Rooster Teeth Podcast - Open Wide, We’ll Take Care of the Rest - #535

Episode Date: March 12, 2019

Join Gus Sorola, Burnie Burns, and special guests Rhett and Link as they discuss kolaches, internetainment, the history of the business, and more on this week's RT Podcast! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time to put your pedal to the metal. From the twisted minds behind Deadpool and Zombieland, an executive producers, Will Arnett and Anthony Mackie comes the new Peacock original series, Twisted Metal, a high-oxane action comedy based on the classic video game series. Anthony Mackie stars as John Doe, a motor-mouthed outsider who must deliver a mysterious package across a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

If he can survive the drive, also starring Stephanie Beatriz, Samoa Joe, Nev Campbell, Will Arnett, and Thomas Hayden Church, twisted metal, streaming now, only on Peacock. You're listening to Rooster Teeth Podcast number 535. If you hear something you would like to you by Robin Hood, Goat, and RTX Austin. We got a couple of special guests with us, but I'm Gus. We got... I'm Rhett. You want me to introduce myself?

Yeah. I'm my buddy Link. I can't believe it. We did a practice this beforehand. We should have practiced. It's a little early. Yeah, I'm my buddy Link. Is it? I can't believe it. We did a practice this beforehand. We should have practiced. It's a little early. Yeah, I'm bringing my little rusty. It's my buddy Burnett, I'm like 500 if you say.

I'm good. It's a lot of them. There's always a debate of whether or not we introduce ourselves. And you guys have done good Mythical Morning for a really long time. We don't introduce ourselves. Right. At some point, you say the name of the show, but you have on our podcast though. You have chirones with your name, right? In the lower third, that's right.

Yeah, why don't we have name graphics? I don't know. We chiron. Doesn't know. I've never heard chiron before. What's that? Chiron's my third child. Yeah, it's the planet where my father's from.

He shows up down here all this. Oh, you look at that. Yeah, that's a chiron. Look at that. You got it. How long have you worked in this industry? That's the guy run? Yeah, I get one. I'm with the red. It's like a planet that's superman escapes. Wow. They have just appeared. I've been here for like 530 episodes. Where's mine? You think they would have made one at one point? And they did it so easily. Yeah, we bring the chiroins with us. Yeah. Oh, you should have had us on. I think they would have made one at one point. And they did it so easily.

Yeah, we bring the chiroins with us. Yeah, we should have had us on senior's ago. It's actually on our clothes. Look at that. It's like a censorship. It's like there we go. That's what you want. Oh, no.

He just humped it away. I'm sorry, guys. I'm sorry that he humped away the chiro. I heard something on a mic, Eric. Is this something you want to say? I don't have a mic. I'm sorry guys, I'm sorry that he humped away the chirologue. I heard something on a mic, Eric, is this something you want to say? I don't have a mic. He doesn't have a mic. Who is who is patting on the mic?

Oh, I think, is that Nick? Oh, is Nick? Don't give us that. Look, you're the one who's pat on the mic. So this is a pre-taped episode of InVase watching We're Not Live. So we're not monitoring chat, normally we keep an eye on chat. But we're not doing that today. Oh. Because you're not there. What are you guys in town for, but we're not doing that today. So because you're not there.

What are you guys in town for? You down for something specific? Just see us. We're in town for you. You know, just for us. We wanted to hang out with you guys and make some videos. Well, you couldn't have picked a better week to travel to Austin than South by Southwest week when it's prohibitively expensive to travel to Austin and the airports are all

clogged. And we're in a tent. We're in a tent. We're in a tent. Actually, we're sleeping in your bus. Did you get a chance to check out the bus? Yeah, we had lots of roasted nuts. No, we haven't been in yet. I'm living exclusively also.

We want to go in the bus. We're smoking out of the top of your bus, man. I think your bus is on fire. No, it's got a little, like a little wood burning stove in it. It smells funny Well, I didn't go inside but the outside smells funny. What kind of would you burn smoke? You smell me outside of my bus or the smoke smells funny I think I see what you're getting at my nose was right against the bus, but Just smells like that in general Our teachers classroom for some reason.

What's that? It smells like an art teacher's classroom. Is that what you really? It smells like a joke. On the inside? It's fucking joke, dude. Do you know how to roll with a joke? We've been doing this for 10 years. I don't know. Maybe I set one up and maybe you laugh.

I don't know. I just try. That's what I do. I come out here and I try. I was telling that before we started that, what's my joke to watch you fail? We're coming out of jail. Artinure anniversary of doing weekly podcasts. That's what I do. I come out here and I try. I was telling that before we started that, what's my joke to watch you fail? We're coming out on a joint. Are 10 year anniversary of doing weekly podcasts? That's crazy. How have you guys been doing good, Mythical Morning?

Are you having a link been together as an entity? We've been. Is this a competition? Because that informs my answer. I'm just curious because I feel. I'm not a competitive person. I feel older every day and I just want Pete Misery loves company.

I don't know. We've all been through it. So yeah, I think the Wikipedia says active since 2000. But that we were just doing like live, live, we were doing like live comedy at that point. But the internet, we started our website in 03, redlink.com.

And that we were probably doing something similar to you. We were hosting our own videos, our own server. And then people started downloading and putting them on YouTube. When YouTube came about in. Right. Oh, four. I think they started doing that in 05, 06, we started. Uh, we joined.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and then GMM was 2012 2012. Yeah, so pretty far into it you guys started your big property GMM. Yeah, yeah as a side project Definitely, yeah, we I had a really crazy realization the other day because we started 2003 as well and April 1st the company will have been around for 16 years Which means at some point in the next few years, we're gonna hire somebody that wasn't born

when the company started. Right, and that's what we're in this surreal place where things like that are starting to happen. I'm just very grateful that we're still around. We're somewhat viable. But we are already hiring children, child labor. So we have lots of lots of employees that were not born. We had that year six, right? You guys, they have smaller hands. It's more nimble. They get a lot of that manual labor done

right. They don't develop the carpal tunnel as fast. It's a serious issue. Just young tendons. It's kind of trying to diffuse everything you say. Everything just leaves it's like the opposite of improvisation. Everything I say just no. It's a good point. It's like you say just no. But it's a good point. It's like you guys working together. I don't know if you guys actually hate each other as much as Gus and I don't want each other. But when you eat other before we work together,

so we were just really priming that pump. No, we didn't. Oh, I move before we work together here. Yeah, but don't we work together at another company, a tech company. Can you just cross? Can you tell us that origin story? I'll tell you exactly.

Okay, we were playing, we in our break room at the 10 company. We had a Sega Dreamcast. At the what company? Tech company. It was a call center. We did tech support. Okay. What was your, do you guys have jobs before you were an entertainment? Engineers. You were engineers. I was computer science. That's what I graduated. I could tell when you were testing the Joc straps. Very, very technical. But yeah, I have an industrial engineering degree.

Industrial engineering. Red has a civil engineering degree. Really, I never knew that. Yeah. So you could be building bridges and industries. Well, I probably couldn't actually. I don't know how much I learned in those four and a half years. But I can design a mean drainage ditch.

And I can fire somebody like that's an industrial engineer. It's all about efficiency. So once you create efficiency, you fire the person who was doing the thing that you figured out another way to do it. Interesting. Have you met Eric? Yeah, Eric. Hello, Eric, I have some notes for you. The main one is, I don't think you're needed. Oh, I didn't have you're needed. Oh, boy. I didn't have part of it straighting Eric.

I would just make a spreadsheet, and this people would be missing, and because that was my job, you know, a part of it. You mean you would accidentally leave people off of a spreadsheet, then we'd get fired? No, I would, I would scientifically leave them off, but then I wouldn't have to like tell Eric, hey man, just, this is it.

You're pack your things. So like we hear about a sports team in the playoffs that's been mathematically eliminated. You're the guy that mathematically eliminates people essentially. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, by Matt, you love that. It's great, I love it.

That's how you'd love to go out. It's like mathematics. Just be smothered by a multiplication sign. No, I'm glad I'm not doing it anymore because that weighed heavily on my conscience. But I mean, it can't be as bad as working at a call center. Did you answer phones?

We did. Well, I did. He was my direct manager. He were my manager's manager. But we had a... Oh, he was your second line, they call it. In corporate speak. Your boss is boss.

Do you even know what my job was? You were, I don't know, you sat in an office and yelled at people when they took your chair. I was the president of the company. I don't know why he didn't were, I don't know, you sat in an office and yelled at people when they took your chair. That's all, I was the president of the company. I don't know why he didn't know. I don't know why he worked at this company. I didn't know I was the president of the company.

It was really crushing to always have to answer the phone. So the call center decided to buy a second dream cast for the break room. Oh, okay. It's like a way to let off steam, you know, during breaks, it was back when it was back. It's my decision. I just wanted to play second dream.

Right, so. And that's the manager of the manager. Exactly. This is how Bernie should make a decision. Well, the president is how Bernie and I manage the manager. I think what game was it? It was Dead or Alive? It was Dead or Alive 2.

How dare you? And I was playing Bernie sat down. Seems like an easy game, like if it's just a choice. Oh, you're right. It would be. It's this or that. You just kind of click Dead or alive and it's over. But we sat down to play and Bernie beat me the first round.

And I guess he grew up playing video games so he felt bad about it. And he turned it off. Well, I'm clarifying and say, handily beat him. I was very easy. Okay. He said he told me that he was very good at video games, which infuriated me.

I grew up, I really wanted able to play video games with me. And when I grew up playing video games, I came out of the arcade, of the 80s, and then even when people had like, a Tari's or Coleco's or things like that. So I don't really check out my friends to play, but if I beat them, they wouldn't play with me again, you know what I mean?

Cause they didn't like losing. So they wanted to do something else and I wanted to play video games. So a lot of times I would like nerf a little bit and let them win. And so I felt I just grew up with that kind of anxiety of being a gaming nerd. And so when I beat Gus, I had to explain, I play a lot of it against him, really good of it against this. That's why I beat you.

He didn't know me, and that's the exact wrong thing to say to me in that situation. So I got so mad that I beat him the next round without taking a single hit. And I think I looked at him and I said, I'm also pretty good at it. Yeah. I can't. I can't. I can't. I'm the genesis. No pun intended. Exactly. That was our master system moment. Yeah. I can give you the exact impression because I said, I'm, I'm play a lot of video games. I was trying to be self-effaced. Yeah. Yeah. That was a bad thing. But you had just beat him. So yeah. And I said, I said, so I play a lot of video games. I was trying to be self-effacing, right? That was a bad thing. But you had just beat him, so.

Yeah, and I said, so I play a lot of video games. So that's my excuse of why I won. And he just goes, it's dark. That's thousand yards there. Then he gets this flawless victory on me in the next round. And he just goes like this. I'm also good at video games. Wow.

So that was the moment I met Gus. And we both remember that very well for some reason. It was 21 years ago. Yeah, yeah, 21 years ago now. And then I got, we fired from the call center who got mathematically eliminated by an industrial engineer probably. He came back and stole the Dreamcast.

