Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 81 Charlie McDonnell - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: August 7, 2015

YouTuber, Filmmaker, and one of the first Vloggers in the UK to reach 1 million subscribers, Charlie McDonnell, joins Rhett & Link this week to discuss why he was scared into deleting a lot of his videos at the start of his YouTube career, his perspective on religion and why he identifies as an atheist, and how he met his girlfriend while working on a short film and the interesting time they spent at a topless beach. 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, not at the round table of dim lighting, but at a table we set up in a hotel suite at VidCon, is British YouTuber, vlogger, and filmmaker, and friend, Charlie MacDonald. Charlie was one of the first vloggers in the UK

to reach one million subscribers. He's since racked up 2.4 million subs with 290 million video views on his main channel, CharlieIsSoCoolLike. That's all one word, CharlieIsSoCoolLike. His channel really took off way back in 2007 after he released a video called How To Be English. In that video, he was 16 years old and that 16 year old

charlie teaches us how to properly enjoy a cup of tea here's a clip i'm going to be showing you the ancient english art that is making a cup of tea firstly you will need to get your tea making making equipment. This consists of a kettle complete with water, a mug, a teaspoon, milk, I prefer semi-skimmed milk, sugar for those of you with a sweet tooth. Now Charlie's fan base really started growing after that video and of course so did his love of tea. Beyond vlogging, Charlie has written and directed

several short films that you can find on his channel. One of them is called The Tea Chronicles, which is a short psychological horror slash comedy about tea. Here's a clip from that. You cannot make tea to save your life. Do you know that? I've never, in all of my

days, tasted anything so foul. Do you even know what stirring is? Charlie, it was the sugar. Yes, the sugar. It was hardly dissolved at all. It was all collected in the bottom of the mug. But the milk too. You gave me a dollop of whole and I only need a drop of semi. I bet you put the milk in first too, didn't you, you monster? It was so weak. Are you giving me decaf or something? Because I just can't. Hey, it's just a cup of tea.

Charlie is an OG YouTuber who is still continuing to innovate on the platform after all these years. And we've always appreciated his thoughtful approach to everything he does, including the way he approached this conversation with us. Yeah, had a great conversation. We discussed lots of things, including why at the start

of his YouTube career, he was scared into deleting a lot of his videos. We also talked about working with his girlfriend Emily, who's also a filmmaker and the quality time they recently spent on a topless beach. Uh-huh. And we even got a chance to clear the air over a joke we made when we followed his short film on stage at Buffer Fest in Toronto last year.

Right, and we talked a little bit at the end about his new show and YouTube channel, Serial Time, so stay tuned for that. But first, we wanna take a moment to mention our sponsor for today's episode, Squarespace. Squarespace is the easiest way to create a beautiful website, blog, or online store for you and your ideas. Squarespace features the easiest way to create a beautiful website, blog, or online store for you and your ideas.

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Okay, Charlie, so we're serving you tea. Yeah, of course. And this is such a pressurized moment. Are you judging that tea? As you're sipping the tea, and I feel like we're failing, I don't know. Is that hotel tea? No, we brought our own little K-cup thing,

and we have an English breakfast tea. Literally, we've just served Charlie English breakfast tea. Did you bring the breakfast tea with you? For you, I think. Really? I'm certainly not drinking any of that. When I came in, you were like, do you want a drink? Do you want water, soda pop, maybe a coffee?

You didn't offer me tea. Kevin didn't offer you tea because I think you didn't want to pander. We wanted you to make the decision. We knew what decision you would make, but it's about empowering you to make your own decision. We didn't want to push the tea on you. You have your own tea blend. I do, yeah.

That you sell. I make my own tea. It's called quality my quality blend it's kind of like a masala chai type of thing is quality like a is it you're not big on tea or no actually i love the idea of tea yeah yep um but i can't make myself like it as much as coffee currently yeah i'm i'm pretty pretty big on coffee yeah i have a bit of a caffeine intolerance so like tea is as much caffeine as i can take coffee just kind of sends me a bit mad okay but is is quality a brand name that then you have like the charlie blend as part of it yeah well my

production company is called quality productions uh and then I took that and made my own tea. So it's my quality. I didn't know if it was like Coke, like had like a Charlie soda, but really quality is your production company. Oh, okay. So you're literally just making this tea, like what, out of your basement or something? You've got like a... No, I have a tea guy. I actually did a thing with Comic Rel comic relief which is a charity in the uk

um they wanted to do something cool with me and they suggested going to meet a like a master tea blender learning about how to blend tea uh and at the end of it he kind of made a tea based on my kind of like specific tea preferences and then we uh what are your specific tea preferences well apparently i like a spicy tea okay um and i like it well i kind of wanted a tea that was quite like was a bit of a treat uh generally i'll go for what i have here today which is uh english breakfast tea with a bit of milk uh semi-skimmed here which i think is half and half here uh semi-skimmed in the uk sorry and uh well i should say that this tea is is perfectly serviceable it It's great.

And I'm not... You've got such a way with words. Perfectly serviceable. I don't know how to take that, but with a smile on your face, I feel good. You tell me, because when it comes to coffee, for instance, there's such a spectrum of coffee, right? And there's a lot of bad coffee on the coffee spectrum. Most hotel coffee that you're gonna get most coffee that it's like one of those little coffee makers that's in your room or like the weird circular coffee filter that you throw in there or gas station very bad

it's just horrible it is not serviceable unless the only service you're trying to give yourself is a caffeine boost but is tea the same way? I feel like I have a pretty low benchmark for what I kind of like in my tea. Like tea bags in the UK usually come from like the scrapings of the bottom of like the factories. It's just like sort of tea dust. And that's kind of what I'm used to. And that's kind of like fine for me. Tea dust.

