Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - How We Became a Duo - Middle School Years | Ear Biscuits Ep.326

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

In the continuation of their series of examining their friendship throughout the years, Rhett and Link explore their awkward middle school years and discover that this was the time that they were officially regarded as a collaborative duo. They talk about first relationships, getting to leave the country for the first time through mission trips, and how this was the time in their lives that solidified their friendship forever. Watch the video of Rhett and Link's mutual first girlfriend on GMM here! Get your copy of the "Book of Mythicality" here! Also, Stevie's got a new podcast! Best Friends Back, Alright! is out now! Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode! 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. Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I'm Link. And I'm Rhett.

This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are continuing our friendship series, friendship throughout the years with moving into the middle school year. So we started last time talking about elementary school. Now we're moving on to middle school, which for us was seventh and eighth grade, just a two year period,

but a very substantial two year period in our lives and in our friendship. Developmentally and yeah, the fact that we're- Do you get pubes during that time? Looking at things, oh, that's a teaser. Sure, I'll weigh in on that one. I entered with pubes, just so you know. Looking at it through-

Came right through the seventh grade door with pubes. I'm making a point. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm making pube jokes. Yeah, I really don't wanna talk about pubes at this point. I'll save it for later. That's why I like graciously say, oh, it's a teaser, meaning we'll talk about that later

and maybe he'll forget. Oh no, I won't now. But it seems that you wanna talk about it now. I like having this series because it recontextualizes some stories we've already told, helps us access experiences maybe we haven't talked about ever, because we're looking at time periods

we've talked about before, now middle school, but through the lens of, well, what was our friendship like? And how is it developing? What was the dynamic at that stage? So it kind of gets at new things through that. So I'm looking forward to it. It's like therapy without a therapist. Yeah, I just think that,

as we said with the elementary school, when you tend to have this blanket statement about being best friends and like, oh, they were always so close and they always had this dynamic, but there was- A development. Yeah, it was an evolution and everything's changing in middle school.

And I'm wondering how our perspectives differ on how that impacted our friendship positively and negatively. So I wanna get into that. But we should get into something else first. It's been a couple of weeks since we launched the new Mythical logo and we thought this was the best form

for us to talk to each other and to you about the response that we got and clarify a couple of things. So kind of by design, it's been a few weeks, been three weeks-ish, maybe a little bit more since a lot of chatter and conversation amongst the mythical beast has happened. But so having kind of this delayed conversation

is also something we can talk about because that's the decision we made that we just didn't wanna like jump into the fray, but I guess we should set the stage a little bit. Well, yeah, I mean, for those of you who don't know, we changed the official Mythical logo a few weeks ago. And the first sort of indication that that was happening, I think is one of the things that we got wrong.

There was a, so the way that it works, if you're a member of the Mythical Society, is you get a preview email of what's to come, whether that's new merch or whatever, in this case, it was new merch. So you're the first to know of any big announcement in the world of mythicality. And so that- Mythical Society members are the first to know

via this email. And on GMM on the following Monday, what we were gonna announce the logo and announce the new merch collection with the logo. So on Friday before a holiday weekend, essentially, which is just typical, if we're gonna announce something on Monday, that email usually goes out the week before.

An email was sent out and the thing that was emphasized in the email wasn't just that we were getting a new logo, but that if you wanted to get Randler merch, Randler being the mascot, the little mouse with antlers and wings, it's been a mascot of Mythicality for a very long time. If you wanted to get Randler merch, you needed to act on it right now

because that was going away. Now- It may have said forever. I don't know. No, it said- I hope not, but- The implication was that it was going away forever. It was an unfortunately worded thing.

Right, so it was an email about merch that seemed like it was an email about merch that seemed like it was announcement about the new logo, which doesn't have the Randler in it, being an announcement that the Randler was going away forever. Yeah. And so what we- And in a live stream-

In the live stream on the Society, the- We did clarify this, but we'll do it here too. Which was on Tuesday of that week. We did clarify the Randler is not going away because that was one of the things that people were really responding to. And it was just something that it was, we're blaming ourselves for accidentally seeming to imply

that that was happening. When what we were trying to say is that that line, that iteration of the R Randler as it exists as part of the company wide logo is going away. So get it while you can get it in the same way that we always say about last chance stuff. And I think there was a bit of a marketing spin to it. Yeah.

That of course we don't write these emails. We can get into this a little bit later. This is, but yeah, there was a bit of a marketing spin that was like, hey, this is going away. You emphasize the scarcity of it. If you want this particular hoodie with this particular Randall logo on it, we're not making it anymore.

But it got conflated with an announcement about the logo in general. And it really, the conversation unfortunately became about the Randler going away. Yeah. And that was never the plan. So honestly, it wasn't even an adjustment to fan reaction. It's like, oh my gosh, they really love the Randler.

So we got to backtrack and say, we're not taking it away. That was never the plan to take it away. But it wasn't an adjustment. But we are taking responsibility for the communication that seemed to imply that, that caused a lot of consternation. Yeah, so it's been unfortunate. I wanna come back to maybe a little bit more

of conversation about why we decided to change the logo and what we were thinking and how we're feeling about that. But while we're talking about miscommunication, I think it's probably a good time to talk about a previous tweet that went out like a week and a half before the logo, a couple of weeks before the logo was announced. Yes, and now we're talking five or six weeks ago.

Yeah, I mean, why not, right? So there was a tweet that went out that essentially said something along the lines of, I mean, if you wanna read it just so we could get it exactly right of what was said, and then we can tell you what we were trying to say, and then again, what we unfortunately miscommunicated. I think the big note here for us-

I don't think we miscommunicated as much here. I think it was just left- Too open to interpretation. Left, I'm on Twitter, but I'm- Mythical is art. I'm searching Twitter on Twitter. "'Dear Beast, we value your enthusiasm "'and hearing your feedback on all things mythical.

"'However, lately, we've seen a few of you "'directing questions, frustration, "'and even anger at members of the crew, "'both on their personal social accounts "'and indirectly on public forums, "'which is unfair and not in the spirit of mythicality. "'Please don't cross those lines and always use the appropriate company channels

to raise your concerns and constructive feedback." Now, apparently this wasn't as clear as we thought it was when we read it and said, yeah, this works because- The way that a lot of people interpreted this, and it is your right to interpret it, but in any way you want to, but we're going to clarify what we were trying to say to try to clear it up.

The way that a lot of people interpret it is as if we were saying that you cannot criticize the things that we produce as a company. As a media company who puts media out in the world, that we were trying to police what you say. Of course not. I don't, that's never been our intention. We understand that the whole idea is

when you make something for an audience, that audience has an opinion and that audience's opinion matters. And if it's negative, that matters. And we take that into account. So I kind of think that's wrapped up in we value your enthusiasm and hearing your feedback on all things mythical.

Yeah, yeah. Which is kind of exactly what we said because I just read things mythical. Yeah, yeah. Which is kind of exactly what we said because I just read it again. Yeah, right. But what the line that we're talking about is maybe when it comes to you didn't get something customer service related. Or like, I have a question about my merch showing up

or a stipulation about something else regarding like in any of the stuff that we do from a customer stand. Yeah, let's be specific. We were talking about the stuff that we sell, the merch. That's what we're talking about. People get upset about getting the wrong size, not getting something on time. And being delayed. And then reaching out to the members of the Mythical crew

who that is their job, they work in that department. But tracking them down on their personal socials or talking about them personally, just because you know that somebody's job, that doesn't mean you go to the, you cross the line to their personal socials. I don't even care if they talk about their work and stuff on that.

It's like, everybody talks about their lives on their social. That doesn't mean that you can make it a, it's not a valid place for customer support, feedback or complaints. We have provided official company avenues that you can go through to lodge those complaints and those complaints get heard

and those complaints get considered and answered. Absolutely. So we wanna, we're sticking up for the Mythical crew here, our team, so that they can have a healthy work-life balance so that fans aren't coming or aren't coming into their personal timelines and in their personal space online. And these are specifically people who aren't public,

aren't public making complaints. Aren't public personalities. So there's a distinction between someone who has a show, right? What we would call talent for lack of a better word. I hate that word because it makes it seem like only people on camera have talent, but that's just the industry term for people who like have a show.

