Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 16 The Fine Brothers - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: January 17, 2014

Benny and Rafi Fine, known best for their successful "Kids React" series and multiple spinoffs, sit down with Rhett & Link to discuss growing up as Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, a near death experience at Disney World, their crucial role in the formation of Maker studios and why they parted ways, and what they want to do when they settle down. 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 is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I'm Link. And I'm Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we've got the Fine Brothers. Because you see, Rhett, and people out there, the Fine Brothers are interesting people from the internet. And interesting people? And we have an interesting conversation with interesting people. And interesting people from the internet. And interesting people? And we have an interesting conversation with interesting people and interesting people. Most notably they're not brothers. That's the first headline.

Well don't, spoiler alert. No, so Actually they are brothers. We go to the deep end with the Fine Brothers discussing growing up Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. Dealing with a near death experience on the Peter Pan ride with an employee

while an employee at Disney World. You can find out which one of the Fine Brothers that was. We discussed their crucial role in the formation of Maker Studios and why they parted ways. And what they're going to do when they finally settle down. It will happen one day.

Going into the deep end. I think that's terminology I'm going to adopt as Ear Biscuits continues. Well, let's go into the deep end. And I think the reason why, Rhett, is because of my experience at the spa. Now, I've been looking for an opportunity to share my experience while on vacation with all of you. Well, I wasn't on vacation with all of you. Well, I wasn't on vacation with all of you. I was looking for an opportunity to share this experience that I have with my wife with all of you.

Am I being clear here? Not really. You're gonna share an experience you had with your wife with all of the people. Over the holidays. I'm all ears. Oh yeah. As you know, I decided to have a getaway with Christy

towards the end, after Christmas, but before we came back from North Carolina, take three nights, go to Asheville. You also went to Asheville, but we made a pact that we would do different things, and if we happened to see each other, we would not speak to each other, because it was wife time.

Yeah, I think the point is that when you're in North Carolina, it's a great place, but probably the best place to visit and to get away to in North Carolina is Asheville. So we didn't want one of us to pick Asheville and the other one to pick Benson and then be like, well, you're in Asheville, I'm in Benson. We're like, well, let's both go to the place we want to go. Lots of mules in Benson.

Let's not interact. And we did not interact. However, my wife did send a text to your wife at one point to tell her about a restaurant that you guys should eat at. And I know that you did. And it was great. Oh, that's a whole other discussion. You're welcome.

I think we should save that. Okay. All right. Well, let's save that for next week. That one restaurant experience. You think about the name of the restaurant? Yeah, exactly. So let's save that.

All right. So anyway, the whole terminology of going in the deep end. Yeah, where's that from? Because I went to a spa. Not just any spa. The Grove Park Inn, and I think they may call it resort now, or spa. That's what they call it.

Grove Park Inn and Spa. This is an old hotel in the mountains overlooking Asheville. But the spa is what's world class. But you got to stay there in order to get entrance into this place. So I decided to splurge on this and we would have some quality time at the spa, you know, get a couple's massage. There's a lot of guys who are averse. And when we went there into the lobby, there was a guy there who was not only averse, he was very nervous about the fact that he was gonna get a massage.

Now, I am, I'm just like giving the guy the poo-poo face. Yeah. Because I love getting a massage. It's just a very, an American thing sometimes, unfortunately, to just be uncomfortable. Excuse me. Okay. Let me emphasize my discomfort with-

By coughing up a lung. Are you going to vomit? He's making you want to vomit. Being uncomfortable with, like, being touched or going into a spa wearing a Speedo. Come on, brothers. Loosen up a little bit. I'm going on record.

I love being touched. Period. End of story. So, I mean, couples of massage, you're in the same room with your wife, but you each have your own masseuse and they, you know, they say, do you want a man or a woman masseuse? I was like, I don't care.

Oh, you said you don't care. That's a mistake. No, I said I want a woman. Okay. But I thought it don't, I, if it was a man, I'd be like, okay, whatever. But your wife also requested a woman, right? Yes. Right. I requested a woman for everybody.

I did all the requesting. But before we even get into the massage, I knew that this was the type of thing that you just go to the spa and you stay there all day. This place, at first, they separated us. A man came and took me into the men's locker room and What? And then started giving me a tour through the whole facility. Did he grab your hand and lead you? Well, he told me to strip down and then put on a robe. He did not touch me. And then I did that, and then me and the nervous guy,

he took us both around and paraded us. He toured us of this place. I mean, there's like 14 pools, different pools in this spot. I've heard about it. I've seen it on the Travel Channel. This pool here is 78 degrees. It is the lap pool. As you can see,

the woman there is not having any trouble floating because it's infused with many minerals to make her more buoyant. Really? And then- This one has a touch of Tabasco sauce in it. When you're underwater, when you put your ears underwater,

you can hear music play. Really? And when you look up at the sky, especially after dark, you can see the simulated stars in the simulated sky above the lap pool. Like doing the backstroke, looking at the fake stars,

hearing the music. And this is all from ancient times too, right? I mean, like a hundred years ago. That's ancient for America. He didn't say. Okay. Well, it's an old place. That's all I know. And then he said, and this pool is 84 degrees and it's more for lounging. And then over here, there's like waterfalls falling into hot tubs. Then you go outside and there's a pool, but it is 104 degree hot tub. Now we're getting to a good place. 104 degrees, I don't know about that. Oh yeah, and you're outside and it's cold and you can order a drink poolside.

And then you go back in to the men's only area and there's another hot tub, but then like a little round hole full of water right beside it. And I'm like- it's a toilet. That is a small hot tub next to a big one. He said, that's the

plunge pool. And I was like, oh, I remember this. It's cold. Yeah, it's really cold. It's like dipping yourself into a mountain stream and then you go into the hottest of hot tubs right next to it. Might be a trout in there. And I'm like so excited.

I get to do all this stuff and it's just amazing. And I don't know why that wasn't mixed company. That was in the men's only area. And Chrissy said there was one in the women's only area. I don't know if I was supposed to get naked before jumping in. Because I'm not taking off my shorts before jumping in the polar plunge pool. I mean, any guy knows that. Well, as long as you get into the hot tub quickly,

things will right themselves pretty quickly. Well, I did it, but I didn't strip down before I did it. And then there was a sauna and a steam room and all that stuff. I mean, this is even before getting the massage. This place is amazing. Now, it's expensive as all get out, but for one full day, it was like I was in H2O heaven. You spent like literally a full day?

Yeah. Like from the morning until the evening? We left and got, we ate lunch there, poolside, but then we went, we left and ate dinner somewhere. We came back because I wanted to swim under those stars and hear the music. I got to do that sometime. I'm going full naked, though. And I'm not going to be there. Yeah.

The massage itself wasn't that great, but the massage, it was great, but it wasn't any greater than some of the massages that I've gotten out here in Los Angeles. But the massage facility was pretty amazing. I mean, they were like, what type of music would you like me to play? Would you like me to play Native American or piano music? How about Native American piano?

I said I wanted a mix. And then after I started halfway through, I started realizing that the piano music was really cheesy. And I was like, hey, I want to go full Native American. Yeah, of course. Obviously. That's what you got to do. So I'm saying you should go, but I shouldn't be there. Especially if you're going to pull a plug in. I'm going to go, my wife is going to be there, and I'm going to be naked. All right, but. So, I mean, you can hear it in my voice.

I am revitalized. I have been for the few weeks ever since I've been back. Yeah. That was a deep end. Let's see how revitalizing this conversation with the Fine Brothers is I think it was pretty revitalizing as it has already

happened and now we're telling you about it if not just insightful and like going into a cold mountain spring

of internet experience okay you know these guys Benny and Rafi Fine they're the creators of several successful YouTube series

most notably the React series kids react teens react YouTubers react. These feature people reacting real time to culturally relevant, timely, sometimes shocking videos. They are very, very,

very, very popular. Yeah, they've been featured in nearly every worldwide publication, including New York Times, Time Magazine, Variety, Huffington Post, and have won Daytime Emmys, Streamys, Webbys, IAWTV. These guys are legit. You know this. Why else Huffington Post, and have won daytime Emmys, Streamys, Webbys, IAWTV. These guys are legit.