For a guy who now sells his own tea i don't think you should you should uh toe that line anymore you gotta be like high falutin man yeah i'm i'm comfortable being honest with my tea preferences which is that i'm not super picky when i say this is serviceable that's like for me that's good like okay i can drink it and i'm enjoying it and that's fine i'm really am not that picky. But is that master tea blender now manufacturing your tea or did you sublet that to somebody else? The master tea blender has his own tea factory thing where he blends the tea and he can make it into bags

and do all of that stuff for me. What is this guy like? Uh, he's lovely. He's very, very smart, very knowledgeable about tea. Like I made the whole video on your channel. Yeah. I made like a three minute video with him and it took like two hours to film because I just kept on asking like really in-depth questions about tea production and like the

different types of tea. And like none of that ended up in the video. It's just in your head. It's just, I just wanted to know it for me and then you've got the short film uh the tea chronicles yeah by the way you've got super cool posters oh yeah thank you the whole set of your short films like what five uh four short films four short films four but five posters no i want to believe there's five posters there's four posters but they want to believe there's five posters. There's four posters, but they're so cool, it's like there's a fifth one.

What's confusing is that I, so I got to make the series of short films funded by YouTube, and they wanted me to make five of them, but they also gave me a deadline, and I was having trouble reaching that. So for the last film, it's kind of like, it's technically five films,

because it's like, the last film is two, it takes place in two parts. So it's like, the last film is two. It takes place in two parts. So it's like the last film is twice as long as all the other films, but I split it up into two parts. So I could say I have made five films, but there are only four posters. But one of them is the Tea Chronicles, which the description is a short psychological horror comedy film about tea. Yep. How long was that idea brewing?

I'm just giving a death stare. I'm wondering if you even want to know the answer to that question. I just really just cracked myself up. I want to know the answer. I don't want to acknowledge how he asked, though. I guess it was like a month or so. So I was living with my friend, Kyan, and he kind of came up with the idea. He's a YouTuber as well.

Yeah. Originally, we wanted to sort of just do it as a YouTube sketch. This is before YouTube came to me and said, do you want some money to make some short films? So I had no- Which, that's an interesting, I think a lot of people listening would be like, what? That happens? YouTube can give you money to make stuff?

Yeah. How does that work? It was a program they were doing called the creator innovation program where they were coming to some youtubers and being like we can give you a little bit of money to do something cooler on your youtube channel something you always wanted to do yeah we we got investments to do the same program to do our half hour show the mythical show which we did 10 episodes of so yeah that was like what three years ago two years ago now something yeah okay so yeah oh you

that's where the money came from yeah um and then yeah the idea came from uh well yeah kyan moved in with me and he started making me a lot of tea and uh i would always offer to make him tea and he would always decline it and then we kind of talked a bit about that and felt like there was a an idea for a horror movie in there somewhere um we wanted to kind of like throw in a bunch of Alfred Hitchcock references into it. And it was like, we wanted to do it as a YouTube sketch. Then YouTube said, you want to make some short films? And we were writing it and we realized it could probably work as a short film, I guess. It kind of feels like an extended YouTube sketch in a way, the T Chronicles.

But yeah, that's where it came from. It was Kyan's idea. And we wrote it together and directed it together as well. I mean, I definitely want to get back to the different things you've been able to do like the creative bones you've been able to stretch you don't stretch bones no you stretch muscles if you're stretching bones that's a problem i think a baby can stretch bones i think in the uk they stretch bones. That's why I said that. Oh, okay. It's a saying. Is that a saying in the UK? Sure. But let's go through the whole journey.

Yeah, sure. Because you've got quite a track record just on YouTube, like going back basically all the way. But let's go back even further than that. Let's go back to- The womb. The beginning of Charlie. The beginning of Charlie? Yeah.

Well, I don't remember what the womb was like. I'm sure it was great. Yeah. Well, it was perfectly serviceable. I came out just fine. What's that first memory? The womb was perfectly serviceable. That should be a t-shirt.

One of us has to make that t-shirt. Either you or us. It could be a tea blend, which sounds kind has to make that t-shirt either you or us you go it could be a tea blend which yeah sounds kind of perfectly serviceable womb tea oh no gosh that's a horrible idea don't help ask us to help with marketing um i feel like i can't really remember much of what happened to me before i started youtube though i don't know if you have that kind of same vibe where it feels like there's this like this this kind of wall between like my past YouTube self and my current and like YouTube world where I can't well I mean so your first YouTube

videos I mean you were what 17 I was 16 when I started yeah where were you from I'm from a place called Bath originally which was a city founded by the Romans Aquasoulis as it was originally called. There's some natural hot springs there. A really, really pretty place in England, actually. Like, I didn't realize how pretty it was until I moved to London and saw sort of like the grotty side of the city and was like, oh, I actually had a really, really nice place to grow up in.

So, my mom still lives there. So, I go back to see her quite often. There's actually a bath in North Carolina, which is the oldest town in North Carolina, I think, or something like that. That's what I've heard. I guess it was named after your hometown. I'd assume so, yeah. Because my bath is like, yeah, thousands and thousands of years old. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. We know. We know how this works. You owned us. Yeah, but we're cool now, right? Yeah, right, yeah, we're not even gonna talk about it. We're cool, we're cool. So what is, okay, it's a small, we're talking like this quaint, villagey place,

that's what we like to picture, you know? You can picture that if you want. Picture like women coming out in like, Oh gosh. You know, hoods and sweeping the the front steps is that what it was like yeah it's always like fantasy music playing um yeah and we'd all sort of talk and stuff like incredibly posh accents the whole time as well i'm sorry charlie i am sorry that we're being this way it's okay i'm used to it now i know you're used to it i've

been the british youtube guy for a long time like It kind of just goes straight out of my head. What did you do for fun? What did I do for fun? Well, I did a lot of acting, actually. When I was really young, my mom, I was a pretty shy kid. I'm still a shy guy generally now, but my mom saw quite how shy I was, and she was like, I want to put you into acting classes to hopefully make you more confident.

So I got into doing that. Was in a lot of plays growing up when I was younger. Did the acting work though? Did it help the shyness? I think it did to a certain extent. More than anything, I feel like YouTube was the thing that really kind of boosted my confidence. I think I was always a pretty shy guy. And I guess that doing acting stuff kind of helped a bit.

I was always a pretty shy guy and I guess that doing acting stuff kind of helped a bit and I also kind of needed that like acting kind of like base I think to get into YouTube to feel confident enough to do that but it's been a pretty slow process for me I think but you don't recall it it being laced with anxiety to have to for your mom to kind of push you in out of your comfort zone no I never really felt like doing acting was was like going out of my comfort zone i don't know what it is but i feel like i've always been pretty comfortable kind of like doing like plays and performances um versus like interacting with humans normally as my actual self i don't know what it is but it's like you there's a there's a there's a difference you can make where you can when you're playing a character which you know i was when i was doing plays and we all do as well to a certain make when you're playing a character, which I was when I was doing plays.

