Before we get started, we want to remind you that Good Mythical Evening is happening again on September 1st. This the R-rated version of Good Mythical Morning. If you are an adult and you feel like you’re ready for it, it could be a lot of fun. If you’re into that type of thing, you know? It gets a little explicit. It gets a little off the rails, goodmythicalevening.com. It’s exclusively on Moment House, livestreaming ticketed event. Welcome to “Ear Biscuits”. The podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Rhett. And I’m Link. This week at the Round Table of Dim Lighting we’re going on a verbal vacation. Ah. And to hear you talk about it. The way I said it last time. Teasing it last week, it sucked but you know what? It’s better to have a good story than good time. And you know, as I’ve gone through all the experiences that I have had and then tried to figure how I’m going to talk about them, I have realized that it was all worth it just for this moment you know? Like whatever I went through and however. All right, don’t put too much pressure on yourself. I’m just saying that like, I just feel like, I don’t know how entertaining it’s gonna be but I think it’s gonna be very cathartic for me just to get it all out there. Oh, but I want to give a quick interjection, reminder. Good Mythical Evening, the second one is happening September 1st. Yes. Exclusively on Moment House. It’s a live ticketed event, R rated version of GMM. If you’re an adult, grab yourself a ticket at goodmythicalevening.com a’ight? Again man, whenever something goes sideways, it’s great to have a podcast where you know it’s like, well now I know what I can talk about. I tried to keep that in mind the whole time and I do. You did? I do think it helps. That’s good. It’s good to not be in the moment but to be kind of like in performance mode. And I’ll just go ahead and get started, why not right? Yeah. I mean but I will say last night, Lily asked me, I guess she was prompted by observing me. She was just watching you? Christy and I were in bed and she comes up. That’s creepy. She comes upstairs. She’s got a job. I heard about it. She’s got a summer job. She’s a barista. So she comes home, she’s got her uniform on. I’m so proud of her. She comes in the room, we’re asking her about everything and then like, I was totally tucked into bed and then she’s like, “Is that how you sleep dad?” I’m glad that she’s turning out to be normal. And I’m like. I’m just thankful for that. I’m like, “Yeah.” And I was like, “You just use that pillow?” I was like, “You haven’t heard about my physical therapy pillow? “Yes, this is the only, “this little log is the only thing I use.” And so you like, and she’s like, “So you sleep like this?” And it was like a smushed frog on a highway, like on its back. And I was like, “Yeah.” She was like, “Why are you so weird?” Yeah, Lily’s got her head on straight. And I’m like, “For your entertainment Lily.” She was like, “Really?” I was like, “Yeah yeah, I live to entertain you.” I gotta hang out with Lily for reasons that we’ll get into in a little bit. Right. Me and Jessie and Lily and her friend actually got to go to a concert together. Yeah, I’m not happy about it. And I was. I’m okay, I’m happy for you. Lily is, she’s got her head on straight. She understands that her dad is weird. The thing that is important is if you have a weird dad. Yeah. You can get lost in the weirdness. Uh-huh. And lose perspective. Or you can understand the weirdness and just maintain some groundedness and I think that’s what she’s done so I’m proud of her. She loves me for it. You know? She’s gonna keep me around for a long time. Okay, I’ll get started ’cause there’s multiple steps to this. It wasn’t just one trip to one place. There was multiple things that happened. So we were planning on going to North Carolina as the main part of this vacation. It was like go back to North Carolina, see family. Also Jessie is working on this vacation place slash Airbnb. We don’t know exactly what it’s gonna be. The vacation home that we’ve bought there. She’s doing her design thing on it and so we’re like, “Okay, we’re gonna make the most of the time there “and stay near the cabin.” But we’ve got a little bit of time in this two-week window where we can also just do a little family vacation. Let’s just do something simple like drive to Santa Barbara, beautiful place that’s only like 90 minutes away from us. And it would just be me and Shepherd, I mean me and Jessie and Shepherd. I don’t know who put Shepherd second. Jessie and I and then our son Shepherd and Locke may or may not show up because he’s hanging out with his friend and they’re doing things and not, you know I don’t know exactly how it’s gonna go. So Jessie’s been very busy, I’ve been very busy. So we did not do as much of, let’s just say, vetting and research on this particular Airbnb that we were gonna stay at. All we knew is that it was an incredible location, like right on the beach. One of those situations where you’ve got waves literally at high tide crashing into the structure that you are sleeping in at night. You know what I’m saying? I mean you can’t go wrong with that unless the house falls into the ocean. But that’s not my problem, unless I’m in the house at the time. Sounds like you could be. It’s a wonderful thing about renting. Of course the whole time I was there I was thinking, “Man, what would it be like to own this place? “I’d be constantly worried about it falling into the ocean.” Right. So all right, there’s a couple of things that lead up to the vacation where I, we had some pictures, some old pictures that we were getting down from storage to go through and scan some for a James and the Shame related thing that we’re doing. Now it turns out we’re not gonna use any of these particular photos at this point. You’ll understand weeks from now what I’m talking about. So I’m carrying big things. Not just this big thing of pictures and getting all this crap down but I’m also like getting the suitcases and carrying them down the stairs. I carried Jessie’s suitcase. Whenever I do this kind of thing, often before a vacation, I end up unintentionally stressing out my lower back. I always thought that I was hurting my lower back before I went on vacation because it was a transition and I was trying to relax and that may be part of it but I think it’s because I’m just carrying a lot of right before you go on vacation. So when we arrive at the place, I’m kind of like, I’m already in a little bit of a bad mood ’cause I’m like, “Man, my back is hurting me “and I know it’s gonna take 48 hours “before I can paddleboard “which is the thing I’m excited about.” Is just being right there on the beach and being able to go out there and catch some waves man. You know what I’m saying? Or at least just paddle around like an old guy. Sure. But we arrive at the Airbnb and we walk in and the first thing that we all notice, not just the tall guy is that the ceilings are, low. Now I will say in the Airbnb description it did say, this is like the base. It’s the bottom floor of a two-unit thing and it’s an old place and the ceilings are a little bit low in places. There’s some beams or something. We didn’t read it closely enough. Okay. But what I’m saying is that if you are over 5’9. Wow. You would have had to duck to miss these beams that are all throughout the house. Also the bathroom seemed like it was made for Hobbits and all this was taken with wide angle lenses on the Airbnb listing. So we had really no idea it was as extreme as it was. But then I just started walking around. They didn’t have a Rhett stick for reference? No. Which they have here in the GMM studio. A 6’7 tall stick. Right. That stands in for you. We need to ship the Rhett stick ahead of time and have somebody go around and take pictures with it. But Jessie begins taking pictures of me and you know, my wife is a bit of a, she knows what she’s doing on the social media. If you follow her, you know this. So she was like, “I’ve gotta make this into a post.” She was like, “Let me just take some pictures of you.” And the only thing she said in her tweet was, “Just arrived at our Airbnb.” With three or four pictures of me standing there with my head completely gone because. Like behind a beam? Behind a beam. And I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of likes or tweet it has at this point but it is the most viral tweet I’ve ever been in personal proximity to. I mean I’ve been on Twitter since, I don’t know, well over a decade. We have a lot of professional tweets. And I am a relatively internet famous person. Never had a viral tweet. My wife just farts one out. Of course as I told her, I was in it. Of course you couldn’t see my face. I mean your bottom half. She did not tag me. So anyway, while she got a viral tweet out of it which was pretty awesome. We immediately began to, I had taken all this stuff down these stairs. Like you had to come downstairs to get to the unit where you could go in the side and then go around and get in there. And I’m settled in. And she’s mad, she’s happy about the tweet but she’s mad about the situation. And she says, “I just think we should, “we should just go somewhere else. “You’re not gonna be able