Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Link. And I’m Rhett. This week at the Round Table of Dim Lighting, we are giving you a mix and match of some of the greatest ever rabbit hole episodes. That’s right. It’s a mashup episode today because we’re taking a break, actually, from recording, this week and the next three weeks with Ear Biscuits. But don’t worry, we’re always gonna give you a special experience that you can have. And this is one of those, it’s a mashup. We’ll be back on July 17th Mm-hmm. with the all new Ear Biscuits. Until then, you can enjoy episodes like this. We’re gonna be talking about everything from our biggest fears, if you can actually die from lack of sleep, exploring whether or not we believe in ghosts. And also the world’s craziest coincidences. We never knew where the rabbit hole was gonna take us. And now you don’t. So buckle up for the mashup. I mean, I gotta go with the most obvious thing that I’m afraid of at first. Blood. I mean, I’m simply afraid of blood. But it’s not like, yes, I’m afraid of the circulation of blood, the concept of blood circulating. Like I’m afraid of getting, like, if I try to take my own pulse, I just hate that. Hmm. I mean, and it’s kind of ironic because it’s kind of the sign of life. It’s a really good sign that there’s a liquid coursing through tubes in your body. But when I touch it, and it like pulses, and just, it makes me quease. I just get queased. Now, once the blood starts coming out, you’re also queasy, right? Because I think that’s the most. Yeah. That’s the place where most people begin to say, okay. But a little, if like, if your finger was bleeding, I wouldn’t faint. But if it was the result of a cut that. If it was squirting blood. The circulation is worse than the bleeding? Just the sight of blood, it needs to be paired with something like a visceral injury. Chianti? No, it’s like an injury or circulation. Like it has to be paired with something. It’s the one two punch of this blood is associated with this thing, this movement through my innards. Like, I don’t like anything related to surgery. Like cutting people open, exposing the insides, putting the insides on the outside. That’s gross. I think that’s why I don’t like dog erections now that I think about it. Because it looks like the inside coming outside? Yes. I don’t think many people like, I don’t even think dogs like dog erections. Oh, they do. They do. I mean, do? Then why do they lick it? I dunno, they’re ashamed. I didn’t mean to go down this path. I’m sorry. Any injury. Of course, there’s the timeless story of me opening the Barbie doll at Christmas and cutting my finger, and then at my father-in-law’s house, the in-laws’ house, and then running to the kitchen sink. And then the next thing I know, I’m coming to in my father-in-law’s arms, because You cut your hand. my finger was cut. And it’s so, like having a, like, creating that like crevice, that ditch that like, oh, how deep is that? Like, you mean cut? If you see a bone, oh my gosh. Oh, I can’t stand it. And like, so yes, seeing gross like that in a movie is just, it just seems nasty. I don’t like that. I don’t like that stuff in a movie. And then I don’t like, you know, I don’t like seeing it in medical dramas either. Like, I gotta freaking turn. By the way, like, I’m a huge horror fan, but I don’t think I’ve ever watched like Final Destination. Right? Okay. You know, which is just people dying in a bunch of weird ways. Like, I kind of get it, and I would, if you ask me to go, I’ll go to it, and I’m not gonna get freaked out. You’re more psychological. But yeah, I don’t like, gory is not like, I wasn’t a kid that saw those gore magazines, like, what’s the name? What’s that one that was always in every stand in every gas station we went to? Jugs. No, that was different. Anyway, I am not into that at all. I think most people would agree with you on this. ‘Cause every time you, sometimes you meet like a doctor, an emergency room doctor especially, and they just don’t find any of this stuff gross. And they are the, Right. those are the people that we need. I understand. I can understand We need those people. how you can get to that point or be at that point where it’s like, hey, you know what? Some people might find, you know, everybody can find something scary or gross. It’s like, oh, look at this like black, like furry material coming through my epidermis on my forearm. Oh my gosh. That is just horrible. Not that gross. What are you afraid of? I’m afraid of snakes. And this has gotten, I realized recently that this is God, I’m afraid of snakes too. I can’t believe I, yeah, that’s on my, I’ll put it on my list, obviously. It’s affected me deeply, and okay. But do you hold the? I’m. No, let me. On the show, Yeah, yeah. I’m a lot more afraid of snakes than you are. This is a weird complex fear. And let me, I’ll elucidate. Number one. ‘Cause you hold Craig. I’m not afraid of, I’m not afraid of a snake, I’m not afraid of, if I know a snake is there, I’m going up to a cage, somebody hands me a snake, I’m not, I’m a little bit scared the whole time that like, even holding Craig, that like, I’ve seen those videos where they just, they just reach up and bite you, and their little teeth mark get all over your face and stuff, and you bleed like crazy. Uh. I don’t like the idea of that, and so, I’m a little bit scared the whole time, but not too scared to touch ’em. And I have had a recurring dream for many years, haven’t had it that recently where I’m walking through some environment, usually tall grass, and there’s snakes everywhere. And this ties into the way my fear has manifested itself in real life. Now, growing up in North Carolina, we spent a lot of time in the woods next to the river, next to the creek. Okay. We would walk indiscriminately through the woods Yeah. without ever thinking about snakes. And you know what? We saw snakes. We’d be swimming in the river and we’d look over, and there’d be like, I remember down in Keith Hills at the bottom of that last spillway. Ooh. Yeah. There was a bed of, I think it was probably water snakes. I don’t think it was moccasins, but like, I’m talking 40 snakes slithering on top of each other like Indiana Jones. Total Indiana Jones. And we would like stick a like golf club in there, and like, And they were long. they were big. They were big. They could have been six foot long, easy. And I stepped on a water moccasin one time when moving the canoe and jumped away. And he didn’t bite me. But what I have found is that I cannot enjoy hiking in California. Really? I can’t. Because of rattlesnakes. Yes. But then, I went back to North Carolina last year and was walking through the woods with Jessie, and I realized I was constantly thinking about snakes. Really? And I was like in this super focused, like looking around and being like, don’t step on a snake. Don’t sneak up on a snake. And I’m like, why am I, why has this fear manifested itself? Now, hiking in California, when you go up in the mountains, over the summer I went hiking, four times in a row, I saw a rattlesnake. Four, like four hikes in a row, I saw a rattlesnake. But they are reclusive, and you gotta really get ’em cornered for them to do anything to you. There was one And the rattle will warn you. that had its head on the trail, and