We're not saying you can't criticize the shows that we make, we're just saying that if somebody works for Mythical in a non-public capacity, and then you're reaching out to them on their socials or you're talking about them publicly, we're standing up for them and saying, they didn't sign up for that, and we don't want them to be harassed,

especially because we've provided avenues and channels for you to file your complaints. It's not just harassment, it's even- Engagement. Even polite engagement on your personal side is crossing a line that we wanna help preserve their work-life balance and boundaries, you know? So when it starts to intrude,

it's like we wanna stand up for our employees. And again, there was some things in that, in the way that's worded, I completely get it. You could think that what we were saying is that we don't wanna be criticized. So if you took it that way, again, we're blaming ourselves for miscommunication. The thing that we're learning-

I'm not being too hard on ourselves, but it's always hard to know how things are- I am. Okay, so I am too hard on ourselves, but it's always hard to know how things are. I am. Okay, so I am being hard on myself. So because this communication is incredibly delicate, right? And also I think one of the things that's hitting me is it is a really cool thing to have a brand, to have something that people care about enough

to have an opinion about, right? That's a privileged position. For people to care enough to have an opinion about the decisions that you make is something that, ultimately, that's the positive that I take away from this is that, well, if you didn't care, you wouldn't say anything. So you do care and so you are passionately engaging

and we appreciate that. Our end of the bargain needs to be that we communicate things as clearly as possible, but it also is a little bit daunting. And it is the reason that we did not immediately respond to all of the comments about that tweet and all of the comments about the logo and the lack of the randler and all that,

because 99 times out of 100, 99 times out of 100, when you try to clarify and say something else, you end up saying something else that you didn't mean to say. We're doing, I'm sure, I am 100,000% sure that I'm saying something within this 15 minute span that will be then misinterpreted by someone else.

It is the nature of communication. We waited so that all the energy would die down a little bit as opposed to getting into a back and forth and trying to clarify then, oh, well, what about this? And then you have to clarify and it becomes this endless thing. It's not an easy thing. So it's just like, we'll just wait a little bit

and just talk about it naturally the way that we've processed it, but not try to get into this back and forth where we're trying to clarify and just end up digging a bigger hole than we've already dug by miscommunicating in the first place. Now, so back to the logo.

Well, first of all, as a side note about that, about the tweet, about team members and boundaries, like I was feeling bad for Trevor because all these people were, it was all this conjecture about, well, Trevor just launched his podcast and people are being hard on him. It's like, I'm ecstatic.

And my conversation is with Trevor, he's off to the races, man. It's like, and he's a public persona that he can, you know, he can take criticism publicly. That's the other side of the boundary, the appropriate side, but that's not what it was about at all. It made it seem like we were saying, we just launched something and you're not happy with it.

And so- We did not make it seem that way, but it was open enough to interpretation that people took it and ran with it that way. So it's like, I just wish we would have been more specific, but again, we didn't want, well, we're being more specific now. And again, and I think, we haven't really talked about this that much,

but my application, my lesson learned is just don't say anything. Honestly, like if my application moving forward is that if I had to go back and do that again, I would try to speak directly with the people who were being singled out on Twitter and help them develop tools to deal with it rather than making it a public thing, which just stirs up a bunch of stuff and misinterpretation.

I don't know. It's difficult to know what to do. It is and I think the other way to look at it is it's been confusing, it hasn't been perfect. An expectation of perfection in communication is stupid. But that is what the expectation is. Okay, but it's- To clarify. But we can what the expectation is. Okay, but it's- To clarify.

But we can't live up to that standard, but I think this process maybe is helpful for everybody. Cause I think you would agree that we're proud that we took up for our team members and that we're valuing, even if we're misinterpreted or people start to think the wrong thing about us that we don't want criticism, I'd rather have that than have our employees be put in a compromising position.

And that's why we did it. So I do think we made the right decision. And that's why I retweeted it because I don't do a lot of Twitter, but the reason I retweeted that was just like, I want those team members to know that I care and that I wanna defend them. Yeah, so I don't wish we didn't do it.

I just think that even- But I don't wanna make it worse accidentally. What we're talking about right now, I don't think makes it worse. I do think you can clarify and make things better and I think that's what's happened. Back to the logo. And well, would you agree with that?

Because the last thing you said was, if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't do it. But I'm counterpointing that. I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but I don't- It depends on how people respond to this conversation. It's one of those things that I'm just, I'm not smart enough.

And I don't think that anyone at our company is smart enough to communicate in a way that will be completely perfectly received by everyone. And so my tendency is that will be completely, perfectly received by everyone. And so my tendency is just to be like, just do the things that you want to do as a company. Don't explain the decisions, don't defend the decisions because it just feels like a lose-lose. But you know me, I love to try to explain myself.

I'm just, I'm trying to learn how to explain myself less. Well, and to me, I think the thing that I value is an understanding with the mythical beasts. And if there's confusion, if we're not on the same page, or if we're misunderstood, or if we're misunderstanding them or individuals in the community, like I wanna resolve that, you know, it is a relationship.

Which again, to come back to the logo, we're excited about the logo. We liked the new logo. It's very calculated in a lot of ways. It was never our intention to, with taking the RANDLER out of the logo, there was a rationale associated with that, but it was never our intention to, with taking the Randler out of the logo, there was a rationale associated with that, but it was never our intention

to get rid of the Randler entirely. It never even crossed our minds. That was not a conversation we had that we were eradicating the Randler. We were just trying to take the Randler out of the most, the broadest and most outward facing expression of Mythical, which represents us and everything else that we produce and everything else that we're going to produce

as a company. We wanted something that was broader and less specific just for the broadest company logo. And from an outward facing perspective, your logo communicates not to everybody on the inside, it communicates a lot to the people on the outside who are being introduced. And the fact of the matter is,

the Randler in that context of an outward facing logo confused, it was confusing to people because it sent- Who've never heard of Mythical. Who've never heard of Mythical because it sent this visual cue that like, this is a fantasy brand. This might be a sci-fi brand. This might be a-

Well, it reinforces the misconception that we're trying to use the word Mythical in the traditional sense. When in reality, for all these years, we've been trying to redefine the word mythical. Mythical doesn't mean the traditional make believe mythical creatures. Yes, we use that imagery as a fandom

because it just makes sense and it's cool and mythical beliefs is cool. But our content has zero to do with that and so it's really confusing to people when you're saying, this is who we are, this is where we stand for. So this is a change, it's actually been a long time coming in terms of thinking about, like we've recognized it both internally

and also as we've gone through like brand exploration processes, we've learned that a lot of people when they just see Mythical and they see this little magical creature there, they think, oh, these people must do some sort of fantasy thing. And so we're like, okay, well, that's not what we do.

We're a lighthearted brand, but that mascot's important. That mascot was- Well, let me, and I wanna get to the mascot thing, but just to sit a second with the squiggly M and this new thing. So we were excited about that because it would provide clarification. And I'll go further to clarify,

mythical is a place that you can come to. It is where curiosity and comedy create. Laughter and curiosity. We can say it that way. It is where laughter and curiosity create meaningful community. Yeah. That's what mythical means to us.

Right. So unfortunately, by making this headline in this one email about the Randler going away, parenthetically, just within the new merch line, we confused things and we sent the absolute backwards message to some mythical beasts who say, and I fully acknowledge that the Randler to many of many mythical beasts, maybe you,

means, it means that community, it means that connection, like coming up with the concept of the RANDLER as a logo, naming it, designing it, designed by a fan, and then redesigned for one of our logo, for a couple of our logos over the years and incorporating it into that, incorporating it into a lot of other iconography as well, said, this is a community.

