Welcome to “Ear Biscuits,” the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Link. And I’m Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are going to be talking about being fathers. Link, you have a Father’s Day experience that seems, Well, let’s just go ahead and say it. Rather substantial. Father’s Day fail. I had a Father’s Day fun that I’ll talk about. I had a nearly epic fail. Oh, take that as you will. You’ll find out in a moment. Now, over the summer, we are going to be, the episodes are gonna be maybe a little bit shorter than what you’re used to. Just wanted to, before you make that observation and start asking other people, have you guys noticed that the episodes during the summer or a little bit shorter? Is it just me? It’s just a heads up. We’re telling you. We’re just letting go. It is a you. They’re just gonna be a little bit shorter. We will be not too much shorter. It isn’t us, it’s the summer. They’ll be back to regularly scheduled length. But if you use episodes of “Ear Biscuits” to plot your course as you’re driving, you know, it’s one of the things I talked about on tour, it became a little bit of a runner at a couple of locations as we were looking at the international map and trying to guess how far people had come to get to tour. I would use an “Ear Biscuit” as a unit of measurement for travel. You’re an “Ear Biscuit” away, meaning it took you an hour and 10 minutes or so to get here. Or you’re an “Ear Biscuit” and a half away, you know. How many “Ear Biscuits” are you listening to? So do you, on “Ear Biscuits” an hour, 10 minutes. I agree. I think that’s like, The average? The average. Jamie, you saying yes? Yes. That is the average. I’d say 1,10 is like perfect ’cause sometimes you guys go over, but very rarely do you go under. Right. Well, we don’t like to go under an hour because we feel like we want to give you an hour. But just for the summer. But we’re just giving you the heads up, for the summer we’re gonna give you a little less than an hour. We assume you’ve got more going on. And also, just so you know, during the summer, most people, they drive faster. Oh, yep. It is statistically shown. But they drive more. They drive more and they drive faster during the summer because there’re, I’m making this up as I go along the line just so you understand. Do it. You go faster because it’s sunny outside, you’re feeling the energy. You go slow during the winter because of ice. No, no, no. That’s not it. Nope. You go faster because you’re excited about where you’re going. Summer’s the time of excitement. You’re not in this, well, I’m going there again. And so because you’re driving faster, the episodes to accommodate you are gonna be a little bit not as long. This is on you from your internet fathers. That was only to bring us back to the world of fatherhood because I did want to tell you, and I’ve been saving it, like my Father’s Day experience. Okay. Which, you know, I was so glad my kids, each gave me a card that I could tell that their mom physically gave them the card. Christie gives ’em the card and then, but they wrote in it. It was their handwriting. It was their thoughts in it. And that was a big part of what they gave me for Father’s Day, was time and energy put into putting thoughts to paper about that they love me and that they appreciate me. And I’m glad that Lily wrote her card before we had our excursion. Oh, okay Because if she wrote it during or after, it might be a different card. But I know that Christie gave him the cards because Lillian Lincoln’s card was the same card. The exact same card? The exact. And apparently she has a stack of these cards like blanks. You gotta have a stack of cards. At the house. You gotta have the card stack. But that doesn’t matter to me. It’s fine. But I will say that Lando made his own card, you know. He made a card. He made his own card. Wow. What does that feel like? And the outside said Daddy-O on it. And it was an acronym. Oh crap. Now I’m gonna have to remember what the acronym is. D for drives erratically. Drives aggressively or something. He was critiquing my driving. Check. That was the first D. The A was can’t remember. Well, the A might be the aggressively. No. Each letter was a different thing. The second D, there’s three Ds. So I guess he had some trouble. Always. I only remember the first one. I don’t remember the other ones. But I do keep all the cards. I have a stack of, a stash of cards that my family has given to me in memoriam. Like they’re all there. And a matter of fact, the stat got so tall that it wouldn’t fit in the drawer anymore. So I moved it somewhere else. And I don’t quite remember where that is, but I’m sure I’ll find it ’cause I know it was an important place that I put ’em where I couldn’t find them. You’ll find it in a time of need, in the apocalypse when you need kindling and you’ll have, I’m not gonna burn. I’m just telling you. I’m gonna read them. No, no, no. And then I’m gonna die in the apocalypse. I’m just letting you know what this might come to. My family loved me. May they rest in peace. I’m joining you family. No, they’ll still be with you maybe, but you will all be faced, this is one thing that a lot of people don’t anticipate