Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Our Evacuations During the LA Fires | Ear Biscuits Ep. 455

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

We are all safe! In this episode, Rhett & Link talk about their personal experiences during the Los Angeles fires – from learning about them to evacuating to trying to move forward. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by the fires, and have nothing but gratitude and appreciation for the brave firefighters and the community that has gathered together to help. Here are a few places where you can donate:  California Community Foundation California Fire Foundation L.A. Fire Department Foundation Pasadena Humane Society Ventura County Community Foundation American Red Cross of Greater Los Angeles Center for Disaster Philanthropy Direct Relief 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

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I'm Rhett. And I'm Link. This week at the round table of Dim Light lighting, we're gonna take you through our California wildfire experience. Woo boy, I'm tired. It's been quite a week. We're kinda still in it. Yeah.

When we're recording this, we are recording this on Tuesday, January 14th, so this is one week after all of this started. And yeah, and then it's obviously a few days, a handful of days before it comes out, so hopefully things continue to get better and there's not like something else that we couldn't have talked about because it's in the past, but there won't be anything else in the future that's worse. So what we'll do is we will, from our perspective, start from the beginning and

kind of take you through what it's been like for each one of us. And we've been together a little bit, we've been apart for a little bit, and so we'll kind of just, we're just gonna tell our story. That way we can remember it. To give you the update. First of all, our hearts and concerns go out to everybody who's been impacted by these fires, those who've lost everything that they've got. We've got close friends who've lost their entire home.

I mean, the number of people, the number of people that we know personally who've lost their home. And then you just, you talk to people who, even people who aren't from here, just they're trying to appreciate the scale of the number of individual people who have been impacted is just staggering. That's really the thing that makes this so much different

than anything we've ever experienced is the fact that these fires, we've dealt with fires that are kind of burning in the brush, in the woods woods kind of outside of LA, but this whole getting into the community and essentially wiping two communities, the Palisades and Altadena off of the map, that is the unprecedented nature of this thing for our area.

Yeah, and we know a good amount of people in Altadena because it's not that far from our area, which our homes were, my home was literally the border of the evacuation zone. But then to be- Don't get ahead of yourself. Oh, okay. You have to talk about when you learned that

in the course of the story. All right. Well, I would say I'm particularly tired because, you know, I'm still staying down in Long Beach. I'm thinking we'll come back tonight. We'll talk about that. But yeah, I still haven't... This is my first day coming back in, because it's been a few of like, what is going on? Should we go back? Should we wait? Trying to figure all that out. And again, like Link said, this is a tragedy. We're still in the midst of processing it.

But I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you that we will probably laugh during this podcast. We will probably talk about some funny things that happened along the way, because that's how we're coping with it. Yeah. So just... Thanks for giving us that. Laughter trigger warning. Yeah.

We're gonna laugh. So when did... where do we start? Well, for me it started on Monday before the Tuesday. We were at work. Well, so I... okay, go ahead. on Monday before the Tuesday. We were at work. Well, so I, okay, go ahead. And it was quite windy. So I didn't know anything.

I get back from North Carolina on that Sunday and then on Monday, we did not come into the office. Okay? That's right, yeah. Whatever date that was. We didn't come into the office. So I, of course I'm still working because that's what I do.

But, and my wife's out of town. It's just me and I get back in town and it's me and Shepherd and then Locke and his girlfriend, and his girlfriend from the East Coast who's never been to Los Angeles. She was here for this entire time. Wow. More on that in a moment.

But the two of them are off on a little trip into the mountains. And I'm not looking at the news. I'm literally going to bed on Monday night. I'm on Reddit. I'd really try not to be, but sometimes you just can't help yourself. And I'm looking at the data is beautiful subreddit.

And they have this picture of the projected wind speeds. picture of the projected wind speeds, in Burbank it says 121 miles, it says 121. And so then there's this debate about is this a joke, is this a prank, is this miles per hour, is this kilometers per hour? And I very quickly learn, like over the course of like five minutes I'm like, holy shit, like there's going to be hurricane force winds in Los Angeles, and there's extreme fire conditions because it's so dry, it hasn't rained since May. Like when I say that, like you said, no, it hasn't rained. I think the LAX has registered like four 100ths of an inch since May of rain or something crazy like that.

It's absolutely bonkers, right? So I'm immediately thinking, my son and his girlfriend are in the mountains right now. So I call him, I'm like, hey man, I just found out that I haven't been paying attention, we've been out of town, but this crazy wind event is coming, the fire conditions are bad, I don't feel comfortable with you being up there. You know, when you wake up in the morning, you need to go ahead and drive back,

because it's going to get really bad tomorrow night, that Tuesday night. And I kind of wanted to say, come on and drive home right now, because he's only like an hour and a half away. But he calls me back back and he's like, I think we're going to drive home now. And we're like, thank God. Well, there you go. I didn't tell him.

So they come back. So that was how it started for me, was like, all of a sudden realizing, I'm not prepared. Jessie and Barbara, my dog, are still in North Carolina, and they were going to be in North Carolina for an additional week because Jessie's doing like her photo shoot for the cabin, right?

She's finally finished it and she's doing like her photo shoot. So she's there. So she's, I'm, I'm faring by myself. I'm the only responsible adult in my immediate family. And I'm not that responsible. So, and I've got this, you know, I've got Locke's girlfriend,

you know, it began to dawn on me what I was getting myself into. That's what was happening to me on that Monday night. But I went to sleep and I slept relatively soundly. Well, Christy was, you know, by the time I got home from work, I mean, that morning we recorded the last podcast that came out.

We did. And then it was like, it started to get windy and we were like, we're just gonna leave after this and go home. Yeah. And then Christy was like, we just need to have some stuff ready. We need to have like a go pack and all that stuff.

Which we technically should already have done given the fact that we live in Los Angeles, but we didn't. I mean, I wasn't, I have stuff to like hunker down at my house, like food and water and supplies and stuff. Yeah. I don't have the get ready to go, here's your documents and here, I didn't have any of that ready.

I mean, I benefit from having like like, between me and Christy, having our house, like, very organized, but she has started to think about, by the time I got home, she was thinking about the stuff that we needed to pack. Medications, documents, and then, like, change of clothes and toiletries. That's the extent that we went the night before. I told the boys, like Lincoln's still at home, he's not going back to college yet. Lily had already left. So I told Lando and Lincoln, like, just pack change of clothes, toiletries, you know, and then we packed, like, documents and stuff. And I went ahead and put stuff in the car. Now typically I'd be

like, oh, don't worry about it. Like I told Lando, I was like, this is a 1% chance that we'll have to evacuate. 1%. Of course, I made that number up. Really? And he's been giving me a really hard time about it. But I'm like, but how did you sleep that night? And I was like, okay, so dad, now I know that you'll just lie to me so I can sleep. I was like, well, you know, you got one last good night's sleep out of this.

Okay, well. Because you wouldn't have had that. So yeah, we packed everything. We put a bunch of stuff at the door, but not in the car. Okay, so you were more prepared for me. This is, because we'll hand this back and forth as we go through the timeline. So even that night going to bed for us... I'm backing up a little bit. Oh, okay.

For me. Tuesday night, you're going to bed with everything packed. Back up to me. Yeah. Shepard is not at home. Shepard is at his girlfriend's house. Okay. You know, 20 minutes away.

And usually, Shepherd will find a way home whether his girlfriend drives him home or he takes an Uber or something. But it was getting to be, like the winds were beginning to pick up and they were beginning to get crazy. Yeah. And I'm sitting there and I call Shepherd at 9 p.m.

