Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Wonderhole Sent Us to Therapy | Ear Biscuits Ep. 442

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

Yep, you asked and we delivered. In this episode, Rhett & Link talk about their big passion project Wonderhole, from what they learned, to how they came to decisions, to how much their therapy sessions were centered around it. You can watch the entire series now at youtube.com/rhettandlink! Get 50% off a lifetime membership with 25 language courses for the rest of your life at https://rosettastone.com/ear 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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Visit rosettastone.com slash ear. That's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50% off at rosettastone.com slash ear today. ["Rosetta Stone's Lifetime Membership"] Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I'm Link. And I'm Rhett. Oh my gosh.

And that's one of my cards. Hey Rhett. What are you, who is this, who are you? I'm an imposter. Oh my gosh. That is the best me costume I've ever seen. Just in case you might think it was a caveman, you've got a t-shirt to clarify. I'm telling you.

So Rhett, what you been up to? Talking to me, yeah. Just working, just working. Can you see me right now through your hair? Yeah, I can see you. Okay, all right. Did you fall off of a train? More like a bus.

Oh, you travel by bus. Are you riding underneath the bus? Well, in the compartment up underneath it. I really appreciate the work you're doing to get the word out about Link and his dad's podcast. Yeah. I appreciate that, Rhett. Yeah. What, you're talking to yourself?

I'm talking to myself, yeah. Yep. Well, what is it? Tell them about my podcast with my dad. This Passes from Mortal Beasts with Charles Neal and Link from Good Mythical Morning. Okay, yeah, I've heard of them. It's me. How does it compare to Ear Biscuits,

the podcast with Link and his best friend, you? Well, I mean, I don't know if I can compare with Link's best friend, but it's pretty good. But you are my best friend. It's pretty good. But you are my best friend. It's up there. But you're not my dad. Right. No.

You're Rhett. I'm Rhett, yeah. Link's best friend. This podcast is almost as good as the one that I do with Link. That we're about to do right now? Yeah. Okay, there we go.

Well, it's good to see you, Rhett. Yeah, good to see you too, Rhett. Boy, I'm confused. Yeah, I'll explain a little later. Okay, yeah, so watch my, or listen to my other podcast with my dad, Disp dispatches from Myrtle Beach Well that was Rhett and this week at the roundtable of dim lighting we whoever I am now We're gonna be talking about

Wonderhole, we we we poured so much of ourselves into This show we've been so excited about it coming out. Now that the whole season one is out, we've taken some of your questions, and we just want to talk about it. I think in a lot of ways it represents, it represents a lot to me personally. Hey Rhett and Link, it's Marla from Minnesota. I just got done watching the last episode of Wonder Hole and I loved it.

I love that you released it once a week instead of all at once. It just made it more fun to look forward to. And now that your passion project is out and public and available for anyone to watch, how do you feel? What are the vibes? Let us know. I'm so curious. Anyway, you guys are great.

Love you. Say it back. Bye. Love you, Marla from Minnesota. Love you, Marla from Minnesota. Say it right back at you. Yes, yes, yes. How are we feeling now that it's out? I love you Marla from Minnesota. Sit right back at you. Yes, yes, yes.

How are we feeling now that it's out? I'm feeling similarly to when I was asked this question at the premiere episode of WonderHole, well, the premiere screening. We had an event where special people and journalists, who were also special people, we invited people to watch them in a theater with us. And that was a great experience. We got up there on stage afterward and we were asked questions. The first question was, did you set was, did you accomplish what you set out to accomplish with this?

And when I heard that question, I noticed that I got emotional. Like, I noticed too. I almost started crying a little bit because I was experiencing joy. That the answer that I could honestly give was, yes, we set out to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish, especially given the timing of the question was before any of it had come out on YouTube. I've done a lot of work in therapy, in talking about Wonder Hole, it's been a great object of exercising who I want to be as a creator and how I want to interact with the things that we're

creating. And so I was able to say that we accomplished the main things I set out to accomplish even before it came out because it was an expression of our creativity and us taking... shedding a lot of the parameters that we take into account when doing things before, or trying to do projects. But in this case, we were following, I mean, I appreciate you call it a passion project because, I mean, we've been very passionate about it, and channeling so much of our enthusiasm and our creativity into something, and creating an experience along the way that was rewarding even if the reception didn't match our enthusiasm. So at that point in the process, before anybody saw it,

I felt very happy to be happy about it. I think there's more there that I can talk about, but that's like my preliminary answer. So I was in the same place with you on the premiere. I was, it was very difficult for me to enjoy the premiere because I was just thinking about- The response. Well, just evaluating like what I learned

and wanting to like hold on to like, we don't get to watch our stuff in front of a live audience, right? And we did. And so, and you're trying to parse through the BS things that people say about liking it and then the genuine things people say, right? But here on the back end of,

so now the thing that we made that was the thing that we wanted to make is out there and we have seen like the response across episodes to individual episodes, we've seen the things that people have said about it. I would say the overwhelming feeling is still gratitude, right, I'm still very grateful because we got to, because we finally convinced ourselves, it was difficult for us to convince ourselves just to get to the point where we were gonna do something like this,

where we're just gonna make something. So I'm feeling very grateful to have done that and to have had such a good time doing it, making it. And also getting to work with our team. Like this was a, you know, we've got people on the team who've been with us for a long time. We've got people on the team who just started working basically before this started. And we have an incredible team that is really small, small but powerful. And just being able to be like,

hey guys, we did something. We made this thing that has connected with a lot of people. And there was a lot of people that seemed to connect with it in the way that we connected with it. When we were envisioning how you might feel and other things you might think when you were watching it, there's been a good amount of people who have responded in a way that's like, I see that. I see you guys, I'm connecting with it in this way and the way that our team feels about it. So I think my overwhelming sense is one of gratitude.

Mm-hmm, yeah, and just happiness that it resonated, that you can read comments and it can be about Yeah, and just happiness that it resonated. That, you know, you can read comments and it can be about specific things, but I really have cherished the comments where people go out of their way to talk about the work as a whole, to talk about even, well, they talk about not just an episode, from episode to episode, they don't just comment on it, but they comment on what it means for it to show up on YouTube

and how it's different and what they appreciate about it by zooming out. And especially with it all coming out and there being more of a, it being tied together, I really have appreciated the fact that people have evaluated it as something that is a milestone for us and potentially for YouTube in a lot of ways in terms of like what they're used to experiencing on the platform and saying that this is something that really surprised them and took them in a lot of places emotionally. And folded right in there with the gratefulness is a restlessness, right?

Almost equally powerful, maybe more powerful for me at times, is a restlessness with like all of the lessons equally powerful, maybe more powerful for me at times, is a restlessness with like all of the lessons that we feel like we have learned and are learning, which we'll talk about later on, we're not gonna start out with that, wanting to immediately apply those moving forward. Yeah. But what I try to do is I try to,

because we have a lot of things we wanna do the same, and we have a lot of things we wanna do the same, and we have a lot of things that we wanna do differently. But I'm grateful, again, I come back to the gratitude, because I'm grateful that we get to do that, because when we write a pilot, when we write a screenplay, when we just make a pitch, we just don't learn anything.