will happen in the apocalypse, the number of things that you will be burning that you never thought you would burn. And lemme say cards from your kids is at the top of the list. You think that it’s something you’re gonna hold onto forever, But they’re so flammable. But when you get cold and you’re looking at that, and especially the new cards that have the frilly things on them, and they’re multi-layered and stuff, and the ones that, That’s what I need to get this fire started. The pop up cards. Like you take one of those popup cards, you open it, you light it, it could, I mean, That’s it, right there. I’m just saying, it’s a fire in and of itself waiting to happen. I’m emotionally prepared for that. I’ve got a card stack as well, but every time I add one, I’m like, “That’s gonna burn well.” You see, is that also where you keep your matches? You keep, Is that what you tell ’em? You read the card and you’re like, “Thanks kid. That’s gonna burn well.” That’s gonna burn well. This card’s not, don’t gimme one of those metal cards. Oh. Or we could use that as a weapon. I just remember what the O in Daddy-O stood for, owns his farts. Huh. That’s a good thing to do. Hey, he who dealt it smelt it. No, I own it. I guess he likes that about me because I mean, he doesn’t like that I fart, but if I’m gonna fart, I’m gonna own it. I ain’t blaming it on nobody. Right. Not even the dog. Well, if you’re sharing a house with someone, first of all, dog farts are easy to distinguish. True. Not easy to extinguish. But everybody knows where their dog, first of all, I will say my dogs, something about maybe their age or their size, they don’t have a stink fart. I’ve been around dogs that really, really have some stink fart. My dogs only eat their food. They’re not fed anything else. I think that does help. That does help. It has to. Yeah. So for Father’s Day, what I asked for was quality time with my family. They’re all back home. Lily, Lincoln, Lando. Well Lando’s there, but they’re all back home for the summer. And I’m like, “Listen, here’s what I wanna do. I wanna go get some barbecue, I wanna eat it as a family, and then I wanna go on a one wheel ride with Lincoln. I invited Lando, but ever since he broke his elbow on the one wheel, which yes, was my fault. I didn’t push him, but I pushed him to ride on a uneven terrain. And yeah, he broke his elbow. And so now I’m like, it’s an open invitation, but I’m not gonna insist that you go even on Father’s Day. He’s a little gun shy. So me and Lincoln went and that’s all I wanted. And also cards, which I didn’t say, but I got. And so, we went to Moose Craft Barbecue. I was turned onto this on the show, one of the earliest Naked Food episodes of GMM. I just really took note of this barbecue. It was exceptional. And so, a few days later, I think it was a, it might’ve been two years ago, we went there for my birthday, but we got there so late that they were outta stuff but still great. You know, it’s a good place if they run out. So Christie was like, “Well, you said you wanted to go in like early afternoon. Like, you know, the kids wake up late, they eat late breakfast, so then we need to eat a late lunch. But I’m concerned. I read that there’s a line, they might be out. So I feel like we need to go earlier.” So we got out there at 1:30. They opened at noon. They’re only open Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I don’t even think Sunday. Really? Yeah. Three days a week? Yep. And as I got off the 101, we were like a couple of blocks away, I was like, look and I’m like, “Oh my God, that’s not the line for the barbecue place is it?” And it was. A bunch of dads. So I dropped people off at the curb. A bunch of dads thinking they want barbecue for their Father’s Day. Yep. And I was like, “You know what? This is perfect. We’re gonna be in this line and it’s quality time. This is what I want for Father’s Day. I want us to be together.” And let me just guess, you were articulating that sentiment in exactly the way you just did. Yes, because I had to because of, I was trying to head off at the pass what I knew was gonna happen. It’s like they were, I mean, I look in the rear view mirror, nobody’s even gotten out of the car yet. And everybody’s on their phone looking for somewhere else to go. Oh. And I’m like, “Well, no, no, no. This is it.” And what I’m thinking is, you’re trapped. You’re trapped with your dad. Yes. I feel sorry for your family. It’s my day. At this point in this story. You have to do it. And so, I set expectations that we were not backing out. We’re gonna embrace the line as I was like, “Well, well, we’re gonna hang out somewhere, right, with your father? Might as well be a line. Might as well be in a line. And how long did you anticipate it being based on your estimation powers? I estimated it might be 45 minutes. And I was like, “That’s a lot.” How long was the line? A city block. A city block? You underestimated. When it was all said and done, I’ll just skip forward to the end of this part of the story, Christie was like, “Let’s see, we got there at 1:30, we left at 4:45. Okay. We were in line for, I hope it was good Like 2 1/2 hours. But because of what happened, I didn’t realize it at all. Ah. I