You know this. Why else would we not be talking to them? I don't even understand that question. Was that even a question? I don't think it was. I think we should just get from the questions to the conversation. To the deep end. Here it is, our conversation with Benny and Rafi Fine.

Okay, so, as we've established, you guys are, we consider ourselves pretty busy, but we think you guys are the busiest guys on YouTube. So, quantify your busyness. How are your lives going? I mean, like, you know, this is just another job for you coming in here and having to do this podcast. We want you to just

relax. We've given you bottles of water. Thank you. Nice cushiony seats. It's a brand. We want this to be recreation and relaxation for you. We might give you a massage. We might give you a mud mask. Whoa.

I actually want that right now. But nobody's going to see that, so it's not visual, right? We're not being filmed. It's happening right now. Yes, it's happening. We're getting a massage, guys. It's amazing. We're all naked. We're naked giving each other massages. Yep. It's really good. It's happening right now yes it's happening we're getting a massage guys it's amazing we're all naked we're naked giving each other massages yep it's really good it's happening but in the sense clarify it but i'm not in in the sense of busyness i mean yeah like currently

we don't have lives quote unquote what people like to call like quote unquote lives we don't have in the sense of our lives is completely making the shows uh you know and by that you mean wake up from your waking life is devoted to producing the content on your channels yes and developing things for the future wherever they might end up be it online or television or film etc so there's no downtime. I mean, do you eat meals? Do you recreate? Meals, it's like one a day, usually really late at night. At like midnight.

Which is not healthy. One meal. You know, as a matter of fact, I follow you guys on Instagram, and I saw like a 12.30 dinner. That was me, yeah. Last night. Because I love to cook and don't have any time to cook. So I shop for the first time in like more than a month recently. And I'm like, oh, I got to cook.

I got all this stuff. So I get home really late and then I cook late at night. And I have a really good time. Like, yeah, late night cooking. And then I realize I have all this food that I don't have anyone to feed it to. Oh, God. It's not that sad, though. But it is a bad thing that we do.

So you guys don't live together anymore. Not anymore. Very recently. Yeah. We finally took the step where when we were kids, when we were younger, we never even shared the same room or anything. It's only been since we moved out here

that we shared the room for the first time. We didn't live together for a while. You were still in film school and then I was working at Disney World. We were separated for many, many years and then ended up living together out here. And you guys even saw that because you're one of the early collaborators of ours

with that Lost thing we did together so many years ago. And you came to that apartment that was our same apartment all the way until October. Yeah, with the Abraham Lincoln picture. Oh, yeah. And pretty much no other decor.

Correct. I remember. Correct. No beds. We didn't have beds. You guys moved in and just started making videos and you hung one Abraham Lincoln.

In that time period, every single video we made, Lincoln was there. We got to put him up. Yep. We did have the rights to we made, Lincoln was there. We gotta put him up. We did have the rights to that thing though, sadly. We really should figure out the rights to that thing. I think it's public domain. Okay, hopefully. Yeah, he's been dead

for however long. Content ID's gonna come after us for that, Lincoln. So you did move into separate estates. Yes. And that's the first life thing we've done in like eight years is actually move apart yes that's that like because otherwise it always was like we have no time we can't look for an apartment we can't like actually think about what that means and how we have to like separate

what we own and even though we're barely home uh but yeah that was like the first thing where it's like we have to move on with our lives and it took us like many many years to even do that it's always just every waking moment is dedicated to uh creating content and it's funny because it wasn't like a decision that we like made at a certain point like a decade ago even though it's been about a decade of this though it's gotten a lot busier in the last like 18 months but it's still like somehow we're just meshed like that and both of us just started becoming workaholics at some point and it never stopped right so workaholic is a negative term i mean do you it seems that you're kind of acknowledging that that there's you you've got to exercise some health for yourself and step one is moving out like living in separate places in the sense of being able to uh force the

by every waking moment being about the job i think even being around each other, even though we're best friends, is also part of being best friends and life is the work. So by at least having even a few hours separated or when there is a moment where there's like, oh, there might be a half a day, it isn't also then next to each other being able to be like so what should we work on you're able to at least have a moment to think well what else should I be thinking about right now this is why we can't

go on vacations together this is why is that something you guys make sure you don't do right this is why when we begin to think about

what we're doing in our free time our wives are like no you guys can't be together because it'll become a conversation about some idea and it's

it's not necessarily a bad thing. Right, it's like, you know, you talk about you guys are not only brothers, you said you're best friends, you're collaborators, you're co-producers on everything. In the same way, we find ourselves, the way that we build our friendship is by working on

things. So, we have found that the discipline of separation leads to us not working as much. Yeah. If we lived together, if we didn't have wives and kids and, you know, it'd be very, there'd be a big temptation to just wake up and work and then sleep a little bit here and there. So I can see that. So you've kind of forced yourself to make that decision. Is that helping? Well, it's new, but it definitely is helping just the feelings of sometimes, oh, I'm not working at the moment.

You know, even just that idea of like when I get back home, oh, I'm done if I make myself not check email. You know, like that type of situation. Throw the phone across the room. Of course, you still Instagrammed the meal that you made at midnight. That's Instagram, and I like social media. I enjoy Instagram. I don social media. I enjoy Instagram. Honestly, and I've said this before,

Instagram, we were very late to the party. I don't really like Instagram, but I don't like taking pictures. Our whole life, even, we don't have pictures. We have some, and we always regret childhood stuff. Like, why? We talked to our mom. She's like, you hated it. You would never let me do it. We're like, why don't we have pictures, Mom?

She's like, because you would cry. That's why. My three-year-old refuses to be in a picture. He's like Bigfoot. He'll regret it. That's the thing, though, that's funny, too, though, is that we look back. Recently we came across old video, and our dad was a very interesting person, but at one point had an institute where he was trying to

help a lot of runaway kids in New York, and made a video for his non-profit that we were in. We were really, really little kids and we each have little memories about that shoot but we finally saw the tape again recently and it's crazy to see it's our childhood encapsulated of what we were like as kids, which is not really what we're like

now, but we're walking down the block in Brooklyn. I look miserable. Like, I don't want the camera on me. I'm like, don't even look at me. My life is hell. While he's hamming. I'm like, hamming. He's like, it's such a wide shot, but he's like, ah! Yeah, like, he's trying to say, like, we help runaway kids.

And I'm like, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah! And it's just like, oh, my God, Rafi, shut up. And now I tend to be more subdued than he is now. And I'm much more up, yeah. Overcompensating, huh? Is that what's happening here? Could be. Okay, so you mentioned Brooklyn, and I think some people might know this.

It's in New York. Yeah. I do know that. So that's where you were born. Yeah. Yeah. I was born in Brooklyn Hospital in a very black neighborhood. The family story is my older sister came in and said, I want the black one.

Because I was the only white baby there. But yeah, we grew up in Flatbush and Brooklyn. And we kept him for some reason. And I look like neither of you. You're the darkest of all of us. That's true. You were black. You've got an older sister.

Yeah. How much older? She's almost three years older than me. We're all like two and a half years apart from each other. Okay. I'm in the middle. Middle. Of course.

Two and a half years younger. He's the weirdest of the bunch. Right. Yeah. But yeah, Brooklyn. The middle child, the neglected child Middle, of course. Two and a half years younger. He's the weirdest of the bunch. Right, yeah. But yeah, Brooklyn. The middle child, the neglected child. Either of you middle? Only child.

Only and younger. Ah. Mm-hmm. Never an opportunity to be the middle. Yeah. Or be neglected. You're technically the oldest, the middle, and the youngest, which is interesting. How can you be the youngest and the oldest, but in the middle?

Well, that's called the only child syndrome. You are everything to everyone. At least that's what you think. You're everything and nothing at all. So what was it like? You said that your dad was an interesting guy. What were your parents? The whole upbringing was interesting because we grew up Orthodox Jews all the way until we were teenagers.