This is something that we're doing and experiencing together. And it's very important to all of us. The Randler is one of many representations of that. It's not the only one, but it is one. And you know what? We're very sentimental when it comes to things. Like we're still celebrating 10 years

of Good Mythical Morning, you know, even months later. It's like, and we know that it all hinges on the strength of our community. Yeah. So we like fully agree with the sentiment behind the feelings of the Randler, but when you take it just, but we can also have a new logo that doesn't have an N in it

and it doesn't mean that community is not extremely important, a central part of what we're doing. The relationship that we have with Mythical Beasts. Well, and to be specific. Is just as important as it's ever been. And ironically, taking the R Randler out of the largest, broadest company wide expression

is intended to be a step towards inclusivity, right? As opposed to you see it and it's a barrier to entry. It backfired in the way we communicated that. Now, that does not mean that you have to like the logo. If you don't like the logo, you don't like the logo. Like I totally get that. We can kind of explain what we do like about the logo. We like the fact that the M itself in the Mythical

becomes the logo that stands alone, which that's not something we ever had before. We had to use the whole word or we had to just use the Randler. Now we can use a part of the word that actually stands for mythical. We like the way it looks. We think it communicates that it's like,

this is like sort of a winding road. And like, we're kind of just like going at this by the seat of our pants. And we're on this- That's definitely how we always feel. And we're on this very long winding journey. That whole journey, not the destination thing is our experience. Some people have noticed

that there is seemingly a height difference in the M that's relative to me and Link. That's an illusion, it's the same height, both bumps. But that it's backwards. Well, when we first saw this logo, we were like, oh, one of the cool things about this is it's got like our height difference in it, but it's technically backwards

from the way that fans experience it. We taught about this. So we tried it the other way. Everybody hated the way that it looked. Including us. But here's the thing that we, that it flipped a switch in my mind. I was like, you know the cool thing

about keeping it this way is that this is the perspective that you would have on our height difference if you were standing next to us looking in the same direction. Not us over here and you over here looking at us, but if we all get on the same side of the line, we all get aligned on the same perspective, when we all start moving together in the same direction,

the Rhett and Link height difference would be the way that it is reflected in the Mythical logo. To me, again, that was another like, aha, this is actually, if you really stop and think about it, even cooler. Now that may sound like I'm just trying to justify something. That's part of it, but also when I saw it that way and I was like, this actually becomes more meaningful to me

when I'm like, well, I'm embracing it because I think it looks better, but then when I see that it has this other really cool element, it's just like when you're reading a poem and you're coming to your own interpretation. Sure. That's how I'm seeing it now.

I love that. And for me, it's cooler. I love that. And it's, yeah, it's a symbol of community. Yeah, and we're all together facing the same way. And the Rambler's not dead. You don't have to, he's not retired. He's gonna be around and we're definitely not ruling out that he will come back in a new iteration

or on his own shirt or whatever. It's like, that was never the intention. So if you love the Randler, the Randler's not going away. Randler ain't going away. He's very special. But yeah, from, yeah, I don't wanna keep getting into it, but like you think about Belvedere and like how that mascot is incorporated

in the Good Mythical Morning intros and how that's changed over the years. And you know, if he went away for an intro, then he might come back for an intro. It doesn't, you know, it's not, let's not be so precious about this that we can't change, especially when we're excited about the evolution of the brand and we wanted a new logo and we like it.

So, but there's so many things that we're continuing to learn about communication and having a growing team. And I'm just being honest, I'm not throwing any, I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus. I'm actually saying what we have to learn in this and the responsibility that we have to take is that, you know, when you have a team, we've got over a hundred people working for us across Mythical and Smosh.

And sometimes there's sensitivities might get missed or you might be looking at something through a certain lens of like, okay, I'm marketing this new line of sweatshirts and people need to know that the other ones are going away. So you kind of turn up the marketing in the subject line that we don't see or approve, honestly. Yeah. But it's, and-

Because we can't, because we would literally sleep less than we already do if we were to do that. We can't do that. And so it was a mistake and mistakes are made. It's not the end of the world. It's part of the, it's something that we expect. And as leaders, I think it's something that we have to, we have to learn that it's part of the equation,

but also say, what are our lessons learned here that we can convey, hey, this, you know, you may be newer to the team and the team's growing, but this is what the Randler means to Mythical Beasts. So there's a level of sensitivity that we could have communicated. Yeah, so it's a lesson- We could have done a better job.

It's a lesson learned for us. We don't blame anybody for misinterpreting it. It was open to misinterpretation. We don't blame anybody. We don't have an issue with you if you have an issue with this decision. We don't have an issue with you if you have an issue with this decision. We don't have an issue if you are mad that the Randler is not a part of that company logo.

We don't have an issue if you don't like the new logo. I will say that we are super excited about all of that and our team is super excited about it. So this is how we're moving forward. But that doesn't mean that you have to agree. And we wouldn't expect you to agree. And it doesn't make you any less of a mythical beast. Nope. Because you don't agree.

I mean, that's one of the things I see some comments where people are like, you're not a mythical beast if you don't agree with them. Well, no, we're not looking for, you know, everybody to fall in line. You know, we want you to be genuinely and generally happy and excited about the things that we're doing, but we know that the only people that we can please

all the time is us. And it's not even that easy for us to do that. But that's the only barometer that we have is our own personal interest and desire and our team as well, right? So that's how we decide what we're gonna do. And we usually have a really good barometer of how Mythical Beasts are gonna respond to something.

Well, and it kind of, it's a bit of a shakeup that like these two things were like misses in terms of our sixth sense of knowing how they're gonna respond and for different reasons. But again, it's lessons learned for us. And I'm just super excited about where, about the future of Musical.ly. Oh shit, I mean, Mythical.

I just get so confused lately. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's very confusing. So thanks for hearing us out and thanks for being patient and for trusting us over the past three weeks. If you didn't hear the little announcement in our live stream on the society,

this may, if it's the first you're hearing of this, thanks for trusting us for the time it's taken for this to come out. I think that's something we wanna do. Slow the pacing down here. No need to be as reactive. Yeah. Like we have an established relationship.

It doesn't, just because something shakes things up, doesn't, I had to resist the urge. I know you did too, to like step in at the moment and like, let's make a video right now. Let's clarify. That weekend when we were seeing all the comments, trust me, we were together actually when Link got back from his weekend out of town,

he came straight over to the creative house on President's Day when no one was really supposed to be working and we started figuring out what we were gonna say in a reaction, in a response video. And then we stopped because we said, "'Listen, we don't need to get, "'what we're gonna do if we do this "'is we're in an emotional place right now

"'and we're gonna end up saying something that we regret. And we're gonna say something else that's gonna be misinterpreted. So let's just hold, clarify this one thing on the live stream and then let's just talk about it on an Ear Biscuit. And we're gonna trust the mythical beasts and then we're going to trust that they're gonna trust us in the meantime.

So I think this is more relationship building and a little bit of boundary setting too. So, okay. I feel good about it. Sorry that took all the time that it took. Was that like a business meeting? It was a mini podcast. Let's get into middle school.

So for us, middle school was kind of a continuation of elementary school. Buies Creek Elementary went from kindergarten all the way through eighth grade, but there was the middle school hallway. The whole thing was shaped like a Z. Well, a very straight Z, like steps. And then you-

What is that? That should be a letter. But like- Why is that not a letter? So like the bottom right of your Z is the- It's like an H with the, if you look at an H and you just grab the top end on the left and the bottom end on the right and you tear them off.

Yeah. That should be a letter. I guess like knowing that layout of the school is not really the thing I wanted to, that was that important. No, I'm really interested in this. Spend that much time on it. But over the years,

you would move up the elementary school hallway and then you would start going to the next hallway. But that was like fifth grade, maybe sixth grade, but you weren't considered, definitely sixth grade, but you weren't considered middle school there until seventh grade. And the reason is because that's when your class schedule changed from one teacher all day to multiple classes But you weren't considered, definitely sixth grade, but you weren't considered middle school there until seventh grade. And the reason is because that's when your class schedule changed from one teacher all day to multiple classes

where you went to three different teachers. Yep. And we were in the same class for all of those. So we moved around together. Both years. Both years. All of the, yeah, once you were in a class together, it kind of, that was, you stayed in that lump.

