Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 84 Charles Trippy - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: August 28, 2015

Guinness World Record Holder for most consecutive daily vlogs on YouTube, and bass player for the American rock band We The Kings, Charles Trippy, joins Rhett & Link this week to talk about his motivation behind uploading daily vlogs to YouTube for going on seven consecutive years, how documenting his two brain tumors & subsequent surgeries became a therapeutic escape from a life-threatening situation, and his take on the widespread internet speculation surrounding his divorce from Alli Speed & the relationship with new girlfriend, Allie Wesenberg. *NOTE: This conversation contains adult themes and language To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Link. And I'm Rhett. Joining us today, once again, as part of our Ear Biscuits at VidCon series is OG YouTuber and the Guinness World Record holder for most consecutive daily vlogs posted on YouTube, Charles Trippi.

Now, Charles is truly a pioneer of entertainment and a friend of ours. He launched his Charles Trippi channel way back in May of 2006 and immediately began defining a genre of clickable web content. In 2008, he started a second channel, the CTFXC, aka Internet Killed Television,

and uploaded daily vlogs over there, and he hasn't stopped for going on seven years. That's right. Charles has been uploading a vlog, basically a reality montage of highlights of his day, every day for seven years, and he hasn't missed a single day, hence the record. It's crazy.

And it turns out a lot happens over that amount of time. For one, you amassed 1.5 million subscribers and over 670 million video views. You also share life altering experiences like a surprise engagement proposal, vacations, getting tattoos, touring with his band, We The Kings, divorce, and even brain surgery. The dude has filmed his own brain surgery.

Yes he did. And he kept going right through it, sharing his daily life on YouTube to this day, making him arguably the most determined vlogger of all time. And we talked to him about that determination, his process, and the motivation behind his choice to bear all of his life to his fans. We also spoke about those brain tumors,

the brain tumors that he had and the surgeries that he had to go through as a result. He tells the whole story of how it went down and also how vlogging became a therapeutic way for him to deal with it. He also describes the whole process around how he was able to vlog his entire brain surgery, the second brain surgery, and you're gonna wanna stick around to hear about that.

And later in the conversation, we talked about something that we've been anxious to talk with Charles about for some time, and that is his relationship with three different Allys, including what it was like to experience the massive fan reaction to his separation from his wife, Ally Speed, and his perspective on all of the internet speculation behind that.

And we know it wasn't easy for Charles to talk about all this stuff with us. I mean, he already put it out there over the course of the years of experience in it. But in fact, he said it's the first time that he went back and kind of encapsulated it in a conversation and talked about and started to process some of the divorce again.

So we really do appreciate Charles being open with us and our friendship with him. We had a great conversation and we know you'll enjoy it too. But first we want to take a moment to remind you to support entertainment by getting some of our merch, y'all. Rhettandlink.com slash store. If you want to find more ways to express your mythical beasthood, head over there to rhettandlink.com slash store. If you want to find more ways to express your mythical beasthood,

head over there to rhettandlink.com slash store. Check out all the things we got available like bobbleheads, hoodies, posters, wristbands, shirts, hats, coffee mugs. All of that can be found over there at rhettandlink.com slash store. Again, it's a great way to express your mythical beasthood and also support entertainment.

Thanks for doing that. Now, on to the biscuit. and also support entertainment. Thanks for doing that. Now, on to the biscuit. I was telling Rhett, I was trying to remember the exact timeline of like us first meeting and then- That's a very good question. I don't remember, it just kinda happened.

Well, I know the first time we met in person was in Philly in 2008. Oh, was it one of those YouTube things? What are those called? Yeah Yeah you were going to that. Rhett and I, we were just there for, we were doing videos with Alka-Seltzer. Oh yeah, yeah, it was the Philly cheesesteak thing. Yes, and you came with Shay.

That's right, yeah. It was the Geno's and Pat's thing, right? Yeah, right. So that's the first time we met in person, but we certainly knew of you before then and I think we may have been like internet friends. Yeah. Because you had a haircut by that point.

No one Googled that. No one Googled what I looked like. You didn't have the long hair. It was purple at times, and that was gone by the time we met. Oh, that was gone? Okay, good. Yeah, I'm almost positive. Okay, good.

I'm glad that was gone before. I'm less embarrassed. I do remember, though, at the Geno's and Pat's thing, it was when I was a vegetarian. Yeah. And I remember, though, at the Geno's and Pat's thing, it was when I was a vegetarian. Yeah. And I remember telling you guys that, and I remember getting almost spat on by, I think it was the Geno's guy.

Those are the ones that have, like, it looks like Guy Fieri on the other place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Flash, all the Flash. The Flash, yeah. He was upset with you. He was very upset with me that I was vegetarian. He was like, why are you here?

I was just like, bread and cheese, please. I remember that. That's cheese bread. And Nultz. Nultz was there, bread and cheese, please. I remember that. That's cheese bread. And Nalt's, Nalt's was there too. Nalt's was the one that brought all of you guys. Yeah, I remember that, it was a lot of fun. Yeah, and Ed Bassmaster was there and a couple other people too.

I feel old. Long time ago. Oh yeah, you're internet old, dude. We're all old. You're older than us. You've been doing it as long as we are. No, you're internet older than us. Really?

You're a little bit internet older. In terms of being established, I mean, yeah, absolutely, you're a pioneer. That's what I'm going to call you. I remember watching you guys back in the day, though. When I started, I was watching you guys. Oh, really? Yeah, like all your songs and stuff. I remember that.

We had a backlog of songs, but- Yeah. Because I remember really admiring the fact that you guys harmonizing together. was like you see both you guys and you got the dynamic and you guys nailed it every single time i was really impressed all the time you know this is mind but it was mind-blowing well but we were i remember thinking you were getting traction you know it's like because we there was a time early on when we were like trying to figure out like who's who's doing this right right no one you know but you certainly trying to figure out who's doing this right? No one. You certainly were.

But I mean, people getting the response were doing it right. When I look back on your channel, the Charles Trippi channel, which was like, I guess you would call it your sketch channel. It wasn't, there were sketches, but it was. It was my channel, it was your channel. Yeah.

And I mean, I'm just struck with how you were, like I said, pioneering, but you were inventing a genre of sensationally titled shareable content, like trapped in a claw machine. And then the thumbnail is you're in a claw machine. Were you actually in the claw machine? I was. I used to work at a movie theater, and my job was to restock the claw machine and to retake it. Here's a fun little fact. Did you guys know those things are rigged?

I assumed, but... The claw is supposed to clamp X amount of times harder, so that way not every single time you win something. Yeah. So I was supposed to do it every 20 times or something like that. So one in 20 chance to actually get something. And I thought that was really kind of f***ed up.

So I would choose, and I would make it one in five or something like that, or like that or one and one and i remembered one time there's like a setting on the back it was like a setting that you had to kind of go into like a flathead screwdriver like a computer setting and stuff like that it was so messed up i thought it was so screwed up so every time i would do it i'd like take it down every single time and the reason why i was uh in there is because i had to refill it again because my boss found out because he was like wondering why the thing would go from here to here. The car machine keeps getting emptied.

You're like Robin Hood. Kind of, yeah. For cheap toys. We thought that would be a funny idea. I always wanted to do that because you see babies on the news getting stuck in a car machine. So I was like, why not?

I got the key. Let's just do it. And you got the YouTube channel. On the job. On the job. I was editing and filming on the job so did you get fired no they actually supported it i worked at an imax theater and i worked at another movie theater like in the theater and uh that's where actually without that kind of stuff i would not have been able to do a college you have no time when you're in college so i would go to work go upstairs in the production booth and whatever cut the movies press play do nothing i would drink with my boss upstairs

we would get baileys and coffee it's so cool right baileys and coffee we're awesome people right yeah and we would drink get drunk move the movies baileys with the boss yeah right switch the reel switch the reel which was a pain in the ass to To this day, I hate King Kong because I dropped it. Really? Yeah, because it's probably as big as this table. You guys can't see this table, but twice the width of this table. It's just math. Well, they don't do any of that anymore.

No, it's all digital. It's all digital. I quit it in the wrong time. Another video, I Can Make You Yawn. Oh, yeah. I remember that one. I mean, Rhett and I found ourselves doing an I Can Make You Yawn video three years ago. Yeah. Yeah.

