Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 234: Our First Episode Apart (Coming to Grips with Coronavirus) | Ear Biscuits 234

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

Rhett and Link discuss and process how COVID-19 is affecting their world and the world as a whole as they hunker down in this first ever remote episode of Ear Biscuits! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Other conditions apply. Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I'm Link. And I'm Rhett. This week at the, well, my table's not round. My table is a rectangle. My table is a big oval. Like I've got an ellipse.

This is my dining room table that I'm seated at in my own home. I'm in a corner of my living room at a table that I actually, I actually got upset with my wife about buying this table because she got like a nice table that you have to like screw together in order to- As opposed to what?

Well, like a folding table. Okay. It was a table that she got for a party that has since been canceled because of the virus. Yes. And my son's 16th birthday. And because she can't just have like a folding table like everyone else, she's gotta have a pretty wooden table that you have to put together.

I was like, why do we have this? We have to put it together. But now I am so thankful to my beautiful wife and my smart wife, my wife who has so much foresight, Jessie. She's not watching, she's probably not listening. Well, she's taking a shower right now, if I must be honest about this.

You must be honest. Because right before we started recording, I said, okay guys, I'm starting to record, and no one responded. She said, well I'm taking a shower, and then my fifth grade son, it just continued to, he's talking to his classmates, he's learning, They're learning.

He's doing school. We are in a totally, I mean, this is the first thing that has been completely altered because of the virus for us in terms of content. This is the first ever Ear Biscuits that we are performing remotely, separate from each other. Performing, performing. I don't consider, that's are performing remotely. Separate from each other. Performing.

Performing. I don't consider, that's an interesting perspective. I feel like I'm saying weird words because I'm not in my normal environment. I would have just said doing. This is the first ear biscuit that we're doing. I don't mean performing in like a performance sense, like in an entertainment sense.

Like I mean performing in like a performance sense, like in an entertainment sense. I mean performing in like a surgical sense because I'm gonna be honest, I'm a bit stressed out because I mean we've got, it's just me doing everything on my end. I don't know if you've got assistance. I don't think you do. If you do, I'm gonna be angry.

I try to get my children to help and they did not respond. So yeah, I'm performing a freaking technical feat here that I'm freaking rusty. Even, I mean, thinking as we've been doing the vlogs, I at least know how to work our camera. And now it's like I had to dust off my garage band to figure out how to record myself. And then we got this, I got an iPad video chatting with you.

Yeah, just to give you an idea of how this is set up, if you're that kind of person who's interested. Well, first of all, let me just say that something will go wrong with this recording. I mean, it is destined to be an error somewhere in the process, and you're probably gonna be somewhat frustrated. Hopefully not, but.

I'm pretty shocked. We're three three minutes in and nothing's gone wrong except for my use of the word performance and i also thought that this would be a simpler uh process to set up but i was like oh no okay because we're going to do this thing where we're going to do like a split screen uh we'll talk about how we're trying to figure out the same kind of deal for gmm but essentially we've got the camera that we normally record the vlogs with recording video we've got uh audio going directly into a computer we both have these blue yeti mics this one i've had forever link had to get that one uh so this is like one of our first mics that we ever bought as a as a company and, I actually saw a clip

of when we went back to Harness Central, when we went back to our high school. We shot, I think we shot a week's worth of episodes from Miss, I can't remember whose room, Miss Sewell's room, our old French class. And yeah, we had that microphone. And so those mics are going directly into our laptops, which are recording the audio on GarageBand.

But then in order to be able to communicate with each other at the same time, we are on a Google chat that's on an iPad that we are looking at. So I'm now looking at Link, who's looking at me. And if other Mythical team members want to log into the chat, they can watch this as it's happening. But yeah, I mean, here's what we wanna do today.

We wanna process, we wanna bring you up to speed on what our process has been as we've settled into staying at home and coming to grips with what this virus means for us and what it means for our worlds and also the world in general. So this is, you know, I just want to process that with my friend here. I just wanna process that with my friend here. I mean, there's also this thing that's like getting past the fact that like, hey, we're communicating on screens.

This is the new normal. A lot of communicating on screens. We'll get into all that. Well, because I will say, again, we're recording this a few days before the audio goes live, a week and a half or so before, almost two weeks before it would go live video on YouTube. So a lot may have changed by then,

but currently where we're at in California, we are under a stay-at-home order. So it is technically illegal at this point for us to conduct our business in the way that we typically would ie going into the studio now I think we want to protect ourselves we want to we want to protect other people we want to we want to do the right thing so so we're trying to figure that out. We're not not doing it just because it's illegal. We actually, and it's interesting, at this point in the conversation nationwide,

there's very different perspectives. There's people who are like, oh, this is a complete overreaction, and there are people who are like, no, we need to be listening to what the medical experts are telling us. And we're on team medical expert. We're not medical experts, but we're on team, we believe the medical experts, the consensus of the medical experts being that we need to stay at home, social distance, and kind of flatten the curve.

So this is our effort to flatten the curve. And so we're going to continue to bring you what we can bring you. It's just going to be in a slightly flattened the curve manner. Yeah. I just want to hear the story that I've heard like third hand. I want to hear it from your perspective because you haven't told me. Christy was talking to Jesse and I caught bits and pieces of she was shocked by someone outside of her window

and I just didn't hear the full story. I wanna hear that from you right now. story. I want to hear that from you right now. Well, yeah. So our wives were on a group video chat with their close group of female friends. Which I don't think they had ever done that. They've been on WeChat for years. That's the thing that they would talk to each other and give themselves cute little chat group names or whatnot. They were well ahead of the curve of us finally doing that with our friends, but they never did video chats.

