Welcome to “Ear Biscuits,” the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Rhett. And I’m , getting something outta my throat. Oh! Caught you- Gotta be able to talk if you’re gonna be on podcast. Caught you off-guard! Link. Oh hey, Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are reminiscing about the good old days when times were bad, before the internet. What was it like to live before the internet? Well, we can tell you ’cause we were there for it. So pull up a chair. And we’re also there for the part that was after the internet. We’re still here. We’re still here, we’re still in it. And the internet’s still happening. Every single generation and every single person likes to sort of center all of time around themselves. This is a very natural thing to do. That’s why everyone always thinks that the world is ending when they’re alive. Everyone, if you’re, many Christians, and when we were Christians- Well they centered time around Jesus. No. Right. But not themselves. Yeah, but when Jesus is gonna come back, like you remember- Oh, okay. You remember what it was like to feel like you were like, I really think Jesus is gonna come back in my lifetime. It’s just, we all like to think that, right? So take this with a grain of salt. But I do feel like there’s a significance to how old we are specifically, as it relates to the internet, which is obviously- Oh, yeah. One of the hugest, most influential technological shifts that’s ever happened. And that is that we got a childhood that was completely- Internet-free. Internet-free, with the exception of a few, like we were exposed to the internet in like very, very metered doses at some rich kid’s house when we were like 16 or 17. But in terms of the internet being a part of our lives. Don’t just call Trent some rich kid. He was more than some rich kid. He was a special friend. He was great, but in the context of that point, he was just some rich kid as you would. I mean, he had a couch in his bedroom. Yeah. You know, I mean, if you got a bedroom with a couch in it, that’s pretty amazing. His bedroom. And then you’ve got a computer with the internet in it. That’s really amazing. Trent’s bedroom was bigger than not only bigger than my parents’ bedroom. It was bigger than my living room. Trent’s bedroom was bigger than every house in the McLaughlin household. I mean, in fairness, his dad was a builder. Yeah. You know, I would expect no less. Right, if you’re gonna build yourself a house, give the kids big rooms. I was like, this house has two staircases. It’s just more roof. You know, I mean, we were so wowed by this guy’s, Trent. We’re getting on a little Trent sidebar here. No, this is, very pertinent, I haven’t landed my point yet. For a boy that was wowed by a couch and two different staircases. There’s two ways up to the second floor in this guy’s house. Well, you could have a fire. You could go up one way, you can come down another way. You could have like the, and like a foot race on multiple levels. And then there would be, and each staircase could be one way. If our minds were so blown by that, think about what the internet did. You think that Trent went up one staircase and then came down the other one? Yeah, it was a down and up. But you know how when you have to walk someplace, like maybe it’s someplace- No. In your neighborhood. Not since the internet. And you walk there one way and you walk back a different way because you feel- I love that. That it’s shorter. There’s multiple times when I’ve realized, why do I come back this way? Why don’t I come back the same exact way that I came if I thought that that was the shortest way? Well, I mean- What is that? When you’re in a, it’s- No, I’m talking about walking. It’s, oh you’re talking just about walking That’s what I started with I was walking. What is that? Well, the answer to your question is stimulus, man. What I’m asking really in the context of that rich kid, Trent, some rich kid is, did he suffer from that same thing? And do you think that he came up one staircase- Mm-hmm. Because he thought that was the best way upstairs, but going down was the better way to go downstairs. And do you think that that’s why his dad put two staircases into his house because he knew that Trent needed to have options, and the other son? To answer your question, no, I don’t think that was the reason. Okay, thank you. I don’t think that was the reason. Yeah, but we have, you know, do we have something to offer on this subject? Well- We definitely have a pick your fee. I have to finish the second part of my part. Yeah, so finish it. I’ve, you know, I’m just waiting. We are the only generation that had a childhood completely internet free, and then adulthood that was basically, while we were in college, the internet became a thing that was gonna be in everyone’s life. While we were in college, like while we were going from… Right. Childhood to adulthood, that change. And that’s just an unusual thing, that like put a feather in our- Cap. In our cap 45-year-old caps. Yeah. Because we can say that about ourselves. Not everybody can say that, Link. So we do have a unique perspective on this. That’s what I was getting to. And we’re gonna give it to you. I think one of the reasons this is so fresh in our minds is because we just released a video over on the Rhett and Link channel. This is the third video that we’ve released once we started putting videos out over there. Just, you know, keeping you guessing, expressing ourselves creatively. Give it a watch. It’s, as of the recording of this, I don’t know exactly what we’re titling it, which is always subject to change anyway, but it’s- Right. Rhett and Link in 1984. So we subjected ourselves to all the limitations of being in 1984, which is the year that our friendship began. And yeah, we decided that we wanted to have the recess, that we never got. Because when we met, you know, our teacher held us in from the recess. But we, so we constructed this elaborate scheme to put ourselves back in the 1984 of it all. Driving a car from 1984, wearing clothes from 1984, only speaking to people who lived in 1984, and only using technological accoutrement that was available in 1984. Specifically maps of the paper variety. It was mostly about the maps. It was a lot about the maps, there’s also- Because we had to navigate across town. There’s also a music video in there and the song featured is on your streaming services. Limewire, Napster. If you wanna burn a CD- Yep. Of that, you can do it. Actually if you wanna buy the cassingle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So before the internet we had something called cassingles. And if you’re- I never bought one. I’ve very rarely bought a cassingle. You can get that at mythical.com. It’s “You Are Here” is the name of the song. It explores paper maps, the conceit of the video in musical form. And also male friendships, which is another discussion for another time. Like next episode. Maybe Next episode. I’m very- So, yeah. I’m very happy with the song. Check out the 1984 video on the Rhett and Link channel. Please comment, share it with people. Y’all love it. I’m very happy with the song. I love the song. I’m very happy with the video, very happy with the song. I’m getting to do a little genre specific. Yeah. Songwriting. I’m enjoying that part of the Renaissance. Bringing it back. Definitely. Going back to the OG roots and writing these songs. We were just working on a song yesterday for the next thing. Oh yeah. Is it the next thing? Is it the next one or the one after the? No, it’s the next one. it’s the next one. It’s the next one, okay. The fourth one. So, check that out. But yeah, so we’re in like this pre-internet frame of mind. Let me tell you, the struggle is real when it comes to using paper maps. If you’re rusty on that, and I don’t know any reason why you wouldn’t be. Yeah, just watch that video before you decide, look, you know what things were better, things were better. You talk about going one way and coming another way. Okay, I mean we explored so much about traffic and driving in the video, that I don’t, you know, we don’t have to talk about that too much. But sometimes, when you’re looking on Google Maps and you went one way to get somewhere, if sometimes it just depends on which direction you’re facing. Oh, I’m on this side of the street- Yeah. And now there’s a couple of right, you know. It’s right or left. Google takes into account all the right turns and all the left turns. That’s true. And it can send you a totally different way. I drove an hour to Malibu over this past weekend, and went one way, went through Calabasas, looking for some rappers, saw no one. We had to get through the gates. And then once we got done with all of our Malibu shopping and dining, and just having a good old time, apparently we’re facing the other direction. And traffic had changed in such a way, we went back a totally different way. That’s one of the beauties of