Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Rhett. And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we’re going to take you through our California wildfire experience. Um, Oh boy, I’m, I’m tired. It’s been quite a week. We’re kind of still in it. When we’re recording this, we are recording this on Tuesday, January 14th. So this is one week after all of this started. And, um, yeah, and then it’s obviously a few days, a handful of days before it comes out. So hopefully things continue to get better and there’s not like, uh, something else that we couldn’t have talked about because it’s in the past, but there won’t be anything else in the future that’s worse, but. So what we’ll do is we will, from our perspective, start from the beginning and kind of take you through what it’s been like for each one of us. And we’ve been together a little bit, we’ve been apart for a little bit, and so we’ll kind of just, we’re just going to tell our story. That way we can remember it. To give you the update. First of all, you know, our hearts, uh, and concerns go out to everybody who’s been impacted by these fires, those who’ve lost, uh, everything that they’ve got, we’ve got close friends who’ve lost their entire home. I mean, the number of people, the number of people that we know personally who’ve lost their home. And then you just, you talk to people who, even people who aren’t from here, just they’re trying to appreciate the scale of the number of individual people who have been impacted is just, it’s staggering. That’s really the thing that makes this so much different than anything we’ve ever experienced. Yeah. Is the fact that these fires. We’ve dealt with fires that are kind of burning in the, in the brush, in the woods, kind of outside of L.A, But this whole getting into the community and essentially wiping two communities, the Palisades and Altadena, off of the map. That is the unprecedented nature of this thing for our area. Yeah. And, you know, we know a good amount of people in Altadena because it’s not that far from our area. Which, um, you know, our homes were like, my home was, like, literally border of the evacuation zone. Don’t, don’t get ahead of yourself. Okay. Talk about when that, when you learn that. Okay. Over course of the story. All right well, I would say I’m particularly tired because you know, I’m I’m still staying down in Long Beach like. Yeah, well. I’m thinking we’ll come back tonight, but like. We’ll talk about that. But yeah I still haven’t, this is my first day coming back in because it’s been a few of like what is going on, should we go back? Should we wait? Trying to figure all that out. Um, and again, uh, like Link said, this is this is a tragedy, we’re still in the midst of processing it. But I’m just going to go ahead and tell you that we will probably laugh during this podcast. We will probably talk about some funny things that happened along the way. Because that’s how we’re coping with it. Yeah. Uh, so just. Thanks for giving us that. Laughter trigger warning. Yeah. We’re going to laugh. So when did, where do we start? Well, for me it started on Monday. Before the Tuesday. We were at work. Well, so I, okay, go ahead. And it was, it was, it was quite windy. So, I didn’t, so, I didn’t know anything. I get back from North Carolina on that Sunday? And then, on Monday, we did not come into the office. Okay? That’s right, yeah. Whatever date that was. We didn’t come into the office. So, I, of course I’m still working, because that’s what I do. But, and my wife’s out of town, it’s just me, and I get back in town and it’s, uh, me and Shepard, and then Locke and his girlfriend. And his girlfriend from the East Coast who’s never been to Los Angeles. She was here for this entire time. Wow. More on that in a moment. And, but, the two of them are, uh, off on a little trip into the mountains. And I’m not looking at the news. I, I, I’m literally going to bed on Monday night. I’m on Reddit. I really try not to be, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself. And I’m looking at the dataisbeautiful subreddit. And they have this picture of the projected, like, wind speeds. And in Burbank it says 121 miles, it says 121. And so then there’s this, uh, There’s this debate about is this a joke? Is this a prank? Is this miles per hour? Is this kilometers per hour? And I very quickly learn like over the course of like five minutes. I’m like, holy shit. Like there’s going to be hurricane force winds in Los Angeles and there’s extreme fire conditions because it’s so dry. It hasn’t rained since May like when I say that like you said yeah, it no it hasn’t rained I think that the LAX has registered like four one hundredths of an inch since May of rain or something crazy like that. It’s absolutely bonkers, right? So, I’m immediately thinking, my son and his girlfriend are in the mountains right now. So I call him, I’m like, hey man, I just found out that, I haven’t been paying attention, we’ve been out of town, but this crazy wind event is coming, the fire conditions are bad. I don’t feel comfortable with you being up there. You need to, you know, when you wake up in the morning, you need to go ahead and drive back because it’s going to get really bad tomorrow night, that Tuesday night. And I kind of wanted to say come on and drive home right now because he’s only like an hour and a half away. But he calls me back and he’s like, I think we’re going to drive home now. And I’m like, Well, there you go. I think I didn’t tell him. So they, so they come back. So that was how it started for me was like all of a sudden realizing I’m not prepared. Jesse and Barbara, my dog, are still in North Carolina and they’re, we’re going to be in North Carolina for an additional week because Jessie’s doing like her photo shoot for the cabin, right? She’s finally finished it and she’s doing like her photo shoot. She sees it there. So she’s, I’m, I’m faring by myself. I’m the only responsible adult in my immediate family, and I’m not that responsible. So, and I’ve got this, you know, I’ve got Locke’s girlfriend, you know, I, I, it began to dawn on me what I was getting myself into. That’s what was happening to me on that Monday night. But I went to sleep, and I slept relatively soundly. Well, Christy was, you know, by the time I got home from work, I mean, that morning we recorded the last podcast that came out. We did and then it was like it started to get windy and we were like, we’re just gonna leave after this and go home and then Christy was like we just need to have some some stuff ready, we need to have like a go pack and all that stuff. Which we technically should already have done, given the fact that we live in Los Angeles, but we didn’t. I mean, I wasn’t, I have stuff to like hunker down at my house, like food and water and supplies and stuff. Yeah. I don’t have the get ready to go, here’s your documents and here, I didn’t have any of that ready. I mean, I benefit from having, like, between me and Christy having our house, like, very organized. But she has started to think about, by the time I got home, she was thinking about the stuff that we needed to, to pack. Medications. Documents, and then, like, change of clothes and toiletries. That’s the extent that we went the night before. I told the boys, like, Lincoln’s still at home. He’s not going back to college yet. Lily had already left. So I told Lando and Lincoln, like, just pack a change of clothes, toiletries, you know, and then we pack, like, documents and stuff. And I went ahead and put stuff in the car. Now, typically, I’d be like, Oh, don’t worry about it. Like, I told Lando, I was like, Eh, there’s a one percent chance. That we’ll have to evacuate. One percent. Of course I made that number up. Really? And he’s been giving me a really hard time about it, but I’m like, but how did you sleep that night? And I was like, okay, so dad, now I know that like, you would just lie to me so I can sleep. I was like, well, you know, you got one last good night’s sleep out of this. Okay, well. Because you wouldn’t have had that. So yeah, we packed everything. We put a bunch of stuff at the, at the door. But not in the car. Okay, so you were more prepared for me. This is, this is, cause I’m, we’ll hand this back and forth as we go through the timeline. So, so even that night going to bed, for, for us. I’m backing up a little bit. Oh, okay. For me. Tuesday night, you’re going to bed with everything packed. Back up to me. Yeah. Shepard is not at home. Shepard is, uh, at his girlfriend’s house. Okay. You know, 20 minutes away. And usually Shepard will find a way home, whether you know, his girlfriend drives him home, or he takes an Uber or something. But, it was getting to be, like, the winds were beginning to pick up, and they were beginning to get crazy. Yeah. And I’m, and I’m sitting there, and I call Shepard at 9pm. Okay? 9pm. He’s not at home. It’s a bit late. It’s a bit windy. 