This episode is sponsored by AutoTrader. See a car in a movie that you just watched? You can find it on AutoTrader. Shop millions of new and used cars on AutoTrader. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast for two lifelong friends talking about life for a long time. I’m Rhett. And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting. I’m gonna, hey, I just got to know about your It is called skin diving, right? Every time I say it, I’m like, hold on. Am I saying the sexual term that’s confused with what you’re doing? Skin diving. What would that be? Well, skin diving sounds Just another name for sex? Yeah. Sex without a condom. Right. So you are Um, which we, which we don’t recommend unless you’ve been fixed like we have. You, you, you’ve learned how to I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know if that’s a proper term. Free diving is the Free diving! Free diving, but skin diving I think isn’t, I don’t know, honestly. That’s it. Oh, I knew I didn’t have it right. Free diving, where you hold your breath And go to depths of up to or beyond 50 feet. Okay, I, I gotta, this is tapping into fears for me. Uh, and I know that you got trained. So I, I need the download on your free diving. Uh. You prepared for that? Yeah. I’ve got video that, uh, how, you know, how of Hollywood divers. Shout out. Um, who is a friend of the show, that show being Good Mythical Morning, because we originally got to know Hal when he was on that episode of Who’s the, Who’s the Boss? We played that lineup game where we had, we looked at a set of people, and one of them was the boss, and a couple of them were employees, and you had to ask them questions to figure out who was the boss. Okay. And I think we accurately guessed that Hal was the boss. So Chase got to know Hal. And Chase was already into scuba diving because Chase produced that episode. Right. And Chase made Hollywood Divers his dive shop of choice. So when we got into diving, we went with them as well. Right, to get certified. And Hal is a, he’s a Carolina boy, North Carolina boy, East Carolina boy. Okay. And, uh, So we, we love to, we, we have a lot in common, having grown up in North Carolina, we always have a good time. So he took me and Chase and Shepard out and anyway, he filmed some of this and I have it on a little teeny micro SD card that I’ll give to Jamie to make sure that the video version of this has at least some complimentary video. I haven’t seen it yet. Okay. So yeah, um, Shepard, who is now. And can I, can I, can I stop you there for a minute? Yeah. I can’t wait for you to get into it, but I do, I do want to talk about Wonderhole first. Oh, let’s proceed. Because it just came out on Friday. Mm hmm. And this comes out on Monday. So our future selves are experiencing the first episode of Of our passion project comedy series, Rhett and Link’s Wonderhole, in real time right now. We’re reacting to people’s reactions. We’re trying not to react. Well, we’re um, we’re basking in the glow of People enjoying episode one or curling up in the fetal position because nobody liked it. Yeah Yeah, as we record this, we’re in an interesting anticipatory place But just want to put a shameless plug out there go to the retin link youtube channel our og youtube channel The one that started it all. The reason that we’re right here, right now. If you are not subscribed, please subscribe. Watch the episode if you haven’t. Check it out. Uh, we took the world’s most expensive first class flight. Is what it’s called. And we did that in a sense. Dot, dot, dot. We did that in a sense. Um. But we did much more. After having our red carpet show it on a movie theater screen, Yeah, we did a premiere. I’m feeling so excited. Let me talk a little bit about why we did it like that. So, as you know, we made the decision to set aside the, you know, the game that we have been sort of secretly playing for many years. You know, there’s the stuff that UCS make and there’s all the stuff that we do. We talked about this in our We’re Done video that was on the Rhett and Link channel. Um, We’re done. You see all the stuff that we actually make, right? The mythical stuff, Good Mythical Morning, Ear Biscuits, Mythical Kitchen, et cetera, everything on the society. But meanwhile, a not insignificant chunk of our time has been spent for the past few years and like try developing other things for what you would call traditional media, right? TV, movies, whatever. And there’s been some success. We’ve had a couple of TV shows most recently, a couple of years ago on Food Network. Um, but we’ve set that aside and just thrown ourselves into. Wonderhole as our sort of first step into just making the thing that we want to make Essentially kind of making the thing that we know if we had a pitched it directly to a network or a streamer They would have said no we’ve got enough experience to know that they would have been like nah So we were just like well, let’s just make the thing we want to make and because we are And we we actually made the decision to make our own series Like it wasn’t that we came up with this idea and we realized we couldn’t pitch it You That isn’t what happened. We decided that we wanted to make something Without for ourselves thinking about the network streamers or whatever. Yeah without trying to formulate something that we thought someone would buy we formulated a show that we were extremely excited about pouring all of our creative energy into and I think we’ve, I know we’ve succeeded. At pouring all our energy into it. Yeah. We definitely did that. Right, right. Ear Biscuits is supported by AutoTrader. We live in LA. You look around anywhere, you know what you’re going to see? Cars. Lots of them. And guess what? They’re probably all on AutoTrader. I’ve had, uh, many a car in my day. Yeah. You know, I’ve had cars that I thought were pretty cool. I’ve had cars that I tried to fix and ended up totaling. Like my 1996 Dodge Intrepid, when I got the bright idea to change the water pump. Ooh, that’s a That was too ambitious. You never got that Crown Vic you wanted. I didn’t. Maybe one day I will. If you see it on the road, you can likely find it on Autotrader. Rhett, it’s not too late to get that Crown Vic. Mm hmm. New cars, used cars, electric cars, all types of cars. With millions of options to choose from, buying a car becomes a whole lot easier. See it, find it, Autotrader. Sometimes when it’s getting later in the day, I say to myself, Rhett, you need to pick me up. But then I say, Rhett, don’t drink coffee right now because you’ll be up forever. I also don’t, I don’t ever just say ret and then something. I actually don’t do that. In come the people from Mudwater. They sent us a sample of their product. I’d seen ads for this thing, like, for a couple years now. I’ve been wanting to try it. I will say that as Link was putting it together, he spilled, he spilled it. He spilled both of ours. I may have also spilled mine a little bit when mixing. But, I’m gonna say it was all his fault because he’s not here to record this ad with me. Well, switching to mud water can help you say goodbye to sleepless nights. It’s got all the energy without the late night existential crises. To use mud water, you simply drop the powder into your favorite mug, or maybe your least favorite mug. You use whatever mug you want. Pour some water on it and give it a mix. There’s also caffeine free blends available. Although the regular version has, I think, a pretty low level of caffeine compared to coffee. With organic ingredients for a clean, natural boost, mud water smooth, earthy flavors provide a delicious and natural source of energy. Their OG blend contains cacao and chai for a hint of caffeine, and hot chocolate like flavor, lion’s mane for focus, cordyceps to promote natural energy, and both chaga and reishi to support a healthy immune system. For a limited time, you can get up to 43 percent off your entire order, free shipping, and a free rechargeable frother. When you use our exclusive link, head to mudwater. com slash ear and grab your starter kit. That’s up to 43 percent off your order at M U D W T R. com forward slash ear. After you purchase, they ask you where you heard about them. Please support Ear Biscuits and tell them we sent you. Stay energized and refreshed all summer long with Mudwater. Because life’s too short for anything less than natural, delicious energy. Um, but we decided to do a premiere. And that’s a win. We, we did what we set out to do, which was make this thing. Yeah. If people like it, it’s icing on the cake. But it’s also enables us to continue doing it and all that. Right, right, right. So. We decided to do, uh, sort of a traditional premiere, and also, like, make six episodes and release it on a weekly basis, to essentially say that this is our, this is the TV show that we’re making, right? Really, the distinction between A tv show and something