life. Cannon, what’d you take? Which road did you take? We took, no, we took the one with Malibu Creek State Park on the way there. But then we came all the way down to PCH. Oh, wow. On the way back. Came through Santa Monica. Nice. Yeah. Scenic. Well, they’re both scenic in different ways. You know, taking a long way home, is something you should do. If it was my rec today, I might recommend that. Oh, more than that. But there’s nothing more thrilling than- You’ve got a better rec than that. Than my map telling me to go the other way back. I was talking about it. I was like, “I’m so glad we’re going this way.” And that it’s, I also know that it’s the quicker way. And also, I don’t like the other way anymore, ’cause I’ve already gone that way. Do you remember the first time that you went back to North Carolina after having grown up there, and we knew all the ways to like, I guess at some point there was a map involved, but mostly it was like, okay, if you lived in Buies Creek, and you had to get to Lillington, or you had to get, Lillington was easy ’cause it’s just 421. But let’s say you had to get to Cary. you had to go to a Waverly Place. Yeah. ‘Cause you had a hot date. Oh yeah. For a movie. Mm-hmm. You knew how to get there because you had driven with your parents, and your parents had been there multiple times. And then there was this transition when you were 15 and your parents were telling you where to turn. Right, based on the fact that they had memorized it. And then by the time you got your license at 16, you knew how to get there. Yeah. But it was very specific. It was like these turns. Right. And you had the different places that you could go on a regular basis. When I went home the first time with, I guess it was, it may have been a GPS. It could have been my phone. I can’t remember which one. I know GPS, I was using that out here, for when we first moved out here before you used the phone. Yeah. But the first time I had a computer telling me where to go to like get to Cary, it sent me a slightly different way. Yeah, and we were- Because we weren’t making the best choices. Nope. Every single time. We were making the same exact choices of how we were gonna get to a place. And of course, traffic was something that you encountered. It wasn’t something you could anticipate or plan for. It was like, “Oh, well, turns out there’s a combine on this route today.” Yeah. And that was just something you had to deal with. Have you ever recall being, learning that there was a different way to get to Waverly Place that was better than the way that you had learned? Yeah, I would go with other people, and be like, “Whoa, they’re going a different direction.” Everybody would have their way. Every family. And somehow you, if you were riding with another family, you could pick up their way. Mm-hmm. But Ooh, I got a new, I can’t wait to show my family the new way. Wow. Yeah. Going- Hold on. Like, cut, I remember when way I started. I don’t think I could have done that. Cutting through to Bojangles. Other ways. Cutting through at Fuquay, that Bojangles, and then going back through where Don lived in that lake. Sunset Lake. Sunset Lake. I remember when I first discovered the Sunset Lake cutoff to get to Cary. That was nice. That’s a good route. And then, but then this, they lowered the speed limit- Mm-hmm. Leaving Fuquay. And that got frustrating. I was like, maybe I need to go back to my old ways. I don’t think I could have sold my dad- 55. On a different family’s way. Right. Like if I came home, and I was like, “Hey dad, the Maddoxes can get to Cary”- Five minutes faster than you. Well, two minutes faster. Yeah. Must be real. Like, he would’ve been like, “I don’t care.” You know what I mean? I think he was like, “This is the way we get to Cary. We’re not gonna change it because the Maddoxes get there two minutes faster.” And how would you even know that? What were you timing it with your stopwatch, son? Right. You know, he put me on the defensive real fast. Oh yeah. There’s no way I could have defended that. But now we don’t have to have, everybody’s family is equal now because we’re all using the internet to get where we go. I think it has to be more apropos in LA. But I’m guessing anywhere that there’s some sort of pseudo metropolis, you’re starting to adopt this habit of, even if you know exactly where you’re going, you put it in your map, you put it in your ways or your Google map. I do not use Apple map. It’s just not as good. Sounds good. Yeah. And because it’s gonna tell you the right way to go, and then it’s gonna tell you if something changes. It’s like you’re having this active relationship with the internet that’s constantly assessing whether you’re doing the best thing. You know, I- That makes me feel so good. I was so lost. Yeah. I was so lost for so long and I didn’t even know it. And maybe we’ll get into this, but obviously, I mean, I’m not too worried about it, but we have lost something. But we may have lost something that we don’t really need. Yeah, lost, getting lost. And so we need it. So if you’re a kid and you’re born into the new system, and the way that you think about getting somewhere is like, well we use GPS to get anywhere. We don’t use any of our own intuition or landmarks, or memorizing the terms or whatever. I mean, eventually you just, by default you’ll memorize things if you’re going the same way every single time. Yeah. But obviously you’re losing something that you’re part, some part of your brain that exists so that you can navigate your world. You’re not exercising it anymore. Like we don’t, none of us exercise our math brains very often. I mean, how many people do anything beyond like the 10, 10 times 10 like- Right. I haven’t solved for X in quite a while. Much less integrated. And then hopefully the world will continue on, and it won’t end. Or you know, all the GP, there won’t be some like giant sun flare that ends up taking all the GPS out and we have to suddenly become like people who use maps again. But if we do, I think we’ll be fine. My point I’m making is that you should feel okay because you did it. You did it in the video. I did it in the video. We got to where, you got there before I did. We can navigate via map. Even maps that aren’t even current, we can do that. Yeah. But I don’t know about our kids. No, there’s no way. Our kids will just, we will find them spinning in a circle somewhere. So we got some categories we’re gonna go through, just to kinda jog our memory about what life was like for us before the internet. And through all the, there was a bunch of strange transitions. Like even you talk about GPS. When we moved out here 12 years ago, we were buying dedicated GPS units to go on the dashboard. TomTom. TomTom? Was it another brand? Yeah, or a Garmin. No, I think we both had a TomTom. I think we got a deal at Best Buy. And it was not as good as what we have now. I think you could pay a service and get it to connect to like traffic, but there’s no way it would reroute. I just remember the lady would say, “Take a left on divide towards Sacramento.” Sacramento. Sacramento. You didn’t even say, you just said the word- Sacramento. Sacramento. Yeah. They fixed that eventually. Okay, we’re gonna talk about a lot more. I do wanna talk about my shirt. This is the “Good Moth-ical Morning” That’s nice. There’s some hidden things in this- That’s a black T-shirt. We have it in a black with a white graphic, and then we have it in cream with a brown graphic, I think. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, we’re giving you options, because that’s ’cause y’all want. It’s cool shirt. And- it’s got a lot of hidden- This is for the like, you know, this, and first of all, and this is for, if you’re a super fan, yes. But if you’re like the kind of fan that doesn’t want people to know that you’re a fan of things, which I relate to, this is a way to like subtly sort of indicate you’re, so, “That’s a cool shirt, what does it mean?” “Uh, nothing.” You know, like you can just say that. Don’t be ashamed of us. Or you can be like, “Oh, it’s an internet show called “Good Mythical Morning.” Like you can do that too. You have the option. We’re giving you options, just like Trent dad gave him options for- To get up and downstairs. How he’s gonna get up and down his stairs. Right. Go to mythical.com and get the Good Moth-ical Morning shirt, in both of the colors and in the sizes. “Ear Biscuits” is supported by Chime. Good money habits are really important to have, but can be hard to maintain. Mm-hmm. Whether you just scored your first job. Congrats! Congrats! Or you’re ready to take finances more seriously. Congrats! Now’s the time to start a healthy financial journey. When you sign up for Chime and link a qualifying direct deposit, you get access to benefits like getting paid up to two days early and fee-free overdraft up to $200. And with Chime, there are no monthly fees, no minimum balance, and absolutely no deposit required to become a member. So sign up for a chime checking account today to link your paycheck. It only takes two minutes and it does not affect your credit score. Get started 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, N.A, or Stride Bank, N.A., members FDIC. Early access to direct deposit funds, depends on payer. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limit supply. See chime.com/spotme. “Ear Biscuits” is brought to you by BetterHelp. Most weeks, I, you know, my time is filled with this job that we have here. This good old job. And my time at home. Mm-hmm. As a husband, as a father. Yes. And you can realize that most of the week has passed, and I haven’t taken any time from me. And I can’t be the best me for everyone else in my life when that is the case. I feel that. It’s easy to get caught up in doing things for others, especially as bosses, husbands, and fathers like we are. Which can lead to things like burnout and stress. And therapy can give you the tools to have more balance in your life, so you can support yourself and support others at the same time. I believe in my therapy as me time. It’s even when I don’t know that I have things to talk about, I end up having stuff to talk about. Things to process, to understand myself better, and to put myself to enter back into the game. You know, it’s like take a little meantime in the dugout, then get back in the game, you know? So if you’re thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It’s entirely online. It’s designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Find more balance with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/ear today to get 10% off your first month. That’s Betterhelp.com/ear. Do you remember my phone number? Your current one? Of course not. Your, of course I remember your old phone number. You want me to tell it to you? Uh-huh. 919. It wasn’t that? Nope. It was a 910? Mm-hmm. Well, I remember back when they started that new area code 910. And I didn’t, you were not 910, dude. 910 was the newfangled area code. But you had a new 919. Hold on. Are you saying that 919 was before 910? Absolutely. And then it went back to 919? I thought there was another one before 910. Uh-uh. Yes, 919. You sure? 910 was newer. Yes. It was a big moment in Harnett County, or- I do remember that, but I could have sworn it wasn’t 919 before it was 910. I was not, when I moved, when mom and I moved to the new house, we got a 910 number. 910 893 2729. Uh-uh. Oh, oh, you’re talking, no, my old number 919- Hold on, that- 893 2979. What did I say? Not that. 27, you said the, you got the number- Oh, yeah. 2979. 2979 and I just remembered that for the first time in a long time. ‘Cause I never dial my own number. And then when I moved I got a 910 number. A 910 893- 6091. Yeah, that’s right. Got it. And when we moved, but yours was 919 893 5083. Yeah, ’cause I had the same, you know- Forever. I had a stable family and my parents stayed together. We stayed in one house. I made it very easy for you to remember my phone number. 5083, yeah. It was literally- Do you remember I- That was my parents’ phone number until they moved. Like, hopefully they don’t still have that phone number, right? They probably didn’t port their number. They didn’t port their number. Do you remember our dorm room number, freshman year of college? 24. Not the number to the- Oh, oh, oh. Phone number. Oh, not a chance. 919 515- that means, 515 means nothing to me. How do you remember our dorm room number? This is a campus prefix, and then the second one- Why did I need to remember that? Because to tell the ladies who are gonna call us, you know. “Hello, can I speak to the shorter one?” That’s what I gonna say. I do not remember 515 at all. 515 9182 or something, I don’t know. Okay, so as we were demonstrating, yeah, like you knew everyone’s phone number that you had to call. And I guess at some point, someone had looked it up. Mostly it was probably just like, “What’s your phone number?” And they wrote it down and then you just memorized it, but you associated, it’s crazy. And of course you only had to memorize really the last four digits because you didn’t even have to dial the area code. Right. It was just, you know, 893 and then those 4 digits. So somewhere in your brain you had this spreadsheet. Rolodex. That had a family or a person within that family, associated with a 4-digit number. And that isn’t something that happens anymore. That’s a part of our brain that we don’t use anymore. And like, do you ever sit down with your kids, and make sure that they memorize your phone number? Well, Orlando’s 13, and we were having a conversation last week about it. Somehow he brought it up and he was like trying, he was struggling to remember my number, but then he did remember it. Well, yours is easy to remember. I’m not gonna give it a spoiler. Don’t say it. But you have the easiest phone number to remember of anyone that I know. Yeah, ’cause I knew somebody who worked for Nextel in 1996. And they gave you- No 19, no, no, no, no. They gave you pre-owned number, man. It was 2001 when I got a cell phone. 2000, 2001. Yep. But so, okay, what did he say? Did he remember it? Does he know your number? He remembered it, yeah. ‘Cause I think that’s important. In the case where his phone dies- Right. And then he’s gotta like go up, and first of all, talk to a stranger, to ask them to use the phone. Like, is that, could you even do that? Like, have you ever had to ask a stranger to use their cell phone to make a call? No, but my mom did, when I was late picking her up at the airport and her phone died. Remember that? Oh, I’m so glad you have a good number. Because what if like- Yeah. I changed my number at some point, when I changed service providers. When you got popular. No, it wasn’t because of that. I changed my number when I changed service providers, and I had the option to port the number over, but I saw an opportunity. Having the same number since the year 2000 as I did, let’s just say, there are a lot of people who have my phone number. Yeah. And I didn’t, and I was like, this is an opportunity to reset who has my phone number. Yeah. Now I still have that phone number that forwards to a Google number. So if you call me or text me on that, I can see, but then I can kind of make a choice if I want to interact, because that’s technically not my number anymore. I mean, when you start talking about this in pre-internet, it’s just like, you didn’t know where anybody was. If they weren’t with you, and if didn’t answer their landline, they could be anywhere. And if they were like a child of yours, like we know where our kids are because of location services. Yeah, we do. Right? I mean- I mean I’ve got, we’ve got- And Chris, like I don’t, I can look at, Christie can see where I’m at. I can see where she’s at. You can see the whole family. It’s so useful and gives you peace of mind, right? Especially as a parent or a loving partner. It feels a little big brothery, I think, for the kids. Well, I mean every everybody knows that it’s happening. But yeah, there were times when it was like, well I’m just gonna sit around and maybe- Maybe he’ll show up. Maybe Rhett will call me back. Maybe he’ll show up. I’ll sit on my porch and see if he rides by. On his bike. Yeah, on my bike. I mean, and if you were late for something, you would just, “Is he, did he know about it? Did he forget?” It’s like- Yeah, you would wait for people, you would wait. You would believe the best. But after a certain amount of time, you’d be like, “We’re leaving.” There was a lot of- I find out later what happened. Unknowns, like, I think my childhood would’ve been so much better if my mom could have communicated that, “Yes, I am gonna pick you up, I’m just gonna be late.” Like- Ooh. You freaked me out so much- Old wounds. As a kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the one for me, man. Like, she gonna pick me up? I always- Sometimes she just wouldn’t pick you up or would just be late? No, she would always pick me up, but like, she was always late. Well, you should have gotten used to that. I know, but I couldn’t. Should adjusted your schedule. It’s like some sort of peace of mind there, man. It’s like, oh well, you know, once you’re 12 or 13, you gotta have a cell phone. You gotta be totally at all times connected to the internet. Very nice. But I feel a bit sorry for our kids in this regard. Now obviously as a parent, I like to be able to immediately know where both of my kids are, and you know, I’m not that at this point. I’ve got a 19 year old that, you know, I’m not, he’s still on the family thing, so I can see where he is at, but I’m not checking up on him. Yeah, 14 year old, okay, you know. Mm-hmm. Depends on how late it is, whatever. But we’re not particularly strict about this. But we have, Shepherd has friends whose parents are a little bit more concerned about this. And literally just the other night, well in the