And we all do as well to a certain extent when we're doing video blogs as well, I think, where we have the YouTube persona, which is still pretty close to how I actually am. But to a certain extent, it's still a performance. So it feels like, I don't know what it is about that that makes it just easier easier to sort of like talk talk to people and talk about things and um when you get to kind of like express yourself through a script that you've written instead of just sort of like mumbling thoughts to someone one-on-one just makes it easier i don't know what it is about that though what you you're a very thoughtful guy you know you can tell that there's a lot of just analytical thinking that goes into the way that you approach your career and what we see, you know, on the internet. So, I have this like image of little Charlie. It's like this very contemplative little kid who is like kind of a serious kid. Is that an incorrect assumption?

I think I was pretty serious, I think. But I also wanted to have fun like that's why i started youtube is i was very much just like bored and i saw people doing it like i saw video bloggers like appearing on the front page of youtube when people actually used to get featured and i was like i could probably do that i have just like the the really like basic equipment like a super cheap laptop and like a 15 pound web cab and i thought yeah i could i could do that which is obviously very different to how it is now i don't feel like most people can watch like you know Zoella and be like yeah I could do that I could spend like a couple of thousand pounds on a on a nice nice camera and start doing that um but back then it was a much like easier to think I could get into this this this would be fun

but so but it was all just for fun I mean even your acting were you thinking I'm gonna I'm gonna be an actor I'm gonna be an entertainment type thing or was it i'm just i'm still young and this is just i'm just doing this stuff because it's fun i think um my more kind of like analytical side probably came as i got older you know because i did start youtubing when i was like 16 so i was still you know i was still pretty young um i never really had like a definite plan for what i wanted to do with my life even when youtube was my job like it really was just like here is a fun thing that i like to do and oh i guess it's making me money now so that's nice oh i guess it's making

me enough money now that i can move out so i guess it's my job but i never really like it took me quite a while to actually pick what i wanted to do with myself like I never consciously said I wanted to be an entertainer I was just sort of doing that and it was working for me and that was nice it was only really in like the last few years that I kind of like decided like I you know I tried a lot of kind of like different like forms of like entertainment like doing music stuff um and doing some filmmaking and I guess doing like acting and things like that and it was only yeah like in the last couple of years that i thought i kind of picked filmmaking as my thing that just like seemed that seemed like the thing i was most passionate about i guess um having said that i still do like doing all of the other stuff as well but i guess now if i was

to kind of like pick a focus it would be that but it's still like that's still not my job like video blogging is still that thing but back when you're 16 and you're just you're you're you're you're watching youtubers like who were the people you were watching that you're like i'm gonna do that oh man okay so caitlin hill okay l88 yeah um do you remember blunty 3000 yes hold on hold on. That's old school. No, no. He wasn't a puppet. He wasn't a puppet. You're thinking about.

There is a puppet. Who was the puppet? The sock guy. I can't remember right now. I don't know why I thought that Blunty was. Because there was something that sounded like that. I know what it was. There was that sock guy on YouTube did a response to Blunty

and that's what got what made him big. Yeah. And I can't remember the video or anything about it now, but it was a sock puppet responding to him. So I never watched Blunty. I feel like I remember that vaguely. Blunty? Who else was there?

He was just a vlogger? He was just a vlogger, yeah. Like Renetto? You're talking about those guys? Renetto, yeah. I wasn't too into Renetto but I did I did was aware of him um but yeah that those were kind of the people for me how I was like yeah I mean that's like that's that's so that's first floor YouTube I mean that's ground floor I think but if we if we go boheme as well do you remember boheme yeah he was another one and if we dig back to like your earliest videos the first video that's still public on your channel you're referring to how

your channel is going to change yeah so i mean how many videos are now private oh uh probably like 20 or so i guess so i had this really weird thing when i first started youtube tubing where um i was i was on the website for like a month or so amassed like an audience of like 100 people uh one of my featured videos was featured on the front page i went from like 100 to like 4 000 which at the time was like whoa this is so cool and the front page was like the uk front page or was it it was just the uk front page okay then that had just been introduced so i've gotten featured i was like getting an audience quite quickly and then you know youtube had been around for a couple of years already so

there were people who were like right there at the beginning who had spent two years trying to like amass an audience and then suddenly i'd come in within like a month and like gotten the same amount of views as they had and so people were pretty pissed they were like they they started like accusing youtube of like featuring people irresponsibly. Um, and there was like a little kind of like mini YouTube drama at the time surrounding me and how I kind of like, didn't deserve what I was getting. Um, kind of did you respond to that? Did you, did you talk about it publicly? Yeah. My response was that I was too scared of what the internet was like. Cause I suddenly, my computer was talking to me and it was not being nice. And I was like, this is really scary and I don't want to do this anymore

so I deleted all of the videos from my channel and I was like deleted them like actually deleted them and I said I don't want to I don't want to do this were you thinking about this was this a totally solo thing at the time you know 16 year old kid just figuring this out you know like did your parents know that this was happening were were you talking to any friends about it like or you're just like making all these decisions on your own because at 16 that's just kind of a it's a big deal i was i was my mom was aware of what i was doing like it's pretty much as soon as i got featured was when i told her that i was like making stuff on youtube and it seemed to be going well. But everyone, yeah, I was pretty much making those decisions by myself.

And it seems like, I don't know, the right decision for a 16 year old to make if you're getting hate online to be like, yes, probably should go away from this now. So you deleted them. And then what? And then it was actually Blunty3000 who made a video being like, there's this kid and people are being mean to him. So we should probably be nice. And then there was like this, this Ferrari of all of these other videos being like, there's this kid and people are being mean to him, so we should probably be nice. And then there was like this

Ferrari of all of these other videos being like, we support you, Charlie. And then I put my videos back up and then I kept making them and now I'm here. You put them back up. You reposted them. Yeah. But since then, you've privated them again, right? Yeah, some of the really old stuff has all been privated.

