Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 45 TomSka- Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: August 15, 2014

In one of the most poignant episodes of the series to date, Thomas Ridgewell, known as TomSka, joins Rhett & Link to discuss how he finds comedy in the subversion of expectations, why his religious upbringing led to his current agnostic beliefs, why he decided to make and release a legitimate sex education video on his otherwise comedic channel, and how losing his best friend and business partner, Ed Gould, to Leukemia changed his life forever. 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. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Link. And I'm Rhett. It's time for another conversation with someone interesting from the internet. And this week that person is Thomas Ridgewell, a.k.a. TomSka. Yep. Tom first became known for his co-authorship and voiceover work on the popular animated series online, Eddsworld. And also, way back in 2006, he started his own YouTube channel, TomSka. It's basically sketch comedy, animations, and action videos.

We've been huge fans of Tom. We were elated to find out that he knew of our work from way back in the day. So it was really cool to catch up with him at VidCon to have this conversation. His channel is approaching 3 million subscribers. He's got over 525 million views, and he's updating his content regularly, showcasing his distinct sense of humor. Here's a little sample of his work in this sketch,

Picture Perfect, released in November 2013. It's got about 2 million views. In this, Tom attempts to teach his fellow YouTuber, Crabsticks, how to paint. Chris, I'm gonna teach you how to paint. Why? Because I want to build the only type of ship that doesn't sink. The Titanic?

No, a friendship. Also, the Titanic did sink. Impossible. Chris, I want you to paint me. Done. Show me. That is a shoe. You have painted a shoe. Damn, it must be this brush. Try again. Done. Show me. I is a shoe. You have painted a shoe. Damn, it must be this brush.

Try again. Done. Show me. I imagined you being Chinese this time. That is still a shoe, yet somehow more racist. Damn this xenophobic brush. Only a bad workman blames his tools. Why not a work woman?

Now is not the time for feminism, Chris. When will it be time, Tom? Try again. Tom's most popular series is his ASDF movie, ASDF movie series. It's flash animation that consists of rapid-fire short skits featuring various stick figures

having quick dialogue exchanges. Figures? Figures. Figures? I'd say fig-u-ers, yeah. Fig-u-ers. Fig-u-ers. Emphas, yeah. Figures. Figures. Emphasis on the gure. The Asdiff series as a whole, which has seven episodes and ancillary content, has just over 290 million views.

Almost 300 million views on this stuff. Here's a taste of episode seven. Ma'am, I'm afraid I caught your son doing homework. Where did I go wrong? Hey, Joey, do you want to eat me? No thanks, Mr. Muffin. But I want to die. Hey, Stacy, do you want to go to the prom with me?

Oh, I'm sorry, but I'm a ghost. But you're not dead. Bye, Brian. Okay, you get an idea. Pretty random stuff, but hilarious. Now, I really enjoyed this conversation with Tom. I feel like this was a very honest, very poignant conversation with him. Yeah, I mean, I'd say this is one of my favorite ear biscuits. Thought-provoking, poignant.

Did you say poignant? I did say poignant. Did you say the G? Did you pronounce the poignant? I could say poignant if you want me to. You could say that. You could say figure. Yeah, we could do that.

We talked to Tom about the interesting ramifications of his upbringing as a Jehovah's Witness and his path to agnosticism. We also talked about what business he has making a bonafide sex education video on his channel. He did just that.

And we had an extremely open discussion about him losing his best friend and creative partner, Ed Gould, creator of Ed's World to leukemia in March of 2012. Yeah. I mean, I think in our conversation, the way he put it back to us was he asked us, what would it be like if one of us lost the other? How would we carry on personally and creatively? So I really appreciated the fact that Tom went there with us. Very open. We had a conversation about that painful part of his life and how he's continuing to deal with that.

Here it is, our Ear Biscuit with Tom Scott. Do you live life at the pace of ASDF movies? Or SDF? How do you say it both ways? You don't care anymore. I don't mind how you say it at all. But you say ASDF. I say ASDF because in my naive little mind, I was like, everyone will figure that out.

But I was very wrong. A lot of people say ASDF And I really hated that for a while But then I realized, actually, they're making it easier to share Because they're saying how to spell it to people So now I appreciate these people But do I live my life at that pace? Because it's a breakneck pace Like, joke, joke, joke

I'm in and out to the next thing Is that how your brain or your life works? Oh, it's definitely how my brain works And that's really exciting My life, not so much My life is a lot of sleeping. Just a lot of it. You know, for me, a very successful day is a day where I come up with one joke. But to put it in perspective, the speed of my brain and my life has changed so much that I made one joke that's in one of my movies. Hey, check out my new camera. Bang. Oh wait, this isn't a camera. That was actually

the first animation I ever made back in about 2004. And it was a minute and a half long. Same joke. One joke. Same joke. Three second long joke. It took a minute and a half to tell. And now, you know, 10 years later, I've remade it. You know, it's three seconds long. And that's just, it's just my comedic timing has condensed. Fun fact though, I put that, that was my first ever animation. It went live on Smosh.com long before YouTube. Really?

Yeah, I've been around since way before YouTube. It's just YouTube happened, and that was lovely. That was a lovely meeting. And how did you know about Smosh.com? Smosh.com, Ian and Anthony created it before YouTube, but it was just for their friends because we talked to them about it. Yeah, no.

How did you get on that? I've been in the scene. I've been in the game a really long time. But you were on their forums as a user. And you submitted videos. And I wish I could find them now. That's the only place I know I uploaded it. But I think it's long gone.

I had a history of getting banned off forums for being a disagreeable 12-year-old. You got kicked off of Smosh.com? I got kicked off of everything. Absolutely everything. By being belligerent in the forums? Just being very 12. You know, your average 12-year-old,

Halo playing, I slept with your mother last night kind of attitude. That was me entirely. So lately I'm going through this kind of wave of really wanting to encourage people to not be awful that's purely because I was so awful and I see that in my own audience

I'm like I think you guys are a lot like me and if you are then no please don't be like me but yeah I was on Smosh.com ages ago and what did that look like? Terrible it looked pretty sleek

no the style was a stickman animation. And this was all you at the time? Yeah, yeah. This was back when I didn't know how to animate at all. I don't know how to animate now, actually. I just hire people who are way better than me. Right, so you write and direct everything, and then you've got animators. Yeah, I wanted to be an animator. And voice talent. I wanted to be an animator originally,

but I just didn't have the patience for it. But yeah, I write, I direct, and directing is the kind of thing you throw air quotes in when it comes to animation, because really it's so much down to the creative genius of the animators you're working with. But you do a lot of different things. Yeah, I like mixing it up.

I don't like doing the same thing too many times. But the Asda ones are the, far and away, the most successful on your channel. There's a lot of really successful stuff there, by the way, but you put out number seven just a few weeks ago. A few months, yeah. And it's already gotten up to 14 million views or 15 million, just like all the other ones.

Yeah, and that's really lovely, and that's such a comforting thing. I figure if I upload one of those and it doesn't work, then either the site's changed or I'm just not funny anymore. How would you describe them? I describe those... that series specifically. Yeah, quick fire animated sketches. Very Americanized, I think. Really?

When I began, I did a lot of American accents. Now I'm trying to do mostly British accents because I used to... It's marketable. Is that why? For me, I always find American accents funnier with comedy. Like swear words are so much funnier when said with American accents than British accents, in my opinion,

but I think Americans would beg to differ. But for me, it's all... Right, to you personally, from your perspective. Yeah, I think the F word when said by an American is so funny. Really? So much funny. It's one of those words that changes a lot. Yeah, but somehow it just sounds perfect when it comes out

of an american you'll basically engineer these things to be the quick fire and so how is that kind of jokes at their absolute core so any joke any any joke any narrative you can tell you know a dozen different ways you can tell it over the course of an hour over a minute or i think you can condense any narrative into about three seconds at its core. And some of them are completely random. Like, well, this one's not random, but it's the sun and then there's a planet orbiting the sun and it just says, you're fat. Yep.