So it's like, again, it's just one example, like I said, of a new normal, getting used to this video chat, group chat stuff. But anyway, go ahead. But one of the things that has been an unfortunate just coincidence is that it's been raining like crazy in California. I mean, yeah, we gotta deal with this virus,

we gotta stay at home, but that doesn't mean you gotta stay in your house. In fact, we've been trying to take advantage of being together as a family and hiking and walking. Barbara's gotten more walks, and she's like, what are we doing? What is this? And by the way, trails are now closed as of yesterday.

You can't go on a trail. Well, I didn't tell you this, but on Saturday, and let me tell you, this is why they're closed, because on Saturday, Jesse and I were like, hey, let's go up to the local trail head to kind of get up in in there and as soon as we pull into the trailhead as soon as we pull into the place the cars are parked on the street so you know that all the parking lots are overflowed. And these trails are not wide. They're narrow.

We drove right through and drove right out because I was like, hey boys and girls, that's not social distancing. I mean, just because you're outside doesn't mean, the virus isn't like, I'm outside and so therefore I can't move. If somebody coughs on you or breathes on you on the trail and you're heaving and hoving.

Huffing and puffing. Heaving and hoving? I trail and you're heaving and huffing. Heaving and huffing? Heaving and huffing? I said heaving and huffing. Heaving and huffing? Well, yeah, before the governor put in the stay-at-home provision, we had already decided that we were going to, you know, both of our families, we had decided we were going to hunker down in our own homes and send our employees home and everything. But it was the

first day that it hadn't rained. And again, it was before that ordinance was in place. And I said, well, we can just go on some trails. And then we were on the trail and there was about as many people as normal. But then, yeah, the huffing and puffing. Like people would come down the trail and I would stand to the side and face away. But I was self-conscious because again, this is pretty early. A lot of people I think were just on the trail

because it's part of their normal lives just to go on this trail and like run up and down it or take their dog or if they're an old person with the two sticks. Lots of those old people with two sticks were still out there at that point. Yeah. And so I would act, instead of just like,

just like, what's it called when you pull back and you're? That's a heave. Okay. That's the heave of the heave and the huff. Now I think that's acceptable. Of course you can't go on trails. But then I would like, I would turn and I would act like I was taking in the view. You know like, it's beautiful out here.

Just to like turn away from people who are huffing and puffing and going by me. Well, what I've been doing as a, I haven't been on a trail yet, and apparently I'm not ever going to be again. Well, not anytime soon. Don't be so bleak, man. When we've been walking around the neighborhood

and we've seen people coming, you know me, I can hold my breath for a long time. So when they get about 25, 30 steps away, I just hold my breath and then I go by and then I release. You start turning blue? What if they stop and talk to you? You're like, ooh. I just give a head nod.

Mm-hmm. Actually, I can talk and not breathe in. Yep, how you doing? I haven't taken a breath yet. Yep, I'm still breathing out. As long as the air is going out. You know what, I can breathe and I can not breathe and talk too. You don't have to breathe in to talk.

I'm not breathing at all. You actually don't even have to change the way that you talk. I don't know why we're doing that. No, hold on. Take a deep breath. And then if I just talk, no, I'm breathing out. You got to breathe out to talk. But talking is breathing out. Why?

You let you do this. You let you talk like this. No, you don't want to do that because then you're sucking in other people's virus. Yeah, I'm just using that as an example. But if you just, yeah, but you can't breathe back in, so it's just breathing out, but you never take a breath back in. So whenever you stop talking,

you're holding your breath again, and that is not absolutely normal. Right. Anyway. But where I was going with that was I haven't had an opportunity to go outside very much because it's been raining so much. Yeah. I think this is our last week of crazy rain,

and then it's going to get back to more like Southern California. But there was a moment of sunshine. It wasn't very warm. I mean, for California, it was like 55 degrees, which we're still like, oh, that's a jacket. It's like a blizzard to me. But because the sun came out,

I went outside and actually took my shirt off, got down just to my pants, and took my meditation cushion out there and started doing some yoga, I did some meditation. I mean, I just became like a amateur guru out there on my basketball area out here. Amateur guru is not a thing. Those words cancel each other out.

That's why I said amateur. Wannabe guru. I think is wannabe guru. Sure. No, I don't think you're a wannabe guru. And I think at this point, just sidebar, my air conditioner heater came on. There's gonna be a lot of noise in this podcast. Just get over it.

No one cares. I'm not gonna apologize in this podcast. Just get over it. No one cares. I'm not gonna apologize for it again. Everybody was over it. So I was out there, first of all, I was just enjoying myself, just beyond words. And I've gotten really flexible. Have you seen how flexible I am now? No.

I know I've been moving around like a real old man in all our vlogs because it's because of my knee. But my knee is basically healed. I mean, it took almost two months for my knee to get healed. So I'm kind of back to my spry self now. Okay. And just in time to do nothing. Yeah, exactly. Just in time to stay at home. But I was doing all kinds of, I was going on the internet, looking at moves, doing them. But then I just started to kind of walk around out there and just, you know, just take in the sun. And then I realized that, oh,

I just walked up to the window to the guest bedroom, which is where Jessie is currently on her ladies chat. Ah. So what was she, she hasn't told me about this, by the way. She told Christy that some, she saw someone walk by and she thought it was a shirtless vagrant.

