Welcome to “Ear Biscuits,” the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Rhett. And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we’re gonna discuss what if we never left North Carolina? Ooh. What if we never left North Carolina? What do you think our lives would be like now? And in one way, we’re describing the lives of two guys who didn’t ever leave North Carolina who are really out there in the universe, conjecturing about their life. What if we move to California? They’re having that podcast conversation? Yes, and they are having a podcast right now, what if we had decided to move to California? You know- Which one’s better? We’re better! Ha ha, we’re the better Rhett and Link! Take that! We’re the best. I wanna be the best version of myself. Well, they’re also saying that though. Don’t think of it in a parallel universe kinda way, but like maybe I should. You know, I want to be my best self of all of myselves. You know what? I have a lot to be grateful for. What are the chances? Pretty high, I think. No, the chances are… First of all- I mean, I’m definitely in the 90th percentile of Links in the universe. I don’t know how I feel about the multiple worlds theory. I’m living my best life. It’s definitely the most fun thing to think about the universe. Of all the lives that I’m living. It is very… Boy, you have to have, I’m gonna say a lot of confidence. I’m gonna be nice. You have to have a lot of confidence to assume that you, this version of Link is in the top 90th percentile of all Links? I just don’t wanna, here’s the way that I think about it. I don’t wanna change anything. Well, there’s things that I want to change. You know, I’m on a journey, but I like the journey I’m on. And like there’s some fundamental things. Like, I don’t wanna change fundamental things. Like, I don’t wanna change where I live. I like living in California. I don’t wanna move back to North Carolina. I’m gonna show some love to North Carolina the best I can. But… By the way, I don’t want this to be like a bashing North Carolina episode. I wasn’t thinking it in that way at all. I’m a little concerned that I might be insinuating that my life would suck if I were back in North Carolina. But that’s just a side note. Well, there’s a better Link out there, one in the top 10 percentile- That doesn’t even think that. Who can communicate everything that you’re gonna communicate without insinuating anything negative about North Carolina. And he’s better than you, just so you know. But you could ascend to that level today. But I don’t think his experience is gonna be any better than mine. Like, in terms of my, like from a selfish perspective, I think I’m living my best Link life of all the Link lives that are being lived. I think those are two different concepts. Right, and all I care about is my experience. I think you’re living- Like, from the inside out, baby. I completely agree with you. I’m very happy with my life as this Rhett. Not the outside in. But I’m not going to assume that I’m in the top 90th percentile of all Rhetts out there. I don’t know. I could be, ironically, I could be in the bottom 10%. I don’t know what’s going on with those other Rhetts. I don’t like to make assumptions about anyone, including myself in other places. Don’t be an ungrateful bitch. They’re mutually exclusive. Being grateful for my existence does not mean that I’m better than the other ones. I think that I am so grateful for my experience that it has to be in the top 90 percentile of all Link experiences. Okay, well- And I’m not saying I’m the best person. Well, it’s what it sounded like. I think I’m in the top 79 percentile of people. Okay, you’ve gone… And I’m moving up too. Hold on. I’m getting better. You said 79 percentile of all people? No no, not all. Of all Links. Okay. I’m not expanding the, I’m not comparing myself to anybody else. Except myself. You said that. You said all people. In every, in ad infintintum. What’s, how do you say that? Ad infinitum? Infinitum. I don’t know how to say those words. Of all the Links that there are, I’m in the top 79th percentile of good Links. Very quickly, you went from 90th to 79th. It didn’t take much. No. I’ve made two statements. I am in the top 90 percentile of Link experiences. Like- Oh. But I’m not saying that I’m the best Link there is, but I will be. So you’re a good Link having a great time? Yeah. I’m an above mid Link having a pretty primo time. I’m not gonna make any assumptions about where I stand- And I want to give you that energy. I’m not gloating and I’m not keeping it to myself. I want you to have it. And I’m sending it to you today. Great, great. I am going to prove that I’m not in the top 90th percentile of all Rhetts by telling you a little something before we get into the subject matter at hand. Okay. I’m… I… Gobble, gobble, gobble. You… Know that I, along with my wife Jessie, like to watch trashy reality television. We actually haven’t been watching much trashy reality television as we have, we’re moving out of the pandemic and life has returned to the new normal. There’s just not enough time for all the trash that you’ve been putting in. And there was a time when, I mean, early pandemic, we were, boy, “The Bachelor,” “Bachelorette,” “Bachelor in Paradise.” So the full “Bachelor” franchise. “Love Island.” And then there was other things. “F-Boy Island.” There was the one where the people were together and there was a robot that was talking to them out of a cube, and they lost money every time they had sex. Like, I can’t remember the name of that one, but that was crazy. That was way trashier than “Bachelor,” just so you know. So they had to pay for sex. It was a bunch of hot people. It was “Too Hot To Handle.” It was a bunch of hot, I think I talked about this on a previous episode. I’m sure you did. Bunch of hot people together. And then they thought they were going to hook up, and then they learned that the rules are, if you hook up, you lose money, and you all lose money because it’s a collective prize at the end, whatever you can hold onto. But I have crossed a new threshold. Oh Lord. And I wanna tell you about it briefly and tell you what it made me think about myself and what I did. You would never do this if you still lived in North Carolina. On Friday night, Saturday night? Jessie and I were like, “Let’s watch something funny.” Okay. Right, let’s watch something funny. Stand up special perhaps? So we started looking for comedy movies. We were going to, we were like, oh, that Weird Al movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah, I’d be into that. And I was like, “Hold on, is this like, “I know Weird Al’s funny, but is it funny?” And then I look up the description and it’s like- It’s a great concept. It’s actually a parody of a documentary about his life. So it has a lot of things that are not true that happen. It’s, well, yes, because he does music parodies and now he’s done a biopic parody. It’s the perfect send up of Weird Al, right. It’s only on Roku. But it’s free. Well, I don’t have Roku. I mean, I don’t have the- Oh really? No. You gotta get that. Yeah, but it was like, okay- ‘Cause Mythical’s doing some stuff on there. I know that. I can add the app, but it was like, I don’t want to… Nothing’s easy. I didn’t want to go through that process. And I was just, I was like, I’m in the mood to be amused. I have it. Yeah, ’cause you have a Roku TV. And I want to tell you how great it is. Also have an Apple TV. I wanna tell you how great that is. You can do that when they pay us. So I was like, okay. And then quickly somehow we went from being excited about Weird Al to watching “Ticket to Paradise.” “Ticket to Paradise.” Haven’t heard of it. George Clooney, Julia Roberts, romantic comedy. Oh. Oh. I thought you were gonna go back to reality TV. Okay, well I’m about to get there. This is not a good movie to compare it. I’m telling you how we got to where we ended up getting. The reviews were rotten, I believe, officially. And I knew this going in. It was 57% going in. But- You were watching it ironically. But I was like, and you know what, for what it was, I quite enjoyed it. I just like watching old good looking actors. Gives you a little bit of hope? I don’t know, there’s just something about it. You like watching old good looking actors? I don’t know what it is. I’m not gonna self-analyze here. Oh, I know what it is. But I was just like- We all know what it is. I really like, I like them, and they just seem so fun. And this story is just wild and crazy. You’re into GILFs, man. So, and you know what? I think that this set me up, watching Julia Roberts kiss George Clooney set me up and Jessie up- Okay. To seek out and consume “MILF Manor.” What? “MILF Manor.” So you turned around from watching that movie and you started searching- I still had an appetite for old good looking people. And comedy. ‘Cause it’s your demo. It’s my demo? Oh, because, oh, thanks. You mean I fall into that demo? Well, you’re of that age. Okay, thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment, Link. You’re a parent. But you would not say DILF? You would not call me a DILF? You won’t give me that? I’m not prepared to do that. But I gotta say that I made that GILF joke, and I don’t know, has anyone ever made that? Is it that obvious? Grandma I’d like to be friendly with? Yes. Yes. Yeah, I