Okay, 9 p.m. He's not at home. It's a bit late. It's a bit windy. 10 p.m. was like the peak of the winds. So I went, Shepherd, what are you doing? He said, well, I think I need you to come get me because I don't think I can get an Uber in this weather.

So I'm like, okay, and I tell Locke and his girlfriend, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna Locke and his girlfriend, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go get Shepard. Meanwhile, Lincoln said, my friends are going to the ice cream shop at 9 o'clock. I'm like, no they're not. Well, you're not. It's not gonna be open. And so I get in the car, and as soon as I get on the road, I'm like, this is not, I

am not prepared for this. There's trees down in our neighborhood already. And there's a bunch of shit in the road. And then I get on the highway and there are, there's a sign post, like a four by four sign post that's just in one lane. And then there's signs that are completely blunt. This has already happened on Tuesday night. Mm-hmm And then I get a call from Shepherd he's like dad if you follow the directions to get to the house

You might not be able to get there because there's multiple trees down in the neighborhood So and sure enough at that moment I'm pulling up into his girlfriend's neighborhood and there's a eucalyptus tree across the entire street and then I like You know, I kept navigation on it. I'm like, well, I'll just go somewhere else and eventually it'll, and I,

then there's another eucalyptus tree down. Eventually I get to the house, he gets in, I'm mad at him. I'm like, why did you choose to not be here, right? You should have been at home. We make our way back home. We did make it, but I was like, it was dawning on me how big of a wind event this was already.

Now at that point, I get home, and of course, we're on this text thread with Mike, who is Mr. Prepared, right? And he's our go-to, like, what do we need, what should we do? And he's the one that was telling us, like, you should be prepared, you should have your cars nose out so you can evacuate and all this stuff. And I'm thinking, I'm just like you, and first of all, you are, well... Chrissy's misprepared, too.

But the thing that we have forgotten to mention is that by this point, fires had started. Right. So the first fire to start, and I don't remember the, do you guys remember the time that the Palisades fire started? On Tuesday? It was during the day. It was during the day for sure.

It was probably like the, I think it's the afternoon, but I'll look it up right now. Okay, so Palisades Fire had started and it was wreaking havoc and, you know, we're all following it in the different, this was before I had downloaded the Watch Duty app, which became the app of choice to figure out what the hell was going on. Yeah.

What does it say? It says 10.30 a.m. Okay, yeah, I was gonna say I thought it might have been in the late morning. But the Eaton Fire in Altadena, that was the next morning. No? No, that was during the night. That was during the night.

Yeah, I think it started in the afternoon because the footage I've seen of, or maybe early evening? It was dark. So, and that one, they think, was a transformer, or like a power line or something, because they'd like, there's this footage of people finding it. So, the fire had started, but the winds,

these Santa Ana winds were blowing south. So that was why, and it did so much damage into the neighborhoods, because it was like, it started pretty close to the neighborhoods, and then it blew south. And like like we're pretty far west of that. You're a little bit closer. You're like a mile closer to the fire and then I'm like another mile west and then like Mike's like another mile or whatever. But going to bed there wasn't evacuation orders.

There was not even evacuation notice or anything but we had been told to be prepared so I did the thing I like okay I was like, okay, I'm not organized, but I got documents and I got them in a bag or in a folder, so I had like passports and birth certificates and stuff. I had my bag from the trip to North Carolina that was already packed, so like toiletries and supplements and all that stuff was kind of there, so I was like, I kind of feel like I've got the things

to just get out without like thinking about anything beyond that. Yeah. So then I go to bed. It was so windy upstairs that we didn't go upstairs to our bedroom. We stayed downstairs on the couch and Christy was thinking, I'm gonna probably stay awake and monitor this thing.

Probably? Yeah. Yeah, probably? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I go to sleep on one side of the couch and she stays awake all night on the other side of the couch. But she doesn't wake me up until like 4.30 in the morning. And I had gone to bed and the power went out right before we went to bed. The power went out at like 11 o'clock. Yep.

They shut the power off preemptively because we kind of live up near the mountains and so if you're in one of these neighborhoods that's on the slope, they shut the power off preemptively because that's how a lot of these fires get started with the wind blowing onto a power line or whatever. So I go to sleep, but I cannot sleep without some noise, but I don't have power.

And these winds are whipping through, and gonna keep me up. So I'm like you, I'm like, well, we're not gonna have to evacuate tonight. I mean, the fire's way over there, the winds are blowing south. I'm gonna go to sleep, and I'm gonna put earplugs in because it's the only way I'm gonna be able to sleep. It was a calculated decision. Yeah. Yeah, you actively made that decision. To completely stop up your ears. Yeah, I told you I'm not a responsible adult.

I'm not a responsible adult. At the origin of hearing, you nipped it right in the bud. They're very effective. I slept like a baby. It's not like you turn your phone off so then, well, then someone can beat on your door. No, this is like, they gotta go all the way to your, like, they gotta grab your face in order to wake you up. That's good preparedness. [♪ theme music playing. A few seconds of music playing. Transapp presents a couple trying to beat the winter blues.

We could try hot yoga. Too sweaty. We could go skating. Too icy. We could book a vacation. Like somewhere hot. Yeah, with pools. And a spa.

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Air Transat, travel moves us. Hey, I'm Ben Stiller. I'm Adam Scott. And we make a TV show called Severance. On January 17th, Severance is back for season two on Apple TV Plus and we can't wait for you guys to see it. And before the premiere, Ben and I are going to be binging season one and putting out daily recap podcasts.

Yep. Each weekday beginning January 7th, we'll be dropping an episode featuring exclusive behind the scenes tidbits and brilliant insights from our cast and crew and us. Patricia Arquette, Brit Lauer, Zach Cherry, John Totoro. The list goes on. All your favorite Lumen employees, their friends, Britt Lauer, Zach Cherry, John Totoro, the list goes on. All your favorite Lumen employees, their friends, families, enemies, in your feed every single weekday. And here's the best part. After that, we're going to keep going. Tune in weekly as we recap every episode of Season 2.

The podcast drops on the same day the episode comes out. It's The Severance Podcast with Ben and Adam. On Apple Podcasts, the Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts. (*upbeat music*) Christy wakes me up 4.30 in the morning and she's like, at our house we don't have cell service. We have very, very spotty cell service when we lose power.

Because you have like a repeater or something. And we abandoned that years ago, because that doesn't even work. Oh, so you basically make Wi-Fi calls when you... Yep. ...is how you use the phone at your house. But it had been so long since the power outage, we didn't fully appreciate that. So Christy was up all night trying to go to certain parts of the house or go out front in the yard and get a signal to hear from other people. And she got this little window of signal that then updated and said that the evacuation evacuation line was our backyard.

So we were just on the get set zone. But if, I mean, if it was one more lot over, we would have been in the evacuation zone. So, you know, practically the worst. She was like, get up, we gotta get out of here. I'm like, oh no. So then we're like, waking the boys up, getting the dogs and all of their stuff into the car, getting everybody into the car, getting the cat into his carrier.

He hates that. Getting the litter box and all this stuff into the car. Just loading everything into it, and then, like, I'm trying to be calculated and think about is there anything else, is there anything else we need to be thinking about? And Christy's like, we have to go! We have to get out! Come on, what are you doing? So like, there was, and then we finally get on the road, and like, I mean, before we do, I'm going out into our street trying to get a signal road and like, I mean, before we do, I'm going out

into our street trying to get a signal one last time because we have close friends that live up even higher that are like more prone to have to evacuate. And we're seeing them and they're like, we have evacuated. We're down at the gas station at the bottom of the hill. And we're like, I'm like, oh my god, this is so real. So we get in the car and we're like, what are we gonna do? I'm like, well, we need to drive to Rhett's house. Maybe he has service and then we can kinda regroup from there.

