Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Rhett Dives 40 Feet in One Breath | Ear Biscuits Ep. 435

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Don’t hold your breath! In this episode, Rhett & Link debrief about their special project WonderHole as it’s finally been released. Plus, Rhett talks about learning to free dive – something Link likes to call skin diving… for some reason.  Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% off your @MUDWTR order by going to mudwtr.com/ear! #mudwtrpod #sponsored #ad To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. This episode is sponsored by Auto Trader. See a car and a movie that you just watched? You can find it on Auto Trader. Shop millions of new and used cars on Auto Trader. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast for two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I'm Rhett.

And I'm Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting. I just got to know about your skin dive. It is called skin diving, right? Every time I say it, I'm like, hold on. Am I saying the sexual term that's confused with what you're doing? Skin diving.

What would that be? Well, skin diving sounds... Just another name for sex. Yeah. Sex without a condom. Right. So you are... Which we don't recommend unless you've been fixed like we have. Mm-hmm.

You learned how to... I'll be honest with you. I don't know if that's a proper term. Free diving is the... Free diving! But skin diving, I think, with you, I don't know if that's a proper term. Free diving is the... Free diving. But skin diving I think is an... I don't know, honestly. That's... I knew I didn't have it right. Free diving.

Free diving where you hold your breath and go to depths of up to or beyond 50 feet. Okay, I gotta... This is tapping into fears for me, and I know that you got trained, so I need the download on your free diving. You prepared for that? Yeah.

I've got video that, how, you know, how of Hollywood divers. Shout out. Who is a friend of the show, that show being Good Mythical Morning, because we originally got to know Howe when he was on that episode of Who's the Boss? We played that lineup game where we looked at a set

of people and one of them was the boss and a couple of them were employees and you had to ask them questions to figure out who was the boss. Okay. And I think we accurately guessed that Howe was the boss and a couple of them were employees and you had to ask them questions to figure out who was the boss. Okay. And I think we accurately guessed that Hal was the boss. So Chase got to know Hal and Chase was already into scuba diving

because Chase produced that episode. Right. And Chase made Hollywood Divers his dive shop of choice. So when we got into diving, we went with them as well. Right, to get certified. And Hal is a, he's a Carolina boy, North Carolina boy, East Carolina boy. Okay.

And so we have a lot in common, having grown up in North Carolina. We always have a good time. So he took me and Chase and Shepherd out. And anyway, he filmed some of this and I have it on a little teeny micro SD card that I'll give to Jamie to make sure that the video version of this has

at least some complimentary video. I haven't seen it yet. Okay. So yeah, Shepherd, who is now- And can I stop you there for a minute? Yeah. I can't wait for you to get into it, but I do wanna talk about Wonder Hole first.

Oh, let's proceed. Because it just came out on Friday, and this comes out on Monday. So our future selves are experiencing the first episode of our passion project comedy series, Rhett and Link's Wonder Hole in real time right now. We're reacting to people's reactions.

We're trying not to react. Well, we're basking in the glow of people enjoying episode one. Or curling up in the fetal position because nobody liked it. Yeah, as we record this, we're in an interesting anticipatory place, but just want to put a shameless plug out there. Go to the Rhett and Link YouTube channel, our OG YouTube channel. If you're not subscribed... The one that started it all.

That's right. The reason that we're right here, right now. If you are not subscribed, please subscribe. Watch the episode if you haven't, check it out. We took the world's most expensive first class flight is what it's called. And we did that in a sense. We did that in a sense, but we did much more.

After having our red carpet, show it on a movie theater screen event. Yeah, we did a premiere. I'm feeling so excited. Let me talk a little bit about why we did it like that. So, as you know, we made the decision to set aside the game that we have been sort of secretly playing for many years of, you know, there's the stuff

that you see us make and there's all the stuff that we do. We talked about this in our We're Done video that was on the Rhett and Link channel. You see all the stuff that we actually make, right? The mythical stuff, Good Mythical Morning, Ear Biscuits, Mythical Kitchen, et cetera, everything on the society. But meanwhile, a not insignificant chunk of our time has been spent for the past few years

and developing other things for what you would call traditional media, right? TV, movies, whatever. And there's been some success. We've had a couple of TV shows, most recently, a couple of years ago on Food Network. But we've set that aside and just thrown ourselves into Wonderhole as our sort of first step

into just making the thing that we wanna make. Essentially, kind of making the thing that we know if we had pitched it directly to a network or a streamer, they would have said no. We've got enough experience to know that they would have been like, nah. So we were just like, well, let's just make the thing we wanna make.

And because we are- And we actually made the decision to make our own series. Like it wasn't that we came up with this idea We actually made the decision to make our own series. Before, like it wasn't that we came up with this idea and we realized we couldn't pitch it. That isn't what happened. We decided that we wanted to make something for ourselves. Without thinking about the networks or streamers or whatever.

Yeah, without trying to formulate something that we thought someone would buy, we formulated a show that we were extremely excited about pouring all of our creative energy into. And I think we've, I know we've succeeded. At pouring all our energy. Yeah. We definitely did that.

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Listen and follow Search Engine with PJ Voet and Odyssey Podcast, available now on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. ... ... ... But we decided to do a premiere. And that's a win. We did what we set out to do, which was make this thing... Yeah. If people like it, it's icing on the cake.

But it also enables us to continue doing it and all that. Right, right, right. So we decided to do sort of a traditional premiere and also like make six episodes and release it on a weekly basis to essentially say that this is our, this is the TV show that we're making, right? Really the distinction between a TV show and something like Good Mythical Morning is really,

at this point, it's like, well, you go to your TV and you click on an icon, are you gonna click on the Amazon Prime icon or the Netflix icon or the YouTube TV or YouTube icon? From your point of view, it doesn't really make that big of a difference. Right. So our thought was, well, instead of doing what we did last year and just making like

an episode, when an episode's ready, we release it like a typical YouTube channel or like a monthly release. Let's just see what happens if we treat this as a TV show and present it as like a weekly release like you would do on HBO or whatever. So there are some similarities to what we've done in previous, in last year. And that's why we decided to do the premiere, which was... But there are some notable differences, and it is much more of a show. I mean, you talk about...

There's still very much a YouTube, made for YouTube in some senses. Right. It's true that it's a comedy series that like, once you click on Netflix or Max or YouTube, once you're in there, I think we're giving you that same level of experience on one hand. On the other hand, it does kind of bridge the gap. It straddles the gap. The closing gap, which used to be a chasm

between YouTube video, YouTube content, and other streaming content, right? So it's in an interesting place, which makes it unique. I also think the tone is very unique. I feel like it's very much us, and you can't really compare it directly to any one thing, but to all the things that maybe we've done in the past, but also the way we've been influenced. But back to the premiere. If you don't like us, you're not gonna like it. That's for sure.