morning, Jessie and I looked, and we had a text from a mom of a kid who had been hanging out with Shepherd. And the text came at like 11:50 PM. We were already in bed. It was like a Friday night, but you know, went to bed. And it was like, “I can see that the boys are out roaming.” As they’re, you know, prone to do. And you know, “When are they coming back?” or whatever. And we were like, “Sorry we got this after we went to bed.” Which is basically like, when your kid comes to our house, they are doing whatever they want and we just go to sleep. They don’t even have to be home. Just so you know. And the reason that I do that- Why didn’t she just call her kid? I think may, I don’t know, I don’t know, but- She probably did after you didn’t answer. I think that- Who’s in charge here? I’ve tried to, because our parents had zero idea where we were so often, and many times we would tell them one thing, and do a slightly related thing that wasn’t exactly what we told them to do. That was just- A pivot, you know. That was just kind of how you navigate. It’s just a little just pivot. I kind of want my kids to have that. There’s no autonomy. Have that freedom to feel like there is no tether. Right. But there is. There’s a digital tether. Yeah. Is it safer? Of course. Is it better? Ah, I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I mean, how did you answer the phone at your house? If somebody called. I wanted to hear your answer to this. At my house, I would say, “Hello? Hello? Hello?” You say it three times? No. No, I’m just trying to get the tone right. If I was at Nana’s house, that I was told, I was taught to say, “Neal residence.” Right, every family- And I think because- Had a mode. I didn’t live there. And if I, people would think that if a kid answered the phone, and there’s no kid in the house, that like they had the wrong number. So I said Neil residence there. When I was at your house, I was like, I would just pick it up, and hang it right back up. Yea, we didn’t have a residence again. “Neil residence,” very professional. I thought the way that I remember thinking about this, is that the rich families always said the residence. And I remember thinking, “I don’t think we’re rich enough to say, to call this a residence.” Like, I just remember thinking like, I think those people in Keith Hills, like if you call a house in Keith Hills, which was a country club. Yeah, that’s a residence. That’s a residence. Yeah. They resided. Juby residence, you know. Right. Yeah. Maddox residence, that felt appropriate. But McLaughlin residence, we just, it was like, “Hello?” You know. Hello? Hello? Can I speak? Hello? Can I speak to one of your parents? Either one will do. You know. but most of the, and when you called somebody, okay, so could you, I’m calling the phone. Could you answer like, I’m calling Michael Juby. Okay, and- Juby residence. Can I speak to Michael? No, no, no, no. Is Michael there? Yeah, he’s here, is this Rhett? Yes. That’s typically what they would say. Yes. Hey Mr. Juby. Hold on a second, Michael! Come to the phone! It’s not in your pocket, that doesn’t exist yet! And we’re not putting one in your room yet! Get in here! Exactly. So that’s exactly how it would go. But the thing that I didn’t do, is I didn’t say, “Hello Mr. Juby, it’s Rhett. How you doing?” It’s Michael there? I just said, “Is Michael there?” Like, I wouldn’t, it’s- Right. I had no etiquette. Yeah. Is that what you would’ve done? Sure, yeah, that’s what I did. And when- And I mean, you had to talk to parents a lot more. But then when you showed up at somebody’s house. Don’t even get me started with the girlfriends. We had a neighbor, I’m not gonna name names. We had a neighbor who would, ’cause when you would go to somebody’s house, you would knock on the door, their parents would come to the door, and you would say, “Is Michael there?” Yeah. You know, that’s what I would do. And, but we had a neighbor who would come to our door, he’d ring the doorbell. My mom or dad would open the door and he wouldn’t say anything. He just like stand there because it was like, you know. You know why I’m here, I’m not here for you. And she would know who I’m here for. And my mom would say, “When so-and-so comes to the door, he just doesn’t say anything.” And so I will say, “Do you want to know if Rhett’s here?” And then they’ll like nodding nod. “Well he’s not.” And he just turns around and walked away. He’s on his bike right there. And then, she wouldn’t know where you were either, man. “I don’t have any idea where he is at. We haven’t seen him in 48 hours.” Now that now that you got the internet, you got these cellular telephones, you can be late to things ’cause you can just be in constant communication about it. It gives you an excuse to be a little late. Running 10 late. Let’s be honest. I’m running 15 late, but I’m on the way, you know. Even a restaurant, you know, I’ve called, we’re on our way to restaurants. Oh man. We calling restaurants. Oh, we’re gonna be there, I promise. Don’t give away our table. I’d say we call restaurants letting them know we’re not gonna be there on time 40% of the time. But it’s usually within the like 20-minute window. Like if it calls be on 15, you gotta call. Gotta call. You gotta call. ‘Cause they’ll give that table to somebody else. What about information in general? You know, it’s like, there was all this talk as the internet was becoming the advent. Oh, it’s the information age, you know? Well it was, and it is. And I think it’s- Of course it still is. I think that for me- It’s like- This is probably the- It’s like passing information. Biggest thing. This is the biggest aspect of what I feel is, I mean everything is different in the way that we’re talking about it. But if you wanted to know something when we were kids, you would ask an adult. And that adult also knew nothing. Right. You know what I’m saying? It’s like they didn’t have the internet either. Right. Like there was some adults who knew some things, but if you were like, what’s the capital of Delaware? Right. What are the chances that somebody you know knows that if you’re not in Delaware, you know what I mean? Like I can’t tell you right now. And we did it on GMM recently. I don’t remember either because I don’t- You don’t have to remember. I don’t have to remember. ‘Cause it’s in here, man. Sorry to the people of Delaware. I’m sure it’s beautiful. I’m sure it’s a beautiful capital. I’m sure you do lots of Delaware governing. I’m sure it’s very important. From that- We just don’t know it. From that location. And you may not even know the capital of North Carolina when it’s Raleigh, okay? Delaware residence. You thought it was Charlotte? It’s not Charlotte, it’s Raleigh. So, but here’s the thing. All the information was available in books. So it was available in encyclopedias. Yes. It was available in the library. But as I was thinking about this, I realized never once, not one time that I can remember, did I ever have a question about something, and then open the encyclopedia or go to the library to get the answer. Never, not once. I only used them. Yeah, yeah. If I had a book report. Right. If you had an assignment. Never, never. We were just happy with not knowing stuff. We didn’t know anything. Well, you know, it’s like somebody said, and then, but you would, if somebody, if Uncle Bobby said something about, you know, “Oh, the capital of Delaware is St. Paul.” Not that, that’s Minnesota. Yeah, I know. But you would be thinking, well it’s like, that’s good enough. Yeah, yeah, why would you question- What am I gonna do? Why would you make that up? I’m gonna walk some, I’m gonna walk to a bookshelf and crack open a book? Yeah. No, why? You wouldn’t do that. Encyclopedias we’re cool though, man. For the pictures, yes. Yeah. For the pictures and just like, sometimes it would be like, I’m gonna read the encyclopedia for fun. I mean to give you an idea of what we didn’t have going on. Right. You’re like, “I’m gonna get the Q.” Well actually it’s like I’m gonna get, Q didn’t have its own ’cause is not in, there’s not enough stuff that starts with Q. Mm-hmm. So I think it’s like QRS, or maybe- Right. What comes before Q? P? maybe PQ was like, it was alphabetical is what I’m getting at. If you don’t know what I’m talking about. Every single book- I mean the fact- Had alphabetical things. The fact that the encyclopedias were supposed to contain all knowledge, yet Q still had to share a book. Yeah, right. You know, right? Isn’t that crazy? And it wasn’t- You’re telling me that there ain’t enough Q-related stuff for its own book in the book that had to have everything? And think about this. Q sucks. No one in their right mind who was building a database right now is organizing it. Yeah, sure, you can sort it alphabetically, but no one sorts information alphabetically because that’s not how the human mind works. The human mind works in category. So it doesn’t, so in alphabetical order- Right. When