Twitchin & Kik'n!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Commercial Break – Episode "Twitchin & Kik'n!" (June 20, 2025)

Host(s): Bryan Green and Krissy Hoadley
Co-host: Rachel
Special Segment: Skip Champagne (Entertainment Correspondent)

---

1. Introduction to Live Streaming Ventures

Bryan Green [03:33]:
Bryan introduces the idea of expanding their podcast by incorporating live streaming on platforms like Twitch and Kick. He emphasizes the importance of gauging listener interest before committing to live broadcasts.

Krissy Hoadley [04:01]:
Krissy humorously suggests that if listeners are interested in live streaming, they could "videotape me in the bedroom," highlighting the playful and irreverent tone of the show.

2. Listener Engagement and Feedback

Bryan Green [04:25]:
Bryan acknowledges the increasing number of listeners engaging through texts, emails, and phone calls. He reflects on the challenges of podcasting, noting, "Podcasting is not an easy job."

Krissy Hoadley [04:45]:
Krissy appreciates the communication from listeners, fostering a sense of community despite the show's chaotic nature.

Bryan Green [05:30]:
Bryan shares personal experiences about the pressures of maintaining a podcast, revealing vulnerabilities and the emotional connections formed with their audience.

3. Reflections on Past Events: Endless Day

Bryan Green [07:40]:
Bryan and Krissy discuss the "Endless Day" event, describing it as less overwhelming than anticipated. They mention conducting interviews and low turnout during their Twitch live stream.

Krissy Hoadley [07:54]:
Krissy notes the minimal audience for their live Twitch session, adding humor to the situation by saying, "It went off well. No one watched it, but it went off well."

4. The Rise and Risks of AI and Deep Fakes

Bryan Green [12:10]:
Bryan delves into the topic of deep fakes, recounting an experience with a misleading advertisement featuring a seemingly genuine grandma promoting dubious products. He reflects on the sophistication of AI-generated content, stating, "The deep fakes are getting really fucking good."

Krissy Hoadley [16:09]:
Krissy concurs, acknowledging the challenges in distinguishing real from fake in digital media.

Bryan Green [17:00]:
Bryan references Daniel Thrasher's demonstration of AI's capabilities, drawing parallels to the podcast's own content creation and humorously contemplating the future of AI-driven podcasts.

Quote [12:36]:
Bryan Green: "I might pop in just to see what certain destruction lie around. And it's... There's no doubt about it, it's consumed all rooms. It's... I'm pretty sure."

5. Discussion on Expensive Hollywood Productions

Bryan Green [23:20]:
Bryan critiques the exorbitant budgets of blockbuster films, mentioning titles like "F1" and "Mission Impossible." He expresses frustration over the unnecessary risks actors like Tom Cruise take during stunts.

Krissy Hoadley [26:15]:
Krissy adds to the conversation by highlighting the absurdity of performing dangerous stunts, comparing them unfavorably to professional stunt work.

Quote [26:14]:
Bryan Green: "That's insanity. Let a stunt person do this. Pay him really good money to do it."

6. In-Depth Analysis of the Titan Submersible Tragedy

Bryan Green [30:00 – 38:18]:
The hosts provide a comprehensive breakdown of the Titan submersible disaster, critiquing Stockton Rush's leadership and the submersible's flawed design. They discuss:

• Engineering Failures:
  Bryan Green: "Carbon fiber is super duper strong when you're pushing out on it, but when you're pushing in on it, it's different."

• Leadership and Ethics:
  Criticism of Stockton Rush's decisions and the subsequent loss of lives, emphasizing the disregard for safety and engineering warnings.

• Technical Shortcomings:
  Detailed explanation of the submersible's inability to withstand immense oceanic pressures, leading to fatal implosions.

• Emotional Impact:
  Brian Green: "That guy... he just blindly put himself and shamelessly other people at so much risk."

Krissy Hoadley [36:20]:
Krissy underscores the sadness and preventability of the tragedy, stating, "It's sad."

7. Viral Sticker Promotion Gone Awry

Bryan Green [47:36 – 56:14]:
Bryan narrates an unexpected surge in sticker requests triggered by a viral misunderstanding. The key points include:

• Spam Bot Activity:
  An influx of sticker requests with real addresses and names, likely generated by automated bots linked to coupon websites.

• Operational Challenges:
  The hosts struggle to manage the overwhelming demand, recognizing the financial strain of fulfilling thousands of requests.

• Resolution Efforts:
  The duo improvises by requiring additional verification from requesters, such as sharing favorite episodes or comments, to filter genuine listeners from bots.

Krissy Hoadley [53:03]:
Krissy empathizes with the chaotic situation, noting, "It's kind of promotion for the show," while acknowledging the impracticality of fulfilling all requests.

Quote [52:57]:
Bryan Green: "Millions paid... they're probably like industrial warehouses somewhere."

8. Conclusion and Call to Action

Bryan Green [55:35]:
Bryan urges listeners to engage authentically by submitting meaningful requests for stickers, ensuring resources are allocated to genuine fans.

Krissy Hoadley [56:14]:
Krissy wraps up the segment with humor, advising listeners to share their favorite moments to receive stickers, reinforcing the show's interactive nature.

Final Remarks [57:38 – 58:58]:
The hosts encourage ongoing listener interaction through texts, emails, and social media, promoting their website and video content on YouTube. They emphasize building a genuine community over automated or spam-driven interactions.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Bryan Green [03:33]:
  "If you'd like to see us twitch and kick, then videotape me in the bedroom."

• Bryan Green [12:36]:
  "I might pop in just to see what certain destruction lie around. And it's... There's no doubt about it, it's consumed all rooms."

• Krissy Hoadley [26:15]:
  "Yeah, they are."

• Bryan Green [26:14]:
  "That's insanity. Let a stunt person do this. Pay him really good money to do it."

• Bryan Green [55:35]:
  "I gotta put my foot down. I can't give away thousands stickers on a daily basis. That would be insane."

---

Key Takeaways:

• Podcast Expansion:
  Exploring live streaming platforms while assessing listener interest.

• Community Engagement:
  Valuing listener feedback and fostering genuine interactions amidst challenges.

• Technological Concerns:
  Awareness of AI advancements and the ethical implications of deep fakes.

• Critical Analysis:
  Honest discussions on high-budget film productions and their impact on the industry.

• Tragic Events Commentary:
  In-depth critique of real-world tragedies, emphasizing the importance of safety and ethical leadership.

• Operational Hiccups:
  Managing unexpected promotional mishaps with humor and adaptive strategies.

• Encouraging Authentic Interaction:
  Promoting meaningful listener engagement to build a supportive and interactive community.

