Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Celebrating The GMM 2000th Episode | Ear Biscuits Ep.295

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

In celebration of the 2000th episode of GMM, R&L look back at how the show, their fandom, and they themselves have changed throughout the years in this 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

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I'm Rhett.

And I'm Link. This week at the Round Table of Dim Lighting, we're celebrating and we're looking back on 2000 episodes. 2000 years. 2000 episodes of Good Mythical Morning. Now we recently surpassed our 2000th episode of the show. And of course you should watch the 2000th episode because as of the recording of this podcast,

we have yet to record that episode. So technically we don't know if we even made it to 2000. That's true. I mean, something could go wrong between here and now. This is anticipatory. But if it does happen, maybe it'll be emotional. It'll certainly be special. So watch that to get the full experience of 2000 episodes

by watching the 2000th episode. So we wanted to reflect on 2000 episodes through your perspectives and also our perspective as well. So we put the question out on the internet. A lot can change over 2000 episodes. Let us know how you have experienced the evolution of GMM and how you have evolved along with it over the years. You might get a shout out on Ear Biscuits.

We're gonna be shouting out many of you guys. Thanks for all your responses, for following us on Twitter, at Mythical, and using hashtag Ear Biscuits to converse about episodes and to help us know how to talk about this stuff. What's wrong with your phone? I'm just needing to put it on. You're sleeping?

Do not disturb, I get disturbed so much. So I don't wanna, you know, well, I get disturbed twice as much as you. Because you have glasses? Well, I don't understand. I'm just, I'm sensitive to disturbances. Oh. Except when sleeping.

So yeah, so we're gonna read your responses, but then, you know, discuss those, but also kind of talk about how, we were talking about different aspects of the way that you can kind of contemplate the 2000 episodes and the evolution of GMM from your perspective. And then we will then add our perspective and how things have changed for us, our lives,

our perspective on the show, et cetera. But let's look at the present first. I just wanna make sure, are you okay? Cause I know you've been abandoned by your family. Yes, well, before I tell you about how I've been faring by myself, I do wanna remind you. Oh. All the episodes of Ron Stat are out right now.

So a lot of people, as I'm recording this, you know, not all the episodes are out. And what I see is people are like, man, I wish I could get all the episodes. Like I just finished that fifth episode and man, I gotta wait a week. Well, if you've procrastinated, or if you just thought,

I'm just not really into scripted podcasts. I don't like the sound of that. I don't wanna do that. Whatever your voice is when you talk about why you're not listening to Rodstatt, I'm sure it would be annoying to me. What I want you to do now is I want you to go and listen and you can binge the whole daggum thing.

Yeah, because if you don't like it, you can just get it over with. Right. Because you do need to listen to the whole thing, even if you don't like it. So yeah, so check out Rodstatt. Thanks for all the positive responses. Yes, I have been alone for the weekend.

My family is out of town. Well, it was at least three nights, maybe four. It was Thursday through, Thursday night? Yeah. Through, and then I pick lock up from the airport today. Jessie and Shepherd will still be gone for a little bit. But yes, I've been a bachelor. It doesn't make you a bachelor.

You don't become eligible. Did I say eligible bachelor or did I say bachelor? It's kind of redundant, right? Why ever say eligible bachelor? Because sometimes you're just a bachelor who's not eligible. I don't technically know. Okay, that is what you are.

You're an ineligible bachelor. I don't know the technical definition of bachelor. If it means single man, then I'm not a single man, but I lived as a single man for a weekend. And this isn't something that happens quite a bit, very often as a married man. Did you try to contain your excitement as you sent them away?

Oh, well, first of all, they wanted me to go with them because we'll talk about this, I guess next week, we're gonna talk about our respective trips back to North Carolina. Right, because we, I mean, from their perspective, we just took a three week break. Right. But from our perspective. We haven't left for North Carolina yet,

but yet my family was already in North Carolina. Long story, there was an opportunity for me to go back a little bit early. And I mean, things are busy, you know, getting ready for a break. But there's also an opportunity for them to go and a little bit early and I mean, things are busy, you know, getting ready for a break. But there's also an opportunity for them to go and you to not, but you don't. Here's the thing about me.

Do you come out and say that? Yes. Okay, cool, good. I get the sense that you don't feel that you have the freedom to say that and we can talk about that later, but I was very. I'll soft pedal it. I was very clear about when Jessie asked me,

she's like, I'd like you to go. She's like, there's not really anything on the calendar. I was like, well, there's always something on my calendar, baby. It just doesn't always show up. Just meaning that I've always got stuff I wanna work on. Yeah. But second of all, I was like,

I could really use a weekend alone. I'll just be completely honest with you. I could really use a weekend alone. I like being alone. I'm an introvert. And so I could do that every once in a while and just give this to me. She had no problem with that.

She understands. And so let me tell you the thing. Let me start by telling you the things that I didn't do. I did not shower. Didn't shower. I got into the pool. That counts. It does help some, but I didn't like soap up.

You don't want soap in your pool. When you got in the pool, did you scrub your scalp? No, well, first of all, I wash my hair once a week max. Because that is, in fact, you know what? The latest research is that people are just saying, don't wash your hair at all. I mean, get it wet, condition it. Don't put the shampoo in there though.

Really? Yeah. I am doing that though, shampooing once a week. But I didn't do that. But what I did do is, first of all, I got a lot of writing done. Nice. And there were- I love to benefit from-

And I was doing this thing where I was writing and had quite a bit to do. You know, I was like, I don't know what made me think of doing this, but I was like, I'm gonna work out. And write at the same time. And write at the same time. Really?

But not at exactly the same time. What I'm gonna do is because a lot of people say that, I mean, I definitely, I never take more than like, a long workout for me is an hour, right? Yeah. But people who are like getting ready for Marvel roles and like bodybuilders, they work out for like multiple hours a day and they take really long rest breaks between sets because apparently that's a good thing

but practically you just can't do that. But I was like, what if I did like a really long workout where I did like a muscle group and then I went and I wrote and then I went and did another muscle group and then I wrote. See, I was picturing like a dumbbell in one hand and a pen in the other. Well, that's phase two.

Phase one is just doing them interspersed. So I ended up, I worked out on Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. What? Yeah, I mean, now, That is crazy. The total amount of working out was probably an hour, right? Because it was just like,

let's do some bench press. And then it was like, let's go up and let's write another scene. And we'll write another scene. Now when you were doing the bench press, were you thinking about, was the writing continuing in your brain? Yeah, I would go and I would work things out in my mind

and I would like, I would talk out loud to myself and I would be like, okay, but if this happens and this, and then I would go back and I would write a scene. Talk out loud to yourself. And then when you were writing the scene, weren't you grunting as if you were still working out? No.

But let me just tell you, I feel like I'm on the precipice of maybe developing a system. The workout rider. That I could sell. It would be called the get swole, the swole, we had to come up with the tightest, right? Tight, get your body tight while you write. I don't know what, we gotta work on,

we gotta wordsmith that, but it's gonna be a program. There's gonna be DVDs. Work your pecs while you write on specs. There's gonna be DVDs. Going straight to DVD, just like the thing that we're writing. This is like a, well, it's not really a master class. It's more like a, I don't know, master class?

Well, that would, yeah, you would have to, it's based on the idea that the writing is good, which is TBD. And that the workouts render results. Yeah, I think the one thing that doesn't require any skill is just pushing things around. You know what I'm saying? It's just like you get guaranteed results

if you push things hard enough. Lots of technique needed. But I also tried two new sandwiches. And I don't mean like I went and got a recipe for a sandwich. I'm meaning that I was like, well. You can eat whatever you want, you need no one else's input, so you're just gonna get new sandwiches.

Well, the funny thing is, is I had in my mind that I was gonna cook for myself and I was gonna, cause I love to cook, but like with all the working out and all the writing, there's only so much time in the day. So what I decided to do was. Get sandwiches. I'm gonna try that new Burger King chicken sandwich because they got in on the chicken sandwich war.