And you're out. That's it. That's it. There's no setup even. No. That's just funny. It's completely minimal. The whole point is that I try to take absolutely, I don't know why that's funny sometimes it's just i'm just like i just

know it is it just did yeah you don't need to explain it yeah and actually being that quick you don't have to question it made it funnier yeah you know it was funny period but then because it was funny and it was over it became even funnier surprised like did that happen yeah you just you just wait what ah and it's just this confusion, and yeah, because comedy at its core is the subversion

of expectations, and sometimes just the lack of a joke is funny. Yeah. Just a, I thought something was going to happen,

but it didn't happen. I'm laughing. Or something so random, like, what was the feather joke? Oh, hey baby, are you allergic to feathers? No, hey baby,

are you an angel? It's two guys in a... Set it up. Two guys in a bar. There's a man and he slides up to a woman at a bar and he says, hey baby, are you an angel? Because I'm allergic to feathers. And then he throws up on her. Like violently. So yeah, the way a lot

of jokes get written is... And then you're out. That's it. Yeah, that's it. But a lot of jokes I write come from like, here's a thing, here's a trope, here's a catchphrase, a cliche, how can I just break it? Which is pretty standard.

But yeah, so it's like, hey baby, are you an angel? Or did it hurt when you fell from heaven? That kind of stuff. But then I was like, what if it's like allergies related?

Because originally it was a comic that I wrote when I was 16 where the last panelist, he's just broken out with his face is just inflated because he's having a leisure action. But then you changed it to him throwing up to make it more appealing and quick fire and explosive. And the way that the vomit looked, it was like as tall as his head and as straight as an arrow. Chunks of vomit.

It's awful. Projectile. Projectile. Now, I'm tempted to, you know, come up with some analogy or some reason, you know, for why that content works so well. Like, oh, well, the mindset of today's youth is just so fragmented and all over the place. And so you're frenetic. AGD. And kids don't need story anymore. They just need a stream of jokes and Tom Scott's proving it. And ruining the youth of tomorrow. But you know, honestly, I think it's a very simple analysis as far as I'm concerned. It's incredibly funny. The jokes are really,

really funny. And it's just, you're like, that was funny, that was funny, that was funny, that was funny, and it just, after a while there's just this overwhelming, like, how are all these this funny? Yeah, I think that's a good... What did I say over no I'm

agreeing when you use the word overwhelming I thought I said like overwhelming or something a word that yes I'm also contributing to overwhelming but yeah it's just a cavalcade of everything being so funny and there's no duds kind of a thing is the experience I disagree

entirely for every one I put out I'm sure there's about three that I go, what was I doing? Why did I do that? But I'm saying even within a video. There's always about three that get made within the last two days of production. I'm like, this was funny at the time. And I look back and I'm like, that's awful. That's not a joke.

But then other people like them and I just kind of have to go like, okay. But I have very high, you wouldn't guess it, but I do have very high standards of what does and what does not go in. Because it's not just random. I think one of the things that I've observed about it is I think a lot of people see certain content that might be popular today, like what you're creating, and they're just like, oh, it's just random, and people just like random stuff.

And so it's like, you know, we could just throw a bunch of words and characters into a blender and mix it up, and the kids will love it. It's like, no, you know, we could just throw a bunch of words and characters into a blender and mix it up and the kids will love it. It's like, no, you know, I want to give this generation more credit than most people are willing to. The fact that they like what you're doing, that encourages me as a comedian. Oh, wow. Well, yeah, no, I don't. I absolutely disagree when people do say that, you know, it's just like this mindless comedy and just like kids today are stupid dumb. Yeah, I do

have a lot more faith in them than that. I just think that people do typically outgrow the animations over time. I've witnessed, you know, I've been doing them for long enough now that I've witnessed a generational shift. You know, noughties kids started watching them and now they're teenies

kids. We don't really have a name for these two decades, do we? Noughties and teenies? Yeah. Cause then it's the twenties, thirties, forties. Oh,

right now. Right. Yeah. Well, first of all, noughties is nineties, right? No,

no, then there's a nineties. Then there's the noughties. No, the noughties are the zeros, right? Yeah. Like the 2000 to 2010.

Yeah. Right. Am I right? Yes. Cause we, cause we don't use the term not for zero. Okay. So when you say naughties, I just think about naughty things.

We've done naughty things. Yeah. This took a time. But no, the thing is, I think people grow up and suddenly they become way more analytical of the things they're laughing at. And they kind of, I want to say they get higher standards, but in a way it's more that they just, they want, whereas when you're a kid, you so desperately want to be entertained. Like you will read the back of a cereal box for like,

I'm just going to read this and maybe something will be interesting on it. You desperately want anything to be funny, anything to be interesting, and you'll just laugh at anything. You hit this cynicism when you're about 18. Yeah, you get self-conscious. And suddenly you're just like, no, here I am. You be funny and I will dissect you and I will run you through your paces and a lot of kids decide that they're no longer going to find what I do funny

and that's kind of understandable because I obviously have that with a lot of the YouTubers that I watch I was a huge fan of Smosh growing up but I think now I've kind of reached a point where it's like they're still entertaining the same kind of demographic and I have grown it's absolutely not their job to grow with me. They've got their thing and that's great, but it's no longer my thing.

And I think a lot of kids do grow out of it. It's just something you enjoy at the start and it's a lot of fun. Some people still have fun with it and that's great. And I love meeting those people. It's strange when they invite me to their weddings and name their kids after me. That's happened?

One child has the middle name of TomSka, which is bizarre. The whole middle name is TomSka? The whole middle name is TomSka. Okay, tell us about this. I wonder if the S is capitalized. How does this work? I have no idea. Someone just came up to me one day and said,

oh, yeah, my sister named her child, his middle name is TomSka. And then she was off into the night. I'm still left wondering if that was true. You've seen no pictures. I've seen no birth certificate, but I'm still left wondering if that was true. You've seen no pictures. I've seen no birth certificate, but I'm going to take her word for it. We've had pets named after us. People will have like two cats.

Are you paying some sort of child support? I hope not. You're at risk. It's probably not mine. You've got pets named after you. For your name's sake. We've got a whole game franchise. That's true.

That's original. A human. I'll take it. An entire human, at least middle named after you. I don't know how much that counts. Sometimes some people don't even have middle names. There might be people who have named Tom after me, but that's very presumptuous. Right, there's a lot of Toms.

Very popular. Well, it's interesting you talk about your fans outgrowing your content and you're just backfilling with younger fans, I guess is what you're saying, because they get more analytical or they start to look down on maybe just the tone of it. But I'm actually surprised by that. I think what he's saying is that his content has grown, though. I kind of. I think it's very common for all of us to throw what we used to love under the bus.

Like, oh, that's kid stuff now. I don't like that. And then we hit our 20s and we're like, oh, maybe I shouldn't have been so hard on it. But then sometimes we don't make that realization. I think a lot of us, we hit this angsty teenage phase where it's like, all those things that you used to love, you're like, oh, this is lame now. I would never, no, I'm not, no. But you're saying your work is aging up as you get older and as your comedic tastes change.

