Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 69 Rhett & Link “Most Bizarre Rites of Passage” - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: May 15, 2015

In this special Rhett & Link-only episode, the guys talk about some of the most intense and terrifying ceremonies, acts, and events that mark the transition from adolescence to adulthood around the world, and the extremely painful things people are willing to endure to gain the respect of their peers; including hunting lions with a spear, jumping from a platform 100 feet in the air, and wearing gloves filled with bullet ants. 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 Rhett. And I'm Link. Joining us today at the round table of dim lighting is no one. It's just two of us. Well, each other. Joining each other. Joining us today is no one,

but our voices, the voices of Rhett's and mine, are joining your ears in a biscuit that, hang around. Yeah, why don't you just hang around? Find out what it's about. Don't leave just because nobody's here. We're following up last month's Rhett and only, Rhett and only. Rhett and only. Hey, that's my new podcast.

Rhett and only. Rhett and only. Last month's Rhett andlink only Ear Biscuit with another one. You left your name out of a phrase. I just soaked the face. I wanna let you know, you should probably see that as a sign of humility that you tried to say a sentence with your name in it

and you left your name out. I think that's a great thing. You should be proud of that. You should do that more often. You should take your name out of more sentences. I'm very humble. Yeah, I think it's a Southern thing to mispronounce the word humble with a silent H.

Anyway, what I was trying to get at was we received feedback from you guys that you enjoyed the Ear Biscuit we did about bizarre experiments about a month ago. Yeah, thanks for enjoying that. And so now. It was an experiment to see if you would enjoy it. And now we've gotten your feedback

and you guys said, hey, let's do it again or do another Rhett and Link-only Ear Biscuit that's kind of topical, kind of GMM-ish. Yeah. So that's what we're gonna do today. And I will say, I did see a few comments. People were like, I really enjoyed that Ear Biscuit where you guys talked about the experiments.

It was kind of like an extended GMM, but I want you guys to keep doing stuff where you tell stories and talk about your lives. Not that we're not going to do that again at some point, but just so you know, there is a finite amount of things that we can say about ourselves that we haven't already said in some form. We've done almost 700 episodes of Good Mythical Morning,

if you've seen that show. Because we're no longer living our lives. We're just making entertainment, so we no longer. We don't generate stories anymore. That's what Link is saying. We don't generate news. Well, not nearly at the pace. So anyway.

Well, I will say I've got a story from our past that's embedded in one of the topics that I'm gonna bring up today. As do I. So there you go. Have a little anecdotal stuff. Live a little anecdote in there. But this is, today what we're gonna be talking about

is some of the most intense rites of passage from cultures around the world, past and present. And we're gonna be focusing on what different cultures see as ways for boys to become men. Now there's also rights of passage out there for women, but you know what, we're men who were once boys. We like to think of ourselves as men. After reading about some of these different rights

of passage, I question whether or not I'm actually a man. I like to think of myself as a- A man boy? A boy trapped in a man's body. A man child. Which is, I think that's'm actually a man. I like thinking of myself as a. A man boy? A boy trapped in a man's body. A man child. Which is, I think that's better than a man trapped in a boy's body. Yeah, probably.

That would be extremely frustrating. Yeah, definitely. And doesn't sound appropriate or shouldn't be spoken of. Yeah, you should have just taken right back. But we're gonna be going through some of the ones that were the most intense to us that we hope that you will enjoy. And as it was the case with the previous podcast,

the Rhett and Link Only podcast, it may get a little intense. I don't think it's as intense as like shocking corpses to like animate them in front of crowds. I don't think it gets that intense. But it could. It might. You never know what's gonna happen.

So let's see, and I will commit that there will not be any boys to men R&B jokes. Well that was the one, you just made it. Yeah, it was kind of like a self-referential one. I won't sing mama, I won't sing that. That's the one you're gonna choose? Is that boys to men? That's what makes it funny, man? Is that Boyz II Men? That's what makes it funny, man.

I didn't say the end of the road. I didn't sing the end of the road or, you know. I think you making that joke signifies you're at the end of the road. Okay. Okay, so let's get into some rites of passages in just a second. But first, we wanna mention our sponsor, EF College Break.

They make travel easy, affordable, and even more fun for anyone 18 to 28 years old, college not required. Traveling around the world is one of the best things you can do for yourself, especially when you're young, 18 to 28, you know, it can change your life. These are the experiences you're gonna have that you're gonna remember the rest of your life, but it's logistically difficult.

To travel right and to experience a place fully. You have to plan a whole bunch, not just flights, not just lodging, not just transportation, but you gotta figure out where to go, what to see, when to see it, what's cool to see, what should I avoid? And when you plan your own trip, you do all that yourself. Or you can let the EF College Break Expert Travelers

do all of that for you. Why let them do it? Because it's their job. Trust me, you don't want to invest the time and effort to do it half as well as they can. They take care of booking flights, lodging, transportation, while you're there, site and event coordination, and provide you with a tour director who is a local expert.

I have to say local expert in some sort of random accent. I don't know why. It's about travel, I guess. They've built group trips across six continents with everything from trekking Machu Picchu, cruising the Greek Isles and immersing yourself in Germany's Oktoberfest and almost half of college break travelers sign up solo.

So even if you sign up by yourself, you'll not be traveling alone on your trip. And not only will you not be alone, you're going to meet new people, potentially make lifelong friends by sharing a travel experience with somebody. And it doesn't have to be intimidating to plan a trip like this outside of the country

and EF College Break makes it possible. So what are you waiting for? This is your chance to take that Euro trip you've always wanted. How does that sound? 11 days checking out Berlin's nightlife, Prague's gothic atmosphere, and Munich's old world charm? Sounds pretty great to me.

But you can't go, Link, you're not 18 to 28. Need I remind you? You are a man now, you're not a boy anymore. But I'm a boy in a man's suit, in a man's shell, I'm in the shell of a man. If you are 18 to 28, we're gonna hook you up with an extra $100 off your next adventure by going to our special URL,

efcollegebreak.com slash Rhett and Link. Again, $100 off, go to efcollegebreak.com slash Rhett and Link. We'd also like to mention Casper Mattresses, obsessively engineered American-made mattresses at a shockingly fair price. You spend about a third of your life sleeping, if you're normal, and you better make sure

you're doing it on a good mattress. Well then I'm super normal, because I think I sleep a little bit more than that. I think you might do 50%. Casper brings two comfy technologies together for better nights and brighter days, latex foam and memory foam. So they've got just the right sink

and just the right bounce, which interestingly enough is how they describe me at the club. Oh, he's got the right sink and the right bounce. They also have a risk-free trial and return policy. They deliver it straight to you. You try it for a hundred days. If you're not happy with it, they come in, pick it up. It's pretty cool.