From the bottom of that room. Yeah, okay. Yeah, he just came in and somebody didn't, I don't think somebody turned off his key card and he came back and stole our Dreamcast. Yeah, so that kind of changed somebody didn't, I don't think somebody turned off his key card and he came back and stole our dream cap. Yeah, so that kind of changed the door code, they say. Yeah, that's why they do it right away. It's a, every time, honestly,

every time I go on one of these buildings, we have a security system. And when I present my ID for the security system and it gives me a red light or a green light, I know I still work here. I got a red light yesterday morning. What happened? I was going to do a cross the parking lot

to the other building and I swam my card and it was red. I was going in to get a cup of coffee. I was like, you know what happened? That's over your limit. I was like, that's no good. So then I had to message someone. I was like, I can't get into the building. I turned it in this red sheet, so you got in there.

Luckily, they fixed it, but it was really annoying because I had been in this building. I was right over here and I saw Christopher Maris getting a cup of coffee. That's fine. That's really good. That's a great idea. I want to get a cup of coffee. This one's taken.

I'm going to get a coffee across the parking lot and it was like 30 degrees at this point. So across the parking lot, can't get in. Like motherfucker, so I'm stuck. Walk back across the parking lot coming here to get coffee and Chris is still standing there. I'm like, you asshole, this is your fault somehow. I had to go outside and be cold

because you were getting coffee right now. And did you get coffee ever? I needed to know that you got coffee. It was the most wonderful coffee tasting water I've ever had. The coffee machine's terrible. I hate that coffee machine. It's awful.

We have one coffee machine that tries to tell you jokes as you wait for your coffee. It's got a little screen on it. I can't coffee machine. It's awful. We have one coffee machine that tries to tell you jokes as you wait for your coffee. It's got a screen on it. I can't be true. Yeah. It's where you got the art teacher bit. Yeah, it was. I'm worth copying together.

And it'll like, I don't even know. It just says the stupidest things. I try not to look at the display because it makes me mad. When I'm waiting for my coffee, it's trying to entertain me. It is a bad idea when people are getting coffee. That means they don't have coffee. Bad idea to try to make jokes. It should be one of the coffee's completed.

Right. Here's a joke or the bottom of the cup. I think this thing is true, the Lafay Taffy. You know, you got that Lafay Taffy and you're the last thing you want us to laugh because I mean, it's really hard to laugh with Taffy. It's true. It's, it's really hard to laugh with Taffy. It's true. It's like it's very obstructionist.

You know, you're like a challenge. Right, if you bite on the Taffy and then you're trying to laugh, you could lose a molar. You don't have filling, you can pop right out. A filling can pop right out. That's exactly what I was getting at. You got your, it hasn't happened to me.

I don't have any fillings. I haven't seen you ever eat Lafay Taffy, except the one time we did a show. Now we know what? Bingo. Yeah. Is there a candy that you will not eat? I think everyone has a go to of like,

they have a go to candy for me to reach peanut butter cup. Oh, you a peanut butter man? I do, I grew up peanut butter. I used to put a peanut butter in vanilla ice cream was my favorite thing girl. Yes, I did that too. Got to be about 18. They're from her group.

Do that anymore. Oh, it feels like five pounds every day. You guys should have a little bit. Yeah. But I'm sure someone here can attest to this because it was like all the way through college too. Every night before I'd go to bed, I would pour a glass of milk,

I'll put in some chocolate syrup, and then I would pour a glass of milk, I'll put in some chocolate syrup, and then I would take a spoonful of peanut butter, put it down and stir up the, and make the chocolate milk, and then that would be my, like, going to bed routine. You're not capped. So would you?

My night capped, yeah. You would stir the peanut butter into the milk, or whatever. It stays on the spoon. It stays on the spoon, but I need to use the spoon to stir up the, it gets milky. Chocolate. A little bit of peanut butter flavor gets into the chocolate milk. It stays on the spoon. It stays on the spoon, but I need to use the spoon to get, to start the, get the milky chocolate to make a little bit of peanut butter flavor gets into the chocolate milk.

That's great. Peanut butter infused chocolate milk. You did this up until like three years ago. You had to like, it was, I mean, you did this well into adulthood. Yeah. And I would, I would get a lot of flak from my roommates because there would always be the glass. Think, think, think, think, think, think, think, think, think,

so you know, Link is going to sleep. That was my link is going to sleep, think. It's like the opposite of an alarm clock. Like if I go into bed alarm. Yeah, yeah, but it, uh, other people may have already been asleep. Oh, yeah. That's the problem.

I get in care. I had to do it. Yeah, that's not, that's not your problem. That's their problem. I like it. I heard you guys were Ranchers by the way is my answer. Oh circus peanuts. You'll never eat all their interest. It's what you're saying They glue my teeth together. It's just like it turns into like some kind of epoxy that just like a hard yeah Like just you lose them all are you will it's like a different layer of teeth isn't an epoxy when you combine two things

What's that? Yeah, your teeth and probably I'm sure is that that it? Okay. It's saliva and ranger. For me, it's circus peanuts. I can't understand anybody circus peanuts and twizzlers. I don't understand either of those. Twizzlers is just, oh, you're about to insult me. Red gooey, you about to upset me. Mesh. You don't like light liquorice either. Oh, I hate black liquorice. Yeah. That's a sign of deep emotional pride. Really? You like black liquorice? Yeah. Really, you like LaClaCroix? Yeah, most, you're the one. Most very stable. Geniuses? Stable geniuses love. Don't, don't feed into this. Love LaClaCroix.

Yeah, I know, I do, I love it. I absolutely love it. I mean, there's not many things that I don't like. Circus peanuts though, do you know that Lucky Charms was created by accident when a guy who worked at whatever company makes Lucky Charms put circus peanuts into Cheerios? Really? So that was the genesis of Lucky Charms. Weird.

And if you eat a circus peanut and then eat a Lucky Charms marshmallow, you'll be like, oh, you know what? You're right. This is a very similar thing. They've since like fine-tuned the marshmallow recipe, but that's what it was. It seems like if they took a circus peanut and then just like compressed it down, like put it on a human, human cause I'm on a pressure on it,

they can make like one. And then made it a different color. Yeah, marshmallow out of it. Like that's squeak, but those marshmallows made to something about that. I can't, I can't hang it. Yeah, I'm not a marshmallow man, but on GMM, we did a tournament last Halloween to determine

the worst Halloween candy ever, but basically the worst candy ever. And Neko Wafers, the bad guy, is where we came down. Yeah. Kind of got a black licorice flavor to him a little bit though, don't they? Um, that's, uh, no, that hurts me a little bit. No, they don't do they? Well, first of all, they're just very, uh, there was powdery and it's, it hurts me a little bit. No, they don't, do they? Well, first of all, they're just very, they're with powdery and it's like chalk.

It's like, just like eating chalk. It's like eating straight up sidewalk chalk. But as somebody who likes licorice, I didn't know that good and plenies were black licorice. Yeah. That was quite a discovery for me. Yep. It's weird.

You know Adam? No, I'm just not. They just coated their licorice, right? They just white on the outside. Yeah. I was weird. You know Adam? I'm just not. They just coated their glass flickers, right? They just white on the outside. Yeah. I was like, I don't know how to do that. But then I was a revelation. You got turned around.

I'm with you though. I think black liquorice is a very important candy because it teaches children about disappointment and they're very... I want some candy. You don't have to be wrong. Remember the venue machines? The little like quarter machines that were in the front

of grocery stores and I'd always ask my parents, I wanna go and get a gumball. And then you get the black gumball. It's like it's the worst day of the year. I thought the black gumball was like, great for some. No, the ones I just got with liquor. They're all so rich.

Yeah, wow. Maybe you just got a rotten gumball. I've never heard of a liquor gumball. I've never heard of a liquor gumball. That's like a nightmare, man. Yeah, I mean, I just wanted to see a liquor. I've never heard of a liquor. I've never heard of a liquor. That's like a nightmare, man. Yeah, I've been honest with myself. I wanted to see a little bit younger than I am. I was actually thinking about the penny gumball in this.

Yeah. Where you know the ones where you slide it over, please. Tell me you remember these. Yeah, of course. That's what I was thinking of. That's where I would get the black gumballs. I just wanted to like go to the Nintendo era where you could play my favorite reference.

I understand now. What was that concept that you were talking about? Zoom? I think you talked about this on the podcast. The idea that you eat things that are a little bit of a punishment to you, but that's why you like it. It's like basically benign massacism. Yeah. It's like SNM for your mouth. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like hot stuff or like hot. Yeah, and it's hot. Well, you're hot stuffer. Like hot stuff. Yeah, people do it without pepper. There's a psychological factor to eating things that are disagreeable to some degree.

And that's what I think people gravitate towards. And I feel, I'm definitely, like things with like strong, pungent flavors, like black licorice. I think there's something about the fact that I hate it makes me love it. Yeah, there's a psychological satisfaction, knowing that something feels like you're in danger, or being threatened, but you actually can override that and know that you're actually safe.

That's what people love rollercoasters, right? Because it has all the the thrills of a near-death experience, but you kind of know at least if you're not in Florida, you're probably not going to die on this right. Probably not. Right? Yeah. You know, just even by sheer probability, from the 8,000 people that were out of that day, and the 50 other people that are riding you with you

at that moment, you're probably not going to be like, you're probably in good hands. You're not that special. But I am thinking constantly, especially when I'm on one of those rollercoasters where you're suspended on the bottom, because I'm a big guy and I'm always like, it's gonna break on me. It's gonna'm always like, it's come break on me.

It's come break on me. It's come break on me. Or your legs are just gonna hang a little lower than the tolerance that they built it for or something weird like that. You're gonna lose below the ankles. Yeah. We did it. We did an opportunity thing years ago. They had a new roller coaster down in San Antonio and the travel channel had a roller coaster show and so they asked us to do it. And it was like, but they needed a group of people, they like six people. And I had a little bit more experience with production at that point in time than some of our younger employees.

So I said, you know what, you guys be on the show, I'll just go and ride the roller coaster. And so I won't have to be on camera. And you guys can have this really cool opportunity because I knew in this exactly is what happened, I got to ride the roller coaster twice. And I go, well, that's fun, I'm going home. They had to ride it like 12 times to get all the shots.

They were great. Like at the end of it. It is funny when you get right back on to a roller coaster, they couldn't stand it. Well, and they, if no one's at the amusement park, sometimes though, I mean, if you're in the seat and there's no one in line, like, can I just go again? I think they're supposed to make you get out and walk around for that

reason because. So the line's there for your safety. Exactly. The line is just there. That's why it's going meandering. It's just for the people who are there making. I think, yeah, I was at six flags. And the more I think about it, I think that they'll let you do it maybe one more time, but then they said, we have a regulation, we actually have to make you get off and then get back on. So maybe they had signed a waiver, but yeah, once you ride something twice, if you ride something three times in a row without getting off, it is no longer fun at all. They were breaks because it takes a while to set up. They need to move the cameras.

