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 Oval Table of, it’s kind of a mix of outdoor and indoor lighting, it’s very nice, we’re going to be answering questions that we’ve never answered before that we asked you to ask us, and I believe that we have the people who ask those questions present. Ah-huh. Right there. So we haven’t talked a whole lot. Yeah. Because we’re like, we’re moving around, we’re going from thing to thing, getting ready for the next thing. How’s your Mythicon Rhett? Well, I just took some Pepto. I mean, I’m doing great. I also just took some Pepto. Yeah, I saw that. I went up to Jenna and she was in kind of a group of people I leaned in, and said, “Can you gimme some Pepto?” What’s happening for you down there? Well, hopefully nothing, and that’s why I took Pepto. But then, when you see somebody taking pills, do you just… That’s not a good habit, just when you see somebody taking pills, then say, “Well, can I have some of those pills?” ‘Cause that’s what happened. Well, when I saw that you were chewing it, I was like, “Oh, it’s a chewable.” Yeah. Well, that’s really my jam. You have a thing- I love to chew. Well, but also you have a thing where you don’t really know when a pill is a chewable, or a, what’s the alternative, swallowable? Swallowable. Swallowable? Yeah. And I’ve tried to explain this, that typically the flat discs are chewable and the capsules are swallowable. Right, but I’m pretty sure you can chew everything. If you try hard enough, yeah. I mean, when it goes to your stomach, it’s like your stomach chews it. I don’t know, I feel like I’m really getting the most out of whatever I’m consuming if I actually chew it. That’s why I chew pudding. But no, I mean, I can see that you’re concerned about my stomach, but it’s totally fine, and Link’s is very much fine. ‘Cause he’s just taking preventative Pepto-Bismol at this point. It’s great, a little bit doesn’t hurt. And I think it makes your poops- Real dark- Purple. Yeah, real dark. Makes your tongue dark. It’s like the color of your jacket. Hey, later on tonight on our main stage show, we can both stick out our black tongues, because that’s what happens when you put that bismuth, whatever the active ingredient is. Now? No, not yet, you gotta wait. Okay. Congrats on the show last night, James and his Shame was awesome. That was a lot of fun. Almost too much fun all at once, too early. You seemed like you were having the time of your life. I was having the time of my life. Jessie was having the time of her life too. Yes she was. I was watching from that vantage point over there for a little bit and I was like, “Wow, I don’t wanna be a distraction.” I went away and then I came back later to give approving nods of your performance. I felt those. But somehow, just based on what Charles said at the beginning of your podcast, it feels like me and Charles are in little bit of a competition. I mean, I don’t feel like I started it, but he was talking about he didn’t want to show me up and he didn’t want me to show him up. Right, right, yeah. He kind of stole your thunder when he made an appearance and everyone was cheering for him, not you. Well, but I do want you to know, just to be prepared today for the next hour or so, I don’t have any barbecue sauce. I’m not gonna do any dancing demonstrations. Man, you got Nancy up there, I love that. Pretty great. Pretty great, yeah. Is that just- That was like a thrill? A typical Friday night for them? I think so, yeah. I love it. It seemed like it seemed very automatic for them, didn’t it? You want to answer some of these questions that we’ve never answered before? Let’s get to some questions. You want me to read it? So what we’ll do is we got a microphone down here, we think that everyone who has a question is present. We’ll just ask it and then we may ask you why’d you ask that question? Bonnie Stewart? Right here. Bonnie’s right here. We’re gonna bring a mic to you, Bonnie, but I’m gonna read your question while the mic is coming to you. So Bonnie asks, “If you were a ghost, what location, item or person would you haunt? Do you have life insurance taken out on each other?” Wow. That’s kinda like a hard left turn in the middle of this inquiry. Well, I can see how that those might be related. I like ghosts. “If you’re gonna die, who do you wanna haunt and does the other person benefit from your death?” Is basically the two-part question. Am I reading this right, Bonnie? Yes, I mean, basically I like ghosts, so I have to ask. And then, also I work in entertainment production and it’s something my husband and I have always discussed is like, “I wonder if they do that.” I figure you have to, but I’m just curious. Okay, well let’s start with the ghost part. You seem like a demented person. You’re in the right place. If you were a ghost, what location item of person would you haunt? Well, I mean, first of all, I think the most strategic thing would be haunting you, because I feel like it would be a way for you to continue to have a vibrant career. You could lean into my ear and say, “That one’s not chewable.” No, I’m just saying that- “Ooh, that one is chewable.” Yeah, I mean I would definitely do that. I would give you advice, but I’m just saying that if you didn’t want to have to rethink everything, it would be simpler for you if we just continued to be a duo, but I was a ghost, kind of like that Smosh movie “Ghost Mates”, remember that? Basically we would just be following the plot of “Ghost Mates”. Right, so T-Pain is now involved in this? Ah, hopefully, yeah. Would people see you? You’re not visible. So I would just seem very, very fixated on your memory. I think I would function like a typical ghost, which is, I don’t know if it’s real or not. And that’s what a lot of people would think about you. I think I would just call you my imaginary friend. Okay. Which is not far from reality. I imagine that you’re my friend right now. I don’t know how to feel about that. I mean, do you imagine that I’m your friend? I mean, I think, I believe that you’re my friend, Link. Right, so, but if you were to think about it in an abstract way, you’d be imagining our friendship. And doesn’t that make me your imaginary friend? Okay, technically yes. Yeah, we can be each other’s imaginary friend, dude. But who would you haunt? It could be a new aspect of our relationship. Okay, we can talk about that later. Whether or not we will become each other’s imaginary friends. I know that you really like scaring people. Oh, I love it, yeah. So you really, I hate your question, because I don’t like being scared and I get afraid if I need to scare somebody. So it’s like, I would just be the worst ghost. I think I would definitely have to possess somebody. Is that an option? Demons can do that. Oh, demons. I don’t think ghosts… You wanna be a demon? It’s a different question. Yeah, I’d rather be a demon. I do think it would be fun though. Again, I don’t really know what I believe about this, but if I died and was suddenly a ghost and it was like, “Oh, that is a real thing.” I think I would haunt a very popular atheist, like Richard