Or maybe he's asleep. So we pull up to his house and Christy keeps calling, calling, and we have signal at your house. We cannot get you. We did not know that both the boys were at your house. We're talking to Jesse in North Carolina, talking about how we can't get in touch with Rhett at all. No response. He's like, well the boys are there,

oh, well we'll call Shepherd. Lando's calling Shepherd. Well, okay, so this is my perspective. Well first of all, I'm asleep. And I am awoken by a crazy sound coming from my phone. And I like, so it broke through. And I look at it and it says like, find my iPhone is being, you know when you like

find your iPhone and it makes a sound that will break through all your do not disturb and it's really loud. Yeah. This is the trick that Jessie and I have used on each other multiple times when we absolutely needed the other person's attention and we knew they were asleep. I was proud of her for utilizing this technique. I've used it on her, but she's never used it on

me. And so, and then I'm like, wait, wait, wait, look. First of all, I gotta get my earplugs out, and they're the wax ones. And I'm sleeping with my hair down, so it's like, my hair has like, is reinforced these earplugs. It's like matted to your ears? And I'm like pulling them out and it's like pulling hair out and I'm like... So then I look, I've missed four calls from Jessie and at that point, Shepard comes in the room, he's on the phone with you, who... Yeah.

You're a part in front of my house. Yeah. And so it takes a second to get oriented. We are evacuating. We are in front of your house. We are leaving. You should probably think about doing that too. So I come down to see you guys. I talk to y'all, and you're like, we're headed to the studio. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna get my stuff together, and I'm gonna head to the studio. Now I will say, because I had to keep

reassuring Locke's girlfriend, because she had to keep reassuring Locke's girlfriend because she had to keep reassuring her parents that I was a responsible adult. Hopefully they won't listen to this podcast. But I will say, and I told her this, I was like, between me and the Neils and the McCargs, you're dealing with some of the most cautious people that you're gonna deal with when it comes to this. Kind of in the order of like, McCargs to Neels to McLaughlin's.

I do realize I'm the least cautious in this group. But we're evacuating and we actually aren't even really supposed to yet, is what I tell her. Because I'm like, we're in the set. We're not in the go. We're not in the red. We're in the yellow. Yeah. And I'm like, we're in the set. We're not in the go, we're not in the red, we're in the yellow. Yeah.

And I'm like, and we're still evacuating. So tell your parents everything's gonna be okay. Yeah, and I'm telling Lando, remember that 1% chance? Yep. It happened. Well, at least you said 1%. If you said 0%, I really shouldn't trust you,

but you said 1%. Right, right, yeah. You're telling me there's a chance. Yep. So- That's become 100%, get in the car. I will say the moment of actually having to then, I'm like, oh shit, we're evacuating and this could turn into something.

I had just woken up, but at that point, I had the things that were the essentials. But we weren't in an incredible hurry. I had time to like think about other stuff to get. And I stood there staring blankly for what felt like 10 minutes, thinking to myself, I don't even know how to begin to prioritize what to grab. Now, I've thought about this moment multiple times over the past week as we've heard story after story of people who lost everything. And so, because it's become so real, I

feel like trying to find out or thinking through that is something that I want to do. We've got a whole lot of plans about being prepared, having things in the right packaging and stuff like, you know, just like, okay, well you should have all of, I have my passports and birth certificates in different places. You know what I'm saying? They're like, well one's in a safe and one's in this file folder. It's like, how about everything that you need to get this in Essential Document being in one thing that you just has a handle on it, and you just pick it up, and you take it and put it in the car. Yeah, that's what we have. I mean, it's a little fireproof safe, but it's not

completely extreme fireproof. I don't know, you know, at like different levels. But also I had like all of my camping equipment which has all of... Survival stuff? And like, you know, I had a headlamp for everybody in the house and I had lanterns and everything, but they're not... I want it all to be so you don't have to gather it together. But the real thing is the... Yeah, we should have had that. Beyond the essentials, the memories, right? And like what do you...

Once you get into should I get keepsake territory or something that... What's irreplaceable? When we were packing the night before, I wasn't thinking about that, because I wasn't thinking that we were actually leaving. And then when we were actually leaving, it was just like, alright, we're taking this... We didn't think about keeps Six or any of that. Oh, I didn't grab anything. But I also realized that I don't collect things, right? So I don't have the things that I collect that I would be like, oh, my so and so collection. I have like old journals and stuff like that. Every

picture that we've ever taken, including the film pictures, the ones that I care about have all been digitized and they're in the cloud, so I don't have to, there's not like a photo album. Yeah. Jessie was like, grab Gaga's bell. So her grandmother gave her this bell. She has this little collection of bells

on this little table, and she, and so, because it's like this small thing, and I was like, okay, so the only keepsake was Gaga's bell. I got that. Okay. But I don't know, I'm still trying to process, like, if I had to evacuate again tonight,

which could happen, I think I would just grab the essentials again. I don't think that I have gotten to a place where I can prioritize, like, well, I'm gonna get my favorite pair of pants, or something like that. Some of those things would be easy to grab, but then it just feels like I don't let my brain

go to that place because I don't wanna go through the exercise of like, well, this is the thing I want, and this is the stuff I don't care about. It just feels easier to be like, I've got the stuff I need. Well, especially when you have to evacuate. You can't be making those decisions at that point. Well, I would argue that in our situation,

if you're in the go, you can't make any decisions. If you're in a set, you actually have the luxury of a little bit of time. Yeah, it's true. Which creates a problem. But you did, yeah, it just created a decision for you. I did not, I mean, I kinda had that decision a little bit later, so I'll come back to that.

We get to the studio, we unlock it, we're like talking to close friends, neighbors, people who don't have a place to go, so then we're like, well, just come to the studio. You know, we have power here, we have some food, we have coffee, you know, it still wasn't light outside. It was that early. Yeah. And so, we start directing people to the studio and turning it into a makeshift shelter.

People start showing up, they've got, you know, we've got our dogs, we've got our cat. We're putting signs on the door to our office saying, do not let the cat out. Cat inside. And then our friends come over. They have two cats. We put the cats in a bathroom. We shut the door. We're like, do not use. Cat's inside. And then our other friends show up with a huge dog. And we're like, okay, you're going into the green room with your huge dog. We got people showing up. We got families that are no longer...

We got separated or divorced family members, getting back together with their kids and staying in our studio. Alright, y'all gotta work that out on the other side. I did not know that. I didn't know we had divorced families. Yeah, we're gonna stay. Y'all go on to the other side and y'all can do what you need to do. Because I show about 30 to 45 minutes later, and when I get there, I see all the people

that you've brought. Stevie and Cassie are here. Yeah. Ben and Jordan are on their way. And they're apparently extremely skittish cat, which is in the record, which is in this room. Right, yeah, Ben's up in here. So when I get here, I walk in and I see all the post-its, like cats inside, cats inside, dogs inside. I'm like, wow, okay.

And... It was nice to have something to do. I'm good at making little post-it sites. And I also thought, okay, well, again, I think we are similar in this way. We both tend to minimize things a little bit. Like as a coping mechanism, we just kind of minimize. This is not really that big of a deal. And so I'm just thinking,

we're gonna stay here for a little bit and then we're probably gonna go home. We're probably gonna go home tonight. You know, that's what I'm thinking because that's what I want to be true. But that's when we start hearing that like people, like friends have lost their homes, you know, they're like, we evacuated in a hurry.