---

Overall, "Twitchin & Kik'n!" delivers a blend of humor, critical commentary, and heartfelt discussions, encapsulating the essence of "The Commercial Break" as a chaotic yet relatable comedy podcast. Bryan and Krissy navigate through diverse topics with their signature twisted humor, offering listeners both laughs and thoughtful insights.

Transcript

[Brian Green]

This episode is sponsored in part by Eat Clean. Okay, Eating healthy always sounds great. Like in theory, we all want to be the person who's chopping kale at 6am and meal prepping quinoa for the next week.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

But then reality hets you're juggling work, kids, pets and whatever existential crisis the Internet's throwing at you that day. Who's got time to wash lettuce?

[Brian Green]

Exactly. That's why we're seriously into this. It's called Eat Clean.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Eat Clean is a chef prepared meal delivery service that actually lives up to the name clean whole ingredients. No prep, no cooking, no mystery and plastic trays.

[Brian Green]

You literally just heat it, eat it and go. It's portioned, it's ready to eat and it shows up at your front door like a healthy little food fairy every single week.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

We tried it. The meals are actually good. Like shockingly good. For something that takes zero effort, it's.

[Rachel]

Been a total game changer.

[Brian Green]

No more sad salads or giving up and ordering fries at midnight.

[Rachel]

This makes sticking to healthier choices way easier.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Oh, and we love this. Eat Clean is a woman owned small business. They're all about making clean eating affordable and realistic for real people with real lives like us.

[Brian Green]

Go to Eat Clean to go and use the code POD50 for 50 off your first order. That's eat clean2go.com code POD50 to get started today. And thank you to Eclean for being a sponsor of the commercial break.

[Rachel]

This episode is sponsored by Pura. This summer. Take scent on the road with Pura Car Pro. It's the smart, stylish car diffuser that lets you control premium fragrance from your phone. From commutes to weekend getaways, Elevate every drive and for a limited time, get 20% off Pura car Pro and all the car scents with code car 20. That's pura.com to lay claim to the.

[Brian Green]

Big deal before it's gone.

[Skip Champagne]

Welcome back to wshit. It's five past the hour and it's time for your Hollywood hot pocket. All the glitz, glam and gossip to get your girlfriends talking. I'm your brand new WSHIT entertainment correspondent, Skip Champagne. Today's top tea is no surprise. The man, the myth and the man child. Will Smith has the Hulk hoes talking with his brand new album. This washed up rap mogul and roundly disliked actor has taken the strip by storm with his brand new song and accompanying video. While this reporter is no stranger to a hot track or a hot papa, I'm wondering If this tune features either of those, why don't you be the judge? Take a listen to this new dud of a ditty. Crazy girls.

[Unknown]

Crazy girls. So we're chasing crazy girls around. We don't know what we're doing, but it's the summer. There's a lot of crazy girls coming out for the summer. We're going to the summer break with the crazy girls. Crazy girls come around and just say, how you doing? And we just nod our heads and we're thinking, could we party with them all night or should we stay up all night thinking about them? We should ask who they all and just come around and introduce ourselves. Crazy girls are forever.

[Skip Champagne]

Well, ladies, I hate to use my inside voice, but I think someone should have slapped back plenty more juice to squeeze out of this lemon when we return from this commercial break.

[Brian Green]

On this episode of the commercial break, if you are interested in that, if that is something that interests you, then also do us a favor and text us because that way we can gauge, you know, we kind of take the temperature litmus test. So if more than one of you do that, then we less likely will do it because that's exactly how many people showed up at our live twitch on the endless day. So if we can get more than one.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah. If you'd like to see us twitch and kick, then.

[Brian Green]

If you'd like to see us twitch and kick, then videotape me in the bedroom. If you'd like to see me twitch and kick for over an hour, videotape me in the bedroom. The next episode of the commercial break starts now. Yeah, boy. Aw, yeah. Cats and kittens.

[Rachel]

Welcome back to the commercial break. I'm Brian Green. This is my dear friend and the co host of this show, Chris Joy Hoadley.

[Brian Green]

Bestie you, Chris, and best to you out there in the podcast universe. Thank you for joining us. We certainly do appreciate it. I want to shout out to all the listeners who have been texting in lately. It's very nice of everybody to text in.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Oh, I love the communication.

[Brian Green]

Yes, a lot of communication. A lot of chitten and chatting back and forth. A lot of new listeners letting us know that they're out there, that they enjoyed TCB's endless day. They're probably not new listeners. They probably followed the show at some point, never listened to an episode, then got 26 notifications in an hour that the commercial break was in fact alive and kicking. Holy shit. They made it this far on a Saturday? Yeah. I was talking with one of my other podcasting buddies and he was saying, I was saying, how's the show going? And he's like, yeah, you know, I'm realizing it's not going to be the mega hit that I thought it was. And that's, you know, it is what it is, but it's kind of disappointing. And podcasting is. Is not an easy job.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

No, it's not.

[Brian Green]

It isn't. I kind of realized this is not going to be the mega hit we thought it was either.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

We've settled into it.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. I realize that every morning, actually, when I wake up, get ready to come to the studio, I go, yep, not the mega hit I thought it was going to be. But what does keep us going? The text messages and the emails and the phone calls and stuff like that. That's a. That's a good thing because you know that at least somebody's on the other end hearing you, loving on. You have feedback, enjoying it. A lot of feedback about that email that I wrote that I read that somebody had written us online. And I suspect I know who it is. I think. I think I shared that. I suspect I know who it is. Though he still won't admit that it's him. He claims to know, not know anything about it, but I think that adds more to the mystery, that adds more to my psychosis. And so then for I now, I think it's extra him. You know what I'm saying? You know, someone denies something and you're like, yep, it's you, for sure. You denied it. It's you. Or if he would have said yes, then I would have go, but is it really you? You know, my paranoia gets to new levels. But a lot of people wrote in, including, I think her name is Amanda. And I know she'd been listening to the show for a while, and she wrote that she. That that email was the first time the TCB made her cry also. And I said, well, it's not a crying kind of show. We don't do a lot of crying here.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Except not in front of the camera. Not in front of the camera or the microphone.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. Usually every paycheck, that's when we do the crying.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

It's out of the realm.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, we had to pay the power bill. That's when we. That's when we do the crying. I just want to take a moment and acknowledge South Georgia, Sean and Jenny, Amanda Craig, all these people who have been texting us and emailing us. Thank you very much. We certainly do appreciate it. You, too, can get in contact with us. 212-4338, 1, 2, 2. You can go ahead and do that. And here's a little wrap on the endless day. Now that we're a couple of weeks from it and we have some perspective, we understood it really didn't end. I think we mentioned this like the day afterwards. It really didn't end up being as big of a stretch as I thought it was going to be. Like, work wise, I felt like we were going to be a lot more underwater and tired at the end of the day than I actually was.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah, no, I agree. I mean we did. We were here for 12 hours.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, we were.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

But we had some well timed breaks in between there when we ran some interviews and I think amazingly our twitch stream went off well.