Like, you might learn a little bit by going through the process, but you learn so much more by doing, by getting something out there. Yeah, when you take it all the way through, you completely make it and then an audience completely digests it. Yeah. I'd like to talk more about the therapy part of it, because I'm curious, like, what you brought there. I know that at different points in the process, we would bring up our therapy discussions. So I know that we were both taking the

Wonderhold experience back to therapy. For me, when we first conceptualized the idea, like when we came out with that we're done video on the Rhett and Link channel, and it got a lot of traction because, you know, are they following suit with other YouTubers and taking a step back? And so, yeah, okay, we surprised you. We had a little bait and switch,

which ironically is what we try to do with every episode of WonderHole as well, in a sense. Maybe bait and switch is too strong of a term. I think it is, but especially for the We're Done video, that's certainly what it was. But us saying we are deciding not to ask permission, but we're gonna do everything we can within our power to make something and put it out there. Um... Period. Behind the scenes, what I would talk about in therapy

was how this is a new approach, and there's some trepidation there. But the main thing I talked about was, what did I want out of this? And it reflected a lot of conversations we were having at the time, which was process over product. If we can't create something that is... if you slice the process down from start to finish and you look at any one part, I had this high hope that I could squeeze enjoyment and fulfillment out of each step of the creative process for its own value. Not just, this is a step to get towards making something that, boy, when

that comes out or when it comes together or when we realize our vision, that'll be the point of satisfaction and that'll feel so good. You know, we've learned enough over our careers to know that it's hard to do that. And it's also a shame to look back on something and realize that you were focused so much on the end goal that you short-shrifted the process. So the way that I started to talk about it in therapy was as a playground.

Like that was kind of the analogy that we used. Of, okay, we're having fun doing this and out of play, I trust that we can have like more creativity. That we can have more surprises for each other and for the team. And that focus on experience is something that I continue to talk about in therapy because I had to keep reminding myself of that being kind of the highest hope of have a good time doing something

with people that I enjoy creating with, you being chief among them, in a way that, like, just trusting that that good time will come through in the final product. It was hard to keep remembering that. Well, it was much easier for me to remember that before it started coming out. So, for me, I mean even edit points when you, I'm not saying it was easy,

I'm just saying it was much easier before it started being seen by people to be able to be like, hey man, the process is important and I'm having a good time and the reward is in the doing of it and the response is the cherry on top, right? It's easy to say that,

but for me once it started coming out, I could not divorce myself from the results, right? And I think that it's multifaceted because one thing is just, the unhealthy thing is wanting to be validated, right? Like that's, I want to, I have attached some part of my personal value and self-worth around the reaction

to this thing that we have made. That's not healthy. It's easy to do and the business that we're in largely drives that type of interaction as you begin to look at your relevance and performance and then you evaluate yourself for it. We've done this long enough to know that we've done a lot of things that haven't worked and we're still, we still feel personally valuable to ourselves and to the world and

so we're gonna, so, but then there was this sort of secondary thing for me which was, well I want wanna keep doing this. I'm having so much fun doing it. I feel like I'm learning so much doing it. I feel like this team, along with us, we're kinda getting our mojo. We're figuring out how we're doing this. And we're only gonna get better at it

now that we've begun doing it. Boy, I wanna keep doing it. And feeling like, well, if nobody likes it, it's really hard to keep doing something. You know what I'm saying? Because we don't live in some world where we're just- So did you take anything- Freely create- Therapy before that, or was that the point

where you really started bringing it up? I would talk about it quite a bit, because through the process, I would be like, this is what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to be present when we're doing it, I'm trying to remember that I am in the good old days. When you think about Wonder Hole, the thing you're gonna think about is not the views,

you're gonna think about the process of making it, you're gonna think about being on that island in Florida. Taking the boat out to the island. Shooting and then, you know, and then, or, you know, skydiving for the first time ever. Going to that Neotropolis festival and seeing. Yeah, you're gonna think about those pieces that came together.

And then the time that we had with our team, you know? Right. So not just when the camera's rolling, but it's when it's not rolling. Even to the point where we tried to build in the experience into the process. Like, as we were watching cuts, instead of it just being sent out by email so that we could leave notes, we instituted screenings where we would all sit in the room and we would watch it together.

And then what we discovered was the moment we watch it together, that's fun, but then right after it's over, we just start ripping it to shreds, because that's the point is to give notes on what we've seen to make it better. But like we talked to TJ and then he came up with this system where we're gonna, I can't remember what he called it, but he had a name for it, it was an acronym, and he would say, alright, here's the steps, we're gonna watch the thing. I think it's like the Mace.

Yeah, I think that sounds right. Mythical something, something, something. But you basically, the first thing you have to do is you have to find something that you like and talk about it. Yeah. Something that you, a positive thing that you like. So everybody, the first thing you say out of your mouth has gotta be something you liked.

Right. And then after we talk about what we like, then the people who have had a hand in the edit directly... Give some context. They give more context about what they've already learned from the screening. So it's not... no need to give them notes that they're already giving themselves. Right. And...

Because Ben and TJ have seen that edit, and Dylan, of course, working editing as well, they've seen the cut and they probably like, they're going back and forth and trying to make some decision and they're like, we'll see how they respond in the room. Yeah, so there was valuable information for Ben and TJ to observe our reactions in the room and then say, I observed that this didn't work, I wanna change this,

that type of thing. That was the second point. And then the third point was then we each start giving our notes of what needs to change or what we need to experiment with or find improvement. And so that came from an emphasis on experience. We're sharing space, watching something, laughing, hearing each other react to it,

and that was rewarding, and it was a different experience than we've had on most anything, because we instituted that. It was still hard not to just get down to business and get down to the notes, right? But there's a lot of people investing in it that it's like, it's a little fragile. I speak for both of us when I say, I can't tell you, I don't remember any point in my career where I watched the first cut of something and didn't feel like my heart was sinking. Like every single time I watch something,

I'm just like, oh shit, this sucks. I just, it's my. It's much more likely to feel that. Because you always have this idea of this is how this is gonna come together. And then I just get super critical of myself, of my performance, of so many things, right? And so I'm grateful for the system too,

because it was like, hey, let's, you know, we've got something positive to say and also we've got time to make changes. I mean, I don't wanna go into too many details, but like episode one, there was an absolute monumental change made to the episode after the first time we watched it. Right.

And we don't have to get into everything, but there was a very huge shift that occurred in that episode that I think made what I felt was a broken episode into a great episode. And knowing that you've got some really talented people all trying to figure this out together and having this like, we can figure this out, we can figure this out. We can figure it out in the moment and we can figure it out

once we've shot it too. We've got a lot of tricks up our sleeves. So I'm feeling good. And... So you started to bring more, I mean, I started bringing things into therapy once it started to bring more, I mean, I started bringing things to therapy once it started to come out because then it became a real test of,

did I accomplish what I wanna accomplish and do I need to stick, how do I stick to my guns of like, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't matter how it's received because that's kind of a lie. It does matter how it's received. It impacts a lot of things. Our ability to build on it and do it again versus have to move on because it tanked.

You know, it's like we've been very attentive and looking at the response. And so that was something that I took to therapy just to kind of keep a clear head when navigating all those comments. And from episode to episode, the performance being wildly different in terms of the view counts.