I remember there was a drone at the top of the first hill. You know, that took a little while to set up. But I was, I was, I can see everyone. I had enough after two. And then they were out there to like three in the afternoon filming this stuff. And then it's Texas. So it got hot.

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Yes. Really never had collaches before. I know know and I have all the stuff we've eaten. I'm still suspicious that this is a practical joke. That was a great one. Not at all. I love this type of practical joke. I hate the bun. Well, it's also it's a subtle practical joke. It's like let's serve them something and then we'll all act like we know what collaches are and then when the three people who don't, the two of us as Stevie show up and don't know what it is, we'll be like, you've never heard of collaches before? You got prank, you ain't a delicious man.

Yeah, I've got you. I love subtle pranks where you're not really sure what the, no, we've never heard of them. But we do know now they're like Polish and slash German. Yeah, it's not even like a Texas-wide thing. I think it's like a very central Texas thing. I think a central Texas has had a high concentration of German immigrants in the 1800s who moved here.

We got everything. And so as the reason, like, so Kalachi took up, I think Kalachi itself is actually Slavic and Polish, but I think Germans kind of brought it over with them. It's a weird place because there's still a lot of German-speaking people, like out in Fredericksburg, which is just west of here. But the language has branched, and they speak a dialect of German that is different than people in Germany speak.

No. Yeah, so it's like you can speak a specific type of German to people who, you know, whose family is immigrated here. You're talking like a Texas German dialect? Right, there's a Texas German dialect that's officially recognized as a branch of Germany, German. These people are like isolated in like a Amish sense. Is that why they're still speaking German?

I think it was just a holdover from when communication was more difficult and you couldn't really, pick up a phone and call someone and I think it's just a holdover from that. I'm sure we're at a point in time now where this dialect's gonna die off. Okay, and it's probably not gonna be viable in the next generation.

As long as the collaches don't know. Yeah, the bright side is the collaches we start to disseminate. In those lives. I mean, I love when people put things in just balls of bread. Wait, it's kind of like, it's like a bun from...

Golden Corral has those type of buns. Like a yeast roll, I'm like, it's a yeast roll. And then it's got, I mean, mine had scrambled eggs and sausage in it. Yours had like a strawberry goo in it. Well, my first one has sausage egg and cheese. I started savory, I ended sweet.

Like I do all my meals. Smart. Get your cheese. So you're a principled man. There's a, it descends into the horror of black licorice. Just that. It's like a black licorice. You know what, that's interesting.

Think about black licorice. I'm gonna continue to be an advocate for it. It's sweet and savory all at the same time. And it's just saying, it's very confusing. I thought of it as a binier. You know, that's the closest thing I can compare it because it's a little heavier than I've had. I've had a binier with like, crawfish in it. So it's like a savory bignet. I've never had

a savory bignet. I'm not like a mackerel. The the the the the working man's vernacular. Payball. Yeah, you heard if I say the words, I'm picking a blanket. Does that? Oh yeah, I'm picking a blanket, but that's not some different kind of the same though. No, because the pig pokes out of that blanket I still don't know how they got all that stuff in that red ball. You like the surprise. I couldn't find the whole sausage and goo I looked everywhere for the whole it was no For the first 10 minutes with just my tongue all over the outside of

Looking for the hole. There's there's a place between I'm looking for the whole. There's a place between here and Dallas. Whenever a burnier I drive up to Dallas, there's this place that we always stop at. It's in a town called West Texas, West Comet, Texas, not confusing at all. Okay. And it's this place called a check stop,

check like Czechoslovakia. And they have a huge selection of Kalachis. And it's like right off the highway. Is it like a gas station? Yeah, it's actually like a gas station convened store kind of thing. This town is known for two things. The Kalachi bakery and the fertilizer plant that blew up.

It blew up like five years ago. Oh yeah, okay, I remember that one. Yeah, it was a big explosion and it was funny because all the photos from it were people from the checkstop taking photos of this big plume, the smoke. Yeah, you can see the check tech stopping a lot of those photos. And everyone had stopped there

because everyone stops their heads exactly halfway to Dallas. But the name of the town is West Texas. That's the name of the town. There's so many towns in Texas, you can literally find a name. Every name is probably a Texas town. There's a cutting shoot Texas. I never had that.

I think I ran Texas. Parastexas. That's a better one. Yeah, that's all every every name. We're there. I think even Austin used to be called Waterloo, right? I think it used to be Waterloo, Texas. Then after Stephen F. Austin illegally brought

all those people into Mexico, they renamed the town and it's an awesome technical podcast. And do you guys come shoot city hall? I'm shooting. Wow. I think do you guys when what's that? Come shoot city, all right? Come shoot city. Wow, look at that. Do you guys, when you're driving somewhere in Texas? Because I, I experienced with Texas,

you know, like flying to a city, you experienced a little bit of it. I mean, Austin Dallas, I guess that's only, never been in Houston. Never been in Houston. It's great time. We're, we're Austin's right in the middle of the, three of the top 10 cities in the nation by population.

San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston. And Austin's number 11. It had never been in San Antonio. That's crazy. That's the way. So it's like, but we, I mean, we drove, Interstate 40 across when we moved to LA.

Right. From where? From North Carolina. Right. So we have, that's our only driving experience of Texas. But like, so, you know, it's the cliche of it just, it never stops, but there's nothing that's going while you're going.

Yeah, when you went to Boston, there's nothing. Yeah, when you drive in on I-10, if you're coming, if you're driving west, you come in like an orange Texas on the Eastern border of Texas, there's a sign on I-10 that says, welcome to Texas, it'll pass over 1,000 miles. Yeah, that's my question is for you guys, when you're driving around the state, do you like prep, do you have to prep like a post-apocalyptic, I'm going to another town, I've got to make sure I can get there.

It's like, so Russell up my chuck wagon in the type situation. We got ahead of that because in the first time we ever went to Comic Con was a 2006 where we had our booth. Yeah, yeah, 2006. You know T shirts were like, it was all five. They were the big part of our business model because T shirt for like the currency of internet. So we had a trailer and filled it up with T shirts and other stuff and went out to Comic Con with that. And first of all, it was Comic Con's in the summer. So it was so hot in West Texas, towing this thing

behind my pickup truck. You talking about the town West Texas? No, this is Western Texas. Okay, which is not a town, I don't know. Let's be clear. Yeah, anything west of, a little bit west of Austin, there's a couple more towns like Fredericksburg, where they just talked about. Yeah, I'm a blood and germ population there, but then west of that, there's nothing until

I pass out. It's like 450 miles of nothing, just like it looks like a roadrunner cartoon, not that way. And- Was Gus and the trailer? No, was- I mean, Gus was not, where were you? You probably weren't a plumber.

No, I wasn't a sucker. I was gonna make that, but I flew out there. Train, we're not gonna find a plane somewhere. But it was so hot, I could literally, if I watched it, I could watch the fuel gauge go down. And then it was like 200 miles between gas stations out there and they have signs to tell you

it's gonna be a big long distance. Yeah, but I thought if this car runs out of gas, it's... I'm gonna have to eat T-shirts. Yeah, I'm gonna die. It's like 115 degrees from the thermometer. I played a little loving prank on Bernie as he drove away. I remember that trip.

We had just finished loading the trailer up and he was driving a pickup that we used for work-related purposes and that truck has seat heaters. So like we finished loading up the trailer, Bernie was about to get in the truck so I put his seat heater on maximum because it was middle of summer. So I said, all right, see you have a good trip.

How far out were you before you realized the seat heater was on? He was our school economy. I'm not sure everything else. But it was even coming back, like driving back from LA, it's just such a long slog, like the only thing between, or come back from San Diego, I should say,

is between California, Texas, basically New Mexico and Arizona, then you get to Texas and we're like, oh great, we're in Texas, we were halfway home. At that point. And it's just, it's just a lot of place. Nothing out there. A lot of it. I mean, we hear about, I mean, we've been, it's just a lot of place. Nothing out there. A lot of it.

I mean, we hear about, I mean, we've been to Death Valley on a couple of trips. So then you, you start to hear, yeah, yeah, yeah, just a couple of times. It does, Ellie. It's pretty great. And it's a lot of death and valley. Ooh. You hear about people going there. They're like, take the wrong, oh, I'll take this Google map shortcut and then they just

die out there. Do you have friends who've died in Texas from like taking a wrong trip? Yeah. I mean, it seems like it can happen. I don't think so. No. No, that's good. I'm glad. I didn't want it. I didn't want the answer to be. Yeah. There was a family. I'm going to tell the story that I'm thinking about it. There was a family in a minivan that somehow the dad was like, let's go to death Valley, guys. And he they went on some road and got into a situation where the dad was like, let's go to death Valley guys. And they went on some road and got into a situation

where the van was not equipped to continue. Because on Google Maps, it's, oh, this is a, this is a wide road, that's a road. They're both roads and take this one. And of course, it wasn't quite the middle of summer but it still was getting like 110, 115 degrees. And they found him like a mile from the van and the family in the van. Yeah.

It's wanted to bring everybody's spirits up. Yeah. Tell you that story. Good job. They'll enjoy black licorice. But you should, yeah, don't go to Death Valley in a minivan. There was a guy who just got snowed in somewhere and he survived for four days on Taco Bell sauce.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause, because he added this car. Yeah, that's just gonna they're gonna be having an excuse now to leave the Taco Bell sauce in my car. I now have a reason to bring it out just in case my car gets. I hope that guy, you know, you know how McDonald's has like a car they'll give some VIPs to get like free McDonald's for life. I hope that guy gets like free Taco Bell for life. I don't wish them. We're just sauce. Yeah, it's like all give this sauce. But it's delivered. They'll have a truck show up and hook it up into his hot water here.

Well, it's probably the perfect thing from Taco Bell to, you know, it lasts a long time. It's both a liquid and a solid. Yes, you know, hydrated. I mean, it's kind of perfect. Did you just say sauce is a liquid and a solid? Yeah, a little bit. It's more of a plasma.

A plasma. Spended. Taco Bell sauce is a liquid and a salad? Yeah, a little bit. It's more of a plasma. A plasma. Spended. Talk about sauce is a plasma. It's an engineering theory. It's an even more of a salad, like glass. Don't go. Oh, oh, I want to get you guys opinion on something.

Oh great. What are you going to do with this? So there is, how many six of buttons? There is a continent at the very southern region of the Earth. This is whole relationship. Yeah, it's extended into arguments that nobody else cares about How do you pronounce that continent where the South Pole is? All right, I'm not gonna think about it. I'm just saying naturally and article big. Oh, yeah, yeah, well What I would say is I typically would just say Antarctica, but in response to this question in which I know someone is Looking for the

technically correct pronunciation. That's what that's all about. That's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about.

And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about.