[Brian Green]

It went off well. No one watched it, but it went off well.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Right now we were able to do it.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, that's. This is kind of bringing me to the point that I was going to make, but here's a little wrap up on it. Over 30 downloads, over 10 people heard the episodes throughout the course of the last 15 days and no coverage whatsoever in the podcast. So I really think you're telling me.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

We'Ve got a chance.

[Brian Green]

I'm telling you, we really made waves with this one. This one. This was the coup taker off, if you will, of all commercial break episodes. This was really well worth it. Chrissy did everything we wanted it to do. It brought us no traffic, no attention. And our guests are the one who suffered. Really. Dignitaro is the one who suffered. Actually. She's the one suffered. Love that, Tignitar.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

I love that. I know I, I've, I loved her before we met her and then I love her even more.

[Brian Green]

You know, we talk about this a lot because it's a fourth wall kind of podcast here because, you know, what else are we going to talk about? We let you in. It's transparent. We're pretty transparent about almost everything that happens on the commercial break. Good, bad and indifferent. But there are some guests that you know are coming on that you are really clueless about how you're going to interact with them. Because there are some people that you see in other interviews on stage doing their act and you go, yeah, that's a very affable person. I think we're going to get along with them no matter what because we're pretty affable people. We're pretty easy to get along with. And then there are some people who you think might be a little bit more difficult personality wise. Some have, some have proven to be. And then there are People where you just don't know. You're like. They have a kind of a stage presence that's not exactly, like, affable, but it's not stern or mean or anything like that. Tig is one of those people. You watch her on stage, and she's got this stage presence that's very funny and very commanding.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

So funny.

[Brian Green]

But then you don't know really what you're gonna get. It's kind of like, I don't know, like a potluck. You're like, oh, I wonder what she's gonna bring to the table? And what she brought was a very empathetic, I'd say, caring, friendly.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

Vibe. It made me feel very comfortable talking to Tig. So comfortable that I think I cried at the end of the episode. So there you go. There's two times we've cried.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

That's okay.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, but that's okay. Sometimes you're gonna cry. Listen, when you do a thousand hours of anything, sometimes you're gonna cry. That's just the way that it is. Just the way that it is. But this brings me to my next point, which is this. And this is a little minutiae of the show. They're doing a little house cleaning, I guess. I think it would benefit us not only. What might we actually do in person recordings, where you may have a chance to come sit and watch us do a recording or an interview. But I would love it if we could start doing a twitch or a kick live recording. So not a broadcast of the episode, but we will record the episode and we will stream it so that you can see it while we're streaming it. And then, of course, it'll broadcast a couple days or a week later, whatever it is. If you are interested in that, if that is something that interests you, then also do us a favor and text us. Because that way we can gauge, you know, we kind of take the temperature litmus test. So if more than one of you do that, then we less likely will do it, because that's exactly how many people showed up at our live Twitch on the Endless Day. So if we can get more than one.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah. If you'd like to see us twitch and kick, then if you'd like to.

[Brian Green]

See us twitch and kick, then videotape me in the bedroom. If you'd like to see me twitch and kick for over an hour. Videotape me in the bedroom. Oh, God. That was funny. That was funny. So text us. That reminds me of a ad that I saw on if. Listen, do you have an X account, a Twitter account.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

I do. And I refuse to sign back into it.

[Brian Green]

I sign into it, but I have never. I mean, I think I have like three tweets. When it was Twitter. I think I have three tweets. All of them, as you can imagine, just crushed with traffic and likes and comments as our social media does. But I go on there just to see. I guess it's a lot like if my house was on fire.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

I was gonna say a dumpster fire.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. Well, if my house was on fire and everybody got out safely and I knew that the fire was somewhere in the house, I might pop the door open to see just how badly the house was on fire. You know what I'm saying? I might pop in just to see what certain destruction lie around. And that's why I go over to X sometimes. I just wanna pop the door open and see how bad the house is burning. And it's. There's no doubt about it, it's consumed all rooms. It's. I'm pretty sure. What a cesspool. I mean, honestly, I don't know if it's just my feed or it's everybody's feet. I think it's everybody's feet because everybody's complaining about. But is it the cesspool of dick pill ads and pornography? I mean, I don't care about the pornography. God bless you. I have porn on. On your platform, if that's what you choose to do. But then just the most vile kind of violence and racism and all that other stuff and it's just. It's not my cup of tea. It's just not. Words are energy and when exchanged, you know, you that. I think someone said this. I don't. Maybe Pete Holmes, I don't know why that's coming to mind, but that's a random name to pull out of my hat. But Pete Holmes, I think he said, words have energy. They are spells that you can cast on people. And I just don't like reading about that stuff. I don't like acknowledging.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

No, I was going to say, I mean, look, I try to be positive and yada, yada, yada, but I don't insulate myself with only every day is sunshine. But there's certain paths I just know not to go down.

[Brian Green]

Yes, well, Twitter is definitely one of them, or X or whatever the fuck you call it, because the algorithm has changed, most definitely. And now it favors a lot of that content because it's clickbait. And that's what they want. They want interactions on the platform and it's just spreading a lot of bullshit. But anyway, that's not the point. The point is I go on there the other day and I don't. I'm like googling something about or searching something about the Atlanta Braves. And up pops an ad. Just imagine this like a 75 year old woman, looks very scholarly with a British accent, standing in front of a chalkboard. So a teacher type vibe, right? Older, diminutive, you know, like weighs 100 pounds, sopping wet, glasses on, gray hair, British lady. And she's like, what did she say? Did you know that almost any man can have a 10 inch erect penis without. It doesn't matter what size or race you're born or how much you weigh. Your dick can be long and hard just like the porn stars. And I'm like, wow, okay, go Grandma. And then she was like, you can literally give instant orgasm by being thick and rich and hottie in your man junk area. And I'm like, wow. And then she starts getting like super graphic about how you can increase because now I'm hooked in. Now I gotta go, oh, can I.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Forgot about the Braves at this point.

[Brian Green]

Thought forgot the Braves were the last thing on my mind. Now I'm thinking at some point in my life I can give Astrid the satisfaction she deserves if I just listen to grandma here tell me about my girth and how I increase my length and my width and my height, all of it. And then she goes on to explain that with. Without. Whatever she goes on to explain, but halfway through the video, I start to notice that Grandma's mouth's moving a little weird. Yeah, I was gonna say, you can tell that it's almost like one of those Conan o' Brien used to do a bit where he'd put a. A picture of somebody like, I don't know, Donald Trump or whoever. He put a picture there. And then there was a comic.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yes.