Yeah, kind of. That is what you're saying. I kind of do both. You've got my animations like Asked to Movie, which stays at kind of a constant level. When I make that, I am making it for myself aged 12 to 15. That's who I know would like that video. And as long as I keep aiming for that specific kid,

turns out there are a lot of that kid out there in the world, which is weird because I didn't have any friends when I was that age. So I wish I could have met any of these guys. But yeah, these are Adventure Time, Invader Zim loving, catchphrase screaming, pie is the funniest thing in the world, haha cheese kids. Because that's what I was. That's absolutely who I was.

Yeah, and you're still targeting that, but you've got other things you're saying. Basically, everything I make is for me at a different age. That's kind of how I figure it. So, you know, I do like the Aston movies, yeah. That's for me at certain ages. But then I do the action videos, and that's kind of more what I was looking for

when I was 18, 19, when I was very into, you know, Freddie Wong and that. And not that I'm not still into Freddie Wong in a romantic way, but yeah. And I even did, you know, I did a video called The Sex Talk, which was aimed at, again, myself, aged kind of more around 14, because I never got The Sex Talk.

And so I was like, I needed to have seen this. Yeah, it's interesting. And I'm going to make it now, so hopefully other kids will not so that's your motivation because we were just talking about that it's interesting because so much of your work is just

strict comedy now not that the sex talk wasn't funny and had it's moments but I thought okay when I sat down and watched that video this might be a parody but then I'm like oh no there's a penis and that's how it works it's a penis and that's how it works and it's not even got a smiley face on it it's a legitimate yeah sex education video i know i just kind of went haha surprise bam there's some dicks but i mean what went into deciding to make that

i know the mindset and how you made it because you just told us that you were targeting yourself but was it i can get a lot of views with this was it there's a legitimate need for sex education on youtube i had no idea if i was getting a lot of views for it um i thought it could potentially be a real channel killer and i think i i and i made enough redrafts to it that it wasn't a channel killer but it could really have done a lot of damage if i'd just been like oh i'll just type this out in an afternoon and shoot it'll be fine uh i went through a lot of different stages and I actually ran the whole script past hundreds of people online to be like, what am I saying that's wrong in this video? And luckily I'd made

loads of mistakes in the original version. So what was your motive in making a legitimate sex education video? My motive, and I don't want to get too dark really, but the fact is I was looking up statistics online of just terrible things like sexual abuse and I'm like, wow, that's one in three women are sexually abused. And similarly, it's not dissimilar statistics for men, but then one in three women are sexually abused and I look at my audience, my audience is one third women and two thirds men. And I'm thinking, you know, yeah, how many of the people watching my videos right now

are either, you know, going to be abused, have been abused, will be abusers. And I just kind of had this little panic and I just, I felt like I had to do something. And my therapist has called this a bit of a Messiah complex. But no, I just felt so much like I just needed thing and and wow and my therapist has called this a bit of a messiah complex but um uh but no i just felt so much like i just needed to to do something to give something back more than just just comedy and and it was and it was it was great you know i redrafted this video and and

and i think i did a lot of a lot of good and apparently it's played in schools now which is really really cool um there was there was one whole section of the video, which was kind of a how to, which I cut out and then put on my second channel. Cause it was like this, I don't, I don't need this. They don't need this part of the video.

Well, you can figure it out once you present the parts. Yeah. It's like, okay, but now go make your own mistakes. Uh, but web protection,

um, or, or click to my second channel, my second channel and watch this, but I'm like, please subscribe. I was like, please don't watch this video. I was so, because, yeah, like, obviously I'm a VidCon at the moment,

and I met this little group of kids, and they couldn't have been older than five. And I was just like, oh, you've seen that video? They mentioned it. They didn't mention it, but they must have seen that video. And it's so awful because,'s, you know, like, one thing I really don't like about YouTube is that there is an age restriction, but it's 18 plus and that's it.

Whereas I want there to be like a 13 year old restriction. So anyone under the age of 13, but YouTube would like to pretend that no one under the age of 13 is on their website. Because, you know, that's obviously why Justin Bieber is the biggest thing ever is, you know, no one under the age of 13 uses YouTube. on their website. Because that's obviously why Justin Bieber is the biggest thing ever. No one under the age of 13 uses YouTube. But I really wish that I could age restrict that video because while I do think it's important that younger people see it,

especially in this age of the internet, because if I don't make that video, someone else is going to find it. They're going to figure it out, right. Was the sex talk video the most unusual video you ever put on your channel. Even in your channel trailer where you kind of orient people to the fact that you make three different categories of videos.

You make animations, you make action, and then you make comedy sketch videos. And you made a comment in there, you said, and I'm going to try things. So don't freak out. Don't freak out and unsubscribe, because I'm going to experiment and come back with the things that you love.

I did that knowing that the sex talk was not going to be the only time I was going to try something like that. I have a few things that I want to try, such as I want to do a video on how to YouTube, for example, very casual, just like here's everything I think people might want to know if they're going into making YouTube videos.

But then I also want to do other videos, like I want to do a video on sexism. I just kind of want to know if they're going into making YouTube videos. But then I also want to do other videos. Like I want to do a video on, you know, sexism. I just kind of want to, you know, gradually, you know, be like, here's some comedy, comedy, comedy, comedy. But here's the way, here's something that's kind of important. And now more jokes. I want to mix things up and I want to present them in, again, the way that I would have wanted to see them when I was that age

and in a way that hopefully it's going to do some good. Because the fact is, yeah, there are loads of channels doing great things, you know, like Lacey Green, you know doing great things, you know, like Lacey Green, you know, doing great, you know, sexual education videos and other people doing great social awareness stuff, but the fact is, their audience, it's kind of a preaching to the choir situation. Their audience is already there. Their audience is already

going, yeah, you're right, but whereas my audience typically is, like I said, your average kind of halo playing, I slept with your mother last night, kid, sometimes. And so these your average kind of halo playing i slept with your mother last night kid sometimes and sometimes and um and and so these are the kind of people it's it's pretty insulting when you're like i sleep with your mother sometimes not even you know when you're not even exclusive right and it's just like on occasion oh that's awful um you said it but you didn't mean it that

way yeah no um but you've got your audience and you've gathered them around a certain brand of humor across three different types of videos. But then you're like, but I've got things I want to say to them and I'm not going to leave that up to somebody else. That's interesting. Inspiring, really.

Yeah, and that's why at the end of my sex talk video, because I never plan on making another one. Because people were like, oh, do more videos on sex. And I'm like, no, that's fine. But that's why at the end of it I was like, I'm going to link to Lacey Green, Lacey, take it from here. And then just, yeah, hopefully she got a nice influx of kids

being like, what does this button do? We haven't talked about violence. I mean, that's a big part of even across genres. I don't know if it's in the sex talk. Sex, suicides, it's awful. I mean, people may just casually look at your work and say, well, that's why he's so successful. Again, we know better.

But how do you view it and how do you bake in violence what's your thought process there I love violence as a comedic tool I love explosions blood and stuff like that my goal is to one day flip a car

I've been going when I was younger I was raised quite religious but even in church I was still making guns out of plasticine and getting them confiscated and drawing stick men blowing up. And that's just always been a part of me. When I was about eight years old, my mom would every week buy me a pack of toy cars, which I would take to the garden and destroy with a shovel. A shovel? And I would do this every week.

Like hack them? Yeah, just smash them, just break them, pretend they're crashing. I've just always been a very destructive child. But it was like, basically I'm saying that I'm kind of like Dexter. Whereas I had these tendencies, but my parents just kind of let me hone them.

They kind of just like, let me control them, and now I make them on YouTube. I hope you're not like Horse from that video you just released. Yeah, that video was the darkest, weirdest thing I've ever made. Explain it. So yeah, I have this one character wherein it's me wearing a horse mask, running around in a dress, murdering people.