to enjoy yourself, “you’re gonna be ducking around this thing.” Oh it’s only one bathroom. This is something that was in the listing that we just didn’t really look at and it’s technically, it’s got four bunk beds that are outside in the living room area kind of? So Shepherd was gonna be sleeping in this bunk bed that’s kind of out in the open and then sharing a bathroom with us. And 13-year-old needs privacy if you know what I mean? Okay. You know what I’m saying? And so you could kind of tell that he’s a little bit antsy and then Jessie’s like, “We’ll just try to find a hotel. “We can get our money back for the.” And I’m like, “We’ve already moved all our stuff in. “I’m the tall one. “I’m the one who should be complaining and I’m not. “Let’s just try to enjoy ourselves.” Not a great way to start a vacation. Yeah. Yelling at each other about how you need to try to enjoy yourself. And she couldn’t think of other ways to continue to make more viral tweets. It’s kind of like. You go into that, you dig that well one time. You know what I’m saying? Yep. So, but I was like, there’s a lot to love about this. The location is beautiful, there’s a freaking hot tub on the deck out there overlooking the beach. There you go. And I immediately got into it. There you go. By myself, no one got in there with me. No low beams over it? Well. You’re seated. But I will say the deck from the upper part is over you. So there’s no sun. That was another thing that wasn’t great. It would’ve been nice to be on the top. Wow, you’re in. You guys are you know, if you care this much, you kind of need to read the description. It sounds like. Lesson learned. Everything you’re complaining about you immediately say, “It was in the description.” I’m just gonna point that out. Well it wasn’t, you know how, they’re not gonna. That’s the art to Airbnb. They make it all positive. They make the negative positive. You’ve gotta interpret everything as a worst case scenario. I mean. If they mention it in any way and it can be interpreted as a negative, then the reality is, it’s very negative. You have to be committed to reading all the reviews. And here’s the thing I look for in reviews. I made a mistake about that, there was only two reviews. Yeah, two reviews. One of the things I’ve learned to look for in Airbnb reviews is somebody, at least one person saying something good about the mattresses ’cause that’s a big thing for me. It’s like, if you don’t have a good mattress that can suck. Of course I bring my own pillow. And a square pillow right? No I bring my own pillow. It’s small enough for me to pack. All right, well. You know that. I’m happy for you. That’s a little tip. The bed was okay. Okay. The bed wasn’t bad. But anyway, so things were slightly charged you might say. A couple of days in, Shepherd is already, he’s kind of bored because he can’t get into a personal space you know what I mean? And I was like, yeah I hate that for him ’cause he likes to get on and you know. Hide. Talk to his boys and play games and stuff. So he’s getting a little bit amped up. The TV, we wanted to, the first night we wanted because we were all caught up. We wanted to watch the “Stranger Things” finale but the TV remote didn’t work. Oh, you’re doing that thing where you’re trying to find a button on the back of the television just to turn it on? And also. Can I use my phone for this? We couldn’t connect to the Sonos sound system. So it’s like, there was a lot of things that were kind of falling apart and making it stressful and making it difficult to enjoy. Now these are very. Meanwhile remember. Privileged problems. I was in Hawaii. Remember how good of a time I had? You were having a great time. Best vacation ever. Potentially. Best vacation ever. Now so we have some good experiences, had a few good meals. I did eventually get out on the water. But then I’d say four nights, it’s like a five night thing to get kind of, before we went to North Carolina. Fourth night I’m like, “Jessie, we have to go through these pictures.” You brought the pictures. So I said, “I have a system in mind “for how I’d like to go.” Again, what I’m thinking when I approach this is we have a bunch of pictures from the past before we had digital cameras. So this is lots of, from college, from after college, from early marriage and I’m like, “I want to be able to enjoy these photos “and look through them. “So my idea is if we scan the ones that we want to scan.” Mm-hmm. Then we can enjoy them. Jessie’s expectation that she brought to this process was. Oh. “We’re gonna enjoy this right now. “Why can’t we just we enjoy it right now? “We’re looking at these pictures. “Let’s enjoy it right now.” Yeah. And, we clashed. Oh. Again, tensions already high but we clashed in this situation and it ended up getting. We got into a pretty big argument about it because I was unrelenting and she was unrelenting ’cause I was like. Yeah. “I’m gonna keep doing my system “because I want to get done with this. “I don’t want to do this tomorrow night.” You’re making a scan pile. And she’s making a memory. Basically, yeah. I want to make the memory in the future and she’s like, “Oh look at us when this so and so.” So it’s a romantic opportunity. I’m like, “Yeah but I, that’s later.” That’s later. Right now is the system. Yeah. And let me also add two other factors that are going into the stress level being high. As you know, we rarely take an actual vacation. So I’m out on vacation but I’m taking meetings. I’m joining meetings, I’m doing Zoom meetings. I’m doing emails. Yeah. We’re continuing to be bosses to some degree. For the meetings that we couldn’t miss. Yeah. There’s some, as always, it ebbs and flows but we were kind of in a season, that week especially where it’s just like, some uncertainty about some things developing, projects and stuff that are just kind of like, you can’t get out of your mind. Lurking. So unresolved things. Yep. That were kind of stressing me out and then of course, I’m trying to get ready to announce this James and the Shame project and also I, doing a lot of it on my own getting ready for this launch and doing a lot of the technical back end and even design of some of this stuff and so. Yeah. There’s just a lot right? So it’s like tensions are high and everything is adding to the tension. So we’d kind of snapped and went to bed angry. Oh. Okay? We wake up in the morning and I’m like, “Hey, let’s take a walk on the beach.” Okay. “Let’s try “to hit the reset button.” Clean slate. We are in a beautiful location, especially if we’re not in the house. It’s a good idea. If we get outside, we forget about the low beams. You know, we forget about the one bathroom. We forget about our son. I hope this worked. It didn’t. We get out on the beach, beautiful. We’re walking and then we begin talking and we kind of pick up right where we left off. About the pictures? I don’t know how it started but I, I thought this is an opportunity to clear this stuff up and I tried to kind of come into the conversation with somewhat. I was like, “I feel like we brought different expectations “into this process.” But we didn’t really get to talk about that because we kind of just ended up restating exactly what our positions were the night before and at that point. Nobody budged. We went from a couple walking on the beach to just two people walking on the beach in a line. Oh. In a line that grew. She was in front I bet? She was in front. Yeah yeah yeah. And at one point I would just say. Her legs must’ve been moving fast to stay in front of you. We were just two people on a beach or a man following a woman on a beach. Not sure what’s gonna happen there. But she was a good 50 yards is where we kind of settled you know? It was just. Oh wow. Two people walking on the beach and I was like, “Eventually we’re gonna get to a place “where we can’t go any further “’cause that’s what happens on California beaches.” And it’s on her to turn around. She’s gotta turn around at some point so she does. At which point we meet and then we start walking together and then it was a good opportunity to have that space. We began talking and I’m a calm demeanor and we actually got to. At least she didn’t turn around and. Slap me? You were like 50 yards, you see her. She’s picking up speed, picking up speed. And just runs past me. She just like, tackles you. Oh well, I’m a big man. So we ended up getting to a good place and talking about how when we collaborate on things like that we have to state what our expectations and intentions are and if we are bringing very different expectations and intentions to something, then we need to make some adjustments. It was really the, everything accumulating you know? As with most big fights that are about nothing, it’s really everything else. Which you’ve outlined. True. You know? But this was also the day that we were going to go whale watching. Whale watching? And I’m gonna tell you all about – Is it the right time of year for that? Oh it’s the right time buddy, let me tell you how right it is. I’m gonna tell you all about whale watching, how that may be the thing that completely redeemed the entire vacation in a second. But first, don’t you have a podcast? Yeah I’m doing it man, I’m just listening to