Yeah. But if you don't like one episode, you might like the next, so. The premiere was more of, you know, it was a pretty small event, like 200 people. It was mostly people who worked on the show, and then, you know, quote, industry friends, you know, YouTubers and TV personalities and stuff that we know. And then industry like press people and also a lot of YouTube people

because YouTube was gracious enough to put this event on with us, right? They've been a really good partner in this. And I say what I mean by partner is essentially like, they are supportive of our efforts to make this kind of content for their platform. You know, it's all self-financed for us. They don't have any involvement in that.

And they're not like giving any advice or anything like, it's not like a network, but they're very supportive and want this to be a success, but it's up to us and it's up to you for it to be a success. It's not really, they don't do anything to like manipulate the platform. But they did come to the event and, you know, basically kind of showed up as,

that hey, this is a mythical and a YouTube sort of presentation, which was a very cool thing. Yeah. And we don't get to see the things that we make in the context of a live audience, which is such a weird thing. We make the stuff that people enjoy in the privacy of their own homes.

And the only way you find out what people think is funny is from comments or things that get memeified or things that get broken out into a TikTok video. But when you're in a room with people, especially with the way that we think, and I mean, the scrutiny that I couldn't help but apply to all the reactions in the room, you know, it's a totally different thing,

and it's like, okay, how many laughs are we getting? Are they building? Are we missing with any of these? Do any of these fall flat? Are there times when we're shifting the tone and people don't understand or they're catching up? Or we're trying to accomplish something and it doesn't seem, they seem a little behind or they don't get it.

We tried a lot, even within episode one, but across this whole series, I wish we could have showed the whole thing. I wish we can continue to screen the episodes in a room so that we could, there's so much to learn. Actually, we talked about how there might be too much to learn because a, we talked about how there might be too much to learn because that's a theater is not. It's not people watch YouTube videos.

The actual, you know, the way it should be experienced. But it was really rewarding to actually have the premiere because it puts into practice something that we're not great at, even though we've written about in our book of Mythicality, which is stopping and celebrating. And I think before this thing comes out on YouTube, to have this, yes, it's a premiere, yes, it's promotional,

but it's also a celebration. Like a lot of our close friends who have been like super supportive of us creatively from a personal standpoint were there to react to it and to see it. You know, I have friends that don't watch any of my content. For them to show up and have this enthusiastic response, it means something different. And it was very special to have this moment. We rented a big party bus. We took a lot of the Mythical crew, including the core WonderHole crew. And then when we

got there, we had a little mixer beforehand, and we had the screening, and then they had a Q&A with us afterward. And then we had a party. And then after the party was over, we all got back on that bus and came back. And because we were all dispersed talking to people, it gave us time to celebrate together and to debrief on the ride back and say, what's the feedback you got, kind of thing. So it kind of put aief on the ride back and say, what's the feedback you got kind of thing.

So it kind of put a bow on the whole thing that we got to experience together. Which is really special. To me, it's a, I always want to do it for any new project because I just feel like it's another data point. For me, you know, obviously we're a little bit different in that. My like, I'm not saying I don't think stopping and celebrating is important

and I think I should be better at it, but I savor it a little bit less than you do. Like for me, it's more just like, I even said it when I was there to multiple people, I was like, I don't know how to, I don't know how to necessarily enjoy this process because the thing that I get the most satisfaction out of is when I feel like I did the thing that I set out to do.

Right, and that I, not that I didn't, not just leaving it all in the field, but like this is as good as I can do. And I also realized that that's like a asymptotic, whatever the word, is some unachievable goal where you keep. With some moving target. You'll keep moving the target. But at some point you will have done the best thing you could do and you will have reached it.

Right. So it's not asymptotic, but. Right, there is a reality to the fact that you will have done the best thing you could do and you will have reached it, right? It's not asymptotic, but right Yeah, there is a reality to the fact that I will have done at some point the best that I can do and so because I feel like Wonder Hall is such a significant step towards that but it is definitely not that So I can't like I'm just thinking like boy. This is all really great feedback I want people to be honest with me. I want people to tell me I don't like, I'm just thinking like, well, this is all really great feedback. I want people to be honest with me. I want people to tell me, I don't want you to be like,

oh, I'm gonna say these things to you because you're my friend, which is a very like LA thing, because you go to see things that people have made all the time, and you're not gonna be an asshole and tell them that it wasn't good. Speak for yourself. And so there are a number of sort of catchphrases that I picked up on that

people will say like, oh, that was so fun. It was so fun. You guys seem to really enjoy yourselves. There's lots of things that you can say that sound encouraging, but underneath the subtext is I don't that you can say that sound encouraging, but the underneath, the subtext is I don't have anything to say that was complimentary. That wasn't what I experienced at the Wonderhole premiere. I was very happy. Oh, I thought you were saying that is what you experienced.

No, no, no, what I experienced was people that I trust saying that they liked it, but then insisting on continuing to talk about it, which in my experience, when I go to something that a friend has done, I'm looking for the thing to say. And so then I like find the thing to say, and that's the first thing I say,

but then because I'm saying it more for their benefit and edification rather than like this, I'm gonna give you like some critical feedback right now when you're celebrating this thing, I don't keep talking about it because that would seem really disingenuous, right? Oh. And so, there's a few trusted friends who kept talking about it.

Nobody was like, oh, this is like some, like you've made the perfect piece of media or anything. Like I'm not, but it was very much just like, you guys, I can see what you were trying to do and I think that you did it. And that's what I'm celebrating. And I also cannot help but think,

now that we've done this, how much, like what we can take and grow from and actually apply to doing even more of it. So did you have the moment of satisfaction at some point during the screening or during filming? When you're like, I'm most satisfied when I've accomplished what I set out to do. So did that happen for you?

I think I've had more of that feeling just along the process of being like, wow, we're really like, we were in this room talking about this thing. We came up with this idea for this thing to happen during the episode or for this left turn to occur or for us to weave these two things together, and then we actually did it.