And oddly enough, that's one of the least problematic videos I think I've ever made. That video is just very much like, it doesn't come from a dark place, it's just, I find it very funny. It seems very happy because of the least problematic videos I think I've ever made. That video is just very much like, it doesn't come from a dark place. It's just, I find it very funny. It seems very happy because of the music. The music is terrifyingly happy. But it's the creepiest horse mask you'll ever see, which floats around the internet. We own one.

Yeah, of course. They're so funny. But yeah, what's funny is that midway through shooting that video, I had a therapy appointment. So midway through shooting that video, I got in the cab, went to therapy. With the dress and horse head went to therapy with the dress and horse head on not with the dress and horse mask on but then i came i came back and reviewed shooting that video and it was didn't miss a beat didn't miss a single beat well yeah how much are

you paying this therapist because a lot well she's not doing he's like oh and you know what you should just continue to this take the knife with you and just get out whatever you have in your system. Just leave my office. You terrifying man. Well, let's go back to the backstory then. I mean, the crashing cars kid who eventually makes murderous horse videos. Where was this? Where were you born? We know how you were made.

You made the video about it. Oh, yes, absolutely. So we can skip that part. Yeah, I wish my parents didn't tell me in such excruciating detail my backstory. I can never visit. Yeah, we're not going to start there. I can never visit Scotland or Loch Ness now. But, yeah, no, I was born and raised in England. I say born and raised.

I'm still there, except for right now. I was born in raised in England. I was born, I say born and raised, I'm still there. Whereabouts? I was born in Essex, actually. So my actual original accent is more like this, which is, so Essex is kind of like, I don't want to say scummy, but, you know. Like Adele? Maybe, like YouTubers like Sam Pepper. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And stuff like that. So like Emma Blackery as well. That's the Essex accent. Okay. I grew out of that when I was about six. We moved to Cambridge, which is actually a very posh part of England. You know, it's Cambridge University. They row boats against Oxford a lot.

There's a pretty incredible story of your birth, right? Oh, yeah. No, yeah. It's wild. So I was originally a twin. I had a twin sister named Amelia. At this point, I was was named dudley which is fabulous um dudley and dudley yeah i like that it's full-on harry potter style and as a chubby kid they would

have been hell at school uh that would have been like the worst yeah the worst ever of my life always i've never i have never met a real dudley and it's like i would have been the only one no solidarity it would just been me um i wouldn't be popular on YouTube like I didn't even like the name Thomas when I started making you know online videos but now I'm like why that's stupid but if I'd been called Dudley I think I would never would have gotten over that um but um but yeah no uh but basically my mom my mother had a car accident because some stupid person pulled out in front of her and uh caused her to do an emergency break and and sadly, my mother lost my sister in this accident. And this is while she was pregnant with you, right?

This is while she was pregnant. And the doctor said like, oh, you know, the child's gone. I'm sorry. You don't have children now. And my mom, you know, went back to work for a couple months and was like, no, I think I'm pregnant. And the doctor's like, no, no, the baby's dead. She's like, no, I'm pretty sure I'm pregnant. And the doctor's like, no, no, the baby's dead. She's like, no, I'm pretty sure I'm

pregnant. And then they finally caved in and did a check. And I'm like, oh, there's a baby in there. There's a Dudley in there. Well, yeah, there is a Dudley in there. And then my mom was like, hey, Tom's dad, you know how I had a child die, I'm going to pull rank, and I'm going to be like, I need a favor, and it's to not call my child Dudley because that's awful. And I got luckily named Thomas. But yeah, then my mom had to sleep with her.

She had to basically lay down, and this is so disturbingly graphic, because I basically would have fallen out. It was so complicated. And I was born about a month premature in a little box. Did she carry your twin as well? No, the twin was lost kind of immediately after the crash. But the twin basically is the reason I'm alive. She took physically the impact of the crash. It's, yeah, it's quite graphic to imagine, but hey, so that's really weird. But my plan. But my plan is if I ever have a daughter, there's no question.

She's named Amelia. There's just no question about that. Sorry, future wife. Was this a story you knew from a young age or something that you found out later in life? I kind of knew it from a young age. So your parents were open about talking about those type of things. It didn't really hit me what it meant until quite later in life.

I think I was about 16 or something like, oh, I'm supposed to be a twin. That's weird. And that really kind of weirded me out. Especially the etymology of our names or the story of our names. It's like Thomas actually means twin, which is weird. And Amelia comes from the Latin, I believe, of ameliorate, which means to make better. So basically I was totally the evil twin.

Wow. Which is fine. I mean, it's kind of obvious that I'm the evil twin. You'll own that. But yeah, that's kind of a weird little backstory. But yeah, I was born and raised, and then we moved to Cambridge. What did your parents do? So my mom runs a hairdressing salon.

Well, that's Link's dream backup job. Clearly. And my dad co-owns the family business of landscape gardening. So basically I'm moving very soon and I'm having my dad come and do my garden. I'm hiring my own father, which is the strangest experience.

But yeah, that's my backup plan is the family landscape gardening business now you said you grew up jehovah's witness yeah uh so were they devout devout jehovah's witnesses are they still and what's it like growing up in in that environment it's difficult to speak on their behalf so so i won't but yeah i was i was raised at least for the first few years a devout uh jehovah'shovah's Witness, full-on knocking on the doors, kind of upbringing, no birthdays, no Christmases, and all that stuff.

And what's left over now is that even though that's not me anymore, I actually have a lot of love for the people in my life, but I have a lot of disdain for organized religion as a whole. But I don't really want to inflict that on anyone. Maybe a video will come out of it one day, but, uh, for now I'm okay just to let that sleeping dog lie. What was the progression? Uh, I mean, the progression was, was really just that, um, we kind of slipped away.

I think the whole family kind of pulled back a bit over time. And then I spent my first 10 years very carefully indoctrinated into that, but not enough that I became kind of brainwashed. But then we kind of fell back for a few years. And then by the time my parents tried to get me more back into it, I'd already kind of slipped a bit. And then I went to uni and started meeting atheists and people from the world. And I kind of became very open-minded. Was there anyone in particular or anything that happened

that kind of broke you out of the faith? There's a handful of things, actually. One of them is my friend Jacob, who is a YouTuber called Latum Way. And meeting him, he's like an atheist, ranty YouTuber. And meeting him and becoming friends with him, I think, definitely shaped me a lot. But anyway, when I was younger, one of the most formative moments in my life was, I couldn't have been older than about 18. And I was waiting in town center to hang out with one of my close friends. And there was this man, this evangelical Christian fellow

on a literal soapbox, you know, preaching to the crowd, and he was killer. It was so impressive to watch. Even if I didn't necessarily agree with everything he was saying, I was still kind of religious, and he was just amazing. People were coming up to him asking him impossible questions, like, so do babies go to hell? And crazy questions that would stump anyone. And this man would still take them and win.

And it was incredible. And at the end of it, I walked over to him and I was like, hey, man, I just want to say, even if I don't necessarily agree with everything you said, that you're an incredible public speaker, like Hitler. And he was very polite. And I said, but I don't necessarily agree with everything you said. And he's like, oh, well, that's okay, man.