Are they calling it something? Cha-King. Oh really? The Cha-King, the C-H apostrophe King. And also interestingly, part of their campaign was a little bit of a dig at Chick-fil-A because, I don't know what they, they said something like, a certain portion of the profits from this sandwich

or whatever are going to LGBT causes. Oh. So they basically just like get a little jab to Chick-fil-A, which I appreciated. Can you taste the inclusivity? It's good. I'm just judging the chicken. It's kind of gotten to the point where,

and we had that McDonald's one on the show and everybody was like, you guys didn't have the sauce on it. Yeah, they didn't put much sauce on it at the local McDonald's that we tasted it from. So it wasn't that great. No. But you know, it's basically-

Is it as big as the Popeyes? Is it as breaded as the Popeyes? It is as crunchy as the Popeyes. By the way, I've given up on Popeyes. You can't, I just can't beat the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. You know, social causes just isolated for a second. Right, but I think the argument most people are making is well, okay, maybe they haven't made it taste as good

that there are so many alternatives now that you just don't, you don't have to tempt yourself with it, you know? And I think that- Popeyes has not had the lasting power and I have to assume that Burger King hasn't topped it. Burger King got very close to Popeye's, but they're kind of definitively a different chicken sandwich.

More traditional, like it looks like a pop, it has the same profile as a Popeye's chicken sandwich with the breading. Okay. Of a sauce that comes on it. Pretty big then. It's pretty big, yeah. Pickles and you can get the spicy one, but never get the spicy one when you're testing the sandwich first.

I thought it was good, but I don't find myself thinking I'm gonna go back and get it. What was the other place? Well, I'm using- Taco Bell chicken sandwich? Yeah, actually I'm using the term chicken sandwich loosely because I tried the naked chicken chalupa from Taco Bell, which I don't even know how long that's been out, but I saw a commercial for it.

Naked chicken. It is a taco that has chicken as the shell. And it's not like one of these- So it's like a KFC Double Down, but a taco. Well, the KFC Double Down was literally just two chicken breasts with stuff in between them. Taco Bell has made it- This is one chicken breast doubled on itself with stuff in the middle.

No, this is take chicken, put it in a machine and make a taco shell out of chicken. This isn't like, I mean, I don't even know what you're talking about. You're talking about like taking a breast and like folding it around stuff? Yeah. Taco Bell would never do something like that.

So it's a flat bendable nugget that is circular and then folded over like a shell. No, it is a nugget, nugget-fied taco shell, meaning that it was flat maybe at one point, but when it firmed up in the fryer, it firmed up in a taco shell. Like it holds its own shape. It does not sound good.

Like if I were to take everything out of it, it would just literally be a taco shell that's chicken and other binding agents, I'm thinking. That can't be good. It wasn't bad, but it definitely wasn't, I need to do this again. It was like, okay, that's kind of interesting and it really is, I guess it's for the low carb folk.

But it's got fried stuff on it, so that's not low carb, it's got bread stuff on it. So that's not low carb, it's got breading on it. Gotta say, I wouldn't recommend that necessarily. Cause also just as like a safety, you gotta just the kissing, the chicken quesadilla. Yep, that's a good go too. Always good, it's always good. And I went to the driving range three days in a row.

Okay, that's good. Now this might not sound exciting to you, but this is, I, now. Oh, you mean just standing in one place and hitting golf balls forever? Well, when you're as good at it as I am, it's fun. And the, the, now if you suck at golf, golf is very frustrating, but if you are just grooving it,

let me just say, grooving it to the point where people, a crowd begins to gather. No. Yes. Well hold on, you're telling me that you were just hitting a golf ball off of a tee and people stopped to watch you? Yes. This is not Pac-Man final rounds.

Like it was an exhibition. Okay, now you know me, I'm a big man. I'm tall, I have a big arc, I'm relatively athletic, and I can get some club head speed. And what was happening is, is after three days of practice of hitting a bucket of balls and kind of getting my groove back. Were you drunk redneck celebrating or something?

No, but I did, I had my hat on and my sunglasses on, all my hair coming out the back. So I kind of looked like- Somebody. Maybe I'm like a golfing personality. You know what I'm saying? Like there are guys on the tour that like have that look. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like this is the redneck golfer.

Yeah, yeah. And so listen, I wasn't trying to draw a crowd, but I- You were like step right up and watch me go. But what happened is, is I'm getting all my clubs in my bag, I'm kind of getting straightened out because I'm really trying to get, my back is basically better and I haven't been golfing aggressively for a long time because of my back,

but my back is good right now. And so I'm getting my hip turned. And so I'm hitting, we're at this, I'm not gonna say what range it was, but it's a range where the fence, which is probably 30 or 40 feet high is at. Sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you. Gosh.

I scared the crap out of me. Siri, I wasn't talking to you. I know you're interested in me and my story. Why does she speak so loudly? I don't have any idea what's going on, Siri. You scared me. Shouldn't have said her name again. So just for those of you who know about this stuff

and the 1% of you who do know about this and appreciate it. So this fence is like 250 yards out there, 30 or 40 feet tall. So to get over the fence, you're carrying at least 300, 310, 320 in the air before it hits the ground and begins rolling. I began hitting the ball consistently just over the fence. And then I realized-

They didn't even build the place big enough to contain the redneck energy. And then I realized that a guy is behind me and his buddies come up to him and are like, you ready to go? He's like, and he didn't hear it. He didn't know I was hearing it. He's like, and he didn't hear, he didn't know I was here. And he was like, well, I'm just watching this guy drive.

Oh, God. And you know me. This is not good for you. Once I have an audience, it's like, that's when I begin performing better. Did you acknowledge? The pressure is, no. Did you acknowledge him?

You were like, you played it cool. Like I didn't hear him and I'm not even seeing him. No, no, no, I was like, if this man wants a show, he's gonna get a show. And now his boys have showed up. And now all three of them are standing there. And then I was like, well this man wants a show, he's gonna get a show and now his boys have showed up and now all three of them are standing there and then I was like, well, you guys want it, you're gonna get it and it was just like,

bam, bam, bam, over the fence, over the fence, and then I was like, well, I mean, they were into the driver, let's see what they think about the 7-iron and it was just like, and they were just. They stayed there for that long? Yeah, and then the guy was like, I would hit it and it was like coming off.

I mean, I was grooving. It was coming off of the club face. It makes a great sound. And he was just like, damn. This is getting gross. Like, I mean, did they put dollar bills in your waistband? Here's the thing. If you play golf and you know the mechanics of golf,

you know how satisfying it is when it's working and how satisfying it is to watch it work. So again, I'm talking to the 1% of you who care about this. I'm really focusing on you right now. Did he like, he wasn't like biting his lip, was he? Well, I didn't make eye contact with him. I was just listening to him. I never turned around to acknowledge him.

Did he ever ask you if he could mount one of his balls on your tee? I think he just wanted a lesson. But I was prepared to be like, hey man, I don't teach, I just demonstrate. Anyway, I mean, I'm- Hey, that's a T-shirt. I mean, wear that T-shirt to your Topgolf session.

I don't wanna build it up too much, but it was- At least Topgolf has a frigging, has targets to hit. Well, I was picking targets. That sign, that sign, over the fence. Were you pointing? Mm-mm. Can't do that. You can't Babe Ruth it out there, no.

He would know that you were watching. You never had a conversation. You never acknowledged the audience. No, because I wanted to be in the zone and I was in the zone, I didn't wanna be broken out of it. That's funny. See, I had a great weekend. I mean, what I realize is that-

What if something would have gone wrong? Like if you would have fallen or like, you would have pulled something, and then like they're watching, you'd had to, you would have acted like nothing would have happened. No, I would have asked for help. Help me, help me out. But I just had a glimpse of what, you know,

I've been married for 20 years and what my life would have been like if I had never gotten married. It would be no showering, lots of golf. Ineligible dirty bachelor. Eating a lot of fast food and working out and writing and having basically no day or night rhythm. It was like nothing is, it's just what happens happens.