And then the power was still on, so we can see from our thermostat and security system that either our house is burning down or somebody is tampering with every window and every smoke detector. So that's how they had an indication that they were losing their house, was all of the readings through the internet. That started happening and we're like, oh shit, this is really... Well, we started getting lists of people, both in the Palisades and Altadena, who we knew who were losing their homes. And because it was a little bit psychological but also a little bit the reality, we're kind of in the middle of town at this point in Burbank, you know, kind of,

and you've got one fire to your northeast and another fire to your southwest and they're both and another fire to your southwest, and they're both burning into the city, destroying the city. You kind of feel at that point, like the city is burning down, right? That was beginning to happen. Yeah. The whole day passes and we realize

we're not gonna go back home. People are just trying to sleep on a couch or like get a coffee. There was too many people here for in. some people running and getting some McDonald's. We have one. I ate McDonald's for breakfast and lunch. I hadn't done that in a long time, but we have one shower here that like, yeah, it's like a it's a shop shower essentially. Right.

And you two people can take a shower in it before the hot water runs out. So we start making the decision that we should probably find places to stay tonight so we can have a little bit more of a comfortable stay. As was everyone, like people were going out to the desert, people were going to relatives further out. Friends house. Airbnbs. Airbnbs. So at that point, that's when we decided

we were gonna get Airbnbs in different places. So at that point, that's when we decided we were gonna get Airbnbs in different places. And I found one kind of like in Silver Lake and take my crew again, that's two boys. Sean, Sean's with us because the barbers in North Carolina, I got Sean this whole time. He seems to be doing fine. I mean, the moment I put Sokka in the car, he was trying to get him to the studio.

He's like peeing in the crate. By the time we get to the studio, it's like we're having to abandon one crate and then put him in the dog crate, tried to take him inside. It was like... any emergency situation is not made better by cat pee. It makes everything worse. Yeah, by this point in the afternoon, I had booked a place in Hollywood. Because I was just trying to get further away from the mountains and further, like, I kinda went in between the two fires, but like, you know, the furthest point for both of them without going out of town.

I just didn't think, well, we're gonna come in tomorrow. Who knows? Hey, and this felt like a reasonable choice. You know, you're kind of in the Hollywood Hills, and I'm sort of just east of, like, Griffith Park, so kind of east of the Hollywood Hills. We're still pretty close to each other, but we're well away from these two fires. I booked this place, and I'm like, all right, we can check in at technically,

like, four. It's like two right now. So we drove back home, because we, again, we're not in an evacuation zone. It held it, like, get ready to evacuate. So we could technically, we were allowed back in. Of course, power's still out up there. We go back up there, and we get our other two cars, which we hadn't gotten. We noticed that when a lot of people evacuated, they were parking cars down in like the Ralph's parking lot. And then all getting in the one car and leaving, which is maybe what we should have done.

Just so you don't lose your house and all your cars. Right. So we're like, we got the, we're gonna move our cars, we can get more stuff now. We were acquainted with the sober reality of people losing everything. So then that was our moment to be like, well, is there anything to grab? So then Christy was like, journals, photos that we haven't digitized. I was like, well, I've got all of these boxes. All of this stuff is boxed up. I know where it is. So then we're scrambling at the house, like, loading boxes of journals, photos,

and then I'm like going to my closet, I'm like, I'm gonna get more clothes. So then I start getting all these clothes and throwing them in my car, and then I'm like, oh, what, what, what? is there anything else I'd want to get? And I'm like, my records. I'm like, all right. This is my collection. There are records that are limited number, keepsake type things. Plus, this is an active project that I'm working on. So I have this momentum. I don't want to lose these records that are irreplaceable or hard to replace. And then by the time I'm like, I don't have time to go through this, Christy's like, we have to go! What are you doing? I'm like, oh, I'm

going through my record collection. I'm getting my records. And seeing which ones I really, really, really... I'm a responsible adult! So then I ended up just taking all of my records, which my record collection is not that huge that I can't put it in a couple of sizable... Like crates? Three sizable boxes. Because then I left and went over to the creative house

and got the rest of my records. I noticed that. Which is further away, but I'm like... and then I'm like... I go into the back room and I'm like, here's all the tapes from like the early Rhett and Link video days. That haven't been digitized? I don't know that we've digitized all this. So then I start, I'm like, I don't know for sure, I'm just getting all of this. Lincoln, throw all this stuff in the car.

So like we're throwing all this stuff in the car and we're having three, we got the three-car caravan trying to leave. I go in your office and I look for a second and I see these guitars and stuff and I'm like, should I grab one of Rhett's guitars? I don't know. I almost did and then I'm like, I don't know which one to grab. This is probably way overkill to be here anyway. Yeah, I feel like the creative house. I mean, anything could happen. We've seen that anything could happen as these fires rip through neighborhoods.

The fact that it was like, you know, it's not just a fire spreading, but it's embers that can travel three to five miles and just start a spot fire way over here. Yeah, yeah, that's how... Completely unrelated to the fire. It was like super scary. Well, related, but not near. Yeah. Five miles a while. So then... So I did the same thing. I went back.

That's the only stuff that I got. The reason I went back is because... I got a lot of pants. I guess my pants and my jackets are really special to me. I didn't get any sweaters. They're not special to me. But I got a lot of pants and jackets. You do have a lot of special pants and jackets. And it's been hard to am lot of pants and jackets. You do have a lot of special pants and jackets. And it's been hard to amass these pants and jackets.

Right. So I got all of those. I went back, the main reason I went back is because Locke and his girlfriend needed to get back to college on Friday morning. And I was like, I don't know if we are going to have an opportunity to go back. And so they had not grabbed all of their stuff to get back to college. I was like, you guys should go get all your stuff. We can have it at this Airbnb, and

then I'll drive you, or you know, you can get to the airport on Friday morning if we end up staying this whole time. It still felt scary, right? I mean, it was like to go back up there and like to be making these type of decisions a second time. Well this is interesting. It's just weird to know how to feel. So you end up kind of being like numbed and exhausted. Well I think this is where I wanna talk a little bit

about the difference of the fact that I was by myself. I mean I was with my kids. But I didn't have my wife with me. And you know, and also, Jessie, I think Jessie would have been more concerned than me, but not to the level of Christy's concern. Right. Like this is, Christy is in her element when things like,

in terms of like, Oh yeah. All systems go for this shit's hitting the fan. Like she is very sensitive to that and knowing and being ready. And so I would imagine that having her with you the entire time made it feel like that. I'm not saying it wasn't serious. I'm just saying that I didn't have that kind of person with me. And so I think that I was still very much, and I think I still very much am still in this minimizing mode because that's the way

my family dealt with problems. It's just like when you fell down and you had a bone sticking out, it was like walk it off. Like we didn't, you know what I'm saying? We minimized everything, which makes you seem like you're really calm in a tragedy, and it can be a good thing,

but ultimately it can also mean that you go to sleep with earplugs in on a night when you might need to evacuate. But when I went back, I still was in this mode of like, A, I really don't think our house is in danger, and B, I don't know what the hell to grab. So the only thing I grabbed that I didn't have before is I grabbed Sean's carrier because I had forgotten that. Okay.

That was the only thing in addition. No pants for you, huh? No. Yeah, I guess I'm much more materialistic than you are, but that's okay. Well, I mean, I think you have a collection of something. I like materials. You have a collection of things that I don't have.

Yeah. And also you have a lot more special pants. Yep, that's right. I mean, so it's like I kind of feel like you have an excuse. And then we go to the creative house. I'm loading all of my records. Like, Christy's like, we have to go. We have to go.