And I went, I'm actually raised a Jehovah's Witness. And then this man's face just turned, and he just got, and he went, well, brother, with a big smile on his face, went, well, brother, you're going to hell. You're going to burn in hell. Really? Yeah, just with this terrifying, you know, smile on his face, just of this, you know, faux love,

and was like, well, you need your soul to be saved and and stuff like this and the fact that he could say that to me you know but also still feel like he means well and and genuinely believe that just made me so terrified and angry towards you know religion that was kind of a very much a tipping point and being like oh okay this is off maybe maybe the maybe there maybe there is no right way and and that's kind of what actually made me become uh more open-minded and i wrote a vlog called the day my faith died uh about this this moment and uh and i know i never really made it because i don't want to start that conversation yet i don't really have any answers and i never

really will i i guess at the moment i i class as agnostic, which is just, is there a God? So you wrote a vlog, you scripted it, but you never filmed it. No, not really. Because you don't want to have that dialogue on your channel yet. Yeah, it's just like, of all the things I want to stand for at the moment, that's not one of them. I don't really have anything to say yet you know i feel like well well i mean it's already quite it's already quite you know out of line in a way of me to give my audience the sex talk i took you know a million children maybe that who whose parents had maybe even decided not to tell their kids about this yet and gave them the sex talk prematurely and so i can understand why as a parent you'd be very

upset about that and so if i'm gonna, hey, maybe religion's kind of crappy, that's just not my place yet, unless I have something that's really powerful to say, but not in a I feel this kind of way. Because the truth is I am still a bit angry, and I kind of want to be coming from a place of actual understanding. Well, you know, it seems like,

even if that's what you've gone through personally, from what I can see, you don't bring that particular thing into your comedy. No, yeah. You don't make fun of... I have two rules.

Two rules when I started making YouTube, which I still adhere to, and that is no swearing and no blasphemy for some reason. And I guess when I started it,

it was always because I was making the question that was, you know, would I be okay with my parents watching this? And that was was making the question, would I be okay with my parents watching this? And that was it. More so, would I be okay with my parents' friends watching this? The parents from the religion and that.

Right. Those bridges are long burned now. Long burned. But still, it was a... And you stuck with that? Yeah, I still don't swear. Because I actually kind of like the challenge of making comedy without swear words. I don't think it makes me better than anyone in any way,

but I do like the challenge and it does make it harder. And it does make some jokes not funny. Sometimes I've replaced the F word with screw or something and it's just not as funny. Right. But it is because I do want my comedy to be accessible to little younglings. And while I think it's okay for kids to know swear words, I do have a bit of a problem with swearing in comedy sometimes.

Like a crutch? The bigger YouTubers, yeah. Because sometimes I feel like, your joke was literally that someone just swore. That's not a joke. There's no artistry to that. It's just a shock. I've tweeted about that.

I still have to keep in check my tweeting habits. It's awful. Because the rule that I've learned on the internet is anything you say about someone can and will be found and read by them and held against you. The first VidCon I went to back in 2012, I ran into the guys who make dick figures. After I tweeted about them doing a Kickstarter

and how much money they'd asked for, and they'd remember that, and everyone in their office already knew who I was, and I was like, I can't say mean things anymore. Lately, I actually did a tweet, because obviously PewDiePie, biggest YouTuber in the world at the moment, and I don't know anything about him,

but because they're big YouTubers, you dehumanize them. You just tell yourself, oh, they're just a big YouTuber. But I actually asked my audience, what is PewDiePie? Is he actually a nice guy? And I was like, yeah, actually he donates hundreds of thousands to charity, and I'm like, oh, that's really cool. And then he messaged me like, I'm a nice guy. He personally.

You were just asking your audience, is he nice? What's bizarre about PewDiePie? And he told you personally, yes, I'm nice. Felix is a lot like me, which is that he will track down anything and everything said about him. When we have the tag of our name saved on Tumblr or on Twitter, it's not because we're looking for compliments. For some reason, we're morbidly looking for that one person

who said, I hate this person. So we can reply going, why? What's the worst thing that you've seen been said about you and did you engage? I have an awful habit of engaging. I have a lot of people that don't like me and most of it's quite fair. I was quite abrasive when I was younger

and that's left scars. There's a small clique of people online that are very ready to call me out whenever I slip up in any way. What do you slip up like? They're like the devils on my shoulder. Basically any insecurity I have, they will echo it very loudly. So basically if they're okay with something I've done, then I know that it must be all right.

But yeah, there's critics. There's a lot of critics, especially when what you make is so outwardly simple and it gets the views. A lot of people feel threatened by big, successful YouTube videos. People forget that actually the more popular a YouTube video is,

it means that there's actually more traffic on the site and more chance for you to succeed. I genuinely believe that. So you should never be threatened by another YouTuber. You should never look at someone who's made sketch comedy and has got a million views and be like, oh, well, now no one's going to see my sketch. It's not like a cinema screening and there was one screening

and they've now missed you. There's actually more likely that you will succeed. Now, you got involved in creating things, comedic animations and that kind of thing, really early, right? I mean, how old were we talking about? 10, I'd say. So back at the time of the millennium.

So how did that happen? So back in the old days of the internet, before Google was really a thing and all that stuff, as I'm sure you know, the way we found websites was we would type in, we would write a word and then put.com at the end. And when you're 9, 10 years old, that goes as far as typing in words like fart.com, butts.com, and other rude words.

My father thought I was searching porn when I was younger because I would search rude words at.com and he was like, oh, what are you doing, you deviant? It's like, no, it's a funny word. I just need to go to rudewords.com and he was like, oh, what are you doing? It's a funny word. I just need to go to farts.com. I need to go to boobs.com. What was at farts.com? I couldn't tell you, but I'm sure it's still active.

What's at farts.com right now? I'm going to check. I feel like that's a good way to get a virus. What's at farts.com? It seems to be available. It's available. That's not true. It's definitely parked. It probably costs cost you like ten thousand dollars to get it

well i'm interested now but um but okay so you were searching things like that i went to stupid.com okay and i saw this animation uh called maynard uh by a fellow called tom deslongchamp who is uh this american artist fellow and And it was just terrible. It was this stupid little animation of this man with a deformed head, I think, riding a skateboard and laughing at squirrels. But in that moment, I could only have been about 10 years old, and I said, whatever this is, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. This is what I want to be.

And this website is still up. Yeah, it's amazing. And now it sounds like knickknacks and things, and it's still much the same. I think it's in the same hands. Redneck farting butt neck pillow. No, the quality. $16.99.

The intelligence. Go ahead and order one. Order two. The comedic level of this site has not changed in the slightest. But it's not animation anymore. And when you saw that, though, what was the, when you said, I want to do this, why? Why did you want to do it?

I don't know. Like, I never thought, like, oh, I want to make movies. I want to make TV. I thought, I don't know what this is, but I'm sitting on a computer. I'm watching a cartoon character fall over on a skateboard. I'm going to do this. Whatever this is, I'm going to do it for the rest of my life. And that day was the day I started learning to animate,

and I didn't know how kids animated. So I thought you animated in powerpoint microsoft powerpoint uh so so i would start animating slides and and slides in slides of powerpoint and it'll be like i'd do a circle on one slide then move it on the next slide genius no no you would like hit spacebar yeah we did this do you not remember this we did the same thing with that presentation software at school that wasn't powerpoint but was on the um the high school computers i totally remember doing this but you would do just a few frames and every time you hit the space bar it something would change

yeah or the arrow key that's how you do it and then i would make things like had hundreds of frames until it crashed the you know school computers but eventually i learned oh low weight people use flash and and i grew at, and I grew and grew and grew. And then I was about 16, 17, 18. And I was like, oh, actually, I'm really bad at this. I'm going to hire people. And this little 12-year-old kid came up to me and was like, hey, TomSka, I have 5,000 more subscribers than you on YouTube

because I had 2,000, this kid had 8,000. And he said, let's collaborate. And I said, hey, can you animate this Astor movie thing for my channel? And boom. That was the first one. Yeah, that was the first time I ever produced or hired someone else to do animation.