And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's what that's all about. And that's That's like you're saying, Antarctica. Anyway, I'm doing this. Can I hear it a few more times? I wasn't. Antarctica. Antarctica. You say Antarctica.

Yes, I do. I just said it. I know I saw it. Can you just say yours and let him say his and let us decide Antarctica? And Antarctica. Well, that sees too much. I think you're pushing a little too. I don't know.

You're definitely wrong. Oh, I'm kidding. Thank you. I don't know what it is. I'm too much. I think you're pushing a little too far on that. You're definitely wrong. Oh, I'm kidding. Thank you. I don't know what, I'm with Bernie. But the C, the C's there for a reason. You know, you can't take the C out of Antarctica, then it's no longer an island. That's just like a pirate metaphor.

So, you went like, it's like the lion fishermen, the C's there. It's like the lion and the owner. The owner, the C is there for Antarctica. Have you ever met anybody who's been Antarctica? The C is there for Antarctica. Have you ever met anybody who's been Antarctica? The C is there for Antarctica. No, but I've, what?

The Antarctica. You guys know Gav, Gav from Sloan. Yeah, yeah. We keep saying we're gonna touch all seven continents. And I had, I was on the amazing race when they did the social media season. So I got to knock a couple different things out. I haven't been to Africa and I haven't been to Antarctica.

And Antarctica. Good job. Thank you. And we've got a couple of friends who had been to like three continents in the event. They had been to like three continents in a short amount of time and then they were like, you want to try to go for all seven this year and it made all seven in 12 months. Wow. Who are you talking about?

Jayne and Caroline. Oh, is that right? Yeah, you don't, you don't, I don't base my friends to listen to them as much as I do. Where people have traveled. But the interesting thing that I learned is that so the trip, you know, the boat ride to Antarctica, you mean through the boat ride to Antarctica.

You mean through the southern ocean? Like, if you go on, I like to watch those YouTube videos where it's just the big ships in the southern ocean and they're like, 100 foot waves, you know, that kind of situation. That's like the craziest ocean in the world down there. And so you have to kind of, you have to go through it, of course, because there's only a certain amount of time you can actually

fly in and out. And they were, they were on the ship. And this woman who was kind of organizing thing, she was like, uh, you need to make sure that you've always got something to hold on to as we go through this other notion because it gets so rough that we've never had a trip with someone hasn't broken a bone. Wow. And everybody's like, okay, and one of the dudes with them broke his leg. Really, just getting tossed around.

Yeah, because he didn't listen. So if you're ever going through this other notion on your way to Antarktika, close, strap in. See, I like that in my own home. I'm always holding on to something because of the earthquake. Yeah, they can have. Yeah, there's, yeah.

Like when I bought my house, they made me sign this form that said, I knew that I was on a fault line. No kidding. Yeah, and I was like, well, I had to bring out a geologist to like assess it. And I'm like talking to the geologists and their whole neighborhood, though, right?

It's not like a thin little fault line, right? Well, it went beside, they were able to pinpoint part of it. Yeah, because you think they're huge and a lot of them are huge, but there's an offshoot and they get very detailed with the geological coming out. Yeah, like I was just like, in between me and my neighbor. And I was like, well, what happened? I'm like getting nervous if I should back out on this purchase. I'm like, what would happen if you're,

if it did quake here, you know? And she said, well, I just think your lot would gain elevation. And I'm like, great. I'm not saying you're gonna pay more now. You'll get a view. But I hold on to everything when I'm walking around. I always keep an anchor. I've never been in an earthquake. I'm super keep an anchor. I've never been in an earthquake.

I'm super fascinated by them. I've never been in many. Actually, there were two in one year that I felt been in LA nine years now. But it was probably five years ago. Yeah. In a couple of weeks, there were two that I felt. And one, I was sitting there watching TV,

and it started, some started shaking. I thought I was having something, it was happening in my mind. Not having any point of reference for it. I was like, oh, I'm having a stroke. And I was like, oh no, this is an earthquake. But they're very localized. And then a globe fell off.

A globe fell off. A shelf. Oh my God. It's a metaphor. It's like the earth is splitting in half. Was there anything like liquor? Super on the nose. He was a little good in plenise.

After your thing, elevation. Yeah, the only earthquake that I felt was I was sleeping and it felt like someone pushed my bed against the like the headboard against the wall once. It was just like, bam, but it wasn't a shaking thing. But I woke up and I looked at my wife. I thought that she had like, she'd meet the bed or something. That sounds more like a paranormal activity. Yeah, the one again kind of.

You were spirit just moves your bed. Yeah, that was not an earthquake. Oh no. Is that what it was guys? That's right, I had, that was at E3 I think, or something in LA, and there was some party, and I got out of it, and I was just having an anti-social evening, and I was laying in my hotel by doing nothing, just starting at the ceiling

and all of a sudden I felt it, like everything moved. Just a little bit, just a little bit. It was just enough to where I could feel it. And if I hadn't been laying down, there'd been no way I would have felt it, and it totally made it worth not going to that party, because now I can say, I've been in a risk way. Yeah, I'm jealous.

Are you? Yeah, I've never been in a one. I'm in a situation, man. I wonder if you'll win. Really? Yeah, not a big one. A little one, like you did. Just enough.

You want to take that box, the Earth move. Check. Done. Well, I had to get earthquake insurance, wildfire insurance, and mudslide insurance. Really? The trifecta for my house. The California 3. I don't think you had to get mudslide.

But apparently where we live is kind of at the bottom of the foothills of the, you know, Angela's national forest. And like a hundred years ago, there was this giant mudslide that came through the mountains and then covered what they call the Crescenta Valley, which is like the valley north of the valley, with like 12 feet of mud and like hundreds of people died. Wow! And the Army Corps of Engineers went in and put all these dams in the mountains. So if you go hiking in the mountains,

they'll just be this dam there with nothing. It's just waiting for a mudslide. There's no water because it's California, there's no water. Yeah, and there's one of those, like, basically right next to my house, just this dam. And I think about my house just moving into it. 12-12 feet of mud. That's how you like, yeah. That's two stories. That sounds awful.

Yeah. That's halfway up on a second floor, basically, at that point. You gotta have a lot of faith, like those dams probably haven't really been tested. Like, you gotta hope that, when it's go time, basically, at that point. And you gotta have a lot of faith, like those dams probably haven't really been tested. Like, you gotta hope that, when it's go time that they were built correctly. Yeah, and that's the thing they're talking about now is of course everybody talks about the big one,

the earthquake, but now the latest thing is the big rainstorm that's inevitable in the Southern California area. What's that? Which is basically they're like just, you know, given weather patterns and what's happening with climate change like in the extreme weather patterns, there's going to be like a flood that, like a 500 year flood in LA would be catastrophic

and probably kill more people than the big one. Interesting. Yeah. I'm full of good news. I feel like it's been raining a lot more in LA. You guys are probably. It's raining right now. Yeah, you're not like the typical. I feel like it's been raining a lot more in LA. You guys are probably- It's raining right now. Yeah, you're not like the typical people

from Los Angeles who grew up there, you grew up in North Carolina where it actually really is, right? So, apart of North Carolina, let me guess. Let me guess. I don't know this about your history. You guys seem like Ashville. And what's your point of reference for North Carolina?

Like, what are you pulling from with this guest? My dad lived in North Carolina during his retirement years. Okay. Yeah. And where did he live? Transylvania County. Yeah. It was yeah. What? Yeah. Transylvania. Yeah. Dad's a vampire.

I said, when we were in eighth grade, there's a hundred counties in North Carolina and we were required to memorize all 100 counties and then write them on a map. What nightmare? What? Yes, an actual nightmare. What's horrible? You never know. You never know when we're going to lose all historical knowledge and they're going to be like, we need a kid who can tell us what the county is. Haven't forbid they teach you something useful. You got to memorize the stupid county. Yeah, we had to take a blank map and put them all in.

It's good if you're like a local weatherman because you know they're always talking about the counties. Right. So I was kind of into that because I wanted to be a weatherman. Really? Yeah. I got a buddy in college who was the same way.

He was an engineer. He was really into meteorology. And... Oh, I didn't want to be a meteorologist. What about a weatherman? I just wanted to be a weatherman. You just wanted to be a weatherman. I didn't want to know anything. Just. I just wanted to be a weatherman. I didn't want to know anything.

I just wanted to tell him that you want to talk about it. Yeah, back in the day, you could just be the personality and there was some guy in the back who knew what you were doing. The fan of light of weather.

Yeah, you got to have that. That's what I wanted to be. Point to the temperature. Right, so. But Transylvania County. 54 counties. That must be the most in any state. I think that's in the western part of the state.

It's close to actually, yeah. Yeah, which is my former refertale. Where else is that a rally? Raleigh, okay.. That's in the western part of the state. It's close to Asheville, yeah. Yeah, which is my former refrigerator. And that's the very worst case. We're outside of Raleigh. Raleigh, okay. So we're not in the middle of nowhere. We have to change our complement. Raleigh and Fable.

The Asheville guests is a complement, right? Yeah, the Asheville school. You're saying we got an Asheville mindset, man. You know, you got the hillbilly thing mixed in with the like hipster thing. There's a lot of hipster billies. No, that's a good place. That's a good place.

That's a really good place. Asheville. A lot of trees, well, a lot of hipster billies. No, that's a lot of good food. That's a really good place A lot of trees well, a lot of trees everywhere. I just I missed this. Yeah, well I used to I got two boys and I would take them every fall and it's always a gamble You got to try to hit this like two week window But I would take them there to try to see color, you know, because we don't have seasons and we have the leaves actually We didn't get colors this fall. It would have really. I think I have an autumn this year normally goes from green to brown. This year there was actually it was actually kind of pretty and awesome.

Weird. It was really where like there were there were news reports about it. And there are articles in the newspaper. Pretty here. Why are the leaves colors this year? I didn't know you didn't get like a fall here. No, not at all. Not really. Yeah. You all you all missed our winter earlier this week. We have a lot of live oaks here too, which they're flipped. Like they do, they lose a lot of their foliage in the spring, like right before the, you

know, you have to cut them at certain times of the year. So that's a lot of it here. But also it's a weird town too, because it's the very green town, which makes it horrible for allergies, if you have allergies, it's tough. And you guys have been doing this for a while. I think you would probably agree. I mean, you just did this really cool thing with Smosh. Yeah.

But I think it's, especially from people who've been doing it for a while, it's a very, it's a time and transition. Like, there's a lot of different things going on now. And a lot of different models that are, you know, being tested, I think. And I've been talking to a lot of people lately and was talking with Ian at it's Masha at one point about what he was going through

and Jocelyn from Clever, about their whole thing with DeFi. And there's other people I've been talking about too and there's always this conversation because I guess because we're in Austin that they talk about like, well, what would be if we moved out of LA and moved to Austin? And I'm gonna say they specifically said that,

but people I've talked to, I've said that. And I always encourage people, Austin is a great town, and I'm really glad that we're here, but it's totally different than when we started here. It's a much bigger city, like you said, 11th largest. And I always point people towards North Carolina, Asheville, and Chattanooga,

if they're looking at what is the next, I think, cool place to be in. Because if you're doing stuff that's internet-based primarily, and we've talked about this for years, like geography doesn't play as big of a deal into it. I think, you know, sometimes it can help being an LA, you know, it's definitely easier to get people around. So I think you can move.