I don't like being here. Well, you talk about the guitars. This is a very sad note, but. So, yeah, I didn't grab any guitars. Shepherd made the point, you should have grabbed a guitar so that we would have one to play right now. Here's what he said when we were at the Airbnb. But also because, you know, and again,

I don't have super, super special guitars, but I did hear, I don't know if you've heard about this, you know, Mandy Moore and Taylor from Dolls. Yeah. Or they're married and- They lost their place, right? Yeah, well, it seems, the thing I know that happened is the Dolls studio with every instrument

that they've ever collected. And these guys are like- Oh no. All gone. Every single thing. I and these guys are like, all gone. Every single thing. I love those guys, I love that band. I mean, I can't imagine, you know, I can only imagine how like, some of these guitars

that they've been playing for forever, that are super special, so. Yeah, they just didn't have any time. Right. So we, the three of us, two dogs and a cat, in three cars, try to make our way down to Hollywood, and we're pulling over on the side of the road because Lincoln is not following closely enough, and then whenever we put... he doesn't see us, so then he

speeds up and goes past us, so then I'm speeding down the freeway trying to catch up with him to let him know that he's past me. Everything is just escalated. We get there. The guy helps us check into the Airbnb in Hollywood. He's like, you know, there's some homeless people down here. You might just wanna keep an eye on things. We go up like two and a half flights of stairs outside in order to get to this, to get in the front door to this house. So then I'm like, okay, boys, we're gonna start unloading stuff. Christy, you're gonna stay down in the car and keep an eye on things while it's open so someone won't come along and

like loot the car. Take the dogs up. Get them to use the bathroom. Put them in their crate so they're secured upstairs. We take the cat up. We take the litter box up. We take the cat out of the crate. We put him in the litter box. Oh good, now he's using the bathroom. Now we're gonna close him up in the bedroom that he's gonna be in for the night. And then the boys are bringing up some stuff, and by this point, it's dark. Because I didn't hurry up enough with my vinyl collection. And then, all of a sudden, Christy is there, in the house. And she's like, we have to go! We have to go! We have to leave right now! There's a fire! And I'm like, okay. Let's take a breath and hold on one second. And then as I'm minimizing

to Christy, I look over her shoulder, across the hill, and I see flames leaping over the skyline in the middle of Hollywood. Basically across, like I can see across the freeway and that's where it's like burning. Burning! It has... And you have a great video of this which we're showing right now. Yeah, I'm like... and then Christy's like, why do not take a video? We need to go now to the desert! We have to leave this city! And she is losing it.

She hasn't slept. Rightfully slow. She had not slept. Rightfully slow, that's you. Rightfully slow. She had not slept all the night before, the entire day. She had been up for two days in an entire night. She didn't have her earplugs.

And here it is. The flames are literally following us wherever we go, it felt like. I mean, we literally saw the sunset fire start. Like, I saw it come over the ridge the moment that it was just taken off. And I'm like... So then we're like, take the dogs back down. Boys, take everything back down. I'm texting the host. I'm like, we can't stay here. There's a fire. He's like, I don't think it's gonna cross the freeway. I was like, we can't do this. We can't be here. And we're like, are we leaving the two cars and getting in one car? No, we're gonna take all three cars. Where's the cat? Oh, the cat's in that

room. So like I'm going up there trying to get the cat out of the room that I've locked him in to put him back in his carrier so he can pee on himself again. And he's hidden under the bed. I can't get him out from underneath the bed. He's like biting me, scratching me, everything. I'm like, I'm laying down on the floor. My entire body is under the bed trying to get this cat. And there's a fire over the ridge. I have to take the bed, turn it up on its side. Oh God.

And then he finally runs out onto the couch. And then I'm like moving the couch up to it. Then you take the couch and put it up on its side. Oh God. And then he finally runs out onto the couch. And then I'm like moving the couch up. Then you take the couch and put it up on its side. And then I'm like. It's like a video game. It's like a Wii game. I finally get him back in the crate, and we get him out of there,

and we're driving back to the studio. So we get back to the studio, and I'm like, what is happening? I'm texting with you. Where do we go? I'm texting with you at this point, and I'm like, what is happening? Where do we go? What do we do? I'm texting with you at this point. And I'm texting with Stevie as well. Stevie, basically, because they had thought about maybe going, getting into the desert, she's like,

my friends who went to Palm Springs today, it took them nine hours to get there because of traffic. We did not want to do that. So I told you that. So I'm canceling an Airbnb, I'm trying to book another one, I'm trying to like... Well, so back up one second. So meanwhile, while you're trying to figure that out, there's that fire, yes, the Sunset

Fire, but at this point, that night, Tuesday night, this is what had happened. So another fire had started in the Angeles Crest, so basically in the mountains north of us, it was called the Creek Fire, and this one was very far away, but it was like the winds were blowing in a way that it would have become a big threat to our houses, right? So I'm like, oh shit, then Sunset Fire starts, then Fire and Studio City starts, then I think before that the Kenneth Fire had started, which was over on the west side of town and it went from 50 acres to a thousand acres in like 45 minutes. It was very apocalyptic.

So at that point, you're looking at, by that point I downloaded this Watch Duty app, which by the way, if you're in the LA area or any place that's prone to wildfires in the west, you need to have the watch duty app. Like, it's incredible and for keeping up with every single thing that's going on. Now, I'm looking at this thing, getting all these updates, and it begins to feel, this is when it began to feel like the city is burning down. Yeah. And also, this is when you start thinking, okay, I know that the conditions are fire,

it's very fire prone right now and it's super dry and it's super windy, but how do we have seven fires going at the same time? Like, someone is starting at least some of these, right? I don't know how the first one started, but. Well, the Creek fire started because someone deep in the mountains. Went off the road.

...went off a cliff on their car? Yeah. And I don't know what type of vehicle this was, if it was just a civilian or if it was someone, like, a service car. I still haven't heard, but like... But then in Hollywood, you're like, is that Embers? Is that Arson? Is it, you know... But like... You're starting to see things on social media. But the thing is, is about like that fire,

the Hollywood fire is an example. I know that the embers can blow a long way, but the wind wasn't in a place where it would've blown embers to Hollywood. The wind was blowing south from the Eaton fire. It wasn't blowing that far west. Exactly, which is why that's where it went. And if it was, then there would have been a hundred fires.

You know what I'm saying? So there's still, I mean, there's all kinds of, I'm sure by the time this comes out and as the weeks unfold, they're gonna start figuring out, well, okay, this one was started as an electrical fire. This one was this car. This one was arson. They did find some guy who was starting fires

over there on the west side of town, but they don't necessarily, at this point they don't know if that was him. But like we got a lot of interesting people in this town and there's, I mean, now that I'm looking at fire stuff on my social media, which we'll come back to that and what kind of God forsaken place that has been

for the past couple of weeks, couple of days. But I'm getting all of these videos that aren't necessarily from this week, that are from the past few years of, people just starting fires in LA, like people just do that. There's just people on the street starting fires everywhere, constantly.

Like arson is a huge deal, is a huge problem. So it's got it, but it just felt like this doesn't feel like there's not a safe place, there's no safe place to go. Oh yeah, so that's what, I mean, we didn't want to go all the way out to the desert, so we're like, well, we're gonna go to Anaheim, it's a concrete jungle. That's where we're gonna go. So we drive, I'm willing to drive an hour outside of town. And then we found a place...

Just so Christy could sleep, honestly. Yeah. She needed to sleep. We needed to, like, have reception, but then... Oh my goodness. So we go... Yeah, we go outside of Anaheim, where we check into this house, and I don't know how long it's been since somebody stayed in this house, but it smelled like mildew, to the point where... It was more unsafe than the air quality up here. I thought we'd moved into a more unsafe place.

