” That’s a good thing. Now the moment that you start trying to do it for other people and you’re starting to do it for adulation and people to kind of pat you on the back, that’s trouble but understanding that you need that and you want that and you’re never gonna, you’re never gonna be satisfied unless you’re creating and that might be the next thing, that’s a good thing. So that’s something that I’ve. So I’ve sort of let go of my guilt of being like, what we talked about earlier. Like the fact that yeah we’re doing all this other stuff but I still have 10 other things that I want us to do. That’s not a bad thing and I can embrace that and that’s not unhealthy. You know what I’m saying? Yeah definitely and I think that it’s, again it’s back to understanding enough about myself, you understanding enough about yourself to, to begin to parse what your motivations are but not a beat yourself up and not to over-interpret things. It’s like every single thing that you pour yourself into, there’s, it could lead to a problem or it could lead to something worth celebrating. It’s great right? But if you’re, yeah I’m glad to hear that you’re not beating yourself up and just reducing your desire to something that is motivated by the wrong things but gaining clarity. I think as, again at our age, we can have enough perspective to gain clarity on what a vibrant life can look and feel like for each of us. And understanding the parts of it that are actually healthy. That was a big shift for me. You know, I’m thinking about it because of this movie that we’re right in the middle of this creative process. If you told me, like I should be okay if for some reason I was able to look in the future and find that this movie was never going to be made into anything other than a script. Now that would be disheartening for sure. I like to believe that it’s going to happen but the process of writing it should be enjoyable and vibrant and life-giving regardless of the outcome. If it doesn’t get made into a movie, it doesn’t mean that the process of writing it and developing it was for nothing because there was joy and life in the process. Yeah. And that’s a huge shift for me as an achiever. I can’t get rid of the engine that is always putting me, is always in a certain gear and as soon, the moment you turn it off and say, “Hey let’s the engine rest.” I’m like, ah let’s turn the engine back on. I can’t stop that about myself and that’s not necessarily unhealthy. It’s the perspective if all of a sudden that engine is running for everybody else’s expectations. And so that’s been a huge shift that’s kind of happened in the therapy process with me. Of kind of just eh, this is who you are. This is how you’re built, embrace it and know the pitfalls. Yeah I mean there’s so many ways that we’re alike, so many ways that we’re different. When you talk about letting go of other people’s expectations for me, I’m like, yeah I think my practice is letting go of my own expectations. That I’ve created. Yeah. And this you know, to have this sense of and practice of control. Like this morning I’ve got my mountain bike ride that I do and it’s the same. So I can measure myself against it in order to get better, to be a little faster and more efficient. Which shows progress. But I heard an owl hooting and I made a decision. You know what, I’m gonna find this out and this morning, you know you’ve been talking about owls for a couple of months now and how you’ve seen them. It’s kind of really upset. I’ve seen owls. I’ve not seen an owl. Everywhere. And then I looked up and I saw an owl. It was very dark, the sun hadn’t come up yet. So it was like the silhouette of an owl on this big power tower. You know the power towers? The power towers. Yeah so I saw an owl. It’s a beautiful thing. And I stopped my route. I paused my podcast. Did you call to him? And I listened and looked at the owl and then I rode around to the other side and I wanted to see the backside of the owl but then his head can turn around all the way. Yeah. Give or take. Yeah. Which is an owl thing which was cool to experience. Did he do that? I think he did that. He looked at you? His head turned all the way around. He was following you? Yeah, I mean it was a silhouette but I, that’s what I was imagining happened. You choose to believe that he was pivoting to look at you. Yeah, let’s talk about things we hate about getting old. Well. For me this can be quick. I think what you got at with the mountain biking ties in to something that I was thinking which is a little bit of good and a little bit of bad of getting old. So there is this refining process from a physical standpoint right? So you’re talking about the mountain biking and improving your times but the problem is is that your body is only heading in the wrong direction. So you can. Yeah. You