10pm was like the peak of the winds. So, I’m like, Shepard, what are you doing? He says, well, I think I need you to come get me. Because I don’t think I can get an Uber in this weather. So I’m like, okay, and I tell Locke and his girlfriend, I’m like, okay, I’m gonna go get Shepard. Meanwhile, Lincoln said, My friends are going to the ice cream shop at 9 o’clock. I’m like, no they’re not. Well, you’re not. It’s not gonna be open. And so, I get in the car, and as soon as I get on the road, I’m like, This is not, I am not prepared for this. There’s, there’s trees down in our neighborhood already. And there’s a bunch of [bleep] in the road. And then I get on like the highway, and there are there’s like a, a signpost, like a 4×4 signpost that’s just in one lane, and then there’s signs that are completely blunt. This has already happened on Tuesday night. Mm hmm. And then I get a call from Shepard, and he’s like, Dad, if you follow the directions to get to the house, you might not be able to get there because there’s multiple trees down in the neighborhood. So, and sure enough, at that moment, I’m pulling up into his, uh, girlfriend’s neighborhood, and there’s a eucalyptus tree across the entire street. And then I like You know, I kept navigation on. I’m like, well, I’ll just go somewhere else and eventually it’ll, and I, then there’s another eucalyptus tree. Eventually, I get to the house. He gets in. I’m mad at him. I’m like, why did you, why did you choose to not be here? Right? You should have been at home. We make our way back home. We did make it, but I was like, it was dawning on me how big of a wind event this was already. Now, at that point, I get home. And, of course, we’re on this text thread with Mike, who is Mr. Prepared, right? And he’s our go to, like, what do we need? What should we do? And he’s the one that was telling us, like, you should be prepared. You should have your car’s nose out so you can evacuate and all this stuff. And I’m thinking, I’m just like you, and first of all, you are, um, well, Christy’s Miss Prepared too. But the thing, the thing, the thing that we have forgotten to mention is that by this point, fires had started. Right. So the first fire to start, and I don’t remember the, do you guys remember the time that the Palisades fire started? On Tuesday? Um, it was, it was during the day. It was during the day for sure. Yeah. It was probably like the, I think it’s the afternoon, but I’ll look it up right now. Okay, so Palisades fire had started. And it was wreaking havoc, and, you know, we’re all following it in the different this was before I had downloaded the Watch Duty app, which became the app of choice to figure out what the [bleep] was going on. Yeah. What does it say? It says 10:30 AM. Okay, yeah, I was gonna say, I thought it might have been In, in, in, in the late morning. But the Eaton fire in Altadena, which was the, that was the next morning? No, no, that was during the night. That was during the night. Yeah. What I think it started in the afternoon because by, ’cause the, the footage I’ve seen of, or maybe or early evening, it was dark. So, and that one they think was a transformer or like a power line or something. ’cause they like, there’s this footage of people finding it. So the fire had started, but. The winds, the Santa Ana winds were blowing south, so that was why it did so much damage into the neighborhoods because it was like it started pretty close to the neighborhoods and then they blew south. And like we’re pretty far west of that. You’re a little bit closer. You’re like a mile closer to the fire and then I’m like another mile west and then like. Mike’s like another mile or whatever. But going to bed, there was an evacuation. There was not even an evacuation notice or anything. But we had been told to be prepared. So, I did the thing, I like, okay, I was like, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not organized. But I got documents, and I got them in a bag, or in like a folder, so I had like, passports and birth certificates and stuff. I had my bag from the trip to North Carolina that was already packed, so like toiletries and, You know, supplements and all that stuff was kind of there, so I was like, I kind of feel like I’ve got the things to just get out without, like, thinking about anything beyond that. Yeah. Um, so then I go to bed. It was so windy upstairs that we didn’t go upstairs to our bedroom. We stayed downstairs on the couch. And Christy was thinking, I’m gonna probably stay awake and monitor this thing. Oh, probably? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I go to sleep on one side of the couch, and she stays awake all night on the other side of the couch. But she doesn’t wake me up until like 4:30 in the morning. And I had gone to bed. And the power went out right before we went to bed. The power went out at like 11 o’clock. Yep. They shut the power off preemptively because we kind of live, you know, like up near the mountains. And so, if you’re in one of these neighborhoods that’s on the slope, they shut the power off preemptively because that’s how a lot of these fires get started with the wind blowing onto a power line or whatever. So, I go to sleep, but I cannot sleep Without some noise, but I don’t have power and these winds are whipping through. I’m gonna keep me up. So I’m like, I’m like you I’m like, well, we’re not gonna have to evacuate tonight. I mean the fire is way over there. The winds are blowing south. I’m going to go to sleep, and I’m going to put earplugs in because it’s the only way I’m going to be able to sleep. It was a calculated decision. You, yeah, yeah, you actively made that decision. So. To completely stop up your ears. Yeah, I, I, I told you I’m not a responsible adult, so it’s like at the, at the origin of I’m not a responsible adult. At the origin of hearing you stop, you nipped it right in the bud. They’re very effective. I slept like a baby. It’s not like you turn your phone off, so then well then someone can beat on your door. No, this is like they got to go all the way to your, like, they got to grab your face in order to wake you up. Yeah, that’s good preparedness. We’re getting into a new year. I’m not gonna use the big R word, resolutions. But you might be thinking about learning a new language because you’re traveling this year or You know, career advancement, you know, that might, language might be a path to that. You can put that on your resume. Yeah, or just cultural appreciation. And I do think that, you know, if we are going to talk about resolutions, I do think that committing to learning a language could be a really good one. Yeah. Good for your brain, good for your life. Expand your horizons. 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How fast is Indeed? In the minute we’ve been talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed data worldwide. Did you make those, uh, uh, offers? Somebody else did? Not personally. Okay, yeah, because we were doing this. There’s no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. You will get a 75 sponsored job credit to get your job’s more visibility at Indeed. com/ears, that’s ear with an S. Just go to Indeed. com/ears right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed. com/ears. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Indeed is all you need. Christy wakes me up, 4. 30 in the morning, and she’s like, We, at our house, we don’t have cell service. We have very, very spotty cell service when we lose power. Cause repeater or something. And it been, we, we abandoned that. Years ago, because that doesn’t even work. Oh, so you basically make Wi Fi calls when you Yeah, it’s how you use the phone at your house. But it had been so long since the power outage, we didn’t fully appreciate that. But so Christy was up all night trying to like, go to certain parts of the house, or like, go out front in the yard, and like Get a signal. Get a signal to hear from other people. And she, she got this little window of signal that then updated and said that like, the evacuation line was our backyard. So we were just on the get set zone, but if I mean, if it was one more lot over, we would have been the evacuation zone. So, you know, practically the worst. She was like, get up. We got to get out of here. I’m like, Oh, no. So then like, we’re like, getting waking the boys up, getting the dogs and all of their stuff into the car, getting everybody into the car, getting the cat. Into it’s his carrier. He hates that getting the litter box and all this stuff into the car, just loading everything into it. And then like, I’m like trying to be calculated and think about is there anything else, is there anything else we need to be thinking about? And Christy’s like, we have to go! We have to get out! Come on, what are you doing? So like, there was, and then we finally get on the road and like, I mean, before we do, I’m going out into our street trying to get a signal one last time because we have close friends that live up even higher that are like more prone to have to evacuate and we’re seeing them and they’re like, we have evacuated. We’re down at the gas station at the bottom of the hill and we’re like, I’m like, oh my god, this is so real so we get in the car and we’re like, what are we gonna do? I’m like, well, we need to drive to Rhett’s house, maybe he has service, and then we can kind of regroup from there. Or maybe he’s asleep. So we pull up, we pull up to his house, and like, Christy keeps calling, calling, and we have signal at your house. We cannot get you. We did not know that both the boys were at your house. We’re talking to Jesse in North Carolina. Right. Talking about how we can’t get in touch with Rhett at all no response. Yeah, it’s like well the boys are there. Oh, well, we’ll call Shepard. Lando’s calling Shepard Well, but okay. So this is this is my perspective. Well, first of all, I’m asleep And I am awoken by a crazy sound coming from my phone. And I like, so it broke through. And I look at it and it says like, Find my iPhone is being, you know, You know when you like find your iPhone and it makes a sound that will break through all your do not disturb and it’s really loud? Yeah. This is the trick that Jesse and I have used on each other multiple times. When we absolutely needed the other person’s attention, and we knew they were asleep. I was proud of her for using, utilizing