[Brian Green]

Who would put his lips in the picture. Remember the funniest fucking thing ever. And then they would switch the pictures and he would make these voices with his lips moving. But the picture was a still photograph. It looked a little bit like that. Little bit like that. And I realized that what I was seeing was a deep fake. Essentially someone had created an ad with the likeness of a grandma to get you to feel comfortable that she knew what the fuck she was talking about. When in fact Grandma probably has no idea that her likeness is being used to try and convince you Grandma is.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Probably an AI image.

[Brian Green]

I think it's based on a real image because it appeared and also what I noticed was that the grandma kept making the same movements around the chalkboard over and over and over again. So I'm like two minutes into this video before I realize it's a deep fake. Because the deep fakes are getting really fucking good.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah, they are.

[Brian Green]

You can usually tell, but there are some deep fakes where it takes me a hot minute to figure it out. It is convincingly real. Convincingly real.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

So did that make you be when you figured out that it wasn't the real grandma, did you? Was it less trust? Trustworthy?

[Brian Green]

No, I still wanted to figure out how to get my dick ten and a half inches. I mean, fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on. We should all get ten and a half inch dicks. I don't know how that saying goes, but I mean, ten and a half inch dick, that's a pretty good reel right there. Because every guy wants to know how to increase his length. Every guy. I mean, I don't know about every guy, but it's of interest now. I also know it's all bullshit. Like you can't, I don't think you can really increase your length to 10 and a half inches because I have 10 inches to go if that's the case, you know what I'm saying? And that just seems like I'm too old to get that much running room out of my own anatomy. It's just not going to happen. But you got to imagine that there's so many people that fall for this. So many people. And that like Piggy fronted on something that I had seen just days earlier, which was Daniel Thrasher, who had visited our show when he did that. Daniel Thrasher is like the, the online influencer, comedian, actor, young guy who had come on with Henry hall, who we played his music a couple weeks, month back, who we really liked. Daniel Thrasher, really funny, nice guy. He's got like a billion followers or whatever online. And he did a demonstration completely not like his usual content, which is very produced comedy type content. He did a demonstration where in like 10 minutes, he took a copy of his own voice, made it say some things, put some background noise to it, put it through a phone and made it appear that he had really called someone to tell them something and left them a voicemail very convincingly. You wouldn't have known the difference between the two voices. And he had done it all with AI in just seconds, like minutes, you know, five minutes or whatever it was. And so he was pointing out, this is our future, we have to Be careful, because people can do this and they can replicate it and it can sound convincingly real. I thought to myself, well, shit, here I am chatting up a storm. Chatting up a storm with chat tcb, just feeding it every inch of the commercial break, all 10 and a half inches of the commercial break, and hoping that it doesn't go rogue one day and decide it's gonna make its own version of the commercial break. But eventually, I think it's gonna. It's going to get smart, just like Brian would, and it's going to say, I could do this so much better than Brian can. Let me get to it. Let me get to it.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Let me stop his madness.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, let me stop the madness and make it funny for one second. All right, we'll take a break and we'll be back. You make this rather snappy, won't you? I have some very heavy thinking to do before 10:00.

[Unknown]

Hi, cats and kittens. Rachel here. Do you ever get the urge to speak endlessly into the void like Brian? Well, I've got just the place for you to do that. 212-4333. TCB. That's 212-433-3822. Feel free to call and yell all you want. Tell Brian I need a raise. Compliment Chrissy's innate ability to put up with all his shenanigans, or tell us a little story. The juicier the better. By the way, we love to hear your voice because Lord knows we're done listening to ourselves. Also, give us a follow on your favorite socials. Hecommercial break on Insta, TCB, podcast on TikTok. And for those of you who like to watch. Oh, that came out wrong. We put all the episodes out on video, YouTube.com thecommercial break and tcbpodcast.com for all the info on the show, your free sticker, or just to see how pretty we look. Okay, I gotta go now. I've got a date with my dog. No, seriously. Axel needs food. Today is pork chop day.

[Rachel]

This episode is sponsored in part by Squarespace. Squarespace, the all in one platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or you're scaling your business, Squarespace gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings with a professional website, grow your brand, and get paid all in one place. Squarespace does it all. We have used Squarespace. We have helped others use Squarespace. We are helping someone we know build their website with Squarespace. Squarespace is easy it's all there. If you need design, Squarespace has AI tools to help you get cutting edge design. Even though you're not a designer.

[Brian Green]

Who is really?

[Rachel]

Once you get that website up and running, you are going to need to be found. Search engine optimization is the name of the game and Squarespace has SEO tools built right in videos. It's the wave of the future, kids. Everyone, everywhere is doing videos. You need to do the same thing. You can showcase your expertise and engage with clients. When you put video content on your website, guess what? Squarespace makes it easy. And then once people find you and see those hilarious videos that you're putting on your website and are convinced that they need your product or service, a little change is going to need to exchange hands. How are you going to do that?

[Brian Green]

Payment tools.

[Rachel]

Those payment tools, they can be awful complicated, but Squarespace makes it easy. Head to squarespace.com commercial for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code commercial to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Squarespace has long been a sponsor of the commercial break. We have long been a client of Squarespace. Thanks again, Squarespace, for supporting the commercial break. This episode is sponsored by Discover. If there's one thing we've learned from the entertainment industry, it's just how easy it is to earn a reputation, even if it doesn't reflect who you really are. For example, everyone thinks that Discover is a card that isn't widely accepted. But in reality, it's accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Yeah, 99%. So maybe now you'll think twice before judging a book by its cover. Unless it's a celebrity cookbook.

[Brian Green]

In that case, judge away.

[Rachel]

Based on the February 2024 Nielsen report. Learn more at discover dot slash credit card.

[Brian Green]

You know, Chrissy, every summer comes around and every summer Brian starts complaining about the blockbuster films we're all being force fed to watch. But there are a couple that I'm excited to see. I'll explain. F1, which is the new Brad Pitt, the most expensive movie ever made or some shit. I don't know. That's what I read. The most expensive production ever. Blah, blah, blah.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

It's about more so than like Avatar and all those.

[Brian Green]

Cameron, I think that if I'm not mistaken, he liked to hold that title. He does. And he can fund it with his pocket change too, because he goes down to the Titanic and he steals all those priceless artifacts. That's not true. That's not true.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Did you see, there's that whole thing on Netflix, too.

[Brian Green]

Oh, we can talk about that.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

I haven't seen it.