the rest of his body, which was weird in like an ambush situation, but he kind of slithered away. I don’t know why this has, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what happened to me. I don’t think about, I’m so afraid of snakes, and when I go hiking, I just do not think about death to that. ‘Cause I want to enjoy hiking. Well, I wanna enjoy it too, but I’m thinking about snakes. I think my level of compartmentalization is like super human. Like, I think that might be my superpower. Oh. What if, you’d be called DJ Compartmentalizer, or just the Compartmentalizer? Actually, that sounds like a show on ABC. Like, it stars a teenager. You know? Like a teenager doing an adult job. Solving. Who like talks directly to an angel. He has to be solving crimes though. Yeah. But he’s like, he’s doing it through his expertise in like storage equipment. Yeah, he just owns a storage facility. The Compartmentalizer. I’m afraid of snakes too, man. I’m afraid of spiders. I’m afraid of bugs. I’m afraid of lizards. I’m afraid of any little thing that like creeps or crawls or has multiple legs. Fuck multiple legs. I had a lizard drop the tail on me. He dropped the tail? You know how if they panic, they can just drop their tail so it’ll start squiggling around, and they run away from it? Just separate from their tail? They have an ability to snap their tail off. This was, you know, you know those, you know the big. I didn’t know they could snap it off. I thought it had to be pulled off. Well, I don’t exactly know the mechanics, but I’ve always, here’s what happened. I was in the garage, and I had just cleaned the garage. I was very proud of myself. And I was like, man. And I’m like spraying like mint, you know? You can do like mint spray to get insects from keeping. Oh. So you don’t have to like do like pesticides. Oh, like ants and stuff? Yeah. Any kind of bugs, you know? I’m like, I’m sucking up. I’m like sucking up all kinds of, I’m just going around and sucking up little spiders. And I know people don’t like it when you kill spiders, but you know what? I kill spiders. I kill, if bugs get in the house, I kill ’em. Sorry, I’m that guy. And so, and you know. You’re a maverick. The best way to do it is with your Shop-Vac. Just suck ’em right up. Yeah, surely they probably die slowly inside of the Shop-Vac, but I also don’t care. I bet there’s a lot to eat in there. And so, I think they make a little community of friends before they all die slowly. But I suck ’em up in the thing. Just reverse it and just blow it into your neighbor’s yard. That’s what a Shop-Vac can do. I care about my neighbor more than I care about the community of insects that live inside my Shop-Vac. Here’s the thing. I was looking at my amazing immaculate garage, and then all of a sudden, I saw one of those lizards, and it was a big daddy. Sometimes they get real big. And he was doing the thing where as soon as he saw me, he played dead. Now let me be clear, I don’t kill lizards. It’s just. Are you fine with picking ’em up? Nope. I don’t. Now, as a teen. Me neither. As a teen and younger, I won’t pick up a lizard. I killed lizards. I killed snakes. I mean, I’ve killed squirrels and rabbits too. I would, a BB gun. I was a little terror. And we did eat them sometimes when we could convince my mom to cook like a rabbit in the house, which we did one time. She like braised a damn rabbit. You bring a, you’re bring in a little tail. Did you bring the tail of the lizard to Jessie and ask her to cook it? No, I didn’t. So this thing’s staring at you, and then? But I don’t kill any animals other than insects now. I have evolved. Okay. It’s playing dead. It’s playing dead, but I like, I can’t, I’m not going to touch this thing. ‘Cause they bite, man. They bite, and this, I’m scared of ’em. They look like a snake with legs. Yeah. And so I got, I got the broom. He was not even responding to the broom. He was like, I’m so committed to this. Oh wow. But then it, like the third stroke of the broom, he woke up, panicked, and went right back into the, like the little crevice area where the other broom was. Just leave him alone. And I was like, no, no, no, no. ‘Cause now, when I’m coming down here in the morning to do my stretches, I know that you’re high hiding over there, and you’re gonna run out and bite me on the nose or something worse. He wouldn’t have stayed there. And so I took the back end of the broom and started poking back there, trying to get him to move. And he is like, I see him, and I’m not trying to poke him. I’m trying to scare him Flush him out. to get him out of the garage. He does a maneuver, and then all of a sudden, bam, I’m looking in two different places because he’s done his thing. The tail broke off right at the base, and this was a big sucker. His tail was three inches long. His tail breaks off and begins to do this acrobatic dance that is, you know what? It worked. Oh my god. This is horrifying. I’m focused on this. I’m focused on this. This evolutionary adaptation worked because I didn’t see where he went. I was too focused on the trick. And that thing moved. When it detaches, it just keeps wriggling. For three to four minutes. Wow. Three to four minutes. And then I was afraid to touch it. I left it there for a day ’cause I didn’t have a Kleenex. That is so disturbing. And you know what? I know that like what other animals? I mean, I’m afraid of all those little things. What else? I know that you’re afraid of bees. I’m not afraid of bees. I’m not afraid. I don’t know what it is. I’m not afraid. I just believe I’m not gonna get stung by a, like a yellow jacket, a bee, especially a bee. I am not afraid of bees. It like. What about a wasp? I’m not gonna sit there and eat lunch with a wasp. They’re demonic. I’m not gonna mess with a wasp. But like a bee or a yellow jacket even, like those little yellow jackets that come around your food, but they don’t sting you, man. You can’t handle it. Hold on, the little ones, that’s different. You cannot. A real yellow jacket will sting you, and I have been stung multiple times. I’m talking about the little things, the little ones that aren’t actually yellow jackets. I’m not scared of those. But they’re yellow. I’m not scared of those. Yes, you are. And you’re afraid of bees. I am afraid of bees. Yeah, I’m not afraid of a bee. Now, but I’m. A bee can land on me, and I’ll keep eating. Not to the point. Because you don’t put that energy out there, and then the bee won’t sting you. That’s not my experience, man. And then honestly, if they do sting you. How many times have you been stung by bees? Not that many. No, not that many. I’ve been stung by several bees. That’s because you’re being erratic. No. You think they’re interpreting? No, no. Yes. I’m saying that like, there’s multiple times where… You’re threatening them. I’m a bee friend. …a bee landed on me… I love bees. …and stung me. With no threat. ‘Cause they don’t have multiple legs. I wish I wasn’t. They have cute stripes. I wish I wasn’t scared of bees. ‘Cause I really believe in them. They have arms. They have arms, y’all. And you’re also afraid of bats. Is that on your list? You’re definitely afraid of bats, dude. You didn’t put it on your list? Well I can, it’s not a comprehensive list. We’ve gone through the