This is, they just sent one to me and I gotta say, this is the most trouble-free mattress experience I have ever had. Well, even the unpacking of the mattress, because it comes packaged, is an event in and of itself. I should have been there. It comes out like a snake. Well, like a jack in the box.

Or like a dinosaur that you put into one of those, like a tablet that turns into a dinosaur that keeps getting bigger. Okay, two things to note there, a snake slither and it didn't slither out of the box. It didn't. It just kind of expanded. But you also- It's very satisfying. Second thing to note is you don't dip the mattress

in water in order to get it to expand. It just does it on its own. That just came from me. I'm at the very beginning of my 100 days, but let me tell you, I don't think they're gonna be coming to get this one from me. It's $500 for a twin size mattress, 950 for king size. Compare that to industry averages, it's an outstanding price point.

And now you can get $50 off any mattress purchased by going to casper.com slash Rhett and Link and using code Rhett and Link. Casper.com slash Rhett and Link, offer code Rhett and Link. Now, onto the biscuit. I used to go dove hunting with my father and my brother growing up. I was never invited.

I do remember you coming to school and telling me about- We didn't trust you with a gun, but- And I still don't, honestly. And I will say, and this may be a difficult thing for many of you who didn't grow up in the South, in the 80s, to relate to this, but when I was about 10 years old, which is older than my oldest son now,

I had a shotgun in my hands and I was responsible for shooting birds out of the air. So I would go out with my brother and my dad and that was a pretty big deal to me to think, and especially as I think about it now, I think about giving that responsibility to like Locke, like we don't hunt as a family now, but to think that I kind of felt like I was a man,

but I had a very powerful machine and I was shooting a bird of peace out of the air. Sounds a little ironic. Right, it's not really that hard to do. But did you consider it a rite of passage? Maybe you didn't use those terms. I felt like, I did feel like a man, but I think I would have felt different

if I had been faced with what the Maasai tribe has to face. And this is not hunting dove with a gun. This is hunting a lion with a spear. By yourself. By yourself? Yeah. Now I will say, spoiler alert, probably an incorrect use of the term at this point,

they don't do this anymore because of government restrictions on lion hunting and the lion population isn't what it used to be. That sounds like a good thing. But, so but let's go- For everyone involved. Let's go back to whenever this was still a legal thing. They would send a boy out with a spear. Wow.

And you had to kill a lion. Have you seen a lion? Have you like been, you've been to the zoo. You've seen a lion. Yes, Rhett, I have. I've seen many lions in many different screens and some in person. They're always kind of sleeping at the zoo and in many different screens in some of the person. They're always kind of sleeping at the zoo

and they're also hard to see at the zoo. But I wouldn't want to try it. They're always behind like the rock sleeping. Yeah, I wouldn't want to have to sneak around that rock with a stick with just something pointy on the end and think I was gonna win this scenario on the other side. Well, this was no zoo. This was just the plains.

You just, I mean, I've seen, there's a YouTube video of a guy, like a really old video, and one of those dudes dressed up in like a classic, like colonial, you know, jungle suit, and he's shooting a lion with a gun that's charging him. Like a high powered rifle. You mean like a safari suit?

Like a safari suit. Not a colonial suit. Whatever. I pictured a pilgrim in the Savannah. You know what I'm talking about, like the colonial times, like the way that the guys would go out and like colonize like other places,

but I was thinking a safari suit. And he kills this lion with a gun and it's just, it's crazy. But he had a gun again, these dudes had a spear. I mean, they were a boy, they were a boy when they went out. It's like sending Locke out there with a spear and saying, come back and I want you to have killed a lion. And they did it. They did it, this would not have continued

to be a rite of passage for many years. Apparently they were relatively successful because this is how you become a man. And this is back in the day when there were a lot of lions and so this wasn't thinning out the population. Now the way they do it is they send people out in groups of 10 and you can come back with, basically the government-

Like just hair from a lion. You don't have to actually kill a lion? Well, no. Just like trim a little hair off the lion's mane and that'll count. Well, no, the lions are protected. It doesn't mean that they can't kill them. It just means that they have to only kill

a certain number of them. And so they send them out in groups of 10 and the guy who actually is the one who successfully spears the lion, who throws the first spear that kills the lion. Okay. So, because I mean, there's, again, there's YouTube videos of this happening

of like multiple dudes like going up and killing a lion in crazy intense videos. But the first guy throws the spear and kills the lion, he gets to wear the lion's mane as a prize trophy and he officially becomes a man. But they kind of understand, listen, we can't- I wanna be your main man. Everybody can't kill a lion. And so I guess it isn't that no one, not everyone is a man, but they kind of understand, listen, we can't. I wanna be your main man. Everybody can't kill a lion.

And so I guess it isn't that no one, everyone is a man. It's just that the dude who actually is the one to do it. He's the main man. He's the main man, exactly. Yeah, I don't even know if I, I don't even want to watch a video of that, but I certainly would respect any 10 or 12 or 13 year old who had speared a lion.

I mean, that garners a lot of respect for me. For what that's worth, I don't know. You want me to move on to bulls? Yeah. I got some bulls here. Go for it. Jumping over bulls, and this one gets even better. Oh. While completely naked. Now this is a rite of passage that I read about,

performed by men of the Hamar tribe of southern Ethiopia before they are allowed to get married, okay? So if you really wanna get married, you gotta line some bulls up and you gotta get naked. Now, as with a lot of these rite of passage ceremonies, just picture, it's a big deal for everyone who lives in your town or village or whatever you wanna call it.

And not only that, but you've got family members and friends coming from far off other villages to come in to witness this rite of passage. You get naked. The thing that strikes me is, first of all, the pressure associated with something like this. I mean, culturally it's set up that every year people perform these rites of passages

and then as you're growing up, you know that, okay, I'm gonna make the passage one year. And in this particular zone, it involves lining up bulls. But first, all of the female friends and family members of the boy, soon to be man, get together and they are whipped by the men of the tribe. This is part of the ceremony. And the scars that are on the backs of the women,

I mean, they stay there for the rest of their lives. They're kind of like a badge of honor to testify to the pain that they are willing to endure for the initiate. So if it's their son, initiate, I don't know if that's the right word, the person who's initiated. I like initiate. And you know, you say, well, this is a sad byproduct of this thing that women are being whipped,

but actually what I read said that it was a strange form of empowerment because the women are belittling the men who are whipping them and kind of- Like talking trash to them. Talking trash to them and saying, you're too feeble to whip me hard enough to hurt me, and they're not acting like they're being hurt. This is, I mean, this is their part in the rite of passage.