And then it just so happens that that Charlie Changes video that is like the most recent one up was just the video that I was kind of like, yeah, this is okay, I guess. This seems good enough. And I just left it up. But they're private because you don't like them. Essentially, yeah. They're just like really embarrassing things that I would prefer people not to see. I think every YouTuber who's been on the platform for a long time goes through it.

Taking some. Okay. We actually, we found, we went back not too long ago, like maybe a year or two ago, and found videos where we had given out our email address so people could send us things. So, whoa, we need to get rid of those. Yeah, like a year ago.

The things that you find when you go back. Yeah, so I totally relate to that. Oh, that's how we still get it on these emails. But backing up just a little bit, seeing as your sense of humor and your vibe is very self-deprecating, the fact that your name was CharlieIsSoCoolLike, what was the idea there like

when you when you came up with that i think i wanted to call myself charlie is cool and i don't know why because i was 16 and i thought that that would be a good username um but that was taken and so i really thought i'd go for charlie is so cool because i thought i you know people normally add like numbers at the end of their username if they if it's taken so i'll add words instead to be a bit different charlie is so cool was also taken so i went for charlie is so cool like what are charlie is cool and charlie is so cool up to these days i don't know we should we checked in with those guys uh i haven't spoken to them in a long time and i don't know if they're still posting i don't know how quickly you introduced the old guy with the voiceover which we'll play a clip right here

you've just had the almost imponderable joy of watching Charlie is so cool-like, which makes you, like, cool. Who is that guy, and when did you start adding him into the end of your videos? So that is Stephen Fry, who is a comedian, writer, actor in the UK. Relatively, like, big deal in the UK. He's kind of known as like a national treasure um he's he's a good export too though we we know about yeah okay yeah yeah okay good um yeah did you know that was him from i had no idea that was even fried but now that you say it

i'm like of course that's even fried how did you how did you work that how early was that um i can't remember exactly what it was um it was like you know two or three years into YouTubing for me, I guess. I did an interview on this show called Carpool with a guy called Robert Llewellyn, where he was just like interviewing people that he knew, people he thought were interesting. And he did one with me and then he did one with Stephen Fry immediately afterwards. And I guess Stephen Fry had seen mine and he spent the first five minutes of his interview just talking about me. So I sent him a message being like, that really nice thank you for doing that um my mom

wants to have you over for tea is that okay and he said um well you can come to the the recording of one of my tv shows if you like and we can meet each other then um so I did that and then afterwards I sent him an email being like you up for being in all of my videos for the rest of for the rest of time? That's awesome. Within like half an hour, he sent over that little clip with like a few variations for me to pick from. Oh, that is awesome. Yeah.

So have you stayed in touch? Yeah, I see him every now and then. He still remembers who I am, which is nice. As long as you don't forget me, Stephen Fry. Yeah. But yeah, no, he's just a super lovely guy. And then your vlogging career just started to snowball i think so like a million subscribers happened within what the first year uh i'm not entirely sure to be honest it's all still a bit of a blur to me yeah um but it it happened eventually and you know there was a long period where my channel was like the most popular one in

the UK, which made me feel pretty good at the time. And yeah, I mean, I kind of like had that initial thing of like one of my videos getting featured. And then from there, I felt like this kind of like weird obligation to the people who were watching me. Like as soon as I had any kind of like sizable audience, I was like, I keep making videos for these people i feel like they i owe it to them and so i really just like tried to keep up the momentum from there and like i had a few videos and things that went viral but for the most part it was just like trying to keep up keep up uploading stuff for a

long time yeah where do you think that comes from because you can you can sense i think that's one of the things that people really like about you and your fans really like about you is that there's a, you really care. There's like a deep sense of care and almost, you just said, an obligation to your fans that kind of finds its way into the way you present yourself and the way that you think about your content and how you'll make a video about how I'm going to change this or I'm going to do this. Where do you think that comes from? I really don't know. It's always just sort of been a part of me, like pretty quickly as well after getting featured. I was like, I also feel like I really need to use this platform

to do good stuff as well. Like, I don't know what it was that made me just want to be like, I owe this to these people. I have to try and be a good role model now. I have to try and use this platform to raise money for charity. It just felt like, I don't know, just felt like the right thing to do.

Yeah, you have a high sense of responsibility that is very obvious in everything you do. And there was an association with the Vlogbrothers and Nerdfighteria that I think, you know, that was a vibe that they were certainly developing in terms of like charity work and things like that, that I think, was there a parallel track? I feel like they might have been a big inspiration in that. Like, it's difficult for me to pinpoint

exactly what it could have been. But I was definitely, you know, I was a Vlogbrothers fan before I knew either of them. I started in 2007 in like Aprilil and they started i think at the beginning of 2007 with their initial like blood brothers 2.0 so i um yeah i i feel like they've always been kind of like very good role models generally um on on youtube so i guess there could have been that as as a fact then or um i don't know i like to think i'm just a nice person and and maybe that's where it comes from but has it ever, you know, has a sense of obligation because it's such a, this is not an easy job. I mean, it's a fun job.

We all love doing what we do, but it's not easy. You know, it takes a lot of work and there's a lot of second guessing yourself. There's a lot of doubting yourself and your abilities and trying to reinvent yourself and that kind of thing. Has it ever gotten to a point where you're like, maybe I shouldn't keep doing this. You know, maybe I should try something else.

Has your sense of responsibility and obligation to your fans ever gotten to a place where it was overwhelming to a point where you might want to stop? I feel like I've definitely felt that before. Yeah, and when I have, I've always tried to think, how can I adapt to my YouTube channel to do something different to be kind of like challenging myself like whenever I get to a point basically where I'm like where I just feel like I'm doing the same thing over and over again that's when I start to think how can I

change now what what is like and I think part of that comes from just like you know because I did start when I was 16 right my content is always just like it, I've been trying to let it grow up with me. So I'm trying to kind of like adapt and change it as I go on. So yeah, whenever I do feel like, I don't know, overwhelmed or just like, or just bored, you know, or just feeling like this isn't really interesting to me anymore. I always come straight to, well, you know, leaving entirely seems pretty drastic and probably unnecessary. And if I think about this a bit more, there's probably something else I could be doing here to make this more fun for me again.