can get, and I’ve been thinking about this because you know I’m pretty physically active and I work out on a pretty regular basis and a lot of it is based on sort of thinking about my, the things I wanna be able to do and longevity, especially as it relates to my back right? So my back has been a problem on and off, even when I was looking at those anniversary videos or the honeymoon videos. That we ended up putting into the podcast with Jessie and Christy on it. I listened to some of them with the sound on and one of the things I was complaining about in that video when I was 23 was how bad my back was hurting. So this is a long, this is a multi. Huh. You know over a couple of decades of struggling with this and so so much of my working out is designed to make my back better and a few months ago I was getting to a place where I was doing squats and dead lifts and I was like, “I think I have overcome my back issues.” I always get to this plate. And then I pushed it a little too hard and I had my. It broke. You broke your back. I had a moment. And that actually set me on a course of, it was a couple of months of dealing with the pain and not being able to work out in the way that I wanted to. But I ended up kind of embracing when I came out of that time I was like, “You can’t, you don’t need to be, “you don’t need to be doing dead lifts okay?” Let’s just take dead lifts out of the workout routine. It just doesn’t make any sense right? I mean it’s got the word dead in it. But this was, there’s this idea that there’s a sort of physical refinement. Like I’m learning the things that hurt my back. I’m learning the things that hurt my, I’ve got a shoulder thing right? I got a shoulder thing. And I’m learning, I had to change me, even though I don’t play golf that often, I had like a net that I hit balls into at my house just on a pretty regular basis. I’ll go out there and hit 10 balls or something. I’ve had to change my swing based on a new pain in my back but also my shoulder. And so there’s this, this idea that you’re refining and you’re learning some things about your body but at the same time, every single process in your body is heading in the wrong direction. And every single thing that you’re dealing with is only going to. All the factors are stacked against you. You can resist it and you can do a really good job of trying to stay in shape, et cetera but everything is just heading in the wrong direction. That’s a, that’s a. Right. There’s a sense of impending doom when you really think about that. Well yeah, I think in the way that we discuss parenting as being okay, you shift to this paradigm of harm reduction. Definitely understanding my body is another way. I’ve gotten in touch more with my body. Knowing what the limits are and from my physical therapist, gaining an education on, like okay, when you reach too far, you hyper-extend yourself and then that’s a danger zone. So actually knowing the safe limits with which I can reach and. Reach for what, anything? Anything. A jar? Yeah. You know, like I’m sure with your back and when I worked at IBM in the warehouse, they would have all these things about how to properly lift something. Yeah, yeah. Lift with your legs, not your back, two man lift. Don’t twist, don’t lift and twist. All these things that you know, at our age you really start to understand. Okay the way that my shoulders are built and my collarbones and my rotator cuffs, I can really, I have to be aware because my body will go, if I push it to the limit, physically, that will cause damage. I have to be aware of that, educate myself. And yeah know that I’m just trying to do things to be active and to strengthen myself but reduce harm. You know? Not hurt myself. Every time I go to the gym it’s like, this could be the day that I hurt myself and I’m not gonna be able to go back to the gym. Yeah. Like mountain biking. I see guys who are 10, 15 years older than me out there doing exactly what I’m doing. That gives me hope. It’s like okay there’s, there’s a version of mountain biking that I can continue into older age ’cause I’m probably, I’m not gonna get into golf you know? Like you are. There’s a version of golf that you can do as long as you don’t have like, as long as you continue to know your limits right? Yeah, and it’s tough. There are some things like, I definitely relate to the, like the way that I hold myself. I mean I’m sure you can just look at some of the more physical videos that we do. I’m a little stiff. I’m actually, if you go back to old Rhett, like young Rhett. I’m was, I’m not. You were floppy? I’m not stiff. I was super flexible and I’m actually still flexible but I don’t move the center of my body. Yeah. In really, I’m careful with how I move because I’m so concerned with getting hurt. And then, I remember, if I’m hiking