Yeah. That's just part of it. And then they bring out the bulls and they line them up. These are castrated bulls that are lined up side by side. Oh, so steer. These are steer. Okay, if you want to get technical. And they're lined up side by side, like picture a bunch of bulls.

From the video I saw, we're talking like five. And it's as if you're trying to get them all bunched in together for a picture like, okay, steer, we're gonna take a nice group photo for your class. You need to get in a little bit closer. So they're all facing the camera, so to speak. Right. And there's people holding them in place.

And then the person, the boy soon to be man is naked, like just buck naked. Yeah. Or bull naked, the bulls are also naked. The bulls are completely naked. There's no bucks involved. Yep. And then he runs and he jumps up on the first cowl.

And then starts to pitter patter across them like Legolas on the top of snow to the other side. And then he goes, it falls down on the other side and then people cheer. And that's it? Nope. You're a man? Nope, you gotta do it three more times. What is the risk involved? Slipping between steer?

Slipping down. Steer slippage. Yep, that is the- You don't wanna slip and get stuck between steer. Right, if you complete the task, you're a man. And if you get steer slippage, I don't know what happens if they let you keep going. Well, steer slippage when naked is probably a more serious business

than like steer slippage when fully clothed. I mean, there's a lot of pressure involved because it's not easy to balance barefoot on the top of cows who are just standing there. I mean, I's a lot of pressure involved because it's not easy to balance barefoot on the top of cows who are just standing there. I mean, I assume they practice this in the privacy of their own pastures, but you've got your friends and relatives who are being whipped on your behalf.

Yeah, there's a lot of pressure here. And then you're stripped down into nothing, and then you've got to balance on these bulls. I mean, we've jumped over a cow, but we weren't naked. Well, technically it was two cows. It was, you're gonna tell that story. But the cow was dead. And I didn't really consider it a rite of passage,

but it was- But it's a memory, it's a heck of a memory. It's a great memory, so I'll consider it, in retrospect, this a form of rite. It's a great memory. So I'll consider it in retrospect, this is a former rite of passage now that I know about it. And I think there was something instinctual within us that led us to try to do this. Just to give you some background, after school,

I mean, this is like early high school, maybe we definitely had our licenses. We were like 16 years old. Really? You think we were that old? I don't remember riding our bikes out there. Because we could easily walk down there. There was a cow pasture that was adjacent to the golf course. I always rode

my bike down there. Okay, the golf course that we would play on as kids with Ben Greenwood, our other friend, and we'd go across the creek to the cow pasture. We've actually told this story on something before. Yeah, we have. We'd chase the cows. See, again, this is why we don't just tell stories

because we've told you all the stories before. But we would chase the cows and it's just thrilling to chase cows. That does make you feel like you have power over a whole herd of beasts. It kind of makes you feel like a man. One day we go out there and we see in the distance there's a berm that's not usually there.

And as we get closer, it is a dead cow laying on its side and it is bloated. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty nasty. And it was really nasty because it was a mama cow who died while giving birth. And the baby cow was halfway out. Yeah, halfway out and the baby cow. This is a shocking thing.

The baby cow was also dead. Yeah, this is a shocking thing to come up on as a teenager. So I remember there was a sense that we needed to kind of whisper, being in the presence of this dead cow and dead calf. And it was pretty fresh, I would say. I don't remember it stinking. It was a somber moment because it was almost

like an introspective moment for us. And we sat there and kind of looked at each other and we talked quietly and it was like, this is serious. Did some forensics. We've been out here chasing these cows for years and now here this cow lays dead, having given birth and died and the new life died, like we were being overly poetic for like 15 year olds

or whatever we were. And then a couple of minutes pass and we start jumping over it. Yeah, well, what happened was, I remember the silence was broken with someone saying, you think we can jump over it? And then we just backed up and started running full speed and jumping over it like it was a hurdle.

Yeah, and we did successfully several times. Because there was substantial risk and pressure, I would say, to not- You don't want to hit a bloated cow. You don't want to land in the middle of the cow. Yeah, you don't want that kind of slippage to happen. And we were not naked. Maybe we should have been.

Yeah, it would have made it more interesting, I guess. And that's why I'm still not a man because I wasn't naked when that happened. But maybe there's something within us that was like, okay, there's risk here. So if we do it within the presence of each other, we're proving something. And that's kind of what's behind these rites of passages

as we move on to the next one that, you know, you're demonstrating bravery or an ability to endure pain. Yeah. And it's a demonstration, a willingness to, and there's a camaraderie of people have gone through these things that then you're joining the ranks of people

who've gone through it. Yeah, well, and I've made a couple of comments. I mean, number one, we're not, our role, our angle in talking about these things is not to judge them or try to say, or try to endorse them and say that this is what we should be doing

or they shouldn't be doing it or whatever. It's just to tell you guys about them. It wouldn't have a little fun talking about it. But also, yeah, this is a totally, these things only exist in more isolated cultures that are still kind of holding onto long time traditions, exactly for the reason that you were talking about, because if you go to a certain tribe,

like if you go to this next tribe, the Satare Maue tribe in Brazil, you know that every man in this tribe, which is currently at 10,000 members, there was only 88 people in this in the 1970s. Really? But now there's 10,000 people in this tribe. You know that every man in this tribe

has undergone this incredibly painful rite of passage that we're gonna talk about. And that means something. It's like, I'm from North Carolina. If I meet somebody from Washington, I just know, okay, you're from the US also, but there's not a connection with, oh, you did this thing where you stuck your hand

inside the bullet ant glove. So tell me about it. So this is the bullet ant glove. Now, I've heard a little bit of this one. This has been on a number of television shows and there's a few YouTube videos showing people do this. So you may have seen this one. But this is essentially when this tribe makes their,

the Satteray-Mioe tribe makes their young boys wear gloves filled with bullet ants while they dance for 10 minutes without flinching. Bullet ants. Yeah, so bullet ants have the most painful sting of any insect. Any insect. So I mean, you're talking to like biggest bumblebee, craziest hornet you can imagine.

Worse than that. So this thing is a four plus rating on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which is a thing. The Schmidt Sting Pain Index. I'm so glad that there is a sting pain index and that it's called the Schmidt Sting Pain because it I'm so glad that there is a sting pain index and that it's called the Schmidt Sting Pain because it makes it so difficult to pronounce. Yeah, and I can just imagine how Schmidt figured this out.

Schmidt just sat around and stung himself with multiple things, I guess. He was like, oh, that's gonna give this one a four plus. They call it, the locals call it the 24 hour ant, referring to the full day of pain that follows being stung. So here's what they do. They render the ants unconscious by submerging them in a natural sedative.