like good mythical morning is really at this point It’s like well you go to your tv and you click on an icon Are you going to click on the amazon prime icon or the netflix icon or the youtube tv or youtube icon? From your point of view. It doesn’t really make that big of a difference, right? so our thought was well, let’s Instead of doing what we did last year and just making like an episode when an episode’s ready We release it like a typical youtube channel or like a monthly release. Let’s just see what happens if we You Treat this as a TV show and present it as it’s like a weekly release like you would do on HBO or whatever So there are some similarities to what we’ve done in previous that in last year And that’s why we decided to do the premiere which was but there are some there are there are some notable Differences and it is it is Much more of a show. I mean, you talk about still very much a YouTube made for YouTube. Um, in some senses, right? There’s it’s true that it’s a comedy series that like once you click on Netflix or Max or YouTube, once you’re in there, I think we’re giving you that same level of experience. On the other hand, it does kind of bridge the gap. It straddles the gap, the closing gap, which used to be a chasm between YouTube video. YouTube content and other streaming content. So it’s, it’s in an interesting place, which makes it unique. Also, I think the tone is very unique. I feel like it’s very much us, and you can’t really compare it directly to any one thing, but to all the things that maybe we’ve done in the past, but also the way we’ve been influenced. But back to the premiere. If you don’t like us, you’re not gonna like it. That’s for sure. Yeah, but if you don’t like one episode, You might like the next. So, um, the premiere was more of, you know, it was a pretty small event, like 200 people. It was mostly people who worked on the show and then, you know, quote, industry friends, you know, youtubers and TV personalities and stuff that that we know and then industry like press people. And also a lot of YouTube people because YouTube was gracious enough to. Put this event on with us, right? They’ve been a really good partner in this. And I say what I mean by partner is essentially like they are supportive of the, of our efforts to make this kind of content for their platform. Uh, you know, we, it’s all self finance for, for us there. They don’t have any involvement in that and they’re not like giving any advice or anything like, it’s not like a network, but they’re very supportive and, and, and want this to be a success, but. It’s up to us and it’s up to you for it to be a success It’s not really they don’t do anything to like manipulate the platform, but they did come to the come to the event and uh, You know We’re basically kind of showed up is that hey, this is a mythical and a youtube sort of presentation Which was which was a very cool thing Yeah, and and we got to see we don’t get to see the things that we make in the context of a live audience Which is such a weird thing. We make right the stuff that people enjoy You In the privacy of their own homes. And the only way you find out what people think is funny is from comments. Or will things that get memefied or things that get broken out into a tick tock video, but when you’re in a room with people, especially with the way that we think, and I mean, it was the scrutiny that I couldn’t help but apply to all the reactions in the room. You know, it’s a totally different thing. And it’s like, okay, how many laughs are we getting? Are they building? Are we missing? Um, With any of these do any of these fall flat are there times when we’re shifting the tone and people don’t understand or they’re they’re catching up or we’re trying to to accomplish something and it doesn’t seem they seem a little behind or they don’t get it you know we’re we tried a lot even within episode one but across this whole series I wish you could show the whole thing I wish we can continue to screen the episodes in a room so that we could you know there’s. There’s so much to learn. Actually, we talked about how there might be too much to learn because that’s a theater. It’s not. It’s not people watch YouTube videos. The actual, you know, the, the way it should be experienced. Um, but it was really rewarding to actually have the premiere because it puts into practice something that we’re, we’re not great at. Even though we’ve written about in our book of mythicality, which is stopping and celebrating. And I think before this thing comes out on YouTube to have this, Yes, it’s a premiere. Yes, it’s promotional, but it’s also a celebration. Like a lot of our close friends who have been like super supportive of us creatively from a personal standpoint. We’re there to react to it and to see it. You know, I have friends that don’t watch any of my content for them to show up and have this enthusiastic response. It means something different. And It was, it was very special to have this moment, you know, we, we rented a big party bus. We took a lot of the mythical crew, including the core Wonderhole crew. And then when it was, when we got there, we did, we did the, we had like a little mixer beforehand. And we had the party bus. The screening and then we they had a Q& A with us afterward and then we had a party And then after the party was over We all got back on that bus and came back and because we were all dispersed talking to people It gave us time to celebrate together and to like debrief on the ride back and say what did What, what’s the feedback you got kind of thing. So it kind of put a bow on the whole thing that we got to experience together, um, yeah, to me, it’s really special to me. It’s a, I always want to do it for any new project because I just feel like it’s another data point for me. Obviously, we’re a little bit different in that my like, I’m not saying I don’t think stopping and celebrating is important and I think I should be better at it, but I savor it a little bit less like than you do. Like for me, it’s more just like, I even said it when I was there to multiple people. I was like, I don’t know how to, I don’t know how to necessarily enjoy this process because The thing that I get the most satisfaction out of is when I feel like I did the thing that I set out to do. Right? That, and, and that, and that I, not that I didn’t, not just leaving it all in the field, but like, this is as good as I can do. And I also realize that that’s like a asymptotic, whatever the word, is some unachievable goal where you Well it’s a moving target in the least. You’ll keep moving the target. But at some point you will have done the best thing you could do. And you will have reached it. Right. So it’s not asymptotic, but Right, yeah, there is a reality to the fact that I will have done, at some point, the best that I can do. And so because I feel like Wonderhole is such a significant step towards that, but it is definitely not that. So I can’t, like, I’m just thinking like, boy, this is all really great feedback. I want people to be honest with me. I want people to tell me, I don’t want you to be like, oh, I’m going to say these things to you because you’re my friend, which is a very, like, L. A. thing, because you go to see things that people have made all the time, and you’re not going to be an asshole and tell them that it wasn’t good. Um, and so, uh, and so there are a number of like sort of catchphrases that I picked up on that people will say like, Oh, that was so fun. It was so fun. You guys seem to really enjoy yourself. Like there’s lots of things that you can say that sound encouraging, but the underneath the subtext is I don’t have anything to say that was complimentary. That wasn’t what I experienced at the Wonderhole premiere. I was very happy. Oh, I thought you were saying that. No, no, no. What I experienced was People that I trust saying that they liked it, but then insisting on continuing to talk about it, which, in my experience, when I go to something that a friend has done, I, and I don’t, I’m looking for the thing to say. Mm hmm. And so then I, like, find the thing to say, and that’s the first thing I say, but then, because I’m saying it more for their benefit and edification rather than, like, this, I’m gonna give you, like, some critical feedback right now when you’re celebrating this thing, I don’t keep talking about it. Mm hmm. Because that would seem really disingenuous, right? And so, the, the, there’s a few trusted friends who kept, kept talking about it. N n nobody was like, oh, this is like some, like you’ve, you’ve made the perfect piece of media or anything. Like, I’m not, that. Right. But it was very much just like, you guys, I can see what you were trying to do and I think that you did it. And that’s what I’m celebrating. And I also cannot help but think, Now that we’ve done this, how much, like what we can