you. No but you have another podcast. I have another one. I’ve got a couple. Yeah. I’ve got like three or four in the works. No I just got, I don’t want any more podcasts. “Dispatches From Myrtle Beach” is going good. If you haven’t checked it out, check it out. I know people are asking for a video version, the time’s not right for that. But we will keep it in mind. So if you’ll only listen if you can watch, I would just ask for you to give it a shot. Listen, just go. You know I think. Over there to wherever you get your podcasts and just listen for 30 minutes. Listen to episode one. If you don’t like that, you won’t like any of the other ones but. I think it’s one of the funniest things that Mythical has ever made. I think you gonna like it. Thank you. And I end up finding myself. I can’t take credit for it. It’s mostly your dad. Yeah. So I end up, even, the other night when we were at a party at my house and you were there. I ended up just playing, I just held out my phone and played a clip from Mythical Pods for everybody. Because I just want people. I’m just like, you have to understand. Right. You gotta understand what’s going on here. You need to check this out. Yeah. This is entertainment, pure entertainment. So go listen to it. There’s a lot of levels to it. There’s, I feel like it’s, people describe it as raunchy at times. People describe it as wholesome and usually they describe those things at the same time. Where else can you get that? Yeah, right. Well there’s a certain part of Hallmark stores. Oh really? Yeah, right. Yeah that’s kind of what “Dispatches From Myrtle Beach” is. Wherever you get your podcast all right, listen to it. Okay, whale watching. Okay so we had set this up ahead of time. We knew that we were supposed to. It’s on, thankfully I have good people in my life like Cara in this situation who put this on my calendar and tell me where I need to be and when I need to be there. 10 a.m.. ‘Cause you get on a boat. It’s what it said and so I’m like, “Well 10 a.m. is probably when you’re supposed to arrive “and they start telling you what you need to be ready for “or whatever.” Wrong, we go through the harbor gate there in the Santa Barbara Harbor at 9:59. Ope. And you have to get a ticket and there’s a woman at the gate. And I didn’t know where I was supposed to go. So I was just like, “We’re going whale watching.” She’s like, “Oh well you better hurry “because they leave at 10 o’clock sharp.” Oh. So at that point I’m like, “Oh crap.” We go, first of all, all the tensions that had been built. Are back. Are back. And we’re trying to find a parking space in this giant lot and I’m supposed to be on this far end of the thing to get on the boat and that was when I hit the steering wheel and said, “I hate this vacation!” Wow. Yep. So my. Definitely the vacation’s fault. Yep, my wife and my son. Thankfully only one of my children was with me at the time will forever remember that I’m sure. So I said, “I’m gonna drop you guys off. “You run to the boat, you tell them I’m parking “and tell them to wait.” So drop Shepherd and Jessie off. They’re running towards the boat. I’m trying to find, I can’t find a spot in the lot that I’m at next to the boat. So I have to go out into another lot. I park, I’m in flip flops y’all. Jessie calls me, she says, “The captain said you need to run.” The captain is now giving me messages. Yeah. “You tell the captain, I’m in flip flops.” Well I listened to the captain and first of all, have you just noticed that as you get older and then you have to run for a reason and then you’re like, “Damn, running ain’t easy.” Yeah you gotta. Like jogging okay. Six minute stretch beforehand at least. Sprinting? Sprinting in good running shoes would be difficult. Yeah. For more than a couple, like 10 to 20 yards. But running 300 yards in flip flops, I was making so much noise. Flippity floppity . It was like . People probably thought there was fireworks going off. Pre-fourth of July. I ended up making it. Literally, not the captain but the, one of the crew was like, “Well all right, you’re lucky.” Basically as I go up the little stairs that they had set there and he immediately removes them as I get on the boat. Was everybody on the boat looking at you? Yeah, I made quite an entrance. They heard me coming from at least 200 yards away. What is that, that’s a tall man running in flip flops. So the first thing I noticed as we settle in is that everyone else has a lot more clothes on. Nobody else is wearing flip flops and shorts. They’re bundled up. I’m talking pants and like, those puffy jackets. Oh gosh. With hoods! Yep. And I’m like, “Oh I should’ve read about this.” Now I do have a hoodie on because I was like, “Oh we’re going out on a boat.” It was like 80 degrees in Santa Barbara which is pretty warm for Santa Barbara. I was like, “It can’t be that much cooler out on a boat.” It was. Really? The wind chill but also just the sea air and. Where did the boat go out to? Channel Islands, so right in between Santa Cruz and whatever the other island is right next to it. Not Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz California. Santa Cruz Island. So off the coast of Santa Barbara and off the coast of this whole part of California there is the Channel Islands which technically Catalina is part of that island chain, it’s just further south. I’m gonna go scuba diving out there. Yeah it’s a beautiful place. And there’s an incredible history about the islands and a pretty sad history about the native people who were out there and how they were moved to the shore to build the mission. Huh. When the Christians showed up, they made them all leave and go work on the mainland. It was pretty horrible. But it’s a beautiful place and the reason that it is. Well it’s a small price for you to think you’re saving their souls. Don’t say you, but you mean them. Yeah I know what you mean. So the, the cool thing about this place is that there’s a lot of whale traffic. I mean this is what whale watching’s all about. You go to where the whales are. On the inside of the islands or on the outside of the island? Especially in between the two islands. Okay. Something about what’s happening with the wildlife at that place. So influence, basically makes it a feeding ground. Now he said we should, you know we’ll probably see some humpbacks. I’ve never seen a whale, never seen a whale. For some reason I thought it had to be winter, January. I don’t think it could be July. The season is, most of the year, there’s different whale types, species that will be there is what it looked like. Oh wow. But May to sometime in the fall is probably the best time. Not only for the weather but also because this time of year is when the blue whales show up. Largest animal on the planet. Really, right there? Largest animal on the planet. Now he said as we were going out. He said, “We might see a blue whale. “I will say it’s not common. “There’s only 15,000 blue whales “in the world at this point.” That’s less than you would see at a basketball game. You know what I’m saying? This is all. I’ve never seen a whale at a basketball game. Exactly, all of the whales in the world, blue whales in the world wouldn’t be able to fit inside the you know, the cryptodome just because or whatever they call it. Because they’re bigger than people. But just to give you an idea of how many people. Yeah yeah, it’s sad. So we, it took us awhile to get out there. It’s miles off of the coast and you’re going pretty fast. Probably an hour. On a big, more than an hour I think. Maybe 90 minutes to get out to the location. One of the things that we did see on the way out there when we would venture out onto the deck and freeze our asses off. Because there was an inside area where you could sit enclosed and there was a snack bar, pretty cool. Dolphin pods, now we’ve seen dolphins, you’ve seen dolphins, we’ve surfed with dolphins but when you get a couple miles out from shore, the dolphin pods are enormous. I’m talking hundreds of dolphins, hundreds, it’s overwhelming. Beside the boat? And then they see the boat and they come swim with it and they jump up. They’re smart. They know so much that we don’t know that they know. And they’re like showing off for us and stuff and I’m like, “This is pretty cool, okay. “This horrible vacation’s getting a little bit better. “What if we just see a whale?” And at that point, we’re on our way out there and the captain comes on the loudspeaker and says, “Okay we’ve spotted a whale, “looks like we’ve got a juvenile humpback.” They don’t use terms like port and stern and stuff because we’re all idiots. And he just says, “On the left, front side of the boat.” He just uses things that everybody can understand. It’s still a ways off and I was kind of amazed at how, well I go out there and I see this blowhole from what felt like several hundred yards and this guy somehow knows that this is a juvenile humpback. He’s probably got binoculars but also. Maybe a radar. Sonar. He’s seen quite a lot of whales. And sure enough, we get out there and I see, and I made a commitment. Hold on to your flip flops, we’re gonna run to the whale. I made a commitment that was not going to use my camera ’cause I was like, “I wanna be in the moment.” And