Like her emotional and knee jerk it was a shirtless vagrant. Like, her emotional and knee-jerk reaction was fear. Yeah. She was deeply afraid because her husband walked past the window, and then it took her a couple of beats, and she was like, wait, that was my husband. What have you done, man? I mean like, you're gallivanting around your house and you're putting your own family in fear.

Well, the other day, I was actually, the other day I was walking through the neighborhood just by myself. Shirtless? And no, I was, but I mean, I didn't look well kept. No, you don't. Right. And I had on like, I had on a hoodie

and then like some unmatching sweatpants and like hiking shoes. Okay. Because it was the day we thought we were gonna go to the trail. Yeah. And I know what my hair, listen, I've seen the comments.

I've seen all the people requesting beard or hair trims. At this point, it's definitely not gonna happen. It's like, I feel like I've been preparing for this moment all my life to look like this during this pandemic. You were ahead of the curve. But I was walking through the neighborhood and I started realizing that it could easily be perceived that a homeless man

has left some urban area and is now up into the neighborhoods looking for a place to bed down. His territory has expanded. And I got a little paranoid. Oh, you got paranoid. And then all of a sudden, like at the height of my paranoia, I hear whoop whoop, like when the cops do that thing

where they make that little noise. The cop chirped you? I turn around and there's a cop like flying towards me. What? With his lights on and the siren, and now he's chirping, he's. He's like, he's almost like a record scratch with a chirp. And I'm like somebody has called and said

that there's a vagrant walking through the neighborhood. It was probably your wife. And the cop is coming after me. Yeah. Did you get down? You should have just got down, put your hand behind you. But I was thinking about like what I was going to say. I was like, no, no, I live here. And I was realizing that no matter what I said, everything was going to sound made up. I haven't been cutting my hair because of therapy. It's a long story. I was actually thinking about this today that even if I made a decision to trim,

I'm not gonna cut my own hair at this point. Yeah, well, you could. I'm not saying you could. I'm not saying you couldn't. I'm saying you should. But I haven't. But just to check in on that, I don't feel like I've learned my lesson yet. You know what I'm saying?

You know if you listen to that AirBiscuit, there's a reason I'm going out. I respect that. I don't think I've learned what I need to learn yet. I've learned that people, a lot of people have, I learned that it's polarizing. That's what I've learned i well i think you also have learned like keep a shirt on whenever possible stay off the streets um try to get your

sweatsuit to match if you're going out in public just do a little something do a little something for yourself you know okay what was the last thing that filled you with wonder that took you away from your desk or your car in traffic? Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is... Anime! Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President.

And welcome to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. It's a weekly news show. With the best celebrity guests. And hot takes galore so join us every friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on crunchyroll or on the crunchyroll youtube channel i just really like to process what's happened over the last few weeks just like how what what i'm curious what your experience has been and i just figured we could share our experiences because it's it's it's just been so surreal.

There's so many times when I'm like, this is, it's like a movie, you know? It's like, this doesn't really happen. I've noticed that that thought has started to happen less and less, but for the first week and a half or so, like every night when I'd lay down in the bed, it was just like, I'd take a breath.

That would be the main thing that I would feel. It's like, is this real? You know, we were getting pummeled with news. Every few minutes was something was changing. Everyone in every sector of society was just scrambling to figure out what to do and having the entire spectrum of reactions. I think the one moment that will stick with me is, let's see, it was a couple weeks ago before things got really stringent here. Again, we were trying to be as safe as possible,

and we were preparing to send employees home. This was Wednesday a couple of weeks ago, and then just getting them prepared like, hey, Friday, get your stuff, don't come in, and then I think the announcement went out officially that Sunday. So I'm not saying, hey, we were ahead of the curve. But, I mean, we were sending people home. We were starting to process.

But I had not watched the news. I had read the news. And, you know, I had read like the bites of news. But we were in a very busy time. We were actually recording a lot of GMM, and thank goodness we recorded as much as we were able to record to then have fully produced set-based episodes that we could stretch out. But I had not consumed live television news because it's just not a part of my life anymore. I just don't like the bickering.

I don't, it's nothing but stress, and it just ticks me off. But I was like, hey, we gotta do this. So I turned it on. I think this was like Wednesday or Thursday night. Hold on one second. Is the laundry room door closed? Yeah, it was closed.

Oh, it didn't get any quieter. It's okay. Go ahead, Link. It's fine. For what it's worth, it didn't get any quieter. It's okay, go ahead, Link. It's fine, for what it's worth, I can't hear your launch. You can't hear it because you're listening to a video chat which is not gonna get it, but I guarantee you it's in this. We shouldn't have started running the washing machine, but it's fine.

And by we, you mean? I mean my beautiful wife. Oh gosh. Go, go, you finished, you're getting ready. What did you just say about your beautiful wife? Nothing. Okay. Yeah, you don't watch news.

But I watch the news this night. I knew that about you. I've known that about you for many years when we would get to work and I'd be like, so, did you hear about so-and-so? You know what? I changed that. That recently did change because you got like an app. No, not recently.

Over the past year, every day I will read the headlines on my phone. I will read the headlines. When you've been friends with somebody. But I'm not going to turn on the television. When you've been friends with somebody for over 35 years, recently is in the past year, just so you know. Okay, well, I mean, that's not what recently sounds like to everybody else.