Well, and the performance going down and down and down and then way, way up. And we'll talk about lessons learned later because I think we'll get into like how we're talk about lessons learned later. Okay. Because I think we'll get into like how we're thinking about some of that stuff. We got a lot more questions. For the past three seasons of Gone South, we've covered one story per season. We tried to figure out who killed Margaret Coon.

She told me I'm gonna kill you. I said, well, do it, bitch. Go ahead and do it. We delved into the violent world of the Dixie Mafia. I'm an outlaw and I was a thief, but I'm far from being the psychotic nutcase that I've been made out to be. And we tracked a serial killer in Laredo, Texas. Just turn around, please. Turn around. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!

Now, Gone South is back for a fourth season. But this time, we're doing things a little differently. So, in Gone South Season 4, we'll be bringing you new stories every week, with no end in sight. I'm Jed Lapinski. Welcome back to Gone South, an Odyssey original podcast. Listen and follow now on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes every week.

Let's hear the next thing. Hi, Rhett and Link. Congratulations on Wonderhole Season One. I'm really glad that you guys got to make something like this in the way that you envision making it. I was wondering, since you're endlessly creative people and we know you must've had a million ideas for what to put into Wonder Hole Season One,

how did these six stories end up making the cut? I know we sat in a room and we like, we put like just one-liner ideas on a board, which we probably have a picture of that. Because we're making this for YouTube. Because we're making it for YouTube, we knew that we had to at least have some reason to believe that people might be interested in it

in a YouTube context. And so a lot of the pitches were simply a title and then maybe like one line of context. Now, as you know, if you've watched the show, there's not really an episode that the thing that you clicked on is exactly the thing that you get. It's not like other YouTube videos and that the thing that you click on is just,

oh, these guys say they're doing this. Now I'm watching them do this. Well, everyone else does that on YouTube already. So we want you to click on it, but then we want to actually make you feel something different, right? Make you think something different. We want to tell a story of some kind. That's kind of the loose way to describe the show. And so we kind of had some stories and themes that we wanted to hit on, that we had in sort of a loose list. And then we would be like, okay, this seems like a fun idea,

this seems like the thing that we could do in this episode, but what kind of theme, I think about we drank a cloud, or whatever we ended up calling that. It was like we went to extremes to drink a cloud. I think we tried real hard on that one to get people to click on it. It kind of worked. But we thought it would be fun to document the process

of us trying to drink this cloud. But we had this other idea rolling around in the back of our heads, which was, for some episode it would be really cool to do some flashbacks to us as kids and hire some kid actors and do some little vignettes and we could actually find a way to tell the story in this way.

Which clicked into place when it became an exploration of the longevity of our friendship and the creative component. Component, that's not a word of it. And an illustration of the fact that we kind of get to do the things that we wanted to do as kids. Like it's kind of our lives now. And it was a bit of a celebration of that. Like how many people get to sit around

and have ridiculous conversations as 12 year olds that they didn't get to grow up and fulfill. We thought that was gonna be episode two for some reason, but then what became episode two is another good example of like that brainstorming process. Right, because we had the, well, TJ knew about Neotropolis, which is all the

sci-fi stuff you see in episode two. That's not our set design, right? The only thing that's our design is the costumes, and it was Daniel Salon who did that, who's worked on GMM in the past, and he made those costumes, but everything else is just a festival, like a cyberpunk festival that happens once a year out in the desert. And we knew that we could get production value by shooting there and could probably get permission to shoot there.

Right, but we didn't have an idea that we connected with for that. Yeah, totally separately. There was a, you had the, like a buried treasure idea. And when I pitched that, the time capsule idea the first time, my pitch was, we will be sitting on a porch in elderly makeup. Like, cause people always talk about one of these days,

you guys are gonna be old together, just hanging out. And we were gonna do like two old men sitting on a porch, reminiscing about the time they buried this time capsule. But then we did the thing with the kids and it was kind of too similar to that. And then I was like, well, what if we're just old and we're looking for it? But we weren't thinking like cyberpunk.

We were thinking like 20, 30 years from now. But then when TJ had this Neotropolis idea, we were like, oh, well, well you could bring these two things together. And what if the future is literally this futuristic thing that we have and let's go all the way to 200 years in the future because it's a cyberpunk set.

Right. So that's how that one came together. So they all came together differently, but at one point there was probably like 40 plus ideas on a board. But we only greenlit five. So it's not like we fell in love with it. Until we broke the story, I think that's what we're saying. Until it, there's a certain point when you break the story

and it becomes, in our minds, an episode of Wonder Hole. And I think both of the examples we just walked through were those turning points, where everything clicked into place for those two videos. That happened for five in our initial things. We were actually short. And then we had to come back. We were like, the red and blue thing

was kind of hanging out there, but that was the one that we didn't have. It wasn't hanging out there. It didn't exist. It wasn't on the board at all. It came up later. So yeah, we were actually, we didn't have an embarrassment of riches here, you know, because we didn't, those things,

they would click into place, but we were pretty picky about it. And so it took a while. Yeah. And that's why Red and Blue came about later and was the last one we shot. In fact, the day after we had the premiere screening, the next two days is when we shot Red and Blue in its entirety. But I think that answers that question.

Yeah. Did we answer the question? Yeah, I think we did. Let's hear another one. Hi, Rhett and Link. This is Robert from Kelowna, BC in Canada. Calling about your Wonder Hole prompt, the only question I had from the entire show was, when you convinced that guy at the shoe store to hold your envelope with your clue for 200 years, did you convince him to do that before he knew that it was gonna be for a TV show?

Because if you did, that guy is my new hero. Anyway, love the show, love you guys, have a great day, bye. He is our hero too. He is one of my favorite aspects of the series and it just, it makes us wanna do more of that because. More of bringing just everyday people into the story. Everyday people because it scratches that commercial king's itch, you know?

We just like working with people and we like you knowing that, okay, this guy is a real guy. He was really the shoe shop owner. And I'll tell you what he knew when we walked into that shop. I don't know what he knew. I know what he knew. So. I didn't wanna know.

So I don't know anything that he knew. Well, okay, well, you're in this guy's boat. Yeah, tell me, what did he know? He knew that we were making a YouTube video that featured Burbank businesses, which is not untrue, but we did not want him to think that he was like, cause we wanted when we said we've got this thing that we want you to hold on

for 200 years, we wanted it to be like, how is this guy gonna actually react to this? So the general idea is it is a YouTube video about Burbank businesses, business, that features a Burbank, I think maybe TJ was like, that features a bird bank, I think maybe TJ was like, that features a bird bank business. Right, in other words, TJ went to him and asked if we

could film with him and basically it was like a bit of a casting exercise, he was like, yeah, he's, you know, he's happy to be in the video and he seemed very cooperative and into it. But the entire exchange, everything where he talks about the treasure box and he's like, you want me to hold on this? Who's gonna pick it up? You're gonna pick it up?

The first take, just the conversation that happened. There was nothing, we didn't do anything else. And it's almost all of the conversation because I remember when it was over and we went outside, we were like, well, do you, what, what do we, do we miss something? Do we need to go in and talk to him some more? Do we need to pick anything up?

And Ben was like, we got it. Ben was like, we got it. And I was like, oh, okay. It was just what you saw. I mean, it was edited down, but it wasn't edited down that much. No. And then.