what’s, if people wanna see. Right. A video of a whale, they can get one at National Geographic maybe, not Rhett you know what I mean? Yeah. So I’m like, I wanna see this, I wanna be in the moment. So right now as you’re talking about this for the video version. We’re gonna cut to some really amazing whale footage. Hold your horses because I can get to a video. Hold your whales. So we get up there and we see this humpback and it was a juvenile. So I mean, I don’t know, this thing was probably 20 feet long. It’s a large animal. It’s the largest animal I’ve been close to. Next to the boat? Like a dolphin would be? No no no. The whales don’t come up, maybe they do at times. But these whales were not like, “Hey we’re gonna come show off for you.” They’re more just like, “I’m doing my thing, I’m not scared of you.” So they get the boat, they move the boat kind of close. They turn the boat and they move close to the whale once you spot it. And what happens is these whales come up and they do their thing and they stay near the surface and they’re doing their blowhole thing and then they take a deep dive and their tail comes up. Woo, just like the commercials and they go down and he’s like, “Okay, we’re going to wait seven to nine minutes now.” Huh. Because once they do the tail thing, they’re going deep. They don’t always do the tail thing but they, if they do the tail thing they’re definitely. Seven to nine minutes. Seven minutes exactly later. Wow. The guy says, “Okay it’s been seven minutes. “Keep an eye out.” And then as he’s finishing his sentence, here it comes again. Because they’re predictable, they go down seven and nine minutes and this one apparently was a sevener. It comes up in the same spot? No and he’s like, “Oh it’s on the right side of the boat.” And so everybody goes to the right side of the boat and then we see it do its thing. So we saw two humpbacks, we ended up seeing a mother and a juvenile. It’s really cool. Huh. Then he says, “All right, we’re gonna keep going “because we need to get to the area between the two islands “which is where if we’re gonna see a blue whale, “this is where we would see it.” So we start getting close to this spot and the guy comes on the loudspeaker and he’s like, “Okay well we’ve seen a whale that’s pretty far off. “We’re not exactly sure what species it is. “We’re gonna keep moving. “Just keep your eyes out on “the left front side of the boat.” So we start going and then we get to, again kind of like from 100 yards away you see this thing come up and you see this blowhole and he says, “It’s a juvenile blue whale.” What? And I’m like, “Oh brother. “We’re seeing a blue whale.” We get up close to it, bump bump. It’s doing the same thing that the humpback’s doing. Like coming up, blowing, breathing, and then he says, before this happens he says now it’s really, first of all he says. You can kind of, he’s got some energy in his voice ’cause this is a big moment for him. And he’s like, “We don’t always see blue whales.” He’s trying to let these people, just us normies on the boat. Yeah. Understand what they’re experiencing. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and he says, “This thing’s gonna dive in a second. “They usually don’t do the.” He had a technical term for it. They don’t show the tail is what I say. Show the tail in the same way every time. It’s less common for blue whales to do that. At that moment, the thing comes up, shows its tail. Yes. And goes down. And I’m just like, I’m totally dadding out. I’m grabbing Shepherd, I’m saying, “It showed its tail son just for you.” What? Yeah. How long was this juvenile? The juvenile, I would say 30 feet or so? It’s a big-ass thing right. But then at that point he says, “We’ve spotted an adult blue whale.” What, no? But also when the thing goes down he’s like, “Okay the blue will be down from 10 to 12 minutes.” 10 to 12. Okay, so I got to see, and I was pretty close, relatively to this thing, to the juvenile. But then the adult comes up and it’s within, 50 yards, 40 yards of the boat. Wow. And at that point I was like, “I’ve already seen a blue whale. “I’ve seen a blue whale do the tail thing. “I think I’m gonna film this thing because now I can, “now I can say I was there and I enjoyed this.” And let me just show you right now what I ended up getting. This is a. Of course we know this isn’t gonna be National Geographic footage. We all understand that. But we’re gonna let Rhett have his moment. This is an adult. You zooming in here. Wow. Look he’s going, he’s going, he’s going and also. Got that tail. Does the tail. Whoa. So slow. Can you believe that? I mean I know that again. I don’t have a sense of scale. National Geographic would have a, you’d have a sense of scale. They get to 90 feet long. Okay? I’ve been obsessed with these. I don’t think I’ve ever explained this my, I was really into whales. Especially as a kid, I had whale stuffed animals and stuff and any time I went to a natural history museum, there’d be, oh this is the blue whale skeleton that’s hanging in this room or whatever. Yeah. I was just like, “I can’t believe that this thing exist.” Their heart is the size of a Volkswagen Bus. Pumps one time a minute. Hah. It sends that blood all over. We’re gonna wait 60 seconds. For the heart to beat again. And his heart’s gonna beat again. And the dude on the loudspeaker is just losing it. He’s like, “You saw two blue whales, they both did the tail thing.” Again, he’s using the technical term. I don’t recall it. The tip bucket is at the starboard bow. Yeah he did and I tipped well. And like, I go. I’m grabbing my wife and my child and I’m just like, “We just experienced this.” They don’t seem as into it as me. This is kind of a dad thing. The largest living animal. Yeah. Yeah, just right there. Just blowing for us. We go back inside. At this point the guy’s like, “All right now we need to turn around and get back home.” We go back inside, we sit back down, I look at my wife and my child in the face and I said, “I fucking love this vacation.” Turned it around for me. Yeah you’re. It was that easy. You’re like a, you’re like a ship without a moor. It’s like you’re, what’s it called you know? A ship without an anchor. You’re just floundering at sea. I was in a fragile state. Sea of vacation man. I was in a fragile state but. We’re gonna die, this is the best day ever. I mean seeing a blue whale and seeing a blue whale do that thing with its tail like that. Redemption. It made it all worth it. It really, and as my vacation progresses and things only get worse as we’re about to learn. Okay. I kept holding on to that blue whale. I stuck my hand. I just put my whole body right in its blowhole. Up to my waist and just grabbed on and said, “This is the thing that I am gonna hold onto.” Yeah. So that was the next to last day. We go home the next morning. High on blue whale fumes. Me and you have to take a little trip together. Yep that’s when I, I got back from Hawaii and then the very next morning we have to meet up and get on a plane. Yeah Rhett and Link going to Aspen, Colorado. Never been to Aspen, I was pretty excited about this. This was a YouTube panel. At the Aspen Ideas Fest. We were invited to share our perspective. It was livestreamed, you might have caught it. It was, it was quite a little trip you know? We got there that night, we got up the next day. We saw a little bit of Aspen, stayed and did our panel. Slept that night, got up next morning and then flew our separate ways. So you could continue your vacation and I could go back home. But yes, just, I knew that Colorado was a beautiful place, I had been before. Been to Vail but I had been during the winter. And never really been to a ski town in the summer time and I’d heard that oh, “You gotta go to Aspen in the summer time.” And you know this is. You just have to see Aspen. This is the ultimate rich place, you know what I’m saying? Yeah. I mean the real estate is just insultingly expensive and we were, but it’s so incredible. It’s just this incredible spot. We walked around. The airport is in this, is in the Valley. Canyon. But you drive around the Valley and you’re in Aspen proper within like I don’t know, seven minutes. The thing that struck me was that, I mean you’ve got these very aggressively sloped mountains on every side and of course, you can see the ski slopes, even though they’re green. Just right there and they come right down to the base of the mountain and it’s the town of Aspen. You could ski right into it. And the town of Aspen was established there well before there was ski resorts there. So it like, and it’s not just one road. There’s a grid of streets with all types of long established buildings. Man that bank looks like it was there in the frontier times. Kind of a vibe. Yeah it’s pretty old. So it’s like, it’s a pretty expansive, old town that still has this kind of vibe of like, I’ve been here since I don’t know. Whenever it was established. It’s been there since it was established, I can tell you that for sure. One of the highlights for us was we rented electric bikes. We were told by Robert Kinsel, the big man at YouTube who was on our panel, who we’ve gotten to know. He was like, you need to ride bikes down the Rio Grande, which