Yeah. But you got a locker. Yeah, you got a locker. Locker for the first time. You could play sports because that was when you could like get on the basketball team or the, before that it was just- We both played on the soccer team.

Before that we had done recreation soccer, but this was like school soccer, school baseball, school basketball. And it was, so it was kind of cool that like your whole school career, you kind of saw this whole trajectory and you could see the middle schoolers, you could see those eighth graders

coming into the lunchroom and stuff. So it was like, you really had something to aspire to because it was right there in front of you. And it wasn't a huge scary deal to go to the middle school because it was just going further down the hallway. It was one of the more easy, it was the easier transition I can think of for most people having to go to like a whole new place

and new friends. It's like, it's everybody I was in school with before with like the one new person from Nebraska that shows up. To me, this is all wrapped up in the talent show, which we have talked about before, but at the end of the year, those three teachers were in charge of putting the talent show on.

So any student could sign up for what they wanted to do. And then there'd be that assembly during school hours where everybody would come in and sit in the auditorium and the seventh and eighth graders will perform their talents. And they were- And I had been thinking about this from, just intently from first grade.

Oh yeah, cause it's like- First time I ever saw it. These are celebrities. I was like, what in the world? And school celebrities getting up there. How did they get up there? Performing a song. And like, there would celebrities. In school, celebrities getting up there. How? And like, performing a song. And like, there would always be this big grim finale. Like the biggest act would be at the end.

And you'd go in there and you'd look forward to it. And then they would do it again that night for the parents would come in. So you'd have two performances. Shop Best Buy's ultimate smartphone sale today. Get a Best Buy gift card of up to $200 on select phone activations with major carriers. Visit your nearest Best Buy store today.

Terms and conditions apply. So by the time- I didn't even remember that. Yeah, by the time we were in seventh grade- And we had practiced in sixth grade because the fall festival- That's right. We did OPP and made it,

you're down with Halloween. That was sixth grade. And we talked our way into that. Yep. There was not supposed to be a performance of any kind in that thing and we were like, we gotta get ready for this talent show. We gotta know what it's like to be up on the stage

at this auditorium and perform for a full house. Yeah, so by the time as seventh graders, we formed our posse and picked out our rap song that we were gonna perform. We did- We had a big posse. We did Digital Underground, same song, which had Tupac in it. And then we added on, and then our friend Ben Greenwood,

he came out with his drum machine. Not on though. And he didn't turn it on? No, because we played the track. That's right. And we played a second song. But he had a drum machine. We added a second song onto the end of it.

Maybe that was eighth grade. Seventh grade was huge because it was our first year doing it and we like, they didn't put us last, but they put us close to last. And like we really showed up the final act. I don't even remember what the eighth graders did. Everybody forgot then. By the time we were eighth grade,

we knew we were gonna do So What's the Scenario by Tribe Called Quest. Yeah. And we have more people in our posse, but it was a big deal. And one of the reasons we chose- But that was like a victory lap. The seventh grade talent show was like the really coming of age.

We chose songs that had different parts, different rappers in it. Cause it was like, you can represent, like these people can each be represented by someone. And so the scenario had what, like four, five people rapping in it? Maybe six. Man, those were the good old days.

So yeah, so that just a picture. Oh gosh. That's who we were at the time. We were just thinking about being on stage and performing and getting attention. But also I was in a place where my sixth grade year had ended with my first ever girlfriend, a one month long relationship with Leslie.

There's a video on YouTube because she happens to be Link's first girlfriend too, where we called her and reminisced. Yeah, on the vlog channel. Cause yeah, seventh grade. Yeah, I found out we were in different sixth grade classes. I find out you were dating her. And then I was like, first of all, this is how I find out.

Like you didn't tell me. Like that's an indication of like sixth grade being in different classes, you start going with Leslie and I didn't know ahead of time. That's an indicator about like, that was just something that we didn't talk about. You know, I don't, maybe we weren't that close. Maybe it was just something you don't talk about.

No, I was only talking to the people that I felt were necessary to pull it off, which was her best friend, Amber, who then became my girlfriend in eighth grade. Right. But you didn't, talking to you about it, wouldn't have caused it to happen, so there was no reason to consult with you about it.

Unless we were like really good friends, Rhett. I didn't talk to anybody other than Tate. I talked to Tate because Tate was also interested in her. Oh, you were still trying to box him out. I did box him out. By telling him, dude, I'm going for Leslie. I think I said something like- It's my turn.

May the best man win, but just so you know, I'm also interested. I'm sure you didn't say may the best man. But my mentality, now, first of all, that relationship lasted one month. There was no hanky-panky. There was nothing, not even a holding. There was a holding of a hand at one dance.

That was it, no kissing. I wanted to, I didn't have the nerve. But I'm bringing the possibility of what it's like to have finally been in a relationship. And I've already made it very clear that from very early on, I was girl crazy. But the thing that I had was girl craziness without any game whatsoever, right?

I had no idea how to talk to girls. My go-to move was just staring, you know, and waiting to see if they stare back. Like I was so not good. And it's like, thing is, is that I was actually pretty sociable person and I was, oh, I wanted to get up in front of the school and I wanted to give a speech in front of class.

I wasn't awkward in those settings, but when it came to women, I just didn't know how to proceed at all. I just had this really high level of desire and then no game at all. But that did give you an edge because I think a lot of kids were still like me, I was very timid and I was like frozen. But you weren't frozen, you took action.

Yeah, but my actions were sort of characterized by timidity in one sense though. Like I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I'm gonna talk to the friend. I did not talk to friends. I did not. You didn't do anything. I didn't do anything.

So I'll give you credit for that. I mean, I was having a conversation with Amber in history class and she kept talking to me about the boy she liked. That happened to be you. And I kept trying to guess who it was. And I was guessing all these people. And then I think I probably guessed everybody except me

until I realized it was me. And then we started going together. Right. Because it was just- It was never that easy for me, just so you know. If it had been that easy for me- It was so easy yet I made it so difficult. If I had had the desire that I had,

but then the level of interest from girls that you had, you know what? I would be the father of a lot of children right now. Or something would, it would be bad. You know what I'm saying? Well, it's not necessarily bad. Having a lot of kids, a full quiver. I mean, okay, yeah, you're right.

Proverbs just say something like that. But so in seventh grade, me and Amber started going together. That's when I had my first kiss at the Lillington- Ruritan Club. Ruritan building for somebody's birthday. But who were you, so seventh grade, who were you-

Seventh grade was a dry spell for me. You weren't even at that point. I was primed and ready and pubed up and everything. But just, I was, let me say there was- Primed and ready and pubed up and everything. But just, I was, let me say there was- Primed and ready and pubed up. There were things happening. There were things happening. The plumbing was working and the plumbing was working often.

I mean, it was, I tested it constantly. Right, right. I was so ready, so ready. You weren't even testing your plumbing at that time, were you? No. Golly, so much missed opportunity. No, well, I mean, one tends to catch up. You won't ever catch up with me.

I mean, you could, you'd have to- I'll have to die for you to catch up with me. You'd have to quit your job. Wow, Rhett. You'd have to quit your job to catch up with me. What do you do for a living? I'm just masturbating all the time to try to catch up with Rhett. You know what, I'm not gonna do that.

I don't advise it. I've slowed down quite a bit. I don't want it to fall off. No, it's like lifting weights, man. It's like a bicep, yeah, the more you use it. Is it though? Well, definitely, if you don't wanna go- Is that your rationale, all these, your justification?

If you don't have a semi-regular release, now first of all, nocturnal emissions will kind of take care of it in one sense, but it's actually bad for your prostate health to hold it in, man. You gotta let it flow. Why let it flow? Yeah, I know gotta let it flow. Why let it flow? Yeah, I know you let it flow.

Thank you. I'm talking to, if you're like, oh, you're not currently in a relationship and you don't, I'm just saying, let it flow. Keep the hose going. Keep it going. Okay. And then, but I mean, you got a girlfriend in eighth grade. Amber.