But the story even before that just quickly is that both of our parents grew up on the west coast and jewish families you know jewish history everything uh nobody orthodox they were big hippies uh and uh our father was like really into like lsd and like lots of things living in the hate in berlin in the hate 1967 he was there as hardcore as you guys can get at uc berkeley during it oh wow and they were both going on like spiritual remembers none of it or what he remembers tons of pants he saw. Remembers none of it? He remembers tons of it. He used to have, even our house has all these concert posters that he then sold, some of them later, but like really

classic posters. He sold these posters on eBay for like $500. It's like those classic, amazing artwork posters that are so limited, but they got at those concerts. But both of them fully hippies, everything, spiritual journey stuff then they basically decided they went to israel and then they decided that they wanted to become

orthodox jews but in like a hippie way like they were going to go undercover and the idea was orthodox to what yes completely i think it was like the revival what was it like it was underneath like jewish revival that was like a but so our father went undercover almost to become a rabbi in like hardcore brooklyn you know going to become a rabbi there without letting them know that that's what he was really wanting to do so we ended up you know letting the orthodox community know that he was actually like a spiritual because it's not simple process to like not be an orthodox jew and then show up and be like i'm going to suddenly become that he was actually like a spiritual hippie kind of guy. We can go on and on for this because it's not simple process to like not be an Orthodox Jew

and then show up and be like, I'm going to suddenly become very, very religious and they're very skeptical of these things. Got it, yeah. Outsiders, like that whole idea of even like Amish. Even Jews on Jews, there is outsider tendencies based on how religious you are.

It's complicated. So we ended up kind of just getting born right at that moment where they were becoming Orthodox and they did end up kind of embracing the Orthodox lifestyle, not just trying to do it and get out and become a rabbi and leave. They ended up kind of buying into it. So long story short, they were all in. We were raised very religious, but things that they were doing was very unorthodox where they would be helping kids on the streets and not just the Jewish kids and not trying to make the Jewish kids that had run away from home for various reasons to become Orthodox just to get them off the streets,

which was controversial to not make them be what they used to be. And there's a whole crazy, crazy upbringing that was like all walks of life would all be hanging out. And when we talk to people now that we're still in touch with that knew us when we were kids, they describe it as it was just a place to go to meet other nice, cool people that were trying to be good, which is very interesting with some of the stuff we do now where we realize oh where did the idea for things like talking to people come from and we realize

people having opinions and being a person it's like this obviously came from being in that environment where everyone was we didn't know the stories we were so young but then finding out later this person had this drug problem or this person had this abuse in their life etc etc but they were all just people that were friends to us growing up But then finding out later this person had this drug problem or this person had this abuse in their life, et cetera, et cetera. But they were all just people that were friends to us growing up.

Yeah, so what was it like being kids in that environment where your parents had experienced this transformation, but they were still trying – they were doing it in an unorthodox way at the same time? We didn't know much of the difference, which I think is normal when you're young. Like you just think this is the way life is. The only things that we realized were different was when we'd visit grandparents because no one else in the family was Orthodox. So like we'd go and visit them and have to be explained that they don't keep the Sabbath. They don't keep kosher, you know, things like that. Other than that, though, it was a pretty great childhood up until, you know, the point where you get older. Well, it was still great for me.

You ended up rebelling. Well, it was still great for me. You ended up rebelling and everything. But it's like you get older and some of the rhetoric comes in. And for me being more of the, I need to have answers and let's have a real conversation. And you kind of hit a brick wall sometimes in really right-wing religion. What kind of answers were you? Well, it was more of like questioning, well, why did we say that when technology changed, it doesn't say anything like this in the Torah? Why do we say this is okay and not this? And the answer is like the Bible.

Yeah. But not going into the super specifics was kind of just getting brick walls of because that's what it says. And we're not good enough now. But then I would go on and on about. But the Talmud, the entire Talmud is just, which is complicated, but it's a book that is so many books. It's not even of laws. It's about rabbis from centuries ago debating the laws. Right.

It's not even of laws. It's about rabbis from centuries ago debating the laws. Right. And which is something I actually still think is pretty cool about the Jewish religion is that there's so much study done about arguing about why. And I think that's cool. But in today's world, they don't – You're not allowed to ask why anymore. You can't really ask why. You can just look at what other people thought.

And you can't agree to disagree. You have to follow this way. And I would be like, but that's contradictory. And then the rabbis would just be like, well, it has to be, that's what it says, deal with it. And if you question too much, you start getting in trouble. So, so you started for me, you started questioning and getting in trouble. Yes. I started, I went from like the, the person that was like the next rabbi in my class to the one that was getting in trouble often from asking too many questions. Okay. So you got, I mean, you were kind of,

this was part of your life and you were kind of all in as a, as a questions. Okay, so you got, I mean, you were kind of, this was part of your life, and you were kind of all in as a kid, but then something changed. So, what age are we talking about? Middle school? It has very specific stories of why it happened. It started at age 13, my bar mitzvah, where things get, a lot more

responsibility comes onto you as a male when you're 13 in Orthodox Judaism. You've got it, You're a man now. Yeah. And like there's certain things that. You wear a cool hat now. You do. The black hat is a cool hat.

It's an expensive cool hat. But the way that prayer works becomes different and the school day becomes a whole lot longer. And like, so my school day, which already was long, the school day was nine to four 30, but then it became seven to five 45 and then all this homework. And it was just getting a little bit too much for me, even just on that side of things. And so that's where things started for me. And also the seven to 545,

and there's still only two hours of secular. It was three at that point. For me, it was only two, right? For you, it was two and a half. Two and a half. But because the things that you have to learn in America, and then the rest of the day was Hebrew. You have to learn to be American.

Yeah. But the quick story I always, and then the rest of the day was Hebrew. You have to learn to be American. Yeah. But the quick story that is the moment I remember is my principal, who I was terrified of, and he's still the principal at this same school to this day. We should go talk to him. I want to go talk to him. Oh, he's listening. Well, even seeing your guy's documentary,

it's very like, oh, I want to go back and talk to my teachers. Because it'd be so crazy to go back and talk to Orthodox rabbis that were our teachers and be like, hi. And be like, you were great, but look and talk to like orthodox rabbis that were our teachers. You were great, but look what happened to me now. Our teacher was hot. And so there was some interest on that level. That's why you guys would go back. We had some hot rabbis.

I'll tell you what. Those beards. Yeah. rabbis. I'll tell you what. Those beards. The way that worked with the long school day, the 7.30 in the morning until 9 was prayer. Prayer was always at school, but then once you become 13, you're part of something called a minion, which 10, 13 or up males together can pray properly. There's things you can only do

with 10 males that are adults. 13 is an adult in that world. You have to start going to the minion really early in the morning and do all that. And I wasn't feeling well one morning and was like, I can't get up and do this. I need to sleep an extra hour. But I didn't. I really wanted to go to school.

Like I had no interest in not going. I wanted to go and learn that day. I was all excited about it. I was happy. I'm like, I'm feeling better. Let me go. And I got in so much trouble that morning because then being told like, if you don't come to the Minion, you shouldn't even be here.

When I'm trying to then go back to me like, but this doesn't make sense. I came here to learn. I wanted to learn. And that was a moment that is very paramount in my mind. I'd love to tell that principal and be like, if you had not done that to me, it is hypothetical. I would not have gone down the path of questioning as much as I did to lead me completely not to do this anymore. And that's the moment I can pin it all back to is where everything's starting to change. So it crumbled apart from you there. What was the cold turkey moment? There was no cold turkey moment.

From there, that was 13. And then I was still very orthodox all the way to like 17. Both of us didn't eat something like non-kosher. No, one of the big moments of my life, I was maybe 23 and had a cheeseburger for the first time. At that point, I had a little bit of non-kosher stuff where I'd eat chicken but like milk and meat together is such a no-no and it was a moment

of like I'm never going back I'm getting a cheeseburger. Not a bacon cheeseburger. That's too far guys. Right, right. Where did you get the cheeseburger? It was at McDonald's because McDonald's was such a place that I was like you could never eat there. It's so not kosher and wrong. And even though I knew it wasn't going to be good. McDonald's like the look place that was like, you could never eat there. It's so, you know, not kosher and wrong.