take and grow from and actually apply to doing even more of it. So did you have the moment of satisfaction at some point? During the screening or during filming when you’re like, I’m most satisfied when I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. So did that happen for you? I think I’ve had more of that feeling just along the process of being like, Wow we’re really like we were in this room talking about this thing we came up with this idea for this thing to happen during the episode or for this left turn to occur or for us to weave these two things together and then we actually did it so it’s not like one singular realization like we screen it in our office with our smaller team right and I guess but again I’m always of two minds there’s the satisfaction. Of being like we did that and then there’s the like, okay, it wasn’t perfect How can it be perfect and I can’t really let go of that and I also don’t feel like I Necessarily suffer because of that. It’s just my disposition. So i’m kind of like, all right This is just not I had a great time at the at the premiere, but i’m always of two minds I think I relate to that for me. The premiere was this like, uh stake in the ground that was like, okay You Well, it would have been nice if it was done so I could say this thing is done and now it’s going out there but we had to get up the next morning and shoot two days worth of Production for the, for episode five, which we have now completed. Cause episode six was already shot. Cause now, now I feel like after that, I was like, there was a complete relief like this weekend. I was just like feeling great about it’s done and we’ve already partied about it. Um, but yeah, I was definitely, um, on the other hand, the moment we got there on stage and we were being asked a few questions about it. We started talking about how our. Our mind is going 100 miles an hour with, um, notes and all of it was not, was geared towards how does this impact what we do next, which, um, And our, our, our full intention is to do Wonderhole season two next. There are some challenges which, which I, I can elucidate. But at that point I was like, you know what? I have notes. I have, I noted things that didn’t work. I noted things that we could have done better that started to work, uh, or did work, but could be so much worse. Fill in the blank. This could have been so much funnier, this could have been so much more surprising, this could have been so much more moving. Um, I feel like I can learn from the positives of what, like if I’m looking at my own performance, my performance in this scene compared to this scene and how maybe it’s uneven or, you know, it’s like I think about all these things and like ways to improve and invest in, you know, Moving forward. But at the same time, I was really trying to appreciate what it was and being in that room and kind of watching it with other people brought me as close as I could be at times to forgetting. That it was us and something we made, you know, because we don’t watch ourself on a movie screen So it’s like i’m watching I can I could trick myself into thinking I was watching somebody else’s thing and in those moments I was very happy, you know, I was very Proud of whoever made this thing and I was all in on it. I could feel that the production value was like Really good. So no detriment to that to say at the same time, I could feel that it was made by a team. You could count, you could, you could see in a small room and you could count, you know, so when we were out in the field, you could pretty much count everybody working on it, two hands, even if you’d lost a couple of fingers, you know, the crew was never very big. Right. And I think that that gate gives a feeling to it that. It wasn’t that it was scrappy, but that it was or homemade. It’s something else that I don’t have a word for, but it’s, it’s kind of in between like this, like a full budget to do the type of thing we have an ambition to do and a low budget we’re like somewhere in the middle that actually gave it. Charm and heart. Yeah. So I actually felt really good about that. Um, even though what I want people to say, man, this could be, this could be, this could have been on HBO Max or, you know, because I think their stuff is more elevated, right? I don’t know if that’s the case. And I’m okay with that at this point. Yeah, it is. You know, so I started to feel like what it was is. Something that we were extremely creative. We took some big creative swings and even when you were confused instead of surprise, because there’s lots of like, um, moments of surprise that we try to bake in, even if even if that is not exactly right. I think it’s. It feels good to see someone really go for it and we as a team I feel like really went for it and that was very satisfying to me and we it worked to the point that the criticisms I have are um, they’re the minority of things that I experienced Yeah, you know and I actually think all that stuff you said at the beginning about like You know the notes and the this could have been this, you know, You You know, I have all the same observations about my performance and, and, and all that to me, that’s also something to celebrate because when you do what we’ve been doing for the past 10 years on that front, which is writing a pilot script, spending a bunch of time on it, doing revisions. Having conversations with, with network executives about it. When you never get to the making of it. You didn’t get to make it. Right. So you never actually got to apply any of the lessons. Exactly. So when you just, okay, so it, you know, I can’t help but think like, damn it, we should have started this earlier, but it’s okay. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. I wish I was 36, not 46. Like, I have those thoughts, right? But, um, having made it and having achieved what we wanted to achieve and just knowing that like, Actually dialing in a few different elements of it, is actually the easier part than just making the thing and having it work in general, and so I’m, I’m, I’m very encouraged. Part of the excitement in the way that we constructed each episode was that we baked in numerous creative questions. What is it going to feel like if we do this? What is it going to feel like for an audience to experience this thing with going in blind? Because we’re not blind, we know what we’ve planned. So, I’m really excited to start to see the answers to those questions. See if we can decipher the answers to the creative questions that we’ve had. Because there’s a lot of genre bending, a lot of genre skipping, and it’s, it kind of m Uh, like meshes isn’t the right word, but it kind of moves into this continuum of genre experiment as one example of like a line of questions that make me excited for it to come out and because we won’t be in the room watching. And. And I won’t be able to interrogate my trusted, creative, uh, friends, you know, like I did at the party. I interrogated people. You know, I wasn’t afraid to keep talking about my own show. Oh, really? Yeah. At one point, two of my, two, a friend and an acquaintance started talking about another show that they were watching. And I was, you know. I was still there. So I said, Hey, this, this is, this is my, this, this is about my show tonight. I want to, I want you to talk about my show. And I was joking, but not really, not really. They left. Um, so there’s a lot of questions that I’m trying to answer and I don’t think they’ll all be answered. Well, and then the, the, the big question, which is, this is like, uh, I was talking to a friend yesterday, actually about this, I was like, it’s equally exciting and frustrating to know that the big question that we will have. At least. Some piece of an answer for by the time this comes out is like, how does, how well does it work on YouTube? And the equally exciting and frustrating thing is that. How good it is, is, is a, is a small piece, is a small piece of how well it will work on YouTube, right? Yeah. Because if you think about it. Just look at videos that have tens of millions of views. Just, just pick one at random. Yeah. And you’ll look at the most, look at the most viewed videos on YouTube and then try to track views to quality. And I, at least by my standards, I don’t think you will see a correlation. However. I mean, like, okay, for example, the video that has gotten the most views in many, many years on the Rhett and Link channel is just the one where we just kind of set up the whole idea for us making this series. And the only reason it has over 4 million views is because it’s called We’re Done and people thought that we were quitting YouTube. And it’s like, that’s the world that we live in, right? That’s the world that we live in. So we have to learn to manipulate that world, which is why we made that video in that way. Yeah, so the question is also the way it’s also the