Yeah, the same one you had in seventh grade. That's right. Yeah, and that's when I started dating. So we are using first names now, huh? Because we've talked about these relationships so much, the name's already out there, Anna. We've got whole songs about this. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So Anna became my eighth grade girlfriend and I'm proud of her. She was always smart and I think now she's as smart as ever. She's the smartest of all of us. Some sort of a lawyer situation. Harvard. Yeah, she's very smart. I mean, which is indicated by her long-term relationship

with me. It never made sense to me. But she was also very sweet. What was the last thing that filled you with wonder that took you away from your desk or your car in traffic? Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is... Anime! Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray.

And I'm Leah President. And welcome to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. It's a weekly news show. With the best celebrity guests. And hot takes galore. So join us every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel.

So that's who we were at the time. You were coming around a little bit. I was thinking about girls nonstop, but our friendship was reaching a new level because a couple of things. Number one, we were- Especially when you weren't dating anybody. I think seventh grade was an acceleration for us.

Yeah. Number one, we were in all the same classes together, which isn't something that had happened consistently because it was like every other year we'd be in the same class as we established on the last podcast. But another thing that was happening, jumping off of what we talked about last time,

is our level of sort of enthusiasm and seriousness about our faith was taking off. Kind of just a little story to put this into perspective. I don't think I've ever taught, maybe I've talked about this, but around that time, and I think it was the summer between my seventh and eighth grade year,

I suddenly became obsessed with whether or not I was actually saved. This is a very common thing in like evangelical circles, especially like Baptist circles, where, because you hear things from adults, like if you're not completely sure that you're saved and you're lost, you're saying these really damaging things to kids

about their certainty, about, you know, you're making their eternal salvation be based on a one-time event that they had to get just right. And I had, you know, prayed the sinner's prayer and done the whole, I want Jesus in my heart and forgive me of my sins when I was like five years old. So for a lot of times in the back of my mind, I was like, did I really understand it?

And I remember being at a Christian concert, New Song, who came to the D. Rich Auditorium at Campbell University where we saw many concerts, also saw a hypnosis one time. And I also heavy petted my girlfriend in the balcony of the same place just to put things in context. But not in the same night you rededicated.

Not the same night. So. I was not at this new song concert. Oh boy, you missed a show. You missed a show. My mom actually was. Five white guys with goatees singing in harmony. Yeah, and they're still around.

New song is just, they're like Menudo. They just replaced the members. Oh, well, it's gotta stay new. And so you went forward for a rededication? No, I didn't, again, I've always been, I'm more timid than you might think, okay? I'm more timid than you might think. Because- That takes a lot of,

you gotta check your pride to go forward. Well, the thing is is that what happened was is they were like, raise your hand and come forward. This is a classic invitation where at the end of a concert, you haven't really done the concert if you don't invite everybody to make a personal decision for Jesus right then and there. And I've got this overwhelming feeling that now is the time.

I gotta just make sure, I gotta make sure that I'm saved. I couldn't go forward because I was like, I knew so many people there and I was like, I don't wanna confuse them. And what are they gonna think about me? So on the way home with my parents in the car is when I said, I started crying and I was like, I don't think, I don't know if I'm saved

and I really wanted to go forward. Well, this is like seventh grade. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Damn, you're like crying in the car? Yeah. Cause maybe we talked about it, but I don't think we talked about it. You might've said, you know, I rededicated my life.

Before that night, I remember that summer, cause I think that that concert was, it was either the beginning of seventh or beginning of eighth grade, I can't remember the exact. I just remember that summer, I couldn't go. And this is where I have sympathy with people who have obsessive compulsive disorder and get obsessed about one particular thing

that maybe they think they got wrong or they needed. Having this thing that I kept going back to, that the moment that my mind would move off of whatever I was directly engaged in, playing a video game, shooting a basketball, boom, I would be hit with this, oh man, I might die and go to hell and I've got to get this right.

Wow. And it was overwhelming. It was really, again, I know I don't have obsessive compulsive disorder, but it was this one time where I was like, now that I've grown up and I understand, I know people who, like my wife who have it, it's like, oh man, I understand.

But for you there was a buildup to it. And did that new song, Night, give you the relief you desired? Yeah, I never thought about it again. Seal the deal. Cause then I was like, I don't know when I got saved, if it was five or 14. And then as I got older, I began to understand more

about grace, you know, and understand that like, it's, you know, you think God was sitting, and if I was that worried about it, that was probably, I was probably saved. Now, of course, I don't believe any of that framework anymore, but at the time I very much believed it, it was the most important thing.

Well, it does go to show you, I mean, yeah, in our involvement at church and in the youth group and in the choir, like they were like Sunday morning for Sunday school and church, Wednesday night was youth night. Thursday night was like the choir night. It's like, we were still involved in all these things. And like Tim was our new, was our youth pastor. And he was like, he was like,

he was bubbling over with joy for all this. He was like a super sweet, nice, sincere guy. And he was just, he was enthusiastically in love with Jesus. And enthusiastically, all systems go on evangelism. And between him and Benny Inzor, who was involved, he was our choir director back then, like middle school. And we were like,

so this was after the Bible tells and so-so stuff, which update on that, we have the church play digitized and we're gonna find the right time for us to do like a participant commentary, we didn't direct it, on the Mythical Society, because I think with rights, that's the best, maybe the only place we can do it. So we'll let you know when that happens.

You think you're gonna get sued by the Bible tells me so people? Tells me so people? Well, they are. You think they're still doing that show? They are. They're very litigious. Yeah, they might be, I don't know.

They're very litigious. Yeah, they might be. I don't know. So this was the age of, by the time you get in seventh and eighth grade, you can start to go on mission trips, baby. Oh yeah. That was huge for us because not only were we, all the stuff that we had been doing at church

and like how tight knit our group of friends was that had come up through all of the indoctrination. Now we were going out, we're taking trips in the summer and you didn't wanna feel too guilty about that last day where it felt like a vacation because we were going there for the Lord's work. After all, it's called a mission trip.

You're on a mission to bring the love of Jesus and salvation to the people of the mountains of North Carolina or the mountains of West Virginia or Trinidad. That's an island. I've never been out of the continental United States and here I am. That was the first time, yeah. I think that was after our eighth grade year.

But all of these mission trips were like, especially Trinidad, these are like big moments of all of us taking this huge risk where it's like, what is Tim gonna ask us to do? He's gonna ask us to like- It was throwing accelerant on the spark of your faith. The honest perspective on this, and every youth pastor knows this is that

these mission trips are not really about the work that you're doing and they're not really about the people that you're reaching because most of the time you're just talking to people who already know. And sure, I mean, yes, there was a little boy who I used a bracelet to bring to a personal saving knowledge of Jesus Christ in Trinidad. Used a bracelet?

You remember the bracelet? You said, I'll give you this bracelet if you accept Jesus. No, no, we had the bracelet with the beads on it, and each bead represented a point in the gospel. Do you remember, what was the, the first bead was black for sin. The second bead was red for blood of Jesus. And then- The next bead was white

for Jesus cleanses your sin. Pretty racist, by the way. And then there's- Black before sin, white after sin. But we didn't pick up on that. We were also talking to kids in Trinidad. Yeah, this is, but it still worked. I think there was a green one for like growth.

Yeah, there was a blue one for baptism. Oh. Because blue was baptism. That was after the white was, because you get saved and then you make a decision for Jesus. You make it the public decision. Right. With baptism and then green you grow.

I think there was a yellow at some point. I think yellow was the rededication. The inevitable rededication. Anyway, so, but the point I'm making is that it's really about the way it solidifies and accelerates your own faith. Like it's those milestones that if you want your youth group to like suddenly be on fire, you go somewhere together and you basically have a trauma bond experience together

and then you're all in, right? You're going on this trip to like this foreign island. Christian camps do the same thing. But Christian camp is like, you're not doing as much ministry. This was all, it was all outward oriented. So like you were put in these, like out of your comfort zone.