And even though I knew it wasn't going to be good. McDonald's, like the look of it and Ronald McDonald and everything was just kind of like wrong to us. It was like idolatry. It felt like idolatry. And McDonald's feels wrong to a lot of people. Nobody understands why he exists. Basically, but even then, it was a decade long journey to get out.

Very slow for each of us. For each of us in different ways. And then almost another five, six years after the 10 years to really feel comfortable with my decisions and not have guilt and like all of these things to really feel like, no, this is who I am, which in a lot of ways I'm very thankful for because it has made me look at

the world differently. It's made me not just accept things as they are. It also makes me understand religion, which means I understand people better because I totally relate. Even people that are really religious, I have no issues with it because I totally know what that's like. It can be an amazing and great thing.

I have a lot of positive memories about it too. Yeah. So you moved out of the house. When was the cheeseburger moment? That was in Orlando, Florida like eight, nine years ago. Oh, okay. So that was after you were out of the house. Yes.

You were down managing something in Disney World. And, Raph, you were kind of observing this as a younger brother. Yep. And so what was going through your mind? I was like, I loved every, I wasn't at the age yet where I had to start like worrying or thinking. Everything was still like fun and everything was a game and I would get stickers and that was all the learning I was doing. It was like, oh, sweet, stamps. And like, I'm a great student and like, I'm enjoying myself so much.

And then we ended up kind of down this path where it was like, Benny's not doing that great in this environment. We might have to change some things. And there were some of that where like, also the Orthodox community was getting kind of more strict that we were in, in Brooklyn. So our parents weren't even liking that as general because we were so unorthodox in this orthodox environment where our parents even let us watch like Beavis and Butthead. And that was like a horrible thing.

Like kids would come up to us in school and ask us like, what happened to Beavis and Butthead? And we'd be like, oh, I'll tell you. Don't worry. And so we were, you know, always kind of outside. The oral tradition of Beavis and Butthead. Beavis and Butthead and listening to Metallica. Those were the two big things. Huge, crazy, horrible things.

And we were playing role-playing games. Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons. And we were orthodox kids. So it was interesting in that way. But it was, for me, everything was just, I was such a happy, like, fun, like, I just, nothing ever really fazed me, kid. It was just always laughing, always smiling.

Everything was great. So I just kind of saw what was going on and i was just more fearful for him because there was all this talk of like sending him off to a boarding school and like he has to go off to a yeshiva somewhere else because he's giving trouble and like all this stuff and we ended up i guess as a family decided instead just to move out of brooklyn moved up to upstate new york to a school that was like not as orthodox and to a whole community that was not as orthodox. The whole family moved. Yeah, we all moved away.

The whole family ended up moving. So we went upstate and like, you know, it was, I still, everything was kind of just fine for me. I lucked out. The whole experience for me was I got to watch Benny literally like just get at my parents all the time and like be the horrible middle child that like was so rebellious. And then whenever I decided to like also kind of be rebellious it was much easier for me they're like we've been here well the story is easy for me is like the one the one time only that i had the

tv moment of like i'm leaving the house i'm driving away and i'm not telling my parents where i'm going only happened once and it was arguing over the fact that i started dating a non-jewish girl i was i was uh i had just turned 18 and it was a huge the fact that I started dating a non-Jewish girl. I had just turned 18. And it was a huge to-do with my parents. And I stormed out the one and only time. Go two, three years later, Ravi had a girlfriend through all of high school. It was not an issue. It was literally like I had my moments where I literally had to have the conversations.

Every step of the way, it was had to have the conversation that I didn't want because when we first moved out there, I was still going to a yeshiva to learn extra studies and that was going on for a while. And then- Then you ended up in public school, the only one of us that was in public school. And there were still, even then,

it was like, you still got to like keep going with your studies because now you're just going to not even be learning Hebrew and Torah and everything. So you still have to go after school to learn that stuff. And then slowly but surely, I had to start saying, I don't want to do that anymore.

Then I had to start saying, I want to go out on Shabbos, on Saturdays, you know. I want to be able to drive and do that. I want to be able to date a non-Jewish girl. Each of these were like mega like intense conversations, but not nearly as intense.

Someone had taped away. Yes, completely. So I literally went to public school and I went to prom and I played baseball for, you know, like I was able to just do everything more normal than my brother and sister completely.

I locked out. Do you think that, I mean, did your parents have this sense that they were losing control or was it like, you know, obviously it had to be a different process for them having come from the background they came from

and then sort of making it really strict and then slowly coming out of it as well. So it had to be different than somebody who was Orthodox from birth. Correct. If there was something like that going on, it would not have been, even though I say, oh, it took 10 years. No, that was more personal journey than it was like strict parents or family. And that's the thing that I know from having friends that

are in that generational orthodoxy for hundreds of years. Have lost so many family members to the Holocaust and all these things. It's so deep-rooted for them. It becomes an excommunication scenario sometimes for those families. For us, it was, we have hippie parents.

So they were very open. I couldn't talk to my rabbis that way, but I could talk to my dad. I could have those conversations with him and he was never hardline. We would have good conversations. And it was more for the things like deciding to date a non-Jewish girl or stop me making my own personal decision. That wasn't like horrible arguments, what's wrong with you? But it was more of like, well, that's too much, you know? And it was, I think that was their own journey

too of realizing, wait a second, what do, where are we now? And even now with all of us, like our dad still being the most religious, but all of us have mellowed out about this and i think is he still a rabbi well you never are not really a rabbi you go through rabbinical college and you're still a rabbi because even the thing the difference between like a rabbi or a priest there's no you can be a rabbi without any congregation rabbi means teacher so teachers all tend to be rabbis and rabbis are have congregations but you can just be a rabbi that doesn't have any of that and it's just a teacher you don't have to be at the head of a synagogue to be a rabbi. Got it. Okay.

Yeah. So he's still a rabbi and people still, he gets called for advice for things and still gets called when there's a runaway because it was such his line of work for so long. Now that he's retired, here and there, he'll still get called being like, where do I go to? What do I do? My kid ran away. And he's still like someone that through the connections of people, he ends up still getting contacted about that stuff. He wrote a book about it. Really? Yeah. Well, okay.

Now, I heard you mention that there was a point in which you were kind of in line to be the next rabbi. And then, of course, with this rebellion and kind of seeing things differently, did that begin to change your aspirations? Were you guys thinking at the time, oh, we want to do something creative? Where did that come in? You were thinking, I want to be a YouTuber. Because that existed. Well, I love that even that because of people asking, when did you come in? You were thinking, I want to be a YouTuber. Because that existed. Well, I love that even that because of people asking, when did you decide to go on YouTube?

And we're like, we were already making videos before YouTube. So it wasn't a decision to go to YouTube. An online filmmaker. But, you know, even before all of that, like I wouldn't even necessarily, the thing that I always wanted to be when I grew up, even with all the talk of being a rabbi, was a baseball announcer.

I loved, I still love baseball. He'd be playing the games, and he'd just be like, you always hear me announcing the baseball game, video games. Whenever I'd go to a Yankee game, I'd be announcing the game with a little tape recorder. Like, it's what I really wanted to do. Wait, wait, wait. You would go to a live Major League Baseball game

with a tape recorder? What are those little, like, tiny tape recorders? How old were you talking about? I don't think that's called commentating. I think that's called What are those little, like, tiny tape recorders? How old are we talking about? I don't think that's called commentating. I think that's called dictating. 10, 11 years old? You were dictating the game. Well, you're an actor, just like, you know, you watch on TV, and I was there. Not if it's just going to a tape for you. That's dictating.