I couldn’t have told you that the Rio Grande. Flew right through there. Flew right through Aspen. No blue whales. So we did that and boy that, I mean, I, there’s a couple of places I’ve been in the world where I felt like I was in a fairytale. You know what I mean? Where it’s just, this is like this weirdly curated part of the matrix that’s a little too nice. Very pristine. I mean right when we got on the bike path we stopped and we’re like, “Oh look at those mansions right there next to the creek “that leads right here to the river.” And I looked at this, it was this mansion built on the side of this slope and then right next to the house, there was a waterfall. Like a creek that became a waterfall flowing like, pretty vertically. Right next to this person’s house. Backyard waterfall. I mean this is next level stuff. And it had been curated by a landscaper but it had not been created by a landscaper. Right, not at the house. Imma build my house next to this little waterfall. Good gracious, it was. I think. It was so beautiful that it was disturbing. It was. It was almost a little unsettling. Yeah. There’s no grit. Couldn’t find any grit. But we did go to, several people had told us that we needed to go to a store called Kemo Sabe. Which was this, wearing the cowboy hat and the Stetson hat is a thing that’s kind of associated with Western ski towns. And this, we went, this place makes these incredible hats. I wasn’t planning on buying a hat, I didn’t. But they were like, hats, boots, et cetera. And they’ll, if you’re willing to pay, like I don’t know, it might be a thousand dollars or more for a hat. Yeah these are nice hats. Then they’ll, they’ll put it on your head and perfectly size it. They’ll steam it to fit your noggin. No matter how wonky your head is. Right. They can put a hat around it. But we noticed when we walked in that like five women in their late 20s who all had hats on sort of. Very glammed up. They kind of descend upon you when you enter the store and begin asking you, “Do you need help?” Following you around as you go to the different things. And I was very intrigued with the knife section. Yeah they had this total glass case full of knives. And there’s a craftsman, I think for. I ask her first. I was like, what’s the deal with these knives? Well and it’s a craftsman from Georgia who makes these knives. She starts small, literally. Like a small knife. She brings it out and it’s got this cutting board that you put this cheese knife that’s about this long, about three inches long, about three inches long and she puts it on this little magnet. To kind of make it suspend itself above the cutting board. All right. And she’s like, “The handle of this one is made from mammoth tooth.” Or something like that. Yeah. And it is $2900. I was like. Okay. “You want me to cut some cheese “with a $3000 knife.” And she kept going because apparently we looked like we could maybe get knives like this. Yeah I mean. I don’t know if it was the twinkle in our eye. She moves on and let me just, I’ll cut to the chase. Eventually she brings us to a knife that was this long. Yeah it’s like a three and a half foot knife. That the handle for the knife was the jaw of an extinct fossilized cave bear. And I’m talking about the huge cave bears. Yeah. That were on the North American Plains back in the day. And this knife was $20,000? Yes, yeah. A knife. I don’t, did she let us touch it? I don’t remember actually. No, she didn’t take that one out. I think that by that point she saw, the Buies Creek was really coming out and we were thinking. My golly, look. Oh my goodness. Look at the jaw on that knife. She’s like, “I’m not gonna get this one out “for these fools.” They’re obviously not gonna buy anything. They’re just gonna look at stuff and leave. We strolled out of there, I mean you almost bought a wallet. I thought well, a pair of gloves. Oh yeah, pair of gloves. Pair of leather gloves. After being shown all of this. So much leather in there. I was like, oh there’s a $65 pair of really nice leather gloves. We walked out of there with nothing. We did. Except this story. But we had a great time in Aspen. Now I was the, you were gonna go back to Los Angeles which I assume that just happened, breezed. You probably just got on a plane and just went straight to Los Angeles right? No I had to fly through Denver. Okay, but no complications? No complications. I on the other hand. Red carpet man. I continued with my troubles. So I was supposed to fly from Aspen to Denver and. You had no troubles when you were with me. You need to note that. Denver to Raleigh. Because you can’t fly from Aspen to Raleigh. So we get on the runway in Aspen and then the pilot comes over the loudspeaker. A lot of people talking to me over loudspeakers on this vacation now that I’m thinking about it. We’ve got a juvenile. Yeah I was having trouble deciphering between the pilot and the captain which I guess is the same person in some ways. Yep. The pilot comes on the loudspeaker and says, “We’ve got a problem, we’re too heavy.” We’re gonna remove the tallest guy with the biggest hair. Everyone start doing cardio right now. He said basically there was a mix-up and this plane was a plane that was supposed to fly to a different location but there was a mix-up because the night before, a rich person in their private plane went off of the edge of the runway and they had to shut the airport down. Because the Aspen airport is notorious for accidents ’cause it’s like this, the wind and the short runway and all that stuff. It’s a small airport. So he said, “We can take off but we have to be “at a certain weight to land and I have three options. “I can ask some of you to leave which I don’t want to do. “I can have somebody come and take fuel “directly out of the plane but that takes a very long time.” For some reason. “Or we can sit on the runway and burn fuel.” This is a great time to just burn jet fuel in the economy, you know what I’m saying? This guy says burn it for the hell of it. Oh God. So he comes to that conclusion, that that’s what they’re gonna do. They’re gonna sit on the runway. Did everybody vote? Didn’t appear to be a democracy. You have three options. Did not appear to be a democracy. We sit on the runway for 30 minutes burning fuel and then he has to add an additional 15 minutes to our route to Denver which would’ve only been half an hour and he was gonna make it 45 minutes in order to get to the right weight to land. Because that’s when weight is really an issue is when you’re trying to land. I mean just, he should just keep going up. Keep gaining altitude, Icarus that. But what ended up happening was I missed my connection because of all this. At which point I ended up getting on another plane from Denver. I was gonna go from Denver to Houston, Houston to Raleigh. While we’re in the air going to Houston, the pilot comes over the intercom and says, “We have a problem.” Houston has a problem. “The Houston airport has been closed.” Closed? “Due to weather. “So we are diverting to Dallas.” Okay, so we land in Dallas. We land in Dallas and the pilot says, “Okay, we don’t have enough fuel to make it to Houston.” I know where you could’ve got some. The first plane. Yeah exactly right? I could’ve brought it in my carryon. So we had to wait for them to fuel, all this stuff takes forever. Now I am thankful that we live in a country which is pretty well regulated. Damn. So there are things like lots of paperwork and stuff that has to be done to make sure that. That’s why people don’t die in commercial airline crashes because of the regulations. That’s why you die in private plane crashes a lot if you’re gonna die in a plane crash. Because of all this, all this logistics and stuff they have to do. But when you’re really wanting to get to Raleigh, you’re just like, “Why can’t you just fill the damn plane up “and shut the door?” I didn’t say that. Everyone remained remarkably calm but I was like, this day, this flight. Trying to get to Raleigh is becoming like a, an analogy for the way my life feels right now. You know what I’m saying? There was just a lot of, again, I’m thinking a lot about the album coming out too. Because I was, I gotta announce the album, the following week. And I don’t know how people are gonna think about this and they’re gonna think I’m dumb for doing this. I’m thinking all these things and I’m more stressed out about that than I realize. The business stuff that we continue to talk about, you know, there’s just a lot of stress and then I’m having this crazy day. We end up flying, okay so yeah. So we go from Dallas. Means now we’re gonna just fly to Houston. So we fly from Dallas to Houston. Okay. And then we’re gonna fly from Houston and Raleigh and the flight to Raleigh gets delayed. But actually I’m thankful it got delayed because I may not have made it if it didn’t get delayed. So anyway I woke up at 5:30 a.m. that day. Was on four different planes and my wife picked me up from the airport in Raleigh at like midnight. Wow. So it was a long day. Very happy to see my wife. And you know when you’re really happy to see your wife and you’re going to a hotel room, just the two of you. You know what that leads to. Oh yeah. Missionary sex. Okay. Shout