It's probably not sustainable. Okay. But it was a hell of a weekend. Wow, I had the worst weekend ever. Why? I ended the weekend with you celebrating Lily. That was fine. Well, that was great.

It was fine that you were there. No, it was great. It was fine that you were there. No, it was great. It was a horrible weekend because our internet went down, which means our lives were grinded to a halt. No ability to communicate at our home because our cell phones only work through our internet because we have no cell service at our house. So we were cut off from society.

It was like we were camping, but we couldn't even start have a fire. It was bad. Yeah, that sucks, man. It was bad. You could have come to my house. I have lots of internet. And I mean, there's a lot of room too.

Multiple rooms. I thought about it. I mean, we went to the creative house one night just to watch something. You know what, the creative house is a good backup for internet. Yeah. And maybe like the apocalypse.

So I'm glad you had a good time and I left you to it. I was in misery. Internetless misery. Yeah, I don't know how you did it. Shop Best Buy's ultimate smartphone sale today. Get a Best Buy gift card of up to $200 on select phone activations with major carriers. Visit your nearest Best Buy store today. Terms and conditions apply.

Okay, let's talk about GMM. 2000 episodes. We're gonna read through a number of responses and instead of going through and commenting on each one, we kind of have grouped them into a few categories and we'll just kind of go through and let y'all speak and then speak to it. Let's start with Allie.

She said, when I started watching GMM, I was barely nine. Now I'm almost 17, driving, I have a job, I'm going into my junior year of high school and I've made leaps and bounds when it comes to my mental and emotional health. Rhett, Link and GMM are a huge part of that and I am so grateful. You wanna alternate?

Hit the next one. Yeah. Sammy Foxx. I started watching when I was 12 or 13 with my dad in the mornings before school. Now I'm 22, about to graduate with a degree in anthropology. What?

And I watch GMM and GMM more every morning. My personality has definitely been shaped by GMM. I love this. Elizabeth Tolbert said, when my husband and I started watching GMM, we were just dating as freshmen in college. Now, eight years later, we're married and we watch it every night after work.

Woo-hoo! Jackson Melvin, I've gone through puberty. That's it, that's all he said? It was a reply to us, otherwise it would just be like a very profound update. It's like he just discovered it. Update, I've gone through puberty. I've made it through to the other side.

I'm still waiting for that to happen. To have them fully drop? I mean, sometimes I'll get a zit and I'm like, is this still residual puberty? No, it's not. Okay, good. Bohemian Maiden of Mythicality said, 11 years ago, I was an awkward youth watching after school

and now I'm a slightly less awkward adult who shares GMM with my three-year-old son. He has apraxia of speech and makes the ASL signs R and L for Rhett and Link whenever he sees the YouTube logo on the TV. It's something magical to have created something so enduring and stable yet ever evolving and growing, which we'll talk more about later.

I hope to teach my son to emulate that in his own life. Congrats on achieving it. Thanks, Bohemian Made Mysticality. Richard Lonsdale. When I started watching GMM, I had short hair, clean shaven, was in my 40s, and hardly anyone had ever heard of my former job. I now have long hair, long beard, in my 50s,

and everyone is a virologist, except me. And then his next tweet was, I started watching in early February 2020. Wait, what? Okay. So basically he- So he was in his 40s, he was like 49. Yeah, now he's in his 50s. And then he turned 50, but his hair grew out.

His look totally changed because of the pandemic. He did the pandemic haircut thing. This is more of a pandemic change than like an evolution while watching GMO. I think I've actually seen Richard tweet some things about, he's a good, if I'm not mistaken, because he is an actual virologist. Former virologist?

No, he is a virologist. Oh. He's not former. He's just saying basically everyone is now. He's not currently working in it. No, I think it's a joke. Oh. Everyone thinks they're an expert on this, except for the guy who is the expert.

No, he said, have you ever heard of my former job? Oh, former job, you're right, okay, well, yeah, but everyone does think that they're a virologist, but thank you, Richard. Virologist. Yeah, however you say it. Robin tweeted, I've been watching y'all since 2015 and you raised me when no one in real life was.

I'm now 18 and just graduated, living on my own and still wake up and watch y'all every day. You are also the only reason I have Twitter. Oh, well, I guess we're the only ones reading this. Assume you don't have anybody following you. Maybe you have people following you. I don't know. Let's leave that out of it, Robin.

Leah, began watching daily in 2013 when I had two children, age two and three. In the time since then, I've gotten married, adopted four cats, had another child, and the oldest, who was born the same day as Lando, is now heading to middle school. Wow. It is so crazy to hear these responses of people

and how much their life circumstances changes, how much they changed as people. Going from being in grade school, weathering middle school to be in high school, going from being in school to graduating high school, going off to college, like dating, getting married. I mean, at the top of the year, we're gonna celebrate, it'll be the 10 year anniversary

of Good Mythical Morning. So we're at like nine and a half years to get to 2000 episodes. And it's quite a phenomenon that, being on the inside of it, like from our point of view, like looking out at this, it's so nice to hear because I just, you know, and it's nice to stop and celebrate in this way and think about how much has changed,

how much people go through. I mean, you talk about puberty, people sitting there watching and becoming adults. Well, that's the thing that's so interesting to me. And again, very little of what we've done has, I mean, a lot has been strategic, but a lot has just been what we thought we wanted to do, right, when it came to the show

and the direction of the show. But it's, when everybody asks us like, okay, well, who's the show for? And we never have a real great answer for that because we're like, the audience is very broad and that seems like a cop out when we say, well, sometimes the family will come up to us and we don't know who's a bigger fan,

the kid or the parent. And the funny thing is, is in so many of your answers and lots of ones that we just read, there's something very cool and I'm not taking credit for it. I'm saying it's just, we kind of stumbled into it that we created a show that you could grow up watching and not feel like you were growing out of it.

That you could transition from a child to an adult. You could transition from a student to a spouse and still call it a part of your daily routine. And that is, it's just really cool to see. And I mean, when we started the show, again, it was after we moved out here to LA, we had all of our kids, but we were starting a new career and we were like, I mean, we started,

we did the television show and then we kind of relaunched our YouTube career with Good Mythical Morning as like a big part of that. But I mean, we've changed a lot as well, even though we were already married and in parents and you know, but the kids were so young and now, you know, the first few episodes, well, the first few seasons,

we would have all these stories about our lives, like learning to live in Los Angeles, taking these kids to play dates in the park and like the stories from Christy and Jesse and everything that they were going through. It's like, we were sharing where we were in our lives at that point with GMM being so conversational. And then, I mean, a lot of the conversation

has shifted to Ear Biscuits, but so much has changed about us. I mean, look how much older I've gotten. Look at this gray hair. You know, it was, I think the reason when we were committed to developing an audience on YouTube at that time, I think our instincts said, we have to reach a younger audience.

And we had been doing that since the beginning of YouTube. We were always older than everybody else, give or take. We were always the old guys. Who was getting traction on YouTube and developing an audience. So we knew we had to reach people younger than us and really embrace that side of ourselves. Well, and I think there was a time and I don't,

there was a few conversations about this. And I think a lot of it was precipitated by you deciding to stop dying your hair. Which was relatively late in the GMM. So when we had conversations with people, what we noticed, especially when we had like conversations with people who might be considering another project or like somebody who was in marketing,

maybe brand that we were gonna work with, whenever we told them how old we were, they were like, what? They always thought. We were younger than we were. We were probably in our 20s. Even when we were in our late 30s, they thought we were in our 20s.