and I’m going really quickly down a mountain, I remember the way that I used to do that as kids, sometimes we would just start running. Remember the time we ran down Grandfather Mountain? Yeah. And it’s like now, I’m going 30% speed if I’m running. But like, my whole core is really tight because I’m, the core has gotta be tight. There’s just a whole lot of extra thought that’s going on. There’s technique. But then there’s things like oh, I know that this food will cause my psoriasis to flare up. Or I know if I have, if I drink alcohol two days in a row, oh you’re gonna get a flareup. If you eat this food, you really should take a beano before you eat this food. Or you know what? If you have this particular meal, you should just go ahead and take a dose of Pepto-Bismol right after you get through with it. Oh. There’s these old man ways of thinking about things that are a little bit disheartening. Yeah. But it’s also, you figured some stuff out. You’re not just, you can’t because you’re not young anymore. You can’t just go into a situation with reckless abandon and be like, “I’ll deal with the consequences.” But you’re also learning some things about yourself physically so that you can prepare for them. So there’s good, and there’s two sides of that. There’s some good in it and then, but the ultimate reality is, it’s all heading in the wrong direction. When you talk about the 10, the 15 years. Right. You talk, you got 10 to 15 years left of mountain biking and then you’re gonna hang it up. You can’t think of it like that obviously. Yeah. But that, it’s sort of the overhanging reality is that it’s all gonna get harder and more difficult and more consequential as we get older and you just have to accept it. I’ll tell you the other thing I hate is hair popping up in places. Like I realize, I’ve got all this hair growing on my ears now. Oh yeah. I’m not. I covered it up with other hair. I mean not inside of the ear, like the outside edge. Right here. Yeah. I’ve got hairs growing and that there’s black ones. You’ve gotta have somebody in your life who sees that. I shaved this morning. And helps you with it. And every time that I shave. I have a magnifying mirror. First of all, here’s something that I learnt. I don’t, a commitment to actually look at myself in the mirror. Like okay, this is you, I’m gonna look at it and I’m going to assess it and I’m gonna do, I’m gonna make decisions to do stuff about it and I’m gonna make decisions about what I’m not gonna do stuff about and I’m just gonna, I’m gonna accept who I am and figure out what I’m gonna work on here. Christy’s given me all these night lotions. It’s like, what’s happening? I have glasses, I don’t know if you knew that. But if I take those off, the thing that the glasses covers up is the places where there’s like, that’s where age happens. Yeah. So glass. I’ve been aging. Get you nice thick glasses. Out in the open for many years. Yeah and I’ve been hiding behind these glasses. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, I don’t know how old they are now. I think they might be pushing, they’re in their mid 50s at least. Yeah. They announced their new tour and it was trending on YouTube and I was like, “Damn.” I mean they look old but not as old as they are. Yeah. But I was like, we’re still gonna be announcing tours and doing stuff one day and people are gonna be racking up. We’re gonna have to say things like, Jon Stewart with his new show. I don’t know if you’ve seen the promotions for his new show but he’s like, “Yeah this is what I look like now.” Yeah, yeah he just did. He’s totally gray and wrinkle faced and just aged. Yeah. ‘Cause he went away for a little bit and he came back and he’s like, this is what everybody. Yeah this is what I look like now. Well I’ve noticed this now that we’re on TikTok and there’s people who were you know. Yeah. 10 years old or whatever the last time they watched us and wow, “Wow you guys got old.” We did. Now it was, at the same time I’m grateful for the fact that I do think we’re aging rather gracefully. There’s things that we do. Most people are surprised to hear we’re as old as we are. We’ve got full heads of hair. There’s lots to be grateful for in the physical department. Yeah. And I’m grateful for the gray hair ’cause I’m just grateful for the hair. Right but at the same time, it, there are days in, again like you said. I don’t wear glasses and also my, my eyes are different. I have different kinds of eyes that are a little bit buggier and I have sort of, I don’t know what the genetic name for this is but I have the sort of eye bags. I’ve had them forever. But they’re the kinds of things that I can, I look at old men, certain old men and I’m like, “He’s got my kind of eyes “and that’s where I’m headed.” Oh God. And the aging apps, like some fans have