And then we like searched, we're like, I'm sure somebody's done this. And then of course you pop up from like seven years earlier. I didn't, really, was that long? Do you have that on there? It was like six years ago. Okay. I Can Make You Yawn and then like best sleeping pranks.

And it's got, you know, the thumbnail is you with like the Sharpie on your face and pop rocks and Coke myth. It's just like, you know, it was like premonition type stuff that you were seeing the future of what was going to work on YouTube. Which is funny, cause I had no idea what I was doing. Right.

Know what he does. But you had honed it to a craft even back then like the sensational titles and people just you know you had to click yeah you gotta do like i remember as a kid my grandma would read those national inquirers and that's the only reason why i did open those things so i thought maybe kind of doing the same thing for youtube would be the same thing because i mean if you guys back in the day would watch anything on youtube you'd be you wouldn't watch like day 400 or Untitled Vlog. You wouldn't do that.

No one would ever do that. That's why I kind of get annoyed with anyone with titling videos. They're like, oh, it's totally fake. You know what I mean? It's like – or misleading comments or misleading titles. Right. It's like that didn't happen. It's like would you read – honestly watch a video called Untitled Vlog 2000?

Like no one ever would watch a movie like that. Right. Is it fair to say that you've tried everything? Like I mean, can I name anything? Like boobs, of course you've done boobs. I've done boobs. Male and female. But anything, I mean, in terms of the technology,

whenever YouTube would come out with something, like, well, one of the most viewed videos on that channel still is longest video ever on youtube yeah i remember this was somehow it was before they put in they probably put in the restriction back then because of you it was it was a not it was almost a 10 hour video yeah it was the restriction back in the day there was no time restriction it was only a file size file size it was 100 megs and i remember that file being that's why it looks like crap if you try to find it it uh um it was 10 hours or something like that but yeah when you stretch out and try to export it back in the day you try to do that on like i was doing i movie i 2006 it just

exploded so you would have to like compress it and compress it again and compress it smaller and i remember compressing probably 10 times to get it under 100 megs to be able to do that and then it got online now there's like no limit you can put a movie up there it would rain for 25 hours is there a limit now? there was a time limit too that they added later

and then you had to be a certain type of partner to have that removed but if you have that removed can you just do it indefinitely? yeah if you look you can look for like like I've used sound effects, like you can look like rain, like rain, like on YouTube, look at rain and thunder. Yeah. And it's like 25 hours or something like that. So I don't think there's a limit anymore. Yeah, there's probably not.

But you would be the one to formulate these questions and then scientifically by guessing and checking or compressing in this case, find out the answers. Of course, the next video you released was the shortest video ever on YouTube. Yeah, I thought that was kind of like, oh you. I had to do that. Somebody was so pissed about it,

so I was like, you know what,. What was the motivation for, like what were you doing at the time that was like, I'm gonna do this YouTube thing and do it. So, aggressively. I'm gonna bend YouTube. Oh, it aggressively? I'm going to bend YouTube to my ends. So I started MySpace back in the day. If you guys don't know what MySpace is, it still might be available. I was doing that, and I had a bet with my roommate at the time to get more friends.

I won, and then just kept doing that kind of stuff. And then I was making videos with other friends at the movie theater and we would put on our website and bandwidth sucked then, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah. You'd have to put a QuickTime video up there. You'd have to spend like $80 a month for like five views of your video. Yeah, because you were paying for the hosting. Yeah, so it's one person watch a video, like 100 megabyte videos,

like 500 megabytes right there. You actually didn't want people to watch your video. Yeah, you're like, don't watch it, seriously. And then my friend Ricky lived out here, and he showed me YouTube. And at the time, it was only available to just, I mean, it was only really used for uploading a video, embedding it somewhere. There was no community or anything like that. So I was doing that, and then one day I was just on the site,

and I noticed that there was things called, there was like channels and subscription boxes and things like that and i was like all right something's gonna happen here so then i was like i had so much time in the uh theater you know i was just like all right so let's just keep making more videos networking around i did the just kind of looked around like lisa nova like those are renetto back in the day just kind of saw what they were doing yeah um and just kind of even nolts heato back in the day. I just kind of saw what they were doing. Yeah. And just kind of even Nolts, he was back in the day too. And it was just seeing what they were kind of doing and then almost mimicking it and just to kind of see that there was actually a channel forming.

And once I saw that, I just dropped MySpace altogether. And it sounds obvious right now, but back then it was pretty. No, it was a decision. It was a decision. It was like, which baby do you keep? We were very fixated on MySpace from the beginning. Oh yeah, like the Live Journal back in the day and Friendster and all those things.

But no, then it just, I was like, oh, I'm making videos, I'm just gonna keep doing this. And you were watching other people, but I mean there were sketches out there like the Lisaisa nova uh lisa novas of the world and they were vlogging like the renetto right or like the lifestyle vlog that like naltz would do yeah it's like renetto and naltz were way ahead of their time i think renetto especially like nobody got what he was doing like they thought he was this crazy guy

then they realized he was wait i love uh renetetto but i mean he was he is a crazy guy but right um he would take a vlog but he would make this like crazy sensational thing like you were saying and he would like you know the head would explode or something like that i remember that one was mentos or something like that and then it would just make this a really entertaining vlog but it was actually kind of like a skit right so you kind of see what that's going on then you kind of like you know just build off of that and were you thinking like i mean nobody was really thinking of a career back then because we nobody knew what it was going to lead to but were you thinking like did you have another thing that you wanted to do like as a career

were you like i'm gonna be a rock star no everyone. Well, everyone has that kind of thing. I grew up on it with my dad and stuff like that. So I wanted that at one point, and I did that for a while. Then I quit to go to college. So I was in college, didn't know what I wanted to do. Picked a bulls**t degree, got that degree. Then just kind of lived up in Tampa, where USF was, where I kind of graduated from.

At what point did you make up the last name Trippie? That's your real last name, right? That's my real last name. Right. And I'm the third. So, yeah. It's actually. Trippie the third.

It's not a funny story. It's just kind of a sad story because when my grandfather came over here, his grandparents, Ellis Island, they didn't want it with an I because it was too, I guess, Italian. So they made it a Y to be more American. Oh, it was T-R-I-P-P-I. Yeah. So if you see. Trippie.

Trippie. Very few with a Y. But so there's like a, what's his name? Charles Trippie, football player back in the day, had it with an I. Okay. Yeah. So you'll see with an I, but very few with a Y. I think it's all my family probably with a Y.

They're the only ones who made that decision. Yeah. Let's go with a Y. We got screwed. Yeah. They did it to him. Yeah. The guy at Ellis Island did it to him.

Yeah. It was just kind of like. He changed it to a Y. Yeah. Oh, he did it. I'm sorry. Yeah. Got it.

Yeah. So when they got there, they're like, okay, that's still Italian. You're a Y. Get out of there. You're welcome to America. Yeah. Kind of things like that. Americanized it.ized it right yeah it really works as a youtube channel though it does it's trippy because you'd have people like his hair it's long and it's purple

sometimes yeah exactly you would have all these people like with usernames like renetto lisa nova you know stuff like that you know nulty kevin naltz or something like that right and you don't realize i i would sit there and think of one, and I'm just like, well, I'm just going to say his name. It works, man. It works. You had vision. Yeah, I was lazy.

Okay, so at the time you're doing this early on, you're working at a theater, which is not typically the thing that leads to a lifelong career, right? And you probably didn't think so. No. So was it just like a game to you? Was it, I'm just going to see if I can master this? It was kind of a game because there was also Google Video.

Do you remember that before Google bought YouTube? Yeah. That's kind of submitted and bought YouTube. So it was kind of a game. We would upload a video to YouTube. We would upload a video to Google Video. I don't know if there's another website at the time. And we would see which video got more. Yeah, that's crazy. And we'd, you know, we kind of like lay bets in like with people. We made the videos. We're like, oh my God. I remember

there was a video out there that got a hundred views and we, we almost f***ed ourselves. Really? A hundred views back, back in 2005, I mean, that was 100 views. I mean, you could pay that like 100 times on a website. That's insane. Yeah. And then there was a comment, and you'd be like, holy shit, what the fuck is going on? Somebody saw this and was compelled to say something about it. Yeah.