And we felt like that was an advantage to work on YouTube. Yeah, we were like, well, okay, we gotta work on YouTube. We gotta hold onto that. But then there was a, what, you know, as the relationship developed between us and you guys and the way that sort of entertainment and especially, you know, social media

and YouTuber relationships with fans have evolved and it's become much more of like a family and there's much stronger connection than there was when we started. We just started seeing the way people would talk about us as dads, often like making fun of us, whether it was dad humor or you guys are my internet dads. We were not hiding our age as well

as maybe we thought we had to in order to be as successful as we were. Yeah, and again, maybe that's not as much of a key. It wasn't as, again, I don't wanna overstate, it wasn't like, oh, we can't let them know how old we are. Like we were fine to tell you how old we were. We just thought that if you thought that we were younger, then that was probably an advantage.

And I think there's been a shift. Especially the gray hair thing. Yeah, that decision point, I mean, I think there's been a shift. Especially the gray hair thing. Yeah, that decision point, I mean, I think we did have this discussion, but it was kind of like, come on, who are we kidding by that point? It's like, I can't carry on with this dye job. And I think it looks horrible.

I didn't think it looked bad at the time, but of course, looking back, it's very dark. I just cringe. I did it myself. Yeah, yeah. And I would, looking back, it's very dark. I just cringe. I did it myself. Yeah, yeah. And I would get crazy. We always did our own hair for some reason. There was a couple of times,

like maybe four times that I went to a shop. I went to a real trendy Silver Lake stylist and he colored my hair. Did he tell you like, you've been doing it just for men and like why? He was a soft spoken dude, very nice. And he didn't, you know, he wasn't too opinionated. But I had confidence.

Like he's the guy who gave me my new haircut. Oh, okay. Like this was before we met Anna. Right. Who helps shape our quaffs now. So yeah, he cut my hair. It was at the place was called the Fox Tail, I'm pretty sure.

Something like that. It's got a tail and a fox in the title. So I trusted him cause he's the one who like gave me my new hairstyle. Boy, that was, I mean, that was a big risk. Cause it was like, I need to get rid of this boyish hairstyle. But then when I was like, you know what?

I'm tired of coloring my hair myself. You can do a better job than me. Then I realized I just didn't like sitting there and people walking in and out and seeing me getting my hair colored. Like that was, I just didn't like that experience. Like that's why I wanted to do it at home. But yeah, once it was like, I can't keep this up.

It's going to have to change. And then we had the conversation, it's like, who are we kidding anyway? I mean, it's like, this is actually being more of myself. I need to embrace this. And it's not going to impact. Are people watching because they think we're younger than we are? Because if they are, if we're holding on to that, then that will go away.

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... Animal Bay! Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. 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. Yeah, it's like we need to rip that bandaid off. Well, because you talk about your hair, which I mean, you know, is obviously different, but definitely, especially as we've gone back for the Mythical Society and we've done these react

to the early videos, I don't know when it was, but for the longest time, if I went back and watched an early Rhett and Link video, I kind of was like, I basically look the same, but my hair has changed. But over the past three or four years, every time I go back, I'm like, man, I was a baby. Like, I don't know. Your face was younger.

I can't tell you what has changed about my face. I couldn't specifically point it out, but I'm like, that face is young and this face is old. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you begin to, and I think that we'll talk about this later as we're gonna hear from you guys about how your, you know, the show has been a part of your life change,

not just in the stage of life, but it's just who you are. Well, so we'll talk about that personally. But like you said, I think that one of the cool things that's happened over time is just us embracing who we are. So part of it is, yeah, I'm 43. I'm gonna be 44 in the fall. And that's who we are. We are dads.

We literally were dads when we started, but we could be a lot of your dads. And that's kind of part of it, I think. Yeah, I definitely remember that, I always had this fear that like, when is this success gonna run out? And if there's anything I can control to prevent it from petering out, I wanna do that.

And it wasn't that I thought that people thought we were young, but I didn't know for sure. I was like, if they, you know- This is one of the factors. If my hair goes totally white, it's like, what? Why would you watch that guy? Mm-hmm. It's, you know, I was just, I was like,

I don't know if this is gonna be a factor. Well, we'll find out. We'll find out, yeah, that's right. But I'm just glad that we have such a wide range of people watching because we stopped just catering to a younger audience. And as we talk about the evolution of the show, we became more, we came into more of our own,

we came into more of ourselves completely. And I think YouTube started to gain more, older people would watch YouTube. People who were more of our contemporaries, you know, would go to YouTube for different things and discover our show and realize that, hey, this can be for me if I'm, you know, if I have kids, if I'm older, if I'm, you know,

if I'm retired, if I'm a retired virologist. And the funny thing is, is now YouTube as a medium feels kind of old. Like, you know what I'm saying? Compared to, okay, TikTok, right? And so it's funny how quickly things, I don't mean, I don't think YouTube's going anywhere, but as a medium, it feels like this is kind of a,

this is sort of a young adult and older person's thing. Now, you know? Well, let's talk about the show though and how the show has changed in your eyes. Christy Scarpetta, GMM's evolution from three men, she's talking about Jason who was our first editor in your garage in your backyard. Three men in a garage, that evolution

to a multi-dimensional show that still embodies the same ethos is unique. As a mythical beast, I recognize the similarities in my life. I've had to adjust, develop, or start over, but my core remains unchanged. GMM's adaptability with stability is wonderful. Wow, this is like kind of a mission statement

that we've not really articulated, but thank you and I think it's Kirstie. Oh yeah, sorry, Kirstie. I called you Kirstie, Kirstie. Mumshkin Joy. I've been with you guys for six or seven years now. I've enjoyed watching the channels grow. Seeing the crew getting more involved

with the various channels and the interactions with you guys and each other is beautiful. You build a wonderful family. Here's to another 2,000. I mean, there is a sense of the family, the people that make the show, there is this family of faces. Some, I mean, they definitely change over time

in the way that families do, I guess. But I think that's one of the biggest, that's one of the biggest transformations of the show in I think the reason that the show is still going on, frankly, is going from three guys in a garage coming up with everything to the amazing team that we have right now that enables us to step in and be a part of the show in the way that we are now.

Like I can just guarantee you that the show would be finished if we were still trying to do it the same way. Yeah, we couldn't have shouldered that burden. Never, not in a million years. Samantha at Diznerd13, I've been a fan for about a year. Found you guys in a time I definitely needed some laughter. I started watching everything from Good Morning Chia Lincoln through to the current episodes.

So I've seen the evolution happen very quickly. It's been amazing to see how you have grown as performers and how the games have evolved. Yeah, that's an interesting dynamic. It's like if you're a longtime fan, you've experienced the evolution slowly, more like we have, sometimes it's harder to see, but so many people all along the way have then gone back

and then had this accelerated binge watching that's like, it's like, I mean, people make time lapses, but when you're catching up just from last year and you're going all the way back to Chia Lincoln, I mean, that's, actually, I think that's what the next commenter kind of fleshes out even more. Yeah. LTN's fridge. LTN's Samsung Smart Fridge.

Is it, what is it? You've got a Samsung sponsorship in your Twitter handle? I believe that this could be a Samsung smart fridge that has gone sentient. Oh. And is now a fan. Okay, so. We accept you.

We will proceed with caution. Three years ago when I decided to click on Will It Donut, I liked it so much that I wanted to start from the beginning so that entire summer and throughout half of the next school year, I binge-watched all the seasons. So I got to see how you and the show changed, whether that's waiting for Link's new haircut. Yeah, knowing it was gonna come.

Yeah, seeing the change to the expanded format and back, seeing Rhett's hair get longer and longer, and my favorite part was waiting for the new intros to see my progress to catching up. Overall, this show changed my morning routine for the better. I can look forward to the new GMM and GMM more episodes instead of dreading going to school. I got the sense of being a part of something bigger

as I became a mythical beast. I was so excited to see you live. My life was changed all because I saw a pink donut in a thumbnail. Gotta love that thumbnail. Yeah, we welcome all appliances. Right, yeah. Into the world of mythicality.