believe that it’s a… I thought I made that up just now. No, I think it’s like a category. So what, what… A MILF is really about, it’s a- Oh, I’m gonna blow your mind. It’s all in relationship to your age. So that’s what I’m saying. Your MILF is a GILF. So when you watch MILFs, you’re just watching people your age that you’re attracted to. That’s all I’m saying. I am old enough to be a grand person. No. Come on now. Track with me here. MILFs to you are just attractive people. In order for you to have a MILF experience, it has to be with a GILF. Yeah. You’re 45, my friend. Well… Tell me about this show. But I just think when you think about, when I think about culturally I think about MILFs, I think these MILFs are gonna be like women that, you know, are my age. I’m not thinking they’re gonna be older than me. I mean, Julia Roberts is 55? So she’s a little bit older. Anyway… And there was lots of buzz about this on Twitter. That’s why we ended up watching. You know, whatever they did to pay to get people talking about “MILF Manor,” #MILFManor on Twitter was very effective. Everyone was talking about how you had to watch this. And it was like, this feels like the trashiest possible thing that we could watch because of one thing that I did know, which I’m going to tell you, and it is the reason that it’s gonna blow your mind but also the reason that I had trouble moving forward with it. And that is this. This is the premise of “MILF Manor.” You take a bunch of MILFs, and I mean, some of these ladies, some of them were early 40s, some of them were like 60. So we’re talking like 40 to 60. That’s a good range. And they’re getting to know each other. And then they’re like, okay, now we’re gonna bring in the young men that you are going to be consorting with. Is that a proper word? The young men are their sons. Ooh, what? All their sons. So it’s a bunch of MILFs and their sons. So SILFs. I just think, you know, you don’t, I don’t think you have to carry through the acronym really. It would be SOMILFs, it would be sons of MILFs. SOMILFs. Son of a MILF. So what is their objective? To screw the MILFs. But not, they don’t need, not their own mom? Of course. Well, this is where, I mean, first of all, of course not, but- Good. I only watched episode one. I mean, that would be trashy. I only watched episode one, and I didn’t finish it. You didn’t finish it? Well, because I’ll tell you in a second. When that happened, I was like, man, I don’t like… ‘Cause one of the kids was 20. The youngest guy there was 20. Okay. Right? And first of all, as many people pointed out on Twitter, yes, it is very much true that if this were reversed, if it was a bunch of old guys and a bunch of young women, the show would’ve never been made, and it would’ve been canceled the moment that someone thought of it. But hey, listen, we live in an age of rebelling against the patriarchy, so I get it. We can, you know, we can watch shows like this and be entertained by them in a way that we couldn’t be if it was reversed. But even then… It just felt… It felt so exploitive. Exploitative? Exploitative. In a way that all reality TV is. But I was just like, this is… Because it was like the mix of the family unit. It was like, oh man. Like, I was thinking about the casting of it, first of all. You have to cast a MILF and you have to find a son, and you have to find them, they have to be willing to go on a show and somehow ostensibly be told that they’re not going on the same show. I don’t know how they did that. But what is this going to do? I mean, obviously this is crazy dynamics because you’ve got, right off the bat, you’ve got this, you know, well, there’s one couple where these two dudes, you know, they’re broing out or whatever, you know, two 20-something-year-old guys just broing out. And then one of the guy’s moms comes over, and then he’s like flirting with her, and then he goes to that mom’s bedroom with her on night one. And then her son comes in after her and is like, “Mom, no, you just met this guy.” And it was like, yeah, exactly. So the whole- This is happening in real life. Why not just document it? But the thing that made me turn it, so I was very uncomfortable because it just felt, it’s one thing when you got a bunch of people who go on “The Bachelor,” or a bunch of people who go on like “Love Island,” and it’s like they know exactly what they’re getting themselves into and they’re only ruining their own lives. You know? But not their mom’s life or their son’s life together as a like a family unit in a way that it just got too, it just got a little uncomfortable. But then there was, one of the first sort of things that they did, like one of the set pieces or whatever, challenges, was we’re gonna put all these boys, all these SOMILFs into blindfolds, and they’re gonna take their shirts off, be in blindfolds, and then… Sorry, the mom is blindfolded. The moms are blindfolded. The sons have their shirts off. And the moms are going to feel the bodies of these guys to find their son. Ew! Ew! So they’re like, “Oh, oh,” like feeling their abs and their chest and their shoulders and their faces. So what they’re hoping for is for there to be like, “This is definitely not my son, “so I’m gonna start being real flirtatious with this body.” And did that happen? Well, of course, but I didn’t, that’s when I cut it off. Oh, good for you. During that challenge, I was like, man, I like- Wow. I like watching trashy TV, and I don’t mind people doing stuff that makes them look stupid. And listen, I may be coming across as a judgey guy right now but it was just like, even I cannot be entertained by this. I am so relieved. Like, Rhett McLaughlin has a line. No, yeah, I met my limit. It’s “MILF Manor.” He has a line, y’all. And it’s mother on son touching, televised touching. And you know what? Okay, you had to get to the line I guess to know it existed. But like we’re not gonna say what this airs on. This is not a sponsor. People can find it if they want. We’re not gonna promote it. We’re not gonna say how to spell MILF or manor. Because here’s the twist that I think they probably should do if they didn’t do, but I’m not gonna watch to find out. I’m just saying, if I was a, you know, just soulless producer of this type of TV, here’s what I would’ve done. I would’ve made sure that one of the sets of MILF and SOMILF was a stepson. You… You would’ve done that? And then they end up hooking up because that’s what everybody’s into. No. That’s like the… Look at the data, dude. In multiple states, the number one porn category is step, is having sex with your stepmom or your stepsister. Like, that’s what people are into, man. And so these producers know that. And if they’re, I’m using the term smart with quotes, quotations here. If they’re smart, one of ’em was a stepson and they’re gonna mix it up. And I just think that at this point, I don’t know, man, I just, it made me too uncomfortable. Made me too uncomfortable. And not because you’re now making me uncomfortable, but could I use this as an opportunity to shift and segue into what we actually wanted to talk about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. ‘Cause I’d love to do that now. You wanna leave the MILF Manor? Can I? Yeah, can I exit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what if we get invited to DILF Desert? I’m trying to think of… I don’t wanna go to no desert. It’s at Palm Springs? Joshua Tree? Joshua Tree. DILF Desert. There’s not another location that starts with a D? But just so you understand, this means that you’re single. So I don’t, I mean, no plans to be single anytime soon. It also means- Nope, I’m not eligible. It also means that Lily will be joining you at DILF Desert. So there’s a lot, and I can’t go because I don’t have a daughter. And I’m also married. And you’re not a DILF. I thought you were gonna say that. And I’m not a DILF, okay. That’s good. “Ear Biscuits” is supported by Chime. They say money can’t buy happiness. but not worrying about money can definitely boost your mood. You know what I’m saying? That’s where Chime comes in. They were named the number one loved banking app. With payday up to two days early and fee free overdrafts up to $200, they offer financial peace of mind in your wallet. All of this with no annual fees, no large security deposits, and no credit checks to apply. See for yourself why Chime is so loved at chime.com/ear. That’s chime.com/ear. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services and debit card provided by The Bancorp Bank or Stride Bank, NA, Members FDIC. Early access to direct deposit funds depends on payer SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limit supply. See chime.com/spotme. Chime was the 2021 number one most downloaded banking app in the US according to Apptopia. Would you be watching this show at all if you still lived in North Carolina? Good question. Would you be the type of person that would then talk about that show on this show? Better question. Would we even be doing this show? Good question. If we were in North Carolina? What would we be like? Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about that and more. We’ve independently prepared some thoughts. First let’s promote some stuff that’s important to us. It is the fourth, we are celebrating the fourth anniversary of the Mythical Society. Crazy, man. Love it. We’ve been doing the Mythical Society for as long as we went to high school. And, you know, when we celebrate the anniversary, we do a lot of deals. You can sign up for all levels at discounts, and there are special things that we’re giving away, et cetera. Go over to mythicalsociety.com if you’re interested. Never been a better time to join the Mythical Society. I mean, specifically if you want to join third degree, I believe it’s annual, and you do that in this month, you get a choice of a previous quarterly collectible. It’s the only way to get that, unless you want to pay like some exorbitant price on eBay. I think that starts to happen ’cause these things are collectibles. Collectibles. That’s the only way to get some while supplies last, so check it out. How did you approach this conversation? Because we each jotted down some notes, and we haven’t discussed this. It’s just a fun question. What if we never left North Carolina? I divided it into three categories. One was how would things be different professionally? The other was how would things be different spiritually? Okay, good. Because that is a topic of conversation for a lot of folks who believe that a lot of things happen because of our move. And the third was more broadly, personally, which I guess does encompass spirituality, but just like the kind of person we would be. I basically did that too. Yeah, my thoughts first went to your first category. So maybe let’s start there where it’s like, the thing that I said, like just as a blanket statement before I get into any conjecture about what it is specifically we would be doing, I just think as a performer, I would be a lot more meek. Like, I don’t think I would’ve just… I wouldn’t be so unabashedly whatever you would call me. I think there’s this dynamic of being out here that accelerated this, like I can be, I can really embody like a performer. And I’m really talking about, embody a performer, what does that even mean? That I could go more extreme. Like, my hair wouldn’t look like this if I still lived in North Carolina. It would look a little different. Like, I wouldn’t be finding my dress code vibe. And I know this is kind of personal, so I’m mixing categories. Yeah, I was about to say this seems pretty personal. But I’m just making a point that like, these things are all a function of I think me being a performer and giving myself permission to be weird. Like, I don’t have… I think if I was back home, I would… There’s this different force than there is in LA. Like the center of cultural gravity is a little more normal. You know, it’s not an entertainment hub. There’s people doing all types of work. You rub shoulders with some, you could rub shoulders with a farmer, a tech executive, a factory worker, a philosopher. You can rub shoulders with all these people in North Carolina. It’s a lot broader a spectrum and slice of life. At least for us in LA. And I think that like… Yeah, and you can rub shoulders with artists, certainly, but there’s such a high concentration of people expressing themselves here that like, there’s less of a barrier to overcome to like do something to be just, how did I say it? Express yourself? Just be weird if yourself be is it. Just yourself be if you is weird. Whatever. Well, do you talk about the personal first? Because that’s what you, I mean, that’s… I guess I was trying to say that to say that like, I’ll go either way you want to go by finishing. When it comes to my performance, like if I leave the studio and I went back home and I was seeing my family members more often, I was seeing my friends back home that have nothing to do with the entertainment industry, and I was in those type of social circles where there’s just more head scratching in terms of like, okay, the sensitivity to deviating from the norm is higher back home. And I think that I would’ve absorbed that, and it would’ve slowed my accelerating decline into the weirdness that is I believe my true self. Accelerating decline? That’s an interesting way to put it. That’s how I think people back home would have seen it. And I would feel like I would’ve had to answer to it. So it’d be like, “Man, I saw your video the other day.” And I’d be like, “Oh yeah,” a little sheepish about it. And I would be thinking about those people more often. Like… Well, I think there’s a lot to unpack with that. I kinda wanna save my thoughts on that ’til the end. Okay. So pick apart which part of it you want to go with. We can come back to all of it. I mean, I was thinking about the way that our career progressed and the way that what happened to us professionally with Mythical and the specific things that we have done and accomplished over the past decade since moving. And the first thing that hit me was just a general principle of the fact that we tend to be opportunistic, which is a negative sounding word, but we’re not particularly specifically vision driven. We talked about this in “The Book of Mythicality” that we pick a direction and go instead of outlining or manifesting exactly what it is that we want to accomplish. And we also are interested in a lot of different things. If you look at the past 10 years, you know, if you look at our entire career, so beyond that, like we’ve made a documentary, we’ve written a non-fiction book, we’ve written a novel, we’ve had a podcast that was an interview show, we’ve had a podcast that’s just talking to each other, we’ve had a daily talk show, we’ve made a bunch of music videos, we’ve made a bunch of sketches, we had a reality TV show, we had a scripted TV show, we’ve had multiple music things happen together and individually. We’ve done so many different things. We’re into a lot of different things. In the past you should say 12 years. Yeah, you can argue that we’ve been better at some things than others, and that’s true. But I think there is a propensity to try a lot of different things and to fill, you know, opportunity with an idea. Like, we’re kind of reactive. So let’s just say, so specifically what happened was we moved out here to do “Commercial Kings,” to film that pilot and to kind of do a trial run. And let’s say for whatever reason we had decided, no, we’re not going to be out here, and we go back to North Carolina. The biggest inciting event that led to us growing Mythical was receiving money from YouTube to make the Mythical show, which was independent of us being in California, had nothing to do with us moving. Had to do with the relationship that we had with YouTube at the time and also our traction on YouTube, which again had all happened before moving. But it was based on a few seasons of “Good Mythical Morning,” which we launched here. So it hinged on that. If we were back in North Carolina, I do think we still would’ve made “Good Mythical Morning” because the reasons we made it were, the show got canceled, didn’t get reordered, “Commercial Kings.” So then like we had to build something. And that was like part of the strategy was daily video strategy. But it was based on Good Morning Chia Link in which we started back when we were in Fuquay-Varina. So I think that we still would’ve gone back to, hey, we still would’ve had the idea of “Good Mythical Morning,” and we would’ve done it. So I think that, I like to think that it still would’ve started. I think we definitely still would’ve done it. But again, so much pivots on or depends on very small choices that end up having big effects. So obviously really big thing that happened when we started the Mythical show was hiring Stevie. Now it’s hard enough to find a producer, a good producer, right? You know, we had hired people on like a one-off basis before that we wouldn’t necessarily be like, yeah, we wanna bring this person in to be like a full-time producer with us. Yeah. But with Stevie, we found a producer that really understood what we were trying to accomplish creatively. But then we just kind of got lucky that she was also on board to help grow the company. Like, she was committed. Like, she was on board and capable of that as well. And the chances of finding that person, especially 11 years ago, are much higher in Los Angeles than they were at the time in Raleigh. Now Raleigh has become- You could totally do it now. People are doing it now. Yeah, right. You know, there’s all types of North Carolina based successful creators. Right. So just to finish- So we could do it now, but then we couldn’t have done it. We couldn’t have found the team. And it wouldn’t have been, it wouldn’t have been as Neither one of us can talk today. Yeah, it’s just, you know… It’s, you know, first day of the week. The way that we were hiring out here was kind of an accelerant. But that would not have been throwing any fuel to the fire back home. And what that did in building the team in the way that we did, enabling us to make “Good Mythical Morning” and make a bunch of other stuff led to the specific things that we ended up doing. So my theory is that if we were back in North Carolina, the chances of us finding somebody to help us grow our team but also finding people to fill the needs that we had in a team would’ve been greatly reduced. But the thing that would have remained is this tenacious opportunism, I’ll call it, and this creative drive to try a lot of things. And we would’ve done a bunch of different things. But also at the time, we saw YouTube