[Brian Green]

Oh, you haven't seen it. Okay, I'll talk about it in a second. Most expensive movie made. I think I read this. Maybe I'm completely wrong. One of the most expensive films ever produced with a budget over $300 million. And by the way, F1 premiered just a couple of days ago downtown, inside of Times Square. And guess who was the host for that premiere? Hannah Burner. Her friend Hannah Burner. So she was standing there with Brad Pitt, you know, doing a whole bunch of stuff, and she posted it online, to which I replied, des looks great in that suit. I wonder how DEZ feels about that. Des Bishop, our other good friend. Anyway, F1 is coming out and the early reviews are in, and apparently it's a really fucking spectacular movie.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

That's good.

[Brian Green]

I like watching F1 formula racing when it's on and when it's convenient to watch it, I don't hunt it down. But that's a movie I'm kind of excited to see because, you know, action sports, you know, good dramedy. Let's see that. I want to see that. That's good. And then that Mission Impossible, the last one, now, I told you, wasn't a Mission Impossible fan until I watched this last one. Not the one that's coming out this summer, but the last one when I thought it was really fucking impressive and very action packed.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

They're very good.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. And that Tom Cruise. What? I mean, what else can he do? That guy is a nudnik. He's crazy. How do people let him do this? He is the most bankable movie star in Hollywood besides Brad Pitt. He is the most bankable movie star maybe ever. And they have him attached to a guide wire jumping from a helicopter to an airplane 50,000ft in the fucking air. And then not only are they filming it for the movie over and over and over again as he does it repeatedly, then they're filming it to film it, to film it, to make sure you can see it in some fucking reel. This. These people are idiots. They're insane. Let a stunt person do this. Pay him really good money to do it. But that Tom Cruise, he just can't let it go. He has. He has. It's now his signature thing. His signature thing is letting you watch him do real stunts.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Aliens.

[Brian Green]

Aliens, aliens. I mean, we talk about the guy who survived the Air India crash. What about Tom Cruise?

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

I think we might need to examine that.

[Brian Green]

Didn't he hang onto the side of a plane while it was taking off one time. That's real. There's no cgi. I mean, they CGI out the belt that's hanging onto him. But you say, oh, he had a belt hanging on. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he had a belt hang. You do it, you fuck. You get on the side of a plane and hang on while it's taking off. That's insane. That's insane. Shit. And I saw a reel where they were showing that, like how he did that. And some twad in the fucking comments is like, oh, he's got a belt on. It's not real. He's got a belt on. He's hanging onto the side of a C1 fucking 30.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

That's insanity. There is no explanation except for literally not having all of your marbles in your head for wanting to do that. I don't care who you are, you can have a death wish. And that's not an easy way to go. You don't want to fall off a plane while it's 10,000ft in the air hanging off the side of it, or trying to get from a helicopter to another plane. It's all just silliness. Stop it, Tom. We can figure out a computer or something. Listen. But it's not like I'm your biggest fan in the world, but I don't want to see you die. Thank God those movies are over. But I do want to see it. I'm excited to see it.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Me too.

[Brian Green]

And then on the opposite end of the Tom Cruise. But Tom Cruise also seems, like religious about safety, right?

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah, you've got to be.

[Brian Green]

Because when I saw the reel of him in the new movie, he jumps from a helicopter to an airplane midair in I watched the reel of how this all went down, like how they made it behind the scenes type thing. And he says right before he does the first jump out of the helicopter, he says, we're going to be alive today. We're going to get some good footage, but we're going to be alive. We're going to make this happen. He flew his own fucking airplane for Top Gun. And then he taught other people how to fly their airplanes for Top Gun so that it would look as real as fucking possible.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

He's dedicated.

[Brian Green]

He's a man of action. He's a true superhero. Except he goes to that place we don't talk about because then the episode won't be airable. And then you got the other side of the spectrum, which is this dunce that decided he was going to make a tin can submersible out of old Coca Cola bottles, bottle tops and some thin wire and take it down all the way to the Titanic.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

What? Oh, you're talking about the. Yeah, I know I haven't watched it yet, but I want to.

[Brian Green]

This guy is the guy who started the company. He has got to be one of the most egotistical human beings that ever lived on Earth. Because anybody that didn't believe in his vision that this would work, despite all, all evidence to the contrary, was not going to be around him. He surrounded himself with yes people. And those yes people were scared to say no. They were scared to go down in the sub. They knew there was problems all along. They knew it. And yet he continued to go. He continued to press forward because he wanted to be the next Elon Musk. He wanted to be the next Steve Jobs. He wanted to be the next guy who changed the world with this technology, which wasn't technology whatsoever. And he wanted to take. He wanted to make tourism down to the Titanic part of a larger plan to take people to all different places throughout the ocean. And he would revolutionize this and become fabulously wealthy and famous along the way. Stockton Rush was essentially just an asshole who believed his own bullshit. But what's clear from watching any of the documentaries, there's a couple of them out there, actually. There's one on Netflix, there's one from Discovery. They're equally good. I think the Netflix one is more. The movie is better, like the actual production is better. But the one from Discovery is also as. As informative. And I'm not ruining anything because we know the ending here. Everybody dies, right? But this Titan submersible, the one that got lost at sea, that we all were holding our breath while they were holding their breaths, we thought, waiting for them. This Titan submersible was never supposed to go down to depth. Never. It should have never been made of composite materials. It should have never been made with what it was, what it was made with, which was carbon fiber. Now, I know a little bit about carbon fiber because Jeff and I were once in the carbon fiber business. Believe it or not, it's a true story. We were trying to hock expired carbon fiber all around the world. Somebody called us one time and said they had a load of a thing of. I don't know what you call them. A ton, reels, roms, rams, I don't know of carbon fiber. Could we sell it and we'd get a hefty commission. Except it was expired. No one wanted It. I think it might have gone on the Titan. I'm not sure. It might have.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

We talked about that at the time.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, at the time I thought maybe there was a connection there. I mean, we never really did anything with it. They called us, we made some phone calls, no one knew what the fuck we were talking about. And so we said, well, it was a good. It was right at the beginning of the pandemic.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

It was.

[Brian Green]

Which, strangely, is when Stockton got his carbon fiber and decided to start spinning it up around a tin can and going down to the Titanic.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

I can't believe people got on board with him.

[Brian Green]

So many people, even the people that they talked to that survived the Titan said that they really believed in Stockton and they really believed that he wouldn't put his own life in danger. And they really believed that he was religious about safety. When everybody else that worked for the company, it was clear that there was no.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Well, wait, are we talking about. Is this the one that blew up or imploded? Yeah. Well, how did somebody survive it?