They gave it five stars? What's going on here? And I mean, you tapped into the social nature of it too. So I mean, you got your friends who you're like placing bets about things, but then very quickly, you became known and you knew other people. At least that's my impression of it, right? Yeah, I thought that was like the idea of YouTube

is kind of connecting and making friends, you know what I mean, through that. I'm like, I am a very awkward person. I mean, you guys know, I've mentioned person a million times. I'm like very awkward and socially, not socially you guys know I've met you in person a million times. I'm very awkward and socially – not socially awkward. Like I'm pretty good at it. But be this as our job, like I don't like going out and going to parties and stuff like that.

I'd rather just sit home and watch a movie versus – because this is what we do for a living. We go out and we make these videos and we're very entertaining. So it was just kind of like one of those things where I just kind of liked doing it. And this is weird. I mean, YouTube in general is just weird when you think about the whole, you should write a book, right? Everyone else is. Yeah, but you don't have time.

No. Let's make a vlog. Well, and let's talk about that because that was another, it's become probably the most significant innovation that you. Oh, the daily stuff? Is the daily vlog. So, okay. Was anyone else doing that? Shea. Okay, so Shea started doing that just a little bit before. And technically Naltz.

Yeah, and Naltz was doing it. It just wasn't as consistent. Yeah. He had a different kind of thing. It was like two minutes of pranking his family or something like that. But it wasn't every single day. No, Naltz did it every day. He did? Yeah, because I remember it was,

Shay and I were talking about it. We thought it might have been the kiss of death if we made a video every single day because we noticed when he made one every single day, his views dropped. So we thought it might have been the kiss of death. I remember Shay and I talking about that for a very long time.

Yeah, because Nulls had like a slogan that was like, every time you take a crap, I make a video. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was way ahead of his time. I mean, it sucks that a lot of people don't know who he is. I wish a lot of people did because he was a pioneer. He was one of the first.

But then you and Shay decided in parallel, right? No, Shay. Was this a collusion? It was Shay first, and then after the first month, he called me, he was like, you better do this. And I was like, well, I don't know, my knife is not he he called me he was like you better do this and i was like well i don't know my knife is not that interesting and just do it and i'm like i don't have like seven kids do it yeah it's like you know i'm in college i don't have time so and then i just it was like all right i'm gonna do it and i started doing it and if i watch the old ones

i cringe because you have the old flip where it's like jerking around jello and stuff like that technology wasn't there yeah and doing it like every day that kind of wasn't like the goal it just so happened because i feel like i'm the type i have a very stubborn person when it comes to doing something and like if i put my mind to something i'm not going to stop so it's just the principle of saying that you started you can't Yeah, you can't stop. And I never thought, like, I didn't realize I never stopped until somebody pointed it out, like, a couple years later. They're like, you realize you never stopped in two years?

I'm like, holy ****. And then at that point, I was like, okay, well, let's keep going. Let's make something of this. And then after three or four years, you know, somebody put me in contact with Guinness World Records. And then I was like all right well i would make this contact last so i kept doing it and then at year five or six they gave us that right so i didn't really there was no plan on doing it every single day it was just

like i mean i said daily vlogs but i thought i was just gonna do daily vlogs you know whenever i got a chance right and now we're what's the unbroken streak now 2276 seven years and the guinness record do you actually get like a plaque yeah i have i have the plaques at home they're literally on my office i have two of them now they give you one every year oh really um well they give you one every year um because they update the book but right and you still got the record yeah and they didn't give me one last year because they just kept the same record um but this year they saw the significant jump because it went from 1500 to 2700 right so this is yeah it's a bigger jump we should update it so yeah they literally give you this plaque it's like an award not as cool as the play buttons for

youtube but it's like a plaque it says gu Guinness World Record, little certificates and stuff like that. Right. And you had to develop, I mean, that developed over time. There's an art form to doing the daily vlog. It's like a formula. So give us the formula. You wake up, you introduce yourself. You wake up here kind of like you guys do with this.

You say hello. You introduce what's going on. Don't really say what you're going to talk about. You just do it. And whatever happens in the day, it happens in the day. And then you edit it at the end of the night. And then you see a community. Because you guys have a huge community behind this.

And then you see that. And then you involve them. And then you pick something. So at the end of the day, you're uploading. How many days? In an ideal schedule, I know sometimes it probably fluctuates. Yeah. It depends on what. You can't really get ahead.

No, you can't. Well, it depends on what you're doing. Like if you're kind of, what do you mean? Like you can't be in the next day? Is that what you mean? Yeah, like there's no buffer because. No, yeah, yeah. You sleep and then you wake up and do it again.

Yeah, you gotta do it again. Yeah, exactly. So you have to, you get home that night, at the end of the day, you're like editing and uploading something that goes out the next day. Next morning, yeah. So how streamlined has it gotten at this point in terms of.

I can do it in my sleep. So, because I assume now that there's like, you're self-editing as you're shooting. You're like, I know this is actually the beginning of this clip. This is the end of the clip. Yeah, I know. I'm not trimming anymore. Yeah.

So, is it like a, you open it up and you just back to back, you just throw them in the timeline. Yeah, with the J and the L on like final cut. And yeah, exactly. You know, you shoot to edit. First, you used to shoot kind of thing. And then like Shay was always like, him and I would always talk about it because like him and i our videos back in the day were like 30 minutes long yeah which is ridiculous like a tv show and then we started like all right well i started finding myself at least he still does it but i was like i can't watch that much

and like so i figured i'd short my down a little bit the more exciting stuff like highlights yeah and um but it's the same thing, like you said. It's like you shoot to edit kind of thing. So you know where it is. And then I've been teaching Allie how to do it too. So she's understanding that too. So when she edits some of the times, she knows how to do it. But yeah, that way you're not like, basically,

because when you edit, it's real time, sometimes longer. So if you shoot like 60 minutes, you can't do it in 60 minutes. It's going to take longer than that. And then, so it's gonna you can't do it in 60 minutes it's gonna take longer than that and then so it's still either you or ali editing at this point there's nobody like comes in and be like okay you guys are sick today i'm gonna come in and do this no no no yeah gotta do it gotta do it through everything you know i've helped everyone's helped me in the past my parents have helped my sisters help you know ali ali speed has helped back in the day and stuff like that everyone's helped me. And there's,

I mean, there's certain points where it's like, oh, like, I gotta get to the internet in order to upload this. Dude,

yes. It's gotta be like crazy moments of desperation. Touring is like the worst. Oh, I can't imagine. We've gone, I remember one day,

specifically, it was a day I almost lost a record. It was in London and it was pouring raining and we got invited. Do you guys know the band Thrice? I don't think so.

I know the one before it. Twice. Twice. I'm trying to make a numerological joke. There you go. I can't even say. Well, if anyone listening knows Thrice, they had a going away tour and they invited the band because we were overseas touring and they invited us to go watch.

And that was one of my bands i loved as a kid and i had to miss it because i had to walk around london in the rain trying to find the internet and i literally would go up to people's doors and hotels asking if i could have their wi-fi password really yeah and i got it finally said yeah i got it because if you don't if it was what's the rule if you don't if it doesn't post before? It's got to be 3 a.m. Pacific time, which is the day, because YouTube switches over at midnight, which is 3 a.m. Eastern. When I was over there, it was nice because I was way ahead, but that was a pain in the ass.

And then anytime we tour, we go to Malaysia, we go to Japan, we go to Australia and stuff like that, you find out who has really crappy internet, like how long it takes. Right. But you've always found a way to make it work. There's always been a way. Somehow, if you find a way, determination, you'll find it. But you're wearing the hat, IKTV right now,

coining the phrase the internet killed television. Right. You coined that very early on, right? I've had that for, I don't know how many years. Before the daily vlogs. Yeah, way before. I was like listening to the Buggles, I mean, Radio Killed the Internet Star,

Radio Killed the TV Star. I can't even remember anymore. What's TV? And I listened to that and I was like, I wonder if this domain's open. I just bought it immediately because I was like, holy, it's available. Right.