didn’t realize it at all. Okay. Well, what happened? Well, we get in line and I had a brainstorm. Full dad mode activated. I’m like, “You know what? I’m gonna take care of some technical stuff for you kids that’s been not, that hasn’t been taken care of.” Lincoln had some banking issues. Mm. He couldn’t, you know, he didn’t have a card. He needed like a debit card. And I had ordered one, but I’m like, “You know what? Even though the debit card’s not here, son, your father can be a hero and put your debit card on your phone wallet, like your Apple Wallet. I can do that for you because I’m your father. All you gotta do is stand here with me and enter your passwords and send me your codes and all that jazz.” So when I was doing that with him, like the other kids are like, well, I’m gonna go down the street and get a coffee, you know. Oh. So I had my little one-on-one time with Lincoln Consulting about his banking. And I’m sure that took 40 minutes without me knowing. Okay. But it was completely successful. And boy, was I on dad cloud nine. I was just, like, Lincoln didn’t say anything. He was like, “Alright. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I was like, “Son, I moved your money,” You could feel the love. “I moved your money.” Yeah. I was like, “You’re gonna be able to purchase things with your own money now, right? How do you feel about that?” “Nothing.” But I felt great about it. Great. Okay. And I was like, and then Lily comes back with some drinks and I’m just riding the dad wave. Like, “Now what else can I do for your children?” And Lily’s like, “Well my phone, the battery dies like halfway through the day and it says that the storage is full and I can’t do anything.” And I’m like, “Huh, give me your phone.” Oh gosh. And she did? She did. Yeah I mean, it’s Father’s Day, you know, and she, you know. Her phone didn’t work well. I’m like, well there’s a correlation here, I believe. You can’t even install an update because you don’t have enough room. And I’m like, you know, daughter of mine, the photos of you are your culprit. And I started looking at how she was managing her photos on her phone. And we use Google photos. we have for years. That’s where our backup is. That’s where I’ve purchased a family plan of 200 gigabytes of storage. Okay. And this is where all of your photos and your very lifeblood of digital experience is archived. I’ve provided this for you yet here you are using a different Gmail and moving all of your photos to that. And so your Google storage is running out and you’re not utilizing the right Google account. And what is this over here? You’re also still using Apple Photos and that’s maxed out too. And you don’t need, you got your photos in three places. And this is so many photos. Can I ask? So much space. Can I ask a question at this point? So I know we talked about this a bit on a more, Years ago, yeah. At some point. And so, if you use Google Photos with an iPhone, which, I’m not gonna criticize that. Boy, we got in trouble for that. I don’t know if I recommend it but we fully committed and I can’t back out now. If you use Google Photos on an iPhone, doesn’t it automatically still just save them in your photo stream because that’s how the phone works? Yes. So the first thing you do to create space is you delete all of the photos from your Apple Photos. Just delete it. And then once you delete all of them, and I’m talking like thousands of photos, If you started with Apple 5,000. No, just like they accumulate. Every time you take a photo, it goes to your Apple. And if you choose to sync it with iCloud, it goes to your iCloud. Can I just say at this point that that alone makes, I’m not in, I’m not into your family plan. Yeah, I know. But I’m not either but I can’t back out. Can’t you select, Optimized Storage, and then it’ll after, and you can like, have it after a certain amount of time, it just makes it a thumbnail that then has to be downloaded if you access. I’m not a tech desk for you? Or you’re a tech dad apparently. I’m a tech dad for my kids and I have my system. And it seems like the story’s not gonna end well just based on the way you’ve been foreshadowing. So I’m just asking questions, man. “Lily,” I say, “You gotta make sure you delete, Apple Photos are worthless. You just delete ’em. And then you go into your recently deleted folder, and then you gotta delete those because all it does is move it to trash, but it’s gonna take 60 days or so to delete ’em. So you gotta delete ’em immediately so that they actually go away and off your phone and free up the space. It’s that simple. But the complicating factor of these other two Gmail addresses and moving in a line in the heat, A lot of factors here. How hot was it? It was pretty hot. I was outside on Father’s Day. It was hot. It was a bit of warm. And I wasn’t even in an urban environment. Yeah. I was on the asphalt and the concrete and getting baked a little bit. A dad on asphalt. And I started to get a little confused between all of her Gmails and Apples and iClouds. And I didn’t think I was getting confused. But I was finding new things like clean up your photos, create space and I’m like clicking this. You were doing open heart surgery on, Right, right. On