So it was very, what you saw was very real. Once we started rolling, we came in, we met him for the first time on camera. We had the conversation that you saw in a slightly longer version without any edits, but there was no stop downs, there was no cuts, there was no direction in the middle, there was nothing. It was like, from the time we walked in the door to the time we walked out, they rolled and that was it.

And then we asked Ben, and he was like, we got it, that's awesome. And then... The original plan was not to have him play, which you may be like, well damn, that's, again, my favorite part of the whole video is the fact that he plays his great, great, great, great grandson in the thing. But I'm just gonna be honest with you, that was not plan A. Plan A, because we've, as you can see,

throughout the series, we've tried to incorporate other people that you might know from other things into each episode. I can't remember who we were trying to get to do that. It just didn't, it wasn't really coming together that we could have somebody do the future role. And then, I don't know who said this. It might have been TJ who was like, what if we-

I think Ben and TJ, the idea was hatched in their conversations. Yeah. And pitched to us. And as soon as they said it, we were like, yes, this is actually like... Yes. Why didn't we plan this from the beginning? Because this is perfect, because obviously his grandson would look like him. We just weren't thinking...

To be honest with you, we've changed our view on this, and we'll talk about this when we talk about lessons learned, but that was shot very early in the process. And we were seeing a very big difference in the modes that we were in for when we were in present day Burbank going around and laying the clues, and then the anamorphic-ly filmed cinematic, sci-fi, fully scripted futuristic part.

Right. And we thought that those parts would feel incredibly different, but then we started realizing as we started making the show that, oh, I don't know how much people are gonna, people obviously know that the sci-fi thing is happening in some futuristic fictional place. Yeah, it's fictionalized.

But the tonal shift between those two isn't something that is gonna be this giant, isn't gonna register in this giant way. And so that's why we never thought that he needed to be the guy in the movie because we needed him to act or whatever. But it turns out him acting just like himself and saying those lines in the way that he did,

it's by far my favorite part of that episode. It might be my favorite part of the whole series because I especially like it when neither of us are the reason that the scene is good. It goes back to that commercial Kings thing. I've always liked it when we position somebody else to be the funniest person. So we, yeah. I mean, he showed up and of course that scene wasn't in Neotropolis.

It was on a set somewhere. It was the same set where we shot us waking up from the beginning of the 2020 for, the 2022 for. And the person who, I can't remember, like Jenna, who was the person, your person? Jenna was the actor in the, the repair- Draven. The repair shop, Draven. Draven, yeah. Draven, the prepare shot, that was Jenna.

And then Felicia Day did a voice, did the voiceover. That was also shot in the same place. So those are the three things we shot there. So we brought him out and then he was asking us, he was like, why didn't you give me a script? I could have memorized this. But the way that we wanted to do it was just like, feed him every line, which we did.

Every single line was fed to him off camera. But then when we filmed our part, he just watched him react and they got some of that too. Like when we ate that hot pepper, it was like really a hot pepper. For some reason. For some reason, which is, I mean, which works for the behind the scenes on the

Mythical Society, but... It slowed us down a little bit. I don't know if it actually did anything for the actual thing because we had to act like it wasn't. So we just made it really hard on ourselves to act like we just didn't eat a hot pepper. Yeah, when I muted my Nano taste buds, I was like, shit, my taste buds are on fire.

Not muted. They are not muted. I don't know why we did that, but I'll blame TJ for that. Yeah, so Sam is the star, man. Sam is the star. And Sam recently replaced the souls on Shepard's boots. Really? And he did a great job. Okay, of course he did.

He's gonna be there forever. Next one. Hi, my name is Ripley. I'm from Baltimore, Maryland, and I had a theory on Wonder Hole that I'm interested in your take on. I was chatting with a friend after we had both seen the first episode, and he mentioned that he had expected a literal physical hole. So naturally the topic became, well, what is the Wonder Hole? I thought the Wonder Hole was essentially a brainstorm. Wonder Hole seems to be a behind the scenes play by play of just how you guys come up with stuff, how it's not even really voluntary. I'd love to hear your take on that.

really voluntary. I'd love to hear your take on that. Okay, I love the fact that you're talking about this and trying to figure things out. I think a big part is we raise so many questions for ourselves as we were making it about how are people gonna take the genre shifts and all the different choices we made, raise a lot of questions that then, again, in therapy, as we were getting these answers, oh, that didn't work, oh, that did work, oh, that was confusing, people loved that.

I was just trying to say, well, if I don't get the answer that I wanted, the main thing that I wanted was an answer. And so I was trying to approach it with curiosity answer that I wanted, the main thing that I wanted was an answer. And so I was trying to approach it with curiosity and not be so invested in everybody liking or understanding everything. In this question in particular, I appreciate your theory. I don't, that's not, that's not, I don't think of it, when I think of the Wonder Hole,

I do think of it in terms of the actual content of the episode, right? Yeah, I think it would serve to talk a little bit about how we came up with the name, because there were, we had names for the show that were thrown around that were more descriptive in terms of the fact that it's us going out and doing things or whatever.

What was the sexual one? Rhett and Link are doing it. And- So doing it was the name of the show. And so that's it. And then in smaller letters, Rhett and Link are. And so the reason we didn't ultimately go with that name and some other names that were kind of like it is because, and again, I don't know if this was the right

call from like a marketing standpoint. Let me just say that upfront. I'm just saying that like, I'm happy with the fact that we did it and I'm, is consistent with how we feel about it, but it doesn't tell you anything about the show other than maybe there's a hole, and if there isn't, you're gonna be like, why isn't there a hole? Rhett and Link are doing it was just a reality show.

Right, right, right. So a docu-reality show. That's why we didn't like it, because we were like, well, that is what we would call it if we were like, Conan O'Brien goes, or whatever his name of his show is, where he like travels, right? Because that's what he's doing. But we had always envisioned the show as something

that would elicit a sense of wonder. And it would make you laugh, it might make you cry, it might make you think it was going to be unexpected, it was probably gonna take a left turn that you couldn't anticipate. So we had this idea of wonder, right? And there was this, I found this German word, I think it's wonderkomb, which is like wonder chamber.

And it was something that back in the day before there were museums, people, a lot, you had to be probably a wealthy person, had a literal cabinet of curiosities inside of their homes. And so it was like a room or a shelf or a literal cabinet of curiosities inside of their homes. And so it was like a room or a shelf or a literal cabinet where you were like, this is the stuff that I've collected throughout my travels. Let's sit down and let me tell you about each thing. Yeah. And.

Wondercomber. The wondercomber, the cabinet of curiosities was a precursor to what we now have as museums. Sometimes rich people have a bunch of stuff and then they just turn it into a museum, sometimes they're publicly funded or whatever, but this is how we experience incredible things that people have discovered now is by going to museums. And I really liked that wonder-comber.

So we started talking about wonder something, like wonder what? Wonder or something wonder. So we put together a list of like 75 ideas that had wonder and something. Bread was taken. Yeah, Wonder Bread was actually, once you start, you disassociate from like

existing brands and stuff, you're like. I think we came up with Wonder Bread by accident. And then realized, oh, Wonder Bread is a thing. But... I had, on my list, I had Rabbit Hole. Because we had this idea of taking people on a journey that you didn't know where it was going and you could never predict where it was going.