And then hundreds of them are woven into a glove made out of leaves, which basically looks like a large oven mitt, stinger facing inward. So you, you know, it's like you got all these ants stingers facing your hand, and then the ants begin to regain consciousness and they slip the boy's hand into the glove.

And then the goal of the initiation rite is to keep the glove on for a full 10 minutes. 10 minutes. Now let me just quickly give you something as a point of reference. You may have heard of the Australian comedy duo, Hamish and Andy. They did this.

I don't know which one of them did this. There's a YouTube video, it's got about 6 million views of showing them do this, but one of them- That's not enough views to do it. Sticks his hand into the mitt and pulls it out almost immediately. Like he sticks it in there, he reacts,

he pulls his hands out. And then for the next few hours, he is in intense debilitating pain. Like he's lost to the world. Crazy. And the boys of the actual tribe, they put it in there for 10 minutes and they don't just do it once.

What? They will go through this ordeal a total of about 20 times over the course of several months or even years as part of the initiation rites to become a warrior. And so what they do, once you put your hands in there for 10 minutes, your hands, it's so painful you can't take it, right?

You have to, they get around and you dance. The way they, you know how sometimes like when we do something real painful on GMM, Like eating the Carolina Reaper. You feel like you gotta do something. You gotta at least walk around. So they actually have a dance that is part of this. Like you, it's just built in.

You get stung, you got your mitts on, and you do a dance with everybody. And then once his hands are so overwhelmed with venom that his hands become paralyzed. But then once they start hurting again, you shake uncontrollably for a few days, for a few days. Your whole body shakes? Yes.

Just tremors of pain. Yeah, I mean, you'll be in intense pain for 24 hours. And then for the next couple of days after that, you'll still be having little shutters here and there. I wonder if it will kill you. I mean, I gotta think that it could, there's a risk of death. Maybe somebody could have a reaction to it.

But yeah, that's what they do. That's how they become men. I mean, the more- I'd rather jump over some cows. Yeah, the more intense the shared experience, the greater the effect, I think, on the community. Especially to become a warrior. I mean, you kind of wanna pass a threshold of pain in order to be entrusted as a warrior in your community.

I mean, you think about Navy SEAL training, which has a reputation of being extreme and they design everything so that you can drop out at any moment. They even encourage trainees all along the way. They're berating them, they're constantly giving them outs to get out of it because they wanna weed people out. Because then they know that as hard as it was, you had every opportunity to check out,

but those who made it through, there's a bond that, I guess leads to effective wartime strategy. Well, and you gotta think that in an interesting byproduct of this type of such an intense initiation ritual that you can't avoid, you've gotta think, I don't know the statistics on this, that probably every person, every man at least, ends up doing it.

Which is an incredible thing to think. I mean, it says that in order to become a warrior, so I would think that the people who had not gone through this would be, that's the guy that couldn't do the bullet ant thing. He refused to do it. In our culture, if you don't wanna do something uncomfortable, you just don't do it.

And there's no judgment. And that's fine. That's the way it is in our culture. It's a totally different thing in the Western world. But in this culture, it's like, you can't avoid this. You're on a straight trajectory towards the bullet ant glove if you're a male and then you have to do it in order to get to the next stage.

And that's an interesting dynamic. But I- You can't avoid it. I would imagine that it's tempered by the fact that from a very young age, from your earliest memories, you're aware of this rite of passage and it becomes something that you're conditioned to expect. So it's not like you're an Australian comedian who just decides two days earlier to do it.

Right. You spent your whole life being invested in this thing, your young life, and then finally this day is here, I'm looking forward to this, this means something to me and to my community. And those are factors that can really tip the scales. Large motivations, large motivations. You know, I mean, we tend to be motivated,

I'm gonna get into this vat of ice and I'm very scared, but I'm gonna do it because A, it's entertaining, it's what the mythical beasts have come to expect and my livelihood is now attached to being entertaining in this way. But I've done a lot of stuff that I would never do if cameras weren't rolling. I say that all the time.

Yeah. But this goes. Would you do this? This is so But this goes- Would you do this? This is so much more meaningful. Would I do this? Because this is the real question. A comedic duo has already done it, eh? He didn't do it as long as I will.

When I watched, oh, oh really? You're gonna go full 10 minutes? I'm gonna go one second longer than that guy. When I watched this, it made me think, and I don't even wanna say it out loud, but it's made me think that like, oh, I could totally see us doing a series like this where we go around and do all this ridiculous stuff.

But then I just said, I should not think that thought because I just value comfort too much. All right, let's weigh it against this next scenario that I got here. We've been to Kenya, Ethiopia, and Brazil, but now let's come back to North America, to North Dakota specifically, where the Mandan reside. That's the Mandan Native American tribe.

Their exact origin and history is unknown, but ethnologists theorize they originated in the area of the Mid-Mississippi River or the Ohio River valleys and migrated north to North Dakota between the seventh and 13th century. So that's your little background. This is a tough group.

Let me ask you, if I dangled you, Rhett, from the ceiling with a rope- Don't ever dangle me. Dangled you from the ceiling with a rope under your armpits. Okay, not bad. And drove stakes into your chest and back, not pieces of meat, just like pieces of like sharp wood.

Okay, that's a difference. Do you think you would A, sign up for this at a young age and B, keep a smile on your face the whole time? Smile the whole time? Smile the whole time. I don't think I would be smiling at any time. Well, if you wanted to be a leader of the Mandan tribe,

you better be smiling pretty, buddy. Now, this was a powerful- That's intense. Powerful religious ceremony of the Mandan people called Okiipa, okay? And it was the culmination of a four-day ceremony performed annually during the summer, which basically retold the story

of the creation of the earth from their perspective. So just picture a big tent with dancers inside performing, and the men of the village are fasting and praying and seeking visions. And the younger men were the ones who generally underwent torture to demonstrate their bravery. Okay. And that's this rite of passage in the Akipa.

They had long wooden skewers pushed through cuts in their skin on their backs and chests. Are these like kebab sticks or are they probably bigger? Well, I'm looking at a picture here and it just, this picture like mini spears. It's just like acupuncture on like a Native American level. Like way, way beyond. And then they string ropes up under their shoulders,

under their armpits and hang them from beams. And then their bodies are weighed down with buffalo skulls. What? Which are hung from more skewers that are thrust into their thighs and their calves. Okay, now I can handle that. And I mean, obviously the torment of this was extreme, but crying out was a sign of cowardice.