I'm curious about that. You start 2003, you have the .com, which is very similar to origin, but we had the discussion at one point that he's talking about Which is like hey, we can kind of do this from anywhere like we it would make sense to go to LA to do this But we could go to the middle of Kansas where the cost of living is way cheaper We talked about going to Detroit. Yeah, we did at one point. Yeah, buying a block of houses in Detroit And we found houses to go by for like $7,000 right? They probably ended up bulldozing

We're about to out of the park. I think of houses in Detroit. You found houses you could buy for like $7,000. Right. They probably ended up bulldozing. We were about to out of park. I think. I had this brilliant idea to do that. But we, we should have stayed in Austin. Yeah, I get it. I mean, for us, we were, we were, we were each married with kids when we were really starting

in earnest to see if we could make a go at being intern attainers. Right? So, Red's father-in-law who owned a bunch of dentistries and had this corporate office in like the town, one town over in Lillington, or like, you know, one town over from where we grew up. He had this basement that he wasn't using. And we basically, he basically let us move into the basement and make that our studio. Right.

Basically for free. I don't know what he, did he charge us anything? Or did he like, I think he made us- He just had expectation. He had like, yeah, there was, yeah, there might have been some strings that got me like, hey, you're gonna make a commercial for my dentistry and stuff like that. We made it a commercial.

Did you really? Yeah. That's fascinating to me. I always love those early beginning things that people might not know about that are necessary to kind of like our wedding. We made one wedding video for our premiere. We never did that again. And we made one commercial for his dentistry. And we never did that again.

But the concept of the commercial was, we would have, we cast all these people who, amongst our friends and family members, to come in and we're like, we set up this backdrop and like we've tried to make it look real cool like we bought a promised filter for Basically we put a a filter on the front of the camera that literally made it look like you were shooting through a little bit of mist Made it seem like they were in heaven and then yes, they were in this heavenly My grandma was in the back there with her dentures. Oh, wow. Mom and Elle. One of the last piece. One of the last things she ever did.

So what we would do was smile through a promis filter. We had them sit down and like kids, adults, old people on their deathbed, like your grandma, coming in and we would, we just coached them to smile and open their mouths. Like open mouth smile. Open mouth laughing really. Like, well, yeah, cause ultimately you wanted that like, well, because so we had a montage of people

smiling and kind of laughing with their mouths open. And then this slogan was, just open wide, we'll take care of the rest. And we didn't even think about how that might be misconstrued. And they bought airtime and they showed it. Just open wide, we'll take care of the rest.

I think. No, I swear to live by. Yeah, it's good when you can make a commercial that then can be repurposed for something other than it dentistry. Like, you can use this for two different purposes. I don't know what the other purposes would be. Someone will find out even. Right.

Don't figure it out. You're talking about filming that commercial with, you know, some old people mixed with the thing of that baked in a buttery flaky crust, blooper reel, I don't know if you all ever see that. No. It's this internet video where some local restaurant, I think I want to see in Ohio, or Wisconsin, they're trying to film this older couple.

And they can't say that. They have the older man has one line that's baked in a buttery, flaky crust and it's just take after take of him not saying that line. The wife getting exasperated, finally they tell her, okay, you say the line. And then she can't do it. Oh my God, it's so frustrating to watch.

So somebody cut together all the fails. All the bloopers, right? And just put them all together. That's my favorite guy. But that would have been a brilliant ad when they go man. Yeah, but they didn't do that, you're saying. I think they may have ended up putting it

on their YouTube channel as well. And you can also watch the final product. Oh, okay. That's smart. Well, yeah, so we did our thing in Lillington for a while. And then we actually started making the local commercials. So this is getting into why we moved L.A. So we started making our local commercials

that back in like, OA, O9, like the Red House furniture, the Cuban gynecologist and some of those purposely kitschy, bad local commercials that had real businesses and real business owners in them. And, oh, there we go. There's one right there. Like, so a lot of those went really big and we would make like a... He really was a gynecologist in Cuba

but an auto salesman in America. Or dog. I like the O and the G were slightly overlapped. Yeah, because he's a Cuban gynecologist and an American auto salesman. Well, I'll join the club. And so, those ended up getting a lot of traction. And, you know, that was the first, that was the first time anyone outside of just the YouTube audience

was interested, like when we made the Red House furniture commercial, which is the slogan was where black people and white people buy furniture. We it was it was a racial reconciliation commercial where furniture was also being sold. Right. And so we would get people to say things like, I'm a white person. I love the Red House. I'm a black person. I love the Red House. I'm a black person, I love the Red House. And which I'm not sure you can make like a commercial now. Probably not a different time. But in 2009 it was okay.

And we talked to CNN, like CNN wanted it, it was the first time we were like, national news, we were like, oh, there's something about this is really resonating. And then long story short, a bunch of production companies in LA were interested in developing it to a television show. We ended up getting a season on IFC.

And that was the initial move to LA. Got it, it makes sense. And at that point, we were like, I think we were kind of of a mindset that, we've been in North Carolina for a long time. We had traveled to LA to work on stuff. The idea of moving everybody out there, I think more than anything was just exciting.

It was just like, oh, this would be an awesome change of pace. It wasn't so much, this will be the next evolution of our business, because what we thought was happening at that time, we thought we were making the transition. We thought we were like, okay, we came upon YouTube and now we're going on to television. Right. You know, and we weren't so naive to think that that was, we understood that it wasn't that simple and there's everything's kind of merging. But I still think we had

this idea that, okay, we're kind of transitioning into more traditional television situation. And of course, once we got out here, we got out to LA, we made the season of commercial kings. We were sitting around waiting to find out if it was going to be picked up for a second season. And then we started GMM and sort of the interim because we were like, we need to do something that even if this thing gets picked up again, it's something easy that we can produce a bunch of very quickly. That's the way to kind of maintain a connection with our fan base. So that was the whole idea behind GMM. We felt like kind of maintain a connection with our fan base. So that was the whole idea behind you. We felt like we had lost the connection with our audience because we took time off to

make the IFC show and then the majority of people who watched us didn't have IFC so they couldn't see the show. So then we were trying to figure out how to maintain that connection because it was the only thing that we had complete control over. And we knew a part of that was just a daily show or a daily video, right? But then for us, that was, okay, let's make it into a show. We'll sit down at the card table that we sat down behind in one of some of our first videos back in that Lillington basement. We literally had the same card table out in wets

converted garage in his backyard and Sherman oaks. Yep So that's what but we can predict what's gonna take off right because at the same time we were also We also wrote a pilot stay busy. Yeah, we were right. We wrote a pilot for a scripted half-hour comedy um, that was feature us and like, going out meeting. I was playing music, like, like we had, we thought, we like wrote a scene and we're like, we have this connection to a connection

to a connection to Jack Black. And I bet we can write a scene where he's in the, where he was in the opening. And so like we were working on that and then we were taking meetings and pitching it. So we were trying to make both of those things happen. The whole, like Red said, the LA of it was just, we had an opportunity that we couldn't say no to, which was the IFC show that then moved us out.

But then from our family perspective, we were like, well, we're gonna move out for six months. We're not gonna do a permanent move. We left our homes furnished. We told our families, our extended families, we're going out for six months. We rented furnished apartments because we didn't bring you to our stuff. When you tell somebody in a relationship with,

let's just take a break. And what you really mean is, we're never gonna see each other. We're like, yeah, slowly peeling the bad day. It all right. It seems it's easier Well, what was the attitude from your family was you guys are actually engineers and this is a phase no Not at that point at that point they were they got it. Yeah, I mean because we had been due we had been doing it for The local papers had done a couple of odd and CNN and everything at that point Yeah, the families were completely, you know, both, you know, our wives and kids were obviously they were,

they were in and then our parents and extended family at that point were like, yeah, this is what you guys are supposed to do. That's great. And then my mom was like, I kind of knew that you weren't coming back, you know, when we went, you moved. I knew that you guys were gonna get out there and it was you were going to love it. And we do. I mean, there's a lot of people who are like, I can't stand LA and I get that. But, um, we've, both from a personal standpoint, just the people we've met, and I think the big thing about a talent like LA is just like, it can be very difficult to make meaningful

connections with people and felt real friendships. We've done that. So that's, it also helped moving out together. So we were kind of like this union of nine people in his wife and three kids, me or wife and two kids. But then, you know, making some meaningful friendships. But then the biggest thing for us was

we'd never really had anyone who had any experience in production at all. Like we would always have one person sort person come in to help us in North Carolina. Literally, at one point, there was just a dude who walked in off the street because the place that we had our studio was an old barbershop. A guy would just walk in and start talking. He thought he was coming to the barbershop. I think the first time, but then he just started talking to us. Then then a couple weeks later, he brought his like 15 year old son,

and then he just left and left his son there, and then his son started, was our intern. Really? And then that was the way things. There was another guy. Yeah, we have such parallels. He's like, he dropped off his parents, they drove from Vancouver,

and they just dropped him off for the day to hang out with us. We're like, wait, wait, wait, wait. We're not a babysitting service, you know? Right. And the Gavin was the same way. Gavin started Slomo Guys in order to get a visa to come work at Ristartee's in the US. Yeah, that's why he started the show.

And now Slomo Guys is a huge thing. More subscribers in Ristartee than everything else. It's just weird story. Right, yeah. Okay, you don't know what's going to take off. Don't know what's going to really resonate. We had another guy who showed up because again, once it doesn't matter if you're interviewed on CNN or whatever, but when you get an article on the in the local paper, yeah, that's a big.

That's when everybody around you starts to get the phone calls. Yeah, from from like your aunt and like your second cousin and stuff. But we had this guy who then he showed up because he looking at the pictures, he figured out where our studio was. His name was Carl. And Carl showed up and he was like, guys I work at, I'm not making phone of him.

This is just how he talks. He's like, guys I work at the tire plant, but the hours they got me working, I got like, I'm on for like six days and then I'm off for like four. I don't have anything to do, I just want to come and help you guys out. And then we're like, okay, turn out to be the nicest guy, like super helpful.

I mean, he didn't, his point of reference was making tire, right, but he found a way to help us out. There's a lot of crossover. And he showed up one day and he was like, I wanna give you all something. And he like pulls out these scissors, the biggest ass scissors you can ever imagine. Like literally, it's like bush sheers.

Like they're for cutting tires. Like bush nippers. And they would cut rubber with them. And he was like, I thought you guys could use these. And we, we had him for a very long time. I got the set. That's amazing. No, we cut, we cut tires with him.