Dawkins. So I would just give Richard Dawkins hell until he breaks down he’s like, “Ah, they’re real! Ah, my life’s work is ruined.” And then you’re like, “It’s just me Rhett, that guy from the internet.” Yeah. “It’s started out as a hypothetical question in a live “Ear Biscuit”.” I don’t know why I’m using that voice. Is that the voice you would use? No, I’d probably keep my own voice. I mean, but it would be more ghostly. Tell me to choose something. No, I’m not gonna- I know you’re not my puppet. No, I’m not gonna, you can imagine that I did that. You’re not as cooperative as my dad. Okay, second part of your question. Yes, we did have an awkward conversation with the people who help us make these decisions about insurance and such. And we do have an insurance policy on one another, which is pretty- It’s wild. Think about it. I mean, ’cause you get to a certain point and you’re like, “Well, what do we do if one of us kicks the bucket? Or when one of us kicks the bucket?” And if it’s sooner, I think the other person gets more money, I don’t know. Is that how it works? I can’t remember. Do we have it on us? Let’s read the life insurance policy. Yeah, I don’t have it. There’s, yeah, so if it’s, is it one of us? Is there anything wrong with talking about the specifics of this? Well, only- Of course not. Nothing other than the fact that you will almost definitely be wrong about it. Other than that, yeah, it’s totally fine. I mean there was, it was probably like 40 pages and then you just get to a point where you’re just signing it and saying, “Okay, this is something about if I die, Christy takes over from me.” Christy. Or she just gets the money that I would get. Based on the contract that I read- And you gotta keep doing stuff. Based on the contract that I read, Christy might want you to die. It’s not, I have a lot to offer. She gonna be sitting very pretty. Yeah, that’s how we designed it. It’s gotta be some silver lining. It’s gotta be really sad if one of us dies, but at least it’s like, “Good gosh, now look at all this money.” Here’s the thing, we talked about this on the way over here and we made sure not to tell Christy about this, because we flew separately. So Link and I and Jessie were on and Stevie as well, were all on the same flight over here. And then Christy came with Shepherd and Lando and Lincoln later, and we were like- ‘Cause we didn’t want him to miss school. And I was like, “What if this plane goes down?” Welcome to my world. She said, “Welcome to my world.” The reason we didn’t bring it up is just- You’re always thinking that. I was just thinking we didn’t want you to think about this, but basically what would happen, and this is what we talked about, was Christy would just be in charge. That’s right baby. She said, “That’s right baby.” And then very quickly it turned into that Christy was gonna do something with Cassie, Stevie’s girlfriend. It was gonna be the Christy and Cassie Show. And we thought that that would be- That would be great. Pretty awesome. Yeah, so what I mean, but, so there you go. The answer to your question, we literally had to think through all the scenarios, was like, “Well if one of us dies, what if both of us die? What if I…?” We figured it all out. We’re totally ready. Ready to die. Ready for it. And haunt Richard Dawkins. Just like the Biggie Smalls album. Okay, next question is from Jasmine Lopez. Where’s Jasmine? Oh. Right here. Okay, I love this question Jasmine. Nice hat, Jazz. Can I call you Jazz? Jazzy, Jazz, Jazz. Smooth like Jazz. I could call you Jazzy, but that’s what I call my dog. Keep it as Jazz. This is, there’s a lot here- Peanut butter J, long-legged peanut butter J. Can I get to the point? I’m allergic. I also call him that. I also call him Jazzy Jeff. DJ Jazzy Jeff Props. I call him that. Jasmine says, “My man and I broke up, who gets to keep you?” Oh. “Him that introduced me to you all, or me that fell in love from the second episode I watched.” Oh. Oh wow, okay? So first of all, you’re here, he’s not. Exactly. And the tickets were his birthday gift, but since we stopped talking, I’m here. So I thought that you would take a special interest in this, because- I’m very interested in this. You have a tendency, I’ve observed to believe that if someone is into something, someone else close to them cannot also be into that. One of the best examples of this, and the earliest example of this was when your stepsister Emmy just liked music. So you decided, you’re like, “I can’t like music, she’s taken music from me.” The whole vertical of music, not a genre, all music. I remember like it was yesterday when my mom told me that, she said, “Now Link, Jimmy and I we’re getting a divorce and you’re still gonna be my son…” She didn’t say that. And the first thing I remember saying was, “Oh, thank God I can like music again. I won’t be related to that stepsister of mine.” And now I love music. So it’s like a lot of good can come from a really proper divorce. You know what, you just, sometimes life gives you lemons and- I just threw them at him. Make orange juice and let the world wonder how you did it. You know what I’m saying? Okay, what’s your perspective on that Jazz? On the lemons? Just on, I mean it seems like embedded in this question is the same principle that you feel like you both can’t go on liking us in the same way. No, because he looks exactly like you. So I’m stuck, yeah. Oh, he looks exactly like me. Well, then why’d you break up? She saw the life insurance policy. Something like that. Okay, well this has gotten very complicated all of a sudden. So it seems like can you each choose one of us? Yeah. And only watch, you only watch- Half of the screen. Do you wanna watch Rhett or do you wanna just watch me? Because you wanna watch me ’cause you’re over him. Yeah, I understand that. I mean, we did think for a while about selling some sort of device that you could place over one half of the screen, but then we realized that’s just paper. Yeah, and physical.com buy paper so you can cover up the one you don’t like as much. But interestingly what we could do to make that even easier, and I don’t wanna sign our team up for any unnecessary work. But there could be- Like we never do that always. Yeah, that’s one of the things that happens when we talk is that we end up giving work to people by accident. Right. Stevie had to come up with crabs inside of crabs last night. She’s gotta figure out what that means. But I think maybe some sort of filter that just edits one of us out completely of an episode. I think you should do the same thing that we tell everybody to do when they complain about not being able to play along with the games, just put your hand over the answer. Put your hand over the answer. Reddit, is Reddit here today? Is Reddit represented? Okay, all right. When’s the second episode? This guy’s got an idea. The second episode. He introduced her and then she started from the second episode. Oh yeah. On my own. Why not the first episode? The second episode was on my own. The first one was together with him and I was like, “Okay, that’s potential.” And then it