Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 196: Were the Twenties the Best Years of Our Lives? | Ear Biscuits Ep. 196
Episode Date: June 3, 2019The twenties were a perilous time, and we aren't referring to the Roaring Twenties. R&L dive into some nostalgia as they recount life when they were in their twenties, ponder whether or not ignorance ...truly is bliss, and more on this episode of Ear Biscuits! Sponsored by: Hello Fresh: Go to HelloFresh.com/Ear80 and enter Ear80 to receive $80 off your first month. Stitch Fix: Get started now at StitchFix.com/Ear and receive 25% off when you keep all items in your box! 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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This, this, this, this is Mythical.
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Ramble.
Before we get started, we want to let you know that we got some tour dates.
We wanna invite you to take it up and come see us
for a night of unpredictable comedy and harmonious music.
How does that sound, Rhett?
That sounded really good.
I might go to the show.
We're gonna be singing and talking to each other
and like who knows what else is gonna happen,
but sometimes it involves weird get-ups.
Well, every show's different.
We never know what's gonna happen.
We're gonna be in Las Vegas June 21st,
Salt Lake City June 22nd, Denver, Colorado June 23rd,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin June 25th,
Indianapolis, Indiana June 26th,
Detroit June 27th, Omaha, that's in Nebraska,
June 29th, Minneapolis, Minnesota June 30th.
And then later in the year, we're gonna be in Houston, June 29th. Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 30th. And then later in the year,
we're gonna be in Houston, Texas on September 4th,
New Orleans September 5th, Birmingham on September 6th,
Jacksonville, Florida on September 7th,
Tampa, Florida September 8th,
Albuquerque, New Mexico November 20th,
Phoenix, Arizona November 21st,
Sacramento, California November 22nd,
and Valley Center, California, on November 23rd.
Again, these are all the dates for the rest of 2019
and most likely for quite some time.
So if you wanna see us, now's the time to take it up.
RhettandLinkLive.com.
Now on with the biscuit.
Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Link.
And I'm Rhett.
This week at the round table of dim lighting,
we are exploring the question,
were the 20s the best years of our lives?
Now we didn't live during the 1920s.
It's like when we were in our 20s,
was that the best time of our lives?
Have we peaked?
Did we peak long ago?
That's a different question.
I think best and peaked are two totally different questions.
Well, it sounds like you're already answering the question.
I have lots of thoughts on best.
And I think it has lots of implications for how,
I don't wanna spoil it.
What about your best peaks?
Are we gonna get back into which kind of peak
you're talking about again?
I do need to acknowledge that my voice is otherworldly.
It's very, is it very DJ-esque?
I feel like it's, yeah, so Link's still a little
under the weather but I actually,
maybe I've adapted to your voice.
Maybe this is the new you.
I don't hear it anymore.
I know, it's like I'm still having this head cold thing.
Is this me for, is this permanent link?
Well you know what, I've been.
Is this my permalink?
I've been in a constant state of feeling like
I'm getting what you have.
I mean I've done things like I haven't been going to work.
Of course, you're in a constant state
of getting everything.
That's called being a hypochondriac.
No, no, but I have physical symptoms.
I have slight headache, slight sore throat,
very slight things happening.
But you know, I think I'm gonna be okay.
Well, when we were riding in the car,
I mean, if I encounter anybody, I'm like,
don't touch me, don't touch me, it's for your own good.
And then we're in the car and I'm like, don't touch me,
but I'm touching stuff in your car.
And then I noticed that I finished my coffee
and I put the coffee down and then you adjusted
the temperature gauge on your car, whatever it's called,
your temperature dial.
You wanted it to be cooler, my friend.
And I couldn't help but notice and I did point out
that as you were touching the temperature dial,
your finger was rubbing up against my coffee lid
where my mouth goes.
Yeah, because you got this big ass thermos
you take everywhere.
I'm like, why does it have to be so big?
Why do you need so much coffee?
Why has it got to be my thermos' fault?
Well, it's your thermos is so big
that it was blocking the temperature controls.
It's tall, man.
There was no way to adjust the temperature
without touching your mouth hole on your thermos.
Everything's bigger with the links to.
I'm like Texas.
I'm like Texas, man.
I think you're just compensating for something.
Yeah, I like to drink coffee, homie.
And listen, I was the gracious,
you never would have even known
that your finger was touching my mouth place.
On my coffee mug, you know?
Don't say mouth place.
Just don't use that terminology.
Did you sanitize?
I have since sanitized.
I wonder what you touched on yourself
after you touched my mouth place.
I'm actually, I've gotten, I don't know,
I don't know if anybody's got video evidence of this
but I feel like I've gotten better at not touching my face.
So you don't know if people have video evidence
of you not doing something?
Like that's not how evidence works.
No, you don't understand.
I'm gonna present reams of video
and in none of this video for the next two weeks.
You're misunderstanding.
I think everyone's following along.
You are not gonna see me touch myself.
So if you have approximately a decade
and more specifically about seven years of a daily show
of a person being themselves in their natural environment,
that natural environment being a desk
that he shares with another man.
That natural environment is a set.
How do you reconcile that?
I'm there so much that it's my natural environment.
Okay, it's not really a basement.
My theory is, and I don't, listen, don't do this
because I don't want anybody to do this,
but my theory is that my frequency of touching my own face
has decreased over time.
Sure.
Because I just feel like I've become more conscious.
Now I'll touch the hair.
You'll touch the top of the hair.
This isn't the face.
In fact. The face begins
where the hair ends.
They call this, I heard somebody call this
like the golden triangle or something like that.
He's pointing at his mustache.
It was, I don't know if it's your eyes,
your mouth. And if you can't hear him,
he's calling it a golden triangle.
Your eyes, your mouth, and your nose.
But it's basically an ungodly high percentage
of the crap
that will make you sick goes in through this place.
Yeah.
It's not like you're getting a cut somewhere
and getting a cold.
I mean it does happen, but it's going in
through the golden triangle.
I don't know if that's the term.
What is the constellation that forms this golden triangle?
Your two eyes and your mouth?
It might be your two nostrils and your mouth.
Well.
That's not really a triangle though.
That's more of a trapezoid.
But your eyes have holes, your eyes are holes.
Your eyes get stuff too.
Don't touch your face.
Hey let's not forget eyes, they get stuff too guys.
I believe that I touch my face less.
I touch my face when I think about germs.
Have I touched my face yet?
How often do you touch your face?
A lot man, I'm sick dude.
No no, you're not sick.
Lily gave me this and I don't think
she was touching my face.
I probably, I don't know, sometimes I'm doing
that dad thing where I'm like, wouldn't it be funny
if I acted like I was poking you in the eye?
I probably poked my daughter in the eye for the fun of it.
Let me just say, that's not a dad thing.
Like, no other dads do that.
Just speaking for all other dads. Hey, I'm gonna poke you in the eye. That's not a thing that dads do that. Just speaking for all other dads.
Hey I'm gonna poke you in the eye.
That's not a thing that dads do.
Just like graze it.
I don't know man.