And we booked it for two nights, and I was like, we can't keep staying here. So then, like, we're trying to figure that out. I'm booking a different place. It's hard to find places. You're like an Airbnb connoisseur at this point. Everybody's, yeah, I canceled one. I needed to get out of a second one, which I didn't do.

We stayed there in the mildew house two nights. And then we moved to closer to the beach, because we found a place that was like further away that felt even safer. So then we're like down near Newport Beach. You're like going all the way to Mexico eventually. Well, you know the red flag warning, like if you look on the map, it literally went all the way to Mexico. Yeah, yeah. Like it wasn't like you could just drive to the desert and everything, it would be

fine, like the high winds and everything. Right. So going towards the coast was actually helpful. So I mean, two nights in the mildew Anaheim, and then we go to two more nights in another place. And then I'm like, then they're... you know, we're constantly monitoring the wind forecast and how the fires are going, and if we're... the power's coming back at home, but then they're turning the power off again. We can't go home because no power means no cell service, and we, you know, we can't communicate, so we're not gonna go back home until we know that we have reliable power.

You're still not at home. I'm still not at home, but we had to move to a, like I tried to extend in the place we were in in Newport, and someone else had booked it. So then we had to leave again. So I booked four, I'm in the fourth place that I've booked. And we're in Long Beach. So I could get into work and then go back home

and we're staying there tonight too, but we might come back tonight, I don't know, but just living in three different places and having booked four different places with very limited supplies. It's extremely nerve-racking. We're talking to all our people who've lost everything. You're on social media constantly trying to get information because you feel like at any moment there could be another fire that could like pop up.

And that's where this watch duty at. And then you gotta watch that. We'll get back to social media in a second. You know what, every time we have an open position here at Mythical or a new position is created, it's crucial to get somebody in that role, to get them doing their thing as quickly as possible. It's not an easy thing to do, but it's important.

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Firing, indeed, is all you need. Backing up to that night that, so you ended up leaving because there was fire in the neighborhood that you were in. I'm looking at, first of all, obviously there are some heroes in this situation. First and foremost, the fire department, all the firefighters from our area and all over the state, all over the country, from Canada, from Mexico.

The stuff that they are doing to fight these fires has been absolutely phenomenal. I mean, everyone's been talking about the pilots doing these water drops and these retardant drops. And it's like watching SportsCenter highlights. You know, it's absolutely phenomenal. But another set of people who have sort of risen to the occasion is the local news.

Like you don't watch the local news if you're, you know, like a person under 50, 60 or whatever on a regular basis. But all the local stations have been running, I think they're done with it now, but the first couple of days they were running constant, commercial free, and they were in it. They were on it.

And of course, the national media, these national news organizations come in, Anderson Cooper comes in and flies in and does his thing. I didn't watch any of that national stuff. It's like the local people who knew the area, who were there from here, there's news anchors who are losing their homes and finding out about it on air. Like, it was just, you know, the quality of the coverage

has been absolutely phenomenal. I hate the fact that it takes something like this in order for us to value the local news, but that's, we were watching, so I'm watching the news when all this is happening. I've got the WatchDuty app, which gives me a lot of updates, but then I've got the different channels

and I would kind of go through them. So I kind of, I'm like, well, we're gonna stay here because we're not currently under threat. We have power. I now have this watch duty app that sends me updates and stuff. I feel comfortable being able to go to sleep. I'm not gonna put my earplugs in tonight.

But we get to that house and I felt like I needed to give the kids some sense of normalcy. So I was like, let's go out to eat. It was like, you know, like, let's just go out to eat. Why not? We're here, we're in Silver Lake. And we can't take Sean with us.

So I put Sean in his little carrier, which he's not a big fan of. He doesn't pee in it, but he's not a big fan of it. And then we go just for a quick little dinner. And it was this weird moment of calm and normalcy as we were like sitting there eating pizza at this restaurant, while there's like helicopter going over,

a fire truck going by. And there's other people in the restaurant, like where every, in certain parts of the town, it's like life goes on in some way, but then you're kinda like, everyone's on high alert. We come back, come back to the Airbnb, and I just see Sean just standing there.

He's out, he's out of his thing, and I look, and he has chewed his way out of his carrier. Oh, wow. He doesn't like it. Get it at an airport, he can do it at an Airbnb too. But we, this time he like ruined it though. He like chewed the zipper off and then there was a hole just big enough for a shawl to get through. So we gotta get a new one of those. But then, so we go to bed and we end up staying at this Airbnb and I'm,

I just spent large periods of time trying to begin working. Uh-uh, yeah. And then not being able to because of the threat and the updates. Oh yeah. So that was this weird thing, because I got nothing, there's nothing else to do. I'm sitting there, we're inside, air quality's bad. We've got masks to wear when we go outside,

but inside we've got like an air purifier, this Airbnb had an air purifier, and so we're like inside where you're not smelling smoke and stuff. But I've just kind of been in this limbo, Jesse not being here, I've just kind of been in this limbo. Jesse not being here, you got the kids, and we're all just kind of like sitting there. You know, it's just, it's a weird, this limbo.

Well, it started to make me feel like COVID, where there's like so much panic, and you have to make all these logistic decisions, but you don't quite have enough information and you're, you feel isolated and you have to stay put, once you find a place to stay put. And then it's just like, okay, what am I supposed to be doing? And so there would just be multiple times when I would realize how exhausted I was and just kind of crash, you know,

just the emotional exhaustion of constantly being on alert. And questioning whether you should be doing something else or something different. It was reminiscent of the start of the pandemic in that way. We ended up getting power back at our house on Friday night. So we were still in the set, not the go evacuation area. They had made a good amount of progress at stopping the Western edge of the Eden fire

so that it felt like the threat was reduced, winds were dying down. So Shepherd and I went back home because Locke and his girlfriend had gone off. So Shepherd, Sean and I went home. He had gone back to college. So I've been there this whole time and they've continued to make more,

like as we speak right now, there's not even any active flames in the Edenon Fire that they can speak of and they've done a whole bunch, like we're in the middle of another Santa Ana wind event right now, but they've done a whole bunch of preemptive, you know, sort of fire proofing of that left side, that west side of the fire, and they've since reduced the evacuation orders to, there's no evacuation order at all for either one of our neighborhoods at this point. They keep shutting power off. Last night was the first night that they didn't shut

power off when the wind picked up, because I think that the wind wasn't that in that area. And we're waiting to know if we have assurances that that won't happen at night, so maybe we can go home tonight versus tomorrow morning. I mean, I think tonight is the most likely for it to go off versus last night. But I think that tomorrow after tomorrow, we're kind of out of the peak of the conditions. But okay, so the social media aspect, let's talk about that because this has been...

Well, I had to get back on X in order to get information. You don't have to watch the local news. I felt like I needed to do that and then like I came to the conclusion that between the watch app and the local news, I was better off. You are, trust me. So I created like this X account and it's, you know. Because you can't get in your old one. Right.