[Brian Green]

Survived the other dives down to the titanic. There were 83 dives in this particular version of the Titan. There were other versions of the Titan. And here's where you learn a little something. What do you learn? Well, you learn that there was the original Titan, the hull of the Titan, the cylinder that held them in, it cracked. And it cracked so bad that Stockton had to go, despite against his wishes, he had to go and have another one created. And they hid that in some fancy PR words. And they never told anybody in the future that one of them had already cracked. Because every time it went down, the immense amount of pressure that was put onto carbon fiber, which is essentially just a weave, that's. Think of it like a weave. Carbon fiber is super duper strong when you're pushing out on it, but when you're pushing in on it, it's different, right? For whatever reason. And so it kept getting pushed. And as it got pushed, it would crack and snap. And they would hear these cracks and snaps. And in the Netflix documentary, they have audio of the popping, what they call popping. It sounds like your microwave popping popcorn. Now imagine you're in this tiny little thing with five other people where you have to literally, like, pull a curtain to piss in a pot. And you've been down underneath the water, you're 12,000ft under, you've been going down for eight straight hours in complete darkness, and you start hearing popcorn, like noises all around you. I would shit myself. First of all, I would never volunteer, Right? I Do have zero interest in going to see the Titanic? Zero. Those people are down there for a reason and I don't want to be down there. I like swimming. I don't like being underwater. I don't have any interest in scuba diving. I don't have any interest in any of that. Doesn't interest me. No space, no scuba diving, okay? It's just not for me. It's not my thing. But these people were going down there. 80 dives before this, 82 dives before this, people were going down. And each time they were hearing popping and cracking. And each time the lead engineers, one of which was sued by Oceangate, the owner of Titan, one of which was sued to the, to like, threatened to take away his green card and sued his family and said that he was fraudulent because he wrote an email, one email that said that we should not be bringing people down when we test this hull. It is not safe. People are going to die and we're going to be left to pick up the pieces. I refuse to go in it. You should refuse to go in it. He wrote that email and Stockton fired him the next day. Fired him the next day. Because Stockton said in the movie on tape, I'm not forcing anyone to drink the Kool Aid, but we're going to do this. This is how it's going to go down. It's not. I would not put my. I'm not. I don't have a death wish. I wouldn't put myself and my life in jeopardy. But that's exactly what he was doing. And he should have known it. The depths that they were going to, the immense amount of pressure, the crushing weight of the ocean just forcing its way into every crevice was going to make that thing explode one way, implode one way, way or the other at any given time. And anyone who went on it was not aware that it had already almost happened. And in multiple smaller scale tests, it never got to depth. So they, they would go to this laboratory and they would make smaller, like 18 versions of it and they would put it in there and they tried to get it to 4,000 meters, which is where it needed to be tested to in order to get down to the Titanic. And it didn't even get to 3,900. It exploded every, imploded every time. And Stockton said, we're just gonna keep going because I believe, I believe in it. But everybody in the entire submersible industry said no hole should be cracking and popping. None of them.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

That seems bad.

[Brian Green]

Of course it does. It's not adjusting, it's not settling. It's getting ready to fail is what it is. That's why these, like, you think of a submarine, like think of a nuclear submarine, the kind they have in the bases.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

And you go, oh, yeah. Those guys, they, you know, they can shoot down to 4,000 meters and hide near the Titanic. They can't. They actually can't go much below 500 meters. Why? Because they're so big. And the amount of strength needed to hold something that big together under those depths is so immense, it doesn't exist. You can't do it. It would cost so much money. It would be so heavy, it would just sink right to the bottom. So they actually don't go very deep at all. I mean, they go deep for us. Like, we wouldn't want to be 1500ft underwater. That's a third of a mile or whatever it is underwater. But they don't go deep because they can't go deep. Only specially designed submersibles can go that deep. And that James Cameron, he's built a number of them and they look like literally like weird spaceships. Like, the last one that he built looks like a casket. And he stands up in it. Oh, it's got a seat, but he's like kind of standing up in it and he's held in it. And it just, like, it's a big cylinder that just goes down because it's the perfect shape to get him down there. It's small enough that they can take steel and make it strong enough for within reason, for expense. But they're spending like $10 million to build those things. Stockton spent like, you know, he had a group on to build a new hole for that Ocean Gate. When he had a lot of money behind him and a board full of rich people. This guy went to fucking Princeton, for God's sakes. And he was so dumb and so blind to everything that was going on around him that he just blindly put himself and shamelessly other people at so much risk.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

God. And then it happened. And when it happened, everybody who had ever worked for Stockton Rush knew exactly why. They all were like, that's it. There it was. It was gonna happen and there it was.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah, it's sad.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, that guy, one of the lead engineers, the first lead engineer who's in the Netflix documentary, said you should do this on a guide wire. Send it down there on a guide wire multiple times. Test it, see if it holds up. See if it doesn't crack. Look at the, look at the, the Take the. The skin off of it. Let's look and see if there's cracks, if there's damage, if there's pops, if there's concerns. We need to investigate every pop. We need to investigate everything. And Stockton just blindly was like, no, not going to do it. The weird thing is, you know, okay, Stockton blindly led people to their own death, but Stockton himself was in the sub, so it wasn't like he was trying to murder people. He just was dumb. He just was like, fucking dumb. Yeah, yeah. And then you think of Tom Cruise on the side of a plane, you go, well, you know, at least Tom's got the best people in the business working on it. Stockton claimed he had the best people working on it, but. But he didn't have the best people working on it. He had kids. Essentially, when the lead engineer and pilot quit or got fired, they made the accountant the lead engineer and pilot. Yes. And she was like, you're fucking insane. I'm not going down on that thing and I'm not an engineer, so I'm not doing it. Fuck you. No way. She quit the next day. So some people did stand up to Stockton, but there were a number of them that didn't. And now they're all, you know. Well, I tell them so. Well, you should have just refused to show up to work. I mean, people were going to die. That's. That's it. And those poor people, that Hamish Harding.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

And wasn't there like a child on there, too? Not a child, but, you know, a teenager. Yeah, that was the dad.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, he was. His dad was like a British Pakistani businessman, like telecom something, I think. Telecom billionaire millionaire, something like that. And he was proud and happy to have taken his son, to be able to afford to take his son down to the Titanic. Something he really enjoyed and he wanted to see. And he was happy that he could take his son along with him. And now the mother is stuck with nobody. And just a crazy, crazy story that. The ending's no surprise, but there are surprises in the middle. And in the Discovery documentary, you see that in the mothership, the one that was supposed to be there keeping an eye on them. Here's the thing, you cannot just pick up a phone and call somebody up top. You can't do that. So you have these big radio antennas, and those radio antennas have to be very powerful, so they can send signals up into. Through the ocean, right, and then hope that it reaches there. So I believe what they did is that they would talk and that talk would be transmitted into text and that Text would then reach them via some signal, right? And that's how they would communicate up and down because they didn't have a wire attached. So at some point, they got video of the inside of the communications room on the mothership. At the moment, they heard a large explosion underwater. Like a thud, like a pop. It startled the entire room. And then they never heard back. They never heard back. Actually, they heard back. One minute later, they got the last text message they ever received. That text message was coming up. Dropping weight coming up, so they believe. So they hear the sound. Then one minute later, they get this message. Dropping weight coming up. Emergency dropping weight coming up is essentially the last message. And why is that? Why did they hear the thud and then get a message? Well, because it took that long for the message to get up top. Which is just fucking insane when you think about it. It's like you sent your last message and people got it after you died.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

Creepy. Well, Chrissy, the good news is you'll never catch me doing anything like that. I'll go to Bentonville. But the fuck I'm gonna go to the Titan. I'm not going to the Titanic.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Me neither.