I don't remember doing it.
I'm just saying, it seems weird for me to say oh I touched.
I just touched my face.
I touched my daughter's face.
I just touched my face.
I'm very conscious of it.
Yeah you did.
I touched my beard.
Is that part of the triangle?
I think that's just outside of the triangle.
Below the triangle. It went over the mouth. Can bacteria go beard, is that part of the triangle? I think that's just outside of the triangle. Below the triangle.
It went over the mouth.
Can bacteria go up these hairs and get into the mouth?
What is happening?
Did we both just, are we really caffeinated?
This is a different Ear Biscuit.
You never know what you're gonna get.
Well we've had an interesting day.
We've traveled, we traveled to the west side.
It's been weird, yeah.
It's always a little bit exciting
to see the other side of Los Angeles.
We ate brunch out.
Oh yeah, okay, so tell them about the lobby.
Okay, so. And then tell them
about the brunch.
Yeah, we had quite a day.
The first, so this was the two of us and Stevie
going to a meeting.
You know, we're always meeting with people.
Tell them what the meeting's about.
The meeting is about making something awesome
into something even better.
But different, on another medium.
It's about something we really wanna happen,
we really want you to see and.
Because we wrote it and we knew we wanted
to be on television.
I mean, I don't know why we can't talk about this.
I haven't thought about it but you just talked about it.
I don't think there's any reason not to talk about it.
If we think about it, there might be a reason
not to talk about it but I think that's stupid.
Well. You know what we're talking about.
But in this particular place that, see,
this is the reason that I didn't wanna say
what the meeting was about because now I'm gonna
give characteristics of the lobby of the place that we were
and now people are gonna know where it is.
When you tell the people, when you tell the listener
what it is we experienced, then it will be clear
to everyone involved that the people who made the decision
for the thing to be there wanted us to talk about it.
So we are exonerated.
That's not exactly what I was getting at, but it's cool.
They have a koi pond in their lobby.
And for all, in every other way,
it's a pretty nondescript lobby.
There's not anything.
It's not big.
Like sometimes you go into like,
I don't know if you've ever been into the lobby of CAA,
the agency, the talent agency.
It's not our agent.
Not our agent, but I have been in the lobby.
It's like not a sponsor.
I do visit other lobbies.
I'm kind of a lobby connoisseur.
Now if you visit other agents,
our agents are gonna start shaking in the boots.
No, no, I just went to look at the lobby.
And also, I'm also a foyer connoisseur.
Any sort of like the beginning of going into a building, whether it's a home or a building, I'm also a foyer connoisseur. Any sort of like the beginning of going into a building,
whether it's a home or a building, I'm really into.
None of this makes you a douche, go ahead.
But this lobby was rather unimpressive
except for the fact that they had a koi pond.
Now I will say when you hear Rhett say
they have a koi pond, I would venture to guess
that you picture like a foliage draped environment
with like a dark water with some sort of sediment
at the bottom, like a pond and you would be wrong.
But I wouldn't blame you for it
because that's what I would picture.
Matter of fact, even when he said koi pond just then,
I still pictured it even though I was there
and that's not what it was.
It's pretty much just a sort of a rectangle
in the middle of a floor.
It was like the tile that made up the floor
then if you went down a foot and a half
and then you laid more of that same tile.
It was very modern.
But you think the koi need more than that?
I felt, I immediately felt sorry for the koi.
What brings a koi joy?
Do you know?
Koi joy.
Rhett, you got me.
I don't know.
I believe that koi joy is found in just being koi.
Let's come back to that.
So it's just a square area with approximately
420 gallons of water.
But of course, things like koi ponds and lobbies
usually aren't the kind of thing that we cannot experience
and then not begin asking questions to whoever's closest,
which happened to be the woman who was manning the desk.
We had a good meeting. I guess she was
womaning the desk.
We had a good meeting, so after the meeting,
we were kind of flying high and Stevie went to the bathroom
so we're just mulling around.
I'm like, hey.
Two old men with their hands in their pockets
looking at Koi.
And I'm like, hey, receptionist.
I didn't call her that.
Oh gosh.
I just was like, hey, you responsible for these Koi?
And she said, well, yeah.
I mean, if one of them jumps out.
What, if one of them jumps out?
Okay, don't get paranoid, lady.
She was like, well, I said, does that happen?
She says, yes, it happens and they're very slippery
and so that's when, and then she picks up the mail,
like little tray, the tray, the caged kind of mail tray
and she's like, and that's.
Like a basket, like a wire basket.
A mail basket.
That you hold letters.
She's like, I just put that, just put that on top of the koi
and I pushed the koi back into the koi pond.
So it's not a mail tray, it's a koi pusher.
They got koi pushers.
Koi catcher.
It's a koi catcher.
It's a koi catcher that brings me joy.
The weird thing she said was,
yeah, so sometimes like big trucks will go by
and then they'll get kinda agitated and they'll jump out.
Would you?
I don't know.
As if I didn't feel sorry enough for these koi.
But just think about it, you're just a koi,
you don't know, think about how,
that's why they're jumping out.
They wanna see what the heck is driving by.
I don't think they want.
You don't think they have wants?
I don't think they have wants or joys.
Why do you have so much of a clear idea
of what a koi needs?
Do you own one?
Well we had friends who house sat for a couple
that had a bunch of koi, you know this.
Right.
Yeah and all the koi died because somebody
did something stupid with the water.
And who was sad?
Well none of the koi workers, they all died, bingo.
How much, he had to pay like $75,000.
Koi are very expensive fish,
especially if they're old and rare.
They can live like 111 years.
Yeah, something like that.
Sometimes koi will be left in someone's will.
Yeah.
Because koi outlive the boys.
After the koi pond.
Pushing it a little too hard.
The Koi pond excursion.
Trying to make a t-shirt.
We had a little bit of time before our next appointment.
Lots of appointments today.
And so we got a little brunch and we needed a quick bite.
We wanted to be a little bit fancy.
And so for the first time.
I'm on Yelp.
First time ever, we go to, well, okay.
I'm not gonna say the name of it
because that's really what makes this story funny.
So we decide on this place that is a chain restaurant
that serves breakfast and coffee.
Well, it's like Panera, but it's,
A little fancier.
Yeah, you should spell it.
It's French.
It's French.
Well, in French, it's the pickle bread or something like that.
Q-U-O, no, L-E space.
P-A-I-N.
Which is, that's bread in French.
And then another word, Q-U-O-T-E-D-I-E-N-E.
Q-U-O-T-I-D-I-E-N.
I was close enough, Jacob.
I just got two letters wrong.
So there's a parking garage underneath
this particular establishment
because there's multiple stores or restaurants.
So we go downstairs and the woman,
like the parking attendant stops us.
She says, you're driving.
She says, where are you going?
And I froze because I don't know how to say this place.
And of course Link leans over and says,
La paquititan.
Just like that.
La paquititan.
And I was like, what language was that?
I was just so enthusiastic because I was like,
ooh, ooh, I know the answer to this.
La paix quanti d'un.
No you did not say it in a French accent.