Do you have something that you do that's like your pastime of choice in those moments where you feel that way, that you're like, okay, I'm going to go and do this? Because there have been times in your career where you might have made like a video a month. You know, there's been some stretches like that, right? what what else are you doing in those times playing video games usually um my go-to if i'm feeling sad is to play through legend of zelda ocarina of time if i'm really feeling really yeah yes yeah that's a good one it's uh it's just like that's the like the best

nostalgia hit i can possibly give myself is playing through that game um and i'm a bit of a control freak as well um i i'm my guess is that a lot of youtubers are like this right where you want to be like in complete control of the content that you're making it's why a lot of us want to do our own thing and not go into tv is we can we can make yeah whatever we want to make um and so part of that is like i like going back to a video game that i'm like really familiar with the world so I can feel like completely in control of it. But yeah, that's what I tend to do if I need a bit of a mope. But you don't find yourself thinking, well, this should be another channel, Charlie Gaming channel. And I would just play Zelda again and again, like every week.

It's always that. I'm not going to lie. I do have the YouTube channel, The Legend of Charlie. It's ready to go. Ready to go? As and when. My plan,

tentative plan for at some point in my life was to, you know, try out the whole Let's Play thing. Is this breaking news? It can be if you want, but I also don't,

I don't know when it's going to launch, if ever. Okay, well, it's there. You're going to get some subs, man, just from that. Yeah, maybe. I mean, it is there. It does exist, and I've been considering doing it for a long time,

and I would want to play any video game there, but my plan would be to try and... No, you only play that one every week, all the way through. Now, what did you think about The Adventure of Link? Did you ever play that, the original? It was like the second Nintendo version? So that's a bit before my time. I did go back to play it.

Has that been put out on any sort of emulator or anything? I feel like you can get it on the Nintendo Virtual Console, like on the Wii U or whatever. Because the ironic thing about this conversation is that we have Link here, and he's never played any of these. And there's a game called The Adventure of Link, which was the one that,

that was the first one that I, with a friend, got into. Because Link, even at the time, when Link was my best friend, he still wouldn't play the games with me, so I had to go to Ben's house to play The Adventure of Link. I had a friend named Link, and I'm going to Ben's house to play The Adventure of link when you're living the adventure of link why play it oh wow but that one and if i

would have said that at the time i would have probably been uh cooler than i was yeah is that to your point is that your nostalgia hit then is that the one you go back to well i don't because i did because i guess it would be on the emulator somewhere but I haven't gone back to do it. But because even those, even like the original Legend of Zelda still would take too much time for me. At this point, you know, like my son actually got Ocarina of Time and started trying to play through that

and he got a little, he still has it but he's gotten a little discouraged. Bogged down, he got a little bogged down. Yeah, yeah. I think there's a bog in it, right? There is a literal bog that Link can get bogged. Sure, I'm sure there's some bogs. Probably a bog in that.

So it's more about sort of vicariously watching him in video games at this point. We wanna break in here right quick just to mention our sponsor who helped make this Ear Biscuit possible, Squarespace. Building a website can be tough and even if you do know your way around coding, creating something that looks good and works well

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Yeah, Ear Biscuits. Squarespace, build it beautiful. Well, since we've talked about video games games we should probably also talk about religion okay so in your are you sure i can i can keep talking about zelda for the rest of the podcast if you like uh depends where you want to go so on on wiki uh it says that you identify as an atheist and have you vlogged about this or is this like just something separate i mean it's really like not a very important part of my life to be honest it is like i feel like um when i started thinking about um like religion in that way and i was like yeah i guess i am an atheist

then it kind of it did become a big part of my personality for a bit and i feel like i probably talked about it i've talked about it about it in like second channel videos a bit and really nowadays it's like something that doesn't really factor into my personality at all. I get it. But you, so you, I guess my interest is in that in the US, atheism is still pretty stigmatized. I don't want to say demonized, but maybe.

Because you have to like, if you're an atheist in the US, it's like you kind of have to, you can't just be like, oh, I'm an atheist and this isn't a big thing to me because you immediately have to defend it. Right, yeah. And it's like a bigger deal. Yeah, and I really like- But it kind of seems like in the UK, it's kind of like,

okay, yeah, that's what you think about that? That's cool. I think the best way to sum it up is like in the US, on a $10 bill, there are the words In God We Trust written on it. And in the UK, we have a picture of Charles Darwin. It's really not that big of a deal. Right. And if we had Darwin on any currency, it would never happen.

It wouldn't happen anytime soon. Exactly. But he is on the South Carolina flag. I'm getting totally confused. That is Darwin. I'm so confused right now. Yeah, but that's what I was interested in exploring was not calling you on the carpet.

Like, okay, so why don't you believe in God? But more of that cultural idea of you just finding yourself, well, yeah, realizing that you're an atheist because it's just something that is just, you're not called on the carpet for it. That's the culture. I think so. That's how it feels anyway. Everybody in the UK is an atheist. Well, I wouldn't go that far.

But I think that a lot of people in the UK wouldn't kind of like, they might identify as being religious, but it's not, even that isn't necessarily like a big part of their lives like they might not go to church they might just kind of like be almost just like spiritual people who just think yeah there probably is a god and that's kind of sometimes as far as they go obviously there is you know religion in the UK and it is a big thing for a lot of people but um I guess for me growing up it never really felt like that um and so yeah as soon as I realized yeah i probably don't believe in god then it was like okay that's that's the thing about me that i know now what's what's next yeah how old were you when you started thinking about those things um i must have been must have been around the time that i was like um starting around youtube i think i think i was kind of like uh agnostic for like the first couple of years that I was like making videos um and then yeah that's pretty soon after that Stephen Fry is a pretty

well spoken he kind of talks about these issues quite a bit but do he influence you and thinking about those things is that were you a fan of his at the time um I think I was a fan of his um although I don't know if it was him specifically like you said I feel like it's because there are a lot of prominent atheists I guess in the UK, people that I admired and found out that that was something about them so that probably kind of got me thinking about it, although I did, you know, I spent a lot

of my teenage years kind of like not wanting to go either way with it really, just kind of wanting to it's kind of my default position in life whenever I can is just to kind of sit on the fence unless I feel confident enough to say something kind of wanting to, it's kind of my default position in life whenever I can is just to kind of sit on the fence unless I, yeah, kind of like feel confident enough to say something kind of new about myself. But,

but there's no, there's no impulse to say, to make this a part of your sort of public identity in a way that like I'm going to, you know, because there are plenty of YouTubers who are like, okay, that's the atheist YouTuber.