You were 16. I was 18, or just turned 18, and this kid was 12, 13, I think he was 13. And he was a bigger YouTuber than me. Like I said, I had 2,000 subscribers, and he just did it for free. I hoped it would be successful. I had no idea, really, what would happen. And then a few months later, I had 2,000 subscribers, and he just did it for free. Because I hoped it would be successful. I had no idea really what would happen.

And then a few months later, I felt bad, so I gave him 20 pounds, which is about $35. And then years later, I was like, I feel really bad, so I gave him 100 pounds. That's it? And he didn't animate any of the other ones? No, he did not. But yeah, that was kind of how it kicked off.

And that first one, how quickly did it take off? And was that all on YouTube? Yeah, that was all YouTube. Yeah, the first Aston movie was uploaded August 10th, 2008. And it immediately did pretty well. It got like 40,000 views on its first day. And then over the next month, it went up to 700,000 views, and then about a month later it broke a million.

What else did you try before then? I just tried little sketches, little things. I would mostly make stuff at school, whenever I did a media and a film production course. All animation? No animation, no live action. Yeah, I did live action. There was a couple of animations, and they were just awful.

I have an animation called Pokemon Extreme, which is the highlight of my animating capabilities. It's awful. That really, really took off. Now it has 15 million views. That's weird to think. Well, every single one of those has that at this point. Which is just strange and terrifying.

It's such a terrifying number to imagine. I come to hear VidCon, it's like, oh, 16,000 people. That's a lot of people. If a video I made got that in a day, I'd be like, well, this is the worst failure I've ever made. So you were an adopter of entertainment, really, before there was YouTube. You were putting stuff on Smosh.com and Stupid.com and everywhere else you could find it.

I remember when it was Google Video. And I mean, now it is Google Video again, but still. Right. Yeah. So you were living at home up until the age of 18 and just kind of doing this for fun. What did you do after 18? I went to university. I already kind of figured

that I didn't really care about university. I just wanted to do this and see how that took me. But I kind of went to university and I still got my degree, but really it was, what I did there

was mostly grow as a YouTuber. And I've never had to use my degree to get a job. I had to turn down jobs whilst at university. Well, tell us about the Mensa thing. Oh, the Mensa thing.

Oh, goodness. I mean, that's a really weird thing. I just pretty much never talk about that because it's much like talking about religion. For some reason, it starts a fight every time I do because everyone's like, oh, you think you're a genius? It's like, no, I don't. I have a piece of paper.

Leave me alone. But when I was nine years old, I went a bit loopy because I had a teacher that was bullying me. How so? Emotional torment, being like, oh, I'm going to make this one child, because I was a fidgeter, I was a nuisance, but apparently this teacher was very abusive

and since then has actually been fired and sued, I believe, and all this stuff. But she would like make, like when in the assembly or whatever it's called here, you know, when it's all the kids in the room, like she'd just make me stand up or like she'd bring me to the front and do stuff. I'd put my hands in my pocket, she'd pin the pockets.

But basically, you know, just really awful teacher. But I went a bit loopy and teachers couldn't figure out why. And that's actually where I developed an eating problem. Cake is just delicious. I went to IHOP today. Oh, my. International House of Pancakes is a big lie, though. It's only here in America.

But anyway. It draws an international crowd. It really, really, really, really does. So as a coping mechanism, you would start eating and becoming a genius. Well, no, not so much. But they took me to the shrink, and the shrink was like, hey, there's something strange about this kid. We think he has Asperger's. And But they took me to the shrink and the shrink was like, hey, there's something strange about this kid. We think he has Asperger's.

And then they took me to do an IQ test and they're like, oh, we were wrong. No, he actually has a genius level IQ. And I can't say that I can't speak for what I have now. But when I was nine, I had a genius level IQ. And they were like, oh, we'll be in Mensa. And that was just a nice little thing. What is it? I don't know what, explain that.

I've heard it. Mensa is just the, I'm sure it stands for something, but it's just an honorary title for smart people. Do you have to go to meetings? No. Everyone at Mensa is short-sighted

at this much I've got. No, you sit in a circle and you say, hi, my name is Tom and I'm a genius. Yeah, but that's it. It never really, hasn't really had any effect

on my life, but yeah, everyone who's in it is some kind of scientist or something, and I'm like, I'm going to make cartoons online. But people do get what you're getting at, too, is people are really sensitive about... Anytime you say anything about yourself, they immediately compare themselves. If you imply you have any pride, you're like, I'm going to destroy you.

So it's not the British way. The British way is to be like, hey, I'm s***. And then they laugh. So I just don't really mention the good things. I don't really reply to the nice people or talk about the good stuff because when I do it, people are just like, oh, look at you, boasting about your family. So this job keeps you humble.

Yeah. It depends on what you read, and you just have to read it all I know how it is so at uni you were still very much focused on YouTube is what you said as a business model kind of

it was very fortunately the YouTube partner program came in just as I turned 18 near enough. And that meant that I never had to get a real job. I'm doing air quotes. You can't see, but I never had to get a real job. So luckily, I just started making a living off that.

And in my first year of university, I got to tell my parents, you know what, I don't need my pocket money this month. I got this. Okay, well tell us about Ed's World and how that comes into all this. Okay. So Ed's World, back in the old Smosh.com days, there was a website called Stick Suicide, which actually is now Cyanide and Happiness,

the very popular webcomic. But there was a website called Stick Suicide where I met this kid called Ed Gould, who was this, for some some reason very physically underdeveloped man, who was about 15 years old. His voice didn't break until he was 18, which is very questionable. He was 15 at the time. How old were you?

He was a couple years older than me, so I was like 13. He'd have been about 15. And he made these just awful looking back now animations, but as a kid who loved online cartoons, I was like, you are God. And I spammed him and I spammed him until eventually he was like, okay, you can be in the background of one of my really good cartoons. And then as time went by, it was like, okay, you can do a voice.

Okay, your character has a name. And then this show grew. And over the course of nearly eight years, the show Ed's World grew and became this kind of big thing that people really, really loved. And it's this cartoon series about Ed and Tom and his friend Matt and the wacky adventures that these three straight white males get on.

And you were Tom. I was Tom. And it was kind of longer form. Yeah, they were all about 10 minutes because Ed had awful pacing and what could have been five minutes was always about 10. Just lots of pauses. If he'd spent a long time drawing a background,

he had to make sure everyone saw it. But sadly, he developed cancer of the blood leukemia and passed away in 2012. But you were there from a 13-year-old going through this whole process with him. Actually, what's really funny is, it's funny actually actually this is the saddest thing i'm going to say uh what's really sad is you know i i compared uh you know our relationship to your guy's relationship you know uh when when he passed i was like well great i am you know i'm link

without my ret or ret without my link whichever uh, or other YouTube, you know, duos. I'm Ian without Anthony. John without Hank. Right. I mean, let's even... Barretta without Barretta. Oh, wait, that happened. Well, let's build into it a little bit more up to that point.

I mean, you guys, you were working remotely? You didn't... Yeah, he lived in London. I was, you know, I was around in different places. We'd hang out here and there. But there but you know ultimately we made the cartoon online uh and how successful was it it was you know it was pretty successful it's it's got a really it's held a really weird place in a lot of people's hearts it's it's a source of nostalgia and inspiration for a lot of people and that's that's wicked nice and and so you were doing

your uh own videos yeah in parallel i was doing my things, but they were always smaller than Ed's. I only overtook him in subscribers when he had cancer, which didn't really feel like a fair game. It was like tortoise and the hare. It was like, oh, come on, at least get up on your feet, soldier. So your main thing was being... Yeah, I think the most impressive thing I did was Ed's World, which I gradually kind of took over as a co-writer,

co-producer, co-director and stuff. And by the time, before Ed passed, I'd already kind of moved on to being the lead writer and director and producer. And you said online that Ed was instrumental being kind of the first critic of your work. Oh, yeah, he was a miserable bugger. Like he would, yeah, anything you presented him with, he'd be the first to criticize it. He hated Astor movie, despite animating the most popular one and playing the most popular character, the I Like Trains kid.