not as a long-term career but as a stepping stone. And we saw it as something to get us into what we thought was better, traditional media of some kind. But what would that have been in North Carolina? And my theory is that we would have made some kind of move into broadly speaking documentary film that’s what we call self insertion documentary film like Morgan Spurlock, which means it actually has a whole new meaning now. But basically when you make a documentary about yourself doing something. You think we would’ve gone back to that? I think we would’ve done that because it’s the most ambitious creatively but the lowest barrier of entry, and you can do it from anywhere ’cause we’d already done it with “Looking for Ms. Locklear.” Yeah. I’m saying this is just one path. At the same time we got that job with Coke and McDonald’s to make that commercial. We may have also been like, “Let’s move into making commercials “and that’s gonna be our thing,” and oh, and then all of a sudden, “Let’s start a studio in Raleigh,” and it would be like a, you know, making ads for people. There’s so many things that we can talk ourselves into getting excited about. Yeah. That the number of options would have been endless, but the chances that it ended up happening the way that it happened here and specifically the things that have come out of that- No. Very, very low. Yeah, I’d like to think that we would still be successful and that we would’ve found a way. I’m pretty confident in agreement that we would’ve found a way. And it’s also much easier to support yourself in North Carolina. The level of success that we would’ve had to achieve in order to just make a good living that was at least better than the living that we were making as people on staff of Campus Crusade, wouldn’t be too hard to do. Where would be living now? Like, do you think we’d be living in Key Hills? Living in Buies Creek? You think we’d be living in like, I think we would be up in our, I mean, like good stuff happening in Raleigh. We got to, you know, our alma mater is there. You think we’d be out there in like cool-ville Carrboro? I bet you we’d be in, I bet you we’d be in Raleigh. Well, it’s funny because a lot of my thoughts about where we would be living are kind of based on my thoughts on the spiritual part. Okay. I wasn’t actually thinking about it related to the professional part. I think professionally we’d be up there because eventually we’d be hiring people and like there’s more of a center up there, you know? But ’cause I don’t think we would go the route of like having a huge, like huge warehouses on some former tobacco field in Harnett County. Like, I like the idea of that story a little bit, like being outside of Fuquay and like just having these huge, like a campus of huge barns that like we could just film crazy stuff in. So maybe we, I think maybe we would have, I don’t know. I think ultimately we’d be pulled more into the city to work with some people. If we had stayed the course on YouTube in particular and not have like lost, you know, focus on that, which is what I would’ve hoped- If we’d have stayed creators and not just like commercial producers. Right. Because again, no one really had the vision that there was gonna be so much potential in what is happening on YouTube. Right. And if we had to like, those other ventures had to not distracted us too much and we had remained creators, then I think that it would look a lot more like a lot of these creators that are in places outside of North Carolina. We talked to… I can’t remember. Linus? No, well, yeah, so we talked to Linus Tech Tips, who’s in Canada. We talked to him at the YouTube summit. But then we talked to another guy who’s down in Houston. Got a big warehouse? What’s he got? Yeah. I can’t remember. He’s kind of like a Mr. Beast-y creator in that, you know, the amount of money that has moved into the system over the past five, six years, if we had stayed the course, then we would’ve been able to generate the type of money where you can be like, “Hey, let’s get this warehouse.” ‘Cause that’s what happens when, I mean, yes, we’ve got a great studio. The rent is ridiculous. But if you’re somewhere else, if you’re in the south or if you’re in a less developed place, like you can get some giant building or build a giant building. Right. You know, you can do what Dude Perfect did. Yeah. I mean, now they’re talking about building $100 million campuses. It’s like an amusement park. I’m not saying that that would’ve happened. Maybe. But I think that- Maybe it’d be like just a, you know, like a dirty waterpark version of that. But I think that we would’ve, you know, if we had stayed creators, we would have done something along those lines that you see happening in these different places around the country. What we’d be making? I don’t know because so much of, the percentage of content that we’ve put out into the world, such a high percentage of it is “Good Mythical Morning” because it’s just happened so often. It’s a long video every single day and it’s been going for, you know, over a decade. And it wouldn’t have developed, maybe, I don’t know. It could very easily not have developed. It could have fizzled out. And at this point, you know, and it has been this way for quite some time. It’s not like doing GMM has kept us, for the most part, from doing anything else that we wanted to do. But if we didn’t have it… It’s also given us so much opportunity to try other things, that if we didn’t have that, I think we would’ve stuck in, we would’ve stayed in more traditional creator mode, which is you just make videos as you make videos. But I don’t think, yes, but I don’t think we would’ve stayed in Fuquay. I agree with that. We would’ve migrated a little bit north. Let’s skip to the spiritual stuff because that is a big part of this too. It’s like, you know, when I talked about my spiritual journey and like leaving evangelicalism, like there was a lot of stuff percolating in like the year or two before leaving North Carolina, which also just part and parcel was me leaving my church that I was very involved in. But like I was having all this behind the scenes like crisis of conscience and not feeling like, just feeling like I was playing a role. Not in service, but like just trying fake it ’til you make it kind of thing. And like so I started to become very disillusioned with my church experience and my, just the way that I was conducting my relationship with God in quotes, I guess you would say. But you felt more guilty about it rather than like, “I don’t believe this.” Yes. More so. There was all parts of that, I mean, I was questioning it because of my experience. Like, it was very much a heart exercise for me first and like a feeling exercise than a brain exercise, which is I think more the way that you describe it. So for me, yeah, I was disillusioned with my experience, and I started having conversations with Christy and like confiding in one or two other people that was like, “I just don’t know if I can keep this up.” And then we had the opportunity to move out to LA, and it was just like, okay, this is gonna make it a lot easier. You know, it was like cutting the cord. Now I did start going to church when I was out here, but I was just attending. I wasn’t involved. I wasn’t like very, I wasn’t deeply entrenched in it in terms of like- Leadership. Leadership, they need me, and like they’re counting on me. And like I don’t wanna be that guy who just quits, you know? And have people counting on me. That was a part of it. Anyway, all of that to me sets the stage for, man, I think I would be in this difficult place where I would be like, there would’ve been many years of like straddling the fence. Without the move to LA, I would’ve just been like, I don’t know if, it would’ve been a few more, it would’ve definitely taken a few more years for it to boil over for me and be like, “I can’t be involved in my church in the way that I am “because I’m just not, I’m not into it. “I’m just not… “I just don’t, I don’t believe it “to the extent that I’ve been trying to believe it.” I just felt like I gotta, I gotta go elsewhere. I gotta leave this environment. But like that would’ve been really hard for me because I felt like that would’ve, I just would’ve been… It’s not… It would’ve involved a lot of hard conversations, and it would’ve, like I just put this imaginary person on a pedestal that was like, the person who does the right thing is that they serve and they trust and they trust beyond themselves that they’re doing the right thing. They’re trusting God, not themselves. And I just need to do more of that. And I would convince myself to just hang around and be miserable, I think. And I think, ’cause I actually thought about it. I think kinda what you’re getting at is, I think it’s actually less related to the culture and more related to the specific church for both of us. And let me explain that. Because the biggest sort of traumatic element of it would have been leaving the specific churches we were at. Yeah, I absolutely considered them like a type of family. And mine was my family. My dad started my church. My dad was an elder at the church. You know, so it’s like… So it was like, so that’s how, I think about it in that context of the church that we were going to. And- Oh, it would’ve been so difficult to have those