Just so you know. So I turned on the news and it was, it's a different experience watching television news than reading about it. And it really, that's when it really hit me. I mean, the newscaster looked straight down the lens and said, we need to come to grips with this.

You need to come to grips with this. This is the new normal for the foreseeable future. We're used to getting what we want when we want it, and that's not going to be the case. Jade, chill out. I think she's getting worked up because she thinks I'm getting worked up because I'm channeling my inner newscaster. What are you barking at? Do you hear Rhett's laundry?

It's okay. And I gathered the kids around, because Christy and I were watching it, and I said, you know what, kids, this is, I just want you to know this is a huge deal. We're gonna be as safe as possible. I gave them reassurance, but then I also said, this is something that you're gonna remember

for the rest of your life. Hey, am I gonna have to send you away? And you know what I mean by that. I just mean go in another room and sit on another comfy couch. The last time I remember hanging on the words of a newscaster was 9-11. And I know that, I think it was the governor of New York,

it may have been thrown around by a bunch of people, that like, this is, this generation's 9-11. In the sense that my experience, all of the questions, all of the fear that came up, all of the just not knowing how to process it and looking for someone or the people who can help make sense of it to give reassurance that there's a plan, that we're going to be okay.

And I distinctly remember that morning at 9-11 just hanging on every word of the newscasters and everyone was trying to figure it out on live television, you know? And again, this was more drawn out than that and it's different in a bunch of ways but there was a kindred experience that then I tried to convey to the kids,

but I just ended up saying, you're going to remember this the rest of your lives, having to hunker down in our homes. And, you know, I didn't make it that bleak and doom and gloom as scared as I was. I didn't want to dump all of that on them, so I didn't make it that bleak and doom and gloom as scared as I was. I didn't want to dump all of that on them, so I didn't do it. Yeah, well, you know, the interesting thing,

I would say two things, kind of where I come from a slightly different place with this. I mean, one, my talk about the, you know, apocalypse, I often talk about it in, you know, I'm joking, I'm going into character and I'm just kinda BSing. But that comes from a place of actual concern that, you know, all our systems are so fragile.

We're seeing that right now. We're seeing that, we were a lot more vulnerable in a lot more ways than anybody, well, I'm gonna say than anybody knew, but actually there's a lot of people who've been saying for years, you know, again, I think people who aren't in America might be a little bit perplexed as to

what they hear coming out of the US and they see on Twitter and they see on the news, it's like, why is there this very bifurcated reaction to what's happening and why does it seem like people of a particular political persuasion seem to think a certain way about a virus? I think that's probably rather perplexing to people from other places in the world.

And there's a lot of reasons that go behind that. But I think that interestingly, we have seen a lot of people saying, "'Hey guys, listen, this is going to happen.'" You see a lot of people saying like, "'Nobody could have been prepared for this.'" Well, actually there's like, there's some excellent books

that have been written about this that basically said that this was completely and totally inevitable, unavoidable, predictable. excellent books that have been written about this that basically said that this was completely and totally inevitable unavoidable predictable they've been telling us for years that uh given how global our society is now and how quickly people travel and how easy it is for a you know a virus to jump from an animal to a person and there'd be no immunity. Anyway, we kind of knew that this was gonna happen. And so I think I kind of had in the many different in-time scenarios that when you watch like Doomsday Preppers

and that kind of thing. And again, I don't think that, we're not in an apocalyptic situation by any means. This is not the end of culture or humanity or anything. This is just a difficult thing that is affecting everybody and that we have to kind of come together and overcome, and we will overcome it. It's just a matter of how long will it take.

But you're the type of person that was familiar with the world of the world going into crisis because you have an interest in it because there's something, because of your personality type, there's something within you that made you read about it. But then there's a second step, it's like, when you would read about these things, you would process them in a way

that led to personal application. Like in, I think it was the GMM episode where you went through all the apocalypse bunker stuff that you had bought and you took me through it. And then you also bought stuff for me, right? And we made a... Which hopefully you still have. I still have.

I haven't had to dig into it yet, but I feel better knowing I have it. So thank you once again. But yeah, I think we represent two different personality types that like... And I think mine's a little bit different, but go ahead. Well, so yeah, this was something that wasn't a surprise to me, right? But the second thing was, we have the news on all the time.

Like it is a, it's kind of like a, we've got the news on in the house like at night a couple, three times a week. I think our kids, our kids get very tired of hearing me and Jesse talk about the news. Whereas with Lando, when I sat him down and we were watching the news that night, it was the first time we had ever watched the news as a family.

And he was, the newscaster was interviewing somebody, and they were getting into it, you know, like they do. It was just like they were trying to cut each other off, and one guy wanted to answer his, say what he wanted to say instead of answer the question, and Lando turned to me and he said, are they angry with each other? Are they fighting?

And I was like, yeah, that's what happens on the news, which was news to him. And it, again, it's like, that's not my vibe, man. It's just like, well, I gotta watch the Australian news. I think that's one of the interesting elements of this thing is that, you know, because the whole world of news,

both online, print, and cable news, everything is driven by ad revenue, right? And so for years, we've gotten into this place where it seems like every time you come back from a break on a cable news program, breaking news, right? And I think when things actually become breaking news, like they have right now, when people actually need to know,

like it's a potential life or death situation, whether or not they get this information, I think people maybe become a little bit numb to like, oh yeah, you guys are panicking about something. I think that's one of the things that's happening in our country, a lot of bit numb to like, oh yeah, you guys are panicking about something. I think that's one of the things that's happening in our country. A lot of people who are like, they're always talking about the latest crisis.