out to Trevor on that one. Yeah. From the Smosh Funeral if you don’t know. And one of the things that, and you’ll understand why I’m explaining this in detail. One of the things that happens when you’ve having missionary sex. Oh god. Is your faces. Even though I’m much taller than my wife, I do have a way of getting my face close to her face during missionary sex. Okay, okay. And I was able to do that. It takes a little flexibility. And some arching of the back but I was able to do that and you know, we really had a great reunion. The reason I’m giving you these details is because I did not know at the time but my wife had COVID. Oh. Now she told me. Did that missionary evangelize the COVID? Oh she shared it with me all right. She had told me that she had a sore throat. Now my wife has told me she’s had a sore throat a hundred times over the past couple of years. Yeah. And every time she thinks she has COVID and every time she hasn’t. You got to North Carolina, allergies man. Whatever, like I’ve never seen a positive COVID test. Allergies hate COVID boy. They’re really getting a bad rep with all this COVID. Yeah. So, but she wakes up next day and feels worse. Ends up taking a test, it’s positive. I’m like, dang it. We had missionary sex, we slept in the same bed. So I’m basically like, man I’ve totally been exposed because you are really, really infectious in the early stages of COVID especially. Right before symptoms hit and as symptoms are hitting. At least with these latest varieties is what I was gonna say. What is the term? I still have COVID brain. Strains. Because I got it. Strains? Isn’t it? Variants. Yeah. Yeah. We’re forgetting very simple words which I’ll talk about in a second. But I’m like, I’m supposed to play golf with my brother and my dad the next day okay? And this was a special golf trip for a number of reasons. Mainly because we were gonna play Keith Hill’s Country Club which is the country club I grew up next to. Yeah. My neighborhood was outside the gate. I didn’t grow up in a country club. Old stomping ground. I could walk to the course. You act like it. The course, there’s an original 18 holes that is so weird how I played that course so many times growing up that it’s so imprinted in my mind. Unlike any other physical space that large, where multiple times throughout my life, a lot of times when I’m having trouble sleeping what I’ll do is I’ll play an entire round of golf on this 18 holes in my head. Because I remember every hole. I could draw, I could draw every hole for you. That’s cool, so. Almost to the point of every sand trap. If you were imprisoned and they threw you in a hole. This is how you can. I play golf in my head. Cling to reality. I would shoot so many great scores in my head. But one of the things that this has done for me is it’s given me this incredible desire to play the course again. It’s been probably 15 years since I’ve played the course. Okay. And over the past 10 years since we’ve been in L.A., multiple times I’ve tried to set up my dad and my brother and I playing Keith Hills and something has always come up. The last time it was like, the trip got changed because of COVID or something. So I’m looking at the weather, I’m thinking about the fact that I just got exposed by my wife but I’m also thinking, “You know, maybe I’m immune to it “and also I’m gonna be outside the whole day.” So, and I of course I told my brother and my dad. I was like, “I still want to play golf. “Jessie’s got COVID, we had missionary sex last night.” I didn’t tell them that but I was like, “I’m pretty sure I’ve been exposed.” And they’re both like, “We don’t care. “Whatever, we’re gonna be playing golf. “Not a big deal.” Okay. And the weather’s getting bad. Like it looks like it’s gonna maybe rain us out. I’m like of course, of course, of course I’m gonna get rained out. I’m gonna get COVID, I’m gonna not be able to play the course. You’re in a bad head space man. But the weather gods who may or may not be just God, decided to smile upon us and it did not rain at all. And I played, I know no one cares about this but I’m gonna say it anyway. Because I care about it. I played so well. The thing is is that you know if you know, playing golf can be so frustrating but when it’s not frustrating it’s almost as good as missionary sex. And it is, I mean it was just like, I could not believe how well I was hitting it. I was just hitting these drives. In fact there was a guy who was out there trying to get his, he’s getting ready to do a qualifying thing to become, not a tour pro, but like a pro shop pro. Every pro shop has a pro. Yeah. A person who is a professional golfer. He’s not necessarily playing on the tour but he’s a pro golfer. And he was like, we let him play through because he was like, “I got a qualifying round tomorrow “and I’m kind of getting in some practice.” He saw my drive and he said, “Nice piece.” Piece. Nice piece. We had never heard, we had never heard a golf shot referred to as a piece. I don’t like that. But I’m beginning to do it more often now. I don’t like that. Because a pro, potential pro is doing it. Anyway, I had an incredible time and I also was like, I don’t even think I’m gonna get COVID man. Can a guy who just recently got COVID hit the ball like this? I don’t think so. Or maybe that’s the only reason you could. Yeah, I go to sleep that night and I wake up. I wake up in chills, fever, headache, regret, I take a COVID test. Of course it’s positive. Of course. I mean, I mean you didn’t really make a responsible decision but I’m just gonna go on record and say that. Okay what part of it? What part of it? The golf part. Playing outside? Exposing your dad. First of all, you know as well as I know, COVID behaves completely differently in North Carolina. Yeah. They don’t think about it in the same way. Well you know, it was their call. In fact when the California people are like, hey I think I might have COVID they’re like, “We don’t care.” It’s just a completely different perspective there. You know and so, neither one of them got it. I will say my brother and my dad did not get COVID. Okay. My brother had already had it. My dad hasn’t had it, maybe he is immune. Yep and that’s the statement that makes people get it. That’s how I mysticize this thing. The moment you start saying, “I haven’t gotten it. “I kind of think I’m not gonna get it.” Yeah, that’s where I was thinking. That’s when you get it. Well but here’s the really interesting thing. Now the entire time that we’re in North Carolina, everything has shifted. We’re like, we were planning on being in this hotel for a little bit while Jessie is working on the house and then we were going to drive to the beach to spend the 4th of July with her family down at the beach and then come back to L.A.. And of course now it’s like, well we’re COVID buddies. Gonna be in this hotel room for who knows how long. The thing I’ve failed to mention up to this point is the nature of the hotel we’re staying in. We’re staying in a hotel. For ceilings? No their ceilings are plenty high but we’re staying in a hotel on Franklin street called The Graduate which you know about The Graduate. Have I, we stayed there one? I’ve stayed at. I haven’t stayed. I’ve stayed at The Graduate in Nashville, The Graduate in Providence, Rhode Island. It’s like a really cool hotel chain that takes the themes of wherever it is and incorporates it into a trendy, sort of hipstery situation. In this particular case, it themes it around Carolina basketball. Ew, gross. Which is almost as bad as COVID. So I had COVID but I’m also stuck. Carolina blue walls. Oh, just in my room, there is a, there are side tables with rams on them. There are pictures of Michael Jordan and Dean Smith that I cannot not look at. Just outside the room, there is a giant courtyard inside that is a literal replica of the Carolina court with two basketball goals. And then the front desk has a scoreboard with the final score from the 1982 National Championship, whichever one they won. This is not the place for you. And I thought I was gonna be there for a couple of days. And I was like, “My wife’s a Carolina grad.” I do, let me just say, I have matured around this issue over the past few years. I think just being in California where no one cares about the rivalry and also, NC State doesn’t, Carolina doesn’t really consider State a rival. I love that you threw everybody who’s really into this rivalry, you just threw them all under the bus as being immature. No, okay what I’m saying is to as I have gotten older, my belief that I, or my willingness to let NC State’s performance against Carolina or anyone else determine my happiness from afar has seemed to be foolish. I mean that’s more of a statement about NC State athletics than it is about your maturity. But tying your personal wellbeing to the performance of a group of 20-year-olds that you can’t control does seem immature. But listen, I can’t help it, it’s in my blood. I still care about sports, I’m not gonna stop caring. But I care a little bit less than I used to. So I was able to somewhat enjoy being, because first of all, before I knew I had COVID, I did walk around on Franklin street a little bit and I was like, “This is a cool spot, I gotta