sent us through those and the Donald Sutherland version of you. Yeah that’s. Is so, we both look so real ’cause I look like my granddad and when he was elderly. Yeah. And like, how my dad’s getting now. It’s like oh my God, that is scarily accurate. I know exactly, yeah that’s the beauty of it. But for some reason I’m still wearing the exact same glasses which I think may be the case. I think when I’m 80, I might still be wearing these glasses because I’ve been trying to change them up and I keep going back to them. But I mean I got hair, I shaved the hair on my ears. Just to keep it down and I’ll use the nose hair trimmers inside of my ears. In ear, yeah. And boy I’ve looked inside of your ear to know that you got a lot of that stuff happening inside of your ear. Yeah. But I don’t think you have the outer rim, black hair growth that I do. But I mean. Now yeah. I gotta get down in that magnifying glass and look at it. So back to what I was saying about looking at yourself in the mirror. The thing that I noticed was that I just don’t look at myself enough. I think there’s a lot of people who look at themselves too much and they obsess about things and it’s not healthy. But the thing that I would notice is when I’m getting ready in the morning and fixing my hair, I will, over the course of fixing my hair, I will step back and step back and I will realize that I have gotten four or five paces from the mirror while I’m fixing my hair. The longer I fix my hair, the further from the mirror I get and I do, I just some. I think it’s a subconscious practice of, I’ll probably be happier with it if I don’t scrutinize it as much. And then I, when I’m done I’m like, I have to take five steps back up to the mirror and certify, am I good? ‘Cause I actually, it’s kind of a good practice. Maybe you’re getting different angles or something. To be far from somebody it’s like all right, I spotted Link, I recognized him and I had a conclusion about what he looked like. I got this, because I’ve done the five paces but then I’ve gone back up and it’s like, now I’m gonna go up and talk to him. And now I’m gonna see is that, is there a zit on his face? If you get really close, is there hair on his ears? If he gets intimate, like there’s sometimes when I really go through a process and I’m gonna use that magnifying mirror, imma get rid of all this stuff. I have hairs growing on my nose. Yeah. Like black hairs. Yeah yeah. Growing on the bridge of my nose. I get those sometimes. I don’t shave those. You pluck those. I pluck those individually and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Sometimes I’ll just touch the bridge of my nose and I can feel if there’s a hair that needs to be plucked. Do you use a serum, a face serum? Like an, it’s like an oil with a dropper? Yeah that’s got like the blood of virgins in it. Not yet, I’m sure I will once you finish talking about it. Oh I use it. I mean. At night, it’s a night serum? Well it’s. It makes it nice and shiny. Well it’s actually, they suggest that you use it in the morning. What I’ve found is my eyes are so sensitive and already very red all the time if I don’t put my drops in. I really can’t put anything on my face in the morning. I just wash it and I put a little, little moisturizer here of some spots like some, I have eczema or psoriasis or something that would kind of pop up on my face. But I, so I started doing it at night. I’ve actually been doing, I don’t know if you knew this but I’ve been doing the, I’ve been putting moisturizer, anti-aging moisturizer on my face for like, I don’t know like seven or eight years. Well how I would know that? You’re keeping this a secret. You’re trying to underage me. I mean. You’ve gotta give me these serums. Christy’s been giving me these serums, maybe you haven’t realized. But I’ve done doing. I’ve got some night creams. Yeah but now I’m pretty much down to man, this one, I got this one. This stuff, it’s a little bottle. It’ll last you a couple of months. It’s $150. Good God. But it’s the only thing that I’m currently using ’cause I was using like a retinol thing and then a moisturizer over that. Yeah. But I’m pretty much just doing that, ’cause I mean listen. I’m trying to, I’m trying to delay the inevitable. I don’t, I know that we’re gonna eventually look our age but I’m like, why not try to stave it off as long as possible? Why not? Now the real question’s gonna be, when I do get the Donald Sutherland bags, ’cause they’re coming and they’re coming with a vengeance, is there gonna be this moment, like 15, 20 years from now when I’m 65 years old, when all of a sudden I start thinking whatever Kenny Rogers thought before he got his bags removed and suddenly looked like a different person. Yeah, you don’t wanna do that. You don’t wanna. At this point. You don’t want to assume an