Every day you would go and let's paint this woman's house. And I have a scar on my knee where I stepped through a barbed wire fence and like ripped out a chunk of my knee. I always remember that trip to the mountains of North Carolina, painting that woman's house. And I remember some of us had to,

was like, we gotta go up to the door and talk to her. Like, we gotta make sure that she knows Jesus. And just kind of having this sense of mission and obligation and you know, you're serving people, but you're also trying to seal the deal. And yeah, you either had a bracelet or you will be taught to, you could use the five fingers on your hand.

Yeah, that's cool. So it's like, put your thumb up, thumbs up. Good news. I've got good news. Point your index finger. You're gonna die. You're going to hell. And then middle finger. I guess middle finger would be going to hell.

I think it's like, so I don't know. Those first two are like, you're going to hell. See? Yeah, right. Bird. And the ring finger is gonna make a commitment to Jesus. And then the pinky is like, you got a little, now your faith begins to grow. It's a little faith.

But that's probably not what it is. It's basically taking people down the Roman's road. But we want, but you see these tools that we were given that then we had to put into practice. And every night we would come back and we'd have these- Gospel in a hand is what we called it. Circles where we would do popcorn prayer.

We would like ask, we would share our experiences and pray for one another. And you know, so I was a seventh grader. It was very meaningful because we didn't, there wasn't a lot that we had to care about that deeply. Right? Again, I think that's one of the- Taking huge risks with your friends. That's why religion is so effective

is that there is this deep longing for meaning, right? I mean, I'm sitting there just whacking off every day and thinking, is this all there is? It's just whacking off? I mean, it's okay, it's pretty cool. But you were feeling horrible about it. I was feeling horrible. I wasn't feeling as horrible about it

as I would in high school. Okay. That just got, it got worse and worse. But what I'm getting at is I was like, there's something lasting and there's something deeper and more meaningful and there's something eternal that I can be a part of. The work that we're doing is eternal.

And we were, you and I, there was a group of friends, but there were more girls than guys in our youth group. Holly was a part of all these trips. Well, you're making a point that there were older girls. There were high school girls, but not, and a few guys on these trips too. But that was the other thing is this like,

you're sitting there praying for and hearing like this like high school girl pray and maybe she'll pray for me or maybe I can pray for her. It was intimate. It was like, it was awesome. But you and I were like the most committed of our friend group, especially, and we were like the only guys

who were as committed as we were. So it's like it very much resonated with us and became even more of a center point of our friendship. Right, to bring it back to us, the way that we were connecting with each other, because, and I think this is when a certain dynamic, from my perspective, this is a dynamic that was developing and I wanna hear what you think about this.

Okay. So, you know, my parents were together, still are together and my dad, you know, the way I saw my dad was that he had the knowledge about everything, right? Like you wanna know what to think about politics, you wanna know what to think about religion. He's got it figured out. And he was smart, but he was also very assertive

in how he talked about it. Yeah. And confident. And so I would sort of take the things that he said, and yes, the things that our youth pastor said, but it's just like, you really wanna know what's the real deal. I talked to my dad, and then I would sort of assimilate that into the Rhett version, which whatever.

And then I would be like, well, I've gotta get Link straightened out about, he's gotta know what to think about politics, right? Because that relates to your faith and the role and what God is trying to do through politics in the world. But this is also, this is what you need to think about predestination. You know, this is what you need to think about baptism.

I've got this information. Now I've got to give it to you because, well, you don't have a dad at home who's telling you these things, right? So I've got, so I, and again, now this was not a calculated thing and I never thought about it that way, but that dynamic existed.

Like I was getting this information and I had a willing recipient of that information in you. Oh yeah, I mean, we did talk about beliefs a lot and yes, whatever the dinner table conversation was at your house about politics or religion, we would talk about the next day. And I would just, I'll be like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, just, you know, I was just looking

for youth pastor and I guess your dad through you to just, yeah, just tell me what to believe. Give me the right answers. You know, I'll ace this test. This feels good. And so yeah, it was like, that was my predisposition. And neither one of us- So to kind of lock in.

Neither one of us had a contrarian or questioning aspect to our personality. Now, I kind of developed that over time, obviously by deconstructing and there's a little bit of that in me that came out. But at the time, it was like- That wasn't until like late college and after. We had friends, there were kids who were already being like,

well, hold up now, really? This is what y'all, this is what we believe? We just were just primed for, this is what we believe? Yes, how do I believe it really, really hard? How do I align my life completely with it in every way? It was like, this is the most important thing, never crossed my mind that it might not be true. Yeah. It was just like,

this is it, man. And by you, what I was getting from you, when I would like, if I would like bring something like that, I was like, oh, he's just as serious about this as I am. And so we began to separate a little bit, especially from our guy friends, as these guys who we took this seriously. And we began to bond more aggressively These guys who we took this seriously.

We began to bond more aggressively because of the way that we were separating and kind of gravitating towards this view of our faith. Yeah, and seventh grade was the last year that Ben was in school before he went to homeschool. That was another big factor. I think he was easing out into homeschool because of his chronic fatigue syndrome. And so by eighth grade, he was basically not there.

He didn't go to church with us, but we would still, he still participated in the talent show with us. We still go to his house and like do dance routines and learn like rap songs and stuff. So, I mean, y'all were still very tight. But the amount of time- It was this point where we became more of a threesome. Well, I would say- Friendship.

I think we were more of a threesome earlier. Okay. And I think this is when with Ben's chronic fatigue, there were days when I would call over there and Ms. Greenwood would answer the phone and she'd be like, Ben can't do anything right now. Yeah. And as a seventh grader, especially me,

I just was not, I've never been, I still have problems like talking to people. Which we've already talked about that. But this is- So that ended up being this thing where, okay, I'm not spending this time with Ben. I'm not doing this thing like every day during the summer between fifth grade and sixth grade,

I was gonna be at Ben's house doing something and you would be there a lot, right? But like the default was we're going to Keith Hills to do something. And that was changing. Now it became, this is when like in the book of mythicality, we're talking about you and I riding our bikes and meeting at the midpoint at the middle of town.

Yeah. And I had enough confidence as a seventh grader to start riding my bike everywhere and spending the night at your house more often. And that's when like, we would start doing the flashlight wars and we would go to the Keith Hills Gate. You would, I would come along for the things

that you've been doing for years with your neighborhood friends, like setting off fireworks at the gate and having the security guard show up or like the campus police for Campbell University and they would get on the loudspeaker and say, boys, we know you're in the woods, come out. I loved it.

And then I would start to come out and realize I was the only one walking out and then I wouldn't walk out. And then we'd like, we would sprint back to your house. And I was so much slower that me and your neighbor, Heather, weren't fast enough to keep up. And we got caught in the headlights of the security car. And then we had to go talk to the security guard.

But he gave us a really strong lecture and let us go because you ditched us. Yeah, man, I mean, every man for himself. So yeah, I was kind of getting in the mix there and like having more sleepovers and starting to gain confidence. And none of that was registering with me, by the way. And things didn't register, I don't think things register.

Things registered with me in terms of like, cause I remember basketball was another thing where like, I mean, we were definitely best friends by this point and it was, and church was the engine and then school was just icing on the cake. But like you were on the basketball team as a seventh grader and eighth grader, of course, but like, I find it wild that we did play soccer together.

That's something that I tend to forget. I wanna come back to the basketball, but like you were the goalie, right? Yeah, much to my, I did not like it. Because you were so tall. You were so big. I was like, man, I should be over there scoring goals, man. And I played, I liked soccer.

I was pretty good at it, at defense, you know? I couldn't run a lot. I didn't have a lot of stamina, hence the security guard thing, but I could play some good defense. Yeah, because sports were becoming a really big part of my life. And then of course I was gonna play everything

that we were allowed to play, which that was those were the three sports, soccer, baseball, and basketball. And I was just hanging on by the soccer thread other than that. And again, I didn't know that you, cause we didn't talk about these things. Now as a kid, a parent of teenage boys,

I get the fact that you're just not, there's a whole part of your brain that you're not really using. And you really look back on these things reflectively, but. But I'm thinking of things like, he's playing basketball, like, and he practices basketball so much, like this really infringes on us being able to hang out.