Yeah. Their, their mission is kind of to break down religious constructs kind of expose them and that kind of thing there's no impulse to get involved with that i tell you what's more important to me is i like you know i i'm a big fan of critical thinking um and i'm a big fan of like science so i talk about those things on my youtube channel and i have a kind of like a series dedicated to talking about science. But it doesn't really feel like a worthwhile thing to me to be like, I want to talk about atheism. It just feels like, I don't know, it feels like a certain like conflict that is not really fun to get into a lot of the time.

I like to talk about the things that I kind of believe in that I think are like important to me, which a lot of that is like critical thinking in science. That's kind of like if there's any kind of like spiritual part of me, it comes from like hearing about amazing things from the universe. So that's kind of the thing I want to like impart to people if there's anything. You know, I want to look at the positive side of like the things that I do believe in. And what's that series called? I know that I watched a few of these. Fun Science.

Fun Science. Yeah. Which you've tackled different topics including what um what have i done i did the first one was on the moon i did one on light one on sound uh i've done one on like a year and a half ago as well i seem to remember yeah and i've been like wanting to kind of come back to it for a long time as well although i i kind of feel like it's one of those ideas where if i did come back to it i'd want to do it as like a more produced kind of thing i kind of would want to

do it like like a kind of show on my youtube channel um as opposed to how it was before where it was just like i do a video blog and it's called fun science and i'll talk about science sciencey things now um i'd like to see if i if i could do it again how i could turn it into like a bigger thing is uh stargazing and breast gazing one of those? I don't think it was. That was just a blog. No, that was just, that was me off in Gran Canaria where we went stargazing on the holiday at some point.

And also a lot of women had their breasts out. Well, let's talk about that. Sure. So this is a topless beach. No, it was just a beach. Just many beaches that I would go to there and it would be like, oh, you just got your top off. I guess, welcome to Europe. And then...

Where is the beach? It was on an island called Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. Okay. And what's your interaction with those? What, with breasts? Boobs. What, do you mean just Emily? Were you there with your girlfriend?

I was there with my girlfriend, yeah. What's her name? Emily. Emily. And Emily's a filmmaker. Yeah, she is. You talk on your channel about her film Cold, which certainly looked that way. Yeah.

And so you were there. What was your role in shooting your short film? And then I'll come back to how you interacted with her with all the boobs on the beach. Yeah, we'll come back to the important stuff. Yeah, let's come back to that. Yeah, so that was Emily's, had that film funded by New Form Digital. Yeah. And funding lots of people to make short films recently to hopefully get turned into series.

She wrote and directed it she wrote and directed that movie um what did you do uh i edited it but she so she was producing your early short films um yeah so she produced uh offline for me um as well that's actually how we met before we were kind of like yeah a couple is she she made a film for me which was very nice of her i want you to keep doing this but instead of you, I'm just going to be your boyfriend. No, not quite like that. Okay. But yeah, she did my subsequent films after that, Strangers in a Bed, and Our Brother.

She produced both of those. And so when the new form digital thing came around, it was very much just like, it's your turn to make a movie this time. And also, I don't know how to produce a film that's not something i'm good at so um i want to be involved in a key role if i can and so she asked me to edit it um as i've edited like a lot of my my own short films as well so it's something i had experience doing and that was that was really fun actually like i've never yet i like it was the first time i had that experience of like making a film that wasn't mine, right? Like not, you know, it comes back to this kind of like being a control freak kind of thing.

Where I felt like I needed to be writing and directing my own movies in order to feel like I was like being creatively fulfilled. But so long as I'm working on something that I think is great, right? You don't need like, and I, you know, obviously editing is like a big role and you get to make a lot of cool creative choices but i was ultimately not the person in control completely but i trusted emily and i thought the film was going to be good so i still got a lot out of the experience of doing that what was that process like i mean in being in a relationship but working on a project together i mean a that can be stressful depending on the dynamic in the relationship but then taking someone's vision and editing it i mean surely this led to some arguments of some kind you're not a very argumentative guy so you might be about to say we didn't argue at all but what really happened i'll

try and think and see if there are any instances where we did argue but i honestly it just sort of didn't happen i feel like i don't know what it is about mine and Emily's relationship, but we are just very, very good at just like flipping the switch and being like, okay, we're in work mode now. And now we're in relationship mode. So she didn't get mad at you when you were staring at the boobs? We were both staring, you know? Yeah, right.

They were there in the world. And we thought, well, there they are. It's hard to take your eyes off sometimes when they're there. Lots of different sizes and shapes. And, you know, I think in that video I talked a bit about, like, you know, confidence and how I wished I was comfortable enough to, you know, share my breasts with the world. What were we talking about?

The short film? Well, the relationship. Okay, so if you don't find yourself, there's not a lot of conflict in working together, how do you guys handle conflict in your relationship? Because you're very particular and opinionated guy, I know, but you're also just, you're a good, agreeable guy. You don't seem like you get mad very often.

I really don't get mad very often. I really don't get mad very often. And I don't think Emily or I really enjoy conflict very much. So, you know, obviously like all other relationships, we have points where we have things we disagree on, but we get through it just fine by not shouting at each other. That's not something we're interested in doing at all. Most of the time I don't think that helps. Have you ever shouted?

Like, I can't picture it. I can shout. I have done in the past. I've been known to, I think, on occasion. Really? But, yeah, it doesn't happen super often. I would be very scared of you if you were shouting. You know, when it's like out of nowhere.

When there's somebody who's just very collected and seems just very even keel, that person getting upset is like, I don't wanna be around the situation that got them upset about something. I've definitely screwed up. There's no doubt. That's the power you have, Charlie.

Yeah, it is. It's like somebody. Gravitas. It's like the person who, you know, doesn't speak a whole lot, but when they do say something, you listen. Mm-hmm. You know, you kind of... I'm definitely that person. But you have that, like, emotionally.