Keeping people guessing, surprising and delighting an audience on a trip, going down the rabbit hole. And then nobody really liked, nobody liked Rhett and Link's rabbit hole as much as me because it also implied something that we didn't like, which I can't even remember what that was. ["Dreams of a New World"] It can't be like a conspiracy thing or whatever.

We didn't want people to think this was like us going, investigating something. Uncover, like, yeah, uncovering something. But then when we have wonder plus another word, that's when Cole came back around. And then when you put it together, it's like Rhett and Link's Wonder Hole, it just kind of makes you...

You laugh a little bit. A little, a little bit. It's a little embarrassing. And there also is a place called the Wonder Hole in South Africa, two words, Wonder Hole, which is a cave where this like purported giant serpent lives or whatever, you know, sort of like a folk tale or whatever. Yeah, so we like that vibe.

So anyway, that's how we named it. But then, now, first of all, I would say there are no wrong answers to this question because when we named it, it was, oh, this is also kind of paying homage to the very first video that followed this general structure. We dug a medium sized hole. This whole like vlog meets some fictional elements

kind of thing that incidentally we called Wonder Hole Season Zero was the 2023 videos on the Rhett and Link channel. And so we were like, oh, this is kind of cool because that video, making the decision to make that video in that way is what led us to this place. So Wonder Hole kind of completes the circle. But we see it as there are moments or a moment

in which the video becomes something different than you could have anticipated. Right. And that's when we're starting to go down the wonder hole. But that was actually- You're not getting what you clicked on. That was a retrospective idea. You're going down the wonder hole.

We always talked about left turns and surprising people. We hadn't broken a story if we hadn't done something that surprised you. Yeah. And so that became the wonder hole for me. At the moment when you realize that this is more than I bargained for, now you're going down the wonder hole. Come on, go all the way down. Yeah, and we like the fact that it was something

that's ownable, that like, when it becomes something that you can associate with it, like, Rhett and Link are doing it, or Rhett and Link's rabbit hole, these are words that exist already. Yeah, it can shape too much expectation. And we'll come back to expectations, but let's hear another. Hey Rhett and Link, this is Alex from Colorado. I was thinking about Wonder Hole and I loved it, but I really started wondering what didn't work. So often people talk about the best parts of making their projects, but I want to know what was really hard.

What moments served as good learning opportunities? What parts of your process do you think wouldn't carry on into the second season? Perfectionism is a beast that's really hard to conquer, so I think this could give a lot of good insights for people who might wanna take a crack at their own projects without fear of hitting roadblocks. Let us know. Great question.

I'll tee this one up and let you take the lesson learned. After what, like Rhett said, we were calling it what we now call season zero, the previous year of eight videos or whatever they were. In deciding what we wanted to do next, we decided to formulate, approach it as a show and have X number of episodes and the show have a name and it have a release cadence, so that we could put

more of the, like we can make a bigger deal out of it from a marketing standpoint, okay? And also separate it from our own noise. We create so much content, we create a lot of noise that is difficult for us to break through our own noise. When you make... 10, 11, 12 videos a week. Every single week you've got all this shit coming out that just has our faces on it. It's very difficult to break through your own noise. And so that was a part of making it a show, was to kind of put a tip to the spear to kind of see if it can break through not only our own noise but the noise of the internet.

You could focus on it. You could focus on the different phases of it and make it what we wanted it to be, put it out there, and then promote it, get the benefits of that, but then also do what we're doing now, which is learn from it and then retool and have a reapplication for move forward with the second season or whatever it is that we're planning on doing. So that was a good idea in my mind. Even now. I still believe in that idea, and I think that was the right call. I think that we made some mistakes in how we applied that specifically in terms of

marketing. Well, what I learned, and I don't know exactly all the aspects of this, but when you call something a show, you set necessarily an expectation. And when you don't clarify that it is more anthology than episodic, you know, major arc being, you know, unveiled over the course of multiple episodes. A leads to B leads to C in the episodes. When you don't clarify that.

And you can just watch them in different orders. Then people are just left to draw their own conclusions based on the expectations that we've left you with no choice but to draw some sort of conclusion. And then I think we added a little bit of fuel to that expectation fire when we made our trailer, which basically was, hey, let's throw all the best moments. We'll do what you do with the trailer, which is throw all the most compelling visuals together into one trailer. But again, out of context, you see... It was really just a teaser trailer. It didn't give you any information about what the show,

what the format or... But we couldn't have done, like, without being like... Right. What I'm saying is, if I could go back with the way we would talk about it, is I would be like, just so you know, everything, you know, every episode kind of stands on its own. There is a way that all the episodes are tied together, and you will be rewarded if you watch all six episodes, but...

We're never gonna say that. Yeah, I know. But the other part, it wasn't just, was it serial or episodic, but also what genre are we in? Is this fully, is this scripted? I think that when we released a trailer that was just teaser footage and a montage and a name that meant nothing to anybody, without filling in the gaps with information about what it was, we left you to fill in those gaps with your own assumptions.

And when it's a sensational trailer, your expectations go in a certain place. It's heightened, and it go in a certain place. It's heightened, and it's also a little specific. And then we made, in order to get people to watch the trailer, we contextualize it with a YouTube title, We Found a Hole in Our Office, and then it starts with something you would expect of us looking at a hole, and then it goes through there, and it's just showing you the trailer. That was just a device to get more people to watch the trailer than just putting out the trailer

and saying, Wonder Hole, season one official trailer. Now, you won't believe the hole we found in our office, or whatever we called it. But then, again, once you click on it, we didn't tell you... That it was a trailer. ...that much or anything at all. We didn't tell you that there isn't really a hole in our office,

and that has nothing to do with any. This is just a device for the trailer. So you thought, oh, they are gonna find a hole in their office, and then that's going to be this narrative is what a lot of people... And also, there was an article written for Variety that said Rhett and Link to release scripted series. Right. And another thing that we did, again, this is a lesson learned, these are mistakes that we made from a marketing standpoint.

We made the We're Done video and we talked about all the things that we had tried to do and people had said no and we were like, now we're gonna do what we wanna do. We didn't really explain that the thing that we're gonna do isn't anything that we had tried to do and people had said no, and we were like, now we're gonna do what we wanna do. We didn't really explain that, the thing that we're gonna do isn't anything that we've tried to do in Hollywood. It wasn't a script that we wrote that they rejected. Yeah, cause some people were like. It wasn't a pitch that we made that they rejected. Yeah, some of the more critical comments were like, I can see why Hollywood rejected this

because it sucks or whatever. Oh, yeah. It's like, we didn't, like everything that we've pitched to Hollywood has been like an intact, like, universe, you know, like a sitcom or a screenplay or whatever. That they reject it. They did reject it. Don't worry, they reject it.

But, and I think this kind of gets back to the, I'll just talk briefly about, just because we're talking about that aspect of it right now, a lesson that we also learned is that, which is something we anticipated, but I think the lesson was so much more visceral than we could have anticipated, and that is YouTube currently as it exists rewards a certain type of video. And that video is not one that tells scripted or pre-planned fictional story.