I believe, I'm pretty positive, that the reason why I started keeping score for the girls basketball team was because it gave me something to do that like I was attached, I traveled with the basketball team, with the boys and girls. And then so I could-

You had to go on the bus. I got to go on the bus and I could keep score for the girls and didn't just watch the boys game. Cause I thought it was cooler to be able to watch the boys game. Versus keep up with it. Yeah. Pandora though, she was tough to keep up with.

She's tough to keep up with as I recall. She was a stat machine. Yeah, just a layup tyrant. But that was part of my equation. You know, it's like, I wanna be in the mix. I wanna, you know, what's my middle school identity? I'm okay with being the scorekeeper if I can be on the bus, if I can be in the mix.

And you were, so you were processing things on that level? I remember that, yeah. Yeah, to me- But I also knew that I would never talk about it because it's like talking about your feelings and being needy is just a real sign of weakness. Like, what am I supposed to say? It's like, well, can I,

do you think I can be a scorekeeper so that we can spend time together? But just to clarify, aren't you like, our kids talk about that stuff. It is very much a generational and also a geographical thing. There was probably kids in certain places in the world that were, and in our community,

that just wasn't how you process life as a kid. Right. So for me, it was just like, oh, there's a sport, I can play it, I can be good at it, okay. It never crossed my mind that do I want, like, am I having fun? It wasn't about having fun, it was about winning. It never crossed my mind, it was just like,

you have to be as good as you possibly can at this. And of course you have to be as good as you possibly can at this. And you have to be as good as you possibly can at this. And it wasn't just sports, it was like, oh, you also have to be as good as you possibly can at this. And of course you have to be as good as you possibly can at this. And you have to be as good as you possibly can at this. And it wasn't just sports. It's like, oh, you also have to be as good as you possibly can at academics. You have to be as good as you possibly can

at the talent show, at giving a speech for the class. But it didn't feel like pressure. It just felt like a way of being. Yeah, this is the plan. I mean, and it was such a tight knit community. Like in our middle school classes, seventh and eighth grade, we had the same three teachers, Ms. Wake, Ms. McClam and Mr. Royal,

who was also the basketball coach, PE coach, health teacher. And our group of friends, whenever something would happen or there'd be like strife, there will be drama with the girls. And sometimes it would involve guys and dating. And sometimes it would be us doing like stupid stuff. But regardless of what happened, that like there was drama or trouble,

all three teachers would take it upon themselves to hold a tribunal to resolve it. They wouldn't send anybody to the principal's office. They were sparing him because he had the rest of the school. And I think that they like to be more heavy handed than he was. You remember if you were in one,

you'd be in one class and all of a sudden, like a knock on the door and another teacher would like call the teacher out. And then we just, we'd be in one class and all of a sudden, like a knock on the door and another teacher would like call the teacher out. And then we just, we'll be back in a minute student. And then instead of coming back in, she would say, Rhett, Link, can you step out into the hall? And then we'd step out into the hall and all three teachers would be there,

like laying into us, like questioning us about something we did or, and sometimes it would be there, like laying into us, like questioning us about something we did or, and sometimes it would be like calling the girls out into the hall and there'd be like six girls out in the hall with the three teachers, just like trying to have like a, it's a tribunal. They were put on trial and it was kind of amazing. I remember this in general.

I don't remember it as specifically as you do. I remember when the six girls are going, okay, well I know why these are the six girls going out because they had a sleepover, but that one girl wasn't invited and now her feelings are hurt. So like that level of drama, like that middle school drama, like the teachers were like,

one of them was a parent of one of our friends. Right, one of the girls in the group. But they were all like very involved and like- I never thought about that being one of the dynamic- It was like street justice. Yeah. I don't remember what the punishments were. We never really got in much trouble.

I think it wasn't really punishments as much as it was like the tribunal and the lecture was the punishment. You know? Yeah, because we never got like suspended. No. Because everything we were doing, we were all really, we all made really good grades.

And we were good kids, but we were mischievous. Yeah, which we definitely carried on in high school. But like that middle school drama thing, they were, it's just so fascinating. They were so in the weeds and it weeds and we were scared of them. And that's when I was told, when you get to high school next year, they're gonna stuff you in a locker.

Well, as it relates to me and you, I mean, I'm surprised that that didn't happen, but as it relates to me and you, I think that middle school is when people began to think of us as a duo. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

The teachers. Yep. That's why if you got called into something, I would get, and vice versa, our friends. So Rhett and Link, they're a duo. And again, this was not like an intentional thing, but it was like, oh, there's a school dance. There's the lip sync contest.

It was like, oh, well, we're gonna do DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince because they're the ultimate duo. We're the ultimate duo. Mm-hmm. We started performing together. We started seeing ourselves as a team. If we could work together on a project, like if there was a way to be like,

hey, we're gonna do this Oedipus video. That's right, and we used Anna's video camera and we did our first video project. And it was like, hey, we're gonna do this Oedipus video. That's right, we used Anna's video camera and we did our first video project. And it was like, we were kind of thinking about it in that way and then we did a whole different one over at Heather's house. Yeah. But the next year, there was a cornfield and like a scarecrow.

Yeah. But we started, we just naturally fell into this creative partnership. That's right. That really hadn't happened up until that point, right? It happened through the talent shows, through video projects. That was when we began to work together creatively. And I think that, now we had done things like

the stupid little radio shows and stuff at the house, right? Yeah, the pause tapes. But what I found, and of course, I'm going around, I'm sampling every friendship. You know what I was doing. I was going to every single house. I was spending the night at everybody's house. And I had in mind, not an agenda,

but I sort of just naturally carried with me an agenda without thinking about it. It was just my personality. To what? I wanna have fun in a particular way. Okay. I am interested in having fun in this way. Okay, now we've got this radio.

I think that we should do this radio show and like we should do voices and that kind of thing. There was no one else who was receptive to that besides you. I was all in. You know what I'm saying? No one was receptive to that way of thinking about amusing themselves. Ben was.

Ben was. Ben was. Well, as we discussed, Ben was even more of an ideas guy. Yeah, right. And he was more out there and like, I mean, again, when you go over to his house and he's like, let me show you the new dance that I invented. Right.

And it's kind of like river dance. It's like, I mean, he was wild card. He was amazing. But yeah, I was kind of like river dance. It's like, I mean, he was a wild card. He was amazing. But yeah, I was very much like, yes, I had a sense of like, yeah, we're gonna hang out. We're gonna make stuff. We're gonna do stuff. This is it.

This is amazing. And regardless of what it was, this is a precursor to like the blood-o thing. But I definitely had that sense at that point. If we're gonna hang out for an afternoon, whether it was, you know, me and you or Ben was there or not, it might be like, all right, we're not just getting together.

Like we're getting together and today's mission is fill in the blank. Go out and cut down a tree. Try to make a raft that we're gonna float in the backyard. Take some stuff off of this tree and make a tea that Ben said we should make because we found it're gonna float in the backyard, take some stuff off of this tree and make a tea that Ben said we should make because we found it in a book in the library.

Yeah. We had missions, we had agendas and then- Go into that sewer. Right, it carried with it a sense of mission and then that was, we filled our time with that way of thinking and then we also filmed any creative endeavor with the same sense of mission. Like this is gonna be good and this has gotta be

the best thing that we've ever done. Again, we never talked about it. There was no like, let's have a meeting and figure this out. Right. It was in the natural thing where, and then with Ben sort of checking out because of the health problems that he was having. I mean, I still believe to this day

that if Ben had not had those issues, the three of us would have grown up and started something together. Yeah, I believe that. With something creative together. But what ended up happening is it was the two of us were kind of left. Yeah, and then people started to group us together.

Like that's when people would say, it would be Rhett and Link, Rhett and Link, this, that, and the other, you know? A lot of weekends we would hang out, we'd spend the night at one person's house or the other. I think it started to happen a whole lot at this phase. And so it was this identity of, oh, these guys are a duo.