I just bought it for like 20 years or whatever it is yeah and uh it was just i don't know i just noticed i was not watching tv anymore i was watching all my friends on the internet watching you guys i was watching lisa i was watching shay i was watching everybody on the internet yeah and again i mean it's it's actually finally happening yeah you know it's dead yeah i mean or almost Or almost dead. Almost dead. Yeah. It's puttering out.

It's gasping for air. Right. It's gasping for air. It's buying the internet right now. That's what it's doing. The internet is, I mean, TV is now just buying everything to be on the internet. Yeah, it's just becoming.

It's molding in. It's becoming television. Yeah, exactly. But there was a point when there was a question if you would get to see your prediction happen with this whole brain tumor thing. Oh, right. So there's a, you know, I wanna go through this

because there's a couple of layers here. There's just the fact that you had a brain tumor and you went through it. Right, yeah. And then there's a layer of, and you document your life every single day and you're not going to stop. Because if you could, just between us

and everybody who's listening, if you could ever come up with an adequate excuse for stopping, I think a brain tumor is on the list of excuses. I thought so too, but no. But it's funny because if you actually had stopped at the very beginning and made an informed decision before you embarked

on the daily content. Like what if, continued? Yeah, it's like, well, if I'm gonna do this every day, what if something really bad happens to me? You know, I mean, do you recall thinking about that or was it just, Shay's doing it, he did it for four weeks, now I'm gonna do it, and yeah, I just said I was gonna do it so now i'm doing it was it was just one of those things where i was like i'm just gonna do it it wasn't like what ifs no i never you're a kid you

know i was like 20 20 years old or something like that when i was doing all this stuff like a punk ass kid you know stupid hair i wasn't really caring it's just didn't even think about like foreseeable things like that you don know, think about stuff like that. When you're a kid, you just think about what you're doing, you know what I mean? But there was an, so there was an announcement to your audience, I have a brain tumor. But I mean, there was some part of your life

that made it into the daily vlog that gave inkling as to hey, something might be up right right because you had a seizure first right i had a seizure on tour yeah okay yeah tell us about that and i was on seizure uh we were walking in boise idaho just before before the show we're trying to see that blue field because that's all i think is that uh boise um so we were walking with danny our drummer and then he said i just kind of did like a spin and just hit face first. I had like a iced coffee, Starbucks iced coffee. Starbucks, if you want to sponsor me,

I've been drinking you forever. Yeah, but you gave him a brain tumor, so take that into account. Well, I saved my face, so I landed face first on the iced coffee. On the coffee? Saved by Starbucks. Yeah, so instead of the cement, I literally had a little gash and a hole in my jeans,

which became very fashionable. But yeah, so just that happened. Went to the hospital, just hanging around Danny. We were playing games on our phone. At the same time, he had broke his arm like two weeks prior. So the band was a mess. I mean, a drummer with one arm is possible. He killed it, though.

He killed it. Yeah, he killed it. Yeah, Def Leppard. He Def Lepp drummer with one arm is possible. He killed it though. He killed it. Yeah, he killed it. Yeah, Def Leppard just. He Def Leppard-ed it. Yeah, he just killed, we had our drummer, drum tech, Yoshi, like at parts would just hit the cymbals. It was really funny actually. So you were making it work,

but then you've gotta go in and you're like, well, okay, now it's my turn. Yeah. Just get a little check out. Yeah, let's go, you know, I fell down. They took me to the hospital, the ER or whatever. And I'm just sitting there. The guy comes in.

You know, face is kind of like white. And he's like, all right, I got something to tell you. And my immediate reaction on anything is humor. So I knew something was wrong with my head. So I'm just like, he's like, I got something to tell you. I'm like, it's not a brain tumor. It's not a tumor or whatever. Immediately go to Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? And he's like, no, sir, tell you. I'm like, it's not a brain tumor. It's not a tumor or whatever. Immediately go to Arnold Schwarzenegger, right?

And he's like, no, sir, it is. It is a tumor. Did he do the impression back to you? No, he didn't. If he did, I probably would have made things much better. But obviously, I went, what? First, you don't understand it. And then, because you don't understand something like that.

That's something I don't think very few people understand. And that's why I continue doing these videos is because there's a lot of people out there to watch these videos that are going through that or have family members. And so we went through all that, you know, had to go. I mean, that has to hit you like a ton of bricks. It does. At that moment, you're just. But you're still young. You don't really get it.

You think you're invincible. You know what I mean? You're like, oh, well, whatever. You know, it's a tune. We get it out. So you didn't think I'm going to die.? You're like, oh, well, whatever. It's a tumor. Get it out. So you didn't think, I'm going to die. No, and at one point, I did think I was going to die. I just thought, whatever, take it out of my head.

And he was like, all right. Because the doctor that they assigned me to in Boise, which was a great hospital. Can't remember the name of the hospital. Great hospital, though. That one in Boise. Boise. I know Shay would know it. The guy was very confident about everything

and he was like yeah we could take it out right away and i was like okay let's do it right now and he's like well you have to be here for what you say three weeks and i was like well i don't want to be in idaho for three weeks so we flew home we found a doctor over there and uh he um got it out first one was sleep like i was asleep um they thought it was okay well how how big are we talking about the first golf ball okay it was a golf ball benign it was well technically all tumors are they have their benign is like a weird word they say okay because um it was technically benign um first time and then i guess it turned into something without treatment, into more malignant. Okay.

And went through the whole surgery. And I always have to give credit to Ali Speed. She killed it with the editing. I couldn't do anything. And she helped so much with the editing on that because I was like doped up, you know, like I couldn't even do anything with my hands. So she edited.

That's why we didn't miss a day. And that one was not, that procedure was not filmed. That one was not filmed. But the whole process though, it's not just the procedure, it's how much, you have to make a decision, how much of this are you sharing online because I would imagine there's a temptation to say,

well, I'll just share, I'll share just enough. Right. But then, well, let's just wait until this comes to a conclusion. And then we'll just give an update and say, this is what was happening, I'm filling you in. Yeah. It's kinda like YouTubers and their secret projects.

Right, exactly, and they go away for a while and then they cast them coming back with Bigfoot. Yeah. Brilliant, too. So what did you decide? Cause obviously you didn't miss a day, but it's not, it's not like every second of your day. No, you're editing. Yeah. You're editing. Um, it's, it was one of those things where I just sat down and I was like, it was more helpful to kind of talk to a camera and not have somebody really, you know, say anything. It

was just like, let me just vent. And then later, you know, we kind of the conversation and the comments. And then I started noticing people people commenting saying they'd gone through it as well so i was like oh i mean if they're going through it you know this is cool we're having that little connection so we can help each other and uh it was crazy and then got that surgery was two years later um i had another seizure i was like seizure free for like two like two like two years or like a year and a half and that's what causes those like seizures if you guys ever have a seizure please get it checked out

not to scare you but just get it checked out and yeah so they noticed something happened when I got back off of Warped Tour and so I went back in and they said it was back and I was like oh there we go again and so they had to go to a different doctor. And I wasn't on chemo or anything.

That could have probably helped keep things regulated. Because it was in the same place? It just grew back in the same place? Well, yeah. Technically, the type of it was called an oligodendroglioma. It's a long word. And don't Wikipedia it. It scares the shit out of you if you do.

Did you do that at the time? I did not. He told me not to and i listened to my doctor really yeah i did not do it my parents did um and i could see the face like look on their face because there's like ones where like you can live your whole life or you can be dead in two years so it was like one of those i was like and i was super healthy i was So I was going through it all. But the doctor, I mean, he told you. Yeah. We could take care of this. You could be fine. Or you could die in the next.

Right. Well, he obviously didn't say that. They didn't know what it is until they take it out of your head. Oh. Yeah. So we didn't know what it was until after the first surgery, unfortunately. So then they found out. And that's the worst part.

You're waiting for a result. Biopsy. And you're just like, you'd think that worst part, is you're waiting for a result, biopsy, and you're just like, you'd think that would go a little bit faster, you know what I mean? They pull something out of your head, it's like,

all right, what do I have? And so you wait for like two or three weeks, get the phone call. He's like, all right, well. How are those two, three weeks then? I mean.

It sucks. Because, I mean, you have to, at some level, you're coming to grips with your mortality, right? Right, yeah. And we're talking the second time now.