So it's not like one singular realization, like we screen it in our office with our smaller team. Right. And I guess, but again, I'm always of two minds. There's the satisfaction of being like, we did that, and then there's the like, okay, it wasn't perfect. How can it be perfect? And I can't really let go of that, and I also don't feel like I necessarily suffer because of that. It's just my disposition. So I'm kind of like, all right, this is just,

I had a great time at the premiere, but I'm always of two minds. I think I relate to that. For me, the premiere was this like, stake in the ground that was like, okay. Well, it would have been nice if it was done, so I could say this thing is done and now it's going out there, but we had to get up the next morning

and shoot two days' worth of production for episode five, which we have now completed. Because episode six was already shot. Because now I feel like after that, there was a complete relief. Like this weekend, I was just feeling great about it's done and we've already partied about it. But yeah, I was definitely, on the other hand, the moment we got there on stage

and we were being asked a few questions about it, we started talking about how our mind was going 100 miles an hour with notes. And all of it was geared towards how does this impact what we do next, which in our full intention is to do Wonderhole Season 2 next. There are some challenges which I can elucidate,

but at that point I was like, you know what, I have notes, I noted things that didn't work, I noted things that we could've done better that started to work or did work, but could be so much fill in the blank. This could've been so much funnier, this could've been so much more surprising, This could have been so much more surprising. This could have been so much more moving. I feel like I can learn from the positives of what, like if I'm looking at my own performance, my

performance in this scene compared to this scene and how maybe it's uneven. You know, I think about all these things and like, ways to improve and invest in moving forward. But at the same time, I was really trying to appreciate what it was and being in that room and kind of watching it with other people brought me as close as I could be at times to forgetting that it was us and something we made.

You know, because we don't watch our stuff on a movie screen, so it's like, I'm watching, I can trick myself into thinking I was watching somebody else's thing. And in those moments, I was very happy. You know, I was very proud of whoever made this thing and I was all in on it. I could feel that the production value was like

really good, so no detriment to that to say at the same time I could feel that it was made by a team that you could count, you could see in a small room and you could count, you know. When we were out in the field, you could count, you could see in a small room and you could count, you know. So when we were out in the field, you could pretty much count everybody working on it on two hands, even if you'd lost a couple of fingers. Right. You know?

The crew was never very big. Right, and I think that that gives a feeling to it, that it wasn't that it was scrappy, but that it was, or homemade. It's something else that I don't have a word for, but it's kind of in between like, this like, a full budget to do the type of thing we have an ambition to do, and a low budget.

We're like somewhere in the middle that actually gave it charm and heart. So I actually felt really good about that. Even though what I want people to say, man, this could have been on HBO Max, or, you know, cause I think their stuff is more elevated, right? I don't know if that's the case.

And I'm okay with that at this point. Yeah, it is what it is. So I started to feel like what it was is something that we were extremely creative. We took some big creative swings. And even when you were confused instead of surprise, because there's lots of like moments of surprise that we try to bake in.

Even if that is not exactly right, I think it feels good to see someone really go for it. And we, as a team, I feel someone really go for it. And we, as a team, I feel like really went for it. And that was very satisfying to me. And it worked to the point that the criticisms I have are, they're the minority of things that I experienced. Yeah. You know? And I actually think all that stuff you said

at the beginning about like, you know, the notes and this could have been this, you know, all the same observations about my performance and all that. To me, that's also something to celebrate because when you do what we've been doing for the past 10 years on that front, which is writing a pilot script,

spending a bunch of time on it, doing revisions, having conversations with network executives about it. When you never get to the making of it. You didn't get to make it, so you never actually got to apply any of the lessons. Exactly. So when you just, okay, so, you know, I can't help but think like,

damn it, we should have started this earlier, but it's okay, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. I wish I was 36, not 46. Like, I have those thoughts, right? But having made it and having achieved what we wanted to achieve and just knowing that like actually dialing in a few different elements of it is actually the easier part than just making the thing

and having it work in general. And so I'm very encouraged. Part of the excitement in the way that we constructed each episode was that we baked in numerous creative questions. What is it gonna feel like if we do this and then this? What is it gonna feel like for an audience to experience this thing with going in blind? because we're not blind. We know what we've planned.

So, I'm really excited to start to see the answers to those questions, see if we can decipher the answers to the creative questions that we've had. There's a lot of genre bending, a lot of genre skipping. And it kind of mesh, like meshes isn't the right word, but it kind of moves into this continuum of genre experiment as one example

of like a line of questions that make me excited for it to come out. And because we won't be in the room watching, and I won't be able to interrogate my trusted, creative friends, you know, like I did at a party, I interrogated people. I wasn't afraid to keep talking about my own show. Oh, really? Yeah.

At one point, a friend and an acquaintance started talking about another show that they were watching. And I was still there, so I said, hey, this is about my show tonight. I want you to talk about my show. And I was joking, but not really. But not really. They laughed. So there's a lot of questions that I'm trying to talk about my show, and I was joking, but not really. But not really. They laughed.

So there's a lot of questions that I'm trying to answer, and I don't think they'll all be answered. Well, and then the big question, which is this is like, I was talking to a friend yesterday actually about this, I was like, it's equally exciting and frustrating to know that the big question that we will have at least some piece of an answer for by the time this comes out is like,

how well does it work on YouTube? And the equally exciting and frustrating thing is that how good it is is a small piece, is a small piece of how well it will work on YouTube. Right? Yeah. Because if you think about it, Just look at videos that have tens of millions of views. Just pick one at random.

Yeah. And you'll understand. Look at the most viewed videos on YouTube and then try to track views to quality and at least by my standards, I don't think you will see a correlation. However, I mean, like, okay, for example, the video that has gotten the most views

in many, many years on the Rhett and Link channel is just the one where we just kind of set up the whole idea for us making this series and the only reason it has over 4 million views is because it's called We're Done and people thought that we were quitting YouTube. And it's like, that's the world that we live in, right? That's the world that we live in. So we have to learn to manipulate that world, which is why we made that video in that way.

Yeah. So the question is... It's also the reason why we're making these episodes where... Every episode of Wonderwall is... The title and thumbnails are as they are. Yeah, structured around our best guess at a title and a thumbnail that will actually work on the platform. Because we want it to break out of...

We'll see if that works. The dedicated fan base of Mythical Beasts that you are a part of, which leads me to ask, will you share it with somebody who is not a habitual GMM viewer? Somebody who knows about us, but they may not be a mythical beast, preferably they're not at all.

So it's like, share it with some of those people. I think that's what we're hoping to do, is to reach out and bring more people into the fold because this is a different thing than Good Mythical Morning. Now I mentioned some of the challenges that we have, briefly in terms of like, our ambition to create a season two is very high.