animals, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Snakes, bats, bees, spiders, lizards. Multiple legs. I asked Lando before I dropped him off this morning, what is he afraid of? And he said, oh, and this was a big one for him. He’s afraid of mascots. And I was like. That’s a common fear. It’s a common, I’m like, why are you afraid of mascots? He’s like, ’cause I, there’s a, ’cause I know there’s a person in there. And I’m like, but they don’t talk. And he’s like, yes. And he said, and their facial expression never changes. It’s like, it’s a silent, it’s so creepy. Like, mascots are freaking creepy. I was like, oh, you know what? I should be afraid of mascots. I’m gonna start being afraid of mascots too. That’s a good cogent argument, sir. This is what it’s like to have Link as a dad. You come to him with a fear, and he just adopts it, as opposed to helping you with it. I am now afraid of mascots, man. I find mascots creepy. I think that if you don’t find mascots a little bit creepy, then there’s probably something wrong with you. Or you’re a Disney adult. But I think that you do, most kids when confronted with a mascot will cry hysterically. And I think Lando’s past that point. He’s not gonna, you know. I don’t know if it’s the majority. I mean, at Disney World? No, not the majority. I mean, when you’re like, when you’re really young. I’m saying like a mascot that you don’t recognize. Lando is not really young. He’s 12. No, I’m saying but he’s not gonna cry at a mascot. He just is like, I don’t, I’m not, I’m not. Yeah. I’m not interested. But he’s not gonna cower from a mascot at this point. He, there’s a little bit of cowering. Well, maybe you gotta get a mascot costume and find out. That sounds Maybe I gotta like a good video. put him in one. That is the way that you overcome a fear is become the thing that you’re most afraid of. He’s gonna be like the best college mascot ever. I’m Batman. And he’s like, I used to be very afraid of this. You should be, you should be the next Batman. The beard won’t work. Bearded Batman, not gonna happen. Did you say what you’re afraid of next? I’m afraid of tweeting, dude. I’m just freaking afraid of it. Well, there’s a lot of evidence in support of this. And it’s just like, there’s just these few times that I will tweet, and I’m not talking about like a retweet or like some sort of promotion. I’m talking about like expressing myself and like using, like thinking about things and writing it down. You know, I actually think I’m afraid of writing down thoughts. Like, I hate doing that. Yeah, ’cause they get lost sometimes. I hate writing things down. I hate email, but I’m afraid of tweeting, because the few times that I take a risk, it’s just like, it just leaves everybody scratching their head and criticizing me. Yeah, that’s the internet. And I don’t blame ’em. That’s the internet. You know what? ‘Cause I always learn that, you know what, you’re right. So I’m afraid of actually having a thoughtful discourse with the open internet. Oh, is that what you’re intending to do sometimes? ‘Cause it, cause that, ’cause that feels different than the way you tweet. It doesn’t feel like this is the beginning of a thoughtful discourse. It doesn’t, some of the things you tweet don’t feel like an invitation to discourse. It’s just like, I don’t know what. Nothing. I don’t know what series of events led to Link tweeting that. And it’s so tough. I mean, it’s so tough to know how to, like, there’s so many things that like my, I mean, you think about all the issues in the world, and they, you know, the people who care about the things they care about, if they like you, they want you to also care about it. Especially when it’s something that’s like, if it’s like an issue that people need to champion because there needs to be change. And it’s like extremely intimidating to me. So it’s like, yeah, to take like the serious route here, it’s like I’m really afraid. I don’t know, it’s just like, it just, it just, it racks my nads man to like care deeply about things, but to not know how to like do it on Twitter. I, it’s just like, there’s something, and it’s, I, some of it is the perfectionism thing and like, not wanting, you wanna be able to anticipate criticism so you can take care of it yourself and not let other people do it. Like, as a perfectionist, you know, there is this fear of criticism, you know? So I think that’s part of it. But then just like, even tweeting goofy shit, you know, is like, I feel pretty paralyzed on that front. And I think I’m okay with it. You know, I think I’m just, I don’t feel like I’m less of because I don’t. Except the times when I do, and then I realize that I shouldn’t. Yeah. Maybe I should just delete Twitter. I like it. I like lurking. You probably shouldn’t delete it. You should probably not follow 4,000 people. You should probably undo that at some point. Because you got a lot of, I mean, I had to go through one time, many years ago, ’cause we are. Jenna helped me with that. Oh, how many do you follow now? Oh yeah, I helped you unfollow things, yeah. Yeah, I don’t know how many people I’m following now. Oh, so you reduced the amount? I reduced the amount. Because we used to like, follow everybody who followed us. Yeah. And then some of them Okay. were taken over by really weird accounts. Oh. Yeah. There was, you were following some really weird things. Shanice, lostgirl23 on Twitter, said not mine. Just to get that out of the way. Okay. But my parents were. This is kind of like your Vietnam story. Were flower girl and pageboy. Now, we’ll come back to pageboy. To the same wedding because my dad was the nephew of the groomsman, and my grandmother was friends with the bride. My parents are not related. Ha ha ha. Sweaty emoji. Sweaty, laughing emoji. They only realized when they got married themselves. Okay, so there’s, they only realized when they got married. There’s no connection between the two families. What about pageboy? Can we, can we go there? Is this, is pageboy mean the ring bearer? Uh, I’m gonna say. Or did they bring a pager to this wedding? Yeah, I think it’s on a pillow, but it’s the pager instead of a ring. Because he’s like a, he was a doctor? Or a drug dealer? The guy getting married was a drug dealer. No, he was just an EMT. He’s EMT. He’s an EMT. Okay. I was a ring bearer in my Aunt Teesie’s wedding. You remember it? The little, no, I don’t remember it. Of course, you know, you got all the wedding pictures, and I had a pillow with the, I guess both rings were on it. That’s a lot to entrust like a little child, young enough to not remember it. And also like, I’d have trouble not eating one of the rings, the way I was at that age. I would just put things in my mouth. Well, I mean, I was like. That’s, I guarantee you that’s happening. I was like four, I was four years old. How many ring bearers I was smart enough swallow the ring every year? to not eat a ring. And then they go, oh crap. Well, we have to delay the wedding. How long does it take a ring to get through a toddler’s digestive system? Hmm. Or do you just have the wedding and then be like, Write that down. let’s do a, we’ll just do a a like a temporary ring, or a pager, in this case. Maybe that’s what happened. Were you ever a ring bearer? Or how many weddings have you been in? Just by the way. How many weddings have I been in? Well, you