You said it in some other accent.
La paix quanti d'un.
And I wasn't being funny.
But it was funny.
I knew the answer.
And we needed to park.
And I then said, we all started laughing,
well me and Stevie started laughing, and you laughed,
and the parking attendant woman sort of smiled
and I said, you know, they really need a new name
for that place, and she said LPQ.
LPQ.
And that's what they call it, they call it there,
they call it LPQ because they don't,
so they don't have to say, la pain contenton.
Oh man, it feels good to say it.
Yeah.
It gives the koi joy.
La pancante.
So we have had quite a day.
The menu was very promising and the Yelp reviews were like,
there was like, there were like over 700 Yelp reviews
of this place and it had over four stars, almost four and a half stars.
It wasn't bad, it's just.
Then it wasn't good.
Well it wasn't bad, the menu made me think,
made me get really excited and then I just didn't feel
like it completely delivered on the menu.
Also the coffee mug had no handle.
I looked over.
So I had to.
This chick was over there drinking her coffee
and she was holding it like a treasured bowl
that you would like.
Serve the king.
Oh yes, monarch needs to drink of this.
Something the pope would use ceremoniously.
That's how she was bringing it to her lips.
And then you looked over at me.
And I was like why is she doing that?
And I was doing the same thing.
You were doing the same thing. Cause you don't feel like you can. I think that's what a quantadon is. You don't feel like you can grab it to her lips. And then you looked over at me. And I was like, why is she doing that? And I was doing the same thing. You were doing the same thing.
Cause you don't feel like you can.
I think that's what a Quintadon is.
You don't feel like you can grab it with one hand.
What is a Quintadon?
You said it was pickles.
I know and you fell for it.
I gotcha, I got you.
The whole day you've been thinking
a Quintadon is a pickle.
Yeah I know but here's the thing.
Cause it was on his plate.
You, that's not the kind of thing you joke about.
Just to be, just honestly, like that's the kind of thing I joke about. just to be, just honestly, that's the kind of thing
I joke about. Just because you fell for it.
No, no, like you usually.
Oh, this is your type of joke.
No, no, you don't normally do purposely deceptive humor.
That's the kind of thing I tell my kids,
it's like, you know, the quanted don't means pickle.
And so you typically know French,
because you. I typically do, yeah.
No, it's funny, we both took three years of French,
but you retained a significantly higher portion than me.
Je mange le hericau vert.
French for the daily bread.
Is the whole name of the restaurant.
The daily bread.
Quantidon means day, daily.
Okay.
Men shall not live by bread alone.
It doesn't mean bread and pickles, sorry.
And if you were to rewind and re-experience
this Ear Biscuit, you would hear at the top,
Rhett gave a shout out to pickles.
The pickle bread or something like that.
Because he was falling for my joke.
And that really gave me coy joy.
That's why you do it.
It's quite a long play.
Exactly.
Okay, so I feel like I can still recommend the restaurant.
Just personally, I would say that I think you should try it.
But I do think that you should say LPQ
just to not embarrass yourself.
Unless you're French.
When you go to a French restaurant,
do you order by initials?
You give it a shot.
I'm a CPK.
California Pizza Kitchen?
Yeah, that's French, right?
Yes.
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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.
Let's start with a question from Annie
known as Celestial Link.
I guess that's in reference to you, Link, on Twitter.
Yeah, if I weren't me,
I would still devote my entire Twitter experience to me.
If you could go- That would be my choice as well.
If you could go. That would be my choice as well. If you could go back in time
and bring one current invention with you,
which you would be credited for inventing,
what would you bring and why?
So you go back in time, you can take something with you
and you will be credited with inventing it.
Is there a size limitation on this time traveling device?
Let's say no. I would say no.
I have a specific answer that then leads
to a more general and powerful answer.
You know, I'm gonna do it in reverse.
I have a general answer but then I have a more specific.
Can I just answer, you wanna go first?
No, I'm interested, I do have an answer
but now I'm very intrigued.
I would take, back in time, I would take an aerobie.
You remember the aerobie?
I do, finally.
When we were in college, we could not be satisfied
with a normal spinning flying projectile
that you can throw and catch in the little grass patch
beside your apartment.
No, we had to get the world's longest flying device
that can be thrown from hand to hand.
We had to get the Aerobi.
A- It's quite an amazing flying disc.
E-R-O-B-I-E.
Flying ring. For those of you
Googling this, the flying ring.
They make a boomerang version as well.
They make two different sizes, maybe three different sizes.
It actually comes back to you.
But they do not float.
They will fly a long way.
They will sink in water.
And they will sink in water because we've lost
a few aerobics in some ponds.
And not just ponds, they fly so far.
Sometimes they would just go into the woods
and we would never ever find them again.
Let me tell you, some of the most exhilarating experiences
I think we ever had were just getting so far from each other
that we were questioning whether we were still looking
at our friend. Yeah.
And chucking this aerobie and then just seeing it soar
and then the thrill of seeing that person catch it.
I gotta hand it to us, man.
We were good at throwing an aerobie. We weren't great at catching it though. Well, it's not hard to, man. We were good at throwing in a Robie.
We weren't great at catching it, though.
Well, it's not hard to catch it.
We were good at catching it.
If you don't catch it, it's pointless.
It's like a fail.
It catches the wind and sort of hovers.
Whoa!
You'd think you were about to catch it
and you'd be right here with your hands
splayed out in front of your face,
and then all of a sudden, when it was five feet out
and rapidly approaching
it would catch a breeze like a hawk going over a canyon.
Yeah, a thermal.
A thermal and it would just take off
and it would go another 400 yards it felt like.
It felt like.
It'd go another 38 yards.
Well I would take one of those back inside.
There's no place in Los Angeles to throw one of these.
There's no open space large enough.
The reason why this is top of mind is because Lando,
we had some unstructured time where we were hanging out
a couple weekends ago and I was like,
whatever you wanna do, bud, let's do it.
And his answer immediately was,
I wanna go buy a tetherball.
That was his answer.
Yeah, this is a child that is used
to not having a lot of space.
So he went.
Needs a ball tied to a pole.
Right.
That's its idea of fun.
They do it, they play tetherball at school
and he fancied himself a semi-pro.
Now you didn't buy him one, did you?
Hell yeah, I bought him one.
Okay.
I asked him whatever he wanted, I'll do it.
So I called the Big Five and I was like,
do you have tether balls?
And they were like, yeah.
Of course they do.
That's pretty much what they're known for.
Tether balls are us, I think is what they used to be called.
They were like, yeah, we got those.
So we go over there, I'm like, well,
they only have one left.
I was like, this woman was risking a lot
and just like that snap answer.
Well, it's probably been there for weeks.
She should have said we only got one left.
You better get over here right now.
I was like, Lando, we're just, snatch it buddy.
You're buying the one tether ball people bought in 2019.
Like okay, now call the factory, we gotta get
another tether ball because they're coming in to get it.
As we were leaving with that tether ball,
I saw a guy walk in and I was like, I looked at Lando,
I was like, he's gonna be disappointed.