[Brian Green]

Not gonna happen. All right, we'll be back.

[Unknown]

Why don't you text us and we can text back and then you can text us in reply, then so on. It's a fun little game I've been playing.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Playing.

[Unknown]

And I think you'll be great at it. 212-4333. TCB. That's 212-433-3822. You could leave a message too. If you do, maybe you'll end up being the voice of the show. But be warned, the pay is not great. You could go to the website and drop us an email. Also tcbpodcast.com and while you're there, you can get a free sticker. Who doesn't want a free sticker? Just go to the Contact Us button and ask for one. Follow us on Insta hecommercial break and watch the [e-mail] thecommercialbreak Now I'm gonna go back to that texting game. You wanna play? Come on. Bye.

[Rachel]

This episode is sponsored in part by Mint Mobile. Do you know what I find funny? Frustratingly funny. Like flat earth frustratingly funny. How much money we all pay for.

[Brian Green]

Our cell phone bills.

[Rachel]

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[Brian Green]

You get to keep your phone, your.

[Rachel]

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[Brian Green]

See Mint Mobile for more details.

[Rachel]

This episode is sponsored by one of our favorites, five Hour Energy. Do you know what has always been missing from my life? A tiny glowing bottle of fruity magic that makes me feel like I'm starring in my own 80s music video. Neon, big hair and fireballs. A blazing enter 5 hour energy new glow Motion flavor. This stuff doesn't just taste like a fruity party, it looks like one too. It glows under UV light, which means your energy shot is now part of your outfit. Functional and fashionable. We love a multitasker. And yes, it's got as much caffeine as a fancy coffee. But unlike that $7 latte GlowMotion won't judge you for wearing glitter and yelling Woohoo. At appropriate times, of course. Oh, and yes, it has zero sugar so it won't crash your vibe. Just 2 ounces of pure go go go. Perfect for the Night owls Festival. Junkies, overachievers, and anyone who treats sleep like a suggestion. Sound familiar? Five Hour Energy GlowMotion is available online. Head to www.fivehourenergy.com to order yours today. That's FiveHouseEnergy.com to order yours today. Thanks Five Hour Energy for being a sponsor of the commercial break.

[Brian Green]

All right, most expensive movies ever made. We'll cap this off. Star wars The Force Awakens $447 million wow. God. We could do just one of those millions. We could do something with Avatar. Way of the Water had a budget. Had an estimated budget of about 350 to 460 million. Pirates of the Caribbean, Stranger Tides had 379 million. Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom, 432 million. And then the other Avatar movies, Fast X apparently had $300 million. Fast X, fast. Fast and Furious.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Is that the Fast and Furious?

[Brian Green]

Geez. Those movies are like. They're a juggernaut. That's a juggernaut.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Oh, yeah. They just keep turning them out. They were making one down the street from where I lived.

[Brian Green]

Oh, yeah, that's right. You were telling me that. Yeah, I just can't watch them. I don't know.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah, it's not my thing.

[Brian Green]

It's not for me. But I do. I do appreciate that. A lot of people appreciate it.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Speaking of Star Wars, Jeff and I went down a rabbit hole with, oh.

[Brian Green]

Did you watch Andor? Did you like it?

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

We really liked it.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. A lot of people saying, Andor is a fantastic television.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

It's really good. And then that ties into Rogue One, if you remember, that came out in 2016, which, at the time, when I saw it, I was kind of like, yeah, I don't know. It kind of didn't make sense. But after watching Andor, it does.

[Brian Green]

It makes much more sense. Okay. Haven't seen Rogue One, haven't seen Andor. So maybe I'll watch those two. You know, maybe that's what we'll do at night at Disney. We'll catch up on some old. Some Disney shows we watch. So I never told this story, but I thought now would be a good time. A couple of. Maybe a month ago, month and a half ago, Astrid and I are, you know, doing what we do, hanging out, working on the show or whatever, and both of us start to notice that we. We're getting a few text messages regarding sticker requests. We think this is very interesting. Oh, wow. Okay.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

3, 4, 7, 10. You got to understand, yes, this show has an audience, but for every audience member, for every 10 audience members, there's maybe one that will interact with us. And that's the law of averages for any show. It's not just the commercial break. It's any show. So actually, put it way down for the commercial break. For every 50 audience members, one will interact with us. Right. And so we maybe, you know, we get quite a few sticker requests, but usually not ten in a day. We have. But it's not. Certainly not a normal day. So I thought, oh, okay. People listen to the show, they really want their sticker. But we haven't announced a new sticker. There's no sticker promotion. Why are we getting so many requests that day? By the end of the day, it is hundreds of sticker requests. Hundreds. But there's something a little odd about the sticker requests. The sticker requests are just addresses and names. Usually with a sticker request, usually I'd say half of them. There's something written there also in the sticker request. Like in the, in the comments section. Yeah, like, love the show. Can you sign the sticker? Can I get one of these? I need two of those. I've been listening to you for a long time. But by and large, none of these sticker requests have any comments whatsoever. Address, name, email address. So I say to Astrid, oh, we must be getting. There's a spam bot. Somebody has told their chat TCB to go spam the fuck out of the commercial break. Those probably aren't even real addresses. They're probably like, you know, industrial warehouses somewhere. So we start looking at some of them and we start feeling this out a little bit. They're real houses. Then we Google the names and the addresses and a lot of them are coming up connected. This person has been reported to live at this house. This is the house address that you have. So we go, well, that's weird. Why would a spam bot give us real addresses with real names of people? Could happen, could be trained to do that. I even asked one of my friends who works in AI, could you train? Yeah, you could ask it to go through a list of, you know, names associated with addresses and then send that to you. But that's a lot of work. For what payoff? Yeah. And for what payoff? Right. Do you own those addresses? Are you going to go show up at their house and steal their mail and hope that you get the stickers from the commercial break? Why not just ask to buy a bunch of stickers? Right? Okay, whatever. So by the end of 24 hour period, we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of sticker requests and we are going crazy about this. I can't believe this. By the end of two days, we're getting close to maybe 700, 800 sticker requests. It's nuts. And I'm like, what is going on?