You couldn't cry, you couldn't grimace. The ones who were best able to stand the pain became the leaders. Was it? So if you're smiling, smiling Jack, he's the next leader. So did you just, was that just a twist of your own, the whole thing about smiling,

or was that actually part of it? Like the happier you seem while you did it? I added the smiling twist. Okay, but that probably would have been a nice touch. Those who were best able to withstand the pain. So the one who could muster a smile was certainly the one who was a top notch leader, at least according to my understanding.

I will say that I think that I've always thought that that's a sign of somebody who's tough is that their pain doesn't register on their face. Like somebody who's really, really tough, like that you look at them and you're like, he doesn't seem like he's in that much pain. And then some people you look at them and you're like, their face looks like it's a sign of all the things

that are going wrong in their body right now. And then some people just have resting pain face. Oh, really? It's like, man, is he like barefoot stepping on broken bottles? No, that's just the look on his face. Resting painful face. Resting pain face.

It's got a cousin face, which we don't need to talk about. This O'Keeffe rite of passage is not performed anymore. I mean, it was suppressed by the US government. So it was thought that the last ceremony was held between 1889 and 1890 on the Fort Berthold Reservation. So this ain't happening anymore, but I'm looking at a painting by George Catlin in 1832 of this thing.

And it's just, I can't imagine just stepping in as a, you know, kind of a researcher slash artist and witnessing this from the outside, especially with a language barrier. It's like, what's going on? Are they being executed or something? No, they are becoming men. It's amazing.

It just makes me wonder like what would, you know, again, I go back to, because we live in a culture where you can just get out of stuff that you don't like. Like were there people who were like, I don't wanna be a part of this. And then they became like an outcast. I don't know, but I'd like to think that there, I mean, that there still was a to each his or her own

type of a thing that they didn't. But probably not. Yeah, I don't know. It probably wasn't, man. That's probably not how it was. The Fulani people, you heard of those people? No. Well, can I interest you in a whipping match?

No, I don't think so. Well, if you were a member of the Fulani people of Africa, I could. I'm talking about a couple of boys lashing each other with sharpened sticks. Now, my kids fight a lot. Mostly, mostly it starts as a game. And it usually ends with-

Somebody crying. Somebody crying. And listen, 11 year old and a six year old, you would usually think that the six year old is the one that ends up crying, which is very often the case, but- Not every time, right? It's a tough six year old.

Yeah. And do you give them sticks with like shards on the end? I do not. It's all kinds of things, often pillows. But the Fulani people do take things a few steps further. A whipping match is basically a ritual in which two different kids, two different boys, who are, they volunteer, they say,

I'm ready to become a man. I'm ready for my whipping match. There's a interesting video in National Geographic that kind of shows this happening. And the sense that I get is that the Fulani people are a very widely dispersed people. They're not just like a small village that all live together.

This is like a large group of people and they have a lot of different villages, but they all do this ritual and these whipping matches. So they'll take a kid from one of the villages and they'll take another kid from the other village and they say like, my kid's ready, my kid's ready. All right, let's put them together. So they pit two kids from two different villages

against one another. And what they do. So you got like a hometown rivalry. Do they both win or does only one of them gets become a man? Only one winner. Yeah, in the video that I watched. But do they both win manhood at the end, whether you win or lose?

No, I think, I don't know if the other dude has to go back and do it again. But here's what you're trying to do. You take your shirt off, you're not naked, but you don't have a shirt on, and you have, with the help of your father and your brothers and other men in your life, you've selected a stick and you've sharpened the end of it.

And this is just like a eight foot long just stick. Eight foot stick. They can get, you know, you get a lot of leverage with that kind of thing. And all these people come out to watch you. You, so the guy who goes first, one guy goes out into the middle and he puts his arms above his head.

Oh no, it's not a fight, they just take turns? And then you get to hit the dude three times with your stick. And they hit them on the side, the ribs and it reaches around and grabs the flesh off of the side of the front. It's just intense. I mean, there's a video on National Geographic,

just intense. I mean, historically, this has been done to prisoners across many societies and it's horrifying. As a punishment. It's a horrifying thing to think about, much less witness, but to witness it and then volunteer for it, wow. So this is what happens.

You inflict three whips and then you have three whips inflicted upon you and the crowd judges who took it better. So let me tell you right now, the video that I watched of these two kids who looked to be about 13, 14 years old, they both took it a whole lot better than I would have. I mean, there was so little flinching,

there was no crying and they got whipped hard. No crying, very little flinching, but it no crying, and they got whipped hard. No crying, very little flinching, but it was like kind of obvious to the crowd that one kid had flinched less, and they come out and they reward him and they throw talc powder all over you and they put gold coins on your forehead. I don't think the baby powder is worth it, honestly,

but maybe the manhood, being considered a man is. Man. So. I just, you know, I just feel sorry for him, but that's just, maybe that's just out of ignorance. Maybe it's just from my insulated perspective. It's a different culture. If you were to take, without doubt.

I don't understand MMA fighting. Like I can tell, whenever that, like whenever I go to a restaurant, like we go to a sushi restaurant, that for some reason, they always put MMA fighting on there. And I don't have cable. It just doesn't come on screens in my life. So I haven't developed an interest in it. MMA fighting does not come on screens in my life. So I haven't developed an interest in it.

MMA fighting does not come on screens in your life. And then, so when I see it at the sushi restaurant, which is just not a great place to see it. You know, there's raw flesh on my plate. Why do I want to? That's a horrible combination. I don't get it. I asked him to change it to basketball one time.

Yeah, basketball's not gross. During the tournament. But I'm always struck as if, you know, having not seen MMA for a while, I'm like, man, this is brutal. And but the thing that always gets me when I'm seeing it for the first time is that at the end, there's like a guy who taps out

and then there's a guy who wins and it's like, there's no winner here is the way that I feel about it. But the guy's so elated and he's trained so hard for this and he's, you know, it's not really that different except he's 12 years old. And to me that's kind of a big difference. Like would we be watching MMA for 13 year olds? That's kind of what this is.

You might if you were in this culture. One of the interesting differences with this one is that it doesn't happen at a certain age. It's the rituals conducted once a boy feels he is ready to become a man, which is an interesting, I wonder if that's always been the case. That 44-year-old boy feels like he's ready. So it is voluntary, but again,

the same thing that you said, if you were to take 13 year old Rhett and Link and make them have a whipping match against one another, that would be cruel and unusual, right? But for these guys who, this is what they know, this is a cultural thing for them, they just step right up to the plate and do it. It does remind me of the 10 year old Rhett and Link

that would, whenever I'd like come over to a sleepover at your house and we would, we'd take the cassette tapes and we'd stuff papers in the top and we'd make recordings. We would. Ridiculous recordings playing different characters. That was our form of YouTube way back in the 80s. But one of the other games we invented, we only played it one night.