They're always talking about how things are falling apart, but it's like, does it ever really happen? And so I think that people are skeptical of that. You've even got like the Nat Geo shows, like the seven ways that the world will end and let's spend 60 minutes on each one, you know? And that's just not the type of stuff I like to watch. You like to watch that type of stuff

because I don't want to, I would rather think, and on a subconscious level, it's been easy for me to think, you know what, scientists or experts in whatever field it is they have to be alarmist in order to be heard. You've gotta be your own hype man if you want anybody to listen to you. And it was a convenient position subconsciously for me to settle into.

But I will say, turning on the news and experiencing the breaking news for the first time because I was out of that world, I woke up. Like, I mean, I was texting you that night. I was like, what does this mean for our friends, our families, for our company in terms of action we need to take?

You were already talking about that. So I felt like I kind of got on board. So, and then there's people who are, you know, it's had to sink in for everyone in their own time, and that's the difficulty because in the meantime, this virus is moving around. But I think I did get on board, and I think you were like,

was there any part of you that was like, I'll call it a morbid excitement? Like, yes, this is, I mean, I don't wanna frame you here. Maybe that's a nasty question. Well, I think that, I do think, actually I think it's helpful sometimes because I mean, I'll talk in a second about like what I'm actually fearful of

and like what I'm anxious about, like how I've been dealing with that personally. But to me, I find it helpful, like when I'm going through something that would otherwise be fear inducing, to kind of think about, to think about being in the midst of a story that has a happy ending, right?

To think about what role you're playing in this larger adventure of humanity kind of coming together and overcoming this thing. So there is, and I don't wanna talk about it now cause I think there's a whole other podcast and talking about So there is, and I don't wanna talk about it now because I think there's a whole other podcast and talking about why this is, this could ultimately be good for humanity, you know, like experiencing a crisis like this,

and we could talk about all the things that might change and for the better, but I know you've been watching Lord of the Rings as well, right? That's right, yeah. So as a family, you know, everybody in the family has already seen the movies, but That's right, yeah. So as a family, everybody in the family has already seen the movies, but it's been a while. And so far we've just watched

Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. We haven't watched The Return of the King yet. But you had to be thinking the same thing that I was thinking. Multiple times during...

This could be my wreck, but I have another wreck, but I'll make a mid-podcast wreck of watching The Lord of the Rings because first of all, like you said, you remember how much better it is than The Hobbit, right? Like The Hobbit was a great book, but the translation to three movies,

it just didn't, The Lord of the Rings is just, it's my favorite trilogy, okay? That I'm on, this is my favorite trilogy. When I was watching it, I was like, this is better than Star Wars. I like told, and Lily still wanted to fight me. You know I've always thought that. I've always thought it was better than Star Wars.

I know you've always thought that, but like I had forgotten, it was nice to get back into it. I don't weep while watching Star Wars. There's so many moments of just pure joy and sadness. Anyway. Yeah. But there's these things that Frodo and Sam especially and Gandalf, things that Frodo and Sam especially and Gandalf, they kind of say to each other

that are these epic inspirational phrases. There's these conversations that they have where they start realizing, in fact, is it at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring or is it Two Towers where

I think it's in Two Towers where Sam starts talking about are they going to tell stories about us? I think that might be the end of the first movie. Yeah, but it's like, are we gonna be the heroes in the story? And I'm not, and so, I like to think about situations like this,

not like how am I gonna be a hero, but like how are we as a species going to overcome this? And like, what's the story that we're gonna tell? And I hope the story that we tell isn't that we started not trusting one another and we just were completely polarized. Like this is an opportunity to come together. Again, I do think it requires people to actually

sort of digest what the real threat is, and I think that even by the time this podcast comes out, that many more people will be like, oh, okay, this is serious. But yeah, so I do think there's a part of me that feels like- I find myself gleaning lots of hope from watching the movie. It's like the hope that drove Sam and Frodo on their journey

and that drove everyone else to do whatever they could, even when they couldn't help Frodo directly anymore, they could help out their friends. They could help out those that they were with. Yeah. Or they could say, okay, we can't go after them, but we can go after Mary and Pippin, you know, it was, and it hit me at such a,

at a point where I really needed it to just, I don't think I've ever gleaned so much hope from watching a movie that applied directly to, it just kind of fueled my ability to get up the next day and be positive. And I think that's good for us, you know? It's like, that's the kind of stuff that, those are the kind of challenges that we need to face, that we need to come together and face.

I mean, specifically the way that I've kind of been responding to it in terms of how this, the virus kind of taps into my hypochondria. Okay. Has been interesting. And even though, you know, I know from a statistical standpoint, the majority of people who get it won't even know they have it. And then on top of that, a larger majority of people who get it will not require hospitalization, you know, and then within our age group with no underlying health conditions, again, statistically, we're probably going to be okay, even if we contract this thing, even if we could track this thing, right?