Appliances don't care how old you look. That's right. You know what I'm saying? Maybe that's the future of the show. It's just a bunch of AI watching it. Yeah, I mean, I can only liken it to when I discover somebody, a musician or a band, and then you realize that they've got eight albums.

Maybe one day, you know, it's like, I know that Elvis is waiting for me if I wanna become a fan one day. You know, and it's gonna be quite an experience if I wanted to do that. I've never done that with Elvis. I don't know if I will, honestly. The thing is is that you're more familiar with Elvis

than you realize. You probably have heard any song that you think, you've heard them all. But I think that's how people who aren't mythical beasts think about Good Mythical Morning. It's like, oh, I've seen the thumbnails. I have an idea of what that's like. Are you saying that we're like Elvis?

I like this analogy. And then, but when you dig into it, you're like, oh, there's a lot more here to this experience than what I thought. I think I would find that from Elvis. And especially because you have this whole body of work and you can have that time lapse experience. But Elvis died on the toilet

and I don't want that to happen to you or me. While working out and writing? Yeah, Ren Frost, to wrap up this section, "'I wasn't there in the beginning, "'but it has been part of my daily routine for years now. "'I like how the boys have become more comfortable "'with themselves and it has allowed me "'to become more comfortable with who I am.

Ren, thanks for saying that. You know, the show would not be going on if it wasn't for the crew, for the reasons that you said, but there's also this beauty that like utilizing and platforming their talents frees us up to be free. And I think that, you know, the thing that we've learned over the course of internet tainting is how valuable being yourself

and really putting yourself out there and inviting connection in that way for people to relate to you and know that you're being real. It's something that I think we've, I think we were slower to evolve on that front than a lot of other successful YouTubers because we were so focused on what it was we were creating early on.

And then we made a strategic decision with Chia Lincoln and Good Mythical Morning to platform our friendship and our conversations. But we still cordoned off the things that we would talk about. And I think the way that we would talk about those things where there was a lot of areas of our lives, even though we shared a lot of personal stories,

that it was still very filtered and presented. And I mean, I look at us now, and the things that we talk about here on Ear Biscuits, it's just like, this is just what, I'm gonna tell you what happened. My filter is a lot lower. Christy still gets on me. She was like, you don't have to share everything

with recent episodes. But it's just trying to find out, I just like, I enjoy the freedom of being more myself. And a lot of that, I think because of Ear Biscuits has made its way back into Good Mythical Morning, especially because of the way the team sets up the episodes where we don't have to plan something to deliver or to produce or engineer results.

So we're more in a reaction mode and a being ourselves mode and not a producer mode. Cause when you try to get into that producer mode and you're thinking about the way this is being presented, you're just not as engaged and you're not as funny and that's not as fun to watch. But yeah, I think that, I mean, we talked a lot about this when we got ready to tell our deconstruction stories, right?

When we, there was this massive part of ourselves that we had kept from you that we sort of, once we opened that up, it was such a massive part of who we were and I think it kind of relates to the way that we presented ourselves, right? You go back to the beginning of the show, so 2012, You go back to the beginning of the show, so 2012, you know, we were one year into being in LA, really like six months into being in LA.

From a spiritual standpoint, where I was at at that point was I basically had a full on crisis of faith, right? But I was still calling myself a Christian and still kind of believing that there was something in the sort of broken down pieces of my faith that I could assemble into something. I was still going to church, still call myself Christian, that kind of thing.

Still had certain beliefs about Jesus. But a lot, it was super shaky. But you can speak to where you were at, but you were going to church as well. Yeah, I would say I was in a very similar place. It wasn't the type of place that you wanted to process that publicly. Right.

Especially having never processed any of it publicly before then. It was like, that's the last point. The internet was a very, very different place 10 years ago. Meaning that there's very few people who were talking that openly about what they thought about everything. It's like now everybody tells you

what they think about everything and you're almost expected to say what you think about everything, very different time. But we kind of opened up this personal window into like our stories and our friendship, but we were still in this kind of, the default is to make this family friendly. Like now the interesting thing,

cause we've talked about this, and I think what we've said in the past is we're like, the show evolved in terms of its rating, in terms of its family friendliness, and over the years it's gotten less family friendly, whatever that particular term means to you. And I think that the thing that we've said in the past is this is related to the fact that our kids have been

growing up with the show, and so our standards have changed. I think, I don't remember, but I would venture to guess that I was the one that articulated it this way, because I felt like we needed an explanation. And I felt like for me, at least, this was a true, but still partial explanation that I gave at the time, which was,

as my kids get older, I think there's a parallel with the show aging up along with our kids. Cause I think about like, I want them to be able to watch it and it be the type of thing that I'm comfortable with the things that I'm saying and the things that we're doing and the angles we're taking, the jokes we're making

that I can watch it with my family. And as my family gets older, then those standards start to loosen. And I'm not saying it's not that it's- I described it that way and I left it at that. And it's not that it isn't true. I mean, for me, it's not really true because I've always let my kids kind of watch

whatever they wanted to watch, even from a pretty young age. And so they were already experiencing and watching things that definitely went beyond the line that GMM even goes across today when they were younger. So there was an incongruity there for me. And also one of the things we've, I don't think we've ever shared this,

but like, you know, even when we were Christians, even when we were like neck deep in evangelicalism, our personal unfiltered conversation with each other was I say 90 to 95% identical to what it is now in terms of how much we curse. Yeah. We've cursed our entire lives. There wasn't a time in which in my private life

with my best friends and with my wife where I didn't curse, right? And even in front of my kids quite a bit. Like that's just how I have always talked. And I never thought that cursing was some like sign of faith but we had just this idea that- I was a little more conservative than you, but yeah, it was the type of thing that,

so that evolution, it wasn't like whenever our beliefs started to change that we got more loose-lipped, that, so that evolution, it wasn't like whenever our beliefs started to change that we got more loose-lipped, we cursed more, no, it's like- And also with innuendo, which I think that, we still don't curse on GMM, and the reason we don't curse on GMM is because if you do curse, even if you curse and bleep it, you automatically get put

into a different category on the platform, and you don't get served to as many people. So you don't get as many views and our business doesn't work the same. So we're gonna continue to be family friendly. But when it comes to the innuendo, the jokes that go over the kids, we've always been super innuendo heavy in our just conversations with each other.

Personally. Personally. Absolutely, yeah. I think what you're seeing on GMM now is how we would always joke amongst the, you know, just privately amongst friends. But now, I mean, like Wren was saying, we're more comfortable being ourselves on camera.

And so that's, you know, a more honest reaction might sometimes elicit a shit that then I think they had to cut around a few times because like, we're actually so comfortable behind the desk and not just in Good Mythical More, but especially in Good Mythical More that we're just, we're reflecting who we've always been in that way. So it's not an, but it is, so it's just an evolution

of how we're presenting ourselves that. It's more of a opening the door to who we've always been in that way. Yeah. So it's just an evolution of how we're presenting ourselves that- It's more of a opening the door to who we really are more than it is to changing. And the funny thing is when you see it from the outside and also you kind of know our story, you're like, oh, these guys left the faith and they've gotten more and more crass. It's like, well, I've always been crass.

It's just, nah, I just don't think that it matters that you know that. But what I will say, just in case you're getting like, are you guys gonna keep pushing things? Like, I feel like where we've gotten on Good Mythical Morning is, it's honestly, it's about as far as you can go before you begin getting categorized differently. And so I think that we have no desire to go any further.

I think that there's the right amount of innuendo. On Good Mythical Morning and Good Mythical More. But maybe there's an opportunity in other venues for that. And that's intriguing. But yeah, for GMM, I think we're, I mean, we dance a little bit around this line and like sometimes we're still pulling back. We're not just pushing, pushing, pushing.