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah, there's gotta be something.

[Brian Green]

I look at the traffic of the show, it's not notably different. It's a little bit up, but not notably different. So now I'm extra suspicious. Why are People coming to our website. Our Google Analytics that tracks traffic on our website is going bananas. It's up by like 6,000%, right? And I'm like, wow, that's crazy. But then I.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

People are finally catching.

[Brian Green]

People are finally catching on to the commercial break. Someone has said something. Yes. Tom Cruise made a video about his stunts. And in that stunt on the side of the plane, it's a tcbpodcast.com for your free sticker. I don't know. I have no idea. I can't imagine why people would be going crazy about our stickers on these days. It's just driving us nuts. And she goes, Astrid's like, it costs a lot of money to send out. We're gonna have to order new stickers. Like, it costs money to send out these stickers two or three bucks a pop. Like, what are we gonna do? And I'm like, I don't know. I mean, if they're real listeners, I guess we have to follow up.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Up.

[Brian Green]

So then I go into the Google Analytics and I start diving a little deeper and I notice that there's a weird extension. It says like the. The website that the traffic is coming from, there's a weird extension. And I click on that extension, but it doesn't go anywhere. It's like, you know, this website can't be found or whatever. So then I Google tcb free sticker. And when I do up pops a list. And I'm not talking one or two, I'm talking like 12, 15 websites that are these coupon websites where it give it like essentially catalogs all of the great coupons that are available for things around the world. Like, yeah, you know, from Lunchables to deli meats to Kmart, Target and Walmart and all this other stuff, right? Tires. Yes. They're huge websites that just suck in. And they all have a section on free ship you can get for free. And they all probably are owned or share information with each other. They screen scrape each other's information. So on all of those sites that day and the next day and the third day, at the top of the free shit you can get is the commercial break podcasts, free sticker. So no good deed goes unpunished as we now have thousand sticker requests to fill from people who have never nor will ever listen to the show. Maybe some of you did, maybe some of you are here because of that sticker request. But we know damn well, just like they know damn well no one's actually listening free stuff they do from a podcast.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

I Know, it's crazy. I mean, I remember, but. Yeah. This doesn't. Yes. Just.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, I guess. I know. I get it.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

But, like, I used to work trade shows and, you know, I mean, it could be the dumbest little tchotchke stuff. And, I mean, people will just come over and grab handfuls of it.

[Brian Green]

Yeah.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Little keychains. It has nothing to do with anything.

[Brian Green]

It must be in our brains.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Green]

Bad parents, did you say?

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

No. Crap.

[Brian Green]

Oh, I thought you said bad parents. And I'm like that, too. It must be in our brains, in our DNA somewhere. It's free. I didn't have to work for it. I don't have to pay anything for it. It's free. Let me get it, and let me get it in bulk. If it's. You're right, it's stupid as shit. Listen to our listeners. I want to give you a free sticker. I like that.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Oh, absolutely. But for other people that really had.

[Brian Green]

Never listened to the show nor ever will listen to the show right now. And so I said to Astrid, I go, okay, I know this is a pain in the ass, but dump all these people into a system, and then you're gonna have to respond to them and ask them to tell you which is their favorite episode and their favorite line from their favorite episode. And if they respond, then send them a sticker. So I think we probably had 100, 150 people actually do that. So maybe they actually did start listening to the show. But otherwise, I mean, I guess it's.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Kind of promotion for the show.

[Brian Green]

Kind of. I mean, it's very expensive promotion, but it's kind of promotion. You know, when you only have 10% of people actually responding to your promotion, and it's $3 a pop, it can be very expensive. So all this to say, I want you to have your free sticker. I like the idea that you have a free sticker and we are doing new ones and we have an endless day one coming. So you can commemorate your endless day. But please do this favor. Write something when you go to the website and in the contact us button and you want your free sticker, and you can have a free sticker every time we have one. So it's not just one free sticker. If we change the stickers, you can have another one, no problem. I don't mind that either. But do us a favor and write something in the comments section so we can decipher the bullshit from the reality very quickly. And I don't know, write your favorite episode, write a comment Write. Say something funny that we say. Ask for a signature, something along those lines so we know it's you and it's real and you're a listener.

[Rachel]

I don't want to be a dick.

[Brian Green]

But I gotta put my foot down. I can't give away thousands stickers on a daily basis. That would be insane. We. We don't make any money here.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

No.

[Brian Green]

How are we gonna afford to pay for more stickers? That would have been my entire paycheck if I would have sent all of those stickers. Seriously, it's crazy.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah. I remember when you sent that to me and I looked at that site, it was just like, what was it, the free thing of the day?

[Brian Green]

Yeah.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Or something.

[Brian Green]

Free.com or whatever. Freeshit.com. but then it propagated to like these other. All these other sites. It just went on. It was a rabbit hole that went on and on forever and that went on for days. It took about a week for that to shake out of the system. And I think every once in a while, we still get people that are asking for free stickers from that website. So thanks for the free promotion, but the joke's on you. It's not really free. You must listen to the show. I should have asked them to pay for postage. Because if you really want something to free and then they ask you to do something, probably pissed as you are, I would imagine.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

So. All right, well, guess what else is free? Texting us. 212-4333. TCB 212-433-3822. Text us. Questions, comments, concerns, content, ideas. We take them all at that phone number. We'd love to hear from you. So many of you do so, but those of you that do not, if you're that other 49 out of 50 people, people that do not, just text us, say hello, we're friendly, we're nice. You never know. It could turn into a lifelong romance. Do it now. Did you watch andor let us know. Do you Want to see F1? Let us know. Do you not like Stockton Rush? Let us know. Did you go on Stockton Rush's submarine? I want to know. Let us know. Anything we talk about. Add in your two cents. Keeps the conversation going. You text me, I text you. That's how it goes. All right. Okay. TCBpodcast.com. that's where you can get your free sticker. You say something nice in the comment section. You can also see all of the video, hear all of the audio right there from one location. TCB podcast.com also all of the videos are available the same day. They are here on the RSS feed. Need just go to YouTube.com thecommercial break for all of those videos, every single one of them on our channel. I got it all.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

Well I think if you if you'd like to see us twitch and kick.

[Brian Green]

Oh twitch and kick. Let us know. Let us know if you'd like to see us twitching Kick. All right Chrissy, that's all I can do for today. But I love you.

[Chris Joy Hoadley]

I think so. And I love you.

[Brian Green]

Best to you bestie and best you out there in the podcast universe. Until next time Chrissy and I will say we do say and we must say goodbye.

[Unknown]

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