But you hear those stories, right? Like I think a lot of the stories that we're hearing, and I think that these are getting more attention because they're surprising. It's like, oh, 31-year-old Olympic gold medalist swimmer just dealt with this for two weeks and is still feeling the effects. Or a 34-year-old dude in LA dies from COVID-19. So there's a part of me that, I mean, of course,

I'm thinking about my parents who are in the higher risk group, your parents, you know, we know a lot of people who are in higher risk groups. And so- Both of my grandmothers. Yeah, you still got grandparents who are alive in their 90s. So thinking about them, but then I start thinking,

do I have a dry cough? You know, I'll start thinking, do my lungs feel funny? Like that's how my hypochondria kind of manifests itself. And I started thinking that, have I contracted this? Am I gonna be one of the statistics? So I kind of get on a little bit of a fear loop. Spiral, spiral. Doing that and then,

and it hasn't helped that I've also, I think, now I already knew I was slightly allergic to dogs, like when I got my allergy test a couple years ago, the only thing that came up was a slight allergy to dogs and cats, but it was like a two out of five or something. COVID-19 does not give you an allergic reaction to dogs. Right, but because I'm now at home with Barbara a lot,

spending a lot of time with Barbara, it's like I've had this drainage and like sore throat that's been going on like two weeks now. And I'm reasonably certain it's just- That it's COVID-19. That's what I thought, even though those are not really symptoms of COVID-19 for most people.

So up until like yesterday when it hit me, I was like, oh, this might be because me and Barbara are having so much quality time, which I've really enjoyed all my quality time with Barbara. I don't know what I'm gonna do about that. I might have to get a better allergy medication. But anyway, so the- You could shave her bald.

I thought you were gonna say something else. And I was gonna say, she's a female dog. Bald. You know where the allergens come from? They come from the scrotum of the dog. The hair on the scrotum. But my wife has the exact opposite issue and she thinks that she's going to give it to someone.

Right? Okay. So I'm worried about getting it. She's worrying about giving it. So, you know. Well that should make you feel better, right? That she's not gonna give it to you. Well I don't think she's worried about giving it to me.

Is she wearing a mask everywhere? No, no. Okay. But as you know, I do have masks because that was one of the things that I had already bought many years ago. But I don't have many, I have like a couple of packages of them, but we actually, because we, you know, you don't need them

unless you're sick, technically. We were gonna have just a couple for ourselves, so it's, you know, if you have an N95 mask, it can offer some protection if it's sealed correctly, which is pretty hard to do with a beard like this. Like if you're gonna go into a grocery store and you wanna be extra safe, it's not gonna hurt to wear a mask.

But, you know, Jessie's like, "'Hey, we need to take these masks to the hospital.'" So she's like already talking to this person on Twitter. This is like three, four days ago. And again, this is two weeks out from when you're gonna see this episode. But in Santa Monica, there was an ER doctor who was already saying, we're running out of masks.

I will drive anywhere in LA to pick them up. I don't care how many you have. And so she was like talking to this person on Twitter, but at the time she kind of had a sore throat and she was like, I just wanna let you know, full disclosure, I have a sore throat. And the woman was like, okay, wait 14 days. Anyway, we're gonna probably give our masks to a hospital

as you should if you have some, if you were one of the people that, like me, had some ahead of time. I think for me, it's, you know, I just, I don't obsess about if I have it or not. I feel like that for over a week now already, we've been isolated. We've been very strict about it. So with every day, I'm gaining more confidence that we're not carrying it and that we're doing everything in our power to protect ourselves and other people at the same time.

So, for me, it's more about channeling my energies into a routine, really routine. Things that I know I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to fill my day with things. I'm going to occupy myself. And, I mean, as we've been developing what our work plan is, that certainly helped, but before we really got on top of that, there were a few days there where it was just like a lot of cleaning, you know? Yesterday, I went in, I always go into my shower, and as I said, in the You're Not Showering Properly GMM episode or whatever it's titled,

we changed the title so much, I will clean the drain of the shower because there's so much freaking hair that gets in there. I don't know how my wife has any on her head anymore, honestly. My shower won't drain unless I clean the hair out of it. And I'm blaming it all on her because she's not currently here. Her and Lily just walked out to take a walk or something. But the way my shower works, it's like this fancy, long, heavy strip of tile.

It's like a one-inch tall, two-inch wide, four-inch deep slab that you have to pull out. Because it looks fancy, right? You can't see the drain, and then the water drains all in it. When you pull out this big freaking rectangular slab, there's one little drain at the end, just one silver dollar drain with like a thing on it. But that whole trough is plastic and it fills up with like soap gunk.

And so here I am for the first time ever, not just cleaning the hair out of the drain, but I'm getting down on all fours and I'm spraying stuff down, I'm grabbing a hand towel and I'm cleaning out the trough of this thing. Felt good. Didn't feel necessary, but it felt very good.

And even though I totally destroyed my hand towel with bleach, it's like a pink mosaic now. That's nice. Yeah, really, it's pretty ugly. We've been doing a lot of cleaning and getting to things that just over time, they, like the area next to my bed, like my bedside table, and then like, I had like stacked books

and electronic equipment and stuff, and then just slowly, and my wife calls it like my corner. Yeah. And she's like, when are you gonna clean the corner? You have one at the office too. And I'm like, well, when I have time. It's not important. It's not important to clean the corner.

Well, the corner is cleaned. The corner is very clean right now. I mean, you could sit in my corner. Take a before and after photo? No, I don't do that kind of thing. I don't need to congratulate myself with pictures. You know what? I'm not gonna take that because it's your loss

that you don't want to stop and celebrate your own accomplishments. I don't wanna become addicted to it. Well, of course that doesn't happen. Who's addicted to cleaning an organization? Exactly. Who finds themselves trapped by their own processes? Right.