came out in my YouTube list and here I am now. Okay, so you just feel like you got what you needed out of that relationship. Right, and now we’re getting twice the views. Exactly. All the welcome here. Just agree to not talk to each other. And see over the internet thing, yeah. Matt Walker right here. Okay, we’ve moved these people to the front. Hey Matt. Hey, how’s it going? Great, now on a scale of 1 to 5, how intelligent do you think your question is? Zero. Off the chart. Just so long as we’re clear. Right, yeah. Matt, asked us, “Do you think you could survive for an entire year only eating 5-pound Velveeta cheese blocks?” Followup question, “Just how thick do you think your blood would get?” Okay Matt, I have a question for you. Sure. Are you preparing for some sort of challenge? No, I can give some backstory if you want. So at work, we work in a room with no phones. We get very bored and come up with the strangest questions that we can think of. So this is just to pass the time and we figure that out. You said that you work in a room with no phone? We do, it sucks. You get bored. Yeah. This the White House? What are talking about? Oh, you’re not gonna tell us? I can’t, I’d have to kill ya. Okay. And take out that life insurance policy. There’s a life insurance joke in there somewhere. Okay, why do you think we can answer this intelligently? 5-pound Velveeta cheese blocks. It turns out that’s the biggest block you can buy. And we calculated that if you buy one a day and eat that whole thing, it’s about $45,000 a year of just Velveeta. Okay, so you’ve got the budget covered. Right. Let’s talk about the health impacts. That’s the followup question. $45,000. Do you have to eat all five pounds every day? That’s a challenge, I guess. Well, that’s not gonna work. I mean, all you can have is Velveeta cheese, which is not even really a cheese, it’s probably a cheese product. Right, mostly plastic. Oh man, that would be a rough year, first of all. I can guarantee you that. Yeah, I think it would come to halt pretty quick. The inner workings. Can you drink water or do you get the moisture just from the cheese? There’s water in. There’s water in it, you’re kidding? Just all your moisture from the cheese. If you squeeze a block of Velveeta you get cheese water out of it. A 5-pound block. Yeah, that’s important. Yes, you’re drinking cheese water, eating cheese. Hey, and there’s a thing. Christy is a cheese lover. You’re a cheese lover. Christy got me cheese for my birthday. I like cheese, but I just don’t understand. I think it’s something to hear Christy talks about. It is like there’s something that happens in her loins. Well I don’t wanna get, I don’t wanna say anything inappropriate about your wife while she’s just behind you in my line of sight. She’s not in my line of sight. This is all on purpose. But I do believe that the same thing that happens in your brain during sexual stimulation happens in your brain while consuming cheese and chocolate. So this might be something you need to look into. I like to stay hydrated and so that’s my thing, through all intimate exercises. I’ve heard that. So now if she wants, if I want, I’m gonna serve her I guess Pizza and Velveeta. Yeah, I’ve heard that you’re known to take a water break in the middle of an encounter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe you could start taking a Velveeta break. You just keep a block of cheese next to the bed. I mean, that’s a big block of cheese. I think that might count as like a threesome that. Oh, okay. A cheesesome. “Just how thick do you think your blood would get?” You would die. This is not a good idea. But I do think you should try it and I think you should start a YouTube channel. I’ll send you the link. Okay. Do not do that Matt Walker. Where you wanna go now? You wanna go here? Yeah, is this Evie or Eve Fields? Yeah, right here. Eve Fields, hello, Eve. Okay, this is, this is a multi-part question here. “Now y’all know that there we’ll come a day when you retire and stop creating content, but if everything were to disappear besides the merch and the memories you’ve left on people, what kind of impact or legacy do you think you would have left in that hypothetical situation?” That’s interesting, but hypothetical, ’cause how would that ever happen? Yeah, ’cause we think about, and we’ve talked about on this show before, just this reams and reams of content over 16, we’re looking 20 years eventually it’ll be more than that. So much of our lives are on the internet. I mean, just look at “Ear Biscuits” alone. And we’ve talked about how much is there. I take strange comfort in that. And now that you’ve taken that away from me, hypothetically, yeah, the merch on its own. We got some good merch and we got a lot of merch too. We’ve said a lot of things on T-shirts. But I don’t know what people would conclude if they only had the merch. They’d be like, “Were they NASCAR drivers?” One of ’em was a snake, there’s just so many yeah, we’re still good. There’s just a lot of different conclusions. Rub some bacon on it, that’s a old shirt. That was one of our first merch items. It still works, the technique still works, rubbing bacon on things. Boil for safety. Boil for safety. There’s just a lot of things that out of context wouldn’t make a lot of sense at all. Now if you got, if you got hold of the “Book of Mythicality”, that would explain a lot. That would help. That feels like cheating at that point. So let’s just say that doesn’t exist. I just like he’s got the feel good Mythical Morning shirt on. You know what? I think that even through our merch, there would be this message of feel good, accept yourself, accept others, and let’s be nicer to people. Yeah. I do think that a lot of the slogans that we put out into the world are things that come from our mouths and our conversations, but they also are just a great indication of the relationship we have with Mythical Beast that we kind of feed each other in that energy, like you gather the people that have similar energy and I’m just glad that when we meet you guys at the meet and greet lines or see your faces here and we soak up your energy that there’s so much positivity, there’s so much acceptance and a welcoming vibe that everybody doesn’t look the same, everybody is not into all the same stuff. It is an eclectic group, but you have this… Now, if you keep yelling, I cannot keep a train of thought. All right, kick that person out. You are not accepted. You were judged. Well, you know what I was trying to say? Well, I think that’s my favorite thing about being here is that there’s a group of people who they get all of the inside jokes and all of the references. Because it’s one thing when you’ve got a friend and you know somebody in your town or whatever, that’s another Mythical Beast. But I assume, and I can kind of see it on your faces that being in the presence of other Mythical Beasts in this way where it’s like this unspoken thing is pretty cool. That’s what we were hoping for. This is literally the coolest thing ever for amazing. And this isn’t the first thing thing I’ve ever seen with you guys. So I just threw myself right into this. Outstanding, 10 out of 10. 