this technique. I’ve used it on her, but she’s never used it on me. Ha! And, uh, so, and then I, and then I’m like, wuh, wuh, uh! First of all, it’s like, I gotta get my earplugs out, and they’re the wax ones. And I’m sleeping with my hair down, so it’s like, my hair is like, is reinforced these earplugs. It’s like matted to your ears? And I’m like pulling them out and it’s like pulling hair out. And I’m like, so then I look, I’ve missed four calls from Jesse. And at that point, uh, Shepard comes in the room. He’s on the phone with you. Yeah. You’re parked in front of my house. Yeah. And so it takes a second to get oriented. We are evacuating. We are in front of your house. We are leaving. So I come. You should probably think about doing that too. So I come down to, to, to see you guys. I talked to y’all, and you’re like, we’re headed to the studio, and I’m like, okay, I’m gonna get my stuff together, and I’m gonna head to the studio. Now, I will say, because I had to keep reassuring Locke’s girlfriend, because she had to keep reassuring her parents that I was a responsible adult. Hopefully they won’t listen to this podcast. But, um, I will say, and I told her this, I was like, Between Me, and the Neils, and the McCargs, you’re dealing with some of the most cautious people that you’re going to deal with when it comes to this. Kind of in the order of like McCarg’s to Neal’s to McLaughlin’s. I do realize I’m the least cautious in this group. But, we’re evacuating and we actually aren’t even really supposed to yet, is what I tell her. Cause I’m like, we’re in the set. We’re not in the go. We’re not in the red. We’re in the yellow. Yeah. And I’m like, and we’re still evacuating. So, tell your parents everything’s gonna be okay. Yeah, and I’m telling Lando, remember that 1 percent chance? Yep. It happened. Well, at least you said 1%. If you said 0%, I really shouldn’t trust you, but you said 1%. Right, right. Yeah. You’re telling me there’s a chance. Yep. So that’s become 100%. Get in the car. I will say, the moment of actually having to then I’m like, oh [bleep], we’re evacuating and this could turn into something. I had just woken up. But at that point, I had the things that were the essentials. We weren’t in an incredible hurry. I had time to like think about other stuff to get and I stood there staring blankly for what felt like 10 minutes thinking to myself. I don’t even know how to begin to prioritize what to grab now, I’ve thought about this moment multiple times over the past week As we’ve heard story after story of people who lost everything. And, and so, because it’s become so real, I feel like trying to find out, or like, thinking through that is something that I, I want to do. Like, we’ve got a whole lot of plans about like, being prepared, having things in the right, like, packaging and stuff. Like, you know. Just like, okay, well you should have all of, I have like my passports and birth certificates in like different places. You know I’m saying? They’re like, well one’s in a safe and one’s in this file folder. It’s like, how about everything that you need to get that’s an essential document being in one thing that you just, has a handle on it, and you just pick it up, and you take it and put it in the car. Like, yeah, that’s what we have. Little simple things like that. I mean, it’s a little fireproof safe, but it’s not completely Extreme fireproof. I don’t know, you know, at like different levels. But also I had like all of my camping equipment which has all of Survival stuff? And like, you know, I had a headlamp for everybody in the house and I had lanterns and everything, but they’re not I want it all to be so you don’t have to gather it together. But the real thing is the Yeah, we should have had that. Beyond the essentials, the, the memories, right? And like, what do you, what, like, Once you get into, should I get keepsake territory or something that, what’s irreplaceable? When we were packing the night before, I wasn’t thinking about that. Because I wasn’t thinking that we were actually leaving. And then when we were actually leaving, it was just like, alright, we’re taking this, we didn’t think about keepsakes or any of that. Oh, I didn’t grab anything. But I also, I also realized that, I don’t, I’m not, I don’t collect things. Right? So I don’t have the things that I collect that I would be like, Oh, my so and so collection. I have like, old journals and stuff like that. Every picture that we’ve ever taken, including the film pictures, the ones that I care about have all been digitized and they’re in the cloud. So I don’t have to, there’s not like a photo album. Um, Jesse was like, Grab Gaga’s bell. So her grandmother gave her this bell. She has this little collection of bells on this little table and she, and, and so, ’cause it’s like this small thing and I was like, okay, so the only keepsake was Gaga’s bell. I got that. Okay. But I don’t, I don’t know. I’m still trying to process like, like if I had to evacuate again tonight, which could happen, I think I would just grab the essentials again. I don’t think, yeah, that I have gotten to, to a place where I can prioritize like, well, I’m gonna get my favorite. pair of pants, or something like that. Some of those things would be easy to grab, but then it just feels like I don’t let my brain go to that place because I don’t want to go through the exercise of like, well, this is the thing I want, and this is the stuff I don’t care about. It just feels easier to be like, I’ve got the stuff I need. Especially when you have to evacuate, you can’t be making those decisions at that point. Well, I would argue that in our situation, and if you’re in the You were in a ready. If you’re in the go. You, you can’t make any decisions. If you’re in a set, you, you actually have the luxury of a little bit of time. Yeah, that’s, it’s true. Which creates a problem. But you didn’t, yeah, it just created indecision for you. I did not, I mean, I kind of had that decision a little bit later, so I’ll come back to that. We get to the studio, we unlock it, we’re like talking to close friends, uh, neighbors. People who don’t have a place to go. So then we’re like, well, just come to the studio. You know, we have power here. We have some food. We have coffee. You know what? It still wasn’t light outside. It was that early. Yeah. And so, we start directing people to the studio and turning it into a makeshift shelter. People start showing up, they’ve got, you know, we’ve got our dogs, we’ve got our cat, we’re like, putting signs on the door to our office saying, Do not let the cat out cat inside and then our friends come over they have two cats We put the cats in a bathroom. We shut the door We’re like do not use cats inside and then our other friends show up with a huge dog We’re like, okay, you’re going into the the green room with your huge dog We got people showing up. We got fit like we got Families that are, you know, no longer, we got separated or divorced family members getting back together and with their kids and staying in our studio. Okay, sure. Alright, yeah. I didn’t know that. Y’all gotta work that on the other side. I did not know that. I didn’t know we had to, we had to divorce families. Yeah, we’re gonna stay. Y’all go on to the other side and y’all can do what you need to do. Cause I show up about 45, 30 to 45 minutes later and when I get there, I see all the people that you’ve brought. Uh. Stevie and Cassie are here. Yeah. Um, Ben and Jordan are on their way. And they’re apparently extremely skittish cat, which is in the record, which is in this room. Right. Yeah, Ben’s set up in here. So we, when I get here, I just, I walk in and I see all the post its, like cats inside, cats inside, dogs inside. I’m like, well, okay. And It was nice to have something to do. I’m good at making little post its. And I also thought, okay, well, again, I think we are similar in this way. We both tend to minimize things a little bit. Like, it’s a coping mechanism to just kind of minimize. This is not really that big of a deal. And so I’m just thinking, we’re going to stay here for a little bit, and then we’re probably going to go home. We’re probably going to go home tonight. You know, that’s what I’m thinking, because that’s what I want to be true. But that’s when we start hearing that, like, people, friends have lost their homes, you know, they’re like, we evacuated in a hurry, and then, um, the power was still on. So, we can see from our thermostat and security system that either our house is burning down or somebody is tampering with every window and every smoke detector. So, it’s like, that’s how, how they had an indication that they were losing their Um, all of the readings through the internet. That started happening, and we’re like, Oh, shit, this is real. Well, we started getting lists of people, uh, both in the Palisades and Altadena, who we knew were losing their homes. And because it was a little bit psychological, but also a little bit the reality, We’re kind of in the middle of town at this point in Burbank and you know, not it kind of and you’ve got One fire to your northeast and another fire to your southwest and they’re both Burning into the city, destroying the city. You kind of feel at that point, like you’re, like the city is burning down, right? That was beginning to happen. The whole day passes and we realize we’re not going to go back home. People are just trying to sleep on a couch or like, get a coffee. There was too many people here. Some people running and getting some McDonald’s. We have one, I ate McDonald’s for breakfast and lunch. Hadn’t done that in a long time. But, we have one shower