reason why we’re making these episodes where every episode of one of the thumbnails are as they are structured around, uh, our best guess at a title and a thumbnail that will actually work on a platform. Because we want it to break out of the dedicated fan base of Mythical Beasts that you are a part of, which, you know, leads me to ask, will you share it with somebody who is not a habitual GMM viewer, you know, somebody who knows about us but doesn’t, you know, they may not be, you know, You know, preferably they’re not at all. So like share, share it with, uh, share it with some of those people. I think that will, that’s what we’re hoping to do is, is to reach out and bring more people into the fold because this is, this is a different thing than good mythical morning. Now I mentioned some of the challenges that we have, um, you know, briefly in terms of like our ambition to create a season two is very high. I mean, like. Our plans are to do that. Am I making an announcement that we’re going to do it? I feel like I can, but I, but also I can’t because, um, well, the business side of it, right? Like we’re committed to, um, continuing to bet on ourselves and invest in ourselves, but it has been an investment so far and unless this thing gets a, an astronomical amount of views, it will not. Pay for itself in season one. So and that’s not really the that wasn’t we know that really the we knew that yeah But but to make it sustainable to to do a you know, our hopes for a season two are We need Sponsors. We need some sort of ad integration beyond just the AdSense ads that pop up around before and after and like mid rolls. Inking some deals with brands that can underwrite an increased budget for season two, um, so that we can invest in the things that. To accomplish the notes that we have right to continue or just to pay the budget that we have for season one. Yeah, that’s true. I think that’s the so that’s from a business standpoint. That’s a big challenge and it seems like. It’s one that, I mean, it’s one that we’re certainly up for. And it, and we get frustrated because it seems like that should be easier to do. But I think because it’s a new property. It’s hard to do. The success of it, I think, will impact our ability to sell against it for a second season. Yeah, for sure. Watching closely the level of engagement and, you know, uh, how well it performs on YouTube. So anyway, thank you for listening to us, you know, talk about it like we would if we were just sitting in our office talking about, you know, debriefing. This is like, this is the, where the practical side of the creative process, um, kind of comes into play, and I will say that, um, we are, we do not discount the fact, or we are not unaware of the fact that we have this incredible privilege to make. And, you know, the same friend I was talking to yesterday about the show, you know, it’s been working on this screenplay for three years and is basically sending it out this week. And he’s like, I know it’s good. I know that I’ve done everything I can. And, you know, I had read the first draft on this thing, which like two and a half years ago and given some notes or whatever. And he’s, he’s like. But the thing I prepare myself for emotionally is knowing that whether or not it’s good is not really the reason that it will get made or not get made, because that’s not how people make decisions in this town. They make decisions based on will it sell and what sells is not necessarily what is good. Now, sometimes it all aligns and it is, but it, I, it wasn’t lost on me that like we spent all this time investing into this thing and working on it. And some people got to see it and some people will like it, whether or not it’s like, Oh, it’s a, it’s a commercial success is like, That would be this wonderful story that we could tell and it would be awesome, but not only already We’re already in a really Incredible spot that we should be grateful for. Yeah, and we did it this way and we are encountering the challenges You know in terms of like budgeting Strategically because our other like big projects Throughout the years that did get made we were asking Mythical beasts to then go to another platform or to Subscribe to another thing to pay money for it. Like, this is completely free. It is completely visible by anyone in the world. It’s not just for people in the United States. That has access to YouTube. So, it was, you know, we have the money to invest at this point, right? So, you know, it’s like, let’s, let’s, you know, Give as many people a chance to see this with as few barriers as possible. So um, and we were having the ability to do that is was the realization we had and we followed through with it and yeah It’s not lost on me that like it is a tremendous privilege to be in this place A lot of creators don’t have the money to invest in the way that we have or the audience we have um, so even within The realm of like creators, YouTube, et cetera. Um, we’re trying to prove, you know, we’re trying to champion the cause of creativity for them, but also connect some of the dots from a business standpoint so that they can follow in our footsteps and that the quality of content. We’re seeing from creators is able to, um, increase maybe not just the quality, but like people being able to like, really put themselves out there and not feel like the only, so we’re waving that flag. The only way to make it work is it for it to get caught in the algorithm in a certain way. It’s like, we’ll see. Yeah. Okay. But the way to do that, the way for that to happen is for, you know, if you like it, if, well first of all, watch it. If you like it, talk about it, share it in the way that you would a TV show that you like. The next five Fridays at 6 p. m. Eastern, 3 p. m. Pacific. It comes out on the Rhett and Link YouTube channel. Okay, thanks for indulging our, uh, infomercial for Wonderhole. We didn’t even know we were going to talk about it until we sat down. Then we realized, oh, this is right after premiere. We got it. This is the perfect time to talk to you about it. So hope you’re half as excited as we are. Yeah, uh. I was gonna make a pun about, but I’m not gonna hold my breath, but then I wouldn’t have meant that. But I was trying to transition to you holding your breath. Ear Biscuits is brought to you by BetterHelp. One of our mottos here at Mythical is stay curious. It’s important for us to ask questions and then see what happens. It’s an ethos that has been very rewarding in terms of not only creating content, but keeping our lives fresh. We’re like grown up kids in a lot of ways. Mm hmm, and kids are always learning and growing, but as adults, sometimes we lose that curiosity. What’s something you’d like to learn? Gardening, a new language, or maybe how to finally beat your best friend in bowling? Hmm. Therapy can help you reconnect with your sense of wonder. Because your back to school era seems I feel that. I actually talk about the development of our show, Wonderhole, a lot. And how, personally, I’ve wanted to make it a playground for creativity within therapy. We are huge advocates for therapy. So if you’re thinking of starting, give BetterHelp a try. 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 at any time for no additional charge. Rediscover your curiosity with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp. com slash ear today to get 10 percent off your first month. That’s betterhelp, H E L P dot com slash ear. Ear Biscuits is supported by Rosetta Stone. I’ve done some traveling this year, and every time I travel, I am reminded at how many languages I don’t know. Most of them, in fact. Yeah, yeah. In comes Rosetta Stone, the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app that truly immerses you in the language you want to learn. They’ve used trusted experts for 30 years with millions of users and 25 languages offered including but not limited to Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic. Rosetta Stone immerses you in many ways and is designed for long term retention. For example, it has no English translation so you really learn to speak, listen, and think. And their built in True Accent feature gives you feedback on your pronunciation. So it’s like having a personal trainer for your accent. Plus is an amazing value. A lifetime membership has all 25 languages for any trips and or language needs in your life. That’s lifetime access to all 25 language courses Rosetta Stone offers for 50 percent off. Don’t put off learning that language. There’s no better time than right now to get started. For a very limited time. You can get Rosetta Stone’s lifetime membership for 50 percent off. Visit rosettastone. com slash ear. That’s 50 percent off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50 percent off at rosettastone. com slash ear today. So yes, Shepard had been asking about this because he is now. He’s actually