I mean, like our plans are to do that. Am I making an announcement that we're gonna do it? I feel like I can, but also I can't. Because, well, the business side of it, right? Like we're committed to continuing to bet on ourselves and invest in ourselves, but it has been an investment so far. And unless this thing gets an astronomical amount of views,

it will not pay for itself in season one. So... And that's not really the... That wasn't, we knew that. We knew that. But to make it sustainable, our hopes for a season two are we need sponsors. We need some sort of ad integration beyond just the AdSense ads that pop up

around before and after and like mid-rolls. Like inking some deals with brands that can underwrite an increased budget for season two so that we can invest in the things that, to accomplish the notes that we have, right? To continue to- Or just to pay the budget that we have for season one. Yeah, that's true. I think that's the, so that's, from a business standpoint,

that's a big challenge. And it seems like it's one that, I mean, it's one that we're certainly up for. And we get frustrated because it seems like that should be easier to do, but I think because it's a new property. It's hard to do. The success of it, I think, will impact our ability

to sell against it for a second season. Yeah, for sure. So we're watching closely the level of engagement and how well it performs on YouTube. So anyway, thank you for listening to us talk about it like we would if we were just sitting in our office talking about it. Debriefing, this is like, this is the,

where the practical side of the creative process kind of comes into play. And I will say that we are, we do not discount the fact or we are not unaware of the fact that we have this incredible privilege to make the thing that we want to make. And, you know, the same friend I was talking to yesterday about the show, it's been working on this screenplay for three years and is basically sending it out this week. And he's like, I know it's good. I know that I've done everything I can.

And I had read the first draft on this thing, which like two and a half years ago and giving some notes or whatever. And he's like, but the thing I've prepared myself for emotionally is knowing that whether or not it's good is not really the reason that it will get made or not get made because that's not how people make decisions in this town.

They make decisions based on will it sell? And what sells is not necessarily what is good. Now, sometimes it all aligns and it is, but it wasn't lost on me that like, we spent all this time investing into this thing and working on it and we got to make it. And some people got to see it and some people will like it. Whether or not it's like, oh, it's a commercial success is like, that would be this wonderful story that we could tell and it would be awesome, but we're already in a really incredible spot that we should be grateful for. Yeah.

And we did it this way and we are encountering the challenges in terms of like budgeting strategically because Our other like big projects Throughout the years that did get made we were asking mythical beasts to then go to another platform or to subscribe to another thing to pay money for it. Like this is completely free. It is completely visible by anyone in the world.

In the world that has access to YouTube. So it was, you know, we have the money to invest at this point, right? So, you know, it's like, let's give as many people a chance to see this with as few barriers as possible. So, and we were having the ability to do that was the realization we had and we followed through with it, and yeah, it's not lost on me that it is a tremendous

privilege to be in this place. A lot of creators don't have the money to invest in the way that we have, or the audience we have. So even within the realm of creators, YouTube, et cetera, we're trying to prove, you know, we're trying to champion the cause of creativity for them, but also connect some of the dots

from a business standpoint so that they can follow in our footsteps and that the quality of content that we're seeing from creators is able to increase. Maybe not just the quality, but like people being able to like really put themselves out there.

And I feel like the only way to make it work is for it to get caught in the algorithm in a certain way. It's like, we'll see. But the way to do that, the way for that to happen is for, if you like it, well, first of all, watch it. If you like it, talk about it, share it in a way that you would at a TV show that you like.

The next five Fridays at 6 p.m. Eastern, 3 p.m. Pacific, it comes out on the Rhett and Link YouTube channel. Okay, thanks for indulging our infomercial for Wonderhole. We didn't even know we were gonna talk about it until we sat down and then we realized, oh, this is right after premiere. We gotta, this is the perfect time to talk to you about it. So, hope you're half as excited as we are.

I was gonna make a pun about, but I'm not gonna hold my breath, but then I wouldn't have meant that. But I was trying to transition to you holding your breath. Eardrums Ear Biscuits is supported by Rosetta Stone. I've done some traveling this year and every time I travel I am reminded

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for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50% off at rosettastone.com slash ear today. Ear Biscuits is brought to you by BetterHelp. One of our mottos here at Mythical is stay curious. It's important for us to ask questions and then see what happens. It's an ethos that has been very rewarding in terms of not only creating content

but keeping our lives fresh. We're like grownup kids in a lot of ways. And kids are always learning and growing, but as adults, sometimes we lose that curiosity. What's something you'd like to learn? Gardening, a new language, or maybe how to finally beat your best friend in bowling? Therapy can help you reconnect with your sense of wonder

because your back to school era can come at any age. I feel that. I actually talk about the development of our show Wonder Hole a lot and how personally I've wanted to make it a playground for creativity within therapy. We are huge advocates for therapy. So if you're thinking of starting,

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to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash ear today to get 10% off your first month. That's better help, H-E-L-P dot com slash ear. So yes, Shepard had been asking about this because he is now, he's actually like you, advanced scuba certified. He's not, you're also nitrox certified. Of course. yeah, yeah. But he's been asking about free diving

and I have always liked the idea of free diving because before I ever scuba dove, is that how you would say it, scuba dove? Sure. I don't think it is, but. Scuba dived. Scuba dived? Yeah. Before I ever did that, I've always liked being in the water

and being under the water, like since I was a kid, you know. You were a competitive swimmer. I was a competitive swimmer. You were a member of the Keith Hills pool. Yes, I was. But I also was like, you know, it was the thing to do to like see how far you could swim underwater and like how many links of the pool can you swim

without coming up for air and stuff like that. And so I always did that. So I was like, I think that I will be good at this. And also, I love scuba diving. The only thing I don't like about scuba diving is all of the equipment and like how heavy the thing is. And the people don't realize like when you watch like a scuba diver in a movie, like walking around,

you know, that tank is very heavy, especially the steel tanks in California. Like it's just very cumbersome, right? Yeah. And being able to be like, I've got on a wetsuit and I've got some fins and a mask and I could just go into the water. So Hal took Chase, Shepherd and I,

because Chase was also interested in getting his free dive certification to Catalina Island, which is the same place that right there in their little Marine Park or whatever it's called. Yeah, where I guess who was certified. Where I got certified as well. That's where we did this.

I will see videos on social media of people swimming down to like unbelievable depths. That is not what we did. down to like unbelievable depths. That is not what we did. With nothing except maybe a spear and some goggles and they're just, you know, there's some people who would be like world record holding free dives, people just holding their breath forever, going down forever and it's like,

just effortlessly dancing in the water, and it is so anxiety inducing for me. You see like, I don't know where, in different parts of the world, you've got people. Blue holes. Like, huh? Blue holes. No, I'm talking about the free divers jumping off boats and then like, they're like, there's

like a tribal vibe to these people who are diving down and fishing for their livelihood. Oh. But they're like, really advanced. Pearl divers. Yeah, pearl divers. In the South Pacific and stuff. Free, like just going for it, just going deep, holding the breath forever, effortlessly. And I think it might be one of my biggest fears. It makes me so anxious.

I never grew up going to the Keith Hills pool. Like the times when I would be invited to the pool party and everybody would play shark or whatever that is. Where there's like... Cross the pool. Cross the pool and you're diving. Everybody's on one side and they're diving in and trying to not get tagged.