here. That, like, it’s like a, it’s a shop shower, essentially. Right. And two people can take a shower in it before the hot water runs out. So we started making the decision that we should probably find places to stay tonight so we can have a little bit more of a comfortable stay. As was everyone. Like, people were going out to the desert, people were going to Airbnbs. Airbnb. So At that point, that’s when we decided we were going to get Airbnbs in different places. And I found one kind of like in Silver Lake. And, and, and take my crew. Again, that’s two boys. Sean, Sean’s with us because Barbara’s in North Carolina. So Sean, I got Sean this whole time. He seems to be doing fine. I mean The moment I put Sokka in the car, he was like, he was trying to get him to the studio. He’s like peeing in the crate. Ugh. By the time we get to the studio, it’s like we’re having to, like, abandon one crate and then put him in the dog crate. Try to take him inside. It was like. Any emergency situation is not made better by cat pee. It just, it makes everything worse. So, but yeah, by this point in the afternoon, I had booked a place. In Hollywood, um, because I was just trying to get further away from the mountains and further, like, I kind of went in between the two fires, but like, you know, the furthest point for both of them without going out of town. I just didn’t think, well, we’re going to come in tomorrow. Who knows? Hey, and this felt like a reasonable choice. I, you know, you’re kind of in the Hollywood Hills and I’m sort of just east of like Griffith Park, so kind of east of the Hollywood Hills. Right. We’re still pretty close to each other, but we’re well away from these two fires. I booked this place and I’m like, alright, we can check in at technically like 4, it’s like 2 right now. So we went, we drove back home, because we, again, we’re not in an evacuation zone. It’s, it’s, it hold It held it like, get ready to evacuate, so we could technically, we were allowed back in. Uh, of course power’s still out up there. We go back up there, and We get our other two cars, which we hadn’t gotten. We noticed that when a lot of people evacuated, they were parking cars down in like, the Ralph’s parking lot. And then all getting into one car and leaving, which is maybe what we should have done. Just so you don’t lose your house and your, all your cars. Right. So, we’re like, we got the, we’re gonna move our cars. We can get more stuff now. We have, We were acquainted with the sober reality of people losing everything so then that was our moment to be like well Is there anything to grab? so then Christy was like journals photos that we haven’t digitized. I was like, well, I’ve got all of these boxes All of this stuff is boxed up. I know where it is. So then we’re scrambling at the house like loading boxes of Journals photos and then I’m like going to my closet like I got, I’m going to get more clothes. So then I, I started getting all these clothes and like throwing them in my car. And then I’m like, Oh, what, what, what is there anything else I’d want to get? And I’m like, my records, I’m like, all right, this is my collection. There are, there are, there are records that are like limited number keepsake type things. Plus this is an active project that I’m working on. So like I have this momentum. I don’t want to lose my. These records that I, are irreplaceable or hard to replace. And then by the time, I’m like, I don’t have time to go through this. Christy’s like, we have to go! What are you doing? I’m like, oh, I’m going through my record collection. I’m getting my records. And seeing which ones I really, really, really I’m a responsible adult! I ended up just taking all of my records, which my record collection is not that huge that I can’t, like, put it in a couple of sizable, like, three sizable boxes. Because then I left and went over to the creative house and got the rest of my records. I noticed that. Which is further away, but I’m like, and then I’m like, I go up into the back room and I’m like, here’s all the, the tapes from, like, the early Rhett and Link video days. That haven’t been digitized? I don’t know that we’ve digitized all this. So then I start. I’m like, I don’t know for sure. I’m just getting all of this. Lincoln, throw all this stuff in the car. So, like, we’re throwing all this stuff in the car, and we’re having three, we got the three car caravan trying to leave. I go in your office, and I look for a second, and I see these guitars and stuff, and I’m like, Should I grab one of, should I grab one of Rhett’s guitars? I don’t know. I almost did, and then I’m like, I don’t know which one to grab. This is probably way overkill to be here anyway. Yeah, I feel like the creative house, I mean, I didn’t do anything. Anything can happen. We’ve seen that anything can happen as these fires rip through neighborhoods. The fact that it was like You know, it’s not just a fire spreading, but it’s embers that can travel three to five miles and just start a spot fire way over here. Yeah, yeah, that’s uh Completely unrelated to the fire. It was like super scary. Well, related, but not near. Really? Yeah. Five miles away. So then So I, I did the same thing. I went, I went back. That’s the only stuff that I got. The reason I went back is because I got a lot of pants. I guess my pants and my jackets are really special to me. I didn’t get any sweaters. They’re not special to me. But I got a lot of pants and jackets. You have a lot of special pants and jackets. And it’s been hard to amass these pants and jackets. Right. So, I got all of those. I went back, the main reason I went back is because, uh, Locke and his girlfriend needed to get back to college on Friday morning. And I was like, I don’t know if we are going to Have an opportunity to go back. And so they had not grabbed all of their stuff to get back to college. I was like, okay, you guys should go get all your stuff. We can have it at this Airbnb and then I’ll drive you or you know what you can get to the airport on Friday morning. If this is what we end up staying this whole time, it still felt scary, right? I mean, it was like to go back up there and like to be making these type of decisions. A second time. Well this is interesting. It’s just weird to know how to feel. So you end up kind of being like numbed and exhausted. Well I think this is where I want to talk a little bit about the difference of the fact that I was I was by myself. I mean I was with my kids. But I didn’t have my wife with me. You know, and also, Jesse, I think Jesse would have been more concerned than me, but not to the level of Christy’s concern. Right. Like, this is, Christy is in her, in her element when things, like, in terms of, like, all systems. Go for this [bleep] hitting the fan like she is very sensitive to that and knowing and being ready And yeah, and so I would imagine that having her with you the entire time made it feel like that I’m not saying it wasn’t serious. I’m just saying that I didn’t have That kind of person with me, and so I think that I was still very much, and I think I still very much am still, in this minimizing mode because that’s the way my family dealt with problems, is just like, when you fell down and you had a bone sticking out, it was like, walk it off, like, we, like, we didn’t You know what I’m saying? Like, we minimized everything, which makes you seem like you’re really calm in a, in a, in a tragedy. And it can be a good thing, but ultimately it can also mean that you go to sleep with earplugs in on a night when you might need to evacuate. Yeah. But when I went back, I still was in this mode of like, A, I really don’t think our house is in danger, and B, I don’t know what the [bleep] to grab. So the only thing I grabbed that I didn’t have before is I grabbed Sean’s carrier because I had forgotten that. Okay. That was the only thing in addition. No pants for you, huh? No. Um, yeah. I guess I’m much more materialistic than you are, right? But that’s okay. Well, I mean, I think you have, you have a collection of something. I like materials. You have a collection of things that I don’t have. Yeah. And also you have a lot more special pants. Yep, that’s right. I mean, so it’s like, I kind of feel like you have an excuse. Um. And then we go to the creative house. I’m loading even all of my records like Chris is like we have to go We have to go. I don’t like being here. Well, you talk about the guitars interest This is a this is a very sad note, but so yeah, I didn’t grab any guitars Shepard made the point you should have grabbed a guitar So that we would have one to play right now. That’s what he said when we were at the Airbnb. Uh, but also because like, you know, And again, I don’t have like super, super special guitars. But I did hear, I don’t know if you heard about this, You know, uh, Mandy Moore and, uh, Taylor from Dolls. Yeah. They’re married. And They lost their place, right? Yeah, well, it’s, I, it seems, The thing I know that happened is the Dolls studio With every instrument that they’ve ever collected And these guys are like Oh no. All gone. Every single thing. I love, I love those guys. I love that band. I mean, I can’t imagine, you know, I can only imagine how, like, some of these guitars that they’ve been playing for, forever. Right. You know, that are super special. So. Yeah, they just didn’t have any time. Right. So we, the, the three of us, two dogs and a cat, in three cars, try to make our way down to Hollywood, and like, we’re pulling over on the side of the road because Lincoln is, is not following closely enough, and then, whenever we put, he doesn’t see us, so then he speeds up and goes past