Lily’s phone. On Lily’s memories. Yes. Out there I the sun, Just on a curb. This is so precarious, man. I’m nervous. So I’m like, “Well, we gotta stop backing up this Gmail account, but we gotta keep backing up this one.” And I’m trying different cleanup tools and all of a sudden it’s like, whoa, 8,000 photos are being deleted. And I’m like showing it to Lilly like, “Look, this is great. Look at what I’m doing for you.” And then I get through all of it. And at this point, we’re at the door to the restaurant. Timing is not great. Then you turn a corner and there’s like only eight people in between. You can smell the meat cooking at this point. Oh gosh. It smells so good. There’s only eight people in between us and the counter. Once you smell the meat, whatever you were occupying yourself with is out the window. That’s when Lily said to me, “Dad, let’s just do this later.” Yep. That was smart. And that’s when I said, “No.” We’re almost there. “That’s a mistake.” We’re almost there. If we don’t finish this journey, we will never get back on the trail. And you’re too important for this Lily. Your phone storage and performance is too important. Your father is committed to completing this task for you and making your life so much better ’cause you’ll actually be able to use your phone again. And I pressed on. Even though Christie was then like, “What sides do you want?” Yeah. To everybody. We’re taking together the order, yeah. Because now, we’ve been in line for hours and we’re getting over there and we’re like, “Crap, we don’t know what we want at all.” Well, there’s only so many choices, right? Well, and you can’t see the menu until you get inside. Unless you look on your phone which, well, I was doing other things with those. Yeah, a little occupied. So I’m like pushing on, but I’m having to accelerate a bit. And we get, there’s like four people in front of us and I do it. I finish and I hand Lily back her phone. And in triumph, I move on to ordering the barbecue. And Lily’s like, boop, boop, boop, boop. And then she’s like, “Dad, you’ve deleted all of my photos from this year. I have last year’s photos still, but I don’t have anything from this year. Like, we’re halfway through the year, dad, and they’re gone.” A little bit more than half, almost. And then it’s like her, I think her eyes literally, they got moist. Her eyes got moist. And then I’m like, “Oh crap.” And then her face got a little red. I think her eyes actually turned red. Like, you know when the saying, “Seeing red?” Yeah. It was like, it wasn’t, she was about to cry. I think she was about to punch me. Yeah. Yep. But like many times, like, you know. Like, I could tell that she was doing everything she could to not pummel me in the barbecue line literally. And I was like, well, that’s, and I took the phone back and “Well, daggum. No photos from this year.” And I’m like, “Maybe she’s looking at the wrong account. The defunct one.” I pull up the other account. Oh, they’re gone. they’re gone from there. One of the accounts, they were gone. All photos were gone. I go over to Apple Photos, all the photos, no photos, nil, zilch in those two. And then in the one that I wanted to be the one, ain’t nothing from this year. And you know, she didn’t have to tell me how important this was to her. And I’m like, “Oh crap.” And like, I’m just like, it felt like there were like, like, my body had been infiltrated with bugs and they were eating me from the inside out. Like all of a sudden I just felt like a complete father failure. Please tell me that this story has a good ending. And at that point, she goes and just sits down because they said, “Here’s a table for you.” so we haven’t even ordered yet. And I was like, “Well, you can go ahead and sit down.” She’s sitting there alone, looking at her phone and she’s texting. I’m like, “She’s texting all her friends about how her dad has just eradicated her entire life of this year.” And I’m like, “I’m not gonna engage.” But I’m like, so then we order and we sit down and we’re waiting for the food. And Christie’s like, “So what” she starts starts making conversation. I’m like, “I think I can get this to a point, I think I can fix this. I want to fix this before the food gets here so that we can enjoy the food.” Okay. Please. And what I said that Christie just said was the only thing that Christie said, because what she told me a little bit later was, “Yeah, I looked at Lily’s face and I looked at your face and I knew that I was gonna back away slowly.” Yeah. And the boys knew this too. So me and Lily are at the end of the table and I have her phone again. And I’m just like trying to figure out what to do. And ultimately, I went on my phone after trying a number of things and I logged into her Apple iCloud on my phone. And I discovered that all the photos were there. Thank God. But. And I turned and I showed it to Lily. And then I was like, they’re all here. What I want you to do is I want you to turn off syncing. I don’t want your phone. Don’t let it sync. To communicate with the Cloud in order to delete all of those. And she did that. And I was like, now I know that they still exist and when we get home, I can completely fix this because I am your hero, your