And so we knew that going in, that's why we didn't put Wonder Hole episode one in the first video, because everything that we've learned about the internet is that if you call the thing that you're making a show, then people are being asked to make a different type of decision than they usually make when they're deciding to watch a YouTube video,

which is everyone makes a decision to make a YouTube video, to make a watch, everyone makes a decision to make a YouTube video, to make a watch, everyone makes a decision to watch a YouTube video based on it popping up and them seeing a title and thumbnail and deciding if they think that that is worth their time. In that moment. In that moment.

And we thought, well, the people who know this is a show, they're going to find this. They know when it's coming out. They know what channel it's on, they'll find it. But we have got to put these things out into the YouTube ecosystem in the best way for them to have a chance of actually breaking through, right? And, but we were like, we don't need every single episode to be a completely tried and true concept.

We'll do some stuff that's YouTube-y, but not necessarily a definitive point of reference. So for instance, we took the world's most expensive first class flight. This is something that, I don't know who started it, it may have been Casey Neistat, but that was many years ago and since then many different YouTubers have done the same video. It is a genre. And so we were like, well, people click on this type of video, so let's title and

thumbnail our video in that same way, but let's do something different that uses that concept to get to something that we actually wanna say. But then there was something like, we cut down a tree with a peanut butter ax, which... Is not a genre. It's not a genre, but there are people who've done like... Outdoor videos.

Weird, there's the guy, I did a thing, who I love his channel, he did a, I cut down a tree with a tree. Yeah. And so it was kind of reminiscent of that. But as you can see from the views, like it didn't break out, it didn't connect. Click through was low, impressions were low.

And then of course, episode five, we spent 24 hours locked in red and blue rooms, is the most, the best performing episode of the entire season now that's not an Existing exact video title that exists out there But the two color rooms next to each other and the we spent 24 hours locked in Those are very YouTube II things and it just caught the algorithm in a really significant way so that so basically the lesson learned there is that our intention to use a really clickable title and thumbnail

to almost Trojan horse our way into being able to make the video that we wanna make on the platform that lets us freely distribute it, that worked. But the real lesson, how important that is is something that we were hit over the head with. And I wish it was a little bit different, obviously. I wish you could just be like, hey, we're making a show on YouTube,

episode, Wonder Hole episode one, and that's all it says, and everybody will watch it. But that's not the environment that we exist in right now. Maybe we will someday. Maybe we can be a part of that changing, where it's like you can tell stories in this medium. But that is what we learned. Yeah. That was the question, and that's why different episodes go farther, some go

farther than others into the genre, so that we could have more data to learn how we wanted to move forward. I would think. I would say that another miscalculation that we made was, again, back when we were editing and releasing trailers and promoting the show before and as it was premiering, it became clear to us in interviews that we didn't fully know what the show was. You know, we never pitched it and it got rejected, but we never would have pitched it. I think it was interesting because of that We're Done video, and I said we're not creating something

with the first question being, what will a network buy? It was more of what will a YouTube viewer click on to a certain extent, as we just said. And we started building what we wanted to do, and it had all the elements, we knew all the elements we wanted to put into it, but we didn't have a completely cohesive concept for a show. I mean, we

just didn't because I couldn't in one or two, I'll even say three sentences, tell someone who was interested, like a journalist, or someone asking a question in the AMA on the Mythical Society. You did say in that one interview, Wonderhowl, every episode takes an established YouTube genre and turns it on its head, because we had kind of come up with that. I was experimenting with... One or two episodes.

Yeah, it wasn't true, but it was... But it was an interview, who cares? It was a, you know, it was a local LA morning show clip. I was like, well, this is a good place to test out this one-liner that isn't really completely what the show's about. But it just, it exposed that we didn't have a tagline. We didn't have, you know, we didn't talk to Jimmy on The Tonight Show this time around,

but we would have had to clamor to figure out what to say. And I think the reason we didn't do that is we completely underestimated how much the context that we were creating for the show and the expectations that we were setting for our audience mattered, because we were like, we're doing this to create buzz around this,

but really it just comes down to that click. Will people click on this? But the thing we underestimated, and I think it's ultimately a good thing that this is the case, is that there were a lot of people who were like, guys, when you talk about it being a show, it seems like you're saying

that there's some sort of cohesiveness and there's some way I can describe this and I can talk about it and I can anticipate it. It's actually good that that's the feedback that we've gotten because it shows that people are, there are people who are hungry for that. And it also really informs the way we think about season two in terms of being able to say

this is what it is. Yes, definitely. And I feel like I'm really glad that we did it the way we did it. I'm not saying it was a mistake, I'm saying it was, it's a lesson learned, but the way that we did it the way we did it. I'm not saying it was a mistake, I'm saying it was, it's a lesson learned, but the way that we learned it, we had, it was so much more of an open-ended question that we've learned, we now have answers

where we can narrow it down. The show is being developed in front of your eyes. And that's why we're calling it season, that's why we call the previous year season zero. Because it was a development process in front of you to get to where we're going. And I think when we get to where we're going, then we'll probably do something different.

But we now know that we're not there yet, which is why we are happy to announce there will be a season two. Can I just make a big deal out of that? I know we said it a number of times, but we're doing a season two of WonderHole. If we haven't said it officially, you try it on, say it officially, it's fine.

We are officially doing season two of WonderHole. In fact, we're already doing it. We're already doing it. You will be waiting a while, probably as long as you waited for season one. Yep. We do a lot of other things. Unless you're my therapist, and then you'll hear all about it.

Yeah. All along the way. But there will be a season two, and if you like season one, I think you'll love season two. That's the way I feel about it. But we still have things to learn. But the thing is, is like, who knows? We can be wrong about things we're saying right now.

Who knows what thing we are already wrong about for season two? Oh, yeah. That's the wonderful thing about putting it out there and doing it. I didn't learn anything else, did you? Yeah, I think people might be interested in this, but also it's a big lesson to learn for the way I'm thinking about our approach. Again, back to, I think episode two is the perfect example of this, right? You've got the stuff that was happening

in the present day of us bearing the time capsule and then you got the stuff that's happening 200 years in the future. 200 years in the future, very cinematic, fully scripted. Every single word was written on a script that we were reviewing before, that we wrote and then reviewed and the writing process was really collaborative with the team and then we are reading it and like memorizing lines. Everything that was happening in present day Burbank was

very loosely outlined, like we were like, well, okay, we kinda need to do this in this scene. And I think what we have found is that, speaking of expectations, is when you have been on the internet for a really long time, or when people's number one point of reference for your work is you operating in a very particular mode, and in our case,

that is totally off the cuff, totally unscripted, saying the first thing that pops into our minds, just being good friends together, and you've got literally like a thousand X times that of any other format. It can be very difficult to see somebody in a different setting, in a different format, and still think that it's good. I've seen this happen with stand-up comedians. I've seen stand-up comedians who are like their podcasts. I think they're super funny on their podcasts. And then I see their stand-up special, and I'm like,

oh, you're funnier on your podcast than you are on your stand-up special. Another thing that happens is somebody's a really good stand-up. Then they do a movie, and you're like, oh, you're a really good standup but you're not a great actor. And so I'm first in line to say that this applies maybe more so with us than it does with any example that I've given because most people come into our world through Good Mythical Morning or Ear Biscuits

or something where we're just being ourselves. Right. because most people come into our world through Good Mythical Morning or Ear Biscuits or something where we're just being ourselves. Right. And then when we take out a script and start memorizing lines and start acting, sure, there could be some incredible moments. I think you had an incredible moment in episode two when you, right before you fell off of the cliff, right?