I knew, I could tell he wanted a tether ball. But before we checked out, I went past and they had an Arobi and I was like, I looked at Lando, I was like, he's gonna be disappointed. I knew, I could tell he wanted a tetherball.
Before we checked out, I went past and they had an Arobi
and I was like, Lando, look at this.
And I told him the story that I just told you.
Way better than a tetherball.
And we also bought a $10 Arobi.
They don't have the big ones though.
Yeah, they do, yep.
Okay, you got a big one?
Yep.
Where you gonna throw that?
Well, we went to the park and they had a tetherball pole.
That's why he knew he wanted to buy a tetherball.
Oh, you didn't buy the pole and the base,
you just bought the ball and the string.
Right.
Find your own pole.
A legit pole at the nearby playground.
Bring your own ball and tether.
There was no ball or tether there, it was just a pole.
Wow, what is the world coming to?
I know, man, you can't leave a tetherball hanging around,
someone's gonna take that.
Oh yeah, just like rims.
Taking the rims off a souped up Civic.
Interesting that you would take an aerobie back.
So you think that would gain you fame and fortune?
Because that was kind of how I approached this.
No, because I think it would be cool
and people would think I was awesome,
but then as I was making the rounds,
like selling tickets for my exhibitions
of throwing the aerobie and whatnot,
I would also educate the people
about the aerodynamic design,
which would then lead to the invention of the airplane wing
because I would go back that far in time.
Because even on the aerobie packaging,
it talks about how it achieves lift like a wing
because of the way the lip is designed, I believe.
So I would actually go back in time,
I was gonna just say I was gonna take a wing
of a plane with me.
Yeah but then the Wright brothers would have invented
a giant Frisbee and we still wouldn't be flying.
You'd probably screw the whole thing up.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like, all right, no Orville, trash the plans.
I can tell by your.
There's a man with a flying disc.
I can tell by your ridicule that you are tracking
with my statement.
So would you take it to the Wright brothers?
I would pre-live the Wright brothers.
I would be there in the late 1800s.
Why don't you just skip the aerobie and go for plane?
I already answered that.
Okay.
The wow factor.
Two for one.
I think the wow factor of inventing aviation,
because who invented the aerobie?
In this universe.
That's because the plane already existed.
Do you know his name?
No, you don't.
Well, if the plane didn't exist,
then you would know his name.
And that's why I'm going back in time with an aerobie
to invent flight.
I took a different tack.
I would, this is a difficult thing to take back,
I admit that.
I would take public storage back.
What, oh.
You greedy bastard.
Okay so. I see where you're going with this.
The guy who invented public storage
is a guy named Brad Hughes.
He is worth $2.2 billion.
Good gosh.
In 1980.
All he did was nothing.
No, the story goes like this, my friend.
He needed to store some stuff and he had a warehouse
and it was completely full and he was like,
what am I gonna do?
And he came up with the idea for what he called
private storage, which actually makes a lot more sense.
Yeah it does.
But then when he took it to market,
he had changed it to public storage.
For marketing reasons?
I don't know.
So he is still, he's like 85 years old.
The dude's worth over $2 billion
because he just came up with the idea
that there should be little cubby holes for adults
out in the world that you can just pay for.
And no one thought of this until the 80s.
I mean, take that, Arobi.
You know what I'm saying?
You just go back with a, I would go back with a,
in fact, I'd probably go, my time machine
would probably be the storage bin.
And then I would just unsheathe it and come out
and be like, this is not only a time machine,
that's not really what's important.
Put your stuff in here.
Pay a monthly fee.
Hand me your money.
Now here's the other thing,
because I also was thinking about the time period.
You're gonna go back to the late 1800s?
Okay, okay, okay.
Before antibiotics? I'm going back to the late 1800s. Okay, okay, okay. Before antibiotics.
I'm going back to 1980, brother.
Like you know what I'm saying?
Tom Cruise movie.
You basically have all the luxuries of modern times.
There's less channels, first of all.
You know what I'm saying?
I take all my storage money
and I just cruise around in a boat.
You could come with your aerobie.
We could toss it on, I mean, my boat would be so big
that you could throw a full size aerobie on it.
But flight wouldn't exist
because I wouldn't have gone back in time.
Is that, okay.
So they're not mutually exclusive.
You could also.
I think public storage is like the one thing
that the majority of people on Earth when polled
could agree upon as being abhorrent.
Like there's just something about it.
Yeah but here's the thing.
That's like, you know what, I'm having a negative response
to just you saying public storage.
Okay how about this, Beanie Babies.
That guy's worth 1.9 billion.
Oh is this your runner up?
And all you have to do is take a Beanie Baby back
and you can take that back to 1986
because that's when he invented that.
That guy's a chump, man.
But it's a lot easier to travel
with a Beanie Baby through time.
Stuffed animal with beans in it.
You know?
So maybe I just, you know what I would do?
At least that fits your brand.
I'd take a storage bin full of Beanie Babies back
and I'd be like I got two ideas for you fools.
Be like well I gotta get a lot of Beanie Babies
before I can justify this public storage thing.
I think we've answered that.
Shauna Brown asks, is it better to be knowledgeable
or better to be ignorant?
In other words, is ignorant truly bliss
or is it better to have knowledge of something
even if it means it can cause pain or chaos?
I'd say a corollary question,
which we gleaned from Facebook,
from Megan Elizabeth Taylor.
Yes, that Megan Elizabeth Taylor.
Would you rather be a worried genius
or a joyful simpleton?
Is ignorance truly bliss?
And how did you approach this question in your brain?
I don't know your answer of course.
Well I took it, would I rather be the kind of,
my state of being as a person would be someone
who is knowledgeable about everything,
including the things that might potentially
bring me anxiety and trouble.
Or someone who is just unawares of things
that might bring worry.
And so as someone who is at least somewhat knowledgeable
about enough things to bring myself anxiety and trouble,
I would say that, my knee-jerk reaction is to say that I,
me personally, in the current state, I wanna know things.
Like when we talked about the.
The simulation.
Well, yeah, yeah.
You're always opting for knowledge.
And we also, we talked about the.
Are you going the other way?
No, no, I'm talking, I'm saying me,
this version of me wants to know things.
Including like, you know, we talked about this on 23andMe.
Maybe we talked about this, but you can like
basically check, yes, I want to know if I've got the,
you know, the.
Predisposition to Parkinson's disease.
Right, do I have these specific genetic markers
that lead to these illnesses?
I actually don't know if that's one specifically.
I don't know what they are but I checked all of those
and looked at all the information.
Like as soon as I had the opportunity to,
my instinct was just to look.
Right, but in this,
in the way this is framed,
you're saying if you could snap your fingers
and just be a different person,
like different brain personality makeup,
you would opt to check your intelligence at the door
and walk in anticipating that what?
You would be a happier person.
Well, let me just say that I don't think that I'm unhappy.
I don't think that I'm currently unhappy.
But if I had to choose between, like the way that
the second question was phrased, worried genius or joyful simpleton.