Like I was so scared I thought I was gonna shit my pants. You know? You were just scared of having your face underwater. I was so scared I thought I was gonna shit my pants. I just- You were just scared of having your face underwater. Well, I mean, I could do it. I could swim, I could put my head under water, but I wasn't great at it. Like I wasn't a great swimmer. I never, I just knew how to swim, but that was it.

That was like the baseline. My mom pretty much can't swim. It's like she had an accident. Well, it's not genetic. It's not genetic. But I think that she certainly didn't encourage it because she's been afraid of swimming. Right.

Like we were, we did go to another pool, but like she would never get in the water. She would like wade in a little bit and then get back out. So I never saw her swim, because in high school, she hit her head on the bottom of the pool. And then she got too scared to do it again. Anyway, even now, if I'm swimming in my own pool,

and because I've gotten into scuba diving, and when I was trying to get ready for my first scuba diving, and when I was trying to get ready for my first scuba training, I would swim under the water and just hold my breath and try to swim the length of the pool, not knowing that that's not really a component of scuba diving. You're always breathing. You actually never hold your breath. It's bad to hold your breath when scuba diving.

Don't do it. I will just experience, in the first few seconds of being underwater, like if I have to dive down and get something from the bottom of the pool, I'll start to experience a little panic. So then, like even if I'm going down to the bottom of the pool, grabbing one thing, by the time I grab that thing, I'm like, if I don'm going down to the bottom of the pool grabbing one thing, by the time I grab that thing, I'm like, if I don't get it on the first

try, I gotta come up. And even when I get it, I'm like, oh my god, I'm like, I'm coming up so fast. And then when I, no matter how long I've been underwater, when I come up, I'm like, oh! It's just, it just makes you so anxious, man. But it is all mental. It's not a, I don't think. So you were set up for it. You're totally comfortable with it. And I do understand that it's totally mental. Here's the thing.

I haven't, you know, we did a breath holding thing on the show years ago, just static in those horse troughs that we have. And I think I did over three minutes. And I would not be able to do that now. I haven't. So what did they train you? No training, like there was no preparation.

This might blow your mind. It blew my mind because I just didn't believe it was gonna happen. None of us had done any respiratory training at all before Saturday. And all three of us, he told us that we were gonna be able to do this and I just really was like, I don't feel, like I was a little bit, I wasn't comfortable

and I'll tell you reasons why. But not even by the end of the class, by the middle of the class, Shepherd, Chase and I all dove down to the Jacques Cousteau plaque in the Marine Park and touched it and came back up. Well that's 45 feet. 43 feet down. Damn!

I mean. And it was actually. Cause my pool was eight feet deep. It was not hard. And that's when I experienced the panic. It wasn't hard, well how long does it take to get down to 43 feet and back up? When you've got these fins on, not long at all. The nerve wracking part of it is the fact

that you have to be equalizing constantly and the deeper you get, the more difficult it gets to equalize. Once you pass 30 feet. But that's no different than scuba. Right, but in scuba, you are, when you go down, typically you are right side up and you're just letting the weight,

you're getting the air out of your BC and floating down very slowly and you're just going, and you're kind of just getting down to your depth and then you start swimming around. Yeah. With this, you gotta get down there and you're kind of just getting down to your depth and then you start swimming around. Yeah. With this, you gotta get down there because you've got one breath. So you pike dive at the surface.

You jump out of the water like a dolphin? No, you know, pike diving. So my head is like this and then I, then you throw your body down and put your feet up. So you go down and you immediately like, when I turn over, I'm already six and a half feet deep. My head is six and a half feet deep. Are you allergic to this conversation? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My body's trying to expel something. And at six feet, you're already in need of some equalization. As you know, if you're

going to the bottom of your pool, you probably feel the pressure on your ears. Yeah, yeah. And I have one good ear. Like right ear is like, yes, I'm here, I'm ready to go. And left ear is like, you gotta really push me to equalize. There's just something genetic in my eustachian tubes that creates that problem. But, so you're going down and you're like,

I can't do the, is it Frenzel technique, which is you use your tongue as a throat piston. And like those guys, if you watch these Netflix documentaries. Sounds like that could have other applications. If you watch these Netflix documentaries, and these dudes are going, the world record is over 700 feet on one breath. Damn, what?

Think about that. And now, no over 700 feet on one breath. Damn, what? Think about that. And now, no. 700 feet. And if you didn't know, people don't scuba dive at 700 feet. Nobody does that. I mean, I'm sure there's probably somebody who has, but the reason you don't do that is because of the decompression issues

with like breathing compressed air and being, but you don't have to worry about decompression with this because it's the same air the whole time. There's no opportunity for nitrogen to like get into your blood. But your body experiences pressure, including your lungs. All of the pressure, yeah, yeah, yeah, all of the same pressure.

Which is why you're equalizing your ears, but do you have to equalize your lungs? Do you have to, uh... No. In fact, you do not want to let any air out. The only air you're using is the air to equalize, but at no point, at no point do you want to exhale any air, because as you come back up, you want the air in your lungs to create buoyancy to continue to send you up. Yeah.

Because you're wearing a weighted belt. Shit. That creates a neutral buoyancy at 20 feet down. So in other words, if I'm 20 feet or above, I am positive, I am positively buoyant, so I'm coming, the natural tendency is to come back up. And 20 feet and below, it's to send you, the weight sends you down.

Because of the pressure of the water above you. With the compression of your wetsuit, it compresses your wetsuit and makes it less buoyant because there's volume in your wetsuit. Yeah, smooshing air out of it. Yeah. So anyway. Okay, so once you swam past 20 feet, you started to gain...

We dialed in my weight. I felt I was a little too heavy, so he took one of the weights off. But at a certain point, diving down, you're gaining... You're kind of accelerating. I would say that out of the three of us, I was the worst at it. Shepard was the first one to touch it. And Shepherd was nervous going in because he doesn't think he can hold his breath that long. And, but he really just took to it.

And Chase did it no problem. Like both Chase and Shepherd spent some time at the plaque. Cause I could like see. On the first time? Yeah. That's bold right there, because you still gotta come up. You're only half way.

I touched it and it was like, brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr that you still have half, you have what it takes to get back up. Well, the thing is, is that with those fins, you know, the free diving fins is what me and Chase had. Shepard had the just like sort of hybrid fins. So he wasn't as fast as us. You probably get to the plaque in 15 seconds. And then you probably get up in 10. So that's a 25 second dive. You can hold your breath for 25 seconds.