Do you think we're going to tag business? Like, someone who can't do off in traffic, you follow them? I'm just going to go to the grocery store. Yeah. Cut off their Velstems. Um, but you guys might have stuff around like your set and your offices that I have this where it's, I walk through and it's like a kitchen magnet or some man's like, I remember that thing from 12 years ago,

how the hell did it get all the way through these different offices and get it here? Even here behind us, like a lot of this stuff that we have behind me and behind you, it's like hold over stuff that, you know, kind of we've coiled onto it and just, it makes its way onto the set. Yeah, that's what, that's the way the GMM set is.

It's, and at this point, there's just so many weird, well, the way we're creating a prop for just a one time use for GMM now. Yeah, there's just, they're having to purge. Yeah, a lot of the stuff. Yeah, you're just storing a lot of stuff. We lost a lot of stuff. I mean, because when we moved out,

we put both of our families stuff into, like you had those pods, and then they would deliver it across the country, and then we had, let's see, we had a bunch of stuff in a U-Haul, and when we towed my mini-van, so like, one U-Haul had like half of it was your family stuff, half of it was my family stuff,

and we had all the stuff of it at our studio that we couldn't bring. So we just publicized a yard sale. Like we had fans and community members and just anyone who had read that article in the news and observer, I guess, showed up and we had an auction for all of our props and members. All of our stuff, yeah.

Because probably worth a lot now. We had made like one of the first videos that was taken off of our website and put on YouTube was a parody of Pimp My Ride called Pimp My Stroller, where we literally physically pimped out a double stroller to make it look like kind of like the bat mobile if it were made out of black cardboard, but it had ground effects and spinners on it. Nice. Of course. And it had a chocolate milk delivery system to my daughter and his son's mouth.

But anyway, we can bring that, we can bring that across the country. But somebody bought it and from time to time, it pops up. Yeah, like pictures of it and somebody's garage somewhere. There's like an argument happening between a husband and wife about getting rid of a pumped-out stroller. Yeah.

But I believe it still lives on. My moment like that is so much less wholesome than yours. But when we were purging stuff, I had, do I want to bring this up? I think I know where you're going with this. Find out where you're going with this. It was one of those moments of like, what am I doing with my life?

Because we were going through stuff and like get rid of this, get rid of that, get rid of this. And somebody goes, do we need to keep that? This, and I said, I said, no, no, no, I go, we have way better Nazi flags than that one. So, because we were doing it with edge comedy. And I was like, what do I just say out loud? It's just like, what does my life become? We also had a, we had a new employee start several years ago.

God, it's probably been like six or seven years ago. And I take him down the storage unit to show him like where we had some computers and stuff. And we're going through boxes like this, you know, explain this is this server, this was this server, this is this machine, that's the box of porn. And he was like, what? I was like, oh yeah, there's someone in our community who works in the porn industry

and he'll send us stuff. But you can go through the box. If there's anything you want, just go ahead and take it. And it was lags. It's just like, not much a lot. Like it wasn't even a weird thing to me at the time. And I was like, that's a weird want, just go ahead and take it. And it was lags. It's just like, nunch a lot. It wasn't even a weird thing to me at the time. And I was like, that's a weird first day for you, isn't it?

Like, showing you where the porn stash is and telling you just to help yourself to it. And that employee made a lot of money from the lawsuit. I don't know if I should laugh at that, because I can't tell if it was a joke. Luckily, not a joke. But know. Luckily, not one joke. Yeah, but I just say before we get too far away, I don't have to do an ad or before we get too far away from the LA discussion, one of the things I would love

to see more of you guys do and being in LA, I think, helps this with collaborations. I loved you guys in dirty 30 in Grace and Hannah and Mamrie's movie. As dude number one and dude number two. Yeah, that were our names. Yeah, I thought Mamrie was, that was a really great performance for her, but you guys, when you guys stole the show, I thought you did great.

Oh, you thought we stole the show. I thought you guys were fantastic. Yeah, I think I might have told you that maybe before, like a VidCon or something, but I've always remembered Y'all's performance. Now it's on camera, so it's official. Yeah, it's official. You've officially got that.

Thank you for that. Yeah, well What we we came they're working on a The third one. Yeah, no Maybe he's working on I Guess that would mean she's 50 Just go to just dirty. It's just yeah, I'll say filthy 50 Not a wig by the way, that was my actual hair. Like seriously, that it was my hair. Oh, it's kind of hard to remember.

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Blacar, blacar, blacar. Go. I'll explain it. You know, I was thinking about. I go teeth. But you guys will probably remember when you talk about things that you can't predict how they take off. I don't know if we've ever talked about we've ever talked about this publicly, ever.

Good, I like this. Which is 2003, 2004, somewhere in there. You guys just did this really cool thing, Mythical did with Smosh. And we've always had that philosophy too, trying to find other really cool people to work with. And early on, there were these guys that wanted to make a ninja cartoon. And we were working on it, you know, because we had animation and we were working on an animated

version of Red versus Blue Lake traditional Saturday morning animation. So we started working on this, I don't like it too much away because they probably, the property is still something they probably want to still sell. But it was a story about ninjas trying to get out of the world of ninjas and having difficulty doing that and animation takes a while to make yeah, and so they would turn in scripts and performances and then six months They'd be doing reviews and they're like, oh, there was kind of guys of like we just want to make stuff Yeah, and so they said how would if we start doing like coming soon like promotional material I said that doesn't work on the internet people just want to click here and go watch it So we'll do all that once the show is ready to go.

And they were really wanting to do it. So I said, sure, go, you know, go for it. So they started doing this promotion for the cartoon where you could ask one of the ninja's a question. What? And the show asked a ninja became seriously such a fucking runaway hit that we never made the cartoon. And it was a conversation of like, you guys don't need our help to do this.

You know, just do this. It's not only did you lose a job, you're also wrong about telling them not to make stuff. That's a promotion. You're not. It goes even to layer deep because Kent, Kent and Doug are the guys that made it. And Kent specifically was who we knew.

Kent Knuckles and Doug. Gosh. Well, let's just say it's embarrassing. Set me up. What is Doug's last word? Well, I can look it up, but yeah, Kent Nichols and he was the guy who showed me YouTube for the first time. And so we went through, we looked at it

and he goes, you can host your videos here. And, you know, and I said, but you go to their website, you don't go to your own website, you can't just host the videos on your site because no, no, you have to go there, but they can search for you and everything. And I looked at the site and I turned them and go, nobody's gonna use this fucking site.

Yeah, that's how we felt. We initially viewed YouTube as competition. Yeah, oh yeah. That's what we did. We said, when people said, why don't we have a YouTube? We said, we have a website. Yeah, what would you need that?

We have two people on the website. But ask in India, I remember remember we watched that show on iTunes. Yeah. It's a video podcast. And we were trying to do the same thing early on. We were like, oh, this video podcast, that's, I mean, this is the best interface. Clearly, this is where the future video is. Well, because Apple legitimized it in our minds as a platform.

So, I mean, that's why when we first started making content specifically for the internet, I mean, the stuff before, like to put my stroller and the sketches and the music videos that we had made, those are the things that we were just making that then, oh, by the way, let's put it on the internet. You know, when we started making things for the internet, the first thing we made was sitting down next to each other

with mics making a video podcast. We called it the RetinLink cast. And that was the first thing that we did. And it was because Apple video podcast made sense to us. And like Ask An Ninja was a big part of that. So I mean, we were saying, what's our Ask An Ninja? Apple video podcast meets since to us. Right, like Ask An Ninja was a big part of that. So, I mean, we were saying, what's our Ask An Ninja? Glad we didn't ask you what we should do.

We'd be like, don't do that, make a cartoon on this thing. Put a terrible idea. Yeah, wait a year, make a cartoon. That's amazing though, how connected that was. And I didn't realize the association. Well, I don't think we've ever really talked about it before.

Maybe very briefly. Yeah, and even so, it's like, you know, especially once they were like taking off, like I said, they didn't need our help. It's like, we didn't want to make it seem like we were trying to take credit for anything. You know, that we were all good at. Yeah, you see, I mean, so you see how that became,

the retinolinkus became a precursor for what is good in the good morning. It was always in the back of our heads. We were always kind of doing that. Let's sit shoulder to shoulder and have a conversation. I should go back to that look. But it's, if you listen to my voice, Stevie is giving me such a hard time.

I'm not sure so much better now. My voice has changed. That was a grown-ass man. I had children and I, my voice was like a totally different register and I would kind of whisper, so they're jumping. Yeah, I was kind of whispered for talk.

I don't, yeah. It was a little strange. It was a little strange. It was a little strange. It's funny to see that. Maybe it's strange now. Maybe that's my norm. We had a, you know, it took us so long

to decide to really start doing a podcast. You know, we didn't. We started with audio. We didn't jump straight into video. We did audio only for the first, I think, two years of the podcast. By the time we started the podcast, the company was already almost six years old. We'd moved through a couple of offices and the audience had kept asking for it. We kept our online video and late to just about everything else. Yeah, the YouTube.

They kept asking when we were going to do a podcast. To us, at the time, it seemed dumb. It was like, we didn't think anybody was interested to listen to whatever we had to say. You know, in the early days, it was just like, what are we working on? What's going on? Kind of like a behind the scenes look

and it's like, do people really, really care about that? And, you know, it really took off from there. And first when we started, it's like, you say, we just put down mics on a table and just said, all right, you know, we're gonna talk. Here's a few things, maybe we'll talk about. And now we argue at each other for an hour and a half every week.

One of the things that I regret over the years is that we were, we isolated ourselves. Like we really didn't communicate with other people. Like, I mean, the fact that we met so late is just, I feel like a shame. It was so much we could have learned from you guys, from so many other people in the YouTube community.

And you know, cause like, we were not an active part of that community. Like you heard like, DeFranco talk about how he came up, you know, as an example. I mean, that was, that was not our experience at all. We were studying it as like at arm's length as competition like, oh, who are these barrettes and barretta guys?

Like, oh, we can do that. But it was never, let's talk to these guys, you know? So I think that's a big regret as far as not getting involved in the community aspect. But it seems like for us, we felt like we were between two worlds. Like there was this new media thing, it was called back then, and then there was the old world. And a lot of things that we did as a business, we had to do early on because we had to host

our own videos. And if there was no YouTube, there were no pre-roll ads. Those didn't exist. So you couldn't just hit a button and you turn on pre-roll ads. So we had to do things like subscriptions and merchandise, which became these super progressive business models after the age, golden age of pre-roll ads came around. But they were really to us. They were the things that worked from old media and they made sense for us to be sustainable.