father, who has got your back. But the food, and then I could tell that she loosened up. Got your back right after. I mean, literally right before that, while we were waiting, while I was like rummaging through my phone trying to figure out how to see if this was the case, Lily was literally like, there was a bar in this place too. She’s like, “I need a drink.” You know, it’s like when you’re 21, she’s 21, your 21-year-old daughter is like, “I just need to go to the, I’m gonna go drink at the bar.” Well, this is a… let’s just be real, if that was what had happened permanently like, it is devastating. Especially like, I had a moment where I thought that, well, I did have a moment where a bunch of pictures that I had taken of the kids when Locke was like, from like the time Locke was like six months to two years old. Right. I used this very spec, you know, it was like 2005, 6, very specific type of camera that saved in a really weird format. And at some point in the process of my photos syncing in the background, that format was no longer supported. And a bunch of the videos, all the videos taken from that time. Yeah. It ended up turning into thumbnails and that’s all I have. Yeah, me too. From that time. And it’s like, That hurts. And when I realized that, it was like… But you know, it was a sporadic. But when you’re 21. Right. You think about the amount of memories that you are making, especially in the year 2024. Like, if you weren’t able to solve this problem, it would be, I’m trying to think of like the equivalent, you know how sometimes like, you know, like if you accidentally kill somebody’s pet, like I’m not, No, no. I’ve never done that. I mean, first of all that was, No, don’t. Let’s not talk about it. I’m talking about somebody that you actually know very well. I’m not talking about running over a dog that ran in front of your car. I don’t know what you’re talking about. But like, I don’t remember the story. I know that there’s some story about somebody coming into a house and stepping on a cat, No, don’t. That’s why I’m not talking about that either. Right. But like, when that happens, That’s bad. Yeah. You’re kind of like, Right. Forever you see that person and that’s what you think about. Like, you were risking that kind of thing that for like the rest of the year. For the rest of our lives, it would’ve been like, “Remember 2024?” “Well, not the first half, dad.” The first two quarters of 2024, it’s like lost forever. Right. Piece together from other people’s pictures, you know. I have so many things that I’ve done over the years that I’ve never lived down. It’s such a risky thing to do. But I felt like it was the perfect thing to do in line for apparently 2 1/2 hours. And then the food shows up and, What’d you get? And an interesting thing happened. We got pulled pork, we got pork ribs. we actually didn’t order brisket. Everything was there. We were the last people to get the potato salad, which was good. There were collards there. They don’t have collards. Beans? They have beans. They have beans. What’s the bread product? Potato bread. Sliced potato bread. Very good. Very basic, but very good. Interesting. Perfect. All the food shows up and I start eating. And I take two bites, and this is right on the heels of fixing, like knowing that all the photos are there. And I get this stabbing pain in my stomach. And I look at Christie and I’m like, “Oh God, I don’t think I can.” Like, my look was like, I’m hurting. I don’t think I can eat. And Christie’s like, “It’s anxiety. You are having, it’s affected you. I’ve been looking at your face this whole time and you’ve been panicking, just the shit in your pants basically. And now I’m like, “Well, now I think I might literally shit my pants. I don’t know what’s going on.” But like, it was hurting bad. And I just, I was like, “Well, I’m gonna start,” I started eating slower and then I just couldn’t. I basically couldn’t enjoy the food. And then like halfway through the meal, I’m like, “I have to go to the restroom.” Oh, at the restaurant. Yeah. And nothing came of it. I really thought a lot. I thought it was gonna be quite a ballistic experience but there was nothing, nothing. Okay. Except more pain. And I know it had to be just getting all, just in knots. Like literally, I think my guts were in knots from what I had almost done. And so, I couldn’t even enjoy my Father’s Day lunch. Everybody else seemed to enjoy it. And Lily, Lily bounced back, to her credit. She bounced back and she was really graceful about it, you know. So I really appreciate that. But then I was like walking back to the car almost limping. Like, I was like, bent over a little bit. I was like, “Good God. What’s going on?” I was like, “Well, I-” Because you were still in pain? Yes. I was like, “I need to get home.” So we drove back home and- Happy Father’s Day. And when I got back home, Did you take the stuff to go so you could eat it later? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I ate some. Everybody enjoyed. Got their fill. We had some leftovers. I got some to eat later. And then when I got home, it was just gas. But so much of it. And I don’t know, how does anxiety create gas? I don’t know. I’m sure it does. I don’t know how it… Maybe I was just, It’s a nervous farts man. Oh gosh. And they were, I mean, if they would’ve left me on the side of the road, I probably could have gotten home using the power of the propelation. So my body keeps the score, so to speak. And I was like, “I don’t think I’m gonna be able to go one wheeling.” I’m just gonna have to lay on my left side. That’s what they say, do. They say lay on your left side. But then things cleared out and I was totally fine. And we one wheeled and then I came back home and I was like, Lily, I want you to download all of your Apple photos from this year to your desktop locally. And then we’re gonna upload those to the Google account. We’re gonna fill in the gap and your life in digital form is gonna be restored. And we did that that night and we brought this chapter of our father-daughter relationship to a close and we’re moving forward. But it definitely took a toll on my body. Did you, like the next time that Lily runs into this particular technical problem, I’m sure she won’t share it with me. Does she now know how she will rectify it? I doubt. That’s not clear. But I didn’t teach a daughter to fish, if that’s what you’re asking. Yeah. You know. That feels like next, I think but maybe this is a, I just deleted all of her fish. Maybe this is a true Apple genius moment. Well, no, you don’t want the Apple, the Apple genius will be like, why are you doing this again? Right. Why are you using Google Photos? Get your dad on the phone, and then I’m, For the family plan? Then I’m being reamed out by a genius. Is it worth it? I don’t know. And you know, I just wanted to be the hero on Father’s Day, you know. I think that was your problem. I mean, you know. And I wanted to utilize the downtime of a line. To armchair quarterback just a little bit, just as another dad, I think that you want, yeah, I think you overdadded. Sure. Overdadding can happen in a number of contexts. Yeah. And you specifically did it in the context of trying to be the tech hero in a complex environment. Yeah. Food, line, heat, you know. A surgeon would not just open up a patient on the side of the road. They do it in a controlled environment. Yeah. They’ve got gloves on. It’s climate controlled. They wash their hands first. Yeah. Surgeons don’t operate while hungry either. That’s a known thing. No, I think you’re getting that confused with grocery shopping. Like, good grocery shoppers go on full stomach. Well. Hey, were you the hero? No. Were you the villain? I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I didn’t make the mistake of trying to be a hero. I also didn’t have much of an opportunity to be it. Surprisingly, Shepherd is experiencing the battery problem with his phone, but he just uses Apple Photos. Oh, tell him to come over. So we don’t really have to think about it. Tell him to meet me in the line. You know, the wonderful thing about Apple Photos is that we just take pictures and we never think about anything else. If we want to go look at something in the past, we just click on it and it comes up. Yeah. I never really think about it. I don’t know. I just click the optimized storage option so that it doesn’t overwhelm the phones. At least I didn’t delete all Lincoln’s money from his bank account. Yeah. Well, that’s next year. You know? Next year. You’ve got time. When you get a win like that, it just creates so much dadmentum. What’d you do? So, But allow me to interject for one second about this T-shirt. Oh yes. This is the patchwork t-shirt. If you look closely, you can tell it’s GMM. We also have it as a sticker, both available at mythical.com. I know you like it, so you should get it. Mythical.com. Get it. “Ear Biscuits” is supported by Nutrafol. Summer’s finally here. That means more days spent outside at the park, on the beach, or in the pool. 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It’s entirely online, 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. Take a moment, visit betterhelp.com/ear today to get 10% off your first month. That’s BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com/ear. I’m not very good at making requests for myself, whether it’s my birthday or Father’s Day or Saturday night. Well, you’re so selfless. Well, I’m not trying to set myself up as selfless. What I’m saying is that, there’s something about the combination of my family of origin and my personality that makes me a lot like my dad, which is like, Don’t worry about me. I honestly, Saturday night at about 10:30 PM, Jesse was like, “so we’re going to brunch tomorrow and we’re going to the Huntington Library and Gardens.” Huh? I’m like, “Oh.” And I just thought it was because we were just gonna have a fun day. And she’s like, “It’s Father’s Day.” I’m like, “Oh, it’s Father’s Day.” And I’m not trying to, again, I’m not being like, oh, I’m so selfless. I know you’re not. I don’t think about these things and I probably should. Well, you also have a dad. Who I called. Who you called, but, so you’re the same as him. He didn’t know it was Father’s Day either? It was also his anniversary, his 56th anniversary. Wow. So I had to, you know, had to do the double duty. But I’m just saying like my birthday, the same thing. I