Like if you're actually saying the state of the genius
is that they're worried or the state of the simpleton
is that they're joyful,
I would definitely choose joyful simpleton.
And I wouldn't know what I was unaware of.
And so I'm.
Yeah, you wouldn't know what you don't know.
I'm all about that, man.
I would definitely choose that if I had the choice.
I'm surprised by that.
I just feel like that's really incongruent.
I still don't get it.
I just think, I'm just trying to understand
what you're saying.
Yeah, you're saying.
I'm saying that me right now,
if there's something to be known in this version of me.
It's basically would you rather be happy
instead of knowledgeable.
Burdened with some sort of knowledge
or freed to just be happy.
Yeah and I understand that this seems inconsistent
with my answer about the simulation, the matrix,
and like would you, but the way I was thinking about that was
is that I actually knew that there was a possibility
that there was something else and I could experience it
by unplugging myself from the matrix
and then experiencing the real world.
Yeah, this you're so ignorant.
This is like, I'm literally,
You do not know. My mind in this sense
would not be able to comprehend
anything that would bring me worry that I'm saying if the alternative is being able to comprehend anything that would bring me worry, then I'm saying
if the alternative is being able to comprehend those things
and then bringing me grief,
then I would choose the joyful simpleton.
And if you're giving me these two choices.
And I thought that's what I would choose too,
but the way that I immediately thought about it,
I'm like, what are situations that I would opt
to not know about in order to,
like, because when people talk about ignorance is bliss,
they're usually talking about a specific subset of knowledge
like related to something.
But then I tried to come up with what would be that thing
that's burdensome that I would be happier
if I didn't know about it?
But then I'm like, well, climate change.
Well, no, I mean, obviously I would rather know about that
so that I can be engaged in being part of the solution,
you know, even though it weighs heavily on the mind.
It's actually like creeping up constantly
in the back of my mind and I think that's,
I'm sure you would agree that's a good thing.
You know, we need more of that, more of that.
Concern, yeah.
Yeah, just like a discomfort associated with
the seething of our planet.
But what if it was more personal?
Okay, so I have a personal example.
Okay.
If you have a relative who they've got some indication
that something's wrong with them and then they have tests
done and then they're waiting on the test to come back
and especially being like across the country,
it's not like you talk to them every day or you see them
and like you know, where were you yesterday?
Oh I went into the doctor.
It's like they kind of have to volunteer this information.
And yes this has happened.
And I think, maybe we've talked about this,
but there's an inclination to say,
I'm gonna spare you the knowledge that I'm awaiting a test
because we think something's wrong and it may be bad news.
I'm gonna wait until I get the results back
and then I'm gonna give
those to you and then I'm like well, yeah,
I understand that instinct, I too have that instinct.
It's like I don't wanna burden my mom
with something that's happening when I don't really
have answers or there's nothing actionable,
like just as an example but I second guess that.
You know, it's as another example, so I'm like,
I actually don't think that works because you know, you're denying their ability
to love you through the unknown and that's,
and you know, that happens in life
and no one should go through the unknown
where they can only wring their own hands.
You wanna be able to hold hands with somebody, so to speak.
So I, that was my personal example, that didn't work either.
So I'm actually unable to come up with anything
that I would rather not know when I approach it
from that way.
Yeah but I guess what I'm saying is that you're approaching
it from this point in time with these life circumstances.
So yeah, now that.
But can you think of one?
Can you think of a practical example within that way
of approaching the problem that's like actually
it's better not to know.
No and I think we talked about this before.
It's like, my tendency is to believe that knowledge
about something like data related to anything
is ultimately better.
Knowledge is power.
Than not having it, than not knowing something
because you're gonna be able to do something,
even if it's like knowing when you're gonna die.
I don't know if we've specifically talked
about that situation.
But I think I would wanna know.
I think I would wanna know.
Right, so skipping back to the other way,
do you feel like you know or have known people
who are more of the, they're in more of an ignorant and blissful zone?
I think I know people that way.
Well, okay.
Do you wish you were one of those people?
Because I think that brings it into focus.
No, because I'm not unhappy.
What I'm saying is, this is how I interpret the question.
Let's just say I'm in the ether.
My soul is in the ether before I inhabit my next body.
I'm not saying I believe that this is how the world works.
You obviously do.
Let's just say that this is how the world works.
You wouldn't say it if it wasn't you.
And whoever makes the decision
about what body you end up in says, Rhett.
Of course they have the voice of Morgan Freeman
which I can't do.
That wasn't it.
An impersonation of him.
But I'm just gonna, this is my voice, so I'll use that.
He says, I'm gonna give you a choice in this lifetime.
Would you like to be worried genius
or a, what is it, joyful simpleton?
And I was like, those are my choices?
Like if I choose genius,
I'm gonna be like a worried, tortured genius?
You know, like Nietzsche.
Or. La paix, quoi Nietzsche or.
La paix quoi t'es tant.
Or you're going to be a joyful simpleton,
meaning you're gonna be somebody who no one knows about.
You're not gonna make any history.
You're not gonna go to accomplish anything
that is great in the eyes of humans.
Have you seen Forrest Gump?
Ha!
But you know, no, Forrest Gump was tortured.
He was knowledgeable enough to be tortured about Jenny.
So I'm talking about somebody who is just happy
but may need other people to take care of them.
I don't know what they might need.
I would choose that scenario
if presented with those two options.
But if it was just like would you rather be ignorant
or knowledgeable, I would choose knowledgeable.
Okay.
Okay.
I'm gonna choose to be burdened and knowledgeable.
Let's answer the question that we started
this whole thing off with.
Let's pay off that title.
This is from Hannah Brooks.
Unless it sucks and then we change it.
Hannah Brooks asks,
your 20s are the best years of your life.
In quotes, as if someone told her this.
Do you agree with this?
What were the best years of your life and why?
The 20s is, it's interesting because I usually think of it
in terms of like middle school, high school, college,
out of college, early, you know, married,
married with, that's how I divide up my life.
Married, then married with children.
Yeah.
And then I can also think about it in terms of our career
and I can like start to put different strata in there.
But like the 20s, that's the end of,
that's like the tail end of college. Right?
Yeah.
Well for us, it basically encompassed.
Turned 21 as a.
The end of college, getting married,
and mostly everything that we did
before we really became full-time YouTubers.
I mean, you know what I'm saying?
It's like, it was before we had really found our calling.
Boy. To what we kind of have settled into now. It was before we had really found our calling
to what we kind of have settled into now.
It was a bit of a strange time.
It was a strange.
Of figuring things out.
Yeah, and there was a lot of,
it was high stake peril.
You know, it was like, okay, what are we gonna do?
Why are we gonna, you know, what the heck is going on?
Cause I feel like, I'm tempted to say
the best days of my life,
I'd be tempted to hone in on the college years,
cause those were some great years.
Yeah.
You got this budding freedom,
you've got this blossoming self-discovery,
it's almost falling on you like a dump truck, at this blossoming self-discovery,
it's almost falling on you like a dump truck. Like you're getting, self-discovery is being dumped on you,
you're just getting buried in it.