us, so then I’m speeding down the freeway, trying to catch up with him to let him know that he’s past me. Everything is just escalated. We get there. Uh, the guy helps us check into the Airbnb in Hollywood, he’s like, you know, there’s, there’s some homeless people down here, you might, you might just want to keep an eye on things. We go up, like, two and a half flights of stairs outside in order to get, to get to this, to get in the front door to this house. So then I’m like, okay. Boys, we’re going to start unloading stuff. Christy, you’re going to stay down in the car and keep an eye on things while it’s open. So someone won’t come along and like loot the car. Um, take the dogs up, get them to use the bathroom, put them in their, uh, crate. So they’re secured upstairs. We take the cat up, we take the litter box up. We take the cat out of the crate. We put him in the litter box. Oh, good. Now he’s using the bathroom. Now we’re going to close him up. in the bedroom that he’s going to be in for the night. And then the boys are bringing up some stuff, and by this point, it’s dark. Because I didn’t hurry up enough with my vinyl collection. And then, all of a sudden, Christy is there. In the house. And she’s like, We have to go! We have to go! We have to leave! Right now! There’s a fire! And I’m like, Okay, let’s take a breath and hold on one second. And then as I’m like, sit, minimizing to Christy, I look over her shoulder across. The, the hill, and I see flames leaping over the skyline in the middle of Hollywood! Basically, across, like, I can see across the freeway, and that’s where it’s like, burning, burning! It has And you have a great video of this, which we’re showing right now. Yeah, I’m like, and then Christy’s like, Why? Do not take a video! We need to go now! To the desert! We have to leave this city! And she is losing it, and She hasn’t slept, she Rightfully slow She had not slept Rightfully slow, that’s you Ha ha ha ha Rightfully slow She, she had not slept all the night before, the entire day She had been up for Uh, two days and an entire night. She didn’t have her earplugs. And, here it is, the flames are literally following us wherever we go, it felt like. I mean, we literally saw the sunset fire start. Like, I saw it come over the ridge. The, the moment that it was just like, taking off. And I’m like, so then we’re like, Take the dogs back down, boys take everything back down. I like, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m texting the guy, the host, I’m like, We can’t stay here. There’s a fire. He’s like, I don’t think it’s gonna cross the freeway. I was like, we can’t do this Yeah, yeah, we can’t be here and we’re like, are we leaving the two cars and getting in one car? No, we’re gonna take all three cars. Where’s the cat? Oh, the cat’s in, in that room, so like I’m going up there trying to get the cat out of the room that I’ve locked him in to put him back in his carrier so he can pee on himself again. Right. And he’s hidden under the bed. I can’t get him out from underneath the bed. He’s like, biting me, scratching me, everything. I’m like, I’m laying down on the floor like, my entire body is under the bed trying to get this cat, and there’s a fire over, over the ridge. Right. I have to take the bed, turn it up on its side. Oh God. And then he finally runs out onto the couch. And then I’m like moving the couch and put it up on its side. And then I’m like. It’s like a video game. It’s like a Wii game. I finally get him back in the crate and we get him out of there and like we’re driving back to the studio. So we get back to the studio and I’m like, what is happening? I’m texting with you. Where do we go? What do we do? I’m texting with you at this point. And, and I’m texting with Stevie as well. Stevie, basically, because they had thought about maybe going, getting into the desert. She’s like, my friends, who went to Palm Springs today, it took them nine hours to get there, because of traffic. I did not want to do that. So I told you that. So, it’s, it, now I’m canceling an Airbnb, I’m trying to book another one, I’m trying to like Well, let, so back up one second. So, meanwhile, while you’re trying to figure that out, there’s that fire, yes, the Sunset Fire, but At this point, at that night, Tuesday night, this is what had happened. So, another fire had started in the Angelus Crest, so basically in the mountains north of us. It was called the Creek Fire. And this one was very far away, but it was like the winds were blowing in a way that it would have got, it would have become a big threat to our, our houses, right? So I’m like, oh shit, this, then sunset fire starts, then a fire in Studio City starts, then I think before that, the Kenneth Fire had started, which was over on the west side of town, and it went from 50 acres to 1, 000 acres in like 45 minutes. It was, it was very apocalyptic. So at that point, you’re looking at, by that point I had downloaded this WatchDuty app, which by the way, if you’re in the L. A. area or any place that’s prone to wildfires in the west, you need to have the WatchDuty app. Like, I, it’s, it’s incredible, and for keeping up with every single thing that’s going on. Now, I I’m looking at this thing, getting all these updates, and it begins to feel, this is when it began to feel like the city is burning down. Yeah. And also, this is when you start thinking, okay, I know that the conditions are fire, it’s very fire prone right now, and it’s super dry and it’s super windy. But how do we have seven fires going at the same time? Like, someone is starting at least some of these, right? I don’t know how the first one started, but Well, the Creek Fire started because someone deep in the In the mountains went off the road went off a cliff on their car. Yeah, and I don’t know what type of vehicle this was if it was just a civilian or if it was someone like a service car like I still haven’t heard but like a. It, but then in Hollywood, you’re like, is that embers? Is that arson? Is it, you know, but like you’re starting to see things on social media. The thing is, is about like that fire, the Hollywood fire is an example. I know that the embers can blow a long way, but the wind wasn’t in a place where it would have blown embers to Hollywood. The wind was blowing south from the Eaton fire. It wasn’t blowing that far west, which is why that’s where we went. And if it was, Then fire there would have been a hundred fires, you know, so they’re still I mean, there’s all kinds of there You know, I’m sure by the time this comes out and as the weeks unfold they’re gonna start figuring out Well, okay. This one was started as an electrical fire. This one was this car. This one was arson They did find some guy who was starting fires over there on the west side of town, but they don’t know at this point They don’t know if that was yeah him but like we got a lot of interesting people in this town and there’s I mean Well, now that I’m looking at fire stuff on my social media, which we’ll come back to that and what kind of God forsaken place that has been for the past couple of weeks a couple of days But I’m getting all of these videos that aren’t necessarily from this week that are from the past few years of People just starting fires in LA like people just do that. There’s just people on the street starting fires Everywhere constantly like arson is a, is a, is ,a is a huge deal is a huge problem, so it’s got it But it just felt like this doesn’t feel like there’s not a there’s not a safe place. There’s no safe place to go Oh, yeah, so that’s what I mean. We didn’t want to go all the way out to the desert So we’re like well, we’re gonna go we’re gonna go to Anaheim. It’s a concrete jungle. That’s where we’re gonna Go so we drive in I’m willing to drive an hour outside of town Um, and then we found a place. Just so Christy could sleep, honestly. Yeah, yeah. She needed to sleep. We needed to, like, have reception. But then, oh my goodness. So, we go, Yeah, we go outside of Anaheim. Where, like, we check into this house. And, like, I don’t know how long it’s been since somebody stayed in this house. But, like, it smelled like Mildew like to the point where it was more unsafe than the air quality of yeah, I thought it was I thought we moved into a more unsafe place and we we booked it for two nights and I was like, we can’t keep staying here. So then, like, we’re trying to figure that out. I’m booking a different place. It’s hard to find places. You’re like an Airbnb connoisseur. Everybody’s, everybody’s, yeah, I canceled one. I needed to get out of a second one, which I didn’t do. We stayed there in the mildew house two nights. And then we moved to closer to the beach because we found a place that was like further away that felt even safer. So then we’re like down near Newport Beach. You’re like going all the way to Mexico eventually. Well, you know, the red flag warning. Like, if you look on the map, it literally went all the way to Mexico. Yeah, yeah. Like, it wasn’t like you could just drive to the desert and everything would be fine, like the high winds and everything. Right. So, going towards the coast was actually helpful, so I mean, two nights in the Mildew Anaheim, and then, and then we go to two more nights in another place, and then I’m like, then they’re, you know, we’re constantly monitoring the wind forecast and how the fires are going, and if we’re The power’s coming back at home, but then they’re turning the power off again. We can’t go home because no power means no cell service. And we, you know, we can’t communicate. So we, we’re not gonna go back home until we know that. You’re still not at home. I’m still