And what was his criticism? Same as everyone else's. Same as all the other animators in the world. Just like, well, it's really simple. It's not very funny. But, you know, that's Ed. He was a miserable man. But, you know, that was part of his charm. Right. But that's Ed. He was a miserable man. That was part of his charm.

Right. Doing that quotes again. And you became business partners working remotely. Were you also best friends? Best friends is a very strong word. His best friend was a fellow called Matt or Wally Cube, Matt Lobster, whatever username he's going by at the moment.

And they were definitely best friends because they lived together at uni and they'd been friends for a very long time. But the thing was, I moved down to London in 2011 to live with Ed and to, like, I finished university, finally. Now I'm going to move to London. I'm going to be your best friend.

We're going to live together and we're going to take this show on the road. Yeah. And then he died. He had leukemia and then there was a... There was a remission. He had leukemia, and then there was a... There was a remission. He had leukemia when he was younger, and the problem with leukemia and...

Before you met him, he had big... No, he developed it, and the horrible thing about it is that when it went away, the doctors didn't tell him, like, oh, it's gone. It was more of a, well, it'll come back, and yeah, it's not a matter of will it kill you, it's when. It was more of a, well, it'll come back. And yeah, it's not a matter of will it kill you?

It's when it'll kill you with his diagnosis, which was awful. But yeah, he was on track to beat it, which was really weird. The doctor was like, yeah, 70-30 chance he'll live. Nope. And that was really awful. But yeah, when he passed, I... And how much did you talk about it? I mean, was it...

Very candidly. That's the thing is that I never once, I tried to be very strong. I never once played into the, like, the sad, you know, like, oh, buddy, how you doing? You know, every time I visit him in the hospital, the first thing I pretty much say when I walk in the room is, what happened?

And I just make jokes immediately. And then he would always be so sad in the hospital, you know, because like either his parents or someone would be there being very heavy, sad. And I'd show up and I'd be like, get out of bed. And I think that was very helpful to him to have someone who just treated it like it was normal. Because he truly just kind of felt it as an inconvenience. It stopped him from making cartoons, which he wanted to do.

And so I was stable. But ultimately, I didn't emotionally prepare myself in any way for the chance that I was wrong. So I was in denial for quite a while when he passed. Was there a struggle in having left the faith that you were raised in at this point, when the rubber meets the road, was there an increased bitterness of that or a temptation to go back to it or did you how did your faith well i i guess i was just very kind of i didn't blame anyone like that's the thing is you know like kind of it's oddly freeing to be like well there's no one to blame it's just it is you know happens and and it was, you know, but then, yes, a Jehovah's Witness did knock on my door a few weeks later

and was like, hey, want to have a book? And I'm like, brother, just don't. And, you know, because, yeah. But, yeah, it was very hard. I took it, you know, because the first time Ed got cancer, I don't know how much you want this in your podcast, but the first time Ed did get cancer, I blamed myself. Really?

Because of religious upbringing. Connect those dots. I don't get it. Yep, this is a fun story. And this is a whole vlog's worth of content, and I'm just going to pile into one sentence. No, just let us have it. So this is another reason why I definitely felt like I needed to make the sex talk was because of my religious background,

I genuinely believed when I was a child that masturbation was such a sin that it caused bad things to happen. And every time I did it, something bad would happen and be my fault. So Ed went to the doctors and, you they were like oh you might have cancer and he told me on msn those were the days and i was like oh no you're like i sure been doing that a lot maybe it's my fault i really shouldn't touch my i'm gonna do it uh and then the next day it was like oh well i have cancer and i felt so guilty and so responsible we don't have the results yet yeah we'll know the next day and i was like well i really shouldn't tempt fate but i am 14

and um and yeah and i felt so i felt responsible and i prayed and prayed and prayed and i you know i made it i struck i struck up a deal with god and i said I will not Touch myself If ever again If Ed gets to live And I didn't For two years Until his cancer Went into remission And

Did you And I kind of went back On my deal A little bit But you felt When it went into remission Did you feel like That you had paid your penance

And that did it In a way I kind of Yeah like it's very arrogant To believe like, oh, yeah, I saved his life. But no, it was, I felt it was. Well, not after you caused it.

I felt like I caused it. And so I was like, I'm sorry, I'll never do that again. But then I did that again. But yeah, that was very strange. And these are other reasons why I needed to make the sex talk and tell people to touch themselves. And it's not weird and it doesn't give people cancer and kill your cat.

And then how long until it returned? Three years, I'd say. Basically the entirety of me being at uni and it was just when I'd finished uni and I was planning the move where I was pretty much like, oh, it's back. And at that point you had relinquished your faith.

Yeah, well, yeah, I'd kind of just been like, yeah, this isn't for me and stuff. So there was no struggle when it came back for there to be a personal tie to you. I wasn't like, oh, I did it again. Sorry, girlfriend, you're out. But I actually did break up with my girlfriend around about that time, but that was different reasons.

But yeah, no, there wasn't a religious struggle there. It was just kind of like I was definitely in the more the mindset of, you know, not everything happens for a reason. You mentioned in a vlog that you kind of took it upon yourself to continue Ed's World. Tell us about how that came about. That was a hasty decision. So, you know, what's really morose about the situation

is that the day Ed died, or the day before Ed died, I was joking around with Paul, who would become the animator of the show. You know, like, oh, here's what I'm going to do if Ed ever gets a terminal diagnosis. Like, just joking around. Because the other thing is that we played it light. We played it like, oh, it's never going to happen. Let's make it a source of comedy. And I was saying, like, oh, we's what I'm going to do if Ed ever gets a terminal diagnosis. Just joking around. Because the other thing is that we played it light. We played it like, oh, it's never going to happen.

Let's make it a sort of comedy. And I was saying, oh, we'd be like Chef from South Park. We'd record loads of extra lines and then just still keep the show going and all this stuff. And seven hours later, Ed was dead. So it was very sudden. It was so sudden. The doctors, it was just like he was ill,

but then suddenly everything just failed in the space of hours. And I was asleep when it all happened. I woke up to the phone call, which was bizarre. But I had talked to Ed briefly about what would happen if he died, but it's not like the kind of conversation. So if you croak it, what am I going to do with that show? But Ed's mom told me that before he died, he'd said that he wanted me to continue the show.

And I just have to kind of take her word on it. I hope she wasn't lying. But the way I went about it, I regret massively, though. I know YouTube and I know commenters, and I was really afraid that if I kept the show going, people would be like, oh, you're profiting off Ed's death. So I said, I want to give everything the show makes to charity. But I feel like the only way I can do that is if I ask people,

if I did a fundraiser to fund the show. And the support was amazing. We raised $83,000, I believe, and that was crazy. I wish I hadn't done that. I wish that I had actually either paid for the show out of its own profits, because we still would have donated a lot to charity, or paid for it myself because I'd say that the amount of money I've lost

from the stress of that obligation has been greater than the savings of not paying for it myself and suddenly making it into an obligation was terrifying and just not something that I think we should have done it turned into a job rather than an honoring of a friendship and it turned into an obligation

so we still have a lot to do um you know we have like four and a bit more episodes to go uh before we've met those obligations but yeah that was before you've met the obligations that you promised in the initial campaign yeah and how long after he what he died in 2012 he died in early 2012 and here we are in mid-2014 it's still we're still not done like we really thought like oh it'll take us a year no you know that that was very wishful thinking and yeah we made promises that we couldn't keep and that was dumb in retrospect do you believe that this is still honoring his memory and your friendship i absolutely do um i think it's honoring his memory and his friendship for the wrong reasons now.