Yeah. Now you are equalizing and moving your legs and so you're expending energy and so you're using the oxygen. So it's not like a static breath hold. But it hit me, I was like, oh, I understand. I totally see how somebody who was really comfortable and really well trained and had the technique down perfectly

could go really, really deep because me just a hack who was uncomfortable, which I'll get to in a second, was able to go to like 43 feet on the first day. You know what I'm saying? Like you can totally see how, like even how is obviously like much more trained than we are, because he's the instructor. He would do things where like,

so we had to practice rescuing people off the bottom. So not at 43 feet. We went to like 15 feet and he would go to the bottom and like lay on the bottom like he was incapacitated and you had to go down and you had to like bring him to the surface and put him in do-si-do and like keep his airway open and stuff. You have to like learn how to rescue.

That was the kind of point of the class is like rescuing each other. So like Shep would rescue me, I rescue Shep. Do-si-do, so you're talking about hugging somebody from the back. Same thing as you know about in scuba training. You get them to the surface, you fill their BC, you do do-si-do like this.

Oh, oh, oh, like a square dance. Yeah, and then you swim beside them and keep their airway open. And the thing about this is that, I mean, obviously this was kind of the point was to scare us a little bit, but the shallow water blackout is a real risk with free diving. If you watch these documentaries,

of the people who go super, super deep, it's basically passing out before you get to the top. But why do they call it shallow water? As you're coming back up? Because I can't remember, even though I did take this written part of the class, I'm gonna guess 90% of shallow water blackout happens at like 20 feet or less.

And it has to do with what's happening with your body as you're getting closer to the surface and the pressure is being relieved. That doesn't mean that it's not dangerous. It's just less dangerous than being 45 feet down and having a blackout. At that point, your buddy's gotta come down and get you and swim up with you, take your weight belt off

so he can get you to the top. And, but you know how like if you breathe, if you hyperventilate and then hold your breath, you feel like you're gonna pass out? Well, if that happens to you when you're in the water, you just pass out. In these documentaries, these people,

every single person who comes up from a record setting depth, they get to the top. And in order for it to count, they have to be in their own reconnaissance when they get to the top. And every single one of them starts to get this look on their face like, you can tell they're fighting passing out

because they're pushed themselves to the absolute limit for setting these records. And first of all, just. Why did you even watch this before you went? Well, because I don't, I do not ever want to do competitive freediving. I'm not interested in going deep. I'm interested in going down there and looking at things

and going lobster hunting. Who's a different thing in your mind? That kind of thing. You know, you can do all that stuff at like 20, 25 feet, the stuff that I wanna do, like spearfish and stuff like that, eventually. But I don't want to be like, I'm going 100 feet down.

Yeah. But he put the fear of God in us about the shallow water blackout, because apparently it can happen pretty easily. So there's a number of things you should do. Like you don't hyperventilate. Like if you wanna hold your breath forever, Okay, uh-huh.

You try to over-oxygenate your blood through hyperventilation, and if you're doing a static breath hold, well, that's what you do. If you really wanna go David Blaine on somebody and go super long, you breathe pure oxygen for a couple of minutes before you hold your breath, and that's how he's able to like get into a tank

and just sit there like he did at the YouTube summit 10 years ago and we were just like sitting there watching him, he's in a tank for 15 minutes because he's breathing pure oxygen. Beforehand, yeah. Now he's also a maniac who can hold his breath forever. So you combine those two things. Okay, so tell me,

so you're not hyperventilating at the surface, what are you doing? You're just taking big belly breaths, almost like meditation breaths, you know, you're going, deep belly breaths, not chest breaths. You're really sticking your belly out, and then you're. Filling your, like really expanding your lungs. And then you're blowing it out.

And so what you do is you have a snorkel in. This is where I got uncomfortable. I don't like breathing through a snorkel. I've never been comfortable. I don't feel like I'm getting good air or something, you know? Because anytime I've ever been in the ocean or a pool and I've decided to go deep, I just come up and I try water and I just start breathing

or I hold them to the side. Yeah. But with this, what you wanna do is you wanna relax your body so that you're not using your arms and legs. And you are positively buoyant at the top and you kind of go face down in the water and you breathe through your snorkel as you relax and you're also using your vision

to spot where you're gonna go. So I'm like sitting there floating like a dead man on top of the water, looking at the plaque, like that's where I'm going to go. Okay. You take a few breaths. God, and my heart rate is just increasing right now. And then you take one last one.

And then you spit your snorkel out because apparently if you keep your snorkel in and then you black out, like water rushes into your lungs or something. Oh. More readily. So you spit your snorkel in and then you black out like water rushes into your lungs or something, more readily. So you spit your snorkel out and then you immediately hold your nose if you're mean. It's stuck to the side of your, it's attached to your mask.

It's actually on the back, it's kind of on the back of your mask to create like that. Is it the same type, same kind of scuba mask is what I have? So technically it should be a free diving mask because it's less volume inside. More aerodynamic.

No, I didn't realize this, but like, do you know that when you're equalizing your ears, in the process, you're like equalizing inside of your mask as well? I guess because it's all connected through the tubes. So the air in your mask is. So if free diving masks typically have smaller volume, they look more like goggles like this

and they're smaller so it's less. Oh, they're not over your nose. Oh, they're over your nose. Oh, okay. But they're, you know, my mask, my scuba mask is like this. Yeah. But he was like, it doesn't matter, it's your first class, just wear my scuba mask is like this. But he was like, it doesn't matter.

It's your first class, just wear your scuba mask. Shep, he brought us a free diving mask for Shep and he used that. I used my regular scuba mask and it wasn't a problem. If I really got into this and I was like, I gotta go down for a long time and you know. So how much of this practice did you do on the boat or on the surface before?

Nothing. In fact, as we were on the ferry out there, I was like, hey, Hal, let me just be honest with you. We took the class, but we did it real fast because Shepherd is getting ready to start school and we just sat down and we went through the whole thing. So I kinda need some review. I need to know what's the most important stuff

for me to know, especially breathing techniques and stuff for me to know. Especially like breathing techniques and stuff because there's like types of techniques would you do when you like come up and there's like clearing and he basically was like, the main thing is you just need to like understand like belly breathing, you know. And like when you come up, what you wanna do is you wanna

breathe all of your air out, bring your belly button as close to your spine as possible because you're trying to get all the carbon dioxide out. You're squeaking, you're wringing your lungs out. And that basically prevents, because another thing that happens is in the first 30 seconds after you come back up, that's when you have another chance of blacking out. So you have to watch your buddy.

When your buddy comes up. Because if you hyperventilate, You's when you have another chance of blacking out. So you have to watch your buddy when your buddy comes up. Because if you hyperventilate, you're taking shallow breathing, you're not getting enough oxygen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're like, your lungs aren't filling up with air, it's just the top of your lungs is how I picture it. So you're not really getting oxygen. That's probably right.