Oh. Was you had this, Rhett had this ball. And it was like a, I don't even remember what kind of ball it was, but it was like a baseball size ball, but it was mushier. And then we decided- I think it was the Incrediball. I don't know what that is.

It was small, it was like a baseball size ball. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Incrediball, I think that's what it's called, is a- Bouncy. It's a baseball baseball sized ball. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Incrediball, I think that's what it's called, is a- Bouncy. It's a baseball designed for like kids. So it's like cloth and rubbery. I remember it being slightly mushier than what I think that would be.

But anyway, we decided to get on opposite sides of your room, which was a very small room. I mean, we're talking- I cannot believe you're telling this story. And then we would just throw, we said, all right, we're gonna throw the ball at each other's balls and see who can take it. Like we'll take turns.

I'm gonna throw it at your balls and then see if you can take, I mean, we were fully clothed. Yeah, fully clothed. We're not like tribesmen. We're sitting across from each other. With our legs spread. Opposite sides of the room, rolling the ball at each other. Yeah, we rolled it across from each other. With our legs spread. Opposite sides of the room, rolling the ball at each other.

Yeah, we rolled it, that's right. We rolled the ball like bowling ball style. You know, it was another, we had to divide the test of manhood. I haven't thought about this in a long time. So we're doing it and I'm sure we're like groaning and laughing and giggling and being complete idiots like we still are.

And then. The door. No, no, the first thing I hear is the sound of my father coming up the stairs. And my dad had a little bit of a quick fuse. So I knew that there was no like, hey guys, quiet down. There was, it just went from hearing nothing to coming up the stairs.

Bam, the door swings open. He opens the door, he's standing there, he's got on a V-neck white T-shirt, underwear, and his socks that he had worn to work, like navy socks, like pulled up a little bit. He was a boxers man, he was wearing boxers. No he wasn't. He wearing briefs?

You picture him in wearing boxers, he never wore boxers. No he wasn't. He was wearing briefs. You picture him in wearing boxers. He never wore boxers. I don't want to picture briefs in my mind. He never wore boxers. But he was wearing briefs, huh? So he was like Walter White out in the desert. Yeah, exactly. Season one of Breaking Bad.

And then he just looked at you and says, I know what he said. He says, what the hell are you doing? That's exactly what he said. And I remember we both just looked at him and I was so afraid. Especially because I was thinking, what do you say?

We were throwing a ball at each other's balls. There's nothing you can say. I mean, we're both spread eagle with a ball in our hand, giggling, and he busts into the room. It's like, he knows what we're doing. We're throwing a ball at each other's nuts. And I was like, oh, nothing, we'll be quiet. And he was like, okay, and he just walked back downstairs.

I think when he opened the door in his anger and he said that, then he saw like, the configuration we were in, it's like, it's as if he was then thinking, you know what? I don't wanna know. I don't wanna know, exactly. I don't even wanna know. But I think the larger observation here,

besides the fact that I have no idea what impact this is gonna have on us, the fact that you've told this story publicly now, is you're right, we invented a test of manhood. And if we were like isolated in like some part of the world and there was like us and like 50 other people, we might say, you know what, the way you find out if you're a man is you sit across from each other

and you roll an Incrediball at each other's balls. That could be how things get started. I think that's called a cult. I'm just saying. If we did it, it would be a cult. But you see how these things get started and then it's just like, yeah, you know, my dad and my dad's dad and now me

have all took the credit ball to the balls. Well, that brings me to an interesting one. This next one I have has an interesting backstory, which it's a legend which led to this rite of passage practice which you may have seen on television on the different Nat Geo type scenarios, Discovery Channel, what have you. I lead a sheltered life so I really hadn't seen this yet. So I'm gonna talk to all of you out there

who've never heard of this. But maybe you haven't heard of the legend that went into it. We're going to the Southern part of Pentecost Island to Vanuatu, okay? Which a season of Survivor was there. Yes. So you know it's an awesome place if Survivor did a whole season there.

Right, maybe. Let me ask you a question to get into this one. Would you ever bungee jump, Rhett? Yes, no, or if cameras were there? Yes, if cameras were there. But no, otherwise? I don't think I would just do it for fun, no. I agree.

Would you ever bungee jump using Tarzan vines strapped to your legs instead of an actual bungee cord if cameras were there? No, because I do know what you're talking about now and I have seen this on the television. 100 feet in the air, Tarzan vines, and that's my terminology, strapped to their feet, that's not what they call it.

It's called land diving, known as nagol, and it's done by the Vanuatu people as a ritual associated with the annual yam harvest. They don't do it for cameras. They don't do it for accolades. They do it for the yams. Okay, yams are good. And when you reach it-

Good for you. Superfood. And when you reach a certain age, you get to enter into this practice of nagal. Is it sweet potato casserole or is it just sweet potatoes? It's yams, okay? They make everything out of them, okay? Here's the backstory.

Legend has it- Because if it's sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top, I might do it for that. Legend has it that a woman was dissatisfied with her husband whose name was Tamale. Likely story. She was so dissatisfied with Tamale that she ran away from him into the forest,

but Tamale pursued her, so she climbed a banyan tree, which is a tall tree in Vanuatu. Well, up he goes after her climbing, so she ties lianas, which are vines, to her ankles and jumps to get away from him. Smart. She survives. You know, she invented bungee jumping.

Legend has it. Her husband, in hot pursuit, jumps after her, but he misses the crucial step of tying Lianas to himself. That is important. So he died. Pretty much the only important thing. He died. Okay, he died.

Splat. Tamale died. I thought this was the origin story of Tamales. No. But that's different. No. His name is Tamale. Right, that's just it.

So now, and the legend is that now the men, because they certainly perform this ritual annually now, that it originated, this land diving originated so that men would not be tricked again into, you know, to follow the fate of tamale. So the timing is good. Yam harvest is a dry season, which makes it a good time to build this huge tower.

It's also the time of year when the lianas have the most elasticity, which is key. It's the natural bungee cord. It takes them between two and five weeks to build this tower, 20 to 30 men constructing it, cutting trees down to construct the body, clearing a site, removing rocks from the soil. I mean, a lot goes into this thing.

And they do this, they don't just leave the same structure up, they do it every time. They rebuild it. Yeah, that's my understanding. And the lowest platform is about 10 meters. Okay, 10 meters, that's high. That's like, you jump into water off of 10 meters and that's a scary thing.