conversations with your actual family and then your church family. It’s just like everybody would have an opinion, an active opinion, and you’ll be there for it, even if you weren’t going anymore. Yeah, so I have… I’m gonna tell you very quickly, because you never know what could have happened, right, three different options as to what could have happened. So what actually- This is just for you. Yeah, yeah. And I think you will probably find that you relate to these different options. So what actually happened was I had a deep crisis of faith that had been unfolding for many years in North Carolina to the point that I had gone to my pastor. And the thing that I had told him at the time was, “I do not believe in the historicity of the Old Testament.” You know, specifically the origin story, Genesis, the Adam and Eve thing. Like, you know, I was in a place where like these people didn’t exist, man. You know, like this is a myth, this is a creation myth. And I’m trying to reconcile what that means. But it was very easy for me to, you know, understand that this was going to lead to losing confidence, and I was already losing confidence in more parts of the Bible. And right up until the time that we left, I had gotten to a place where my confidence in the Bible and specifically in the gospels and the person of Jesus, which as a concept I was still very much in love with Jesus, loved the concept of grace, loved the idea of the gospel, and God, you know, finding a way to have a relationship with us and like all that was a beautiful picture, but my confidence and the underlying reasons to believe that had eroded to the point that I specifically remember on that road trip to California, which incidentally a video series came out of that. I don’t know if you remember this, but I seem to remember that I got very real with you. You knew where I was at, but I remember on that trip and some of those long conversations that we had in between trying to make videos was when I was basically saying, “Dude, this is not true. “Like, whole cloth, like this is not true. “Like, I can’t hold onto, “I’m afraid I can’t hold onto to any of this.” Yeah. That was where I was telling you that. And when it landed on me, first of all, I wasn’t surprised ’cause it wasn’t totally out of the blue, it wasn’t an announcement. There were like little conversations we would have even back then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I just remember being able to have some like really uninterrupted long conversations where it was just like- Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also like what does this mean about moving to California? Like, you know. And the way that it landed on me was I was in a place of, “This isn’t, I can’t do this anymore. “I can’t do this anymore.” Like, it was very much about that experience for me and just being, you know, the way that I interacted with the belief system was just like, I just, I was beating myself down. And it was just like, you know, I think decades of that. My journals prove it. Yeah. To myself. So it’s like, yeah, we’re coming from two different places. But yeah, on that trip when we were coming from the same place and going to the same place, we were having all these conversations. So yeah, I don’t remember the specific conversation, but that’s how I processed what you were saying. And because I was having so much inner turmoil and I did not want to leave the faith ’cause I didn’t, there was no alternative that seemed attractive to me. And I still was saying, you know, what Peter said, which is where, you know, where am I gonna go? If it isn’t with you, where am I gonna go? That was the mentality that I had. That was what I was writing in my journal. So coming to California and then immediately getting involved in a church that was a LA church. Now yes, they were evangelical and basically believed all the same things that my church back home believed, but it presented in a different way. And there were people in the congregation who had a lot of different ideas. There were people in the congregation who believed in evolution. There were people in the congregation who thought it was okay to be gay. You know what I’m saying? So there were things that I was like, “Okay, this feels like I can kind of do this. “And I’ll just, I’m gonna, you know, by faith, “just hold on to this Jesus concept.” Yeah, me too. And just kind of be an LA Christian for a while. So that’s what ended up happening. And of course, you know the story, it didn’t last very long. Eventually it was like, “I don’t see any reason to hold onto this.” Right. And, you know, I’m jumping into the sea of uncertainty. We’ve done a podcast or two on that. But if we had not moved- So what are the three options in your mind? So option one would have been- ‘Cause I’ve said the thing about being on the fence for me. Option one would have been, I would’ve taken these concerns very directly back to my pastor and to the elders. As a leader in the church, I was leading a Bible study at the time. I led a Bible study for basically my entire adult life from college on. I was always leading a Bible study. And gone and said, “I need you guys to pray for me “because I have all these doubts.” And I think that… So option one would’ve been going through this deep spiritual discontent, but then through ultimately what I believe would have been social pressure. I’m not blaming, this is just how the church works. Through social pressure I would have been kind of pressured back into just doubling down on my faith. So going through a crisis of faith and feeling like you’re about to lose it, and then realizing that you don’t wanna lose it because all the circumstances would keep you there. You’re still in the south, you’re still in this community. Your parents, your in-laws, everybody is going to the same church. They all believe the same thing. There’s just so many forces keeping you in, and it’s so difficult to get out of that. I think that in spite of, and I’m pretty strong-willed, you know me, I think that this is, this might be, I don’t know what the probability is, but this is at least, there’s at least a 33% chance that this would’ve happened, and I would’ve like- The age Jesus was when he died. I would’ve doubled down on my faith and kind of gone back in- Ooh, okay, interesting. Only, only to probably lead to an eventual crisis of faith another 10 years down the road. Just so we’re clear. Let me share my version of that. Because the information would’ve never changed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My version of that scenario. Yeah, the main way that I was serving at my church was leading the music. Like, the band leader. You know, the strumming the guitar, and we had, there was an organ. Playing the organ. It was… Yeah. Something for everybody. It’s wonderful. I worked really hard at it. But it was, yeah, I started feeling increasingly like a hypocrite because of like my crisis of conscience behind the scenes. But I think I would’ve gotten to a point where, yeah, I think I would’ve gone to the leadership at the church, which, you know what? I love those people. You know, I have very fond memories. And Christy and I have over the past two years we’ve reconnected with the pastor. You know, Warren and Kathy, we’ve reconnected with ’em. We’ve seen ’em a couple of times ’cause they’ve come out here to visit their family, and like… And then when we went back, we saw ’em over Christmas for like an hour or so. So I love ’em to death. It’s been great to reconnect with them. Anyway, I think I would’ve gone to them and said, “Listen, there’s some stuff going on with me.” We can, you know, get into the spiel of it, but I think it would be like, “I need to take a step back. “I need to take a step out of service.” Like, being an active, like on stage. Like, people can, if you choose to look at me while you’re like trying to worship God, like I’m up there, like trying to do it in the right way or everything. It’s like, I would’ve stepped away from that. And I would’ve been like, “I’m still gonna attend, “but I got some stuff that I need to work on. “I need to focus on it. “And being in a visible position of leadership “is a big distraction for me personally “to what I need to work through.” And… I don’t know how I would’ve… Yeah, but like… And what would’ve come of that? I don’t know. I feel like, I’m surprised to hear that you, in this scenario, yeah, in this scenario, you would’ve been like, you said pulled back in, but like you would’ve gone back in and like doubled down. Yeah, if your second option is more of like staying on the fence. I’ve already said this is where I think I would be. I don’t think I would’ve… I think I would’ve tried to double back down, but then I would’ve found myself in the same place another six months down the road. In none of my scenarios, just because you know me and my personality, none of my scenarios involve me being disengaged with it. I don’t disengage, right. I move, I move towards something kind of aggressively and with conviction, and I like figure out everything that I need to think about it. Like, that’s my personality is not to disengage and become passive in any way. So what’s the second? Or the third? I’ll go to the third and come back to the second. Right. So the more extreme version of this or, you know, the other