Yeah, that's interesting. Because for us, our minds went to, we got to get sponsors. So we were cold-calling sponsors and say, oh, we've written this song about how your iPod dies and how it's a conspiracy from Apple to put in a doom seed. And I mean, one of the few people that we did know

was Justine, I Justine. So we're like, let's do a collaboration with you. It's sort of a bitch. And then we, like, so so we knew I got this Apple watch Can I I'm sorry in her story she keeps sending me these these Competitions seven-day competitions she's yoga like four times a day It's just like I gotta say no to these competitions that she sends me. Oh really? I'm just doing today. Yeah, sorry. I got it. She's not sending me competitions, but she's 720 points. God damn it

we is She's not sending me competitions, but. She's 720 points, God damn it. We used, oh wow, I don't wanna say we used her in video. She appeared in a video. She collaborated with us, but I mean, so we got a sponsor, we just reached out to someone who repairs iPods. And so, we did like subscription service or I wish we would have thought about that. Like I said, I wish we would have been talking back in.

It's funny you say that because we called our premium members, our subscription members, sponsors back at the point in time. Back at the day when we started. Like we figured we viewed them as our sponsors. Sure. Kind of like a crowd focusing that. Yeah, instead of one lump sum, a little lot of little and little bits.

And what was the value proposition for them? Like what was the first thing you were selling? So we, I don't know if this was to do inside baseball. No, no, no, no, it was inspired by them because we, Red vs. Blue was a weekly production and it was about five minutes of animation a week that we would make and it was about four people, four or five people that worked on it.

So Monday, I'd write it Tuesday, I'll be right. Tuesday, I'll be right. Tuesday, I would also write it. It was supposed to be, I'd always go into Tuesday., I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be,

I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be,

I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I was going to be, I're like, oh, how is the audience going to like this? You know, the community, are they going to enjoy this?

And you put this video out, and somebody's going to be like three in the morning when we post it, and you're waiting, you're waiting to see like people downloading the video, and it's got a five minute runtime, so it's like five minutes. It's like, oh my, and where they can like this, so they can hate it, what? Here comes the first comment. And it's like, did they like it?

And then the first comment is first, it's like the first post. And we were so annoyed by that. But then we had a conversation of, this is people telling us what they find valuable, is that in a world where you can watch anything, you can't watch everything, you can't watch every 400 hours of video that are uploaded every minute on YouTube,

you can't do that. So you gotta choose what you watch. And being first is valuable to people, especially if it's, you know, everyone has access to it. So that was a thing to know about it. But you mean there was a certain point after people enough people knew about it that you decided to start charging. Yeah, that was that was like a month in we were in the month. We got our first bill was 13,000 dollars for bandwidth for hosting these videos. You were like,

it's like, oh no, we're gonna go out of business immediately. We were technically we were out of business at that point. Because I was not gonna pay for it. How do people find it at first? Email. We would burn CDs and hand it to each other. And then what happened, we did is like, it's a long forgotten thing, but when we first started,

we thought, what are we gonna do? We just put a PayPal button on the website. And it's like, the videos are there. If you like it, you can send us a couple bucks. I mean, no obligation. If you don't, that's fine, whatever. And people just voluntarily started sending money. And you have a story about that.

Were you asking how people found out about the subscription service or about the videos? The videos. No, the videos. But it wasn't a... Well, eventually both. RVB was not an overnight success, but it was really close to it. And we had worked on, I was 29 when I started Red versus Blue.

We worked on tons of stuff all the way through our 20s, you know, trying to have this production of that production, things that would take off. Before that, we made an Apple Switch ad parody with Gus in it, which dates it back to like 2000, one of the first things. And we knew we had made it big. Like you talked about the local newspaper. We were like, wow, we've made it huge

because a gaming magazine called us and they wanted to put the video on the CD that they glued to the front of the cover of the magazine that month. And it's like, that was distribution for digital video that. Oh, right. And we were like, oh my god, this is incredible.

But Redversible was April 1st, 2003. We put out the first episode. We estimate about 3000 people watched it. And then it got linked on, this 2003, it got linked on Slashdot, on Farc and Penny Arcade. And it brought our servers down. All on the same day, it was May 5th, 2003.

Yep. It brought everything down. And then we had to, then we had about 250,000 people show up to watch the second episode. And by the end of the month, we had a million people week coming. So it was like like that. So we had to figure out things really, really quickly. Yeah. Yeah. That's unbelievable. Yeah. And so you were like, okay, just put a PayPal button up first. And then people responded to that. Yeah.

It was 10 bucks for six months back then, and you could see the episode on Friday versus it would come out publicly on Monday. And then if you were a registered member of the site, it would come out on the site for those members on Sunday. Yeah. Before it came out to everyone on the front page on the release system. Yeah. And it was like this benefit, but also it was important to us because if we can space out

when people are downloading it, we didn't need as many servers to in order to do that. And also if you were a premium member, instead of downloading the video at 320 by 240 resolution, you could get it at 640 by 480. Oh, baby. That's my quality. I think it was called high res. It was called high res. Yeah, I'm fascinated by this because,

and thanks for going into it, even though I know a lot of listeners probably are like, yeah, they appreciate and I'll be part of this. But for us, I'm fascinated because, I mean, we just launched our Mythical Society, which is a paid exclusive fan club, I'll call it. Yeah, I mean, it is powered by Patreon, but we've always been very reticent

to say the word Patreon because we didn't want people to think that they were enabling content that... Well, just because we've been so, from the very beginning, because it was ad supported, even before it was ad-sense reported, it was sponsor supported, and before it was ad-sense supported, it was sponsor supported. And we've always done that. And so we had this hesitancy to say, oh, give us money to enable the content.

At this point, with the Mythical Society, people are getting like a lot of different stuff that is being enabled by it. But, and of course, the Patreon system kind of allows that to happen seamlessly. But we're really trying to figure out, I mean, the subscription service and what, how we can make it a valuable experience for those people who are spending money every month to get something that they can, only they can get.

So it is totally separate content. So there's not, we don't have any windowing. Yeah. I mean, we've been doing some stuff to YouTube, it would take a year to go to YouTube at one point. Cause we refuse to like, like, go of the dot com. But if I may, yeah. I feel like listening to YouTube talk,

it's a very common tone that I hear among digital creators specifically where there's almost like this feeling that a business model has to be justified. Like we're making this content and we're doing this and there's just new service and we're charging. I personally feel we went through that very early on with advertising, like even putting advertising, we didn't do it for years on any of our videos, but then YouTube came along and that's just the way

everybody did it. And our friends who were huge inspiration for us, Home Star Runner, they've never done like any ads. Like they come from that era where they just could never make that step. Although they did local commercial stuff too. There's a pizza company that has a website that looks just like Home Star Runner.

It's called Mellow Mushroom. Remember that? Yeah, they made it. Yeah, they made it. Like you guys went the car commercial. Yeah. I just love that kind of stuff. But I have a philosophy and that was a guy who taught us early on when we started the subscription

service and you could pay 10 bucks or 20 bucks and 20 bucks you got a DVD at the end of the season sent to you. And that's when Microsoft showed up. When we started talking to you, that's when they had to have a talk with us. But a guy sent us $250. And we, it came in, we're like, holy cow, we're like, this is, you made a mistake, this is too much. And he was a little bit older than us and he goes,

no, no, he goes, I've watched your videos for now the last six weeks that you've been putting them out. And that amount of money is whatever you guys want to use it for and do whatever for. That is as much money as I would spend going out to a comedy club with my friends one night to be entertained. And you guys have entertained me for six weeks. So just there you go. And it like it just like opened my eyes to it. It's like I have that personal philosophy. We talked about this on a game time recently. Yeah. This game came out called Apex Legends. It's a free game,

but there's a paid tier for it. And then the gamers are like, oh, did you pay for that skin or did you buy the coins or whatever? And my thing is, yeah, I did that. And it's not because I want the skin or the cool weapon or whatever, I do it because I like the game. And it's to me, it's like, there's a premium level to stuff, but there's so many people that watch you guys and watch GMM.

And it's like, I think about the stuff that I watch. Sometimes I don't support things monetarily because of the premium layer. It's because I get so much out of the thing. I buy YouTube red, for instance, not for the premium shows, even though we have premium shows. I mean, but I buy it because I spend so much fucking time

on YouTube. Yeah, right. It's like, if YouTube 10 bucks a month for YouTube because I spend so much fucking time on YouTube. Yeah, right. It's like, if YouTube 10 bucks a month for YouTube, I spend so much time on there, I will absolutely. That service is worth 10 bucks. So, I'm like, yeah, the benefits you get from it, I remember when they lost, I was like, this doesn't make any sense, but like you,

I was like, I use YouTube all the time, I'll gladly chip in a little bit of money just to help the platform, and make sure it continues. And I really, I'm not in a position to do that, but I definitely think that, I mean, I use you two more than I use cable. To me, it's less about the thing that resonates to me is not chipping in money to support, but you're getting like pain for something

that's worth paying for. You know, and it's just a, it just a different model, but it is legitimate. It's not something that you need to apologize for. Well, but I think that the sort of the apologetic tone comes from the, there's a different relationship that we have with our audience, right? Then a traditional actor or whatever. Nobody questions a traditional celebrities, motivations for why their contract is

Timberlain bucks for a movie or whatever it might be but yet I feel like Regardless of what kind of decisions that we make what anything time we're charging X amount of money for a shirt or Introducing a new product. It's like there's always that percentage of the audience that's like, money grab. Oh, sure. It's like in you. And you can't be too affected by that,

but I think that there's this like, oh, I mean, why are you guys doing this now? Don't you have enough money? It's like, well, that's not really, that's not how this works. That's not how it works. I always think the word, even if there's a word called monetize and it's associated with like digital well, that's not really, that's not how this works. That's not how it works. Everything the word, even the Therese word called monetize,

and it's associated with like digital things, that's a completely made up word. It's like, I mean, Ford says, how are we gonna monetize the F-150? We can be like, the three-time product. Yeah, monetize implies that you're finding a way to mix money off something you were gonna do anyway. It's just a bit, that's not, that's not,

we had to make a new word. Yeah, we had to make a new word. Yeah, we had to make a new word that means business. Going back to your, your, your San Diego Comic Constra, when you drove out there, remember we had a discussion about that because it cost us more obviously to get this truck and drive out there and go out to do this event. And we were saying, now we're like,

we might have to charge like another one or two bucks for our shirts at this event. Is that something we're comfortable with? Like we, we have that guilt at the time. Right, yeah. Because it's costing us more to do this. Like we're gonna lose money if we don't charge just a little bit more.