admit. “It’s a cool spot. “This is a cool college town, it’s a cool campus.” Whatever, I just don’t like them for a lot of other reasons. But once we knew we had COVID, we did not leave the hotel room. We told the front desk that we had COVID, we said we’re gonna need stuff brought to us. They didn’t have room service. But we’re gonna be doing DoorDash, et cetera and we need somebody to bring that to our door. Knock, walk away. So we were taking it very seriously. Stuck in this hotel room. Let me just say and this is, probably a pretty good time for you to, because I’m gonna stop talking about what my experience was. I had a great time in Hawaii. Let’s go back to that. You ended up getting COVID as well. Not from me. Yeah it was so strange. You and I got it almost at the same time being totally separate. After all of this time of us avoiding it, we both got it independently of one another. But so did everyone, everyone did. I got it, my wife got it, you got it, your wife got it. Locke ended getting up. Yep. Jenna ended up getting it. Jenna, you got it independent of both of us. Yeah. Everybody. We spent so much time together. Everybody I know who made it until this point without getting it, got it. I know very few people that didn’t get it. Christy came, yeah it’s like, you know we got back from Hawaii. I got back from Aspen and then that week, my nieces came in from out of town. First time I was hanging out with them for three days. We went to Universal Studios, took them there for the day and night. Had a blast. Next day they flew back. That night, Christy starts feeling bad and I think went ahead and tested positive. My nieces never ended up getting it but I think we picked it up. I mean you know, I’m guessing it was at Universal. She started feeling bad that night, after Universal. Yeah. It can’t happen that quickly. Maybe it was earlier than that. Yeah I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. She had these flu-like symptoms, body aches, headache, fever. Just being totally, just grounded in the bed you know? Just couldn’t do anything. My throat was scratchy, never had a fever but I think it was a couple of days after that I tested positive. Around the time when I was gonna come back to work. So that’s when things started getting really frustrating because I. We had been gone on vacation kind of a staggered vacation and then you get COVID a little bit after me. Yeah. You’re waiting to test negative so we can actually work again. When you have so much that piled up and was ready to go, I really experienced flashbacks to the beginning of the pandemic and just remembering how difficult it was to like, have so much that you felt like you needed to do. But you couldn’t, I could do so little. So you got better before me. Well, but we haven’t talked about how bad it did get. Yeah it was like. For me. You have this attitude of like, well I’m fully vaccinated, boosted. I’m just gonna go ahead and get it. Let’s just get this thing over with. Because it won’t be that big of a deal anyway. I mean when Lando got it, actually before our Hawaii vacation, he didn’t feel great for a day and a half and then. He was 12. He was, it was not a big deal. For one day. Well, and. But yeah it was freaking tough man. For a lot of people, for a lot of people, the original Omicron wave which happened around Christmas was very mild for everyone I knew who had got it. But this, I’m pretty sure we both. All of us probably got BA.4 or BA.5 which is the new variant right? Yeah. I would not characterize this as mild. I mean obviously I was not anywhere close to going to the hospital or anything. But I just haven’t gotten sick. There weren’t any breathing issues with anybody. In a long time. But it was more like down with Christy and with you, it was like flu symptoms. Well for me, I had a 103 point something fever which is like, that’s like whoa, you getting up there, you might need to go to the emergency room. I wasn’t gonna do that but that was what my fever was. Chills were incredible. It, the headache was really intense and there was probably a 24, a 48-hour period in which I would, in the, at night time, it would get like that and then I would kind of be okay during the day. I recovered pretty quickly after that. We spent about five days in this hotel together. Anyway, I’ll just say that you know, it’s not just a cold. It might be that for a lot of people and I hope it is. Yeah. For most people but it’s not just a cold. And now it’s also, I mean obviously the thing that from, since we’ve learned more about this is the worrisome thing is this long COVID which is affecting a reasonably high percentage of people who are having these symptoms. Some debilitating symptoms for an extended period of time. That’s why this, “It’s just a cold, forget about it. “It’s just at worst a flu.” Is just a bull, ignorant way to think about this thing because it’s just not consistent with the truth about this which is ooh, this thing is gonna keep infecting people and we don’t know about these longterm symptoms and this is not a small deal. We can’t, oh it’s just gonna become endemic and it’s gonna be fine. Hopefully that will happen eventually but both of us have been talking about, and I was kind of, I said, “Is this in my head?” But over the past few weeks, it has become an inescapable fact that I, something happened to my brain. I got the COVID brain. Forgetting very simple things that I obviously knew. Thinking about something, losing my train of thought in the middle of something. Hopefully these are temporary symptoms that will go away. But I’m gonna tell you right now, it’s a real thing and it’s a big fricking deal like on a global scale that we will be figuring out and reckoning with. Think the globe’s gonna get a little dumber? If we all get equally dumber, then maybe it’s not that bad. But it’ll be more difficult to solve problems as a species. Now I don’t know what it says about me but I’ve had, I hadn’t had the fidelity of being able to ascertain whether my brain fog is just a way of life or if it’s, a little bit. I mean I don’t know man. I just think that. Because I have name fright. I can’t remember people’s names. We were talking about my therapy with my family the other day and Lily was like, “What’s your therapist’s name?” And I was like, I got this deer in the headlights look and I couldn’t remember my own therapist’s name. I had to look it up on my phone. That kind of stuff has been happening to me and I’m like, it was sudden and it was totally tied to that experience and again, I’m trying to not to. Do you know his name by the way because? I still can’t remember it. Your original therapist? No, I remember his name. Yeah. My new therapist. No, I don’t. I’m joking. I do remember his name now. You want me to say it? Don’t say it. So anyway, I mean not to get on the soapbox there but yeah, it’s like you know. It ain’t over. Yeah I felt. It ain’t over. I do feel that having gotten it and it not being fun at all and not a breeze at all. I do feel differently about it. And also it’s just like, you know, I don’t want people to be going around super scared and I understand all the negative consequences to living a life of fear and I don’t want to do that and I haven’t been doing that. But it just kind of sucks that the reality is we can’t just move on like everything’s normal. That’s why we still take these precautions at Mythical. We get tested every week and people wear masks and it’s not gonna completely protect you but. And I think when you. You gotta do something. When you do get it, just giving yourself permission to recover. Give yourself time. You know? Instead of trying to push through which they’re actually. I think that’s good advice, that’s safe advice. I think I’ll leave it at that. It’s sound advice because trying to push through physically or even mentally can prolong your recovery. Okay, so we eventually get to a place where we, now we’re still testing positive. But Jessie’s family are like, “Y’all come down to the daggone beach.” And we’re like, well we’re gonna, of course we’re not gonna get close to you and we’re wear masks the whole time. And of course again, North Carolina, they’re like, “Okay, whatever you want to do. “We don’t care.” So we go down there and I didn’t, thankfully I didn’t have the fatigue and so I was able. I kind of felt like, I’m kind of back. Fatigue was a big part of it for me. So thankfully I didn’t. Head cold, congestion and fatigue. Those were my big things. So we were kind of staying away from everybody as well as we possibly could. Thankfully none of them ended up getting it. But you know, on July. So on, we had July 4th, little celebration, get together. And then July 5th was the day that I announced the James and the Shame project. I was like “Hey, this is something I’ve been working on. “Here’s a little Instagram post.” So on July 4th during the day, Jessie and I were like, “Hey we haven’t really been outside to take a walk “on the beach.” Because we’ve been trying to really take it easy and fully recover but we both felt like we could go out on the beach and take a walk. And so we go out. I’m kind of feeling like you walked together this time. Yeah we’re walking side by side, not in a 50-yard