But that's what I wanted to do, but with that, I always had, my dad also had that little tape recorder that you take notes for, like, you know, those little tiny cassettes. Yeah, a dictator. Fine. But I started there, there and even then and i was roping you into it even back then i was constantly fiddling around it was all started with audio first where i'm like oh i wanted to make little funny tapes and interview people around the block or use this the speed to make me sell make myself sound like a chipmunk and like do stuff like that

that then evolved and all my bar mitzvah money went to audio equipment and I had all this professional audio equipment and made hundreds of talk show radio shows. It was pretty much weekly. It was every week I would do a talk show slash music countdown of my 20 favorite songs. Whenever you would find a new band, they'd become number one

out of nowhere. Oh, I love it. And you would distribute it how? To your younger brother? He was in it. I would rope him in and play characters. I would play a baby character. That's who I would play. My Cedric character. I would be playing the different characters and rope neighbors in, etc. And then we would play

them because we would still be driving. Once we were upstate, our sister, who was older, would end up being in school in the city. So if there was a drive to the city or we're going to a ball game, this became family listening on the two hour drives to places. So they had to be good. We made similar recordings but it was just for our own enjoyment.

We would have never played them for our parents. Make people listen to them. It was like a thing you do. I got a tape ready. We're going on a trip. I'll make a tape for that. It would be a big deal of what became number one. It was for family. It was like, oh wow that went to number one. There was like a list on my wall of like what the current chart was.

Excellent. And even before any recordings and stuff, the playtime and everything of just around the block were always these like crazy imaginative adventures that he would create for us and our friends. We had toys or no toys. And like we were big. for us and our friends. Whether we had toys or no toys. And like we were big and like even when we came to the internet

with this three hour long G.I. Joe action figure thing many years ago, that came from what we used to do and play with the G.I. Joes. But it wasn't just... Elaborate storylines. It wasn't crash into each other

or fight with guns. It was like, all right, here's the storyline for this episode of G.I. Joe. Destro just really pissed off, you know, General Hawk.

And like, you know, because he just, I was about to say slept with his wife. You wouldn't have done. And like, you know, because he just, I was about to say slept with his wife. You wouldn't have done that. So, you know, he would just call him. He was jealous of his silver head.

Oh, definitely. It's crazy because we recently reconnected with our, we had one of our good friends growing up was a Catholic next door neighbor. Just random. That we had like a real, our best friend was our next door neighbor who was more religious than us. And then our Catholic girl who was extremely controversial for us to be hanging out with. We played baseball with. But we're still in touch with both of them. But even talking to her, reminiscing about the past, she talked about specific – and it's weird for me hearing it because I don't remember it in the same way that he does and she does.

She even called out what it was like, and it was like we'd get together and you would just tell us what we were playing that day. Adventures. We'd play and have adventures on the block. And I don't fully remember it that way. I was just playing. All in our heads. In the sense of he would just be like, and this is the magical crayon that brings us to another place.

So you were also the creative dictator. Which led into all this happening. I never was wanting to be a filmmaker originally. It was like, oh yeah, Benny's doing that. When the family got a video camera, I want to say it was maybe 12 or 13 and that's when the sketches started and they were very, very small

but that's where that all began and it was roping him in and roping neighbors in to start making little commercials and little things. Not nearly as good as your commercials, guys. They're not.

God, no. They're horrible. And that's where that started and then it evolved into longer content, mostly with toys. Almost everything we did in the beginning was with toys because that's what we had. They're horrible. And that's where that started. And then it evolved into longer content, mostly with toys. Almost everything we did in the beginning was with toys because that's what we had. They were the easiest actors to work with. All we had was toys.

There was five different 30-minute to two-hour long action figure things that then we would show to friends. And the screenings grew to like 50 people at best. No, this is not stop motion. This is like movie shape with your hands. In the beginning, you could see our hands and our bodies. We didn't care about that. You'd see our face in there. We'd be like saying the line down.

In the beginning. And then they got better and better. I remember when G.I. Joe 5 came out. I already moved. At that point, G.I. Joe 5, I was already an adult and in Florida. And then showing it to all of my Disney coworkers. And they were like, this is pretty good. And I was like, G.I. Joe 5, we've come a long way.

Hanging it up in the break room to come see the screening. That's right, the Benny Film Festival month. Well, let me ask you, so even now, how does the dynamic play out? Because back then it sounds like you were this creative visionary that you were a willing participant that kind of got pulled into this thing. Do you still have kind of that role separation in that way now? We, creative, the origination of ideas is fully together. Yeah.

Like we don't, we never remember who came up with the original idea of something. It's, it always just comes out of us just sitting and just starting to talk. Some of our favorite things to do still to this day, we try to set aside time scheduled just to be creative and let's talk about new ideas. And I actually really enjoy that more than anything else. And then the actual execution of writing it, it has always been Benny. He goes and he, we call it, he vomits it out. And like he'll, he's been known depending on what we're doing to literally write like literally an hour and a half feature.

He'll write in like two days. He'll just like vomit and just throw it out there. And then usually my job, no matter even if it's a three-page script or a 90-page script or it's a treatment or, you know, whatever it is, it's I then am the editor to basically be like, great. We came up with all the ideas. Great, great, great. You go do it. And then I'll take it after the fact and i'll shape it and mostly that ended up happening when we got older because i went to film school he didn't so the idea of like how to put together a screenplay in

the proper way to even the way we're going to shoot it thinking about the action thinking about how everything's going to go into that became like he's the creative like mad genius he's going to vomit it all out and i'm gonna help sculpt it and put it to what we need to actually you've got the tech you've got the tools which is how it all started now as you know for so many years things kind of ebb and flow and like now though i did not go to film school from doing this for all this time now like i know all that stuff for the most part but and i can assist in that in ways i couldn't before and same with him who was never really the writer from being around it, he's a capable writer

as well and it just kind of has morphed through but now as we're growing and moving on we're not pulling ourselves out of everything but we're really liking, we're wanting to be more of the creative minds to then push other people to write. More producers We're leaning towards a more producing level because

you can't grow. Producing and show running and executive producing, like really you have to be high up because i'm sure you guys dealing with it too you can't you have so many ideas and you want to execute them and you literally come to a point where you're like this i literally physically there's not enough hours in the day right i need other people to become the bottlenecks and plus we don't live together anymore so there's even less time yeah we've lost that. Did you go to broadcasting school? No, my quick story on that, I was so from the really religious Jewish school

to moving upstate to the smaller Jewish school did not work. I was too beyond it, and I also was a very shy kid, and I went from a large class to a class of three people in the middle of nowhere town, and I couldn't handle even that. So, long story short, when they didn't know they were going to send me away or not, I ended up homeschooling. And then through homeschooling,

ended up done with school in terms of high school at 15. So I was in a community college part-time at 15 and then stayed part-time or full-time all the way to age 19, doing great and hating my life. Like I never liked institutionalized schooling. And that's when I ended up down at Walt Disney World because there was the Walt Disney World College Program, which if you're not familiar with it, there's thousands of them that they recruit from around the country and around the world now. Slaves. Slave wages to

come take a semester off and go work at Walt Disney World. It used to be get credit and then the schools got wise and realized it was just indentured servitude and you don't get credit anymore. You're cleaning up vomit, some people. I know, you didn't have to do that. But some of them did. They got college credit

for cleaning up vomit. Years ago. So that's when I ended up down there to do that. So technical task. And then I never went back. So from 19, I went there for the semester,

went back home to shoot a feature and then came back and then stayed at Disney all the way until we moved out here. So I never finished school even though I was there really young. And why Disney? Why'd you pick?

That was the early dream of my life, was to be a Disneyland cast member that ended up becoming Disney World. And I think that also has to do with entertainment and the idea of how it made me feel as a kid in the sense of even the escape that I was in. You wanted to be in a mascot? See, look, you just walked into the stereotype of what everybody says when you say you work at Disney World.

Okay, then you wanted to be Snow White. Listen, the two of you. I'm open to that. The two of you would have been, they call them fur when you're in the costumes there. But you guys would have been fur because of your height. You guys are so tall that they need tall guys to be goofy and to be in these things. I would be goofy all day long. I was the worst height.

I was so generic as a height. You have to be really short or really tall. Really short or really tall. Or look perfectly like somebody. So I just worked in rides. Lots and lots of rides. I'm so generic as a height. You have to be really short or really tall. Or look perfectly like somebody. I just worked in rides. Lots and lots of rides. I'm a ride geek still. Every time I'm at a theme park, I'm looking at the ride operating console and like, oh, I can operate this.