Oh, this is the first time. Still the first time. Well, still. Yeah, first time. Well, the thing is, like, that's why I think the vlogs really helped is because it keeps your mind off of things. Because otherwise, you're just sitting at your house, you know, watching TV, you know, watching a movie. And you're just, like, in the back of your head, you know, you're thinking about everything. Versus working. Working. Yeah, because it becomes a job by then it was a job in every

video it's not like you mentioned it how much did you process over those weeks of waiting i'm like i you know i thought it was fine i was just like what's okay you know whatever i'm young i can take care of it i honestly didn't think about it much at all. I guess what I'm asking is, did you ever find your vlogging to be a form of therapy for you? You know, to find yourself processing things that otherwise you wouldn't have talked to Allie about or your parents about or your friends about.

You find yourself verbalizing things that- Yeah, I think so, yeah, because- Or did you just edit the action points and your dogs into your videos and it was just an escape it was kind of both more of an escape probably if you think about it because you don't want to dwell on things so it was kind of cool like every single day i was able to just focus on every day having fun and then just edit the video enjoy you know let other people's and you know watching the videos enjoy the video and if they're going through the same thing they can see that it's

not a death sentence i guess you could say and then so i just kept doing that and then two years later had another seizure like i was saying and then got another doctor's opinion said it was back this doctor said it was a little more serious it was bigger and uh so they showed me i don't have the x-rays on here we're on radio so we can't really how big yeah it was a little more serious. It was bigger. And so they showed me. I don't have the x-rays on here. We're on radio, so we can't really. How big? Yeah, it was. This one was small, like a baseball.

Wow. So it got bigger. So which was scarier because, you know, they come back. These ones come back without treatment. And your skull doesn't get bigger. Your skull doesn't. So your brain just gets mushed. Your brain gets mushed.

I literally have like a hole in your head. And it's like fluid. It's very interesting. And the x-rays are really interesting to kind of see, especially before and after. Before, it's just like your brain. It's like a white brain. White brain. It's like just white stuff in your brain, like filler.

And then when they take it out, it's this black gap. And then it's like fluid and things like that and your brain doesn't your brain can't grow in there your brain's already grown so you can't like isn't it like when you're like a certain age your brain's fully grown or something like that so as the as the cancer grew into that baseball it just pushed it over yeah it was more it was a tumor though think cancer and tumors, I don't know if it's the same thing. But it's like, as the tumor grew, it pushes your brain over, which causes things like seizures and other things like that. Some people smell things.

They'd be like, who's cooking steak or something? Did you experience any of that? Nothing else. Other weird stuff? Nothing else. Sometimes they can't see color. It's weird like it's a kind of like mine is on the right side so it's the frontal right frontal lobe so it's supposed to be like your motor skills on your left side which sucks as a musician so you

lose everything right or when they take it out you can be the best musician ever so that's what i was hoping for but you didn't experience any real physical changes? Just a seizure. Just a seizure. Yeah, and that's what, everything else was fine. And then they did this surgery. The guy said he needed to get, this one was, this surgeon's the rock star of surgeons. He was, like, he would tell me stories about how, like, him and the other guy, they were best friends, were in, like, punk bands in med school in Boston. And they would go below the hospital, and, like, there was an abandoned part in the hospital. It turned into a punk

venue. This is my brain surgeon. He's telling me all they say. When you said he was the rock star, I just thought you meant he was really good at brain surgery. He is. Also literally a rock star. He was just awesome. He's Italian. He's the one that actually brought all the news from when Kurt Cobain had his

OD in Italia, Italy. No one would give him the information to America. news from when Kurt Cobain had his OD in Italia, Italy, and no one would give him the information to America. He was on the phone with Courtney Love and Kurt getting all that information back over here. It was him because he's Italian. He's the rock star.

He's telling me all this stuff. He's like, this is what we're going to do. You're going to be awake. First off, I'm like, what the f***? You're awake? He was telling me you don't feel anything. Once don't once your brain's like heads open you can poke your brain yeah you probably yeah you probably lose like you probably be dumb but you're not gonna hurt to get dumb yeah it wouldn't hurt to be dumb you wouldn't know you're getting dumb i guess but um and you and so that's the first thought is oh i'm awake second thought can i film it yeah it was it was actually i was like that was actually i don't know why but i But, um, and you, and so that's the first thought is, Oh, I'm awake. Second thought.

Can I film it? Yeah, it was. It was actually, I was like, that was actually, I don't know why, but I know my mom and my dad were like, what are you thinking? Right. Why is that the first thought and stuff like that? You like asked the doctor? Immediately asked the doctor. I was like, he said, sure.

He said, that sounds cool, man. He did. He actually loved it. He loved the idea. And he's like, um, sure. He's like, what it he loved the idea and he's like um sure he's like what kind of camera is it he's like you can't have a crew obviously and i'm like i was like i have this little camera here and uh he's like yeah no problem so i bring it in i have the uh i guess there was two surgeons there was a main surgeon and there was another surgeon

and uh the other surgeon was like trying to figure out how to do it and so i literally had um i don't know if the clips actually made it in because um ali speed actually edited for me because i couldn't do it obviously um couldn't do anything um so that makes sense and the other reason why i couldn't do it is because right after the surgery they gave me the nurse 80 i don't want you did this she gave me the camera like right after the surgery and the first thing you do after filming anything you're like looking through things and you're like oh you know what the hell what is this you see your brain and then um i had what's called a um what's this called a stress attack or something like that yeah and because you're watching the footage back of your brain brain being hacked at right like 20 minutes uh

prior so i had this effect and like the camera the guy another surgeon I mean that nurse came in and grabbed my camera and was like what the f*** are you doing you know they had this argument and so she did all the editing for that so I didn't see it for a long time literally I haven't seen the but you were telling them how to use the camera to film the thing I told them how to and then they saw

me how I was doing it because I was like filming it and then my arm just went down and they were like okay so we got to do this and so the surgeon you were trying to hold the camera i was trying to hold it with my left hand and that's the arm that actually was affected by the tumor oh gosh so i was actually filming for first maybe i want to think it was like 10 minutes but it was probably 30 seconds i mean there are tripods that is that is yeah but i wanted the more like you want to i'd have the vlog thing.

If you have a tripod, it just looks like a surgeon video. But so, he's like right in front of my face. He's like, so what are you thinking right now? I'm like talking about, you know, I don't know what it was.

This is one of the nurses. The surgeon, another surgeon. Oh, really? Let me hold that camera. So they were comfortable like adding a layer of documentation

that they became the document in their own process. Right. They could have like seriously malpractice suit. They could have screwed themselves over. I know. It's crazy that they allowed it document in their own process right they could have like seriously malpractice uh suit they could have screwed themselves over i know it's crazy that they allowed it to happen yeah so not only did they allow it to happen they started they did it yeah they actually did it i dropped the camera in his brain yeah they were like asking you questions and like you were talking about the surgeons and how great they were you were talking

about fans and how great their support was. You were vlogging. I was talking. Apparently, they said I had my humor totally intact. I was like – You were groggy. I was groggy. To this day, I've only watched it once. Yeah, it was in there. I watched it maybe a year ago. It was the first time I ever watched it.

Oh, really? Because there's two versions. There's the censored version. Shay Carl actually came out to when the the surgery happened and our singer actually came out as like moral support shay and casam came out the first time um for the second one shay's there um and he's with aloe and they were editing and she's like i don't know what i should put in she's like put all of it like shay always does and so we made two of them because it was pretty intense.

You see blood, but it's not like gushing blood. But you see the brain. You see the brain, but it looks like if you took Jell-O. I put like pink Jell-O. Don't be so hard on yourself. It was a giant brain. It was a giant, giant brain. But it's interesting because I watched the uncensored version recently, and it's interesting that they can do that kind of stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, how did they figure that out? So it was cool that they did that, but then, I mean, on an emotional level, I think the thing that when I was watching through it, it was... Which one did you watch, the uncensored or the regular one? Well, I'm actually talking about kind of the... The whole story. The story around it and how, I'm actually talking about kind of the- The whole story. The story around it and how, I mean, it was,

it's so compelling because it's so real and it's so, just a part of something that you had committed to. Right. You committed to something blindly and then when this happens, you stuck with it. Yeah. And as Rhett and I watched it,

I remember our conversation, I was very curious about the emotional side of it. Right. You know, I think that it was, I was very curious how you were dealing with it and then how much of that would be conveyed to the audience. Right. I think a connection really formed on that one because it was cool because you're connecting with people. Maybe 10% of people have something like that or relate to that.