And boy, I was not happy about being on there. I mean, why, if you bend off of it and you get back on it, it's just, it's scary how, I mean, like, I could find the fire stuff that I needed and it helped me for a little bit. But then there was so... I mean, it's just... it still was trying to give me all this unrelated to fire bullshit. Like, people spouting all types of wild shit. It was... scary. It was scary in a different way. Well, I think the thing that's so scary to me and makes it difficult to remain hopeful

for us as a nation and as a culture and as a species is that we face a travesty like this, an absolute devastating natural disaster where people are losing everything. One of the most populous cities in the nation is being ravaged by this. And then what is the response? use it as an opportunity for engagement, but also to just sow disinformation, to scapegoat people and basically score political points in the midst of a tragedy. It's like, okay, so this thing is happening and now I'm gonna use this,

so many people are taking it and like, I'm gonna use this thing to blame the people who I disagree with politically. So if we're all being impacted by something, right? The fire doesn't care what political party you're from, right? And we face a tragedy like that, but then instead of trying to come

up with solutions and think about what we can do to be better prepared, to prevent these things, to address the larger macro things that are contributing to them, we just use it as an opportunity to attack people. Like, it's gonna take so little for us to completely crumble as a society because there's just this thing that happens where the conversation becomes immediately toxic and immediately unproductive where people are not able to interpret or evaluate the things that are happening outside of a very

narrow political ideology that they have identified with, right? So, I mean, the most obvious thing here is like the conversation around what, how climate change contributed to this. And it's not controversial, it's not political. It's not that complicated. You know, regardless of local government and management and all these things, like local government didn't make the fire season 75 days longer than it was in the 70s. You know, local government hasn't made these droughts more intense and more frequent than they ever were. There are,

regardless of what you think is causing it, there are macro climate changes that are happening that are contributing to these things. And if you're in this place where you can't even begin to consider it because it would betray your political ideology to even begin to have that conversation, you're part of the problem. And then, you know, I will say, if you're in a place where the only thing that you wanna do is talk about how climate change made this happen, but yet you're unwilling to take critical looks

at our local infrastructure and the systems that we have in place and some of the systemic failures that may have contributed to the nature of these fires and the impact of them being that much more devastating, you're also part of the problem. Like, can we just look at what's happening apart from any sort of political stance and just say, if there's something that is contributing to these fires

being so intense and so frequent and so devastating, then we should address it. It doesn't matter who you vote for. Well, It doesn't matter who you vote for. Well, it doesn't matter who you vote for, actually. But I'm saying it shouldn't matter who you voted for and how you identify politically. It shouldn't change the reality of what we're dealing with. And then you got these people,

the people who are using this opportunity to point out the fact that implying, using this opportunity to point out the fact that, implying, I saw a clip from Fox News of this asshole on there talking about, he just showed a picture of the fire chief, and he was like, I hope they know what they're doing, and his point was, the fire chief is a woman, and his point was, clearly, this woman is not capable of handling this thing.

Oh. And, you know, she's lesbian. And I was thinking, you know, if I'm in a fire, I kind of think I'm looking to the lesbians. That's what you want. You know what I'm saying? It's just like... That firefighting lesbian, boy, that is the one. That's who you want.

I mean, you might need to be a butch lesbian, but listen, I think she probably is. And I'm like, hey, listen, I'm looking to you in this situation. I'm not complaining about the fact that you're a woman. Nope. But okay, and then there's the, I don't know if you saw this, the number of pictures of the devastation where there's just like, okay, here's the palis okay, here's the palisades, or here's Altadena, and all the houses are gone, and there's trees

standing. You cannot look at a social media post about that without some comment that has an alarming number of likes being someone saying, all the trees are still standing and the houses are burned down. Really makes you think, doesn't it? Makes you think what? With the emoji, with the monocle emoji, like the thinking emoji. And then people in the comments would be like, look up direct energy weapons. And I'm like, look up critical thinking.

Direct energy weapons? Don't go down that hole. Don't go down that hole. Dude, hold on. Don't go down there. Oh boy. Listen, I'm not going to explain why the trees don't burn down and the buildings do. Because it seems obvious to me why that's the case. You can go look it up if you want to

and you can find the answer in about 14 seconds. I'm not gonna make it that easy, you know what I'm saying? But the number of people who see something like this happening and then immediately are like, I'm gonna have the worst hot take you can possibly imagine. They're contributing to the devastation in ways that they don't even, they can't comprehend. And listen, and I know that me talking about it, if critical thinking didn't get you into the situation,

critical thinking ain't gonna get you out. So me talking about it is not gonna be helpful. I'm just venting at this point. I'm just saying, I don't know what the solution is. But we live in a world where when this kind of stuff happens, we just start attacking each other and the solutions, you're not gonna find the solutions in attacking each other. And if you join, like, I was just like a fresh off the street joining X, and that's

what I'm saying, like, just freshly joined trying to get some information, I'm just pummeled by a bunch of conspiracy theories. Like, left, right, and center. Yeah. I mean, well, a huge part of it. So I got back off that. A huge part of it is people wanting to have engagement. Well, I mean, I see the AI images of the Hollywood sign burning.

Oh, the number of people. And at a certain point very early, when I was like fleeing Hollywood, I was like, oh shit, is that where it is now? You know, it's like, it took me a second to realize, oh no, this is just, AI, yeah. This is just an AI thing that somebody decided to make to get engagement.

I mean, the good and the bad that people are capable of in the way it comes out in this, you got people who are flying drones into the fire areas and these expensive water dropping planes are running into them because people wanna get their drone shot for their social media. Yeah. You got people who are, you know,

just pulling out the worst possible hot takes so they can get engagement. You've got people looting, going into the areas that have been evacuated and looting. Then you have some people, ostensibly starting some of these fires. And then you've got a whole lot of people who are completely unwilling to even to begin to engage with all of the factors that might contribute to this.

That's the thing that's so scary to me is that, are you really so committed? Listen, you can think, you can be open to the fact that climate change contributed to the conditions that prepared the environment for these fires to break out. And also open to the fact that there could be systemic local changes that need to be made. Both of those things can be true. I mean, I was in my backyard yesterday looking at the power pole that's in our backyard.

And I'm like, that looks like it was probably put up in 1975 or whenever my house was built. And there are these high tension, high voltage wires at the top of it. The things like this big around, it's coated, it's a piece of wood coated in creosote, which I think makes it flammable. But regardless, high voltage lines in the air

in this windy dry place that could be in the ground. But it takes forethought and it takes investment. We have to be willing to invest in it, to get these utilities underground so that the winds can't have any impact on them. You gotta do all of it, but you can't just be just pointing fingers and just finding somebody to blame. Like if we're gonna get through this, you have to be like, hey, if something contributed to this, then we

should take it into account. I mean, it's hard to ask, like, where do we go from here when it's not over yet? So it's a bit premature. Yeah, I'm just, it's a little too early. I mean, but it's, it's, it's a wild start to the year, I will say that. Like, it's just so weird. I don't know. I still feel like, you know, I'm still so much in this like, this is really happening. You know, it just doesn't seem real. And it's

like, again, my heart goes out to everybody who's lost everything. And like, now they're scrambling to like figure out what to do next. everything. And now they're scrambling to figure out what to do next. And there's so many people scrambling to figure out, where are they gonna find a place to live? Oh, and just the whole insurance. All the insurance stuff and working, trying to work towards solutions. Yeah, we don't have to have, We don't have to have,

like we can build systems that serve the people in the communities. We don't have to build systems that exploit people in the midst of tragedy. It's so frustrating to me. I know I'm just ranting about it, but the insurance thing is just this whole other can of worms to talk about, you know?