He literally, like any theme park you go to, he has to talk to you about it and he's like, oh, I see that they don't have that button. He's so hipster about it. You and Link have that in common, although Link was apparently, through the stories I've heard, the worst ride operator ever in the history

of ride operators on the Santa Cruz boardwalk. What? Yeah, I did that for one summer. I cleaned up pee, I cleaned up vomit, and I got sent home one day because my attitude was so poor.

Whoa. I mean, is there a connection? Whoa. I only spent a couple months at Disney, because after graduating film school and I was working

in the industry in New York for a little bit, then we decided we were going to take one year in Florida. I can't handle anymore. And then we have to move back to New York or out to LA. And so during that time, I was like, I need a job. Very easy to get a job over there. Literally, I know everybody that works there thanks to him. This is going to be simple. All the managers and they're all rising up in the company.

So easy way to get a job. I couldn't last like more than a couple months. I just. He was part-time like a day a week. I couldn't be a part of that environment.

It's just like coming from like arts and like everything to be like just the idea of being so regimented and like responsibility and like.

I worked that. One of the many rides I worked at. You don't even get to take it very seriously if you actually get it it's okay i worked there i love that you hated it yeah i could not work there yeah it was it was awful the main thing i couldn't i like there's so much responsibility you're being paid absolute and you have so much responsibility and people's lives are in your hand because of how these rides work also so you're literally like having to be

on task you really need to be on task. You really need to be paying attention to your job. And people treat you like **** too. And like you're supposed to just have a smile on your face and everything's supposed to be great. At the same time, though, like I totally – because I was around all of his friends and I totally – they all have the pixie dust. And they're all like it's so beautiful and it's amazing. Well, they also all know that it's not perfect and there's all these problems. But they all look at the positive side of it.

And I just couldn't help, but always just be like, I see that there's beauty and I love going there. It's fun. I really enjoyed Disney, but to work there, to actually be one of those slaves, I could not do it.

I could not do it. Did you ever see anybody like, cause I know people have gotten like decapitated by space mountain and stuff. Did you ever there for that? I, were you ever there for that? Were you ever there for that? When I worked in Fantasyland, I was a middle manager in Fantasyland, and there was a really bad accident at the Peter Pan ride,

and someone got really, really hurt. Oh, really? Somebody got old? Well, he was old, but he... They left the ride? They left Neverland and they got old? That's the thing. They're supposed to say when you come at the end of the ride, it's like, welcome back from Neverland. Anyway, there's a moving belt at Peter Pan, like Haunted Mansion moving platform.

But Peter Pan is a very old ride in Florida that has not ever been renovated in the way that it has been in other theme parks. So the moving belt never has a slow speed. And most of these rides have slow speeds on the moving belt, not Peter Pan. The only way to stop it is to emergency stop it which you don't want to do because it's hard to load the ride back up and it might not turn back on so when guests with disabilities come on you have to bring them up the back and they have to step on the moving platform and you train them as they get up there man i'm probably in trouble telling this story but uh

that you you have them hey when the boat comes across grab the back of the boat and then step use it to balance yourself and step onto the moving platform. This is a disabled person? Guests with disability. People that can walk but not very well. Say it right. Yeah. Okay.

Otherwise, Mickey will come after you. Here comes a boat. You better grab hold of it. Exactly. Exactly. It's not going to slow down. Anybody that has worked at Peter Pan's Flight has a story where they or a guest has tripped. There's a million.

All of us, because it just is not safe. But anyway, so everyone trips. This particular guest tripped, fell face first into the track. And then they e-stopped it. But when the e-stop happens, all the boats kind of swing forward. And the boat swang right into his neck. So I got there to like reservoir dog's blood and I thought he was dead, but he wasn't.

But it was really bad. It was a really bad accident. It could have been Captain Hook. It could have been. It was dark. You don't know, he could have swooped in there. They airlifted him over the It's a Small World building which I thought was pretty funny. But yeah, two days later I had my next interview for management

and that accident had just happened. And so all of my different interviews were like, were you part of the incident? And I was like, I was the first responder to the incident, and I got promoted the next week. Really? Yep. Because you did such a good job. And I traded shifts because it was Valentine's Day when this happened. And I, even back then, always single, had the – one of the guys was like, look, I have a girlfriend.

I want to switch. You know, can you work my night shift? And I'm like, sure, fine. And I did it, and that happened. And we both were up for manager. He didn't get it, and I did. So I always would tell him, if you were there, it would have been you

because you would have dealt with the Valentine's Day Massacre. The Valentine's Day Massacre. The other middle manager that was there with me that day, every year on Valentine's Day, we still email each other and be like, happy Massacre Day. Oh, God. Really?

Wow, I'm glad I asked that question. Well, let's see if that opportunistic approach to your job applies to YouTube. So you guys moved to L.A.? Yeah, from Florida, yeah. In 2007. You kind of delivered an ultimatum that listen, I gotta get out of here and you were both there at the time at Disney World. Well, what it was was

he finished film school and was doing working in the industry and working his way up through camera departments and stuff. Now where did you go to school? Hunter College, which is a city school in New York City. And so when he was doing that, he was making his way up, working for Comedy Central shows and different series and stuff.

And then the decision was, because we were still making stuff together when we could. Because we had already made feature films and went to film festivals. We had done stuff already, even in high school. But it kind of stopped because of us separating. And then I remember the conversation even of like, what makes sense? Being like, I can keep doing this and I might be able to move up and get connections. Maybe that'll help us if I'm working on other things. Or do we say no? Like, why are we going to keep working for other people? We need to move up and get connections and that will help us. Maybe that'll help us if I'm working on other things. Or do we say no?

Like, why are we going to keep working for other people? We need to just get back together. It's been years. And let's just start making things together again. And we already were. Specifically for the internet. For the internet. Correct.

And we were just like, we saw things like Homestar Runner and Channel 101. And we were just like, we just need to be doing that. So this is 2005, man. Well, this was 2003 when this conversation happened because we had gone through the film festival circuit in 2001, not the big film festivals, just even small ones with our one live action feature, and thought that was the plan.

Every year we're going to make a feature. We were influenced by Kevin Smith and thought, oh, he made it, we can make it. We'll budge, we can do this. We saw right away, impossible. Like two former Orthodox Jews who know no one is never going to make in the film festival circuit what do we do and the internet was a decision we made in 2003 being like the internet we don't we didn't imagine it was going to be this but we thought that's going to be a way to get audience it's going to

be a way to show people when you have no connections hey you can make something i'm interested in how uh kids react came about but let's go back to the whole Maker part of this, because I remember at the founding moments of Maker, you guys were a part of that, or very shortly afterward. Yeah, we were not a part of that original like when the trailer came out, and even the first like

the station trailer and that core group. Nacho Punch. Yeah, it's now what people know or not know is called Nacho Punch now. But originally YouTube.com slash the station, which now brings you to Nacho Punch. Was the group of some really elite top YouTubers at that time, which at that time, the biggest ones were Philip DeFranco, Shane Dawson, and Dave Days. And then other people were in there, Lisa Nova, Shay Carl, Kassem G.

Hi, I'm Ron. And what a day, Derek. Is that all of them? And totally sketch. Well, totally sketch, but he was there. He was more of an employee kind of situation. Right. He wasn't like the core in the trailer.

So they made a bunch of content, already got it off the ground. And then we were in the scenario where we always thought we would never be able to become some bigger thing on YouTube. We always wanted to work for a college humor. We were like, this is, I guess, what we have to do.

But we needed to make a living. It became the point of work for a break, work for heavy. I was still flying back to Orlando to still work every few months because they let me stay on as a seasonal manager. So I would fly back every few months. He had a day job.

There's blood on the belt. Get back here. We need help. But so we went in there just kind of talking. We went in there to have just a conversation with the people that were running the company because we knew some of them, and we knew Shane. And it was like, well, how can we maybe help you guys? Can we maybe get a paycheck is how it kind of started.