were in my wedding. As a child, none. I was only in my Aunt Teesie’s wedding, I believe. My first wedding that I was in was my brother’s. Which might be the first wedding that, you weren’t in that wedding. Well, I wasn’t in Cole’s wedding. You came to it though. Well, yeah, I attended the wedding. I think. It was in, yeah, it was in Indiana. In Indiana. We drove to Chicago. Remember that? That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Unauthorized. That was awesome, Yeah. Yeah. We actually drove to Indiana. We picked up your granddad. He was thumbing. Well, no. Got it backwards. My granddad picked us up. Yeah, we were hitchhiking. We were in Rensselaer, Indiana. And my grandfather, my dad’s dad, who lived in Michigan, who we didn’t have the best of relationships with, I had seen him maybe once in my life. He decides that he can make the drive down to Indiana to see my brother get married. And Link and I had driven a car from North Carolina to Indiana at like, age, whatever we were, 17 at the time. 17 probably. And but then for some reason when we got there, we no longer had use of the car because somebody else was using it, my dad or Cole or somebody. Yeah, they needed the extra car for something. And at that point, me and you were like, let’s explore this town. We’re not staying here. Well, and well. We’re not staying here at the rehearsal or whatever. Yeah, we drove to Chicago, we did that. Yeah. But I’m saying other than driving to Chicago, we were walking, after we got rid of the car, we were walking around in Rensselaer, Indiana. And an old man pulls up and rolls down the window, and it’s my grandfather. Talk about a coincidence. And I literally have seen this guy once in my life. And he’s like, “You need a ride?” He knew who you were. Yeah. And I was like, yeah. And we got in there, and he was like, “I don’t know about this town.” It’s got more churches than liquor stores. You remember him saying that? Yeah. Because I was in the car, I don’t remember that. Yeah. I remember like, wow, to be Rhett’s granddad. this is kind of a, this is kind of a, Weird interaction? cold relationship. I mean he, I just didn’t know. I didn’t know him. Yeah. But I never, I’ll never forget that line. There’s more, he didn’t. I don’t know about this town. There’s more churches than liquor stores. Yeah. That was how he judges how comfortable he would be with a town. Oh man. And after that, did you ever see him again? Um, I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think so. Yeah. I think I saw him twice. I think I saw him once when I was probably like 10. And then once when my brother got married. He didn’t show up for your wedding. He did not. He did not show up for, I’ve never even thought, really thought. I mean, we literally had very little relationship with him. It’s not like a broken relationship that was, that I used to remember him and it was broken. It was just never, it never happened. So I don’t really think much about it. Except for that story. What a coincidence. Which we do think about occasionally. Yeah. Right. If he wasn’t in town for the wedding, that’d be one hell of a coincidence. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Oh, what, what are you doing here? But again, I think this is a really cool story for your parents. And I’m sure your parents tell this story, Shanice, to friends, acquaintances. But if you grow up. But if like, if you’re connected to people in a town who get married, and then like, well, they didn’t realize it until they got married. That’s what makes it weird. Like, maybe they didn’t live in the town or they moved away or something. Or I don’t know. But this is. I need more details to be wowed. This is not magic. I mean, ultimately what we’re saying is this is just a coincidence. It’s cool, it’s cute. And your parents, they have a really cool story that they can tell. But it’s not magic. No magic occurred here. I think this is a good one. Jen Everson @jennyywhitee, or Jenny Whitey, I don’t know. Double E at the end. My husband and I went to the same uni. Uh oh, your British is showing, or I don’t know, wherever you’re, you’re non-American use of university. Yeah. We don’t say uni here. No, we don’t. It just. Yeah. It kinda reminds me, it’s like saying like innie, outie or uni. It’s like a third type of belly button. Right. Yeah. My husband and I went to the same uni but didn’t meet during that time. Near the start of our relationship, we were walking past the house I had last lived in, and he told me he had also lived there only five years earlier in the same bedroom. So crazy. What a small weird world. Well, it’s not as weird as if he would’ve said, you know what, I lived there in this room And I’m a vampire. under the bed that you slept in. Yeah. Right. And you just never knew it. That’s pretty cool. I mean, you get married, you have this, you know, obviously you found this connection. You found your soulmate. And then you realize that you slept in the same place only five years apart. I have a theory here that I think might hold some water. Magic? It’s not, definitely not magic. This is all science. Now, you know, having made an ad for sleepbetter.org back in the day to try to get people to replace their pillow, just how many dead skin cells a person sheds. A lot. Okay, okay. What’s happening? And recently, I was watching something, and they were talking about dust, and they were like, in your house, if you just go up to a shelf, like a top shelf that you haven’t been to in a while, and you run your finger across that dust, a very high percentage of that dust, if not most of it, is dead skin cells from the people who live in the house. Wow. Now, I just heard that one time, and maybe it’s not true that it’s the, but a lot. And the number of skin that the, the amount of pounds of skin that you shed in a week or a year, there’s, you just are getting rid of a lot more of yourself than you realize. And every nine years, your entire body is new. Every single cell in your body. Even the ones that take a long time to like turn over, like your liver cells. All, everything is new. So. Wow. While your husband, now, who lived there first? He did. He also lived. He did, he did five years earlier. So your husband’s living in this bedroom. He is just shedding himself all over the bedroom. I mean, he will forever, he’s still in that bedroom. He’s shedding the bed? He’s shedding the bed, he’s shedding the walls, he’s shedding the ceiling. Your husband is all over this room. And it’s almost like the essence of husband. Might be a different bed. It was probably not, definitely not the same bedding. No, it’s not. He’s in the walls. But the walls. Walls, the floor. Definitely the ceiling. Nobody dusts the ceiling. Oh. And then you go, I do. into this room, and you live for some specified period of time. And we already know. Your skin cells and his skin cells make a skin cell baby. That’s not what happened. That then. You can’t get pregnant that way. It flies around like, like a fairy and introduces the two of you together. Now you’re getting into magic. Now here’s another scientific principle at play. I think we talked about this, we tried to do an episode of GMM about this, and it didn’t work. It was one of those experimental episodes, where we had different people wear different shirts, and