Yeah, I definitely think that people thought of it that way. Yeah, and there's another dynamic that started to develop at this point that I think is a dynamic that has characterized a lot of our friendship since that point. And we wrote this into the Lost Causes of Lake Creek in the way that we described the Rex character, talking to the Leaf character about something,

about the film school thing. It was, and I remember the first time, the first time I can remember that this happened was, it was between eighth grade and ninth grade. So we graduated from eighth grade and we were getting ready to go to high school. We were swimming in the river like we did so often. And so often that summer, it was just me and were swimming in the river like we did so often. And so often that summer,

it was just me and you swimming in the river, no Ben. Right. And I was casting vision, right? For high school. For high school. This is what high school is gonna be, get ready. And I was doing it through the lens of the women that we were going to get to meet because now it wasn't just all the girls

that we've known for eight years. It was the girls from Lillington and the girls from- The girls that we've seen when you played them in basketball and- The cheerleaders. You saw the cheerleaders and you saw the girls in the stands and you saw, and hey, I met a few scorekeeping girls.

Right, yeah. From other schools. Smarty pants with glasses on. Now- Good with a pencil. And so I remember sort of like trying to cast this vision. And again, that was when it kind of began. And then I feel like I kind of carried this role forward. Right? Oh yeah. I remember the specifics. I feel like I kind of carry this role forward, right? Oh yeah, I remember the specifics. Here's the vision

and this is the way you should be thinking about it. This is how you should be getting excited about it. And again, you are this incredibly receptive person that responded in a way that no one else would respond to me. Yeah. No one else would listen to me in the same way. Yeah, and I was like, I didn't just soak it up.

I did give it back. It was just like, okay. You were on board. Like you were like, you know, that cheerleader from Andrew, Melissa, it's like, oh man, she's- Yeah, she's here at the top of the pyramid. She's, yeah.

And then, I remember we were talking about her, I remember two other girls we were talking about specifically. They were both in relationships. That didn't matter. It didn't matter. I said those would not last over the summer. Right. I was right. One of, Melissa stayed in a relationship.

That did not pan out for me. Well. Because your vision, I think my vision too was that I was gonna date her. We had two girls that we were gonna date together. Yeah. Mine didn't work out just because she wasn't receptive to me because I couldn't convince everyone of everything

at all times. Right. Once they saw my face, they'd be like, okay, well, you better be something, there may be some other things going on. Stephanie's a smart girl. Yeah, right. So we've already said these names,

so I just, you might as well go on record. But yeah, I do think that that's when it really, when it really started to come together. Like you talk about the accelerant of a mission trip and like, we just took that mentality into our friendship. Like we totally got each other and we were going in the same direction. We wanted the same things, a lot of it being attention.

And I was scared as hell of girls, but every day I was getting more ready to overcome that. It would take until 10th grade to do so, but every day I was getting more ready to overcome that. It would take until 10th grade to do so, but we can talk about that next time. Because I think this is a good place to stop. Like the next time we pick up this series, of course we'll be in high school. And that's an interesting phase because our friendship,

our friend group grew a lot. And then the things that we were devoting our time to, like you no longer played soccer and I didn't have anything to do with keeping score for basketball. Like there was more, I'll say threats to our closeness in a lot of ways. But then there were some key things that counteracted that.

So, you know, we can walk through all that and see what we can remember next time we pick this up in like, I don't know, in like a month and a half, we'll keep going at like that cadence, but. Okay. Yeah. Middle school was big for us, man. So, I mean, I think that the thing that I had not,

the thing I wanna remember is a thing that I had forgotten until talking about it, which I think that middle school is the beginning of the duo. Yeah. That was the beginning of us being seen as a duo. Right. That other people would have perceived us in that way. Okay. And specifically creative.

Not just a friend duo, but a creative duo. Middle school was formative. Yeah. All right, what's your rec? My rec is a rec that you recommended to me that I finally watched over the weekend. Oh? Chillin' Island.

HBO Max, they got some good stuff. So when I see something I'm like on HBO Max, I might give that a shot, especially if it's like, if it's featuring Lil Yachty or Young Thug. And I started with, because you told me to, I started with a Lil Yachty episode, which is what I'm gonna recommend to you. I don't even know what the first episode is

and I don't know, and I didn't go back and watch it yet. Did you watch the Lil Tecca episode? I watched Lil Yachty then Lil Tecca and I was like, I felt bad for Lil Tecca. Yes. But Lil Yachty is, listen, I don't know. I don't know anything about Lil Yachty. I do.

Other than what I've seen in this one episode. Oh, yeah. And it's like, what an incredible dude. I love him. Like I met him at the- At the video game awards. Game awards show, but like we gotta have him on the show. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I mean, talk about a dude who just embraces his weird. Yeah, he's great. I mean, he's living on his own plane. But the show is so- Interesting, right? They're just not trying to do any, they're trying to do something that is an innovative and- There's three hosts.

And it's like a mixed media thing because there's a narrative that is unfolding that usually has a make believe element to it, right? Like the little yachty episode is sort of centered around the Yeti, the Sasquatch. But then what they're doing is unscripted. Like what they're talking about is unscripted in the conversation.

I don't know who these guys are. Do you know who the hosts are? Like what's their background, like who they are? I think they're like podcast guys. They're like hip hop community. They're in that mix. But either radio or podcast guys. I just found myself thinking,

man, I really think I want us to be on an episode of this. And then I was just like, if we go through the trouble of like reaching out, they wouldn't even let us on because- We're not cool enough. We're just too square. We're too square. You know, they'd be like, what, those dudes from that show on YouTube? Like, but I just, I want them to know that we're too square. We're too square. You know, they'd be like, what, those dudes from that show on YouTube?

Like, but I just, I want them to know that we're weird too. And we like being weird as much as we possibly can. It's just sometimes we are constrained and can't be. But HBO Max is a place- So you got really self-conscious watching this thing. HBO Max is a place where you could, I would just love the fact that they were talking about the kinds of stuff

that we talk about when we're with our friends and the conversations go to these places, these super philosophical and ridiculous places where we just all end up making ourselves laugh a whole lot. But sometimes it feels like it's a prank on the guest because like Lil Yachty or whoever it is, they don't, they're clearly unprepared for what's about to happen

and everybody else kind of knows the itinerary. And I think Lil Yachty and Lil Tecca represent two different ways to approach it. But here's the thing, Lil Tecca is like 19 years old. It's a whole lot to ask and also to go on a fishing boat. Oh God. Which I think they were next to Catalina is probably where they were.

Yeah, they didn't say. But it's not very narratively cohesive. Deep sea fishing is really difficult to do and he got sick and I was like, I would have gotten sick too. But like the little yachty just because he's older and he's a little bit more comfortable in his own skin. Yeah.

And that's why I wanted you to watch those two back to back because once you appreciate a little yachty, then you really understand how much on a limb they're going with what they did to Lil Tecca. Oh, and then the guy from Vampire Weekend shows up. Yeah. And I just didn't pay attention for a moment. And then I was like, who is this guy?

Yeah, Ezra Koenig. And then once he started trying to explain his one song, I was like, oh, that's the dude from Vampire Weekend? Yes. He showed up? Pretty funny. It's the kind of thing that we would envision. This is what, I watched it, I did one of those things where I watch it

and I was self-conscious about two things. One, how I wanted to be on the show and two, how I want to make a show like that. But then you just, depending on who you're trying to make a show for, they will tell you that like, this is too weird for us, right? I just, I love what HBO is doing

because they're just willing to just make something that, first of all, this isn't going to appeal to many of you who go and watch this show. You'd be like, why did he recommend this? But some of you will be like, this is my jam. And so this is for those who will make that decision and feel that way. Yeah, all right, hashtag Ear Biscuits.

Let us know, I don't know, what stood out to you from our middle school tales. And I know we're gonna be talking about the first part of this as well. So we'll get into that too on some hashtag Ear Biscuits.