So I was able to vent to somebody that knew. It was like going to a support group because they told me I should go to support groups because it messes with your, not to be joking, but your brain. Yeah. But your mental state. And I refused to do any of those just because, like I said earlier, I'm a stubborn person. And I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go on tour. I wanted to go play shows.

And here's a funny thing. Right after that surgery, after both surgeries, after the first surgery, I was back on the stage touring overseas in Europe in two weeks. Wow. Yeah. And I still had the freaking, you know, what's that actor in Fifth Element that has the hair, you know, like that's over the bad guy? Oh, yeah. Oh, this is Gary Sinise. Gary Sinise, is it?

It's Gary Oldman. Gary Oldman. Yeah. In Fifth Element. I look like that. Minus the collar and stuff like that. Overseas. So I would wear a helmet.

And over like two weeks overseas. Second one, when I when i was open brain surgery was back on the stage in three weeks because they told me they're like if you can do it do it and i was like yes i mean you had this like big big circle of a horseshoe of a horseshoe just right there over your right eye yeah your. Your scalp. Yeah. The Indianapolis Colts actually sent me a care package. Dead serious. Thanks for getting our logo. Yeah.

That's upside down though. Yeah. They totally did. It was really funny. It's amazing. Yeah. I thought it was really hilarious too. But yeah, it was a pretty gnarly kind of situation.

I thought it was more of like a, that was my moral support, the internet. And I feel like things came together really well in that. How low did it get though? I mean there had to have been moments where it was like, if you said I never felt like I was gonna die, even the second time, I mean what, there's gotta be those questions of- You don't, it doesn't hit your mind I don't think. When you're going through that stuff, it just,

at least me, I don't think death, I always think of it as a situation kind of thing like i'm not gonna die but i'm going through something pretty but i know there's somebody else going through something like there's somebody probably going through stage four leukemia or breast cancer or something like that and they're going through really bad chemotherapy they're losing their hair you know they can't speak they can't move i know they're unfortunately people going through those things so when i'm able to talk and i'm talking to people back and forth and i realize

this situation sucks but it's life you gotta go through it okay well let me see if i can get at it this way because what i'm still trying to find in there is that moment of fear okay the fear i'm trying to find the fear so this is my last ditch effort to find it. The drugs help. I think it's, okay. I think it's, did you make any plans for, if you died, what would the video be? Like, how are you gonna video your funeral?

I actually did give my password to Allie, and I said, make sure to film and keep going with this thing. I did tell her to keep going. But you didn't say, if I die. I didn't say, I said, if something happens, please keep this going. That's all I said. Meaning the channel or the camera? The channel.

Okay. Well, the camera too, I guess. Well, they're going to go in there. Because I remember in the video, you can hear, they're like, Charles, Charles, can you hear us? Charles, and you just hear my arm fall, and I'm not able to respond. And then you hear clink, clink, clink, and we're done. And so they stop. So they stop filming.

But it was mainly for her. I wanted the channel to keep going because I didn't want to build something and then make this community and then just die. Because unfortunately, I passed away. I felt like it needs to live on because it was bigger than me at the time. So you didn't think about an epic drone swooping shot across your funeral. Well, that would probably happen too.

DJI, I need another random impression of mine. But then it would keep going after that. Yeah, I wanted it to keep going, yeah. But never thought about that part. Thanks, Link. Hey, you won. I gotta give you my password my pastor too one and we're all gonna die and there should be a drone at all of our funerals ah just uh dji like phantoms drones all over the place yes yeah exactly right open casket right yeah really slow right over there somebody's gonna do that okay now you've uh you've mentioned

uh ali speed a number of times, he was with you in the middle of all this, and of course, because your life has been out there for everyone to see, Yeah, everything's, yeah. We all feel like we know a whole lot about your relationships and the things you've experienced, and so we're gonna talk about that.

Okay. So let's talk about the Alis. Yeah, first of all, I'll say what I. Okay. So let's talk about the Allys. Yeah. First of all, say what I can say. Yeah. So there's three. You've actually met all three. All of them, yes.

So one of the very first times we met after the cheese bread incident. YouTube Live, right? Yes. We met Alley, who you were already kind of putting your life on the internet at the time, not in the same way. I was on the Charles Sturpey channel, yeah. But like the famous hot air balloon proposal video.

Oh yeah, yeah. Which I don't believe can be found anymore. No, I think it has been taken now because it was owned by a different company. Okay. Yeah, it was owned by a company. But that was sort of like the beginning of like, I'm gonna put myself out there.

You're gonna know about what I'm going through. And of course, you know, kind of looking back on it, we just wanna hear it from your perspective, right? Because I mean, I think that there's, I mean, there's obviously the thing that people always talk about and joke about. It's just like, does she have to be named Ally in order for you to be with her?

Doesn't John have a book about that too? Like, Life Full of, what is it, A Bunch of Allies? I don'tys i don't know abundance of catherine's catherine's and so we wrote they made the book abundance of alleys and i was like okay that's kind of up all right no i mean like honestly it just it just happens it happened like that so but what is not a policy that's not a policy i only date girls name was there when when you met your current girlfriend. Allie West. Allie West. When you met her and you found out her name was Allie, was there a, oh man, this might be a deal breaker.

Are you going to have to call yourself something else? No, it wasn't a deal breaker. It was more of like, oh, this is going to be weird. Actually, it wasn't going to be weird for me because a name's a name. I don't really care. Some people date several Johns in their life, you know what I mean? It's just because it's on the internet,

I think it makes it weird. And it's back to back to back. And it's back to back to back, yeah. It's interesting. But I think, the bigger question I think that everybody has is just the whole process of what happened between you and Ali Speed and leading up to you and Ali West.

Right. And can we at least tie a bow on the fact that you had a proposal to Ali number one. And I'm sorry, I don't know her last name. Ali with a Y? Ali, Ali R. Ali R, okay. Let's do that, so I'm gonna give her a weird name.

But then you guys never got married, right? No, we never got married, no. Okay. Her family do that. So I'm going to give her a weird name. But then you guys never got married. No, we never got married. No. Okay. Her family wasn't very supportive of the YouTube thing. So it's kind of like one of those things that's like, you know, you do things that you love. If the family's not supportive, it's like, you know, deal breaker. Yeah. So now I wish I can go there and just be like middle finger, you know, do the whole like Homer Simpson going down the sand pit, you know, like in the movie.

Right. But I mean, it's just one of those things it's like you know you got to have you know at least family supporting what you're doing even though it sounds crazy you know and that didn't happen that because you know she didn't like it she didn't support it her family didn't support it so immediately off the table so alley speed that was um you guys got married in november 2011 and there was you know there's you guys got married in November 2011. She was on the channel, and the daily vlogs were already happening, so she was incorporated into that.

The engagement, the actual moment of engagement was part of that. Right. And no hot air balloon, but that one took. I got a fear of flight hot air balloons after that one. Yeah, no, I mean's she's a wonderful woman i never want to talk bad about her she's a wonderful woman a very strong woman and she's helped me through a lot of things and um she it just so happened that it just you know worked out this way but you know all that fun stuff but yeah though it life the reason why that's on there, obviously, is because life happened from 2009 to 2015.

Yeah. And so life has happened for seven years. So that's why that's on there and documented and stuff. Well, I think coming from the perspective of we see you on the internet a lot more than we see you in person. Yeah, it's an unfortunate thing, isn't it? Right. So it's like we see your life being lived as your fans see your life being lived, right? So when, I mean, I remember the announcement video,

I think you called it, we need to talk or, you know, letting everybody know that you guys were getting separated. And, you know, to quote something from that video, over the past couple of months, Allie and I have just haven't been getting along. We have been arguing a lot more than normal and it's just been getting worse and worse and we've just been becoming more and more unhappy

and stressed out. Right. And of course, as two guys who, we've been married for a while. Right. And of course, the fans kind of responded in the same way. We heard that and I was like, there's got to be something beyond this

because what you described is something that happens in every marriage relationship, right? Yeah, exactly. about it in the same way. We heard that and I was like, there's got to be something beyond this because what you described is something that happens in every marriage relationship, right? And just as a fan watching your videos, nobody had any idea that there was anything that was wrong. Right, and the thing is that with the, I remember a long time ago we decided, when the video started that I didn't wanna,

I felt there was too much negativity, that I didn't wanna do negativity on that. Watch too much negativity that I didn't want to do negativity on that. It wants to Jersey shore. If you want to watch that, I mean, I wanted to show positive because the idea drama, drama,

conflict. Yeah. Okay. The videos may have been a lot better. It's not like a reality show. I mean, it's like a homemade reality show, but we have the control over it.