There's some, we're pulling back from some things. It's like, you know what? Some jokes just end up being distasteful. We're not trying to provoke. Like, okay, that butt chugging joke thing was like, okay, if I had to do that over, I wouldn't do that again because it was, okay, we can pull back. But we're open to trying things because it's more,

we're just comfortable being more of ourselves and sometimes pushing some stuff. And that might mean that some people are less comfortable with coming in at this current season and letting their kids watch with them. But our desire is that for most people who kinda let their kids watch like PG-13 movies or whatever, you're gonna be able to let your kids watch.

We're not trying to make GMM an adult show. GMM is, it is a family show, but when I say family show, what I mean is that no matter what part of the family you are, the child, the parent, the grandparent, there's something that you can connect with. You can enjoy it. Yeah. And if you were to be offended,

you're too young to be offended. Right. Or you're getting a little bit of an education. Right, that's our role. Realizing something you need to figure out. But I mean, I think the biggest evolution is just because of Ear Biscuits, it's kind of had this retroactive impact on the show.

And also realizing that it resonates with people. You know, and I think as we get into more user comments, that becomes clear. So a generally distanced Rennie Mae at loudspeaker. I found GMM in the few months following the breakup of my first serious relationship. I was, it was a confusing time

because a lot of who I perceived myself to be stemmed from who my ex was. So when we parted, it felt like I wasn't allowed to be myself anymore. GMM was the first thing I really enjoyed that was my own. It taught me that it was okay to be weird and that I was allowed to like whatever the heck I wanted to like, that being myself was absolutely fine.

It led me to find other things and people that I really enjoyed. Further to that, seeing GMM go through its many formats taught me that it's fine to try and fail so long as you're moving towards something better. These days I'm happier and by no means perfect, but I like to think I'm constantly moving towards something better.

Thank you for that. That was a three tweeter. From Mythical Peach. I started watching in 2018. I was on disability leave because my anxiety had worsened. I was so depressed. My daughter suggested I watch GMM to give me something to smile at.

It worked. I immersed myself in all things mythical and life started to have color. Fast forward three years and I'm at a fabulous job doing wonderfully, watching every mythical thing I can get my hands on. I credit Rhett and Link with turning my life around by showing me daily the funny, weird,

uniqueness that is them. Love you guys. Well, listen, I appreciate the compliment, but I'm not gonna take that credit. We're gonna give that credit to you for the changes that you've made in your life, but we are glad that GMM was a part of it and that we were along for the ride.

Yeah, that's awesome. V slash Robin said, "'I first described when I was 16 or 17 years old "'and this month I turned 23. In that time, I have gone from hating myself, realizing I wasn't straight and gender binary, sad all the time with no clue for my future, to a job I love, knowing I'm a non-binary lesbian,

loving myself and working out, understanding my mental health issues and helping them overall being happier and better. The darkest times were when I was 18 or 19 at uni when I had insomnia, anxiety, and possible depression with no effort to even watch YouTube. I refound GMM last year and it's my daily positivity dose. V slash Robin, yes, thank you.

Joe, Minnesota Joe that is. I am more honest about who I am now, especially in the last 18 months in the deconstruction episodes. I no longer feel like I failed my family or am a bad person just because I didn't fit their definition of good? In good times and bad, I've looked to the GMM family

to share in celebration and in mourning. I lost my best friend this year to COVID and felt so alone. The daily episodes kept me going through those first few weeks. It was my version of putting one foot in front of the other. Joe, thanks for sharing that. I'm sorry for your loss of your best friend. Yeah, it's just, I mean, we get a lot of messages,

we hear from a lot of fans and over the years, especially when we were touring too, but to know that what we make is such an integral part of people moving forward with their lives whenever they encounter resistance or hardship or bottom out for one reason or another. Never could have imagined. Just a couple more and then we'll unpack some of this.

EM, EmmaBowl93, I've learned to be more confident in myself as we have all grown to love each other and you guys in this community. I found it really impactful that self-love was a prominent feature. I've learned that what I wear, how I act, and what I do is an integral part of my personality. And it's very encouraging for me when expression

in all senses of the word is included in an episode of GMM. And hey, just yourself be if weird is you, and that's pretty cool. Thank you, Emma. And finally, Nina Nifek. Over the years, GMM helped me through a breakup, then college, then surgery, graduation, changing friendships, therapy,

and self-acceptance. As the mythical experience moved forward, I grew stronger, wiser, and happier, and GMM connected me to the mythical hive mind. Got a little creepy there at the end. Again, that's that refrigerator talking. No, but this is, you know, I think when we started this, we said that thing the very beginning,

the very first episode, you know, we want this to be something for you. We want this to be a part of your daily routine. Part of that was just good marketing. You know, it was just like, we want you to see this in this way because we're gonna keep giving it to you, we're gonna give it to you the same time every day.

So many decisions that we made, again, they were made because we just kind of figured, seems like something that's not happening on YouTube is a reliable show. Like people are getting content, some people are doing it daily, but you don't know when it's gonna upload, you have to go to their Twitter to see when them say,

oh, 17 more minutes and it's gonna be up. We were like- Reliable. Can we make something that is dependent in the same way that you can tune into a television show that you like? So let's upload this thing at 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time every single day without exception,

unless there's some crazy technical problem and it's only happened a few times out of 2000 episodes. Right. Let's talk to the audience as an individual for the most part, right? We're talking to you. We're a certain distance from the camera. Like we made a very conscious choice to be like,

this camera, I don't know what the, I think we use like a, we use a lens that is, that kind of approximates a human field of view. Now we haven't really talked about this before and it wasn't super intentional, but it was something that was kind of behind our intentions and sort of a gut instinct that we want this to feel

like you're sitting across from two people. Now when you watch a typical television show, when you watch a newscast, if you've ever been in a studio where they're making a television show, and this was the case when we shot Online Nation, we're like, why is the camera so far away? Like, why is the camera 30 to 40 feet away

sometimes on Online Nation? Well, that's because, I mean, for the newscaster thing, you know how would you meet the newscasters at the state fair? I mean, I'd wait in line to meet Greg Fischel, the meteorologist, I'd wait an hour to meet that guy, multiple years in a row. And then you get up there and you're like,

I'm close enough to shake his hand and that's too close to a meteorologist. Right. That's too close to an anchor. But we were like, listen- You know, it's like, I don't want you speaking the news at my face at a point where I feel like I could smell your breath.

But the framing and all that was very intentional. But again, it wasn't this strategy where it was just like, this is gonna get people to connect with this show in a way that they're going to in 20 seasons from now, gonna write about it in this way that the show has been with them through these transitions. We never knew. None of that was intentional. We never knew that Good Mythical Morning

would be a life resource for people and that it would be a source of comfort. And if you were to go back in time to the 2012 version of Rhett and Link again, you gotta contextualize this with where we were at spiritually, which is very much still believing that there was a lot of hope for us

kind of reconstructing our Christian worldview and still seeing ourselves, for lack of a better word, as like an ambassador for Jesus, right? I didn't know how it was gonna happen and I didn't know what I believed, but I still had this hope that I was like, I'm still in this position, I've been given this platform. And again, we never like talked about spiritual things

in like an evangelical way, like trying to change people's minds about their faith, but we still saw ourselves as like maybe being in the traditional Christian understanding, a light, right, in that way, in a very particular way, right, like standing up for Jesus and God's word and that kind of thing. And if he honestly, if you were to read some of these comments and people are like-

If you were to travel back in time and read us those comments when we started Good Mythical Morning. You guys helped me with my transition. Now I'm comfortable with the fact that I'm not straight and that kind of thing. We would have been like, what is going to happen? Like, what is this show going to become?

Are we like, is this show gonna become like the modern day version of Sally Jesse Raphael or something like that? I didn't know. Dr. Phil and his brother Phil. Yeah, I would not have known how to predict what the show would become hearing people talk about it in this way, obviously.

You know what, you could have sent us emails, like these emails are from the future and it could have just been like, you know, you helped me figure out who my real father is. Like you helped me resolve my paternity issues and then we realized that- Maury Poe. No, this is just, our show became Maury?