Yeah.
That's exhilarating.
Well. You know, you hold your breath
and then you're like trying to breathe
and get out from underneath it.
And I think the reason that adults will often say
to young folk, you know, really enjoy this time.
Take it, you know, these are the best years of your life
and they may be talking about high school
or college or whatever.
I think what they're actually saying is,
if I, with my knowledge and life experience
and wisdom that I have garnered in the years
that I've lived, were able to go back to high school
or go back to college, oh man, I would just be able
to do it right this time.
But when you're in the midst of it,
you don't really understand, and this is every stage of life.
Well, okay, so just to unpack that a little bit.
Yeah, because basically you're not saying
when I look back that was the best strata
of my life that I've experienced.
I do think I, well I do think I.
It was youth is wasted on the young is what you're saying.
You're saying that if I could go back and redo it,
I could most definitely make it the best time of my life,
that decade.
Well and listen, I'm not saying
that I didn't take advantage of it and that I didn't take advantage of that freedom. Well and listen, I'm not saying that I didn't take advantage
of it and that I didn't take advantage of that freedom
and I didn't, I specifically remember like that first week
of college of like just coming back to my dorm room
whenever I wanted to and thinking this is awesome.
Having responsibility for just myself is really awesome.
Now at the same time, I was really, not as much as you,
now that I didn't even know at the time because you didn't really talk about it, I was really, not as much as you, now that I didn't even know at the time
because you didn't really talk about it,
I was really concerned about my academics.
I was, especially at freshman, sophomore year,
I was like super committed to studying
and making good grades,
and I do recommend making good grades.
But I think I placed a little too much importance on that,
honestly.
I kind of got into a little bit better groove
in my junior and senior year.
But I do think they were the best years of my life
in one sense.
Are you talking about, you're not talking about 20s though,
you're talking about college.
Yeah. Okay.
Considering the nature of the discovery,
the nature of the fact that we sit out
and have these philosophical conversations
that you had never really had in high school
and really meaningful friendships that went beyond
sort of the typical high school friendship,
like true friends and independent living
and independent experience without being able to go off
and say we're gonna take a trip to somewhere.
We're gonna go camping together, us four guys or whatever.
Those are things that there were so many firsts
without any parental supervision that it was awesome.
And not just, our lives were different
because right out of college we got married.
But like when we were talking to Stevie
on the way to that meeting, she was like,
what was the show she asked us if we saw?
It was like,
it was about dead.
Dead to Me? Dead to Me, she was like, have you seen Dead to Me?
We're like, no, I never even heard of it.
She's like, well, it's a good concept,
I don't know how well it was executed, but it's binge worthy.
And I'm like thinking, I'm not in my 20s.
I don't sit around and just look for stuff
that's just borderline binge worthy.
I've got like, I didn't jump down Stevie's throat,
this is all in my brain, but I'm like,
I've got children and I've got all the stuff
that I'm doing within my own parameters.
The only binging.
I got a bedtime.
The only binging that has taken place for me
is those two days that I was on my back
after the vasectomy.
Right. You can really only get a vasectomy once. my back after the vasectomy. Right.
You can really only get a vasectomy once.
I might get my vasectomy reversed
just so I could get it again,
just so I can binge watch television.
I mean that's literally the only binge watching
I've done in 15 years.
Stevie's still in her 20s, isn't she?
No, she's 31, man.
Whoops, not in my mind.
Well sorry Stevie.
I just mean everybody here is in their 20s in my mind.
Okay thanks for clarifying.
Whoops.
But you know what I'm saying.
So what's your point?
My point is, what is my point?
My point is like the 20s are the time for a lot of people
where it's like they just got time to do stuff
but for us the 20s were,
we've thrust ourselves into marriage.
Thrust is probably not the best word.
We've thrust, we've been catapulted out of college
and out from under like any sort of financial support
that our families or whatever offered.
And now we're like, we're trying to make this happen.
I mean this was like a scrappy time.
I mean it was nerve wracking.
I mean, I was talking about,
you know we both had our engineering jobs
and we were hating them and I wasn't realized
I was hating them until you kept insisting
on how much I should be hating it
and then I was like yeah man, you're right.
Let's figure out something else.
Let's get together one night a week and come up with comedy.
Yeah, comedy night.
You know, come up with comedy.
Then get up the next morning and get to the spreadsheets.
You know, and like, Christy was teaching,
she had a math degree and she taught high school math,
she taught geometry and junk like that and she was like going math, she taught geometry and junk like that
and she was like going crazy, going nuts
just trying to figure out how to teach high schoolers
and she was only like four and a half years older
than some of her students.
She laid down the law the first day.
She's like sending people out right and left.
It was like, it was carnage.
But.
Paddling him?
Yeah.
She was a paddler.
Spank me, Miss Neal, that doesn't work.
She didn't fall for that one.
But you know, and so we're both like putting our heads
together and trying to figure out how we survive.
You know?
Right, but you look, I mean.
I'm house sitting for this couple,
who's out of the country and we're taking care
of a full grown Weimaraner.
Yeah, but you look back on those times with nostalgia.
No I don't.
I do.
I do, well.
Any time that there's a very scrappy period.
First year of marriage,
I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
Well let me just tell you the way that.
And Christy was saying the same thing, you skip that.
Well you can't, I process this in this way.
Okay, I'm 41 and they're especially related
to like personal health and physical and emotional health
are things that, it isn't that I haven't cared
about those things,
but I have in the past decade or so,
especially probably the past half decade,
just getting older has sort of forced me to be like,
ah, I've kind of gotta get on top of this.
And I'll use my back as an example of something
that has sort of applied to a lot of different areas of my life.
Yeah, talk about your back problems.
So,
I never did anything about my back
when I was in college.
Never did anything in my 20s.
Didn't really do anything about them in my early 30s,
but when it became like, okay, this is gonna be a problem,
like if I don't do something about this,
I'm going to have, I'll be in a wheelchair someday.
Like I will have lifelong, I will be disabled.
I'm not kidding, like my back problems were that bad
that if I didn't do something about them,
I was going to be disabled.
And so, and I started to do the things that I started to do
and continue to do and now it's like my back is healthier
than it was when I was in high school
in terms of the way that it feels
and how often I have pain, right?
And it's like a daily struggle to continue
to do the things that I need to do.
But what I think a lot of times I'm like, man,
when I was 22 years old, like I had a 22 year old spine, you know what I'm saying?
Like now I've got probably like a 60 year old spine
because I didn't do anything all that time.
And so the way I kind of process it is,
yes, those were good times, but I've actually had,
and again, the back is just an example of other things.
Like again, I just started going to therapy last year.
So I, it wasn't like there was some,
necessarily some acute problem.
There were some things that kind of came up
that led me to finally say, okay, yeah,
I do need to go to therapy.
But there was a lot of years where I just.
You don't think going blind was an acute problem?
Yeah, I'm saying that was like one of the things that.
Okay.