You have that... It's a superpower. Yeah. I know that if I ever got to a point where I was, like, shouting about something because I was so angry, that's when I know that something is seriously wrong. For real. And everyone else does. And I should be very worried.

One of the things that, one of the things I kind of see in your vlogs, like when you're just being Charlie, is, like we talked about your self-deprecating tone, but there's maybe a more specific way to describe it is you almost have an apologetic tone. It's just, you know, there's this like, okay, guys, I gotta tell you this thing

and I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna do it in a very entertaining and endearing way that's gonna make you wanna watch more of my videos. But I kind of seem like I'd rather not be doing this at the moment. That is kind of a specific way I could describe it. Hopefully that doesn't come across as an insult. It's a

it's this apologetic, self-deprecating tone. But does that, is that is that true? That there is this like, okay, I'm kind of doing this because I know you want me to. And does that lead to your interest in doing the short film, which

is a more you know, you're able to kind of create doing the short film which is a more uh you know you're able to kind of create like you said it's a script and it's uh it's a different kind of art form and you're able to present yourself and your ideas in a different way is are you you gravitate towards short film because of that i think that when it comes to like doing the short films it's very much like um you know i'm a multi-faceted i'm a human being right i'm complicated i have lots of thoughts and feelings and when it came to the the video blogging there's a there's a specific side of me that i can show through that like i very much want my video blogs to be pretty light-hearted and pretty you know fun

um and to be you know something that will will brighten someone's day you know i really want that to be the case um and there are there are you know facets of my personality and things i think about that don't feel appropriate to talk about in kind of like a more kind of like serious manner um like my last you know short film i made was about death and i wanted to talk about death in a very kind of like serious way and about mourning and um the importance of mourning correctly and i didn't really feel like i could just sit and talk about death in a very kind of like serious way and about mourning and um the importance of mourning correctly and i didn't really feel like i could just sit and talk about that in a video blog it doesn't it doesn't feel right like i've actually made a video about death before on my youtube channel but it was still that kind of like kind of jovial like here's a light-hearted look at

it and when i want to do something more serious sometimes it feels more right to do it in kind of like a short form like in a short film like format well and i will say um we haven't we haven't talked about this specifically but when you screened our brother i was wondering if you'd bring this up yeah part one at buffer fest we of course first of all we're backstage and we can't really see we i could we could kind of get an idea of what it was about and it seemed very serious but you can't really hear it because you're behind the speakers and everything. And just to give background, we are backstage because we are tasked

to introduce the next act after your short film screens, and it was like... Something very lighthearted. Lighthearted. But your film was... I mean, how would you describe the short film? It's a pretty sad film, right?

I mean, it's like the thing I want people to get out of it is I want them to cry at it. Like if they do that, then I'm like, great, the film did its job. Mission accomplished. Everyone in the audience is crying. Yeah. And also thinking about like mourning and the ways to do it properly and what healthy mourning is and what unhealthy mourning is and all of that sort of thing um you know letting your feelings out um so it's it's a serious film you know it is and uh uh that's not to say that i want all of my films in the future

to be like that at all um i just sort of wanted to try and see what it would be like if i tried to do just a straight up drama about a topic i thought was going to be important to me but so you use the question is red is your question going to be, what was Charlie's response to what we did when we came out? Well, so for those of you who weren't at Buffer Fest, so Link and I had to get up there after Charlie's film. And then first of all, we are almost always just trying to be funny. So that's what people expect of us. And then we've got to introduce something that's kind of lighthearted. So backstage, we came up with the idea.

And then we go out on stage and Link says, first of all, I mean, the film's over. And people, I mean, it worked. What you tried to accomplish worked. Oh, yeah. You got everybody in this very emotional, serious place. Put us in a tough spot, man. And then Link says, wow, Charlie, that was hilarious.

And then the tension just broke in the room. And it was the biggest laugh of the night. That's the biggest laugh I've ever gotten. But I was concerned. It was like, I didn't want it to seem heartless. Or like I didn't care. We haven't talked about it since then. Oh, no, we did.

I'm pretty sure we did. Didn't we? I'm pretty sure I saw you briefly afterwards at buffer fest yes we did i could tell that you were like worried about what you just done because you know for like absolutely everyone else in that room it's like exactly the thing you need to do but for me specifically you could be like is he gonna is this okay that we did this um and i laughed so it's fine it really really was yeah okay well let's you know with with all the different creative endeavors and things you've done over the journey let's talk

about serial time okay which is a huge project that you know you've just launched and i'm interested you know in in doing a similar format i know that it's a level of putting yourself out there that when you describe yourself as, I mean, you said you were a control freak and you're a calculating artist in everything you do. That's been clear through our whole conversation. I'm curious, you know, what's your interaction with putting yourself out there in that daily talk show format. Right. Was that scary? Yeah, no, it was scary. Obviously, if people don't know about Serial Time, you might be quite familiar with the format because we've obviously, we've taken direct inspiration from you guys with Good

Mythical Morning. And yeah, I mean, a big reason that we wanted to, that I wanted to do it is I wanted to find a way where I could essentially be making a show that kind of played a bit more by the playbook by the YouTube playbook that would be because you know I there's a big demand on YouTube to be uploading regularly and to be kind of like making content that's like keeping people on the website and all of that stuff just didn't really fit with my own YouTube channel and so I wanted to find a way where I could do that sort of thing where I would also be kind of like creatively fulfilled.

Like a lot of YouTubers do that through doing daily vlogs, right? It's that same sort of thing where it's like long videos where you're really getting an insight into kind of like the kind of person that they are. And that's the first thing I tried, right? Is I tried to do some, I did like a weekly vlog, one weekly vlog and really just didn't enjoy the process of doing it. I don't know if you've ever tried that before, but it's like i found that it really just disconnected me from my own life it just really made the like i i wasn't i wasn't living presently in the moment at all i didn't really remember the week that i had through because i was trying to figure out the best way to film it the whole time so the the lovely thing about the format for me is it's like uh it allows me to kind of be

like i feel like on serial time i'm a bit more of myself like than i am kind of like on my main youtube channel or at least it's a different facet of myself that people don't normally get to see because it is all happening in in pretty much in one take um if i leave if i stumble then we tend to leave that stuff in um and so it kind of like it shows people like a slightly, I think maybe more authentic version of how I am. Like if you were to kind of like actually chat with me in person, it feels more like that. But that's the risk, right?