And from there, they kind of sold us on like you should just be here. And within two months, we were the head of production and the head of creative for Maker Studios and hired the entire first staff and were producing or writing or a combination for all of those channels from like November 2009 to July 2010, something like that, though very few people even know we were ever there because the whole point of it, even for us, was like we're running it for everyone else.

It was not about us. It was about all of them and building something that they talk about in an idealistic way that we believed in. Once things stopped matching up with where the company was going to what we believed in, we left. So you were producing things that we would know,

like you mentioned to me. Oh, Going Deep with Kasim G. Kasim G. Yeah. It would be the station. Again, Nacho Punch, they got rid of all the videos. You can't see them anymore. So all this work that we did over at the station is no longer online.

So there was a whole bunch of things that were on the station that we were involved with and series that never finished and things like that. So there's all that series there. And then in the beginning of Going Deep with Kassem G, we helped book that show. And his awkward moments was something we helped him with too. And the Shea Carl channel, like things like Man vs. Wife and The Perfect Life. I don't know if you remember those shows. And I think we actually wrote all the Perfect Life episodes. We wrote a bunch of stuff for Shea.

We wrote more for Shea than we wrote for other people. We really liked writing for Shea. But then we would help produce and we brought in other writers. We had a whole contributing writing system for all the comedy clubs so a lot of the sketch comedy that would show up on the station was written by writers that there's writers on Community now that wrote things for Maker that we had

gotten in connection with. And that's even how we met Nice Peter that way too. He was Lloyd. Epic Lloyd runs the West Side Comedy Theater so we wrote him yeah he told us yeah we had him in here so he told us how uh you and lloyd kind of brought peter i literally remember being on the phone with him outside of maker's like motel uh at the time it wasn't called maker yet i don't think but we were was it it was but no one referred to it as i was like outside just making these calls because there's no privacy we were all like bunched together in these rooms and so I was walking out calling each of the the heads of these various places of the UCB and groundlings and

everything I remember just getting on the phone with Lloyd and he was just like I've got like three people I want to send you and it's similar to the Shane Dawson scenario we saw a couple of nice Peter videos and we're like whoa right and like, we have to bring this guy in. So it was fun. There was a lot of fun. I would say there was a lot of positives in terms of the content that was being made. But what was the mismatch? What happened?

Well, I think that there were steps along the way of like even when we, around the time that we first got there, you know, Shane and Phil, like had their kind of falling out and they ended up having their reasons and if they're on here they could maybe talk about their reasons but so well they've both been on here so now you have to tell us they didn't talk about it well they had lots of other things to talk about well i we can't really talk about it sure what are your reasons you know well even for ourselves we're not allowed to really talk about it but the basic idea is that things did not align like in the idea of us uh growing a company and being a part of like the top of a company being executives at a company and also

again if really match up for us we're known better or worse as also being very vocal people about multi-channel networks in general right and maker was like the first one and we were there when when it first happened, when we all joined into one CMS account. I remember the day we all signed the paperwork to do it. It was a very big deal. And from being around what that meant and our beliefs in that system, and especially when you even see now, it wasn't just because of our history there that we felt that way. We have very specific things about being taken advantage of that we didn't want to see happen in certain paperwork for any MCN. And certain things like that started not aligning with their, where they were trying to grow the company into this gigantic mega thing that it is today versus this thing that was

really going to be a united artist supporting each other, growing to grow and promote people. And that was, there was just a conflict in terms of, in a way it is like being more of a business versus being a business, but in a content way. And it didn't line up that's the that's that's a very yes the political way it's a political way and like there's there's a lot of other reasons and it just uh we couldn't work there anymore but we want but at the same time like on our side we couldn't work there anymore but we wanted to fully still support and help and be a part of it however we could. We just knew that whatever we – the idea originally was like the Fine Brothers are done. We're now a part of another company.

You know, like just like if we were to have gone and worked for a college humor, it wouldn't be about us anymore. It would be about college humor. So that period of eight or nine months was no more us. We're going to create more Fine Brothers. We're going to help other people. no more us we're going to create more fine brothers we're going to help other people and then we finally were just like with what we believe in and the way that we want to get there and how we want to treat people and across the board we knew that we had to go and do our own thing but be supportive and help them however they wanted if they wanted it and they didn't

want it when we left working for the station and maker there were opportunities other places a lot of other people came knocking being like run our digital studio and we entertain those for a bit thinking oh is that what we want to do and then realize well you know we've never been full-time on youtube before and even being around something like maker energizes you a little bit we're doing this for everyone else so like well we've never tried like what would happen if we just developed and just said let's take a let's take six months and let's see what happens. And that's what we decided to do. We could be in executives in five years if this fails.

We went into a brainstorm insanity. And I still have the flash card that I found when we moved that had multiple things on it, but one of it was like, kids reacting to something? What else was on the note card? Other shows that we made. Like Lindsay Lohan's show. Lindsay Lohan's show. Making fun of what she was going through. I think there was something called One Week the note card? Other shows that we made. Like Lindsay Lohan. Lindsay Lohan show. Making fun of what she was going through. I think there was something called

One Week Equals Seven Days that we've never made. That you never liked enough for us to make. What is that? It doesn't work. It sounds a little bit of a word. I love it. I'm never going to win. I think Last Moments was on there. What is One Week Equals Seven Days? One Week Equals Seven Days.

The gist of it is that the sketch is, it'll start with like, you know, Sunday, and then you see little vignettes that happen throughout an entire week that tell a whole story. One week equals seven days. So you're able to quickly see in like a minute or two minutes, like this crazy story from point A to point B.

Yeah, we'll start working on that. But, perfect. You'll see that it's a brilliant idea. It'll become the biggest format. So, Kids Rats was part of a large slate of development that we were in production for a couple of months shooting a ton of different things. But this was like a shooting out of the experience of the Maker thing.

You were like, we are going to rack our brains, list a bunch of ideas, and then we're going to produce a whole bunch of them. Well, even before Maker, we had a system of ideas and then we're going to produce a whole bunch of before even before maker we uh we had a system of how we shoot things which was like there's no point you're gonna if you have a show that you want to make or you have a format you have to be able to really test it isn't we don't really think that piloting with one episode really gives you a gauge on youtube we pretty much were like it's a it's a two-man team and you know you can do everything

with two people and this is even what we brought to maker it's a two-man team, and you can do everything with two people. And this is even what we brought to Maker. It's like everything's going to be two-man. It's going to be like a great director, camera person, and then a super PA. And so that was pretty much always kind of like our kind of version of it. And then you have to be able to shoot three in a day. Whatever that thing is, it's got to be three in a day. So we were doing that, and we brought that whole idea to Maker for all the talent and all their shows and whatever we would be producing.

And so we went back out of that being like, great, why don't we basically just make like 10 of those and like just go crazy. And so that period of time when you look, we rebranded the channel. It was a new show every Sunday. That was the idea that sometimes it was the same show, but like we'd have four different shows running at a given time that would air once a month. Right. But you weren't just thinking, I think we talked about this a little bit earlier, but you weren't just thinking, oh, this is a funny idea, this would make a great viral video, which I think a lot of times is

the trap that we get caught in when we create things. We always think viral series. Right, which I think it's so smart, you know, for obvious reasons when something catches and then it's like, oh, we've got the formula. Especially if you can shoot three in a day. As a criteria,

at the top of your brainstorming. We make the mistake of shooting for three days. I know. The other reason why we really bought into that concept and even at Maker it works really well was like, if you do that and find things you really do like that

you can shoot that much of, it frees you up to do the thing that takes you three days to shoot one thing. And you're not panicked about when my next video is coming out because you already shot all these other videos. We would have conversations with each of them. Like we'd be like guys, like Shay or Cas or Timmy came on. Timmy came on towards the end, yeah. And it was just like. De la gata.

Yes. You got to, you know, you got to do this. You have to. This is how you get your channel going. You got to have it. You got to be constant. You got to be moving. You, you know, you got to do this. Then you have to, this is how you get your channel going. You got to have it. You got to be constant. You got to be moving. You can't have a week where you're missing all that stuff.