end of the spectrum would have been that I would have decided, because again, the information didn’t change. Like, I didn’t move to LA and get new information that made my faith crumble. The information was available and is available that caused me to lose confidence in the Bible. And to then finally consider that I might have been wrong all along. That still would’ve been there. And if I had to just been like, listen, regardless of the social pressure, regardless of how uncomfortable it’s going to be to not believe in the context of North Carolina, living in the same town with my parents and my in-laws and everybody who believes a very particular thing, there is a version in which I would’ve said publicly, at least to them, “I no longer believe this,” and move aggressively in the other direction. I did go through what every, not every but many deconverted, deconstructing people go through as like a angry atheist phase where like every single thing that you think about the religion is negative. And you see the negative side of every single thing from Christianity, and you, you know, you listen to all the atheist people and so- It’s about what you’re against now. And you kind of become a fundamentalist on the other end of the spectrum. Yeah. I think that there is, and I know people like this, I know people who have in the context of the south, because I think that in some ways it kind of forces you to take, you have to sort of take aside aggressively because it’s so culturally ingrained that you kinda have to be like, I’m a fish swimming upstream now and I’m going to, and all the stuff that comes along with that. So it’d be like not going to church at all. You know, kind of like debating my family and friends. There’s a version of me that kind of took like a sort of an angry path. You can do all that without being angry. I’m not saying that being a atheist makes you angry. I’m just saying that for me because the way I would lean into it, I anticipate that there would be a version of it that was like actively opposed to it all and wanting to tear it all down. Right? Which then that, is that where you get into like you have to move to another county? You have to find some like-minded people to… I’d probably have to move to like Raleigh Durham or whatever, you know. But I was actually thinking about moving in the context of the second option, which is what I’ll call my staying on the fence, which I think is really, really common for people who are our age and younger who are deconstructing in the south. And that is, I’m just gonna go to a more progressive church. I’m gonna go to a place that just doesn’t believe as stringently about all these different things. It isn’t so much about dogma and doesn’t have a dogmatic worldview, isn’t so evangelical. Maybe I’ll go to a mainline church, you know, or I’ll go to just kind of a progressive church. And there’s all kinds of flavors of that, and there’s flavors of that in the triangle. And it would be like, I want to maintain a Christian identity and I want to maintain a faith in Jesus, and I still believe in the resurrection, and I still believe that, you know, I’m leaning into the mystery of God and trusting Jesus through this thing, but like have a different kind of faith on the other side that’s still a faith. Which, listen, I really respect. In many ways, I respect people who take any one of these paths because it’s their story and their circumstances, and I don’t think any one of these paths is necessarily wrong or right. I think it’s so based on your particular circumstances and your disposition as to why you end up doing one thing or another. But so this middle scenario would probably have involved moving. And you’d also want to be an environment that was affirming regardless of like your sexual orientation or your gender identity, you know? Yeah. I think that, I would hope that I would have ended up in that same place. I think I would’ve observed your experience if you took the middle path because it would’ve taken me longer, you know. Got a lot of love for the people in my church, and like I just valued the commitment to, well, if this is your family, you stick with ’em, no matter what. Even if you disagree with them or whatever. So like, I would just try to blend in. But I think it would take more years, but I would’ve like slowly faded into the background and then shown up somewhere else. Yeah, I don’t think I could have actively achieved this middle ground sort of still remaining a Christian but becoming a new type of Christian and stayed at my old church because I wanna be involved, you know? And if that was what I believed, it wouldn’t be consistent with the things that you have to believe in order to be in leadership at my old church. And so I’d have to go to a place where like, well, that’s not a requirement. And when it comes to the, you know, it’s interesting when it comes to the LGBT stuff, which was something that I think that where we were, you know, 15 years ago was, okay, like, you know, “Hey, I don’t really have a problem with this. “Like, it doesn’t seem, like I know some of these folks “and like I don’t have a problem with it, “but I kind of know that I’m supposed to think “that God has a problem with it.” And I think that there’s a lot of people who are still in that situation where- I’m just not gonna say anything. It’s like, “Hey, like, “yeah, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything wrong with this “on its face. “And I know gay people and they seem pretty cool. “But yeah, it seems like the Bible’s pretty clear “about this, so God must have an opinion about this, “and this must be his standard, “and so I’m gonna stand by that.” And it’s, I mean, it’s a difficult position to maintain. But I just wanna make the point that there are a lot of people who go to churches that are not affirming and also don’t believe that God is okay with anything, you know, anything beyond just marriage between a man and a woman who are not bigots. You know, I’ll say that. It doesn’t automatically mean that they’re a bigot. I think it means that they subscribe to an ideology that gives them a bigoted view of this situation. But I- They back into it. But I think a lot of people in their heart of hearts are like, “I would never mistreat somebody “who was different than me in this way, “but I kind of know “that this is what we’re supposed to think.” And so it does affect your behavior. And I’m not saying it’s okay and it’s excusable. I’m just saying that the reason I know that that’s the case is because I was one of those people. I was one of those people. I existed. I was one of those people. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. There’s also people who have a, like a well-formed analysis interpretation of the Bible and come to a different conclusion that they are affirming of all forms of- Well, and that’s what a, like a progressive church would probably. They would be like, “Okay, yeah, these verses,” you know, they have a way of explaining it that I don’t necessarily agree is, you know, I don’t know if you can, if it’s an intact view, but I agree with the view. But you’re saying you would end up in a place like that? Yeah. In the middle way. Yeah. And again- I probably would too. Just so I could tell my family that I was still going to church every week. ‘Cause you see ’em all the time. When you see him all the time. Like, it’s easy to like not go to church for months while you’re figuring this stuff out and not have to answer to anybody. So it’s like- Yeah, they’d be kinda judging you for the church that you’re going to like, “Oh, he’s going to that liberal church, “but at least he still loves Jesus.” Right, they would know about it. Like, the distance allowed me to not have to, like to have my process and not have to answer prematurely to people who were interested and concerned, like family and friends who would’ve been interested and concerned. It’s just like it wasn’t on their radar ’cause there’s a three hour difference. We also didn’t have any friends, good friends outside the church. I mean, all our friendships were people who were, you know, either people from our campus ministry days, people from our churches, and then our family. And there was more than enough of those folks to go around. And we all agreed about the basic things regarding Christianity. And so that would’ve been a difficult thing. Coming out here, we immediately became friends with a whole lot of different people, including a lot of people who had very similar backgrounds and were coming out of that, and they were at some point along their sort of deconstruction journey. And so immediately kind of connect with these people and you can commiserate a little bit. And we would not have had that in North Carolina at the time. Oh God. And then you talk about the hiring part, like we were talking about the creative business part and like how we’d be limited in who we could hire at that time. Like, the other thing that like, all the members of the Mythical crew that we hired, like all different points of view and walks of life and ages and, you know, experiences and hobbies and orientations and gender identities. It’s like all of this is is, I mean, we knew that it was the right thing to do to like say, hey, we want to have a lot of different perspectives who are like baking into