It was like a passionate, really believable moment of good acting. Well, thank you. And there were... I really fell too, by the way. There were like flashes of things that was like, but I'll just be honest with you, I remember watching that episode in,

we got up in front of the group that we premiered that, that there was two, we did episodes one and two at the premiere. And like, I was just like, like kind of cringing at my performance in the future part, right? I was like, oh, some parts kind of were okay. Some parts really didn't work.

And I think that we, you know, one of the things that we've sort of realized is that we thought that there would be this really big differentiation between these two things, but when we started realizing that people weren't seeing us in the future parts and us in the present parts as different modes. Right. Because the audience began to understand that it's all fictional.

It's all made up. Like the story from the beginning and where we're going with it, even though we may be improvising the things we're saying, we know where we're going. We know at the beginning of We Drink a Cloud that, well, we're gonna do it this way and then we're gonna do the drone and we're gonna do this and we're gonna do this and then we're gonna end up at the beginning of We Drink a Cloud that, well, we're gonna do it this way, and then we're gonna do the drone,

and we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do this, and then we're gonna end up, at the end of this thing, we're gonna be on a Ferris wheel with a helmet with a fog machine filling it up. Because that's the way we wanna tell the story. Once people started being like, it's kinda like it's a little bit like the office, or it's a little bit like fictional vlogging. Like once the audience has bought into that, and we're like, oh, they actually want, they actually are embracing the

fact that we're leading them on a journey. Right. I think the thing that a big lesson learned for me is that when we put ourselves in that situation where we've got this tight is that when we put ourselves in that situation where we've got this tight script, never took an acting class, never been trained, never had an acting coach, we don't really know what we're doing. Sometimes we have these moments, right,

where it'd be like, oh, that really worked. But I think that we've kind of recentered and been like, oh, you know what, we could do all of that same, that kind of scene work based on ideas and outlines and interact with each other in that way in the quote unquote scripted parts in the same way as we do in the unscripted parts. And it kind of all becomes a little bit more

curb your enthusiasm approach than it is like. Right, and I tend to agree that I think the expectations are much more magnified with us than with the other examples you gave of a comedian actor, that type of thing. Because in this instance, even in the same piece, we were playing the same character, which is ourselves, and doing it in different modes, and that was kind of something that people weren't interested in looking for that, and so it didn't make sense to you. Well, if you like watching us because we're being ourselves, and then we're acting like ourselves,

but not actually being like ourselves, how are you gonna like that? Not as much. There's no way you can like that as much, right? Now, I think, first of all, there's a huge part of the audience that was like, oh, well, I know you guys are acting in that situation, and I'm sort of overlooking the fact that you guys

are not particularly gifted actors, to enjoy the whole thing. I'm not saying that. This wasn't like something. It's just something that we learned by doing. Yeah, it was more of a hangup for some people, and it would be a hangup for me personally. I'll just say that if I was a fan of us, it would be a hangup for me. And so I think that we...

And it became more clear... I'm excited about where we're going. ...seeing how people process it. Where we're going. And now we can build it into where we're going. Let's hear another voicemail. Hey guys, this is Sarah and Colin, calling from Tennessee, and we just finished this week's episode of Wonder Hole,

and both of us are very concerned that you might have accidentally, or somehow crushed Link's actual car because we've both been emotionally invested in the story of Link getting his car back. So yeah, we just kind of wanted to call and get maybe a confirmation from you guys that that wasn't his actual car, that you found another replica and used it for the video because if not, we are both gonna be very sad. Thanks, bye.

Yeah, it's just a replica of my 1987 Nissan pickup and there wasn't even a motor in it. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't. No, it was real. I mean, that was my truck. I crushed my truck. I told you the reason why in the video, and then you saw it get crushed.

I mean, most people were taking issue with, if it really upset them, it was people who have connections with cars. You know, I know we did a really good job of establishing my connection to my truck, like the home video and all that stuff. That's why it was so exciting that like, now you have to reckon with how you feel about it.

Just like I had to reckon with how I felt about it and my family had to reckon with how they felt about it. I reckon they did. The exciting thing for me was transferring that experience to you. And I know you're not happy with us for really crushing, as many people said in the comments, the hard body. They don't even make them like that anymore. I severely underestimated the amount of people who were just in love with the fact that this truck

was still salvageable and clean. So even if you didn't connect with the sentimental value that I had, just the fact that it was a, I'll say in quotes, perfectly good running truck. It wasn't perfectly good. It wasn't. It required a rake to start. And can you just replace the starter?

Yes, but there was also a fuel leak and there was also... it was my truck to do with what I wanted and I'm really glad that that's what I did for the reasons, I wanted to create an ending that moved you, that meant something, that made you think and feel, and I just felt like all of those interests came together in such a way, on screen and off, to make me not only willing, but ready, emphatically ready to destroy this truck that still means the world to me. I would argue that in parting ways with it the way that I did, it means even more to me than if every time I went back and visited my mom for Thanksgiving or Christmas and I looked out her back window, which I'd done for two years, and saw it just parked there. It wasn't runnable. It wasn't drivable.

And it was kind of a sad, leaving it up on blocks. For every year that we didn't do anything to it, it would have just died a slow death out there. That is the fact. So I'm really glad. I think it served a much greater purpose. I memorialized it in a way that now I can do something that I couldn't do with the truck,

just walk up to it and say, well, I wish I could drive it, or I'm gonna give it to somebody to fix it once again. And can I just add? So I feel good about it, but it felt horrible too. For the people who said things like, Mrs. Satchel waste, destroying a perfectly good truck. You could have given it to a young person. You could have given it to someone who wanted to,

I need a truck. Okay, I'm sorry, but do you watch The Fast and the Furious? Do you watch any movie ever where they destroy a car and have you ever, while watching one of those movies, said to yourself, I can't believe they're destroying all these cars for entertainment. We destroyed a 1987 pickup truck

that was a piece of shit to you for entertainment purposes. I do not have one ounce of remorse for this act. And if you feel that way, great. If that's the way you feel, great. Please stop watching, because I know if you're really into hard bodies, you're probably watching,

and you know that hard body is a thing, you're probably watching Fast and the Furious. You probably watch Smoky and the Bandit too. You probably were a fan of Dukes of Hazzard. Do you know how many of those cars they went through? Do you know how many of that car they destroyed? Do you know how many Crown Vic's? Oh, I'd love a Crown Vic. I could use a Crown Vic. Do you know how many Crown Vic's get destroyed

on a daily basis in this town? Come on, guys. Thank you for saying that. Come up with something else to comment. I've been feeling really bad about it. Or just think a little bit before commenting. Just every once in a while. I'm sorry. I think the thing that makes you upset is that people apply,

they applied something to our video as if it were of, I mean, it was reality. That was really my truck, and I really did destroy it for the reasons that I gave, plus the reasons I didn't give, which were making a show. And I think what you're feeling is that the part of the reason that was in making a great, a moving finale episode, that feels overlooked, and there's this double standard that you don't see what we made as a legitimate show. And so that hurts my feelings.