So if you expel, you come up to the top and you have to, it's discipline to expel all of the air before you go, ah! Because when you get up there, that's what you wanna do. Right, but the thing he told us, and this is where it comes back to the mental thing, I was uncomfortable because I could not fully relax. It was also, the waves were kinda, there was a bit of a swell coming in,

so it was like I was getting seasick because I get seasick in the water. Oh, shit. And I didn't take Dramamine because I was like, oh, well, the ferry doesn't make me sick. But like the bobbing up and down and like looking at all the kelp like going like this and I get sick. So I started getting a little seasick.

And so I'm a little bit seasick and like, the waves are kind of coming in, my snorkel's getting filled up sometimes and I'm having to like move my arms and legs a little bit. So I wasn't in like prime, just like sitting there, just trying to hold my breath as long as I could. So I would go down and I would be like, man, I don't have a lot of air right now.

Like, I don't feel, I gotta come back up. Chase was going down and would spend, cause I would like shadow Chase. So basically what happens is you, obviously you never do this alone. Number one rule of free diving, you never do it alone, even though there's people who do, but you shouldn't. So, you know, we do our, saw all the same signals.

He's like, I'm gonna go down, I'm gonna go in down, okay. And I'm like, okay. Then he goes down and wherever he goes, I'm swimming at the surface looking down, making sure that he's, everything's cool. And if all of a sudden he stops moving, lets out a bubble of air or something like that, then I would know, oh, he's having a problem.

Oh, so as his buddy, you don't dive down with him, you stay at the surface to watch him. Yeah. Oh. I guess if somebody goes really deep, you might dive down to, I don't know, I haven't gotten this far yet, they're still newbies. Okay, that makes sense though.

Okay, and that's why. But Chase was really good at it. That's why you had to learn how to rescue because that's your job as a buddy. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But I never got fully comfortable,

but here's the one thing Hal said. Well, Chase is also rescue diver certified. So like. He's got a lot of experience. And it's the mentality. You have to get comfortable. That's the thing that I really enjoyed about Scuba that I think I talked about at the time was overcoming some of the fear

of like going underwater and breathing. I had overcome some of the anxiety I described today. And I like, I do like the idea and I, the experience reward of overcoming something or pushing your body and saying, no, I'm in charge. Like volitionally, my body is not in charge and just in panic is'm in charge, like volitionally. My body is not in charge, and panic is not in charge. Yeah, and does not help.

So you didn't, so you were able to get calm pretty quick, or in the first one, there's a little more, there's gotta be adrenaline and... I would go down and I was just kinda questioning things about like, how are my ears doing? And it's funny because my right ear just goes and my left ear goes, it makes this really high pitched noise as it's equalizing.

And you gotta keep equalizing as you keep going deeper. Yeah. It's just not comfortable. It never got comfortable? The left ear? I think it's always gonna require, require some level of like pushing. But again, I'm not, for what I'm gonna- Just ring it out with a Q-tip.

What I'm gonna try to do is like, okay, shepherd, let's go, let's go get some lobsters. Because in a certain, I think it starts in either September or October. You can just go out there and if the lobsters are a certain, I think it starts in either September or October, you can just go out there and if the lobsters are a certain size, you have to bring your little measuring thing

and they have to be a certain size. You can just grab them, put them in a net and then take them home and cook them. Grab them before they grab you. You can't spear them. It's illegal to spear them with anything. You have to just grab them. But they will grab you.

They don't have pinchers, pinchers in California. Oh, they don't. So they're defenseless. Yeah. They're scary as hell to look at though. They're big bugs. Oh God. But they taste wonderful.

They taste good. Can you bring me a crab leg? I can get scallops. I like scallops. I can get fish too, man. I like fish, a crab leg? I can get scallops. I like scallops. I can get fish too, man. I like fish, but crab legs? There are crabs that you can bring up in California. Can I go, the thing that has bummed me out

is that if you're getting too into this, well this is, I'm either gonna have to scuba dive separate. I'm still gonna scuba dive. Well, but when you're doing this, is there opportunity to scuba dive? Or there's no, at the same place? Of course. Like if you take a boat out.

I was free diving all around scuba divers at Casino Point, which is so easy at Casino Point. You just walk down the steps, man. Yeah. I mean, if you weren't taking a class, I would have gone and just scuba dove, but I would have had a buddy. Yeah. Or maybe you would have done both. Oh, but here's-

Do you know how one impacts the other? Like if you're gonna free dive some, if you're gonna scuba dive some and then free dive, I think it might impact your, that's gonna impact you. From a decompression standpoint? Yeah. I'm sure. But if you free dive first and then scuba dive,

I don't know that that will impact you, but don't take my word for it. Yeah, I don't really know. I can't tell you that. Did you have a computer or a watch on that told you anything? My computer is scuba only. So Chase and Hal had the free diving one.

Yours would be- Mine has an app. Mine is like a big, like I gotta get a different dive watch. I'm not gonna get, the one you got is just too, it's just too much. I don't need all that.

Too big? It's too big and it's too expensive. I don't want, because I'm not, unless I'm gonna- That's never stopped you before. If I'm gonna wear it all the time. I've never heard- I'm not gonna wear it all the time.

I just want something to like, when I go diving, and I really don't want an Apple watch, Ultra is a great dive watch. Not a great dive, it's a good dive watch and it like logs everything for you and you can do free diving and scuba with it, but then you've got an Apple watch and I kind of like, don't wanna do that again.

Okay, all right. So I gotta figure that out, but this is the thing from a mental standpoint. So you know how when we did that episode where we held our pee forever? Yeah. And- I was good at that. We were told that the sensation

to pee comes at a 25% fullness of your bladder. Yeah. Like your bladder is not made to be, like when you feel like you got to piss like a racehorse, you're like, my bladder is gonna burst. Well, probably not, right? It's like to get to 100% capacity would be ridiculous.

Like it, no, it does happen. People do burst their bladders. It has happened. I think a president died like that or something. 100% capacity would be ridiculous. Now it does happen, people do burst their bladders. It has happened. I think a president died like that or something. But the feeling is at 20, 25%. Yeah. So you're saying when's the feeling for breath hole? Well, he didn't put it into those terms,

but what he told me is that, you're designed to breathe. You're supposed to breathe. Like you're supposed to breathe. Like your body wants to keep you breathing because that keeps you alive. So anything that's restricting breathing is going to set in some panic really early, like really early.