alter ego late in life. Right but what. When you’re cosplaying as your younger self but it looks like a mask. But then you’ve got some doctor who says like hey. I can do it. I can do this and no one will know. Oh you’re paying $150 for a serum. I can do some stuff for you. I get some. I’m not ruling. Oceanfront property in Arizona. I’m not ruling any. I’m just telling you right now, I’m not ruling anything out. Hey you shouldn’t. The way technology’s changing Donald. Yeah. You could, you’d be just fine. But yeah it is, talk about eyes. It’s an eyeopening experience to see that, those aged photos of us and you start to think, I wanna be healthy enough to toss my grandchildren around and a little bit of those great grandchildren. And I wanna be able to see them through my eye bags. Yeah. I don’t want them pulling on them. “Grandad, let me pull on your eye bags.” I don’t hate too much besides my hair. I’ve pretty much given up on the fact that I’m never gonna have a big chest. I can’t get. Never gonna have a big chest. I can’t make my chest have muscle on it. My pecs won’t do anything and when I try to build it, all it does is mess up my shoulders because I’m like. We need to get you on the Marvel, Marvel. I’m doing pushups and now my shoulder hurts or a bench press, I can’t do any of that stuff. I can not, that’s the other thing I haven’t liked about my body is I just can’t, I can’t get pecs to grow. You’re doing pretty good in the shoulder department. That’s the thing that I worked on constantly is you know, I don’t like the shape of everything. So I can get a chest. Yeah you can get a chest. But I can’t get, I don’t even work my chest out anymore. ‘Cause I’m like, “It’s big enough, okay.” It’s like, work on the shoulders. But I think this is it. I think this is as. Unless I. With our powers combined. I think unless I start, if get on gear as Locke would say. That’s the. Headgear? That’s the term for steroids. Seriously? Your son wants you to take steroids? No I’m saying like, he’s like, “Dad all those guys, all those superheroes “in the Marvel movies, they’re on gear dad. “That’s not natty.” Natural. Natural, okay. He’s not suggesting I do it. But he’s just like, “But if you really wanted to get big, “you’d have to get on gear.” Anything else you hate? I just wanna be thorough. So I’m just gonna let you know, if all of a sudden I’m really big, I’m probably on steroids. What else do you hate? I just wanna make sure we don’t miss anything. About getting older? Yeah. You know I have thoroughly established how much I do not like myself without a beard. People talked about, when they saw my honeymoon videos and my wedding pictures of like, “See, Rhett doesn’t look bad without a beard.” Well I was 23 years old. One of the things that I discovered when I shaved for Buddy System was that one of the things the happens as you get older is you gain weight right here. The little bit of chin that I had that I was able to kind of show. Yeah. When I weighed like 185 pounds when I was 22 years old, that’s been filled in. Right? It’s been, and I don’t know. If I was like, I’m gonna get super thin and get super cut and then I’m gonna shave and see what it looks like. I’m not gonna do that but like, that’s another thing is that, the turkey chin that is an inevitable part of getting old. Okay. I’m not happy about that but I have a beard to cover it up. Yeah. So when you get turkey chin. Oh yeah. You’re gonna have to make a decision. Are you gonna grow a beard? I’m gonna grow a, I’m gonna grow a beard. I think I am. Yeah. I just, I have always been a fan of The Lord of the Rings Legolas and not The Hobbit Legolas. So I’d rather get a chicken chin than whatever happened to his face. He got a chiseled face, I don’t know what happened. I don’t wanna know but baby face Legolas is the one that I’m gonna remain true to. Wow I’ve never thought about this difference. His face was just totally different and they did some CGI stuff too because it was supposed to be, he was supposed to be younger. Yeah he was supposed to be younger. But his face was like, I mean Orlando Bloom’s face bloomed. You know what I’m talking about? It’s weird. Oh okay. But he, and it wasn’t elvish anymore. Last thing I’ll say is I definitely feel like I’ve kind of transitioned into a place where I needed more things to be explained to me. I actually, I saw that Matt Carney tweeted recently something about appreciating the younger GMM writers who always put notes in their scripts that say, “Thank you for explaining “this young reference to me.” All right, and even though we’ve got kids and so we are a little bit more in the know. But not for long, they’re gonna be gone soon. There is this being, trying to be a part of internet culture and you know, we know that we’re sort of YouTube dads and we know that when we