like you advanced scuba certified. He’s not, you’re also nitrox certified. But he’s been asking about free diving and I have always liked the idea of free diving because before I ever scuba dove, is that how you would say it? Scuba dove? Sure. I don’t think it is, but scuba dived scuba dived. Yeah. Um, before I ever did that. I’ve always liked being in the water and being under the water. Like since I was a kid, you know, and you were a competitive swimmer. I was a competitive swimmer. A member of the Keith Hills pool. Yes, I was. But I also was like, you know, it was the thing to do to like, see how far you could swim underwater and like how many links of the pool can you swim without coming up for air and stuff like that. And so I always did that. So I was like, I think that. I think that I will be good at this. And also, the, I love scuba diving. The only thing I don’t like about scuba diving is all of the equipment. And like, how heavy the thing is, and the tank. People don’t realize like, when you watch like a scuba diver in a movie, like walking around. You know, like, that tank is very heavy. Especially the, the steel tanks in California. Like it’s, it’s just very cumbersome. Right. Yeah. And being able to be like, I’ve got on a wetsuit and I’ve got some fins and a mask and I could just go into the water. So how took Chase Shepherd and I, cause Chase was also interested in getting his free dive certification, uh, To Catalina Island, which is the same place that right there in their little, uh, marine park or whatever it’s called. Yeah, where I got scuba certified. Where I got certified as well, that’s where we did this. Now, I will see videos on social media of people swimming down to like, Unbelievable depths with not what we did with nothing except maybe a spear and some goggles and they’re just, you know, there’s some people who would be like, like, world record holding free dives, people just holding their breath forever, going down forever, and it’s like there’s effortlessly dancing in the water. And. It is so anxiety inducing for me, you see, like, um, I don’t know where it in different parts of the world, you’ve got people like, huh? Blue holes. No, I’m talking about the free divers jumping off boats. And then, like, if they’re like, try, there’s like a tribal vibe to these people who are diving down and fishing for their livelihood. Oh, but they’re like, right. Really? Advanced like Pearl Divers in the Yeah. Pearl Divers and in the South Pacific and stuff. Free. Like just, just going for it. Just going deep. Holding their breath forever, effortlessly. And it, I think it is one of the, it might be one of my biggest fears, it makes me so anxious. I never grew up going to the Keith Hills pool. Like the times when I would be invited to the pool party and everybody would play Shark or whatever that is, where there’s like across the pool. Cross the pool and you’re diving. Everybody’s on one side and they’re diving in and trying to get, not get tagged. Like I, I, I was so scared. I thought I was going to shit my pants, you know, I just scared of having your face underwater. Well, I mean, I could do it. I could swim, I could put my head under water, but I wasn’t great at it. Like I wasn’t a great swimmer. I never. I just knew how to swim, but that was it. That was like the baseline, you know. My mom, uh, pretty much can’t swim. It’s like she had an accident and like dove in and hit her head. Well it’s not genetic. But I think that she, she certainly didn’t encourage it because she’s been afraid of swimming. Right. Like we were, we did go to another pool, but like, she would never get in the water. She would like wade in a little bit and then get back out. So I like never saw her swim because in high school she hit her head on the bottom of the pool. Yeah. And then she got too scared to do it again. Anyway. Even now, like if I’m swimming in my own pool, and because I’ve gotten into scuba diving, I’ve, and when I was trying to get ready for my first scuba training, I would swim under the water and just hold my breath and try to swim the length of the pool, not knowing that that’s not really a component of scuba diving. You’re always breathing. You actually never hold your breath. It’s bad to hold your breath when scuba diving. Don’t do it. Um. I will just experience, in the first few seconds of being underwater, like, if I have to dive down and get something from the bottom of the pool, I’ll start to experience a little panic. So then, like, even if I’m going down to the bottom of the pool grabbing one thing, by the time I grab that thing, I’m like, if I don’t get it on the first try, I gotta come up. And even when I get it, I’m like, Oh my God, I, I, I’m like, I’m coming up so fast. And then when I, no matter how long I’ve been underwater, when I come up, I’m like, it’s just, I just makes me so anxious, man, but it is all mental. It’s not a, I don’t think so. You were set up for it. You’re totally comfortable with it. And I do understand. Here’s the thing. I haven’t, you know, we did a breath holding thing on the show. Years ago just static in those in those horse troughs that we have and I think I did over three minutes And um, I would not be able to do that now. I haven’t so what did they train you? No training like there was no preparation This might blow your mind. It blew my mind because I just didn’t believe it was going to happen. None of us had done any respiratory training at all before Saturday. And all three of us, he told us that we were going to be able to do this. And I just really was like, I don’t feel like I was a little bit, I wasn’t comfortable. And I’ll tell you reasons why, but not even by the end of the class, by the middle of the class, Shepard, Chase, and I all dove down to the Jacques Cousteau plaque in the Marine Park and touched it and came back up. Well that’s 45 feet. 43 feet down. Damn! I mean. And it was actually not. Cause my pool was 8 feet deep. It was not hard. And that’s when I experienced a panic. It wasn’t hard. How long, well, how long does it take to get down to 43 feet and back up when you’ve got these fins on not long at all. The, the, the most, the nerve wracking part of it is the fact that you have to be equalizing constantly and the deeper you get, the more difficult it gets to equalize once you pass 30 feet. But that’s no different than scuba. Right. But in scuba, you are, when you go down, typically you are. Right side up, and you’re just letting the weight, you’re, you’re, you’re getting the air out of your BC and floating down very slowly, and you’re just going, Eh, eh, eh, and you’re kind of just getting down to your depth, and then you start swimming around. Yeah. With this, you gotta get down there, because you’ve got one breath, so you pike dive at the surface. You jump out of the water like a dolphin? No, you know, pike diving, so my head is like this, and then I, then you throw your body down and put your feet up, so you go down, and you immediately, like, when I turn over, I’m already six and a half feet deep. My head is six and a half feet deep. Are you allergic to this conversation? Yeah, yeah, yeah, my body’s trying to expel something. And at six feet, You’re already in need of some equalization. As you know, if we’re going to the bottom of your pool, you probably feel the pressure on your ears. Yeah, yeah. And I have one good ear. Like, right ear is like, yes, I’m here, I’m ready to go. And left ear is like, you gotta really push me to equalize. There’s just something genetic in my Eustachian tubes. Creates that problem. But, so, you’re going down and you’re like, hold, I’m, I can’t do the, is it Frenzel technique, which is, you use your tongue as a throat piston, and like, those guys, like, if you watch like these Netflix documentaries. Sounds like that could have other applications. If you, you, if you watch these Netflix documentaries. And these dudes are going, the world record is over 700 feet on one breath. Damn. What? Think about that. And now 700 feet. And if you didn’t know, people don’t scuba dive at 700 feet. Nobody does that. I mean, I’m sure there’s probably somebody who has, but the reason you don’t do that is because of the decompression issues with like breathing compressed air and being, but you don’t have to worry about decompression with, with this, because it’s the same air the whole time. There’s no opportunity for nitrogen to get into your, But your body experiences pressure, including your lungs. All of the pressure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of the same pressure. Which is why you’re equalizing your ears, but do you have to equalize your lungs? Do you have to, uh No. In fact, you do not want to let any air out. The only air you’re using is the air to equalize. But at no point, at no point, do you want to exhale any air. Because As you come back up, you want the air in your lungs to