actually am trying to get better about my birthday because my birthday’s in October and I’ve actually talked to Jesse about, I wanna start, I love horror and I do the horror movie thing where I invite friends over to watch a horror movie. But I’m like, “What if we start doing like an October birthday thing that’s like, it’s like, one of those Halloween parties that you see in the movies where people are dressing up?” Oh. And she was like, “Maybe not this year.” I don’t disagree, but I’m actually, I wanna get better about planning for that because it’s not something I’m intentionally doing. So I didn’t know it was Father’s Day, but then when I was like, “Oh I’m really glad we’re going to brunch and I’m really glad we’re going to the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens because I love Botanical Gardens. It has become a thing. We went to the botanical gardens on tour when we were in Atlanta when you had to go back for Lando’s, Graduation. Graduation. The rest of us, so not everybody, not everybody, but about half the group was into the idea of the botanical gardens. Beautiful botanical gardens in Atlanta. But lemme tell you, it doesn’t get any better than the Huntington. It’s crazy, every time I go, I’m just reminded at how over the top this place is. This is a hot tip. If you’re coming to LA and the weather’s nice. It’s not too hot outside. It was pretty hot. Bring an umbrella if it is, but nice. And it was crowded. It is wonderful. It was crowded. Me and Christie went there a month ago. And they have this whole like desert, like California desert area. That’s my favorite part. But there’s a, I mean it’s all amazing. There’s huge trees. Some of the biggest monstera growing up the side of the hugest trees. It’s awesome. Multiple gardens that are like representative of different climates in different parts of the world, Right. Meticulously gardened by this incredible staff and also museum pieces. And it’s a private collection, right? Yeah, I think the Huntington family, like the story of like Mr. Huntington and his wife and they like built the place in 1919, you know. It was back in like those, what’d you call that, the gilded age when it was like possible to become like so incredibly rich that you could like buy this giant facility? And of course, at some point you donate it to, or not donate it to the, it’s not a state owned thing now it’s just, you can have a membership or you can pay and go in there. Very popular dad idea. And we didn’t necessarily, I think I underestimated how much dads would be into this. Yeah. I mean, I went there on Mother’s Day and that was a mistake. Well, I can’t imagine it being any more crowded because it was one of those night, it was one of those days where there’s basically no parking. Every single available parking space, and we did find one eventually, but very popular. And so this is actually, and first of all, Jesse knows the things that I like and she helps to care for me in a way that I would otherwise care for myself. But like something like knowing that I like botanical gardens, not something that registered with me. It’s actually in my second half of life that I’ve actually become sensitive to or more sensitive to and tuned into my own preferences because I think it’s something about growing up as a younger sibling or something, or I don’t know what it is, but it’s just like some combination of factors, I’m kind of like, I like a lot of things. I have a very good time but when you start asking me which things I prefer over other things, I’m kind of like, “I don’t know, what do y’all think?” You know what I’m saying? So I’m actually like, “No, I do like botanical gardens. I like walking around botanical gardens and saying things like, ‘Wow, how’d they get that in here? Like, can you imagine? Like, how many of those do you think are in America? That’s from there? Oh, you probably couldn’t take a seed out here. If you took a seed out of here and then planted it somewhere, it’d probably be against the law,’ you know.” Dad thinks. Yeah. Yeah. It is an opportunity to dad really hard. Any type of exhibit where you have to notice things. If you were to build this right now from the ground up, a greenhouse like this California, I don’t even know if you could, honestly, you need to find a contractor who specialize in this kind of thing. I don’t think they’d be able to do it, honestly. And you’re thinking all these thoughts, It’d be so cost prohibitive. And the people that you’re with, you’re like, they need to hear these thoughts because this, I’m getting Better at not saying these things out loud. This enriches the experience. I’m getting better at not saying these things out loud. But that’s the impulse though. My experience is enriched by my thoughts that other people need to hear to enrich their experience. This is the thing, Link. Especially if I’m in charge of helping make them into people. The dad final frontier is keeping things to yourself. If you don’t get there, you’re gonna become a bad dad. Yeah. You gotta be sly, you gotta be tight. The pendulum swings. Let’s just explore this for a second. There’s a bad dad on one end of the pendulum, and that is a dad who’s not engaged, that is a dad who isn’t