go on TikTok people see us as these dad characters. They don’t see us as their peers which is totally fine and normal and natural. But I just find myself hearing things and needing someone to explain it to me and feeling a little bit more out of the loop about more ideas, concepts, slang, et cetera. Yeah. And that’s only increasing. I’m only going in the wrong direction and then I was like. But it’s so good for your brain to stay engaged. The way that you’re engaged in TikTok is good for your brain. It keeps you young and yes it’s a losing battle and at a certain point we’re just not gonna care and whatever the next TikTok is, you probably won’t care. And then my version of that is, okay I am going to try to appreciate what is magical about Trippy Red’s music. You know? I’m gonna try, I can connect with Lincoln that way but I’ve made a decision, from a music standpoint I should be able to, I should be able to appreciate what’s happening now. Yeah. So that’s the place where I’ve decided to keep my mind young and not allow myself to fart on something I don’t understand. But also to be engaged as much as I can. Not for clout, but just for what it does for me. Are you gonna change the way you talk? That’s another thing I thought recently. I cannot do that. I can’t, I’ve never. I hear the new slang and I’m like, I just can’t do it. Even hundred percent. I cannot say, so many people, 100%. That’s not even new slang. It’s not even new slang. That’s like 75 slang. 75? Like somebody’s saying. No it’s not. 100%, I agree with that, I say that and I’ve said that since I was 20. No. No you haven’t. It has now become a social colloquialism over the past five years. Hunded, hunded, that’s different. 100%. Just conversationally, when you agree with somebody saying, 100% is something I can’t even do that. Okay, well that’s. I take issue with that because I don’t feel like I’ve adopted any slang and I say that. That is slang. It is slang. But it’s one that you felt like you could adopt because it’s, it’s not young people slang exclusively. It’s actually, I think it’s more of, it might be our age slang. But it’s still something I can’t do. I’m using it as an example of something I should be able to but I just can’t. Well, but I don’t know because. And saying bro, that’s. I can’t say, I cannot call anybody bro. I can’t do that. Well bruh. Or that. Definitely. Like there’s so many of them but I feel like I’m, at this point I’m so, I’m so far behind because at some point, I’ve never wanted to, oh you seem like you’re talking that way because you’re trying to connect. Yeah. With somebody. And so I don’t think I should. But the more that you don’t do it, and the older that you get, it becomes that, then you sound like an old person and you don’t even know it. Yeah. Like right now it’s still like borderline. I can have a conversation with a teenager and they’ll just be like, “He’s a dad. “He’s not youth.” But like 20 years from now, if I’m talking exactly the way that I am right now which is most likely the case, at that point I’ll be using words that the way you perceive an old person who says like, what do old people say when something is great? Well serendipitous. I don’t know, but so be it. Like a grandfather. So be it. Yeah I’m accepting that. Right, 100%. All right, you got a rec? I do, and I do think it’s relevant which mine are usually not but this one is. There was a documentary, it was recommended to me by a friend called “Beauty is Embarrassing”. It’s not a new documentary, it’s been out almost 10 years. It’s about an artist named Wayne White who is the guy who did all the puppets and stuff for “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”. He was back in that era. Okay. Doing all that stuff. He’s a Southern boy that we really relate to. I mean he’s older than us but, a small town Southern guy who kind of got out of the South and went to the big city and pursued this career in entertainment. But the story is really about how he has continued to stay creatively engaged and had these multiple career phases. Where all of a sudden he just invented a whole new thing that he was doing, that he became known for. And it’s super inspiring to see somebody so committed to their own creative pursuit in a way that’s not related to trying to be successful in a conventional sense but just following their creative instincts wherever they might lead. Now for him the result has been that it has been very rewarding and commercially successful but he’s just a delightful guy. It’s a really awesome story. Wayne White is his name again. The documentary is Beauty is Embarrassing. Okay #EarBiscuits. We’ll speak at you next week. Let us know what you think. If you’re middle aged or hope to be one day, make us feel better about it. 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