It is. That you had to calculate that you were willing to take. Yeah. And I think that this is the tricky thing to get over, I think. And it's an important thing to kind of like bear in mind, I think for like all video bloggers is like people are really looking for like uh authenticity right and we can we can say that like with video blogging it's like it's it is it is very authentic a lot of the time you know you are seeing real people talking um but also when it comes to video blogging you know you want to kind of like heavily edit it you want to kind of like script it you want to make it feel like um you know a piece that you're sharing

with people um and sometimes that means that you're not kind of like completely sharing the kind of person you actually are all the time because that is a really scary thing to do but it's also i think what people really like to see they want they want to see like you know i think kind of like some of the most like interesting insights into people come from like fly on the wall documentaries where the person in the the subject of the film is does not have any control over how that film is going to come across right those are just like such interesting character pieces so it was important to me to find a way where i could like try and be more of myself and have a bit less control over like that sort of thing to show people like a more authentic version of who i actually am it might be scary for me but i think people i hope that people would be

more interested in seeing that and what's been the reaction uh from fans of seeing that that side of you presented in that way um i think they like it uh for sure um and uh yeah having a lot of fun doing it um i haven't really experienced quite as much engagement before as I did with Serial Time. And that's the thing we try and focus a lot when we're making the show as well, is to figure out ways that we can include people in the show as much as possible. And as a result, a lot of people do seem to want... I feel like I get more fan art for Serial Time than I do for myself. People just seem

like really interested in in getting involved so that's a side of it that like you know i i tend to try and measure like success generally on on youtube not by like views but by like engagement and not by just like how many likes or comments but like um the kind of engagement that is hard to measure like people doing fan art or people kind of like creating stuff based on things that you've made or like wanting to go to your shows like those kind of like um more abstract kind of things that if i if i see that then i'm like okay this means that people are really kind of like interested in the thing and that makes me feel better than you know i prefer to have like a thousand people who just like really really care about what i'm doing than like a million people just kind of like passively watch a video right well there is a reward for putting yourself out there

you know so uh we wish you the best in that we appreciate you putting yourself out there here man and uh so yeah our uh friendship goes way back so it's cool to finally sit down and get the full story so thanks for hanging man. Thank you for having me. It's been lovely. Yeah. Perfectly serviceable? Better. Better than perfectly serviceable.

Great. And there you have it. Our Ear Biscuit with Charlie McDonald. Charlie is so cool like. True statement. Yes, he is so cool like what? Like cool, like cool. Tweet at Charlie, let him know what you think about our conversation, hashtag Ear Biscuits.

His Twitter handle is coollike, C-O-O-L. Is there another L than an I-K-E? I think there's a double L right in there. Yeah, that's two Ls. C-O-O. Like cool and like. Yeah. It's not cool like, it's cool and like.

Yeah, he actually got that. C-O-O-L-L, single I, single K, single E. You don't have to say the single typically. That's how I remember it. Like we said when we were talking to Charlie, I think we mentioned this a couple of times, he has this thoughtfulness to the way he approaches things and this self-deprecating humor and approach to things

that I think is, as he demonstrated even in our conversation today, it's one of the things that makes him a likable guy. He's easy to like because he's good at what he does, he's entertaining at the stuff that he, when he creates something to entertain you, it actually entertains you, but you get- As opposed to what?

Well, I mean- You talking about general YouTube stuff? No, I'm just saying that, you know, he's good at what he does, period. But that doesn't, being good at what you do doesn't make you likable. If you're good at what you do doesn't make you likable. If you're good at what you do, but you have, he has this, he kind of second guesses himself.

Like he doesn't think a whole lot of himself and that is an attractive quality. I think that's why he's built, one of the reasons he built a fan base that wants to connect with him personally, because he just doesn't seem like a guy who's full of himself. I'm not saying that like most YouTubers

are full of themselves. Just every once in a while, you talk to somebody who just seems like, this person really is humble. He wouldn't describe himself in that way, because if you're really humble, you shouldn't call yourself humble. You can't be prideful about being humble.

That's the kid 22. But he's truly, as they would say in the old South, an humble without the H guy. Have you ever heard anyone actually say humble? My grandmother-in-law. Really? Says humble. Yep.

Really? She's from the old South, man. She still calls it the war of Northern aggression. Oh gosh. I mean, this is old South. Well, we should have asked Charlie about that. I'm sure he'd have lots of good thoughts. Yeah, I mean, he really,

he holds himself in such a way that I know that anything he says, he's thought through it. You know, he kind of has that gravitas about him, which is interesting for a comedic voice. Maybe we could learn something from that, Link. But don't you think it's an interesting combination of, like, I mean, self-deprecating is a form of humor, but there's something else that's like this thoughtful

gravitas that I will call it, which is not, it's not common in the world of comedy. Metered, self-metered. Okay. Is that a word, did I make that up? Charlie, let us know. He's a gas meter. If you've ever been described as metered,

I don't even know what it means, but I'm gonna. Charlie is- Measured. Charlie is so metered-like. Charlie is so measured. That's gonna be his iPhone channel, which remember, people used to do that. We should reserve that for him. All right, guys, we're actually opening a new shop

where we start to speculatively reserve YouTube channels for iPhone vlog accounts for people who are so late to the game they're never gonna do that. Okay. We never, we tried that for a little bit. That's what our second channel started off as. I'm digressing. Yeah.

And you guys are- You should regress right back to this. The music is playing me out of my own ear biscuit. How rude. I'm gonna, Kevin, cut an egress right through to the end of this thing. How many egress words can we come up with? As you guys are exiting through the outro, we will-

No, it has to have egress in it. Oh. You digress, you regress. I'm gonna make some progress through my egress to the end, but I digress. And all you egrits should leave a review on iTunes and that's helpful for us. Also comment on Clown Cloud.

It's SoundCloud, I said Clown Cloud. And I don't know, I'm gonna reserve that. Please join us next month at Clown Cloud. Desperate times, God, for being in a desperate place. Let's just end this. Yeah.