not at home. But we had to move to a, like, I tried to extend in the place we were in, in Newport, and someone else had booked it. So then we had to leave again. So I booked four, I’m in the fourth place that I’ve booked. And, We’re in Long Beach, so I can get into work, and then go back home, and we’re staying there tonight too, but we might come back tonight, I don’t know, but like, just living in, like, three different places, and having booked four different places, with like, very limited supplies, it’s, it’s just, it’s extremely nerve wracking, we’re talking to all our people who’ve lost everything, um, you’re in, you’re on social media, constantly trying to get information, because, You feel like at any moment there could be another fire that could like pop up and that’s where that that’s where this one Yeah, that is we’ll get back to social media in a second backing up to that night that so You end up leaving because there was a fire in the neighborhood that you were in. I’m looking at it. First of all Uh, they’re obviously there are some heroes in this situation, first and foremost, the, the fire department, the, all the firefighters from our area and all over the state, all over the country, from Canada, from Mexico, the stuff that they are doing to fight these fires has been absolutely phenomenal. I mean, everyone’s been talking about the pilots doing these water drops and these retardant drops and it’s like watching sports center highlights. You know, it’s absolutely phenomenal. Um, but another set of people who have sort of risen to the occasion is the local news. Like you don’t watch the local news if you’re, you know, like a person under 50, 60 or whatever on a regular basis. But they, all the local stations have been running. I think they’re done with it now, but the first couple of days they were running constant, commercial free, and they were in it, they were on it. And of course, the national media, these national news organizations come in, you know, Anderson Cooper comes in and flies in and does his thing. I didn’t watch any of that national stuff. It’s like the local people who knew the area, who they’re from here, there’s news anchors who are losing their homes and finding out about it on air, like, it was just You know, the quality of the coverage has been absolutely phenomenal. I hate the fact that it takes something like this in order for us to value the local news. But that, that’s, we were watching, so I’m watching the news when all this is happening. I’ve got the WatchDuty app, which gives me a lot of updates. But then I’ve got the different channels and I would kind of go through them. So I kind of, I’m like, well, we’re going to stay here because we’re not currently. Under threat. We have power. I now have this watch duty app that sends me updates and stuff I feel comfortable being able to go to sleep. I’m not gonna put my earplugs in tonight But we get we get to that that house and I felt like I needed to give the kids some Sense of normalcy. So I was like, let’s go. Let’s go out to eat It’s like, you know, like let’s just go let’s go out to eat. Why not? We’re here. We’re in Silver Lake And we can’t take Sean with us, so I put Sean in his little carrier, which he’s not a big fan of. Uh uh. Uh, he doesn’t pee in it, but he’s not a big fan of it. And then we go just for a quick little dinner, and um, it was this weird moment of calm and normalcy as we were like sitting there eating pizza at this restaurant, while there’s like, a helicopter going over, a firetruck going by. And there’s other people in the restaurant, like where every there’s in certain parts that that Town, it’s like, life goes on in some way, but then you’re kind of like, everyone’s on high alert. We come back, come back to the Airbnb, and I just see Sean just standing there. He’s out. He’s out of his thing, and I look, and he has chewed his way out of his character. He doesn’t like it. Get it at an airport. He can do it at an Airbnb, too. But we, um, this time he, like, ruined it, though. He, like, chewed the zipper off, and then there was a hole just big enough for a Shaun to get through. So we got to get a new one of those. But then, but then, so we go to bed, and we end up staying at this Airbnb. And I’m, you know, I just spent large periods of time trying to begin working. Uh uh. Yeah. And then not being able to because of the threat and the updates. Oh yeah. So that, that, that was this weird thing, because I got nothing, I, there’s nothing else to do. I’m sitting there, we’re inside, the air quality’s bad, we’ve got masks to wear when we go outside, but inside we’ve got like an air purifier, this Airbnb had an air purifier, and so we’re like inside where it, you’re not smelling smoke and stuff. Mm hmm. Um. But I’ve just kind of been in this limbo Jesse not being here. I’ve got the got the kids and we’re all just kind of like sitting there, you know, it’s just it’s a weird this limbo. Well, it started to make me feel like COVID where there’s like so much panic and you have to make all these logistic decisions, but you don’t quite have enough information and you’re. You feel isolated and you have to stay put, uh, once you find a place to stay put. And then it’s just like, okay, what, what am I supposed to be doing? And so. There would just be multiple times when I would realize how exhausted I was and just kind of crash, you know, just the emotional exhaustion of constantly being on alert and, and questioning whether you should be doing something else or something different. It was reminiscent of, of the, of the start of the pandemic in that way. We ended up getting power back at our house on Friday night. So we were still in the set, not the go evacuation area. Yeah. They had made a good amount of progress at stopping the western edge of the Eaton fire so that it felt like the, the threat was reduced. Winds were dying down. So Shepard and I went back home because Locke and his girlfriend had gone. So Shepard, Sean, and I went home. He had gone back to college. So I’ve been there this whole time and they continue to make more like as we speak right now, there’s not even any active flames in the Eaton fire that you can, that they can speak of. And they’ve done a whole bunch like we’re in the middle of another Santa Ana wind event right now, but they’ve done a whole bunch of preemptive, uh, You know, for sort of fire proofing of that left side, that west side of the fire, and they’ve since reduced the evacuation orders to, there’s no evacuation order at all for either one of our neighborhoods at this point. They keep shutting power off. Last night was the first night that they didn’t shut power off when the wind picked up. Because I think that the wind wasn’t that. And we’re waiting to know if, if we have assurances that that won’t happen tonight. So maybe we can go home tonight versus tomorrow morning, but. I mean, the power, it’s, I think tonight is the most likely for it to go off if, versus this last night. But I think that Tomorrow, after tomorrow, we’re kind of out of the peak of the, of the conditions. Um, but, okay, so, this, this social media aspect, let’s talk about that, because this has been Well, I had to get back on X in order to get information. You didn’t have, you don’t have to. Watch the local news. I felt like I needed to do that, and then, like I came to the conclusion that between the Watch app and the local news, I was better off. You are, trust me. So, I created like this X account, and it’s, you know. Because you can’t get in your old one. Right. And boy, I was not happy about being on there. I mean, why? If you’ve been off of it, and you get back on it, it’s just It’s scary how, I mean, like, I could find the fire stuff that I needed and it helped me for a little bit. But then there was so, I mean, it’s just, it still was trying to give me all this unrelated to fire [bleep]. Yeah. Like, people spouting all types of wild [bleep]. Uh, it was scary. It was scary in a different way. Well, I think the thing that’s so scary to me and makes it difficult to remain hopeful. For us as a, as a nation and as a culture and as a species is that we face a travesty like this, an absolute devastating natural disaster. Where people are losing everything. One of the most populous cities in the nation is being ravaged by this. And then what is the response? The response is to use it as an opportunity for engagement, but also to just so Disinformation to, um, scapegoat people and basically score political points in the midst of a tragedy. It’s like, okay, so this thing is happening and now I’m going to use this, so many people are taking it and like, I’m going to use this thing to blame the people who I disagree with politically. So if we’re all being impacted by something, right, the fire doesn’t care what political party you’re from. And we face a tragedy like that, but then instead of trying to come up with solutions and think about what we can do to be better prepared to prevent these things, to address the larger macro things that are contributing to them, we just use it as an opportunity to attack people like it’s going to take so little for us to completely crumble as a society because it is. There’s just this thing that happens where the conversation becomes immediately toxic and immediately unproductive, where people are not able to interpret it. Or evaluate the things that are happening outside of a very narrow political ideology that they have identified with, right? So, I mean, the most obvious thing here is like the conversation around what, how climate change, uh, contributed to this. And it’s not controversial, it’s not political, it’s not