No one. The thing that I've been thinking, so we have been, from both personal and professional standpoint, this has been, this has shaken things up, changed things around, right? So, I mean. Completely, really. My heart goes out to the many people whose businesses

just completely stopped because of this, you know? And I understand that that's one of the big national debates happening right now. It's like, okay, well, and we can talk a little bit more about this maybe in a subsequent podcast about like the, you know, weighing the value of the economy versus the number of deaths, which to me seems like sort of a weird thing to weigh. But I understand that like a complete depression, economic depression will harm people and make people, it will lead to ultimately more

death in some way. So it is a factor and I'm sensitive to the people who, you know, they don't have any way to make any money right now. We're in a position where we can still bring content to people, even if it's slightly altered like this. but assuming that the ad market is still going to be somewhat, is going to exist on some level, we still are in a service business that we're offering a service that we think is helpful at this time. And so we're committed to doing it,

but thankfully we're in a position where we can do that and we can keep our employees employed and that kind of thing. And not everybody's in that position. So we recognize that we're in a privileged position to do that, but that is our mentality. Yeah. I think, you know, the conversations we've been having are, I think that the word opportunity comes up a lot. I think, and when we talk to our team, we're trying to

convey that to them as well, that, you know, let as we can, let's be as safe as we can, and then within that context, let's look at the things that we can actually do, the things that we have control over, and let's look for as many opportunities that this extremely challenging and scary situation grants us. Because we can still make videos. It's an opportunity for us to do that. I think the main opportunities are not to capitalize on anything. I mean opportunity in the sense of service, an opportunity to serve our immediate families

because we're spending so much time together. Our friends and loved ones via phone calls and chats, serving our mythical team, some of which we can give work to, others don't have as much to do from home because of the nature of what they were doing at mythical um they there's just little for them to do at home but giving them an assurance that hey we're going to keep putting out content in the most creative way we can in order to continue to support um all of all of our team and to keep them on the payroll, just to be blunt about it.

But also to create content as a way to, an opportunity to serve all the mythical beasts, to serve you. Because, I mean, we're continuously blown away with the opportunity we have to make things that connect with you. We talk about, we come back to it a lot on this podcast, that like, it's an amazing privilege

to be able to create something that's a source of light in your life. And when we all, everybody on earth is experiencing some level of shadow being cast by this virus over their lives, some of them, it feels like a complete eclipse. And if they're a mythical beast, we can give them 15 minutes,

25 minutes with Good Mythical More, every single weekday if we can give them a vlog if we can give them these conversations it's a privilege to be able to do that and it's exciting to know that we can do it it's very engaging

for me to say you know what, I can make this not just for it's not for it's not about the business it's not about the business, it's not about the money, except in supporting our team and our families. And we've talked about this before. But it's about supporting the mythical beast. Yeah, you know, one of the things that we have

just realized over the years is that, you know, we never set out to do anything except create, right? We never, we were, even years ago, we just were like, okay, we're just going to make videos. Oh, there's an audience here. And then people started talking about the effect that the regular content coming into their homes had on them people helping people get through things and again we were i think for many years i always felt really self-conscious and kind of uneasy about that because i was like well that's not what we're that's not what we're trying to that's not what we're trying to do we're just trying to make you laugh but eventually I kind of just accepted the reality that making people laugh is therapeutic, it's good.

It's like, you got to embrace that, that this is helpful. And I think that in a moment like this, when you can't do anything except consume content, for some people you're in a situation where it's like, okay, well I can clean, I can work out, I can take a hike, I can make myself food, but really a lot of us are just consuming content, reading books, listening to podcasts,

watching internet videos, watching movies. And those are, yeah, it's an opportunity. And it's an opportunity that we take very seriously so it's you know we're we're completely committed just like link said we're completely committed to continuing to bring you uh the content that we have always brought you it's going to look a little bit different of course and we'll be talking about how that's going to affect GMM and some other things. And hopefully this is not too long of a period of time and we'll get back to a somewhat normal schedule soon. But our intention is that we recognize that this is something that people kind of count on, especially during this time. And we want to, not just for the sake of our business and our company kind of remaining buoyant,

but also to serve you guys. I mean, kind of the additional thing that I've been thinking is, again, I'm trying to evaluate whether or not, like, what part of this comes from a healthy place and what part comes from my sort of my own personal struggles with being so performance-based, kind of having that mindset of always wanting to do, do, do and finding my self-worth in what I do. You know, I've seen this virus. A lot of people are taking advantage of this time

to not only do things for people, but to do things that are super cool and get them noticed, right? And sometimes I start thinking like, okay, all right, yeah, we've got GMM, that's great, but we've always had that. We've got your biscuits, that's great, but we've always had that.

You know, we've got the Mythical Kitchen stuff that we recently added to the mix and all this stuff. But I start feeling this pressure to be like, but what else could we do? And I think that some of that could be, and I also feel it from a personal standpoint, which is like, oh, you've got all this time on your hands. Well, you know what?

You should like really figure yourself out. You know, this is an opportunity to really accelerate that work you've been doing in therapy. And you need to, like this is when you need to really sit down and figure out what your values are and your goals and all this stuff and the things that you keep putting off, kind of like getting your mind straight about this stuff. And so I felt this sort of intense pressure.