everything that we’re making. It’s the right thing to do and good can come from it. But I can say from experience, like having made that decision again and again with hiring that like, then it’s like you’re rubbing shoulders with so many people that came up in a different way from us and that are different people than a lot of people that we would’ve been able to interact with on a daily basis in a workplace environment than if we were back home at that time, given what we were trying to build. It would’ve been a lot smaller. It would’ve been a lot more limited. And so then our exposure would’ve been, yeah, it wouldn’t have been nearly as robust and eye-opening as it is out here. Yeah. You know, and that’s just something practically that would’ve happened. Even if we wanted something different to happen and we put all the same things in place, it would’ve just been a lot slower and smaller. Yeah, I think that, my conclusion is, regardless of which path I took spiritually, my best guess is that it was very likely that in each one of those scenarios, I would have at some point ended up with another crisis of faith that probably led to somewhere like I am right now, which is kind of like, I don’t know a whole lot about what happens after you die, and I don’t think anybody does, okay? That’s my worldview, broadly speaking. I think I would’ve gotten there, but I think it accelerated by moving to Los Angeles. There’s no doubt that that’s the case. I think it slowed it down a little bit initially, but I think that on the whole, it would’ve been harder for it to happen in North Carolina, but it would’ve eventually happened because there’s no regional nature to any of the information that was really key in changing my mind. I still would’ve gotten to it eventually. Yeah, I don’t know if I would’ve gotten to it because I mean, I’m still actively, I don’t mean to say still. I am actively working through in therapy now just coming to grips with how much power I externalize and give away to other people in terms of like perceived judgment. Like, I want, you know, I wanna perform for people so that I get the response, a response of acceptance and you’re good and you’re okay. And like, I just have a proclivity to do that, you know? And when we moved out here, you know, we had our relationship where we could like keep each other in check. It’s like, is this who you really are? It’s like we know each other so well that like there’s this undercurrent in our conversations that’s like, we would both know if either one of us was making a choice that was unhealthy and like we’re going off the deep end. Like, “You know what? “I’m gonna start snorting cocaine.” It’s like is that really who you want to be? Is that really who you are, Rhett? You know, it’s like… We never had that conversation. That’s not something that’s ever happened for the record. But I’m just using that as a hyperbolic example, right? We can keep… We keep ourselves true to ourselves, right? That’s a healthy level of accountability. And then obviously with Christy and you with Jessie, like there’s this like we know each other. There’s very much that dynamic. And then with the kids. But we were building friendships. It’s like when you move to a new place, you can kind of redefine so much of yourself. So it’s like if I was still back home, all of my relatives, it’s like everybody has this long-standing idea of who you are and how you fit in. Like, everybody in my church, it was like this certain, they saw me in a certain way. So it’s like so many more relationships where I would have this perceived judgment. I’m not saying they’re all judging me, but like it would be very easy to feel like they all have an opinion on anything I do that would deviate from the norm, right? And that’s a very powerful pull for me. Like, I’ve identified that. That like I want to start internalizing more of who, like I’m operating from a place of within to without versus a place of like from without to within. If that even makes sense. Well, I mean that’s the identity of a three. Even more so than a- Well, so the crux of that, having all of these people who you’ve grown up with for heaven’s sakes. You walk around the Walmart and the Target and like you see somebody who has has a long-standing idea of who you are. “That’s Rhett. “I know his parents,” you know? “I read that article about you in the paper. “You’re doing a weird thing.” You know, all of these, “I don’t understand it.” All of that stuff would play into just kind of bogging down. We just wouldn’t be in, I would not be in the same place. Well, so you’re kinda getting into the personal, which I think is a good thing to end on. I completely agree and relate. I think that I am, I still, even though I get a little bit better every single year at this, I still am too interested in being liked. Still care too much about being liked. And if you’re the kind of person who cares about being liked, you will be molded by your environment in a way that is, you know, the more you want to be liked, the more you will be molded by your environment. And so for me, that’s stuff like this. So yes, I have a job, just by default being a creative person and having a creative job, you’re already a little bit in left field. Like, this guy does some weird stuff. And it gives you the right, I suppose, to dress a certain way, to wear your hair a certain way. You know, it’s like you don’t, you can look at me and you’re like, “Well, I doubt he’s an accountant.” Right. Right? Right, I doubt. And I think that that would still be the case. But the thing is that in Los Angeles, everywhere you go, you see people who are trying to make a statement with the way they are presenting themselves. And usually that statement is, “I’m cool. “I’m different. “I know something that you don’t know. “I got more money than you got.” Whatever. Like, right? That is less pronounced in North Carolina because a lot of times the social pressures in North Carolina, especially outside of a metro area, but I would say even within, you know, in the south, a lot of the time the pressure is, “I want you to know that like I’m still cool. “I’m still okay.” Like, you know, here’s a perfect example. When we were back in North Carolina recently, I had to meet some guys who, I got several estimates on some tree removal that’s being done on the property there. And I was kind of like looking at myself in the mirror. Before you met him. And I was like, and I have my hair, I had a man bun. You know, I don’t like having my hair down when I’m like actually doing something besides entertaining people most of the time ’cause it gets in the way. So the way that I can wear my hair is by putting it either doing a half bun or a full bun. And I was like, I don’t wanna meet this tree guy with a man bun. Yeah. Again, this is a problem. But I’m also thinking like, I kind of want this guy, I don’t want this guy to think I’m some city slicker and he’s gonna like take advantage of me and like start talking about trees in ways that I don’t know or like take advantage of me and charge me too much. So I just- This California guy. So I put on a trucker hat ’cause I had a trucker hat. Okay, did you change your accent? Probably. When I put on a trucker hat, I look like a redneck. I mean, like I got this, it looks like I have a mullet. And you weren’t wearing like a toga? I mean, most of the time, especially when I’m back in North Carolina, I’ve got like my, you know, my like North Face jacket and then it’s like a pair of jeans and like I was wearing like duck boots to be able to walk around the property. So I put on a hat, I look like a local. But you had to think about it. Yeah, and I guess what I’m saying is if I was still in North Carolina, there would be enough places that I had to go regardless of which spiritual path I took, I still gotta show up with all these people from North Carolina all the time. And I’m just not, like, I’m not the guy that is like trying to be different, right? I am too interested in being liked to be too different, and I don’t like that about myself. I would like to decrease that. But because of that, it kind of keeps me from taking too many risks. Yeah. To present myself in a way that draws the wrong kind of attention to me. Because if I show up at a place where it’s like, “hey, we’re all like guys who are watching football,” my natural tendency is to become a guy who likes watching football because that guy’s within me. I do like watching football, not all the time, but I can become that. I’m knowledgeable. I can have conversations. What a nightmare. I think I would be the guy who still watched football. That’s totally true. If I still lived in North Carolina, I would still be watching sports. Well, I still watch sports here. Yeah, and I don’t. And I am so glad. Oh my goodness, I’m so, there’s no pressure to know about the sports. The reason why I watched the sports was so that I could be a part of the conversation, so that I wouldn’t be like, what, you know, “Poor guy, he’s so outta touch.” You know, outta here there’s no, there’s no touching, there’s no touch football. Yeah, so I’m trying to think, I’m trying to think how it manifests itself beyond the way you dress and the way you wear your hair. I like being different, I like being different. I feel like being in North Carolina, I mean, especially the path that we