Maybe it's a testament, maybe it's a testament, maybe here's the positive, I'll come down off of the myself box, maybe it's just a testament to people really getting attached to it. Because I'm not talking about the person who just called. They seemed upset because you destroyed your truck that there was sentimental value. I get it, we wanted you to be upset. We wanted you to feel like, oh man, he destroyed this truck that he taught his kids how to,

yeah, we wanted you to feel that. That was the whole point of it. But for the people who just feel for the truck, do you feel for all vehicles that get destroyed in movies? I think they do, yeah. No, they don't. I don't know. Or TV shows? Maybe you're just like, well, y'all are making, is it in real TV? It wasn't fiction. But yeah, even in fiction, real cars are destroyed.

But it was fiction. It happened, but so, Yes. To pull the curtain back. Okay. Like we said, I'm confused. Is that every single decision that we make in the show is something we have planned to make.

It's a decision that we know how the story will unfold. Now, we like, for instance, when we were making those gummy versions of ourselves. I get uncomfortable when you say all of this for some reason. Well, that's, well. It's very, it is obvious if you think about it, but the people who don't like to think about it,

and they just wanna think that everything we did was like, more real than it was, I feel like I'm spoiling it for them if you go into this. Yeah, but, yeah, but it's just, but the fact that so many, the top comment on the second episode, at least for a while, with like 6,000 thumbs up was fictional vlogging.

It's like you guys are doing fictional vlogging and I like it. And so I was like, oh, good, because that's exactly what we're doing. Did we really make molds of ourselves? Well, of course. Did we really run into a problem and we were not able to get that giant mold

out of that thing? Yes. Did we also know that we weren't gonna be able to take these things to North Carolina and that we were gonna have to get ballistics dummies and we were gonna have to cut the faces off and then put the new ones on? Yes.

Did we- Not at first though. Did we really hope that we were gonna be able cut the faces off and then put the new ones on. Yes. Did we hope- Not at first, though. Did we really hope that we were gonna be able to recreate your wreck? Yes. Did we look into doing it at the site? No, because you can't do that. Did we look into doing it at an actual test track? Yes, we were in conversations with a test track

to reenact the crash. To reenact the crash at full speed. We were trying to figure out how you get the car to go. It's a MythBusters ship. Were we gonna ship the truck to California for that? Yes. Yeah. Were we going to ship the gummies to North Carolina, assuming that we could make them at a certain point?

Yes. Yeah, oh yeah. But when we would find out that it couldn't work, we had to make it part of the story. And what I'm saying is that we knew from the beginning, regardless of how this episode ends, regardless of what happens, your truck gets destroyed. And it's got to. At one point we were gonna pull it up by a crane

and get it to drop straight down and it was gonna reach the velocity that we estimated it had gone when it hit the ditch and it was just gonna hit the ground and be destroyed. And then that, eventually that all got turned into, we're just gonna go to a record service in Anger or Benson or wherever it was and just get it crushed. Right.

So yeah, well, I appreciate the fact that that makes you feel uncomfortable. That when people find out that we are essentially taking them on a journey right from the very first frame of the show. And I think some people do feel a little bit duped by that, right? If you're new to the show,

then you're like, what's real and what's not real. But I find the thing that makes me engage by it, theoretically, since I made it, it's hard to be engaged by it in that way, is figuring out what is planned and what isn't planned. They planned to do this and then this thing went wrong and then they made it part of the story. I think that's part of it.

That's part of the wonder hole. Yeah, you're left wondering. Yeah, right. All of this is the reason why we're continuing it, because it's really fun to raise questions and to create something that you don't even know completely the experience you're creating for an audience. That's very exciting for me,

that their response is information, not of did this joke work, did this idea work, but even more fundamental questions. That was really fun for episode one. I think the fun now for episode two is applying. Season. Season two is applying what we think we learned. And that's where we are right now.

I think the biggest difference for me is like, I felt like in season zero, we were all guesswork, just throwing things at the board and seeing what stuck. Season one was taking what we thought had worked and applying it, but also still experimenting quite a bit with our like titling, thumbnailing approach, but also our storytelling approach, like what parts are scripted

and then how do you fold those together? And is it like parallel? Is it like a break to something else in the middle? But because... So two is about putting it together. A little bit more cohesion. More intentional. Doubling down on the right things, smoothing out the rough edges,

applying what we learned, but it's kind of like... To me, I think the word is cohesion, because it becomes more of a show than it has been. I think I'll leave it at that. But I don't want to set the wrong expectation, because we're still doing this on YouTube, and so long as we're doing it on YouTube, and so long as YouTube is a place that makes it difficult to tell a story that requires you to watch multiple videos in order to get, each episode of Wonder Hole will always stand on its own. I'm not saying it won't be a part of a greater whole, but if you happen to watch episode

four as your first episode, it's gonna be okay, and you're not gonna feel lost, because we just don't feel like... It's got to be. It has to be. just don't feel like- It's got to be. It has to be. We don't feel like we can do that yet. We don't feel like we can do that on this platform. Right. But let's get back to the positive place.

The hard body thing always gets me upset. I was back at a positive place. I am like really, really excited. And again, I'm still back to that place where I'm super appreciative of the people who really connected with it and the people who've like gone out of their way and maybe said the most expressive and effusive

and descriptive things they've ever said about our work. Yeah. Then people, the way that some mythical beasts are talking about the show... It's super encouraging. ...is like, okay, I have you in mind. You know, when we make this show, we have you in mind. We needed that, thank you, because we needed that confirmation to say, this track

that we're on is the right one that we're gonna stay on. And that doesn't mean that we did it exactly the way we wanted it to do. It doesn't mean that it was great. It just means it was... Season one was the best that we could do with what we knew and what we were capable of. And season two... And I do believe that it's the best that we've done. I think so.

Yeah, I'm very happy with it. And season two will be, from our standards in terms of what we're trying to do, will be that much more dialed in. And I think that if you connected with it already, you're gonna connect with it that much more. And maybe if you were somebody, and again, this isn't the point, we're not trying to win you over, that's not the point of it. But if you happen to be the kind of person that was like, the lack of identity, the lack of cohesion, some of the things like maybe some parts kind of threw me out of the moment or like the acting was a little bit eh-eh in some parts, like if

that was your issue with it, then I think a lot of that is being taken into account as we move forward because we agree that those were issues that needed to be resolved. So we'll see what happens. We're gonna be working on it for a while. Yep. All right, pardon us as we go back down the wonder hole. Thanks for all your interest, all your support,

all your curious engagement. Let us know what you think. 1-888. EarPod 1. And do you have a rec? What's the rec, Link? Watch it all. It's in a playlist. Together. All six episodes. Throw a party. Watch it with people.

Send them the playlist. Now that it's all out. The channel is currently called Rhett and Link's Wonder Hole. We didn't even get into that. That may not always be the case, but we have our reasons for that. That may change. And if it changes then with season two, it'll probably change. But it's over there. Rhett and Link's Wonder Hole, there's a playlist that'll come up. You can watch them all six, back to back to back to back to back.

Talk to you next week. Hi guys, it's Bailey from Ohio. I just got home from work, it is 10 p.m. and I just wanna say I am so glad that you guys do Good Mythical Morning. Allows me to watch something and eat my dinner and it doesn't even have to be morning and I just get to have a fun thing to watch.

So thank you guys so much. Love you, bye!