10 out of 10. Well, I told Jessie, ’cause she hasn’t performed in quite some time. You wouldn’t know that based on how she did last night. But I kept telling her, I was like, “You have nothing to worry about. This is the warmest group of people that you will ever imagine. We could literally get up there and just bomb so hard and they would tell us that we did a great job.” Well that’s kind of the reason I wanted to ask this, because for me, what you guys have given me is so much more than just the content. I’m not trying to get sappy here, but I wouldn’t have- Do it. Okay, let’s do it. I would not have come out as transgender if it wasn’t for you guys. You have made such a safe and welcoming place. I have never felt more accepted and loved here. And you guys just exuded that. And for me, the reason I ask this, is because your impact is so much more than just the surface content. I mean, yes, you’re eating crabs inside of crabs, which some might say is not the highest quality content out there, but just the way you embrace the weirdness and all of us, and also on “Ear Biscuits” just being so open about you guys’ stories and your own histories and journeys just helps someone like me be like, feel comfortable with actually being curious about themselves and exploring that. So just, you guys are great for that. And I really thank you for just the positivity and love. Thank you for sharing that. Thanks Eve. Now yeah, that means a lot to us. And I wanna go back to the beginning of that question was about retirement, wasn’t there? Yep, retirement. You’re talking about retirement. Let’s talk about that for a minute. We’re at an interesting point in our careers right now. There’s a lot of opportunity and honestly there’s a lot of different directions that we could take Mythical in. And, but because and I think a lot of it has to do with being middle-aged. Who are you talking about? I mean, yeah, you’ve broken the 45 barrier, I think that’s past middle-aged. I think is, see for you, you’re past middle-age and you just start to think about all right, the future, you think about by the time we’re 50 in our early fifties, then it’s where the kids are gonna be out of both of our homes. You think about is there, do we have the ability to retire at some point earlier than most people? Conceivably. We also have the ability to like I was saying, take the direction of Mythical in a lot of different ways. We’re trying a lot of things that aren’t just about the content we create, but there’s a whole business side of running Mythical and saying, all right, what are the initiatives that we want to invest in? One example, the Mythical creator accelerator, you may be familiar with that we invest in up-and-coming creators who are building their own brand and we want to be footsteps that they can follow in when our experience was we really didn’t have anyone to emulate. So we saw that as an opportunity. It’s a business opportunity, it’s a legacy play for us to say, how do we invest in up-and-coming creators, help them benefit and build their brands. It’s totally separate from Mythical, but by using with our guidepost so they can be healthy and thrive and put their own version of good out into the world, that’s very exciting. But it’s separate from our own work as creators. So at times we find ourselves being pulled in many directions or seen that our company can be pulled, pushed, or sent in all types of directions. And I think, and these are conversations that honestly we’ve been having, given where we’re at in our careers, I think. Well, it’s kind of the balance between running a business and starting new lines of business as we continue to grow Mythical and then remembering that we are creators first and foremost and sometimes it’s just difficult to do both of those things. I think the thing that we’re excited about that we really haven’t talked about at all, you’ll be the first to hear about this, is that we’re really seeing 2023 as a reinvestment in us as creators. And you may be like, “Well, you already make so much stuff,” but I think that in terms of some of those, maybe if you’ve been watching for a long time and some of those early videos that got you into the Mythical world that maybe leaned a little bit more into us expressing ourselves creatively. That’s something that we really wanna press on in 2023. But I think that as we think about retirement in general, the way I’ve thought about this is even if we were to say, okay, we’re going to retire and I’m gonna go live in a little cabin with Jessie, you’re invited, Jessie. Oh, how nice of you. And I think you’re the one who might need an invitation. And then, oh, I’m gonna just do woodworking nonstop. The problem, regardless of what decision we made individually as what we wanted to do in retirement, there’s no doubt in my mind that we’d be trying to find a way to turn that into content, because we can’t help ourselves. And also turning it, if I had a cabin somewhere in an undisclosed location and you had a cabin, I don’t know if you want a cabin or what you want, whatever you want, your version of a cabin. Yeah, you really put me on the spot, but sure, I’d like for it to be really modern. The van is what people are saying. And I’ll park my van at my ultra-modern cabin. But even in that scenario, there would be some way that- ‘Cause I like having a toilet that’s not in my shower. Okay, good, I agree with that. We would have, there would still be content. It would be like, “Hey, we gotta do our podcast.” Go to the spot in your van where you do the podcast. I’ll go to the spot in my cabin. Because I think it will be, I want to do that. Not, well, we gotta do that. Well, you think when you think about retirement, you think about being able to begin to pursue what you want to do and what your passions are if you’re lucky enough to do that. And I think that we’re just privileged to be doing what we want to do already. Already. And there may be some things that aren’t as fun. It’s not as fun to run a company as it is to make content. So I think the thing that is always going to be there is going to be making content. Yeah, I think that that’s a lot of the soul searching that we’ve been doing recently has, and conversations that we’ve been having, but what are are the next five years, 10 years look like for us? I mean, we are specifically having those conversations and the thing that really invigorated the conversation and it’s like it kind of felt like a light bulb moment and it’s what you just said we find ourselves in this amazing position to have the opportunity to express ourselves, because of all of you even though it’s like without an audience, you can’t make things in a vacuum. And the fact that there’s so much enthusiasm and trust and excitement for what we want to do and how we wanna connect with each other and connect with you guys, that that gives us a good amount of freedom and saying we can take even more advantage of the creative freedom that we have now by cooking up even more things that we can share, as opposed