create buoyancy to continue to send you up. Yeah. Because you’re wearing a weighted belt. Shit. That creates a, uh, a neutral buoyancy at 20 feet down. So in other words, if I’m 20 feet or above, I am positive, I am positively buoyant. So I’m coming, uh, it, the natural tendency is to come back up. Mm. And 20 feet and below, it’s It’s to send you, the weight sends you down because of the, uh, pressure of the water above you with a compression of your wetsuit. It compresses your wetsuit. It makes it less buoyant because you’re, you’re, you’re, there’s volume in your wetsuit, smooshing air out of it. Yeah. Um, so anyway, okay. So once you got, once you swam past 20 feet, I don’t know if I, I don’t, we dialed in my way. I thought I was a little too heavy. So he took it at a certain point, you go diving down. But I didn’t have time to I would say that out of the three of us, I was the worst at it. Shepard was the first one to touch it. And Shepard was nervous going in because, like, he doesn’t think he can hold his breath that long. And, but he really just, like, took to it. And Chase did it no problem. Like, both Chase and Shepard, like, spent some time at the plaque. Because I could, like, see On the first time? Yeah. That’s bold right there. Cos you still gotta come up. I touched it. You’re only halfway. I touched it and was like, brrrrrrr! I was, like, poking it to get back to the top. How do you know the feeling the first time you go down there, that you have, that you still have half, you have what it takes to get back up? Well the thing is is that, with those fins, you know, free diving fins, is what me and Chase had. Shepard had the, just like, sort of, Hybrid fin. So he wasn’t as fast as us. You probably get to the plaque in 15 seconds, and then you probably get up in 10. So, that’s 20, that’s a 25 second dive. You can hold your breath for 25 seconds. Yeah. Now, you are equalizing and moving your legs, and so you’re expending energy, and so you’re using the oxygen, so you can’t, it’s not like a static breath hold. But it hit me, I was like, oh, I understand. I totally see how somebody who was really comfortable and really well trained and had the technique down perfectly could go really, really deep. Because me, just a hack, who was uncomfortable, which I’ll get to in a second, was able to go to like 43 feet on the first day. You know what I’m saying? Like, you can totally see how, like even how, Hal is obviously like much more trained than we are because he’s the instructor. He would do things where, like, so we had to practice rescuing people off the bottom, so not, not at 43 feet. We went to, like, 15 feet and he would, he would go to the bottom and, like, lay on the bottom like he was incapacitated and you had to go down and you had to, like, bring him to the surface and put him in do si do and, like, keep his airway open and stuff. You have to, like, learn how to rescue. That was the kind of point of the class, is, like, rescuing each other. So, like, Shep would rescue me, I’d rescue Shep, you’re talking about hugging somebody from the back. Same, same thing as you know about in, um, Scuba training. You get them to the surface, you fill their BC, you do do si do like this. Oh, oh, oh, like a square dance. Yeah, and then you, then you swim beside them and keep their airway open. And the thing about this is that he kept, I mean, obviously this was kind of the point, was to scare us a little bit, but the shallow water blackout is a real risk with freediving. If you watch these documentaries of people who go super, super deep, it’s basically passing out before you get to the top. But why do they call it shallow water? As you’re coming back up? Because. I can’t remember, even though I did take this written part of the class, I’m going to guess 90 percent of shallow water blackout happens at like 20 feet or less. And it has to do with what’s happening with your body as you’re getting closer to the surface and the pressure’s being relieved. Um, that doesn’t mean that it’s not dangerous, it’s just less dangerous than being 45 feet down and having a blackout. At that point, you got, your buddy’s got to come down and get you and swim up with you, take your weight belt off so he can get you to the top. And um, but, you know how like if you breathe If you hyperventilate and then hold your breath, you feel like you’re going to pass out. Well, if that happens to you when you’re in the water, you just pass out. In these documentaries, these people, every single person who comes up from a, from a record setting depth, they get to the top and in order to, for it to count, they have to be on their, in their own reconnaissance when they get to the top. And every single one of them starts to get this look on their face like, You can tell they’re fighting passing out because they’ve pushed themselves to the absolute limit for setting these records. And I, I, first of all just Why did you even watch this before you went? Uh, well because I never, I don’t, I do not ever want to do competitive freediving. I’m not interested in going deep. I’m interested in But it didn’t, so it didn’t Going down there and looking for things and It didn’t relate. Going lobster hunting. It was a different thing in your mind. That kind of thing. You know, you can do all that stuff at like 20, 25 feet, the stuff that I want to do, like spearfish and stuff like that eventually. But I don’t want to be like, I’m going 100 feet down. But he put the fear of God in us about the shallow water blackout. Because apparently it can happen pretty easily. So there’s a number of things you should do. Like you don’t hyperventilate. Like if you want to hold your breath forever, you try to over oxygenate your blood through hyperventilation. And if you’re doing a static breath hold, well, that’s what you do. If you really want to go David Blaine on somebody. And go super long, you breathe pure oxygen for a couple of minutes before you hold your breath and that’s how he’s able to like get into a tank and just sit there like he did at the YouTube summit 10 years ago and we were just like sitting there watching him. He’s in a tank for 15 minutes because he’s breathing pure oxygen. Beforehand. Yeah. Now he’s also a maniac who can hold his breath forever. So you combine those two things. Okay. So tell me, so you’re not hyperventilating at the surface. What are you doing? Big belly breaths, almost like meditation breaths. You know, you’re going deep belly breaths, not chest breaths. You’re really sticking your belly out. And then you’re filling your lungs, like really expanding your lungs. And then you’re blowing it out. And so what you do is you have a snorkel in. This is where I got uncomfortable. I don’t like breathing through a snorkel. I’ve never been comfortable. I don’t feel like I’m getting good air or something, you know. Because anytime I’ve ever like been in the ocean or a pool and I’ve decided to go deep, I just, I come up and I try water and I just start breathing or I hold on to the side. But with this, what you want to do is you want to relax your body so that you’re not using your arms and legs and you are positively buoyant at the top. And you kind of go face down in the water and you breathe through your snorkel as you relax. And you’re also using your vision to spot where you’re going to go. So I’m like sitting there floating like a dead man on top of the water, looking at the plaque like that’s where I’m going to go. Okay. You take a few breaths. God. And my heart rate is just increasing right now. And then you take one last one. And then you spit your snorkel out. Because apparently if you keep your snorkel in and then you black out, like water rushes into your lungs or something. Oh. More like, more readily. So you spit your snorkel out and then you, you, you immediately hold your nose if you’re me. And it’s stuck to the side of your um, it’s attached to your mask. It’s actually on the back, it’s kind of on the back of your mask. Okay. To create like that. Is it the same type, same kind of scuba mask is what I have? So, technically it should be a free diving mask. Because it’s less volume. More aerodynamic. No, I didn’t realize this, but like, Do you know that when you’re equalizing your, your ears, in the process, you’re like equalizing inside of your mask as well? I guess because it’s all connected? Oh, so the air in your mask is So, if, freediving masks typically have smaller volume. They look more like goggles like this. And they’re smaller. So it’s less, Oh, they’re not over your nose. Oh, they’re over your nose. Okay. But they’re, you know, my mask, my scuba mask is like this, but he was like, it doesn’t matter. It’s your first class. Just wear your scuba mask. So Shep, he brought us a free diving mask for Shep and he used that. I use my regular scuba mask and it wasn’t a problem. If I, if I really got into this and I was like, I