then you smelled them and decided if you were like, we tried to guess who it was, but it was based on a study that had been done, which is based on people’s pheromones and sort of like just general body odor. Different people are attracted to different sort of, for lack of a better word, flavor profiles of other people. I don’t think that was science. I think it was just some person who we had on the show who said they could do a personality profile based on what people said. That was different. Okay. But no, but there was a study that was done where it was like, if, okay, say if I, if me, as a heterosexual man, who is attracted to women, were to smell 10 women’s shirts that they had worn, and I rank them according to which one, which smell I was most attracted to, if you were then to show me those women, I might, I would be more likely to order them in my level of attraction to them based on what I, the smell. Like, that’s what the study kind of in general said. Huh. So what I’m saying is that I believe that Jen. We almost did an episode of GMM called “Do white people smell like cheese?” We did, we did. That was pitched to us, but we never did it. We did, we decided against that. But spoiler alert. We do. We do. Jen, what happened in your situation is your husband had shed in the room, and you became, you breathed him in over the course of the time that you lived there. And whether or not you had a natural connection with that, just exposure therapy, being exposed to the leftover husband that is in that room over the course of the time you lived there, you became primed. Developed an affinity. Yes. It’s just like when you’re trying to get rid of a peanut allergy, and you give a little bit of peanut to a person over a period of time. So now, it’s like her husband is the peanut. She doesn’t have an allergy to him. But in the same way that you can get rid of an allergy, you can enhance an attraction. And that is precisely and scientifically and definitively what happened in this case. And that is why you’re together today. C.V. Films @Technoboy652. Once I was driving in this parking lot and got cut off, forcing me into a curb, which popped my tire. I start driving away and realize that the tire is popped. I like how he’s using the term popped. Popped the tire. So I pull across the street into a small parking lot to inspect it. I looked up, and I had pulled directly into a tire store. This might be magic. Well, that’s serendipity, you know? You pop your tire and then you, I mean, it’s kinda like, I remember the one time that I was driving, back in North Carolina, I was driving from Holly Springs to Apex, and I got pulled over by a cop. And I, there was, I had to find the right, a bit of curb to pull over on. And when I finally found it to pull over, the cop behind me the whole time, I looked up, and it was the police department. I was at the police station. I’ll go straight, just book me now. Yes. I remember that. So, I know the feeling. So it’s like I, you know, you feel the need to explain. That’s kind of a different feeling. You feel the need to explain. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t even know this was a tire shop. I just, you know, it’s just, here I am. Well, I think that this is all about perspective. You got the guy who has busted his tire, popped his tire, who pulls in, and he’s like, isn’t this awesome? And this is crazy. This is crazy that I just pulled into this tire place. And the tire guys who work at the tire place are like, oh, there’s another guy who thinks it’s a great coincidence that he popped his tire on that curb that busts everybody’s tire. You know what I’m saying? Like. I think it might, they might have like spike strips. They might, they might be drawing. It’s intentional. Yeah, they might be drawing people in. It might be more than just a curb. You know what I’m saying? It wasn’t just a curb. It was sabotage It might be a tire Ponzi scheme. A tire-popping Ponzi scheme. I bet you they didn’t do that. Let’s believe the best. I mean, this is, it is a good feeling. Here’s the thing that did excite me about talking about coincidences, coinkydinks, large and small, is the ex, when you experience it, there’s like this elation, it’s like, oh, I’m at a tire shop. This is so perfect. Like this is lined up. You know, that’s, most of the time, it’s like inexplicable. But for it to be so serendipitously service-oriented is really nice. But even when it’s just kind of crazy, like, man, we were, we were in the same wedding as kids, and now we’re married. It feels cool. It feels cool, right? Yeah. I mean, do you remember, the main coincidence that I’d love to hear again is the wild horses one. And we can get back to the tire guy. Okay, the wild horses story. Because this one highlights perfectly the thrill of experiencing a coincidence. Like, you may not know the meaning, but you feel like there should be a meaning because it’s just so crazy that it happened, and it’s a shared experience that when you tell it, it’s never as good as when you experienced it. But it brings up other people’s experiences, so at least you can share in that. And that’s what I want. I don’t remember what year it was. Let’s just say 2005. Because it was in the aughts. Okay. I’m with my brother-in-law, Chris, in a boat at the North Carolina beach, specifically in the sound between Emerald Isle and the mainland, near Beaufort, North Carolina. Okay. This is a new boat that Chris has gotten that he bought from his brother, I think. So we’re kind of like feeling like this freedom of like, man, we just, we got a boat. We can go anywhere on this intercoastal waterway. Yep. And that’s not like an expression I made up. That’s a thing. Mm-hmm. So we’re in the boat, and you know, the coast of North Carolina, it’s got the outer banks, but it’s not just the mainland, and then like, you know, a long strip of isles, there’s all kinds of little islands all around, if you look at the map of the coast, right? Mm-hmm. Some are small, some are big. There’s just a bunch of ’em. And as we’re kind of going through the sound, and I see these little marsh covered islands, some have trees on them. And I’m like, you know, there’s an island somewhere on the coast of North Carolina that has wild horses on it. And Chris is like, “No.” I’m like, yeah. Like I, there’s, I think it has something to do with maybe like the Spanish came over here hundreds of years ago, and some horses got out, and now there’s like a wild population, like herd of wild horses. Undomesticated. Yeah. That live on some island. I was like, I don’t think it’s anywhere around here, but there are, there are horses. There are wild horses somewhere. So I mean, we moved on, we started talking about other things, and then we just start going like, he’s like full you know, got the pedal to the metal. We’re just flying through the sound. You can’t hear anything. We’re playing the radio. The whole time, we’ve been playing the radio, but we can’t hear anything when you’re going full bore, and we’re going past this island, and all of a sudden, we look to our right, and out from like behind a tree, this horse like comes up and like comes up and like turns away, sideways, so that like we can see the whole horse body. Wow. Like it’s displaying itself to us. And what did he say? The horse said