to working on things in private and in secret, and then hoping to develop them by playing somebody else’s game and then no one ever seen it. We’ve done a good amount of that. We talked about that. We did the whole “Ear Biscuit”, where we talked about all the ideas that we had come up with and all the movie ideas and TV show ideas. And for years we’ve taken a pretty big part of ourselves creatively and tried to package it in a way that we could drive across town and have a meeting with a group of important people and trying to talk them into letting us make something. And after so many years of doing that and just repeatedly being told that this doesn’t work, or even when it does work and they wanna do it, they wanna put their spin on it in a way that makes it not what we want it to make. We’re beginning to be like, okay, stop trying to convince those people to let us make something and just start making stuff for you guys directly. We gotta figure out how that looks and how we do that as a company. But that’s where our minds are at right now. Yeah, and so you see what happens when the word retirement enters our brain and then it comes out as how do we express ourselves? I think that’s exactly how we think about retirement is that we don’t, I guess, in that sense. But we do think about cabins, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe everyone says we do. Very modern, mine’s gonna be rustic. Okay. Jasenya? Right. All right, your question. It’s pronounced Jasenya, sorry. What is it? Jasenya. Jasenya? Yeah. “What emotion do you both feel the most?” Oh, what emotion do we each feel the most, or both feel the most? My theory is that it’s the same emotion, but I’ll let you go first. Oh gosh, this is tough. Christy and I just went on a little getaway into we went back to Big Sur, and you lose reception, so you gotta be strategic about downloading what you wanna listen to. And we downloaded the audio book, Brene Brown’s book, “Atlas of the Heart”. Highly recommend this book, even though I only listen to the first two chapters so far. Usually, that’s all you need. Pretty awesome so far, but she takes you through all the emotions that can’t exist. I’m like, “Wow, there’s so many emotions that I didn’t know I could have.” And she lays the groundwork that it’s really important. It opens up your life to be in touch with your emotions and to be able to identify more of them specifically kind of, it gives you a vocabulary with which to understand your own experience and thereby live a more robust experience. If you just think, well, I can just feel anxious or I just feel sometimes I realize that anxiety is actually anger, or if I say I’m frustrated, it’s like, well, that actually may be anger. But and then also saying, hey, there’s lots of different types of, there’s joy you can experience. There’s lots of positive emotions too. That’s what I’m trying to say. I wanna experience all of the emotions, so that’s my recommendation. I don’t know if it’s my rec today, but “Atlas of the Heart”. Yeah, that should be the rec, because I don’t have one. I don’t know. I don’t wanna just go to anxiety. That’s definitely me. Well, just be honest man. But I think that that’s probably my go-to. Yeah, pretty good. I got a pretty good anxious sweet spot there. It’s just like, nestle right down in there. It’s like, let that divot in your bed where you’re like, oh, this is where I lay every single night. And I can tell if I shift over two inches in the wrong way. And it’s like, oh, I’m back in that anxious spot again. Maybe I should roll over. Roll over into joy. “Roll Over to Joy” that’s your book Link. Okay, “Roll Over Into Joy”? “Roll Over Into Joy”, yeah. Okay, I’d read that, I’d read the first two chapters. Is goosebumps an emotion? Yeah, potentially. But I totally appreciate what you’re saying and that’s something that therapy has helped me with is you feel something and then you are if you lean into it and you get to the bottom of it, What is that? Oh, there’s something beneath it. But generally speaking, and this may be, this is I kind of figured that’s what your answer would be and it may be surprising, it may be even surprising to you, but I think that as you look at a list of emotions, I think that anxiety is probably the thing that is operating the most often for me as well. Now I may deal with it or it may manifest itself differently and people may not be like, oh, I wouldn’t have, you may not know that even if you’re interacting with me, I don’t tend to let you know that that’s what’s happening. But I was thinking about the way that I interact with this this weekend. Yeah, one huge part of it is anticipation and just knowing that we’ve thought about creating this experience for you guys that we’ve got a team that knows you really well and knows what you like and what you want and picking a special spot like this. But then right on the other side of every one of those anticipations is an anxiety about something that could go wrong, is the fear is we’re gonna come down and just roll through the whole town just taking people one by one and throwing them. And then you’re like, “Oh, we made a decision to do this outdoor event, was that a mistake? Is it gonna rain? Yes, it’s gonna rain on day 1.” And then things like, okay, oh, the performance last… I’m like choosing, where am I gonna place my worry? It’s like, okay, I’m gonna do this concert, perform these songs that I’ve never performed for a crowd. You really wanna kind of have warmed up a little bit in front of some people, but, oh, I don’t have time to do that, so let’s, oh, it’ll be fine, let’s just do it. Jessie’s got anxiety about it and then there’s there just all the things. And then we’ve got this ridiculous show that we’re gonna do tonight where we’re only doing the things that we’re gonna do, because it’s you guys and we know that you’ll have a fun time watching us do something that we probably wouldn’t take out on the road. But yeah, so it’s like a lot of, and I don’t necessarily think I would call it an anxiety disorder, but it is definitely the general thing that’s always there, just under the surface that you can dip into at any point. To be like, “Okay, yep, that’s something I can attach some energy to right now and worry and try to figure out.” Okay, I’m gonna change my answer to horny. Okay, I don’t believe that’s an emotion. You might wanna talk to your therapist about that. That’s like saying that your love language is sex, which I tried to pull that one time. Oh really, it’s not. Yeah, it can’t be, it’s not an emotion. It could be physical touch, but not always that kind of physical touch. Okay, but then I’ll just go with goosebumps. Okay. I feel like I’ve been pretty chill here. No, and I think Jessie and I were talking about it last night. How chill I am? Yeah, how chill Link is, because the thing that you wanna be able to do is and I feel like with each year that I get older, I get better at this, is not just wanting something to be over. There’s so much of my life when I’ve had something like that performance last night or what we’re doing tonight where I’m