you’re thinking about something, just think about it for a second. So you would see like, I’m gonna learn about, let’s not use Q ’cause it’s too hard to come up with words. I’m gonna learn about, if I’m in the C, it’s like Canada. And then right after Canada is cans. Nope, that’s the other way around I think. No, Canada ’cause C-A-N-A, and then cans would be C-A-N-S. So it would be the next thing. We don’t even know how to do alphabetical order anymore. Cans? Canada comes before cans. Oh, with an S, yeah? You add an S in this illustration. Yeah, but you don’t. You don’t look up the plural version of things. Okay. Can. Comes before Canada. And then also in between, well and then- And then after Canada comes Canzada. Cans, well no. With a Z. No, no. Canzada. Cannes, France. C-A-N-N-E-S. And so you’d be like, I’m gonna learn about what a can is. And then I’m gonna learn about the country of Canada. Yeah. And then I’m gonna learn about a city in France. That’s my afternoon. Right. What do those things have in common besides being C-A, starting with C-A-N. Like that’s not how people’s brains work. And we, that’s the best that we had. Now the Dewey Decimal System in the library. That was awesome. That was much better. That was so good. It was organized by concept and like theme, but then within the themes and the concepts, was alphabetical. Because how else the hell are you gonna do it? Why the hell, speaking of hell, would you start to put math into like, something that’s not math related? Why are you gonna add a decimal to like a group of organization that has nothing to do with math? Putting decimals in words. Things were desperate back then. I actually, I think the Dewey Decimal System was pretty great. I don’t wanna real, I don’t wanna throw anybody under the bus. Nobody goes to the library. What do people, the libraries still exist? Are new libraries being built? Why? How? Well, we went to the library at NC State and it’s awesome. And it has a robot that gets the book, but it’s hard to not think. Yeah. This robot is getting this book. This feels like a very temporary and unnecessary step because that robot could just be a computer without an arm, and could retrieve this information. Not from a physical book. Oh, you’re talking about a laptop with legs? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think people go to the libraries now to force themselves to study. I think it’s a, first of all, it is a study environment for sure. Yeah. It’s the vibe. It’s like, “I’m here to learn. I can’t do this next to my bed.” Uh-uh. You know. Yeah, psychologically, libraries are important. Practically they’re useless. No. What? No. Jenna is a- Jenna loves libraries. Love libraries. We’re pushing her buttons. Defend libraries. I don’t know, it’s like- Libraries are a great resource for people who can’t afford certain things. Like there’s a library close by that has like a sound booth, where you can go in and record. There’s also a library that you could check out like a 3D printer and print things off. And you can go to libraries for free classes on how to speak English. Is it? It’s free Wi-Fi. It’s a community centers. These, you’re not describing library. That’s a library. That libraries do all these things. And library have pivoted. You can also check out national park passes at libraries, if you, so you don’t have to pay to go to a national park. There’s so many great free services about libraries and they’re fully underfunded by the government right now. And I just want people to know- Because of us. That libraries are important. Okay, now, I believe- Change the name. I believe in everything you just said. Thank you. Libraries are more expansive. We were talking simply about the books. Also they have computers and not everybody has a computer. So it is a way for people to go on the internet. I think that’s great. But I would just call it something else. Well, that’s tough. We gotta put, we gotta change the signage. We can’t do that. Yeah, that’s true. Let’s just change what libraries mean slowly. But I do think, not to get serious, this being, having access to all this information, again, does it make, is it better? Is it worse? Like, I’m not making a judgment about what’s better and what’s worse. But I do know that, you know, there’s lots of pontification about what’s causing the deconstruction movement, which when I talk about the de deconstruction movement, I’m talking about people deconstructing their traditional faith. That’s not just happening within evangelical Christianity. Our background is happening all over the world. People are deconstructing traditional belief systems. To be a person who did that in the ’80s, again, when you couldn’t ask your dad what the capital of Delaware was, unless he like was from there. If you asked an adult in your life, a deep question about the nature of existence, well, if you were in North Carolina in the ’80s, you most likely were going to, whether you asked a person who was from your church, or went to church or not, they were gonna kind of say the same thing. Like philosophically, everybody was like, well, this is rooted- Right. In a Judeo-Christian worldview. It’s like God created the earth, and like, you know, there’s a couple of things you gotta do. Maybe it’s do good things. Maybe it’s except, whatever to get to heaven. People had different takes on it. But you never thought maybe that’s not true. Because why would you think maybe that’s not true? Everyone else thinks this, like it’s just part of the fabric of your culture in your society. Very, and it was pretty regional. I mean, I remember for me, it was during a, one of the most significant like stages in my initial reevaluating things, was having a bunch of time at work on, in my first engineering job, having a bunch of time on the internet because all our projects were getting shut down because of the whole Enron thing that was happening. Okay. And so, I was supposed to be reading manuals, but I was going on the internet to just research things. And I mostly just fun things, like crow hunting or ultra lights, and all those stages that we talk about. Yeah. But I also was interested in Bible stuff, and then I would, and I was going to bolster things. I was like, I want to like be able to defend this thing. I’ve got this, you know, people are asking this question, I wanna be able to defend it. But then very quickly, I just found myself getting exposed to these different perspectives. All Christian, but like different perspectives. Oh, this guy is like- Oh, yeah. Thinks that there is, there are things in the Bible that are not true. You know, or like, it’s not inherent. It’s it’s infallible, but it’s not inherent. And all of a sudden that’s something I would’ve never found in a library book. I would’ve, I mean, yeah, sure it’s in there somewhere, but why am I gonna look it up? And so- Right. To me that is, people are like, it’s this video games, or it’s this or that. The reason people are deconstructing traditional beliefs is because they have access to a bunch of information. I’m not making even making a judgment on whether traditional beliefs are right or wrong. I’m just saying that if people get exposed to other perspectives, in critical perspectives on the things that they were told when they were kids, a certain percentage of them are going to leave those traditional beliefs behind. It’s inevitable regardless of the truth claims. And as a parent, now first of all, I don’t have a dogmatic worldview that I’m passing on to my kids. It’s like, you have to believe this. Mostly it’s like, “Hey,” like, “we want you to be a loving person and there’s a whole lot of stuff we don’t know about. And we trust you and we’re, you know, we’ll figure it out together.” It’s a very different system. Right. But also, if I start talking to my kids about something, they already know about it in many times, but also if I say something, they can immediately go and figure out, well, what does somebody think about what dad just said? What does the internet think about this? You know what I’m saying? It just, parents don’t have the same level of authority when it comes to information because that was the only place you could go. Yeah. If you wanted to know something, you asked the adults in your life, and the adult that you were around the most was your parents. And now, you’re like, I know my dad or my mom doesn’t know as much as the internet does about this thing. So that’s a shift that we live through. Yeah, like the level of- But you think about the past in a different way. Critical thinking has gone up because the ease with which you can check things and know things. Well you just said the level of critical thinking has gone up, which- Maybe it’s gone down? Let’s think about it. Well, critical thinking is- I think- Is your ability to like think through something logically. I don’t know if that’s gone up. Well, I think that as much as- To be exposed to other perspectives. Like