nothing. Okay. Chris immediately stops accelerating, and the boat slows down, and we’re just idling, and we look at each other like what in the world? And he’s looking at me like, I can’t believe this is happening. Then, because the boat is no longer making any noise because we’re idling, we hear the song that is playing on the radio, and the song that is currently playing on the radio is Wild Horses by Rolling Stones. Crazy, man. That’s crazy. And then, do you remember what you did? You just kind of, you looked at each other wide-eyed, right? And you were like, are you, are we really here for this? Right? Yeah, it was mind blowing. It’s a great feeling. All right. Have at it, man. Use your spooky voice. This is from Sasa. Sasa, the vil bear? The evil bear. The evil bear. That makes a lot more sense. My biggest scare is more spiritual. When I was 12, I was alone at home, and I saw that on my bed was a dip, like someone was sitting on the bed. When I did a double take, I saw the tip lift. No, the dip lift is what she meant to write. I saw the dip lift. Like when someone stands up. I hid in the living room. Hashtag EarBiscuits. Okay. That’s, that’s kind of mild. I mean, you saw it, Could just be a faulty mattress. you saw a divot in your mattress that then plumpified? At age 12? Yeah, age 12. How reliable are you at age 12? Very, I mean, just talking hormones alone. Like, if a 12 year old reporter came to you, I mean, first of all. Does he have a hat? Does it say press on the hat? No one trusts the media anymore anyway, much less a 12 year old reporter. So 12 year old reporter comes up and is just like, I believe that children journalists are our future. aliens landed in Belarus. You’d be like, okay, prove it, 12 year old. I think Sasa, I think you gotta, you gotta be looking for spooky things in order to see something like that. I don’t think, because that’s not an attention-grabbing thing. It’s not a cupboard slamming. You know, it’s not, it’s not someone, like a possessed person yelling at you that normally loves you. I don’t know. I mean, listen. I don’t, I don’t discount it. I just think it’s, But you just did. I think it’s a bit nitpicky. Oh, and to make it clear, I mean, we’re not trying to pick these apart, even though we just did with that one. I’m open to this. I just don’t, I think you have to be looking for something to spook you to see something that detailed. That subtle? Yeah. Well, you don’t know how big the dip was. I mean, what if this was a thick ghost? Mm. You know? It depends on how big the, how much the bed is being deformed. Like, if I’m in a certain mindset, anything could scare me. Like when you make me watch the scary movies, and then for the next week or so, as I’ve said before, I ain’t ashamed to say it, I get scared taking out the trash. Mm-hmm. I mean, there’s like a, there’s a dark area where the trash can should go. I also get scared, not necessarily taking the trash out. I have to run. I take the trash out, and then I kind of run back. But like I told you, Like a beaver’s chasing me. when I’m by myself in the woods, I get scared. And it is because of all the things that I put into my mind with horror movies and horror books. But it won’t, I can’t stop though. The thing that happened to me in my camping trip is not something that I, you know. I, to a fault, I wasn’t ready for something spooky to happen. Yeah, that’s been made clear with people’s reactions. Yeah. To your story. Of you not going outside when your wife was offered. Well, was asked about hotdogs. @GoldenCheezie, William Millard tweeted, spooky voice. when I was nine or 10, already, we had, we don’t even remember what age we were. That’s good. No, oh, when I was nine and 10, let’s say that, we moved into a funeral home as part of the family business. Oh snap. I started to have persistent sleep paralysis and saw a figure both in the room when awake and in the elevator in my dreams. Those two years were probably the scariest in my life. They stopped after moving. Okay, so. Funeral homes, man, at 10 years old. Okay, there’s three things. It’s this funeral home with a freaking elevator in it, and you’re living in it. You’re living in a freaking funeral home? It’s part of the family business. That’s wild. Sleep paralysis. I mean, the only thing scarier than sleep paralysis is like surgery paralysis. And I don’t even want to talk about that. All right. I know you’re, They are related. you’re afraid of sleep paralysis ’cause you feel like you’ve had it at times, right? Well that was, that was an interesting way to put that. You’re afraid of sleep paralysis because you feel like you’ve had it. I didn’t say feel. I said because you’ve had it. No, you said you feel like you had it. Did I say that? Yes. Okay. I have had it, but I have not had it in probably 10 or 15 years. I had it a lot as a kid, and I, and it slowly wore off in my twenties, and I haven’t had it in many years. But a lot of people report seeing. So when you have sleep paralysis, you can see with your, your eyes are open? Not for me. So, okay. For William, saw a figure in the room, Most people. when awake. But in sleep paralysis. Most people sense the presence of a figure. Like what happens is, is you, your mind wakes up, but your body does not. And so you can, so you’re fully aware, I’m in my bed, and what happened with me, I would wake up, and I would be like, oh no, it’s happening again. I can feel myself in my bed. I can feel the position that I’m in, and I can’t move. I can’t open my eyes. I can’t do anything. And so you really, so you’re faced with a choice. Now you could be like, I’m just gonna lay here and go back to sleep. But for me, I could never do that. I had to commit fully to getting out of it. And so I would like start trying to find a limb to move. And you would be like, and eventually you like go like, and then you get out of it. What? That would happen to me pretty often growing up. It’s like breaking out of a shell or something? But some people, when they wake up and they’re in that state, they will sense the presence, it’s very common. There’s a name for the person, the ghost. It’s like a dark figure that they sense when they’re in sleep paralysis. Slenderman? Slenderman may be based on this character, but it’s just this dark figure. I’ve heard many people talk about it. I never, I never saw the dark figure. Sleep paralysis. Common figures. Hmm. People who experience sleep paralysis have essentially woken up before they’ve stopped dreaming. It’s an incredibly common sleep problem. An estimated 8% of people who experience it regularly ever wake up frozen in the middle of the night. And see a pitch black figure. Yeah. Okay, here it is. Imagine you’re asleep, and you suddenly open your eyes. This is kqed.org/science. Your body won’t move. It’s as if something’s holding you down, you hear scratching in the corner of the room, then see a pitch black figure. You think it’s just your mind playing tricks until the figure starts moving slowly, it’s getting closer. You shut your eyes but you can hear it shuffling toward you. This is what sleep paralysis is like. No, not for me. Sleep paralysis usually occurs when you’re, well, asleep. Your brain is telling you to go to sleep and to not move because when you walk around in your sleep, that’s not good. But some people