just, I’m actually sort of fantasizing about getting to my hotel room and lying down. And they probably don’t want to hear that. Yeah, right, ’cause they’re just, “Get through it, don’t screw it up and just get to your hotel bed.” But that you’re acknowledging that something’s wrong with that. Yeah, and actually well, and being able to talk to Jessie throughout the past months about her being a part of this actually was helpful. Being able to tell her some of those things that I would tell myself was therapeutic for me, ’cause I was like, “Listen, the experience is going to be when it’s happening, don’t let that slip by. Anticipate it, look forward to it, and then enjoy it when it’s happening.” And I think that by talking about that so much, I actually, when it was over, I didn’t have a sense of relief, I was like, “Oh man, I’d like to do that again,” or, “I wish that had gone on longer. I wish that was still happening.” That’s good. Yeah, so I’m getting better at that. So you didn’t run to your bed afterward? Well, we did run to the bed. So, what are we learning here? Yeah, it’s like we’ve had the privilege of experiencing so many things. We lead a really wild life being able to just live our dreams, but yeah, there’s something to like we wrote about in the book, like making a decision to stop and celebrate, you know what I’m saying? Like, “This moment, I’m here for it, I’m in it.” And I just wanna go back to giving you guys credit that you’ve created an environment for us here that I’m not freaking out, but instead I’m like, they know what they’re here for and they know what they’re gonna get. So I just, let’s just go with it. You might as well not try too hard, just let it happen, let it happen, it’s a safe space. So I do feel like I’m living it up. I feel like I’m here- I’m having a good time. I’m having a good time and it’s so much different when you go into a place where you’re having to explain yourself or prove yourself. So that’s what I was talking to Jessie, I was like, this weekend is built on for some of you, it may be days or weeks or months, but many of you years of a relationship, that we get to come in here and have together for a weekend and experience in person. Jamie, how are we doing on time? We got- When are we supposed to be done? I think we’re just rolling right along, we’re good. Oh, we’re good. So Mike Davis, right there in the leopard print. How you’re doing? Hey, Mike. Hey. What up Mike Davis? What’s going on? I don’t think we’ve ever answered this one. “What’s your least favorite episode of Good Mythical Morning?” Least favorite episode? Do you have an answer? Somebody yelled out, “Ghost Pepper.” I mean, the Carolina Reaper. Wasn’t it worse? It was worse. Blind Taco, The Horseshoe. Well, the ones that definitely- People think The Horseshoe, people think the Blind Taco, blind? Blood Taco. I was like, what’s a Blind Taco? I mean, if I think about the physical effects of an episode, I don’t even remember what it was. It wasn’t at The Ghost Pepper, it was that other one, The Scorpion Pepper where I was in good Mythical more, I was lying on the couch. Oh yeah. And I was just, I had lost the capacity for entertainment. I was beyond being energized by the what was happening. And I was just angry and scared and anxious and that was bad. And then of course, the longest-lasting negative physical effects was that glass of vinegar where it just led to like a- A duo or don’t-o. With some mash. And it was- That was horrible. That’s the reason we ended up buying them, because I was so angry about that. It’s like, yeah, “Don’t cross me, I’ll buy ya.” To me, you think it’s the Grape Nuts vlog. Yeah, that was torturous. See, I don’t have an answer. My least favorite GMM episodes are the ones where it’s like, I think it would be if I could come up with one, one that I was really excited about that then sucked, ’cause it’s like, yeah, the food stuff were miserable afterward, but it’s really hard to point to an episode that was a complete flop. I mean, you might not like some of the guests and I’m not gonna throw any guests under the bus, so let’s remove those. We’ve had a few guests that absolutely sucked. Yeah. Right, I think I might thought start a Reddit thread where everybody can just talk about which guests sucked the most. That’d be great. We’ll leave that for there. But it’s a real credit to the Mythical crew that makes the show. I mean, you’ve seen the evolution of the show. It’s changing over time that they know the show and us so well that they’re setting up parameters for the show to happen to us. It’s a really interesting thing that the thing our baby is now something that we’ve basically said, “All right, we’re entrusting you to raise our baby team and then bring our baby to us and then see how we react to it. Oh, it’s my baby’s back. Oh, you’ve gotten taller.” It’s like sending it off the boarding school. So it’s this weird, it’s this weird like being just as committed to Good Mythical Morning as ever, just as excited about it as ever and knowing that there’s ways that we can infuse ourselves into the show even more by entrusting our team and stepping back from the matriculations of planning. We’ve done that increasingly year over year. And I think it’s really having a positive impact on the show, because it gives us this an increasingly more authentic performance that’s less and less of a performance and more of just an authentic experience of us behind that desk. So I can’t find an episode where it was like I was so excited and then it just bombed or didn’t come together, because they have all the right places that matter most there and so we can kinda mess around with it. And I actually think that, so the cliche answer I always give is who? Mike. But people ask the inverse like, “What’s your favorite episode?” And I’m always like, “The next one,” because we do, but what it’s just like we are excited about where the show’s going. We’re excited about the things that we can do. That desk, that set, that environment is a playground for us. And that’s another part of what we’ve been talking about in realizing, hey, what we’ve built together, how can we take more advantage of it creatively to continue to push boundaries? I mean, continue to eat stuff, yes. We’re gonna keep eating stuff on Good Mythical Morning and we’re gonna keep doing other things too, ’cause it needs to be fun for us, it needs to be fun for the team that’s making it with us and blind-siding us with it a lot of times. Yeah, and I think that some of our, this wouldn’t be a least favorite, it’s like when am I the most, I’m actually changing the way I think about this now. We’ve talked about this before on “Ear Biscuits”, when we try something that we think is creatively ambitious or we do something that isn’t us just eating something and then it performs at like half the views, because that’s the way the internet works. But I know that’s not how you guys feel about it, because you’re very vocal when you do like watching us take a creative risk and do something different. And not only because you watch, many of you watch every episode or most