And we had, we had, we'd like, oh, what are we gonna do? Can we really do that? Like right, Seth, it's a more direct connection. So I think about what I'm, you know, what we're asking for, you know, is I think about where people getting this money. You know, I don't think Marvel probably sits around

and wonders where does the money come from that people are using to buy tickets, you know? Well, and I appreciate, I don't think Marvel probably sits around and wonders. Yeah. Where does the money come from that people are using to buy tickets? Yeah. Well, I appreciate the, I do appreciate the accountability. And in one sense, I think that, you know, I think the primary reason we run our business the way that we do is because we, we kind of apply our efficiencies to it. We want to be responsible. We want the people who work for us to be paid well,

be respected and... Or do cool stuff like be able to, you know, and ultimately... But ultimately, it's much. It's much obviously a huge brand, but you guys really helped them in a situation that was pretty dire. Yeah, I mean, like, our philosophy has always been to,

okay, let's create a great product. Let's be smart about the way we make money off of that product, and let's be smart with the money that we receive from it. And the, the kind of the vision we've had over the past couple years is like, you know, we're not getting any younger. And we've been trying, you know, we changed the name of the company from Rhett and Link Inc. to Mythical Entertainment years ago. And the idea behind that was that, what, first of all, the idea of like coming in and seeing Rhett and Link Inc. on a wall in our own,

it was just, we aren't egomaniacs, but like that was just too much. So we wanted to, first of all, this isn't about us. This is about something that we're a part of. I'm not an egomaniac. And, and Romeo and that, and Liz Cod right. Well, you have to be somewhat narcissistic just to do this job. I think we all agree with something that leaks a little bit helps me. So, but the idea of making creating something where

we can support other creators and like we started having conversations the last couple of years, it's like, how can we take these lessons that we've learned, you know, we've done all this, we've in the same way that you guys years. It's like, how can we take these lessons that we've learned? We've done all this, we've, in the same way that you guys have, it's like just by trial and error, you've kind of learned how to run this business and how to create new lines of revenue. So how do we help other people do this?

You know, all this story of like, YouTubers burning out and people coming up. And of course, we were like, similar. Like we were late 20s when we got started this whole thing. So it was like, we already had families and then already had a real job, but you got a lot of kids coming up and they're kind of hitting, they're really striking, you know, goal with their audience at like 17 is like they're not, not making a wall of reality. Yeah. And then it's like they're trying to manage all these expectations. We're like, how can we

help this situation? And then right in the middle's like they're trying to manage all these expectations. We're like, how can we help this situation? And then right in the middle of while we were trying to figure out what that would look like in terms of a business model, you know, we see the article about defi-shoding down. Yeah. And we're like, we just texted Ian, you know, we were like, hey man, just let us know if we can,

at that point, we weren't thinking, we would buy, we think, we're't thinking we would buy much, we would think much. We're saying you have placed a crash from a production standpoint. We've got a place, if you want to make some videos here. We've got facilities. And then a couple of, I don't know, maybe a month and a half later, it was like, oh, there might actually be a real opportunity here to, you know, keep this thing going.

And it helps to, you know, answers the need that they had, which is, you know, to make, you know, if Ian didn't find someone, he was, unfortunately, he was in a place where he was like, he was gonna have to walk away from this brand that he created. Yeah. And then, so we were able to kind of keep

Smosh going and kind of give them the autonomy that they want to continue building their brand. And then from our perspective, it was like, this is something that we would have imagined building over a period of time with the way that we were thinking about it last year, but to sort of get this turnkey product that is already what you would, they got more subscribers than we do already. So the idea of having something that's already built, that already has momentum, that already has relevancy,

and they have a creative vision that's very intact. It was just like, who can't say no to this? It seems like a great opportunity. Yeah. You've got to jump on it, even if you're not quite ready. Not quite there. Yeah, yeah. We were ready to start building something,

but I'm so glad that this happened instead, because I mean, it was a win-win. It's like we did it for Smosh, we did it for us, equal parts. I mean, it was perfect timing, and it was a perfect marriage of two families. Serendipity, so much of the stuff was about timing, too.

Oh, yeah, man. You can't ever predict that. Yeah, I think we have such an appreciation for that, because the way things have changed so quickly, everything we've talked about, you know, you tweak the timing by a month or two, you know, and it potentially falls apart. Yeah, and that's become our whole philosophy at this point.

It's like, we say yes to things a lot of times because we're like, I don't know if this is a good idea, but it's going to lead to something. Like, and this is, I mean, it all kind of goes back to, you know, like a year and a half ago, YouTube came to us and said, we want to do some, some avide stuff that we want to support. We, what is the, like like enhanced version of Good Mythical Morning? We want to give you guys like a TV budget to make half hour, half hour content every single day, and that ended up being this multi-segmented

GMM where we were doing like three or four videos every single day. It was absolute hell to create because it was just so much work. But we had just based on the idea that we wanted, we knew we were growing, we rented out the studio next to us, and then we, just in time, we had rented this new space, YouTube comes and says, we want to make this show. So we had to hire a bunch of people to make the new version of the show. So we had a facility for them. That was crazy. We learned so much about production,

but we were like, this is not sustainable. There was a part of us that was like, we hope they don't come back and ask for more. They didn't come back and ask for more. And then we were like, okay, now we've got this studio of a shirt, something will come up, you know, a few months past and then the whole divide thing happens.

And so again, it was like, we had these, and Link was right there with the spreadsheet going on. I'm not sure. Exactly. He's gonna mathematically eliminate this studio. But I'm being bottom-own. Yeah, so half of it, I mean, I'd say that the vast majority of the things that have worked for us

never worked as they were originally intended. No, I know. I think that's a big lesson we talked about all the time. It was just like learning and adapting as things. Yeah, figure out what it works on the fly. Yeah, it makes me think, I mean, my oldest kid, my daughter, she just turned 16. You know, so it's like trying to figure out, and your son's not far behind, and like trying to figure out college, and like, their beans push so hard to figure out what they want

to do with their life. Oh yeah. And, you know, I was out to dinner with my daughter and we were just talking about it. Like, she experiences so much anxiety and stress associated with this external pressure to declare a future for herself. And it's, and I just told, I was like, listen,

you know my experience. It's like, I had no, I could never have anticipated that I would be doing what I'm doing and be, even be who I am right now, you know, as a 40-year-old, as your 40-year-old father. You know, so I just don't feel like it's fair for her to have that much pressure on her. I just try to take it off and say, listen,

you gotta take things as they comment. And let's just see what happens. Yeah, follow your gut and a little spreadsheet doesn't hurt. A little spreadsheet doesn't hurt. A lot of spreadsheets starts to hurt. I also feel like social media has kind of warped that a little bit too, because my kids I have the same discussions,

they're at the same age, my oldest is about turn 17, so he's right in the middle of all the college stuff right now. He's freaking out. It's just, it's a lot of responsibility put on people. I'm actually trying to encourage him to take a gap year. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, great. But it's just a tough thing that,

you know, there's so much momentum to education at that point that you see. But I went to school for pre-med at UT, then the internet kind of came out of nowhere in the middle of the 90s. And so I was like, oh, I'll do that. So I switched to computer science. Right. You know, and almost, I ended up taking organic chemistry as an elective on my transcript.

But I talked to young creators too. It's the same kind of thing with social media. It's amazing the conversations I'll have with people who are 19, 2021, and they think they're too late for anything, you know what I mean? Like, oh, I missed the boat on this or I didn't get enough, YouTube early enough or I didn't get on Vine or whatever.

What's the next thing I gotta look at? And it sounds like you guys have a similar story. I tried to explain, it And it sounds like you guys have a similar story. I tried to explain. It's like, I was 29. I worked on stuff for, imagine you're 19 now. Imagine you have the next 10 years to work on stuff before you're, you know, figure something out. And there's people who, you know, found that even later in life, you know, it's like, but there's this constant feeling, I think, for a lot of people, it's like, I'm too late. I missed out, you know what I mean?

And it's not at all to be. Even business-wise, you talked about that earlier. We were early on the internet video, we were late on a lot of other things. This podcast wasn't the first podcast made. Podcasts have been around for years and we started. And it's huge, we've been doing it for 10 years now. Yeah, and don't get me wrong.

It's like, when I look back at, I mean, every single day we were stressing and we were working our asses off to try to figure out what was the best thing to pour our energies into, you know, and trying to balance the work life thing and pulling the all-nighters, but scheduling those and like, sleeping on the couch and waking up and continuing to do it. Like it was very stressful and it wasn't like,

oh, I'm not telling Lily to just, don't worry about it, it'll come to you. You know, I hope that's not the message she's getting. Well, I have a plan, but realize that it's likely to change. Yeah, you got a lot of time. Yeah. The time is on your side, you know? Yeah. And what I always tell them is like, you know, try stuff.

Even if it doesn't work out, you're still honing your craft. Or I think for a lot of people discovering what their passion is. Because the last thing you want to do, and it's, it's, the thing I've run into before is when you're really good at something you're not passionate about. You're just like, that's a tough place to be in. Right. And it's easy to stay on that path.

Well, and I think they're more overwhelmed with options than we were. Like for me, you know, my junior year in high school, I told my dad, I was like, I think Lincoln, I think we wanna go to film school. And he was like, okay, well, I'm not gonna pay for that. We were a couple years into this business, and my dad was still asking me when I was

going to get a real job. Yeah. So, yeah, this definitely, you want to get a real degree. Yeah, I'll pay for that. It was pretty bad simply because it was the smart kid's major. That's exactly, I never made that conscious decision. It was like, I'm in the smart kid group in high school, so I have to pick a major like green right?

All right. Well, we got to wrap this up. No, I appreciate that. But before you go, I do high school, so I have to pick a major like green, right? Well, we gotta wrap this up. No, I appreciate that. But before we go, I do have one more thing I need to read. I just want to remind everyone about RTX coming up this summer. So don't forget, RTX Austin 2019 will be here sooner than you think. Will you be there? We can pass as are available right now at RTX Austin.com.

Can't wait to see all of your beautiful faces July 5th to 7th at the Austin Convention Center for the greatest animation, gaming, and comedy event in the world. You know, we were talking about some of our shared experiences. We wanted to start RTX years ago as a place for Internet creators to come together and you know, show what they're working on and you can see you can take part in this right now If you head over to RTX Austin.com right now pick up weekend passes for you and your friends come hang out with us and the greatest community on the planet, July 5th through 7th at RTX Austin. You'll have a chance to see this podcast on the spot, always open, off topic, all live,

plus the RT animation festival, special gas, big surprises, amazing cosplay, world premieres, and so much more, that's rtxAustin.com. Do not miss it, come check it out. Who doesn't wanna come to Austin in July? Well, come out here, we have air conditioning, it'll be taken care of. You can have three day indoor event.

You can come eat collaches. Bring your cable backs. Absolutely. All right. We'll see you guys next time. Thank you so much for taking the time. Good to see you guys today. Good to see you guys.

This was fun. Thanks for having us. We'll see you guys next time. Bye, buddy. Bye. I'm not a fan of the music. I'm not a fan of the music. I'm not a fan of the music. I'm not a fan of the music. I'm not a fan of the music. I'm not a fan of the music.

I'm not a fan of the music. I'm not a fan of the music. I'm not a fan of the music. I'm not a fan of the music. I'm not a fan of the music. I'm not a fan of the music. I'm not a fan of the music. I'm not a fan of the music. Do you like apples? All right, example. Together in Trempathos, Characans, Characans are free to deal

as nothing to do with this podcast. Analyze various unsolved and rooster-teeths, cryptic podcast, f*** face. Call to action. Feel free to add something show premise specific, but short. Listen to show name on Apple Spotify

or wherever you get podcasts. It's f*** face, a podcast. Subscribe or no. You do yes?