Out of obligation. Out of obligation, not out of love. I think that it would have done a lot better and people would have probably worked for free if money hadn't even got involved. People would have done it for love. We could have done it at our own pace and maybe stopped whenever we wanted to.

How does it end? Do you know how it's going to end because i think a logical question is what does the character pass away is there some so um we have uh two episodes two big episodes planned called the end part one and part two which are these massive fun episodes where we're going to try and tie off a lot of narratives not and and not with the intention of ending the show per se but just bringing it to a satisfactory point where if we didn't continue no one's going to be going but what happened uh you know we we we have plans and and maybe maybe once we have finished it suddenly we'll feel free and like oh actually i do want to

keep going but we're giving ourselves the option to maybe go like okay we we did it and we keep we can't keep doing this it's it ultimately it isn't our show it was his show and we need to move on with our lives but we're giving ourselves the option but maybe we won't and what's the conversation with uh ed's mom like about this at this point it's very strange she's not a big fan of the show but yeah i mean I think she, yeah, like I haven't definitively, and I probably, I haven't definitively told her that, you know, like, oh yeah, by the way,

we're going to end the show because the fact is we don't know. But she would understand at this point. I think she wouldn't be like, no. Well, it sounds like there's lots of lessons that you've learned specifically related to that. But overall, in this whole experience of losing a business partner a creative collaborator and a close friend i mean what's your perspective

on that and what you've learned and how how does that impact how you live your life it's changed absolutely everything really um you know mean, can you guys imagine it without the other of you? It would just be, well, I just spent a lifetime building up a thing with this person. That's done now. So it's just kind of,

there is no point to it. And that's what I hate about it. As a storyteller, as a film lover, there's no twist. There's no point to this. This is just chaos. It's just happened. There's no point to this. This is just chaos. It's just happened. An irreplaceable part of my life is gone.

It's like a South Korean movie. Have you ever seen a South Korean movie? They always end so sad. I haven't. I'm not interested at this point. That's how they all end. There's a film like The Host, and it's just, oh, okay,

well, that was all for nothing. But it's interesting. You say as a filmmaker, maybe it's as a human, we want our lives and certainly the tragedies and the heartache to be redeemed with meaning. The only thing I've really truly learned from losing Ed is the importance of legacy.

I guess, and this sounds very pretentious, but I guess if anything, I feel like I've had an insight into the meaning of life, which, and in my opinion, it is our legacy. It's what we leave behind. It's the amount of people that we touch and affect and inspire. And when Ed passed, what came out of the woodwork was the thousands and thousands of people that he had brought joy to and inspired to become animators. And, and that was, that was incredible. And I, and I, and I think I decided at that point that what I care the most about is my legacy is how many people I can inspire and how much good I can do and how much joy I can bring

to the world. I mean, that mostly on YouTube in real life, I'm quite a, you know, contemptuous person, but online, at least, uh, to strangers, I like to bring joy. And I want to, you know, I want to do good and I want to make videos like the sex talk. And I want to do videos, uh, you know, I want to do a video on, you know, on, on self-harm and help people and affect people and, and do good and leave behind a legacy because, you know, it will, it does have a ripple effect and it will pass through time. It's not just, you know, like without YouTube, I would be able to only affect my friends and my immediate family, and that's a few generations, and then maybe that's all gone.

But hopefully, you know, I can change things and make people happy. And that's what I at least believe is the point of my life. At the end of your heart-wrenching vlog where you processed Ed's death, the last thing you said was I could say I may be getting

this wrong, but you said something to the effect of I could say that I don't know what I'm going to do, where I go from here, but the truth is, I do. And it's just not going to be as fun anymore. And it's not going to be as fun anymore. Yeah. Has, you know, in the last couple of years,

A, has that proven to be true? Have things, have you found the ability to have fun more than you thought? And what is it that you know you're doing without it? Yeah, well, you know you're doing without him um yeah well you know like so if you really if you watch my if you watch the numbers if you watch my channel uh right around the point that ed died uh i had like a bunch of videos written and it was actually the summer of kind of like my the best content on my channel the most successful stuff videos i'd made and you know but then as soon as i had to start making things after he'd passed, I did, I did just like massively fall off and sank into a big hole for at least two years, which I'm now, I can comfortably say now I'm getting out of.

And yeah, that, yeah, I do, I do know what I'm doing, but it isn't as fun anymore. It did cost me about, you know, two years of my life. Like I still made videos and I made a lot, I think I made a lot of really good videos, but it did really stick a thorn in everything. And that was lame. But yeah, it's getting better. It's getting a lot better, and I'm starting to actually enjoy my job again.

For the first time in a while, I'm excited to do things, and that's killer for me. I was getting a bit sad before I died, and I just kind of like feeling like this is just my job and my hobby is gone it's just the obligation now and but like now i'm finally feeling that love again and i'm feeling excited again which is really great because it's just at the point when the numbers are getting awful on youtube and i'm really struggling to like maintain my audience, but maybe now I'm going to have that excitement, that love that I need to bring it back. You know, if other people can get, you know, 10 million views on every video they make, then damage. So can I, I'm, I'm coming back.

This is 2014. Let's go. Well, we won't hold you up anymore. You gotta, you gotta get back to writing that next video. I have, I've actually, I wrote a note on the plane over here, which is great and very exciting. Well, listen, we love everything that you've done, and this time just hanging out with you has been phenomenal. It's been great. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. When I came in this room,

the first thing I did was I brought up one of your laptops and checked, and yeah, I've been following you guys since 2007, and it really, really means a lot to be able to meet you guys. It's wicked. Thank, I've been following you guys since 2007. And it's really, really, it means a lot to be able to meet you guys. It's wicked. Thank you so much for everything you do as well. Round of applause for you. Silent applause.

Add that in in post. Okay, well, we don't do that, but you know what? We can in spirit. Thank you. Thanks, Thomas Tomska. Thank you. And there you have it. Our Ear Biscuit with Tom Ska.

Incredibly thoughtful guy. And I don't mean like the thoughtful guy song that we wrote, a guy who just thinks about a lot of weird stuff. I mean a thoughtful guy who has been through a lot of things and has, is processing and has processed a lot of things that you made. You just don't know that you just can't look at somebody's YouTube channel, especially somebody who's such an artist as him is making sketch videos and animations and know just how much has transpired over the past few years. Yeah, and I mean, so I'm truly appreciative of his honesty. I think it, you know, I certainly have many takeaways

and things that I continue to think about from that conversation. I'm sure you do too. Let Tom know what you think on Twitter. His Twitter handle is TheTomSka, TheTomSka. I don't care how you pronounce it. That's how you say it. You know, the guy's been through the ringer. He's coming out on the other side

of it where he can be excited about being creative. And I'm excited. You know, I love every conversation we have on your biscuits. But there are the certain people that we talk to that I get especially excited about what they have yet to do. And when you talk to that I get especially excited about what they have yet to do.

And when you talk to a guy like Tom, you see the work that he's done. I'm excited about, this guy, he's young. He's got so much stuff that he's going to create. I've loved everything that he's done. I'm excited about what he's going to do in the future.

Thanks, Tom. You can, again, tweet at him, TheTomSka, and also hashtag EarBiscuits to let us know what you think of this show. Leave a review on iTunes, that's always helpful. And you can count on us to be here next week for another one of these. Yes, indeed.