episodes and therefore you’re not just like, “I’m just coming in for this one and I’m coming in for this one.” So we actually have you in mind more often than it may seem like sometimes. And again, that’s that sort of well this has gotta be a business that supports the team, but this is also a show that is for us and for you and for our collective experience. So we’re gonna keep trying those things and we’re not going to be surprised or disappointed if some of those things that may require more effort or more creativity or more time from the team don’t get as much as many views as just sitting down and trying every flavor of a Hot Pocket. But we’ll continue to try to make trying every flavor of a Hot Pocket as entertaining and informative, because these things matter. Right. Right? Right. Today we are eating another block of Velveeta cheese. Let’s just do that for a month. To turn that question back on you Mike, do you have a least favorite episode of GMM? I do. Okay. Probably The Horseshoe. The horse one? Yeah, sorry. It was a little boring. Are you- Ah, I was bored. I almost died. I didn’t have anything to do. I was like, “What am I doing here? I don’t think I should do anything.” Are you a horse guy? I’m not. Okay. I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse that he’s not a horse guy. He just bored with it. There was a whole level of humor that you just didn’t get. Yeah, horse humor. Horse humor. Equine. Yeah, yeah, some of them aren’t for everybody. It didn’t turn out how I thought it would turn out. Yeah, you saw my anxiety on full display in that video, boy. See it’s important for other reasons. It’s important to be bored sometimes by our show. I had to take down all my posters of horses that I have up around my house. Jessie was like, “Why are all the horses in our decor coming down?” She loves horse decor. It’s kind of her specialty. We’re working on a Thanksgiving episode that you were going to hate. Awesome. It doesn’t involve horses but you will be bored. So don’t miss it. I won’t. Okay, the last question I’m not 100% sure is Abigail Naylor here? Oh, we’re gonna have to toss that microphone. You’re way back there. Way back there. We just got the yellow card. Got the yellow card? Yeah. This better be a good one, if this is the last one. It is, so okay. They’re right there. Sorry I’m late. Hello Abigail. Hi. So you had a question about friendship. “What advice would you give to us for maintaining such a meaningful relationship with each other for the many years to come?” Yes, that is my question. This is my lifelong best friend. Well, like 11 years since we’ve been friends. No, that’s nothing. So, no, yeah. We got a long way to go to compete, but she’s just like everything to me. I moved to a new state from North Carolina, moved to Louisiana with her. I knew no one as a little 11-year-old girl. And she was the first person I met the very first week I moved to Louisiana. And she is just like, if you know me, you know her, if you know her, you know me. So I just wanted to get y’all’s advice ’cause y’all have such a great lifelong relationship, friendship. So yeah, that’s just my Clarice. So, yeah. And what’s your friend’s name? My name is Clarice. Miss Clarice? Yeah, like “Silence of the Lambs”. Oh yeah, you haven’t, he hasn’t seen it. We actually both have the first same name. We’re both Abigail, but she goes by Clarice, so yeah. It makes it simpler. Okay, I’m glad you knew her name. Yes, I learned that a couple days ago. ‘Cause I was gonna say that’s the good first step to friendship. It is. Having the same name also helps. That too, she didn’t tell me that until two weeks after we knew each other. She’s like, “Oh, my name’s Abigail by the way.” I was like, “That’s good information to have Clarice.” Two weeks to find out her name. All right, we gotta give some good advice here. It’s the last question. Well, we’ve answered this, we have answered this question, but we wanted to talk about it again. Friendship, is not easy. No. I’ll sing a lot guys, ’cause I’m a guy and I talk to guys about friendships sometimes and they’re like, “Well, it’s tough for guys sometimes.” We’re guys, we have an extraordinary friendship. There’s a lot wrapped up into it, so there’s a lot at play here. In some ways, friendship or even best friendship is an inadequate description of the nature of our relationship. I mean, so we are best friends, but when you’re that and you’re also business partners and your performers who a cornerstone of your performance is friendship. I mean there could be some, there’s some unique challenges for us, because there’s a lot wrapped up in it. It’s certainly very important to us to actually be friends, because we care about each other. But also, and then secondarily, because this doesn’t work if we’re not actually friends, that would really suck. You’re saying that if you make your relationship the product and then the relationship is over, that is a big problem. We’ve never seen that happen before. It’s interesting, somebody sent me something recently that talked about how the number of friends in people’s lives decreased dramatically, because of the pandemic and specifically number of close friends. I thought you were gonna say because of children, which is also children will kill friendships. No, but specifically- Especially babies. ‘Cause of the social dynamics- Oh my gosh. The social dynamics- I’ll remember that. The way that things changed with the pandemic. There is I would say an alarming percentage of people who do not have one close friend, that has increased. But the number of, and this is something that has just been moving in that direction culturally for a really long time. So I do think it’s more important than ever. One of the ways that we have answered this question in the past, we always talk about communication. I wanna come back to communication, because one of the things that I’ve said, and then we’ve talked about this recently on our own, is the way we would answer this question on one of the tours, I think it was maybe Bleak Creek or whatever, ’cause there was a question about friendship that would come up a lot and we would talk about how having something that you’re a common goal was key to a long friendship and the fact that we were building something together and so you’ve got this baby that you shared together in the same way that like a marriage may have kids you pointed out, which I agree with and why I think that that is somewhat true and I do think it’s actually true, because for a lot of the reasons that we’re saying, there’s a lot of things at stake and there’s also a lot of things that bring us back into each other’s lives ’cause both of us tend to kind of, I mean, you’re more extroverted than me, but in a lot of ways we can go a pretty long period of time without having meaningful interactions with somebody, ’cause we have so many things going on and there’s a lot of people maybe back home in North Carolina that were good friends with us, that we’re just not the greatest at staying in touch with people are initiating and maintaining those long distance