It's like that, it could have gone that way, apparently, like that's how drastic things have developed. And if you had said no, the reality is, is that you're still, let me show you an episode from the year 2021, and you would see like, again, you like communicating the fact that you were literally ingesting ramen noodles up your butthole.

Yeah, how is this bringing good into the world? How is this edifying people's lives? literally ingesting ramen noodles up your butthole. So that it- Yeah, how is this bringing good into the world? How is this edifying people's lives? And it's this- I don't think that particular segment did as you acknowledged earlier. It didn't. That won't happen again.

Right, yeah, sorry about that. But yeah, I was like, we didn't calculate it. We couldn't have anticipated it, but we've experienced personally the freedom of being more of ourselves and sharing that honestly, and not presenting a packaged version of ourselves. Now, we still do that. Even here on the podcast, I mean, we still,

there's things we don't share a lot of times because they're not our stories to share or there's certain aspects of things, but we're so much more free and it's been so much more rewarding to us personally. But still it wasn't calculated that, oh, this is gonna resonate with people. Like I'm actually, so many people said,

I figured out my sexual identity and I had the confidence to come out of the closet or that type of thing. To have that impact on people's lives is just, is flooring. But even when people say, you know what? I just, I learned to embrace my weirdness. In that person's life, that's an equally powerful statement, you know?

Coming from somebody who is weird. We harness all of this for comedy and for entertainment value on the show. So it's easy to forget that like, it is a true expression and it doesn't make a difference. So I'm really encouraged for all the people who said, you know, if someone has a problem with me being weird, that's their problem.

You know, and that's the message that we send just because we're comfortable connecting with each other and there's no real judgment there or very little judgment between the two of us, right? It's mostly a celebration. And if we're not celebrating what the other guy does, we're celebrating the fact that we can turn it into comedy,

which is kind of the same thing. Right. I mean, I feel like I am still, I'm growing more comfortable with the fact that this is how people see the show. Yeah. I'll admit that this continues to be, it continues to be a struggle for me.

I think that for a couple of reasons. I mean, one, there is just this in the same way that any normal person who did something that wasn't necessarily designed or intended any normal person who did something that wasn't necessarily designed or intended to help someone and then you hear that it did help them, there's just a human sort of like embarrassment about that. You know what I'm saying? Like, I think that most people are just a little bit like,

oh man, I didn't mean to help you in that way. And so the fact that you're giving me credit in this way makes me feel uncomfortable. But then I think there's a, for me, there's a second part of it, which is, a lot of this kind of goes back to the core of my personality, the way that I think about things and the way that I think about entertainment

and many of the reasons that I got into the entertainment business because I'm a performer. You know, I'm trying to create things that sort of give me a sense of self-worth. We're not gonna go back into the Enneagram episode if you wanna listen to it, if you haven't, you should. But just the idea that I'm much more comfortable with people connecting with things

that I sort of do as a performance, right? Like it's like, okay, well we have a song, we have a music video, we have a sketch and you enjoyed that creation. The achievement. The achievement. But when you start talking about how, no, the thing that you're actually connecting with is me

as a person, with me as a person, with you as a person, with the two of us and our friendship and you're kind of moving beyond the performance and the things that we're trying to put out there and the things that are very designed and curated and you're actually bypassing that, not that you don't enjoy the stuff that we create, but that you're actually having a more thorough

and deeper connection with us as people, that feels like something I can't control, you know what I'm saying? It feels like something that I can't manufacture. It feels like something I can't go into a room and conceptualize something. It's just like, no, you're actually just connecting with us as we connect with each other. And that's just something I am continuing

to grow more comfortable with as more and more people articulate it. But I'll be honest with you that it's not a natural thing for me to be okay with that. It's kind of akin to accepting unconditional love. I mean, I don't know that it's, well, at a certain point in a relationship, yeah, there is this unconditional love

that someone you're bonded to would have and then sometimes that's maybe difficult to accept. I think it has been nice to know that like, the more that I just embrace my weaknesses and call them uniquenesses, so to speak, it's like, oh, I discovered that I'm accepted for, and celebrated for being myself. You know, it's like, okay.

So a casual viewer may think I'm just an idiot, but a committed mythical beast will celebrate. It's like, you know what? I want to be more like that in the sense that I might not wanna make, say that exactly what he said or do exactly what he did, but the spirit behind it is something that people celebrate. And it is a freedom that it's like,

oh, these mythical beasts know enough about me that like I feel safer being myself, even though I know that there's a risk that something might come out sideways because I know that I've got, I'm understood more. So for me, it feels like, it actually feels more safe to be accepted. I definitely feel way safer

and way more comfortable than I did 10 years ago. I think the point I'm making is that there's still this, and there's a weirdness to it, not in the weirdness that you were just talking about, but like there's this thing where even in something as simple as, again, we don't know whether or not, we don't know how emotional we're gonna get in the 2000s episode because we haven't recorded it yet,

but we have obviously demonstrated that both of us have the capacity to be emotional on the internet. And if you think about like, okay, like when we recorded the episode where I got emotional, the most recent one talking about Jesse, right? And it's like, there's a weirdness to, and maybe this is something, okay, I'll just be honest with you. When I have seen other YouTubers cry,

some are more known for crying than others, I've always had this aversion to it because I interpreted it through the lens of performance. I'm not saying it wasn't authentic, but like, you know what? It was on a video that was being monetized, that had ads on it, right? And so, and that's the case with us. Like we get paid, it's kind of a squirrely way for getting,

we get paid by the advertisers on Ear Biscuits. And that's how we're able to make the show and make it a part of our business, right? And then the more we are ourselves and the more comfortable we are, and the more it's like, well, I'm crying right now, not because I want you to see me cry, but because I want to cry.

There still is this weird thing that when you are a performer, when you're on camera, and now you're in, if you think about the most successful episode, I mean, I'm talking about Ear Biscuits now, but just as a way to illustrate this, the most successful episode of Ear Biscuits, by a long shot, is the episode about Ben,

where we both got really, really emotional talking about him. And so then if you're only listening to the smart fridge out there, who's telling you how you should react to the reaction of the audience, the smart fridge would say, you need to cry more, talk about Ben more,

you will get more views and more money. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It becomes this, I don't know how well I'm articulating this You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It becomes this, that's, I'm not, I don't know how well I'm articulating this, but what I'm just basically saying that the more real we get, the more ourselves that we are, and the more that people respond to it,

it gets very weird for me because I see what we do still in a performance context because the more people watch, the more money we get, and the better our business is. Do you know what I'm saying? So those are just things that I haven't quite reconciled. I'm not saying I wanna not be vulnerable and I don't wanna be honest.

It's just weird when you put yourself out there and you are accepted and then you're like, well, I can actually benefit quite a bit from being accepted. Yeah. I'm taking a risk, yeah, but not really because if I'm vulnerable in 2021, it's actually seen as a cool thing to be vulnerable.

We've, yeah, we've crossed that threshold and now we're experiencing that. So now we're knowing what we're having to learn what the parameters for personal health are and experiencing that tension of being vulnerable. And people say, you're so brave. You're so brave for saying that, I'm like.

Right, it's like being vulnerable can be a manipulation. Right. So it's, yeah, so that is the, you know, that's the trap we don't wanna fall into. Yeah. It's like you wanna be honest, but you don't wanna be dishonest with your honesty. Like if I do a tweet,

sometimes I'll do a tweet thread that's especially serious about something that I'm passionate about. Yeah. And then 95, and the reason I'm doing it, honestly, the reason I'm doing it is because I hope that there's a Rhett out there, me from the past, and I'm trying to talk to that Rhett, right? I'm saying, hey man, go ahead, come on over

because these things you're holding on to, it's not where the life's at, man. That's the process, that's what I'm trying to do. Yeah. But then a lot of our fans who are the ones who follow me on Twitter respond in a, this is brave. Thank you for saying this.