That it wasn't going blind. You can listen to that podcast. But there was an acute problem? Yeah, I'm saying that was like one of the things that, Okay. that it wasn't going blind.
You can listen to that podcast.
But there was an acute problem
that kind of sent me over the edge.
All that to say though is that I feel like now,
the thing that I can't line up is caring about yourself
and taking actual steps to care for yourself
and set that on top of youth.
Like that would be an incredible thing.
And maybe that doesn't happen because when you're young,
you just don't feel a need to address these things
in the same way.
You're like, I have got all my life.
Youth is wasted on the young.
But to answer the question, are you saying that the 20s,
or maybe you're saying college,
either one was the best decade of your life?
Not, I'm not talking like retrofit it,
I'm talking about just for what it was.
I think, and maybe this is just the futuristic,
optimistic part of me,
I still always have a sense that I am entering
into the best years of my life.
Now, you know what I'm saying?
I'm saying like, if I, it didn't get much,
it didn't get much better.
That seems weird to me in a good way.
It didn't get much, that much,
it doesn't get that much better than what I experienced
in my 20s in college and all those cool memories
or whatever.
But there were things about me, the way I thought,
the way I approached life and relationships, et cetera,
that I'm glad I don't still think and do the things
that I did at the time.
I like the me that I am now more than the me that I was then
and I would hope that that is a progression that continues.
I hope when I'm 50, I look back at 41 year old Rhett
and I like the me now more than I liked the me then.
Like what else is life about, right?
Now there's this sort of sinking feeling
that eventually age will become an insurmountable problem.
And that no matter what you do,
you're gonna die of something,
you're gonna have chronic pain or whatever,
maybe there's nothing I can do about my back
20 years from now, who knows?
Not looking forward to that and answering those questions.
But I'm just saying that,
and I've told this to Jessie, I was like,
I think that my 40s are gonna be the best years of my life.
And then I think when I enter into my 50s,
I'm hoping that my perspective will be, I think my 50s are gonna be the best years of my life. And then I think when I enter into my 50s, I'm hoping that my perspective will be,
I think my 50s are gonna be the best years of my life.
Yeah.
That's my attitude.
I've already ruled out the 20s and I told you why.
Okay.
So I think for me, I think the nows,
because I'm 40, I don't think it was the 30s.
I think, I agree.
I feel like I'm in year one,
you're in year two of the best decade.
I mean, I think the 50s won't be as good.
Hey, what about grandkids?
Why man?
I don't think that's gonna help enough.
I think I'm the-
Our kids are gonna be like 50 before they have children.
I think I'm the- That's what's gonna happen. I'm the best, I feel like I'm the best. Our kids are gonna be like 50 before they have children. I think I'm the best.
I feel like I'm the best version of myself
that I've ever been and I want to be an even better version
of myself and I think I'm on that journey semi aggressively
and I think that's a big part of,
well that's a big part of, well, that's a big part of what makes me satisfied
is that I feel like I'm growing
and knowing more about myself,
discovering more of myself and who I can be.
Self-realization, I guess you call that.
And I actually think that there's a,
and I think we grew up with this,
just, I'm sorry to interrupt,
but to add to what you're saying,
I think that we kind of had this,
and I feel like there's a little bit
of an American ideal here to be like, stay the same.
He's the guy that he was when he was,
I'm still the same man that I was when I was 20 years old.
I'm still the same man, you know what I'm saying? And it's like, I'm still the same man that I was when I was 20 years old. Still the same man, you know what I'm saying?
And it's like, I'm like.
Don't confuse it with a southern accent.
I'm saying that I'm from the south
and in many different ways that mentality was around me.
Okay.
And so that's how I'm characterizing it.
All right, that's fair.
I'm not making a judgment about the South,
I'm making a judgment about who I was
and where I come from.
And what I'm saying is that I believe that constant growth
and constant change is actually a sign of health.
Not stagnation.
Yeah, I mean, if it's the right kind of change.
Yeah, of course.
Of course, change in the right direction.
But I'm like, what is life if it isn't change in the right direction?
Like what, if you're not evolving in a certain direction.
You're only dying, because you are dying.
You might as well be growing and living at the same time.
And the idea of settling into a way of thinking
and a way of doing as soon as I reach my adulthood
and then just being that way forever.
Now, maybe you were enlightened at age 21
and you just stayed the same.
I'm not anywhere near enlightened,
but I'm just trying to move in that direction.
And so to me, that's what life has become for me
is being like, oh, this is what it's about.
It's about right here.
It's about this moment. It's about moving in the right direction. Yeah, this is what it's about. It's about right here, it's about this moment.
It's about moving in the right direction.
Yeah, let me put it this way.
You know, there's the phrase live your best life
and I'm saying that to people constantly.
Like strangers in the mall and stuff.
You and Joel Osteen?
Live your best life.
Did he come up with that?
I think he has a book called Live Your Best Life Now.
Oh, well he added now.
You're taking, you're taking.
Well crap, I'm freaking deriving a Joel Osteen novel,
not novel.
Is it Osteen or Osteen?
Who cares?
I don't care.
Osteen. Osteen?
Well you're talking about Osteen.
Ironically, I didn't realize that his book
was exactly what I'm saying which is,
live your best life is something
that you're constantly doing now.
I totally agree with this guy.
And this is when Joel Olsteen walks in.
Fellas, I'm so glad.
That you finally figured it out.
You finally figured it out.
Come to my big old church.
We've got 700,000 people every Sunday.
I think you're, you know, it's making a decision to say,
you know, you tend to focus on the future
and like you put it in terms of in the future,
I want the future to be my best, but I want this week, or this, maybe it's,
I think it's unfair to say this day,
and depending on what you're going through,
it might be this week or this month or this year.
Just say now like Joel.
But I think having a mentality of,
if I know that I don't have plans this weekend,
and I can either do, I can either say,
well, you know what, I'm gonna do nothing.
I'm gonna let it come to me.
I feel like for me personally, more often than not,
that's a mistake because it sets me up
for not living my best life now.
But instead, just kinda waiting for,
it's like living for the weekend.
It's like, what about Wednesday?
What's my best Wednesday?
No.
Or, if I am on the precipice of the weekend
or if I'm thinking about it, it's like,
what's something that I can do to set stuff,
as we've talked about before in the context of the kids,
what are some things that we could set up loosely,
not grip too tightly, like the song goes,
that will create the opportunity for an experience
that could be the best of that.
You know, the best experience I could have this day.
And that may be sitting on the couch and binge watching
whatever dead to me is that I'm never gonna watch,
by the way.
It's dead to you.
But you know what I'm getting at?
It's like, I do feel like.
You're talking about living your best life now.
If you have a mentality of like, all right,
I've got this, I'm gonna find some enjoyment
or some fill in the blank that brings some bestness to it.
Yeah, you're talking about gratitude and mindfulness.
Yeah, and that is a challenge for me
because I'm so future oriented.
And so I was.
And a lot of people are past oriented.
They're like, man, those are the good old days.
Yeah.
And I look back, I think you looked back
and I do the same thing and that's like,
well, if I would have known that I had the back
of a 20 year old, I would have done things differently.