took going from engineering and then like the Campus Crusade, I started to come like, I’m the most, like in college like we dressed crazy. That’s true. And it’s like, I’ve gotten back to that. You know, like, I like being different, like expressing myself, and like I feel like I’m getting back in touch with that fun high school and college, especially college version of us that was the main reason for that, we gave ourselves permission to be those people ’cause we were in a band, an alternative rock band. And I enjoyed that so much. So I feel like I’m, yeah, like dressing weird, my hair like this. I went to, you know, I never would go to a mechanic back home dressed the way that I went to the mechanic on Friday morning. Had to get him to like fix this hole in Lily’s tire. And I was teaching her how to do it. I took her with me and like- Teaching her how to take a car to a mechanic? Yeah. Important skill everyone should know. I was like, you know, we could just, we could plug this ourselves, but ain’t nobody got time for that. Oh, I did it. And then, that’s not what we’re talking about. Okay, good, you did it. I watched a YouTube video. I don’t recommend it. I look so crazy. I don’t think I could have brought myself to go to a mechanic and ask him to do anything. What’d you have on? A tank top? I had on that furry blue sweater. You saw me right afterwards. Oh, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the t-shirt, it did have a stain on it, and then like- Oil stain. My hair and my weirdo glasses. Transmission fuel stain, fluid stain. So I just feel like there’s no way I’d go to a mechanic back home dressed like the weirdo that I am. Yeah, you’d be taken advantage of. Right, and it was just like, again and again, it’s not the type of attention I want. Like, I’m free to be weird and nobody bats an eye out here. There it’s just like, it’s, you know, it’s kinda like that scene where Gandalf is going through the Hobbit, Hobbiton. Yeah. And everybody’s like kind of sneering at him. I feel like, you know, and that’ll suck the pepper outta you, man. I feel like if I’d have stayed in North Carolina, it was already sucking the pepper outta me. It’s like that’s a huge thing. Now I will say, I think Christy’s… Whenever she gets in this space where like she could see herself living back in North Carolina because her interaction with this culture out here is much more negative in terms of like, “Oh, and who are you? “Oh, and what are your talents? “And what do you have to show? “You know, are you the shit?” You know, it’s like that kind of vibe. “And what can I get from you? “What can you give me? “Are you worth talking to?” There’s like this- Yeah. And can’t go outta your house without being entirely put together. Like, there’s all these forces out here that will also, they’ll wear you down too in a different way. And so… Because I like getting attention and because I am successful, let’s be real, I’m, you know, because I, then, I’m at home here, you know? It’s a freedom for me, but it doesn’t squish me. And sometimes I totally understand that people would feel that way being out here and hate it. And then you look at how much you’re paying for your mortgage or your rent and you’re like, “Oh my god, why am I here?” Yeah. Like, we have some neighbors who just decided to move. I thought they would never move. It’s like so bummed. If it’s not, you know, if you’re not making money hand over fist, it’s hard to have a family here for sure. It’s a tough- It’s a different beast. And all of that cultural stuff. So it’s not all great, but it’s like, for everybody. I actually think, so Jessie loves it out here. Doesn’t wanna move. I love it out here. Don’t wanna move. We’re not gonna move. But I actually think that I could. So like, I’m not… Like, I love being out here and being in the mix, and I like being able to, you know, I like having so many options for things to eat and stuff. But the thing is that, you know, the last few times that I’ve been to the triangle, I realized that like, what is it that I really enjoy doing? You know? Okay, I like having things at my house set up the way that I want, right? And, you know, I’m pretty particular about that. Like, I like, you know, I wanna be able to get into a sauna, you know what I’m saying? I like my little ice bath that I get in every morning. You could afford all that stuff. So I could do all that in North Carolina, no problem. I like watching sports. I like going to sporting events. I would love to be able to go to NC State football games and basketball games. I would love to have season tickets, see the Wolf Pack play. Like, I’m still really into it. And I could afford like really good seats. I could get close. I love that. You know, there’s so many good places to eat now. So many of the things that I do, I could still do there. Yeah. And also I think that things have evolved culturally in a pretty short period of time, especially if you’re in Raleigh, you’re in Chapel Hill or Durham, whatever. It’s just like, you know, Jessie and I drove through Carrboro, and you just get this, I was like, oh, it’s really interesting to be back here in North Carolina and have this mix of like progressive people but southern tendencies. And those two things definitely exist together in droves in many places in the south. And I actually think it probably has a lot to do, it’s one of the sort of subconscious reasons why we ended up getting a place back home was to be able to stay there a little bit longer, you know? Yes, it’s to have a place to stay when we go back and see our families as our, you know, parents getting older and that kind of thing. But I think part of it for me was just recognizing that I, you know, there’s a lot that I really like about the south. There’s a lot that I like about the triangle. And now that I’ve kind of gone out and done my thing and like a lot of the things that we do are kind of based on what we’ve already done and we move into opportunities based on the opportunities that we’ve already created for ourselves, that’s not ever going away. I’m not saying, don’t worry, I’m not saying I’m planning on moving. I’m just saying that as I- I wasn’t worried. As I have like a thought exercise, there’s not this recoiling in any way. Maybe we need to set up a satellite, we could set up a satellite campus, Mythical campus in North Carolina. And also even- I don’t know what would happen there. Even when it comes to the way I present myself. Yeah, okay, when I met the guy with the, the tree guy, I put a hat on. But in a lot of ways, I just don’t think that that’s a factor anymore now that I’ve lived a life in which it’s not a factor. You come out to a place where it’s not a factor, it’s like, oh, I can look however I want to look, I can talk how I want to talk. Whatever. I still like, I mean, the oceans are better. It’s nice and hotter. The beaches are better. The beaches are better here? I’m talking about North Carolina being better. Oh yeah, the beaches are better for sure. I like a good southern exchange at a gas station. Yeah. “Hey, where you going to? “Up to ” Kind of a thing. Yeah, so I like a good interaction with some tilled soil. You can get some of that out here. Yeah, I mean, so for me, the reason that I’m here now and plan to stay, now first of all, Jessie’s more committed to staying than I am. I mean, she just loves it. And I love it too, but I also like North Carolina quite a bit. I’m not saying she doesn’t like North Carolina, but it’s- Yeah, I’m much more committed to being out here. But for me, I’m just saying that the main reason I have plans to stay indefinitely and probably die out here is like, you know, at any point in time, well, everyone’s gonna die at any point in time, but like, you know, not anytime soon hopefully. I’m saying I could retire out here. It’s because it’s just where we’ve built this thing, right? And it’s where our team is, and it’s where we’re operating, right? And I don’t have any desire to like try to recreate that in another place in the United States. No. No, me neither. Well, let’s shut this down. It’s been a good conversation. My recommendation is the Spotify playlist, Tibetan Bowls. Ooh. You know, see if you can last the five hours and 21 minutes of listening to nothing but Tibetan bowls. Do they add anything besides bowls? There’s sometimes there’s a little bit of synth in there. You can do yourself a little meditation. You know, focus on the moment with Tibetan Bowls, meditative tones for clarity and healing. Whatever that means. Nobody needs that. I just thought it was cool. And if that’s not your thing, the new SZA album is really growing on me. Oh, double rec. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Since I’m here. All right, sending out love. No regrets. #EarBiscuits. And of course join the conversation there and by calling 1-888-EARPOD1. Hi, my name is James. I’m a longtime fan. In fact, I’ve been watching since your Caption Fail videos. My very first video of yours was the Christmas Caption Fail. Your most recent episode of “Ear Biscuits” on the chat GPT I found utterly hilarious, and it reminded me of that Caption Fail video. I just couldn’t stop laughing the whole way through. I just wanted to thank you for bringing back memories of the first time I watched your content. 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.