have a problem with that not turning off. So when they wake up, they still can’t move. Oh gosh. And people who are susceptible to sleep paralysis, if I’m, if I remember correctly, are more likely to have the surgery paralysis thing happen. Oh my gosh. That is a nightmare. William, I’m sorry that happened to you. Living in a funeral home. Oh my gosh. And then dreaming about the same person. Once you’ve seen something that freaks you out, dreaming about it, I guess, makes sense. Well, you know, Or it could just be. Well, so I told this story on GMM years ago about my wife and I having. Shared dream. Well, in my dream specifically, and you can go back to the GMM ’cause it was much more fresh. And I told it the very next day. But essentially, what I dreamed is that I was in this elevator, and the elevator opened, and there was this little blonde girl who was, had evil intent of some kind. And it was very scary. And I woke up. And I started talking to Jessie about it. And she had just had a dream at the same time about a little blonde girl. And we had kind of just like. And what did I say? And we just sat there in the bed kind of freaking out for a while. Well, @jade_iemrg tweeted, me and my family were talking about spooky ghost stuff. And I said how I’ve seen a girl with long hair and a long white nightgown run by my line of vision out of the corner of my eye. And then my whole family starts sharing stories from when they’ve seen the same ghost with the same descriptions. Having other people experience the same thing, either in a dream or like, I mean, if you trust somebody who also sees the same thing you saw, then that makes you feel a little less crazy, but a lot more scared. Ear Biscuits is supported by Thrive Market. We are big fans of Thrive Market. They make healthy living easy. So, you know, this is one of the things we turned to during the pandemic is being able to have groceries delivered, which is awesome. You can make those choices online. But the thing about. But what are those groceries? But the thing about Thrive Market is it’s, they make it easier to make better choices, right? Because they’ve got very high quality, lots of healthy, healthy options. And they all do this for really reasonable prices. Yeah, Thrive has all your go-tos for groceries and household essentials. Several of your favorite brands quickly shipped to your doorstep. Like Annie’s for cheese and fruit snacks. Seventh Generation for cleaning. Primal Kitchen for all those good sauces. Yeah, and you can save money on every single order. As a member, on average, you can save over 30% each time. There’s also a deals page that changes daily, giving you cash back on a lot of brands and price match guarantee. I like the sound of saving money. I did a little math on my last order. I think I saved about $40 versus if I had’ve gone in the store. And when you join Thrive Market, you are also helping a family in need with their one for one membership matching program. Super cool. You join, they give. Join Thrive Market today and get 30% off your first order plus a free $60 gift. Go to Thrivemarket.com/ear for 30% off your first order, plus a free $60 gift. That’s T H R I V E market.com/ear. Thrivemarket.com/ear. Ear Biscuits is brought to you by Better Help. You deserve some me time. I deserve some me time. And I, you know what? And you don’t need to be embarrassed to say it. For me, me time, a lot of times is therapy time. Mm-hmm. Like that’s how I view therapy. Oh yeah. And therapy can give you the tools to find more balance in your life so you can keep supporting others. You know, you can have some you time too, some others time. If you get that me time without leaving yourself behind. We talk about therapy a lot on this show so you know that we believe in the benefits of it, and we love the idea of it being accessible in different formats, so you have options. Yeah. If you’re thinking of starting therapy, give Better Help 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 anytime for no additional charge. Find more balance with Better Help. Visit betterhelp.com/ear today to get 10% off your first month. That’s betterhelp, H E L P, dot com, slash ear. Conversationstarters.com. Not a sponsor. Yet. Hit it. What’s the longest you’ve gone without sleep? What is it? Okay. All right. Okay, okay conversationstarters dot com. Dot com. Oh man. What’s the longest you’ve gone? The AI heard us talking about it and was like, okay, try this one on for size, boys. I mean, I definitely am on record saying that I never elected to pull an all-nighter in college, which is the first place, I think, that you’re gonna be apt to stay up all night. Except for that one time that we went snowboarding in the mountains and. That’s a good place to snowboard. And we, yeah, it is. We went, so we had. As opposed to the plains. You know, we had to drive a number of hours. You start skiing at like 1:00 AM, the night ski, at Hawk’s Nest. Same place. This was the scenario under which I broke my pelvis and suffered the concussion. But I remember at a preceding time, we did it, you start skiing at one, you ski from like one to, maybe like one to four. Does that sound right to you? Night skiing. Night skiing, they got the lights on. I don’t believe you’re right about that. You think it’s done by one? My best guess is that. It might be done by one. ‘Cause first of all, during the winter, sunset it’s probably 5:30 or six. Yeah. So I think it’s probably like six to midnight, night skiing. Yeah, and then I think, I think you might could go to one and then. ‘Cause they gotta make snow at some point. And then we had to drive back, and maybe stopping at the Waffle House and all that stuff. By the time I got back, I went, I did not sleep. I went straight to class. And I just remember being in my medieval history class, and I could not stay awake, and I was taking notes, and I literally was able to look back at my notes and see the moment that I fell asleep, because. Like a movie, just being a squiggly line. Yeah, it’s just like a, yeah. It, the line just kind of squiggled down off the page, and. That’s how I want to die. I was fighting, I was fighting it so hard. Taking notes. You know, you just cannot stay awake any longer. That was, so I remember that being an all-nighter. I don’t recall that. I mean, the most recent all-nighter was when we shot Hazel, and we were fighting against the sun coming up. That’s right. So this is, in case you didn’t know, this is the TikTok first, we released it on TikTok, and then we put it on the Rhett and Link YouTube channel. But basically our horror, you know, spending a night in the creative house kind of thing. Nobody watched it. But if you were there for when it happened, you were, It was awesome. you were thrilled by it. Which is great. We, obviously, we stayed up all day, ’cause that’s typically what we do. ‘Cause I’m not a vampire, and I also don’t take naps. But then the night shoot rolled around, and you know, Ben had the shot list planned. As soon as it gets dark, we start, ’cause we gotta shoot in the dark. We had talked about potentially like doing blackout of the windows, but we were trying to avoid that because it takes a bunch of time. Yeah, so it was, we had one night in the woods, which did not take all night. And then the next night, I