Like a slight, like that's why the snorkel gets me panicking a little bit because I don't feel like I'm getting great hair, you know? But it's all mental. It's all mental because you are getting what you need. But then what happens is, is he says that, and this actually didn't happen to me, I didn't push it. I'm gonna push it, I'm gonna try and pull,

I'm gonna like try to push it to this point. But the first thing that happens is your diaphragm starts contracting. You have a spasm of the diaphragm when you're holding your breath. What? And he's basically like, you've got to get to a place where that happens and then you keep holding your breath

and you get past the spasms. So it's like- That sounds crazy. Running long distance and you get a cramp and you're like, you can stop or you can run through it and then you get through the cramps. So it's that kind of thing. So I think that with, I need to do some like, there's all kinds of exercises you can do to like,

you can pack your lungs where you fill up as much as you can and then you start swallowing air. It's not just swallowing air because that just goes to your stomach. I haven't done it yet, but you're stretching your lungs. Now you would never wanna do that while you're actually free diving because that could be dangerous.

That's a preparatory exercise. That is to get your lungs to actually be bigger. Okay, what about a technique where you're holding your breath, you're free diving and you breathe, you expel the air into your mouth and then you breathe it again to trick your body into thinking that you're breathing. That won't work, Link.

I've tried that before. Because that would have a lot of carbon dioxide in it and your lungs would recognize that. I know, but they're still just like, oh, but there's, I'm doing the action of breathing. My diaphragm is moving. Yeah, and if you- That's not anything they told you to do.

And if you were to breathe carbon dioxide, like if you get inside of a coffin, buried alive, and you start breathing, you can breathe all you want. Eventually you'll die. Yeah, so there's- Because you'll use all the oxygen. I know that, but there's no advantage to it? No.

I mean, it's not gonna hurt. You're either holding your breath or breathing your recycled carbon dioxide, and maybe there's still a little oxygen that you're getting out of it. No, you wanna breathe it all in. Did you ask him? About fake breathing inside of my mouth?

Yeah. It didn't occur to me until right now. Well, you need to ask the big questions. And it's still not occurring to me. I'm telling you, man, this might be the ticket. I will say on the way, I guess he knew that we were the kind of people who wouldn't matter. I guess he knew that we were the kind of people

who wouldn't matter on the way to dive on the ferry. He's, Hal started telling us about a book that he's reading that I actually, I started reading it as well because it intrigued me. But it's about basically the people who figured out everything that we know about decompression. And it's called Chamber Divers. I can't remember the author.

I think she lives in North Carolina now, but it's basically- Nightmare stories of learning how to scuba dive. It all starts with an explanation of like one of the first attacks that was made during World War II, I guess, where the Allied forces were trying to attack Germany and they were, this was like pre-D-Day,

and they were like trying to go up on these beaches, but they got completely wiped out by the Germans, like mowed down like 97% casualty, I think. And then they were like, wow, we're gonna have to figure out a way to approach the beach underwater. And so then that, it's one of those things where like the technology for warfare

ends up driving all this innovation sometimes. And so they were like, how do we get people to be in submarines? And then there were these, the whole book so far has just been about this family that became the experts in what happens to people under pressure. And fascinating story of the way they built

the Brooklyn Bridge and what they would do, this was in the 1800s first of all, crazy. There would be this giant metal reinforced room, essentially, this giant box. Okay. And they would sink it to the bottom of the river, the East River, I guess, into the mud. And then they would send men down into this stairwell,

and then they would go inside of the thing. Well, they would pump a bunch of air into it to send all the water out, and so the bottom of the thing would just be mud, the river bed, and they would put like 50 guys inside this box, and they would work all day shoveling the mud out, and it would continue to just sink this giant chamber all day, shoveling the mud out,

and it would continue to just sink this giant chamber further and further into the mud. And then at the end of the day, it would first of all, it would be super hot in there because the pressure was so high. It'd be in there covered in mud, and thermodynamics is such that we increase the pressure, we increase the temperature. Yeah.

And then they would come up the stairwell and then half of them would get the bends like crazy and some of them would die and they were getting paid a lot of money at the time, like two and a half dollars an hour, which is a crap ton of money in the 1800s, but they were also dying like crazy. And they would do this until it got down

and it hit the bedrock. And then they would fill the whole container up with concrete and then build the bridge on top of it. That's how they did every one of the footings for the Brooklyn Bridge. Are you serious? And just went through men, just killing men constantly, just like everything that was built. Crazy!

Let's just see how many guys we can kill in the process of making this thing. But in the process, they were like, what is happening? I go down there and then they come up and some of them die. This is 1800s, they didn't know. Well we're not gonna stop, so we might as well learn. And then they figured out, oh, decompression. And so everything that we know about the tables, the decompression tables for scuba,

and I've been at this depth and now I gotta go scuba and like I've been at this depth and now I gotta go to this depth and I gotta stay at this depth for this long so the nitrogen gets out of my blood and that was all from those guys, but also so then they could put people in the submarines because what they were doing initially in like the wars is they would put dudes in the submarines,

they would send them down and they didn't know, they all died. Over and over again, just like whole submarines of dudes just died. Until they figured, oh, now we know what's happening. It's a fascinating book, I'm just like four chapters in, but... What's it called? Chamber Divers. Chamber Divers.

So Hal's telling us all these... That's my recommendation. All of these stories, as we're about to go underwater. Ha ha ha. Did he hand you a shovel? all of these stories as we're about to go underwater. That was like, but we're just... Did he hand you a shovel? But it was like, we're not, we're just free diving. We're not going that deep and we don't have to worry about decompression. Okay, well, I don't know. I do feel, I feel a little more, I'm acquainted with it.

I think you would be fine at it. I have to overcome something. I have more to overcome. But I'm okay with it. I'm also okay with all the equipment. I kinda like the equipment. Let me tell you, those fins, you wouldn't want them for scuba, I guess, because they're just too long. You feel like Michael Phelps, man. It's crazy how fast you can go. The fins are like this long. The fins are so long that they didn't fit in my bag. Fins are this long. It's a four and a half foot long fin.

It probably is almost four feet, yeah. And um. Damn. So like, when I was at that plaque, I was like, okay, I'm kinda panicking. And I was just like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, and I'm like, at the top, that fast. You come up so fast.

Okay. All right, well, I've given my rec. And I was just like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, week. Leave us a voicemail, we're listening to your voicemails, and we're looking for the ones that spark a response from us. Yeah, come on, y'all. 1-888-EAR-POD-1 Use hashtag EarBiscuits. Let us know what you think. Bye bye. Hey y'all, I just listened to the episode about what would happen to Good Mythical Morning if one of you suddenly met and unfortunately met your demise.

I would really love to explore the option of like a pre-made GMM video or a pre-made Ear Biscuit saying like, hey it's Rhett, you're watching this because I'm dead or whatever. I just think that would be a really cool way to acknowledge it for everybody and go out. But hopefully that doesn't happen for a very very long time. Alright, thanks.