got to go down for a long time. And you know, so how much of this practice did you do on the boat or on the, like on the surface before? In fact, as we were on the ferry out there, I was like, Hey, how, let me just be honest with you. We took, we took the class, but we did it real fast because Shepard is getting ready to start school. And like, we just sat down and we went through the whole thing. So I kind of need some review. Like I need to know what’s the most important stuff for me to know, especially like breathing techniques and stuff. Cause there’s like types of techniques when you do, when you like come up and there’s like clearing. And, and he, and he basically was like, the main thing is you need to like, understand like belly breathing. You know, and like when you come up, what you want to do is you want to breathe all of your air out, bring your belly button as close to your spine as possible because you’re trying to get all the carbon dioxide out. You’re squeak, you’re wringing your lungs out. And that basically prevents, because another thing that happens is in the first 30 seconds after you come back up, that’s when you have another chance of blacking out. So you have to watch your buddy when your buddy hyperventilate. You watch him. You’re taking shallow breathing, you’re not getting enough oxygen. So if you’re like, It’s you’re not really get your lungs aren’t filling up with air. It’s just the top of your lungs is how I picture it. So you’re not really getting probably right. So if you expel you come up to the top and you have to. Discipline to expel all of the air before you go Because when you get up there, that’s what you want to do, right? But the thing he told us and this is where it comes back to the mental thing. I was uncomfortable because I Could not fully relax. It was also the waves were kind of the there was a bit of a swell coming in So it was like chop. I was getting seasick because I get seasick in the water Oh shit, and I didn’t take dramamine because I was like, oh, well the ferry doesn’t make me sick You But like the, the bobbing up and down and like looking at all the kelp, like going like this and I get sick. So I started getting a little seasick. And so I’m a little bit seasick, and like, the waves are kind of coming in, my snorkel’s getting filled up sometimes, and I’m having to like, move my arms and legs a little bit, so, I wasn’t in like, prime, just like, sitting there just trying to hold my breath as long as I could, so, I would go down, and I would be like, man, I don’t have a lot of air, right, I don’t feel, I gotta come back up. Chase was going down, and would spend, I, cause I would like, be like, Shadow chase. So basically what happens is you, obviously you never do this alone. Number one rule of freediving, you never do it alone. There’s people who do. So, you know, we do our, it’s all the same signals. He’s like, I’m going to go down. I’m going to going down. Okay. And I’m like, okay. Then he goes down and wherever he goes, I’m swimming at the surface, looking down, making sure that he’s everything’s cool. And if all of a sudden he stops moving. Lets out a bubble of air or something like that and then I would know oh, he’s having a problem Oh, so you as his buddy, you don’t dive down with him. You stay at the surface the surface to watch him. Yeah. Oh I guess if somebody goes really deep you might dive down to I don’t know. I haven’t gotten this far yet There’s still newbies. Okay, that that makes sense though. Okay that and that’s what chase was really good at it That’s why you had to learn how to rescue because that’s your job as a buddy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay You Uh, but I never got fully comfortable, but here’s the one thing Hal said, so Well, Chase is also rescue diver certified, so like He’s got a lot of experience. And it’s the ment the mentality, like You have to get comfortable. That that’s the thing that I really enjoyed about Scuba that I think I talked about at the time, was overcoming some of the fear of, like, Going underwater and breathing, I had to overcome some of the anxiety I described today, and I like, I do like the idea, and I, the experience, reward of overcoming something, or pushing your body and saying, No, I, I’m in charge, like volitionally, my body is not in charge, just, and panic is not in charge. And does not help. So you didn’t, so you were able to kind of, Get calm pretty quick. Or in the first one, there’s a little more, there’s got to be adrenaline and I would go down and I was just kind of like questioning things about like, how are my ears doing? And am I like, it’s funny because my right ear just goes and my left ear goes, it makes this really high pitch noise as it’s equalizing. And you got to keep equalizing as you keep going deeper. And yeah. It’s just not comfortable. It never got comfortable. Uh, the left ear. I think it’s always going to be Require some level of like pushing but again i’m not But what i’m gonna get Ring it out with a Q-Tip. What i’m gonna try to do is like, okay shepherd Let’s go You know, let’s go get some lobsters Because in a certain, I think it starts in either September or October. You can just go out there and if the lobsters are a certain size, you know, you have to bring your little measuring thing and they have to be a certain size. You can just grab them, put them in a net. And then take them home and cook them. Grab them before they grab you. You can’t spear them. It’s illegal to like spear them with anything. You have to just grab them. But they will grab you. They don’t have pinchers. Pinchers. In California. Oh they don’t? So they’re defenseless. Yeah. They’re scary as hell to look at though. They’re big bugs. Oh, God. But they taste wonderful. Can you bring me a crab leg? I can get scallops. I like scallops. I can get fish too, man. I like fish, but crab legs? There are crabs that you can bring up in California. Can I go, the thing that has bummed me out is that like if you’re getting too into this, well this is, I’m either going to have to scuba dive separate. I’m still going to scuba dive. Well, but when you’re doing this. Is there opportunity to scuba dive, or is there no, at the same place? Of course! I was free diving all around scuba divers in Casino Point, which is so easy at Casino Point. You just walk down the steps, man. Yeah. I mean, if you weren’t, if you weren’t taking a class, I would have gone and just scuba dove, but I would have had a buddy or maybe you would have done both. Oh, but here’s, you know how to do, how one impacts the other. Like if you’re going to free dive some, if you’re going to scuba dive some and then free dive, I think it might impact your. That’s going to impact you, but if you decompression stamp. Yeah, I’m sure. But if you free dive first and then scuba dive, I don’t know that that will impact you, but don’t take my word for it. Yeah, I don’t really know. I don’t, I don’t, I can’t tell you that. Did you have a computer or a watch on that told you anything? My computer is scuba only. So chase and, and oh, yeah, mine had the free diving one. Yours would be mine. Hasn’t has an app. Mine is like a big, like I got to get a different dive watch. I’m, I’m not gonna get, that one you got is just too, I don’t, it’s just too, it’s too much. I don’t need all that. Too big. It’s too big and it’s too expensive. I don’t want because i’m not unless that’s never stopped you before if i’m gonna wear it All the time i’ve never i’m not gonna wear it all the time I I just want something to like when I go diving and I really don’t want an apple an apple watch ultra Is a great dive watch not a great It is a good dive watch and it like logs everything for you and you can do free diving and scuba with it But then you’ve got an apple watch and I kind of like don’t want to do that again Okay. All right, so I got to figure that out. But this is the thing from a mental standpoint. So, you know how When we did that episode where we held our pee forever. Yeah. And I was good at that. We, um, we were told that this sensation to pee comes at a 25 percent fullness of your bladder. Yeah. Like your bladder is not made to be like when you feel like you got a piss, like a racehorse and you’re like, my bladder is going to burst. Well, probably not. Right. It’s like to get to a hundred percent capacity. Would be ridiculous like it now it does happen people do burst their bladders. It has happened I think a president died like that or something, but the feeling is at 20 25 percent Yeah So you’re saying when’s the feeling for breath? Oh, well that way we didn’t put it into those terms But what he told me is that you know You’re designed to breathe like you’re supposed to breathe like your body wants to keep you breathing because that keeps you alive so Anything that’s restricting breathing is going to set in some panic pre, really early, like