Like the whole strategy of that idea that has become synonymous with what YouTube is, if you're a big channel. And then we were like, and they'd be like, well, I need to make this thing. We're like, we're not going to make that thing until you make. Once you have these nine episodes in the can, we'll make that thing. We'll make that thing. Like the resources can go towards it. But anyway, so, right.

So it was. But even then, the goal of throwing things on the wall was finding a format because we had the Lost Parodies. We had spoilers, things that were very popular but never stuck in the way that we saw other things. At the time, Epic Mealtime and Annoying Orange had completely blown up. We were like, whoa, this is working now. We have to find what that is. What is our Annoying Orange that completely grown up. We were like, whoa, this is working now. We have to find what that is. What is our Annoying Orange that can work every week? And we even saw, like, talking with Dane, the creator of Annoying Orange and everything,

we were friends with him for a really long time, and we saw him go through almost a similar process where he was always making, like, weird little viral series, like, funny, really great viral stuff. Or Talking Eggs. Yeah, Talking Eggs. I love those videos. Like, one-offs and series.

He would have all these things, like Demon Face and, like, all this stuff that he would do and he had this base of like a good every video we put out no doubt would get 50 to 100 000 views and we were also in that boat we were like 50 to 100 000 views and you'd never really see anything pop more than that and you'd be like okay who knows and then dane all of a sudden put out annoying orange and it was insanity and so we were we started seeing that that idea of like, if we just find the show, because we have that similar kind of thing, we have this audience that will then cede it to everybody if it hits.

And we thought maybe it would be spoilers if we did it in a different way. We thought about that being weekly at one point. But then if you go back to the around October 2010 when Kids React started, there was a narrative web series going. There was our Lindsay Lohan kind of pop culture parody thing. There was interactive content we were making.

The last moments of relationships of the show that we still kind of do now. They were all just kind of going and going and going. And even right away, when we shot Kids React, which the main,

the early origination of the idea was that I was around kids for various things we were shooting at Maker. And I would, if I was directing or even if I was producing, I would try,

as you guys have worked with kids a lot, if you really need them to perform, you've got to become friends with that kid before you start rolling. They're going to shut down. So I started having a lot more detailed conversations with children, and it was fascinating me. I was trying to talk to them about things and then realizing, oh, they're holding a phone. And the whole conversation was like, this was not me when I was a child at all. And it wasn't that long ago.

And so it became from a scripted place first. And we were like, what's some way we can show the difference between children now and the past in a script? And then as we started talking about that idea, it shifted into YouTube and YouTube videos and kids watching. And what would they think about seeing this? And we're like, why are we doing this? We should just show them a video. It's kind of how we got to it. And it wasn't,

we weren't even sure, like we brought in the kids and we didn't know exactly how it was going to be edited together. We just shot that. We wanted to show them a bunch of videos and we didn't really know that it was going to be kind of like this separation of watching and question time. I just took the footage and started. We took the ideas of like,

well, we know we want to cover a lot of different things. And that first episode had like double Rainbow in it, which was huge and a really big video. But then it also had President Obama in a viral video. Because even then we were playing around with, well, what about kids talking about more serious things? So it was like that first two episodes of Kids React,

you can see our mind at play. We tried these types of things. Does it all work? And even then we're like, we think the most interesting is probably the President Obama. And even to this day, those more bigger episodes are the ones that we really get the most passionate about and love that we have a format to talk about things like bullying in a real way and things like that but that's where it really all came from and then right away when he was editing it i remember looking at a cut and i didn't know it would be what it would be but

i was like this is going to be like this is going to this is a million views quick like i know this is going to travel around the web this is going to be good because we had so many relationships with so many websites by that point of years of being featured on places so we were just like everybody's going to want to post this thing like sometimes we'd be like ah we can only send this to like 20 people this one was like this is like it felt much more mainstream and more universal than anything we'd made before one of the reasons we love talking to you is i feel like we you know we we're constantly trying to learn. And because you guys are so active

in the way that you think and you're students of the medium, there's no telling what you're going to continue to produce and you're going to continue to stay busy. I think the question I've got for you is when you get to that point where you're like, okay, I feel like we can kind of take our foot off the gas and I know it's tough to do.

I can relate to that. What do you want to do point where you're like, okay, I feel like we can kind of take our foot off the gas, and I know it's tough to do. I can relate to that. What do you want to do when you settle down? What is settling down for the Fine Brothers? I think only, like, literally when we moved was the first time we even had a moment to start thinking about that. I mean, I know for me, I really want to travel. I definitely want to see more of the world in the same way that I'm getting to, in a way I want to make content there, but throwing that to the side, it's like I want to, I always

have a, and it's just gotten more by doing these react shows. I love to meet people and I love to see the way, I like realizing how easy you can get stuck in your own life. And especially in America. Americans are very much this way. We don't go anywhere. We feel like we're the center of the universe versus going to other countries. How do

people really live in these places? What is different human to human living somewhere else versus living here? I'd really like to do more traveling. I even look to you guys, and we've talked about this sometimes, of there's envy even to the fact of you being able to still produce the content that you do at the quality you make it with families because that is

something that I really want and I'm not close to it now. We both haven't gotten to the point where we're like we want families but it's more on being envious of people like you guys and we have specifically you guys have come up in that sense of like it's a it's amazing to see that you guys have been able to do what you've done uh and have also this whole literally this whole life, like literally what quote unquote life is for people. You've somehow been able to do both. And for me, I've just been,

I couldn't even imagine being able to even, I don't even know how I'm going to get to that point where I can be ready to do that because of how bad we've gotten. Just get a girl pregnant. By mistake. Get her pregnant. Get a random girl pregnant.

That's how both of you guys did it. Yeah, right. The first one, you can talk into it, and then everything changes. Please let me get you pregnant, random woman. Let's build a life together. I think that was my line right there. Very sexy.

Well, guys, we wish you the best in what you're doing now and in those plans for the future. So we'll keep tabs on that, and it's time for you to sign the table. Oh, man. Oh, man. All right, there you have it, our conversation with Benny and Rafi Fine. I mean, these guys are defining digital entertainment.

I mean, it's an honor to call them friends, and it's nice to have been able to really understand their story. And I mean, I was struck with the fact that they've really paid their dues. You know, Kids React is by no means the first viral thing that they

ever created. And even before their channel, they were creating viral videos on MySpace. I mean, that's going way back. I think that there is a perception from people who either aren't involved in the YouTube community, don't know many people who are, who they see YouTube as a place where accidents happen. You know, oh yeah, the guy who made that video and it accidentally went viral. And while that is a dynamic of YouTube, when you talk to somebody like the Fine Brothers,

you're just struck with the systematic approach that they bring. It's so calculated, it's so tenacious. And I know that's something everybody has had in common. And one sense who's been on Ear Biscuits is they're. Calculation. It's so calculated, it's so tenacious, and I know that's something everybody has had in common in one sense who's been on Ear Biscuits is they're also tenacious, but these guys are not just tenacious. They're smart and calculated and purposeful, and we love, in fact, after they left, we just talked to them for a while. After they left? You mean after we stopped recording? They were still here when we were speaking to them.

Yeah, after, well I was on the phone with them, that's what I did tell you. After we stopped recording, we just kept talking to them and asking them all these questions. We can't, I mean, you know, it's stuff you wouldn't care about, the minor details and nuances of uploading and, you know, YouTube videos. But seriously, another hour,

maybe an hour and a half of that. And they could have kept going. That's the thing is I love when I feel like I've tapped into something and they just start talking, completing each other's sentences and just going and going and going and going. I mean, these guys are a wealth of knowledge.

I mean, they should write a book. You know what? We should write a book and get them to write it. Ghost write it. All right, that's what happens on Ear Biscuit. That's what you get. Chomp down, go to the deep end. I don't, whatever kind of euphemism you want to use,

if you like being touched, you're in the right place. Oh my. We do it every week. So iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, you know? I'm going to retract that. That's why there's two of us. I'm going to retract that if you'd like being touched, you know, if you don't like being touched, if you're skittish about that kind of thing, you're welcome here too, because we're not going to touch you unless it's with sound waves going into your ears.

That's exactly what I meant. All right. We'll see you or you'll hear us next week.