Right, the highest platform near the top, we're talking 100 feet, which you can do the conversions, I'm mixing measurements here. During the jump, the platform supports snap on purpose, causing the platform to hinge downward and absorb some of the force. So they got this thing down to a science and vines are selected by village elders

and matched with each jumper's weight. So it's like an old guy who's got a lot of experience, like you need this vine because you looked to weigh 184 pounds. Oh my goodness, not very precise. He's just eyeing it. There's not a blackboard with some calculations or some TI-82.

Yeah, there's no calculators involved. He doesn't have one of those in his back pocket. Younger boys jump as a rite of passage starting from the lowest platform, which 10 meters, we're talking like two stories high jumping into this thing. More than that. 10 meters?

I mean, your son dies. That's three stories. Three stories? Well, they may start a little bit lower than that. And then, you know, the event goes on, men start jumping from higher and higher platforms, and the final man, you know, jumps from 100 feet. Now here's the thing,

you've strapped these vines to your feet, your bungee jumping off your head has to hit the ground in order for it to take. For in order for what to take? The yams. In order for the yams to be blessed. Oh, got it. Your head has to hit the ground.

So as you launch yourself off, you hope that whoever cut those vines, cut them just right. As you launch yourself off, you hope that whoever cut those vines, cut them just right. If they're too short and your head doesn't hit the ground, yams aren't gonna be blessed. You'll live, but the yams are- If the vine is too long, and I'm talking four inches too long,

you'll die, but the yams will be blessed. Okay, well that's good to know. At least you don't die for nothing. Right. So you become a man, you get to enter into this, and then you just keep doing it for the sake of the yams. Now the thing I watched. Put that on a bumper sticker, by the way.

Do it for the yams. Do it for the yams, or a T-shirt. I think the thing I watched about this, you know, on one of those channels that shows stuff like this years ago, the impression I got in watching it was that it is very, very rare for someone to die doing this. Well, I watched a YouTube clip of a guy

and he, whew, snap, the thing, the vine snaps. You see it snap and he just hits the ground. From 100 feet. And then everybody runs up to him and he hit a, they built it on a slope, so when your head hits the ground, it's not just flat, it's on a slope. You kinda roll a little bit.

And that helped, that helped, because he just stood up and started cheering. So it kinda undermined a little bit. Were the yams blessed? Probably. That's a good question. Probably, I think that counts. If I'm the guy who's in charge, that counts. I mean, that is a good question.

If I'm the guy who's in charge, we'd probably stop doing this and probably just like get fertilizer. But you know what? Whatever. You're not in charge. I'm not in charge. Do they have your email or your cell phone? No, they do not.

Maybe that's why they haven't called you. They want you to be in charge, they just haven't called you. You know, and the thing is is that you say elasticity is important, but from the videos that I've watched, they're not very elastic. We're not talking about actual elastic.

We're not talking about bungee cords where the thing goes to like five times its length or whatever. We're talking about a vine that may stretch a little bit because it was a little bit bent in one place. I think it's cool that the platform gives away and adds that level of boinginess. Yeah, you need, boinginess is key.

The honed engineering that goes into this thing. I would love to go and watch it. I would certainly buy a ticket to watch. But you wouldn't do it. No, and I wouldn't stand right underneath them either. This is one, I'm not saying I would do any of these, but this is one that, you know, the yams are gonna have to die.

I'm not doing this. I'm not interested. I'll do the bullet ant before I do this one. Will you do this next one? I don't know. Let's analyze it. Let's go through the details once more. The Matisse hunting trials, the Matisse tribe,

I think I'm saying that right, is in Brazil. And a boy is not a man until he can participate in a hunt. Oh, okay, sure, he's gotta hunt. No, no, no, no, you can't hunt unless we do a series of things to you, a series of unpleasant things. Okay. The first thing they do to the boy

is they put poison into his eyes, which is supposed to improve his vision. Oh, really? Yeah, got some poison in your eyes, they rub it in there, it's bitter. Is this like a long-term positive effect and a short-term negative effect kind of? Apparently, but that's just step one.

The second step is they beat you and whip you. It's a series of beatings and whippings. I guess from the other guys that you're about to go out hunting with. And then lastly, you're injected with poison frog goop. They have- Define frog goop. You know, like poison frogs have like nasty poison

on their skin and in these glands and stuff. And they- So you scrape it. They get the poison off with these wooden- Squeeze it. Like needles. And then they inject you with this poison. Oh my goodness. And this poison is supposed to increase your strength

and your endurance, but not until it is also caused projectile vomiting and intense diarrhea. They basically almost kill you. I don't typically associate projectile vomiting and intense diarrhea with strength and endurance. But if you can exhibit strength and endurance while projectile vomiting and all of that, then you've earned a ranking higher than me

on the man scale. Well, I'm just trying to figure out- Which again, doesn't count for much, I guess. You know, I'm trying to figure out the origin of this one, right? Because I have a feeling that they got together at one time and they were like, what are we gonna do to make sure a boy is a man before he goes hunting?

Take the worst things that exist in our environment and inject them into your person, your eyes, skin. Right, well that's where they ended up, but it was like one guy said, let's put the poison in his eyes. And everyone was like, that's a good idea. All right, let me write that down. Let's just beat him.

Let's just beat him and whip him several times. Okay, hold on, let me put that on the whiteboard. Pencil it in. Okay, what about those, we got those poison frogs. Let's take some of that poison. You know, Herb ate one of those frogs a few days ago and he had projectile vomiting and intense diarrhea. Why don't we just take some of the poison

and just inject it right in there? Okay, well, let me, all right, let's write this down. All right, who thinks that bitter poison in the eyes is a good idea? Everybody raised their hand. What about the beatings and the whippings? They all raised their hand. And the frog, they all raised their hand.

Okay, we'll do all of it. Yeah, it's like they were having a brainstorming session and then at the end- There were no wrong answers. They forgot that they were only gonna choose one and they just, they like slept on it, went back to the whiteboard and said, oh, the work's done. And of course the men came up with it

because they were like, we already hunt. You know, obviously they're the ones who came up with this. Yeah, the first ones who came up with it. Not the boys, there were no boys in the room at the time. Like, hold on, can we just do one of these? So that's what it takes to be a man and a hunter in the Matisse tribe in Brazil. I'm not signing up for that one either.

I don't think I'm signing up for any of these. I mean, in retrospect, if we analyze our touch points for like throwing stuff at our own reproductive organs or jumping over dead cows. It's like we're grasping at manhood, Rhett. Well, I would go as far as to say that we're not men. I mean, I would go as far as to say that by the standards,

if we were to go and hang out with any of these people groups, we would not be considered men. What makes a man, Mr. Lebowski? I think about that line, that and a pair of testicles. I always felt like getting my own car is the closest, like, this is kind of a, this is a commentary, perhaps a sad one.