So it was like one of those things. It's like a time capsule almost a little bit better, I guess to say. And the idea was when I get older, that whole idea of these videos, when i get older that whole idea of these videos when i get older and i show my kids i want to make sure they know i was cool at one point and uh so i wanted to show like you know cool little things that i've done in my life and remember cool little things because i have a terrible memory prior to the tumor and uh maybe

that's all connected i don't know but um I wanted to have something that I can look back on and kind of reminisce and see all these cool things I do. Because, I mean, you guys probably know that all the cool shit you guys do, you probably don't remember half of it. You know what I mean? Right. Oh, yeah.

And it certainly resonates with me when you say, this is the show I was in charge of. It was also my life. And it was, I hear you saying it was, you know, you and Ally, it was your life together and it was i hear you saying it was you know you and ally it was your life together for that stint of time right and you made the decision to not exploit that for the sake of entertainment value i mean you could have done that like you said that would have been entertaining that's what reality tv is like that is just slapping somebody in the head yeah right

exactly and uh yeah that was a very difficult video to shoot. And thinking back on it, I wish she was a part of it. But to be honest with you, it was a very difficult thing just to shoot by myself. And a very difficult, whole thing was a difficult situation. It seemed like it was almost like a, I'm just going to do this. Almost like it was a spur of the moment. It certainly didn't seem like there was any plan. I just turned on the webcam. I think it was literally shot on my webcam yeah there was no it wasn't like a prepared statement by any means no i rambled forever i didn't know what to say

like because you you go with what you're you're thinking and stuff like that but it wasn't satisfying as a viewer yeah no for some people they want more you know everyone wants more especially and i respect that you know people are invested in watching these things for sometimes. Some people I've met today, seven years, since day one. And I understand. I respect that. But at the same time, it's hard to. It's like mom and dad divorcing or something like that.

It's like, why was it us? You know what I mean? So it's kind of hard to explain that. And it was a very difficult situation for both her and myself. And we didn't know what we were getting. We didn't know how to deal so it's kind of hard to explain that and it was a very difficult situation for both her and myself and um we didn't know what we were getting we didn't know how to deal with ourself so to explain that to a million and a half people you know how do you do that and i just one day i was like in the day i was just like i had something in my head and i just turned on the webcam literally used imovie and just started talking. Right. And, you know, just said what I.

And had you guys discussed, I mean, obviously you had made the decision that you were getting separated, but had you discussed the process by which you had let everyone know? Oh, we did. And like I said, like I, thinking back, I wish we both were on there to explain it. It would have been better to sit everyone down, like, so to speak. But for me, I was just one of those spur of the moments things like you said i just had something on my mind i wanted to say and i when i watched it again i was like this seems kind of genuine so versus me

kind of like going back and hey guys you know blah blah turning on the real camera and stuff like that i wanted to be more genuine um speaking from my heart. And, you know, things happened, you know. And there's definitely things I wish I would have done differently. Obviously, everybody wishes they'd done when you think retro Captain Hindsight. But very difficult time, obviously. Yeah. And I do apologize to everybody who was, you know, affected by that.

You know, her, her family, people watching the videos, my family, everybody. Is it, I mean, is the decision that you've made that, okay, we've moved on, obviously, each of you. Yeah. And so there's no need, I don't wanna ask the question, I just wanna ask you about the principle of not shedding any more light on it.

Like what, even though that was kind of a spur of the moment thing, that was kind of the, at least that's the last thing I've said that you've really kind of gone on record about it right well i mean i've done stupid things everyone does stupid things when you're angry and stuff like that and i that's what i'm saying like i definitely wish i could take back but and you say things when you're angry and stuff like that but i see what you're saying like i kind of it's happened a long time ago she's happy i'm happy i'm so happy for her and i just want everyone else to you know move on yet it was a situation and i do apologize you know things suck you know what i mean but it's life and that's the whole point of these videos it's kind of what i'm saying is like that's the whole point of these

things is like you know went through a brain tumor filmed it went through a divorce filmed it this is life everyone's going your parents might go through the same situation things like that happen and um kind of the point of what i was doing with the videos i didn't want to stop didn't want to like hide it or anything like that can't sugarcoat that you can't put like a cgi person or something like that or replace or anything like that you have to explain things but there was i mean leading up to the separation, there was a lot of editing that had to be made, right? There was, people went back and they wanted to find out

where they could see the signs, like, oh, now in retrospect I can see it, they weren't together. Or when they were together, it was like this. Right, yeah, there's people always going, it's like a treasure hunt for some people. And they want, you know, when the attachment goes so deep as seeing a couple go through brain surgery, and you know, it's,

how did you impact, how did you experience the backlash? Because I have to think that people were upset. She went through this brain surgery with you, man, and then you're gonna, you know. No, of course, of course. I imagine they've thrown you under the bus. They've thrown both of us under the bus, which sucks. I mean, in any

relationship, they're gonna throw, because people feel betrayed, and I respect that fact, you know, because people are invested in you for so long, and then it's just over. But it's not so much over, like I said in the video, it's just the next chapter. You know, it's what happens in life. It's's relationships and breaks up breakups all the time in life and i feel like everyone's gone through a breakup in life maybe some of the younger ones are going to

so it's going to suck but it happens and you go on to the next chapter and you make yourself happy and you want happiness for the other person and you you just move on in life. Right. And, you know, you expressed in that video that you wanted to remain close to Ali Speed. Exactly, yeah. What's the relationship like now? Well, we were very cordial. We weren't very close, obviously. You know, there's still some things we're still working on because it's a hard thing to go through emotionally. So, you know, it still you know some things you know we're still working on because it was it's a hard thing to go through you know emotionally so you know it takes time to heal

i mean both for the internet and both for us you know i mean i know the internet's still healing over that and we're actually still healing over that so i know a lot of people are like wanting that quicker and it's like you know we put all these videos on the internet and i know people want to see things quicker um but we're still healing you know life's still healing so so but you come to something like vick you guys you cross paths that's the difficult thing oh that's what i'm saying like we're very cordial when we see each other yeah we see um the phil's wedding and things like that very cordial i mean we're not hate we don't hate each other, but it still takes time to heal wounds. And I'm happy she's moving on.

She's getting her life together, being happy as well. And I have a wonderful girlfriend as well. We're moving on with our next chapter in life. And was there, I mean, that whole process of like, okay, I've announced this separation and now I've got this new woman in my life. How did you make decisions about

when you were going to introduce Allie to your audience? Because there's, I mean, obviously there's, the internet is just completely full of speculation about the timeline and we're, I'm not going to speculate about that. Internet has done enough speculation about that. People think things and got to love Reddit for digging even deeper. But yeah, I mean, people find timelines, but it's not what it appears on the internet just because it's on the

internet doesn't mean that's what it was. And unfortunately people have made wrong assumptions on all accounts on so many things and uh you know we were wanting to take our time to introduce you know we were still taking our time so we didn't want to rush into things as well you know so we had to take our time before we made the decision to i mean essentially introducing somebody to anybody, even bringing anyone into a vlog for me is like introducing to your family. Yeah. So it takes some time to think about it and then eventually do it. But unfortunately things happened and we were forced really quickly because people were making wrong assumptions and, you know, things got really

out of hand really fast on both for her and for myself. And you can't have that. I didn't want the hate. It was affecting too many people too quickly. And how did she handle that? Coming in, I mean, obviously, when you just look at it from an outsider just watching your vlogs, it's like, hold on, this was a happy family a couple of months ago. Right, yeah.