I've actually been overwhelmed by it a couple of times. And I've felt myself like waking up in the middle of night thinking about what am I gonna do? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do to take advantage of this? Not in a like slimy, like get more attention kind of way, but it's just like, you know, being in this sort of desperate, desperate times,

but being in a position where we can bring people stuff, feeling this pressure to be like, and what else could we do? And what else could I do for my, you know, to deal with myself and all the problems that I have? Yeah, I mean, for me, until, like, recording this podcast is a relief for me because I now know that we're wrapping up and

we actually got one in the can and we're able to do it I mean we're gonna record a the first good mythical morning split screen ever in a few hours uh I feel much better but yesterday I was completely overwhelmed setting up all the technical aspects. And I just felt very buried. So I didn't have the margin to think that much about those things. But I definitely understand. I think the, I wanted to read a quote from an article that I think speaks directly to this, and and also hopefully can serve as encouragement to you listening too. I was reading a Washington Post article which came across Twitter, and in that article, which I'm sorry I can't remember what it's called, but there's a rabbi, Rabbi Yosef, was quoted from his Facebook page where he had written to his LA congregation,

but then it was put in the Washington Post article and had an impact on me in terms of my mindset. He said, every hand that we don't shake must become a phone call that we place. Every embrace that we avoid must become a verbal expression that we place. Every embrace that we avoid must become a verbal expression of warmth and concern. Every inch and every foot

that we physically place between ourselves and another must become a thought as to how we might help that other should the need arise. So, yeah, I think that this morning, you know, I was in an effort to keep my routine going and to start my day with some sanity. You know, I've been trying to do my workouts in the garage. And this morning I was halfway through it, and this golden retriever just runs up into my garage. And then it ran back.

I petted the golden retriever. It ran back out. And then this woman who's a neighbor that I see but never talk to is walking by. And I take the earbud out, and we had a conversation. You know, and it was, how are you doing? Yeah, from 10 feet away. And I was like, oh, maybe I shouldn't have touched her dog. I'd only petted once, but I'm not going to sit here and like, love up on a dog.

But we had a, we had, there was, it was a friendly conversation. It was short, but there was an undertone of care that I gave and received that was extremely powerful that I never, and it was simple. It was, this is so surreal, isn't it? Do you have everything you need? It's actually a beautiful morning. And then that was it, you know? But there was a connection that otherwise would never have been made.

And I drew strength from giving that care and also receiving it. And I think it doesn't have to be the big things. It can be those small interactions. I think about all the opportunities that I have within my own home with my family. The amount of time that we're spending together is utterly unprecedented. And there's a lot of pitfalls associated with that. I'm sure we'll get in all that later. We need to wrap up for the sake of uploading this huge freaking file, but I just wanted to leave it at that quote. Yeah, I think, you know,

we're going to see, I think we are seeing, we're seeing the best and the worst in people right now. You know, there are people who are thinking about themselves, um, people hoarding, you know, people buying up things, people price gouging. But I think that the, the majority of people are thinking about their fellow person. And, um, I think I have hope. I have hope that in the end, that this is gonna bring us together, even though we are, especially in this country, divided. Even again, like I said,

even about our perspective on a virus, which the virus has no political affiliation. You know, the virus doesn't care about whether you're in a red state or a blue state, but still, for some reason, we're so polarized in this country that we filter everything through that. We can't hear a piece of news without filtering it through the source.

But I think that this is an unprecedented situation, but it's an unprecedented opportunity to think about what you can do for your fellow human. I would say to love yourself and to love others. Yeah. Okay. I think this went okay. You got a wreck? I think it went well.

You got a wreck though? Yeah, I do. Now, I've been telling you about this. You haven't responded to me about this yet. Oh, I know what you're gonna say. Now, first of all, I will say, you do need to watch Lord of the Rings. Do that.

But- That's clear. You gotta watch Tiger King on Netflix. Everyone's been talking about this. You've probably, many of you have probably already watched it, you've heard about people talking about it. And it's not for everybody, let me just say that. It's not for everybody. It's a documentary.

It's a docu-series about a, not just, one guy, the Tiger King, is just a dude who raises tigers, you know, and like a sketchy situation, like the whole home zoo and exotic animals and that kind of thing. But it's the world of that guy and then other people like him, but it's also kind of a murder mystery.

And so, and it's all real. I watched the first episode last night because you told me to watch it and I was laughing out loud. The first episode, real fresh to me, amazing. There were some hilarious edits. Getting to know him as a character and then it takes some turns and it's like, it's serious.

Oh well. But I've never laughed so hard. You wait for episode two. Episode two, like everything that you thought, like they go a level deeper and you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, that can't be true. They keep peeling, it's like an onion, they keep peeling back layers.

The onion goes down like four more layers on episode two. You gotta watch it, Tiger King. You gotta watch it. On Netflix. It's for me, the thing that I was thinking when I was watching it is I was like, man, we need to find a story like this. Like it was just inspirational for me to think about.

It was like over decades. Yeah, I know. I don't know if he was just utilizing the footage because the guy had a cameraman following forever and then somebody came in and like, anyway. They get into it a little bit. Yeah, I agree. If you can't tell, I agree with the rec.

Okay, so we're gonna be doing this for the foreseeable future from our homes. And let us know what you thought about this conversation and how you're dealing with all this. Hashtag Ear Biscuits. We'll be talking about it. Hashtag Ear Biscuits. We'll be talking about it. Hashtag Ear Biscuits. We'll be speaking at you next week.

Love ya.