line. Because things were great with us. And we are walking down the beach and literally the first. It’s so, I love the North Carolina coast. I mean I’m just gonna be honest with you. When you go in July and you get in that water. Oh yeah. You just start thinking, “Man this is better.” I’m sorry, the beach is better here. The beach is better than California beaches. Let’s just be honest. It may not be as pretty. Bath water. Or as pristine because it doesn’t have the mountains and the cliffs and stuff. But there’s nobody there. When families, you start feeling like you might be too close to another family when they’re 100 feet away. You know what I’m saying? There’s just so much room. Hey, you don’t have to tell me. I talk to my dad every week. Yeah, right. So, but the first little family group that we come to recognizes me. “Oh, Rhett. “Hey, can we get a picture?” And I said, “Yeah I do want to let you know.” I didn’t have my mask on because I’m walking outside and I’m like, “I’m recovering from COVID “so I don’t want you to get too close.” Okay. I was like, I didn’t want to be like, “Don’t get too close to me.” Without telling them and I didn’t want to let them get close to me because I’m trying to be respectful. So we ended up getting a picture and this guy and this girl were kind of on. I tell some fans I have herpes sometimes. Yeah, just don’t touch my lips. There’s, there are probably like two people. It’s a weird picture, I’m sure. I didn’t see it but I’m sure it’s a weird picture. Probably taken in landscape given the fact that they’re this far from me. It’s like you’re photo bombing their photo. I thought nothing of it. You know, it was a slightly weird interaction ’cause I’m like, “Don’t touch me. “Don’t get close to me ’cause I’m recovering from COVID.” And then the reason I said that, the next day I share on Instagram about James and the Shame because I got this comment on my Instagram post. Not gonna say who it’s from. “I actually met this due on the beach yesterday “and he seemed annoyed that I recognized him. “Don’t meet your heroes I guess.” Hah. Seemed annoyed. Dude, I told you that I was recovering from COVID. Hah. I mean I almost responded to this comment but then I just like, I’m gonna wait and we’re gonna talk about COVID on the podcast. But I told you that I had COVID and that’s why I didn’t, you think I made that up? Let me read it. Not so I can say the person’s name out loud but I’m going to. You don’t have to say the person’s name out loud. Actually met this dude. And also. So doesn’t sound like a fan. Weird. It had, it had to have been. It was the only person I met on the beach the day before. So he wasn’t like a significant other of a fan? He was the one who said Rhett. Oh. So, anyway. Thanks for this. Thanks a lot for that. Dude. Should’ve just given him COVID. Don’t meet your heroes, they might have COVID and tell you to not get close to them. Don’t be so annoyed about it. The assholes, what? Don’t be so annoyed. Him, he shouldn’t be so annoyed about it. Is that what you mean? No, you man. Why are you so annoyed? Well you know it’s like, because. I actually had a conversation with this dude about what you’re commenting about. He seemed annoyed then too. Well I think the reason that it gets on my nerves so much. I know why it gets on your nerves. No it’s because, like all it takes is one little story like that for people to be like, “Oh you know that guy’s actually an asshole in person.” And so I’m, I don’t just, I’m not just nice to people because I have a reputation to maintain. I’m nice to people because I am nice to people and I also appreciate if people want to come up and if they’re fans of the show, I really appreciate that. That day on the four plane day where I’m in these airports and I’m rushing around wondering if I’m gonna get, lots of people came up to me that day. And I was like, “I’m having a really shitty day “but I’m not going to let them know it.” You know what I’m saying? So I was like, put on a smile and had a good interaction. I just thought that was especially. That’s a tough one man. You know. Par for the course with the life you’re living now. But it was kind of sort of proper way to wrap up the vacation. Right. Because that was the kind of thing that, it just characterizes the whole experience. But I will say that coming back, fully recovering except for some brain fog and some forgetfulness, whatever is happening. And then you know, it’s really nice when you can get back home and be happy A, to be in your own home and be like, “I really like the home that we have. “I like the home that we have built.” Yeah. Not just the home itself. The house itself. I love my toilet. But the people in my home. And then to have a job that you want to come back to. There’s a lot, there is a lot to be thankful for. When your vacation sucks, yeah. Well it does put that into perspective because I think that there’s you know, plenty of people who are like, “Man I hate my job. “All I do is look forward to a vacation “and then when I’m on vacation “all I do is dread the fact “that I’m gonna have to go back to work.” It’s nice to be like, “You know I’m ready, I’m ready to get back at it.” It has been tough coming back though after everything being delayed because of our, especially me being sick. It delayed our whole production schedule. It’s been tough to try to, because we’ve had to cram everything in. It’s like jumping into the deep end. Yeah. When you’re not on vacation. Everything has been stacked on itself. Which is why we’re going on another vacation. We’re going on a long weekend vacation. We’re about to go back to Colorado. We’re going to meet our college friends. Yeah I think. And we’re gonna go white water rafting. Yeah, if we’d survived, this’ll make another great podcast. Yeah if is is the last podcast just ’cause, I don’t know. Either one of our college friends killed us or something bad happened white water rafting. Well I have said on our group thread that this is the perfect setup for a horror movie or a thriller. Yeah. Because it’s like, you get together with your college friends that you haven’t really hung out with in this fashion in 20 year. When any of my boys. Everybody’s having a great time. Start getting topless, then because when you something bad is gonna happen. Somebody’s gonna die. Yep. So yeah we might have an incredible story to tell next time. All right, but in the meantime you got a rec. Yeah go whale watching. I’d never thought I wanted to go whale watching because yeah just think about everything but seeing a whale assuming that you won’t see one. But man, even in the worst vacation ever, you saw all those whales. Now I’ve set the standard, I saw two blue whales and they did the tail thing. Yeah yeah. Go whale watching huh? So I can’t guarantee that you’ll have to kind of experience but I will say you should dress warmly, definitely take anti-nausea medicine. I took Dramamine. Still got a little, I started to feel a little bit seasick on the way out. But I was like, I’m just gonna breathe deeply and get through this and I did, it was fine. All right, solid rec. That would be my only concern for the Neal family. There might be some sickness that you might encounter. Maybe I’ll see one when I’m going scuba diving. Yeah. That would be crazy. That would be awesome, yeah go whale watching. All right, we’ll speak at you next week. #EarBiscuits and of course, you can always call and let us know what your reaction is to listening to the latest episode. 1877. 888. What is it? Is it 888, yeah. 1-888-EARPOD1. COVID brain. Hey Rhett and Link, this is Jake from Albuquerque, just listening to Link recall his family vacation in Maui and it was very fitting because I was there around this time last year where I proposed to my girlfriend at the top of Haleakala and now we are set to be married and we’re actually flying out to Greece this week for that marriage. So I don’t know, Link if you’re just following me around, maybe you need to go to Greece next year. I can tell you all about that trip when I get back. Thanks for all the content that you put out there. Everything’s great, love “Dispatches From Myrtle Beach”. Can’t wait to recognize your dad. Hi Rhett and Link, it’s Hayley. I just wanted to come on and say that I am just so excited for Rhett’s solo music project. I am just so excited that you guys are being able to do separate things. You know I also love Link’s podcast with his dad and it’s just been awesome to see you guys branch out and do separate things but also stay together and do your funny stuff. Hey Rhett and Link, so I have a friend named Kefir, that is not why I’m calling. I’m calling because I have a bottle of kefir in front of me for the very first time. Which I have just tried and it was all because of you because I’d never heard of this in my entire life. First opinions, I got the blueberry. I think it tastes pretty good. It just reminds me really of liquified yogurt which is fine and I’ll let you know if it starts making me happy. To watch more “Ear Biscuits” click on the playlist on the right. To watch the previous episode of “Ear Biscuits” click on the playlist to the left. And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your mythical best.