And now there's a new girl. And she's named Allie. Yeah. What? Yeah, and then they think just because of the worst thing i would have to say um is just because things are on the internet doesn't mean it's what they are because like um just because somebody likes a photo likes uh comments or something like likes an instagram photo they assume the worst like if you like something um for example,

your wife isn't going to think something, like, you know what I mean? Right. I like, I don't, I've liked food to pictures of walls, you know, to anything on Instagram. People take that and run with assumptions. And I feel like that's where the internet kind of needs to just trust people. And just to clarify, you're addressing the allegations that

there was a relationship before prior yeah and which there was not and um that um was completely wrong and out of control and i felt bad because ali west was being brought into something like this and she was taking it like a champ but deep down she was hurt very hurt that people were saying things and assuming things based on nothing you know what i mean just assuming assumptions and um she's taken some time it's been a year and a half everyone's moving on and it's great because you know life is moving on and stuff like that she's able to come to these vidcon things she's meeting people people are you know kind of apologizing to her mainly for making the

assumption that not giving her a chance and stuff like that and saying horrible things. I understand. She understands too. She talks to them. People get hurt. They say things really quickly without thinking. It's nice to see that the internet's coming back

together because there was a rough year and a half yeah well i know you guys have moved on but we appreciate you taking the time to talk about it of course you talk about everything yeah i know definitely definitely this is actually the first time i actually got to really talk yeah online about it so it's pretty it's kind of nervous kind of nervous about that but you know hopefully everyone understands it and doesn't take things the wrong way. Yeah. Well, thanks for being open. Yeah.

And what now? I mean, is there an end date to the vlogs? Are you going to do it? What's the date? The 27th. The 27th of something. Something. We don't know.

Some 27th. The 20th. You'll never know guys i i actually as long as you keep doing it it's a record that no one can ever break that's the interesting thing yeah yeah yeah yeah it's not like setting a world record in like the breast stroke yeah you know you have to wait at least seven years for somebody to break it yeah right so i'll have seven years of being nervous yeah so I don't know. I really honestly don't know. I had so many cool things that I could probably have in my life.

You know, the band's still touring a lot. Yeah, we didn't even get a chance to talk about that. But now you're a rock star in addition to all these other things. Yeah, that was a great thing that I kind of stumbled into because we've been friends with it as a kid. You know, recording that, filming that, you know, the process of that, doing the albums, and just life, you know. You know, eventually, the process of that doing the albums and um just life you know you know eventually i'm saying this down the line guys don't get assumptions um you

know kids you know down the road a family and uh it's really exciting to see down the world road to be able to document that too yeah that's a huge process i mean you guys have kids so you know how it is yeah but i guess if if shea is example, eventually you just won't be able to keep up anymore. You're going to start dropping days once those kids come. Yeah. I was just going to say, once you get on day 18, I'll have to stop maybe stopping a little bit. Kid 18, I'm sorry. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Right. Exactly. All right, man. Well, we don't want you to stop, so keep going. And we wish you the best.

Hey, thanks for letting us process all this with you. Of course. Thank you guys for having me on here. Here's a fun little game, guys. Go back and listen to this and see how many times my voice cracked. Okay. All right. And are we going to put a vlog?

You vlogged before we started. Yeah, I'm going to vlog it right now. We're going to do a vlog at the end so that people know that you survived it. Okay, guys guys so we're just now ending what episode number is this whoa now you're getting really technical i mean 80 something okay 80 something of ear biscuits and i just wanted to say i'm vlogging on it so i'm vlogging on it right now did you do you feel good i feel because you were like i don't know how this is gonna be you said you didn't know i didn't know what it was going to be like. I actually was really nervous.

Actually, this is what I sound like. This is actually kind of interesting. But yeah, no, we actually talked about a lot of things. I was really super nervous. Luckily, these guys are people I've probably known probably almost 10 years, right? Yeah. Getting here. Getting close.

Almost a decade. Yeah. Getting old. So yeah, you guys can listen to this whenever they upload it. When do you guys upload? Let's see. Well, we're batching these, so it'll be to this whenever they upload it. When do you guys upload? Let's see. Well, we're batching these, so it'll be a few weeks. We're going to make you wait a little bit.

Probably the most nerve-wracking thing I've ever talked about. And they got it out of me. All right, yeah. Jet out! Thanks, man. Yeah, no worries. And there you have it, our conversation with Charles Trippi. Tweet at him, guys.

Let him know what you thought of our conversation. His handle is Charles Trippi. Use hashtag Ear Biscuits. Yeah, and especially we want to just express that we appreciate him being so open. He told us after we finished recording that he was nervous about coming on here, knowing that we would ask some questions about his relationship with Allie.

And he's lived his life in front of everyone out there who watches his content, but he can edit it, right? I mean, it's his life and he's extremely open about it, but he has the ability to kind of present it in a way that he's like, well, if I don't want them to know about that, then I won't tell him. But he had the courage to come on here and let us basically grill him towards the end there

about these questions and the internet speculation, so. And address some of that. Yeah, so thanks to Charles for doing that. We appreciate that. Tweet at him, let him know what you think. You know, another thing that I really enjoyed about the conversation was it was a refresher for me going back through his experience

all the way to the beginning of YouTube with how much he did help shape what so many people after him started to do. Like I said in the intro, developing a genre of clickable internet content, even before the daily vlog thing, you know, just having. He was one of the only people that was getting traction on those kind of videos way back in the day.

And pushing the medium in a lot of ways, the sketches and also just vlogs and everything in between that just became clickable, thumbnail and title, every single, name any aspect of it, and you could always kind of look at his channel and figure it out. And I was reminded of that. One thing we didn't talk about,

another example of experimentation was the live stream where he and Shay Carl and It's Brent, you remember this, all three of them decided to see who could stay up the longest and it precipitated from the new technology of live streaming and people doing live casting, like Justine was broadcasting every moment of her day, even when she slept and a couple of other people

were doing that on Justine TV. I think they were on Blog TV when that started. I can't remember, I think that's where it was. Not Ustream, not Justin, but Blog TV. Because we went into the chat room, we had met them in Philly, and then we were becoming more of the community, so we were able to enter each person's chat room,

and I don't know how long they stayed up. Who won that? Didn't Shay Carl win it? I think Shay may have won, but it was, I mean, it was days that they stayed up and they were broadcasting all of it on the internet. And, you know, at a certain point they were all like falling asleep in front of their webcams,

which is hilarious, with people in the comments, like talking to him. Maybe we should do that again. I don't wanna be a part of it though. I hate staying up. Oh yeah, me too. I mean, it's past midnight now and I'm just like, what is this, a lock-in?

But it's the spirit of experimentation and pioneering captured in that moment that it's just like, okay, you can live stream. Let's do it without sleeping. It'll be fun. You know, he and Shay were spurring each other on even with the daily vlog thing. And it's just a lesson and a reminder

that when you try things, things happen that you didn't expect. There's unexpected byproducts that might lead to your career or breaking a Guinness World Record or doing seven years of videos every single day. That continues to be the thing that just blows my mind. And, you know, as coming from two guys who, yes, we do have a daily internet show,

but we're not constantly broadcasting our lives and we don't have to personally edit every single second of video every single day. And I cannot believe it. And I cannot believe it. I really cannot believe it. There's no one's ever gonna come close to the record. I mean, there's just no way it's gonna be broken. I mean, first of all,

it continues to build every single day, right? But there's no way anybody else is gonna break that. Well, it's possible, especially if they invent technology to age twice as fast. Would that count towards catching up? Well, you know, the reason, it will never be broken in the way that he's doing it, which is someone who's filming it

and then editing themselves. But when it becomes like a robot camera that's on you that does an automatic vlog. That doesn't count. Yeah, that doesn't count, because that's gonna happen, that's next. I think the bigger question is why on earth would anyone develop technology to age twice as fast?

Oh, I didn't even, I heard you, I thought you said, I assumed that you said age more slowly because that would have made some sense. I didn't really listen to you. You gotta age faster. Every one of your days has to equal everyone else's two days in order for him to catch it or her to catch up with Charles.

Well, in seven days from now, we'll have another Ear Biscuit for you and Charles Trippy will have seven more vlogs for you. You know, that's sort of the pattern that we've all established. And you can count on all of us as we've established. So we'll speak at you next week, guys. Thank you.