I don't know what the, yeah, and again,
that's a revisionist thing.
And I can't do anything about it.
You can't do anything about it. I don't have, the, yeah, and again, that's a revisionist thing. And I can't do anything about it.
You can't do anything about it.
I don't have, and if I sounded this way, I didn't mean to,
I don't have regrets about it necessarily.
I'm just happy that, you know,
I'm happy that my wife made me go to, you know,
a certain physical therapist
who finally gave me the right information
and one thing led to another and I'm doing things
that are helping my back
live its best life now.
Are we just doing pop psychology,
like vapid, empty pop psychology here?
Or is it just that simple?
I honestly don't care if we are.
If we are, who cares?
If it, is it effective?
Does it make it? All we need is love.
Does it make a difference?
Throw that in there.
Because, you know, we're pretty complex creatures, us humans,
and our brains, and we've got,
like we've said before many times,
and somebody else said it before me,
we've got Stone Age hardware,
and we're running modern day software on it.
And it leads to a lot of different problems.
And I think that you can live a life
where you're constantly stressed out
and there's a bunch of cortisol in your blood
at all times or you can find some simple coping mechanisms
that help you get out of your own head
and get out of your own way,
separate yourself from your thoughts
and realize that you are not your thoughts
and find some joy in the moment
and also look to the future with optimism.
And I'm not saying that we have done this
or are experts at it by any means.
I think just what I'm saying is that
we spent a lot of time, we're so focused on
accomplishing things and succeeding at things
that I think a good portion
of the last couple of decades of our lives
have just been completely consumed with trying to succeed.
We've had no time to stop and think about things
like personal health and growth in many ways
because we've been so focused on our career
and just trying to keep up with things
and trying to be good dads and good husbands and the things
and the responsibilities that we feel like
the world has put on us.
But I feel like the sort of the one addition
that has happened to me in the past few years
and therapy has been the most tangible catalyst for this
is just this sense of working on myself.
And it has made me, the thing I told Jesse,
it was like I feel just a lot more excited
about the next chapter of my life.
If I'm dividing my life into two halves
and I'm kinda entering into the second half,
I am approaching it with a lot more excitement
and not this sense of regret about what I didn't do
but more about what I'm gonna get to do.
And of course, it could all fall apart
and I could face incredible disappointment and tragedy
and whatever it might be.
But what I'm trying to do is get to a place
where the external circumstances and the outcomes
don't affect my well-being as much.
And I think a factor for me in being at this point
is the fact that we've experienced the success we have.
I feel like in my brain and my heart,
it's given me the space to then explore things
that I didn't give myself permission to do.
And I'm not proud of that.
I think that's a lesson learned that,
I don't like turning this into something prescriptive.
I just like sharing our own experience.
So I'll keep this on myself and say to my past self,
in terms of more self-discovery
and allowing myself that time for myself,
even though I was chasing after things.
And the reason why the 20s were such a perilous time was because we were
scrappily trying to make things happen and it was,
I feel like there's an art to living your best life now
in the midst of those things, right?
We just happened to be at a point where,
I mean, everything's not going great, I mean, it's not,
but there's an art to that, whatever life throws at you,
there's still space for there to be some bestness
and you deserve to have some bestness, you know?
Yeah.
So I'll leave it at that, but I think it's,
so I'm gonna say not the 20s, the 40s.
The 40s.
The 40s.
The 40s and beyond are the best years of our lives.
And with that. Those were the best years
of our lives.
I'm gonna leave you with a wreck.
Wreck, baby, wreck, babyreck baby wreck baby one two three four,
wreck baby wreck baby one two.
It's a book that's made a big difference in my life.
A book?
Joel Osteen's Live Your Best Life Now.
What a coincidence.
What is the thing, yeah.
I had planned on recommending this.
No, I can't say that I would recommend that book.
I don't know Joel, haven't read the book.
Good for you if you read it
and you got something out of it.
But what I, I actually was planning
on recommending something else,
but I will do, I'm gonna recommend something
I recommended before, but I'm gonna say it again, therapy.
Did you just change your answer?
Yeah. Oh.
I actually had something else,
but I can save it because it was completely unrelated
and I can use it for another time.
I've talked about it before, but I know that I thought
that there was a stigma attached to therapy
because I thought that you had to have
an acute mental issue in order to go to therapy,
but to me, if you wanna use the analogy
of a car, I think that the idea of like,
I don't take my car in man until I got a problem.
You know what I'm saying man?
But I think if you want your car to continue to run clean,
you want it to be trouble free,
you take it in for the scheduled maintenance man.
And the scheduled maintenance of your-
You can watch my daughter on The View
or whatever she's on.
And the scheduled maintenance of your body,
there's an interesting dichotomy that somehow in our culture
we have this huge mind-body split and we're like,
yeah, I got a problem with my knee,
that's something I can talk to my boys about.
I know that I'm characterizing everyone who's ignorant
as with a southern accent and I'm just doing it
because that's where I'm from.
I just think that was George Bush specifically.
Those are the kinds of accents that I do.
But trust me, I'm a redneck at heart
so I've got nothing against that.
But the idea that you can talk freely
about your physical problems
but when you get to talking about mental problems
that suddenly this isn't something you can share
with a friend, this is something that you're gonna
be judged for, that's an unfortunate side effect
of something that's gone wrong with this particular society.
And you say mental, you mean, I mean emotional.
Mental and emotional.
All types of.
And I think that, I wish I had discovered it earlier
and I highly recommend it and you know,
I know that for a lot of people cost is an issue
and I don't know what the solution is for that.
I know at one point we recommended Better Health
but then you couldn't recommend Better Health
because there was some controversy around the people
that I don't even know what the deal was
but they're not a sponsor anymore.
But I don't know what the alternatives are
for sort of low cost mental health help.
But I'll just say that.
I think they have clarified the qualifications
of the people and that cleared some things up
and they also refined what types of issues
that they're tackling.
Okay, so do your own research on that.
I do not, I'm not gonna say that it is
an illegitimate resource.
I would encourage people to check that out on their own.
Yeah, so I'm just saying that do your own research
to find out where affordable,
you can get some affordable therapy,
but I would just say that I believe that it's a priority
and there's probably some things that you're spending money
on that may not be as important.
And so, you know, do what you can to find that help.
All right. It's important.
It wasn't a book, it wasn't an album,
but that was pretty good.
Yeah, pretty good.
All right, hashtag Ear Biscuits, keep talking at us.
And we always enjoy hearing your feedback.
And also, we enjoy hearing if you introduce other people
to these conversations.
Hey, you should check out Ear Biscuits.
These guys are fill in the blank
with whatever you think will resonate with them.
Make it up if you have to.
Lie to them if you need to.
Just fabricate the entire thing.
All marketing is lying. so just lean into it.
Yeah, yeah, just, we need it.
If you think your friend would be more into two women,
just say it's two women and they're really funny.
Or whatever.
It'll take a few episodes for them to figure it out,
but hopefully they'll be hooked by then.