friendships. So one of the things we’re thrown into each other’s worlds over and over again all the time. We’re constantly in each other’s worlds. So that’s one of the things. So there’s no outta sight outta mind, that’s never gonna happen with us. But you kind of pointed out the inadequacy in that analogy, because the negative way of seeing that is you would say that if it were a marriage and people were just in the marriage, because of the kids, then the day that the kids leave, the marriage is over. And that happens all too often. And you made the point that, well that’s only part of the answer and probably not even the most important part of the answer. The answer is the friendship is valuable, because the friendship is valuable and the friendship remains and is important, because of the value that the friendship brings, not because of the thing that you guys are building together and the way it benefits from your friendship. If that makes sense. Yeah, I think definitely. When we’re both excited and going after the same thing and we’re in this especially if we’re in like a creative flow, it’s very exhilarating to be there with your lifelong best friend and to say, we’re going after this thing, we’re making this thing and it’s kind of a magical synergy. It does feel great and it does edify me and I think our connection, but there’s also that personal side to it that’s like, yeah, but we’re also actually friends. I’m restating what you’re saying in other words that, and I think this is kind of where our answer is, is that it takes a lot of work to maintain a relationship, and for it, I think it’s very important that we have given ourselves permission to say this is, we’re committed to this and it requires work and there’s times when it’s not going as well as other times and given ourselves and each other permission to express our needs in the friendship is something that I think we’re still learning. I mean, we’re still growing as individuals like we talked about earlier, getting in touch with your emotions, understanding that there’s a lot more of those out there that can be a part of your experience like that. It’s a similar experience of knowing how to apply the principles of relationship to a friendship, ’cause you think, well you can fall in this trap that friends should just be friends, because it’s easy. You don’t make friends, your closest friends are people that you just find yourselves hanging out with and having a good time with, “Oh, I find myself liking this person,” but that’s not, a friendship is not gonna thrive longterm if you don’t give yourself permission to say, “No, this is a relationship that needs, that requires work and energy.” And a big part of that is being vulnerable to say, “Hey, in this particular time I have a need that’s not being met that in our friendship,” or vice versa. And so, and we’ve had those conversations and I think that’s something that we haven’t shared publicly. We just say we leave it at communication. But I think that’s a little more specific version of that same thing, ’cause it’s easy to say, well you just gotta communicate, you gotta talk things out. But even after all these years when you find that if you have a certain need in the friendship that’s not being met, it’s a hard thing to say, it’s a very vulnerable moment. And then on the other side of it though is this a renewed connection and a renewed bond that I think we’ve been through that a number of times. Yeah so, this may seem like a tautology or circular reasoning or whatever you wanna call it, but the best way to maintain a friendship longterm is to continue to be friends. And don’t expect it to be easy. And understanding that it’s a commitment. And I think the same thing applies to relationships. We could really quickly transfer this into marriage advice. When we got into our marriages it was under very specific understanding and we were in a very specific place in terms of our worldview. And in that worldview divorce was not really an option. Now we are different people at this point and I think that there are legitimate reasons for relationships to end and marriages to end, but I think that we still have to approach our marriages as if divorce is not an option. Obviously, there are circumstances that could lead to that, but I think that you have to go in with the level of commitment that this isn’t going to be based on continual feelings of romance and friendships are not gonna be based on continual feelings of compatibility or this, the vibes are always good. If that’s what it’s based on, the moment that that ends, it’s just like, all right, I got more convenient people or whatever, it’s something that’s easier for me. So I think that that’s where the communication comes in. The communication is because things are, when you’re work on so many things together and you’re together all the time in the same way that you get annoyed at your brother or your your sibling, that’s the kind of relationship that we have. And so, understanding when that’s beginning to happen and knowing when conversations are required in order to kind of break through that and move to the to the next step has been really pivotal. Is that good? That’s perfect. It’s more than enough, thank you. All right guys, you can always let us know what you think using #EarBiscuits or you can leave us a voicemail 1-888-EARPOD1. 1-888-EARPOD1. Thanks for joining us at Mythicon. We’ll talk at you next week. Love ya. Hey, Rhett and Link, my name is Carlin, we’re driving back from Mythicon and we just wanted to say that seeing you guys go up on stage and do what you guys have always wanted to do with James the Shame and seeing Charles so proud of you guys and with of course, ElkHound SnuggleBaby, you guys absolutely killed it. So awesome to see you guys doing what you wanna do. Hi Rhett and Link. My name’s Brett, I’ve been a Mythical Beast a long time. Mythicon was a blast. You guys hit it out the park and it was everything I hoped it would be. I got to meet Myth’s crew members face-to-face, which was so surreal. Your guys’ live performance and the Time Gate Bit sent me over the fucking moon. I was dead laughing. It meant so much to me to to be here this weekend and to share in the first ever Mythicon. So I just, I wanna thank you guys wholeheartedly, the Mythical crew, everybody working behind the scenes keep being your Mythical selves, especially you, DJ ElkHound SnuggleBaby. Love you too James. Hi Rhett and Link, also known as James in the Shame and DJ ElkHound SnuggleBaby. I had a great time at Mythicon, it was amazing and I just wanted to let you guys know that this year has been really tough for me and my husband. We had a miscarriage and then to followup failed IVF cycles. But right before Mythicon I had another, my fourth cycle and the day after Mythicon I found out that I got a positive pregnancy test. So we’re expecting, and it just seems so fitting with SnuggleBaby DJ name just all magically came together. So I appreciate you guys and what you’re up to and thanks for just being your Mythical best. 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.