I was talking to Shepard about what you're talking about, like Sister Wild's start to the year. I was trying to get him to understand how different the world that he lives in. His life is. I was like, bro, I was just gonna be completely honest with you. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and the only thing that we ever thought about from a threat perspective

was this vague Cold War, like maybe Russia will do something, but to be honest with you, we never really thought about it. And we were in North Carolina, we didn't have, we weren't on the coast, hurricanes didn't flood the mountains when we were kids. So we didn't have any wildfires, there's no earthquakes. It was so idyllic. I think that I had this thing that I thought as a kid

that tried to persist into my adulthood, but it has been crushed at this point, which is this feeling that the people in charge, basically they have things figured out and they're gonna take care of us, right? crushed at this point, which is this feeling that the people in charge basically, they have things figured out, and they're gonna take care of us, right? And I'm gonna be okay. If I just work kinda hard and I graduate with an okay GPA,

I can go to a college and then I'm gonna get a job. It was just kind of straightforward for me. In the environment I come from, those things could work. It's not the case for everybody. But then it just feels like since 9-11 and the financial crisis and COVID and these multiple natural disasters, you've got what happened in North Carolina,

which those people are still suffering like crazy. And now what's happening here, and there's stuff all over the world, but the thing you're talking about, this feeling of exhaustion and sort of being on high alert and feeling like you can never really let your guard down, I don't know what it's like to be a kid in that environment.

Like when I talked to Shepherd about it, I could kind of see as he was talking about it that he doesn't register with him that it could be different. Because his entire life, pretty much, there's been this, well, of course the people in charge don't have this figured out. You know what I'm saying?

Of course we're not going to be okay. You mean you thought that at one point? You thought that everything was gonna be okay when you were a kid? Well yeah, that's kinda what we banked on. And now we're in this world where it's like, I don't think it's gonna be okay. And I don't know exactly what to do about that.

Yeah. Is that a good note to leave it on? I say that's what my generation was raised off of. We were, you know, the millennials were told if we follow these specific steps, we'll get, everything will work out for us. And even following those specific steps, nothing works out. So, yeah, I can understand his generation growing up in that totally separate as well.

I would like to end on a more positive. Thank you. Please do. Yeah. Because there are parts of the social media that have been really beneficial to what's been happening here in LA. I was able to find like the grassroots efforts that immediately came up around the fires, like before there was even local or federal aid coming in, has been astounding. And TikTok was what got that going, which is another

reason why I think they should hold on to TikTok, because just the immediacy of reaching people in need. Like there's people and companies who've put together specific spreadsheets of how to reach out to people in specific need, all the organizations in LA taking donations, there is an entire spreadsheet that someone has made that they update daily with what each place needs as far as volunteers or supplies. Like, that's what I did this weekend is I went through this spreadsheet and I drove around to all these places and dropped off things that I knew that they needed because someone had put this together. As well as like signing up for different volunteer things over the next few weeks that I didn't

know existed in Los Angeles. Like over the next few weeks, I'm going to be going and putting meals together for people. So I will say like that's been as disappointing as it is in our elected officials and what we have in place for the clear climate issues, the people are still the ones that are like, we are here to help each other and it just made me fall in love with this city all over again. But yeah, it's been hard to watch and I want to commend as well, you all and the higher ups at the company. I know you all don't talk about these sort of things

publicly, so I would like to if you don't mind me. You all and the rest of the higher ups at Mythical have been really, really amazing about checking in on everyone who works here, offering anything that's needed, making sure if people need time, they take time and it doesn't come out of anyone's PTO. No one's required to work. We make sure everyone's healthy. I just want to say thank you for that. I know you don't publicly talk about the things you do internally at Mythical, but I want people to know that it's amazing and it's really appreciated. Well, thanks for saying that. Yeah. I was telling Jessie last night,

how good of a job our leadership here, and not me and you, I'm not talking about me and you, I'm talking about our C-suite and Lisa, our HR director, and how great of a job. Like I told her last night, as I was picking, if I finally picked Jessie up at the airport last night, she finally got here to join us in this mayhem.

And I was like, I couldn't, you know, I don't know if this makes me a good leader or a bad leader that when I got on our leadership call yesterday, that I was basically just listening to them in the fact that they had done such a good job of thinking through this and communicating and preparing and she was helpful, Jessie was like, you're a good leader because you know how to hire good people. But that was a blessing the way that our senior team and our C-suite, the way they have been processing this

and taking care of our people. Yeah, so I'm glad you're feeling that. And I think that the, you're right. We can get too focused on the negative. And I know that social media is not really a representation of reality. Because you're right, if I were to just walk over to these fire ravaged places,

it's not like the guy talking about direct energy weapons would be sitting there. In fact, even the guy who- They wouldn't be even close to that. Right. Sorry, I was gonna call them pussies, but maybe I shouldn't. Well, and honestly, and this is the thing, is people get possessed by these ideologies because even the person who's going to, from their, the comfort of their keyboard somewhere

in middle America or wherever, I'm not calling out middle America, I'm just saying somewhere not dealing with this right now. And talk about direct energy weapons or different conspiracy theories. I believe that if they were here, they were experiencing it, they would actually be helpful. They would wanna help there, you know what I'm saying? But social media turns people into reactive people

who just go straight for this ridiculous, and I don't think that they're just all bad people. I just think that we've got this system in place that encourages this type of engagement. And it's, I think that that person may say this crazy shit, but if their neighbor was in need, they'd probably help them. And how do we take the good instincts to come together and to help one another?

You know, it's like, just because you voted for different people, it doesn't mean that in the midst of a tragedy, you don't actually have a natural compulsion to help one another. Right. But when you live in this social media place where half of the country is evil, and that's the only way that you can process anything is by just saying, well, half of the country is evil and that's the only way that you can process anything

is by just saying, well, half of the country is stupid and evil. I'm on the good part and they're all bad. But no one actually lives like that as they interact with people. And how do you take the good instincts, the good parts of humanity and reinforce those things? I don't know, that's the thing.

But I do think that when you get off of your phone and you get out into the world and you see that, yeah, I mean, the number of people who are at some of these donation centers, they're having to turn away certain things that are showing up because people are bringing in so much stuff. Along those lines, there are ways to get involved if you're wondering.

But again, there's a lot of people who are stepping in and trying to exploit this tragedy, and there's lots of scams, and there's lots of fake GoFundMe's and that kind of thing. We've vetted a few things that we've put all those links in the description and in the show notes. So I'm not even gonna list them. If you're interested in some of those vetted ways to get involved and to give, we've got all that listed. And we encourage you to do that. When you feel helpless and you feel like you want to be a contributing member of society as it relates to this,

resist the urge to find some way to point at somebody, another human being and say that this is your fault? And I'm gonna go online and say that and be like, how can I actually help? How can I put my phone down? How can I not make a post about this unless it's pointing people to resources? I mean, just read through the list we have in front of us

just to like put the titles on there. These are places to donate. California Community Foundation, California Fire Foundation, LA Fire Department Foundation, Pasadena Humane Society, Ventura County Community Foundation, American Red Cross of Greater Los Angeles, Center for Disaster Philanthropy, Direct Relief, and World Central Kitchen. Thank you so much for your support, your love, your thoughts, your prayers, your concern, and for your

service to those in need around you. We appreciate it, and thank you for giving us this space to process and to kind of get that out there. So we will go from here and we will do what we can and we will talk at you next week. Thank you. Hi Rhett and Link. My name is Bethany and I just got done listening to the most recent episode of the podcast. Link, you talked about how you visited Whistler in British Columbia, and you talked about Vancouver and Squamish and Vancouver Island and the BC ferries and all that. It really made me smile because I am from Vancouver Island. I grew up there and I lived there my whole life up until a couple months ago. And I really, really miss it.

So it really brightened my day to hear your positive experience there. I hope you guys know how much of an impact you have on so many people. You really just make my day better whenever I watch your videos or listen to your podcasts. And I hope you, your crew, and your families are all staying safe right now.