being, I think we were okay with not knowing things. It’s like we were, had to be comfortable, with not knowing where people were, not knowing what the capital of things were, or not being totally certain about things. So like, because there is this, there is a just a baseline expectation that something you can get to the bottom of something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that does make, I don’t know if that makes you a more critical thinker, but it makes you more critical. Yeah, that I agree with that. I mean, I have haven’t studied this, but I don’t, I think that people are not, we have, we know more, we have access to more information, but because you can kind of just get it through a search, I think their critical thinking is like one of the biggest issues right now. It’s like lack of critical thinking. I mean, it’s not like it’s ever been great, like across all of society or whatever. But, I don’t know. I’m not so sure. With so much information, it’s certainly more important to figure out how to be a critical thinker because you gotta sort much more. It’s more important than ever, yeah. You know, you were talking about being in that engineering job and just having access to all the information, and I said, “Oh, now I can learn about this. Now I can learn about that.” For me, that was, that there was like the music aspect of it, that was- Learning about music? Well, having it at your fingertips. Yeah. With, you know, I was talking about Napster and Limewire, like illegally downloading, of course the music industry had to catch up, but it was such an exciting time. I didn’t have a personal computer or a laptop until I started working at IBM in 2000. Yeah. Like other than that, like some, like, yeah, I didn’t. We shared a computer. I got a computer in my apartment. Senior year. Senior year? That Dell computer that we used. We would go to computer labs and use those for schoolwork. And then you could, I guess you could download music. I didn’t take the time to download and then burn CDs. Like there were, there was talk about being illegal, and I didn’t know about that. But then like at IBM, I would start downloading music, and listening to it on like Winamp. Just to have something to listen to while I’m working. And you were doing this on company time and company computer? Oh yeah, yeah. Ooh, that’s trouble. You could have been taken to jail, well before that though. But it was- Before that, we did not have, we talked a little bit about this as we were putting together the cassingle. we were just talking about the level of the amount of music that you had in your home, right? It consisted of your parents’ record collection. I don’t know about you, but like, you know- Yeah. My parents being born in the ’40s, you know, being teenagers in the ’50s. My mom had records. Going to college in the ’60s. They had a bunch of records, and… My mom bought a lot of tapes too. I took a bunch of those records and I took the ones that I wanted, put ’em in my room and I had my record player. And so I had that. And then, and so, and eventually, like you had your nicer stereo that had like a turntable on top of it. And then double record. Double cassette. Double cassette. And then two speakers. Like if, you know, you had arrived as a kid, if there was a dresser in your room, that and on top of that dresser was a stereo. With separate speakers. And it had equalization and equalization- Oh, yeah. Like these little equalization knobs, or you know- Yeah. Switches, whatever you call it. And I could play my parents’ records. I could play the cassettes that I was buying, but the frequency that I bought new tapes was one every two months for me. Yeah, yeah, it was about the same for me. Five or six albums a year. Right, and of course, so the main mechanism of discovery was just listening to the radio, and it was just so narrow. And you would record because you had that fancy cassette deal, you could record the radio. Yep. So you would listen to the radio and then when you hear the song that you wanted. Now, first of all, you might know, okay, they’re doing the countdown tonight. And I know that Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” which I didn’t need to record that because I had the album. Right. If Billy Joel did it, I was there for it. And you recorded it and you were like, “Oh man, the DJ talked right up until he sang.” Because some DJs would be like- Yeah. I’m gonna say a couple things as the song’s coming in. That sucks. “Here we go, we’ve got Billy Joel, ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire.’” And then it’s like, , whatever he would say. Right. Right on top of it. And then you would perpetuate that, and like your mixtapes. So then like this DJ’s intro is now becomes part of it. And the fidelity of the music. Yeah. First of all, we were on cassettes, so it’s like the worst medium. Yep. In recent history for audio quality. But then add to that, that you’re getting this FM signal that doesn’t have, you know, it’s got static. It depends on what station you’re listening to. Like, it’s not perfect. Mm-mm. But that was it and it was so precious. The choices you made about this were so precious and you had to pay for every single thing. And then for me, the big, the weird little transition that took place while we were in college, before the stage that you just described, of downloading music, was BMG. And the other one- Yeah. That was just like BMG. Yeah. So Jenna, I don’t know, if you remember this. 10 CDs for a cent. Do you remember the BMG catalog that you would get CDs that you would- You’re too young for that? Uh… That was like a ’90s. You’d pay a cent, and they would send me like 12 CDs that you picked from a catalog, and sometimes it would be stamps. And you would, each little stamp would be an album, and you would rip out the ones that you wanted and you would select your 12, and you’d lick the stamp and you’d put it down there. Like a checkbox almost. Yeah, like a checkbox. There was a little check boxes all down with all these CDs. And then you would all these CDs, and then after that, they would mail you a CD in the genre of your choosing. It was a subscription service. You weren’t paying a cent. You were paying a cent to sign up for this thing- To start. And then it was incredibly difficult to cancel. It was like 7.99 a month or something like that. Then they would send you- And it’s very difficult to cancel. They send you a CD, and then you could send it back and get a refund or get a different one. I think you could exchange it. But no one ever did that. Yeah, my parents wouldn’t have put up with that. They wouldn’t have let me do that. Yeah. Yeah, so we did, so our parents didn’t do it. We did it in college. Well, I would do the 12, and then I would cancel. I figured out how to cancel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kid do that. So- Rest assured. I remember being presented with, okay, you get to pick 12. Mm-hmm. And up until that point, I was on a five to six albums a year clip up for the my entire life. Yeah this is exactly. And then suddenly to be presented with 12 albums. Yeah. I got, I ran out of options. Like I got to like number six, and I was like, “Well, I’ve got everything I want.” Right. Because I’ve got everything that I know from this list. And then- Well, I’ll get this greatest hits from Kansas. Right, you ended up forcing yourself. I remember because growing up in Buies Creek, it’s like- Just in to win. It’s pretty good, mainly. We listened to country and we listened to rap. We didn’t, we weren’t really into rock, but I remember seeing Bob Marley, and I was like, “I’ve heard that name.” Yeah. Never have, no idea what kind of music this is. Good, where, when would I have heard it? When would I have heard reggae? I didn’t know what reggae was. Reggae. I can’t even say it right. Reggae. And so- What’s this reggae? I remember getting that and this being like, “This is incredible.” Oh yeah. Yeah, I’d forgotten that I chose it, ’cause it was one that’s not suck. And you would’ve to borrow it, I would borrow that one from you. And then I would, you know, I had a friend, freshman year in college who are like, I took about 18 CDs, and like, we would start trading them, and selling them to each other. Mm-hmm. You know, it’s like, the discovery mechanisms were so limiting. And you could record your CDs onto a cassette. And then- Right. Give somebody the cassette. Highly illegal, but we did it. So- We made mix tapes. That was pretty, that was important. And mix tapes were a really important part. That was never, mix tapes were never like said to, it wasn’t cracked down on. No. In any way. No. Not like that. An then after age, people were made examples of, like, these people would have like thousands of songs on their hard drive on their computer. And then there was, you know, there was like a federal sweep of college kids getting arrested. You remember that? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You’d hear about it happening in other schools. And at IBM I would be like, “Oh, Lionel Richie has all these songs I didn’t know about.” Right. Because they weren’t on the two albums that my mom owned. Oh, yeah. And I, so all of a sudden this world just opened up to me, and it was like amazing. Yet it was all like pirated, and a lot of it would be strange. Well what- Like strange versions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one of the things I think that this did, is once things became so ubiquitous and you can listen to anything you want from anyone, and also it’s much easier to make music and distribute it on the same platforms. And we won’t even talk about AI music, which is another huge shift. That’s a different thing. But it affects this, what I’m talking about is. Everything with every iteration, it becomes less special, because it becomes less rare and precious, and we just associate. And so I think one of the things, the way that we perceived celebrity culture, ’cause I wanna talk a little bit about TV and movies. Yep. But the distance between us and anyone who did entertainment that we consumed, was a vast gulf. Unfathomable. Yeah. Distance between us and Lionel Richie, still is. Can’t get him on the show. Apparently. But there were so few people who were able to do it in a way that you would end up knowing about. Because if we could only consume so much, I don’t, that’s a really mind blowing thing to me. ‘Cause it also impacts, when you think about visual entertainment, and obviously now, if you wanna make a show, you can also do it with a camera, yes. There’s like gatekeepers or whatever, but like the lines between TV and streaming, or whatever. Like everything is blurred. I remember you’ve heard this, but I had a cousin who ended up being in a Oscar Mayer commercial. Okay. And- I don’t remember this. I had met him one time, he was younger than I was. And he was in a Oscar Mayer commercial, where like the hot dog like drops out of the bun, and a dog eats it or something. Okay. He was like on TV, like on national TV. And I don’t, he lived in Georgia. I didn’t really know the family, like it was just like, what was his name? I don’t remember. I met him one time at like a family reunion. My cousin has a first name, I don’t remember what it is. Right. And I just remember when my mom said, “You know, Bo is in a Oscar Mayer wiener commercial.” The dog eats his wiener. And I had to sit with that. I want you to understand how much I had to sit with that. You had to sit with that? You had to take a seat. It changed everything for me. What? You see, you’ve forgotten. You look at me- Just crossed over, You look at me with this incredulity or whatever the word is, but you would’ve thought the same thing. To know that you were related to someone who was in a commercial changed everything. And I just remember this sitting there thinking about like, “He’s on TV, like he had to like sit there and do this thing and now it’s on TV, and I can see it while watching like ‘Dukes of Hazzard’.” Like how did he do it? You would see it ’cause you can’t skip commercials. And obviously now, it’s like you probably go to school with an influencer, right? You’ve got several at your school, probably, somebody, whatever. Or like you’re in a neighborhood and like somebody’s mom- Their library’s full of influencers. Yeah, somebody’s mom- Taking naps. Is doing that thing that we talked about on GMM recently with the mixing of the waters. Water talk. Water talking it up. And so, and I mean ultimately, I think this is a good thing. I think that understanding that everyone’s just a person is a good thing, but things, entertainment has gotten so much less special in the way that we relate to it. Yeah. It’s created all kinds of opportunities. We wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t have be talking right now. No one would care to listen to this because they wouldn’t know what was happening. We would not have a career. We would be doing whatever else. So it’s been good for us. It’s created jobs and opportunities and all this stuff, but our relationship to an individual piece of content because it’s so disposable, I don’t know man, let’s change things. I was trying to figure out, you know, it’s like what has the internet not touched. This morning I went to the dentist, thanks for noticing. Did you have an issue? Just a cleaning. Just a cleaning. And they had a sign up said, please do not be on your cell phone when you’re in here in the dentist chair. And I honored that. And I just sat there and thought about maybe the dentist chair is the last final bastion of internetless experience. You know, you gotta have a person getting in your mouth. How long did you sit there? To do something, 30 minutes. How long did you sit there? Oh, before they were working on me? But when you could have been on your phone? Seven minutes, which was so, it was torture. Okay, well what did you do? What’d you look at? What’s, give me the scene. There was a print of a painting of a scene in France on the wall. And then there was a window next to it. And I isolated between looking out the window and looking at the France painting, and just thinking about- France? How much I missed the internet in that moment. My dentist has a TV. And on the TV is pictures that he has taken while traveling. Okay. And he takes pictures, not like, “Hey, here’s me in front of the Taj Mahal.” He just takes pictures of things and mostly he likes to fancy himself as a nature photog. Really? So it’d be like, he obviously like went on a safari, and like he took a picture of like two zebras. And it doesn’t, we’re not talking about National Geographic. And how did you know this? He’s definitely a dentist. He’s not a professional photographer. Did he tell you, these are my photos? You can tell. Oh, okay, okay, okay. I’ve been there enough times and seen enough to know he takes pictures wherever he goes, and he puts ’em on the, and let me tell you- Gives you something to talk about. I tell you if you sit there for five minutes, the slideshow is gonna repeat a few times. Oh. We don’t have a whole, I mean, he’s giving you the best of the best. And I kind, he sort of puts me in a little bit of a daze. I don’t think about anything at all. I just like, “Zebras.” Dentists taking pictures of gazelles. Lions. Waterfall. You know, and so that’s what he does to kind, so kind, I think he knows ’cause they have the same sign. If we sit these people in these chairs and we don’t give them something to look at- Yeah. We don’t know what we’re gonna have on our hands, you know? Yeah, you get antsy of just not knowing something new, something new’s going on. Somebody might be talking to me. I might be able to conduct some sort of a relationship through this internet right now. Well, I mean it’s also, there’s an addiction. There’s an addiction to it too. It’s like, you don’t even think about it. Right. If your wife goes into the, it’s like, I’m going into this store, and you are not going into the store. And I am not. And you are the guy who’s sitting on the bench. Yeah. Outside of the store. Yeah. What are you gonna do? Just look like a crazy person that looks like a private eye who’s like watching people. Right. You gotta be on the phone. You don’t wanna creep like that. Yeah. A man sitting on a bench. Not on his phone. Head up looking around. He’s private eye. That dude is up to no good. That guy is a part of a larger operation. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. I’m on the lookout. Might as well give him an earpiece. Right. Right. Yeah, you can’t get away with that. You can’t be sitting and looking. This actually makes me feel better about constantly being on my phone. But- So I’m not creeping people out. You feel that little itch, you feel that little itch in your brain. And it doesn’t have to be anything. It literally is- Right. It’s information that doesn’t do anything to enrich your life. And you also can’t do anything about it. Let’s just be honest. You find out the latest thing that happened in the war on the front in the Ukraine war. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be informed, but what is, you are sitting outside a cheesecake factory, and you find out the latest thing that happened. What are you going to do? You’re about to eat a fucking cheesecake. You’re not gonna do anything with that information. What are you gonna do? Well, you’re gonna know it. Make a call to Zelensky and give him some advice? Well, maybe. No, you’re not! But you’re gonna know- You’re just gonna eat cheesecake! But you’re gonna know it. And then knowledge is power. But did you need to know it right there? I’m not saying you shouldn’t be informed. No. But shouldn’t there just be like a little time in the day like, “Okay, I want to know what’s going on in the world.” Yep. Here it is. I keep trying to figure out like- Let’s try to go a day without the internet. Can you try to do that? I mean, I’m not gonna turn that into a video. That seems lame. Well, I’ve tried to. I haven’t succeeded. I’ve tried to stop, like no phone after 7:00 PM. I did that for like- What about like a all day? Two weeks. Well, let’s start baby steps, man. Like not having the internet where I works. So two weeks, seven o’clock. You put your phone somewhere. I put it like on a charger. Yeah, but you didn’t, but if you streamed something, that’s the internet. You just tried to get rid of your phone. I’m saying get rid of the internet, like you can’t stream anything. Yeah, but streaming is like TV. But that’s the internet. Yeah, what’s this, what are you trying to avoid at that point? I’m not saying it’s not a good idea. It feels like a different thing. It’s the experiment. I’m trying to break the habit of like, give me- I know that. Give me this thing to plug in. This isn’t an internet conversation. I’m trying to broaden it to like- Okay. You can’t get away from it unless you go to the dentist. Okay, but like, can I watch a VHS? Yes. What’s the difference? Oh, it doesn’t use the internet. I’m just saying, I’m being a stickler here. Okay, well I’m gonna- Name something besides going to the dentist where you’re not gonna- So you want me to- Like maybe take a hike? Okay. You want me to play “Succession” on my TV and record it on my VCR? I don’t even know how to do that anymore. How would I even do that? But you have a VCR? No. Exactly. I’d have to buy a VCR. You couldn’t watch. I’d have to hook it up to my TV. If you’re going a day without the internet- Can’t even be done. You couldn’t watch entertainment, you couldn’t listen, you couldn’t be entertained by anything that you could watch or listen to. It all goes through the internet. Some people have made this choice, just so you know. And there’s no doubt they’re happier, no doubt. I mean this whole idea of like getting some information, again, finding out, you know, that two celebrities that you don’t know are getting a divorce, and finding that out right before you go to bed. Right, you don’t need to do that. Wait, what? What am I gonna do with that? Now I’m gonna dream about Tom Brady and Gisele, and- I ain’t got an opportunity. And the problems in their relationship? What as my cheesecake digests. Right. As my perfectly curated meal of as much fat and sugar just moves slowly through my digestive system, and I’m just dreaming about Gisele. Like it’s just idiocracy, man. That’s what we’re living in. You know it, you know it. That’s what we’re living in. Dude, let’s just get outside. Let’s touch some grass, they say. Let’s touch grass. That’s what we need to do today. It’s not my rec, but that’s my rec. Well my rec is get a robe. What? And this is- Get a robe? This is intended for those of you 40 and above. If you’re under 40- McLaughlin residence. If you’re under 40, you can move along. I just gotta say, if you’re 40 and above, you should have a robe. Because listen, I’m just gonna be honest with you. I know there’s a lot of you onesie folks out there and I don’t wanna I shit on your little onesie parade, but really you need to move on. You too sweaty, first of all. You need to like, you need to move on from a onesie. It’s for the 40 and under crowd. It’s really technically for kids. But we’ll give you like an additional 25 years. So the robe is the old men’s onesie? Oh, robe is all, onesie is all about being comfortable. And I’m just saying- But also being dressed up as an animal, usually. I’m just saying that the robe is the ultimate loungewear and- But they come open too easily. No, not if you get a good one. And are you recommending no underwear? Nope, I’m recommending whatever you like. I typically wear underwear under mine. Okay. Because it’s just like- But nothing else. If you sit down, and slippers are nice too. If your feet, if you are like, “Oh, but the onesies that make my feet feel good.” Well, wear some slippers? I’m just saying you should have a robe. I love that you’re going after the onesie community. No, no, you’re more sophisticated than that. You are! You’ve graduated. There’s seven to a- You’ve graduated. Think of all that. You’ve graduated to a new level of existence. 30-year-olds don’t wear onesies, dude. Yeah, they do, yeah, they do. Yeah, look at Jenna. Yeah, see, yeah, they do, they do. Now I’ve never been much of a onesie guy because of, you know, they’re not sized properly, and it feels like the Grand Canyon is trying to make its way through my crotch. I’m gonna take your advice though. I’m gonna- I would’ve thought- I have a robe. Yeah, you’ve already got robes. Yeah, I just don’t know how to really use it. You don’t wear your robe? Like, no. If I’m, so when I get home from work, am I just, strip down in an underwear and put on a robe? I’m not saying that, I’m not much of a- Can I call it a smoking jacket? Even though no smoking is involved at all? You do anything you want to. I’m not, and if you wanna do this, that’s totally fine. I’m not a much, I’m sure to people’s shock, I’m not a get home and change clothes, change into something more comfortable kind of guy. I just, you know. I am. But this not a robe. So the robe is a weekend thing for me. Okay. There are definitely Saturdays, maybe Sundays. Robe mode. Where nothing touches me other than a robe. Ah, challenge accepted, man. I’m gonna work on my robe mode. And it’s very difficult to have an argument with someone in a robe. If you see somebody in a onesie, you want to argue with them. You kind of know that they’re probably wrong before you even know what we’re talking about. You talking about the grocery store? Have you robed it to the grocery store? I’m not an idiot. Go to Lebowski. No, I have some standards, but I’m just saying that, I’m not saying that I get into a lot of arguments, but it would be difficult for my wife to get too upset with me if I was in a robe. You look like, I mean you look like a loafer, dude. And it makes- It’s easy to get upset. It makes you feel- Like makes something out of yourself. You’ve been in your robe all day. Well and it makes you feel like, how many things could go wrong right now? Like how many different situations could I find myself in that would be life-threatening or- In a robe? Well you could expose yourself to the mailman. Right, he’s not gonna kill me for that. But also if something does go wrong, you’re very much not that likely to get too concerned about it. You know what I’m saying? It’s like- It’s a state of life. Oh, gosh! Somebody’s arm just got almost completely severed and now we’ve gotta go to the emergency room. I’m in a robe though. You know what I’m saying? It’s like, let’s not rush. Okay. Let’s not let this upset the apple cart too much. Okay. Maybe I need a new robe. I mean the only reason I started doing a robe- Something to get excited about. When we got that robe at the YouTube summit, which is a ridiculous robe by the way. Yeah, no, I know. I mean first of all it says Good Mythical Morning on it. No, you wear that one? One side is candy cane, and one side is green and blue stripes. First of all, don’t judge me for wearing something that says Good Mythical Morning on it, that we got at a YouTube thing because you wear that giant hoodie that says Good Mythical Morning on it, and you wore it at a party at your house with like mixed company. Well I was cold. Yeah, but I mean I don’t do that. I’m not gonna wear that robe outside of my family. Yeah. I have four. Whoa. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got a rotation, you love all these things? I have three. Yeah, you have, if you wear ’em as much as me, that one’s a terry cloth one. Yeah. Great for drying off. And then I got a thin one, and then I’ve got one that Jessie got me, another terry cloth one that’s like a white one, that’s like my backup. It looks a little too much like I’m trying to go to a spa. Mm-hmm, yeah. Because it’s all white, but if the other two are in the laundry, I’m just saying you should try it. You should try it, if you’re over 40, do it. Yeah. It will make you feel differently about everything. I’m gonna try it. Of course, join the conversation using #EARBISCUITS and leaving us a voicemail, responding to this or any other episode. 1-888- EARPOD1. Next week we’re gonna be talking about male relationships, friendships. Phew. Phew! Hey, Rhett and Link, this is Colton. I am calling you from the inside of the IBM building 305. We are testing the audio, might be able to hear the music, but I just remember hearing your podcast about your engineering days, and I thought of you guys, thought of you, Link. knowing that you used to work out here. Pretty cool to feel like I’m kind of walking in your footsteps a little bit. So I just wanted to shout out, tell you guys I’m thinking about you guys, and hope you guys are having a great day. And yeah, that’s all I got, bye. 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. 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