saying anything to anybody because he just doesn’t care enough to say anything. He’s sitting on the bench, “Y’all go ahead, I’m gonna sit on the bench.” He doesn’t care enough. This is a big circle anyway. And then there’s the momentum that swings the pendulum towards the middle or the other side, which is a dad who cares, a dad who’s invested, a dad who wants to talk about the things that he is realizing, how much concrete it would’ve taken to build this particular facility, Or clean up your daughter’s phone. That’s the same instinct. And set up the bank account. Right? These are things that are born out of, Love. Love and care for your family. For real. Now, you could make the argument that they’re born out of a narcissistic tendency to want everyone to see the world the way that you do. But let’s just set that aside for a moment. I’m not buying that. And what I found myself doing is, and I actually, the thing that has brought this to light is the number of, social media has helped with this because anytime you see a dadism parodied on social media, and they do this all the time in like movies and otherwise, a movie that I didn’t really like that Sidney Sweeney, romcom, “Anyone But You.” my favorite part of the movie was the dad character who was daddying it up. And that was his angle was like, making all these observations about Australia and the US when he was in Australia. And I was like, “Shit, he’s doing the same stuff I did when I was there.” Right? And so when you see it parodied and you’re like, “Oh, no one cares as much as the dad cares. And so you get to a point where you’re like, “You know what? I can make this observation about what the legality of taking a seed out of here would be. And I could just think about that in my own brain.” That’s the final frontier. Now if you see a, Maybe, you should talk to your dad about it. If you see another dad, I wonder if, Oh, there you go. If you see another dad, or if you, like, once my boys get to- Thinking about taking a seed out of here. Once my boys get to the right age, in fact, I think that Locke is there now. Locke wasn’t with me. Locke’s been abroad. He’s coming back today actually. He wasn’t there. I did talk to him on the phone. But he’s getting of that age where I think I can start dispensing this sort of information. Tread lightly. I’ll be like, what do you think about taking a seed out of here? And then he’d be- It’s a trick question, son. And then if he responds, like, how much concrete do you think is in this facility? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You throw things out like that. But you gotta, just a little goes a long way. It’s like salt. Right. And so, All right, well. So anyway, I traversed the, and I was with my nephews as well. So Cole’s boys were in town because they are driving Locke’s car across the country to get it to the east coast where he needs it for his college. Okay. And so they’re doing this, It’s a family affair. They’re doing a road trip. Very excited for them. And hopefully they make it. Well, I’m glad you didn’t fail at anything, But I was with them and I didn’t fail at anything. I think I was a good uncle. I was a good dad. I saw a lot of incredible plants. I spent time in the American Art Museum. You can’t spend all, you can’t see all the art when you go to the Huntington. You have to pick one of the galleries. Went to the American Art, which also includes furniture, which really got my wife excited. I’ve seen that. She just loves looking at furniture. Furniture. Will take note of that from Mother’s Day. Yep, yep, yep. And so if you’ve got any interesting chairs or other things that would excite my wife, just leave us a voicemail. Oh. So it was relatively uneventful. Had a good brunch, had a good time out in the Huntington. Would’ve been nice if there weren’t so many other dads there. But I did not delete any photos. I did not upset my one son that was present or my nephews who were present. They did make a few observations. You don’t need to make a summary. They did make a few observations about me saying and doing the same things as their dad, my brother, which I thought was funny. Nothing to know. Just they’re like, “Yep, that’s something that dad would say.” But yeah. Well he’s also a dad and he’s also my brother. It’s instinctive. Yeah. We can’t help it. We’re proud dads. We’re still learning. And if we keep talking it, you know, it won’t be a shorter episode. Yeah. So we’re gonna end it. My recommendation for you is simple. Find the local botanical garden and go to it. But don’t dad too hard. Keep the thoughts to yourself. If you need to make notes on your phone or a notepad, learn to keep the thoughts to yourself before you tell everyone in your group. Or just go alone and talk to yourself out loud. We’ll talk at you next week. Hi, Rhett and Link. It’s Neve from Dublin in Ireland. Just calling to prove that yes, your international mythical beast can call “Ear Biscuits” and say hello. Rhett, I know you’ve discovered recently that you’re not Scottish, you’re actually Irish. And to tell you that in here your surname would be pronounced McLaughlin, not McLaughlin. So if you’re Irish, thought you might wanna know that. Okay. Thanks. Bye.