It's like getting my own car was a rite of passage. You know, there's independence associated with that. Definitely, and at age 16 is where we come from. Right, so it's a little bit older. It's interesting today, there are lots of 16 year olds who could care less about getting a car because in the digital age, I'm told, it is just not that much of a,

getting a car is not arriving because you've traveled the world on the internet. There's something psychological there. The trend of kids not getting cars, but I will say that at least for us that, Oh, it was a huge deal. That was the right of passage. I thought about it.

More than jumping over the cow. You know, I know kids these days who do not immediately get their license when they're eligible. But for me, it was like October 11th, my birthday. Oh, you were in line. I'm at the DMV. Like I've been thinking about this day for years.

I don't under, I cannot relate. I cannot relate to why you would be like, oh, I'll do that. I'll wait, I'll wait to get my license. I'm not saying, I'm just saying, I'm giving you my perspective. I'm not prescribing anything. No.

But for me, it was. Shooting a gun with your dad, I think that there's something to that. You know, when I turned 16, we had the big birthday party. My dad cooked a pig at my aunt TC's house. Right. I was one of the last ones to turn 16, so everyone had their own car.

And then I remember I got in my truck, my 1987 Nissan pickup. Yeah, Brooks and Dunn license plate. Old and beat up at the time, didn't have the license plate on it yet. No, it does in my mind. I listened to some Charlie Daniels and we drove around and I remember we had the party and they were like,

what are we gonna do? It's like, we're gonna drive around. We have this power now, we have this autonomy. Go anywhere we want, any road. And then no, everyone got into their own car and there was like, no one was together anymore. We were just like a bunch of, we're like a parade going down country roads.

Just not, it was- Caravanning. Caravanning into the rest of our lives as men. And loving every minute of it. I mean, when I got my license, because I got it a little bit earlier than you, just I'm a little older. October before June.

I picked you up and we just went on some, we just went around some dirt roads. Oh, it was exhilarating. In a, what were we? Omega. We were in the Oldsmobile Omega. Just in this like 1981 sedan going around on dirt roads. Why?

Because we could. Because we were men, right? And then, you know, you get married or you have children and those are milestones that say, well, maybe now I'm a man. I'm responsible for other people's lives, like these kids who need to be fed. I feel more man-ish now because I feel like if I fail,

somebody could die. People are depending on you now. Right, but there was, you know, it would, I would have stepped in that more confidently if I had ingested frog poison or balanced on some cows in front of my loved ones who had been whipped. It would be more definitive.

It was definitely more definitive. I do think, and I think this is an application, at least for myself, I'm gonna noodle on this, okay? So I'll put this out there for food for thought. As parents of kids who are approaching, they're in adolescence. I got a 12 year old daughter and it's not, I'm talking about both of them becoming adults.

It's not just about being a man, but getting closer to an adult. Right. Creating something special for each of my children. And I know people who have done this. It's kind of like a rite of passage in a way that it's like, okay, this weekend is about you're 13 or you're 16 or whatever,

creating an experience that they can kind of hold on to. Maybe there's something written and there's, I love the idea. There doesn't have to be bleeding involved. But, I mean, obviously, as we think about it, in 2015, United States. Or pain, doesn't have to be pain. We're gonna like create like a cool camping trip

and a plaque or something. But what if there is, what if we do break out the bullet ant glove or something like a mild version of that? Well. We'd be like taken to jail, man. Or what about like an ice bath? Like, I mean, that was traumatic for me on GMM.

Ice bath is not bad. But I think that's a good one. I think a heartfelt letter. Maybe a signet ring. I think a heartfelt letter. Maybe a signet ring. That would be cool. I think something that is physically challenging could signify something. So like-

A whitewater rafting trip. Well, that would be fun, but I'm talking about like- Well, I'm thinking about I wanna do it too. Making it to the top of Half Dome or something like that. You know, just something that's difficult. That's good. I feel like we should create, you know what we should do? Link, this is what we should do.

It's probably already been done. We should create a curriculum that's a rite of passage for boys and girls. We could create experiences. Everywhere. And it's just different rites of passage that you sign up for with your kids and they do it. And then we make a YouTube channel.

We don't have to do the YouTube channel part. Well, there is a website, this is not a plug, I just found it, called extremesealexperience.com. Extreme Seal Experience? Yeah, where you go through Navy SEAL training, trained by real Navy SEALs instructors, and you like go through the whole thing. It's in Virginia.

And one of the frequently asked questions is, will I die? So I'm not sending my kids to this, but there are people who sign up for this type of stuff. Extreme Seal, they're not the only one who does it, but that's just the one that I found. But okay, so that's for us to noodle on. I think as we're shutting down this ear biscuit, hopefully we've given you some things to think about.

What makes a man or a woman, I think, like we said at the top. We wanna reemphasize this, that for those of you who thought that we were leaving women out on purpose, we were not, we made a decision since we were once boys, now we consider ourselves men that we would focus on the rites of passage traditionally seen as boys becoming men. We weren't excluding the women because they're women,

we were just deciding to focus on the men because we're men. Now, in fact, in doing a little bit of research for this. Because I certainly think about my daughter Lily, who's 12, and like the half-dome idea, and all that stuff is great ideas. Some of the things that the women have had to go through are just, you know, unfortunately, horrible things that they've had to go through.

And there's not really any reward on the back end. It isn't like, oh, now you're a woman necessarily. It's just, you know, abuse. But I think, yeah, in our culture, it's like giving our kids, all of them, an opportunity to have some sort of formative experience as opposed to just trying to look back on their life and trying to figure out what it is

that helped them transition to the next stage of life. But that, you know, something definitive. Wanna figure it out. So as we work on that, we welcome your input, not only about that question, but about this episode in general. Let us know at Rhett and Link, hashtag Ear Biscuits, what you thought about this episode

and feedback for future episodes. Also make sure you leave a review on iTunes, that's always helpful. If you're on SoundCloud, you were able to comment along with us. So your comment correlates to a specific time in the conversation if you wanna check that out. But I think that's it as far as what we need them to do.

Right Rhett? That's all we need you to do. I need you to become men and women. If you wanna go. Unless it's not time. Bungee jump on some vines or stick your hand into a bull and ant glove or jump over some cows, you can do that too.

Maybe you've been inspired to do, take a specific application for one of these things. Do not mention us. Do not mention us. In association with your decision to do it. Do not mention us, but please film it. Hashtag Ear Biscuits. Don't do it.

The music's been playing for a while, so hopefully they clicked away before you invited them. Before they heard that. They did, sounds like it. Good.