that complicated. You know, regardless of local, uh, government and management and all these things that like, Local government didn’t make the fire season 75 days longer than it was in the 70s. You know, local government hasn’t made these droughts more intense and more frequent than they ever were. There are, regardless of what you think is causing it, there are macro climate changes. changes that are happening that are contributing to these things. And if you’re, you’re in this place where you can’t even begin to consider it because it would betray your political ideology to even begin to have that conversation, you’re a part of the problem. And then, you know, I will say. If you’re in a place where the only thing that you want to do is talk about how climate change made this happen, but yet you’re unwilling to take critical looks at our local infrastructure and the systems that we have in place and some of the systemic failures that may have contributed to the nature of these fires and the impact of them being that much more devastating, you’re also part of the problem. Like, can we just look at what’s happening apart from any sort of political Stance and just say if there is something that is contributing to these fires being so intense and so frequent and so devastating Then we should address it. It doesn’t matter who you vote for. Well, it doesn’t matter who you vote for actually, but i’m saying It, it shouldn’t matter who you voted for and how you identify politically, shouldn’t change the reality of what we’re dealing with. And then you got these people, like, the people who are using this opportunity to, like, point out the fact that, uh, implying, you know, I saw this, a clip from Fox News of this asshole on there talking about, um, he just showed a picture of the fire chief. And he was like, I hope they know what they’re doing. And his point was, the fire chief is a woman. And his point was, clearly, this woman is not capable of handling this thing. And, you know, she’s, she’s a lesbian. And I was thinking, you know, if I’m in a fire, I kind of think I’m looking to the lesbians. You know what I’m saying? It’s just like that firefighting lesbian boy. That’s that is the one. I mean, you won’t do, you might need to be a butch lesbian, but I listen, I think she probably is. And I’m like, Hey, listen, I’m looking to you in this situation. I’m not complaining about the fact that you’re a woman. No. Um, But, okay, and then there’s the, the, I don’t know if you saw this, the number of pictures of the devastation, where there’s just like, okay, here’s the Palisades or here’s Altadena, and all the houses are gone, and there’s trees standing. There, you cannot look at a social media post about that. Without some comment that has an alarming number of likes being someone saying, All the trees are still standing and the houses are burned down. Really makes you think, doesn’t it? Makes you think what? With the, with the emoji, with the monocle emoji, like the thinking emoji. Uh huh. And then people in the, in the comments would be like, Look up direct energy weapons. And I’m like, look up critical thinking. Direct energy weapons? Dude. Don’t go down that hole. Dude. Don’t, don’t go down there. The, the Oh boy. Like, I’m not go Listen, I’m not going to explain why the trees don’t burn down and the buildings do. Because, it seems obvious to me, why that’s the case, you can go look it up if you want to, and you can find the answer in about 14 seconds. I’m not gonna make it that easy, if, if, if, you know what I’m saying? But, the number of people who see something like this happening, and then immediately are like, I’m gonna Have the worst hot take you can possibly imagine. Are, they’re contributing to the devastation in ways that they don’t even, they can’t comprehend. And I, listen, and I know that me talking about it, If critical thinking didn’t get you into the situation, critical thinking isn’t going to get you out. So me talking about it is not Um, gonna be helpful. I’m just venting at this point. I’m just saying, I don’t know what the solution is. But we live in a world where when this kind of stuff happens, we just start attacking each other and the solutions, you’re not gonna find the solutions in attacking each other. And if you join, like, I was just like a fresh off the street joining X. And that’s what I’m saying, like, just, just freshly joined trying to get some information. I’m just pummeled. By a bunch of conspiracy theories. Like, left, right, and center. Yeah, I mean, Well, a part, a huge part of it So I got back off that. A huge part of it is people wanting to have engagement. Well, I mean, I see the AI images of the Hollywood sign burning. Oh, the number of people And at a certain point, very early, when I was, when I was like, fleeing Hollywood, I was like, oh shit, is that where it is now? You know, it’s like, it took me a second to realize. Oh no, this is just, this is just an AI thing that somebody decided to make to get engagement. I mean, the good and the bad that people are capable of, in, in, in the way it comes out in this. You got people who are flying drones into the, the fire areas and the, and these expensive water dropping planes are running into them because people want to get there. Drone shot for their social media. Yeah You got People who are you know, just pulling out the worst possible hot take so they can get engagement. You’ve got people looting Going into the areas that had been evacuated and looting then you have some people ostensibly, starting some of these fires. And then you’ve got a whole lot of people who are completely unwilling to even to begin to engage with all of the factors that might contribute to this. Like, that’s the thing that’s so scary to me is that are you really so committed? Like, listen, You can think you can be open to the fact that climate change contributed to the conditions that prepared the the the environment for these fires to break out and also open to the fact that there could be systemic local changes that need to be made. Both of those things can be true. I mean, I was in my backyard yesterday looking at the power pole that’s in our backyard and I’m like, That looks like it was probably put up in 1975 or whenever my house was built. And there are these high tension, high voltage wires at the top of it. The thing’s like this big around. It’s coated, it’s a piece of wood coated in creosote, which I think makes it flammable. But regardless, high voltage lines, in the air, in this windy, dry place, that could be in the ground. But it takes forethought, and it takes investment. We have to be willing to invest in it. You know, to get these utilities underground so that the winds can’t have any impact on them. You gotta do all of it. But you can’t just be pointing fingers and finding somebody to blame. Like, if we’re gonna get through this, you have to be like, Hey! If it, if something contributed to this, then we should take it into account. I mean, it’s hard to ask, like, where do we go from here when it, when it’s not over yet, so it’s a bit premature. Um, yeah, I’m just, it’s a little too early. I mean, but it’s, it’s, um, it’s a wild start to the year. I will say that. Like, it’s just so weird. I don’t know. I still feel like I, I, you know, I’m still so much in this like, this is this, this is really happening. You know, it just doesn’t seem real. And it’s like, again, my heart goes out to everybody who’s lost everything. And, like, now they’re scrambling to, like, figure out what to do next. And there’s so many people scrambling to figure out where are they going to find a place to live? And, you know. Oh, and just the whole, the insurance. All the insurance stuff and, like, working, you know, trying to work towards solutions. Yeah, we don’t, we don’t have to have, we don’t have to have, like, we can build systems that serve the people in the communities. We don’t have to build systems that exploit people in the midst of tragedy. I, it just, it’s just so, it’s so frustrating to me. I know I’m just ranting about it, but the insurance thing is just this whole other. to talk about, you know, I was, I was talking to, uh, to Shepard about what you’re talking about, like just a wild start to the year. I was trying to get him to understand. How different the world that he lived his life is. I was like, bro, I was gonna be completely honest with you. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. And the only thing that we ever thought about from a threat perspective was this vague cold war. Like maybe Russia will do something. But we look to be honest with you. We never really thought about it. And we were in North Carolina. We didn’t have we weren’t on the coast. Hurricanes didn’t flood the mountains when we were kids. You know. So, we didn’t, we didn’t have any wildfires, there’s no earthquakes, it was so idyllic, I, I think that I always, I had this thing that I thought as a kid that tried to persist into my adulthood, but it has been crushed at this point, which is this feeling that the people in charge, basically, they have things figured out and they’re going to take care of us. Right. And you just kind of, and I’m going to be okay if I just work kind of hard and I, and I graduate with an okay GPA, I can go to a college and then I’m going to get a job. It was just kind of. Straightforward for me. Now, I, I, you know, in the environment I come from, those things could work. That’s not the case for everybody. But then it just feels like since 9/11 and the financial crisis and Covid and these multiple natural disasters, you’ve got what happened in North Carolina, which those people are still suffering like crazy. Mm-hmm, And now what’s happening here? And it’s there, it, it’s, there’s stuff all over the world, but. The, the, the thing you’re talking about, this feeling of exhaustion and sort of being on high alert and feeling like it can never really, you can never really let your guard down. I don’t know what it’s like to be a kid in that environment. Like when I talked to Shepherd about it, I could kind of see us, he was talking about it, that he doesn’t, it doesn’t register with him. That it would, it could be different because his entire life, pretty much there’s been this, well, of course the people in charge don’t have this figured out, you know what I’m saying? Of course, we’re not going to be okay. You mean you thought that at one point you thought that everything was going to be okay when you were a kid? Well, yeah, that’s kind of what we banked on. And now we’re in this world where it’s like, I don’t think it’s going to be okay. And I don’t know exactly what to do about that. Is that a good note to leave it on? I think that’s what my generation was raised off of. You know, the millennials were told, if we follow these specific steps, we’ll get, everything will work out for us. And even following those specific steps, nothing works out. So, yeah, I can understand his generation growing up in that. Totally separate as well. I would like to end on a more positive. Thank you, please. Yeah because there are parts of the social media that have been really beneficial to what’s been happening here in LA I was able to find like that I like the grassroots efforts that immediately came up around the fires like before there was even local or federal aid coming in was has been astounding. Um, I and Tiktok was what got that going. Um, which is another reason why I think they should hold on to Tiktok. Guess that just the the immediacy of reaching people in need like there’s people and companies who’ve put together specific spreadsheets of how to reach out to people in specific need all the organizations in L.A Taking donations. There is an entire spreadsheet that someone has made that they update daily. With what each place needs as far as volunteers or supplies, like that’s what I did this weekend is I went through this spreadsheet and I drove around to all these places and dropped off things that I knew that they needed. Because someone had put this together, um, as well as like signing up for different volunteer things over the next few weeks that I didn’t know existed in Los Angeles, like over the next few weeks I’m going to be going and putting meals together for people and, uh, so I will say like that’s been as disappointing as it is in our elected officials and what we have in place for the clear climate issues, the people are still the ones that are like, we’re here to help each other. And it just made me fall in love with this city all over again. Um, but yeah, I, uh, It’s been hard. It’s been hard to watch. And I want to commend as well. You all and, uh, the higher ups at the company. I know you all don’t talk about these sort of things publicly. So I would like to if you don’t mind me. Um, you all and the rest of the higher ups at mythical have been really, really amazing about checking in on everyone who works here offering anything that’s needed. Making sure if people need time, they take time and it doesn’t come out of anyone’s PTO. No one’s required to work. We make sure everyone’s healthy. And I just want to say thank you for that. Uh, I know you don’t publicly talk about the things you do internally at Mythical, but I want, I want people to know that, uh, it’s, it’s amazing and it’s really appreciated. Well, thanks for saying that. Yeah. You know, I was telling Jesse last night, um, how good of a job our, You know, our leadership here. Yeah. And, and not me. Not me and you. I’m not talking about me and you. Right. I’m talking about, you know mm-hmm, our C-suite and our, and Lisa, our HR director and yeah. How great of a job. Like, I, I told her last night as I was picking, I finally picked Jesse up at the airport last night. She finally got here to join us in this mayhem. And, um, I was like, I couldn’t, you know, I don’t know if this makes me a good leader or a bad leader, that when I got on our leadership call yesterday. That I was basically just listening to them and the fact that they had, um, done such a good job of thinking through this and communicating and preparing and she was helpful. Jesse was like, you’re a good leader because you know how to hire good people. Um, but that, that was a blessing the way that our, our senior team and our, and our, our C suite, the way they have been processing this and, um. Taking care of our people. Yeah. So I’m glad you’re, you’re feeling that. And, you know, and I, and I think that the, you’re right. We can get too focused on the negative. And I know that social media is not an app, you know, is not really a representation of reality because you’re right. Like if I, if I were to just walk. Over the, you know, to these fire, uh, ravaged places. It’s not like the guy talking about direct energy weapons would be sitting there. You know, in fact, even the guy who they wouldn’t be even close to that. Right. I’m sorry, I was gonna call them pussies, but maybe I should. Well, and honestly And this is the thing, is people People get possessed by these ideologies because even the person who’s going to, from their, the comfort of their Keyboard somewhere in middle America or wherever I’m not calling out middle America. I’m just saying somewhere not dealing with this right now and talk about direct energy weapons, um, or different conspiracy theories. I believe that if they were here and they were experiencing it, they would actually be helpful. They would want to help their you know i’m saying but social media turns people into reactive uh, people who just go straight for this ridiculous, and I don’t think that they’re just all bad people. I just think that we’ve got this system in place that encourages this type of engagement, and it’s, I think that, that person may say these, this crazy shit, but if, if their neighbor was in need, they’d probably help them. And how do we take the actual, how do we take the good instincts to, to, to come together and to help one another? You know, it’s like, just because you voted for different people doesn’t mean that in the midst of a tragedy, you don’t, actually have a natural compulsion to help one another, but when you live in this social media place where half of the country is evil, and that’s the only way that you can process anything is by just saying, Well, half of the country is stupid and evil. I’m on the good part, and they’re all bad, but no one actually lives like that as they interact with people. And how do you take the good instincts? The good parts of humanity and reinforce those things. I don’t know that that’s the thing, but I do think that when you get off of your phone and you get out into the world and you see that, yeah, I mean, the number of people who are at some of these donation centers, they’re having to turn away certain things that are showing up because people are bringing so much stuff along those lines, there are ways to get involved. If you’re, if you’re wondering, there, again, there’s a lot of people who are stepping in and trying to exploit this, this tragedy and there’s lots of scams and there’s lots of fake GoFundMe’s and that kind of thing. We vetted a few things that we’ve put all those links in the, uh, the description and in the show notes. Uh, so I’m not even going to list them. If you’re interested in some of those vetted ways to get involved and to give, we’ve got all that listed. And we encourage you to do that. When you feel helpless and you feel like you want to. Be a contributing member of society as it relates to this. Resist the urge to find some way to point at somebody, another human being and say that this is your fault. And I’m going to go online and say that and be like, how can I actually help? How can I put my phone down? How can I not make a post about this? Unless it’s pointing people to resources. I mean, just, just read through the list we have in front of us, just to like, put the, put the titles on it. These are places to donate. Uh, California Community Foundation, California Fire Foundation, LA Fire Department Foundation, Pasadena Humane Society, Ventura County Community Foundation, American Red Cross of Greater Los Angeles, Center for Disaster Philanthropy. so much for, um, your support, your love, your thoughts, your prayers, your, your concern, and for, for your service to those in need around you. Um, we appreciate it. And, um, Thank you for giving us this space to process and to kind of get that out there. So, uh, we will, we will go from here and we will, um, we’ll do what we can and we will, uh, we’ll talk at you next week. Hi Rhett and Link, uh, my name is Bethany and I just got done listening to the most recent episode of the podcast. Um, Link, you talked about how you visited Whistler in British Columbia. Uh, and you talked about Vancouver and Squamish and Vancouver Island and you know, the BC ferries and all that. And that really, it really made me smile because I am from, uh, Vancouver Island. I grew up there and I lived there my whole life up until a couple months ago. Uh, and I really, really miss it. So, it really brightened my day to hear your Um, I hope you guys know how much of an impact you have on so many people. You really just make my day better whenever I watch your videos or listen to your podcasts. And I hope you, your crew, and your families are all staying safe right now.