And I'm not saying it doesn't help them, but like it makes me uncomfortable because I feel like I'm being rewarded for my vulnerability when I'm literally just trying to say something that will get somebody to think a little bit differently. Right. Does that make sense? Yeah. So GMM, now, first of all, this is much more prevalent on Ear Biscuits,

but I think what you were getting at earlier is that all of this thing that's happening, all the stuff that's happening across all the mythical properties that might be most concentrated in Ear Biscuits, it's spilling over into the way that we approach Good Mythical Morning and the comfort level that we have when we're on camera. We may be doing something really, really stupid and we're not gonna suddenly make Good Mythical Morning

into something where we're talking about political or religious things because we're trying to give you a break from all the bullshit and all the conversation to just have a laugh. But we are being more ourselves in that place. I don't know, I mean. And we've got, we're getting better at turning, like giving ourselves over to that.

And that's a performance technique to say, with cameras here, with crew in the room, with plans being made and producers expectations and our own expectations, we're learning to just go into a flow, an artistic flow. And so it's into a flow, an artistic flow. And so it's still a performance, but it's a personal one. And I'm encouraged that more and more people are noticing

and that the show is evolving in that way that as much as we seem to be dependent on food to get people to click on the show, it's like click for the food, stay for the friendship is like what we started joking about because it's like, there's still a core that, in that comment earlier, I think it was Kirstie's comment about how we're,

you know, we've changed so much, but we're still who we are. Yeah. So much of us is still the same. And our relationship is still the same in the right ways that like you keep coming back to that. And I'm just glad that people see it because we didn't know that's what we were presenting.

And we didn't know that we were creating this environment. And that we were inviting this community to be built around the things that are being made of Mythical. And I'm just, you know, the people that are becoming Mythical Beasts are, they're great people. They're people who actually, they like us too. They're not great because they like us,

but it's nice to have people notice those things about you and to celebrate who we are and welcome us giving more of ourselves through the things that we wanna create and put out there. And I wanna take a second to also say that, every internet creator has whatever you wanna call it, a fandom that is characterized in a certain way, right? And there are certain fandoms that are toxic, right?

The really cool thing about the vast majority of the Mythical Beasts, at least as far as I've observed it, and especially as I've observed it through the lens of other people. So like, you know, I noticed Science Mike said this months ago, maybe years ago, the first couple of times he came on GMM

and the thing he said to us, the first thing he said was, he says, "'Your staff is absolutely amazing. I absolutely love coming to Mythical and working with your team because they, and he's got experience going to other places and he was just like, you're so accommodating, so friendly, so nice, and they've got their shit together

and I appreciate that. The second thing he said was, your fans are so nice and encouraging. And he's like, you know, cause a lot of mythical beasts have kind of migrated into, to become fans of Science Mike. And so you can see it through somebody who's an online personality,

who's fielding these comments and these observations from people to just feel that encouragement. I think sometimes I just kind of take it for granted. I mean, I know I just talked about how if I do a tweet thread, that's supposed to be thought provoking. I'm uncomfortable when people say,

"'Thanks for being brave or being vulnerable.'" I'm not saying don't say that. I'm just saying that's for me to reconcile. But I don't want that to communicate that I don't appreciate how encouraging and frankly, just loving our community is, right? Mm-hmm. don't appreciate how encouraging and frankly, just loving our community is, right? I don't think that that is a characteristic of all internet fandoms.

No, we have the best fans. Yeah. I mean, we have the best community of fans. There may be some that match it, but I don't think there's any that surpass it. And I think we wanted, if you would ask us what kind of community we would have wanted to build

like when we were just getting started, it would be like the most comedically critical people that still like us because they will think that we are the funniest thing ever. Yeah. The fact is we're not the funniest guys ever. We're not. I really wanted to be,

but I'm just slowly realizing that I'm not. Because we're not the funniest, but we're funny and we're other things too that people relate to. We're a lot more, just like normal humans who aren't always the funniest, but there are other things too when it matters. I'm not gonna say that our fans have just noticed that in us

but I think they've inspired that in us too because we've started, it's a relationship that we've started to understand that there's an opportunity for us to be the best versions of ourselves as we continue to tell people to be their mythical best. So we continue to evolve. So many things have changed drastically

since the beginning of Good Mythical Morning. And so it's not the stances we've taken as much as it's the honesty in the evolution that we've experienced as individuals, as friends, and also as a community. Yeah. And I'm so grateful it turned out this way and not how we thought we wanted it to go.

Oh yeah. Even though it's still a struggle to think that sometimes when you think about like a particular project we wanna make or put out into the world, but. I still wanna be, I'm not ever gonna let go of it, either because it's pathological or whatever. I'm never gonna stop trying to make the best possible thing I can make,

but I am very grateful that we have a community that isn't just concerned with us being excellent, right? And what that might mean, sometimes you create something that's actually not as good as everyone says that it is. And the three inside me wants you to be, to just tell me how it is, just give me the facts, man. But you know what?

It's just probably a better way to live. But I mean, I'm tremendously grateful and I think this exercise just makes me so glad that things are going the way that they're going and that the community of Mythical Beasts are who they are. And I just, you know, 2000 episodes of any show is quite a feat. How many has Judge Judy done?

Well, yeah, let's, don't bring her into this cause that'll blow us out of the water. Yeah, thank you for being here. Whenever you got onto the boat, even if, I know a lot of people got onto the boat, you got off the boat and you're back on the boat. You come and go, I get it, I'm the same way. But thank you for being here at any point

that you have been a part of this thing and the way that you contribute, say it all the time and we mean it, that we wouldn't do this without you, we couldn't do this without you and you make what we do incredibly fulfilling. Yeah. Here's to that, man.

Now give us a rec because it's your turn. Oh yes, okay. So as we come out of the pandemic and we begin to party once again, if you're gonna invite people over to your home to party, first of all, play music, not you personally. Ooh. Like if you got a gathering of people at your home

and there's not a soundtrack, you've missed a giant piece of the puzzle. So first of all, rectify that. That's my first rec. The second rec is without thinking, you need to play a particular band called Krungbin, okay? I'm gonna spell this if I can remember, you're gonna have to help me.

K-H-R. U. U-A-N-B-I-N? U-A-N-G-B-I-N. There's a G in there. So just remember the K-H-R to begin. U-A-G-B-I-N, Krungbin, it's a Thai word. I didn't know this. It's a trio from Texas. Don't let that throw you off

because it does not sound like Texas music. They actually resist being categorized because what I would have said is it's just like this, just like funk. It's just this groove. They're always in this very intoxicating groove. And every single song they've ever made, without exception, is something that you should have playing during a party.

Did I introduce you to them or did you introduce me to them? I definitely found them independently of you. I don't know if I introduced them to you, but I found them independently. Like they came up on a Spotify. Yeah, it started getting pushed. And I was like, and every time I heard it, I was like, man, who's this old band?

Who's this 70s band? That was what I thought. Like the first time I heard it, I was like, oh, this must be an old school band. No, they're making music now. A lot of instrumental stuff, but then they get it into more vocals too. And they're doing some collaborations.

They did an album with Leon Bridges. The Paul McCartney album that just came out, they got a song on that and it sounds like a Krungman song and it just has a little bit of Paul McCartney vocal. It doesn't sound the other way around. Oh yeah? Yeah. Well, they did it the right way. And then, you know what, for my party,

for my hangout party, like that's all we listen to. We put that playlist on. You can listen to it for four hours. And the funny thing is I kept asking you, I was like, is this still them? Because I would just do like Krungbin radio until they'll keep coming back and then it'll start mixing other bands in.

Only them. But it was only them. Yeah. And I was like, how many songs can you have that are just amazing? Krungbin. All right, hashtag Ear Biscuits. Next week we're gonna get into the longest trips back home

that each of us have taken since moving out to Los Angeles 10 years ago. Three weeks in North Carolina. We'll catch you on the flip side of that. Hashtag Ear Biscuits. Let's celebrate 2000.