really early, like a slight, like, that’s why the snorkel gets me panicking a little bit because I don’t feel like I’m getting great air, you know? Um, but it’s all mental. It’s all mental because you are getting what you need. But then what happens is, is he says that, and this actually didn’t happen to me, I didn’t push it. I’m going to push it. I’m going to try it in the pool. I’m going to like try. to push it to this point. But the first thing that happens is your diaphragm starts Contracting that you have a spasm of the diaphragm when you’re holding your breath. That he’s basically like, you got to, you’ve got to get to a place where that happens and then you keep holding your breath and you get past the spasms. So it’s like, that sounds crazy running long distance and you get a cramp and you’re like, you can stop or you can run through it and then you get through the cramps. So it’s that kind of thing. So I think that with, I need to do some, like, there’s all kinds of exercises you can do to like, you can pack your lungs. Where you fill up as much as you can, and then you start swallowing air. It’s not, it’s not just swallowing air, because that just goes to your stomach. It’s some, I don’t, I haven’t done it yet. But you’re stretching your lungs. Now, you would never want to do that while you’re actually free diving, because you, because that could be dangerous. That’s a preparatory exercise? That is to get your lungs to actually be bigger. Okay. What, what about a technique where you’re holding your breath, you’re free diving, and you, you breathe, and you You expel the air into your mouth and then you breathe it again to trick your body into thinking that you’re breathing. That won’t work, Link. I’ve tried that before. Because that would have a lot of carbon dioxide in it, and your lungs would recognize that. I know, but they’re still just like, oh, but there’s I am, I’m doing the action of breathing. My diaphragm is moving. Yeah, and if you That’s not anything they told you to do. And if you were to breathe carbon dioxide, like if you get inside of a coffin, buried alive, and you start breathing, you can breathe all you want, eventually you’ll die. Yeah, so there’s Because you’ll use all the oxygen. I know that, but there’s no advantage to it. It, I mean, it’s not gonna hurt. You’re either holding your breath or breathing your recycled carbon dioxide. And maybe there’s still a little oxygen that you’re getting out of it. No, you want to breathe it all in. Did you ask him? About fake breathing inside of my mouth? Yeah. It didn’t occur to me until right now. Well you need to ask the big questions. It’s still not occurring to me. I’m telling man, this might be the ticket. I will say, on the way, I guess he knew that we were the kind of people it wouldn’t matter. On the way to Dive, on the, on the ferry, he, Hal started telling us about a book that he’s reading that I actually, I started reading it as well. Cause it intrigued me, but it’s about basically the people who figured out everything that we know about decompression and it’s called Chamber Divers. I can’t remember the author. I think she lives in North Carolina now, but it’s basically nightmare stories of learning how to scuba dive. It all starts with an explanation of like the one of the first attacks that was made during World War II, I guess, where the allied forces were trying to attack. And they were going, this was like pre D Day, and they were like trying to go up on these beaches, but they got completely wiped out by the Germans, like mowed down like 97 percent casualty, I think. And then they were like, well, we’re going to have to figure out a way to approach the beach underwater. And so then that, that happened. It’s one of those things where, like, the technology for warfare ends up driving all this innovation sometimes. And so they were like, how do we get people to be in submarines? And then there, there were these, the whole book so far has just been about this family that became the experts in, like, what happens to people under pressure. And fascinating story of, like, the way they built the Brooklyn Bridge and what they would do. This was in the 1800s, first of all. Crazy. There would be this giant metal reinforced room, essentially. This giant box. Okay. And they would sink it to the bottom of the river, the East river, I guess, into the mud. And then they would send men down into this stairwell and then they would go inside of the thing. Well, they would pump a bunch of air into it to send all the water out. And so the bottom of the thing would just be mud, the river bed, and they would put like 50 guys. Inside this box and they would work all day shoveling this the mud out and it would continue to just sink this giant chamber further and further into the mud and then at the end of the day, it would first of all, it would be super hot in there because it was the pressure was so high they’d be in there to like pressure covered in mud in thermodynamics is such that we increase the pressure. We increase the temperature. Yeah. And then they would come up the stairwell and then half of them would get the bends like crazy and some of them would die And they were getting paid a lot of money at the time like two two and a half dollars an Hour, which is a crap ton of money in the 1800s But they were also dying like crazy And they were trying and they would they would do this until it got down and it hit the bedrock And then they would fill the whole container up with concrete. Yeah, and then build the bridge on top of it That’s how they did every one of the footings for the brooklyn bridge. Are you serious? And just went through men, just killing men constantly, just, like everything that was built. It’s crazy! Let’s just see how many guys we can kill in the process of making this thing. Um, but in the process they were like, What is happening? How’d they go down there? And then they come up and some of them die. This is the 1800s, they didn’t know. Well we’re so we might as well learn. And then they figured out, oh, decompression. And so everything that we know about, like, the tables, The decompression tables for scuba and like I’ve been at this depth and now I got to go to this depth and I got to stay at this depth for this long so the nitrogen gets out of my blood and that was all from those guys but also then so then they could put people in the submarines because what they were doing initially in like the wars is they would put dudes in the submarines they would send them down. And they didn’t know, they all died over and over again. Just like whole submarines of dudes just died until they figured, Oh, we, now we know what’s happening. It’s a fascinating book. I’m just like four chapters in it, but what’s it called? Chamber divers. Chamber divers. Hal’s telling us all these, all of these stories. As we’re about to go underwater. Ha ha ha. I was like, but we’re just Did he hand you a shovel? But it was like, we’re not, we’re just free diving. We’re not going that deep and we don’t have to worry about decompression. Okay, well, I don’t know. I do feel, I feel a little more, I’m acquainted with it. I think you would be fine at it. I feel a little, I have to overcome something. I have more to overcome. But, I’m okay with it. I’m also okay with all the equipment. I kinda like the equipment. Let me tell you, those fins, you wouldn’t want them for scuba, I guess, because they’re just too long. You feel like Michael Phelps, man. Like, it’s crazy how fast you can go. The fins are like this long. The fins are so long that they didn’t fit in my bag. The fins are this long. That’s a four and a half foot long fin. It probably is almost four feet, yeah. And um, Damn. So like, when you’re, when I was at that plaque, I was like, Okay, I’m kinda panicking. And I was just like, boop boop boop boop boop boop boop boop boop I’m a to the top. That fast. You come up so fast. Okay. Alright, well, I’ve given my rec. I might read it. Uh, I’m just listening. Let’s be honest. Alright. Well, thanks for sharing that. I’m glad you survived. Yeah. When are we going scuba diving, man? God. All right. We’ll talk at you next week. Leave us a voicemail. We’re listening to your voicemails, and we’re looking for the ones that spark a response from us. Yeah, come on, y’all. 1 888 EARPOD 1. Use hashtag Ear Biscuits. Let us know what you think. Hey y’all, I just listened to the episode about, uh, what would happen to Good Mythical Morning if one of you suddenly met and unfortunately met your demise. I would really love to explore the option of, like, a pre made GMM video, or a pre made Ear Biscuit, saying like, Hey, it’s Rhett! You’re watching this because I’m dead! Or whatever. I just think that would be a really cool way to, to acknowledge it for everybody and go out. But, hopefully that doesn’t happen for a very, very long time. Alright, thanks.