believe, is when we went back to the creative house, and we were shooting all night in the house. And that’s the one that went all the way ’til the sun came up. Yeah, so we actually kind of go in on less sleep. I just remember the sun coming up, and that was when we were packing everything up and putting it back in the trucks and being very tired but not being sleepy. I, like, my body was like, okay, well we missed that opportunity, and then I was like, I’m gonna go home. I don’t. Missed that opportunity to what? To sleep. To sleep. But now, circadian rhythm is in play, and your body’s like, okay, well now it’s okay, I guess another day is here. And I have had such a difficult time sleeping during the day. I know I had to have slept. I don’t remember it, but I had to have slept. You didn’t sleep during the day during this thing? No, I went home and slept for, I think, probably two hours and then woke up and was like, I guess I’ll just, you know, I’ll never make up for this. I don’t think I’ve ever done more than that. What I’ve never done, ’cause obviously, we did the same thing with All Night Long. All Night Long, when we sang Lionel Richie’s All Night Long, literally, for 11 hours, all night long. It’s on YouTube. Check it out. Check it out, Brian, you didn’t know about that. That was from sundown to sunrise. And then again, same thing like go home. That was easy because we were constantly Engaged. occupied, and there were certain scenes with the Hazel thing, especially towards the morning, like, they were shooting something with you, and then I had this downtime. And once you sit down and you get still, that gets difficult. We had one all nighter for Buddy System too. Well, Buddy System also. It was season one. So yeah, we’ve had a few all-nighters, but it, I’m, neither one of us have ever been the type of person to say, let’s just stay up all night. And I can’t do that. You know, there’s people who can do that. Okay. I mean, I get, when I get really tired, I start to feel like nauseous. It’s like my body just starts shutting down. Well, I’m about, I’m about to scare you a little bit. You’re about to tell me it’s actually a good thing. You should be doing it on a monthly basis. No, no, no. Well, I read that book Why We Sleep, which then I found out that at least some of the research that the guy had quoted in it was not right. And so I don’t know what part that was. I didn’t follow up. Okay. But one of the things he talks about is you basically don’t make up for it. Like you can’t, you don’t make up for lost sleep. Like, whatever the effects of missing sleep have, it’s, you get those effects, and they’re short term, and then of course compounding, there’s long term effects. And like one of the things he talks about is people who are chronically undersleeping. Like you hear people like Steve Harvey, he’s one of ’em, who will say like, I sleep four hours a day. Yeah. Jay Leno says the same thing. And there’s this like pride of like, you only sleep four hours. And this guy’s point was that, yes, there is a range of what people require, but really nobody can get away with that little sleep. They’re suffering. They’re suffering consequences that are long-term health consequences. So when Steve Harvey’s mustache just falls off one day, it’s probably ’cause he’s only getting four hours of sleep. That’s how it happens, huh? It starts with the mustache. Now there’s been a couple of times, you know, I told you earlier in the year when I started struggling a little bit with insomnia, and then I think I figured out that it had to do with the intermittent fasting thing I was doing. And that’s a kind of a common side effect, but it didn’t go away for me. But because I’m a hypochondriac, or I have whatever health anxiety, whatever the proper term is today, there was a point in which I was waking up and not being able to go back to sleep. And I thought that I might have fatal familial insomnia. What? Fatal familial? It’s a rare genetic degenerative brain disorder. It’s like you can’t sleep and it kills a family member? It is, well that can happen. It is characterized by an inability to sleep, insomnia, that may be initially mild but progressively worsens, leading to significant physical and mental deterioration. Affected individuals may also develop dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, the part of the nervous system that controls involuntary automatic body processes. Well, yeah, but. Basically. Why do you think you’d have it? I don’t have it. You just got scared. I wasn’t sleeping. I mean, it is a form of torture. I would hate, I hate it for the people who can’t sleep. Like that’s, it’s just. You’re not getting it. It is literally a form of torture. But you’re not listening to me. I’m listening to you. I’m not talking about somebody who can’t sleep. I’m talking about a disease in which you slowly lose the ability to sleep and invariably die. Gosh. You’re not listening to what I’m saying, bro. I’m not talking about insomnia. I’m talking about chronic insomnia that they do not have a cure for, and it happens to some people, and they just freaking die. So you stay awake to death. Yes. Well, I heard you. I eventually, man, that is a nightmare. And I’ve, you know, I hate to make, I’m not making light of it ’cause I thought I had it, but somebody does. Somebody does have it. They don’t know what to do about it. They can’t, they can’t do anything about it. There’s no treatment for it. You can, I mean, there’s gotta be like some like high powered something to knock you out. I don’t, I don’t think so. I think that your whatever is in your brain that allows you to sleep eventually just goes away. Oh gosh. But what’s, how long can you go without sleep before you die? That’s another question. Yeah. We’re not getting that one from conversationstarters.com. I got that one from my brain. How long, how long can you stay awake without dying? Because you can go a few days without water, right? Yeah. You can go If you’re not sleeping. a few weeks without food. You need to stay hydrated. You need to eat. 11 days. Yes. The longest recorded time without sleep is approximately 264 hours, or just over 11 consecutive days. What? Now that person just probably fell asleep. I don’t know if they died. Hmm. You know, and there’s like, you know, you’ll have like mind or body altering drugs that will keep you, keep you awake in order to get stuff done beyond caffeine, stuff that, stuff I don’t even want to know about. Let us know what you think about the Rabbit Hole episodes. I mean, we have fun when we come in here and go to conversationstarters.com. And if you wanna weigh in, give us a little voicemail. 1 – 8 8 8- Earpod1 Earpod1 Bye. Hey, I watched, I listened. I listened and watched the episode where Link was talking about the frames on your license plate. And I was looking around at all these cars in traffic, and almost everybody has them. But then I just looked at my own car. I’m hit with both the sticker on the actual trunk as well as the border on my license plate. They hit me with both. To watch more Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist on the right. To watch the previous episode of Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist to the left. And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your mythical best.